Author’s note- Sorry guys, breath of the wild and spring break really got to me. On last Monday, when I was able to finally acquire the game, I played for a whole day and night without even eating a thing. But getting back into school reminded me of the story, and now this chapter is coming out. Enjoy~!

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A Recognition

After my conversation with Chloe, I walked over to the line of people who were waiting to be picked. The people who were good at soccer, whose names I forget, were already picked. There were only a few people left, but as soon as I got into the line, I was immediately noticed.

???- “Pick him, that guy’s a complete savage!”

I recognized the person speaking as one of the busybodies that surrounded Helen and I on Friday. He was a man of small stature, with wavy blonde hair and blue eyes. I didn’t have much of an impression of him before the incident, but now it was slightly negative, given that he was one of the people that added fuel to the fire.

Team Captain- “You sure? Is he any good?”

The blonde dude brushed the hair that dangled in front of his eyes to the side, as he glanced over at me.

Blonde haired dude- “He was pretty good at dodge-ball.”

The team captain nodded, and then pointed at me.

Team Captain- “Nathaniel.”

I walked over to his side and waited for everyone to be picked. And while I was waiting, I observed the layout of the teams. The other team had some good people, but so did ours. My team had Julian, a couple of good soccer people, and of course, me. The other team had a couple of good soccer people as well, along with a few generally athletic people. The teams were pretty well matched.

But I wasn’t really too enthusiastic about this game. Although my general rule of thumb was to try your best and have fun when it comes to athletics, things had changed since my previously normal life. For one, it had just rained yesterday. I guess that’s quite self-explanatory. And for two, even without my ability my body was considerably stronger than it was before, meaning if I decided to go all out, I’d literally crush them all.

Thinking back to all the shattered glasses and broken pencils, I smiled sheepishly. Yeah, I really couldn’t go all out. But then, how was I supposed to play this game?

Suddenly, a perfect idea popped up within my head. What if I used this as part of my training on controlling my strength? That would be like killing two birds with one stone!

Just as I finished thinking about it, teams had already been decided. And we were about to start the game.

The playing field seemed to stretch outwards before me, and I took in everything within an instant. The green turf that made our makeshift playing field, the positions of the players, the ball hovering in mid-air. Suddenly, time seemed to shift, and everything turned back to normal. Start!

The ball hit the ground, and in moments everything turned into chaos. The people rushed forward to the ball, kicking wildly without abandon. And the ball ended up flying towards the other team’s side, allowing one of them to start dribbling the ball towards our side. One of our teammates ran to block him, and the ball ended up flying back to the center.

The captain of our team obtained the ball and started dribbling it to the other team’s side. He shot, but the ball was blocked by the goalie. The goalie threw the ball to an area devoid of people, and one of his teammates started rushing towards the ball. But he wasn’t going to get it. My turn!

Just as he was about to get to the ball, I appeared like a fleeting shadow. With a fake to the left, I shook him off and drove past him. Two people from the other team moved to intercept me, but in my eyes they were just too slow…

I tapped the ball with my foot, and it flew off like a rocket! It passed in between the two people and went straight towards the goal. And although the goalie was already diving to catch the ball, it was moving too fast! Goal!

I made a victory gesture, but no one seemed to notice. Instead, they were staring blankly at the goal. Even our team captain was rubbing his eyes in disbelief! I could imagine them thinking, ‘How did he make it from there? That’s too much, isn’t it?’ Maybe I needed to tone it down a bit; I don’t think I controlled myself enough…

I decided to treat the game as if I was playing with children, and it felt almost as if I was a robot. Every movement was mechanical and calculated, but ironically, I still had some trouble. Controlling the power and speed of my movements was easy enough, it was only when my body just ‘reacted’ that my power and speed just exploded.

This ‘reaction’ mainly happened when I was doing something habitual. For example, say I normally had to get the ball that was at a certain distance. So I would normally push off with say, 50% of my power to run and get that ball. But now that my ability has increased my base power by about 3 times, that normal 50% is actually 150% of what I would previously do. See the problem here?

I shook my head and concentrated in front of me.

Nick- “Hah, hah, whew.”

The other team captain, Nick, had finally gotten to our goal by getting past all our defenders. And he was about to shoot at our goal. But this time, I was the goalie.

I intended to move up slowly and kick the ball away from him, but with only a single bound, I was right in front of him. His eyes narrowed sharply,

Nick- “Not this time!”

He launched a kick at the ball, but I kicked the ball at the same time!

“Bam!”

The ball went flying towards the other side, and my kick had also caused his leg to shoot out, causing him to fall onto the ground. Right after this the gym teacher blew the whistle and screamed out,

Gym teacher- “Time to get inside! When I unlock the door, I’m not waiting for any of y’all, so you better finish whatever you’re doing and get over here!”

We stopped the game there, but I was not satisfied with the results of that practice. Obviously, I was still unable to control my power properly, especially when running. It’s easy to adjust when it’s something like walking, where all you have to do is move at the same speed as the other person and keep both feet on the ground. But running? That’s a whole other game.

In combat, this would be a serious problem. Say I tried to dodge in between two flying knives, or some other projectiles. Would that move be very effective if I ended up dodging past one and getting stabbed by the other? But I never really had this problem in combat before, even when I did use my ability… I’m missing something here.

In the dreamspace combat, I’ve found that my body moves with my thoughts, which normally wouldn’t be much different than reality. So is there some kind of disconnect between my thoughts and my body?

Thinking back to my most recent fights with my body strengthening playing a role, I really didn’t have to do much weaving in or out of their blows. I created an opening with a flame point of some kind, and smashed in with my golden aura.

Pretty easy, but… It seems that close combat won’t be a problem with my abilities. The biggest issue will be getting close; with my control like this, I wouldn’t be able to effectively dodge. Invisibility might work, but I would have to be moving slow enough to keep it active. And I don’t know what that speed is exactly either…

Whatever. I’ll have time to test all of this out later; it’s not like my bodyguards are there just for show. Right?

I put it on my to-do list to test the ability of my bodyguards, and then I decided it was time to talk to Chloe. But she was already over at the door, and I was on the field. I needed to hurry.

I was about to jog over when a hand clasped over my shoulder. And what was my instinctual reaction, having being brought up in dojos and with martial art fanatics? It was a shoulder throw of course!

I grabbed their hand to sling the person over my back, but mid-way, I realized what I was doing. So I tried to soften the throw as much as possible, yet all that really did was make them fall off my back. But it was either that, or getting slammed into the ground so…

(Author’s musings- I come from a martial arts background, and I’m basing this off of personal experience. Stop typing that comment about how unrealistic the situation is; this actually happens!)

The person fell to the ground with a gasp of surprise, and I immediately apologized before I got to see who the person was.

Me- “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry! Are you ok?”

The person rolled over and said angrily,

Julian- “Nathaniel! What the heck was that for!?”

Oh… Him. He seems to be having a lot of bad luck lately, and I think some of it (most of it actually) might be my fault. Sorry Julian, I’ll make it up someday.

Me- “Sorry, force of habit. Here, do you need some help?”

I extended out my hand to pull him up, but he angrily tried to shove my hand away. However, my hand didn’t move as a result of his pathetic attempts to move it away, and at this he only got angrier. After about a second of struggling with my hand, he exclaimed angrily,

Julian- “I can get up myself!”

With that, he jumped to his feet and dusted himself off. Then he quickly walked off to the door, not sparing me another word. I wanted to chase after him, but I was too busy stifling my laughter. Am I a bad friend?

I looked back at the doorway for Chloe, but she wasn’t there anymore. Speaking of which, there weren’t many people at the door anymore. I would probably be locked out if I didn’t hurry.

With that thought, I moved forward like a gust of wind and arrived at the door. Then I got dressed in the locker room quickly and headed out to the main gym, where we had to wait until we were dismissed. But when I got there, I didn’t see Chloe. Was she still getting dressed?

I was kinda new to having a girlfriend, and I assume you can tell. Is this normal? Or was it just a girl thing to spend so long getting dressed? But last time, she was here before me… Hrmm.

I reclined against the wall in thought, waiting for her to come. But then it hit me; was Helen bothering her? No offense to Chloe, but she doesn’t really seem to have many friends that she can talk to. And getting dressed really doesn’t take that long, unless there was something else she was preoccupied with.

I reclined further into the wall, hoping to relax a bit, telling myself I shouldn’t have to wait much longer. And it worked for some time: until the bell rang. Then suddenly, they rushed out like the bursting of a dam.

Questions filled my mind, yet I didn’t have any answers. But she would be at our next period, I could ask her then. ‘Don’t worry about it Nathaniel. I’m sure there’s a good reason for this.’

I walked through the hallway quickly; evidently my stress was manifesting itself physically. And this was ironic, it seemed, because she was gone for only a small period of time. What reason, other than she wasn’t where she was supposed to be, called for worry? Had I become so insecure, depending on her to follow my every expectation? I used this logic to forcefully calm myself down, and by that time I had arrived at the tech theater class.

Chloe wasn’t here yet, so I decided to do something that even I found quite unusual. It had no prompting, yet I for some reason I found it relevant at the time. I started to watch the video of our fight against Helen.

The start of the video was a picture of my face with some Mlg style sunglasses on one side, and Helen’s beet red face on the other. A red zigzag line, the type that you’d see in a game like mortal combat before the fight would start, separated us in a stark contrast. And then the video began.

It seemed the taker of the video already knew something was about to go down for real, so he had even captured the beginning, where Helen walked towards me for the showdown. It was worth noting that the circular red imprint the dodge-ball made on her face was clearly visible during the video, making me chuckle slightly.

Helen- “Who told you to hit me in the face!? Don’t you have any pride as a man, hitting a girl like that!?”

Her blonde hair was in disarray, and she looked incredibly aggressive. But this seemed to mean absolutely nothing to the me in the video, as my face remained cold. Extremely cold. I retorted back with biting words,

Me- “When did this become about my pride as a man? What you said earlier about Chloe was absolutely horrible, and I thought maybe hitting you with a ball would shut you up for once!”

Horns started to flare off in the background, and a sniper scope appeared on screen, coincidentally coinciding with the shape of the circular imprint on her face. They showed the scene of a nuclear bomb exploding, and then it switched back to her, who was now going all out in absolute rage!

Helen- “You and that slut! Why don’t you settle down in real life for once, and realize that you’re not all that! You think you fooled anybody by trying to tell the gym teacher that she really fell? She never tries in the first place, and everybody knows that you two are a couple now. Who are you trying to fool!?” She shrieked.

My eyes seemed to spit out flames, and I stepped forward aggressively. She was scared, and started to back away into the corner. And in that moment, I switched the video off.

The way I looked then reminded me too much of the gazes I received when I killed those people. I remember them clearly. The mercenaries in the auditorium, the winged man, the hulky lady, the military men outside of the racetrack, the rabbit girl, the black eyed lady, even Viola’s death in the illusionary space. Was it hatred? Contempt? Disgust? Either way, I didn’t like seeing it on my own face one bit. It made me feel no different than the killers who came to take my life…

I put away my phone, and decided to apologize to Helen if I could after school. The decision was almost meaningless; whether I apologized or not would really have no effect on the past. But yet, it put my mind at ease, knowing that I still had a conscience, I was still myself at my core. Nothing could change that!

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Author’s note 2- Oh yeah, btw, I have only completed about 22% of the game so far. I guess there’s quite a long road to finishing the game, but this time I’ll make time for my story as well. Seeing as how I finished this chapter, there’s not much reason to doubt my words, I hope…