Arashi's smile shifted.
The full-volu grin softened into sothing else. It was almost fond - the smile a friend uses when they know sothing bad and are about to share it.
"Well… She's been everywhere," Arashi said. "Top floor, training rooms, the libraries, even a few labs where the normal students usually work. Mostly the training rooms. She's been showing up before sunrise and leaving way after dinner."
"Hikari?"
"Our Hikari. The sa one."
Raizen sat up properly on the couch.
"She mastered Eon grab. Like, mastered it. Not just lifting things — she can grab sothing across a room and rotate it mid-air without breaking a sweat. She's been doing levitation drills, and I think she can hold herself for almost an hour now. Almost two ters high! Last ti we tested it she was up for fifty-three minutes before she got bored and ca down. Bored. Not tired."
"Fifty-three minutes." Raizen's jaw dropped. Last ti, he could barely hold himself ten centiters off the ground for a couple of minutes.
"Yeah. And she's like sixteen."
"Got a problem with that?"
"No, no, but that's just —"
"- Incredible."
"…Yeah"
Arashi leaned back into the couch and stared at the ceiling like a man whose pride had taken a series of small, professional injuries.
"She started doing constructs last week. Stable ones. Not the wobbly kind we – the others – could barely manage. Full constructs, holding their shape. I saw her make a stairway. A whole stairway, up to a random step in the library she'd been wanting to reach. She walked up it, got the thing she wanted, walked down, dismissed the stairway. Nine steps. I almost cried."
"Healing?" Raizen asked, rembering how she managed to close the wound without even her staff.
"Osamu's been teaching her. Healed up a bruise on Esen's hand last week — no scar, took her about two minutes. She apologized for it being slow."
Raizen didn't know what to say.
He'd left for Ukai a week or sothing ago. Hikari had been good then. Strong for her age, focused, the quiet competence of soone who took the work seriously. But the things Arashi was describing weren't a few weeks' worth of progress. They were years of progress, compressed into the ti he'd been gone.
"What about the staff?" Raizen asked. "She's still using it, right?"
Arashi's expression shifted. His smile trembled, as if jealousy was cracking through it, wanting to leave its mark.
"You should see what she can do with the staff," Arashi said.
"Woah, woah. What do you an by that?"
"She can shape light into blades that cut. She holds the staff with both hands and the blades co out from the head — sharp, real enough, they cut through training dummies like they aren't there. She can block… Anything. Two days ago she blocked every shot I fired at her with the end of her staff — and you know how my pistols work, the rounds are fast — she just stood there and tracked every one of them and stopped them."
"I've seen her summon blades before. I've seen her use the ray, too-"
"Raizen."
"What?"
Arashi looked at him directly.
"I don't think you understand what I an."
He let the silence hold for two seconds.
"It's like comparing Kori to ," he said. "The gap is that big. Not slightly better. Not improved. Different category. The ray she does now can stop mid-air — she'll fire it and the beam will just end at whatever distance she chose, like the staff has decided where the ray ends. And if you touch the end of it, you don't get burned. You get vaporized. Esen and I tried to cook so popcorn, but the corn didn't even get to pop – it just got turned to ashes! Last week she clipped the corner off a steel target dummy in our practice room. She just… Took a clean angled chunk out of it. The cut surface was so smooth, you could see your reflection in it."
"Does Kori know?" Raizen asked. He thought that maybe Arashi was exaggerating, but the way he said things just… Wasn't his style. There was no show, no amusent.
"Nah. What I'm telling you right now, It's just what we saw. Us – the guys. Even Ichiro got so interested he rose pillars for us to peek through the top window-"
"The top window!?" Raizen frowned. "That's like ten ters tall!"
"Exactly. That's how interested he was."
"Don't forget about us!" Keahi shouted from behind the counter, chilli sll aggravating. "We took peeks on her, too!"
"Oh, yeah" Arashi rolled his eyes. "The girls say they've watched her, too"
Then he leaned towards Raizen, whispering "But I don't really believe them"
Raizen sat with that.
His version of Hikari was strong. Quiet, careful, the kind of student who hid her capability behind her deanor. The Hikari Arashi was describing wasn't quiet. She was the strongest Royal Scholar in the Academy, and Hikari going all-out just… Wasn't how he imagined her.
"She's the strongest of us now," Arashi said. "Easy. By a lot."
He nudged Raizen's leg with his foot.
"Unless those tree-climbing guys taught you sothing we could use."
"They taught a few things."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"More than levitating an hour?"
Raizen thought about the multi-dash kick. The tornado kick that had landed on Kenzo's jaw. The golden cage of uninterrupted dashes. The shimring threads of the healing Kenzo had used on him afterward. The reinforcent he'd channeled through himself and the techniques he'd learned.
"Probably not as much as Hikari," he said.
"Yeah," Arashi said. "Yeah, probably not."
The door slamd open.
Kori stood there, with a triumphant look on her face. And under her arm, grabbed by the shoulder, Hikari – hair all ssed up, sweat running down her neck, in a worse state than Raizen's ever seen her, even in the Rust Room.
Kori finally let Hikari go, carefully – as if afraid she might try to escape to the Academy again.
"We-re back- " but a violent cough interrupted Kori's joyful voice.
"KEAHI, YOU'RE BURNING THE HOUSE DOWN-"
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