(HN+MHA AU(Remake). Chapter 1.)
It all began in Qingqing City, China.
With the trembling voice of a broadcaster who, without even realizing it, uttered the phrase that changed the course of history:
"A luminescent baby has been born..."
At first, it seemed like just another urban legend. An edit. A hoax.
But then came the second case. The third. The fourth.
And soon, a similar phenomenon began spreading across the entire globe.
The cause was never determined.
Science argued. Governments scrambled to maintain control.
But as time marched on, what was once an anomaly became the ordinary.
People burst into flames. People flew. People shattered walls with a single touch.
According to official statistics, roughly 80% of the world's population developed unique abilities, collectively known as "Quirks."
Humanity entered a new era.
An era where chaos and fear walked hand in hand with hope.
And in this world, a profession that children could previously only fantasize about stepped into the forefront of history.
In the morning silence of the Roth family apartment, a faint, painfully familiar scent hung in the air—a mixture of cheap instant coffee, fresh pastries, and the stale, medicinal sting of joint ointment.
Fifteen-year-old Nicholas Michael Roth opened his eyes and let out a muffled groan. The varnished wooden edge of his desk pressed into his face, his cheek uncomfortably glued to an open notebook filled with blueprints.
He painfully straightened his stiff spine, feeling his vertebrae pop. He had been sitting on the floor, his head slumped right onto his own desk. The posture was so unnatural that an ordinary person would have woken up crippled, but Nicholas’s dense, father-side inherited bones only answered with a fleeting, dull ache. Dampening the tension with his usual acrobatic stretch, he rubbed his sleep-deprived face.
Well, at least this time it was the desk in his bedroom. Not the kitchen table in the middle of a midnight snack. And certainly not the top of the refrigerator, where he had somehow managed to climb a week ago in his sleep, fleeing another nightmare.
Nicky looked up at the wall calendar. A red marker ruthlessly circled a date just two days away. The Entrance Exams for UA High School—the country's top hero academy.
"Alright... Long day ahead," he muttered, fumbling along the edge of the desk for his electronic night-vision goggles.
They were made of heavy plastic, slightly scuffed around the temples—a gift from Nicky secured them on his forehead, habitually hiding part of his face beneath his messy, brown bangs. These goggles were his armor against the outside world and a constant reminder of Raven Brooks. A reminder to look fear right in the eye, just like his friend always did.
The daily plan fell into place inside his head as neatly as an engineering schematic: wash up, brush teeth, stuff his stomach (preferably with carbs, since his ribs were already sticking out), school, then a hangout with the guys, and in the evening—the final, grueling training session. His "acrobatic kickboxing" style wasn't going to perfect itself, especially when his Quirk guzzled his body’s resources like a faulty reactor.
Nicky pushed open his bedroom door and froze. A heavy, dull thud of a wooden cane echoed down the hallway, accompanied by shuffling footsteps.
"Oh, right. Still need to get used to that. Uncle Saul lives with us now."
Walking toward Nicholas down the corridor was a tall, wiry man of forty-seven. He was frowning, a deep vertical groove etched into his forehead—the very "Line of Disappointment," as his father used to call it. Saul Roth looked as though he had spent the entire night fighting his own duvet: his eyes were exhausted, his fingers tightly gripped the pommel of his cane, and his right leg dragged noticeably behind him.
Allows him to sharpen any of his senses to the absolute limit! Unfortunately, due to old injuries, his Quirk frequently glitches, triggering wild sensory overload from the slightest rustle or a loose thread on his clothes!
"Nick." Saul stopped, a dozen new micro-wrinkles cutting across his brow. He winced as a teaspoon clinked a bit too loudly in the kitchen. "Face in the blueprints again? Your father said he found you on the floor. Do you even sleep normally, or does your brain just hum like a transformer box all night?"
"I sleep fine, Uncle Saul. I'm just picking... strategic locations," Nicky tried to smirk, reclaiming a piece of his usual cocky confidence, but the heavy shadows under his jade eyes made it impossible to fool the veteran.
Nicky's nervous system, which ran 15% faster than the human norm—a family trait he shared with Saul—caught the micro-movement of his uncle's fingers. Saul was irritably rubbing the fabric of his old sweater. Overload again. Saul’s Quirk was clearly acting up today, making him feel every single fiber like sandpaper.
"Bloody strategist," Saul muttered grumpily, though without any real malice, as he limped past. "Go wash up. Your mother is already performing a 'scan' on the coffee beans in the kitchen, and your father is trying to raise team morale with a box of donuts."
Nicky ducked into the bathroom. Glancing into the mirror, he saw a lean, wiry teenager. Standing at 165 cm and weighing barely fifty kilograms, the constant stress, nightmares, and calorie-burning Quirk made him look deceptively fragile. But if you looked closer... tight, lean muscles of a gymnast and rock climber rolled beneath his skin. His fingers were calloused, possessing a powerful grip capable of holding colossal weight—a literal hydraulic clamp.
He quickly brushed his teeth and splashed ice-cold water onto his face, trying to wash away the remnants of a sticky nightmare about a dark supermarket backroom, before heading into the kitchen.
Life was already in full swing there. Sitting at the table was Jay Roth—a slightly chubby, good-natured man in a light T-shirt. A half-empty box of chocolate rolls sat in front of him. Nicky understood instantly: his dad was exhausted. The new company in Musutafu that he and Uncle Miguel had opened was draining all his energy, and Jay was pounding sugar by the ton to fuel his optimism.
Quirk: Emotional Battery!
Converts sugar and intense emotions into pure stamina! The ultimate sweet tooth of the family—you can accurately judge his mood solely by the type of sweets on the table!
"Oh, look who's awake! Our Mickey Mouse!" Jay cheered, flinching ever so slightly from a sudden surge of carbohydrate energy as he handed his son a donut. "Here, Narf, recharge your pistons. You're storming UA in two days, you need more glucose!"
"Thanks, dad." Nicky deftly caught the donut with two fingers and took a bite. While sushi was definitely his favorite, this would do before a heavy day.
Luanne Roth stood by the stove. Her black bob haircut was perfectly styled, and her signature pearl necklace rested around her neck. She turned to Nicky, her jade eyes—identical to her son's—gleaming with a soft light for a fraction of a second. She squinted, scanning her son's biological condition with her Quirk.
Quirk: Biological Scanner!
Sees and senses the physical state of living organisms within a two-meter radius. Chemical composition, hormones, injuries—nothing can be hidden from her! She was the one who instilled a love for biology in Nicholas.
"Cortisol levels are above average again, Nicky," Luanne noted ironically, though with clear worry, as she set a plate down in front of him. "And your adrenal fatigue hasn't gone anywhere. Did you stay up half the night again? If you collapse from a panic attack during the exam, I will personally lock you in a lab. And no amount of gymnastics will save you."
"Everything's under control, mom," Nicky smiled boldly, though he shrunk back slightly inside. It was impossible to lie to his mom's Quirk; she saw right through him. "My 'Autonomous Control' can handle it. I was just calculating some new strike combinations paired with my combat protocols. In theory, if I trigger Sprint to close the distance, and then switch to Hydraulics during a clinch..."
"In theory..." Uncle Saul interrupted harshly from the corner of the table, sipping his bitter coffee, "...you'll burn out your muscles with lactic acid in ninety seconds, catch a massive cramp, and turn into the perfect punching bag for some powerhouse heavy-hitter. Your Quirk is a system hack, Nick. And every hack comes with a price. Don't play games with time. You have two days until the exam—save your skin."
Nicky remained silent, thoughtfully picking at his donut. Uncle Saul was right, and Nicholas knew it better than anyone. His Quirk didn't generate fire or explosions like the cool heroes on magazine covers. It simply removed the natural limiters of his own body.
Quirk: Autonomous Control!
Allows him to consciously manage his autonomic nervous system. It overrides the body's evolutionary safety blocks, unleashing devastatingly powerful combat protocols. Time limit: 2 minutes!
An ordinary person would tear their tendons apart trying to force one hundred percent capacity out of their muscles. But Nicky was lucky: his bones were incredibly dense by nature (thanks to his parents' and uncle's genes), and his nervous impulses naturally fired faster. His body was the perfect "hardware" for such a dangerous "software." And yet... two minutes. That was his ceiling. Anything past that meant self-destruction.
Nicky remembered that one fight with Aaron back in Raven Brooks. When Roth, in a fit of insecurity, had screamed that his Quirk was weak and useless. Aaron had punched him square in the face for it. "It’s not the Quirk that matters, Nicky, it’s the user!" his friend had roared back then. That punch and those words still burned in his soul, forcing him to push forward.
"Alright, I've gotta run to school." Nicky grabbed his backpack, adjusted the turquoise cuffs of his jacket, and headed for the door. "I'm meeting up with the guys after class. Aaron, Mya, Trinity... everyone will be there. We need to go over exam strategy."
"Say hi to Amanda and Miguel if you see their kids!" Luanne called out after him with a warm smile. She knew perfectly well how Maritza Esposito sighed over her son, and she would be more than happy with such a daughter-in-law. But right now, Nicky had an absolute chaos of feelings toward four different people spinning in his head, and dealing with that was the last thing he wanted.
Stepping out into the streets of Musutafu, Nicky breathed in the cool morning air. A long day lay ahead. School, where Delroy would undoubtedly try to crack another joke about "Sick Nick," and that bully Finch Allen would bore holes into him with her gaze. But Nicky didn't care. His fists clenched tightly, his fingers naturally and easily feeling the strength of his "hydraulic clamp."
In two days, he would prove to the entire world, and to himself, that a kid from Raven Brooks with a watch on his forehead and a broken combat style deserved to stand alongside the greatest heroes. Because if you know you're right, you have to go all the way.
Morning in Musutafu was bustling and packed with people, flowing down the main streets like an endless grey river. Thousands of salarymen, students, and laborers stormed the subway stations.
Nicky watched the crowd with a brief glance from the corner of an alleyway, pulling the laces of his blue-and-turquoise sneakers tight.
Ride in a suffocating, packed train car? No way. First of all, Nicky despised confined spaces—in a crowd, his subconscious would start screaming that the walls of the train were about to close in, just like in that damn backroom from his childhood. Second, he had a good hour before classes started. And third... what better workout could there be than some morning parkour?
Roth took a running start, jumped, and catching a brick wall ledge with his calloused fingers, effortlessly propelled himself upward.
Even without activating his Quirk, his bones were incredibly durable, his tendons could handle wild loads, and his fingers functioned like a hydraulic clamp. The ultimate foundation for a gymnast!
His fingers dug like iron into a narrow ledge. An ordinary teenager would have ripped their nails off or sprained a wrist, but Nicky’s dense bones and reinforced ligaments bore his weight without a single complaint. He pulled himself up, kicked off a water pipe, and with a swift, cat-like motion, vaulted over a fence, landing on the flat roof of a garage cooperative.
The cool wind hit his face. Nicky ran in a broken, unpredictable rhythm, instantly reading the geometry of his surroundings. A two-meter gap loomed between the buildings ahead—a light push, a brief suspension in the air, and he landed on one knee, immediately rolling into a perfect gymnastic shoulder-roll across the concrete roof of a neighboring store. His dense bones acted as natural shock absorbers, completely neutralizing the momentum of the impact. Zero pain. His wrist didn't buckle; his body absorbed the kinetic energy like a sponge.
Down on the sidewalk, an elderly woman carrying a grocery bag looked up in terror:
"Hey! Boy! Get down from there, that's dangerous! You'll break yourself!"
Nicky didn't even turn around, merely smirking as he ran, adjusting the night-vision goggles on his forehead.
"Break myself? Grandma, I’ve jumped from fourth-story heights and dampened the impact so well your knees would shatter just watching it," he thought arrogantly. He was one hundred percent confident in his own righteousness and the capabilities of his body.
The most important part—no legal trouble. Using Quirks in public places without a license was strictly penalized. Local police and patrolling heroes kept both eyes wide open. But right now, Nicky was entirely "clean." His autonomic system was resting, "Autonomous Control" was deactivated, his heart beat at a steady rhythm, and his exhausted adrenal glands weren't pumping adrenaline. Everything he did was pure physics, gymnastics, and athletics, multiplied by a natural skeletal mutation. You couldn't pin anything on that.
He flew up a fire escape onto the roof of a five-story residential building. The final stretch to school lay ahead. Nicholas leaped onto the concrete parapet, balancing right on the edge. A bit further down, the gates of his middle school were already visible.
He paused for a second, watching the students swarming below. Delroy was probably lingering somewhere down there, ready to call him a "Freak" again, along with Finch and her endless nitpicking. But the morning warm-up had toned his muscles. Blood warmed his body pleasantly, and his nervous system was already demanding action.
"Well then, school," Nicky muttered, adjusting the collar of his turquoise jacket. "Let's see who the 'freak' is today."
He dropped from the parapet, plotting his descent trajectory via air conditioners and wall ledges. Like a drifting shadow, he was perfectly symmetrical in every single movement.
Analyzing his surroundings and mapping out a route in his mind, he deftly slid down the sloped roof of an extension, caught the metal awning with the soles of his sneakers, and dropped to the ground right by the school gates with a soft, springy motion. A shoulder roll wasn't even necessary—his dense bones obediently absorbed the remaining momentum, and his short grey jacket didn't even get dirty.
The moment he straightened up and adjusted the night-vision goggles on his forehead, two familiar figures materialized right in front of him.
"Oh, look at that, the Sherlock Holmes of Raven Brooks has deigned to come down from the heavens!" a dry, sarcastic, yet deeply familiar voice rang out.
Aaron Peterson stood there, leaning his back against the brick fence with his strong, muscular arms crossed over his chest. From beneath the sleeves of his blue shirt, large fists with rough, boxer-like skin over the knuckles were visible. Standing beside him was Mya. Her bright orange hair, gathered into her signature high ponytail with a green scrunchie, caught the morning sun like fire, and her blue eyes, which always reminded Nicky of a vast ocean, instantly sparkled with amusement.
Nicky took a mental sigh of relief. It really was a blessing that the administration at this Musutafu school didn't force everyone to wear a dull, identical school uniform. A casual dress code was a lifesaver. Without those stupid matching blazers, finding his people in the morning crowd was ten times easier. Nicky immediately spotted Aaron's blue denim shorts, his red sneakers, and Mya’s turquoise T-shirt, which matched the accents on his own jacket perfectly.
"I was just conducting a tactical reconnaissance of the terrain," Nicky smirked, instantly regaining his usual arrogant confidence. He lazily locked his hands behind his head. "And besides, while you two are blocking the gates creating traffic, I just finished a full cardio workout."
"Right, a workout," Aaron scoffed, raising an eyebrow ironically. The fingers of his right hand habitually reached for the sketchbook poking out of his pocket, where prepared sketches were already waiting for their moment. "Nicky, admit it, you just fell asleep in some bizarre place again and now you're making excuses. Be glad you aren't late. Because by the time you pick the locks on the doors with that analytical mind of yours, a hundred years will pass and UA will be closed for summer break."
Channels mental energy into his own drawings, forcing them to materialize into 2D or 3D forms! He assigns them a strict algorithm of actions with a touch. Limited by his knowledge of anatomy.
"Hilarious, Peterson." Nicholas rolled his eyes dramatically, but a familiar warmth bloomed inside him.
His gaze lingered on Aaron’s face for a fraction of a second. The straight nose, the bitten thin lips, those brown eyes... In his encrypted journal, Roth had already caught himself thinking more than once that he found his best friend incredibly attractive, and the strong hands of a boxer-artist gave him a strange flutter. Nicholas quickly looked away, feeling blood rush to his cheeks, and immediately bumped eyes with Mya.
"Hey, Nicky!" Mya took a step forward, smiling genuinely and openly.
The moment she stepped closer, Roth felt a wave of soft, cozy heat radiate from her, like a lit fireplace. Her "Thermal Resonance" Quirk always activated passively whenever she got flustered or tried to act older and more mature around him. For Nicky, whose brain was constantly cooling down after the mental overloads of "Autonomous Control," this warmth was like a drug. His palms instantly grew sweaty, his face warmed up, and thoughts about how beautiful her red hair looked in the sunlight began spinning frantically in his head.
"Crap, I'm a creep, she's my best friend's younger sister," he scolded himself mentally, panicking that these feelings might drive Aaron away.
Quirk: Thermal Resonance!
Functions as a thermodynamic battery! Absorbs and redistributes thermal and kinetic energy. Under intense emotions or embarrassment, her skin becomes hot to the touch, like a fireplace.
"Hey, Mya," Nicky tried to keep his voice as casual and quiet as usual, the way it always got when all the attention shifted to him. "What are you guys standing around here for?"
"Waiting for you, weirdo," Mya punched his side playfully with her elbow, making her high ponytail bounce amusingly. "Aaron and I were just talking about the UA exam. It's only two days away! Can you believe it? There will be actual Pro Heroes doing the evaluation! What if we see Present Mic? Or All Might himself?! I'll probably scream right then and there!"
Aaron merely let out a sarcastic huff at that, but beneath his outward composure, Nicky—thanks to their deep bond and ability to understand each other without words—caught a subtle hint of tension. Aaron smiled—that specific, complicated smile that concealed a whole mess of family issues, fear of his unstable father Theodore, and perhaps a faint, carefully hidden jealousy regarding how Mya interacted with Nicky.
"Relax, squirt, don't embarrass the team before we even get there," Aaron gently patted his sister's shoulder, then turned his serious brown eyes back to Nicholas.
"Hey! I am not a 'squirt'!" Mya complained, but her brother ignored her.
"We've worked out the synergy. Your acrobatic stunts and my ink shields should pair perfectly. But Uncle Saul is right—don't even think about cranking your combat protocols to the max in the first few seconds. Your two minutes are our emergency trump card. Got me, Sherlock?" Aaron explained to Nicholas.
Nicky stubbornly tilted his chin up, a familiar arrogant spark flashing in his jade eyes.
"Which one of us is the biology genius here, Aaron? I know my body's limits perfectly well. Everything will be calculated down to the second. Let's just get to class before the bell rings. I don't want Delroy taking our seats."
The trio turned and headed toward the school doors, shoulder to shoulder—ready to face any hardships, just like back in Raven Brooks.
The noisy, morning-lit corridors of the school lived in their usual pre-exam frenzy. Teenagers huddled in groups, frantically flipping through notes, arguing, and shoving past one another by the lockers.
The trio walked shoulder to shoulder, navigating through the living mass. The lack of a uniform certainly made them stand out from the crowd, but the boys' thoughts were occupied by something else entirely. A heavy, sticky anticipation hung in the air.
"Anyway, here's the plan," Aaron said quietly but firmly, shoving his hands into his shorts pockets and leaning slightly toward his friend and sister. "Right after classes today, we gather at our place or yours. Hang out for an hour to blow off steam, and then—the final run-through. We need to perfect our dual synergy."
"I'm in," Mya chimed in. She walked slightly ahead, her bright orange ponytail swinging rhythmically, her face bearing an uncharacteristically serious expression. "The competition at UA this year is absolutely insane. People are flooding in from all over the country. Expecting something simple from an elite academy's exam is the height of stupidity. They'll definitely throw something at us that normal schools don't even prepare you for."
"The main thing is keeping the pace," Nicky murmured thoughtfully, adjusting the frame of the night-vision goggles on his forehead. His analytical mind was already cycling through options. "I can coordinate your actions at full speed. If the exam is practical, thirty seconds in Overclocking mode will be enough for me to read the threat trajectories and hand you a completed algorithm..."
Roth cut himself off mid-sentence. His nervous system instantly registered a sharp shift in the atmosphere ahead. The streams of students suddenly began veering around one specific spot in the hallway.
Nicky looked up. Time seemed to slow down around them, narrowing the whole world to the dimensions of a cramped school passage.
Standing right in front of them was him. Delroy Schmidt.
Quirk: Mass Displacement!
Capable of instantly altering his body's density, changing his weight from 10 to 500 kg without changing his physical dimensions! Possesses the death grip of a wrestler and a natural muscular suit of armor.
Delroy stood with his massive, oak-trunk-like legs spread wide in his denim shorts. The sleeves of his yellow jacket were rolled up as usual, and his mouth was half-hidden inside a high purple collar, making the glare of his black eyes seem even heavier from beneath his brow. He looked like a low-slung, stocky bulldozer that had no intention of yielding the right of way.
The group stopped a couple of meters away from him. An invisible wall of pure, concentrated animosity instantly erected itself in the hallway. Tension surged like a wave, causing passing students to quicken their pace in alarm.
Delroy swept a freezing gaze over the trio. His fists, covered in rough skin, slowly clenched. Everything inside him boiled at the mere sight of Nicholas. This "freak" Roth... A guy who had once simply joined the track and field team and, without any visible effort, on pure gymnastic agility, snatched first place away from Delroy. Outran him by a measly five inches. And then—just left. Quit the team as if it were some stupid game.
Delroy couldn't forgive that. Track and field was personal to him... for one specific reason.
Nicky felt a chill run down his spine, his fingers tensing reflexively. He remembered how Delroy had shoved him to the ground in a rage after that finish line. He remembered his heavy, terrifying physical strength—this guy could pin Nicku against a locker so hard that Roth's dense bones would creak under his opponent's weight.
Aaron took half a step forward, shielding Mya and Nicky. His broad shoulders tensed beneath his blue shirt, and his brown eyes narrowed. The mutual hatred between him and Delroy was just as severe—Schmidt and his half-girlfriend Finch Allen had spent far too long tormenting their family after the incident at the "Golden Apple" park.
"Delroy," Aaron spat with obvious sarcasm bleeding into his voice, breaking the silence. "Blocking traffic again? Is your mass finally too big for the hallways?"
Delroy didn't even look at Aaron; his black eyes were locked dead onto Nicky. He slowly pulled his chin out of his jacket collar and delivered a low, challenging rasp:
"Out of the way, freak. Charging around so fast in the morning. Watch you don't trip... because nobody's picking you up at the UA exam. You'll have to do some real running there, not jumping across roofs like a stray cat."
Nicky felt his own arrogance and stubbornness flare up inside. He took a step toward Delroy, staring directly and defiantly into his eyes despite the difference in build.
"Don't worry about me, moron," Royh replied with a cocky smirk, tilting his head slightly. "I control my speed perfectly. But I'd advise you to be careful braking on the sharp turns at UA. A living cannonball is powerful, sure, but if you miss your target—the academy wall is going to turn out harder than your head."
Behind him, Mya let out a soft sigh, feeling the skin beneath her T-shirt passively heat up from her own embarrassment and anger at the bully. The air around the three of them grew noticeably warmer.
The space between Nicky and Delroy practically crackled with sparks. Schmidt tucked his chin deeper into his purple collar, looking ready to violate school rules right then and there and engage his Impact Core to teach his arrogant rival a lesson. Nicky, whose nervous system was redlining from anger, refused to back down either—his fingers subtly curled into a rigid Kenpo stance. Aaron was already reaching for his sketchbook, and Mya could barely contain the wave of heat waiting to burst out.
A second more, and a full-scale, destructive Quirk fight would have broken out right in the Musutafu school hallway.
"Alright, break it up! Separate, now!"
As if out of nowhere, a tall, graceful figure stepped between the boys. Long black hair whipped around like a silken hemisphere, and for a fraction of a second, the faint, subtle scent of expensive powder and makeup wafted through the air.
Trinity Bales appeared precisely when she was needed most. Her purple eyes, usually deep and calm, were now burning with a dangerous, neon glare. Due to the sudden flash of irritation, tiny, perfectly circular sparks of violet bio-plasma crackled around her finely manicured fingers. She looked like a taut string—graceful, yet ready at any moment to unleash a four-hit flurry of lightning-fast strikes to vital pressure points.
Without another word, Trinity grabbed Nicky's jacket sleeve with an iron grip. Her lean, conditioned core muscles and flawless center-of-gravity control allowed her to literally spin the boy 180 degrees with one sharp, calculated movement, dragging him away down the corridor and nipping the conflict in the bud.
Delroy merely let out an angry snort at their backs, burying his mouth into the collar of his yellow jacket again, but he didn't pursue the confrontation alone—Trinity's authority and her hidden threat worked even on a stubborn bulldozer like him.
Having dragged Roth to a safe distance near a window at the end of the recreation area, Trinity finally let go of his sleeve. She crossed her arms over her chest, pursing her lips, and deliberately turned her back to the approaching Aaron and Mya, completely ignoring their presence.
The cloak the color of the night sky that half-covered her neat skirt swayed elegantly as she stepped closer to Nicky.
"Nicholas Michael Roth, have you completely lost your mind?!" her sarcastic voice, laced with genuine anxiety, dropped to a whisper to avoid attracting the teachers' attention. She glared at him angrily with her purple eyes. "The UA exam is in two days! Do you want you and Schmidt disqualified before you even fill out your registration forms? You're a smart guy, Nicky, so why do you let the provocations of that overgrown whale get to you?!"
She caught her breath, subtly smoothing out the perfect folds of her blouse. Due to the emotional spike, her magical energy passively demanded a recharge, and Trinity felt her blood sugar level fluctuate slightly. But she habitually ignored the discomfort.
"Hey, Trin," Nicky raised his palms placatingly, his cocky smirk instantly melting into a soft, apologetic smile. He could never withstand her momentum. His jade eyes looked at her with warmth. "Okay, okay, I admit it, I got carried away. That idiot just pisses me off by existing. Thanks for pulling me out."
Trinity sighed, the natural magnetism returning to her eyes. She touched up her makeup with a light brush of her finger and addressed Nicky strictly:
"Bottom line, Nicky. After school, the crew—me, Ivan, Maritza, Lucy, and Enzo—are meeting up at the burger joint. We'll grab some lemonade and decompress. And after that, Ivan is waiting for us at the support club workshop; he wanted to showcase some new blueprints and calculate tactics for the practical exam. So, you're coming with me. No arguments. I need a focused analyst on my exam team, not a guy with fists smashed up by Delroy. Got it?"
Aaron, noticing Trinity's deliberately cold tone toward them, merely let out a silent, understanding grunt, wrapping an arm around Mya’s shoulder. They knew perfectly well that Bales avoided them just like half the school did, and they had no intention of forcing themselves into her space.
"Alright, Nicky, we're heading to class then," Aaron said flatly, turning around. "See you later. We'll move the synergy training to this evening."
Nicky nodded to his friend, then turned his gaze back to Trinity, who was already poised to drag him off to their lessons.
"...You know, maybe you should at least try to get closer to them, huh?"
