The next day, a young boy with spiked blue hair and blue eyes walked into school. Confident as ever. Everyone who saw him turned around to see him a second time.
The person was none other than Cody, who had finally been released from hospital and returned to school. As he walked towards his favorite spot, he found his lackeys sitting there with gloomy faces on.
"Boss! Hey, the boss is back!" One of the lackeys yelled as the color returned to his face.
Cody nodded with a smile as he walked towards them. "Why so gloomy?" He asked. He seemed to be in a pretty good mood.
"Boss, that Dino has been going around bragging about his victory to anyone who would listen." The lackey replied while gritting his teeth.
Cody laughed. "Don't worry about small fry like him. He have bigger fish to fry." As he said so, he ruffled the head of his lackeys, who were happy to receive Cody's good graces.
As they returned to the class, Cody surreptitiously stored the strands of hair he collected from his lackeys into a test tube. As they entered the class, Cody didn't even wait before he challenged one of the strengthening type ability users to a battle in the arena.
The class was uproarious in an instant. Cody didn't even wait for a few minutes of having returned to class before he challenged someone. As the person couldn't deny the challenge, the two walked to the arena. Several people followed, after all they were curious why Cody was in such a hurry to challenge someone.
The fatty referee yawned as he walked towards the arena. "You guys want to fight the first thing in the morning?" He rambled irritated.
Regardless, he organized the match and ordered its commencement with his now symbolic whistle.
Both the combatants were strengthening type, and on the blow of the whistle, the two immediately activated their abilities. The opponent's bulge, yet Cody's body only showed signs of mist evaporating from his body as it turned hot, but no signs of muscular expansion.
"What's going on? Did Cody's ability improve?"
"Looks like he improved the control over his ability."
Cody and the opponent rushed towards each other for a head to head competition in strength. Both of them drew their most powerful punches, striking at each other with their might.
When the fists collided, a pocket of air compressed before expanding outwards like the remnants of an explosion as dust flew up from the ground of the arena. The audience and the referee waited with baited breath to see the outcome of that clash as the dust slowly settled.
The referee raised his hand to signal the end of the match! "Stop! Match over! Winner Cody!"
As the dust settled, everyone looked in shock at Cody's opponent's fist which had broken down to the elbow and was bleeding horribly.
"Quick, to the infirmary!" The fatty referee yelled as he and a few other officials rushed the injured combatant away. Meanwhile, Cody gripped onto some of the tissue he had scratched from the opponent, a peculiar glow in his eyes.
Adrian, who saw this match felt the chill down his spine. He could see that Cody had gotten stronger, abnormally so for such a short amount of time.
After school ended, Adrian was heading to the bus stop to catch the bus to the training station, when he saw Cody on the same path as him. As someone who was especially intuned with Cody's presence, the sudden appearance of the guy unnerved him.
Adrian slowed down his step and tried to calm himself down. He straightened his back, and slowly began returning to his normal walking speed. Cody, who was in front of him calmly looked sideways twice, before heading right into an alley.
"Isn't this... that... alley?" Adrian almost yelped in surprise. "What is Cody doing here?" He asked himself secretly.
Cody stomped his way into the alleyway, kicking the cardboard boxes as he walked forward. Adrian gripped his fist tightly, realizing that he could not afford to enter the alleyway as the cardboard covers had been blown wide open. Instead, Adrian crossed the street and walked into the small alley on the opposite side.
Adrian hid behind a stinking garbage container peeking all the way towards the alley at the other side of the street. Luckily, the sun was still broadly lighting up the sky, and the activities on the other end were visible, albeit unclearly to Adrian.
Cody walked right to the end of the Alley, when a shadow suddenly creeped out from behind Cody before turning into a woman. It was the same woman Adrian had seen on that treacherous day, the one who had mercilessly murdered two ability users in the blink of an eye.
"A shadow based ability!" Adrian screamed internally, thanking his stars for not having stupidly following behind Cody.
Cody seemed surprised to see her appear. Adrian guessed that he didn't see her transforming from a shadow into a person. Adrian could only broadly see that Cody seemed to be exchanging something with the woman. A few glass objects exchanged Cody's hand for a velvet cloth bag. The kind used to store diamonds and other ornate jewels.
Adrian saw that after a few discussions, Cody walked out of the alley and hailed a taxi. Leaving the area. Meanwhile, the woman turned into a shadow, disappearing from the scene after ensuring that Cody had left.
Adrian had a bad feeling about the whole matter. This woman was tied up with the snake gang that beat up the Gray Ninja and wreaked havoc in the backward district, and now Cody was having some deals with the woman as well.
After a long time, Adrian finally left the scene. He felt like he was being pulled into a conspiracy he had no power to survive from. He hated that he hadn't and perhaps he truly couldn't awaken an ability, or even protect himself.