Erika and Noah made their way to a local restaurant, one where the cashiers and manager knew them well for running late and taking breakfast as takeout.
'Despite setting multiple alarms, we still end up being late. It's a wonder mom managed to wake up at the time she did today.' Noah observed as Erika placed the order.
Their food arrived a few minutes later and something unexpected happened.
"Happy birthday, Noah! Also, good luck for your ceremony!" The cashier suddenly wished him while handing over the food to Erika.
"Thank you?" Nora replied instinctively while glancing at the cashier and trying to figure out who she was.
Erika, however, didn't let him get a good look at the cashier and dragged him away. All Noah could see was red hair and a name tag with the name 'Eve' on it.
'I managed to see her name tag and not her face…' Noah facepalmed as the mother-son pair started making their way to his school.
"Maybe I should have bought a car…" Erika muttered while passing Noah his food.
"Mom, you have super speed. You don't need a car." Noah pointed out, taking a sip of coke.
It had been a long time since he had eaten such food. This was a bit surprising considering how he used to eat this at least twice a week in his past life.
"That only helps me, you know. If I try dragging you to school while using my super speed, your body will burst open with everything spilling over the ground." Erika replied nonchalantly.
"I know." Noah sighed as he ate the rest of his food silently.
It took them twenty minutes to reach his school which was situated in the center of the city, some distance away from the city lord's house as well as the Adventurer's building.
Noah knew his mother used to work in a particular section there though he was not sure about her current job.
Once they were only a few hundred meters away from the entrance of the school, Noah and Erika noticed a small crowd gathered near the entrance.
Noah could tell without looking that most of the gathered people were below twenty and either belonged to his school or had passed out in the previous year.
"Oh for goodness sake… Can't teenagers stop fighting on such an important day?" Erika sighed, realizing what was happening.
The scene became more clear after they had reached closer. Noah could see two of his classmates fighting each other right outside the school gate.
Both of them seemed dead set on killing the other person and the crowd kept cheering them on.
Erika and Noah were about to go inside the school while ignoring the crowd when their attention was suddenly drawn toward someone calling their names.
"Noah? Aunt Erika?" The voice was feminine and was familiar to the duo, both of them having heard it numerous times.
They turned together to see a young girl looking at them with an impressed expression. Erika reflected the same expression immediately after taking a look at the girl's appearance.
"Damn Izzy, that's one good look you pulled off." Erika whistled lowly. "What do you think Noah?"
Izzy, as Erika had called her, was Noah's classmate and his best friend. She was two months older than him and the two of them had been studying in the same class for a long time.
She currently wore a shimmering dress the color of the night sky, split at her thigh and going down to just the top of her ankle. From her neck, the dress went in a criss-cross pattern, showing a small amount of her bosom.
Her luscious, long, silver hair was kept open and came down to her waist in slight curls. Some of her hair also fell on her forehead, showcasing her slightly purple-blue eyes.
"She fits the description of a queen," Noah commented, earning a sidelong glance from his mother as well as a smile from Izzy.
"You surely fit the description of someone who might be breaking into a drug store later on and then go around the town on a motorcycle." She joked before noticing the crowd at the entrance of the school. "Another fight?"
"I am expecting a few more to happen as people will try to erase their old grudges," Noah commented as the trio moved ahead together.
'She was safe for most of the time but things turned worst after today…' Even though Noah was acting calm and keeping his emotions under control, his mind was full of thoughts.
Izzy, or Isabella which was her full name, had been one of his closest friends since ten years of age. They had started going to school together and had been classmates.
Noah remembered that in the old days, he, Izzy, and two of their other friends had ventured out on strange adventures around the city, completely unaware of the nearing disaster called high school.
Majority of humanity unlocked their powers and received a Soul book on either their sixteenth, seventeenth or eighteenth birthday.
The chances of unlocking any sort of power after that were nearly impossible, except for a handful of people who had proved this wrong.
Most of those who unlocked their powers early on developed a superiority complex and high school was full of such things. That was why he had referred to it as a disaster where the school management was way too lax.
During the start of the quartet's high school year, things had been so chaotic that two of them had shifted to another town. Only Noah and Izzy remained in their current city.
Izzy had then unlocked her powers on her seventeenth birthday, getting a whooping SS grade water affinity, S grade wind affinity, and SS grade ice affinity.
She had soon become the ice queen of the school, not the cold beauty type people associated with the title.
Izzy got the title due to her terrifying powers that could defeat the majority of the children in the school.
Due to being her best friend, Noah also faced fewer difficulties and most of the bullies avoided him.
The only reason Sukhma's gang bullied him was due to the fact that he too had a similar level of affinity with his elements and could rival Izzy in combat.
However, Noah didn't have to worry about either of those things now that he had a perfect understanding of his power.
'Yet I spent some time on those three idiots just to get a satisfying first revenge…' Noah sighed mentally, knowing well that he should stop spending so much time on trash.
"Did you walk here from home in that dress?" Noah curiously inquired aloud, just to keep some conversation going.
"Nah. My mother dropped me a few meters back and then went back home to get my little brother here. He would throw a tantrum if we didn't get him here today." Izzy sighed, making both Noah and Erika chuckle.
The two of them knew very well how troublesome Izzy's little brother could be. After reaching the crowd, they avoided it completely and made their way from the sidelines.
It seemed like no one was going to pay them any attention until someone look at Izzy by mistake and gasped.
Soon half the crowd had turned in their direction and was staring at Izzy and Erika. Noah thought about blinding them for life but knowing Izzy and his mother, they could handle things well themselves.
"It's rude to stare at someone for that long." Izzy declared with a calm smile on her face.
The temperature suddenly dropped down by multiple degrees that even the fighting teenagers stopped fighting.
"Sorry…" One of the boys gathered in the crowd mumbled, being a relatively newer person around the school. If not for the warning given to him by his friends studying in the same class as Izzy and Noah, things would've turned disastrous.
"Good." Izzy smiled genuinely as everything returned to normal.
She then walked inside the entrance while chatting with Erika. Noah watched the two of them walk in front of them while smiling slightly.
'Still the same.' He thought before following the two of them.
***
AN: I don't like writing generic female characters so keep that in mind before you declare Izzy as a Chinese COLD beauty.
Also, check this paragraph comment to see both Izzy and Erika's reference images! In case you can't see them, I will be creating a discord server soon and will put them there.
Vote with power stones and spread the culture!