Dane rushes through the halls of the Souls-Corp base, white light coming from the ceiling lights, giving them a cold, factorial look. He enters the mostly dark control room. The only light sources are a few flickering screens, with people sitting in front of them, Souls-corp employees with the task of searching for any signs of nightmares around the globe and dispatching fighters if necessary. Lucius and Rumi stand in the middle, still discussing what to do against the nightmare Cynder. They stop their conversation and direct their attention to Dane. Without saying a word, he steps past them, gently pushes a man away from a screen, and sits down. Confused, Rumi and Lucius watch, asking Dane what he is doing, but he doesn't answer. After a few quick clicks, he turns on the security cam of the training field and projects the picture on the big screen at the room's end.

  It shows Ragnar standing in the middle of it, arms spread open, and Teon in front of him. After watching for a second, Rumi speaks.

  "What is this idiot doing there?"

  "He requested Teon to fight him."

  Without changing another word, the three hurry out of the room. Back at the field, Ragnar waits for Teon's first move, arms still spread open. The boy just musters him for a few moments, not moving a muscle.

  "Don't worry, you don't need to hold back."

  Ragnar says with a smirk. Teon sighs before attacking Ragnar. With incredible speed he directs a few strikes in Ragnar's direction, but all land only in empty space, as Ragnar dodges them effortlessly except for the last one. He catches this one and holds Teon's fist in a tight grip. The impact of fist against open hand sends a shockwave over the field, strong enough to crack the ground. It's followed up by three more in short intervals. Ragnar lets go of the hand and takes a step back.

  "Interesting. I guess you copied that from Cole?"

  Shocked Teon asks how he would know that, and with a laugh, Ragnar replies that he informed himself about all of them. Then he encourages him to use even more power. Teon points with spread fingers at him, and five concentrated streams of blood shoot at Ragnar. All of them hit their target but are just reflected off his body and carve deep rills into the ground and walls. Ragnar yawns dramatically and exaggeratedly and walks towards Teon. The blood still bounces off his body, not even leaving a scratch on his clothes.

  "This isn't all you've got. Come on, show me what the bleeding angel can do."

  "Are you sure?"

  Teon ends the blood attack as Ragnar stops right in front of him and lowers his arm; blood drips from his fingertips and on the ground, leaving a small puddle. Ragnar raises his hand next to Teon's ear as the boy hesitates and then snaps with his fingers. Teon suddenly flies sideways over the whole field and slams through the wall. His friends and Nova gasp in shock, and Kaia is about to stand up and run to him, but Ragnar stops her with a single no. Teon shoots out of the hole and the wall in the form of the bleeding angle he has used before, no emotion shown on his face. The blood covering his wings spreads the smell of iron over the surroundings, so intense that some of his friends start to feel sick. He moves towards Ragnar, who just smiles like a child on Christmas.

  "That's it, Teon!"

  Before the two clash, the door opens and Rumi, Lucius, and Dane burst through on the training field. Lucius yells at Ragnar to stop this right now. Ragnar responds that he won't because he is having way too much fun.

  "Why does he have to be like that?!"

  Rumi mutters through gritted teeth, watching powerless as her husband and Teon clash.

  After exchanging a few quick strikes, Teon backs away and draws an upside-down cross in the air with his index finger. While Ragnar smiles and mocks the boy, Rumi remembers what this attack did to her and doubts if her husband is able to take it and survive, as Teon has drawn it on the height of Ragnar's heart, and it would just rip right through. But as Teon finishes and his arms sink back down to his side, nothing happens. The emotionless expression covering his face changes for the first time in this battle, and he looks confused. His confusion is shared with the rest of the viewers. He gathers himself again and starts attacking Ragnar again. Swinging with fists and wings at the man mocking him and just dodging each attack, taking him not really seriously. Then Teon's left wing finally manages to land a hit, but as it touches Ragnar's shoulder, it is destroyed, exploding in a mess of blood, bones, and feathers. Teon screams out in pain and stumbles backwards. His eyes fall on a splatter of blood on Ragnar's shoulder, and he snaps with his fingers. Black flames burst out in its place. Rumi winces on the side as a flashback of the pain these flames caused her enters her mind. But Ragnar just looks at them with shining eyes, the fingers of his left hand running through the flames before he extinguishes the fire with his flat hand.

  "Not even a single burn."

  Rumi murmurs to herself, a wound to her pride audible in her voice.

  "You're surprisingly strong for your age. But even with all you're capable of, you could be happy to barely take on Dane."

  Surprise is written over the faces of everyone except for Lucius and Teon himself. The statement hangs heavy in the air, and no one moves. Nova curses her brother internally for saying that Teon is even stronger than her.

  After a few moments Teon takes a step forward, then another and another until he stands only an arm's length away from Ragnar. He raises his arm and places it on Ragnar's chest.

  "What are you trying now?"

  Then suddenly Ragnar's eyes go wide, and he moves faster than anyone can react behind Teon and flicks him with the middle finger in the back. The boy flies over the whole field uncontrolled. Ragnar catches him by the throat before he crashes into another wall. The eyes of the others are still directed to the places where they stood before. Lucius is the first to react and look into the new direction. A cold shiver runs down his spine as he sees Ragnar looking more serious than ever before.

  "What did Teon try to do to make him act like this?"

  Lucius's thought was not long unanswered.

  "Trying to touch the soul of someone directly?! That goes too far!"

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Teon tightly holds onto Ragnar's arm, trying to come free while gasping for air desperately. The man holding him flicks his middle finger against him another time. This time against his forehead. Teon is instantly unconscious, and his body goes limp; the wings and halo slowly disappear. Lucius and Rumi finally dare to move and sprint towards the two. Lucius catches the unconscious boy as Ragnar lets go of his throat. A dark bruised ring remains where he held him. Rumi steps behind her husband, fuming with anger, and slaps him against the back of his head hard enough to create a shockwave. But all Ragnar does is yelp out like someone stepped on his foot and hold the back of his head."

  "That hurt!"

  "You could've killed him!"

  She responds, nearly screaming. Ragnar shakes his head and replies that he can control his power and would've never let it go that far. Scoffing, Nova comments that he is able to control them now, receiving an angry and hurt look from her brother. Before he left the field, carrying Teon, Lucius forbade Ragnar to spar with any of the recruits. While pouting like a kid, Ragnar reluctantly agrees.

  A few hours later he wakes up in his bed and rubs his hurting forehead. Grunting, he sits up to see his friends sitting around him in silence while Lucius leans against a wall, eyes closed, deep in thoughts.

  "W...what happened?"

  Lucius opens his eyes as he hears Teon's voice. And explains to him what happened. He finishes his retelling of the earlier events by telling Teon that he should be happy that Ragnar only knocked him out after he tried to touch his soul. After a phase of silence, Teon speaks up.

  "What is Ragnar's ability?"

  "I already explained it to your friends, but I happily do it again."

  After Lucius took a stool to sit down, he started talking. Ragnar's ability, "Impact-Controll," as he named it himself, just as the name says, is able to control any and all impacts of physical bodies connecting with each other, to a more than subatomic level. The simplest example to explain it would be that he is capable of increasing the destructive force of a feather's touch falling to the ground to a level that could destroy planets whole and, vice versa, reducing the destructive force of an atomic bomb, for example, to not even squash a single blade of grass despite the bomb going off.

  To Teon's question if this has any limit, Lucius just responds that they don't know and that testing it would be too high of a risk. But to all they know of it, it has no limit to how strong it is or how many impacts at the same time he can control. To slightly control him by artificially limiting his soul energy through the ring he wears. It's an identical twin to the one Rumi is wearing and only works as long as both of them wear them. After he finishes up his explanation and ensures again that Teon is alright, he tells the group to go to bed and leaves the room.

  Later that night, light shines through the small gap between the floor and the door of the group's bathroom. Inside on the cold floor, in front of the open toilet seat, sits Kaia. Tears running down her cheeks and falling down her chin. Her hands covered in her own blood hold a sharp knife, the edge glinting red in the light. Just like her hands, the floor around her is colored red by puddles of blood. Suddenly a knock on the door causes her to wince, her heart skipping a beat.

  "No no no, not now!"

  Teon's voice quietly comes through the locked door, asking her if everything is alright. She clears her voice and wipes tears from her face, only to end up just smearing blood over her cheeks."

  "Yes... everything is good, Teon."

  "Are you sure? You've been in there for a long time."

  "I'm fine, I promise."

  "If you say so."

  Teon responds before turning and walking away. As he leaves the room to find another bathroom to pee in, he wonders where this strong scent of metal in the air is coming from.

  "What is happening to me?"

  Kaia looks through blurry vision at her right arm. On it, fused to her skin, is a scale of obsidian color. Her jaw tightens so much that it causes her increasingly more pain as she puts the knife on the end of the scale plate and starts to cut it with agonizingly slow motions. In each of the blood puddles on the ground are lying 4 similar scales. Her left arm has three wounds where she cut them off; the fourth and biggest one belonged to a place on her waist where now a large wound gapes open. The bleeding reduced from the moment she cut it off but was not completely gone.

  "Why... why?! It hurts so much. Why is this happening?"

  Kaia whimpers as the last scale finally comes off and falls to the ground, followed by a small flow of blood. Then she hears a strange voice in her head, talking to her.

  "Why not let it happen?"

  "Get out of my head... please... I can't take this much longer."

  The voice just repeats its words. Kaia whimpers again as she brings the knife up to her neck and sets the sharp edge against her throat. It scrapes the sensitive skin there and draws a single drop of blood, which slowly runs down until it seeps into the fabric of her shirt. Her hands hold the knife there for a moment, trembling until they slip down to her sides again and she starts crying again. A while later she slowly calms down.

  "Fuck... I need to clean this up quick."

  She gathers the scales and puts them on the edge of the sink at first. Then she takes a towel and wipes the blood from the floor until no trace is left of it. She takes the scales again and throws them in the toilet and flushes them all down.

  "Please don't clog the drain."

  She follows this by washing herself up at the sink. Cleaned, she throws the bloody towel in a backpack and then bandages her wounds. At last she looks in the mirror and wipes a few new tears away, trying to force a smile. After leaving the bathroom, she sneaks back to her bed, hiding the backpack under it, and crawls under her blanket. Each movement causes her wounds to burn like hell, but she suppresses each sound.

  "Why can't this all end?!"

  "It won't! You're not strong enough to let it end, no matter which way!"

  The strange voice torments her again. Kaia closes her eyes, trying to block it out and get some sleep. Tears start to run down her cheeks again, and she muffles her sobs with the blanket.