The group of six students walked up to the table and huddled around Cameron. It wasn't hard to spot him; he was the only person in this cafeteria wearing a suit worth more than a million dollars and once they got close to him, one of the students started to speak to him in a fake cordial tone.
"Heeeey, you're that new kid that everyone's been talking about, right? Old Maximillian's kid, right?"
Sasha was studying the situation carefully; she could tell by the looks on the students faces and their body language that they weren't up to anything good, while Cameron immediately had all of his confidence drained out of him by the sight of six people standing around him like he was a campfire.
"Yeah, man, that's a nice suit you got on; you thought we were showing out for the first day, huh?"
Cameron looked around him, nervous at the sight of so many people that he didn't know surrounding him. He was scared that they were going to hurt him and he just felt a bad aura radiating off of them. Looking over to Sasha, he could tell that she was ready to fight but weirdly enough, he gained a small bit of confidence back seeing her prepared to fight and thinking of an idea.
"Yeah, you want it?"
Slowly, Cameron began to take off his jacket, while the students around him were a bit surprised, not expecting him to be so compliant. They were off guard which was perfect and Cameron once again looked over to Sasha and didn't say a word while one of the students started to comment on how well the situation was going for them.
"Wow, this guy got with the program."
Right in the middle of his sentence, Cameron threw his jacket onto the face of the closest student to him and vaulted over the table to get to the side Sasha was on. Immediately after Cameron got to the other side, Sasha popped up from her seat and kicked the table forward to cause it to roll and push back the six students that were on the other side.
The group of six that were pushed by the table became sandwiched between it and the wall of the cafeteria, but two of them managed to get themselves over it and charged at Sasha and Cameron. One of them spat a grey liquid out of his mouth at Cameron.
Cameron managed to roll out of the way of the grey liquid for the most part, but a little part of it got on his shoe, which would turn into stone before his very eyes. Sasha would keep her bat held close to her, holding it with one hand so the back end of the handle could be exposed as the closest one out of the two tried to throw a kick at her stomach.
Stepping over to the side and forward, Sasha evaded the kick while striking the back of the student's leg with the handle of her bat to force him to step forward. Making a full counterclockwise turn, she built up momentum and struck the front of the student's stomach before slamming the knob into his nose and causing it to burst with blood.
The quick combination would leave the student stumbling back and tripping over himself while the second spat out grey liquid at Sasha to try and turn her to stone, much like he did Cameron's shoe.
Being forced to step back and away to duck and dodge under the stone spit, Sasha was just about to throw her bat at the student's head to get him to stop until she saw a stone shoe fly in and hit him right in the temple to knock them unconscious.
Noticing the direction in which the shoe came from, she looked over to see Cameron, who seemed to have been the one to throw the shoe. Their quick break from the fight didn't last long, as the very table they were sitting at was flung at them. Cameron jumped out of the way of it while Sasha swung her left leg forward to use the momentum and perform a corkscrew flip over the table, leaving it to crash into a group of unsuspecting students.
The jacket Cameron had on would be thrown off the students face by their friend, letting the four remaining out of the group ready themselves for a battle. At the same time as the four prepared themselves, Sasha spun her bat around with one hand and pointed it forward at the group before tilting it upward towards herself twice. She was silently telling them to come at her while Cameron looked seemingly out of it.
He couldn't tell what this feeling was; everything was slowed down to a crawl, and his heart was racing. There was no telling if this was all a good or bad thing, but the only thing ringing in his mind was "stay alive.".
One of the four students pulled their arms back and lobbed two balls of fire at Sasha, while the other three ran at her and Cameron behind the balls of fire. A member of the three slammed their hands onto the ground to send out a seismic wave in an attempt to trip Sasha and Cameron up.
Without fail, Sasha managed to deflect the two fireballs thrown her way, sending one right into one of the students that were coming at her and the other into a different table in the cafeteria. However, she would be dropped to the floor by the seismic wave due to being focused on deflecting the fireballs rather than leaping over the wave.
Cameron was also knocked down by the wave, but he'd notice that more students were getting into their own squabbles due to some of the projectiles in their fight hitting other areas. He knew that they should probably get out of the cafeteria since things were getting a bit out of hand, so he quickly tried to get to his feet, only to be met with a fist crashing against his cheek.
His head was shoved to the side as he took the punch, and despite never being hit before, it was like he didn't really feel it all that much. There was a bruise on his face but no pain, just the rush he was feeling before, and instead of running away, he quickly reeled his fist back and threw it out at the person who punched him.
Cameron's punch was awkward due to never actually throwing one out before, but it worked, and the student he punched was knocked completely unconscious. Looking down at the student, Cameron couldn't help but apologize, despite being the one who was hit first.
"Oh, my, I am so sorry."
Kicking up off the ground, Sasha looked over to Cameron and squinted at him as he apologized for knocking someone unconscious.
"Don't apologize for knocking someone out!"
At this point, around ninety percent of the cafeteria was in an all-out brawl due to misunderstandings and different objects and powers hitting the wrong people. One student seemed to be charging up a purple orb within their hands, prepared to throw it out, but before he could fully release it, he was struck in the head with a piece of metal, forcing him to drop the orb.
Kathy watched on as the fighting ramped up in the cafeteria. It was best for her to leave as soon as she could before things got too wild and she became stressed out. Just as she was about to head out, the purple orb fell to the ground and an explosion went off in the cafeteria, knocking a large number of students back.
"Just my luck..."
While she was gathering her things and about to leave, a student that was blown back from the explosion came flying in her direction. Ducking under them and allowing the student to pass over her, Kathy's rush became even greater since she knew what would happen if she was kept in here any longer; in her mind, she would complain as she ran out of the door. ["I wouldn't be in this shithole if i had the choice."]
Cameron was knocked to the ground from the explosion; his ears were left wringing while his brain was radiating pain throughout his entire head. Before he knew it, he could feel a hand pat him on the back, which would cause him to slowly look up to see Sasha in his blurred vision speaking to him with a cheeky smile on her face.
"Welcome to the real Blackwell High! How are you enjoying your stay so far?!"
Despite Sasha being loud and shouting, he couldn't hear what she was saying due to his ears still ringing from the explosion and the fighting that was still going on in the cafeteria.
"W-what?!"
Before she had time to respond, Sasha was hit across the face with a metal pipe, but she seemed to be fine for the most part as she immediately slammed the side of her bat into the students stomach before brutally smashing it against their face and leaving her bat stained with a great deal of blood.
Sasha made sure that nobody else was coming her way before finally telling Cameron that it was time for them to go. He got a taste of what it's like to be at the school so it was definitely time to head out.
"Alright, time to get out of here."
Helping Cameron up on his feet, Sasha rushed him through the cafeteria while the students carried on battling it out. Crashing through the door, the two of them made it to the hallway, where they could catch their breath.
Cameron needed a minute to process all the things that happened at once while Sasha spat out a tooth from her mouth. It seemed that the metal pipe did more damage than she initially thought.
Now that he had time to calm down and get himself together from that whole situation, Cameron felt a sharp pain in his hand, wrist, and right side of his face. Whatever that rush was, kept him from feeling the initial pain of throwing out his first punch.
"AAAGH, my hand! My face! Where did all this pain come from?"
Chuckling to herself, Sasha also felt a sudden pain in her face but she had much higher tolerance for it than Cameron did so her reaction wasn't vocalized. She more or less just sucked it up but still spoke anyway since Cameron did just get hit with an explosion.
"Sounds like someone's adrenaline has worn off. We should get you to the nurs-"
Remembering what she told her mom this morning, Sasha realized that she had told her mother that she wasn't going to get into any fights today, which was a big problem because the nurse would have to call her parents to tell her she got hurt in an all-out brawl in the cafeteria.
Luckily for her, she knew just the person to go to in order to get fixed up, but she had to be quick since she knew they didn't like to waste their time.
"Scratch that, I know a girl; let's go find her."
Cameron scratched his head in confusion since he didn't know why they weren't going to the nurses office, but if Sasha knew someone better than them, then he didn't mind going over and checking them out. He still needed to learn more about the school anyway, so it was probably for the best that he went along with the ride.
She stood herself up and started walking to the north wing, where her person was. Cameron followed Sasha to see where she was going, and as she was walking, she began texting Danny to tell him what happened.
With the two of them walking off, leaving the cafeteria to become whatever it was going to be,. They went to see this "izzy" that Sasha was talking about, but Cameron had a question on his mind that needed some answering.
"Hey, Sasha, where did you learn how to fight like that?"
Sasha knew that explaining her training would take a bit of time, so it was best for her to paraphrase on the way to one of her many associates.
"It's a long story; I'll paraphrase it on the way to Izzy."
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Right after they left.
============================================================
As the fight raged on in the cafeteria, there was something lurking in the ventilation system. Making its way up and around, traveling into the ceiling wasn't a puff of smoke or a traveling cloud, but the sound of footsteps making their way to the vent grate.
Nobody could hear anything because of the commotion, but inside the vent was none other than Valentina herself, and she managed to push the vent grate out, which gave her a full bird's-eye view of the cafeteria. From her pocket, Valentina pulled out a small black ball with a cap on top of it, and popping off the cap, she threw it straight down into the heart of the fighting.
The moment that black ball hit the ground, a cloud of black smoke would cover the floor, leaving everyone in the center of the cafeteria disoriented and blinded. Jumping down from the vents, Valentina made her way into the cloud of smoke. While she was falling, she grabbed two students by the back of their heads and used the momentum from her fall to slam them both into the ground and knock them out.
Immediately jumping off of the two students she landed on, Valentina positioned herself behind another student and quickly swept their right leg while grabbing onto their forehead to forcefully throw them down to the ground with her left hand. Without hesitation, she brutally stomped on the students heads to knock them out.
She was quick and quiet without the possibility of being noticed due to both the smoke and the commotion, but she needed a way to stop all of this from continuing. So she quickly dashed behind another student in the smoke cloud and kicked the back of their knee to force them to kneel, and while they were kneeling, she grabbed onto their right arm and twisted it clockwise.
Spinning her pointer finger in a circle, the cloud of black smoke began to shift and form into a megaphone, which Valentina would grab onto and shout into in order to project her voice over the chaos of the cafeteria.
"AYE! IT'S TIME TO PACK YOUR THINGS, YOU ANIMALS; THE PARTY IS OVER!"
Twisting the students arm even further than she did before and stepping over it with her leg so she could use it to generate torque, she continued to look at the cafeteria, which was now having their full attention focused on Valentina.
The fighting slowly came to a stop as the black smoke megaphone transformed into a student wearing a black jacket that had the word "security" plastered on the back of it.
"Get your shit and get the hell out of here! NOW!"
Bending the arm of the student backwards, a loud snap would echo throughout the cafeteria as their arm sounded like it broke apart like an old wooden bridge being struck by lightning right in front of everyone.
"Unless you want what he's heaving, I suggest you all get moving."
The display brought a good bit of the students to their senses, and they started to leave. While they left, more members of the security club began to make their way into the cafeteria. One of them wore a white jacket instead of a black one compared to the others, and they walked over to the student with the broken arm and tapped them on it three times.
Suddenly, their arm was fixed, like the damage done by Valentina was undone, leaving the student to run off. Still, despite getting things calmed down, Valentina was extremely irritated that an all-out brawl would happen the one time that they're doing something extremely important.
"Of course this has to go down while we're in the middle of an investigation."
Looking around the cafeteria and seeing the number of unconscious students within it, Valentina sighed because she knew that she couldn't count all of them, so she looked over to one of the security club members and asked, hoping that they had an answer better than her own.
"How many bodies we got?"
Looking around for a bit, the security club member really couldn't get a good number. It wasn't like they were marked by number or anything—just a bunch of unconscious people in the room.
"Uh... a lot."
Pinching the bridge of her nose, Valentina looked down at the ground before frustratingly grumbling to herself.
"Great..."
Well, she couldn't get a solid number, which only made Valentina even more pissed off than she already was. But just as she was about to order a clean-up, her phone started to ring and vibrate. Pulling her phone from her pocket, Valentina looked at who was calling her and saw that it was Danny, so she tapped on the answer button so he could speak.
"Hey Val, I was wondering where you were at. There was some crazy brawl that happened in the cafeteria, and I wanted to make sure you weren't stuck somewhere."
Out of frustration with the situation, Valentina answered Danny with complete sarcasm, as if she didn't know what happened.
"Oh wow, what a coincidence! I just so happen to be in the cafeteria right now!"
Laughing at Valentina's clear anger at what happened, Danny made a quick quip about being in the cafeteria to try and cheer her up.
"So am I."
And just like that, Danny was standing in front of Valentina and the security club, seeming as if he just blinked in front of them. This completely caught everyone off guard, including Valentina, who admittedly forgot that Danny had powers.
"Wha-, I keep forgetting you're fast as shit now. Alright, everyone, clear out; we'll handle things from here. Continue on with the investigation."
With Valentina's word given, the security club members started to walk off, letting the two of them handle things if they actually had them. In the meantime, while they were gone, Valentina kicked off the conversation, assuming that Sasha had something to do with the massive brawl in the cafeteria.
"Shot in the dark, it was Sasha, wasn't it?"
Danny wasn't going to lie to Valentina about it; there was not really a point in doing so since the evidence was on the wall, on the floor, and a little bit on the ceiling.
"And Cameron, but yeah."
Hearing that Sasha brought Cameron to the cafeteria made Valentina's eyes widen a bit. She didn't think that she would actually bring him to a place like this, knowing how famous he was.
"She brought the rich kid to the cafeteria? I knew she had a problem with rich people, but I didn't think she'd try to have the guy eaten alive on the first day."
Bringing a bit of good news to all of this, Danny decided to tell Valentina about how Cameron was able to handle himself even if he only knew so little about what actually happened.
"Surprisingly, he did pretty well for himself. At least that's what Sasha told me."
To Valentina, that was pretty surprising to hear since the first time she met him, Cameron was extremely timid and shy. If she were to voice it now, she'd say that she didn't even think he'd be alive for the day, but she did want to know where Danny was during this situation since he didn't admit to being part of it.
"Well, what do you know? So where were you in all this?"
Tilting his head back, Danny looked at the ceiling, noticing a couple of students hanging from it. Things had gotten crazier than he first thought, but he should have expected it, knowing his friend.
"Sat it out; I just needed some time to think about some things."
Today was just full of surprises for Valentina, as she couldn't believe what she was hearing. ["Danny, sitting out a fight? The hell is going on this year?"]
"Danny Nash sitting out a fight? I think I've heard it all now."
Strangely enough, Danny didn't seem to be all that entertained by the statement. He had a bit more of a serious look on his face as he controlled the velocity of the air molecules behind him and stopped it in their tracks. This effectively created an invisible construct which Danny would use to sit down in, like a chair, while he spoke.
"Yeah, I've just been doing a lot of thinking. Maybe I've been wearing the mask for too long, you know?"
Valentina thought about what Danny was saying and how he's been reacting to the school day so far. At the same time, Danny could remember when he was able to just greet people in the hallway, wave to other people and get conversations going with ease prior to receiving his powers. Now he's met with silence from anyone who knows of him who isn't Val or Sasha.
"For the past three or so years, we've been pretending to be these delinquents or, in your case, just a very brutal cop. I'm thinking this stuff might come back to bite us in the ass someday."
Pulling up one of the many chairs that littered the cafeteria floor, Valentina sat down across from Danny and crossed her arms, wondering just what he was getting at. It was definitely important for her to listen to her friend and hear him out.
"How so?"
Leaning back in his self-made chair, Danny began to think of what he wanted to say, and what it came down to was a question.
"If you got your powers today, what would people think of you? The brutal cop of Blackwell, founder of the security club, just got her powers. How do you think everyone around you would react? Not including new students who never knew you to begin with."
That was a hard question to think about for Valentina since she never thought about that kind of stuff. She just thought that she might not ever get her powers until after high school or possibly towards the end of the year, but right now? She didn't really know what to think.
Eventually, she was able to come up with an answer that she thought would make a bit of sense to her.
"Well, I think the security club would be happy, and the other students would be more fearful of the security club as a whole. The end result would end up being more positive for the school, as now people would have even more things to think twice about before doing something foolish."
Danny contemplated Valentina's answer for a bit and had an answer ready for it because this was something that he had in his mind since his first period. He looked her dead in the eyes and asked more follow-up questions based on her answer.
"Do you ever think that fear is just the beginning stage of anger? What if someone tries to get a name for themselves by killing you? Tear down everything you built out of this 'fear'?"
Another set of good questions that Valentina needed time to think about, and ultimately she came to her own conclusion about it all. In the end, she felt that it was always possible for someone to try to do that, as the creation of her club disrupted the very violence that this school profited off of and encouraged. Getting powers on top of it only drove the targeting toward her instead of other people, which she was completely fine with.
"That's a possibility, but then again, that's always been a possibility for me. Ever since I joined this club, I've run the risk of that happening, so it wouldn't surprise me. But I see what you're getting at; things could always get worse."
Danny was happy that Valentina considered what he was saying and could see where he was coming from, but there was one thing that he was more concerned with than things getting worse for him and his friends if they did get their powers.
"Well, my problem isn't things getting worse; it's more or less how much worse they can get. Getting worse is almost a certainty, but how much worse is an entirely different animal?"
Valentina was really confused as to where all of this was coming from. It wasn't like Danny was talking about things like this, and she really wanted to know what was going on with him.
"Where did all this come from? You turning nutcase on me? It's not like you to be thinking about this kind of stuff."
The best way Danny could put it was a gut feeling; he didn't have anyone threatening his life or saying something to set him off, but there was just a feeling he couldn't shake that made him think about all of this.
"I just got a feeling in my gut, that's all."