Silence filled the colosseum, which felt weird and disappointing. What was the point of a competition to see who’d come out on top if none of the citizens were there to see it? Especially when the five other candidates conversing happily around me looked so weak.

  I only recognized two of them.

  The big guy in the navy blue suit was Golem, but he was the complete opposite of his name. That soft smile he gave the newbies and the reassuring grip on their shoulders reaffirmed the opinion I had of him: gentle giants always finished last. Too worried about everyone else to care about himself.

  Not me though. I was keeping my body awake with push ups. I was about to reach one hundred when the dwarf candidate interrupted me. I didn’t call him a dwarf because he was just shorter than me. The man was cursed by whatever God existed up there to be as tall as half my leg. It made me sick knowing he was one of the people I was being compared to.

  “Hello, midget,” I sighed, pushing myself back to my feet. “How’s City B these days after Zandalf’s untimely demise? Old men like him should die peacefully in their sleep.”

  He frowned. “Perhaps in a better world that would be possible. For now, we take our losses and make sure to give the enemy an even bigger loss.” He gestured for me to shake his tiny hand. “Also, my name is Titan. Nice to see you again, Pluto.”

  I shook his hand with my pinky instead. Didn’t want to crush it accidentally. “They say the strongest men are usually tall, so don’t be too hurt by the results at the end.”

  His frown turned upside down, just like the smiley face on his white sweater. “That’s only really a thing in basketball, man. And volleyball. I don't think strength is what these guys are looking for.”

  Yeah, that’s what you thought, fool.

  Someone tapped my shoulder, but it wasn’t the gentle giant. His shadow would've dwarfed mine. I turned my head around and realized one of the newbies had the balls to try and talk to me.

  Well, “balls” wasn’t the right word to use here. The one who tapped me was a skinny female, who looked to be in her fifties. I was usually a fan of cougars, but that was only because of their mature demeanors. This one was too happy-go-lucky for my tastes.

  “Hey, guys!” the cougar exclaimed. She had on a mossy green turtleneck sweater and black jeans. Green was an ugly color, so I was immediately disturbed by her presence. “Sorry to interrupt your conversation. But it’s just my first time at Radius Skyscraper, and it’s all so scary. I had recently gotten my powers, and they told me to come here.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” the dwarf said. “This will be a nice and painless procedure. I presume they only want to see how we use our abilities in different scenarios like the last time I was here. Just be confident and relaxed. Treat like how you would any test.”

  She exhaled, and then laughed. “Ok, that’s good. I’ll try not to mess up. Thank you, um, Titan, right?” Once the tiny man nodded, she turned to me. “Wow, you are gorgeous. And love your hair color. I don't think I’ve seen you on the big screens before. What’s your name?”

  “Pluto,” I answered with a fake smile. “And like the boy said, don’t take this so seriously. It’s my first time doing this too — even though I’ve had my powers for a while.”

  “Aaah, that’s great! Buuut, I am older, so my life experience might give you a run for your money.”

  The cougar laughed, as if that comment was supposed to be funny.

  “Speaking of the first time, where’s Phoenix Korrect?” I asked the half-man. “It’s supposed to be his first too, and yet he’s late. Don’t tell me he got scared at the last minute.”

  A buzzer blared through the colosseum, loud enough to rattle my teeth.

  I looked toward the source of the sound, up past the arena walls. That’s when I saw him.

  Phoenix.

  He sat with the rest of the Radius, high above us, legs crossed like he owned the place, looking down on us. The possibility that he was sitting with them up there because he was chosen before me was absolutely impossible in my mind, so an extreme amount of confusion filled my head at that moment.

  Was this a case of overconfidence taking over his common sense? Lyra, Granny Teresa, and the water female weren’t saying anything, but what about Daemon? I was sure he’d have words to say.

  “Good evening, everyone,” Granny Teresa said into a mic, her voice frail and weak. “I don’t wanna waste anybody’s time. You all know why you’re here in this colosseum that Lyra worked so hard to create tonight. You’re here to see which one of you has the ability to stand with the Radius up here.” She smiled. “All of you look so young and pretty — especially the blue one in front. I could just gobble you all up and preserve your bodies inside of me.”

  All of us looked pretty disturbed by that last sentence, although I was the most disgusted.

  It wasn’t only because of what she said. Something else was off, and I raised my hand to get to the bottom of it.

  Granny Teresa pointed at me with her cane. “Yes, boy with the blue hair.”

  “Where is Daemon!?” I asked bluntly, putting my hand down.

  “Away,” she replied kindly.

  “Where and why!?”

  “You’re not important enough to give his location to.” My mouth gaped a bit. “As for why, this event isn’t exactly of importance to Mr. Williams. That’s why I’ll be overseeing it today.”

  I wasn’t of importance!? A future member of his damn team!? I was trained by Jesus fucking Hernandez! That should've been enough reason for Daemon to lay his eyes on me.

  “Permission to ask another question!?”

  “Yes.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why is Phoenix sitting up there with you people!?”

  “Because we found his Radius Ability useful for our cause, and realized there was no need for him to take part in this event.”

  I froze as everything began to crash down to me. My lungs felt tight, and my body was burning with frustration. That fake ass detective was a pebble with an ability that wasn’t even suited for combat. A pebble I could crush with just my aura. We might've started at the same time, but my feats have always outweighed his.

  Phoenix was a sidekick at best, yet now I had to answer to him!?

  “Is that enough questions from you?” Lyra cut in, yawning. “I have this merch signing thing in the morning, so let’s wrap this up quickly.”

  I laughed softly. “Yeah, we should wrap up quickly! Which is why I propose a different way to end this!”

  “Hey, Pluto.” The gentle giant placed a hand on my shoulder. “You shouldn’t talk to them so casually. If you talk back too much, they might disqualify you completely. Or worse, demote you.”

  “Yeah, maybe we should just keep quiet,” the cougar suggested meekly.

  That was the problem with greenhorns. They were too afraid to do their own things, and only conditioned to follow the leader.

  I scoffed. “Did you wash those hands before touching me?”

  “Blue haired boy, are you suggesting that the ideas of the Radius for this event pale in comparison to yours?” the old hag questioned, her smile disappearing.

  “I would never,” I said, "I just want to offer the best option so that you guys can get a good night's sleep!”

  “Oooo, I like sleeping!” the water female exclaimed, jumping out of her seat. “Hey, what do you want to do?”

  I grinned. “You guys say you’ll choose one of us based on how helpful our Radius Ability will be to your cause, but what if you didn’t have to choose.” Aura enveloped my pointer and middle fingers. “What if there was only one candidate here?”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  No one was fast enough to stop me from piercing the cougar’s forehead with fingers. While her earlier expression remained the same, the light in her eyes still faded. I freed her skull from my grasp, blood squirting out like she was a fountain, painting my body red.

  That was my second favorite color, so you could say she died beautifully.

  The silence from before became even stronger, and the living candidates’ shocked faces were locked onto me.

  The midget broke the quiet. “Wh-What the fuck did you do!? Plu-”

  I launched him into the colosseum walls with a kick. It was easy to do when I imagined his little body as a soccer ball.

  That was enough to get one of the newbies — a black guy in a track suit — to try and escape the area. But he didn’t do it conventionally. Blue arrows spawned beneath his feet, like the ones in those racing video games, as he got into a runner stance. I chased after him, predicting he’d charge through the wall.

  I was wrong. The second my knuckles grazed the hairs on his neck, another set of arrows appeared in front of us. The guy zoomed into the air, and the shockwave from my punch left a dent in the brick wall. The positioning of his body was straight, and there’s no way the newbie would expect what I had in store.

  “Saturn!”

  A large white orb materialized in my palms, and pieces of the floor were drawn to it, fusing together to create a ring around my creation. A huge golem of rock grabbed me from both my left and right — courtesy of the gentle giant, no doubt. That didn’t stop Saturn. It was a homing projectile. The planet didn’t need me to move. Only the target.

  So, even when the newbie switched to the right, Saturn followed and sliced him in half. His acceleration arrows probably didn’t allow him to make any specific movements like curves or twists, so catching him was effortless.

  “Stop this, Pluto!” the golem roared, picking me up, blood raining down on us. “Are you insane!? Don’t throw away your life for this shit!”

  “Oh, my life hasn’t started yet!” I shouted, aura bursting out of my body, cracking his stone armor. “As for your life-”

  The sound of a drill cut through my sentence. I looked around, ears perked up, trying to find where it was coming from. My Energy Sense was only the size of a poor man’s bedroom, so I couldn't immediately anticipate that the golem’s hand would blow apart from the inside.

  An East Asian guy whose body was half spinning drill slammed into my abdomen and kept going. We smashed through the colosseum wall, and suddenly we were out over the city.

  Buildings rushed past below. My hoodie tore apart, revealing my beautiful, chiseled body. The golem was jumping toward us like a man on a mission, his hands reforming.

  “Damn!” the driller exclaimed, eyes watering. “I should’ve listened to my mom! I knew this was too much for me to handle.”

  I snickered, raising my hands into the sky. “I’ll tell your mom she was right.” I grasped the metal, stopping the drill’s movements completely. “After you die.”

  “H-How did you do that!? That’s a fucking drill!”

  “It’s because I’m stronger than you,” I replied calmly.

  One slight push, and the metal shattered, along with the driller’s confidence. I raised my fist with a smile, gravity sending us back down.

  “Don’t do it, Pluto!” the golem pleaded from afar, leaping on the buildings.

  “Wait!? Don’t kill me! Please!”

  Their words went unanswered. I punched his head, turning it into bloody bits.

  “Mercury!”

  I blasted a large, cratered ball at the incoming golem, hot air washing over my skin.

  But it never landed.

  An invisible force from above crushed it, and then slammed into me. My back hit the empty street, blood bursting from my mouth as parked cars flipped around me.

  An emerald avatar — about the same size as the rock golem — materialized out of thin air. Its hair was long and lush, a sharp contrast to the balding dwarf inside it.

  Force manipulation. It would’ve been a strong Radius Ability if the midget didn’t have to be asleep for the avatar to appear. On top of that, the downward force only came from the gap between his hands, held together in a triangle.

  Even so, I was still being pushed further into the concrete, paralyzed, organs screaming in pain. And it looked more agony was coming as the golem descended down on me, avoiding the dwarf’s area of effect.

  “Just hold him there, Titan! I’ll need to find another restra-”

  “Don’t hesitate, Golem!” the half-man screamed, strengthening the force on me. “Pluto was intending to murder everyone in that colosseum that threatened his path to the top! He already killed innocent lives, and we’ll be next if we hesitate or hold back!”

  As the golem debated on what to do next, an idea popped up in my mind. In order to defeat gravity of this level, I needed to introduce the perfect counter.

  I hated to admit it, but Phoenix was right. I wasn’t doing good with my potential. I wasn’t giving my Radius Ability the respect it deserved. Even Jesus tried to cram that into me.

  But right now was the perfect moment to try it. To add a new planet to my Solar System!

  “But we can’t just kill-”

  “Don’t be stupid, Golem!” the midget yelled while my mouth gaped. “It’s either us or him, and that isn’t the type of question going on in his head. You get that, right!? So, right here! Right now! Kill hiiiiiiiiiiiim!”

  A barrage of stone punches attempted to slam into my body, like a meteor shower. But it didn’t matter how many meteors were in the sky. Their size could never match-

  “Jupiter!”

  The orange ball that emerged from my mouth reduced the fists into pebbles. The limbless golem and the avatar were glued to the planet, as though they were flies trapped in a spider’s web. Jupiter grew, and then grew even more, lifting us all up into the sky.

  “Red Spot!”

  A beam of red energy tore out of the planet, eviscerating the giants until there was nothing left.

  Jupiter dissipated as I landed feet-first into the crater. The dwarf’s body joined me inside, burnt to a crisp. I was about to walk back to the colosseum when a question from behind stopped me.

  “Why…?”

  I turned my head, a bit shocked he was still breathing. Then again, he clearly didn't have long left, so I decided to entertain myself a bit more.

  “Isn’t it obvious, my little burnt chicken nugget? It’s because I’m stronger than you.”

  ********

  “Is there a reason why you’re holding the head of that little person in your hand, Pluto?” Phoenix asked me.

  He was sitting at a table with the other Radius in a dimly lit red room that they had asked me to go to after my cleansing last night. They were clearly pissed at me, considering I wasn't even offered a seat at their table. I guess that’s why I was sitting in a chair away from them.

  “Just call him a dwarf, Phoeney Weeny. That is what their species is called, after all.” I tossed the severed head onto the table. None of them looked surprised. “Consider that a peace offering. He had a useful ability. Maybe you could give it to one of the KBs.”

  “He smells like beef,” the water female commented, licking her lips.

  Phoenix glared at me. “What do you expect us to do with a charred brain?” He must’ve been furious realizing I could get away with murder without any repercussions, and that made my heart flutter.

  “He was still talking right before he died, so his brain is still there,” I assured him, crossing my legs.

  “I should have you in cuffs for what you did. The murder of those five candidates. The collateral damage and potential harm you could have brought to civilians.”

  I shook my head, chuckling. “You have to calm down with this holier than thou act. Ly created the colosseum in an evacuated part of the city, which was only evacuated because of the event last night. You know what that means, Phoenix? It means you people must've anticipated that would happen. No, not just anticipated. You guys wanted that to happen.”

  “Why would we ever-”

  Granny Teresa put her hand up, and that was enough to stop the wannabe detective’s flapping lips. “No, no, he’s right. The purpose of the event was to see how each of the candidates could handle themselves in different situations, and a life or death battle is certainly something that could happen — especially with that mean old Jason running around these days. Pluto here has shown us that he’s worthy of finally being promoted.”

  I couldn’t stop the corners of my lips from curling upward, or my fist shaking with excitement. This was it. I was going to be a member of the Seven — a top dog that could do whatever he wanted and rule the city like a king.

  “Promoted to Head of the Radius Lieutenants!”

  It felt like a bullet just went through my head.

  “I’m already a lieutenant though,” I said, trying to hide my disbelief. I noticed Lyra hiding a grin with her hand, so now I was trying to hide my anger.

  “Yes, which is why we’re promoting you to Head,” Granny Teresa repeated. She looked at me like I was stupid. “You’ll get very good benefits, you know. Free access to things regular people would have to pay for. You’ll be advertised to the public more, practically giving you celebrity status in this world. Not to mention, you’ll lead the other lieutenants into the future.”

  I laughed awkwardly. “With all due respect, I thought you’d make me one of the seven.”

  “Oh, now why would we do that?” the hag said with amusement.

  “Because there’s no one left but me. You still have two spots left.”

  “Well, you’re not going to be filling one of those slots, my dear boy! Those slots are hopefully going to be filled by two people with very promising Radius Abilities.” Lyra gave the hag an SB, and a holographic screen popped up. A cheeky redhead appeared on it. “One is a woman named Angela Angels. She can extract all kinds of pain, and after her work on all the victims of the Sunvirus in the country, we think she’d make a great fit for our cause.”

  “And the other-” Lyra pressed a button, and a disgusting, zombified girl with blue hair showed up on the screen next. “Is a kid named Moonlight.”

  Granny Teresa’s eyes lit up while my eyes darkened. “Isn’t she adorable? According to Ly, her healing ability could potentially outshine mine! She can absorb the ooze from a zombie bite. I’ve never seen something like that before. She’ll be a good addition.”

  “According to one of our Resource Adventurers, she’s staying at this, uh, underground facility full of no-name scientists and inventors,” Daemon’s daughter added.

  “You mean to tell me that some nobody and a hideous amalgamation are more qualified than I?”

  “Yes,” Phoenix answered.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it, dude,” the water female said. She loudly sipped from her cup before continuing. “People are cut out for different things in life. I'm cut out for chilling around and keeping our water supply intact. And you’re more cut out for fighting bad guys.”

  I wondered what would happen if I used Venus on her hair? Would it boil and she’d scream in pain, or would it evaporate and she’d scream in embarrassment?

  “What does Daemon have to say about this?” I paused for a bit, seeing if he was hiding in the area somewhere. But my Energy Sense didn’t detect him. “He’s not here to see me again.”

  Granny Teresa laughed softly. “Of course he isn’t, silly. Something like this doesn’t concern Mr. Williams.”

  “But a talking zombie and his hellspawn does?”

  “Yes!”

  The blissful ignorance of the response and her relaxed demeanor caused my rage to erupt. I blitzed toward Teresa, hand raised and shrouded with a sharpened aura. But speed meant nothing when my intentions were already predicted.

  I stopped, my fingers inches away from the hag’s neck. I didn't have a choice. A revolver, a spear made of water, and elongated acrylics were all aimed at my head.

  “You wear your foolishness like armor even though it fails to protect you,” Phoenix growled, arm steady, unyielding grip on his gun.

  “Pluto, you’ve been making this job so interesting lately,” the water bitch said.

  “Can we kill him already?” Lyra asked Teresa. “But I don't want my nails ruined so early. Can you guys do it?”

  “Now, now, children,” the hag said, gesturing for them to stop. “If Pluto really wanted to kill me, I would personally make him regret it.”

  Granny Teresa smiled once more, although it wasn’t the usual innocent smile an elder would give you. Past the slimy gums, there was an endless void of darkness with faces and expressions inside that were too twisted for me to know how to describe. For a split second, I heard a cacophony of wails, and fear ravaged through my bones like a Radion just jumped out of her mouth.

  I quickly jumped back, afraid I’d be the next poor, unfortunate soul inside her body.

  “Monster,” I muttered, eyes widened. “It’s wrong to call you ‘she’. You’re more of a… ‘they’.”

  “Oh, my, young man!” the old monster said. “If you wanted to show me a bulge that ferocious, you could’ve asked nicely.”

  When Granny Teresa said bulge, I presumed she meant the bulging pecs poking out of my shirt. After all, it was chest day. Then, I looked down and realized how much of a freak she really was. Despite that, the others were staring at me like I was the real weirdo.

  “Bright, glittery, unicorn underpants. Still a child at heart,” Phoenix said in a low tone. “Strangely comforting.”

  “Make fun of me all you want, Phoenix,” I shouted, aggressively pointing at him. “Ponies and magical horses are a sign of ultimate masculinity! Besides, I bought these for $3.99 ten years ago at the ripe age of twenty-six!”

  The water female sighed. “I wish my bulge had been that big.”

  My brows raised. “Wait, what?”

  What finally got me to pick my pants up was Lyra taking a quick photo of me.

  “What a dickwipe,” she snickered. “I’m sending this to literally everybody you know.”

  “I’ve had enough of you weirdos!” I exclaimed, face turning red. “Don’t think I won’t become one of the Seven! I am Pluto!”

  I stormed out of the room with one goal swarming my mind: kill those two bitches. Not just them. Anyone they thought was a better fit than me needed to be slaughtered so that the path to my goal stayed clear.