Smoke still curled through the ruined streets like the world was exhaling pain.
Sirens. Screams. Crashes. The new soundtrack of reality.
Dioka and Guakulia walked through it like two dudes who missed the memo that the apocalypse wanted them dead.
Dioka hopped over a cracked street light. "Bro, everything looks like a DLC map."
Guakulia deadpanned, "This isn't a game."
"Yeah but it feels like one."
He wasn't wrong.
Mutated humans — Supernovas — were everywhere. Some were crying, some destroying things on accident, some fighting each other because unstable powers turned everyone paranoid.
It was a mess.
And that's when they found the first real threat.
A mutated boy stood in the middle of an intersection, trembling violently as arcs of blue lightning shot out of his body uncontrollably. Cars around him exploded like popcorn in the microwave.
Guakulia squinted. "His Track awakened too fast. Body can't handle it."
Dioka winced. "He's literally sparking like a broken charger cable."
Then the kid screamed — a burst so huge it blasted a shockwave in a full circle.
A car lifted.
A bus flipped.
A building window shattered.
People ran.
The kid wasn't attacking…
He was dying from his own mutation.
Dioka's expression shifted — serious, sharp. "We gotta stop him."
Guakulia gave him a look. "We don't know how to use our abilities."
"Yeah but we're anomalies, right? We got plot armor or something."
"That's not how this works."
But Dioka was already moving.
He sprinted toward the lightning kid, the ground cracking under each step — not from super strength, but from the raw destabilized energy his body was releasing. His cells were adapting on the fly, rewriting themselves to handle the chaos in the air.
Guakulia watched.
He didn't panic.
He didn't shout.
He just murmured:
"…so that's how your body operates."
Dioka leapt into the lightning storm like an idiot with hero dreams. Bolts slammed into him, bright and violent.
And yet—
He didn't fall.
His body absorbed the shocks instinctively, redirecting them through his muscles like a conductor rerouting electricity.
"BRO—" Dioka shouted through the lightning. "THIS IS CRAZY—WAIT, THIS KINDA FEELS GOOD—"
Guakulia sighed. "He's enjoying it. Of course."
Dioka reached the boy and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Hey! Hey! Focus! Breathe!"
The kid sobbed, "I CAN'T CONTROL IT—"
"Then let me help control it!"
Dioka pulled him in, grounding his lightning into his own body. His skin flickered with electric veins, eyes glowing faintly.
The kid collapsed into his arms, unconscious but alive.
The lightning stopped.
Guakulia walked over, hands still in pockets. "You absorbed excess energy. Your body reacts to external stimuli by evolving short-term solutions."
Dioka blinked. "In English?"
"You're built different."
"Yeeaahhh I kinda felt that."
They placed the kid gently on the ground. Civilians peeked out from behind destroyed cars, watching with wide eyes.
Whispers started.
"Those two aren't normal."
"They didn't get Tracks?"
"But… they're stronger."
"What are they?"
Guakulia ignored them.
Dioka waved awkwardly like some accidental superhero.
Then the air shifted.
A pressure fell on the street — heavy, predatory, wrong.
A man stepped out from the smoke.
Tall. Shirt burned. Eyes glowing red with a SIGIL etched on his forehead — the mark of a ranked Supernova.
His aura crackled with raw destructive energy.
A D-Rank Mutant.
And he did not look friendly.
He scanned Dioka and Guakulia with disgust. "No Tracks detected. No Sigil. So you two are… what? Flukes? Glitches?"
Guakulia's eyes sharpened. "We're anomalies."
The man sneered, cracking his neck. "Then you're threats."
He launched forward.
Fast. Brutally fast.
A punch aimed at Dioka's head — enough to pulp concrete.
Dioka didn't dodge.
Instinct moved for him.
His spine shifted, muscles thickened, bones reinforced. His arm snapped up and caught the punch mid-swing.
The shockwave blew dust across the street.
Dioka blinked. "Oh. That was cool."
The D-Rank snarled and swung again.
Dioka blocked.
Then again.
Blocked.
Then Dioka grinned.
"Okay yeah… I'm definitely built different."
Guakulia finally stepped forward, his presence growing denser, colder, precise like a blade being unsheathed.
He spoke softly.
"Dioka. Don't kill him."
"Huh? I wasn't— I mean— actually I might've on accident."
"Exactly."
Guakulia raised one hand.
Reality around his palm warped ever so slightly — bending like heat haze, but sharper, controlled. His ability didn't manifest like power.
It manifested like logic overriding physics.
The D-Rank hesitated. "What… are you?"
Guakulia's face stayed emotionless.
"Not something you can measure."
He flicked his fingers.
A ripple of spatial distortion cut across the street.
The D-Rank flew backward like a ragdoll, skidding across asphalt until he hit a flipped bus and passed out.
Silence followed.
Even the sirens felt quieter.
Dioka stared. "Bro… what the hell was that?"
Guakulia lowered his hand calmly. "A test."
"A test for what?!"
"To see if the system still tries to categorize my ability when I use it."
"And?"
"It didn't."
Guakulia smirked faintly. "We're invisible to it."
Dioka's grin went nuclear. "Broooo we're OFF THE GRID?? We're literally cheat codes??"
Guakulia's eyes glowed faintly.
"No. We're something worse."
The wind blew through the ruined street.
Around them, frightened survivors stared at the two teenagers standing calmly in the aftermath of powers they shouldn't have.
The world had mutated.
But Dioka and Guakulia?
They had surpassed mutation.
They were the first beings the system couldn't shape, label, track, or limit.
The first anomalies.
And the world was only beginning to realize it.