Lucas's smirk vanished. He slammed his fists together, and the sound wasn't skin on skin, but the dull thud of stone. A low hum vibrated up from the ground itself. Dust and loose pebbles swirled around his hands, not floating, but being pulled into a violent vortex. With a grating, grinding sound like a tombstone being dragged, the particles compressed, forming jagged, slate-gray gauntlets around his fists and forearms. This wasn't a shimmer; it was a cage of solid rock.
"I think it's time someone taught you your place," he repeated, his voice low and dangerous.
James's first instinct was pure Valorian reflex: step forward, accept the challenge, and contain the threat away from the wounded. "This is between you and me, Lucas. Let them go."
Lucas laughed, a sharp, ugly sound. "You don't get to set the terms. You think that little power surge of yours makes you special? Let's see what that power is worth when it's not fighting dumb animals."
"Back off, Lucas," Kara snapped, stepping to James's left. A shimmering heat haze began to rise from her hands. "Or you'll be dealing with all of us."
Drake, though still wincing, moved to James's right, planting his feet and becoming a fortress of bruised but unyielding muscle. Luna stood behind them, her expression serene but her hands glowing with a protective, verdant light. Xander was already subtly shifting his feet, his eyes darting around, calculating vectors and air currents.
They were making a choice. By standing with him, they were taking on a risk that wasn't theirs. This wasn't just friendship; it was the first interest payment on his debt, and the realization struck James with the force of a physical blow.
"Fine," Lucas sneered, gesturing to his own cronies. "Have it your way."
Lucas charged, leading with a right hook that was less a punch and more a thrown boulder. James didn't try to block it head-on—that would be suicide. Instead, he fell into his Valorian stance, his hand striking the inside of Lucas's stone-cased arm, deflecting the blow's trajectory. The impact was a jarring shock that numbed his fingers, and the scrape of rock against his uniform was deafeningly close. He was deflecting, not blocking. He was a fencer fighting a man swinging sledgehammers.
Across the clearing, a blast of brilliant orange flame from Kara met a crony's hastily-formed shield of water, exploding into a blinding cloud of steam.
James felt the hum of the Nexus power in his chest, a tempting reservoir of strength. He tried to summon the ripple he'd used on the wolf, but he immediately felt the problem: it was a wide, unfocused blast of force. In the close-quarters chaos of the brawl, with his friends fighting nearby, using it would be like swinging a sledgehammer in a closet. He could hurt them as easily as he could hurt Lucas's thugs.
His power—his unearned, inherited debt—was a clumsy, useless weight.
He saw Xander send a razor-sharp gust of wind not at a person, but at the ground, creating a disorienting dust devil that made Lucas's other crony stumble.
Seeing James on the defensive, one of Lucas's cronies—a burly fighter whose fists seemed as dense as lead—saw an opening and charged at Drake. As he charged, Luna thrust her hand forward, and thick, thorny vines erupted from the earth, attempting to ensnare the thug's legs, but he plowed through them with sheer, brutal momentum.
The sight of his friend, already hurt and now under renewed attack, broke something in James. The distant, academic idea of a "debt" became a burning, immediate reality.
Lucas seized the opening. The stone around his fist pulsed, glowing a dull, angry red as he super-heated it with raw kinetic force. He drove it into James's gut.
The impact was a crushing, grinding agony. It wasn't just a punch; it was the force of a landslide concentrated into a single point. James felt his ribs scream in protest as the jagged stone fist ripped through his uniform. The world didn't just flicker; it fractured, the air driven from his lungs in a choked, dusty gasp. He collapsed, the taste of blood and dirt in his mouth.
"See?" Lucas panted, standing over him, triumphant. "All that power, and you're nothing. You haven't earned the right to wield it."
He was right.
Through the haze of pain, James saw the burly thug, now free of the broken vines, raise his fists to deliver another blow to a faltering Drake. Luna cried out a warning.
In that instant, James made a choice. He couldn't pay his debt by unleashing a tidal wave. He had to pay it with precision. With control.
He ignored the searing pain in his stomach. Instead of pushing the Nexus power out, he pulled it in. He focused the raging storm inside him, channeling it not into an external blast, but into his own muscles, his own nerves, his own blood.
The world didn't ripple. It slowed.
A new, terrifying energy surged through him—focused, sharp, and cold. He felt the hum in his chest solidify into a hard, dense point of light. His vision sharpened to an impossible clarity. He saw the thug's muscles tense for the punch. He saw the flicker of fear in Drake's eyes. He saw everything.
And as the thug's punch began to move, James was already gone, a blur of motion, his own counter-attack a silent, precise threat about to be unleashed.