The moon, indifferent as ever to earthly matters, casts its silver, impartial light through shattered windows and hole-ripped walls, giving the mayhem and destruction in the corridors a surrealistic unworldly glow. In some strange, fairy-tale way, it transforms the thick clouds of dust into something resembling early morning fog rising from an enchanted Scottish lake, from which at any moment a hand could emerge, clutching a sword or something else very mythical. It makes the whole scene almost look peaceful.
It is not.
The school is literally torn apart.
Despite the dust, Longshot keeps his eyes wide open, not blinking once, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. His arrogance has all but vanished. He almost wets his pants. The only thing he wants right now is to save himself, but he’s trapped. All around him, a war rages, unlike anything he’s ever seen before.
To his right, half a wall hurtles toward the old man who had let them into the school. But instead of crushing him like a grape underfoot, it passes straight through him, shattering into a thousand pieces against the wall behind, as if he had turned into smoke himself. The moment he solidifies again, he expertly deflects an enormous wooden beam aimed at his head, wielded by a large girl with tiny pigtails, moving like a seasoned martial artist.
On his other side stands the woman he knows all too well, caught in a shaft of moonlight streaming through one of the many holes torn in the walls and ceiling. She appears to be a harmless old granny, but he no longer falls for her innocent appearance. Around her on the ground lie five soldiers, curled up in the fetal position, tears streaming down their faces. A few meters away, two students from the same group as the girl with pigtails have met a similar fate.
Initially, he had been somewhat shocked to see such young people entangled in this violence. But he changed his mind swiftly when he saw the wiry, cruel-looking girl making objects fly like projectiles without touching them, and the surf-dude causing everyone nearby to collapse, gasping for air.
Still, she’s not done. Now, she’s under attack from a giant boy with wild, exploded hair and torn clothes, his body covered in scorch marks. Despite his intimidating build and undoubtedly superior strength, he, too, is fighting back tears as the ground starts to shake beneath them.
Further down the corridor, a man and a woman stand frozen, locked in a strange standoff. Though neither moves an inch, their clothes are soaked with sweat and exertion. The man, arms spread in a dramatic pose, directs an array of objects—furniture, rubble, bricks, beams—toward the frail-looking woman. Somehow, she manages to hold it all at bay, standing at the center of a protective bubble that suspends everything motionless in midair around her.
The man hisses in a pompous Oxford English accent. “Get out of my head, witch. It won’t work. I’ve trained.” The woman doesn’t answer; she only smiles. "It won’t be long before your concentration slips," he continues, "and then I’ll snap your tiny body in half. There’s more between heaven and earth than you can protect yourself from."
Longshot, being a journalist in decline, realizes this could be the scoop he's been searching for. But his hands are shaking too violently to take notes. Should he join the fight? Help them, maybe? But for what? For whom? He doesn’t know these people; he doesn’t know why they’re fighting, and he doesn’t care. He made peace with being a "pragmatic" a long time ago. Better a coward and alive than a hero and dead. To hell with all this. To hell with the newspaper, the blog, and the juice channel. He needs to save himself.
As the fight moves deeper into the corridor and the dust settles, an enormous hole in the outer wall is revealed. It might not be ideal, but it's better than nothing. He starts running, darting unexpectedly nimbly around the many obstacles. He reaches the opening unharmed, crawls over rubble and wreckage; only a few meters separate him from freedom.
But then he makes a mistake–a rookie mistake—he looks back one last time. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have seen the massive wave of rubble and debris surging through the corridor toward the old woman, like a tsunami of destruction. She’s so focused on the boy in front of her that she’s completely unaware of the danger she’s in. There’s no way she’ll survive this.
Longshot tries to reason with himself: this isn’t his fight. It’s not his responsibility. He needs to save himself. He doesn’t own these people anything. But despite all his objections, his body decides otherwise. Whether he wants it or not, it rushes back into the corridor, as if it’s driven by a will of its own. Shit, shit, shit, he thinks, picking up speed. I'm going to regret this.
The boy laughs through his tears, triumph surging through his scorched body. The wave of bricks and dirt has almost reached them. Whatever she plans to do to him, it won’t matter for much longer. He’s so consumed by the euphoria of his imminent victory that he fails to notice the journalist charging toward him.
In the brief distance he has to cover, Longshot begins to expand, growing larger and more distorted with each step, and by the time he reaches Fred, he throws himself onto the boy, engulfing him and cutting off his oxygen. Only then does Gran snap out of her concentration and glances over her shoulder just in time to see the tsunami of bricks, tiles, and metal settling only a few meters behind her. Stunned and speechless, she looks at the journalist wrapped over the boy.
“No thanks,” he mutters as his body begins to shrink and contort back into a more human form. “Hated to do it.”
“Yes, yes… thanks,” stammers Gran.
Longshot shrugs. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. But if you don’t mind, I was just on my way out, and…” He glances longingly at the gaping hole in the wall he’d hoped to escape through, only to see men and women in uniform already climbing through. Too late. Definitely too late. He curses under his breath. By giving in to an uncharacteristic surge of selflessness, he has ruined his only chance to escape.
Five meters away, the woman, surrounded by the objects suspended in the air, aimed directly at her, becomes distracted for just a moment. It’s all it takes. In an instant, everything collapses onto her. The man across from her lets out a triumphant laugh. Longshot stares in disbelief.
And then, it’s all over. From both sides of the corridor, fresh troops flood in, their boots echoing ominously against the walls. Behind them, a tall, proud man in uniform strides confidently around the corner. They’re trapped—there’s no escape.
The troops charge closer. They’re almost upon them now. He shuts his eyes and wraps his too-short arms tightly around his too-large chest in a desperate, futile attempt to shield himself.