Shooting for the Top

Ren had trouble sleeping that night because of all the commotion from those who wanted to get an early start on their rank battles. Ren was still groggy when he got up, but he had a class at 8:30 a.m. that he had to attend.

Ren was absolutely bored out of his mind as the instructor when over battle strategies and formations. "Good thing only the first class is mandatory, all I really need to do is pass the exam at the end to pass this course. I'll be fine," thought Ren. He was, however, curious on the so-called training portion of the day.

Ren entered the stadium on campus, which was meant for battles or in this case training. They had different schedules for each student so as to not over-crowd the classrooms and stadiums, so Ren only entered with around one hundred other people. They also only had one class and training session every other day.

Everyone filed in the stadium and the instructors made them form five rows of twenty people and then whatever was left over.

There were three instructors to run the training session for that day. One of the instructors was a short, stout man with stringy black hair who looked to be middle-aged with glasses, the other two were women. Both were taller than the man. One woman had brown hair just long enough to put in a ponytail with brown eyes. The other had blonde hair that only just reached her shoulders with blue eyes.

The woman with brown hair stepped forward and introduced herself, "Hello recruits! My name is Ms. Carol Elway. To my left is Mr. Dawkins, to my right, Ms. Ferber. We will be conducting this training session today. We will be focusing on your weaknesses for now. We have grouped you specifically so you can all work on something similar. You all have abilities that focus on close-courters combat. However, you will encounter times where you can only rely on yourself and someone or a group of people with a ranged ability will be attacking you."

Ms. Elway snapped her fingers and a bunch of floating targets held up by magic appeared in the air, one target for each respective recruit. Each target was about sixty feet in the air.

"Your goal, is to destroy this target. You're allowed to try anything, as long as it isn't someone else, to break this target. You and you alone can break your target," explained Ms. Elway.

Most of everyone looked at each other and then at the target, wondering how in the world they were going to destroy the target. Those with super strength, or super speed abilities were really confused. Some recruits' abilities require them to touch the target to activate their ability.

FWOOM... CRACK!

Someone had picked up a rock and threw it, smashing the target.

"Is that it?" questioned the guy who threw the stone.

"Yep, you can leave once you smash your target. Otherwise, you're stuck here."

"What a waste of time," mumbled the guy under his breath. He then, turned and left the stadium.

A majority began to complain as they couldn't figure out any way to destroy their target.

"If it helps," piped up Ms. Ferber, "this is exercise is meant to think of how to use your ability in a new way. If you can do this, you can unlock endless number of ways to use your ability. Try to think outside of the box."

Very few were able to destroy their target in the first ten minutes. Ren sat down and decided to watch and see what other would come up with, after all, he may have to fight one of them later on.

Twenty minutes later only 12 of the 103 people were able to break their target. Ren got tired of waiting to see what the others would come up with and stood back up.

WHOOSH.....CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!

Ren jumped up, spun and kicked the air, sending a huge shockwave of air, destroying all of the remaining targets.

Ren landed, turned, and walked out of the stadium. Everyone still in the stadium was awestruck at Ren's performance. Some of the recruits looked hopeful at Ms. Elway. She knew what they were thinking.

"No, you guys can't leave, you alone can destroy your target," she remarked as she snapped her fingers again to make more targets appear.

"Time to do something actually worthwhile," grinned Ren.

Ren headed towards the dormitories which was right next to a parking lot. He took a deep breath of air. "Smells like it's going to rain," he observed. He looked up and noticed some dark clouds headed towards the campus." When he looked back down, he noticed a purple Toyota in the parking lot. He always thought purple was a weird color for a car. He entered the building and stepped in front of the reception desk.

"Hello, could you tell me which room Lorraine Flanagan is staying in?" asked Ren.

The receptionist lady smiled and replied," I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to give that information out. She must be popular. You're like the tenth person to ask me that question."

"Really, is that so..." retorted Ren, surprised. "Looks like I'm not the only one who just wants to shoot to the top."

Ren then noticed keys on the desk next to her. It had the Toyota logo on it.

"Do you happen to own a purple Toyota?" asked Ren.

"Yes, why?"

"Well, it's going to rain soon, and your windows are down."

"Really?!" She took out her phone to check the forecast, then tried to think if she left her windows down or not.

Ren began to walk down the hallway, away from the reception desk to make it look like he was leaving. She took her keys and hurried out the door to her car. Ren shot over to the computer, which was open on a list of those who were checked in and their respective rooms.

"She must have gotten curious when so many people asked for the same person and decided to look her up," guessed Ren.

He scrolled down to Lorraine Flanagan's name. Once he read the information he was looking for, he scrolled it back up to where it was originally, and then shot back down the hallway towards Lorraine's room, just as the receptionist came back into view of the desk.