10 Igne natura renovatur integra.

It was the day of the Christmas Carnival and I hadn't seen Nebula the whole day since we both busy with helping set things up. I had finished all my work by noon and had planned to go help out Nebula when Nikki and Alice decided to get me and Kal to help with the heavy lifting. Having the reputation of being one of the strongest, I and Kal made an odd team, A 6-foot tall guy who looked like a heavy weightlifter and me a barely 5 foot 4 guy with a swimmers build, carrying speakers almost the same size me from the pickup truck to the ground where the Carnival was going to be held. After that, I kept getting roped in with more and more work but I was too excited about my plans in the evening to care about anything else.

By 4 almost all the preparations were complete and the people who would be managing the different parts of the carnival had started coming in and had been shown to their booths. Some of the people who were going to be acting as hosts were already changed into their evening wear and were busy making their final checks on stage. I was helping out Nikki, Alice and Anna do the last tests on Stage with Billy, Kal and Sunny, well I was helping while the other guys were gawking at the girls in the evening gowns. Once the teachers arrived I and the guys left to get changed. Once we changed into our suits, the rest of them left for the Carnival and I waited in a class opposite the locker rooms. By 5:30 the entire school building had emptied out and I saw Nebula and the rest of the girls come in the building to get changed. I called out to her when I saw her come in.

" Hey Nebula, wait up!!"

Nebula turned, saw me and replied "Hi Night, you are ready already? You look Handsome."

I jogged up to her and said: "You look beautiful."

She punched me on my arm and said: "I haven't changed into my dress yet."

"I know, but you always look beautiful to me"

Then the girls who had just entered the locker room all went "Aww".

And I got another punch for all my trouble.

"I'll wait for you in that class, Take your time," I said as I kissed her on her cheek and went back to the classroom.

After half an hour most of the girls had already changed and left when Amelia came out and said "Nebula is the only one left, she is packing up the rest of the stuff. She told me to go on ahead and told me to tell you to wait a while more and the wait will be well worth it," then she left, leaving me to wait there.

I waited there, 15 minutes passed, then half an hour passed and I got a little worried. So I knocked on the door and called out "Nebula !!! Is everything alright? Do you need help packing up?"

There was no reply after I kept knocking for a few minutes so I shouted out: "Hey Nebula!!! I am getting a little worried out here. Give me a shout out if everything is alright or I am coming in."

I activated my enhanced senses and let the energy flood me and I waited for a few more minutes and tried to listen carefully, but didn't hear anything from inside at all. The carnival had started in full swing by now and the music was blaring from the speakers and the sky had darkened.

I slowly opened the door and walked in carefully. I obviously had not entered the girls' locker room before but I was pretty sure it would be a mirror image of the boys' one since it was right next to it, separated by a wall. As I walked in I saw it was empty, there were a lot of the wooden cupboards with locks on them but as I moved in I saw there wasn't anybody in there. As I moved further in and turned around the row of cupboards to look at the other side where there was a large mirror with a row of sinks in front of it, I noticed a paper stuck on the mirror. I went close and saw that it had written on it

"COME TO OUR CLASSROOM IF YOU WANT TO MEET ME"

I was surprised when I saw that. Did these two just trick me into waiting out there? I figured she might have left with one of the groups and I hadn't noticed. I went out to go to the classroom. The 4 classrooms for the 11th and 12th-grade classes were in a different smaller building right next to the main building. As I got out of the main building I saw that it was pretty dark out and the lights were also off in the 4 classrooms. By now I was curious, what was all this about, why make such a big fuss? I still had my enhanced senses active, if they were going to play with me then 2 could play the same game. I decided to see if I could jump up to our classroom window from the outside to see what they were doing inside. As I reached outside the window, I took back a few steps and as it was instinctual to activate the forced enhanced mode anytime I was practising anything strenuous to search for a little enhancement, I did it.

That was when things went to all to hell. As soon as I activated forced enhanced mode I felt my strength increase by a considerable margin and I realized something was wrong. My ability to learn skills from the forced enhanced mode was also exponentially faster than just by watching. Anyone within range of increasing my capabilities during forced enhanced mode also improved all my current skills and almost instantly picked up on the basics of any physical skills as well as instincts that the scanned had while using them.

This made me react on that base instinct and look up and I saw 3 people wearing entirely black clothing, with their faces covered hiding behind the parapet above the 1st-floor window. As soon as I saw them they too realized that they had been spotted and stood up took out some kind of knife and jumped. I had already taken the first step towards the window to jump up to it, so continued forward with all my strength. It was quite a bit more than enough to quickly propel me forward right under the 3 guys and out of their line of sight. This would be my only chance, as I reached the window, I put my left foot on the ledge and jumped towards the rightmost guy. Since they were jumping down facing outward and I had passed under them, before he could realize I reached behind the guy and kicked his head hard enough that I heard his neck snap and break and propelled him into the guy next to him, sending him sprawling away. But now I was spinning mid-air and was going to land with the third guy behind me towards my left. I reacted instinctively and raised my left arm up as I turned and saw the guy bringing forward his knife towards me. I could see no way to avoid it, so I lept towards him, letting the knife stab right into my left arm and diverting it away from me while I tackled him down to the ground. I caught his other wrist with my right hand and slammed my forehead into his nose twice making him go limp. I picked up the machete strapped to his leg and stabbed it right into his neck.

The fight had started barely a few seconds in but 2 out of the 3 were dead and I had a knife in my left arm. As I got up I saw that I had gotten really lucky with that first kick. The guy that had been hit by the body of hit teammate had hit his head on the metal fencing next to the building and had his teammate land on him. Before this third guy could get up I rushed towards him and stabbed towards his neck. He had barely opened his eyes when he saw the machete going into his neck and tried to grab his neck to stem the blood flow but that would be in vain.

As I was beginning to relax my senses started to warn me, I quickly turned around moved my neck to the side and there was another guy in similar garbs, he was shorter about the same height as me, trying to stab a knife into my neck. For the 1st time since the fight started, I felt confident as I could tell I was stronger and faster than this guy. I immediately caught his wrist with the knife with my left hand, grabbed the elbow of the same arm, turned my body, flipped him over and slammed him to the ground. Before the guy could figure out what was happening, I grabbed his knife and stabbed him in the neck with it.

This time I didn't let my guard down. I went to each of them to check if they were dead for sure. Then I ran into the classroom to check if Nebula was there and if she was OK. I saw her laid out in the back of the class on top of 3 desks set up side by side. She was wearing a very beautiful white Blouse with a light bluish green sweater vest and a long skirt. Amelia was right, she looked incredibly beautiful. I checked her over to see if she was alright, she was breathing fine and had a steady pulse. So I gently picked her up using only my right arm and brought her to sit on a chair and put my jacket that I had taken off before I was going to jump on the window on the desk and laid her head on it.