Show Off

"Sorry about that." Sydney sat back down, turning to Zane. "What were you saying?" 

"Oh, uh, I asked your name, but I know it now. My name's Zane Syne." 

Zane wasn't going to offer a handshake, but Sydney immediately stuck out her hand in front of him. He hesitantly shook it. 

"You know who I am, right?" He asked her.

"Yeah, I do." 

"..."

"..."

"You're not gonna say anything about that?" 

"What do you mean?"

"Like, you're not gonna curse at me or go away from me because my parents are Dark Mages?" 

Sydney raised an eyebrow. 

"Uh, no? Why would I hate you for something your parents did?" 

Sydney didn't realize it, but that short reaction highly increased Zane's impression of her. She was probably the first person in the Magine Kingdom that Zane actually would feel bad for killing.

With sparkles appearing in Zane's eyes for just a second, he cleared his throat, looking away. 

"You're right." 

With nothing to talk about, the two sat in silence, watching the next person to cast their spell, which was admittedly quite mediocre. 

"Hey uh," Zane awkwardly tapped Sydney on the shoulder. "Could I ask you for a favor?"

"Uh, sure?"

"Could you teach me how to…" Sydney couldn't make out the last part as Zane mumbled it. 

"Teach you how to what?" 

"...Teach me how to cast Mana Dust?" 

Sydney blinked at him. Zane became nervous that she would refuse, but fortunately…

"Why not?" She shrugged. "Do you want my spell sheet, or for me to teach you directly?" 

"Either one is fine with me." 

"Alright. I'll just teach you then." She scooched closer to Zane and began to teach him.

"So focus on your fingertips, then basically spread out little dots of mana…" 

As she explained, Zane was able to immediately grasp the spell and learn it. Without saying anything, he immediately casted the spell, his fingertips glowing and emitting sparkles.

The sparkles grew into a long path that twisted around Zane and Sydney, circling them. From Zane's fingers, tiny blue horses appeared, galloping on the sparkles. They galloped around the two, letting out squeaky neighs every few seconds.

Watching the horses and sparkles, a sense of nostalgia filled Zane, along with a small warm feeling. He missed his parents dearly. Had Sydney not been beside him at that moment, he might have cried again.

As the horses returned to Zane, he canceled the spell. The sparkles and horses disappeared, leaving Zane and Sydney sitting there.

"Looks like you got it pretty quickly." Sydney nodded at Zane, scooching back to her original position.

Zane coughed. "No, I've just been trying to learn that for a while." He had gotten so caught up in his memories he forgot to pretend to struggle while learning it.

The trip down memory lane over, Zane looked back towards the gymnasium floor, only to see plenty of black spots on it that were releasing smoke, the people on the bottommost bleachers having climbed up to avoid the heat being emitted by the floor.

"Man, of course I miss the exciting spells!" Zane complained, pulling at his hair a little.

On the floor, in the middle of a massive burnt spot, Firenze stood, breathing heavily. After casting the basic spell he was assigned to learn, he decided to showcase the strongest spell he knew, which was his Fire Domain spell.

The spell Fire Domain was a spell that turned the caster into the epicenter of a raging inferno, limited to a certain radius around the caster. Firenze had almost emptied his mana reserves to properly cast it, but to him it was worth it to properly impress Leo. Fortunately, it seemed to have worked.

"That… was quite something." Leo gave Firenze an incredulous look as he wrote something down on his list. "Are you sure you're not an early awakened? That you were awakened recently like everyone else here?"

Firenze was still panting, but nodded. "Yes, Sir Leo. I just worked hard enough." 

"Even with hard work, to cast a spell of that caliber…" Leo trailed off. "You can go sit down now."

Firenze weakly nodded, shuffling back to his seat as Leo called the next name. "Lisa Crowe!"

On the bleachers, Lisa groaned while Lanius cheered her on. "Good luck!" 

She made her way down, stopped in front of Leo, and started casting her spell before he could ask.

"Mana Sticks." She said with no emotion, as she instantly conjured ten blue, translucent sticks and began to effortlessly juggle them all.

After a few seconds of juggling (just enough for Leo to get a good look at it), Lisa immediately canceled the spell and sat back down next to Lanius.

"What was that?" He frowned at her. "This is our chance to show off!"

"Dude, this is only the SECOND test, chill." 

Before Lanius could retort, Leo already called the next name. He was getting used to the eccentric behavior of the test takers.

"Lanius Ashrule!"

"That's me!" Lanius got to his feet and bolted down the bleachers, barely being able to stop in front of Leo.

"Mana Lights!" Lanius shouted, three balls of light appearing over his hand. Luckily, he was able to get the hang of the spell before he ran out of time. Leo nodded at his good casting.

"Would you like to showcase-"

"Yes!" Lanius interrupted Leo, immediately turning to face the tower of earth Sydney made during her turn. 

"Ugh, here we go." All the way back to the bleachers, Lisa was already dreading what was going to happen.

"Amplified Magic Cannon!" 

Screaming out the name of his spell, Lanius aimed a palm at the tower, the other hand grabbing his wrist for support. In front of his palm, a small ball of bright energy began to form.

"Okay, so far so good." Lisa bit her nails, immediately regretting those words.

The energy ball began to throb, rapidly increasing in size, surpassing his hand and even Lanius' whole body as it kept growing and growing, finally stopping when it was the size of the entire gymnasium wall.

With one side of the room now covered in magic energy, everyone had gathered to the other side of the room, and struggled to keep their eyes open. Even Leo had moved behind Lanius, his jaw nearly hitting the ground.

"This fucking idiot!" Taking cover from behind the bleachers, Lisa screamed. 

"What the fuck is this bullshit!?!?" Next to her, Firenze shouted in frustration.

"HAHAHA! HOLY SHIT!" Past the two of them, Zane was absolutely loving the situation.

"Blast!"

Lanius yelled, and the massive energy ball was ejected from his hand, immediately hitting the tower of earth. The sound of an explosion rang in everyone's ears, and once the dust settled, they could see that Lanius' spell had successfully destroyed the tower of earth…

…Along with half the damn gymnasium.