Roy broke the door's handle off.

  The sound of the handle breaking filled the room. After it, no voice was in the room, to the point that you could hear the breathing of someone at the other end.

  Everyone looked at Roy, waiting to see what would happen.

  Roy took a deep breath, calming himself down, then he turned around, throwing the handle at Darius.

  "I am no coward," he said.

  Darius caught the handle.

  "Then prove it," he said with a smile on his face.

  "I hope I won't regret this, but I'll be on the team." Roy began walking back to his seat.

  Darius played with the handle, throwing and catching it.

  "You won't."

  "What's the name of this team anyway?" Roy said as he walked past Marie and Omar to go to his place.

  "You made me worry, man," Omar whispered to Roy.

  "It's simple. 'Executioners' was the name approved by the government, as your main job will be to judge and execute what was judged as a threat to the world."

  "Is there a symbol for it?" Omar asked.

  "Not yet."

  Omar's eyes went down from disappointment.

  "Any other questions?" Darius asked.

  "If our identities are secret... who exactly knows who we are?" Elise asked.

  "Not a lot of people. The ones in this room, and your identities might be shared with the part of the team that is in the other academies, but normally they aren't. Even the world government won't know your full info."

  Darius stopped throwing the handle. "That's what is said, but the government already knows that it will be the ones in this class that will be in the team. They said they'll delete that info the moment you graduate, but I doubt it."

  "Delete it. Right." Roy murmured with a small laugh.

  "So this team exists because the world leaders are afraid of Rank 0," Valeria stated.

  "Afraid isn't the right word here, but they are afraid of something." Darius didn't elaborate.

  "You said all three Rank 0s," Ren said. "Together?"

  "Yes," Darius said without hesitation.

  "Why would the government make this team now? Rank 0s were there long ago. What changed?" Jax asked, standing up from the ground.

  "The answer will contain the classified information. The moment I answer it, all of what I said will begin."

  Darius completely broke the handle into pisces "I'll give you all a last chance to try and leave.".

  The room fell into silence again. After a minute, Jax began walking back to his place next to Ren.

  "You all are officially in the team. Congratulations," Darius said.

  "Like we had a choice," Jax and Ren mumbled together as Jax walked past him.

  "Okay, regarding your question about Rank 0s," Darius began explaining. "Rank 0s were never stable. Everyone has to walk on eggshells talking or having any kind of interaction with them. I think the reason this isn't known is obvious."

  "Isn't the principal a Rank 0?" Marie said. "She looked normal."

  Darius sighed.

  "She is the most stable of the three, but being the most stable in a room full of crazy people doesn't really mean anything."

  "That doesn't sound right," Marie mumbled to herself.

  "You still haven't answered my question. Why now?" Jax reminded Darius.

  "Rank 0 danger wasn't enough to justify spending this much and taking the danger of making this team, as we know how to calm them down if things began going sideways."

  "You mentioned this other thing before. What is the thing dangerous enough to make this justifiable?" Omar asked.

  Darius took out a device that looked like a remote from his pocket. The moment he pressed it, the lights turned off and a hologram of the moon appeared in front of him.

  "Not long ago, we found where Space Stones come from."

  Hearing this, everyone, even Ren, who didn't pay a lot of attention, sat straight and became focused.

  "Located at a constant distance from the Moon. It doesn't orbit. It doesn't drift. It is always in the same place relative to the moon, and most importantly, it doesn't close," Darius continued. "A portal."

  The moon hologram turned until the portal appeared to the students.

  Everyone was shocked by this, but the three on that last bench were the most shocked.

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  Marie's breath became cold enough to see.

  Omar's heartbeat was audible a meter away.

  And Roy's eyes became so wide that they looked like they would fall out.

  "A year ago, we sent a Rank 1 hero into it. Till today, he didn't return, and there is no info about him. And three months ago, he was pronounced dead by the government."

  "What's on the other side?" Ren's voice was barely steady.

  "We don't know."

  Darius crossed his arms.

  "But whatever it is, it was strong enough to kill a Rank 1, and that is enough of an unknown threat to be treated seriously."

  "This team," Darius said, "exists because when something comes through that portal..."

  He stressed when, not if.

  "...there will be no public alarms. No evacuations. No hero broadcasts. No world leaders giving speeches."

  He pressed the device again, making the hologram disappear.

  He looked directly at them.

  "You will intercept it. You will fight it. And in the best-case scenario, the world will never know it happened."

  "Any questions?"

  He waited for a second, then continued.

  "Now that we've gone over this, let's proceed to the next point."

  "Wait. We'll just go to another point this fast? We need time to process this." Marcus's voice was barely steady.

  "Learn how to process things faster or to take the info and process it later. If you learned that your team has a traitor while fighting, will your enemy give you time to process?" Darius's voice became louder and faster, too fast. He didn't wait for an answer.

  "No, they won't. Learn to take the information fast now while you're still in the comfort of security."

  With this, everyone who was about to say something kept it to themselves.

  "Now let's continue. Does anyone here know how we get powers from the Stones?"

  "By random?" Jax answered.

  "That is what is known, but not the truth. Does anyone know what mana is?" Darius asked as his eyes looked over the desk, searching for something.

  "Mana?" Jax said. "Like mana that lets you use spells in games? That type, or is there another thing with the same name?"

  "No, it's the same. Space Stones give whoever touches them a pure, non-specific type of mana, and then it changes. What it changes to determines your power and how many you have, and everyone gets a different amount of mana when they touch the Stones. Normally, the more powers you have means more mana, but there are exceptions of C-ranks or B-ranks having more mana than that of an A-rank."

  Darius said this while walking back to sit behind the desk and started searching around.

  While what was said was new information for most of the ones in the room, no one was really surprised, as it was a normal thing for people to theorize about how exactly the Stones give people powers.

  But any real trial to understand it was always combined with failure or an explosion.

  "Why is this classified information? It sounds like it could help a lot with technology," Ren asked.

  "Because the government knows enough about it to know that a dangerous weapon could be built with it, but not enough to build it or stop someone from doing it," Darius answered as he found the paper he was looking for.

  Hearing the answer, Elise and Marcus thought the same thing:

  'The first thing that came to their mind was weapons. How disgusting.'

  "What is the reason for you telling us this?" Valeria asked.

  "The reason is simple: knowing that your powers come from an energy inside you makes it easier to grow and master your powers." Darius walked back to the front of the desk.

  "Any other questions?"

  He waited for a second. When no one talked, he continued.

  Darius sighed.

  "Okay, that's all of the information for today. Now to the teaching."

  He looked at the paper for a couple of seconds, raised an eyebrow, and threw the paper away.

  "This is bullshit. We're doing this my way," he said.

  "Does anyone here know what it means to master a power?"

  Valeria, Dorian Crest, and Vivienne Crest all raised their hands.

  "Three out of ten." Darius pinched the bridge of his nose. "This place is a joke."

  No one liked the comment, but no one spoke.

  "Okay, let's go from the beginning. First, there are two main types of powers and a third not-so-common one. Who knows them?"

  Everyone raised their hands except Roy, who simply didn't want to answer.

  Darius looked around, then pointed at Marie.

  "Marie, right? Explain the three types."

  Marie stood up and began talking with excitement, as for the first time since she got here, she felt that she was in a place for learning.

  "The two main types are elemental and physical. Elemental, like water: with it, you can control and create your element. Physical, like super strength. Physical powers either enhance one physical trait a lot, or enhance a lot of traits but lesser than the focused one—"

  Before she could continue talking, Darius interrupted her.

  "That's enough. Sit down."

  Marie listened and sat down, but with a disappointed look.

  Darius pointed at Dorian.

  "You look spineless. Stand up and continue."

  Dorian stood up and talked with a formal kind of tone, different from his sister.

  "The third type is a power that can't be put into one of the two main types. An example would be teleportation. And there are some powers that can be classified in the two main types but have something more that isn't in the definition of either elemental or physical, and for those, they are called special physical or special elemental. The latter is more common."

  "Good. Before we return to the mastery part, any questions?" Darius looked at them with eyes that said, 'Don't you dare ask a question on this dumb subject.'

  No one asked anything.

  "Okay, every type has a different type of mastery. For the special ones, it differs from one power to another. For physical, it's like building muscles."

  Darius flexed his arm. "You put the physical trait under pressure, and it gets stronger."

  Darius put his hands down.

  "Now to the one that needs and can actually be taught: elemental."

  "Let's take water as an example. What does it mean that you have water power?"

  He held three fingers and began lowering them as he talked.

  "First, that you can control water around you. Second, that you can create water. Those are known, and most can do them as early as they get the power. The third one, only a few people can do." He closed his hand. "Third, you can turn your body to water—"

  "The way you said it makes it sound like it's dangerous, but it doesn't sound like it." Omar's face went from confusion to fear when Darius's purple eyes locked onto him for interrupting.

  "It is dangerous. There are so many ways to die doing this. Continuing with the water example: if you turn to water and get absorbed by the ground, you die.

  If you want to transform a part of your body and not the rest and don't do it with a near-impossible technique, you die.

  If you get vaporized, you die.

  If you fail at transforming, you die."

  Every student except Valeria, Dorian, Roy, and Vivienne was shocked but more confused about why anyone would even try to do this.

  "But if you master it—"