— Honestly, I don't even know what happened —, he justified himself with sudden desperation, trying to get something off his chest. And there had never been another interested party, someone who would ask him with such naiveté.

Jim hadn't been the only one Nazz had protected. Before he entered the shelter, when the crow was finishing his first year of confinement, he helped another one. The beloved Angela Belmonte, the opposite side of the coin that was the image of these two weirdos.

— Oh, yeah. I've seen her a couple of times —. Jim said excitedly, scratching his head when he mentioned her.

The captain of the aerial dance and gymnastics team, the shelter's poster child. If it weren't for her metallic emerald eyes and small red spikes on her forearms and shoulders, no one would mistake this European princess for the Chimeras imprisoned there.

— She's very pretty — Nazz agreed. — And I think that was the whole issue.

She always trained after school, alone, quietly. With her three years of enrollment, she was one of the institution's most promising young players, a revelation in Aztlan's sports. Like Jim, she was provided with privacy and the means to refine herself. But months ago, that training hadn't been so solitary. Nazz, who always hid in quiet spots to doze, kept her company from the gymnasium stands, without her noticing.

— Un, deux, trois. Un, deux, trois —. The gymnast in a pink leotard repeated like a metronome, performing reverse somersaults with great elegance, interrupting the young raven-haired man's nap.

— Man, how does that not hurt you? — He tilted his head to one side, lost in the masterful dance, which ended in a perfect split. Impressed, he continued watching her. Until two strangers slammed the door of the place with intoxicated laughter.

— Look. I told you it was her —. He pointed to one with a bottle of tequila.

— Yes. She's very guapota —. The other smiled as he locked the door.

— Excuse me, excuse me. You can't come here. The headmaster will be very angry if you don't leave right now —, she warned them, taking a few steps back to pick up a sturdy wooden mallet he used in his routine.

— Look at those eyes. They are beautiful —. They stalked her furtively. — For that, they're going to pay us a lot —, one licked his antennae-like mustache, as he circled her.

— I'm warning you! — The young lady shouted as she raised her wooden mace, fearing what was next.

Suddenly, one of the strangers lunged at her. Nazz barely noticed him, a coyote snatched her head in a flash. With a swipe of his paw, he throwed her against the wall. The crow didn't hesitate any longer; he ruffled his feathers and went after the bastard. Before being banned from self-defense classes, he was recognized as the best fighter in all the shelter. And, using an elegant kick he'd practiced, he pushed the drunk away.

— Run! — He said with a burst of adrenaline, trying to bring the young lady back to her senses. She had rejected the opportunity to leave, with a fighting stance like his, ready to fight by his side.

— You said she was going to be alone, dumbass —. The coyote's accomplice claimed, due to the opposition of his prey.

Both children tried to scare off the intruding Chimeras as best they could. But it was no use. Angela ended up on the ground with a strong blow, distracting Nazz and allowing the attackers to knock him down. Thus, they focused the punishment on him, and only him. A bottle hit, a scratch, and several kicks that he desperately tried to cover, curled up in a ball on the floor.

— Honestly, I've never felt so useless —. He pulled out one of the feathers on his head, tense and sweating. — After a tug and a feeling of breaking something inside me. One went toward her.

Nazz no longer felt the blows, nothing hurt. He only thought about stopping the coyote's friend, a vicious leopard. Millions of ideas raced through his head, trying to keep him awake, to shut off his judgment. So that his desire to save her would invoke something inside him.

— Oh brother, once again... One more time I let it out again —. The crow explained with shame and memory.

With this, Jim recognized the burned area he saw when he arrived at the shelter. A large hole in the gymnasium roof. He understood that this was the instability everyone feared about him.

Process: https://youtube.com/shorts/-aTQMKOVvlM?is=eWSdMA3sftTLFFFs

In desperation, and without any explanation, Asim Al-Nasr summoned a terrifying column of fire. A skill no mortal beast possessed, much less a humble raven like the one he copied with his feathers for hair.

— And that's why I can't take classes with you. The headmaster canceled my classes —. He shuddered, suddenly bursting into tears, which she wiped away by shaking her head sharply. — Luckily, I didn't burn her. Then they set up more cameras, and pushed me aside... Those a-holes!

It wasn't their appearance that made the normals suppress their compassion and want to erase them. It was the fear of what they could do. Their closeness to their infamous predecessor, to the first, the rebel who dared to stop the world with enormous crimson explosions. Millions of times larger than the raven child's fire. Any one of them could be the prophesied aberration that would end their world... The Absolute Zero, king of the Chimeras.

*His name is: عاصم ألبرتو النصر كورتيس

*Guapota = Pretty

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