Fyn felt a little awkward as he approached his new 'friends'.

From the looks of things, they were already already acquainted, and he was the odd one out.

He felt like he was joining a new school halfway through the year. Everyone seemed to know each other already, and he was left picking scabs in the corner with the lunch ladies for company.

He glanced across the group and was surprised that he actually recognised two of them. 'It's the girl from the fountain and magic boy... fancy seeing them here.'

The pair were collapsed on the ground, heaving for breath and sweating buckets.

Fyn neared them with Jackson at his side. The big man walked with powerful strides, reminding Fyn of a marching soldier. He had muscles everywhere you could think of and plenty of places you couldn't. Fyn would bet good money the man would look like the perfect superhero, given some spandex and a couple of dead parents.

The trainer certainly looked strong enough, but was that bravado? If Fyn didn't know better, he would think all those big muscles were made of styrofoam - because just moments ago - he had batted away the man's hand like it weighed nothing.

He looked across at Jackson's huge arms and then down at his own; they were that of a skinny child, not a bodybuilder or a superhero... yet those same slender arms seemed to possess immense strength.

Strength beyond even Jackson - the walking steroid advertisement.

'It seems like there's an awful lot I still don't understand about my new body,' Fyn thought. However, any more questions of his abilities would have to be shelved for later. He would file them under 'more weird shit I don't know,' and eventually circle back to the issue when he wasn't doing insane things regularly.

For now, he and Jackson had arrived at the group of four kids, and Fyn had some friends to make.

He wondered how he should act around them. What role should he play in the group? A clown? A reliable friend? The quiet one, maybe? Or perhaps a boy wise beyond his years, distant but always there when you needed him. 'I like the sound of that,' he thought. 'I'll give that a go first and see how things turn out,'

At the end of the day, he could only wait and see how they reacted to him. Hopefully, none of them would hate him, as that would make his job far more difficult. Fyn imagined protecting people who wanted to avoid you would be tricky.

Aside from the two kids he recognised – who were collapsed on the ground and caked in sweat – two others stood above them, breathing heavily. They were both tall for their age, possessing a confident air unusual amongst children.

Fyn tried to figure out how to start this conversation, as it seemed none of them were in the mood to talk first. They all looked exhausted from whatever training they had been doing, and most of them didn't seem all too pleased to see Fyn dander over with a sandwich in one hand.

In the end, he tried to be encouraging. "Looks like you guys were working hard," Fyn said – with what he hoped was a friendly smile.

The girl with dark hair glared at him, and magic boy looked like he was about to burst, staring at Fyn with eyes so wide he would need a windscreen wiper to clean them. Aside from them, the tall girl with grey eyes and short brown hair seemed particularly wary of him. She stood on guard, like a barely sheathed sword, practically radiating scepticism.

Only the tallest boy looked pleased to meet him. He stuck out a hand, and Fyn shook it, relieved.

"Nice to meet you; the name's Grant," said the boy. His eyes were a little more aged than one might expect, but Fyn had seen plenty of kids with experience beyond their years. What mattered was that the boy's smile was warm, and his grip was firm. Already, he seemed like a solid kid.

'Shouldn't be too hard to keep this guy alive,' Fyn thought hopefully.

"Nice to meet you, too. I'm Fyn, by the way. Sorry for being late, I… had other arrangements," Fyn lied. It was a good lie, though.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

At least... It was better than telling them he had slept in.

"Oh yeah? Like what, lunch?" snapped the dark-haired girl. Her voice was nasally and harsh, grinding on his ears like nails on a chalkboard.

'There's always one prick,' thought Fyn. 'Can't be helped, I guess.'

Now, whether or not the girl had a fair point was mute in this instance. Why? Because Fyn said so.

Fyn scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Among other things, yeah. Can't train on an empty stomach, like."

"We did just fine," said the other girl. Whatever emotions she felt about his arrival were buried behind a steel wall. Her face was stern and placid, like an icy lake.

"Speak for yourself," the dark-haired girl retorted. Fyn noticed she had mascara running down her cheeks. 'Why would she wear makeup to training?' he wondered.

'Maybe she's never trained before,' he mused. 'that doesn't bode well.'

He went to shake the taller girl's hand first, sticking out an arm. She looked at it for a long moment as though it was the tail of a rattlesnake. Finally, she reached out and grabbed his hand, shaking it firmly. Her grip was like a vice, and she seemed to be trying to twist his arm off with fingers made from titanium.

'Christ, that's some grip!' Fyn winced and pulled back.

The girl smiled like she had just won something and relaxed a little. "Call me Sloan," she said.

With a nod, Fyn turned to the two on the floor. From the looks of things, his handshake would not be taken well. 'Do kids even shake hands?' he wondered. Grant had seemed fairly comfortable doing it, but… Fyn tried to think back to when he was a kid (the first time). He couldn't remember ever actually shaking someone's hand at that age. 'Hopefully they don't think I'm weird.'

He glanced at the dark-haired girl and held out a hand. She wrinkled her nose up at him, ignoring the outstretched hand pointedly. "Mallory, it's a pleasure, I'm sure," she said. Although, from the way she said it, you would think meeting him bordered on torture of the highest degree. In fact, it seemed meeting Fyn and pleasure were so far apart you could drive a cargo ship through the gap between them.

'Definitely an asshole, then.'

Fyn did his best to smile – which came off rather strained. Prick or not, he was going to be spending a lot of time with her.

Finally, he turned to the youngest of the group - magic boy. The kid looked as thin as Fyn remembered. Painfully thin. He had the eyes of a startled cat and a gaunt face covered in pockmarks and scratches. Everything about him looked a little skittish, bordering on feral.

The boy was looking up at him as though Fyn had two heads. His eyes were round, and his bottom lip trembled slightly. It seemed he was trying to say something but couldn't get the words out.

"Hi," said Fyn, bending down and sticking out a hand to the boy. He had already committed to the whole 'hand shaking' thing by now, so he was going to go all the way.

The boy licked his lips nervously, extending a trembling hand. From the look on his face, you would think he was reaching towards a mouse trap. Finally, their hands met, and Fyn smiled at him. "Need a hand up?"

The boy nodded minutely, and Fyn easily hauled him to his feet. He weighed almost nothing.

"H-hi. I'm Kinsley."

"So that's your name!" Mallory chirped. "I wasn't sure you even had one."

Grant gave her a reprimanding look, and Sloan ignored both of them. Her whole focus was on Fyn, whom she watched like a hawk watches a rabbit. Or how an older lion watches a young male get ready to challenge them for their spot at the head of the pride.

Fyn wasn't sure where to go from here. With introductions out of the way, he has already left his comfort zone far in the rearview mirror. Small talk with preteens was truly uncharted waters for him, and those waters were deep and murky – with the occasional dorsal fin for good measure.

It seemed none of the other kids felt like saying anything either, so they all just stood there dumbly, watching each other in awkward silence - like a bunch of distant cousins at a family reunion.

Thankfully, the suffocating silence was soon shattered by a thunderous sound that could probably be heard across the Atlantic.

"Right!!" Bellowed Jackson, who had gone forgotten during the greetings. "Now that you've gotten that waffle out of the way, back to conditioning!"

Mallory and Kinsley groaned audibly while Grant and Sloan's eyes burned.

"That's enough running, though. Let's work on your upper bodies now. You lot are far too scrawny for my liking!"

From how huge he was, it looked like anything below heavyweight would not be to Jackson's liking. 'Just how much did he eat to get that big?' Fyn wondered.

The huge man spun on the balls of his feet and stalked off towards the lawn in great, sweeping strides. It was rather impressive that he had managed to recover some of his overbearing momentum after being shown up by Fyn just moments earlier.

Five kids followed behind him, like ducklings chasing after their mother. They crossed the grass and arrived at a serene area where the groundsmen had terraformed the lawn into an outdoor gym.

Fyn had been privately hoping for some fancy training equipment - but instead of futuristic weight machines and gravity amplifiers, there were hundreds of old-fashioned metal dumbbells laid out on a gravel square in the lawn. At one edge of the square was a set of pull-up bars, and at another sat a huge man in a white lab coat.

He was lounging behind a cheap plastic desk covered in small glass bottles full of dark green liquid. His feet were kicked onto the table, pushing aside a few bottles as he leaned back in his chair precariously. If a teacher saw him sitting like that, they would probably have an aneurysm on the spot.

'... Impossible.'

The man had a big black beard and a smile like a hungry shark.

"What the fuck is he doing here!?"