Noah felt a familiar flutter of discomfort at being the center of attention. Lucas had been one of the Academy's star students, someone Noah had looked up to from a distance. The idea of directly challenging him felt presumptuous, even with everything that had happened since their graduation.
"I don't know," Noah said slowly. "That's a lot of attention for something that doesn't really matter."
"Doesn't matter?" Kelvin looked personally offended. "This absolutely matters. We're talking about establishing baseline performance metrics for the team's primary speed assets."
"And it would be fun," Lyra added, though her tone suggested she was confident in the outcome. "I mean, Lucas has years of experience with high-speed combat. No offense, Noah, but you've been doing this for what, six months?"
"Which is exactly why we need to test it," Kelvin fired back. "Experience versus raw capability. And Noah's been consistently exceeding expectations since day one."
