The moment Spotlight activated his powers, I turned again to Payback to continue our conversation. “So, I think it's better with we do test it, I'll probably stay here in the base at least one week.” I said to him like our conversation never had been interrupted.
He looked at me, knowing well Spotlight’s power, and was just about to answer when I interrupted him by turning again to Spotlight.
“Very interesting, my guess from the time I met you was pretty spot on, wouldn't you say?
He laughed “Yea, yea. That’s true, so did you get anything?”
Spotlights powers were a manipulation of the attention, he could redirect and to an extent control it, the most basic way was by reflecting it away, learning about his power, the active way it was used against me was to directly manipulate my attention, my power mutated to acquire the same ability, Using the concept partition from Swordjuice's power, neatly identifying the concept of attention and making it easier to learn how to manipulate it.
Using the template from Spotlight's power I was able to bypass his redirection of my attention, it gave me the tools to somewhat manipulate future concepts, as long as it was redirecting, I was confident I could do it, but only if the power used in me manipulated a concept in me in some way.
I noted how easily my power acquired countermeasures to almost any power, and it would just grow more and more easily. While turning increasingly more capable of keeping me alive.
“Yes, I did. It was pretty straight forward, with the help of Swordjuice’s power I could separate the attention aspect and find where you were messing with it, learning from your own power I just did the inverse and redirected the attention to its proper way.”
“Wonderful! look at this monster we’re creating, people.” Spotlight laughed loudly spreading his arms.
“Yes, it's good to have such a promising new member” Payback said smiling, the others also all emanated a positive vibe.
“Can you use the same power as Spotlight now?” Swordjuice asked, intrigued.
I tried it, already feeling what would be the case though, there was no response or instinct, trying to manipulate attention from people resulted in nothing, trying to manipulate my own had limited success, it was like thinking about moving my arm instead of just moving it.
“No luck, I think it because I haven't learned any method of affecting other powers at distance? Each thing is very specific, it's like I'm building a puzzle, piece by piece.”
“It makes sense, and on the same note, I think there's no way for you to interact with him directly, correct Glassmetal? He asked turning to the glasses wearing young man.
“Yes sir” the young man coughed at being the center of attention, looking awkward. “Even if I created something for him to use, I don’t really see it doing much.”
“That's fine, I think we should do yours now, Payback.
“That's true.” Payback assented. “No better time than the present after all.
“Doesn't your power heal people? I'm not injured” I asked him.
“Ah, it doesn’t work in that way” he grinned at me, making me think of a mischievous kid revealing a secret. “It reverts people to a previous state.”
I widened my eyes “As in time manipulation?” I had to control myself not to shout, this kind of power were of the rarest kind, this kind of healing was absolutely amazing, it could just about deal with anything.
“No, before you ask, it doesn’t revive the dead, it only works on living people.”
“Hm, I understand, what about the red haze you get? I thought you were taking the wounds of people.”
“it's not really like that, and we might want to use both abilities on you, so maybe you can fight one of the others? Then you can experiment both ends of the stick.”
“I'll fight him” LED said but then added “I'll let him hurt me” giving me a grin. I just scoffed not really caring that I wasn’t really his match in a fight, not without some cheating with powers.
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“It’ll have to wait until next week actually.” he said reminding me of the cooldown, I had already forgotten about it. “Unless one of the other recruits want to volunteer?”
“Sorry man, I don’t do well with these hand-to-hand scuffles” Glassmetal denied, trying to sound cool about it.
“Aah” Swordjuice let out seeming flustered. “I mean I want to see what happens but I don’t do that well getting hurt, sorry” she was fidgety not really backing up her talk in the morning about wanting to fight the regime, did she actually know the level of violence she would be subjected to?
“It's fine” I reassured her “I can wait one week, and besides I wouldn’t want to beat up a teenager.” she gave me an unamused face, I just smiled.
I'd have to do with only one half this week, that was okay though. I had a lot of training being patient during my life.
“So, how does it actually work?” I asked Payback returning to the previous conversation. “Your powers that is.”
“Ah, yeah, it basically takes the moment, or consequence of the attack from the person. so, it's like it never happened. And then if the, well, consequence of the action isn't there anymore, the wound can't exist, or well the wound is the consequence right, so that’s taken off, but not in an injury way, but in a consequence of the action ‘attack’ way. You get that? It can be a bit confusing.”
“I think I get it, the consequence of action instead of the injury themselves, it's more of a causality manipulator then.”
“Huh? I guess?” he said with scrunched up eyebrows.
“Never mind that.” I said, now just animated to have the powers tested on me. “Hit me up”
He walked up to me, now just the two of in the center of the test area, Swordjuice went away giving us a quick ‘good luck’ going to stand with the others on the observation line.
Payback reached his hand touching my shoulder, there was a brief moment of opaqueness, my vision being blocked, or more like not existing? And then all was back to normal.
“So, you get anything?” He asked me.
“You did it already? I only saw some white wall and nothing.” i tilted my head confused
“Yeah, that happens, Probably the eyes or brain being reset?” he shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter.”
“Hmm so why didn’t I get anything, it was different from when my power tries to get something or reacts to an attack, it just had no reaction at all.”
Glassmetal snapped his fingers. “Your powers modify your body right, maybe they’re, like, intrinsically connected.”
“So, when the body resets the body resets with it.” I completed nodding rapidly in understanding. “It makes sense, is it impossible to deal with this kind of effect though?”
“Maybe you need to learn a power that can detect or interact with time stuff first then.” Swordjuice said with a finger on her chin.
“Oh, if only we had someone like that here” Spotlight said animatedly, indicating Payback with his head intensely.
Payback laughed at him “it's true though, the attack mode just inflicts the consequence, it’s probably a time related, or causality as you said.”
“You might be able to separate it with the concept parts you have already.” LED nodded also thoughtful. “It’ll have to wait anyway, during the week we’ll start with strength training.”
“Sure, I did some of it before, nothing much strenuous though.” I was mildly disappointed that I hadn't gotten anything from Payback, but so was life and there was more to do. I'll have a next opportunity with the other side of the power, that I think is much more likely to work.
LED nodded and turned to the still gathered Dawnbreakers, “I see we will have company, isn't that right?”
“Ah!” Swordjuice jumped startled, “I forgot I had something to do” and the girl bolted right away Glassmetal wasn’t far behind stiffly walking away with a weak “I have some training to do already”
LED scoffed, not surprised with their attitude, I hadn't really thought they would want to exercise with me either, the cool part of the training was done for, now came the real grinding.
“Well, see you all then” Spotlight casually took his leave.
“Yeah, until later, see you at dinner?” Payback asked us as he went away.
“We should be done by then.” LED said.
I turned to him, his normal impassive face looking back at me. I raised an eyebrow at him “by dinner?” how much time did this guy want to work out?
A smile blossomed on his face. “Let’s see how far you can adapt.”
That day I did more repetitions of strength training than in all the rest of my life. By the end of it I felt like a puddle of melted tires. But we got to confirm that my power could enhance me more or less to a peak athletic build, the power not activating the large-scale transformation that it did like in the fights, even if I tried pulling it with all I had while I tried lifting more than I could, ending up needing LED’s help to be able to breathe again.
We theorized it could be a psychological thing as I knew this wasn’t a real fight, or even a real dangerous situation, and all research showed that powers could be extremely conditional, only activating when their specific reasons where met. And, as the only part of it I could activate outside of the natural way, the low level of enhancement I had acquired from learning from LED’s power was activated. I probably would need to evolve the power first before being able to mutate freely.
LED let me off for the day, and I went immediately to take a shower i asked LED where they were and he showed me leading me to the third floor, the ones with the rooms but instead of turning to the side the rooms where we turned the other one, leading to an area with two opposing doors marked for men and women, like a club's bathroom it had multiple stalls a sink with mirror and a huge wall that I guessed were the showers. LED left, not being today the day, we were going to bond as men I thought laughing to myself and proceeded to take a long relaxing shower using one of multiple clean towels stacked in shelf built into the wall.
After getting to my room and changing my clothes I thought about just sleeping but there was a big obstacle in the way of that, the hunger, probably the hungriest I've ever felt.
So, it seemed I'd see Payback and the others at dinner after all.