Sitting in the dark on a dilapidated couch that was inside a warehouse in one of the poorer areas of the city, I was having the best moment of my life. I closed my eyes, feeling again at the presence of my power in my mind. ‘My power!’ I thought again, I couldn't get enough of it.

It felt somehow like a newborn larva; weak, small, and an all-white nothingness about it. Powers came in a couple of well-recorded categories, they being more of a guideline than any set in stone rules; as power could be just as varied as the people who wield them. Powers often were full of intricacies and could even change over time.

Besides the categories of type, like telekinesis brawler or teleporter, they were also categorized in another two ways; The more common one was the Set type, where the power manifested pretty much with all the impact and flashiness it would ever have, with capabilities more set from the start, as the name implied, in this case it wasn’t like the wielder couldn’t grow, powers normally had a very high ceiling of mastery and control. But in straight capabilities sense, the power wouldn't change much overtime.

The other type was growth type, this one started extremely weak and had a vast potential to both firepower and change overtime, acquiring new capabilities or just growing in output, they also each had a growth requirement, and going by the feeling I got from mine; it was a growth type.

I grinned in exhilaration, tightening my fists. Absolutely perfect, I always had more of an interest in growth type, there being a possibility of defining their growth in the earlier stage or just grinding them to overpower-ness, the dream power for someone like me, which was exactly why I got it, probably.

What was left to find out was the intricacies of the power, there were people with information gathering power or some types of meta powers that could help with this kind of stuff more accurately but I had no access to any of those as far as I knew so it would have to be the normal way.

I got up from the couch, turning the torch on my cellphone for light as it was completely pitch black, everyone would be sleeping now it seemed but I couldn’t wait till morning to test everything I could, so I used the lantern to navigate to the door and went to the patio outside, using the roof of the car as a platform for my light, I moved to the open area besides the car; the ground had a thick layer of dust over it which I disturbed by moving through it.

I reached for the white featureless ball of power I felt inside of me. It gave me the impression it could grow in any direction, but no matter what I did or thought, it remained unmovable.

I tried to focus more deeply in the presence of the power. It was almost like remembering something, but there was a distinct feeling of moving towards something more concrete than that, like feeling for an arm. One that, in my case, remained stubbornly motionless. Focusing to see if it was something else, I searched my mind for any way of activating the power. I needed to see more proof.

Could this be just my imagination after that tripping-balls dream, but no, it felt way too real? It was exactly like I heard so many people describing it as well, although that could just be my bias, as I knew so much. Creating it in my head was easy.

That’s foolish considerations though; my mind was way too used to shut down any hope of acquiring powers because of all the false alarms in the past. This time was different. I had never felt something like this. It could just be that it was a passive power.

That’s what it must be. There were plenty of powers that acted only passively, although not as visually impressive as most active fire slinger powers. They could be just as useful or powerful as their more active variants. The most common examples were physical powers like regeneration or super strength or the shielding powers that triggered automatically. There were lots of more crazy or complicated ones, though.

I spent the next hours trying to prod my powers into existence, nothing I did seemed to gather any reaction, I thought about trying to awaken the others but we weren't very close so I couldn’t know what they would think of that, and besides that I had no idea what I should do then.

Till the early morning I got frustrated and paranoid that I was just dreaming about things, eventually just choosing to sit on the dirty ground and still trying to coax any reaction from my power to no success.

“How pathetically obsessed can you really be?” I heard a voice saying from behind me, I was sitting facing against the door to the inside house so it could only be one Dawnbreaker that had woken up, huh, how fitting.

“Don't pretend you didn’t do the same, Spotlight said you also used to be a Sleepwalker.” as the voice I heard was feminine it was pretty easy to gather who of the four it was.

“There's a difference between testing your powers and trying something that is clearly not working for hours on end.”

I said nothing to that. Each power was unique. The only way for me to know prod at it wouldn’t work was to try. Maybe she was partly right, though, so I wouldn't argue.

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“Have you come to just quip at me?” I asked instead.

She regarded me silently, not showing what was going on in her mind. I was about to go back to my meditation when she spoke up.

“We need to bounce from this city as soon as possible. So I'll help you, and I'll be cashing on this favor in the future, don’t forget. “

I frowned at that, not seeing how she could help me. Unless, hmm. I thought her power was clairvoyance related, but it might run deeper and be a more general information gathering. Depending on how it works, she could try to visualize me or my power and gain some insight or information on it.

“Alright, hit me up.” I smiled up at her. That seemed to annoy her. Probably didn’t like the deductionist type? Not that I could help it.

She rolled her eyes at me, but seemed to get to work anyway, her eyes getting a very subtle glint as a shining circle around her pupils manifested, only noticeable because of the gloom of the warehouse. The moment she activated it, I felt a reaction from my power, like it was growing agitated at her direction. It wiggled all over like those videos of magnetic sand. The structure of its lines changing constantly as a frown steadily grew on Spyglass’s face.

I just watched curiously, her eyes subtly shining and my powers seemed to get used to it or something as it stopped wiggling as much and seemed to be in a state of rest, now slowly creating spikes on its surface and rotating but otherwise nothing.

“Ugh, what an insufferable one. You power hungry type always seem to get what you want.” she tsk'ed her tongue in annoyance.

“You got something, right? I felt my power responding to it. What did you see?” Is it powerful? I couldn’t hold my excitement at the prospect of knowing more than I was before halfway to believing the whole thing had just been my imagination.

“Yeah, it seems to be an adaptive growth type. So It'll grow to adapt to what's thrown at it. It’s new, so it's hard to get information on it. It also changed in the middle, so yeah."

Oh, so that’s what all that wiggling was about. That’s so cool, so interesting. I felt like a teenager again with all this excitement. “Do you think there's a limit? Was it just the initial exposition? it doesn’t give any indication of that on what I feel though, not that it necessarily would. Do you think it just reacts to other powers? It seemed to me to have a meta-power element to it. If it also responds to environmental stress, I'm pretty much set for life.” I giddily laughed, maybe a bit psychotic, even. The look Spyglass was giving me at this point was almost reaching disgust. I ignored that and moved to get some iron bars that were laying close by.

“Here, can you hit me with all you got?” I cheerily asked her, a warm smile on my face. Doing it to annoy her even more on purpose, she wouldn’t want to help me based on the tone she was speaking with me this entire time, but maybe I could get something making her take part without noticing.

She smiled back at me with the same cheer. “I really think I might.”

Her hands tightened around the metal. “You're one of those reckless fools, aren't you? The kind that would do anything for power?”

“I thought you were the same. Can't you understand where I'm coming from?”

“Don't lump me with the likes of you.” it seemed I had hit a nerve, I thought, seeing her clenching the bar in both her hands. “Wanting to be hit with a metal bar on a hunch it might not hurt you. You don’t even care if it hurts if it advances your power.”

“Well, of course, I'm involved in this life now. I need power now more than ever.”

“Don't pretend that’s the reason. It's never enough power. You should get a hold of your ambitions before it kills any of us.” I noticed she didn’t seem to include me in her use of 'us'. The whole tirade seemed uncalled for. What I was doing was just normal. People who get powers and don’t test their limits are just dumb. You need to know what you’re working with.

But before I could open my mouth again, she threw the bar in her hand away. It flew, making loud clanking noises as it bounced on the floor and hit one of the old machines. She just huffed and marched away, back inside.

It seemed dealing with the Dawnbreakers would also be a complication on its own; the organization didn’t seem as knit together as I'd hoped; I needed to sustain myself for the long run. Getting into dangerous jobs as muscle would always be a last resort now, though, if my powers developed the way I hoped.

I shook my head, putting the matter aside. Thinking in what would be the best way to provide some physical stress to my body alone, I could always just throw myself at things but if my powers were more reactive, like it reacted to Spyglass’s powers maybe it would function similarly, where it only responded to counteract powers, or power generated effects. I somehow felt it would react to the mundane forms of attacks as well. Maybe it was threat detection based? Then I'd really probably need a sparring partner.

Deep in my musing I again didn’t notice the approach of another person, LED this time, as I saw when a turned around deep in thought and almost hit his leg with the metal bar, stopping just short of it, I really didn’t want to find out if he also got mad easily.

“I heard you two talking. Need some help?” weird. Yesterday, he seemed indifferent to me, but now he was being much more approachable. Was it because now I was technically officially part of the group? Maybe he’d want to recruit me for the inner circle he was a part of, it could be because the awakening process wasn’t as sure proof as they’d sold it and getting to know me before was setting himself up for disappointment, a feeling I could relate to.

“Yes.” I said before the silence dragged on too long. "If it wouldn't be asking too much, I know it sounds weird.”

LED brushed the matter off with a shake of his hand. "Our powers are a part of us as any other and so also come with instincts. If you feel it's okay to be okay, it's likely that it will.”

His deep voice was surprisingly eloquent in long strips of talking like that. Was he a teacher or public speaker in the past, perhaps? “That’s true. I have an inkling about that. I imagined it was just random hope or precipitated conclusions.”

“When it comes to powers, our instincts matter a lot. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination though, so ‘fine’ could be anything, even more if your power regenerates you.”

That made me a little more uncertain, but I wasn’t a stranger to pain or experiments, much less both together. So, I passed him the metal bar. He took it without hesitation, getting in a batter stance. No dilly dallying was a constant in his personality, it seemed.

Now was time to get beaten up based on a faint instinct. Is this the type of training I would always do? If so, I might regret my personality that lead to this specific power.