Kinsley and the other kids woke up the next day feeling like they had been run over by a extremely large and incredibly slow-moving tank. It must have reversed back over them for good measure, because there was no other plausible explanation for the pain they were feeling.

The bits of their ruined bodies could be classified into two distinct categories.

Neither of them good.

First, there were the parts that hurt. They played an orchestra of pain all up and down their nervous systems, twisting and stabbing and burning and throbbing all at the same time, as if in competition with each other to see which could be least comfortable. It hurt to exist, with every movement a blaring horn of tortuous origins.

Second, were the more worrying parts. The bits they couldn’t feel anymore. Now those, were frightening. When your hand was pretending it wasn’t actually there, you knew something had gone seriously wrong.

Just how bad must the pain be for your body to simply shut off the receptors?

It was hard to tell, and since their heads were clouded by the agony of existing, such thoughts whistled through through them without ever making contact with anything important.

And then… there was Fyn.

He lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what he would have for breakfast.

Nothing hurt. In fact, if not for his rapidly growing strength and height, he would have forgotten he did any exercise at all the previous day. If nothing else, he felt fresh. Like his whole body was the sensation you get after eating a mint and drinking a glass of cold water.

He was the opposite of sluggish, whatever that may be.

‘I’d better not tell anyone else how easy exercise is for me,’ he realised. ‘They’d probably be jealous.’

He rolled over and jumped out of bed. There was a set of freshly washed clothes laid out on his desk beside a pile of books he’d already read.

Or... perhaps read wasn’t the right word for what Fyn had done. All he had to do was look at the page once, and it would forever rest in his mind. But that didn’t mean he had actually read or understood everything on the page. Just that he could recall it, if needed.

It was more like he was saving a file onto a computer without ever looking at what it contained. But if he needed the contents of the file, at least he knew where to find them.

‘I could get used to this,’ he thought. Honestly, he couldn’t help but be smug. Going from a kid who barely went to school, to – what was effectively – a genius was bound to inflate his ego a little.

Fyn threw on the silken exercise clothes with flawless precision. He felt like he was wearing fabric made from a gentle breeze, or sewn together from stray wisps of a cloud. Whatever they were made from, the clothes were certainly more comfortable than the stray scraps of fabric he had picked up from the industrial park days previously.

Then again... what wasn’t?

***

Aside from Fyn – who seemed to be perpetually in motion, zipping back and forth between his plate and the silver platters of food like a whirling dervish - breakfast was… tense.

While Fyn was doing his best to eat anything and everything laid out on the long ebony table, the other four kids were in various states of disarray.

Sloan was doing the best of the lot, sitting with her back almost close to her ordinary ramrod straight and picking at a… well, Fyn wasn’t sure what she was picking at, but the juicy red thing had certainly tasted alright. He’d already had a fair few himself and wouldn’t have turned down a couple more if they hadn’t run out already.

The other kids were notably worse for wear, like a couple stray socks left on a clothesline during a rainstorm.

They resembled a group of birds dropped from their nest a few days too early, looking shocked, and a little bit hurt at the sudden development. Their plumage was sticking up in every direction, and even Mallory hadn’t bothered sorting out the tangled nest that was her hair.

They were staring forlornly at the food, as though bitterly wondering how long they would be able to keep it in their stomachs if they dared eat anything. With the ghastly spectre of another training session looming over them like the gallows, each of them was keenly aware that whatever the ate might not necessarily remain eaten.

Fyn, however, was actually rather looking forward to training.

Then again, he had a different perspective on the whole thing. After all, physical training, as of yet, had proved to be little more than a distraction for him. A way to pass the time, if nothing else.

In fact, the only thing Fyn had found difficult so far, was getting his new pals chatting. Or whatever it was kids did these days.

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

“Are you going to eat that?” He asked Grant, who was eyeing up a boiled egg rather peevishly. He looked suspicious of it, as though he didn’t trust it to stay down.

“Uh…” Grant blinked back to life, jolting up in his chair a little – which, from the look on his face, hurt. “Nah, no, no, y-you go ahead.”

Fyn reached over and grabbed the egg, peeling the shell with surgical precision and popping the whole thing into his mouth like a gobstopper. He chewed with more enthusiasm than one might have thought possible, and even less decorum than you are imagining.

Think of a broken trash compactor, and now add the sounds.

Grant winced as Fyn started to chew and Mallory looked like she might throw up. Neither Kinsley nor Sloan were paying either of them any mind, too wrapped up in their own little worlds of hurt and… Fyn wasn’t actually too sure what Sloan was thinking about. Something very serious, no doubt.

“Excuse me, Fyn,” Mallory said his name like it had just asked for her spare change.

Fyn looked up from his plate, eyebrows raised. “Yeah?” He mumbled through the mouthful of egg.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but… why aren’t you…” she trailed off helplessly.

“What?”

Mallory pinched the bridge of her nose and looked up at the ceiling. “I was just wondering if you had done something like this before? You seem very relaxed, is all…”

“Relaxed?” Fyn swallowed, taking a moment to process this. “I suppose I am pretty chill compared to you guys. The lot of you are very tightly wound, I’d say.”

“Yes, well,” Mallory muttered. “That’s why I was wondering what’s so different about you.”

Fyn ran his tongue along the outside of his teeth before speaking. “Nah, I haven’t done anything like this before. I guess I just adapt quickly, yunno?”

Mallory frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose that is a useful trait for a minion to have...”

Fyn raised an eyebrow and set down the slice of - whatever it was he had been eating - before speaking. “Minion…” he turned the word over. “I’m just going to throw this out there, because, yunno, we all make mistakes, kid, I get it, believe me. But… did you mean team member? Because there’s no way you just called me a ‘minion’, right? Like, this isn’t some sort of shit period drama. You can’t be serious, right?”

Mallory scoffed. “What else would a plebe with a body affinity be? It’s common knowledge that your kind never get very far. Born with wings of lead, you can only fly so high.”

‘So, she figured out I had some form of body amplification,’ Fyn thought. ‘I suppose it was obvious considering the amount of weight I was lifting.’

“I don’t follow,” Fyn said. “Why would my affinity make me a plebe? A sentinel’s a sentinel, right?”

Grant smiled at him. “Of course we are, any future sentinel is worthy of respect in my book. How big could the difference possible be between affinities anyway?”

“Big,” grunted Sloan.

“She speaks,” said Mallory, rolling her eyes.

“Is there a problem with that?” Sloan asked, her gaze cutting across the table like a knife headed straight for Mallory’s face.

“No, no, of course not. I’m just surprised someone as stuck up as yourself deigned to speak to the likes of us,” Mallory snapped.

It was at this point that Kinsley tuned in to the conversation. He didn’t like what he saw - paled a little, and did his best not to get involved.

Sloan leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and glaring at Mallory. “It’s a good thing I don’t care about weaklings like you, or I wouldn’t still be sitting here. I imagine you’d struggle to speak so loudly with a broken jaw.”

Mallory smiled thinly. The motion looked like it was drawn on with a sharpie. “I’d like to see you try. Of course, that would require you to get near me, and I already used insect repellent today.”

‘Insect repellent? What the fuck is that?’ Fyn wondered. He would like to see something that could stop a spider the size of a loaf of bread. ‘I need some of this spray.’

“Ahem,” Fyn coughed sharply, getting the girls’ attention. “As much as I like to see a good fight, ladies. Would someone mind filling me in on this whole, affinity thing? Yunno, on account of it affecting me directly, and all?”

Both of them shot him a searing glare, but it was hard for Fyn to feel much pressure from two literal children. He did his best not laugh and returned the glares with ones of his own.

‘This is actually kind of fun,’ he realized. ‘As long as I don’t think about how difficult making them get along will be, anyway.’

“I-I wouldn’t mind hearing more about this as well,” said Grant.

It seemed that Kinsley was also of this opinion, as he was nodding meekly. Although no-one but Fyn had paid him any attention. The boy was like wallpaper or graffiti on a subway wall. You only noticed him if you were looking for him.

“Of course you wouldn’t know,” shot Mallory. “Born on a planet like this, I’m surprised you can tell right from left, never mind understanding affinities.”

“Hah,” Fyn laughed sharply. “Let’s be serious. Do you have any idea how pathetic it is making fun of someone for not knowing something they couldn’t possibly have known. Like, that is up there with making fun of people’s hobbies in terms of being a dick.”

Mallory sneered. “Why should it matter why you don’t know something. Fact is, from where I stand, I’m looking down on you.”

Fyn’s smile was almost a snarl. “Yeah? Maybe I should cut you down to size. Not like you could do much more than drizzle some water on me. I wouldn’t mind a shower, actually.”

Mallory gasped and shot back in her chair, raising a finger and pointing at Fyn furiously. There were tears in her eyes.

“Y-you!” She stuttered. “Shut up.”

That reply put everything in perspective for Fyn, who had lost himself a little. It was clear to him now, that he was not above the childishness of his appearance.

‘What the fuck am I doing? She only a kid...’

“Hey, Mallory, I’m-“ he motioned to apologize, but she has already spun and was storming towards the door on the far side of the room.

She paused at the huge oak door, turning to glare at all of them. There were tears running down her cheeks, and her eyes were red.

“I hate all of you!!” She screamed.

The only person surprised by this was Grant. Who had done literally nothing to anyone, probably ever.

As for the rest of them...

Fyn felt a little embarrassed that he had made a little girl cry, Sloan looked smug and Kinsley was doing an excellent job of pretending he wasn’t there.

He may even have surpassed wallpaper and vanished into apple in an orchard territory. So wholly unremarkable was he, that even Fyn struggled to keep track of him.

Mallory spun and grabbed the door handle with furious zeal. She wrenched it down, but not quite as fast as it moved. The old iron joltrd down with more speed than she had been expecting, and suddenly, the huge wooden door was flung open from the other side.

As Karst strode in wearing – possibly the biggest smile a human could muster – Mallory was hit square in the face by the opening door and toppled backwards like a felled tree.

The smile on Karst’s face froze, as he peered around the door to see Mallory, already in tears, and grasping at a bleeding nose.

“Oh,” he glanced up at Fyn, who couldn’t help but grin at the Giant’s predicament. “Fuck,” said Karst.