I jumped off my window and flew off into the sky… Or I assumed that was what was going to happen, instead I sort of floated down and started hovering a few inches above ground.

What’s this? I have the ability to fly... so why can’t I fly?

Try as I might, I couldn’t get more then a few inches off the ground. I looked over to the other people flying with ease in the sky and spotted the unruly jet-black hair that belonged to Mark. I dropped the few inches to the ground and kept staring at him. I absorbed the ability from him, so we should essentially be able to fly in the same manner, so why can he fly at such great heights and I can’t even go above a few inches?

Does this have to do with his obsession of flying? …. No, if that were the case then the other 2 guys flying would also have some difficulties of their own. As far as I can see I’m the only one among the people with the flight ability who is having problems.

So, what then? Perhaps it has to do with this not being an original ability but an absorbed one? Are original abilities much stronger then absorbed abilities? Or is it because I only absorbed a drop of blood from everyone, which means that I only got a tiny portion of the ability? Will I have to consume a larger amount of blood for me to get the complete benefits of my absorbed abilities?

It could just be that I have to practice harder to get to the point of the original ability holders…? Yeah, let’s try to practice more before coming to a conclusion...

I went to a secluded alley, everyone was out on the main streets enjoying their abilities, and started practicing.

4 hours later, an exhausted me returned home covered in sweat and without bothering with anyone else I went up to my room and plopped down on my bed. I had managed to get to a height of a few meters, but nothing beyond that, and it was extremely tiring. Every time I tried pushing beyond the height limit of my flight I would get a splitting headache and my muscles would start becoming sore.

I was so tired that before I knew it I was asleep.

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I woke up to the sound of my mother screaming and shaking me up, demanding to know what’s wrong with me. I had to explain to her that it was nothing, I just was tired from practicing my abilities and took a little nap. The reason she was so hysterical was because I had been sleeping away for about 7 hours, which came as a huge surprise to me. It must have been a combination of both my tiredness and the fact that I got so little sleep last night…

I looked at the time and saw that it was almost midnight! No wonder mom was so worried… I took a quick shower to get rid of all the sweat, went downstairs to have some food and came back to my room.

Okay, so it seems like for some reason I don’t get the same power by absorbing abilities as the original ability holders have. I can improve by practicing, but it takes too long and is too tiring. The other option I can try is to see if drinking more blood allows me to gain more power in the ability. I have a plan for getting more blood from Mark, but as my parents are still up right now I will have to wait a bit.

I decided to do a little more research while I waited for my parents to go to sleep. I spent the next hour or so on the internet and I learned a few things.

There seems to be a difference in the ‘power’ of all ability holders. Even though two people may have the exact same ability, it is not certain that they would be equals in terms of ability control/power. So if two people got the exact same ability, let’s say ‘water manipulation’, one person might be able to control just 1 gallon of water at a time while the other might be able to control 1.5 or 2 gallons. Or, they could control the same amount, let’s say 1 gallon each, but one person might be able to use the water from the water particles in the air itself while the other might not have such control and will need existing bodies of water in order to control it. This seems to apply to all abilities no matter how rare they are.

Rarity of abilities is another thing I learned. Some abilities appear much more frequently then others. Abilities like observation, perception, increased loyalty etc were much more common then say the elemental abilities or invisibility etc. The gamers around the world had already started classifying these abilities going along the pattern of games. There were some who classified them with colours, green being the most common up to the colour purple for the extremely rare abilities or black for unique abilities. Some people went with a tier system like basic, intermediate and so on up to legendary and unique.

I, however, preferred the simple system which went like this:

Common: Abilities that appeared most frequently like observation, perception etc.

Uncommon: Abilities that are a little less common but still quite a lot of people have them like pain resistance, heat and cold resistance, tougher skin etc. Flight was surprisingly listed as uncommon, apparently a lot of people could fly now.

Rare: Fewer people had these abilities, but still the number of people with these abilities were in the hundreds of thousands. Examples included X-ray vision, heat vision, invisibility, elemental manipulations(fire, earth, water and air manipulations)  etc.

Super-rare: Thousands of people had such abilities, but compared to the 8 billion world population it’s rare enough to be called super-rare. Examples were abilities like healing, variant-element manipulations (lightning, ice, metal, weather etc), telepathy etc.

Epic/legendary: A few hundred people had such abilities. Abilities like teleportation, telekinesis, hiding presence, regeneration, immortality etc were considered as epic/legendary.

Unique: Only one person in the entire world had a unique ability. Control, invincibility, morphing, ability deleting, true immortality, all-elemental manipulation and my absorption were the only unique abilities I knew of.

(Author here. The number indicated refers to people having one ability, like tens of millions of people could have the ability of observation, while only around 300-500 people would have the ability of regeneration.)

Apparently the difference between ‘immortality’ the epic ability and ‘true immortality’ the unique ability is that ‘immortality’ just stops a person from aging but he/she can still be killed or hurt, but ‘true immortality’ makes the person completely impossible to kill. The unique ability holder was surprisingly a 63-year old woman, and she did not look happy at all with her ability. Imagine being stuck in a 63 year-old body for all eternity…

From my perspective the most dangerous would have to be the ability deleter, if he were to somehow delete my absorption ability I would be rendered completely helpless. Must remember not to piss the guy off…

I glanced at the time and it was nearing 1:30am. Perfect, everyone should be asleep by now. I got up and stepped into the hallway, listening for any sounds coming from any of the rooms. Apart from the distant snoring sounds of my father and Mark, there wasn’t anything else I could hear.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I crept down the stairs and into the storage closet. I rummaged through till I found what I was looking for: a syringe! Chloe is a doctor, training to be a surgeon, and she insists on keeping a few basic medical supplies at home at all times which included about 10 syringes. I picked out one and headed upstairs.

I opened up Mark’s door and found the same sight as last night, him sprawled on the bed snoring like an idiot with a small light on. With no need about being quiet, I casually walked towards him, lifted off the covers and pricked him with the syringe. I slowly drew some blood, and when the syringe was full I withdrew it and covered Mark up again. The guy hadn’t even budged while his blood was being taken, seriously how deeply can a person sleep??

I went back to my room, closed the door and emptied the blood into a glass. The glass was about a quarter or so full with blood, and frankly looked quite disgusting. I took a deep breath and gulped the whole thing down in one go.

…..

…..

Hmmm….

Sure the taste was quite disgusting, but surprisingly I didn’t feel anything from it. No feeling of disgust, no feeling of vomit coming up… nothing. Does this have something to do with my ability? Blood will no longer make me feel disgusted when I swallow it? If this has got something to do with my ability, then I am very thankful for it!

Blood successfully absorbed. Ability of flight already present.

Oooh! That was quick! Barely a minute had passed since I drank the blood and already the mind voice was triggered. Drinking more blood really does make a difference in absorption rate.

I then jumped off my window for a second time today, but this time time I didn’t float down! I was actually flying this time! I climbed up into the night sky and it was incredible! Instead of floating a few meters above the ground I could now climb up to a height of about 6 stories before feeling a slight headache indicating that it was too much for me to climb more right now.

I spent quite a bit of time soaring through the air without a worry in the world. I now understood Mark’s obsession with flying, it really is quite exhilarating!

I finally decided to head back home after I saw the sun starting to rise in the distance, and I was also getting tired. But the night was a success as far as I'm concerned. Drinking more blood does make the absorbed ability much stronger. Although even with the extra blood absorbed flying still makes me tired, so I headed to my room and went straight to sleep.

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Next morning, after having breakfast and doing some more idle chatting with the family, I told everyone that I was going to my apartment and will be back in a few days. I left my parent's house with a very satisfied smile on my face, Mark had been skulking all morning because he found out what my ability was last night. Hah!

I had decided to fly all the way to my apartment, which was situated in the city about 55 miles away. Mainly so that I could train my flight ability further, but also because I couldn’t see any buses or taxis anywhere, seems like people still haven’t resumed their normal lives after all the craze of the abilities.

__________________

Whew! Finally home!

I found out the hard way that my flying speed was extremely, extremely slow. It took me about 4 hours to travel the 55 miles to reach my apartment. The journey was nothing special, I only saw more and more people using different kinds of abilities along the way.

I wanted nothing more then to go straight to bed as I was tired from all the flying, but was interrupted at the entrance to my apartment by my neighbor, 58 year old neighbour Mrs. Jane, holding her cat Stella.

“Ah Ben, I’m so glad you are back. Could you look after Stella for me? I want to go and visit my son, he keeps asking me to come because of all this ability business.”

“Sure, I’ll look after her. Have a safe trip!”

And with that she dumped Stella into my arms and hobbled off. Surprising she didn’t discuss about abilities, or even ask what my ability is. She is usually extremely talkative… must be in a hurry I guess.

Me and Stella entered my tiny one-bedroom apartment, I dumped her onto the floor and immediately went off to sleep in my bed.

________________

*CRASH!*

Huh…? What…?

I sat bolt upright and looked around for the source of the crash.

……

Damn cat! Stella had probably bumped into the lamp and had made it fall over! And she was just staring at me as if saying ‘fuck you looking at?’ Cats are such assholes.

I glanced at the clock and it was 1:17am! Wow, had I slept through the whole day yet again? This must be a side-effect of over-exerting myself with all the flying. I must remember to not push myself too hard in the future…

I got up and went to pick up the now broken lamp, but before I could Stella zoomed past me and bumped right into my bed! And when I say zoomed past me, I mean she moved at an inhumane speed! It wasn’t even a blur, one moment she was there beside the lamp next she had crashed into the bed!

Am I hallucinating? I know cats are fast but that can’t be real, it looked like those kids I saw earlier moving at super speeds only much faster…. Wait… super speed? Could Stella have an ability??

I quickly switched on my laptop and checked online…. wow! Apparently all animals and even plants have an ability now! This is just insane!

Wait… Animals and plants have abilities too now… this means I can get abilities off them too?

With a menacing grin on my face, I picked up the syringe and washed it up in the bathroom. I then advanced towards Stella still with a grin on my face…

“Meow…?”

“Here kitty kitty kitty. Come here Stella. Good girl.”

*Prick*

“MEOOOWWW!!”

*Scratch!*

*Bite!*

“OOOWWW! Stupid cat!!”

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Author's note: I will probably have another chapter ready in a few hours. Would be sooner but I have to go someplace right now for a few hours... Next chapter will be where the fight between humans and animals finally begins.

Hope you guys liked this chapter :)