As the head of the ISPC, my job is to regulate
potens and potens related activity. I will do what
I must to ensure their future.
-Savvria Ixen Âkil, President of the ISPC
Reveca felt how a bug smashed against the visor of her helmet. It scared her a bit, almost making her lose the balance she had fought so hard for. At least it didn’t smeer on one of her eyes.
She moved her left arm backwards at the same time as she moved her right one forward, making a turn to the right thanks to the air hitting her extended wings. The change in directions was slow, mainly because she hadn’t rotated her body to accompany the movement and wasn’t using her power. Nonetheless, she didn’t hate the slow pace. Even though she could control the air and technically fly, Reveca didn’t want to repeat the experience from the day before.
Reveca created an air current in front of her, the purpose being to slow her down. Unlike her last landing, she used a weaker current which wouldn’t stop her immediately. Still moving forward, Reveca put her feet running on the rooftop of one of the buildings around her, eventually coming to a stop. She then turned and faced the costumed figure looming over one of its ends.
Gravity was looking down at the city. Quiet. Stern.
Reveca had been surprised at the silence her mentor was sustaining. After what she had told her after the first training session, Reveca had expected her days to be full of strict and rigorous orders and exercises. Not that they hadn’t been, but she had expected an abundance of comments regarding her poor technique with them.
The lack of features and the two white semi circles on her face made it impossible to read her expression, but her corporal language suggested otherwise. She emmanated an aura of worry… Or sadness… Or reflection… Could it be anger?
Ok, maybe it wasn’t as easy to read her, but she knew that it wasn’t something positive… Probably. Revaca approached Gravity just as she brushed the insect from her helmet, retracting her wings after.
“You didn’t use your legs,” Gravity said as Reveca’s footsteps reached her. “If you want to bring out the full potential of that suit, you need to use your whole body. And your legs are a part of that.”
Reveca mentally sighed as she heard the remark, (Maybe she wasn’t as sad as I thought.)
“It’s hard,” Reveca replied. “Every time I try to move them, it feels like I’m going to fall.”
“You needn’t worry about that,” Gravity said as she faced her. “You have plenty of time to fall.” She then turned around to face the city again.
“What now?” Reveca asked, barely making the words not sound like a growl.
“Rest.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Really?”
“You’ve been at it for an hour now. I don’t see a problem with a five minute break. Do you?”
“Nop,” Reveca immediately said. She went to the ledge and sat on it, her feet dangling forty meters above the ground.
It was crazy how quickly one got used to heights when flying. Or at least that was for her. Maybe there were heroes or villains out there that flew really close to the ground, terrified of falling. But now that she was thinking about it, Gravity was probably right. When flying high above the ground, you have plenty of time to fall, meaning you have plenty of time to begin flying once again, if you somehow fall. And if you did, you could calmly recollect your thoughts before you hit the ground. Of course, as calmly as one could get while speeding towards it.
Sweat began falling from her hair.
Reveca wanted to take her mask off to cool her head, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. Instead, she created a breeze that targeted herself and Gravity. The light current was nice, but it felt best when the air hit her exposed skin. Maybe the holes weren’t as useless as she thought.
She leaned back, her palms leaning on the gray rooftop. It had a dirtier and different color than the other walls of the building, which were painted with white, probably since most people wouldn’t get to see it. They weren’t missing anything special.
Her ginger hair blew behind her.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” Reveca suddenly said.
“Gravity. I thought you knew by now,” her mentor said as she kept looking down.
“No, I mean your real name.”
Gravity remained still for a second.
“We can’t disclose our identity to Neighbors,” she finally said. “Company policy says it’s an anti-blackmail measure, or in case a villain had infiltrated the program. Though I doubt the latter.”
Reveca twirled her head to the right.
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“It isn’t,” Gravity replied with her arms folded.
Well, she wouldn’t have expected less from her mentor. Gravity had been very professional for the moment. Which was something she could appreciate… To some point. Sure, she was showing herself as rehabilitated from her times as a vigilante, but… That also made her look like she didn’t care. Her attitude screamed ‘I don’t like doing this, but I’ll do it’, which was something that confused Reveca extremely. Why would anyone risk their life for something if they weren’t passionate about it? What was the reward that justificated the risk? Was she just shy…?
…On second thought, that had been a dumb question. Maybe Reveca hadn’t gained her trust, and she was just trying to be cautious. And maybe she would open up once she had spent…
“Laura,” Gravity said.
Reveca eyed the heroine for a moment. Hadn’t she just said that she couldn’t say it? Several blinks passed by before her lips opened.
“Are you sure you’re okay with breaking the rules?”
“What rules have I broken?” Gravity inquired, with a tone of genuine curiosity.
“You just told me your name.”
“No, I didn’t,” Gravity said plainly. “I just said a name out loud. Never mentioned it was mine.”
Reveca smiled behind her mask.
“Hmm.”
(Maybe…)
“Is something wrong?” Reveca then asked.
“Nothing that would disrupt training,” Gravity answered.
Ok, she would have to wait until she trusted her, though that may be sooner than expected.
“Time’s up,” Gravity said.
Reveca got up and extended her wings with a quick movement of arms and legs. She was just about to jump from the building when Gravity put a hand in front of her.
“Let’s do a different exercise,” she said, letting her hand fall. “We’re gonna simulate a pursuit. I’ll be the villain running, you’ll be the hero chasing.”
Reveca was surprised by the proposed change. She hadn’t been doing much else apart from flying around these last days.
“How much time do I have to get you?” She then asked.
“What it takes me to reach the tower,” Gravity said as she pointed to Ataki Tower. The gargantuan tree and its stature distinguished it from any other building. “Do what you believe necessary.”
Reveca eyed her mentor’s face.
She was basically telling her, ‘Go ham’, meaning she could now use her power. It also suggested that things were going to get serious.
Reveca tightened her fists.
“Do I have to tag you, or do I have to catch you?”
“I’m not going to stop just because you touch me.”
Catch it is. Now, there was only one question left.
“When do we start?” Reveca said, confident. Not trying to appear confident, but being.
Gravity approached Reveca from her right and shoved her into the building’s rooftop.
“Now,” she then said just as she fell in the tower’s direction.
“Fuck,” Reveca growled, also as she fell.
She landed on her but, the material of the costume scraping against the gray and stained pavement. Instead of getting up in a conventional way, Reveca created an intense air current that pushed her wings and compensated for the spoiled start. With a frontflip near the edge and a wave of air that surpassed the one hundred kilometers per hour mark, she began her chase against the falling heroine, who was thirty meters away from her.
Reveca closed her eyes at the same time as she inhaled the crashing air.
Gravity had said that this was a simulation. It wasn’t a test, but it surely had a similar purpose. She had to prove to her that she was capable, because if she didn’t… What would be the point? Why train her? Not only that, but why would someone not give their best when the lives of many depended on the results of their training? The idea felt… Wrong. If she didn’t give her all now, in a safe environment, then what would happen to her when the real deal came?
Reveca opened her eyes. The time had come.
As the name suggested, Gravity could manipulate gravity in some ways, her ability to change how the pull from the planet affected her being one of them. Reveca had to find something which would give her the advantage over her mentor. Fortunately for her, she had studied air resistance and gravity, both the concept and the heroine.
Gravity would eventually reach terminal velocity due to air resistance. Reveca had also read that the heroine, despite being able to change the direction and intensity of the Earth’s pull, couldn’t do both those things at the same time. Of course, Reveca was getting this information from WoloHeroes, meaning there was a possibility that this was entirely incorrect, which wouldn’t have surprised her. Why would anyone make public their limitations? Nevertheless, Reveca knew Gravity had some, whatever they may be. The classification given to her by Ataki said so, and such a thing wasn’t usually dishonest. Vague? Yes. Untrue? Not really.
Said classification categorized Gravity as a one-atlas-seven-alchemist-two-speedster-four-flier-six-nomad. And what such the catchy classification meant was that she had: little to no super strength, a capability to bend gravity with few limitations, reach low superhuman speeds, fly with a velocity below average, and an above average movement capability.
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For her part, Reveca was an aerokinetic with high capabilities. This wasn’t her bragging, or believing herself superior to others. It was a fact. She could create faster currents at further distances with better precision than most aerokinetics, because she simply had the capabilities.
Gravity may have had more experience than her. Hell, maybe more experience than most heroes due to her vigilante past. But Reveca had more raw power and potential. Of course, they had different power sets, and the both aspects wouldn’t nullify each other. Gravity would know things Reveca wouldn’t, while Reveca would be able to do things Gravity simply couldn’t. But they would balance things out.
In other words, she had a chance, and that’s all she needed.
The runner in the blue and brown costume was a speck in the celest skies approaching the only pillar that supported them, it being Ataki Tower. Reveca and Gravity had been in the east part of Expansion Valley, with fifty kilometers in between with the tower. Despite the speed that the both of them had, it was a good fifteen to twenty minutes away.
With the aggressive holw of the winds at her ears, Reveca’s face was starting to get numb, the cool air of fall making her teeth tremble. She divided a partial amount of the air hitting her helmet, making them part both ways to then turn and hit her from behind to increase her speed. Her body then began to feel a gentle warmth as she activated her pyrokinesis.
The flight hadn’t needed a lot of time to reach a steady pace. Gravity wasn’t accelerating anymore, probably having reached terminal velocity. And Reveca had only boosted her velocity enough to match Gravity’s, keeping the same distance she had had at the beginning, choosing to think before acting. The both of them were flying in an open space in the air, relatively close to each other.
It was the best possible outcome for Reveca without a doubt, and Gravity must have known that.
Up here, Reveca could let loose a controlled tornado that would have swept Gravity into her hands without having to worry about collateral damages. Not only that, but she had tons of other options while Gravity limited herself as she didn’t have other objects to use against Reveca.
That’s why suspicion built up inside her.
Why would she do that? Did she have a plan to counter her? Another accomplice like that flier from the other day? Maybe she was luring her to a place where she could surround her. The possibilities were wide and many. Despite that, she couldn’t just sit there while Gravity approached the tower. Reveca had to do something, and she chose to accelerate.
Her progress wasn’t fast due to her doubts, but it was steady. She reduced the distance between the both of them to a mere five meters, and having such a good opportunity, Reveca decided to risk a try at success. She extended her right hand while the other moved in a semicircle, helping her focus as she created a wave with an opposite direction to the one propelling her.
As soon as she felt the surge of air strike, Reveca closed her stretched hand around Gravity’s shin. She then felt the collision of both currents, both having been significantly slowed down to minimize the result of the air crash, and Gravity’s foot on her face. Despite her attempts, Reveca was launched fumbling through the air. Once she resetted her balance with a burst of air, she scanned her surroundings for the runner while opening a bit her jaw. That had hurt quite a bit.
Reveca caught a glimpse of her, seeing how she chose not to go towards the tower. Instead, Gravity was falling, faster than before, to the ground. With a growl, Reveca followed her. It was harder to catch up to her as they fell to the streets below. Somehow, her speed limit had extended. Luckily for her, the Gravity’s boost didn’t last long.
The heroine was forced by the approaching pavement to change directions, her newly found speed disappearing with the turn. She flew above cars and streetlights, her elegance attracting glances. Reveca took advantage and sped up even more than last time, her wake blowing leaves, clothes and treetops in the sidewalk. She had her next to her in less than five seconds, but before she could do anything, Gravity descended even more. She began dancing behind, next to, and in front of moving cars. Her presence was barely an inconvenience to the drivers, and their presence didn’t seem to be a problem to her either. Gravity flowed, sliding like a professional ice skater between the vehicles. Instead of running away from her, she was putting a show for everyone to see.
Reveca sinked into the street, trying to minimize the loss of distance. When she was about to burst another current of air, a car moved behind her, cutting the path to her propelling wind, causing her to suddenly descend while the car veered like crazy. She managed not to fall, but Reveca almost skidded across the floor with her belly, avoiding such fate by creating a rising current of air below her.
The ascending air elevated her, also slowing down her movement. She saw how Gravity was getting away, as if she were water going down a turbulent river without spilling a single drop on the earth. The situation wasn’t playing her way.
Gravity probably knew that she could use the cars to hide among them, giving her a distraction to win more distance. But had she known that Reveca would push the cars with her air currents? Had she lured her into that situation knowing that Reveca wouldn’t be able to take the upperhand?
Reveca bit her lip. Of course she had.
Experience was posing a bigger threat to her than raw power was to Gravity, and that was annoying, because it meant that her chance was slipping.
Gravity was in charge. She was the one that controlled the exercise due to the fact that the winning condition depended mainly on her, and she was taking advantage of that authority. In order to match her. To beat her. Reveca needed to take the lead. Being the one that was chasing, she needed to stop her in her tracks, corner her.
Reveca, from a position above the street, burst a wave of air, making the air ripple around her. She quickly matched Gravity and not only that, she surpassed her. With another burst of air, she stopped. Reveca then used an ascending current below her, aiming at her wings to stay as stationary as she could. She could see Gravity, still dancing between lanes, while her eyes set on her like a predator watching its prey.
Reveca threw herself at Gravity once she was close enough. She extended her hand, trying to grab her costume, but Gravity easily avoided her by falling upwards. Which Reveca had luckily accounted for.
In a confrontation, Reveca knew she would lose against her mentor. Experience was too valuable of a resource in fights, and even with her power, she wouldn’t be able to compensate for her lack of experience in normal hand to hand combat. But she didn’t need to fight her, only catch her for a moment. And that, she could do.
Reveca threw her left hand above her head, and the air answered with an intense current that swept Gravity to even a higher distance above the pavement. She then burst with yet another wave of air, flying towards her while putting herself between the street and the heroine. This way, Reveca would deny her the possibility to hide among the cars once again.
But she was not done.
Reveca reached for the air in front of their oblique trajectory. She reached and began compressing it. Thanks to the fact that Gravity wasn’t far, being a somewhat twenty meters away from her, allowed the bubbles to gather a decent amount of compressed air inside of them. She waited for the moment when Gravity reached the field full of air mines, compressing even more bubbles ahead of it.
Compressing air was a tricky thing. It was a weird application of creating and moving air in a space while at the same time not letting the air pass a certain threshold. Whenever she wanted to create compressed air, Reveca had to mash together rotating air currents, the rotation being what maintained the shape of the compressed area, coming from different angles with the same intensity, otherwise the air would escape.
With a tightened grip on the air, Reveca finished a set of highly compressed air in front of the current one that Gravity was trespassing.
She then let the air flow.
Gravity was hit from multiple directions, her flight being slowed down as she was hauled around, almost stopping thanks to a well placed mine that hit her in the face. Though the hit was clean, she kept her momentum forward, front flipping without control through the air, nonetheless.
She was almost on her reach.
The maintenance of the several mines, the strong current behind her, and the current in front of her reducing the crash of air was hard to achieve, limiting her capability. And having a shot at victory, Reveca decided to get rid of some of the mines, specifically the ones located at the periphery of the path followed by Gravity. They weren’t proving as fruitful as the ones in the center, which were actually hitting the running heroine.
Gravity tried to use her body to correct her trajectory as she kept tumbling through the air. She managed to contain it to the point that it became a slow rotation as she fell to the sky. Reveca approached the heroine as she was facing her, just before she left her range of her view as she turned around. Gravity tried to fall downwards, easily changing directions thanks to her loss of momentum a couple seconds earlier. But Reveca stopped her from doing so by augmenting the range and intensity of the air current propelling her, pushing Gravity to the field of air mines above her.
The fake villain was launched upwards, but didn’t follow the expected trajectory. She began to ascend in an oblique direction to her right, just where a tall building filled with windows stood, similar to the other ones in their vicinity. Reveca let the air of the prepared mines loose, air rippling from her left, while compressing more bubbles next to the building’s wall of glass. She didn’t compress as much air as she had done with the other mines, afraid that they would break the glass when the pressure rained rampant, possibly hurting the people at the other end of the wall. Gravity tried to keep going to her right, but Reveca created two strong and intense air currents, similar to the one from before, which pushed her to the top of the building, where the air traps lay in anticipation, rendering her sideways movement null.
Reveca had done it, she had cornered Gravity.
Reveca was following close behind, five meters away from her while the minefield stood fifty meters or so away from them. Gravity was caught between a rock and a hard place. She could either try to stop, giving an opportunity for Reveca to catch her, or keep flying into the space full of compressed air bubbles, that would knock her over and also give Reveca the chance to catch her. All that remained was to see which option she would choose.
Gravity, of course, chose a third option.
She smashed against one of the building’s windows. Reveca was surprised at how sudden it had been, and when she tried to follow her, she flew past the broken glass. She tried to recover as quickly as she could, getting to the overture shortly after. With nervous feet, Reveca walked over the smashed slivers of glass, causing some of the head in the floor to turn her way. She looked around and found another broken window, it likely being the one Gravity had used to flee. Reveca ran towards it with her wings still deployed and jumped once she was near the ledge.
“Fuck,” she swore under the howl of the wind. She was scanning the exterior for any sign of the runner. There was none. Reveca created an ascending current behind her, propelling herself as high as she could. Once she was a fair distance away from the buildings, she burst the strongest wave of air she could, quickly making her way to Ataki Tower.
Of course she had found a third option. That’s all she had done during the training session. Her plans weren’t bad. They had logic and tactics behind them, they made sense, they were decent. But they had been too predictable.
Reveca was thinking of easy-to-follow plans to compensate for her lack of experience. So easy in fact that even Gravity could anticipate. She had been a fool to think that she could match her right now. Her potential and visions of a promising future were blinding her. How had she expected to catch her when she had learned to fly just three days ago?
Reveca raised as much as she could the heat of her pyrokinesis, the cold air was making her eyes teary. Burning herself wasn’t a concern thanks to her small temperature resistance. To hot temperatures, of course. She also hoped that the augment in temperature would give her even the slightest boost in velocity. She needed every bit of speed she could muster. And gas’ particles worked like that, right?
With the howling winds to keep her company and silence as much as they could her deprecating thoughts, Reveca flew as the wind itself.
After a short journey, she reached the gigantic tree crowning Ataki Tower. Even with the burst of wind she used to stop herself, the wind behind her pushed her away from the building, also causing the twisted branches to swing in the opposite direction she had come. Reveca quickly corrected her miscalculation and centered herself above the tower, looking out for an incoming blur.
She had been quicker than Gravity, right? Her absence here indicated that. Reveca prepared herself to strike her with the strongest storm she could throw. She waited. The only thing that informed her about the pass of time was the usual horn dampened by distance and the movement of the few clouds in the skies. Except that, everything else was silent.
Until the elevator rang.
Reveca turned around to see Gravity stepping out from the machine, a box under one of her right arm whilst she held a book in her left one. The heroine opened the white box and took something pink out of it while looking straight at her. She moved her mask a fraction and began eating.
She had stopped for donuts on her way here.
Reveca descended until she was next to her.
“You really said you take your work seriously when you’re here eating a donut in the middle of a training session?” Reveca practically scowled at her. She was furious. Livid. But most of all, she was annoyed with herself. Because she had lost to someone who didn’t even take her seriously.
“I’m not. The session was already over before I even opened the box. Why, does it make you angry?” Gravity asked with sincere curiosity.
“Of course it does! You don’t need to rub it on my face, I know that I wasn’t even close to get you!”
“Good. Then the donuts fulfilled their purpose.”
Reveca took a step back, containing her anger and her wish to strike her across the face.
“Why?” Was the only thing she was able to articulate.
“Because I now can make you go one hundred percent serious with the mention of donuts.”
“I was already giving it my all!”
“Were you? Then why didn’t you use compressed air from the start?”
“I was waiting to see what you were going to do.”
“Mmh,” the heroine answered, with a tone that implied she wasn’t buying it. “Why didn’t you attack me? I understand why you didn’t before I did. But after?”
“That…!”
That… That…
“And how were you limiting yourself?” Gravity continued. “You didn’t create a storm or even go at full speed. And don’t tell me you couldn’t because I saw the footage from your entry tests and how you were flying on your way back.”
“I… I did give my all,” she said, barely a whisper.
She did. She went all out. She must have given her all.
“Because the alternative is…”
“Stupid,” Gravity finished for her. “That’s what you were going to say?”
Reveca faced the ground.
“Holding back isn’t a bad thing. In theory,” she added after a pause. “It just means that you don’t like hurting people, that’s it. There are a bunch of people that don’t want to hurt someone or get hurt themselves. And from an analytical perspective, those kinds of people are not meant to hurt people…. Or to be heroes.”
Reveca snapped her head to face her with the most menacing stare she could do. Unfortunately the effect was dampened by a few tears which were falling from her eyes.
“Prove me otherwise. Prove me that stare is right.”
Gravity then extended the hand with the book.
“What is that?” Reveca said, not letting her tears ruin her tone. It was already embarrassing enough.
“Punishment for holding back.”
(Holding back, not failing,) Reveca mentally remarked.
Reveca took the book, turned it around and read the title.
‘A guide to fliers’
“And if you excuse me, I have something to take care of,” Gravity said as she hopped once again in the elevator. The bell rang, and the machine descended deeper into the building.
And with that, Reveca was left alone with her thoughts, without any wind that could silence them.