POV Jack, retired policeman

Somehow we smoothly got Vivaldi under military control. We were expecting fight or at least some kind of violent confrontation. He was described as violent and dominant person. He became very submissive after we showed him, that we had miliary power and info.

Info, we had about Kirk showed that he was meek participant of religious group and after that group fell apart, he became Vivaldi’s lackey out of his own will. We didn’t expect much resistance out of him. Our main consideration was, that he lived on suburbs of Shield city. We couldn’t intimidate him with military vehicles or even with large number of soldiers. Steps, military and part of police forces were doing, were half official half illegal.

We went for Kirk with large number of soldiers. They were in civil clothes mainly. One could see, that they were soldiers, because trained solder had military style of doing things. Attention and rest kind of behavior was in their blood.

When we knocked to his door, Kirk was resting after another all-night party. Soldiers surrounded building. It took long moment before we heard some movement and request for us to wait. I was with two soldiers before his doors and we waited.

He jumped from window on opposite side of the building. He throw kitchen knives at soldiers and passers-by. Some old woman, that lived in nearby house, was too curious and got knife into the head. Soldiers gave chase. They had orders to shot in legs, but after some of their companions got knives in guts, they were shooting little higher.

It took lot of shots to get down Kirk. We took his body, stole stone entity from building and left area. Local police was cooperating with us. They came after we left. There were few hurt people, but only unlucky old lady died.

Army had its own doctors and one of them was very surprised, that Kirk, who had lots of bullets in the chest, was still alive. We took him to military hospital.

After doctors examined him, they stated some unusual facts. Kirk’s heart was shot twice, he had multiple punctures of inner organs. We skipped part about legs and ass. He had blood pressure around thirty. Somehow, something was providing his brain with enough oxygen, that he didn’t die. He had unusual contents in blood.

Normally, during lifetime human body became home to many bacteria, yeasts and other miniscule creatures. We are, humans, enclosed ecosystems for life creatures, we call primitive. They are smart enough, most of them, to live and be helpful or neutral to us. Vitamin D is produced in human guts by bacteria. Most of those stowaway passengers are in guts. Some are living in blood or tissues.

Kirk blood had something unusual living in it. These things, whatever they were, helped Kirk to stay alive. Moreover, his bone structure was enhanced and his muscles were changed. Muscles alone could stop bullets from small caliber guns. It meant that bullet would be stop inside of muscle mass.

Guy was unconscious. Military big fishes were debating, if they should decapitate that guy or help him recover. He acted violently and didn’t seem to be reasonable. Even if he would recover, he would remember, who shot him. They decided to decapitate him. Doctors did the procedure.

Decapitation is universal procedure for ending life of brain in mammals. It works each and every time. Autopsy confirmed it in that particular case also.

POV Coal

We got info from Jack, that Vivaldi was under military control and Kirk was shot during his try to escape. It shook us inside. We got used to think, that reapers, not, that we could be reaped.

Most of the Devas had big psychological problem with that, that we cooperated with Jack against bio-stones. It looked as me, En, Smoke were after continuation of cooperation. Sith and Mouse were neutral. Rest were against cooperation. It seemed, that we would have inner fracture.

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Nameless didn’t allow fracture to grow. He said, that some kind of cooperation was inevitable, as we couldn’t destroy military. But if majority was against cooperation, then that majority should create rules by which we all should act when confronted with military requests. All of Devas, Unlimited and Associated were included in that discussion.

Inner discussion, among Unlimited Devas only, was done on topic of bio-stone left by Kirk. It wasn’t trivial. We could ask for that bio-stone. We could try to force our candidate to become new host. We could left military with minimum information, what to do with it. We could provide them with some info, that would allow them to create new host. We could give them info, how to create new host safely. We couldn’t find solution, that would please us all.

We had some time to consider our options.

POV Main

There is point, when you achieve maximum, what you can do with something. As I did with [Muscle] and [Body integrity]. There was that special feeling of limitation. I felt, that I was limited, till Dee would invent some better mixture. If I didn’t have passion for magic, I would felt down. Even when I put my main attention to magic, I felt that big cloud over me. Normal people call that experience of limitation midlife crisis.

People, who had midlife crisis are not freaks or psychos. They just stand on top of the hill and can see, that there is only descend before them. So they go back fooling themselves, that there was some better path, they could choose. There wasn’t. Still, anxiousness needs to be beaten by experience.

There is only one solution in western culture to midlife crisis. You can only have fun descending. In pre-western culture solution was to put hopes on children. I can guess, that in post-western culture, it will be gene therapy or something very similar.

So, I got that other hill, I could try to ascend. I spent lot of time experimenting with magic. I mixed different kind of abilities searching for something new. It really ate my time. If I wasn’t enthusiast on magic, I would resign and went to other things many times. My road to magic success was filled with failures. After I got some results, I could see, that there was logic in magic. That it could be made smarter not harder. But it couldn’t, because you were smarter only afterwards.

I was searching for something, that would be counted as counter choice to sonic boom. I got sonic boom as base point. I had reference points such as lightning, friction control and freezing. I ended with blowing empty air with mixture of magic effects. It only created some refreshing winds. At some point I reconciled, that I could only create wind. Wind is nothing much. But, having friction control and freezing I learned hot to accumulate movement of air around me. It was nothing much at beginning. I bended wind with friction control and it circled me. I didn’t blow air with my fists. Sudden short movements of my muscles and freezing were creating more air movement. Key factor was control over moving air. When you connected breeze into circle, something was changed. Some physical property changed in that tunnel of air. It was loosing its momentum, but I could sustain it and reinforce it into cycle. It didn’t have much power, but it deflected thrown items. I built it up, putting more cycles, one on another. One day Dee showed me, that I could change sonic boom ability into wind sphere ability. I chose that. Not because it was better, but because it was mine.

It wasn’t even sphere. Those were chains of air circling around me. I could feel, if someone or something was crossing perimeter about one and half to two meters around me. It hindered attackers, but not by much. It deflected things a little, plasma balls included. When combined with my friction control it boosted my movements.

Most importantly it was last ability from major magic abilities, as Dee said.

It stroke me then. Those magic abilities were fight oriented. When you think about it, no successful species in human nature was successful, because it had fight oriented abilities. There is no such animal. Before humans ants had bigger biomass on globe. But even looking on big cats, most successful weren’t tigers or lions but smaller like panthers or jaguars. Even bear wasn’t successful because of his strength, but his omnivore habits.

In nature, only those infighting in own species invest in totally offensive abilities. Hunting needs different abilities to merge during one action to be successful. More adult deer, adult stags died from other stags during fight over female, than from predators. They had deer horns to kill each other.

I got the feeling, that we were cheated. We, hosts of bio-stones. Our magic couldn’t help us much in building a house. But it could be used to destroy house more easily.

When you have hammer, all you can see is nail. Abilities to fight would led us to conflicts and fights. If bio-stones granted or enhanced us on that road, it meant, that there would be fight in future. It was fucked up. It went against everything I wanted achieve. I believed, as Bartosiak was preaching on youtube, in systems achieving political stability, which let everyone grow.

It was horror, if we were made to fight. It was sneer from Darvin’s theory of evolution. I went for really long talk with Dee. I was ready to serious steps, if I didn’t get some understanding and promises.