“Mom said I’m almost at the level of a low-tier. And that I’ve got super regeneratioo- gauhn…” The crazy woman pressed a wooden popsicle stick into his tongue, jamming it side to side in order to get a good look at all of his teeth. “I see… That alongside the oversize canines makes you more of a predatory Ego shift… Interesting. I don’t know how this correlates with your cloning ability, however… It would help with combative measures but not to the same level as pure strength enhancements would. Clones wouldn’t need to live long after all… What did you say happened?”

He groaned, fighting the urge to push the teacher off as the wooden stick invaded his mouth. She had spent the past half hour being groped, manhandled, and forced to pose for her. It didn’t help that the training room had another one of those dress codes they had to follow. Just like in normal gym class, Liam had been put in a sleeveless shirt that stuck to his skin, as well as a pair of black shorts he had at least had the ability to choose. It had been meant for him to exercise, but he was doing very little of that right now thanks to the woman invading his mouth.

He should have listened to Wyland, since this ‘Mrs. Deus’ person was crazier than someone on Skimmer. The longer he got to know her, the more he found himself thinking she was actually a good person, though. At the very least she hadn’t been put off by his Ego enhancements, quite the contrary, she seemed obsessed to know every little bit about it, much more than even his superpower.

Egos were a rare thing in Utopia, apparently, so he was prime research material.

“Somewhat retractable claws and teeth… regeneration too. Predatory ego shifting perhaps, but balanced? That makes no sense… You know, this would go a lot more smoothly if I had just a bit of your blood…” She muttered, glancing it him with some hope. He glared at her expectant eyes, which earned a look of petty disappointment. She’d done this twice already, and he had denied her every time just like now. Mrs. Deus’ face turned to one unbecoming of a teacher, like a thug that hadn’t been given what they want. “Tch, kids these days are too scared of a needle, I can just ask for a bit of the blood vial Wyland took in your classroom.”

He winced at the words, and she grinned. “Yeah, and Wyland owes me one, punk.”

He grimaced at the mere thought of this woman with a bit of his blood, not sure if it would be used for something terrible. He still wasn’t sure if this woman wasn’t obsessed or an evil person, after all.

It had taken a while before he had come to the realization that she wasn’t just an avid fan of freaks. Apparently her intelligence enhancements had been purely to study upon the superhero awakenings. She was able to see things in people with powers that others simply couldn’t. It made her one of the most important people in Utopia. At least, that’s what came from her own mouth. Considering the other things she had spoken of, it definitely made her untrustworthy.

His arm was raised up as she once again inspected the horn like protrusions coming from his elbows. “-Ego shifting isn’t an evil thing like most people think, Liam. At least, it doesn’t affect the mind on any actual level. People who go through the transformation still gain powers, but their body changes to form a need that suits the Super. Tests were actually created to pinpoint the trigger effects of Ego shifts as late as a hundred years ago. Intelligence enhanced Supers are quite fragile, you see, and having a flexible exoskeleton like yours would create an excellent protective measure, even if it’s not quite so durable as say, your big friend over there.”

She pointed to Ezekiel, Who was being trained to take hits from Wyland. The kid had his hands in front of him in a semblance of a fighting stance, but would immediately break it and back off when Wyland went for a hit. It was sad to see, but it made up for it with the look of frustration on Wyland’s face. The rest of the kids were being trained in similar ways. Lidia and the Emily girl, as well as the flamer kid, left into a different room. Sometimes he could see through the door that there was a looming orange glow of flames, only for it to be quickly snuffed out...

They weren’t with a teacher, which worried him. Wyland was training with Ezekiel while the other two teachers seemed to be out of sight. The rest seemed to be practicing with their powers, or trying to spar with each other. Not many of them were being chaperoned by a teacher, actually. It seemed Liam was one of the lucky ones.

At least he had a show.

Liam grinned at the sight of Wyland reprimanding the kid who was almost twice his size. “Ah, don’t be mean. I’m sure your friend is doing his best.” Mrs. Deus said, bringing the elbow near her face. He snarled, wondering how she still thought that. “Not my friend. I barely know the guy.” The woman scoffed, grabbing onto his elbow horn and pulling down, sending the weirdest feeling down Liam's arm.

“Whayuavh… Get the hell away from that!” The shuddering feeling left as soon as it came, and he pulled away from the woman in embarrassment. She was smiling, writing something else on the clipboard on a chain hung around her neck. “Must be sensitive since it’s new. ‘Else it wouldn’t have been so painful.” He shook his head, earning a curious look from Mrs. Deus. “It wasn’t painful, just like… Like.” He furrowed his brow trying to remember what the feeling felt like…

Then it hit him.

He felt the canine tooth the teacher had been inspecting moments before, pulling on it with a bit of strength to make sure he was correct. He was. “It felt like you put a plier onto one of my teeth and tried pulling it off. You didn’t do it hard so it didn’t hurt, but I felt a rush down into my stomach… Guess it’s a bone or something?” She nodded, no longer focused on that body part. “Or something. Teeth aren’t bones after all. It seems socketed as well so it might actually regrow if it breaks off.”

Socketed?

Break off?

“… teeth aren’t bones?”

Why was that his first question?

Another half hour of inspecting him, and finding details about him that even he hadn’t been aware of… (Apparently, his toes had become hooked and extra jointed, and his achilles tendon, whatever that was, was bigger and built better for jumping.) And Mrs. Deus finally started asking about what he wanted to know most of.

His powers.

“I guess we can get to the boring parts.” She waved her hands dismissively as she talked, no longer anywhere near as eager as before, apparently. “Please make a clone of yourself. Let’s see if I can figure out how this works…”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

He nodded, putting the palm of his hand on his newly discovered fanged teeth. He stopped moments before sinking down, much to the woman’s disappointment. She still seemed to obtain plenty of information from just the action alone, though. At least, if her mad scribbling on her clipboard had anything to say about it. “Activated through pain? Blood? Maybe it’s a form of splitting the nutrients in the body… Interesting! What’s taking you so long, Liam? Too scared?”

He grimaced at the thinly veiled attempt at a taunt. “No. I can do it, but only if you can keep the bastard. I’m not going to keep another one of them in my house. I’ve got enough as it is… what?” The way she looked at him was like she’d just seen a ghost. “Are you telling me it doesn’t take active concentration to keep them materialized? That would mean the clones are capable of some kind of conscious thought… fascinating.”

Liam scoffed, thinking back to those stupid things. “Hardly. Sometimes they do orders without asking but most of the time they act like whatever I say is law. It’s like they don’t even bother to think about how stupid they’re being. I remember telling one to hop on one foot and… something happened and they fell which made them break an ankle or something. Then I had to deal with the damn clone fighting my mom in the house. Didn’t even recognize it until I took a hit from the woman… Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but don’t look at me like that, Deus.”

The woman seemed awestruck, only snapping out of it when she heard her name used so unprofessionally. “At the very least call me teacher, boy. I have a doctorate, you know? It’s enough disrespect to call me just Mrs.Deus. Most would call me Dr. Deus.” He rolled his eyes, another thing he did wrong because of another word he did not know. She still seemed plenty ready to talk about the power and its requirements, though, so he assumed it wasn’t really important.

“Now, tell me about your power! I thought for sure your Ego shift came from the fight with the Ego-death yesterday. If that wasn’t the case, then something traumatic must have happened aside from that incident… Though, how you survived is a completely different story now. Do the clones pass on whatever they have to the main body? I’ve heard of crazier things, but…” He shook his head. “I died. And I woke up at home. I didn’t know what happened until I saw my body at school.“ For a moment the woman went silent, and he wondered if he said too much.

Then she pulled his head to the side, checking inside his ear. “You woke up in another clone!? Outrageous! You say that the clones barely respond to stimuli unless provoked, so unless you were lying then it must be true that your consciousness shifted… That immediately makes this power a lot more useful, huh? Say, do you remember what the clone felt as their body was being taken over?” Her words were eager for answers, and that damn smile on her face was back.

He was shocked at how well she took the words, but couldn’t help but be comforted at the way she was. Her brunt demeanor reminded him of some of the more… eccentric people from the badlands. It was actually a bit comforting. “I woke up in another clone, but I didn't get any memories. I just found myself with a pair of scissors on the front lawn… They were cutting the bushes for some reason.” The scissors… that brought up some bad memories.

“Hedge trimming… while you have little idea of the concept. Perhaps their minds are downloaded with a set of information that disappears to make way for your consciousness, but that would mean that…” The teacher stopped speaking, scribbling down onto her clipboard with a newfound fervor. Liam, for some reason, didn’t mind it at this point. It was fun to have someone so open with their ideas around him. Maybe it was something unique to intelligence enhanced supers, and luckily enough today he’d found two of them.

Maybe coming to school hadn’t been as big of a mess up as he thought.

The woman was muttering something about his cloning at some point, and for some reason he was feeling a lot more charitable. “You want a clone? You can take it and experiment with it while I mess around.” He wanted to test out the limits of his strength and speed, and looking around this place it seemed there were quite a bit of machines made for such a thing. By the way her eyes shined, it was as if he’d asked her hand in marriage.

She clasped her hands in his and went close, shocking him a bit. Her nose almost touched his. “Seriously! And I can keep it? You said I can keep it before, right?” The way she worded that made him nervous, and it reminded him of the times he’d been referred to as a Jit-toy back in district 3.

Eh, it wasn’t his problem if his clone got… used, right? “Yeah, whatever. Let me just… move back a bit.” She moved like a robot, so quickly he almost hadn’t realized she’d been following orders. Were all intelligence enhanced heroes this… wierd? He decided not to think about it, and sunk down his teeth onto his forearm. He was surprised at how easily his new fangs went in… Not quite as easy as the knife from yesterday, but still with enough ease to remind him just what kind of new person he’d become. The thought went away as he saw his blood rush out, forming a blob on the floor about the size of a head…

It was an unnatural amount of blood, just like it had been last night. He and Mrs. Deus, as well as a now resting Wyland and Ezekiel, watched the blob shift and form into something bigger, until it turned into another version of him, crouching on the floor with a look of suspicion on their face.

Huh.

Liam gently placed his foot on their shoulder, and pushed them so they went off balance and fell to the ground. He didn’t know why he liked hurting his clones, but it was probably the fact that they always looked so goddamned pretentious looking… That was his face, though, so he wasn’t about ready to say that aloud. “Yeah, uh, here you go. Follow everything she says, alright clone?” He said, getting up to leave. The clone stood immediately, looking at the woman without any emotion in its eyes. “It really is a conscious version of you! It even has a consciousness in it’s eyes, can you hear me?” She grinned even wider as the clone nodded in response, and began the maddening scribbles onto her notebook.

The woman was excitedly chatting up a storm, but none of it seemed aimed at him so he thought it’d be a good chance to leave.

His head was woozy from the cloning process, but nowhere near as bad as it had been the first time. He chalked it up to it all being a new part of his ego form and went for the nearest source of water, until he was stopped by a towering figure.

Ezekiel.

Shit. Liam lowered himself and took a stance. The nails on his fingers tensed up and jutted out a small bit more, something he hadn’t experienced until now. The kid seemed freaked out, but only a little bit compared to a couple days ago. Maybe they finally realized just how strong their power was compared to his.

…Shit.

He was ready to get his ass handed to him, until Ezekiel spoke. “Teacher told us to… To spar together. He told me to come get you…” Liam raised an eyebrow, looking past the big guy and to where Wyland had been. They were casually looking at a phone in their hand until they noticed him staring. He felt a headache as all they did was wave happily at him. Liam groaned, turning to Mrs. Deus for a way out. “You don’t need something from me, right teach- err.. Doctor Deus?” The woman didn’t even look his way, too busy analyzing the clone who had, by this point, had everything but its shorts ripped off, purely because it was holding them as she tried pulling them down. “Nope,you get out of here. You little bastard, get those off.”

She almost succeeded until Wyland ran in, angrily pulling her aside to tell her that that absolutely wasn’t something that could be done in public. She had tried arguing that it wasn’t a human, and that even if it was no one wanted to look at an Ego anatomy… that had been loud enough for some of the students to hear, earning a couple pitying glances towards Liam. A few solid minutes of arguing and insult throwing and the woman had had enough. “Gah, fine! You damn heroes and your dumb rules!” she huffed and pulled the clone to a different room that had opened up from a wall that had been completely blank before...

Ezekiel looked at him nervously as Wyland was still yelling obscenities. “Do we go get him?” Liam’s head felt like it was on fire, unsure of how the hell this kid still had the balls to ask him that.

…why the hell was he being put through this.