A lot of things were happening.

Specifically, a lot of things to Liam.

He dodged a blow from his mother’s right, doing a short hop as the woman tried knocking his balance over with a kick. He stepped back from the myriad of combos, feeling safe for a moment only for the woman to follow with a low sweep to his legs. Multiple jabs went his way and he winced as he was forced to block two of the hits in an attempt to move himself out of a corner. The force behind the hits were almost four times stronger and faster than he was used to, and the only reason he’d been able to block the blows without his arms snapping had been because of his new body.

The sharp black tint on his arms and shoulders, as well as the new sense of balance and improved eyesight, it all combined to make him faster and stronger. Even his height was taller, two-ish extra inches on his meager 5’8 had given him just slightly more than 5 feet and 10 inches in height. It felt a bit awkward at first but he’d soon taken to it rather nicely. He could feel the extra muscle, the extra density on his body, all seamlessly formed together to give him incredible strength.

Nowhere enough to take even 25% of his mother’s power, however.

The woman backed off, a satisfied smile on her face as she saw Liam fall to the floor in complete exhaustion. As if to mock him, all she was doing while he was gasping for air was a couple casual stretches. It was as if she hadn’t just fought at incredible speeds for twenty minutes straight. They had moved straight from the house to his mother’s gym the moment the woman had figured out the ‘trespasser’ inside the house had been an Ego mutation of one of his clones.

He could still feel the pain in his stomach, even after it had healed.

“So your strength isn’t quite the level of a low-rank… but it's still quite impressive. That was decent for an endurance test, Liam. Let’s take 20 minutes to rest, then we’ll test your burst strength.” Mika spoke, before running to the end of the sparring room to grab some water. He could barely raise a hand up to the air, waiting for her to turn back to him before he flipped her the bird. She just scoffed, and threw the half empty bottle of water at him, landing a blow right on his head and soaking him. “10 minutes now.”

… at least the water was refreshing.

He really wished he hadn’t explained to her what he thought had happened. The woman was giddy with excitement, figuring out how much his body could bend before it snapped…

He sighed, hoping the next test wouldn’t be quite so hands-on with her. She had been holding back all these years when training with him, and even though he knew that it was still amazing to see just how much strength she had in her. A single punch of hers at full strength had been enough to break the ribcage and bruise the organs of this newly mutated clone, and knocked him out immediately.

He had found himself tied up to a chair before that happened, and it had only been until his mom had seen his panicked golden eyes that she realized the stupidity of the situation. She (and Liam too, honestly) had thought some perverted criminal had tried to break into the house and steal their unmentionables. What actually had been the case was his clone, after healing its injuries, had been…

Merely doing the laundry, specifically the light coloured underwear.

How these brainless things knew how to do these chores without his exact permission still shocked Liam. It turned out they weren’t quite as brainless as he thought, because whatever the clone Liam had beat half to death did, it must have been based on an extreme desire. Ego transformations derived from human desire, and it must have been similar for the clone. A desire to live, most likely.

That desire didn’t seem to come directly from them, however.

His clone that had a broken leg still hadn’t healed anything by the time he had woken up, and neither had the one with the bruised fingers. This clone had been different for some reason, especially because… well.

Its powers weren’t just limited to the clone.

“I think… I’m ready to go again.” Liam said, standing back up with a new strength in his step. The muscles that had felt so weak just a few moments ago had suddenly turned hot, only to reenergize as if nothing had happened. His stomach felt a bit emptier, but his muscles felt great. He grinned, showing a pair of fangs that hadn’t been quite as pronounced in his old transformation.

The moment was ruined as he dodged a dumbbell the size of his head. Mika had been looking at him with impressed eyes, as if she hadn’t expected him to dodge the weights that could turn the old him into paste. “Regeneration, high reaction speed, and near low-tier physical enhancements… Gotta say it. I’m jealous.”

He snarled, knowing where this was going. “Can’t help being such a winner, mom. Maybe we can stop this before I hurt your pride anymore?”

She grinned, the malice laced inside her eyes so viscous it almost seemed to drip onto the floor. ”I’ve been against worse, son. Now, we’re going to do this again, and this time I might not take it so… easy. You’ll heal right up, after all.”

She took a stance, her arms loose in front of her while her legs were spread wide. He scowled, taking up the same stance. In the house she’d been forced to be stiff when she had fought his clone, in order to keep the preciously few belongings in their house intact. It had made her slow and hesitant, the same as if someone had been fighting in a house full of glass. This was a sparring room with district 2 anti-power tech.

Someone with her strength could go all out here.

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“Demon woman… cares nothing about me,” Liam muttered. He was in shambles as he trudged up the stairs to his room. The moment the woman had understood the fact that his fractured bones and muscles healed within minutes, and that it burned through his metabolism for the resources…

He had gone through a living hell.

He was home now, but he still couldn’t get the chalky taste of those damn gross snacks at the gym out of his mouth. She had forced him to eat almost two dozen of them, and unfortunately for him she had paced it just enough to make him only feel like he was ready to throw it all up. Sprinting for an hour, 4 ‘protein’ snacks, lifting for an hour, 4 more ‘protein’ snacks. In the end, they had just been sparring again nonstop, for the next four hours.

It had gone to the point where after a sparring match, Liam, who had been rendered useless in all but his mouth, would have had to sit through his mom shoving one of those damn bars into his face, crouching in front of him and holding it out like a child did when trying to feed a stray animal. It only made it more hurtful to his pride when she had taken the same amount of the snacks and downed them herself, looking none the worse for it.

She must have needed them from all the beatings she had given him by the end. He groaned, still feeling the pain in his body even long after it healed. The wounds may have been gone but the memories still remained, and they were somehow even more pronounced than when he had died to the Ego-death. He chalked it up to the woman having some sort of vendetta against him for all the trouble he had caused in the past week.

That wasn’t right, was it? The week hadn’t even…

Wait, had it really only been two days?

He groaned, hoping that he had already squeezed out all the excitement in his life, and that the rest of it would be complete peace and damned quiet until he grew old and died. At least he had finally made it to his goddamn room. He was finally alone…

Ah, right.

One of his clones was at his study desk, while the other had been laying on his bed, both nurturing their own respective, broken bones.

What a goddamn bother.

He moved to the bed and grabbed the clone by its bad leg, earning a violent, sudden flinch that caught him off guard. It didn’t stop him from pulling it off the bed, however. It fell pretty easily thanks to his new strength and he had to catch himself from squeezing down on the ankle too hard. The clone made that little detail harder to do when it had brought half the bed along with it. “Goddamnit… Neither of you are allowed on my bed, lay on the floor or something if you want to sleep.” A few more painful minutes of setting up his bed, he jumped on with a massive groan of relief.

It was moments like these that made training with his mom almost worth it.

The tension melted from his shoulders and back as he finally forced himself to relax. This bed had been his only respite in this entire district, he tried his best to close his eyes and fall asleep… The clones were making it damn hard to do that, though. One was staring at him while the other was just out of sight, presumably never having left the floor. Ordering the bastard looking at him to turn at the wall only made things worse, the sight of them just standing an inch from the wall stock still being almost nightmarish.

…Man, how the hell did he sleep yesterday?

Eventually, he rose up with a groan, no longer feeling quite so tired as he was anxious. The damn clone was still laying on the floor was still there, looking up at him as if it wasn’t being the stupidest goddamn creature on the planet. “...How the hell do you two do laundry but can’t figure out when you’re pissing me off. Get the hell up and… sit down at the desk.” He muttered, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. It was still only around 8pm so he still had plenty of time to do shit before school started tommorow.

He just watched as the clone struggled to get up and wobbled to the seat, putting as little weight as possible onto the ankle that had been sprained. It had swollen up in the time Liam and his mom had gone to spar, but it seemed to be healing nicely.

It wasn’t any type of super regeneration, though.

Their had to be a trick to the clone he was inhabiting at the moment. He raised his hand, and moved the clawed fingers in front of him, letting the scrape against the hard skin occasionally. It was insane to have turned into an ego so suddenly, and without any warning. “...How the hell can I make you two heal any faster? None of this is making any sense.” He groaned as the two just tilted their heads at him, hating the fact that he was having a converstaion with brainless creatures. He steeled his eyes and went to his desk, ripping out an unused notebook.

It would amount to nothing if all he did was ask questions.

He went back to his bed and rested on the side, scribbling down his thoughts on the powers. He tried to recall every little thing he had done to these things, and why only one of them had come to regenerate so quickly. It wasn’t very cohesive when he was done, but it was enough to see a pattern.

* Shifting into one is instant, but takes some kind of trigger. I can’t turn into one on my own.

* One of them I hurt, and it regenerated. The rest don’t regenerate.

* Making a copy of myself makes me tired, but not if I shift into the other clone.

* They follow orders to the letter sometimes, but can generally do everything I tell them.

* I am an Ego now

* They don’t go away when they die, or they might but only my original body can’t…

That got him to stop writing. He glanced up to the ceiling, a shiver running down his spine as he considered that idea. It’d be a real shame if his body dissolved when it died. It’d be the same as if he had never existed in the first place. It’d be worse if he took a bullet to the heart only to start melting like sludge. He’d seen some Ego-deaths die like that, and it had never been a pretty sight.

…well, he had a couple clones in front of him to test it out.

With his new body, that wouldn’t be so hard…

That idea was quickly snuffed out. He may have had the option but even if he had done it as cleanly as possible, there’d still be an entire body to dispose of if his theory had been wrong. Besides, it would give him nightmares to kingdom come if he actually found out his body was no longer real.

…Man, he really hoped he was real.

Throwing the notebook aside, he reached for one of the drawers at his side and pulled out a small knife. There was still one thing he wanted to test out, and this would also deal as a quick sleeping fix. He jammed the blade into his palm, having to dig into the the flesh in a twisting motion to actually pierce. It pierced easier than he had expected, which was disappointing. A gun would still kill him in a couple shots, unfortunately.

That wasn’t what he was testing, though.

The blood in his palm went forward and twisted in shape, landing on the floor and staining the wood. It morphed and turned into a black ball of goop with a disgusting, sloppy noise, until it finally started turning into something a bit more familiar. Liam grinned as the clone stared back at him, the same golden eyes looking at him as they formed on the bed on all fours in front of him, over his legs. It was a success.

He kicked the copy off him, hearing them fall to the ground with a grunt. There had not been any worry of it taking any injury.

Not with it’s Ego mutation.