Finally getting some peace after getting a week's worth of action in the span of half a day, Calvin opted to take the rest of the next day off. Not off work, since he enjoyed the normalcy of it, but off everything else that wasn't normal.

Normal being a relative term.

The morning passed by without any excitement. He woke up, worked out, harassed Sam, went to work, and went back to the apartment.

The only relatively interesting thing that happened is when he got a notification that the credits Dox had promised to give him from his being a test subject was deposited on his account. It was more than enough for him to be able to buy his own place, but thinking about leeching more from Sam while actually having money was somewhat gratifying.

----------------------------------------

"Hey, Sam. Do you know any henchmen fighting schools I can apply to?" Calvin asked while the two were lounging on the couch after work.

Sam gave him a passing glance, turning his attention back to the television. "I'm a smuggler, not a henchman."

"Then... smuggler fighting school?"

"No. Why do you want to know?" He turned back to Calvin.

"I want to learn how to bake. What do you think?"

He looked at him inquisitively, "is this about when you fought the motorcycle helmet guy?"

Calvin looked back at him briefly before turning his attention back to the tv. The commemorative mug in his hands trembled lightly, the sting of pain from the man's punches and kicks were still there despite the bruises already being gone.

"I just want to be prepared for the next time you take me out for an adventure. Just in case." He shrugged.

Sam raised a brow but didn't comment. "You know, I was always wondering why you kept exercising in your room at the butt crack of dawn."

"It's so I don't grow old and decrepit like you, old man."

"I'm an intellectual, not a brute like you." He raised his hands in surrender. "I'm not asking that. I'm asking why you're doing it in your room. We have a gym in the building."

"We do?"

"It's in the basement."

"There's a basement? Why didn't you tell me?"

"You didn't ask." He said, a smirk appearing at the corner of his mouth. "I thought you'd have asked someone, to be honest. You've been pumping it every morning like a musclehead."

"Fuck." Calvin cursed. "Can you blame me? This place barely looks like it has working pipes."

"Never judge a building by its pipes."

"I think an inspector would refute that." He muttered, thinking for a moment whether or not to make time later. He shrugged, wanting to keep chillin for now, "I'll check it out tomorrow."

"Just ask Vince. He'll point you to where it is."

"Vince doesn't even lift his head to look at me anymore."

"That's just how he is." Sam gestured helplessly. "Also, it's probably better to go there in the afternoon."

"Why's that?"

"Just trust me."

"Okay?" He shrugged, "By the way, can I get one of those masks? The ones from last night?"

Sam looked suspiciously towards him. "Why?"

"Something I want to try."

"I'm not enough of a hypocrite to tell you it's dangerous. Just don't be a creep with it, okay?"

"I'm not you." Calvin glared at him. "And it's not for henchmen shit."

"Yeah, yeah. Just give me five-hundred dits and I'll give one to you tomorrow. Along with the pocket you forgot to take from Dox." Sam stood up, putting down the mug of coffee and fixing himself up. "Alright, I got a date. I'll see you tomorrow."

Calvin grimaced at Sam's suggestive wink. "Ew."

Sam chuckled and left the apartment. Calvin sighed for a moment, turning back to the TV to watch a commercial about a new flavor of Destructoman soda.

"I'll go tomorrow morning." He muttered to himself. The day was for himself and his mental health.

'Tomorrow.' he kept repeating in his mind like a mantra, tapping his finger along with the annoyingly catchy jingle from the commercial.

After a moment more, he sighed and put his mug down. He grabbed the remote, pressed the button to turn off the TV, and then went out of the apartment.

Down a few flights of stairs, and into a narrow corridor, he faced the familiar man slouched over behind the desk. He was playing with his holowatch as per usual, like a sedentary constant in Calvin's life here.

"Hey, Vince." He greeted the clearly sleep-deprived man. "I heard there's a gym here."

Vince stopped what he was doing and looked up. His dull grey eyes scanned him up and down for a second before speaking. "New shirt?"

Calvin looked down. He forgot he was changing its color this morning to experiment with the new power. Right now it was a kaleidoscope of chaotic and vivid colors. Like a tie-dye shirt made by a primary school student.

"You could say that." He shrugged.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"What's wrong with the old one?" Vince asked, oddly still paying attention to him.

"Nothing? Just changing things up." He said, looking at the man still staring at the shirt. "Anyway, the gym?"

"Sam told you huh." Vince mumbled. "Down the corridor you came from until you see a second stairwell on your left."

"Thanks." Calvin nodded and went his way.

He walked down the grimy hallway, passing by equally grimy occupants walking through, until he reached the grimy stairwell at the end. There was another flight of stairs going down, unlike the main stairwell that stopped at the ground floor.

"Weird." He muttered, somehow he was pretty sure there wasn't a set of stairs going down here. But this stairwell is identical to the other one, barring unique mold colonies growing on the walls.

Moving on, he went down two flights until he reached the 'gym'.

"Training Hall." He read the weathered sign beside a set of double doors. "Close enough, I guess."

He opened the door and was greeted by the sight of a familiar old man in a familiar situation.

'It's the old man from the sauna.' Calvin recognized him by the look on his face and by the sound of his snores. "Uh, excuse me? Hello?"

The old man continued to snore a storm. Calvin just opted to ignore him and find out where the equipment is.

Right now he was in a small room, a lobby of sorts, with rusty lockers on the wall and, unusually, a mechanical clock. He walked through the only other door in the room that didn't have a toilet sign on it and entered a hallway of doors.

"What kind of gym is this?" He muttered, walking through the hallway.

Each door had a plaque with a symbol on it, like the one on the toilet outside.

He walked to the nearest one, the one that had an arm flexing on it with bulging muscles. For anyone with a brain they'd assume it was the weightlifting room, and surprisingly Calvin had a brain. Unfortunately, it was locked.

He frowned and went to the other door, one with the symbol of four elements on it. It too was locked.

He went and tried three more doors, and got three more annoying metallic sound that told him 'fuck off, I'm locked'.

Calvin sighed, trudging towards the front desk where the old man peacefully slept. He got there and tried waking the old man up again with a greeting and knocking on the desk, which proved as ineffective as the two times he tried it in the past.

Annoyed, he went to shake the man's shoulder, only to find his wrist grabbed by an aged hand.

"It's rude to wake someone up in the middle of the night, kiddo." The old man spoke, almost in a bored manner.

"It's four in the evening." Calvin took his hand back.

"Is it?" The old man squinted, turning to the clock behind him. "Huh, look at that."

"Can you open the gym? I want to work out."

He looked Calvin up and down before reaching beneath the desk. He pulled up a logbook and a pen, opening it to a bookmarked page then handing the pen to Calvin.

'Name, time in... power?' He wondered about the last bit, leaving it blank instead. He pushed the logbook back to the old man.

"Write your power." The old man pushed it back.

"I don't have one."

"You do."

"How'd you figure that?"

The old man smirked at him with an incredulous look. "Why else would you be here?"

Calvin paused for a moment, "to... exercise?"

"Exercise huh. That's what you kids call it nowadays." The old man yawned. "Look, if you don't tell or show me your power, I can't give you a training room that fits your power."

'Training Hall.' Calvin remembered the sign in front. "This isn't the gym?"

"Can you read?" The old man gestured to the front of the desk.

"I can't lift weights and stuff here?"

"Are you a Physic type then? Enhancement?"

"No." He shook his head.

"Then no." The old man's eyes scanned him again. "You probably won't be able to lift the lightest weight there."

"Damn it." He was going to smack Sam in the head when he got back.

"So? Power?"

"I said I don't have any. I thought this was just a regular gym."

"Stop lying, kiddo. I know you do."

Calvin puckered his lips. 'Shit. Does he have the same thing as Dox?'

"You're young, so I assume you're worried about keeping it a secret because you think your power is weak or weird." The old man sat back lazily while explaining. "One, your power is only as weak as how you use it and how much you train it. Two, I won't judge. I don't care if you can sweat acid or spit glue. And three, your identity won't be leaked. Not by me. Not by the logbook."

He looked at the logbook, squinting his eyes in suspicion.

The old man sighed and pointed to an entry in the book. "Can you read this?"

Calvin looked closer and tried to read it. "It's smudged."

"No, it's perfectly written. Well, actually, no. Their handwriting is poorly, but I can read it. You can't. Everyone else can't either." He tapped the logbook. "Tinker tech."

He looked back at the logbook. The line above his name was smudged. Turning the pages, they were all filled with smudges like a child's finger painting.

'Fuck. I'm curious.' He lamented his being a cat and wrote his latest power.

"Color control. That's new." The old man nodded for a moment before closing the logbook and putting it away. "Come."

He stood up and led Calvin to the hallway of doors. They entered the first door on the right, the only one with a blank symbol on the plaque, into an empty grey room.

"Okay," the old man spoke, taking out a notepad and a pen. "Describe your power."

"Uh- I can control color? I can change the color of objects, like this." He changed the color of his shirt back to white.

"So you don't need to see the object." He nodded, scribbling on the pad. "Can you change something from far away?"

He changed the old man's flower-patterned shirt to a plain blue. "I can."

"How far?"

They did a bunch more tests, most involving the limits of his power. The limit of color he could change, whether or not he can change it to be transparent, and many other things.

When the old man was satisfied, he pocketed his pad then gestured for him to follow again outside and into the hallway. They walked past a few doors until almost the halfway mark to the end, the old man faced a door with a symbol of bubbles on it.

"Put your hand on the handle." He gestured to the door. Calvin complied and put his hand on the handle. The old man then scratched his head, squinting at the symbol, "how do I do this again?"

He then drew something on top of the symbol using his finger, at which Calvin felt a small sting on his palm that made him flinch and let go.

"What the..." There was no mark or anything on his palm, but the pain was real.

"Now you can enter whenever you want and not interrupt my sleep." The old man chuckled before gesturing for him to go inside the room.

"Could've warned me." Calvin grumbled, massaging his hand.

"I could've." The old man grinned.

The two of them entered the door into an empty grey room similar to the one before.

"Look here." The old man showed him a button on the wall. He pressed it and out came a holographic display showing some controls. "If you press this..."

He explained the controls to Calvin. How to make spheres pop out of holes in the wall, how to make them go back, how to make them float, how to make them go crazy. All sorts of things one would imagine in a superpower training room.

"And that's it." The old man nodded, satisfied with the explanation. "Any more questions?"

"What are the balls for?" He asked.

"You need things to change color, no?"

"Huh." He nodded. He could do it from his room, changing whatever object was in there. But there's some kind of satisfaction in having a standard object to practice with. Like lifting dumbbells instead of buckets of water. "Can I come here any time?"

"Excited to grow strong, are we? Whenever you have time, you can go. Only to this room, of course." The old man smiled.

"I see. Thank you." He nodded.

"I have a question of my own, kid." The old man started as he saw Calvin gesture for him to continue. "Why are you doing this?"

"What do you mean?"

"This," he gestured towards him, "why are you doing this?"

"Uh, to practice my power?"

"No, you misunderstand me, kid. Why are you practicing? For what goal?" The old man spoke.

"To make the power stronger? I guess? I don't know, I just want to."

The old man shook his head. "You need to figure out why. Do you want to use it for a job? To train to be a hero? To impress your crush? Whatever goal you have, it would still be better than having none."

"Why?" Calvin looked at the old man with frustration in his eyes.

"Let's say you're doing this to be a fighter. Try changing one of them to white." He gestured.

Calvin did as he was asked and changed it to white.

"Now do two at the same time."

He did so, but with a noticeable delay between coloring.

"There, you can work on that. Coloring multiple objects at the same time." He nodded.

"How would that help with fighting?"

"It's up to you how you use your power to fight." He gave an example. "All I'll say right now is that nothing is useless in a fight. Find it, I'll give you suggestions if you can't.

Now, let's say you want to be an artist. You can try making a pattern on the ball, and advance from there. You want to use your power for interior design, change the color of the entire room. You want to be an illusionist, try using your color power to make optical illusions.

Do you see what I mean, kid? You have to know where you're going to start walking there."

Calvin hesitated for a moment before deciding to be honest. "I want to learn how to protect myself."

The old man chuckled. "We need to get some meat on you before you learn how to fight. What you can do right now, however, is improve your power. Do the first exercise I told you to do. Come tell me once you can change all the available spheres to one color, instantaneously and simultaneously."

With that, he left Calvin in the room to practice on his power.