Elijah walked around back to Smokie Joe's BBQ, where he found Marcus already sitting on the pile of logs with a meticulously rolled blunt in his hand. He looked up from his sitting spot, took a drag, and held it before coughing a couple of times. And taking a deep breath as Elijah stood in front of him silently with his hands in his pockets.
"I'm sorry. I went too far and crossed a line that I shouldn't have in an attempt to get you to see things how I view them. I just hate the idea of losing my best friend." He looked up from the blunt he was slowly turning in his hand, showing a deep purple bruise around his left eye.
Elijah hissed at the sight. "I'm sorry for overreacting and punching you so hard." He moved closer, inspecting his handiwork wearing a grimace on his face.
"Seriously, dude, I know you were down for a while, and your leg isn't what it used to be, but you did shot putt too, and you _didn't_ injure you're arm. So punch me nicer next time I say something stupid, please." He handed the blunt out to Elijah, something he'd done a thousand times since he'd signed on with the marines, trying to get him to fail a piss test.
Much to his surprise, Elijah took it and took a big puff before coughing so hard he turned almost as purple as Marcus' shiner. "Clench your jaw and swallow hard repeatedly. It helps you stop coughing." He said, still deep in shock that he actually took the blunt from him. "Are you okay? Did you suddenly find a new calling in life better than the Marines? Did you see the aliens and just decide fuck it nothing matters anymore? What's going on?"
He righted himself after another 20 seconds of swallow-coughing. "Actually I wanted to talk to you about just that but you hadn't apologized yet." He moved over and sat next to him handing him his blunt back. "Okay I've had my fill of that. Thank you my day has been crazy."
"_My_ Day has been crazy. I actually need your advice on something first. It's kind of big but I don't know if I want it."
Elijah could guess what he was getting at since he also had a big decision today. "Well? Continue." He still was going to make him say it before he rubbed super-powers in his friends face and ended up being wrong.
"I got this message but not a normal message. It's like a screen that's not really there but I can minimize and pull it up without any issue. It's just floating in my vision." He paused and waited for a response that Elijah wasn't giving him so he continued anyhow. "I have an offer for super powers infront of me."
"Just the offer? You haven't clicked yes yet?"
"Well obviously not, I have my whole future planned out. I'm committed to the Stanford Physics department and have 60k in research grants waiting for me after graduating with my PhD. And that's only right now who knows how many more rich people with my inventions. But on the other hand, _magic_ and the Alaxid are bringing over their technology and knowledge, making everything I've learned up until now pointless. Yesterday, I was looking at the future of being this generation's Nikola Tesla. Today, my inventions might as well be scrap."
He hadn't thought of it that way. "Well, wouldn't that all just make it all the easier to take the superpowers?"
"Well, yeah, but what happens when it's not something I can overcome with intelligence. What if it gives me something like super farming and I'm just really good at planting potatoes, and they take me to other planets to plant farms of potatoes for them."
"Well, it's funny you mention that because I was lying around all day, so I did some reading on reddit. And it seems like the 'Framework' gives you abilities based on what you're good at. So unless you're living a secret life as a potato farmer, I think you'll be fine."
"Why are you being so calm about this? I imagined you being all _Holyshit holyshit. My best friend has superpowers._ And why were you lying around all day? It's hard to get you to sit down to study, I could never imagine you just laying around on a Monday afternoon."
"Well, honestly." He thought of the best way to put it. "I did have a sudden change of heart about the military. Because I also received that offer this morning at 8 a.m."
"No fucking way." Marcus gasped, "My best friends a superhero." Elijah said in unison with Marcus, reading exactly what he was about to say.
"WELL YOU ACCEPTED IT DIDNT YOU? I KNOW YOU DID. SHOW ME YOUR POWER RIGHT NOW." He was up off of his seat jumping up and down.
Elijah let a smug smile cross his face "Which power, I've got 3."
It looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel for a moment before he stopped and looked him dead in the eyes. "Details now."
Elijah took about 20 minutes explaining in graphic detail about his morning, including the race against his mom, the ambulance ride, and seeing Olivia's tattoos show up and his own. The healing process, and how after that little healing and a day of rest, he was good enough to use his powers to run into town and make it there only a minute after Marcus had.
"Let me see the tattoo on your hand. I'm not eager to smell your running boots to see your foot tattoo, and the logistics of seeing the back of your thigh while you wear cargo pants makes me not want to see those right now either. So hand it is. And then I want to test that one cause it seems to be the only one you struggled with. Other than sticking the landing on a half mile leap like you're the fucking hulk or something. That was stupid by the way," He switched his tone to a mocking one, "I just got super powers let me go outside and destroy some poor farmers equipment that he uses to feed his wife and kids."
Elijah pulled off his glove and held out his hand for Marcus to inspect. The tattoo pulsing lightly and lighting up his face with a golden glow. "It's not like I exactly meant to jump that far without a plan on how to land. I just kind of _did it._ All I really thought in that moment was, don't step in the pothole at the speed of blur and remove my leg from my body. So I jumped, and my second ability turned it into a super jump on accident."
Marcus got up and went and placed a log in the middle of the alley. "Run down to my house real quick and grab the golf balls out of my closet. Mom's not home, she and Kathline are out drinking again. And Gordon probably doesn't even know I'm gone, I doubt he'll care that you come in. I'll time you."
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"I'm just gonna use my new normal sprinting speed no need to use powers on a block run."
"I'm still gonna time you." They walked around the front of the building. "Don't go until I say." Elijah nodded and walked over to the sidewalk under the street light and crouched down into a runners start position. "Ready. Set. Go!" He punched the button on his phone at the same time he said go.
Elijah made it up to the door in under 5 seconds by his count. He opened it and walked straight in, "Hey, Marcus, grab me a beer before you go back to your room."
Eli went to the kitchen and played fetch for Gordon like he often did in Marcus' place. He held it out, and Gordon reached out, grabbing it without so much as a glance at him or a thanks. He ran up to his room and tore through the messy closet filled with discarded failures from previous inventions until he found a sack of golf balls sitting next to the automatic golf ball shooter with 'Golfinator 2000' written on the side in red sharpie.
He ran back out of the house and down the street, where he skidded to a stop by Marcus. "39.2 seconds. Slow poke."
"Sorry, I had to stop and get Gordon a beer too."
"All I hear are excuses." Marcus reached out and took the bag of golf balls from him, going back to the alley behind the building and setting them down at one end of the building. "Make yourself useful and bring about 6 logs down to the other end of the building." Elijah did just that grabbing as many as he could in one arm load. Which could have been more had he not run out of space to carry it all. He went back and grabbed the last two. Setting up equal distance apart from each other covering the width of the alleyway.
"I'll call out 1 through 6, and you have to hit the right one each time." He said, handing Elijah a handful of golf balls.
He threw them and they were pinging all over the alley after hitting the logs and bouncing off but sure enough all he had to do was target the one he wanted to hit, the log and his hand would glow and anything he threw in that general direction went straight at the one he wanted it to hit. "I swear if I see that hand glow one freaking time the next time we play darts, I'll never play with you again."
"Like it would make a difference, you beat me literally one time, and that was after you made the _Dartinator_ to beat me." Elijah took another handful of golfballs and decided to try and target one of the golfballs that had rolled farther away and threw it at it. And sure enough, it hit its mark like always. He decided to push it a step further and aim at a small piece of bark that was flung off and was sitting on top of a trash bag next to the dumpster.
"You know you said you have beyond peak human strength when you were explaining the stats and the bonuses you got. But that looks like a regular strong guy, not a _super_ strong guy throwing to me. You're telling me you can't bury a golf ball in a log?"
His inane ramblings broke Eli's concentration on the piece of bark. "You know what? I think the only time I used the full extent of my new strength was when I panic jumped this morning. That's honestly not a bad idea at all." He turned like he was about to throw a pitch in a baseball game. He wound all the way back and pulled forward with all the strength he could muster, feeling the muscles Ripple under his skin as he pushed them, and when he let go, it whistled like a bomb.
It impacted the log and went through it, disappearing long into the night. The log also disappeared in the sense that it exploded into about 50 different chunks.
"That was it. That's what I needed to see. I'm clicking the yes button." Elijah watched as his friend waved his hand in the air in front of him. "Yes, I accept your terms evil contract of aliens who stole my future." With that, he watched Marcus freeze in place for what seemed like forever, not breathing or blinking. Over the span of the 30 seconds or so he watched his friend grow from 5'9 to 6'0 foot tall, all his acne clear up, and his body convert all of his body fat to muscle until he looked like he was under 10% body. Then he started back up like he never stopped moving at all.
"Woah, do you have teleporting powers, or did you just move so fast I didn't see it."
"No. When you accepted, you froze and grew and got shredded. I'm actually kind of jealous. Had I known I'd get super powers, I might not have trained so hard to get my body. Since they are just handing out abs now."
"Yeah, but I went from weak and pudgy to gym rat. You went from fitness obsessed to literal God amongst men. I don't think you have much room to complain here. Now, how do we check our character sheet- Whoa, okay, it just kinda pops up on you there." He went silent for a long minute. "This is bullshit."
"What do you mean, dude? How can your powers be bullshit? Everyone online and even my own say that you get powers that play to your strengths. You're a literal physics genius. How could it not be some reality altering power like teleportation or something."
Marcus mumbled under his breath before repeating it louder. "I told you. I told you I was going to end up being an intergalactic potato farmer."
"There is absolutely no way your class says potato farmer."
"Framework, is there a way to share my class with someone else?" Eli watched as his friend jumped as presumably a new screen popped up in front of him. A moment later, one popped up in an infeont of Eli as well.
[Marcus Bennett would like to initiate a framework link. Doing so will establish a temporary connection that will allow you view each other's profiles, as well as allow for framework supported private video calling between the two parties involved from now on unless personally restricted by one of the involved parties.
Do you accept?
Yes/No]
"Sweet! We have alien FaceTime." He thought as he accepted in his head. He had spent some time interacting with the framework earlier in the day while he was stuck on the couch. He had gotten decent at thinking about how he wanted something and making it happen on the screen.
Marcus' character sheet popped up in front of his face, and he couldn't help himself. He busted out laughing at the sight of it. "I don't know how you managed it. But you really did get potato farmer powers, didn't you."
[Name: Marcus Bennett
Race: Human
Subrace: Champion of Terra
Champion Rank: B
Intelligence type
Current Class sub-type: Psychic Herbalist
Stats:
Strength - 13
Endurance - 12
Agility - 14
Intelligence - 23
Wisdom - 19
Appeal - 18
Skill number 1: Voices of the Small
C Rank - Level 1
Active ability - You may select a target. If the target is of a lower sentience level than you are, you inherently understand what it needs and can translate any messages they are trying to send you. You may also give the target instructions, and if it is friendly, it will follow them to the best of its ability.
Skill number 2: Made in my Vision
B Rank - Level 1
Active ability - You make select a target in the [Plant] subcategory, and you may grow and/or shape a targeted plant rapidly and to your specifications.
Skill number 3: Portable Pocket
D Rank - Level 1
Active ability - You have a personal pocket dimension outside of time and space that allows you to store items in stasis.
Size approximation - Duffle bag]
"They even gave you a cosmic Duffle bag to keep your gardening tools safe!" He doubled over laughing again before trying to compose himself so he didn't actually hurt his friends feelings. "No. No, seriously, though. It's not a bad powerset, and I see exactly where you get all of the powers from, well, at least 2 out of 3."
"Oh, do tell, how exactly did I end up with the powers of every farmer ever?" Marcus moved back over against the wall of the Smokehouse, hopping back up on the logs.
"Well, skill 1 is the one with the most guesswork, but I would assume it's because you view everyone around you as dumber than you. Skill 2 is so obvious if it was a gun it'd have already shot you, that ones from your personal cultivation project you have going in the 'watercoolerinator' in the corner of your room. Skill 3 obviously has something to do with physics that I'm not nearly smart enough to understand."
"Oh snap, how did I not think of that. I'm not a potato farmer. I think I just became the world's best pot farmer!" He yelled that one out with a look of glee on his face that could only be described as child like wonder.
"Well, with that, I think I better get home. I promised mom I'd be home by midnight, and we both know she won't go to sleep until I'm back home, we learned that the hard way."
Marcus got up and gave Eli a hug. "I'm sorry again about yesterday. Although don't think I'll ever let you off the hook about a hero complex now when you literally have superpowers now."
"I'd watch it. It'd hurt a lot more to get punched by me now. Also you have to go to school tomorrow."
"The hell I do! How am I supposed to explain to everyone that I grew 3 inches and got a 6 pack over night." He pulled up his shirt for emphasis. "I looked like a 30 year old dad that drank bush light this morning. The majority of my diet consists of strawberry uncrustables and chocolate milk. Why do you even want to go there anyway?"
"The same way I'm going to, we're magical super beings now. Anyhow, mom is making me go. She won't take 'I have superpowers' an excuse either."
"So you're just gonna come out and tell everyone, 'Hey yeah, I have magical super powers because the light peering out of gods asshole shines on me'. Yeah, that sounds like a great plan. Count me out."
"You're forgetting one important thing." Elijah paused for dramatic effect before raising his palm and showing the glowing target mark on it. "Three skills. Three tattoos. It's gonna come out sooner or later. I got my tattoos about an hour or so after I clicked yes. So you can either explain them with me or without me by your side for it. Good luck."
Eli tore off running at his maximim normal speed through town and turning on his springs when he got outside of town.
Slowing down as he pulled into his driveway, he received a notification.
[Marcus Bennett would like to video chat.
Yes/No]
He clicked yes and busted up laughing again at the golden eye tattoo emblazoned on Marcus' forehead. "I'll be at school tomorrow."