An idea popped out of my mind when I was popping the freckled boy’s shoulder blade out of its socket. With so much energy literally ripping apart every cell in my body–so much so that it's leaking out and fueling every negative emotion I have been purging since day one of being a child–it would be irresponsible of me to just let it ferment into nothingness.
At the very least, such potent revitalization needs a sufficient outlet or, more appropriately, a method of release and what more it could be, other than his portal powers.
“No, wait. I’m about to be a superhero-in-training I gotta call it something cool. Eye Sockets? Too gross. Portal Socke–Nope, nothing with socket. Well, it does look like an eye. Maybe… Optic Leap. Ugh. Still sucks, but good enough for a placeholder.”
A hideous grin spreads across my face before Martian Manhunter’s amused voice brings me back to my present.
“Are you done ruminating, Edmund?” He asks, quite patiently.
“Sorry. Yes, I am.” I nod, locking my legs on each other as I sit like a yogi master.
J’onn has led me to the center of the hedge maze where a cabin hand-built by my great-grandfather lies. Unfurnished saved for a single table with an ashtray and three lighters and foul-smelling mattress, most probably left by a few guards and servants that uses the cabin as fuck and smoke house.
Thankfully, J’onn is more than happy to telekinetically throw the mattress away before ordering me to sit down at the center of the room.
J’onn begins his lesson by ruminating on a single word, “Energy. Carbon-based lifeforms like us emit, consume, and waste refined forms of energy to create, convert, and compile other forms of matter. It is the single most important facet of this universe, both an unending currency and a yoking path to ultimate power.”
Still in his human skin, he brings his hand up to the level of my face before shifting its very form. Changing the pigments on the flesh from brown to pure black to crimson red to a cerulean blue before returning to a mute green coloration that permeates the skins of Green Martians.
“Every cell in my body spends energy to shift the shape and form of my flesh and blood, powered by nothing but my intent and will.” J’onn returns his body into his real form, skull elongating to an oval shape.
His hands break and crack as his fingers lengthen into minute-long digits that can probably cover a whole basketball in one hand, while the flesh of his legs contracts as the meat on his bones disappears. His viscous crimson eyes are betrayed by the kind smile on his face yet betrayed by the sheer muscles emanating in his nearly naked form.
Even his legs, albeit lacking meat, are shaped to rival those of human bodybuilders. ‘Damn. He could make money by joining Mr. Universe.’
“This is me, Edmund. Every second you see me as a human, I consume energy. Every second you hear my voice in your mind, I consume energy. Even when I speak to you, I consume energy.”
J’onn turns back to his human form. “At first, it took me hours on end just so I could change the color of my skin. Shaping my very flesh and organs and bones took years, decades even. Not to mention the energy and will it took to even thread the pain that would be instilled during the process. Edmund, using this ability is not without agony.”
“I’m not averse to agony.” I say.
He smiles. “That I know. The power we hold is everlasting and the energy we consume is neverending. But we ourselves… are weak. What holds us together is the strength found not in our body, but in our spirit and in our mind.”
He leans forward. The smile on his face is now gone, replaced by a grim expression.
“To will strength is far more difficult than to wield it. That is the only thing I do not fear to offer you.”
He levitates up and speaks, “Train, young one. I will protect you and let you know once your mother calls upon you.”
He disappears into the roof, leaving me alone, yet the beat in my heart knows that he is there and he is always listening.
I suppose that monologue came from decades of experience of being one of Mars' greatest detectives in a telepathic society. He points out two of my greatest weaknesses, one that are not being enhanced daily by my original powers.
The strength of my mind and spirit and the output and input of my energy.
The former will need far more time and has already begun the moment I awoke with the memories of my past life. My experience actually helped me in the recent months, even allowing me to recover from the psychological aftermath of the blood ritual. If a normal eight-year-old experienced that, then he’d be spending time in Arkham right about now.
‘What I can do right now, however, is fix the goddamn leak.’
I focus on my body, letting my main senses fail me. Sight goes out first, next is hearing, then taste, and, finally, my sense of smell. It’s not really gone, just so repressed and my sense of touch so attuned that it feels as if it had disappeared out of nowhere.
Millions upon millions of tiny feet tingles my skin, crawling through every pore and under the epidermis. Deeper than that, fireworks marches across my intestines and pumps smoke and fire on the lining of my stomach.
Brain cells swim with so much potentiality that in the brief refractory period, every neuronal firing is shortened to microseconds, faster than what the Flash is currently capable of—at least I got him beat in that regard, even though it will only last for a few days. Heart bloating with so much blood that my valves rarely, if ever, closes; the only thing keeping me from getting a heart attack is the fact that the same energy is keeping me alive.
I open my eyes, letting my sight come back. A meter in front of me is a black line, the initial stage of the Optic Leap. The energy spent creating the line is immediately filled, confirming my theory.
The maintenance of the Black Line is negligible in the next five minutes, but according to Bruce’s supercomputer, there will be a pull of energy–no more than 2%–once it goes past ten minutes. That, however, is not my focus today.
I close the Black Line before conjuring it again; this time, I’m focusing on the consumption of my energy as it appears in existence. Optic Leap responds to my thoughts in conjunction to my will, meaning that I would need to think of creating a portal and willing myself to create a portal for it to work.
I continue closing and re-conjuring the Black Line while feeling the energy withdrawing from my stomach before being filled up once more. Normally, I would halt my experiments with the Black Line after five or six times as the consumption of energy reduces my body into a state of fatigue, hunger, and parched. That side effect is now negated during my birthday and so I continue on without regard for my safety.
I don’t need to be at the start of the luncheon, so I have at least four hours before Jasmine calls for me and J’onn ends my training. As such, I have decided to divide this session into two parts, two hours to attune myself from the pain of having my energy disrupted and consumed and the other two are solely for opening up as many Optic Leaps as I can.
Slowly but surely, an hour goes by as the painful knot in my stomach regresses into being uncomfortable, akin to a bloating belly after a huge meal. Waves of exhaustion slowly build up in my bones, which is easy enough to ignore as it is a familiar feeling these past few months; Not from being bereft of energy, mind you, but from the mental fatigue of having to endure belly-aching pain.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Two hours in and my threshold for long agony becomes accustomed to the sudden flux of energy within my body. With what was visible to me in the energy meter, it appears that my energy is slowly lessening down as the graph shows signs of small fluctuations in between portal conjuration. Sure enough, the training has been a boon for me and my powers. What I achieved in the past two hours equates to a week’s worth of portal generation, with the bonus of continuous conjuration beneficially altering my cell’s acclimating to the sudden loss of energy.
My breathing slows down and so does my heart as I halt conjuring Black Lines, resting for a beat as I turn on my watch. Having toggled the change logs, I can see the sudden 0.2 and 0.1 uptick in Vitality and Focus, respectively. Although I have yet to figure out how it could calculate such a miniscule increase, Bruce was right in saying that its simplistic nature does quench my thirst for accomplishment. Even now, my brain releases small bursts of endorphin whenever I see the black arrow that signifies an increase in stats.
‘Damn, he really is a master of everything, even pop psychology.’
I reset the Energy Meter, tearing off the graph and saving the current video before starting another. I don’t have the knowledge nor the will to read through that technobabble, but Bruce might and I am sure as the crow flies that he will want to read my experiments.
‘I’m not sure I’m using that idiom correctly. Eh.’
I conjure another Black Line and widen it into its Active State before conjuring the secondary portal and activating it. The successive conjuration takes a toll on my body but is quickly refilled, leaving me panting and sweaty. That pain, however, is not without merit as I rotate the direction of the main portal as if I had been practicing it for years while the secondary portal blinks in and out of existence like an eyelid of a monstrous giant.
Making sure to not exacerbate my body from the constant surge of energy, I begin experimenting with rotating an Active State portal. I close the secondary portal, focusing on the main one. Another passed by as I orient the portal diagonally, horizontally, and vertically, which adds more to the energy consumption. Like the pain in his stomach, rotating the portal becomes close to second nature as its speed continuously increases, albeit incrementally slow.
Since this part takes no great strain on my body, I decided to begin an obsession of mine ever since I found its significance. I close the portal, letting it reappear to the side yet still within a meter of me while I conjure a secondary smaller one.
I had defeated the Scythe by portalling his hands and ceasing my connection to the portals, trapping him in it as the portal tried to snap shut. From what I have seen and reviewed–in my mind, at least–the portal kept bouncing off the Scythe’s flesh because it wasn’t sharp enough to razor through cartilage, muscle and bone. The borders of the portal are cylindrical, but its materials are close to hard light or some sort of coalescence of energy.
‘Maybe plasma? Shit, I should not have forgotten high-school science.’
I touch the border with my fingertips and find myself recoiling from the heat. The burn quickly heals before I touch it again and yelp in pain, sniffing hard as I shake the hand I had used.
‘It’s not hot enough to sink through flesh and sharp enough to tear through either, but there is a possibility of developing it.’
With that in mind, I divide my attention to two things. Conjuring and activating as many portals as possible whilst trying to manipulate, shape, or wield the borders of my portal and try to change its very characteristics. To do that, however, I need to manually sense and control the portal which I have not been doing, contradicting what I had promised Jake.
Usually, I just set the dimensions of the portal and conjure it with my mind, allowing the powers to create the portals without any other input.
‘Now that I think about it… that might be why the energy output is so much worse. Not my fault that it's hard as fuck. Why do I need to flirt and dance around my own powers? As if It's... never mine to begin with.'
Oh.
"Well, yeah. That tracks." I mutter as I think about it more.
I know that dormant meta-genes lie in most human beings on Earth and those lucky few who activate it get ridiculously cool powers or become freaks of nature, no in-between. Well, may some in-between. While the spirit of Jake may have agreed to let me use his powers, that is a poor substitute for total control over one's self and body. The metahuman ability has locked the manual creation of portals until the genes themselves—or whatever those Court of Fucks did—truly bond with my DNA and, frankly, I really hope that I don't need to do further magic rituals for that to happen.
'Please, please, please be open to the Power of Friendship! Or at least let me in before we get kidnapped by the Legion of Doom.'
Since I don't have any enough information nor leverage to have my meta-gene ability to cooperate with me and I have a fuck-ton of energy lying around in me... “Might as well try.” I mutter with a weak grin.
----------------------------------------
“Edmund!” A bolt of static electricity surges through my brain, causing the portal to snap shut from breaking concentration.
I look around to see human-form J’onn looking at me with worry in his eyes. I shake my head and slap my cheeks, becoming numb from the sheer concentration.
I wipe the sweat on my face as I turn towards him. “Sorry. Is it time?”
“Not yet, but your bodyguard informs me that we still have half an hour until you need to replace your clothing.” He informs me before his eyes narrow as he asks, “Is every human party like these? Day long and consume far too much resources.”
I shake my head in amusement. “No, this one is… it's pretty weird, actually. It’s like a family tradition until an heir’s tenth birthday.”
“I see. Tradition.” He nods his head, as if understanding everything. “Now, since we have no more time. Let me see what improvements you have made in the past month since we met.”
A smile appears on my face before dying it down to not appear arrogant. “Well, I can do this.”
A black line appears beneath my body–longer than the tip of my nose and the cheeks of my ass–before another appears two meters high and behind J’onn. The portal behind J’onn activates, widening to meet my width and height as I activate the one below me.
I perform my first official Optic Leap.
My body slips down the first portal in one fell swoop before reappearing behind him and landing upon the floor with an, “OW!” I grab my ankles as I use the walls as a crutch, forgetting that I had removed my shoes and was in my socks when I teleported. “Watch your foot, J’onn. There’s a loose floorboard.”
Sure enough, the energy consumed when I teleported myself three meters away is enough to create a vacuum within my body. Although I am quite literally guessing, the meter long length of the portal and the fifty centimeter width consumed as much as five activation of a normal thirty-centimeter-long portal. With two of them active for about three to five seconds–the optimum time for my body to safely pass through the portal–a hole has formed inside of my stomach, one that quickly reaches the other organs before being swamped by an unknown sense of relief.
“The pain… does it not ache you?” J’onn asks, as I catch my breath.
I tilt my head at the weird question. “What do you mean? Of course, it does. It’s not enough for me to bitch and whine, though.”
‘At least on the outside.’
“I see, then I was wrong, then.” J’onn nods to himself again, as if understanding something that I do not. “Is that all your abilities?”
“Well, I do have a killing move.” I open another portal, this one in the optimum size of ten centimeters.
Unlike the previous iteration of the portals, the borders of this one are much more pronounced. A glow unlike nothing I have ever seen illuminates the Optic Leap, akin to a…
“Lightsaber.” I giggle at the thought. “Can you regenerate?”
He brings his hands forward, elongating a finger to at least seventy centimeters and making it look like a pencil. I rub my hands together, doubting my portal can actually tear through the flesh of the Martian Manhunter.
I open another sized portal next to the main portal before urging him to move his finger through it. The pencil-like finger passes through the main portal and emerges from the second one, keeping my eyes on his hands before severing the faint connection I have to it.
The portal snaps shut, but finds J’onn’s fingers in the way. Like last time, the portal strikes around the skin of the finger and, when they find the finger too tough, bounces off the flesh at a faster speed. Akin to a rubber band with so much kinetic energy, the portal bounces in and out as it keeps razoring away the quickly regenerating flesh of J’onn’s finger.
“See?” I remark.
A confused smile appears on J’onn’s face before he gazes at me with warmth and a little bit of fear. “It truly is amazing. Thank you for showing this to me, friend Edmund.”
A blush appears on my face at his sincere words. I wave him away. “Pfft, nah. I-I gotta go. Thanks for keeping me safe!”