“Sup, I'm Sean.” Sean introduced himself as the camera started rolling. “And these are my babies.” He gestured to the numerous barbells and weights lying around his room.
From time to time, several more weights could be seen being brought into the dorm room by the school’s staff as the interview went on. The strain it took for those staff members to bring it in was obvious just by looking at their shaking arms and legs. Sean patiently, carefully, and lovingly explained and showed the good traits of each weight. Some of these were even used by Olympic athletes while others were more customized for Sean’s personal usage.
“Every morning I wake up at 5 am to get started on my warmup routine. I lift those cute little guys over there.” Sean walked over to the thick circular dumbbells. “They call these circus dumbbells because they’re mostly used by professional lifters in the strongman competitions. I use them for an assortment of warmup exercises. Upper-body, lower-body, core, and more until it's time for me to get ready for school.”
“Uh, Mr. Sean? Do you mind if we ask some questions?” The interviewer lady politely asked despite how irritated she was.
Did he understand just how rare of an opportunity it was for her to interview a student from the prestigious academy for future heroes!? She had a limited amount of time to interview as many freshmen as she could before the school kicked her out! This musclehead was taking up all her time talking about a bunch of nonsense no one cares about! But she couldn’t lose it, she just had to take charge of the interview back in her favor.
“I haven’t picked my hero name yet, but it ain’t going to be something dumb. You know there are some heroes that just flat out tell everyone their power? It's so dumb because every supervillain knows their gimmick and they could prepare for it ahead of time. It's like someone naming themselves Mind Reader and being surprised that the villain’s plans they read inside his mind were fake!” Sean chatted while casually lifting the circus dumbbells.
“I... apologize...” Trisha was reaching her limit. “I was hoping to find out more about your power and the results of the examination test that all the examinees went through.” She strained to sound as nice as she could.
“I don’t know. I didn’t go through the examination test.” Sean shrugged.
“Then how did you get accepted!?” Trisha yelled.
“I beat some dude and they let me in. I forgot his name but his costume was some animal. He was a tricky dude but it was no sweat with these babies.” Sean flexed his developed muscles.
“What kind of nonsense are you babbling about!?” Trisha didn’t understand at all.
“Trish. There’s a secret exam...” The cameraman whispered.
“Oh.” Trisha understood immediately. “Thank you so much for accepting this interview examinee. I wish you success in your future in the academy.” Trisha could no longer deal with this meathead.
“Hey, you know when I was a kid, I had no interest in being a hero. I was more focused on my weights and playing around with my friends back then.” He suddenly went on another tangent while putting his hand on her shoulder.
“I think we’ve run out of t-”
“It was only when I got caught up in a bank robbery with my mom that something sparked in me. Like a bolt of lightning from the heavens.”
“You probably should’ve started off with this instead of talking about the weights...” Trisha muttered.
“When my mom was taken hostage, I felt something burning inside me. Some people said I turned as red as a tomato but at the time, the only thing I could see was a bad guy hurting and scaring my mom.”
“You’re just going to keep talking anyway.. Okay. Sure. Go ahead...” Trisha gave up.
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“My body moved on its own. I beat, hit, ripped, tore, bit, and scratched at the masked man before realizing, I could copy people’s superpowers. He kicked at my head, knocking me to the ground after I copied his power. I still didn’t know what I was doing. It was instinct that aimed my hands at him and used his own power against him. My mom realized he was weakening somehow and freed herself by beating him to a pulp. Once she embraced me in her arms, the heroes came in, I realized just how close I was to losing someone that meant the world to me. People all over are in similar situations because of people choosing to commit crimes and do bad stuff. I want to put an end to it. I want a world where heroes aren’t needed at all.” Sean shared his dreams.
“That was actually kind of beautiful...” Trisha was shocked something kind of eloquent could come out of this musclehead’s mouth.
“If you want, I can schedule future interviews with you.” Sean winked. “Here’s my number. Contact me if you want any juicier scoops.” He kept winking.
“...” Trisha sighed. Every fiber of her being was telling her to reject this boy’s advances and leave this room immediately but her reporter soul couldn’t let up such an insider source for information in the most popular hero school in the nation.
She turned the camera, grabbed the laminated card, and left out the meathead’s dorm room. Shame filled her soul as she heard him say, “See you later sweet cheeks.” on her way out. But shame could be digested later. Right now, she had a whole dorm full of students to interview before she was kicked out. Trisha was going to get everything she could out of these children before then.
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“Hmm...” Sean smiled as he taped the reporter’s hair and pocketed it.
Prediction would be useful in a fight. He’ll keep this power for a long while. With this copied power, he could anticipate the actions of a single person in front of him. If he tried to predict more than one person, he would get a headache. His max limit was unknown. Maybe he could fight off a hundred people at once if he trained with it long enough without a scratch on him.
After all, everyone knew that powers were also trainable muscles. By exerting them, they got stronger. Sean’s copy power was a bit more difficult to train but it wasn’t impossible. His time limit with copied powers increased the more he stole and used superpowers. Maybe he could even improve the copied powers if he got far enough in his training.
Right now, his max limit for storing someone’s superpower was ten minutes. For the number of powers, it was three. Ten minutes was a long time in a fight. Since his only strength was copying the powers of others who had them for years, Sean decided to focus on other paths than just his ability. His body, martial arts, and using his brain.
It turns out the recommendation exam for the school was actually a secret. That was something Sean actually didn’t know. He also didn’t know who recommended him for the exam in the first place. Sean was popular in his middle school for his easy-to-approach personality and friendly atmosphere but not for anything heroic. He kept his hero training at home and never really talked about hero stuff unless others brought it up. So, someone had an eye on him in the hero community and Sean had no idea who.
Sean shrugged as he looked at his pet iguana in its enclosure. He continued to alternate lifting the circus dumbbells till he reached his set. After getting that out the way, he moved onto the barbells before putting weights on them. Working on those took him a few hours before he reached his limit.
After finishing his warm-up, Sean decided to head to the school’s gym. His babies were probably going to get jealous, but they’ll get over it. This was the top school for heroics in North America. Their gym had to be out of this world to accommodate all the future heroes. Sean fed Camo, his iguana, before leaving and travelling across campus.
Thankfully, there was a map outside their dorms that told him exactly where he was on campus and where he needed to go to reach the gym. It took around ten minutes before Sean made it to the gym and as he saw the unbelievable holy site. He teared up in pure amazement. It was truly glorious...
Gym equipment that even giants could use, machines that targeted every muscle group, weights that ranged from those that children could lift all the way to heroes that could lift trains, and little flying cleaning drones that sprayed and wiped any unused equipment.
Since it was still early in the morning and everyone was still preparing for the new school year, there were very few people inside. Sean couldn’t help himself from immediately rushing from machine to machine working on whatever he could. None of his muscles were spared as he worked out for hours. His chest muscles, back muscles, arms, abdomen, legs, shoulders, and glutes. Along with tearing his body down to rebuild back up stronger, he also stored any stray hairs found inside his pocket to test inside the combat gym.
That’s right, the fighting gym. It’s a second gym right next to this gym for people to train their fighting skills. Sean plans to head there after he finishes all of his muscle groups. Sure, he was in horrible pain with all of his muscles crying and begging for relief but Sean was a firm believer in what doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger. Plus, he doubted The Academy for Extraordinary Youths wouldn’t have a medical team capable of healing injured students.