New Delta Tower – Training Room

June 8, 11:33

The punching bag seemed to be mocking me as I swung my fist at it. I winced as a twinge of pain flashed through my left side, or what remained of it, anyway.

I was off-balance, since I usually didn’t train, preferring to let my power build up kinetic energy in my body as I refrained from using any energy in my day-to-day life. But with the attack of Pact, as they were calling themselves, we all found flaws in ourselves, and devoted our time to training. Everyone was downcast. We had suffered a complete defeat, and it resulted in New Delta’s criminal underbelly fleshing out and starting to spread throughout the city. We were powerless, despite our superpowers,

I rebalanced myself and circled the punching bag, throwing out jabs and hooks with my hand, trying to get used to the feeling of one side being much heavier than the other, as I had been doing for the past few days.

And yet, after a few jabs, I stopped, placing my hand against the bag for support. My power made me strong, ridiculously so, but it meant that I didn’t know how to fight very well. And that had come through in the first fight with Pact. My breath started coming in gasps as I remembered the feeling of the flesh vanishing from my side, evaporating from a power I barely understood, a power that had been directed at me, to kill or maim me, and it had worked. I felt weak. Powerless.

My fist clenched, and with a cry of pure anger, I pulled it back and slammed into the punching bag, sending the full force of my power behind it. The bag flew across the room and exploded into a shower of fluff and leather, covering Mark as he entered the training room.

“Wow. What’d that bag do to you?” he quipped.

I rolled my eyes over to glare at him. “What do you want?”

“We’ve got visitors.”

“Who?”

Mark grinned and gestured over his shoulder for me to follow as he spun and walked back upstairs. With a sigh, I followed.

Whatever or whoever I expected to see when we reached the top, it wasn’t two Heroes and a Hero Errant.

Known as the greatest heroes in the land, Hero Errants were the leaders of Hero teams, something every Hero desired to become one day. You only became one if at least four of the already existing Hero Errants voted to make you one, and it required not only a strong power, but a conviction and mindset that really befitted a true hero. There were certainly nine Errants around the world, and everyone was anxious to see who the tenth would be.

I had spent hours on the Amp Wiki, researching, so I knew basically all of the Heroes and Errants, so I was able to recognize these three on sight.

The Errant in the center was Longinus, a tall man wearing a suit of custom armor with his titular spear floating next to him. His hair poked out from the sides of his helmet, which was made in such a way that he looked like a Roman Centurion. He had a short, scruffy beard, and piercing eyes. The Amp Wiki didn’t have info on any of the Heroes powers, other than the ones that had publicly explained their powers, of which there were few. But there was speculation. People theorized that Longinus had some sort of telepathic connection with his spear, which had manifested when his power awakened. It seemed to be able to move fluidly, without him seeming to focus on moving it. He fought alongside it, as if some invisible had guided it. He was crazy strong, being able to take down a lot of high-level opponents by himself. The Wiki theorized he was around an 11 on the 1 to 15 scale of power, but they had no idea what his Threat Ranking could be. Most people theorized he was either a Delta, an Amp whose power originated from themselves and affects objects that aren’t alive; or a Zeta, whose power somehow warps space to affect non-living objects. Either way, he was strong, and his team wasn’t anything to scoff at either. He had brought along Diva, a girl only a few years older than me, tall with perfectly straight blond hair that fell into natural, but unobtrusive curls at the bottom. She was dressed in her signature purple dress, which fell down to just her knees. She had a perpetual smile plastered on her face, though some videos uploaded around the web suggested she broke down occasionally, like the rest of us. She was one of the more mysterious Heroes, with basically nobody even knowing what her power did. She was a mystery, but at least she was on the right side. Many villains with unknown powers were a lot scarier than a Hero with a power she wasn’t comfortable with sharing.

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Finally, Tesseract had come along with Longinus, and my gaze lingered on him the longest. Wearing a long, dark blue cloak with a hood that completely covered his face and shadowed him in a blue glow, he stood with his cloak pulled around his body, trying to appear as smaller, not noticed as much. Tesseract was one of the few Amps who had publicly explained his power, because he felt that it could help people. He was classified as a Tau 7, someone who could affect both himself and other living beings with his power. He was able to create artificial body parts, limbs, organs, and more that he could safely implant into people. They all had a core, a cube within a cube within a cube that spun constantly, proving some mythical power from beyond our understanding to the body part. Tesseract connected the cube to the mind of the person he attached the limb or gave the organ to, and their brain did the rest of the work, subconsciously integrating the new body part into their body, making it feel as if the new limb was there all along. It was astounding the number of people he had helped, making organ transplants unnecessary, and giving people with lost limbs a second chance at life. Despite this, he kept to himself for the most part, never showing his face or talking with his real voice, using a voice modulator instead.

“Sir Errant, it is an honor to have you here in our base,” Mark said formally. “Would any of you like anything to drink?”

Longinus shook his head. “We’re only here for a short time. I heard one of your teammates lost a limb in a fight with that new villain group, right?”

Before Mark could respond, I jumped into the conversation, taking a step forward. “That would be me. One of the villains had some matter destroying power, probably at least a 9, and-”

Longinus waved a hand in the air. “I’m not interested in the specifics. It’s not my problem right now. Do you want help or not?”

I was taken aback for a second. I had heard, of course, of Heroes growing arrogant or boastful from too many fans, too much fame. But I hadn’t heard of an Errant being this cold to people, especially to me, a member of an Array, the future of Heroes.

“Yes sir, I do.”

He nodded to Tesseract, who walked over to me and nodded his head towards a side room. In a staticky voice, he said, “It will be easier if there’s less people watching.”

I nodded and followed him into the room, closing the door up to a point, but leaving enough of a crack that I could faintly hear Mark talk to Longinus as Diva stood quietly nearby.

“What’s…all about?” Mark’s voice flowed faintly in s Tesseract turned to me. “Alright, now keep still while I work on this. It’ll be about ten minutes of standing still, so I hope you aren’t antsy.”

I gave him a quick smile. “I think I’ll handle it, thanks.”

There was a slight tingle in my side, and I gazed down to see a dark blue glow start to form on my side. I kept my eyes on it and listened back in to the conversation on the other side of the door.

“…none of...concern. Headed…Foundling City…” Longinus’s voice was almost too deep to make out.

“Then why…here?” Mark’s reply came.

“Heard…Pact. Wanted to…them.”

I grimaced. Wanted to what? Attack them? Learn about them? This was frustrating. I glanced back down, seeing my new, blue arm slowly forming down my side. Not much time left. I cocked my head as much as I could towards the door without moving my body. Little came of it, but the next part I heard loud and clear.

“You want to what?!” Mark shouted.

“Quiet.” Longinus said sternly. “It’s…top. Don’t question…”

“You’re…and arrogant. This is…city.”

“Learn to…okay, kid?”

“Okay.” A third, inhuman voice cut into the conversation, startling me. I looked over at Tesseract, who had his hood facing me. “It’s done.”

I looked down, and sure enough, my arm was there. It was almost a perfect replica of my left arm, save for the fact that it was glowing blue, and seemed transparent, enough that you could see the spinning cubes within. I tried to lift up my hand, but it wouldn’t move.

“Final step is to connect the limbs. Concentrate, cause I’ll need you helping here.”

I turned to him. “Okay, what do you need?”

He placed a gloved finger on my forehead, and with his other arm, grabbed the wrist of my new hand. “This will be difficult. Imagine your old hand. How it moved. How you swung it when you walked, how you placed it in a pocket. Get the perfect picture in your mind of what your arm was. Is. Then, I’ll connect those thoughts to the core of this new arm.”

I nodded and thought. My arm…it wasn’t something I thought about often. After all, not many people direct their thoughts at their arms, or legs. Especially before losing a limb. But now that I had lost a limb, this was surprisingly easy. I had learned pretty quickly to attune my senses to having one arm, though my body hadn’t been willing to cooperate. So I gathered thoughts about my arm, the mannerisms I had with it, the juice packet I had grabbed with it right before the fight…and after a few seconds, Tesseract said, “Done.”

He stepped back from me, letting go of my new arm. “That was pretty fast, nice job. Enjoy your new arm.”

I nodded. “Thank you so much.”

“Just doing my job with what I’ve been given.” He stepped out of the room, returning to his team.

I took a deep breath and lifted my new arm. It felt…natural. Completely natural. Despite the knowledge that it wasn’t my arm, wasn’t the arm I had been born with, it felt the same. I grinned. This was exactly what I needed.

Grabbing a pillow off of a nearby chair, I tossed it in the air and punched at it with my new arm. The glowing blue appendage went straight through the pillow, sending a small cloud of feathers reminiscent of the punching bag into the air. I grinned wider. Pact wouldn’t stand a chance now. With my confidence and strength returned, I looked around the room, nodded, and then walked off to go grab a juice packet.