After my little media announcement, I blew up. Figuratively, of course. Blowing up on stage would have made getting back to Earth even harder than it already was. I was still intact, staying with Magnus and his angry brother when he was around. I could feel him slowly warming up to me. Magnus’ Anomaly counted for a lot of trust, and the guy felt safe enough to leave me with his brother.
He did point me to the best doctor he knew. She was interesting. On one hand, she was hesitant to treat a human, both because I was an alien and because her knowledge of human biology was limited to what I could remember from high school. On the other hand, she was the first pjulsen doctor to get to treat a human, and it was under good terms. Slowly, she’d managed to get my injuries taken care of. It took a bit of carefully observed work to figure out what kind of treatment I could take, but leading into Magnus’ theory about humans and pjulsen being similar, it looked like everything was fine. After we confirmed I wasn’t going to explode from a couple of painkillers, my doctor was more than happy to be the first in her field to work on a human and gain those bragging rights.
When my health was in order, Sven had given me a few options to mull over. I could just hang out with Magnus and essentially be his roommate for my stay on Clamor. That was the most relaxing option and most boring option. The next choice was I could help Sven out by using my powers. More exciting, though I was a bit scared to get involved with a war between two different species. The final option was to get involved with the war and have Sven help train me up to something a little respectable. He was determined that I would find my way home, and to repay the debt he insisted he owed me, he would turn me into the best fighter he could.
I wanted to focus on getting home first, but apparently, the team of scientists Magnus wanted me to meet were out of town for Clamor Science Con or something. Thinking I was funny, I called them Sphere Team Six, a joke Magnus didn’t get or appreciate. That was the true heartbreaker of being stranded so far away from home.
It didn’t take much deliberation to go with Sven’s offer to help the pjulsen and buff up my training some. The urge to help out the innocent people of Clamor was pulling at me. If I couldn’t protect humans, I could at least protect the pjulsen. Then, through rigorous amounts of controlled ass beatings at the hands of the strongest guy on the planet, I could get stronger for my triumphant return home. At least, that's what I kept telling myself when I was wiping blood off my chin for the billionth time in an hour.
“How are you going to defend this planet and your home if you can’t land a single hit on me?” Despite his words stinging, I knew Sven wasn’t trying to be a dick when he said them. He held his hand out to me, which I took. He pulled me up without any trouble. The dude’s hand wasn’t even sweaty from nearly two hours of training.
“I’m not the best on Earth,” I said. I spat out a glob of blood and saliva onto the floor of the gymnasium-like room we were using. Using my tongue, I ran them over my teeth to make sure one hadn’t gotten dislodged. I didn’t have Luna’s healers on hand to fix me up if things went downhill. “Alex and Val are really good. The others have cool powers that make them freakishly strong.”
“Ethan, going off your memories and how you understand your power, touching that Sphere did something to you. You’re a lot stronger now than you were a week ago.” Magnus was there too, mostly so Sven could tell me what I was doing wrong quickly. He might have also been hanging around so there was someone else there to witness me getting routinely embarrassed. It was humbling.
“Then why is my armor getting thrashed so easily?” I looked down at the cracks and holes that punctured the Shimmer-Armor I put all over me. What helped me withstand blows against the Sentinels was useless against Sven, and he wasn’t even using his powers or his sword. He was just beating me in hand-to-hand combat without breaking a sweat.
“It’s because it’s clunky and not well-made.” That one really stung. The armor saved my bacon more than once, and Sven could see that one did hurt me. “You’re not doing a bad job with it, you’re just inexperienced. I don’t blame you. Your powers came from a source you don’t understand. We don’t even fully understand it yet ourselves, which is another reason why we keep the number of people with powers in check. A powerful problem is bad enough. A powerful problem you can’t understand is how cities and societies collapse in a matter of months.”
“How do I fix it? I’ve taken some serious hits before, but nothing like this.”
“Your armor is energy. Everything about our powers is energy. When we use it, that energy flows.” When he saw that it wasn’t making sense to me, he sighed and shook his head. “When you make your armor, you’re manipulating this energy to create it. You have to constantly keep the energy balanced so it doesn’t overflow to one area. If I kick you in your chest right now, and you see it coming, you can direct more energy to that spot to take it. But I know the weak spots in your armor. I’ve done this for a long time and I have a lot of experience with perfecting my own power, so trust me, I’ve been there.”
“I don’t get how to fix it. Alex has a power where he has to direct energy around in his body and it enhances his strength, defense, you name it.” For once, I wanted nothing more than to see that confident bastard again. His Anomaly might’ve offered me something to learn from.
“There’s no easy fix. You just have to focus on what you’re doing.” To show an example, Sven spawned a bolt of lightning and held it in his hands. The intensity and the brightness increased at the back end and ran all the way down to the front. “You’ve used attacks before where you put everything you had into a single, concentrated area. That’s how you killed that man in the cave.”
My face went red. I forgot that with our three minds connected, he had access to my memories too, even the ones I wanted to keep hidden the most. Since he remembered it like I did, he knew how miserable I felt. I hated that he knew about it, but he didn’t dwell on it for very long.
“You need to do the opposite of that. Instead of putting everything in one attack or one spot, spread your power out. Shimmer’s ceiling is up to your control and your imagination. I can only control lightning. You can create inanimate objects as your mind sees fit. If you can capitalize on and utilize your gift, you’ll be able to exceed me.”
“Well, I can only sort of create inanimate objects. I struggle to create soft objects or ones that bend well. It took me a while to get my armor to where it is now.” I dispelled the armor I had on and sat on the hard ground. I expected Sven to yell at me like a drill sergeant, but he was a lot calmer than I expected him to be. It gave me time to think about what he said, which is probably what he wanted anyway.
“Well, everything does have a limit, realistically. That’s another part of your armor’s weakness. Areas that it struggles to bend are areas where it’s more liable to break as you have to weaken them to give them their necessary mobility. Your elbows, your knees, your neck. The list goes on, but if you have to bend or turn in it, that’s an automatic weak spot.”
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“I thought I’d gotten pretty good at using my power.” I ran my hand through the mop of sweaty hair that clung to my face.
“You’ve barely had time to use it.” Sven crouched down and did some light leg stretches that made the entire lower half of my body seize in agony. “A lot of what you’ve developed has been self-taught, which is fine. Given your inexperience and the suddenness of your power blooming, I’d say you’ve done tremendous work. I’ve been at this for a long time. I bet that I can help push your power to new heights.”
“Pretty confident for a guy who’s only beaten a kid a few times.” I smiled at him to show I was only playing around.
“You don’t want to see the things I’ve had to beat before you,” he replied, returning my smile. He stood up and offered me a hand again, which I took. For someone so lanky, he was strong.
And, while the gesture was appreciated, I knew I had another shellacking coming my way. He didn’t give me kindness without reminding me what I was there for.
I did my best to follow his instructions. I put my armor back on and focused on balancing out that energy he talked about. I didn’t know how it worked. I knew I could make objects and craft them into certain shapes, so it had to be similar to how I manipulated those. With my armor, I had to focus on every single inch of it to fix the holes Sven saw in it. In my head, it felt like I made it stronger, but there wasn’t any difference in how it looked. How Sven even found those holes baffled me. It really must have come with the experience he had talked about.
Keeping the level of concentration needed to balance my armor was hard while moving. My attacks were noticeably slower, and Sven knew that. He casually dodged around me, letting me figure out how to enhance my power without having it all collapse. I wasn’t pushed, which was a nice change of pace compared to Alex flinging hockey pucks at me. I had the time to figure out how to work my power myself. When I moved and something felt weird, I was allowed to adjust it. As much as I missed home, it was nice to be able to train without having a massive deadline or an insane looming fight on my shoulders. When I made it back to my home wasn’t up to me anymore, so in a way, my powerlessness became the perfect chance to become powerful.
Thinking about it that way helped put my mind at ease some. It was a damn shame thinking about it that way didn’t do much to help ease the learning curve for my powers. I was gassed and Sven didn’t even look bothered. I’d just moved a couch up three flights of stairs while he walked a single bag of garbage out to the can at the curb. My attacks were coming in slower from the fatigue, not just my new concentration on better energy distribution for my armor. I tried to hit a right hook onto Sven’s midsection, but he saw it coming from a mile away. He caught my arm and broke the armor that covered it in a single strike, albeit one that took a little more effort than his previous strikes.
Panting with my hands on my knees, I dissolved the rest of my armor. The base of my skull was tingling while a small trickle of blood ran down from my left nostril. I wiped it off with the back of my hand, leaving a huge splotch of fresh blood and sweat on my wrist. My heart told me to push through it and keep going. It wanted me to do something productive. Then my brain told my heart it was an idiot. The last time I pushed too hard, I was hospitalized for days and ran the risk of getting Lizzy killed by my sister.
“That’s your body’s way of saying it’s done for the day, so let’s call it.” Sven rolled his neck and did some shoulder rotations. “Your instincts for your powers are startlingly good. You have a great mind for this, one well beyond your years and experience.”
“I do?” That caught me by surprise. I always assumed I was just managing to get by doing what made sense at the time.
“Absolutely. Although you had your friend’s help to spring you along, you harnessed your power very quickly. After that, you’ve been steadily growing it and expanding its applications on your own.” Sven held his hands a few inches apart and made lightning dance in the space between them. The crackling and popping reminded me of a little firework I’d use on Independence Day. “My power has a much lower ceiling than yours. In just a few months, you’ve taken remarkable steps in getting closer to your ceiling. Even today, after you had only a little nudge in the right direction, you were already putting the pieces together.”
For the life of me, I couldn't see it, but I didn’t know enough about Anomalies to dispute it. If anything, Sven was the master, so it would have been foolish not to consider what he was saying. Really, like I’d been thinking the whole time, I only did what I thought made sense. There was still a lot about my power I didn’t understand. Touching the Sphere did seem to make me stronger, and maybe even gave me a little better control. Everything about my Anomaly felt better.
And I was still a long way off from being close to touching Sven, even in practice.
“Here, dinner will be my treat tonight,” Sven offered, already walking away and waving me toward the door.
“Hold on, I’d like to practice a little more, if that’s okay.” I took a few more deep breaths and wiped some sweat off my forehead.
“Ethan, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Sven leaned back against the door and watched me. “You’re already at your limit.”
“I know, I won’t push it. I just want to practice without getting beat up for a little bit.” I had a better idea of my limits than I had when I knocked myself out from overdoing it. Sven didn’t argue, so I took that as my cue to do what I wanted.
I formed a full set of armor over my body, deliberately weakening the areas where it would have to bend to accommodate my movements. My neck, shoulders, elbows, hands, hips, knees, and ankles were all looser than the parts that covered my chest, upper arms, lower arms, upper legs, and lower legs. The armor I’d created was about on par with everything I’d used against Sven at that point. That is to say, it needed some improvements big time.
I first focused on improving the strength of my helmet and chest piece. Thinking about it as energy I could consciously and continuously control helped. I made sure I was solidly connected to the armor, trying to feel for the energy I could tug at. To test it, I made it a little weaker first, then I made it a little stronger. Slowly, I pushed my Anomaly to its limit, my Shimmer growing brighter with the effort. So far, so good, and so normal for my power.
Keeping my elbows as loose as possible, I pumped more power into them. My goal was to make them as strong as I could get them without compromising any mobility. I started slow, allowing myself to stop and breathe if the strain got to be too much. I forced myself to keep all the armor up even if I felt bad. While I needed to improve my armor, I needed to figure out exactly when I needed to stop exerting myself before it became a problem. If the tingling at the base of my skull got too bad, blood from my nose came next, so I knew right when I had to pull it all back.
It took forever before I felt like I’d made any noticeable progress. I was drenched in sweat, and believe me, being stuck in your own armor smelling like a recently used locker room was not a great time. The rancid smell and nasty feeling were both worth it when I could feel those weak areas become stronger without losing any mobility. To cap that part off, I hadn’t gotten to the point of fainting, or even feeling close to it. The cherry on top of everything ended up being the rest of my armor. They didn’t lose any strength or durability either.
Decided enough was finally enough, I broke down my armor and collapsed on my ass. I brought my knees up, folded my arms over them, and rested my forehead on my forearms. Taking in deep breaths while sweat dripped between my legs, Sven and Magnus walked up to me.
“Impressive work, Ethan.” I looked up to see Sven holding out his hand for me. Grinning, I took it and he effortlessly lifted me to my feet. “Now, about that dinner offer.”
It was the best shower I’d had in my life. I felt accomplished and capable, a rarity for an unconfident guy on the best of days. When you put that guy on a brand new planet with no way home, those little victories were like a drug. I needed each one I could get my hands on, even if Sven and Magnus were practically handing them over to me on a silver platter.
After I got cleaned up, Sven made good on his promise, bringing Magnus with us. The pjulsen food I’d been treated to already was something special, so that perked me up real quick. If I was going to feast every time I did well with my powers, that was almost as good of a motivator as getting back home.