“So I guess it’s time I told you about powers.

You’ll find that some people use the word abilities, but in the end it’s all the same.”

The girl nodded her head at the man’s words. If she listened well she would be rewarded for it.

“The first thing to know about powers is that we don’t know where they originate from. It’s quite inconvenient really. The majority of powers naturally appear in subjects some time during puberty, but there are rarer cases in which people have unexpectedly gained powers in the latter years of their lives. The oldest known person to gain powers after puberty was one hundred and twelve years old.”

“Does that mean I’ll get powers too?”

The man considered her question with a grim expression.

‘But then again’ she thought, ‘his expression is always grim.’

“You already have powers, not everybody can create electricity and punch holes in metal walls you know.”

She looked at the man with curious eyes, “Are those the only kinds of powers?”

“Of course they’re not. Powers are as diverse as the people on this earth. Well, they never used to be actually, powers previously only appeared in about one in a hundred million people.

The first case of powers appearing is thought to have occurred some several thousand years ago and since then powers have been appearing in people at greater frequencies. Most historical figures are suspected to have had powers in one form or another.”

“Like Deus Ex Machina?”

“That’s a man that came a lot later. But we’re getting distracted. Over the years powers have become a lot more widespread and have popped up in one in ten thousand people. Scientists researching into the development and creation of powers discovered that the appearance of powers coincided with certain genetic anomalies occurring within people.

The problem lay in how supposedly normal people were developing these anomalies immediately and without warning. There have been many incidents of people developing powers in the middle of crowded places and accidently harming the people around them.

Strangely enough, the highest chance people have to develop a power is right before a situation which would lead to their death. We’re not exactly sure why that is at this moment but several tests have been conducted-”

*Yawn* the girl lifted her arms and the wires that were running into them clattered against each other.

“You need to know these things.” The man gazed sternly at the girl.

“I know, sorry. When’s story time?”

“After this if you listen closely to what I’m saying.”

“Yay!”

“Although there are lots of different powers, the majority of them were quite easy to put into categories. A British scientist researching the power phenomenon, a man named Robert Richter, created the Richter table which categorised powers into five types, Strength, Manipulation, Knowledge, Creation and Unknown. About a hundred sub-categories were created for each of those, but I’ll make you memorise those later.”

“Aw.”

“These categories were created in order of most common to least common. Powers from the Strength category appear in almost every powered individual and can be as simple as durable skin that can’t be cut, to entire organic bodies being replaced with something else, perhaps a certain element or even something intangible like darkness or light.

You yourself have two strength type powers. You’re enhanced physical strength and your body regeneration ability. As for the Manipulation category, you don’t have one of those abilities yet but we’re hoping that you will soon develop one as the experiments continue along.

You should be careful if you ever come across a manipulator. As their category name suggests, they can control certain things to some extent although this usually only extends to natural elements and minerals.

Most manipulators can’t use their powers if some sort of barrier, such as clothing or human skin, is in between them and their element. This is an important thing for you to remember if you ever find yourself running into an enemy that has manipulation powers.

The weakest of manipulators can only manipulate objects that their bodies are touching whereas the strongest have been known to manipulate dozens of tons of their element from kilometres away. Some are powerful enough to manipulate elements past barriers. It’s because of these beings that Manipulation is known as the strongest type.”

“But I can control electricity.”

The girl lifted her arm towards the man and her arm glowed as blue arcs raced across it.

“No, you can create electricity. Alongside Unknown the Creation type powers are the most mysterious. People with these powers are able to create materials out of thin air.

Similar to the Manipulation types they are limited in what they can create and most can only create things within a certain radius of themselves and not beyond walls and barriers.

I think you know of the superhero Diamond?”

“Yes! She can create diamonds as big as a hundred feet tall!”

“Indeed, perhaps higher, but the most intriguing thing is that she can also make it disappear at will. We’re not sure where creation types retrieve their materials from since no diamond reserves are known to disappear when she fights.

Many of the other creation types would long ago have disrupted the cycle of this earth if the materials had been taken from within it. Even now we are still looking into where the materials conjured by these people are coming from.”

The girl looked at the man impatiently.

“So that means that there’s just Knowledge and Unknown left, right??”

The man nodded at her.

“Knowledge is possibly the simplest of the power types to understand. They know things. Again, we’re not sure how, but people with a knowledge type of power are those that suddenly find themselves knowing information that they did not before.

Several of these people, such as the hero Photon, have gained knowledge dozens of years ahead of our time and use it to create complex machines.  

Our organisation works with several knowledge types to equip our personnel with the highest level of technology. The laboratory machines you see around you are also a result of their technological knowledge.

There are also those that gain knowledge of past events and use it to change our view of history even now.

Now then, that just leaves the Unknown category. The name is pretty much self-explanatory, if a power turns up that doesn’t belong to any other category it will go into this one. As far as humanity knows there are only a few dozen of these types to have ever existed.”

The girl fiddled with her thumbs, “You mean like being able to tell the future?”

“No, all of the future tellers on record have fallen into the Knowledge category. And that’s only if they’re not charlatans. They possess knowledge of some future events but they can’t tell the future per se, at least not at will.

Once the event they know of is about to occur and they change it slightly they won’t know what happens next because they have already changed the event that they know about. It is not true future telling since they don’t know what happens once they have deviated from the path they saw. A true future teller would be able to both change the future and see the new future their change has made.”

“But what if we did find someone like that!”

The man ran his hands through his hair.

“Well then, I think we would recruit them. It does sound like an incredibly useful ability. If we had someone telling us that what we did was bound to fail before we did it, then it would save us a lot of time and resources.”

The girl puffed her cheeks and looked annoyed. She was incredibly bored right now.

“Well now E-23, I think it’s time for a story.”

E-23 looked up expectantly at the Director’s words and he reached out to the nearby bench and grabbed one of the numerous papers that were lying on top of it.

Stolen story; please report.

“Let’s see, File no.12258B was just delivered to the hero association today. It’s Mouse’s report on the capture of Earth Man.”

The girl clapped her hands together with a smile on her face. She always loved story time.

~~~~

“Oh hell no, don’t you even think about it.”

*Clatter*

The woman stared in surprise as the gun she had been holding a second earlier was kicked out of her hand.

I brought my foot to the ground and immediately moved it forward. I rotated my entire body forward and swung my arm around to smash her face with my fist.

*Crunch* I heard a satisfying crack as my fist hit her square in the jaw and it broke.

She fell to the ground writhing in pain and I stepped back to look my opponent. She looked young, maybe only around twenty years old, and she had bright pink hair.

She wasn’t wearing anything special except for a leather jacket that looked like it would suit B-rated movie bikies instead of a twenty-something year old girl.

Something had flown out of her mouth, after I punched her, and it lay on the ground next to her face. I think it was chewing gum but it was hard to tell while it was covered in blood.

“You just shot me!” I shouted at her.

She coughed and a glob of blood flew out of her mouth. She shot me an angry look.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The nerve of this woman! Acting like nothing had happened when I had clearly just kicked a gun out my face.

I ran my hands over my face and realised that she was right. I hadn’t been shot. Perhaps it had been my imagination.

“Watch out!”

I felt a pair of hands pushing against my ribs and the before I knew it I was flying through the air and crashing onto the bitumen street several meters away. I had time to see blonde hair fall in front of my face before I was pushed further into the ground as someone crashed into my chest.

“What did you do that fo-”

*BOOM*

My sentence was drowned out by a deafening explosion.

‘Oh crap my house!’

A flickering of flames lit up the area as what was left of my house blew to pieces in front of my eyes and the rest caught on fire.

This was turning out to be an incredibly bad week for me.

“Hey”

I had lived in that house for ages.

“Hey hey”

I made my first memories in that house.

“Listen to me!”

I- was interrupted from my reminiscing as a pair of hands reached up in front of me and started pulling at my hair.

“Why aren’t you running, are you dumb?!”

‘Oh right, there was a blonde haired girl next to me before.’

*Smack*

Ouch.

*Smack* *Smack*

“Hey, stop hitting me.”

*SMACK* “No seriously-“

*BOOM*

My eyes widened in surprise as the girls back exploded into flames and she went flying behind me.

*Crash*

Standing in the middle of the street was a man dressed in black. He was only a few meters away and he was holding a weapon which looked incredibly menacing. If this wasn’t real life I might have mistaken it for a rocket launcher.

‘Oh wait, that is a rocket launcher.’

And this is real life.

The pink haired woman walked up to the man and lifted her hand in front of his weapon.

The woman grunted and a canister appeared in mid-air, the man caught it with his hand. The man lifted the weapon and an empty canister fell out it. He put the new one into the empty slot to finish reloading his weapon.

It took me a few seconds to realise what was happening.

*Swoosh*

The man fired the rocket launcher again and I could see a trail of smoke heading towards me through the rain. I stood frozen in place as I stared at it. There were several thoughts rushing through my head.

‘I definitely did not picture myself going out this way. I sort of wished I’d dated a girl before I died. Then preferably have died in her arms. Maybe not from a rocket launcher though. Although now that I think about it, that does sound sort of kick ass.’

As my thoughts rambled on a shadow fell over my body and I heard the crunching of gravel. The bare back of the blonde haired girl covered my vision as she moved to stand in front of me. She spread out her hands in front of her.

The back of her shirt had been blown off and the rest of it lay in tatters around her. But I could see no physical wounds on her body. I was sure she had taken a rocket to the back before.

The rain was illuminated as a bolt of bright blue electricity fired out of the girl’s hands towards the rocket.

*BOOM*

The area lit up as the rocket and electricity collided and I saw that several of my neighbours were running for their lives down the street. Luckily the woman and man hadn’t noticed them.

The woman moved towards us and the girl tensed.

“You know, when you left the Directors hair turned white.”

‘That’s kind of a weird way to start a conversation.’ I thought, ‘Director? Where have a heard that before?’

The woman wiped her mouth and spat out another glob of blood.

“We didn’t think that you would be able to make contact with another organisation so soon. We underestimated your resourcefulness E-23.”

‘Organisation? Did they mean me? This girls name was E-23?” Questions kept popping up in my mind.

E-23 moved her hands in front of her defensively but reconsidered and moved them to cover her sides, no, to cover me.

“He’s just a bystander. Leave him out this.”

The woman laughed and more blood trickled out of her mouth. The broken jaw seemed to have healed already. She must have a regeneration type power.

“You expect us to believe that you found a powered being lying on the street?”

E-23 shrugged.

“That’s right.”

I sighed and put my hand on the ground. I felt the wet bitumen crunching underneath my palm as I lifted my body up, ‘Well, she did save my life. I guess I owe her one.’

And the rain did look nice on a moon and fire lit night.

“That’s wrong.” I said.

E-23 cocked her head around to look at me and I smiled at the expression of surprise on her face.

*Pop*

The woman blew a chewing gum bubble from her mouth and it exploded over her lips. She traced her tongue over the pink substance and crossed her arms.

“So who are you then?”

I smiled and placed my hand over the girl’s, E-23’s, shoulder.

“I’m this girl’s companion.”

The woman and man looked at each other with stern expression, “I guess that means we have to kill you then.”

I shrugged and wrapped my hands into fists.

“Then I guess that means I have to get serious.”

The rain stopped falling around me, although I could still see and hear it all around us.

“And they won’t be fighting alone.”

I heard a voice speak from above me and my neck cracked as I bent it backwards to look at the new arrival. What appeared to be a teenage girl holding a sword and an umbrella was hovering above us.

‘Is she wearing a shrine maiden outfit or is it just me?’ I double checked, ‘she’s definitely wearing a shrine maiden outfit.’ It was just like the kind I see all the time in Japanese manga.

‘Oh hey, she has a bunny mask as well.’

She lifted her weapon to point towards the man and woman. A white glow began to surround her body and she shouted for all to hear,

“Flying down from the heavens, Lunar Princess has arrived to deliver judgement on all evil!”

That aura, that mask and that corny battle cry, they could mean only one thing.

A hero had arrived.