The world had shifted on its axis. The quiet, scholarly boy was now a strategic asset in John Howlett's eyes. The study, once a place of stern lectures and financial ledgers, had become a war room for industrial ambition. Blueprints and reports on European steelworks now shared space with timber accounts. John's frustration had been funneled into a voracious hunger for the future his son had outlined.
James observed this transformation with cold satisfaction. The first brick of his fortress of influence was being laid. But a fortress needed more than walls; it needed an inviolable core. His body was a weapon, his mind a strategem, but against the emerging threats he was researching—the whispered hints of vampires, the potential for other mutants with powers far stranger than bone claws—he needed a more active defense. The System was the key.
Alone in his room, the house silent around him, he willed the interface to life. The cool, blue geometries of the Shop unfolded in his mind. He ignored the flashy, expensive upgrades and went straight to the defensive modules. He found it quickly, a skill that resonated with the metallic nature of his own hidden weapons.
[Metallic Resonance Shield] - Cost: 1,000 Points
A dynamic defensive skill. The user generates a kinetic barrier composed of manipulated metallic particles in the immediate environment, or from their own biological metal stores. Effectiveness scales with the density and quantity of available metal. Shield strength, area, and refinement improve with proficiency. Capable of evolution through repeated use and combat stress.
It was perfect. It synergized with his biology, offered scalable protection, and most importantly, it could be trained. It was not a static purchase, but a seed he could cultivate. Without hesitation, he initiated the transaction.
<< Confirm purchase: Metallic Resonance Shield for 1,000 Points? >>
Confirm.
A wave of bizarre sensation washed over him, not painful, but deeply alien. It felt as if the very iron in his blood, the hardened calcium-phosphate matrix of his bones, had suddenly gained a new, dormant awareness. Knowledge flooded his neural pathways—not intellectual knowledge, but muscle-memory knowledge. The instinct to draw, to shape, to push. His balance updated: 2,110.
He stood, flexing his hands. Focusing his will, he reached for that new internal sense. A faint, shimmering distortion flickered into existence just an inch from the skin of his left forearm. It was barely visible, like heat haze off summer stone, but he could feel it—a thin, resilient film. He picked up a small penknife from his desk and pressed the tip against the shield. The blade stopped dead, as if hitting solid steel, a good inch from his skin. The effort was minimal.
A genuine, cold smile touched his lips. This was a new kind of power. Not for attack, but for absolute negation. He could already envision the applications.
His grinding began that night in the hidden granite bowl. He started with small pebbles, flicking them at the shield, feeling the minute impact and the corresponding energy drain. He then progressed to larger stones, throwing them with his enhanced strength. The shield held, but he could feel the strain, a mental muscle being taxed. He learned to shape it—a small, dense disc to block a single projectile; a larger, thinner curtain to deflect a wider area. The skill was clumsy at first, but with each repetition, the movements became more fluid, the shield's response more instantaneous.
He incorporated it into his physical regimen. He would run through the woods, maintaining a low-level shield to deflect branches and brambles. He would practice with his claws, slashing at the shield, testing its resilience against his own primary weapons. The sound was a strange, resonant clang-shriek, like metal grinding on ceramic. After two weeks of relentless, nightly practice, he could conjure a forearm-sized shield strong enough to cleanly deflect a hurled hatchet, the force dissipated in a shower of invisible kinetic energy. The shield was no longer a flicker; it was a reliable, hard-edged fact.
It was during one of these sessions that he felt a presence. He let the shield drop and retracted his claws in a single, fluid motion, becoming just a boy standing in a moonlit clearing.
Victor stepped out from the treeline. He was bigger now, at thirteen, all coiled, feral power. His eyes, that pale yellow, glinted in the dark. The air around him hummed with that same subsonic frequency of active mutation James had felt before.
"I knew it," Victor snarled, his voice a low growl. "I knew you weren't just some weak little bookworm. What are you doing out here?"
James regarded him calmly. "Walking. The house is… confining."
"Don't lie to me!" Victor took a step closer, his scent aggressive, challenging. "I've seen you. You move too quiet. You don't get tired. You're not right." He flexed his own hands, and James saw the tips of his fingernails, thick and sharp like claws. "We're not right."
"Is that what you think?" James asked, his tone devoid of fear. "That we're the same?"
"We are the same!" Victor insisted, a desperate, angry conviction in his voice. "We're not like them. We're stronger. Better. We should be together. Brothers."
The word hung in the air, loaded with a truth only James fully understood.
"Brothers share a common purpose, Victor," James said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that made Victor lean in slightly. "Do we share a purpose? You seek dominance through fear and strength. I seek… understanding. You want to be the alpha of the pack. I'm studying the forest to become the one who owns the hunting grounds. We are not the same."
Victor stared, confused by the analogy but understanding the core rejection. His face twisted in betrayal. "You think you're better than me? With your books and your soft hands?"
"I know I am," James stated, a simple, irrefutable fact. "Because I understand what we are, and you only feel it. That is the difference between a weapon and the one who wields it."
With a roar of pure, undiluted fury, Victor lunged. It was blindingly fast, a feral pounce meant to takedown and maul.
James didn't flinch. He willed the shield into existence, not as a small disc, but as a full-body, concave wall directly in Victor's path.
Victor hit it with the force of a charging bull. There was a deafening BWOMP of concussed air. The kinetic energy rebounded, throwing Victor backward off his feet. He landed in a heap, grunting in shock and pain, clutching his shoulder. He looked up at James, his eyes wide with a new, primal fear. He hadn't seen a weapon; he'd been stopped by nothing. By empty air.
James looked down at him, his expression unchanged. "You see? You are a blunt instrument. You will always lunge. And I will always be ready."
He turned and walked away, leaving Victor shaken and bewildered in the dirt. The encounter was a data point. Victor's mutation was progressing, his aggression escalating. He was a growing liability.
The final breakdown of Thomas Logan was triggered by this very escalation. The next day, a shaken and humiliated Victor, nursing his bruised pride and body, recounted the bizarre event to his father. He spoke of James's unnatural speed, his strange, invisible defense.
For Thomas, it was the last straw. The psychological torment, the daily erosion of his manhood, now combined with the proof that his true son was being physically dominated by his cuckoo-child. The fragile dam of his sanity broke.
He found James in the library, the sanctum of the Howlett intellect that had always excluded him. He reeked of cheap whiskey and despair.
"You," he slurred, pointing a trembling finger. "You devil's spawn. What did you do to my boy? What are you?"
James closed his book slowly. "I am James Howlett. The son of this house."
"LIES!" Thomas screamed, the sound raw and torn from his throat. He stumbled forward, grabbing a heavy, bronze bust from a pedestal. "You're my son! MINE! And you… you sit here in your finery, looking down on me, twisting my boy against me… you've poisoned everything!"
He hurled the bust with all his might.
James didn't move. He focused, and a shimmering, semi-opaque shield of metallic force erupted before him. The bronze bust struck it with a resonant GONG and clattered harmlessly to the floor, dented.
Thomas stared, his jaw slack, his rage replaced by superstitious terror. "Witchcraft…"
At that moment, John Howlett, drawn by the scream, burst into the room. He took in the scene: the drunken Thomas, the dented bust on the floor, and his son, standing calmly behind… nothing. A faint heat-haze in the air that was now dissipating.
"What is the meaning of this?" John's voice was ice.
"He… he's a demon!" Thomas babbled, pointing a shaking finger at James. "He defended himself with… with air! He's not human!"
James looked at John, his face a mask of frightened confusion. "He threw the bust at me, Father. I… I don't know what happened. I just put my hands up."
John Howlett's face hardened into a mask of pure contempt. He saw a drunken, violent liar attacking his brilliant, defenseless son. The contrast between James's poised intellect and Thomas's brutish collapse was absolute.
"You're done, Logan," John said, his voice low and final. "You're finished. Get off my land. If I see you or your brute of a son by sunrise, I'll set the law on you. Now get out."
The fight drained from Thomas. He looked from John's unforgiving face to James's cold, innocent eyes. He saw his life, his pride, his very identity, utterly annihilated. Not by a fist, but by the quiet, inexorable pressure of a mind he could never hope to comprehend. With a broken, guttural sob, he turned and fled.
John turned to James, his expression softening with concern. "Are you alright, son?"
"I am, Father," James said softly. "Thank you."
As John left to ensure Thomas was expelled, James walked to the window. He watched Thomas Logan stumble towards his cottage, a broken man, his world in ashes.
He had achieved his goal. Thomas was neutralized, a non-entity. Victor was confused and fearful. John was more committed than ever to the industrial empire that would be their legacy. And he had a new, potent defensive skill, already growing stronger with each use.
He had turned his family into tools and weapons, each serving a purpose in his grand design. The monster was not just hiding. He was building, refining, and eliminating, piece by piece, until the board was set exactly as he wished. The game was proceeding perfectly.
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:)(if u like it give me some power Stone 😅🤌🤌🤌)