As Miss Clare uttered the words "Learn his power," I could see Mr. Eun-ji's eyes widen, and he looked down at me before looking right back up at Miss Claire.
"Claire, what the hell are you on about?" Mr. Eun-ji scoffs, his arms crossing as his eyes narrow at Miss Claire.
"I copy stuff," I interject.
"Stuff?"
"Powers."
"Powers." Mr. Eun-ji repeats my words in disbelief. "Oh, ok. That's normal."
"Really?" I question. Looking up at him.
"No!" He yells in response. I feel myself recoiling and instinctively put my arms up. Miss Claire walks over and puts her hand on Mr. Eun-ji's shoulder, "Hey. No need to bite the kid's head off over your own narrow-mindedness." She says softly as her grip on his shoulder tightens.
Mr. Eun-ji struggles but escapes her grip and stumbles a bit sideways before regaining his footing. "I apologize, Claire, but you can't expect me to believe something as illogical as copying powers! That would change the very balance of our society! Do you take me for an idiot?" he shouts.
"Yes." Miss Claire says with a deadpan expression. Her eyes pierced into his. "You're a grown man living in a roach-infested apartment. And you gamble all of your paychecks on horse races. Rankers make more than most jobs in the world."
"Woah, you are dumb," I speak up, saying the first thought that enters my mind. In reaction, Miss Claire bursts into laughter, while Mr. Eun-ji glares at me. If looks could kill, he'd murder me.
"Tell your brat to think before he speaks!" Mr Eun-Ji yells at Miss Claire.
"Eun-ji." Miss Claire says with a sense of pseudo-sweetness. "Should I remind you who you're talking to?" Miss Claire says, keeping her tone while swiping her pointer finger across her throat. That alone sent a shiver down my spine alongside a very clearly frightened Mr. Eun-ji. He meekly shakes his head and takes a step back.
Miss Claire walks over to me and kneels to match my height. "Alright, kiddo, watch this. Watch how my aura moves, and try to copy it when training with Eun-ji."
A portal appears in front of her, and another one appears in front of Mr. Eun-ji. Miss Claire punches through it, and a shadow fist appears out the other side and hits him. "Ow!" Mr. Eun-ji yelps before recoiling, "Did you seriously have to hit me to show the kid your moves?!"
Miss Claire ignores him and keeps her focus on me. "Any questions, kiddo? Need another demonstration?"
I contemplate for a moment, before a question pops into my head. "Why wasn't the fist that came out of the other portal your actual fist? Making one out of shadow seems like a pointless move." I ask.
"The portals are linked to the shadows of the environment. The inside of them is too wonky to be a straight line to the other side. The path to the other portal is different each time." She explains. "It actually wastes far more energy to use my real fist to aim for the other portal."
"Then why don't you make more portals and more fists at that point? It'd be a way stronger move." I question.
"The path to the other side of the portal is wonky, kiddo. It'd be way too hard to pull that off. You'd need some crazy senses to immediately gauge the path to multiple portals and guide multiple shadow fists directly through them with enough momentum to hurt your opponent," she further explains.
"I see.. That's quite the precise maneuver." I say. I can't help but contemplate it. It always intrigues me how seemingly simple moves have these complicated inner workings. I mean, it took me six months to learn how to use the shadow tendrils as effectively as I do now.
Miss Claire has told me before that with more experience I gain with copying people, the easier it will be for me to learn. I hope that's true.
Miss Claire sees me contemplating, and she puts her hand on my shoulder before shaking me. "You think too much, kiddo! Just get up and train with Eun-ji over there! Too many thoughts runnin' around in that little head of yours." Miss Claire then promptly waves goodbye and exits the room, leaving me alone with Mr. Eun-ji.
When Miss Claire leaves, Mr. Eun-ji walks over to me. "So what do ya want me to do, kid?" he asks expectantly, tapping his foot. I get the impression he has very little patience or liking for anything Miss Claire tasks him to do.
"What are your powers, Mr. Eun-ji?" I ask, hoping to annoy him as little as possible. "Enhanced senses and precognition." He answers plainly. "All of my five basic senses are over one hundred times as effective and sensitive as a normal human's, and that also gives me a level of precognition, cueing me into people's next movements before they make them. But it also makes me far more sensitive to pain than your average person."
"Then why didn't you dodge Miss Claire's punch, Mr. Eun-ji? She wasn't really putting much effort into it, it wasn't that fast." I questioned, I mean, if he was that good, he would've seen it coming.
"Kid, your mentor is the goddamn devil incarnate. If I had dodged that, I knew she would've hit me with something way harder. It's called picking your battles. I like being alive." He says shakily, a shiver running down his spine.
"Although now that I'm thinking about it. I don't know how you'd copy my power. It isn't something that physically manifests like others. I mean, you have to see the power to copy it, right?" He says as he looks down at me curiously.
A fair assumption on his end, but I'd rather correct him without giving away too much. Miss Claire has ingrained the idea of hiding the full details of how my copying works from people into my head.
"Oh, my eyes are special. I'll spare you the details, but it should work with practice." I reply, hoping that my explanation is enough for him.
"If you say so… Ray?" He says as if it were a question, trying to verify my name. "Yup, Ray." I verify.
"Your first assignment is to hit me." Mr. Eun-ji says plainly. His arm crossing, he's clearly expecting me to make the first move. Seeing as earlier when I assumed him to be an intruder, I wasn't able to hit him once. This is gonna be a pain.
I quickly step forward, throwing a punch at him, but Mr. Eun-ji dodges quite easily. I assumed he would. I'm not trying to hit him at this point. I want to expend as little energy as possible while getting a feel for how he moves his aura. From my prior observations, by design, it is constantly spread throughout his body; however, sometimes it spikes in certain spots, mainly in the facial area. I can only assume that the spikes are triggered when he uses precognition, and the aura constantly being spread is just a result of his amped senses. I've never seen anything like it before.
His aura is green. But it's very thin due to how much it's spread out.
People with multipurpose powers, like Miss Claire's shadow manipulation, can't use all of their moves at once. The reason for that is unknown to many. However, my own hypothesis is that they can't move their auras in all of those different directions at once. That's why it takes many people a lot of practice to use multiple moves at once.
I consider aura like a muscle; the more you stretch it out by using different moves, the more you can do with it at once. An example is how Miss Claire took a while to learn how to do the portal punch thing. I saw her trying to do it when she first took me in. With time, I noticed her aura could move and stretch further to pull it off. But I didn't know exactly how it worked until she explained it earlier.
I keep mindlessly throwing punches at Mr. Eun-ji while I contemplate this. I cannot help but wonder about my own limits. Will I be able to use multiple powers at once? Is that even possible?
Since I've been observing Mr. Eun-ji's aura movements for long enough, I should probably kick it into a higher gear to try things out. Since the whole point is to learn Mr. Eun-Ji's power, I should probably refrain from doing anything with my aura aside from trying to mimic it. I'll practice the portal punch thing Miss Claire showed me later.
I try to spread my aura across my body manually. As I do, I can somewhat feel my senses heightening; however, when I try to physically move, it stops.
Damn, this is hard.
I thought learning it would be easier since it's just spreading my aura out everywhere. I was wrong.
I attempt again. I think I'm straining myself. My senses are most definitely heightened. I can hear Miss Claire all the way across the lair, munching on chips and watching reality TV.
My vision improved immensely, my peripheral vision increasing to where I can see an entire 180-degree view at all times, noticing every little detail. I can even smell the outside air above the lair.
It's all so overstimulating. I move slightly and trip over, and I can tell you first-hand, Mr. Eun-ji was not lying about the increased pain. My face scrunches up as I hold back from making any sound. It isn't the worst pain I've ever felt. But it hurts like hell. I writhe a little bit in pain.
Mr. Eun-ji runs over to me. He looks mortified. "Uh… that's the increased pain from my power, right?" He says softly as if he's forcing himself to be calm. "Holy hell, Ray, you have an abnormal pain tolerance; most people would be screaming in pain right now. What in the world has Claire been-"
I cut him off and shook my head, "No. This is from my life before she took me in. If anything, the comfort she provided dulled my pain tolerance."
Mr. Eun-ji seemed to look even more horrified. A petrifying four minutes of pure silence ensue. When it was finally broken by him speaking, "Okay… Whatever you say."
Suddenly, his expression switches in a very pseudo-chipper tone, "How about we go grab ice cream? My treat."
Ice cream. Never heard of it. But I won't turn down someone's kind offer to buy me something. "Sure, Mr. Eun-ji. Let's go." I reply. He swiftly grabs my hand and takes me out of the room, We briskly walk past the living room area as Mr. Eun-ji rushingly explains to Miss Claire, "Okay, I'm taking the kid outside, bye!"
Miss Claire looks over, unable to process the words that escaped Mr. Eun-ji's mouth before he and I left and took the elevator up.
He and I walk outside the elevator and exit the warehouse. I look up and see the starry night sky above me. I suppose time flew by, me napping the day away until I trained for about an hour with Mr. Eun-ji.
Walking under the night sky and feeling the breeze is nice. I never get out that much ever since living with Miss Claire. Hopefully, my first mission and now this outing will change that.
It is a silent thirty-minute walk. It's very awkward. I try to pass the time by mimicking Mr. Eun-ji's power. Eventually, the silence is broken by Mr. Eun-ji, "So, kid, are you curious about how your mentor knows the rank 50 hero?"
My eyes widen, I had no clue that he was that strong, "You're the rank 50 hero?!" Mr Eun-ji laughs in response, "Yeah, well, there's an argument that I should be higher, and I agree. But the hire-ups sure as hell don't want an ex-villain to climb any higher than I have."
An ex-villain. That makes sense, there'd be no other way Miss Claire could ever get along with a hero otherwise. "So why did you change?" I ask.
"I used to control the information flow of the underworld. There's nothing that slipped past me. And when anyone knew too much, or if anyone got in my way, I was powerful enough to silence them myself." Mr Eun-ji starts explaining. "Claire was my number one customer, she used to pay a lot. Until my business came crashing down."
"How'd that happen?" I asked, probing for information. "Ironhide came and shut me down. I honestly look up to the guy; most people ranked above him would've just killed me where I stood, but he sent me to prison and let me go through rehabilitation. He's the reason I got so far," he replied. He isn't lying. Based on his comments, only the top 25 heroes could best him. Any one of them besides Ironhide would have mutilated him.
"In all honesty, I just surrendered after a long six-hour battle. Both Ironhide and I were tired, and I was too scared of another ranker interfering, especially someone like Paragon." Mr Eun-Ji further explains. "Yeah, Paragon would have probably tortured you for days before killing you," I grimace. "Nah, he probably wouldn't do anything THAT bad." Mr. Eun-Ji says while ruffling my hair.
After all of that talking and walking, we finally stopped by a food truck. "Here, this is the best ice cream in town." I look at the food truck. It's red and it has a big cutout of Mr. Eun-Ji in front of it. "You just took me here because you probably own it. And it lines your own pockets with money." I look up at him and huff.
"Guilty as charged. And I have Claire's wallet." He pulls out a black leather wallet. It most definitely belongs to Miss Claire.
For a guy who seems to fear her so much, he certainly has the gall to cross her like that. "I'll just tell her this is a necessary training expense." Mr. Eun-Ji chuckles. I seriously doubt Miss Claire would buy that.
"So, Ray, what flavour of ice cream do you want?" Mr. Eun-ji looks down at me and asks. "What's ice cream, Mr. Eun-Ji?" I ask while looking up at him quizzically.
Mr Eun-ji laughs in response, "You have an odd sense of humor, Ray."
"No, I'm serious," I tell him.
"Goddamn, you're sheltered. Fine, I'll treat you to my favorite flavor. Rocky Road." He replies as he swipes Miss Claire's debit card in the card reader at the register, placing the order himself and ignoring the worker there.
"You're only buying it because it's the most expensive flavor on the menu. Is it even normal to charge for flavors?" I question. I still can't get a read on this man.
"Uh, I made it the most expensive because it's my favorite. Besides, I think charging per scoop and then adding an extra charge depending on what flavor you get is a great business practice. Especially since my name is attached to the truck." He explains this as the worker scoops out three scoops of Rocky Road ice cream for each of us. I see that he paid one hundred and fifty dollars for this.
Miss Claire is not gonna be happy with us when we return.
I take a bite out of one of the scoops. It's kinda cold, but it's really tasty. "Kid, you're not supposed to bite it. That can make you're teeth ache. You really never have eaten it, have you?" Mr. Eun-ji interjects.
"Well, I like biting it. The cold doesn't affect me." I reply, while taking another bite.
Mr. Eun-ji and I sit down on a nearby bench, eating our ice cream. Idly partaking in small talk that I am half-hazardly paying attention to, "So why are you still at Miss Claire's beck and call if you're a reformed hero?" I ask him, I mean it's a valid question. I want the full picture after all.
"Well, when I debuted as a hero, the WWSHA erased all information about my old life as a villain. Claire knows, so essentially that info is blackmail against me." Mr. Eun-ji explains
"The World Wide Super Hero Association can just do that?" I question.
"Yeah, they bury all kinds of information. Did you know that Paragon had another child besides his two daughters?" Mr. Eun-ji asks me.
"... No… I didn't." I reply.
"Yeah, a son. According to his eldest daughter, Elaine, she and her sister looked up to him. And Claire is the one who murdered him in cold blood, no witnesses, just made him disappear. The only thing they found was blood and one of his teeth." Mr. Eun-ji explains.
"Miss Claire wouldn't do that," I say solemnly.
Mr. Eun-ji was about to respond, but was interrupted when we both heard a sharp, high-pitched shriek from an alleyway two blocks over.
Mr. Eun-ji stays put, while I, on the other hand, rush over to the source of the sound. A pitch-dark alleyway two blocks over. I grab a paper bag from a nearby trash can and poke eye holes in it with my fingers before putting it on.
The only one who would so brazenly hurt someone in public to induce a scream of pain like that would be a hero. Because they know that they'd be able to get away with it.
I step into the alleyway and see two identical individuals, both at least 5'0 tall. Light teal hair that almost covers their eyes, and they are wearing giant coats that cover all of them. The one on the left is wearing a yellow coat. And the one on the right is wearing a purple coat.
Below them is a boy around my age. The man in yellow stomps on his head, crushing it and killing him instantly.
They both notice me seemingly simultaneously. And look up from the ground to look directly at me simultaneously as well.
"And who the hell are you?" The one in yellow says.