Glassport
Skyler stumbled out of the tank, falling on his knees, taking deep breaths. Kael was next to him, lying on his back.
"Holy…" he breathed out. His mind was too cluttered, and he didn't have the capacity to curse.
"Yeah," Kael muttered, laying his forearm on his forehead. His chest began to roll silently. Thairon ordered a scan, rolling his eyes at the results.
Kael's laughter became clear now.
It wasn't loud, far from it. The slow, steady rumbling of his chest was almost menacing. Not in the way that he might go off the rails and leave a trail of bodies behind, but by the time he was done, people were going to question their sanity.
He was out to have fun.
Skyler looked more at peace in comparison. He knew his purpose was different, more selfless. All the same, he trusted both of them to be responsible.
"Alright you two, go and shower," he ordered.
"Don't need to tell me twice," Skyler muttered, pushing himself up with a hand. He stumbled like a child learning how to walk but continued forward, more careful with each step. Kael was the same.
Though, he chuckled the entire way.
—
Skyler shuddered as the hot water washed over him. Having his body back after a week of being inside a computer was relieving.
He snorted.
He just realized how ridiculous his life had become. Uttering that sentence didn't feel out of the ordinary, not for more than a few seconds. He raised his hand, watching the water pool on his palm. Nax had said controlling his powers would require work in the real world.
His hand glowed red.
The pooling water began to bubble, turning to steam. He focused on the glow, imagining it spreading to his whole body. He realized it had worked when the sound of the running water dulled. The droplets slowed to a crawl, hanging in the air. The steam froze, becoming a thick, permanent layer blocking his sight.
He blinked.
Tentatively, he raised a hand, poking one of the droplets. It burst apart, moving with speed exceeding everything else in his vision. He dispersed the glow, and the droplets continued to fall.
He chuckled, clenching his hand into a fist.
—
The water did not touch him.
It flowed like there was an invisible layer over his body. He raised his hand through the stream, watching the water bend away. He stopped concentrating, and the hot water finally touched his skin.
He marveled at how instinctive it felt, as if he had a limb that he wasn't aware of and suddenly could move it.
Kael turned his attention to the rack holding the shampoo, soap, and the scrubber. It was within arm's reach, but that wouldn't be fun. As Nax had drilled on his skull for the last week, imagination was the key. So he imagined.
He spread his fingers as the mental image started to come to reality. It started as a small, fluctuating distortion. It began to open, or rather, the fabric of space at two different points bent, occupying the same location. He reached through the small portal, barely squeezing his hand through. He awkwardly grabbed the bottle and pulled it.
It wasn't worth the effort. He had spent far more energy by opening the portal. Yet the electric feeling that spread through his hand to his heart was intoxicating. The difficulties that came with the Displacer Module were absent.
The capabilities that coursed through his cells?
Indescribable.
—
"Eat slowly; you are not starving," Thairon said, squinting his eyes.
Kael swallowed, feeling the food get stuck in his throat. He washed it down with a glass of water. "I want to be training, not eating," he muttered, abandoning all basic table manners. Skyler was eating fast too, just not enough to warrant a warning.
"Done," he said, slamming the empty bowl on the table. Thairon's lips curled at the display.
He gritted his teeth, taking a deep breath. "You... ugh, just go."
—
The training room was the newest addition to the complex. The bots had dug the room far away from the rest of the structure.
"Nice," Skyler said, spinning around to get a good look. The entire place was white and metallic, and unlike the rest, the walls, floor, and ceiling were smooth. The gaps that existed between the panels were absent. It created the illusion that the room was going on forever.
A section of the floor in the middle of the room parted. Two human-shaped dummies rose up. Floating cubes with holographic target rings separated from the walls and the ceiling. Finally, a transparent forcefield split the room into two.
"Go ahead," he said, patting both of his brothers on the shoulders.
Kael rushed ahead, and his improved speed had him colliding with the dummy. Skyler pointed a finger at him, laughing. He was more careful in his approach, strolling up to the dummy.
Thairon walked into the control room overlooking the area to watch their performance.
—
Training Log 02.09.785
Day 3 of Training
Skyler's control over gravity is progressing smoothly. He can cause local disturbances where gravity fluctuates. He can't exert full control over whether the gravity decreases or increases, but he will get there. His speed requires an open field to reveal its full potential. Still, he can reach thousands of kilometers per second fast within the training room, a fraction of his potential.
Kael chose to leave the illusionary part of his abilities for later. He is fully committed to perfecting his control over space first. His time with the Module Hunters, short as it was, certainly had a part in this decision. He can open small portals, enough for his limbs to go through. His work on phasing into different dimensions to become intangible is more difficult, but he is relentless.
I am searching for a desolate planet through the ruptures to use as a training ground.
—
Training Log 09.09.785
Day 10 of Training
Skyler figured out how to control which way the fluctuations tip. He can consciously increase or decrease gravity in locations he wants. He also managed to affect the gravity of objects and people. He managed to reverse the curve sharp enough to flatten a dummy on the ceiling. His speed reached six thousand kilometers per second, fast enough to travel around the planet in exactly seven minutes. I am searching for a suitable location to open a controlled rupture so he can let loose.
Kael has been traveling everywhere with portals. When he is not traveling, he is busy pranking us by popping through the walls, the ground, and the ceiling. He also figured out a nasty little offensive move, tearing several dummies to pieces. He even considered returning to Zele Island to prank the Module Hunters. He decided against it to not open old wounds. We also began to see things we should not, such as ghosts, arachnids, and reptiles. As he recently started on his illusionary abilities, I warned him to take his pranks elsewhere.
I managed to find a suitable planet at last.
—
Unknown Planet - Designation: Training Ground
"This is fucking awesome!" Kael said, screaming the last word out, throwing his hands in the air. He took a deep breath, screaming out another "yeah." There were two moons in the sky, one shattered to a dozen large pieces, clearly visible in the purple night sky.
Everything else was just a barren wasteland.
Skyler took his phone, snapping photos with the twin moons in the background.
"The atmosphere is breathable, and there is nothing alive. Feel free to let loose."
As soon as he stopped speaking, there was a red blur. Skyler went through a boulder, smashing it to dust and pebbles. He continued to accelerate, leaving his vision in the blink of an eye. Each step he took went off like a small nuclear weapon, carving a trench of craters.
He thankfully had the sense to put distance between them before causing such destruction.
He saw the grin on Kael's face and returned through the rupture.
—
The rocky landscape before him was reduced to nothing. He felt the barest moments of resistance. Then the kinetic energy he produced turned rock to dust, caused earthquakes, and burned the air.
He kept increasing his speed, setting his sights on a mountain. Gritting his teeth, his next step launched him forward even faster. He passed the mountain, eyes burning blood red. He remembered all the times he was too powerless to do anything. His protests were useless to improve anything or to make the government hear their voices.
The miners of the Shöne Coal Mine were buried because he was too weak to convince anyone to bring the safety up to standards.
He passed by the mountain again.
All those people in positions of power only cared for themselves. The people were either too numbed or tired to change anything. He would make those changes by force and blood if he had to.
His mind went into overdrive, working to adapt and absorb all he was seeing, to manage his new accelerated state.
He changed directions, going straight for the mountain. His struggles, his many failures, and limited successes flashed before his eyes. He remembered the crying families of the miners, the textile workers left without jobs and months of salary gone unpaid, and, of course, the starving slums.
If no one was willing to do anything, then he would.
He screamed his frustrations, rearing his right arm back. Mid-step, his world returned to normal, all the energy he accumulated crystallizing on his fist.
He struck, releasing the energy forward.
The rock at the point of impact turned to plasma for tens of meters. It caved into a multikilometer crater, sending violent shockwaves that caused the mountain to break along its faultlines like a beast rearing to attack. The atmosphere was lit for kilometers, creating a massive fireball. Debris weighing hundreds of tons was violently ejected to the stratosphere, creating a stunning parodical visual of a meteor shower.
The dust cloud rose so high he couldn't see the end.
Then it got worse. The mountain began to collapse, creating a continental landslide, threatening to bury him beneath it.
He screamed again, digging his spread-out fingers into the ground. An invisible wave washed over the crumbling mountain. The loose rocks, each weighing tens of thousands of tons, were forced to stop. They floated in the air for a moment.
He raised his hands, slow and deliberate.
The debris began to rise with his command. The gravitational curvature did a full reverse, pushing rather than pulling. The starry night sky, already blocked by the dust, was completely darkened by the enormous debris.
He burst out laughing, eyes wide and a bloodthirsty grin on his face.
—
Kael landed on a shattered piece of the moon.
He didn't need a suit, nor did he need to breathe.
He slammed his fist into the dead piece of rock, visualizing what exactly he wanted to happen. The rock pulsated, growing in size for a moment before it began to shrink. Phantasmal images were left behind, quickly disappearing.
He held the piece, one that was the size of a metropolitan city mere moments ago, in the palm of his hand. It looked like a triangle bent forward, and no one would ever believe its true size.
He grinned, rearing his arm back to throw it with all his strength at another piece. It flew through the void towards another piece. Once sufficiently away, he snapped his fingers, returning it to its original size.
The result was epic.
The moon itself was small, the biggest piece being the one he just threw. It smashed into a piece almost as big, both shattering into much smaller parts. The shockwave pushed the remaining debris away, sending several towards the planet.
He was sent flying back, spinning through the vacuum. He focused, folding dimensions until they were too thick for him to pass through. He came to a sudden stop, setting his eyes on the other moon. He opened a portal to its surface, pushing himself forward, using the folded dimensions as a spring board.
He landed on it, kicking up the silica dust covering the entire stellar object.
He struck again, hands outstretched, fingers together as a knife, piercing through the rock. He felt the height, width, and length, forcing them to shrink. The mass of the atoms, mostly stored as energy, was offloaded into subatomic dimensions while the shrunken three dimensions held the remaining atoms together by compressing them.
The moon, exactly three thousand nine hundred ninety-three point two kilometers in circumference by his senses, stood in his hand, shrunken to the size of a handball.
He wanted to curse and gloat, but there was no air.
He couldn't throw the moon to the planet since it still needed it. However, nothing stopped him from doing it to another planet. The distance, measured in light minutes, folded like the wings of a paper fan in his perspective. It took his entire strength to keep focusing in all directions to find the closest planet.
When he folded one part, another section would be undone, and he had no idea how long it took, lost in the euphoria of the struggle.
He finally found what he was seeking. Opening a portal to light minutes away was difficult since most he had done was planetary travel.
It was all the sweeter when he finally managed to open the portal. He threw the ball through, returning its mass and releasing the shrunken dimensions. The moon, too close to the barren world for the gravity to break it apart, hit the planet like a celestial wrecking ball.
All he saw before the flash of light blinded him was the planet trembling.
He returned back to the training ground just to let out the emotions bubbling inside him.
—
When all was said and done, they sat down, far away from the destruction.
They looked at each other with empty gazes, waiting for anything to disturb the silence. Kael cleared his throat, coughing out a globe of silica dust covered in saliva. It would have torn open microlacerations in the lungs of a normal person.
It did nothing to him.
Skyler chuckled. Once he was clear-minded enough to think, he realized how ridiculous this situation was. Two weeks ago, he was just a human. Today, he destroyed an entire mountain and wrecked the surface of a planet.
The more he thought, the more he began to lose control, and the more his soft huffs turned into high-pitched cackles.
Kael began to laugh too. He didn't know why. Perhaps it was because he had just caused destruction on a scale no module would ever be capable of or because he too found the situation too ridiculous to believe. He didn't care to think enough, doubling over and laughing in uncontrollable waves.