The Mysterious Energy
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(Brian's P.O.V)
Ice cream with the Parkers was a pleasant affair and i found myself enjoying the time. They were the perfect definition of a simple yet loving family and I found myself feeling comfortable with them. My earlier hesitance easing up slightly. I had also quickly noticed how Peter was so sullen. He had a sad look on his face but started to open up a little when I talked about my love for Transformers.
Turns out a future scientific genius like Peter shared a passion for huge robots that could turn into cars, who would have thought? I'm being sarcastic by the way. After that we found something to talk about and his bad mood was lifted. He even offered to show me his Optimus Prime toy. I learned a lot about the older Parkers too. A lot of it was consistent with what I already knew about them but there were a few details I didn't know. For instance, Ben had served in the army. After retiring he had briefly gone into construction before opening up an appliances and tools store.
Hence, given his stable income, it was implied that the Parkers were not in any financial strain. May on the other hand had worked as a masseuse for a long time before getting married to Ben and choosing to settle down as a housewife. She had taken her hobby of gardening far and she was a fantastic cook, well in Peter's opinion at least. We laughed and enjoyed ourselves a lot and at the end of it they asked me the question I had been dreading.
"Brian, we have something we need to ask you."
May started while Ben put his hand in hers. Peter didn't talk but the little glint and wide smile on his face made me sure he knew what May wanted to say.
"Would you want to join our family?"
Surprisingly, I found myself nodding. Then my voice responded as if to affirm my decision.
"Yeah. I would love that."
"Yay! Now we can play every time we want!"
The youngest parker shouted in happiness. Even Ben was laughing and May was wiping her eyes.
A soft smile graced my lips as I thought to myself, 'maybe…this isn't so bad.'
(General P.O.V)
The next few months passed in a blur of happiness and contentment as Brian became part of the Parker family. He also found out that Peter had just recently lost his parents in an airplane crash. The tragedy had taken a toll on the child who although was smarter than most kids his age didn't fully want to believe his parents were gone. Brian would hear Peter sniffling at night whenever Aunt May left after reading them a bed time story.
He empathized with the kid and would usually hug him when he got sad or tried to cheer him up with children games. Brian wasn't sure what anyone else would think of an adult like him enjoying kid's games but surprisingly he found out that he didn't mind playing them that much. For starters it helped him blend in, it wouldn't help for his foster parents to see him as an unusual child. Though May and Ben were loving people with selfless hearts, Brian knew too well how something perceived weird could make people start to be cautious.
He knew the main reason for his adoption was to provide Peter with someone of his own age to bond with. His presence would help Peter immensely due to interacting with someone of his own age. He wouldn't be lonely anymore. Already, May and Ben could notice a disconnect between Peter and other kids. Add on to that the death of his parents and the Parker couple had been worried. Brian was a gift to them and not long after, he adopted the surname Parker.
On other matters, Brian didn't stop trying to cultivate. He was getting frustrated but one day, something happened in kindergarten that gave him an idea. It was while they were in the playground and Peter and him were playing ball with some other kids. One of the other kids started picking on Peter and called him some hurtful words. The rage on Peter's face was great when the boy said something about Pete's parents. Brian had been surprised to see him tackle the other boy.
(Brian's P.O.V)
I had moved to help but after touching him my hand stopped. I could feel a tiny amount of the same energy I had felt in the air coursing through his body. It was barely noticeable however and only enough to make Pete a little stronger. Something that could be mistaken for just anger. The majority of the energy was passively being channelled to his mind and like a light bulb everything became much clearer to me.
After making it back home and being reprimanded by Aunt May, I excused myself and went to meditate out in the garden. Aunt May had asked me why I usually did that and I had given her the excuse of being taught by one of the sisters back at the orphanage how to meditate as it calmed the mind. An adult would still be skeptical at my response and although she kind of was, I had already cultivated an image of a bright and intelligent kid, so my adoptive parents usually let me be.
In my cross-legged position, I breathed in and instantly felt at ease. It had gotten easier to sense the mysterious energy in the air and although I couldn't use it to form cultivation meridians or even a qi core, I still persisted. There must be a way to use it. History shows that as long as a resource is useful, humans would find a way to tap into it and use it. Technically the probability of there being a select few of people out of the whole population who could use this energy for different purposes was high.
Wait a minute...maybe that's why Peter had a little bit of that same energy swirling around his body. I remember that in the amazing Spider-Man, Peter's body had had a serum administered to him by his parents before their death. It hadn't seemed to have any outward effects on him apart from stabilizing the spider venom from the radioactive spider that had bitten him hence changing his D.N.A and granting him powers.
This being a similar universe, I couldn't rule out the possibility that the serum given to him by his parents hadn't enhanced him even a little. And further following that train of thought...the energy had mostly been interacting with his mind, enhancing his intelligence faculties instead of physical parameters. Which means...
I sank deep into my meditation and spread out my awareness. The mysterious energy in the air- it wasn't...potent enough! There was a sort of heaviness it lacked from my cultivator intuition.
A heaviness my whole essence related with qi. I had to find a very huge source of this mysterious energy for it to even have a huge impact in my cultivation. I sighed a little in frustration before calming down. I was actually lucky I had made the request to change my cultivation to use any energy. That however didn't mean that every mystical energy was suitable for cultivation. But there must be a way...
Think. Think. Think. A gentle wind blew past me... ruffling my hair and sending some dust onto my face making me sneeze. The dust made me fleetingly think about how much I hated sand. It would be a headache fighting the Sandman once he got his pow..ers...
My eyes immediately shot open and widened. A bubble of laughter escaped my mouth as my brain made the connections! That's what the mysterious energy was! It was the energy of possibility! Luck given form through the medium of intent! Allow me to explain my conclusions. In my normal and previous world, there was no way a normal person could form powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider, nor form a symbiotic relationship with an alien life form without the risk of alien diseases or pathogens affecting him or those around them, nor acquire powers after being disintegrated by an experimental particle accelerator!
My conclusion thus was that the mysterious energy influenced all these incidents! It was only potent enough to be a spark. The mysterious energy broke the boundary between the possible and the impossible. It stands to reason that I could also take advantage of this fact. I didn't know a lot about this world to take other incidents as a reference for what I was planning to do though but what I knew would hopefully be enough.
My intuition told me that for the energy to act as a catalyst it also had to follow some scientific guidelines. Complex science is indistinguishable from magic so I couldn't know what would work or not. Though I doubted that a person who drowns in hot sauce could gain powers and become the hot sauce man due to the energy. I knew I wasn't smart or strong enough to take advantage of this but maybe my Chinese magic (cultivators essence) could help me.
And it just so happens that I had the perfect candidate for my first ability. It was an ability that all cultivators had. I usually asked myself how it was possible for someone in the first level of qi condensation to recognize someone in the foundation establishment through their cultivation only.
The answer I came to was that every cultivator possessed an innate power to scan and retrieve information about the status of others. It wasn't a strong ability by any means but what if I could push it further? Luckily it wasn't a physical ability. I wagered that the mysterious energy was potent enough to actualize my efforts into what would probably be my greatest support ability.