22 Not so useless

Half an hour later at the physical training facility.

"Harder! do it harder! You're almost there!" A girl exclaimed excitedly.

"I'm at my limit" Uriel huffed and puffed while pulling the elastic cord at the band machine.

"I guess you don't have super human strength." She shrugged after witnessing his poor attempt at pulling the band. "Let's try sprinting now." Medusa said.

"Hang on a minute, I really need a break. I got an Idea, why don't you record all this?" He said as he took out his old digital camera from his backpack.

"This is Sage's private vlog, I'm here with Medusa trying to figure out my trait, we'll be performing different experiments to test out the extent of my trait and find a way to activate it." He spoke at the camera.

"You should've started recording before attempting to pull the elastic band." Medusa pointed out his mistake.

"We already discarded superhuman strength, but we can still try other things." Uriel replied a bit regretful, after realizing he would need to perform several physical trials that would most likely be as tiresome as pulling the elastic band.

The reason why they came back to the physical training facility wasn't just because it possessed all the necessary equipment to test Uriel's physical prowess, but also because after noon the place was deserted since most students would cherish what little free time they had and would hardly spend it working out.

"Experiment one: Sprinting." Uriel said after pointing at the athletics track and then took a position that resembled that of the athletes.

"You need to run up to the 100 meter mark, I'll time you." Medusa, who had her cellphone on heart, said as she pulled up the chronometer app on her phone to measure his results. "On your mark, ready, go!" She shouted.

Uriel ran with all his might focusing on speed rather than endurance, he ran the fastest he ever had in his life and then...

"23 seconds, that's... lame actually." She looked disappointed, but Uriel was just starting.

"Super speed, enhanced endurance and pain resistance discarded." He said with a jagged breath. He was slow, tired and his muscles ached.

"Experiment two: jump."

He said at the camera, but just like last time, it was a failure. He jumped a bit higher than he was able to, but it wasn't by any means something remarkable.

"Experiment three: quick reflexes."

The set up for this experiment was Uriel standing near the wall of the gym and Medusa holding a bag of tennis balls with a murderous gaze. She was planning on taking revenge for the misunderstanding she considered herself a victim of, because she had thought that Uriel was going to ask her out, not to test his trait but on a date. Still, she didn't have any ill intentions towards him and asked Uriel if he was sure it was safe.

"Don't hold back or this will be useless." He said.

"It'll be my pleasure..." She grinned.

Medusa threw the tennis balls like bullets with malign precision. Nine out of ten were hits and of those nine, three were right on Uriel's vital points.

"Hold back! Hold back! stop!" He yelped after each hit, but she mercilessly kept shooting the harmless, yet painful, projectiles until she had let out all her pent up stress.

"Whew, this was really therapeutic." She said when the bag was empty and Uriel was all bruised up.

"Quick reflexes and regenerative abilities have been discarded." He said at the camera with a grunt.

"Experiment four: Endurance." [...] "Experiment sixteen: flexibility"

"This is useless, we've ruled out all the physical capabilities I could think of already." Medusa said after the long session of experiments, but Uriel wasn't ready to give up just yet.

"The scientific method needs observation, an hypothesis, data gathering and then analysis. there might be something interesting in the recordings, but I'll check that out later. We should try abilities unrelated to physical prowess now. Do you have any ideas?" Uriel tried to keep a solemn expression on his face, but with all the bruises he looked funny instead.

"Well, my trait feels like... It's like my eyes are burning, but it's not painful."

"That's it?" Uriel expected more than a short explanation.

"That's why everyone says that you either know how to use your trait or you don't have one. It's not like I have to do something to feel it, it's always there."

"Yes, but you also said yourself that all traits are different, we can't assume I don't have a trait just because it's different."

"Well then, let's try some of the possibilities..." She replied and they immediately got down to work.

"Experiment seventeen: invisibility."

"Experiment eighteen: teleportation."

"Experiment nineteen: laser sight."

[...]

"Experiment thirty five: see through."

"Really? see through? and how will you put it to the test?" Medusa asked intrigued and confused in equal measure. Only then did she notice that Uriel was staring at her. "Hey! Stop looking at me, don't act like a pervert!" She flinched as she covered her intimate parts as well as she could thinking that maybe, just maybe, he could have the ability to see beneath her clothes.

"Don't go thinking stuff like that, I was trying to look inside your backpack."

"And?" She asked, still a bit intimidated.

"And your bra is white..." Uriel said with a deadpan expression.

"I knew it! all men are the same, you're a pervert!" She yelled, but more than angry she was disappointed. "You're a pig! no, you're even worse than a pig, because at least those perverted freaks would acknowledge it while you pretended to be something else... I thought you were a nice guy." She got teary eyed.

"Calm down! I was just joking! I just took a wild guess, I didn't know it was actually white." He exclaimed calmly trying to avoid getting a slap to the face.

"Really?" She sniffed.

"Really, in fact, let's rule out see through and every possible trait related to eyes. I don't feel anything weird in my eyes and they didn't change color or anything." Uriel replied.

"Hang on a minute... now that you mention it, the reason why traits are called like that is because most of them are related to a physical change. Some are not so evident, maybe I should... examine your body and see if there's anything unusual." Heat rising up to her cheeks.

"Who's the pervert now, uh?" Uriel chuckled, but refused politely. He didn't like the idea of being naked in front of a girl.

They kept trying all sorts of different traits and abilities until it was dark already, but all their experiments resulted in failure.

"Hey, at least we had fun..." She said trying to cheer up her friend.

"It was fun." Uriel said trying to hide his disappointment behind a friendly smile.

"Hey! there's something we didn't test, although I don't know if it will be possible to do it now." She hurried up to say trying to find an excuse to hang out with him again.

"What is it?" Uriel's curiosity was piqued.

"What about weapon mastery? It's going to be difficult since guns and weapons are forbidden on campus but..."

"Not all of them, I actually have a knife on me at all times!" Uriel said with intense emotion as he produced a small swiss army knife from his pocket.

"What!? That's not a weapon, it's a tool." She said looking down at the old knife. "It is beautiful though." She had to admit that it was masterfully crafted and it possessed beautiful carvings.

"You could say it's an antique, it was passed down to me when I was a child."

"Wow, giving a knife to a child seems like an irresponsible thing to do."

"Maybe, but if not for this knife I would have nothing to remember them from..."

His face became sour as he thought back at the time when he received the knife as a gift from his parents. It was his single most valuable possession, not only because it was meaningful to him, but also because it was truly beautiful and well preserved. If he sold it to a collector he could make as much tens of thousands credits, maybe even more.

Then, right in front of their incredulous look, the knife disappeared into thin air.

"WHAT!?" They both yelled.

"it disappeared! I saw it disappear!? Did you hide it?" Medusa asked.

"No, I don't have it anymore, it's just not there." Uriel was flabbergasted.

"Can you make it appear again!?" Medusa's excitement leaked out of her glimmering eyes.

"I don't know, I don't even know how did I make it disappear." With that, he closed his eyes and focused on the knife, then it appeared on his hand just like before.

"Wow! This is so cool! I don't know if it's good for battle, but your trait would be a killer in parties!"

"Parties? yeah, like I'd ever get invited to one." He scoffed.

"Try something else, here, can you make this disappear too?" She said as she handed him a bottle of water.

"No, it's not working."

"What about this?" one by one she handed him all of her belongings but nothing else disappeared.

Still, Uriel was finally able to activate his trait and that was good enough for him. He had also documented the whole process in case it could prove to be useful later.