5 New Abilities
READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTE!
It turned out that waiting for the results to come out was harder than training for the exam in the first place. It would take a week before the results came out, meaning I had nothing better to do other than try and find ways to distract myself from thinking about whether I got in or not. Which, unfortunately for me, resulted in me working out until I passed out at night from exhaustion.
Slowing down at the curb, I took a moment to catch my breath and stopped jogging. Pausing the music blasting in my ears, I looked up at the evening sky and frowned, 'I'm going to be late getting home.'
Letting out a sigh, I pulled out my phone to text my mom when the squeal of tires screeched through the air, and I turned around just in time to see a black van barreling around the corner.
The van's tires spun before catching, and I immediately realized that the vehicle was headed straight for me. Acting without thinking, I dropped my phone before throwing myself at the car, transforming into a purple glob in mid-air.
Enveloping the car, I clenched every fiber of my body as extended stabilizing spikes into the ground. I felt myself stretch for an agonizing second before the van ran out of momentum, and the wheels stopped spinning.
Snapping back into my body, I rested against the front of the van, which I realized was covered in a thin, translucent film. My face was beaded with sweat, and my core temperature seemed to skyrocket as steam poured off my body in waves. 'W-what is this?!'
Clenching my hands into fists, I struggled to stand upright, but I picked my head up as the sound of the van door opening caught my attention.
I don't know who I expected to see coming out of the car, but it certainly wasn't two thuggish-looking guys who stared at me with a concerning amount of hunger in their eyes.
Getting a bad feeling about the situation, I turned to run away when one of the thugs clapped his hands together. Much to my dismay, a massive barrier in the shape of a transparent cube appeared out of thin air, no doubt made to keep me from running.
"You're not going anywhere, boy!" The cube summoner snarled as his partner stepped forward and raised his fingertips, which, instead of nails, had metallic tips that sparked with blue electricity, "Now we can do this the easy way or the-"
Before taser-fingers could finish his sentence, I ran at them, ignoring the heat building up in my body. Taser-fingers snarled, and much as I expected, his fingernails shot through the air attached to thin wires that sparked with electricity.
Ducking under the wires, the lower half of my body turned into a miniature tornado of purple slime, letting me slide across the ground and close the distance.
Before I could get within striking range, however, Cube-man pushed out his hands, causing another transparent cube to appear, blocking my path.
Slamming into the barrier at full speed, I splattered apart, but that didn't stop me. I simply flowed up and over the wall. The impact, however, sent another wave of heat scorching through my body that I struggled to contain. 'Am I somehow absorbing kinetic energy?' I wondered.
Putting that thought aside for later, I jumped off the barrier, reforming my body in midair as I cocked back my right arm, compressing the muscles within to their limits before releasing, sending my arm rocketing down towards the villains.
My fist slammed into the barrier with a boom, causing cracks to spread across its surface. I grinned as I saw their eyes widen. But before my arm could snap back, I felt some of the heat inside me travel down my limb into my hand. A purple aura infused my fist as my skin hardened to the point where I could hardly bend it.
I watched with wide eyes as the purple light flashed like the sun before exploding with a tinted shockwave that seemed to travel through the barrier before shattering it into countless pieces.
"Woah," my arm softened, snapping back to my body as I landed on the ground, staring at my fist in shock. "That wasn't part of the description."
Taking a step, I felt my entire body turn into jelly as the heat in my body reached new heights, and I collapsed onto one knee, "W-what's happening to me?"
Before I knew it, I collapsed over onto my side as the edges of my vision started to darken.
"What the hell was that? The boss never said anything about this kid being able to explode things?!"
"Does it matter? Just grab and throw him in the back before a hero comes around to see what exploded?!"
'Fuck me,' I thought to myself before I felt my mind slip away as I passed out.
---
A speed bump made the back of my head bang against the car floor with a thud, rudely awakening me from a not-so-peaceful sleep.
Trying to sit up, I almost smashed my head against the transparent barrier imprisoning me, 'Oh, this is not good.'
Looking around, I was alone in the back of the van, which was surprisingly clean. Turning into my slime form, I tried to find any gaps in the barrier, only to be met with smooth, seamless edges.
'Shit!' Cursing my luck, I wondered why I, of all people, was the target of a kidnapping attempt, 'These guys aren't slouches either, a guy who can create perfect barriers to trap people and a nonlethal quirk that can stop people cold. I probably wouldn't have been able to last much longer, even if my quirk hadn't decided to go all haywire.'
Thinking back on the entire fight, I tried to figure out the rules of my new ability. The most likely scenario is that I can absorb kinetic energy but with some kind of stipulation. After all, it didn't activate during the exam, even when I smacked into the ground after stopping the skyscraper from falling. It only happened when the car slammed into me or I crashed into the barrier.'
Pausing, I looked at the transparent prison entrapping me, 'I guess there's one way to find out.'
