Battle-Ready
--Dani's Perspective--
Walking through the city was easy with all of the defined pathways, something I wasn't really used to on the Isle, or during the March on Orion's Castle. It's hard to believe that only took place a day ago... so much has happened.
I often wondered about how so much time passed in The First Trial without any time passing in The Real World, but thinking about it just made my head hurt...
"Hey, guys! So, you ready to start your training?!" Alatus asked with her upbeat attitude.
Her outfit no longer consisted of a solid black color. She had purple stripes lining her arms and a light blue color coating the top of her new jacket... but her pants were black.
"So, it seems that we have some talented people within your group. I'll get to the cooperation part in a second, but I want to focus on Dani specifically for a moment. You're not gonna get embarrassed, are ya?" Alatus asked. She was finally releasing that tense tone she always wore and she started to sound happier.
"What about me? Are you talking about my strands?" I asked Alatus. She fixed her body to lean one hand on her hip and nodded, pointing at my hands.
"You did some crazy shit out there. You can summon weaponry, and your strands have a weird power and insane control. What's your secret? Is there even a secret?" Alatus asked me. She was darting all around my body, looking at me, and lifting my arms up to see if anything was hidden underneath them... which there obviously wasn't.
"Real talk now, we chose you because you did the most damage in the fight. Whether you were actively doing it or not is up for interpretation, but Alatus and I were impressed with the display of courage. Dani was scary, but there are other things everybody else did that we would like to expand upon. Down here, and especially in this army, we're not about morphing you into a soldier that can do everything... we want to expand what you're good at." Fudo said.
Fudo lifted up the hair covering his eye and revealed an empty shell within his socket that he took out to show us all. Inside that socket was a weird circle... so basically, it was a sphere with a circle inside.
"It might not make sense to you, but within this small orb in my eye is a counterweight. And it matches my body to make me perfectly accurate in all long-range shots. It's weird how it works, and I couldn't really explain it, but do you see that target on top of that mountain over there?" Fudo pointed, and surely enough, there was a small, red target on the mountain.
"Was this a plan or something? To set a target on that mountain to show off your abilities?" Carl asked. He got close to Fudo, as if he took it personally, and narrowed his eyes on the target.
"Oh just watch." He said. Fudo put the bow on his back into his hands, drew an arrow, and appeared to aim straight up into the sky. He let the arrow loose, feeling the reverberation from the string against his chest, and let the bow down to his side.
He sheathed it on his back with a smile as we focused on the target... and after ten seconds, the target burst into scraps of wood and vanished from the naked eye.
"What?! No way! You have somebody up there, don't you?" Carl asked Fudo with an upset tone. Fudo shook his head and smiled.
"You can't believe it because you don't see it as I do... however, Carl, I wanted to take you specifically under my wing. But first, let Alatus explain what she wanted to say." Fudo said, crossing his arms at his hips and looking toward his sister.
"The main thing I wanted to bring attention to was your strands... and ours. They're distinctively different, but both serve uses that we don't understand. My strands, which I used to save Lia's life, were able to completely block The Deity's Strands. I've thought about it for a little bit, and nothing's come to mind. I thought the strands we all used were the same... but now that I know they're different, I'd like to ask some questions. Dani, what can you do with yours?" Alatus asked me.
"Several things. I can heal my body if I sustain injuries, and summon weaponry, and I am able to focus them a little in my left eye to see all strands in an area around me. And yours?" I asked Alatus.
"Hm... I can hold it as a solid object, and I can apparently redirect yours. I previously used the strands in my body to increase the weight of my punches. However, it's interesting that our strands react in this way. Has this ever happened before?" She asked again, leaning her body toward me.
"No, you're the first complication I've had with the strands... and why are we direct counters to each other?" I muttered, curling my finger under my lip.
"Alatus... your last name, it's Achamo, isn't it?" Boo, speaking from her prolonged silence, finally stepped forward.
"Yeah, same as Fudo's. Why?" She asked.
That's when Boo decided to explain.
"My entire childhood was my mother raising me to fight The Asterios. All training and time I spent not in school were focused on improving my combat ability, just to fight the Asterios. I've heard that my ability was inherited from a previous White Stone, but I was raised with my capability of speed in order to counter them. If that purpose serves the same purpose for all Achamos, then your strands probably counteract with Dani's because she's an Asterio." Boo finished, bringing a great point to the table.
"I never even thought about that... so, our lineage and last names are directly connected. Then, that girl, Moon, she's like us too, isn't she? We were all so far apart, yet our base abilities are connected through a single last name..." Alatus muttered.
"That doesn't matter for the time being. What matters is that we want to expand what you're good at. Boo, you said you're good with speed? How fast are you?" Alatus asked her.
"Not very fast anymore, since Sky took my speed for himself..." Boo commented, looking at her hand with a helpless face.
"However... when I did have my ability, I unlocked a new speed, faster than the speed of light." She added.
"Don't be ridiculous, you can't move faster than the speed of light, that's why our traveling ships are so limited," Fudo said, dissuading Boo's explanation. She was luckily adamant about it.
"I don't care what your hunk of metal can do. When I was using my ability, I was faster than I could perceive light. There was no light... but I could see everything with my strands. I raised my body temperature up to one hundred and six degrees Fahrenheit and drained my body of forty-four percent of my blood. Soon after, I basically melted and came close to death.