2nd Awakening

Ed looked around the office and saw several piles of flesh and bones melted on the floor. Each one had a large pool of blood underneath it. He turned towards the desk and saw a pile of flesh melted to the chair. A golden crown sat atop it.

His eyes widened in shock. 'Did I do this? No, my powers don't work on the living… What happened then?' He inspected the bodies and located his father. He looked at the pile of flesh with sorrow. 'If I leave it here then it will just get eaten by mutants…' He pulled the flamethrower from his back and released a stream of fire towards his deceased father. The body quickly burned to ash. He took a nearby glass jar and filled it with the ash. He covered the jar with a thin layer of metal to reinforce it. Then he put it in his backpack. He glanced at Jarrod's melted flesh. 'I'll leave it to rot. Rats or mutants will feast on it eventually.' He exited the office.

As he walked through the building he saw more melted piles of flesh. A green mutant that looked like a dog was feasting on one of the bodies. It saw Ed and charged at him. He hurriedly used his powers to melt the ground beneath the dog. However, he was shocked as his powers melted the dog too! It yelped desperately as the skin fell off its face. Blood poured down and flesh fell off its body. It quickly died. All that remained was another disgusting pile of flesh.

'My powers changed?! Right. Before I passed out I felt my body release a huge wave of mana. That must have been what melted all the bodies…' He looked around again and noticed that some of the weaker parts of the building also had signs of melting. 'So, my powers work on the living now. I wonder if anything else has changed?' He opened his backpack and took out a bottle of water. He tried using his powers on the water and it moved as he wanted it to. He solidified it into ice, converted it into gas, and returned it to ordinary water. 'My powers work on any state of matter and on anything living or dead now? Isn't that a bit overpowered… Eh, maybe not? Ms. Willow and Mr. Sai's powers are probably stronger. Relm's powers might be stronger to.'

Ed looked at the various piles of flesh. Tears appeared in his eyes. "So my revenge is complete just like that?" He muttered aloud. 'It feels disappointing and empty... I just want my dad back... I didn't even get to enjoy seeing Jarrod die a miserable death... At least I know I'm responsible for his death I guess...'

Ed secured the building by blocking all the entrances with his powers. Then he searched all the dead bodies. Each pile of flesh had a mana-core hidden within it. 'Feels odd taking mana-cores from dead espers bodies...' He headed back down to Luny's lab and began to get to work. He set the newly acquired mana-cores and the 15 mana-cores he obtained from Luny onto a table. Then he ground them into the seven elemental powders.

'Time to make some new limbs! I might as well improve them while I'm at it. The arm I made before was way weaker than my expectations.' He controlled his powers and made a steel arm the same way he had previously. Gears were used for the finger-joints, a ball for the wrist, and a flexible pipe for the elbow. The rest was hollow steel. 'There's no point in using a steam core to make it into a rifle again. Hmm… I don't really understand the seven elemental powders very well yet. Let's test them.'

He attached the steel arm to his body. "Ugh!" He winced in pain as he welded the arm directly onto his body. 'I wonder if I can use lightning elemental powder and cables to recreate human nerves for the arm someday? It's too far beyond my level right now though… I don't have a good understanding of biology.'

Ed grabbed a tiny amount of silver elemental powder. He held his new metal arm out and injected a small amount of mana into the powder. Boom! A loud crackling sound rang out as several streaks of lighting appeared and shot out onto the floor. 'Definitely too hard to control that power accurately right now. No wonder Luny used it in such a crude manner during the torture…'

He grabbed some black dark elemental powder next. When he sent his mana into it a large amount of black miasma formed and corroded the floor and part of his arm. He quickly fixed his arm. Then he repeated the test with white light elemental powder. A bright light flashed, but as far as he could tell, nothing else happened. 'Hmm… all esper powers should come from these elements. Mordy's power was mostly from the dark element. I'm guessing Ms. Willow and Mr. Sai powers were mainly of the light element?'

Next was the red fire elemental powder. A large fire appeared. 'Nothing unexpected there…' The blue water elemental powder and yellow earth elemental powders went as expected as well. Last was the wind elemental powder. 'I wonder why the wind powder is green?' A large burst of green wind formed and flew forward into the wall. A large dent was created in the concrete. 'Mm… I can probably use this.'

Ed set to work modifying his two new arms. 'Since I'm not firing a bullet I don't really need to open the wrist anymore…' He remodified the wrist by making a hole in the steel ball that connected to the arm. The hollow arm now connected to the smaller hole in the wrist. He then added an even smaller hole to the hand. Now there was one long tunnel that went through the entire length of the arm. It was wide near the shoulder and grew increasingly smaller towards the hand.

Next, he melted some silver and nickel to create battery casings. 'Good thing Luny had a lot of materials here...' He poured fire elemental powder into one of the battery casings. He welded the battery into the middle of his forearm by wrapping it in four thin steel bars. He took aim and released mana into the battery. A flame shot from his forearm into his wrist, then into his hand. It poured out in a steady stream towards the nearby wall. 'Mm. Good. At this level the arm still won't burn.'

He created a wind mana-core battery next. He welded it into his upper arm. The battery released power in the direction of his forearm. He lifted his arm and poured mana into both the wind battery and fire battery. Swoosh! The wind roared as massive flames shot from his palm. The wind from his upper arm fed the fire in his forearm. He stopped after firing for a couple of seconds and frowned. 'No good. The arm started melting. I need a way to cool it.'

Ed grabbed the water elemental powder and created a water mana-core battery. 'I can't just release this one forward. It would ruin the other two…' He enclosed the water battery into a metal sphere with holes in it, like he used previously for his old arms steam core. He welded it into his hollow shoulder in a way that allowed it to rotate freely. Then he created a wall that blocked off his upper arm from his shoulder. 'Now I just need pipes to cool the rest of the arm.' He molded the entire arm to have pipes that ran all the way from the hand up to his shoulder. It caused his arm to have a lot of grooves in the metal. It looked like someone welded a bunch of pipes together into an art piece resembling an arm. The water battery fed the pipes water to cool down the arm. Each pipe ran down the length of the arm and curved back towards the shoulder. The end of the pipes stuck out of his shoulder as exhaust pipes. Once the water flowed back up it would exit the shoulder as hot water or steam.

"That should do it!" Ed smiled. "Now for the other arm and the legs!" He repeated the same process to create the other arm and the legs. When he was finished he aimed both arms towards a wall and fired. Large streams of fire slowly melted the wall. When the arms started turning red from the heat, Ed sent mana towards the water battery. Water poured through the pipes and steam exited from the exhaust pipes on his shoulders. The arms slowly returned to normal while fire still poured out.

"Great! Now for the legs!" He threw a kick forward and a large stream of fire blasted out causing him to fall backwards on the ground. 'Mm. This might take some getting used to…' He ate some rations from his backpack and continued practicing. 'I wonder if I can fly once I get the hang of this?'

…

Several days later. Ed now had full control of his arms and legs. 'Mm. I still can't fly yet, but these should work well in a fight. The range is much longer than my powers as well.' He could only use his powers within a range of roughly 3 meters. His arms could shoot flames almost 30 meters! 'Just a bit further and my arms would be comparable to the flamethrowers they use on mech tanks!'

Ed prepared to leave the building. He looked in the mirror once more before leaving. He frowned when he saw his body. 'The arms actually look kind of cool… You can't see the legs under my jeans and the metal feet just look like boots… God my face is a mess though.' He ended up melting some nearby cloth to form a black mask to cover his mouth and nose. With his dark shaggy hair, the only body part barely visible were his eyes.

'Time to go. World Walker should have come to pick me up by now since Scrambler died. Either he gave up a while ago or something else happened. It's been nearly seven weeks since I came here after all. It would be weird if he was still trying to pick me up.' He walked down the road while keeping an eye out for mutants. He was headed for the railroad his father used when they traveled to Miami.

…

A large stream of fire poured from Ed's hands as he burned a pack of mutant dogs into ash. "Fuck! They're everywhere!" He complained. 'Jarrod's men must have been sweeping this damn place clean every day. No wonder I struggled to find mutants when Mordy and I first got here.' He collected some of the stronger mutants hides and turned them into strong leather clothes. He covered the clothes in some of the scales he had collected earlier. The black jeans and shirt covered in scales made for an odd sight.

'Only 1 mana core from 20 mutants. Damn.' He put the mana-core in his backpack where he had stored all the mana powders he had created. He was already completely out of the fire, wind, and water powders. 'World Walker mentioned it being hard to buy mana-cores on the black-market… I didn't even know the government regulated them. It's going to be a pain in the ass getting more when I need them. They don't last forever.'

"Run!!!" "Move!!!" "Aghh!!!" A series of shouts rang out from down the street. Ed turned around and saw a group of men running towards him. Each one carried a spear in their arms. 'The sinless group? What are they running from?' His question was soon answered as his eyes widened in shock. A 6-meter-tall mutant was chasing them! It looked like a fox with 3 tails. Each tail hurled large balls of fire towards the men. He watched as several were burned to ash.

'I'm not fighting that!' Ed spun around and ran in the opposite direction, but the men followed him. "Why the hell are you chasing me?!" He yelled.

"If we're going to die then we'll take a filthy esper with us!"

"Yeah! Damn esper! At least our deaths will be meaningful now!"

'Oh, for the love of Christ! Should I melt the ground and hide in it? No… that would leave me trapped if it chose to burn the ground. I might find a sewer if I'm lucky, but I don't want to take any chances.' Ed continued to run faster as he heard agonizing screams ring out behind him. Then they stopped. He glanced behind him and saw the mutant breathe fire towards him. "Shit!" He dodged by jumping through the glass of a nearby antique shop. He ran to the back of it and melted a hole to exit the other side. The fox rampaged through the shop as it broke directly through the wall to continue chasing him.

"Die!" Ed turned around and shot large flames from his arms. They were large enough to cover the entire mutant! Then his eyes widened in fear. 'It barely singed its fur!' He dodged into a nearby alleyway as the mutant breathed fire after him. He could feel it burn the clothes on his back as he exited the alley and dodged to the side.

"Huff! Huff!" He breathed heavily. 'What do I do?!'

The mutant easily jumped atop the nearby buildings and jumped down in front of Ed. It glared at him with angry eyes.