I was in a rundown little house inside a warehouse with a group of people actively pursued by the government, having just drunk a mysterious metallic liquid that someone on the internet had created with unspecified means, the thing felt gelid in my stomach, but the sensation dissipated quickly.

I opened my eyes, not feeling anything different yet. LED approached me, and without a word, he raised his hand with the white ring of light he had conjured before, seeing it up close was weird as there was no substance, only light in the shape of a circle, yet in a brightness that you could look at directly with no problems.

As I was observing the construct he guided it to my head, I just stood there, dazed, and felt something settling over my forehead. “Any idea how long…” how long it is. I thought as I felt warmth ignite inside me, a hot wave expanding from my stomach, Hitting all of my senses. Suddenly the room looked extremely different. It started with just the colors, everything turning sharp and vivid before expanding; new colors that I'd never seen before appearing and the perception from all my senses expanding.

I could see colorful auras emanating from everyone on the room I think I felt myself moving looking at everything around me, and someone or something guided me to the sofa, the moment I laid down everything started going even crazier. I could see Spotlight by my side his smirk taking the whole room, I swear to you, smirking was this guy's whole personality. The colors started whispering to me secrets about life and I felt myself floating. The room growing smaller and smaller as I was shot through the ceiling to the expanse of the universe beyond, and then there I travelled for decades slowly floating between the stars. Yet somehow during all this time I was in a state of calmness I hadn't felt for a really long time, without hopes or expectations, disconnected.

I felt like a child again, before powers had come to this world. But after a while it was over, and my mind floating through the infinite expanse arrived at a landing station inside my soul, somehow, I just knew that was what it was.

Here I saw infinite versions of myself, doing every job and activity imaginable, I walked through a cityscape where I was the only person, I could see myself living any live. The countless paths that I could have taken. This continued as I walked backwards in time, arriving at my young self.

I saw a five years old version of me staring at shows with superpowers, from before powers really existed, from when they were impossible, and I cheered at the television in excitement and ran outside to play with my friends pretending we were superheroes.

The vision changed for me when I was twelve, fooling around in class without any worries not paying attention and it not even mattering in the end. It was a scene I knew well. It was quite remarkable, in my class was Silvershade, the alarm and commotion that was having one of the first trigger events in the world happen just before my eyes, the panic only subsided a couple week after when the reports around the entire world were more consistent. I always wished that had been me.

And then I was a young adult, a college freshman, I was seeing my friend whoop in joy in our dorm, his bed was completely on fire, and I congratulated him, he also came to do this college because he was passionate about powers and he had just triggered, why couldn't it be me. At this time power became a faraway hope, one that I couldn’t shake off.

"Envy?" the guy asked me, the fire spreading now to cover everything, taking over my vision completely as I recoiled and covered my face from the heat. The darkness enveloping everything.

I blinked and I was in another place entirely. This time besides an old man. He was fishing, we were on a river bank.

“Today is my last day alive.” he said to me. Turning over and looked deep into my eyes, into my soul. “I wasted my whole life, all of it suffering for something I never got. The more I tried the more it seemed to be out of my grasp, and all of that for what? Nothing.” he spat on the river the old hands holding the fishing rod shook.

He laughed then, saying “it's probably because I wasn't alive to begin with.” his empty eyes stared over the water at nothing and I saw the scar on his neck the same one I could feel on myself.

I stared over the water at nothing holding the fishing rod on my trembling hands, on my side a heavily bearded man sat, long hair unkept and tired eyes. He was staring at his empty hands, and raised his head to talk to me.

“Say, if you ever get powers, what then?”

I disregarded the irony of asking an old man at deaths door a question like that, like I had much more time left. “I'd probably train it, master it fully.”

“And then use that power for what, not saving people? Not going to overthrow the regime?

“You know that’s not even possible; I just want to enjoy slinging some fire or lightning around.”

“The novelty of that hasn’t left yet? Quite impressive. But you know the truth right, you just don’t want to think about it too much."

“What's the point of thinking of what I'm going to do with powers I don’t even have, it's much better to focus on how I'll get them.”

“Such a reasonable mind set, got us through all these years, hiding our lack of direction under this layer of pragmatism.”

I didn’t say anything to the younger me, we were the same person, I had no idea what he was trying to gain from riling up these deep doubts we had.

“After so many people died it would feel wrong to just go live a normal life.”

I shuddered; we didn’t think about this. The therapy I did wasn’t solely for the reason of giving up on getting powers, it was also the PTSD. I sighed, sagging over the fishing rod.

“They were like brothers to me, we were all going to get powers together, make a team. Train together, help each other grow stronger.”

The group of Sleepwalkers I was part of was made of my buddies from the last year of college, we came together as a last resort to try and trigger, and after a while one of them finally did, he had a power that could give other people boosts in ability with some claws and slight transformations.

That was all well and good but we secluded ourselves in an old big house one of them owned and there we did experiments and fought and trained with these powers, every one of us feeling like our dreams were on the cusp of being true that everything was finally going to go all right, but we didn’t notice each one of us getting more violent, fighting more fiercely and more often. By the time the enforcers found us three had already died, another one had triggered and we were just a bunch of brutal savages, of course we didn’t react well to their presence and all were gunned down or destroyed in the ensuing fight.

All of this while I bled in the ground from a neck injury I had gotten in the latest fight, minutes before.

I was the only one left, they cured me to get the story and also because I technically hadn't fought against them. Or I was just lucky someone was feeling generous that day.

“It doesn’t matter anymore now, we got the dammed powers, I won't lie and say I'm not happy about it. But from now on we have to find out how to actually live.” that ringed true enough, id had been focused on powers every waking moment of my life, the relationships I had always ending in fights or disappointment. Until I just stopped really trying to get close to people.

There was a tugging at the fishing line and I just let it be. “In a way getting powers will finally set me free, like I'm being reborn in a way.” the tugging got so strong it yanked the fishing rod from me, almost making me fall in the river. Before I could get up properly, I saw a fish jumping up from the water, it opened its mouth and gobbled up the whole world in one bite.

I was falling now through a sky painted in the color of every possible sunset, not slowing down or reaching any ground. I was aware of myself, and that I had apparently spent a lot of time doing things, it didn’t feel like any time had passed though, it felt very much like a lucid dream.

One of the clouds approached me then. “What is it that you wish for?” it asked me.

“Power!” I didn’t even have to think, the answer coming out automatically.

It laughed at me. "Boring little human.” it said in a mocking tone and went away.

After another unspecified stretch of time where I just kept falling and falling another cloud came talk to me:

“Why do you wish for power?” it spoke from a face formed in its cloudy body.

"I wouldn’t be satisfied without it” It also laughed at me, but this one didn't go away. "Don't you humans know that the most you run after something the farther it gets from you?”

"Should I just give up on what I want then?”

"I am not to tell you what you should or shouldn't do, but you probably should set some clearer goals” it then went about explaining to me the intricacies of ‘achievement manipulation’’ to fool the ‘causality of space time’ for what must've been another half an hour.

While doing so it slowly entered me through my mouth, which was close to the weirdest thing that happened to me, a cloud is just some vapor though so it wasn’t bad.

When I had gobbled up the whole cloud two deep black slashes appeared in the sky, they perfectly mirrored each other and just stayed at a fixed distance from me no matter how fast I fell. The slashes then slowly opened up revealing a pair of eyes.

They stared at me and my existence was paused. They were profound, crazed and hungry. My fall suspended as we hang there in the sky in an endless moment.

It was like looking at a mirror too much.

A ragged slash cut itself beneath the eyes, opening to reveal a maw of fangs, it let out only one hauntingly sharp word. “More!”.

My back impacted the soft couch, my breath caught in my throat, my forehead burned, I shot up sitting, the room was dark. There was no one around me. I brought my hand to my forehead, there was nothing there anymore. But inside me I could feel it.

My power.