“Spears sent you to Fire, eh? Must think you have a temper and like to come to blows.” I made no judgement, although his face got a little long. “That’s why you learn multiple Dragons and different types of mindsets. He’s a Wind stylist himself, very good with a spear and them kicks of his.”

“So I learned. You’re right... his default kicks were almost as strong as my Iron Fist, and when he unleashed a Form, he blew me away. And he was fast, much faster than I was.” He sounded at once dejected and excited that he had a goal.

“Well, Fire is for the young and ambitious. Incredible attack speed, the best lightfoot on the chase, and very showy, with multiple uses. If all you can use is the Fire Dragon, you’ll be sitting well, but that should not be an issue.

“Make sure Moon Dragon is your second Dragon, or you’ll never be able to learn it without compromising the Greater Four. Multi-Dragon use is three, four, or five Dragons, depending on if or when you learn the Moon.”

“I can’t learn all Seven?” he asked, startled.

“No, Powered can’t learn all Seven, and that means a natural Chi-user like you. Only Forsaken can learn Seven Dragons, and it’s a very painful thing to be able to do, meaning they have to devote themselves to the Seven above all things.

“I think there’s one, maybe two Seven Dragons masters on the planet, one in the Tribes, one in Russia. If I’m not mistaken, The White Bear is a Seven Dragons master.”

“Not the Golden Hag?” He was startled.

“Oh, heck no. She’s not a Chi-user, she’s a straight Null. Relies on shutting down people like us, then beating us all up.” I shrugged. “Different mindset. Uses Gear to fly and whatnot.”

“It certainly hasn’t hurt her position,” he mused.

“No, it sure hasn’t,” I agreed, and we got to discussing the particulars of the direction he should take.

-----------

“Luke, you need to go traveling with Danny when he takes off to get some training,” I informed the big, brawny guy. “If it means you miss some schooling, so be it. There’s other kinds of training you can do in the interim. But you’ve got way too much potential to be wasting it here.”

His expression was kind of mixed as he looked at me. “What do you mean by 'potential'?” he asked warily.

“You’ve a strong Core powering extremely high passives. But you’re too restricted by what you think are your limits. Part of that is because you are an athlete; you know when to stop exerting yourself so you don’t hurt yourself. It’s why you are so slow compared to the others.”

He glared at me and rolled his eyes. “Exactly what are you saying?”

I held up four fingers. “What are the main characteristics of a good Brick?”

“Strength! Invulnerability!” he recited immediately.

“Power and durability,” I corrected him, and he rolled his eyes. “What else?”

“I dunno.”

“Immovability and recovery, or self-healing.” I waggled all four fingers. “You need to get to work on those, or Iron Fist is going to come back from his training and leisurely walk all over you.”

“What?” That got his attention.

“You know anything about masters of the Crystal Dragon?” I asked him. “Oh, Danny won’t be able to lift as much as you, but what does that matter when he can hit two or three times as hard as you can? He’ll have chi wrapped around him enough to withstand bullets, and hitting him will feel like pounding on a stone wrapped in a tractor tire. You won’t be able to move him if he doesn’t want to be moved, and you won’t be able to catch him if he does move.”

I pointed directly at him. “You... are very lucky. You’ve got the strength, but not the power. You’ve got the durability at a much higher basic level. You need immovability, and you need recovery, so that when you get hit and get injured, and you will, you can fix yourself up.

“You can’t get that staying here in SHIELD. You can get it if you go out there, get your Core Awakened, and start learning Crystal Dragon basic techniques.

“You’ll have the heavyfoot so you can’t be moved or tripped, and you can brace yourself just standing there. Remember this?”

I darted my hand out, stuck it to his chest, and lifted him off his chair as he grabbed my arm and shouted in protest as his hands kept sliding off, “Awwww, dammit!...”

“Shut it!” I shook him once as I sat there with him at arm’s length up off his feet, staring down at me in irritation. “Can you do this?! No, you can’t. You can’t defy physics. If you tried to do this, this chair would be collapsing. If I stand up,” which I did,” and this were you, this would happen.” I released my Root on the floor and promptly overbalanced forwards, his feet hitting the ground as I fell over, quite rigid, still stuck to his chest, and stopped there at an angle, basically leaning on him with my arm out and toes rigid.

“You punch slow, you move slow. You can lift and you can endure a bullet. If all you are facing are normal mooks, you’ll be fine.” I pushed off his chest and back to my feet as he glowered down at me.

“But you are going to fall behind the curve fast, because you don’t have the fundamentals to do the job you want to do. First lesson: I should not be able to lift you off the floor if you don’t want to be lifted.”

He grimaced at me. “How’m I supposed to do that?” he demanded.

“Two: If you get the shit beat out of you, you should be up and ready to go again very fast.”

I whisked a nail across my cheek, and he made a leery face as my skin split open and blood welled up and dripped down there. Then sparks arced across the cut, and it began to seal up, pull the blood back inside, and in less than thirty seconds there was no sign it had ever been there.

“Damn,” he muttered, staring at that. “That would be pretty handy...”

“Lastly, you should be able to punch faster than me.” I reached out, thorked his nose, and drew back; all he could basically do in response was blink. “Look at you. Look at me. Consider how much stronger you are than me. Think of just how much stress your arms and legs can take, how much faster they can move than what you are showing.

“Now, you don’t have the reflexes to do things like thork someone’s nose, but that’s fine. All you want to do is be able to hit them.” I threw a slow punch into his chest, and drew it back. “Nothing fancy, nothing extreme. But FAST... with POWER.” I crouched down, and straightened. “You want to be able to JUMP with POWER.” I put my hands on my hips, and glared at him. “You know how high Spidey can jump. You’ve seen how high I can jump with Repulse. You should be able to jump higher and farther, and go bounding down a road at over a hundred miles an hour or something, maybe faster.”

He was staring at me, licking his lips. “I can learn to do all that, huh?” he asked, a light in his dark eyes.

“And you’re more than smart enough to learn how!” I wagged a finger at his nose. “Don’t say you ain’t! I know you’re not dumb!”

“Hey, if it can be learned, I can learn it!” he agreed with a bit of a swagger. “Luke Cage is nobody’s fool!”

“This is earned power, not lucky power,” I warned him, poking him in his steely abs with a sparking finger. He yelped in pain. “Crystal Dragon and Core disciplines, Lucas Cage. If you don’t upgrade, you’re going to do nothing but fall behind. Do it right and you’ll be solid in more ways than you think.”

“Okay, let’s see just what you talking about.” He sat back down and crossed his arms, but his gaze was a lot more intense now.

It was a good thing. He was competitive, and not being able to engage in athletics was doubtless really bugging him. If we were the only things he could compete against, then against us it would be!

----------

“You two have been walking weird around me,” I told Cindy and Gwen, kicking back a bit. “Out with it.”

“Uh, aren’t you supposed to be assessing us?” Gwen asked instead.

“Is it because you know Peter’s web formula and you want to come work in the Baxter Building, but are afraid to ask?” I went on, ignoring her words.

She and Cindy looked at one another. “Busted!” Cindy tossed her hands up. “How long have you known?”

“No, that’s not it. The videos you’ve been posting of the city at night? No...” I tilted my head as they fidgeted, caught again. “You want to ask me for something. Power armor? No, not for something, about something...” I studied them as they wriggled more. “If I’m going with Peter? No, I’m not. No, that wasn’t it. No, I don’t have any relations with the Shields or Danny or Luke or Richie... Nope, that’s not it, either. Oh, nothing with Johnny Storm, although he definitely has a hot crush on me... Nope.

“Okay, I give up. What’s your question?” I sat there, arms crossed, looking at them, and they finally looked at one another and sighed.

“You’ve got spider-powers too, right?” Cindy finally asked.

“If I said no, would you believe me?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow at them.

Their eyes met again. “No!” they said together.

“Very well, then, I’ve got spider-powers.” I wriggled my fingers at them. “Pheer me.”

My utterly blasé reaction wasn’t helping matters. “You aren’t even going to ask how we know?” Cindy demanded of me.

“Horrors, my secret is out. However was I found out. Woe is me. How could you possibly have discovered the presence of another spider-totemite when there are already three of you here. I cannot understand this.”

My monotone delivery was taking all the fun out of it, and making them doubt themselves with my lack of denials or defensiveness. “We’re positively sure about this!” Cindy stated again.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you are.”

“Your Attract and Repulse powers are exactly the same as our wall-crawling!” Gwen finally chimed in. “We have the readings to prove it!”

“Really.” I leaned into my hand, totally unperturbed at the reveal. “Let’s see. You’ve been trying to replicate my sticky-fu style of fighting. So that got you interested in seeing if you could reverse your wall-crawling like I do. So, Cindy here slapped together something after Gwen looked up the biometrics, and you integrated it into your bracelets... and yes, Cindy, I noticed you are wearing some now.

“You then noticed that the exact same biometric reading springs up when I use my sparkfoot as when you invert your clinging power. Then you started thinking about how easily I overcome your timesighting, compensate for your reaction time and agility, my own strength and agility being about on par with yours, and la, I must have spider-powers. There you go.”

Lightning arced between my fingertips, danced between my eyes, around my hair, spiraled around my arms a few times. “Spider-powers galore, that’s me.”

They both winced. “We, we don’t know how to explain that yet,” Gwen admitted. “I know our powers are a little different, but we’re not exactly sure how...”

I pointed two fingers over my shoulder and webbed the wall of the room behind me.