Momentous Changes

She awakened…

My mind initially went blank. I had subconsciously removed the possibility that she might of awakened, given that she was a contractor. Could contractors awaken? Could they use both abilities? Was there a drawback to either? Would she be able to better protect herself? Wait, first things first. What’s her ability!?

Me- “What did you awaken to?”

Chloe- “Look.”

She held out her arm like she was about to do something. But nothing happened.

Chloe- “That’s weird. Why isn’t it working?”

Her eyebrows furrowed in frustration, but nothing happened.

Chloe- “I swear to god I awakened! I could make this red glass appear out of nowhere; they said it was called barrier.”

So it was like Viola’s… I knew abilities could be passed down, but was she related to the Lynch family? I didn’t exactly have the best of relations with them…

Me- “It might be because I’m standing here.”

Chloe whined,

Chloe- “Stop making fun of me~! It’s just not working.”

I didn’t bother to explain my thought process. I backed away from Chloe, and suddenly a red light appeared right next to her hand. It materialized quickly, forming a 2 dimensional wall of light red glass. It slightly sparkled under the morning sunlight, and with further concentration she made it into a glass panel of sorts.

Me- “See? Well, I’m happy for you! If you’d like, I can talk to you about the in’s and out’s of using abilities.”

Chloe- “That totally doesn’t sound like you, but of course! That would be awesome!”

I was trying to tone down on my ultra-overprotective side, and it seemed to be getting good results. Maybe I should keep acting like this? … Naaahhh

*******************

I explained to her about basic stuff, like how people had an ability field, and that you could not actively use your abilities while being within the radius of another’s field. This radius became much larger once someone actually started using their ability, and when they had unlocked greater powers from their unconscious.

I then moved to how your ability gets stronger the more you use it, and how it grows in sync with your will power. I wasn’t however, able to properly explain the bottleneck a person would experience after their ability grows to a certain level. I certainly hadn’t experienced the stagnation described in the book, but I had the lingering suspicion that I had already broken through after my fight with the black figure.

We were just arriving at the school as I moved onto details on how to use the golden aura.

Me- “…express your desire precisely and make sure there aren’t any loopholes within your words. Now that I think about it, your ability as a contractor should only be able to be used for a bit upwards of 5 minutes. Has that changed after you got your ability?”

Chloe responded,

Chloe- “I don’t know. I haven’t tried it before; I’m still trying to get used to barrier.”

As she spoke, a red light fluttered about her, changing into different two-dimensional shapes such as a triangle, circle, star, and other simple things. It was much more difficult to control barrier than the golden aura. Instead of simply expressing her ‘desire’ to shape the light into a circle, she had to physically imagine the red light as a circle before it would actually turn into a circle.

I now had a newfound respect for Viola, at least in the terms of her being able to manipulate barrier seemingly effortlessly. That did not however, reduce the hostility I felt towards her as a person. And thus I was not going to introduce Chloe to that clan.

Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t potentially restricting her growth due to my own personal vendetta with Viola. It was just, knowing that girl and her attitude, she must have not of gotten a good upbringing. That was the fault of her family. If I were to recommend them against my own better judgment, Chloe might get hurt.

I opened the door for Chloe and followed her in. School seemed to be operating on a normal schedule despite the likely-hood that a great number of people had just awakened their abilities. It wasn’t a very wise decision in my opinion, but I could see the rationale behind them keeping us in school.

Chloe and I were a little bit later than usual, as we had kinda stopped at the beginning and walked pretty slow the rest of the way. So I said my good byes and went into my first period classroom.

The atmosphere was quite rowdy when I came in. Everyone had gathered into a group, watching this popular kid who had seemed to have awakened. Whatever animal he had likeness to, his fur seemed quite soft. The girls were rubbing his golden fur and squealing, while the guys were attempting to drag him out of the crowd to get a short feel. Awakening, I realized, was not as common as I expected it to have become. But it was still quite significant.

I sat to my seat, immune to the commotion that was going on. I opened C.H.I.B.I.’s app.

The icon looked updated. Before it was a simple symbol of a perfect circle, but now the circle was the well-known symbol of a runic snake biting its tail. Ouroboros. The loading screen wasn’t nearly as bare bones as before, a wall of green terminal text that would quickly switch to the app’s true screen. Instead, there was an actual loading bar! It even had a percentage indication of how far it was in progress!

After the app finished loading, a screen popped up asking if I would like to check out the tutorial, with a ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Wow, why had the organization suddenly become so user friendly?

I tapped ‘yes,’ and the screen switched to a sort of tutorial mode. It moved to the first screen.

‘This is your mission screen. It lists out different tasks with various rewards in the order of easiest to most difficult that you can access at your current clearance rank. Your current clearance rank is (Rank 1- Novice). Please work hard at raising this, as acquiring a better rank comes with many benefits. Swipe right when you are ready to continue.’

I was a pretty fast reader, and I already knew the first part of the content. I swiped to the right pretty quickly.

The bar at the top switched to ‘Shop.’ A slightly transparent description popped up, reading,

‘This is the Shop. You can buy many different things here, and more useful and expensive items will be added to the shop as you acquire more clearance points. Anything you buy will be teleported to the initiation room once you arrive, so make sure to pick them up.’

That reminds me. My other self wrote that he stored the stuff he bought in my bag before we switched. What did he buy?

I unzipped my bag, and looked in. There was a book covering a bunch of stuff, so I put that on my desk. But when I reached for the next item, I froze, and my eyes widened from shock!

Armored boots, armored gloves, a bulletproof vest, a helmet with a drop down visor and facemask, a taser, a switchblade with bloodstains on it, and a freaking gun with multiple cartridges! I could get arrested for the armor alone, much less the freaking switch blade and gun. Why in h*ll would he put all this in my bag!?

I immediately zipped the bag right back up, thankful for the fact that most of the classroom had their attention still focused on the guy with fur. And with the bag closed and secure under my feet, I continued the tutorial.

‘This is your profile. Here you can manage your clearance rank, monetary funds, friends, and a list of accepted missions. You will not, however, be allowed to write information about yourself. That will be compiled by related personnel and posted publicly here. Would you like to receive a list of the reviews you have so far?’

‘Yes’ ‘No’

I chose the option on the left out of an instinctive curiosity. There were a total of two reviews, one by an unfamiliar name, Nancy, and the other by Joyce Kim. I reviewed the one by Joyce first.

‘A hot-blooded amateur with a bit of experience. He’s quite arrogant, and thus he unknowingly offends those he probably shouldn’t. However, he has the talent to back it up. A few set-backs will put him on the right track.’

Huh. I was expecting something much more negative, coming from her. But other than showing favoritism, she never really did anything that was per say… hostile towards me. Borderline definitely, but not quite. We’ll see what happens later.

I checked the second review.

‘Practical. Intelligent. Although inexperienced with our rules, he can and will do the job quickly and efficiently. A man who has no qualms getting his hands dirty. Recommended for strong-arm type missions, or assassinations.’

Well. That was not the impression I got from my other self. At least the first part wasn’t true…

With that, the tutorial ended. I swiped over to review the available missions, and there was a lot of stuff. The first mission after the one I took was apparently the easiest available. It also was outlined in a purple color, marking it as special compared to all the other colorless borders. It read,

‘Law enforcement’

‘Crime is now running rampant with the new ability user’s, and your police stations are sorely understaffed. Please help keep your city safe, and help Sherriff Tanner to do his job. Give us access to your information by pressing the button below, and we will contact qualified users if an unexpected situation arises. You will be paid 100$ for each resolved issue, and 500$ more for every rank past D.’

‘Ability Index- N/A’

‘Ability Description- N/A’

‘Status- Press here to accept’

That mission sounds good. I was genuinely surprised that there was such a good intentioned mission, given the dark and frankly, above the law nature of the organization. I applied immediately.

After I was done with that, I took a glance over to the guy who awakened a body transformation. He was using his ability to impress girls, but I was using mine for the betterment of society.

What? I’m not jealous…

****************************

Physics literally turned into gossip day. The teacher simply couldn’t teach with how riled up the students were, so he just let us do whatever. Good for them I suppose, but boredom never felt good. I was practically rejoicing when the bell rung, and we transitioned towards our next class. This transition however was much different than normal.

What happens when you give a group of immature teenagers powers straight out of an author’s imagination? I now knew the answer.

It wasn’t like some ecchi anime where every girl had on a short skirt that exposed forbidden sights every time the wind blew or when they bent down to pick something up. This was a public high school, in America. People just wore whatever they wanted, as long as it didn’t violate the dress code too much.

This made harassment pretty much impossible to go unnoticed unless the girl was ultra oblivious, or they were people they didn’t want to break off relations with. Even with abilities, this stayed pretty much the same. I didn’t see anything, and that was the way I liked it. But there was certain mischief that suddenly went haywire.

“Splash”

???- “Oops, my bad. I was aiming for my friend over there.”

For some reason, the man thought it was a good idea to surprise his friend with his new ability. Water blast to the face style… I didn’t like people like him at all, but unfortunately, he seemed to be telling the truth about his friend. My ability didn’t react to show him as having any malicious intent towards me. So I had no justifiable reason to surprise him with my ‘fireball to the face style’ either. A shame…