“Wait wait. Your SON!? Since when, why didn’t you ever tell me?” I go as I look between them both.

“Yeah kid, did you not just hear what I said.”

“So, if you’re here that means it's serious isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I’m afraid so. Their attacks have been more rampant than before” says Chris as he sits down drinking some water.

“Can you both just slow it down and explain to me how this” pointing between the two of them “even happened?”

Sighing Cain takes a seat on the couch across from Chris.

“I guess this time I do owe you an explanation, more than from what you got when dying in the woods.”

“Excuse me what?” Chris says, almost choking on his water.

With a reassuring look

“Don’t worry about it, I’m all good now see” lifting his shirt to show the now patched-up hole in his chest.

“Anyways, Ethan, yes this is my son. And yes, he is better at Gear using than you because he’s had much more practice than you.”

“And about your ‘friend’ Julia. Like I said she’s a hybrid and if she’s the same age as you that means someone must’ve awoken her recently, around the time you were born. Whether or not that’s a coincidence we’ll have to find out, but for now, that means we now have three people to deal with. The ‘Boss’, the Sins, and whoever revived Julia.”

Scratching my head I think I’m starting to understand it. All but one part.

“So you said she’s an experiment, made in a lab. From what?”

Looking at each other as if neither wanted to answer, Cain reluctantly shared.

“Well, simply put. Humans. The man who started this project, his name was Dr.Elric. Working for the ‘Boss’ he was tasked with creating an army of humans. This project required vast amounts of Gear energy to do and so thousands of people were killed, slaughtered to do so.”

“Wait so are you saying-”

“Yeah kid, your friend was a product of about thousands of humans, adults, and kids just like you. She probably doesn’t know how she was made, none of them ever do, but one thing I can tell you, Hybrids were the failed attempt at the Sins.”

“Failed attempt?”

“I’ll get into it after, but you’re aware of the Seven Deadly Sins correct? From the bible?”

“Rage, Greed, Lust, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Pride?”

“Yeah, the Sins are based on those seven. Julia was based on those, but they scrapped the idea and then after getting destroyed by the heroes, they just disregarded it altogether. You saw the way she acted, how she tried to eat you.”

Thinking back, I could still smell her breath, normally it was the smell of vanilla and peaches, but Friday she was something much worse. The putrid smell wasn’t strong enough to hide the malice behind her, even before she transformed into that giant.

“Yeah I remember, I kinda was there you know.”

“Yeah smart ass, well then you can guess which Sin she represents.”

“Gluttony.”

“Bingo. Now that we got that little track out of the way, I can explain why Chris is here. He’s going to be your teacher as well as your partner. Both of you are the new age of heroes and I intend to keep you all together. Until we find the other 5, you two are to help train each other and keep each other safe until the final fight happens.”

Looking at Chris who was now happily laying on my couch, scrolling through his phone looks up at me and smirks as he puts his phone down.

“Don’t worry Ethan, as long as you don’t do as bad as you did in practice you’ll be perfectly fine” laughing as he sits up and hops up, and walks to grab himself some orange juice.

“Man, I know you’re not in MY house disrespecting me like that!? Or do I need to give you another beat down to show you who you should be listening to?”

“Both of you shut it! God, this is why I hate kids” Cain says as he takes a sip of water.

“Look I know it’s not ideal, I would normally train Ethan myself, but I won’t be here for a while meaning you two will only have each other.”

“Where are you going, old man?”

“Business I have to take care of,” he says walking towards the exit.

“Oh and by the way, if I haven’t mentioned this already, you heroes are also based on the Sins. So for example, if you haven’t already figured out, my idiot son here Chris, he’s the counterpart of the Pride Sin.”

“The one and only” taking a bow.

“And as for you Ethan” looking at me up and down.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon. Until then I leave the protection and training up to you two. Don’t die on me or else I’ll bring you back and kill you myself” and with that, he put his coat on and sped away.

For a while, we sat in awkward silence as the only sound was the neighbor's television playing in the background until finally, I spoke up.

“So how did you get so good at using Gears? I mean I get you might’ve had more practice than me, but still, I’ve been practicing whenever I could and can’t use my Gear as instantaneously as you.”

“Please, the only practice that you’ve had is when your life is in danger, not real practice. There’s no time to teach you everything I went through so I’ll just give you a crash course on the basics.”

Getting up, he looks at me as if waiting for something.

“You’re just going to sit there or are we going out?”

“Yeah yeah, let’s go” and with that, we grabbed our bags, put some food and drinks, and headed out. Meadow Town is a quiet place during the night, not like big cities where lights are always on and something is always happening. As I look up, I can see the stars glistening in the sky, dancing across. Nighttime in Meadow Town is my favorite time, the air is fresh, the stars are bright and there are barely any people outside so you have the whole town to yourself.

“Here should do” as we pull up to a park. I stand in front of the park and memories flood back into my head. I grab my head, remembering the horrific night. How my two friends were with me enjoying our time together, and within several hours, they both ended up murdered like animals.

“Hey man, I don’t think we should be here, let's go to the field nearby.

“What’s wrong with this place, besides they got swings, who doesn’t like swings.”

“No man, let's GO to another place” standing my ground.

Sighing and walking out the park,

“Alright alright, let’s go.”

We make our way over to the open field nearby. The park is empty, the light poles around the field providing the only source of light. We walk closer towards the middle so we have enough space between us and the street as well as enough space to practice. We put our stuff down and get ready.

“Alright, activate your Gear for me and show me what you can do,” Chris says while rolling up his sleeves and walking away from me.

“Wait when you mean to show you what I can do, do you mean?”

“Yeah, just like how we have scrimmages in football, we’re having a mock battle. I’m not like my dad where I can explain, I’ll show you what to do and you follow. Got it, okay.”

I can see that he’s not going to back down so I take my sweater off and get into a fighting stance.

“Gear Shift: Zero!”

My arm begins to glow blue, but right before I can do anything, Chris comes flying at me, arms lit ablaze. I try to block with my left arm, but in one motion, he easily swats it away, punching my face with his right hand.

“You have to be faster than that Ethan!”

He pushes me down to the dirt, flipping forward in the air off me, mid-air he aims his arm at me, a pillar of flames comes bursting out towards me. I roll out the way barely enough so that only my hair feels singed and my collar is black.

“Are you TRYING to kill me!?”

“In a real fight they will be, so yeah I am.”

He puts his hands together and begins gathering flames so dense that it becomes a ball of flames. As the size increases, I realize that he begins to slowly back away. That’s when I realized that he needed time to charge his attack, just like how I did when I did something similar in school.

I charge at him, aiming my hand at him, and fire a bolt of electricity at him. He easily dodges and jumps up.

“Ha, you can’t dodge mid-air. Easy shot.”

I charge my energy and fire a shot of electricity at him. Instead of connecting, however, he crushes the ball and the next thing I know, he’s behind me

“You should protect your blindspot more often.”

I turn around, but before I could even blink he elbows me in the gut and flames blast me back. I look down and see my shirt is burned through.

“How- how did you even dodge that? And when did you get behind me?” as I groan, sitting up.

“I used my Gear” he goes while helping me up.

“My Gear allows me to manipulate heat, whether or not it’s to cool or heat things. This whole time you’ve seen me manipulate heat to create flames. But that’s not the limit of my powers. By cooling the area around his body, I’m able to greatly reduce the heat surrounding me.”

“The area around you? Why would you want to do that?”

Smiling, he lifts his arm showing his Gear markings. “You see this, doesn’t this look familiar?”

Examining the marks closely, I could see amongst all the markings, there was a Gemini symbol.

“So what does that mean?”

"It means that I may not have two Gears as you do, but my Gear has a secondary function.”

“When I manipulate the heat around me, I cool it to the extreme. So much that it causes the natural expansion of the universe to slow itself down. As a result, I get the lucky bonus to slow down the flow of time.”

Looking at him, it was one of the rare times where I was confused.

“So you’re telling me you can just stop time and do whatever you want, and resume time when you’re finished?”

Laughing he takes a slight step back,

“I wish. That would solve a lot of my problems. It’s not as easy as that though. My power only slows downtime, not stopping it. So let's say I slowed time to a third of its normal speed. That would mean that things around me will appear as if they are moving three times slower; while my opponent perceives me moving three times faster.”

“Oh okay, I think I understand now, so whatever fraction you slow down, that’s how much faster you appear to be moving right?”

“Correct. However, there are major drawbacks to this. If my opponent can move faster than the amount I slowed time down by, he/she will be able to move normally, hence why my dad is a pain in the ass.”

“Not only that though, but I cannot use my power for extended periods. It requires me to cool the surrounding area to such a low temperature, that causes my body to freeze almost immediately. Because of this, I must deactivate it to thaw out the ice forming on his body.”

“Oh, so that’s why there was steam when you were behind me.”

“Correct, the moment I stop using my powers, the ice immediately melts, turning to steam.”

As he went on explaining his Gear I realized how much he had worked on his Gear, even though he only has one. I haven’t even unblocked my second one, and he’s already found a way to advance his own so it has two functions.

All I can do is shoot electricity out of my hands, and on that one occasion, condense it to the point where it becomes plasma. I have to start training so I don’t become a liability in a fight.

“Alright, now show me what you can do” and with that, I showed him my wide range of attacks, which included my beam blast and plasma ball.

As we stayed outside, the sky got brighter and my body felt heavier. So much to that point whereby the time I managed to get a break-in, the sun was rising, my arms on fire and my whole body aching from combat training.

“Can we take a break, we’ve been at it all night. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve learned a lot more about my Gear, but physically I’m drained. This is harder than football practice, and that’s gruesome.”

Sighing he takes a swig of water.

“Alright fine, we’ll stop for today, that'll be good for now.”

As we both sat down, we watched the sunrise and after a while, made our way back home. Time went on like this for a while, we went to school, football practice, came home, dinner then training, squeezing school work whenever we could. My mom never questioned me about my late hours because my grades never fell below a 3.5 G.P.A, but she insisted Chris come over at least every other night to spend dinner with us since she thought I was the one keeping him outside so late.

Looking through his glass ball, the ‘Boss’ chuckles a bit, after seeing the progress both Chris and Ethan have made.

“Well well well. They’ve improved wonderfully. I think it’s about time we introduced them to their purpose. Dr. Zaroth, are they ready?”

A man appears from the shadows, a mask covering his left eye. You could see a scar still coming out from where his eye seems to be.

“Yes sir. All the preparations are in order. Both the girl and Greed are ready to be deployed.”

“Perfect. Now then boys, please do your best to entertain me. I have 6 others waiting to get a taste of you two and you haven’t even unlocked the full potential of Gears. And besides, five others are just like you. The time of war is coming, the day of reckoning is among us, especially you boy. Ethan, I can’t wait to see what you do, I’ll be waiting for you.”