Zach was temporarily blinded by the flash. Closing his eyes and staggering backward, Zach caught himself on the end of a bookshelf that was nearby. When the pain finally subsided, he opened his eyes and gasped in surprise. Bones had become literally bones; all of his skin and flesh was gone. What was left was his skeleton and his clothes.

“I am Penance!!!” Penance shouted.

His eyes were orbs of amber light and his voice was dripping with malice. Suddenly Zach had this urge to repent.

“What the hell?” Zach cried out.

The bright amber light flashed again and Bones’s body was back to normal, but with a slight improvement. When Zach first saw Bones he was quite thin, but now he had a little extra meat on him and his skin was figuratively glowing.

“What in the ever loving God’s name was that!?” Zach demanded.

“That was Penance.” Bones said.

“Who or what is Penance?” Zach asked.

“You see, my primary ability changes my body into a skeleton. In that, Uh… state, I am incapable of aging. My secondary ability is Penance himself. Penance gives off an aura that causes people to relive their guilt. That repentance feeds Penance and keeps him alive. Together both my abilities replenish me to youth. You asked me how it was possible that you and I are alike considering that Connected like us only exist every five hundred years. Well the answer to your question is that I am over a millennia old.” Bones said.

“Huh, that is amazing.” Zach said starstruck.

“Well I did not come here to show off, I came here to help you gain control over your ability. Do you have a tuning fork or something glass?” Bones said.

Zach smiled and reached into his satchel and pulled out a leather tool strip that was rolled up. He undid the straps that was keeping it from coming undone and swiftly unrolled it in front of Bones. Inside was a full set of gleaming tuning forks.

Bones doubled over in laughter when he saw the set and after a moment he caught his breath.

“Oh my lord Reilly was right, what other goodies do you keep in that satchel?” Bones asked.

“Oh just bits and bobs.” Zach said with a huge grin.

“Ok let’s start simple. I want you to hit this tuning fork against this cube and just listen to the ring.” Bones said pulling out one of the tuning forks.

Zach took the fork from Bones and struck the cube softly with it. The resulting ring caused his ability to flicker.

“I felt my ability flicker.” Zach said with excitement.

“Excellent, but this time try a little harder.” Bones replied.

Zach did so, and in response he felt his ability flicker brighter.

“Nice, but now use the memory of the ring to play along with the real ring.” Bones said.

He repeated it and this time, Zach matched his memory of the ring to the current ring and he felt his ability awaken. He did it again and felt that the ring was coming from his body instead of his memory.

“Good, now try to make it ring without striking it against the cube.” Bones said.

Zach felt the ringing that was coming from his body begin to fade. So he held the fork up and let the ringing in his body flow down his arm and into the fork. With amazement Zach watched as the fork began to ring.

“Great job! Now try two tuning forks.” Bones said.

Zach began to pull the next fork in line out, but Bones stopped him.

“No. let’s start off with two strongly contradicting tones first.” Bones said, pulling the fork on the opposite side of the leather strip.

Zach took the two forks and hit one then the other. The high pitch and low pitch gave a sense of calming to Zach as he recreated the two tones from memory.

“Excellent now try to match the low pitch fork with the high pitch tone and the high pitch fork with the low pitch tone.” Bones said.

Zach did so but he could not make the low pitch tone on the high pitch fork.

“How about the other one?” Bones suggested.

Zach did so and promptly ducked as the fork blew to bits.

“Like I said before. If you match the resonant frequency to an object, it’s structure deconstructs itself.” Bones said.

“Deconstructs my ass. That fork shattered.” Zach said.

“Ok take the fork and hit on the cube once. Listen to the ring and commit it to memory. Once you have it in memory I want you to make it ring twice. Once that happens I want you to make it ring three times and close the gap between each ring. Zach closes his eyes and does what he is told. The more he practices with the forks the easier it gets to make them ring.

“Excellent work Zach. now I want you to hold the cube and make it ring.” bones said.

Zach picked the cube up and concentrated on making the cube ring. The more he pooled the kinetic energy in the cube the more it began to move until finally the cube gave an ear piercing whine and it crumbled to dust.

Zach was shocked.

“Nice work. You found its resonant frequency and caused it to vibrate so violently but yet controlled that you destabilized it’s molecular structure.” Bones said.

“Wait, you said that my clones can turn that pure energy into any form of energy that is in my body, right?” Zach asked.

“Yes” Bones replied.

“Ok, I want to try something.” Zach said, pulling his blueprints from his satchel.

He looked over them and found what he was looking for. He then grabbed a handful of the metal dust and began to concentrate. After a second he opened his hand to find dust. He tried again but with a lot more energy and then opened his hand to find that the dust had clumped together to form a blob of solid metal.

“Amazing!! What did you do?” Bones asked.

“Well the reason why two pieces of metal don’t fuse together is because there is a very thin layer of oxidation on the surface. Over the past few months I have been working on a theory that a machine could cold weld metal together by using vibrations to knock the oxidation off of the surface. I just proved the theory by cold welding this dust together into a blob.” Zach explained.

“In my many years of life I have only seen that happen once before.” Bones said.

“Really? When did that happen?” Zach asked.

“Well I knew this woman that had an ability similar to yours and at one point she got extremely mad and threw a metal chair, it crashed into a couple other chairs and they fused together, no seam nothing.” Bones said.

“Well ok th--” Zach was cut off as a student with enhanced speed zipped right up to Zach.

“Hu-hu-hu, we found something.” The student said.