Arik stood there in shock.

His arm, still outstretched in the punch position, was rampant with pins and needles and emitted a faint trail of smoke. The man that had taken the incredible punch was lying face down on the carpet floor, motionless.

Arik assuredly was not currently in top shape, and with how many upside down events had been occurring as of late, there was no way to be truly sure of what was happening. But it didn't take a genius to piece together what was going on. He had just used another power. Another ability with supernatural effects just like his flight. But how long had he had this one?

Movement from the man on the ground flinched Arik out of his analysis. He slowly raised himself off the ground and bore a sinister grin with constricted crystal blue eyes glowing with both fascination and wrath. His concerning face petrified Arik.

'How is he getting up after a punch like that? That should have killed him let alone knocked him out.'

Arik's eyes suddenly grew wide with astonishment. The chest of the man Arik had punched moments before was webbed with red lines of tangible energy, like cracks in the windshield of a car that had just collided with something at high speed.

"You actually cracked my armor with that punch. Nobody's been able to do that since the old man. Congratulations." He stood up straight and spit blood from his mouth.

'This guy is insane. Just how many powers does he have?'

A quick glance past the man revealed the bear off in the doorway, it's face now ever so similar to the man's. Which meant—

Arik quickly turned to look behind himself.

'The window!'

Due to the scuffle before, they had swapped positions and now Arik had a clear shot of escape. All he had to do was be faster than the bad guys.

"C'mon now. You were just starting to show me what I wanted to see. Gonna run so soon?"

Arik shot a serious glare at the man, searching for any tip of his next move. Anything was possible with the powers the stranger had. Nothing was certain, but he had to try.

With every ounce of strength Arik had, he turned and blitzed for the window. Moving from the position he was at was like breaking concrete on his bones. He felt as if he weighed 1,000 pounds and the forces of gravity were working double time to keep him still.

Only but a few feet from the still boarded up window, a familiar firm hand grabbed ahold of Arik's hair once again and yanked him from his momentum.

"I'll be back. And when I do, I won't be alone. So get good at that second spell of yours. You'll need it."

Those were his final words before he dashed forward with Arik and tossed his body head first through the window that he had sought after all this time. The sudden light blinded Arik briefly, but he could feel his body plummeting from the sixth floor faster and faster.

In a calculated panic, Arik activated his flight and rocketed to the clouds faster than he had ever flown before. The cold wind boomed through his hearing and he was afraid to look anywhere but up for fear of someone recognizing him. The thought of that happening, his identity and powers being discovered by the public, caused his heart to thump like a machine gun.

'I've got to get out of here. Faster. Faster!' he thought to himself.

His body began to warm up against the brumal conditions of the sky as sparks and gusts of flame began to radiate from his entire body. It was similar to the strange punch he used earlier, definitely the same power. But this one was affecting every inch of his body and didn't feel as potent.

The more that this energy thickened and enveloped his body, the faster he bolted upward. Feelings of g-force and rising pressure grew on his face like that of a skydiver, but the comical part was that he was going the opposite direction. His person finally speared into the clouds above and disappeared from any prying eyes and possible cyborg enemies. Escape was finally his.

A few moments later, Arik exploded out of the top of the clouds ruling over Zoro county. Although it was still an uncomfortably low temperature, especially in the thin button up he wore for his interview earlier, it was much sunnier up there. He immediately felt safe and alone from the rest of the world, a reprieve that he currently needed just to digest what had happened to him minutes ago.

The fiery energy coursing from him subsided and his speed gradually slowed to a halt. He floated back into a lying position above the clouds and sprawled out as if on a comfortable bed. He could barely even feel the immense pain at the moment. But he knew it was there, barred behind a timed cage that was sure to flood his mind with injury any second now.

Looking up to the beautiful and fair baby blue sky, tears began rolling around his ears.

"Why is this so hard?" he asked to the void. "What did I do to—" a sharp wince cut him off. The pain was slowly coming back. "Whoever is out there, please just leave me alone. I just want to exist. Smile like the others— What could you possibly want with me?"

His tears were more heavy and he began choking through his words.

"I'm just a nobody. I can't have amazing things like others. So why should I have awful things happen to me if I don't ask for much?" He paused as if searching for words. "So what do you want with me?"

"WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Several seconds went by in icy silence and Arik chortled to himself at the realization that he had just been passionately venting to the barren sky. Of course he wasn't truly expecting a response, but he just couldn't keep it in any longer.

'Maybe I'll fall to my death again up here—from that seizure thing that guy was talking about. But the funny thing is, it wouldn't solve anything. I'm truly stuck aren't I?'

The pain increasing as his adrenaline lowered made it harder to stay afloat, and he could feel his mind straining to keep himself up. He let go of his thoughts of weightlessness and fell, disappearing into the cloud bank. His thoughts were the only things darker than the nimbuses that day, and his eyes the only things more misty.

It had been an hour or so, a rough estimate from Arik as he didn't have his phone anymore. He didn't have anything but the clothes on his back. He had left in such a hurry earlier that everything was still in his apartment, including his burger. Now he was stranded outside, beaten and battered, freezing from the environment and blood on his clothes. To make matters worse, his dizziness from the fight hadn't subsided, each step feeling like the floor was giving way.

'And yet, I've still been through worse.' The fact generated comfort in his heart.

However, he wasn't just outside in the cold. When he floated back down to the ground earlier, he had dropped into Woodstock Forest to not be seen once again. He went to the abandoned logging town deep in the forest and found a shoddy shelter. Once an impregnable brick house, years of weather and seclusion had whittled it into nothing but two walls holding up a small corner of the roof that once was.

Arik decided it was as good a place as any and held up until he could find out what to do next. But he was truly stumped. Perhaps it was the sudden nausea distracting him from higher functioning thoughts. And so he sat against the precarious wall and racked his brain as long as he could before grogginess began to weigh on his eyelids. He didn't want to sleep at a time like this, but all of his aching bones and muscles pleaded for it to be so.

There was a trifecta of miserable ailments riddling his body that he knew sleep would appease. And while awake, the pain, nausea and cold were torturing him. Not to mention the fear of randomly getting jumped by a bear and a supervillain. It was no wonder he couldn't think clearly.

'Man. I wouldn't be in this position if I had that sweet armor power that the metal arm guy had. Guess that's just my luck though.'

His eyes slowly fell and shut close, the anodyne of sleep immediately rewarding his body.

BOOM!!

An explosion of rubble and earth danced around Arik, startling him awake almost painfully. Brick from the wall rained down onto him as he jumped away into a roll on the ground, dodging what he could. His panic and confusion propelled him out of the structure before it had completely collapsed into a pile of relic rubble. Arik stood about 20 feet away and batted at the dirt and dust in his face.

"What the hell was that all about?" he pondered in annoyance. He looked up to the sky, now noticeably darker than when he went to sleep. "Can I please catch a break?!"

He observed his surroundings for any sign of what could have caused the brick house to fall apart, but there was nothing but typical thickly rooted forest in every direction.

"Man, how long was I out?" he said to himself while rubbing the back of his head and stretching.

His body stilled as he realized something bizarre yet familiar. His pain was gone. In fact, he felt great. He looked to his arms and lightly squatted to feel out his body. Not so much as a joint click. His eyes were growing wider with silent panic by the second, and he felt his face. No blood, no broken nose, no swollen eyes.

'D-did I—'

His body began to shake violently as memories and voices filled his head. Memories of the times he should have died, but just didn't, and was somehow miraculously fine afterwards. Voices of the metal armed man talking about being something called a "deathless."

"Did I die?" he said out loud, his voice wavering to speak the words.

He fell to the ground violently and threw up, his muscles spasming like he was getting electrocuted repeatedly. The floor beneath him began to twist and pulse in place in tune with his heartbeat.

"Except, I can't die, can I?"

Those were words that he already knew deep down. But they were just so impossible, so asinine that he couldn't fathom entertaining them in the past. They were as ridiculous as, well, as ridiculous as flying. But they were impossible to ignore any longer. The proof was too apparent. He was immortal.

He was "deathless."

He did fall from his sixth story window. He did get impaled by that tree. And whatever had happened just moments ago, he died then as well. His clothes were still bloody and ragged just as before, but there was no blood to be found on his body. It appeared that when he died he appeared to come back with zero wounds. Like a mortality refresh.

'Did I bleed out? Did the cold get to me? Did I have another seizure or heart attack or something?' His jaw was aching from how hard he was clenching his teeth. 'Or maybe that guy found me again and killed me in my sleep.'

He stood up carefully, fearful of falling over or perhaps breaking apart. He didn't know what to expect anymore, and he didn't know how to feel about this new knowledge. Should he fear this power or feel empowered by it. After all, he was now a superhuman.

His brain was thinking faster than he could understand. Each piece of information meant five different things and he didn't know which way to piece them together. So in the meantime, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps and finally decided what he was going to do next.

He wiped the puke from his mouth and his eyes glinted in fierce conviction. His body stiffened and his fists balled.

"I think I'll go home."