Aaron Cyrus March 18th,20XX

I patiently waited for my turn with the scientists while they checked Destia. Today was the very last day off I had before launching into the hectic schedule my manager had put together for me. From variety shows to showmanship matches to podcasts, he had made sure I couldn’t even take a half-hour power nap without being accounted for.

As much as I wanted to protest and ask him to loosen up on it all, I also acknowledged I had been rather reckless recently. My manager and company had worked hard to help me clean up all the commitments I’d missed and, on top of that, had even negotiated for the companies to reschedule instead of cancelling the contracts altogether, which was nice.

There were a few unsavory rumours flying around about me being difficult to work with and having a big head now that I was ‘popular,’ but those weren’t anything new. I just needed to put my best efforts into all of the work I had to do in these upcoming weeks.

My manager had left me a couple of hours on my weekends, but I feared that was only because he couldn’t find anything to fill up that time.

I was pulled out of my self-pitying thoughts by the sound of a dull thud from the now grassy arena that Joyce had set up for us to practise our powers. I got up and looked down at a harsh indent in a padded platform and a frustrated Destia on the floor.

One of her arms flicked in and out of visibility and she had massive bags under her eyes as she prepared for another lap around the large space. I wanted to ask her to take a break, but I couldn’t bring myself to dampen her determination to get back to normal.

I still remembered the bewildered expression on her face two days ago when I’d pulled her out of the living room, and she’d realized that half of her body was invisible.

While most of the kids had more than a single special ability, Destia so heavily favoured her speed that I’d forgotten her other ability of invisibility. She’d been calm at first, although confused since she’d never been partially invisible before, but as time went on and the phenomenon refused to end, she grew increasingly frustrated.

Right now, she and the scientists were trying to completely deplete her of energy and get as close to fainting from exhaustion without actually doing so. I was against it, as was Joyce, but Destia was a legal adult already and she had all but said that if we didn’t let her do this in a controlled environment, she would go out and do it on her own.

Before things had gotten to this point, she had shared exactly what had happened when her powers went haywire. She’d said that she felt frustrated because she hadn’t used her powers for so long, and then she had suddenly felt sick to her stomach and then she had unwittingly used her powers when she felt stressed out. And then she had gotten to the state where she currently was.

Each scientist had a different theory as to why, but right now, they were testing Anatha’s hypothesis that the phenomenon might be tied to the subconscious stress Destia felt from losing control of her powers that first time. Since I’d put my foot down at drugging the kid delirious, this was their next best option.

I sort of regretted it since Destia was only so haggard because they wanted to achieve an effect they could have easily achieved with a pill. But then again, Destia was so difficult to physically restrain that I also didn’t think it would be safe to have her out of her best mind. While I was pretty sure I could deal with her, that would be far from the ideal way to test out which one of us would win in a fight.

But speaking of restraining, I wondered what would happen if my abilities even went haywire. At least Destia’s abilities only affected her person. The threat only came about when she used her body to harm other people so the threat could be effectively neutralized if one could manage to restrain her. But what about me? If I suddenly went wild and increased the gravity in a space so much that everyone there got badly hurt?

The thought frightened me and I couldn’t come up with an immediate solution to the emergent problem. It wasn’t really something that had occurred to me in the past, but seeing Destia, who was the most proficient at using her powers in the group, suddenly lose control made me nervous.

I thought back to when I’d first gotten the abilities and was suddenly thankful that I hadn’t accidentally hurt anyone. I was still paying off the property damage on both Joyce’s house and my old apartment, but at least no one had gotten hurt.

But then, thinking about how dangerous my abilities could be made me remember how I’d used them just recently, and I got angry all over again. At least in the past, I could say I wasn’t a threat because I didn’t know how to hurt people with these abilities. But because of those idiots, I couldn’t honestly say that anymore.

I felt bad towards Destia, but once she got better, I’d have to ask her to spar it out with me and see how effectively she could get past my abilities. If that wasn’t an option, I’d get the nerd pack to make a tranquillizer or something.