Lucas begins giving me a tour of the facility, showing me several of the training rooms that I'll have access to. They have general facilities in addition to the ability-training ones, though most of the rooms are designed with power users in mind.

So while they have a couple of pools, few people use them for laps rather than training water-based abilities. The two tracks are often used by people training speed-enhancement abilities, though they are required to be courteous to those using them who don't have those. The reverse is true, too.

Things like that exist that can be used both ways. Then there are more advanced training rooms. One of the ball rooms, I discover, is actually a room that shoots balls at random angles and speeds. It's often used by people with certain abilities, such as telekinesis, barrier bubbles, and speed.

"I use it sometimes for training, myself," Lucas tells me. "It's actually pretty good for martial arts, too, as you can deflect the balls with your hands or feet and have to keep in mind your surroundings, trying not to get hit while still protecting yourself."

"Seems pretty nifty," I say.

"Yeah," he says. "Come on, let's move on."

There are two basketball courts in here, too, and several small, personal training rooms with mats covering the floors. These rooms are often used for powers that don't need specialized equipment, consultations, and other things.

"Like training in martial arts," he tells me. "Some of our members like to practice them with their abilities, and use these rooms for that."

"Do you guys teach martial arts?" I ask.

"Nah," he answers. "Everyone in my family learns from when we're first able to do the moves and follow instructions. My training started when I was three, so I have seventeen years of it now. Every day for at least an hour."

So he's twenty, and probably pretty skilled in martial arts. How nice are his abs? Focus, Kieran!

"Here are the locker rooms," he indicates a room. "Men's, women's. They have bathrooms, showers, lockers, whatever a locker room should have. And now, let's show you the room that will probably work best for your ability right now."

Lucas takes me further down the hall, then hangs a right after a bit and leads me down another hall until we reach a set of double doors. Entering it, I find us in a room two stories tall and at least two hundred long and maybe a hundred wide. There's some sort of padded barrier three feet in height surrounding most of the room, with a gap about five feet from the wall to the barrier.

Within the enclosed space are padded blocks of varying sizes, the tallest of them almost ten feet in height, the shortest maybe two. The widest is about five feet across, and the thinnest looks to be two feet.

"We have four of these rooms," Lucas tells me. "Just to let you know. If you're with a personal trainer, we can also lock the doors for privacy, though you can't for security reasons."

"For privacy?" I ask.

"Some people don't like showing their powers to others," he tells me. "I actually already locked the doors so that we can talk about your ability without others overhearing. Don't worry – it's only locked one-way. You can exit the room without issue, but others can't get in unless they have a key."

When did he do that? While I was looking around? I didn't notice the movement near me, so he must have been fast.

"Okay," I say, sitting on one of the benches lining the wall. "What's this room used for?"

"Like I said," he says. "Several things. Flight, phasing, and agility for those moving quickly are among the more common uses. We can set up larger barriers to help with the flight maneuvers. I think one of the rooms is currently set up for that.

"How it relates to your power," he says. "Is that you have to move from one shadow to another. The barriers cast shadows with the current lighting, meaning you'll be able to do that in here. However, there are some important questions. How advanced is your ability? What's your range, do you need to move between linked shadows or can they be separate? Do you still need to see the shadows, or can you move to a shadow you can't see before entering the shadows? How many times can you successively move between shadows before needing to rest? How long does it take to activate your ability?"

"Um," I interrupt. "I've only used my ability one time, when I was five. I don't really know the answers to those questions."

"When you were five?" He raises an eyebrow. "Ah. The standard issue, and I'm guessing it traumatized you a bit then, enough to keep you from using it for awhile."

"Yeah," I nod. "By the time I was over it, when I was a little bit older, I'd never had need of the ability, so I never bothered trying to train it again. But I decided after getting a bit of money that maybe I could look into getting a professional to help me train the power."

"Probably a good idea," he flashes me a killer smile and I feel my heart skip a beat. Focus on the consultation, Kieran, not the hot guy giving it. "What's your understanding of abilities?"

"About one percent of people are born with them," I answer. "Usually inheriting whatever the ability is from one of their parents."

Then I remember his aunt's comment.

"And if both parents have similar abilities, the kid can inherit something stronger?"

"You seem uncertain."

"My ability's never been much of a focus in my life," I shrug and slip my hands into the pocket of my hoodie. "And I don't really know anyone with powers. Except you guys, I guess, and we just met."

"You've probably met a few people, just didn't realize it," he says. "And yeah, it's good that you came here. You'd probably only train shadow-walking."

"That's what I have, though."

"Nope," he says. "It's rare that someone has only one ability, especially when that ability is something as advanced as shadow-walking. Most people have an entire set of abilities. I can move through light, generate it, and manipulate it, among other things. The official term for someone like me is 'light-shaper'. And don't make the mistake of thinking that light is weak, either."

He raises a hand, and a whip of light forms from it, flicking out and touching my cheek. Literally touching it, as if it's physical. How can light be physical, though? The whip itself seems like it's made of some sort of golden light condensed down into a solid state, giving it a crystalline appearance.

"Shadow-shapers can do the same thing, but with shadows," he tells me, the whip fading. "You're right in that abilities are hereditary, though. If a parent has one, the child is basically guaranteed to have it, though it may end up weaker. My mother married a guy who can manipulate light who came to us from a continent, hoping to renew our bloodline's strength. It resulted in my birth. I'm not as powerful as grandpa or as my great-grandpa was, but I'm still plenty powerful compared to my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Most of what Thomas can do is sense altered light, and that's really it."

"So one of my parents could move through shadows?" I ask. "Neither one mentioned it, though."

"They probably couldn't," he shakes his head. "If they did, they probably would have helped you train that ability. Almost everyone with a walking ability learns how to move with their clothes on early on, so once your ability was discovered, they'd have trained you until at least the point you could move with clothes on."

"I can shadow-walk clothed?" I ask.

Lucas starts disappearing and reappearing in various parts of the room, his clothes remaining on him. After a few ports, he reappears back in front of me, leaning against the barrier again.

"It does take some training," he says. "Usually starts with small things. Bracelets at first, moving on to underwear, underwear and socks, shorts, and so on. Building up to bigger things. What you're actually doing is taking other objects with you. The root ability is just moving yourself through shadows, which is why you have to train to take other items.

"That said," he reaches under his shirt and pulls out a shield-like token hanging from the necklace he's wearing, a sunbeam emblem on it. "If you have a spellsuit tailored to your ability, you can do that training without the uncomfortable early stages."

"Your family could afford a spellsuit?" I ask. "Isn't that extremely expensive to get them for children? Mostly because as soon as the child grows, the spellsuit is no longer able to fit them?"

Spellsuits are tailored to the owner. While there's some room for body weight changes, there's much less room for growth. A child would probably outgrow their spellsuit within six to ten months, so a family would need to keep buying new ones if they wanted the kid to keep wearing them. I'm not sure why he showed me the token, though.

"Normally," he tucks the token back under his shirt. "My great-grandpa was a Sivalshi Guardian, though, and their spellsuits are different. Actual magic. That token I just showed you, Kieran? That is the spellsuit. All I have to do is channel some of my magic into it and the suit forms around me. It's always perfectly-tailored to my size. My grandpa gave it to me when I first started training my light-walking power."

The suit forms around him? That's how he puts it on? I knew the Patron's spellsuits were leagues above the ones mankind can create, but that's even more beyond what I'd thought.

"Nifty."

"Yep," he says. "I always had it on while training the ability, though as you saw, I don't need it to keep things covered anymore."

"Meanwhile, I'll have to work my way up to that," I say. "Since I don't have a spellsuit."

"Yep," he says, then gives me a curious look. "Mind if I ask why you suddenly decided to train this power? If you had decided it wasn't all that necessary, it seems kind of random."

How can I be honest without revealing things? He seems a lot friendlier than his first impression gave off, so depending on how the rest of the consultation goes, I may stick with him. I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be training with him, though, considering his looks and the knowledge that he'll end up seeing me naked.

While my fantasies do include hot guys like him seeing me naked, there's a vast difference between fantasies and realities. At least I won't have the 'normal' problem that someone would have in that situation.

If I do work with him, things will go a lot smoother if he trusts me a bit more instead of being suspicious. That means not lying, but not telling the full truth, either. What can I say to explain my sudden interest?

"I received a job offer," I tell him. "Security job. It seems someone somehow dredged up a record I didn't even know existed mentioning the shadow-walking incident thirteen years ago. They gave me a small advance and told me to find a place to train my power and to get some martial arts training, and then in a month, they'd assess my abilities. If it's good enough, they'll hire me on, probably want me to keep training."

"Teleporters can be extremely useful," he nods. "I've gotten a few of those offers myself. I'm surprised there was even a record of you doing that if it was a one-time thing when you were five. Chances are, they found a mention of a kid who shadow-walked, and then had to do some heavy research to identify and locate you."

Thank the Patron that's a plausible explanation.

"Still," he flashes me that killer smile again, setting my heart racing for a moment. "Must be a pretty nice place to want to see if you're worth hiring on enough to give you money in advance. Don't worry, I won't ask which company it's for."

"Thanks," I tell him, and he flashes that smile again. "So, um, how do we go about this?"

"First," he says. "I have to ask how old you are."

"Eighteen," I say. "Didn't I already tell you?"

"Near-eighteen, barely-eighteen, almost-nineteen?" He asks.

"Uh, eighteen and a half, why?" I ask.

"Okay," he nods. "So there are a few things you need to know before you begin training your power, Kieran. I take it Tabitha already told you I'm gay?"

"Uh, yeah," I answer. "It's not really a problem for me."

"That's good," he says. "The first thing you need to keep in mind is that using your powers will make you horny. That's perfectly normal. In fact, there's reason to be concerned if it doesn't. It'll be slight at first, but the more often you use your powers, the greater this effect will be. It's something to do with our powers, and no one really knows what. Keep in mind that just because I'm gay, it doesn't mean I'm going to be ogling you over this. I keep my eyes where they belong. They might accidentally wander down, but it's never intentional and I always correct that as soon as I notice. It's the same as a guy checking out a gal, or a gal checking out a guy, though with the added part that I stop as soon as I become aware that I'm doing it."

I wouldn't mind him checking me out.

"That's fine," I tell him, feeling my cheeks a little warm at that thought, despite how uncomfortable even the idea of being naked around others makes me. I don't really get hard, anyway, so this probably won't apply to me.

"Second," he says. "You've probably noticed that you haven't grown facial or body hair, and are probably thinking you're a late bloomer. You aren't. Power users tend to, ah, be free of that. That's also perfectly normal, so if you were hoping for a hairy body for whatever reason, I'm sorry to burst your bubble."

"I prefer the twink build, anyway," pops out of my mouth before I can stop it. "Having it, I mean."

Well, and ogling it, but there's no need to tell him that. Hopefully, he just takes that to mean that I prefer having a slender, hairless build and not me trying to make a move on him or comment to provoke him or something.

"Understandable," he grins. "I do, too. Next up, your dick is probably above-average in size, right?"

"A little too close for comfort there, Lucas."

"Most male power users," he says. "Are about six to seven inches, which is above-average, when they're eighteen. Their thickness is a little bit more than average, too. About one-point-five to one-point-seven inches.

"Starting sometime between the age of eighteen and a half and nineteen, where you are now," he says. "Until the age of about twenty, though, it can grow more despite the fact that it should be done doing so. Weird, but true. The biology of power users is a bit strange. Depending on how much you use your ability, it can grow up to half an inch longer a month. Most power users who use their powers regularly and heavily end up between eight and nine inches long, and most end up at least two inches thick, with the upper end usually being about two-and-a-half inches thick."

What? That sounds strangely… strange. Power users tend to be monsters in the size department? Doesn't that cause problems for their wives? Unless like male power users, female power users have some sort of added 'help' to them, something that makes it easier for them?

"Following that," Lucas tells me. "Power users have a lower fertility rate. My parents don't use protection and try pretty much every night, and they've only had two children in thirty years of marriage, me and my little brother. This doesn't mean you're safe, though, so make sure to still use protection, especially since if you end up training this power a lot, you'll probably inevitably find yourself getting some as a way to relieve the effect it has on you."

"All of this sounds weird," I say.

"Yeah," he shrugs. "You know the ancient myths?"

"Not really."

"The gods were always fucking around," he says. "And I mean literally. The myths of the Old Society were full of this god sleeping with that person or beast or whatever. One theory is that power users are actually descended of gods, and these traits, well, come from that."

"Well," I say. "I don't have much of a libido at all, so it probably won't be an issue for me."

"You never know," he shrugs. "Now that those forewarnings are made clear, Kieran, let's move on to the actual training part."