Lola happily waved her legs as she lay on her bed with a holo phone and happily looked through many articles of heroes and villains with demon powers.

Besides each country's heroes, most people who like heros always idolize people with similar powers to their own in one way or another.

In 5 years, Lola had grown a great deal thanks to the increase of her life force from daily training and from Lily’s daily hunting and training.

Besides during the time when she first got her powers, Lola would spawn Lily only with 10% of her life force after she gained enough life force for this. Even if it was only 10% of her life force now, the imp was no longer just palm sized. She was as big as Lola’s head and formed a head of hair and could talk verbally.

“Lazy girl, what are you doing?” the demon asked.

“Just looking at Mephesto!” the girl said and squealed.

This hero was a very powerful demon power user. He had the power known as Archdevil which gave him wings, tail and horns of a demon but even more than that, he had super strength, speed and even demon magic. He was one of the American union’s heroes and the only Demon power Hero. His most powerful ability is to summon a demon avatar by transforming the power of his bones and blood with demon magic into a giant golem demon.

The demon sighed and crossed her arms while holding her trident.

“Child, I should tell you this but I have gathered life force equal to 20% of your current body's amount.” she said.

“Wow really! Already!” the girl exclaimed and jumped up on her bed to look at her familiar demon.

“Yes but I must warn you of something.” she said.

“Huh?”

“Your ability is about to mature and unlock a secondary power.” she said.

“Really? I have another power!” Lola said, her eyes shining.

“No, not another power, this is your own power you call ‘Demon’ which summons me. That said, it is not without its price.” She said.

“Huh? Do you know about my power?” Lola asked.

“Yes, your ability focuses on cultivating life force. An energy demon needs to grow but does not exist in abundance in our dimension which in turn requires us to form contracts with other creatures to obtain it. Most of the humans you admire all have a contract with a demon produced at birth with many strong demons, much like yourself to me but yours is a very versatile power as you grow as much as us demons by using us to gather it by giving us a body formed of your own life force to host us in this world. When you reach a sufficient strength, that said, your ability reaches maturity in which you can use your own life force to open a rift in space and enter the demon plane.” She said.

“Wha!?” the girl was shocked before gulping. “I-is it dangerous?” she asked.

“Of course it is, stupid girl. But your ‘opening’ is occupied by me and only me at this time and by coming here, I will naturally protect you in this world.” She said.

“What is the point of going over?” she asked.

“Naturally there is a reason. I am your current only demon contract but that does not mean i am the only one, or need to be the only one. Of course, I am your main contract and thus your primary demon, when inside the demon plane, we both gain another ability. Through the use of your life force, just 1%, I can make weaker demons than myself into my servants and in turn yours as well and you can summon them.” she said.

“Really! I will be able to have a legion of demons!” she asked excitedly.

“No.” the demon said with a deadpan face.

“Huh?”

“You have a mental limit to how many you can control. Beyond that will cause the extras to be crazy and out of control and can even cause injuries to your soul that can change your very personality and soul.” she said.

“So… how many can I control?” she asked.

“At the current time, only 5 counting me. With the form you summon me in with only 10% of life force, that is the limit. That said, as time passes and you gather more life force, following the same base performance will become the new limit but each demon must have my brand.” she said.

Lola turned serious and nodded. “Alright I get it!” she said and opened the side cabinet and took out a small notebook and turned to the first few pages as she began to write. This is her power notebook, a book she uses to store all her knowledge of her power offline where it can’t be hacked and found out by any possible villains. “There, now we can open the portal!” She said.

“Just a warning, it uses 10% of your life force at present to do that. It will also take around a month to restore that life force. Don’t recklessly open the portal or you will weaken yourself needlessly.” Lily said.

“Wha!? Seriously!” Lola exclaimed and frowned. “Well I guess everything has a price.” she mumbled. “So how do I actually use it?” she asked.

“You do not need to worry. As soon as enough life force is gathered, the knowledge will be passed directly to you through me.” She said.

Lola nodded. “Then I will call you back.” she said.

The demoness nodded before closing her eyes and her body shone a white light and turned into a fog and flowed into Lola starting at the heart which shone before slowly through her body and merging with her.

Suddenly she felt her world tremble as knowledge of two abilities formed in her mind that allowed her to control her life force to achieve the ability.

When she awoke from the daze she knew how to activate the portal.

She raised her hands and faced each other. Slowly that same white fog flowed out of her hands and slowly compressed in between her hand and formed a swirling mass which she threw forward which flowed to the center of her room before it seemed to hit a wall and space literally cracked and the swirling mass wormed its way into the cracks that were sealing up as quick as it formed. When it fully entered, it began to spin faster and faster until it pushed the space apart.

What appeared from this ‘mirror like’ portal was a world where ash was constantly falling. Far off lava flow could be seen flowing like rivers and volcanoes were easy to see in the dozens.

She swallowed hard but before trying to enter but stopped and she quickly ran downstairs and grabbed a large water bottle and put ice inside and filled it with water before running back and cautiously walking through.

The portal closed quickly as soon as she passed but it was reduced to the size of a hand mirror at best.

“Huh!” she exclaimed but when she saw it didn’t go away she sighed in relief.

Surprisingly she didn’t feel that much heat but found she was actually inside a cave with one side of the wall carved out to be able to see outside, the view she had seen.

As she looked around, she finally noticed the powerful and large demon sitting down near the portal she had made. It was a clear female demon, pure red skin and red glowing eyes as if they were on fire. She had long braided hair forming snake like bundles that wouldn’t get in her way as the hair was pulled behind her with none towards the front.

Her skin seemed sort of scaly and she had three clawed fingers on her feet and human shaped hands with long black claws. Finally she had two large black leathery wings that closed in around her and attached to her lower back and a long tail like that of a reptile but was thinner and very flexible with several spikes on the back running up from the tip of the tail and continuing up her back.

“L-lily…” Lola asked timidly.

The demon grinned showing the fangs she had in place of teeth. “I see you were smart enough to bring water.” She said and stood up showing her full impressive height of nearly 2 meters with strong toned muscles but also a great sensuality.

“Also, while here I would prefer if you called me by my full name Mania Sek Elizabeth Satanis.” She said.

“B-but it’s so hard.” She complained.

The demon sighed, “Then at least Mania. Lily is too degrading of a name to be called in this dimension.” She said.

The girl nodded, “Good, let’s go, now that you can come here we can obtain minions who will slowly grow stronger as they gain small bits of life force.” She said.

“Huh? But doesn’t all the life force come to me?” Lola asked.

“Almost all of it yes but our contract states we gain a certain amount depending on the work we do. Naturally servants have a fixed amount of 0.5% of the life force they can generate during their stay on earth. I, on the other hand, can retain up to 2%. It is small but it is growing all the same. Considering that you might live a far longer life than normal humans with our intervention, it is a good deal to have this kind of contract.” she said.

“Oh… okay.” Lola said timidly, compared to normal.

The demon picked her up like a child and walked outside where the scalding heat hit them causing the girl to instantly sweat but a wave of the demonesses hand made the heat drop to human tolerance levels but was still hot.

“This is a dangerous place for humans so let’s get four minions quickly before getting you home.” She said.

“Right.” Lola said and they took off to search for the demon.

***

Milo sat in his family's basement as he looked at the many cages before closing his eyes for a moment. After that moment the still and unmoving zombie and skeleton animals seemed to gain freedom as they began to act like regular animals of their type. Some of which tried to get out of the cage but he didn’t care.

An inactive link connected all of them to him now, it is through this link that he commanded his raised undead and naturally he can turn it off and on in case he wanted to control a stronger undead.

This is exactly what he was going to do as he raised his hand that began to glow.

Slowly a light in front of him appeared before a swirl of light formed and flashed before a very strange undead appeared before him.

It was a skeleton but different from other ones, his bones were deformed. There was extensive bone growth causing many lumps of extra bone to form plates around almost all the bones leaving only the joints of important parts like the spine, hips and arms, free. Naturally the hands and feet were also free of these but the ribs, and central areas of most longer bones were bulked up by these bone growths.

“Seems Bargo has grown really well. The bone plating has reached a sufficient amount.” he muttered. Bargo is the name he gave to this skeleton that had been his first summon and he used since the start. “Time to finally evolve you buddy.” he said as his eyes shined and from it a very thin ray shot out and vanished in a blink of an eye into the skeletons before green energy flowed out and gathered in front of the skeleton.

Milo grinned as he rolled the wheeled chair he sat on over and put his hand on the glowing orb that was as big as his head. This was the spiritual energy the undead soul produced and the strange beam had been the activation of his undead biology ability.

Under normal situations he can only produce small effects on an undead due to the minor growth they get daily but Bargo had been sent to the undead plane for over 2 years after he reached this state where Milo has modified his body to slowly form a bone carapace in the places that had formed. It was both a beneficial trait and deformity meant for this moment.

Crack! Crack!

As Milo slowly rubbed the energy, the bone plates began to crack until it fell off and broke down into bone powder that began to swirl around. Eventually the extra bone had all but fallen off and all that was left was the original skeleton without the deformities. The bones were glittering white and new, being as strong as an adult human.

That said, from some research Milo had done with people with similar power, he had learned that skeleton growth can only be done by using their own bone mass to form weapons and armor and only powerful undead can do that.

Of course if a necromancer did that in their place, there would be direct feedback to him improving his mental abilities. On the other hand, if a skeleton obtained bone armor, this would make the soul advance and evolve because bone armor helped gather energy from their world.

All this bone powder was the mass needed to make this armor and it gathered into five bundles, four were near each limb extremity and the last was floating on the right.

Slowly the bone powder began to clump together in a specific fashion and formed what looked like a metal glove from a knight’s suit of armor. Each digit was formed separately and formed from the back to the front and floated onto the skeletons hands before piecing itself together and forming small bone nails along the joint sections to fix the pieces together.

The feet were no different as boots formed like that off a knight’s suit and fixed itself around the skeleton.

The last, and largest, cloud of bone powder was the hardest. It clumped together and slowly formed a single long mass. Soon a handle formed like that of a sword while the rest of the bone powder gathered at the end forming a long club like shape.

This was the limit of the transformation but Milo wasn’t discouraged as the powder finished making what would eventually be a sword.

Naturally he also didn’t remove the bone deformation trait as he would need more and more bone mass to improve and make more armor until he formed a complete knight. He was prepared to train this skeleton to be his strongest death knight while he looked at the cage with the winged zombie lizard that in the future would be his knight’s mount.

Milo didn’t have much ambition to be a hero, in fact, he was extremely shy about his power and always tried to hide the fact he was a necromancer because of misconceptions. If not for his friends, he would have been heavily bullied for being a natural born villain due to the innate ‘evilness’ of his power but naturally he didn’t want to be a villain and his friends also knew that and gave him incentive to grow.

As he let go of the energy orb, it went back to the skeleton and the feedback began as it moved and grabbed the club like sword. It was then that it finally evolved as two blue flames formed in it’s eye sockets and quickly ran down his spine and spread through all his bones exposing at the joints only the same flames spread until it surrounded his club in a weak blue flame.

These were soul flames, only a strong undead being can have soul flames and is a sign of intelligence among undead.

The skeleton kneeled down, “I thank Master for awakening my soul from it’s never ending cycle of death.” He said.

“Don’t worry Bargo. As my knight you have to protect me but also work to grow stronger alongside me. I need a strong training partner so you will help me and I will help you.” Milo said.

“Of course my lord.” he said.

Milo chuckled at the dramatic skeleton before giving him the order to test his new strength and sending him back to the undead plane to continue training until he summoned him again.

***

In what could be called an old era dojo, a family of asian descent sat and in the middle Shoji was being looked at by the others.

At the front was a strongly built man who wore a traditional but simple kimono and had long hair tied up on the back of his head. This was Shoji’s father and naturally those around him are his siblings. Next to his father was a beautiful japanese woman with long silky flowing hair who wore a woman’s kimono and sat in seiza like everyone.

Although everyone was sitting quietly, the older siblings and the parents had a kind of hidden edge to their refined aura like a sheathed sword while Shoji and the younger siblings had only an elegant aura from their education.

Shoji’s father was looking at his exam papers with a small smile. “Good, an estimate of 14 to become a trainee is a good estimate.” he said nodding.

“That is even higher than your brothers.” Shoji’s mother said, hiding her smile behind her sleeve.

“Thank you, father, mother.” Shoji said, serious but never calming down.

“Hmm… your strength and agility is higher than average but since the exam doesn’t test weapon control it is hard to tell fully. That said your endurance is low which is within our families estimates but that will be covered soon enough.” He said.

“Huh? Will father modify my training schedule?” Shoji asked.

“Modify? No, you will be given a new schedule from top to bottom. The early hours of the morning are for your basics. Never forget that all the basics you learned until now is the foundation for our family’s legacy sword techniques. Every morning you will train it before going to school. When you return from class you will be put through our true training to reforge your body that has slowed down it’s growth.” His father said.

Shoji swallowed hard. His family is a very rare family, they were always with a weak power no matter how many years have passed. Their ‘Sense Emotion’ power is amazingly dominant no matter what and even psychic clans don’t come to find them. What is even rarer is that they come from a lineage of warriors and samurai dating back to the middle ages of japanese feudalism era and have shared their sword martial arts training only with those of their family.

For training the body as well they have taken to training their children intensely in different martial arts to benefit their bodies in different aspects best fitting them to improve their movements and ability with the sword.

The strongest known member of their family had amazingly grown to the strength of a Braveman but the gap to hero is just that big.

“Dear, which style do you think fits Shoji best?” his mother asked.

“The boy is smaller in stature and has thinner bones than his older brothers. He might be best for speed sword. Of course that will depend on him after he hits his growth spurt. We will start by building his base strength with martial arts first and once we can figure out exactly how he might grow we will focus.” his father said.

Shoji said nothing as did his brothers. To such a traditional family, a rarity in the current world, they have a very strict hierarchy though not as strict as ancient japan. This is mostly a discipline trained from an early age.

“I am curious, child, do you plan to be an investigator or aim for heroism?” his mother suddenly asked.

Shoji looked to the side then up, “I am not sure. Maybe I will try heroics but if it doesn’t work out I will become an investigator or police detective.” He said.

His father smiled wide.

In Shoji’s eyes, he saw an intense red mixed with pink as he saw his father’s happiness and love for his child.

Many would think red was for anger but that is not so. Yellow was in fact the color of anger and it wasn’t limited to that because the shape changes depending on the emotion since the same color could mean different things from anger to hunger.

Anger is a yellow flame shaped aura but what his father had was a twirling reddish pink aura which was happiness, pride and love.

“Good, it seems you are not blindly following one path. Study hard, train harder and just stay safe.” his mother said.

Shoji nodded and his mother stood, “Good, then let us go have dinner shall we.” she said and all the children and young adults happily agreed as they stood up and went to dine after a long day.

***

“Ahhh!” Robin shouted as he was in his house's basement where he had built a very strange gym for himself when he was at home, well his father did. Elastic heroes have several ways to train, one of them is their maximum range. This is what this machine is for. Having been developed decades ago, it resembled the torture rack without the spikes, and when used on elastic heroes the danger was negligable.

This tool is formally named the hyper stretcher, it was made for people with elastic powers but short range, since they don’t have a large range early on and without training.

Furthermore, this one is even more special as it has extra add ons which connect to all the users fingers and stretch those as well. This is to extend the stretch range of the fingers as well, which can actually be useful in many situations when you grab something that could suddenly expand abnormally wide.

“Please relax all muscles, resistance has been noticed.” a robotic voice spoke to Robin.

“I… am!” he exclaimed.

“Maximum range confirmed, current full body expansion from the tip of the finger to the tips of the toes is 45 meters. Not counting finger expansion it is 40 meters. Not counting torso expansion 30 meters. Elbow to wrist length is currently 11 meters. Knee to the base of the foot is 10 meters in length.” the machine gave the measurements.

After holding for about a minute the machine finally released Robin and his body was unwound and returned to normal where he just lay there tired before removing the bindings from his hands, fingers and feet.

“Urg… stretch training is always the most painful.” he muttered while sitting on the table before kicking out his leg making it stretch and he began to do the next training. This was to be able to sustain and naturally walk around with his arms and legs always in spring form to get used to it and to allow the feeling to become natural.

After the legs were wound, compressed to a point that didn’t make it brush against each other or other objects, came the arms, which were done the same making each limb only about twice as thick as their normal. It wasn’t enough to fire off but that could be achieved easily by compressing it a bit more and releasing the attraction force that holds the arm and leg back.

There is another reason he is training like this, he wants to be able to hold the shape of a spring even after he punches and kicks so that he can pull back his arm in that shape. This is a very hard training due to his weakened rubber control but as with everything ability related, if it is possible to train one aspect, it is possible to train another.

Of course to make something natural isn’t easy and walking as if you have 10 meter long limbs isn’t a very ‘natural’ thing especially when you are only just over a meter yourself.

“Woah!” he said as he landed on his spring loaded legs which actually bounced and he almost catapulted himself into the ceiling. It goes without saying that those who use spring style are very mobile but one of the biggest problems they cause is collateral damage because the force in their jumps tends to be very high.

It took several moments for Robin to balance himself on his own two feet because he needed to balance his weight right at the center of the spring.

“This is so strange.” he said as he started to walk very strangely because he had to keep the spring firm enough that his leg would not drop down while constantly landing and balancing himself. He actually walked like a child as he tried to go by this and used the railing to climb the stairs. Also, despite living in a condominium, they were on the first floor which had the basement.

“What are you doing son?” Charlotte asked, looking at her son strangely.

“Training.” he said and balanced himself while holding both arms out and sighed, “I decided that I would train the spring style to make up for my lower elastic strength and lack of range.” he said.

His mother looked at his arms and sighed, “Just don’t break anything, okay?” she said.

“Sure thing.” He said and began to walk and go to his room. After a short while he walked out in his running gear and went out while his sister was out because it would be embarrassing to run with her like this.

Just after he left, that said, Ruth arrived and just after her, a very high class car parked outside. From this car walked out a man that was clearly well trained and not a common man.

He looked at a small paper and checked the number of the building before nodding and walking to the door.

Due to training from a young age, Robin would be able to run a half marathon already and he regularly does this around his condo. Naturally this would mean he would remain outside for a few hours just to run but this has given him great cardio and now with the twirled limbs, it became even harder as he had to resist his body returning to normal and balancing each step without falling, something that happened quite a lot when he started.

When he was finally exhausted he walked home.

“I’m home!” he shouted and he found his youngest brother of 7 this year ran at him. “Hey hey! You missed it, one of captain stretch’s sidekicks came over and recruited big sis to the captain’s Academy of Elastic Crime Fighters!” he said excitedly.

“Eh?” Robin said and his mind blanked out in such a way that he forgot to maintain his arms and legs stretch causing them to suddenly spin and return to normal making him fall over.

“Hey bro, is something wrong?” Robin’s younger brother asked.

“Ah no, i was… just caught off guard.” he said and didn’t care that his arms and legs were undone and quickly walked into the living room and finding only his younger sister and brother he walked to his parents bedroom where he found the three having a hard expression.

When they saw him, it became a bit gloomy.

“Son.” Isaac called.

“Dad… did the captain really only recruit Ruth?” he asked.

His father sighed, the biggest regret of his life is that he caused so much pain for his children because of his own power. “Yes…” he said.

“Why? Is it because she is stronger, more mature, smarter!? Why!?” he asked.

“It’s because of your glaring weakness.” a voice came from behind Robin.

Standing there was his 8 year old younger sister. Unlike the twins, she actually inherited her father’s power completely but was very blunt. Her name is Judith.

“Weakness? You mean my hardening power?” he asked.

“Yeah, you are stronger than sis only when you use that but you can barely use that without becoming dehydrated. It’s natural that the captain wouldn’t recruit you to an academy that trains children with elastic powers who have the potential to become at least a Strongman.” she said showing her very high intelligence and maturity despite her age.

Robin clenched his fist in anger at the world, anger at his power and most of all at the captain for being so biased. There are countless crime fighters with glaring weakness who find solutions through teamwork or some piece of technology. One of the things Robin has most wished for was to discover what could counteract his own weakness but besides water that he absorbs directly through his skin, he can’t do that to any liquid substance he has come in contact with.

He even once tried to see if he could drink soda through his skin and shockingly sucked out only the water in the drink leaving everything that made up the drink out.

“Again…” he said in a very quiet voice.

“Robin…” Ruth said, trying to move close but her hand was slapped away.

“Again this happened! Just because your power has no direct weakness besides the general you are given priority!” he shouted and ran out of the house.

“Robin!” she shouted, feeling pain in her heart.

The academy in question was one that she would live in like in a dormitory meaning she would transfer out of their school to a new one and during the year she would live there.

Robin only returned home when the sun was setting to not make his parents worried but he would never stay in the same room and to sleep, he didn’t stay in his room. After his parents went to sleep and his sister came to their room, he took his pillow and blanket to the living room coach.

The transfer was done very quickly due to the influence of the braveman in question and not 2 days after the visit, Ruth was picked up with her belongings.

Robin had asked his childhood friends to just leave him be for the time during playground time as he sat away from the others, even then his arms and legs were in spring form but he was heavily distracted because his sister was always many steps ahead from training and growing stronger to even how society treated her.

Because of this he didn’t notice a looming shadow behind him or when that shadow tipped a pan on his head releasing it’s content on him

“Ahahaha! This is good, this is a perfect place to dump that smelly kitchen oil we got from the chef at home.” a very irritating voice to Robin sounded.

The content in specific was a huge pan of dirty used kitchen oil used for frying. Of course, although Marcus, the bully in question, would throw things at Robin, he wouldn’t go so far as to throw boiling hot oil.

“So how does it feel to be thrown out and left behind like trash, trash?” Marcus said.

Hearing the jeer and not being in the best state of mind, Robin’s reason couldn’t keep his cool as he stood up and shook that oil off his head before turning around already into a punch right into the fat boy’s face and firing off the right arm’s spring which pushed the boy far off.

“Good, I have been hoping for something to finally get rid of this frustration. Since you monkeys have come to me then I will finally kick all your asses, maybe that will also teach you some manners. Three birds with one stone.” he said as he began to crack his knuckles.

“You idiot!” shouted the lackies as they all transformed forming a monkey band but far off on the ground, Marcus stood up glaring at him as he transformed into a towering 5 meter tall gorilla.

“You will pay for that punch!” he growled.

“Come at me Donkey.” Robin said and spat out the oil that got into his mouth making the rudest comment while also referring to a game character whom Marcus particularly hates.