Did you know that it’s possible for someone to do the same thing for a hundred years, and still have no idea how it works?

Yeah, that was me. I had noticed that over the years and decades, my recovery from the worst types of damage and recovery had increased in speed. What would have taken me months to heal in 1925 could recover in a few days, I had just never connected the dots.

I knew I was resistant to extreme cold, and to a lesser extent, heat. Down in the mines, I dressed like the other overheated guys and sweated a little, but it was never really uncomfortable. I walked down a friggin’ snow-covered mountain naked and never really got hurt from it.

When I got punched, nowadays, I often barely even felt it. I could walk away from some effects with just enough damage to look like I was done for, and be fine a day or two later.

When you build muscle, what you are really doing is slowly damaging it by taking it to extremes. Your body builds more muscle to compensate for it, increasing the extremes you have to endure to make an impact.

Eventually, you will get to a point of diminishing returns, where your skeleton and ligaments can no longer support the strain of muscle training, and you lose more muscle mass just from living than you can regain from training it.

If you overdo it, you can tear a muscle or ligament past its ability to heal naturally, and then you are laid up, your muscles slowly wasting away as you heal from the damage straining too much would cause.

Powers work the same way. You grow your strength by burning off all your energy potential just short of actual exhaustion. I didn’t know if they lost effectiveness over time by not using them the way muscles do, but it seemed likely.

I, apparently, was not actually that wimpy in the power department. I could absorb energy and then use that energy to do some pretty extreme stuff, like jumping a mile up in the air.

I gained cold resistance because I spent a huge chunk of time in conditions that were bitterly cold, but not quite enough to actually hurt me. My power wasn’t weak, it was just untrained.

When I let some cowl turn me into a cube steak, it was like I had over-strained myself lifting weights. I didn’t make any progress in resisting their power, because my body had to immediately spend energy resetting to a condition before I had even been exposed to the power.

That’s why non-lethal effects had almost no effect on me. Blackhawk had indeed interrupted our crime, but I mostly just pretended that his stun, blindness, and electrocution grenades had knocked me out… That was the way the game was played, for a mook.

Caelo’s power was the same way. I was the literal embodiment of ‘that which does not kill you makes you stronger'. Her powers didn’t actually hurt me, and when she occasionally used them, my resistance grew, until I had to actually intentionally drop my guard to let her in.

I found this all out the hard way, from the next week’s training. Because I was more or less immune to her entropy drain, both Naomi and I frequently expended our energy until it was almost, but not quite, exhausted.

She proudly informed me that her own control and capacity were increasing, since before this she could never safely empty her battery, and my ability to hold onto the energy she produced also expanded since most metas who used energy on me quickly overwhelmed that capacity and critically damaged me.

I also took advantage of the opportunity to practice avoiding Caelo.

The problem was, while Naomi was sexy, dangerous, and confident, Caelo was very much as attractive, and she was also exquisitely vulnerable. Naomi made me horny when she tried, but Caelo made me feel horny and NEEDED.

It was a heady combination, and if I ever had the slightest inclination to follow it, I knew it would fuck up everything utterly. We still talked, but it was pretty much always at meals, surrounded by others, or in close proximity to my boss, her sister.

I had a lot of experience resisting temptation, and I guess, like a muscle, you built more willpower as you used it. Not to mention she was tied to a guy that was apparently able to turn one of the strongest metahuman mercenaries around, a guy that regularly killed class C masks, into a glorified garden sprinkler… without even really trying, according to the video I watched.

One minute he was all badass jumping around slashing at the little giant, the next he was being used to pound other cartel soldiers into dead meat, eventually… ahh… coming apart under the strain.

Not high on my list of guys to piss off by poaching his girlfriend. Getting beaten into hamburger slowly was one of the more painful ways to die. I knew because it had happened to me plenty of times. He couldn't kill me, but he sure could hurt me.

Training with Naomi, outside of our power burn, was painful as well. I was pretty resistant to physical damage, and she enlisted Tino’s assistance to ‘help increase my resistance’ by kicking my ass pretty regularly.

And boy, did that guy know how to kick ass. He could hit JUST hard enough to avoid bruising me up too badly, wait a little while, and then do it again. He didn’t even seem to take pleasure in it, simply informing me every single time he had to increase his strength to make an impression.

Yeah, I had gotten beaten by plenty of people, but humans have a maximum cap on how hard they can hit. Once I broke a threshold where a normal guy’s beating could not hurt me anymore, that was it… I stepped into the metahuman arena where I was immediately overwhelmed by the kind of strength that could punch through vaults or massive lethal damage like Smile’s spines.

What Tino was doing could only have been matched by a regular diet of stepping into traffic. The worst part was, it was really working, and I was gaining resistance to his attacks faster than I had ever thought possible.

And with that resistance, I was gaining more power from every hit. The more I resisted, the more of the energy was funneled into my ‘battery’, and I was getting better at holding it longer, and not immediately being overwhelmed and needing to burn it off quickly before it consumed me.

Red Shift had tried to join in the fun, but within a few tries, he’d admitted that he couldn’t speed strike fast enough to even bruise me without risking injuries himself.

“See, if you had joined a real hero team, instead of being thrown into the deep end so long ago, they would have probably figured this out.” Caelo signed to me while I was getting my ass kicked by Tino and she was simultaneously trying to get through my defenses with her empathy. “You aren’t really a villain, you just try to survive the best way you know how.”

“Nope, I am a total villain,” I said, wheezing a little as Tino whacked me in the stomach hard enough to drive the breath out of my lungs and fold me over.

Tino grinned, “You know, I have had to do this before, but usually, people are telling me to stop instead of asking for more.”

I grinned at him from the ground and started pulling myself to my feet. “Harder baby, Harder.” I gasped.

He laughed! “Oh man, don’t say that… you are exactly my type. Muscular, and tough enough to take it.” He pasted the side of my head pretty effectively, but I rolled a little instead of falling over. “I already got your underwear ads in my spank bank. Why aren’t you gay?”

I shrugged a little and leaned down to punch the hard metal of the deck, not hard enough to dent it, but it helped get rid of a little of my extra energy. “I’m sorry, man, but I am a total chubby chaser. Your tits just aren’t big enough to do it for me.” He responded by catching me in the gut again, quite a bit harder than before, which pushed me back a couple of feet.

He chuckled again, “Alright dude. I think you have officially earned permission to make fag jokes while I am beating your ass.”

I grinned, “Like I need permission to get you to beat me off.” which earned me another gut shot. I think he needed to pick a different target soon or I’d start coughing blood and the experience would be wasted. “You know, If you keep up the lighthearted sexplay, pretty soon you will ruin me for it. I can already see that you are getting close to maximum force. Pretty soon I might… Ooof!… need to find someone that can really give it to me… AGH!… harder.”

He nodded, “All joking aside, I think you might be right. I threw you hard enough to dent the deck.” he pointed at a spot where my head had impacted, which had a suspicious dent in it. I wasn’t even bleeding! “I’ve been hitting you with stuff from my special moves pack. You will never be as strong as I am, but right now you are taking stuff that would probably flatten me.”

Caelo signed something, and I pretended to ignore it until she did it again obviously enough for Tino to realize she was talking. “What’s she saying?”

“Nothing.” I sighed. Nope. Not going to do that. Okay, I probably would do it, but it wasn’t like I liked the idea.

Caelo scowled at me and looked beseechingly at Tino.

I sighed. “Fine. She said that if we are at our best state for training kinetic energy, it’s time to start moving to other sorts of energy, like heat and microwaves.” I winced.

Tino grinned, “ooh… I like that. We have a really big oven in the Galley, although you’d have to go ashore to find a big enough microwave. But, of course, you wouldn’t want to burn your clothes off, so I think you are going to have to do it naked, right?”

Caelo made a sign that even Tino recognized. “No sweety, I will be taking pictures instead. I wouldn’t want to traumatize anyone,” he replied.

Fortunately, it looked like my resistance to energy really only affected the end result. I got stuck in the oven for… way too long, always right at the top end of the temperatures I could stand for a long time, and apparently that heat resistance folded over into other energies that had the same effect.

Lasers and Microwaves both worked by heating things rapidly. Without a power user or some very specialized special effects machinery, pushing it past that point would be damned near impossible.

Being able to absorb 500 degrees and remain at a normal temperature would stop them… lasers and microwaves heated you up over time, and my absorption was instant… they could not even get started. Unless someone hit me with, say, a ball of superheated plasma, which was not outside of the realm of possibility, I wouldn’t be affected.

Again, we tested this, with a plasma torch and an arc welder. It took a bit for me to handle the voltage, but soon enough I could hold my hand to either one indefinitely without getting torched or zapped more than a mild sensation.

I had already been exposed to massive amounts of radiation when I was younger, and it seemed to have virtually no effect other than to increase my power. A lot of other abilities were just weird ways of applying heat or kinetic energy, from force pulses to sonic bombs, grenades to bullets. By the time Tino got done with me, I could bounce bullets with ease. It was creepy, and not something I had ever expected.

I didn’t magically gain any laser vision or anything like that, I was still me, but I was a much tougher me. After a week, I could store enough energy to take a full charge of Naomi’s improved effects and walk away, holding it. I didn’t have to release it all in one shot, and spent about half an hour racing around a track with redshift at superhuman speeds, slowly releasing the energy to almost keep up with him.

I didn’t get knocked back much either. I didn’t get magically heavy enough to withstand a hit, instead, all the kinetic energy of a damned near 2000-pound man at maximum density simply got absorbed… no force, no knockback, no fuss, no muss, and only a few hairs out of place. The dude still hit as hard as shit, I just was seemingly unaffected.

My resistance might have plateaued, but my ability to store energy definitely hadn’t. Naomi started discharging her energy, to be followed up by a severe attempted beat down by Tino, while Caelo drained her energy against my defenses. All without discharging.

I became the ultimate training dummy.

All good things come to an end though. My utopian existence of daily beatdowns, as well as a few carefully calculated PDAs, public displays of affection, where the crew could catch us, was ended after barely a week.

“My father’s supposed to come home tonight, and then we get to head to New York for an art opening. I already heard that the Hollywood Fracas is supposed to have a few dirt diggers there,” she told me over a delicious lunch of some stuff that was supposed to be far too hot for non-Jamaicans to enjoy.

To me, it was just a mild burn, though, since apparently chemical resistance also extended to Scoville ratings.

I could chow down on a plate full of Carolina Reapers without even reaching for a glass of milk. I wouldn’t do it, though, as apparently being bred for their heat had utterly wrecked the sweet and spicy tangy flavor of peppers, they mostly tasted like chemicals.

I’d much rather have the uniquely delicious flavors of jalapenos or the slight tang of habaneros. I had yet to ‘test my might’ against the likes of pepper X or Apollo peppers, though.

On the plus side, if I was ever really starving, I could handily win any ‘hottest wings’ competitions, just like I have always been able to win eating contests… it wasn’t really fair, though, since most contests intentionally excluded metahumans, because their powers give them an edge that normal people could never beat.

Most competitions like arm wrestling were out, now too. While I might not be the strongest guy around, was it really fair to force someone who was stronger than me to try and push against my ability to absorb the kinetic force of his strength? I could sit there yawning while absorbing his energy, and then eventually beat him when he wore out or just reapply the energy to break his arm.

I could choose not to apply the energy now, which was really good when working out. 500 pounds was a great weight to get my muscles going right now, but risking more was risky. I was 6’1, and the guys that could power-press 800 lbs tended to be both taller and with a broader skeletal frame that could support more strain.

I was also worried about meeting Kjootoo. No, I was a little scared. He had ‘ghosts’ or ‘loas’ or whatever that was. I had no idea if I could protect myself if he got angry. Naomi and I had been taking every opportunity to make it look like we were regularly doing the horizontal mambo, and everyone was fooled except for Caelo… who had powers that let her detect her sister’s emotional state.

But fathers had a very special attitude toward guys that were opening their baby girl’s legs on a regular basis, and I had no idea what his reaction would be.

His reaction was… unexpected.

He came aboard after flying in on a helicopter to land on the freshly-repaired helo deck, where we met him. Every inch the houngan, he was dressed in a tuxedo jacket, slacks, and a top hat, and had tattoos down his bare chest and face resembling a skeleton.

He simply looked me up and down, and then looked at Naomi. “Good, he can take the damage now. You have done well to toughen him up.” he looked back at me and waggled his finger. “You are not to play henchman games. You protect my daughter. You take villain's name and villain's look and distract or fight masks. No surrender until she is clear. If she is captured, we will have no words until she is free. Understood?”

I nodded slowly, this was not the way I thought this conversation would go. “Of course not. We are in love. I would never abandon her.”

He clicked his teeth with his tongue. “Do not lie to me boy. You may be older than me, but you are still a boy. This is different game than you are used to. If you fight, you kill. The men you will face are killers. They do not play the game you know. Ayida has spoken, you are partners, not lovers. You are done with little league. You may play the game again, but your fate is tied to other games.”

He grinned a little, “Your fate is tied to me now, boy. Louis will be disappointed.”

“Pardon me?” I said, a little stupidly.

“He lost his chance when he waited. I am not disappointed, His fate was never tied to mine, except when he saved my life, but yours is. We will speak of it again when you need to.” He chuckled a little bit. “For now, we share a hunger! I have been eating nothing but American garbage in Florida, and we need real food!”