No, no, no, no. You don’t go after her. She goes

after you.

-Torch, from the Texas Sector

Time was running out, and Luke wasn’t going to waste any more of it.

He had immediately gone to the storage room he owned after leaving the restaurant where he had… Talked, with Ludwig. The black and dark building greeted him as he grabbed the door’s handle and inserted the key in.

Luke made his way inside after closing the door with a bang. He walked in circles, looping around the empty center, as he thought. As he tried to find a very much needed inspiration.

“What do I need? What do I need for him to accept me? What was appealing…? Something… Appealing? Something flashy? Yeah, that could… No, no. Not with Ludwig. What could work with Ludwig? What did Ludwig want? Something useful, he wanted something useful…”

He trailed off, transitioning from speech to thought, without realizing said transition.

Luke needed an answer. He needed to find what Ludwig considered to be useful. It was a hard question, a problem. But, despite him not being the smartest guy around, Luke liked solving problems. It gave him a good feeling. Not feeling useless, being able to handle yourself without constantly needing the help of others.

(What do I know about Ludwig?)

Gathering what he knew about the subject was necessary. You couldn’t solve a problem with information you didn’t have, and so, Luke remembered.

Surprisingly little.

He hadn’t talked much with Ludwig. In fact, Luke doubted he had ever had a normal conversation with him. Earlier today had been the closest thing to it, and… Well, it was best to forget about it.

Nevertheless, he had information.

Luke had watched closely his thought process along the past week. Methodical would be the best word to describe it. Ludwig had searched for a starting point in the beginnings of their training, and once he had obtained it, he expanded from it, never leaving it behind. Even though he hit several dead ends, he kept going without ever scraping the progress they had made so far. After failing, he would give two steps back, and try to look at it in a new way, try to find another stepping stone to keep going.

(That’s it!) Luke thought. (I need a starting point. Something with a solid base and a promising potential. That would probably appeal to Ludwig.)

Unfortunately, the answer shortly lived as one, because it quickly transformed into another question.

(What could that be?)

He went back to what he knew about Ludwig.

Luke doubted Ludwig’s thought process would give something else, so he instead went further than the past week. He went to the beginning, to that side street.

To that red monster that had thrived so easily in a situation where he had failed so obstreperously. Maybe that was a mistake, because to Luke, that thing didn’t need anyone or anything else apart from itself.

(What about something more recent?)

He found himself at night, a single light striking the dark forest as trees crunched and fell, the trunks breaking dead leaves as they hurled into the ground. His hands clasped those red strings, which had made his vision go partially red as he looked up, towards Ludwig.

It was strange. Both encounters had involved Ludwig, yet they were so… Different. In his second encounter, Luke could picture Ludwig in it. He could picture the person that Ludwig was. Meanwhile, that first encounter… What was that?

Luke shook his doubts out of his head, and decided to focus on that human version of Ludwig. The one who could use a hand, instead of the one that had taken some. He returned to that nocturnal fight he had had with him.

Luke had faced him head on. Ludwig had been able to hit pretty hard, but Luke had hit him harder. Out of the two, Luke could probably better fit the term of bruiser. A pretty bad bruiser, since he was as tough as a normal person, but still, a bruiser.

But despite hitting quite hard, the advantage hadn’t remained by Luke’s side throughout the entirety of the fight. The situation quickly changed once Ludwig had climbed onto the trees and used his superior mobility. Nonetheless, the situation could have ended worse for Luke than how it had.

If Ludwig had constantly and safely chipped away at him, there wasn’t much he could have done to stop him. But he had been lucky. Ludwig had risked too much for what should be a rather safe fighting style. He had left out his strings for too long, making Luke able to seize them.

(But what if he hadn’t? Was there something that I could have done?)

In his own words, Luke was a bad bruiser. Not only did he lack endurance, but he also lacked enhanced mobility. Atlas weren’t the fastest potens, not at all, but they had formidable strength, making them able to reach the thirty-to-fifty kilometers per hour range. They could also jump high distances.

But he wasn’t an atlas. He was barely a bruiser. And with the lack of knowledge he had had about his power then… No, he couldn’t see himself winning.

That needed to change. Something had to change. What could be different? What could he do? What was within his grasp, but he was too blind to see it?

More problems, more questions, and yet no new information. He did what he knew, and went back to what was known. Something Ludwig had contributed to the past week.

Luke was able to manipulate Newton’s third law, which referred to how if you hit something, that something hits you back. But he had the ability to break it, to bend it to his will. But how could he use it to be a better bruiser?

“If someone hits me,” he then said, now speaking out loud. “Could I make it hurt less?”

Luke’s mind spun around the idea, but he wasn’t able to imagine a scenario where someone punched in the face and walked away as if nothing happened. If anything, he could imagine a scenario where someone hit them and they didn’t feel a thing…

(Hold on.)

Luke could store the energy of the reaction. He could store it in his body whenever he hit something. Not only that, but he could also store the energy in some object if said object was provoking an instance of the third law. Then, could he store the energy in someone else’s body if they struck something? Going a step beyond, could he ignite the pool of energy stored in someone’s body?

He dwelled on the idea, thought it through. And it seemed plausible. It could work. It could also not, but the possibility… Was there. There was one tiny little problem.

How was he supposed to test it?

Convincing someone about it would be extremely weird. What was he supposed to say?

‘Hey, would you mind punching that wall over there for a full minute before I explode the energy that will store in your body, possibly tearing your arm apart if you don’t hit anything?’

The only option that didn’t sound insane was maybe asking Ludwig. Of course, he would have to wait for that, and the thought of having to do something that he couldn’t work in this situation was… Alarming.

Luke decided to put it to the side for the moment. While interesting, right now there were more useful things he could dwell and practice on. He instead went back to how he could improve as a bruiser.

Being more durable was out of the question. That only left mobility, and it didn’t take long before Luke realized how his power could improve it.

When something or someone jumped, all that they’re doing is pushing against the ground, so in order to jump higher, he just had to push harder against the floor.

Luke walked to one of the walls to charge his pool of energy. He began kicking it, feeling the flow of energy change, how it passed from his foot to the shoe, only for the wall to deliver it back.

Since he hadn’t found out until recently that he could use his power on other extremities apart from his arms, Luke hadn’t had to worry about the precision of his charging. The proximity of two bodies made it significantly harder to store the energy whenever he was kicking.

Within the past week and thanks to Ludwig, he had gotten the hang of it. Mostly.

The selection between two really close bodies, weirdly came down to a matter of relaxation. If Luke wanted to imbue his foot, he just had to tense his foot, stiffen it. Meanwhile, if he wanted to store the energy in the shoe, he had to relax his foot, letting the energy flow through both bodies until they settled in the shoe. Of course, that was the case if the shoe had room for additional kinetic energy. If it had reached maximum capacity, which was the normal case, since the pool of power didn’t seem to leave the shoe as quickly as it did with his body, then the energy would imbue his foot, whether it was tense or not. Luke had quickly found out that he needed to be prepared for that, otherwise, he would just be smashing his foot against a wall.

He then raised his foot before rigidly slamming it down, feeling the kinetic energy swirling around it before flowing into it. Luke only kicked another two additional times, since what he was about to do didn't need much energy. After doing so, he walked around a bit, putting his weight on the balls of his feet as he concentrated. He then stopped.

“Just like jumping, only… Harder.”

He flexed his knees before igniting the flowing pool, kicking the ground several times harder than what he normally could. Luke quickly ascended one, two, three meters above the ground until his momentum finally died. He began falling, and by pure instinct, he tried to absorb the impact. Even as he did so, Luke knew it wouldn’t work. His power wasn’t that convenient. It had given him more trouble than help.

That was why when it worked, he found himself dumbfounded.

His legs had slammed against the dark floor, yet they were fine. He began walking, and it was after a couple of minutes when he was able to express what he felt.

“What?”

Confusion took hold of his mind, as one of the most natural and logical things in his world view crumbled. Instead of dwelling on it, Luke moved to action in order to test it, almost as if he wanted to prove that it had been a mistake. Because it was wrong.

He planted his feet, and after a few moments of concentration, he let himself fall, closing his eyes and moving away his arms so that they couldn’t intercept the fall. As gravity propelled him downwards, he focused on his body’s flow of energy, preparing himself to catch it when the change came, when he finally hit the ground.

The sensation felt surreal. He hit the ground face first, yet he didn’t feel pain, only the touch of concrete and a minimal influx of energy entering his body. Opening his eyes didn’t help him to process the situation. With a swift and only movement, Luke raised from the floor and threw himself backwards, once again towards the ground.

But the pain didn’t come.

Luke lay down, looking at the dim and dusty ceiling as something left his body. A feeling of belonging. He felt less real, less… Attached to the world. Everything was under the same rules, except potens. Except Luke.

He somehow felt less…Himself… Until he didn’t. The feeling disappeared as a thought popped in his head.

—-----

Luke was climbing the ladder behind the storage room to access its roof, hands and feet on the metal crossbars. He stopped at the last one, since his objective wasn’t getting on the roof. If someone saw him jump from the building, it would certainly cause a commotion, and the same could be said if he managed to land safely. So instead, he would jump from somewhere where the buildings around him would hide him.

This time it didn't take long. He released his grip and threw himself down, eight meters high in the ground. It didn’t shock him much this time. As soon as he touched the ground, all the energy seemed to disappear, whilst a small reserve appeared in his interior.

Luke stood still.

The feeling of disconnection had disappeared what felt like a long time ago. Instead, something else had taken its place. Something he wondered if other potens felt, even though he knew it wasn’t completely true.

From the tallest mountain to the smallest difference in elevation, none mattered to Luke.

For a small moment, he felt invincible.