Chapter 54 Ramping Up 3, Revenge of the Power Scalers

“The manifestation of meta human abilities in Bulwark differs significantly from my own world. But knowing the respective sources of each, it only makes sense. They have more of a selection.” – I. La, the Bamboo Hat Meister

Jun’s own snores startled her awake.

Blinking away her sleep, she pushed off a jacket blanket. ‘Who put that there?’ her mind pondered for a moment before she sniffed herself. “Eugh!”

She quickly got up from the cold metallic floor, heading to the gym showers.

Meanwhile, Puppet Rain sat in a lotus position in the corner of the room. One eye blinked open, watching Jun leave, before it closed, and the puppet was still.

|

Jun’s breath came out in mist as he unlocked his bicycle. “Just sit in the back as usual,” he told the still figure beside him.

Puppet Rain robotically sat on the carrier seat.

They made an odd couple as they biked. The clouds were made of glazed ceramic that night, filtering the moonlight in an odd way. Unlike when he was Nightcore, Jun was silent, a lot more stoic as Daycore. Not slower or dumber, but more thoughtful and contemplative.

‘I finally landed a hit on her, but it had no power to it. I’m either fast enough to keep up with her, but too weak to do anything, or strong enough to trade blows but not fast enough to catch her.’

At a red light, Jun paused and read his messages.

DarKing: Yo @SolJun, @Aiden1507, there’s a new arcade spot, see you there at 5?

Aiden1507: Sorry, I have something else lined today.

WrenWood: Jun? (´• ω •`)ﾉ

Those were from a few hours ago.

WrenWood: Is Jun ok? They usually respond quickly (/ω＼)

AspiringTubaSquire: THEY MUST BE TRAINING! A MOST NOBLE PURSUIT!

AspiringTubaSquire: @SolJun can I join you?

Aiden1507: How did you guess that? Yeah, they have been.

Wrenwood: Σ(°ロ°) They’re doing secret training? That’s so cool! (๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ

LuKing: You’ve also been squirrelled away in the lab Aiden. Have you been practicing something as well?

Aiden1507: Just testing some stuff.

DarKing: Should’ve called us! We need practice as a team for the paintball…

Glass shattering dragged Jun out of his phone, just in time to see a masked thief emerging from a broken window, stuffing jewellery into a bag.

“Stay here,” he muttered to Rain as he got off the bicycle. “Hey!” he yelled at the fleeing thief, “Stop running!”

The thief turned to him and yelled, “NAH!” and continued running.

Rolling his eyes, Jun took off his Daycore mask, bringing her left hand up to her face. The world slowed, and Nightcore Jun sped up to the man, booped him on the nose, then stopped in front of him underneath a streetlight.

In slow motion, the man skidded to a stop. He looked behind him, where Jun was a moment ago, then at her. “Wha- Hey did you- Did you just change forms, run past me and boop me on the nose?”

“Yeah?” Jun answered. “Justdropthebag-”

The thief threw the bag at her, and she caught it in surprise.

As she lowered it down, she saw the thief untying his shoes.

“Dudewhatareyoudoing?”

“Resigning,” looking up at her, the thief enunciated every word, “I will no longer participate in organised crime.” Before going back to untie his other shoe.

Jun looked in the bag, finding it full of jewellery. “You’re not even going to try to escape?” she asked, confusion clear in her voice. “Noteventry?”

The thief spent a moment looking at her as if she were stupid, and given that she perceived the world faster, it was a long moment.

“For what?” he asked, before with an accusing point he said, “You want me to look stupid don’t you?”

“What?” she asked. “No, I was surprised-”

He pointed behind him, to another streetlight, “You wanted me to do the whole bit where I run back and forth, and every time you run in front of me until I fall on my ass in terror and TRY TO CRAWL AWAY LIKE A PATHETIC MOOK!? NAH, FUCK THAT! I’m leaving with my dignity today!”

“LookI- Ididn’t- Look this is the first robbery I’ve stopped; it wasn’t what I was expecting-”

The thief threw his shoes at her. She could’ve easily caught it, but she was in so much shock she just let it bounce off her. “Whyareyouthrowingyourstinkinshoes?”

“They were bought with stolen money. I shouldn’t have them,” the thief told her.

“Iliterallycouldnothaveknownthatinanyway.”

He pulled off his balaclava, and tossed it towards Jun, “Where’s the police station?”

“So, you are really trying to turn yourself in?” Jun asked, realisation finally setting in.

He took out a phone, searched for the directions to the nearest police station and left.

Jun watched him go, then glanced down at the bag full of jewellery. “How do I return this?” She glanced around as if it would give her an answer, instead she saw crows staring at her from the top of the streetlights.

She eyed them back, they seemed to be focused on the bag, but ultimately the crows didn’t move.

Shrugging, she returned to the store, called the police, and waited by Rain.

“Wait a moment,” she realised, face turning a bit red. “It looks like I’m out on a romp with the Puppet.”

God damn it, why did it have to be that attractive?

|

“Anyways, that’s the story of how I stopped my first robbery,” Jun said as she passed the basketball to a howling Darius. He almost fumbled it with how hard he was laughing, but still managed to get it past Luther and pass it over to Josh.

“YOU DID GOOD JUN!” the Tuba congratulated as he dribbled the ball towards the hoop, easily passing Wren before going for the throw.

Aiden jumped to intercept, his hand came short, but Oros leapt off his outstretched arm and caught the thrown ball. Now firmly in his hands, he threw it over Josh to the other side of the court. Jun moved to catch it, but slipped as Wren covered the floor with soap water. Both Luther and Darius leapt for it, but the ball sprouted origami wings in midair, pivoting away from Darius and landing cleanly into Luther’s hands.

He scored a clean goal.

“Hey no fair!” Jun called out, “no messing with the ball!”

“Nobody ever ruled that,” Aiden took the basketball with a cheeky smile, absorbing the bird back into his body as he took off the paper wings.

“Yes, we are! Ranpo, add it to the rulebook!”

“Sure, sure,” Ranpo rolled his eyes as he picked up a pen with his beak. “Thumbs…” he muttered under his breath.

Josh slapped Aiden on the back, “EXCELLENT PLAY FRIEND!”

He paused as he felt his back, “AIDEN MY FRIEND YOU ARE NO LONGER SKINNY!”

Aiden chuckled, “Yeah, I’ve been eating more and just generally working out more.”

“YOU NO LONGER HAVE THE CONSTITUTION OF MERELY A HEDGEHOG!”

Josh paused, deep in thought.

“An otter!” he yelled.

“We already have an otter girl in our class,” Darius pointed out.

“Komodo dragon!”

“Also taken,” Jun called out, “Scale dude. But Aiden also has scales, so it works out.”

“A zebra?”

“Doesn’t work cuz. He doesn’t have a long face anymore,” Luther pointed out.

Aiden touched his face, “I have a long face?”

“A llama,” Josh declared. “YOU HAVE THE CONSTITUTION OF A LLAMA!”

“Makes perfect sense,” Jun quipped.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Ranpo added.

“It’s an upgrade from hedgehog,” Aiden agreed.

“But what was that about the crows anyway?” Luther asked.

Jun shrugged as she got the ball, “I was hoping you two could answer that.”

Both Aiden and Ranpo were blank faced.

“I UNDERSTAND!” Josh said, “YOU USED YOUR CONTROL OVER CROWS TO MAKE THEM FIGHT CRIME!”

Aiden glanced at Ranpo.

Ranpo glanced at Aiden.

“Yes,” Aiden said, “that is exactly what we did.”

|

“We should get them to help,” Jun said as she lounged on a lab chair.

“Sit up, and no,” Aiden replied as he scraped bacteria off a petri plate with a tiny metal loop, before he smeared it onto a water droplet on a glass slide.

“What is that?” Jun asked as she sat up.

“If I did it right then its E. coli, I’m preparing a gram stain as well as some other chemical tests to confirm it.”

“Can’t you just absorb it?” Ranpo asked.

“I need to be absolutely sure these things are as they are written in the book,” Aiden replied.

“Neat, and why can’t they help with our other problem?”

“They’re our friends Jun, but that doesn’t mean we should get them wrapped up in this, I still don’t want you to be in this mess, but I can’t stop you,” Aiden replied as he flamed the metal loop with a Bunsen burner.

“Boohoo, they can help us.”

“They do have extraordinary abilities, which you can’t replicate,” Ranpo pointed out.

“Are you ready for that responsibility then?” Aiden asked.

Jun paused.

“Bringing them into this could hurt them or place their lives in danger. Ya is a mystery, but he plays by the rulebooks. Rain however is an utter lunatic and wildcard. A polite, and maybe sometimes understandable lunatic, but she has no qualms about murdering someone,” Aiden went on. “Do you understand that? Are you ready for the worst-case scenario? Are you ready to live with the worst-case scenario?”

She had no answer.

“Have you told them about the Puppet?” Aiden asked as he start dripping some purple looking chemicals on the glass slide.

Jun shook her head.

“Good, the less they have to do with that the better.”

“You suck,” Jun said, taking out her phone.

Aiden sighed, “I know.” He continued with his work in the silence. Placing the gram stain under the microscope, he saw the pink coloured rods, confirming it was a gram-negative bacillus underneath.

He slid his chair to the bench with the other chemical reagents, beginning work on identification.

“You know Wren could make those chemicals,” Jun pointed out.

Aiden sighed. “Wren is a good person, which is why I can’t exactly go up to her and tell her I’m practising making a biological weapon.”

“Four did it,” Jun said.

“Four is a professional and a teacher for an institution making human weapons and training child soldiers, he is not exactly going to say no to this,” Ranpo replied.

“Ranpo, you’re supposed to back me up on this,” Jun complained as she leaned back in her chair.

“For getting them to help. But this? I agree with Aiden, we can’t diminish what we’re trying to do. It’s a biological weapon,” Ranpo replied.

“You might not need it,” Jun replied.

“The express purpose of a nuclear weapon is to never be used, that does not make the resulting Cold Wars any better,” Ranpo answered.

“Hey! I’ve been studying, I know what fallacies are now! That’s false equivalency!” Jun shot back.

“If anything, it should be a strawman argument,” Ranpo mused. “And that’s only if discounting the very real possibility Aiden actually creates something dangerous.”

“It can’t be allowed to spread,” Aiden added. “Whatever I make must be a surgical weapon, if it spreads from person to person in any capacity, then we are fucked. I refuse to become a second Shitala.”

“Who’s that?” Jun asked.

“He’s the person who brought back super smallpox,” Ranpo replied. “Look him up on the S-Class Files.”

“Sounds like he doesn’t deserve that S-Class,” Jun remarked.

“Well when you can cause a pandemic you get that rating either way,” Ranpo said.

Despite what Ranpo had said about the multi-headed monkey, Four had very pointedly given Aiden the man’s file with a don’t fuck this up look on one of his faces. He finished up his chemical identifications, all results matched the characteristics of E. coli.

So, after washing his hands again, Aiden pressed a finger to the sample, and absorbed it.

And froze completely as a barrage of information assaulted his mind.

The memory of E. coli repeated a dozen, a hundred, a thousand, a million, then a billion times as he absorbed every single individual cell of E. coli from that corner of the petri dish.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Aiden, you alright?” Jun got out of her seat, standing beside him in a moment.

He held his head, “I- I am. It was just surprising. I need to double check something.”

He pressed his finger onto the blank corner of the petri dish and created E. coli.

Nothing visible on that corner of the dish, and Aiden knew why, he only made a single cell of the bacterium.

He put his finger in the other corner, still covered in bacterium, and absorbed.

Aiden was hit by the memories once again, and they each overlayed onto each other until it was once again a single concept in his mind.

And he pressed another corner and absorbed.

This time he was slower. Aiden created a new E. coli cell every time he relearnt the concept, creating a thousand copies before he stopped and let the absorption combine the remaining number into one.

He put his hands to his head, “Holy shit.”

“What happened?” Ranpo asked.

“Every single cell of E. coli gave me back memories,” Aiden replied.

“Oh,” Ranpo paused. “Oh. Holy shit.”

“What are we holy shitting for? What am I missing?” Jun asked.

“If his creations replicate, they are still considered part of his power,” Ranpo explained. “And it worked through dozens of generations.”

“Is it just a product of binary fission or would it work with any type of reproduction?” Aiden murmured.

“I should have kids,” Ranpo said.

“What?” Jun said.

“What?” Aiden said.

“What?” Ranpo said. “Easiest way to test it out.”

“Ew!” Jun yelled as she tossed a pair of tweezers at him, which the crow easily dodged.

“Jun don’t throw things in a lab. Ranpo if you have kids, I am not absorbing them, that is a few too many layers of fucked up for me,” Aiden asserted.

“And that is saying something for him,” Jun added, “you didn’t just make me grossed out, you made a person making a biological weapon grossed out.”

The crow rolled his eyes.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” Aiden said as he took stock of his remaining bacteria cultures. “This changes things, I can have much more freedom in experimenting, it’ll speed up the process dramatically.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Jun pointed out.

“It is a bad thing, it’s not like with the regular animals I toss out. I want time. I want a lengthy process in which I can spend considering every factor. This discovery? It’s a blessing and a curse…” he trailed off as he felt Darius’s power ping him. “Did you feel that?”

“Darius yeah?” Jun said, checking her phone. “They’re in trouble, needs our help.”

And she disappeared.

Aiden threw off his lab gown, washing his hands in record speed, “Ranpo I need you to deal with the clean-up.”

“I have it handled.”

“And… before I leave, do you think my face is long?” Aiden asked.

“Dude, you’re still thinking about that?” Ranpo asked.

“Right, wrong time,” Aiden replied and disappeared from the lab.

And teleported to bright neon lights and blaring pop music, catching Jun at the end of a sentence.

“-so you guys weren’t in danger?”

“What happened?” Aiden asked as he looked around, seeing the rows of arcade machines.

Darius grinned at him as he passed him his opened can of milkis coffee, “Well, you guys haven’t been around the past few weeks after school. I figured we ought to get together like usual. Kept it as a surprise though!”

Aiden took the drink, “Sorry, but I’ve been busy.”

“That’s why I confirmed with Jun beforehand that you guys weren’t!” Darius cheerfully declared.

Aiden glanced at Jun, who glumly said, “It’s true, he asked me if we were busy in chat, I told them no then ten minutes later they said they were in danger.”

“Were you guys in on this?” he glanced at Wren, Josh and Luther.

“I was cuz,” Luther unashamedly admitted.

Wren shook her head, as did Josh after he took off his tuba helmet.

And Aiden let out a breath of relief, taking a sip from his coffee, “You know what, I’m not mad, where’s the pinball machine?”

Darius laughed, “That’s the spirit!”