Chapter 5 - Progress

Chapter 5 - Progress

I jumped up awake at the sound of a door closing. I looked down at my arm and quickly lunged for the shirt on my nightstand. I put my arms through the sleeves and finished pulling it down as Ashe walked in. I faked my usual smile and acted like yesterday had never happened.

“Hey, I came to make sure you were okay. I never saw you come back yesterday.” she said worriedly. “You had better get ready for work, you can’t miss two days in a row.”

“Sorry, I was just tired and went straight to sleep. I’ll get ready and meet you down there.” I replied.

I kissed her cheek and watched as she left the room. I closed the door and stopped smiling. I dressed in my suit for work and sat there for a while.

“I knew it would be hard to hide this, but the guilt is going to be worse.”

I walked downstairs and acted normally again. We went through our daily routine and all I could think about was training to use the power, or how to hide it. I hurried through the work and finished faster than I usually did. Not only that, I had also used almost no stamina. I helped Ashe finish up her end of the work as well and then showed the manager. He was impressed with our work for the first time yet, and let us off work for the day.

We ate a late lunch at the dining area and talked for a while. I could tell she was still worried about yesterday but wasn’t as suspicious. She really did care about me. As we were waiting for our food to show up, a man with a fancy hat and a vest sat down next to us. He was clean head to toe and looked to be on the high-end side of wealth. We were confused, but I knew I had seen his face from somewhere.

“Jake?!” I said, shocked to see him look so different.

“Yeah, kid. I clean up nice, huh?” he joked.

“You know him?” Ashe said as she raised an eyebrow out of confusion.

“It’s that same guy from yesterday. At least, I think..” I said.

The food we had ordered arrived, I started digging in, and Jake stole bits off of my plate. Ashe’s face looked curious and she began asking Jake a ton of questions. Things like who he was and how he knew me. He told her that he was a martial arts trainer and that he had been teaching me self-defense for years. It had almost seemed like he knew to come up with a background story. He spared no details when coming up with small talk about us. I felt like a puppet as I nodded to everything he said.

“At least I don’t have to lie...”

When we finished our meal, he explained that we had the training to do and apologized for taking up my time again. We walked back to her room, and for the first time, she didn’t excitedly grab my hand. The look she gave me made my heart ache. I couldn’t tell her the truth, but I knew she thought something was going on behind her back. She went to close the door without even a goodbye, but I stepped between her and the door. I gave her a soft hug, lifted her chin up towards me and smiled. She blushed but instead of smiling, she started to pout. I still hadn’t gotten past my nervousness when it came to romantic things. I had tried to kiss her again but had been too nervous before.

“Hey, everything is okay. You don’t have to worry.” I said

I gave her a short kiss and looked back at her. Her face changed to a smile and then back to posting again when she had noticed I was looking. I chuckled and kissed her one more time. I held her tight as I apologized and said goodbye. She struggled but let me leave. She closed the door and I went back to my room to change. All I had for exercising was shorts and I had to cover the tattoo as well. I grabbed my black shirt and shorts and changed.

I ran down the stairs and met up with Jake. We walked outside and around to the back of the building. I gave him a stare, my eyebrows bent and a frown on my face.

“Hold on! I know what it looks like. I didn’t steal this, I’m just ‘borrowing’ it.. from a ‘friend’.” he said as he chuckled. “Alright. First things first. It’ll just waste time if we walk out of town normally. We’ll both turn on our powers but go as slow as we can to build self-control. Match my pace!”

We both tapped our arms and covered them back up. Our skin shone through our clothes, but he didn’t seem worried. He began running and I followed after him. What felt like running in quicksand for us, was actually a dead sprint. Even at the slow pace, we were going, turning through the back alleyways over and over were stressful. We weaved through and jumped over dozens of trash cans and debris. It took us 5 minutes to get out of town unseen. We deactivated our powers and I immediately started gasping for air. I looked over at Jake and he was completely fine. He wasn’t even breathing heavily.

“Control Is the hardest thing about this training. It takes lots of stamina just to focus on that. You want it to be second nature before you use it in combat.” he instructed. “Next up is strength. We are going to have you punch some trees.”

We walked further out of town and into the woods. The trees and brush thickened, with only wildlife in sight. I followed him up to a large clearing and looked up at the sky. It was clear out and the sun was glaring down on us. Sweat was dripping off of me and my shirt was soaked. An entire day of normal exercise couldn’t even do that for me at this point. I walked up to a large oak tree. It’s trunk wide and covered in thick bark.

“Control..”

I pressed my tattoo and thought of strength. The tattoo shone bright red, as it again flowed throughout my body. I pulled back my arm and punched at the tree holding back almost all of my strength. When I hit the tree, I felt a little pain, but the tree was fine. I looked down and scrapes had formed on my fingers.

“Wow, You controlled that nicely. If not, you would have broken at least one bone, if not more.” Jake said. “So on the next one, You need to switch to resistance before your fist hits the tree. It’ll be hard to switch so practice with that low amount of power.”

I did as he said and tried to switch between the two as I punched. My hand slowly got more scraped but it started to hurt less and less once I got used to it. After over a hundred punches a thought came to me.

“Why don’t I just do both!”

I thought of both attack and resistance at the same time and made a fist. The wire-shaped lines running through my body glowed purple as I swung my fist towards the tree. Splinters Scattered out around me from the impact, and some even deflected off of me. My fist had destroyed this side of the tree. I pulled away and looked down to see nothing wrong with it. I shouted out with excitement thinking I figured out some cool unknown trick.

“Haha. That’s gonna hurt really bad when you turn off your power.” he mocked me. “But you have the right idea. Just never try to do more than 2 combined. That’s the black power.”

I was weary to turn the power off after he had mocked me; however, using the power was starting to drain my stamina and I couldn’t hold it for any longer. I pressed the button and braced for the damage. I grunted and held my fist close from the pain. It wasn’t nearly as bad as my legs felt, but still enough to tense my face. I took a break to heal and regain some energy but continued as soon as I could. I practiced doing the same thing almost all day. As the sky turned black, I laid on the ground and breathed heavily. My arms were numbed and I was exhausted. After I rested, we walked back to the Inn and I went up to Ashe’s room.

I knocked and walked in to hear her shower running. I laid down on the couch, exhausted from training all night. I closed my eyes and thought about what I had told Ashe earlier. I had lied to her. If anyone finds out about my power at best I’d have to leave, at worst I’d be killed. The noise of the shower stopped, and Ashe walked out, wrapped in a long white towel. She saw me, ran up, and hugged me.

“I didn’t expect you to come over!” she said her face filled with glee. “I’ll go get dressed!”

I struggled and sat up as she went to change. When she came back she was wearing bright pink pajamas. She sat down and cuddled herself next to me. The softness of her clothes made me more tired than before. I slowly began to doze off as I leaned my head onto Ashe. She poked my cheek and my eyes squinted as I opened them back up.

“You should just stay the night…” she said as she blushed.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me lightly towards her room. Too tired to resist, I followed her. I fell flat on her bed and sank my head into her pillow. She laid next to me and nudged closer. She reached her head over my chest and wrapped her arms around me. I slid my fingers through her beautiful hair and smiled. Engulfed in softness, I went to sleep.

The next few days were intense. Work, Eat, Train, Sleep, repeat. Those were the only things I had time for. If it wasn’t for the fact I worked with Ashe, I would have hardly seen her. Despite that fact, she took it pretty well. Thanks to Jake that is. He came by for lunch every day, and they became friends. I was most surprised about how different Jake was than when I had first met him. He still treated me with arrogance and annoyance but was social and kind to others. He was almost as good at putting a mask on as me.

We sat down for another lunch and waited for Jake as usual. Our food arrived after a while, and he had yet to arrive.

“What if the AI..”

I apologized to Ashe and rushed to leave the hotel. As I went through the doorway, I collided face to face with Jake. He collapsed to the ground and held his head. I looked down to see the exact same expression as the day we met. His fancy vest was stained and his hat was gone. I smiled and held my mouth closed, but couldn’t help but laugh aloud. He stood up and wobbled in place. He grunted and pushed me to the side as he began to walk to the table. We sat down and Ashe chuckled at the site of Jake being Hungover.

“Oh shut it you two. I had a rough night.” he stated as he rubbed his irritated eyes. “I’m going to need a minute before we can go.”

The mood lightened as we made fun of the drunkard in front of us. After he ate, Jake and I left the hotel and went to the alleyway as usual. He slouched against the wall and activated his power. After a few minutes, his irritated eyes and attitude changed. The healing abilities of our powers were truly remarkable.

“Ahh.. Much better.” he said as he stretched out his legs against the wall. “Alright, Full speed. Try and keep up.”

I turned on my power and he took off faster than I had ever seen. I pursued him, as I turned corner after corner. I couldn’t catch up. I imagined what his attitude would have been like after this and cringed. An idea came to my mind as I ran and I acted on it. Every time I turned the corner I leapt into the air at an angle and switched to power and resistance instead of speed. The bright green light switched to purple as I focused. I bent my legs and collided with the wall. My calves tensed and the cement cracked as I pushed back off the wall. I switched to speed midair and went back into a dead sprint. Instead of losing speed from the turn, I accelerated instead. Each turn took incredible amounts of concentration, but I finally caught up to Jake.

We passed the city limits and flashed past multiple people. At that speed, we didn’t have to worry about being seen. I fell over the instant we got to our training spot. I laid there in exhaustion as Jake walked up to me. He sighed and sat next to me and looked up at the cloudy sky. The fall weather had been getting worse. The clouds started to sprinkle cold rain down on us. The refreshing feeling of the water helped as I caught my breath. As we both stood up, the sky got darker and darker. The sprinkling turned to rain and got worse by the minute.

“Well, I guess this will help.” Jake said. “Attack me. I’ll only defend myself.”

We both activated our powers. I charged at him and attacked as fast as I could. Even with how much I had practiced, I still couldn’t touch him. He stood in place and dodged punch after punch. I couldn’t think of any way to hit him. Out of desperation, I pull all of my focus into going as fast as possible. I let go of the idea of control. I flew past him at a blistering speed and swung my leg at him from behind. The momentum of the speed slid me across the now mud covered field and I completely missed. I lost my balance and fell. I was soaked in mud head to toe.

“I figured this would happen.” he stated. “If you only focus on power or speed you will lose your fighting sense. I told you ‘control is the hard part’.

I was exhausted, the ground was a mess, and the rain continued to pour down on top of us. We walked back to town, our clothing completely ruined. Jake went on his own way halfway through town, and I continued to the hotel. I coughed and sneezed on the way. When I arrived it had turned into nothing more than a sniffle. I walked inside and rubbed my arms as I shivered. I made my way to Ashe’s room like usual and walked inside. The instant she saw me, she rushed up to me and pulled me towards the bathroom.

“Aww. Cmon! You got mud all over the place. You know we are gonna have to clean all that up tomorrow.” she whined.

“I’m sorry. It was a rough day.” I apologized. “I’ll go back to my room and change. I just wanted to see you.”

“It’s too late for that now. You need to get out of these soaking clothes.” she pleaded. “Let me help.”

I sighed, turned around, and raised my arms. She lifted up my shirt and the wet cloth unstuck from my back. I put my arms down in front of me and looked down at them. I forgot all about the tattoo until just then. I froze. Ashe looked at me with confusion and asked what was wrong. I asked her to grab me some clothes while I washed off. When she returned with the clothes I cracked the door and grabbed them with my other arm. I put the clothes on and looked in the mirror. There was no way I could hide the tattoo in the short sleeve shirt she had gotten for me. I sat in the bathroom and debated what to do.

“I can’t let her know. It’s too dangerous.”

I looked at my face in the mirror and faked the happiest look I could think of. I reached for the doorknob and took a deep breath as I twisted it. The door opened and I saw Ashe sitting on the couch. I walked out angling my forearm behind my back, just enough so that she couldn’t see it.

“Well, thanks for letting me wash up here..” I chuckled. “..but I’m really tired. Ashe looked at me and sighed with a frown on her face. “Alright.. I hope you can come over tomorrow.” she hinted.

I backed up to the door and she walked up to me. She got closer, and I opened the door behind me. She leaned towards me, and I leaned away through the doorway. I was worried she would see the tattoo if I had let her hug me. She looked at me and raised her eyebrow. Her gaze wandered and saw me hiding my arm.

“What’s wrong. Did you hurt your arm again?” she questioned. “If you did, you need to get it treated.”

I continued to back away step by step, but she rushed up to me and grabbed hold of my arm. I went to pull away, but when I saw the worried look on her face, I stopped. She pulled my arm out from behind my back and looked down to see the tattoo. Her face completely changed. Her mouth lied open, her face devoid of emotion. She stood there, her face frozen like a statue.

“It’s.. It’s just a lame tattoo Jake convinced me to get. I regretted getting it and hid it from everyone.” I lied.

Her face finally changed. Her face became sullen and her grip tightened harder and harder. I tried to pull away as my arm was being crushed, but her grip was too strong. I pulled her arm with my other hand, and she gripped even harder. I knelt to the ground and shouted in pain. I could tell she wasn’t going to stop, and I reached to turn on my power. She pushed my arm back behind me, pushed me to the ground, and sat on top of me. I gasped for breath as I hit the ground. She was far stronger than I was without my powers. So much confusion was going through my head about why she was doing this, that I couldn’t react. I felt a blunt pain in the back of my neck, and my conscious faded.

Author's Note

Thank you for any comments or advice!