"And why would I do that?" He asked as soon as I told him to show himself.
"Why wouldn't you do that?" I ask in return. And I believe it's a pretty fair question. Why in the world would he not show his face to me? Is there a reason for it?
"Well," He paused, as if confused as to how to answer the question. "It might be hard for you understand since, you know, you are a mortal and all."
"Try me," I pester him as his response only made me more curious.
"Hmm … see, it's like this, if I step on to a place on Earth or any other planet, the aura around me will make everything around me so powerful and fast that things could go out of order."
"Like?" I asked, not really seeing what he meant, probably because of the beating from earlier. No, I'm not making excuses. Shut up!
"Like a flower that is a bud right now would be in full bloom in two hours."
"That's not bad."
"And it will dry up in the next two hours."
"Okay, that might be bad." Not that I care about some random flower drying up.
"The current of the river will get so powerful that a guy drowning in it will be on the shore within a second."
"That's helpful."
"And the current would be so powerful that the said guy would be on the shore, in pieces."
"That's certainly not helpful." Not that I care about some random guy dying because of water current.
"Earth's planetary rotation-"
"I get the idea." I interrupt our comedy routine with that. "So fine, don't show yourself to me. But anyway, you said you can give me an ability, huh?"
"Yes!" He answered plainly; making him looked a bit bored.
"Any limitations to what I can ask?" I wondered that, and so I asked.
"Well, you can't ask something that would tip the scales too much in your favor. I am only giving this ability to make the upcoming challenge a challenge and not an inevitable doom for you."
That makes sense. Though, I wouldn't know what kind of ability would qualify as 'tipping the scales enough' for him.
"Let me think!" I say and started to make a cool expression of pondering.
"Could you hurry, I have to go back to watching over the entire universe?" He said, almost as if he was showing off.
"I can't rush such an important decision, alright?" I said grumpily, mainly because I'd expect God to be more understanding of such things.
"Fine, I'll give you 6 hours." He said, "Decide within these six hours or I'll give you whatever ability I see fit."
As soon as he finished saying that, he cut the connection. What is with this God anyway? He acts so … so … so humane?
*****
And so, in the six hours that were given to me, I kept thinking as to what the best the ability I could ask for would be. A lot of cool things came to mind.
Mind-control. Psychokinesis. Pyrokinesis. Super Strength. Super Speed. But these were all quite overpowered and I figured he would probably not agree to giving me any of these abilities.
And because of that, I was at a loss for what to do. I discussed it over with Danny, who spent ten minutes getting over the shock of the fact that God wanted to help me, but then he did think quite hard to come up with some good abilities.
Aside from the ones I had already thought of, he mentioned the ability to build incredible amounts of mana (which will enable me to become a mage), some Wuxia abilities, some game abilities, etc. But, with every single ability that came to mind, there was some problem. Either it was only effective in certain scenarios, or it was too powerful, or it just sounded cool but was absolutely useless.
Four hours passed like that and the sun rose. For the two remaining hours, we decided that taking help from Grey and Jessica might be a good idea. And so we called them over to my house (where the two of us already were) and asked their suggestions. And that is when some interesting ideas started coming to mind.
Control over electrons. Every atom has electrons so it can be useful in about any situation. At the same time, controlling electrons doesn't directly enable me to control matter itself. All that I may be able to do is move matter by moving electrons … and produce electricity of course. So, it is not THAT overpowered. However, even though it seemed like a good fit and he would probably be willing to give me this ability, I just didn't feel like it would work. My conscience told me it wouldn't work. And well, Nee-san said to listen to conscience. Not that I am the greatest brother in the world, but I would like to believe in her wisdom on this one.
And like that, two more hours passed. Finally, after that time-limit was up, I heard his voice again.
"So, human, have you decided what ability you want me to give you?" He asked as soon as he made sure that I could hear his voice.
"Let's suppose for a moment that I didn't. What ability would you give me?" I figured, since he's God, he might think of something cool. And well, I wasn't wrong in assuming so.
"Oh, I don't know. Conjuration, maybe?" He suggested.
Still, while the ability to conjure anything I want sounds pretty badass and definitely would have limitations that stop it from being useless, I didn't feel it was my type of ability either.
"So, anyway, have you thought of something by yourself?" He asked.
I hadn't thought of anything. That was the truth ... until that point.
When I heard him mention Conjuration, an idea came to mind – an idea that felt right at home with me.
"I have." And so I told him, "The ability I want is – the ability to steal other abilities."
"…" No immediate response came, as I expected.
"What's wrong? Can't comply?" I wasn't actually scared that it might be considered too overpowered, I just wanted to say that to mock him, as something of a revenge for earlier.
"No," He said with a bit of a chuckle, "Of course I can comply."
*****