Gertand, the Northern Emperor, was not the most powerful Super, not even close. The Northern Empire was the largest acknowledged empire, at least in terms of geography. He had a shortage of people though.
"How is this batch coming along Ternka?" Gertand asked his Head General.
"They are talented recruits. They all had HPA scores over 6, and each was already an accomplished soldier," General Ternka said. He brushed back his brown and silver hair then looked down at the medical chart projected into the air from his wrist cpu. "We are being conservative with the augmentation process, sir. I know we want to push and achieve small s Super class soldiers, but the last aggressive augmentation was a complete failure. We can't afford to waste any talented soldiers." Ternka looked up at his leader, seeing the calm violet of his eyes.
"Of course. I'd rather a full roster of A6 soldiers than a few A8s and a mass funeral. You know how I feel about that." Gertand's brows furrowed, and he said "We are missing something. There is a key to further Augmentation growth. We need that key first." He smiled then, "I'm glad we are about to welcome a new cohort of powered soldiers."
'Ternka is so careful, but he is right to worry. I don't know why I let that researcher conduct that experiment... I guess I wanted to believe him,' thought Gertand. He tried not to dwell on that debacle, 10 good soldiers dead and a mad scientist who ran away. 'Someday Dr. Xeno, you will pay for those lives you sacrificed to your research.'
"Lets see how the A squads are doing, Sir," Ternka said.
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The blue woman threw a rock the size of a pony at a group of men more than 20 meters away. They didn't panic, and instead rushed behind a slight looking fellow in grey workout gear. He raised his hands and a shimmering field projected out towards the rock. They collided soundlessly and the rock slid to the earth, still 6 meters from the group.
"Dammit," She said, slamming her hands together. The sound reverberated through the area.
"Are you sad that you didn't kill us Tiff?" the forcefield guy said, his smile softening the serious question.
"Screw you Ryan. I thought I'd gotten stronger than this and your forcefield would at least, I don't know, bend or something."
Watching from the observation platform, hovering about 10 metres in the air, Ternka said "Her HPA assessment was a 6, and after treatment she achieved a full level 6 augmentation. You know how rare that is."
Gertand noticed that she was almost 8 ft tall and perfectly proportioned, as well as being blue.
Tiff was walking towards the group now, her eyes downcast and her stride short. The closer she got, the smaller she became. By the time she was next to them, her skin had turned a creamy shade of mocha and she was now about 5'10".
"That is impressive. The process must be improving if we are getting such good conversion rates lately, great job," Gertand said. The violet in his eyes swirled though. Unspoken between them was the knowledge that the improvements in the augmentation process were due to Dr. Xeno's work, so it was tainted by the atrocities committed to achieve this breakthrough. He turned towards his head general. "I have to ask Ternka, but how does an A6 soldier have such strength? That was easily on the small s Super scale," Gertand said, watching the beautiful soldier below.
"And why does she change colour and size?" Ternka said with a smile. "This is why I wanted you to witness this cohort. Nearly 5% of them have expressed a power after the augmentation process," he said, leaning closer to his emperor.
"5%, are you sure?" The colour in his eyes intensified. "We barely had enough power expression to give it a percentage before. Is this also due to his improvements?" Gertand was excited. Power expression. 'Holy fuck, this could change everything,' he thought. "Tell me everything."
"We don't know if it is because of Xeno's improvements, or this is just a talented cohort of soldiers. We'll have to do more rounds of augmentations before we know, but this could greatly accelerate the program." Ternka started to pace around the platform, and he pointed towards Tiff and Ryan. "They have the most obvious powers of this group. Ryan is a P4 field generator, and Tiff has a P3 transformation ability with attendant powers. As you know, the A scale is linear, but the Power scale is more like exponential. We have had so few people generate powers that there is a lot we don't know."
Ternka's excitement was starting to build, Gertand could see it in the way his pacing increased and his eyes grew wider. Gertand was excited too about the possibility for power expression to increase. He could imagine squads of power users cutting through the opposing armies.
"So you're saying the Power level doesn't correspond to their A level. These powers seem incredible for such a low number, what would a P10 be like?" Gertand stopped suddenly. 'Is it possible? Can we develop a human into a full Super?' Gertand was equally excited and terrified by this thought. "How can we determine someone's Power potential? Is there a test, or does the HPA test measure it?"
"We don't know sir, it seems to have no correlation so far. Tiff has a higher HPA score than Ryan, but his Power is at least an order higher than hers. They didn't exhibit their powers right away, they both developed a few weeks into their rehabilitation training." Ternka paused, the next thing still stymied him, and scared him. "Another interesting fact, that we haven't told anyone, not even the soldiers themselves... But their A levels improved after the powers manifested. Tiff is now stronger even when not transformed."
"Amazing. We need to understand this General Ternka. And, we need to keep it as secret as possible," Gertand said. 'This could change the face of the world. Again.'
Supers destroyed the world, it was true. Humans hated them, Gertand felt it deeply. He knew that saving the planet's ecology, furthering their science, increasing their genetic potential, nothing would make humanity forget.
'They don't know that what comes next is so much worse,' Gertand thought to himself.
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She sat on a slab of stone, carved into the wall of the deep cave. The only light illuminating her obsidian black hair, pale skin and jet dark eyes, was the coruscating blue energy in front of her. It crackled and shifted like static electricity, and seemed to form into shapes and show images.
"Finally," she said, her voice rasping, as if from disuse. She lounged back on her stone seat, stretching her long legs clad in a leather so dark it shone. A smile creased her face and she stared up into the impenetrable dark of the cavern above. "Soon they will all return."
Beyond the blue glow, on the cavern floor writhed a group of creatures, vaguely human shaped, but covered in rags. From seemingly nowhere, she threw a hunk of meat at the monsters.
"Soon."