When I was fifteen years old, Uncle Giancarlo invited me to a marathon he had joined a month prior. He bought me quite a lot of running paraphernalia, a few of which were clearly there to help me help him pick up women. It did not surprise me, for his action and demeanor over the past four years of living together had been quite peculiar. Aunt Stefania had even assigned him our pool house as his designated love nest. It irked Rian and Cassandra at first as they loved taking quick swim and loved not seeing bimbos walking around in their underwear, but, after a few months of them getting used to not seeing a new woman in our kitchen every day, they got onboard with the idea.
Anyway, Uncle Giancarlo took me to his favorite running spot in the city to help me build up some muscles and gain a semblance of a stamina. Although I loathed the weeks of the mind-bending training, most of which I did alone as he had sudden 'emergencies' he had to take care of, I quite enjoyed the progress I made with it. More so right now, seeing as I had a little inkling on how to asses my newfound powers accurately. If I had more than Flight and Enhanced Senses, that is.
•••••••••••
The Rocky Mountains. According to the National Park Services website, it stands over 4,399 meters above sea level and it reaches across six states. It is one of the largest mountain range in North America and, considering rarely anyone ventured past the lowest mountain peak, this would be a great place for training and assessment.
Gliding over the range and coming across a charming view of Mount Elbert's peak and the turquoise lake, I can't help but feel a sense of calm even in the dead of the night. The stars twinkled as I found a nearby mountain slope whose surface was vertically level enough to be affected by a straight punch.
"I got this. I think." Psyching myself up and treating this as lightly as humanely possible. Honestly, my expectations from this experiment were next to none. Not that I don't think I had no other powers, that was just how they had raised me that way. What was it the aunt Stefania used to say?
""Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."" I muttered, remembering her words whenever the three of us would join a competition or even whenever Uncle Giancarlo promises us something.
Ridding my thoughts of expectations, I relaxed my taut calves and flew towards a rock wall. Its rough and craggy surface towering over my body. I had previously crashed into a pit of sand from almost a thousand kilometers, breaking god knows how many bones in my body and yet had miraculously healed over the course of a hot mug of cocoa and a story. The idea of an enhanced regenerative ability is very appealing to me, seeing as what I'm about to do in the next few minutes is, let's be honest, a stupid idea. The winds assaulted my body as I flew closer towards the grey sandstone wall, my hands gingerly touching its surface. "Alright. Test number 1. Super Strength." I muttered as I withdrew my hands, my clenched fists reaching up to my chest before unleashing a punch at the rock wall.
Boom!
My fist slammed into the quartzite as it recoiled a thick load of dust and dirt towards me, its rugged surface widening under the might of my fist. The mountain slope too shuddered, the snow atop the mountain peak quivering for but a second before settling down.
Crack!
I removed my embedded fist out of the metamorphic rock, causing the webbed crack to widen, reaching towards a nearby thin slab or rock that fell off, cascading below the mountain slope.
Boom!
A swelling bloodied fist, a dirt and dust caked body, and an irritated eye was the direct aftermath of my actions. Though all of that was nothing in front of the amazement I felt the moment I destroyed this slope. "Holy shit! I have super strength!" My voice echoing across the mountain as I yelled to the world. I watched my swollen fist and bloody knuckle heal at an obvious rate; the regeneration process was peculiar, albeit slightly painful. As if thousands of small ants were nipping my muscles then reattaching them to different strands, creating a process of reallocation that lasted for an entire minute.
So let's add super strength to the powers checklist. Next experiment: Durability.
•••••••••••
Had you ever have a series of stupid ideas that became stupider as you complete the last dumb idea? For instance, imagine walking on a street corner and seeing a picket with an oddly shaped hole in it. A stupid idea in that scenario would be to stick something inside of it and see what happens to it. The next stupider idea would be to go over the fence, drop your pants, align your naked butt to the hole, and wait for another person to think of your previous dumb idea.
"Now, obviously, I suffered multiple concussions during my stint off the coast of New York because why would I, a normal twenty-year-old man, think of such an idiotic plan?" I asked myself, knowing full well that I was doing this because it's fun and dangerous. Who else would pass up the chance to fall down in to the ground at 30,000 feet? "Not me."
Waving away the clouds that obstructed my vision, I reminded myself of the first time I fell off a high place. I was twelve years old then, a year into being adopted. Cassandra's and I's friendship were going strong; I was the reluctant sensible guy, and she was a mischievous vixen intent on spreading chaos. We were a great duo and one of our greatest hits was jumping on top of Uncle Giancarlo's old Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale, gifted to him by his late father. We would climb that red hood and place our feet on the roof, then flip off down the lawn. But we had a brighter idea. What if we climb up the roof of the house through the attic, then jump towards the car, then flip off and land safe on the lawn?
"17 stitches and a broken femur was worth it seeing his face..." Chuckling at the memory of Uncle Giancarlo's horrified face, my gaze travelled down the mountain and guessed my trajectory. As I heaved one big puff of air, I closed my eyes and felt the zephyr swaying my body. My flying ability had always, since its inception, been about letting go of control, to have instinct take over the wheels, to be nothing but a guide to my invisible wings. But what if my instinct contradicts my thoughts? What if I wanted to fall down voluntarily but my body, sensing an imminent threat to itself, actively struggles to seize control under me?
Boom!
Leaving a loud boom behind me, I dove towards the ground, ignoring all the blaring signals my body was making, the basic instinct of self-preservation. The wind hammered my face as I crossed my arms and brought it to protect my head before quickly turning around with my back hurdling towards the ground. The dark sky under the infinite universe grew larger as I felt my back break, crashing into the ground, sending dust and debris in a circle around me before blacking out.
•••••••••••
Sniff! Sniff! Baaaa!
"Uh, hello? Are you a dead person?" A deep feminine voice and that goddamn mountain goat's bleating brought me to my consciousness. The bleak sight of the morning dawn bringing a tear to my eyes, bathing me in its golden light as if blessing my body with its warm healing.
"Uh, ok. Please say something if you're dead because... well..." The voice rang against my ringing ears when a something pierced my side.
"Argchkkk!" I roared through my disfigured mouth, my lower jaws nearly falling off its sockets. My body was trembling in pain, blood spewing off blood on every broken orifice, making the woman scream in fright.
"Please don't be a zombie!" The god-awful woman kept stabbing me in the side, yelling for me to stop screaming from pain. "Jesus, what the hell is that? Are you... oh what the hell!"
The healing ants under my skin went to work as they carried my mandible and began welding the bones to my skull before stitching my tendons and muscles to strengthen the adhesion. An entire minute passed by before they finished their project and punched in their time-cards.
"S-shtop phoking meeh." I muttered through broken teeth, further frightening the woman.
"Y-you're alive. Oh my god! I thought you were a zombie." Footsteps echoed through the dawning sky, heavy yet hesitant. The ringing in my ears lowered enough to hear her rapid breaths and ever quicker heartbeats. Scared and anxious yet curious enough to draw near me and kneel beside me, the pool of blood dampening her knees and whatever she was wearing.
"Ok-ok. Mindy's gonna kill me. She's a nurse and always tells me stories about things like this. Emergencies. Anyway, she was saying, "You should always know how to do stuff like this because you never know?" and, for the love of me, I just ignored her most of the time..." The woman kept rambling off as she gingerly pressed a cloth into one of my many bloody holes.
"Dhon't. Just let me h-heal." I whispered, keeping my mind from the pain the healing ants brought. Focusing on how the healing ants work, their movements and behaviours, I asked the feminine voice. "W-who are you?"
"Ok-ok. Uh, I'm Elisha Westwind. Nice to meet you, zombie-man." Elisha introduced herself, her deep voice keeping me from slipping into unconsciousness.
"I-I'm Jericho." I whispered back, my eyes gazing towards her blurry figure. A red, purple, and yellow light resembling a woman. "I-I'm not a zombie. Just superhuman."