"I'm fed up with one superhero, and you come back to add another one here? Come on!"
Thomas was standing in the middle of an apartment that was on the rooftop of four levels building. Half of the rooftop had this apartment, with the other half changed into some sort of a sitting place to enjoy the sightseeing of the town around.
The sun was close from setting off, as he and Jax took three hours wandering the town. Jax wanted to show off many things to him, letting him visit lots of places, introducing lots of people to Thomas, and ending up in this building.
In front of Thomas, a twenty year old girl stood. She had decent features, nice body, but her temper was quite explosive. She stood there, crossing her arms, and even stomping one foot on the ground from time to time. She glared at Jax, and the latter showed a fearful expression for the first time since Thomas met him.
"Ahem," Thomas heard this girl throw such explosive words over Jax for a few minutes, and decided to act, "I'm a new superhero in the town. Jax here highly recommended your place for me to stay."
"I do indeed have a vacant apartment here, but you folks… Being a superhero doesn't give you the right to cut most of my rent thanks to that! I hate superheroes! I had enough from one, and now another came in with a tank of water on his back!"
"It's a tree pot…"
"Whatever, it looks like a water tank to me," she scoffed, turning to Jax before adding, "I want to kick you out of here right away!"
"..."
Jax seemed to fear even saying a single word to her. And that made Thomas inwardly sigh.
"If you don't want to rent it, then fine," Thomas was prepared to drop this place out of his plans, "I have a map already, marked with lots of other places to select from…"
He was about to turn around and leave when he felt something soft holding his arm, preventing him from taking a single step forward.
"You…" It was the owner of this building, and she gave him a serious look.
"Don't dream about walking away after wasting my time. Hmph! I hate superheroes, acting all mighty and haughty, as if you own the world."
"Do want to rent me this apartment or not?" Thomas couldn't get what was going on here. Moment ago, she was complaining about him coming here to rent her vacant apartment. And now when he was ready to leave, she jumped and got his arm, preventing him from going away.
"She will rent it to you," Jax finally spoke, attracting her fierce eyes again, "she is just like this, shouting and complaining, yet she needs the money for the rent."
"Who said I'm poor?" she bellowed back, and Thomas could now understand her mindset.
"Sorry but I have to rent a room for me to stay in," Thomas broke free from her clutches, "if you don't mind, let me have the apartment, or else I'll go."
"Don't be this impatient! You, superheroes, are always like this!"
"So…" Thomas stood in front of her, and she sighed as if she was forced to accept such a deal or something.
"Fine! I can rent it to you. However… I hate troublemakers!"
"I'm not one," Thomas shrugged, "what shall we do now?"
"Wait a minute, I'll go and get a contract for you," she didn't forget to glare back at Jax before going towards her bedroom, closed the door, and stayed there for a few minutes.
"She is a very nice person," once she vanished, Jax heaved a sigh of relief, "don't take the wrong impression about her."
"You are speaking now when she isn't here," Thomas didn't miss to mention this, "is she this scary or what?"
"No, but the thing is… Sigh! As we are superheroes, we have the privilege of not paying sixty percent of the rent. And that means she will take a loss from doing so."
"Then she shouldn't," Thomas knew why she was acting like this, but her attitude was quite excessive. She wanted to rent that apartment badly, and he could tell that from how this all ended. But he couldn't understand why she acted this way.
Jax was indeed a treasure trove for information, one with its lid being removed. He spoke about her past, and how she came from a faraway place, without any family, enough funds to buy this building and then lived with renting its apartments.
"Don't call me Genny, call me Miss G!" Before he'd speak about everything related to her, Genny appeared from her bedroom, holding two copies of a contract and a brush.
"Sorry," Jax's face changed, and the look of trust dropped, and fear got over his face. Thomas gave him a blaming look, blaming his soft bones.
"Sign your name here and give me your badge to write down the details from it," Genny placed the contracts over a table.
Thomas found the contract quite simple. In return for renting an apartment, he had to pay two Niks, not that much actually. But when he thought about the discount, he knew he would have paid much higher if not for his identity.
The process of signing the contract didn't take longer than a few minutes. She just copied a series of numbers on the back of the badge, his name, and the SA department number as well.
"Let me get the keys and show the place over to you," she went again towards her bedroom, it didn't take more than a few seconds before coming back with a chain of many keys.
Thomas got his apartment key and went with her to the lower level to check it out.
"The other apartment is hired by a group of superheroes from outside the town," as they arrived at the third floor, there were two closed doors there. She motioned towards one, and Thomas knew the other belonged to him.
"But they aren't here," Jax paused, as he got another glaring look from Genny.
"They paid in advance, a full year in advance," she stopped in front of Thomas' door, crossed her arms as if she was blaming the two for not doing like this group.
"They seem rich," Thomas moved towards the door, not interested in such debate that he got nothing with.
"They not only paid for the one year, but also paid the full price, without any cuts."
"Good for you then," Thomas opened the door and entered his new home. He expected to see a place filled with dust, but a clean, wide room welcomed his eyes.
"You did indeed keep the place tidy and neat," Thomas said in praise, giving her the credit for such a thing.
"I'm not that lazy," she seemed to grow a bit arrogant by his comment. He ignored her and checked the place. It was nice and spacious, filled with everything he'd need.
There were two bedrooms, one study room, and a hall. In addition to a kitchen and a bathroom, the place was indeed quite good for him.
"I like it," he said after checking everything.
"She has a very nice building that no one wants to leave after renting the place," Jax joked, and she raised her nose as if she was delighted by such praise.
"Do you know how to cook?" she asked, and Thomas realised something. He got a place to live in but didn't have any food to eat.
"Forget it," she sighed, "I'll make dinner for you, but this time only. Don't get used to such a treat. You need to learn how to cook for yourself."
"Aren't there any restaurants here? Perhaps take-away ones?" Thomas didn't know if there was something like this here or what. He came from Earth, and there... Food wasn't an issue as long as you got money.
"Take what?" Genny seemed to be startled by what he said, yet she waved her arms as if she took what he said as a way to escape from embarrassing himself, "you have to teach him where the market is, how to cook as well, ok?"
She turned to Jax, and the latter saluted her as if he was speaking with his superior or something, "leave this to me."
"Tsk, as if you can even tie your shoes on your own," she shook her head, and Thomas couldn't help but inwardly agree with her remark.
"Phew! Finally alone," Thomas saw the two out, closed the door, and looked at his new apartment in relief.
He already placed his tree pot over the table. The first thing he did was to check it out. And as he expected, new fruit was formed there, ten in number.
"I don't know on what basis my tree converts Qi into these balls…" he grabbed them and the fog around his tree thickened again. He didn't hesitate and placed these in his mouth, feeling the amazing feeling of energy running through his body.
"What does this power do exactly?" as he consumed his ten balls, he started to call his power. His hands glared in black light, while fine threads appeared out of them.
The threads were short, coming out as if they were thin tentacles emerging from his hands. He felt like he could control these, but they didn't look dangerous or anything.
"I should test it on something…" he kept playing with the threads for a few minutes, trying to let them take any form but failed. They could move around, but never mixed together or anything.
He turned his eyes towards the table that held his tree pot. He waved his right hand as if he was slashing the table using a sword or something.
*Crack!*
Just when his threads touched the table, the entire table shook. The place where the threads touched the table turned all black, showing a hole that rapidly grew, spreading cracks all over it as if it was a glass shattered after throwing a piece of rock at it.
"Damn!" Thomas hurriedly stopped his superpower, moved fast to catch his precious tree pot before falling. The table turned into dust in a span of a few seconds, "it was like fire spread over and ate it!"
He carefully placed his tree pot on the ground, turned around and started to check the table or the dust left over from it.
The entire table got nothing left, not even a single piece of wood. It all turned into a small pile of black dust, one that was so light to fly in the air under his breaths.
"Is this the might of my superpower? It's so cool!" he couldn't control his excitement. This superpower, the one which was deemed to be worthless and without any fighting ability, was something truly amazing!
He looked around and decided to take care of a few chairs as well. With every touch of his superpower, the chairs turned into dust, the same way it happened to the table.
"My superpower is really amazing!" he was now sure that anything touched by his superpower would turn to dust. He even tested on a few of the balls he acquired before, the regular ones that were used to fuel many things in this world.
They also turned into dust. And after testing for an hour or so, he felt exhausted. "I need to take a break… It seems this is my limit in my current level of strength…"
He yawned, stretched his arms. He was feeling much better now. Being useless, one with a superpower that didn't have any fighting abilities sucked.
He realised his true power now. Even if the SA department didn't see any value in him, he didn't care. At least he had something to fight back with, something that no one knew about.
"These threads can't be seen by anyone, even the old and strong superheroes back at the test area missed them…" as he walked towards one of the two bedrooms, he called his superpower again, giving it a long look.
He didn't know how his superpower worked, didn't know if it released fire and burnt down everything to dust, or it worked on another level and destroyed anything down from its basic structure.
He didn't care about such a complicated thing for now. He had a cool superpower, and a way to raise up this power.
He slept for a few hours while a big smile was over his face. When he woke up, it was already late at night. He stretched his arms, feeling more relaxed than ever.
"Blue moon, orange and purple stars… Interesting…"
He entered into a small balcony, one that could only accommodate one chair there without anything else. He looked at the sky, finding a big blue moon shining there, with big stars that shone in bright purple and orange colours.
It was a fascinating sight, one that was totally different from how the night sky on Earth looked like. The moon was like a planet close to this world. And the stars looked much bigger than the ones he used to see on Earth, looking all circular, as if someone scattered shining coins on a black curtain.
"Time to learn more about this world," Thomas got a few things from the resources department back at the SA, one of which was a thick old looking book.
When he read fast through it, he found out it was speaking about the history of the entire world. He got the book, dragged a chair over to the balcony, and started to read its content under the lights of the moon and stars up there.
"Hmm… This world passed over three eras in general… But the book says there isn't any record about the previous two eras. How come they know about them then? Weird…"
The book started by speaking about the history of the world, how it lived through three main eras. The old two didn't leave behind any records about them, according to what the book said. And yet Thomas didn't believe that.
"At least the weird stuff the current superheroes use at the test areas are left over from these old eras…" he muttered while flipping more pages, arriving at more information about the current era.
The current era was called the Great Monarch Era. It was named after the great monarch, the one who started it by unveiling the way to use the F grade superheroes in society.
Starting from there, the world started to walk on the path of a grand evolution. And with it, a fever over the Qi mines spread over.
"What's the relation between the two?" Thomas read through tens of pages speaking about the current era, mentioning lots of uses of the F grade Qi balls and orbs that were produced by the F superheroes.
The book also spoke about the current and intense clash between superheroes and villains. Words tried to describe how righteous superheroes were, how vicious and evil those villains were.
But Thomas didn't like this. He felt like superheroes were the real tyrants, and all this was a conflict over interest, nothing more.
"Superheroes should work to protect the normal people, not to enslave them," he sighed, while thinking about the relation between this clash and the idea that started this era. "Something seems off here…"
For a reason, he felt like this clash was older, way older than the time of the great monarch. The more he read, the more he thought this entire thing was a cover up for this clash, and truth was kept hidden from him and others.
He didn't focus too much on this point. After all, he was an outsider in this world, and didn't know a ton of things about this place or its history.
Yet for a reason, he felt like his destiny was to unveil such mystery one day. After this section, the book started to speak about the general layout of society, with superheroes standing on the very top, and normal people at the very bottom.
He read through the classifications of superheroes, their top tasks and ranks, the most famous superpowers out there. The book also spoke briefly about how to level up one's power, using training Qi techniques that were generally inherited from big families and such things.
"Sorry book, there is another way to evolve as well," Thomas smirked when he read this part. He already got lots of techniques from Earth, yet he didn't feel like they were helping him, not like the tree pot and its magical fruits at least.
The book then would start speaking about sectors, how they appeared out of nowhere, without warning. This was already old news to Thomas, and he flipped through these without interest until he finally arrived towards his task duties.
When he read through this part, he found out he was going to do the same task he was doing back on Earth. He was an investigator, studying cases that involved any misuse of superpowers in the area around the town.
His task was to just investigate, gather intel, find clues, and then handle everything to the Villain Hunter department. He felt unease when he recalled Ellisa, calling her the B*tch in his mind wherever he recalled her name or face.
"She has all the reasons to act mighty and arrogant," he sighed after finishing reading the book. His task wasn't exactly like his Earth's job. He had no power to execute justice, no authority to catch any criminal, no privilege to even fight.
All he had to do was to gather clues and investigate things, nothing more. And that made him feel like his hands were tied behind his back.
He moved his eyes around, watching how calm and silent the town was at such a late hour at night. From the book, he learnt that this town was quite special, as it was a coastal town.
It had a big port, one that led to an open ocean, ending up towards the Isolation zone. According to the book, this place was one of the earliest spots where superheroes first arrived from other older sectors. And it was a place that was destined to see lots of action in the future.