True Self

My body pierced through the golden membrane surrounding the ceiling, and it felt as if I had dove into a pool of water. Headfirst.

My eyes had involuntarily closed, and I was holding my breath. The only thing I was able to do was to hold onto that golden thread, and hold it with a stronger grip.

I was taken further upwards. And as I went the liquid became thicker, and thicker. Soon, it became so thick that I couldn’t move, couldn’t even open my eyes. This feeling lasted for a while, before all the pressure suddenly disappeared. My eyes immediately flipped open.

The scene before me was somewhat, familiar. I was sitting on a green, grassy hill, under a gigantic tree. The tree was about 10 ft tall, and it was filled with green leaves. Each leaf had a golden imprint of lines on its surface, and I discovered that every leaf was unique in some way. Some were larger, some had a different shape, whereas others had a different golden imprint. Looking closely the imprint seemed to form, a picture?

I looked closely at one of the largest golden leaves near the bottom of the tree, and saw that was a picture of a dictionary. Acting on an impulse, I touched the leaf, and suddenly, it expanded out into millions of words. If I focused on one word, I could feel the distinct impressions I had of it, and the words that I associated it with came closer to form a sphere around it.

Slightly intrigued, I moved my finger off the leaf to find that the words in midair just disappeared, like they never even existed! I moved my finger on and off the leaf, watching the words appear out of thin air and disappear just as quickly as they came. After doing this, my eyes moved onto the other leaves. Each of them had a different image, and I was quite interested in trying some of them out. But just as I was about to move to a leaf with the image of food on it, my eyes swept across the tree trunk, and I stopped. What would happen if I put my hand on the source of all of the leaves?

Closing my eyes, I gently laid my hand on the tree trunk.

…Nothing happened. I took my hand away, but suddenly I felt this strange feeling around my belly, almost as if I had just been stroked by some sort of hand. Strange. So this tree was connected to me by some means?

Focusing back on the task at hand, I drew my attention back onto the leaves. Obviously, my other self wanted me to do something at this tree. Apparently, I could fix my co-ordination here.

I looked along the myriad of leaves for pictures relating to movement, and I found 3. The first was a picture of someone performing a martial art, the second a picture of a kid reaching for a ball, and the third a picture of a toddler imitating his parent’s walking posture. I chose the second one first.

With that decision, the leaf snapped off from the tree and floated onto my hand. Then it expanded into a gigantic sphere of every situation where I had to use one of my limbs to affect the outside world. For example, in a couple of images I was reaching out towards a thrown object, whereas in others, I was kicking at a ball after running towards it. But looking at these images now, a question popped up within my head. What was I supposed to do to fix my co-ordination?

I couldn’t just mentally disregard all the images before I got my ability. That would probably just make my co-ordination even worse than before! But maybe I could…

To make things less jumbled, I moved the memories before I got my ability behind my body. Then I sorted out the images where I preformed the actions correctly from the images where I used too much power, went too fast, etc. And with a thought, those images disappeared.

I wasn’t sure of its effects just by arbitrarily looking at what I had done, but the memories of my failures were rapidly disappearing, leaving only the correct actions in their place.

After doing this, my next thought was to do this with all my memories. Since I was already here, why shouldn’t I further perfect myself? It couldn’t do any harm…

I started to sort through the leaves one by one, eliminating any mistakes I had ever committed within the past. And bit-by-bit, the individual inscriptions on the leaves became more and more perfect…

****************

I picked up the thin book from the floor, and looking at its poor, unadorned appearance, I still couldn’t believe the book was worth $500. Begrudgingly flipping the book open, I read the first page.

‘A Beginning to Your Ability (Vol. 2)’

‘This book aims to expound and add upon the truths discussed previously in this series.

To start off, I will define the 3 types of abilities that one may have. The first one is manipulation. Manipulators are able to control and transform certain materials and energies already in existence with ease, and their advancement widens their ability to control, to transform, and to manipulate a wider variety of things. Manipulators are relatively uncommon, yet their unusual abilities make them a force to be reckoned with.

The second type is augmentation, or more commonly known as transformation. They liken themselves to an animal, or less commonly to a certain object, and this transformation gives them additional strength, speed, etc in exchange for parts of their humanity. Their advancement brings them greater abilities at a lower cost, along with a base, overall strengthening of their body.

Augmenters are the most common type of ability users; 9/10 of the people you find will have some sort of augmentation as their ability. This may sound mundane, but when equipped with modern technology and firearms, Augmenters become quite deadly.

The last type is called the Deviants. Being a special class of ability users, Deviants have a wide range of abilities, but they all have one thing in common. Their ability can bypass the ‘repel’ effect to a certain extent. Not only this, but their abilities are generally much more powerful than most augmenters and manipulators.

Deviants are the least common ability users found naturally, with their numbers making up less than one percent of people who awaken. However, do not think that because of this, they are uncommon. Due to the fact that abilities can be passed down through descendants, although rare, this makes Deviants such as illusionists much more common than one might think.’

I flipped the page, but as I was doing so, the motion suddenly became crisp and refined. Was Nathaniel almost ready to come out?

Shutting the book, I exited the Racetrac. From there I made my way to the house as quickly as possible without alarming any pedestrians. It helped, I might add, that I took the paths off the well-beaten road. I appeared at the door like a gust of wind, and opened the door to walk in. But before I could go to our room, I caught Gabe glancing at me from the corner of my eye. Sparrow wasn’t with him.

Me- “I assume Sparrow is interrogating the man I tranquillized?”

Gabe nodded,

Gabe- “Yeah, her ability is more suited than mine for that sort of thing. But where did you go?”

I responded in a roundabout way, not answering the question. Like some slippery politicians I knew of…

Me- “You were watching the cameras, correct?”

Gabe- “Yes. And?”

Me- “I just walked out of the school, and tried a new way home.”

Gabe could obviously see a few problems with my explanation, but he didn’t call them out. I also wasn’t willing to placate his worries; I didn’t have much time left. But at least he had courtesy befitting of a bodyguard, something I couldn’t say about Sparrow.

Taking advantage of his momentary silence, I promptly walked up to our room. And then I closed the door.

My movements became astonishingly quick as I placed down my backpack and took out a notebook to write on. A mechanical pencil was flipped out of my pocket quickly, and I started to narrate the events that had happened while he was gone along with a few of my speculations on paper.

My writing was crisp, elegant, noble, and every word was written almost as neatly as if I had printed it onto the paper. And suddenly, in the middle of my narrative, a pounding feeling came from within my head. He wanted out!

Going into second gear, the sounds of my pencil scratching paper turned into a constant blur of writing. And within moments, I finished the last line. It read,

‘Burn this after you have finished reading, and scatter its ashes.’

Then I slipped out of control of my mind, and my head slumped over onto the bed. My vision went dark moments later, and I didn’t resist the transition.

******************

What felt like years passed by in mere minutes as I modified my memories at lightning fast speed. The slightly out of sync image of a child learning table manners went fully in sync, and the many images of training in a martial art were perfected. Then, I was finished.

My vision swam for a second, and suddenly I realized I was staring at my room’s ceiling. I lifted up my hands to examine them, and they were filled with all the familiar creases and lines. I pinched myself, and I felt a sharp jolt of pain. This was most definitely the real world.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a slip of paper filled with writing laying on top of a thin book. I picked it up, and started to read the note.

So… While I was gone, he skipped school, bought illegal firearms and armor, bribed a teenage girl with drugs, and used up all of my money? Not only that, but he ended up placing Sparrow in a life threatening situation, and worsened my relationship with Chloe?

I was pissed. Incredibly pissed! As I imagined that stupid smile across his face while he was running around and having fun, I wanted to smack the crap out of him!

Taking a few breaths to calm myself down, I continued to read the note. He had left the helmet and visor at the Racetrac, and he also explained certain details about what he had read so far from A Beginning to Your Ability (Vol. 2).

He encouraged me to read the book, and then he closed off by telling me to burn the note into cinders.

Taking my anger out on the poor sheet of paper, I immediately burned it to a crisp without a second thought.