“NoOooooOooOooOoOOOOO. How could this happen to me? My precious weed.”

“Honey? Are you okay?” My dad yells from below.

“Yeah, I am. Just give me a minute, okay?”

I flip through my clothes many times over, looking for a specific jacket. Yes! No! Flipping it over, rat guts covered the back of it. It’s my favorite jacket, I really don’t care enough about the rat guts even though I should. It’s got the an inside pocket where I can hide my leftover weed and it’s just long enough to cover my bruised knuckles. It’s almost perfect.

Grabbing a spare elementary school backpack I left in my closet (I knew it would be useful one day), I first filled it with a few of my favorite comics and mangas. Looking around, I tried to find what I would need next. A comb, lighter, pillow, blanket, and spare shoes seemed good enough.

Running down the stairs, I see my dad already packed in his hiking gear and walking stick. He turned his head and looked at me. “You okay? You ready to go? You look kinda disheveled.”

“I’m okay.” I quickly say. “Let’s go, I’ve got everything I needed.”

“Well okay darling. If you say so.”

As I start walking down the sidewalk, a feeling in my gut hits me. “Hold on, Dad. I forgot one more thing sorry, I’ll be right back.”

Running up the stairs and back to my room, I open the back of my desk drawer and pulled out my baby pipe, hidden behind a bunch of drawer junk. Almost closing the desk drawer, I find my grandpa’s mahogany knife lying on top. I’ve never even thought or used this thing in the past few years, I’ll gladly use it as an excuse. Whipping it in my pocket as well, I head outside.

“What did you forget?”

“Grandpa’s knife, the one he gave to me before he passed.” I showed it to him, flashing the blade in the sunlight.

He gave me a slight, serious nod. “He’d be happy that you were using it.”

The walk back to the hospital soon became boring. During walks, I would practice splitting my mana in half, then half again. Pulsing the mana in waves along with my heart would leave a calmness in me that I treasured. Not sure what else to do, I would follow those repetitions wherever I would go.

Arriving at the hospital was nothing special. I asked my dad if we could go back up the emergency exit at the stairwell instead of the front entrance, reminding myself I’m carrying contraband.

Opening the door to the hospital, my mom acted like everything was okay again.

“Give me a hug, honey. I missed you.”

“I missed you too mom. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“It’s okay, you’re just stressed from all these changes and your brother. It’ll be okay.”

Again, she never fully apologised but I get over it like I usually do, wanting to keep the peace between us. I approach my brother and throw another blanket on top of him, squishing it into his sides. Touching his cold hand, a pulse was still felt, hope still lingering in my thoughts.

Splitting my mana into a fourth of my total mana, I guide it to my fingertips. Guiding my hand around his wrist, I wrap my fingers around firmly. Feeling his mana pulse alongside his veins, I try to imagine his mana flowing throughout his body. Closing my eyes, I slowly seep my mana into his stream, reaching for that flow of mana. I hit it! Opening my eyes, I see a light twitch in his right eye. Not sure if it was just my delusions or that I actually helped him, I excitedly looked forward to the future.

A schedule soon followed as life usually makes it happen.

Everyday, I would wake up, and practice strengthening my brothers mana for 15 minutes. Next, I would go to my mom’s new church, volunteering to help feed people and myself. I wouldn’t go to the sermons, sneaking out away from my mom.

Behind the church and hospital, a forest of rocky pines filled acres and acres of land. More than 50 for sure. I would sneak out, follow a somewhat path till I hit a small creek of slow moving water. Following the creek to the left for a good ways, a small open clearing came into view. Behind the clearing, a small rocky cavern jutted out of the mountain. It wasn’t much, but it was my home.

My backpack, pipe, and comics sprawled out in the corner, a content smile filling my face. In the clearing, I dug a small pit and filled it with firewood, building fires on cold days. I would come here as often as I could to practice my abilities in peace, to get everyone from the busyness of the town.

Following a ritual, I would take a hit of my pipe and sit in the lotus position on the cold cavern floor, meditating my mana inside me. I would do this until I felt completely relaxed and comfortable with practicing my mana. My foundations were still weak, it still took a lot of concentration to move my mana in my body. I knew it needed to be instinctual and concrete, so I can adapt to situations quickly and surely.

Taking off my shoes, I could feel the pulse of the mana in the earth beneath me. While meditating, I would ever slowly try to pull some mana from the earth. I could feel the deep, rich mana fill me up, an earthy wholesomeness, grounding me to this planet. I try to picture gently pulling from the earth and it’s never ending well of mana. Every now and then I can feel it’s ancient pulse slowly rocking me back and forth.

Fuck, I’m kinda high. Pushing myself up, I stretch and practice my few abilities.

For now, I realised that I need an offensive, defensive, movement, and utility ability. I feel like that would round me off so I can at least defend myself in a variety of situations. I’ve also never had this thing called “talent” and now don’t even have a crutch like skills or abilities. The only thing I’ve ever been proud of is my autistic determination to do the same thing over and over again a million times. I’ve always enjoyed fighting games and would consistently play well, as I’d go into practice mode and practice the same move, over and over again until it became muscle memory. I hope to do the same for my mana empowered abilities.

My first inspiration for an offensive move came from Joe’s punch. I also happen to love Gon from Hunter X Hunter, to which I brought and read the manga over thoroughly. Walking up to the nearest tree, I split my mana in half, guiding the rest of it to my palm.

The first few tests practicing punches didn’t go so well. Punching the tree with just my mana-enforced my skin protected me but didn’t do any more damage. Enforcing just the bones created more “umph” behind the punch but my hand started bleeding immediately after. Apparently you also have a bit of muscles in the palm as well that had strained so I mana enhanced it as well. Wrist pain became an issue as well after a while. Basically, everything from the wrist up had to be coated.

It’s harder than you think, imbuing mana into muscles you didn’t know existed before. If you missed enhancing something, you could immediately tell after. Either from pain or a soreness that nothing else has.

You couldn’t just blanket wash everything with mana, it’d be too big of a waste of mana to keep up.

After punching with a fully enhanced fist, bark pulled off and a small indent appeared in the tree. Happy with success but not the power, my inspiration from HxH gave fruit. After enhancing my hand completely, I gathered another fourth of my mana into my hand, making my hand dense with mana. Another punch at a tree exploded with energy and cracked it visibly. A happiness I didn’t know existed. I was improving. For the past week, I’ve been practicing moving my mana into my hand faster and faster. Now it only takes me 6 seconds for me to be ready to punch full force, although I use most of my mana. I call it a win. I know that there are muscles in my arm that I need to enhance to swing my arm stronger but I need an anatomy book to learn more about that.

Defensively, I can enhance my skin or bone at moment of impact to protect myself. The longer I hold it, the more my mana drains and I can’t hold up defensively in one spot for more than a few seconds before my mana drains out. That’s why I need to be able to just flare it up at the moment of impact then stop it immediately to not waste mana. It’s not as easy as it looks and I don’t have a way to test it so I usually don’t practice it enough.

Movement, I imbue mana into the skin on my feet to walk quietly. It’s not much, but again I have to time it so I only imbue it at the moment of impact with my feet against the ground, it’s not as easy as it looks. I practice this whenever I have the chance to, walking around silently.

Lastly I have my mana empowered shout. I’ve been focusing on strengthening my vocal chords but I feel like I’m doing something wrong as my throat is always sore after. I need to do some research before I could potentially lose my voice or hurt myself.

Practicing for a couple hours. I meditate and take one last hit off the pipe before heading out.

Making my way through the woods and arriving at the hospital, I walk in on my dad and mom praying over my brother.

“Oh Lord, please give our child your blessing. We love him and want him to come back to us. Please, Lord. Please. Please. Please. Please.” My dad finished saying with a few too many “please’s” at the end. My mom held his hand, silently weeping next to him. A small light appeared over my brother and entered his body.

“Hey.”

“Where have you been all day?” She wipes away her tears.

“Mr. Jones came up and asked me to help him to bring some spare clothes to the church. I also helped him clean out his neighbors house so someone can live there.”

“Oh. Well let’s go grab some dinner at the church then. Do you know Steven from down the street? “Yeah.” “Well he killed this giant ugly pig with 6 tusks. You have to try it, it’s delicious.”

“Okay, mom.” I fake my smile.