(Third person’s perspective)

In an undisclosed location, a large abandoned warehouse is currently been used as a sort of meeting room for a group of 30 or so people. They have even set up a large, round wooden table with chairs all around complete with refreshments in case anyone gets hungry or thirsty.

On looks alone, no one will be able to spot any unifying factor between all these people. Both males and females present range from teenagers to the elderly and they look to be from all around the world. Their skins range from the palest of white to the darkest black, with everything in between being represented by one person or more. European, Asian, Caucasian, African… It seems like an international conference of some sort.

Though there may be nothing in common in their looks, they do have a very important thing in common that was the factor in all of them being gathered in one place. They all possess powerful unique abilities!

“Alright, now that everyone is here, we can officially begin the first ever meeting of our council!” Said a burly looking bald guy who looked like he had more muscles then he had hair.

Everyone looked excited and nervous at the same time as they anticipated the start of their first ever meeting.

“Ahem… My name is Anna, and I have been elected as the chief of this council for some reason I don’t understand…” Said an elderly looking woman with a dissatisfied expression.

“You have true immortality! And you are the one with the most life experience, obviously you had to be the chief!” exclaimed an Indian girl as everyone else around the table agreed.

“Whatever.” Continued Anna. “We are all here today to think of ways to better the lives of people from all around the world. Thanks to Amir’s ‘Unrestricted Teleportation’ unique ability,” She paused and pointed to an Arab guy with long, shoulder length hair and a broad jawline, “we have been able to gather more than a thousand people so far from all around the world! Using our abilities, we can help them all and protect them for the survival of the human race!”

Cheers and applause erupted from all around as everyone was happy with the progress made so far.

“It has been less than a month since we started this project to search for survivors and bring them all here, and so far it has been going quite well indeed!” Anna said with a small smile. “Now, let’s move on to important stuff. With the addition of Daniel and his ‘Detailed Search’ ability, this process will be able to be sped up by leaps and bounds!”

Another round of polite applause as Daniel, an African-American young man with curly hair and black eyes that looked to be around 20 years of age stood up and bowed politely.

“So, Daniel, could you explain your ability once again so that those who aren’t aware of it yet could understand it better?” Asked Anna.

“Of course Ma’am.” Daniel spoke with a surprisingly deep voice. “My ability allows me to search for anything basically. I set up a sort of search base and the results spring up with whatever I have searched, including ability holders. So, if I ‘search’ for humans with unique abilities in a let’s say 50-mile radius, then the exact real-time locations of all the humans in that area with unique abilities will be revealed to me. I can then sort of ‘select’ a particular ability and extensive details about said ability will be then revealed to me as well.”

Everyone nodded in understanding and though there were a few questions, Daniel answered them all swiftly to get rid of any confusions. After the Q/A session ended, Anna started speaking again.

“As you can all imagine, we can use this ability to pinpoint locations for unique ability holders that could be our allies, or we can use it to search for survivors by just setting the ‘search parameters’ to simply ‘humans’, or we can even use it to detect if any creature with a strong enough ability is coming closer to us so we can be prepared for attacks. The possibilities are endless and we all thank Daniel once again to agreeing with our offer of joining the Council. Now, Daniel, anything particular catch your interest?”

Everyone leaned a bit forward as they paid attention to Daniel once again.

“As a matter of fact, I found two unique ability holders when I searched in a 500-mile radius earlier that caught my attention. Both of these have the potential to be our greatest allies or our most fearsome foes. Their unique abilities give them the potential of becoming much more powerful than all us combined!”

Some people around the table looked shocked and fearful while some just looked at Daniel as if he were crazy. The burly man in particular looked at Daniel as if he had lost his mind, and spoke up with a sneer, “Oh come on. You think someone can become powerful enough to defeat me with my invincibility? Give me a break!” he finished with a hearty laugh as some of the people around joined in.

Daniel scowled but remained calm as he continued, “As I was saying, these two really are extremely powerful. One of them has the ability called ‘Steal’, while the other has the ability called ‘Absorption’. I’ll explain how these two abilities work so you guys know just how serious of an asset or a threat they can become.

As the name suggests, ‘Steal’ gives the ability holder the power to steal other’s abilities and use it as his own. He can steal as many abilities as he likes as there is no limit, though he can only ‘steal’ abilities from humans and no other living thing, and on top of that the person whose ability has been ‘stolen’ actually loses his/her ability! And as I ‘searched’ for more details, I found out that he can even steal unique abilities!”

This time when Daniel finished everyone looked around in alarm and they had tense expressions on their faces. Although before anyone could interrupt Daniel continued on…

“The next guy is similar, but in some ways his ability is better while in others his ability is seriously disturbing. His ability, ‘Absorption’, works pretty similarly to ‘Steal’ as it also allows him to ‘absorb’ abilities from others and use as many of them as he likes, however the plus points are that the person whose ability has been ‘absorbed’ doesn’t lose their ability and he can’t absorb unique abilities.” A lot of sighs of relief went around at this revelation.

“That being said, he can actually absorb abilities from all living things, whether it be animals, monsters, plants or humans, which gives him a broader range of abilities to choose from. The disturbing thing though is how he ‘absorbs’ these abilities. While ‘Steal’ merely needs the person to touch the other person in order to steal their ability, ‘Absorption’ requires the person to actually drink blood in order to absorb the ability!” Daniel finished with a disgusted look.

Everyone immediately started speaking and voicing out their thoughts. Some were of the opinion that ‘Steal’ is a much more powerful and dangerous ability while others thought that ‘Absorption’ got the edge as it wasn’t restricted in terms of living things whose abilities could be absorbed. Some just couldn't get over the fact that there was actually someone out there drinking human blood! The discussions heated up before Anna stood up and spoke loudly once again.

“Calm down everyone. Don’t get so alarmed! Remember, these two are humans, so no matter how dangerous or disturbing their abilities are, they could very well end up being our allies! Even the ‘Steal’ guy! We have all found out how disgusting some humans have turned out to be now that there are no laws anymore, and he could be used to steal away their abilities as punishment! There are many unknown questions for now and we should wait and confirm things before jumping to conclusions.” She glared at everyone present as they all quietened down.

“I actually also was able to get a list of all abilities these two have ‘stolen’ or ‘absorbed’ so far, and I have listed them all down for you guys to have a look at. We can look through the list to plan what to do next.” Daniel spoke up while handing two pieces of paper to Anna.

Anna passed around the two lists as everyone started discussing and planning on what to do about these two powerful unique ability holders. Some wanted to follow them around to see what they were like first, some wanted to meet them in person to see how they were like while some simply thought that it would be best to kill the both of them and be done.

The revelation from Daniel that there was another unique ability holder with the ability of 'Absolute Healing' in close proximity to the 'absorption' guy made everyone decide that the 'absorption' guy should be dealt with first, as the Council was lacking a person with a powerful healing ability.

As to what they meant by 'dealing with the absorption guy', only time will tell...

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Author's note: A small interlude that sets up the stage for things to come. What do you guys think?

I already expect questions about how come 'Steal' allows the person to get unique abilities but the MC can't get unique abilities. Don't worry, all things shall be explained in due time. :P Give me a few chapters to explain how this all works, so if anyone asks question about this subject I won't be able to answer them right now as that could spoil a bit of the plot.

Think of Daniel's ability as the 'Advanced Search' option in Google I guess, basically he can search for anything and get all details related to whatever he searched. So he would be able to know more about an ability than even the ability holder! Feel free to ask questions about his ability, I don't know if I did a well enough job of explaining it.

OH!! I just got a 0.5 star review a few minutes ago. I know reviews are subjective so I don't really mind if anyone gives me such a low score, but I would appreciate it if the person voting could reveal to me what he/she didn't like about the story so that I could improve on it. If you don't want to reveal it in comments or in the review section, feel free to PM me. Thanks!

And thank you very much to all of you for reading! :)

(Will answer to your comments on the last two chapters now...Give me a few minutes)