We had two more days until our planned maneuver. And it turned out that my concept of how my abilities work… Our entire network of assumptions, really, had been wrong.

Terribly, terribly wrong.

I didn’t build up ‘resistance’ to things.

The last thing I had built a resistance to was heat, in the galley oven.

The day after our date, I decided to go ahead and do a little more resistance training with Tino, and his first hit was full-strength because he knew I could handle it.

And he pasted me. I had a brief moment of clarity before I went unconscious and ‘died’ as my body exerted its power to start resetting me back, rewinding the entropy to a point where I was still healthy.

I could feel it now, like a set of vials in my mind’s eye. Once I was conscious again, and eating my fool head off, I realized that the energy I felt within me was like a sort of reservoir. The basin, the part used to hold it all, was my resistance to entropic forces, and within that were stored other forces.

Now that I could recognize it, I could tell how it flowed.

My absorption was like sponges set into the side of the lake. Once I had been exposed to an energy type for a while and could recognize it, I started building a new frame for supporting that kind of energy. Like the porous rocks in an aquifer, holding the energy. The worse exposure I survived, the deeper the potential aquifer became. Tino had beaten me pretty effectively.

There the analogy broke down a little, though, because the more full the aquifer became, the more easily it poured water into the lake, filling up my energy.

That lake was like 100% of my energy, and if I was prepared for it, say by getting the shit kicked out of me by Tino for a while, the more the dry sponge would get dampened, ready for more energy.

But it drained the lake’s energy. In general, my deepening reserve could be used to keep all of my sponges damp at a small level, like 20% or so, but applying too much at once would spill the energy over like trying to pour water on a dry sponge.

Now that I was finally aware of it, I was able to sort of control where I wanted the energy to go when I wasn’t using it. It took some time to do so, like twenty minutes, and I couldn’t absorb a whole lot more energy than what I had experienced before. Meaning, if I wanted to survive getting dropped into the sun, I would have to slowly get dropped into the sun until my heat sponge thing had grown strong enough to absorb that much energy.

I also had no idea if my skeleton, the core of my energy absorption, could actually survive getting dropped into the sun. Probably not.

It seemed like I was always at least a little immune to forces I had survived exposure to before, but unless I was either exposed to slowly growing levels of force I had to consciously decide and ‘push’ where I wanted my energy absorption jelly or whatever to work.

I also figured out why I had less need to ‘burn off’ extra energy as my resistance training had increased. My absorption abilities, when ready for extra powers, sort of ‘spilled out’ into other energy absorption types before they needed to be dispersed.

In practical terms, that meant that if I let Tino beat on me for a while, the extra kinetic energy spilled over into absorbing other types of energy. We discovered this by teasing me with an arc welder for a while, and after I was starting to feel overly full of energy, Tino tried to paste me again.

Did I mention yet that training my absorption was not much fun?

Of course, the easy way to deal with it was to let Naomi disintegrate me until I was ready to pop… at that point, every one of my absorptions was capped.

At that point, Caelo, who had been watching my training, decided what my ‘cowl name’ was going to be.

She signed to me while I was building my energy on the deck by letting Tino pound me a little. It was actually kind of cool, the energy burned off fairly quickly, but I was getting better at holding on to the surplus over time.

The amount I could use was directly related to the amount I absorbed. If he hit me at full strength three times, with my kinetic absorption maxed, I could generally harness the ‘extra energy’ filling whatever I called my reserve pools, my other absorptions, to return that much force… as we had discovered, if I used it all at once, I could actually hit harder than Tino himself.

Not that I would do that, since his own resistances were about equal to what he could dish out, and unlike me, he had to heal from injuries the hard way.

“You are like Nemesis. You know, that planet that’s supposed to be always on the opposite side of the sun from Earth? You absorb exactly what is thrown out at you, and return it as a force. Can you return a different force than is dished out?” Caelo signed. Now that she was practicing, her FSL was flowing out much more quickly and smoothly than it had before.

“I have no idea. I mean, I guess theoretically that should be possible, I absorb the force, after all, but your normal mask only has to learn how to dish out whatever power they are using. I wouldn’t even have the slightest clue how to toss out a fireball or anything like that.”

She nodded and signed, “But if you saw the powers being used against you, could you do it?”

I chuckled, “Again, no idea. If I could peer into someone’s head, and see and feel what they did to use a power, maybe? It would certainly help my job as a disposable mook, anyway… If someone wanted to fake their death in a really believable manner, being able to use their powers as I got killed would certainly sell it, right?”

Hmm. Nemesis.

“What’s she saying?” Tino asked. He was gradually trying to learn some FSL, but it was a far cry from recognizing a few signs to being able to follow a full-speed conversation.

“She’s calling me Nemesis. She thinks if I knew how people’s powers worked, I could use them after my absorption to their particular type filled up that pool. It’s a very cool idea, and if I was a mind reader that knew how they worked, it might be possible.”

Tino grinned evilly. “You return strength because you already know how that works, then?”

I shrugged noncommittally. “Maybe. I mean, that makes logical sense, but so does the fact that I cannot use the energy any other way. I have never shot fire out of my ass or anything like that, so it might just be a pipe dream.”

“So it’s possible, but you don’t know how,” he stated. “But I think Caelo might have just nailed your cowl name. As far as we have been able to tell, you seem to be able to absorb any sort of energy, including energy drain, like cold. So your cowl name should be something like Nemesis.”

I groaned. “That just sounds evil as shit.”

He nodded, “That’s the point. If the name is intimidating enough, you might not even need to fight as much. Oh no! It’s Nemesis! If we fight him, he might absorb our powers and use them against us!”

“Isn’t Nemesis already taken, though?”

Tino nodded, “Yeah, There are probably a dozen cowls that use it. How about…”

Caelo grinned and signed ‘contradictory but true’ and then fingerspelled ‘Paradox’. No word in ASL or FSL for that particular concept.

“How about Paradox? I don’t want to wind up on every cape’s ‘must kill’ list, and it expresses a similar concept.”

Tino shook his head firmly, “No, There’s a weird cape that uses that as his name. He wears power armor that is stronger than steel but is made out of cardboard, and I think he’s a tinker that uses magical science. Good guy, though, and probably not worth a name challenge.”

Naomi had seen that we had turned to talking instead of just resistance training and headed over. “Is something wrong?”

I shrugged, but Tino answered, “we are trying to figure out a good cowl name. That way he can use that name instead of getting saddled with something stupid by the press, like ‘invulnerable dude’. You know how bad they can be.”

“Yeah, we sort of figured out a little better how my ability works, and we are sort of torn between names, except I think Nemesis will pretty much call the killer capes out of the woodwork, and Paradox is already taken by someone I wouldn’t want to try and fight for it because he is supposed to be an actual good guy.” I shrugged. “I am not too worried about killer capes, myself, but I wouldn’t want you to get caught up in the inevitable destructive rampages those types cause.”

Naomi looked thoughtful, “When someone loses a name challenge they usually just add a qualifier or blend the words together. Like Dark Paradox or Paranemesis.”

Hmm. Thought-provoking, but not my forte. “I guess we could go greek or just get overly weird, without sounding like some kind of bane. Or maybe just… go weird, like uhh...Powerdox. Heh.”

All three of them were thinking. Naomi finally broke the silence. “I like it.”

“Huh?” I said, brilliantly.

“I like it. It’s like a paradox, but specifically for powers. And it has a feel, without actually telling people what your ability is. Cowls usually go for something scary but meaningless, to protect against knowing exactly what their powers are, like Doctor Demon whose powers have nothing to do with demons or fire.”

“Too many capes like to stick their powerset right in their name, which gives cowls a huge leg up. If you know that Lightning Lass and Sonar are out to arrest you, you won’t set up defenses against super-strong metahumans, you will prepare for exactly what they are going to deliver, soundwaves and electricity. I always assumed that was dumb.”

She shrugged, “I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but my cowl name is Vapor. It has just enough connection to my powers to hint but doesn’t just throw it out there. Most people will assume I turn to smoke or fly fast or something.” She smiled a little, “Still, Vapor and Powerdox. Sounds intimidating but not someone you call out the Defenders to deal with.”

I nodded, “I can get behind that. Powerdox and Vapor, though… You always want to go with the higher syllable count first in a team.”

She beamed, “Who’s buying the food?”

“Vapor and Powerdox it is,” I chuckled.

One of the cooler parts about Naomi is that she could make herself mostly insubstantial, only affecting parts of the world in small doses. She could not do it for long, since she couldn’t breathe while doing so, but she could sort of walk across the air or climb up a wall nearly as fast as jogging.

Which was great for her, although I still had to slog. Her black outfit was made entirely of silk, which meant her abilities could somehow turn it insubstantial as well, but that didn’t help me much. It shouldn’t have been much of an issue, except that the place we were breaking into was on the top four penthouse levels of a 22-story building.

When she said we were breaking into a bordello owned by the Sardenez family, which was a branch of the Quattro de Mayo Cartel, I had assumed… well… some kind of private building out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe a 3-4 story mansion, at worst.

In this case, though, we are talking about a luxury resort hotel. The top 4 floors were recessed, giving each end of the oval-cut building a set of steps with pools, places for private parties, and world-class amenities including, it seemed, very expensive company, your choice of chemical refreshments, and a great turnaround for laundering money and goods obtained by other than legal means.

Our job was to send a crippling message to the Cartel. They had recently purchased the facility, and Kjootoo’s weird sources said they were using it as a temporary holding place for the money they were gathering in Florida.

Kjootoo’s people were careful to remain slightly below the DEA’s radar in Florida because selling weed and low-end meta drugs just didn’t offer the kind of incentives that busting a hundred million worth of Cocaine does. Sure, you could probably bust hundreds of low-end Weed sellers, but what would you get out of it?

A bunch of two-year sentences if their lawyers were crap, no real cash or product they could pass off to the alphabet agencies to sell secondhand, and a huge rush of ‘legalize pot’ propaganda at the end of it.

The problem is, they were cutting into Kjootoo’s client base and trying to headhunt his dealers for a bigger score with the hard stuff. Vapor and Powerdox were in an ideal position to do two jobs.

The first one was to take out their laundering supply. Possibly millions of dollars worth of cash, as well as a lot more in other valuables, like hard drugs.

Millions in cash were kind of rough to deal with, but Vapor was more than capable of destroying their entire supply of drugs if she could get to it. She was definitely a class C, if not higher, because of the destructive potential of her abilities.

The Cartels had a LOT of metahumans. Most of them were goon-types, who could be counted on to make themselves scarce if things were not going well, but more than a few were psychotically loyal minions. Mostly they were class D or lower, but a class C boss was not out of the question.

Our plan, such as it was, was for me to create a distraction, and draw out the metahuman types that could threaten Vapor. Because it was in the heart of Miami, it was unlikely that there would be any kind of real ordnance used by the baseline human types, so I was going to create a ruckus that should draw out the meta types.

Usually, you wouldn’t go after the cartels unless you had serious backup or caught them in an undefended position. As I said, they had a LOT of metahumans. Enough, or the right kind, of meta could drop even a class C team like the defenders, and the Cartels liked getting ahold of the weirder types that had unusual abilities that might ignore a tank-type hero’s defenses.

It was hoped that I could soak up their attacks, and survive… and even if I didn’t, I would most likely live through it.

Yeah. Not my favorite plan. But I couldn’t magically appear on the top floors, it was well-defended, and playing distraction was kind of my thing. I’d even be wearing a set of heavily-armored fatigues and a mask made of a titanium alloy to set the tone for the assault.

It was going to hurt, but if Vapor could get a lot of the higher denomination bills and non-drug valuables to a drop point, I would get 20%. Plus, Kjootoo was offering each of us a bonus if it went off without any problems. It wasn’t so much that Naomi was working for her dad, as he was her source for the data we needed on a good target.

The building was owned by the Cartel, and the point was to cause as much destruction as possible in a short time and then get the hell out of dodge. If capes showed up, the Cartels cowls would most likely vanish, leaving me holding the bag, but if I were under constant energy assault, I should have enough energy to disappear myself very quickly.

The official local capes, the Miami Sun, were about 12 people, but they usually only sent out about four at a time for any particular altercation, since trouble tended to happen in waves. I only hoped that with the amount of meta abilities getting thrown around, they would decide to send out their heavy hitters instead of their weird team. Why? Because their heavies were specialized for dealing with various metahuman abilities but were nowhere as good as their B team for unusual capture techniques.

I was worried that if someone like Gravix showed up, I might find myself floating, unable to escape, or if they called in an independent like Galactica… well… force fields didn’t actually damage you, did they? I could find myself pounding uselessly against the inside of a starry shell until my energy wore off and I was a bug on a fly strip.