Chương 115: Redshift

After the handshake, Diamond Bob and I had taken our seats. My gaze passed over to the silvery device next to us, sitting on the table. From there, it then moved towards Sam.

"So what's this supposed to be?" She spoke, matter-of-factly, without any stutter for once in a while.

"Atomic clock. We've got three of them. Two are in here, one is outside. I'm not going to go over all the specifics of how they work but what will be relevant for you at the moment is they're very precise, but certain things related to theories for your powers could make them change. Doctor Tudor is going to finish examining all the photos from your last test while we handle this one." I cocked an eyebrow.

"It's just an arm-wrestling thing, isn't it? Is he gonna have enough time?"

"Well," she shrugged.

"Ask him." With a gesture, she brought my attention back to Diamond Bob as he struck a pose, flexing both his arms. His skin developed a shimmer and lost color, before suddenly looking like vibrant crystal.

"The 'diamond' is literal, son," Diamond Bob stated.

"There's a whole lotta complex mechanisms to it but what you need to know is that I'm your hardest counter you'll ever meet. Literally. Nothin' can move me when I'm like this, 'cept for myself." He then squat down into his seat, resting his hands on the table. Sam spoke up.

"Diamond Bob has a unique power that gives him an impervious diamond body that's resistant to all force."

"Once walked through a speedin' train and the only harm came to my bolo tie. I don't wear one anymore." He grinned again. The glint off of his teeth brighter due to the material he was now made from.

"And what he's failing to mention is it's tied to his net worth. The richer he is, the sturdier he gets." I cocked an eyebrow.

"So he's got a lot of money?" She took a deep breath.

"The Super Commission worked with the Department of Treasury to give him a temporary debit card with the value of all the gold in Fort Knox. It can be deactivated at any point, to keep him loyal. But it means he presently, along with his other assets, has a net worth somewhere in the range of over two hundred billion by market value."

"I couldn't even begin to imagine how to quantify how hard I am right now. That train story happened around just my first half a million." Squinting at him, I glanced over to Sam again.

"…Why would you guys do that?"

"Because it means you can exert as much strength as you want without hurting him. We need you to go all out for this. He's not very strong, either, just resistant. It's just about getting his hand down without any worry about him pushing back." I nodded, before pointing towards May through the window.

"What about her?"

"Second part of the experiment. For full transparency, she will be pointing an infrared light just next to your head and observing how it functions on the electromagnetic spectrum. You will not be able to see it or feel it, and it physically cannot harm you. Sunlight on a cloudy day affects you more."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Right, um," she started.

"So I will be clear, this room is soundproofed." My neck tensed.

"I-It's a byproduct of the room being built from the same parts as the old training room. Alongside that, we did tell Diamond Bob he has permission to incite you for the purpose of getting more strength out of you. With the soundproofing, you guys have full confidentiality with whatever you discuss. If he goes too far, you raise a hand and we stop the experiment. He will lose that net worth very, very fast." The crystalline man rubbed his head.

"Oh shucks, I wouldn't try to actually hurt him. I'm not a guy who hurts people in general! Just ask my second and third wives!"

"…Which wife are you on now?"

"Eighth," he stated, nonplussed.

"Why do you-""They get sick of the superhero life very fast. This one's the one, though, longest marriage I've had yet." It was at that point that I realized behaving this strangely may have also been a way to piss me off. I just shook my head and brought my hand up.

"Alright, so are we getting started?"

"Let me just get out to make sure all the observation systems are set and then you're good to go." With that, she immediately hurried out of the room. After a couple of minutes I saw her through the window next to May, whom she tapped the shoulder of. With that, May perked up and pointed a finger at me. Not to indicate me, or to draw my attention, it seemed. I remembered that her fingernails counted as a reflective material. I was too used to her sticking to mostly her eyes and mouth.

Wait if she could do it with her fingernails, why did she always use her eyes and mouth? No, no, conversation for later. Didn't matter right now.

"So," Diamond Bob started, bringing his own hand up to grip mine. I couldn't really feel it much. So he really didn't get any change in strength. That, or he was holding back. Either was possible, but what I knew for now was that I couldn't build my expectations around him being strong.

"You're a pretty rough type. I imagine you've arm-wrestled before, no?" I shook my head.

"Nope. Too high risk, I'd tear people's arms off." He nodded.

"Okay, I understand. Do you know the formal rules?"

"There are rules?"

"There's entire championships around it. I'll give you the skinny on that. First off, we gotta keep palm to palm contact." He wiggled his fingers to draw attention to our clasped hands.

"Next, get your shoulders good and square, we gotta be looking at each other face on at the start." I adjusted in my position to be fully facing him.

"Next, your elbow does not leave the table. You do that, it's a foul, we start over from the top. So keep it nice and flat to mitigate the chance of it slipping off." I nodded, my arm moving to try and spread out the surface area of my elbow on the table.

"Anything else?"

"So normally they got pegs for your off-hand to hold. I dunno why they didn't do that with this table, but then again half the people here seem to be city-slickers who probably never did anything harder n' a thumb war. So all I'll do is tell you to keep your other hand away from the table. Hold your leg, put it behind your back, whatever. I'd say grip the table but I think you'd rip a chunk out of it." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Another nod from me.

"Alright, so when do we get started?"

"On your go. You ain't pushin' me, so just get started whenever. I'm already resisting." I stared at him for a few seconds, just trying to parse his face, see if maybe he was hiding some kind of punchline behind those eyes, but nothing stood out. He seemed to be serious about it. So, I took his word for it and began to push against his hand. That's when I felt something I hadn't experienced for a long, long time: Resistance. Real resistance.

Resistance was something I'd never really felt to this scale before, admittedly. The crab's entire weight on me was less force against me than this. It wasn't like I was trying to push a wall, or a mountain, or even an entire country. It was like I was trying to push against the entire planet. And he was just sitting there as I sank more and more strength against him, my eyes bulging out from just confusion and surprise. Like there was some kind of abstract prank.

"You started pushin' yet, son?" He asked with a blithe smirk, completely unbothered against my own strength.

"What the Hell are you?" I breathed out, watching his arm to see if any adjustments in how I applied my push against his hand bore any fruit. Unfortunately, it proved barren.

"Just a fella'. Oh yeah, never did explain how I got this power. I used to be a private investigator, you see, handling a lot of what you'd call rural crime and 'weird business.' A woman was payin' me to look into where her cows had been going. The investigation led me to this abandoned church deep in Perry County, where some folks were doing some kind of ritual to a figure they called 'Mammon.'

I ended up interrupting the ritual with my Colt, it got all messed up, and I ended up getting a 'blessing' from this fella'." I blurted out a "What the fuck?" as I kept pushing.

"Yeah, no, those were my first three words too. Turns out the head of that entire outfit was tryin' to receive a blessin' of vitality and one of wealth from this freak. My interruption messed it up and I was in the way of the entire ordeal, and I got this mixed situation. I get vitality from wealth. Like your friend said, the richer I am the sturdier I can get. There ain't no upper limit to it neither, from what I can tell."

"Sounds more like a supervillain- Hgk-" I could barely string sentences together as I just kept pushing. I could feel his hand digging past flesh and pressing against the bones in my palm. Caused a cold pain to run through me.

"-Than a hero to me-" He shrugged, which granted me a quarter of an inch over him, but even that didn't bring me much more leverage. I might as well have been stock still.

"Bah, it ain't how you get your powers, it's how you use 'em. Speaking of which, how'd you get yours?" The thought paused my assault on his hand for a moment, bringing me back to memories of the dream. The promise I made. No, Adam already heard it. I told enough people with just him. There didn't need to be anyone else who needed to hear. I shook my head.

"No idea, just woke up like this," I half-truthed, before resuming my attempt at bending the unbendable.

"That's fine, happens to plenty like that. Oh, yeah. Heard you were an orphan, from the info they gave me." They gave him personal information? I didn't even like the fact he knew my name and face, why the fuck would they give him my personal life? He's a fucking mercenary, if someone paid him off he'd give it away to others.

"Been there myself. Daddy lost the farm and walked out the day it went in the red. Mama left with her new boyfriend three months later. I lived in a shack by myself for three years. Only reason they didn't take the home was because they forgot the damn thing existed for that long. When they found out I was on the streets for a good while. Just like you," he went on. Didn't need him throwing this shit in my face. All it did was make my heart beat heavier and my arm tense up more.

I was worried about the tendons in my forearm snapping from how tight my grip was.

"Though, I guess unlike you, I didn't need Mama Taxes and Daddy Government to fix my mess up. I knew how to do everything by myself just fine. Didn't need to risk a prison sentence for it." It was just words, but the way he said it. The vitriol hidden behind his teeth that bled out with each syllable. He tried to come across as smooth and charismatic, but I felt the bile bubble up every time he parted his lips. He saw a chance to look down on me. Like he was anything better. Like he'd gone through anything like me.

My heart became thunder. My breath became lightning.

"And unlike you, no one had to die for me to get the-" There was no synapse connecting my brain to my mouth at that point. Something deep in me took the reins and boiled out a" Shut the Hell up!" And with it came a surge of tension in my arm, followed by a KRAK It was all over in an instant. His hand was on the table, flat. So was his forearm. At a completely skewed angle, torn straight from his bicep. Diamond Bob stared down at the detached limb, before glancing up at me.

"…Huh. I should've went with the bad jokes instead." The weight of the moment sunk back in on me as I just realized I dismembered a man in what was supposed to be a normal test. Horror sunk across my features.

"Shit, shit-""Relax, relax!" He noted, bringing a hand up.

"So long as I'm diamond, it doesn't hurt."

"But your arm-""You ain't the first to take a piece off me, son. Though I've never seen the whole arm come off.

'Specially when I'm one of the richest men alive for the time being. But I imagine it's no different than when I lost a finger or two. It'll take me a week or two to get the thing stuck back on, but I should be fine." He brought his other hand out, resting a hand on my shoulder.

"Take a deep breath, son. Sorry for getting you riled up that bad. You did nothin' that'll do me any real harm. The docs told me they wanted the safest experiment possible. That's why they got me. No one gets hurt on my watch. Diamond Bob don't scuff nor get scuffed." As I closed my eyes and started to breathe, remembering to try and stuff any panic I had into a box to leave on the street corner, I could hear the doors burst open. Opening my eyes, I could see Sam and Dr.

Tudor both hobbling in with surprised looks on their faces.

"Could hear that through the soundproofing," Dr. Tudor noted.

"But I think you just gave us all the data we needed."

"Yeah, I-" She started, before looking at Tudor.

"Do you want to explain it to him or do you want me to?"

"Explain what?" I asked.

"Well, you're pretty good at layman speak for the technical details, why don't you start us off?" Tudor started. Sam nodded.

"Right. So, atomic clocks work based on how atoms move. They move based on how they function in our atmosphere, with Earth's gravity." I raised an eyebrow.

"A bit more simple?"

"You know how grandfather clocks have those big pendulums? Or the swinging part on a metronome?" I nodded.

"Atomic clocks use atoms for the same sort of method. We lined up three atomic clocks. One right next to you, one in the same room but far away from you, and one outside of the room. They were synchronized and giving us readouts." Another nod from me, still trying to parse what she was saying.

"When you started really pushing on Diamond Bob, we noticed a small change in the timing on the clock next to you. Then when you started getting upset, the timing changed a lot, and the one just in the same room as you got a small change too. Then when you broke his arm off-" My face curled. Her appearance matched mine.

"Sorry, just no better words for it." Diamond Bob piped up a "I said there's no hard feelings." Sam resumed.

"But when that happened, there was a huge shift in all three atomic clocks. At the same time, May-" She gestured to the window. May was bug-eyed in shock of what happened, but did end up waving to us.

"Noticed the laser she put on you bending, and started to see it start to strain out where it was close to you. That's a phenomenon called redshift." That was the second time she mentioned gravity.

"Wait, so does that mean I-" I started, not really sure how to parse it out. Dr. Tudor nodded before speaking.

"Yes." he then cleared his throat.

"Leo Holt, you do not have super strength."

"You control gravity."