Chương 5: R&R Ch. 5 — Power to Knockout

Despite the misgivings he once had, Nicholas was sure that he made the right decision. Whatever favors he was going to owe were certain to be worth it. All he had to do was shake or nod his head when directed, and he spent most of the time zoned out.

"So what should we do now?" Jasmine asked as they rode the elevator up to their floor for the hotel room.

"Why do you ask me?" Nicholas asked, leading the way to their room. They had asked them if they were a team or if they had just arrived at the same time, but apparently, because they're a team, they would share a room. And that would be the trend until they split up as a team. At least it had multiple rooms.

"Well, you owe me one, so I imagine at least we can hang out a little bit," Jasmine pouted as they came to the door.

"Do you want to cash in your favor?" Nicholas asked, laughing as she opened the door.

"I mean, if I need to call that in just to hang out with you, I doubt this team is going to last long, dork." Jasmine gave him a light shove before heading inside with him trailing behind her. They would have to get used to hotels as superheroes since they would travel around the world to make it a better place. Hopefully, the accommodations would stay this nice.

"We don't. I was just wondering what level of hanging out you wanted to do," Nicholas said, rolling his suitcase into his room.

"Did you just pick the one with the bigger bed?" Jasmine asked, whirling on him.

"No, I just picked the first one I saw?" Jasmine, not believing him, checked each bedroom anyway before sighing in relief.

"I get the bigger bed, phew, that's a relief." Jasmine said, sagging onto the couch.

"That's a relief because?" Nicholas asked, getting into the chair on the side.

"Well, you're the smaller one, so that means I get dibs on the bigger bed." Nicholas blinked slowly before shrugging.

"Reasonable as anything else, I guess."

"You know I was trying to get a rise out of you with the short joke," Jasmine said, sticking her tongue out at Nicholas.

"Meh."

"Spoilsport, toss me the remote so I can pick what we watch while you order delivery." Nicholas looked at the pamphlet that had a list of stores for them to order food from, but he hadn't planned on doing so. It wasn't like he had any money.

"Weren't you paying attention? They're paying for us." Nicholas had heard that part of the spiel, but he hadn't believed it.

"To make sure we don't do anything with our powers to harm the city?"

"Yeah, so after we get some food, want to goof off with our powers?"

"Aren't we supposed to not be doing that?" Nicholas asked, not opposed to the idea. He had super powers he definitely wanted to mess with them.

"No, we're not supposed to be destroying areas full of stuff, but what if we rented out a space?" Jasmine asked, grinning. Nicholas looked back at the pamphlet and flipped around towards what Jasmine was alluding to before nodding. That would work.

"Tonight?"

"No, you're probably still exhausted and running on empty, so we will do it tomorrow." Nicholas paused for a moment, thinking about what he wanted to do with that response.

"Are you going to be doing anything?"

"Sadly no," Jasmine said, her expression faltering.

"I'm still recovering from the soul damage, and the one thing I made isn't exactly a combat thing."

"Can you show me?"

"It's not big enough for you to come in yet."

"Aren't you taller than me?"

"It's not that kind of small. I can explain if you want, but it's a little bit personal if I'm being frank." Jasmine said, looking away from Nicholas.

"You said your ability is a prep-work type. Does that mean you make items or raise super animals?" Nicholas asked, changing the subject to the two most common abilities of that category that he could think of. It wasn't likely Jasmine had either; they were very rare abilities, but it would be fun if she had either. He would prefer not the pet one. It would be exhausting to help raise magical beasts.

"Weapons and armor. I can cut off pieces of my soul to make items with power. The first item I made was a forge so that I could be as limitless as my imagination." Jasmine said happy for the conversation to move to easier waters. But the answer still sent Nicholas reeling.

"So when you said your soul hurt, you weren't kidding or something; you actually cut off pieces of your soul?" This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Nicholas didn't know for sure; it wasn't like his first aid courses told him anything about the severity of soul damage, but he couldn't imagine that it was good for you.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh yeah, souls are resilient, so I will heal. I'm just going to be out of it for a while," Jasmine said, waving off his concern.

"Besides my knife, I didn't actually make much besides the forge since I didn't want to use up more of my soul on my first day."

"Knife?" As if she were waiting for the question, Jasmine holds a hand out, and from an amber portal, an ornate to the point of ridiculousness jade green carving knife falls into her waiting hand. Despite it looking wildly impractical, Nicholas instantly shirked away, the knife screaming danger in every possible sense. It wasn't just danger he felt. It was as if it was the absolute end.

"What is that?" Nicholas asked quietly, his eyes unable to leave the blade that spoke of the end of existence.

"This is my carving knife. Usually you can only pull off some wisps of the soul, but with this I can cut off chunks to have more material to work with." Jasmine said casually, spinning the knife in her hand.

"And you're going to use that on our enemies?" Nicholas asked carefully.

"What? No, it's ridiculously painful to use this on other people. I'm going to use this on myself. I will not use anyone's soul without permission, and since nobody is going to understand what it means, only I'm using mine." Jasmine said firmly. Nicholas got the feeling that this was an argument Jasmine had with someone several times.

"You can use my soul if you want at some point?" Nicholas offered, unsure if that's what he was supposed to be doing in this situation.

"Well, it's kind of you to offer, but like I said, you don't get what it means yet, and I won't be doing that till then. My power will make my soul heal faster." Jasmine said the knife vanishing in an amber light. Nicholas was pretty sure she was hiding several parts of this conversation, but that was all he could offer in this situation. Until he knew how she was doing, actually all he could do was make sure she didn't have to push herself too hard in training. Though they had another week to rest anyway.

"So, any time you practice, you're going to have to injure yourself?"

"Don't worry about it I have no plan," Jasmine said, winking, though Nicholas thought she was being truthful that she had no plan. He wasn't sure what he could do, but it seemed like a good place to figure out a plan to help Jasmine. First, he would have to learn what soul damage actually did, but that's going to have to wait till he's at the training camp; it was unlikely anyone would tell him here.

But at least he could oblige her requests until she felt better, so he booked one of the super rooms for new supers to blow off steam with their powers. The next day, Nicholas was almost more excited than Jasmine as they made their way towards the practice room. It was absolutely huge, almost the size of a basketball court, with all sorts of things they could use to practice their powers.

"Any idea what you're going to start with?" Jasmine asked, rubbing her hands together in excitement.

"Well, I've been thinking that I should just pick one or two words to specialize in right now so that I can figure out how to use my powers with those and make them as strong as possible." Nicholas said, pacing the room.

"Don't you have a generalist power? Wouldn't specializing ruin it?" Jasmine asked, sitting on top of a pile of tires.

"I actually don't think that's how my power is going to work, actually." Nicholas said with a slow shrug. Jasmine raised an eyebrow but said nothing. While there were some sweeping statements you could make about powers, there was nobody who could speak more on someone's power than the owner.

"I haven't used my powers, but I have tried focusing on some words. And the ones I used feel a lot easier to call upon. Though specifically in the way they were used before." Nicholas explained.

"So you want to use the first two or three words you learn to test that theory and make power effects you can just default to whenever there's an emergency?" Jasmine asked, making sure she's on the same page.

"That's what I am thinking?"

"So what are you planning on starting with?" Jasmine asked, leaning forward. This would give her a good idea of what kind of hero weapons she should make first to complement him. As a duo, they would have to cover more than a normal team would.

"Well, I was thinking I could do support and control effects pretty easily with just a few words, so that's where I was going to start," Nicholas said, pointedly not sharing the word he was starting with.

"Tease."

"What can I say? I like a little mystery." Nicholas laughed. Jasmine laughed. He couldn't tell for sure, but he thought Jasmine seemed back to almost entirely normal at this point. In his mind's eye, he saw himself floating in front of a nigh infinite amount of indistinct cards. His words. The cards he could play in battle to change the tide. Most of them entirely blank though there were the two he had used once before. Slight detail was on each of them. That wasn't the card he was looking for.

His mind self grabbed a card seemingly at random, but Nicholas knew it was the one he was looking for. It was as indistinct as any other card he could have, but that was part of the point of his training. This was the start. This was going to be the cornerstone of his beginning. He would use the card to control the battlefield and make it so Jasmine could easily defeat their opponents. And he had settled on one answer.

Most people couldn't do anything if they could not push off of anything, and he genuinely couldn't think of a better use for this word besides this. As he began channeling his power towards his ability, he mentally began shaping his power in the image of what he wanted. To lift everything up and hold it up a few feet in the air and hold it there until he stopped channeling power into the command." Up" Jasmine felt the world tremble as Nicholas used his power to warp reality.

And then she floated up into the air along with everything else in the room. She had flown more than a few times, so it wasn't a new thing for her, but Nicholas definitely did it differently. And they were still rising. And the ceiling was getting way closer.

"Nicholas!" Jasmine called. Nicholas said nothing, and the ceiling continued to get closer.

"Nicholas!" Jasmine finally looked over to realize that Nicholas was passed out again. Jasmine pushed off the tires towards her friend, catching him and placing her back between him and the ceiling. Jasmine's back slammed into the ceiling, and they stayed there pressed against the ceiling before they then fell and once again she twisted around so she was the one that took the brunt of the fall. Nicholas, at least, had the wherewithal to wake up looking at her blearily.

"What happened?"

"Well, I saved your life twice, and now my back really hurts." Jasmine said brilliantly, still holding her teammate.

"I see, so it happened again?" Nicholas asked, rolling off of her and sitting up so that he was no longer in Jasmine's arms, which she thought was at least a little lame. He could have hugged her back for saving him.

"Yeah, it did."

"Irritating."

"That's all you got?" Nicholas stood up, dusting off his jeans.

"Yeah, it just means I need to practice more. Are you okay? You caught me both times, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but I'm good. I probably didn't need to catch you since both of us are super now, but I was acting before I could think about it." Nicholas nodded before giving her a grin.

"This is awesome, isn't it?" Jasmine couldn't help but agree.