Chương 6: R&R Ch. 6 — Plots, Plants, and Pondering

Jasmine fought off a yawn as she and Nicholas walked through the portal. It had been a late night playing with Nicholas's ability, and despite all the issues he was having controlling it and making it pretty much useless currently; it was fun. She had picked a good one for her partner because Nicholas was strong. For someone without a telekinetic ability, lifting everything that had been in the room was impressive.

He was going to run into issues with Authority, eventually; reality manipulators always did, but they could manage. Jasmine also worked on the design for protective charms for both of them in her head. Not that she was supposed to be carving up her own soul to make things. But that's what the doctors said, and she had been learning how to manage her soul since she could walk.

There was healing that needed to happen to her soul, she was well aware, but the swooshy bits that spun outside but were still part of her soul were fine to play with. And making interlocking protective charms was easy. Probably. She knew how they worked, and as soon as she had a teacher who was used to soul forging, she would get started. Not that her teacher would be better than the tutors she had her whole life. There would only be a D-rank soul smith.

She had spent most of her time being trained by tier eights or her grandmother. At least that put her better than Nicholas; domain specialists always got the short stick. Thankfully, she could help fill in the gap, and she was pretty sure he was already building his visualization. Part of her burned with hatred. It wasn't Nicholas's fault that he was so clueless about so many things. But also he was so talented at other random things.

"This place is pretty awesome," Nicholas said with a whistle as he looked down at the academy. Jasmine shook her head from her daydreams to look out and see where they would spend the next month. Hopefully, they would be done in a month. At least by the end of the month, she would have healed enough for her to have her soul fully functional. Even if she made another big item. A paired weapon and armor set would probably make her able to function at least as an F-rank.

But the academy was in fact like many other academies. She had toured more in her family's land till her eyes nearly fell out. This one would probably end up being painfully average, almost. Certainly, the spies that her family installed would be exceptionally average purposefully.

"Come on," Jasmine said, nudging Nicholas's shoulder.

"We should go check out our rooms before we do anything else. It's not like the classes start until next week." Nicholas nodded, following along as he continued to look about wide-eyed. It wasn't that impressive; every super, even the failures who wouldn't go past the first stage, got to go to these, but she supposed that was her upbringing telling her it was worthless to be excited about. She already had more than enough of a plan to deal with whatever plant was meant to be their team's mentor.

It wasn't like you had to agree to their help, and she was sure Nicholas was good with that. After several consultations with the map and an elevator ride, they were in front of their suite.

"After you," Nicholas said, opening the door to let her in first, which Jasmine happily obliged. At least the rooms were nice, but that wasn't a surprise. Accommodations for supers were always nice. Her grandma had said it was so that powerful supers were less likely to go do something stupid since they always had a safe place to go to. All she knew was she was going to be enjoying the benefits of a two-bedroom, three-bathroom suite for her team.

Jasmine's first order of business was to go to the kitchen to see if it was stocked. Or, more accurately, stocked with things she could manage. She had been prepared for much of the super life, but cooking? Jasmine didn't know how to boil water without burning something. So she was looking for anything that required the microwave. Jasmine gasped with joy at the sight of the electric kettle that would boil water for her. Score, she didn't have to worry about burning it!

"Jasmine?" Nicholas called, sounding not concerned but confused. Jasmine poked her head into the room Nicholas was in to see what the problem was.

"Why are there three rooms?" He asked, staring at her, his expression unreadable. Her partner was a weird one, but she was having fun.

"Bathroom?" The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Nicholas pointed to her side.

"It's right there, and it's not a bedroom since both have thumbprint scanners."

"Darn, so you won't be able to sneak into my room for a late-night rendezvous. Or hide under my bed to scare me." Jasmine said, trying and failing to snap her fingers to make finger guns at him.

"I had no such intention of doing that."

"Well, I am sure I can configure it so you can come in whenever you want; it's not like I'm hiding anything." Jasmine shrugged before walking to the mystery door. If it wasn't one of their rooms, then that meant it was exciting, so she was going to find out just exactly what was hiding behind it. Before Nicholas could say anything, Jasmine opened the door to reveal a wide room with two desks.

"Why do we need two desks?" Nicholas asked, trailing behind her.

"One for each of us, dolt."

"We each have one in our rooms, presuming your room is the same as mine." Jasmine raised a finger to protest, but he made a good point. Unable to come up with one, she went to one of the desks.

"I think this is for power work, meditation, designing weapons for me, reading the dictionary for you, all that stuff," Jasmine finally said.

"Meditation?"

"You literally rewrite the rules of reality with your words, and I cut up souls to make items with powers. Both seem like they warrant at least a little meditation." Jasmine said dryly.

"Touche." Before she could ask another question, he tossed her his own schedule so she can compare the two.

"Morning training, first and third classes together, our second class of the day and afternoon training is split up." Jasmine said, making sure she was right.

"And that's the whole day?"

"Yup."

"Interesting."

"You're a man of few words, aren't you? We should work that into your costume design and make you all brooding; it'll help with marketing." Jasmine said jokingly.

"I already have a plan for a costume design." Nicholas said slowly.

"Though I was thinking the color scheme would wait till you finished since we're a team, right?" Jasmine almost fell out of her chair as she spun around.

"You actually have a costume design? Like, actually, actually?"

"Yes, actually," Nicholas said, pulling out his phone. Jasmine was about to ask him what he was doing when her phone vibrated, and she now had a folder of photos and notes about his costume ideas. Jasmine took the ideas and spun them around in her head a few times as she tried to decide if she thought they were good or not. It would contrast heavily with her own costume, well, kind of. She was going to have two costumes, but it was still going to be interesting.

Though more importantly she was jealous, she couldn't change her idea to copy him because it was going to be cool.

"Okay, I will admit your costume is sick, so yeah."

"What are you thinking for yours?" Nicholas put his feet on his desk as he leaned back in his chair.

"You looking for any ideas for your own?"

"No, but I am curious."

"One of those skin-tight jumpsuits that hide nothing." Jasmine said, shrugging. The look Nicholas gave her actually made her fall out of her chair laughing.

"Don't give me that look; it's because I will be wearing armor over it, so it has to fit under whatever I make, and it'll be easier if my super suit is just painted on." Jasmine said on the floor, still giggling.

"Well, your phrasing could use some work, but that makes sense." Nicholas said, nodding. While Jasmine was on the floor, she rifled through her backpack and pulled out her sketchbook and all the loose papers she had for designing her soul armaments. Ignoring her giggling plight, Nicholas walked past her to look at some of her designs.

"Hammer?" He asked, holding up a lightning hammer design Jasmine was sure she had thrown away.

"I scrapped that one. Hammers smash things, not zap things, so I figured it would be wrong to use a lightning hammer." Jasmine said, grabbing the design and tossing it into the trash.

"Okay," Nicholas said, returning to his own chair.

"So, is there anything you want to ask me while we can abuse the powers of nepotism?" Jasmine asked, getting back into her chair. Part of her hoped he would actually have questions. She knew so many things that it was hard to tell what was normal and what wasn't. Nicholas drummed his fingers on one knee as he thought about it.

"The school's going to engineer people in danger, aren't they?" he asked quietly. Jasmine winced before nodding.

"We need to get up to one thousand karma, and saving lives is the easiest way." She wasn't saying the actual easiest way, but yeah.

"So that's what the weekly training against Beyonders is going to be. Videos and such to advertise for us to get our belief up. Follow that with a raffle to see us fight live. And we have to fight Beyonders going for them?" Jasmine blinked slowly.

"How did you figure it out?"

"It wasn't hard." It wasn't, but still.

"That means we have two weeks to get ready," Nicholas said, leaning back in his chair. Jasmine wasn't sure she appreciated the fact that he was signing away their last break week. She was going to work too, but at least he could pretend.

"Problem one, I have no control and I'm not useful if I tire out in one word. Even for marketing. Problem two, your soul damage, right?" Nicholas asked, looking at her. Jasmine nodded; it was an accurate estimation of what was going on.

"Problem one is what I'm going to spend the next week solving. If I can't get it to basic usability in one week with nothing to do but work out the problem, we might have bigger problems."

"You don't need to worry about problem two," Jasmine said, trying to assure her teammate. She would heal, and he wanted to feel like a worthwhile member of the team, so she was happy to let that be the focus.

"I was actually doing some research and had a question for you. Prosthetics with powers are built via a method related to your power, aren't they?" Jasmine nodded. It was a more extreme version of her power, and it was almost exclusively used with the soul remnants of perished heroes, but that was correct.

"And you only want to use your soul since you don't want to hurt people?"

"Yeah."

"Even if using a piece of my soul could make you an item with a portion of my power?" Nicholas asked quietly. She winced at that one. Her mother had planned on her sidekicks doing that for her. It touched a sore spot.

"It's more complicated using it on someone else who's alive."

"Would it be strong?"

"Yeah, if we made a soul-bound weapon with both of our souls, it would be incredibly strong and grow with us. It would be doubly so if we made a paired set. But it's dangerous, and there would be a lot of complications." Jasmine said, hoping the conversation wouldn't continue.

"Tabling that, there is something we could do for your practice. Something that has soul remnant parts for you to practice on that we won't ever lack," Nicholas said, grinning. Jasmine leaned forward. If she could practice with something other than her own soul, that would be huge. Even better if she can use it to supplement her own soul, but that was a secondary desire.

"Beyonders have soul fragments, right?" It was like Nicholas punched her. She knew it was possible. Hell, more than a few people desperate to stand up to the Pinnacles have grafted Beyonder prosthetics onto themselves to have access to both sources. But she hadn't thought it was an option because it didn't work for her Grandmother's power. The thing was, Jasmine didn't have Darlene's power; she had her own.

"Did I say something wrong?" Nicholas asked after another minute of stunned silence.

"No, you are just a mad genius. It won't work for some of my designs; the properties are entirely different, but it will work for a few and give me lots of room to practice." Jasmine said, nearly vibrating with excitement.

"It'll still be two weeks till you can work on it," Nicholas said, not dampening her mood in the slightest.