Wednesday, June 3

  "Dr. Smirnov?" William offered his hand. "William Doe. I think we spoke over the phone yesterday."

  "That was my assistant who spoke to you," the woman replied. "It's good to meet you, Mr. Doe."

  She accepted the handshake from her seat, then gestured to the white, reclined sofa chair across from her own. "You can sit. I received only a basic summary of your concerns from her, so I would like to hear a direct accounting of the situation from you."

  'Concerns,' William thought. That's a euphemistic way to put it.

  "Then it's probably better if I start from the beginning." He exhaled as he sat down. "My son is fifteen years old. He only got his ability a year ago, so I guess you'd call him a late bloomer. I was ecstatic at the beginning, with the idea he'd finally be able to protect himself… But now he's starting fights multiple times a week. The injury reports have been horrifyingly extreme; not his, but the other children."

  Dr. Smirnov blinked a few times, processing, then struck him with a perplexed look. "Do you have records I could use for reference?"

  Thursday

  "I took the time to examine the records you sent me," said Professor Hoang, adjusting his glasses. "As you suggested I would, I noticed a handful of worrying points. In particular, I found that John's history with one boy – I believe it was 'Oliver'– demonstrated a kind of escalating hatred that has a tendency to spiral out of control…"

  William made himself nod along, glancing around the room as Professor Hoang spoke. The man's office was completely different from Dr. Smirnov's. Instead of parallel sofa chairs, there was a traditional desk with office seats and a rim of bookshelves – but the meeting was still giving him deja vu of the day before.

  "…Still, I have to say, I was mostly underwhelmed. Your son isn't being abnormally reckless. Neither is he engaging in combat at a level that would impede his recovery, which can occasionally be an issue."

  Professor Hoang paused for a moment in thought, scratching his beard.

  "A significant fraction of high-schoolers have a person they consider a 'categorical enemy,' just like Oliver is to your son. In fact, if I were to select a random boy of his age and level from a nearby school, records like his would be unsurprising."

  William caught himself in a frown, but couldn't bring himself to correct it. It was shocking, really, just how similar the assessment was to Dr. Smirnov's, even if the language was different.

  "You're not trying to say that there's nothing wrong with him, are you?"

  Professor Hoang chuckled. "I would certainly recommend he distance himself from Oliver. It would be best if he stopped attacking downed opponents. But I find that teenagers are always disordered in one little way or another – and, in fact, given your son is a late-bloomer…"

  Friday

  "I was surprised by your description, actually." Cindy Alborough smiled from across the coffee table. The woman ran a private practice from her house, which meant William had been forced to drive into the suburbs. "Parents of late-bloomers usually have the exact opposite concern: that the time their child spent as a cripple might have made them cowardly or unassertive."

  "John isn't having that issue," William said, keeping himself from palming his forehead.

  "I agree," she replied. "It seems to me that he's simply compensating for the time he spent without an ability. Naturally, John feels a need for respect, having been disrespected for multiple years. It means the process of reassertion that he's going through can be difficult to rush."

  He wanted to groan. The day before, Professor Hoang had used that exact term, 'reassertion,' to describe John's actions. It was a neat little word. But it boiled down to 'brutalizing classmates more frequently to make up for lost time' – not something William could accept as justification on any level.

  "What would you suggest I tell my son, then?" William asked. "I don't approve of his behavior, ultimately, no matter why he feels he has to act this way."

  The woman thought for a long while, then said, "I'd recommend a 'final blow policy' to curb excess injuries. You can tell him this: 'At the end of the fight, right before you aim a final attack, take the time to consider if it's really necessary.'"

  So half of a half-measure? he thought.

  "The problem with this kind of policy, though, is that…" she kept going.

  Saturday

  Dr. Ruiz was talking, but William couldn't stop himself from zoning out.

  Their meeting was in an informal office, with two couchlike chairs placed across from each other, just like the office he'd visited on Tuesday. The profound circularity of it all, of the discussions, was beginning to weigh on him.

  "You've already ruled out a fight-ending policy?" Dr. Ruiz asked. At William's delayed nod, the man continued, "I believe I'm in agreement. For teens of your son's age, ability growth factors into practically every decision made. A request for self-sabotage is unlikely to go over well."

  This wasn't the reason William had dismissed a 'fight-ending policy,' of course, but the other professionals had all said similar things.

  "We've already gotten into heated arguments," he said in acknowledgement.

  Dr. Ruiz nodded, going silent in thought, and strummed his fingers against his clipboard. Eventually, he said, "According to the records, your son has increasingly escalated the intensity of his combat after gaining his ability. If the trend continues, John's actions might become truly problematic. I think the intelligent thing to do, here, is prevent him from going any further – not reverse the trend entirely."

  That's not why I'm here, William thought tiredly. I'm here because of what he's already done.

  "You could try hiring a fighting partner, so he feels less of a need to fight at school. You could also accomplish this by spending time training him at home… What do you think, Mr. Doe?"

  William sighed.

  "I'll think about hiring someone," he said, "but I can't train John's ability. He already surpassed me a while ago."

  It was a euphemism of his own, only giving up that he was below 3.0. Still, the look in Dr. Ruiz's eyes chilled into cold condescension.

  "I understand." The man flipped through his papers. "I'm going to quickly sign you off, and you can be on your way."

  .

  .

  .

  Thursday, June 11

  It's the same story each time, over and over. Just a different cover.

  William could feel his frustration flush against his skin, compounded by the unhelpfully hot sun, as he trudged through the hospital parking lot to his car. Employee and patient parking made up most of the humongous space. As a result, he'd been forced to park a quarter-mile away, and the walk was long and unpleasant enough to make him start questioning himself.

  Your son is behaving as expected. You should be glad he's not a coward. If you don't like it, here are some band-aids you can try. If you don't like those, you're out of luck.

  When he reached his car and started the air conditioning, his mood improving by nothing, he admitted to himself that the walk had nothing to do with it. It was the people themselves. They were totally ineffectual, seemingly unaware of the notion that a father might want his son to be a better person than 'as expected for his age and level.'

  And maybe he should have understood what to expect, after what he got from Dr. Saledi. That it was pointless to search for outside help. But it was a visceral feeling, when you realized your son was becoming the exact type of person you despised most. It made you desperate for solutions.

  The first time he had the thought, William's solution had been denial. Initially, of the problem's existence, then its severity – and despite the notifications of violent incidents that had built a wall of text in his inbox, he couldn't help but give his son the benefit of the doubt. John had been the recipient of so many one-sided beatdowns, without an ability for the first fourteen years of his life, that William could hardly imagine his son on the other side.

  Each email always came with a brief summary of events. Who were the parties involved, what were the injuries, which party initiated it, et cetera. The breaking point had been twelve messages in a row, each with his son's name listed as the aggressor, in hindsight a moronic line to draw in the sand.

  "So starting the fight eleven times in a row is perfectly fine. But twelve times in a row is unacceptable, somehow?" This was the first thing John pointed out, sarcastically, when William had brought up the issue.

  He'd conceded his mistake, that a strict cutoff of two or three times in a row made a hell of a lot more sense. In response, John had immediately protested that the school's classification of 'aggressor' wasn't a fair criterion.

  "If someone calls me a cripple loser and I throw the first punch, I'm the aggressor. But if I ignore it, people will think I'm an easy mark for letting them get away with it. Really, I'm starting a fight either way!"

  Which was a reasonable point, even as an attempt to duck responsibility. So William had suggested that they take the time, as father and son, to review each fight individually for justification; that way there'd be no confusion. But John had objected even to this, in the sense that 95% of the people in his grade had, at some point in time, kicked him while he was down, so everyone but him was the aggressor if you were truly being fair.

  "And everybody hates that I've gotten stronger than them, anyway. The only reason they stopped is because they're too weak to back it up! It's not like they all became saints, all of a sudden, so isn't it fair if I use them like they did with me?"

  The words had flowed naturally from John's mouth, without so much as a stutter or hint of conflict. At that point, William had been forced to admit that nobody was fooling anyone, anymore, and there was something wrong with his son.

  The arguments that had followed were a mistake.

  A while later, near the end of May, William had decided to try mental counseling at their current hospital – and they pointed him to Dr. Saledi, a woman who supposedly specialized in therapy for teens. It was a setup for disappointment. John had returned from the initial session without a single sign of self-reflection. In fact, he became even more confident in his approach, and he'd started escalating his actions by targeting multiple of his classmates at once.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Saledi's sole advice to him had been a warning not to become a 'roadblock' on his son's path to success.

  He could still remember the look of her politely condescending smile. As though he were clueless, as though he didn't understand the attitude of self-justification that elite and high-tiers held: making excuses for just about anything, so long as it contributed to the maximization of a teenage growth window. It was an attitude that produced strong people, rather than good people, which William would never accept.

  And that was why he was going through the trouble, he reminded himself. He wasn't searching the many clinics and private practices in New Boston for nothing. He was looking for an expert – a real one, with decency and compassion – with the advice or solutions to help his son.

  William started his car.

  ***Beautiful***

  Javier, the senior mentor of my intern group, had among the nicest offices I'd ever seen.

  It was heavily nature-themed, just like Javier's house had been, with potted greenery scattered throughout and a bonsai growth box on a windowsill. The room was situated in a far corner of the NxGen headquarters' topmost floor, and made use of the location with a garage-like retractable roof, currently open to let the sunlight in.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  My mentor had been tending to his bonsai tree with a pair of clippers as we talked. In an official capacity, I was giving him a progress report on a new project. My team had just started our comparison of aura flow between similar abilities with differing secondary effects – Flame Claws, Freeze Claws, and Thunder Claws, for example – not that the results were very illuminating.

  In an unofficial sense, I was in his office to ask for a favor that would likely be rejected. And I'd been dancing around the issue for what was annoyingly long.

  "…On a related note," I said, "There have been rumors about a god-tier who offered herself for research. A lot of people think she can copy abilities. I was wondering if we could get her to use the abilities we've been studying, so we can compare the aura flow of each within the same channel system."

  Javier put his clippers down and faced me for the first time in a few minutes. He seemed more surprised by my reasoning than by my mention of Jane.

  "I don't believe I've heard that suggestion before," he replied. "What improvement would you expect to have if we restarted our experiment in such a way?"

  "I think we'll be able to draw a clearer connection," I said, "between specific movements and specific ability effects." A look of sudden understanding entered his eyes, and I kept going: "We know individual differences in channel structure can affect aura flow – so with each ability being used in a different person's channel system, we're not doing a direct comparison. With a single person, there's a good chance that the randomness and contradiction in our results would go away."

  Javier had started nodding to himself, so I sat back in my chair and let him think. I could only speak like this, of course, because I'd gotten familiar with him as someone who cared more about solid research and work effectiveness than level. Either that, or he had a lot of respect for my far-away level projections. The end result was that I could get away with a bit of presumptuousness.

  "It's possible you're right," he eventually said, "but individuals who can mimic abilities are outliers in many ways. The results would have just as good a chance of being ungeneralizable to a broader population."

  "…And I notice you've taken the hearsay for granted. Both that she exists and her ability matches common opinion."

  I tried to look disappointed, as if realizing that my clever idea had been reduced to a hypothetical due to a lack of feasibility. "She's not real?"

  My mentor only smiled and shook his head. He picked up his bonsai clippers, like he was going to turn back to his tree, but hesitated and put them down again. I caught his gaze flicker to my earring.

  "Before I resolve the rumor for you," Javier said, "assist me with a different one. What is your relation to the Lingard clan, exactly?"

  So it definitely matters when it comes to Jane. I let out a mildly amused huff.

  "I guess you heard about that – it's all nonsense, of course." I gestured to the stud in my earlobe, "The clan head-to-be is the king of my high school. He helped me become an affiliate; maybe that's how the idea got spread around. Really, my clan isn't qualified to enter into an agreement with the Lingard clan. We'd be absorbed, more likely."

  It was almost funny, how easy it was to say a bunch of true things while being untruthful.

  "But I don't think I'll go out of my way to correct anybody about my standing," I added. "If that matters."

  He nodded in understanding. "I can let you see her, then, the woman who's currently our research subject. If anyone questions me, I can simply pretend I was fooled by the rumors and misunderstood your place with the clan."

  "Really? That's-" So if Arlo or a main-line member of the clan wanted to see her, they'd allow it? Why?

  "Simply is an exaggeration," he said, "but it should be alright. Whatever visit will have to be brief, and you won't be able to work with her in any capacity – but I feel you've at least earned a look at the truth."

  I reached across Javier's desk to shake his arm up and down with both hands. Without it, I might have hugged him. "When do you think I can visit?"

  "I'm unsure. You may have a chance in July, if my understanding of the scheduling is correct." He glanced me over. "You seem more excited than I would expect."

  "Well, I've heard so many ideas, but if even one of them is real…"

  "No need to speculate," Javier said. "With subject JCM91, anything you think of might as well be true."

  Subject JCM91. The name obviously referred to Jane, and it was oddly familiar, though I didn't know why.

  He turned back to the windowsill and started tending to his bonsai tree again, snipping at a layer of dark green leaves interleaved with pockets of salmon-pink flowers. I took it as his way of saying, 'we're done here.'

  Then he started chuckling softly to himself, back still turned.

  "Do you want to know what I find so odd about this?" he said. "I find wasted potential to be immensely frustrating – and I became interested in Aurology as a direct result. Yet I spend time and effort cutting away at a bonsai. I limit its roots to a minuscule box of soil."

  Javier punctuated his statement with the noise of a cut leaf.

  "In any other state but a bonsai, the tree couldn't be an ornament for my office. And in this sense, as a decoration, it has reached its full potential. But I often wonder if I should plant it in some rural field, so in my old age I could watch it tower higher than the height of our company headquarters."

  If I had been anyone else, I would have taken it as the tangential rambling of a superior and put it out of mind. That was probably what Javier expected.

  Jane Doe is the bonsai tree, isn't she? I thought. You often think it's a shame, what they've done.

  He kept snipping.

  .

  .

  .

  When I left my mentor's office, my working hours were long over, but the sky was just as bright and blue as it had been mid-afternoon.

  There was no difference in the Earth's rotation compared to my old world, or at least I hadn't noticed it… Either way, June 11 was near the summer solstice, and there would be enough daylight to support a training session with John in the evening.

  We'd entered a minor routine since Saturday. A lot of it was John experimenting with his ability, testing it against me, and failing. Occasionally, I gave him suggestions for what he could try. But even with an arm tied behind my back, none of his performances had matched up to Zirian's – frustrating for him, I could tell.

  That wasn't to say that the time was a waste. John had quickly grown from 3.0 to 3.2, and he was clearly stronger, now, maybe a 3.4. Much to my envy, his growth rate was so fast that there was no need to accelerate it with bloodthirsty combat, though my guess was that he'd slow down after another level or so.

  John was already training by the time I arrived at Citrona Park, jumping up and down in the air with a body enhancement ability. I noticed that his leaps were taking him higher than the trees. He was midair when he saw me, and gave me a wave, but lost balance as a result and crashed a minor crater into the ground.

  I laughed to myself, but went to help him.

  "Don't you have exams tomorrow, John?" I asked as I pulled him up. "Be careful you don't give yourself a concussion, bomb it, repeat a grade… "

  It was a partial reference to his lack of a healing factor, but he only snorted – tame, compared to how he'd taken a similar jab three days ago.

  "You can keep getting jealous," he said. "Once this week is over, I'll be able to do whatever I want while you work nine-to-five."

  "Not if you have to do remedial classes," I shot back.

  John rolled his eyes.

  "I'll do just fine. My English test is tomorrow, anyway. I'm good at English." He glanced up and down at my formal pants and blouse. "Did you just get off work or something? You could've changed."

  I gave him a look that meant 'you've never landed a hit on me,' which he seemed to understand. His eyes narrowed and started glowing with a burning amber light.

  We'd both gotten used to minimizing our talking and getting straight to the action, to make use of the limited sunlight.

  "How about this? You can try to make me regret it," I said, activating my own ability. "Your Aura Manipulation is growing and transforming so quickly; I want to see how it reacts when your goal is ruining expensive clothes instead of landing hits. I think it's versatile enough to respond to intention."

  Pitch-black claws appeared on his hands, but John didn't give any other sign of acknowledgement.

  Instead, he immediately attacked, turning each of his ten 'fingers' into a spiked tendril that flew through the air. I did the same, easily stalling and overpowering most of them, but noticed belatedly that he'd sent his 'pinky claw' after the cuff of my pant leg from my blind spot.

  I jumped before it could make contact. John attempted to capitalize, straightening the tendrils into blades, but I'd already attached a tendril to the tree behind me to pull myself out of reach. He dashed after me in response, attempting simultaneous axe swings to my torso and waist, though they were slow enough to my vision that I blocked them with hand-blades of my own.

  We flew throughout the woods and clearing, John constantly chasing after me as I hooked and grappled the branches for momentum. He struggled at first, even though I was limiting myself to defense, but eventually attempted a good series of attacks, each one flowing into the other. Some were clever mixups, like a spear stab with an ultra-thin secondary appendage aimed at my office shoe, or a fake jab at my eye meant only to distract and obscure my vision. He even managed to slice a section of my bangs.

  Still, it was ultimately nothing I couldn't counter, and he started getting tired. Eventually, I started thinking of stopping and calling it my victory… And then he paused, right after I'd stopped another tendril-based attack, and grinned at me.

  "I think I can take an attribute of Devil's Hands beyond the original, now."

  I took a step backward in surprise. He breathed in deeply, closed his eyes, and split his 'thumb claws' into two independently-moving tendrils before sending all of them at me from every angle imaginable.

  "Twelve against ten?" I yelped. It was suddenly a struggle to keep him at bay without attacking. "Don't you think that's unfair?"

  The minor numerical advantage wouldn't seem like much, on the surface. Still, while I was barred from going on the offensive and breaking his claws, it allowed multiple tendrils to start ganging up on one of mine – and eventually slip past it. I had to resort to dodging, rolling my shoulders and twisting out of the way, but John finally managed to take a piece of my sleeve.

  The evidence was a thin strip of fabric fluttering to the ground. I quickly made an 'x' with my hands once I realized, meaning I was giving up.

  "You'll be able to do it with every finger pretty soon," John said, a little disappointed, but accepted the victory.

  Feeling comparable parts excited and fatigued, I sat down to rest. He walked over until he was two paces away, then deactivated his ability and dropped to his hands and knees in exhaustion. He was smiling widely in spite of it.

  "Did you say I'll be able to split my fingers?" I asked him. "Are you sure?"

  "I don't know why, but yeah." John panted a little. "It just feels right, for some reason."

  "And, uh, by the way," he said hesitantly, "your phone's been making noise for a while now."

  I nodded, though I'd been trying to ignore it.

  Unfortunately, the rings were getting louder as I regained environmental awareness post-combat. I briefly considered my present company, decided not to answer the call, but tapped on one of the many unplayed voicemails I knew would be waiting for me.

  For a moment, my phone was silent. Then came the calm, steady voice of an older man.

  "It is a sign of great disrespect to ignore contact from your clan head, granddaughter," the voice spoke. "I was willing to excuse the behavior earlier, when it was uncertain if you were being intentionally contemptuous or simply careless. I now have no such confusion."

  John looked at me, bewildered, and I gestured for him to keep listening.

  "So allow me to be clear. I have watched your fighting, and you are far, far away from achieving your full potential. I fear that you will never reach it. There is an unacceptably high chance you fail to become a god-tier, and if you do manage to achieve it, it will surely be on the margins."

  "I hope you can understand that my prior order is only to your benefit, as well as the rest of the clan. If you truly have no knowledge of it, I will once again repeat myself: come to New Oakland, to the clan compound. I will personally welcome you."

  It was one of the shorter ones I'd gotten. John kept staring at my phone after the message was already over, so I tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

  "I should probably explain what that was…"

  .

  .

  .

  Through five years of life in my new world, my mother never liked to talk about her former clan. Still, the one thing she couldn't keep to herself was a disdain for her former family, from which I had gathered a few things.

  For one, my mother had always held that they weren't a 'real' clan. Her reasoning was that the Strauss extended family was mostly made up of Demon Claws users, an ability that never grew beyond 5.4. Our god-tiers were exclusively the result of ability evolution, an inconvenient fact that made 'natural' god-tiers hesitate to introduce their genes to the family. As a result, for its 250 years of existence, the 'Strauss Clan' had clung to its status by lucking into one-in-a-million chances every few generations… But sooner or later, their time would be up.

  (I had recently developed my own theories on how a single family could produce ability evolutions even semi-consistently, but I kept them to myself.)

  The current head, Eduard Strauss, was 74 years old. He was a 6.2, with the same ability as mine, and he'd led the clan for nearly 60 years. As far as my mother and father could find, he had no public heir, a state of affairs that made her mood jump whenever anyone brought it up.

  It would have been smart of us to consider the implications, back when I had evolved my ability. I was quite possibly the only Devil's Hands user who wouldn't die of old age within the next twenty years. But it would be so cartoonishly shameless – to come crawling to the daughter of the very woman you'd exiled for her weakness – that I'd unconsciously dismissed the possibility.

  (And maybe that was why, in his voicemails to me, Eduard spoke as though it had never happened.)

  "You see what's happening, now, right?" I said. "Most likely, if they don't drag me back, they're not a clan anymore."

  The sun had started to set, but I could still see John's face. He'd clearly gotten uncomfortable.

  "Even after they kicked her out?" he asked. "That's pretty fucked up, isn't it?"

  His disbelief brought me back to the time I went slack-jawed at the sight of Lingard Mansion. I recalled what Arlo had told me, then. "Considering the rate your level's been growing, you were bound to bump into something like this sooner or later. You'll get used to it."

  Which definitely isn't comforting, judging by your body language, but that's not what I'm going for.

  "I don't think that's a good thing, but cool, I guess." He rubbed at his arm. "So what are you going to do? Fly out to the West Coast sector?"

  "No. I'll apologize over the phone, say I was busy with my internship here in New Boston, and make them come here to meet me." I paused, quickly choosing a plan. "Whatever they want to talk about, I'll make them do it in public. I'll lend you my binoculars if you want to watch."

  If there were written rules, 'respect your betters' might as well have been number one. John would have a clear view as I stepped around it.

  ***Beautiful***

  In June, daylight lasted longer than even the later working hours. As a result, William couldn't say that he'd worked deep into the night, and instead had to content himself with driving home while the sun was halfway set.

  Among his full schedule of meetings for the day, none had violated his low expectations. Just as expecting a hit tended to soften the hurt, expecting very little meant you could hardly be disappointed. The miserable part of the whole experience, he'd begun to realize, was that the many conversations with high-tiers were making him think of Jane.

  With his ex-wife, William tried to focus on the way they'd met. He kept himself purposeful and measured around the issue. Recently, though, their final conversation kept rising out of whatever trench he'd tried to push it down.

  "Five and I could stay," he recalled her saying, on a warm summer night like this one. "Even four."

  He also remembered what his son, then a toddler, had told him that night. By any account, it was parrot-like repetition, with no concept of underlying meaning.

  But William couldn't shake the idea: that before John had learned to walk three steps in a row, he knew that they were nowhere near enough.