[REND] 12.2 - Adore Your Core

Dario moved ten feet away and beckoned Deen to attack. Though wearing a determined face, Deen hesitantly approached him. She balled her fists and raised them; from her form, it was apparent she was inexperienced in fighting.

“Go ahead,” Dario said. He didn’t put up any guard, just standing there with his hands down.

Wow, I’m commentating inside my head, I thought with a giggle. A possible future career?

“Kick his ass!” Reo shouted.    

Deen aimed a kick at Dario’s torso before Reo finished his sentence. Dario hopped back to avoid it, but Deen stopped mid-kick and didn’t finish it. She wobbled after that bizarre maneuver but put her foot back to stabilize. She then lunged at the confused Dario and swung her left fist.

Dario raised his hand to catch the punch, but Deen twisted her body, pulled back her left arm, and threw her right fist instead, which Dario easily dodged with a step back.

“What’s up with that?” Myra muttered.

“She seems to be reading Dario’s movements,” Everett offered.

Dario raised a brow as he dropped into a stance. His mouth twitched into a slight smile. Had he guessed what Deen’s power was?

Deen launched amateurish kicks and punches. Watching her made me internally cringe so hard that my stomach could probably grind down stone. Making the scene worse, Deen kept stopping her punches and kicks, doing weird moves like ducking even when Dario wasn’t doing anything. Deen and I practiced fighting yesterday—technically, it was early morning today—and it wasn’t as bad as this. Granted, it probably looked bad, and we just didn’t know any better. I was no fighter myself.

“Come on, attack me.” Deen gasped. “I-I would like to qualify my statement—it wasn’t meant as an arrogant challenge. I just want to show what else I can do besides being awkward in a fight.”

“I’ll use my powers to add realism to our fight,” Dario said, bringing his fists up.

“Wa-wait! Not that serious!”

“You need to get used to my power since we’ll fight side by side as comrades someday.”

An invisible force made the hairs on my neck and arms stand on end. I felt clammy, my skin rubbery. I broke into cold sweats as my head got squeezed. This would likely feel much worse as a normal human. I pretended to be woozy. Myra stopped me from fake falling to my side. Though I hated her touch, she seemed like a nice person. Could also be faking it.

The disgusting feeling disappeared. Deen was kneeling on the ground. I think she got down before the blast came; the pressure must’ve been stronger on her since she was near Dario. What would Dario’s full-powered headache field feel like?

Deen stood up, wearing determination on her face.

Hopping on the balls of his feet, Dario closed the distance in a blink. He jabbed at Deen. She stepped left, into Dario’s other fist. She ducked down in time—Dario’s punch passed over her head—and returned with a kick, which Dario expectedly avoided. Their fight continued. Deen was getting into the flow of it.

Everett and Reo cheered. Even Johann clapped. We all knew Dario was playing around, but I admit that Deen looked cool. The universe was conspiring to ensure that she was the main character instead of me.

Dario attacked faster and faster. Deen no longer tried to counterattack, focused only on dodging. She continued to step, giving ground to Dario.

“What? I don’t get it!” Deen exclaimed. She attempted a sideways jump while ducking, instead getting her legs tangled up and falling on her butt. Even though she fell, she avoided Dario’s last attack, a low kick.

How would I have fared in her position? Very badly. I couldn’t remember any of my judo lessons years ago. And how was I supposed to grapple Dario, given my small size? My only strategy was being durable and wildly attacking, hoping something would hit. In my transformed monster body, I bullied Purple Mohawk by being stronger and faster.  

“Are you okay?” Dario said, extending his hand to Deen.

“Yes-yes, I’m fine,” Deen replied as Dario pulled her up. “I’m so slow to keep up.”

“Keep up with your power? If my guess is right, you might have quite an impactful ability.” He turned to the rest of us. “What do you guys think? Share your thoughts first before I share mine.”

“Whoever guesses correctly gets a kiss from Deen!” Reo pointed at Everett. “Go ahead, give your best shot.”

“Shut up, dude,” Everett snapped.

“Looks like Deen was predicting your moves, Dario,” Myra said. “Uh, heightened senses? Hyper intuition, like she’s got trajectories mapped out in her mind?”

“Deen’s reacting even before Dario made a move,” Johann said, leaning forward in his seat. He seemed to be interested. “She’s also evading weirdly, as if she’s moving too early because she knows she’ll be too slow to react in real time. It’s a toss-up between some sort of mind-reading powers or future sight.” 

“Dario, since we’re doing a guessing game,” Myra said, “we should be able to ask you questions since you were the one who fought her.” Dario gestured for her to go ahead, so she asked, “Did you think about doing specific moves to attack or block Deen?”

“Of course, I thought about it,” he replied. “What do you mean?”

Myra snorted. “Oh, don’t play dumb. Like when you tried to catch Deen’s fist, but she didn’t follow through with her punch, you must’ve suspected she was reading your mind. If I were in your position, I would’ve thought of various fake moves and check Deen’s reaction. Did you do that?”

“That’s a dumb plan, Myra,” Reo said. “If Deen could read minds, she’d see through the fake intentions.”

“What I did was clear my mind and rely on instincts,” Dario said. “Then I increased my speed. If I were fast enough, it’d be as if Deen didn’t have mind-reading powers anyway.”

Myra shrugged. “Guess that sorta counters mind-reading.”

“However, I soon discounted the possibility of Deen peering into my mind,” continued Dario. “The way she moved was incompatible with it. It felt as if she knew my moves before I thought of them. I tried to decide at the last moment what my next strike would be, but she was already reacting.”

“Not mind-reading or some kind of super sensory ability,” Johann said. “That leaves prescience.” 

“Prescience?” Reo wondered. “Is that French or what?”

“Precognition, future sight, foreknowledge,” I said. As I predicted, Dario would easily realize Deen’s powers. But there were other aspects to it that the hero wannabes didn’t know, and wouldn’t know, if we could help it.

“Ah, just a fancy term,” Reo said. “Prescience. Sounds sci-fi. Seriously, though. Seeing the fucking future?”

“Won’t work on you because you don’t have a future,” Myra murmured.

“That’s a good one, so I’ll let that slide,” Reo said. “Anyway, do Corebrings have someone with that power? Seems awfully strong as fuck.”

“There are rumors of Corebring seers,” Dario said. “It’s logical to assume the Hive has ways of predicting the future, given the relative peace we’re experiencing. The world’s population has exploded since the end of the Adumbrae War. One would assume that the Adumbrae seeding rate would increase proportionally with the population, but we have only this one Purple Bloom at present. Compare that to multiple during the Adumbrae War. The Corebrings must’ve some way of nipping disastrous seedings in the bud. Anyone remember the sinking of Gibraltar?”

“Like seven years ago?” Reo said. Myra raised a brow at him. “What?” he said. “I watched the news back then.”

“A small Purple Bloom was supposedly hiding under Gibraltar Island,” Dario said. “The Professor told me that the Corebrings learned of it before there were any attacks—it could have only been through some sort of future sight ability. And take Madagascar as another example. The Corebrings have already destroyed two Purple Blooms, according to the Professor, with the public still unawares.”

“Why’s the fight still going on over there, though?” Everett asked.

“Their future sight’s not super tight, probs,” Myra said.

“Since our artificial Cores came from a Mother Fragment,” Dario said, “it’s possible for us to have a seer ability too. Is our guess right, Deen? Can you see the future?”

“I wish,” Deen said. “But it’s pretty close.” She took a deep breath before the big reveal. She waved at the space above her right shoulder. “I have something that I call a Guardian Angel.”

I’m warming up to the name now, I thought.

Deen and I brainstormed what to call her power on the way to Eloyce University. I thought naming the invisible owl thingy ‘Guardian Angel’ sounded lame. My suggestion was Garg-Owl. It was a gargoyle owl. It was a genius idea to me, but Deen just laughed. Bitch.

“A summon like mine? Reo asked. “We can’t see anything.” The rest of the group echoed him. 

“It’s invisible, but it’s there,” Deen explained. Erind and I tested it with the CCTV and cellphone cameras. Nothing shows up unless I’m looking at it. Erind ordered ghost-hunting equipment online to test it, but I don’t think those’ll work.”

“It’s like Sneak, my stealth fairy,” he said. “Does your Guardian Angel have a physical body like Sneak, too? Can we touch it?” 

Deen shook her head. “You’ll just touch air. It’s like a ghost that only I could see.” She glanced at me, and our eyes met.

We had agreed that she shouldn’t mention that she could probably touch the Guardian Angel. After all, it told her not to try, but didn’t say anything when I attempted to touch it. I explained to Deen that she should keep secret some stuff about her power. These people weren’t our friends. I, alone, am the Supreme Best Friend of Deen.

“Are you sure it’s not just your hallucination?” Myra asked. “If you’re the only one who sees it…”

“I don’t think so,” Deen replied. “It’s persistently there since midnight. Even if it’s just a figment of my mind, the power is there.”

“This Guardian Angel, how does it work?” Dario asked. Something was different with his tone. This guy was interested in Deen’s power. “Can it see the future?”

“Seems like it. It then speaks inside my head about what to do. During our fight, for example, it says, ‘He’ll catch your hand when you punch’ or ‘Incoming left kick’, and so on. Simple and short instructions. I tested some things with Erind, and it’s always like that. But, so far, there’s much left that I don’t know about my power.”

“We’ll help you figure it out,” Dario said. “That’s what we’re here for. We all had to go through that process. Eventually, you’ll understand your power as you meld more Core. Perhaps we can discern what it can do by what it can’t. What are its weaknesses?”

There we go, I smugly thought. Predicting the future was an insane ability. Dario would want to know the weaknesses in case we were to use it against him.

“The Guardian Angel only gives instructions—that’s one weakness,” Deen said, subtly looking at me again. “Not very descriptive instructions. It would’ve been so much better if I could see what’s going to happen.”

“It may be minimizing the scope of the advice so that a ‘safe’ future wouldn’t be too affected,” Dario guessed. “I hypothesize that when your Guardian Angel processes what to tell you, it includes possibilities of your actions when given certain advice.”

“I didn’t get much of that,” Myra said. “But it sure sounds like hell of a useful power.”

“This is merely the start of it,” Dario reminded. “I’m sure Deen could do more things with her Guardian Angel in the future”.

“The time between the danger and instruction is also short, right?” Myra said. “That’s another weakness.”

“Yeah, it seems like it only warns about immediate danger,” I nonchalantly hopped into the conversation. This wasn’t true. We had a heads-up of at least five minutes before Deen’s sister arrived. Five minutes was plenty of time to prepare, even if the danger was a falling nuke or something. We didn’t want Dario knowing how far into the future the Garg-Owl could see.  

“It’ll probably have range problems too,” Everett said. “All of our powers are limited by range. Dario’s headache field, Reo’s fairies, how far I could burn things.”

“Corebring and Adumbrae alike are similar in that aspect,” Dario explained. “We are affecting the world with supernatural energies. The physical ranges of our abilities start small. As we meld more with our Cores, our abilities are amplified, including their ranges.”

“How does that work with predicting the future?” Reo asked.

“I was thinking,” Everett said, “that a sniper might shoot far enough that Deen’s Guardian Angel would only detect the bullet entering its field. Not enough time to save Deen.”

“Hopefully, no sniper’s going to shoot me,” Deen said with a nervous laugh. We both knew that her power’s range was very far, if it was limited at all. Her older sister was likely outside of the gated community when her Guardian Angel told us to clean up and leave the kitchen.

What was that? Like half a mile? Let these hero wannabes think that Deen’s power is far weaker than it really was. We’d use this against them in the future.

“A good thing I see is that it reacts to smaller threats,” Johann said. “Dario wasn’t going to actually hurt Deen. The Guardian Angel still protected her.”

“What I want to know,” Myra said, “is if it extends the protection to others.”

“Erind and I were wondering about that too,” Deen said. “But we can’t test it. I don’t think it’ll protect Erind if I do the punching.”

“I volunteer Everett!” Reo said. “Stand beside Deen. Go on. I’ll punch you. Don’t be a pussy.”

Deen received no prompt from the Guardian Angel. Even Myra tried it. The Guardian Angel remained silent as Reo punched Myra.

“That was weak sauce, Reo,” Myra said, lowering her crossed arms. “Don’t make excuses about how pathetic that punch was.”

“My excuse is that I’m just physically weaker than you,” Reo said. “Your Core made you physically stronger than the rest of us. But I bet you won’t last long if I sic a juiced-up Blubber on you.”

“I believe we should test with someone who Deen holds important,” Dario said.

“But Erind might get hurt,” Johann said.

“No worries,” I said. “My body has already started to change because of the Core. I’m much, much stronger than Deen. I can take a not-so-serious punch from you guys.”

Last night, I demonstrated to Deen how strong I had gotten by denting her five-pound dumbbells with my grip alone. Making her feel better that I was also changing was one reason. The other was that I’d pretend this was part of my power from the Core. I really wasn’t sure if I’d get one separate from my Adumbrae power.

“Really?” Reo asked. “I just noticed you’re not wearing your glasses. The Core is affecting your body.”

“Want to see by how much?” I walked toward a concrete column. About fifty percent of my strength. I threw a hook punch, following what I saw on an internet video. My punch took a chunk off the column.

“Holy shit!” Reo exclaimed.