Transfusion 5.4
The moment I stepped out and exchanged a few words with this "speedster," it became entirely clear that he had been playing to the crowd — performing for potential sponsors. With me, he spoke calmly, even with a degree of caution. You could see that the guy had a head on his shoulders and had no interest in being rude to some ambiguous potential super he knew nothing about.
That alone put him considerably above the majority of the superhuman population in my estimation. Too many professional heroes — even seasoned ones — loved staging elaborate performances while genuinely believing in their own exceptionalism, their own near-divinity. Some became so convinced of their chosen status that they stopped using their real names altogether, going exclusively by their hero aliases.
The logic being, apparently, that millions and billions of ordinary people shared those names, while there was only one Hero. Absurd. I had never been particularly fond of flaunting my own hero name, though it was honestly a decent one.
That was part of why I actually respected the Patriot. He didn't involve himself in that kind of spectacle, didn't chase popularity, didn't scramble for every available piece of the pie the way ninety percent of other supers did.
Instead, he spent the majority of his day simply saving people. He did television appearances occasionally, showed up in films — but all of us want to eat well and live comfortably. What matters is remembering which things actually come first.
He didn't build a cult of fanatics around himself, and he was consistently careful about how he treated others. In nearly twenty years of his career, he had never once been caught in any kind of scandal. Even the most well-informed people in the industry agreed — he was the most righteous of the heroes. No alcohol, no substances.
Shockwave reminded me of him in certain ways. In his eyes I saw a straightforward young man chasing a dream of standing at the top of the world, doing everything in his power to get there. After years of working in this business, I had learned to recognize people like that at a glance.
Still — your own situation always needs to stay in frame when you're thinking about others. The idea of putting on a small performance was still on the table, but I wasn't going to push the guy hard. I'd handle it cleanly. A quick win would earn me just as much credibility, without meaningfully damaging his reputation.
He had clearly read something in my expression, though, because he wasn't exactly eager to agree to the fight. Only the silent nod from Brink on the nearby bench made him shake his head in disbelief before turning and walking to his side of the arena. I didn't waste time taking up position across from him.
The referee understood the situation quickly and gave me the abbreviated version of the rules — rules that everyone here already knew by heart. His words passed through my ears without landing, because my attention was entirely inside my ability. The rhythm of thousands of heartbeats wove a complex melody through my mind, while my vision seemed to take on a faint red tint — so many people were here.
But the moment I simply exhaled and chose to clear my awareness, the power shifted and concentrated itself entirely on the speedster standing before me. The years had kept moving, and I had never stopped developing my ability, refining my control. New material for experimentation had added further cards to my hand.
"Three… Two… One…"
The referee was still calling out the final numbers of the countdown when he waved his hand — and dust lifted from the surface of the arena. The speedster had apparently decided against playing games and chose to end this as quickly as possible. Fair enough. Good luck to him.
He moved like lightning — far faster than any ordinary human eye could track. Supers possessed slightly enhanced perception, which meant I could at least make out his red-and-yellow silhouette, but he was still several dozen times faster than me. Measured against him, I moved like a slow-walking tortoise.
His fist was a projectile, aimed directly at my chest. Within a few milliseconds it had broken the sound barrier — and so had he. If it landed, my entire ribcage would compress at once, and the only place I'd be reassembled was an operating room. I would survive — my regeneration was reasonably solid — but full recovery would take several weeks.
The key word being: if.
A few milliseconds before he reached me, my consciousness lurched into a different state and nearly everything around me came to a standstill. The headache was absolutely savage — blood hammered through my ears like a bell striking, while my eyes felt on the verge of rupturing at any moment.
Breathing became nearly unbearable, and maintaining focus on a single point required something close to a titanic exertion of will. Even my skull felt too small, as if it were seconds away from simply giving out under the pressure.
But I endured the pain and used the moment, because my opponent was still moving at a dangerous speed. In that stretched instant I could at least make out the genuine surprise spreading across his face as he watched my body seemingly drag itself sideways at significant speed — his fist sailing past its target by a matter of centimeters.
And then, without expecting it himself, his body jerked sharply of its own accord, stealing from him any chance to redirect. My leg shifted into an unnatural position just ahead of him — a clean trip placed directly in his path.
The fundamental weakness of speedsters is this: they may be fast, but altering course at those velocities is far more difficult than people appreciate. Especially when their own body betrays them at precisely the wrong moment.
Fortunately this was only a training bout, so he hadn't pushed to his true maximum speed — which meant he traveled only about ten meters before flying outside the boundaries of the arena and driving himself into the earth. The referee blew the whistle immediately, signaling the disqualification and the end of the match. Since the assembled spectators had barely processed what had happened within a single second of fighting, the applause for me was sparse and uncertain.
What interested me far more was Brink's reaction.
I turned toward him and watched his face as I gradually came back down from the effort. Sweat was running across my entire body, and the pain from numerous torn muscles was making it meaningfully difficult to concentrate.
This was the result of nearly a year and a half of sustained training — endless attempts to unlock a new dimension of my power. Searching for a way to hold my own against powerful supers, I had realized that I had always placed too much priority on how I could harm or heal others, and not enough on ways to augment myself.
From that realization, I had managed to slightly reshape some of my older abilities, excavate certain ideas that had never previously found an application, and — as always — invest enormous amounts of time in training. My experiments with shutting people down and "slowing" their consciousness had led naturally to the logical counterpart: accelerating my own mind.
Considerably more dangerous than its inverse, and on its face it sounded like nonsense — but people consistently underestimate what blood is actually capable of. The capillary system penetrates every millimeter of the brain, and our capacity for thought is directly dependent on the volume of that fluid that reaches it.
The problem was that even with all my skill and capability, the limit I could reach was this: at the cost of excruciating pain, I could accelerate to the level of an ordinary speedster — but only for a single second.
Meaning I could perceive the world at an order of magnitude faster than normal, without the ability to move at those speeds myself. Attempting to push further, or extend the window, would produce consequences far more serious and far less reversible.
But that was only the first new technique.
I had also managed to revive the concept of controlling the human body through blood manipulation. Every previous experiment along those lines had failed for one simple reason — if I moved the blood within, say, a rat's body so much as a meter to one side, the result was a clot of red liquid pooling in one location and a skeleton with shredded muscle and skin left in another.
Much to my profound disappointment, the legends of the last airbender had turned out to be somewhat light on scientific rigor… But a solution presented itself eventually. An ordinary body cannot withstand those kinds of "lurches" — but what about a body that isn't particularly ordinary?
Through a series of experiments, I taught myself to move my own body this way — using nothing but the ability itself. To subordinate my own blood to my will, to push through the strange sensation of controlling yourself from the inside, and to execute a precise, almost surgical displacement in a desired direction.
It frequently caused relatively minor injuries — torn muscles, dislocated joints — but combined with the acceleration of my consciousness, I could move briefly at a level comparable to a speedster. And that raised my combat capabilities by an entire order of magnitude.
The essential discipline was knowing the exact limits and not accidentally tearing myself apart in the process. But nearly twelve years of training had produced something real. The combination was high-risk. It was also extraordinarily useful.
And Brink clearly understood that. He was staring at me with eyes gone wide with genuine surprise, visibly working through everything he knew about superhuman abilities, trying to construct a framework for what he had just watched. Because from the outside, no one in that arena had been able to determine what specific power I actually possessed. Healing combined with physical strength was already a strange combination — and now something that bordered on speedster ability had shattered every remaining template.
That had been my plan for catching the director's attention. Because what could possibly interest a researcher who had spent his entire life studying and categorizing abilities — more than something completely new, something that fell entirely outside any existing category?
"Well — how was that?" I asked, walking up to him with a smile. "I hope a fast fight didn't disappoint."
"Not in the slightest." The director matched my smile, and in his eyes appeared something genuine — delight, and the spark of real curiosity. "I already understood that you were going to accomplish great things. But the limits of your potential have only continued to expand." He paused for a beat. "Since you've had a chance to warm up — why don't we return to my office and begin discussing the details of our agreement? Just a first draft of the terms, but I believe we have a good deal to talk about…"
***
Annie walked through the corridors of Godolkin with her mother, taking in the portraits of the great heroes who had studied here. Every one of them had achieved something extraordinary and become a genuine legend. Figures who had actually inspired the young woman to push herself toward something better. The names of these students had become shorthand — passed through popular culture now as synonyms for the word "hero" itself…
"And why, exactly, do they have Maeve hanging here? Everyone at the church knows exactly what she is. The abbess said she goes through men practically every week! And there were even stories about her being seen with a woman. And not as a simple friend, either!"
…Her mother, unfortunately, did not share Annie's view, and regarded virtually every current hero as a blasphemer or a deviant of one variety or another, not worth the smallest finger of the Soldier Boy or the Scarlet Countess. The Patriot was more or less the only modern super who met with her marginal approval.
At this point they were finishing the tour and making their way toward Director Richard Brinkerh off's office. The meeting had been scheduled well in advance but had only now aligned with both calendars.
Brink was an extraordinarily busy figure, and he had agreed to meet personally with the young heroine only because of her extensive record of beauty and talent competition wins and her established career with the Young Americans. It wasn't a vast career — but it was a successful one.
However, just as they reached the director's door, it opened from the other side. The young man with gray eyes — the one she had already seen today. The super who had dispatched Shockwave in a matter of moments and sent him airborne.
Annie still hadn't worked out what his ability actually was — he had moved too quickly even for her — but something about him had caught her interest. It felt as though he reminded her of someone. And only now, seeing him up close, did she finally understand where she had seen him before.
"Wait — you were on NBC, weren't you? In that program, where you were healing people and —"
"Hm?" The young man appeared to have been completely absorbed in his own thoughts. The sharp exclamation from Annie's mother seemed to be what pulled him back to the present. He looked momentarily confused, clearly not following what was being said.
"Yes, yes — it's definitely you! You have that frightening costume — the red-and-white one. And your hero name is —" Annie's mother always spoke quickly and with her full self fully deployed; in this particular moment, Annie was silently wishing the volume could be reduced by approximately half. The young hero appeared to share her opinion — he didn't even let the woman finish.
"Yeah, that's me. I'm without the costume right now, so feel free to use my regular name. Mark Shety, or just Mark." He had been looking at her mother while he spoke, perfectly composed — but the moment his eyes moved to Annie, something shifted in his expression. Recognition. "Starlight? From the Young Americans?"
She wasn't accustomed to being recognized out of costume, and the surprise showed. But the young man only smiled, clearly reading her reaction.
"I'll be honest — you were my favorite member of the team. The reality drama and the petty scandals never really interested me. But a real heroine who actually wanted to save people?" He gave a slight shake of his head, the corner of his mouth lifting. "I'm sure Mr. Brink is going to see exactly what you're worth and offer you the best possible terms. He values people who genuinely put in the work to become better."
Annie had no idea how to respond to that, and for a moment she simply stood there without anything to say. Her mother resolved the situation by taking her by the hand and steering her toward the director's office. The young man gave a quiet huff, raised a hand in farewell, and headed for the university exit.
Annie didn't want to admit it to herself — but she had already made up her mind about where she wanted to enroll.
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