Welcome to my little Galactik Football One Shot collection :)
The One Shots will differ in topics and won't be connected to each other unless speciffically said so.
I do not own Galactik Football and I make no mones writing this.
First up: Powers
Everyone in the universe is born with certain powers that usually manifest in ther teenager years, but only intense training can bring them out.
Not manifesting means being a "blank" and no one wants to be one.
Powers
Everyone in this universe was born with powers. The range of possibilities was huge: there were those who could talk to animals, those who had super strength, there was invisibility or control over the elements and so many more.
Usually these powers were found between the ages of ten and sixteen. In rare cases powers have been discovered at age seventeen, but never after that.
Those who never discover their powers were pitied and looked down upon.
Everyone knew this and it was the reason that three young teens of fifteen years could be found in the backyard of a home in one of the bigger cities on Planet Akillian.
Thran, a young man of Asian origin with short dark blue hair and stormy grey eyes, was going through his strengthening exercises. He could feel his powers, he knew that he was either a technopath or a cyberpath, but he had trouble gaining the strength necessary to let his powers out and manifest them.
The exercises were shown to him by his father, who at his son's age had the same problem.
Right next to him sat a tall, green-eyed red-head. D'Jok, too, was doing exercises meant to strengthen his powers, however his were a little less specific than Thran's. He had felt the soft tendrils of his powers but unlike Thran was unable to put a proper name on them.
The third teen was short with black hair and blue eyes. Unlike his two friends Micro-Ice wasn't doing anything, he just watched with a bored expression.
"Do you two really have to work on this stuff every free minute you've got? I mean, come on dudes we have done that stuff in four out of eight of today's classes. You've got to take a break at some point."
Thran responded without so much as looking at his friend "Of course we do. The more we practice the better. Remember: There is no such thing as too much practicing when it comes to one's powers."
"Thran is right Micro-Ice. I'm being honest with you right now: without the relentless practicing I would most likely be a blank by the time I turn seventeen and I really don't want that."
"Moreover Rocket, you know the son of that florist, would never have gotten where he is now without the exercises. They diagnosed him with weak energy-paths, they thought he would be a blank. And now look at him, he is almost as powerful as Mark."
"Mark is not powerful." Deadpanned the shorter teen and Thran shrugged "Give him time. I'm sure he will get better."
"Point is 'Mice that even someone who was practically told that he would never get his powers, trained and achieved something everyone thought impossible. Rocket is the living evidence that anyone that is dedicated to their training can uncover their powers."
"Pff, you are just training this intensely because there is no way that D'Jok the Great will be shown up by a weakling like Rocket."
That was when Thran finally looked at his friend "What the heck is it with you? Rocket is not weak, if anything overcoming this enormous obstacle in his life makes him a very strong person in my opinion. And Mark isn't weak either, he discovered his powers only four weeks ago, he has plenty of time to grow."
"Thran is right you can't compare these two to people like Tia and Mei. Don't look at me like that I know exactly you are always thinking about these two when you make comments about someone's strength.
The girls have both years and training on Rocket and Mark. Comparing them to that is unfair and unrealistic."
Micro-Ice crossed his arms in front of his chest, a defiant look blossomed on his face. "What about Ahito and Yuki then? Both discovered their powers about six months ago? They are both way stronger than Mark and Rocket."
Thran stared angrily at his smaller friend. "Ok. First of all: Keep my brother and my cousin out of your arguments; they aren't here to hit you over the head themselves.
Why do you even bring them up? You know very well that Ahito trained even more than I do to unlock his powers. He had a nasty power-blockade that required intense training. That's why he had an easy transition from Unlocking- to Control-training.
And Yuki discovered her powers a little early because she was very, very eager to do as her favourite cousin did. We really should have paid more attention to what she was doing instead of to what Ahito was doing.
Both are being handled and trained by our entire family. There is always someone to give them the attention and training they need.
Rocket is the son of a working single-father. I'm sure that his father does what he can, but you can't compare that to Ahito and Yuki, who both have eight aunts, nine uncles, six older cousins and two sets of grandparents each next to their own parents who are all dying to train them and give them pointers.
And I'm not even going to mention the amount of relatives we don't see on a regular basis that would be thrilled to lend a hand in their training."
"Yeah, ok. So Rocket gets the single-parent-bonus, great. Do I get that too? My Ma is alone with me and I've got no relatives to help me with my training." Micro-Ice interrupted harshly.
"And what about Mark, hmm? He's got both parents, an older brother, an aunt, an uncle and two younger cousins. He should be better."
D'Jok frowned deeply, unhappiness with the situation and his younger friend's behaviour clearly written on his face. "What is your point? Maya is alone with me, too and you don't see me slacking off on training, do you? Furthermore stop dragging Mark down, I thought you two were friends."
"We are." Micro-Ice had the decency to look slightly ashamed.
"Then stop talking crap about him. He had his powers for only four weeks Micro-Ice, that's nothing."
By now the black-haired teen was red-faced, but it was not possible to say whether it was from anger or shame. Suddenly he got up and walked to the garden gate.
He tossed a "See you at school tomorrow." over his shoulder and left his two friends both slightly angry and confused.
They stared after his retreating form until they couldn't see him any longer. When he was finally out of their sight Thran shook his head.
"Sometimes I really wonder just what is going on in that head of his."
"Yeah, me too." D'Jok turned to look at his friend "He's been so strange these past couple of months."
Thran blinked once and then brought a hand up to coup his chin, something he did whenever he thought about things.
"Well, thinking about it, it started when Rocked manifested his powers for the first time, remember?"
"Sure do, how could I forget?" the red-head asked with a slight smile on his lips. "Best thing that happened this year at school. I mean no one believed Rocked would ever be anything other than a blank and then suddenly he made the potted plant on Mr. Williams' desk grow."
Thran chuckled and grinned, letting his hand drop again. "His shocked face was the best thing ever."
D'Jok's smile turned into a grin "Whose face? That of Mr. Williams or Rocket's?"
"Truth to be told I don't think I can say whose facial expression I laughed more at, I mean after my brain rebooted."
They both laughed a little bit more remembering that day at school but quickly sobered up and returned to their earlier topic.
Thran looked off to the side. "Micro-Ice got a little strange after that but I never really thought about it until now."
"I didn't either. Think it got worse after Ahito and Yuki got their powers?"
"I don't think that with Ahito surprised him too much, after all we all have been trying to unlock and manifest our powers since we finished basic training after turning thirteen. And Ahito always had a little more oomph behind everything he did. That power-blockade was just unfortunate."
"Then it was Yuki who threw him for a loop?"
The younger teen nodded. "I think so. Yuki is really young and for her to unlock and manifest this early is rather unusual."
"Do you think he is jealous?" Green eyes narrowed in contemplation.
"He might be, but I don't understand why he would feel that way. Everyone he knows trains to unlock and manifest their powers and so far all of them have either been successful already or are on their way there."
Silence came over the two as both of them searched for an answer. D'Jok fiddled with his bracelet.
"It got really bad after Mark finally manifested, didn't it?" he spoke into the silence.
Thran looked up, his face scrunched up in memory "Yes, that is about right. You think there is more than jealousy to it?"
He received a nod and an affirmative hum. "I think he might be worried about not making the cut, you know, about turning out to be a blank."
Understanding dawned on Thran's face "You think that is why he is so nasty? He is afraid? But why wouldn't he spend more time with training then? Micro-Ice knows that the only way to unlock and manifest one's powers is training."
D'Jok shook his head. "I don't know. I really, really don't know." Frustration coloured his voice and a deep frown marred his face. Thran could feel the sudden shift in mood before the older teen even spoke.
D'Jok clenched his fist "I don't know what is going on in his head and he isn't talking to me about it."
Blue energy started to coat his hands. He didn't notice it starting to spread all over his body nor did he notice Thran staring at him.
"I mean is it so hard? Ok, I get it's not easy to talk about stuff like that and really, who wants to?! I just want to help!"
Thran blinked twice and kept staring; awed by the fact that D'Jok was unlocking without noticing it. He ignored the red-head's ranting. All that was missing was...
"Because seriously! Right now he is dragging all of us down with his attitude! Doesn't he notice that?"
Suddenly the blue energy pulsed around him once, twice and then burst out in a little shockwave, stopping D'Jok effectively in his angry rant.
He stared at his hands which still glowed in a faint blue, his eyes wide and his mouth slightly open.
Slowly, very, very slowly he lifted his head to look at Thran only to finally notice the other's staring.
"Wha... Did you ... how ... why..."
"As much as I enjoy you being completely speechless for once..." Thran, too, had an expression of shock and awe on his face, but had slightly less trouble finding his words.
"Congratulations: You just unlocked and manifested your powers." That was when he finally managed to get a smile on his face. It would stay there for a long time.
"But how? And why now?"
"I have no idea. Remember: Powers are strange things, for all the research that has been done unlocking and manifesting one's powers is still something that no one can actually explain.
But if you want my opinion, I'd say that the rush of strong emotions together with your earlier training made it easier for you to unlock and manifest."
His friend stared at him. "Could you, uh, elaborate?"
Thran sighed "I think you would have manifested your powers within the next few weeks anyway, but you getting angry gave you the necessary boost to unlock and manifest now instead of later."
He received an unsure nod for his explanation. "Ok. But what can I do? I don't exactly feel like the others described feeling."
"Like who described? I need a little more info here."
"You know like Mark and Tia and Mei said they felt when they first manifested." He went back to staring at his own hands. The glow had died down.
"Mark, Tia and Mei?" Thran started to think, however it didn't take long for it to click for him.
"Oh, that's what you mean. D'Jok all three of them use primary powers, yours' is most likely a secondary power. Think for a moment, does it feel anything like how Rocket and Ahito described it?"
That earned him a rather flat look. "Thran all Rocked said was that it felt weird but not unusual and Ahito shrugged his shoulders at me and said, and I quote 'Absolutely no different than yesterday, but with something a little extra'. I hate to inform you of the fact that neither Rocket nor your brother are good at describing how they feel."
"And how do you feel?" a crooked grin forming on his mouth.
D'Jok huffed "No different than yesterday, there is just something extra."
An amused laugh escaped Thran, one he didn't bother to try and stifle. "And here you complain about Rocket and Ahito."
"Oh, please shut up about that." The older teen couldn't help but smile and feel giddy. Finally.
"What can I even do?" he looked at his hands in wonder.
Thran shrugged "I have no idea. Rocked just started manipulating plants and Ahito accidentally busted the piping. But considering there was a small shockwave... try pushing air around."
"This is silly. How do I even do that?"
"Ahito said that the first few times feels really strange, so if I were you I would close my eyes and go looking for that strange feeling, then push." Thran winced suddenly "But please be careful when you push. Cousin Tomoko pushed too hard and send fire raining down on her school."
Green eyes widened and the red-head swallowed hard. "Ok. No pushing too hard, wouldn't want to be responsible for the destruction of property."
With that D'Jok took a deep breath and closed his eyes. A few moments of silence later a strong gust of wind nearly blew the two teens over.
"D'Jok I said careful." Thran watched in dismay as his mother's roses lost the fight against the wind and simply broke. She would be rather unhappy.
"I'm sorry. I really just gave that weird feeling a little tap, nothing more." Came the sheepish reply.
The shorter teen gave a resigned sigh "At least you didn't cause a hurricane. This here I can explain to my mother" he pointed towards the rosebushes "but I would have immense trouble trying to explain a missing roof."
"I said that I'm sorry."
"And I said it's ok." He gave his friend a smile. "Besides now you know for sure that you can manipulate the air around you."
"Yeah, but I think that this is going to take a lot of training to get completely under control." He frowned again. "And Maya can't help me with this. She is a psychic and she can turn invisible. Those powers don't even have the same basic mechanism that mine do."
Thran put a hand on his shoulder in silent support. "Don't worry, my family loves you. We've got a lot of secondary power users that would give you a hand in training if you asked them nicely."
D'Jok turned to him, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Don't they have enough to do with both Ahito and Yuki? And you will be needed to be trained too in a bit. I know you are close to unlocking and manifesting."
"Don't worry, my grandparents had five to train at the same time, but I'll ask around beforehand if you want me to."
"I'd appreciate that." Then a strange expression came over his face. "See Maya, I can be very polite and thoughtful if I want to."
Thran gave a pointedly impolite snort "Sure, she just wishes you would want to be so more often."
"That she does. So what do we do now?"
His friend shrugged his shoulder. "I'm not sure. I mean you finally achieved what we have been training for and are going to need to get instructions tomorrow at school. I'd suggest you don't tap that weird feeling anymore tonight unless Maya wants a demonstration.
You'll need to tell the teachers tomorrow so that you can be put into the power-control classes."
"That means I'm going to be pulled out of class with you and Micro-Ice. Great this is something I could do without. I don't want to leave you alone with him and the bad mood he has been in lately. You don't need his negativity."
"Hey I can deal with him, there is nothing for you to worry about, after all I do manage to get along with my brother and an army of aunts, uncles and cousins."
"It's just that there aren't many in that class anymore, most of us have both unlocked and manifested already and are in the control-classes."
"True but I'm not going to be alone with Micro-Ice. – Seriously we need to stop talking about him like that. We make him sound like some kind of nasty bully and that's something he most certainly isn't. He is just not really himself right now."
"You are right, but he is foul-tempered and he has been talking smack about both Mark and Rocket."
"Think we need to ambush him with a talk about feelings?" Thran had the gall to look amused at the thought. D'Jok looked less than happy at that prospect.
"With how he has been these past few weeks that's going to be like pulling teeth."
"The question is: are we going to go and pull the teeth?"
D'Jok didn't even think for a second before answering "Sure we are, I would do that for any of my friends if it means they are going to feel better afterwards." He paused "But let's make a plan of action first. He might take offense if we accidentally use the wrong wording."
"So he could potentially react like how basically any other teenager our age would. Don't worry too much. We brainstorm a bit tomorrow afternoon and then we are going to find some time to talk to him."
It was getting dark and the first stars could be seen in the sky. Far off in the distance the bell of the old church sounded.
D'Jok looked up and into the sky. "I better get home. Maya told me to be home before seven."
Thran looked at his watch. "Good idea then. You have about twenty minutes to get yourself home." He gave his friend another warm smile "Want me to tell Ahito?"
"Please don't." The taller teen smiled back and his eyes lightened up with mischief "I want to see his dumb face when I tell him myself tomorrow at school."
That earned him a chuckle. "Considering how you go about informing my brother about things I really regret not having manifested yet, I like seeing him dumbstruck. It's funny and you don't see that particular expression on his face very often."
The red-head laughed under his breath. "Would you believe me if I told you that I do what I do to him just to see that look on his face?"
"Trust me man, that isn't just you. All of us do that. Mom and Dad do it, I do it, our aunts and uncles do it from time to time, our older cousins do it and I swear grandma Akemi talks in riddles just to annoy him." Thran told his friend, voice full of mirth.
"What a lovely family, I get the feeling that with you guys and a friend like me around Ahito has absolutely no need for enemies."
"We do try not to overdo it. Messing with him is fun, upsetting him isn't. He does retaliate, you know."
"Good for him. It's important not to let others walk over oneself." He went and grabbed his messenger bag. "And don't worry I don't plan on anything worse than showing up, attaching myself to him and not saying a word about my specific powers until the teacher does."
"Well that's about as harmless as it gets." Thran offered as he saw D'Jok to the gate. "See you tomorrow."
"Sure. And don't let Micro-Ice upset you."
"I won't, no matter how grumpy he gets."
"Good. Say hi to Ahito for me. Bye."
"Will do, see you." Thran watched D'Jok's retreating back until he turned around the corner. Then he went back inside.
He could do his exercises just as well inside, after all technopathy and cyberpathy weren't powers prone to causing massive destruction of property, but they hadn't dared to stay inside since they didn't know what kind of powers D'Jok and Micro-Ice were going to have. Considering the overturned rosebushes Thran thought they made the right choice.
After taking off his coat and shoes he went upstairs and entered his room where he nearly tripped over a bunch of old circuit boards. He really needed to clean up. It was a good thing that he and his brother were no longer sharing a room, Ahito would have been complaining if he had to live here.
Deciding that training could wait – after all he had done quite a lot of it already today – he started to pick up the things that littered his floor. He didn't know why but people always assumed that he was an organised and orderly teenager. Ahito said it had something to do with him being so smart it hurt.
Thran shook his head. He was just a normal teen with an averagely cluttered bedroom floor. The things people were assuming about him and his brother were amazing: Thran was smart, Ahito was not; Ahito was lazy, Thran was overly active; Thran always had a plan, Ahito always had to improvise; Ahito was messy, Thran was orderly.
Untrue, all of it: they were both smart, however their fields of knowledge didn't overlap all that often; yes Ahito loved napping, but Thran spend more time playing videogames than actively running around outside; Thran liked having a plan, that was true and Ahito didn't care much for making them, but he was so good at improvising and going with the flow that no one other than Thran knew when he was actively following a plan he had made; and that thing with orderliness? Fact was that out of the two of them Ahito was the neat-freak, at least when it came to his own sleeping and living space. Thran? – Not so much.
He sighed when he spotted several broken computer parts – served him right for not being careful of where he placed them. Better to clean up his room completely then.
An hour later and Thran was running on autopilot: clothes into the hamper, electronics and computer parts into the designated boxes. He would dust the shelves later, he decided while deep in thought about what was going on with Micro-Ice.
Was it really jealousy? Shouldn't he be practicing and exercising at any given opportunity then? Were Thran himself inclined to jealousy he most certainly would attempt to catch up with the others as soon as possible.
As it was Micro-Ice didn't practice more than absolutely necessary, at least that he knew of and just complained about others not being as strong as he expected them to be.
So was it something else then? If yes then what was it? He remembered D'Jok thinking about it being fear of turning out to be a blank. But it couldn't be insecurity about his own abilities, Micro-Ice always seemed sure of himself when he was practicing with his classmates and friends and rarely refused a challenge, even if he already knew that he would lose.
Thran was so deep in thought that he didn't notice the green energy surrounding him, he didn't notice it pulsing gently and then dimming down, he didn't notice that he had stopped picking up computer parts and electronics off of the floor and instead just started to grab them out of the air when they flew towards him.
He most certainly didn't notice his younger twin brother leaning in the doorway watching him with the widest, warmest smile on his face.
All he noticed was a strange itch in the back of his mind that he mentally pushed at, trying to get it to stop.
It was only when he scratched at his head tiredly – boy what had he done today to get this tired all of a sudden – and an old motherboard smacked him in the forehead, that he noticed that something was most decidedly off.
Thran looked up and stared uncomprehendingly at the floating piece of tech. He blinked once, then twice. Somewhere off to his side he could pick up strangled noises.
It took all of five minutes for him to really comprehend what he was seeing and when it finally registered with him he yelped and fell over backwards on his behind. The motherboard simply fell out of the air and with a loud clang onto the floor.
Not even two seconds later Thran snapped his head around to look dumbfounded at his now loudly laughing younger brother.
Ahito for his part didn't take long to calm his laughter down to amused chuckling and walked over to his brother. Once he reached him he dropped onto the floor behind him and slung his arms around the others' shoulders in silent congratulations.
One of Thran's hands automatically flew up and settled on his brother's forearm. They sat there for a while, the silence comfortable. It was their mother calling them down for dinner that broke them out of their little moment. Dinner was good, his parents were excited and Thran couldn't wait to tell his teachers.
Much later, seconds before he drifted off to sleep, he remembered that Micro-Ice was now the last one out of their group of friends that had yet to unlock and manifest their powers. Tiredly he hoped that his friend wouldn't take this development too hard.
What happened the following day showed him clearly that Micro-Ice didn't appreciate the turn of events.
Well, here you have the first One Shot.
Thran kind of took over at some point. While I would love to write more on it, all I have come up with so far is meh.
I hope you liked it.
BlueNightOwl out.