Ready to learn some cool stuff? This will be fun.
I slowly close the front door behind me. It's hardly even chilly outside tonight (that's Texas weather), so I'm only wearing my jacket over my shirt. I've still got a baseball bat, since going out at night is still dangerous. I walk on over to the outside of the neighborhood where Azalea and Erika are waiting for me.
"Hi X!" Azalea says. "Ready to mess around with our cool new superpowers?"
"Heck yeah," I respond. "Not sure these count as superpowers though, anyone should be able to do this stuff..."
"So what sorts of things were you thinking of working on tonight?" Erika asks as we start heading west.
"I'll tell you guys when we get there," I answer. "When everyone is here."
After a few minutes, we run into Darius and Minerva...who appear to be engaged in romantic activity. We wait a minute for things to get less...intense between them, before getting closer to them.
"Hey, you two!" I call out. "Enjoying the night so far?"
"Yep, pretty much," Darius answers. "Hard to not enjoy anything I do with her."
"Ready to go?" Erika says.
"Yeah, let's do this!" Minerva replies, at which point we all get going again.
"Uh...which monsters did you say would be there tonight?" Erika asks me.
"Astigmatism and Reaper Bird."
"Oh..." Erika says. She seems sort of...disappointed.
"Wait, Reaper Bird is coming?" Azalea asks. "They sort of freak me out..."
"Don't worry, they're pretty friendly, you just need to listen to them closely, because they always say two things at once," I assure her.
"They weird me out too," Minerva comments. "The way their head keeps flipping around like that..."
We get pretty lucky with the crosswalk tonight; the walk signal is on almost as soon as we press the button. Once we cross, Minerva takes off sprinting without warning, and we have to run to catch up with her, which I honestly would rather not do, considering we're already up at midnight on a school night. At this speed, we make it to the park not a minute later. Astigmatism and Reaper Bird are hanging out in the pavilion.
"Hey, dudes!" Darius says as we approach them. "How've you been?"
"PFrientet,yhgoowoadb,oIugtuyeosus?" Reaper Bird says.
"It's a long walk here from the apartment," Astigmatism says. "How do you think I'm feeling?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry about that, we'll meet closer to your place next time," I say. "Why don't we head down to the theater so we can get started tonight?"
We all step down the stairs down the middle of the seating area to get to the stage.
"Okay, so we've found out that we can summon our soul powers without magic, but we need to be in the right mindset to do so. Like Darius would need to be feeling really confident that he can face his adversary, and that might fill him with Bravery. But it seems that when we use the essences straight from our own souls like that, we can become even more powerful than what we would get from magic; we just need magic to get us started so we can use those abilities in the future.
"Take, for example, what happened earlier today. I got filled with a whole lot of Justice, and then when it all exploded out on someone, it hit him so hard he nearly passed out. And there was a time you may or may not have heard of when Frisk was filled with so much Determination that they couldn't be killed by even the most powerful being to ever live. There's not much telling what else we may be able to do if we manage to bring out enough of our essences."
"So why did we have to come?" Astigmatism asks.
"Well, that got me thinking, you know how humans supposedly used magic to relate the barrier? That got me thinking: what if they just used their soul power? Astigmatism, would you mind activating our souls real quick?"
"Fine," he says. He brings out one of his bouncy orbs, and our souls light up.
"Finally!" Minerva shouts as she starts floating above the ground.
"Wait!" I call out. "Before we start messing around with our powers, I need to try something." Minerva slowly starts moving downwards. "Azalea, could you hold up your shield?" She does so.
I reach out to touch the blue square, and my hand passes right through; wait, it looks like my hand is also making a small hole in it.
"Oh...X, could you...stop that, please?" Azalea says, sounding like she's somewhere between sick and in pain.
"Oh, sorry," I say, jerking my hand back. "Now Astigmatism, you touch it. Don't worry, Azalea, this time you shouldn't feel anything."
Astigmatism walks up to Azalea and touches the shield, making it turn red for a second...before his hand flies right off of it.
"Ow! What did you do to this thing!?" Astigmatism shouts.
"Remember?" I explain. "That shield destroys magic, which is what you're made of."
"You said it wouldn't hurt!"
"I said Azalea wouldn't feel it. I never said you wouldn't."
"Whatever, I am not doing that again."
"That's fine, you don't have to." I turn back to the others. "So, I, a human, can pass through the shield, but Astigmatism, a monster, can't. And the other night, when I threw a bullet at her shield, it sort of broke it for a second. This shield is probably exactly the same as the barrier."
"Oh, you're right!" Erika says. "Both the barrier and the shield took the same power to destroy them as they took to create them, and it probably takes a little more than a seventh of what was used to create them to pass through."
"So, my point is, humans probably never used magic; it was soul power all along."
"Okay, so now can we do more cool stuff?" Minerva asks. "Ah, come on, why isn't it working?"
"Hey, could you guys get our souls going again?" Darius asks, noticing that they're gone.
A few moths fly from Reaper Bird's head.
"Whoo!" Minerva shouts, floating upwards again with her red soul.
"Hey Minerva, how high can you go?" Azalea calls out to her.
"Pretty high, but if I go too high I'll lose my powers and probably die," she shouts back.
"And Darius, you have increased speed, right?" Erika asks.
"Yep, check this out." Darius runs all the way to the other end of the park and back in about eight seconds (Town Park isn't that big but that's still pretty fast).
"Wow, that's like as fast as a car!" Azalea says. "X, can I see your Justice bullets again?"
"Sure," I say as I throw a yellow energy bolt into the railing at the side of the seating area, making a loud BANG and putting a small dent in it.
"Dang, I gotta be more careful where I am those."
Right then, I notice a red car with a black, horizontal stripe out on the road slowing down as it approaches the park. I look back at Astigmatism and Reaper Bird, who seem to be frozen in fear.
"OWhhnaot's he doing here?" Reaper Bird says.
"EVERYBODY HIDE!" Astigmatism yells. "IT'S RICHARDS!"
Suspenseful, huh? I wasn't originally planning to end this chapter here, but if I didn't, it would probably take until Saturday to finish. Speaking of Saturday, that's when Spring Break starts for me, so expect updates a little more often then.
Next chapter, the gang, a tough monster, and an amalgamate are under attack by a serial killer!