Interlude


Nendou

"I seriously don't know what to do with you." Koenma raked a hand through his brown hair with a beleaguered sigh and shook his head. "I mean, seriously, what kind of monster are you?"

"What are you talking about, God-dude?" Nendou chuckled. "I'm no monster. Just a normal guy with a normal life."

Koenma's eye twitched. "I'm pretty sure your definition of 'normal' needs to be reevaluated."

"No thanks, man. I don't date guys. Especially not married ones with scary wives."

"Ugh." Koenma dropped his face into his hands and did his best not to pull out his hair. He had no idea what Nendou thought 'reevaluated' meant, but he was pretty sure he did not want to find out.

These last months (time dilated or not) had been a serious trial for Koenma. Not because Nendou was a bad student (although, if Koenma were trying—Kami forbid—to teach him anything cerebral, he would redact that statement in a heartbeat) but because Nendou was too good of a student. Koenma couldn't remember the last time he had met anyone, never mind a human, who was so intensely in-tune with their body and spirit energies.

Within hours (though not all on the same day), Nendou had learned to use his spirit energy to enhance his strength and speed by infusing it into his bones and muscles, learned to fire energy blasts from the palms of his hands, learned to body-flicker, learned to manifest a spirit spear, learned to crush stone by pushing spirit energy into the cracks between molecules, learned to sense and identify the strength of another's spirit energy, learned to project his senses onto the spirit plane to interact with ghosts, learned to astral project, and on and on…Whatever the task, the boy did it with intuitive speed, grace, and ease and with more than a little mind-boggled irritation on Koenma's part.

Because, despite all that bodily and spiritual attunement, the kid was still a raging moron.

"So, what's next God-dude? Can I learn how to fly? You know, like in Dragon Ball when they push energy out of their feet and shoot off into the sky like a rocket? I want to fly! That would be the coolest thing ever, man!"

"You can't just learn to fly, you idiot." Koenma closed his eyes to massage his aching head. "Only those with control mastery over wind are able to do that, and it takes years—decades—of intense study to—"

"Hey, look! I'm flying! Whoa—!"

Koenma looked up just in time to see Nendou use his spirit energy to propel himself off the cave floor and over sixty feet into the air of the high, domed cave before smashing head-first and waist-deep into the solid-stone cave ceiling. His hands coated with a pale gold aura, Nendou worked himself free of the fissure he'd created before pushing out of the hole to give Koenma an idiotic grin.

"My bad, God-dude. Put too much power into my feet. But I think I've got it now, just got to sort of push against the air to hover like a helicopter. Except don't helicopters have, like, spinny things on their tops or something? Maybe I should make a spinny thing on my head, except I'm already flying, so not much point to that, huh?" Still coated in his golden aura, Nendou zoomed around the cave in a victory-lap before landing sure-footed on the cave floor less than five feet away from where Koenma stood gaping.

"So, what's next, God-dude?"

"A monster," Koenma muttered, shaking his head. "An absolute monster…"


Kaliea: I absolutely love the idea of Nendou being an absolute genius when it comes to anything physical specifically because he's so stupid mentally. For him, there's no real concept of "I can't because my body can't," if he thinks it, he'll do it, and it's only when he literally can't do it that he says "guess it wasn't meant to be" and moves on to the next impossibility. The idea of having Nendou learn (sort of, as he literally just did it) how to fly is based around Kusuo's ability, to an extent. The main difference is that Kusuo could fly telekinetically, meaning he was able to lift and propel himself with his mind using levitation. I also used (obviously, as I referenced it in the chapter) the concepts behind the Dragon Ball character's ability to fly. The way I figure is it's theoretically sound - air can be dense if you compress it and the harder/faster you push against it, the more resistance there is. So if you apply a constant push to the air around your body in the right ways we could, theoretically, fly. Plus, I thought it would be funny ;P