There were things she needed to test, like how much damage she could take, or if she could regrow a limb, but this was something that could come as they continued to grow familiar with their powers.
She glanced over at Dinah, biting her lip as she looked at the ghostly woman. “Who are you?” she asked, for what must have been the thousandth time.
As usual, Dinah didn’t say anything, so Ozella returned her focus to working on her team’s stats, or at the very least, contemplating them. She focused again on Sam’s power, wishing there were better ways for her to help him enhance it.
It truly was a unique ability.
***
Zoe Goa Ramone got back to the mansion late, slipping in through a backdoor.
The lights were off, aside from one of the lights in the study, so she tiptoed by, wondering what Ozella could possibly be doing.
She poked her head in to find the strange woman buried in a book, several books actually, flipping through pages, making notes in the air with her finger, Dinah sitting across from her, her eyes half-open.
Of course, once Dinah sensed Zoe, her eyes opened and she looked over to the woman.
“You should get some rest,” Zoe said, no longer making eye contact with Dinah. She thought it was a good thing that the ghost woman, or whatever the hell she was, was able to heal them, but the lady was downright creepy.
“Wait,” Ozella said, turning to her.
“Yes?”
“Where did you go?”
“Does it really matter to you?”
“No,” Ozella said, looking down. “I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Normally, Zoe would have left it at this, but she could still feel the effects of the wine, and the sad look on Ozella’s face made her feel guilty.
“I went out for a drink,” she finally said.
“Did you have a good time?”
“Something like that,” Zoe said, putting her hands into the front pocket of her hoodie, where she had tucked Dr. Hamza’s supplies.
“I have an idea for tomorrow, something I would like to test,” Ozella started to tell her.
“Can you save it for tomorrow?” Zoe asked. “I’m getting tired.”
“Well, I think that it would be something that you would think was pretty helpful…”
“Really, Ozella, I’m sure I’ll like it, but I want to get some rest. Especially if we’re going to bust this shipment. Just remember to stay back and leave the fighting to Helena and me.”
“I have a way I can be helpful too,” Ozella said, not making eye contact with Zoe.
“No one said you weren’t helpful, but leave the fighting to us.”
With that Zoe stepped out of the room, and made her way down the hall to her own bedroom. She stopped in front of Sam’s door for a moment. She took a quick look around to make sure no one would see her, and pressed one of her tiger ears against the surface of the door, listening for any sounds on the other side.
Sam was definitely asleep, but there was someone else asleep with him, evident in second set of exhalations reaching Zoe’s ears.
Burying her pain with a sigh, Zoe stepped away from the door, moving to her bedroom.
Once she was there, she locked the door, and took off her hoodie and hung it in the closet. She stepped into the bathroom, looking at her face again, growing angry at the tiger side, her claws extending from her fingers, the urge to do something about it coming to her.
But in the end, she didn’t try to claw her own face or anything crazy like that. She simply relaxed her hands until they returned to normal, yawned and got out her toothbrush.
As she brushed her teeth she turned to the side, checking out her side boobage, looking at her good side, the side that she’d used multiple times in her modeling gigs.
Whatever role fate played in all this, at least fate had kept her good side, her left side, so she could still theoretically do shoots…
But turning to her other side reminded her of why she was definitely out of the fashion industry from here on out, unless Dr. Hamza was able to do something.
Rather than feel guilty about betraying her team, Zoe tried to look at what she’d done in a different light.
She wasn’t trying to betray her teammates, she was trying to help them.
After all, Ozella was looking crazier than ever with her eyes always darting left and right, keeping stats or whatever she did in her head in check, not to mention the fact that there was a ghost following her around.
Sam would have a choice, as would Helena, because both their powers were subtle enough that they wouldn’t get in the way of their everyday life, but Ozella and Zoe? Both of them were screwed.
So that was what Zoe was doing by reaching out to Dr. Hamza, she was trying to create another option, a way out.
It was too bad too, because she liked some of the parts of her newfound power, especially her hands.
Looking in the mirror, her toothbrush sticking out of the side of her mouth, a little toothpaste foam around her lips, Zoe’s claws took shape, and as they did, her hands and wrists grew thicker, tiger hair forming, her forearms muscling up.
It was everything she’d ever dreamed of, but her hands had something her face did not.
Her hands could turn back to normal, as they quickly did, back to being well-manicured, dainty, blemish free, whereas her face stayed the same. And her tail? That was another thing that she didn’t really like.
Zoe turned to look at her ass, her tail peeking out of the hole she’d cut in the top of her jeans. She’d always found tails sexy, and she knew a lot of people, including many photographers she cosplayed for, liked it when she wore outfits that had a little tail on it.
But actually having one was a pain in the ass, literally.
It made sitting difficult, it seemed to get in the way too much, and while it did help with balance, she didn’t think the trade-off was worth it.
Zoe washed her face, cringing a bit as she moved her hand from the smooth side of her face to the furry side. She stepped out of her jeans, careful with her tail this time, and turned to look at her ass yet again.
This was another one of her moneymakers, something that she worked hard on maintaining, a perfect bubble butt from years of squats and lower leg workouts, now ruined by a tail balanced on top of it.
Zoe slapped both hands onto her ass, did it again, feeling its firmness, massaging her cheeks just a little as she looked at how touching her rear naturally moved her tail.
Realizing how ridiculous she was, Zoe stuck her tongue out at her own reflection and flipped herself off, heading to bed.
Chapter Forty-Two: Figuring Shit Out
(Or at the very least, attempting to rise above the level of amateur.)
Helena Knight began the next morning by stretching, her hands over her head, tilting her hips to the side until her weight naturally gave way, allowing her to move into a handstand.
She held her handstand for a good minute or so, just warming up, preparing to move into her next pose, which involved doing the splits and shifting her body backward onto her left foot, her right foot still in the air.
Once she was in this pose, Helena lifted her left hand, and brought it to her right foot, which was still held high in the air
She continued her routine for the next forty minutes, eventually moving into handstand push-ups, as slow as she possibly could, her concentration only broken once Zoe entered the gym.
Helena lowered herself, and sat up, smiling over at Zoe.
In that smile she tried to hide the fact that Sam and she had officially hooked up. She knew the woman with a half tiger face would sense it anyway, so she ignored her as she moved over to the punching bags.
Rather than deal with any drama, Helena continued her workout, practicing her flips this time, front and back, tumbling as she ran along the padded mats, and interspersing her movements with chops and kicks.
This only caused Zoe to step up her game as well, delivering rapid punches to th
e punching bags, spinning kicks, coming within inches of shredding her targets with her claws.
Both were breathless by the time they stopped trying to one-up each other, and it was Zoe who spoke first, a thin smile on her face. “You really are fast,” she said.
“And you are strong,” Helena said as she made her way over to her, a white towel thrown over her shoulder. Helena wiped her forehead, even though there was just a small amount of sweat on it.
She tightened her two ponytails again, and went for a sweatband that was on a side table filled with boxing supplies.
“Our costumes should be here around lunchtime.” Helena said as she laced up a pair of punching mitts. “You interested?”
“Definitely.”
She stuck her hands out and approached Zoe, the tiger girl cracking her knuckles before beginning.
Zoe hit like a brick, and there were a few times that Helena thought she might have to throw in a kick just to protect herself, but Zoe behaved more or less, never baring her claws, and only going for the pads.
Eventually, Sam entered the gym, in a shirt and a pair of shorts, looking a bit out of place.
Both Zoe and Helena smirked at each other as they turned to Sam, Helena the first to speak. “Are you ready to train?”
“This is going to be so much fun,” Zoe said.
“Train?” Sam set a cup of tea down on a desk off to the side. “I mean, I kind of came here to watch you two train.”
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Zoe asked.
“Yes, I’ve already told you that’s why I came here.” He shrugged. “Watching you two fight is awesome. I only wish I could fight as well as you.”
“You could if you trained more,” said Helena.
“Trained more for about five years,” Zoe added. “But we can at least show you a few things. Finish your tea, and then come over here.”
Both women had their own intentions when it came to training Sam.
Helena wanted to actually help him, for Sam to get stronger; Zoe simply wanted revenge.
In the end, it was the most brutal thirty minutes of Sam Meeko’s life, with Zoe clapping her hands together as he jumped to the ground, did a push-up, jumped up, did a jumping jack, jumped to the ground, did a push-up, yelling for him to go faster, to move more gracefully.
Helena’s suggestions centered around form.
She had Sam stand upright, pressing his hands into his lower back and pulling his chest back at the same time; had him do supported shoulder stands against the wall so he could reverse the flow of his blood; and also instructing him to roll around on the ground until he was dizzy, Zoe leaping around him, laughing as she forced him to change directions.
By the time Ozella came into the gym, Sam was laid out like an angel, sweat all around his body, his chest moving up and down as he breathed heavily, his black hair matted to his head.
“Am I interrupting something?” Ozella asked, and immediately called for Dinah.
The ghostly woman took shape. She moved over to Sam and crouched onto her knees, sweeping her hair aside as she bent forward and began healing him.
“I will never get over that,” Zoe said under her breath.
True to her nature, Helena didn’t comment. She only offered a tight nod to Ozella and said, “No, we’re just finishing up with Sam’s new morning exercise.”
“Do we have to do this every morning?”
“You’re the one that wants to be on a superhero team,” Zoe told her ex. “Do you think that they sleep in? No, they train, constantly, to the point where it drives them mad.”
“But I don’t want to be driven mad.” Sam motioned for Dinah to stop, letting her know that it was enough. The ghostly woman stood and wiped her hands, her breasts swaying a little bit as she faded away.
“But that’s what training’s all about,” Zoe said. “Pushing yourself to the brink, seeing if you can just get over the next hurdle, challenging yourself. That sort of thing.”
“Yeah,” Sam said as he sat up. “It was definitely challenging.”
“Can I talk to you all about something?” Ozella asked.
In her schoolgirl uniform as usual, Ozella looked down at her feet as the three of them turned to her, Helena tossing Sam a towel, which he quickly used to dry off his face and neck.
“What’s up?” Zoe asked.
“So, I have been thinking a lot about ways I could use my power to help the team. As everyone knows, I can see stats and other details floating in front of me, so I got to thinking, especially after I was able to write something down in my book…” She reached into her little red backpack and pulled out her Book of Known Variables. “And it appeared in the stats that I could see floating before me.”
“What are you getting at?” Zoe asked.
“Maybe it would be better if you guys followed me,” and with that, Ozella turned to the door.
***
“So here’s my classification of your abilities, Sam,” Ozella said, turning a piece of paper to him. They were in the study now, all gathered around a large table.
Sam Meeko
Codename: Nosy
-Enhanced Orthonasal Olfaction
-Psychometry
-Memory Reading
Known Limitations: An abundance of scents can cause issues, cannot turn power off, cannot identify chemicals by name (classification issues), nasal congestion could lead to diminishing returns, no combat capability.
“Seems about right,” Sam said, frowning at the fact that she listed him as having no combat capability. But after seeing Helena and Zoe perform, Sam knew better than to let this fact bother him. “And Nosy?”
“We all need codenames,” Ozella said.
“And what’s mine?” Zoe asked.
“Tiger Ears…” said Ozella, a hint of apprehension in her voice.
“Not bad,” Zoe finally said.
“Is there more to it than this?” Sam asked, looking at the small amount of information she had provided him with.
“That’s what I needed your help in uncovering. I wanted to rank these abilities, but I haven’t thought of a good way to do that yet. However, classifying them gives us the chance to clarify them, to dig a little bit deeper. We are all familiar now with your enhanced orthonasal olfaction, which is a fancy way to say your super sense of smell. And from this we have also found that you are able to get information from an object, a.k.a. psychometry, and you are able to interpret people’s memories. What else do you think you’re able to do?”
“I guess that sums it up…”
“Maybe something else will come to the surface,” Ozella said, “but for now, this is a good starting ground. Your known limitations are where I want to focus next. I would like to eventually knock all of these things off, allowing you to, for example, turn your power off, or wade through a variety of scents to pick out individual smells. So the training that we come up with for you should be based around this. Make sense?”
“Yeah, it does,” Sam said as he took the piece of paper from her.
Ozella wanted a way to manually increase their levels, if their powers could be classified as such. She’d tried this with herself last night, giving herself experience points, making up numbers that she needed to reach to increase the level of her healing power.
It hadn’t worked yet, and if someone looked carefully in the study, they would find a trashcan full of discarded bloodied tissues, from Ozella cutting herself and seeing how quickly Dinah could heal her, hoping that she would be able to increase the speed of her healing power by giving herself an imaginary level up.
But yeah, it hadn’t worked yet.
“Helena,” Ozella said, taking another piece of paper out of her notebook, “I need more information before I can complete yours. As it stands, it is the barest of all of them.”
Helena approached Ozella, who turned the piece of paper so Helena could get a better look.
Helena Knight
Codename: Ballerina
-Mental Inducement
-Enhanced Persuasion
Known Limitations: Must make eye contact with target for power to work.
“Ballerina, huh?” Helena asked.
“Does it work?”
The lean combat dancer shrugged. “It works for now.”
“I would like to flesh the sheet out, so I’ll start with a few questions. Have you noticed any enhanced power since being exposed to the serum, I’m talking agility, or strength, or endurance?”
Helena bit her lip for a moment, one hand now resting against her side. “No, I believe I’m performing at the same capacity as I was performing before the accident.”
“So nothing?” she asked.
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“Are you telling me you were able to flip and move around that quickly before the accident?” Zoe asked. “Because when we sparred the other day, you were fast, but you weren’t as fast as you were in there this morning. When I saw you flipping around it was like a hummingbird or something zipping through the air.”
“You think so?” Helena asked, raising an eyebrow. “I could have been going easy on you.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I’m not going to say that I keep track of your abilities, but considering we have fought against each other, I’m pretty sure that something has changed about you.”
“Then maybe you have heightened agility now,” Ozella said, scribbling something down in her notebook.
“Maybe.”
“Really pay attention over the next day, especially tonight, during our assault. If you think your endurance has changed, or that you are stronger, I can add it to your sheet as well. Regarding your known limitations, the only one I could really think of is that you have to make eye contact for your power to work. So that gives us other things to test. For example, can you use a mirror to make eye contact? What’s the actual distance that your power will work? How many people can you hypnotize at once? What are the limitations of your hypnotism?”
We Could Be Heroes Page 24
