“I mean, I gather everything I have and push it all out at once.”
Anaar smirks, which causes Codi to wrinkle her nose. “As I thought. You and Pryshka are polar opposites. That might be why you two attract so strongly.”
“What does that even mean?!”
“Centripetus is the pinnacle of efficiency. It will always find a way to move toward the greatest result with the least expenditure. This is why she easily outpaces her opponents. Even though she does not have the inherent stamina of an Earth Affinity, her movements have no waste, allowing her to keep up. Even though she does not have the strength of a Fire Affinity, nor the speed of an Air Affinity, she knows just where to strike, and how to path for success.”
“Great job with the explanation. I’m sure she will be happy to hear it. Want to try helping me now?”
“You are the opposite because everything you do is wasteful, despite your specialty being precision.”
“The fuck you mean everything is wasteful?”
“When you attempt to use a stronger attack, you simply add more instances of current to what you are doing.”
Codi throws up her hands once she realized the grand revelation she was painstakingly waiting for was obvious. “No shit! What one bullet can’t do, fifty can!”
“I’m glad you put it in those exact terms. Let’s work with that. You said fifty bullets can do what one can’t. In that you are right. But let’s take it in another direction. Did you use fifty bullets because your target was nimble and you missed often, of did you use fifty bullets because you were trying to wear them down?”
Codi clenches her fist, the reflex to attack what annoyed her overcoming her subconscious fears of Anaar, but then she remembered it would do no good anyway. “What the fuck does it matter?!”
“Just answer the question Codi.”
“Obviously because the one didn’t hit them hard enough! I guess that means to wear them down!”
“No, no, your words were perfect. It wasn’t hitting hard enough you said. In that case, why waste a ton of bullets when you can just lob a grenade at them?”
Codi was poised to protest when she stopped in her tracks. “Wait… What? Where did grenades come from.”
Anaar’s eyes went wide when he realized where the disconnect was. “You don’t actually know how to make your attacks stronger do you?”
“No shit, or I wouldn’t be here! Plus, I hit people with bolts of lightning. There isn’t much to it when you are trying to hurt them.”
“I think you are a visual learner, so I should probably demonstrate. Let’s go over to that large rock.”
They move over to the rock, where Codi waits expectantly. “Well?”
“I am going to show you exactly what you are doing. This rock is one of the top Titans in your class. This is how you start.”
He raises his hand and releases a gout of flame at the rock for five seconds then stops.
“At this point you realize your first attack had no effect, right? We can see the rock is not harmed at all.”
Codi rolls her eyes. “And?”
“Now I’m just going to skip all the levels in the middle and jump to what would likely be your last attempt before being defeated.”
Anaar expels flame again, but this time it is a massive conflagration that engulfs the entire rock. Once he stops, there are some clear scorch marks on the rock. He takes extra care to point out the damage to Codi.
“Seem familiar?”
“Of course it does! No matter how much I throw at them, they just shrug it off like this!”
“Next I need you to watch very closely. I am going to utilize 1/3rd of the fire from the last attempt.”
“Pfft! What kind of idiot shi-”
Codi’s words stuck in her throat as she witnessed something impossible. It was only a split second, but she saw it. There was a thin line that shot from Anaar’s finger, which crossed diagonally along the face of the stone, but did not go from end to end. Codi had to bend down to examine the rock more closely, but where the line touched, there was nothing left of the rock. The result was a clean rift that shone daylight from the other side.
“I call bullshit! That had to be three times more power! Not 1/3rd!”
“You have an example of this right in your kitchen! Your sink can either run directly from the faucet, of you can turn on the sprayer attachment. Same volume, different power.”
“How do you expect me to squeeze a bolt of lightning?!”
“Okay first off, let’s stop calling it lightning. You do not command lightning, but we will get into that in a minute. You are not necessarily needing to condense the size of the arc, but rather than just adding a hundred more arcs, try putting more voltage into the one arc instead, which will net you a better result, with far less energy expenditure.”
“How in the fuck am I supposed to do that? I thought that was what I have been doing.”
“No, just think of it like this: You need to cut through something, and the branch you have isn’t doing the trick, so instead, you got get a tree trunk. All you did was bring more of the same thing, yet did nothing to solve your problem. If you had simply whittled the branch into a sword, then you would have increased your chances.”
Conceptually, Codi understood what Anaar was saying. It all seemed perfectly reasonable, but the problem was that she still had no idea how to address the problem. If just having more energy was not equivalent to more power, then she was not sure what was.
“I’m buying what you are selling, but I don’t have a use for it. How the fuck am I supposed to make a sword, or whatever it is you said.”
“I mean, just use Ohm’s Law and go from there.”
“How the fuck does that help me?!”
“Codi, precision is your thing. There is no way you could paralyze or attempt controlling someone with electrical currents without an uncanny awareness and surgical execution. If the resistance of something is too much for what you are hitting, why not focus on the area of least resistance? You must realize resistance is not constant throughout the human body. Some things have lower resistance than others. Pinpoint your attacks on those areas.”
“That makes enough sense. I suppose I have not been taking full advantage of that aspect of my abilities. That doesn’t change certain people just being extremely resistant overall.”
“Then hit them harder. You agreed to one part of the equation, now look toward the other. If you want to increase your amperage, you need to increase your voltage, while reducing your resistance as much as possible. Your electromotive force is severely lacking for someone of your talent. Perhaps you spent so much time on manipulation of minutia, that you never took the opportunity to figure out how to simply push harder. You once said that Electrokinetics that don’t capitalize on the more intricate applications were stupid. In that case they would probably laugh at you for not even knowing the basics of electromotive manipulation. You have a choice: Fully invest into precision and specialize as a Manipulator, or take a step back and figure out how to increase your force so that you are more well-rounded.”
Codi mulled over everything she had learned, and indeed found herself at a crossroads. She was confronted with the embarrassment of being exposed for the fraud she was. She loved to brag about how strong she was, when in reality she was more like an animal built for speed, but with no power. She had no idea how to increase said power to make herself competitive. Her confidence laid in the prowess of what she did know. As she continued to think, a thought sprang to the forefront of her mind.
“Oh yeah! What was all that shit about me not using lightning?!”
“Right, I said we would come back to that. We have already established your overall strength is very weak. You are leagues away from the strength needed to claim you manipulate lightning. Furthermore, you never utilize static electricity. You only draw in energy to funnel it, using yourself as a conduit. I figured you did this to increase your control. It doesn’t help that gathering
enough ionic charge outside of yourself that would be strong enough to qualify as a lightning strike would be quite difficult. It’s no different from what other Elementals deal with. The main difference is that Electrokinetics are the only who can store energy, so they are not required to overcome those barriers.”
With so much information, and so many areas of improvement, Codi was overwhelmed, which was not a feeling she was accustomed to. She made a series of calls to find out just how much people loved her. By the time she was done, she managed to coax Phavian and Maggie to help her practice understanding differences in resistance, and increasing her electromotive force. Though Codi did not know, the only reason the two agreed was because they knew Anaar was on standby available to heal them.
Maggie faithfully assisted until she had class, while Phavian was unfortunate enough to have no class that day. Through a series of drills and breaks, Anaar worked with Codi, making only the most minimal of progress. Her spirits were low after such a failed outcome, but Anaar reminded her that she was essentially starting from scratch in understanding her powers, so it was understandable it would begin slowly. Thanking him for the portal to her room, Codi dejectedly entered, seeking the relief Pryshka would provide when she told her about her miserable day.
30
The people had spoken, and the results were finally in. Though everyone was taken by surprise the previous year, which lead to class infighting about who would be the best candidates to represent them, this time, opinions had more or less been solidified over the course of the year. Anaar sat at the kitchen counter, eating the breakfast Harston had made for him, and perusing the selection.
He was not surprised to find his name, along with Maggie’s and Kintaque’s. He gave an internal cheer when he saw a new name added to the list. He made himself a note to check in on Dan after he recovered from the shock of being chosen as one of their class’s champions. In an odd twist of events, Jesus had dropped from the list, and was instead replaced by the Pyrokinetic woman he had faced in the last Melee. Though he could not be certain, he believed she was eliminated before him, so it boggled his mind why she would be chosen instead of Jesus. The only explanation he could arrive at was she could have been given grace for being defeated early by his hand.
Somewhere he could hear Codi screaming at the top of her lungs and strutting like a peacock. It took her four years, but finally in her Senior year, she was getting the recognition she deserved. Phavian was of course on the list, with the other three spots being occupied by the resident Titan squad of the Senior class. He was interested to see what they did to affect their results, after such a pitiful showing in the previous year.
Though he knew little about the Junior class, he did recognize all the names from the previous year, which meant they were the only class to not make any changes. Since their class is known for their Medics, it was prudent to stick with those whom they were certain could put up a good fight. If the Titans were to be used as an example, it would seem explosive power was much more important when going against the best each class had to offer.
Anaar’s lack of exposure to the Freshman class left him with no opinions on their chosen champions. What he did notice, only Shonte was chosen out of all of Peter’s friends. Cross-referencing the class rankings, he realized the Freshmen simply went with their top five students. It was not a bad decision, especially considering the campus at large considered their class to be extremely weak in comparison to the others.
Phavian walked into the kitchen with a backpack slung across his shoulder, bent down to kiss Anaar on the forehead, and then immediately picked up his fork and began to eat the food on his plate. “You saw the contestants for the School Rankings?”
Anaar looked with disgust from Phavian to his plate, back to Phavian, and then to his plate, which was rapidly emptying. “There is food on the stove. Why are you eating mine?”
“Because yours is right here and I don’t have time to fix a plate! I need to get to class! Speaking of which…”
“Nope, you are perfectly able-bodied. Since you are too lazy to fix your own plate, you can think about ways you can do better as you walk to class.”
“Maaann… I knew you were going to do some shit like that. Glad I left enough time to get there on my own.”
He steals the remaining bacon from Anaar’s plate, giving him a kissing motion as he retreated from Anaar’s seething gaze. Once he was well out the door, Anaar stood to refill his nearly empty plate. On the way to the stove, he spied Harston worriedly glancing at his phone. The older man was so engrossed in whatever it was he was doing that he jumped and dropped his phone when Anaar appeared directly beside him.
“Something the matter Harston? I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Harston scrambles to gather his phone, smiling broadly. “No! Nothing at all! There could not be a day more grand!”
Anaar had come to learn that Harston was a terrible liar, with the exception of when he was sneaking around trying to do something for him. One of his most obvious tells was when he chose incorrect language. Harston was such a stickler for vocabulary that saying the words ‘more grand,’ even though it still worked, was like holding up a sign that screamed for help.
“Riiight… I would just drop this Harston, but I noticed you used a metal spatula on the good nonstick pan. That alone was enough to make me think the apocalypse was upon us. Have a seat. Tell me what is on your mind.”
“Absolutely not! I could never impose-”
Anaar raises his hand to stop Harston. “It is impossible for it to be an imposition if I am the one requesting to be involved. Be honest with me. You are not easily frazzled, and I can tell you are terrified.”
“It is nothing for you to concern yourself about. Just the mistakes of a foolish old man. Think nothing of it. You have far more important things to worry about.”
“Harston, you aren’t even that old. Even if you were, mistakes happen no matter the age. If it is something so simple, it should be easy to talk about, right? I know I am not your peer, you are well above me, but the very least I could do is lend you an ear like the many times you have done so for me.”
Harston sighs, pulling out a chair so he could sit. “Very well. I know once you set something in your sights, you refuse to give up. Once you hear what it is, you will understand why I would not want to bother you with something so trivial.”
Anaar nods, taking a seat next to Harston. He knew Harston well, but he realized it was only in the context of himself. He knew little about the person Harston was when he was not in Anaar’s presence. He was interested to learn more about the man that had taken such good care of him over the years.
“As you know, my daughter is not well. She recently took a turn for the worse and my best option to save her was an expensive experimental treatment. Even with insurance it was a gratuitous out of pocket expense. I expended all my savings, but it was still not enough. I have never been very fastidious when it came to finances and investments, so my credit is poor. I needed more money quickly if I was to do all I could for her. I reached out to some people who connected me with a broker that would give me a loan. Everything was fine, but now the payments have doubled, and he says it is now not even covering the interest. He says that he will need collateral and if I refuse, something will happen to Janna.”
Everything inside Anaar wanted to explode. He wanted to shout at Harston for doing something so asinine as enlisting the services of a seedy loanshark. He wanted to shake him for not turning to him for help when his daughter was in need. He wanted to question Harston as to why he was being so weak when in actuality he was strong.
He knew in the end, none of these emotions were sensible. Harston’s propitiatory personality likely made him believe he was the one victimizing the loanshark for the inconvenience of not being able to pay back a sum in which he was never intended. Despite how close they had become, Harston still held fast to Anaar being the employer, which made asking for anything such as financia
l assistance taboo. Even asking for assistance with his daughter made no sense. Anaar had not been honest with Harston about his abilities, even though there were many opportunities to discuss them. Harston would never have known Anaar was a Medic and had the potential to help.
“Harston, I know I have no right to judge you for the actions you took up to this point. You were only doing the best you could with what you had. What I will say now though, is moving forward, you can rely on me. I know I take so much and never give, but that will stop now. First up, let’s start with this money situation. How much are you making right now, from whomever it is that is paying you?”
Harston’s hands fidget, him doing his best to find a way out of his current situation. He knew if Anaar found it to be too low he would likely do something rash. He was aware that he was past the point of escaping the situation, so he instead would do his best to end it quickly.
“I am paid quite handsomely. I receive $60K annually.”
Anaar’s hand gripped the table, the sounds of the strain on it growing louder. “$60K? A year? For all that you do? In an environment as rich as this one?! That won’t do. I am going to demand you are moved to $150K a year minimum. So tell me, who exactly is the person signing your check?”
Harston began to pale as his plan backfired. He had not expected doubling his salary would still anger Anaar. “I am not exactly sure…”
Anaar shot off a quick message as he was speaking to Harston. “$60K. I am so pissed right now. I can’t believe them! No, I’m just as much at fault for not asking sooner. Since you don’t know, I’m asking Ixnes. If she can’t give me answers, I’ll just pay you myself. Next up, I want to see this correspondence.”
Anaar looks at the phone on the table expectantly, which sent a small shiver down Harston’s spine. He knew Anaar’s reputation on campus, but never had he been on the receiving end of anything considered to be antagonistic. He had no reason to believe Anaar would hurt him, but knowing such did nothing to relieve the pressure he felt. He unlocked the phone and navigated to the thread, handing the phone to Anaar.
Revelations (Song of Sophangence Book 4) Page 51
