Louie paced in circles inside the dark cell,
his footsteps echoing off the cold, shadowed walls of the large, dark cell.
The total darkness made the space almost impossible to see, and the feeling of weakness and helplessness before the great metal consumed Louie's mind.
His eyes scanned every inch of the walls around him, searching for some crack, but all he found was that strange, rigid, thick material.
He stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. The dense, metallic air filled his lungs.
— I need to get out of here somehow, as soon as possible... — he murmured to himself. — Considering there are no windows or anything like that, the door is probably the weakest point of the cell; even if it's made of that metal, it has hinges. So, if I aim a strong punch at it, I can get it off without exactly having to break the metal, right?
He lifted his gaze, trying to keep his mind focused on his plan, but he only felt more anxious.
— Think, Louie... think.
— I can't stay waiting for help. I don't know how strong they think I am, but to lock me up here they must not expect me to be able to break out, right? — He raised his palm upward, clenching it. — But... how much do I even know about what I can do?
He looked at the cell.
— Could I... knock this door down with my super-strength? — Louie muttered, staring at the thick door in front of him.
He furrowed his brow, thoughtful.
— I've never tested the real limit of the strength I can generate, but I know it's greater than an untrained Kaelum's, thanks to super-strength. In training with Kael I focused on controlling it as much as possible, not on exploring how far it can go. From what Kael said, the super-strength works mostly like an exponential graph: it multiplies itself over time and training.
He paused, bringing his hand to his own arm.
— But there's another problem...
His expression grew more serious as he faced the great wall before him.
— If I punch this door with full force, will my body withstand the recoil? I don't even know how resilient I am...
— Human limits change completely when the Kaelum power enters the body... but how far does my resistance go after receiving these powers? How far can my arm go before it breaks?
Louie clenched his fists. Frustration and doubt were already mingling inside him.
— Ahhhhh what the hell! — he shouted, slapping both hands against his own face. His cheeks flushed instantly. — I don't know squat about myself, and even less about them! All I do is sit here whining!
He slowly removed his hands from his face, relaxing his fingers until his arms fell to his sides.
— Calm down, Louie... breathe — he whispered, filling his lungs with air before releasing it slowly. — I can't act on impulse. I have to test calmly to understand what I'm capable of... otherwise I'll end up hurting myself for real.
He fell silent for a few seconds, organizing his thoughts. Then he nodded to himself, as if approving the idea.
— Alright... I'll start with a weak punch. Just to see how strong I am and how much I can take — he murmured, trying to convince himself it made sense.
He breathed and positioned himself in front of the metal door.
His eyes fixed on the spot he planned to hit. He tried to concentrate as much as possible, adjusting his force, trying to control each muscle as if he could measure everything to the exact degree.
With his elbow slightly bent, he brought his arm forward. The movement was light, but careless — more instinct than calculation.
A simple punch. Weak, but completely poorly executed.
Louie barely knew how to throw a proper punch, let alone use so much strength at once.
Then Louie would only understand how much he had underestimated his own strength when he saw, on his own flesh, the result of that simple, light strike.
At the exact moment the skin of his fingers touched the metal...
BOOOOM! ... CRACK!
The blast was enormous, followed by horrific snaps — like bones and ligaments giving way under the impact.
— AAAAARRGH! — the scream tore from his throat before he even felt the pain arriving in full.
The door dented under the impact, creating cracks that spread across the thick metal of the entire cell.
The noise was deafening, and for a second it seemed like it might open all the way.
But any sense of victory evaporated instantly.
The price came quick and merciless.
Louie's arm simply shattered in multiple places.
The sound of flesh tearing and bones exploding nearly competed with the thunder of the punch.
The shoulder had popped out of place, tendons ripped, and you could see compound fractures. Much of the bone had crumbled into almost microscopic fragments, and what had once been an arm turned into a mass of flesh, bleeding openly.
The right arm now dangled uselessly at his side, dripping blood like a red storm, where drops of blood poured from raw, exposed flesh.
Louie felt his whole body tremble, and the pain hit him — the worst he had ever felt in his life.
— W-well, what the... fuck! Why... the hell did that punch come out so strong?! — Louie shouted, teeth clenched trying to hold the pain, eyes bulging from the unfortunate surprise.
He staggered a few steps back, breathing heavily.
The arm throbbed incessantly. It wasn't just immobility; it felt like the limb had ceased to exist.
The pain was brutal, his vision blurred, but even then he knew he couldn't just sit there lamenting.
Even nearly passing out, he needed to think of an escape.
The door and part of the surrounding wall had nearly given way to the impact, with many cracks running through them.
But what good was that if he had no idea how to control his own strength?
Without that, any attempt would only cause another brutal injury.
He looked at his own arm — or at least at what was left of it.
It was completely destroyed.
His face was pale, drained of color.
Tears ran from his left eye, as blue as the sea now struck by a painful rain.
At that point, overwhelmed by pain, escape seemed the least of his problems. Louie's sole focus then was... not passing out.
— E-e... now...?
He tried to speak, but his voice came out shaky because of the wound.
— "W-what if... what if I use the left to try to break the door...? no... that won't help... it'll just break too..."
His head spun without stopping, as if even the most basic thoughts were barred by a great wall.
— "What if that happens...? How will I face those lackeys outside the cell? And more importantly... how will I face Seprus...?"
Louie clenched his jaw, fighting to stifle the pain.
— "I need another way out... or at least... a way... a way to stop this pain..." — he thought, before finally giving in and falling to his knees on the floor.
— AHHHHHH! WHAT THE HELL! — Louie screamed, the sound of his agony echoing through the cell with nothing to escape it.
He wheezed on the floor, his arm hanging uselessly at his side.
Blood flowed rapidly, pooling on the floor, staining the strange metal of the cell red.
The pain was unbearable.
With no other option, in a slow but painful movement, he brought his left hand to the right arm that lay in pieces.
With a gentle motion, though constrained by the pain, he closed his fingers, searching for his own arm and trying to grasp it.
A useless action...
It was like trying to hold onto his own void.
The absence of flesh, blood, and bone there... was cruel. It was as if Louie's arm had simply evaporated into pure nonexistence.
— If only... if only I had some way to heal myself... — he says, while a drop of blood trickles from the lip he bit down on.
But then... amid the despair and surrender, something inside Louie changed.
And, at that very moment, as if a gear clicked within his head and drove thousands of others along with it, a light turned on.
And with it... the loneliness simply... vanished.
What appeared there was not just the hope of being saved, but a memory.
A memory so vivid it almost took shape inside the cell.
But it was not the same as the memory of the massacre he had relived earlier, where everything around him seemed to distort as if reality warped with him.
This one was different.
This one seemed present with him in that dark, silent prison.
And, as if the world there had come to life, words echoed, striking the walls of the large cell.
— It's not just about how much you can force a power, Louie...
The voice sounded as if it were right there.
— It's about how you make one power feed the other.
It was Kael, from the training they had earlier.
Louie remembered clearly the rare serious expression on his face while he explained how Synthesis worked.
To Louie, with everything still extremely new — and with no control even of his separate powers — it had seemed too complex. Result: he had completely failed in the attempt to synthesize.
But in that moment, however impossible it seemed, that was his only chance.
And something inside him said that there, now... he would achieve what, moments ago, had seemed unattainable.
— It's not about adding one power to another. It's about using their fusion to multiply thousands of ways and forms of use.
Kael continued, in the memory, almost like a projection beside Louie.
— All you need to do is... believe.
Said Kael, almost materialized, approaching Louie. Even with his face marked by pain and fear, Louie tried to concentrate on everything Kael had said.
— Trust that every cell... every micromolecule of your body... is a piece of you.
Kael crouched in front of Louie. His muscular body, white hair — which at that moment looked bluish, like a hologram — and he gave a light touch to Louie's chest, who was still kneeling, his left eye watering.
— A little piece of a huge universe, where you... are the commander.
Louie closed his eyes, grinding his teeth hard, concentrating on all that Kael had said.
Super-strength... wasn't just the power to be strong. It was control over every muscle, over the very body, over circulation.
Just like lightning... it wasn't just a mindless discharge. It was energy, electromagnetic currents, acceleration and stimulation.
At that moment... Louie understood.
The Synthesis that had once seemed impossible now revealed itself to him like a ray of light bringing hope amid the blood-soaked darkness and pain.
He closed his left fist, moving each part of his body.
— To activate the Synthesis... I must control every muscle, every fiber, every microvein of my body.
Louie's gaze began to shift — from pain and fear to confidence.
— And use the lightning to accelerate the blood, nerves and cells in my body.
Concentrated, he began to channel electricity into himself.
— It's not to attack... — sparks jumped from Louie's eyes — it's to guide the electricity through the arteries that super-strength opens... and force my body to regenerate.
— And the result of that...
Louie's and Kael's voices came out in unison.
— Is the Synthesis.
And accompanying both their voices, like thunder tearing through a rainy, stormy night—
ZzzzzzZZT!
A discharge ran through his veins and, as if reconstructing matter itself...
Craaack! Craack!
The fractures began to align, bone by bone, vein by vein.
ZAAAP!
The blood stopped gushing with a final internal crack. The arm returned to its place, with no trace that it had been ripped apart.
Louie breathed deeply, sweating, trembling from the recent, agonizing pain.
But now... whole.
— W-what insanity... I didn't think I could fully heal like that... — he whispered, with a small smile.
He rolled his shoulder, previously dislocated, watching every movement of the now-healed arm, from elbow to fingertip, feeling the blood circulate.
In a simple motion, he turned his palm upward in front of his body, watched it for a while, and closed it tightly.
— This is a level of healing I never imagined could exist... Kaelum powers are really badass...
And as he stood, his look no longer of pain but of confidence, now knowing he had the power to finish what he had started.
Get out of there and beat Sethros and his lackeys into a pulp.
— I think I owe you one and you don't even know it... — Louie says, letting out a short laugh. — But thank you for the help, Kael.
♦ Electrokinetic Reconstruction (Lightning + Super-strength + Ions)
› The "Electrokinetic Reconstruction" is the Synthesis of the Ions, Lightning and Super-strength powers. It allows rewriting injuries at a molecular level, reconstructing muscles, nerves and entire organs — even the heart and brain. Each electrical impulse reorganizes the ions in the body, accelerating regeneration and strengthening the new structures with superior energy and density. ‹
Louie fixed his gaze again on the large, rigid, unknown-metal door in front of him.
Still dented and marked by the previous punch, it seemed to challenge his strength.
A confident, determined smile appeared on his face.
— Time for round two, little door!
He cocked his newly-healed right arm, bending the elbow, feeling each muscle tense as he prepared.
And, in a quick, precise movement, like a snake striking, Louie threw his punch with everything.
BOOOM!!!
The impact raised a gust of wind so strong that the entire cell shook, cracking the floor and the surrounding walls.
The door flew against the concrete wall behind it, which split straight open, creating a path out of the large building.
And Louie's arm... once again, was shattered.
But in less than the blink of an eye, the pain and wounds vanished entirely, leaving him whole once more.
Ahead of him, an open passage to the street shone with the light of freedom, visible from one of the high floors of the building.
— It's good to see the light after so long... — Louie murmured, watching the opening in the concrete. — Sorry, mom, sis and Kael, but I still have something to do before going home...
His eyes scanned the dark corridor, now slightly illuminated by the brightness coming from the opening in the building.
— There's someone... I need to find — he said, with a brief memory of the purple-eyed girl. — And whoever stands in my way, I'll crush everything that prevents me from reaching my goals!
With renewed determination, Louie advanced down the corridor — once dark, now bathed in the sunlight streaming through the passage — ready to face any challenge that might arise.
⋞⋆⋟⋰⋞⋆⋟⋰⋞⋆⋟⋰⋞⋆⋟⋰⋞⋆⋟⋰⋞⋆⋟⋰⋞⋆⋟⋰⋞⋆⋟
Meanwhile, Sethros watched Louie through the cameras, in a control room in another building.
His eyes glinted with a disgusting obsession, completely out of control, as he watched Louie destroy the large cell created by the Technicist.
— I get it... — he kept murmuring, voice loaded with delirium and tension. — I get it! I get it!...
Sethros' eyes trembled and rolled, full of a fanaticism that sent chills down the spine.
Sethros, the Apostle of Samael, one of the fallen Apostles of the Sacrificium Sanguínis, was also one of those responsible for collecting the "shells" left by the bloody sacrifice at Peninsula High.
— I finally understand! It was a huge mistake to have doubted, even for a second, the decision of such a divine and extraordinary being! — he screamed, still with an excited and grotesque look. — I am extremely ashamed! I deserve it... I deserve punishment for my mistake!
Sethros, in a quick, awkward movement, repeatedly banged his forehead against the control room table.
Blood spattered the walls the more he hit, running down the wood and dripping to the floor like a small waterfall.
A cold smile formed on his blood-stained lips. His eyes shone with sick, ecstatic fanaticism; his breathing came short, almost hysterical.
— Soon, soon... the world will receive true justice and return to its precursor path! — he said, stopping his head-banging and spreading his arms toward the camera watching Louie. — And for that... we only need to break Louie into pieces so small he'll cease to exist. Only the profane king will remain!
His whole body trembled, and his face burned with madness and excitement.