AnotherArchetype
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Chapter 103 - Elastic
🕑 Added 2025-01-13 08:27:38 +0000 UTCWe had taken some time to eat the last of the chocolate bars Xandra had stolen from the Putsley Bay petrol station. She threw her wrapper off the edge, watching it flip and twirl on its way down to the concrete far below. I pocketed mine.
"Let's go fast," said Xandra, being the first to move away from the verge and back to relative safety.
"Sure," I said.
"I tried making myself taller to give myself more strength to maneuver," she said, "But I would need to be a lot bigger to make all the extra mass worth it."
"So you don't want drumstick legs then?" I said, half-joking.
"Nope," she said, putting her arms above her head and popping some joints in her spine.
"Regina says I should try and work on flexibility," said Xandra, "Instead of going bigger, or trying to make my bones stronger, if I work on the elasticity of my body, then I'll be able to push it even harder to gain speed."
"Like a cartoon character," I said, nodding.
Xandra snapped both her fingers and pointed at me and said, "Exactly."
She gave me a look that suggested it was my turn to pitch how I might go faster.
"Well," I said, "I was thinking about making my feet super huge, like enormous, so I can hop around like a frog better."
"Seriously?" said Xandra.
"No," I said, deadpan.
"Oh," said Xandra, before giggling into her palm.
Making her giggle felt really good.
"Maybe I'll try that elasticity thing too," I said, "For some rubbery-frog jumps."
"Hey, get your own power ups!" said Xandra, in mock-dismay.
"I'll take inspiration from where I please," I said, "Sue me."
"If you had any money maybe I would," she said.
"You'd need a lawyer first," I said.
"You'd need two lawyers because my lawyer would be way better," said Xandra.
"Well my lawyers would know karate," I said, "And they'd have guns."
"Guns?" said Xandra, mock-impressed, "No way, how could anyone beat that?"
"Well," I said, my tone changing to a more serious one, "When we're better than the Peepers and their guns, then we won't have to run away anymore."
"Unless they bring rocket launchers," said Xandra.
"If you can beat guns you could probably beat a rocket launcher," I said.
"Well," said Xandra, clearly done with the topic of conversation, "We better get going. I want to get there before the sun comes up."
She picked up her carry bags and did several squats. What was clear just from looking at her doing this was that she was making easy work lifting the hefty carry bags, far more than a girl her size should.
Strengthened bones and sinews, the medical-knowledge fragment of the power in my mind told me.
On her latest squat I noticed there was a strange fold in her legs at the shin, almost like her leg was going into itself, and the extra mass was folding over to compensate. It wasn't by a lot however, maybe half a thumb-width at most.
"Ah," said Xandra, "Got it, I'm ready. Let's go."
Before waiting for me Xandra broke into a sprint, passing me by and running along the edge of the motorway. What was quickly apparent was she was being propelled forwards much faster thanks to the elastic change she had made to her legs; so much so she was already far off enough in the distance that I would lose sight of her if I didn't make the effort to keep up.
I didn't want to be unoriginal, but the idea of making my legs more elastic instead of simply tougher, on top of the bulked muscle, seemed like an easy way to add more power to my jumps.
Others stole my bulbing up power idea, I thought, so trying what others can do has to be fair game or I'll be left behind.
But what did elasticity really mean?
I didn't have time to figure everything out on the spot so I willed my body to coil up; to grow the year's worth of muscle I needed for even more strength, and for my legs to bulk up to the nth degree too.
I broke into a sprint, following in the wake of Xandra, the barren soil and the last vestiges of the dump heap to my left, and the gulf of the motorway with its constant roar of air and trailing cars, and hazy lights to my right.
Once I was at my max sprinting speed I introduced the first jump, and then another, and another after that until I was hurtling onwards.
It wasn't so exhilarating anymore because my mind and all my senses were used to compensating for the influx of speed.
I was in control of my body and didn't feel rushed by the onset of more ground before me, nor did I feel at risk of landing poorly or otherwise skirting too far off the edge to the right.
I hadn't caught up to Xandra in the slightest. Maybe she was making a point of how much faster she was than me. I could neither hear her because of how fast I was moving, nor could I see her with my keen vision. Which meant I had to resort to heightening my sense of smell so there was something for me to follow.
Thankfully she had stopped making herself smell like a rabbit as soon as that change in our scents was no longer needed. The unique 'Xandra' smell, minus her usual scented perfume and make-up she had been wearing when I first met her, was neither something particularly nice or bad to smell. It was simply the smell that, in my mind, was the sum of the parts which said 'Xandra's scent'.
Like following a non-player-character's trail in a video game, I followed Xandra's scent as a guide for me not to lose track of her. Even then the smell became slightly fainter with each moment because of the incredible speed with which she was moving.
My first option was to simply try and use my imagination to make my legs like rubber. But I had learned already how dangerous it could be to rely on imagination alone to make the power work.
The were-cats at the Wedder Gorge facility had shown me how bad that could all turn out.
It was like a gambling addict winning big on the slots; sure, they won at the slots, but what would that matter if they were going to throw their winnings back into the slots only to lose it all anyway? Relying solely on imagination when using the power seemed to me to be more or less the same mentality.
If there was one philosophy I was starting to live by with the power it was this: do the minimum to make it work, and tread carefully.
I felt safe enough with my leaping ability to try adding a little extra oomph to it.
My fear with Xandra was that, under Regina's influence, she had relied only on imagination to put the extra spring in her step.
Maybe this would be my opportunity to show Xandra there was another, safer way to use the power?
Help me figure this out, I thought, willing the medical knowledge absorbed by a fragment of the power inside me to search for a solution to my want for more elasticity.
You'll want more elastin, the fragment responded, create more elastin fibres to induce elastosis.
But what even was 'Elastin?'
The voice answered, Elastin is a protein your body produces to provide stretchiness and strength to your tissues, and many organs.
Good enough, I thought, I told the power to make more elastin in my body.
But simply adding more of a protein fibre wasn't going to cut it. Instead, it was the balance between imagination and something real that would keep the power from expressing itself in a way that might produce unwanted side effects on my body and mind.
Everything I was thinking could have been gibberish and simply wrong, but unless I experimented with the power I wasn't going to know what methods were right and what were wrong.
The power got to work scarily fast, changing the composition of not just my legs, but the rest of my body to provide the elasticity I wanted.
And then I felt it.
The springiness in my legs and all across my body.
My next jump was immense.
Woosh!
I thought I was going fast before, but it was nothing compared to this new speed.
Although I was likely still a long way off, the sheer intensity of the air buffeting me, trying like gravity to force me to slow down. I had fought against the open air before, dealing with the loss of speed as a result; but at this speed the buffeting air was as if it were a stark warning not to try going any faster.
It was frightening.
My heightened senses felt as if they were in emergency mode. For the first time since I had used my senses to make easy work of avoiding obstacles up ahead, my senses felt truly unequipped to keep up. I was no longer precise and confident in my movements. One jump took me to the precipice of the motorway verge, requiring me to kick the ground with both feet as if it had insulted my mother's good name.
The spring in my legs shot me back up into the air, sending me off to the left the way I wanted.
Like flying, the ground rushed beneath me.
Xandra's smell was much harder to track at such a volatile speed. Even so, the tiny fragments I could make out grew stronger each time until, finally, I had caught up with her.
And then, much to my horror, she jumped to her right off the edge of the motorway.
Something within me was sure she wasn't going to make it.
I had a fraction of a second to decide if I was going to leap after her.
I landed and made my decision, bounding off again with a POW like the sound of a vehicle backfiring, and all at once I was soaring over the motorway after Xandra.
My body soared upwards, climbing higher and higher as gravity and the open air worked tirelessly to slow the momentum of my body to nothing.
Xandra landed on the other side of the motorway, hitting the ground and sliding across the soil.
The remainder of my jump came to me in fragments.
A third of the way there.
Halfway there.
One quarter left to go.
I cleared the other side and then some, landing beyond Xandra, striking down with both feet.
The force of the landing should have broken my ankles and the rest of my body.
Instead my body took the impact, the elasticity absorbing what my bones and sinews wouldn't naturally be able to.
On the ground, crouched, my heart thumping in my chest like the world's fastest drummer was performing the greatest drum solo in existence.
I turned and faced Xandra with a smile.
And she, sitting on the ground but unharmed, smiled excitedly back.
