"What was that?" Robert asked. 878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqP3MpxAYLH
"Force redirection?" Cole whispered.
"Newton's third law of motion," I said, rubbing my knuckles. I hadn't punched Cole that hard, but a bruise was starting to form from the reflected force. 878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnf14oF4Oef
"So, that's all of us," Aaron said.
"You've been counting?" I asked. "I thought you didn't care?"
Aaron shrugged. "There's obviously something up. I want to be ready," he said, lightly touching the burn-mark on his face. It was healing surprisingly fast, as if my writer was impatient. But then, so was I.
"Smart," I said. "But now that we all have powers, does anyone else want to duel?"
"I do!" Jack said quickly. His blue eyes sparkled excitedly.
"With who?" Cole sked, chuckling as if he thought Jack was joking.
"You," Jack said, pointing at Cole.
"Um, me?" Cole asked, incredulous. "Wait. What?"
"Yes." Jack started sculpting a globe of condensed air. It felt like liquid carbon dioxide, which was impossible at one atmosphere, but that was Jack's specialty. Cole backed up hesitantly. "I just got my powers. You got yours yesterday!"
"Everyone else got their powers yesterday," Robert said. "You'll have to fight one of us eventually. That's no excuse."
"Okay," Cole said, breathing in. Jack approached him with the rotating ball of liquid carbon dioxide. Cole raised his arms like a child unsuccessfully imitating a boxer.
"Go," I whispered. Jack smiled at me. In this moment, Jack was protected. He could feel that.
And Jack launched the ball of carbon dioxide straight at Cole's head.
"FREAK!" Cole screamed. At least, he screamed something like that. Unable to duck out of the way, he raised his hand to block the blast. At the last moment, the liquid ball solidified.
Instead of hitting Cole's hand head on, the sphere of carbon dioxide splintered on Cole's palm and flew out at Jack as chunks of warm dry ice. Jack stared with his mouth open, and the solid chunks dissipated as carbon dioxide gas.
"That was awesome!" Cole screamed. Jack frowned. He grabbed a glass beaker off the table and chucked it at Cole.
As it spun midair, the solid liquefied, turning into a spinning orange glob. Cole pointed and changed the direction of the orb.
"So that's not just defensive," Aaron whispered to me."
"No, it seems not," I agreed. "It appears to just be modifying Newton's laws of motion."
Jack ducked and the glass hit the table behind him. It solidified as a misshaped lump.
"So he can change the direction of forces?" Aaron clarified.
"Yeah," I said. "Pretty cool."
Cole picked up a AA battery form a pack of batteries sitting on a lab table and threw it at Jack. It picked up speed at a mathematically abnormal rate.
"Force increase?" I whispered. Aaron nodded, whistling.
Jack threw out his hands and the air in front of the battery liquefied. At the same moment, the pack of batteries beside Jack exploded into a million shards of shrapnel, the liquid electrolyte condensing back into the air.
Jason, Robert, Aaron, and I ran and ducked behind a wall as metal shrapnel flew everywhere. Aaron increased the gravity right in front of us to capture the metal, and Jason increased the friction of the shrapnel to slow them down before they reached us.
Cole, on the other hand, didn't look so awesome. He had managed to deflect most of the metal shards, but one stuck prominently in his left thigh.
"What the heck," Cole said, attempting to sit down as smoothly as possible without jostling the entire left side of his body. Jack rushed in, quickly helped Cole down, and pulled out the metal piece.
"Dang. How'd you do that?" Cole asked, eyes widening at how deep the tiny piece of shrapnel went.
"I got the liquid inside the rechargeable batteries to expand into a gas," Jack said.
"That's pretty crazy," I said, picking up on where the battery gel had condensed.
"Little help on the first aid," Jack requested.
"'Kay." I picked up the covered beaker of ethyl alcohol and synthesized some more. I tuned to ask Robert to grab some bandages only to find that Robert and Aaron were gone.
"Where's Robert?" I asked.
"He said he was going to fight Aaron," Jason said.
And in that moment, Robert teleported back in with a beat up Aaron. And outside the window, the Earth was in flames. 878Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9lTIaQ4MjM
