Chapter 3

Once he went down to the kitchen everything was normal, like they always were. His mom was going the right speed again, and the smell of the food was back.

“Hey mom.” He said,

His mom smiled, “Good morning. You look like you’ve been up for an hour!” She complemented him.

“Because I have.” Tarin said slowly. He wasn’t sure what his mom was implying.

“What? Did you wake up early or something?” His mom said, “And I have been up for 5 minutes, so don’t give me any backtalk about how much I sleep. Again.”

Tarin didn’t understand, he’d been up for an hour working. She had woken up earlier, how was it that she thought it was only 5 minutes? It didn’t matter, he ate his breakfast and went to the park to meet up with his friends. When he got there his friends were talking a lot to each other, and they looked worried. Why was everyone so worried today?

Tarin went up to his friends, “Hey guys what’s up?”

They looked at him, Max was the first to respond. “Tarin something weird is going on.”

Train was confused, “What do you mean?”

Max turned to Aaron, “Show him.”

Aaron held out his hand, and a tiny light appeared. It then exploded, “Tarin this happened this morning, and when I do it it feels like that plant we saw in the cave yesterday.” Tarin was blown back by the act, how had Aaron created a tiny explosion of light.

“How did you do that?” Tarin asked,

“I don’t know! It felt so natural, I flash banged myself this morning from it.” Aaron looked extremely scared, “What is this?”

Tarin looked at his hand, then realized all the weird stuff that had happened to him this morning as well. “It happened to me too.” He said.

Colton shook his head, “It was the plant wasn’t it?” He said.

Tarin nodded, “Probably.” He said. They all started talking, he calmed them down. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.” He said,

They walked to a section of the park nobody came to, it was connected to a sewer pipe so it usually smelled pretty bad. Nobody would be over here.

“Alright,” Tarin said, “Somehow we got powers from the plant.”

Aaron squinted his eyes, “We.”

Tarin sighed, “didn’t realize it at first, but now with this I’m able to see. Everything was going super slow, and my mom said I was in my room for five minutes. When it felt like an hour.”

Max shook his head. “I destroyed my clock this morning, I decided not to question it.”

Colton shifted his feet, “I fell off my balcony.” Everyone looked at his wide eyed, “But I caught myself on the smallest piece of it.”

Tarin shook his head, “Ok, we have to go back and get those plants. We also have to figure out what's going on, that one first though.” They all nodded.

After the meet up at the park, they all went to Tarin’s apartment. Tarin wasn’t a genius in the medical field like he was with technology, and he had made a few things to make it easier. He got his friends to let him prick their fingers to look at their blood to see if anything was wrong, they all agreed. Tarin had taken his own first, and looked at it.

“Ok, that’s not right.” He said,

“What’s wrong?” Colton asked. Tarin’s blood was moving, really fast too! He shifted over to them, and looked at them.

“Well mine makes sense, my blood is going extremely fast. Just how I was going.” They all nodded, he looked back at the blood samples and switched it out with Max’s. His was also very weird, his blood was growing slowly. Expanding almost. “Strange, Max, your blood is expanding. At an incredible rate I might add.”

“What does that mean?” Max asked.

“Well, being how you're super strong i’d say your blood and muscles are growing so much it causes you to have this incredible strength.” Tarin then looked to Aarons, who’s looked fine but when he brought it to the microscope, what was scary was when his radiation detector went off when he did bring it to the microscope. “Alright Aaron, your blood is normal.”

Aaron let out a sigh of relief, “Thank goodness.”

“It’s the radiation I’m worried about.” Tarin added,

Aaron looked at him “What?”

Tarin nodded, “Your blood is sending out massive amounts of radiation, so your whole body would be radiating radiation.” Tarin brought the sensor over to Aaron, which when he did the needle went up and never went back down. “Yep, definitely radiation.” Tarin moved onto Colton’s blood. Looking at it everything seemed normal, but when he touched it was the problem. His blood wasn’t normal, it flexed like a muscle would.

Colton tapped Tarin’s shoulder, “What’s wrong with mine?”

Tarin nodded, “Well yours is denying to move, like at all. Each little blood cell looks like it’s working actively as a muscle, but also acting as a blood cell.”

“So what would you call that?” Colton asked,

“Scientifically, cellular multi dividing muscle syndrome. Or in other words, you're really agile and fast.” Tarin said,

Aaron was shaking his head now, “It doesn’t matter, how do we get rid of them!”

Tarin shrugged, “I don’t think that’s physically possible, whatever affected us caused every little cell in our bodies to mutate into unthinkable ways.”

“So we’re stuck with these?” Colton asked,

Tarin nodded, “Unless I could get some of the stuff that affected us, we’re stuck with the powers. I’ll start trying to find a way to make them livable, but I need a better working space and more materials to do so.”

“And being high school student’s we don’t have many of those i’m guessing?” Max asked,

“Well no, but we could always try.” Tarin said, “We might as well try these abilities though, right?”

Tarin suggested they at least tried their powers before trying to abandon them entirely. When he got his friends to agree they went back to the park, and went to a new area that the city had stopped work on for overgrowth of vegetation. Tarin had brought a traveling lab case, and the samples he’d acquired from everyone. They were going to try their presumed powers to see what they could do.

“Alright Max, try it out!” They’d found a lot of old building equipment and rubble, so they decided to use it for training. Max gave a thumbs up, and picked up a giant boulder.

“Wow!” Max announced, “It feels like nothing!” He tossed it around in his hands a little bit, and dropped it.

“Alright, so Max, I’ve been testing your blood samples and found out that when pressure is put on a position of your body your muscles naturally build and regenerate to create your super strength. Maybe try jumping or something?” Tarin suggested,

Colton was trying to do what he’d done before, and make his instincts react to a fall or something. He tried jumping into a bush, but it didn’t work. Tarin suggested it was probably quick thinking, and reaction. In other words he was doing it, not his powers. Max jumped, and hit his head on the ceiling. A small crack was there.

Max screamed in pain, Tarin ran to him. “Are you Ok?”

Max nodded, “It’s going away!”

“The pain?” Tarin said,

“No, the injury!” Max showed him his now very cut and bruised knee, which was now fully healed.

Tarin looked at the spot where the injury used to be, “Interesting, I’ll make a note of that.” Tarin had brought files and paper to write down what they found out about themselves.

“So I have super strength, and healing? Cool.” Max said,

Suddenly Colton screamed, Max and Tarin both looked over to see that Colton had landed on his finger.

He looked astonished, “I’m not really good at physics, but I dont think this is possible.” Tarin ran over, and checked his stance and his finger.

“You look fine, I guess you have Hypermotility. Fast reflexes for short.” Tarin explained,

“Sure, for short.” Colton said, he then pushed his finger to the ground and jumped into the air he landed on his feet. “Cool.” He muttered.

“Alright Hypermotility, and enhanced agility. Noted.” Tarin wrote down the abilities as he walked back to his set up. “Can you guys test my speed for me?” Tarin asked, they all came over to him.

Aaron smiled, “Show us you can first.” He laughed.

Tarin got into a running position, and started to run he went at normal speeds. He looked at his hands, then he turned around. He focused on what he remembered doing in his room. He ran, then hit the wall on the other end.

Max came up to Tarin, “You're fast!”

“Thanks,” Tarin said, he got up and realized how hot his feet felt. Then his shoes caught on fire, and he started jumping. “Fire!”

Colton and Aaron ran over, “Well makes sense speedster!” Said Aaron.

Tarin quickly took off his shoes, and felt his feet. They really hurt. He sat on the ground, and looked at them. Then they started to feel weird, they felt normal again. He looked at his feet once more, and all the burns were gone!

“You have regeneration too!” Max announced.

Tarin looked at his feet and had an idea, he ran to his house. He snuck in and grabbed his extra pair of shoes, and his experimental friction reducing rubber. He ran back, and installed the rubber onto his shoes.

He unfroze everything, “That looks better!” He announced he turned to the group. “Friction-resistant shoes!”