“But your power comes from your hands,” said Stuart.
“No, it does not. You have to think of a water tank and a hose.” I poked my head again. “This is the water tank. Your hands, or your breath” – I pointed at Chico – “can be the hose. Whatever hose you want. I even use my feet when I’m drawing energy from the earth beneath me. Denny uses his arsehole sometimes.” Nobody laughed – they didn’t want more skunk musk up their noses. “The outlet and the water tank are two different things.”
I saw a few of the recruits exchanging looks that said this made sense, that they couldn’t believe it was that obvious and yet they had never considered it.
“Commander Michaels never told us that,” griped David, like a kid looking to blame a teacher for his lack of knowledge.
“Don’t worry, you’ll still get your gold star sticker at the end of the session,” I told him patronisingly. He laughed just as the others did.
“What about people like me and David?” said Stuart. “We don’t use outlets, we just will it to happen.”
“And that’s exactly where your problems stem from. You’re limiting yourselves. Vampiric gifts don’t work off will power. You don’t wish it would happen and then it just does. David, you concentrate hard with your eyes when you send out that blast, right?” David nodded. “There’s your outlet you’ve been using without even realising it. Stuart, didn’t it occur to you that when you shred into tiny little molecules that that is how the energy is being released? That it bursts out of you?”
He tilted his head. “Huh.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that shredding could also serve as teleporting you around? That maybe you could learn to shred and then go from place to place as molecules?”
Stuart treble-blinked and then his head seemed to be working away.
“I suppose you didn’t.” I turned back to Denny. “Now, I want you to close your eyes.” He did. “Think about nothing but that water tank – all the water swilling around in there, wanting to get out so more can replace it. All it needs is a hose. Remember I told you that this was similar to Stuart’s gift. He has to feel the water bursting out of him. You have to think of it bursting inside you; filling you and filling you, drowning you into nothing but -” And then he was like a puddle of mushy peas in the space of a second. He even smelt a little like them. “Mush,” I finished. Everyone was clapping for him and wooing. “Now, Denny, you need to think of the water filling you again, stretching you and stretching you until you might burst again. But this time, you don’t burst. You turn off that hose and leave the water in the tank.” It was strange talking to a puddle, and even more strange to think that the puddle could fully understand me. He was mush for a good ten seconds before speedily reforming – I took that as him concentrating on the water/tank metaphor.
Whole again, Denny glared at me with a cocktail of astonishment, gratitude and respect in his eyes. “Oh my God, I did it. For years I’ve been trying to control it. I could just kiss you right now.” His face turned serious. “I won’t.”
All the others reacted in much the same way when I took them aside individually as I had done with Denny. Chico learned that he could in fact use his palms to emit thorns, he just needed to work on emitting more than one thorn at a time and having a better aim. Butch was able to pop up his shield a couple of times, he just needed to learn how to form it at will and how to keep the shield up for the length of time that he wanted. Stuart was now able to shred in the space of three seconds and reform again just as quickly, his goal was to learn how to do it within the space of a second in order to avoid any power directed his way. He also wanted to master how to move around while he was only molecules.
Salem, being quite violent, decided that it would be much more fun and dramatic if his outlet for his psychic boom – that could knock you unconscious – could be his fist. After Reuben weakened his gift so that the boom felt more like a slap, I let him practice on Damien seen as he was being a lazy little sod. Damien’s low concentration span meant he was still having trouble with trying to project his astral self any further than a few feet. But after a while of getting psychic slaps from Salem, Damien – in utter desperation – was able to astral project away from the impact. Sometimes learning the hard way was the only way to learn.
David had decided that he wanted his outlet to be his palms, not his eyes, so he was working on that and doing excellently – Reuben had weakened his power in advance to ensure that David’s blast couldn’t do any more than give his victim a minor shock, and he practiced mostly on Denny who said he would happily practice with his own powers in his own time so he could help David today. Denny looked out for David a lot, which was good as I came to realize that David was very nervous of his power and by virtue of his young age.
It turned out that Reuben had a little trouble with controlling whether he strengthened someone’s gift or whether he weakened it, but by the end of the session he had a better hang of it. He was working toward increasing the degree to which he could affect someone’s gift and with being able to affect someone’s gift with minimal bodily contact as opposed to holding onto them for up to eight seconds.
Max and Harvey were hard work because both believed that they had nothing left to learn…So I paired them up, which they soon regretted. I first let Slap-head – he was back to that now that he was being a wanker – explore whether he could choose exactly what senses he wanted to affect (he didn’t believe this was possible until, one by one, I took each of his senses away and then left him to silently whine about it to the wall). It transpired that although cocky Harvey was able to send something zooming away with his telekinesis, he couldn’t make something come toward him, or rotate, or levitate so I allowed him to practice on a practically defenceless Slap-head. Slap-head of course stole every one of Harvey’s senses once he recovered his own just as payback.
Each time the recruits were successful in their attempts, I would give them a nod of approval, but after that would holler, ‘Again!’ And, to their credit, they did it over and over and over. I was tempted to loudly express how pleased I was with their efforts but I couldn’t afford to show any signs of compassion or kindness with these blokes as they would only view this as a weakness and start taking the piss. Coaches needed to have a tough exterior or they’d all end up being wankers again. Besides, as Max had said, they were big boys.