This time I awakened my powers much earlier and did it deliberately.
Though that applies not only to my abilities.
My life in general is now much more deliberate.
As for my superpowers, it was enough to think about why, in my previous life as Mark Grayson, it happened so late.
The answer turned out to be surprisingly simple: I didn’t have the necessary push.
I waited for it, dreamed about it, thought about what I’d do when I got superpowers; there was never any question there.
I always knew I’d become a hero like my father.
But I never did anything to make that moment happen sooner.
What I mean is, I have two childhoods to compare.
And I clearly see that my childhood as Mark Grayson was too…
rosy, if you will.
Hell, I never even got into a fight until that fateful day I decided to stand up for Scott.
And actually, I did that precisely because I hoped the fight would be the trigger.
And I was right, because that same evening it happened.
Back on my father’s homeworld of Viltrum, such a calm and carefree childhood probably isn’t the norm.
A race of conquerors, a militarized empire that holds entire galaxies in an iron fist, a cult of strength above all else.
I highly doubt that with such an ideology, Viltrumites raise their children as delicate flowers like I was until graduation.
This time, I tried to convince my mom, and it was a very exhausting, annoying, and difficult process to let me join a sports team.
I was fourteen then, and I suffered a crushing defeat against my mother’s prejudices.
She actually had some arguments on the matter.
She said that if I awakened my abilities, it would all be pointless.
And if I didn’t, then I didn’t need it.
Besides, my heritage automatically gave me an unfair advantage over ordinary people, so the path to sports was closed to me.
I couldn’t exactly tell her that I only needed sports to give my body a stressful load and provoke earlier maturation, and therefore have more time to prepare for the fight with my father.
In short, the sports team didn’t work out, and I started training on my own.
Even then, Mom wasn’t thrilled, but she didn’t forbid her son from going for a run and working out in the yard.
I convinced my parents to buy me good, expensive running shoes with nice shock absorption, a water-resistant sports MP3 player, and a children’s punching bag.
Then I started my daily workouts.
Mom was demonstrably against it and pursed her lips in disapproval, but she didn’t stop me from self-improvement.
Dad just looked at it all with mixed feelings.
Seriously, who the hell knows what’s going on in that alien’s head!
It turned out that even without a full awakening of my Viltrumite, well, heritage, let’s call it that, I had significant advantages over humans.
Nothing extraordinary or obvious, not even the lower bar of superheroes, of which there are plenty on our planet.
But running more than ten kilometers every morning and then being able to do half an hour of push-ups, pull-ups, and pound the punching bag for rest?
All at fourteen years old.
Plus, I never got sick.
No colds, no flu, nothing.
The only time in my life I ever had a fever was when my baby teeth were coming in.
The training worked even faster and better than I dared to hope.
At fourteen, I was practically an ordinary kid, one who just never got sick.
By sixteen, I was descending to the bottom of the Mariana Trench to visit the local extremophiles, training and testing my body’s limits.
The actual awakening happened during a run three months after I started training.
I always finished my run with a sprint, when my lungs are already burning from lack of oxygen and my muscles are at their limit from fatigue.
But instead of slowing down and stopping, you accelerate more and more.
In my past human life, I always ran the last kilometer or so like that, depending on the music.
Music controls me during workouts.
This love of music and running transferred fully to the new me.
There are some songs that I just can’t stop to, and others that make me accelerate relentlessly, squeezing every last drop out of myself.
That day, I was finishing my early morning run, around six a.m., when there are no cars and everyone’s asleep.
I hit the final stretch and was pushing myself to “Goya no Machiawase” when it finally happened.
First, all the accumulated fatigue disappeared, as if my muscles finally woke up from a long sleep and started working at full capacity.
It was as if I hadn’t just run a grueling ten kilometers in twenty minutes.
Secondly, the neighbor’s house started approaching too fast, dangerously fast.
Not for me, of course, but for the house.
Fortunately, my reaction speed and thinking didn’t lag behind my strength.
I even had time to think that if I tried to brake, I’d leave marks on the asphalt.
So I didn’t.
I just jumped up.
The familiar feeling from my past life of falling into the sky caught me and carried me upward.
And when I say falling into the sky, that’s not a beautiful metaphor.
On the contrary, it’s a very accurate description.
It’s as if my body’s center of gravity shifted, ending up slightly outside my body, and started pulling me toward itself with a force many times greater than Earth’s gravity.
That’s exactly what I felt, even though I knew it was complete nonsense.
I can’t possibly have that much mass, can I?
Especially since I can instantly change the direction of that pull by force of thought.
I decide where my body is in space.
I could comfortably walk on the ceiling all day if I wanted.
Last time, as Mark Grayson, I hardly thought about it.
I took it for granted: Viltrumites can fly, so I can fly, because I’m one of them.
But the other part of me, the one that understood from a scientific perspective how difficult it is to overcome Earth’s gravity, was hysterical.
It’s one thing to generate lift and take off like Atom Eve does with her reactive jets of altered air.
It’s quite another to simply ignore Earth’s gravity like I do.
That requires energy comparable to our planet’s gravitational influence!
“That can’t be!” the rational part of me, the one that was an astrophysicist and cosmonaut in my past life, screamed.
“Such energy can’t be hidden in such a tiny volume without consequences!”
And yet it is.
The fundamental force of the universe, capable of stopping even light and time, simply doesn’t seem to affect me.
And that made me feel invincible!
However, if it weren’t for the memories of my past life, this first solo flight could have been much more painful, even dangerous.
I remember how scared I was the first time, realizing I didn’t know how to stop my fall into space.
How I panicked and gasped for air that grew thinner and thinner as I rose into the stratosphere.
Eventually I passed out and started falling back down.
I probably would have survived the fall, but my neighbors’ property definitely wouldn’t have if I hadn’t woken up in time and taken off again.
Nothing like that happened this time.
I already had flight experience, including in open space.
So I easily took control of my flight and returned before anyone noticed a flying boy in the sky.
Not that it would have been an incredible sensation.
The world is full of all kinds of supernatural creatures, including children.
Eve is already wearing her pink costume and playing superhero, and she’s my age.
But her father isn’t harboring plans to conquer Earth, just waiting for his child’s powers to awaken.
After checking that my jump hadn’t left any marks on the asphalt, I went home.
A strong smell of pancakes hit my nose the moment I stepped through the door.
Mom was already making breakfast.
She always gets up shortly after me.
I think she’s even started getting up a little earlier than usual to chat with me right after my run.
And in general, about a month after I started training, she stopped looking at me with such disapproval and accepted my new hobby.
“Good morning, Mom,” I said, faking heavy breathing.
“Mmm, pancakes?”
“Good morning, son,” Debbie replied from behind the stove.
She gave me a sympathetic look and added, “Still nothing?”
“Unfortunately,” I lied, hanging my head dejectedly.
“Don’t be so upset about it,” she consoled me, then immediately added, “Maybe it’s for the best.”
I rinsed my hands in the sink and snagged a burnt pancake from the table that had been set aside.
“Hey!” Debbie protested.
But when she saw that my prize was a reject, she calmed down a little.
She had a thing about that.
She wouldn’t let anyone eat until she was completely done cooking, set the table, and called everyone to eat.
Especially with pancakes and baked goods that aren’t made in a single batch, and spread their sweet aroma throughout the whole house.
“Even if you’re young and healthy, you shouldn’t abuse your liver like that,” Mom grumbled.
“Then maybe a shocked liver will help me awaken my superpowers,” I smirked, crunching on a hard piece of fried dough.
I threw the completely charred black edge into the trash, though.
I’m not completely insane.
“Well?” Debbie smirked.
“Not sure yet.
Maybe one more…”
“Go already!” She waved her spatula at me.
I threw my sweaty clothes in the laundry hamper, got in the shower, and turned on the hot water.
It no longer burned me at all.
So, awakening my powers was only the first and easiest part.
Now I needed to train while keeping this secret from everyone, especially my father.
If he found out I’d already gained my powers and started acting ahead of schedule, everything would only get worse.
I needed time to prepare.
Yes, hiding superpowers from your family when your father is the strongest hero on the planet is a very, very nontrivial task.
Fortunately, I had a significant advantage over my father.
Nolan is always busy saving lives all over the world and is constantly in the media spotlight.
But most importantly, I remembered when his adventures as Omni-Man turned into long disappearances that Mom and I explained as trips to gather material for his next book.
Some of them lasted months.
Once he disappeared in another dimension for six months.
Unfortunately, that was before I turned ten, and I couldn’t get any benefit from it.
But now things would change.
I had several years before graduating to become better than my former self.
I also needed to prepare for the possibility that this still wouldn’t be enough.
Maybe the Guardians wouldn’t be as helpless if they were ready for Dad’s attack?
But I don’t want to tell everyone my story either…
After finishing my morning routine and tidying up, I returned to the kitchen.
Dad still wasn’t there.
Even Omni-Man needs to get a decent night’s sleep sometimes.
Mom was huffing and puffing over a jar of strawberry jam, holding it between her knees and trying to open the lid with a kitchen towel.
She looked very funny.
As soon as she noticed me, she immediately stopped her struggle.
“We’ll have to wait for your father,” she said, putting the jar back on the table.
“It’s time for him to get up.
His agent is supposed to come today.”
“Let me,” I said, taking the jar.
I pretended to struggle a little, then twisted the lid off.
“Oh, you got your superpowers, son!” My father’s voice suddenly came from behind me, and my heart sank into my shoes.
How did he know?
Did he see me flying?
Damn, what bad luck!
What do I do now?
“Nolan!” Mom’s indignant cry interrupted my panicked thoughts.
“Very funny, Dad,” I quickly replied, realizing it was a joke.
“Hitting me where it hurts, huh?
Fine, fine…”
“They’ll come soon, son.
Any day now.” I’d heard this a thousand times in my past life.
And each time, Nolan believed it less and less.
Even now, fourteen was already a pretty late age by what Dad had told me before.
From his stories, ten to thirteen was the age when most Viltrumites awakened their powers.
Of course, you can’t believe everything Dad says, but there seemed to be no reason for him to lie about this.
“Sit down for breakfast!” Mom interrupted the conversation, pouring coffee for Dad, black tea for me, and green tea for herself.
How can you eat pancakes with green tea?
“Alright, alright, as you say, dear,” the fearsome alien conqueror capitulated to his wife.
Damn, how strange it all is.
Even knowing what my father is capable of, I still can’t fully believe that all of this, our whole life, our whole family, is just a lie and an act.
“Exactly, as I say,” Mom went into dictator mode.
“And I say no talk of superpowers or superheroes at the table!”
“Mmm, strawberries and pancakes.
I love you, honey!” Dad pulled Mom to him and kissed her.
They were pushing the boundaries ofdecency a bit, flirting in front of their child.
But I’m not a little boy anymore to get upset about that kind of thing.
We sat down to breakfast like a normal, happy family.
Is there a chance that things will stay that way?
That our Viltrumite heritage won’t destroy this family?