Ability Wielders

Reaching the entrance of their neighborhood, Hayden ceased the movement of his legs. Behind him was Daniel. There was no sight of Courtney at all.

"You have no sense of camaraderie, don't you?" Daniel reprimanded Hayden. "She's a Level 1 wielder, she can't keep up with us."

"Yet you left her behind." Hayden rolled his eyes. "Also, to be fair, I didn't tell you to follow me, nor did I say keep up. This is exclusively on you."

"Uh…." Daniel was speechless of Hayden's answer. He couldn't refute him as Hayden's words were accurate. "Inconsiderate piece of shit."

"It's as if you don't understand me." Hayden coldly chuckled.

A few minutes passed till they finally saw Courtney from faraway, walking. Hayden was losing patience, yet, perplexingly, he waited with Daniel. When she caught up, she stuttered in exhaustion, "H-how the hell are you guys so quick?"

"I have to do some things. Goodbye to the two of you." On that note, Hayden literally vanished from their sights.

"W-what the hell?" Courtney's entire worldview was turned upside down by these shocking events. "H-how is he so fast? How is his stamina inexhaustible?"

"We're wielders." Daniel's simple answer caught Courtney off-guard again. "We're humans that have superpowers. Everything's possible."

"Huh…" Courtney thought that this made sense.

"Meet me back here at 4:30 PM. I have to take you somewhere." Daniel patted Courtney on the shoulder.

Courtney nodded as a sign of consonance. Walking back to her house, Courtney was mulling the things over, 'I have entered a whole new mysterious world… It'd be much smarter to have a guide… What if there are monstrous wielders out there that can kill me with a single thought…?'

As this passed in her mind, she shivered involuntarily. She steeled herself to go with Daniel as that would be the safer choice. Outside of these concerns, Courtney was excited.

Who wouldn't be excited if they suddenly gain superpowers that allows them to disregard the limits of reality? She was literally living the dream of billions of people who sought the ultimate exhilaration in life.

…..

Arriving at his house, Hayden took one more transient shower. This time, he did so with soap, shampoo, and conditioner. He then dressed with a red tank top and plain navy blue board shorts.

Immediately afterwards, Hayden drew the rest of the CHORUS with the same style, albeit different poses. He moved on to the next batch of gifts, which were the stuffed toys. "Fabrics, pre-fluffed synthetic toy stuffing… Yeah, that's all I need."

Going online, Hayden bought everything necessary for the production of the stuffed toys. Checking the executive delivery option, Hayden set the time of transport at 5:00 PM tomorrow. "Settling that… Let's go for the figurines first."

Going downstairs, Hayden opened a door behind the staircase leading up to the second floor and revealed another set of staircase. What met him was absolute darkness.

Getting his phone from the pocket of his shorts, Hayden launched the HCS app. Fiddling with his phone for a bit, light illuminated the flight of steps. Descending the stairway, Hayden was met with a room that has a floor covered with dust-resistant gray wool carpet.

The room had five book-filled shelves on one side, and an extra shelf full of mini figurines; eleven of which were CHORUS members on the topmost part of the shelf, and below that were old-school heroes such as Iron Man, and the Hulk, and superhumans from War of Honor such as Downpour, who was an enormous bulking man with a huge white sword and wearing a white knight's armor.

There was a small sofa beside the staircase with a glass coffee table in front and tons of modern machineries spread throughout.

It was kind of like a technological nut's lair with all the high-tech devices on it. An example was the Rapid 3D Fabricator in the middle of the room.

This was the former basement of their house that wasn't used at all. This was until six months ago, when Hayden got the permission to utilize the basement as his personal lair. This is where he stored all the stuff he couldn't fit in his room.

One such stuff was his collection of hardbound books as well as rows of manga and comic books on the shelves. He was a sucker for pieces of literature of the fiction genre prior to his awakening.

Furthermore, his parents indulged him when it came to these books, allowing him to purchase them using their money without much restrictions.

When he became rich, Hayden fueled his own collection desires. When it got too messy in his room, that's when he got his parents to show him the basement. A few months later, when Hayden got out of smaller hobbies to do, that's where the basement came into play.

Whenever he'd need some sort of big machine, Hayden had it installed here. When he's bored, he'll just come down here and work on the hobbies he was fascinated by.

One of those hobbies was creating and rendering 3D models in his laptop and printing them using the Rapid 3D Fabricator.

Sitting on the sofa, Hayden plugged in the charger on the laptop and activated it. Thereupon, he initiated a 3D model creator and renderer, loading a preset of Eun-ha that he created months ago. This was created when he first acquired the Rapid 3D Fabricator. In fact, they were the first ones he created.

As Hayden has already built models of the CHORUS members before he met them personally, he simply had to make minor changes on them. These minor changes were their three sizes and the matter of capturing the true beauty that their faces had.

All that was left was to modify the clothes for their most recent song era, Sweet Love. Their clothes for the Sweet Love era was colorful, exuding liveliness and cuteness; which was their default theme.

He spent an hour adjusting the presets of all the members of CHORUS. Following that, Hayden connected his laptop to the Rapid 3D Fabricator, procured the required differing-colored blocks of plastic, and inserted it into the machine.

Activating the Rapid 3D Fabricator, green lasers shot out from all sides of the machine and swiftly built a colorless figurine of Eun-ha in a matter of a minute.

The finished product of the Eun-ha figurine was donning a red blouse and white denim shorts. Her body was leaning slightly to the right side, with both of her hands on her back, at the level of her tailbone. Her hair was styled into a half ponytail, looking incredibly elegant.

"Nice." Hayden nodded in approval and took the figurine out. "The creation of this Rapid 3D Fabricator is extremely revolutionary."

How did the Rapid 3D Fabricator work, you asked? Well, it worked by removing the chemical bonds in a plastic block, creating tiny molecules of plastic that is then reconstructed one by one through the usage of a chemical bond inducement technique discovered during the Age of Advancement.

This was also how component synthesizers worked, albeit this Rapid 3D Fabricator specialized on creating plastic 3D models.

What's more fascinating was that it can take multiple colors all at once. Moreover, the texture quality was superb. The surface had no impurities at all. It deserved its name as a revolutionary piece of tech.

Placing other blocks of plastic into the fabricator, Hayden walked to a glass case and took out a handheld laser engraver. Rotating the figurine upside down, Hayden engraved his signature on the bottom.

He repeated this for the remainder of the figurines. It was already 5:10 when he was done. "Let's move on to the letters, shall we?"

Returning to his room, Hayden was sitting in front of his desk writing on a piece of paper. A stack of paper was beside him. Crumpling the piece of paper he was currently working on, he threw it to the trash can adjacent to his desk. Hayden complained, "Why is this so hard!"

This was perhaps the hardest thing that he has ever done since his six months of being a wielder. "You've already formed one earlier, yet now you think that it was bad!? It's simply a modest letter of admiration and gratitude! What's so hard about that, Hayden!?"

Double slapping his self on the cheeks, Hayden's eyes turned sharp, full of concentration. "You can do this, Hayden."

To make it less taxing on himself, Hayden prompted to write Eun-ha's letter first. "Oh, yes, I have so much words for her…"

Once he started writing for Eun-ha, Hayden's hands moved by itself. He was put in a perfect flow state, though he remained aware of his surroundings due to his Divine Perception.

Unknowingly, Hayden wrote four long pages' worth of words for Eun-ha. It contained well-expressed compliments, how she caught Hayden's eyes the second he became fond of CHORUS, how she accompanied him during his times of loneliness, albeit not personally, some flowery words, a couple of jokes here and there, and general words of thankfulness for the best three weeks, and counting, of his life.

The letter was in full Korean, written in magnificent cursive. If anybody else was in the room, they'd be stunned of Hayden's penmanship that can be considered eye-candy.

"Huh." Hayden slowly bobbed his head up and down when he was at the part of the letter where he said 'love, your boyfriend and fan, Hayden Emperador' and signing it. "That's something… I didn't know I had it in me…"

Skimming through the letter, he approved of its contents, folded it into one rectangle, and put it in an envelope. On the backside of the envelope, Hayden wrote a large cursive print of Eun-ha's full name effortlessly.

"Moving on…" Hayden remained in his flow state thanks to his Divine Perception, spending, all in all, two hours on the ten letters. Each and every letter was personal and was well thought-of.

Finishing with Jin-ae's letter, Hayden heaved a sigh of relief as his shoulders slumped on his chair. It was obvious that Hayden was mentally exhausted. "Expressing feelings is hard. I wish this is the last time my stupid ass would think of letters as a gift…"

Resting for a good few minutes, Hayden grabbed a wad of white sealing wax and a seal stamp from his desk drawer. He had one custom made back in the day as he thought it was cool to have some sort of symbol.

Utilizing the Breathing Technique, Hayden heated up the sealing wax and poured it onto the letter of Eun-ha. Succeeding this, Hayden stamped the sealing wax. When he removed it, an open-ended circle, termed as Ensō or Zen circle can be seen with the silhouette of a howling wolf inside it.

What was the meaning of this insignia? First, the wolf can be a symbol for many things, such as loyalty and strength. In Hayden's perspective, this was an omega wolf, someone who didn't belong. It symbolized both his loneliness and independence.

A more pessimistic perception was that the wolf denoted that, in the end, he's truly alone in this world. You shouldn't rely on anybody but yourself.

The howling represented how Hayden truly cared about people regardless of him being such a lone wolf. This showed how he was still human in the end. He was affected by feelings and all that shtick.

The open-ended circle meant many things. In Buddhism, it meant nothingness or the void, limitless strength, enlightenment, and many more. For some, it meant that imperfection is essential in life. Some viewed it as a symbol for being incomplete as a person.

However, for Hayden, the Zen circle represented his own hope and enthusiasm in things. The small part missing on the circle connoted that there will always be an end to things no matter how hard it gets, no matter how unlucky he was, and no matter what happened.

This also doubled as his pessimism, that a journey must always end, like all things should. It is inevitable. It is a reminder that there's no such thing as a continuous adventure and excitement. One day, he'd grow old and die, even if he became the strongest wielder in the totality of the human race.

On top of that, it served as a reminder to him that he cannot afford to be laidback since time is moving. Meaning, he shouldn't dwell on the past and always look what's in front of him. It served as a reminder that he should be grateful to everything he had and to be strong, moving on whether or not he loses someone or something.

There were so much more that the Zen circle meant for Hayden, but these were the main ones for him. We'd be here forever if I listed everything out.

He spent a good three minutes imprinting his Zen circle-encased howling lone wolf insignia onto the envelopes and hid the eleven letters on his Space Ring.

Hayden muttered in annoyance, "Yeah, I seriously got to buy a new Space Ring."

Finishing all that, Hayden dressed up with black slim-cut jeans, a plain black shirt, and headed off for the meeting place on his motorcycle.

…..

Meanwhile, somewhere in Metro Manila, within the headquarters of the Pangkat Anino. Annie and Caesar was sitting on a metal bench in front of a dark oak door.

Presently, Annie was sporting a clean modest pink shirt, blue jeans, and brown boots. Her outfit revealed her absurdly sexy and curvy bodyline.

On the other hand, Caesar wore a black and white jersey of the NCR Carabaos, the baseball team of the National Capital Region; chino pants, and red-colored sneakers.

"Who was this guy again?" Annie asked Caesar. For the past few days, the two were staying here in some sort of secret base.

"Sophia didn't give us a name." Caesar shook his head. "But, based from the principles of this group, it would be our best option to join them."

"What were the principles?" Annie was bad at remembering these sort of stuff. Oddly enough, she was the best in her class when it came to mathematics and language studies. She has mastered four languages so far, Indonesian, Filipino, English, and Chinese.

It was evident from this that she was a true genius. After all, she did still master Muay Thai alongside these, and is one of the prodigies when it came to improvised combat.

One must note that she undertook Muay Thai for a short six months, and that was her being forced by her father so that 'she could protect herself.'

"The common principle here is that members of this group desires freedom most of all. Hence their creed, 'The goal is freedom. Nothing comes above.'" Caesar said with a straight face. "The second is the 'Three Cs.' 'Competence. Concord. Constancy' Competence means that the group prized strength and potential, the basis of the hierarchy of the group. Next came concord, meaning that the group members should work together to achieve the highest goal, which is freedom, and other common goals. The last one is constancy, in which you cannot betray the group or you'll be hunted down by them and be tortured for an eternity."

"And you don't want that, right?" Annie shuddered. "They're feared even by that Kamay ng Lagim that raided our Vermillion City, right?"

"Indeed." Caesar nodded in agreement. "Imagine the power of such a small group of 20-something people to instigate fear in such a huge criminal power in the Philippines. Plus, I heard that their leader is the strongest Level 5 wielder in the Philippines."

"So, essentially…" Annie couldn't believe her ears. "The two extremes in here isn't Kamay ng Lagim and Puting Araw… But…"

"Exactly." Caesar grimly spoke. "If we get them on our side, we may be able to attain vengeance for the families we've lost."

Abruptly, the dark oak door creaked open. An intimidating and powerful voice resounded outwards. The sentence was in English, "Come in, the two of you."

Caesar and Annie stood up. They attempted to control the tremble of their legs, to no avail. If the man's voice was enough to intimidate them this much, what of his power?

Annie and Caesar couldn't imagine what kind of power the man held as they entered the dimly lit room that obscured the face of the 'boss.'

The dark oak door loudly shut behind them, making them jump in horror. They were too tense as they felt a looming sense of doom.

"The two of you came from Indonesia. Correct?" The Boss' voice, which should've become a lot less scary since its volume lowered, became scarier instead.

"Y-Yes." Caesar was the one to answer in English. He was incapable of speaking Filipino. He instinctively protected Annie by stepping in front of her. He marginally bowed, "We came seeking refuge and to purge the vile Kamay ng Lagim who raided our home and bereaved us of our loved ones."

"No need to bow." The Boss' tone was that of intrigue. "I take it you're from the Crimson Cloud that unified the Indonesian world of wielders? And you girl… You're the daughter of the mythical God of Battle, aren't you?"

"Yes, she is." Caesar politely replied. "Please take her in. At least her. I don't need to be taken in. I plead of you."

"No need to plead." A chuckle can be heard from The Boss, confusing the two. "Sophia was the one who brought you here. She's a trusted ally of our Pangkat Anino, and anybody she has brought have always been worthy. Tell me, what's your power, Caesar."

Being called by his name, Caesar was caught off-guard. It was clear that 'The Boss' the two have heard so much about from Sophia had researched of their background.

"I possess the common Ability, Invisible Hunter." Caesar remained respectful and disregarded The Boss' laidback attitude. "As for her, her Ability is the Celestial Tigris-Rhinoceros. She will be a powerful addition to your group."

"I accept the two of you." Much to the bewilderment of the two, The Boss let them join without much arguments. "Your Ability, Invisible Hunter, although is considered pretty common, remains quite useful. As for your Celestial Tigris-Rhinoceros… I'm certain that you'll do well. Call me Boss. You don't have to be that polite when talking to me as there's no true leaders here. I'm simply someone who disseminates what our move will be. We all have a say in it. I take it that you have your cellphones with you?"

"Yes, Boss." Annie was the one to speak this time around. Her voice was filled with gusto. She was chiller than Caesar when it came to interacting with The Boss. "Do you have something for us?"

On the side, Caesar was tugging at Annie's sleeves, his eyes conveying, 'What the hell are you doing? Be respectful!'

"I like your optimism, girl." The Boss was amused of Annie's character. "Howbeit… I have to disappoint you. Right now, you have something else to do than go around killing Kamay ng Lagim members."

"What is it?" Annie's face dimmed down.

"The man will learn Filipino." The Boss replied. "As for you… You will be training in combat, intelligence gathering, and everything else you have to know to survive on your own. Just because your Ability is powerful doesn't mean you have the rights to be complacent."