Soon, the class ended with me just doing cardio, which I found out I could do endlessly: I ran on the treadmill at a decent pace of 60 km/hr till the end of the class without a single drop of sweat, after I 'thought myself inexhaustible'.
I didn't even get halfway to the classroom for the subject I'm most interested in, Science & Mystic Arts, or as the kids like to call it, S&M, when the P.A. system suddenly announced they needed my presence in the staff office...
...But stop halfway through.
The announcer then said, "Actually... never mind.'"
In response to my thoughts rejecting the idea.
The principal would probably just like to talk with me about that matter with Mr. Richards and new physical stats in the gym, but I don't wanna talk about it, so...
Anyways, more eager than ever to do even more daring experiments, I instantly switched out my P.E. shirt and shorts amidst the river of students in the hallway and had the next class's notebooks and textbooks in my hand within the instant I'd like them to be in my hand.
I headed to the last class of the day with some excitement. Today, Mrs. Haller said she'd be teaching us about the different manifestations of energy, of which light and heat are the most common.
When I arrived in the classroom, I weaved through the gap between the tables to the very back-leftmost corner table beside the windows as anime protagonists do, and put down my things on my usual table before greeting my favorite NPC, "Hello there, Ms. Winnie the Poop."
"Its Ein, Ein! It's literally one syllable!" said Ms. Poop in displeasure, her cute mellifluous voice intoning words reminding me of her name again in a rather vexed tone which I just find adorable.
I sat on my usual seat beside her and looked at her with a tentative look and said, "Right... So Rin."
"Ein with a capital E! You babbling baboon with the attention span of a gnat!" She complained, her bright blue eyes bursting with emotions. Then she started poking me in the cheek with her delicate lil' itty bitty fingers as she narrowed her eyes, "You... why do you look different today?"
"Different? Why, I look as handsome as ever," I said, flashing her a grin. She only frowned in response and looked at me very closely in inspection as if attempting to burn my image into her retina.
In response, I only smiled while pointing at the side of my forehead, "And well, if you'd like me to remember your name that much, maybe you could try putting it in my head telepathically, oh great warper of mind?"
Hearing me, she snorted in irritation and turned away rather cutely, like an angry little critter, pursing her little pinkish lips and puffing her cheeks.
Her celestial blue hair shimmered like stars in the cosmos, gently flipping about at her quick turn of harrumph. With all the cosmic lights coming off her, she looks like she's on the verge of going supernova with every burst of emotions.
"Hahaha, still can't get past the gate, can you?" I teased, feeling quite triumphant in my ability to fuck with the minds of everybody who tries to fuck with mine.
For you see, even though I was physically weaker than the weakest goblin, I at least have my own genius. Although not the 'I can build anything' or 'I can conquer the world through words' kind of genius, it's more like 'I have enough mental fortitude and imagination to rival both a writer high on crack and his protagonist' kind of genius.
Having consumed all sorts of media from the old archives of the internet, reading all sorts of things from Lovecraft's work to little-known and strange parts of the internet like The Foundation and various creepypastas, which I suspect were all actually real somewhere in the Multiverse.
Oh, just the sheer amount of infohazardous material could probably make someone insane. It's not like I don't fear them or anything; in fact, I am very much fearful a freaky dark tentacle would suddenly find itself all the way up my ass one of these days, but well, what can I say? I got lost in the intrigue, in the concept of horror rather than the horror itself.
So yeah...
You could only imagine the true depths of my dark imagination.
"There's a literal outer god at the entrance..! How the heck am I supposed to pass that!?" Ein complained.
"Skill issue, little Ms. Telepath, skill issue," I said, shaking my head in seeming disappointment. "You can't even pass poor little Umr at-Tawil who is.... Oh wait, shit, did I just..?"
Hearing me, her eyes widened as she looked all around as if expecting something to come out of thin space. Her rather adorable face showed utter horror as she said, "You just said its name, you idiot!"
"Ah... right."
It was at this moment that I knew, I fucked up.
I've been too complacent. I actually forgot that uttering the names of these beings evokes their awareness...
Darn it!
Look what a bit of power does to you, makes you forget the 'trivial' things.
Mhm, I guess I should expect a visit at any moment now...
Any moment now...
Aaaany moment now...
"..."
"..."
Ein and I stared around the room for a tense few seconds just for nothing to happen.
It was then that the river of students finally arrived along with Mrs. Haller who then prompty began the class with a, "So energy..."
"Huh, well, that's anti-climactic," I remarked, blinking several times and deciding to just focus on the class.
"Don't jinx it!" Ein rebuked in a hushed tone, also deciding to focus on class, though I could still see her glancing behind us every now and then as if afraid the entity would suddenly appear behind us.
In truth....
I denied any cosmic horror to be in my presence at this moment.
Much like how I'd denied that P.A. summons to the principal's office.
And well, I guess it worked.
s
Unlike the previous class, the S&M class was relatively uneventful. I'm still a bit shaken by the small incident.
Still, imagining all the things I could do by manipulating these different types of energies Ms. Storm is talking about does distract me quite well, be they Cosmic, Psionic, Magic, Qi, and everything beyond and in between.
Speaking of power, come to think of it...
I don't remember channeling or wielding any kind of energy.
Maybe I'm psionic? They did say that wielders of potent enough psionic power could manipulate reality with their very thought and desires. But they also said it's rather difficult to control, since every little thought and want needs to be absolutely controlled, otherwise...
But I never had to worry about that, did I? Never even thought about it till this moment. No, it's all very perfectly controlled...
If not psionic, then what? No type of power I've heard of comes in as easily as mine; almost every power source needed control and precision, be it of the energy itself, their emotions, their desires, their will, or their very thoughts.
In fact, from what I've read and heard, natural-born reality warpers of any type probably don't have it as easy as I do; most of them lack controls at the beginning, like they'd accidentally change the color of the sky and don't know how to put it back, or blow up like an anti-matter bomb and wipe out their entire planet.
Their lack of control often causes psychological and existential problems, like accidentally making the person they like fall in love with them, as they question whether the love was genuine or just another product of their desires acting on reality. They had to question pretty much all things that happened to them, which was quite a nightmare if you asked me...
Good thing I won't have to deal with that, it seems.
So what's the real source of my ability, really?
Maybe I have some sort of unique metaphysical ID, like a being of a higher plane of existence acting through this avatar type? Well, I certainly don't feel like it, nor do I remember being one.
Hmm...
Well, whatever, it's not like it's important that I know right at this moment
All in due time.
Although I suppose it would be a good idea to fake my ability as having been sourced from a more common source, otherwise I may become a subject of observation or experimentation for the more unsavory kind of inquisitive cosmic beings.
But what to fake it as? Most people usually use more than one 'system of power', combining them for their benefits. Like Zach, for example, he has his innate Cosmic power allowing him to manipulate vectors of course, but since he probably doesn't wanna be a glass cannon, he also Cultivates in The Way using Qi.
There's generally no conflict since Qi and Cosmic power uses different channels, with Cosmic going in the Quantum channels and Qi going through the Spiritual channels. Strangely enough, Cosmic is the more 'material' aspect, even though the application of its abilities feels more immaterial, while Qi is more immaterial, even though its effects feel much more 'solid'.
The divide, I suppose, is between the 'Scientific' and the 'Mystical,' which is what this whole class is all about, I suppose.
Hmm...
I guess it'd be fun to try every type of power source there is.
I have nothing but time on my hands after all.
With this in mind, staring out through the window, I prodded the clouds on the horizon, manipulating them at my will as they turned into all sorts of funny shapes before finally settling on a rather shapely-looking Neo Armstrong Cyclone Jet Armstrong Cannon.
Turning back to the classroom, I looked at Ms. Telepth's side profile, her expression, which had turned into juggling attention between the lesson and remaining vigilant of a sudden attack by the Gatekeeper of the Ultimate Gate
I amusingly poked at her adorable side profile, much to her annoyance as she tried biting off my finger like an angry little critter.
By the end of the class, I had already learned about all the common energies in the environment, scientific and otherwise, which was very helpful since I wanted to know all about how they could be used to do some rather fun things.
Like, did you know that without 'kinetic energy', nothing in the Universe moves? From the orbital rotation of the Earth around the Sun to all the little microscopic particles moving around to make everything possible...
Without kinetic energy, everything would be still, and nothing would change. Or maybe it was the other way around? That without movement, there would be no kinetic energy.
Hmm...
I think it's a kind of continuum, a fundamentally interconnected concept, two sides of the same coin, like space and time. Essentially, you can not have one without the other.
In any case, after the S&M class, the bell rang, and the school day was finally over. I said goodbye to my favorite telepathic girl, who disappeared in a burst of cosmic blue light after showing me her tongue like a child, teleporting directly to her crib there and then just as usual.
I headed for my locker as I shoved the textbooks in there for routine's sake instead of directly heading out, as I had a brief conversation with Eric about this summer season's new anime and how badly they had botched the source's adaptation this time.
And soon, I found myself walking in an empty hallway as I had arranged it to be such, and took another step—
Bringing me inside my own room.