Supernova

Chapter Twenty Two - Paralyzer and Cassanova

Elias and I became immediately inseparable. The blonde woman brought his things to my room, his new room, our room, and we didn't leave it for three entire days. All we did was take hot showers together, hold hands while we had meals at the bar, watched the snow fall through the window, went through each others' things, I teased him about what I found and he eyed me curiously, filling in the blanks by himself. We also asked careful questions, which he was far more skilled at, and we watched each other's eyes. We fucked a lot too, but I feel like that goes without saying. We spent a lot of time kissing as well, which was interesting to me. I got up the nerve to ask him if I was alright at it and he told me that he didn't have anything to compare it to, but he enjoyed it, and I decided that I believed him.

However, three days was as far as either of us wanted to push breaking the rules. The students here were more or less left to our own devices for training, but we were expected to do it, so we eventually made our way down to the training gyms. Elias couldn't do much. His sweat and saliva were too potent to do most of the activities or be too close to anyone at all, so he spent most of his training time skiing, where he could be bundled up and alone. I'd never tried it before, so he took me. Within two hours, I was better at it than he was. His form was good, but his balance was shaky. I mocked him about this too.

"Why are you so bad at this?" I teased as we sat on the ski lift, heading back up towards the top. "I thought you did this all the time."

"I was paralyzed by my quirk for most of my life," he admitted to me casually. "I only started walking four years ago. I'm still learning."

Oh.

"I understand that," I told him honestly. "Somewhat."

"Yes," he smiled at me. "I'd imagine you would."

We also had to submit official forms to the headmistress' office about our partnership. We picked the forms up, and sat at the bar in our room, glasses of bubbling soda beside us. It was mostly straightforward. Elias filled them out, and I told him my answers. I paused when he asked for my hero name. I had been going by Princess America since I'd entered the gym, because it used to encompass everything I felt I was, but it didn't feel appropriate anymore.

"I don't know," I told him honestly. "What's yours?"

"Paralyzer," he said back, no hesitation. He then watched my eyes a little, squinting a bit, resting his face in his hand. "Yours should be Cassanova. Like Cass, get it?"

"What does that mean?" I asked him. "I don't know that word."

He smiled at me. "It's a magnificent and powerful explosion that happens at the end of a star's life."

"Fuck that," I told him, shaking my head. "You're cocky as fuck if you think you're going to kill me too."

"That's not what I meant at all," he said, taking my hand again. "You were a star your whole life in America, weren't you? What comes afterwards is even more impressive. It's a catastrophic event that reaches vast corners of the cosmos. It rearranges the universe. There's nothing like it."

His eyes were doing something I didn't understand again, but I was fascinated by it. I watched them a while, but failed to find anything threatening in them. He brought his mouth to mine again and I felt like my entire face was exploding and we left the bar and gravitated towards the bed and the rest of the forms eventually got filled in and submitted and I didn't ask any more questions.

We skied for a week, which was only made interesting by the fact that I could drag Elias onto the more difficult mountain areas, able to rescue him if need be, but it eventually got boring. In addition to bored, I was getting annoyed. Elias couldn't do much of anything else, and I felt like I might be getting slow as a result. He was a terrible sparring partner. I told him all of this, harshly and in cruel language, but it didn't phase him in the slightest. He smiled at me through my entire temper tantrum.

"Have you ever heard of recalibration?" He finally asked me once I'd calmed down enough to be silent for longer than a breath. I was interested in what his eyes were doing, and I calmed even more just by watching them. I shook my head no. "It's a training technique that's sometimes used on individuals whose quirks are too big for their bodies. The goal is to encourage the body to catch up with the quirk to be able to hold it and control it. You have training experience already, and it might make me less of a burden for you."

"It's not like you could become more of a burden," I muttered, but the harshness had dissipated.

"It's rather brutal and violent, which I feel like you might enjoy," he continued, unphased as always. "Nobody has ever been able to touch me, so I've never really been able to try it. Would that be of some interest to you?"

I asked whether or not that meant I'd get to take out some of my frustration on him and he said yes, as much as I wanted in fact, and I told him it interested me very much. We spent three entire days in the library pulling recalibration literature, studying anatomy, and coming up with a plan. I was hesitant. Elias told me about Val, the healer that the Claeson family used, and how a product made from her quirk would be able to ensure we could run recalibration not only daily, but completely risk free. I was then impressed. Elias had then done nothing but simply ask the headmistress if we could have a gym to ourselves to train in, and she showed us to one I hadn't been shown on my tour, largely empty and secluded from the others, and handed us a single key to it. We spent every single day there, for more hours than we even needed to, leaving only to eat, shower, and sleep.

It was hard to tell which of us was more delighted with recalibration and the successes he made. He was hungry with something to prove, and more than that, he was a fast learner. I enjoyed his successes professionally, because they were largely an extension of my training and how tied that was with my ego, and I privately relished in watching how his eyes behaved through the pain because it let me get to know them a little. Because I could feel him to some degree, I thought I had some basis tracking his success. One day after he'd healed up, he told me that he had been waiting to meet someone like me for a while now, and I told him I understood completely. I said the same thing back to him when we were back in our room, showering the paralytic off of us, and he too said that he understood completely.

Another thing that I told Elias was my goal about having my photo up on the wall as a Deathmatch Champion, and if he wasn't going to be able to keep up with me, I'd switch and find someone else who could. He seemed amused by this as well.

"My brother is one of the current Champions, you know."

"I know."

"I wouldn't mind being a Champion, myself."

I smiled as understanding seeped in. Sibling rivalry seemed to be yet another common ground that the two of us stood on. So, we practiced for this too. Discussed our strengths and weaknesses. Made ourselves untouchable. Between recalibration, my sheer force, his strategic knowhow, and cell learning, I thought we might be. I told him so. He told me that we were, and he sounded so certain that I believed him without a thought.

When Demon got back from his tour, he was even more furious with me than I hoped he'd be. Him and Needles had gotten back from their final mission at night, and after hearing word of our pairing, came directly to our room. I knew it was him before he'd even reached our door. I looked at Elias wide eyed as I heard the furious knocking. He just smiled back at me. When I opened the door, Demon pushed me back and onto the floor with an non hesitant elbow, barging his way in, Needles following timidly, his golden eyes somewhat amused and somewhat uncertain.

"I thought I told you not to fucking talk to her," he said, getting close to Elias, but not that close. Elias just continued to smile, leaning his pale face into his bare hand.

"Not everyone is as keen on having a silent partner," he said back to him.

"And you," Demon said, turning to me. I was still lounging on the floor in the place that I'd landed. "You couldn't have picked anyone else?"

"Nobody else interested me," I challenged back. "That's my partner. You don't have to work with us if you don't want to."

"I should kill you both," he told us. "Right here, right now."

"You can't kill us," Elias and I said together. I was the only one who seemed surprised.

"If you've done this just to piss me off," Demon pointed at me, his voice harsh and heavy. "Congratulations, you've succeeded."

"Actually, I like him quite a bit," I told him honestly. "So that's just a bonus."