Meeting at the Gym

Hayato woke up at 5:30 am. Brewed some coffee and ate last night's leftovers. He wanted to spend some time with his son but Hikaru came home unusually late last night. Hikaru is a mild-mannered person and is surprisingly much smarter than he and his wife. Also, he never rebelled or did anything bad since his mother died. So Hayato wasn't sure if his recent behaviour is bad news.

'Huh?'

Hayato thought he heard a female voice from Hikaru's room. He walked upstairs and quietly peeked in. Hikaru was sound asleep on the bed.

'Hmm'

Hayato suspected that he was on the phone with that girl he never heard her name from yesterday.

'Sigh, maybe they were talking all night.'

Still, that was better than the other illegal things he could be doing. Hayato thought that maybe he had lucked out if his son thought that talking to girls late at night was an act of rebellion.

Hayato got his stuff and left the house.

Hikaru pulled his arm from under the covers after he heard the door shut. Compared to last night, Aimi looked more like herself but still looked like a different person altogether. He had tweaked her facial features using her genetic data but couldn't perfect it from his level of control. It's also possible that the data was corrupted or there was data loss after he absorbed her.

He was frustrated that he "cheated" by increasing her resemblance just from visual memory and from shapeshifting practice he learnt overnight.

He had noticed that his knowledge and feel of human anatomy has evolved. It was like his muscle memory or "mimicry" memory had gotten better after absorbing Aimi's parents.

Thus, by gaining their memories, genetic data and anatomy, he was able to further increase his mimicry control. He noticed that he could summon his tentacles a lot faster.

He experimented with all of his body parts. He could make any shape he wanted. He could grow hair and even assume another person's identity- however, he still lacked control on that part. The faces he was able to make didn't look normal. They were quite creepy. For example, it was difficult to align the eyes. With one eye askew, the whole face looked malformed.

Bottom line is that he needed practice but had almost reached a plateau in his growth. He needed to consume more bodies.

Later at school, he bumped into Daichi along the school corridor.

"I was impressed by your work last night. Your team managed to get over a 100."

"It was quite difficult considering we had so few people."

Daichi replied with a smile.

"There's three for you in the school basement. Taiyo can show you. I look forward to your performance at the gym."

It was at this moment that Hikaru suspected that there would be a sparring match.

"Thank you for granting my request about keeping Chiho's family alive for my experiment. I'll see you after school."

"You're welcome." With that Daichi left.

Hikaru looked down the corridor to the Janitor's closet and saw Taiyo, the school janitor standing there looking back.

Taiyo has been employed for over a decade. Taiyo's nickname is known throughout the school as Taiyona. The name ending with the last syllable for taidana (lazy).

He went over to Taiyo and was led down the basement where it was guarded by a few adults sitting on stools. There was a pile of bodies in the room. Hikaru picked a couple out, not caring what which one and absorbed them.

His absorption rate increased with each body he consumed. It took him 20 minutes to absorb three bodies. The average time to finish a meal is 20 minutes. Even the fastest speed eating competitor could not eat a horse within that time even if he had unlimited space in his stomach.

Through classes, Hikaru kept his eyes on the whiteboard but his mind on his arm. The cut Aimi gave him on his palm when he caught the knife two days ago had completely healed without a trace of it having been there. The injuries had healed within a day. The injuries he received from lifting the car also vanished a long time ago.

He was ecstatic about his body's capabilities but not feeling content. How do I compare to the other parasites? Could they heal faster and lift more than me? Is it possible to get stronger and is there a limit?

It seemed likely that the hierarchy within the parasites is based on species. One has more innate strength than the other. Much like a house cat and a lion. Meaning if he was unlucky enough to have a weak parasite, he wasn't left much of a choice but to either join one of the opposing sides, human or parasite.

He remembered that Genkei, his parasite neighbour had said that he is of the lowest species. So Hikaru had hope he was on the higher spectrum of power levels.

There were 2 horizontal cuts of 5cms on each arm, A-B and C-D. The pair of cuts on each arm are separated by a vertical distance. In this experiment, Hikaru wanted to see if he could speed up the healing of his cut by focusing on it.

Hikaru focused on cut A during period 1 and 2. B acts as the "control", meaning cut B is the baseline of the experiment and won't have Hikaru's concentration. The purpose of B is to see if there is a difference between focused healing and passive healing.

C-D was the same but was testing if cuts on the other arm heal at a different rate. However, Hikaru was just being careful and thought that it was unlikely to have a different result. During period 3 and 4, he focused on healing C. Things went as he predicted. Cut A closed up after school ended. It was healing a lot faster because he had absorbed more bodies since then. He concluded that focused healing was passive healing by a factor of 10.

After school, he went inside the gym which was guarded by two parasites at the door. A sign on the door said closed for TriSP meeting. He had already texted Chiho last night that he had the same meeting and it could take as long as yesterdays.

Chiho texted back "Ok."

Followed by, "You better not forget."

There weren't many in the gym as Hikaru was expecting over a hundred occupants. There were more than twenty people in the gym including Daichi, Botan, Junpei, Ikuyo and others.

They all looked at the person who arrived.

"We're waiting on one more." Spoke Botan.

"I'll start explaining in the meantime. Following last night's performance, I selected a few exemplary individuals. Some of you are instead chosen because I judged that you might have potential." Daichi explained.

Junpei creased his eyebrows.

"To cut it short. This is a Battle Royale."