Chapter 3.2

I decided to get the materials to test my abilities with the First in a large store "Everything for the home", namely in the building materials section.

Pipes - plastic and metal, tiles and metal roofing, wooden panels, tiles - ceramic and stone, I even managed to find marble. I bought all this in the amount of a couple of pieces. This should not arouse suspicion, well, who knows, maybe you started a renovation and are buying "testers" to see how this or that will look.

The girl consultant, seeing that I was buying such things, practically glued herself to me and began to chatter something about how it is not proper for a man to do such an inappropriate activity as renovation himself. And seeing that there was no wedding ring on my finger at all, she smiled and her eyes sparkled, starting to praise herself one after another, you see, she can not only advise on the selection of necessary materials for repairs, but also inspect a house or apartment, calculate and calculate, or even call her sister, and they will take on all the repairs themselves, and will take next to nothing.

There was no obvious hint from the First (I managed to discourage her from doing this), but here you can guess for yourself what they are ready to accept payment in. Having politely refused and thanked for the offered help, I still promised that if I decide to take up repairs seriously or need help or advice on this issue, I will contact her.

The girl instantly became sad, but said nothing. Returning to the apartment, I continued testing new abilities - swords, claws, blades like axes or scythes and something like spears created by the symbiote's flesh, all this dangerous magnificence cut and pierced both plastic and metal with stone with the same ease. With the symbiote manifested, my strength was enough to tie a metal water pipe into a knot and crush marble into small stones in my hands. With the symbiote subsiding, my physical strength was much less - the pipe simply bent without tying into a knot, and the marble only broke, but did not crumble. A couple of hours later, only small chopped and mutilated pieces remained from the purchased building materials, all of this went down the garbage chute.

As a child, when I was still a child, even before I went to first grade, I loved watching cartoons and movies about superheroes, and after them I would run out into the yard and play with the boys I knew as these same superheroes. I imagined that when I grew up, I would have a colorful suit, a cape and a mask. That I would patrol the city and fight villains and criminals. But time went on, I grew up, and the realities of adult and real life made themselves felt. I became more cynical, worked and calculated my budget. Heroes who do not receive money for their life-threatening occupation began to seem to me not romantics following their dreams or beliefs, but fools ruining themselves. Doing so much for others and almost nothing for yourself?

No, I could not understand this. All this would have remained just a childish rethinking of my ideals, but another world and a symbiote changed everything. I gained a power that, according to the First, had not yet reached its peak. I had money that my father, or rather one of his accountants, regularly transferred to me every week. But my worldview remained the same. I still considered it stupid and inappropriate to patrol the city day and night and fight ordinary criminals and real supervillains, or rather supervillainesses.

Of course, this did not mean that I would pass by a person who was in mortal danger - push him away from the car, help injured people in an accident before the ambulance arrived or something like that - I was ready to do that. But to specifically wander around the city in search of injustice or adventure - no thanks. I did not want to become a villain either. I considered robbing, stealing or especially killing to be wrong and beneath my dignity. In a past life, I knew what it was like to be tired of earning every ruble, saving and denying yourself many things.

And I would not make the lives of ordinary people even worse. So, I closed the path to becoming a hero or a villain according to my own convictions. Therefore, there were only two paths left - firstly, to simply continue to live peacefully with easy money, and secondly, to become an antihero and a mercenary. But the first option would have been simply blasphemy, especially when the power and abilities themselves fell on me in the literal sense of the word.

The second was more acceptable - just do whatever you want, within the law of course, and it will be easier to work with people if they think that you only need and are interested in money.alfabank.ruAdvertising|16+Read more Okay, for now we'll stick to the last plan, but first I'll have to go out into the city and practice, because everything I did at home can only be called theory. Ideally, this should have been done in a day, or better yet, two, but I was shaking with impatience. So tonight I decided to go out and test my strength in the field, so to speak.

The dark color of the symbiote's flesh was perfect for night forays - it would have been almost impossible to notice me with normal vision against the night sky or dark buildings, if my eyes hadn't already been white on this body. Jumping from one building to another, when there are tens of meters of hard asphalt and a lot of moving cars beneath you, is pretty scary. Even if you believe the words of the First that the fall would most likely not kill me. I couldn't launch a web, so I made do with thick tentacles that could stretch for a couple of dozen meters, and strong legs that could throw me from one roof to another.

- A-a-a! - no matter how hard I tried not to scream, I couldn't. You can't help but scream when you fly over a busy street at a height of fifty meters. My feet literally dug into the roof of another tall building and by inertia I slid forward another couple of meters, leaving clear traces behind me. "It's getting better and better, Host," the symbiote encouraged me, to which I nodded in agreement. My first attempts to overcome the distance between the houses were quite dismal, even though I chose buildings that were only a couple of meters apart.

The first time, I braked sharply just before the jump - changing my mind, which is why I fell from the fifth floor straight into a dumpster. The second time, out of fear of another fall, I jumped with all my might and flew over one narrow building, crashing into the wall of another house behind it, after which I fell to the ground again. These were not the last falls, fortunately, apart from sensitive bruises, I felt nothing, and I could have broken bones. And the First claimed that such falls could not kill me and the bruises and contusions from them would go away the next day.

- Okay, that's enough for today, - I commented on my last jump and had been jumping long and high for almost three hours already, I was about to make the First retreat, but her voice stopped me: "Back the same way!" - the symbiote cheerfully advised. In general, as soon as I began to master our common capabilities, the First began to behave like a seasoned trainer. Strict, but fair.

"The faster you master it, the stronger we will become!" I sighed, but internally agreed with the alien. The first one was right - the faster I trained in all these jumps, controlling the tentacles and creating weapons, the better it would be. Training in abilities and capabilities is an integral part of all newcomers in the superhero and villain community!

Next time I should take my phone and headphones with me so that jumping and jumping between buildings was not so boring.

- Yahoo! - I shouted again when once again I pushed off the edge of the building with my feet and four large tentacles at the same time, which sent me on my longest jump. - Your mother! I cursed loudly in Russian when I realized that I had made a mistake again and miscalculated my strength, I again almost jumped over the building I wanted to land on, and it had as many as forty floors, and not five like the previous one, and I was not going to check how I would feel after falling from it. Having landed with a thud, I lost my balance and rolled head over heels towards the edge, losing my bearings in space, I was spinning so much.

With some wild effort, spurred on by nothing other than the desire to live, I was still able to transform both hands into scythe-like blades and drive them deep into the roof of the building. I was dragged a couple more meters and thrown over the edge of the roof, or rather, I simply knocked it down, and then hit the panoramic window with all my might, which crunched audibly from such barbaric actions towards myself.

- Ouch, - I commented on the situation, and then added resignedly: - Well, fuck your mother! The thing is that on the other side of the window the light was brightly burning and there were about a dozen people who were now staring at me with all their eyes. Young girls and one guy, clearly decided to relax and hang out, as soon as the owners of this apartment left and left their offspring alone. A bunch of beer cans, both empty and full, pizza boxes, and a guy making out with three girls at once made that clear. We looked at each other for a few long seconds, and then the teenagers simultaneously rushed to their phones and pointed them at me with enviable speed, I didn't even have time to gasp, I had to urgently pull myself up onto the roof away from prying eyes and gadgets. Lying on my back, I made the symbiote disappear from my face with my mind and inhaled the slightly cool night air into my lungs. Hmm. Murphy's Law in all its glory — it showed up not even on its first outing, but during training! I could only hope that they didn't have time to take a proper photo of me.