Mod Superhero

Clara spent the next few minutes explaining her training to Emmett—how she’d found the core of her power and how she was using meditation and yoga to tap into it.

Emmett’s eyes had gotten progressively wider as she talked. “This is safe, right? We don’t have the containment protocols—”

She grabbed his arm. “It’s safe. …I’m pretty sure it’s safe—almost positive. I’m taking my time with it just to be sure.”

Emmett nodded. “I know you’re being safe. It’s just… I don’t know if I’ll be able to help you. If something happens…” Emmett met her eyes and trailed off. 

Clara smiled, trying her best to look reassuring. Then she turned and went back to the bedroom. 

Emmett cleared his throat, a mischievous look in his eye. Clara paused outside the doorway. Her cheeks flushed. 

“Next time, tiger. We’ve got work to do and some of us need a break!”

Emmett smiled sheepishly and Clara closed the door behind her. She settled down on the floor, picked up her sphere, and started tracing feather patterns on the surface. 

She ignored the flush of heat in her skin and focused on the sensation of power in her fingertips. She felt the electricity in her hands flow to a steady pulse in her arms. Followed it all the way to the motionless pool of lava in her core. Breathe in, trace shapes, follow the flow of power, exhale, repeat. 

Getting in the right headspace took her a little longer than usual.

She kept going until she could focus clearly on the core of her power, only satisfied when it hung in her mind’s eye like the midday sun. 

Finally, Clara stopped tracing shapes. She let the sphere of metal cool and set it aside. Then she started meditating. 

Over the last few days, Clara had worked her way up from finding the core inside her to trying to tap into it. She focused on her breathing, using the rise and fall of her chest to push and pull on the core of power inside her. The core felt heavy and solid, more rock than lava. Each breath became labored until she was sweating, just like Emmett had been moments ago. 

Slowly, the core yielded to her. She worked it like stubborn clay, kneading it until the surface began to bubble. 

Clara smiled, allowing herself a small victory. This was as far as she’d gotten. 

Today, Clara was determined to push herself. 

She pulled on the core. She drew it outward, expanding it with each inhale. Slowly, the ball of lava grew. To call the process slow was an understatement—it felt like Clara was crawling up a hill, one handful of dirt at a time. Worse, she couldn’t relax even when she exhaled because it felt like she’d lose grip of what she’d gained. 

One small slip, and the core would disappear inside her again. 

Clara lost track of time as she expanded her core. When she’d first found it, it had felt small as an apple, but now it felt roughly the size of a bowling ball. She had no way of measuring something like that for sure, but the description felt close enough. The metaphorical bowling ball of lava sat right around her stomach, just below her ribs—almost wide enough to touch them.

Clara had spent so much time controlling her powers, and yet there was so much she didn’t understand. 

For instance, she knew there wasn’t actually a core of molten power inside her. It was just a mental representation. She’d read about other supers that described their power in different ways. The electric super, Livewire, wrote about their powers as flowing along their nerves and reacting to the flexing of their muscles. The aquatic super, Wave Warrior, described his powers as entering a flow state—swearing that he didn’t actively control his movements. When using his powers, it felt like he was merging with the water around him. Druids and nature-based supers described similar sensations of calmness and also connectedness with nature.

These mental representations of powers seemed as varied as the powers themselves. The only common thread was that there seemed to be a deeply personal connection between the super, their powers, and their inner representation. 

Clara’s representation seemed to be a mix of different ideas. Yoga and meditation helped her temper and control her power. At first, she’d assumed her power would follow chakras that she was familiar with, but then her power had manifested as a core which seemed to be from Daoism. But by that point, Clara had also spent years working metal spheres in her room. 

In the end, Clara decided not to get lost in the weeds of trying to categorize and explain when she saw in her mind’s eye. After all, there were many supers that didn’t understand their powers. What mattered was controlling her powers, training them, and ultimately using them. 

Clara focused inward. She continued the process of kneading the core until the surface was malleable, then pulling to expand its limits. 

The larger it got, the more difficult the process. Twice, her concentration faltered, and the core shrank, and twice she caught hold before the core was lost completely. 

All the while, Clara’s breathing had steadily increased. Sweat beaded off her face and soaked her shirt. She opened her eyes to find the room steaming like a sauna. 

But Clara wasn’t done yet. She closed her eyes and focused. 

The core sat burned brilliantly inside her. It felt as wide as her shoulders, as big around as a beach ball. Progress had slowed to a crawl, and Clara was reaching her limits. 

Despite that, Clara wanted to keep pulling. She needed this. She needed to learn and figure out how to control her powers—needed to fly and fight without a suit. 

Instead of stubbornly pushing forward, something inside Clara caught her attention. She focused on the core. It burned bright inside her like a bottled star. As much as she’d stretched it, she’d imagined it would be lighter. Instead, her core felt just as heavy and dense as it had at the start. 

That was unexpected… From the few other accounts of superheroes describing cores, there had been periods of expansion and filling. As a core expanded, it then had to be filled, returning its density to the original state… After all her work, Clara had expected her core to be light. After all, it was more than double its original size. 

…What if all this time she hadn’t been expanding her core, but instead had been zooming in on it like a photograph? The sphere hadn’t changed, only her position relative to it had…

Clara focused on the surface of the core again. She didn’t have much to go off of to test her theory, so she worked the surface of it again, kneading the core until it bubbled. There wasn’t much difference from when the core was small. It felt like she could see more detail, but bubbles were roughly the same size relative to the sphere. 

Even though Clara was sitting still, she was almost at her limits. By this point, the muscles in her chest and stomach were burning from exertion. Her breath was shallow and quick. 

With her last bits of energy, she pulled on her core again. Only this time she wasn’t tried to expand it—

She was trying to pull it through her limbs. 

For a moment, the core bulged, its surface stretching like the moon pulling the tide. The core distended, stretching toward her shoulders. 

Clara winced. She wanted to stretch the core into her arms, but just moving it this much was the hardest thing she’d attempted. Just holding onto the molten surface was pushing Clara to her limits. 

Clara grit her teeth and pulled. 

Her core almost reached her shoulders before Clara lost her grip. 

Her core snapped back and vanished from her mind’s eye. Clara opened her eyes, her stomach lurching from the sudden change. Then she gasped for breath. She’d struggled and concentrated so much at the end that she’d been holding her breath. 

Clara tried to stand, but couldn’t. She flopped back on the floor.

Her bedroom window was fogged. Steam rose off her skin, causing the entire room to waiver. 

A knock came at the bedroom door, and Emmett quickly entered. He stared down at her, his face twisting from a concerned frown to a smile. 

He waved away the steam. “Are you good?”

Clara sighed. “Yeah. Making progress.”

Athena’s voice came from down the hall. “Holy shit! Don’t catch my apartment on fire!”

“Trying not to,” Clara replied. Then she wavered Emmett away. “Just… give me a minute.”

~ ~ ~