"Leon?" Kate spoke. "Is that- you?" She stood beside him, still surprised.
He raised his head, his bright blue eyes different from the light blue before. This time, they almost seemed like they were glowing. His eyelids were a bit puffy from all the crying.
Kate couldn't believe what she was seeing right now. How was something like this even possible? 'Leon. Is he one of them too?' The infamous metahumans came to her mind.
She hugged him tightly. This wasn't the moment to think about what-ifs and whatnot. If this was really happening, then she couldn't be anything less than happy for her nephew.
"It's alright now, Leon. And I'm here for you. Always will be." She gave him a gentle kiss on top of his head.
"Just in case, I'll call Doctor Angie here. It's better than going there like this. Let's figure this out first, shall we?" she spoke.
Seeing him slightly tense, Kate said, "Don't worry. She's a close friend of mine."
Leon nodded and said, "Kate?"
She looked at him, and he continued, "Thank you… for everything."
She gently shook her head, saying, "You don't have to worry about anything."
After a few moments of silence, she added, her tone a bit unsure, "Do you not remember anything about me? Anything at all?"
He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I do remember several other things vividly. That explosion. The time I spent with my parents and my sister.
I felt something familiar when I saw you, but I really can't remember…" He became silent after that.
Her expression got a bit sadder, but then a cheerful smile came back to her face, and she said, "It's okay. Memory loss is unpredictable, after all.
Don't stress too much about it. Just know that even if you don't recover your memories, you'll always be that little kid who followed me around, calling me cute names." She chuckled, a tear dropping from her eye.
"Oh, sorry. We Blades have always been a bit of crybabies. Though, it's the first time I saw you cry like this," she said, wiping her tears.
"Aunt Kate," Leon spoke with a firm voice, "You- your full name. Can you tell me your full name?" His eyes were slightly less red now.
Just that firm look in his eyes, something about them made Kate relax a bit. "It's Katelyn Blade. I'm your mother's younger sister."
"It's nice to meet you, Aunt Katelyn," he said with a bright smile, his eyes closed, sending warmth across her chest.
She gently held his face and replied, "It's so nice to see you again, Leon."
After giving Angie a call, Kate took Leon's vitals, and unsurprisingly, everything was normal. Everything about him had returned to normal, except for one thing: his eyes.
She was looking at him as he paced around the room. She'd instructed him to take it slow, but his recovery was a miracle in itself, and him walking normally wasn't even the biggest surprise of the day.
"Leon, your eyes. Do you feel anything else? Discomfort or any vision problems?" Kate asked, just to make sure.
He stopped and started stretching his arms and legs. "None at all… In fact, I'd say I can see better."
'I don't know if this is a part of the ability called Six Eyes, or a side effect, but whenever I focus hard, time slows down a little.
I think it's just my perception getting faster as everything goes naturally. Everything else around me feels like it slows down.
I can't move that fast, though.' He scratched his head. He needed to ask a lot of questions to his two masters.
"Better as in?" Kate asked, raising her eyebrows.
"Hmm, I'd say clearer." He nodded and kept all the mindscape and abilities part to himself. He was sensible enough to keep a secret until it didn't need to be kept as a secret.
That is, until he became strong enough.
As he was stretching, his stomach made a sudden growl that made him blush. Kate chuckled and said, "The washroom is on the other side of this room. Freshen up, I'll prepare breakfast."
He looked down, rubbing his belly. 'You had to make a sound?' he thought with a pout.
It was only while taking a shower that he noticed the changes in his body. He was slightly taller; his hair had gotten slightly longer, and his eyes.
'They look exactly the same as his.' He remembered Satoru's eyes. 'Are these supposed to be the Six Eyes?' He focused a bit harder, and his perception sped up again.
He could see the world in slow motion, the water running down the showerhead. He could differentiate each individual droplet, even go as far, to seeing it in macro detail.
As if his vision had really zoomed onto the droplets. "Agh!" A searing pain went up his eyes, and he had to abruptly stop what he was doing.
He quickly finished up and went to the dining room, wearing some loose clothes. Kate really hadn't thought he'd wake up this soon, so she hadn't bought any clothes for him.
She told him they'd go shopping later on. But for now, he'd have to make do with the oversized clothes.
They sat down, Kate happily looking at Leon devouring the food like a vacuum cleaner. "Slow down, champ. You'll choke yourself at this rate," she chuckled.
Back in Leon's mindscape, Satoru had been boring Sukuna to death, randomly talking about random stuff all the time.
Sukuna just lay on his back, trying his best to ignore the idiot.
"Oh, I forgot to tell the kid that his eyes will burn energy like a hungry furnace," he said out loud.
Sukuna just clamped his ears with two of his hands, then turned his face away from the clown.
Back in the physical world, afternoon rolled by, and Dr. Angie came to Kate's home. "What the fuck?" was her first reaction when she saw Leon, who was now better than ever.
She too suspected the same thing as Kate. Maybe Leon was one of the metahumans. But an ability that could heal him to this level? She understood why Kate insisted on calling her there.
The less noise they made about this, the better it was for them, especially the kid. And if he was ever troubled by his abilities, Angie could just request a favor from one of her friends at S.T.A.R. Labs.
Just to be sure, Angie took his vitals one more time. He looked a bit tired, so, for her assurance, she checked his blood sugar level.
And right now, it was dangerously low- no, that would be an understatement. This would have been fatal to any normal human, but he just looked tired.
Now Kate and Angie were more certain that he might have just awakened some abilities, as a higher metabolism rate was one of the signs of metahuman physiology.
'I don't know why I feel so hungry again. I ate two days' worth of food two hours ago,' Leon thought, a bit grumpy.
Kate and Angie didn't say anything to him about it, just that Kate brought a box of chocolate cookies and handed them to him with a smile.
Leon was surprised. 'How did she-' Then he remembered the test Angie had just performed on him.
With a slightly flustered face, he slowly started devouring the cookies.
After discussing something with Kate, Angie returned to her day duty. Kate decided to take the day off.
Leon's recovery was a weight off her chest, so she just wanted to forget about everything and sleep for the day.
Leon, now lounging on the couch in the living room, looked back and saw a treadmill by the window.
He suddenly remembered Satoru's words. 'Don't forget to do lots of physical training, okay!' His goofy voice echoed in his head.
He walked to it and adjusted the height of the side handles, then started by walking on it. Then, slowly increasing the speed, he began to jog.
He'd been jogging for a few minutes now, but he wasn't even getting tired. 'What? How am I not even breathless?' he thought, steadily increasing the speed.
"Hah, hah, hah!" He finally found his limit; the top speed he could reach was about 45 km/hr, or 28 mph, and he could maintain that speed for about 10 minutes.
On the 16th-minute mark, he finally felt very tired and shut the treadmill down. Now he stood beside it, supporting himself on his knees, taking heavy breaths.
"That- was crazy!" he said in a raspy voice, a smile tugging at his lips and an excited glint appearing in his eyes.
His training hadn't even started yet. 'Is this because of how Sukuna healed me? Or just my body being prepared for what's to come?'
Considering the fight he saw before, the latter was the most probable. What kind of training would he have to go through to reach that level?
He decided not to think about it for now. He wasn't really feeling sleepy as of right now, and it was several hours before night, so he decided to do the thing he'd always loved to do before.
He remembered enjoying reading books. The other thing he remembered was that he was in grade three or something.
If he'd continued, he'd be in seventh grade now. 'Sigh, that's a lot of backed-up content to complete,' he thought but wasn't too worried about it.
School had never been much of a hassle for him. His ability to comprehend and remember things had always been ridiculous compared to others. Pretty ironic, considering he was suffering from memory loss right now.
He dismissed the thoughts, then took another shower and sat down in front of Kate's computer. It wasn't password-protected, so he figured it was a home device.
He went through anything he could find on the internet. First, it was some history and some recent news.
The Justice League had saved the day again. Lex Luthor, again accused of collaborating with some crazy villains, who then magically disappeared before he could be arrested.
Leon went back in time on the internet, four years to be exact, looking for anything that said anything about the incident at that superhero convention.
Until he found one. Again, the name Lex Luthor popped up. Somehow, he was involved in transporting some rogue metahumans who'd caused the fire.
The Justice League, on that day, was busy fighting some crazy scientists with alien tech. The more he spiraled down the articles, the hazier the truth became.
The thought of revenge and retribution never came to his mind, even though, with each passing second, the absence of his family was leaving a bigger impact on his emotions.
He just wanted to know what happened on that day. Who was responsible? And were the heroes truly occupied somewhere else?
He knew that they weren't invincible gods, like people made them out to be. Hell, Superman himself almost died once.
Truth for proper closure. Even though a bit conflicted, that was what he was truly after.
'The internet isn't the best option for this,' he sighed. The sheer level of nonsense people put out here obviously barred it from being accountable source.
So, he just closed all the news tabs and started studying, stuff from school that he missed in four years. Yeah, the internet did have everything, after all.
By the time evening rolled around, Leon realized something very important. He was constantly taking up information into his brain like a sponge and was not even strained.
And to add to that, he remembered everything that he read in the past few hours, like an image printed on his brain. He could go through everything like flipping through a book itself.
'Six Eyes…' Was this because of them? He didn't know but was eager to find out how much he could push himself.
He then pulled up something way above his grade, mathematical equations that he previously had no idea about.
It took him some focus, but he could understand whatever he read through. From basic Pythagorean theorems to complex geometries.
Everything made sense as he went through them… It was jarring and scary. But that smile, the glint of excitement, never left his face.
He didn't even realize when the day dissolved into dusk. Just when it got a bit darker, his eyes were off the screen.
'I should probably stop for the day,' he thought, rearranging all the things he learned today, in his brain.
There were several things he didn't understand but had already memorized, like that one calculus equation and that irritating theory about irrational numbers.
'Whatever, I'll continue this tomorrow.' He also couldn't wait to see his "mentors" again. He then went to Kate's room, where she was still deep asleep.
She truly seemed at peace right now. He didn't wake her up and slowly closed her door, going back to his own room.
When he felt hungry and dizzy at the same time, he remembered he'd been constantly focusing and probably unconsciously using the Six Eyes.
He'd already noticed the pattern: whenever he focused and the Eyes worked their charm, he'd be exhausted afterward, more than when he'd run on that treadmill.
He went to the kitchen and made some sugar-water, sprinkling in some salt and lemon, but more sweet, probably enough to kill someone with high sugar levels.
Then, as he regained his bearings, he decided to run again. But this time, he kept his eyes closed, a solution he'd come up with to conserve his energy.
He ran for another half hour straight at slightly less speed than before. Leon wanted to go faster, but he was testing his resilience, not max potential.
Around the 35-minute mark, he started breathing heavily, and his legs started to give out. So, before he fell on his face, he stopped the treadmill.
"Haah, haah, haah!" He was more tired than in the afternoon. Thirty-five minutes of constant physical exertion was his current limit.
He could probably push his speed past 30 mph, the time significantly decreasing as a result, but he was completely exhausted right now to do something like that.
'Like I'd thought. Keeping my eyes closed was a good idea.' The energy consumption was significantly lower.
If he'd been exerting his Eyes, he likely would have lasted a few minutes at best before passing out. And that was after he drank that sugary mess.
'Hope Kate doesn't worry too much.' He remembered his mother's temporary ban on sweets in his house back when he was five.
'Yeah, she'd be pissed if she saw me drink that,' he thought with a melancholic expression on his face.
He missed them. He missed his sister's antics, his father's shenanigans, and his mother's scolding…
'Damn!' he thought, wiping off the extra moisture from his eyes.
The same night.
Back in his mindscape:
Leon stood in the white space, folding his arms. He gave a long sigh. The two supposed masters of his had fought again, it seemed.
They looked worse than they did after their previous fight. Satoru spoke first, "Yo, kid! Back again, huh? Don't worry about us.
We just had a few disagreements on what to teach you first. Think of it as a schedule for you that we came up with."
He was standing with his hands in his pockets, a bit far from where Sukuna sat, arms resting above his knee, with a smirk on his face.
"And you fought to decide that?" Leon asked in disbelief.
"Yup!" Satoru nodded happily.
Leon gave a sigh and asked, "So, what's the routine that you so 'disagreed' upon?"
"Heh! You're gonna love this," Satoru spoke with a grin that made him step back a little.
"Alright, this is what we finally agreed upon."
... To be continued!!!
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A/N: Alright, done with the third chapter... Don't forget to like, comment and subs- sorry, wrong platform. Just leave some comments and do tell me if there's any mistakes. See you next chapter, bye!