Chapter 10: RELUCTANT TEACHER
[DEO Headquarters, Outdoor Training Area — September 2016, 7:12 AM]
The outdoor training area sat on the DEO's roof—a reinforced platform designed to handle superhuman sparring without compromising the building's structural integrity. The morning sun hung low on the horizon, already warming my skin, feeding that hungry thing in my cells that craved yellow light.
Kara stood ten feet away, arms crossed, expression set in professional neutrality. She'd changed into her training suit—similar to the Supergirl uniform but without the cape, more practical for demonstrations.
"Heat vision first," she said. "Since you've already triggered it once."
I nodded. Remembered the migraine, the scorch marks, the way the power had erupted without warning. Not an experience I wanted to repeat.
"Watch." Kara's eyes began to glow—not the explosive burst I'd produced, but a controlled brightening. Twin beams of red-orange light lanced from her pupils, carving a precise line across a metal target thirty feet away. The beam lasted exactly three seconds, stopped exactly where she wanted it.
"Focus," she said as the glow faded. "Not anger. Not strain. Focus. You're directing energy, not forcing it."
I faced my own target. Concentrated. Searched for the sensation I'd felt during the midnight training—that building pressure behind my eyes, the heat seeking release.
Nothing.
I pushed harder. Imagined the energy flowing, pictured the beams cutting through metal.
Still nothing.
"You're trying too hard." Kara moved closer, studying my face. "Heat vision responds to emotional state, but it's not about intensity. Think of it like... turning on a light. You don't strain to flip a switch."
A light switch. Okay. I relaxed my shoulders. Stopped trying to force the power. Instead, I just... reached for it. Acknowledged its presence. Invited it forward.
My eyes warmed.
A weak beam—barely stronger than a laser pointer—scorched a line across the target's surface. The metal glowed faintly where I'd hit it.
"Better." Kara's voice carried something that might have been approval. "Again."
We spent an hour on heat vision. By the end, I could produce a consistent beam for two seconds, strong enough to cut through half-inch steel. Not impressive by Kryptonian standards, but functional. Progress.
The headaches were manageable now—dull aches rather than splitting migraines. My body was learning to handle the energy expenditure.
"Flight next," Kara announced.
My stomach dropped. I'd crashed a dozen times during the DEO's official testing. Flight and I were not friends.
The rooftop training area had padding specifically for failed flight attempts. I'd become intimately familiar with it over the past week.
Kara rose into the air effortlessly, hovering six feet above the platform. No visible effort. No strain. She might as well have been standing on solid ground.
"The key is believing you won't fall," she said. "Your body can manipulate gravitational fields—you just need to tell it what to do."
"And if I tell it to fly but my brain keeps screaming about gravity?"
"Then you crash. Repeatedly." A hint of something—humor?—flickered in her expression. "I speak from experience."
I bent my knees. Jumped. Focused on up, on staying, on not falling.
For half a second, I hung in the air.
Then gravity reasserted itself and I hit the padding with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.
"Again," Kara said.
I got up. Jumped. Crashed.
Again. Crashed harder.
Again. This time I managed to hover for almost a full second before tipping sideways and spinning into the padding face-first.
"Stop thinking about falling," Kara advised from her comfortable position in the sky. "Think about staying up."
"That's like telling someone not to think about pink elephants."
"What?"
"Nothing. Earth thing." I brushed padding material off my shirt. "Let me try something different."
Instead of jumping, I closed my eyes. Focused on the sensation I'd discovered with the strange strength—the field that extended from my body, wrapping around objects I touched. The tactile telekinesis J'onn had noticed.
What if flight wasn't about defying gravity? What if it was about extending that field downward, creating a platform of invisible force to stand on?
I imagined the field spreading beneath my feet. Imagined it hardening into something solid. Imagined pushing down instead of trying to pull myself up.
My feet left the ground.
I opened my eyes. I was hovering—actually hovering—three inches above the platform. Wobbling badly, arms windmilling for balance, but hovering.
"How are you doing that?" Kara descended to my level, studying me with sudden intensity. "Your technique is wrong. You're not manipulating gravity—you're doing something else."
I couldn't explain without revealing too much. "I don't know. It just... works this way."
The hover collapsed. I dropped three inches and stumbled but didn't fall.
"Interesting." Kara landed beside me, that analytical look still sharpening her features. "Your powers don't work the way Daxamite powers should. The strength tests, the durability inconsistencies, now this. Something's different about you."
"Is that bad?"
She considered the question seriously. "Unknown. Different isn't automatically dangerous. But it requires caution."
We continued training for another two hours. Flight remained elusive—I could hover briefly but not maintain it, and any attempt at actual movement sent me tumbling. Heat vision improved steadily. Strength exercises revealed the same patterns from before: inconsistent readings, wild fluctuations depending on my mental state.
By noon, every muscle in my body ached. The bruises from flight crashes had started healing but still throbbed. Solar energy could only do so much when I kept creating new injuries faster than I recovered from old ones.
"That's enough for today," Kara said finally.
I sat on the platform edge, legs dangling over the drop, catching my breath. The city spread below us—National City in all its sunlit glory. People going about their lives, unaware that two aliens sat on a government roof arguing about gravity manipulation.
Kara sat beside me. Not close, but closer than she would have a week ago. Progress of a different kind.
"You didn't quit," she observed.
I looked at her. "Was that an option?"
The corner of her mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "For most people."
"I'm not most people."
"No." She studied the cityscape. "You're not."
We sat in silence for a moment. The sun continued its climb, warming my skin, feeding the power that churned beneath the surface. I could feel myself getting stronger—not dramatically, not overnight, but steadily. Each hour of solar exposure added to the reserves. Each training session taught my body something new.
"Same time tomorrow?" I asked.
Kara stood, brushing off her suit. "6 AM. And bring water—you keep overheating during the vision exercises."
She flew off without waiting for a response. I watched her go—a blur of blue and red against the morning sky—and allowed myself a small smile.
Not friends. Not yet. But maybe, eventually, something better than enemies.
I gathered myself and headed back inside. Tomorrow would bring more crashes, more bruises, more small victories counted in seconds of hover time and inches of heat-scorched metal.
I could work with that.
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