"Hey, Jay," Nanami muttered as he stroked his chin. "I don't know what, but something's pretty sus about you right now."
Jay looked taken aback, and Raidou stepped forward.
Thank you! Jay thought, expecting Raidou to stop the blue-haired parrot from prying.
Raidou gave Jay a questioning side-eye. "He has a point, you know?"
Jay held in the urge to fall to his knees. Not you too... ugh, I acted too differently from my usual passive self. Of course they're going to suspect something. What to say...
Jay scratched the back of his head, quietly running different scenarios in the back of his mind. He knew telling the truth wasn't an option—doing so would defeat the whole purpose of the plan.
He couldn't outright lie to them either, partly because he could tell that his perceptive friends might suspect something, and partly because it would be a pain to keep track of the lie.
Liars need good memory after all.
"Um, you were a lot more straightforward than normal," Liam said with a thoughtful look on his face. "If I'm being specific..."
Liam's voice trailed off, and a faint smile appeared on his face.
Kazumi nodded. "Like when he was leading us against you, Liam."
Jay blinked, feeling surprised... and a little disturbed.
And both emotions stemmed from the fact that his friends knew him so well.
Rarely had Jay made close bonds with anyone outside his family, and even those familial bonds had frayed. He was a reserved person at his core, one who only stepped up whenever he had something to do that he deemed important. He knew it was selfish, but he had accepted that side of him long ago.
He didn't open up to people, and if he ever did it would only be about things the other party knew of, or something completely mundane. He had made the mistake of fully trusting a person more than once, and he had... regretted it, to say the least.
Which was why the realisation that his classmates... no, his friends, knew even that much about him disturbed him so much.
I guess you'd need basic observational skills and a reason to care, he thought, and they all have both of those...
"Ugh..."
Nanami turned away from Raidou and gave Jay a questioning look. "Did you say something?"
Jay shook his head and pulled his hood back on. "No."
It's pretty uncomfortable to know that I'm technically being watched.
He shivered involuntarily, imagining himself as a lab rat in a glass cage, with all the others as scientists observing him.
He shook his head and took a few breaths to calm himself. Glancing at the others and noting that they were having their own conversations, he turned around and left.
Maybe it's best that I... put some distance between us for a while.
As Jay walked away, Liam confronted Kazumi and Lee.
"Um... you guys—"
Kazumi sighed. "Spit it out, Paxton. You need to be more forthright. Otherwise, who's going to pay attention to you?"
Liam blinked repeatedly. "U-uh—"
Kazumi frowned. "You're doing it again."
Liam's ears reddened in embarrassment, and Lee tapped his shoulder. Liam turned to him, hopeful that Lee would say something in his defence.
Lee nodded. "He's right, you know. If there's one thing that pisses people off, it's unfinished sentences..."
Liam waited for Lee to continue, then frowned after Lee remained silent for several seconds. "Unfinished sentences... and what...?"
Liam blinked, realising what Lee had hinted at. "Ah. Right."
Lee smirked, and Kazumi folded his arms.
With a sigh, Liam continued. "You guys texted me earlier. Something about... a discussion?"
Lee and Kazumi exchanged a look, and an ominous feeling came over Liam the moment they looked back at him.
"We wanted to talk about your Venma," Kazumi stated.
Liam froze completely, shocked at Kazumi's words—
"Don't just say it like that," Lee cut in. "He'll misunderstand."
Liam blinked in surprise and looked up at Lee.
"Don't look at me like that." Lee sighed. "Knowing you, at least twenty different reasons why you shouldn't be around us would have passed through that head of yours."
Liam blinked repeatedly, then looked down at his feet. A strange, giddy feeling filled his chest, and he smiled.
Being understood this well feels... great.
Kazumi rolled his eyes in disdain. "Forget that. Like I was saying before, we called you here to talk about your Venma. Or, to be more specific, your 'Primal' state."
Liam took a step back in shock. "Primal?! Why the hell are we discussing that?!"
"Simple," Lee replied, "there's no real way to prove that you can control it. Your... what did you call it? That buff thing."
Liam tilted his head in confusion. Then his eyes widened as understanding dawned on him. "Oh~. You mean Blood Break?"
Unseen thanks to his shades, Lee rolled his eyes at the name. "Yeah, that. You mentioned earlier that you started to black out when you pushed it to the max. Maybe..."
"Maybe Primal was a progression of Blood Break." Liam put a hand on his chin.
But... how? Liam frowned. I don't get it. How could Second Break lead to me losing consciousness and still have enough awareness to keep fighting?... Barely any awareness—no, stop.
He sighed and shook his head, then turned back to the other two. "I still don't understand. Why bring this up?"
Lee and Kazumi exchanged a look, then smiled. Liam couldn't help but feel like something bad was about to happen, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"You see," Lee said. "Since we're the two strongest people in class—"
"—and the ones who interacted with your Primal directly—"
"—we've decided to help you figure out the whole process!"
Liam gaped at them in shock, then stumbled back in fear.
"Wh-what the hell?!" he yelled. "Why are you looking at me like that?!"
Kazumi's eyes gleamed with a predatory light, and Lee's smile had turned into an evil grin.
The two boys did, in fact, want to help Liam out. However, their motive was... a bit less than noble.
When he had fallen into his Primal state, they had both been on the receiving end of feints, tricks, and attacks they should have been able to counter. Both of them were grateful that Liam had become stronger for their own varying reasons, but...
It's humiliating to think that I, who have been trained to fight since I was six, was tricked so easily! Lee thought as he smiled at Liam. I mean, one of the reasons I wanted him to get stronger was so that he could get Kazumi off my back, but a little rough-housing to help him get even stronger isn't a bad thing, right?
Kazumi, on the other hand, was more... curious than wounded. Fighting Liam was a definite bonus, but the biggest question left by the fight against Primal Liam was—
How was Liam fighting differently when most of "Liam" wasn't consciously participating? How was he making simple combat manoeuvres look like sophisticated martial arts moves? It doesn't make sense.
Kazumi fixed the whimpering Liam with a smirk that promised violence of the highest order.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
****
A few hours later...
Liam crashed on his sofa with a deep groan, feeling completely drained.
"Ugh, those psychopaths!" he yelled. "I can't believe they forced me to use Blood Break just so they could satisfy their violent cravings!"
Liam shuddered as he recalled how Kazumi had forced him to fight for ten minutes straight against both him and Lee, pushing his Blood Break to the brink at the latter half of the spar.
Liam sighed and covered his face with a forearm.
"...Besides that... Kazumi's Venma."
After the hellish spar, Kazumi had wanted to test something else.
"The bastard electrocuted me!" Liam clenched his fist tightly. He sat up, a deep frown on his face.
"I'll never forget this," he muttered. "I'll hold this grudge for life. I'll pay him back tenfold!"
Of course, he couldn't say all that to Kazumi's face, so he assured himself of it for now.
"Ahem... back to the matter at hand."
Liam put a hand on his chin. "His hand turned black, and his arm became covered in these weird black lines. Then he sent electricity shooting through me. He can't have Nanami's Electric, so what is it...?"
He sighed after a few more minutes of thinking. "Well, another person's Venma isn't my priority right now." He paused to put a hand on his chest. "The bigger question is: how come I wasn't affected negatively by the electrocution?"
Liam hadn't been stunned by the shock, nor had he gotten burned. He had definitely felt the electricity, but he hadn't suffered any injuries.
...There's one possibility.
Liam's mind began to whirl as he came up with his hypothesis, and slowly, that hypothesis turned into certainty.
Electricity takes the path of least resistance, he thought. That would mean the current would find the quickest way to the earth.
Liam stood up and headed to his bathroom. So that would mean... my blood and heart muscles would have to have incredibly low electrical resistance. Because of that, the current would instantly dive into my bloodstream and bypass my nervous system and heart entirely.
Liam grinned widely as cold water splashed on his head. That's friggin' awesome! That means I'm technically immune to certain levels of electrocution!
He chuckled quietly as he lathered his hair with soap. And that would mean I have a natural shield against Nanami. Hehehe~.
After rinsing his hair and finishing his shower, he got dressed and went to the kitchen.
"Now that I think about it, that would mean my blood vessels are a kind of massive grounding wire?"
He put a bowl of beans in the microwave and sat on the counter. "Hmm... does that mean, if I'm hit with enough electricity, I can use it to hit the other person during discharge?"
Liam's eyes widened along with his grin, and he hopped off the counter with a shiver of excitement.
"Hell yeah! That's so damn cool! Gah~!"
Liam began imagining himself throwing arcs of lightning out of his fingers, destroying the ground with discharged electricity, and many, many more fantasies.
He laughed at himself as he crashed down on his sofa and began eating, and halfway through his meal he began acting out a few scenes he had imagined, before getting embarrassed by his own antics and sitting back down.
To be accurate, Liam wasn't entirely correct. He was not a "massive grounding wire." Electricity doesn't choose one single route, after all. The reason was... simpler.
His Venma-altered body had naturally adapted to channel electrical current through his blood without allowing it to depolarise his nerves and heart.
Of course, he would figure it out much later on.
After the meal, Liam completed his regular workout, finished his Blood Break practice, and went to bed after one more shower.
Hmm... he thought as he checked his CID's notifications. I've received Chad's ticket. I guess I just need to decide who to take with me, right?
Liam's thoughts fell silent, then he grabbed his hair and groaned.
"Argh! I've never done something like this before! How do I know who to pick?!"
He paused. "Wait. Since when do I have enough friends that I can't choose all of them—no, that's stupid."
He sighed and sat up. "Do I really have to think about this deeply?"
He fell silent for a moment.
"Of course I do," he groaned. "I can't take Kazumi, because he'd scare them. We aren't even friends anyway... Lisa's definitely coming, since she hasn't seen my mom in a while..."
As the night wore on, Liam went through his limited list of friends, eventually coming up with an optimal formation.
"Well, it'll work if they agree," he said as he lay back down. "And I still need that permission from Jet. Well, tomorrow's another day. And I have a lot of things to do."
Liam drifted off to sleep, oblivious to just how much his words would come back to bite him.