Summus Proelium

After everything that had happened, and all the weirdness around getting brand new powers, I had to go off by myself for a little bit after I showed the others what I could do. I went for a run across the rooftops to stretch my legs and clear my head. At first, I was just using my old powers, the ones I knew so well. It was comforting at this point, using red paint to pull myself from building to building, blue to launch myself, green for speed, and so on. I didn't have to think about what I was doing, not really. I just let my mind drift and took off. Between my powers and my skates, I could cover a lot of territory in a relatively short time. My body knew how to move, how to follow my environment sense to find the best places to hit with my paint, the best places to land, or to jump off of. I didn't have to consciously consider any of that. It just happened automatically, which was very useful when it came to turning my brain off and just experiencing the run without thinking.

About halfway through, I decided to try using my new powers, mixing them in to see how it went. As I neared the edge of the latest roof, I took a breath before pointing at a billboard in the distance. A thought shifted my body into its liquid form, and I sent a shot of that rainbow paint at the top edge of it. Just as the paint struck that spot, I sent myself through it. Just as before, my new body reformed right on the spot where the paint hit. I was suddenly standing there, while my old body fell apart into a puddle of paint on the edge of that roof. I turned to look over my shoulder just in time to see that happen, staring that way for a long moment as I absorbed the sight.

Then it was on. I made myself solid and used green-blue paint to launch myself forward and up. In the middle of that leap, I made my body liquid once more and shifted it red. I looked like a cherry-flavored version of myself, like a red gummy bear or something. Or at least a red doofus in a coveralls and helmet. But either way, my body did seem to have that same sort of texture as a gummy person. A thing that was probably added to as I reared back with one hand and snapped it forward, launching a blob of red paint, like a pile of Jell-O, through the air to smack onto the top of a roof ahead of and far below me. In the midst of falling, I focused on that spot and felt my red body get pulled that way. But rather than do anything to stop myself, I let go and allowed my body to plummet as quickly as possible. Once I was right over the roof and going down, I shifted my body to green so it would go even faster. Not orange to protect myself, or even yellow to slow down. No, the solution here, as in most cases, was definitely to go faster. I made myself plummet as quickly as possible straight down at that roof. At the last second, I had the brief thought that maybe I should have practiced this a bit more safely first. Then it was a bit too late to wonder about, as I collided with that hard surface while going as quickly as I could straight into it.

Just like when that guy had hit me with the blast of conclusive force, my body blew apart into hundreds of droplets that sprayed in every direction. And just like then, I was seeing through every droplet in every direction. Granted, I couldn't see very far like that. My vision was very limited, only allowing me to look out about ten or fifteen feet. So all I could see was the roof and a bit above me. But either way, splashing down like that didn't hurt at all. It blew me apart into tiny droplets, but there was no pain involved at all. If anything, it just kind of tickled a little bit.

As before, my droplets snapped back together after a second or two, reforming my body in a kneeling position right there on the roof. I looked around, lifted my hands to stare at them, then laughed out loud. It sounded maybe a little crazed, but who could blame me right then? This was completely wild. It was absurd. I just turned into liquid and exploded all over this roof before immediately reforming. It was ridiculous. All of this was ridiculous. And I had to keep exploring it.

With that in mind, I jumped to my feet, shifting my liquid body to blue in mid-jump so that as I came down, I bounced upward. It seemed to magnify the amount of force I put into it. As hard as I hit something as my blue, I rebounded off of it even harder. Now I really was like a gummy bear. The old cartoon version. Was it weird that my body was still liquid, but I could bounce off of things like that? Or that I could stand on things like I was solid while at the same time other solid objects moved right through me? Well, to be fair, there was nothing about any of this that wasn't weird. So why single that part out? This entire situation was absolutely ridiculous, and I actually loved it.

Bouncing off the roof like that, I aimed for a traffic light below. As my blue body impacted it, the impact sent me rocketing forward and up. With a thought, I changed my body to be red, throwing another blob toward the nearby building to pull myself that way, then shifted green to pick up speed. At the last second, I turned blue once more and positioned myself so I would impact at the right angle to rocket forward again.

Oh, oh yes. This was something I could definitely get used to. I went sailing through the air, changing back to my solid form to corkscrew between a pair of signs that were fairly close together. My hand extended to shoot green-red paint at the side of a freeway overpass as I gave a loud whoop of ecstatic excitement. On the way there, I inverted and activated a bit of orange paint on myself, along with green paint on my legs. Just before hitting the side of that overpass, I sent a shot of red a bit further along it in order to make my momentum pull me that way. Then my skates popped out as I landed it against the side of the concrete. Just like that, I was rolling along it. I could hear cars passing by above, and a couple people honked while craning their heads out of their windows to look down at me. I waved at them and kept skating sideways along that thing. My gravity boots allowed me to stick to it without any trouble. Which briefly made me wonder how my paint could shift Touched-Tech like that completely into liquid and then back again without any trouble. But then I decided the only thing that really mattered in that moment was that it did. It worked. Later, I could work out some of the details. I was sure that Paige and Wren would want to get into all the nitty-gritty about this stuff. For the moment, I was comfortable with simply taking it moment by moment to see what happened. If asked, I would say I was experimenting. But really, I was just goofing around.

That goofing continued as I practiced more with shifting between my solid and liquid forms and the various effects that being different colors in my liquid form could accomplish. I'd barely scratched the surface as far as that went, and it already felt like an entire world of new options had opened up. Combining my new powers with my old ones, especially the way I was able to collide with solid surfaces as hard as I wanted to, and even teleport myself wherever I shot that rainbow paint, and suddenly I was even more mobile than I had been before. It was so amazing.

I also figured something else out through my goofing off, which totally justified calling it experimenting. When I blew apart into those droplets, it would normally pull me back into the center part of them to put me together. But with some focus, I was able to pick one of those droplets to make the actual center of my body. Every other droplet would be pulled that way to reform around it. Even better, when I did that, I would retain the momentum of that droplet. So when I exploded into every direction, I could pick a droplet that was moving the way I wanted to, and reform around that in order to keep going that way without losing speed. I could splatter against something and use that to completely change my direction and orientation without stopping.

Obviously, that opened up whole new ideas for getting around. It made me feel so free, so alive. I had spent so much of my life throwing myself into skating, skiing, running, absolutely everything I could possibly do to feel free and alive. And this? This was the best I had ever felt as far as that went. I had been very free before, very good at traveling through the city even with my original powers. Hell, that had been the whole reason I’d been so nervous about possibly losing them. I had thought that there couldn’t be anything better than that, at least as far as my own preferences went. But adding in these new powers and shifting between them? It was a whole new world of possibilities. I could go anywhere like this.

And speaking of going anywhere I wanted, once I was finally tired of running, I collapsed onto the top of a roof near the mall. Lying there staring at the clouds in the sky, I shifted myself to be pink. I was in liquid form, and as the pink color took over, I allowed myself to gradually melt. I literally turned into a puddle right there. In this form, I could slip through cracks and find my way into tight spaces.

But I wasn’t going anywhere right then. I was simply spreading myself out and relaxing. I didn't even look like a person anymore. I was just a pink puddle of melted Jell-O quivering there on the roof. I couldn't see the sky anymore, only able to look out a few feet from myself. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered right then. I let everything go, all my worries, all my cares, everything. I simply melted into a puddle and lay there. It was sort of like lying in a hot bath after a massage. All the tension completely left me. My body was a living puddle, stretched out on the roof. I just laid there and did absolutely nothing. I thought about nothing, I worried about nothing, I let it all go and simply relaxed in a way that I probably hadn’t ever done before. All those thoughts and concerns could wait until later. For now, for that moment, I wasn’t thinking about anything. My mind drifted. It was sort of like being asleep, but not really. I was still conscious, just in a semi-dream state. Maybe it was like meditation? I wasn’t sure, since I’d never really done that. All I knew was that it really helped.

Eventually, I did start thinking. But not about my parents or any of that stuff. I wasn’t even thinking about Bobby and what he was doing, which was something that had really been on the back of my mind basically ever since he shot Pittman. No, right then, I was thinking about who I was, who I wanted to be. Maybe it was because this new ability to shapeshift into people I painted brought that to the front of my mind. Either way, I was thinking about gender, about how I’d starting to understand my own feelings on the subject. For the longest time I had felt so awkward and wrong whenever people brought up the possibility of me looking like a boy. Now, of course, I knew that a large part of that was the lingering effects of that memory wipe. Every time anything came up that made me possibly think about what had been erased, it had been painful. So I couldn’t even properly consider whether I had… those feelings. My brain associated thinking about that with pain, so it had pushed those thoughts away as much as possible. But now things were different. Now I knew that--well--sometimes I felt more like a girl and other times I felt more like a boy. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with those feelings, but I definitely wasn’t going to ignore them anymore. I wasn’t going to push them away. I was Cassidy Evans, and sometimes I was feminine, other times I was masculine. If people didn’t like that, they could suck eggs. Or whatever. All I really cared about was that they left me alone and let me be myself.

With those thoughts drifting through my mind, I reformed, pulling myself back into a full humanoid pink body before shifting into my normal self as I stood up and stretched. With a yawn, I cracked my neck from one side to the other. God, that felt good. I definitely recommended transforming into a puddle and stretching out to lie across a warm roof if you're able to do so. Ten out of ten for relaxation. I felt totally rejuvenated right then, even after only lying like that for maybe twenty minutes or so. Seriously, it was absolutely amazing. Maybe part of it was exhausting myself with that whole super-powered run through the city first, but either way, I felt like myself again, like I was ready to take on the world and deal with whatever might be coming up next in--hang on.

Blinking uncertainly while standing there, I bounced up and down a couple times. My head turned one way, then the other, my body leaning with it. Something was different. Something was strange. My body came together right, didn’t it? I was definitely all in one piece, solid and everything. So what was--huh? I bounced again, leaning all the way over on one foot, then I did the same on the other foot. Slowly, I lowered my head to look down. My mouth opened, then shut as I squinted that way. What… uhh, what exactly was…?

A soft noise of uncertainty escaped me, as I looked up and around to make sure no one was around. I was alone. Biting my lip under the helmet and mask, I hesitantly reached down with one gloved hand, very slowly moving toward my own--well--uh… toward the part of me I used in the restroom. My gloved hand found that spot, and also found something that definitely hadn’t been there before.

Yes, I may have screamed. Yes, I jumped, tripped over my own feet, and fell hard backward on the roof. And this time I wasn’t using any paint, so it kind of hurt. I fell onto my backside with that squeal and stared down at my own body. My hand moved up to my chest, then felt myself all over. What--what--what? What?!

I was a boy. I’d posed as a boy for so long, sure, and sometimes I felt more masculine. But this wasn’t like that. This was a literal physical change. I was a boy. I was a boy, in every sense of the word. My body had actually changed. When I put myself back together, I had a--I grew a--I lost my--boy, I was a boy! Was it--it wasn’t permanent, it couldn’t be permanent. Of course it wasn’t--I could--wait I could still be a girl, right? I was still… that was, I could still just…

Even as those panicked thoughts filled my mind, I felt--uh, that disappear. It was a very strange sensation. One second it was there, then it was gone. My body shifted. I wasn’t a boy anymore. A quick doublecheck confirmed it. Yup, definitely a girl again.

Okay, now that I wasn’t completely panicking so much, I hesitated. What had that been about? Why--sure I’d felt more masculine at the time that I was putting myself back together, but how would… I hadn’t shapeshifted into anyone at the time, had I? No, it was just me. My own body.

To check that, I quickly changed clothes into my civilian outfit, went down into the alley, and jogged across the street to reach the mall. My mind was racing the whole time as I hurried through the crowds and found my way to the restroom. I chose one of the small, single-occupancy restrooms on the far side of the mall, out of the way.

Locking myself in there, I stared into the mirror while focusing. Male. Male. Boy. Think about being a boy. Think about everything that was involved with being a--aaaaaand it happened. My body shifted. And no, I didn’t change to look like anyone else. I wasn’t shapeshifting into another person. I was just me, but as a boy.

Nor was there a time limit. I checked, keeping myself solid while watching the seconds tick by on my phone. After several minutes, I still hadn’t changed back. I was absolutely, completely a boy right then. A male version of Cassidy Evans. And with another thought, I could shift back into my female self. Boy, girl, boy, girl. Wait, hang on.

Yup. I could be both at the same time too. I could… well, mix and match parts however I wanted. Which was a whole new basket of wild.

I’d thought my powers were already going to take a lot to get used to, and now it turned out I could actually shift my sex to match however I was feeling at the time? I could change into a boy when I was Paintball and--wait, that meant my costume didn’t have to be so… loose. I couldn’t be found out as a biological girl as long as I stayed in my male form whenever needed. This was… this was…

Holy shit. I really was the gender fluid.