Chapter 14) Curiosity At Its Finest

"You wish I was done Trish. I haven't told you anything about me, after all, I only thanked you for treating Jason like a human."

She reeled back after realizing she might have jumped the gun. She put her head down and swished her hand, implying to continue.

"(ahem), Anyway, I can start with an actual introduction. My name is Nicholas Bruno, although I just prefer being called Nick. My family is Italian, and I am an only child. Not an over the top amount of money, just a common upper middle class family if I say so myself. I've known Jason since elementary school, and we're now brothers in everything but blood. Now you can go ahead."

With how seriously he was speaking, I decided to meet him with the same energy.

"My name is Tricia Blake, although you can just continue calling me Trish if you prefer. I have a baby brother, so one sibling. I'd say I'm about the same financially speaking, not too high, nor too low. That's about it on my part."

Nick couldn't help but pick up on something however.

"Wait, but earlier you introduced yourself as Tricia Woods. So what? Now we're opening up with lies?"

She was taken aback after recalling that she had indeed done so.

"No no that wasn't my intention. See, my mother's last name is Woods, while my father's is Blake. I had been thinking about my mom at the time and probably just spilled hers out instead by accident. Sorry about that."

He took a moment to gauge her expression before rubbing that back of his head and groaning.

"Fine, fine, with that out of the way, let's get on with this. What do you plan on doing now that you're dragged into this? I mean realistically, no one would believe what you've seen and we are now in too deep for you to go back to not knowing anything about us. So, do you have a plan?"

She had to contemplate this for a while, as up until just now, she really didn't think about it all that much. 'I mean, today has been pretty ridiculous, and these guys haven't exactly allowed me to catch my breath.' A few moments rolled by before Nick realized it might have been more challenging of a question to answer right now than he originally noticed.

" My bad, as that was a rough question after today, so let me ask you this instead. While you've only had today's actions to go off of, how do you feel about Jason?"

'HOW IS THAT AN EASIER QUESTION TO ANSWER AT ALL?'

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'None of these goddamned tests are giving me any results.'

I first tried scraping a corner off of the ring to possibly find out its material composition, only to snap, crack, and pop all my damn tools. After that I just decided to do a conductivity test, which just boils down to me zapping it and seeing how well the current flows through the ring. Well, that ended in failure as well cause the damn thing kept eating all the electricity, so not only could I not monitor the current, the machine also gave out, as the ring "pulled" too hard for the system to handle, activating the emergency override to shut the damn thing down. I tried a fire test, where I slowly increased the temperature in a little metal container, and watched for any reactions through thermal lenses. Low and behold, it showed the container get hot, and the ring staying cold.

Now after these back to back failures, I've decided this thing should get the blast treatment. I angrily made my way over to a detonation hall, where all the walls, floor, and ceiling were graded for mid-grade, high impact explosives. 'If the stupid ring breaks, then its good that I don't have to do anything with it anymore. If it somehow survives, then I'll officially have stumbled across a seemingly indestructible weapon, as it can throw back anything that it absorbs apparently.' With that thought, I smiled maliciously as I chucked the ring into the "Boom Room," and watched it bounce on the floor before coming to a stop in the center of the soon to be blast zone.

After going behind the blast shields, I took one last look at the ring before pressing the detonation button.

There was a blinding flash of light, then an obscene amount of dust whipped past me as the devastating explosion tore away at the room. As I was thinking to myself that the ring must have been destroyed, I realized no sound wave had been produced, and I looked up only to see a horrifying, yet beautiful scene.

The flames, dust, and even a visible sound wave, were all stopped in mid-air, not moving an inch. Then all of them started getting pulled towards the epicenter of the explosion, and with shock on my face, watched as the ring absorbed the whole thing. Not a single element of the explosion was left. 'Hey, hey, hey come on man! That was enough to flatten a school building! The damn ring is unreal!' At that moment however I came to a dangerous conclusion. 'Does that mean I have an explosion readily available with a thought so long as I put it on?'

As I was rummaging through ideas, unbeknownst to myself, the ring was humming and vibrating rhythmically.

'Oh master, thank you for the meal.'

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I could only laugh to myself in my head.

'Of course you got put under the suspension bridge effect when Jason pushed you out of the way of the black fire earlier. Anyone would. That does not mean I am gonna let you stay this way though. I'm only going to try and make you realize your "crush" isn't reasonable. Now if you somehow actually started crushing on him...hehehe'

While Nick was debating on whether it'd be fun to wingman or not, I could only desperately try to stop a blush from creeping onto my face.

'Why did he have to ask me that? I mean please, there are so many questions you could have used, so many topics we could've talked about. Now I have to come up with an answer when I don't even know what the answer really is...wait a minute I think I can do this.'

"So you're asking how I feel about Jason right? Well, while he has saved me twice now, I've come to notice he's kind of been keeping me away. Like, he has talked to me, but not AT me. He avoids facing me when we talk. Besides that though, I guess I just feel like he's a person too good to be true? However after you telling me that stuff about him does make him far easier to approach than my first impressions led me to believe."

'You sly vixen. You escaped the question this time, and I'll let you feel safe for now. Mark my words though, for I SHALL make you confess.' With this both of them started having a stare-down, when a rumble happened all of a sudden, breaking their little match. They looked at each other before bolting back towards the main house with one thought on their minds.

'Jason what the hell did you do?!'

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'Damn that was close.'

After the ring devoured the explosion I had thought nothing would happen as the ring seemed to have done everything for me. Well, right after the silence came a cracking sound. I looked up only to notice the ceiling had enormous fissures spanning the whole room. After that I dove into the hallway as the ceiling came down and caved in the whole room.

'I really can't let the ring have me so fixated next time.'

With that thought I realized the ring is now buried under all the debris.

'Good ridda-'

I didn't even get to relish in the ring's loss before a small hole in the rubble bubbled open, and the ring flew out, stopping abruptly in front of my face. I could only let out a sigh as I stuffed the damned thing in my pocket again. As I made my way back down the hallway to the staircase, I watched Nick and Trish storm the door with worry written all over their face. A smile graced my face, but was quickly wiped away when I noticed.

"Jason are you okay?!" They both yelled when they saw dust all over me. I cast a slow gaze over myself, before noticing all the dust and other rubbish coating me.

"Yeah I'm fine, just got a little carried away with my experiments and brought the ceiling down on me. No big deal. The part of the ceiling in question ends up somewhere in my yard with nothing on the surface that could have been damaged."

Nick was stilling patting my arms and torso when he froze after registering what I said.

"You caved yourself in a room down here and are saying it's fine?! What makes you think that is fine?! Are you stupid or something?!"

Both Tricia and I gave him a pensive look. He looked around and realized what we were suggesting and he just threw his hands up in the air and stormed away.

"Fine then! See if I care the next time you decide to bury yourself alive! I'll laugh till I'm sick."

I shared another look with Trish before we both started laughing, following after him. No words were spoken until we all made it back upstairs. It was only now, that we all noticed the sun had gone down.

"Well I suggest you both shower and go to sleep after today's wild ride. I'll be staying up for a bit longer to finish cleaning the place and I'll have Luna guard your doors tonight so you can feel at least a little more comforted. If I haven't said directly to the both of you already, I am sorry for the problems I have caused you both. Have a goodnight."

After that I walked away, leaving them to their own devices. I gave Luna a signal to follow after them and with a low growl she reluctantly got up and sauntered after them.

"(sigh), I hope they could forgive me one day for all this, but right now I need to focus on one more thing, and I'm hoping it will work the way I want it to." I mumbled all of this while slowly putting on the ring once more.

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A few hours later, at the dead of night...

I fell to the floor panting, absolutely exhausted.

"Why does it feel like everything I do, something pulls out of me? Come on, using a damn ring shouldn't be this damn hard."

For the past few hours I have been in the depths of my property surrounded by charred grass and multiple trees looking as though somewhere around the base of their trunks, something blew up.

'I have to learn something practical from this damn ring before it loses effectiveness. I can't be limited to just one thing. I have to learn everything I can about this thing, because I feel like something is going to happen soon. Really soon. I can't be caught off guard like I was all day yesterday.'

My body creaked with the exertion I put on it to get up in one motion. I reset my breathing, released my domain again, and activated the ring. 'Let it all flow like water. Let the whims of the world guide your hand. Breathe in. Breathe out. Become one with your surroundings.' As these words resonated deep in my mind on repeat, the energy from the ring slowly oozed out in a steady stream on power, swishing and flicking along with my minds will and guidance. In my mind's eye, I had the stream swirl around me, visibly establishing my domains perimeter, and had it rise and fall with every breath I took. After doing this, I had the stream rise into the air and compress into small spheres, slowly picking up speed as they rotated on an orbit around me.

With every breath I took in, the spheres condensed, then grew incrementally larger. After a few minutes of doing this, all the spheres were about the size of basketballs. My eyes snapped open, and with a swing of my arms, two of the twenty spheres flew out with blinding speed and smashed through four trees each. With another movement, I had two spheres forcibly inject themselves into my body, and with a now overwhelming feeling of strength, I launched myself forward, putting cracks in the ground, and threw a punch at a boulder fifty meters away from me. The poor boulder held no resistance and immediately exploded. With a quick sweep of my foot, a gust of air was swept up and cut another tree completely from its position. After getting into a horse stance, I had two spheres illuminate in a red light before they burst into flames. With these raging spheres of fire, I had them establish my domain's perimeter once more.

I rose my hands into the air, looking as though I were praising the sun, and with the steady descent of my hands, I injected ten whole spheres into the fiery perimeter, and then crossed my arms, holding the energy together. I swept my hands out and the fire wall turned into a immense wave of flames with me at the center. It swept out for one hundred meters before stopping. With the final four spheres of energy, I had them all seemingly dissipate into the air. For a few moments nothing seemed to happen, until a dark cloud was seen forming above me. With this, sweat started pouring down my face as I had my arms up in the air, forming a cup. One hand suddenly only had two fingers pointing towards the cloud, and with a vicious chop downward, a lightning strike followed right behind my motion, striking the ground in front me.

I collapsed once more, completely and utterly exhausted in every form of the word. 'With all this I might as well be the avatar haha, (cough), ughhh that little chuckle at my own comment almost killed me. (sigh) This ring is too cool. I am sorry ring for being grumpy with you.'

The ring hummed in a seemingly accepting matter. I stared at the night sky for a while, trying to regain the feeling in my limbs, before finally managing to get up, regrettably with horrible muscle cramps. 'At this rate I'll need a cane with how my back is screaming at me.'

Unknown to myself, the two tattoos on my arms were creeping onto my back with an extremely slow pace, slowly forming a new marking in grey.