Ability Wielders

"Oho, finally, huh?" The Boss" deep laugh engulfed the whole room as he turned his chair around, his body still enshrouded by darkness. "What are you waiting for? Tell me."

"For starter…" The Stalker recounted all the events of Hayden"s feats. To this day, The Stalker still couldn"t comprehend and confounded by Hayden, he didn"t even believe his own words! "There"s all that."

Hearing of Hayden"s feats of fighting a Level 2 cognizant on his own, standing his own ground against a Level 3 a.s.sa.s.sin, forcing an outrageously strong Level 3 wielder from South Korea, and "wooing" a Level 4 wielder to be in a relationship with him. The Boss was tongue-tied.

With that in mind, The Stalker hypothesized that a dual wielder has appeared in their ranks. Consequently, he had Techno confirm something for him, and that was Hayden"s Ability was stated as an Enhancement Mental-Sensory Hybrid-Type Ability in the database of Puting Araw!

Those wings, tail, claws, and horns was definitely not an effect of this Divine Perception. In addition, that strength, speed, toughness, and absurd regenerative capability, one will be stupid if they remained puzzled as to how Hayden is that strong with all this information at hand.

"So he hides his power to the world…" The Boss took a deep breath. A few seconds later, he laughed vehemently. "That kid doesn"t trust Puting Araw at all!"

"This…" Everything regarding Hayden flashed on The Stalker"s mind and thought that this conclusion made sense. "A dual wielder that doesn"t reveal his full apt.i.tude to Puting Araw… On top of that, the disguise, his personality of not wanting to draw as much attention to himself, this can only mean…"

"Right." The Boss was chortling, amused of the situation. "That Rose is really losing out on one h.e.l.l of a wielder!"

As a member of Pangkat Anino, The Stalker naturally has heard of Rose Kapayapaan, the sole wielder that can stand up against their boss. He couldn"t help but shudder due to his boss" statement.

"He wants to keep a trump card to himself." The Boss continued his talk, revealing his bulking muscular arms as he rested it on the table. "Other than not trusting Puting Araw fully, Hayden, that kid, doesn"t even trust the power of Puting Araw to protect him! An interesting character, truly an interesting character."

"So…" The Stalker recovered from his shock. "What do you plan on doing to Hayden, boss?"

"Why protect him of course!" The Boss exclaimed. "Black Devil, that idiot, has already sent in three a.s.sa.s.sins after Hayden. All three of which went awry because of unexpected occurrences, the first time with Blade Dancer messing up; the second with Hayden"s unforeseen evolution; and lastly, with Hayden"s dual wielder prowess. With Black Devil"s idiocy, he would constantly deny that Hayden is not a dual wielder, narrowly thinking that a dual wielder appearing in the same country is just d.a.m.n impossible. Surely, that ignoramus would send one more a.s.sa.s.sin, no, a bunch more. Protect Hayden. We gain his trust. You"ve got to gain the trust of a person you want to recruit, right?"

With The Boss" explanation, The Stalker understood completely. He has always revered this side of his boss, a person who valued talent and camaraderie, which is what attracted such mighty members on the side of Pangkat Anino.

Even if a person can become stronger than The Boss, as long as they took his fancy, he would recruit them no matter the cost, unless the cost was one that went against his boss" own moral standards and values.

Till now, The Stalker was impressed of his boss" mindset. If they recruit Hayden into their ranks, and if the group nurtures Hayden correctly, he may one day become stronger than The Boss and the leader of Puting Araw, judging from Hayden"s unparalleled feats concurrently so to say.

Regardless of his boss having the appearance of a musclehead, his intelligence and knowledge of humans" train of thoughts were simply too profound.

"Nothing else? Dismissed." The Boss" voice emitted happiness. "Keep a steady eye on him, I don"t want any mishaps. Good luck."

…..

Scarlet led Hayden and Daniel into another division of Puting Araw. It was named "Blue Agent Division." It was an impressive division, riddled with a thousand of five-meter by five-meter gla.s.s-walled rooms, which was counted by Hayden through his Divine Perception. All of the rooms had various screens within, displaying numerous video feeds.

Operating said computers were people wearing Puting Araw uniforms and earpieces, along with small eyepieces. Hayden noticed that they also wore white bracelets.

Twisting and turning, the trio arrived in front of a room labeled "Room 641." Prior to going in, Scarlet rotated her head and talked.

"This is a Logistics Support Room. From the name itself, you can already understand what it is for." Scarlet didn"t bother to explain thoroughly where they were at all; just what you may expect to such a reserved lady.

Well, she was right though. The name Logistics Support Room was self-explanatory. Obviously, the room was designed for Blue Agents to support Red Agents. As aforementioned, there were three types of members of Puting Araw, the combat-oriented Red Agents, the intelligence-oriented Blue Agent, and the hybrid White Agents, an all-arounder that possesses combat and intelligence gathering capabilities.

With this in mind, as most Blue Agents has no combat power or extremely low combat ability compared to other wielders, this Logistics Support Room was designed for Blue Agents to support Red Agents during a mission without their actual presence for the mission.

Needless to say, there were also some missions that needed the physical presence of Blue Agents, such as reconnaissance work, espionage, and when the Blue Agent themselves think that their physical presence is required; which is usually only done by higher-ranked and seasoned Special Agents.

These were all explained to him during his Blue Agent training, and despite him being inexperienced, he was rather confident if ever it was necessary for him to act as a Blue Agent, either for himself, or for someone.

In truth, being a White Agent, the only concern that he actually had was his lack of attack power when using Divine Perception, not his intelligence gathering. Sooner or later, he"d be put in a peril that would need him to reveal Indestructible Devil in the presence of people. That"s also one of the reasons that Hayden was reluctant in helping Scarlet, other than he didn"t know her.

"I"m going to excuse myself now," reaching this point, Daniel said. "I also have a mission to do. Let"s talk about that date later?"

Scarlet"s countenance flushed a bit as she nodded silently. With that, Daniel took off, leaving Hayden and Scarlet alone. Recovering, Scarlet opened the door to the Logistics Support Room and entered.

Hayden followed suit, eyeing the Logistics Support Room. In spite of being trained in the ways of a Blue Agent, Hayden more of a hands-on or field experience and did not know how to operate the devices in the room.

"Well, even if I was trained with it, I prefer to do missions on my own anyways." Hayden thought, taking off the leather jacket he was wearing, revealing the lines of his muscles through the tight-fitting black shirt he was wearing. "All these pieces of equipment would be pointless."

"This is the manual for all these…" Scarlet meekly said, a tablet materialized in her hands. She was likewise clueless of what everything within the part.i.tion does. "You also have to sign yourself up for the mission so that you"d get part of the merits."

Hayden nodded, opening the tablet and seeing a sign-up page for a mission, he filled it up. Subsequently, a catalogue of different categorized equipment appeared, many of which were not in the room or weren"t of use to Blue Agents.

As Hayden hasn"t accessed this type of information in the past, he decided to activated Divine Perception and skim through everything. With the evolution of his Divine Perception, Hayden could memorize things much more swiftly.

In a mere five minutes, Hayden was already done absorbing, digesting, and integrating the information to his mind. Looking at the various screens, Hayden identified everything.

Indeed, it was all equipment for the benefit of Blue Agents. The nine screens on his left with Neural Interfaces beneath them were for Buzzers. Neural Interfaces are interactive devices that allows a person to control a machine solely with their minds. It worked by using the handprint and wirelessly connecting the nerves of the user to the device, allowing the brain of the user to directly send messages to the device.

As for Buzzers, they were cameras that has a bee-like structure and can fly at 600 kilometers per hour, as well as silently. It can transmit live video feed from up to thousands of kilometers, can be controlled on the same distance, yet still possessed high graphical resolution, which is at 32,000 pixels and at 120 fps; a truly advanced breakthrough of science.

Apparently, from the information Hayden got, Buzzers were invented back in the Decade of Advancement, but wasn"t released to the public due to the obvious public concerns, mainly stalking.

One more technology that Blue Agents use are Sensory Links, bracelets that gave the Blue Agent link to the sensory organs of a Red Agent. It worked in such a way that the transmitted data is raw, meaning that it came from the information picked up by the Red Agent"s senses and not the one already processed by the brain. Sensory Links comes in pairs and cannot exceed more than two, or at least this the first version.

The Sensory Link worked in such a way that Blue Agents with Abilities that conferred them superhuman senses, with the exception for touch and very specific sight-related Abilities, allows them to be able to utilize their Ability even without physically being with the Red Agent.

Regardless of the database of the technology used by Blue Agents having dozens more, Hayden only processed what kind of equipment he has on hand concurrently. For the last one, there was the ring termed as the Whisperer.

The Whisperer was originally named the Neural Transmitter. As the name of it coincided with the term Neurotransmitter, short for neural transmitter, which was a part of the nervous system of the human body, it was renamed to be the Whisperer.

It was a handy device that was one yet another secret technology developed by Puting Araw that would allow Blue Agents and Red Agents to communicate telepathically within thousands of kilometers. What"s interesting here is that the Whisperer has instantaneous transference regardless of how far two people are from each other, unless you"re literally on the other side of the world.

Together with the aforementioned, the one more useful function of the Whisperer is that the two users can send each other a "memory," which is basically a picture. It was truly a wonder how the Whisperer worked, though Hayden did read that the Whisperer was cla.s.sified as some sort of new technology called "Essence Technology."

One would be stupid if one can"t infer that the words Essence Technology meant technology that employed essence energy. The Sensory Link and Neural Interface were also apparently cla.s.sified under Essence Technology, whetting Hayden"s curiosity.

For the others, there was no use checking up on it for the current situation as he has a promise to fulfill at hand, hence, Hayden sat down on the chair and started preparing.

"Sensory Link?" Turning to Scarlet, Hayden asked. These minor actions of Hayden"s greatly shocked Scarlet.

She saw personally how eccentric Hayden"s actions of scrolling past everything on the tablet without blinking in a matter of a few minutes, before closing his eyes for a few seconds, then sitting on the chair. With a peculiar expression, she took out a pair of Sensory Link bracelets from her s.p.a.ce Ring.

Handing one to Hayden, she squinted her eyes, observing what his next actions are going to be. At that moment, Hayden woke her up from her daze, "You"re not wearing it? I want to test it out."

Shaking her head, Scarlet wore the bracelet and activated it. Hayden did so as well and closed his eyes. A few seconds later, he saw himself in Scarlet"s point of view.

Closing his eyes once more, Hayden returned to his original sight. Muttering to himself, Hayden was fascinated a bit, "Interesting… This is truly miraculous."

Witnessing this, Scarlet went wide-eyed. It seemed as if her worries were getting realized. This Blue Agent that she was counting on was totally oblivious on even a mere Sensory Link! Sensory Link was one of the basic devices used by Blue Agents!

"Hey…" Scarlet said in a soft voice. "Are you sure you can do this? I mean, this mission is pretty hard. I really solely asked you due to your Ability…"

Hearing this, Hayden stared at Scarlet with a look saying "What do you mean?" He was absolutely incredulous and suspicious of Scarlet"s words.

Scarlet"s hair stood on all ends as if she was being stared at by a bloodthirsty wolf. What is up with this fellow? Soon, a look of understanding appeared on her face.

"I heard all about your Ability from Daniel." Scarlet nonchalantly explained. "He kind of bragged about his best friend. He doesn"t shut his mouth on how you help him and all that with your amazing Ability. If it isn"t as plain as day that he likes me, I would"ve suspected him to swing the other way."

Hayden"s rage seethed when this entered his ears. That d.a.m.ned Daniel! To think that he helped him land a date! Watching Hayden"s countenance transforming into a fierce one, Scarlet shivered.

"I"m sorry Daniel," Scarlet sighed. She felt guilt but would rather have not deal with Hayden again, hence, she didn"t voice out anything at all. "Maybe I"d genuinely give you a chance with me as compensation for this…"

Activating Divine Perception, Hayden ignored Daniel"s atrocity for the meantime as he a.s.severated, "You can go now. Don"t worry, you"ll accomplish this mission with no hiccups with me around."

Hayden"s confidence was infectious and, for an unknown reason, utterly rea.s.suring for Scarlet. Perhaps due to Hayden"s ridiculous feats as told by Daniel to her? She didn"t know at all.

Nevertheless, she opted to trust Hayden disregarding that the mission they were going to perform was a high-leveled one. She figured that Hayden was the type of person that would not make empty promises.

Nodding, Scarlet established a communication link with Hayden and exited the room, embarking on the location of the mission, which was in Pasay City. She used the underground highway that only Special Agents have the privilege of using.

The said underground highway was connected to all the cities of the Metro Manila region so that the members of Puting Araw that those who had Abilities that bestowed upon them increased mobility wouldn"t be seen by the public, and that Puting Araw members can respond much faster or save time when going to different cities.

Standing in the highway in a Puting Araw uniform, Scarlet summoned her 36 blades, and, clasping her hands, it all amalgamated into one enormous blade that was shaped as a kite.

Jumping on top of the "hover board," Scarlet zoomed out, her figure blurring, a sonic boom ensuing. This was the Level 2 power of her Ability, amalgamation of the blades.

In reality, the kite-like blade shield that Scarlet did was factually a shield, however, with her telekinetic power over the shield, she found out that she could indeed utilize it as a mount.

The sole downside to this was that she could not use it outside as it would incur suspicions of unidentified flying objects, or could perpetuate hearsays of secret military technology developed by the Philippines, which was forbidden in all countries long ago by the World Government. It would not only endanger the existence of wielders, but may also risk the Philippines" position in the World Government.

With that, within 10 minutes, Scarlet arrived at Pasay City. Emerging out of a hotel that was a member of Anthony"s Grand Hotelier Conglomerate, she navigated her way to a remote location of the city.

Arriving, Scarlet went inside one of the building, ensured no one was around, and changed clothes into a light-armored stealth suit. Thereupon, Scarlet took out the Whisperer ring and the Sensory Link bracelet, adorning them.

Fishing her phone from her s.p.a.ce Ring, Scarlet called Hayden. "Hey, I"m ready whenever you are."

"Copy that." Hayden didn"t talk much, cutting the call off immediately and wearing the Sensory Link and Whisperer.

"Can you hear me?" Hayden"s voice sounded out inside Scarlet"s mind. "If you can, start releasing the Buzzers."

"Okay." Scarlet replied with indifference. It was normal for Red Agents to be ordered around by Blue Agents, so this was nothing much.

Taking out the nine Buzzers, she threw it. On the other side, Hayden manipulated the nine Buzzers in the sky two at a time. Utilizing his Divine Perception, in a matter of a minute, the nine Buzzers were perfectly in place, encompa.s.sing the entire compound that Scarlet was in.

Working his magic, Hayden started his reconnaissance of the place, sending a detailed memory of a processed map of the entire surroundings to Scarlet, including radii where enemy presence is highly probable, the best routes to the building that she had to seize, and a freaking estimate of the number of enemies.

Barely walking out of the building, Scarlet was shocked. Examining the map in her memory, she was greatly shocked of Hayden"s capability.

As for how Hayden did this, he did all these calculations within a minute with his Divine Perception, all based on the information he had at hand. The amount of information one can extract from the mission details alone is surprisingly high.

Of course, Hayden sent in a warning that these were all merely calculated prospects and that it was possible for an outlier to appear.

With that warning, Scarlet calmed down. Indeed, Hayden wasn"t omniscient and all-knowing, it was best to not be complacent.

There were almost no shrubberies in the compound she was in, causing a stealth op to be nigh-impossible. Well, with Hayden around, that quest that she described to be nigh-impossible was changed to effortless.

Hayden entered the shared senses mode, allowing him to see, hear, and smell through Scarlet"s eyes, ears, and nose. With this, he paid attention to everything, providing hints on how Scarlet should move.

In fact, he gave her advice on how she further take advantage of her Ability. The pa.s.sive of her Ability, Blade Terpsich.o.r.e, was that it conferred her enhanced balance, agility, and dexterity, and that it gave her natural affinity towards bladed weapons.

He gave her advice such as using the blades as a tool for stepping, in other words, creating a staircase, or the fact that she can actually wield her handleless blades as a regular weapon by amalgamating it. Basically, the amalgamation part of her Ability was, in reality, limited to her imagination, h.e.l.l, she can even create a chain-like blade whip that is absurdly sharp.

She"s been using this Ability for years, and only this time did she question her own knowledge of her Ability. She thought that the usage of her shield as a mount was already ingenious, boy was she mistaken.

With that, the mission went smoothly, with Hayden"s apprising her of enemy presences. From there on, she took care of everything else, knocking people out if she can, resorting to killing if she had to, and finishing the mission with no hiccups whatsoever. The whole mission took an hour, an hour earlier than the estimated accomplishment time

Although she was informed of Hayden"s Ability"s exploits through Daniel, Scarlet was still awe-struck by Hayden"s enemy detecting power and imagination.

She thought that no matter how Hayden performed, there was, in no way whatsoever, her partner can be surpa.s.sed. Now, she felt a bit silly and astounded as this event proved her wrong.

…..

Author"s Note: I don"t remember on how I address The Stalker, whether it is "The Stalker," or "Stalker." To avoid confusion, I will now refer to him as The Stalker, same goes for The Boss.