Accidental Hero (Jack Blank Adventure) (16 page)

Skerren blew a sharp snort of air through his nostrils. “Of course”.

Stendeval nodded. “Excellent.” He waved his hand and red energy flowed forth as he craned his neck to look skyward, up into the tower. Jack heard a rumbling, high in the upper regions of the building, far out of sight. All the way up in the top, Jack could hear something making its way down, tumbling through the tower. Jack
saw it was a series of cannonballs flying down toward the group, being waved along by Stendeval. He directed the cannonballs to swoop in with a light glide and form a pyramid in the center of the room. He dove straight into his lesson.

“Skerren… do you think your blades can cut through these cannonballs?” Stendeval asked.

As always, Skerren was bold. “My blades can cut through anything.”

“Confidence!” Stendeval said. “Very good.” With no further warning he sent a swarm of cannonballs hurling at Skerren. They came whirling at him from all directions, with a life of their own. Skerren quite effortlessly sliced them all in half like cantaloupes. Each one fell to the ground with a clank. He was good—there was no denying it.

“Impressive,” Stendeval said. “Most impressive.”

Next, Stendeval raised the stakes, moving a marble column with a tarp over it into the center of the room. “I want you to cleave this column in half, straight down the middle,” he told Skerren.

“Heh. And I thought the School of Thought would be able to present me with a challenge,” Skerren said.

Stendeval pulled the tarp off the column to reveal a bust of the mighty Hovarth sitting on top.

“What is this?” Skerren asked.

“It’s only marble,” said Stendeval. “Are you not up to the task?”

Skerren grumbled under his breath. He was uncomfortable with it, but he wasn’t going to back down. He sheathed one sword and raised the other high in the air. He brought it down hard on the stone homage to Hovarth. With a great clang the sword rebounded in the opposite direction, driving Skerren back. He cried out, dropped his sword, and shook out his wrist. The bust of Hovarth was undamaged.

“No!” Skerren said, dropping to his knees.

Stendeval lowered himself to the ground and paced slowly around Skerren. “So. You slice through iron cannon-balls like butter, but when you face off against a marble bust of Hovarth, whom you grew up idolizing in Varagog Village, you can’t even chip it.”

Skerren looked up, mortified. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I’ve never… I thought I could cut through anything.”

Stendeval just smiled and reached out his hand. “It would appear that your only limit is your conscience,” he said, helping Skerren to his feet. “You
can
cut anything, but only if your heart is in it. This is a good start. It pleases me that you could not break your mentor’s image. Your confidence in your swordsmanship is well placed, but to what end will you use those swords? That is the question. Your power is amplified by belief in yourself. A true hero must believe in much more than that.”

Skerren nodded. It seemed to Jack that his arrogance was replaced with genuine respect. Stendeval moved on to Allegra.

Allegra started to tell Stendeval about her powers, but he stopped her. He wanted Allegra to show everyone what her powers were. “Our actions tend to speak louder than our words,” he said to her. “Allow me to help you.”

Stendeval thought for a moment, then with a wave of his hand, he drew an ornate glass sculpture out from a random corner of the room. It was a crystal globe the size of a bowling ball, filled with a million different designs and colors. It danced through the air at Stendeval’s whim, illuminating the room with color like a reflective disco ball.
“This glass comes from Murano, an island in the Venetian lagoon. I purchased it from a master glassmaker there in the year 1565. It has extraordinary value, to be sure, but greater still is its sentimental value to me.” Stendeval placed the sculpture on a stand some ten feet away from Allegra. “Allegra. Please hand me the globe.”

Allegra started walking toward the stand, but again Stendeval stopped her. “Ah, ah, ah… from where you are currently standing, please.”

Reluctantly, Allegra reached for the globe. Jack watched in wonder as her arms extended across the room, her silver limbs stretching like pulled taffy. Her fingers wrapped around the globe and she picked it up. She was about to hand it to Stendeval, when he levitated up to the next level of the tower. “Please hand it to me up here,” he said.

“It’s too far,” Allegra protested.

Stendeval looked down kindly. “Try.”

Jack could tell Allegra needed more encouragement. “You can do it,” he told her. “It’s not that much farther.”

Allegra nodded, steeling herself for the attempt. She reached up, extending her arms even farther. She was doing it, but she looked nervous and unsure.

“I don’t like this,” Allegra said. “It’s too valuable, I can t…

As she spoke, her hands first began to shake, then turned to fluid. The crystal globe passed through her fingers like water and shattered on the floor.

“Oh!” Allegra cried out. When she looked at the countless crystal shards on the ground, Allegra’s face bunched up like she was about to cry.

Stendeval lowered himself down. “It’s quite all right,” he assured her.

A twirl of Stendeval’s fingers and the fragments of the globe zipped back together into crystalline perfection. Allegra was immensely relieved.

“I can see you are blessed with all the power of a Valorian woman,” Stendeval told her. “Unlike Valorian men, who can fly and fire plasma blasts from their hands, you can shape-shift and extend your form into any solid object. You do, however, have your limits. The farther you stretch, the less solid you become. That is also a defense mechanism.” Stendeval winked, and a suit of armor lunged for Allegra. She melted into a puddle. “When frightened or unsure of yourself, your instinctual reaction
is to shift to a liquid state,” he told Allegra as she pulled herself back together. “Perhaps the opposite is true as well? If you could banish fear from your mind, perhaps you could become solid. Indestructible. The first step is not being afraid to try.”

Stendeval patted Allegra on the shoulder and put the globe away. Now it was Jack’s turn to be nervous. He was next.

“I don’t know how much I can do here today,” he blurted out as Stendeval hovered over him. “I can’t turn on my powers like these guys. My powers just kind of show up.”

“Yes, when you’re angry or scared,” Stendeval agreed. “Still, they are there waiting for you to command them. Your power over machines has helped you beat your Rüstov parasite thus far. If you can learn to truly control your powers, the Rüstov may find they committed a grievous error by infecting you.” Again, Stendeval looked around the messy room. “Let’s start with… this,” he said, drawing an appliance out from the heap. Jack recognized it right away as a SmartWater-CleanWindow. Stendeval set it down on the stand. “Jack Blank, the floor is yours.”

Jack shook his head. “I couldn’t make this thing work this morning
without
my powers,” he said. “I didn’t even know what it was.”

“Please try, Jack.”

Jack breathed deep. Stendeval was right. He at least had to try. His powers were the only thing keeping him alive, and he’d basically gotten by on luck and instinct so far. There was no guarantee that was always going to be enough. If he wanted to make sure that his powers were always there to counteract the Rüstov, he was going to have to master them. The tough part was, he didn’t really know where to begin.

Jack looked at the machine. He thought hard about making it go, about turning it on with his mind, but he didn’t know what he was doing. He wasn’t sure if his powers really even worked like this. His powers always just happened, and right now they weren’t.

“I can’t do this,” Jack said at last. “I told you I don’t even know what this Smart-thing is supposed to do.”

“Fair enough,” Stendeval said. “I shall explain. It’s really a very clever invention.” Stendeval moved to the machine and turned it on. “It’s one of Jonas’s older ideas,
from before the invasion. As you can see, it produces a high-powered, ultrathin stream of water in a rectangular frame, resembling a window. The water is infused with nanotechnology—little microscopic, intelligent computer chips that seek out any form of dirt or refuse, then clean it away. You simply pass a dish through the Clean-Window, and let the water do the rest.” Jack watched Stendeval pass an old, tarnished silver platter through the Clean Window. He set it down on the table and the water continued to scrub the platter until it was shinier than Allegra’s silver skin.

Stendeval urged Jack to try again, this time with the knowledge of what he wanted the machine to do. Jack did so, but he was still nervous: nervous that nothing would happen, that he couldn’t do it, that he didn’t belong.

“Here goes,” Jack said.

Again, Jack thought really hard, reaching out with his mind to try to make the machine work. This time, it was different. This time, his eyes looked deep into the machine. At first, Jack wasn’t sure, but after a minute he could swear he saw the gears turning inside and the circuit boards firing information back and forth. A dribble of
water began to fill the Clean Window and then stopped.

“Something happened!” Jack said. “It was… I could almost see inside of it for a minute. Something happened!”

“Why did you stop?”

“It was too complex. I felt like I could see the little microchips in the water and… it was too much. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.”

Stendeval nodded and started digging through his collection of artifacts for something for Jack to try his hand with next. Eventually, he whisked a tricycle down from the upper levels of his tower. “I have another idea,” he said, setting the small bike down before Jack. “Make this one work,” he challenged.

“A tricycle?” Jack asked.

“It’s a machine,” Stendeval replied. “A simple machine but a machine nonetheless. All you have to do is make it go.”

Jack thought about it. It seemed pretty silly, but he did understand how this particular machine worked. In his head he saw the pedals rotating. They were connected to the axle on the front wheel, which, when turned, would
move his bike forward. He saw it all happening in his head, and before he knew it, the tricycle was riding around the room in a circle with no one on it. It was completely under Jack’s control.

“You’re doing it!” Allegra said to Jack. Stendeval applauded.

“I can’t believe this,” Jack said. “It’s working!”

“You see, Jack?” Stendeval asked. “You
can
control machines. But in order to do it on command, it would appear you have to know how the machine works. I suggest you study science and engineering. The more you learn, the more you’ll be able to do. Knowledge is power, young friend. Knowledge is power.”

Skerren clapped a slow, sarcastic clap, and Jack’s concentration broke. The tricycle slowed and then halted.

“And what a power it is,” Skerren said. “Rust-boy can make tricycles move. The enemies of the Imagine Nation must be quivering with fear.”

Stendeval gave Skerren a disapproving look. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, young Skerren. A Chinese philosopher who visited this island long ago once told me that. You would do well
to remember it, for you have a ways to go yourself.” He looked at the class. “You all do.”

Skerren quieted himself. “Does that mean we didn’t pass?” he asked.

“Pass?” Stendeval repeated. “No. There is nothing to pass here today. In fact, I will not be testing you at all,” he revealed. “Some of the Circlemen will test you. Others will simply observe you in your daily life and make their decision based on your actions. It is my firm belief that life will test each of you better than I ever could. I will simply evaluate how you react to life’s trials when I make my decision about each of you. In the meantime, I hope you have all learned something here this morning. Something you will think about even after you leave my class. The rest of the day is yours.”

With that, Stendeval’s lessons were over and class was dismissed. On his way out, Skerren purposely bumped into Jack, knocking him to the floor. Looking up from the ground, Jack saw Allegra looking back, nibbling at her lower lip. Jack could tell she felt bad for him, but she didn’t stop to help him up. No doubt, she was afraid of getting on Skerren’s bad side.

Jack picked himself up. “I’m used to people giving me a hard time, but this is too much,” Jack said to Stendeval as the others left. “Everyone here either hates me or is afraid of me.”

“Things will not always be as they are today,” Stendeval said, drifting down to Jack’s level. “I am more than five hundred years old. I have seen much change in my lifetime. Change begins with the individual, especially individuals with power like ours.”

“What are your powers, Stendeval?” Jack asked.

“My powers,” Stendeval began, “are whatever I decide to devote my power to. Each day I have a certain amount of energy I can use to do almost anything, and I use those energies to whatever ends I decide,” he added, using his powers to send the cannonballs back where they belonged, and the suit of armor back into place.

“So, you can do anything?”

“Well. Some things take a lot of power, some take a little, and some are beyond my reach. At the end of the day when the power well is dry, I am just like anyone else.”

“I wish my powers were that easy,” Jack said. “It’s going to be hard to make my powers work, because I don’t really
know anything about machines. I certainly don’t understand the ones you have here. They’re too complex.”

“So, what do you understand in machines?” Stendeval asked. “Start with that. Start small. Sometimes you have to think small to think big.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at me,” Stendeval replied. “Am I immortal? No, that is beyond my power as well. But the first thing I do each morning is reverse my body’s age by one day. Just one day. I do this every day, so technically, my body is the same exact age as that first day I thought to do it, nearly five hundred years ago. If I looked at that whole task at once, if I tried to reverse five hundred years in a day? That is too much to ask. But to deal with one day—today—I can do that. In a way, so can you.”