Hashim walked silently in the City of Metals. It was long past the time when the sun had set, and though some few places had lights, those were closely guarded, and most of it was dark, especially with the tall buildings and billowing smoke cutting off most of the moon- and starlight.
Hashim reached deep into himself, and summoned forth Gensa. Toon was willing to test Gensa's ability, and their combined force made the elusive personality manifest. They still didn't know exactly what his ability was, despite how long he had been around. Unlike The Subsidiary, which was Xavier's biting name for Elias that Hashim had adopted, he had been formed on a thought, and his ability developed naturally, while Elias's was a direct result of Hashim's mental state shifting, so his personality was built around the ability itself.
Toon and Hashim hovered at the front of their mind, forcing themselves to mingle together, fulfilling the role of 'brain' together. Then, Toon and Hashim both activated their abilities.
It had been a stretch, but after a short period of muddled confusion, Gensa emerged.
He stood still, blinking.
This was his first time having a physical body.
But not his first time activating his ability.
Yes, that was right. Gensa was not as they assumed. In fact, he was formed by an ability, though not out of necessity or discovery. By the slow combination of Hashim and others into fusions they had evoked a harmony between Hashim and Toon, causing them to join together, albeit loosely.
But it all came to a head when...
The contact.
Through Ardena, to the monster, then back to Regus. A circuit.
No, a loop. A feedback loop. Energy transferred between them. Regus had copied Ardena's ability, drawing out some of her reserves of power, and then pushed them back into her.
The power of abilities had two measures, according to his philosophy. Generation and output. Those differing measures could create two opposite phenomena. If the output exceeded the generation, as in the case of Elias, the user would grow weak and begin to burn through their body's stored energy to keep their ability active while their brain frantically picked it apart, stopping the use as quickly as it could.
But the second, and far more common, phenomena was the buildup of something that he had dubbed Mana Shards. Slowly in most cases, as people's power output and generation often lined up much better than the anomalies they had seen recently, the unused power that was stored in each person would begin to crystalize and condense, though not in a physical sense. So instead of blocking or lowering the capacity of things like the subject's lungs or stomach, it would instead block part of the output or lower the capacity of their total power storage.
Peter, John's brother, had that problem, though an incredibly advanced stage due to unknown circumstances. It was obvious, upon analysis and comparison. Something had happened early in life between him and John, and it had restricted him while leaving John free.
Gensa stretched out a hand. He had guided Regus's power to knock free some of Ardena's lodged Mana Shards. And through it, he had been connected to...
With a flash of black, as if leeching the light from the area, a monstrous being rose from the cobbled alley. The body of an artfully colored black, purple, and red spider, with a woman's torso fused where it would usually have a head, though her skin was grey and also intermittently covered in the black-and-red chitin that made up the rest of the spider's body. The shirt she had worn before was now gone, but there was nothing odd about the point of fusing. Despite its clearly illogical appearance, it seemed completely natural, a smooth transition between carapace and smooth grey flesh. This was one entity, made to be so.
Gensa hadn't just accidentally enslaved the creature. He had evoked its true form.
The closer to human a monster was, the stronger it became. There was also a point where that stopped. No monster, it seemed from records, could have a body that was more than half human.
This was clear from the experiences of the continent's army of heroes. If not immediately dealt with, many monsters were known to evolve or metamorphose into forms that became increasingly human, until they were very nearly half-human, with destructive power that Gensa estimated, based on reports Toon had seen, to be on par with Ardena herself.
Gensa grinned. So, the bogeyman.
Well, well, well, Gensa thought, projecting it towards the creature. It seems we're going to have some fun.
He felt a distinct sense of amusement in response. How peculiar.