18 2nd Awakening (1/2)

Ed looked around the office and saw several piles of flesh and bones melted on the floor. Each one had a large pool of blood underneath it. He turned towards the desk and saw a pile of flesh melted to the chair. A golden crown sat atop it.

His eyes widened in shock. 'Did I do this? No, my powers don't work on the living… What happened then?' He inspected the bodies and located his father. He looked at the pile of flesh with sorrow. 'If I leave it here then it will just get eaten by mutants…' He pulled the flamethrower from his back and released a stream of fire towards his deceased father. The body quickly burned to ash. He took a nearby glass jar and filled it with the ash. He covered the jar with a thin layer of metal to reinforce it. Then he put it in his backpack. He glanced at Jarrod's melted flesh. 'I'll leave it to rot. Rats or mutants will feast on it eventually.' He exited the office.

As he walked through the building he saw more melted piles of flesh. A green mutant that looked like a dog was feasting on one of the bodies. It saw Ed and charged at him. He hurriedly used his powers to melt the ground beneath the dog. However, he was shocked as his powers melted the dog to! It yelped desperately as the skin fell off its face. Blood poured down and flesh fell off its body. It quickly died. All that remained was another disgusting pile of flesh.

'My powers changed?! Right. Before I passed out I felt my body release a huge wave of mana. That must have been what melted all the bodies…' He looked around again and noticed that some of the weaker parts of the building also had signs of melting. 'So, my powers work on the living now. I wonder if anything else has changed?' He opened his backpack and took out a bottle of water. He tried using his powers on the water. It moved as he wanted it to. He solidified it into ice, converted it into gas, and returned it to ordinary water. 'My powers work on anything living or dead now? Isn't that a bit overpowered… Eh, maybe not? Ms. Willow and Mr. Sai's powers are probably stronger. Relm's powers might be stronger to.'

Ed looked at the various piles of flesh. Tears appeared in his eyes. ”So my revenge is complete just like that?” He muttered aloud. 'It feels disappointing and empty... I just want my dad back... I didn't even get to enjoy seeing Jarrod die a miserable death... At least I know I'm responsible for his death I guess...'

Ed secured the building by blocking all the entrances with his powers. Then he searched all the dead bodies. Each pile of flesh had a mana-core hidden within it. 'Feels odd taking mana-cores from dead espers bodies...' He headed back down to Luny's lab and began to get to work. He set the newly acquired mana-cores and the 15 mana-cores he obtained from Luny onto a table. Then he ground them into the seven elemental powders.

'Time to make some new limbs! I might as well improve them while I'm at it. The arm I made before was way weaker than my expectations.' He controlled his powers and made a steel arm the same way he had previously. Gears were used for the finger-joints, a ball for the wrist, and a flexible pipe for the elbow. The rest was hollow steel. 'There's no point in using a steam core to make it into a rifle again. Hmm… I don't really understand the seven elemental powders very well yet. Let's test them.'

He attached the steel arm to his body. ”Ugh!” He winced in pain as he welded the arm directly onto his body. 'I wonder if I can use lightning elemental powder and cables to recreate human nerves for the arm someday? It's too far beyond my level right now though… I don't have a good understanding of biology.'

Ed grabbed a tiny amount of silver elemental powder. He held his new metal arm out and injected a small amount of mana into the powder. *Boom!* A loud crackling sound rang out as several streaks of lighting appeared and shot out onto the floor. 'Definitely too hard to control that power accurately right now. No wonder Luny used it in such a crude manner during the torture…'

He grabbed some black dark elemental powder next. When he sent his mana into it a large amount of black miasma formed and corroded the floor and part of his arm. He quickly fixed his arm. Then he repeated the test with white light elemental powder. A bright light flashed, but as far as he could tell nothing else happened. 'Hmm… all esper powers should come from these elements. Mordy's power was mostly from the dark element. I'm guessing Ms. Willow and Mr. Sai powers were mainly of the light element?'

Next was the red fire elemental powder. A large fire appeared. 'Nothing unexpected there…' The blue water elemental powder and yellow earth elemental powders went as expected as well. Last was the wind elemental powder. 'I wonder why the wind powder is green?' A large burst of green wind formed and flew forward into the wall. A large dent was created in the concrete. 'Mm… I can probably use this.'

Ed set to work modifying his two new arms. 'Since I'm not firing a bullet I don't really need to open the wrist anymore…' He remodified the wrist by making a hole in the steel ball that connected to the arm. The hollow arm now connected to the smaller hole in the wrist. He then added an even smaller hole to the hand. Now there was one long tunnel that went through the entire length of the arm. It was wide near the shoulder and grew increasingly smaller towards the hand.

Next, he melted some silver and nickel to create battery casings. 'Good thing Luny had a lot of materials here...' He poured fire elemental powder into one of the battery casings. He welded the battery into the middle of his forearm by wrapping it in four thin steel bars. He took aim and released mana into the battery. A flame shot from his forearm into his wrist, then into his hand. It poured out in a steady stream towards the nearby wall. 'Mm. Good. At this level the arm still won't burn.'

He created a wind mana-core battery next. He welded it into his upper arm. The battery released power in the direction of his forearm. He lifted his arm and poured mana into both the wind battery and fire battery. *Swoosh!* A large sound could be heard as massive flames shot from his palm. The wind from his upper arm fed the fire in his forearm. He stopped after firing for a couple of seconds and frowned. 'No good. The arm started melting. I need a way to cool it.'

Ed grabbed the water elemental powder and created a water mana-core battery. 'I can't just release this one forward. It would ruin the other two…' He enclosed the water battery into a metal sphere with holes in it, like he used previously for his old arms steam core. He welded it into his hollow shoulder in a way that allowed it to rotate freely. Then he created a wall that blocked off his upper arm from his shoulder. 'Now I just need pipes to cool the rest of the arm.' He molded the entire arm to have pipes that ran all the way from the hand up to his shoulder. It caused his arm to have a lot of grooves in the metal. It looked like someone welded a bunch of pipes together into an art piece resembling an arm. The water battery fed the pipes water to cool down the arm. Each pipe ran down the length of the arm and curved back towards the shoulder. The end of the pipes stuck out of his shoulder as exhaust pipes. Once the water flowed back up it would exit the shoulder as hot water or steam.

”That should do it!” Ed smiled. ”Now for the other arm and the legs!” He repeated the same process to create the other arm and the legs. When he was finished he aimed both arms towards a wall and fired. Large streams of fire slowly melted the wall. When the arms started turning red from the heat, Ed sent mana towards the water battery. Water poured through the pipes and steam exited from the exhaust pipes on his shoulders. The arms slowly returned to normal while fire still poured out.