Jericho Heiko: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio (United States of America)
Jericho sat on the hardwood floor of his room, scratching his stomach with his left hand and bouncing a blue racquet ball off of the white walls, playing solo catch. The impact made a hollow pop kind of noise, a kind of noise Jeri always enjoyed. Music played inside the room loudly, the sound bouncing off of the walls in an attempt to escape somewhere. It was loud enough to be heard outside the door. Jeri didn't like the music playing right now, he couldn't like it because it sounded like chaos. What the genre was... He didn't want to know. It was like some kind of mix between Screamo and Techno. It was a concoction of Hell. Jeri did his best to ignore it, focusing his eyes and mind on the hard, blue ball. He had this music on as a courtesy.
Next to him was his best friend in this State, Peter. He laid out on his stomach, glasses balanced on the tip of his nose and eyes looking bored as ever. His blond hair rested over his eyebrows, which were colored black. He wore just a white shirt which on the front would read "Getitout!" in big, bubbly, rainbow letters--or was it more of that psychedelic pattern?--with a little mention of the organization in small print under the main picture. He had blue jeans on and his legs were lifted in the air, crossed at the ankles. Peter's head rested on the palm of his hand, and his brown eyes stared down, half-lidded at a notepad he had under him. He scribbled down information with light strokes and with a neat hand. Jeri thought his position made him look like a girl. A really, really bored girl.
Jeri tossed the ball harder than he had been and shouted a groan. The ball bounced back with that same hollow pop and returned to his hands within a second. He turned half his body towards Peter, frowning.
"How can you even listen to this stuff!?" Jeri asked with a tone close to disgust. Peter tilted his head towards him lazily.
"Huh?" He lifted his head off of his palm, letting his hand drop, only held up by his wrist. "What?" Jeri groaned and repeated his question. Shrugging, Peter looked back down at his work. "I don't know," he said in monotone. "It's not bad and it helps me concentrate."
Jeri rolled his eyes. Helps him concentrate. "Dude, you look bored as f**k. Will you quit that already? Jesus. You haven't said a thing for thirty minutes!" Peter dropped his arm and looked at Jeri again, changing his expression to one that seemed to say "Are you out of your mind?"
"Bored? I'm not bored. I'm concentrating."
"Who concentrates like that?" Seriously, Peter had the dullest looking "concentration face". Instead of furrowed brows and focused eyes, he looked detached and far away as if he were daydreaming. Peter grunted and rolled his eyes, smiling.
"I do. Besides," he looked back at his notepad, grabbing it in his hands and lifting it up like it was some kind of relic, "how could I be bored? You're the most interesting thing in the world right now!" Peter's bored eyes were now lit with fascination, staring down at the words he wrote on the paper. "And," he continued, rolled from his stomach onto his back and then lifting himself into a sitting position right next to Jeri, although somewhat crooked, "I think I'm figuring this out!"
Jeri grunted and looked back at the wall, starting up his game of catch with the paint. "Sorry, but I already figured it out." Peter's eyes widened in belief and awe and then almost as quickly went down into a look almost annoyed.
"You're not a goddamn pyro," he said without humor, looking at Jeri above his glasses. He looked stern, like a schoolteacher having a talk with a rowdy student.
"Oh come on!" Jeri caught the ball and looked at Peter smartly. "How could I not be?" Peter's face took on a look of disbelief. He looked at Jericho as if he were completely out of his mind, completely stupid. He grabs his notepad and faced it towards Jeri, pointing at the written words.
"Uhm, all this!?" He shoved it towards Jeri's face and he pushed it back. He looked unimpressed. The notebook held a list of everything they did with Jeri's power, ever test, and every little spontaneous thing that went on with him. Peter had made calculations on it too. Jeri could see the math in the margins.
"That doesn't mean anything." Jeri told Peter, dismissing his little notebook.
"Doesn't mean anything!? Doesn't mean anything!?" Peter was getting worked up now. "This means everything! The tests and the trials... None of this is for nothing you know! Everything written in here goes away from your little fire fantasy."
"Uh-huh. Except I burped fire yesterday," Jeri smiled somewhat triumphantly. Peter rolled his eyes.
"Whatever. Just..." Peter paused for a moment, "Just forget the pyro thing for a sec. I want to try something." Jeri knew that meant he won, but his interest was too high for him to say anything. "Your ball," he said, pointing at it, "throw it at the wall."
Jeri looked at Peter oddly, but seeing him not changing his mind or explaining anything, Jeri did as he was told. The ball made the pop! noise and was back in his hand.
"Keep doing that," Peter told him. Jeri did, still unsure of what all this was about. Peter didn't say anything for several minutes, just watching. Jeri couldn't stop wondering what in the world he was trying to do, but he stayed quiet, knowing that if he stopped Peter would not only get angry, but not tell what this was about. "Okay now..." He finally said, going slow as if he were afraid speaking quickly would throw off some fragile balance. "Focus on the ball, just the ball. Nothing else." Okay, focusing... He still didn't get what this was about. Kind of hard not to think about it. "Now, think about absorbing the ball's energy when you catch it."
"Wait, you want me to focus on the ball, just the ball and think about absorbing something? Sorry, but that seems just a little impossible." Peter groaned.
"Okay, sorry. Do both."
"Okay, but... My arm is getting tired."
"Don't think about your arm, then. Just make sure you throw the ball the same way every time."
"Hold on. Is this one of your make-Jeri-into-a-science-experiment-and-not-tell-him kind of I-want-to-try-somethings?"
"Yes, now focus."
"Could have given me a heads-up. I wouldn't have said no."
"Jeri!" Jericho laughed and continued with his ball throwing, trying to focus now when he wasn't before. He wasn't completely sure if he was doing it right? Focus on absorption. That wasn't as easy as baking pies. Not for him at least with crappy music in the background and so much other stuff to think about, like how he should not think about things, for example. He focused on the sound coming from the ball rather than the ball itself, finding that much less susceptible to distractions. Absorbing whatever he was supposed to absorb (he kind of forgot) was a thought in the background. That hollow pop, now on his mind, became the loudest thing in the room to his ears and in effect, he could suddenly hear the rhythm it made. The metronome pops were somewhat hypnotic to him. For a second, he wondered if he could make music from this. It was at the twentieth hit (by his count, which he started late), that Peter finally allowed him to stop.
"You can take a break now, but while you do, I want you to try and think about releasing all that energy when you throw the ball." Think about releasing the energy. For some reason, the idea seemed ludicrous to Jericho. He had powers now, but even still... The idea that he could just think about it and it would happen? It was awesome, he had to admit, but trying it made it feel impossible no matter how many times he did it. Most of his little abilities showed up by accident so he hadn't gotten used to it. He wasn't sure, though, that he'd ever get used to it.
Jeri lifted his arm to toss the ball, thinking he'd rested long enough. He tried to focus. Release the energy with the ball. He flicked his wrist forward, the same way he'd been doing for the past forty-five minutes. The ball went fast out of his hand, smacking into the wall with loud pop, and flying towards his face with reflected speed. Going fast, its arch was more like a straight diagonal and instead of landing safely in his hands, the hard racquet ball smacked Jeri right in the nose. Jeri made a noise of exclamation and his hands went to his face immediately.
"Sh*t!" He exclaimed through his hands. "What the Hell!?"
"I told you to toss it, not beam it!" Peter told him in an agitated way. "You have to be constant in experiments not go all out and whatever!"
"I didn't beam it!"
"Really?"
"Yeah, really! Why would I try and break my own nose!?" For a smart kid, Peter was really stupid sometimes. Jeri frowned as he checked his nose, making sure he didn't do any damage. His eyes traveled to Peter who was vigorously writing notes onto his notepad. Finding out his nose was fine, he put his hands down and eyed Peter. When he was finally finished he looked up triumphantly.
"I think I've got it... Your power, it has to be kinetic. You take in the energy and then release that same force! Maybe... Even harness potential energy as well!" Jeri looked at Peter with a lost look.
"Wait, you lost me. What about the Kinect?" Peter opened his mouth to say it again, but he was stopped by the radio. The music ceased to play and now a smart man's voice was playing. He made another reminder about the Atlantean's need to register and then listed the locations of some of the facilities in major cities. He also put in a sidenote about contacting the local police station for the facility nearest to you.
"Aren't you going to go to that? At least check it out?" Jeri grunted.
"Hell no," he said instantly. "They don't need to know what I can do and I don't want to tell them."
"What about seeing other Atlanteans? Find out what they can do."
"Why would I want to be cramped up with a bunch of fishheads?" Fishheads had been a term created a day after the Atlanteans came out. It was made by (from what Jeri knew) a guy at a gas station. The name Atlaneans naturally implied Atlantis, and when talking about the city in the sea it was easy to find out where the word sprang up from. "Anyways, I don't need cops looking at me weird because I've got a start sewn on my shirt, if you know what I mean."
"Who cares? At least you have something. Man, I'd kill to be able to do this kind of stuff!" And by "this kind of stuff", Peter didn't just mean Jeri's ability. The internet was an information super highway and the cars of eager Atlanteans bragging about their powers sped through the lanes. There were powers from the cool, to the goofy, to the stupid, and just plane outrageous. Jeri was not one of the hundred or millions putting his power out on the net. Mostly because they still weren't sure what it was, exactly.
"You wouldn't be the only one," Jeri commented, remembering some news reports springing up here and there. People were crazy, they really were. There seemed to be occurrences here and there about people attempting to gain Atlantean powers when they hadn't had one on their own. There was just one earlier in the week about some crazy doing it. The methods they discovered were... Jeri and Peter shuddered, both thinking the same thing. With stuff like that, it made Jeri glad that the protection of a military base kept the weirdies from getting in.