CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"We're terribly sorry… aniki," dark hair, goon 1, and goon 2 apologized as they placed their heads on the ground, bowing in dogeza.
Rio just facepalmed at that address. "I'm not your big brother, this isn't the Yakuza." Silly kids like them may have never seen a real gang in their lives; the only thing they would have as reference were old Yakuza movies.
"WE'RE TERRIBLY SORRY, ANIKI." The trio shouted out as they kowtowed once more. A large tick mark appeared on Rio's head. He wondered if the beating he gave them had driven them senile.
"Just don't let me hear that you've been bullying anyone else, okay? If I get word that you've been making trouble, I'll have to deal with you myself, and I won't be as merciful next time," Rio declared solemnly as he slammed his fist into his palm, a surge of electricity sent flying in its wake.
The boys gulped audibly and began pecking their heads in unison. No one would believe that these were the same kids who strutted around the school all day like they owned the place.
"So, ermmm… what are your names again?" Well, that was awkward. The trio just looked up, bewildered—betrayed, even.
"You don't know us?" Goon 2 said in disbelief.
Dark hair was also in disbelief. "Everyone at Soumei knows us, we're famous."
"I'm Yamane Akiro," dark hair introduced himself.
"And I'm Masa Ohara," goon 1 said out loud.
"I'm Kiba Aureleus," goon 3 said a little too proudly.
"And we are the Three Musketeers of Soumei Middle School!"
There was no way anyone was calling them that. It was the most cringy title he had heard all year, and he lived in Japan to boot. Also, that was such an overdramatic English name. Didn't Goon 3's parents know that no one actually went by that name? Rio thought to himself, conveniently disregarding their real names.
"Look, I don't care what you're called, I don't want to see you around here, okay?" Goon 2 seemed to want to say something, but dark hair just slapped him across the head. The trio scurried off while Rio just sighed at the stupid stuff he'd been having to deal with lately.
He put it behind him and headed down to the library.
"GOOD MORNING, MRS. FUYUMI, HOPE YOU'VE BEEN HAVING A WONDERFUL DAY," Rio greeted as he stepped into the library.
A shhh was the only reply he got from the aged librarian. There were rumors that she had been working at the school's library since the schools founding. She was so old that she had become a veritable urban legend. Still, like older people, she was easy to get along with. She usually pointed out where the really good stuff was—easily his favorite staff member at this whole school.
Some would call him old school for visiting actual physical libraries. Now an entire town's worth of resources were readily available, but he much rather preferred the smell of physical books. It was soothing and one of his rare few hobbies.
He headed down to the sciences section. There was something he needed to verify. If he was correct, he would unlock an ability no member of the Flash family had ever gained access to—maybe. He wasn't aware of all the issues of the comics that were out.
For the past few months, he had been intensely researching kinematics, general relativity, and dabbling in material sciences. The first aided his understanding of what he could do, the second showed him the possibilities he could explore, while the last was mainly for ideas for his super suit.
Those were topics he'd need to study for years to achieve the goals he had planned, but that wasn't the reason he was here. Rio pulled out a ladder as he reached for the top shelf for the book he was looking for. Cursing at how high up it was, he stretched out his arms to knock the book off the shelf, his fingers grazing the pages and sending it falling to the ground.
He turned sheepishly to Mrs. Fuyumi, who was already glaring at him icily; he just returned a smile and mouthed a small apology.
Descending the ladder, he picked up the book that was the source of all his current problems as he gently wiped its pages, dust having accumulated for a long time on the cover.
'It was to be expected, but it seems no one has picked this up in years. Understandably though—this wasn't meant for middle schoolers.'
No, it wasn't porn. It was a book on the theory of general relativity.
Rio understood that the higher the speeds he traveled at, the greater the kinetic energy gained. The increased energy would then lead to higher relativistic mass. It was simple, really. Objects in motion generated energy just by going fast—it was the principle behind his infinite mass punch.
What he couldn't understand was how exactly the Speed Force dealt with all that kinetic energy without frying him or having him break all the bones in his arm.
Rio enjoyed understanding how things worked. The Speed Force wasn't entirely logical. One might ask what being worried about logic in a fantasy world amounted to. It was fantasy—bullshit would happen with no explanations for them apart from being a plot device.
This was the real world though. Things didn't just happen, and concrete rules existed for everything—even for speed magic.
"It wouldn't work, huh? If I was outputting this much energy, I could obliterate a continent. It'd be stupid to use that much power to subdue a person, the calculations aren't adding up" Rio mused as he dropped his pen and massaged his temples.
The whole thing about mass earlier? Rio wondered if he could use the mass generated during his runs to somehow affect gravity. Now that would involve bending space time with relativistic mass, it was the kind of thing that wouldn't hold up normally but this was the speed force though so Rio doubted that would be a problem.
Gravity was a force derived by the mass of super large bodies like planets. It was also one of the fundamental forces of the universe. Gaining access to gravity-related powers was just one of the many possibilities of the things he could potentially do.
Generating friction from high-speed movement would lead to heat, which would then generate fire. He could wave his hands and generate intense winds, and he could generate electricity from his Speed Force—so possibly magnetism? Still, if he wanted to accelerate to speeds that would create enough gravity to subdue a 60 kg human, he'd need to be at about 60% of the speed of light and that was a rough estimate at best, the exact calculations for now were beyond him. It was a great frame of reference to know what was possible though, or maybe impossible.
Talk less of the speed of light—Rio had hardly breached the sound barrier, his speed subsonic at best. While his perception was much faster than his body was. A probable side effect of the speed force was that he could think much faster than his body could react to. That was why he could calmly dispatch a bullet when he was younger and way more inexperienced without the speed to match. The speeds of his movements were about 200 meters per second at his best, and he didn't feel good for nearly a week after pushing himself that hard.
It was incredibly frustrating; he worked harder than anyone else he knew on his quirk. Yet research showed that the power of quirks usually rose with age and the body's development rather than hard work. It irked him to no end that some nobody out there could be as powerful as he was without putting in half the effort.
"Still, it wasn't like my training was in vain." Rio waved his hand, and a tangible afterimage was left in the place of where his hand was previously, before fading away like a mirage. He made a small incision on his hand and watched in interest as the wound closed up near-instantaneously.
Maybe he couldn't be as powerful as his full potential allowed because he was too young, but his control continued to grow daily.
While he had no clue on how to go about phasing through matter, generating constructs, sharing his speed, or even tunneling through time—apart from generating constructs, the rest seemed more like science fiction. There wasn't even a proper theoretical framework for those abilities.
He knew that sooner or later he would get them down. All he needed was time, and there was nothing he had now more in abundance than time. In ten years at most, if his projections weren't off, he would have power that surpassed anything this planet had ever seen.
For now, though, he needed to think about how he could breach the speed of sound.