Chapter 9: MIDNIGHT PRACTICE
[DEO Headquarters, Training Room Three — September 2016, 2:17 AM]
The DEO never truly slept, but it quieted. Skeleton crews monitored essential systems. Security patrols ran on predictable schedules. And the training rooms sat empty, waiting for someone desperate enough to use them in the dark hours.
I was definitely desperate enough.
The facility lights were off, but my enhanced vision had adapted over the past few days. Shapes emerged from shadows with increasing clarity. I could see the training equipment, the impact meters, the weights arranged in neat rows along the far wall.
I started with basics. Lifting, punching, squeezing. The same exercises from this morning's official tests, but now I paid attention to something different—the sensation beneath the strength.
When I'd gripped the paper crane, there had been a feeling. A warmth spreading from my palms, wrapping around the object, protecting it. The same warmth I'd felt unconsciously every time I touched something without destroying it.
I picked up a weight. Focused on that warmth. Let it flow deliberately, intentionally, instead of relying on instinct.
The weight felt different. Heavier, somehow, but also more present. Like it had gained solidity through my attention.
I squeezed. Watched my fingers dig into metal that should have crumpled. The weight held.
Now the interesting part.
I set the weight down. Stepped back ten feet. Stared at it with every ounce of concentration I could muster.
Move, I thought. Lift. Come to me.
Nothing happened.
I tried again. Focused harder. Imagined the warmth extending beyond my skin, reaching across the distance, wrapping around the weight the way it wrapped around objects I touched.
The weight didn't move.
My head began to throb—a dull ache building behind my eyes. I pushed through it. Extended my hand, palm out, willing the telekinetic field to project.
Move.
The ache became a spike. I staggered, pressed my other hand to my temple.
Move, damn it.
Something shifted. Not the weight—something inside me. A pressure building, seeking release, finding a channel I hadn't known existed.
My eyes burned.
The wall exploded.
Not exploded—scorched. Twin beams of red-orange energy lanced from my eyes, carving parallel lines across the reinforced steel. The light was blinding, the heat intense enough to make sweat bead on my forehead.
And then it stopped.
I dropped to my knees, palms against the cold floor, head splitting with the worst migraine I'd ever experienced. The room smelled like burned metal and ozone. My eyes throbbed like they'd been filled with hot sand.
Alarms started wailing.
Perfect. Just perfect.
I tried to stand. Made it halfway before my vision swam and I crashed back down. The heat vision had taken something out of me—drained whatever solar reserves I'd accumulated, leaving me hollow and shaking.
The door burst open. Kara flew in, cape streaming behind her, ready for combat.
She found me on the floor, hands pressed to my temples, scorch marks decorating the wall behind me.
"What are you doing?" Her voice was sharp, but the combat stance relaxed when she registered the absence of threats.
"Trying to be useful," I managed. The words came out slurred. "Didn't go as planned."
She crossed the room in two strides, crouching beside me. Up close, I could see her expression shifting—anger, confusion, something that might have been concern.
"You have heat vision." Statement, not question.
"Apparently."
"And you decided to test it alone. In the middle of the night. Without supervision."
"In my defense, I didn't know it was going to happen." I tried to meet her eyes and immediately regretted it—the light was too bright, even the emergency lighting stabbing through my skull. "I was trying to move a weight. With my mind. The heat vision just... appeared."
Kara was silent for a moment. Then she stood, walked to the water station, filled a cup. Brought it back and pressed it into my hands.
I drank. The water helped—cool and grounding, something physical to focus on while my brain tried to reassemble itself.
"The migraine will pass," she said. "First-time heat vision activation is always rough. Your optic nerves aren't calibrated yet."
"Speaking from experience?"
"I set three couches on fire when my powers first manifested." A ghost of a smile crossed her face. "My Earth mother was not pleased."
I finished the water. Set the cup down carefully. The room had stopped spinning, mostly.
"I need to control this," I said. "Before I hurt someone. All of it—the strength, the vision, whatever else is waiting to surprise me. I can't just sit in a cell hoping it all works out."
"So you sneak into training rooms at 2 AM and trigger uncontrolled power surges?"
"You have a better idea?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she studied me—really studied me, like she was seeing something for the first time.
"You're not what I expected," she said finally.
"Is that good or bad?"
"I don't know yet." She offered her hand. "Can you stand?"
I took it. Let her pull me up. Her grip was firm, impersonal, but she didn't let go immediately—waited until she was sure I had my balance.
"Thank you," I said. "For the water. And for not... I don't know. Leaving me here."
"You're my responsibility now. J'onn made that very clear." She stepped back, arms crossing over her chest. "If you want to train outside official hours, you need supervision. Someone who can intervene if your powers decide to go haywire again."
"And you're volunteering?"
"I'm offering to not report this incident, on the condition that any future midnight training sessions include me." Her expression hardened. "One time. Understand? If I catch you doing this alone again, I'll lock you in containment myself."
"Fair enough."
She moved toward the door, then paused. Looked back at the scorched wall, at the training weights I'd been practicing with, at me still swaying slightly from power depletion.
"You really were trying to move objects with your mind?"
"It's something J'onn mentioned. A field effect, connected to my strength. I thought maybe if I concentrated hard enough—"
"You'd develop telekinesis through sheer willpower?"
"When you say it like that, it sounds stupid."
"It is stupid." But her tone had softened. "Also not entirely impossible. Daxamite physiology isn't well understood. You might have capabilities even your own people didn't know about."
"That's either encouraging or terrifying."
"Usually both." She opened the door. "Go back to your quarters. Get some sleep. We'll start proper training tomorrow—and I mean proper training, with protocols and safety measures and someone who knows what they're doing."
"Kara."
She stopped.
"Thank you. Really."
For a moment, something flickered in her expression—not warmth exactly, but the potential for it. An acknowledgment that maybe, possibly, I wasn't the enemy she'd expected.
"Don't make me regret this," she said.
Then she was gone, and I was alone with a pounding headache and scorch marks on the wall and the first genuine hope I'd felt since crashing into this world.
The water cup sat on the training room floor. I picked it up, carried it to the sink, rinsed it out. Small, normal actions. Grounding myself in the mundane while my mind raced.
Heat vision. I had heat vision. That was a core Daxamite ability, something that should have developed naturally over time with solar exposure. But mine had triggered early, explosively, in response to pushing my telekinetic limits.
The powers were connected somehow. The field effect J'onn had described, the strange strength, the heat vision—all pieces of the same puzzle.
I just needed to figure out how they fit together.
Tomorrow, Kara would train me. Actually train me, not just lecture me about Earth customs while looking for reasons to distrust me. It was progress. Small, fragile, easily broken—but progress nonetheless.
I walked back to my quarters through quiet corridors, emergency lights casting long shadows. My eyes still ached. My head still throbbed. But underneath the pain, there was something else.
Possibility.
I'd come to this world knowing the outline of Mon-El's story. The romance with Kara. The invasion. The exile. The eventual return. But this—the tactile telekinesis, the early power development, the connection between abilities—none of this had been in the show.
The story was changing. I was changing it, just by existing.
The question was whether those changes would make things better or worse.
I reached my quarters, collapsed onto the bed without bothering to change clothes. Sleep pulled at me—power depletion was no joke, apparently, leaving me drained in ways that went beyond physical exhaustion.
Just before unconsciousness claimed me, I thought about the paper crane still sitting in my pocket. Perfect folds. Impossible precision. Evidence of abilities I was only beginning to understand.
Tomorrow, training with Kara.
Tomorrow, answers. Maybe.
Tonight, I slept—and for once, the dreams were quiet.
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