The Aberrations of S.I.D.E.

No. 16: Powers Explained

Remus hunched his shoulders. "Whatever."

Persephone turned back to Virgil. "Second one is altering our appearance entirely---like, making ourselves look like other people. That's easy for Janus, but it's a little trickier for me. I need to be totally calm, and I need to focus a little harder than I usually do."

"Mmm-hmm," Virgil mumbled.

"Level three is turning into animals," she continued. "For Jan, he's either got to be concentrating really hard, or his emotions have to be high. It doesn't take that much out of him, but he is a little dizzy afterwards. For me, I have to put my all into it, and I get really, really tired afterwards."

"It's just 'cause you're younger, though, right?" Remus said. "When you're sixteen, you'll be at his level?"

"One more word and I'm not going to let you talk for a fucking hour, Sanchez."

Remus looked down at his lap.

Persephone scratched the back of her neck. "As I was saying... level four is what me and Jan call 'horror forms.' It's hard to really describe them, but they're meant to inspire fear---and they probably do a lot of damage, but neither of us can hold them together for long enough at the moment. They take a lot out of us." She bit her lip. "I've only done one once, and it wasn't even that complicated---I was just mimicking Venom, if I'm being honest---but the energy required to hold it together for a minute knocked me out for three days. Granted, that was when I was in seventh grade, but..."

Virgil raised his hand.

"Yes, fine, you can talk now," Persephone sighed, doing the hand motion again.

"So that thing he turned into---that was one of his horror forms?" Virgil said, uncovering his mouth.

She nodded. "We started coming up with ideas once we figured out we could do them---though we'd save them for when we were older and had more control. I actually have some old sketches that I did---hang on." She dug out a sketchbook from her bag and handed it to Virgil. "They're not that far in."

"You keep these with you?" he questioned, thumbing through it.

"We need references."

Virgil stopped when he found the sketch of the mouth thing next to one of a being that looked like it was made of pure fire. Both sketches dated back to almost three years ago.

"Oh---that one was my idea," Persephone said, pointing at the fire one with a grin. "I'd been reading up on Norse mythology a lot, and the fire giants sounded so cool, I just had to model a horror form off of that."

Virgil looked up from the sketchbook. "You two are freaky as hell."

"We try to be." She looked a little bit smug at that.

"Were you really out for three days?"

"Again, I was twelve," Persephone reminded him. "Jan's sixteen, and he's done this before."

Remus cleared his throat. "That's, um... that's what Augustass kept pushing him to do. Horror forms are useful for interrogation. And when you're fighting, even though Janus doesn't usually have the energy to actively fight."

"So, wait," Virgil said, furrowing his brow. "He couldn't have actually hurt anyone when he was like that? He was just spouting empty threats?"

"Yeah, but nine times out of ten, people see freakish huge monster and are pretty sure they're gonna get killed if they don't skedaddle," Remus said, waving a hand around. "He'll be able to do damage eventually. We think."