It took Freddy a few moments to catch up with where he was and to realize what was about to happen, but when he did, he felt strangely at peace with it.
He could have traded far worse things for an opportunity like this.
The clinic had a typical sterile vibe, with nurses wearing white coats and carrying stacks of papers around. He had no fond memories of hospitals, as the last time he was forced to go to one was when he had a near-lethal fever. The treatment and subsequent medicine halved his savings, and he didn't even get paid time off from work.
This place gave off a distinctly different atmosphere, however. While that hospital had been falling apart at the seams, with tired employees patrolling the hallways and sick patients waiting in long lines, this place looked more like an idealized version of a clinic, one primed for a movie set or something.
To be fair, he wouldn't expect much else from a wealthy gated community.
Matt took him to a door near the entrance, and he was told to enter. The assistant would be waiting for him outside, it seemed.
He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
An aged-looking man wearing glasses sat at a desk, his ear-length black-accented-by-gray hair tucked behind his spectacles. His posture was great, and although he appeared somewhat meek, he was balanced and composed, with a healthy complexion and bright eyes.
He smiled the instant he spotted Freddy enter and got up to shake his hand. "Greetings, Mr. Stern. I'm Dr. Leonard Garfield. Pleased to meet you," he said in a hearty, surprisingly loud voice, giving Freddy an almost painfully firm handshake.
"I'm uh... pleased to meet you too, Doctor."
"Come on, sit," the doctor urged him, rushing to his desk. "Don't worry, today will be a simple health examination."
That made him release the breath he didn't even know he had been holding.
The man chuckled a bit at that.
He looked down a bit, gathering up the courage to ask the man a question, but before he could open his mouth, the doctor spoke. "As I said, there is no need for worry. You're in good hands."
"Will I... Will there be side effects?"
"Yes," the doctor confirmed bluntly, nodding. "That's just how the human body works. However," he said while tearing a piece of paper out of the notebook he was writing in, "it is my job to make sure you never notice them. And I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty damn good at what I do," he bragged with a smile and a cheeky wink. "Just relax."
The man asked him numerous questions regarding his health and lifestyle habits. The doctor frowned enough times to make him realize that he had been living quite an unhealthy life up to that point.
After that, the man extracted a few vials of his blood. It hurt a bit, but he was a big boy, so he endured it. The man left the room for a few minutes, taking the samples with him, and returned shortly with a chair, which he sat in next to Freddy. "Now, Mr. Stern, please take your shirt off."
He complied.
The man placed a finger on his sternum.
He felt a sensation that reminded him of what Madame had done to him when they first met. A squirming warmth oozed its way into his chest cavity, and he felt like his lungs and heart were being held up by gentle, firm hands.
"All right, now take a few deep breaths."
He complied again, breathing deeply until the man told him to stop. The doctor then got up, stood to his right, and placed his right palm on his chest while putting his left palm on his back.
"You have a water affinity, right?"
Freddy nodded.
"Good. Please use your primary tempering technique."
"Uh..." He hesitated. "I used up all my essence, so I'm pretty drained."
"It's all right. Even a second is fine if you can manage."
He could, so he did, and the man nodded after feeling him use it. "Ah, generic water body, good, good." He nodded, taking his hands off. "That will be useful." He returned to his desk, but he suddenly paused and turned around. "Just to make sure, do you have any other affinities?"
"No, why?" Freddy asked.
"Some people tend to hide them for personal reasons," the doctor said, shrugging. "I'm a medical professional, so I wouldn't be telling anything to anyone, and knowing would make my job a lot easier," he said, and then, with a strange tone, he added, "especially if you have the blood affinity."
That made him pause for a moment. "No... I don't. I assure you."
"Oh, all right." The man nodded, taking his word for it. "Also, I advise you to refrain from attaining new affinities during the next six months."
That claim made Freddy perk up. "Is that even possible?"
The doctor nodded. "There are treasures and other rare, special methods that can achieve that, but using any of them could result in serious problems for you, especially in the case of the blood affinity."
"I will keep that in mind, but..." he said, chuckling, "I highly doubt I'll have access to something like that."
"Well, I wouldn't have my reputation if I weren't thorough with my work," he said, heartily patting Freddy on the thigh with a chuckle of his own.
An adult man who appeared to be a nurse walked in, handed a paper to the doctor, and left.
The man looked at the paper, sighing and frowning as he read its contents. After reading through it, he got up, walked over to a nearby cabinet, and pulled out a small collection of what appeared to be medicine containers. Then, he wrote a few things on paper and handed everything to Freddy, who forced a smile on his face.
"I thought today was just an examination..." he said, eyeing the almost a dozen medicines on the table.
"Well," the doctor said with a chuckle. "I don't see a reason to be so afraid of vitamin and mineral supplements."
He winced as he read the label on one of the bottles and flushed red in embarrassment. "Oh..."
There was also a paper detailing the schedule for taking them... as well as an exhaustive list of things he should and shouldn't consume.
Seeing coffee and red meat on the list of things he wasn't allowed to intake, he nearly cried.
"A bit of advice," the doctor added. "For now, use all your essence on the tempering technique, and tell me as soon as it is ready to evolve."
"You mean... I can't train anything else?"
"You can if you want to. But the better you get at using it, the fewer long-term consequences you'll see, not to mention just how much faster you'll be able to grow muscle with the aid to recovery."
That was a tempting prospect, but he wasn't willing to completely give up his right to work on other techniques. "I'll think about it," he said noncommittally.
"One final question," the doctor said, grabbing a paper to write something down. "What is your prime talent?"
That question made him pause. This was the first time anyone had ever asked him what his talent was after becoming an arch. Madame knew, technically, but she inquired about the prime vestige he manifested. This begged the question—wouldn't she have informed the doctor? Or maybe she was too busy for that—
And once he did...
He was a little disappointed. Nobody was here, and it wasn't hard to puzzle out why. Rather than call this a pond, it was more apt to call it a tiny patch of marsh. It was overgrown with tall grass, with even a few trees growing within the pond itself, and there was an unpleasant smell in the air.
A not-so-small part of him was hoping that he would come across some serene, picturesque part of the forest, maybe discover a lonely girl twirling a stick in the water and—
He cut the train of thought off before it went too far in that direction and focused on the present. Luckily, there was a tiny patch of sandy clearing he could sit on...
But it was on the other side of the pond. And there was no clear path to it. He sighed and began the annoying process of getting there. He slipped on the muddy bank with his first step forth and dipped his entire right foot into the filthy water.
"Oh, fuck off."
The wet sock sloshed in his dirty sneaker, and a few minutes later, he made it to the patch of sand.
Once he did, he sat down, took his shoe and sock off to let them dry, and got into a semi-comfortable stance. He did a few rounds of meditation, stopping only after his soul started hurting. There was, indeed, a plethora of water wisps around him, and he was pleased by his progress in collecting them.
Planning to continue his gathering in the Netherecho, especially after he dragged so many water wisps to his immediate vicinity, he left his body—
And instantly returned. Vestiges surrounded him. Froggy, dirty, grimy masses of filth and swamp-related concepts were everywhere, and he wasn't planning on repeating the mistake he made back in his old apartment.
If only Bloodshed was here to act as my bodyguard...
Oh well.
He had no reason to stay here, but he still decided to loiter just a bit longer. The patch of sand was surrounded by thorny growth on all sides, and he wanted to push it away to make a path through it so that he wouldn't have to walk along the pond's edge again.
He needed something to push the brush aside, so he broke a branch off—
Hmm?
A distinct, calming feeling radiated through his body. He broke another branch and then kicked a patch of grass, and the same sensation accompanied both actions.
There were two possible explanations for this. Either mother nature was a masochist, and the "calming feeling" was his reward for being violent with her, or the infinitely more likely explanation—his talent was triggering when he damaged the plants.
"First oysters, and now this?" he mused.
At first, this didn't stand out as anything too special. Just a wacky quirk of his talent, something that—
"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a goddamn second...!"
His talent was triggering against plants!? That was... No, wait, yes? Wasn't this a pretty big deal? When it activated on the oysters, he hadn't thought much about it, but didn't this completely shift the nature of his prime talent?
Healing being only usable in combat was a rather strict requirement. What if he were too injured to fight? Having the option of just kicking some bushes around was—
"Wait," he said out loud, cupping his chin and pacing in circles.
His mind was rushing around a rather important question—what about the healing quality? Every time he used the talent, a minor pulse of soothing energy washed over him. Was this just what it felt like to use the ability...
Or was it actually healing something?
The mere thought of it made his heartbeat speed up. His sore muscles...
Immediately, he grabbed the stick and began smacking it around. He tore leaves off, broke more branches, and crushed grass, trying to do as much damage as possible.
The more he did so, however, the more concerned he grew—after all, not even the faint red scratches on his hands were going away.
Was he not doing enough damage? Or did the healing...?
Rather than jumping to conclusions, he decided to push it as far as it would go.
He put his wet shoe and sock on, pushed through the growth in a rush, and returned to the streets. He found a hardware store that sold machetes and bought one. It cost forty dollars, and he bought it with his own money. Someone could be observing his purchases with the card, and he wanted to avoid suspicious items on record.
As he returned to the forest, the instant he entered the wild area, he started cleaving grass, cutting branches, shredding bushes, and stomping mushrooms. Even some bugs were caught up in his wanton eco-terrorism.
The feeling of power that entered his body was addicting, and he spent far longer than he expected fighting the poor plants as if they were his mortal enemies.
The intensity of the sensation of his talent activating fluctuated wildly depending on what he did. He didn't quite understand what worked best, but he allowed the feeling to guide his actions.
It took surprisingly, even concerningly, long for the faint scratches on his hands to vanish. After he warmed up a bit, the feeling of soreness in his body subsided. And when he finally cooled down...
He grinned.
It wasn't that he felt better after doing this. He felt goddamn perfect. While his arms were tired from swinging the machete around, they didn't hurt. Nothing did. There was no soreness or muscular pain to speak of. Because it fucking worked.
His talent had sped up his muscular recovery!
While a small part of him wanted to share this information with his trainer and doctor, he immediately gave up on that. Based on what his doctor said, this could mess something up. Not for a second did he believe it would endanger him, though.
In fact, he would bet everything he had that the doctor was worried about it hindering the effect of the steroids. If the man's treatment failed to work, it could ruin his reputation.
Now... as long as he followed the schedule, he couldn't be held accountable for any unexpected, weird effects that his talent had... right?
But they had no reason to worry. He would be giving them the action-hero physique they wanted. Because he was about to begin training in martial arts.
As long as he did enough eco-terrorism to recover from his daily workout and then again enough to recover from his personal training, he could dedicate the second part of his day to martial arts.
His trainer would undoubtedly notice something was off, but he could probably bullshit his way out of it. He'd just claim it was related to his NDA-locked secret.
Extremely pleased, he made a mental note to buy a book about martial arts and healing at the store, hid the machete under a patch of leaves in the forest, and returned to his apartment.
He ate a huge dinner, feeling ravenously famished after his machete workout, and then he showered. He grabbed the toothbrush and put it in his mouth while still drying his hair.
The mirror before him was clouded with the steam of his hot shower, so he grabbed the small fan and used it to lift the fog. It wasn't like he needed or wanted to look at himself. It was just—
The condensation lifted, revealing his face, and he dropped the fan. It clanged against the sink and skittered across the ground, the sound of it still blowing hot air echoing through the large bathroom, creating a backdrop that harmonized with the sudden ringing in his ears.
His face, the same face he had looked at countless times, appeared before him. And the acne scars that plagued his skin, the old, nasty pockmarks of his adolescence...
Were almost entirely gone.