Chapter 5: Chapter 4: The Madrigals

Powers, new and old alike, are coursing through me as I regain control of my body. My amplified senses, which were already enhanced by the essences I drank and then again enhanced by the powers of “One For All”, allow me to hear whispered conversations occurring on the other side of my new, and temporary, home. I can also smell a staggering array of scents, from the smell of Colombian food to the wilder scents of the distant river which separates the town from the wilderness that surrounds it.

That said, I have also lost things. I cannot feel even the slightest connection to my old array of ocular eyes, which is itself rather disorienting. I had grown accustomed to the array of eyes that I possess, and suddenly finding myself without any of them is a bit uncomfortable. I also don’t possess my backpack, which is annoying. At the same time my pool of creative energy has been completely refilled which is kind of nice. As I assess my surroundings, all of them, I begin to realize something important…

There are new senses I can feel that are decidedly more esoteric than my bodily senses. My strangest essence, the “Essence of the Unnamed Darkness” tethers me to the dimension that exists within me where items, concepts, and more that I steal are placed, and the one mental window I currently have that is separate from my physical eyes is that of my “body”, within the personal dimension I now own. With a thought I can move that body around the personal dimension but I don’t need anything located within there for now. Though that may change in time…

I can see a number of curious silhouettes within the dimension. These are strange objects that I assume are part of the “Mind Control University” essence as that peculiar essence says in its description that it confers items based on the “Favored Methods” it grants its imbibers great skill in.

The silhouettes are very slowly losing whatever supernatural effect makes them hard for me to discern, and I know that in time they’ll be fully visible to me. I do not know what they do, but I can assume they’ll likely give me the means to gain greater power pertaining to each of the six “Favored Methods” the “University” apparently educates its students in.

I allow the “me” within the village a second to get my bearings. I am currently standing in the shade cast by a beautiful chapel, and in front of me I can see dozens of villagers going about their day in peace. Mirabel Madrigal, the powerless protagonist of the hit Disney film Encanto, sings to a small group of children about her famous family.

I glance at my own hands, and I am surprised to see that my already changed body has changed again. I really shouldn’t be surprised though, as I am in a Disney movie, and my body has been changed as subtly as possible while allowing me to pass as a native of the village. My body has the sort of artistic glow that the talented artists behind the film gave the characters.

I do not bother moving just yet and instead I place an ocular eye on the ground right in front of me. I study myself for a second, and mentally smirk as I take in the features of my tan, toned body.

I stand over six feet tall, a fair deal taller than I was back on Earth prior to drinking the essences I managed to snag from the warehouse, and I have archetypically masculine features. I have a rugged sort of handsomeness, the kind someone might expect to see in a logger or a hermit, which suits me well enough given the time that I been homeless.

As soon as I finish checking myself out, I close the eye and turn inward. This setting is excellent for me because I can steal the abilities of the main characters without any real problems, but unless I plan to turn the entire cast of characters in this film against me from the jump I need to tackle the powers of Dolores first… Her hearing could easily be a problem unless I address it first. But that necessitates me finding her…

That said, I have a number of tools that I can use to either acquire her loyalty or to prevent her from using her powers. And I want to do both of those things. If I can get my hands on her power I can study it and make it easy to create using my creative powers, and if I get her loyalty I can keep her from turning against me or telling her family when I begin to take the powers of her relatives.

I glance at the people going about their business and as I study them I feel my perception of reality slow down a touch. As my view of the world seems to enter slow motion I begin to get strange senses for each of the people. Just by studying them I am gaining a sense for how influential they are and, very specifically, how useful they would be to me. This is a very predatory sense, but it is one that I can appreciate as it allows me to begin to plan and scheme.

I begin to walk out of the shade and when I feel the sun’s full glow on my skin I smile. It is warm out here, and the sun’s rays feels good on my skin. Mirabel is now beginning to try and ignore questions about her own powers, or rather her lack thereof and is becoming increasingly distressed.

I feel a bit sorry for her, as it is unfair that she received no powers of her own. I could change that… Though, at the moment the main powers I could give her are terrifying ones like echoes of my version of All For One, unless I actually sat down and created a superpower using my creation abilities. Unfortunately doing so would deplete the totality of my creative reserves and thus would set me back by close to twelve hours. Still… Mirabel deserves better than she’s got.

No one has noticed me yet, and as I step out of the shadows I begin to spread ocular eyes around me. These handy little beauties allow me to open up mental windows that will keep me informed as to what is going on here as well as allow me to begin to look towards the destination that I most need to understand: “Casita”, the magical home of the Madrigals themselves.

A few of my eyes begin to speed towards the colorful home of my… well, those I intend to victimize even if they are not truly my enemies. I have no real ill-will towards the family but I want their powers and I am willing to take them somewhat forcefully even if I don’t plan to or need to do so permanently.

For a split second I turn inward and begin to use my body that is in my personal dimension to do something rather esoteric. I will the body to manifest “physical” embodiments of the powers in my possession, including brand new ones that I acquired as a result of the latest set of essences that I drank for the sake of studying them.

They appear in the dimension in the form of eldritch runes and almost DNA-like double helixes that float in the air around my second body. The “inner” me begins to examine these runes and curious shapes with an immensely fascinated look on its face. As it studies these powers I sense the creative cost of recreating them begin to drop.

Now is a good time for me to go ahead and practice some of my newer, stranger powers. This is before the plot of the film really gets underway, and I have bizarre new powers that I need to get used too before I can really use them, which is unfortunate since their powers are potentially really handy if I want to get the most out of my time here.

I shut my eyes and I feel my body disincorporate. As my eyes surge towards “Casita”, I feel my body enter the void between dimensions and I am treated to a view of a mental map of the entire region this film takes place in. This map shows everything from the mountains that surround the village to the interiors of homes within the village itself.

I choose to reincorporate in a spot near one of the mountains that protect the village. The very instant that I make this choice I open my eyes and I find myself in front of a massive mountain. I allow my senses an instant to adjust to this, as the village I was just in was loud in a way while this place is remarkably quiet.

I can see an entrance to a mine in front of me that prior to my consumption of either the darkness essence or the quirk essence would have confounded my senses. Now darkness is more an ally of mine than a foe, and so I step into the lightless mine with a giddy smile on my face.

Light doesn’t bother me, but I am a creature of darkness thanks to one of my new essences and stepping into the darkness of the mine feels comfortable in ways that being in the light doesn’t. I feel a familiarity with this patch of darkness seep into me and I begin to walk deeper into the narrow, resource-filled place.

My eyes reach the very edge of “Casita” as I am doing this but when they try to move into the house itself I find that my eyes cannot open in the place. I spend several moments trying to find a workaround, but ultimately I find that I am unable to open eyes inside of the place which is disappointing. At the moment only Luisa and Mirabel are outside of the house, and while I can do a lot with my eyes if I can’t target Dolores I am partially stymied.

It is a bit surprising that the magic that powers the house seems to be able to suppress my more, potentially, devastating abilities but I can still do a lot. I plant eyes everywhere around the house, surrounding it completely and positioning myself so that the instant a Madrigal leaves their home I can target them. I can still see into parts of the house anyway, such as the portion of the place that is outdoors, but I can’t see into any of the rooms aside from through small windows.

Meanwhile I consciously choose to lean into my “Darkness” powers, and as I do so I feel my corporeal body shift and change in the mine. The change is instantaneous, and I go from having a human body made of superpowered flesh, to possessing a quadrupedal form in the rough shape of a tiger with “flesh” the color of midnight on a moonless, starless night.

This transition is odd, but this is an aspect of my strangest set of powers: “The Essence of the Unnamed Darkness”. I practice moving around in this form for a moment, even as I activate one of my “All For One” quirks that lets me perceive my surroundings using infrared thermal radiation. I’m mainly doing this to practice using it, as I can effortlessly see even in the dark, despite the physical impossibility of that. I am a supernatural being, logic is no longer something that constrains me.

I begin to study my surroundings with a curious eye. I am here to practice using my new abilities, and in the case of my strangest ones that means absorbing things. I silently approach one of the walls of the mine and place a paw on it. As soon as I do I begin to feel some of what I am touching silently seep into me, disappearing from this world but entering the same space where my “Inner” self is currently studying my current powers.

The” Inner” me walks over to the stones and dirt I am sending to it and the creature chuckles. As I practice sending things to it, I find my “paws” increasing in size slowly but surely. This makes it easier for me to send more material to my inner self, and I even begin to send things like gold and silver ore in very small amounts.

After several minutes of transmitting plenty of stone and growing I decide to practice something important that I can do in this form: shapeshifting. I visualize my cat-like body becoming an eerie, limbless mass of darkness and as soon as I have this image in my mind and I will my body to shift I find myself floating in midair, as a bizarre darkness-being. I silently float and I chuckle internally.

I visualize spears of darkness coming out of me and I will this to happen in actuality, right before a series of thin tendrils of darkness fire out of me and stab the walls that surround me. They cut thin holes in my surroundings and allow me to send more material to my other self. I relax for a few moments and absorb countless pounds of materials, slowly but surely increasing my size through repetitive “training”, before I decide to practice shapeshifting some more.

I focus and visualize an eye in the middle of the elemental mass that currently constitutes my physical form. Willing it into existence is noticeably easier this time than it has been for me to do this sort of willful shapeshifting, and internally I smirk as I realize that experience plays a real role in the usage of these powers, which I was unsure of until now.

A piercing scarlet eye appears in the middle of my spherical body. This eye is unnecessary for me to physically see my surroundings, but I can appreciate that I can make even organs as complex as eyes with my particular variety of shapeshifting.

I continue absorbing material from the mine walls that surround me while I begin to practice another vital skill: more comprehensive shapeshifting. I will my spherical body to change colors and become bright green. I manage to do it successfully and let out an inhuman laugh as I feel my proficiency with these powers increasing.

The darkness essence is easily my weirdest current essence. I know this essence won’t always be the weirdest one I possess, but it is both tremendously powerful and also incredibly unique. I can already tell that it’ll become a fundamental powerset in my possession so long as I hone it properly.

I begin to fully dedicate myself to my training and as I do time passes. I enjoy shapeshifting and doing so to steal endless tons of natural resources.

The whole time I am training I am slowly and surely pushing myself and enabling my body to steal other things more efficiently and further grow. At the same time, I can feel how expensive each of my powers is for me to recreate dropping in cost, which is very encouraging.

Before I know it the sun is setting outside, and darkness begins to descend on the distant village. At this point I have spent almost an entire day in the mine and I have absorbed countless tons of dirt, rocks, and ore, though I’ve diligently kept my limbless body the same size. My personal dimension is filled with the stuff I took from this mine, from gold and silver ore to endless amounts of rocks and dirt.

When I realize how late it is I blink my one eye and after repeating a process I’ve grown somewhat familiar with by now I teleport to the sky high above “Casita”. I peer downward and I see the festivities that are occurring in the home of the men and women I intend to victimize. Men, women, and children are gathered inside and outside of the home and watch a strange ceremony taking place in the home’s courtyard with rapt attention centered around a small child who is holding Mirabel’s hand as he approaches a staircase.

I can identify all of the Madrigal’s right now, from the shapeshifting Camilo, to the one woman I need to take care with: Dolores, to the almost stunningly beautiful Isabela. Their ages are all appropriately changed as well, with all of them, aside from Antonio, being several years older to accommodate the strange change that has happened to Mirabel. Isabela, the oldest grandchild in the Madrigal family, is only a year younger than me!

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They are all watching and encouraging Antonio, the youngest Madrigal, as he and Mirabel walk towards the staircase on the other side of the courtyard. I know what is destined to happen, and so I know when the best time for me to strike will be.

Antonio, a young boy with thicky curly hair whose skin tone is similar to his father’s, approaches the stairwell with his cousin and he looks up at his “Abuelita” with a mixture of fear and excitement. Mirabel’s face is wracked with grief as she recalls her own traumatic ceremony close to fifteen years ago. It is clear how vividly she remembers the emotions she felt on that day, emotions which no child should ever have to feel.

I feel a pang of pity for her, and so I elect to do something about it. I dip into my pool of creative energy and I begin the eldritch process of using the power to recreate a supernatural ability that I possess: the power of telekinesis. This potent psychic ability is one I possess thanks to demonic auras and to the Mind Control University essence I drank and it was one of the ones that I studied during my hours of training. The version I intend to give to Mirabel is the basic, but still powerful Mind Control University one, which lacks the infernal connotations of the demonic aura one.

Antonio and Mirabel climb the staircase. “Abuelita”, their grandmother and the matriarch of the family, hands Antonio a beautiful golden candle as Mirabel walks past her and over to the side of Felix and Pepa, Antonio’s parents. The two, one an impish man with a charming grin, and the other an energetic middle-aged woman, place gentle hands on her shoulders and quietly thank their young relative for encouraging their son. Antonio was always more like a brother to Mirabel than a cousin.

The boy smiles at his grandmother and takes the candle in his hands for a split second before letting go of the arcane artifact. He then approaches a plain-looking, shimmering door, and Mirabel’s heart begins to hammer in her chest. There is a moment when she almost has a panic attack as a dark part of her mind envisions Antonio failing to gain a power, but I reach out and calm her using the same aura which allows me to be telekinetic as the thing also grants me telepathy.

I transmit waves of calmness directly into her mind, which is not a subtle usage of my telepathy but as I do it I can physically see the young woman beginning to calm down. She refocuses after a few moments, and she watches Antonio places a hand on the doorknob of the door he is front of.

Unlike during Mirabel’s ceremony, the door does not vanish and instead it begins to shift, its design changing to reflect Antonio’s power: an affinity for animals of all kinds. Animal images and an image of Antonio himself begin to carve themselves onto the door and the little boy’s eyes widen in shock and joy as everyone in the village begins to gasp in awe. A beautiful bird, a toucan, lands on the boy’s shoulder and he converses with the thing, clearly understanding its animalistic noises.

Curiously, I can also understand the bird. I know precisely why this is, it’s due to one of my new essences the “Essence of the Superorganism” which grants me the power to use the abilities of all mundane life on Earth. That said this is the first time I have really felt one of the powers of the essence.

The door opens behind Antonio, even as more birds, creatures he invited, appear in the night’s sky and fly towards him. Other animals are distantly approaching the house, and the noises they make cause villagers to gasp in awe and delight even when a jaguar reaches the house and delightedly enters the room behind Antonio.

The villagers begin to cheer, the noise they make incredibly raucous and I use this moment to strike. I reach out with my powers, targeting Dolores, and I feel our souls connect.

She does not have an esoteric ability like I do, and she is both powerless to resist and unaware of my power, as I wrap an eldritch limb around her superpower. I feel the arcane construct that embodies her tremendously powerful hearing squirm as it itself tries, and fails, to resist my power.

I yank the ability out of her, right as the noise of the crowd reaches a crescendo, stealing her power for myself. She does not feel anything, and she enters the room behind her little brother and the rest of her family other than Mirabel, blissfully unaware that she has lost her incredibly powerful hearing.

At the same time, I place an ocular eye on one of her earrings, and unlike with the house this time my eye is able to open. This prompts me to mark the clothing of the other adults in the family with ocular eyes.

I begin to hear everything around me for miles as a result of my theft of Dolores’s power. Noises from every centimeter of the region fill my ears, and for a second I wonder if this power was

Mirabel looks into her cousin’s room, sadly, from right outside of it. I know what the room looks like, it is a nature-centric paradise with a great tree in the middle of it that is perfect for all sorts of animals. I wait several minutes as Mirabel begins to walk away from the festivities and walks out of her home.

She only goes right outside of it, singing about how she’s spent her life waiting for a miracle, and at the apex of her song I use my fairly freeform shapeshifting to transform and take the form of a glorious angel made of light. I begin to descend towards her, and as I approach her I allow myself to begin to glow, using the color-shifting aspects of the “Essence of the Unnamed Darkness”.

I can feel the power I have constructed using nearly all of my creative energy within me, even after reducing its costs by studying my version of it, and I am happy to give it to Mirabel. She deserves to feel like a true member of her family, even before the end of the journey she is going to go on.

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Mirabel Madrigal’s eyes are wet with tears as she sings. She sings a sad song about the hope she’s clung to her entire life, a desperate hope that someday a power would manifest itself in the depths of her soul.

She belts her soul out, and the song she sings, a song that is meant for no one else but her, is overheard by one person and it’s not who she counted on hearing her song. Instead of her cousin Dolores overhearing her, she is overheard by a strange eldritch entity, but one with benevolent intentions towards her even if its intentions are decidedly less benevolent to the rest of her family.

“No Mirabel… You are not too late for a miracle.” A voice says, interrupting her and causing her to look in its direction. Because of her crying she hadn’t seen the gentle glow the winged creature descending towards her has been emanating for several moments, but now that she can see it she is astounded to see a classically beautiful and human-like angel approaching her. She spends several moments looking at the supernatural being, awed by its majestic beauty.

Henry’s angelic form is akin to angel statues and possesses an inhuman beauty. Mirabel is enraptured by the thing’s appearance, and its very presence, and this activates several of the eerier abilities Henry possesses.

His powerful appearance and presence fascinates the young woman, and his words pierce deep into her soul. She is in an easily impressionable state at the moment, and a creature possessing the sort of inhuman beauty of Henry in his current appearance possesses makes Mirabel feel powerful emotions. A subtle psychic aura he possesses magnifies the effects of the significant emotions Mirabel is feeling towards the angel.

“I’m… I’m not?” She asks, after a few seconds. He smiles gently at her, and lands right in front of her. He takes her hands and she gasps as she feels his warmth. Several powers he possesses magnify the intensity of the joy she feels at this moment, all of which are already magnified by the impact of the day she had just been having. The emotional whiplash is significant, but that only helps Henry.

“Mirabel I am a being of creation, and I have come to give you a gift.” Henry explains, lying with almost frightening ease. Mirabel’s heart pounds so hard that even if Henry were a normal human he’d have been able to feel it through their joined hands.

“Long ago you were denied a power, at least as far as you understand it. That is because you have a very special role to play in the days to come. Your home loves you in ways that you cannot imagine, but its inability to grant you a power, at least in the same vein as your mother or your sisters, has resulted in you suffering considerable heartache. Today, I correct that.” Henry explains, this time telling Mirabel truths that she wouldn’t normally realize this early.

Henry willingly gives her the powerful telekinesis he created for her. As he does he begins to glow radiantly, and Mirabel is enveloped in the light emanating from his body. Mirabel feels safer in this light than she’s ever felt, and as it continues to envelop her she feels the power Henry is giving her. The light eventually begins to dim, and Mirabel gazes at the angel, deep, powerful emotions visible in her gaze. The angel smiles back at her, joyfully.

“I have corrected a mistake that has negatively affected you your entire life. You now possess a power all your own, Mirabel.” Henry tells her, after the two silently smile at each other for several moments.

“Reach out and use it. I know you can.” He adds, a second later. Various decorations dot the area around the home, such as pots and other small containers that are filled with gifts for Antonio. Mirabel gazes at one such pot, filled with a traditional soup that Antonio likes. Mirabel’s instincts, alien ones that come with the power, guide her as she lifts a hand in the direction of the pot and begins to emanate an invisible energy that she can direct with conscious thought.

For a few moments nothing happens but then the pot begins to vibrate. Mirabel gasps in delight, before the pot begins to float into the air, freed from the tyranny of gravity, causing the girl to jump with joy. She lets out a delighted gasp of utter victory, amazed by the fact that she can now use a power that is all her own.

The angel smiles at her, but before she can ask him another question he vanishes, disappearing as abruptly as he first appeared. Unbeknownst to Mirabel, Henry has merely used a demon eye to turn invisible so that he can continue to alter events. Mirabel looks around in disappointment before resuming training her abilities. She is relieved when her powers continue to work, and this assures her that she has truly gained new abilities all their own.

Eventually Mirabel reenters her home, and this sets events back on track. Before Mirabel can show off her powers she sees her home crack, tremendous cracks rocking the building and seemingly even dimming the magic of her home and this frightens her, which sends her running to her family. When they come outside to see what has gotten her so worked up the house has mysteriously been repaired. Over the next few minutes her and her grandmother have an intense fight which ends with both of them going to their rooms in anger.

Alma enters her plain room and begins to pray. Her room is a large space, though not nearly as large as Isabela’s room or as Antonio’s room, and it is a mundane master bedroom. She kneels next to her bed, and as she does a figure appears behind her, unnoticed by the woman, thanks to the eerie demonic power he is wielding with ever-increasing ease. The figure is the same pseudo-angelic entity who gave Mirabel a power all her own, disconnected from the candle the majority of the Madrigal’s do not yet realize is dying.

“I suppose I can turn you into my first doll…” The angelic intruder whispers, unheard by Alma. He begins to subtly glow a menacing red aura, as he reaches into Alma’s mind and lulls her to sleep. She falls forward as she falls asleep, her head gently coming to rest on her bed, and Henry smiles at her.

He places a hand on her shoulder and he begins to pour the transformative power he wields as a dollmaker into the woman. The energy seeps into her and is unresisted by the woman as she sleeps for the last time.

Alma’s body begins to change, becoming beautified as she is given an alternate form all her own to shift into and out of. Her normal appearance will always be her human self, but she is helpless to resist being transformed into a doll by the deadly dollmaker and so she is being given a form that is reflective of her in her youth, but accentuated, beautified, and refined.

For several moments Henry’s power pours into the woman. As it pours into her, her very soul is touched by it and all of her priorities, her loyalties, and her love, fades away and is replaced by one thing: utter loyalty towards the figure who transformed her.

Eventually she opens her eyes and smiles at Henry. Henry smiles back at her, even as he reads her mind and confirms that she is his, in every way.

“Hello Alma…” He mutters. The doll’s smile softens and joy fills her eyes as she opens her lips to respond to Henry.

“Hello master.” She tells him, smiling joyfully at the figure who robbed her of her old self.

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