I have to love the New Mutants. I remember getting a minor comic book for them, and seeing how everyone mocked Cypher as a kid. How could someone who could speak every language be any good? Then, they found 'oh, it also counts computer language, body language, the language of love', and suddenly he was overpowered.

For a kid who was always told growing up all they'll ever get to be is a random person in sales with my stupid birth power of "knowing exactly the lowest price that someone will sell something for", it was just what I needed to hear to know I could still have a chance. I knew how my life was going to be. Some people moneyball sports, I'll moneyball powers.

My first plan for this was when this kid at school was pissed all he got was to change the color of things at will. I traded him my Larry Johnson rookie card for it. He thought it was a cheap party trick, I knew how useful it could be...and the second I was able to help capture my first bank robber a few days later after running to their getaway car when I changed a red light to green and got him hit by a car to stop him, I was off to the races.

Next it became "giving the kid who could detach his arms at will five bucks for it. He was happy he wouldn't have to worry about it- I could rip my own arm off and have a baseball bat to whack people with...plus, good luck trying to slice me if I can take myself apart at will. The kid who could eat anything was despondent he had the reputation in school of 'the kid who ate weird things for money' and wanted to change his image? My copy of Sonic 3 later, and now I could chew my way through anything and free myself from anything. That kid who talked to ants who thought it was stupid? Great, I'll take that from you- an army of one of the largest populations in the world, especially with them biting and causing some pain, will do me just fine. Plus, it is more sustainable than the time I bought the power to train bees to fight people- the ants won't die after biting people, and when I got the ability to talk to squirrels you don't know which ones have rabies to hurt the person.

Some of it even gave me some hobbies. Sure, you may not like being able to blow up into a ball and bounce around, but being able to squash people is fine with me...plus, it gave me a nice relaxing hobby of sumo wrestling to clear my head. You don't want to convert sound into light waves? Fine, I'll take it and use it to shock and blind my enemies to stop them quickly...especially when added to when I got the power to shoot fireworks from my hands for a nice quick pyro burst. Someone was unhappy they had really good ventriloquism? That's fine, I'll just use it to throw my voice and distract people.

Enough good powers, and people think I'm just useless and sell me their useless powers, and the more and more it has, the stronger and stronger I get without them realizing. But, I have to go, I'm pretty close to getting the money I needed to buy from the person who can change trash into trees, and I might be able to do it without costing me my chance to create balls to stick to people and subdue them.