Chương 22: Whatever, I Have Tiger Muscles

I shift my body back and forth, frowning in the mirror as I try to look at myself from every angle. I've been going on trips to the zoo for the past three days now, and last night I cleared out their entire catalog of animals. My twitchy, shapeshifting jitters have been all the worse now that I have so many more interesting ideas to work with. I actually ripped my shorts yesterday without even thinking about it, as the constraints of clothing have felt tighter and tighter around my neck.

Obviously, though, I can't just walk around naked.

Or at the very least, I can't walk around appearing to be naked.

So here I am, experimenting with covering my body in octopus skin and trying to make it look like fabric. Octopi (it sounds better than octopuses, bite me) have absolutely absurd skin biology, capable of almost instantly changing not just the color but also the texture of that skin.

Most other animals that can change their skin color, like chameleons, can only apply simple palette swaps and it takes them a long time to do so, in the area of five to twenty seconds, because they control the color of their body through hormone releases into their bloodstream. Octopus skin, however, is directly linked up with my nervous system, letting me apply changes to it with the same speed and ease that I move my own hands with.

Unfortunately, the octopus evolved to camouflage against a background of rough coral, colorful anemones, and peppery sand, not cotton shirts. I can definitely make myself not look naked, just by redistributing fat and making sure the papillae of my skin hang a little at the edges to simulate something I'm wearing rather than just looking like I've painted myself a different color.

This isn't enough, though, because it doesn't believably look like the uniform, and since this is the military I get the distinct impression that I am very much supposed to wear the uniform, even if it is only a white shirt and short shorts. People are going to ask me questions if I walk outside wearing a solid pale mass of slightly shiny pseudo-shirt with little bumps on it in a vain attempt to look like finely woven fabric.

Oh, well. I guess I'll just fill out a power provision request form for being allowed to walk around naked. It's a little weird, but I already know from experience that sometimes I will just have to grow bigger in a fight, and whatever I have on my person has to be able to accommodate that or it will get left behind in pieces. Maybe they have someone who can design me some sort of stretchy super-suit, but I genuinely don't know if that's possible outside of movies.

A knock on the bathroom door startles me out of my thoughts.

"Come on Lia, I need to pee," Christine mutters groggily. Right, right. I quickly put my real clothes back on and open the door for her.

"Hey, nice job getting up on your own!" I smile at her.

"It feels vaguely condescending to be praised for something like that," Christine grumbles, pushing past me towards the toilet.

"Any improvement is worthy of praise," I insist.

"You don't need to be ashamed of doing better."

I exit and shut the door to the bathroom, leaving behind her wordless grumbles. Today's experiment might have been a failure so far, but I'm definitely going to be doing a lot of experimentation with octopus bits from here on out. Those things are awesome.

I find that thought, and the genuine excitement behind it, to be vaguely surprising and kind of uncomfortable. I don't really get excited about things very often, and I'm not entirely sure what to do with the giddy feeling in my chest.

I idly shift and unshift a few more things as I wait for Christine to be ready to head to breakfast, growing tentacles out of my scalp in place of hair, experimenting with a dozen different kinds of animal eyes to try and find my favorite, shifting the muscles underneath my skin to try and optimize the best mix of strength and aesthetics. I don't really need to passively walk around with super-strength because I can just give it to myself anytime I don't have it. Still, though, it just makes me weirdly happy?

I like being better than I used to be. I like turning that better state into my new norm and then finding something to improve on even further.

I'm a firm believer in evolution, but one of the stupidest arguments I've heard against intelligent design is 'if all these creatures were made on purpose, why would God make something as absurd as the platypus or horrific as the horsehair worm?' Well, because creating stuff is awesome, obviously. I'm barely scratching the surface of everything I can do, I can feel it, but all this potential inside me is a fount of hot energy, a burning need to keep going, keep improving, keep finding out what I can do next.

If a god created the universe, I can't imagine them not getting addicted.

I almost, almost think I feel something like agreement humming in the back of my mind, the smile of something happy to be understood. But I'm probably just still waking up, last night's dream still sticking to the edges of my mind. I would rather not believe that there's a god poking around in my head, if I can help it.

I feel a familiar prod at the edge of my domain and head over to open the door for Anastasia. I guess I really did take too long in the bathroom if she's coming to get us rather than us going over to get her.

"Hey, Ana!" I greet her, and she grins back at me, her braids bouncing as she rolls back and forth on her feet.

"Good morning!" she greets me back.

"Ready for breakfast?"

"Just about," I confirm, glancing back at the bathroom door.

"I took a little too long getting up this morning."

"Hehe," Anastasia giggles.

"I like your tennycles!"

Huh? I lift the tentacles coming out of my head up in front of my face to check if they're there, and… well, okay, I guess obviously they are. I wiggle them in front of my eyes a bit anyway before returning them to rest on the back of my neck and down my shoulders. I guess I should probably get rid of them and turn them back into hair. I can feel them squirming and curling with next to no input from my conscious mind.

They each effectively have their own brain, as an octopus' decentralized nervous system extends down into each tentacle and I seem to have made the same additions to myself. Lifting up one of my human arms, I poke at some of my suckers and feel them instinctively curl around my finger, a dull thrum of curiosity towards what everything feels like and tastes like with these new, foreign organs.

Oh yeah, did I mention that I can taste through my tentacles? I can taste through my tentacles. So that's weird, but the taste is… different? Like, things that I would expect to taste really bad like, say, shampoo, mostly just taste interesting. Not good, not bad, just… interesting. Unique.

I guess the way my tentacles taste is more about exploring substances than trying to identify what is and isn't safe to swallow; the sensory organs on my suckers did not evolve with the assumption that everything they touch carries an immediate risk of ending up in the stomach like my tongue did. Instead, I feel an almost voracious need to investigate and grab every new thing I can get my suckers on, the entire experience abstractly engaging to the back of my mind.

It's surprisingly easy to ignore these new limbs twisting around and exploring everything they can reach, like background music or a scented candle. It's pleasant, but not distracting. If anything, it makes it easier to focus.

"You know what, Ana? I think I'll keep them today," I tell her, giving her an affectionate pat on the head.

"It's not like people can get mad at me for training my power in the power training building, right?"

"Oh, oh!" Anastasia says, bouncing up and down.

"You should be a baby tiger again!"

I chuckle.

"Unfortunately, I think I will need thumbs for most of the day. Maybe after class?"

"Okay!"

Christine raises an eyebrow at my new hairstyle when she comes out of the bathroom, but she's seen me looking a lot weirder so I guess this doesn't even warrant a comment from her. We head to the cafeteria together like we always do, Anastasia and I collect our double servings of casserole, and Christine immediately separates hers into component parts before dropping everything back onto her plate sorted and separated.

I hesitate. Honestly, casseroles have been pretty difficult for me to eat in the past, with so many different flavors and textures all fighting for supremacy in my mouth. After a bit of arguing with myself inside my head, I give in and push my plate closer to Christine.

"Mind doing me?" I ask.

She blinks at me with a far more surprised expression than the tentacles elicited.

"Uh, yeah, sure," she agrees, and my food expands up into the air, every individual ingredient snapping into a position sorted by type rather than relative location. Christine has been getting a lot better at using her power, ironically seeming to make the most progress whenever it is in the service of allowing her to be a little more lazy. Or… maybe not lazy. She's learning better when it allows her to do something more efficiently. I should phrase it like that.

Everything drops back onto my plate in discrete little piles, and I give her a nod and smile of thanks before chowing down on everything one at a time. Goodness, this is a lot more enjoyable. I really don't like casserole. I can eat it normally, I've proved that plenty of times now, but I really don't have to, do I? So why have I been? Trying to seem normal has been a lost cause from the start.

"My my, I love what you've done with your hair," Ed says, grinning at me as he wheels up to the table.

"Very chic, very avant-garde."

"Why thank you, Ed," I say, pressing my fingers against my chest in an exaggerated, flattered expression.

"I must introduce you to my stylist."

"I would love to meet them and exchange fashion tips! I'm really hoping gray will be in next season," Ed agrees, gesturing to his salt-and-pepper hair.

"I think it's in season now," I say, matching my tentacles' color to his hair. He lets out a reedy laugh and starts eating breakfast.

"Well, good morning Medusa," Maria says, sitting down next to him.

"How are the snakes today?"

"You know, I could probably actually do that," I say, trying to think about exactly how all the body plans would connect together. I'd have to remove the digestive systems in the snakes so they don't end up pooping in my brain or something… although, maybe I could just extend the tracts down around my spine until they meet up with my esophagus… I start twisting my head around a bit, trying to figure out exactly how much space I would need to free up for that kind of thing.

"Oh crap, you're not joking, are you? Please don't, I'm really afraid of snakes," Maria backpedals.

"You seriously think you can do that? Just turn yourself into a chimera? I mean, I guess you're already doing it…"

"No I'm not," I insist.

"The chimera is a completely different mythological beast. Although yes, I could probably turn myself into one of those too. That one would be way easier, actually. Only one snake to manage."

"Oh no, please, I really mean it about the snakes," Maria whines.

"You should not have let her know one of your weaknesses," Christine says.

"She never forgets stuff like that."

I quickly shapeshift my tongue and flick it out of my mouth, thin and forked as I taste the air. Though rather than freaking out, Maria just turns beet-red and looks away from me. Huh. Not really what I was expecting. I wonder what's up with that. Christine suddenly starts choking on her food, hammering a fist against her own chest as she tries to stifle a laugh between every breath she manages to take.

This is a sex thing, isn't it? Everybody only reacts like this when it's a sex thing. I just flicked my tongue out, what does that… no, wait, I get it now. Agh. Not what I meant, not what I meant!

"Oh my god, you two," I sigh, trying to sound annoyed enough to convey that the innuendo was very unintentional while not sounding so annoyed that I seem judgmental or offended. Of course, I still find myself as unable to look at Maria as she seems to be unable to look at me.

"What is it?" Anastasia asks.

"What's going on?"

"Gross teenage stuff," Christine wheezes.

"Lia is simply demonstrating her only weakness."

I'm suppressing my blush, as is my new habit, but that doesn't stop my tentacles from writhing in embarrassment, wrapping around each other and squeezing as if I could squish the stupid out of my head.

Thankfully, breakfast ends before I can make too much of a fool of myself, and before I know it we've gotten through our first round of classes and lunch. Our group heads out to the practical class field together, chatting away with each other while I experiment with all the different versions of every sensory organ I have access to in hopes of finding my favorite set.

I think I can probably mix different aspects of different eyes together in order to create an optimal ocular system, but the problem there is properly linking it to my brain. Brains are very adaptable, but my brain changes so often that adaptations don't really stick. Using a sensory organ that no particular brain has experience with is like trying to run a resource-heavy program on an old computer. The program is incredible, but it's just not up to speed.

"Well recruits, you've made it a long way," Commander announces, pacing in front of us with a dangerous smile.

"Actually getting you good at using your physics-defying gifts is somewhat beyond the scope of our time together. That will be a lifelong journey for all of you. What we do aim for here, however, is making sure you have the base of knowledge and experience required to ensure that everything you do with your powers is intentional. Purposeful. Controlled. Accidents can happen when people are learning to deal with abilities outside the scope of anything they've ever had in their life before.

But nobody wants a soldier who has accidents. When you leave this little cradle, we want to know that whenever you kill someone, it will be very much on purpose."

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She stops in the middle of our line, hands clasped behind her back as she slowly crosses her gaze over each and every one of us.

"It's taken you all a while, but I think we are officially at that point. And so in celebration of this agency, we'll be having a slightly different class today. Blackburn, Cortez, Folbridge, White! Form up behind me, you are all exempt from this exercise. Everyone else!"

She snaps her fingers and a soldier walks up next to her, holding a hat upside down.

"Draw lots."

Ed, along with three other people, moves behind Commander as instructed, while the person first in the remaining line walks up and pulls a piece of paper out of the hat. When it's my turn to do so, I grab the first scrap my fingers touch and take it out to see that the number two is placed on it. Interesting. I decide to be a little proactive and perform the obvious follow-up step of finding everyone else who drew the number two.

Only one other person fits the bill: a guy named Felix Koch, whose powers I'm pretty sure have something to do with secreting some kind of gross fluid.

It doesn't seem very special. I can do that too.

"Alright, everyone!" Commander announces.

"Welcome to the Fort Moore Power Training School Class of 2056 Single Elimination Tournament!"

What? Wait, seriously? They're going to have us fight each other?

"I am, of course, well aware that most of you have the relative athletic ability of an obese housecat," Commander continues.

"I also know what a concussion is. This is not a literal knockout tournament; in fact, causing any significant injury to your opponent is grounds for disqualification. You will fight to either restrain or dominate. If your domain completely crushes your opponent's, you win. If you grab onto your opponent and they cannot break free, you win. If you otherwise prevent your opponent from moving or reaching you, you win.

In cases where none of these conditions seem likely to occur without substantial injury, I will determine who wins. The two of you who drew the number one, approach. Everyone else, line up where you would at the start of class."

"Well, this sucks," Christine mutters as we all line up.

"I'm going to get annihilated."

"Don't count yourself out already," I encourage her.

"Your power is a lot stronger than you think."

She just glumly holds up her piece of paper, which has the number seven on it. Beside her, Anastasia gleefully holds up her paper, which has the same number. I pat Christine on the shoulder.

"Never mind, it was nice knowing you," I tell her.

"I wonder why those four aren't participating," Maria comments.

"I mean, Ed is in a wheelchair, so that makes sense, but what about the other three?"

"Honestly, it might not even be the wheelchair thing," I hum.

"Ed's power straight-up doesn't work unless he has other people to use it on. It doesn't test his abilities to put him in a one-on-one situation. As for the others… my guess is that they have the opposite problem."

Blackburn's power turns things into statues. Not like, stone statues, but it freezes them in place and I don't think he has any way to unfreeze them. If he uses his power on a person, it either doesn't work because they have enough domain protection, or they die. There isn't really any in-between. I'm not entirely sure about the other two, but the fact that I've never seen them practice their powers around everyone else makes me assume a similar situation.

Of course, it's always possible that Ed was excluded because of his disability. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure if I want that to be the case or if it would piss me off. I'd look like an asshole trying to express a strong opinion about it in any case, so I just hope that Ed is happy to sit this out. He probably is; Ed doesn't seem like the type of man who feels like he needs to prove himself to anyone.

Whereas I, meanwhile, am very much going to be disappointed with myself if I don't get first place. I killed an Angel for fuck's sake. Getting bested by any of these morons would just be embarrassing.

The first match is between shadow teleport guy—I think his name is Cameron—and someone else whom I have never really paid any attention to. Commander calls a start to the match and Cameron immediately moves towards the west side of the field, so that the sun casts his shadow along the length of the combat area. His opponent is faster, though. Much faster. His power clearly enhances his speed.

Though he moves as if he is just taking a leisurely walk, he covers distance impossibly quickly, the speed at which his feet move not matching the rate at which he glides across the ground.

As the speedster attempts to grab Cameron, however, his hand ends up swatting straight through Cameron's wrist, which explodes into a cloud of dust. Before anyone can worry too much about whether or not Cameron just died, though, his hand reaches up out of his own shadow a few feet behind the speedster. He grabs onto the edge of the illuminated part of the ground and heaves himself up out of the earth, his body now unnaturally lanky and tall.

In fact, it has the same height and proportions as the shadow his old body cast from the evening sun.

Now that his opponent is far larger, with an enormous stride and an unnatural reach, the speedster backpedals to keep his distance, dodging a swipe from one of Cameron's newly giant arms. Cameron seems content to give his opponent space, resuming his walk west. Why wouldn't he? His now-larger body casts a now-larger shadow, putting him more or less in the same position he started with but better.

The way Cameron moves in his elongated body is disturbing; I've fought giants and I've been giants, and something with that much mass has a fundamentally different presence than something the size of a person. An insect can fall out of a tree and hit the ground almost entirely unharmed, even if it can't fly. A person would be severely injured by that same fall. An elephant, meanwhile, would die instantly from a far shorter fall.

Physics is cruel to the large, yet Cameron doesn't seem to be moving any differently than he did before. It's as if he didn't get any bigger at all, everything else just got smaller.

Not that I think that most of us would be okay if we jumped out of a tree right now. Powers just… make the world not work right.

Eventually, Cameron's shadow is long enough to cover the entire length of our designated battlefield. Then, it's only a matter of using it to hem the speedster in. As his opponent tries to jump over Cameron's shadow to regain space, though, Cameron's hand shoots up from the darkness and latches onto his leg. After a few seconds of the speedster failing to escape, Commander calls the match.

"Group two! You're up next!"

Well, I guess that's me. Felix and I head onto the field, my opponent giving me a cocky smile as we square off against each other.

"Don't feel too bad," he says.

"The rules are hilariously in my favor."

"If you say so," I answer blandly, uninterested in posturing. I kick off my shoes and socks, my clothes growing tight as my body bulges, as much muscle as I can fit into this humanoid frame blooming into existence with a twist of will. I crouch down slightly and wait.

"Begin!"

As expected, Felix waves his hand toward me and emits a glob of grayish goop in my direction. I dodge without much trouble and start rushing towards him, so he responds by backpedaling and coating the ground between us in slime. I hesitate, my path towards him blocked off, and he takes the opportunity to start expanding his area of control, starting with shooting more bits of goop at my feet. Ugh, this is annoying.

If I could just take my clothes off I could turn into something that can fly, but trying to figure out how to create a flying body that can also wear a shirt and shorts has been an exercise in futility so far.

Whatever, I have tiger muscles. I can do the next best thing, and jump.

He clearly isn't expecting me to leap fifteen feet straight at him from a standing position, but I guess his confidence wasn't entirely for nothing because he still manages to react. He jumps away from me as I jump towards him, coating the area he was standing in with more gunk as he rolls into his own trap.

It doesn't seem to affect him at all, letting him rise to his feet immediately, but the moment I land my feet jerk to an instant stop, nearly toppling me over onto my face as I'm unable to skid even a centimeter.

I'm glued down. Again, this makes very little sense. The ground underneath us is grass and soil. Even if I was superglued to the earth, I could just pick up some earth and take a step anyway. Whatever surface-level dirt gets caught on my feet wouldn't really be much of a hindrance. But nope! I straight-up can't move my feet at all.

The goop is also weirdly comfortable? Like, it's just the right temperature, it doesn't have that unpleasant clamminess I'd expect from a heavily viscous liquid, and it hasn't even splashed up between my toes to annoyingly stick them together. Felix's entire domain just kinda feels nice, comfortable and hopeful that I'll enjoy my stay inside of it. I briefly wonder if I've misjudged him. Was he really giving me an arrogant smirk, or were the words that I interpreted as smack talk actually genuine? …

Nah, probably not. People aren't that nice.

"Gotcha!" Felix grins.

"See what I mean? My power is perfect for locking people down."

I ignore him and push my domain down into the goop at my feet, trying to see if I can overpower him enough to disable the adhesion. It's clearly a supernatural property of the liquid, and one that his domain controls given that he can walk through his own slime just fine. I don't succeed at freeing myself, though, so either his power doesn't require much dominance to work or I'm just wrong. Probably the former.

Okay, plan B then.

"As far as I know there's straight-up no way to get out of that other than me letting—woah woah woah what are you doing!?"

I lift up the top half of my foot, leaving the stuck bottom behind and reforming it before taking a step. Then I free my next foot, leaving the stuck flesh behind from it, and so on as I approach my opponent.

"Oh my god," he says, cringing back and retreating from me.

"Oh my god, holy shit, are you alright?"

"Yep," I assure him. What a fucking baby. I'm killing off the bottom parts of my foot and reforming the flesh underneath to be relatively stable before I lift my leg. I'm not even bleeding when I do this. It barely hurts.

He takes another step back and I shift my right hand into a long mass of tentacles, reaching out to try and grab him before he can run away further.

"Nope, nope, nope," he squeaks, and the ground underneath me stops being adhesive.

"I forfeit."

Hmm. Commander never actually mentioned whether or not it's legal to forfeit. Just in case, I keep advancing on him until she calls the match.

"Morgan!" she snaps at me.

"You win by forfeit."

Oh, alright then. I drop my arm and shapeshift my hand back into place, a ripple of scales passing onto and then off of my skin.

"Good match," I nod to him.

"Your initial tactic was okay, and it still slowed me down. You probably should have tried coating my whole body with that stuff once you made it harder to dodge. It would have been a lot more costly to replace my entire epidermis."

He just gives me an uncomfortable stare. I guess that makes sense. Most people don't like to get advice right after losing. It's a bad habit to not look for ways to improve when you fail, of course, but that's just how people are.

"Okay, now the two of you clean up the field of the mess you left on it," Commander orders.

That seems to snap Felix back to attention, and he retracts his entire domain, the goop vanishing wherever his power no longer touches. I walk over and retrieve the now-unglued chunks of my own feet that I left behind, wondering what exactly I'm supposed to do with them. Part of me is tempted to… eat them? And I mean, in terms of efficiency that's a pretty good idea, but that would probably make a few people vomit if they saw me do it.

I guess I'll just carry them back with me into the line and surreptitiously feed them to a mouth I form on some other part of my body. That should be doable, right? It'll be a fun way to pass the time between matches, at the very least.

Man, this is such a weird thought process to have. It is absolutely insane that my life has reached a point wherein I am considering eating my own discarded dead feet, but like… it's optimal. My power is limited based off my own biomass reserves, which have no known upper limit but can very much run out.

Eating everything I can get away with eating is the best way to prepare for future engagements, and my life from here on out is more or less just going to be a very long string of future engagements rapidly becoming present engagements.

The idea of eating my own discarded flesh is a little gross to any human brains I use, but at this point I have fewer available human brains than I do other kinds of brains, and I know I won't mind at all if I just swap over to one of the more cannibalistically inclined options at my disposal.

I suppose I could be even more optimal, though. Like… maybe I should grow a part of my body designed to attract and catch insects. It wouldn't really be a fast method of gaining more biomass but every little bit adds up. Heck, I can digest the grass on the ground now, come to think of it. I bet Commander would yell at me if I started eating her lawn, though. Could I eat a tree?

I've definitely picked up biological information from a few tree parasites here and there, but I'm not sure how much actual biomass I would get from chewing wood. Presumably, I am using the specific materials and chemicals that I eat in order to form the body parts that I make. Does wood have the proteins and minerals and other components that I use to grow body parts? I don't have any idea. I'll have to look that up at some point in the future when I actually have internet access.

Maybe I'll chew on a two-by-four at some point in the meantime, just to see what happens.

These are all questions for later, though. Cameron and I won the first two matches, so Cameron will be my next opponent, assuming a normal tournament structure. How can I stop him? His ability to teleport to any location in his shadow makes him very hard to restrain, and I doubt I can just act weird enough to intimidate him into surrendering. I wasn't even under the impression that was an option, I just sort of did it by accident. So how can I actually win?

I guess the first question is 'what happens if I stop Cameron from exiting his shadow?' Normally, he leaves behind some sort of creepy husk to continue casting the shadow that he crawls out of, but what if I force him to stay inside it while the husk disintegrates? What if I move the light source while he's in the middle of trying to emerge? I'm not sure I can risk figuring out the answer to those questions, because if what happens is really bad for Cameron, I'm disqualified for hurting him.

That's not really an option.

…Because it hurts Cameron. It's not an option because it would hurt Cameron. Not because it would disqualify me. Right, brain? What brain am I even using right now anyway? Whose is this? Oh shoot, 'who' isn't even the right question, is it? It looks mostly like an alien brain, but there's also… wait, when did I start mixing them?

"Begin!"

Oh, the next match is starting. I quickly switch back to Lia's brain and resolve to investigate this later. Hey, Peter's fighting! Kick his ass, other guy!

Man, I probably should have learned some of these people's names. I'm just not really in the habit of introducing myself to others, and nobody other than Maria and Ed has gone out of their way to introduce themselves to me. I get the impression that a lot of people are scared of me.

That's kind of a weird thing to think about. Julietta, the legitimate threat. I know it's been the case for a while now, but it still doesn't feel like me. I'm just trying to use my power in the best way I can. It's not my fault that it's weird.

Speaking of powers, the guy currently fighting Peter uses his to pull a bunch of humanoid dirt monsters up out of the ground, their bodies flash-solidifying into imposing stone golems. He makes half a dozen of them, each nearly eight feet tall, and they rush towards Peter simultaneously. For his part, though, Peter just stands there with his hands in his pockets, wearing his usual shit-eating grin.

Damn. I was really hoping Peter would lose.

The golems surround him on all sides, closing in and forming a solid wall of stone around him. In any normal situation, this would be the end of the match, since golem guy can win by preventing the opponent from moving or reaching him. Against a lot of the powers here, he probably would have won, but I can tell from Peter's dumb face that he is supremely confident how this match is going to go.

Sure enough, Peter just walks right out of the encasement.

The absolutely wild thing about this is that it is neither an exaggeration nor an understatement. Peter walks forward, and the stone that would normally be impeding him simply doesn't.

He doesn't phase through it, he doesn't teleport through it, he walks through it, pushing it aside like it was a wall made of bubbles and leaving behind a Peter-shaped hole.

It wasn't even a show of strength. He didn't hit the wall, or otherwise generate enough force to break it. He just strolled leisurely through it and reality simply lacked the means to stop him. I see what he meant now, when he described his power to me. Not invincible, although that is a pleasant side effect.

Inviolable. Unable to be broken or infringed. Peter is an immovable object that can move.

And I need to figure out some way to stop him anyway, because there's no way I'm letting that smarmy bastard beat me in the third round.