Noctis sat restlessly at the docks, the same area where he had encountered Cassius and the Bandit King for the first time. From the time he had acquired these miraculous new abilities to now, he hadn't accomplished much of anything, having been entirely preoccupied with mending his wounds. The stagnation ate away at Noctis, and drove him to go back to the docks where he had experimented with his powers for the first time. With the ability to manipulate and become not just the air around him, but all gasses, Noctis felt more than overwhelmed at where to begin.

Training to use it properly in combat was certainly at option, but from Noctis' perspective, he felt he had a decent degree of control of it already and true progress wouldn't come without engaging in do or die battles with others, as opposed to solitary introspection. With that in mind, he began to think over the almost limitless applications beyond fighting. His initial thought drew him towards towards the properties of gas and it's relationship with the material science he had studied off and on. Perhaps he could even work to make his own unique gas just as Adder had done.

Before any of it could happen though, Noctis needed to find a place to work in peace, somewhere open and out of the public eye. Standing up and moving out of the docks, Noctis proceeded into the storage areas of the Ninth District that surrounded it. Surely there was a number of abandoned and spacious warehouses that were suitable. After a few moments of prowling side streets and alleyways, Noctis found a rather spacious building, a rusty lock chained onto the only entrance. It seemed to be made of solid concrete, with no windows, and it was far enough out of the way that no one would come around regularly. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, Noctis took a deep breath and began to focus. He had only managed to become one with the air once before, immediately after eating the fruit. After bringing himself back together the first time, Noctis was now ready to try and replicate the sensation, this time more deliberately.

Closing his eyes, Noctis started to hone in on the unique nature of his powers, his newly acquired sense letting him feel the air and other gasses around him with astounding clarity. Eventually, Noctis began to replicate the same sensation within himself, and in moments, his body disappeared. He was still able to see, though his vision was far more broad, and his other senses functioned similarly, all except his sense of touch, which had become something indescribable. Carefully, Noctis drew himself, or what he considered himself, against the locked door, pressing along the small gaps and cracks that kept the building from being air tight.

With surprising ease, Noctis found himself flowing into the building. The large single room had a small upper section composed of indoor scaffolding, while a number of long since abandoned crates lined the far wall, dust and cobwebs having accumulated over what must have been years.

Deeming it suitable, Noctis was now faced with the problem of bringing himself together. He had done it once before, and doing it again was much easier. It was a process that now felt natural to him, splitting apart and bringing himself back was something that beyond the initial shock, seemed as simple as breathing. Maybe the fruit simply needed to settle, or his abilities were still developing, but the rate at which Noctis was grasping his new abilities wasn't due to an aptitude or talent on his part.

Now standing in his normal, corporeal form once again, Noctis began to walk the facility and truly take it in. Here he'd be able to truly let loose.

Deciding to treat his ability to manipulate gas from an academic standpoint, Noctis first reasoned that he should try and better understand the composition of the air around him, and it's properties. Slowing his breath again, Noctis closed his eyes and began to focus once more. This time not on the physical nature of the air, but it's make and properties. How it could be manipulated and changed with his powers. At first, the air was almost impossible to discern, it seemed chaotic and blended. As time passed, however, patterns began to emerge and distinct gasses made themselves known to him. The revelation on Noctis part was incredibly exciting. The air around him wasn't just a single entity, but an incredible number of different elements.

Perhaps most surprising was the discovery that the majority of the air people used to breath wasn't even oxygen, but rather nitrogen. Now that he could pick apart different elements in the air around him, Noctis felt as if a host of new possibilities were opened to him. It was hard to not feel like a mad scientist, as Noctis held the world in his fingertips.

His next step was taking specific components and studying them directly. Gradually, Noctis 'pulled' a host of different gasses in concentration and simply observed them, how they behaved and finally, how they reacted with one another. Certain combinations simply did nothing, while others behaved violently. Hours and hours of experimenting just to become familiar with his own power resulted in numerous toxic fumes, small explosions, and near disasters.

After a while, Noctis elected to take a small break to let everything sink in. Walking over to the crates along the far wall, Noctis took a seat while his mind raced. Thinking back to his past study at Goldov's, Noctis recalled the metallurgy behind making steel. How impurities and certain dissolved gasses were removed to strengthen it, while oxygen was often blown through iron to help do so. With his powers, such a process wouldn't require any additional tools and could be done with an unmatched efficiency. Making a mental note, Noctis made sure to remember to tell Devroux, his smith companion. Perhaps the pair could even make something together in the future.

With the basics now firmly understood, Noctis sought to move on to even greater ambitions. Something that could be multi-purposed in both combat and as a supplementary material. His own custom gas. Noctis understood right away that making something as complex as Adder's gas wasn't in the cards, not right away. Instead, Noctis' gas would have to be much simpler, and improved over time. Carefully, Noctis began to pick out certain gasses in the air that he knew reacted favorably together, something that he could consistently generate when needed. From there, he began to recount their properties, what managed to ignite, what was toxic, what was dense and what was stable.

All of the properties of the elements in question was information that even without his new powers, was right up Noctis' alley as a Material Scientist. After a great deal of consideration, Noctis slowly began to draw in the gasses in front of him, manipulating them subtly with his hands to mix and blend in a small sphere in front of him. It was time to put his mental theory to the test. As anticipated, the gasses began to react within the space he forced them into, the color shifting from colorless to a dark and saturated violet. Holding it steady, Noctis slowly lessened his influence over the new gas, to see if it managed to exist naturally in the air without immediately breaking apart. To Noctis' own surprise, the gaseous purple ball not only maintained it's composition, but even it's form for the most part as it slowly descended towards the floor, denser than the air that surrounded it.

The gas that slowly began to spread apart along the floor was unique by Noctis' own hand. It was denser than air, flammable, and when inhaled or otherwise brought into the body, served as a fairly potent toxin. It wasn't nearly as deadly or quick acting as Adders, but the resulting damage it caused over time seemed far more gruesome. Collecting the gas and manipulating it over to one of the cornered portions of the crates, Noctis identified the familiar skittering of rats. To test out his new creation, Noctis let his gas blanket the boxes and began to wait, a mental timer running in his head.

After only a few seconds of consistent exposure, dozens of rats scurried in a panic out from the gas. Clearly the irritant nature of the gas triggered something within their primal instinct to survive, which clued Noctis in. Now to test his hypothesis on the end result, Noctis had to do something that was a bit unethical. Picking out a single rat, Noctis held the gas over the rodent, following it's attempted escape to make sure the gas continued to be taken in. After 30 seconds, the rat began to slow significantly. 45 seconds in, the rat stopped moving entirely, dead. After a minute, the effects of the gas were confirmed. Prolonged internal exposure to the gas caused necrosis, cell death. Of course, Noctis was no doctor and couldn't identify the exact nature of the ailment. What he could identify, however, was the sight of the rat rotting from the inside, a decay that was familiar to him. Whatever the gas did in specific, Noctis knew it couldn't be pleasant.

On a normal person however, it would take significantly longer, with more gas required to produce a similar result. Still, it was a useful irritant, and would cause suffocation if nothing else. Now needing a name, Noctis began to think it over. Unable to think of anything creative after such mental exertion, Noctis gave up after a while and called it quits. Making a mental note of the warehouse's location, Noctis once more dissociated himself and squeezed out of the building, looking around for onlookers before reforming back into the side streets. With a new handle on his powers, and a new invention, Noctis walked off to celebrate with a drink at Teddy's bar.

[Exit]