Like all things lightning must mature, in it’s infancy it is just a light static charge. It will not grow to something bigger or stronger until it has had the time to grow in strength and intensity.
Armin without mother or father was raised as an experiment, no love or nurturing did he find in the arms of the S.T.E.M. facility, or any of its scientists. He was given materials to stimulate his mental faculties, as well tests for his physical capacities, but his room other than those ‘training materials’ was relatively spartan in nature. No cot for him to sleep upon even only a steel ledge that he could lay upon uncomfortably, for the first couple of years at least…
Raised without care he began to focus on the things that brought him the attention he desired, answering questions correctly on assessments and achieving exceptional feats of strength were the things that rewarded him the most. So that was what he began to strive to accomplish with aplomb, and that he did, his strength grew immensely and they began to reward him with even more of the S.T.E.M serum and treatments. This in turn continued to amplify his strength.
The STEM treatments began to be boosted by Myostatin Amplification, which caused Armin’s body to begin dedicating itself to the creation of muscle mass in extreme quantities. The need for fats and proteins in his diet, made him hungry at almost all hours of the day. The muscle growth was immense, and by the age of nine he had successfully torn the bars off of his cage twice to get at the food stores. They began to leave the food and his cage open.
A problem arose in his treatments, the STEM, HGH and Myostatin therapies would not level out, his strength and appetite would only continue to climb, any time they reduced his food or the serums he would start to regress and weaken.
They needed to find a way of halting the regression, it took them five months to find the right concoction of genetic STEM treatments to prevent the regression. A spinal tap of the STEM serum derived from Electrophorus electricus and Mellivora capensis. The process was intense, painful and lasted for over eight hours, the eight lower vertebrae of his back all had to be infused with the serum.
Six days of recuperation that felt like forever, a constant tingling in his spine and his lower back, combined with pain that would flow over him in soft waves, then surge into massive surges that caused spasms in his muscles. Smashing hard enough to cause fractures in the concrete of his cage. The side effects didn’t start for a week….
The Journey of Thunder 