《The Chair Guy》


 Chapter 1. How I ended my career as a supervillain

    I groaned, twisting inside of the little broom closet as I slowly peeled off my armor, including all of the little bits of ice that had shredded it and now stuck into my skin and muscle like an acupuncture treatment gone wrong. Fortunately, the only piece of supertech I¡¯d ever been able to afford, my image-altering goggles, could survive a hell of a lot more abuse than a class four alpha could easily dish out.


    Technically I was leaving behind a lot of evidence. Blood, skin cells, shredded bits of DNA, even the bits of my costume that might lead back to me if some super-sleuth decided to take on the case, but I was far enough away from the scene of my crime that it was almost irrelevant unless one of the big-ticket boys got involved. Those guys had more important and profitable things to do than waste their time chasing down a thwarted, albeit ultimately stylish and fashionable, supervillain like me.


    Teleportation sucked.


    Okay, maybe it didn¡¯t suck so much for the alphas who could just imagine where they wanted to go, and then popped there. For a guy like me, who had to carefully disconnect every single atom, shift them to their new destination, and then reassemble them consciously while avoiding quantum entanglement or losing even part of their dispersion, every single part of teleportation sucked.


    Once I had all of my bloody Kevlar and polymer plates stuffed into the deep maintenance sink, I carefully dispersed the molecular structure and, turning on the sink, washed the resulting slurry of sand, polymer glop, and organics down the sink. It was thinned up enough that it shouldn¡¯t clog up the pipes, and Glacier Girl¡¯s ice would melt and disperse on its own like all summoned constructs.


    In the end, yeah, they¡¯d find some of my genetics if they really hunted for them, just like they¡¯d find the traces of every single maintenance worker that had ever used the room before the plant closed, and pretty much everything they¡¯d ever mopped or cleaned up. My personal signature would be one of the millions that wound up in a room like this, and because of the old electronic plant¡¯s long history, even the minor amounts of quantum radiation I¡¯d leave behind would be buried beneath forty years of old CRT television radiation scattered around the plant.


    As a surface structure, there was no way that the Industrial Park would ever be inhabited again, because it was just too dangerous for too little gain, so our destructive little battle wasn¡¯t really costing anyone anything, except maybe the insurance company.


    Unlike a lot of other alphas, my magic didn¡¯t yank matter imbued with my personal energy signature from the ether. Which meant that the last part of any job, clean-up, was what I was best at. I had no illusions that, if they really pulled out all stops, the Bureau of Strategic Anomalies, the BSA, wouldn¡¯t be able to track me, but I made damned sure that it would be a difficult and expensive proposition that wouldn¡¯t be worth their time on a whim.


    Besides, I was pretty sure that they approved of me, at least on some unofficial level. I was easy to hire with the Vilnet app, not terribly expensive, had a clean kill sheet, and was willing to custom-design a villainous persona for a slight surcharge, as well as being ready to let an up-and-comer ¡®finally defeat¡¯ an established persona for a bit of a heftier surcharge.


    I would brag, but that would sort of defeat the purpose. On Vilnet¡¯s ¡®100 most wanted¡¯ list, I was number 26¡­ and 28, 30, 33, 34, 41, 77, and 90. I was on the world¡¯s greatest supervillain list three times also, although admittedly two of those times were marked ¡®deceased¡¯. All inside of two years. Barely nineteen years old, and I beat out long-established heels who¡¯d been terrorizing the country for nearly thirty years.


    I can almost hear you thinking, ¡°Blueprint, if you are so famous, why aren¡¯t you rich and powerful? I mean, you can literally turn air into gold, why do you work nine-to-five being a human punching bag for carefully-staged heroes instead of just retiring to enjoy your ill-gotten gains, or better yet, becoming a superhero instead?¡±


    I already had some stock answers to that, if anyone ever actually asked, which they didn¡¯t. I mean, sure, some of my personas had a certain celebrity value, but sitting still long enough to give a reporter an interview would sort of defeat the entire purpose.


    My entire business model involved showing up someplace in an over-the-top costume, creating some visibly nefarious but ultimately harmless and easily-thwarted plot like turning everyone in Empire City blue or cornering the nation¡¯s supply of zero-calorie sweeteners, doing a lot of property damage to heavily-insured but generally useless and abandoned real estate, throwing out a monologue about whatever ideology I¡¯d picked to match the costume and scheme, and then getting beaten up by whatever heroes had agents willing to pay for a high-visibility takedown.


    Look, Heroes were IMPORTANT. Not the two-bit vigilantes that used powers or brute strength to stop drug dealers and beat the hell out of purse snatchers, those guys were basically thugs themselves that would be better off working for the police as alpha auxiliaries or private security.


    But real heroes? Earth was NOT safe. It was kind of a dimensional crossroads ever since the quantum membrane experiments in the forties resulted in the first q-weapons, and the resulting fallout started awakening alphas. The REAL bad guys, insane megalomaniacs that wanted to rule the world with their powers, dimensional invaders from hell worlds, Opportunistic aliens that saw Earth as an easy raiding target because of its low tech levels, displaced deities, mutated super-monsters, suicidal psychopaths, and wannabe warlords, needed heroes to stop their schemes.


    Those guys were NOT harmless kooks and had zero compunctions about doing whatever it took to accomplish whatever cripplingly evil crap they had in mind.  Solid class three and four heroes were needed to protect people from those assholes. The problem is, that being a hero was not cheap. Beyond just their gear requirements, a lot of alphas had special dietary requirements like shoveling away enough food to feed a family of six at each meal, having to occasionally ingest expensive substances like deuterium or tritium to stay healthy or grow their powers, the need to sleep in a special environment like a vacuum chamber or alpha fallout just to get a good night¡¯s rest.


    And widgeteers, tinkers, and sorcerers? Those guys almost HAD to have federal funding just to produce the marvels that so many people took for granted, like holographic traffic control, enhanced food production on kaiju-free farmland, and the protective machinery that KEPT those farms kaiju-free. All of this stuff required money and had strict limits. True Genius and Tinker tech worked regardless of what happened, but widgeteer junk? Widgeteers could only keep a certain amount of constructs going or had to replace them occasionally when they dispersed, and that took support.


    And don¡¯t even get me started on Kaiju. Humans were not the only ones affected by the Q-bombs and quantum instability, and Kaiju were universally driven to hunt down and consume Q-instability sources, and lacking those, they enjoyed consuming secondary Q-instability, meaning sapient life. Most cities had to deal with the occasional Kaiju attacks, from the small-scale predators like Z-vamps and cranium rats that had to be tracked and destroyed when they infested a population center, to the giant monsters like rocs, dragons, murder bunnies, and the occasional Lovecraftian monstrosity that crawled out of the ocean.


    The thing is, the public was fickle. Alphas were expected to pay their own way unless they were part of one of the state or federal teams, which tended to be very picky and exclusive clubs for well-connected or exceptionally powerful alphas. When something like a roc or an alien invasion appeared, though, EVERY Alpha higher than class two tended to help unless they were totally selfish rat bastards and medical bills and funeral expenses sucked.


    That¡¯s where I came in.


    Vigilantes didn¡¯t appreciate what I did. Ironically, despite being outlaws, they tended to have a narrower view of right and wrong than even the well-known do-gooders. Mostly I think that they hated the entire idea of publicity and getting paid for doing good. I couldn¡¯t blame them all that much, since I, too, was envious of people who got paid for doing what they loved when I was broke, working dead-end boring jobs, and trying desperately to keep my head above water.


    There¡¯s nothing like working long hours at a job you hate to cement a sort of bigotry against those who were successful doing something they enjoyed. It¡¯s a fact that if you did want to worry about keeping a nine-to-five job, you needed sponsorships, patrons, a trust fund, or heck, even a popular streaming service showing your exploits. Me, I help to provide those exploits.


    Okay, enough trying to convince you. Either you already think I am a total sell-out, or you are looking for tips and are already on my side. I like to think I am good at my alternative job, but I was strictly small potatoes. Not just because of my less-than-phenomenal superpower, but also because big heroes, class fours and fives, needed big villains to fight. That meant big money for big schemes and big paydays.


    I started shrugging into my civvies, a beat-up hoodie, and a pair of black jeans and trainers. I checked my balance on Vilnet and activated the withholding software for Strategic Special Simulations, the holding company, and the hidden pass-through for getting paid to play a bad guy. It was a stunt coordination company, based out of Columbus, Ohio, and I was the boss and only employee.


    We had some links to indie video games, basically, some budget motion capture work, but the real income was from ¡®private effects¡¯ commissions, in this case, twenty grand from Glacier Girl¡¯s PR firm. After taxes, insurance, and the sheer costs associated with making a realistic villain scheme, in this case, a failed plot to add silver nitrate to the South End¡¯s water supply to turn everyone blue, it had been a fun, but expensive little scheme. My total expenses, including the armor that GG had wrecked and now was floating down the drain, I¡¯d only made about twenty-five hundred profit.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Yes, I paid taxes. The quickest way to get on the radar for law enforcement was untraceable income. That¡¯s also why I didn¡¯t use my ¡®power¡¯ to make something like gold. Not only was the energy expenditure to make such a huge change prohibitive, but my registered ID was ¡®Blueprint¡¯ for a reason. Sure, I¡¯d invented lots of other identities, but when I¡¯d first discovered I was a class two alpha at seventeen years old, I¡¯d had hopes of being a superhero.


    It wasn¡¯t going to happen. Class two¡¯s were not exactly as common as dirt, and sometimes they could get decent civilian gigs with their powers, but my power, microkinesis, wasn¡¯t even strong enough to influence a roll of the dice, let alone all that superhero stuff. Unlike most supers, I couldn¡¯t summon matter or power from the ether, so on the superhero scale I was simply one of the few males with a mostly useless single-function power. A bit like an antique icebox, I was both rare and mostly useless.


    Two and a half grand wasn¡¯t a lot. It would cover another month¡¯s rent and probably my food bills, but I had to hope to pick up another gig soon, or drop out of college and get a real job for a while. The occasional ¡®real¡¯ commissions that SSS picked up were peanuts that could barely keep the private company insured, but since I didn¡¯t have to worry about things like payroll, it was a pretty decent shell.


    Honestly, just about everyone that did commission work, from graphic artists to web designers, tended to own their own minor company to run the profits through, just as a way to protect themselves from any legal fallout if something stupid happened, like an audit from some asshole Infernal Revenue agent trying to get a promotion by busting pieceworkers.


    Yeah, the IRS did that kind of petty crap with regularity. Every IRS Agent was convinced he would uncover the next Al Capone, and by the time they got done tearing apart some poor schmuck¡¯s personal finances looking for money laundering links, the artist was ruined, their clients permanently spooked and looking at tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees just to prove that they were innocent. If the devil was real, he undoubtedly worked for the IRS.


    That was why I was always careful to pay taxes on every dime I made at my side gig. That, and as a motion-capture guy, I was technically a stuntman. I paid the hazard insurance, which meant unless I was stupid enough to actually get knocked unconscious and unmasked by the cops during one of my schemes, my legal bases were covered. If the IRS tried to dive into SSS taxes, all of the income was thoroughly covered, and if they pressed too hard, I could just dissolve the company and file bankruptcy, and then start a new one¡­ a new logo, new website, new path to getting paid. The virtue of a logistics management education shows its value, and my Vilnet links and reputation score would remain untouched.


    As I made my way out of the abandoned industrial park, wiggling through the big gap between the chain-link fence posts, I knew this was the most dangerous part of running any scheme, getting away. As a class two male alpha, even dressed up in beat-up civvies, I still had the ¡®look¡¯ of an alpha. If there were still cops looking for Diabolus Firetrap, my invented persona, I¡¯d get grabbed just on suspicion.


    ***


    Sure enough, as I jogged towards where I had my beat-up 1996 Sentra was parked, I caught the red flash of a police car flagging me. I sighed and started jogging in place as I waited for them to pull up, making sure I had a nice solid sweat going. It was weird, to me, the way that cops liked to wave a red flag at potential suspects and then take their lack of assent as proof that they were guilty, but the reality was, these guys weren¡¯t really expecting to find a class four supervillain jogging through an abandoned industrial park at three in the afternoon wearing Value-Mart trainers and a girl-band hoodie from the nineties.


    The guy didn¡¯t even open his car door as the vehicle pulled up to the curb. He wasn¡¯t a powered cop, so he was clearly just going through the motions as he looked me over. ¡°Alpha?¡± he asked, more curiously than accusingly. Since I hadn¡¯t run, my only suspicious tell was the fact that like all Alphas, I had an incredibly high metabolism and looked like a bit of a bodybuilder. I did in fact work out, since as a male alpha, refusing to put in some basic time tended to make you look¡­ weird, and I also liked drawing the occasional female eye.


    There was also a ninety percent chance that there was a budget quantum displacement meter in the car somewhere. While I could and had fooled them on occasion, right now there was no real reason. For all they knew, Diabolus Firetrap was long gone, and I was just a low-ranked teenage alpha keeping myself fit that happened to be nearby, and not even suspiciously so.


    I nodded, ¡°Yep. Going for a run. Class two. How can I help you, officer?¡± It always paid to be nice to cops, even the occasional assholes. As a registered alpha, cops were always considered to have probable cause, since it was considered the same as carrying around a loaded weapon at all times.


    Yeah, it was unconstitutional and blatantly unfair, but I couldn¡¯t begrudge the human race its best efforts at defending itself from people who could potentially destroy an entire city in an eye blink. Some alphas used it as an excuse to consider themselves an oppressed minority, but to me, well, it was a Tuesday. As long as I wanted to live among humans, I¡¯d follow human rules, and if I didn¡¯t like it I could go try and live among the Kaiju¡­ and that was unlikely to end well.


    Yeah, I know, selective morality. I was a supervillain, that¡¯s what we did.


    ¡°Registration?¡±


    I nodded, and still jogging in place, fished out my registration card, and handed it to the slightly overweight crew-cut blonde through the open window. The government had considered, for a very short time, demanding that registered alphas get a bar-coded tattoo, but that was a step too far¡­ even the Humanity First creeps admitted that being forced to accept a brand would turn alphas from a necessary evil into a permanent enemy, and honestly, it was even less popular than the pro-alpha attempts to institute a mask immunity law had been.


    Although we WERE expected to keep our registration cards available. The same way a guy driving a car was expected to have his driver¡¯s license handy. We simply couldn¡¯t put our ¡®car¡¯ in a garage somewhere. I¡¯d already ¡®reset¡¯, so I didn¡¯t have any blood on my clothes or anything, but female alphas had it a lot easier trying to pass as a basic. A gorgeous girl was a gorgeous girl, but a tall, muscular guy with near zero body fat stood out anywhere but Hollywood, a sports team, or a red carpet.


    Despite the nomenclature, ¡®alpha¡¯ was not the same thing as an alpha male. Basically, over time, a ton of different terms had been used, from metahuman to awakened human, from quantumite to mutant. Alpha was the term that basically stuck. We could still be absolutely antisocial and shy geeks, over-the-top extroverts, or self-absorbed nerds just like anyone else. Why? Because in the end, we were just as human as anyone else, we just had a lucky reinforced recessive in what humans prior to the Q-bomb release referred to as our ¡®junk DNA¡¯ which somehow activated and linked to our physical form, and made magic possible.


    Yes, I said it, magic. It really WAS magic. Scientists kept trying to quantify it, but so far they couldn¡¯t even figure out what part of the DNA housed the gift, if it was the DNA at all. Certain physical gifts came with measurable physical changes to the individual that had it, like density increase or improved physique actually changing the way an alpha¡¯s body was put together, but some girl that could fly without wings or shoot lasers out of her eyes? Well, her eyes were just eyes, and her brain was still her brain and behaved the same way any other brain behaved. Eyes cannot shoot laser beams, and yet some eyes did, thus¡­ magic.


    ¡°What the hell is microkinesis?¡± he asked, looking at my card.


    It was a question I had been asked a lot. I had a lot of stock answers, but I wouldn¡¯t give anyone a rundown on what it could REALLY accomplish, since that would be stupid. ¡°It¡¯s a non-ether form of telekinesis. I can¡¯t pull power from the ether, or matter, so it¡¯s a super weak type of telekinesis. It¡¯s mostly useful for shoving around like¡­ dust and stuff.¡±


    He looked at me curiously. ¡°And that¡¯s class two? That sounds more like class one.¡± Class one powers were so focused or specialized that they were considered the same thing a normal human could do without powers, or just generally useless, like changing your hair color at will or having preternatural balance without all the cool things like enhanced strength or hyper-perception that went with it.


    Obviously, with a lot of training, you could often leverage those abilities to incredible levels, but a normal human with enough training could break a stack of bricks with his bare knuckles, too. Class ones were generally not required to bother with a registration card, because they were generally less threatening than a human with a gun or a knife.


    I shrugged, ¡°Technically it¡¯s strong enough to push a button at a distance, or interrupt an electrical circuit, so the government in its wisdom decided that it¡¯s potentially a threat. Mostly it¡¯s just about strong enough to spell out words in my breakfast cereal or affect a coin toss on a bar bet, but I am definitely NOT on the invasion alert list.¡±


    To be completely honest, if they ever re-assessed my abilities, I mean, if I didn¡¯t actually lie to the assessors, they might rank me as a class four or class five. See, while my individual telekinesis was really, really weak, I could affect a LOT of things at one time¡­ and microkinesis allowed me to affect little things, like, say, the vibrational speed of a couple quintillion molecules, or flipping a proton and a neutron¡¯s polarity a few hundred million times.


    I had the ability to reset or rebuild molecular and atomic structures based on things I had sampled. It was kind of like having an image database, and was the reason I called myself ¡®Blueprint¡¯. I couldn¡¯t fly, but I could rip apart my own molecular structure, shift it to another location with my microkinesis, and then reassemble myself based on the blueprint I made at the time I decomposed my original structure. It was only slightly faster than running, but it made my escape feasible.


    After looking at my registration card and calling it in, he nodded and handed it back. ¡°Yeah, you should probably head out of here. I already let the station know you were here, and as a class two you clearly aren¡¯t who we are looking for, but there was an alpha fight near here, and the cowl in question managed to barely escape. It¡¯s not safe at all in the area.¡±


    I smiled, accepting my card back as I nodded towards the parking lot where my chariot awaited. ¡°Yeah, I was already pretty much done with my run. I appreciate you guys and might consider joining up with the force when I am done with my schooling. I am in 3G housing, and you have my number if you need anything from me. I hope you have a good day, sir.¡±


    He nodded, looking a little relieved as he pulled out and I ran over to my car. I couldn¡¯t blame him for being a little relieved. I mean, it was his job, but it¡¯s dangerous to interfere with someone who was clearly an alpha, especially so close to a known incident.


    After all, I might be a supervillain.

 Chapter 2. A dangerous opportunity

    To be fair, the loss of my armor¡­ hurt. I mean, don¡¯t get me wrong, it did its job, but good Kevlar and ballistic nylon were NOT cheap. The stuff had cost me nearly two grand, plus the time I¡¯d spent modifying it to look the part of ¡®Firetrap¡¯, but I wasn¡¯t made out of money.


    And it wasn¡¯t like I could send a bill to Glacier Girl for her screw-up. And it HAD been a screwup. She¡¯d let fly some kind of combination power that created an exploding ball of ice, probably a modification of her primary and secondary power, and it had flown the wrong way when I dodged it¡­ right towards a cluster of civilian press and bystanders with camera phones.


    If I hadn¡¯t dissolved it, who knows how many days or weeks of energy would be needed to reset it? I¡¯d hoped to stash my armor during my getaway, for later retrieval, but she¡¯d done a real job on it. It had been totally trashed, but at least that was better than ME getting totally trashed. I mean, I might have been able to reset myself, or I might have died¡­ but the energy debt would have put me out of action for weeks or even months if I lived through it.


    Hell, even if I COULD bill her for the damage without it coming around and biting me on the ass, that would have been pointless. I¡¯d seen her costume¡­ it looked barely better than homemade, and she¡¯d probably mortgaged herself to a publicist just to pay my fee, or maybe even scraped it up on her own.


    Of course, she was gorgeous. EVERY alpha was gorgeous if they didn¡¯t go out of their way to look terrifying. She was also a solid class three or maybe even a class four with her power interactions, and I had given her a very solid performance. I was a professional and liked to think all of my performances were solid, and she¡¯d offered nicely pithy banter with enough fire and ice-based puns to make her a solid media asset to whatever team she would likely wind up with.


    Ice summoning and a nice, strong kinetic gift of some kind, either elemental manipulation or projection shielding. That meant decent defenses and better-than-average offense, paired with silvery-blonde hair to her waist, an hourglass body more Marilyn than an acrobat, high cheekbones, and almost oversized eyes and elfin chin that would cement her in fanboy spank banks for at least a week.


    Sort of a teenaged Taylor Swift look that meshed perfectly with her powerset to create a ¡®warm ice queen¡¯ presence that could easily catapult her to some notice with her gifts. I had to rely on costuming to get the ¡®villain of the week¡¯ look right, but Glacier Girl was a walking theme that only required a white or blue domino mask and a matching leotard to perfectly fit her persona. To be fair, I probably would have chosen the clashing paradigms approach since it was almost TOO classically thematic a persona to ever get her noticed, but I wasn''t an agent.


    I had to admit, I was a little envious, but in the end, I was a speed bump, a launchpad that got paid to give other alphas the boost they needed. Despite my power¡¯s versatility, I¡¯d never be able to tap into the ether¡­ which meant that I¡¯d never have the sheer power necessary to be a celebrity.


    Other alphas could recharge themselves from the ether quickly. I wasn¡¯t a genius, but I¡¯d been able to cobble up a ¡®battery detector¡¯ from an old quantum displacement meter that I kept in my flat. Over the last two years, careful exercise, frequent power debt, and diet had increased my energy storage potential, and I had just arbitrarily decided when I started that I had one hundred ¡®points¡¯ to play with, which had increased to nearly two hundred and sixty by this point.


    But other alphas, even starting alphas, seemed to have storage potentials in the thousands, and could get it back easily and quickly through resting and their ether connection. One energy ¡®point¡¯ was about the equivalent of a single blatant effect, like speeding up the molecular vibration of air to create a ¡®heat blast¡¯ capable of putting a minor scorch mark on something, or a minor reset like a small wound, and healing myself after Glacier Girl¡¯s misplaced ice explosion had cost me a solid forty points, which probably left my ¡®energy balance¡¯ at something like fifteen points.


    And there was only one way for me to refill my balance. That was eating, exercising, and rest, and I ate a LOT. On a good day, I could recover a solid fifteen points with enough food and rest, or twenty-two if I got in a good workout without using my power, but if I had tried to reset my armor, well, that probably would have cost me hundreds of points, putting me into energy debt.


    Energy debt sucked. It meant I had overextended. Of course, a little energy debt was inevitable since that was the only way I could expand my ¡®bank¡¯, but a serious energy debt could leave me zombielike, looking and feeling sick and wan, for days or even weeks until I managed to get back into a positive balance again.


    That¡¯s another reason I couldn¡¯t just make myself rich. Creating something like gold, even starting from something like lead, would cost me hundreds of points between the actual conversion and absorbing the neutron fallout. Electrons were easy enough to push around, they almost seemed to want to leave their orbits and shift their charge, but neutrons were very unfriendly and difficult to pry out of their matrix, and protons wanted to kick your ass if you dared disturb them. Or, at least that was the mental impression I got from using my power.


    Free molecules, like air and water, were easy to push around. Creating a wall of air to ¡®simulate¡¯ some kind of kinetic ability wasn¡¯t particularly difficult, although lifting the tightly bound molecules of something as small as a penny was a hell of a lot harder. Heating it up, electrifying it, freezing it, or even releasing the molecular bonds to turn a penny into copper dust barely took a point of energy, but simultaneously and in concert pushing every single molecule in that penny to actually move it was a nightmare that could take hundreds of energy points.


    No, I don¡¯t know why it worked that way, it just did. I wasn¡¯t a quantum physicist, I just assumed that state changes were easier than telekinesis, and for me, they were. If I robbed a bank, which I had done twice in order to set up a scene, ripping an old vault door off of its hinges was absolutely impossible, but melting the entire door into a pile of dust or a pool of bubbling alloy was as easy as pie if a bit energy expensive. Ironic, I know, since ¡®super body¡¯ was one of the most common enhancements. It was a weakness in my performance, I couldn¡¯t play the ¡®super strong villain¡¯, which unfortunately affected my earning potential.


    My small studio apartment cost me over a thousand dollars a month. When I¡¯d moved in, it had only been six hundred a month, a student special that was reasonably affordable for a single occupant without roommates, or a couple just starting out. Last year, though, a new management company had bought it up, painted all the ceilings black, added a neon lip to the pool, and started re-marketing the apartments as edgy because there were two mid-scale bars and a student club within walking distance.


    And, of course, edgy doubled the rent. If I could have afforded to move, I would have, since I had about as much attraction to edginess as I did to bulimia, but the same company had bought a bunch of the local apartment complexes and done similar ¡®flip theming¡¯ to them, and I still wanted to stay within jogging distance of the school. I had my choice between overpriced theme parks, only this time I¡¯d need a roommate.


    A roommate would be a bad thing considering my side gig. Hell, I couldn¡¯t even risk a girlfriend or hook-up culture. All I needed was a nosy neighbor or date barging in while I was trying to recover from a beating, or wondering why I was walking around like a drugged-out zombie when I went into energy debt. I wasn¡¯t necessarily an introvert, but like Bruce Wayne, my lifestyle demanded I act like one, only without the faithful butler or limitless trust fund.


    Between my ridiculous food bills and my rent, as well as scraping up enough cash to afford my next semester, I might have to get a new gig at half power, and resurrect my old ¡®junkyard armor¡¯ I¡¯d built out of stainless steel scrap when I first started out. All because some hot girl, who might even be a student right here, mistimed her ultimate combo breaker.


    I sighed and threw myself onto my futon once I got back to my apartment and threw some frozen hamburgers into the air fryer to cook. No, I didn¡¯t use a microwave. I knew exactly what a microwave actually ''did'' to food, I didn¡¯t want to blow off a power point to fix it, and the air fryer cooked food just as well at a fraction of the cost of using a range or oven.


    I needed the protein and carbs from a half-dozen burgers to start recharging, and frozen patties, lettuce, tomatoes, and a loaf of bread were a fraction of the cost of buying burgers from a fast food joint, and much better for me, anyway. I was no chef, but wrecking food with a front-loading air fryer was actually difficult. Another reason not to get a roommate, since they would question why I needed two refrigerators and a chest freezer in a fifth-floor walkup since I wasn¡¯t a hunter.


    Like I told the cop, messing with electrical frameworks, even stuff like short-range digital wireless, was easy and took almost no energy. I was no cyberkinetic, but using my powers to simulate a wireless keyboard or mouse was pretty much a no-brainer, as I brought up my laptop from across the room. The Vilnet app was, to be honest, illegal, but it was the sort of illegal that no one ever prosecuted. Absolute anonymity, but it was hefty enough that my decade-old tablet just couldn¡¯t handle it, so I had to keep it on my slightly newer school laptop to check my stuff. I also checked my quantum displacement meter.


    Yup. Eighteen points. Ugh. I could only regain about ten points a day, even if I stuffed myself, so I was looking at over a week before I could even take a ¡®Technotron¡¯ gig, one of my old standby supervillain identities that looked fine in even repurposed junk armor. He was a fake technopath, which was easy enough to simulate as long as I was someplace with a lot of semi-functional mechanical and electronic garbage, and I could muscle together some scrappy drones as minions easily enough. They wouldn¡¯t be very useful, but throw on a few whirring saw-blades and maybe a welder or two and they could trundle around stupidly and be intimidating enough for a hero to wreck convincingly.


    If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Glacier Girl, though, had left me a five-star plus review, which made me grin. Apparently, she had REALLY appreciated my performance, and probably appreciated me saving her from a costly and potentially career-wrecking mistake that might have even gotten people killed. Not that she, or the publicist she might be using, actually mentioned her superhero ID, not on Vilnet. Heroes didn¡¯t touch Vilnet, at least not in a way anyone could ever trace.


    Still, that brought my overall rating to four point five. That was phenomenal as a villain-for-hire because there was always some douchebag hero that thought he or she was hiring a supervillain to take a fall and go to prison to boost their apprehension rating rather than paying for a publicity stunt.


    As if ''anyone'' with flashy powers would willingly accept a criminal record and jail time for less than twenty grand. My first one-star rating had come from a male hero who¡¯d done his best to kill me since he thought he was buying a fall guy and got all steamed when I refused to lie down and let him arrest me.


    He hadn¡¯t been very bright, smashing and causing massive destruction to get to ¡®Technotron¡¯ rather than cleverly foiling my plot to turn the mayor¡¯s mansion into the set from ¡®Maximum Overdrive¡¯ unless my price was met. He kinda wrecked the mayor¡¯s mansion as well as several pieces of artwork that the London Museum got VERY upset about.


    Not that my machines could have actually hurt anyone. Sure they looked scary, but a toaster with little robotic arms was still made out of a crappy toaster that even a toddler could have disassembled safely, as long as they unplugged it first.


    My ¡®price¡¯ had been ONE MILLION DOLLARS in a conscious nod to Doctor Evil, but Hot Shot¡¯s flaming entrance and subsequent spree of destruction had wound up costing the mayor and the city almost eighty-eight million in property damage, and when he realized that I was really escaping, he decided to turn the ¡®unrepentant supervillain¡¯ into a charcoal briquette.


    That had been near the beginning of my illustrious career, almost eleven months ago, and I had learned a lot since then. First off, I had been flirting with the idea of becoming a male hero¡­ I mean, male heroes that could actually get on a team were considered elite because of their sheer rarity, and the girls¡­ well¡­ some of the guys slept their way through entire teams, and alpha girls were always spectacular. Money, girls, and worship galore. It was a heady mixture.


    But I realized that the celebrity also went to their heads. I mean the guy gave me a low rating because I wouldn¡¯t let him murder me! Male heroes were almost universally absolute enema-blenders, and I refused to take any jobs with them in the future.


    That was also the closest I¡¯d come to breaking the ¡®no killing¡¯ rule. Do you know what happens when you cover someone with a thick layer of ice, even a fire-based hero, cutting off their oxygen and freezing them? They can¡¯t be cinematically ¡®melted¡¯ later with a hair dryer and wrapped in a warm blanket with a cup of hot cocoa, no, they die. After my little fit of pique and turning him into a human Popsicle, I¡¯d had to blow a huge amount of energy restoring his blueprint before he died of frostbite, low core temperatures, and muscular crystallization. It had been weeks before I had enough energy that a new persona could make an appearance, and I¡¯d nearly been evicted for failure to pay rent.


    And then he gave me a one-star rating. He didn¡¯t even leave a review explaining why he left the star, probably out of embarrassment, just a big fat drop in my previously pristine five-star rating. But I triumphed over my innate villainous urges and did not stop by his house to demand an explanation.


    I could have. I mean, with microkinesis, tracking a quantum signature was as easy as following a painted line, and I even stopped outside of his apartment building once, after he got a contract and moved out of his mom¡¯s basement, but I was made of willpower, a true paragon of self-control and discipline.


    Well, that and I didn¡¯t want to blow my secret ID. Mostly that second part. Attacking a hero in his secret ID was almost as big a no-no as letting innocents die. Kicking his ass while he was trying to polish off his breakfast Wheaties in his tidy-whites would have been a worse career move than just accepting the bad review and moving on, even if I really wanted to put his damned fire out.


    Especially when I saw him swat Aquamarine¡¯s ass as she did the walk of shame from his new high-end apartment. Yes, that Aquamarine, the playmate class five with sonic projection and water transmission, with the DD cans and the glittering blue skin.


    Yeah, before I awakened, I was a high school geek, focused on classes and getting into the right college, way too busy to have time to date or have fun. After I awakened, I was a college geek, way too focused on classes and making ends meet to have time to date or have fun. I was just religious enough to avoid hook-up culture, and the fact that girls went out of their way to make me notice them now just made things that much rougher.


    I might have mentioned that male alphas are rare. Honestly, we are. Something about XY versus XX chromosomes. Women potentially had two superpowers, one for each X chromosome. If they were lucky, the power was broad and had a higher power rating potential, and the two powers were complementary, like force fields or magnetic control.


    Men, on the other hand, had a single power. It was often broad and self-reinforcing, which meant that there were fewer men with high power ratings, but plenty of them with nice solid class two or three support abilities. Something about the Y chromosome, supposedly, was bad.


    Bad, as in If the Y chromosome develops a second power, the power self-destructs, killing the guy, often in gruesome or horrifying ways. The ¡®net was filled with horror stories about men who started to develop the stigmata of a second power, and then something horrible happened that killed them and occasionally everyone around them, like teleporting into a wall and causing an antimatter explosion as the two types of matter overlapped that took out an entire block. Most of the stories were fake, but enough were real that it was a terror.


    The worst part was, that q-powers only usually started to express themselves under extreme duress, as a sort of reaction to a life and death situation, and not only was it impossible to predict who would get a superpower, which was sort of rare, like one in a million, but the form of that power was unpredictable and somehow related to the stress that caused the power to jump-start.


    If you got thrown out of a plane without a parachute, there was about a one-in-a-million chance you would gain a superpower before you hit the ground. And even if you do, it might be a minor power that isn¡¯t enough to keep you from going splat when you say ''hello world'' at extreme speed. I mean, how much would it suck to be flying towards the ground at terminal velocity only to suddenly discover that you could levitate¡­ except that you were a class one who couldn¡¯t actually change the speed you were levitating, and you are traveling towards that big green ball at fifty miles an hour. Yep, you found your superpower, but you are still wondering if the ground will be friends with you.


    There were some death cults back in the seventies that promised to awaken powers in normals, but those were pretty much self-defeating since their score was somewhere around zero successes.


    But, you know, there are a thousand minor tragedies a day even in a place like the old Unified States of America, and a lot of those tragedies involved women. So in the end, the hero gig pretty much was a woman¡¯s world, just like the traditional emergency services were a men¡¯s game. As a man, even as a class three or higher, trying to make it as a hero often puts you in competition with a lot of women, many of whom had their powers awakened as a result of some kind of conflict with a man, and a lot of whom had two powerful abilities that reinforced each other compared to your one. Talk about a hostile work environment.


    Men also tended to be more¡­ resistant to authority, which is why a higher than normal percentage of men with a serious power rank wound up doing the private sector or villain thing. While the hero gig was maybe one man out of a hundred, powered criminals were closer to one in five. Which made an alpha jogging near an ¡®incident¡¯ something that the police would just¡­ instinctively view with justifiable bias.


    Six delicious hamburgers, two fryers full of hand-cut french fries, a cup of fry sauce, and a shower later, and I was feeling a lot more human. I¡¯d also regained two power points for my troubles, which made me feel a lot better at a solid twenty. I had a scheduled class in about an hour, and since I was so low I¡¯d probably burn myself into intentional power debt before I worked out afterward. The power was already wasted, so I might as well take advantage of the chance to possibly add a few points to my pool, even if it meant I headed into training looking like I¡¯d already been ridden hard and put away wet. It wouldn¡¯t be the first time.


    A short drive to the school and an eminently forgettable class session about warehouse management later, and I was at the campus gym, having burned through my energy supply during my walk by practicing holding a bubble of kinetically charged air around my body while moving.


    So why such a boring major?¡± Well¡­ long explanation short, Logistics and supply management was one of those careers that would always be in demand. It was not elite, it was not sexy, it was not STEM, but a guy who knew how to wrangle goods from point A to point B, and how to keep a plant or retail system going, would never have to fight for a job or worry about making rent.


    It was one of those secret careers that had almost no status attached to it, you¡¯d never be on a board of directors or be clamoring your way to the top of the pyramid, and yet you¡¯d always be well-paid if you knew what you were doing, you¡¯d never get downsized unless the entire company were falling apart, and if you GOT fired, you¡¯d get snatched up again in a week.


    And it was a lot less boring than an accountant or systems analyst. Hell, if I played my cards right, becoming a global logistics supply officer meant both stability and constant exciting world travel. I would never have the power of flight, running on kinetically neutral air doesn¡¯t count, but I would love the power of first-class air travel with cute stewardesses and jet-set destinations.


    I had no illusions that it would all be fun and games. It would be a lot of hard work, but I was no stranger to hard work. Ever planned an exciting scheme? Trust me, bringing all the pieces together into an aesthetically pleasing superhero battle required enormous amounts of work, especially when you were on a budget like me. Logistic management and the part-time supervillain gig went together like pie and ice cream.


    Even if someday I went legit and went to work for a hero organization, it would be as one of the ¡®chair guys¡¯. And guess what skillset and career path would make the best choice for keeping a team outfitted and trained for whatever came their way? That¡¯s right, logistics.


    I was sort of patting myself on the back as I pushed through the double doors leading to the gym, distracted by my self-congratulatory reminiscences and the fact that I was kind of stumbling and exhausted from energy debt when I got hit in the face.

 Chapter 3. Lucky means grasping it when it passes by

    ¡°Oh shit, Jake, are you okay?¡± I heard a man¡¯s voice, as if from a distance. A few moments later I realized I was lying on the floor and my nose and the back of my head were hurting.


    I groaned and tried to scoot up to sit on my butt instead of lying on my back. I winced as someone pressed a cold, damp rag into my face. I didn¡¯t think my nose was broken, but I definitely had a nosebleed, and hitting the floor, stunned, on my back, hadn¡¯t helped the back of my head any. I had a serious headache, as I glanced blearily upwards at Jerry, one of the guys that was on my floor at the apartment complex.


    Like me, he lived at the complex to go to school, but unlike me, he wasn¡¯t hurting as badly for rent and tuition. I mostly tried to refuse to be jealous of his trust fund. He would be graduating with a business law degree, like most of the more affluent students from New Empire State, without the gigantic specter of debt hovering over his head.


    You couldn¡¯t help how you were born. As my dad used to say, a man isn¡¯t built, he is made by his own actions. Some people just had an easier road than others. I also couldn¡¯t complain too much, since I had certain genetic advantages too.


    ¡°What hit me?¡±


    ¡°Are you okay? We were ahh¡­ doing the medicine ball thing.¡±


    The School¡¯s gym was almost always packed up during the day, between team training and physical electives, but in the evening, students had free use. Jerry liked to say that he was as queer as a paper hammer, and the gym was a favored location for gay hook-ups among the fitness set after hours, with a lot of accompanying grabass and a few weird games, like medicine ball tag.


    Still, trying to afford a gym off-campus could cost hundreds a month. If I hadn¡¯t drained my power pool to nothing to try and increase my limits while I worked out, I¡¯d probably have canceled out some of the kinetic energy rather than getting dropped like a six-year-old trying to catch a watermelon.


    I nodded, slowly rolling back to my feet with Mister Blonde Ambition¡¯s help. ¡°Yep,¡± I said, rolling my neck a little. Structural damage is minimal. A slight bloody nose and a bruise on the back of my head. ¡°But seriously, a little heads up would have helped.¡±


    I was straight, but the fitness crew was sort of my social circle anyway. Like I said, I wasn¡¯t an introvert by choice, but rather because I had to be. Empire State was a lot better school than most, and by extension, a lot of the girls that went here were looking for marriage prospects more than a well-rounded education. Hanging out with the fitness crew tended to keep me under the radar of the more predatory types, and I wasn¡¯t going to pretend that an amazing body and gorgeous face couldn¡¯t hook me like a fat trout. It had before.


    I hadn¡¯t grown up poor by any means, upper-middle class as a teenager, but I did remember my folks struggling when I was younger, and being glad for any kind of food we got to eat. After my pop lost a battle with cancer just before I graduated high school, though, things had gotten a lot tighter, and there was no way I was going to beg my mom for money to go to school when she still had my little sister to take care of.


    I held the wet towel to my face as Jerry pulled me to my feet. I was a little taller than he was, at 6¡¯3¡± compared to his 6¡¯1¡±, and was considerably more muscled, but he had a lot more definition to pursue his favorite game. Unlike the aggressive ¡®rainbow¡¯ crew that hung around campus, the fitness crew didn¡¯t have anything to prove, didn¡¯t try to start any crusades, and tended not to give a shit about what anyone thought.


    Yeah, that meant I got passed at occasionally, but it didn¡¯t bother me any, and when I mentioned that I wasn¡¯t interested, it usually just ended respectfully. As the kids of the upper crust, it was in their best interests to keep their proclivities on the down low and avoid the social justice crowd like a plague lest it bite them in the ass at a later date.


    Obviously, if I wanted to come out of the closet as a much higher-category mask, I could have gotten into one of the academies, but that would not only have exposed me. If I thought that predatory hotties were a problem now, that would be a drop in the bucket compared to what I¡¯d have to deal with at the predominantly female academies if I let them know I could use the abilities of a class four or five. Did I like girls? You bet your ass, but I was also self-aware enough to realize that right now I was an easy target, and I was nowhere near socially adept enough to recognize the difference between genuine interest and a girl that just wanted to use me.


    And yeah, I had dealt with that before, in high school. It had left me a bit scarred, I will admit, since my dad had his own company. Christine had seen me as the ticket to the easy life, and when my dad passed, leaving his company in disarray, she¡¯d dropped me like I was radioactive. It was an eye-opener at a terrible time, but it also taught me a valuable lesson.


    ¡°Tell you what. Spot me for five sets and we are even.¡± I said, wiping off my face carefully. The bleeding had stopped, but when I was working out in energy debt I really needed a spotter. There was no better way to improve my energy pool, but since I worked out in debt pretty frequently, I¡¯d gotten more of a reputation as overly cautious rather than a whiner.


    Jerry nodded, ¡°Yeah, no problem,¡± he said, waving at one of the guys he was currently flirting with. After I¡¯d cleaned up and stretched, he met me by one of the machines. Sure, I loved free weights, but they were very popular, so I hit one of the cable trainers instead.


    ¡°Do I have to bitch about safety?¡± I asked Jerry, and he laughed a little, ¡°Probably. One of the new guys¡­¡± he nodded his head at the one that he¡¯d been flirting with, a wiry and powerful-looking Greek kid with curly hair that was right inside of Jerry¡¯s strike zone, ¡°Is a freshman.¡±


    He licked his lips, ¡°Yummy freshman too, but he¡¯s a little excitable. On a class night, you are probably going to have to lay down the law a little and scare him. I mean, you just got bopped, but imagine a girl had come through the door? She¡¯d probably be in the hospital.¡±


    I shrugged, pulling the crossover. Universal trainers didn¡¯t cap at a very high weight, but I was here to build the energy pool, not muscle. ¡°Probably would have gone right over her head, but yeah. I think you might want to consider going over gym discipline with him a few times. Remember last year¡¯s break? I don¡¯t want to lose this place after hours, and there¡¯s no way the school will spring for a trainer off-hours.¡±


    He nodded, smiling a little, ¡°Right. An excuse to use a little discipline. I got it.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Seriously, though. Real discipline, not sex games. Do you ever think about anything but sex?¡±


    He shrugged, scratching the back of his neck below the man-bun he usually sported. When he was trying to look sexy, he tended to load his hair down with enough product to make Fabio wince, but workout time meant hiding the bodice-ripper hair. Honestly, if he¡¯d been straight no girl in school would have been safe, but then again, if he were straight he probably wouldn¡¯t put as much care into his appearance.


    ¡°Yeah, every once in a while I think about school or working out. Other than that, not really,¡± Jerry remarked thoughtfully. ¡°I mean, sometimes I think about the future, but mostly that¡¯s just putting in the time and getting the grades, and then letting the future take care of itself, you know?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Nope, absolutely not.¡± I said, switching over to leg lifts, ¡°but I¡¯m not going to criticize. You do you. I kind of get a rush out of overdoing it.¡±


    He grinned and glanced back at the guy he¡¯d been eyeing, ¡°I¡¯d rather be doing someone else, but I get it. Oh, did you hear about Mindy Pearlance? She awakened a tier 4 power after that ski trip thing two months ago¡­ I bet it has something to do with cold.¡±


    I nodded, having my own suspicions. Glacier Girl was REALLY new. New to the point where I wondered if she was less concerned about getting an in as a local hero compared to getting the chops to attend an academy. It would make a lot of sense to get a public mention of defeating a supervillain and then apply for a scholarship¡­ to be honest, my fee was a hell of a lot less than the fees to attend Trafalgar or even Empire State for a single year, so her investment would make a lot of sense.


    If it was Mindy, a girl I barely knew about, I had to keep it under my hat. After a few incidents, where hero identities were exposed by a gossip rag, followed by families getting murdered by a cartel in vengeance and the subsequent murderous rampages, doxxing was a felony. That was the kind of offense that would get you murdered in prison even faster than diddling kiddies or being a snitch, so even a two-year sentence for ¡®accidentally¡¯ letting slip a hero or worse, a villain identity might be a death sentence. Not to mention it was unprofessional.


    Before that, not jumping a hero or villain in civvies had been an unwritten rule, but some people refused to follow the unwritten rules, which led to it becoming very much written.


    ¡°Well, better her than me,¡± I stated blankly. ¡°With my luck, I¡¯d get a second power and turn myself into an icicle or something. Still, a ski lift snapped, right? I¡¯d bet on something like flight, telekinesis, metal control, or something like that. The ski thing was just incidental. Not like making things colder would save her from falling to her death, right?¡±


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Of course, being able to create giant snow drifts and protect herself from harm with a shield WOULD help her survive a collapsed chairlift, but I wasn¡¯t going to tell him that. I¡¯d like to think of it as a professional courtesy, but a hero getting doxxed would just about wreck her potential to be a hero unless she had no ties, no family, no hostages to fortune. That would mean no sponsors, and an easily manipulated hero, unless they were incredibly powerful, could just about kiss their chances of finding a decent team goodbye.


    Glacier Girl had potential, but her real identity getting bantered around would relegate her to a future of making ice sculptures or working for a ski resort making fake snow. Earth needed heroes, not living snow machines.


    Jerry nodded, ¡°That actually makes a lot of sense. Power awakenings are weird like that. I was actually thinking of changing my thesis to the arbitrage and legal rights of alphas. I mean, it¡¯s a little uncomfortably close to criminal law, which would make my dad shit a brick, but right now, most powers have to choose between a lawsuit attorney or a criminal lawyer when it comes to legal situations, both of which are kinda stopgaps. Being a specialist seems like a potential goldmine and a way to make my name for myself instead of just being my dad¡¯s appendage, you know?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°I am not going to run with that straight line, but I think you might be onto something. I know Wisconsin company specializes in alpha problems, but as you said, they are a merger of criminal and business law. I could see you standing in front of the Empire State Supreme Court someday fighting for some kind of alpha rights if you played your cards right.¡±


    A slow smile spread over his face, ¡°I can actually see a good slot right now. Alpha men¡¯s rights!¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°Alright, well, obviously most alphas are women, right? And traditional family law has always been tilted towards women, for good reason¡­ but alpha men are a legitimate minority. A lot of super teams won¡¯t even accept a male, claiming social or morale problems.¡±


    I nodded, adding more weight to the bench press machine and starting to fight my way through my debt. ¡°Right? That and the chance that under stress they might develop a second power and¡­ you know¡­ level a city block.¡±


    He grinned, ¡°You just gave me the perfect Junior thesis. Why Title Nine should be extended to male alphas. I mean, it¡¯s not like they are rare by choice, which means they are a clear minority.¡±


    I looked at him skeptically, ¡°Title Nine?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah, any sports organization that accepts federal funding is required to offer minority opportunities. Usually, that means women and other minorities, but in this case, I think I could make a pretty good argument for male alphas.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°I know what Title Nine is, I just am not sure if that¡¯s necessary. I mean, male superheroes are already celebrities, and if anything they make a lot more money. There are a lot of teams that would tell them no, thank you, but if pressed, their celebrity status probably would get them on a team that doesn¡¯t want them anyway¡­ most of the teams have serious sponsors, and those sponsors wouldn¡¯t throw away the PR.¡±


    He looked at me skeptically, ¡°I thought you were a logistics math major, not communications or legal.¡±


    ¡°Sure, but I am also not an idiot. If you suddenly awakened pyrokinesis and decided you wanted to join the Black Sisterhood in Chicago, Quench-ade energy drinks would put you on the team, to hell with whatever Sister Scripture said. Even if half the team quit because they don¡¯t want a male, the sponsors would tell ¡®em not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out, probably including Sister Scripture herself.¡±


    He nodded slowly as I sat up and started toweling myself and the machine off. Weight courtesy, always clean and disinfect your machines after you use them. ¡°Yeah, you are right that that is common sense, but it¡¯s not about common sense.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°No?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°Nope. It¡¯s about standing in front of the courts, on camera, very visible while everyone knows your name, and arguing for fairness. It¡¯s about taking a position that no one has ever seen before, and being armored and ready to fight that position while knowing it¡¯s completely defensible.¡±


    ¡°And it¡¯s about getting rich, famous, and powerful doing it,¡± I added.


    He tapped his nose, ¡°Got it in one. Are you sure you don¡¯t want to switch over to a law major?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°No. I¡¯d probably wind up defending supervillains that beat up old ladies.¡±


    He shrugged, the powerful shoulders under his tank top shifting when he noticed his current interest looking at him. ¡°It takes those too. Everyone deserves a fair shot in court.¡±


    I didn¡¯t have the heart to tell him I disagreed with him, but he was an occasional workout buddy. It just wasn''t worth the fight.


    ***


    It had been a very long day. On the plus side, I knew that my energy pool had increased by two points, just by how it felt, and confirmed it when I got home on my battery detector, two hundred and sixty-two potential points, hovering at right around twelve.


    Since my recovery seemed to be based on a percentage of my pool times the stuff I did to increase it, rather than a set amount, I had high hopes that one day I¡¯d be able to consistently match at least some low-level superheroes. Just to match their energy recovery, though, I¡¯d have to have a pool in the tens of thousands, but I had high hopes that someday I¡¯d find a technique or material to either increase the recovery or a way to stay in constant energy debt for long periods.


    As I polished off almost a carton of eggs and a big chunk of ham for breakfast, I checked through my Vilnet mail for Strategic Special Simulations. As expected, Hotshot¡¯s people were trying to set up another rematch, and so I sent off another in a long line of emails refusing to work with him. Big paycheck offer, though, two hundred and fifty grand and an offer to retract the one-star rating, but I was done with that douche spatula. Maybe they¡¯d finally get the point since I used the term ¡®douche spatula¡¯ this time.


    A bunch of the usual bullshit offers, including yet another phishing attempt that I dutifully recorded. Yeah, lots of people try to milk supervillains because they assume we are rich and too stupid to play the hero game, but Vilnet was good about bringing those down, occasionally with extreme force.


    A request for assistance with The Titan kaiju on the West Coast. Honestly, if it was East Coast and I had the energy, I¡¯d probably have accepted the offer, but the assistance requests were almost always bulk mail, and they didn¡¯t pay well. If I wanted to build a new villain identity showing up for something like that could safely get my new identity out there without chancing BSA apprehension. Plus, you know, helping to drive off a monster that could kill millions of civilians.


    I didn¡¯t have decent long-range transportation, and I¡¯d run negative trying to afford a plane ticket, not to mention that the time-sensitive nature of the request meant that by the time I got there, it would be over. That and I wouldn¡¯t touch anything like a kaiju at less than full energy. Those things were dangerous, and I needed to make sure I at least had enough for a full reset if worse came to worst.


    Nothing really worth pursuing, and I needed at least a week to refill my energy to a usable level anyway, but I liked to keep my eyes open for future potential.


    Interesting. Black Box Incorporated was sending me mail again, probably because Tunra Inc., Glacier Girl¡¯s publicist corporation, had given me such a glowing recommendation. Their spiel was always enticing, a week¡¯s work for a cool five mil tax-free, federal pardon for any known felonies, and no questions asked.


    I had done my research. BBI was a federal front, which was why they could offer tax-free income and a pardon, a fact that they never even tried to hide. The problem is, their jobs were almost always black-bag deniable shit and more than a few up-and-coming supervillains had disappeared from their jobs. Not all of them, of course, but enough to imply that the work was not only murderous but incredibly dangerous.


    They weren¡¯t often suicide missions, but a few mentions on the forums implied that they were often damned close, and I had never signed up to be a hitman. I wasn¡¯t a killer. Not that I wouldn¡¯t do it if I needed to, but it had never been necessary and I didn¡¯t want it to be.


    Not that I was a pacifist or anything. Did I think people deserved a second chance? Absolutely. Did I believe in turning the other cheek? You bet. But if someone slapped that cheek too, it was time to take their hands off so they couldn¡¯t slap anyone ever again. Unrepentant monsters deserved to die, but I¡¯d rather not spend my own life hunting them down. Someone once said ¡®Go forth and sin no more¡¯, and if someone given a second chance broke that rule, well, they were forgiven once for making a rotten mistake, doing it again meant it was intentional.


    Then there were a few legitimate supervillains looking for minions or partners. Again, I had to be super picky. Not that I would necessarily turn down a bit of criminal mischief that didn¡¯t involve hurting civilians, especially if their opponents were ¡®secretly evil¡¯ like certain governments and corporations, but that was a slippery political slope. I¡¯d rather avoid flying my ideological flag to the world because it was off the beaten path enough that I would attract real enemies that wanted to hurt me rather than people tuning in to whatever weirdness I made up for a hero to knock down a peg.


    Was I a coward? Some people would probably say yes, and others would say no. My dad used to say ¡°A real man knows what he is willing to live for, what he is willing to die for, and what he is willing to kill for,¡± a statement I was happy to back up, I just didn¡¯t feel like letting everyone know what those were until I had to.


    Most interesting, though, was a personal correspondence from someone named Hotcocoa37 that had ¡®thanks¡¯ in the subject line. I went ahead and decrypted it to a mild, but happy surprise.


    Dear SSSinc:


    I would like to give your contractor a thank you from the bottom of my heart. I lost control and he kept me from doing something I¡¯d regret for the rest of my life. I just wanted to let you know that I recognized what he did and am eternally grateful. My agent didn¡¯t want me to send this because he said it opened me up a little, legally, but I couldn¡¯t just let it go.


    I saw the damage I caused and really regret it. Please let me know if he is okay. I am sorry, I couldn¡¯t afford a bonus or medical liability, but if I could have I would have. I keep seeing all the damage my accident caused, and the blood, and I am terrified that I did something I can¡¯t take back.


    I was originally intending to leverage the PR to get into a local workshop part-time while I finished my education, but I realized that I still need an enormous amount of training before I can safely pursue my career. Fortunately, the Kellar Academy offered to assist me both in completing my degree and becoming a certified emergency specialist.


    Please let the contractor know that I owe him a huge favor, and I take favors seriously. If he needs a PR victory after my schooling is complete, or anything else, please tell him to let me know.

 Chapter 4. Sometimes my first ideas are stupid.

    Hmm. And double Hmm. The Kellar Academy was fully accredited and offered BSA-sponsored degrees. If I could get an ¡®in¡¯, and I could simulate a class 3 ability, it should be possible to finish my bachelor¡¯s degree in a civilian application field with a BSA grant that was a hundred times more forgiving than my current loan structure.


    Not to mention, they had power research facilities. I had no illusions that the BSA didn¡¯t already know that I did a few extracurricular activities on the side since they had access to alphas with astonishing powers of observation, but completing a ¡®responsible power use¡¯ course or three would likely get me off of their radar for a while, and once my loan was paid off, the only time I¡¯d even have to use my powers was when there was a general alert or at my own discretion.


    And I even knew the perfect ability to simulate. Microkinesis evolved into pyrokinesis. For a single-power individual, low-ranked pyrokinesis is the LAST power that anyone would ever want on a superhero team. It seldom provided any defense at all, meaning you were a glass cannon, and pyrokinesis was NOT the sort of thing you wanted on a team¡­ arresting criminals by turning them into a screaming pillar of fire was not exactly high on the list of peacekeeping options.


    On the other hand, a glass cannon that could shoot fireballs was almost perfect for emergency calls, as well as civilian applications galore, as long as they were not TOO powerful. Class 5? Well, at class 5 pyrokinesis you were extremely dangerous, and could probably draw a salary just to stay the hell out of any altercations short of a kaiju or world event, and that level of heat control would probably make you damned near invulnerable.


    The school was almost guaranteed to have professionals in power manipulation. It was possible that they had a better bead on how to increase either power generation or total power pool, something my own research had completely failed at.


    The entire reason I had been classified as a two was because the ether, where the ¡®big girls¡¯ drew their power from, was inaccessible to me. In my opinion, someone HAD to know something about it, because powers were known to evolve occasionally, and if they didn¡¯t, there would be an awful lot more class 2 males.


    But, like all things, it was not about what you knew, but rather WHO you knew. Unsolicited applications to the academy, especially for a grant, generally wound up in the same pile that unsolicited manuscripts wound up in at a publisher.


    The best part is, aside from the Strategic Special Simulations, there was no real connection between me and the ¡®contractor¡¯, since at no time did I use heat when dealing with her. As exciting and romantic as a ¡®fire versus ice¡¯ battle might sound, the reality is a steamy, dangerous, and ugly mess.


    I quickly tapped out a reply.


    Dear Hotcocoa37,


    SSSinc. Appreciates your comment. Contractor #6628 is perfectly healthy after a short stint in our regenerative facilities and appreciates your gratitude.


    No additional bonuses or payments are expected or will be accepted, although your offer is appreciated. However, contractor #6628 has expressed his appreciation that you recognized your mistake and will be taking training to address it prior to active duty. That is very responsible, and admirable, and shows great promise for your future.


    However, when you mentioned a willingness to offer a favor, #6628 mentioned an acquaintance with minor control issues, a class three who could potentially benefit from an introduction to your new alma mater.


    Since he understands that referrals could also enhance your standing, would this settle any feelings of debt on your part?


    Sincerely, SSSinc. Administration.


    As I headed to my first class, materials acquisition, I set aside my gut instinct and really thought out the plan to worm my way into the Kellar Academy. I was no genius, but I was usually pretty good at coming to a snap decision that worked, if poorly, but if I gave it some real thinking time I could almost always come up with something better.


    The biggest problem, if Glacier Girl actually decided to refer me, was to have a power that was useful enough that the BSA would want to provide my education for free, as a way of keeping me on the hook, but not strong or dangerous enough that they felt the need to keep me under lock and key or keep a permanent eye on me because that would seriously cramp my future.


    At first glance, Pyrokinesis would certainly get me into their hallowed halls, but pyrokinetics were a huge danger flag for turning supervillain, which almost guaranteed constant, if subtle, surveillance in the future. The same is true of cryokinesis, and possibly even electrokinesis.


    In truth, just about any ¡®kinesis¡¯ I could simulate would probably put me on a watchlist or something. Not to mention, the first time I went into any kind of training, I¡¯d probably burn through so much energy that I would be out of action for a week, and there was no way I could put up a meaningful display compared to someone with ether access. So what were my other options?


    I couldn¡¯t simulate a widgeteer, that was for sure. Don¡¯t get me wrong, I often pretended to be a widgeteer, because they made good villains. There was a world of difference between buying a cheap remote control car and merging a bunch of fake metallic crap onto it versus making an actual widget-type drone.


    Then again, my brain was going a bit crazy with ideas as I slid into the stadium seating in the teaching amphitheater. True widgeteers were usually straight-line power armor or superhero types. Their ¡®gadgets¡¯ were metaphorical representations that their power latched on to produce an effect, and wouldn¡¯t work if they stopped providing them with energy, whether that was immediate by losing contact, or more subtle like time. The upside was that their powers were cheap, since a metal casing and a plastic army man, or whatever they used, usually didn¡¯t have any actual expensive tech.


    The downside, of course, was that they didn¡¯t actually advance science in any reproducible way. They weren¡¯t geniuses except in the most abstract way, and once the widgeteer was gone, so was their invention. Wizard types were pretty much the same but tended to use ingredients to cast spells instead of building wacky tech. It was the same sort of power, metaphoric representation, it was simply expressed differently, and could often be enhanced by more expensive and complicated spell components.


    Now, super-geniuses were a different kettle of fish entirely. Their brains were enhanced by their superpower, and they could produce real, reproducible technology¡­ that is if you could somehow manage to keep up with their genius. Unfortunately, though, if they kept advancing their power and technology, they almost always went completely insane, at least from a human standpoint. Their motivations, especially after you passed the 200 IQ threshold became almost utterly alien and often involved leaps of logic that were¡­ well, bugnuts to anyone that wasn¡¯t just as smart in exactly the same way.


    I was not that smart. Not even close. I KNEW I was stupid compared to even the better tacticians who ran the BSA. Even my ¡®villainous¡¯ activities were calculated to be beneath their interest level, or else I¡¯d get stomped.


    The trick was, to make myself valuable enough to train, while not being dangerous enough to watch¡­ and now that I thought it out, I had the perfect scheme¡­ err¡­ plan to make that a reality, if I had the right referral.


    The best part was? If I DID have to pay back my education with public service, the smartest place to put me would be in R&D, well away from the battle line, a ¡®chair guy¡¯ in every possible way, while still doing my part to help out in alerts.


    I probably should have been paying more attention in Materials Acquisition, but the class was mostly a retread of what I already knew, so I spent the class time gleefully plotting out my rise to power and how I could manipulate the BSA into covering my finances for the next several years.


    ***


    There was a reason I was paying a premium for living so close to school. Because of my degree, my classes were spaced pretty far apart, and going home to recharge was better than spending hundreds of dollars a week hanging out in a coffee shop between widely-spaced classes as a lot of other students did.


    Unfortunately, this was a football and basketball school, which meant there was little support for the sports-like activities I did enjoy, like mixed martial arts and wrestling. I wouldn¡¯t say I was particularly good at them, but I liked to think I could have gotten a wrestling scholarship, at least, if the degree program I chose had been available at a more¡­ flexible school.


    When I came into my apartment and started heating the teapot to make myself some ramen, which was fairly edible if you doctored it up with some cooked chicken, sesame oil, half of a hard-boiled egg, and frozen vegetables, I found another personal message was active on Vilnet.


    Was Glacier Girl constantly monitoring Vilnet in hopes of getting a line on an event she could thwart? Some heroes did that, but like me, most Vilnet users couched their jobs and opportunities in codes, doublespeak, and easily deniable language that made extracting any useful criminal information almost impossible. Villains were a cowardly, superstitious lot, and supervillains like me were often doubly so, since keeping ourselves under the radar until it was time to spring our big surprise was a job requirement.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    Dear SSSinc,


    I spoke with the Kellar Academy liaison, and apparently, it''s very common for newly-inducted trainees to refer other alphas for consideration. I would be more than happy to refer #6628¡¯s acquaintance, but they told me that some basic ground rules had to be applied.


    #1. She must be assessed, which means they have to head to a BSA recruiting facility to get a new power assessment, even if she had one previously.


    #2. She must have graduated High School or received a G.E.D. and be at least 18 years old. If this is not true, the Kellar Academy cannot accept them, although if their power assessment supports it, They can be referred to a juvenile program for future consideration.


    #3. She cannot currently possess a Felony Warrant. Prior incarceration, especially in a juvenile facility, is NOT a disqualifying condition, since according to my counselor ¡®young alphas almost always get into trouble with their powers.¡¯


    #4. I would personally prefer to meet her before she uses me as a referral. This can be either costumed or civilian, although I would personally prefer civilian since Kellar does not expect their students to maintain an identity for the entire length of their education, and most students create a protected identity after they graduate. I simply wish to ensure that the person I am referring is not going to be negatively connected to me in the future.


    However, I don¡¯t consider a mutually beneficial referral to be an adequate return for #6628¡¯s assistance, but it¡¯s a start.


    With Gratitude,


    Hotcocoa37.


    P.S.: Recognition of Contractor #6628¡¯s contribution does not express or imply any legal or tort liability in any way, shape, or form. In addition, in the event of an unprotected identity, all identity protection laws are still in full effect for all parties. This note is not legally admissible evidence for free information release. (Post Script added by Anthony Blake, empowered consulting representative.)


    Heh. That was good. I bet Glacier Girl herself didn¡¯t even have any contact with Vilnet, either through ignorance or simply to keep her distance from a known criminal marketplace. Her PR guy was at least reasonably smart, although since it was her agent himself rather than some kind of corporate legal group, it was likely that he was just getting started in the gig, and GG might be his only contract.


    A boyfriend or school chum, maybe? Well, an in-person meeting was not a problem. I mean, Technotron had enemies, Diabolus and Camshaft sort of had a nemesis, Crankweld had a lot of bad publicity, Mashmaster, and Negative Zero USED to have enemies before they were declared deceased, but BSA had a file on Blueprint and it was a known identity for Jacob Allister Doyle, not protected, a class two with zero enemies. I didn''t have many friends either, but class twos don¡¯t make nemesis or go out in tights fighting bad guys.


    I knew Glacier was local, and now I suspected I knew her real identity, but hey, that¡¯s why I picked up the job. Occasionally SSSinc. attracted interest from out-of-towners, but traveling halfway across the country wasn¡¯t really cost-effective, and newbie supers tended to try and build a rep where they were going to work rather than flying someplace where their exploits would probably not even show up in a local paper.


    Then again, Empire City had a LOT of supers, with a population behind the sea wall of nearly ten million. That meant it was both a great place for a criminal to make a statement or a profit, and a huge source of edible life for East Coast Kaiju to attack. Tokyo liked to brag about the nasty aquatic monsters that came ashore to wreak havoc, but in terms of sheer monster mass few cities outside of China could boast a combined inland and shoreline attack volume higher than Empire City.


    Not that it was really something to boast about, since either a monster wave or a single powerful kaiju could lead to untold destruction and loss of life, but hey, that was why alphas were so important. Academies like Kellar also provided the kind of training that attracted worldwide attention, and students were known to come from as far away as Osaka or Dubai to attend.


    I was really amused that she assumed I was female, but since it was a class three going to the academy, well, most class threes had to have two mutually complementary affinities to even risk being considered for superhero work. I quickly replied with an unused secondary account:


    Dear Hotcocoa37,


    I am an acquaintance of contractor #6628. If you would be so kind as to meet me at the Student Union at three, assuming you do not have a prior engagement? I will be the one wearing the button-down shirt with the dog on the pocket and back.


    I meet your concessions with the exception of the updated assessment, but due to the fee involved, I would prefer not to worry about it until you have confirmed that I would be an acceptable referral. Does this meet your needs? Feel free to contact me for a change if necessary.


    Thanks for your time,


    -Prospective Referral Blue.


    Okay, call me cruel if you want, but I wasn¡¯t going to change her expectations before I showed up. She resoundingly beat my ass, so I was going to get at least a little fun out of startling her, I hoped.


    A few minutes later she replied that she¡¯d be there, and I got to work getting a kit in order. This was going to be a balancing act, so I had to make sure I was ready to impress both her and, if that worked the BSA assessment. Academy recruiting worked quickly, so I¡¯d have to be ready to head directly to the BSA facility after my¡­ interview. I might be mailing my lease cancellation in if things went according to plan.


    ***


    I had my clothes, my laptop, my books, and my few belongings packed up in a big canvas knapsack. It was kind of sad that once I pulled everything important and stashed my armor, I could fit all my belongings into a single bag. The apartment was furnished, one of the reasons I rented it, and once you excluded that, the belongings were sadly limited.


    I was actually confident enough that I went to the school store and sold my books back. Any useful information that was in them was on the ¡®net anyway, but a lot of the tenured types insisted that you blow your hard-earned money on their fantastically overpriced published crap, especially the ones in ¡®soft¡¯ sciences, where the book was nothing more than their collected political maunderings and heavily-biased opinions.


    When I got to the student union, I wandered to the machines, pretending not to notice that Mindy was there and looking at me in shock as I bought myself a bag of pretzels and fruit juice. After a few moments, I heard the word, ¡°Jacob?¡± coming from her direction in the almost-empty building, and I turned, dropping my bag and the snacks on the round table she sat at, before turning my chair around and sitting on it with my arms crossed across the back.


    ¡°I am surprised you recognized me, Mindy,¡± I said, carefully tearing the bag of pretzels open. ¡°Want one?¡±


    She looked at the stencil on the front of my shirt and then back at my face, her delicate blonde hair a little flyaway in the powerful air conditioning of the wood-paneled atrium. ¡°I thought you would be a girl. I haven¡¯t seen you for a while.¡±


    I glanced at her, crunching on one of the sticks. ¡°So did my parents. So did you just want to meet me to make sure I am not a complete monster, or did you want a demonstration? You see me every day, but we haven¡¯t had classes together for more than a year, since Intro to Advanced Atomic Science.¡±


    She sighed and tapped her teeth. She was wearing a very different costume this time, ¡®young professional¡¯ with a finely-made suit-style jacket, a pale blue ruffled ankle-length skirt, and decent strappy sandals. ¡°I just wanted to meet you, but I hoped we could go someplace for a demo¡­ but the fact that you are male kind of complicates things. If you¡¯d like I could take you for assessment?¡±


    I smiled a little, ¡°I was assessed a couple of years ago, but a friend has been training me, and I think I can qualify for class three now. Currently, I have a public ID, but obviously, no one cares about a class two. I do have to warn you, though, I know who you are¡­ domino masks really suck, but per the nasty gram your publicist sent, I am well aware that it¡¯s protected information.¡±


    ¡°Wait¡­ are you¡­?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Naww, he has cool elemental controls. Me, I¡¯m just a low-grade widgeteer. A few repairs, and some light trauma assistance. I patched the D-man up after he showed up with a few scratches, but as you can tell, he knows more than a few of us. My record is clean, though, so he told me that we could trade favors if you were so inclined.¡±


    ¡°Do you want to be a hero?¡±


    ¡°Not even slightly, but I wouldn¡¯t mind playing support. If you go to the big show after school, he mentioned you might need backup, especially if you decide to spearhead a solo career.¡±


    She looked thoughtful. ¡°He¡­ might be right. Is he usually a matchmaker like that?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°The company he works for is. They have a lot of respect for heroes, and while SSS itself is the showtime division, the parent company handles publicity, and logistics, and tries to build winning teams.¡±


    She smirked a little, ¡°So basically they are an agent company, and he hopes to headhunt me after I finish at the academy and get licensed?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Naww. They are more like a consultancy firm. They might hope that you hire them as your back end, or put in a good word if you go to work for TFI, Marma, or a state BSA team, but they don¡¯t directly employ heroes.¡±


    ¡°Do you work for them?¡±


    ¡°No Ma¡¯am, I am trying to get my degree, although working for them is definitely on the table once I get through the educational minefield if I can¡¯t work directly for one of the biggies.¡±


    Considering the kind of bounties heroes could earn for bringing in bad guys and fighting against waves and Kaiju, more than a few of them supported their own backup team, even if they worked professionally with a larger team. Thus, companies that specialized in helping a super set up their team, and took care of the legal and back-end issues like supplies, insurance, and liability had their place, even though they didn¡¯t get the spotlight very often.


    ¡°What¡¯s your major?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°Logistics and supply, Ma¡¯am. That¡¯s why the D-Man suggested I talk to you.¡±


    She nodded slowly, ¡°That makes a lot of sense. It¡¯s also a darned good reason to refer you. Are you hoping to get a scholarship? You seem to know more about this than I do.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yep. If I go in as a class 2 or even a class 3 without a referral, I¡¯ll either be stuck with a grant that will require BSA service¡­ or I get a scholarship with a BSA service price tag attached. That means, when I am out, I will most likely get stuck wherever they want me to be, or even a floater.¡±


    ¡°So why me?¡± she asked curiously.


    I smiled, ¡°Because you already made it clear you want to be local, and I don¡¯t want to be shuffled all over the country. Also, it would be returning a favor.¡±


    ¡°Why is that important?¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°Because I am male?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡± she asked.


    I sighed and looked at her, ¡°If I asked for a referral from someone else, I would owe them a favor, a big one. Do I really have to explain this?¡±


    She blushed, which, with her light complexion, involved turning an interesting shade of vermillion. She really was a stunner, which, considering she¡¯d already been very attractive before her awakening, was not too unexpected, since it tended to enhance what you already had. ¡°I¡­ see. Maybe we should head to the BSA facility to get you reclassified?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Good Idea. Are you paying?¡±

 Chapter 5. The phenomenal power of lumping stuff together

    It was not a very long walk. Considering that most people wound up awakening when they were young adults, BSA facilities being close to college campuses in the heaviest residential districts just made sense.


    While we were walking, she asked more about what I could do. Fortunately, I had prepared responses for exactly these questions, and she was a lot less¡­ invasive than the BSA examiners were likely to be.


    ¡°So you said you were sort of like a widgeteer?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, sort of, but it¡¯s more of an odd talent. The label for it was microkinesis, which means I can manipulate small things very precisely.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°That sounds like technopathy, sort of.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°The way I use it is. After training it for a while I realized I could go microscopic. It¡¯s not a huge power, but if you use it right, it can help in a lot of ways. I can merge together alloys, reshape small masses of materials, optimize devices, and even repair damage as long as I have the material available. That even includes things like minor trauma as long as it¡¯s not too deep.¡±


    ¡°How deep is too deep?¡±


    ¡°About three inches. That¡¯s why it¡¯s microkinesis. I don¡¯t have any real range, and I have minimal power levels. In some ways, it¡¯s amazing, in other ways, it''s the weakest possible option.¡±


    ¡°A true healer can fix stuff like¡­ internal injuries, and disease or poisons in some cases, but their power is generally limited to what they call life force. I don¡¯t know how that works, but it means that if an injury or something is too deadly, they can¡¯t do anything about it.¡±


    ¡°And you can?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°It¡¯s not about severity, it¡¯s about depth. Regeneration is rare, but for something like a finger, as long as I have some of your living tissue to work with to rebuild the cells, it¡¯s not a problem. If someone cuts your throat, even if they cut it three inches deep, as long as I get to you before you die and have enough energy, I can seal it up quickly enough to keep you alive. Honestly, though, the throat-cutting thing is a lot easier as long as you haven¡¯t lost too much blood because rebuilding cells is a bitch.¡±


    She almost looked breathless as we walked, watching me, ¡°That sounds¡­ incredible. That¡¯s like class five healer territory!¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°It is and it isn¡¯t. That¡¯s why I am not trying to work as a healer. First off, I have to know what you were like before your injury or whatever damage it is I am repairing. Most humans are pretty similar, and I have fixed injuries before, so that¡¯s not too big of a deal, but supers have all sorts of weird genetic, biological, and energy quirks that if I don¡¯t get a chance to look you over before you get injured, I might not be able to fix you.¡±


    ¡°Secondly, if someone loses a finger or an eye and I have to fix it, well, I am a microkinetic, not a healer¡­ on a molecular scale, three inches is HUGE. Reforming all of those cells, pulling them out of your body and modifying them, and then replacing them and giving them the energy to regrow¡­ Well, I¡¯d probably be down for a week from energy exhaustion.¡±


    Okay, that was not precisely true. If I had to do a full-body reset for someone who was barely alive that I had already blueprinted, I¡¯d probably be down for a week. That three-inch thing was mostly for rebuilding stuff I didn¡¯t already have a pattern for, but I had been careful to avoid actively lying except about the ¡®who I was¡¯ stuff.


    I¡¯d been Diabolus during our prior encounter, but she didn¡¯t need to know that. I also didn¡¯t want to spend my life learning the blueprints of every damned hero in the BSA and be locked in a shed resetting them after every minor injury for the rest of my life. An ability like that would be considered ¡®too valuable to risk¡¯, especially since¡­ technically¡­ it could even revive the dead if they hadn¡¯t been dead for too long.


    If the BSA didn¡¯t nab me, the Secret Service probably would, locking me in a room in case some assassin got lucky. Either way, any freedom I enjoyed would be over for ¡®national security¡¯ reasons. I was a pretty good solo supervillain, but I didn¡¯t harbor any illusions about a superhero team, or even a whole lot of normies with guns, being unable to bring me down.


    ¡°A cellular regenerator could do it. It would take a lot longer, and probably cost a lot more, but saving time and money is well within the limits of a class two, not a class three, especially with my downtime. But I have cooler stuff I can do that I think makes me a class three.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    I dug into my pockets, and put down my bag to retrieve a pair of metal snips. ¡°Do you have super strength?¡±


    She shook her head. I knew that, but I had to ask.


    I held up a nickel and a penny. And offered them to her. ¡°Here, check these out. Ordinary change, right?¡±


    She nodded, looking them over, ¡°They look like it.¡±


    ¡°Go ahead and cut them in half.¡±


    She took the offered snips and with a little grunt of effort managed to clip them both. Not very clean, but then she offered them back to me, ¡°I am now officially a felon.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Not really. Machines have been mushing pennies into keepsakes for a hundred years. That law was meant to stop forgery, hell the government would love it if you burned billions of dollars, since it wouldn¡¯t have to honor their debt. Now watch this.¡±


    I carefully took all four halves, put them back together, and then pressed them together. After a few moments, all four halves became a slightly larger whole. Poor Ben and Abe had pretty much ceased to exist since I didn¡¯t feel like reconstructing their heads on either side of the coin.


    ¡°What did you do?¡± she asked.


    I held up the disk. ¡°I merged them together. Of course, nickels aren¡¯t really much nickel, and cents are mostly tin and manganese now, but I blended the alloys, reinforced the molecular bonds, and realigned the crystalline structure.¡± I offered her the snips. ¡°Try it now.¡±


    She nodded and tried to cut the alloy blend. After a few minutes, she had a slight crease in one edge, but the snips were dulled and it wasn¡¯t cut. ¡°Ouch,¡± she said, handing the snips back to me. "I didn''t add force to it because I figured it would break the snips."


    I smiled, ¡°That¡¯s my best power. I can reinforce things and make alloys and composites that are pretty much impossible using standard methods, at least on a small scale. I couldn¡¯t put up a building, but give me a few minutes and I could make a ring that¡¯s almost impossible to break short of throwing it into Mount Doom.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s really awesome.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°It¡¯s cool, but it¡¯s small scale. I am also not a real widgeteer, I can¡¯t make anything that can¡¯t exist in reality, but then again, unlike a widgeteer, it¡¯s permanent. That¡¯s why my known name is Blueprint. Give me a design for something small like a watch or even an integrated circuit, and enough raw materials, and I will make you something that¡¯s ten times better.¡±


    She looked very thoughtful, ¡°Can you make a diamond?¡±


    I nodded as we approached the squat BSA complex. ¡°Yes. But I wouldn¡¯t waste my time. The value is artificially inflated, and the compression energy cost of making one large enough to be worth selling, I¡¯d be out for weeks, and I wouldn¡¯t get any real value. I¡¯d make more per hour flipping burgers.¡±


    ¡°That makes sense. How about weirder stuff, like c60 fullerenes?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I don¡¯t know?¡±


    ¡°How about stuff like nanotubes and nanofibers? I mean, if you can produce those in long chains, places like DuPont would hire you for millions. Why haven¡¯t you tried that?¡±


    I looked at her with my jaw dropped, letting the door swing closed.


    She was smiling at me oddly, and tilted her head, waiting for my reply.


    ¡°Because.¡± I said, slowly, ¡°I am an idiot. I never really thought about it. I also don¡¯t really know how to do that.¡±


    ¡°Can I make a suggestion?¡±


    I nodded slowly, my mind blown by the possibilities.


    She smiled a little, ¡°When you re-assess, show them what you can do with merging and strengthening materials, and maybe the surface healing. Don¡¯t tell them how you do it, just tell them you think it into existence like most alphas do. Between your material dependency and low energy levels, I am still pretty sure they will rank you as at least a class-five support. Otherwise, they are likely to throw you in a black site lab forever.¡±


    The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.


    ¡°I will be more than happy to be your referral, which means technically they would have to get through me to get to you, and I am NOT a support. Right now I am class four, but after training, I know I have at least class five potential, and pissing off a class five alpha is generally frowned upon.¡±


    ¡°How do you know all this?¡± I asked.


    She smiled a little, ¡°My mom is a functional replicator.¡±


    Whoah. Okay, remember how I said widgeteer stuff expires eventually? Well, replicators create expendable devices, but they can be used to build OTHER stuff that isn¡¯t expendable. If widgeteer drones can build a building, the building isn¡¯t going to fall down when the drones expire. Just like a wizard or tinker cell replicator can cast a spell or create a device that can regenerate, the regenerated limb doesn¡¯t just stop working when the alpha runs out of energy.


    Functional replicators were a whole different story. They weren¡¯t as smart or as insane as double-reinforced super-geniuses, but they were replicators that were damned close. They could create REAL technology that could be reverse-engineered before it expired, or even just use small bits of widgeteer tech to enable much more powerful true technology, like batteries or golem brains that make drones smarter or have far more power than they should have.


    As a functional replicator, Mindy¡¯s mom probably had a perfect idea of how black research sites worked and might have even spent some time in one.


    ¡°Right. You win. Let¡¯s kick this pig.¡± I said as I held open the glass doors for her into the BSA facility¡­ exactly the place where you are likely to be locked down as a national security asset.


    But weirdly, she was starting to become the first person I trusted in years since Christine proved that trust was a huge mistake.


    ***


    ¡°Your referral has paid your assessment fee, but that will be refunded to her if you qualify for a scholarship. I do need to warn you, however, that scholarships for males are very uncommon. This is not sexism, this is simply the law of averages since most males don¡¯t have a power paradigm that encourages public service.¡±


    The young lady at the assessment desk actually seemed interested in a male getting a referral. To be honest, most men didn¡¯t even bother trying for the academy.


    The thousand-dollar reassessment fee was often considered more trouble than it was worth, and if a man assessed higher than rank 2, they could often get work as part of a publicity team even if they were more-or-less untrained. No one expected them to hunt supercriminals, and fighting during waves or Kaiju attacks was more of a case of power strength and endurance than training.


    Not to mention that more than a few of them simply took enhanced jobs or became supercriminals themselves. It was vanishingly unlikely that I was going to be the only male at Kellar Academy, but I was definitely going to be one of only a handful.


    And if I DID manage to get a scholarship, well, most of the guys that would be there would have wealthy families, since an academy was not cheap. Socially unpromising, but if I didn¡¯t find some better way to deal with energy recovery, I¡¯d be doomed to spend the rest of my life as a third-rate supervillain barely making ends meet, since based on my current energy growth, it would take me damned close to thirty years before I could regularly produce more than a flake of anything useful or use my powers effectively.


    After a quick description of what I was planning to provide as my ¡®evolution¡¯, I was taken down to a small workshop on the second floor, where I met a bearded man dressed in Contraweave.


    Contraweave was great stuff. It had the ability to distribute force over most of its surface, making it basically bulletproof, and it was highly resistant to heat, and cold, and would even ground something like a laser or electricity burst. Of course, the fact that it was skin-tight and cost almost a thousand dollars a square foot meant I had never used it myself, but it was often a standard issue for crime-fighting alphas. The fact that it was form-fitting and fairly thin, almost like spandex, meant that more than a few super-types would rather wear armor or Proxovan, which was a lot cheaper and heavier and behaved more like neoprene.


    Mostly people wore armor bits under it, as much for protection as for not revealing their religion or whether they were chilly. Yes, it was that thin, but to be fair, it was also more durable than most armor for people who already had protection and just needed to be sure that they didn¡¯t get charged with indecent exposure after a rough fight. Not that it wasn¡¯t sort of indecent even as a full-body suit, a fact that more than a few of the more attractive alphas capitalized on.


    This guy¡¯s contraweave was just a solid yellow, and he covered it up with a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts as well as a pair of Crocs. It was clearly more for protection in case something went wrong rather than a fashion statement.


    The workshop, or lab, was clearly meant for powers testing, as it had workbenches, some weights, and a short multi-range. Obviously, stronger powers would probably require a more comprehensive testing suite, especially if you needed to test defensive abilities, but for an initial class two or three combatant, or a non-combatant like me, this should be fine.


    He was seated at a desk with a workstation and smiled when I entered. ¡°My identity is Linker. Did she tell you I was a truthseeker?¡± he asked me in a gravelly, but friendly voice.


    I nodded, ¡°Minor Bio-enhancer, actually, class three, but with an enhanced sensory suite that qualifies you as a court polygraph.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Truth. Good baseline. I will be asking a series of questions before I allow you to demonstrate your power evolution. If you don¡¯t want to answer a question, just say you won¡¯t, and if for any that you don¡¯t know the answer please just say you don¡¯t know the answer instead of trying to guess or prevaricate. As an evolved power, I assume you have already tested your limits, will this space work?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°It should work, but I haven¡¯t so much evolved my power as determined its capabilities since my first assessment. I believe I would qualify as at least a class three utility now, although the student that is referring me thinks I could qualify up to class five¡­ but I think she is just trying to boost my confidence.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Well, while you are here, we are being recorded. I can make an initial estimate, but if you disagree with my assessment or for...other reasons, the recording can be audited by the local Alpha council. I¡¯ve been audited 37 times, usually by clients who disagree with my class rating, but so far my judgment has not been overturned. I am pretty good at this.¡±


    I grinned, ¡°Perfect. If I am just a class two, I¡¯d much rather just know it now than get into trouble from being overconfident.¡±


    He raised an eyebrow, ¡°Partial falsehood?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I don¡¯t think I am a class two, but you¡¯re the expert, and while I won¡¯t be happy if you asses me at that, because it¡¯s liable to cost me, I am unlikely to contest your judgment.¡±


    Some of the questions, I clarified, and then reluctantly said I didn¡¯t wish to answer, like ¡®Have you ever committed a felony¡¯, which I asked if juvenile pranks count, and after an affirmative, I clammed up about. Obviously, I didn¡¯t have any felony warrants, at least not that I knew about. Negative Zero probably had felony warrants, but that¡¯s one of the reasons why he was deceased.


    ¡°So let me get this straight,¡± he said. He was able to bend the ¡®improved¡¯ coin with his fingers, which just showed that he clearly used his bio-enhancement on his own body, but it was a struggle. ¡°You can merge and reinforce almost anything, including wounds?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah. But it¡¯s always small-scale. That¡¯s what I spent the last two years learning to do. The biggest problem, and the reason I wouldn¡¯t call myself a widgeteer, is because of the energy requirements.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    I thought about it for a moment, ¡°You know how the human body produces bio-electricity and caloric energy?¡±


    He chuckled, and I remembered, bio-enhancer. ¡°I might have some familiarity with the concept.¡±


    ¡°Well, I did some research. Most alphas seem to draw the energy for their powers out of the environment, sort of. They use bio-energy to control it, so after they use their powers for a while or do one of their giant attacks, they are drained. They need to eat, rest, sleep, and maybe work out a little to rebuild it.¡±


    He nodded slowly.


    ¡°In my case, I have to use that bio-energy for every part of my powers, not just for control. I don¡¯t have any environmental energy I can wrestle into shape. That¡¯s why what I can do is so minor¡­ I technically could probably use my abilities to bend a steel bar, but it would take a lot more energy than just picking the damned thing up and hammering it with a hammer until it bends. The larger something is, the more energy it requires to manipulate exponentially.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°So you could stick a one-pound pile of pennies and nickels together, but if you tried to stick one pound of solid nickel and copper together, it would be a lot harder?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s exactly it. In fact, merging a pound of actual bronze is way outside of my energy pool. I mean, I could do it slowly, and it would look weird for a while, but eventually, I would get there¡­ or I could do about half that in a hurry, burn out my energy pool, and then I¡¯d have to spend a week relaxing, eating, and feeling like crap before I tried it again.¡±


    ¡°Power burnout.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Exactly. I call it energy debt.¡±


    ¡°But it¡¯s not that bad when you¡­ heal, right?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°That depends on the wound. A simple cut? Merging the tissue back together is child¡¯s play if it¡¯s inside of my range, but if there¡¯s a lot more damage, dead tissue, or missing flesh, it gets exponentially more difficult based on actual mass. A simple slash is easy, a large third-degree burn could potentially be impossible.¡±


    He looked at me seriously, ¡°Why is it that I keep getting the feeling you are only telling me half-truths?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Because I am? Let¡¯s put it this way¡­ if I have to heal myself, I can bring a lot more of my bio-energy into play, because I am willing to sacrifice my body¡¯s resources to stay alive, and I know what I am doing¡­ If it¡¯s someone else, well, unlike you I am not a bio-controller. I don¡¯t really know what¡¯s wrong with them, and just sort of think my powers into working. If I run out of energy, I have nothing left to offer them, because the resources I could pull on to heal myself are a lot less than what I can pull from THEM. Three inches, remember?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°That¡¯s a lot closer¡­ okay, I will buy that. Do you have a way of determining how low in energy you are? Like right now?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yep, I am running a little over ten percent. That¡¯s one of the reasons I wanted to try Kellar. I hoped that they had a way of helping me improve my potential energy, instead of having to constantly walk around in burnout and eat ten times as much as anyone else just to hope for another one percent someday.¡±


    He smiled slightly, ¡°That and a favorable grant or possibly even a scholarship?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Not going to lie. That¡¯s the primary reason. I mean, yeah, I¡¯d love to improve my power, but in the long run, my degree is going to keep food on the table and maybe support a family someday.¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°Yes and no. Based on your display, I am going to tentatively assign you as a support class 6.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±

 Chapter 6. Why the Y?

    He looked at me curiously. ¡°I am a bio-controller. I have a very good idea of how your brain works, and how it interacts with your body. I am well aware you were trying to lowball your potential, probably out of justified concern because as a tinker, you could face a lot of pressure. Your original assessor was simply trying to assign you a class based on your demonstrated abilities, not your ability potential.¡±


    I had been expecting class four, and maybe secretly class five, but class six? I knew what I could do, and the kind of city-shaking effects a class six could accomplish were way outside of that zone. ¡°That still doesn¡¯t make any sense. Class six? What exactly is a tinker?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Do you know how alpha abilities work?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Magic.¡±


    He laughed, ¡°That¡¯s not actually far off the mark. A few super-intelligences figured out a part of it before they went off the deep end, but that¡¯s a close approximation. Powers have always existed among humans, and all humans have powers.¡±


    ¡°Huh? I thought that the q-bombs started them off.¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°Not at all. In the end, all powers are created by the human mind. It¡¯s a sort of telekinesis that all humans possess. Before the Q-bombs, it was barely noticeable, but have you heard of the Mandela effect?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°False memories caused by the telephone effect.¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°Not always. When you have a huge number of people believing something, all of those kinetic effects added together seem to have the ability to modestly alter reality. Just like ancient miracles, or various confabulations. Heck, in the bible, Moses made a snake, but most people forget that the two court magicians also made snakes that his snake ate! That¡¯s why I said it¡¯s a lot like magic.¡±


    ¡°Okay¡­¡± I said doubtfully.


    He nodded, ¡°Right. Still, as far as we can tell, the Q-bomb created a link that added power to the system. So under the right circumstances, that link can become powered and developed. The fact that Heroes have always been a feature of human mythology, especially after the advent of comic books, reinforced this¡­ a fact that many of the more powerful heroes take advantage of. In a very real way, the more powerful people believe a hero is, the more powerful they can actually become.¡±


    At my skeptical expression, he held up his hands, ¡°This is just what a couple of mega-brains came up with and it fits the facts as we know them. That¡¯s why we can¡¯t isolate the factors or genes that make a human awaken. The reality is every human, under the right circumstances, has the potential to connect with the quantum reality unlocked by the Q-bomb. Every single one. But humans are, for the most part, unique¡­ and the exact circumstances under which each will awaken is a complete mystery.¡±


    ¡°So those cults that promised to unlock powers?¡±


    ¡°They weren¡¯t wrong, but it almost always requires an incident that, if you don¡¯t unlock your abilities and they are not the CORRECT abilities to survive that unlock, will kill whoever tries it. And because there is such a broad variety of unlock factors, you can rarely get it right intentionally.¡±


    ¡°But you are a weird case.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Your powers don¡¯t come from your X chromosome. They come from your Y chromosome. That¡¯s why you can¡¯t link to the quantum reality.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I was beginning to feel really stupid, repeating ¡®what¡¯ again and again.


    ¡°Your power is linked to your Y chromosome¡¯s potential unlocking instead of your X. The reason most males die when their Y chromosome is the unlock, is that there is usually almost no limiter on an alpha ability. It can express in really disgusting ways, like teleporting into a wall the first time you experiment, because there¡¯s no innate quantum-realm safety valve for you to access. In most cases, the male will have some powerful expression that draws off so much energy that they expire instantly because they don¡¯t have a quantum realm energy back-channel.¡±


    I looked around nervously.


    He laughed, ¡°No. You aren¡¯t going to wind up in some windowless black site while we try to figure out how it happened. The BSA is not as bad as people make it seem, because most of the crimes they are blamed for are flat-out suicidally stupid. If we went around locking people up who have the potential to turn every BSA employee into a pancake, giving them a reason to hate us would be a very bad move.¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°But there have been other surviving Y-unlocks before, and sometimes when a Y-unlock mysteriously disappears, well, we get the blame, and sometimes a Y-unlock is so unstable that we HAVE to limit the damage somehow¡­ but I promise we don¡¯t torture anyone or turn them into lab rats. It would be pointless since we aren¡¯t going to find anything by dissecting alphas.¡±


    ¡°However.¡± he looked thoughtful, ¡°As a Y-unlock that HAS discovered a method of working around the lack of a link to the quantum reality, even if it¡¯s slow and unreliable, you are definitely a person of interest. Be aware, though, that we might¡­ request information if you find more ways of accessing energy, or have a dramatic expansion, or something like that. That¡¯s why I said that your degree might not be as important to putting food on the table. As a class six alpha, I can promise that the BSA will be very happy to compensate you simply for sharing your knowledge of how a Y-unlock can expand their abilities.¡±


    ¡°Why is a Y-unlock so important?¡±


    He grinned, ¡°Because Y-unlocks can do insane crap. You know how powers are basically expressions of functions locked into a concept?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No. This stuff isn¡¯t on the wiki anywhere.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Right. A lot of it is firmly hidden on conspiracy theories and metaphysical websites that nobody pays attention to cause they think they are religious or mystical gobbledygook. Well, powers have two parts, function and concept. That¡¯s WHY so many male double unlocks kill themselves. They gain the function, but without a concept to control and limit it, there¡¯s no safety valve to tell it what it¡¯s SUPPOSED to do. That¡¯s what the quantum reality does, it links it to your mental concept of HOW the power is supposed to work, and then provides the extra energy needed to turn the staff into a snake.¡±


    ¡°The fact that you have an ability with a function that doesn¡¯t adhere to a concept, and yet you both made it work and survived the attempt, makes you very valuable, but more in a ¡®let¡¯s see what he can figure out¡¯ way rather than a ¡®let¡¯s lock him a box and force him to do what he already knows how to do¡¯ way.¡±


    He sighed, ¡°That¡¯s why super-brains are so sad. Half of the males that awaken their Y ability gain a concept without a function. A function without a concept is like handing a toddler a chainsaw, while a concept without a function is like being born paralyzed. Most super-brains aren¡¯t actually geniuses, they just have a concept that drives them so firmly and no way to express that concept that they explore the concept exhaustively until it drives them insane. That¡¯s why almost all mega-brains are male, and those guys, well, we do lock them up in black sites, because it¡¯s usually only a matter of time.¡±


    ¡°So Tinkers and wizards are like super-brains, except that they have an actual function to go with their concepts?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Actually most powers are like that, widgeteers tend to have a stronger concept, but without the scientific foundation of their concept to back it up, they don''t have any longevity. Tinkers make worse heroes than widgeteers but are much more valuable as teammates. When you are in the academy, they will teach you about the most common concepts, and more about power scaling functions. In this case, because you can simulate a concept even if you don''t have it magically applied to your function.¡±


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    ¡°Wait, so that means I will be approved for Kellar Academy?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah, even if you weren¡¯t referred, the academy would be desperate to offer you a scholarship. Even if your function doesn¡¯t lend itself to a front-line alpha, it is very flexible. I wouldn¡¯t be a bit surprised if, once you figure out more about how it works and how to grow your energy levels, you were able to do things that would solidly cement you into a combat role if you wanted it, maybe even changing your power classifications since classifications are an expression of concept, and you could potentially press far beyond that limitation.¡±


    I kept my mouth shut since I already knew he was right.


    ***


    ¡°I have something I think you should see.¡± Princess Pixel announced, resting her fingers on the tiny black mainframe she preferred to use to perform her magic. At her level of technomancy, things like screens and keyboards just slowed her down, and even though Kali hated her silly super-name, she wasn¡¯t going to criticize her incredible work.


    ¡°I assume it¡¯s important?¡±


    Pixel nodded, bringing up a holographic representation of what she was seeing. There was a damned good reason she was considered class five, and the combination of technomancy with lesser light control was high up there. She might not be a combat alpha, but she was probably worth her weight in big, fat sapphires.


    ¡°What is this exactly?¡± Kali asked. She wasn¡¯t even going to pretend to understand the scrolling mass of 3-dimensional hexadecimal that appeared.


    ¡°Oh right, sorry,¡± Princess Pixel replied, altering it to show words and letters. ¡°A new support just lit up the telltales from one of the assessment centers near umm¡­ Empire State College, and get this, Linker gave them a reassessment at class six, as a Y-awakened male. It¡¯s getting shot up the chain for a full audit.¡±


    Kali smiled, ¡°Really? Do we know anything about his background?¡±


    Princess Pixel started to work quickly, a number of screens flashing through her holographic projection. Surprisingly, she started giggling. ¡°Yes, we do. Oh man, this is perfect!¡± she started humming as more screens, this time containing a variety of different languages, started flashing. ¡°You are gonna LOVE this!¡±


    Kali was starting to get a little irritated, ¡°Okay, what am I going to love?¡±


    ¡°He is Strategic Special Simulations.¡±


    The name was familiar. ¡°Oh, he works for them?¡±


    Pixel shook her head, ¡°No, he IS Strategic Special Simulations. The only employee. The owner, and sole shareholder.¡± she started flipping her gaze through the hologram, ¡°It¡¯s all him.¡±


    ¡°Wait, that doesn¡¯t make any sense. I mean, there are a dozen different cowls that work for them, a few of them on the Vilnet top 100. Does he have like, a stable of contractors?¡±


    Pixel shook her head, ¡°Nope, they are all him. Our new Academy student has been a very bad boy. Six spots on the list and two of them are supposedly dead¡­ they aren¡¯t near the bottom of the list, either. Oh wait, sorry, eight spots on the list, under different identities¡­ and three spots on the BSA watch list, too.¡±


    Kali was a little shocked, ¡°What the hell is he doing going to the academy then? Won¡¯t the BSA notice?¡±


    Princess Pixel beamed, ¡°He¡¯s still in the holding system, and I am pretty sure none of their amateur data sleuths have noticed it yet. Do you WANT them to notice? It says here that he¡¯s only being ranked as a class six because of alpha strength issues, with a recommendation for close surveillance and reassessment after graduation.¡±


    Kali shook her head and flopped down into the office chair next to Pixel. ¡°Hell no. not if there¡¯s a chance for recruitment. What¡¯s his power? Why¡¯s he flying solo?¡±


    Pixel brought up a secondary screen that showed various clips of footage, and a guy in several different costumes, mostly armored. ¡°No one¡¯s done a deep scan of his abilities, but so far he¡¯s shown class three in several different elements, class five energy absorption, and what looks like better than class five regeneration, as well as some serious widgeteer or maybe even tinker gear. They have him down as a support, and it looks like his offense is pretty low, but defensively? If they saw this, which I am going to make sure they don¡¯t, he¡¯d be on the international team before you could blink.¡± She shrugged, ¡°If he¡¯s a tinker, he¡¯s a hell of one.¡±


    ¡°What he showed at his assessment was class four creation. I mean, the real thing, not widgeteer summons. He also had a weird healing ability tied to it. As far as why no one has locked him down¡­ well, it looks like he¡¯s been careful to not attract much attention, playing the PR game as a series of disposable mooks. Heck, I never even noticed him, and you know full well I am always on the lookout for that kind of thing. It looks like he likes to take a lot of downtime between gigs.¡±


    ¡°ID security?¡±


    Pixel nodded, her pink hair shaking. ¡°Pretty much. A bunch of minor corporate cutouts for a Vilnet account. Clever for a normie, but he¡¯s clearly not a hacker, only commercial security. He¡­ oh.¡±


    ¡°Oh?¡±


    Pixel nodded, ¡°He¡¯s straight, but I think he has trust issues.¡±


    Kali looked at Pixel curiously, ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    Princess Pixel sighed, ¡°He¡¯s only nineteen, but the usual methods of dragging him along by his hormones probably won¡¯t work out well. This newly awakened Tier four put him through the Heathers ringer last year¡­ It looks like she somehow convinced him to sign over controlling shares in his dearly departed Dad¡¯s company, probably with the promise of marriage or something, and then drained him dry, selling the shares off to a vulture capitalist. Funded her debut with a big-name heel.¡±


    ¡°Who is she?¡±


    ¡°Crystal, the newest member of The Flare. Class four shifter and elemental. Turns herself into bulletproof glass and focuses light, reinforcing gifts.¡±


    Kali nodded slowly, ¡°So basically she makes him fall in love with her, strips his assets, and trots off to become an A-list superhero leaving him high and dry. Probably didn¡¯t even know or care that he was an alpha too. That could cause¡­ complications.¡±


    Pixel nodded, ¡°Yep, about a month later he started up SSS and started playing the heel game with a flexible identity. When the heat got too much, he killed off an identity. Not too successfully, since he didn¡¯t tend to build up much fame with his heels, so he couldn¡¯t charge the big bucks.¡±


    ¡°So he¡¯s heading to the academy because he¡¯s desperate?¡±


    Princess Pixel shrugged, ¡°Beats me, maybe. He¡¯s got a sponsor, maybe someone he did a favor for? But considering his finances, he might be desperate. He doesn¡¯t seem particularly greedy, it just looks like he likes playing the villain game. He gets his ass kicked more than Mega-mind. Maybe he¡¯s a masochist?¡±


    ¡°Either way, we can work with it. Do we have anyone at the Academy?¡±


    Princess Pixel shook her head, ¡°Not as a first year, but we have a few people I could clean up and insert. How do you want to do it? This guy¡¯s not particularly smart, but he¡¯s really paranoid.¡±


    Kali smiled, ¡°Get Matchmaker on it. She can find someone, you can clean her up and insert her, and by the time he graduates, those BSA shits won¡¯t be able to touch him with a ten-foot pole. This might be the chance we need to get our own Graviton.¡±


    Princess Pixel sighed and dropped the illusory screen. ¡°Nuclear option it is.¡±


    ***


    Codex grumbled and wiped the sweat off her forehead, glancing around the cheap apartment she was using for surveillance. She HATED trying to keep an eye on technopaths since their brains were wired so oddly, but she was one of the few who could do it. She picked up the handset of a rotary-style telephone and quickly dialed a number only three people in the world knew.


    ¡°Yeah, this is Pollyanna twelve. The Jury is at it again, but I think this time they might have dialed into something. Please put me in touch with Director Gleeson.¡±

 Chapter 7. Sidekick is not a politically correct term.

    A whirlwind. I sort of expected it to happen, but I think it caught Mindy by surprise. What surprised me, though, was that apparently, being registered as a class six support made me a kidnapping risk.


    Seriously. A kidnapping risk. I didn¡¯t have any registered combat abilities, or defensive abilities, which was intentional, but I didn¡¯t expect that. The worst part was, IF someone kidnapped me, I couldn¡¯t technically defend myself. First off, I was still at only about 25 energy, and showing off my abilities would ''not'' fit into my plans.


    This meant they hustled us into an unmarked van, along with five other identical vans that took off in other directions, in mere minutes after I got my paperwork. Somehow, Mindy was changed from my ¡®referral¡¯ to my ¡®sponsor¡¯, and the agents that were escorting and driving us were keeping mostly quiet.


    ¡°Now you see why I was a little worried about the whole black site thing.¡±


    Mindy sighed. ¡°I get it, but at least we aren¡¯t wearing bags over our heads, and they haven¡¯t tranquilized us. Hey, can you tell us anything?¡± she asked one of the suits in the front.


    The guy with a thick mustache on the passenger side shrugged, ¡°You aren¡¯t hostiles, but I don¡¯t have much to say. All I know is that we have a drive-through to the transit hub, and we drop you off there.¡±


    ¡°Transit hub?¡± I asked.


    He nodded, ¡°Transit hub. I can¡¯t tell you much more, except to say that in this case, you are getting the golden ticket from the Champions HQ. I don¡¯t know your names, and I don¡¯t want to, no offense.¡±


    After about ten minutes we were driven into an underground garage, and I couldn¡¯t bear to tell Mindy that based on molecular links, the entire drive wound up being a big sprawling trip around a few blocks to deposit us right back under the BSA center. I guess the point was to confuse things, but with the amount of obfuscation, I half expected to hear ¡®Hail to the Chief¡¯ playing when we hopped back out of the van.


    The transit hub wound up being a quick maglev trip to the east, a private car on the public line, to Reagan Island, in the middle of Obijway Bay. The maglevs were almost necessary for underground transit between Empire City and the bay since surface transit was entirely too vulnerable to attacks by awakened beasts. There was a small chance that something like a carni-worm or voleoid might get through the armored underground tubes, but mostly they stayed in the deserts to the west¡­ anything this close to the east coast was more likely to wind up as food to something bigger like an earth shark.


    Once we got back into the sunlight, past the Reagan Island walls, A charming little city was revealed. Most of the architecture was clearly either here or transplanted from someplace before the Q-bombs went off, with shopfronts that would be more at home in an antique row or maybe an eastern town from the 1800s, right up until the Kellar station. The Kellar Academy itself was a lot more impressive since parts of it had been transplanted directly from Boston after it fell.


    Ivy-coated buildings from some school in the past, which I wasn¡¯t sure about, although I think there were plaques inside each building¡¯s lobby that would remark on its history towered over tree-lined paths, offered a glimpse into the past. The ancient architecture was matched by more modern structures, but the world-famous arena, housing, and additional buildings built from more modern materials were carefully sculpted to match the prevailing brick and whitewash ivy-league aesthetic.


    There were not actually a lot of students at the Kellar Academy, less than two thousand per semester, most of whom were class two or normies, which was a drastic reduction from its twenty-thousand plus students back before it was relocated. The difference, today, was that it housed a much more technically-oriented crowd.


    Fantasists from the forties probably would say that our world was clearly set in the future because we had flying and maglev vehicles. The reason, though, was that cities, often overcrowded and protected by walls, almost required a computerized system just to handle traffic. Public air transport, unless you were a widgeteer or extremely wealthy, was almost necessary to fly between cities unless you fancied getting eaten.


    Ever since the Q-bombs, open-air and wireless transmission have been very unreliable, and a lot of cities and even smaller towns kept the majority of their growth underground now. Obviously, the surface-level construction was a lot more dangerous, which was why my crappy flat was ten stories underground.


    Of course, the super-green folks who wanted Earth to return to the wilderness had seemed pleased about the new focus of vertical populations and lots of untamed green, right up until they got eaten by some animal that was mutated by the exposure to Q-radiance. Today? Well, wilderness and nature were the enemy, an enemy that was more than capable of protecting itself from humanity.


    Add in ¡®invasive species¡¯ from the occasional mythological or alien assault, some of which, like dragons, were more than capable of fighting back against a class six alpha, and the occasional Kaiju that was often unable to be killed, only driven off by as many alphas as could show up, and humanity had retreated to the kind of protected city-states of the ancient past.


    We were escorted to the main building, where we were finally dropped off at a high-security elevator leading down.


    When the elevator doors opened, we were greeted by a woman with bright silvery-blue hair, dressed in a silver and red contraweave. She was, as expected, very attractive, but looked like she was in her early forties.


    ¡°Mister Doyle, Miss Pearlance?¡±


    I nodded, and Mindy said, ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Welcome to Kellar Academy. I apologize for the less-than-ideal greeting, but considering your classifications, operational security was paramount. My goodness, a class five and a class six!¡± she looked a little flustered.


    I was honestly surprised, I would have pegged Glacier Girl as a class four, not a class five, but she might have been holding back a lot while we fought. Of course, in hindsight, if I could, I would have chosen a different way to display my abilities¡­ class six was entirely too notable, and as a male? The last male class six or higher I had heard about was Graviton, a class eight, and we all know how THAT ended.


    ¡°A couple of questions.¡± I asked quickly, ¡°First, I am support. Is there a way we can keep my rate on the down-low?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Of course. I used to be active, but I retired to work in security here at the academy. The only people who have to know are the dean, myself, and, from what I understand, your alpha placement specialist. Operational security makes sense. Are you two a¡­ uhh¡­ couple? Should we board you together?¡±


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    Both of us shook our heads quickly, and Mindy said, ¡°No, not at all. We are acquaintances. I was originally supposed to refer him here since his original assessment was as a class two, but for some reason he re-assessed as a support class six, and they changed my category to sponsor¡­ what does that mean?¡±


    The woman tilted her head, ¡°Well, I am Subvector, class four personal kinetic. You probably won¡¯t see me often after I get you situated because I am the Master-at-Arms under the security chief. At least, I hope you won¡¯t see me much, because I usually only make an appearance when someone gets into trouble or in my classes. A sponsor¡­¡± she thought about it for a few seconds.


    ¡°Some of the old terminology has gotten outdated. The term ¡®sidekick¡¯ for example is considered demeaning. But when you are someone¡¯s sponsor, they are sort of like your sidekick. In this case, it¡¯s probably because you are a powerful combat alpha, and he¡¯s a support. You get to¡­ umm¡­ protect him and keep him out of trouble? I mean, he¡¯s a class six, we could probably find someone else to sponsor him if you would prefer?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°You mean I am like¡­ her ward?¡± I glanced at Mindy, who was blushing fiercely, ¡°So does that mean I call her mistress? Or mommy?¡±


    Subvector shook her head, while Mindy started coughing. ¡°No no. but the Academy trains people to work under constant threat, we are training heroes, not kindergarten teachers.¡± she shrugged a little, ¡°We also train kindergarten teachers, since the Academy has fully accredited educational programs, but that¡¯s generally secondary for maintaining a civilian identity rather than our primary focus for higher-category alphas.¡±


    ¡°In this case, most support classes work with combat classes as sidek¡­ sponsored. The Academy is very competitive, up to and including rank challenges, which will affect your placement when you graduate. The Champions, for example, won¡¯t even accept someone who is not a class four and is at least one of the top ten combat-rated graduates. There are frequent competitions in all aspects, from widgeteering and support, crafting, combat, scientific, or even artistic pursuits for those who use them as part of their Hero identity.¡±


    ¡°But every hero needs support, and even support needs to know how to fight. Thus we have sets of ranks. Any student may challenge another student for their rank in their particular category, and teams have ranks as well. As a sponsored student, if someone challenges you in a combative or obstacle course completion, and it¡¯s a team challenge, Glacier Girl steps in as the primary combat role. If it¡¯s someone training to be a combat hero, she may choose to take your place in a single combat challenge, since support are not expected to go toe-to-toe with combat beasts.¡±


    ¡°What challenge categories are there?¡±


    She smiled, ¡°Single combat, group combat, single obstacle, group obstacle, technological competence, magical competence, artistic, gearing, criminology, survival, and stealth. Each student has a rank in each category, although sometimes scheduled competitions do not fit strictly into a single category. Different teams, as you are well aware, in the real world, often have different central foci. The Watchers, for example, tend to look for those who excel at single obstacle, stealth, and survival rather than strict combat, The Champions look for single and group combat as well as criminology, while the Monster Hunters out of Denver try to nab anyone that has high ranks in group combat, group obstacle, and either technological or magical competence.¡±


    ¡°What about groups like The Flare?¡±


    She sighed, ¡°More than a few teams are put together strictly based on their popularity. We certainly have public relations and media appeal classes, since that¡¯s an important part of being a hero, and the artistic challenge category tends to focus on that, but groups like the Flare don¡¯t care as much about rankings. They are still important, but it¡¯s more about how photogenic they are, as long as they are reasonably competent and have a decent power category.¡±


    GG nodded slowly, ¡°Groups like the Flare, Summer Wild, and Olympus are the ones that make the big bucks and keep the public interested, especially when they are in movies and stuff. But when there¡¯s a wall breach, it¡¯s the Champions or the Hunters that the city calls. I sorta want to be in the Flare because it¡¯s my home team, but that¡¯s because I wanted to make my career and then get out, and just be on emergency call. Maybe find a nice guy and settle down.¡±


    ¡°How about you? What¡¯s your end goal, Blueprint?¡± Subvector asked curiously.


    I monologued, ¡°The same thing we do every night, Pinky¡­ Try to take over the world!¡± and at her odd look I realized she probably didn¡¯t have any idea what I was referencing, even though Glacier Girl was snickering. I wondered if it was a generational thing.


    ¡°Seriously, I am hoping to get a good job in supply and manufacturing logistics, maybe play the chair guy for a team or two, and then, once I have a civilian job in a good place, retire to the emergency reserves. Of course, if my abilities pan out, it might be nice to run my own super-gear or transportation production company, but I am not really interested in a family until I am totally solid and stable, maybe in my thirties or forties.¡±


    She looked at me oddly, ¡°That is really thought out. As a class six support, though, you might not need to wait that long¡­ some of our students already have trademarked materials worth millions.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Sure, and I already have logistics chain training, but I was halfway through my degree. I still need to work on the business management aspects, but mostly I need the degrees so I can get the right start with the right company.¡±


    She nodded slowly, ¡°This is getting outside of my area of expertise, but most standardized courses can be tested out of if you are already grounded, with full accreditation. You will still have to put in the full four years for Alpha courses, but I sort of applaud you for having everything charted out like that. You should have a master¡¯s degree when you leave your civili¡­ standard job.¡±


    ¡°So they are looking at keeping me on a full four-year scholarship?¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°As a class six? They¡¯d keep you here for a doctorate if they could. But most Alphas choose to do what they can to keep their civilian identities quiet and peaceful, or they go full-time heroes. Between the salary for being on a team and various bounties, keeping in the black is absurdly easy for someone higher than a class three.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°If you survive. The Monster Hunters have a turnover rate of what, fifteen percent annually? And that¡¯s not from retirement or transfers.¡±


    She sighed, ¡°That¡¯s not a lie. I actually retired from the Monster Hunters myself, but I will admit that far too many kids leave in a box. That¡¯s why I am here, I also train unarmed and creative power courses, and I keep hoping that a little common sense might sink into more students.¡±


    ¡°That being said, You are coming in mid-term. From my information, you are both going to need some minor remedial power courses, to get up to speed for your first year. Unfortunately, no team suites are available until the second year, which means I need to put you in the solo dormitory. Because she¡¯s your sponsor, I think I can get some rooms on the same floor, but you are going to have to remember rule number one.¡±


    ¡°Rule one?¡± Mindy asked.


    ¡°Yes, the academy has a lot more unpowered students than powered. Keep your abilities close to your chest. You¡¯ll receive special uniforms, and you are not to use any powers higher than class two when you aren¡¯t in your uniform and your alpha identity. It¡¯s not really a secret that there are powered students, but once you are in uniform you are ONLY your alpha identity¡­ other students might know that you have a few tricks, but unless you are planning to spend your entire life as a full-time super, you are just a class one or two enhanced, not an alpha. Got it?¡±


    We both nodded, and she led us out of the transit terminal.

 Chapter 8. The problem with a secret Identity is all the lies.

    As we walked, Subvector looked at Mindy curiously. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind my asking, wasn¡¯t your alter ego on the highlights stream recently? That should give you some cachet. A real live supervillain put-down.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°He wasn¡¯t a hardcore, more of a kook. He was trying to turn everyone in blocks C and D blue. Ranted about how he would make everyone look like an alpha to end discrimination.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Well, it was a good fight. What was he, a class four elemental? Devil-something?¡± I kept my mouth shut.


    Mindy looked a little confused, ¡°Diabolus Firetrap. I wasn¡¯t sure. I mean, he had flames, and could even use them to transit, and as a pressure-wave defense. That big fireball at the end? That¡¯s a heck of a transit power. I¡¯d put him closer to a class five.¡±


    ¡°So he didn¡¯t self-destruct?¡±


    Mindy shook her head, ¡°Naww, it was transit. As much as I hate to admit it, he got away clean. I have reason to believe he¡¯s alive and well, but his scheme was foiled and I managed to freeze off the contaminated water until Public Works got there, and that was good enough to hit the highlights stream.¡±


    Subvector smiled a little, ¡°Well, good that he¡¯s alive. Monsters need to be stopped, but the kooks¡­ I always have hopes for them. Besides, even with the armor, did you see that ass?¡±


    Mindy laughed, ¡°Almost more of it than I wanted¡­ we sort of got into a wrestling match near the end. He¡¯s also stupidly strong, but I think that was just a side effect, not a secondary power since there wasn¡¯t any kinetic manipulation backing it up. He kept talking about how he was purified by fire, so I wonder if he figured out a way to use the element to boost his physique.¡±


    Molecular reinforcement wasn¡¯t that rough when I had the extra energy, but I had been extremely careful¡­ monkeying with your physiology was a stupidly dangerous game, and just figuring out how to increase my muscle and bone density without screwing up my oxygen delivery, blood flow, and nutritional balance had cost me more than one reset. Technically, I could probably qualify as a class three body enhancer, but if I had shown that off, what would they have labeled me as, class seven?


    Subvector sighed, ¡°I hope he winds up here eventually or on the right side of the law. We don¡¯t have nearly enough men, and with an elemental physique¡­ hell, I¡¯d probably try to get him teaching something like that. We have way too many glass cannons right now, especially among the elementals. Not to mention¡­¡± she glanced over at me, ¡°No offense, but even in the armor you could tell he had an amazing body. I almost envy you wrestling with him.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Do you make it a habit to get all physical with supervillains?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Personal kinetic, no range, of course I do. I mean, I guess I could try throwing street signs and stuff, but in the end, I am a class four flying brick.¡±


    ¡°That wasn¡¯t what I was asking.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I know, but if you are looking for PR, few things are as compelling as a forbidden Romeo and Juliet relationship. I sort of had something like that back when I was active, with a class three vigilante, but he was¡­ too serious about being a vigilante. When he started killing people, I had to put him away.¡±


    ¡°He started killing people? Like a Grimdark?¡±


    She nodded as we stepped into one of the buildings and waved to the older man behind the desk. ¡°Worse. He was a light elemental, lasers and solid light constructs, although he couldn¡¯t break the transportation barrier, which was why he was only a class three, but he had a thing about anyone abusing normals with their powers. I got his point of view, but he drilled a street-level hero for using his powers to stop a hostage.¡±


    ¡°Some guy kidnapped his daughter from her mother, and of course, a street shielder Tung-pow went in to capture him safely. Razor, though, went nuts and drilled Tung-Pow right in front of the six-year-old daughter. I wasn¡¯t even there¡­ I had to track him down and lock him up, which put an end to my adventurous youth.¡±


    ¡°Do you always tell that story?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yeah, I am over it, but I always figured if you can¡¯t be a good example, you can be a terrible warning. Vigilantes and Supervillains can be exciting as bad boys, or bad girls if you are into that, but you have to keep your mind on the possible risks.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I imagine it could also be a hell of a PR fallout.¡±


    She nodded slowly, ¡°That¡¯s why I had to go after him myself. It wasn¡¯t my job, I was in the Monster Hunters, but being connected with a cold-blooded murderer would have tanked my career as much as it broke my heart.¡±


    Mindy sighed deeply, ¡°I am so sorry, that must have killed you.¡±


    We exited the elevator as she led us to some rooms. ¡°Not as bad as all that. If you decide to date alphas, you are probably going to have to get used to the fact that it¡¯s going to mostly be flings. Fun for a short time, but there are so few that there¡¯s no real incentive for most of them, especially the handsome ones, to stick around. It¡¯s best to get the romance out of your system and enjoy what you can get, or stick to normies instead.¡±


    I looked at Subvector, ¡°You make us sound like complete assholes.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°It is what it is. You are likely to get a lot of attention, and some girls just try to get a high score. I mean, there are wonder stories like Osprey and Ocelot, but you are a class six¡­ If you aren¡¯t gay, you are likely to have a lot of people trying to get into your bed, both normies and alphas. I highly recommend getting used to being naked except for your mask.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Nope, not going to get used to it at all. I plan on staying away from any romantic entanglements until I am ready for a family, alphas especially, and being the community bicycle has zero appeal.¡±


    She looked at me sympathetically, ¡°An alpha already fucked you up, didn¡¯t she?¡±


    My jaw dropped, ¡°Uhh¡­¡±


    She sighed and shook her head, ¡°It¡¯s not going to be a secret from security. Whoever she was, she¡¯s going to get scrutinized very closely to see if she¡¯s a security risk. The same with any family or close friends. We take op-sec and protecting your identity very seriously. Did she know you were an Alpha?¡±


    ¡°She knew me as a normie. She knew I popped as a class two, but I didn¡¯t exactly share my reg card, since I didn¡¯t have one at the time. We broke up after she popped.¡±


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    ¡°You could save me a lot of trouble by letting me know her name.¡±


    I sighed deeply, ¡°Christine Freemont.¡±


    She raised an eyebrow, ¡°Do you know her I.D.?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yep, but I won¡¯t tell you.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Good.¡± and showed us to our rooms.


    ***


    I glared at the class schedule while I shoveled away a mountain of grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. They were pretty good, with a hint of mustard and mayo on rye and a delicious cheddar/gouda blend, but I wasn¡¯t in a position to truly enjoy them.


    ¡°Something wrong?¡± asked Mindy as she sat down next to me with a 12¡± veggie pizza. One good thing about being an alpha, mostly you¡¯d never have to worry about getting fat, although considering how much we tended to eat, malnutrition could potentially become a problem.


    I take it back. There were some fat alphas, but you¡¯d have to regularly and grossly overindulge, or have a power based specifically around being fat. Where there was a will there was a way, though.


    I nodded, ¡°This is remedial?¡± I asked, pointing at no less than 6 classes I was expected to course load. Each was three hours, and I had to take three a day. ¡°I was expecting actual educational courses, like business management and accounting, not a bunch of hardcore electives.¡±


    She shrugged, we hadn¡¯t received our uniforms yet, and it looked like at least three of the classes would be expected in uniform. ¡°We have different courses. I think some of yours are probably support, like advanced anatomy. They have access to our original transcripts and our assessment results, so they probably want to like¡­ improve your medicine or something.¡±


    ¡°I have seven classes, five per day, but most of them are an hour and a half. It looks like I get remedial teamwork and uhh¡­ Eastern studies with you, though.


    I swallowed another sandwich irritably. ¡°Okay, this class I guess I can get behind, fitness training. But it¡¯s kind of irritating that they put me on it like I am not in shape and don¡¯t know how to lift and train. Criminology I get, but what on Earth is remedial appearance? Do I have to learn to put on make-up?


    She smiled a little, ¡°It¡¯s probably a class on public relations. I mean, for remedial classes we might not even have more than a couple of teachers, and it¡¯s only four weeks. Remember that a lot of these kids came from rich backgrounds and even superhero families.¡±


    ¡°Like you?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Not like me. Sure, I grew up middle-class, but my mom isn¡¯t a superhero, she¡¯s a tier-two multiplier and low-end functional replicator. The only reason we had money at all was because she worked three jobs at the same time.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°Then how did you afford¡­¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°SSS? Scrimping and saving. When I was a teenager she went to bed every night with a recombination headache. When I awakened, while I was at college, I had a choice¡­ finish my school, or try to work part-time as a cape influencer. I went ahead and blew my college fund on influencer because when I popped as a class four I knew I could afford to finish school. Even if I couldn¡¯t get a spot somewhere like the Flare, with a good experience under my belt I could at least join an emergency response team and maybe run a stream occasionally.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Before I popped I was kind of dumpy, but you know what awakening does. I won¡¯t run a fantasy site, I am not a slut, but I know I could hold an audience now. But that leads me into something else.¡±


    I polished off another sandwich. ¡°Something else?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I am your sponsor now. All I know about you is what you showed me. I am pretty sure that remedial teamwork will help us get it together as a fighter and support, but umm¡­¡±


    I glanced at her, ¡°You think we need some time together as people to learn about each other outside of remedial teamwork?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yeah.¡±


    ¡°Not like dating, right? I don¡¯t think either of us needs that kind of stress right now.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Of course not. Other than like¡­ study dates, I guess. Most of the people here come from privileged backgrounds, so we might have to present sort of a united front. Besides, Dia¡­ umm¡­ someone vouched for you, and I am sort of interested in why. You don¡¯t strike me as someone that hangs out in the wannabe circuit, how¡¯d you guys meet?¡±


    I had a carefully prepared story. ¡°We were both dating the same girl. At the same time.¡±


    ¡°Did you know about it?¡±


    ¡°Nope. It wasn¡¯t until she popped, ripped us both off, and kicked us to the curb that we met and compared notes. We kinda hit it off pretty well, since we were both huge supervillain fans, but it wasn¡¯t until he came to me sorta messed up that I realized that he played the game. He knew I was a class two fixer by that point, and I patched him and his armor up.¡±


    ¡°He isn¡¯t really a kook, that¡¯s just the LARP he plays to get gigs. A weird rant or two, scary armor, and cool special effects make for good streaming. Right now, alpha oppression is pretty popular, but if something else comes along, he¡¯ll probably switch identities and become like¡­ Forest Fire or something. We work-shopped some identities, but other than that we were just dudes that hung out together at the mall until he told me you felt like you owed him a favor.¡±


    ¡°Was he hurt badly?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Not more than I can handle, although he had to scrap his armor. That was a little expensive, but he¡¯s got backups. You might not see Diabolus Firetrap for a while, though, since the identity was linked to the suit, and replacing it will cost a bit.¡±


    ¡°Does he have a lot of identities?¡±


    ¡°A few. SSS likes to stay flexible since they only hire men.¡±


    ¡°Why is that?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°That I know. It¡¯s a stunt company that specializes in providing villains that LOSE. Sure, there are many more female than male alphas, but normies still run the show¡­ who enjoys watching pretty women getting beaten up? There¡¯s a place where that sort of thing is popular, but SSS doesn¡¯t roll that way.¡±


    She nodded slowly, taking a big bite of her pizza. ¡°That¡­ makes a weird kind of sense. I mean, it¡¯s kind of sexist, but logical at the same time. Do you plan on working for them?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°I¡¯m a guy that can repair armor. Even if I wind up being able to make a set of widgeteer armor for myself, do you know what people call normie-strength heroes and villains in super armor?¡±


    ¡°Tin cans?¡±


    ¡°Sardines. Lots of Widgeteers have done it, but unless they have some kind of physical enhancement, sooner or later they are always dead fish in a can, if only from the same kind of brain damage boxers and football players have to deal with.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°See, that¡¯s exactly the sort of thing we need to learn about each other. So I suggest we take at least an hour a day, outside of our class schedules, maybe dinner?¡±


    ¡°That we can do.¡± I looked around at the almost deserted dining hall. ¡°Probably right here. I mean, it¡¯s seven, and this place is almost empty.¡±


    ¡°Fancy students, fancy food. This place is pretty great for us, but a lot of these kids probably eat out every night or order in even if this place is technically free. Also the timing¡­ The Alpha students, at least, probably have unusual schedules.¡±


    ¡°So are you going to try and try to milk me for more information on Diabolus?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°That was the original plan, but it sounds like you have lots of interesting things surrounding you as well. I owe him a debt still, but I didn¡¯t develop some kind of crush on him or something.¡±


    I nodded, buffing my nails on my shirt as I grabbed another sandwich with the other hand, inspecting my nails, I said, ¡°Monsters lead such INTERESTING lives.¡± in my best Bugs Bunny voice.


    She laughed, ¡°I wouldn¡¯t call him a monster.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Oh, no. If you are around for a general alert, you will get to meet real monsters.¡±

 chapter 9. A rare hint of honesty.

    ¡°Both of you have above-average IQs, so I am not going to stand here and lecture you. You are welcome to consider this class a study hall, but playing it like a traditional class would waste both your time and mine. You have a lot of reading, though, and a full class schedule, which is why it¡¯s scheduled in three-hour blocks.¡±


    The teacher was a normie, although I knew better than to use the term around, well, normies. It was considered kind of offensive, although in my opinion just about any term used to describe a group of people was, sooner or later, deemed offensive. As if changing the language would make a difference. I think the current socially approved term was non-alpha, but that would probably change eventually too as the council of the eternally butthurt decided on something new to pitch a fit over.


    I¡¯d gotten a surprisingly good night¡¯s sleep and a delicious breakfast from the school mess. It was quite a bit more crowded in the mornings, so I figured Mindy¡¯s guess about where the students were the night before seemed pretty accurate. A few people had been interested in me, but a stern glare had kept them mostly away until Mindy had shown up. I wasn¡¯t making any friends, but I wasn¡¯t here to make friends, and I was more than capable of ignoring the occasional ¡®What the fuck is HIS problem?¡¯ I caught.


    ¡°To be honest, I don¡¯t even care if you show up except on Fridays for the next four weeks. That¡¯s when I throw a test to make sure you have read what I assigned you. I usually teach early American History, So I plan to use this time as a way to catch up on my work. I¡¯ll be here even if you aren¡¯t, so if you have questions about what you have read, or about American History, I will be happy to help you. I get paid to be here, you don¡¯t, so use it as you will.¡±


    Doctor Menendez was a young guy, maybe in his thirties, so I guess that meant he wasn¡¯t like¡­ tenured or something. I didn¡¯t really know how academies or universities worked, and I also didn¡¯t really care.


    ¡°The only real rules I have are that when you are here, you treat this like a public space even though there¡¯s only the two of you. That means no eating, sleeping, or other acts that are best held in private¡­ I don¡¯t want to watch that. If you are Alphas, and no, I don¡¯t need to know, try to avoid using any powers in this class, at least spectacular ones. I don¡¯t care if you can use your abilities to sharpen your pencils or memorize the dictionary, I just don¡¯t want superpowers flying around my head, or you burning down the classroom.¡±


    ¡°Do we need to raise our hands?¡±


    He shook his head. ¡°Nope. And you are perfectly welcome to talk about whatever you think you need to. Just don¡¯t try and talk over top of me if we decide I need to go into full-on teacher mode for something. Also, keep quiet during quizzes. This class is remedial, but it DOES help determine class placement when the regular semester starts. If you screw up the reading, you¡¯ll be dumped into remedial Alpha history, and that class DOES get graded, and it¡¯s boring and time-consuming. They will figure you need the lecture time to learn. Some folks do.¡±


    The books and websites he gave us to read were not exactly basic, but they were not too bad, written from the standpoint of both alphas and normies. They didn¡¯t delve into powers but rather addressed the social and strategic effects of alphas before and after the Kaiju started becoming a real problem.


    The BSA was created to be the organization that coordinated those who stood on the line between the monsters and humanity. It still filled that job, but its scope had expanded to be the line between normies and supers as well. It wasn¡¯t a BAD organization, and it was funded from the resources recovered from groups like monster hunters and sales to the private sector of both resources and their technology patents.


    They were also the go-between for humanity and defense systems, like Kaiju guns (which seldom worked) and advanced peacekeeper weapons and armor (which usually worked).


    Their third role was peacekeeper forces and direct intercession for non-kaiju threats, like true supervillains and dimensional invasions. They were the direct support for the academy, wall bounties, and both state and federal teams, but they also ran a small army of ¡®emergency enforcers¡¯ who were pure humans specially trained and equipped with the best of the best equipment for dealing with superhuman threats and assisting the super teams.


    Good in concept, but the tinfoil hatters were convinced, for good reasons, that the emergency enforcers were black-ops teams. Too many of their lower-profile operations resulted in unexplained disappearances, silent witnesses, and ¡®shot trying to escape¡¯ cases. I understood it, but I firmly supported the fact that alphas should go after alphas because when humans were faced with people who could turn them into mulch with a blink, they tended to turn ¡®capture¡¯ into ¡®lethal force¡¯ simply out of fear.


    It was like that experiment back before most cops were outfitted with powerful nonlethal as well as lethal weapons. Small, feminine women started joining the various police forces, and many of them, because their threshold for feeling threatened was far lower than the big bruiser males, gained a suspect-kill ratio in the double digits.


    It wasn¡¯t because they were evil, it was because they weren¡¯t as intimidating, and situations where intimidation and physical force could have ended them fairly peacefully turned into gunfights as the women were forced to protect themselves with lethal force.


    That wasn¡¯t the case so much anymore, there were lots of effective female police officers now, but suspects knew that no matter how aggressive they were, 50 kilovolts at 19 milliamps would turn them into a flopping fish. It changed the face of low enforcement among normies.


    But supercops? If the only thing between you and instant death is a thin layer of armor and a recursive plasma cannon, that cannon becomes a much more attractive option. The Emergency Enforcers, of course, had access to a huge variety of nonlethal alternatives, but most of them were not guaranteed to work on most alphas. It was hard enough finding LETHAL weapons that worked in a lot of cases.


    That and a ton of case studies were embraced in the websites, and to be honest, despite my initial trepidation, the concepts were fascinating¡­ I had no intention of becoming a superhero, but if I was able to process energy like a normal alpha, my huge variety of potential special effects up to and including complete molecular lockdown would make me a shoo-in for a team anchor, and when the time came to leave the class, I was hooked on the subject matter.


    ¡°Doctor?¡± I asked as we unplugged and folded our new school-issue tablets. I wouldn¡¯t hit Vilnet with it, that was for certain¡­ heck, I wouldn¡¯t even do it from the school¡¯s network. If I needed it, I¡¯d head off-campus to find a solid hard link.


    ¡°Yes, Mister Doyle?


    ¡°I¡¯ve been running through the justice center¡¯s files on takedowns of certain medium-profile reprobates. Is there a better source of details? I am hoping to get into team support and logistics, and a better idea of the strengths and vulnerabilities of certain classes of Alpha would be pretty useful, but most of the records just talk about who and where¡­ the how is mostly useless quotes. Who helps, a lot, but as you know most of the actives keep their take-down abilities secret, not that I can blame them.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°That¡¯s the biggest reason right there. Unless a takedown happens in front of a digicam, it¡¯s usually kept quiet by both the BSA and the individuals involved. I hate to have to say wait and see, but until you are in a better place, your security rating is going to be too low to get into the real meat of a lot of the encounters. However, the Monster Hunter records are kept a lot looser, would that help? I like where your head is at.¡±


    He gave me a few more sites, one of which required a visitor password that he was happy to provide, and I decided that this particular remedial class was worth my time.


    After lunch was physical fitness, the non-costumed kind. Easy breezy, even though in this case, it wasn¡¯t exactly remedial since I was in pretty good shape. Technically I was auditing the course, but it was a full class, and after the coach/teacher checked to make sure I knew what I was doing, I found a ¡®spotting partner¡¯ who was a big guy named George, he left me alone.


    George considered himself an unsophisticated farm boy, and he even had a hint of an accent from the Texan unity, which only disappeared when he was stressed. He repeated the whole ¡®I¡¯m just an unsophisticated farm boy¡¯ thing pretty much every time anyone pressed him, although he did ask me if I was going to try out for the ¡®a-plus football program¡¯ when I pushed a bit more iron than was normal for my size, which was already a lot.


    ¡°Can¡¯t do it, I¡¯d get disqualified.¡±


    ¡°You an alpha? He asked bluntly.


    I nodded, ¡°Class two. Just enough to make sure that I can never participate in any sports.¡±


    ¡°Wahl,¡± he drawled slowly, ¡°Thar¡¯s rules and then thar¡¯s rules. A bit of physical enhancement''s usually just noted and ignored. Have you seen some of those monsters that play running backs? Alpha or not, they could squash both of us into a ball.¡±


    I severely doubted that, but I just nodded, ¡°Mine is an automatic disqualification. Microkinesis.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°A very weak form of telekinesis, like a nudge. It¡¯s not good for more than just pushing dust around, but it¡¯s strong enough to foil a pass or an interception. Some wide receiver gets butterfingers while I am nearby, I can guarantee I know where all the fingers are going to get pointed, even if he just fucks up.¡±


    ¡°Dude, that sucks. I¡¯d hate to have to work under those kinds of restrictions, and if it had just been a bit of enhancement, I can guarantee that the coach would be looking at you. Is that true for other sports too?¡±


    I thought about it a little, ¡°Most of them, although I might try for wrestling or kendo as long as they don¡¯t try to put me in the ring with might-based class threes. That sort of stuff is WAY out of my reach.¡±


    ¡°Can you play basketball?¡±


    I grinned as I started cleaning up the weights. Between the two of us, we were attracting a LOT of female attention in our gym clothes, and while I tried to dodge it, George just seemed to soak it up, which I was fine with. ¡°That depends. Do you think I will cheat?¡±


    He laughed, ¡°I don¡¯t care. This class is a gimme for the team, an easy pass to bring up our GPA. I just gotta stay busy for three hours, and the weight equipment for basics is Nautilus trash. I do my own sets in the morning before I even get here.¡±


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Ironically, it was NOT that easy to cheat with a nudge. My range was too short to affect anything I didn¡¯t have my hands on, and it would be a huge waste of energy, but I had to build my brand as that ¡®weak-ass alpha¡¯ to counteract any unearned popularity, and I did a great job by sucking completely at basketball.


    I didn¡¯t even have to fake it, since while I could run around the court all day and steal with ease, I¡¯d never really played that much and could reliably miss the rim with every shot, especially when I tried to hit it. Still, some of the guys were looking forward to playing with me again, since after I realized I was NEVER going to be mister basketball, I was pretty good at the passing game.


    The best part was that the hot shots who could sink the ball from half-court were fawned over. The power forward, whatever that was, who made sure that every rebound was snatched and passed off to someone who could actually shoot wasn¡¯t much of a celebrity. Heck, the only reason I even tried shooting occasionally was because otherwise the defenders would stay a few feet back and try and block passes instead of staying close where I could get around them.


    ¡°Well, on the plus side, at least no one will ever accuse you of cheating if you play basketball. Great hands, but you shoot like my sister,¡± George said as we headed to the locker room afterward.


    I nodded. I think I could have found a way to use my abilities to increase my rebounds and tip a few shots, but it would have been a huge waste of energy. I was guessing George had assigned himself as my designated mentor, and I could do a lot worse¡­ at least no one had assigned themselves as my nemesis, although that didn¡¯t happen as much to big, athletic guys. Be pleasant but not too friendly, and people leave you alone. I¡¯d probably make a great wingman, which might have been George¡¯s goal.


    George Pendergast was affable enough, and I needed to start building a new contact network. Considering that the ¡°unsophisticated farm boy¡¯s¡± family ran one of the largest agricultural conglomerates in the Middle States, acting friendly was probably a good start.


    ***


    The morning class on day two was¡­ unusual. Because of the number of alphas and their training, the school had adopted an almost Maxwell Smart approach to keeping their ¡®uniformed selves¡¯ separated from their student identities.


    First, you were expected to go in uniform. I didn¡¯t have a ¡®uniform¡¯ for Blueprint, so I simply wore a light blue World Gym tank top and gi pants I used to train in, with my lifting trainers. A black domino with a holographic feature alteration to make me look like I had lower cheekbones was more than enough of a disguise.


    Second, the rooms had a secondary transit elevator in each closet, which would deposit us into a subsurface assembly room with a private code to return us to our rooms. It wasn¡¯t great identity protection, but most alpha students were expected to change their super-handle when they joined a team to protect either their identity or to suit a theme. I mean, come on, can you imagine Mindy calling herself ¡®Glacier Girl¡¯ into her forties? I certainly couldn¡¯t.


    I would probably hang onto Blueprint for as long as possible, simply because ¡®Paradox¡¯ was taken. Trademarks were very real, which was why I was glad I was able to grab ¡®Blueprint¡¯ as a legal ID. My supervillain personas, though, were not registered because, you know, supervillains. They were not often sticklers for trademark law.


    And teams like the Olympians, of course, wanted their teammates to use a handle based on Greco/Roman mythology. THOSE trademarks were often registered property of the team itself, sort of like in professional wrestling. As I recall, there¡¯s been at least three Vulcans, and only one of them was a widgeteer.


    Once the small, well-lit transport cab brought me to the underground hub, Glacier Girl was already waiting for me, only instead of the revealing outfit she¡¯d fought me in, she was dressed in a well-supporting sports leotard and tee combination in blue, surprisingly close to the color of my gi.


    She had a mask similar to mine, but only idiots wouldn¡¯t recognize each other. I just hope she didn¡¯t recognize Diabolus, except he¡¯d been wearing a full helmet with voice modification and much heavier military-surplus armor. Same height, but that was about it.


    ¡°Nice look, GG,¡± I said.


    She shook her head, ¡°I am burying that until I graduate. Right now I am registered as Frostweaver instead, to get a little distance. It¡¯s funny that we match, though.¡±


    I smiled, ¡°Not a bad handle at all. I''m just Blueprint, but I don¡¯t have a real uniform, so I just dug this out of my gear for right now. Once I graduate, I figured my uniform would be whatever the team chooses, or nothing at all.¡±


    She giggled, giving me the up-and-down. ¡°Can I vote for nothing at all? You look amazing.¡±


    I gulped, ¡°Uhh¡­ you look good too, but I meant just civvies or whatever I need to wear to support a team.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°I know what you meant, I was just¡­ I mean, I knew you were well-built, but damn.¡± she held out her hand towards my shoulder, ¡°Can I touch?¡±


    I growled a little and then said ¡°Fine,¡± tilting my head a little as she ran her fingers down the muscles of my arm. I didn¡¯t like it, it was a little too flirty for my tastes, but if we were going to train together, physical contact was absolutely going to be necessary, so she might as well get it out of her system now. Maybe I should have picked a sweatshirt, but have you ever tried lifting in a sweatshirt? I had no idea what this ¡®Eastern Studies¡¯ was supposed to be, but since it was in uniform, it was a good assumption that it wasn¡¯t just Chinese history.


    ¡°Your muscles are incredibly hard.¡± she said curiously, ¡°I thought you were a widgeteer or something. Physical strengthening?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Materials specialist. But an enhanced physique seems to come with the package. Most people with any kind of healing gifts have pretty good bodies because they can just think of themselves as improved, just like kinetics. It¡¯s not like a mass manipulator or internal elemental, I mean, I am not bulletproof, but I do intend to be the best I can be.¡±


    ¡°So you just¡­ thought yourself into looking like that?¡± she asked skeptically, brushing my bicep again.


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I broke my ass on the weights for years, and trained in Sambo, boxing, Lethwei, and wrestling. When I was a teenager I dreamed of being a superhero, and then my dad died, my lucky superpower turned out to be a dud, and I went broke.¡±


    She sighed, ¡°I am sorry about your father. My father was¡­ He disappeared when my sister and I were babies, so I don¡¯t know much about him. But uh¡­ I got a pretty good Alpha gift, so I have been focusing on training that. Still, they graded you as a rank six, I doubt very much your power is a dud, even if it¡¯s support.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°I still don¡¯t understand why. I mean, yeah, it has a lot of potential, and I have been trying to train and expand it for two years. Mostly I think it¡¯s because it has a healing component that is¡­¡± I tried to think of a good term to explain it.


    ¡°Weak but Consistent?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Right. Utterly consistent in its applicability. If the injury is small enough, I can heal it no matter what it is. Poison, radiation, burns, severed, whatever. That¡¯s why my body is enhanced, because I can fix any workout damage instantly, including temporary improvements, and I keep the strength and durability without having to deal with the scarring or loss of flexibility.¡±


    ¡°That, and I can make widgets work.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    I smiled a little and decided to offer a hint of trust. ¡°If a widget is small enough, within my field, I can power it even if the widgeteer has disconnected it. Not for very long, I have massive energy problems, but a few seconds is usually long enough to at least figure out what it does, or to trick it into doing what I need it to do. That¡¯s one of the reasons I like the name Blueprint. I am not a widgeteer, but I can play one on TV.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Now I know why he registered you as a tier six. That¡¯s sick. I mean, you could use ANYTHING, even the most powerful widgeteer gear.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Sure, like I said, for a few seconds.¡±


    ¡°Can you heal yourself?¡±


    ¡°Well, yeah. That¡¯s how I learned.¡±


    ¡°How much? I mean, you said you can heal anything small enough to fit inside your field, or whatever. But your whole body is part of you. Can you heal yourself?¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°Yeah, but again, energy problems. Do you know what burnout is?¡±


    She nodded as we started walking towards the G wing. ¡°That¡¯s when you run so far out of energy that you pass out, and if you overdo it, you can kill yourself.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Well, I have a very small energy pool. I won¡¯t kill myself, but if I try something too big for me, I can run into something I call energy debt.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°I go into the negative. I can run into the negative as deeply as my maximum energy, but when I run into the negative I feel like complete crap, all of my food and rest are just spent trying to recover, and I walk around like a zombie for days or weeks until I can get a positive balance again. It¡¯s like a really nasty flu, and I can even get sick because it depresses everything, including my immune system.¡±


    She looked at me shyly, ¡°Can you tell me how you awakened? I¡¯ll show you mine if you show me yours.¡±


    I ignored the innuendo, ¡°It was stupid. I was trying to build real claws like Wolfling when I was seventeen, out of some beat-up steel knives and some of those chain-mail gloves that you use to keep from lopping off a thumb when you are cutting meat. I didn¡¯t secure the vice well enough, and the grinder slipped, and a piece of knife went flying at my face. Of course, as a seventeen year old I never even considered something like safety goggles.¡±


    ¡°I tried to dodge out of the way, and my ability turned its path just enough so that it hit me in the ear instead of the eye. And then I managed to heal the ear while my dad called the ambulance, and went into massive energy debt. They kept me in the hospital for a week not because of the ear, but because my entire system was acting like it was trying to shut itself down. After I recovered, the doctor submitted a report to the assessment center about a boy who was covered in blood with no apparent injuries, and two weeks later I was a class 2 microkinetic that could barely influence a coin flip.¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°That was more exciting than mine. A boy at the resort where I was working thought it would be funny to jam up a lift while I was in the maintenance bay. I almost froze to death when he took off for the night without telling anyone, because he forgot I was closing. After a while, I got comfortable again, and then I froze and broke the lock. Boom, superpowers.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Boom. Still, cryokinesis is an incredibly useful power. Control, attack, defense, it¡¯s super popular with teams.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yeah, exactly. It¡¯s both the most common elemental and the most popular. Most teams have at least one already, which is why I felt like I had to do what I did. Although technically, it¡¯s a bit different from normal cryokinesis.¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°Hire a PR team.¡±


    She nodded and looked at the G annex. ¡°Well, I thought we had the same class, but it looks like I am in room G305 and you are in G306. Catch you at lunch?¡±


    I nodded, smiling in what I hoped was a friendly way instead of a rictus grin. ¡°Sure thing,¡± I said, before turning to face my fate.

 Chapter 10. Ancient Master that is not genre-blind.

    I thought I walked into a trope.


    It looked like a classic dojo if the dojo was designed to deal with guys that could bench-press a semi. Then again, that¡¯s probably precisely what it was for.


    Sitting at one end, on a mat, was an old man. Or at least I think he was old. He had a white beard, and wrinkles around his eyes, but the guy was huge, like professional wrestler huge.


    I glanced around and looked at him. ¡°Eastern studies?¡±


    He was sitting cross-legged, or maybe lotus. I¡¯d never really paid any attention to the mystical side of martial arts. I mean, I got the philosophical implications, but the whole concept of ¡®learning martial arts so you never have to use them¡¯ struck me as hypocritical. With great power and all that, and the whole ¡®chi¡¯ and ¡®invisible martial arts¡¯ stuff was proven to be a complete bucket of hogwash when alpha abilities weren¡¯t involved.


    ¡°Are you my teacher?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°For this, yes. Not going to be your ancient mentor, though.¡±


    ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡±


    He coughed a little and then pushed his way to his feet quickly. Geez, he had to be seven feet tall. ¡°Couple of reasons. First, I¡¯m not as old as I look.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°You don¡¯t look that old.¡±


    He laughed, ¡°Don¡¯t try kissing my ass. I know what I look like. I didn¡¯t awaken till I was thirty-five and spent half my life in the box killing sandworms. Your age tends to slow down when you awaken, but if you pop late, you start late.¡±


    ¡°You were killing sandworms as a normie? That¡¯s pretty impressive¡­ that you are still alive, I mean, you must have been pretty good at it.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yep. The second reason is that I know the tropes. I am not going to try and convince you to be a superhero, I plan to teach you exactly the secret technique rather than acting like you aren¡¯t ready for it, and I don¡¯t plan on dying to the super-evil dude or monster to let everyone know that the situation is serious and to give you the drive to triumph with only memories of my wisdom to guide you.¡±


    ¡°Secret Technique?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yep. Have a seat, grasshopper.¡±


    I shrugged and sat down cross-legged. So far, this class was at least entertaining. ¡°So is this the part where I start calling you Sensei?¡±


    He shook his head and flopped down, almost thunderously. Clearly, he had a bit of physical enhancement, probably increased density. ¡°Naww. The correct term would probably be close to Senpai.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?


    ¡°Well, a sensei is more of a revered teacher. Not necessarily older, but definitely the teacher. The senpai, though is more like, I guess, a tutor. A more experienced student that¡¯s just far enough along the path ahead of you that they can help you get your bearings. And that¡¯s just the Japanese I know from watching anime when I was a kid.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Is this the class?¡±


    He smiled slightly, showing off a couple of missing teeth. ¡°This is YOUR class. You are in a unique position, that I am betting you are aware of, but don¡¯t think we are aware of.¡±


    I glanced around to make sure I knew where the exit was. Yep, right where I left it.


    ¡°Do you know who I am?¡±


    I looked at him closely. ¡°You look familiar, but I am having trouble placing you. I bet you are¡­ a teacher!¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°Good guess. Right now I am teaching the tactical math and combat resilience classes, and now this.¡±


    ¡°Combat resilience?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Fighting after someone breaks your nose. Probably not a course you are going to need, all things considered. It mostly involves pain suppression, making hard choices under pressure, and concentration through distraction, all things you have proven again and again you are not a slouch at.¡±


    ¡°What are you talking about?¡±


    He rolled his eyes, ¡°You are a very clever kid, but Vilnet is run on BSA servers. It has a very important role, letting people blow off steam with a minimum of fuss. Don¡¯t worry, you aren¡¯t on the hook for umm¡­ Diabolus, Technotron, or even Earthmaster, although I recommend leaving him dead. You pissed off some real baddies with the laughing gas stunt, and one of the nastier drug cartels had to evacuate, which let half their network get pulled in and cost them almost four billion in lost profit and product.¡±


    ¡°Really? I am just off the hook like that? How did they find out? I covered my tracks.¡±


    He laughed, ¡°You see, that¡¯s why you are in this school. You covered your tracks reasonably well for a civilian. Alphas, though¡­ let¡¯s just say that anything on the computer can be traced by technopaths, so if you are a real villain you can¡¯t trust any machinery that you haven¡¯t custom-built yourself. If you write things down, you are vulnerable to information manipulators. If you keep it to yourself, You are vulnerable to clairvoyants. If you even keep your schemes from yourself somehow, you can still be noticed and thwarted by seers.¡±


    ¡°In your case, though, the only felony that could be traced against you is malicious mischief, and even that is debatable since SSS is a fully licensed stunt company.¡±


    ¡°I did a lot of property damage¡­¡±


    He smiled, ¡°Yes you did, and you always got at least a verbal agreement from the owners of those properties. THEY could be charged with insurance fraud, but hiring out-of-work crisis actors to be your kidnapping victims was brilliant.¡±


    I was a little surprised, ¡°I did? I got those guys behind the hardware store. Only two hundred bucks apiece for two hours of work. I got a pretty good return on my investment.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah, they were doing a video spot for a manufactured protest against Buddy Time Mechanicals hosted by Six News.¡±


    ¡°Huh,¡± I said thoughtfully.


    He shrugged, ¡°Not really important, but after the third Technotron appearance, The Champions wanted to recruit you. Seers told Chrome that if she tried to pull you in, you¡¯d run, but if she waited, you¡¯d show up here.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Still thinking about running. I tried to do the hero thing, and it didn¡¯t work. I work better behind the scenes.¡±


    His eyebrow raised, ¡°Do you? You are aware that filming your exploits for hero PR was the whole point of pulling your capers, right? And nothing is ever lost on the internet.¡±


    ¡°Shit,¡± I replied.


    ¡°That¡¯s why you are here. This is not a history class. Do you want to share your powers better than you did when you were trying to get one over on a bio-controller? Or should we just keep pretending that all you can do is cheat on coin tosses and heal minor boo-boos?¡±


    This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to be a superhero, not anymore. I am perfectly fine with being an assistant.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°That¡¯s fine. I¡¯ve seen your tapes. You¡¯d make a third-rate superhero anyway.¡±


    I looked at him in surprise, ¡°Really? Reverse psychology already?¡±


    He grinned, ¡°You¡¯d make a third-rate superhero right NOW. So how long does the burn last after a full restoration?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°If I am at low energy, which I usually am after a good show, if I am hurt badly enough to need a full restore, I get to look forward to being a zombie for at least a week. Maybe more, and at least another week or two to get back to full energy.¡±


    ¡°So, if you had unlimited energy, or at least the kind of pull that most class fours have, How far could your powers go? That¡¯s what this class is going to be about.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Is that before or after I get a golden Unicorn from Santa Claus?¡±


    ¡°After.¡±


    ¡°Got a pencil and paper?¡±


    He nodded and walked over to a classic Asian-inspired table underneath a painted picture of some bald dude with a sword, a fox, and a bunch of ideograms down the side. In a moment he returned with a clipboard and a pen that he offered to me.


    After a moment I put a big ¡®264¡¯ on the paper. ¡°This is my maximum right now. When I started I only had one hundred and six energy. Each point equals about one calorie, or the energy required to raise a kilogram of water about thirty-five degrees. A decent low-powered fire flash, once you add in the power to project it to its target intact, costs me about ten points to be strong enough to ignite clothing. Fortunately, that¡¯s not how I do it.¡±


    ¡°What I do instead is ignite a few molecules of hydrogen, and keep them stable through the flight. Much lower difficulty, and it expands when I split off the energy. It also makes a truly impressive-looking fireball, which will cause small scorch marks on most flammable objects, or ignite things like pyrotechnics for about a single point.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°So you can control molecules?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°To some extent. That¡¯s how I merge things and adjust their molecular or crystalline framework in metals. Give me ten pounds of pig iron, charcoal, and unlimited energy, and I could make you a breastplate that could bounce an armor-piercing Depleted-uranium tank round. Of course, the impact of that tank round would still kill you from hydrostatic shock, but that¡¯s what special padding and stuff is for. I don¡¯t have the technical know-how to fix that easily.¡±


    ¡°Most alphas with access to the ether have an amount of energy roughly equal to their class ranking times a thousand. Not every time, of course, but it¡¯s a general rule that¡¯s mostly held for me. If I were a class four, for example, I would have around four thousand energy and be able to regenerate about a hundred and eighty energy per hour. That¡¯s where my namesake comes into play.¡±


    ¡°With four thousand energy, given the right materials and an example of, say, an enforcer helmet, I could replicate the helmet. It would cost me about three thousand, and I could use the remainder to improve it to the point where even Man-Ape would have trouble giving it the Samsonite treatment.¡±


    He watched me as I was cribbing numbers on the sheet. ¡°You just figured that out off the top of your head?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°I have had a lot of experience figuring it out. Cold is the same way since it¡¯s all about molecular movement, but there are fewer shortcuts. I can shoot ice pellets like a machine gun, but they have to be tiny, and even a handful costs me a ton of energy. When I play the cold elemental game, I need a lot more props to sell it.¡±


    ¡°Electricity is easiest, but it¡¯s harder to control. Unlike an elemental, I have to pay attention to things like relative conductivity and set up the right sort of low-pressure ionized pathway to shoot it. It also doesn¡¯t do much damage, but it looks impressive.¡±


    ¡°So basically, your power, your microkinesis, is based around moving molecules?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Sometimes millions at a time, but I need to trigger movement in every single one of them. But as you probably saw, static electricity, heat, and cold are my friends. That and kinetic energy.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Okay, this is getting into dangerous territory. My biggest solid mass is about an ounce. What happens if you throw, say, a sheet of aluminum foil in front of a flying airplane?¡±


    ¡°It mushes.¡±


    ¡°How about if the sheet of foil is immune to kinetic impacts, or rather, it becomes an immovable object? My power is moving around molecules, AND stopping them. What if you have a sheet of foil that becomes a completely immovable object immune to any sort of motion?¡±


    He winced. ¡°It rips its way through the airplane. Does that apply to other types of molecular motion?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s how I appear so tough. Fire and cold might as well be warm and cool breezes because getting rid of molecular motion is easy.¡±


    ¡°What about electricity and impacts?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Impacts are the same deal. I get hurt, but it¡¯s usually because there is too much mass, or I do something that distracts my attention. A bullet is no big deal. A fist? A normal-sized one I can slow down, at least, but I fist the size of yours, or a big old Mjolnir hammer, or someone throws a car or telephone pole at me, I am pasted just like anyone else, no matter HOW much energy I have.


    ¡°Except for one thing.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± he asked curiously.


    ¡°Well, there¡¯s a lot of air in between me and a thrown car or lamp post. Only a few grams of air mixture is enough to stop a lot of projectiles. It¡¯s not perfect, but the conversion works pretty well.¡±


    ¡°What happens to the energy?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    He looked at me closely, ¡°What happens to the energy when you absorb it?¡±


    ¡°Well, heat and cold both require energy to alter their state. It¡¯s like accelerating and decelerating in microgravity. Electricity requires friction, and canceling it out requires me to produce an opposing friction charge.¡±


    His brows narrowed, ¡°An opposing friction charge?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°That¡¯s how I look at it. My magic is less telekinesis and more... crapping all over the laws of thermodynamics. Newton''s laws take a lot more energy to break.¡±


    He nodded, and asked me the question I had been dreading, ¡°Exactly how small a particle can you affect?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Pretty small. Now, before I start lying to you so that you don¡¯t lock me in a vacuum-sealed coma for the rest of my life, how about you ask me different questions, like how my reset works.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°I assume you can record a current state, and then re-apply it to an existing molecular structure as a quantum observation effect. Is that close?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Got it in one. That¡¯s how I can replicate things too. Improving things is easy, as long as I know what I am doing. That¡¯s how I could improve stuff¡­ I work on a tiny section, and when that section is set how I want it to be, I spread the pattern around, and my power handles the rest. I had to plumb the depths of the internet to find the molecular patterns for different ratings and blends of steel, and memorizing biological patterns takes frequent and extended contact. I experimented millions of times to find the best crystalline patterns for my needs. I was just lucky that my power handled most of it, allowing me to experiment hundreds of times per second on a tiny scale until I found the perfect set of combinations and alloys.¡±


    ¡°Not that it helps, just experimenting costs me half a year¡¯s worth of energy, only to find I couldn¡¯t create anything big. If you want a five-molecule thick layer on already-decent widgeteer armor that can distribute the force of a ten-molecule thick armor piercing round or a laser, I can do it. You want me to turn medieval plate mail into case-hardened carbon steel that can do the same thing, try someone else.¡±


    ¡°So again, what happens to the energy?¡±


    I looked at him oddly, ¡°What do you mean? I already told you, it costs the same energy coming and going, like thrusters on a spacecraft.¡±


    ¡°Not that, I meant kinetic energy. Where does the energy go if you put a piece of aluminum foil in front of a plane?¡±


    I glared at him, ¡°I don¡¯t know. I am not a sick psychopath that would do something like that.¡±


    He sighed, ¡°Okay, where do you THINK it would go?¡±


    I scratched my head, ¡°I don¡¯t know. Maybe it would convert into heat and blow up the plane? Sometimes friction from bullets hitting an air shield makes them melt. Maybe it just goes into the Ether or the Q-Brane or something.¡±


    He nodded slowly, ¡°So have you figured out who I am yet?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Total mystery.¡±


    He smiled slightly, ¡°Well, two years ago I was Jupiter for the Olympians. There was some¡­ conflict, and instead of dragging them through the mud, I moved here to the Academy.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°That sounds cool. What class are you?¡±


    He smirked, ¡°Class eight. Wanna guess who was before I became Jupiter? I will give you a hint, You and I have something in common.¡±


    I looked at him in shock. There have only been a few class eights in history, but there was only one male. A single one. ¡°uhh¡­ you kept your class hidden?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°Nope, I was Graviton.¡±

 Chapter 11. In spring, a young mans thoughts turn to cultivation...

    ¡°Graviton, the Scourge of the Champions, the guy who wiped Fiji off the map. The ultimate boogeyman for generations of hero-worshiping tweens. Hell, I learned to read from comic book fights between you and Kismet.¡±


    He sighed, ¡°Yeah, Kismet was amazing. After the Cthulhian got her, that¡¯s when I decided to stop playing supervillain and start killing Kaiju. You can call me Senpai or Mister Bob, though.¡±


    ¡°So your battles were fake?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°Oh no, the battles were real enough, just the reasons for them were fake. We were lovers for almost as long as you¡¯ve been alive, and every once in a while, I¡¯d haul the suit out and Kismet and I would get in a little foreplay.¡±


    ¡°Ugh. Now you totally wrecked my teenage spank bank.¡±


    He grinned, ¡°Good. Honestly, you should probably just pull every heroine the hell out of it. Most of them are supremely egotistical attention whores who would do anything, sleep with anyone if it gave them a chance to boost their rating or make them more relevant. Especially the over-the-top squeaky clean ones like Angelique. That girl¡¯s had every hole violated more times than the old New York subway system.¡±


    I put my hands to my head. Angelique was every boy¡¯s dream come true. Blonde, beautiful pure white angel wings, sonic control¡­ not production, actual control. Class five, and the most beautiful youthful face and incredible hourglass shape you could imagine.


    Mister Bob smirked at my melodramatics. ¡°Don¡¯t be so worried about it. I mean, she¡¯s old enough to be your grandmother, but she doesn¡¯t look it. If you really need to get a piece of angel ass, you ARE a class 6 male. Just let it slip at a presser or something that you grew up dreaming about her, and she¡¯d be on her knees faster than a sushi chef making California roll.¡±


    I shook my head, still double-facepalmed. ¡°No thank you. I will never touch an Alpha. Not even her.¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°That¡¯s a really good rule of thumb, let¡¯s see how long you can hold onto it. Just remember, if someone like Angelique comes around and suddenly you fall in love or lust with her, power abuse is assault, maybe even rape. Even if you enjoy it, her using her sonic abilities to manipulate your limbic system is the same as using a date-rape drug.¡±


    ¡°If she uses her sonics to try and control me, I¡¯ll pull her wings off like a fucking fly. I will NOT be used like that!¡±


    He looked at me askance, ¡°There¡¯s a history there, I think. You could try, but it might not be so easy. She¡¯s a highly advanced class five, and as Alphas train and live their lives, fight, and even breathe, they become more durable and more resistant to damage, age, and disease. Ripping her wings off would take a hell of a lot of force. I could probably knock her unconscious with a gravity punch, but even as a class eight, I don¡¯t know if I could do that. Break her bones, kill her, sure, but tear her wings off? I doubt it.¡±


    I was pretty sure that a kinetically neutralized piece of two-pound test line stretched across her flight path while she ran into it at full flight speed could do it, but that wasn¡¯t important. What was important was the next thing he said.


    ¡°I can help you with your energy problems.¡±


    I lowered my hands, ¡°What? How?¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°There are a few different ways. Like you, I am a Y-awakened. I looked at your records and noticed that while you trained for fighting, you never touched Chinese martial arts. Is there a reason?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°It sucks.¡±


    ¡°Sucks how?¡±


    ¡°Most of it is total bullshit. Monkey style? Like pretending to act like a monkey will help. You scratch your head and armpits, jump around, and act like it somehow gives you primate muscle structure. I KNOW what primate muscle structure looks like, and not even the best kung-fu master in the world can match it. A real chimp can rip your arm off and beat you to death with it.¡±


    ¡°The same with all the other animal forms. Crane style just means you offer people an easy nut shot when you concentrate too hard. In a real street fight, kicking higher than someone¡¯s knee is a good way to get your ass kicked, it¡¯s too slow. Even going to ground, or letting someone take you to the ground, is a good way to get kicked in the head with a steel-toed boot or beaten to death with a sign.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°And don¡¯t even get me started with all that Chinese medicine and chi flow patterns, Dim Mak, and spirit-strike martial arts where fat old men pretend to knock people down from across the room without alpha powers. It¡¯s all bullshit.¡±


    Mister Bob nodded along as I was talking, and when I finished, he said, ¡°You are both right and wrong.¡±


    ¡°Okay, what am I wrong about?¡±


    ¡°Most of that stuff is based around wish fulfillment and desperate old men trying to pretend that they own the secret truths of the universe. The whole concept is an important Chinese cultural artifact from a time when some of it actually worked.¡±


    ¡°You mean the magic times.¡±


    His head shot up as he suddenly looked at me attentively, ¡°What did you say?¡±


    ¡°I said the magic times. Back before the Q-bomb, when humans believed in that shit. Back when court magicians could turn a staff into a snake. When the powers of true belief meant that pissed-off gods could create monsters, or ride on flying chariots drawn by goats across the sky. When true love really was one of the strongest forces in the universe.¡±


    ¡°How do you know about that?¡±


    I gave him a ¡®look¡¯. ¡°My power lets me observe molecular structures and interact with almost any particulate, and detect energy enough to both manipulate and interact with those structures meaningfully. I know damned good and well that no physics could account for what ¡®I¡¯ can do, let alone the people that can change into a giant bear, shoot laser beams from their eyes, or shit golden bricks.¡±


    ¡°I figured out years ago that there¡¯s some magical asshattery going on, and that it was here long before the Q-bomb ripped a new asshole for magic that a few very lucky people could draw on to do stupid magical stuff. I figured, in the end, pretty much every human has a special gift that could awaken if just exactly the right circumstances occurred¡­ it¡¯s just that those circumstances are invariably lethal, and if it¡¯s not the perfect situation, people never sodomize the magical sphincter to get the power to keep themselves alive.¡±


    ¡°The only difference between now and then is that people think they are too smart to believe in anything that isn¡¯t vomited from the mouths of con artists and Hollywood freaks that have the word ¡®doctor¡¯ in front of their name. It takes a direct connection to the aforementioned cosmic blowhole to overcome all the energy of that disbelief, and save yourself from whatever suicidal stupidity would have gotten you killed otherwise.¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°I think that is both the most cogently crude and enlightened explanation of alphas I have ever heard. So.. first the scientific stuff. Everything is made of energy in the end. You¡¯ve heard of the unified field theory?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I have heard that it¡¯s in pieces and has been expanded and broken constantly since Einstein proposed it, mostly because he was a fake too. He stole a lot of other scientist¡¯s ideas and marketed them as his own, like Edison.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°It¡¯s in pieces because we don¡¯t have a descriptor for the fifth force, We have frequency and wavelength from photons, mass and temperature from electroweak bosons, weight and compression from gravitons, and quarks from gluons.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Simplified, but close. I hate how physicists use the same word for boson strength as for molecular vibration, but it is what it is.¡±


    ¡°Well, there¡¯s a fifth force. With it, the entire theory of everything becomes possible. Magic, chi, dao, or essence. I guess its aspects would be described as ¡®shape¡¯ and ¡®flavor¡¯, but the more mystically-minded would call it ¡®spirit¡¯ and ¡®soul¡¯. The problem is, the very existence of spirit and soul would make atheists shit a brick, which means most scientists.¡±


    ¡°Spirit is that which KNOWS itself, like dirt, light, or even quarks, and of course, the soul is that which can define itself, meaning life. That¡¯s why scientists will NEVER discover the origin of life from its chemical basis, because it requires defining the soul of that life, and the unified field theory will never work because the link with which everything is truly defined involves self-knowledge as an immutable law. It is the definition of order, and while chaos is easy enough to find, order requires its own definition on every level.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Very deep.


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    He nodded, ¡°That¡¯s what the magic rectum is accessing. A level of power of undefined soul and spirit. Now, we are only human¡­ I have no idea how the soul works, but the spirit? Well, every single human uses shape constantly to interact with the world, from the moment their eyes first open, they start recognizing self-defined objects and their personal ability to interact with their body and environment.¡±


    ¡°Fully X-enhanced humans, alphas, have a direct line to that wellspring of power. They use the shape in ways that both define and defy the other forces and because that wellspring of shape and soul are as undefined as it¡¯s possible to be, uncontaminated by the ¡®self¡¯ and waiting to be formed into whatever ¡®self¡¯ is defined as in THIS world, they can use their gifts, gifts which pretty much magically permit them to define that raw self into whatever their gifts dictate. Got me so far?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yep, the pucker is full of raw magic, so most of them can mold that into whatever their gifts need it to be.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah, but it also brings with it soul, and that soul builds up as well. That soul is the very definition of life, so as they use their powers effectively, more and more soul accumulates. Either slowly as they accumulate and use power, or quickly if they use... other methods.¡±


    ¡°That makes them more and more alive, and an alpha cannot accumulate more ¡®spirit¡¯ energy than their soul permits, because the soul is sort of the container for the spirit. Otherwise, the energy is just lost into the real world like an overfull glass, where it gains its own identity.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a slow process, but it¡¯s natural, and it seems very fast because the soul constantly draws more spirit from the wellspring to equalize it every time the alpha uses their gifts to define and use it.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s a pretty good theory for magic. So what about us Y saps?¡±


    ¡°You ever read Xianxia books?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, for a little while. I¡¯ve also seen some of the Chinese magical dramas, like Two Princesses and a Phoenix, The Jade Dragon, and Hidden Finger Crouching Llama.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Well, it¡¯s like the difference between a fish and a creature that lives on dry land. They will never understand the concept of drinking because water is what they live in, even if they can recognize when they are beached and out of energy, and being out of energy for too long can kill them.¡±


    ¡°Us bastard mammals, though, know damned good and well what drinking is. We are not going to dry out in an hour, and we can also lug around water in a way the fish couldn¡¯t even dream of¡­ their bodies don¡¯t NEED to be made of mostly water like ours do, because they are never away from it for more than a few moments.¡±


    ¡°So you are saying that I can learn to drink?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Right now, you are just regaining energy like a turkey. Occasionally you tilt your head up and get a mouthful of water, and while that¡¯s plenty for normies, you burn a lot more off by defining it with your gift. The ¡®function¡¯ part of function and concept, which is, to be fair, a pretty poor way of defining it.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, I heard the whole function and concept thing before. It didn¡¯t make a whole lot of sense except for explaining why super-brains crack.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Super-brains crack because they are exposed to the soul of the power without being able to experience or connect with the spirit. It would be kind of like being a ghost. Exposed to all of the world but never able to touch it.¡±


    ¡°Can you come up with an example from the fish metaphor?¡±


    He gave me the stinkeye, ¡°Do you need one? They have a normie soul that can¡¯t use any spirit other than their own, but it¡¯s constantly dragging in more spirit that they can¡¯t touch. Their minds and souls expand with the constant life gain until it eventually pops like an overfull water balloon.¡±


    ¡°So wait, you are saying that if there¡¯s an afterlife, they just disintegrate and never show up at the pearly gates?¡±


    He grinned, ¡°That¡¯s why the word soul is loaded too. I don¡¯t know if there is an afterlife that we would recognize as such, since, you know, things like memories and personalities are part of our body¡¯s brain, but I am certain that our souls live on as long as we can self-define, and that self-definition is the meaning of soul.¡±


    ¡°And no, I think that their souls just hit a point at which they can no longer effectively draw in spirit, and just¡­ cut loose of everything that is NOT their soul, or self-definition. They leave all definitions that are not themselves behind, just like a soul whose body has died. Of course, if the person is still alive, it just leaves a living body with only the barest amount of soul to keep their cells working. The body and brain are alive, but the mind is gone.¡±


    ¡°So how do we drink?¡±


    He grinned, ¡°That¡¯s the easy part. Drinking is not the problem, when we learn how we can hold many times the water that a fish can. The problem is, that the spirit essence that is in this world is like muddy water. Instead of drawing it in pure and defining it instantly like an X, we have to hope we find water that matches our gifts so we have to do the least amount of cleaning up to make it drinkable without killing us.¡±


    ¡°So the Xianxia stuff.¡±


    ¡°Exactly. Spirit exists in everything, and the soul exists in all living things. When we pull, we expand our soul and fill it with spirit. Unlike the fish, though, our gifts only use certain shapes of spirit or our dao. There¡¯s energy in everything, and each thing has its own shape, but there are certain similarities in groupings that let us either purify it more easily into what we can use, or pull directly from it because it¡¯s a shape we can use. If your soul can use pink essence, well, every shade of pink works, although we can make all those swirling variations on the shade of pink mix together and purify it eventually into our BEST pink.¡±


    ¡°For example. If we were to pull spirit essence that strongly resonated with fire, or magma, from the bottom of a volcano and our gift was strongly associated with that spirit, it would fill us up quickly, we would barely have to purify it for use, and our soul would easily grow and expand to hold more quickly. Way faster than those who constantly draw pure spirit from the sphincter and have to define it as fire-shaped to use it.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s uhh¡­ cultivation?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Right. First, you learn how to pull in essence consciously. Then you learn how to clean it up and transform the close-enough types into what you can use easily, and then you get the fun time job of trying to get rid of the bits that are contaminated with shapes that are so alien to your body and soul that you cannot do anything at all with them. Cultivation, purification, and expulsion. You have been increasing your pool by running yourself completely out of energy, right?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Pretty much.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°That works, but extraordinarily slowly. What you are doing is not expanding your soul, but strengthening it so that it compresses the essence you get more effectively. That is, without a doubt, our greatest gift¡­ we can advance in leaps and bounds by both expanding our souls and then strengthening them to compress the energy. The ancient Chinese scholars even have names for the different stages, although I probably should look them up.¡±


    ¡°Expanding your soul is the opposite of what you are doing. It means filling yourself up with so much spirit that your soul is stretched out and gets bigger to hold more. You don¡¯t want to draw too much, or your soul, your foundation, could rupture, but if you can compress the spirit energy far enough, amazing things can happen.¡±


    ¡°Is that what you did?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah, things start getting complicated at some point, whether you focus on your mind, your body, your soul, or all three. I tried to focus on all three for a while, but eventually, I cut out power expansion in favor of focusing on improving my body since gravity is already a hell of a force without increasing it too much. Power compression just fits my gifts too well. Right now I could create a microsingularity that could easily kill me, but if I focus enough on my body, I should be strong enough to survive it, and maybe pull it into an updated gravity punch.¡±


    ¡°What would that do?¡±


    He grinned, ¡°Punch Cthulhian in the face, and his entire body, all half a mile of it, implodes and is sucked into a space the size of a molecule. I imagine that he would feel that, and I¡¯d feel a little better.¡±


    ¡°But if you could do that, you¡¯d be at your peak, right? I mean, dimensional invaders, Kaiju, supervillains, nothing could stand before it, right?¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°Maybe, but we have beaten that stuff before. We aren¡¯t winning the wars, but we aren¡¯t really losing either, at least not anymore. That¡¯s not what scares me.¡±


    ¡°What scares you?¡±


    He sighed, ¡°We have poked a hole into a dimension made up entirely of pure spirit and soul essence. Soul is by its very definition self-defining. I am worried, that whatever lives in there, in an environment of almost limitless power, might decide to find out where the hole leads.¡±


    ¡°Like the Beyonder. Secret Wars two. Umm¡­ comic books.¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°Sure. I haven¡¯t read that. So, now that I have your attention, your first lesson is breathing.¡±


    I smiled a little, ¡°Pretty sure I figured that out a while back.¡±


    ¡°Not that kind of breathing¡­ can you tell what your current energy is?¡±


    I concentrated. Without the accuracy of a quantum displacement meter, I couldn¡¯t be exact, but right now I was a little less than a quarter full. I could honestly feel it, the same way I knew if a particular power use was going to drive me into power debt. ¡°About fifty, I guess?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Well, that¡¯s why I am your teacher, your personal Mazer Rackham, except I am not Maori, you aren¡¯t a child fighting the buggers, and our time is limited by my patience and your learning speed, not an interstellar fleet.¡±


    I was relieved. At least he had some taste. That was a pretty good book, even though I disagreed with the kiss and makeup with murderous aliens philosophy of the rest of the series, and kids that age were idiots at best, no matter how high their IQ score was.

 Chapter 12. No, I am really not Diabolus, hes a supervillain.

    I was on top of the student hall, watching Empire City across the bay as the sun slowly set behind the buildings spread out before the wall, leaving glittering traces of each sunlit ray before the disk could disappear behind the architecture seemingly forever.


    It had gotten a bit cooler, so I wore a light jacket over my tank top. Training under Mister Bob had gone on a lot longer than either of us had suspected, but he considered it important enough to call central and let them know that I would deal with my other classes later.


    In with the good air, out with the bad.


    Bob had referred to the ¡®shapes¡¯ of spirit energy as essence, but once it was inside me and purified to the point I could use it, he called it chi. I didn¡¯t really care about the names for it, as far as I was concerned it was just the energy I used to accomplish power tricks. Neither of us had any idea of the actual ¡®shapes¡¯ I absorbed best since apparently, spirit energy could have as many identities as there were subatomic particles in the universe, but we were experimenting to find out where absorbing energy worked best, and right now that seemed to be at the highest point possible.


    In with the good energy, out with the bad.


    A lot of the air pollution from as recently as forty years ago was gone. This was not only because the industry moved mostly underground but also because Widgeteer and Tinker tech were much better at stripping stinks out of the air. There was still enough to give the sunset sky those brilliant oranges and yellows that made the skyline so distinctive, but the air smelled clean, at least much cleaner than the reprocessed, flavorless air in the subsurface.


    In with the good spirits, out with the bad.


    Bob suspected that with the ease that I kinetically neutralized swaths of air, some kind of air shape was at least one of my ¡®aspects¡¯, or daos. I didn¡¯t know if it was that, or the shape of air pollution, or urbanism, or the Dao of height, or it could be anything at all¡­ but I did know that standing up here, taking deep lungfuls of city air, churning it around in whatever I used to store energy, and then imagining that I was breathing out the stuff that I didn¡¯t need or couldn¡¯t use, I¡¯d already regained nearly half my energy in only most of a single day.


    I couldn¡¯t sit zen or do any of those weird meditative poses stuff and get anything useful out of them, yet, I just did these weird and slightly unnatural breathing exercises, and it worked even better when I was getting in some exercise. I jokingly told Mister Bob that I was using the Dao of action, but he took it utterly seriously and said he¡¯d look into Katas, or Martial arts exercises, that could help enhance cultivation through action.


    In with the shapes of energy I could use, out with the shapes that harmed my advancement.


    The weird part was that I wasn¡¯t entirely certain he was wrong. Working out and keeping moving had always seemed to help me recover energy more quickly, although carb loading just seemed to enhance my own body¡¯s reserves¡­ apparently I, and every other thing in existence, also seemed to create this spirit energy with every single action, and keeping my body fully fed and rested increased my recovery innately.


    The concept was simultaneously cool and creepy. I know Bob said that the idea of spirit energy and soul would make scientists shit a brick, but in this world, a widgeteer could make a freeze ray out of a banana peel, three space Lego bricks, and a squirt gun. Atheist types or not, it was hard as hell to argue with the evidence of your own senses. I bet that some of the big brain types that hadn¡¯t gone nutty yet might be able to find out more.


    In with the good magical chi hopium, out with the bad.


    I needed to go down and probably find the Gym for some sets, but it was nice out here. Nice and surprisingly empty. Like I said, I wasn¡¯t exactly an introvert, but occasional privacy was wonderful. No social obligations or people to stay away from, no constant quiet yammering pounding at the walls of my seclusion, no loudmouths with incessant meaningless questions to distract me from¡­


    ¡°The sunset is beautiful, isn¡¯t it?¡± I heard beside me. If I hadn¡¯t grabbed the awning support, I might have gone over from sheer surprise. Okay, there was really no chance of that, but I was cursing myself for relaxing my own situational awareness, as I glanced at Mindy, who was dressed in civvies. I still had my mask but had taken it off to dine on the smells and tastes of the sunset air.


    I nodded at her silently, turning back to watch as the final rays of the exposed sun vanished behind distant buildings. Mindy was respectfully silent until the sky started to darken and lose the last lustrous hues of approaching night.


    In with the good air, out with the bad.


    Mindy was beside me, fiddling with the long, silvery ponytail that she¡¯d tied her hair back into, and she spoke again,¡± So¡­. Do you come here often?¡± with a hint of a smile.


    I glared at her, ¡°We have been here for two days. I don¡¯t do anything often yet.¡±


    She sighed and nodded, ¡°They have me in something called remedial martial arts. Right now, that means I get pushed over again and again and again, apparently until I learn how to fall over right. I don¡¯t like being ostracized by being the special needs kid.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯d think you¡¯d have gotten used to that by now,¡± I teased with a snicker.


    She stuck out her tongue at me and barked, ¡°Why I oughta¡­ If you weren¡¯t my sidekick I¡¯d give you such a pinch!¡±


    I chuckled, surprisingly comfortable with the turn the conversation took. ¡°you¡¯d have to beat me first and to do that, you have to learn how to fall. If it makes you feel better, when I got started in martial arts, I had to do exactly the same thing¡­ I was already fairly beefy for my age, so I just kept getting more and more pissed off that this shrimpy Russian girl kept pushing me over. I even took a swing at her.¡±


    ¡°What happened?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°I spent some quality time counting ceiling tiles and wondering why my ribs hurt so much. She was teaching Sambo. I figured, you know, big guy¡­ that whole ¡®size doesn¡¯t matter thing¡¯ was bullshit. Technically, I was right, if both fighters are trained it matters a lot¡­ but me, I didn¡¯t know Jack, so I might as well have been a hundred and fifty-pound Pinata.¡±


    She looked nervously at the roof gravel for a moment and then looked back at me. ¡°I hate to do this, but you are a class six now. A lot of the stuff you do is¡­ interesting. I have to ask you.¡±


    ¡°The answer is yes.¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Yes, you can spend lots of money on me, wine and dine me, and then brag about how you caught the best-looking guy on campus and how amazing I was in bed with a two-by-four, a dishwashing brush, and a live hamster.¡±


    ¡°Asshole,¡± she smirked. ¡°But seriously¡­¡±


    ¡°The answer is sort of, I helped. Mostly with some of the flashy stuff. I have a pretty good working knowledge of fireworks and can trigger fuses from a ways off. I watched the fight, too. I can do some cool sparkly special effects, I had fireworks stashed all over the warehouse, and I still have microkinesis¡­ Flash paper is super lightweight, and you¡¯d be amazed at how easy it is to direct Roman candles with even a hint of telekinesis. D did the heavy lifting, I just made it look good for the cameras.¡±


    ¡°And the bomb? And him disappearing in a hail of sparkles? Pyrokinetics aren''t known for being able to teleport. Fly, maybe, but he was there one second and gone the next.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Armor stopped most of it and I healed the rest. The sparkles thing was pure stage magic, which you fell for beautifully, I might add.¡± Bob may have figured out a lot more about my abilities than I was comfortable with, but the teleportation¡­ every time I¡¯d made a ¡®miraculous escape¡¯ I¡¯d made sure that it looked like stage magic. It might be slow, but it was my escape plan, and I might need it someday, not to mention it would open up a barrel of cats I wasn¡¯t ready to try to herd up again.


    ¡°But there was so much blood¡­¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yes, and he¡¯s totally fine. You just caught both of us by surprise. I tend to try and coordinate the special effects, and if I¡¯d known you were able to combine your kinetics with your Ice for more than just personal defense, I¡¯d have probably set up better counters and more effective bystander ward-offs, so I feel a little responsible as well.¡±


    ¡°So terribly responsible. Did you get hurt too?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Naw, I wasn''t close enough. Still, if you wanted to pay off the D-Man, he probably wouldn¡¯t turn down a new set of riot armor¡­ You kind of fragged the last ones beyond my ability to repair.¡±


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    She nodded slowly, ¡°I can probably do my best with that. You know, I still get the sneaking suspicion that you are just bullshitting me, and you and D are the same guy.¡±


    I chuffed, ¡°Are you kidding? I mean, he¡¯s a fire elemental. I¡¯m just a fixer. Sure I help rig things up to look more exciting, but that¡¯s pure PR. Besides, after that blast, I¡¯d probably be covered with scars. Do I need to take off my shirt to show you again?¡±


    She smiled slightly, showing off just a hint of cute overbite. Sooner or later I would have to make squirrel jokes. ¡°You might.¡±


    I sighed, turning back towards the stairs. ¡°Maybe I should add no flirting into that deal. I am not here to meet girls. No offense, you are clearly a ten and a half on a scale from one to ten, but I have no intentions of turning into a man-slut.¡±


    She mulled that over for a second, ¡°Really, ten and a half¡­ is there a way to get to eleven?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, but you would need to have been born with red hair and freckles. I am one of those awful guys that automatically adds two points for natural redheads. Technically that could get them up to twelve.¡±


    She snickered, ¡°And if I told you I was born with red hair and dyed it and my eyebrows to match the whole Glacier Girl aesthetic, and that it takes a lot of base to hide freckles?¡±


    ¡°Then I¡¯d kick you out of my room and never let you in even to study. I have my goals, and panting over a superheroine is not on the list.¡±


    ¡°Speaking of studying, can we change and head to the gym? Apparently, my homework is to get in some cardio, and I suck at maintaining focus when I am by myself¡­ the whole remedial leper thing is bugging me.¡±


    ¡°You didn¡¯t have fitness yet?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I did, but it was just time in a team sports class, like high school but with more plastic surgery.  Miss Pringle, she¡¯s the improvised defense instructor, Said that all of us who have NOT spent the last few years working out have to get in regular cardio¡­ something about it affecting our power growth.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°It¡¯s true. Being an alpha is like a force multiplier, but both your power strength and your body attunement depend entirely on your fitness, and that fitness can also help guide your power growth.¡±


    ¡°You know this?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I lived this. Remember what team I was on? A lot of amateur cowls are in it specifically because heroing is too much damned work, and sooner or later being a walking burrito catches up with them¡­ even the pro PR girls that ignore physical training wind up getting themselves accidentally caught, often by normies that are just in better shape.¡±


    ¡°Okay, here¡¯s my room,¡± Mindy said, pressing her palm to the lockplate. ¡°See you in fifteen minutes. Actually, I just realized I need to deal with my makeup before I get there, so I¡¯ll meet you at the pool in twenty!¡± she added before slipping into her room.


    The¡­ pool?


    ***


    Whew, I had sort of thought it might be a trap, but when I got there she was wearing a nice one-piece dark blue swimsuit instead of a bikini or something specifically designed to attract attention. She hadn¡¯t been lying, though, with her makeup cleaned off she did actually sport rosy pale freckles. She might have been pulling my leg about the red hair, though, or else her bleach and dye job was pretty amazing.


    She was a really good swimmer. I had some experience and had spent a summer learning some professional swimming techniques, and I also was fit, which helped, but she swam like she¡¯d spent every summer at the beach. I had joined her in the lanes of the subterranean double Olympic pool, and while I had the endurance to keep swimming after she finally had to stop and pant for a while, her speed and grace through the water made me look like a clumsy amateur.


    When she was resting, I flopped with my elbows supporting my weight behind me at the rail, and looked at her curiously, ¡°Why?¡±


    ¡°Why what?¡± she panted. I was sort of panting also, but that was because I was trying the breathing technique again here, in a wet environment, in case water was one of my shapes. It was decent, at least better than the dojo deep underground, but it still didn¡¯t hold a candle to the energy I was pulling from the kinetics of the natural air currents up on the roof.


    ¡°Were you serious about being a redhead? If so, why would you change it?¡±


    She tilted her head back against the railing, staring up at the ceiling as she started scissoring her legs to hold her against the side of the pool. ¡°Stephen. The same guy that told me to hire a stunt company. I am not actually cold, I am water, but ice is a hundred times more useful than steam, or at least it seems that way, and I can manipulate ice also.¡±


    ¡°So he told me that if I wanted to go the ice route, I needed the look, but neither water nor ice users looked right and popular with red hair. Fire and Earth could pull it off, and my force secondary was fine with anything, but the name, the hair, the costume, those were all designed to encourage the brand.¡±


    ¡°Did it?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I got a scholarship here. If I had walked in off the street, it might not have worked.¡±


    ¡°So you are water control, and can run the temperature up and down, and yet still control it as ice? Can you control steam and water vapor?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°To some extent. I mean, my power levels are way low, but the powers trainer said localized weather alterations were not outside of possibility.¡±


    ¡°Jeez, you are definitely a class five. No, if you had walked in off the street this place would have snatched you up if you¡¯d been bald and weighing three hundred pounds. And PR wise¡­ well¡­ I don¡¯t know about this Stephen guy. I mean, I appreciate him sending you my way, but being a red-headed cold controller would attract attention, and full-on water elemental that looked like that would be PR gold.¡±


    ¡°How do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Think of the headlines, ¡°Frosty shows off fiery temper as she drops the Gladiator!¡± Don¡¯t get me wrong, the silver hair thing is definitely classic, but classic also means that it¡¯s been done about a hundred times.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°I guess I can see what you mean. Every team wants an ice elemental but usually already has one. The powers teacher was pretty insistent that I not focus exclusively on cold too. I figure branding is probably still important, but maybe it¡¯s better to focus outside of the mainstream.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°You are a class five, and gorgeous to boot. Water elementals are a lot LESS common than ice, especially if you can control it in changed states¡­ which is probably why you were upgraded to class five. Branding is NOT important to a class five unless you want it to be, and then, your brand is what you make of it.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°if you decide you want a rose and green outfit, and you want to call yourself something that is not even that related to water like¡­ Harmony, as a class five, will just be considered a clever affectation instead of an off-brand, and people would probably come up with their own associations, like calling you the stunning siren of seventh block. You could probably even dip your toes into a villain look if you want to and that would just make the fanboys pant harder.¡±


    She looked at me curiously, turning over to rest her elbows on the bar and scissoring her legs again. ¡°Allow me to pick your brain then. What would be an off-brand villain look that wouldn¡¯t get me on the supervillain watch list?¡±


    I thought about it, ¡°Okay, how about Rusalka? That¡¯s a murderous Russian water spirit known for drowning men who are attracted to her. Black and green costume, any hair color you want, and the press would eat it up. Even if they¡¯d occasionally paint you as a little grimdark if they got the chance, that would just add to your attractive mystique. Hell, ignore the press entirely, and suddenly there¡¯s this giant mystery that they¡¯d eat like flies on a melted popsicle.¡±


    ¡°Good example, Miss Anthrope. She¡¯s a class four illusionist who works for Redemption. She refuses to talk to the press, and her name literally tells everyone that she hates people, but if she left Redemption even the Flare would snatch her up in a heartbeat.¡±


    I sighed, moving away from the wall and treading water as I tried to concentrate on both that and the breathing exercise at the same time. ¡°Honestly,¡± I said between breaths, ¡°despite how much agents push it, and the fact that I make money on it, visible publicity only matters to the little guys. It¡¯s sort of a loser¡¯s game because when you lose relevance, you lose support. At higher levels, it only matters to the agents because THEY make money on it.


    She nodded, ¡°That sort of makes sense, I guess¡­ over rank four, support isn¡¯t as hard to get?¡±


    I shook my head, accidentally splashing her with water, which just made her chuckle. ¡°Not really. Unless you have a really extravagant lifestyle, working for someone like the Monster Hunters gives you a fantastic support network if you are skilled enough to succeed at it. Bounties, especially, are a huge source of income.¡±


    ¡°I wonder why my agent didn¡¯t suggest that?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°Simple enough¡­ agents don¡¯t get a share of bounties. They care a lot less about your money than they do their own. If they can build your brand, get you into a commercial or two, maybe a straight-to-video movie or possibly even porn as long as they could leverage it for publicity, they get their fifteen percent.¡±


    ¡°Porn? Seriously? And fifteen percent? I am paying Anthony twenty!¡±


    I nodded, ¡°You you think Glamour girl¡¯s sex tape was really a leak or an accident? Heck no¡­ she¡¯s been on The Flare long enough to start losing relevance. She¡¯s still hot, but she¡¯s aging and her Playboy spread was almost fifteen years ago. But now, every teenage boy who¡¯s hunting for superheroes is making a beeline straight to the unauthorized sites to see her bouncing on Johnny Reb¡¯s lap. Especially after the whole Johnny Reb racist remarks thing on hidden access.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s never had a squeaky clean image, not after getting caught with Repli-Carl before she showed it all for Hugh Hefner, but now she¡¯s back in the news again, not bad for a fifty-five-year-old sex symbol that looks like she¡¯s thirty. I don¡¯t like to give straight-up advice to people, especially about their careers, but would you accept some?¡±


    Mindy nodded, lowering her goggles for another set of laps.


    ¡°Fire Anthony. Not for his advice¡­ I mean, it wasn¡¯t really terrible, just not really applicable, and he clearly had no idea you were a class five potential. Not even for the cookie-cutter image, although together they show the kind of talent management skills you¡¯d expect in a grandpa, not a decent agent.¡±


    ¡°But as a known class four, he should have been able to wrangle you at least a decent scholarship for City College, maybe even here. More importantly, he is ripping you off. He knows damned well he¡¯s ripping you off, and is doing it anyway. Hell, he probably expects to get fired the moment you actually meet someone who knows anything about agents. Their usual cut on an active-duty super is fifteen percent, and for a part-timer who they don¡¯t invest much time into, ten or twelve percent is closer to fair. Anthony is flat-out robbing you.¡±


    She sighed, ¡°He already dropped me. I am going to be here for the next four years, probably, which means no profits unless I do some kind of side gig. He didn¡¯t try to get me to do porn, but I bet he would have, since he DID try to get me to let him shop me out to heromates.¡±


    ¡°Heromates?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yeah, you know, the little video girls that sit in the corner of your screen and take off their clothes? I turned him down flat. No one gets to see me without clothes except someone ¡®I¡¯ choose.¡± She turned and started doing another lap down the pool.

 Chapter 13. A nose full of impurities

    Day five. Mindy and I had taken our tests for Doctor Menendez¡¯ remedial appearance class. Mainly the course was about not looking incredibly stupid and ignorant when in costume, and some of the reading assignments were truly useful, like how to talk in an interview to sound relevant while not actually giving away higher-clearance information.


    Some of the bad examples were utterly hilarious, like one particularly stupid brick back in the 80s that carefully explained that he was happy to stop an alpha assassin naked because he¡¯d noticed the woman¡¯s heat signature while he was busily boning the governor¡¯s trophy wife and his mistress, the state assemblywoman, at the same time.


    The Secret Service actually had to shut him up when he started repeating the stories the mistress told him about exactly what kinds of toys the governor enjoyed, and where he preferred for her to put them. Needless to say, that conservative incumbent wasn¡¯t even able to get on the ballot for re-election by his own house subcommittee.


    However, I did find out that the 80¡¯s team anchor, Ogre, claimed that he liked to make sure that his boudoir was ¡®painted like the inside of a goddamned cement truck.¡¯


    The Doc was happy with our answers. Apparently, it didn¡¯t matter that much whether our answers were good or bad, intelligent analysis or yammering about rumors, he just cared that we seemed to have taken the information seriously enough to have an opinion on them.


    Remedial Criminology was an audit, as was advanced anatomy, although Doctor Lindsay MacKillain, the Anatomy teacher, seemed delighted that I already had a firm grounding¡­ I sort of had to, and said she looked forward to seeing me attending specialty anatomy next semester, she was writing me in as qualified for the course based on my earlier education and a set of online tests I could take at my leisure.


    Remedial teamwork was an eye-opening experience as a ¡®costume¡¯ class. The class was fairly full with semester students, nearly every first year on campus, and I didn¡¯t impress Powercry in the slightest.


    Each class varied between information management techniques and equipment, and actual class exercises in the Gym. She informed me gravely that she WOULD be seeing me for remedial teamwork next semester, right along with Mindy and a new batch of first-years, but that didn¡¯t surprise me¡­ I¡¯d always worked alone, and I still didn¡¯t really feel like labeling me as a class 6 power had been a smart choice. The class, as it sounded, focused on teamwork, although advanced versions tended to focus more on direct action or support, depending on the individual¡¯s abilities. Remedial teamwork was a combination, but later classes were more specialized.


    And then there were Eastern studies for the third time. Honestly, this was probably the hardest class I¡¯d ever taken, not because of the volume of information, but because of the sheer unfamiliarity I had with both the subject and the exercises.


    Last class he¡¯d had to correct my breathing exercises a little, which made it even MORE uncomfortable and alien, but this time, when he had me run the breathing exercise, he seemed surprisingly pleased. ¡°So how much energy are you at?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°I¡¯ve been completely full for a couple of days. I tried to overload like you said, but when I try, I just breathe out all of the excess instead of storing it inside.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Not entirely unexpected. Technically Tu Na, or Wu breathing is the simplest and most basic form of cultivation. It works for all three types, and it¡¯s so basic that even normies with no potential can do it. So, have you figured out the hidden secret of cultivation yet?¡±


    ¡°Does it have to do with normies?¡±


    He smiled slightly. ¡°Yes and no.¡±


    ¡°The basic secret of cultivation is that, if you can teach a normie how and figure out the appropriate method, and most importantly find a way to get rid of all the useless shapes cluttering up their energy channels, they can awaken the same potential that an alpha does. In fact, alphas ARE exactly the same as a normies, we just had a lucky break and survived the trauma that opened up our pathways enough to start accumulating and using essence, basically getting flooded with exactly the shape of spirit energy that we needed to absorb to get us over the first roadblock.¡±


    ¡°How does that apply to single-power users?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°I guess that means that if we can find the right shape, we can potentially unlock our OTHER major branch as well, without risking our lives on guesswork?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°That¡¯s basically it. Supposedly, people used to know how to determine your perfect shape, but whatever it was is lost. I have been doing some of my own research, but the only thing we have that comes close is a library that we captured from the Serenoid Empire when they tried to invade back in ¡®97. The problem is, the diagrams are made for people with six arms, and we have only managed to translate a tiny bit of it.¡±


    ¡°Is there any chance that I could look at it?¡±


    He raised an eyebrow, ¡°You think you can translate it when our best minds have failed?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°Nope, but I have a unique perspective on energy and matter based on my abilities. If there are any¡­¡± I checked my notes. ¡°Cultivation methods that resonate with me, knowing how they work SHOULD give the big brains at least a primer into the language, right? By comparing what I experience to whatever instructions are written for a particular diagram?¡±


    ¡°You can tell?¡±


    ¡°What shapes resonate? Yeah. I mean, it¡¯s not so much being able to sense it, but I am getting better and better at monitoring my own energy state. I haven¡¯t EXACTLY been able to name my own dao shape, but I have managed to exclude a ton of possibilities, and I have a list of what I feel are fairly common possibilities.¡±


    ¡°Do tell!¡±


    I nodded and pulled out another list of notes. ¡°Bear in mind, a lot of this is just stuff I managed to pick up from reading some of the older, translated stories. I can¡¯t read ancient Chinese, so some of the terminology might be two different words for the same thing, or possibly even be totally wrong, but a lot of these stories have been cross-referenced and translated so I am fairly confident.¡±


    ¡°To be honest, if I had to pick a single one, it would be motion or acceleration. I had a bunch of other possibilities like air, height, sunlight, pollution, and the stars, but a swift storm yesterday wound up blocking out a lot of possibilities, so I tested it on the trams and during the storm. I am almost Ninety-Five percent certain that my ideal shape is some kind of motion. Or maybe something close to that. Considering certain power¡¯s effectiveness in comparison to other near-misses, I feel good about it. If I can find some¡­ methods to choose from? I should be able to interpret stuff pretty well by feeling my way through it.¡±


    ¡°From what I can tell, I get the strongest effects from the strongest fields, and obviously the most effective transition of motion is an orbit. I get much stronger effects from altitude than I do from wind speed, which I guess is because of a slightly increased orbital speed from Earth, and stronger energy from a large moving mass of wind than from a transit tube.¡±


    ¡°So if I were to determine a method, I¡¯d be specifically looking for one that embraces motion, particularly one that fights for acceleration. It helps that every single one of my powers can be defined as acceleration in some form or other. That might also be why I spend energy in deceleration because my power treats deceleration like acceleration in the opposite direction rather than adhering to a universal motion standard.¡±


    ¡°Damn, you DID do your homework. I am pretty confident too, confident enough to think that if your Dao embraces a different concept, it¡¯s one close enough to motion or acceleration to count.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Yes I did. Now, it¡¯s possible that I am ever so slightly off. It might be acceleration, it might be motion, it might be action, or it might be some weird mystical concept that embraces them all, like lightspeed or circularity, but we are working on feels here, and this feels right.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°I will do what I can. I can¡¯t guarantee the documents themselves, but I will try to get the diagrams, at least, as long as you are willing to document whatever you find out. I get it, but damn BSA and their over-the-top secrecy. It¡¯s like half the time the only ones that seem to know anything are the ones that are actively attacking it. So what else did you find out?¡±


    I took out my other set of notes again, ¡°Well, As far as I can tell, we need the right cultivation method, apart from just Wu breathing or whatever it is. Something that¡¯s capable of pulling energy more efficiently to start stretching my Dantian, which as far as I can tell is my soul storage. Is that what you did?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°I was mostly focused on the physical, but my abilities are almost entirely linked to my body, so I was able to start circulating my energy directly through my body and use it like a sort of battery for energy compression. Some¡­ stuff happened, and the power of gravity contains a powerful concept of compression as part of its very idea. My soul expansion was more like¡­ putting a balloon on a soda bottle and shaking it up, which kind of felt backward.¡±


    I nodded and continued. ¡°That¡¯s the next part. Once I figure out a way to start cleaning up all of the extra bits of shape I can¡¯t use, I should be able to start running my energy through my body directly, and as you said, that¡¯s called circulation. I¡¯ve tried doing it myself, but I immediately start running into walls of crap I can¡¯t budge until I have a LOT more energy available.¡±


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    I flipped to the next page. ¡°Okay, meditation. Sitting in one place and diving into my belly button has never worked. On the other hand, doing a workout routine or katas and movement frameworks seems to help me perceive and manipulate my energy better. Doing it without actually using power is there, but as I said, I keep hitting roadblocks I don¡¯t know how to clear or break yet.¡±


    ¡°As far as I can tell, despite my various power sub-abilities, which are called techniques, by the way, the real kicker seems to be the blocks. My cultivation is like a small aircraft, I can get it going really fast and powerful, but there are chocks in front of the tires that keep it from even getting started. From what I have read, there are supposedly medical treatments or umm¡­ medicines? That can help fix that, but my own powers are kind of useless to get past them, unlike yours.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°The entire way that my abilities work involves speeding past stuff and taking snapshots of the before and after. I can make a LOT of mistakes, and then just go back to the prior save point in my body and start over. I have been able to push those chocks a little, but it hurts and seriously fucks me up since I don¡¯t know what I am doing, and when I restore, it is like getting teleported back to the beginning of the maze again, with all my chalk marks disappeared and a brand new floorplan.¡±


    ¡°Right now, I am technically at the beginning of the refinement stage, or the condensation stage. There were a lot of other names for the first stage before you build your dantian, but some of them, like mortal or powerless, are a little on the dodgy side. I also kind of like the forging realms, like the body forging realm for pre-dantian. I got a lot of notes from something called the Chinese Journal of Golden Medicine, but I think I know why you were able to move forward¡­ and I don¡¯t think I am until I can figure out a way.¡±


    ¡°Elucidate.¡±


    ¡°Your concept is mass and weight. You naturally create pressure on your energy, which is exactly what it needs. Eventually, the pressure causes it to clump together, and form a liquid stage, and then eventually even more weight and pressure, like a diamond, causes it to form a solid mass kind of at the bottom of your soul container called your foundation. Each time you compress, it tugs and yanks at all of the impurities, the inappropriate shapes, where the sheer weight of your concepts liquefies and forces them into new shapes.¡±


    ¡°So your concept just naturally refines most of the spirit essence you get and forces it into exactly what you need. That probably won¡¯t work for later stages, but uhh¡­ mind if I use a badly thought-out metaphor?¡±


    ¡°Sure, I do that all the time,¡± he chuckled.


    ¡°Before we were awakened, we were like kids stuffing toys and shit up our noses. Anything that didn¡¯t work, up our noses it went. Your concept, though, was like suddenly standing in a ten Gee field, it pulled all of that crap right out and let you use your energy channels. Mine is more like a whirlwind. I keep pushing and pushing, and all it does is add more crap up there.¡±


    He laughed, ¡°I am starting to love your metaphors. At least it wasn¡¯t fish.¡±


    ¡°Well, The fish one was damned good. Basically, for me, the next stage is to do what your concept does naturally, but to do that, I need to be able to breathe through my nose. In your case, if what I was studying in the old tales has any validity whatsoever, what YOU have to do to get to the next stage is exactly the opposite. You need to start inducing motion and friction in that solid mass of power at the bottom of your soul and grind it into a fine powder so that you can fill your soul with as much power as possible without breaking it. Once you stuff it so full it¡¯s almost going to crack, it should all merge together and create something called a magical or golden core, sort of like heat and pressure turning coal into a diamond.¡±


    ¡°So I got it easy in the beginning, but now I get to the hard part?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, but I get to the hard part right at the beginning because of my concept, and once I get past it, it gets easier¡­ for a little while anyway. The next part is a bitch, but according to the documents it could take anywhere from a moment to hundreds or even thousands of years.¡±


    ¡°I am not sure about this Chinese stuff, they seem to be fond of throwing thousands of year terms around, like plants that supposedly only have a fruit that grows every thousand years and stuff, or flowers that just sit there and absorb energy for fifteen thousand years. The ultimate goal seems to be living forever. I also couldn¡¯t decipher their stages very well. EVERYTHING I have read says they gain significantly more power each time they cross a threshold or a level or rank or something, and that there are little ranks and big stages.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Unlike you though, I don¡¯t have that much of a clue to my own energy. But yeah, I am¡­ formidable, I guess. Still can¡¯t kill a giant Kaiju, but who can?¡±


    ¡°Did you have any tribulations?¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡± Bob asked.


    ¡°Well, from what I can tell, you must have passed at least one or two thresholds. Everything I read implied there would be challenges or tribulations. Lightning, getting attacked by your own insecurities, monstrous beasts getting attracted to you, breaking through your weaknesses, it¡¯s always something, but the common theme seems to be that it¡¯s painful, dangerous, and requires enormous willpower.¡±


    He laughed, ¡°Well, when I hit the points that you mentioned, I was kinda on active duty. I am basically immune to lightning because of my power interaction, fighting powerful beasts was my full-time job and one more wouldn¡¯t even be noticed, and¡­¡± he leaned forward conspiratorially, ¡°I don¡¯t have any insecurities.¡±


    ¡°How about psychological flaws?¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°Well, I am arrogant to the extreme, but as far as I know from my own reading that¡¯s pretty much a defining feature for cultivators. So no, I didn¡¯t notice anything unusual. However, that leads to homework.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°More than I am working on already? I am going to wear out my laptop.¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°No, I meant that ¡®I¡¯ have homework. You have already shot past what I intended for this class, and feel free to keep checking in occasionally during downtimes, but not here. Especially if you get more information.¡±


    ¡°Is that normal for a class like this?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah, technically you are not my student so much as a research assistant, because you picked up the basics amazingly quickly, and while I might be the only one who knows about this stuff, my level of knowledge isn¡¯t much higher than yours. Both of us are still punching in the dark.¡±


    ¡°However, you still have nine hours a week to kill. I¡¯d love to let you have it off for your training and research, and I want you to keep working on your breathing and trying to break those barriers with different methodologies if you can, but I am going to move you over to the Quigong and Tai Chi class.¡±


    ¡°What? Why?¡±


    ¡°Not much more I can tell you unless I can get diagrams from BSA that we mentioned before, and my experiences don¡¯t fold over because of our different concepts. However, as someone who can somehow detect your own energy levels, I was hoping you could actually evaluate it, and who knows? Maybe it can help your plugged-up circulatory problems.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°You sound like a vascular doctor.¡±


    He nodded, moving his great head slowly, ¡°That¡¯s the first time in my life I have ever been confused with an intellectual. Still, I am at a bit of a standstill, so your next two weeks are kind of open. Hopefully, your mind will be, too. I agree with you about some of the ridiculous superstitions that exist in the kung-fu circuit, but some of it might offer insights you could use since Martial arts and power cultivation have apparently gone hand-in-hand for a very long time¡­ may be long enough.¡±


    ¡°Long enough?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yep, everything I have heard implies that energy expansion and learning to fight more effectively are like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that taste great together. I never learned to fight until after I got my powers, learned to focus them without killing myself, and played supervillain for a while, so I have always had that option. You learned to fight long before you tried to use your ability, and your ability, by default, isn¡¯t really tied into combat like kinetic or body enhancers are.¡±


    He sighed, ¡°At some point, even if this cultivation stuff is more mythology than history, SOMEONE had to take the first steps in cultivation to figure it out. I am hoping that even if we can¡¯t find anything to help you jump over it, at least you will have the basis to repeat those first steps yourself and share them with the rest of us.¡±


    I facepalmed.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±


    ¡°Well, I have been running through the online fiction depositories because the actual translated versions of stuff about internal alchemy are limited. There is so much fiction about cultivation that it¡¯s not even funny. It¡¯s like asking a fantasy reader ¡®What is magic?¡¯ fifty different people have fifty different ideas, and every single one seems valid.¡±


    ¡°There seems to be a few common points of reference, but even those seem¡­ flexible. It¡¯s enough to make me even doubt the way my own power works.¡±


    ¡°How do you figure?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°The second thing I could do when my power awoke, was figure out how many grains of dust were in a pile of dust. Manipulating them came quickly, but it makes me wonder if what I do qualifies as telekinesis at all, since it¡¯s not so much moving them as figuring out what they are, and how to alter their maneuvering vectors. What if what I do isn¡¯t moving them so much as simply a weird enhanced detection ability? That certainly explains why my first assessment came back as a class two.¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°If that¡¯s the case, then figuring out how to manipulate your own energy should be easy.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Well, you can detect the bits of your own power, right?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°More or less, but mostly I can just detect their potential movement effects, as particles.¡±


    "Wait, what about electricity? Heat?"


    I shrugged, "Electricity is electron transfer. Motion. And temperatures are molecular motion. If an energy can be expressed as a particle, I can touch it and manipulate it, but if it''s a pure wave, like magnetism or gravity, I can''t touch it."


    "So wait... does that mean you can handle light?"


    I laughed, "Technically, yes. under certain circumstances. It really depends on how it''s behaving at the moment."


    "God, you are so overpowered," he laughed.


    I shook my head, "See, that''s where we have to disagree. You control gravity. It''s the most prevalent force in the universe. Me, I can nudge a few particles around. Sure, that means I have a lot of potential flexibility, but it''s still just tiny things. The really important stuff is way out of my league. A real class three light controller would probably tear me apart easily, and a brick? even though being able to stop kinetic motion is pretty cool, their sheer energy would mean I could barely stop them for a few seconds before they pounded me into a hamburger. Heck, I can''t even deal with the wrong spirit shapes because they are just... stuck.


    He grinned, ¡°So, figure out how to get them moving without hurting yourself. You said Orbits seem important, so start with that. If the unfit shapes have different movement characteristics, well, stop trying to beat on them like some sort of micro-hulk, and instead do as I do, use the movement to pull them out of your nose.¡±


    ¡°Think of it like a whirlpool. I mean, sure, a whirlpool tends to toss things about, but in the middle there¡¯s suction. If you can use that to suction out the impure bits of energy, then find a way to get rid of them, that should have a similar effect to my gravity compression.¡±


    I nodded slowly. I guess that was a possibility. Still, the idea of accidentally turning my own organs into particle-beam weapons was not particularly appealing.

 Chapter 14. Roofs are dangerous.

    Okay, essence, like most energy, seemed to have the characteristics of both a particle and a wave. Imagine each ¡®energy unit¡¯, as I called it, as a conglomerate particle instead of a battery.


    I was back on top of the school building, shadowboxing. Silly, but I just thought better, when I was in motion. The small observation deck could easily be covered in a few steps, but that just meant I had to make sure to get in arm motion as much as footwork.


    Obviously, my nervous system uses electrical impulses to trigger chemical impulses. That was Biology 101. I had nailed down the exact reaction of those impulses back when I was trying to improve my body, which was why I had a lot more¡­ short nerves than most people. Chemical reactions were slow, electrical impulses were much faster, so I had shortened the chemical reaction chains to the bare minimum. It made me fast, very fast, but it still couldn¡¯t hold a candle to what a ¡®fast¡¯ alpha could do, either through some sort of speed superpower or due to bio-enhancement.


    Most of the fictions had mentioned ¡®body enhancement¡¯ as one of the side effects of cultivation, and I had sort of done it in reverse. They usually mentioned flooding their body with chi energy and rebuilding it better, while I had taken the more intellectual route of making it better before even knowing what the hell chi energy, essence, or whatever really was.


    The thing was, most of the novels that detailed how cultivation worked started with the same steps. Figure out where your energy pool is, start pulling energy into the pool, and then purify it to be what you need. Once that happened, there were apparently three possible paths.


    1. Flood your body with energy, let the energy rebuild you, and get better and better at idealizing your ¡®divine form¡¯. Of course, how that worked was a mystery. You just did it and let your body handle it, as if there was some sort of blueprint out there for a ¡®divine heart¡¯ that started adding energy on its own.


    If there was, I didn¡¯t know what it was or how it worked, and I wasn¡¯t going to just disintegrate my own heart, flood my system with energy, and hope something magically developed like there was a magical blueprint in the collective unconscious that knew what a ¡®divine heart¡¯ looked like. This was called ¡®body cultivation¡¯. Apparently, the way Graviton naturally worked, his body had already started doing this on its own using compressed energy without input. I would need to seriously scan some physical enhancement alphas since Bob¡¯s method would likely kill me.


    2. Keep growing my ¡®soul¡¯, stretch it out, fill it with energy, and then try to compress that energy down. Once I got my energy channels, or meridians, working, this was supposed to just naturally increase my ability to handle and manipulate energy in all of its forms. That was referred to as spirit cultivation, and of all three types, it seemed to have the most solid and consistent information, probably because there¡¯s no way to prove anything about it, no external special effects, so everyone, from Tai Chi masters to Bodhivistas, seemed to have been working from the same internal alchemy stuff forever instead of making up cool new fictions to match their magical worlds.


    Last, and probably least, was referred to as mind, or external energy. Of the three types, it seems to have been indulged in the most by fantasists, because it included the most blatantly magical stuff like ryokan fireballs and the ¡®ninth tier heavenly divine sword of flaming dragon-fire moon ten thousand Li cuts.¡±


    Depending on the fiction, primarily body cultivators were mystical martial artists, spirit cultivators were cultivators and mind cultivators were wizards or sorcerers. Supposedly, each had its own strengths and weaknesses, but few went with all three for various disconnected reasons.


    Of course, in my case, I didn¡¯t think it would be possible for me to gain power unless I went with all three. I just wish I knew how, but I figured I already had at least a basis in both body and mind cultivation from improving myself and learning to simulate various elemental attacks. Normal Alphas just had instincts that helped them¡­ maybe body enhancers had an instinct for improving their internal organs and skin durability, but what it was, I didn¡¯t have it, probably due to that missing secondary connection, those ¡®concepts¡¯ that Linker was talking about.


    I felt through my body, based on what I felt when my energy was high. I didn¡¯t need to just feel it, I needed to visualize it, just like when I was merging materials. The energy was sort of like light, but felt way lower on the scale, if not completely off the scale. I couldn¡¯t make it flow like water, but when I treated and perceived it like particles, I could actually feel it all over my body.


    Obviously, it was not sight, but I could still feel it. Was this what my power looked like? I started wondering¡­ how did I detect it? Was it like light? Was my brain bouncing whatever this energy was off of this energy? After a few minutes I just...shelved it. That way lies self-crippling analysis.


    My soul? I had no idea what that would even look like. Was it like a balloon in the middle of my stomach? Or was it my whole body? I mean, soul energy was tied to life, and my whole body was alive, but at the same time it was supposed to be a container for my energy, and as I explored further, I realized that it seemed to have a place in my middle where it pooled more strongly.


    Like radiation, the particles of different shapes seemed to be everywhere, with a slightly higher concentration of the same kind of energy particles that pooled inside of me. Some of it was coming, some of it was going, and a very tiny amount was changing, from one kind of shape to another. The fiercely organized part of my mind was creeped out at it, but I guessed it was natural, like fire shifting solid and gas into plasma and new shapes.


    I added more breathing to the energy to try and create that spiral, and to my delight, it seemed to actually be adding more energy instead of simply leaching away the excess. I started stirring all of it to rotate around the area where it seemed to be slowly creating a whirling pool. In with the good, out with the bad and useless. Like fire, or the slow spinning of electrons around a charged molecule.


    The fire metaphor actually made it a lot easier to deal with. While I had trouble thinking of the energy as a liquid, probably because my ability was tied more to particles than to waves, imagining it as a spiraling circle of shining bits of plasma was much easier. A plasma spiral that spun rapidly and burned away anything that fell into it other than itself, the bits of dirt, dust, and other, odder contaminants burning away¡­


    ***


    The ceiling was interesting. There was a big sign over the bed that said ¡°Call, don¡¯t fall!¡± with a picture of a stick figure crashing to the floor between a hospital bed and a wheelchair.


    A track, white panels, and an enormous amount of suspended medical equipment, some of which I recognized, a lot of which I didn¡¯t. I had a pretty good medical education, as far as the body was concerned, but most of the tools were stuff that specialists learned to use. If I took the time I could probably figure out what each of them was, and how to use them, but right now I had a more important question on my mind.


    Like why I was here. I mean, it was pretty obvious that I was in a hospital, since I was tucked into a hospital bed and wearing a hospital gown, and my left arm ached pretty harshly. I was tempted to reset it, but¡­ there was something weird going on.


    I didn¡¯t have an IV, which was probably a good thing, since they weren¡¯t used frequently with alphas. Not only because it was a nightmare trying to get through toughened skin, but also because, biologically, alphas tended to be very different from each other as well as different from normies in a lot of ways.


    ¡°Hello?¡± I asked. After a moment, I managed to find a call button on the bed and pressed it.


    Minutes later, a dark-skinned, very large man dressed in scrubs stuck his head in, and smiled, ¡°Hullo Mister Doyle! You are awake! This is very good!¡± He looked¡­ I was thinking maybe Tongan or old-school Samoan. I wasn¡¯t that good with accents.


    I nodded and looked around. My neck kind of hurt as well. ¡°Right, uhh¡­ why am I here?¡±


    He opened the door a little further, ¡°You are not going to have spontaneous power fluctuations, yes?¡± he asked.


    ¡°No, not that I know of¡­ was I?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yes, A teacher, Doctor Landhurst, was called to help you because you were shocking the paramedics after your fall.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t hurt anyone, did I?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°No, not hurt. You are class two, yes? No, minor shock, but paramedics needed rubber gloves. Especially with your condition, yes?¡±


    ¡°My¡­ condition?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yes, people wanted to know why you were climbing around roof coated with sewage and tar. Slipped, fell, and dislocated shoulder. Lucky you did not dislocate your brain. Flyer?¡±


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.


    I shook my head, ¡°So I just¡­ fell?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yes, you fell. Landed right on lawn by the base of Quentin statue, lucky you didn''t fall on statue. You were unconscious. No one was quite sure why. Sports medicine specialist said you had dislocated shoulder, but the X-ray machine come back blank. They were worried you might have head injury, but alphas are hard to read. Doctor Landhurst said your brain wasn¡¯t damaged, you just had power exhaustion really bad. You are lucky you¡¯re not dead.¡±


    ¡°Not flying? Sometimes folks fly, and burn themselves out by mistake and fall, thought maybe that was what happened, especially if you fly out of¡­ sewer? Fighting shock rats?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Something like that.¡± My brain finally started to work and I started remembering what I was doing. I¡¯d been shadowboxing and running from one side of the observation deck, so what happened?


    I could feel the energy inside me right now, slowly revolving. No, it wasn¡¯t power exhaustion, not at all¡­ I could FEEL I had at least twice as much power as I had before, it was circulating through my core like a haze of lightning. It wasn¡¯t power exhaustion, it was more like an overload. Had I damaged something?


    I guess I had been so caught up in my exercise that when I suddenly started drawing power in, I¡¯d stripped it from other parts of my body, maybe including my brain. I guessed that when that happened, my brain shut down, and my body kept moving because I was still moving¡­ had I pranced my way right off the edge of the roof?


    From what he was saying, I pitched right over the safety rail through the crenelations, hit the lower roof, and slid off with a good two-story drop onto the grass beneath. No kidding about getting lucky! I had dislocated my shoulder, but if I had landed on my head, I would be dead. No do-overs, no resets, no blueprints. D-E-D dead. I was tougher than usual, but tougher wouldn¡¯t keep my skull from splattering if it hit concrete after a two-story fall.


    Still, between me and Mister Bob, we had been right! The energy thing didn¡¯t really match the literature very much, I didn¡¯t have a magic lake in my crotch, or channels, at least not yet.


    I needed to think, I needed privacy. I needed to exercise and meditate somewhere I wasn¡¯t going to fall off the roof!


    ¡°Can I go?¡±


    He raised an eyebrow. ¡°Are you safe to go? You were banged up, and the doctor doesn¡¯t know why you were unconscious for fourteen hours.¡±


    I nodded and checked myself. I had some good bruising around my collarbone, but nothing I couldn¡¯t heal up easily enough even without a reset. My brain seemed to be okay even though I had a headache¡­ probably a bit of a residual concussion. My neck hurt, but that seemed part of the initial dislocation, soft tissue damage since nothing felt broken, and I had to be grateful that someone with likely stronger than normal strength seemed to have relocated my shoulder while I was out. Fourteen hours was bad, though, since that meant I had missed my classes. The rest of me appeared to be alright except for some bruising on the outside of my left hip and knee.


    I nodded, ¡°I¡¯m a support healer. I seem to be in pretty good shape.¡± I had an idea about that tar sewage stuff too. One thing both the fictions and the internal alchemy books had stated was that impurities, the stuff that was getting sucked into my now slowly spinning energy core, would make their way out of you disgustingly. but that was one more thing I owed someone for, cleaning me up. My clothes were probably utterly wrecked, so I needed to heal myself and get back to the dorm.


    ¡°Support healer? What is that? You are not listed on reserve? Oh, I am Bill. William Enoha. Usually, anyone with any gifts related to healing or triage quick to get on clinic reserve.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°I am Jacob Doyle. I guess you know that already? I have only been here a week, I¡¯ve been in remedial classes. What is the reserve?¡±


    He grinned broadly, ¡°If you can help with medicine you can be placed on training reserve. That is, maybe, supposed to improve your experience healing. It will also help earn school credit and increase support rankings. I am on reserve. I am strong and have paramedic associate¡¯s degree from the University of Oahu. Helps pay for school and improves ranks.¡±


    I nodded, that was actually a solid plan. Yeah, his accent and odd word choice didn¡¯t exactly inspire confidence in his intelligence, but with a plan and training like that, his intellect probably seriously belied his appearance. ¡°You wouldn¡¯t fit in an ambulance easily.¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°It has its compensations. You feeling up for getting checked out? Or wait for dinner first? Your sponsor was here¡­ two hours ago? The cute girl looked worried.¡±


    I shrugged and tested my shoulder. I¡¯d probably just let it heal naturally in a day or so instead of wasting energy. ¡°Go ahead and get a discharge started. Are we on campus?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah. The campus has a good clinic. Lots of minor injuries in training. We are behind the Bullworth building. I¡¯ll get you set up for discharge.¡±


    ***


    I was feeling alright, if in a little pain, but I had done more feeling worse, so I managed to get to Criminology class after I changed out of the academy sweats that they¡¯d given me to get home. I had met Doctor Landhurst, a severe woman in her fifties who ran the trauma center. Most medical conditions other than trauma would be handed off to one of the city hospitals because the Academy was not exactly a hotbed of infectious diseases and age-related illnesses, but apparently training-related injuries in a place where combat dueling was a respected method of proving your value were common.


    ¡°Jake!¡± I heard Mindy¡¯s voice as I exited the class, and noticed her standing next to another young lady, a somewhat mousey girl wearing glasses. Short, very much a fan of the color brown, yes, unattractive, no. She was definitely working the hell out of both the ¡®beautiful all along¡¯ and the nerdy sexy librarian trope. I could tell just from the way that energy was circulating that she was very definitely an alpha. Was this a new facet of me unlocking my abilities? Being able to detect alphas at a glance? If so, it was definitely not something I wanted to share. One more secret that could get me black-bagged.


    I stopped, ¡°Hi Mindy.¡±


    ¡°What on earth happened to you? I came by the hospital but you wouldn¡¯t wake up. Are you okay?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yes, I am fine. Do you want to go to dinner? I can¡¯t really talk about it here.¡±


    She nodded quickly, ¡°Sure. Oh, first I¡¯d like you to meet Abigail Snow. Abbey, this is the guy I was talking about, Jacob Doyle. Abbey is remedial also, and got rushed here yesterday just like us! She was pushed into the PR classes too, for the next two weeks until the mid-break.¡±


    Abigail pulled off her glasses with her left hand, which I noticed didn¡¯t seem to actually have any magnification, which meant that they were a prop. She held out her hand for me to shake, and as a seeming habit, bit the earpiece of her glasses, calling attention to both her lavender eyes and her lips while I shook her hand.


    Oh yes, I was very familiar with the look, and she was playing it quite expertly. Christine had played a similar game, although in her case it had been a bit more genuine, since before her awakening, she really was a lot more of a bookworm. The difference was, that I recognized it instantly this time and had to wonder exactly how accidental this meeting was. ¡°Hi, Abigail, a pleasure to meet you,¡± I said, shaking her hand lightly.


    She wanted to play the game, I could play the game, at least until I knew what her angle was¡­ It could just be her way of dealing with people, or it could be intentionally aimed at me. I knew damned well I was paranoid, but I also knew that just because I was paranoid didn¡¯t mean someone wasn¡¯t out to get me. In my head, Admiral Akbar was screaming ¡°It¡¯s a trap!¡±


    She smiled, showing off a hint of retainer. Small signs of imperfection and vulnerability? Check. If she¡¯d been a redhead, I would have been instantly sure that she was a plant, because she would have been TOO obviously targeted at my history.


    If she was a weapon, though, someone knew my history and emotional vulnerabilities very well. If I weren¡¯t Paranoid I¡¯d probably be drooling over her, since even her short height, slight dusting of brown freckles, and compact, curvy body concealed by shy, slightly-too-baggy clothes were right in my preferred sweet spot. Not traditionally beautiful, since most guys seemed to prefer overfull lips, D-cups, perfect complexion, and long legs, she probably would be considered an eight or nine instead of a ten, but definitely in my strike zone.


    ¡°Hello Jake,¡± she replied, seeming to linger just a bit too long before she released my hand. ¡°I understand that you are Mindy¡¯s support?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yes. And since you know that, I suppose that means you are an alpha?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°They rushed me in here, I just assumed that meant that other rushes were here for a reason. I doubt very much that after we work and fight together there will still be a lot of doubts about our identities, but in the end, we are all on the same team.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°At least I assume we will be on the same team unless you plan on putting on a cowl and monologuing about world domination?¡±


    She blushed a little and then laughed, ¡°Right, No more internet! The world will return to printed books and newspapers! Muahahaha!¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Is that a key to your psychology?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No, but I think that would be interesting. I am not a huge fan of social media, but I read my books online just like everyone else. Why, are you looking for keys?¡±


    I nodded slowly, another quirk in my strike zone. Shy but confident, too. Either she was sincere, or she was very well trained. ¡°Maybe, maybe not. Will we be seeing you in teamwork training tomorrow? I have to ask my sponsor¡¯s advice on a few things tonight.¡±


    She nodded, smiling brightly, ¡°Yes! I¡¯ll look forward to seeing both of you tomorrow!¡±

 Chapter 15. Changing my mind

    ¡°So what¡¯s going on?¡± Mindy asked. ¡°I checked on you, and you were completely lights-out. I was really worried, but the Doctor said you were suffering probably a minor concussion and energy exhaustion.¡±


    I nodded, smiling as I grabbed a slice of pizza. It was cutting into my limited funds, but it was worth it to get food near the sub-floor dormitory lounge. ¡°Yep, remember how I was trying to expand my energy? I think I succeeded. Not a whole lot, but enough to make a serious difference.¡±


    My energy budget had more than doubled. Falling off a roof sucked, but I guess technically it was worth it. I¡¯d also gotten a bit tougher, and breathing in energy had gotten a bit easier and a lot faster. Five hundred and fifty energy points, and it was a little easier to align molecular structures as well. I still couldn¡¯t hold a candle to even most class twos, energy-wise, but with the right preparation, I¡¯d made it my job to hold my own.


    Also, once I got in a minor reset, which only cost me fifty points! I felt great. I wasn¡¯t going to try it, but I kinda needed to test¡­ and at that level, testing it was sort of amazing. The problem was, for a lot of the things I wanted to try out I did NOT want to be under the all-seeing eye of BSA, or even the tentative trust of Senpai Bob. They knew what powers I displayed when I was working the SSS angle, and what I had shown them, but there was a lot of stuff I needed to experiment with that I never wanted to see the light of day, like finding out if my dissolved form could travel faster, now.


    ¡°So what does that mean?¡±


    ¡°That means that I might be able to make a bigger impact. I still can¡¯t recover my entire pool in a single day, but I am a lot closer to that now, and for that reason alone I owe you big.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°If you can use it for healing, I doubt very much you will owe me anything. So you figured out how to expand your energy? How does that work? And how will it affect our teamwork?¡±


    I thought about that for a moment, ¡°Well, I might be able to improve your armor more easily, and as far as healing, I have no idea, I haven¡¯t really had a chance to test it yet, but from what I can tell, it has improved slightly, so my range might also have improved, but I¡¯m not willing to hurt anyone to test it.¡±


    She looked at me thoughtfully, ¡°The more I get to know you, the more I realize that you are both brilliant and blind.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    She sighed, ¡°You come up with ideas and uses for your abilities that are amazing. You get these strokes of brilliance and dive right into them with almost no fear. And then you completely miss the most obvious stuff right in front of your face. I don¡¯t get it.¡±


    ¡°What did I miss that was so obvious?¡±


    She sighed deeply, ¡°The clinic? It¡¯s nearly the end of the semester. In a day or two, higher-year students are going to start frantically scrambling to improve their rankings. That means injuries and lots of chances to test your limits with healing.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Oh,¡± since she had a very good point. Test my short-range healing AND my energy recuperation. In retrospect, I probably was a complete moron, since just knowing a small part of my abilities already clued in other people about ways to use them that I had never even thought about.


    ***


    Okay, chock one up in the ¡®Paranoia¡¯ column. Like the other early entries, Abbey had remedial courses until the new semester started. She didn¡¯t join Mindy and me in early-morning exercises, as was becoming the norm for us, but at breakfast, she met us and turned out to be really chatty.


    She was tapping at her glasses, ¡°So basically, when I read a knowledge base, it¡¯s displayed on a reflective surface, and the inside of a pair of glasses is the best way for me to visualize the information.¡±


    ¡°Is it like technopathy?¡± I asked, curiously.


    She shook her head, ¡°It¡¯s a unique ability. I can¡¯t control computers, although I can read, decode, and alter a lot of the data stored on them. But it¡¯s not really about computers. I can do it if I am standing in a library, or just about any place where data is stored in any form¡­ written, computer code, art, even photographs.¡±


    ¡°That sounds a heck of a lot more powerful than class four,¡± Mindy remarked, before taking a big bite of a breakfast burrito.


    Abbey smiled, ¡°It would be, but it¡¯s very specific. I can¡¯t go fishing for information unless I know what I am looking for, and it only works on one data point at a time.¡±


    ¡°what does that mean?¡± I asked.


    She looked thoughtful, ¡°Okay, say that you umm¡­ accidentally took a selfie of yourself in the bathroom mirror without your shirt on, and someone found the image and put it on the internet. You know how they say nothing disappears from the internet? Well, I can make it disappear. Even if it¡¯s been renamed, changed formats, or been photo-manipulated, I could still disappear them all, even the hardcopies that people printed out would turn blank if they were close enough.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s incredible.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yeah, but if you wanted to say¡­ change your driver¡¯s license to say you were twenty-one, I could change the license, and all related databanks would say you were twenty-one, but that wouldn¡¯t affect your school records, medical records, birth certificate, social security Identification, yearbooks, or anything like that. Each of those is a different data point. That¡¯s why I wouldn¡¯t do it¡­ I mean, technically even people¡¯s brains would change the information because it¡¯s just data in the end, but changing everything to make you twenty-one would take forever and there would always be massive holes because I can¡¯t think of everything.¡± She was chewing on the stem of her glasses again. Not a flirt, a bad habit.


    ¡°It¡¯s class four because I can also fish out data if I know enough about what I am looking for. The BSA considers that very dangerous, even if it¡¯s not something that can level buildings. Also, stuff has to be in a contiguous network. That means that the people who have read it have to have regular social or other connections with each other, or there has to be a data link or something.¡±


    ¡°So if like, some secret agents took analog snapshots of documents, and then destroyed the original documents, it¡¯s no longer contiguous. I can¡¯t find the documents unless I find some other way of tracing them than the original. That¡¯s why I wouldn¡¯t make a good spy¡­ since wireless networking became impossible, most countries and even companies keep their secret information on disconnected networks or even isolated servers, or even as a paper file in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door that says ¡®Beware of the leopard¡¯. I have a short initial tracking range.¡±


    I grinned. ¡°Still completely kick-ass power, though, even if it¡¯s mostly harmless.¡± At which Abbey giggled. ¡°It¡¯s an amazing support power. Do you have a tertiary?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yeah, but it¡¯s kind of a useless tier-two power. I mean, I think technically it¡¯s complementary because if I didn¡¯t have it I wouldn¡¯t be able to read or manipulate anything I traced. I can display what my primary power tells me on any reflective surface. I can also use it to make cosmetic changes, so I can alter stuff with my primary.¡±


    ¡°How does that work?¡±


    She thought about it for a second, and then said, ¡°I came into the cafeteria this morning wearing a green sweater.¡±


    I looked at her sweater, which was most definitely orange. Kind of a Velma look.


    ¡°No, I watched you walk into the cafeteria wearing that sweater. I remember thinking that you looked like you stepped right out of the mystery machine.¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°You are wearing an Aerosmith tee shirt under your hoodie.¡±


    I nodded and unzipped the hoodie. ¡°Yep. It was my grandpa¡¯s.¡±


    She chuckled, ¡°This part is always hard. Okay, I was wearing a green sweater, but the moment I told you I was, I altered the data so that I was wearing this orange one. It changed cosmetically, but it also changed your short-term memory and your memories of your personal monologue to match. I mean, I don''t have any direct control of your memory, only that data point. Just like your tee shirt when you walked in was a Rush tee shirt. I guess your grandpa gave you a Rush Tee?¡±


    I thought about it for a second, and suddenly I realized, yes, it WAS supposed to be a Rush Tee! My grandpa hated Aerosmith and called Tyler an overhyped man-whore. He didn¡¯t give it to me, it was part of my inheritance. But you are right.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°My power changes short-term memories, but long-term memories always develop¡­ holes, eventually. And I apologize, I usually wouldn¡¯t do that if I can help it.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Rush, Aerosmith. They are both a couple of really friggin¡¯ old bands I couldn¡¯t care less about. I don¡¯t have any emotional attachment, since my grandpa died long before I was born, I just grabbed a bunch of stuff when I left home and this was one of the shirts.¡±


    Mindy looked confused, ¡°Wait, when you say a band tee shirt, you mean like¡­ an original concert shirt?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah.¡±


    She rolled her eyes, ¡°You know those are worth like¡­ thousands of dollars as collector''s items?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°I¡¯ve been wearing it for years. It¡¯s not exactly holy, but it¡¯s not out-of-the-bag untouched either. It¡¯s probably worth about twenty bucks, which is how much it would cost me to replace it with another tee shirt.¡±


    Abbey looked confused, ¡°But I thought you could repair stuff, right?¡±


    ¡°Right?¡±


    ¡°So why don¡¯t you just repair it to mint condition, and then sell it?¡±


    Mindy had her hand over her mouth and was sort of snorting, laughing I guess. Right. This is yet another case of coming up with brilliant ways of flexing my powers while utterly missing the most obvious potential uses.


    ¡°Because¡­¡± I thought about it for a few minutes, ¡°Because I didn¡¯t think about it?¡±


    Mindy looked at me suspiciously, ¡°She has a good point. I mean, you are kind of broke, right? I am sure your old job paid pretty well, but it couldn¡¯t have been that great. Why didn¡¯t you head to a junk shop or a dump and just start finding stuff, fixing it, and then reselling it online? Or you could have made a mint restoring artwork or even old VCR tapes and hard drives so that their data can be recovered. I bet that the BSA would pay you your weight in silver if you could crack a hard drive that¡¯s been reformatted and zeroed out.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if I could do that, the hard drive thing, but I might be able to fix an old VCR tape or cracked CD¡­ my repair isn¡¯t that awesome.¡±


    Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    I used a little of my newfound energy to quickly reset my brain. Yeah, it¡¯s confusing, don¡¯t try this at home, but I could actually see the fading spirit particles where my short-term memory had been changed, and suddenly remembered putting on my Rush tee-shirt this morning, and yes, she had been wearing a green sweater.


    ¡°Please don¡¯t do that again,¡± I said. ¡°That¡¯s kind of invasive.¡±


    ¡°Oh!¡± she said, ¡°Okay, I fixed it. I promise.¡±


    I looked down at my hoodie and the tee shirt beneath was Rush again, and it had always been Rush. With another minor twitch, I remembered that it had been Aerosmith a few seconds ago.


    ¡°That¡¯s matter manipulation. That¡¯s sort of a big deal.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°It¡¯s not big enough scale to be a big deal, I guess, and I have so many restrictions. It has to stay within expectations, and it can¡¯t affect other people physically¡­ like I couldn¡¯t turn you blonde. Something about other people, especially alphas, makes it not work. And staying within expectations means I couldn¡¯t like¡­ turn your tee shirt into solid gold, or even a more modern band¡¯s shirt. It¡¯s a sub-power of data manipulation, after all. That¡¯s why I am training for support.¡±


    ¡°So here¡¯s a question,¡± I said, ¡°if that bathroom selfie picture was on a screen or a printout, and someone took a picture of that screen, would that picture disappear too?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°I don¡¯t think it would. It¡¯s not contiguous. Just like if they put it on a hard drive and flew to Japan with it¡­ the range is way too far.¡±


    I suddenly felt a lot better. Matter manipulation and mental manipulation were both scary powers, even if, in her case, it was very limited.


    ***


    ¡°Anyone want to tell me why the ELC 1200 has such a short range?¡± Mister Dexter was looking directly at one of the girls in the front of the classroom where we were auditing remedial teamwork.


    ¡°Because of elves?¡± the dark-skinned brunette replied, looking a little confused.


    He sighed, ¡°Sort of. However, if you don¡¯t come up with a better answer, you might be repeating this class. The ELC-1200 uses ELF frequencies to cut through the q-brane interference. The problem is, that it would be useless if the antenna was half a mile high. What is the other reason?¡± he glanced back at me, ¡°How about we hear from one of the auditors?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Because ELF in greater strengths is seriously toxic, like sticking your head in a microwave, except it¡¯s at the other end of the spectrum.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Exactly. That¡¯s one of the reasons you also want to keep your communications to less than ten seconds unless you were one of the lucky alphas with resistance to radiation across a broad spectrum.¡±


    He pointed at the screen, where an ELC-1200 pocket communicator was shown disassembled. ¡°So remember. Twelve hundred feet, or around four hundred meters, is the absolute maximum that you can use to send data communications in combat unless you are lucky enough to have a communicator on your team. That is why we are trained in Morse code.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s why your combat team carries repeaters. If you don¡¯t drop a repeater at least every thousand feet if you are going into active combat, you will lose connection with your backup, guaranteed.¡±


    I sighed, that reminded me of the downside of being support-focused. I wanted to be the ¡®chair guy¡¯, but the chair had disappeared when quantum interference had gotten too strong for decent wireless communications.


    Now, if you wanted to actively engage with your team, you had to be close. This was a major focus of some of the courses like combat logistics I would be taking next semester, but remedial teamwork was sort of like combat logistics for dummies. Of course, if your team specialized in criminal interception, you might have a decent detective crew that fed you patrol and interception coordinates but never came within a mile of a super-fight, but those guys were an entirely different team, and worked more like a police force¡­ once they gave you your mission, you were done talking to them.


    In my case, if I got the job I wanted, I¡¯d be closer to the action than I liked. Maybe not up in a super-criminal¡¯s face, but that could happen too. Maintaining and coordinating contact with my team was going to be every bit as much my job as making sure they eat, train, and have all the tools they need to do their job. If the team leader was the quarterback, I guess I was angling for assistant coach.


    The teacher sighed. ¡°Alright. Thursday we are going to be running our last exercises. Next Monday will be the final exam. Both of those contribute heavily to your total score for the course. Auditors, obviously you won¡¯t be taking the exam, but if you choose to participate in the exercise, a good subjective score will be reported for your introductory teamwork course next semester, assuming you don¡¯t wind up in remedial teamwork again.¡±


    ¡°Chinook, Blueprint, could you please wait a few moments after the break?¡±


    I nodded, and the rest of the students started taking off. It was interesting the way that many of them, like me, were wearing somewhat shapeless ¡®school uniforms¡¯ that were basically form-fitting coveralls, except that most of them wore decorated masks. There were only three males in the class, and two of them were wearing brown coveralls instead of gray, which meant that they were either class one or two supports or didn¡¯t have any powers, potential civilian contractors that still wanted to get involved in hero teamwork.


    To be honest, most support teams were predominantly normies, even the ones that were close-in combat support. Much of our job didn¡¯t involve using powers at all, and it was a little-known fact that for every professional hero, there were usually a dozen civilian supports, from mechanics to PR, detectives, and researchers to emergency workers and crowd control specialists. Many of them trained alongside their teams even if they were never going to get involved in the slug-fests of the primary combatants.


    It was an even less well-known fact that more than a few vigilantes were pure human, with no powers at all, and yet they still managed to rack up scores against lower-class villain types. Equipment, training, experience, and intelligence often made more of a difference than a random power or two.


    In the nineties, there was a street vigilante named the Hanging Judge, who specialized in taking out class two and three murderers in Kansas City, usually lethally. It wasn¡¯t until after his death from cancer that his memoirs and legacy were discovered by his family. He wasn¡¯t an alpha at all, a pure normie, who got his start taking out and robbing drug dealers. He used the proceeds to get decent equipment, and using his talents and intellect, as well as enhanced gear, he took out over 21 known alpha killers as well as a score of normie serial killers and lethal enforcers. Even though he was technically a criminal, he was a hero to a lot of vigilantes and even normie police officers on alpha response teams.


    After I went down to the front of the classroom, Mister Dexter was sadly shaking his head at Chinook, the young lady who had answered the question about ELF transmitters. Good-looking body, of course, and her mask was decorated to look like a hawk or eagle, with feathers and a beak painted on the front instead of a holo-disguise like a lot of us used.


    ¡°I get that you want to go back to the nation, but even solos have to get a decent grounding in teamwork, especially if you ever get called on to help stop an invasion. If you don¡¯t get at least a seventy on the written test, you are going to be repeating remedial, and despite being the right ethnicity and powerset to work as a solo, the nation¡¯s not going to want to support you unless you pass at least introductory teamwork. You are good at working with a team on the exercises. All I can say is please stop worrying so much about your ranking and put in some study time before Monday.¡±


    She sighed. ¡°I am only rank twelve. If I refuse a rank challenge, I could drop a huge number of slots by year two. I am just not very good at memorizing all those little facts. I know that only fourth-year challenges really count, but if I can get to at least the top ten, next semester I get to start off with challenge restrictions and will have a lot more study time.¡±


    ¡°Sorry for eavesdropping, but challenge restrictions?¡±


    She turned and looked at me, her eyes opened wide, and she stammered for a moment, her mouth dropping open a little under the edge of her mask, before she coughed, and nodded. ¡°Ye..uhh...yes. Challenge restrictions. There are three restriction categories for the ranks. The top ten, which is category one, the runners, which are rank eleven through twenty-five, and the strivers, which is everyone below rank twenty-five for each competition.¡±


    I smiled, ¡°Oh, tell me more, please.¡±


    She gulped a little. I had no idea why she was so nervous¡­ did she know I was a class six? That was supposed to be restricted information. ¡°Right, you can only challenge one category higher. So the strivers can challenge other strivers for rank or the runners. You can only gain one rank for each challenge, but a lot of the challengers have specialty abilities or can build a combat load-out specifically for defeating a particular person¡¯s weaknesses, like widgeteers.¡±


    ¡°Even a rank sixty widgeteer could build a special weapon specifically designed to take advantage of a rank 11¡¯s weaknesses, and if they win, they go up to rank fifty-nine and the rank eleven drops to rank twelve. There are also politics and cliques involved, and I am not particularly popular, So if the current rank thirteen knows she is not able to take my slot, she could ask a rank forty widgeteer to drop me a rank so she pops over me without a challenge.¡±


    Mister Dexter shrugged, ¡°Technically, doing that sort of thing is not discouraged, because it encourages teamwork¡­ She could do the same thing.¡±


    Chinook nodded, ¡°Yeah, but I am not that popular. Phantom Pane has already had me spooked twice by a specialist breaker to keep me out of the top ten because she knows I can tromp her good because my powerset resists her echoes. If I can get into the top ten, though, only the top 25 can challenge me, and none of them can drop me easily.¡±


    I scratched my head, ¡°Huh. The rankings seem like a game of rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock, devil, scout.¡±


    Mister Dexter nodded, ¡°For the solos, it truly is. No one is going to challenge Flashworks for number one because she¡¯s a class five light elemental, but that¡¯s why,¡± he looked seriously at Chinook, ¡°getting teamwork specced is so important. Even if you can¡¯t stay in the solos, a good teamwork ranking is often looked at even more seriously than the solo ranks.¡±


    ¡°Devil scout?¡± asked Chinook.


    I nodded, holding up devil horns and then a Boy Scout salute. ¡°Yeah, even more stupidly complicated to prevent draws when larger groups are playing. There are even variants where you have to use both hands at the same time or toss dice. But that¡¯s seriously deep nerd stuff. So widgeteers are almost always at the top?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Nope. Usually, they are close to the bottom, because most of them are fragile. Easy knockout, even if they are wearing armor because implied damage is judged.¡±


    ¡°Implied damage?¡±


    She sighed, ¡°Yeah. If I punched you in your face with eagle claw in a duel, and you aren¡¯t innately tough, I could easily put a hole through your head. Widgeteers are usually fragile, so even in armor, I could hit hard enough to splash their brains around inside of their helmet.¡±


    ¡°So if I get in a hit that¡¯s good enough that if I put actual pepper behind it I would win, it¡¯s counted as my victory. I mean, people still get hurt a lot but rarely die. Usually, it¡¯s the tougher alphas that get the worst, though, because if I tap a support in their throat, it¡¯s obviously a death blow¡­ but two bricks pounding it out might have to disable or knock each other unconscious. With big defenses and big attacks, it¡¯s a lot harder for a duel master to make a point decision.¡±


    Mr. Dexter nodded, ¡°That¡¯s why Flashworks is solid number one and Oahu is solidly number two. Flashworks can almost always force a point decision and is nearly invulnerable in her light form, and Oahu never gets a point decision because the more you hit him, the stronger and tougher he gets. Then again, Flashworks will be gone in two semesters. Once Flashworks is gone, you will probably shift to number eleven easily enough, and all you need is an ally that can counter a top ten or two.¡±


    Chinook nodded, ¡°Yeah, but if I get top ten, it becomes that much harder for someone to find a breaker to knock me out of it.¡±


    He sighed, ¡°My point still stands. These credits are very important. Please don¡¯t make me see you again next semester.¡±


    Chinook nodded, ¡°I will do the best I can.¡±


    Mister Dexter turned to me, ¡°Now on to you. I know you are just an audit until the semester ends, but I want to ask you a big favor.¡±


    ¡°A favor?¡± I asked curiously, no idea what I could do to help a teacher.


    He nodded slowly, taking off his glasses and starting to rub the lenses with a cleaning cloth from his pocket. ¡°Yes. I want you to participate in the teamwork exercises on Friday as a support.¡±

 Chapter 16. Zonked on Fullerenes.

    I was surprised, and I noticed Chinook, as she was starting to head towards the door, seemed surprised, and she turned to watch the conversation.


    ¡°Why is that?¡±


    He put his glasses back on and leaned against his wooden desk. ¡°Teamwork training is mandatory credit for support lines, even for research and logistics.¡±


    I nodded.


    ¡°The problem is, that remedial teamwork usually gets three types of students. Team-oriented rushes, like you and a few others, civilian prospects, and combatants that have¡­ serious troubles with passing the basic teamwork classes, often due to handicaps or unwillingness to study and pass the basic teamwork courses that everyone is required to pass.¡±


    ¡°Civilians have it because they usually have a tough time during the combat exercises, not the schoolwork. Training to survive a logistic strike is very difficult, and a civilian has to be in top shape, both mentally and physically, to deal with it during an exercise. A baseline or a civilian alpha with no physical enhancements has an uphill battle, but taking remedial teamwork before passing basic teamwork gives them a decent enough scoring boost even if they still drop below the threshold in exercises. The school will consider them qualified for non-combat roles, especially if they can get through search and rescue training exercises.¡±


    I nodded slowly, useful information. ¡°But what does this have to do with me?¡±


    He sighed, ¡°We only have two full support alphas in the class. That means that our teamwork training has only been able to field two full support teams of ten, which is larger by far than most field teams. With a third full support alpha, I could make three teams of seven, which is not an unreasonable team size. When we need smaller team training, I¡¯ve had some of the more versatile combats taking on support roles, but they need to train as full combatants in smaller teams as well.¡±


    I sighed and shook my head. ¡°I really can¡¯t do it, not yet. Not that I wouldn¡¯t be interested, but I still have no training, and I can¡¯t afford the power expenditure.¡±


    He sighed and nodded, ¡°I understand.¡±


    ¡°However. That being said, It¡¯s during off time. I have a few abilities that might help in an emergency. I would be happy to keep an eye on things just in case someone gets hurt or an attack strays.¡±


    ¡°You can stop a stray attack?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°My healing is close-range only, but I have a bit more leeway with my ability to soak up kinetics.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°I meant to ask about that. Your power is odd. Powers usually come in clearly distinguished groups. How can stopping attacks, merging things together, and healing all be part of the same power?¡±


    I thought about it, how much should I explain? ¡°Well, it¡¯s all about motion. There¡¯s a reason I call myself Blueprint. Normally, my power only works on the tiniest scale and burns a ton of energy to do something new. But I have an eidetic memory for micro-mechanical details.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°How stuff is put together on a small scale. For instance, most humans are put together in the same way. If someone gets a cut, I already have a good idea of how their skin and muscle cells are supposed to work, and if it¡¯s within a few inches, I can move the cellular structure back into its proper alignment and help replace the damage with copied cells.¡±


    ¡°A few inches?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s why I don¡¯t call myself a proper healer. I can do surface stuff, but if your upper leg has a compound fracture, that¡¯s probably too deep a wound. I also had to educate myself on exactly how humans are put together.¡±


    He looked thoughtful, ¡°If someone had skin cancer, could you fix it?¡±


    I shrugged ¡°Beats me, I haven¡¯t tried. Maybe, maybe not¡­ I mean, cancer isn¡¯t technically damage, it¡¯s something caused by your own body, so I don¡¯t know if I would help it or just make it worse as I replicated the mutated cells. I mean, maybe someday I might be able to, but I will need a hell of a lot of training first, and it¡¯s a lot easier to work with inorganic substances.¡±


    He nodded slowly, ¡°You really need power assessment and training.¡±


    I got a little nervous, that wasn¡¯t the direction I intended the conversation to go. I did not want the BSA to know everything I could do, even if they could help me grow more powerful. I didn¡¯t trust them that far, and getting my powers picked apart by a professional team would make it very difficult to conceal certain things.


    ¡°Is that mandatory?¡± I wondered if I was going to have to ditch this school so soon after getting accepted.


    He shook his head, ¡°Not mandatory, but strongly encouraged. While every alpha ability is different, there are broad similarities that can certainly help in training. Most elementals can project or solidify their element, use it as a defensive field, and many of them can use it as a movement ability, for example, so we have a decent database on how to train elementals.¡±


    ¡°Unique powers like yours, though¡­ well, we have a decent power database. If we can find out your abilities, we can try and match them to other, similar powers we have on record, and that might offer ideas, training methods, and power expansions that you might not otherwise consider.¡±


    ¡°A database that might be cracked by any cyberkinetic with a grudge, that lists all of your exact abilities and possibly weaknesses?¡±


    He sighed, ¡°Nothing is guaranteed, and I understand your concern, but after a few years, most of that gets out as public knowledge anyway. There are five major wikis that I know of which are rundowns of each hero and villain¡¯s powers. We have some of the best security around, but nothing is perfect, and civilian witnesses alone add to the databases.¡±


    ¡°On the plus side, though, it looks like you are clearly support. It¡¯s unlikely you are going to build up a rogue¡¯s gallery or a nemesis personally, and knowing a weakness is the best way of preparing to have it exploited, right?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°You sound like you have dealt with that exact thing.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°I wasn¡¯t always a teacher. I spent almost ten years as an alpha interceptor, and five years as a guard at the pen.¡±


    I nodded and noticed that Chinook had left while we were talking. I wondered if the conversation had disturbed her. ¡°I will consider it, and I figure I have four years to decide, right?¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°No, you have about two weeks. This is the Kellar Academy, not Empire City College. Power training is a regular part of all programs, and knowing which power training program you need to go into might help. You wouldn¡¯t want to get shuffled into mass projection training or something that requires academic re-shuffling, you know?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°I promise, any power training I wind up in will probably help me in one way or another. Like you said, my ability is unique¡­ Who knows? Maybe learning to create a miniature fog bank might be as important as figuring out how to restart someone¡¯s heart someday.¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°Your choice. I will look forward to seeing you on Thursday.¡±


    ***


    One of the advantages the academy had was a series of large, underground training rooms that were extremely durable, and were designed for personal training, sparring, and experimenting with potentially dangerous abilities without worrying too much about collateral damage or potential bystanders. They were generally monitored for safety, but the monitoring could be turned off manually from inside the room as easily as the lights.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I was experimenting with my new abilities post-whatever, the new energy flow patterns, and while I wouldn¡¯t say I was amazed, I was certainly pleased.


    Direct momentum manipulation had increased to almost seven inches, and after careful study, I had decided that ¡®momentum¡¯ was the best description of my power shape or dao. The dao of momentum also just sounded cool as hell, and fit all the clues.


    My blueprinting was sort of like photographic memory, where I could take a snapshot of all of the current locations and movements of an object, including myself, for later reconstruction, and I was able to trace or replicate a blueprint out to nearly ten feet now. I still couldn¡¯t replicate a car, for example, but it was a hell of a lot better than only being able to handle a couple of feet at a time. The fact that my blueprint ability completely curb-stomped Heisenberg''s uncertainty principle was just more proof that it was magic.


    My energy expenditures were also a hell of a lot better. Disassembly teleportation was considerably faster, although some of the old transport limitations based on density still applied, but while disassembled I could move at nearly fifty miles an hour instead of the fast sprint I was limited to before. Right now, I could disassemble and then reassemble at least six times before I was nearly completely drained of energy from a full tank, which was sweet. Still not a great combat maneuver, since, while I could break my body down quickly, it still took at least a minute of solid concentration to restore my full blueprint.


    By the same token, if I had to do a full restore, it would probably be a lot cheaper too, although I wasn¡¯t ready to almost kill myself to test it. More importantly, if someone I had already blueprinted needed a full restore, I could do it all at once as long as they were close to normal sized rather than slowly resetting a section at a time that I had to do with a shorter range.


    If I had to use a cultivation mythology term for what the ¡®sense¡¯ I used for blueprinting was called, I¡¯d probably call it spirit sense or divine sense. It wasn¡¯t like I had a third eye or anything, I just could take a snapshot of the way all of their body¡¯s particles were moving and their positions. I imagined that if I ever had to do a full reset on someone, they¡¯d probably lose just about everything, including memories, since I took their last blueprint, but again, that wasn¡¯t something I had a safe way of testing, and I sort of blueprinted people instinctively when they were within my range. All I had to do was pay attention to them for a moment and their new specifics became part of my memory.


    Right now, the more interesting part of using that power sense, was that I was starting to get a feel for the way their spirit particle shapes looked, and even the way they moved inside of the bodies of other people with powers. I couldn¡¯t manipulate them directly, I think something about their soul prevented me from doing so, but it was a ton of conjecture.


    My Wu breathing was working much better as well. Much faster. It would still take me most of a day to completely refill if I was in an area where there was a lot of the kind of spirit particles I needed, but now that I could tell the other spirit shapes, I was able to sort of block them out from my breathing, which helped enormously.


    Other Alpha¡¯s flows were weird, though. Some of them seemed to instinctively rotate their energy, just like I had learned to do consciously, and the energy seemed to reach out through their bodies. Brick-type alphas especially seemed to just naturally run their energy through their body as it slowly moved, and I had to wonder if that was why they had such extreme durability. I still had a lot of blockages preventing me from running energy through my body the same way, but I had plans to attack each of those in turn, starting with all of the little blocks in my main torso.


    Most alphas just had a sort of wellspring in their core, one which I seemed to lack. I couldn¡¯t see the connection between them and the q-rift, but pure, unformed spirit energy just seemed to flow into their core constantly, like Jeb¡¯s black gold. The faster their spirit rotated, the more rapidly the energy mutated into whatever shape they needed most, and when I got close enough, I was starting to fill out a mental database of what those powers could be.


    Mindy¡¯s energy, for example, was water-shaped. I wasn¡¯t sure that it was water as much as river, however, since it seemed that it was closer to my preferred shape than it was to Aquilla¡¯s. Water plus motion equals river, or maybe flow. Aquilla, one of the alphas in our remedial class, was water as well, but her abilities involved being able to breathe indefinitely underwater, move through it at high speeds, and push it around for attacks and defenses rather than creating it. Ice summoners seemed to be an almost completely different kettle of fish¡­ each alpha I met seemed to be an entirely new set of data on how energy shaping worked.


    I still couldn¡¯t summon, of course. That involved, from what I sensed, pulling a huge amount of spirit energy from wherever alphas got it, and then just forcing it all to take on the shape of whatever they were creating out of nothing. It seemed to work well for them, but without that wellspring, I was still limited to my own efforts. If I tried to, I could probably force some of my energy to take the shape of another kind of energy, and thus technically create molecules from my own energy, but I was technically robbing it from my own body¡¯s resources and power rather than summoning it from somewhere else. It was expensive and probably just a huge waste of time, but I was glad I knew how to do it.


    And I discovered my new favorite material.


    Carbon. Oh, carbon. I wanted to write a sonnet on carbon. It was incredible stuff. Forget diamonds, diamonds were seriously overrated. But carbon was what made iron into steel, and as per suggestions, I tried making fullerenes and nanotubes.


    To Cohen a phrase, Oi, Vey! Building the first nanotube was a bit of a nightmare, but honestly, once I had figured out how to construct both single and double-walled tubes, it got a lot easier. The trick was the valence electrons, which almost lent themselves to carbon co-links better than any other material I had ever tried to work with.


    Fullerenes were awesome, but compared to the strength, utility, and sheer versatility, multi-walled graphene nanotubes were just sheer awesomesauce. Stronger than diamond, potentially flexible in ¡®giant¡¯ sheets, which I was quickly blueprinting when twisted one way, it was incredibly conductive, but when twisted the other, it was a near complete insulator. Its thermal characteristics were also extremely mutable.


    The biggest problem with nanotubes has always been creating them to a long enough length, especially for multi-walled nanotubes, but I didn¡¯t have that problem. Normally they were measured in nanometers, but I could measure them in millimeters before their complexity grew out of hand. Just for S and G, I even managed to create a simple transistor contained within the structure of a C-70 fullerene, or soccer ball type.


    Organic molecules are made with carbon, that¡¯s pretty much what organic means, that they contain carbon. Obviously, something like silk contains helium, nitrogen, and oxygen as well, but even with the scraps I brought with me¡­


    A few hours later, I was gleefully blueprinting the stuff I had made, when the door alarm chirped, letting me know someone was outside and trying to get my attention.


    ¡°Is he cackling?¡± Abigail asked as I happily waved around the two plastic baggies, one that had a series of fine translucent hairlike threads, and the other containing what looked like a few grains of sand and a small black disk the size of a pinhead.


    ¡°I think so,¡± Mindy replied. ¡°Can you grab some of those hard-boiled eggs and a bottle of water? He missed all of his classes yesterday and I don¡¯t think he¡¯s slept since Monday night.¡±


    ¡°Wait what? What day is it?¡±


    Mindy looked at me closely, concern written on her features. ¡°It¡¯s Thursday morning. What were you doing?¡±


    I giggled again before I could stop myself, and then I realized I was incredibly tired. I missed two days of sleep! If I wanted to be ready to keep an eye on the teamwork exercise tonight, I¡¯d HAVE to grab some sleep and miss today¡¯s classes. Then again, the joy of auditing remedial courses was that missing a couple of days was meaningless.


    ¡°These!¡± I said, holding up the bags triumphantly. I was no genius, and my gifts had done all of the heavy lifting, but I was still stupidly proud.


    ¡°I found him the training rooms. I don¡¯t think he ate or drank or used the bathroom for almost two days. You stink, buster.¡± Mindy remarked, glaring at me, ¡°As your sponsor I am officially complaining.¡±


    ¡°Does that mean no sex and I sleep on the couch?¡± I asked drunkenly, not even realizing what I said until I realized that she was a very interesting shade of red. ¡°Oooh, pink!¡± I added, thoughtfully pointing out her blush.


    ¡°You can sleep in your bed AFTER you have a shower!¡± she remarked angrily, and I guess it was fortunate that I¡¯d already been to the bathroom once. Bowel control for the win, or I¡¯d probably stink a lot worse.


    ¡°What has you so excited?¡± Abbey asked.


    I put the bags on the table, quickly swallowing two eggs and drinking the entire water bottle. ¡°Those!¡± I remarked triumphantly, ¡°Mindy is a supergenius, and so are you. I want to have your babies!¡± and then I laughed as both of them started turning pink, before turning around and stomping to the shower. I barely managed to stay standing long enough to soak myself, my clothes, and the floor, before stripping and getting a little more heat as I sat on the floor of the shower with the drains.


    After a few minutes, I managed to stumble back to my feet, turn off the shower, and drip my way back to my room, completely ignoring the fact that a bunch of other students were getting ready for breakfast and early classes except for the weird noises they were making.


    Oh right. I forgot clothes. By the time I realized that I was naked, I had already flopped wetly into my bed, barely pulling the covers over me before I was zonked. I don¡¯t think I even remembered to close the door.

 Chapter 17. The rule of cool has exceptions.

    My stomach growled as I rolled over, and realized I was not wearing anything when I crashed. Not terribly uncommon, but I had stopped doing that altogether when my ex had kicked me to the curb. Mindy was leaning over me, her hand resting on my shoulder and sort of gently rolling me to wake me up. Nice outfit, a delicately clingy blue lace-edged top over jeans.


    I blinked out her owlishly and groaned. ¡°Quick reality check, did I walk from the shower to the bed naked in front of half of the third floor? Please tell me it was just an ¡®in school naked¡¯ nightmare.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No, it happened. What the hell happened to you?¡±


    I groaned and sat up on the bed, pulling the cover over my waist. ¡°I was in¡­ I guess a tinker¡¯s frenzy?¡±


    She looked a little confused, ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°I am not actually a tinker, but it was kind of similar. Sort of a fugue state during crafting, I guess. You sort of forget everything. I mean, it¡¯s happened to me before, but it usually only lasts an hour or two.¡± I looked around frantically, ¡°The baggies¡­ do you have the baggies? I blueprinted them, but I can¡¯t let anyone else have them!¡±


    She nodded and pointed towards my desk, where I relaxed as I realized that the baggies were sitting on top of my laptop. ¡°So what is so important about them, before I innocently compare their appearance to something humiliating like hair or sand?¡±


    I laughed a little, ¡°Give me a few minutes to get up and put on some clothes and I will tell you. Is Abbey here? What time is it?¡±


    She nodded, taking a step back, ¡°Almost six. I figured you¡¯d probably be hungry. All you ate was a couple of eggs and a bottle of water. Abbey¡¯s out in the lounge, almost tearing her eyes out in curiosity,¡± she smiled a little, ¡°and you might as well just get dressed, it¡¯s not like almost everyone on the third floor doesn¡¯t know what you look like naked, big boy.¡±


    I groaned and flopped my head into the pillow, before tossing off the blanket. Mindy quickly gulped and turned, and then shot out of my door, carefully closing it behind her.


    Smartass deserved to blush. I wasn¡¯t a big or a little boy, I considered myself average, although I didn¡¯t exactly have much basis for comparison. People tended to give you funny looks if you started asking the guys in the gym shower to measure and compare. Or maybe they¡¯d consider it flirting. I do know that I was bigger than Jerry, at least according to him, but he mostly made jokes about how I¡¯d make a terrible boyfriend because any guy I jumped would need a colostomy bag.


    Still, big boy? Was that an insult or a compliment? Was she just making fun of me? I sighed deeply and started grabbing my civvies for dinner. Afterward, I¡¯d come back and switch to my school outfit for the teamwork exercise.


    Afterward, I met up with both of the girls and two more that were on our floor, as we headed to the mess hall. One of those girls was another rush named Cynthia Green, a slender blonde who could have passed as Mindy¡¯s sister, and the other one was named Aria Gonzalez, a slightly shorter brunette with extremely long black hair who looked like she belonged in spike heels on a Mexican Soap Opera. I had no idea what their super names were, and unlike Abbey, they didn¡¯t immediately blurt it out when we met.


    Then again, Abbey was apparently very good at making friends quickly. Nonthreatening and friendly, she was only shy around me at first because I was a guy, I think. Once we were headed up the elevator, Cynthia and Aria split off to go eat off-campus.


    ¡°So? So?¡± Abbey asked me.


    I smiled a little, my new secrets hidden safely in my pockets. ¡°The first one is an organic-synthetic fiber. After Mindy¡¯s and your suggestions, I looked up carbon nanotubes and made multi-walled nanotubes almost a millimeter in length. I am not the first one to do that, but I blended it with synthetic spider silk. I know it¡¯s not a big deal, but now that I have it blueprinted, I can start gathering the stuff and spending the energy to create really stupidly durable costumes, so we don¡¯t have any costume errors.¡±


    ¡°So how would it compare to geofiber?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°It would blow geofiber out of the water easily. Then again, geofiber is a cheap version of Alexander Morita¡¯s original Atlas threading, which is probably comparable. Most importantly, I blueprinted it, so given enough time, I should be able to make a real costume or two out of it. It¡¯s not that it¡¯s better, it¡¯s that it won¡¯t cost us four million to hope for a decently durable suit.¡±


    She nodded slightly, ¡°So why were you so excited?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Because I made it, and only I can make it¡­ for a fraction of the cost of Atlas threading. It¡¯s going to take a long time, and this stuff can¡¯t be sewn easily so it might take a lot of fittings to get it the perfect size, but that means I can do my job as Mindy¡¯s sponsored support without breaking the bank.¡±


    Mindy blushed again, but Abbey asked, ¡°So what was the other thing?¡±


    I grinned at her, ¡°Bear in mind, I just looked online for this stuff¡­ I am no engineer or genius, but Doctor Kinihara proposed the design. That, Abbey, is the world¡¯s first molecular integrated circuit. Well, actually it¡¯s a lot of them. Microvoltage regulators, a thousand terabytes of superdynamic RAM, five hundred and twelve cores each running at sixteen gigahertz.


    Mindy nodded, ¡°What does that mean?¡±


    Abbey snorted, ¡°That means certain companies would geld themselves for a supply line. That¡¯s very fast, can you create a production line?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No. I don¡¯t know how to do that, or even make micromanipulators on that scale, yet. But it¡¯s possible. Right now, though, I have it blueprinted¡­ with some basic ingredients, I can create about a dozen of those a day, assuming I don¡¯t need to save energy for something else.¡±


    ¡°So what use are they?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°I am not sure, yet. I was just proud of making it. It¡¯s a very small, very powerful computer¡­ I am betting it will be useful, at least eventually.¡±


    ¡°Most importantly, though, I also managed to bang together a synthetic myofibril and merge them into artificial myocytes.¡±


    ¡°ooh! Tensile strength? How much mass?¡±


    Mindy just looked confused.


    I grinned, ¡°Not much, I was trying to follow along with natural muscles. The tensile strength is based around multilayered nanotubes, but I made both slow-twitch and fast-twitch, although considering the basic tensile strength¡­ Let¡¯s just say that pound-for-pound it¡¯s about thirty-six times as durable, and eight times as strong, as Ogre.¡±


    Mindy looked shocked, ¡°Sex-tape Ogre?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I mean, yeah, there are lots of potential issues, but I have the brain, and now I have the body, to make an artificial human and start the robot revolution! Hahaha!¡± I started cackling madly.


    Mindy gave me a weird look, but Abbey snorted, ¡°And you thought I was the one trying to be a supervillain!¡±


    I grinned, ¡°I think I would make a pretty good supervillain. But no, it would be good fun, but I couldn¡¯t ever get into the whole psychopath thing. I was actually thinking of improved conflict suits for normies or possibly even prosthetics. These are not widgeteer tech. There are a lot of problems to iron out, like power supplies and programming which I suck at, but with a neurosim pack and trans-vr, I could see making something that could give a single soldier a real chance against the mutants, maybe even Kaiju.¡±


    ¡°But only you can make them?¡±


    I nodded at Abbey, ¡°Right now, yes. But not forever, I hope¡­ I will probably need to find some actual tech geniuses to help me design anything better, coders, that kind of thing, so I will never really get the cackling mad genius thing working. Those guys do everything themselves.¡±


    I smiled a little, ¡°Mostly I want to protect the people that are in the real fight. Heroes, even villains¡­ they''re still protecting humanity and protecting me. If that means I need to wear a lab coat and giant glasses and act like an evil idiot, then so be it.¡±


    Mindy nodded, ¡°So you are a real believer in heroes?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yes and no. I am not an idiot, I know that more than a few of them abuse their privileges, but as long as they aren¡¯t true sickos, the moment a Kaiju shows up I will put on my minidress and pompoms and cheer with the best of them.¡±


    Mindy looked at me oddly, ¡°But you don¡¯t want to be a superhero.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Oh no. It¡¯s not a matter of don¡¯t want to, it¡¯s a matter of can¡¯t. I grew up dreaming of being a hero just like every other boy, but when I awakened¡­ let¡¯s just say that it was driven into me quite firmly that I will never, ever be the equal of even a true class three. Those exact words. I have plenty of tricks, but in the end, I¡¯m just a normie with a gimmick.¡±


    As I headed towards the cafeteria lines I heard Mindy and Abbey whispering. Girl stuff, probably.


    ***


    The Arena was set up in a very interesting way. Sort of a tightly-packed grid, like old New York, before it turned into Empire City, with a lot of heavy detritus scattered about. The floor of the Arena could be lifted and lowered like one of those nail tables that you can put your hand under and lift a picture of the palm of your hand, and while the actual flooring and rectangles raised were damned close to immune to any sort of damage, a series of holoprojectors projected a surprisingly realistic looking set of buildings.


    The ¡®enemies¡¯ for the scenario were a roaming set of drones, controlled by a Widgeteer named Heathcliff. They were vaguely catlike, and from what I could tell extremely inexpensive, being made from wood and wrought iron, but each one of the two dozen roamers was roughly the size and strength of a human and considerably more durable.


    The mission was simple. There were a series of ¡®dummies¡¯ simulating unconscious victims of a wall-break, stashed in various locations throughout the huge arena. The teams were split and had to deal with the roamers trying to get to the ¡®victims¡¯, while the active members of the team fought them off and the civilian rescue workers tried to save them.


    The teams were not¡­ terrible. Okay, the normies and rescuer workers were not terrible; they tried to keep focus when they discovered a victim, and some of them had some rescue worker experience.


    The teams themselves, though, were less than stellar when fighting the roamers.


    The biggest problem was that most of the remedial teamwork alphas were in remedial teamwork for a very good reason. They were balanced or tilted towards defense, which, while great for a primary combatant, also meant that many of them were a lot more interested in working solo, and it showed.


    ¡°So teamwork credits are required to graduate?¡± I asked in confusion as we watched the main arena floor, as well as various close-circuit systems that let us keep an eye on details.


    Mister Dexter shook his head, ¡°Not to graduate, this is, after all, a school with a variety of programs, but to progress with certain certifications teamwork has to be completed.¡±


    I watched as one of the second team¡¯s primaries, a girl that seemed to be able to telekinetically control metal, broke off to attack one of the drones that had dived in to attack like a wolf and then backed off.


    This wouldn¡¯t have been a bad idea, except that she basically ignored the people trying to wrestle the dummy out from under a propped-up and burnt-out vehicle of some sort. I managed to get up a kinetic air screen in time to keep the vehicle from smashing down onto the workers, but that was the fourth time I¡¯d had to intercede to keep someone from getting seriously hurt, and I¡¯d blown off over two hundred energy in the process.


    Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Mister Dexter looked at me curiously, ¡°You know I saw that, right? Do you care to tell me how you did it? No one else was paying attention as it fell, not even Catling, who was right under where it would have fallen.¡±


    I nodded, wiping sweat off my forehead. ¡°I figured you did. I can only handle very small volumes, but I never said I had poor control.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°So you what¡­ you telekinetically held the debris in order to keep it upright long enough for them to get the test dummy out from under it?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Close, are you an alpha?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°No, but I worked around, with, and against them for fifteen years. You begin to recognize the signs.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Yeah, it wasn¡¯t telekinetic, even though the difference is hard to explain. Telekinesis involves moving things remotely as if you manipulated them. In my case, I stripped the kinetic energy of the thin moisture and air layer that clung to one side of the wreckage.¡±


    ¡°What''s the difference?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°The difference is that telekinetics impart motion to an entire object. I alter momentum to a small part of it, and it costs me. Just trying to help out a little bit has burned through a lot of my energy reserves. Will the test be over soon?¡±


    He looked at me oddly, ¡°Do you want it to be?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Yes. Call me a jerk, but I am not as forgiving as you.¡± I started pointing out the different people in the test. ¡°Right now, I would flunk almost all of them. The girl in red is just excited to have something to beat up. That other girl there is just so in love with her powers that she looks for any excuse, and already would have killed her team three times.¡±


    ¡°Chinook is mentally someplace else and might as well not even be here for more than five minutes at a time. That one, the heavy brick-looking girl? She needs serious retraining¡­ I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s her teamwork, or if her power makes her too slow to be useful, but she shouldn¡¯t even be in a teamwork class if she spends all her time in that form. The cat-looking one, Catling, shouldn¡¯t be here either, but that¡¯s because she¡¯s already working well with a team, the same for those two guys without superhero names and the girl with that arc welder power.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Most of the skilled ones you pointed out are in remedial teamwork because of¡­ administrative reasons. Good eye.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°I have had bad tactics driven into me repeatedly. The weak man never learns, since he never risks failure. The wise man learns from his own mistakes, but the smart man learns from the mistakes of others. I try to be wise, but I won¡¯t claim to be that smart.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°I can¡¯t really flunk any of them unless they fail the written, which is absurdly easy. Once they are in the regular teamwork classes, they can be shipped back to remedial, but some might decide to join Monster Hunter Scouts instead, and just dodge teamwork altogether. It strictly limits their future employment opportunities, but repeatedly failing teamwork is often a wake-up call that some people just aren¡¯t meant to be part of the whole superhero community.¡±


    ¡°Hold that thought.¡± I said, and practiced the ¡®new and improved¡¯ form of transportation I had been working on.


    My earlier teleportation had involved disassembling myself, moving to a location, and then restoring myself. I guess it wasn¡¯t technically teleportation, since I never lost consciousness, and I actually had to travel the intervening distance. In a real way, it involved doing enough damage to myself to break my molecular structure down to free molecules, using my talents to move myself to my new location, and then ¡®restoring¡¯ my body¡¯s last blueprint, the one I took when I broke myself down.


    It required a sick amount of energy, was fairly painful, and was slow as hell. It wasn¡¯t even really teleportation, because solid structures blocked me. Admittedly even a small crack was enough to pass the molecules through, but I was no jumper. A solid airtight surface, or even water, was dense enough to keep me from moving through it.


    My new version was a LOT more efficient. Now that I had a little ¡®give¡¯ to my soul energy, I could steal the energy from the molecular breakdown and store it until I needed to use it for reassembly. It was well known that I had improved reflexes, strength, and durability, but I could ¡®choose¡¯ to leave a trail of kinetically-aggressive ions behind me as I traveled much faster than before.


    It still was not perfect, but when I moved, instead of just becoming a sort of nasty-looking cloud flickering close to the ground, I became a much hazier cloud that flicked to a location. The best part was, if I left the ion trail, it disturbed the air, trended to pull in dust and debris, and made my path obvious.


    In other words, it left a visible trace of my passage, and I could use the energy I gained from de-resolution to help pay off the reset. The best part was, that the whole ¡®launch¡¯ part added enough energy to my soul space, that it helped to stretch the bounds of my soul very effectively. The distance I could move was still limited by how long I could use energy to push my free-floating molecules to their destination, but so far I¡¯d managed to clock my speed at close to 70 miles per hour. I didn¡¯t know EXACTLY how long I could stay suspended, but as long as I still had ten percent of my energy, I could reform.


    If I couldn¡¯t reform, I guess I would be dead, which was why I was so careful about using it, and I¡¯d managed to convince the people who had seen it so far, namely Mindy and Abigail, that I had some kind of kinetic ¡®dash¡¯ or ¡®jump¡¯ skill. They were not technically wrong, I just wasn¡¯t in a solid form when I dashed, simply because my power didn¡¯t work that way.


    Technically, the term teleportation didn¡¯t apply at all, but it was what I had used mentally forever, just like what I did wasn¡¯t really telekinesis. It wasn¡¯t apportation either, since that involved pulling things, like the way elementals yanked and formed matter out of the ether. I decided that all things considered, I was going to call it my ¡®Ghost Dash¡¯. It sounded cool, and sort of fit the bill, especially since I didn¡¯t have to leave a charged Ion trail, I just did that so people would think it was some sort of super speed. Special effects were important.


    Yeah, Now I was ¡®in¡¯ the battlefield, but when Brickhouse girl¡­ that was my name for her since I didn¡¯t actually know her super name¡­ smashed the drone into a pile of debris, it had ticked over even more debris and caught blowtorch girl. She had a big, nasty, bleeding gash in her right leg that had ripped right through the costume. The school costumes were pretty decent, but they were absolutely not designed for getting hit by a razor-sharp chunk of rusty car hood propelled at close to a hundred miles an hour.


    ¡°Who? What?¡± the guy with a mustache, a baseline human who had already wrapped a tourniquet around the crying girl¡¯s leg asked as I was suddenly¡­ there.


    ¡°I¡¯m Blueprint, auditing the class. Hold her still. Miss?¡±


    ¡°Kelly!¡± she gasped, ¡°I am Kelly!¡±


    ¡°Right, Kelly, I am going to fix your leg up, okay? But it¡¯s going to be a little uncomfortable for a moment since your femoral artery was nicked. You, mustache, good job. You probably saved her life.¡± I said. Okay, yes¡­ it looked like an artery hit, there was blood all over the ground, which meant a little more work. It would suck to repair her leg and suddenly watch her have a heart attack from low blood pressure.


    The cut was pretty deep, but not particularly tearing, and well within my new short range. Instead of having to give her a restore, I could simply reconnect everything. The artery was, of course, my first target, and there were already some dying cells within the muscles of her leg, but there was no real guesswork involved.


    ¡°Mustache Guy?¡±


    ¡°Dave¡±


    ¡°Hey, Dave,¡± I said, holding her wound closed as I started reconnecting the blood vessels and tracing the nerves in her muscles. Thank goodness her bone wasn¡¯t broken, since restoring bones with all of the complicated blood-production structures in the marrow was much harder work than simple muscles.


    ¡°Buddy, I need you to start loosening her tourniquet. I already have her artery restored, but I need you to keep your fingers on her pulse and tell me if it starts getting thready or stops, okay?¡± I looked around and noticed brick girl, who looked like she was trying not to cry. ¡°Hey you, klutz. Can you change out of that form for a second? I need someone to start sponging out the wound as I close it, and it¡¯s going to be seeping a bunch of dirt and metal and crap.¡±


    She nodded, and she suddenly looked like a cute little Japanese girl in her holo-mask, the kind that should be buying Pockey from vending machines and screaming over boy bands and stuffed animals rather than dressed in a super suit. Dave nodded towards the medkit he¡¯d yanked out when the girl went down, and the fan service extra from a Godzilla movie grabbed a handful of gauze.


    I started pulling the fabric away from the now slowly seeping wound as Dave slowly released the pressure on the cloth that cut off her leg¡¯s circulation, and I guessed watching her muscles and veins visibly pulling themselves back together had given him enough trust to believe I knew what I was doing.


    That, and he¡¯d given the girl a tranquilizer, which meant she was in happy land right now. I was doing it slowly enough to see for two reasons¡­ the first reason was that I wanted people to be able to see that it worked since the closed-circuit cameras were watching this scene just as closely as Dave and Suki, and I also wanted the Brickhouse fangirl to feel both guilty and useful, and for people not to realize I could have healed the whole thing in less than a heartbeat. Cells were a lot slower to push around than molecules and worked at an entirely different speed.


    ¡°Start sponging.¡± I told the Babymetal extra, ¡°Right into the wound¡­ Dave here gave her a painkiller, she¡¯s feeling amazing. Dave? Pulse?¡±


    He nodded to me, ¡°Pulse is a little thready, but I don¡¯t think she¡¯s down more than three quarts. Emergency should be able to put some plasma into her.¡±


    I nodded and started forcing all the dirt, metal, rust, and other crap right out of the open surface of the wound as I healed up the muscle right behind it. I blueprinted her red blood cells and started pushing reset whole blood into her system, pulling from my protein reserves. ¡°Don¡¯t bother. I¡¯m giving her whole blood as we speak. Keep sponging, Akyo.¡±


    She glanced at me in surprise, ¡°How do you know my real name? I am Terracotta.¡±


    I looked back at her quirking an eyebrow, ¡°I didn¡¯t. I don¡¯t know your name, but Akyo was Dire Badger¡¯s girlfriend, and it was the only Japanese girl¡¯s name I could remember off the top of my head. Would you rather I called you killer?¡±


    She shook her head rapidly, returning to her sponging, which wasn¡¯t necessary since I had sealed up the wound already. Kelly would have a vivid red mark for a while, but she should be okay. It was never necessary, since as long as there wasn¡¯t a giant chunk caught in the wound it was easy to nudge any contaminants out while I was sealing it, but having to help clean the wound would hopefully teach her a lesson about paying attention to power backlash and collateral damage.


    Yeah, it was probably stupid. I wasn¡¯t her teacher, friend, or parent, but someday I might have to fight alongside ¡®Terracotta¡¯ and I didn¡¯t want her to be more of a threat than any enemy we faced. You can¡¯t cure stupid, but you could train away some of its effects.


    Dave shook his head at me, ¡°Man, you got that mixed up. Great job, by the way, I don¡¯t think I have seen such a clean power heal ever.¡±


    I lifted my hands, which were, unfortunately now covered with blood. Useless blood, since it was contaminated outside of her body, but it did make a decent dye if you weren¡¯t too picky. ¡°Hey, Dave. Sorry, when I am concentrating I just name people things in my head if I don¡¯t know their real name. What did I get mixed up? I promise that it¡¯s not her blood type, since I cloned her own blood.¡±


    Dave shook his head, ¡°Good strong pulse. No, Akyo wasn¡¯t Dire Badger¡¯s girlfriend, that¡¯s Yukiko¡­ Akyo was the name of the ninja assassin sent after him later.¡±


    ¡°Huh. Seriously? I thought that Akyo was the one Dire Badger was getting gooey with who got turned into the herald of Arcanus and was with those mystic slaughter guys.¡± The best part about comic book superheroes was that for the most part, their adventures were sort of made up by the writer.


    Did Mysteria and Doctor Oddball have epic clashes? Absolutely, but except for the actually visible fighting, those clashes were almost entirely classified, and the whole nemesis thing existed only in the pages of the comics. In fact, there was even a question about whether Doctor Oddball was still alive since he hadn¡¯t been seen in over a decade.


    Dave shook his head and sighed in exasperation. Okay, I had followed the comics a little when I was younger, but Dave was apparently a deep immersion comic geek¡­ which might be why he was working as a team support even if he was entirely human. There, but for the whim of fate, I might have gone.


    ¡°No, that was Kamiko, Madame Deathstrife.¡±


    I facepalmed and suddenly realized I had just covered my mask with blood. Crap. Well, at least it matched the front of my costume, arms, thighs, and boots now. If what I was trying to do to expand my powers WAS cultivation, at least I wasn¡¯t stuck in an authentic Xianxia Chinese Magical Period Drama. All of those identical-sounding names would drive me crazy.

 Chapter 18. A new team?

    Six Hundred Energy. I thought about that. Six times what I had started with, and to be fair, even with only a fraction of the energy that a true class three had, I had gotten efficient enough at using, and recovering, that energy that I almost felt like I could justify calling myself that. I mean, I wouldn¡¯t, of course, no matter what the power assessment had said, but as an emergency fill-in, I would be good for at least a few minutes.


    I¡¯d gotten in plenty of personal training time and had a reasonably good idea of my own new potential. I¡¯d probably make a damned good fight for a publicity-hunting hero now, and if I went back to that line of work, I¡¯d definitely raise my rates. Being able to ¡®ghost¡¯ more quickly and efficiently meant I could use it in actual combat more than once, which meant it was a lot more than an emergency escape now.


    I still wasn¡¯t able to pull all of the junk out of my energy channels, or meridians, or whatever they were called, and it was hard getting a decent picture of what they were and how they worked because almost every ¡®cultivation¡¯ book had different definitions of how to get them cleared out, from acupuncture to deep-tissue massages, from some kind of mental construct of a black hole for my energy pool to forcing my way through them.


    The worst part was trying to figure out exactly how they worked and what path they took, and they got all tangled up with Indian spirit medicine chakras and acupuncture points, at this point I was almost ready to give up except for one little fact.


    While, obviously, the whole black hole conceptualization wouldn¡¯t work for me, That was more Bob¡¯s specialization than mine, as I dived more into the concept of momentum, I was able to start tweaking them a little. I added and subtracted momentum from objects, and in the end, the blockages were very much objects¡­ the only thing that had kept me from progressing so far was that I was worried about ¡®vibrating¡¯ the blockages loose and hurting myself in the process. How much would it suck to be trying to play with metaphysical concepts only to discover I¡¯d been ripping holes in my physical body instead?


    But, I had an idea¡­ one that would take absolute privacy and probably cause a good deal of pain, but one that I would try when I had a chance to get away from the School and any sort of audience.


    My last weekend before the official start of classes. Much as I hate to admit it, I think the constant training I got working at the clinic has helped me enormously in almost every way. After careful measurements, my deep probes were able to penetrate, and repair, almost nine inches deep now. That wasn¡¯t terribly exciting for the most part, except that, unlike most medical procedures, I didn¡¯t appear to have to penetrate their natural defenses to be able to alter their matter.


    I couldn¡¯t monkey with their energy, but unlike a lot of people, their personal energy shape was not a hard stop to my abilities. My range absolutely was, which meant that if I wanted to mess with someone all they had to do was keep me at range until my energy was gone. On the plus side, if someone¡¯s powers started going haywire they wouldn¡¯t point fingers at me.


    I hadn¡¯t had much chance to experiment with special effects, but think about it¡­ a nine-inch ball of plasma hurled at something close to a hundred miles an hour. It still wasn¡¯t as dangerous as, say, an anti-material rifle or honest hand grenade, but it certainly was a huge improvement, and between ghost step and the ability to create kinetically neutral air platforms that were actually big enough for me to balance on them, I had damned good battlefield mobility.


    The cool part is that unlike back when I was playing the bad guy, I could do a lot more with neutral kinetic platforms now¡­ back then I could float ominously and deliver a decent monologue, but balance was impossible. Now, though, I could actually hold myself to a platform so a stray bullet or overbalance didn¡¯t instantly send me falling, which was awesomeness in itself.


    Did I still have things I could do that would freak out the BSA and get me locked into a room instantly? Absolutely, if I didn¡¯t mind the fact that forcing a fission reaction would blow me up at the same time. As far as I could tell, they still thought that my absolute limits were assembling molecules, and no one needed to know that I had figured out how to manhandle particulate light¡­ Ironically enough, photons were turning out to be a LOT easier to manipulate than electron transfers.


    I also discovered something very fun¡­ but don¡¯t tell anyone about it.


    Larger elements, you know, the ones with lots of protons and neutrons? Well, a lot of them aren¡¯t particularly stable. I know, I know you learned about radioactive decay back in grade school, but it¡¯s actually simpler than that.


    I discovered that I can suck up radiation like a sponge. Okay, not like a sponge so much as like a filter in a water-purifying plant. And it¡¯s not as simple as just ¡®radiation¡¯, since two-state wave particles are what I can draw into my energy core and purify. The atoms that are erroneously called radiation, basically alpha or helium zero, are just particles with the electron shells stripped off of them¡­ I can manipulate them, clean them up, lock them together, add electrons to make them stable, whatever. Not particularly useful unless you want to blow off the energy to add electrons to them.


    Other types of radiation, in the end, were just high-speed subatomic particles. Protons, neutrons, positrons, electrons¡­ in the end, at least in my experience, their energy definitions were more dependent upon their actual momentum rather than their signature, and to me? That momentum was exactly what I needed most.


    That¡¯s why I was at my best when I wasn¡¯t shielded by a mile of dirt underground¡­ all those cosmic rays from the sun, photons, ions, and even molecular movement. I would breathe it in, and that was charging me faster and faster, and spinning my core more and more quickly as I stripped off the useless particles and simply kept their momentum energy for myself.


    Of course, I wasn¡¯t an idiot, I wasn¡¯t walking around leaving a trail of poisonous dielectric elements trailing behind me, but whenever I could get those masses freed from my energy pathways¡­ let¡¯s just say that I wanted privacy to protect any bystanders from the results of cleaning those out as I was wanting to keep it a secret.


    Of course, some of the stuff I had already managed to strip out of my pathways had proven enormously useful¡­ Let¡¯s just say that some of what I considered contaminants In my own personal energy framework turned out to be important building blocks when I was making my microchip. Even if I couldn¡¯t pull the junk out of my nose easily, if I kept trying I should be able to slowly work the impurities out instead of simply yanking or blowing them out.


    Xianxia stories never mention it, but that crap that gets purified out by the young genius? If it was me, that black goop would wind up being composed of stuff that would poison people if they so much as touched it or even inhaled the fumes it would give off. You wouldn¡¯t want to handle it unless you were wearing a hazard suit, although I promise it wouldn¡¯t be radioactive.


    Heck, I bet that if I had some decent weapons-grade uranium, I could probably force my advancement and spirit energy compression incredibly quickly, and the more of those stories I read, the more I realized just how much the ¡®chi¡¯ energy resembled a hefty dose of not just magic, but radiation as well.


    I mean, think about it¡­ they have to occasionally purge impurities? High-spirit locations, plants, and pills can kill normal people. Does Spirit energy provoke mutations? It just shocked me that no one had really connected the two together. Cultivators would probably consider places like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island a cultivation paradise, and the Kaiju almost always buried the needle on Geiger counters.


    A ginseng root that managed to survive being buried deeply into a high-radiation field for ten thousand years would HAVE to be pretty damned special and has some pretty awesome life-affinity spiritual shapes. The ties to what modern science considers ¡®radiation¡¯ and what the ancient Chinese scholars referred to as essence or spiritual energy ironically encouraged my research into it. After all, if I could use it freely, with my crap connection to the ether, then anyone probably could.


    I¡¯d worked with several others to make sure that my first-semester schedule worked for me. Senpai Bob made sure I was taking a regular Tai-Chi physical training period twice a week, power training with the kinetics, and, once the clinic realized that while I wasn¡¯t ready to work part-time without far more comprehensive anatomy and human biology classes, but I was more than happy to be on-call for emergencies, all discussions about extracurricular activities to pay for the ¡®privilege¡¯ of attending the academy miraculously disappeared.


    No, I wasn¡¯t that sheltered. I knew full well that over the last week, certain rumors had probably gone out, and I expected that in the coming semester a few¡­ difficult cases might show up at the clinic that weren¡¯t students but could earn the Kellar academy a hefty sum.


    But I made no bones about my limitations. Fresh trauma I could deal with. Old trauma? Well, I could rebuild damaged stuff from default human blueprints, but I wasn¡¯t some kind of genius who could read and rebuild your DNA. If someone had brain damage, I could probably restore their brain to a ¡®normal human shape¡¯ using their own replicated cells, but that wouldn¡¯t suddenly return the damaged memories or personality of someone who had serious brain damage.


    Basically, if you have a severe stroke, I could fix what went wrong, but I couldn¡¯t stop it from happening again, and the mental changes from that stroke? I couldn¡¯t restore someone¡¯s mind to what it was ¡®before¡¯ they ever had the stroke. Just like while I could clean out poisons and infections easily enough, I couldn¡¯t fix viruses or diseases unless I knew EXACTLY what I was looking for.


    Could I fix something like a damaged thyroid? Sure, but I had no idea what your own body would do with that once I¡¯d fixed it, and stuff like age? Well, age was the direct result of your own body slowing and shutting down. As I said, I didn¡¯t have any ability to magically read genes and fix them, and even if the whole telomere length related to aging thing hadn¡¯t turned out to be a total fraud, aging, like the creation of life, was as much a mystery to me as it was to anyone else.


    Although looking at alphas from the outside, the more powerful they were, the better their energy flowed through their bodies, and the fewer the blockages in their energy streams, the longer they seemed to live.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    Bob had definitely been right about one thing. Volunteering time at the clinic gave me lots of chances to get close, hands-on experience with a lot of different alphas, and seeing the way their energy streams worked, and flowed through their bodies, gave me some excellent ideas for both my own energy patterns and the way they worked in others.


    One absolute conclusion I had reached, though, was I had no idea how they were connected to the ether. It was maddening. I had to scrounge and fight for every little scrap of energy return, but when an alpha used their energy, there seemed to be some kind of wellspring inside of them that just magically refilled their dantian, like a pressurized oil well, and their dantians were just HUGE, because it was always filling rapidly and their dantian¡¯s soul borders would expand until the pressure equalized.


    Few of them had their energy compressed, that that¡¯s because the students were young¡­ I bet that as they got older, their cores would naturally expand and then compress all that extra energy. No thought needed, no methods, no weird and uncomfortable breathing exercises, no visualization, just friggin¡¯ magic. Lucky bastards.


    Last, but not least, the floors had to be rearranged as the old class left and the new class moved in. I didn¡¯t particularly enjoy the way that the school tried to overemphasize teamwork in your private life, but I understood it. Like a kidney stone, this too shall pass.


    Team suites.


    Basically, the reason the floors were designed the way they were was to create a series of suites. Ten rooms, all with a common eating area, bathroom, kitchen, and exercise area. One of the rooms had its own miniature restroom with a shower, which, as a male alpha, I was entitled to, mostly because no one wanted me in the communal shower or repeating the ¡®tinker walk¡¯, which had entered the rumor mill. It kind of pissed me off, since I preferred to stay under the radar, but what could I do?


    As my sponsor, Mindy was in the room right next to mine, obviously, and somehow, Abigail wound up on the other side. The girl just had this weird way of worming herself into everything and made friends like a hyperactive puppy, and while I was screwing around on the roof trying to expand my energy, in the lab trying to finish Mindy¡¯s super-suit, or in the gym trying to exercise, Abigail and Mindy had both managed to set up a list of ¡®team potentials¡¯. It felt like tryouts, and I was sitting at the dining table bored out of my mind as Abigail happily chatted with Mindy about the¡­ I guess recruits? But it had to be done.


    ¡°These teams, they are just for school, right?¡±


    Mindy shrugged, ¡°According to Mister Dexter, the teams you make in Academy often wind up as the teams you get set up with after school ends. I mean, there are usually some swaparounds, but a lot of cities prefer to hire an entire team ready-made that has been training and working together for four years rather than trying to put one together from a bunch of solos and rebuild them as a unit.¡±


    Abigail nodded, ¡°Exactly right. Plus, I mean, we already have the core of a great team right here! Researcher, that¡¯s me, you are support, and Mindy is our powerhouse. Technically, we could use a good anchor, and a suppressor or manipulator would rock, as would another damager, but any of us can fill in in a pinch.¡±


    Mindy chuckled, ¡°Okay, We can fill in for anything but the anchor.¡±


    Abigail nodded, ¡°That¡¯s why I have been asking the first years about potentially good anchors that would fit our team dynamic. I have some ideas, but I am not sure.¡±


    ¡°What aren¡¯t you sure about?¡± I asked.


    Abigail looked at me nervously, ¡°One of them is from your remedial teamwork class.¡±


    I facepalmed. ¡°Please tell me that they aren¡¯t being dropped back to first year?¡±


    Abbey shook her head, ¡°No, if you are talking about Chinook, absolutely not. She DID want me to talk her up to you, though.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow at Abbey, ¡°Talk her up?¡±


    She nodded, hair bobbing as she pushed her glasses up her nose. ¡°Yep. Wanted me to try to get you to sit with her or pass you her number. I told her I would let you know she is interested, so this is me letting you know.¡±


    I facepalmed. ¡°No. just¡­ no. It¡¯s probably a good idea to put together a decent team, but I am here to learn, finish my civilian education, and build up contacts and a reputation as a competent support. Not to set up a series of¡­ sex whatever. Anyone who¡¯s just looking to score with a competent rookie is off the list right now. Not to mention she¡¯s got a shit attitude.¡±


    Mindy smiled slightly, ¡°We already excluded them.¡±


    Abigail sighed deeply, obviously trying to get my attention. ¡°This one is interesting, but She¡¯s already convinced you are going to say no.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°Really?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Really. Akyo Tokamura. Public Identity, calls herself Terracotta.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s trying for anchor? I thought she was already a first-year.¡±


    Abbey shook her head, ¡°No, she¡¯s from those islands with all the monsters, Japan. Someplace called Kyoto. She got here last semester, but delayed entry to work on her localization skills. She¡¯s not normally a tanker type, she¡¯s actually a manipulator, earth-type elemental.¡±


    I thought about that. ¡°I thought she was a transformer elemental. That makes a lot more sense. Manipulator and emergency anchor. She needs a hell of a lot of training, but she has potential. Who else?¡±


    Abigail beamed and pulled out a notebook. One thing about her abilities, they worked just as well on printed words as they did on computer data, and she seemed to be overly fond of actual print. It was creepy watching penciled-in notes scroll like text on an old CRT monitor, but a lot of powers were like that¡­ they just completely tea-bagged logic like it was a newbie in a first-person shooter.


    ¡°Secondly there is a data controller. She can make minor changes to individual points of information.¡±


    I looked at her oddly, ¡°You can already do that. Why do we need a second one?¡±


    ¡°No, I am not officially on your team. Mindy said that she supported my inclusion as your sponsor, but that eventually the decision was yours. So the second person on the list is me.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Then yes, it¡¯s fine. I thought it was a done deal already since you and Mindy are already friends.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Yes, but you are not like¡­ super friendly toward me, so I was not sure if it would be okay or not.¡±


    I smiled slightly, ¡°I am not super friendly toward anyone. When I first met you, you were too perfect. No offense but I thought you were a plant sent to spy on me or a saboteur.¡±


    She looked thoughtful, ¡°Mindy, can I talk to him in private for a few minutes?¡±


    Mindy glanced at me, and when I nodded to her, she smiled a little at Abbey and rose to her feet. ¡°Don¡¯t do anything I wouldn¡¯t do.¡±


    After she left to head back into her own new room, Abbey looked at me very closely. ¡°Is it because of the Strategic simulations thing or the power thing?¡±


    ¡°Uhh¡­ how do you¡­¡±


    She snerked, ¡°Seriously? Information manipulator? Hell, your own background was too weird. At first, I thought you were sent to mess with me too. I mean, both of us are class-a public threats, I am pretty sure they stuffed us into the same class specifically to keep an eye on each other.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Okay, so how much do you know?¡±


    She took off her glasses and put them on the table. ¡°That¡¯s a tricky question. I know most of your history, although I am more than happy to sever ties between you and SSS if you need it. The Vilnet is garbage. It was actually created by an ex-BSA cyberkinetic as a way to keep things organized.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Yeah, I kind of already got that.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Basically if it¡¯s recorded, written, or stored, I can access it. If it¡¯s in both wetware and storage media, I can affect both, like when I changed your shirt. If it¡¯s solely in wetware, I can¡¯t touch it.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    She smiled slightly, ¡°My secret weakness. I can¡¯t read anyone¡¯s thoughts or memories. If you have a conversation and it¡¯s not recorded, that¡¯s full-on wetware. If you know things, I might not know them, but I can access electronic or written records pretty easily.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Yeah, can you keep it to yourself?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yep, I blurt out my own secrets all the time, mostly because it keeps people from looking deeper. Other people¡¯s secrets are their own problem unless they make it my problem, but like I said, it¡¯s not like I can read minds or anything. I think, however, I might be able to help you with your research.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow and planted both of my hands on the table, ¡°Oh? You know something about nanocircuitry?¡±


    She shook her head and smiled, ¡°No, your OTHER research. That¡¯s why I suggested Akyo Tokamura. I am getting some connections between her and your power research, although I can¡¯t dig them out because you don¡¯t have anything solidified research-wise.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean solidified?¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°I can tell if there is a solid disparity between the written word and reality, as long as someone has tested the written word¡¯s assumption and has a factual response.¡±


    ¡°If someone has written that the world is flat, I will know it¡¯s false because someone has written down tested commentary that it is true, backed by conviction and evidence. Mostly because the more real a fact is, the more difficult it is to alter. If I try to alter the real information that the world is round, it won¡¯t work because it¡¯s too established and repeatedly tested. It would take more energy to change that bit than I will ever have, and someone would almost immediately break the fiction.¡±


    She smiled, ¡°Some of the stuff you are messing with, well, some of it¡¯s true and tested, some of it¡¯s intentionally false wastes of time, some of it is wishful thinking, some is written as fiction but accidentally touches on reality, some of it is sort of true but needs better testing, and some of it is intentionally designed to help someone like you accidentally kill yourself.¡±


    I looked at her shocked, ¡°I honestly hadn¡¯t even thought about your ability to track down records. Seriously, it¡¯s possible that you could find those documents that Bob was talking about, the ones from the invasion?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No. The closest thing that is true is that their manuals work for them. Humans have a different power setup, and trying their methods would kill you or destroy your power somehow. They knew this, so they didn¡¯t fight to get them back when their invasion failed. Their¡­ loot, was either utterly worthless to us or a trap. They consider us hopelessly evil infidels and abominations.¡±


    She looked at me and slid her glasses back on. ¡°So, want another bit of information that will completely blow your mind?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°That category is getting pretty narrow right now. What will blow my mind?¡±


    ¡°Crystal was wrong, but she was also right.¡±


    The edge of the table broke in my hands. ¡°What?¡±

 Chapter 19. The Armor Machine.

    Abigail started again, ¡°I said, Crystal was wrong, and she was also right.¡±


    ¡°I heard what you said. What the fuck do you mean?¡± I almost growled. Yeah, I was well over her, sure, everybody breaks furniture when they are talking casually about their exes. A perfectly normal and sane response. I bet Kellar Academy had trauma counselors who would blow a nut to dig into my head.


    ¡°She was wrong, you were not always going to be a powerless freak who thinks he¡¯s better than he is. You already proved that through rigorous and well-documented testing. I especially liked Glacier¡¯s fight, since that was some awesome action. But she was right about the money.¡±


    ¡°What part of her short explanation about robbing me blind, destroying my future, breaking my heart, and then sneering at me was right?¡±


    Abigail sighed, ¡°Well, bear in mind, I am not a seer or anything, but based on your activity logs, you were going to destroy his company. You didn¡¯t have the training, knowledge, or drive to keep it afloat.¡±


    ¡°If she hadn¡¯t trapped your voting stock, the company would have sunk. At least it still exists, and both of your cousins and her sister still have their jobs. James was VERY much instrumental in stripping your voting rights and then leveraging your stock because he knew what would happen if he let you blow it.¡±


    She smiled a little, hopefully. ¡°Crystal was a cold-ass ruthless bitch, but she had very good reasons for doing what she did, even if it hurt you. According to her own telephone conversations, she even liked you, and felt a little guilty about what she did.¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°Still won¡¯t forgive her, and if I ever get into a fight with her, I am going to kill her.¡±


    Abigail shook her head, ¡°You don¡¯t believe that. I don¡¯t believe that. You would beat her black and blue, but know what?¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°I bet if you do that, she will feel vindicated, like you really deserved what she did, or maybe like she paid the price for her sins or something. You WILL be seeing her again, it¡¯s a small world¡­ but you¡¯d probably get a lot better revenge by just looking at her like you can¡¯t even remember her name. Or like, Crystal Who? Wait, I banged you, didn¡¯t I? Oh right, you ripped me off. No big deal, I made more on my last bounty than the company is worth. Now shoo, I¡¯m busy. If I want to see you again, I¡¯ll check out your Onlysimps page.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Ouch. You really think I can make that much on bounties?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No. Doyle Routing, as a company, is worth about two hundred million. Bounties cap out at a million. Secondary income can be a lot higher, but I think that if you tried, by next year you could successfully take over Doyle Routing even in a hostile acquisition. That is if you wanted to.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I don¡¯t want to. And honestly, I don¡¯t want to brutalize Crystal. She was right, I just wish I never had to look at her again.¡±


    Abigail chuckled, ¡°That¡¯s what masks are for. A little armor, a voice changer, a holomask, and she will never even know she¡¯s talking to you.¡±


    I looked at her searchingly, ¡°So you know my powers?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°I know your research history, what¡¯s been displayed while you were fighting, and what you have recorded. From that, I could draw some conclusions. I also had a few ideas, like the nanoweave, that you might not have considered.¡±


    ¡°So hit me,¡± I said, tilting the steel chair back and propping my feet up on the table. At this point, I wasn¡¯t particularly worried about my secret identity, so I was wearing a nice pair of beige hiking boots with clean soles, Levis stonewashed, and a Gold¡¯s Gym tank top that was a little too tight for me at Mindy¡¯s insistence. She said that it would keep anyone who was too aggressive off-balance, but I was pretty sure an air shield would work better.


    Abigail shrugged, ¡°I get it, you want to know how much I know. I know that your microcontrol goes down a lot deeper than just the molecular level since you wouldn¡¯t be able to adapt kinetic forces otherwise and that you seem to have control over¡­ speed. And that unlike most of us, you can draw your energy from the atmosphere rather than just being restricted to whatever your max draw is.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°You act like that¡¯s a good thing.¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°Isn¡¯t it? You have already figured out how to increase your draw and based on what you have done in training, you also figured out how to expand your maximum. There are better methods, but I don¡¯t think most of them would work for most alphas since our basic energy method is determined when we are awakened. We are restricted to our full energy pool each day¡­ our energy pool slowly improves, but never by much.¡±


    ¡°You figured out how to double your pool in just a few weeks using basic instruction from amateurs. Guesswork. How high can it go? You already more than doubled your power strength too. What happens when you hit the next plateau? Does it double again? I¡¯ve seen you simulate over a dozen different abilities, albeit with low power and carefully husbanding your energy. How about when you cross higher thresholds?¡±


    She chuckled, ¡°Someday you might be the first class nine to ever exist. So yes, that¡¯s a good thing. Hell, right now you want to be the chair guy, but I bet you already have better defenses than most anchors.¡±


    I thought about that. Technically, it was true in a vacuum, but there were other factors to consider. ¡°Potentially I could have better defenses than some anchors, true. But think about it¡­ if I could put up air shields, momentum transfer, or kinetic absorbers to protect myself, how much more effective would those be on someone else who could have more combat utility or already decent defenses?¡±


    Her eyebrow went up and she glared at me with those vibrant eyes, ¡°You used to play a cleric, didn¡¯t you?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Druid, actually, but a similar concept. Can you imagine how cool it would be if I had a pet?¡±


    She nodded slowly, ¡°Yes, I could. Since this isn¡¯t a computer game, though, I think we need to find you a decent pet. Are you sure you aren¡¯t interested in ahh¡­ Chinook?¡±


    I blushed a little at the topic of ¡®pet¡¯ when referring to a real living woman, but understood where she was coming from. ¡°Why, do you have an alternative idea?¡±


    ***


    We were eating lunch, this time with more people in the room, including both Chinook and Terracotta. Terracotta was a very reserved girl, and while we welcomed her to have pizza with us, I was basically convinced that she was going to refuse to join our team on more than a temporary basis, because she was here to get an education, and then intended to return to Kyoto after her schooling was finished.


    ¡°I''m confused. You¡¯re second-year. The rest of this team is first-year, why are you interested in joining a freshman team?¡± Mindy asked her bluntly.


    She sighed and put both of her elbows on the table and then rested her forehead in her hands for a moment. She was, of course, good-looking, with rich black hair down to her waist when it wasn¡¯t caught behind her neck, golden eyes, dark skin visible behind her holomask, and a well-toned body. ¡°A bunch of reasons. First off, Your team support has got their shit together when it comes to the team stuff, and you remember what Mister Dexter said¡­ most of the good contracts demand at least decent teamwork grades, and mine sucks right now.¡±


    ¡°Secondly, I tried to go the loner route as a Freshman. I am a solid class four, but my position in the rankings is delicate.¡±


    ¡°Hold on,¡± I asked, ¡°Why on Earth is ranking so important? I keep hearing like it¡¯s super vital, but lots of people who have never even been to the academy land jobs in decent regionals or even solo defenders.¡±


    She looked at me closely, ¡°You might not understand because of your unique position, but there¡¯s a reason most anchors and cannons go to the monster hunters. Because we are common. The two most common gifts are elemental production and physical enhancement. Elemental production, unlike elemental control, gives you far more potential damage for something like hunting kaiju, but it doesn¡¯t give the versatility that control does.¡±


    ¡°What elemental production doesn¡¯t give you is any extra durability. However, fortunately, for two gifts, physical enhancement is almost always the second gift. So basically, that¡¯s what I am¡­ two gifts, elemental production and physical enhancement. The most common combination on Earth. If I can¡¯t get a good team or protector position, that just leaves the monster hunters.¡±


    ¡°So...what¡¯s wrong with the monster hunters?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°My two gifts are basic enhancement and air elemental production. My enhancement is decent, but not anything compared to most purely physical anchors. I am pretty good at duels because I have insane endurance, and air production lends itself to both flight and ringouts. But with the new Freshman class participating in ratings, I have no idea what¡¯s liable to go down¡­ I figure the only reason I even got rank twelve was because I was the lucky paper to this year¡¯s rocks. I will probably be in the low twenties before I can blink.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with the monster hunters? I¡¯d be a casualty in a week. Air doesn¡¯t give the kind of attacks it takes to drop monsters quickly, and enhanced physicality without something like metal control, shapemod, armoring, or density increase to back it up means I would just make a slightly chewier toy. That means government service or black teams.¡±


    She lifted her head a little, ¡°On the other hand, the team competitions are technically even more important. There are twenty-six freshmen alphas this year, and from what I have seen, you guys will have a lock on the top ten for teams, group obstacle, and maybe even gearing and criminology, although gearing almost always goes to widgeteers.¡±


    ¡°I am already rated as second place for survival. I know it¡¯s kind of a trope among those of us who choose to stick with the tribes, but we learn how to survive in the wilderness, dodge monsters, and fight practically before we learn to walk. And for the team stuff, we could hit rank one.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I will get back to you.¡±


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    I glanced at Terracotta, and then at Mindy, shrugging a little. She was technically supposed to be the leader of this team, but I seemed to be doing most of the talking. She smiled a little, shook her head, and then waved her fingers at me like ¡®Go ahead¡¯.


    ¡°Okay, Terracotta, same question.¡±


    Terracotta nodded, ¡°First I thank you very much for saving Kelly. I made a mistake. It was very bad. Secondly, I say that my English is good but slow so sometimes words take time or I might ask you to repeat words.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s fine.¡±


    ¡°My reasons are much like Chinook. I am a single-power, but I am told my single-power is very good and very versatile. I saw how you healed Kelly. I saw how you moved. You are a fighter, even if you do not behave that way often. I wish to graduate and bring honor to my family. Of all the teams forming among the first and second years, this is the one that has the most potential, and I want to be part of that potential.¡±


    ¡°There is also a personal reason. I am slow, I know that, but our training should help. Most teams will see only that one part of my power is not quick, and is klutzy. I owe you for helping Kelly, and this team is my first choice¡­ if you do not choose me, it is not likely any other team will accept me, and I will be with the put-together teams.¡±


    ¡°Not that those are bad!¡± she continued, holding up both of her hands. ¡°Some pick-up teams are very good because the Academy staff is very good at balancing out known abilities, but it¡¯s still leaving too much up to chance for me to trust their judgment.¡±


    ¡°As far as what I can bring to the team? I am more of a support myself, or I guess they call it battlefield control. I have very good earth control without an element specialization, so I can grab just about anything that comes under the heading of ¡®ground¡¯ as long as it¡¯s not pure metal. Sand, rock, gravel, mud, dirt, asphalt, concrete, even glass.¡±


    ¡°Anything with a silicate structure?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I think so, but there are many substances I haven¡¯t experimented with. But I think¡­ my elemental label is Earth, which means it has some limitations. For instance, I can manipulate coal easily, but not charcoal. Nothing really alive except that, you know, something like sod or dirt has living things in it.¡±


    ¡°I also have good control usually, I was just¡­ not sure what to do during the exercise. I thought I would need defenses, and much of the Arena doesn¡¯t qualify as solid ground. So I brought as much rock with me as I could, as armor.¡±


    ¡°Okay, umm¡­ provisionally, I am cool with having Terracotta as part of the team, but obviously, it¡¯s my sponsor¡¯s decision.¡± I looked at Mindy, ¡°You get to be the bad guy if the answer is no. Muahahaha.¡±


    ¡°The one thing I am going to insist on is a uniform look. Mostly because I¡¯m going to be making the uniforms, and I am lazy.¡± I grinned at Mindy, ¡°Would you please go to my room and grab the school bookstore bag sitting on my bed? I finished your outfit, and it¡¯s sort of a prototype, but could you try it on and show us?¡±


    Mindy hopped up amazingly quickly and dashed into my bedroom, hair flying behind her. As I said, the new look was probably not as protective as the best armors out there, but I was pleased to note that it was sturdy as hell and while it took me a lot of energy and almost a week to make, the expense was not crippling¡­ and now that I had the whole damned thing blueprinted, I could make more of them.


    She came back out wearing a dark gray baggy stretch suit and hood with a half-mask. For the most part, it looked more like a neoprene diving suit than a super suit, with varying thicknesses of material. Honestly, while it was a lot thinner than combat armor, the patches I¡¯d put in for joint support, vitals protection, and the like were stolen ideas from the more popular types of BMX and combat armor.


    Of course, since I was using stuff like carbon nanotubes, silicon nanowires, interlaced fibrous zircon and super synthetic reinforced spider silk for the suit¡¯s outer layer, and crystalline-interleaved short-fiber nanotubes, layers of crystalline-woven tungsten-bronze interspersed with boron-bromine micro-pneumatic reactive cartilage for shock absorption, and I¡¯d even installed a series of ridiculously thin silicon nanotube batteries that could be recharged easily through regular movements of the myo-cartilage.


    This was just a needlessly technical way of saying that the armor was about as thick as a rubber suit, but it breathed a lot better, had slightly enhanced defensive strike areas for both combat and defense, extra joint protection to prevent hyper-extension or joint lock breaking, and even a normal human could easily survive a drop from a ten-story roof while wearing it and the ¡®extra padded¡¯ helmet. I know, because I threw myself off the roof twice while wearing it just to make sure.


    ¡°You forgot the helmet.¡±


    Mindy looked at me in surprise, ¡°There¡¯s a helmet?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Of course. I don¡¯t have the stuff built in yet, but I have a basic computer built into the suit. My software skills are atrocious, but at least right now it can control the fit and the colors.¡±


    After a few moments, she returned wearing a helmet. It looked a lot like the modular, slender ¡®school uniform¡¯ riot helmets because, to be fair, I butchered one to make it. Of course, it was a lot tougher now, and better padded, and I¡¯d found a use for my nanocomputer¡­ there were several of them installed into the suit and the helmet, but right now they were running on modified Game Boy Bios because I was shit at computers and only had two systems anyway.


    ¡°Okay, right now, this is the team costume. I should have more built soon, but to make them I need to get supplies that¡­ I don¡¯t want to get on campus.¡±


    Abigail snorted a little, ¡°Are we going to be dancing? Because that sort of looks like a boring version of ¡®Can¡¯t touch this¡¯ only with Glacier Girl inside instead of Hammer.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°No. Glacier Girl, do an ex-pose, please. Like you were getting ready to do jumping jacks.¡±


    She nodded and stood straight with her arms out and partly open. ¡°Now what?¡±


    ¡°Uhh¡­ crap. I guess I have to do it.¡± I stood up and slipped over to stand next to her, and then reached inside of her helmet, pressing the chin button that activated the holo-mask I¡¯d adapted into a third-rate heads-up display while the bulletproof face shield was down. ¡°Can you see the display?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yeah, did you use a Virtual Boy for this? There''s only three blink-links in here.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s what I used for the bios, yes. The first blink-link is settings. Please don¡¯t mess with those yet. The second one is fit, and the third one is download and file manipulation. Go ahead and hit the fit button.¡±


    She nodded slightly, and then smiled, ¡°It says automatic or manual.¡±


    ¡°Go ahead and blink automatic. Once it¡¯s done, press the helmet button I hit again so it doesn¡¯t accidentally change. Please remember that this is a prototype, especially the helmet.¡±


    The suit¡­ deflated. That was the best way of describing it as it automatically scanned and adjusted itself for the best fit. The fibers were easily able to retract and expand and were highly elastic, and the myofibers were able to make sure that each of the more solid sub-plates was aligned correctly on her body¡­ moments later, it looked like she was wearing skin-tight gray tech ninja armor, which was sort of the effect I was hoping for. It was thick enough not to show too much but still showed off her extremely nice body with plenty of support.


    ¡°Oh god, Blueprint. I mean, the armor is still an ugly color, but I want one if only for that auto-fitting alone. It¡¯s like¡­ super-sexy without having big ¡®shoot me¡¯ skin holes cut into it.¡± Abbey remarked.


    I grinned at Abbey, ¡°a little hint. Color is nothing more than light reflections. See that USB port in the helmet? That¡¯s not for charging, that¡¯s for downloading pattern designs. On my computer, I have a dozen patterns I made in Art Shop, and I put in a simple 3d art model for making costume designs based on an old video game custom avatar creator.¡±


    ¡°Unreal Quakebaker?¡± she laughed, ¡°I used to play with that when I was a little kid.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Well, that¡¯s the program, and it has a bunch of files I experimented with. Glacier, would you be so kind as to reactivate your interface, and hit the file button? You should see a series of costumes. Pick the one you want, and then hit ¡®apply¡¯.¡±


    After a moment, Mindy¡¯s outfit changed to look like a black unitard with a decent set of three heavy asymmetric blue lines from her left shoulder to her right hip, while her helmet turned black and grew a blue stripe.


    Mindy stuck out her tongue at me, ¡°These designs are terrible.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I made all six of those patterns in less than ten minutes. Do better or ask someone to do better. Catalog?¡± I looked at Abbey, using her superhero name since she was technically in a mask.


    She smiled, ¡°I want one.¡±


    I nodded, and glanced at Chinook, ¡°Once we settle on a design, I want us to look similar. I am still working on better junk for the armor, but it¡¯s durable as hell, and it¡¯s not widgeteer crap. I also started experimenting with boron nitride nanotubes, and they are like twice as durable as carbon nanotubes. I figure a few more advances, and I might be able to create even tougher stuff than Atlas threading, and Atlas armor has stupidly steep prerequisites.¡±


    ¡°Prerequisites? Above and beyond the tens of millions?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yes, a normal person couldn¡¯t even move in it. It¡¯s durable, but it was not only incredibly heavy but just moving in it normally required at least a class 3 enhanced physique because of its resistance. That¡¯s another reason Geofiber got so popular. Less protective, but you could also wear hard armor over it and still be able to move.¡±


    ¡°The thicker plates.¡± I said, starting to point out certain areas on Mindy¡¯s armor, ¡°Are laminated buckypaper zircon and tungsten-hyper bronze. They should keep your knees from getting busted if you are crazy enough¡­¡± I looked at Chinook, ¡°To make a superhero landing.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°I hadn¡¯t actually thought of that, but it sure looks cool when it works. How long would it take us to get armor?¡±


    ¡°Give me a second,¡± I said.  I had been thinking about it. I didn¡¯t have anywhere close to the energy to convert that much mass, not even a tenth of what I¡¯d need, but if could get access to a lot of materials¡­


    ¡°That depends. Just to make it without any materials would take me ten days per suit.¡±


    Chinook sighed. ¡°Is that because of your energy problems?¡±


    I nodded. ¡°Yeah, but if I could get someplace with a lot of the raw materials already available, like a dump, or a materials lab, and someone that can help me gather what I would need, it could be a lot faster.¡±


    ¡°How much faster?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°If I had some stuff pre-assembled, and all the materials, It would cost me about four hundred energy. Umm¡­ eighty percent of my maximum. I recover between three and seven percent of my maximum every hour, depending on if I can practice and meditate, get enough food, and am in a place that¡¯s good for my energy, it might even be faster if I can get someplace really good, but places like that are impossible to get to.¡±


    ¡°Like what kind of places?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°I''m not sure if you can handle the truth¡­¡±


    Abbey smiled, ¡°Just tell us. Maybe we can get there.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Any place with high ambient radiation, extreme temperature gradients, or even radioactive materials. Outer space, a dumping place for a reactor, or even a recently-cleared Kaiju nest.¡±


    Abbey looked thoughtful, ¡°If you thought that would freak us out, you are very wrong. A lot of Alphas have¡­ unusual dietary additives.¡±


    I knew that, but¡­ ¡°Like what?¡±


    ¡°I am on record for certain rare earths. They help reinforce my structures,¡± Terracotta, who had been fairly quiet until now, offered. ¡°And a set of armor would let me run lighter when I have to play anchor. Right now, when I armor up, to get class three defense I am very slow.¡±


    ¡°So what kind of radioactive do you need?¡± Mindy asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know, I don¡¯t have to eat them¡­ I mean, Uranium, even if I depleted it, would be poisonous. Something that sends out high-energy protons and neutrons would be best?¡±


    Abbey smiled a little, ¡°So you can deplete radioactive materials?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I believe so, in small amounts.¡± I looked at my hand. ¡°About nine inches. That doesn¡¯t make me immune to radioactivity, so I¡¯d have to purify myself afterward unless I want stuff falling off.¡±


    Chinook snerked, ¡°God forbid. I can think of a couple of options, but I am starting to realize that you are a complicated fellow, Blueprint.¡±

 Chapter 20. One mans trash...

    New class schedule. I¡¯d gotten a very interesting message on the network from the BSA testing facility, and I wasn¡¯t sure how to react. No one, as far as I knew, had ever gotten an audit result where the BSA auditors said that your power class was a sliding scale. Four to six.


    Seven classes. I mean, I understood why, especially after I tested out of Materials Logistics, business logistics, and business management. I knew that in traditional colleges, business and supply chain management courses tend to be front-loaded, but universities didn¡¯t exist to educate students, they existed to make students pay as much as possible for a piece of official-looking paper that stated that they educated, and knew how to kiss ass.


    Don¡¯t get me wrong, Logistical mathematics was sort of complicated when you were first exposed to it, but compared to quantum equations, orbital mechanics, or even actuarial calculations that every insurance company used to keep from going broke, were far more complicated.


    I was very well aware of the fact that being smart in one area did not make you smart in anything else. Those intellectual bobble-heads who thought having a high IQ naturally meant they should rule the world were idiots because intelligence wasn¡¯t divided up so easily¡­ sure, I had a natural cheat for quantum mechanics in the form of my power, but as I had learned the hard way, specialization only meant you were competent in your specialization.


    I¡¯d sort of started SSS as a test, and it was probably a test I failed. It survived, but Abbey was right, that if I¡¯d kept trying to run Doyle Routing I¡¯d have probably run it into the ground. Sure, I¡¯d have kept the trucks running, right up until the company went bankrupt because of all of the OTHER stuff I didn¡¯t understand, or even care about.


    The hardest part of a company was people skills. I forced myself to learn all of the other junk, business management, accounting, and tax law, but running a real business was a thousand more things, that took other people with other skills, and the ability to judge who actually had those skills and who was just padding a resume.


    So, when I went to the Student Union after testing out of the stupidly simple parts of a Logistical degree, I tried to focus on those skills.


    Of course, Kellar Academy had its own idea of what I should be learning over the next four years since they were training people to protect the human race rather than just getting a good job. The classes were just the time you spent in a classroom, and every student was expected to spend the majority of their ¡®free¡¯ time training in other ways.


    In fact, my only two ¡®official¡¯ college-style courses were Advanced Anatomy and Game Theory one, both of which applied every bit as much to Alpha logistics as they did to civilian life.


    Between those, was basic teamwork, of course, combat logistics, Kaiju tactics, power exploitation(transformative), and, Bob had made his power felt, Tai Chi as my physical credit.


    I was a little bothered. I mean, I knew some martial arts, but wouldn¡¯t an advanced martial art have been more useful? I was still a little iffy about the metaphysical stuff. I mean, yeah, it might help, but it might also be a colossal waste of time. Still, it couldn¡¯t be too awful, since millions of people practiced it every day, but millions of people COULD be wrong. I guess I was going to find out.


    The thing is, most courses in a college contain about as much total information as a Wikimedia article over the entirety of the course. The rest of the time was filled with examples, exercises, tests, and memorizing important things like the line of different mathematicians who came up with the theory, the dates when it happened, and all the rest.


    Kellar Academy didn¡¯t pull that. It was more like an educational boot camp. Advanced anatomy was a deep delve into every part of the human body and how they worked, healing methods, diagnostics, and development at different ages for different body types.


    Then again, it wasn¡¯t about training teachers, it was all about practical applications. I guess that was the big difference between a school and an academy.


    I was sitting in my room, at my small and somewhat disposable desk, when I heard a knock at my door. ¡°Jacob?¡±


    ¡°Yep!¡± I answered, closing up the syllabus sheets. In my opinion, preparation was ninety-nine percent of my job, and I¡¯d been trying to get ready for the beginning of courses tomorrow. It was a Sunday, but after finding and attending a small chapel on campus at noon, I¡¯d decided that just poking through my coursework was relaxing enough. I wouldn¡¯t say I was particularly religious, but the chapel was both a good way to meet people and it¡¯s better to be safe than sorry. One day I¡¯d be dead, and I¡¯d rather be wrong than miss the bus because I was a snob.


    Besides, magic was real, maybe God was too.


    ¡°Hey, umm¡­ a rather tall woman named Candace Windwalker is here and wants to umm¡­ take you out. As your sponsor, I think it might be a good idea.¡±


    ¡°Windwalker? Wait, is it Chinook?¡±


    ¡°Yes. She says she has a bribe to join the team.¡±


    I chuckled, and started putting on a jacket, ¡°She doesn¡¯t really need a bribe,¡± I said as I opened the door. ¡°So far she¡¯s¡­ a decent anchor, compared to some of the others, So I am inclined to give her a shot. Have you decided on whether or not you are wanting to bring on Akyo?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I sort of do. I know she¡¯s got too much potential for collateral damage inside of a city, but she can also help repair that collateral damage if we have reconstruction duties, and outside the city, her limits pretty much stop existing.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Then if you are cool, extend both of them invitations. Akyo¡¯s pretty smart once you get past the shyness thing, and for right now she¡¯s a good bet. We might need to replace her year three or four since she¡¯s flat-out stated that she¡¯s heading home after graduation, but that¡¯s a long way away.¡±


    Candace Windwalker was sitting at our table when I walked in and got to her feet. Huh. If she weren¡¯t going to be a teammate, and if she wasn¡¯t an alpha, I might have been attracted. Clever eyebrows, black hair to her waist, moderately deep tan skin, and a strong but not overwhelming nose. Kind of a live-action Pocahontas look, the cartoon, not the incredibly homely reality.


    She had high cheekbones and a plump lower lip without makeup that professional models paid big bucks to achieve, and while she wasn¡¯t voluptuous, the jeans and short red midriff tee she was wearing showed off a trim stomach, and a definite athlete¡¯s body. The fact that she was almost my height with her heels wasn¡¯t really off-putting so much as surprising. I wasn¡¯t huge, but at six foot three I wasn¡¯t short either, which, considering her heels, must have put her at slightly over six feet tall.


    ¡°Gee. I won¡¯t even conjecture your super ID.¡± I said, giving her a once-over and making it clear I wasn¡¯t checking her out.


    She shrugged, ¡°Not too worried about it. Yours is pretty obvious too, since there aren¡¯t that many alphas that look like you. Anyway, I plan on bribing you.¡±


    ¡°Bribing me with what? I don¡¯t really need money, and I¡¯m reasonably certain that you are already aware that you are on the team¡¯s shortlist.¡±


    She smiled, ¡°Come with me and I will show you. It¡¯s on campus.¡±


    I glanced at Mindy, and she nodded. I guess she already knew what the bribe would be.


    ¡°Fine, but I can¡¯t stay up too late. It¡¯s a school night, and mommy wants me home before curfew,¡± I smirked.


    She nodded and walked out the door, me following her.


    ***


    ¡°You have got to be kidding me. What the hell?¡± I asked as the lift settled deep beneath the innovation building.


    ¡°Widgeteers need training too,¡± she replied, ¡°and so do tinkers. Most people call this the failboat, because the widgeteers, failed student work, and even tinker junk wind up here.¡±


    It was a set of underground cages, like a private storage facility except anything but private. It was a series of warehouses, many of them the size of a stadium, filled with...junk. Nothing biological, of course, since apparently that stuff was kept in cold storage under the medical training center, but it had the junk sort of separated by type and function.


    ¡°When students need¡­ more specialized and working equipment for experimentation or crafting, well, you have to go through the regular grant process. Some of the better tinkers walk out of school with multi-million dollar loans, but tinkers¡­ well, unlike Widgeteers, a lot of them will walk out and then right into a multinational research environment that will be happy to pay for their development loans.¡±


    ¡°On the other side are crafting rooms. Safety-sealed with good ventilation, and a bunch of them have special crafting equipment, from old-school forges and machine shops to enchanting bays for the weirdos that need them. You need to sign up for room time, and are expected to clean up after yourself.¡±


    ¡°Each of the rooms has an ordering terminal. As long as it¡¯s reasonably marked as educational raw materials, a lot of it¡¯s covered by the school accounts, and you can put what you are working on in a storage bay.¡±


    ¡°This is where it gets tricky, though. Finished development is technically Academy property, although it¡¯s a little weird because it¡¯s linked to your BSA account. You have to get stuff approved by a faculty member before you can use it in training or competition.¡±


    ¡°What about Patents and stuff?¡±


    She scratched her head, ¡°I am not really sure, but from what I understand, you aren¡¯t considered an employee of the school. That means if you invent some new method or something that can be patented, it belongs to you¡­ but if you do it with others, including actual school employees, the ownership might be more complicated.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°What I do know is that if you intend to use hazardous materials, like radioactive materials, you need to run it through one of the staff members.¡±


    ¡°Does that include power training?¡±


    She laughed, ¡°I think so, but you need to ask your power exploitation trainer. They can get permission for you if it¡¯s needed. I had to¡­ request some special materials my first year.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°Really? What?¡±


    She quirked a half-smile, ¡°I was only a single-awakening. My grandfather told me I could awaken elemental spirits if I underwent a spirit journey, and he was right.¡±


    Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.


    I was extremely interested, ¡°Wait, your power increased at that time? How?¡±


    She smiled, ¡°I went on my spirit journey, found my spirit animal, the owl, and gained the power of the wind. I wish I could tell you more, but based on the fact that your own ability seems to be growing, perhaps I should ask you for help instead.¡±


    ¡°I know this really isn¡¯t a bribe, once your teacher found out your powers extend to manipulating materials too, she would probably have dragged you down here, eventually¡­ but umm¡­ the Whispernet says you are going to be encouraged to maximize your healing ability, because you are a true healer.¡±


    I snorted and started peering through the cages. Yes! I could use this stuff. I wasn¡¯t likely to get any patents, because my secret nickname for myself wasn¡¯t Blueprint, it was Knock-off. I wasn¡¯t an inventor, everything in Mindy¡¯s armor had been designed by someone else, but I had successfully made it smaller and cheaper, if not quite as good as the original. I was willing to bet that there were armor sets out there that were MUCH better than mine, but I doubted they were made on a budget.


    ¡°I am not sure what you mean by Whispernet or true healer. I am pretty good at fixing stuff, including traumas, but I don¡¯t know what that true bit is about.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°There are more than a few minor healing abilities running around. We have two at our school¡­ a third-year empath who can share damage among herself and up to four other people, and a bio-controller who can create cloned biomatter, including stuff like organs, skin, and blood, who can help surgeons replace and repair injuries.¡±


    ¡°The Whispernet is just what it sounds like¡­ second through fourth-year students who gossip. A lot of them work on special projects with the teachers, and some are actually employed by the school. They get a lot of rumors from the staff side of things, and the rumors coming out of there are that the Academy is going to try and encourage you to work for the BSA as a floating specialist.¡±


    ¡°Encourage me? Like, a deal I can¡¯t refuse?¡± I asked, sourly.


    She shook her head, ¡°No. more like lots of money and whatever you want or need for a contract. That¡¯s where the true healer thing comes in. Video of you working on Kelly were leaked and somehow got out past the school¡¯s security. Three of the farmer families have already contacted the academy demanding you be shipped to them immediately for training, and the only reason there haven¡¯t been more is because the leak was found and, well, farmer families are good at keeping secrets.¡±


    Quick history lesson. About three decades after the turn of the millennium, back when Alphas were rare, the highest ever recorded was a class five. There were only a few ¡®big Kaiju¡¯ running around because showing their heads almost always provoked a deadly response from alphas and military forces alike.


    Aside from that big sucker in the Pacific that trashed Tokyo in the seventies before getting driven back into the trench, Kaiju would be turned into mincemeat if they ever appeared inland, aside from a few outbreaks of mutated housepets, wild animals that developed alpha traits, and the occasional mad-scientist designed abomination that broke free from it¡¯s creator and laid waste before it was brought down.


    But politicians, curse their rotten little hearts, were always looking for ways to gain more power. The exact circumstances of what happened were buried under a mountain of misinformation, top-secret designations, and in some cases, a literal mountain, like what happened to D.C.


    At any rate, a certain group of strongly corporate-connected people were trying to rule the world, other people were disagreeing with them, and the first tactical Q-Bomb was dropped on South Korea since what had happened to Poland in the forties.


    It was called the ¡®Faafo¡¯, or ¡®Fuck around and find out.¡¯ moment. Europe, the USA, and the Russian Empire were involved, then China, the Middle East, India, Brazil, and eventually even Australia got caught up and the Q-Bombs only stopped after a lot of damage was done. Q-Bombs had a maximum destruction radius, were much cheaper per kiloton than conventional explosives, and didn¡¯t cause fallout like nuclear weapons, but what happened afterward should have been on the minds of the greedy corporate warmongers that started it, not the simple destruction.


    A lot more people started awakening and gaining an attachment to etheric power. Where before you could count the number of true ¡®alphas¡¯ in each nation on one hand, now they were tenfold. This caused a host of problems, from class three bank robbers and drug dealers to a slew of new monstrosities forming in the wilderness¡­ the first time some people realized there was a new Kaiju problem was when the vicious old dinosaur that had been occasionally terrorizing Tokyo for decades washed up on the beach in two separate, rotting pieces.


    For a few years, simple survival was a huge issue. People started fleeing to the overcrowded cities for protection, and famine was rearing its ugly head, but with the new crop of Alphas, new and unexpected gifts, like people that could grow crops in minutes instead of seasons, rose to the challenge.


    The old power ranking system, based entirely on destructive potential, went from class D negligible to class A, the ability to destroy an entire block with one power use, had to be discarded entirely and replaced with something more organic based on your power potential, energy levels, and each power would be graded separately and the grading averaged to determine your new ranking¡­ which was how I wound up as a class two. I probably should have been a class one, but the fact that my microkinesis could have flipped the safety and pulled the trigger on a firearm remotely, despite its weakness, pushed it into the ¡®slightly dangerous¡¯.


    Today, lots of less civilized areas, ghost towns, and suburbia, were abandoned to the beasts which desperately hungered to empower themselves by eating sapients. Some deeply rural areas survived, due to preparation or the activities of local Alphas, and some didn¡¯t. Right now, some of the wealthier rural areas that produce the food and luxuries in bulk that cities desperately need were stupidly rich.


    These were referred to as ¡®Farmer Families¡¯. Outside of the cities, they were a law unto themselves, without any oversight or nod to any power outside of themselves. They often owned big chunks of the cities themselves, all financed by ¡®outside¡¯ production, salvage, and labor, and these families could, and did, work hard to seduce the most useful and powerful alphas to their cause.


    Of course, when the big kaiju, invasions, or real world-ending nutball attacked, the farmer family teams assisted just like anyone else¡­ even the best of the best couldn¡¯t hope to stave off the combined might of the BSA in this country if they were deemed to be an uncooperative threat, but outside of that? The golden rule prevailed¡­ he who had the gold made the rules.


    I was beginning to understand now why I was considered a kidnapping risk. I would probably get some monster offers through covert channels sooner or later, but I had zero interest in being ¡®owned¡¯ by some farmer family, no more than I wished to be owned by the BSA. Farmer families, though, were known for getting what they wanted. A simple kidnapping, no matter how valuable the BSA might consider my potential, wouldn¡¯t be enough to mobilize a nationwide response. The BSA knew it, the farmer families knew it, and now I knew it.


    And the Farmer families had some stupidly powerful alphas on their payroll. Sure, I might think that I could escape, but if a powerful empath decided that you would fall in love with a farmer family and be permanently loyal, it would happen. They were called ¡®families¡¯ for a reason since few things ensured loyalty as efficiently as marrying into a family and hopefully producing a passel of potentially superpowered children.


    Power tended to pass in lines, and if your genetic father got his powers from getting trapped in a furnace just as it was being lit, and your mother got them from being at ground zero in a gas line explosion, there was a really good chance that turning a flamethrower on you after you hit your majority would give you a similar power. It was not guaranteed, but the farmer families were brutally pragmatic about protecting their advantages, including ensuring that their ¡®super families¡¯ would awaken.


    ¡°Well, shit,¡± I said.


    ¡°Not exactly eloquent, but definitely to the point. Right now you are an unknown factor, like a stream coming from a cave having flecks of gold in it¡­ it might be a decent mine, or it might be a money pit, but umm¡­ Subvector asked me for a personal favor.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°What personal favor did the Academy¡¯s Master-at-arms request?¡±


    She smiled slightly, ¡°She asked me to try and get on your team, and, if I can, to play bodyguard and help you protect yourself by, and I quote, any means necessary. Unquote.¡±


    We had moved well past the organized section of the vaults and were getting deeper into unfinished tunnels, but I felt something egging me on. The floor was still concrete plates, but the lights were getting older and more spaced out, and I think I even saw the occasional old-school LED tube flickering that had to be over fifty years old.


    ¡°Here.¡± I pointed to a beat-up shaft that was not even covered by a door. It was dark, and while there were electrical lines leading down into the pit, nothing was lit.


    But what was COMING from that tunnel¡­ I took a deep cleansing breath and held it for several moments. Helium two, excess high-speed protons and electrons, even the occasional zippy neutron. I grabbed all of the excess momentum, EXACTLY the kind of energy I needed, and reformed the remains into clean hydrogen, by far the easiest puzzle to assemble.


    For the first time, I was starting to feel my excess energy bulge my soul container a little. It would probably hurt, and I¡¯d have to be very careful to do a full reset afterward to get all of the beta radiation and slow protons, as well as the sheerly poisonous chemical damage out of my body, but I could feel everything I needed¡­ from spare carbon and iron to copper, silicon, and even traces of gold, silver, and some uranium. Phosphorous, fluorine, arsenic¡­ all sheer poison, but exactly the building blocks I needed for construction, laced with the energy I probably needed to become more powerful.


    ¡°There?¡± Candace asked skeptically, ¡°Down there? That stuff is¡­ like four hundred feet down, and there¡¯s a respirator outlet and sealer wall there to keep the gasses down. You just want to trot down there, magic down the sealer, and sit in the old pits, where they stuffed mine tailings and toxic waste for over a hundred years before this place was reclaimed?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Of course not. I want the materials and the radiation. The poison down there would kill me in seconds. I want a good, solid hazard suit with a self-contained oxygen supply so I don¡¯t have to filter it so much, a hazmat bath and decontamination system, and THEN I want to sit down there in the toxic waste and mine tailings.¡±


    ¡°And you really think you will be safe?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°Not even slightly. I hope I will be safe. I am sure that with your powers, you prefer to sit someplace with clean winds and healthy sun and rain. I like that too, but I am thinking I can absorb more energy from here.¡±


    ¡°Hoping? Isn¡¯t that kind of a big risk?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, but right now I can drain off the ionized radiation that¡¯s seeping through. If it¡¯s too much, I won¡¯t break the seal. So what did she offer you?¡±


    She looked nervous, ¡°Umm, personal training, which is awesome since she has a similar powerset and decades of experience, and extra teamwork credits.¡±


    ¡°The cheat! That¡¯s practically blackmail!¡±


    She shrugged and then stretched, and I tried not to notice that the motion almost showed underboob. I was paranoid, not dead. ¡°So does that mean I am in? Now that you know I have a very personal reason to keep you safe in a team and play a good anchor?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°You know I have to talk to Mindy about this.¡±


    She smiled slightly, ¡°I let Mommy know what was going on before she ever knocked on your door. Did you know that she¡¯s convinced that you are a liar?¡±


    ¡°Did she tell you that?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Not in so many words, but she did tell me she thought you were some Diablo guy that you said you weren¡¯t.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Let¡¯s just say I haven¡¯t had a chance to come clean yet, even though it¡¯s kind of pointless since I am now officially teamed up with a girl who has probably inspected every inch of my life since the day I was born. The answer is yes, I did lie to her to protect myself at first, but it¡¯s rapidly becoming apparent that I am going to have to come up with an alternative method of ensuring my own safety.¡±


    ¡°Isn¡¯t that what my job is now?¡±


    I looked at her very seriously, and then asked her, ¡°Is it?¡±

 Chapter 21. Scooby-Doo was right. Its always a guy in a mask.

    Bob, or Senpai Bob, had been right. Tai Chi had been sort of an eye-opener. While a lot of the traditions about energy were¡­ a little out there, the core philosophy about working on energy flows had been extremely useful, and as a form of meditation, it was vastly superior to the hard martial arts and straight-up exercises I¡¯d been using before.


    Which was why I was practicing my Tai Chi. It was only two weeks into the new semester. I still hadn¡¯t gotten access to any radioactive materials, and I might not until at least the third year, my request for material from the regular vault had been enthusiastically approved by my new power exploitation(transformation) teacher, GrimFang!


    No, I wasn¡¯t trying to emphasize his name, his superhero Identity really was GrimFang! With the exclamation point. His form was perma-shifted, meaning that his powers had left a permanent stigmata on his body, which happened frequently for certain types of powers. Supposedly, down in Bolivia, there was a group of people that had Stigmata like Jaguars, that actually bred true. Because of the single-chromosome nature of the powers, it was awakened at birth, and they apparently had a much higher male alpha population as a result.


    In the case of GrimFang! However, he jokingly referred to himself as ¡®Florida Man¡¯. His awakening had something to do with two cases of beer, a cute girl, and a U-Haul pickup truck bed filled with over a dozen overcrowded and angry alligators.


    He was enormous, with over seven feet of corded muscle, covered with occasional green and yellow scales as well as a thick, powerful tail. His face was mostly human-like, with odd-looking reptilian eyes, but he had a hint of a muzzle, with two broad nostrils and sharper-than-average teeth.


    On command, he could shift into an even larger form, where his full head became a sort of dinosaur-like, his legs thickened and his feet grew longer to support a digitigrade stance, and his scales grew thick enough to qualify as full-on class four armor. He called it his battle form, and he could also shift into a gigantic Alligator, which was also class four but allowed him incredible aquatic mobility.


    Apparently, my teacher¡¯s physical oddities didn¡¯t affect his love life much, though, since I saw him with a number of extremely attractive alphas on a regular basis. And by a number, I mean having an ever-changing roster of two or three cute girls hanging off him when he wasn¡¯t teaching was not unusual.


    His teaching style was simple. Every person¡¯s power was different, so he encouraged and gave advice and ideas on how to stretch powers into different forms. Transformative powers were not all about getting bigger and stronger or flying faster, making bigger fireballs¡­ That was part of them, but it was about flexing your abilities in unusual ways.


    His advice was interesting, but not terribly useful since he mostly focused on physical transformations, although I did have a transformative power, in the form of blueprints, and the idea of creating a ¡®battle blueprint¡¯, a short-term secondary reset that could enhance certain abilities at the expense of others, was exciting¡­ although it would have to wait until my energy pool was much, much larger.


    Unlike most alphas, my physical mass would have to remain the same. I couldn¡¯t pull matter from the ether, or return it when I was done with it, and the idea of a battle form that would require me to eat for hours ahead of time and then ¡®dispose¡¯ of the remains when I reset back sounded disgusting, but I already knew that I had a shift ability in the form of my dash, and it helped to cement a few ideas I had for improving my energy levels.


    I¡¯d had a few social nibbles of my own. Both power exploitation and basic teamwork were ¡®costume¡¯ classes, and there was one woman in teamwork named Talisman, an exquisite dark-eyed number with hair that resembled Akyo¡¯s, who made it very clear that she was interested in seeing me without my costume. Her ability was creating tiny statues that created temporary boosts in physical ability, and after the third time I politely begged off having any social contact, she let me know in no uncertain terms that she could create talismans that improved virility to superhuman levels.


    Paranoia wins every time, though¡­ I was interested, but I had a lot more important things to do than be added to someone¡¯s harem. Besides, I was sort of starting to like Candace, we¡¯d started working out together in the mornings, although I wasn¡¯t going to ask her to go out or anything.


    I¡¯d even come clean to Mindy, and her reaction was surprising. ¡°Operation Security¡± she had answered. ¡°You didn¡¯t know me, and considering what you were doing, I can¡¯t blame you a bit.¡± Although, on some level, I still think she blamed me for her being the last to know.


    So, with the materials for suits secured, I¡¯d started to make a new set of suits for the rest of the team, including myself.


    And I was doing Tai Chi in the tunnel.


    Yes, I¡¯d gotten a decontamination chamber. Basically, it was a portable full-steam setup, where the water was reclaimed and placed into hazardous storage until I could empty it.


    It turned out that the vapor and pressure outlet that kept the tunnel itself decontaminated had gotten badly corroded over time and was somewhat damaged, and they¡¯d installed a new lock at the head of the tunnel, but once I¡¯d proved that I could handle the radiation and penetrative toxins from the old tailings that were farther down, I¡¯d been allowed to install the decontamination chamber at the lock and use the tunnel for ¡®power training¡¯. Apparently, it wasn¡¯t the strangest thing they¡¯d ever dealt with, not by a longshot.


    I couldn¡¯t go all the way down the tunnel to the bottom safely, not yet. Hell, with the lock installed, I couldn¡¯t even breathe safely because of the toxic fumes. There was simply too much radiation for me to absorb its momentum safely, and breathing toxic fumes wasn¡¯t something I could draw power from¡­ after a few minutes it would do enough damage to my lungs that I¡¯d need a reset, which would waste the power I¡¯d manage to absorb.


    Solution? A helmet and light hazard suit. The helmet was my own design. By my own design, I meant I¡¯d ripped off some publicly available designs, banged them together into a similar design like the one I¡¯d made for Mindy, and added a set of miniature compressed air tanks. They were only rated for half an hour, but considering how easily I could filter and recompress the air inside of them while I was training, they could last as long as I needed.


    I¡¯d also been monkeying with the electronics. After much fumbling, I¡¯d found a bios chip from an old smartphone from before the faafo, and I rebuilt it into another set of carbon microcircuits along with five other Superchips. It was hilarious that I was wearing enough computer power to run all of the city¡¯s infrastructure including traffic control on my head, and using it to run software that was barely better than ¡®Hello World!¡¯.


    Right now my HUD has an energy gauge, based on the original quantum displacement meter, a very basic graphics program, and text viewer with a downloaded power listing from one of the wiki sites, an oxygen gauge, and¡­ clock. Okay, it wasn¡¯t exactly something to be proud of, but getting everything right had tapped just about every bit of my programming knowledge.


    Abigail was after me to take advantage of the power and storage of the systems by installing something called a Development AI. I knew just enough about programming to know that an AI was nothing of the sort, it was a comparison sort program that could assign weighted values to things to assemble other things.


    The problem is, that the weighted AIs she was interested in were all created by Alphas, and I was paranoid enough that I didn¡¯t want to stick a potential backdoor to an enemy into the place where I might have to control things like life support. 2001¡¯s HAL would only be possible if someone actually programmed it to behave that way, but what a cyberkinetic Alpha could do if allowed to install their own version of a master control program was a little terrifying.


    As I ran through the exercises, I interspersed them with some of the qigong I¡¯d seen and learned online. Tai chi, at its core, was actually intended to be a real martial art. Not a great one, but decent for self-defense and weapon use, and helpful for energy flows. Quigong, on the other hand, was designed to be almost exclusively for energy flows¡­ but between the two of them, I was putting together a pretty good method for working out my energy method. The proof was in the corner of my HUD, 723 energy.


    Each time I took a pass, I tried to circulate that energy through the blockages. So far, I had limited success, but as my soul container stretched out the compression or whatever in the spirit energy increased, slowly. I felt like there was a chance I could finally blow them out, and each time my energy pool spun I accumulated more momentum.


    Each rotation I tried to squirt energy towards the blockages, my body going through the modified forms of qigong allowing me to gather energy even without inhaling the poisonous air, but currently, the energy was still wispy and thin, it was like trying to move a stack of empty cardboard boxes with a house fan. The blockages wiggled a bit, but without some external effect, it just wasn¡¯t enough¡­ I was hoping that ¡®condensing¡¯ the energy would be more like a firehouse, or if I was even stronger, a pressure washer.


    But it seemed like a catch-22 situation, at least currently. As I exercised, the power built, but it stretched out my soul chamber more, rather than just compressing it. I needed¡­ something, other than a simple vortex, but it felt like the only way to increase the complexity of what I was using was to allow it to flow through the energy channels that were blocked.


    That was probably the biggest problem I had with momentum as my spirit concept or dao¡­ Things that resisted momentum, like the really solid sorts of energy, were hard kryptonite. I was actually pretty sure that some of the Daos literally rejected momentum, and I was slowly labeling the shapes as I puzzled out what they might be.


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    So far, I tentatively labeled rigidity, steadfast, stolid, and unyielding as the worst offenders. It was strange naming them as concepts, but while they were similar, they were not all exactly the same spirit shape. Then again, some concepts were so similar to mine that I could easily convert them. Concepts like speed, motion, forthrightness, and even more elemental concepts like air and ambition seemed to slide right into my energy pool to be purified into something I could use.


    The weirdest part was that I felt like there was a second pool of energy, somewhere deep beneath the one I used, with a type of energy that I wasn¡¯t able to interpret. Every once in a while it seemed to spin out and reach into what I was doing, changing it somehow.


    If I was right, that meant I actually had a second power, and my suspicion was that it was whatever let me make blueprints. It was very weak, and it seemed to follow an odd sort of path that implied that it had its own¡­ dantians I guess? But it was very definitely a different energy route from my momentum-based powers, the ones most easily identified and manipulated.


    My suspicion was that it was sort of in passive mode, and hadn¡¯t been awakened like my momentum control. Again, that left me in a state of confusion, because I didn¡¯t really have any idea how to awaken it beyond the very minor (although important to me) ability to memorize patterns, or if I should¡­ I mean, what kind of a risk would it take to awaken whatever true power it might have? Was having two powers activated even a good thing?


    Most importantly, why didn¡¯t anyone know this stuff? I wasn¡¯t an innovator¡­ give me a good tutorial or a plan and I could perfect it easily, but this flailing around in the dark thing was infuriating.


    I finally felt like I was finished, with my energy at 725, but to improve my compression significantly I¡¯d probably have to go deeper, and I wasn¡¯t confident in my ability to strip the energy from the radiation before it penetrated and started doing damage¡­ although, if that what it took to start compressing, I¡¯d probably do it eventually in hopes that I could build up enough compression for a change in density before I had to restore.


    Unfortunately, the steam decontamination cleaned off toxins from the suit but didn¡¯t help my own feelings of dirtiness. The suit was stifling, but necessary, and I was soaked in my own sweat and the nastiness of getting at least some of the toxins and secondary buildup out of my system. I mean, I could feel the obstructions peeling away, but it was taking forever.


    Once my suit was clean, and I made sure I wasn¡¯t lugging around any excess, unabsorbed radiation, I stripped the suit, steamed it again, and hung it up outside of the lock to air out and dry.


    The suite was empty as I walked in, which was not really much of a surprise since it was close to midnight on a Friday. I had to hit the tunnel during extra-curricular time, and I¡¯d had to turn down an invitation to go out to dinner with them, settling for a quickly gulped down cafeteria dinner before I went to meditate. They were probably still out or had already headed to bed, and I quickly headed to the showers.


    When I came out wearing a towel over shorts, I noticed that Abigail was sitting at a table, eating a bowl of cereal. I started to move past her but she waved a spoon at me before quickly gulping her mouthful and saying, ¡°Hey Jacob!¡±


    I smiled a little, ¡°Hey Abbey, what¡¯s up?¡±


    She coughed a little and pointed her spoon at the chair across from her. ¡°I got ya a few things. You¡¯ve worked so hard making sure we got our armor, and you are working hard in your classes and spending time training and working at the clinic, so I figured I would start trying to research some stuff for you.¡±


    I nodded and cracked my knuckles. ¡°Awesome. I¡¯d say you didn¡¯t have to, but I know how fast you can research stuff.¡±


    She nodded and held up a data stick. ¡°This. It¡¯s only partially translated, but one of the teachers, the one that teaches energy control and eastern studies, Doctor Reynolds, told me you were looking for this, and gave me a few clues on what to look for.¡±


    ¡°Have you seen it?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I kinda had to transfer it. It was from the Serenoid invasion in the 90s. Most of it was pictures, and whatever language they use is mostly pictographic so it¡¯s almost impossible to translate, but Doctor Reynolds said you might be able to make use of it. He also said to blueprint it and destroy it, and not to look at it on a machine attached to the network. Honestly, to me, it¡¯s gibberish, a bunch of pictures of weird aliens doing weird alien things.¡±


    ¡°Thank you!¡± I said, taking the memory stick. It was a simple USB 5 plug-in, maybe a couple of terabytes total, but I intended to run through it and blueprint it as soon as possible. Apparently, senpai Bob intended to come through, but probably couldn¡¯t get permission to let me see the diagrams, and this was the best way to get around those restrictions.


    Abigail smirked a little, and pulled off her glasses, ¡°Does this mean you owe me?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I sure hope so. Why, do you need a favor?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, I do. But I want to save up enough favors that when I decide to call them in, you are helpless to resist. Besides, You kind of already did me a favor. The armor is awesome and sexy, and the half-silver faceplate is perfect for my projection.¡±


    I shrugged and ran with it. ¡°The armor isn¡¯t sexy, that¡¯s all you. The half-silver thing was just kind of obvious when you described your power since glasses could get knocked off in a fight. But in the end, the armor is designed to adapt to almost any body type, you just happen to have a good one.¡±


    Abbey was turning red, ¡°Thank you umm¡­¡± She glanced at me and then stood up, heading to rinse out her bowl in the sink. ¡°We have our first teamwork exercises tomorrow, so you should probably try to get some sleep.¡±


    I nodded and got to my feet. ¡°Thank you again,¡± I said, scratching my chest. ¡°This is pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Even if it doesn¡¯t help, it¡¯s at least a step in the right direction.¡±


    She nodded quickly and headed into her room, leaving me to shake my head and head to my own room. Such a strange girl, but a lot safer to flirt with than either Mindy or Chinook¡­ Mindy because she knew full well I was just teasing, and Chinook because the one time I complimented her personally instead of professionally, she immediately started hinting that she wouldn¡¯t mind going out or even staying in. Like there was anywhere to go while we were on lockdown, which we would probably be until at least the end of year one.


    Was I being intentionally naive and obtuse? You bet your ass. While I doubted very much that Mindy or Akyo had any real romantic interest, Candace had already made it clear that she would entertain the notion, and Abigail was definitely trying to play the shy hard-to-get game. It was fun occasionally flirting around, but I still didn¡¯t want to get involved with an alpha, especially one like Abbey who could, quite literally, alter my memory if she chose.


    ***


    ¡°What is that?¡± Kali asked, rubbing her eyes. She clearly had been woken up out of a sound sleep as Princess Pixel called her attention. She was grumpy because a board meeting had gone late, but Pixel almost never called unless it was something profound.


    ¡°I was keeping an eye on your new boy toy. He¡¯s using a disconnected system to peruse, get this, the old Serenoid files. He¡¯s going through them like I go through a database, but he keeps making noises like it¡¯s the best thing he¡¯s ever read, and I double-checked, none of the girls are under his desk. He really is that boring.¡±


    ¡°Is he able to translate them?¡±


    Pixel shook her head, ¡°I don¡¯t think so unless he has a linguistic gift we don¡¯t know about, but that would make a grand total of seven nearly disconnected abilities. I¡¯ve been doing database sweeps, and I still haven¡¯t been able to find a common theme.¡±


    ¡°What do we have so far?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Temperature control, electric control, Tinker gift, physical enhancement, perfect recall, teleportation, and healing. All of them were technically class four or below, but remember that Graviton was very similar¡­ a single ability, but a real talent for modification¡­ Do you have any idea what could encompass all of those?¡±


    Kali nodded, ¡°Yes, molecular control.¡±


    Pixel¡¯s eyes widened, ¡°Seriously? That¡¯s like a god power. It¡¯s still apparently weak, but we might need to step things up. Do we have someone in?¡±


    Kali smiled a little, ¡°Yes, but besides his armor and the healing thing, he¡¯s not sharing much with his team. Did you find out much about that Crystal girl?¡±


    Pixel nodded, ¡°Yep. The Flare. They actually filed a marriage license, although from what I understand, she has a form of mesmerism as part of her light powerset. He tried to claim that he was controlled when she and his cousin took control of his company, but an independent verification service confirmed that giving her ten percent of his voting stock was his own stupidity.¡±


    Kali nodded, that certainly explained a lot. ¡°So, aside from his odd choice in bedtime entertainment¡­¡±


    Pixel sighed, ¡°The Maxwells have been agitating. I don¡¯t have definitive proof, but the Academy¡¯s been stonewalling them, and Adrian is acting like he¡¯s going to start throwing his weight around. Interfering might put our surveillance at risk, but¡­ well¡­ if I need to mess with them, I need to start now or we will be playing catch-up.¡±


    Kali shook her head, ¡°Nope, keep in the clear, but keep an eye on things. Like I said, we already have our in, and she can help if Adrian tries something. It might also give us an opportunity to investigate his power in-depth. If needed we can interfere later, but that won¡¯t be your problem, Pixel, just keep an eye on him.¡±


    Princess Pixel smirked, ¡°Right, no one will ever notice the great Kali showing up to stomp one of the Farmer Families. Planning to live up to your namesake? Or should I tell whoever you planted to try and get under his desk? From what I understand from the Academy¡¯s traffic, a lot of girls would jump at the chance. Hell, I¡¯d probably jump at the chance.¡±


    Kali shrugged, ¡°I doubt it will be necessary, but it¡¯s been a while since I had a good fight. As far as getting under his desk, don¡¯t offer that lightly. From what you have supplied, he is in desperate need of a decent coder, and it might come down to getting you closer to him. Keep me updated. I am going to get some sleep.¡±


    Pixel snickered, ¡°Right, gotcha. I have some security camera footage of when he decided to take a walk from the shower to his bedroom without bothering to get dressed. Do you want me to send it to you? I bet you¡¯d be right under the desk with me. Do you want me to interrupt you if you are in a meeting?¡±


    Kali sighed and nodded, ¡°Only if he¡¯s in legitimate danger or we need to intervene directly. I will be¡­ negotiating with the Coopers for the next few days.¡±


    ***


    Codex shook her head. Dammit, this op was most likely burned.

 Chapter 22. If you want something done right...

    Something was very, very wrong. It felt a lot like when I was porting when my body was disconnected from my mind, or like the one time I had to reset after being technically dead. My body was still there, but for some reason, my system wasn¡¯t working right. I carefully started tracing myself and comparing it to my last blueprint, which I had taken right after my workout and meditation session in the tunnel.


    Nope, I wasn¡¯t asleep. This wasn¡¯t a bad dream. There was something flowing through my bloodstream, interrupting my nervous system. It wasn¡¯t doing any damage, but it was a very powerful¡­ My autonomic systems were still going, I was still breathing, and my heart was still beating.


    Yep, I had been hit with a toxin, probably inside of the last 20 minutes. My brain was fairly well protected, chemically, but whatever hit me had caught me while I was asleep, and it had slowed down my waking process. I¡¯d been hovering half-asleep for the whole time, a sort of sleep paralysis enhanced by what felt like ACP or possibly an offshoot powerful enough to affect Alphas but unlikely to kill off humans.


    Fortunately, because of the advancements I had made to my nervous system, resetting that alone was fairly easy. I had traced and blueprinted the entire chemical portion, and the electrical portion was almost completely unaffected¡­ that was one of the reasons ACP was favored among old-school veterinarians, because it only had mild psychotropic effects, leaving the brain¡¯s chemistry only slightly affected. It was what you dosed an Alpha with when you wanted them to wake up ready to answer questions or assist you, and I wondered if this was actually supposed to be a set-up for some kind of teamwork survival training.


    Yeah, there was a set of rules for hostage situations, we knew them, they knew them, nothing mysterious.


    First rule, Don¡¯t ever let a bad guy lead you someplace if he has the drop on you. That almost always means he¡¯s trying to take you someplace where he has a bigger advantage to eliminate or silence you. Well, based on the vibrations I felt as my nervous system slowly reset, the first rule was already a wash, it felt like I was in some kind of small flying transport.


    The second rule, try to notice any landmarks, whether sight, sound, smell, or even taste. I was working on that. If it WAS a training scenario, there would have to be an opportunity to escape or communicate at some point¡­ if it wasn¡¯t, well, I was confident that I would think of something, I always did.


    The third rule is escape. If this was NOT some kind of scenario set up for teamwork, it was a kidnapping. Kidnappers were a threat to your life. By definition. If someone was threatening your life, that meant they chose to intend to do so.


    It was a minor point, but an important one. Kidnappers, if things went wrong, intended to MURDER you. Therefore there is a strong moral argument for doing unto them before they can do unto you¡­ Hell, it¡¯s almost a moral mandate, because if they are willing to kidnap and murder you, they would be willing to do it to others, and my father always said that all it takes for evil to thrive is for good and just men to do nothing.


    Of course, he also said that if you cut a board too short you could always stretch it, but if you cut it too long there was nothing you could do, and that men¡¯s mistake wasn¡¯t giving women the vote, it was teaching them to speak, so I took some of his advice with a grain of salt as big as my head.


    But good advice or not, I was still trying to mentally prepare myself to kill someone if I had to. End their life. Destroy their entire history and potential. Maybe I had a sociopathic streak, but the idea didn¡¯t bother me that much. Mostly I was worried about the trope that ¡®killing changes a man¡¯ that old Hollywood used to push.


    It didn¡¯t help that I felt pretty damned good. I¡¯d memorized the short pamphlet and destroyed the storage medium it came on. Disintegrated it, actually. I didn¡¯t buy into the idea that people could remember every single moment of their lives perfectly without a superpower, since human memory didn¡¯t work that way, but blueprinting? That was not the same thing as memory. The Pamphlet was only sixty pages, and even though I couldn¡¯t make head or tail of the writing, I had blueprinted every page, including the cover.


    Blueprinting was NOT like memory, not at all. I couldn¡¯t ¡®recall¡¯ anything about a blueprint, but what I could, and did, was to study it the same way someone could a physical object. It was like a copy of the file was in my head that I could re-read at my leisure. If I wanted to have a blueprint¡¯s facts as part of my own core knowledge, I had to commit it to memory the same way anyone else did.


    And boy, were the diagrams on energy flow ever so interesting and worth properly memorizing. Rushing wouldn¡¯t help me right here, and obviously, I couldn¡¯t move to meditate to digest or try to apply what I had learned, so I lay down to allow my nerves to slowly reset. Not too quickly, or my body¡¯s jerks would alert my captors, which might mean my adventure would end prematurely.


    Bob had been right. A lot of the diagrams had been designed to invoke energy through dance and having six arms available. It looked like eight limbs were some sort of magical number that allowed the Serenoids an unprecedented amount of control over external energy¡­ a lot of the symbols were clearly directly related to the shapes of certain energies.


    It was almost as though their multiple limbs allowed their dance to actively manipulate those symbols like they didn¡¯t have a set one or two affinities the way humans did, but that their dances allowed them to tap into a huge variety of affinities. In essence, what they lost in the natural ability to connect to a dao, they gained by an innate connection to a sort of magical ability that required the use of eight limbs¡­ divine or profane symmetry that seemed to embrace the language of dao itself.


    Okay, point to myself for purple poetic delving. Anyway, they appeared to be masters of external energy use, meaning what they lacked in sheer power, they made up for in versatility. More importantly, a lot of the diagrams clearly showed their internal energy distribution, and while it was true some of it wouldn¡¯t be able to be applied to a creature like me, some of it was VERY exciting and showed concepts, like 3-dimensional rotation, that I had never even considered.


    As feeling returned to my limbs, I could tell a few things. I was lying down on my side on a moving surface, what felt like a flier or hover based on the subtle shifts and slow shudders from minor turbulence rather than the rhythmic pounding of wheels or treads rolling over the pavement.


    The smell of ionized electronics and lubricant implied that it was probably a light drone carrier for repair or possibly mail delivery. A delivery hover? That meant two or at most three people. I could hear a steady hum and dull distant roar of fanjets through an imperfect sound seal, so yes, a hover. That meant we were on the ground, and limited the possible distance that I could have been taken.


    No, I didn¡¯t have a ¡®unique set of skills for dealing with kidnappings¡¯, or anything like that, it¡¯s just that anyone who¡¯s ever ridden in them can pretty easily tell the difference between a small flier, a hover, and a true ground vehicle from sounds and vibrations alone. Could you feel the difference between being on a boat compared to a haywagon? Sort of like that.


    I felt a pair of heavy bracers around my forearms, holding my wrists crossed behind my back. I recognized them as quantum nullifiers, like prisons use to keep alpha prisoners from simply using their powers to kill everyone and escape, that were electromagnetically sealed together in their ¡®lockdown¡¯ mode.


    Nullifiers were terrifying. They blocked off the connection between your energy node and the ether with some kind of powerful scrambler. I had the plans for several different kinds memorized, but that didn¡¯t mean I actually understood how they worked, although I had an idea.


    But my energy node wasn¡¯t connected to the ether. I didn¡¯t pull my power from someplace that could be blocked off by a scrambled barrier like most alphas. For perhaps the first time ever, my absolutely limited power supply was an actual advantage, because quantum nullifiers would force most alpha power levels to drop to near zero in a matter of seconds, but me? They were mostly an inconvenience because it would take me a few seconds to break the power streams in the electromagnets so I could get my hands under me and lift myself off the floor of the truck.


    I had some sort of hood over my head. Not a full silence hood, but it definitely blocked my eyesight and seemed to have some sort of clasp under my chin. That was...concerning, but after a few moments I realized that I could easily scan it because, like the nullifiers, the whole hood was close to my skin and well within the range of my blueprinting ability.


    The hood was made of woven titanium, and seemed to be a piece of alpha armor¡­ it didn¡¯t block hearing or breathing, but the bulletproof glass visor was blacked out by the simple, and slightly smelly, expedient of it having been recently painted with silver spray paint on the interior. That meant unprofessional, and the nullifier bracelets were of a design that I was totally unfamiliar with, foreign maybe?


    I was also wearing something that felt a lot like light alpha armor. The grain wasn¡¯t pleasant against my skin, and it wasn¡¯t very good stuff, made of woven Kevlar and Cosprene fibers, but it WOULD make me look like an unconscious alpha after a fight rather than a prisoner.


    So in my opinion I had three choices.


    The first choice was to try and dash out of there. I could absolutely leave the nullifiers and probably the hood behind, but then I would be unmasked displaying at least class four abilities. Traffic cameras, dashcams, and idle bored would know exactly who I was inside of a few hours and a pretty good idea of what my powers were too.


    The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    And it relied on the hovertruck NOT being airtight. I could dash through smallish cracks, but I had never even TRIED to move through a totally solid surface before. Theoretically, it was possible to slide between the molecules, but look what happened to Buckaroo Banzai! I was not scared enough to experiment in a way that could wind up with me halfway bonded into a steel wall, with a potential fusion event depending on my luck.


    My second option was to break free, kill or disable everyone in the truck, and try to take control before the thing crashed. From what I could hear there were three people breathing in the truck around me, one of whom was the driver. Since I wasn¡¯t quite ready to go on a murderous rampage, especially with no information, and I thought they expected me to still be unconscious, I put that one on the back burner.


    Option three was to wait around like a good little unconscious lump of meat and hope to be rescued, absorbing as much information about what was actually going on as possible. Not a tremendously appealing idea, and it felt a bit too passive.


    After a few minutes, I decided to combine all three. I would wait and see, try to get as much information as possible hopefully about who and why I was being intentionally misplaced, and then eventually dash or disintegrate my bonds. I¡¯d decide on the killing part later, but if they had hurt the girls getting to me, that option would definitely be on the table.


    Yeah, me, weak-ass power thinking about getting vengeance if they ¡®hurt¡¯ the class four and five girls that could beat me like a pinata with their hands tied behind their back. How pathetic was that? Me big strong caveman, beat chest and protect women wearing power armor from dangerous raccoons!


    That didn¡¯t stop me though. They were becoming my friends, and friends cared about other friends getting hurt.


    ¡°Coming up on the interchange,¡± a male voice mumbled quietly from the front. ¡°Deacon, prop up his highness so casual scans show him sitting up next to you. Baelfire? Get ready. If anything goes wrong, if it looks like the checkpoint defenders are going to inspect, and burn everything. Witnesses, defenders, whatever¡­ half mile radius is scorched. No witnesses.¡±


    Okay, that made plan four the best one. A pyro, quite possibly a powerful one. His Highness? What the hell was that about? I felt hands dragging me up to a sitting position, and let my head loll forward as someone tried to maneuver me into a decent sitting position leaning against the metal inside the wall of the truck.


    Okay, I admit it, I was enjoying flopping forward bonelessly as I heard a female voice cussing and trying to hold me steady. She clearly wasn¡¯t particularly possessed of any kind of alpha might or physical enhancement, and I won¡¯t hesitate to admit that my bone density and mass were a LOT higher than my already-large size would suggest.


    ¡°Stop fucking around, Deacon,¡± a female voice said angrily.


    ¡°He¡¯s a lot heavier than I thought he was. I¡¯m not used to handling unconscious people. You want to do it?¡± a second female voice, Deacon, I guess, whined.


    ¡°Duct tape his helmet to the shelf.¡±


    After the ripping of tape and the feel of my helmet getting taped into place, I still tried to make sure that my ¡®unconscious¡¯ posture looked as unnatural as possible. Sleeping people unconsciously adjust to make sure they are still comfortably asleep, but people who are knocked out or dead just tend to dead-muscle and sometimes their natural muscle tension makes their limbs settle in odd positions.


    I didn¡¯t want to attract attention if there was an IR scan, though, because¡­ well¡­ if this Baelfire chick was nasty enough, all that raising a ruckus would do would be getting a lot of people killed. In fact, I decided to sort of modify plan four, because even pretending to be unconscious or unwilling stood a very good chance of getting people killed. I wasn¡¯t a hero, but that didn¡¯t mean I needed to be an asshole.


    ¡°Excuse me,¡± I said quietly.


    ¡°What the fuck?¡± I heard the voice in front of me, sounding startled, Baelfire, I guess? I felt a quick flash of heat on my front, but Deacon¡¯s hiss made it stop.


    ¡°You are awake? Dammit. Enhanced physique. I should have guessed even ACP wouldn¡¯t hold you down long.¡± The male voice said.


    I sighed, ¡°Look. I am fine with cooperating if you have to cross some inspection checkpoint, and I had my fun flopping around while Deacon was trying to prop me up. You have very delicate hands, by the way, Deacon¡­ I wish I could have felt them under different circumstances, but I really don¡¯t want Baelfire here to roast however many people might be there if they get suspicious.¡±


    ¡°I mean, if she does it she does it, It will be her killing them, not me, but she sounds like she hasn¡¯t murdered anyone in a while and is antsy about it, so I will cooperate and keep my mouth shut until we get to someplace more private where I can properly deal with you.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t you mean where we can properly deal with you? You are not in exactly the position to be making threats. I don¡¯t know if you noticed, but toxin resistance or not, you have a set of electro-locked quantum nullifiers. Right now you might as well be a normal guy instead of an Alpha."


    I shrugged a little as I felt the duct tape being ripped off the helmet. ¡°Whatever makes you feel better.¡±


    I heard Deacon¡¯s voice. ¡°Please accept our sincere apologies on behalf of the Maxwell group and Adrian Maxwell for this rather¡­ abrupt introduction. None of your friends were harmed when we made our extraction, but the BSA was making it absolutely clear that you were being held as an incommunicado virtual prison at the Kellar academy, so we needed to¡­ take steps to ensure your freedom to make your own decisions.¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°So that¡¯s why you have me in a black-out helmet, a set of nullifiers, and pumped me full of animal tranks? And why nameless here¡­¡± I nodded my voice in the driver¡¯s direction, ¡°told the pyro there to burn off any innocent bystanders, wall guards, tourists, or any other possible witnesses. To set me free. Apology not accepted. I will not cause problems for now, out of a desire to prevent unnecessary deaths, but you might as well toss me out of the door because I won¡¯t cut deals with mass murderers, kidnappers, and psychopaths.¡±


    The male voice at the front sighed deeply. ¡°It appears we have made a poor impression on our guest. We are past the border, and there seems to be little sense in keeping him blinded unless you¡¯d rather keep the helmet to preserve your identity."


    I shrugged, ¡°The only enemies I am worried about right now drugged me and snatched me naked out of my bed somehow in the middle of a protected underground complex. If you did it without hurting anyone, I applaud your talents despite wanting you dead for daring to threaten to murder innocents.¡± I said, glaring at Baelfire, since Deacon¡¯s apology implied that they didn¡¯t want me dead.


    ¡°Since you already know my identity, then I don¡¯t see how protecting it is going to help much.¡± After a moment, the chin strap was removed and Deacon, a small and slender, french-looking brunette with a doll-like face, half-mask, and skintight costume of a gauzy, pale blue, and pixie cut, removed the helmet. Beside her was another woman, but this one was clearly wearing combat armor, black with red edging, and a full-face mask that looked like something out of a transforming robot cartoon.


    ¡°Oh, he¡¯s a pretty boy,¡± Baelfire remarked threateningly. ¡°I think you should let me put a few marks on that beautiful face. That way he wouldn¡¯t be so pretty anymore.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Hey, you got the threatening thing down pretty well. Tell you what. I¡¯ll happily let you burn me if you don¡¯t mind if I take off your arms and legs. I will heal, will you? If you are worried, I might just take your fingers instead. After all, you don¡¯t need them to burn things, right?¡±


    Did I think I could defeat her? Of course not, but I was a master of getting away from exactly her type. Pyros were not as sought-after on teams, and thus I had helped several of them get good rep, including that dick-bag Hotshot. With my newly improved energy pool, I might even be able to shut down the heat from her abilities, at least for a while¡­ and a Pyro with no heat was just a nasty woman with a flame fetish. No, I refused to be impressed or intimidated.


    Baelfire just stared at me for some reason. After a few minutes, her faceless mask shook slightly, ¡°You honestly believe that, don¡¯t you? Your infrared didn¡¯t waver in the slightest, you honestly believe that if I tried to burn you, you could take off my limbs and not be harmed, even wearing a nullifier. Are you insane?¡±


    I looked at her in shock, ¡°Isn¡¯t everyone that puts on a costume and a mask and goes out to kill or die for whatever stupid adrenaline junkie reason they can think of? I love the mask, though. It really pulls off the whole faceless evil vibe. You could make a mint as a professional PR villain, especially since even with the armor it¡¯s clear you have an underwear model body and porn star tits.¡±


    As Baelfire just turned away, Deacon looked at me in confusion, ¡°Are you trying to make her angry? The last guy that made a pass at her got both of his hands burned off.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°I am not making a pass. I¡¯d sooner fuck a nuclear reactor. Just pointing out reality. As alphas, our definition of insane is pretty far out there. If Baelfire here tries to burn me, I can guarantee you with utmost confidence I would get better and I¡¯d take away a body part or two as a souvenir. I wouldn¡¯t do it for revenge, or out of fear or pain, I¡¯d do it to remind her next time not to fuck with what she doesn¡¯t understand.¡±


    I smiled at Deacon, ¡°The same applies to you, and nameless behind the wheel who is apparently running this operation. As a personal favor, I would rather you not make me clean blood out of my teeth or give you colon cancer, both are unpleasant and painful ways to die.¡±


    The guy behind the wheel, a heavyweight type wearing a tied mask and ballcap, shook his head. ¡°Jesus. Class sixes. You guys really do consider yourselves gods, don¡¯t you?¡±


    I smiled a little, and tugged my wrists from in front of me, interrupting the electromagnets that held them locked and disintegrating the slender locking mechanisms that held them closed. I could probably have just cranked the bolts open instead, but it would have been a lot less impressive than snapping the bands and dropping them onto the floor. Besides, they were blueprinted now. If I needed them, I could just create a copy, they weren¡¯t made of particularly unusual or expensive materials.


    ¡°Aren¡¯t we?¡± I asked as the bands clattered on the metal floor of the truck. ¡°How about we go talk with this Adrian guy, and I can decide whether or not to kill him for hiring murderous thugs to come after me.¡±


    If there was one thing I was good at, it was monologuing and projecting confidence, even if the only thing I was confident about was having a decent chance to escape.

 Chapter 23. Meditatus Interruptus

    I had to admit, I was truly and selfishly irritated.


    Look, I have selfish impulses just like anyone else, and like most civilized humans, I do my best to reign them in¡­ That¡¯s the definition of a human instead of an animal. Humans share a lot of urges with animals, but we have the self-control to put them aside, especially if they would hurt or damage other people. Saying ¡®Hey look, it¡¯s natural because animals do it!¡¯ to justify doing something screwed up, just means you are no better than an animal and belong in a cage like one.


    But my current urge was purely selfish, and I hated having to put it aside. Not because it would hurt anyone, although the fallout potentially could, but rather because the three stooges holding me captive in this stupid van were getting on my nerves and distracting me.


    I wasn¡¯t able to truly interpret the Serenoid pamphlet, but it wasn¡¯t really designed for linguistic transfer anyway. Once you started to realize what the symbols actually meant, the pamphlet itself started to make more sense. It was like a basic guide that advanced to later forms.


    Why an alien invasion would have something like this was a true mystery, but I remembered the stories, the first gate they arrived through opened and they seemed to be peaceful at first. The moment they saw their first alpha, however, they seemed to go insane, screaming and starting to immediately throw out powerful spells, ignoring the previously peaceful humans getting caught in the crossfire.


    The whole situation was confusing, because the Serenoids fought like the mad, to the death, draining their own life force to keep powering their abilities. No prisoners. Maybe they innately hated Alphas for some reason, or because they couldn¡¯t tolerate anyone stronger than they were, or they needed to challenge anyone who was equal to them to the death, or maybe they didn¡¯t like the colors of their costumes¡­ the reasons why were as confusing and got more so as more and more ideas got tossed around, but the reality was an absolute mystery.


    But simply contemplating the first few diagrams in my head while I waited for this ridiculous trip to end was enough to unveil some answers to my own problems, just from the pictures of energy flows alone. I had screwed up, badly.


    Technically, I was at a stage called body tempering. That¡¯s the stage where you unlock your energy points, and start running energy through your body naturally to improve your body. It wasn¡¯t the organ-destroying and regeneration stuff I had imagined, but rather it was supposed to prepare your body and sweep out and purify your system, preparing it to handle soul and spirit energies.


    There was even a picture of a six-armed male figure sweating black droplets as the symbol that meant essence was shown with arrows moving through all of his limbs.


    I had utterly screwed the pooch by running things in reverse order. My body modification was useful, but I had literally contaminated my own body by doing it before I gave my body the chance to adapt naturally to my energy. I couldn¡¯t break through those blockages, because by modifying my own nervous system and muscle structure, I had destroyed the natural pathways through which that energy was supposed to travel!


    And trying to increase my energy density in hopes of ripping my way through my own energy channels appeared, to put it bluntly, utterly suicidal. It would have been like trying to use a four-inch firehouse to cut a new doorway on the fiftieth floor of a building made of tissue paper.


    What this meant was that my efforts were terrible. The logical flow of the pamphlet, or perhaps guide, was unmistakable. The later energy patterns, as well as the ones that exist in the diagram, six-armed spellcasting? Were probably completely useless, but the basic steps just fit completely.


    The answer? I was going to have to reset my body to an earlier blueprint before I allowed the energy to flow through me with the spiraling pattern. I would lose density, mass, strength, and reaction speed for a while, even some musculature, but it would reset me to about the same level I had been last year and hopefully a little more from the corrected flow. My energy now was MUCH higher, though, so once I did it I should be able to start rotating my energy correctly and allowing it to fill and reinforce my cells naturally.


    But I couldn¡¯t get started here, in front of these¡­ people.


    ¡°You, behind the wheel. Do you have a name, or should I just call you Goon Three?¡±


    ¡°My name is Magazine. Class five Kinetic. I¡¯ve put down a few class sixes in my day, and even a class seven. I am willing to entertain your disrespect because you are not resisting currently and Adrian wants you alive, but please be aware that any attempt to vacate the vehicle before we arrive at our destination will result in this vehicle getting squashed to the approximate size of a meatball and heated to the temperature of molten titanium in less than a second.¡±


    ¡°You would kill your teammates?¡±


    ¡°These girls are not my teammates. They are employees, just like I am. Baelfire would survive, since she can render her body into plasma and would be the source of the heat, but Deacon, obviously, would not. If you resist, you will be directly responsible for her death.¡±


    I laughed, kind of a low, ugly sound. ¡°No, you would be. You have already decided to murder her if something unexpected happens, and every step in the process you have to choose to take. If she dies, you are entirely responsible. Don¡¯t try to play those hostage word games with me, I have heard them far too many times.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t kidding. When planning to play PR pirate, I had listened to the real thing far too many times. That old ¡®you are responsible for forcing my actions¡¯ crap has been a feature of humans dodging responsibility for being murderous assholes since before history was written. Most commonly popularized by beaten women who blame themselves for their husband¡¯s abuse, it is also a fairly popular gaslighting technique for normal people.


    It¡¯s like survivor¡¯s guilt, and it¡¯s often preyed upon by the unscrupulous. ¡°If Only I had been there five minutes earlier!¡± is bullshit. You weren¡¯t there, you had no idea something was wrong, and the only way you¡¯d have done anything different was if you had knowledge of the future¡­ and even then it probably wouldn¡¯t have worked, a lot of foreseers say that the worst thing about knowing the future is being unable to change it.


    He nodded, looking back at the road with a slight smile. ¡°Very well, You understand the score. Deacon is a class three alchemist, one of the many realm travelers that the Maxwell consortium has secured. She apparently understands what is going on with your cultivation and is willing and able to help.¡±


    Deacon was sitting back in the farthest corner of the truck now away from Baelfire and me. Her masked face nodded quickly, and she looked worried.


    Magazine continued, still watching the road. ¡°Baelfire and I both have orders to restrain you if you resist or kill you if we cannot restrain you. We have determined that your abilities are too dangerous to attempt to restrain you without crippling you, and as a healer, crippling you might not be effective. The most effective way to contain you, then, involves killing both you and Deacon. We are both aware of this and have plans to do so.¡±


    ¡°If you wish to rescue her, then cooperation is key.¡±


    ¡°Shit, do I sound like that?¡±


    Baelfire looked at me and coughed, ¡°Do you sound like what?¡±


    ¡°When I monologue. Do I sound like that?¡± I lifted one arm and started gesticulating in the air and stated in a deep voice, ¡°Crippling might not be effective and so we must effectively neutralize your superciliousness by effetely vaporizing the entire Eastern manifestation of the former territories held by the English until the American revolution in 1776!¡± I hammered out dramatically.


    Baelfire let out the most human noise I have heard out of her yet, a very definite snort, and then clearly tried to cover it with a short cough.


    ¡°That sounds a lot like Magazine. The more upset he gets, the more he starts using the biggest words he can think of,¡± Deacon sighed, ¡°And he knows that if he kills me, he¡¯d better not survive it himself. An accident of fate is one thing, but carelessly murdering a Wings of Jade sect member would be¡­ disrespectful, no matter what layer of the sect I am at.¡±


    She glared at the back of Magazine¡¯s head. ¡°Remember, even an inner disciple can stick your soul back into your rotting corpse until they think you¡¯ve learned your lesson about respect and humility.¡±


    I looked at her nervously, ¡°Seriously? Sects? Respect and humility? Dear lord, please don¡¯t shout ¡®You dare¡¯ or that someone¡¯s courting death. Or even worse, someone failing to notice Mount Tai because they are a frog in a well.¡±


    Deacon looked at me in confusion, ¡°Am I supposed to know what that means?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Probably not. You are not from this world?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Of course not. You called it an invasion. We called it a retreat. I am from Earth 3152, this is Earth 3362.¡±


    I thought about that¡­ ¡°Wait, the soulburners? I thought all of you were dead after the necromancer was executed. And how many Earths are there? Over three thousand?¡±


    Deacon shook her head, ¡°No. The survivors cut a deal with the families. We have to restrain our powers, despite living in a death world. There are a lot more than three thousand Earths, but most of them are unsuitable for sustaining life. No one knows how many there are, but since experimenting with portals to new Earths is generally a one-way or suicide trip, few know of more than a half dozen.¡±


    If you come across this story on Amazon, it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it.


    ¡°What does that mean?¡±


    Magazine coughed, ¡°It is meaningless to you, Mister Doyle. Her sort of human has nothing valuable to offer you.¡±


    I glared at the back of his head, ¡°If that¡¯s true, why do you think holding her hostage for my good behavior will have even the slightest effect?¡±


    Baelfire snorted again, ¡°Mag¡¯s been dealing with heroic types for far too long. He does not realize you are surrounded by beautiful women throwing themselves at you every day, so a pretty alien face in distress who is likely to also be a monster is not going to immediately attract your attention.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Oh, she attracts my attention, you said she was an alchemist and I might have something she could help, but it¡¯s not worth risking my life over. Especially not for an undead vampire that poisoned me and possibly my roommates. Right now I just want to know what this Andrea wants, what he¡¯s willing to offer in exchange, and when I can grab breakfast. Your poison sucked, Deacon.¡±


    Deacon shrugged, ¡°That version of Catharatic Tranquilizer was designed for dropping and making placid large canines. I had to keep the dosage low, or it would have permanently damaged your liver, lungs, and kidneys, and possibly stopped your heart if you were a normal class three non-combat alpha. I assume you have already checked yourself out for side effects?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yes I have. And I am currently fit as a fiddle, and I am not going to tell you exactly what systems I had to repair, because I don¡¯t want to encourage you to try and poison me again with a better version. Suffice to say, if I hadn¡¯t been asleep when you caught me, you wouldn¡¯t have caught me.¡±


    Baelfire shrugged. Too bad I couldn¡¯t see her facial expressions with the full mask. ¡°We would have killed you instead.¡±


    I smiled slightly, ¡°No, you would have found an empty room, or you might have found yourself locked down by any of a number of alphas that work at the academy that you only avoided because you were exceptionally quick. I am not going to brag about my powers, I am not going to tell you anything about them, but it might be best for both you and your employer if you pull over to the side of the track, let me out, apologize for the inconvenience, and we never see each other again.¡±


    ¡°He can reach me at my un-monitored line, or by sending messages through Vilnet to Strategic Special Simulations if he wants to set up a meeting, although admittedly he will not be my highest priority considering the impolite way he chose to begin negotiations.¡±


    Magazine sighed, ¡°You are surprisingly polite despite having no leverage in this negotiation.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°You are surprisingly polite despite assuming that you have leverage that you don¡¯t actually possess. Deacon, are you capable of reading my chemical state? I am not that familiar with your toxin, and would like to make sure none of it is still poisoning me.¡±


    Deacon nodded and leaned forward, ¡°May I touch your skin?¡±


    I chuckled and nodded. ¡°Even more polite. I wonder why you are tied up with cold-blooded killers like these?¡±


    She smiled slightly, ¡°I am a cold-blooded killer as well. If I were not, I¡¯d be eliminated instantly. I am not going to try and make excuses, and I am not a drainer like most of my sect, but my alchemical talents are just as deadly and vile by most people¡¯s estimations as any demonic cultivator¡¯s power drain.¡± I held out my wrist as she wrapped her fingers around it.


    ¡°You are¡­ clean. Very odd. Healers, curse-breakers, and even alchemists creating antitoxins should have left behind at least some traces of the toxin, its neutralizers, or even its essence energy. How did you do that? It¡¯s like you were never even¡­ Ulp!¡±


    Her sudden indrawn breath was because I had yanked her toward me. Unlike a lot of alphas, I had no need to directly look at what I was doing or even to have any visible effects like smoke trails, sizzling, or any of that. I had simply weakened the molecular bonds in a broad circle beneath me, as well as spiking the hoverfan, so when I yanked her additional weight on top of me, we both dropped through the floor of the hovertruck.


    This part was...hard. I had taken things with me before, some of which were much heavier than this 90-something-pound girl, but nothing that was alive, or capable of mentally resisting. That¡¯s usually why I couldn¡¯t just reach into someone¡¯s chest and stop their heart because something about their mental integrity stopped it.


    However, after a moment¡¯s panic, I noticed that she seemed to willingly allow me to draw her into the atomic vortex of my weird form of teleportation. It might have been recognizing that she was safe now that I had her blueprint and could actually SEE the soul space containing whisps of her spirit energy, and I made sure to keep that entirely intact¡­ apparently THAT was the part of me that stayed alive when the rest of me was impossible, and the part I coalesced around when I reset after the port.


    Man, I was moving FAST. I could feel the free path we were hovering on, and a flash of heat or something as something terrible happened to the van we had just vacated rapidly, and I could detect we were shooting back towards the city walls.


    No, I wasn¡¯t trying to pretend I was a speedster, I wasn¡¯t intentionally leaving waves in the air, heat, cold, or any real sign we were moving kinetically. Why? Because the truck had both a heat controller and a kinetic controller, assuming that they couldn¡¯t detect molecular motion variation that fell directly within their bailiwick would be stupid.


    But I had something more important to do. I was traveling at some sort of sick speed, faster than I had ever gone before, and I was shedding old resets at the same time¡­ That was my plan, to try and eliminate the contamination while I was porting, in hopes that it would be easier to get rid of the blockages while I didn¡¯t have any physical restrictions in place.


    And it was working! It was working FAR too well.


    Like, I was probably doing three hundred miles an hour down the passway and I realized something¡­ I wasn¡¯t able to force my energy through my channels at the moment because technically my channels didn¡¯t exist, and I hadn¡¯t reshaped my soul container yet to match those channels, but the excess formed and unformed ¡®alien¡¯ spirit energy that I couldn¡¯t use? Not only were they getting stripped away by the pressure I was using, but the soul-blob girl that was with me seemed to be eagerly consuming the energy, forcing it to orbit her soul and spinning her spirit so that the stripped essence was getting twisted into her own native essence, the essence of change.


    Interesting. The Dao of change, while not seemingly particularly powerful, seemed to be extremely friendly with other sorts of energy. At first I was worried that I was just¡­ dumping the contaminants into her, but it wasn¡¯t like the essence was made of actual physical poisons or anything, it was just mostly solidified spirit potential, and she seemed to be spinning that energy as rapidly as she could, and feeding it back to me, which allowed my dao of momentum to shoot us along even faster.


    Wait, did she WANT to get away from her teammates? She said she was ¡®bound¡¯ somehow¡­ was she wanting to get unbound? Maintaining our energetic state was not that hard as long as I had a decent energy pool, and she was feeding energy into my pool as fast as I could possibly handle it, so I checked out her blueprint while we traveled.


    Huh. She varied from human default in minor ways but so did a lot of sub-breeds of humanity, and she was a lot more ¡®normal¡¯ human biologically than most class three physical enhancement alphas. Hell, she might even be closer to a normal human than me, but I was stripping back those enhancements from my blueprint since it looked like they were one of the things directly responsible for my blockages.


    Interesting¡­ Non-biological components. Wireless trackers and radio bugs were a thing of the past, pre-faafo tech that simply didn¡¯t work anymore, but she had an infrared crypto radiator, telltale radiation implant, and even an alpha-particle dispenser set right into the base of her neck¡­ a nasty piece of work with voice-recognition that would instantly flood her brain with heavy Helium-3 isotopes and kill her due to biocellular degradation in minutes.


    Then again, if she was some kind of alchemist, she might be incredibly resistant to traditional poisons or even some heavy metal toxins. Something like a deadly radioisotope was not only easy to track even with atmospheric radio jamming but also wasn¡¯t technically a poison that could be cured or hit with an antidote. So, I just decided to leave that shit behind.


    None of it was necessary for her body¡¯s continued functioning, she didn¡¯t seem to have any odd conditions that required mechanical monitoring, and it was mentioned that she might be able to help me, so off with the monitoring gear. Off also was the interesting dispenser bracelet that contained complex organic and inorganic substances that I didn¡¯t understand, although there was a VERY strange ring tied into her soul space that I didn¡¯t want to touch. It seemed to have its own soul boundaries, and was laced with spirit energy types that were utterly fascinating, but included momentum on a different axis from what I used.


    Here we were! The last time I was here, I had been fighting Glacier Girl right over¡­ there, where her pressurized cold bomb smashed its way into my body. And there was the little storage closet and sink. I quickly reset my own body and then dumped Deacon¡¯s ¡®extras¡¯ into the sink.


    After a moment, her own body reset, sans special mechanical oddities, and she was grinning at me like an idiot.


    ¡°Huh? Are you okay?¡± I asked. I had expected her to be writhing in pain. Hell, only the fact that I had been through my own resets dozens of times kept me from screaming in pain. This reset had been MUCH better than usual, but rebuilding your own nervous system from a blueprint, and restarting its electromagnetic charge so you don¡¯t like¡­ suddenly not have a pulse or a working brain, ALWAYS hurt.


    She nodded, ¡°Yes I am. That was¡­ amazing. Can we do it again?¡±


    I looked at her in bafflement, ¡°What? Aren¡¯t you upset? Didn¡¯t that hurt?¡±


    ¡°No, should it? I mean, I am not a body cultivator, but I imagine a mortal might have found it painful, but it was far less than the pain of increasing a single realm, and the amount of energy you fed me was¡­ invigorating.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t understand what That was. I was trying to rid myself of excess energy that I couldn¡¯t use¡­ it was blocking me from expanding my channels. I thought I might have been dumping out all of my corruption on you, but here you are, looking all excited.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°You don¡¯t know how to purify your essence yet. Frankly, your development is weird, you haven¡¯t even opened your dantians yet, yet you are already halfway into the energy condensation stage. Your body is also¡­ fluctuating. It¡¯s not the same as it was before, in the truck. Temporary ability?¡±


    I winced a little, ¡°It wasn¡¯t supposed to be.¡±


    ¡°So wait, you really ARE a mortal? Not even the body tempering stage?¡±


    I shrugged and tested my channels. They were¡­ tender, a little, but basically alright. I¡¯d need time to start moving the energy through the channels, and preferably quality time in the tunnel. ¡°That depends. Are you going to try and kidnap or kill me?¡± I chuckled. ¡°You don¡¯t look particularly upset.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No. The suicide device is gone. Which means I am gone. But I will owe you!¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Yeah, I hear that a lot, but don¡¯t think you owe me that much¡­ you were an emergency attempt and an investment. When you get settled, send me a note through Vilnet. I could use your help, but at the moment we are both a little too hot to handle. Can you make it from here?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes. The few remaining members of my family are prepared for escape opportunities. We have been for a long time.¡±


    I nodded and started contemplating, I needed more energy for the jump back to the academy. Chock up another victory to paranoia.

 Chapter 24. Lots of terrifying needles

    ¡°Can you hear that?¡± Deacon said quietly, as I was practicing a straight-line kata in the limited space, trying to collect a bit more energy. The port, especially with a guest, had taken a lot more out of me than I had hoped. If I wanted to be able to fight, or even to port and run, I needed at least a couple of solid hours of energy gain.


    ¡°No. Hear what?¡±


    She lifted her eyebrow, ¡°That roar. That sounds like Baelfire¡¯s flying, and it¡¯s getting closer.¡±


    ¡°How close? Did she follow us? How did she follow us?¡±


    She thought about it for a few minutes, ¡°She¡¯s probably hunting us. She must have some method of finding us and she¡¯s probably flying over the city to look for you.¡±


    ¡°Wait, she can just fly over? Won¡¯t the heroes respond?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°They should, but when she¡¯s flying she is very fast. It will take at least a few minutes to mobilize them. This isn¡¯t the academy¡­ Also, if she¡¯s not doing anything actively destructive, they probably won¡¯t do more than harass her to find out who and why she¡¯s here. I am trying to figure out how¡­ wait¡­ the suit!¡±


    ¡°The suit?¡± I asked stupidly.


    She nodded, looking at the generic-looking hero suit that they had stuck me in after kidnapping me naked from my bedroom. ¡°Yes, she put the suit on you. It probably has a built-in Infrared reflection that¡¯s as noticeable as a mirror¡­ she can detect IR reflections right through solid walls, it¡¯s part of her heat control. You can alter structures, right?¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Yes and no. I could alter a small part of the suit, and then, given the time and energy, I could replicate it through the whole thing, but if it¡¯s got some kind of weird infrared thing going on, I would have to change and then blueprint the whole thing¡­ That could take hours, not to mention being an enormous energy sink.¡± I sighed and started stripping it off. ¡°Crap. I don¡¯t even have a backup. You wouldn¡¯t happen to be carrying an extra set of boxer shorts around would you?¡±


    She shook her head, and I could tell she was blushing. ¡°No, I wear my Kereval suit bare like most people, that way there aren¡¯t any air pockets to mess up the stressor fluid¡¯s impact protection. Umm¡­ I don¡¯t know what to suggest.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°You¡¯re just looking for an excuse to see me naked.¡± I grumped, stripping the rest of the suit off and dumping it into the same sink I¡¯d ditched my armor a few weeks ago. ¡°You said she recognizes IR signatures. Does that mean she can recognize my body through walls too? Or yours?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Not mine. I have enough body tempering that while she might be able to recognize me if I got close enough due to not having a signature, her regular senses don¡¯t work well. Your body?¡± she was looking away, ¡°Well, it¡¯s different enough that I doubt she would even recognize you unless she saw you up close. I mean, you physically look the same as when we loaded you, but your entire system is different, not as¡­ artificial.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°See, this is why old wrecked industrial parks have a limited lifespan. If this damned place hadn¡¯t been abandoned almost since the FAAFO, there might be some kind of coveralls or some dude¡¯s dirty sweatshirt or something.¡± I looked around. Wrecked aluminum shelving, some old cardboard boxes, a broken mop bucket, half a decayed mop handle, and some beat-up and rotting old car magazines.


    I shook my head and started decaying the super suit. ¡°Nothing I can use in a hurry. Give me a day, and I could make a suit of aluminum scrap armor, but right now I am tapped. Heck, without my helmet I can¡¯t even tell you how tapped I am, I just know I am low in juice.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Your chi storage is low. Is that what you were doing?¡±


    I nodded and started doing katas again. Yes, it was no fun with your bits flopping out in the breeze, but it helped to get the cycle started again. ¡°Yeah. I can¡¯t do that sitting cross-legged and falling into my bellybutton thing. I found a way of regaining energy, but it involves exercise and motion.¡±


    She sighed and slipped her mask off. Well, honestly, if I hadn¡¯t been surrounded by top-shelf girls at all times during the last few weeks, I would probably consider her a ten, although I was not too fond of the Eastern European look. I liked them short, curvy, and redhead with glasses or freckles. The kind that looked like they just stepped off a red carpet with a permanent tan and umm¡­ I was not too sure of the term, the fish-lip look. I think they call it kissable or bee-stung lips or something like that. Very popular on television since it combined Russian and Indian good looks, but Alpha girls were always amazingly good-looking, and the over-the-top attractiveness just fed my paranoia and distrust.


    Too bad my body disagreed with my assessment, though, or maybe it was prancing around trying to do katas and concentrate while I was undressed in front of a young lady. Then again, according to the fiction I had read, cultivators had very flexible ages¡­ She could be my grandmother¡¯s age.


    Fortunately, imagining my grandmother standing there trying not to look as I exercised naked did exactly what intellectual distrust couldn¡¯t. It helped me get my body back under control.


    ¡°So, basically we are stuck here?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°What¡¯s this WE, white girl? I am stuck here. You can leave any time you like. I thought I made that pretty clear. You could even flag down the psycho and let her know I am here if you want¡­ I probably have enough juice to get back under cover, although I can¡¯t take you with me, and if you showed up at the academy with me, someone might try to shoot you.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°So you are here instead of there to protect me.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°I guess you would put it that way, of course, there¡¯s also the fact that you three waltzed in and snatched me from the school almost effortlessly. Anonymity, for the moment, seemed a lot safer than going back and hiding in a safe that was already broken open.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°It was far from effortless. We had to burn a lot of intelligence to get you. If you went back, the Maxwell group would probably have to write you off or try alternative methods. Can you talk while you are meditating?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah. Do you still hear her? I don¡¯t understand how you could, I can¡¯t hear crap.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°You are here because of me, so for now, I am here because of you. She doesn¡¯t seem to be headed directly towards us, but pretty soon the locals will get involved. If she tries something after she has their attention, well, she¡¯s pretty powerful, but not that powerful. She will probably leave.¡±


    ¡°So what are YOU planning on doing here, just watching me exercise naked?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No. I want to know what method you are practicing. You aren¡¯t a chaos or demonic cultivator, which means you are¡­ unusual.¡±


    ¡°Would you care to define those for me?¡± I asked, switching forms. I still didn¡¯t have enough energy to start working on my channels, but if she had information to expand what I had gleaned from the Serenoid diagrams, I would happily take it apart and see if it could apply.


    She nodded, ¡°A demonic cultivator¡­ well, that¡¯s a little hard to explain. The term is very loaded, like calling a soldier a baby killer. I guess I should start by defining cultivation?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°I have a pretty good idea of what that is already. They draw in energy from the environment to stretch out and eventually compress inside their soul-box.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°The first step isn¡¯t even drawing in energy, that¡¯s the second step. The first step is to use the energy your body naturally produces to clean your system and improve it to be an appropriate vessel for essence. That¡¯s what is referred to as body refinement. You seem to have sort of skipped that stage¡­ before, you were like a box full of random puzzle pieces that had been shaken up and dumped on a table, and you saw the pattern of some of the pieces and used some sort of biology hack to douse them all in glue so it would hold together even if it didn¡¯t create any sort of picture.¡±


    ¡°Whatever you did when we were transiting cleaned off the glue holding the pieces together, so it¡¯s back to being a jumbled mess. But this is not a bad thing! Usually, a bad start like that could permanently destroy your potential or would require powerful alchemical compounds to¡­ dissolve the glue, and if you had already started assembling the puzzle, it would have had to destroy your cultivation base and shake the box back up.¡±


    I grinned, ¡°At least you aren¡¯t talking about fish.¡±


    ¡°Fish?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, a metaphor a teacher was teaching me. Essence is all around everyone, but people are like fish living in water, they can¡¯t recognize it because it¡¯s all their environment is.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Not a bad metaphor for an essence-rich death world like this, if simplistic. Anyway, basic body tempering is like putting the puzzle¡¯s outer edge together. Body refinement is like filling the puzzle in afterward. The Metaphor kind of breaks down after that. The difference between righteous and demonic cultivators is that righteous cultivators refuse to use any essence except that gathered from the atmosphere. Demonic cultivators can also use the essence gathered by creatures as well, which saves them a lot of time.¡±


    She smiled slightly, ¡°It¡¯s sort of ironic, though, since righteous cultivators will happily kill spirit beasts and eat them, which is just another way of absorbing their chi rather than just directly absorbing it.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°But demonic cultivators also drain it from people, right?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Broad brush. Most of them don¡¯t. But the righteous ones, in the world I come from, call all of us evil because we prefer not to suck places dry of natural energies to cultivate. It¡¯s kind of like experience points in a role-playing game. You can sit in one place and contemplate the universe for the next thousand years and hope one day to advance, or you can go out and kill monsters instead.¡±


    ¡°So, most demonic cultivators are basically adventurers, but a few of them are Murder Hobos?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Exactly right! Also, some of the more obscene cultivation methods used by the evil and unethical focus specifically on drawing essence from sapient creatures, lower-ranked human cultivators, or dual cultivation with an essence vessel. My cultivation method involves drawing essence from materials, whether spirit-enhanced herbs, spirit animals and chaos beasts, spirit ore, or anything that sheds energy. I refine it, merge it into special potions or pills, and then let other people use it or use it myself.¡±


    Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°I noticed that you were taking in all kinds of energy and refining it incredibly quickly.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°That¡¯s the alchemist''s gift. We can change most kinds of essence to increase its purity, but our method is super specialized for creating other substances. Change is not something that lends itself to power growth, so we grow our abilities through crafting items and then consuming them, instead. But because I can absorb essence from living things as easily as dead things, the righteous cultivators label me as demonic, just like the psychos that dual-cultivate with a vessel.¡±


    ¡°You know you are creating more questions than you are answering, right?¡± I chuckled.


    She nodded, ¡°Okay, to simplify things, chaos cultivators are able to directly tap into the chaos realms. You call them alphas. Their cultivation happens on instinct, although over time it can slowly naturally increase, and their gifts, the way they use it, are innate. Basically, they gain essence exactly the same way that monsters do.¡±


    ¡°Like Kaiju do?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Exactly. There are three types of energy-using beasts. What you call Kaiju, which are basically chaos beasts, spirit beasts which absorb energy through the environment and eat other spirit beasts, and magical monsters who gain energy through instinctive demonic cultivation.¡±


    ¡°The problem is, in this world, the chaos essence is so strong, that some people become chaos cultivators, or alphas. Every time they grow in strength or use their powers, they slightly increase the ambient raw energy. It¡¯s not pure, it¡¯s chaotic. Usually, chaos energy winds up becoming defined as soon as it enters an ordered structure, but on this world, it isn¡¯t happening¡­ every single alpha that uses superpowers is increasing the ambient chaos.¡±


    She sighed, ¡°That¡¯s why this is a death world. Even the most heroic alpha is adding to the energy problem, and sooner or later one of the monsters on the other side is going to notice that on this world, they can comfortably exist in their natural form instead of being forced into an ordered form. That normally only happens when a world has been overtaken by chaos monsters and destroyed.¡±


    ¡°The Q-Bombs.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I think so. A few insane cultivators have tried using an infusion of raw chaos as a weapon, but here, the humans have learned how to create chaos engines for mass destruction. It has ripped weak spots to a number of different Earths, and tends to attract power-hungry monsters, failed gods, immigrants from chaos-infested worlds, and the occasional sect trying to figure out what¡¯s going on and how to stop it, like the Serenoids. They come here and promptly get their asses kicked, usually because chaos cultivators are insanely strong compared to the other sorts.¡±


    ¡°My people were being murdered wholesale by righteous sects, and we found a portal. We had no idea where it led, except that it was to a world that wasn¡¯t dominated by those who suck dry all the atmospheric essence and hoard all the resources for themselves. When we got here, a few bad apples made sure our immigration was called an invasion, and now there are few of us left.¡±


    She sighed, ¡°Unfortunately, weak chaos cultivators are VERY good food for strong and unethical demonic cultivators. Some idiot drains a few class two or three alphas and all of a sudden your entire clan is declared monsters, and everyone is happy to label outsiders as monsters. That¡¯s why I have an important question for you.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± I asked, curiously. I was working on a half-learned stance that meshed well but required a lot more strength to accomplish. Before I cleaned out my enhancements it was easy, but right now, balancing on your hands is a lot more challenging.


    ¡°Were your ancestors settlers, aliens, or cultivators from another world?¡±


    I coughed a little, collapsing my balance to my knees. ¡°What? Am I an alien? I have no idea, but I don¡¯t think so¡­ I can trace my ancestors back to the Mayflower.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°But you aren¡¯t a chaos cultivator. And I know you aren¡¯t part of my sect, so it has to be someone else. I mean, it¡¯s possible you are just a natural cultivator, but that¡¯s¡­ insanely rare. I guess it has to happen occasionally since someone had to start the whole cultivation thing in the first place, but I have never heard of anyone that started cultivating without being taught.¡±


    I smiled and stood back up, ¡°So I might be one of the giants that other people stand on the shoulders of? I mean, intellectually that¡¯s cool, but I hate thrashing around in the dark.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Fair enough. Hopefully, I can help you find a light. So what do you use to gain energy?¡±


    ***


    ¡°You are kidding.¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°Nope. Tried and true. The more channels you have opened, the stronger your base is. Your spiritual base is extremely powerful, a mythical physique, and probably a bloodline, which would explain why you aren¡¯t dead already. Most people with a special physique wind up dying before they ever reach adulthood, but that would explain why you were able to use your essence gifts without any training.¡±


    ¡°But...ugh, needles?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yep. One hundred and forty-three nerve clusters. You have fourteen spiritual roots. I have four. Serenoids have eight. Hell, even dragons only have twelve¡­ I don¡¯t know what your bloodline is, but fourteen roots are insane. It would be a shame to waste it. You won¡¯t get a huge effect right away, but you could have an incredibly strong foundation and I have no idea how high you could soar.¡±


    ¡°But¡­ one hundred and forty-three needles?¡±


    She snickered, ¡°Are you afraid of a little pain? If you hadn¡¯t wrecked my alchemy kit, I could have probably made you an awakening pill instead, but you wanted to lay low for a few days.¡±


    It had been several hours since it was obvious that Baelfire had called the search off, and we had moved to one of my secondary hideouts, thankfully one where I had stashed some emergency pants.


    Yes, don¡¯t laugh, emergency pants are a thing when your clothes can be destroyed by some asshole elemental with a grudge. It wasn¡¯t the first time I¡¯d been forced to discard my clothes, and it probably wouldn¡¯t be the last¡­ most denim and cotton were not designed to deal with a class four fireball, and I wouldn¡¯t always have the energy to reset and repair my clothing if there was anything left to reset.


    We were in an abandoned high school¡¯s steam tunnels. Yes, I tended to prefer janitor closets, although in this case, it was an entire janitor suite. Someone long ago had set up a cot and mattress, some lockers, and even a bookcase full of old Flint, Vinge, and Heinlein books.


    The two of us were enjoying a meal of Minute Rice, Spam, and canned green beans, and there was even an old tube TV and VCR with a box full of old tapes, from turn-of-the-millenium porn to classics like Ghostbusters. I¡¯d never been hard up enough for entertainment to restore the TV and VCR, and the tapes would take a lot of energy to repair.


    Not that there was any television reception even if I got it working. Don¡¯t make me laugh.


    ¡°So how small do the needles have to be?¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°If I had my pack, I would have been able to show you. But to break open the channels, they don¡¯t need to be very thick. About two inches long for comfortable handling, but super-thin thirty-two gauge needles at the end should work fine. Mostly I need to be able to handle them. My own were twenty-eight gauge but that¡¯s because they had to be able to stand up even if I had to pierce someone with improved fitness or durability up to class three.¡±


    ¡°Materials?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Not copper, it would interfere with your energy channels. Gold is too weak. Silver is weak but still usable. Stainless steel is fine, and so is aluminum. I mean, you wouldn¡¯t want aluminum for a long-term piercing, like jewelry, but for temporary use, it should be fine.¡±


    I nodded, and held up something I had quickly crafted. ¡°four-forty stainless?¡± I said. There was a lot of steel around, including the old lockers.


    She looked at the needle I had made, ¡°Yes. If you could blunt one end, or attach a piece of fabric, that should be perfect. Do you have any alcohol?¡±


    I nodded, I had a fairly decent medical kit stashed. I didn¡¯t always need a reset, and when I first discovered this place, I might have had to hang out here for a day or two before I even had the energy for a partial reset.


    I attached a thin strand of cotton at one end, so it resembled an elongated sewing needle with a flag. ¡°Like this?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, just one hundred and fifty of them.¡±


    ¡°I thought you said one forty-three.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Sure, but sometimes they break or are misplaced. If you are standing there with over a hundred needles poking out of your skin, do you really want me scrabbling around looking for missing needles, or asking you to make more on the fly?¡±


    Fortunately, the needles were TINY, and I had manufactured them before she even finished talking. A quick alcohol bath later, and a shower, and I was back in my birthday suit, terrified as she approached my scalp and forehead.


    Look, I had been hurt really badly a ton of times. Needles should have been nothing, but humans often had an atavistic fear of needles. I mean, no matter what happened, I had enough energy to reset, but it was still scary as hell to have someone approaching your eyes with needles, even with your eyes closed.


    Mostly it didn¡¯t even hurt. I could tell she was hitting nerves, that was the intent, obviously, but I¡¯d never had tattoos or even serious hospital visits. After a while, especially when she moved down from my face, it got a lot easier.


    In the end, she only got 137 needles in. The last six were on the bottoms of my feet, and there was simply no way to get to them while I was standing, and I had no way to lie down. I figured I probably looked like a porcupine, but if it helped¡­


    ¡°Okay, now, the second energy structure you showed me from that book. Don¡¯t try to force it down the lines for the extra limbs, that won¡¯t work, but while standing still, start circulating your energy as quickly as possible. I am not sure what this method is, but it doesn¡¯t look particularly hazardous for a beginning technique. Once it¡¯s moving as fast as it can, start extending the channels through your body.¡±


    Pain. Yep, it hurt as badly as the fiction said it would. It was like I had lava pouring through my body¡­ Lava that was moving as fast as a cyclotron. I was nearly completely full, but the damned energy was ripping its way through my body like the Sanford Dam.


    I¡¯d felt worse pain¡­ Hot Shot had almost turned me into a charcoal briquette, but this just kept going on and on, and I didn¡¯t dare collapse or lie down, and based on the gasps that Deacon made, it had some physical effects as well¡­ I slightly opened my eyes and could see dozens of tiny electrical discharges working their way down the needles protruding from my body like a bad science fiction¡¯s Jacob¡¯s ladder.


    ¡°This is just the base. Your body will not always be as important as you gain power, but for right now it¡¯s the scaffolding and infrastructure for the rest of your growth. A strong foundation means a strong power base and a strong power base means¡­¡±


    ¡°Do you always talk this much?¡± I choked out.


    She shook her head, ¡°No, but this part tends to be very stressful for the simple farm boys and city girls just starting on their path. Talking them through it tends to help, although this is far more than I am used to. You are a mystery on so many levels¡­ You not only have a Dao, but you even have a concept to match it. I have never seen anyone bounce between levels so much.¡±


    ¡°Momentum?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Exactly. You seem to apply it to your life as much as to your power, and that kind of focus makes for a powerful and in your case, inexorable path.¡±


    I could feel the energy flooding into my limbs and every part of my body, and I was embarrassed to notice it also caused other reactions, but Deacon seemed willing to ignore it, so I did too. After a bit, the energy rushed back into my soul space, filling it to almost overflowing, and I started to try and force the energy to flow both ways simultaneously, the way that the diagram appeared to describe.


    Smooth flow. It¡¯s not a heartbeat, a heartbeat will tear you apart if it has too much energy. I could actually feel the field of energy around me, my aura. Within which I was able to use my abilities¡­ as the flows evened out and the pain started to reduce, I could feel the aura expanding out again until it was over a foot away from my body, and then soon to two or even three feet before retracting.


    Even flow. After a while, I could see the way my field pulsed and realized that once the flow smoothed out, I could extend the aura simply by flowing more energy through the area that the aura extended. After the flow stabilized, I realized that I was almost critically low in energy¡­ expanding the energy to my entire body had attenuated it badly, like filling up a stock pot from a drinking glass, only my original soul container was the drinking glass.


    I really needed to get back to the tunnel.

 Chapter 25. Finally, the major plotline is revealed!

    I would like to say that my new re-awakening led to a sea of endless power. I would like to, but I would be lying. I was still a little weaker than I had been when I had been sporting my own personal modifications, but it felt more¡­ whole. Not disconnected, like the whole time I had been using my earlier physical modifications, it was like I was wearing enhanced power armor that wasn¡¯t exactly part of me.


    The hardest part was keeping the energy slowly flowing. Supposedly it would soon become an instinct, just something that naturally occurred even when I was asleep, but for right now it was a near constant, if minor, effort.


    Speeding it up took much more effort, but when I did¡­ well¡­ let¡¯s just say that it increased my power absorption as well as temporarily boosting my strength and speed, but it took a toll on my exhaustion, and left me starving. Too bad I didn¡¯t have an emergency shirt, and never really had enough savings to put any kind of money supply into my hiding places, or I would have gone to a diner for food instead of basically cleaning out the food supply in the hideout.


    Deacon was carefully packing up the now freshly cleaned needles into a piece of boiled canvas as I tore into an old MRE that had probably been expired for decades. It tasted like crap now, but it had probably tasted just as bad fresh off the assembly line, and at least it and the one next to it were filling me up.


    ¡°So what do we do from here?¡± she asked.


    I chuckled, ¡°I honestly have no clue. I figured I¡¯d head back to the academy, they are bound to have noticed I was missing for...about a day?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°That, and a lot of people were asleep. I¡¯d guess almost a day by this point. The surveillance was deactivated, and the maintenance tunnels were active, but it took almost half an hour for you to wake up and for us to get past the border.¡±


    ¡°I will probably have to go on foot. I seem to have more energy potential than before, but I don¡¯t really have a way of measuring it until I can get back to the academy. If I had money I¡¯d probably grab some clothes and more food from an all-night store, but I seem to have accidentally left my wallet behind.¡±


    ¡°I would help with that, but the only funds I have are Farmer¡¯s marks, and in a city, almost no one will accept them except importers. The moment an importer noticed I had them, they would try to find out why, and likely reveal who I am.¡±


    ¡°So how are you going to survive?¡± I asked. Not that I should care that much, at this point I considered us even.


    ¡°That¡¯s why I asked what we should do from here. I am not sure. I was raised in the sect, and then we immigrated, and the survivors wound up getting bound by the various farmer factions. I haven¡¯t ever been anywhere where I wasn¡¯t ordered by someone.¡±


    ¡°You have never been free? In your whole life?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No, my spirit root was discovered when I was a small child, and I was taken in by the sect. Since then, I have just served.¡±


    ¡°How old are you?¡± I asked. Yes, technically rude.


    ¡°Six.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    She looked thoughtful, ¡°Umm¡­ wait, let me translate. The world I came from was very different from here. Most mortals would live around twenty-five years before age claimed them. Our years were set up differently. There was a wet season, a growing season, a harvest season, a fallow or dry season, a second wet season, a growing season, a harvest season, and then a cold season. Each of those cycles took about three years. So I would be, locally, between eighteen and twenty-one years old.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Alright, I thought, at least according to the books I read, that you could be like, hundreds of years old.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°No, we were a small sect. Your lifespan does dramatically increase with each stage you accomplish, but I wasn¡¯t very accomplished in third-stage body refinement. Once you complete a stage, your lifespan doubles, more or less. Wealthy families and powerful sects pack their children full of ascension resources at an early age, to get them through body refinement early, and then after puberty, they race through body tempering. If you aren¡¯t at the first condensation stage by the time you hit your fifth birthday, you are never allowed to join most sects or are¡­ removed if you are in one.¡±


    ¡°But body refinement three is super low?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Alchemists are a different breed. Our education is far more important than racing through stages, especially since we can create pills and elixirs to extend lifespans, ease stage transitions, and boost cultivation. That¡¯s why the age that we learn the fastest is crammed with education and training for alchemy instead of trying to cultivate as quickly as possible.¡±


    ¡°So you can, and do, take your time?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°That¡¯s why the Maxwell group will probably be hunting me for the rest of my life, as will any other Farming Family that finds out I have escaped. A decent Alchemist can create formulas that can even enhance chaotic cultivators. Baelfire was a¡­ I guess you¡¯d call it a class two? Her gift is fire creation and immunity, but she was just a trickster before she took improved awakening pills and enhanced cultivation philters. I think right now she¡¯s rank five, and Magazine is technically rank six, but he¡¯s powerful enough now that my skill isn¡¯t high enough to create a philter strong enough to have a real effect on him.¡±


    ¡°Other Wings of Jade Sect members have escaped before, I am sure that there are sect resources and safehouses somewhere, I just¡­ don¡¯t know where they are, or how to contact them. I also don¡¯t know if there are any in Empire City.¡±


    ¡°What do you use to make your pills and potions?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°The bodies of monsters, spirit beasts, or kaiju. Spirit herbs can be gathered far outside the cities where monsters tend to gather to absorb the energy. Special ores that have been steeped in energy, and some basic materials for keeping everything together, like purified water, distilled alcohol from essence-enriched fruits and grains, just the normal stuff for any alchemist.


    ¡°Do you have powers? I mean, other than potion-making.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, I can detect essence fluctuations and biological integrity, like how many spirit roots you have and where your nerve meridians should flow, that¡¯s a basic alchemist gift, called spirit sensing. I can also produce and control fire and heat on a small scale, which is called alchemist¡¯s fire.¡±


    ¡°Small scale?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Short range, I can heat a small cauldron to pretty high temperatures, or start a campfire. When I progress to later stages, alchemist¡¯s fire can get pretty powerful or even be used as a weapon, since nothing can put it out, but that¡¯s a long way away. I am also pretty good with a staff and usually have an array of potions and poisons I can use in an emergency.¡±


    Ugh, sometimes I hate my head. I was feeling¡­ guilty, at the idea of leaving this naive little dumpling to her own devices. Crap. She was broke, never lived in a city¡­ and her powers were even worse than mine when it came to needing preparation time. If she needed resources to use her potion-making skills, especially the ones that come from the deep wilds, sending her out alone would be a death sentence.


    I would give her about a week before she turned into some gang¡¯s bitch or lab slave, maybe both. Unless she left the city, in which case I¡¯d give her less than a day before she became something¡¯s light snack. If she got really lucky, she might get killed by a random thug or picked up by the Maxwells or another Farmer family, since they made it a practice to infiltrate the cities and try to poach any alphas that fell under the BSA¡¯s radar.


    I was neither the first nor the last low-power alpha to get smuggled out of the city by a Family acquisition team. You were either too weak to be useful, or too strong to be bothered. If you were strong, they were almost guaranteed to start making attractive offers, but if you were too weak and not protected by the BSA or a corporate group, you would probably wind up in a hover truck with a bag over your head like yours truly.


    Ironically, she would probably make a damned good support¡­


    I sighed deeply, why should I feel guilty? She was the most important member of a black-bag team that tried to kidnap me. I should be sending her on her way with a smile and be happy she was out of my hair and would be getting what she deserved. Then again, making the ¡®hard choices¡¯ was one of the reasons I never wanted to be active, and preferred the idea of being support. Heroes were the ones who decided if a villain could be rehabilitated or if they were simply too damned dangerous and had to be eliminated, not me.


    Her beauty had nothing to do with my decision. It shouldn¡¯t anyway. If she were an ugly man in this situation, what would I do? Dammit, I¡¯d do the exact same thing, I wasn¡¯t being manipulated, plus she still had a lot of information and skills I could use, and otherwise, I¡¯d probably lose it forever.


    ¡°I think I know where¡­ We can go.¡±


    ***


    Linker looked at me skeptically, probably as much because I had walked into the recruitment center bare-chested and shoeless as because of what I was asking. ¡°I don¡¯t think we have ever had a sponsored student ask if they can sponsor another student.¡±


    I smiled, ¡°Learn something new every day. But seriously, she has helped me dramatically increase my energy abilities. Right now I could probably heal someone whose heart is missing as long as they were still breathing. Remember that pound of change? I could probably merge an entire two pounds at once right now, maybe even more. Deacon here is an enhancer, a solid one, and I want her on my support team.¡±


    ¡°Right now, would I even need a sponsor if I walked in the door? Or would you or someone working under you be frantically scrambling to find the perfect scholarship before I walked back out?


    He laughed, ¡°Good point. Enhancer, you say? That¡¯s odd, I am not detecting any quantum signature at all. You aren¡¯t doing this just to get a girlfriend a free ride, are you?¡±


    Deacon smiled slightly, held out her hand, and a flame appeared. It was blue and flickered strangely, but I could feel the heat. ¡°I was raised outside of the cities and BSA influence. One of the very first things I learned was how to hide my energy signature, it was sort of a¡­ survival mechanism.¡±


    ¡°Survival mechanism?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, where I came from we had drainers, and very aggressive recruiters¡­ Like put a bag over your head and you wake up in a restraint collar type recruiters.¡±


    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Drainers?¡±


    ¡°Yes, Alphas who were able to strengthen their power permanently by sucking the power, and the life, out of weak alphas. Sort of like the Necromancer, sir.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°That sounds rough, but without being able to trace your bio-energy, unless you can show me something stronger than a minor flame summon, I won¡¯t be able to classify you as higher than a class two.¡±


    ¡°Is a class two good enough for me to sponsor her?¡±


    He sighed deeply, ¡°Yes, it is¡­ but unlike your deal with Glacier Girl, she doesn¡¯t have any school transcripts, and I can¡¯t provide a registered power graph. That means her sponsorship would be the real deal, and you¡¯d have to help keep her off of academic probation.¡±


    ¡°What kind of classes would be needed?¡± Deacon asked.


    He shrugged, ¡°You¡¯d have to take classes or test out of a lot of basic subjects, subjects that you¡¯d have to take remedial courses for, such as American and world history, basic science, mathematics, and introductory English. If you can¡¯t at least test for a basic level for remedial courses, you¡¯d need to attend special courses, on your own dime, to get caught up to educational standards and then wait at least a semester.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I was well educated, although I might require remedial American and World history since the farmer families taught their own version of those subjects.¡±


    ¡°You are from a farmer family?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No sir, my family was enslaved by a farmer family. One of the reasons I am interested in attending is that it will keep me in the same year group with Jacob, and the school is usually a much tougher nut for farmer recruiters to crack than it was recently.¡±


    His eyebrow shot up, ¡°You know about that? That¡¯s being kept high-security confidential.¡±


    I waved a hand, ¡°I was the one they kidnapped, sir. I met Deacon over the course of our escape.¡±


    He started tapping away at his computer. ¡°That helps. We can bring you in as a refugee instead of a mystery guest. Do you have a real name? Super names won¡¯t work under the circumstances, and I¡¯d also like to know which family had you so we can use the leverage against them if they try to attempt another acquisition.¡±


    We had carefully discussed what we would and would not talk about to a truthseeker, while we had walked to the center. ¡°I don¡¯t want to state which house, sir. I don¡¯t want to be the center of a political kerfuffle. But I can state that both Magazine and Baelfire were part of the acquisition team, and both were prepared to create an incident.¡± Deacon mentioned.


    He nodded slowly, ¡°Magazine is already kill-on-sight in any of the associated cities. Baelfire was recently warded off and cited for unauthorized operation in a flight zone. Was she searching for you?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°She was looking for me. That¡¯s why I laid low for a while.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Well, we don¡¯t have much information about her, other than a few suspicious incidents without any proof¡­ but it¡¯s hard to collect evidence when a crime scene is completely vaporized. But if she kidnapped you, that¡¯s enough of a felony to swear out a warrant and restrict her from entering a city zone. Do you want to press charges?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, but it can wait till I get back to the academy. She and Magazine were leading the team that broke in and got me, but I was not conscious at the time.¡±


    ¡°Lo Sabrina,¡± Deacon spoke up. ¡°Or I guess here surnames are last, so Sabrina Lo is fine. I won¡¯t be using the name, Deacon, however, it has poor associations and could attract too much attention.¡±


    He tapped on his keyboard. ¡°Blueprint said you were an enhancer and you displayed elemental fire production¡­ is there anything you can give me as to your alpha abilities?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, I can enhance concoctions made from plants and animals acquired in the wilderness zones, as well as advanced chemistry. It is called alchemy but doesn¡¯t follow the guidelines of the alchemy taught at the magical schools. I can''t create homunculi or shapeshifting magical brews, but I can create a huge number of baseline potions and pills. Minor healing, permanent power enhancement, broad-spectrum antidotes, it would probably be more appropriate to refer to it as mystical medicine than it would be to compare it to the alchemy practiced by magical schools, which are spells sealed into liquid form.¡±


    He nodded, typing away. ¡°Do you know what you would prefer for an alpha identity? I can run it through the database for an IP check.¡±


    She looked lost in thought, but I grinned, ¡°Can I put a suggestion in the hat?¡±


    Linker shrugged, ¡°Is it offensive?¡±


    I thought about it. ¡°Some might think so. I don¡¯t, but then, I might just be thinking about the matching costume.¡±


    He sighed, ¡°Go ahead and hit me with your young man brilliance.¡±


    ¡°Candystriper.¡±


    He facepalmed. ¡°You just want to see her in a sexy candy-striper outfit.¡±


    Deacon, or I guess, Sabrina, was looking back and forth at us in confusion, ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    Linker sighed, ¡°Candystriper was a nickname for a nursing assistant about fifty or more years ago because they wore red-and-white nursing uniforms. The term has fallen out of favor because it was deemed offensive before the FAAFO when the ideologist power blocs took over the media. Now it¡¯s more of a male power fantasy about a healer girl that dresses in a vibrantly colorful outfit with an extremely short skirt, and it¡¯s more of a sex thing, like a French maid rather than any sort of realistic representation.¡±


    ¡°Nurse¡­ Nurse¡­¡± Sabrina was thinking. ¡°With a hint of Darkness. Umm¡­ Night Nurse? With alliteration?¡±


    I laughed as Linker facepalmed. ¡°That¡¯s even worse. A night nurse is a girl that hangs around in case a medical problem comes up in the night.¡±


    She looked at me in confusion.


    I looked down at my pants. ¡°Something comes up in the night? Get it? She takes care of it?¡±


    She blushed, ¡°Sorry, that wasn¡¯t slang I heard before. But I like Nurse, it¡¯s much less aggressive than poison master or drug dealer. My names are pretty bad because I wasn¡¯t raised in English. How about just Sabrina?¡±


    I looked at Linker and he smiled a little, ¡°Not bad, I mean, it¡¯s connected to her real name, but she doesn¡¯t have any family here yet. She might get some flack if she starts calling herself a witch, but otherwise, it should be fine.¡±


    Sabrina nodded, ¡°Okay by me. The families don¡¯t know this name.¡±


    ¡°Sabrina it is.¡±


    ***


    ¡°Wait, I am confused. Another support?¡± Candace asked me, after the whole nightmare of coming back to the academy, endless questions about the kidnapping I had to mostly dodge, and some paperwork affirming eyewitness accounts of a supervillain, Magazine, associating in a criminal enterprise with Baelfire, identity unknown.


    I nodded to her. Most of the others were out. ¡°Yep. Sabrina, this is Candace. Candace, this is Sabrina. I am going to put her on the suite system to complete her academic screening and assign her to the last room. She can meet the others when they get back from class, but I plan on getting in a workout in my secret garden.¡±


    Her nose wrinkled. ¡°Secret garden? Really? You make a sewage tunnel sound pornographic. Hi Sabrina. No offense, but don¡¯t we like¡­ get a vote or something?¡±


    Sabrina looked at Candace with confusion, ¡°I¡¯m sorry if my presence bothers you, are you his lover? We aren¡¯t having sex.¡±


    Candace coughed, loudly, ¡°No¡­ no¡­ I just¡­ this team is brand new, and we are still learning to rely on each other. I just don¡¯t know what the power dynamic is supposed to be. Most teams are led by their primary anchor, which is me, but in this case, the secondary anchor is leading. Her name is Mindy.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Okay, I need a team, but not to put too fine a point on it, Mindy is lead, but I have to do what I feel is right for the team. Sabrina is more valuable as a support than you can possibly imagine, so I had to make a unilateral decision. I don¡¯t mean to be harsh, but you do have a choice. I would hate to find another anchor, but if you force me to do so, I will.¡±


    Candace sat down heavily. ¡°I am not threatening anything, I am just wondering what the hell makes her so special that you just completely blow off the opinion of the rest of the team without even talking to us about it.¡±


    I looked at Sabrina, ¡°Would you like to explain it, or should I?¡±


    Sabrina sighed, ¡°I have sort of an idea, but you ran with it much farther than I expected, so I just went with the flow. Umm¡­ I am an alchemist. Where I come from, that¡¯s considered a valuable thing, although it is less so here because most people don¡¯t know what that really means.¡±


    Candace nodded, ¡°Potion chucker? Do you make bombs? Kind of cool. I guess we could use more area effect attacks if we get into another invasion or monster siege situation.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Not that kind of alchemist. More like the pill and potion-making kind.¡±


    ¡°Like healing potions? That¡¯s amazing, but we already have a team healer¡­ everyone will try to poach you and just say it¡¯s fair.¡±


    Sabrina looked at me helplessly, and I nodded, ¡°Okay, remember my problem?¡±


    Candace nodded, ¡°Wait, did you like, fall in love with her? In two days?¡±


    I growled, ¡°Not that problem, the power problem. Dammit, if I could spank you I would.¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°Promise?¡± and then nodded, ¡°Yes. The big one.¡±


    ¡°Well, Sabrina knows how to get around it¡­ helped me get around it. She¡¯s like¡­ a superhero therapist. With the right tools and ingredients she can expand almost anyone¡¯s powers, and the healing potions, and temporary buffs, and a ton of other things I can¡¯t understand.¡±


    Sabrina nodded, ¡°Power Therapist is a good title. I could help expand your power core, and if you agree, there¡¯s a chance we could disconnect you from the chaos realm and help you reconnect with your guide.¡±


    ¡°My what?¡±


    ¡°Your guide¡­ the spirit wind over the mountain? He is very unhappy that you are tapped into the chaos rift instead of drawing on your spirit energy. You could be a powerful shaman, but you are linked to the destructive energies of the rift and he is not happy with you using it to support the gifts he¡¯s given you.¡±


    I looked at Sabrina askance, and Candace paled, ¡°What? What? You can talk to spirit guides?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No, but I can analyze your aura, and right now, it¡¯s charged with Chaos essence¡­ your guide cannot get in, and he¡¯s projecting unhappiness at you using your affinities, the song of the south wind and the strength of immortality, in order to become a basic thug instead of the powerful spirit warrior he hoped you would become. It should be possible, with time and a lot of work, to sever your connection to the outer darkness and allow his energy back inside as your people need.¡±


    ¡°Wait,¡± I said, ¡°are we talking about cultivation?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, she has a powerful spirit hawk bloodline. If we can find the right materials for a bloodline awakening pill, probably the seven heaven blue yin-yang pill, it could purge the chaotic essence and allow her to reconnect with her true bloodline¡¯s energy.¡±


    Candace looked a little breathless, ¡°Seriously? You sound like my grandfather.¡±


    Sabrina smiled, ¡°Your grandfather most likely carried the bloodline. I think Chaos awakens most alphas because it is so damned prevalent, but magic is in the air of this world now¡­ She would have to be cleansed, but she should be able to connect to her true power, and her advancement would not be blocked like it is now.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean, blocked?¡±


    Sabrina shrugged, ¡°You are using a sort of energy that is antithetical to life. It is natural, but so is feces, that doesn¡¯t mean you should eat it. It chokes this world because of the Q-bombs years ago, chokes it to the point where some natural processes, like radio waves, cannot even cut through it anymore. It¡¯s like living in a wasteland of radioactive fallout, but all of the alphas are eating radioactive food because it¡¯s EVERYWHERE. It won¡¯t kill you immediately, but it does corrupt you and the world itself, and it chokes off your ability to advance towards your eventual natural stabilization point, or even immortality and ascension.¡±


    Candace nodded slowly and then looked at me. ¡°Okay, she¡¯s convinced me, you have my vote.¡±


    I chuckled, I didn¡¯t think I needed her approval but it was nice to have. ¡°I will bear that in mind.¡± Technically, the only approval I needed was Mindy, but at this point, Candace, Akyo, and Abigail¡¯s approval stood fair to make the team run a whole lot smoother.


    Six people. Four active, and two support. I was planning to get a non-alpha into that sixth slot, which was the maximum team size for competition, and maybe hopefully another guy so it wasn¡¯t quite as choked with estrogen, but each of my new teammates filled a valuable role. And if, as Sabrina claimed, the ether energy that most alphas used was indeed as horrible as we thought, then this new team had a secret mission that might be needed to save the entire world!


    No pressure, it must be a Tuesday.

 Chapter 26. Impressing a girl.

    ¡°Secret Identities are a myth. They are a useful myth, but they are still a myth. Don¡¯t make the mistake of thinking they mean anything.¡± Droned Professor Pendrake, our Game Theory teacher. I knew this already, but game theory turned out to be the strategy and tactics involved with being a superpowered individual in the real world rather than a comic book.


    ¡°Some supervillains, and a lot of street vigilantes, the ones that might not have any powers at all, can maintain a secret identity, but they accomplish this by being absolute introverts, and by that behavior alone they usually imply that they lead a double life.¡±


    ¡°But in the real world, even with a holomask, it¡¯s not impossible for someone with decent research skills to determine your real identity. But there are powerful customs involved. If you bust a crime boss, he is very unlikely to come after your family, because he knows damned well that if he targets a hero or the hero¡¯s family from the inside, a standard prison is absurdly simple for a vengeance-seeking Alpha to penetrate. They also have their own families, and history has proven again and again that even the most heroic alpha, when triggered by rage and grief, will usually set aside her imposed morality to redress a wrong in the most violent possible way.¡±


    ¡°Even supervillains profit from this set of written and unwritten rules. While it¡¯s an old game for nemesis to meet as civilians and snipe and snark at each other, you don¡¯t bust a cowl out of costume, and they don¡¯t attack you when you are getting pizza with your baseline boyfriend, because out of costume doesn¡¯t mean out of power.¡±


    ¡°This does not, of course, hold true for the police department. If they have evidence that some girl¡­ or guy, is actually a crook with a link to their face, they have every right to bust you. That¡¯s one reason breaking the law frequently in costume is a stupid idea. Also, certain crimes demand a response, costume or not.¡±


    He paused and looked around the class like this part was especially important. ¡°One thing to remember is that appearances do not make the crime. That¡¯s why you have support and police links. If you see someone moving a television into a truck, they might be a criminal¡­ or they might be helping their friend move. A scary guy winging his way around the city at midnight might look like a villain, or he might be a vigilante, or even a baseline trying out his new set of tech wings.¡±


    ¡°In the comic books, you see heroes patrolling the city. Most of you who go into emergency response work, or join a city team, will never, ever go on patrol. Why? Because that is the cop¡¯s job. We keep watch, but we do NOT replace the police department under any circumstances. Purse snatchers, robberies, even violent crimes are THEIR jurisdiction, not ours.¡±


    ¡°If you are walking by a rape, you will get involved, but remember that in the end, we are all civilians. Our arrests are citizen¡¯s arrests, and even those of us employed by the police or military are civilian contractors. You are a civilian that is armed with a dangerous weapon, your alpha abilities, so make sure your ass is covered.¡±


    He coughed a little, ¡°That¡¯s where the secret identity thing comes into play. It won¡¯t protect you if you commit a felony, you are going to be recognized. Most capes and cowls wind up knowing each other or can obtain each other¡¯s identities, so as Patrick Swayze said, be nice. If things get violent, then get violent, break limbs, whatever, but when someone surrenders, that¡¯s not a good time to start beating his or her ass as punishment.¡±


    He sighed. ¡°You are not the punishment, you are the crowbar or the threat. Except in very special circumstances, you never take the mantle of punishment or executioner. This is not some sort of morality argument, it¡¯s not about trying to take away your edge or an appeal against corporal punishment, it¡¯s the fact that while you might be anonymous enough to have a date or go shopping without being pestered for autographs if you make a habit of playing punisher, it WILL catch up with you.¡±


    ¡°Stay safe, stay educated, and remember to keep your team in the loop. Even if you are a solo, you are still going to need a support structure, someone to let you know when that guy in the bug costume is a legitimate threat, a vigilante that should be left alone, a mentally unstable individual who needs to be brought into a safe policed environment, or just a baseline playing out a sexual fantasy with his alpha girlfriend.¡±


    He glanced at his watch, ¡°On that note, by Wednesday each of you needs to read chapter Thirteen of Markis¡¯ ¡®Donning the Mask¡¯. Write me a few paragraphs, in your own words and not AI-written, explaining the chapter¡¯s thrust and the morale effects of creating a power vacuum when removing an organized local criminal presence will do more harm than good. See you Wednesday.¡±


    Ugh, I was all too aware of the problems he discussed, considering the role that playing the supervillain for over a year added to my education. I was always the Johnny-come-lately since there was no way I¡¯d spend the time building a local underworld presence when it was doomed to come crashing down when the hero attacked, but I could understand the effects.


    Professor Pendrake¡¯s lecture was surprisingly enlightening, despite his poor delivery, but that was probably because he spent twenty-five years working as a strategic analyst and eventually leading Toronto¡¯s armored defense league. He was one of the reasons I refused to dismiss baseline contributions, since without his brilliant tactics and creative use of the Frostbear Kaiju, Toronto would probably have fallen to the psycho-squid monster wave six years ago, alphas or no alphas.


    As I stood, So did most of my team. Like most teams, we were encouraged to take our classes together if they applied, and while Sabrina was still getting placement testing, I suspected she would be here in a day or two¡­ It wasn¡¯t even a week into the new semester, and things were moving fast. Candace had already passed this course last year, but over a day, I usually had a class with at least three of my teammates at any one time.


    It was a little gratifying to be surrounded by lovely women who actually wanted to be around you, and Candace and Sabrina had argued politely about it. Sabrina stated that the effect that essence refinement had on a body naturally increased your charisma, erased physical defects, and just naturally made a cultivator more attractive as they gained power.


    Candace, on the other hand, argued that it was a feedback effect of female psychology, seeing a guy surrounded by top-shelf women, plus my confidence and drive, tended to make other women desire what was a superior male, in some kind of power play.


    I had no idea, I just knew that even though the amount of attention I was getting made me vaguely uncomfortable, especially when girls from outside of the team seemed to go out of their way to try and make themselves more appealing around me, it also kinda stroked my ego, and let me mentally flip Crystal the bird.


    I was training in the tunnel last night, with Sabrina watching from the windowed enclosure of the tunnel¡¯s airlock and decontamination seal and offering advice through the mounted comm speaker, when she brought it up. The rest of the team had been surprisingly eager to have a booster as our final teammate, even if it was as a secondary power support rather than a fifth combatant.


    ¡°You know that any of the team you have assembled would dive into your bed in a heartbeat if you let them think that they had a chance. Some of them would even happily share.¡±


    I snorted, mixing some classic acrobatics freestyle exercises with an Aikido kata. I¡¯d brought in some weights and a hanging bar I¡¯d mounted in the tunnel because doing full essence circulation and draw while working out hard was an important part of body tempering. My chosen method of meditation was a huge boon for body refinement cultivation, and each time I worked out in the tunnel I could feel the density of my muscles increasing, my reflexes speeding, my muscle control increasing along with my wind, and even my senses sharpening. It was creepy, but the essence I was forcing to flow through my body was having a much greater, preternatural effect on my physical development I couldn¡¯t have anticipated.


    Of course, it helped that my energy absorption was also proceeding apace. The speed with which I could drain the radiation fields was growing along with the size of my energy pool. My helmet display read over two thousand essence and growing, and I was still far from filling my entire dantian-thing to the point where I would need to start compressing my chi. It was getting to the point where I could clean the entire tunnel of almost all but trace energy, and if this kept up for much longer, I¡¯d probably start burning off some energy converting the active toxins and moving the entire rig farther down the tunnel towards the pile as my mere presence cleaned out the waste.


    ¡°Including you?¡± I asked, chuckling as I practiced a full-stretch high kick. It wasn¡¯t a thing I was stupid enough to use in a real fight. I mean, it looked cool, but it also gave your enemy a nice, clean shot at your crotch, but it dramatically increased your limberness and flexibility if you could pull it off, and I could.


    ¡°Especially me,¡± she said, shocking me enough that I lost the stretch, and had to recover quickly into the next kata. ¡°What? Why?¡±


    She chuckled a little. ¡°Several reasons. First, you are handsome. Lots of cultivators are handsome, it sort of comes with the territory, but even as a pure mortal you were tall, good-looking, and took great care of your body. That makes a huge difference for a body cultivator, and it also shows discipline, self-control, and focus. You are nice to the girls around you, even if it¡¯s clear you still don¡¯t trust them, not even Mindy. Shall I go on?¡±


    I did a scissor backflip. I wasn¡¯t showing off, I just honestly had seldom seen it accomplished even in movies without wire assistance, but as my reflexes and coordination increased, it became¡­ easy. Street dancers back before the FAAFO had done it as part of their break-dancing thing, but if I had tried this last week I would probably have given break-dancing entirely new meaning as I hit the floor.


    ¡°Yes. I need to know where I need to start adding in disgusting comments or gestures to blow off some of the attention.¡±


    If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    She chortled again. I kinda liked that she wasn¡¯t a giggler, and while her voice was not quite as deep as Chinook¡¯s, it wasn¡¯t almost too shrill like Akyo¡¯s when she got excited. Akyo WAS a giggler, and apparently, her shrillness and giggling were trained, something she called Kawaii. While men where she came from might have found it beautiful, for me the forced gestures and responses just felt fake, childish, and irritating when it got to be too much. I liked women, not little girls.


    ¡°You don¡¯t act like you are immune to the interest, but you also don¡¯t go overboard with sexuality like a lot of guys in your position would. You are like that cute gay friend that socialites wish they had in their friend circle, but you aren¡¯t gay.¡±


    She coughed a little, ¡°Mindy is convinced you are a bad boy for some reason, Akyo probably has a western man kink, which isn¡¯t uncommon for girls where she is from, Candace is just horny and repressed and you are almost available, and Abigail looks at you like you are the answer to her dreams, I don¡¯t know why.¡±


    ¡°And you?¡± I asked, switching over to doing handstand pushups. With the muscle development from cycling and exercise, regular push-ups just weren¡¯t doing it anymore, and I was tempted to get the belt, bracelets, and anklets that were super-heavy just to get a burn.


    ¡°Me? I like your subdued sense of humor, lack of the overweening arrogance that your unique position could encourage, and the fact that you are a sea of stability, a rock I could rest on that will resist the tides. That and I¡¯ve seen you naked.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Everyone has apparently seen me naked,¡± I stated, glad that this time, at least, I was wearing my costume.


    ¡°It seems like it. At least your team and a few others did. Something about getting powerdrunk and wandering around the input dorms in your birthday suit. But the build you developed before you ever awakened has had amazing effects on your current physique, enough so that I wonder if starting body refinement before puberty might be a mistake for dual-path cultivators, at least for the males, who have a higher tolerance for muscle and nerve enhancement.¡±


    ¡°Usually a dual-path or body cultivator has a very compact and seriously cut body, but they don¡¯t have the sheer definition and bulk that bodybuilding or weightlifting adds. By starting late, after you built yourself as a mortal, your body cultivation path might be considerably more productive in the long run. It might not matter much if you ever advance to gold-core or nascent soul, but then again, it might also matter a great deal, since it adds to your already impressive foundation.¡±


    I looked back at my butt. ¡°My foundation is not that impressive.¡± I wasn¡¯t getting energy through special breathing since my air was filtered, but just circulating my essence through my body seemed to be helping to build it up from both my natural absorption and intentionally stripping the radiation of its energy. Supposedly, if I advanced far enough, I could just absorb energy directly through my skin and then purify it, leading to much greater energy absorption, but that was probably a long way off. I just sort of wished that I had a way to measure the energy, store it, and release it into controlled bursts that helped me develop intentionally rather than simply unguided absorption, but I had no idea where to start.


    She laughed, ¡°Not your butt, your power foundation. Everything you have, from your conditioning to your power techniques, your soul space to your dantian, even your psychology, bloodline, and cultivation roots, contributes to your foundation, and then eventually your soul cauldron.¡±


    ¡°So what does dual-path mean, is it like dual cultivation?¡±


    ¡°No¡­ dual cultivation is what happens when a man and a woman cultivate using sex as their meditation medium. It¡¯s a powerful technique, but it ties cultivators together, spiritually. Unless one of the partners is using the other as a cultivation vessel, where they use the dual cultivation as a way to increase and then suck out the other person¡¯s cultivation base.¡±


    ¡°That sounds like rape.¡±


    ¡°It IS rape, even if it¡¯s willing. At its best, the cultivation vessel is left without any foundation and has to be rebuilt from scratch. At its worst, it sucks out their potential, maybe even their life or soul, leaving them as a mindless husk or straight-up killing them.¡±


    ¡°And that¡¯s demonic cultivation?¡±


    She laughed, ¡°No, Demonic cultivation isn¡¯t a technique or a method, it¡¯s the name assigned by righteous sects to any cultivation method that isn¡¯t shrouded by secrecy and shielded by oaths of loyalty and behavior. It has a huge variety of methods, most of which are freely available to anyone who tries to learn them.¡±


    ¡°Of course, a lot of them are unethical if used, just like a lot of behaviors, but demonic cultivation is more of a political label, and those unethical methods being available gives them the excuse they need to shut down and destroy anyone that gains power without swearing to a sect, academy, or lord. The only real exception is alchemy because it¡¯s used by everyone and very rare, but if anything, alchemy guilds and academies are even more secretive about their knowledge.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°And my method?¡±


    She smiles, ¡°I can¡¯t use your method, but if it was freely distributed by the Serenoids, it would be labeled demonic instantly. Serenoids ARE demons after all. Demon is a¡­ different term. What it really means is ¡®outsider¡¯, not particularly like the Christian definition of satanic or evil.¡±


    ¡°But your method, as it currently exists, contains both energy-drain components as well as atmospheric gathering techniques¡­ well, since it seems to be something only you understand and can practice, and you haven¡¯t made it freely available, might potentially be added as one of the righteous schools¡­ if you built a powerful sect around it and used it for political maneuvers. What would you call it?¡±


    I thought about it as I switched directly to some physical judo exercises I was working on perfecting. ¡°Umm¡­ the Jacob method?¡±


    ¡°No¡­¡± I heard the slightly tinny voice from the speaker. ¡°If you create a method, or combine methods into a whole, it needs a grandiose name, like the seven circle heaven-hell energy gathering method, or Jacob¡¯s phoenix foundation earth cycling toxic conversion method.¡±


    I thought about it for a second, ¡°I am not real good at coming up with grandiose names. I mean, the individual techniques seem to have natural names, but some of them are straight-up copies and adaptations that already have names, I just don¡¯t know them, like the umm¡­ four limbs radiation momentum retrieval technique, or maybe some sort of term for stripping toxins and using the bits that are useful while throwing the rest away.¡±


    ¡°Ah, you are right, that¡¯s terrible. And you want to avoid adding the word toxin anywhere into it because that resembles gu techniques, which are pretty awful forms of demonic cultivation.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s gu?¡±


    She sighed deeply, ¡°Technically it¡¯s considered one of the alchemy techniques, but it involves filling a jar with venomous and powerful essence-infused insects, letting them fight it out until only one survives, and keep adding bugs to the jar until the most powerful one remains, the Gu toxic spirit. Then you¡­ uhh¡­ invite it to inhabit your body. It burrows in, adds to your cultivation and power, especially with toxins, but drains and partially possesses you in doing so. Gu ascension involves becoming a hybrid of both forms, and the techniques they use for gathering power can be disgusting and horrifying, like laying larvae in a cultivation vessel and gaining power from the horde of your offspring.¡±


    ¡°Usually the survivor is one of several kinds of centipede, beetle, wasp, or mantis abominations, but occasionally it¡¯s a spider spirit¡­ spider spirits are the LEAST disgusting ones.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Right. Avoid toxic bugs. I probably would anyway, since heavy metal poisons are easy to work with, but biological toxins are usually nightmarish organic molecules.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°As an alchemist, I can confirm that. How¡¯s your energy levels? Are you ready to start trying to extend your power aura?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Looking good. I feel full, and my meter is reading twenty-five hundred. I have almost as much energy as most class two alphas, which is a huge improvement. Want to see something really weird?¡±


    ¡°Weird how? Are you going to strip naked again?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Nope, I was going to show you why Mindy thinks of me as a bad boy.¡±


    ¡°Please do.¡±


    There wasn¡¯t much moisture down here, so I couldn¡¯t freeze the ambient liquid to create icicles without intentionally converting a huge amount of atmospheric hydrogen and oxygen into water, but I was able to freeze a large area of toxic chemical fumes and send it down to impact one of the tunnel¡¯s walls. After a moment, I shot a handmade fireball, fueled by those very same fumes, into the frosty patch, igniting it in a rush of flames, before I sucked the heat energy out of the plasma and made it vanish.


    A moment later, I cleared a tunnel of air with actively conducting electrons to create a giant forked lightning burst, which I intentionally maintained for almost half a second in a stable burst to increase its impressiveness, and then added a set of photons to the mix, while simultaneously creating a kinetically-active patch of air underneath me to make me hover in the air while I did it. At the end, I tacked on a nice bunch of random kinetic motion to the lightshow to carve out and flatten a chunk of the wall in a burst of noise.


    I kinetically deflected the debris that scattered back in my direction and added a scattering photon burst into the mix to make the orb I was kinetically controlling clearly visible with a sparkle where each of the thousands of impacts occurred. Then, I slowly settled it back down and set my feet back on the floor.


    I was pleased to note that the magic act had only burned about fifty energy, which I quickly recovered, and that I¡¯d managed to maintain my circulation almost effortlessly the entire time. It was a display that could have easily classified as a class three alpha for EACH of the several different special effects, but now, if Linker had classified me as a class six after that? I would totally have believed him.


    Versatile, variable, and overlapping powers could be a ton more destructive than a single form of energy, and even if I couldn¡¯t unlink molecular chains to cause matter to disperse, I could have dropped it to absolute zero and then immediately raised its temperature to thousands of degrees to allow natural molecular dissolution to occur¡­ I had options, and the temperature stuff could be started in my aura and then projected in a way that molecular dispersion couldn¡¯t.


    ¡°That was¡­ impressive. Were those all techniques?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°I guess the lightning could be considered a separate technique, but the bubble and floating were variations of the same technique, and the cold and fire were the same thing just at different ends of the scale.¡±


    ¡°Oh, and by the way, your armor, the one that matches the rest of the team, is already ready¡­ it took me about a fifth of my energy to create it after your little acupuncture demonstration, whereas before it would have taken me weeks of constant effort and exhaustion. Go ahead and head out, I am going to need the decontam chamber.¡±


    After I steam-showered my armor and made sure that it wasn¡¯t carrying any toxic or radioactive guests, I stepped out of the shower and took my helmet off. Technically I could have done it myself, now, but it saved energy and made the school¡¯s faculty feel better when I used their safety procedures.


    ¡°So what are you planning to do?¡±


    I looked at Sabrina curiously, ¡°Get some food, get a shower, read our assignment, and then go to bed.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°I meant about the girls.¡±


    I scratched my head, ¡°Get some food, get a shower, read our assignment, and then go to bed. Classes start early tomorrow. I am not planning to do anything. Maybe someday I will, but it won¡¯t likely be with an alpha. You should be happy.¡±


    ¡°Why is that?¡±


    ¡°Because, as you said, alphas are using some sort of corrupting chaos energy. I swore off alpha girls a while back, for good reasons, and now I just have a better reason.¡± With that, I kept my own council and we headed back towards the suite.

 Chapter 27. A broken circuit

    I was screwing around with the armors in my room, at my ¡®lab station¡¯, which was the desk where I kept my computer with a big box of junk next to it. Power Exploitation mostly involved finding a mentor with similar abilities, but the course itself was not graded. It was more of a workshop where you were encouraged to seek out a mentor with similar abilities¡­ in my case, that meant asking Graviton, or rather Senpai Bob, for advice if I couldn¡¯t puzzle it out myself.


    Training in the tunnel had been going rather well, and even team training was working out pretty much like I had expected, Although some team members, namely Chinook and Glacier Girl, were confused I was taking the concept of The Chair Guy a little too literally, especially after my kidnapping. They had taken to unexpectedly going into combat mode to keep me on my toes.


    Candace especially liked to jump me and start a spar, even if I was in civvies, as long as we were alone. She even did it when I was working on my projects. I wanted to get angry about it, but she was right, and it actually helped. While there was no way I was close to Candace physically, my fighting skills were definitely improving and I was already damned close to her speed, which she claimed should have been impossible.


    Doctor Zheraine was technically teaching the power exploitation (transformative) course, but it felt a lot more like a lab course than actual training, but that was understandable considering that the teamwork and combat logistics courses were much more¡­ focused. Right now, it was supposed to be all about finding your ability potential rather than concentrating on using it in conflict.


    That¡¯s one of the reasons why the first-year competitions and duels were not as competitive as later years. Most of the people who came to the academy were young adults and came directly from power evaluation. The first year was mostly about finding out what you were capable of, rather than proving your true potential.


    As a result, my ¡®homework assignment¡¯ outside of the time I spent at the clinic, was to do exactly what I had been doing in my free time¡­ building toys. Our student aid was a straight-up gadgeteer named Traction who was in her third year, but she didn¡¯t even pretend to understand what my specialty was. She was mostly there for us to ask questions, but in my case, her advice wouldn¡¯t help much.


    Both Sabrina and Abigail were in my group. I mean, I guess I understood, since our powers were considered support, but it kind of made things weird since Abigail¡¯s abilities were far more backline than even mine. Her minor reality shifting was potentially powerful, but in practice, it was more like coherent illusions than a useful combat ability.


    Like I said, I wasn¡¯t a real scientist, far from it. Hell, my education was woefully inadequate even for what I was messing with right this second. I was fooling around with a weird side-effect of blueprinting that had been bugging the hell out of me.


    Remember those microscopic processors? Well, when I blueprint-copied them completely, without altering the blueprints in any way, they had a weird buzzing effect on each other. I noticed it when I had installed them in two different helmets, they were starting to get feedback from each other, no matter how close or far away they were, random data streams from one would start interfering with the other.


    I was starting to wonder what the effects were, and if I should just start introducing individualized changes in each one, which was why I was enlisting Abbey¡¯s help.


    I waved my hand in front of the helmet, recording the motion as I glanced at Abbey. After a moment, she slowly nodded. ¡°Yep. It¡¯s the same thing. The feedback is sending the same signals through both helmets, but it¡¯s only some of them. It doesn¡¯t even seem to be particularly consistent, it''s more like it¡¯s a bleed of some unforeseen interaction between individual parts of the subcircuits, rather than a transfer of information between the subcircuits themselves.


    I nodded, ¡°Sort of like the static crossover? Crap. That¡¯s why I was using silicon nanoclusters sheathed in carbon bucky spheres with a boron matrix. I was trying to prevent crossover signals, but this is weird, it¡¯s like the crossover signals themselves are being shared between the boron matrices.¡±


    ¡°What does that mean?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°it¡¯s like umm¡­ you take a banana, coat it with chocolate, and put it in ice cream. When the banana warms up, it melts the chocolate enough that some heat travels to the ice cream itself, because boron is a semiconductor based on its temperature. I don¡¯t really understand the math, but apparently, some quantum particles that make up the chocolate are susceptible to quantum entanglement, so every time I make another banana split, if I make it exactly the same way, all the different bananas coated in chocolate share their temperature with each other.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°I think I need to read that book by Professor Duarte. The one on probability amplitude.¡±


    ¡°Is it¡­ a useful effect? Or just something we have to watch out for?¡± she asked.


    I thought about it. Clearly, unless I wanted to make custom changes to each of the microprocessors I blueprinted, the boron matrix would be a problem, since the more helmets I created for my team, the more interference they would cause with each other when they had enough data manipulation to affect the temperature of the silicon nanostructures. That meant each helmet, at least, would need to be custom-built, and if I improved the armor enough to need microcontrols, the problem would simply get worse.


    On the other hand, if I switched to a different matrix, possibly antimony? It wouldn¡¯t alter its conductivity based on temperature, but it wasn¡¯t exactly the easiest mineral to get ahold of.


    Two hours later, I¡¯d replaced the boron-matrix circuits with antimony-matrix circuits, and unlike the boron circuits, direct blueprint copying didn¡¯t seem to pass any interference between circuits when they got active. ¡°Much better.¡±


    Abbey had been bugging me the whole time about the original circuits. While I recognized that a provable sort of quantum entanglement, everything about it was way beyond my abilities. At her insistence, though, I kept the old pinhead circuits to experiment with later.


    Kaiju Tactics was a FUN course! I thought it would just be a dry retrospective of the different tactical maneuvers that worked and didn¡¯t work against certain known and unknown breeds, but it turned out to be a lot more of a debate and discussion followed by a set of tactical games!


    In essence, most Kaiju with a few exceptions had known attributes. The course had set up a series of scales containing numeric information, determined both by alphas and military fighting them and the results of dissections, and it was set up as a series of ¡®games¡¯, where the same scales could be applied both to known alphas and to the class itself, to determine the safest and most effective ways of defeating them.


    I decided, right then and there, to do whatever it took to move their ¡®game database¡¯ into my team¡¯s armor¡¯s heads-up display. More and more I wished I either was a programmer or had a programmer as a trusted member of my team because I could imagine a thousand ways that kind of information could come in handy!


    The statistics weren¡¯t broad, either. Gynoscope (don¡¯t ask!) was listed as 36 strength, 28 durability, with elemental and poison resistance in the teens that directly affected the amount of damage she would receive in melee with a basilisk and its poisonous breath. Considering the vulnerability of her team, we got to play with figures on a screen and determined that the most effective method of fighting was for her to actually charge right down a basilisk¡¯s throat, activate her power thirty-three neurostatic entropy field, and then rip her way out while her team dealt with the beast from the outside.


    Doctor Kress, the course administrator, beamed as he explained to us after we played out the numbers, that the tactic had eventually been employed by Gynoscope¡¯s hunter team, but not before the bastard had taken out three teammates. One of them was a radiation-type glass cannon, which critically affected their field performance, and the other two were both class 3 supports, which eventually caused their team to get wiped out. If the tactic had been adopted as quickly as our class did, the entire team would have either penetrated much deeper into the invasion or defeated it entirely without losses.


    We did lose some, too, although I began to feel a little bit guilty about some of the losses, since, if I had reported my power potential accurately, there might have been wins. Actually, a couple would have absolutely been wins, although once our team was outfitted with my custom-designed armors approved both by the power exploitation and combat logistics teacher, our newly enhanced team suddenly became a dominating force in tactics class, which unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, led to our team¡¯s first duel.


    The moment the armor was approved, the beautiful and ever-so-talented Chinook decided that it was time to reclaim her place on the ladder, which had been dropping while she went through remedial courses and focused on our team instead of her personal place. I was a bit gratified, but Candace informed me, in no uncertain terms, that she¡¯d decided to hook her wagon into our train because, in her opinion ¡®You guys are going places faster than I¡¯d ever get there.¡±


    Before I¡¯d noticed, she¡¯d hit rank 7 on the ladder, apparently taking advantage of both the dramatically increased impact resistance and the hardened environmental support I¡¯d worked out to train down in the poisonous tunnel. That meant only the top ten could challenge her, but my armor attracted a lot more attention than I expected. Not because of its durability alone, it wasn¡¯t impossibly durable, but because it was light and flexible enough for even people without physical enhancements to use effectively.


    One unexpected side effect was, because of the way I had designed it to be capable of channeling essence through it so that I could absorb energy, Chinook was able to use her winds even with the suit being completely environmentally sealed. I knew it could channel energy while blocking out offensive charges, but I had no idea it would give those with environmental and point-blank energy attacks such a ridiculous edge.


    ***


    ¡°Okay, I am still a little confused. This is a group challenge, right? Teamwork?¡±


    ¡°Group combat ladder, yes. Technically we are being challenged to establish someone¡¯s dominance among the lowest ranks. Right now, because none of us have challenged, all five first-year teams are considered part of the twenty-fifth rung, even though, school-wide, there are twenty-five teams. A victory will move us to rung twenty-four, while the loser stays at twenty-five.¡± Akyo explained. Chinook mostly only knew the scoring for the single combat stuff, as that had been her personal focus, but Akyo had studied those ladders, all of them, in-depth before she¡¯d ever left Tokyo.


    ¡°And you said that it could affect other rankings too?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes. Most of the other categories don¡¯t start to get filled until after grading, but with your tech getting used in ranked matches, that means you personally could advance in support crafting and gearing.¡±


    ¡°Our teammates could also gain ranks in gearing and technical competence as well as part of the team. The only thing is the side bet.¡±


    I glanced at Candace, ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s the part that weirds me out. I mean, is it legal?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°In the school, gear bets based on performance are totally legitimate.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Okay, I get that. I mean¡­ I don¡¯t actually understand the bet. You are saying that the Phoenix team wants our armor. I totally get that, but the details are weird. I mean, you said they are willing to pay up to a hundred grand for each suit IF they win, but they were offering to pay if they lose, too.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°If they win, you personally outfit each of them with their own custom-fitted suit at your earliest convenience. If they lose, they have to wait until you release the suits, if you ever do.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°So what do we win?¡±


    Candace sighed, ¡°A forfeit. They tried to offer a few things to counter the bet, but they don¡¯t have a tinker on their team.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Do we have to accept it?¡±


    ¡°The side bet? no. Technically, since the team is first year even though I am second, we can¡¯t really lose anything by bailing or forfeiting, except for a big bonus for competing as a first-year team.¡±


    I glanced at Mindy, ¡°What do you think?¡±


    Mindy smiled, ¡°I¡¯m going to accept the duel, but the side bet was totally you. I mean, they are second years, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I think the side bet is the only reason they offered, though.¡±


    I nodded slowly. Mindy was the team leader. I didn¡¯t think we were quite ready for prime time yet, but we weren¡¯t bad, after almost a month and a half in classes. This would probably be a good thing since the mid-term trials would be coming up soon.


    ¡°I am not sure yet. I mean, the armors are decent for now, but I am not happy with the helmets yet, they are like massively pre-alpha. Will they accept raw versions?¡±


    You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.


    Candace snickered, ¡°Considering the suggestions Frost Phoenix was making about paying off her forfeit, I am betting she¡¯d accept anything raw you wanted to give her.¡±


    I flushed. I threw myself into classes, but it was getting more and more difficult to ignore the flirting from my team. I mean, it wasn¡¯t terribly blatant, but I was starting to wonder if they were turning it into a game, even knowing I was determined to avoid alpha girls. The fact that the lengths I was going to avoid getting too comfortable with them also pretty much precluded any serious contact with normal girls didn¡¯t help. I felt like I was enthusiastically participating in my own conversion to a full-time shut-in.


    ¡°Do they know our line-up?¡±


    Candace nodded, ¡°At least what is available. But there¡¯s a slight problem.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    She smirked, ¡°You haven¡¯t gotten your active powers registered. Right now, you are considered an enigma. Duels like this are very strictly controlled to avoid serious injury. Right now your air shield is considered verified, as is your healing, rapid movement, and materials merging, but from what I understand you are getting an awful lot of attention because your active ability seems to include too many disparate effects. If you intend to use your¡­ uhh¡­ special armor plug-ins, like fireballs or lightning, you are going to have to get those tested.¡±


    I facepalmed. ¡°I thought momentum control covered it.¡±


    Mindy shook her head, ¡°Not for a class three it doesn¡¯t. For a class six, you could pretty much do anything and no one would be surprised, but you want to keep a low profile¡­ a profile that seems to be shooting away from you faster than you can catch up to it.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Okay, my lovely sponsor, what do YOU recommend I do?¡±


    Mindy shrugged, ¡°You are already attracting attention. My personal suggestion is to go ahead and reclassify as a class four, something that could cover all of your displayed abilities with a single power.¡±


    ¡°As a class four? I am not sure what would cover it.¡±


    She smiled a little evilly, ¡°Would you like to hear the rumors about what your real power is?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Actually, yes.¡±


    Mindy Glanced at Candace, who grinned, and I was not sure if I would like where this was going.


    ¡°The first guess is that you are an artificer.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s like a cross between an enchanter sort, which would normally be eligible for a different academy, and a widgeteer sort, who would be here¡­ basically magical toys. The problem is, that sort of versatility might get you too much notice from the magical school recruiters.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I got a personal invitation from recruiters, so yeah. Not great to encourage that. It would also almost automatically demand a power rank update.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°The second rumor is that you have temporal manipulation. Not time travel, but the ability to speed up or slow down things. That would explain your travel, your healing, and technically even your walls, and being some kind of genius with the ability to slow down time would explain the equipment you make, sort of, I guess.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s a possibility. It might not even require me to claim a higher power level.¡±


    She smiled, ¡°The third rumor is that you are some kind of power vampire.¡±


    I looked at her in confusion, taking a sip of my power drink. We were all hanging out in the common room while the gentle strains of Marilyn Manson¡¯s unplugged album quietly played in the background. ¡°What does that mean?¡±


    ¡°That means that you temporarily rob or borrow powers from others. That would explain your power versatility, but would open up a huge number of questions.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Let¡¯s put that one on the back burner. As a rumor, it would work out pretty well, and keep some people from being as¡­ aggressive. But there¡¯s no way I¡¯d want the instructors and judges to think that.¡±


    Candace snorted. ¡°That leads to the fourth rumor.¡±


    Mindy sighed, ¡°The fourth rumor, and the one that¡¯s currently most popular, as far as I can tell, is that you are a harem lord.¡±


    ¡°A what?¡±


    Akyo snickered, ¡°I know this one! They think that you gain power from every girl you have sexual relations with. And based on Candace¡¯s recent rank gains, you also give them a power boost.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Number one, I haven¡¯t slept with Candace, and number two, her power gains were just because she had the right tool for the job!¡±


    Candace smirked, ¡°I mean, we don¡¯t KNOW that you aren¡¯t a harem lord. Testing it might be a smart idea.¡±


    I gave her the stink-eye and she retreated with her hands up, grinning. ¡°If I didn¡¯t at least try, you¡¯d think I was sick.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Point taken. I think I will try to run with the time control angle. I mean, it fits my power pretty closely and it won¡¯t require me to re-list as a higher class. That just means there are certain things I will have to avoid.¡±


    Candace nodded, ¡°mostly the powers won¡¯t get you into trouble unless they think you can actually alter the time stream or do some horrible things like aging someone by a thousand years.¡±


    ¡°Do we have a good idea of their powers?¡±


    Akyo nodded. ¡°Yes, I already looked them up. Their leader, Frost Phoenix, is a speedster.¡±


    ¡°Interesting name for a speedster. Any relation to her powers?¡±


    Akyo nodded, ¡°Yes, she absorbs kinetic energy for her speed. It keeps her safe at high speeds, and makes her leave a frost trail of lost kinetic motions when she¡¯s absorbing a LOT.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Sort of like the way my power works. Very cool, motion-shift.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Close, but more like motion drain to fuel her own motion, but very similar. Their anchor is a combination shifter and physical enhancement named Bengal. Very fast, extremely tough, strong regeneration and her shtick is, of course, turning into a humanoid tiger.¡±


    Candace nodded, ¡°Humanoid, but furries would go crazy over her. She has HUGE tits in her morph form, and is a solid five on the ladder already, which is unbelievable for a second year.¡±


    I looked at Candace, ¡°You are seven already and you are only second year.¡±


    She nodded, beaming, ¡°Yes, I am. Toot toot. That¡¯s me tooting my own horn.¡±


    Akyo shrugged, ¡°She has huge boobs because she is eight feet tall. They are proportional.¡±


    Candace shrugged, ¡°Still, Jake seems to like muscular girls. I plan on getting him hooked up with someone by the end of the semester. If not one of us, then I will find someone else. His dick is my dick.¡±


    Mindy looked at her weirdly, ¡°I don¡¯t think the saying works if you are a girl.¡±


    Candace shrugged, ¡°I saw it in a movie once.¡±


    Akyo coughed, and I was grateful she was covering up my discomfort with the topic. ¡°Moving on. Next, we have Caroline, she hasn¡¯t chosen an ID yet. Physical specialist, very fast, and she can produce dense bursts of smoke that can render most people unconscious in a few seconds. She specializes in the staff.¡±


    I nod, ¡°I am sensing a theme here.¡±


    Akyo nodded, ¡°Yeah, they are all fast physical. That¡¯s why they are doing pretty well on the group ladder for second-years. Twelfth place, mostly because of outlasting other teams.¡±


    ¡°The last one?¡±


    Akyo smiled, ¡°The last one breaks the theme. Quiet Code is an illusion cyberkinetic. Her cyberkinesis breaks a lot of rules, though.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°Well, first, she¡¯s not a coder. She asks machines to do things, and the machines are¡­ uhh¡­ happy to help out by producing their own code, that code is apparently a nightmare for anyone else to deal with, and she barely needs any real computing power to do it. She can make a pocket calculator pass a basic turning test.¡±


    I had an evil thought. ¡°Is it persistent?¡±


    Akyo looked confused. ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    ¡°I mean, is it like a gadgeteer, where she has to provide energy to keep it going, or is it like a tinker, where once you create it, it¡¯s real?¡±


    Akyo started tapping through her laptop. ¡°From what I understand, the cooperativeness, or sentience, I guess, is active only. She can add instructions to continue self-coding after her influence, but it has to be part of her instruction set, just like learning software. It doesn¡¯t produce its own innate code unless she¡¯s influencing it.¡±


    I nodded. ¡°Tell you what. Introduce me to her¡­ Quiet Code? If she can help me, I would be more than happy to accept the bet. So who are numbers five and six?¡±


    Akyo shook her head, ¡°They don¡¯t have five or six. Right now they are at four, three melees and a support.¡±


    Candace looked a little worried, ¡°If we want to play the honorable game, that means two people will have to sit out.¡±


    Both Sabrina and I said ¡°Me.¡±


    Abigail snickered. ¡°Right. No, Sabrina and I will sit out. Me, because I have zero combat powers, and Sabrina because she¡¯s even more of a secret background weapon than I am. She also doesn¡¯t have the materials she needs to be combat effective.¡±


    Dammit, she was completely right. ¡°I guess there¡¯s no chair guys in a team spar?¡±


    Mindy smiled, ¡°No. Then again, against a melee-heavy team, you are kind of an ¡®I win¡¯ button.¡±


    ¡°How do you figure?¡±


    Candace sighed and patted me on the back. ¡°Such a simple man. You might be fragile, but as long as you stay out of melee combat, you are seriously overpowered.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Sure, under certain circumstances. But under certain circumstances, so are you. You are aware that my only advantage comes from when I use a disproportionate force, right?¡±


    She shook her head.


    ¡°Yep. I can make an air shield or kinetic stopper for fire because fire has almost no real mass¡­ that means that with less than an ounce of force, I could stop fire easily. And only a few ounces of force are needed to deflect most ranged attack paths. But do you know what would happen if you tried to punch me?¡±


    Candace nodded, ¡°You would disappear and reappear in your bed, fast asleep.¡±


    She wasn¡¯t technically wrong.


    ¡°Okay, technically, yes, but if I didn¡¯t have enough energy, you would punch me and shatter my jaw. Your fist has too much mass for me to stop, and too much force for me to effectively deflect. So no, I am not a secret weapon or overpowered, I just happen to know how to screw with most alphas that rely on ranged abilities.¡±


    The girls started to move to their rooms to get ready for their next courses, but Akyo mentioned, ¡°You know if you update your record to reflect class four tachyon manipulation, you are going to get moved out of power exploitation(transformative) and into energy manipulation instead. It¡¯s not as laid-back and you won¡¯t have as much time for¡­¡± she brushed her hands down her body, which was covered by the armor I made her.


    ¡°Your body?¡±


    She blushed. At least I could still embarrass her occasionally. ¡°Tech!¡± she snapped.


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s not really a problem. Yeah, I have some projects I am really excited about, but I¡¯m not a tinker, and I already have decent blueprints. Call me resting on my laurels, but I am more intent on improving my team than myself. I know for a fact I don¡¯t belong within a hundred miles of a front line, that I am a coward, and will never go anywhere.¡±


    Akyo sighed. ¡°I am going out on a limb here, but you are still repeating that s...shit. Why? I get it, some s¡­ slag badmouthed you, but aren¡¯t you holding onto that way too hard?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Actually, I¡¯m not holding onto it that hard at all. I did for a long time, and was kind of using it as an excuse for when I screwed up, especially after my...terrible attempt at playing superhero.¡±


    Akyo nodded and sat down on the couch next to me, her leg propped up on the couch cushion. ¡°Is that why you won¡¯t date anyone?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°I am dating five girls right now.¡±


    ¡°You know what I mean.¡±


    I thought about it carefully, trying to decide if I trusted Akyo that much. ¡°It¡¯s like this. I have been friends with Christine since we were in junior high. We weren¡¯t lovers, but we were both theater freaks and had each other¡¯s backs.¡±


    ¡°After High School, we decided to try and save up to get out of Empire City and move up north to New Rhodes, that¡¯s when we hooked up. Things changed a little, especially when she awakened, but it was¡­ sort of okay. I mean, yeah, I had to man up and stop manning up when I realized that she was able to break me easily, but hey, that¡¯s something every guy deals with. I asked her to marry me and she agreed.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Honestly, it was probably mostly my fault. I mean, I know she loved playing the hero game once she got started, and when my dad died I was convinced I was the next Elon Musk, which only got worse when I awakened also. My powers were weak, but I was convinced we would make the next dynamic duo.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Things got more complicated, she slept with my cousin, and I was stupid enough to cosign voting stock as an engagement present. She turned around and traded it to my cousin for money and nonvoting stock, to get the capital for the PR game. Amazing fights after that and me, mister ¡®The love of my life betrayed me¡¯ Emo douchebag, blew my share of the money trying to play the rich superhero and failing miserably.¡±


    ¡°Boom, story of my life. I finally realized that the PR game was where it was at, and because I had a huge potential variety of abilities I could simulate, I started playing the professional street-level alpha villain.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°A couple of times some of my clients got a little¡­ Well, violence can be a huge turn-on, you know, even when it¡¯s mostly simulated for the cameras. But, you know, the whole power balance thing got in the way.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Almost every alpha is convinced that they are the best at what they do best. My power levels are incredibly low, but given enough time I can come up with an effective counter to almost anything. Alphas are competitive, and I didn¡¯t realize that my most attractive quality was novelty.¡±


    ¡°So, I decided I wouldn¡¯t touch Alpha girls, or at least not active power alpha girls. I am competitive too, and I don¡¯t need the stress, and I refuse to play the hook-up game. But since I have been putting every moment of every day into my classes, my team, and my development, I am just not really on the dating market.¡±


    ¡°Active power?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°You know, front liners. Girls that are destined to go toe-to-toe with monsters or supervillains. I won¡¯t marry someone I am probably going to wind up competing with, especially not someone who I might have to wait on the back line and pray they don¡¯t die. I won¡¯t be a cop wife.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°But you are willing to turn someone else into a cop wife over you?¡±


    I smiled, ¡°You noticed I wasn¡¯t dating. And like I said, I am a coward¡­ if I do meet and fall in love with someone, marry them, and someday have kids, well, my greatest ability right now is my dash¡­ I specialize in getting away from trouble.¡±

 Chapter 28. Wow, shes on fire!

    I was a stylin¡¯ fool. Seriously. The girls were still messing around with their suits, figuring out the perfect sort of designs, and in Mindy¡¯s case, she¡¯d actually figured out how to use the video circuitry to create a sort of active video¡­ her hands and feet were white, and crystalline frost moved and rippled across the surface of her armor. So cool. I was very very quick to steal the 8-frame player she adapted for the other armors.


    Yeah, pretty much everyone was better at software than me. Akyo was even in the process of getting a version of Linux to run on hers, she said that being able to adapt other technology and its drivers could be incredibly useful. I just hoped people weren¡¯t playing Tetris while they were supposed to be fighting.


    Mine had a more...physical adaptation. The energy storage methodology tied into my hard workout sessions had left my body looking like I spent more time in the gym than I did. Something about the body cultivation I was doing was leaving me looking pretty cut, especially since I¡¯d grown almost an inch in two months! At Mindy¡¯s suggestion, I had altered my armor, enhancing the shoulder pieces, increasing its fluidity, and making it look a bit more like a tight jacket and pants combination. It was a little¡­ snug now, but she just smirked and said it would help keep me from getting hurt.


    Yeah, yeah. I¡¯d had to do some waxing that made me extremely uncomfortable, and now I didn¡¯t have much hair anywhere except my head. Silly-sounding, but the tighter the armor lay against your skin, the better it distributed force.


    Any air pockets, such as from body hair, ran a risk of breaking the force distribution flow lines. Unlike the girls, though, I had a special piece of armor I wore UNDER the suit because I wasn¡¯t going to wear a skin-tight structure that basically outlined my junk. One super-tech athletic cup coming up! The thing was fairly heavy for what it was, but it was made of a molecularly-realigned tungsten-titanium alloy I had specially blended for the purpose, and it would probably survive a harder hit than any other part of my armor OR my body.


    If only it didn¡¯t itch. At first, I was shaving, but Candace convinced me to try waxing, and after an hour in the bathroom I never wanted to think about it again, I was finished and convinced I¡¯d use depilatory creams in the future. Maybe it got easier the more you did it, but I certainly didn''t envy swimsuit models and porn stars.


    ¡°So this is what you call low profile?¡± I heard Abbey¡¯s voice buzzing in my ear. We were assembled for the team duel, waiting for the Arena to open up for our fight. Abigail¡¯s new name, though, was Network, so I should start thinking of her as that in costume.


    Quantum entanglement. It turned out that boron, when replicated with a blueprint, was occasionally entangled, as were several other semiconducting elements. The secret was that, unlike all the fabulous stories about quantum entanglement, the mostly transferred information could be loosely defined as ¡®temperature¡¯ because it was vibrational frequencies on a subatomic scale.


    Boron was the secret, but not the end. When sandwiched between microlayers of another semiconductor, like silicon, and a directional conductor, like carbon, it could be used to send pulses. Not clean, not consistent, but it worked.


    But, after messing around for a while, I came up with a crystalline gallium nitrite, thanks to our friendly neighborhood toxic pit, doped with manganese and sandwiched, like the boron, in layers of tightly-woven silicon and carbon nanostructure. I blame HAM radio for the idea.


    It cut down heavily on electromagnetic interference, exactly what was breaking modern wireless communications, and while the eventual quantum entangled signal was not what I considered ¡®clean¡¯, a good squelch circuit and a ton of amplification, and the paired quantum vibration was able to replicate the sonic vibration of an actual voice.


    Gallium nitrite was able to expand the ¡®band¡¯, and as long as each ¡®set¡¯ of helmets contained a modified blueprint, it was able to send a decent analog signal to every helmet¡­ I didn¡¯t even need to make an entire pinhole processor and could focus on the reception. About an hour to blueprint-clone the new quantum transmitters, thirty seconds to imbed and tune them for each helmet, a bit of micro-circuitry work to tie it into the computer network for hopefully later software updates, and the team was now capable of communicating at any range.


    And by any, I meant ANY. As far as I could tell, quantum vibration didn¡¯t have a max range, the sympathetic vibrations just happened regardless of where they were located.


    Abbey wasn¡¯t even close to the arena, but she was in the circuit and set up to be exactly the sort of chair guy I wish I could have been¡­ with her ability to retrieve information in seconds, she was simply more valuable there than I was, so I guess I had to relegate myself to being the tech geek instead of the hidden research nerd.


    ¡°What, no one can hear us. As far as I can tell, the only person who could even have the potential to hack this would be¡­ well¡­ you.¡±


    ¡°Are you planning on distributing comm networks with the new armor?¡±


    I was torn. Seriously, I was agonizing over it. On the one hand, good battlefield communications were going to be our team¡¯s ultimate ace-in-the-hole and give us an unbeatable edge.


    On the other hand, with the comms, a few hours of labor on my part, and some inexpensive materials, hunter teams, Kaiju teams, and even unpowered supercops could survive in the face of certain extinction¡­ Was my safety and anonymity worth the lives of those who risked their lives to protect my home? I would be the first to admit I was selfish, but this kind of selfishness was damned close to murder.


    ¡°I am not sure yet. A quantum radio could land me right at the bottom of a black site.¡±


    She whistled slowly. It caused a hint of feedback, and Chinook spoke, ¡°Ouch. Seriously, though, there IS a solution to the black-bag game.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    She chuckled a little, ¡°Always make sure that at least two of us are sleeping with you at all times. That way, if someone does try to snatch you, they will have to get through two other alphas to do so.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s not a terrible idea. You don¡¯t have to do anything sexual, but if you move around between our rooms, that adds a huge layer of complication to any attempts to disappear you. Also, if you start to distribute the outfits to the other students and they don¡¯t find out about the comm circuits until there are plenty of them out there, no one official could touch you¡­ The ones that have them would protect their source, and the ones that WANT them would start a riot.¡± Glacier Girl pointed out.


    I nodded, as the doors to the arena started to open. ¡°So¡­ start showing them to the fourth-year students and taking orders first? Unless we lose this, then I guess the Phoenix team gets them first.¡±


    ¡°Uhh¡­ Blueprint?¡± Akyo whispered.


    ¡°Yes?¡± I said as the light started to leak in as well as the noise.


    ¡°I don¡¯t think letting the fourth years know is going to be a problem¡­¡±


    The Arena was packed. Normally, for a duel, even team duels, there would be a few normies watching the action, some teams or solos keeping an eye on the action to gauge their competition, teachers and evaluators to grade activities and keep things safe, and any other students and staff that happened to be wandering by and interested by the action sports.


    But now, well, while the Arena was not completely full, that was reserved for interschool competitions but damned if it didn¡¯t look like a good majority of the school hadn¡¯t turned out. There were alpha students in their uniforms, and based on the attendance at seven on a Wednesday night, I imagined that a lot of people had either cut evening classes to watch or the teachers had just tossed their hands and told people to go.


    ¡°What¡­ The¡­ Fu¡­¡± I started to say, but Glacier interrupted me, ¡°Is this for us?¡±


    ¡°Yes and no.¡± Network answered. ¡°There¡¯s been a lot of buzz on the school forums about Chinook¡¯s armor and the mysterious handsome alpha boy that always shows up surrounded by girls, made the armor, and whose power set is nearly completely unknown since you managed to display both super speed and healing abilities.¡±


    ¡°You are supposed to be actually fighting tonight, and there¡¯s tons of curiosity, and some of the fourth-years took advantage of the buzz to schedule duels afterward. I also got a few...umm¡­ special bits of info about you, Blueprint.¡±


    ¡°Dare I ask?¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Yeah, I peeked into Flashwork¡¯s messaging. She¡¯s been bragging on Cruise that after the fight she¡¯s going to drag you into taking her on a date so that she can hopefully put the mystery at rest.¡±


    ¡°What mystery?¡± I grumbled. ¡°I talk to you guys all the time, never dodge teacher questions in classes, run my mouth in tactics class, and say hi to anyone that says hi to me, even if I have no clue who it was that just waved at me.¡±


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


    ¡°Yeah, umm¡­ more like social mysteries.¡±


    ¡°Social mysteries?¡±


    ¡°Yep,¡± said Chinook. ¡°Who you are dating, if you are gay, if your body really looks as good without clothes as it does in uniform, personal tragedies, dick size, all that sort of rumor bait. Mostly they already think you are a nice guy cause you don¡¯t constantly talk shit, and rumors of your¡­ nakedness have already gotten around, but some of the girls are ready to claw their eyes out to find out more. Hell, Twitchblade said she¡¯d pay a thousand dollars for anyone that can get a picture of you with an erection, so they can find out if you are a shower or a grower.¡±


    ¡°Thanks, Chinook. Now I can¡¯t get that out of my head.¡±


    ¡°Hah! You know I could use an extra grand. Hell, YOU can use an extra grand, I¡¯d split it with you. Five hundred apiece. I¡¯d even be happy to be your fluffer to get you ready for the picture. Maybe relax you afterward.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Right. If you didn¡¯t try I¡¯d think something was wrong with you.¡±


    ¡°No, I am actually serious. You said you won¡¯t date or have sex with an alpha. There¡¯s lots of things we could do¡­¡±


    ¡°Shush. We are being called.¡± Glacier girl said, irritably. We all trooped out once the judges and safety said they were ready for us, indicated by a green light on the giant doors. ¡°Do we all know our role?¡±


    ¡°Yep, Terracotta and I play wall. You and Blueprint play set-up, and then we knock ¡®em down.¡±


    I nodded even though no one could see it. ¡°All three of you play finisher games. I have my ¡®special suit weapons¡¯ approved, but I¡¯d rather not let this many people know about them. Chinook, keep your ears open. I have a few ideas to give you an edge, but I will need to see these people in action before I try them. Terracotta? Remember to slow the hell down. I know you are tickled pink about your new suit upgrades, but only go into overdrive if you absolutely have to, It would be a hell of a surprise in whatever challenge you whip it out in, so I¡¯d like to keep it a surprise.¡±


    I looked around the Arena, it wasn¡¯t set up with any special environments this time, simply a series of pylons rising from the ground to help break line-of-sight and to prevent easy running or flying takedowns. Like us, the other team was splitting from their doorway, heading behind the pylons.


    ¡°Remember, the enemy¡¯s gate is down,¡± I said jokingly. ¡°Wait, uhh¡­ who the hell is that?¡± I asked, noticing that rather than the grey suit I was expecting, the lumbering fellow who had treated me at the clinic was diving towards a pylon, wearing what looked like a wrestling outfit.


    ¡°Shit, they have a ringer. That¡¯s Oahu, he¡¯s a fourth-year, and currently rank three. Unbelievably tough, and he gets stronger the more hits he takes.¡± Chinook said.


    ¡°Is that¡­ legal?¡±


    ¡°Yes, although them pulling in a fourth year instead of forcing Quiet Code to risk millions of dollars worth of expensive drones might be considered a little unfair.¡±


    ¡°Millions?¡± I gulped as I dived next to Chinook, breaking the line of sight from this range. I could still tell where they were from the coiling pools of energy at their cores, but it was a poor sort of vision. I should put some kind of vision enhancement or pulse sonar in the suit.


    ¡°Yep. Did I mention most of us are stupidly rich? Not me, the Nation can¡¯t afford to blow that kind of cash, but Quiet Code? With her gifts, the data syndicates have probably been desperately throwing toys and gobs of money at her since she was a first-year.¡±


    ¡°Uhh¡­ most likely the Phoenix put out a call based on financial risk. Does Oahu know your powers, Blueprint?¡±


    ¡°Some of them, not all. We¡¯ve had a few nice discussions at the clinic, but not usually about anything but healing techniques and girls. He¡¯s a great nurse.¡±


    ¡°Then he probably volunteered. There are some people that would cripple you on purpose if they got the chance just to prevent future competition, like Phantom Pane. She¡¯s done that twice already. He probably volunteered so that someone like that wouldn¡¯t get the chance.¡±


    I grumbled ¡°I¡¯d like to see the bitch try.¡± quietly under my breath, but based on the silence I guess my team had heard me.


    ¡°Chinook, new plan. I am going to kinetically strip Frost Phoenix when she shows up. I know you prefer to go toe-to-toe, but with Oahu in play, I want you to try and push your wind, and get him a strong updraft, I''ll assist. Terracotta? Keep Bengal busy until I can refocus. Glacier? Your plan will probably work great on Caroline instead of Frost, but we have the edge against her gas¡­ try to see if you can maneuver her and Bengal together. Hell, we might wind up adding Oahu to the mix if we can, he¡¯s a kinetic absorber, and I¡¯d like to see what her gas does to him.¡±


    I could actually hear Oahu thundering through the maze, and with a flash, I saw a blue streak trailing a line of frost shooting toward me.


    Okay, I don¡¯t want to brag, but Frost Phoenix was a total amateur. I mean, look, I KNOW about the microkinetic drain. I used it like a scalpel, and she used it like a snowplow, probably because of her endless energy. The thing is, when it came to microkinetic drain, her nearly mach one speed couldn¡¯t even come close to the speeds I was FORCED to work at when stabilizing and manipulating trillions of molecules.


    I casually started blocking off her kinetic drain of all of the air and ground molecules around her body, and she glanced at me with shock, realizing I could see her perfectly well as I stuck out my tongue.


    In a moment she stopped, and then burst into flame.


    ¡°Shit!¡± I yelled. ¡°Code one.¡± I started dashing towards the burning, screaming girl. After a moment I got there and realized what was happening. Without her absorption, the kinetic molecules around her were doubling, tripling, or even more in molecular motion. That meant that the air around her body was literally catching on fire, something she was almost entirely unable to deal with.


    I grabbed her, and hauled her off the ground, away from the burning flooring beneath her feet. The air was bad, but something I could handle, as I started to siphon off the molecular motion. At least THIS energy, momentum, was utterly mine, and I could feel it filling me to overfilling in seconds. The girl might be limited, but she was powerful as HELL, converting the Chaos energy directly into momentum a thousand times faster than I ever could.


    I felt like I was going to explode. I started desperately trying to compress the energy as it flowed into me. It was rushing through my channels, feeling like I was burning almost as badly as Frost Phoenix had, but she wasn¡¯t as badly damaged as she probably thought. I imagine she felt like she was dying, but fortunately, I wouldn¡¯t have to do a reset, her hair and costume were falling off, and she had pretty serious second-degree burns, but from my point of view that was an easy repair job¡­ her cell structure was basically normal for an alpha, and reconstructing her outer layer was well within my new range.


    After a few moments, I¡¯d burned as much energy as I could reconstructing her, and regrowing her hair. I didn¡¯t know how long it was originally, but I NEEDED a way to burn off the extra energy she was feeding me a thousand times faster than I could spin it up and compress it, so after regrowing her eyebrows I just manually forced millions of hair cells to grow, giving her about four feet of lustrous red locks. This was probably a good thing since the fire had completely consumed her costume and right now she was naked as a jaybird and had finally stopped screaming and started to hiccup.


    I heard Chinook screaming, ¡°Forfeit! Forfeit!¡± as I subsumed my consciousness and started running in place, even holding the girl, trying to dive into a deep enough meditation to handle the immeasurable stress of getting filled like a water balloon on a fire hose.


    ***


    Whoah. Cool.


    Where my energy had felt like a gas before, right now it was flowing like a river. A rich, powerful stream of energy. It still couldn¡¯t match the blitzing roil of nova energy that your average alpha could pump out, but it was amazing to watch.


    Even as I watched, coils of spiraling liquid were catching wisps of overloaded energy and forcibly liquefying them into the roiling mass of liquid. I was incredibly glad that Sabrina had coached me into keeping the cycling going day and night, awake or asleep, or the overloaded mass would have probably ruptured, destroying my powers and possibly even turning me into an even bigger torch than Frost Phoenix had been a few seconds ago.


    The thing was, what I was doing I wasn¡¯t alone. I could feel another source of energy stretching, expanding, and swapping out energy with mine. The nasty unformed energy was gone, turned into clean, smooth motion, and each of our cores could easily absorb, roll, and return the energy of motion and momentum.


    Both my soul space and, I guess, Phoenix¡¯s were scarred, with a thin hairline of cracks like an egg running through their overextended lengths which seemed to be slowly reforming as we swapped the energy back and forth, the liquid movement like a pair or twin whirlpools swapping water back and forth with each revolution.


    To be honest, it was a little amazing, especially since Phoenix was a complete stranger I couldn¡¯t even remember seeing around the school until our match, but after this, I wasn¡¯t sure if calling her a stranger would be right. More like a twin sister I had never met. I couldn¡¯t peer into her mind or anything, and I was pretty sure she was unconscious, but her energy was¡­ comforting.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t know he could fly.¡± I heard somewhere in the distance.


    ¡°He isn¡¯t flying, he¡¯s floating,¡± I could hear Glacier Girl¡¯s voice. ¡°I can feel the energy coming off of him and Katie.¡±


    ¡°Should we try to separate them?¡±


    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t,¡± a deeper voice, Oahu? Remarked. ¡°Whatever he¡¯s doing to help her has set up a back-channel. She¡¯s not pulling on the source right now, she¡¯s pulling on HIM, and whatever he¡¯s doing to absorb the kinetic feedback is fragile, like a fishing net of kinetic strands barely held together with spit and hopes. I don¡¯t think we should move them until whatever this is comes to a close, let alone trying to separate them.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t sweat it,¡± I heard Senpai Bob say. ¡°Arena¡¯s closed. Full energy shielding went up the minute Chinook hollered and I realized that Phoenix wasn¡¯t supposed to literally rise from the ashes. From what I can see, it looks like he¡¯s trying to stabilize his flow and hers at the same time. I don¡¯t know if it is fortune or misfortune that their powers are so similar that energy swaps work.¡±


    ¡°Probably misfortune. I have never seen anything like that before. It was like her connection to the core erupted. The only time I¡¯ve seen something like that was when a powerful male self-destructed when his secondary node unlocked,¡± a mysterious female voice added.


    Bob coughed, and I caught the last bits of his words as I delved deeper into the pool of power at my core, to start reconstructing the savage-looking cracks I saw in my soul space. Not just mine, but hers as well.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know if you will say that when she gets her power back under control. She¡¯s already a two-core, and that looked a hell of a lot like she just unlocked a third major power. She¡¯s probably going to be weak for a while, but I wouldn¡¯t be a bit surprised if she went up a class or two from this. Now please, you are his team, go gather up the pieces of his armor while we wait...¡±

 Chapter 29. Be true to yourself, even if it makes people whine.

    I was carefully working on another set of a new martial art I was trying to work into my basic training, a modification of Tai Chi called ¡®Daoist Tai Chi¡¯. It was weird since it was a lot more about emotional attitudes and balance than the strictly physical and energy aspects of traditional Tai Chi, but I already had a pretty strong foundation in hard and soft styles, and I needed a lot more of an emotional grounding than I did energy and dantian flow techniques after¡­ whatever happened with Frost Phoenix.


    Mostly because my emotional control, the tight reign I was holding over my reactions, was starting to fray. It didn¡¯t help that when I came out of my self-imposed mental exile, I was busily kissing Frost Phoenix and hadn¡¯t even realized it. Without wearing any clothes or armor.


    I mean, we were not DOING anything but damned if I wasn¡¯t ready to teleport someplace private and go for it, and based on her own reactions, even if we hadn¡¯t shared a single word, she probably wouldn¡¯t have protested.


    That was not me. I¡¯d never been one of those ¡®is this okay?¡¯ every step types, but I was NOT going to jump some girl that might be mentally, emotionally, or physically compromised.


    Unless, of course, that compromising was something we¡¯d already decided on. Honestly, I knew damned well that the wall I¡¯d built against a repeat of what happened with Christine was likely to come down eventually. Maybe it was my innate chauvinism or machismo or something, but I think I figured out what was bothering me so much.


    Every single girl I met was more of a man than I was.


    I know some people would be thinking that was shallow, that it was just my insecurity speaking, and they¡¯d be right. But that didn¡¯t matter. Every girl I¡¯d been with starting with Christine had been basically better than me in every way, and mostly I¡¯d been utterly aware of that fact from day one.


    Now? Heh. Not that anything had changed in the slightest, but I was beginning to realize that it wasn¡¯t my attitude but my understanding that was flawed. My Paranoia was absolutely justified.


    Christine¡¯s reaction was probably absolutely appropriate. I mean, I hadn¡¯t been qualified to run my dad¡¯s company. Hell, I¡¯d barely be able to keep the trucks refueled.


    And that left the second part. The part where she, and my cousin, had just led me along to doing something unbelievably stupid. The worst part was that it made logical sense¡­ from a certain point of view. It was one of those cases where the right and legal thing to do was also immoral.


    James needed and wanted something, and he was powerful, charismatic, and clever enough to get it, that was my share of the voting stock. To be fair, he didn¡¯t have a problem with girls more powerful than him, it didn¡¯t cause him the same sort of funk as it did me, both because he was at the top of his career, and never was interested in gaining powers or being some kind of celebrity.


    Christine falling for that when he turned his magnetism on her was natural. Not that it excused what she did, but it was a hell of a lot more complicated than I thought.


    I couldn¡¯t claim to be an expert on women, but I understood pretty well how social status worked. As long as I convinced myself I was no better than a glorified stevedore, a fence-sitting middle manager, and a convenience for my team, well, that¡¯s what I would project. Self-reinforcement at its best.


    Of course, the fact that my new helmet was reading ¡®3300¡¯ and I was drawing energy through my rebuilt suit and into my body probably helped. I felt strong, and I was strong, and while I still wouldn¡¯t try to arm-wrestle Candace, the newly installed synthetic myofibril myocytes were able to resist my movements, and the charge created from that resistance was now visible in the mark one control panel.


    I wasn¡¯t going to try and use the myocytes to ¡®increase¡¯ my available strength and leverage except on a case-by-case basis, like taking a hit that would otherwise smash through the impact reduction might cause it to trigger for rigid stability for a moment rather than allowing my ribs to get pulverized.


    But the whole ¡®power armor¡¯ thing was just a basket of crabs I wasn¡¯t ready to touch. Not out of any moral or ethical or ¡®showing your true strength¡¯ thing, but just because the control systems were a nightmare that I didn¡¯t want to get involved with, especially the ones needed to avoid hurting myself and others by accident.


    I mean, honestly, you can build about a million toys into power armor, weapon systems, nonlethals, and flight¡­ why do you also need to increase your reactions past your own body¡¯s ability to handle it or throw in enough strength to smash someone into a thin layer of jelly with your steel-encased fists?


    But hey, there was no accounting for tastes. I guess at some point I might have to create a strength-enhancing version, if only because the police could probably use a better version for their intercept teams. It was just the whole ¡®hurt yourself through overextension¡¯ thing that would take, not software defenses, but hardware limits.


    Yesterday, while we were preparing for the match that I guess we lost, Abbey had been working on getting a very dumbed-down version of Ubuntu running on the hardware, something that supposedly mimicked tablet functionality, while still offering access to some very old tuning software that she thought we could beat into accessing the quantum comms we were using now.


    Not well, it was still just on and off for each station, meaning the six suits, but it was there and it could modulate, squelch, and record voice, the three most important features, and the core for more advanced features. Some day. If someone could create them.


    I had come back out of my trance when our cores were stabilized, although I had noticed that Katie, or Frost Phoenix, was still out of it and probably would be for some time. She was conscious, sort of, but she kept moaning and trying to snuggle into my chest until I¡¯d finally apported both of us to the clinic and got her installed in a bed and both of us in scrubs.


    And then I tested the changes, using the Myocytes and the new text file builder that recorded their energy build-up and put it into terms I could understand, meaning not in hexadecimal. Right now, if I tried to do a bench press, I am not sure if I could get enough weights on a standard set to challenge me. If I had to use old Dungeons and Dragons terms, I¡¯d call my strength something like twenty, with a good eight hundred pounds max press. Thank you, body refinement! I wouldn¡¯t dare to try and arm-wrestle Candace, but I was pretty sure I could take on a class two physical alpha, maybe even most class threes.


    ¡°So what did I do, exactly?¡± I asked Sabrina, who was watching me as I panted my way through a set in the exercise room. Daoist Tai Chi was a lot less about moving the energy and more about FEELING it, and how it interacted with your body and, in my case, my meridians or energy points, including the ones that interacted with areas I didn¡¯t really understand. Dao Tai Chi was even further away from a combat art than traditional Tai Chi, but it was definitely more on track with the energy rather than just combat.


    Sabrina was the closest thing to an expert on cultivation we had, and was, even if unintentionally, helping me translate the documents that the Serenoids had vacated. The more I studied them, the more I was convinced that they had been brought intentionally, perhaps as some sort of trade item, because, while they included simple flow patterns for creatures with six arms and three fingers per arm, those flow patterns were easily adjustable for fewer limbs with more digits. Right now, I could hit with my fists filled with energy flow nearly hard enough to dent my own multiplayer hardened plates.


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    And, according to my current testing, that was the least of things. My enhanced three-foot range of direct influence? It was now almost eight feet. Eight friggin¡¯ feet. I had no idea how much overall mass I could affect now, but I was eager to find out. I mean, an eight-foot range might not seem like much, but only a few months ago it had only been a few inches, and that was the range within which my abilities could have a DIRECT effect¡­ indirect effects were as far as I could manage.


    Sabrina tapped her teeth with one fingernail, a reaction I was trying not to pay attention to. On most of the other girls, I would assume it was an intentional habit to draw attention to their mouth, but Sabrina was oddly¡­ innocent. She just did sexy things without realizing what she was doing, I think.


    ¡°Did you drain her energy?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, but our energy patterns were damned close. The minute she stopped pulling energy from the source, her refinement dropped, but her personal energy pressure skyrocketed, and she reclaimed what was...leaking before my soul space could shatter.¡±


    ¡°This was after you healed her, right? You were in close physical contact?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Technically, my microkinesis overloaded from her energy spillage. Lots of skin contact since I picked her up to keep her kinetics from interacting with the ground where I didn¡¯t have enough mass control to stop, and I sort of disintegrated parts of my armor. Technically I was still wearing parts of my pants, mostly because of the density of my¡­ special protection, but she¡¯d burned off her entire costume.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°So you traded energy, that was on a similar wavelength, but you didn¡¯t drain her, and she didn¡¯t drain you.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°I think, if it were even a few weeks ago, she would have. Her soul space is smaller than mine, but her energy density was a lot higher because of her connection to the ether, it actually helped form mine into a liquid and stabilize it, and our soul space fractures.¡±


    ¡°Did you kiss her?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I was kind of busy not dying, exploding, or killing her at the time. Well, not until afterward, I think.¡±


    Sabrina nodded, her dark hair bouncing slightly. ¡°I think what you were doing was a lesser form of dual cultivating.¡±


    I looked at her in confusion as I recovered into one of the Taijiquan, using it as a springboard to do a lightweight boxing combo and stance. The reality was, that the smooth flow from one style to another seemed as much about balancing energy as the Yang and Dao Tai Chi forms, but¡­ then again, I wasn¡¯t exactly built like your typical Eastern martial artist, and mixing in both hard and soft forms led to both decent damage and incredibly fast reactions.


    Tai Chi was absolutely helping with my cultivation, to the point where the tunnel was almost overkill, but hard styles like boxing and savate were helping me keep my energy running and building my body too. It was having especially odd effects on my bones because it felt like every single time I struck something with energy flowing through and enhancing them, my bones gained a bit of that energy, shivered, and altered slightly, becoming durable the same way that resistance training in Muy Thai and endurance training in kickboxing forced your body to improve.


    As I said, I wasn¡¯t really a master of anything, but I had a bit of training in a bunch of different stuff, and as time went by and my training enhanced my body, all of the little bits of martial arts I stuck together because they suited my style and body were becoming better interwoven and flowed more smoothly.


    I guess I¡¯d call it Doyle-style boxing. A boxing art named after an Irish fighter was not exactly a new concept and wouldn¡¯t surprise anyone until they had to fight against it.


    ¡°I thought you said dual cultivating was sex.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No, it uses sex as the medium for cultivation. Sexuality, primarily. It also brings people¡¯s energies closer. Like it or not, Frost Phoenix is going to be closer to you. She won¡¯t be able to help it any more than you will, and you will both be able to cultivate better when you are together. You need to be careful, though¡­ she is used to pulling hellish amounts of raw energy from the abyss and then refining it¡­ make sure you don¡¯t let her use YOU as a cultivating vessel by mistake!¡±


    ¡°Is that possible?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Possible but unlikely, as long as you are aware. You have a lot better energy control than she does, as well as a much stronger cultivation method, since technically she doesn¡¯t have one other than a basic instinctual method right now. So I guess that means you have two choices.¡±


    ¡°I get a feeling I am not going to feel particularly comfortable with either of those.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°One involves keeping her close, the other one involves pushing her away. To be honest, I have no reason to be on your team directly. I couldn¡¯t give the slightest damn about my position in the rankings, I am fairly useless to the team until we can get some materials, and my progression is chemical. I¡¯d suggest putting her on your active team in my place.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t even know if we still have a team, and I am not sure she¡¯s going to give up her own team to join ours,¡± I said, starting to cool down and grabbing a towel to sponge myself off.


    She smiled slightly, ¡°I have no idea if the experience is different between men and women, but getting nearly perfectly dao-aligned essence infused into your dantian is somewhat transcendent. While it was possible she will reject it, it seems very unlikely.¡±


    ¡°So this uhh¡­ dual cultivation only works if you have closely aligned dao?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Non-invasive, yes. Invasive cultivators using someone as a cultivation vessel can forcefully alter their root before stealing their roots and cultivation base. Technically that can also be used to repair a broken or weak base, but I¡¯ve never seen it used that way.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Great, so now I''m technically a rapist.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Not any more than someone who uses mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save someone¡¯s life. You are doing it again.¡±


    ¡°Doing what again?¡± I asked, refitting my newish armor. At least I¡¯d been able to recycle the pieces of the old stuff, and with the material handy, it had only taken me a few hours to re-craft it.


    ¡°Taking responsibility for something you had no control over. She had barely any control over her power, utilizing it in one of the most crude ways I have seen. I mean, come on, kinetic alteration? You were able to use it a thousand ways with almost no energy. What did she use it for? To move really fast by absorbing it. And the moment the kinetics shifted, what would you have done?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Re-absorbed the energy or redirected the kinetic load.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°She just burned. Over a hundred Alphas kill themselves through foolishness every single year, your only sin was denying her destiny to become another statistic. You said it yourself in the van¡­ It is not your responsibility to take the blame for other¡¯s crimes or mistakes.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Responsibility or not, She¡¯s still going to be on my problems list.¡±


    Sabrina laughed, ¡°You are one of the few men I know that would refer to a bunch of attractive women chasing him as a problems list.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, but at least I figured out the problem.¡±


    She raised an eyebrow, ¡°Really? Care to share?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Sure. I am not fond of girls who are more powerful than me. Maybe it¡¯s my man thing, You know, I have to drive, beat my chest, make grunting noises, pay for dinner, and be the big gorilla in the relationship. Do I find someone like Chinook attractive? Absolutely, but not enough to shut off my brain, ego, and common sense. She is trouble I don¡¯t need.¡±


    She nodded and finished setting up her own costume. Mine was a bit bulkier than hers now, but she had zero interest in the myocytes and without a little enhancement, the slightly heavier plated sections were a little too confining for comfort. Still, she looked damned good in the costume as we headed towards Kaiju tactics. She had mentioned a couple of fascinating ideas earlier, and I intended to make them happen.


    Yeah, the whole ¡®better living through chemistry¡¯ idea that was central to a lot of cultivation fiction was a bit of a turn-off, but I would be highly interested in seeing what her powers could do with some of the herbal concoctions she could mix. That meant getting her out of the city, and probably into a high-essence zone filled to the brim with the most hideous and horrible monsters available¡­ Jersey Shore.

 Chapter 30. Keeping it casual.

    Kate had been...shocked, to say the least, when she had realized that her power wasn¡¯t broken or permanently gone, simply modified.


    When I thought that her power was nearly identical to mine, apparently that was because of the energy-swapping that was going on. It was a lot like saying that two people with super-strength were very similar and ignoring the fact that one of them used mass manipulation and the other one used point-blank telekinesis to do the same thing. In function, the powers were nearly identical, but the reality of how their powers worked, the way it tied into their brains and their use, was very very different.


    Katie was an instinctive kinetic redirector, and I was a microkinetic momentum manipulator with eidetic positional memory, a real mouthful. Our end results and Dao were somewhat similar, but we got there using a very different route.


    That included our favored environment for absorbing energy. Once I explained to her the basics of absorbing energy, she was able to restore her rather ridiculously small and dense energy pool by absorbing ambient or directed energy, despite no longer being connected to the ether.


    I was almost envious, but I locked it down, because it was as stupid as comparing my microkinesis to a full-blown telekinetic.


    We were working out in a hot room. And by hot, I wasn¡¯t kidding. I gained a lot more energy from radiation, but it was a constant effort. Kate absorbed energy as naturally as breathing, once the basic concepts were in place, and did it almost instinctively. As a result, despite her near-fatal attempt to turn herself into a screaming inferno, she was damned near immune to a ton of molecular energy effects like heat, electricity, and even lasers. I was pretty good at dispersing harmful energy effects aimed at me, but she did it as naturally as breathing.


    ¡°No!¡± she said, stomping her foot irritably. ¡°It doesn¡¯t work like that!¡±


    ¡°How does it work, then?¡± I tried to ask her reasonably.


    She shook her head, ¡°The motion thing inside works perfectly, but I can¡¯t just¡­ stop some things and move others like that. I have tried like a hundred times, but I just don¡¯t SEE stuff like you do. I feel the energy, and I can soak it up, and I can use it, but that¡¯s why I have to keep absorbing the heat while I move, or I slow down. You can see the particles or whatever, all I can detect is the flow of energy.¡±


    ¡°Does the targeted absorption work?¡±


    She nodded and created a wall of freezing mist with a slight motion of her hand. Not a bad accomplishment inside the oven¡¯s two-hundred-degree heat. After a few moments, she held out her other hand and shot off a jet of superheated air that would have left a trail of fire if we were in a normal environment. She shook her head and shifted her now incredibly long hair around the air mask we were both wearing.


    ¡°For every action, there¡¯s a reaction. I fill up fast, but then I have to get rid of the excess. I either have to kick in super speed, or fire off a flame burst to get rid of it.¡±


    I sighed, She was hanging onto the energy longer, and that seemed to be stretching her pool¡¯s limits, but it was a slow process. I was hoping that she could figure out how to yank apart molecular bonds to gain energy or solidify them to blow off the excess, but as she said, her power didn¡¯t work the way mine did. It still felt horribly inefficient, but I wasn¡¯t a teacher, and it showed.


    Sabrina¡¯s static-laden voice cut in through the still-experimental communicator. ¡°Jacob, your own start was not a good gauge of how quickly people can push through lower levels. Kate¡¯s advancement is very fast, and her body refinement and essence cultivation are keeping pace with her energy levels. She can¡¯t cheat like you did because she doesn¡¯t have innate dao sensing like you do. Almost no one develops full spirit sensing until they are damned close to immortality.¡±


    ¡°So what kind of time frame are we talking about?¡±


    ¡°Well, normal humans might take thirty years to progress through body refinement and into essence cultivation, and then another fifty or so to push into core formation. Because of Earth¡¯s overloaded essence from the chaos gates, Alphas are immediately catapulted into forming one or two cores, skipping both body refinement and essence cultivation stages.¡±


    ¡°You both are catching up incredibly quickly, but you have an incredible advantage she doesn¡¯t¡­ because of your spirit sense, you are able to expel impurities easily. Her body refinement is literally holding back her essence cultivation because she has almost no foundation, like most Alphas, to support her advancement rather than just using her cores.¡±


    ¡°So how do we fix it?¡±


    ¡°In this environment? Time and training. There are pills that can help, but like I said, I have no ingredients. No spirit grass, no natural treasures, unless you want to go around executing Alphas and stripping their organs and cores out for potion ingredients.¡±


    Katie almost gagged. Yes, it was an open circuit. ¡°No, no fucking way. That¡¯s beyond disgusting. Have you really done that?¡±


    ¡°Katie,¡± Sabrina said, ¡°I was a slave. I have done lots of disgusting things much worse than that.¡±


    Katie¡¯s eyes looked sympathetic even through the face mask as she sat down and started absorbing the two-hundred-degree heat, ¡°I knew the farmer families were bad, but that bad?¡±


    Sabrina¡¯s voice distorted a little as she replied. As I said, I was no programmer, and my hardware adaptations for quantum distortion were not great without some kind of decent software squelching to back them up. ¡°No¡­ they were very practical, though. They probably would have if I told them about it, but my family had a life before we transmigrated here, and where I came from was even more horrible. The purity sects made sure that we had no resources other than what we could create ourselves, and survival can be rough.¡±


    ¡°So Jersey Shore is still on the table?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Yes,¡± was Sabrina¡¯s reply, ¡°But it might be too dangerous. You said the Serenoids had a spontaneous world portal, and they were clearly cultivators. That means that the entire area had to have been soaked in incredibly strong essence, and there¡¯s not a cultivator born that could resist planting a few spirit herbs in an environment like that unless they had no alchemy culture at all.¡±


    ¡°Of course, that level of natural essence also means spirit beasts, extremely powerful ones, which is probably why so many Kaiju and beasts attack from the north. There might even be natural treasures, but that place likely spawns Kaiju like maggots from a corpse.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°You have such wonderful and sensual turns of phrase. I want you, now.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Joking, sorry. I still don¡¯t know who to talk to about getting permission, but at this point, I am wondering if forgiveness might be easier than permission.¡±


    Sabrina sighed, and her voice sounded almost reproachful despite the static and distortion. ¡°It might be better to simply wait for the semester break and have a little patience. We don¡¯t have a lot of time, but we do have time.¡±


    ¡°Are you telling me you think I am too weak to keep us protected during Kaiju attacks if we go hunt spirit herbs?¡±


    Sabrina stammered, ¡°Umm¡­ n¡­ no?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Relax. I agree. I am just trying to be proactive since I am sick of being reactive. Do that, go here, get kidnapped, go to school, I feel like my life is being lived by other people.¡±


    Katie looked at me slyly, ¡°Well, you COULD work on my team¡¯s suits, like you promised.¡±


    I glared at her, ¡°I didn¡¯t promise anything. The judges said that the match was a draw, which meant the bet was void unless we had another match. And I am working on them, I just keep hitting a brick wall between what I want to do with them and what I can do with them. Speaking of which, did Quietcode say anything?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Not yet. She¡¯s super shy, and I think that man of mystery thing you seem to cultivate is working against you. She doesn¡¯t trust anyone, but she caught that video of you walking around in your birthday suit, and she thinks you are a dog.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t want to date her! I just need a real coder to help with the suits. The hardware is incredibly custom, and her gift is absolutely perfect! You said she doesn¡¯t even know how to code, and her power just makes computers want to help her, and they program themselves¡­ it¡¯s perfect! Especially since she won¡¯t leave any backdoors for other hackers to get in.¡±


    Katie shrugged, ¡°Well, you could try being a little social, you know, just as an experiment. You seem like a nice guy, and maybe getting out a little instead of getting locked into your workroom constantly might help people be a little more comfortable.¡±


    I groaned and slapped my hand against my face mask trying to facepalm. ¡°Not you too!¡±


    Katie looked at me oddly, ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    I sighed and started to cycle the room¡¯s cooldown. We both had classes soon and while neither of us was particularly sweaty, a shower would be comfortable after the training session. ¡°Oh, Frostweaver, Terracotta, and Chinook keep saying the same thing. Get out! Go on a date! Hit a few parties! Hell, the only ones that leave me alone are Network and Sabrina.¡±


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Sabrina¡¯s voice crackled. ¡°Oh, Network wants you to be social too, she wants to date you, but she¡¯s enough of an introvert despite that gregarious act she puts on that she¡¯s not going to ask. And I happen to agree with them, but I owe you too much to pester you about it. Where I come from, many cultivators are extremely solitary. There¡¯s a saying that you can only challenge the heavens on your own.¡±


    ¡°So they get it? I am here to learn, not to party.¡±


    Her voice crackled again. Damned quantum interference. ¡°No, I think they are insane. They are so focused on the solo task of growing their power, expanding their influence, and stepping on anyone who dares to get in their way that they quickly lose touch with any semblance of humanity and turn into monsters, albeit utterly pure and sanctimonious ones. The same person who said that the path to the heavens could only be challenged on your own was also well known for tearing apart an entire city and killing tens of thousands of mortals in a fit of pique because a blacksmith wouldn¡¯t give him a custom piece he ordered for free.¡±


    Ugh. ¡°Fine. But I still don¡¯t like the idea of dating alphas.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Katie asked curiously.


    I shrugged, ¡°Look, I am overrated. I know it, most people know it. I am only high-rated because I figured out a lot of different uses for my otherwise-crappy power. Call me a chauvinist, macho idiot, or whatever, I don¡¯t really care, but the idea of dating a girl that could rip out my spine and beat me to death with it is just not my idea of a fun date.¡±


    ¡°Are you gay?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I simply have a fragile ego that cannot handle the idea of powerful women.¡±


    ¡°Huh,¡± Katie said. ¡°That¡¯s unusual. I mean, that kinda stuff is bantered around by women all the time, but I have never heard a man just flat-out admit it.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Oh, I have been called much worse. My ex-fiancee called me that, and I decided to own it.¡±


    ¡°So why not date someone like Network? She¡¯s not a physical alpha at all.¡±


    I grinned, ¡°That would be even worse. Look. I am an opinionated, overbearing asshole. I know it, I own it¡­ do you know what Network could do to me if I offended her? She could literally erase my existence, link me to dozens of crimes, delete my bank accounts, and put a bounty out in seconds. Too dangerous.¡±


    Katie nodded, ¡°So basically, it¡¯s not that you are scared of powerful women, it¡¯s that you have absolutely no trust in their ability to restrain themselves. You are convinced that they are all evil bitches that will destroy your life at the slightest provocation, and have zero restraint or common sense. You kind of hate them.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Probably. Maybe. I mean, I don¡¯t actually hate them, and it¡¯s probably idiotic, but if I were gay, I wouldn¡¯t date alpha men for exactly the same reason. I don¡¯t trust anyone.¡±


    Katie nodded, ¡°You would make a terrible hero. And you want to be a team coordinator? How are you supposed to help an alpha team if you don¡¯t trust them to do their jobs competently? If you think they are all aiming to stab you in the back?¡±


    I shrugged and opened the door now that the temperature was below one-fifty. ¡°I don¡¯t know. It¡¯s a problem I have been working on, but as I learn more about how the system works and more about alphas in general, it¡¯s getting even worse, not better.¡±


    Katie looked thoughtful. ¡°Tell you what. I am already working hard on Quietcode. How about this? You already know how to shut my powers down hard. Hell, you have practically been inside my body and my head, and even after the accident I will freely admit that was almost better than sex. If I can get her to agree to give your armor systems a shot, how about you reward me by taking me on a date?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Compelling offer, but there¡¯s one problem.¡±


    ¡°What would that be?¡±


    I started peeling off my mask, ¡°I am completely broke. As in, full-ride scholarship and meals in the cafeteria every single day broke. Right now, I could barely afford to take you out for a hot dog in the park, let alone a date.¡±


    Katie looked shocked, ¡°What? How¡¯s that possible? I have SEEN your suits. Anyone would pay millions for them! And your other toys, too. Haven¡¯t you gotten any incentives from the BSA or corporate interests? Those aren¡¯t illegal, since we aren¡¯t exactly college athletes.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°I am sort of a ghost in the machine. I don¡¯t even know about any corporate offers although I was thinking of creating a low-end suit and selling it as a cheaper alternative to Atlas Threading. That¡¯s why I need Quietcode¡¯s help¡­ I want to patent a version with built-in communications and a heads-up display, and maybe even database linking if she can figure out how to send digital signals through the quantum link. I figured I could turn out about five suits a day, and hook up city emergency workers with them for a modest fee.¡±


    ¡°And you call yourself an asshole?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Opinionated, overbearing asshole. Part of it was how I was raised, and part of it was just experience. I could give away the suits for free, I mean, they need them, but I need money and they would get a shitty alpha version that they could reverse-engineer easily.¡±


    ¡°I probably will make a budget version for the hunters. Like emergency workers, hunters are worthy of respect, but for ordinary superheroes? Fuck ¡®em. I will happily support their popularity, but I will also charge every single penny the market will bear. If I can charge MORE than Atlas Threading because my suits have advantages Morita¡¯s doesn¡¯t, I will do that too¡­ but as of this moment, I am an arrogant starving artist convinced that the world doesn¡¯t appreciate his genius,¡± I grinned, ¡°Without enough juju to take a girl on a date.¡±


    Katie was looking very thoughtful. ¡°I have an idea.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    ¡°Sell me some masks.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    She looked at the two masks. ¡°We have already tested these, and they have a decent comm link in them, I was breathing nice cool air the whole time, and they never heated up. It¡¯s not your armor, but it¡¯s a hell of a proof of concept. Also, have you checked with your student advisor?¡±


    ¡°No?¡±


    She sighed, ¡°When you were first entered into the school system, did you request anonymity?¡±


    I nodded. ¡°I figured it was best. It didn¡¯t work out very well, though, since apparently Adrian Maxwell figured out some of my power and decided that owning me was a lot easier than buying a suit. I don¡¯t exactly have a student advisor, though. Frostweaver is my sponsor, and Subvector¡¯s my liaison.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°So, talk to Frostweaver about selling me a couple of linked masks, and I could take one to Quietcode, that might reassure her a little. If it works out, you might be able to go into a collaboration with her and let her agent pass them on to emergency services, or we might use them ourselves.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Or I could just sell your team suits instead of doing the bet again. I just didn¡¯t want to do that without getting some basic software installed, especially if any of you want to use the muscular or targeting systems.¡±


    ¡°So your suits¡­ they aren¡¯t tinker tech? I mean, they are real, and won¡¯t stop working if you get overloaded or something?¡±


    I shook my head and we started walking back towards the dorms to get cleaned up. ¡°Nope, I don¡¯t have any tinker powers. It¡¯s all real, but until I figure out a way to make a manufacturing chain without worrying about Skynet or gray ooze, I have to make everything personally.¡±


    ¡°Skynet? Gray Oooze?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°Science fiction. Fears of a rogue AI that gains sapience and tries to take over the world, or self-replicating microscopic robots that consume everything.¡±


    Katie looked thoughtful, ¡°I am not sure those are possible.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°With magic anything is possible, but traditionally? Nope. Skynet is certainly possible, but someone would have to actually program a worldwide computer system to try to take over the world or goof up their programming badly with a stupid loophole. Digital sapience like scifi people assume is impossible because digital memory by its very nature is unforgiving of being associative instead of direct. With magic, I mean, it¡¯s possible, but Some of the weirder magical types can make a toaster sapient.¡±


    Katie nodded, ¡°And gray ooze?¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°You would have to craft some kind of microscopic robots that had the ability to move and process on a microscopic scale. I could try, but I¡¯d have to build a processing center to control them via individual and custom-coded digital entanglement for each and every single one.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s that mean?¡±


    ¡°That means, for me at least, I¡¯d need to create a big friggin¡¯ machine to craft them, and then another big friggin¡¯ machine to control them, and it would be a strictly limited number¡­ and I¡¯d need someone capable of simultaneously coding trillions of hefty if small processors JUST for the fabrication step. Then I would need to find a way to allow each of the processors to manipulate a single element the same way that my power does. At the end of that process you¡¯d be left with a giant machine that you could dump trash into one end, and out of the other end comes a full set of armor.¡±


    I thought about it. ¡°Or, to be fair, just about anything you want, but it would take a lot longer than it would take me. Probably.¡±


    ¡°Can you do that?¡±


    I shook my head at her, ¡°No. Number one, I cannot handle the programming, and number two, I have zero idea of how to allow a single microscopic machine to exert quantum telekinesis, let alone tens of trillions of them.¡±


    ¡°Observation,¡± Sabrina said quietly, breaking her silence since the training.


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°Observation. That¡¯s how your power works. When you observe things on a quantum scale, your own brain applies pressure to them. That is true of everything that¡¯s mentally capable of observing. In your case, when you observe trillions of molecules at the exact same time, the combined force is enough to alter those atoms along the lines of your affinity, which is momentum.¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°Which is why I have to use essence to alter them. So the more essence I can bring to bear, the more objects are being personally observed, and the greater the scale I can make changes.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I don¡¯t understand the science outside of alchemy, but it sounds a bit like creating a homunculus.¡±


    We were back at the block, riding up to our room, while Katie waved goodbye. ¡°Explain?¡±


    Sabrina nodded, ¡°Alchemy isn¡¯t just mixing chemicals together to create an effect. That¡¯s chemistry. Alchemy involves mixing your essence into the concoction to unlock potential essence effects based on a huge number of factors.¡±


    ¡°Homunculi are a bit like golems, except that golems are firmly within the realm of the spellcasters. They use magical runes attached to a frame, each of which gathers or channels essence, all tied to a sort of core called a golem core, which receives and interprets programming a bit like a computer.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I have heard of golems. The Red Rabbi used to use them a lot to stop crimes, and then eventually to commit them after exposure to the elders drove him nuts.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Well, homunculi are sort of like those, except a chemical version. We don¡¯t use them to fight people, we mostly use them to observe chemical reactions on a very small scale. They are able to do that innately, and generally have just enough sentience to transfer essence, make observations, and use commands that help moderate or control chemical and alchemical reactions.¡±


    ¡°How? Can you make one of those?¡±


    She laughed, ¡°If I could do that, I wouldn¡¯t still be at the body purification stage. Creating your homunculus is pretty much the step where an alchemist has proved that they have entered the first core stage because it requires a core to create an artificial observer.¡±


    I smiled as she walked into her own room, ¡°But I already have a core.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No, none of you have true cores. You have monster cores. That¡¯s probably why the Serenoids freaked and attacked when the alphas showed up¡­ the pure cultivators were suddenly confronted with dozen or hundreds of spirit beast monsters wearing human shapes.¡±

 Chapter 31. Forgiveness or permission?

    The Serenoid document was driving me crazy. I still couldn¡¯t really interpret it, I mean, their symbols translated to a conceptual language that didn¡¯t match anything on earth, and the only points of linguistic convergence existed in the realm of energy manipulation which was still mostly guesswork to me.


    There were a few things that were pretty obvious, though. Warnings were emphasized in the text, with much darker-printed words and pictures to show what the warning was, and I think I managed to puzzle out the Serenoid equivalent of an exclamation point. Wee.


    One of the things I had recognized, though, was warnings about forming an early core. Essentially, it looked like an extremely high essence environment involved, not only running the risk of developing cancer, birth defects, and all the other modern society risks we run today, but also creating a monster core, that could be advanced by¡­ ugh¡­ destroying other high-essence creatures, and possibly even eating them.


    That was what Sabrina had been talking about. I could sort of understand why purity cultivators would look down on those who hunted down and literally ate the meat of essence-rich creatures, at least if you put humans on the list, and considering those who developed monster cores¡­ basically most alphas, as some kinds of chaos monsters.


    Did that mean that the alphas who were known for progressing to higher power ranks were cannibals? Or that they ate the meat of radioactive Kaiju? I¡­ might be able to do that, to safely eat Kaiju meat, I mean, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was a combination, a little of column A and a little of column B.


    Supposedly, there were ways of deteriorating a monster core if it wound up inside of you, either through alchemy or some kind of absorption to keep whatever essence it possessed, but I had no idea if doing something like that would strip me of my abilities permanently.


    I shook my head and returned to listening to the guest instructor for Game Theory. It was a lot different than I had expected since it also included a lot of law enforcement information. Apparently ¡®game theory¡¯ was not only about military tactics, since as alphas, we only occasionally participated with the military when dealing with Kaiju, but when it came to policing, well, there were a LOT of rules.


    ¡°Remember that even though you may be called upon for law enforcement assistance, you are still civilians. Yes, you can make a citizen¡¯s arrest, and in some ways that gives you a lot more leeway, but it can also cut your throat if you are stupid.¡±


    ¡°If you saw Metalstorm out of costume, walk into a house, what would you do? You,¡± he waved at Lurker who smiled brightly at him.


    ¡°I would go in and capture him, and haul him to the police station. Citizen¡¯s arrest, since regular police would need to call in a super team for someone like that.¡±


    I tried to avoid snickering, since Metalstorm was one of my alter egos, technically a magnetokinetic, since most of the signs of a magnetokinetic were trivial to simulate, either with my abilities and a good bit of armor decorations or with tech toys.


    Officer Wilkins looked directly at me, his brow raised. He was a cop, not an alpha, as game theory often had guest speakers that were solidly grounded in the real world instead of the aery heights of alpha culture, ¡°Do you disagree?¡± he asked, looking directly at me.


    I sighed, ¡°Can I plead the fifth?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°Not unless you would be incriminating yourself. Why, do you have something you need to confess?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I just didn¡¯t want to sound like a smart-ass.¡±


    He glanced at Lurker, ¡°Do you mind?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Not at all. If I have a grudge, I¡¯ll challenge him.¡±


    He grinned at me, ¡°Please, feel free to unleash your inner smart-ass.¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°Lurker would be very very lucky if she didn¡¯t spend the next twenty years in an alpha penitentiary. And by lucky, I mean she had better have a brilliant lawyer, tens of millions of dollars to pony up for a settlement, and that Metalstorm is desperate for money.¡±


    ¡°Why?¡± Wilkins asked.


    ¡°Because a civilian only has the right to intrude if they have reliably witnessed the commission of a violent crime. Otherwise, that is breaking and trespassing. If she heard someone screaming for help from inside, it would be a reasonable operation, but just witnessing a fugitive isn¡¯t enough for a citizen to justify that response. A citizen might not need a court order, but enforcing the law is not our job.¡±


    ¡°Secondly, you have just broken the mask law in the harshest and most premeditated manner. Cops can perp-walk an unmasked cowl legally, as long as they did not personally unmask him or her, but a civilian doing it will not only break the mask law, but if they are witnessed doing it they will also run afoul of doxxing laws¡­ which are both a criminal and civil liability. That means civil awards in excess of five million dollars, easily.¡±


    ¡°Thirdly, if you grab him, you have just committed assault and battery. If he is a known felon, say¡­ someone escaping from a holding facility that¡¯s already been charged with a crime, civilian violent apprehension is perfectly legal, especially if you have been deputized, which a lot of alpha heroes have been. Otherwise, you just attacked someone without just cause.¡±


    ¡°Add to that kidnapping, if you take him to the police station, unlawful imprisonment if you cuff him or prevent him from escaping in any way, and a continuing list of aggravated assault¡­ And if you use your powers at any time to commit any of those crimes, each of them becomes a class three felony with a mandatory five-year minimum consecutive sentencing.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°If you do that, your only real hope to stay out of prison is to bribe him and hope he¡¯s forgiving, and won¡¯t press charges. Even if you have foiled every one of his plots, and you guys got into brutal fisticuffs every single encounter, even if he is a smirking asshole that taunts you while he¡¯s not wearing a mask about your inability to touch him, he¡¯s technically right.¡±


    This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Lurker looked at me closely, her vivid lilac eyes set off against her dark skin, even beneath the black domino mask. ¡°You seem to know an awful lot about that.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°I was in school for corporate logistics. One of the most important courses involved how to legally defend yourself and your property against mask attacks. We also had a lieutenant that carefully and repeatedly explained how and when force was legally applicable, by a civilian security force, even if that security contained alphas.¡±


    What I didn¡¯t tell her was that I had to learn the applicability of those laws inside and out. One of the most important lessons for someone playing the role of the bad guy was exactly how far not only you could go in a scheme, but also how far the heroes were allowed to go. Hotshot had taught me a valuable lesson, after all. There was a very thin line between a hero and a vigilante, and he¡¯d tried to cross that line.


    Lieutenant Wilkins laughed, ¡°Looking for a job with the Alpha Auxiliaries after graduation? You did your research¡­ I am certain I could put in a good word for you.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No sir. I¡¯d rather fight giant Kaiju and murderous villains. A police officer¡¯s job is far too dangerous for me.¡±


    He grinned and nodded, ¡°Good job, smart-ass.¡±


    ***


    ¡°You know you are getting a very strange reputation. Between the suits, your kidnapping, and what happened in the match, no one knows what to think, and you are starting to make people very nervous.¡±


    I grinned at Senpai Bob, ¡°I probably shouldn¡¯t be enjoying this, but I sort of am. The more time goes by, the more I start to realize that my plans were small, my mind was small, my ideas were small, and my world was small.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    I shrugged, working on a new stance. It was technically stolen from Savate, rather than pure Tai Chi, but I wasn¡¯t built like someone raised in China on a diet of rice and soybeans¡­ there were basic physical differences in how certain bodies were designed, and I leaned more toward flexible and durable power than rapid grace.


    Yes, my shtick was about taking a hit, and if I had to steal techniques from kickboxing, Savate, wrestling, or even Escrima or Capoeira to effectively take and return hits, that¡¯s what I would do¡­ not to mention, once you figured out how to visualize your power flow, whatever exercises you chose took third place behind visualizing and flowing your essence through its effective patterns.


    ¡°You said you knew my history, what do you think I meant?¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°Isn¡¯t that my job? To answer questions with thoughtful riddles that force you to recognize truths?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Only in bad anime and chop-socky movies. It also helps if you pull an Uncle Ben right around the time I need a boot in the metaphorical ass. Right now, I am on the verge of something amazing, so I think a boot in the ass would disrupt my concentration more than lighting a fire under me.¡±


    ¡°I think.¡± he said, his broad face crinkling for a moment as he levitated above the floor like a kung-fu master, ¡°That you are considering your prior job before you came to the school, and seeing how you could leverage that experience into training opportunities for your team and showcasing some of the projects you have been working on.¡±


    ¡°Damned perceptive for a meathead.¡± I smiled slightly. ¡°You are going to wreck your own reputation for slamming your head into problems until they are fixed.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Are you asking for permission?¡±


    ¡°Permission for what?¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°Permission to head off-campus dressed up like a third-rate villain so you can do whatever it is that you want done outside of the island?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Of course not. I wouldn¡¯t dream of putting that sort of responsibility on your shoulders. However, when I do head off campus dressed like a first-rate villain, I am merely letting you know in advance that I will be heading into action with a few select members of my team in order to obtain important supplies for our power growth.


    ¡°Wait, you are really going to dress up like a villain?¡±


    I grinned, ¡°What does a villain look like? My team will be dressed in nonstandard costumes, specifically test armors, unless we get very very lucky.¡±


    ¡°Very lucky?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, I am trying to coax an instinctive cyberkinetic to build the software systems, but I don¡¯t really have anything to offer her. Or at least, I have no idea what she wants.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Well, I asked her team leader, who said she would talk to her, but so far no dice. Frost Phoenix was thinking maybe if we offered her a prototype she might be more favorable to negotiation.¡±


    ¡°Have you spoken to the coder yourself?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, she¡¯s shy, and she¡¯s a second-year transfer student so we are not on the same floor.¡±


    He looked at me like I was a particularly stupid dog that couldn¡¯t figure out how to roll over. ¡°Every once in a while I mistake your paranoia for actual experience. And then you do something like this and remind me you are unbelievably ignorant.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    He grumbled at me, ¡°I should force you to figure this out on your own. You and¡­ what was her name?¡±


    ¡°Frost Phoenix.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°You are potentially rich and she knows it, have an incredible power rank, and could potentially boost other¡¯s power ratings and become very famous. You¡¯ve been training her on how to expand her power pool and increase the flexibility of her energy transfer, and most importantly you are reasonably pleasant to look at.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Right¡­¡±


    He grinned, ¡°And she didn¡¯t leave the leadership of her team to join yours. That means she¡¯s ambitious. Do I really have to spell it out?¡±


    ¡°Wait, you think she¡¯s intentionally keeping me away from Quiet Code?¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°No, I don¡¯t, not in particular, but I also think you have some very curious blind spots. You will go on a bender to accomplish something you set your mind on, and then give up at the slightest provocation in another area.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°You have very good points. Can I get out of here?¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    I looked at my watch, ¡°Because Network has to be in class in forty-five minutes, and I need her for something.¡±


    He grinned, noticing I seemed to be energized and focused on a task again. ¡°Fine. Just don¡¯t hurt anyone. You seem to be pretty good at escaping trouble, but if you are not in class by the beginning of next semester, I¡¯m calling the truant officers and sending you to your room without dessert for a week.¡±


    ¡°Hah. Hah. Wait, can you do that?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°You and several others with momentum-related powers create gravitational anomalies when you use transit abilities. I can track those anomalies. You really don¡¯t want me to try and stop you when you are traveling dispersed, though¡­ it might not have any effect on you when you reconstitute, or you may be missing pieces.¡±


    I actually doubted that very much. He could probably prevent me from successfully reconstituting if he maintained a singularity field, he was not a quantum manipulator¡­ he could no more strip away parts of my own memory and ability to blueprint myself than he could read minds.


    But I didn¡¯t need to tell him that. I had a trip to plan for, right after our mid-terms.

 Chapter 32. Stupid is its own reward.

    ¡°So¡­ just the two of us?¡± asked Sabrina cautiously, her eyes narrowing as she looked at me. Considering her resemblance to the lovely cartoon version of Mulan, her momentary distrust was very, very apparent.


    I nodded, ¡°Yes. Heck, if I knew anything about the herbs you need, I wouldn¡¯t bring you with me at all.¡±


    ¡°But this is a severe danger zone. There are lesser kaiju and monsters everywhere, as well as the possible presence of a known hostile force of cultivators, and you haven¡¯t mentioned having any offensive abilities at all.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That¡¯s exactly why it¡¯s just us two. You already know I can get us out of trouble if I need to, but I don¡¯t know if I can move more than just the two of us. And I do have a few offensive abilities.¡±


    I sighed and cradled the shears I had just accidentally destroyed. I was still getting used to the power of my body, which had actually increased more than my prior artificial boosts had permitted. The stainless steel blades had gotten crushed while I was carrying them and we jumped down from the roof I¡¯d ported us onto to get a decent idea of the layout of the beach right now.


    The beach was¡­ bad. Giant aquatic lizards the size of busses were lying down on every inch of sand where the old resort had been, and while Sabrina had absolutely been able to identify several useful herbs that had been growing in what used to be balcony gardens on some of the high-rises, she had pointed out that the monsters that infested the zone could provide very valuable ingredients as well.


    I carefully straightened out and reformed the bladed cutters I had designed for quickly retrieving stems no matter how durable. I also, unfortunately, had to recover my finger that the nearly mono-molecular edge had sliced off when I had gripped them too tight on landing. Not to mention it friggin¡¯ hurt. I¡¯d had worse, but just the shock of seeing your own finger flopping around on one of the concrete porches was a hard thing to deal with.


    Sabrina, before she¡¯d ever even joined us, had darned near a class two physique, which made hopping from balcony to balcony to retrieve mutated vegetation a breeze. But with all of the essence flowing smoothly through my flesh, and the reinforcements from that, I was pretty sure my own body enhancement would qualify as a class three¡­ and yet when my hand hand involuntarily tightened on the custom-made shears, it had gone through my heavy gauntlets, lopped off one finger, and almost taken off a second.


    Right now, as proud as I was of my armor, my own body was actually tougher than it was, which Sabrina told me signified that I had completed the very first stage of body tempering and halfway through essence gathering. Body tempering was the very first stage of what she termed ¡®mortal realm cultivation¡¯, which meant that the idea of someone who had finished higher tiers was somewhat terrifying¡­ class eight? That would barely be considered the beginning of the Asura realm, the second of seven stages of ascension if you left out the mortal realm.


    She said that higher tiers couldn¡¯t even set foot on Earth without having a crushing, awe-inspiring effect on the local terrain, killing people, and possibly destroying kaiju from their presence alone unless they intentionally suppressed their aura. That sort of made me wonder how in the hell humans had managed to drive the Serenoids off¡­ if they had higher realm cultivators, they should have made short work even of the powerful class sixes that had dealt with them.


    Unless there was a reason that they couldn¡¯t enter Earth¡¯s atmosphere. Maybe it was poison, or maybe more efficient Serenoid bodies couldn¡¯t handle the untamed chaos energy infecting Earth, maybe nothing more powerful could transit rifts, or maybe their cultivation was capped out at the top of human-realm. Neither of us had any idea. If they were capped at the Human realm, they would be about on par with those at slightly less than the most powerful Alphas.


    I shook my hand quickly and hopped to another balcony thirty feet away, where another potted plant with great, shimmering leaves draped off the side of the half-broken building. I trimmed a few leaves, one of the large pink flowers, and some kind of growth off of the stem, as well as yanking out one of the roots, grateful that this time, at least, the plant wasn¡¯t trying to eat me.


    According to Sabrina, virtually everything that lived in this region was soaking in chaotic essence, and so far virtually every plant and animal that survived here was mutated into an essence-absorbing form, which meant alchemical value once she was able to do whatever it was she did. I could detect certain flavors of essence flowing through the plants, but I had neither the training nor the gifts to determine what sort of chemical preparations they would have to go through to be useful to her.


    Finding so many living plants was a surprising windfall, even considering how each apartment was draped with foliage back when this was a resort. Sabrina was actually shocked at the amount of survivors, and we had collected a large number of samples.


    Supposedly, there were even techniques to gathering them that would make them better, but she had no more idea of what those could be than I did without knowing each individual new breed, and considering how fast they mutated in this zone, we decided to just grab leaves, stems, flowers, any fruits, nuts, or off bumps or protrusions, and a sample of roots, especially if they had bulbs.


    Now she wanted samples of the creatures, claiming she could determine which parts would be useful, and while I personally would prefer to just mist us back to the island, we had no idea if the wildlife would offer us what she needed.


    ¡°What the hell is that?¡± I asked, looking over at the weirdest thing I had seen on this trip full of very weird things. It looked like all of the essence near a spot on the shore was getting whirled around by a strange point. Unlike the rest of the beach, the lizards seemed to be steering well clear of the energy, but when I looked at it with my normal sight, it wasn¡¯t there except for a surprisingly thick layer of beach grass and weeds.


    I had seen pictures of rifts before, they looked sort of like a stationary heat wave outlined in a shimmery light. This did not really remotely resemble that, so I wondered if this was one of those power points that Graviton had mentioned. It might be worth getting a closer look, and it didn¡¯t seem to have any enemies close to it¡­ and besides, I was very confident in my apportation, it had saved my life many times.


    ¡°What¡¯s what?¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s a sort of weird essence whirl in the air.¡±


    She looked at it again, and then shook her head, ¡°Oh my goodness!¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s a node! A pure one¡­ no wonder there was a portal here!¡±


    I hopped back to her balcony, where she was leaning against the brick wall and staring intently at the phenomenon.


    ¡°What is a node?¡±


    She smiled a little, ¡°Have you heard of ley lines?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Sort of? I know that they are supposed to be invisible magical lines where people build monuments and temples and stuff. I don¡¯t know about any factual accounts, though, except that Stonehenge, a famous monument, was supposed to be built on one.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°A node is where two or more ley lines cross. On most worlds, ley lines absorb the chaotic essence of the areas they pass through and help purify it into natural essence, which cultivators can use more easily, and mages and formation experts can channel into powerful magic. Where they surface, often in mountains or remote and dangerous places, natural treasures or strong cultivation gardens can be found.¡±


    ¡°Finding a node here might explain why there is so much chaos essence in the area. This is a good thing since ley lines are the planet¡¯s way of absorbing and protecting itself from Chaos energies, but this planet has nowhere near enough. The ley lines draw Chaos essence in order to absorb.¡±


    She pointed one slender finger at the spot. ¡°That area is extremely pure. That is probably why the Kaiju dare not approach. They are attracted by all of the chaos essence in the area, but around the node proper it has been greatly purified as it is fed into the node itself by the junction. That is probably why there was a portal here decades ago.¡±


    ¡°Why is that?¡±


    She smiled, ¡°World portals can only form on a node. The one I came through was formed on a small, weak node, with the help of a great deal of blood essence. This node, though, is pure and powerful enough that a portal might have formed spontaneously before it was somehow closed by this world¡¯s heroes.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°So it¡¯s like a weak spot?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No, The weak spots are where rifts form¡­ this is the opposition, a strong spot where connections between ordered worlds are formed. Of course, the fact that it is unprotected is dangerous, but not because it will form and mutate creatures into monsters, but rather because it¡¯s an open beacon to other worlds and beings in search of essence. This is a good place for a sect of cultivators, both for the training opportunities from the creatures that are drawn here and for either human or otherworld cultivators to meditate and gain pure energy. The only flaw is that this world¡¯s chaos essence is far too strong. We should investigate it.¡±This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    ¡°Like, get close to it? You realize it¡¯s surrounded by at least class five monsters, right?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, but see how they avoid it? You should be able to gain your energy quickly from it, and the greenery surrounding it. It probably contains some amazing alchemical herbs. Because of its purity, I doubt very much it would interfere with your¡­ strange transit power.¡±


    I looked more carefully. ¡°Herbs? I just see a bunch of beach grass, some weeds, and the occasional dandelion. There¡¯s a lot more herbs on the balconies surrounding us.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Maybe you shouldn¡¯t judge by appearances. That beach grass is spirit grass, one of the most common, and useful, herbs used by alchemy. The Dandelions are positively soaked in positive essence and are incredibly useful for most medicinal pills, and there are some other plants as well, but¡­ you don¡¯t have the alchemy gift so you probably cannot detect them from here.¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°Well, it looks safe, and I don¡¯t know if we will get another opportunity if we skip this one. This may seem stupidly genre blind, but we should probably pop over there, see what we can collect, then use it as a safe zone to hit some of the lizards and see if they have useful alchemical reagents.¡±


    ¡°Genre blind?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yep. If this was an adventure movie, the whole area would be some kind of a trap for us. Like a giant worm underground waiting to snap up anything that enters the area, or it would be covered by invisible monsters that the lizards can see but we can¡¯t. Genre blind means we ignore all the warning signs and just assume that everything will be alright.¡±


    She smiled slightly, ¡°Then I guess I am genre blind because I am not detecting any essence fluctuations outside of the node itself. Undetectable creatures may be hiding in that area, but if there are, their power and cultivation must be so much higher than ours that they can render themselves undetectable to us with ease, and that¡¯s impossible.¡±


    ¡°Why do you say that?¡±


    She tapped the wall next to her. ¡°Because if they existed, they would already know we are here, and if they wanted to take us out, they would have been able to do it easily at any point.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s a remarkably astute observation.¡±


    I spun around and prepared to grab Sabrina and shoot off because that voice had not been me when a sudden incredible, intolerable pressure seemed to slam into me, and in a few moments, the world faded to sparkling blackness. My last thoughts were; Shit, that¡¯s what I get for genre blindness.


    ***


    Earlier-


    Mid-terms had been remarkably easy, but then, when you have the ability to blueprint information, memorizing whatever silly information you need for a college course is childishly simple in comparison to the relative positions and compositions of nearly incomprehensible numbers of molecules each time I blueprinted something.


    Analyzing and applying that information to provide meaningful breakdowns of the consequences was also easy since most of it was stuff I had learned, either in college or through experience on both sides of the law. I suspected later semesters might be more challenging, but while I don¡¯t automagically remember everything I see, hear, or read, deciding to memorize something gave me a full and complete picture whenever I chose to recall it.


    The trick was not scoring a perfect score on the multiple choice questions, the trick was to score nearly perfectly but with enough of a margin for error to convince people that you were merely sharp, since I really didn¡¯t want people to figure out my trick. Obviously, the term blueprint was a hint, but no matter how much I trusted this school and its people, I didn¡¯t trust them that much.


    As my project for power exploitation, I¡¯d shown off his lower-tier armor, the one with minimal myofibril strands mostly designed for counteracting hyperextension and reinforcing set extensions like grip and carrying. The teacher, an old gadgeteer named Twitchblade, had been surprisingly impressed with a rather cheap innovation by my standards, a set of myofiber whips, one in each arm, that stretched out to 50 feet and had just enough programmed logic to wrap around anything they hit and retract on command.


    I mean, obviously, they were strong, since they were made of woven silicon and carbon nanotube fibers, and the myofibers in my suit arms were designed specifically to help prevent someone from dislocating shoulders or pulling their arm muscles when they were swinging and decided to catch something like a flying car, but I had seen people do vastly more impressive things.


    I honestly thought it was the whole suit, but when she spoke with me about my grade, she explained that having decent grapplers that were designed to protect the gadgeteer from the stress of using them was what really impressed her. Pretty much every gadgeteer who decided to play the hero game came up with their own version of a grappling gun, but not too many of them built a system designed to minimize the impact of using them.


    ¡°So these are not for you?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I don¡¯t particularly like the idea of power armor, and nerve response systems are incredibly picky and at best slow, I meant these for others to use, and the reinforcements are designed to reinforce strength reactively instead of proactively.¡±


    She laughed and gave me a perfect grade. Apparently, few designers actually designed stuff for others to use this early, and even fewer built them from the ground up with human limits in mind, but since I still planned to be the back-line guy, it only made sense to make broad utility systems for a team.


    The practice for teamwork had been similarly uneventful. Technically our team had lost, but I had pressed the fact that we were not trying to beat the artificial villains in the scenario, we were trying to accomplish the mission¡¯s stated goal, rescuing civilians, which we did with only one technical casualty. Sabrina and I had headed to the top of a skyscraper to help coordinate the team, and a ¡®victim¡¯ had jumped out of one of the windows to escape a simulated monster¡­ I had caught the dummy on the way down, using my new grapplers, but the stress meter indicated that I would have fractured the guy¡¯s spine while stopping his fall, putting him in the hospital, or paralyzing him.


    I happily took the credit for that screw-up, since the teacher was right, although I did point out that he wasn¡¯t actually going to die and I could have blueprinted him back to perfect health afterward. The whole thing got our team an overall A+, even though my personal grade was A- for preventable damage.


    Game Theory, Advanced anatomy, and combat logistics were mostly just tests to make sure you memorized the information, and the essays for game theory and kaiju tactics were almost fun¡­ I had thought I would get a great grade on kaiju tactics, because of my essay, but I only got a B for that because I forgot to account for the environment¡­ in my armor, I wasn¡¯t too worried about environmental problems other than water, but I sort of forgot that rarely there was a dragon or other sort of kaiju that was absolutely air-based.


    Me, personally, I was solidly in the top ten percent of first years without standing out too much. Abigail was technically the valedictorian, but she had to take special oral exams due to her unique ability to retrieve information.


    Our team as a whole, though was number five on the academic leaderboards, and even Candace managed to get her credits ironed out. It helped that both Abbey and I had been helping her study, despite the majority of her classes being second year.


    Quiet code had eluded me by virtue of the fact that I wasn¡¯t permitted on the second-year floor, and we didn¡¯t share any classes. Honestly, I was about ready to write her off, except that I still thought that Kate was working hard to keep her elusive for some unfathomable reason. I was close to asking Abbey for help setting up some sort of meeting, but I decided to wait until after winter break to go that far.


    Yeah, I get it, Kate had made no secret of the fact that we had shared something special, and had made it clear that she would very much be interested in getting closer, a lot closer¡­ but she was a little too much like Christine for my tastes, as far as attitude and personality, and I had been down the competitive girlfriend road before. We still trained together, but I had no way of helping her past a certain threshold¡­ a threshold that Sabrina told me would probably be impossible to cross in this world¡¯s chaos-heavy essence.


    Apparently, most people who were trying to cross into the human realm from the mortal realm would sit down someplace with plenty of appropriate essences, clear their mind, and breakthrough when they had gathered enough essence. She had warned me about some kind of tribulation, but something about the world, perhaps the mad levels of chaos essence or possibly my own monster core, was interfering with that crossover despite the fact that my energy pool was practically brimming with condensed essence.


    Condensed essence, or rather, the essence that surrounded my core, was what was supposed to solidify into a true core, eventually. This was not the energy I could actually use, that was in the dantian surrounding it but was almost like a second shell.


    In my case, I needed to do something to destabilize that ¡®natural¡¯ core so that I could absorb the energy inside, what I considered my ¡®superpowers¡¯, into my dantian, allowing it to form a true foundation with my power as its building blocks and my dao as its mortar.


    Yeah, the construction metaphors were a little lost on me, but I was happy to consider my foundation as a race track with my Dao as the tires, and my current power core as a gigantic wreck right in the middle of the track. I could clear the wreck, and use it for spare parts and to rebuild the track, but I was going to need some help, especially since Graviton himself hadn¡¯t gotten any farther than I had.


    Unless a pure node or realm magically appeared somewhere on Earth, a chance rarer than winning the lottery, or a pill could be made that would help break that wreck up, my dantian MIGHT continue to grow, but I will never be able to get my wheels on the track past the core.


    Which was why, when most of my team went home or to visit family for winter break, two of the ¡®school orphans¡¯, Sabrina and I, had decided to go searching for spirit grass, a monstrous acid, and more ingredients for what she referred to as a ¡®yin/yang heaven and earth spirit stabilization pill¡¯.


    And of course, like an idiot, I refused to realize that the incredibly rare chance of a pure node becoming available on Earth would probably be protected by something a little more formidable than a few class-five kaiju lizards.

 Chapter 33. Sick of getting kidnapped.

    I wanted to tear my hair out, smash my head into a wall until I bled, and beat someone to a pulp.


    Once again, despite just trying to build up a situation in which I was a useful team auxiliary, I was finding myself thrust into the role of either the action hero or, in this case, Lois Lane. My plans had been changing, but right about now, I was starting to rethink abandoning my original plan of just finding a job at a trucking company.


    Honestly, the free education wasn¡¯t worth it. I mean, sure, with great power comes great power bills, I was more than happy to try and help with Kaiju attacks if I could, but this was the second time I¡¯d been kidnapped, and this time, whoever did it apparently knew how to counter my tricks.


    Once again, I decayed myself and tried to get through the wall, but whatever the hell it was made of resisted, pushing me back until I had to restore my blueprint. Apporting without movement quickly drained my ability to maintain the dispersion, and unless I wanted to restore myself as a thin red slime, I couldn¡¯t maintain it for more than a few seconds while I was forced to remain in the small room.


    I couldn¡¯t even get between the cracks. The walls were painted with a cheerful scene, rolling hills and mountains curving around like a giant scene in 3 dimensions, with a starry sky. The floor was fitted stone that I couldn¡¯t get through, and in the middle was a small tree, sort of a bonsai with little blue flowers, and it resisted everything I could try, from just yanking it out to disintegrating it.


    And, of course, no Sabrina. Not only had I gotten kidnapped again, but I¡¯d let my team down. The painted sky and stars were shedding light into the ten-foot-wide chamber, and there were tatami mats rolled up against the walls.


    I¡¯d tried to decompose the walls themselves, but whatever they were made of seemed to ignore my abilities. Even making a blowtorch or trying to freeze them to absolute zero had resulted in just more failures, and whatever my kidnappers had dressed me in, some sort of kung-fu gi and pants with my feet bare, were similarly immune to my abilities. Even the air seemed to somewhat resist my manipulation, which was driving me crazy.


    There was a single door, locked, of course, and like the rest, it seemed to resist everything I could throw at it. I still seemed to be able to control the energy flowing through me, but outside of my direct aura, everything seemed to ignore whatever I tried. I hated feeling powerless, and even trying to pick or break the lock netted me no results whatsoever, even forming a protein-based carbon lattice lockpick out of my own flesh and bones simply wound up with me breaking it against the impervious lock.


    I wasn¡¯t strong on the level of other strength-based supers, but if I had to I could probably pick up a sedan and throw it a short distance¡­ I might as well be a child for all the good it did, so I finally just unrolled one of the mats, and sat down to meditate. My energy was capped right now, and I wasn¡¯t sure how to progress past that cap, the liquid energy cresting and breaking within me even though I was still slowly expanding the borders of the small sea inside of me, it was not enough to do whatever came next on my journey of empowerment.


    After almost a day of meditation and slight naps, the door opened.


    I was on my feet instantly, dashing across the room, and a very large individual, probably a super strong alpha, entered as I dashed, easily tossing me back against the wall where my mat rested, as if I was a normal baseline. Like the rest of the room he was¡­ untouchable, and he walked in and stood to one side while another, slimmer individual walked into the room after him.


    ¡°Mister Doyle, that¡¯s hardly polite.¡± The man said. He was around six feet tall and would have been utterly forgettable save for the carefully styled goatee and sideburns leading up to his windblown brown hair.


    I shrugged and slid down to sit back down on the mat. ¡°And kidnapping, beating me unconscious, and trapping me in...whatever this place is counts as the most marvelous courtesy possible?¡± I asked, snarkily.


    He shook his head, ¡°Of course not, but I have sent you four letters requesting a meeting, and you ignored all of them. Even when I sent people to invite you to a meeting politely, you avoided and evaded them. What else can I do?¡±


    ¡°You could fuck yourself, Mister Maxwell,¡± I replied, crossing my arms over my knees. ¡°And that is precisely the reply you are going to receive every single time. Go fuck yourself. I have no interest in the Maxwell consortium, I will not work for you, and I reject you and everything you stand for.¡±


    ¡°I could do that, but unfortunately that would lead to my being neglectful of your needs. Unfortunately, leaving you alone would quickly result in you perishing.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°I doubt that, but you do you, and I will do me. See you in a week, and I can guarantee that my answer to whatever you desire will be the same as now. Go fuck yourself.¡±


    His eyebrow raised slightly, and he glanced outside of the door. In a moment, a guy that looked exactly like the one that planted me on my ass shifted a chair into the room, which he sat down on and looked at me, while the second clone carefully closed the door. ¡°Unfortunately, gently allowing time to resolve my issues is not an option. I require your assistance.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Oh, you must be desperate in order to tell me I have some sort of negotiation powers over you. Is this the part where you monologue like a second-rate supervillain or try to tell me about your terrible spoiled childhood where your mother beat you and your father raped you to evoke sympathy? I have more than enough information to realize that I want no part in your little superhuman army.¡±


    ¡°So what do you want, mister Doyle?¡± he asked, frowning slightly. Well-dressed man that he was, wearing pressed slacks, a decent open-collar white shirt, and a pair of what looked like two-thousand dollar shoes, I just thought he looked like a bad stereotype of a mob boss.


    I smiled, ¡°I want you to go away and never come back so I never have to look at you again until I decide to have my team come out and crush your little block party like an overripe watermelon.¡±


    He thought about that for a moment. ¡°What brought you to the conclusion that my request would be so utterly immoral?¡±


    I smiled slightly, crossing my legs, and said, ¡°When your little teamsters decided that murdering a road full of innocent people was an acceptable price for keeping my disappearance quiet. Up until that point, I might have even forgiven the kidnapping incident, since you chose not to murder any of the guards, but after that, I realized that anyone who employed people willing to go to those lengths was someone I had no interest in dealing with in any way.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean? What lengths?¡±


    I looked at him, baffled. He didn¡¯t seem to be lying, but then again, I wasn¡¯t exactly a master of detecting deception.¡±Magazine, Baelfire. I distinctly heard them discussing exactly how to deal with any witnesses, wall guards, or casual bystanders. Is Baelfire really capable of burning anything in a half-mile radius?¡±


    He narrowed his eyes, ¡°Baelfire was. She isn¡¯t anymore, and neither is Magazine.¡±


    I was a little shocked, ¡°You killed them?¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°Not Baelfire. She¡¯s potentially useful but has to be carefully controlled. Magazine, however, was in charge of the mission and failed not just spectacularly, but in a way that ensured that you would never willingly cooperate. He was a poorly chosen mercenary, I confess, but at the time we only had a fraction of our knowledge about your skillset that we do now. It was his job to ensure that we gained more knowledge, not alienate you.¡±


    ¡°So you killed him.¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°he was an assassin. What else was I supposed to do? Give him a bonus and cut him loose? He would have killed half my employees to make a point. Baelfire, however, is in exactly the same position as you.¡±


    I raised an eyebrow, ¡°Oh?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yes. Locked down. Someone with a similar power to yours, who is able to prevent molecular manipulation in a large area. Once we realized that quantum disabling was unable to work on your abilities, since you could adjust your own molecular structure rapidly, we found another option. If you like, I could have you meet her to assure yourself of her health.¡±


    ¡°What about Sabrina?¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°We took you. She ran. She is a clever girl, raised on a planet even more dangerous than this one. She did her unintended job, which was to lure you out of the academy¡¯s lockdown. It¡¯s amazing how predictable you hero types can be. She requires materials to use her abilities effectively, and you just went out of your way and out of safety to help provide them.¡±


    I smiled slightly, ¡°I knew I could get you monologuing. Typical supervillain. So what is it you are so desperate for? I am certain you already have someone poking and prodding at my armor, good luck with that.¡±


    He shrugged, ¡°It¡¯s tinker tech. I doubt very much we could reproduce it, and our best researchers have used what they have learned from it to formulate a reasonable hypothesis as to how your power works.¡±


    I shrugged, so far he had given away a lot of secrets. ¡°What did they discover?¡±


    He grinned, ¡°More than you would like, probably. You are a molecular assembler, able to create and modify micro-machinery to perform a huge variety of tasks, including strengthening your own body and molecular system, disassembling and reassembling your body, and repairing damage on a molecular scale¡­ as well as creating some sort of self-replicating power supply to break the power limitations most tinkers possess. Brilliant, really, which is why I am loath to dispose of you or attempt to break your mind. Even now, I am relatively certain you have packed your own body with machinery capable of activating a broad variety of practical effects, from producing fire and cold to teleportation.¡±


    Not a bad guess. Subtly wrong, but clearly they had witnessed my attempts to escape. ¡°So what is it you want? Super-armor? Things that mimic superpowers in baselines?¡±


    He shook his head, ¡°Actually it is quite simple. I want you to do what heroes do, I want you to save my father¡¯s life.¡±


    ***


    It turned out that his father was a victim of ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig¡¯s disease. He was currently on life support and had been for over a year, and had recently lost his ability to even communicate effectively.


    The causes of ALS had been determined years before, a genetic proclivity plus certain heavy metal exposure exacerbated it. His father had been in the military before the crash, and afterward, had started collecting land and the alphas needed to protect it, creating the Maxwell collective. Unfortunately, in his opinion, extreme pragmatism was required to keep it functional and prevent it from being nationalized by the remains of what had once been New York City, the pragmatism that included the occasional bribery, murder, or kidnapping.


    ¡°So what is it you are hoping I can accomplish?¡± I asked him. I doubted very much that he was planning on letting me go if I helped him, but the more freedom I had, the more options. To be fair, I had zero worries whatsoever about whether or not his farmland got nationalized. I didn¡¯t think it would be better or worse, but I had problems with this particular monster¡¯s opinions.


    ¡°I need his list of contacts, which means I need for him to be able to talk. Neither he nor I am alphas, but It would cost billions for me to rebuild the list of carefully cultivated connections and their debts to the collective. He¡¯s never trusted me, which I cannot blame him for, but now that he¡¯s incoherent, half of our power is simply gone. Not to mention, trust or not, I want my father back... I am not ready to run the collective.¡±The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°Of course, while I would love to have a fleet of armored guardsmen that could meaningfully challenge most alphas, as well as a communications network that could pierce the crash interference, that would be a completely separate issue. In exchange, I could offer you vast amounts of wealth and a seat at the table, but I doubt your superhero mentality, a mentality I will never understand, would settle for that sort of offering.¡±


    I chuckled, ¡°What¡¯s to understand? I like Earth very much, I live here, and right now, Alphas seem to be the only thing keeping it intact and not overrun by overpowered monstrosities. Something you don¡¯t seem to care about.¡±


    He raised an eyebrow, ¡°What makes you think I don¡¯t care? I live here too.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°When was the last time you sent your hand-picked alpha killers to help out a Kaiju invasion?¡±


    He looked at me directly. ¡°This morning.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    He laughed, ¡°You really have no clue, do you? The coastal kaiju are an absolute abomination, and terrifying, if rare. The interior, however, is also packed with energy-enhanced monstrosities. The Maxwell consortium operates over two million acres of active farmland¡­ We have nearly half a million employees, and hundreds of alphas as well as high-impact technological combat units.¡±


    ¡°We have nearly twice as many class four and above alphas working constantly to keep areas outside of the city safe from predatory enhanced animals as the cities themselves, as well as sponsoring twelve straight-up superteams that help the surrounding territories deal with both the occasional eruption and the psychotic random supervillain.¡±


    He sighed and shook his head, ¡°The one thing that you city folks have absolutely right, though, is that it¡¯s not a democracy. It cannot be a democracy. We have plenty of unincorporated businesses and non-citizens, but we also absolutely have slavery, or at least, those who choose to violate our rules and endanger our citizens and non-citizen workers are offered the option of paying off their debt to the consortium with labor or death. We also have prisons and police departments, and I like to think that the towns within the consortium¡¯s bailiwick are friendly and peaceful places with plenty of opportunities for growth, but no, we don¡¯t cotton to the concept of democracy.¡±


    ¡°The non-alphas help support the alphas, the protectors, and the consortium. We have taxes, and people can choose to elect representatives to bring their concerns to the consortium leadership, but in the end, how useful is the vote of an unemployed drunk, ideological warrior, or someone who cares so little about the community that they aren¡¯t even willing to pay taxes or become a citizen? If they don¡¯t like it, they are welcome to leave. I understand that the cities welcome anyone, or they can try their luck in the unincorporated territories, at least until something eats them. I hear Manitoba¡¯s nice and dangerous this time of year.¡±


    ¡°So tell me, what makes someone like you a superhero? Besides ignorance, of course.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°What makes you think I am a superhero?¡±


    He raised an eyebrow, ¡°So far, your demeanor and moral inflexibility have both suggested it, as has your attendance at Kellar Academy.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°I¡¯m not. However, like I said, I do value lives and this planet. I attend Kellar because it puts me in touch with people doing a job that I like, specifically fighting monsters, and I get some pretty decent training in how to support and help those people. If I have to go personally fight off monsters and killers, I will, but that¡¯s not out of some kind of ¡®with great power¡¯ hero complex.¡±


    ¡°So what is it you want? I mean, everyone wants something.¡±


    I looked at him, ¡°Okay, I am going to try being polite. I still think you are absolute scum, but I can sort of understand where you are coming from. I want a planet like it was before the crash. A world where people can live free from fear, and where I can settle down to a rewarding job, a beautiful wife, and fat babies. To be honest, I¡¯d happily trade away my alpha powers if it meant all the rest were gone too.¡±


    He laughed, ¡°Oh, you sweet, naive, ignorant child.¡±


    I glared at him.


    ¡°What do you think caused the crash?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s pretty well documented. Q-bombs from the Russian empire.¡±


    He shook his head, grinning, ¡°Yeah, to the victor goes the truth. No. Q-bombs were invented by OUR researchers. An offshoot of nuclear research. Only one Q-bomb, in fact. After the end of the Kaiser¡¯s war, Eastern Europe and Germany started getting antsy and trying to out-empire each other. The why of it was unimportant, but our researchers started trying to figure out a way to create the ultimate weapon because everyone was trying to make the ultimate weapon to win a world war.¡±


    ¡°We succeeded, but so did several others. Suddenly, you had bombs that could split the atom and unleash unimaginable damage, bombs that could alter the fabric of reality in unimaginable ways, and bombs that could unleash quantum hell¡­ and on a beautiful day in 1938, well, someone decided to use them. An unimportant little country named China decided that it was a good time to punish Japan for a bunch of historical injuries, and dropped a bomb on a little island called Kyushu in response to a number of conventional bombing raids. Not an unreasonable response, considering the provocation.¡±


    ¡°It wasn¡¯t a very big bomb and it killed less than ten thousand people, most of them from radiation sickness, but in response, everyone started lobbing their own superweapons around, which led to the crash. Next thing you know, monsters and people started popping up that could do things no one understood, and it¡¯s simply gotten worse since then. There¡¯s a good argument that the American Q-bomb dropped on Czechoslovakia was the straw that broke the camel¡¯s back, but for whatever reason, a big push in Normandy got eaten by a giant fire-breathing boar, and after that, the new Cold War developed¡­¡±


    ¡°Before that, humanity was constant warfare. Almost no one lived in peace and prosperity like you wish for, if anything now that humanity has a common enemy, things are more peaceful than ever in history.¡±


    ¡°What happened to power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?¡± I asked.


    He shrugged, ¡°The desire for power corrupts. Ironically enough, because awakenings are so random, simply desiring power is not enough to obtain the power of your average alpha. Sure, there are a few absolute sickos that wind up with disgusting levels of power, but compared to how it was before the crash? I¡¯d much rather have things the way they are now¡­ most people in the consortium wind up living relatively peaceful lives, and even your cities are a thousand times less crime-riddled and deadly than they were before the crash.¡±


    He grinned, ¡°Monsters, kaiju, and enhanced animals are terrifying, but the most dangerous animal always has been and always will be humans. The rise of the interweb has simply allowed propaganda to be controlled more easily. Think about who designs your information networks and educational programs, and what their motivations might be.¡±


    I scowled. ¡°Fine. I will¡­ try to heal your father.¡± Not that I believed him, but he had given me food for thought, and I could do my own research if I could get back out of here. ¡°Assuming, of course, you will let me go afterward. I won¡¯t be joining your army, no matter what sort of story you spin for me.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Fair enough, but I will expect to be given at least a chance to make my case in the future. As will the Maclelland consortium, The inter-Ohio farmsteads, and the Atlantic command. They are my competition, but not my enemy, and none of them want the city to annex them with millions of supersoldiers wearing magical suits that make them all the equivalent of class-four alphas.¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t send murderers and threats.¡±


    He nodded, ¡°And what is your price?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    He spun on his wooden chair slightly, ¡°What is your price? For any of it? Healing, if you can do it, the armor if you can make it work, the communicators, if you can make enough of them. What are your prices?¡±


    I ran my hands through my hair. ¡°I am not really motivated by greed. The healing, I have already given you my price for. No more kidnappings, no more threats of killing everyone in a half-mile radius, and you let me go.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± he asked in surprise. ¡°You said you weren¡¯t a superhero. That¡¯s pretty heroic.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°I said I wasn¡¯t a hero and I mean it. But I absolutely support superheroes, because they do a stupidly dangerous job. Some of them are kind of corrupted by the money and fame, but they are still out there fighting kaiju and monsters, and as long as they aren¡¯t slaughtering and raping people, I don¡¯t really care about whatever twisted shit they get up to.¡±


    ¡°What happened to the ''with great power'' thing?"


    I laughed. ¡°If you were especially tall, and became a basketball player, would you feel obligated to spend every moment you weren¡¯t playing and every dime you made on the needy? Some people would feel like they had to, but I don¡¯t. With great power comes great opportunities, but responsibilities come from your own mind and morality, or your connection to god or the deity of your choice. I will happily help people, but that is my choice, not the inevitable consequence and burden of having a gift.¡±


    He chuckled, ¡°Then we may be able to work together.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No we won¡¯t. Not you personally. You are still on my fuck-off list for what you did, hiring killers and assassins to deal with me. Even if you are right, you broke the rules¡­ but that doesn¡¯t mean that you can¡¯t send someone who has an actual moral compass to do business. I also want my armor back. You can¡¯t use it, and it¡¯s incomplete anyway, I am still trying to make it work correctly. You also can¡¯t reproduce it.¡±


    ¡°How do you know? I have my own tinkers, some of whom should be able to replicate it.¡±


    I grinned, ¡°Because I am not a tinker.¡±


    ¡°So what are you?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°complicated.¡±


    ***


    This dude was messed up. On giving my word not to run, they had removed the restriction Lockdown had placed on my environment, but looking at the senior Maxwell, the guy was an absolute basket case. He was strapped down with machines that regulated his oxygen, blood flow, nutrition, liquid intake, and a dozen other things¡­ I hadn¡¯t even been aware that the level of technology involved in this kind of life support even existed.


    ¡°How much neural damage does he have?¡± I asked, looking at him closely. It probably didn¡¯t help that he was in his seventies, as well. I was able to detect all the flaws in his system, but I was unsure about how much I could blueprint.


    ¡°He was beginning to have extreme senile dementia before his system started to shut down, but from what we can determine, it didn¡¯t seem to propagate to his gray matter¡­ It was entirely nervous system damage, but as a result, his nervous system was almost entirely shot. Demilination, and his autonomic system shut down nearly a month ago. Right now, we have a suspension alpha coming in every day to lock him down for about eighteen hours, which is how we¡¯ve kept him alive so long, as well as a nerve controller, but she can¡¯t keep it up continuously.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°How is she locking him down?¡±


    ¡°Time compression. Technically he¡¯s almost a year younger than his actual age because of it, but if she tries to keep it up longer, she passes out from energy loss, and the projection speedster from the monster hunters is even harder to¡­ ask for assistance than you were.¡±


    ¡°No one else could help?¡±


    The doctor shrugged, his flyaway white hair wiggling slightly from the motion. ¡°There was a healer from the Atlantic command that tried, but she said that she couldn¡¯t affect genetic damage. She did what she could, which is probably why he¡¯s still alive, sort of, but he¡¯s in even worse shape than he was, albeit still alive.¡±


    I nodded and checked his skin. The cells were extensively degraded from replication, which was normal for a 70-year-old, but that should be reasonably fixable¡­ I was just worried about what would happen if I fixed him.


    ¡°I am willing to try, but I need you to do something.¡±


    ¡°What that?¡±


    ¡°Lockdown. I need proof she¡¯s hundreds of miles away. I refuse to work if I don¡¯t have some kind of assurance that I am not going to get locked in a cage if this works. I also am going to need your suspension alpha available to keep him suspended while we unhook him from the artificial nervous system.¡±


    The doctor shrugged, ¡°I am sure you won¡¯t take my word for it, but Mister Maxwell is well-known for keeping his word.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yes, but he¡¯s also utterly pragmatic. I don¡¯t want him deciding that it¡¯s worthwhile to keep me around permanently, or worth more than his own reliability. I think I can do it, but afterward, I am gone. He needs something again, he has to go through channels to get it. I am not a slave, and I won¡¯t let him make me one.¡±


    ¡°We are going to the Voice Hotel on 18th Street. Make sure that your alpha is fresh, unhook this guy completely, and we will go there. I will do my best to wake him up, but anything artificial could completely screw things up. I can detect alphas, and if I detect any alpha but the staff, certain guests, and the cloning brick he has protecting him, I am gone.¡±


    ¡°If I don¡¯t have my armor, I am gone. If I detect any artificial modifications to my armor, such as a tracker or alpha-tinkered tracer, or even a magic spell attached to me or my armor, I am gone. I cannot detect magic, but I can smell the traces a magical alpha leaves behind with the magic. I know what Lockdown¡¯s powers taste like¡­ if I detect her anywhere within a block of the hotel, I am gone.¡±


    ¡°What¡¯s to keep you from just leaving?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°My word. I will do this but on my terms. I am tired of getting pushed around by bullies. Adrian was right about one thing¡­ corrupt people are attracted to power, and he¡¯s one of the worst of them. Word or no word, I trust him about as far as I can throw him with both hands tied behind my back.¡±


    ¡°Are we clear?¡±


    The doctor slowly nodded, and one of the bodyguard clones left to go inform Maxwell of my decision.

 Chapter 34. Adulting sucks.

    Ugh. It was like digging into a cadaver. I mean, the guy was alive, but whatever system they had him linked to was barely keeping his brain active, and there were literally vast sections of his body that were barely kept from rotting, including his lungs and digestive tract that apparently hadn¡¯t been used in weeks subjective time.


    I was busily scanning. Okay, blueprinting his entire body wasn¡¯t going to work. His cell structure was already memorized, but I was going to have to build this up and fill in the blanks as we went along.


    The suspension alpha was named Timesink and was capable of freezing baseline humans and low-powered alphas in time bubbles. An incredibly useful nonlethal power set, probably much more useful than mine, but she¡¯d been running herself to exhaustion nearly every day for weeks keeping this near-cadaver preserved. A cute Irish brunette, except for the overly pale skin and the dark spots of exhaustion under her eyes. She was a solid class four, which meant thousands of energy, but she¡¯d been running her physical body to exhaustion controlling her power.


    I looked at her after several hours of her maintaining the suspension, and she looked wiped, her eyes closed as she sat near him with her hands on one withered arm. She could do it at range, but that required more power and control than touching him.


    ¡°Okay, here¡¯s the deal,¡± I said to her, as her eyes opened at my words.


    ¡°The deal?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°This is gonna look pretty awful. He¡¯s going to look like he¡¯s disintegrating into gas. Normally it would be instant, but with your time compression, you are going to be able to watch the lovely process as it occurs. I know what it looks like, because my power has time compression attached to it also, and it¡¯s ugly¡­ like throw-up ugly.¡±


    ¡°I am suspending his active molecular structure right here.¡± I tapped the side of my head. ¡°Including the memory and energy imprint of¡­ well¡­ whatever keeps him alive. I like to think of it as the soul, or the spirit, but I know it works because that¡¯s how I preserve myself when I apport. That¡¯s basically what I am doing, apporting him while I reconstruct his body minus some of the problems, and hopefully, his nervous system intact, although he might need some time and retraining to do certain things, like talk.¡±


    ¡°When I say drop the shield, drop it¡­ that should get him breathing again, which I will need for the last part of the apport, resetting his energy pattern. If you leave him in the suspension field, I can¡¯t reattach his pattern, and if it takes too long, the pattern will dissipate and go wherever¡­ you know¡­ dead people go. You will be left with a perfectly functional living body, but no one will be home.¡±


    She nodded, nervously, ¡°You know, Wallace Maxwell is a very bad man. Before Adrian took over, he ran the consortium like a feudal slave camp. He strangled his last wife with his bare hands when he found out she couldn¡¯t give him any more sons, even though it was his disease that caused it.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Not my problem.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°You could let me keep up the suspension field, so his¡­ life dissipates. Adrian hired you to heal him, not to keep his soul intact.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Adrian hired me to wake him up. That¡¯s what I intend to do. Apparently, the consortium is on a bit of a razor¡¯s edge and he needs the information in this guy¡¯s head. That¡¯s all I plan to do. Give him his father back.¡±


    She sighed. ¡°I know. My second gift is telepathic. I can tell you are telling the truth. His mind is still alive but lost. He¡¯s still an evil pile of shit I don¡¯t want to see in control again. We could recover from losing his information, but I don¡¯t think we could recover from him being coherent again. If Adrian had called me before Wallace was struck with dementia, I could have recovered it, but afterward, it¡¯s too chaotic for me to dive.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°You do what you need to do, and I will do what I need to do. Afterward, I am out of here. You are aware that I can still use my abilities if you put a tachyon freeze on me, right? I will do what I have to do if you try to stop me. Please don¡¯t make me hurt you to escape.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°You are telling the truth, but you are¡­ protected from mind diving. Either your power has created some kind of shield, or you have been trained a lot. I don¡¯t think your power is what the scientists think your power is.¡±


    I smiled a little, ¡°It¡¯s not,¡± and tucked my helmet under my arm¡­ I was going to be out of here quickly and already checked myself and my armor for odd quantum signatures and essence links. At least he had kept his word about that. ¡°One thing to remember is that he still has the genetic proclivity for ALS, and later in life, it becomes more likely to express. I removed the heavy metals that helped trigger it, but eventually, it¡¯s likely to come back.¡±


    ¡°Are you ready?¡± I asked her. It had taken several hours to rebuild a good blueprint pattern, but the actual assembly now that I had decent aural range would be as fast as rebuilding after an apport.


    She nodded, looking a little sad.


    With a flash, I disassembled his pattern. As a baseline, he had no real defense against it, although as decrepit as he was, even if he were an alpha it probably wouldn¡¯t have provided any defense. Then again, I needed the organic molecules and started feeding more essence into the flow of movements as I built new molecular structures from the inside out.


    I could see Timesink¡¯s expression change as the whole thing occurred, from disgust to anger, and so I flipped around, reassembling and rebuilding his body on the carpet next to the expensive four-poster bed it had been a moment before. It took a lot more energy since he had a lot more that needed to be rebuilt than I usually did when transmitting myself or even a guest, and each additional atom took real energy to assemble.


    After a moment, he drew a breath as the essence pattern from his innate energy rejoined his body. He was remarkably quick to recover, and his eyes opened. My blueprint had not only restored his health, but all the alleles were rebuilt, and I built his body the way that his genetic pattern dictated, as a healthy, fit, and fairly muscular twenty-year-old man.


    The bodyguard, or clone number six, glanced at Timesink. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and I took a step back.


    ¡°Did you get it?¡± the clone said, and Timesink slowly nodded. Wallace tried to lift himself on his hands, smiling, very similar to his son, and the big clone pulled out his pistol and put three bullets in his head.


    ***


    I should have guessed. Pragmatic. Adrian said that he needed the information his father kept locked in his head, not that he needed his father alive. I¡¯d let my own interpretation blind me to the fact that they didn¡¯t need him alive, they just needed the information, blackmail material, and contacts before he died and his contacts were freed from whatever obligations they had to the old man and could begin to work against the consortium.


    And I felt guilty as hell. The murder was my fault. I should have suspected things, but as Adrian said, I was a naive, stupid, ignorant child. I honestly thought he was desperate to get his father back because if I were able to have mine back, I¡¯d do it in a heartbeat.


    But I couldn¡¯t raise the dead, not really. Once their essence pattern was gone, they were gone. Technically I could repair a dead body that wasn¡¯t too far decayed, but my window of opportunity was usually less than ten minutes, and their brain had to be intact since the essence pattern seemed to be linked to their mind and identity.


    When I re-materialized at the table in the apartment, Mindy jumped in shock. ¡°You are back?¡± she yelled, ¡°Sabrina said¡­¡± she stopped as she realized I had covered my face, and realized I was silently sobbing into my own hands.


    Yeah, big strong man. So self-confident and controlled. The stress, and someone getting murdered right in front of me that I had just spent incredible effort to bring back to life, was too much. After a moment I realized that Mindy had tugged her chair towards me and was wrapping her arm around my shoulder, just holding me as I broke down.


    I just couldn¡¯t deal with it. Everything was hitting me all at once. Christine¡¯s betrayal, the constant juggling, and the stress of trying to work jobs and go to school since then, my absolute control as my life got flipped again and again, the expectations, my dad¡¯s death, losing the company, my cousin¡¯s backstabbing.


    ¡°This is such bullshit.¡± I sobbed, my face still clenched in my hands as Mindy patted my back. ¡°I am so sick of adulting. It¡¯s not fair, and I know it never will be, but this sucks.¡±


    She sighed and patted my back. ¡°It sucks. I know. Can you tell me?¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°I am only nineteen damned years old. I should have decades of stupidity ahead of me. But they shot him right in front of me. I still have blood on my armor.¡±


    ¡°Wait, what?¡± she murmured. ¡°Nineteen? I thought you were like.. twenty-seven. I thought you were engaged.¡±


    I nodded slowly against my still-damp hands, trying to collect myself. ¡°Yeah, after I awakened and Christine helped my cousin take the company, I made myself look older so I could play stuntman. No one wants to fight a supervillain that looks like a skinny teenager.¡±


    ¡°So that means you were engaged at seventeen?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah. The stocks were tied into a trust fund, but I was able to choose the management and draw dividends. Christine convinced me to let my cousin take over the management, and I gave her my willed five percent voting stock. I thought¡­ but I was so dumb, so dumb. She left me and he stopped the management account¡¯s dividends because I was pulling more than we were earning, and I was broke, and lost my dad¡¯s house, and then Adrian put me in a room I couldn¡¯t break from.¡±


    I finally stopped sobbing quietly, and hiccuped, ¡°And he said he wanted me to save his dad¡¯s life, and I knew that I would do anything, anything at all to save my dad, so I saved him¡­ and then they got what they wanted and shot him...in the face. Right in front of me.¡± I tried hard not to start sobbing again. Dammit, be a man! Children cry, not adults.


    ¡°Why did she leave you?¡±


    I shrugged a little, not sobbing but feeling¡­ broken. ¡°Because I was a loser. I didn¡¯t know how to manage anything, and even when I awakened I got like, the worst power ever, and she wanted a real man, not a broke loser. And she was sleeping with him, and I¡¯d held out for years waiting for her to be ready, and she was sleeping with him the whole time. She said she was only waiting for me to get my inheritance, so she could support her career, but now that I didn¡¯t even manage it anymore, she didn¡¯t need me.¡±


    ¡°Holy shit, that absolute bitch!¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I guess, but I was also a loser too. I can¡¯t really blame her. Hell, I am still a loser. An ignorant, stupid, immature loser.¡± I dropped my hands, wiping off my face, and then waggled them in the air, ¡°Woo woo! Look at me! I can make stupid gewgaws and fix booboos! I have a power that I never asked for, don¡¯t want, and that people will kill me for.¡±


    I slapped my hands on the table. ¡°I should have just gone back to school, let people beat me up for publicity, and then faded out. Maybe when I hit twenty-five and can claim my trust, I might be able to sell it to a bank and get a truck or something, if the company isn¡¯t completely dead by then.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Even like things are, you could get so rich from your inventions!¡±


    ¡°Why?¡±


    She looked at me oddly, ¡°Why what?¡±Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    ¡°Why get rich off of them? I don¡¯t want to. It¡¯s not my money, it¡¯s my stupid power. My Dad always talked about raising yourself on your own merits and being responsible for your own failures. This stupid power isn¡¯t mine, it belongs to someone else. I don¡¯t know how or why I got it, but it¡¯s not my merits, it¡¯s a cheat, a sham, a fake boost, like finding a lottery ticket in a sewer that wins you millions.¡±


    She scooted around to face me directly and bent forward a little as I rested my forehead on one hand, my elbow on the table. ¡°Okay, what could you do at first?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Push dust around.¡±


    ¡°And every other thing, how did you learn to do it?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°I just kept experimenting and pushing at it, going smaller and smaller until I did something that worked.¡±


    ¡°So you gained a tiny little power, the ability to push dust, which you can do with your fingertip, and you worked your ass off until you turned it into a gift that could heal people, create things from nothing but energy, throw fireballs, freeze, alter entropy, walk on air, disintegrate, teleport, create kinetic shields, and probably even fly. You make brilliant little microscopic computers, break the comm barrier, and make incredible armor, shields, and maybe even weapons. Every step was your effort, your labor, and your mind.¡±


    ¡°You did that, no one else. Lots of people get powers, but most of them never do anything more than what they were first born with. Maybe they get tougher over time, or their powers get stronger, but no one has stretched their abilities like you have¡­ you might as well be saying that you don¡¯t deserve to be tall, or you don¡¯t deserve to be handsome, or you don¡¯t deserve to be as smart as you are.¡±


    ¡°One thing you are not, though, is a loser. A loser would still be pushing around dust.¡±


    I smiled slightly, wiping my face off again, ¡°I do still push around dust. Just¡­ lots of it.¡±


    She sighed and quirked a hint of a smile herself. ¡°Now I understand why you don¡¯t have any interest in alpha girls. It sounds like she tore you apart.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Not until I was stupid. I tried to do that stupid John Cusack radio thing, I kept pestering her, texting her, and then she finally came out and let me have it, and explained exactly why. Because I was being a stalker and a moron, and she even threatened to end me if I didn¡¯t leave her alone.¡±


    She nodded slowly. ¡°Damn. That¡¯s¡­ okay, you were kind of acting like a loser.¡±


    I laughed bitterly, ¡°See? See? I told you. The secret''s out.¡±


    She nodded, she was dressed in pink flannel pajamas, with no makeup, and honestly, I thought she was a lot prettier that way. Also, she hadn¡¯t re-dyed her hair, which meant that the first few inches were starting to come in orange-ish. She hadn¡¯t been lying.


    ¡°To be fair, now? Most girls would gut themselves just to get seen with you. Heck, I already know I have had to keep Abigail from sneaking into your bedroom when we were...uhh¡­ having a girl¡¯s night while you were working.¡±


    ¡°I thought Abbey was an innocent virgin.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°She is, but she was kind of drunk, and she¡¯s a geek¡­ she¡¯s watched porn and started talking about what she¡¯d like to do to you. And Candace got into it too, although she was a lot more descriptive. Even Akyo got into the action a little bit.¡±


    ¡°And you?¡± I asked her curiously.


    She shrugged, her platinum ponytail flopping off her shoulder. ¡°I might have mentioned that I wouldn¡¯t mind seeing you walking back from the bathroom in the throes of a creative frenzy again.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Well, Kate wants me to go out with her. Flat-out stated it.¡±


    ¡°Do you want to?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Not a fucking chance. I honestly think she¡¯s blocking me from talking to Quiet Code because she¡¯s on her team. She acts like the weird dual thing was some kind of meaningful connection, but I think she just wants to do it again for the power boost. I have zero interest, but I don¡¯t want to blow her off completely because I think Quiet Code might be my answer to the software problem, and I don¡¯t want an angry mean girl walking around claiming I psychically raped her.¡±


    ¡°Did you?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I did what I had to do to hold her together after she had a power overload. It felt great, but it wasn¡¯t sexual or anything, and I am not sure, but I think it could work with other people too if their power has anything to do with molecular motion. It kind of crippled her power at first, but after she pushed it out, I think she gained a lot of power from it as well and might gain more.¡±


    She nodded slowly, ¡°Would it work with me?¡±


    I thought about it. Freezing and heating were literally all about molecular motion. ¡°Probably. But it¡¯s really intimate. Like too intimate. Not exactly sexual, but damned close, and from what Sabrina says, it works better if it is sexual. So umm¡­ not a good idea.¡±


    ¡°Why not?¡± she asked, blinking innocently.


    I smirked a little, ¡°Yeah, so now I am wondering if you want me for my powers. Not exactly reassuring.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°No, but you did help me out hugely, although admittedly I paid for that. Do you mind if I give you some advice? From mentor to sidekick, big sisterly advice, or something like that?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Not at all.¡±


    ¡°You have four options. The first one is going to a counselor. Let them know what is going on with Kate, and see if they can offer options. I mean, it¡¯s admittedly weird power shit. But Kellar Academy is the home of weird power shit. I can¡¯t promise it will end well, but it will end better than just letting her string you along. You already know from experience what the end result of letting yourself get strung along is.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I definitely do.¡±


    ¡°Your other option is to find someone to date. Make it clear that you have moved on. It doesn¡¯t have to be serious, or sexual, it just has to be obvious. That way, if she starts to grumble about psychic rape or whatever, well, it¡¯s been weeks since the event that you rescued her in. No one, literally no one, would take it seriously because it would sound like sour grapes.¡±


    ¡°And shut down completely the only avenue to get to Quiet Code, the only serious instinctive cyberkinetic, the one who might be able to create code for my armor and comms that could make them useful to people in the field, and potentially save thousands of lives,¡± I grumbled.


    ¡°Have you tried another route?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, Frost Phoenix rules her team quarters with an iron hand, and she¡¯s third and second year¡­ I can¡¯t even get into her classroom areas without getting shut down and accused of being a stalker or raider.¡±


    ¡°Lunch?¡±


    ¡°Different schedules. They don¡¯t like to let the years mix.¡±


    She nods, ¡°So option three is, bang Kate¡¯s brains out, get the casual fling and her victory lap out of your head, and then hope that opens up your access to Quiet Code.¡±


    ¡°No thank you. I am not going to spend my V card on something like that.¡±


    She looked at me seriously, ¡°I thought you were joking about that.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Nope.¡±


    ¡°So option four. Pull a stunt. Get Quiet Code¡¯s attention somehow, and let her know you need to talk to her.¡±


    I snorted. Weirdly, I was feeling a lot better, but I¡¯d probably have nightmares about Crystal blowing someone¡¯s brain out all over me or something. ¡°What kind of stunt? Hold up a radio in the parking lot playing ¡®Blinded by Science¡¯ and hope she notices? That didn¡¯t work out so well last time.¡±


    She looked at me like I was an idiot. ¡°You are aware, that your teammate is possibly the most powerful information manipulator in existence. So I suggest part of column two and part of column four. Take someone out on a very visible date, and have our darling Abigail practice her control by getting a message to Quiet Code through means only she understands. Abbey may not be a programmer, but I am certain she could set it up so that Quiet Code notices.¡±


    I looked at her a little confusedly, ¡°You want me to take Abbey on a date?¡±


    She went thoughtful at that, and then smiled a little, ¡°Yes, absolutely. You could use a date as a bribe for her help. Even if it doesn¡¯t work out, just make sure you do something for her that no one else can, she will probably be tickled pink and call you her straight gay best friend.¡±


    ¡°Her what?¡±


    She chortled at my shocked tone, ¡°Straight gay best friend. A gay best friend is kind of a status symbol, but you are straight, but as a rare male alpha, it¡¯s still a status symbol. You¡¯d be like her gay best friend, but straight.¡±


    ¡°Uhh...I am not sure I could do that. If she wanted me to help her change clothes and paint her nails naked, I¡¯d probably try to grope her. I¡¯m only human.¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Well, then people would be really convinced that whatever went on between you and Kate was over.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Well, would you like to do something with me as your straight gay best friend?¡±


    She actually looked surprised and pleased, ¡°What¡¯s that?¡±


    I glanced at the minikitchen. ¡°I think I could really use a pint of iced cream. Want to split a banana berry with me while we whine about how evil people are?¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Hell yes!¡±


    ***


    ¡°Are you trying to bribe me?¡± Abbey glared at me through the phone¡¯s video panel. She was at her parent¡¯s house, but we had each other¡¯s call codes just in case something happened, and she looked surprisingly happy when her mother waved her over. Miss Snow was nearly as petite and gorgeous as her daughter, and I almost wished she was a cougar.


    I looked at her thoughtfully. ¡°That depends. Is it a good enough bribe?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°not quite. I could get into serious trouble messing with the school¡¯s databases, especially the data labs. The nerd crew gets very upset when so-called idiots mess with their work.¡±


    ¡°So how do I up the ante?¡±


    She looked thoughtful, and then held up a finger, ¡°Hold on¡± she said, stepping away from the screen. I heard some murmuring that sounded like her mom. And then a moment later she stepped back to face me on the screen. ¡°Okay, I will do it, but it¡¯s going to be more.¡±


    ¡°More?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yes, more than just a simple date. No dipsy-duo of a dinner and a flick.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Ma¡¯am. You wound me. Did you honestly think I would be so callous as to offer nothing more than two hours of bad comedy followed by filling your stomach?¡± I looked around, and said, ¡°Err¡­ I mean, of course, something better. I just realized how dirty that sounded. It was better in my head, and smoother.¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Like that wasn¡¯t innuendo. Okay, you promise something better than dinner and a movie, and then afterward I want a kiss.¡±


    ¡°A kiss?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°A real kiss. Like mouth and maybe tongues and everything. I figure there¡¯s a very real chance that you are going to wind up going out with all of us, and I want a legitimate chance. Especially since, if you ever go out with Candace, there¡¯s absolutely no way she¡¯d ever let you get away without a lot more than a kiss. She has made that very clear.¡±


    ¡°Wait, seriously? You guys have actually talked about this?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yep. No one is allowed to try to take you to bed or try to talk you into marrying them until you have dated all of us except maybe Sabrina, although she might join the club later. But I want to make sure that I get a full chance before Candace or Mindy rip you away.¡±


    ¡°Is Akyo part of the club?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Absolutely, although she sorta made it clear that she just wants to have a romance with a handsome gaijin before she goes back home. She has to go back to Japan, no choice, and figures there¡¯s no way you¡¯d fall in love with her and follow her home like a hungry puppy.¡±


    I was dumbfounded. ¡°Are you really serious?¡±


    She looked at me oddly, and then answered quietly, looking around, ¡°Umm¡­ no? Of course not. I was just trying to be uhh¡­ clever. But yes, I will get something to her if you give me a date and a kiss, and maybe a snuggle.¡±


    I smiled slightly. She was adorable, in a sweet and innocent way. ¡°Tell you what, even if it weren¡¯t a bribe, I¡¯d give you a kiss and a snuggle, if you really want one. I just wasn¡¯t aware you were¡­ affectionate like that.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Well, you were so busy dealing with Candace acting like a sl¡­ aggressive person, that you probably didn¡¯t notice that your team is getting pretty close. I am pretty sure any one of us would like a hug or snuggle, especially Candace, but she¡¯d probably want ropes and handcuffs and latex underwear too.¡±


    I saw a hand dart out from beside the phone and smack her shoulder.


    ¡°Was that your mom?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°No that was my sister. She told me to tell you that if you get tired of superpowered girls, she¡¯d be happy to wait for you for at least two years since she¡¯s only sixteen.¡± another hand darted out to smack her shoulder again, and she said ¡°Ow! She said to tell you she¡¯s eighteen, but she¡¯s lying.¡± Another smack, and this time she turned to glare off to one side. ¡°I am going to tell Mom that you are trying to play jailbait and she¡¯ll take away your Sybian and furry hentai collection.¡±


    ¡°What the¡­¡± I asked before I saw her tackled and a fall of two different colored hairs. After a few moments of oofs and a loud smack, I finally said, ¡°Hey Abbey, I will see you when you get back.¡± After a moment, I saw a thumb raised, and I laughingly hung up. Damn, she had a heck of a family.

 Chapter 35. Hunter

    ¡°Okay, explain to me exactly what you are trying for again?¡±


    I was looking at Doctor MacKillan. For some odd reason, when I decided to start monkeying with my class loadout, they had assigned her as my new course counselor. There were still two days until the new term started, but the Academy tended to be very flexible with course loads, due to the special needs of its powered students.


    ¡°I want to switch to a hunter track.¡±


    She looked a little surprised. ¡°I thought you had your heart set on going full support? According to Mindy, you already have dozens of offers of sponsorship from corporations, some of which have very hefty price tags attached.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I did, but I had it driven home to me just how fragile the situation is. I have a few advantages that nearly no other alpha possesses, and I no longer feel¡­ good about the idea of sending teammates into conflicts without risking the danger myself. I was being selfish, trying to straddle the fence between a peaceful family life and the hero track, and while I am still not convinced about the whole model of modern morality thing, I am willing to become a soldier on the line against destruction. My grandfather was a real soldier, I can do no less.¡±


    I¡¯d researched Adrian¡¯s claims, and while the adventure movies, fiction, and surface stories for children claimed a million different contradictory reasons for the crash, he hadn¡¯t been exactly lying. Human history was filled to the brim with violence, warfare, and horror, to the point where it looked like we thrived on it. If anything, the crash brought us together as a people more than anything else in history, even as it threatened to eat our world.


    Did you know that in old New York in 1921, murders, and violent killings, both domestic and crime-related, exceeded the number of deaths from any other cause? And don¡¯t even get me started on cities like Chicago and Detroit. Hell, modern Detroit is more or less a lawless haven for supervillains, and even it is better run and managed by a warlord with the uninspired name of Earth-Lord than the place was in 1918. The Great Lakes have a lot fewer and smaller kaiju than the coasts, but even the lawless folks pulled together to beat back destruction.


    Even modern-day criminal organizations were far less violent than they used to be. Sure, we had illegal drugs, but we also had pebbles, buzzers, blitz, and white-out which were totally legal, non-addicting, and safe as long as you didn¡¯t try to drive a back-hoe afterward. Most illegal drugs were illegal for very good health reasons, especially since even physical addiction was fairly easy for modern medicine to break.


    But if a cartel made it a regular practice to leave a trail of bodies behind them, sooner or later someone like the Hanging Judge or Specter would decide to clean out the lot of them, and those guys were both terrifying and thorough. They were technically supervillains because they had no problems attacking baselines and tended to leave their own field of dead, but as suspected class fives, few were willing to tackle them when things had progressed to the point that one of them decided to make an example.


    Sabrina had, in fact, gotten back to the school in a huge hurry. Apparently, the herbs and plants we had gathered had been enough, even without my contribution, for her to create some kind of salve that deadened her scent and essence signature, and she shocked the hell out of the wall guards when she simply rode in through the Jersey gates on an old bicycle.


    And, of course, the moment I¡¯d given her my own collection that the Maxwell collective had returned, she¡¯d been off to the labs to work on her own power advancement. She hadn¡¯t been out of the lab for days.


    I sighed, ¡°It¡¯s like this. While my products are not exactly gadgeteer tech, they also cannot be mass-produced. Once I get some problems ironed out, I will probably get a day job designing custom costumes like Ochre, or maybe semi-power armor, custom jobs, and get to work on some bigger projects I have in mind, like possibly an inter-city wireless network.


    She leaned forward on her desk, ¡°Wait, what? How would that work?¡±


    I smiled a little, ¡°I don¡¯t really understand programming logic, but I do know perfectly well how variable wavelengths and digital encoding work. It might have to work like an old-style telephone switchboard, but long-distance analog links, maybe even to other countries around the world, are perfectly possible without fragile hard links. Imagine if a class 6 kaiju shows its head, and monster hunter teams from Chicago, Empire City, and Sonic Beach all show up to give it an instant bad day? Zero casualties, even.¡±


    ¡°The transport guild would throw a fit.¡±


    ¡°So? It¡¯s not like they won¡¯t still be needed, they just won¡¯t be carrying as many messages, and they might be carrying a lot more physical goods. I have seen some of those guys, they could really use the exercise.¡±


    She laughed and started poking around on her keyboard, ¡°You already have business management courses completed for your public ID. Unless you want to go for a master¡¯s.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Not if I run a small side business. I got that figured out before I came to Kellar. I have zero desire to try and run a multinational. I also need free time and lab access, and as much as I hate it, I will need to pick up some serious stem courses. Definitely advanced programming logic, and probably advanced biogenetics.¡±


    She nodded, tapping at the keyboard. ¡°You said you have an eidetic memory?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Something similar to eidetic memory. I can flash freeze. That¡¯s sort of my whole superpower.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°In that case, what you need are training labs, not classes, and tutoring. Classes are there to help drive the information home, but I assume you can pick up nearly any book and memorize it in a couple of minutes?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Hours if I really want to understand it. But yeah, that¡¯s why I was thinking logic classes if I can get them, or yeah, tutoring and labs if they would work out better.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°you¡¯ve already taken Kaiju tactics, what did you think?¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Good for taking naps or studying. Nothing but rote memorization of data. If 102 is the same, I am skipping it. I¡¯d rather take biogenetics to figure out how to take them down, most of them are animals, and teamwork is a much better course.¡±


    ¡°Power exploitation?¡±


    I smiled, ¡°A decent start, but I¡¯d honestly get more out of something more hands-on. I am not a gadgeteer or a shapeshifter, and while I wasn¡¯t truly mislabeled, I¡¯d rather look into power exploitation and energy instead. It fits my power signature better.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Good, I was going to make the same recommendation. Your sponsor suggested Doctor Kearns, and I can see why.¡±


    ¡°Doctor Kearns?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Elemental energy production and motion. Firefly. Your sponsor said that some of your energy problems had been resolved and that you would get a lot more out of physical power training courses. I was going to suggest advanced telekinetics, but I assume that¡¯s still a no-go?


    I nodded, sighing. ¡°Kinetic transfer, you know that flash freeze and restore thing? more like an energy brick than a telekinetic, but the elemental courses might be more helpful since a kinetic shield is a lot more like an elemental air product than telekinesis.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°you know that some of these classes are going to put you into contact with second and third years, right? Not uncommon, but you are getting a bit of a reputation, and reputation means rank challenges.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Do I have to answer them?¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Not really¡­ your chosen path, even on the hunter track, is weird enough that your rank placements will probably have almost no effect on your eventual graduation options. On the other hand, it¡¯s a good way to settle bets and favors, and it¡¯s amazing training in most cases. Please pardon the expression, but dick-waving contests are sort of an important part of public perception, even if the majority of our graduates don¡¯t possess them.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°On that note, Is there someplace to post requests for tutors or professionals from other tracks? I am still fairly broke, but I get the feeling I am going to need to look for a flack, preferably a baseline, to play interference, plus, you know, lab tutors.¡±


    She smiled a bit brighter, ¡°As far as hiring an agent, that is super easy¡­ I mean, the non-alphas who come to Kellar are usually here specifically to train in the side issues of dealing with alphas, and I can put in a call to one of the PR professors about that right away, he could find and send you some promising prospects, and working with you would actually offer school credits. Just give me a list of what you need. Specialist tutors are also offered credits or are even paid for by your grant as long as they aren¡¯t on academic probation. I will get you hooked up. Would non-alpha tutors work?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That would be great.¡±


    She smiled and tapped at the keyboard, and then printed out a tentative schedule.


    Power exploitation, energy lab, Doctor Richard Kearns.


    Advanced Biogenetics for alpha manipulators, Doctor Emmanuel Juarez.


    Intro to alternative martial arts, Master Kelly MacTavish.


    Advanced artificial Intelligence and programming logic. Lab 603 (Instructor TBD)


    Radiology and materials lab (advisor tbd)


    Teamwork 102


    ¡°Two things¡­ advanced biogenetics for alpha manipulators? That¡¯s pretty on-the-nose, isn¡¯t it?


    She nodded, ¡°It really is. Doctor Juarez offers that course specifically for the rare alpha manipulator that attends, we usually get one every couple of years, It¡¯s technically a mandatory course, as is ABAM 102 and 103. Bio-manipulators capable of handling microorganisms, virii, and bacteria are extraordinarily dangerous, so 101 is basically a safety course. You know, ¡°Don¡¯t release a plague¡¯ and such. I sometimes teach ABAM 102, since it¡¯s usually micro-medicine, but Emmanuel handles 101 and 103 because it gets into pretty esoteric stuff.¡±


    ¡°And Intro to alternative martial arts?¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Your advisor, Bob, demanded that one. Alternative martial arts is a¡­ sort of weird category covering a huge variety of mysticism, soul energy, mental resistance training, and some eastern concepts that he said might be very important to you.¡±


    I nodded slowly, ¡°No instructor for Teamwork 102?¡¯


    She smiled, ¡°More like floating instructors. Remember, teamwork courses are mandatory for pretty much every alpha student, and half of our normies take them as part of their support framework. We also have guest instructors, although we don¡¯t start getting crossover students until teamwork 105, year three.¡±The author''s narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    ¡°Crossover students?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Other Alpha academies, Supercop training facilities, and even emergency responder Alpha training programs send alpha and promising baseline students here for our higher-level teamwork training. Kellar is the best for a reason.¡±


    I sat up, ¡°So, it looks good, I guess. Will I have enough time for free study?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°courses and labs are about six hours a day, total. Considering your absolute lack of need for study hall due to your blueprinting, you might even want to pick up some of the extra-curricular stuff, and maybe get your social interaction going a bit. We have teams, both baseline, and alpha, for everything from political activism to air hockey, lots of clubs, and even sponsored clubs by people like the transporter¡¯s guild, tinker¡¯s alliance, new Crusaders, and the enchanted forge.¡±


    I chortled, ¡°An Air Hockey team? Seriously?¡±


    She laughed, ¡°Not that kind of air hockey. Think soccer meets volleyball, with a hint of Quidditch thrown in. It¡¯s a brutal sport, but it¡¯s very popular and a bunch of hunter and hero paths use it for training. It¡¯s even pretty popular among the sports fan crowd since most matches are televised. I am sort of surprised you¡¯ve never heard of it.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Never really was a sports fan outside of extreme wrestling, weightlifting, and the winter games.¡±


    She smiled, ¡°Shall we wrap up then?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Thanks, how do I look up the clubs and stuff? I am still kind of broke, but I might have time to look into an employment placement program.¡±


    She laughed, and then looked at me cautiously, ¡°Wait, what? Seriously? I thought you were joking. Like a princess baby whining about being too broke to afford a twenty-thousand dollar pair of Jimmy Choos. Have you talked to your sponsor?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    She sighed and slumped at her desk. ¡°you¡¯ve been letting her screen your contracts, right?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I figured that¡¯s why I needed to find an agent.¡±


    ¡°Sweety, Have you even asked her for your school account?¡±


    ¡°My what?¡±


    ¡°Your school account. Your¡­ allowance, for personal expenses from your scholarship. Like what you use to buy shoes and ramen noodles and stuff in emergencies? Where do your active rewards from school activities go?


    She tapped her screen a few times. ¡°This.¡± and swiveled the screen around so I could see. three thousand dollars with my name on the account? I quickly memorized the account number.


    ¡°Where did that come from?¡±


    ¡°Do you honestly think a full-ride scholarship, especially with certain extra-budgetary bonuses from specialty corporations, doesn¡¯t expect you to have your own needs, like clothes, non-cafeteria food, transportation, and even sanitary stuff and books?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, I thought it was just tuition.¡±


    She shook her head, ¡°Go talk to your sponsor. She probably doesn¡¯t know about hers either¡­ the packet they give a sponsor is a gigantic folder full of paperwork. Stuff like marketing bonuses, team fundraiser income, and dividends that hit the school instead of directly to you go into that account too. She has your pins and card numbers, but based on the fact that neither of your accounts has been touched, I bet she just lost them in the paperwork.¡±


    ¡°Tomorrow is the last free day before the new semester, and there will be a club fair in the arena tomorrow if you are interested.¡±


    ***


    I had a few bucks left from my ¡®career¡¯ but I¡¯d been saving them frantically until I could get a side income. It was nice, once I¡¯d actually found out that Mindy had, in fact, had no idea that we were getting an income, and I was now the proud possessor of a Kellar student account with three thousand, three hundred, and one dollars in it. Right now, though, Mindy and I were headed for the Arena, to check out the club fair.


    ¡°I can¡¯t wait to see if there¡¯s an art club. I like to think I am pretty good at ice sculpture, but all the techniques I know are kind of traditional¡­ I bet there are actual frost alphas that might know power techniques for advanced sculpture!¡±


    ¡°So artsy.¡± I grinned. ¡°I want to know what the enchanted anvil, the crusade, and the tinker¡¯s guild are¡­ also, weirdly enough, air hockey looks like a fun way to get in some extra physical training.¡±


    She looked at me in surprise, ¡°Air hockey? Really? Oh my god, if you like it you should totally go for it, a lot of hunters are also pro air hockey players, but the college scene is where it¡¯s really at!¡±


    ¡°Wait, there¡¯s a pro league? And a college scene?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°There are eight academies nationwide, and some foreign academies. Kyoto, Drago, North Germany, Eyre, Saskatchewan, Paris, and the Godlings from Zealand.¡±


    ¡°Wait, aren¡¯t Eyre, Drago, and Godling magic specialists?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Drago and Eyre are, Godling is a mixed academy. But Air Hockey has specific rules and limitations that help each academy compete. I still can¡¯t believe you never heard of it!¡±


    I scratched my head and just grumbled something about the story writer never thinking about it as I followed her. ¡°You really think it¡¯s worth trying out for?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°There are a lot of rules and qualifiers, but with your air shield you could be a decent goalkeeper, you are tough enough to be a guard, fast enough to be a forward, have some vertical, and you could even keep outriggers busy. Plus, you get bonuses for wins on your team to your group obstacle rankings and you get good PR exposure.¡±


    ¡°As far as the crusade, they are a specifically Christian monster-hunting crew, sort of like the monster hunters, but a little more cautious, generally better-trained and equipped, but far fewer. Unlike the monster hunters, they take the religious aspects very, very seriously. If you git in, you fit in, but if you don¡¯t, it¡¯s probably not worth trying. Some of them even take vows of chastity, silence, celibacy, and poverty, but no one fails to take them seriously. They don¡¯t get involved in crimefighting, though, at least not the political side, although they have been known to take out homicidal nutjobs, and they always end threats permanently.¡±


    ¡°The Tinker¡¯s guild basically sells temporary or one-shot specialty gear, spells, and stuff. Kind of a junk shop for superhero secret agent stuff. Some of your gear might be a good fit. The enchanted anvil, also known as the armory, though, is all about crafting permanent gear. If you decide to start custom-making armor for people, or weapons, you¡¯d probably seriously want to contact them about it, because buyers tend to work through them to get what they want.¡±


    ¡°Do they take a big cut?¡±


    She shrugged, ¡°Beats me, probably not much though, since it¡¯s actually run by summoners and crafters themselves. The anvil tends to have lots more enchanted than tech items, though, but that might be because of the perceptions of the difference between enchantments and gadgets, though. I am not really sure how it all works.


    I smiled and gave Mindy a kiss on the cheek, which almost made her squeak in surprise before she grinned at me, but I owed her for the ice cream party last week. ¡°I will see you in a bit.¡±


    The Tinker¡¯s Guild pavilion was surrounded by all sorts of, well, toys. Nothing dangerous, but definitely eye-catching, especially the little dog-fighting drones and 3d illusions. The Enchanted Anvil, on the other hand, looked like a reinforced pavilion right out of an old Renaissance Fair, set up right on the asphalt lot, with the ringing of an anvil and smoke coming from someplace behind the curtain.


    I just skirted past the Tinker¡¯s Guild pavilion. Yeah, it was probably fun, but I had zero interest in trinkets. I walked to the anvil, instead, where there was a desk set in front with a guy that looked like Gimli¡¯s twin brother sitting out front, wearing actual old-fashioned chain-mail and a barbute helmet.


    I looked at him skeptically as he eyed me probably just as skeptically. After a moment, he snorted through his large nose and long beard, before turning back to his computer, where I heard the telltale beeps of a certain popular 3d side-scroller.


    ¡°Just a sec,¡± he said, and I heard the level-complete notification, and he took his hands off the keyboard and mouse before looking me up and down. ¡°Something I can help you with?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Just, would you be offended if I asked if you are manning the desk specifically because you look like you belong behind an anvil smashing Threodmir or Mjolnir into shape?¡±


    He shook his head. ¡°Not at all. The name''s Matt Lindbergh, Earth-Forger. Or to be more exact, heat-based semi-metal manipulator.¡±


    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s really cool¡­ Molecular motion, and you gain manipulation after it¡¯s molten?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yeah. I took Earth-Forger because¡­¡± he brushed his hand down his front, ¡°I look like a dwarf, and Glass-Man wasn¡¯t particularly intimidating. I am not a hero though. I might look like a dwarf, but Gimli I am not. Class 3 elemental controller.¡±


    I held out my hand, ¡°Pleasure to meet you, Earth-Forger.¡±


    He nodded and shook my hand, ¡°Likewise. What can I do you for? You look like a hero-type, Are you looking for armor or a weapon or something?¡±


    I shook my head slowly, ¡°No, I am a crafter type myself. I was more interested in seeing what kind of memberships, benefits, and other stuff that the guild offers. I am shifting to the hunter track, but I was thinking of setting up a side gig, especially if it can get me working with other crafters who might be willing to share techniques, ideas, and tech.¡±


    He nodded slowly, ¡°Supertech, not tinker?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yeah, but it doesn¡¯t slide so easily into the tech category. It almost straddles the line between tech and enchantment, to be honest, but since I don¡¯t come from a sorcery tradition, it falls more on the geek side than the goth side.¡±


    He nodded thoughtfully. ¡°Well, that¡¯s one of the reasons the guild is here. We try to catch every semester fair, either for recruits or people needing new stuff, but most people who awaken as tech wind up as tinkers instead of crafters. In the end, that leaves us recruiting mostly from the sorcery schools, like the Drago. Do you have any display pieces?¡±


    ¡°Display pieces? Umm...not really. I have a communicator, but my team is off-duty right now. We left our armor and stuff in our meeting area.¡±


    ¡°Our armor? Did you make armor for your whole team? As a first-year?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I still have some¡­ problems with it, like the hyper-extension locks and secondary feedback, and I still need to find a decent programmer to handle all of the UI¡¯s, hardware extensions, and apps, as well as the AI and targeting systems, but most of the armor, strengthening, myofibers, hard locks, defensive systems, kinetic absorbers, and power systems are ready to go¡­ but without a pet nerd, I have the team using unpowered suits.¡±


    ¡°Wait, powered suits? Are you a power armor crafter? Like Iron Max?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°Not yet. Like I said, I can¡¯t get it working without better software than I can create. So right now my team¡¯s running around in silica-carbon Proxovan upgrade with extruded compressed titanium nanoweave on the stress points. That, and I can¡¯t do that flying thing¡­ not one of my gifts, and I am not a rocket scientist...yet.¡±


    ¡°Yet?¡± He looked doubtfully at me.


    I nodded and looked around. Noticing that no one was looking, I sparked a bit of carbon fuel between my fingers, so that a flash appeared, a bit like flash paper but more reddish. ¡°Yet.¡±


    He laughed, ¡°What was that? It was a little too fast to see.¡±


    ¡°You have micro-detection?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°I can detect impurities, even if I can¡¯t create them. I recognize a lot of them. I caught a hint of carbon, but the rest was a blur.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Nothing but carbon and a hint of magnesium.¡±


    ¡°So¡­ do you have samples? Prototypes? If you can do what you say you can, the guild would love to have you¡­ I mean, two at one school, now all I have to do is track down the other guy, but he seems to avoid showing his face.¡±


    ¡°Two?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°Yep, heard rumors of a true crafter named ahh¡­ Blueprint, or something? We managed to get a sample of his armor from a collector, apparently, he blew up a suit and some chunks of it got around. You haven¡¯t seen him, have you? I heard he goes here.¡±


    I sighed, ¡°Guilty.¡±


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s me. I lost a suit, but that was some pretty primitive crap, so I didn¡¯t work as hard tracking down the pieces as I should have. I have upgraded my custom version of carbonosilicates a lot since then and added a lot more control nodes to it, but the basic suits are still like that, just with the hardened nanoweave. I just figured powered armor was ridiculous if it restricted your range of motion¡­ individual strength points, like gloves and reinforcements? Sure¡­ but most tinker power armor is utterly impossible.¡±


    His grin was huge, and he opened up the tent behind him. ¡°Would you please step into my parlor, sir? I have someone who would very much like to meet you.¡±


    I looked at him skeptically, ¡°No.¡±


    ¡°No?¡±


    I nodded and started looking around. ¡°I have been kidnapped twice so far. I am not going someplace private unless my sponsor comes with me. Can you wait a few minutes?¡±


    He nodded, ¡°No offense taken. That¡¯s smart, and we can¡¯t cut a deal with you without his approval while you are in training, anyway. Conflict of interest. I will be right here.¡± he smiled, and picked up a hand-phone.

 Chapter 36- a hint of Drama

    Do you know what travels faster than quantum entanglement? Rumors. Specifically gossip. Or, in this case, while I was hunting down Mindy, she was busy hunting me down at the fair as well. The fair itself consisted of three guild pavilions, although most of it was held within the arena itself. Mostly it was simply a series of various fold-up tables with signs on them, a student or two, maybe some pictures of what the club or organization was about, and a sign-up list and contact information sheet.


    North of that, farther into the arena proper, were more professional-looking booths set up by corporate interests, a few professional teams like the monster hunters, and even a few of the consortiums. Kellar Academy was a big deal, and while few of the alpha students were wandering around in costume, the day students returned from their first term break was when the special interests would start pulling out all stops to recruit promising talent, both alpha and baseline or low-tier.


    Both Mindy and Abbey were with me right now, but we were set up in our costume armor instead of civilian attire. The light armor, of course, would be difficult to distinguish as armor at all in Frostweaver and Network¡¯s case.


    They both had similar armored helmets, complete face coverage down to the nose, a hard mask that goes completely over their head but has simulated hair in Frostweaver¡¯s case, and the lower halves of their faces were artistically blended holomasks that exposed their chins and mouths. At least, it looked like it did, although they had blended silica nanoweave face shields that nearly invisibly covered their faces and provided an emergency atmosphere and protection at a moment¡¯s notice.


    Their costumes were very thin, by their own decision. Slightly thicker than contraweave, the girls didn¡¯t actually have any air gaps to show off easy-to-hit zones, although the colored patterns, green and white in Network¡¯s case and blue and white in Frostweaver¡¯s, certainly looked like it should have been showing skin. However, at each joint, and in each stress point and emergency impact point, a thin layer of honeycombed armor, slightly visible as seams under the flexible primary layer, protected the girls with enough extra protection to take an old-style armor-piercing thirty-millimeter autocannon round safely.


    Because of the way the force was distributed, any of the armors could distribute a thirty-mile-an-hour full-body impact from anywhere in the armor, including the neck, focused down to as small as ten molecules wide. The joy of nanomesh. It wouldn¡¯t make someone like Network into a tank, but each of the armors ALSO had a series of contingency devices¡­ five hundred yards of yarn-like rope able to support up to a thousand pounds, a full emergency pack with auto-injectors, built-in emergency comms with the base switching station under Candace¡¯ watchful eye, and the armor itself could be used as a wing-suit or deploy drogues in case of a fall.


    Yes, I was terrified of someone falling to their death. They also had full oxygen supplies, could handle pressure up to 1000 yards underwater or a lack of pressure up to a full vacuum, excellent radiation, fire, and cold insulation, and the micro-vents circulated atmosphere constantly to keep the suits at a comfortable temperature against your skin. I was particularly proud of that last bit.


    Plus the girls looked¡­ well¡­ amazingly hot in the costumes. The best part? Once I finished the heavy armor overlay, these costumes would plug right in and become the under-layer for a suit that would make power rangers scream in envy. Not that I planned to have them combine into some kind of mega-robot or something, but in her heavy armor, I was betting all of Frostweaver¡¯s physical attributes would come up as no less than solid class 6.


    I was wearing a similar costume, but mine was a much heavier suit, with very visible torso plates and enough extra utility pouches to make Liefeld proud. I¡¯d managed to get my joint locks just perfected enough that I could use them¡­ Joint locks were something I was very proud of, being able to lock plates in small areas or even all over to prevent impacts and simulate the great strength most power armors tried to create.


    You¡¯d be amazed at how strong your natural strength can become when your suit locks everything needed to effectively use your natural maximum without hurting yourself. If your spine plates lock just before you hit something, you can easily take hits that would fold and kill other people, and the best part was, it was entirely hardware engineering, exactly the hyper-extension protection I¡¯d been trying to maximize. It was still not perfect, but Terracotta had come up with an incredible idea that I desperately wanted to try, and without joint locking, that idea was impossible without likely killing me.


    And to be honest, my armor kind of made me look like a sexy badass myself, especially since it tended to emphasize my musculature since it was nearly half an inch thick in certain areas.


    We each also had control pads built into our arm guards, extra-armored boots and gauntlet segments, and of course, enough armor in certain areas to make sure that no one would be able to tell what temperature the inside of the suit was¡­ and in my case, anyone that tried for a cup-shot was extremely likely to wind up fracturing whatever limb they used to make the attempt.


    ¡°So, you are saying that the armor won¡¯t work if someone isn¡¯t authorized to use it? Like Biosecurity?¡± Ironhide asked.


    I shook my head. Right now we were inside of the forge Pavilion, which was using some sort of magical size enhancement. I didn¡¯t understand how you could have a full forge and two-hundred-foot factory floor inside of a twenty-foot pavilion, but it was either spacial expansion, shrinking, or some weird permanent transport gates that were even more beyond me. Some of the widgeteers that worked for the forge Pavilion were capable of amazing feats.


    ¡°No. Each person has an energy signature. Normal human, alpha, mage, whatever. Normal neural nets are hugely risky because feedback could fry someone¡¯s brain or nervous system that wasn¡¯t innately resistant and make a weakness for certain sorts of alphas and beasts to exploit, but in this case, when I realized that both your energy level and rank was distinctive and flowed when you moved, I was able to add in simple sensors that react to reflexes.¡±


    ¡°I know it doesn¡¯t seem like much, but just being able to lock your joints or trigger impact layers helps distribute impacts into the ground or convert it into kinetic energy. Right now, either extreme impact or intentional power flexing can lock those hotspots. It will take some training, but it is NOT power armor, is energy-free other than what it absorbs naturally, and should dramatically enhance the physical capabilities of almost anyone that wears it.¡±


    The guy from Dupoint was shaking his head, ¡°If it were reproducible or modifiable, it might be useful, but this is a finished product.¡±


    I looked at him curiously, ¡°I was showing all of you the finished product first. I don¡¯t care about your opinion, this was for Ironhide.¡± I waved at the assessor for the Anvil, ¡°They invited you because you have manufacturing methodologies that might be capable of creating some of these substances. But we will get to the stuff intended for you in a few moments. Please wait your turn¡±


    I glanced back at Ironhide, ignoring the Dupoint assessor''s shocked expression at being called out and treated like the child he was emulating. ¡°The point is, that because it¡¯s not power armor, and uses energy flows to determine lock and unlock status, it performs much faster than any sort of classic powered armor. We haven¡¯t had a chance to test it with a true speedster yet, but it should be able to help protect a speedster, hypersonic flyer, or even biological flyer from the consequences of their speed as well as critical flight or transportation failure without slowing them down, I hope.¡±


    I grinned, ¡°It¡¯s not quite those fantastic five unstable molecule costumes from the comic books, but it¡¯s damned close, and while I can¡¯t mass produce it, blueprinting it takes only a few minutes per suit.¡± I was showing one of the Mark two¡¯s, which was sitting on the table Ironhide had set out.


    He was dressed in much more exciting armor, his face completely concealed, that looked a bit like an old jousting outfit, and his voice sounded metallic and slightly hollow as he said, ¡°So it¡¯s like a handicraft, where you kind of have to make each suit special for it¡¯s wearer?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°I guess, yeah. Each suit has to be customized to its wearer¡¯s exact body dimensions, and more importantly, their energy signature to work perfectly. Of course, I have lesser versions, but at that point, it¡¯s not much better than contraweave with Proxovan armor overlays.¡±


    ¡°And no one can do this blueprinting thing but you?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Not yet. Theoretically, it should be possible, since I am using energy sensors on the suits themselves for their safety systems, and that¡¯s all I do when I customize it, but I also do the actual production at the same time. This stuff is woven on a molecular scale, I call it nanoweave, and unless you can figure out how to create a 3d-printer that can create carbon, fluorine, and silicon nested nanotubes and then weave millions of them together, it still takes micro-kinetics to produce.¡±


    ¡°Can a duplicator produce it?¡± The Dupoint guy asked, cautiously, his earlier offense subsumed by the possibilities of nanoweave. This was right up his alley, so I didn¡¯t blow his question off this time. ¡°I honestly have no idea, but next spring, I plan on meeting a professional duplicator and finding out. Good question, though,¡± I answered, trying to throw him a bone. I didn¡¯t particularly like corporate types, but Dupoint controlled a lot of raw materials manufacturing plants, and I didn¡¯t need to make enemies.


    The guy nodded his head, ¡°You are right that this is out of our wheelhouse, but we do have some¡­ interesting production facilities. You said you had samples?¡±


    I nodded and glanced at Network, who stepped forward with a small plastic case. ¡°Bear in mind, all of this has been trademarked, but you are welcome to reverse-engineer the substances for production testing, and if you blow them up, well, they are not useful amounts so ask us and we can probably replace them. In addition, if you manage to figure out a way to industrially reproduce them, your production process can be trademarked or shared as part of the agreement.¡±


    ¡°Inside are eighty-one substances that each have industrial value as well as documentation cards from my testing. Forty-one of them are simply existing materials in new configurations that give them new uses, such as three-twenty-one nested carbon-fluorine nanotubes that have over almost a meter of unbroken length.¡±


    The science guy looked shocked, but grinned, knowing damned well what that was worth.


    ¡°Some of them are utterly original, such as the replicated mylomar structures that have over seventy percent condensing ability on micro-voltage. And some of them, we aren¡¯t sure what they are useful for yet, although we have tentative uses in mind like the heat-transfer material might be useful for heat storage on spacecraft or Peltier cooling.¡±


    ¡°So wait, you are just letting me have this stuff and reverse engineer it, and you¡¯d let us keep any production processes as long as we pay you a fair share of the finished product?¡¯


    I shook my head, ¡°Nope.¡±


    ¡°No?¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No. We trademarked the end product to prevent ownership battles in the future. Almost everything in that box is a mark one product¡­ something we created on our way to figuring out how to make this.¡± I tugged at my suit, letting the surface distend slightly before locking it back into place. "Technically, the end product is going to be one hundred percent public domain, my production process is my own business, but I am giving you a head start on your production process. My only payment will be my name attached to the product, and to be fair, that''s more than I need since I have already moved past most of these."


    ¡°Most of it¡¯s only a generation or two above what¡¯s being put into production right now, and those samples are a present, no more and no less, to help you skip a few steps, I am only saving you a few weeks, months, or years of work, which you are going to turn around and devote to production methodologies.¡±


    The Dupoint scientist looked at me in confusion, ¡°Why?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Three reasons. The first reason is that while I understand logistics, production is far outside of my bailiwick¡­ I could never create the kinds of facilities necessary to exploit this stuff.¡±


    ¡°Two, the sooner you can figure out how to mass-produce it, the sooner it will wind up in the gear and equipment on the front lines, the men and women who fight and die to keep our cities from being overrun. That¡¯s also why we trademarked the materials because I fully intend to start custom-crafting gear using some of these and I don¡¯t want a legal battle. That will waste my time.¡±This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    The guy was nodding, ¡°Yeah, but money?¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Someone smacked me in the head recently. I have a lot more important things to worry about than money. Know anyone who wants a couple hundred pounds of Rhodium? I hear it¡¯s all the rage recently, a quarter of a chainbuck each.¡± I was, of course, talking about blockchain bucks, a popular sort of crypto worth almost 100 grand per buck.


    ¡°As far as money is concerned, well, I am not sure that it¡¯s a motivation. We would happily accept crypto donations, but unlike most tinkers, we don¡¯t have to purchase expensive materials, and we can produce vast amounts of valuables if necessary.¡±


    Ironhide nodded, ¡°You don¡¯t want to have to deal with hard money because capitalization is meaningless. I get it.¡±


    I shook my head, ¡°No, you don¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°How so?¡±


    I smiled a little, ¡°I want¡­ I need some things that have values that are incomprehensible, unreachable, or simply immeasurable by any sort of regular value standard.¡±


    He looked at me, his helmet seeming to stare into my soul. ¡°What sorts of things.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°People. I need information and people from Earth 3152 and any artifacts or information you have on the Serenoids. That''s why I am fine cooperating with Dupoint because you guys already have a history of reverse-engineering some of their materials. Remember how you figured out non-ferrous steel to make Proxovan? If not, I do.¡±


    ***


    I was not happy. I mean, the Dupoint guy was still thinking it was all about money, which I understood, but couldn¡¯t empathize with. But Ironhide was acting like I was some kind of genius inventor angling to take over military production or something, which I wasn¡¯t. The science guy? I hadn¡¯t caught his name, but when he found out none of it was Tinker tech, he was drooling and eyeing me like he wanted to have my babies. Creepy.


    Mindy smiled at me slightly as we walked towards the Arena. ¡°I think I am starting to understand you a little better.¡±


    ¡°How so?¡± I asked. I wasn¡¯t that hard to understand, at least I didn¡¯t think I was.


    ¡°Your motivations, I mean, you are all about doing the right thing. You don¡¯t care about money or fame. You really should be a hero.¡±


    I shook my head, chuckling softly, ¡°No, I am really not. Admittedly I never cared much about money, I figure as long as I have a nice place to live and someone to share it with, I am good, but I am not a hero. If anything, I plan to be a hunter.¡±


    Her eyebrow raised, ¡°Oh?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yep. Being a hero is a lot of things, it¡¯s about not only being the best of the best, but also it¡¯s about being a figurehead, being the light in the darkness for the frightened, and being the spearhead. I''d rather kill monsters and let the police handle supervillains.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°But you don¡¯t want that?¡±


    ¡°Exactly. I don¡¯t want to rule the world, I don¡¯t have some grand play for being the best of the best, and I don¡¯t want to be anyone¡¯s inspiration. What I do want, though, is to help those inspirations. Our world is a dangerous, terrible place, and my dream is to someday be able to walk down to Florida, find a nice piece of beach, a cute girl to share it with, and drink a pina colada without worrying that the kids playing in the surf are going to get eaten by a giant radioactive monster.¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°The rest? That¡¯s just a means to an end. Sure, I like helping people, but my entire philosophy can be summed up in four words. I like living here. That¡¯s not humility, it¡¯s basically laziness. I am not particularly motivated by peace on Earth¡­ Humans are brutal to each other and always will be. This is OUR world, and I will happily screw over anything or anyone that wants to take it away from us. We have the right to screw it up any way we want, to hell with the rest of the universe.¡±


    ¡°Is that why you were playing villain?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Yup. If you buy into the old alpha-beta gamma personality thing, I am a beta who is more than happy to stay a beta. If I could find an alpha personality worth backing up, I¡¯d probably do that instead. Let THEM have all the money and fame, I am just as happy in a lab coming up with cool toys, or helping train the next generation of heroes to kick ass.¡±


    ¡°Are you scared of celebrity?¡±


    I coughed. ¡°In a way, yes. I am not an introvert, not really, but I also don¡¯t like attention. Sure I¡¯d like enough money to do what I want, but I have no interest whatsoever in all the...fidgety bits of gaining wealth and power and keeping it. Mostly I just want people to leave me alone.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°I guess I kinda get it. But honestly, for a while, I thought alpha powers only wound up going to pretty extroverted people. Then I realized that those are only the ones who show it. Abby is more like you, though. She¡¯s not a hard introvert, but she prefers just to do her thing, and to heck with everything else. Me, I will admit I want to be a real hero, saving people, and interviews, maybe go to Europe one day to see the castles, have guys all putting up posters of me¡­¡±


    I grinned, ¡°And for you, well, that¡¯s attainable. Hell, if I didn¡¯t think it would cause drama in the team, I¡¯d be more than happy to have a poster of you dressed in a swimsuit next to my bed.¡±


    We were passing by one of the many snack booths, and I quickly grabbed a couple of drinks and some big cookies for the two of us. I could at least afford that now, but making enough money to support yourself was a long, slow process.


    She licked her lower lip, ¡°Really. A picture of me in a swimsuit? Not a naked picture?¡±


    I glanced at her suspiciously. ¡°No. I¡¯d rather see the real thing instead. But like I said, it would cause endless drama, and I friggin¡¯ hate drama. I have a lot of time to think when I am gaining energy, and I realized that all of it, in the end, is about sex.¡±


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Okay, this is going to sound weird, but why do people want lots of money?¡±


    ¡°To be comfortable,¡± she answered promptly. ¡°To have the best. To be able to control the actions of others, and umm¡­ to be able to do things without having to go through all the problems of responsibility.¡±


    I nodded, ¡°That was a better answer than I was thinking of. Power. Why do you need power? To show you are superior to others, why do you want to be superior? So you can get the best sex.¡±


    ¡°But me? I sorta have all the power I want. The only thing I want more power for is to be able to destroy all the threats.¡±


    She nodded, ¡°So you can sunbathe safely. But there¡¯s a lot more to power than just sex.¡±


    I laughed, ¡°Right. Someone told me that if I wanted Angel, who has sorta been considered the ultimate sex symbol for the last forty years, all I would have to do is ask. Which means, I don¡¯t need an expensive car, a mansion, a million-dollar couch, or any of that junk.¡± I held up my hand and flicked my fingers. Gold was a LOT easier to synthesize now that I had a larger energy pool, so I replicated a handful of krugerrand, something I had seen on the net, with a slight pop as the molecular structure of the atmospheric gasses I had absorbed to create them were displaced.


    I held them out to her, and she cupped her hands while I poured them between my fingers into hers, with little chimes as the coins struck. ¡°So money, aside from enough to be convenient, is pretty meaningless now. But those coins aren¡¯t spendable. They are chemically pure identical blueprints, which anyone would be able to tell just by looking at them. I could make them more useful¡­¡± I turned them into a bar of gold in her hands, which was easy since they still had my signature. The hardest part was to keep them from altering in temperature or radiation levels from the manipulation.


    ¡°That¡¯s better. There are still some places that buy gold, but I¡¯d rather use the energy to make something useful. With a few days'' work, I could probably fill a truck with those, but that wouldn¡¯t do me any good. I¡¯d rather spend the same energy on making a bunch of anti-material rifle rounds that the city guard could use to take out monsters more safely.¡±


    She looked a little shocked, holding the small bar in her hands. ¡°Do you mind if I keep this?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Why should I mind? I mean, in terms of pure value, I think I might have left a couple of million sitting in that Dupoint rep¡¯s hands. And right now, I already finished making mark two suits for Frost Phoenix¡¯s team, and frankly, I would have a hard time giving a damn about their little payment scheme. It¡¯s irrelevant, except that it would make them harder to beat if we had to do a team conflict again, which seems to be important to you guys.¡±


    She sighed, ¡°So as your sponsor, what am I supposed to do to motivate you? It seems sort of impossible, and I get tested on this. Also, why haven¡¯t you done this before?¡±


    I shrugged, ¡°Right now, what do I want? I want a heck of an awesome coder to help me make the suits a lot better. I thought I could get Quiet Code, but drama seems to be blocking that. I want to finish making a decent communications system. I want to help other people get a handle on their power. I want to make a device that can measure and store the essence people produce naturally so I can help keep male double-powers from killing themselves. I want other people to be able to track their power levels, and maybe even figure out ways to optimize or progress so that they stop dying against incursions. I have a lot more wants, but all I really need is time.¡±


    I glanced at the gold, ¡°As to why I didn¡¯t do it before, well, it takes a lot of energy. That¡¯s about half an hour of hanging out down in the dump tunnels, and three months ago that would have been months of downtime and a nightmare to get rid of.¡±


    Mindy nodded, ¡°Want some advice?¡±


    I nodded, ¡°Sure.¡±


    She stopped and looked at me directly, brushing one bi-colored red-and-ice blonde bang out of her face, ¡°Okay, remember, I am trying to take this sponsor thing very seriously. So please take this the way it is intended.¡±


    I nodded back at her. ¡°Okay?¡±


    ¡°Stop being such an idiot.¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    She sighed and took a sip of her drink. ¡°You. You are being a total idiot. You are one of the smartest guys I have ever met, you are incredibly competent, and all of us know you are the real team leader even if you keep trying to defer to me. Not because you are the man,¡± she said, tucking the bar of gold into a belt pouch and making air quotes with her fingers.


    ¡°Rather, because you are always the one that knows what we should be doing, where we should be going, and because you have a plan for everything almost instantly. Sometimes you are wrong, but you have this stupid confidence, not confidence thing going on that¡¯s just getting¡­ old.¡±


    I looked at her in confusion, with one eyebrow quirked, ¡°Confidence not Confidence?¡±


    She nodded, ¡°Yep. Don¡¯t get me wrong, it¡¯s cute, but the whole chair guy thing? It¡¯s so humble-brag that it sometimes makes me want to scream. That whole wealth and fame thing you hate so much? Sure, a lot of people enjoy it, but it¡¯s a responsibility, a price, not a privilege you can just throw away when it¡¯s not convenient.¡±


    She shook her head rapidly, and I could tell that she¡¯d been hanging on to this for a long time. ¡°You like to say that the whole with great power comes great responsibility thing is a farce¡­ and the way people usually use it it¡¯s true, but the real point behind the saying is that great power IS great responsibility. It¡¯s painful to be powerful, and you keep fucking shirking that responsibility and bluntly backing away from it and trying to dump it off on the rest of us.¡±


    ¡°But¡­¡±


    She was looking a little upset now and held up her hand, speaking over the top of me, ¡°No, you get to run your mouth all the time and pretend you are just a silent partner. I am getting this out now while I can. Your whole wounded bird thing was appealing, the sob story about your ex ruining your life, breaking your heart¡­ but now, get the fuck over it! You are in a school full of girls that are ten times as awesome as Crystal is, on a team that would jump in front of a bullet for you, You can make money out of nothing, and yet you keep ignoring it all to cling to that double-edged low self-esteem crap.¡±


    She pointed angrily at the dorm building in the distance, and I noticed more than a few fellow students were carefully trying not to pay attention to the growing volume of her outburst. ¡°Half the girls in that building would drop everything to jump you if you said just one word. Hell, a dozen of them would probably give you everything they have and marry you if you asked. Why? Because you are NOT the guy behind the computer.¡±


    ¡°You constantly overlook everything around you, all the people around you, and then smugly pat yourself on the back because you are ¡°doing the right thing¡± or wallowing in your grief. So Crystal was a bitch that stabbed you in the back? You didn¡¯t love her, and her fucking some distant relative you barely knew and then stealing something you didn¡¯t want in the first place? Get over it already!¡±


    ¡°LOOK at your teammates. Look at what they have to offer, not just their tits, not just their powers or their threat level. Did you know that Network is one of the best researchers on the planet? Have you asked her to help you find a decent object coder?¡±


    ¡°How about Chinook? Have you talked to her long enough to know that her entire extended family was eaten by skinwalkers right in front of her, and that was what made her ascend? And that she¡¯s terrified because she has dysgraphia, and might not be allowed to graduate or even join a hero team?¡±


    She shook her head in evident disgust, and dropped her voice to barely above a whisper.¡°You are the most hero-ish hero anyone has ever seen, surrounded by people who care about you, and you keep hiding behind your team instead of leading them. So here¡¯s my advice, as your sponsor. Grow up, open your eyes, stop wallowing in fake humble self-pity, and stop lying so damned much, especially to yourself.¡±


    She glared at me. ¡°One more thing, I am done with this fair. I am going to go train with Terracotta, which is what you should be doing as a first-year instead of wandering around trying to impress a bunch of greedy people with the introvert genius act. When you decide to start trusting and helping people who would kill or die for you instead of acting like an emotional black hole, talk to me. Until then, this sponsor crap is driving me crazy and I can¡¯t deal with it right now.¡±


    She threw up her hands and stalked off. Abbey, who had been walking along with us, was just sort of looking away from me and pretending the whole thing was some sort of fair display she hadn¡¯t noticed. What the hell just happened?