As it turned out, I was abnormally good at keeping ULE where I wanted it. It wasn’t the most important metric in practical application, in fact, all it meant was that the ULE I was controlling wouldn’t be available for someone or something else to use. It was very helpful at the current moment because all we were doing was having one person put an amount of ULE into something, then the other would try to pull it out.

Admittedly, ‘abnormally good’ was also probably the wrong term for my level of control based on the reactions of my peers. The kindest description someone gave me was intimidating- while avoiding eye contact- and the harshest purely verbal reaction I got was someone calling me “a twisted mound of malice and sadism masquerading as a human.” It wasn’t like I was doing anything special or trying to be mean. When I was the one putting the initial packet in, all I could feel was the barest nudge and when I was tasked with pulling someone else’s, once I got over the initial challenge of getting a hold on the ULE, it was mine to do with as I wished.

Rebecca quickly figured out I wasn’t struggling at all, so she started putting handicaps on me. The first was simply adding another person working against me- to no notable effect. When that did a whole lot of nothing, she added another. With still nothing to show for it, she did it again.

Next, she asked me to exclude the object from my perception once I had ULE in it, which did make it noticeably harder. Instead of feeling like I was just going for a stroll, I was now walking through opaque ankle deep water; the major challenge was not tripping myself up. That problem was solved by handing over control to a fragment of my mind that was literally just a looped copy of my thoughts from when no one was trying to wrestle away control.

No self doubt or over correction possible when the thing maintaining control wouldn’t be sentient on its own. Strangely, my opponents were still getting agitated in the same way- despite my fragment being incapable of noticing them.

The final handicap I was given was to try pulling ULE out of an effect created by an actuated skill. The theory was that if the ULE was already assigned an intention for its use, influencing it would be significantly harder. In a pleasant change of events, this transferred over to reality.

Hurdle one was actually identifying where to try to exert my control. This was made possible by the characteristic warping of my perception where ULE is being used. I really didn’t want to somehow hurt someone, so I had my opponent swap perks a few times until I had a target that wasn’t inside their body. Next, I found that getting traction over the ULE was nearly impossible. Whatever knowledge and experience was part of a perk gave me no loose ends or wasted energy I could grab onto that didn’t instantly fizzle away. In the end, I figured out that I could inject more energy into the effect, forcing excess or instability. I’m sure it would have worked, had everyone not immediately canceled the perk and taken a few steps back into a defensive posture as soon as I tried.

At this point, Navy had noticed the reactions of my peers and requested to have a go with me. Just as I got a handle on the ULE, they stopped the exercise and called Rebecca over. I was confused, but went along with it- also getting a fraction of a second into a match with her before it was called off.

After some conspiratorial whispering, Rebecca came over to me and quietly asked, “can I do a quick scan over your body to make sure there’s nothing wrong?” After a nod, she placed a hand on my shoulder as waves of warm energy swept through me. “Does anything feel off or painful when you use ULE? Were you putting on an act of nonchalance? Have you taken any perks relating to controlling ULE?”

With a “no” to each of the questions and apparently nothing wrong with me, she leaned in closer and even more quietly said, “I want to stress that this doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but when when we did the exercise, whatever you did felt eerily similar to what some of the more… unpleasant demons do. And I know it probably isn’t intentional, but it also felt like you were trying to prove any attempt to resist was futile and pitiful- also like those demons. Except with them, it feels like there is a chance they could be overpowered.”

Feigning that I was only surprised and not experiencing existential horror, I stammered, “ah! Uh, if there’s nothing else for today, can I go? I mean, not that that isn’t important to figure out, but I just want to mess around on my own- if that’s fine and all…”

Mercifully, Rebecca relented, “that’s fine. In fact, take some time to do something else. Remember, it isn’t necessarily anything bad- probably just a normal reaction to the circumstances. If you want to talk, don’t be afraid to call, alright?”

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

I nodded and ran off, caught between ignoring what she told me and overthinking the implications.

Eventually, I didn’t have to make the choice because I had arrived at my apartment- meaning I could distract myself by vivisecting the captured demon. In preparation, I transformed into my costume, with the addition of a thicker glove on my flesh hand. The reduction of feeling and precision in my fingers wouldn't matter since I had my robotic arm and tail to do all the careful work.

The analysis would be done by Cleo using the readings from my horns and a special plugin they had developed for free due to the nature of our upcoming work. It would supposedly be able to interface with the demon’s tissues to activate and sample them as needed by doing some weird stuff with the fluid edge of my tail.

Like the night before, when I popped the lid of the bucket off, the blob of flesh was just sitting in the shallow water not doing anything. If it was at all not disgusting to look at I might have felt some pity, but there was just something about most demons that made them naturally revolting. Also like before, I was going to have to rely on my actual eyes to see the thing- at least until whatever was doing that got removed.

After one final check that I knew where all the improvised safety supplies were located, Cleo started directing me.

The demon was flipped upside down in a large colander that would hopefully keep it like that, at which point I discovered I could perceive the bottom surface of it with my horns. It was oddly fuzzy, especially closer to the sides, but I still got a disturbingly close look at its snail-like foot. Some manipulation of the subject revealed that the side flesh and bottom meat weren’t seamlessly connected. Instead, a few sinuous tendrils connected the two at sporadic intervals.

As I started cutting the first of these with a blade from my tail, the demon broke its frozen state to slowly undulate. Despite how nonthreatening the action was, I still backed off until I was satisfied nothing else was going to happen.

After sawing through nine of the taught cords, the foot sunk a few millimeters deeper into the colander with the outside partially slumping over it. At the direction of Cleo, I flipped the vessel over to deposit the demon into the countertop and tried to peel the thick ULE-invisible hide off the blob. Unsurprisingly, folding it over exposed some more internal cordage to be cut, although these were thicker and started oozing a black ichor once cut.

At the sight of that, I quickly threw my mask on and activated the filtration function. Even if the ichor wasn’t hazardous to breathe near, I expected the smell would be incapacitating in its awfulness.

With the hide removed, all ULE invisibility also disappeared. Hidden under the fleshy wrapping were three distinct sections, held together by similar sinew as before. Cleo was surprised at this, and directed me in separating everything- leaving the hide and foot, as well as a pale, veiny orb and a coil of cartilage-like material supported by muscle.

We both agreed that the invisibility was the largest concern, so after everything else was sealed into glass containers, that was placed front and center. By now the invisibility effect had stopped, but I was able to tell there was a significant amount of ULE in the tissue. Following directions, I placed an edge of my tail against the underside of the material and let Cleo do what they needed to run their analysis.

Over the course of an hour, the invisibility flickered on and off a few times, but nothing else appeared to be happening. Apparently satisfied, I was told to cut the slab of flesh in half and extract as much of the ULE as I could.

Unlike with my MG peers, it was easy to get a hold on the energy contained by the demon, but there was a solid amount of resistance to pulling it out. Still not enough to prevent me from doing so, but more than I had experienced before. With that done, Cleo took a few detailed scans of its structure without the interference imposed by the naturally higher ULE levels in living organisms before I was finally allowed to put the scraps in a fluorine-treated steel container.

Nothing significantly changed in the procedure for the other sections I had cut apart, so after a total of five hours I could finally annihilate the disgusting creature with excited ClF3 and seal the final container for good.

The improvised plastic working area had done its job in containing any spills and most of the gas, but I decided to leave the warehouse to air itself out as Cleo said it could be reverted back to a previous state once the connection to the real world was cut. Apparently, my costume was similarly cleaned by a quick toggle off and back on- although since it wasn’t the most comfortable to lounge in, I swapped back to normal clothes once I was satisfied there was no demon-gunk left on it.

And lounge I did, expertly ignoring everything that had happened over the course of the day with help from mindless entertainment and tasty snacks.