I was in the cafeteria again while Payback and Spyglass made the dinner, as today was their day on that duty. I had copied LED’s powers this morning, and it ‘led’ to a bunch of interesting tests I could make.
In between those was testing to see how it interacted with people that had no powers, my running theory was that everyone had in them an inactive core and if they could make a connection to it to their minds or something, the core would activate and start spewing energy and create a matrix from there.
LED’s powers sometimes made people awaken, and I imagined it was because the pseudo-power it gave people for a while might induce people, who were on the cusp of awakening or were more predisposed to being able to sense that part of themselves, to make the final jump in connection the two pieces together.
We would put all of that other test though, and in the table with me and led was saved, the head research and director kinda of the base here, he worked with the dawnbreaker for a long time most of the time making new guns out of smuggled tinker tech.
“is this really safe?” he asked
“Of course it is, since when did my buffs hurt anyone?”
“Well, that’s true.” Victor exhaled, quickly blowing the out of his lungs.
“Okay, I’m ready,” he said after taking another deep breath in to refill the air he just lost.
“Ill try connecting with you first to see what goes on while you buffed.” I did just that, touching his arm and concentration on the matrix. I frowned as I didn’t encounter anything.
Waving my tentacles around where he should be but not finding anything, I frowned even harder, looking better at the two. “I can’t find it.”
“What do you mean, you can’t find it?”
“It’s like there’s nothing there,” I said, shrugging
“Of course, there’s nothing there. I don’t have powers, right?” Victor said, confused.
“Well, that’s true, but then how can LED buff you?” I countered.
“Yeah, we’re running on the assumption that there is something there.” LED said.
“Hmm, I see.” Victor said, nodding along. “Isn’t LED’s buff working because it goes on the body and not on whatever power tihing you see though?”
“That might it, but the way LED’s power works, it uses the body to latches… oh that’s it. We use LED’s power to find your core and then I can try to connect with it!”
“Sounds good,” LED said, creating a buff on his hand and sending it to victor.
The buff took effect, and I didn’t waste any time closing my eyes to focus completely, feeling around and quickly finding it this time.
LED’s power was like an insect of light curled around an obsidian orb, glassy and completely lifeless. This confirmed that people without powers had inactive cores, whatever the cores actually were.
The question then was, are they like this because they didn’t awaken a power or like this because they can’t awaken a power?
There was nothing here that could tell me which was the case, I thought, deciding to analyze the core itself for clues. I thought back on the active cores. They were like spewing furnaces of energy or like starts. this one, though, was black and shiny, not emitting any sort of energy.
Before I could figure out anything else, the buff time ended and the tether I had made to Victor’s inactive core broke with it.
That means I need a matrix to connect to. No wonder I couldn’t find the core while it’s inactive.
I opened my eyes to see the two curious men waiting for my report on the situation.
“There is a core there, definitely.” I said. They smiled at that Victor, getting more hopeful. “I couldn’t tell though if it’s inactive just because you don’t have a power or if it can’t and there would be a distinction between the two.”
“This is the only inactive core I have ever seen, and it’s the only one I have to go on off. We could get Old man Dan to make a test, but then again, only two people wouldn’t tell me much of anything. “
They deflated a bit, especially Victor for obvious enough reasons. I knew well how it was to get a bit of hope in getting a power only for it to be crushed again. “Hey, no need to give up yet. There are lots of tests we can run still.”
“Like what?”
“Well, we can try another buff first and go from there. You used the strength one, right LED?”
“Yes.”
“Try the mind one this time, then.” I asked. He nodded in response.
LED made the buff, and I prepared myself to make the connection, finding it easy with the buff there to guide me.
The first time the only thing I could notice was that in everyone’s core, there was a connection between the user’s mind and here, where normally there would be a matrix. But that didn’t exist here, just as there was no matrix, there was no connection to the person’s mind.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The strength buff didn’t create this connection, and I asked LED to use the mind buff now exactly to test if it did, and if that made any difference.
I searched around the core and this time I found a connection; it was going straight into Victor’s mind; it seemed. There was something missing, though. There was no feedback, and the core continued as inactive as ever.
The buff ended once again, and I returned to the real world. “There was a connection this time, but that didn’t seem to awaken the core.”
“A connection to where?” Victor asked, frowning.
“To your mind, you felt nothing?”
“What was I supposed to feel, exactly? I felt that my mind was sharper and seemed to work faster.”
“Yeah, that’s the effect of the buff, but didn’t you feel anything extra, like a presence? It might sometimes feel you’re imaging it, but you’re strangely sure, completely sure, that the thing you can feel is your power.”
“Yeah, I feel that too. There’s something else in your mind, a new sense, like your mind expanded and now you’re able to control this new part of yourself.” LED said, adding his own experience.
“Yeah, exactly.” I said, pointing at him.
“No, I felt no such thing, same as the other buff. I just felt stronger.” Victor said, showing his palms
I frowned. That’s weird. There is a connection it stands to reason that it should feed information to his mind. Why would it not activate then? but he’s right, I remember now.
When I was trying to awaken powers with my Sleepwalker college friends I did something similar, getting buffed with powers that weren’t mine, that time I felt no kind of connection to the power, it never felt mine and neither did I feel any sort of presence in my head.
Maybe that’s the key then. There needs to be more of a connection. If just the artificial power flowing in wasn’t enough, then creating a flow that goes both ways might do it, yeah I think that might work.
“Okay, I thought of something. Let’s do another test.” I said in the brooding quietness that had taken the room as I thought.
“Sure, I’m just sitting around like a lab rat.” Victor said, shrugging
I winced, “Sorry, it wasn’t my inten-”
“Relax, man, it was a joke.” Victor said, laughing it off.
I laughed awkwardly. “Okay then. Let’s go LED. I need you to buff him again with something. I’ll buff him too, and I need to find his matrix first.”
“Why don’t you just create the buff yourself? Can’t you use LED’s power?” Victor asked.
“Well, I’d need to rearrange my matrix to do that and then manifest the power and send it to you. There I can use my matrix directly to create the power and cut the manifestation part, directly putting it- “
“Hey, it’s fine. I was just curious. Come on LED, let’s get this going.”
Led buffed Victor once again, and I delved in, this time I wanted to throw something in the mix, a buff of my own, I didn’t have any other power that created a connection back and forth like what I wanted but I had a great one right here, my own. I had never used my own matrix in copies, but if there was one that made you feel a power, that would be it.
I copied the connection, transforming it into a buff that would do the same to another power. I instructed it in such a way that it would bind the buff LED created and then create the body mind two way connection from there.
Just as with the tethers, these might need a matrix to connect to and wasting it would be sad. Even if it takes less energy, if I don’t manifest the buff out in the real world, it still uses a sizeable chunk of my power..
I send the buff towards Victor’s core, and opened my eyes to see his reaction in the real world.
Victor's eyes were trying to pop out of their sockets, and it was still going, his eyebrows raising higher and higher.
“whhhaa-”
“Victor, are you okay?” LED asked, concerned.
“Yeah, of course, I just, I never thought it might actually work.” He shook his head, focusing again on us.
“Lot of trust you have in us huh,” I said
“It’s not about that man, it’s just something that we take as impossible, like I know that there are people in the army that can do this but, for our rogues, never dreamed of it.”
“Well, it’s great you all got me then.”
“Indeed”
“But quick, tell me what you feel exactly.” I said to Victor, lightly shaking his shoulder.
“It’s just like you said. I can feel the power not just that I can use it like before, but actually feel it there somewhere from inside my mind.”
“Yes, that’s great. It’s exactly what we wanted.” I smiled at him, giving him a thumbs up.
“Great,” Victor said, smiling back at me. “Now what?”
“How come now what, don’t you have powers now?”
“Do I? Permanently, are they the same powers as before, just a quicker mind? Kinda lame.”
“Actually, I don’t know, but I thought there should be something more. When people awaken from LED’s powers, normally they have a normal awakening.” I frowned in thought.
“Oh, it’s going away.” Victor said, looking at his hands.
“What?”
“The buff should be expiring about now.” LED said.
“Ooh, then it didn’t stick.” I said, my shoulders slumping somewhat.
“Does that mean it’s actually impossible, then?” Victor asked, now more deflated than ever.
“No, we shouldn’t just give up. There was something missing.”
We stayed brooding for a while, eventually deciding to have dinner while we thought about it and talked to the others as well, to have their input.
----------------------------------------
“Aren’t people normally in very dangerous situations when they awaken?” Spotlight asked.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t. I had mine in a sterile room in the army.” Payback answered. “At least that was where I was before being put to sleep.”
“Yeah, that’s true. How did they do it there?”
“They don’t let you see, to keep the means and the awakeners’ identity secret.”
“Ah, what a bummer. You didn’t feel anything, though?”
“Ah, I felt a bunch of things, he frowned, thinking, it feels almost like I had a dream, like, I remember making something during some time there but it and everything around that memory is a complete blur.”
“Oh, that reminds me, I had a crazy weird dream when I awakened, thought it was because my awakener was the trippy tea guy.”
“That’s part of the reason, the mechanism of it, but don’t you all see,” Glassmetal intoned, raising up from his chair, “everyone was doing something similar.”
“What?” Swordjuice asked, inclining onward in curiosity as everyone watched in stunned silence.
“When people awaken naturally, they are either having a spiritual moment or a deeply stressful one, and when awakeners are involved their powers seem to push who’s being awakened into some type of trance,” Glassmetal explained his theory, sure he had cracked it, spreading his arms over the group. “Maybe what Payback almost remembers was a dream where he as well influenced what powers he got.”
“Hmm, that might be the case. It would explain why LED’s power never awakens anyone on its own,” I said, nodding along, getting surer the more time I spent thinking about it. “There are no inputs from our parts when we’re creating the connection and Victor also didn’t try to do to anything. It’s worth a try then.”
----------------------------------------
After finishing dinner, we set straight for it. Spotlight suggested everyone attacking Victor while he tried so that he had some thrill, but Victor steely refused.
“There’s no need for that,” I said. “We’ll try with him alone, forcing something.”
Everyone got ready, and I prepared to enter and form the connection again.
“Remember Victor, try to push and pull,” I instructed. “Pull power into the world and push your ideals there. I think what you need is some primal need, something for the power to build around.”
I entered his inactive core and created again my buff matrix. I didn’t need to give any signal because Victor would once again feel the presence in his mind, and I had a great seat to witness if our attempts would bear fruit.