It was completely gone.
In the place of what once was the National Guard Armory was now a large pile of rubble and broken glass. Besides the incredibly damaged sign that read “National Guard Armory, trespassers will be shot” most people wouldn't have figured out what the building used to be.
When I had first saw it, I was shocked. It was like the building had seen the approaching missile and hit the ground. Literally.
I decided that something might have survived the blast and slowly walked over the rubble and debris looking for anything that might be of use. It didn't take that long before I found a spot where I could see an intact room beneath the gaps in the rubble. The holes clearly weren't small enough despite how my body changed.
I had to come up with a way of getting into that room. Wait. I had crazy amazing powers now right? I'm pretty sure telekinesis was one. Alright let's try this!
“Telekinesis!”
...nothing happened…
Well I can now confirm that skills are not voice activated, that's a bit relieving. It would be awkward both emotionally and tactically to shout out the names of my skills as I used them.
So skills were just actions that you could perform, but how do I actually perform them?
Since it's telekinesis it should be a mental thing right?
I closed my eyes and thought about what would be the best mental image to form to try and pick up rubble with telekinesis. I thought for a while and went over a long mental list of things that could grab objects from a distance before deciding which one would be best.I attempted to picture one of those sticky hand toys that you could buy in the toy dispensers for 25¢ at the diner. I imagined an invisible one coming out of my head and grabbing onto the rocks that impeded the path in front of me. Slowly I thought about using the hand grabbed onto the rock to lift it up into the air.
I heard a crumbling and slowly opened my eyes to see a large floating rock in front of me outlined by a light pink haze.
“I did it!” I shouted happily, accidentally breaking my concentration and causing the rock to fall back onto the pile of rubble.
“damn it...”
This time I kept my eyes open and stared intensely at the rock, once again imagining the invisible hands picking it up. I watched as the rock was wrapped in a light pink and began to unsteadily float up into the air.
I moved the rock to the side and gave a shout at my victory against the destroyed building fragments.
After that one piece of rubble, I began to slowly get a grasp of how to lift things with telekinesis while I excavated the rest of the hole in the rubble until there was a hole a little larger than me in the ground leading into the dark and quiet basement.
I took my first several steps down the rubble pile that had formed into pseudo stairs down into the basement and suddenly realized that despite having no form of lighting and being underground, the basement looked almost as bright as it did outside. I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things as I looked around but the basement was still brightly lit and easily visible.
I realized that this probably had something to do with the fact that I wasn't human anymore and quickly served to dampen my mood.
Sighing I continued through the basement. Most of the rooms were filled with rubble and mostly unexplorable, however there were 4 rooms that were devoid enough of rubble to be navigated.
The first 3 of 4 rooms that I could explore only had cobwebs and empty containers, … a bit disappointing really.
But, as I slowly entered the fourth room, something inside it began to move. I thought that it might have been a surviving soldier, and boy I couldn't have been more wrong.
As I ran towards the humanoid shape to see if he was okay, he turned to face me and showed his bright glowing blue eyes and let out a screech.
What was in front of me was a zombie. Just looking at it made me want to throw up and run away. It had clearly once been a soldier stationed at the armory and had died somehow. His left arm and shoulder were completely gone down to his waist and you could see the guts about to spill out the gaping hole in the side of his stomach. There were shards of concrete buried into his entire body, some even sticking out of his exposed intestines.
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With a second screech, the creature charged me before I could get away!
“s..stAY BACK!” I shouted and instinctively closed my eyes and put my arms out in front of me.
I waited for several seconds, expecting the ragged corpse to tackle then kill me, but strangely I felt no impact. Timidly I opened one of my eyes to see the zombie stopped in it's tracks several feet in front of me, surrounded by the dim pink glow that I had come to associate with telekinesis.
I breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed for a second, before noticing the zombie slowly moving against it's mental restraints and knew that I didn't have much time.
What do I do?!?!
I've never killed anything larger than a bug before, and I only killed them on accident! Plus even if I tried to run away, I expect that it would follow me.
I mentally reviewed my skills again and remembered the 3 attack skills that I had gotten after my … change.
Pyrokinesis? Traditionally fire is the bane of undead, but this is real life not a game or novel. Plus there's the possibility that it would shrug off the flames and come after me, then I'd have a flaming zombie chasing me instead of a normal one!
Electrokinesis? I'm not sure that electricity would work on an undead abomination, in fact weren't several undead abominations created because of electricity?
The only thing left was Cryokinesis, that could work. If I fire an ice blade at his head I could take him out right here. His head is his weak point right, I don't know I'm trying really hard not to look at him or his disgusting wounds that make me want to throw up.
Okay don't panic.
Just use telekinesis to stop the molecular movement of an area in the shape of a blade.
How the hell am I gonna do that!
I glanced up from my mad rush of panicked thoughts and realized that the zombie was slowly gaining more control of it's movements.
Okay, thinking faster now. Let's live through this.
Make a bunch of my little sticky hands, then make them really really really small. Grab the air and force it to stop moving.
stop moving, stopping molecular movement.
I took a deep breath and looked to the space in front of me where I pictured the particles condensing. Floating in front of me was a crescent shaped blade of ice 2 feet wide and about 4 inches thick. Success! Now just grab it with a bigger hand and throw it as hard as I can at the undead’s neck and pray I can actually aim.
I watched in astonishment as the floating crescent ice blade raped in a pale pink light suddenly flung off so fast I could feel a gust of wind hit my face and I instinctively closed my eyes. Several second later there were two meaty thuds hitting the hard concrete floor and I slowly opened my eyes.
In front of me lay on the ground the zombie soldier’s decapitated head and desecrated body. I breathed a big sigh of relief before promptly collapsing on the ground and vomiting out all of the off brand cereal I had eaten earlier.
I almost died.
That thing was going to kill me.
I hyperventilated a bit thinking about it.
As my eyes wandered around the room, looking at anything but the zombie I noticed an odd shape sticking out of one of the piles of rubble that littered the room. It looked like the wooden stock of a rifle as I slowly got up and staggered my way to the pile.
When I got there I realized it was definitely a rifle, the stock was sticking out of the rocks like the sword in the stone. I grabbed the stock of the gun with both hands and pulled it out of the rubble then brought it up close to my eyes.
It gave off a strange glittery shine almost as if the entire gun emitted a faint light. Well now I have a magical glowy gun, but no ammo. Fuck.
I wondered why it glowed when I remembered one of my skills ‘Analyze’.
“How do I analyze it through...” I wondered out loud.
Maybe it's voice activated?
“Analyze.”
…but nothing happened…
Well then it's probably mental! I stared at the gun and thought out ‘Analyze’ and suddenly a pop up window like my status screen appeared in front of me.
Name: Legacy Grade: Artifact A weapon used by a Veteran during the last World War. When the Veteran died, the only thing he left to prove his existence was this rifle. After absorbing enormous amounts of mana, it has turned into an artifact. Legacy can fire bullets by condensing ambient mana in the air, a skilled user can add an element to these bullets.
Well this would have been very useful to find this before I got attacked by that zombie.
I looked around and realized that the zombie and Legacy were the only 2 things in this room so I decided to flee the basement before anything else made a suprise guest appearance. I quickly scurried across the room to the exit of the basement, my 9 fluffy tails billowing out behind me making me realize I would have to find a mirror soon to see what I looked like now. As I fled the room, I tried not to look at the fallen zombie or it's decapitated head.
As soon as I got out of the basement I breathed a big sigh of relief and inhaled the fresh air.
Step 1, completed now onto Step 2!