At times I was a fucking idiot.
Mike would agree. Sarah would just nod her head and make sure that I got a thump on the back of the head for taking so long to work it out. I didn't even want to know what Raechina would say, but it would be complicated, involve a lot of teasing, and probably frustrate me.
If I had known what happened to Sprite, I am sure she would have also supported my increased self-awareness.
Panic set in when I heard or instead felt Kallax say, "You don't," it took me some time to quell the turmoil and chaos that had started to spiral my thoughts down. Kallax's presence faded, and the sensory deprivation made me a victim of my own uncontrolled thought processes.
I was at a loss, with nothing to ground my senses in other than the faint feeling that something external was waiting for me.
The chaos dredged up my fears and insecurities, my questions and doubts. I envisage my friends spiralling around me, laughing. My nemesis, who was only that in name only, still held power over my chaotic and unprotected thoughts. It was a testament to the damage that bullies could do that here I was with more power than I had ever dreamed of, and I was still haunted by the humiliation and jeers of three people who were probably dead.
Well, that was not entirely true. I had made sure that they were not okay, but I had checked in on them. They were Tier 1 and possibly not going to progress much further. Personally, I thought that even checking on them was a mistake, but Mike insisted, and then he ensured that they would not progress. If they knew who was at the top of the food chain regarding Earth's responses to the integration, I am sure they would have been horrified. No, they would not; they would pretend to be buddies, friends from high school, and no hard feelings.
Shit. I needed to let that go. With some effort, I dragged their images and names, and rather than burying them with more guilt at my former weakness, I cast them aside into my wellspring of apathy. For I genuinely did not care about them. Begone Chris, begone Kevin, and begone Sean. It nearly worked, as no sooner had they been washed away with the power of don't give a fuck. I wondered what happened to the poor dipshits from my tutorial, those three who reminded me of …. I needed to stop.
I needed to get a grip and work out what was going on. I was super powerful and had next to no plan. Shit, if I didn't get my crap together, I would spend the next millennium flitting from one disaster to another. Ignorance and Apathy. Don't know, don't care. Shit, I was a disaster.
Focus.
Concentrate.
Damn, Sarah looked mighty fine in her red bikini. When she wore one of her slightly too-small shirts over it after swimming,* click* Mental picture taken and stored. Shit. Get a grip. Here I was, a disembodied maelstrom of thoughts, and I was at the mercy of my raging hormones from a body that I had no immediate connection to. With her, it was more than a physical attraction. Once again, I felt my insecurities from my formative years crash into me. Rejection, an unknown mother, a father who worked too much and drank too much and showed affection with guilt cash and knee-jerk discipline. He was such a saint in public, and the majority of the time, he was a great dad, but the shitty times were crap. Amy didn't see that; she was always out with her friends and having a great time; she missed the worst. I picked up the pieces. Even now, I feel guilty for what I took from him. It was not enough to be noticed but enough to help me set myself up. If he was drunk enough, it was easy. Once I found his passwords, I was set. The idiot hid them with his porn stash as if a teenage boy could not smell a hidden porn stash better than a wolf on the scent of a bleeding rabbit. I never told anyone and never will. Part of me wonders if his cover-up at work was my fault. Because his partners were snakes, they obfuscated the facts like all lawyers do to a point where I would never know. No way was I asking Lawrance; if he asked me, I'd possibly cave and admit to fleecing my father, but it was a long stretch of guilt-induced conspiracy to turn that into the fraud that sent him to jail.
I was losing it again. Shit. I didn't hate my dad, nor did I love him. There was a little remorse for that, but it was better than hating him as Amy did.
I pushed his image and all his baggage into the growing sea that was considering my total apathy to crappy situations. I needed to get my thoughts in order.
Concentrate. Focus. Shit, don't think of the party.
Why I was dredging up some of my worst and finest moments was beyond me; at least I was not fixating on when I peed myself in class when I was too scared to go to the loo and didn't ask the teacher. Five years later, I would still get the odd reminder, some banter from 'mates'. Other times, it was a stab at my self-esteem. I was six. I was small. I was timid, a fierce father who was a stern lawyer with no shred of forgiveness, just an eye on the prize and path to the goal. The sympathy I got from him was a belt around the ear and a mouthful. He was the one who kept bringing it up years later. Well, past when my mates stopped, and the bullies forgot. Shit, I was fixating on it. Party. Party. Think of the princess.
Can a incorporate collection of thoughts with a nebulous connection to a physical body groan? I would if I could.
The Empress. Everything a man, or in Sarah's case a woman, could want. Close to physical perfection, the last remnants of imperfections would be removed over her last few levels as she approached level 100. At times, it was hard to look at her and harder to look away. Intoxicating to a degree that my brain started second-guessing itself in response to primitive biological urges. Hindbrain. The damn system was supposed to help with that, but her stats and skills just blew any protections that I may have had out of the water. Being in her presence felt right, yet it also fed back into my insecurities, punching above my weight. The party. Yes, the party. That was both the best and worst night of my life.
I visibly watched Sarah deflate. Raechina had ordered me to have minimal contact with her. At first, I thought it was jealousy, but then I realised that it was some scheme to get the two Earth heavy weights on board. She didn't need to do that. We had several arguments, which we both lost due to pride and stubbornness. If she had played it slightly less superior, she would have had both of us eating out of her hands. She was an Empress. Asking her to be less superior was a bit hypocritical, yet I had seen her temper her Imperial leanings. I was sure I was in love with both of them, and I was not sure what to do about that or if I should. My life was changing, and I was not the type of person who could be held to pre-integration morals and standards.
Focus. Calm.
Shit. Sprite was gone. No. I'd deal with that later. Crap. No, I'd deal with that now. Kallax said we would meet, and I had to trust that. I couldn't be held back now by wasting mental energy chasing something I could not control.
Focus.
Calm.
Concentrate.
Slowly, as my erratic thoughts became more controllable, as I shunted things that I now knew the System had been suppressing to my coping mechanism, a big pool of I was going to stick with Apathy, where they got diluted and reduced to manageable chunks. My bleak void of nothingness returned to a calm and less chaotic space.
It lost its sinister or frantic aspect. I didn't need to escape. I finally became centred.
As time, or my sensation of time, passed, I realised that I now had a calm, stable core. I could now work on defining who or what I stood for based on my past. No longer would I feel guilty or insecure about events; they had lost their hold on me other than shaping my journey to the here and now.
I could look at my life and learn what I needed to shape what I wanted. Being beaten to a pulp by someone who was possibly dealing with insecurities bigger than my own was now an opportunity to learn. I could use the experience to bolster my will to fight against bullies and make sure what had happened to me was not repeated.
To accept help from friends. To help friends when they needed it. To be better than an angry drunk who didn't know how to connect to people.
To love where it was accepted and to love when it was needed. Who was I to reject someone when my insecurities were holding me back?
I had been given the title of Champion, and part of it was because I had latent potential. But part of it was because, deep within, buried behind a cultural mindset of privilege and greed, I wanted to help people. Not give them a free ride but make some sacrifices so that those who could not make them didn't have to.
That nebulous connection felt more solid.
It was definitely my body, but something still held me back. I was in a state where, if I remembered my times playing a wizard in DnD, it was a 9th-level necromantic school spell, and I found that I had perfect recall.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
"… a silvery cord that extends from between your shoulder blades and trails behind you, fading to invisibility after 1 foot. This cord is your tether to your material body. As long as the tether remains intact, you can find your way home. If the cord is cut something, that can happen only when an effect specifically states that it does your soul and body are separated, killing you instantly."
Crap, if only that worked with important stuff!
I knew I had to protect the cord, and I knew that my consciousness had been shunted somewhere to protect it while my body was being rebuilt.
The vile gunk that had spewed out every orifice, vomit, shit, pee, blood, tears, pus. All of it was corrupted and full of things that were the antithesis of a pure energy body.
Shit, including the system Nanites. No wonder it was so foul. I already knew that there were issues with the system as I headed to transcendence, but my body had violently rejected the very nature of the system. No wonder Sprite had been shunted elsewhere as well. Now, I just needed to wait for my body to be available for my consciousness to reclaim it.
More of the freaky time, yet not time, passed, and I kept pounding on the thin sliver I was visualising back to my body. Slowly, I could feel it strengthening and widening.
Months, years or even a decade passed. I could not tell, and at times, I felt my control slipping as I gave into the despair of what was happening to my friends. Yet I always came back to the fact that I was doing what I needed, and despair would not help them even if I got out now. I needed to be in the best form possible.
I started getting flashes of sensation. At first, they were overwhelming. Pain. It was not pain, just needing to relearn how to filter the levels of sensation. A slight breeze became a thundering blow as each air molecule smashed into my skin. The weight of my nano weave crippled my movement.
It took a lifetime to learn to filter feelings. I could sense everything in and around my body, yet I had to step back as the data flood shut my brain down as it tried to prioritise the data into meaningful information. With practice, I could manipulate individual cells. I kept practising.
Shit, I was stupid. My body didn't have cells. Now, it was pure energy. I was overlaying my energy construct with my imprinted biology. Shit. I was just like Alakaʻi. No, I was more. I was not tied to a core; if I were, the core was my consciousness. I just had to learn to control myself.
Once I fully embraced that, things started to process faster. My senses were just a matter of deciding what I wanted to pay attention to, and as another age passed, I learned to increase the amount of data I could interpret. Or rather, I could filter it through several layers, with essential information being acted on while less critical information being processed by a portion of my consciousness tasked with picking up and alerting my higher consciousness about issues that may need attention.
I knew my body had been moved. I could detect Sarah's aura, and I had been firmly embedded within her protective aura for some time. I had been moved from a zero energy zone, to an area where the energy fluctuation. If it were a scale of energy being drained to energy funnelling into me, it would be Tier -2 to Tier 1. I soon learned to create a barrier that stopped the drain and let me operate within my own energy levels.
As little as I used my HUD before, I did miss it. I had no idea how much energy I had or how fast it was draining. Over time, I knew I would get a sense of this, but at the moment, I was spitballing the values. Since my purging, I would put my energy into the ludicrous category. It felt so much denser and smoother, and if I had my old HUD, it would have read something ridiculous like 1000%. Tiers did grow exponentially, so it was expected as I was reasonably confident I had broken through some barriers and hit a new cap.
My body was taken underwater, and I felt the Aura of Thaddius; this time, he was really cutting loose, and I was unfortunate to be behind my energy shield and could not observe what he was doing. There were other odd emanations, both friendly and enemy, which I could easily negate when they came in contact with my barrier, yet I could not tell who the fiends were at first. I got Jean, then Dallas. Then I realised that these others were my squad mates fighting us. At first, I was concerned, but then I calmed as their true auras were being restored; I could feel Orr doing something that was delicate and beyond me.
I was slowly getting a feel for my body and my, dare I call it, soul. It had taken me several lifetimes, yet it seemed not at the same time, to get a sense of what I would be capable of. My new form would be energy-hungry, requiring a deep wallet to support it in a low-tier environment like Earth.
Shit. I had known I was going to leave Earth, yet I was starting to understand that I was also putting Earth in danger. I could no longer take an active part in its formation or shaping. I was now a deterrent and the stick that would be used to keep people away – once they found out about me. I also knew that if I unleashed near Earth, I would suck energy from the surroundings; That was what I was feeling as I realised that those negative Tier zones were where I was leeching energy, they were just zones where my energy upkeep was too high, and it would flow from me to the zone. The 2-3 Tier zone buffer was no longer applicable to me. This just reinforced that I needed to leave Earth as soon as possible. I could feel it. In a sense, I was more real than Earth, and it would cost me and the planet if I enforced my new reality on the weaker reality.
Somehow, I was okay with that, even though I had a lot of things to worry about.
Shit. Earth was going to be destroyed.
I also had the n-space crap to deal with, and I also had the Writ and Hunter Throne to deal with.
Sarah, Raechina, and I had to go there as soon as possible and sort that out. I felt I'd be fine out in the broader universe where things were more stable, where the energy and barriers between realms had been almost unchanged for millennia. Raechina would not be happy about me knowing some more of her secrets, possibly even ones she had no idea about. I smiled at the thought of dropping some of those and seeing her react.
I tried to flex my aura out into my body, to try to reclaim it, yet it just seemed to dissipate out into my surroundings, where it was sucked up greedily. I'd mentally exhaust myself in no time if I kept that up. My energy reserves were fine, just my concentration and focus to take anything outside of my inner space.
Shit. Was this my inner space? My core or soul? I wish there were some guidebooks to this. I'd have to consult Orr; he was the bastard who gave me the purging liquid. At least I'd get a short answer out of him. Fuck Thaddius and Bart. I'd rather stuff rats into my ears and let them nibble on my eardrums than listen to them. I really needed a guide, someone to help me. It had to be someone I'd trust, though.
Sprite was the ideal candidate, yet she was gone for now. I missed Sprite. She had been part of me, seen me at my weakest and also as I gained power. We had shared much, and those bonds were hard just to dismiss.
With my senses out of whack, I had vague impressions of things happening around me, and yet I felt safe, enveloped within Sarah's beautiful aura. I knew my friends were in good hands; if Sarah could not cope with them, then our three strange new allies would be able to help her, so I relegated myself to keeping a link to the sensations in case something drastic changed, and I concentrated on sending out waves of support. I was learning to split my concentration, fragmenting myself, each part of me, not lesser, yet with different functions, almost like an AI watching in the background. I was aware, yet not; they could raise my awareness at any time if my primary facet needed to be mindful of what was happening.
Okay. Okay, lf. I needed some names and ways to describe this stuff, away from vague, half-formed ideas. Facets and splinters were the right idea, but they fell short. Shards was not quite it either. They were part of me, connected with me, and they could control me at any time if their priority were deemed higher. At the moment, I had my senses being monitored, at a lower priority, with some ideas about how that would bump up; for example, if it, or I really, noticed an energy surge, it would gain more attention. They were manifestations of concepts I didn't need to concentrate on. Multiprocessors in computing, but better. My central aspect, yes, aspects, that was it; my central aspect was the overseer who had the final say and control. I was now limited to two or three, but I knew instinctively that I could do more. There were even hints of how I could make these aspects external and independent. I spun up or forged an aspect to work that out, how to forge and maintain more aspects and extend them outside my internal self. If I got that, I would have no issues with my energy body.
My overseer aspect was calm, devoid of the immediate need to focus on my surroundings, as the sensing aspect managed that and did the worrying. I still felt it, but it was just not important right now.
Maybe I could forge a guide aspect. If I did, it would be a bit more disconnected from my overseer or central aspect, and I needed it to be able to be independent and honest; it was no use having a guide who just told me stuff I already knew. I needed the guide to be grounded in my sense of, I guess, helping others and being as just as I could, improving those around me and making the world a better place. It was a mix of altruism, social justice and philanthropy. Yet not a subservient role that lets others take advantage of me. I envisage something or someone who was a freedom fighter, an agent for social change and empowered others. Shit, it was Superman, shit, yeah he was a good role model. I'd ground the moral and ethical foundations around my favourite superheroes – the good ones: Spiderman, Superman, Daredevil, Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and even Luke Cage! I'd add Vixen for some environmental guidance to the mix and maybe some Groo the Wanderer for taking the world in its simplest form, cutting through the tape of politics and social manipulation with his sense of simplicity. This guide would be the best of the best of the now-defunct superhero universes! It would be an awesome movie.
I concentrated on these, getting a feel for what I would need; maybe I could enforce these concepts onto an energy construct.
"Or you could just let me take care of it", a soft, sultry voice boomed through the blackness. Despite its suddenness and volume, it had a very playful lilt, and I could almost feel the smirk.
I saw the first thing appear in my void, an ever-changing being, flitting through myriad forms: a wise old crone with flowing, star-dusted robes, the next as a sprightly pixie with iridescent wings. Then, a disco queen in a shimmering jumpsuit seemed to pulsate with the colours of a distant supernova. A glittery afro sat on her head, and platform boots with built-in disco balls completed the ensemble. With a blink, she was a towering figure draped in flowing robes adorned with constellations that seemed to approach and move around her form. Her head, a swirling nebula, peered over spectacles that could double as planetary telescopes as a cosmic librarian; as I took that in, she sifted to a one-eyed woman with an eyepatch fashioned from a miniature black hole standing at the helm of a ramshackle spaceship cobbled together from various technologies. A parrot with a cybernetic beak squawked on her shoulder as she became a swirling vortex of pure energy, its edges crackling with raw cosmic power. A plump cactus with a grumpy expression and a single, prickly flower adorned its head settled before me, arms crossed – achieved through a clever combination of leaning and strategically placed spines.
Instantly, I knew her, Nova Hope; she was to be my constructed guide to the wider multiverse.
Confetti and streamers shot out of nowhere over me.
Fuck. If I conjured her from my subconscious, I required therapy.