I wanted to go out and prowl the forest and get my carnage on the night before, but with how eager the students were yesterday, I figured I’d stay until lunch to get people set up for crafting and check my Empire interface for any flagged items.
Meals are really a simple thing: hit the button get your rations. Pay some money to treat yourself and move on. Considering that Jenna was in to proper nutrition due to her impressive physique, she helped me dial in some training rations and dialed them in a little for each person based on their goals. We put their needs into the Exchange filters, and voila! Professionally tailored meals that were absolutely free.
I don’t feel like the cookie cutter meal of one of the patrons, and my devoted girlfriend forgot to plan meals for me, so I order a Summer Farms Aether Rancher Delux breakfast. Yes, I am going to stuff my pouty face with enhanced foods from the Botanist’s farms. Goliath turtle egg scramble with a pepper-like vegetable and garlic, Murder Chicken sausage patties (that still taste like bacon) and silverleaf pancakes with Canadian Maple syrup. The meal is the size of my head and I greedily protect the platter with my body as I walk over to the tables and benches in the dining hall. I order a coffee direct to table and I’m ready to chow.
“I was wondering where you disappeared to. Did I do something wrong?” I look up to see Jenna fidgeting as she won’t look directly at me.
Aww crap. “Oh, no. I’m sorry that you felt that way. It’s just that we don’t have a morning routine yet and I got into project mode early. TLDR, I’m a big doofus.” I can see the weight slide off her shoulders.
“Are you still in project mode or can I eat with you?” She smirks at me.
I flick a pepper chunk at her face. “Of course you can. Who else would I get to tangle my feet with?”
Jenna’s smile grows as she turns toward the meal console, pleased at their exchange. Her plate comes back with a similar platter to mine but without the starch, and about double the mass.
“Did you plan everyone’s meals using Astorian products?” I ask, the pride in my heart at how thoughtful this woman is, but also so nervous around me; it’s hard to process how genuinely good she is.
“I did! Except the drinks. We don’t really produce non-alcoholic beverages.” She beams, knowing she was helping the Empire.
“Andromeda, you would make a good superhero. Strength, Virtue, Personable, and damned Wholesome. Thanks for joining us, Jenna. You’re kind of fucking awesome.” I reach across and swipe my thumb across her hand before giving it a gentle squeeze. Her blush is radiant.
“I am so glad no one else heard that. Oh my goddess,” she whispers as she tries to hide, but is reluctant to move her hand from mine, so it works poorly.
“You’re adorable. Let us talk about training to ease the burden on your facial capillaries.” I chuckle. “I was going to meditate with some elemental manifestation on the lawn next to your sparring circles. Any budding spellcasters can join me if they chose.”
“Mmm. I was hoping you would help me with some body-enhanced sparring, since that will be one of our major stat training evolutions.” Watching her pop sausage disks into her mouth is mesmerizing.
“Oh, that makes sense. A little demo on size, power, and capacity. I like it. I might break off into meditation practices if some folk are struggling with accessing their internal aether stores though.”
“Sounds like a plan girlfriend.”
I snort at that. It’s one of the very few times she’s called me that, but this sounds like a sassy bestie endearment.
“Well, better change if I want to put on a good show. See you soon babe.” I blip back to our suite up the mountain and rifle through the clothes I brought. Not finding what I want, I decide to mimic the design of Jenna’s padded tech onesie slash jumpsuit and make a two-piece of capris and a cropped vest in Astorian Navy coloring (dark grey with heliotrope, pink, and purple colored features). I pick extra durable skate shoes for their flexible, no-lift soles and blip back to an office I made almost solely for teleporting to.
“Were you aiming for distracting or did you have a non-durability based plan?” Jenna asks, teasingly, but she’s staring at my midriff.
“Pfft, I was aiming for flexibility, comfort, and more visual representation of when I increase my aether output. I’ve been working on enhancing parts of my skin with corundum scales, so I’ll be testing that too.”
“Do you ever focus on one thing at a time?”
“Rarely. Drives Katie nuts.” I snicker as I grab her hand and pull her outside.
There are already a pair of students sparring when we get out there, so we pick a farther circle and warm up with our own combat forms.
“What in Astoria’s resplendent buttocks are you doing?” Jenna demands.
“Gun Katas? It’s the only martial skill I have. I still need training with sabers too.”
“Well, guess we’re going to do a basic hand-to-hand lesson.” After fifteen minutes of laughing at me, she finally acknowledges it should be enough to get a skill. Because of my bad habits, I have to actually check my notifications before I can use what I’ve learned.
“Sweet, Novice Brawling. Maybe you can help me turn that into Knife Fighting or something similar.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Novice, huh? You must have scrapped a few times on Earth. I’m an Expert or above in six martial skills, so yeah, I think I can help.”
“Six? Holy shit. I mean, you were a Marine, so that makes sense, but six seems a little high.”
“Yeah, I trained in Jujitsu and a mixed martial arts philosophy before joining the military. In the Middle East I picked up some really mean and dirty stuff. Some Ukrainians taught me to use a knife, Some Pakistani inadvertently taught me Swashbuckling, and the Israelis taught me to fight with whatever’s around.”
“Wait. You actually have a skill from Andromeda called Swashbuckling?!” She fidgets a little then nods, uncertain at my enthusiasm. “I have some plasma sabers, I need that skill in my life!” I squeal a teensy bit, and I may or may not be dancing in little circles.
Jenna shakes her head, but I see fondness in her eyes. “Sure, hon. But let’s stick to hand-to-hand for now and pump up the power a little bit.”
“Okay sure. How much?” I think about my capacity and uber-rare power rating and ask with concern.
“Maybe twenty percent? Just don’t launch me into space, I don’t have a suit on.”
“I’ll ramp into it. I’ve only ever done this instinctively.” I lean into my Aether manipulation skill and send it into the fibrous meat connected to my corundum bones. The energy stored in my skeleton starts feeding into millions of tiny fibers and when the flow steadies, I feel tight and powerful, and ready to fire.
I dash in too fast and my jab turns into a sloppy clothesline, which Jenna dodges with some surprise in her eyes. She kicks me in the ass as I pass by, making me stumble in the dirt. “Huh. Much bigger boost than I was expecting.” I push up to my feet and dash back.
Every pass I get the coordination closer, every twitch I dial in my new speed and fiddle with the strength in my frame to anchor me. Five minutes in, Jenna’s tossed me around dozens of times, expertly avoiding my punches, until one time she tries to step past me and it earns her a knee to the belly.
To my surprise, and a few gasps behind me, the blow picks Jenna off her feet and causes her to tumble out of the ring and into the grass. She rolls to her hands and knees, dry heaves a few times and groans.
“I thought we agreed to twenty percent. That, felt like a lot more.”
“Uh, sorry? I wasn’t even pushing the aether into my muscles, I just connected them to my aether sources.” I shrug and walk over to her and order a minor alchemical draught to help her out.
She takes it and drinks it. “Ahh, thanks. And I’d forgotten that you don’t have to spare any aether to strengthen your skeleton like the rest of us do.”
“Oh! That is a good point. That kick would have been far less impressive had I wasted that kind of power.”
“Now I kinda want to see what you can do with maximum effort.” She doesn’t seem that serious, but I look for a rock the size of my head and walk over to it.
“Tessa, help me re-enforce the musculature needed to throw this without tearing myself apart?”
Mm, you may injure yourself, but the damage and recovery should be minimal. Is this a show of prowess to your Girlfriend?
I mean, yeah.
I flood the aether in my bones into their attached fibers, I circulate my blood to do the same. The energy expenditure is making me glow, mostly just my skeleton, but I also have a small, visible aura. I pick up the rock as I would a baseball, give it a small test toss, wind up my arm, pick up my leg to add a little extra momentum to my release and then I push out and send it.
The rock hits the lake fast enough that it skips, like a golf ball. The sound of the final splash reminds me I’m still pumping aether and I cut it off. The drastic change is like cutting my strings and I collapse to the ground.
Jenna rushes over, and some students follow after, but before any of the comments come out, “Huh. Never pushed that hard before. I feel all noodley.” I stagger up to standing like a newborn foal when Jenna puts her arm around my side to keep my wobble to a minimum.
“Well, those of you that have been here a minute have now witnessed a whole bunch of pro’s and con’s to aether pumping. Instructor DeGurgis will be teaching you all to use your aether to increase your physical prowess and explain why we’ll be training everyone to do it. Those that have trouble accessing or utilizing their sources can join me by the lake. My AI does a solid guided meditation, proving that different perspectives on the contents of Modules can yield different results.”
“I want to see all the crafting students an hour before midday at the workstations on the shore.” I order before turning and walking down the trodden path toward that chilly body of water. While I walk, I order a Galaxy Fruit and store half of it for later.
Feeling sturdier and more balanced, I summon Indulgence, lower the elevator and grab a fluffy pillow for my butt. I sit cross legged with my forearms on my knees with my palms up and focus on my symbiote core.
Tessa’s core is centered around where my lower intestines used to be, in a mass of meat that has no other purpose than to maintain my preferred form. My aether paths are fairly straightforward: Head, heart, hands, and feet. They follow completely separate paths that the paths that carry my aether-rich blood, and different paths yet again than the aether that flows from my bones to my blood. This seems like a particularly wasteful arrangement. I’ve cast spells before, and meditated before, but this is the first time I’ve considered transmutation as a way to align some of my power channels.
“Tessa, what do you think about that? Moving your core and some of my aether paths to align with my blood channels?”
“It could work. Your biology is more slap-dash than design at this point, so a little remodeling could go a long way. But trying to align the symbiote hive with the multipurpose aether processor that you have as a ‘heart’ would not be a quick or simple thing. It could also be very dangerous for me and my symbiotic portion.”
“I know my heart only beats because I expect it to, but what if we use that to support the symbiotes? Like, attach the hive in such a way that it behaves as an additional ventricle that ‘pumps’ my meridians through my arteries.”
“That surprisingly sounds like you know what you’re talking about. With your permission, I would like to full flood your body with symbiote drones and attempt to saturate the walls of your vascular system while the hive generates a ‘queen’ to start a new hive attached to your ‘heart’. If it works it should minimize the need for transmutation for this aspect of alignment.”
I’m going to assume that my passive absorption and calorie converter functions won’t be disturbed by this. Tessa shrugs in my head
“We’ll see.”
***
“Alright, Candidate Hernandez, remember that once training starts, you will be expected to be at full aether every morning.” He looks supremely annoyed that I was still talking. He has good reason to, I left outfitting his station ‘till last because he’d been a prat to the others about how good he is and should get priority.
My petty side doesn’t need a ton of extra motivation to show itself.
“Same for the rest of the Candidates. Meeting Day after tomorrow evening, and the intensity begins the following morning.” I turn and leave them to their own devices.
Jenna walks with me until we’re out of sight and then I teleport us back to our quarters up the mountain. “So what are you off to do?” She asks.
“The field training spot I picked out hasn’t been checked in nine months. Gotta go make sure I’m not sending people into a horde of aether-warped.” I start donning my EVA suit for the added unknown that I’ll be facing.
“I don’t feel comfortable letting you go off on your own. From the tales of what happened when a small shard of aether rich material warped the wildlife, what would a planet this rich in aether create?” I hear the worry in her tone.
“Hopefully something tasty!” I chuckle at myself and Jenna’s worry deepens.
“Penny! I’m serious!”
“I know you are, and I shouldn’t be joking about my safety to someone who loves me, but I’m going on a reconnaissance mission in tier 2 armor and the ability to teleport. I have a small armory with me, and in a day and a half when the other two instructors get here, you’ll be able to come with.”
She sighs in resignation. “Did I know we had other instructors coming?”
“Maybe? Their names are on the schedule . . . well I thought they were anyway.” I say while bringing it up, seeing only Jenna’s name. “Anyway, David is an Elementalist and an Aether-Blacksmith. Troy is a Jedi. I haven’t seen Troy in action, but he’s Beecham’s buddy and he wanted a Job.”
“Aren’t you worried about perceived nepotism?”
“Most days, but those two are some of the more accomplished symbiote users Humanity has to offer. I’ve been at it the longest, but none of what I’m expert at would be considered ‘the basics’ except engraving, so I’d make a poor choice as their first instructor.”