Chapter 19: More Skills

Nine days had passed since Ben’s first Incursion with his powers. He was back in Katie’s underground training room again, somewhere he had been to very often since becoming a Super. It was just a great place to train his abilities as well as hang out with his friend, and where he ended up most days when they didn’t have an Incursion slot available.

As Ben waited for Katie to finish up her meal and get down to the training room, he thought back to everything that had happened since testing himself against Voltic. Time seemed to be moving quicker nowadays, and in a blink of an eye, he had less than half of the two weeks left.

One of the biggest things to happen during this time was Ben finally telling his aunt about his new status. It had happened on the same day as his first real Incursion.

After getting what Katie had called his just desserts for being insulting, and what Ben considered far too much cheek pinching, the two of them had gone back to her house to rest. However, unlike the day before, Ben couldn’t justify staying at Katie’s place again and had to make his way home before dinner.

Ben’s aunt was still working from home so she was there to meet him and he decided he had delayed enough. Holding off for a couple of days was one thing, but he couldn’t keep something so important from his aunt. Especially not if he wanted to move to Haven and go to Indomitable High.

So as the two of them ate dinner together, Ben told her what had happened. Kinda. He left a lot of it out. Obviously, he didn’t mention the cube. He also didn’t mention Zelter, or even that he’d been out looking to get involved with an Incursion. Instead, he just told her he finally became a Super and was wondering how she wanted to handle that.

Despite him not going into details, that talk ended up going on for quite some time. Moving was not a simple thing under normal circumstances. Moving to Haven Island and in about a month's time? That made things even worse.

Thankfully, his aunt was willing to make the move. There were many reasons for this. The main one was so Ben didn’t have to start living alone so soon. He was seventeen now, but he still had a year before it would be normal for him to be by himself. Another reason was that the commute from work to her office was about the same. And of course, it wasn’t like living on Haven Island would be anything but an upgrade from where they currently were.

Ben’s aunt was pretty high up in the financial department of her company, and she made really good money from what he understood. So they were already living in a pretty nice part of West Cascade. But Haven Island was not only considered the safest place in the city, but it also had access to so many things that the rest of the city and most of the world didn’t have access to.

Some of the very best medical services in the world as well as futuristic consumer goods could only be found on Haven and the handful of other Super districts like it in America. Even then, with the Cascade Workshop, Haven stood out on the world stage. There was a reason it was so expensive to try and move there if you weren’t a Super or didn’t have some kinds of connections.

So with that decided, his aunt started looking into what it took to register as a Super with the DMA and get fast-tracked into moving to the Island.

The next biggest thing to happen was why Ben was in Katie’s testing room today. He’d reached level 5 and obtained another three Skill points. This happened during his second to last Incursion he could fit into the two weeks he had, and Ben had spent a lot of time going over what he should pick.

Unlike with his stat points where the distribution was pretty obvious. Like most E-Rankers who weren’t Enhancers, he only got 3 stat points per level as opposed to the much greater amount higher ranks got. So he just put everything into his Power stat. That increased the maximum limit of all his Skills, as well as increased the regeneration rate of his Power Reserves as well.

At level 5 with his Power stat at 2.5 times his original amount, if he didn’t double up on how much he was applying, he could apply or store to a single gem indefinitely and last more than an hour using two gems at the same time. So very much worth all the stat points he invested, leaving his other Stats untouched for the moment. In the future, he’d start investing in other stats, especially Power Resistance, but for now, it was almost no choice at all.

If only his Skill choices could be so simple.

His options for Skills were split into two categories, one much larger than the other. The smaller category was the standalone Skills. Stuff like Gem Control and Gem Analyze. The former would give him a range of options while the latter would help him figure out what he actually had in his inventory as well as in the System storage—probably also exactly how much a Gem could store as well. Both useful but taking even one would then keep him getting a full set of three Skills for any new thing he would be using with his gems.

The larger of the two categories was of course the sets of three Skills for the various things he could Store, Apply or Release and Transfer from his gems. For these ones, he would likely need to at least take two of them to be of any use, but getting all three would of course be ideal. And each and every one of them potentially offered all sorts of benefits and options to him.

Though some of those options were clearer than others. The things that he had a good guess of what he could do with them were the Stats as well as the other options like his kinetic energy—things like thermal energy or electrical energy. The things he wasn’t very clear on were the physical concepts—like hardness or sharpness—along with the elemental stuff—like fire, earth, lightning, wind—and then the really esoteric concepts—like Death.

For the physical concepts, it was unclear just how that would work. Would storing sharpness make something dull? Would applying sharpness to something cut it or would it make it sharp despite its actual physical features? Or would it warp something dull into physically being sharp?

The Elemental stuff was also quite confusing. While Applying things like fire and electricity seemed rather self-explanatory, just what would Applying Earth do to something? That ambiguity along with the other fully conceptual things made Ben and Katie theorize that even the more straightforward elemental options weren’t so straightforward. And if that was true they could potentially be even more useful than some of the clearer options.

But that was a bit of a risk as he didn’t know for sure.

Which made choosing very difficult.

Unfortunately for Ben, he didn’t have long to choose. And while he had been considering all this even before he actually gained the needed Skill points, it still took him a full day after reaching the appropriate level before he finally made the choice. He would have waited even longer if he didn’t need the time to train with his new abilities before doing whatever kind of test Dark Resolve was going to subject him to before going after the Cube and Blitz again.

“So what did you end up picking,” Katie asked, breaking Ben from his thoughts as she came into the room.

Unlike a normal person, though, who would just walk in, Katie floated into the room sitting primly on one of her Bugbots. This one actually had a seat built into it. She had her lab glasses on, which gave her some sort of extra interface, and was wearing a blouse and some jeans. Following behind was another small Bugbot. Probably one of her lab assistants. One of the ones with all the extra sensors.

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“Lightning,” Ben said as Katie floated next to him. “I thought about it a lot. And while being able to store and increase my Power stat was super tempting, I think I want to take the chance with lightning. If it turns out not like we think, and is just storing and applying electricity, if I combine it with gem control it could still be pretty strong. Especially since we're going to be fighting Villains and I need disabling options. Also I was pretty sure the yellow Gem in my inventory was Heliodor and it turns out I was right.”

Katie nodded at that before she gestured into the air. “Not a bad choice. So have you already spent all your Skill points then? And did you want to train it on the test dummy first? I’ll send a bot up to the lab for some batteries while you do that.”

In the center of the training room, a circular hole opened up as two halves of a circle split apart. From within, a life-size manikin propped up on a stand came up on a platform that sealed the hole shut.

“Yes to the dummy, no to having spent all my Skill points,” Ben said, walking over to the training dummy. “I’m leaving my last 2 Skill points free for a moment. Want to test out just how it works first. Then depending on how it goes, either I get the Transfer and Release Skill for lighting as well as Gem control, or maybe I use the last 2 points for Apply and Storage of the Power Stat since I don’t have one of those crystals in my inventory. At least I think I don’t.”

Standing next to the dummy, Ben pulled the yellow Heliodor from his inventory. Like the quartz he’d inherited, the gem was massive, needing both his hands to carry. Unlike the quartz though, this one didn’t feel full nor was there more than one of them. But considering just how much energy one of these massive gems probably carried, and also considering electricity was probably one of the easiest things he could charge, he wasn’t all that worried about it.

“Alright, the dummy’s already setup so whenever you're ready,” Katie said from behind him. “And don’t worry about holding back. The dummy’s rated for some pretty extreme damage. And even if you fry it I can just swap it out for another.”

“Ok,” Ben said, before holding the gem up to the dummy. The range he could Apply things from his gems had increased, but it was still a bit less than a foot so wasn’t that large yet. “Hopefully this does more than just shock it.”

With that said, Ben mentally activated his new Skill, chose the gem in his hands, and Applied the maximum amount of energy he could from the gem onto the dummy.

Pzzzt!

Electricity seemed to crackle around the dummy for a long moment before Ben cut off his Skill. Despite the impressive light show, though, there didn’t seem to be any damage to the dummy. No scorch marks or anything.

“So that was about like the strength of a taser overall,” Katie said, still floating on her Bugbot as she moved next to Ben. “Do you feel like you could control it at all? Maybe affect how the electricity flows through the dummy? Cause it’s got about the power of a taser in total, but the sensor shows that the electricity coursed through the whole dummy. Probably wouldn’t kill, but probably better not to send electrical currents through people's brains.”

Ben winced and shook his head. “No. Didn’t really feel like I could control anything besides the amount of energy.”

Katie shrugged as one of her smaller Bugbots came into the training room, two things clenched in its front pincers. “Well, that was just the first try. And there has to be a reason electricity and lightning are separate things to your Class. Maybe try just targeting one part of the dummy as a separate object like you’ve been trying with your kinetic energy. After that, we’ll try with the batteries. I have an idea.”

“Alright,” Ben said, before raising his Gem up to the dummy again.

From the sixth sense he got from his Skill, the whole dummy was one target. But he tried to force the Skill to narrow down its focus to just the legs. He’d managed to do that a few times for his kinetic energy Skills, but it still wasn’t consistent yet.

After a few moments of trying with his new Skill, it seemed it wasn’t any easier for this Skill either. For just a split second he could get his Skill to focus on just the legs, but then the whole dummy would become the target again before he could even activate the Skill.

“I can do it but it's just as hard as with the other Skills,” Ben said, shaking his head. “It’ll take some more practice. So what did you want to do with the batteries? See if I can just charge them? I guess that would be a sign of it being more than just electricity control if I could do that without blowing them up despite having little control.”

“Yep,” Katie said as a table pushed its way out of the floor next to her. Once the table settled, the Bugbot leaped up on the table and placed down the two batteries before jumping back off. “The first one is one of my normal batteries. Meant to be charged in a specific manner. If you can charge that then that’s a sign you can do more than just shock things. The other battery is supposed to absorb electrical attacks. It doesn’t have a perfect rate of absorption, so I’ll be curious to see what happens. And maybe try to focus on the idea of charging the batteries as you do this. Your intentions might alter how the Skill applies the energy.“

Ben nodded at that and held up his gem again. This time, after he picked the first battery as his target, he tried to focus on the idea of charging it. Not shocking or destroying it. Just charging. But, before he actually used his Skill, a thought stopped him.

“Um… If this doesn’t work, the batteries aren’t gonna explode because they got damaged, right?”

Katie scoffed and shook her head. “No Ben, they will not. These aren’t some shitty lithium-ion batteries or something. They’re far more advanced and safer. Damaging them will just cause them to lose charge. I wouldn’t have batteries like this in my Drone Armor if they did that after being damaged.”

“That’s good,” Ben said, relieved. Then he moved his gem to the batteries and focused on charging them before activating his Skill.

Pzzt!

Once again, electricity visibly arced around what he was applying the stored energy to. Ben winced at that and was about to stop when Katie called out.

“Wait, don’t stop,” she said, holding out a hand. “It doesn’t look like it's damaging anything and the charge is going up.”

Ben’s eyes widened a bit at that as he looked at Katie before he refocused on the battery and kept up the Skills. After 30 seconds, maybe a minute of this, Katie called a halt to things.

“Okay that should be enough,” Katie said, a considering look on her face as she stared at the battery. She was also making gestures in the air as she did… something. Maybe going through the data from her Bugbots? “You got it charged to about a fourth of capacity in about a minute. Not bad. And there really is no damage to the Battery despite that.”

Ben perked up at that and grinned. “Okay, that's good. A sign that we’re working with more than just normal electricity. Think I should try it on myself yet? I’ve tried targeting myself and I don’t get any feelings of danger or anything. And maybe I can do what Voltic does and boost my speed and strength. Or maybe it would charge up my other Skills? To be safe I’ll just use only a little energy at first.”

“Hold your horses,” Katie said, shaking her head. “While in general that’s a good sign your power won’t hurt you, there are always exceptions. Let’s try on some lab rats first. Then you risk shocking yourself.”

Ben sighed at this, disappointed. Lightning might actually do what he’d been wanting it to do, and he really wanted to get some confirmation. But Katie was right. Better to be safe than sorry. “Yeah… okay. But where do we even get lab rats anyway?”

Katie waved Ben off. “There are specialty companies for that kind of thing, but I’ve already got some. I’ll just send a drone to bring some down.”

Ben perked up at that and grinned. Then he furrowed his brows as what she said actually sunk in. “Wait… Why do you have lab rats already?”

Katie just shrugged. “Research. Experimentation.”

Ben opened his mouth to reply only to pause for a moment. Then he squinted at her. “That… only creates more questions. What would you even need to experiment with when your specialty is Bugbots?”

Katie narrowed her eyes at that. Ben hadn’t stopped calling her Bugbots ‘Bugbots’, mainly because she found it annoying and he found that hilarious. He didn’t do it too often aloud though, to avoid Katie’s retaliation.

“Just for that, I’m not going to explain,” Katie said in a huff. A moment later another Bugbot came down into the lab with a little cage in its pincers. “Anyway the rats here. Just try your Skill on it and we can see if it’ll actually do anything or just shock the poor thing.”

Ben grinned at Katie and moved to the table again as the Bugbot set the cage down. He’d figure out what she did with lab rats later. For now, it was time to see just what else lightning could do.