Noem gestured at the other side of the table. Mona just stared blankly at him, then moved a little too quickly to sit next to him on the couch and dumped everything she’d taken from her room on the table. Then she looked at Noem like he was the strange one.

“Alright, I get the message.” Noem pulled his feet off the table and sat up straight. “You want the couch because you’re lazy and can’t stand standing.”

Mona smirked. “You got it.”

“Brat.” Noem sighed and shook his head. He pushed himself to his feet and grabbed little miss meteor, then made his way to the other side of the table to stare Mona down face-to-face. “Give me a holographic screen and mirror it in front of Mona.”

“What are you talking–eep!” Mona yelped as a black-green screen appeared in front of her. She looked up at Noem in awe, then back at the translucent screen. “How’d you do that?”

Noem gestured up at a device that was bolted onto the ceiling. “The entire house is voice-activated. It’s an option you can turn on for your own system interface, but you’ll probably have to register again since you’ve been inactive for so long. Speaking of…”

The table clattered as Noem bent down and sifted through the small pile of things Mona had brought out. He came up with a small black device suspended in a thick green solution.

“This is your system access chip. Whatever device you plug it into becomes your interface, and from there you can use it however you like.” Noem held up his right arm for emphasis. “I’ve got an interface on my right arm, but this entire house is technically one big interface because I networked it back to this one little screen.”

He bent down again and pushed another screen towards Mona. “This used to be the screen you used for your interface. But I can hook the access chip up to your vital display if you want; it’s almost magic how easily it slots into literally anything.”

Mona nodded seriously with her hands pressed to her thighs. “Does it matter how big the screen is? Wouldn’t it be hard to read on a screen this tiny?”

“Yup. You’d have to use a little more Qi to power it, but you’d never have to worry about leaving it behind. Or getting it stolen.” Noem tapped on his own interface. “I got a bendable screen and a form-fitting armguard to make sure mine fits just right. It’s pretty easy to read without summoning a status window, and I can connect more devices to it because I put a lot of work into encrypting its wireless capabilities.”

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Noem tapped right next to his eye, then his mouth. “That means I’ve got contacts that can show me a screen, voice-activated commands, and a lot more that I’m not gonna tell you. And that’s all open to expansion if I find something new to work with. But it’s only because I put in a whole lotta work to make sure this stuff is safe, hack-proof, and Qi-proof.”

“Is Qi just another word for electricity?” Mona asked. “Or is that yo… our version of mana?”

That was a slip up among slip-ups. Noem kept his face as that of a placid instructor, but it wasn’t easy. Mana was an archaic word for ‘Qi’ he’d only read in textbooks, but a few cultures apparently still used it, so it wouldn’t be an instant give-away that Mona wasn’t actually herself.

“Qi is energy. Plain and simple.” Noem raised one finger and willed his Qi to concentrate on his fingertip. A small sphere of shining yellow-green Qi bubbled forth. “You can taint it to do different things, or move it from one place to another, but it’s just energy.”

Noem pressed his fingers together and spread the shine over all four of them. “When you move your Qi to do something specific, it’s called a Skill. The system recognizes that you’ve done it and records it, and your body remembers that you did it. Then you can reproduce it with a single thought. But if you want to make your skills more powerful, you have practice using them without calling them. That’s the only way your body can get used to them, instead of your Qi and system doing all the work.”

Mona nodded eagerly. “So can I shoot a fireball with my Qi?”

“Not unless you’ve got a bond for it.” Noem said, which didn’t dull Mona’s excitement in the slightest. “Since you have to do something with your Qi to register it as a skill, you can only make skills out of things that your body can physically do. Like focusing, jumping, or putting all of your weight into a punch. But once you make it into a skill, you can make it do a lot of different things.”

The Qi on Noem’s fingertips glowed brighter, then bled down to cover his entire hand. “Steady is a skill I developed to keep my hands from shaking when I did my work. But if I apply the same thing to my entire body…”

With a deep breath, Noem did exactly that. He normally suppressed the luminous effects of his Qi, but for demonstration purposes, he let it shine bright. All of his unnecessary movements completely stopped.

“Whoa.” Mona gasped. “That’s so creepy! It’s like you’re a mannequin or something.”

Noem rolled his eyes and let his skill drop. “The point is that Steady is a skill I made only for my hands, but that I extended to the rest of my body. If you got Jump, for instance, you could stand on your hands and activate it. If you let your system route the Qi through you, it would force your legs to try to jump. But if you focused the Qi in your hands and did the exact same thing you felt when you first used Jump, you’d be able to use your hands and arms. Does that make sense?”

Mona pursed her lips. “Not really? But also yeah?” She frowned and crossed her arms. “Maybe I just don’t understand the basics enough for this advanced stuff. How do I make a skill anyway?”

“I… I just told you.” Noem said in disbelief. “You push your Qi somewhere, it amplifies what you’re trying to do there, and that becomes a registered skill. Weren’t you listening?”

“I was.” Mona argued. “But how do I push my Qi somewhere? And how do I make it amplify what I’m trying to do? And then, what, does the system just automatically register whatever I did? Even if I’m not connected to it right now?”

Noem opened his mouth to answer, then paused. He rubbed his chin and looked over at little miss meteorite as if she’d give him an answer. “You know, I’ve never tried making a skill while I wasn’t connected to the system. Let’s give that a shot.”