Watching the thirty odd various students slash testers push themselves for their fourth breakthrough was an exercise in what is likely was like to be on LSD as energy overflowed and spilled, rippling between people before fading into the background. Over the course of the first hour, not a single person managed to breakthrough, although the four people using internal energy appeared to be closer than the rest.

The first five minutes had been fairly horrifying though, with nearly every person not picking their path correctly at first. The recording probably looked a lot like the entire room was having an epileptic seizure all at once with the various volunteers shaking people out of their attempts if they weren't already stopping.

Of course, pretty much everyone had initially tried for a double breakthrough like I had done. Two people were the only ones to not have their body revolt over it. Both were external energy users. I'd half thought it might be the internal users that could skip forward but I found myself wrong. Just another note for the future.

The path each person's energy wanted to take over the last hour didn't follow any specific patterns, though this group probably wasn't large enough to actually get a significant pattern to emerge.

But left handed people only slightly leaned towards their left shoulder. The one naturally ambidextrous person was a right shoulder energy flow. Four military were trained ambidextrous and one of them was capable of a dual breakthrough.

People who considered themselves more emotional had no greater leaning towards one side or the other versus those who considered themselves more logical. Type A or Type B personalities, if anyone could classify themselves, didn't seem to have a significant effect.

I sighed, thinking back while pulling through all my notes. Was there anything I could actually do to help, or was I just going to be a bystander while everyone went their own way for this? I paused on a note from a month ago, a discussion I'd had with Brent and the others. When I'd managed to get Zhaohui to answer to what the Initiate's Realm was.

I pondered the answer and the images I'd received for a moment. It still felt right, even after my previous breakthroughs. That image I could still call up in my mind of myself, holding some nebulous object even seemed to resonate with it. I couldn't identify the object, but the image it was more than a daydream because I could not shift myself out of what my mind insisted were school clothes, or force the object to take shape.

I had two ideas, one that might hurt me if I had to try to use my Art of Awakening for a breakthrough.

I doublechecked a few things and then stood, setting my tablet aside. My voice easily projected across the quiet room as I started walking among everyone to try my first idea. "What is the Initiate's Realm? When you ask the alien about the world's soul, he says it has made it past the second block of the Initiate's Realm. I don't know what level of research any of you have done on the Seeker wiki, but I did once manage to parrot the phrase Initiate's Realm back at the alien the same as we ask about the world's should. I got a response."

Most of the room had stopped pushing themselves and I now had their rapt attention. We'd posted that response up on the wiki about the Initiate's Realm, and three weeks later Barry and ELF showed up claiming I was working with the alien. If that was the reason why, I really did wish they'd talked more beforehand.

I ended that train of thought, refocusing on the here and now. "The first step off the mortal path, preparing the body to energize the sleeping soul." I held up a hand, even though no one looked to interrupt me as I made a slow circuit among the people. "Whatever you might think about souls or mortal paths, at a minimum we are doing things to our bodies that no human has done before."

I got back to the front of the class, tapping the screen and causing the projected model of the body came up. "This is a model, not you. Not me. You're not preparing a model, you're dealing with your own body. When you are pushing to find your next block, I want you to build in your mind the image of yourself with the power that flows inside you. When that power flows beyond your current breakthroughs, it brings with it greater clarity of that image."

I paused, a half-quirked smile on my lips. "That power helps to define the image you have of yourself. Let it." I shut down the projection again, watching everyone. "Questions?"

There were a few thoughtful looks, but no voiced questions. Instead, everyone seemed to focus again as I watched from the front of the room again.

Over ten minutes passed. Define yourself before your actions define you. Maybe they could define themselves here, or maybe the action of doing this would define them. Maybe it wouldn't even help at all. Maybe-

Sensing someone's attempt at a breakthrough was interesting from the outside. The overflow of power coming from the person's body suddenly dipping to almost non-existent levels as it fell into a block. My eyes flicked towards my roster, quickly matching up student to status. George, internal energy. The rest of the class seemed to lean away from him and for several more minutes I could barely feel the flow of energy he used to push through the block in his right shoulder.

Then the block broke. Energy that had been poured into the block rolled outward in overflow for a moment before I could sense and almost see the energy flowed inward again in his cycling, touching his dantian. His power itself seemed just a touch thicker, more potent. Thinking back to Zach's comment, I could see how you might consider a breakthrough an additional layer.

Then one of the other guys closest to George jerked where he was sitting, falling to one side as a hand flashed out to steady himself. Camo uniform easily gave him away as one of the military from the base. "Ms. Firen, permission to speak?" He looked at me.

I looked at the roster again, Warrant Officer, address as Mr. or Chief, external energy. "Yes, Chief McInnis?"

"Cycling just got the tiniest bit easier for me. Almost couldn't tell and probably wouldn't have been able to if I wasn't sitting literally right next to him when that happened." He jerked a thumb to George, who was still somewhat out of it as he righted his own energy after the breakthrough with a volunteer holding him steady.

"More detail, please." The class was being recorded, but because there was no way to actually record energy flow that we knew of, so verbal descriptions were all we had.

"I was cycling when Mr.-" he trailed off for a moment.

"Bivens." I answered the unspoken question.

"-when Mr. Bivens broke through. I believe I have a relatively good level of feel for energy flows, and when the breakthrough happened the amount of external energy available to cycle into myself increased. Almost not even a noticeable amount, and even now I couldn't tell you if the energy is still a little more or back to what it was."

"No one move." I called out to the room quickly. "Do you think you were cycling the stronger overflow from George?"

"I don't think so, no." He shook his head. "Before you ask, it's somewhat of a drinking game on base that's become a semi-training exercise. Figuring out who someone is by the feel of their energy. The energy I cycled didn't have Mr. Bivens' feel to it after the increase."

I needed to get into that training exercise, but I nodded to Chief McInnis, thinking. "You said it was a tiny amount, do you think the 'feel' of George could have gotten lost in the larger feel of the external energy?"

"Possibly, ma'am. You're more the expert than I am."

I shook my head. "I don't use external energy, so I'm learning just about everything with all of you."

"Ask the alien?" Someone else spoke up.

I laughed. "I don't know how to, honestly. I've done the equivalent of repeating back words in a language I don't know to him, and 'How does energy work?' isn't something he's said that I could say back. Besides, I'm not going to automatically trust anything I could learn from him."

I clapped my hands to ensure I had everyone's attention. "Alright, pausing on trying for fourth breakthrough for a moment. Everyone, let's clear the central area. Chief, you're in the central area. I'd like you to cycle, but not push for a breakthrough. I want to see if we can duplicate this."

It was the work of a minute to get everything in place.

"Test one. Third breakthrough, internal energy user. Melissa, please approach Chief McInnis cycling as much as you can, no breakthrough attempt please. See if you can focus your overflow towards him." I waved Melissa forward.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Melissa stepped forward and I could feel the energy overflowing from her increase. Even having known her for months at this point, I couldn't really feel something specifically 'Melissa' in that overflow…unless you were specifically talking about the general crackle of electricity in her energy. No one else I'd seen had that, but give me ten other people who didn't feel like a specific element and I couldn't tell them apart.

Melissa stood there for almost five minutes focusing, although I could almost see her rolling her eyes.

"No changes, ma'am." The chief spoke up finally.

"That's alright. We're setting a baseline first." I replied. "Melissa, you're good. Back up and George come up."

"Test two. Fourth breakthrough, internal energy user." I said outloud for the recording. George took Melissa's place near Chief McInnis. "I know you haven't really had a chance to figure your breakthrough out George, but just cycle as much as you feel safe to. Again, towards Chief McInnis if you can."

George did so, and I could feel more energy flowing from him than Melissa had been pushing out. George didn't look quite strained, but the African American's brow was creased at his own effort.

"It's like getting hit with a light breeze." The Chief murmured, but shook his head after a moment. "I'm not getting anything from him and what I'm cycling doesn't feel any stronger this time."

I waited a moment still to see if anything changed. "Alright, step back George."

He did, and I gave the man a thumbs up. "Go get some water or something, let someone check your vitals. I really shouldn't have asked you to push like that."

George shrugged. "Meh. Kinda like stretching a muscle you didn't know was tense." He did as told though, heading over to sit next to one of the volunteer nurses who already had a couple of instruments ready.

I turned back around to the main group. "Test three." I paused, looking at the Chief. "Seventh breakthrough, internal energy user. You ready Chief?"

He nodded but looked a little apprehensive.

I stepped up, sitting on the mat facing McInnis, at the same distance George had originally been sitting from him and where Melissa had stood as well. I closed my eyes and focused for a moment on my dantian.

The energy flowing out of me was just a little over two breakthroughs worth, dedicated to overflow cycling. Energy I had pushed out this morning before my run here.

An amount that felt just above what I could passively make without even pushing myself.

"I apologize if this is bad for you."

The spinning energy in my dantian went from lazy circles to a whirlpool. I did not try to guide and build up the energy into my breakthroughs, instead letting it flood out of me, multiple times what I'd just been pushing. I'd never really tried to finesse where my energy went after it left me, but I found 'in front instead of all around me' to be vaguely doable.

Even eyes closed I could sense my overflow smack into the military officer, but I kept it up for a full sixty count before slowing down again, letting my dantian return to it's normal flows again.

I opened my eyes to find Chief with one hand on the floor bracing against my direction. His energy overflow was only slowly building back up on him as well. "Well, that was a unique experience." He coughed. "Like I was in a wind tunnel, it blew my cycling all around. But no, couldn't do anything with everything you were throwing at me. It actually mostly stopped me from actually getting any energy to cycle in at all."

"Interesting." I replied, not able to think of anything else to call it. "Did you get anything else from it?"

The chief looked hesitant. "Let me get my thoughts on it together first ma'am, but maybe."

I nodded and looked to the rest of the class. "Alright, let's go ahead and try to finish up with what we were originally here for then. I'm sorry for interrupting. At this point though, I'll ask everyone to please pay close attention to their cycling and what you're drawing in."

As everyone got resituated, I pulled George over to talk. "Did you need to do anything special, was there any reason you can think of for right over left or over both?"

"The visualization thing helped, I was thinking of the model when pushing it." He answered. "Switching to that I pretty quickly found the block when I know I was flooding the same area beforehand when I was thinking of the model. As for the right versus left? I'm right handed maybe? I don't know."

I nodded, taking notes even as this was being recorded. "Can you explain how you were thinking about yourself? Standing, sitting? Doing something, or somewhere?"

"Just thinking about me sitting here, maybe like a third person view on myself. Should I have been doing more?" He asked.

"Not if it worked for you." I responded with a quick shake of my head. "I'm going to need a lot more examples before we can make any calls on what works best. You are welcome to stay here a while longer, or if you've got a clean bill of health you can leave if you need to. I'd like you to write down anything else you can think of though, either way."

"I'll hang around a little bit longer. I do IT from home, so it's not like I'm missing my job." George smiled. "I wasn't able to push everything at Mr. McInnis, so I'll take a bit here to try to get myself together first."

I nodded. "Alright."

~~~

Two and a half more hours and we had three more people hit their fourth breakthrough. Melissa was the only other internal user and two of the external users managed it. The goop from the external users was enough that I and pretty much everyone else was really worried about those two having anything left inside their body at all. They'd been hauled into the actual medical facility we had onsite with a doctor I didn't know Danny had even hired cleaning them up and checking them out.

The Phelps med center was on standby if they were needed, but the two guys were in surprisingly good moods for having lost around ten percent body volume in black tarry shit that had to be hosed off of them.

After pretty much everyone else had left and I'd gone back upstairs to my office, I noticed Chief McInnis was sitting outside my door waiting. I recalled his earlier statement. "You get your thoughts together, Chief?"

"Yes ma'am, somewhat. I've got some questions that might fill in blanks before I go over my thoughts though. Do you mind answering them?"

"Sure. Come on in." I opened the door and entered myself, sitting at the small computer desk. Chief McInnis took the sole other chair in the room and sat across from me. "Ask away."

"When you were cycling earlier, were you pushing everything you could?"

I thought for a moment and weighed the energy I'd called on mentally. "Pretty close, yeah? It wasn't cycled for building up for stability in my system, so I kinda pushed my dantian for everything it could give me in a burst, instead."

He nodded, not showing his thoughts on that. "And do you know if Mr. Bivens was doing similar?"

I shook my head. "No, he said he wasn't quite able to push everything he could. He assumed it was because he'd just broken through."

The chief nodded again, pausing. "Alright, that somewhat tracks but is a little worrisome. I don't know if you could call it generation or capacity or something, but what Mr. Bivens threw at me was probably thirty to forty percent more than I can currently hold and steadily cycle at the third breakthrough. You however? Whatever you threw at me felt like maybe five times my ability."

"I'm not able to tell closer than that because it was just that much more than I could handle, since you nearly blew my cycling apart with your own. Would you be interested in testing that against someone on two or fewer breakthroughs? See if you can actually completely stop someone from cycling if you overwhelm them?"

I frowned. "I can't imagine what that would do to someone if I did that. It sounds dangerous for them, and if I'd known it would nearly do that to you today, I wouldn't have tried."

"Your call ma'am. I am required to file a report back on my testing with leadership though, just so you understand." He answered.

"I'm not stupid." I replied. "If someone important wants to force a test on another base, I can't stop them. Tell them I'd rather be there to watch if they're going to find some way of testing this. I just don't want to be the one to do it."

"Yes ma'am." Chief McInnis stood and saluted me before leaving.