Mitch stands outside of his apartment too busy kicking himself mentally to notice passersby are giving him strange looks as he stares fixedly at the fire escape. Why the fuck didn't he go down the fire escape? The damn thing is there for emergency escapes, but instead of going out his bedroom window and down the fire escape he jumped around like some spiderman wannabe in the Apartment of Doom.

Speaking of all that parkour shit he had pulled off, now that he was calm enough to think about it, he couldn't figure out how he had managed any of that. Sure it was nothing too crazy: well within the limits of Human ability (especially in a survival situation ) but absolutely not within the realm of Mitch ability. He had been riding a desk for the better part of a decade. He should not have been able to do that.

Of course, he knows it is the energy, but should it really make that big a difference considering he was still at the zero level? Top tier zero is still zero. He knew that E types gained strength from what that insufferable zounderkite Alex had told him, but they didn't appear to get much of a boost by way of speed or agility. Mutter Master, however, seemed to have received significant increases in those two traits. From what he had read in the new-age books he had read this was probably associated with wind types. Based on that way of thinking, water types would have better healing or recovery than the average numbskull. He couldn't figure out fire. He hadn't seen anyone throwing fireballs around, and the books hadn't had a clear association between that element and a particular physical characteristic. Maybe fire would only see benefits at the higher levels.

He stumbles suddenly as he is unexpectedly struck by a passing boulder. Wait, that was human who merely appeared to be a boulder.

"Watch it!" Boulderman shouts over his shoulder without stopping. The girl he is walking arm in arm with stops slaps him lightly on the upper arm. "Brad!" She disengages her arm and walks back the couple of steps that separate her from Mitch.

"I'm sorry about him," she says. Mitch is about to say "No worries" or something inane like that, but she keeps talking. "But," she smiles in an apologetically unapologetic way. Like she is only sorry that she's not sorry, "Unless you're at least a four you really should get out of the way." She looks at his stunned expression for a moment before shrugging and heading back to the Boulderbrad and continuing their walk.

As they're leaving, the Bradrock turns to point behind them while saying something to Not Sorry. Only then does Mitch notice the E41 silkscreened on the chest of his black muscle shirt.

"What a tool," he mutters under his breath. The shitty part is that the shirt works; he has no intention whatsoever of even offending, much less facing down, a level four. A mental video of a head exploding plays behind his eyes.

This seemed like the makings of a brand new kind of classism. Great.

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After deciding, with much effort, to forget about this whole thing he heads up the fire escape to his window on the third floor and peeks through his window. The mist has faded down to a slight haze but hasn't disappeared entirely.

The only thing he can think to do is open the windows to air it out: so he does that. Both his bedroom and living room windows are reachable from the escape, so he hauls them both open as far as they go for good measure. (he should probably lock those in the future). After which he immediately runs to the top of the next flight of stairs.

After a moment or two a thin, barely perceptible cloud begins streaming out over the sill. Mitch nervously backs up a couple of more steps but quickly discovers that he has worried for nothing: almost as soon as the haze hits the open air it thins out to nothing.

So, in enclosed areas, it would stick around for long periods of time; but in open areas, it would disperse quickly. It diffused like a gas. High concentrations would spread out into less concentrated regions until equilibrium was achieved. He must have been the area of lowest concentration, and that's why the mist had followed him the previous morning. Well, it was a theory anyway.

He waited a few more minutes after the last wisps of mists had faded and then headed cautiously in through his window. So, strong start: he wasn't dead. The remains of his formation are still on the floor, and as he bends down to look at them to see if he can figure out what went wrong, he notices that along the outer edges the salt seems to have fused into a solid mass. This thing was a bit more intense than he had planned.

A couple of hours and a fuck-ton of scratched hardwood later he has cleared the previous formation away. He sits on the couch, staring at the open floor, wondering what went wrong. He really doesn't want to try this again, but he has talked himself into believing that maybe-death is better that definitely-death and so attempts to create a better method.

It had taken a while for the energy within the formation to reach a level that was harmful to him. What did this mean? He thought the most likely scenario what that the density of energy had to reach a certain level before it became harmful to people, even those with a low capacity for the new energies. That might explain why approximately ten-percent of people died each time the Tolling clapped about and increased the energy levels. The energy was just too much to handle for those low-affinity fuckers like himself.

So if he had left well enough the fuck alone, he would not have had a near-death experience. Near death though. The word "near" was crucial. But how would he figure out if it was worth the risk to try this again? Sure, it was the best idea he had, but not the only one. The mandatory testing was over (he had been one of the last tested: the tests had been set in order by social security number), so he couldn't just get another I.D. and get rechecked to see if there had been any gains.

Maybe he should establish a baseline for strength, agility, and healing: all of the traits affected by the energy of which he had learned so far. After that, he could check if there had been any changes or improvements to his characteristics. Then he could try again. With a somewhat less aggressive formation. There was an American Shinobi school a few miles away at the northern end of the city, and a gym just around the corner. The first could test agility and the second strength. At least he thought so. But how could he check healing rate? Cut himself?

Yep. Cut himself. Or scratch his arm or something like that.

He had to remind himself that it was either this bullshit or death. That made choosing pretty easy.