Sadly heating up that much water to a boil was going to take time, so I was going to have to wait a bit longer for breakfast despite my vast stomach's complaining. This did mean I had a bit of time to actually explore some of those skills and mutagens that had rained down on me last night.

Moving away from the parking lot to the open field near the creek and its copse of trees just east of the stadium I considered what to try playing with first. Looking at my stat sheet, my eyes landed on my first and oldest. Prehensile Tail.

Looking at my tail that now ended in a massive eight foot flat slab of metal, it hardly looked capable of manipulating objects anymore. Running it through some simple flourishes I remembered from my brief stint as a knight at the ren-fair I found the thing was still fairly swift and easy to control despite its obvious mass. The thing was still a solid mass of metal so no matter how well it handled I'd still basically be interacting with the world using an oversized pizza peel, so fine manipulation was probably out. Unless using Focusing on the skill did something funky.

"Oh, okay." I laughed nervously as I Focused and suddenly it was like the slab of metal was like a gray sock over a hand. The giant blade flexed, bending in half before straightening out, flexed into a conical spear, spread into a wide fan, wobbled like it was made of sheet metal, all at a small flex of will. Shaping it like a spoon and scooping a rock out of the creek before bouncing it around on my bladed tail like it was a marble in my hand. Flexing, I popped the stone into the air, caught it on the opposite face, rolled it to the edge and flicked it over to the other again. My attempt to spin it on the point of the blade failed miserably, launching the rock away into the trees as I laughed. Still not quite a hand, but it looked like if I was willing to Focus a bit I could still emulate the manual dexterity of a mitten fairly well.

Speaking of which, I was starting to feel fairly winded. Scratch that, I was feeling ten minute mile levels of winded. Breaking off my Focus my tail blade quickly returned to its original shape as I almost collapsed into my own coils wheezing for breath. Keeping Focus running constantly apparently eats up stamina at a worse rate than a turbo-boosted Hummer, even with a stamina recovery mutation fighting it, good to know. Actually, could I Focus on my mutagen to recover quicker?

A very brief Focus on it didn't seem to amount to much, so I tried Focusing a bit more and suddenly there was a sensation almost akin to feeling cold water pour down a dry throat in reverse as power flowed into the mutagen at a slow trickle. I almost melted in relief as it felt like I'd just come from running the field in high summer and walked into a deep freezer to breathe crisp refreshing air. It only lasted for about ten seconds, as I'd lost focus on Focusing to luxuriate in the sensation, but I still felt hugely refreshed and ready for more experimentation.

So it seems Focus works similarly to feeding raw fuel into a jet engine, it provides a lot of thrust, but also empties your fuel tank quickly if you just keep it going. Except that for some skills you probably only need that initial burst of power while with more continuous skills like Respiration and Prehensile you need to feed a continuous stream. Let's see, which skill would be best for testing this... hrm, probably Lunge or Leap. Let's go with Lunge, it seems like it would be less disruptive to experiment with. Alright, let's do some baseline testing first.

Using the Lunge skill in my last form had been enough to redirect me mid leap, going maybe ten or so feet from midair. So I wasn’t expecting too much difference from using it now.

For whatever reason, maybe now that I was larger or on the ground and the skill wasn't fighting the momentum of my Leap, my Lunge yanked me forwards roughly fifty feet! I say roughly because while it stopped pulling me forwards I certainly didn’t stop moving as my mass kept me in motion for at least a good hundred feet. It just so happens the tree line was a little less than a hundred feet away, meaning I'd just thrown myself head first into a tree. Thankfully the tree broke before my face did as my shovel nose from my Fossorial Mutagen bit into it like an axe head, cleaving the tree in twain! Where it promptly fell on me.

–You have taken 14 Impact Damage–

"Ow," I groaned in pained annoyance slithering out from under the tree. "And that is why we do the baseline test first."

Now aiming at the nice long clearing of about eight hundred feet between me and where the field ran into the nearby restaurants I tried using Lunge again, this time trying to use my tail blade as the origin point. Good news! It worked! Bad News, it felt like a treadmill on max setting sweeping my feet out from under me and launching me seventy-ish feet or so before I spent the next seventy some odd skidding through the grass and mud. Thankfully no injuries this time, just a whole bunch of dirt and grass sod caught under my guillotine carapace places along with a massive gouge carved in the field. I was going to have to ask someone to clean that out later wasn't I?

Huh, I wonder if I can use Lunge from both my tail and mouth at the same time?

Now, the idea in and of itself was not a terrible idea. What I didn't realize until it was too late was the fact that my head and tail were currently facing opposite directions and I didn't correct this minor oversight before trying the thought experiment.

Sadly, it turns out I could.

*KRA-SNAP*

–You have taken 146 Tearing Damage–

–You are afflicted by Crippled–

–Lunge has leveled up!–

"Dios de Madre!" I moaned as I clenched my teeth through the absolute worst back pain I'd ever experienced in either of my lives thus far. "Oh, I am God's biggest retard! Lord have mercy on this poor fool."

Even using Focus for healing it still took me nearly ten minutes before I felt safe moving again, despite the cripple condition fading after a couple minutes. Both Jeremy and Jack came over to check on me in that time, but I waved them off claiming it was just a pulled muscle.

"Okay, that was a bad idea," I moaned, finally lifting myself off the ground and giving myself a full body shake to make sure there was no lingering pain, "Let's see if I can come up with a worse one."

Slithering over to near the decades-old abandoned restaurant, that I had eaten at three days ago, ironically enough, I looked at the full length of the field, being almost a full kilometer long. I hoped it was long enough as I Focused on Lunge, felt the click of the skill charging and fired.

*KRA-KROOM*

My vision blurred as I absolutely rocketed forward like a serpentine missile barely able to comprehend how fast I was going. I felt myself touch grass after a second and skip off it, getting a very brief ping from my tremorsense that helped me realize that those buildings at the other end of that field were getting close fast. Fearing the worst I used Bunker Down and poured Focus into it to try and ride out the impact. Just to find myself stopping mid air about ten feet from a building.

The raw shock made me drop my Focus which in turn made me drop to the ground. I sat there dumbly for a second before laughing madly, "Boy they weren't kidding about the 'Immobile' part of immobile barrier on that skill!"

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I was still giggling happily as I started making my way back into the middle of the field which was already looking far worse for wear from my experimentation. As I slithered along the grass Jeremy ran out to pass along a message from Jack that I was insane to which I happily agreed as I prepared to try my last skill, Leap. I coiled myself tightly and tried just a basic Leap going straight up.

Have I mentioned I don't care for heights? Because suddenly finding yourself thirty feet in the air is a bit of a bother when you enjoy having your feet, or closest equivalent, firmly planted on the ground. As such I found my startled hiss and uncoordinated flailing to be perfectly justified.

I hit the ground with a sound like a big rig crashing into an earthen berm, head flicking around rapidly as the fear adrenaline flooded my system. I patted my chest where I could feel my heart racing, so that's where that organ had gotten to, as I slowly realized that I was fine and even a fall which should have left me seriously injured hadn't dealt even a point of damage to me. In fact it looked like I'd done a fair bit of damage to the ground based on the small crater I was coiled in. D-did the Leap skill disable fall damage or something?

I tried using Leap again, this time with less panic and flailing, finding again I left a sizable crater but was otherwise completely unharmed. I giggled, then began to laugh happily with the realization that one of my oldest and worst fears had been rendered moot via a side effect of my skill. Charging the skill with Focus I rocketed hundreds of feet straight up. I felt the grip of utter terror seeing the ground so far away but reminded myself that I was fine. Falls had no power over me now! I told myself loudly and absolutely calmly.

Using Lunge I flung myself even higher up. Then I tried to Lunge to the side, and it, sorta worked. I did change my direction somewhat, but it took two or three Lunges to really get me moving in any direction other than down. Staying up was also proving possible but costly, as gravity and my own mass was really trying to pull me back downwards. Still, I was managing to make a very poor impression of a fat drunken pelican stumbling around the sky! I might not be able to truly fly, but I could sure bumble drunkenly through the sky well enough to fake it as long as my stamina could last. Speaking of, I probably had only a couple more lunges in me before I'd be forced to land.

I really shouldn't do this. But I'm gonna do it.

Using one lunge to fling myself back over the practice field and a second to once more go straight up. Marshaling the last dregs of my stamina for one last lunge I let myself hang in a moment of weightless equilibrium before roaring out, "This battle-field will be your grave!" Firing off a lunge from my tail I felt my vision go fuzzy as I rocketed straight down like a rod thrown by God. Seeing the ground rushing up at me I felt my fear of falling come rushing back as I shrieked down at the field below.

*BRA-KOOM!!!*

I must have passed out for a minute or two because the next thing I was aware of was being at the bottom of a dusty crater surrounded by everyone. I also felt like I’d been hit by a car again.

"Joe!? JOE!?!" Omar roared down into the hole my impact had made. "Are you alive man!?"

I tried to raise myself up to give him a wave and soothe his worries, only to come to the realization that everything below my head was fully embedded in the ground. I tried to turn my head to look at the situation, but there wasn't much to see when buried chin deep in the ground. Looking up at the gathered crowd I called, "What wisdom do you seek from the Snake of the Crater."

"Okay, one, fuck you!" Omar shouted.

"The Snake of the Crater is flattered bu-" I started.

"And two." Omar shouted over me, "The actual fuck were you thinking you Pendejo!? I get woken up by the god damn ground shaking explosion and run out to see a fucking mushroom cloud and think we've been fucking nuked on top of everything else only to find out it's you being a fucking fucked dumbass you pinche pendejo puta! Baboso!" he took several shaky breaths before finally asking in a surprisingly level voice, "Are you okay?"

–Health: 158/458–

–Stamina 40/100–

"Nothing that won’t heal in an hour or two," I nodded, "I might be a little stuck but I think I can maybe just," I looked skyward and used some of my recovered stamina to use Lunge again. It proved enough to pop me most of the way out of the ground, though I was now absolutely filthy. "Yep that did it, and sorry for the rude awakening, I was not expecting the results to be this extreme." I looked around the nearly thirty foot diameter and ten foot deep crater I'd made, not to mention the forty foot deep hole I'd made in the heart of it. Holy shit! Had I pierced the bloody bedrock?

"Are you done or do we need to worry about more explosions?" Gerry grumbled as several people started to wander back towards the stadium now they'd confirmed we weren't under attack and I was fine.

"Nah, the only other thing I was going to test was this electrical mutation I picked up." I smiled up at the grumpy armadillo, "So there might be a couple thunder claps at worst, but I doubt anything else will explode."

"That's hardly comforting Joe," Will's left head snapped as his right happily yipped, "Let us know how it goes!" The left glared at the right who swiftly defended itself, "What? You literally know as well as I do how useful electricity is in chemistry."

I gave everyone time to make some distance before I tried to activate the mutation, to very little fanfare actually. I could feel a bit of current running through me, but I wasn't getting the expected snaps of electricity or visible bolts bursting off myself. Attempting to slither with it running resulted in me nearly skipping along the ground as my already silly strength spiked, if I actually had legs I bet I'd be bouncing around like I was on the moon. There wasn't exactly anything really big and heavy around that I was willing to test my strength on, but at a rough guess I'd estimate that my strength was doubled if not tripled while using the mutation.

It sure ate through stamina like it was in an eating contest though. Pausing to Focus on Respiration for a few seconds I readied myself to test what myoelectric was like with a bit of Focus.

Ah, there's that electrical crackling I was expecting. From the edges of my carapace electricity was dancing and arching down to the ground, in, small. bolts... Oh I'm an idiot! Of course I wasn't sparking with standard myoelectric running. I was made of metal and most of my body was touching the ground! It was probably hard to get more grounded than I naturally am so the electricity didn't need to spark out of me to reach the ground unless I massively pumped up the current. So what happens if I'm airborne while using it?

Activating standard Myoelectrical again I used a basic leap, flying a full six stories upwards where I immediately began to crackle and hum like an overloading transformer. Woo! That appears to provide a heft boost to my physical skills as well nice! Now how can I shoot lightning bolts while I'm up here? I tried to Focus Myoelectric purely into my mouth and, Oh that was a mistake! My teeth are going numb! That feel super weir-!

*Kra-kow!*

Oh shit! A legit ass lightning bolt had just burst from my mouth! It didn't go anywhere near where I was aiming, shooting dozens of yards off target to strike a tree, but still! I can shoot lightning while airborne!

Even landing on my head did nothing to dampen my excitement at the discovery as I squirmed happily around the now slightly deeper crater in a snakey jig. This didn't really make up for everything else, but it was a hilariously fun ability to have and it was enough to make me genuinely happy for the first time in months! I felt like I could jump over the moon!

...

Actually, I eyed the massive domed stadium standing roughly five hundred feet away. I bet if I Focus both Myoelectric Mutagen and Leap at the same time I could jump clear over the stadium from here without even having to use Lunge! Not pausing to give the idea even the least bit of thought I let electricity flow wildly through me as I aimed myself in the general direction of the distant structure. Focusing on both the mutation and skill at the same time was a trick, only slightly easier than writing with both hands at once, but I just managed and let the results fly.

I did indeed clear the stadium.

By far more than I intended.

"Ya~ho-ho-whee!"