The only reason everything within a city block wasn't reduced to rubble from the literal shockwave of my anger was my currently intangible form. Villains, terrorists, giant monsters, news anchors and politicians, all those I'd handled in relative calm. Unlike the days of the invasion, not much in how the world was shaping up had truly threatened my life or the lives of my friends so far so there was little reason to lose it - or so I had thought. Mental intrusion that had been going on for months. The last time I've felt like blasting away with my power indiscriminately had been after many life and death battles at the end of the Invasion.
In some ways, mental powers were the worst not because they were more ultimately hurtful than any other form of assault but because they could be so insidious you might not even realize you had to fight them off. Normally passive resistance was enough, but those that specialized in mental intrusion could sneak something through that resistance given enough time, a moment of vulnerability, or even trickery. This was exactly what had just happened with improving my Vigilance attribute; somehow the perception-modifying intrusion had bypassed both my awareness and my resistance but once I was aware of it, that had been enough for the influence to be shaken off. It had almost not been enough either, if my trying to puke my guts out from the mental pressure was any indication. This was entirely unacceptable.
Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y11m29d Known skills:
Points: 10/232
Action and Reaction, Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Eyebeams, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forced Acceleration, Forced Intangibility, Forcefield Creation, Greater Proximakinesis, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap
Attributes: Might 50, Agility 25, Reason 6, Vigilance 28, Ego 25, Luck 7
Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope III
Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II
Not hesitating a moment, I put an attribute point into Ego, then another and another. If Vigilance contributed to willpower because it helped you notice the problem and provided clarity of thought, Ego did so by fortifying one's identity so there was more of you to fight with. Whereas the first ten points of the attribute had made me more comfortable in my own skin, more confident, better-looking, less prone to fear, stronger-willed and less affected by mundane mental harm, while points eleven to twenty had taken all those things to superhuman levels along with an aura of presence and solidity, going into the high twenties made me, my personality, more than it was in a more esoteric way.
As it hit a score of thirty, I felt the world itself giving way to my presence and will, becoming malleable just a little. In the comics, supers with great willpower seemed able to go beyond their limits or even physical laws if they tried hard enough and now I sensed my own force of personality bend the world a tiny bit. Where what I could do had once been rigid my powers would now stretch both numerically and thematically. The difference had come slowly enough it had taken spending multiple points at once to notice but in retrospect some of the things I had been able to do should not have been possible or at least not as easily.
The other thing that would help against insidious magic was being direct. When someone smarter than you or at least better at preparation and planning than you would try to trick you the solution was not to try to catch up. With their head start that might not even be possible. No, the answer was to sit in the table with them then punch them in the face faster than those plans could set things into motion. The significant numerical and qualitative increase in my resistance to mental effects would hopefully force any mind mage to deliver their magic personally if they wanted it to work rather than acting remotely and indirectly, so now it was time for handling the "faster" bit. Point after point, I put my remaining reserve of power into Agility.
At first, this attribute had been about mundane balance, coordination, flexibility and speed. After the first ten points, beyond a steady numerical increase in all that, their effects had become increasingly superhuman. My own ligaments and bones had become a bit stretchier without losing strength in ways biology simply could not make them and my precision exceeded that of any machine my own size. Now that the attribute was in its twenties, more overt supernatural effects became apparent. My reflexes became the slightest bit prescient, my coordination acted instinctively on information that did not exist, and my proprioception gave me a sense of where my body was and where it should be well beyond what my Force Awareness could do. When I had no more points to spend, I felt comfortable I could rival most arachnid-themed comicbook heroes in Agility.
Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y11m29d Known skills:
Points: 0/232
Action and Reaction, Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Eyebeams, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forced Acceleration, Forced Intangibility, Forcefield Creation, Greater Proximakinesis, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap
Attributes: Might 50, Agility 30, Reason 6, Vigilance 28, Ego 30, Luck 7
Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope III
Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II
Looking at the changes in my sheet I felt a great deal better about facing powerful mental attacks now, but by no means satisfied. With six skill slots overall, I could not have everything I wanted active at once and even if I could have using combination effects in the middle of a battle sometimes took up too much time. But both of those limitations could be worked around.
Immutable Force was my go-to skill for resisting non-physical alterations. Being transformed, energy drained, cursed, mentally influenced, it worked against all those things on the idea that from my whole body and powers down to the tiniest particle or field, I was made of forces and Force was what I was. And through my mastery of Force and Self I could tell the forces that made me up to remain unchanged except through interaction with physical forces. It was not an absolute effect but it still blocked the majority of such attacks. In cases where the majority was not enough? I slotted in Retributive Defense and tied it to Immutable Force. Now whatever part of those attacks the latter blocked, the former would reflect back at their source.
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Problem was, that defense ate up a third of my available skill slots, which was a considerable amount. So I slotted in Forcefield Creation to project any force-based powers followed by Lasting Force, allowing me to grant force effects a long duration or even full permanency without me having to keep them active personally. Using all those skills together, I attempted to grant Immutable Force and Retributive Defense to myself... and stumbled against the usual limitation; I was already being affected by these powers so I could not be affected again. This "stacking" rule was what prevented everyone with long-lasting powers from layering the same effect as many times as they wanted and thus getting boosted without limit. No, to do this I needed to be indirect.
I slotted in Super Suit and recreated my usual costume as I did after every stat upgrade. Since it scaled to my body, it was as tough, flexible and as quickly recovering as I was, barring active Regeneration powers. Wielding the other four powers in unison again, I applied the forcefield I created not on myself but on my suit. From there it extended to cover me as well; it still would not stack effects but as the target it would emanate from did not have that effect it could be anchored and made to last. Normally, there was little point in doing this; not just because the benefits would not stack but because my costumes often got destroyed more than once per fight and the time and expense to enchant them was just not worth it.
Even now that I had a specific goal in mind and time to prepare, putting the effort to make something that powerful was considerable. In only a minute I was beginning to sweat as I kept pouring my power into the costume. Two minutes in I was breathing heavily. By the time the process was complete two minutes later, I was gasping and drenched in sweat and felt what an unpowered athlete would probably feel after a four-minute mile.
As my sweat sublimated in the void of intangibility though, I saw with Force Awareness both Immutable Force and Retributive Defense radiating out from my costume. I dropped those two powers off my active list and the effect from the costume spread to my body. Ten minutes of checking its effects while I recovered ensured it worked properly and didn't have any unexpected flaws... except for being anchored to an item that couldn't share my regeneration or grow. But that was a common limitation for everyone making use of shared or granted powers, whether the source was a gadget, a permanent spell, a super-serum or most anything else.
In the six slots now available, I placed Force Awareness, Force Adjustment, Greater Proximakinesis, Forced Acceleration, Empowering Regeneration, and left one variable slot that currently maintained my Forced Intangibility. It was the setup that made me both fast and sneaky while leaving me most of my physical power, a good general approach until I knew what specific counters I needed to reach for. That done, it was time to see what that big ugly box in the sky was about.
xxxx
Flying while intangible was a surreal experience. Even in outer space there was some resistance when one went fast enough and dust motes scraped even very tough skin unless a forcefield was enabled. Stars too had songs of their own, fluctuations far beyond the visible spectrum that one with enhanced senses or advanced technology could listen into. Then there was the everpresent pull of gravity that bent space differently according to where you were. Not so with intangibility; physically, the only thing that existed was you and the rest of the universe seemed an empty, silent, absent void.
As my power pulled me out into the void, I became faster than a speeding bullet, faster than any rocket ever built, faster than a falling star in total silence. Forty-five seconds later I was in geosynchronous orbit, matching the giant brick that was the previously hidden space station. A grey mass the shape and size of a very tall, rather fat skyscraper would blot out the stars in normal vision, but since I was still incorporeal I was seeing things only via Force Awareness.
Annoyingly enough, even from the distance of a mere ten miles, my senses failed to penetrate the station's hull. I could sense the light and other force-based phenomena around and behind it but my awareness perceived the station as an opaque, grey brick. Some power that was not a force-based effect prevented deeper assessment of potential threats but what I could already see was ominous enough. The nose of the brick-shaped craft, for it seemed to have engines and not be just a satellite, was a gun turret the size of a football field. The gun itself looked somewhat like a telescope rather than a conventional firearm, but that only indicated a beam weapon instead of a projectile. Two rows of what were very obviously missile tubes along the craft's sides could fire over a thousand missiles at a time at unknown firing rates and given the size of the hatches and their being augmented by powers they certainly wouldn't be the cuddly, conventional ordnance that could barely blow up a city block each.
Most impressive or alarming of all, depending on one's point of view, was the titanic humanoid robot strapped along the length of the craft's hull. The size of a supertanker and massing nearly a million tons given its gravity well, it possessed relatively smaller but not less impressive versions of the energy weapon and missile tubes the main ship had. This had to be the robot that fought off the multiple kaiju attacks in Japan along with the US military. While in many ways dangerous, its presence greatly allayed my worries about this whole thing; the builder or builders of the station were heroes and less likely to actually attack me if they hadn't so far. The station's erasure from my perception was probably part of their base's defenses rather than something malicious... but that did not mean I'd let them off easy. Whatever their intentions, their actions had still caused a big hole in my memories.
Plus trying to come up with a reason why they would erase my friends and family only gave me a headache...
I flew in closer. Even mundane spacecraft had sensors that extended for hundreds, even thousands of miles; if they had not detected me yet at what was effectively knife-fighting distance it was safe to assume they could not detect me out here. Eyeing the plaque declaring the craft the "SSS Pachyderm", I resisted the urge to facepalm and flew into the ship's enormous mass.
For the first time ever while intangible, I felt resistance. It was a sensation as alien as flying through the void because while my speed was cut down as if flying through molasses and my kinetic energy disappeared, no actual force was exerted on me. That oddity was followed by intense cold, as something drained my thermal energy - again without directly interacting with me. Keeping my figurative eyes peeled, I scanned the material I was slowly floating through with everything I had. Dozens of different faint impressions revealed themselves, effects that worked on physics without being physics themselves. They stretched oddly across more than four dimensions, even into dimensions that did not exist or existed solely for them. The two strongest effects by far were a general "Enhancement" that somehow magnified what the hull was and how it acted without altering it physically, and a general warping of "Energy" acting in alien to me ways.
I had seen many such effects during the invasion; arcane magic. Instead of using power to act through physical laws and their alteration, this form of power seemed to add or subtract new laws that didn't previously exist and was supremely annoying because there was no common interaction through which someone could calculate and predict what the effects were meant to do, other than directly observe and experience said effects. Fortunately, the field of Immutable Force around me resisted any changes to me, which was why I could fly through the hull at all. Otherwise, its material would have been entirely solid and trying to pierce through it would have resulted in more than the equivalent of a cold shower.
Then I was in, crossing invisibly into a large chamber in the middle of the ship. It looked like some sort of superpowered gym, where several dozen kids aged ten to sixteen and a half at the outside practiced their many and varied powers on either stationary targets or against robotic opponents. A good eighty percent of the kids were girls and seemed to be a lot more enthusiastic about blasting away with everything from summoned bees to orbs of molten glass, while most of the boys were gravitating towards several workbenches heavy with supertech gadgets. I guess the adage "boys and their toys" applied even to superpowered people... or maybe the boys didn't feel confident mixing it up with a large group of magical girls.
Snickering to myself I flew in closer... then an alarm rang loudly enough to rattle every free-standing item in the chamber. Before any of the kids could even blink - even those with obvious speed powers - a thick red band that seemed to be both liquid metal and solid energy lashed out at me from the ceiling. I accelerated away rapidly, but instead of falling behind the band matched and exceeded my acceleration, wrapped around me solidly, then dragged me to a dead stop.
"Intruder!"
"To arms!"
"It's a spy!"
"We're under attack!"
I ignored those and a dozen other cries to action and flexed against the tentacle binding my arms to my sides. It stretched but didn't break, absorbing some of the energy of my efforts and redirecting it to reinforce its own structure. It was also entirely tangible to me and in fact contact with it had forced me to be partially physical and thus visible because the enhancement portion somehow improved the energy portion to allow it to affect the intangible, while the energy portion fed back into the enhancement so said enhancement could be stronger. The two unified themes created a feedback loop whose full effect I could not see, but I was certain anyone without Immutable Force or similar resistance to supernatural effects would have been completely immobilized. As it was, I could break this thing with enough effort, especially if-
Two figures approached, completely derailing my plan to break out of this trap then demand questions of the ship's crew. The first was a young man of eighteen years, with short-cropped brown hair, a heart-shaped face that usually sported a shit-eating grin but had now stretched into an uncharacteristic frown, and a short but well-toned form that did not indicate any sort of physical power. The nearby tables and equipment liquefying and reforming around him into a golden suit of power armor proved he had another type of power entirely, and the lack of glasses that he'd finally gotten around to fixing his bad eyesight.
The scowl on the redhead woman's face on the other hand was very much habitual of the face's owner. Taller than the man but shorter than me and of distinctive, even exaggerated Irish descent, she fixed me with glowing emerald eyes even as her crimson tresses partially turned to crackling flame and sizzling lightning. She was superhumanly good-looking as much as the man was relatively plain - then again both of us had had our good share of vanity and powers tended to reflect that.
"Hi Jerry! Hi Mandy!" I greeted my old friends as I struggled for anything else to say. It was a difficulty the woman did not seem to share.
"If you break out of that band we'll assume you are hostile and act accordingly," she said sharply, the corona of lightning around her intensifying. "Now explain; who the hell are you and why are you impersonating our best friend."
Huh. Out of anything I'd imagined her saying at our reunion, that did not even make the list.