Yet another distant explosion shook the rubble, pieces of cracked concrete and brickwork that weighed tons moving overhead, dust and soil sifting through the gaps. None of it quite reached us as we huddled below, deflected by an invisible dome of my own making, but I could feel the massive weight pressing down all the same. Most of it leaned against the tunnel's still-standing walls, bits of collapsed masonry getting stuck over the narrow gap, but there was more than enough weight left to make me sweat; the bubble alone could not handle all of it.

"You think that was the last of it?" Jerry asked from where he worked on his armor. The no longer anemically thin boy had been sending sparks of magic into the metal mass for some time and judging from the sweat and his shaky arms the battle and its immediate aftermath had left him running on fumes, magically speaking. His robotic suit had been half-caught in the cave-in and most of it lay outside the dome, in the fully collapsed part of the tunnel. I had no idea whether it was salvageable and I suspected neither did Jerry.

"Not by a long shot, I reckon," Mandy replied from where she was sitting cross-legged in meditation. "There have been several large explosions across the city over the past few minutes alone. Given their size and the burning exhausts plus the speed the projectiles had been moving... I think the Army is trying cruise missiles now." Probably not the Army, then. Though she was still right about the bombardment; my senses had picked up the shock waves in our surroundings even if they lacked the range to track the missiles or the impacts themselves. When it came to fire and heat, my best friend's awareness out-ranged my own by a significant margin.

"So what, we stay here until they stop?" Jerry's tone communicated how dubious he found that proposal and I agreed with him. Our current accommodations were somewhat lacking, what with being a caved-in storm drain tunnel, but there were more problems than just the cramped space, the stale air and the lack of entertainment.

"I don't know about you two but I certainly can't keep this up all day." And just in case they missed the issue, another aftershock had the bit of concrete the size of a small car I was holding up shift out of balance and forced me to adjust my grip with a grunt. "The force-field can't hold back that much weight on its own and unlike it I will get tired eventually." Especially after getting drained repeatedly during the battle. Fucking demons.

"Taking the tunnels was a mistake," the resident superpowered nerd said, anger and frustration rising in his voice. "We'd have been much better above ground, with more open ground to move in and able to see any curveballs coming. Instead we got trapped like rats - again!"

"Yes, because being hit by missiles would have been so much better," Mandy shot back drily. "Or caught by converging enemy forces, or shot by lightning towers once our cover was destroyed, or-"

"You don't know if any of that would have happened," Jerry insisted with a scowl. "The military and the invaders were too busy killing each other to even notice three people moving around in an active war zone, let alone waste effort and ammunition on anyone fleeing the battle." His hands clenched into fists. "We'd have been fine! My armor could have handled a couple missiles headed our way - the laser turrets were built for exactly such a situation - but noooo, little miss amateur sorceress decided we were safer in the death trap of a tunnel just because she enchanted it!" He kicked the cracked wall, knocking a rock out of place and causing an entire section to sag, bringing the debris overhead a couple inches lower.

"Do you have any idea how the enemy's divinations work?" Mandy retorted, meditation abandoned for the classic hands-on-hips stance. "Of course not, it's not nerdy enough." She glared at the boy, unconsciously taking half a step forward and looking down from her immense height of... maybe five feet. If the situation wasn't so serious I'd laugh. "Well for your information, such spells track threats and any one of us have taken out more monsters than any missile ever will. The enemy was not going to lose us in the chaos and he wasn't going to let us go with his forces only a block or two away. We had to use the tunnels to remain hidden."

"Guys, guys, maybe a bit less arguing and some more helping?" I broke the moment of angry silence that followed their brief exchange. "I'm getting tired here and you're arguing like a married couple."

"Shut up!"

"Shut up!"

"Yes, because identical reactions do not add to that image at all. What's next, finishing each other's sentences?" They recoiled in anger, annoyance and/or mortification and I continued speaking, every bit of levity disappearing from my voice. "If the two of you die because you were too busy unloading at each other to help, I swear I'm going to get a power that will bring you back as self-aware zombies." OK, maybe I was frustrated and angry too, but in my defense holding up the roof for longer just so they could argue some more was supremely annoying. "Now focus. How do we get out of here without rocks falling on all our heads and what do we do about the artillery and demons after we do?"

"I could fuse the rocks together with heat..." Mandy begun but Jerry interrupted her almost immediately.

"The fumes would kill us. There's too much asphalt in the rubble and breathing in what comes out as everything melts would be worse than sticking our noses to a truck's exhaust." He thought about it for a few moments, glanced at his damaged, half-buried armor and sighed. "I was trying to salvage this but... with twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes to recover I'd have enough mana to Fabricate some of the rubble back into a wall. No idea how strong it would have normally been, but with my skills boosting it it should hold for a while." He leaned back against his armor and closed his eyes. With my enhanced senses, I could see minute shakes going up his arms. "Problem is, I'd be down to just the inner suit and tapped out. No weapons, no fabricating or repairing things, no heavy armor. With whatever is going on above..."

"I could keep us safe," Mandy suggested with a hint of her old uncertainty. "Us" was probably not the pronoun she'd wanted to say. "The battle didn't wear me down; if anything draining the enemy restored me fully. In twenty minutes I could have several enchanted items that would help."

"I might as well keep holding this up till you do your thing," I said, earning narrowed eyes for my long-suffering tone. Apparently, my friends had no sense of humour. "I could get us out of the collapsed tunnel too, if it comes to that." Though I was hoping I wouldn't have to, for several reasons. I guess only time would show.

xxxx xxxx

Unfortunately, after more than ten minutes of further thought with the overhead weight seemingly growing by the second, nobody had come up with a safe way to get out of the tunnel without risking further collapse, large explosions, or both. Fire and enhanced technology were simply not the right powers to answer this problem from under the rubble and with our time constraints. Both Mandy and Jerry were willing to risk some of the more outlandish solutions but I put my foot down. If our escape was going to be costly either way, I might as well shoulder the burden, both figuratively and literally.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m12d

Powers [5/46 pts]

Force Adjustment III, Force Awareness II, Forcefield Creation II, Forced Acceleration III, Immutable Force II, Lasting Force II, Progressive Regeneration III, Proximakinesis III, Super Suit I

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Attributes [5/46 pts]

Might 20, Agility 11, Reason 5, Vigilance 9, Ego 11, Luck 2

The protracted battle, the sheer number of enemies, the dangers we'd faced and the effort we'd put into overcoming them, they'd all contributed to a considerable boost to our abilities. Mandy could wield a much stronger and broader array of fire magic, Jerry could build his tech in minutes, repair it in seconds, and have it be more powerful than before. As for my powers, I'd initially thought to wait until we were safe, look through the list again and pick what was best for any long-term plans we had. But as usual, that opportunity was out of reach.

Time and again, life and death situations had forced me into straightforward solutions of brute force due to limited time, immediate threats to myself or others, or my fears of whatever enemies I had just encountered. But however my current powers might not be what I would have picked given more freedom to make decisions, they'd grown on me. Overpowering enemies and tanking their best efforts with sheer durability, blitzing them with superior speed or using force in new and effective ways made me feel powerful. It was that feeling that had first pushed me into being a cheerleader despite my dislike for the social aspects of the sport, what had helped me recover from the accident and... other things. Those powers only enhanced that feeling times a thousand, which was why they'd grown to fit me like a glove.

But just this once, more than simple force would be needed. Extricating myself and my friends from the death trap we'd found ourselves in would need a little more utility and giving up on the most immediate power growth I could possibly get. But first things first; investing in the abilities that would best let me use the new powers to hopefully get the other two safely outside and through the gauntlet of enemies certainly waiting for us to show ourselves.

First, for planning the whole thing I put a point in Reason. At an even six points total, the change to my thoughts was more noticeable than before. My memories of previous events, of my life so far, seemed to sharpen even as they flew before my eyes as the changes settled. I didn't recall even close to everything, many of the smaller details missing, events that were mostly unchanged day to day still gone in the mists of time while others I deliberately shied away from and sealed behind mental walls. But everything to do with learning, knowledge, reading and taking in useful information and skill seemed to gain clarity, to be closer at hand and more easily understood. Heretofore dull lessons in Math, Physics, Chemistry, labs and workshop classes, little tidbits from online searches or books, not only did they become crystal clear but also well understood. Random trivia from everyday life was added to the network of knowledge, cross-referencing with everyday applications and events I hadn't thought of before in such ways. It was a process that had started in previous increases of Reason but only now bore its first fruit and was far from complete.

I didn't suddenly become some mental giant, a genius that could do the kind of absurd scientific advancements you saw in movies. There was no new knowledge appearing from nowhere, things I had never learned dropped into my brain. But what I had been taught I remembered almost perfectly and could apply as quickly to everyday things as a good engineer, I suspected. My instinctive grasp of my surroundings both from years as a cheerleader and from the enhanced awareness powers neatly slotted into that knowledge and could now use it. I couldn't solve complex mechanical problems between swings in a fight, but I could see the best way to apply what I had given a few minutes to think - even if those minutes had to be spent holding up an increasingly heavy roof.

Speaking of, I put one point into Agility and another in Ego. Immediately, I found my reserves of both physical and mental stamina deepening, the efficiency and control of every muscle rising along with the discipline and will to put them to use, the surety of motion and balance matching the confidence and initiative in my decision-making. It was a much smaller difference than the point in Reason had been but just as important in both escaping the tunnel that threatened to become our tomb and the fight that would follow. Plus gaining some more of that palpable charismatic presence backed by a slight but noticeable improvement in my looks would not hurt. Even grimy, sweaty, singed and near exhaustion, pinned under hundreds of tons of rock, I bet I'd look better than any air-brushed actress with clever make-up making her look her best through a dozen action scenes.

Finally, two points into Might made the weight of the world seem lighter, the concrete and rebar digging into my palms softer. My body became denser, stronger, like flexible steel even without my powers and those powers were magnified in turn. If near-total exhaustion had lightened just a little with the Agility increase, two more points of Might rendered it into mere fatigue. Even after tangling with those overgrowing imps that seemed to steal the strength out of my every muscle I felt I could go through another serious fight. Pressing upwards I found there was some give in the rubble, just enough to shift them but not push them back.

I had known the ability increases wouldn't be enough on their own from the moment I put a point into Reason. A five-yard cube of concrete or asphalt weighed three hundred tons, and while the rubble above were not solid or a cube, they were also tangled in broken bits of asphalt, brickwork and even bedrock and partially locked together in ways that would make lifting them harder. With effort and time I could push through, but that had never been in question. Doing so quickly enough and violently enough to push all the rubble far enough away that they wouldn't fall down into the tunnel and crush Mandy and Jerry was a far more difficult proposition. There would be neither space nor time for me to accelerate, nor enough momentum to knock them back completely... so I'd have to make them.

Spatial Distortion I: you may treat one distance at a time from half to twice as long, selectively, in relation to yourself. This does not directly affect other people.

To that end, I got the first rank of the Spatial Distortion power. It would be useful for more than our current situation but here it would play the most critical role. Hopefully it would work as I expected it to and not mess things up in unforeseen ways. The next pair of powers were a bit of insurance to that end and would make things easier too.

Spatial Leap I: change the location and orientation of one target of up to a quarter ton that you can perceive by up to 20 ft and 90 degrees in the same local space. Chronal Leap I: move a target of up to a quarter ton that you can perceive where they were up to 1 second before, or where they would be in up to 1 second.

Unfortunately, several pieces of rubble were simply too large to be affected by either of those abilities. Fortunately, they were not the targets I had in mind for them.

Retributive Defense I: harmful effects prevented, reduced or restored by one chosen defense are transferred to the originator. Instant Action I: exert five minutes worth of maximum effort to perform a second of actions instantaneously.

Of the last two abilities, Instant Action was both a way to get more time for everything as well as a safety blanket in case of errors. While very costly for its effect compared to my other powers, it was a trump card that would help in many situations and hopefully would evolve into something less costly with subsequent rank-ups. As for Retributive Defense, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the defense it was tied to did not have to be chosen when the power was gained. Instead, it could be chosen for every given "situation", though whether that meant individual blows in a fight, individual enemies, or once per battle required more testing. It would also serve as a big "fuck you" to everyone that struck at me without being either tough enough to take it in turn or so powerful that my own defenses were insignificant in comparison.

Finally, Jerry gave the signal and a good portion of the debris around our little pocket of air started fusing with the walls, forming new structural supports between one heartbeat and the next as all the energy the brunet had accumulated poured out of him in a massive crackling azure torrent. Concrete, asphalt, rebar; they were all perfectly recyclable according to our resident nerd, and his powers could do just that without need of equipment. They lacked the staying power of either Mandy's or my abilities though, so he could only handle a small portion of the rubble. It would have to be enough.

In the infinitesimal pause between one second and the next, I doubled the distance between the floor and the already crumbling roof and all Hell broke loose...