Most people nowadays had played a role-playing computer game at least once. Even someone like me, with near-zero interest in gaming, had tried it a time or two out of curiosity. After more than a week of living the real thing I could say with confidence that it resembled those half-remembered games about as much as watching an action movie was similar to shooting and getting shot at. Jerry's near-death had shaken Mandy, my best friend refusing to leave the slowly recovering boy's bedside. For me, it was just more confirmation our continued survival had been nothing short of a miracle.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m13d

Powers [10/56 pts]

Chronal Leap I, Force Adjustment III, Force Awareness II, Forcefield Creation II, Forced Acceleration III, Immutable Force II, Instant Action I, Lasting Force II, Progressive Regeneration III, Retributive Defense I, Proximakinesis III, Super Suit I, Spatial Distortion I, Spatial Leap I

Attributes [10/56 pts]

Might 22, Agility 12, Reason 6, Vigilance 9, Ego 12, Luck 2

Looking at all the accumulated power from just the one battle, enough points to grant a major increase in combat ability, I wondered for a moment whether Jerry would not be lying unconscious on a bed and all but crippled if I'd used them earlier. But only for a moment, because a good memory and even better awareness would not afford me the luxury of blaming myself. There had simply been no opportunity to improve mid-fight, not without an adjustment period of even a few seconds leading to mistakes that would have gotten me and everyone else killed. Unlike a game, just checking your character sheet mid-fight would be like driving and texting at the same time... in a Formula One race where other drivers had gone insane and were intentionally trying to ram you.

The realization was not comforting. It meant I needed to set aside my worries about my friends, the post-battle adrenaline crash, several new scenes of up close and personal horrors of war and any other distractions, then decide on how to spend the points before going out on the new mission. A mission that couldn't wait hours or days for Yours Truly to get her head screwed on strait because delays would get more people killed.

Being a superhero sucked... but we did it anyway.

xxxx xxxx

One of the greatest benefits of super-speed was that a couple of minutes to get ready could stretch out to a subjective half an hour. Proximakinesis also meant I could force water to fill the bathtub in seconds and similar use of Force Adjustment to how I'd made air ignite itself turned the water boiling hot in an instant. As for changing, I just dismissed my Super Suit, scrubbed all the grime and gunk and blood off with powers, and jumped into the bathtub before you could say "utility superpower"; the last time I'd worn mundane, easily destructible clothing had been half a week before.

Then, submerged to my chin in steamy, bubbly Heaven, I got down to some proper decision-making.

Someone once said "specialization is for insects". But while being a jack of all trades would be great, the truth was that people had limited time and/or resources; the more skills they tried to learn, the less time and resources they could dedicate to any one skill, leading to mediocrity and failure. There were over ten thousand professions in the world, each with its own skill requirements; specialization was mandatory.

The same applied to these magical powers all of us had gained. While my new tricks had proven useful and covering situations I could not previously handle was good, there was a limited number of points to spend as getting new ones required greater and greater challenges. Thus the twin questions of what I needed to be able to do and who I wanted to become. The latter was even more important than the former given how magic affected my body, mind and appearance... which brought us to themes and archetypes.

I sighed, let my head fall back into the water and stared at the ceiling of bright red brick above. As it was becoming increasingly clear from both observing its users and... dubiously reliable information from Verity, magic worked on and was strengthened by themes and ideas. What had once been a dark, cramped, concrete tunnel of a basement had shifted into a spacious underground level for a large manor, all brickwork and bronze decorations and lamps that looked like gas lights but weren't. "Aunt" Sarah, the old woman who had control over the building had embraced the theme of a kitchen witch straight out of a fairy tale and the building was shifting to accommodate it. It was yet another example of how our themes grew stronger as our powers expanded, much like Jerry and his super-science or Mandy and her sorcery.

As for myself, ever since the invasion began I'd been doing whatever worked and yet my choices in powers and abilities had been moving towards a specific direction without me consciously choosing it. Maybe it was repetition making the pattern obvious, maybe taking a few minutes to actually think about things with enhanced attributes let me notice. Whatever the case, I could finally see the shape of things to come.

I hadn't set out to get so close to an iconic superhero, not deliberately, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel great. The strength, the resilience, the speed and flight, they were iconic because they were both effective and awesome to have. With a few tricks to cover their weaknesses they'd carried me and others through the invasion and its many threats. Doubling down on the "superhero" theme, deliberately embracing it as others had done theirs... I didn't think I would regret it. In fact, for the first time I felt eager for any changes.

I put two points in Agility and two in Ego, raising both to fourteen. Already slightly beyond peak human in those areas, my body's flexibility, balance, precision, grace and appearance took a small but definitive step towards the supernatural. My self-image and awareness of my own body followed, as those higher stats meshed with Vigilance. I didn't need a mirror to know I'd left behind merely air-brushed looks for a natural equivalent to what a team of professional make-up artists working on a skilled model could produce. I could see it in how the water dripped off my skin like in skin product commercials, feel it in how my hair fanned around my shoulders in gentle golden waves as it dried. Beauty was far from the only thing that was affected but I'd be lying if I claimed it didn't play a part in my decision-making. If anyone tells you beauty is skin deep, smile and offer to flay them if things being skin deep are so frivolous.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Before the changes could settle, before they were halfway through in fact, all six remaining points went into Might. Suddenly my body stretched, not physically but more in the way of seeming too small. My every motion gained considerable inertia, the impression that everything around me was lighter and less sturdy as if it was made of styrofoam. For the pause between one heartbeat and the next the sensation was unsettling, then my newly improved coordination and self-image adjusted.

Without using any powers, active or passive, I pushed at a nearby washing machine with one finger and tilted it. It still felt heavy, as heavy as it would normally have, yet pushing it around was no harder than doing the same to an empty cup. How my mind interpreted my senses had simply adjusted to make using and controlling my new level of physicality easier. As long as I kept adding Agility and Ego at my current ratio, I could keep increasing Might without issues. Further tests proved that while my outward physique looked mostly the same, moving my own limbs had become as easy and quick as blinking, the strength to weight ratio high enough they might as well be weightless even without powers. As long as I was loose and relaxed others might not feel any difference either, but enough tension made my grip harder than a steel vise, as the washing machine found out when its frame dented under my fingers.

I got out of the bathtub, ended the water-heating effect and forced the water into the drain with Proximakinesis, then reformed my suit. This time I picked a full-body, skin-tight one-piece, complete with gloves, boots and a belt, all colored midnight blue. Despite everything the surrounding hellscape had attempted to persuade me otherwise, I no longer felt like wearing black.

If I was to be a superhero, I might as well embrace it.

xxxx

I flew out of the base, everyone within moving in slow motion. I was getting more used to using super-speed even in my downtime, but contrary to its common portrayals in fiction that didn't make conversations difficult. Sound frequencies didn't actually change, not as long as I wasn't moving around anyway, so the longer apparent duration of every sound took only a bit of effort to get used to. The increased body control and precision from higher attributes meant I could talk slowly so people at normal speed could understand with neither me having to slow down to their perspective, nor the conversation feeling odd or awkward on my end. Perhaps higher levels of speed would cause issues but so far everything seemed fine.

In the few subjective minutes of flying out I thought about powers and my first choice was a no-brainer. How often had I failed in something due to not being fast enough? How many times had I been overwhelmed by numbers or cornered by multiple well-coordinated enemies? How many mistakes had I made due to getting pressured for time? One of my powers already provided a solution to this, so why not improve it?

Instant Action II: exert five minutes worth of maximum effort to perform two seconds of actions instantaneously.

Raising Instant Action to the second rank afforded me twice as many actions to which most enemies could not react for the same cost. Paired with a significantly increased endurance from higher attributes would make it more frequently useful; a steal at only two power points. For a moment I considered updating it a second time - it could be a game changer given enough improvement - but the same could be said of all my abilities. More importantly, this was the first time I'd ever had eight power points to spare and no imminent, life-threatening issues to worry about. It was time to improve one of my third-rank abilities to the fourth.

Improving Force Adjustment would probably increase the multiplier to all force effects. It would essentially make me stronger and tougher, significantly so, and similarly strengthen all force effects I could make - which was a lot of them. A good general option to compare the others against.

Forced Acceleration would make me faster, by a smaller margin than Force Adjustment would make me stronger and tougher, but even smaller differences in speed could prove deadly. It would improve my offense with faster attacks, my defense by not getting hit, my mobility obviously, but also mental speed or the speed of my regeneration. The downside was that it was less useful against more powerful enemies; faster blows wouldn't help against someone who could tank them all, dodging wasn't as useful against magic or special attacks.

Proximakinesis was the basis for most of the force effects I created, granted me flight, provided leverage with nothing to stand on and improved my strength. It was less directly useful in defense but paired with other powers had higher utility than all of them.

Progressive Regeneration was how I'd survived all the fights so far. Against roughly equal opposition either through power or numbers, there was no way to avoid hits entirely. Eventually mistakes would be made or sacrifices to achieve an objective would be required. Constant healing that needed neither attention nor resources had contributed to every single fight so far, something my other powers couldn't claim. And slight heroic tendencies or not, staying alive remained my number one goal.

Adaptive Regeneration IV: you recover rapidly from harm. Every time you do you permanently gain minor cumulative resistance to that specific attack.

Empowering Regeneration IV: you recover rapidly from harm and gain a temporary all-around boost. Gain rate scales with recovery, slowly fades post-battle.

Spending the points to get the power to the fourth rank presented me with two similar, powerful options. The first was a long-term investment. In the short run, it might actually be weaker than my previous Progressive Regeneration for the damage types I'd healed from many times and streamlined the healing process to be quite fast. But a cumulative resistance would eventually make weaker attacks completely harmless and even powerful attacks less effective. With enough preparation or prior encounters, armies of mooks would become useless against me. The problem with this was that it was less effective against powerful enemies. Everyone that wasn't a summoned monster had their own rare, even unique abilities. Each new enemy I'd have to adapt against individually, rendering the greatest advantage of this power useless.

The second was an immediate boost. Gaining an all-around boost by regenerating would make every battle of attrition much easier. As long as an enemy could not quickly overwhelm me or couldn't defeat me through non-damaging abilities, victory would get closer and closer. Enemies that would have been insurmountable might become beatable by playing defensively and taking time to grow. The drawback of Empowering Regeneration was the opposite of its Adaptive equivalent; with the boost being temporary, I couldn't prepare long-term and enemies that knew of it could exploit the temporary nature of the boost. On the other hand, if how it worked didn't become widely known, it might seem like I was holding back in fights, only taking enemies seriously and unleashing my full power after they proved a true threat. The idea was familiar... and amusing.

Choices... choices...