I was screwing around with the armors in my room, at my ‘lab station’, which was the desk where I kept my computer with a big box of junk next to it. Power Exploitation mostly involved finding a mentor with similar abilities, but the course itself was not graded. It was more of a workshop where you were encouraged to seek out a mentor with similar abilities… in my case, that meant asking Graviton, or rather Senpai Bob, for advice if I couldn’t puzzle it out myself.
Training in the tunnel had been going rather well, and even team training was working out pretty much like I had expected, Although some team members, namely Chinook and Glacier Girl, were confused I was taking the concept of The Chair Guy a little too literally, especially after my kidnapping. They had taken to unexpectedly going into combat mode to keep me on my toes.
Candace especially liked to jump me and start a spar, even if I was in civvies, as long as we were alone. She even did it when I was working on my projects. I wanted to get angry about it, but she was right, and it actually helped. While there was no way I was close to Candace physically, my fighting skills were definitely improving and I was already damned close to her speed, which she claimed should have been impossible.
Doctor Zheraine was technically teaching the power exploitation (transformative) course, but it felt a lot more like a lab course than actual training, but that was understandable considering that the teamwork and combat logistics courses were much more… focused. Right now, it was supposed to be all about finding your ability potential rather than concentrating on using it in conflict.
That’s one of the reasons why the first-year competitions and duels were not as competitive as later years. Most of the people who came to the academy were young adults and came directly from power evaluation. The first year was mostly about finding out what you were capable of, rather than proving your true potential.
As a result, my ‘homework assignment’ outside of the time I spent at the clinic, was to do exactly what I had been doing in my free time… building toys. Our student aid was a straight-up gadgeteer named Traction who was in her third year, but she didn’t even pretend to understand what my specialty was. She was mostly there for us to ask questions, but in my case, her advice wouldn’t help much.
Both Sabrina and Abigail were in my group. I mean, I guess I understood, since our powers were considered support, but it kind of made things weird since Abigail’s abilities were far more backline than even mine. Her minor reality shifting was potentially powerful, but in practice, it was more like coherent illusions than a useful combat ability.
Like I said, I wasn’t a real scientist, far from it. Hell, my education was woefully inadequate even for what I was messing with right this second. I was fooling around with a weird side-effect of blueprinting that had been bugging the hell out of me.
Remember those microscopic processors? Well, when I blueprint-copied them completely, without altering the blueprints in any way, they had a weird buzzing effect on each other. I noticed it when I had installed them in two different helmets, they were starting to get feedback from each other, no matter how close or far away they were, random data streams from one would start interfering with the other.
I was starting to wonder what the effects were, and if I should just start introducing individualized changes in each one, which was why I was enlisting Abbey’s help.
I waved my hand in front of the helmet, recording the motion as I glanced at Abbey. After a moment, she slowly nodded. “Yep. It’s the same thing. The feedback is sending the same signals through both helmets, but it’s only some of them. It doesn’t even seem to be particularly consistent, it's more like it’s a bleed of some unforeseen interaction between individual parts of the subcircuits, rather than a transfer of information between the subcircuits themselves.
I nodded, “Sort of like the static crossover? Crap. That’s why I was using silicon nanoclusters sheathed in carbon bucky spheres with a boron matrix. I was trying to prevent crossover signals, but this is weird, it’s like the crossover signals themselves are being shared between the boron matrices.”
“What does that mean?”
I sighed, “it’s like umm… you take a banana, coat it with chocolate, and put it in ice cream. When the banana warms up, it melts the chocolate enough that some heat travels to the ice cream itself, because boron is a semiconductor based on its temperature. I don’t really understand the math, but apparently, some quantum particles that make up the chocolate are susceptible to quantum entanglement, so every time I make another banana split, if I make it exactly the same way, all the different bananas coated in chocolate share their temperature with each other.”
I sighed, “I think I need to read that book by Professor Duarte. The one on probability amplitude.”
“Is it… a useful effect? Or just something we have to watch out for?” she asked.
I thought about it. Clearly, unless I wanted to make custom changes to each of the microprocessors I blueprinted, the boron matrix would be a problem, since the more helmets I created for my team, the more interference they would cause with each other when they had enough data manipulation to affect the temperature of the silicon nanostructures. That meant each helmet, at least, would need to be custom-built, and if I improved the armor enough to need microcontrols, the problem would simply get worse.
On the other hand, if I switched to a different matrix, possibly antimony? It wouldn’t alter its conductivity based on temperature, but it wasn’t exactly the easiest mineral to get ahold of.
Two hours later, I’d replaced the boron-matrix circuits with antimony-matrix circuits, and unlike the boron circuits, direct blueprint copying didn’t seem to pass any interference between circuits when they got active. “Much better.”
Abbey had been bugging me the whole time about the original circuits. While I recognized that a provable sort of quantum entanglement, everything about it was way beyond my abilities. At her insistence, though, I kept the old pinhead circuits to experiment with later.
Kaiju Tactics was a FUN course! I thought it would just be a dry retrospective of the different tactical maneuvers that worked and didn’t work against certain known and unknown breeds, but it turned out to be a lot more of a debate and discussion followed by a set of tactical games!
In essence, most Kaiju with a few exceptions had known attributes. The course had set up a series of scales containing numeric information, determined both by alphas and military fighting them and the results of dissections, and it was set up as a series of ‘games’, where the same scales could be applied both to known alphas and to the class itself, to determine the safest and most effective ways of defeating them.
I decided, right then and there, to do whatever it took to move their ‘game database’ into my team’s armor’s heads-up display. More and more I wished I either was a programmer or had a programmer as a trusted member of my team because I could imagine a thousand ways that kind of information could come in handy!
The statistics weren’t broad, either. Gynoscope (don’t ask!) was listed as 36 strength, 28 durability, with elemental and poison resistance in the teens that directly affected the amount of damage she would receive in melee with a basilisk and its poisonous breath. Considering the vulnerability of her team, we got to play with figures on a screen and determined that the most effective method of fighting was for her to actually charge right down a basilisk’s throat, activate her power thirty-three neurostatic entropy field, and then rip her way out while her team dealt with the beast from the outside.
Doctor Kress, the course administrator, beamed as he explained to us after we played out the numbers, that the tactic had eventually been employed by Gynoscope’s hunter team, but not before the bastard had taken out three teammates. One of them was a radiation-type glass cannon, which critically affected their field performance, and the other two were both class 3 supports, which eventually caused their team to get wiped out. If the tactic had been adopted as quickly as our class did, the entire team would have either penetrated much deeper into the invasion or defeated it entirely without losses.
We did lose some, too, although I began to feel a little bit guilty about some of the losses, since, if I had reported my power potential accurately, there might have been wins. Actually, a couple would have absolutely been wins, although once our team was outfitted with my custom-designed armors approved both by the power exploitation and combat logistics teacher, our newly enhanced team suddenly became a dominating force in tactics class, which unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, led to our team’s first duel.
The moment the armor was approved, the beautiful and ever-so-talented Chinook decided that it was time to reclaim her place on the ladder, which had been dropping while she went through remedial courses and focused on our team instead of her personal place. I was a bit gratified, but Candace informed me, in no uncertain terms, that she’d decided to hook her wagon into our train because, in her opinion ‘You guys are going places faster than I’d ever get there.”
Before I’d noticed, she’d hit rank 7 on the ladder, apparently taking advantage of both the dramatically increased impact resistance and the hardened environmental support I’d worked out to train down in the poisonous tunnel. That meant only the top ten could challenge her, but my armor attracted a lot more attention than I expected. Not because of its durability alone, it wasn’t impossibly durable, but because it was light and flexible enough for even people without physical enhancements to use effectively.
One unexpected side effect was, because of the way I had designed it to be capable of channeling essence through it so that I could absorb energy, Chinook was able to use her winds even with the suit being completely environmentally sealed. I knew it could channel energy while blocking out offensive charges, but I had no idea it would give those with environmental and point-blank energy attacks such a ridiculous edge.
***
“Okay, I am still a little confused. This is a group challenge, right? Teamwork?”
“Group combat ladder, yes. Technically we are being challenged to establish someone’s dominance among the lowest ranks. Right now, because none of us have challenged, all five first-year teams are considered part of the twenty-fifth rung, even though, school-wide, there are twenty-five teams. A victory will move us to rung twenty-four, while the loser stays at twenty-five.” Akyo explained. Chinook mostly only knew the scoring for the single combat stuff, as that had been her personal focus, but Akyo had studied those ladders, all of them, in-depth before she’d ever left Tokyo.
“And you said that it could affect other rankings too?”
She nodded, “Yes. Most of the other categories don’t start to get filled until after grading, but with your tech getting used in ranked matches, that means you personally could advance in support crafting and gearing.”
“Our teammates could also gain ranks in gearing and technical competence as well as part of the team. The only thing is the side bet.”
I glanced at Candace, “Yeah, that’s the part that weirds me out. I mean, is it legal?”
She nodded, “In the school, gear bets based on performance are totally legitimate.”
I nodded, “Okay, I get that. I mean… I don’t actually understand the bet. You are saying that the Phoenix team wants our armor. I totally get that, but the details are weird. I mean, you said they are willing to pay up to a hundred grand for each suit IF they win, but they were offering to pay if they lose, too.”
She shrugged, “If they win, you personally outfit each of them with their own custom-fitted suit at your earliest convenience. If they lose, they have to wait until you release the suits, if you ever do.”
I nodded, “So what do we win?”
Candace sighed, “A forfeit. They tried to offer a few things to counter the bet, but they don’t have a tinker on their team.”
I nodded, “Do we have to accept it?”
“The side bet? no. Technically, since the team is first year even though I am second, we can’t really lose anything by bailing or forfeiting, except for a big bonus for competing as a first-year team.”
I glanced at Mindy, “What do you think?”
Mindy smiled, “I’m going to accept the duel, but the side bet was totally you. I mean, they are second years, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I think the side bet is the only reason they offered, though.”
I nodded slowly. Mindy was the team leader. I didn’t think we were quite ready for prime time yet, but we weren’t bad, after almost a month and a half in classes. This would probably be a good thing since the mid-term trials would be coming up soon.
“I am not sure yet. I mean, the armors are decent for now, but I am not happy with the helmets yet, they are like massively pre-alpha. Will they accept raw versions?”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Candace snickered, “Considering the suggestions Frost Phoenix was making about paying off her forfeit, I am betting she’d accept anything raw you wanted to give her.”
I flushed. I threw myself into classes, but it was getting more and more difficult to ignore the flirting from my team. I mean, it wasn’t terribly blatant, but I was starting to wonder if they were turning it into a game, even knowing I was determined to avoid alpha girls. The fact that the lengths I was going to avoid getting too comfortable with them also pretty much precluded any serious contact with normal girls didn’t help. I felt like I was enthusiastically participating in my own conversion to a full-time shut-in.
“Do they know our line-up?”
Candace nodded, “At least what is available. But there’s a slight problem.”
“What’s that?”
She smirked, “You haven’t gotten your active powers registered. Right now, you are considered an enigma. Duels like this are very strictly controlled to avoid serious injury. Right now your air shield is considered verified, as is your healing, rapid movement, and materials merging, but from what I understand you are getting an awful lot of attention because your active ability seems to include too many disparate effects. If you intend to use your… uhh… special armor plug-ins, like fireballs or lightning, you are going to have to get those tested.”
I facepalmed. “I thought momentum control covered it.”
Mindy shook her head, “Not for a class three it doesn’t. For a class six, you could pretty much do anything and no one would be surprised, but you want to keep a low profile… a profile that seems to be shooting away from you faster than you can catch up to it.”
I sighed, “Okay, my lovely sponsor, what do YOU recommend I do?”
Mindy shrugged, “You are already attracting attention. My personal suggestion is to go ahead and reclassify as a class four, something that could cover all of your displayed abilities with a single power.”
“As a class four? I am not sure what would cover it.”
She smiled a little evilly, “Would you like to hear the rumors about what your real power is?”
I nodded, “Actually, yes.”
Mindy Glanced at Candace, who grinned, and I was not sure if I would like where this was going.
“The first guess is that you are an artificer.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like a cross between an enchanter sort, which would normally be eligible for a different academy, and a widgeteer sort, who would be here… basically magical toys. The problem is, that sort of versatility might get you too much notice from the magical school recruiters.”
I nodded, “I got a personal invitation from recruiters, so yeah. Not great to encourage that. It would also almost automatically demand a power rank update.”
She nodded, “The second rumor is that you have temporal manipulation. Not time travel, but the ability to speed up or slow down things. That would explain your travel, your healing, and technically even your walls, and being some kind of genius with the ability to slow down time would explain the equipment you make, sort of, I guess.”
I nodded, “That’s a possibility. It might not even require me to claim a higher power level.”
She smiled, “The third rumor is that you are some kind of power vampire.”
I looked at her in confusion, taking a sip of my power drink. We were all hanging out in the common room while the gentle strains of Marilyn Manson’s unplugged album quietly played in the background. “What does that mean?”
“That means that you temporarily rob or borrow powers from others. That would explain your power versatility, but would open up a huge number of questions.”
I nodded, “Let’s put that one on the back burner. As a rumor, it would work out pretty well, and keep some people from being as… aggressive. But there’s no way I’d want the instructors and judges to think that.”
Candace snorted. “That leads to the fourth rumor.”
Mindy sighed, “The fourth rumor, and the one that’s currently most popular, as far as I can tell, is that you are a harem lord.”
“A what?”
Akyo snickered, “I know this one! They think that you gain power from every girl you have sexual relations with. And based on Candace’s recent rank gains, you also give them a power boost.”
I shook my head, “Number one, I haven’t slept with Candace, and number two, her power gains were just because she had the right tool for the job!”
Candace smirked, “I mean, we don’t KNOW that you aren’t a harem lord. Testing it might be a smart idea.”
I gave her the stink-eye and she retreated with her hands up, grinning. “If I didn’t at least try, you’d think I was sick.”
I nodded, “Point taken. I think I will try to run with the time control angle. I mean, it fits my power pretty closely and it won’t require me to re-list as a higher class. That just means there are certain things I will have to avoid.”
Candace nodded, “mostly the powers won’t get you into trouble unless they think you can actually alter the time stream or do some horrible things like aging someone by a thousand years.”
“Do we have a good idea of their powers?”
Akyo nodded. “Yes, I already looked them up. Their leader, Frost Phoenix, is a speedster.”
“Interesting name for a speedster. Any relation to her powers?”
Akyo nodded, “Yes, she absorbs kinetic energy for her speed. It keeps her safe at high speeds, and makes her leave a frost trail of lost kinetic motions when she’s absorbing a LOT.”
I nodded, “Sort of like the way my power works. Very cool, motion-shift.”
She nodded, “Close, but more like motion drain to fuel her own motion, but very similar. Their anchor is a combination shifter and physical enhancement named Bengal. Very fast, extremely tough, strong regeneration and her shtick is, of course, turning into a humanoid tiger.”
Candace nodded, “Humanoid, but furries would go crazy over her. She has HUGE tits in her morph form, and is a solid five on the ladder already, which is unbelievable for a second year.”
I looked at Candace, “You are seven already and you are only second year.”
She nodded, beaming, “Yes, I am. Toot toot. That’s me tooting my own horn.”
Akyo shrugged, “She has huge boobs because she is eight feet tall. They are proportional.”
Candace shrugged, “Still, Jake seems to like muscular girls. I plan on getting him hooked up with someone by the end of the semester. If not one of us, then I will find someone else. His dick is my dick.”
Mindy looked at her weirdly, “I don’t think the saying works if you are a girl.”
Candace shrugged, “I saw it in a movie once.”
Akyo coughed, and I was grateful she was covering up my discomfort with the topic. “Moving on. Next, we have Caroline, she hasn’t chosen an ID yet. Physical specialist, very fast, and she can produce dense bursts of smoke that can render most people unconscious in a few seconds. She specializes in the staff.”
I nod, “I am sensing a theme here.”
Akyo nodded, “Yeah, they are all fast physical. That’s why they are doing pretty well on the group ladder for second-years. Twelfth place, mostly because of outlasting other teams.”
“The last one?”
Akyo smiled, “The last one breaks the theme. Quiet Code is an illusion cyberkinetic. Her cyberkinesis breaks a lot of rules, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first, she’s not a coder. She asks machines to do things, and the machines are… uhh… happy to help out by producing their own code, that code is apparently a nightmare for anyone else to deal with, and she barely needs any real computing power to do it. She can make a pocket calculator pass a basic turning test.”
I had an evil thought. “Is it persistent?”
Akyo looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, is it like a gadgeteer, where she has to provide energy to keep it going, or is it like a tinker, where once you create it, it’s real?”
Akyo started tapping through her laptop. “From what I understand, the cooperativeness, or sentience, I guess, is active only. She can add instructions to continue self-coding after her influence, but it has to be part of her instruction set, just like learning software. It doesn’t produce its own innate code unless she’s influencing it.”
I nodded. “Tell you what. Introduce me to her… Quiet Code? If she can help me, I would be more than happy to accept the bet. So who are numbers five and six?”
Akyo shook her head, “They don’t have five or six. Right now they are at four, three melees and a support.”
Candace looked a little worried, “If we want to play the honorable game, that means two people will have to sit out.”
Both Sabrina and I said “Me.”
Abigail snickered. “Right. No, Sabrina and I will sit out. Me, because I have zero combat powers, and Sabrina because she’s even more of a secret background weapon than I am. She also doesn’t have the materials she needs to be combat effective.”
Dammit, she was completely right. “I guess there’s no chair guys in a team spar?”
Mindy smiled, “No. Then again, against a melee-heavy team, you are kind of an ‘I win’ button.”
“How do you figure?”
Candace sighed and patted me on the back. “Such a simple man. You might be fragile, but as long as you stay out of melee combat, you are seriously overpowered.”
I shook my head, “Sure, under certain circumstances. But under certain circumstances, so are you. You are aware that my only advantage comes from when I use a disproportionate force, right?”
She shook her head.
“Yep. I can make an air shield or kinetic stopper for fire because fire has almost no real mass… that means that with less than an ounce of force, I could stop fire easily. And only a few ounces of force are needed to deflect most ranged attack paths. But do you know what would happen if you tried to punch me?”
Candace nodded, “You would disappear and reappear in your bed, fast asleep.”
She wasn’t technically wrong.
“Okay, technically, yes, but if I didn’t have enough energy, you would punch me and shatter my jaw. Your fist has too much mass for me to stop, and too much force for me to effectively deflect. So no, I am not a secret weapon or overpowered, I just happen to know how to screw with most alphas that rely on ranged abilities.”
The girls started to move to their rooms to get ready for their next courses, but Akyo mentioned, “You know if you update your record to reflect class four tachyon manipulation, you are going to get moved out of power exploitation(transformative) and into energy manipulation instead. It’s not as laid-back and you won’t have as much time for…” she brushed her hands down her body, which was covered by the armor I made her.
“Your body?”
She blushed. At least I could still embarrass her occasionally. “Tech!” she snapped.
I nodded, “That’s not really a problem. Yeah, I have some projects I am really excited about, but I’m not a tinker, and I already have decent blueprints. Call me resting on my laurels, but I am more intent on improving my team than myself. I know for a fact I don’t belong within a hundred miles of a front line, that I am a coward, and will never go anywhere.”
Akyo sighed. “I am going out on a limb here, but you are still repeating that s...shit. Why? I get it, some s… slag badmouthed you, but aren’t you holding onto that way too hard?”
I chuckled, “Actually, I’m not holding onto it that hard at all. I did for a long time, and was kind of using it as an excuse for when I screwed up, especially after my...terrible attempt at playing superhero.”
Akyo nodded and sat down on the couch next to me, her leg propped up on the couch cushion. “Is that why you won’t date anyone?”
I grinned, “I am dating five girls right now.”
“You know what I mean.”
I thought about it carefully, trying to decide if I trusted Akyo that much. “It’s like this. I have been friends with Christine since we were in junior high. We weren’t lovers, but we were both theater freaks and had each other’s backs.”
“After High School, we decided to try and save up to get out of Empire City and move up north to New Rhodes, that’s when we hooked up. Things changed a little, especially when she awakened, but it was… sort of okay. I mean, yeah, I had to man up and stop manning up when I realized that she was able to break me easily, but hey, that’s something every guy deals with. I asked her to marry me and she agreed.”
I shrugged, “Honestly, it was probably mostly my fault. I mean, I know she loved playing the hero game once she got started, and when my dad died I was convinced I was the next Elon Musk, which only got worse when I awakened also. My powers were weak, but I was convinced we would make the next dynamic duo.”
I shrugged, “Things got more complicated, she slept with my cousin, and I was stupid enough to cosign voting stock as an engagement present. She turned around and traded it to my cousin for money and nonvoting stock, to get the capital for the PR game. Amazing fights after that and me, mister ‘The love of my life betrayed me’ Emo douchebag, blew my share of the money trying to play the rich superhero and failing miserably.”
“Boom, story of my life. I finally realized that the PR game was where it was at, and because I had a huge potential variety of abilities I could simulate, I started playing the professional street-level alpha villain.”
I shrugged, “A couple of times some of my clients got a little… Well, violence can be a huge turn-on, you know, even when it’s mostly simulated for the cameras. But, you know, the whole power balance thing got in the way.”
“What do you mean?”
I sighed, “Almost every alpha is convinced that they are the best at what they do best. My power levels are incredibly low, but given enough time I can come up with an effective counter to almost anything. Alphas are competitive, and I didn’t realize that my most attractive quality was novelty.”
“So, I decided I wouldn’t touch Alpha girls, or at least not active power alpha girls. I am competitive too, and I don’t need the stress, and I refuse to play the hook-up game. But since I have been putting every moment of every day into my classes, my team, and my development, I am just not really on the dating market.”
“Active power?”
I nodded, “You know, front liners. Girls that are destined to go toe-to-toe with monsters or supervillains. I won’t marry someone I am probably going to wind up competing with, especially not someone who I might have to wait on the back line and pray they don’t die. I won’t be a cop wife.”
She nodded, “But you are willing to turn someone else into a cop wife over you?”
I smiled, “You noticed I wasn’t dating. And like I said, I am a coward… if I do meet and fall in love with someone, marry them, and someday have kids, well, my greatest ability right now is my dash… I specialize in getting away from trouble.”