It was not a very long walk. Considering that most people wound up awakening when they were young adults, BSA facilities being close to college campuses in the heaviest residential districts just made sense.

While we were walking, she asked more about what I could do. Fortunately, I had prepared responses for exactly these questions, and she was a lot less… invasive than the BSA examiners were likely to be.

“So you said you were sort of like a widgeteer?”

I nodded, “Yeah, sort of, but it’s more of an odd talent. The label for it was microkinesis, which means I can manipulate small things very precisely.”

She nodded, “That sounds like technopathy, sort of.”

I nodded, “The way I use it is. After training it for a while I realized I could go microscopic. It’s not a huge power, but if you use it right, it can help in a lot of ways. I can merge together alloys, reshape small masses of materials, optimize devices, and even repair damage as long as I have the material available. That even includes things like minor trauma as long as it’s not too deep.”

“How deep is too deep?”

“About three inches. That’s why it’s microkinesis. I don’t have any real range, and I have minimal power levels. In some ways, it’s amazing, in other ways, it's the weakest possible option.”

“A true healer can fix stuff like… internal injuries, and disease or poisons in some cases, but their power is generally limited to what they call life force. I don’t know how that works, but it means that if an injury or something is too deadly, they can’t do anything about it.”

“And you can?”

I nodded, “It’s not about severity, it’s about depth. Regeneration is rare, but for something like a finger, as long as I have some of your living tissue to work with to rebuild the cells, it’s not a problem. If someone cuts your throat, even if they cut it three inches deep, as long as I get to you before you die and have enough energy, I can seal it up quickly enough to keep you alive. Honestly, though, the throat-cutting thing is a lot easier as long as you haven’t lost too much blood because rebuilding cells is a bitch.”

She almost looked breathless as we walked, watching me, “That sounds… incredible. That’s like class five healer territory!”

I chuckled, “It is and it isn’t. That’s why I am not trying to work as a healer. First off, I have to know what you were like before your injury or whatever damage it is I am repairing. Most humans are pretty similar, and I have fixed injuries before, so that’s not too big of a deal, but supers have all sorts of weird genetic, biological, and energy quirks that if I don’t get a chance to look you over before you get injured, I might not be able to fix you.”

“Secondly, if someone loses a finger or an eye and I have to fix it, well, I am a microkinetic, not a healer… on a molecular scale, three inches is HUGE. Reforming all of those cells, pulling them out of your body and modifying them, and then replacing them and giving them the energy to regrow… Well, I’d probably be down for a week from energy exhaustion.”

Okay, that was not precisely true. If I had to do a full-body reset for someone who was barely alive that I had already blueprinted, I’d probably be down for a week. That three-inch thing was mostly for rebuilding stuff I didn’t already have a pattern for, but I had been careful to avoid actively lying except about the ‘who I was’ stuff.

I’d been Diabolus during our prior encounter, but she didn’t need to know that. I also didn’t want to spend my life learning the blueprints of every damned hero in the BSA and be locked in a shed resetting them after every minor injury for the rest of my life. An ability like that would be considered ‘too valuable to risk’, especially since… technically… it could even revive the dead if they hadn’t been dead for too long.

If the BSA didn’t nab me, the Secret Service probably would, locking me in a room in case some assassin got lucky. Either way, any freedom I enjoyed would be over for ‘national security’ reasons. I was a pretty good solo supervillain, but I didn’t harbor any illusions about a superhero team, or even a whole lot of normies with guns, being unable to bring me down.

“A cellular regenerator could do it. It would take a lot longer, and probably cost a lot more, but saving time and money is well within the limits of a class two, not a class three, especially with my downtime. But I have cooler stuff I can do that I think makes me a class three.”

“What’s that?”

I dug into my pockets, and put down my bag to retrieve a pair of metal snips. “Do you have super strength?”

She shook her head. I knew that, but I had to ask.

I held up a nickel and a penny. And offered them to her. “Here, check these out. Ordinary change, right?”

She nodded, looking them over, “They look like it.”

“Go ahead and cut them in half.”

She took the offered snips and with a little grunt of effort managed to clip them both. Not very clean, but then she offered them back to me, “I am now officially a felon.”

I laughed, “Not really. Machines have been mushing pennies into keepsakes for a hundred years. That law was meant to stop forgery, hell the government would love it if you burned billions of dollars, since it wouldn’t have to honor their debt. Now watch this.”

I carefully took all four halves, put them back together, and then pressed them together. After a few moments, all four halves became a slightly larger whole. Poor Ben and Abe had pretty much ceased to exist since I didn’t feel like reconstructing their heads on either side of the coin.

“What did you do?” she asked.

I held up the disk. “I merged them together. Of course, nickels aren’t really much nickel, and cents are mostly tin and manganese now, but I blended the alloys, reinforced the molecular bonds, and realigned the crystalline structure.” I offered her the snips. “Try it now.”

She nodded and tried to cut the alloy blend. After a few minutes, she had a slight crease in one edge, but the snips were dulled and it wasn’t cut. “Ouch,” she said, handing the snips back to me. "I didn't add force to it because I figured it would break the snips."

I smiled, “That’s my best power. I can reinforce things and make alloys and composites that are pretty much impossible using standard methods, at least on a small scale. I couldn’t put up a building, but give me a few minutes and I could make a ring that’s almost impossible to break short of throwing it into Mount Doom.”

“That’s really awesome.”

I chuckled, “It’s cool, but it’s small scale. I am also not a real widgeteer, I can’t make anything that can’t exist in reality, but then again, unlike a widgeteer, it’s permanent. That’s why my known name is Blueprint. Give me a design for something small like a watch or even an integrated circuit, and enough raw materials, and I will make you something that’s ten times better.”

She looked very thoughtful, “Can you make a diamond?”

I nodded as we approached the squat BSA complex. “Yes. But I wouldn’t waste my time. The value is artificially inflated, and the compression energy cost of making one large enough to be worth selling, I’d be out for weeks, and I wouldn’t get any real value. I’d make more per hour flipping burgers.”

“That makes sense. How about weirder stuff, like c60 fullerenes?”

I nodded, “I don’t know?”

“How about stuff like nanotubes and nanofibers? I mean, if you can produce those in long chains, places like DuPont would hire you for millions. Why haven’t you tried that?”

I looked at her with my jaw dropped, letting the door swing closed.

She was smiling at me oddly, and tilted her head, waiting for my reply.

“Because.” I said, slowly, “I am an idiot. I never really thought about it. I also don’t really know how to do that.”

“Can I make a suggestion?”

I nodded slowly, my mind blown by the possibilities.

She smiled a little, “When you re-assess, show them what you can do with merging and strengthening materials, and maybe the surface healing. Don’t tell them how you do it, just tell them you think it into existence like most alphas do. Between your material dependency and low energy levels, I am still pretty sure they will rank you as at least a class-five support. Otherwise, they are likely to throw you in a black site lab forever.”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I will be more than happy to be your referral, which means technically they would have to get through me to get to you, and I am NOT a support. Right now I am class four, but after training, I know I have at least class five potential, and pissing off a class five alpha is generally frowned upon.”

“How do you know all this?” I asked.

She smiled a little, “My mom is a functional replicator.”

Whoah. Okay, remember how I said widgeteer stuff expires eventually? Well, replicators create expendable devices, but they can be used to build OTHER stuff that isn’t expendable. If widgeteer drones can build a building, the building isn’t going to fall down when the drones expire. Just like a wizard or tinker cell replicator can cast a spell or create a device that can regenerate, the regenerated limb doesn’t just stop working when the alpha runs out of energy.

Functional replicators were a whole different story. They weren’t as smart or as insane as double-reinforced super-geniuses, but they were replicators that were damned close. They could create REAL technology that could be reverse-engineered before it expired, or even just use small bits of widgeteer tech to enable much more powerful true technology, like batteries or golem brains that make drones smarter or have far more power than they should have.

As a functional replicator, Mindy’s mom probably had a perfect idea of how black research sites worked and might have even spent some time in one.

“Right. You win. Let’s kick this pig.” I said as I held open the glass doors for her into the BSA facility… exactly the place where you are likely to be locked down as a national security asset.

But weirdly, she was starting to become the first person I trusted in years since Christine proved that trust was a huge mistake.

***

“Your referral has paid your assessment fee, but that will be refunded to her if you qualify for a scholarship. I do need to warn you, however, that scholarships for males are very uncommon. This is not sexism, this is simply the law of averages since most males don’t have a power paradigm that encourages public service.”

The young lady at the assessment desk actually seemed interested in a male getting a referral. To be honest, most men didn’t even bother trying for the academy.

The thousand-dollar reassessment fee was often considered more trouble than it was worth, and if a man assessed higher than rank 2, they could often get work as part of a publicity team even if they were more-or-less untrained. No one expected them to hunt supercriminals, and fighting during waves or Kaiju attacks was more of a case of power strength and endurance than training.

Not to mention that more than a few of them simply took enhanced jobs or became supercriminals themselves. It was vanishingly unlikely that I was going to be the only male at Kellar Academy, but I was definitely going to be one of only a handful.

And if I DID manage to get a scholarship, well, most of the guys that would be there would have wealthy families, since an academy was not cheap. Socially unpromising, but if I didn’t find some better way to deal with energy recovery, I’d be doomed to spend the rest of my life as a third-rate supervillain barely making ends meet, since based on my current energy growth, it would take me damned close to thirty years before I could regularly produce more than a flake of anything useful or use my powers effectively.

After a quick description of what I was planning to provide as my ‘evolution’, I was taken down to a small workshop on the second floor, where I met a bearded man dressed in Contraweave.

Contraweave was great stuff. It had the ability to distribute force over most of its surface, making it basically bulletproof, and it was highly resistant to heat, and cold, and would even ground something like a laser or electricity burst. Of course, the fact that it was skin-tight and cost almost a thousand dollars a square foot meant I had never used it myself, but it was often a standard issue for crime-fighting alphas. The fact that it was form-fitting and fairly thin, almost like spandex, meant that more than a few super-types would rather wear armor or Proxovan, which was a lot cheaper and heavier and behaved more like neoprene.

Mostly people wore armor bits under it, as much for protection as for not revealing their religion or whether they were chilly. Yes, it was that thin, but to be fair, it was also more durable than most armor for people who already had protection and just needed to be sure that they didn’t get charged with indecent exposure after a rough fight. Not that it wasn’t sort of indecent even as a full-body suit, a fact that more than a few of the more attractive alphas capitalized on.

This guy’s contraweave was just a solid yellow, and he covered it up with a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts as well as a pair of Crocs. It was clearly more for protection in case something went wrong rather than a fashion statement.

The workshop, or lab, was clearly meant for powers testing, as it had workbenches, some weights, and a short multi-range. Obviously, stronger powers would probably require a more comprehensive testing suite, especially if you needed to test defensive abilities, but for an initial class two or three combatant, or a non-combatant like me, this should be fine.

He was seated at a desk with a workstation and smiled when I entered. “My identity is Linker. Did she tell you I was a truthseeker?” he asked me in a gravelly, but friendly voice.

I nodded, “Minor Bio-enhancer, actually, class three, but with an enhanced sensory suite that qualifies you as a court polygraph.”

He nodded, “Truth. Good baseline. I will be asking a series of questions before I allow you to demonstrate your power evolution. If you don’t want to answer a question, just say you won’t, and if for any that you don’t know the answer please just say you don’t know the answer instead of trying to guess or prevaricate. As an evolved power, I assume you have already tested your limits, will this space work?”

I nodded, “It should work, but I haven’t so much evolved my power as determined its capabilities since my first assessment. I believe I would qualify as at least a class three utility now, although the student that is referring me thinks I could qualify up to class five… but I think she is just trying to boost my confidence.”

He nodded, “Well, while you are here, we are being recorded. I can make an initial estimate, but if you disagree with my assessment or for...other reasons, the recording can be audited by the local Alpha council. I’ve been audited 37 times, usually by clients who disagree with my class rating, but so far my judgment has not been overturned. I am pretty good at this.”

I grinned, “Perfect. If I am just a class two, I’d much rather just know it now than get into trouble from being overconfident.”

He raised an eyebrow, “Partial falsehood?”

I nodded, “I don’t think I am a class two, but you’re the expert, and while I won’t be happy if you asses me at that, because it’s liable to cost me, I am unlikely to contest your judgment.”

Some of the questions, I clarified, and then reluctantly said I didn’t wish to answer, like ‘Have you ever committed a felony’, which I asked if juvenile pranks count, and after an affirmative, I clammed up about. Obviously, I didn’t have any felony warrants, at least not that I knew about. Negative Zero probably had felony warrants, but that’s one of the reasons why he was deceased.

“So let me get this straight,” he said. He was able to bend the ‘improved’ coin with his fingers, which just showed that he clearly used his bio-enhancement on his own body, but it was a struggle. “You can merge and reinforce almost anything, including wounds?”

I nodded, “Yeah. But it’s always small-scale. That’s what I spent the last two years learning to do. The biggest problem, and the reason I wouldn’t call myself a widgeteer, is because of the energy requirements.”

“What do you mean?”

I thought about it for a moment, “You know how the human body produces bio-electricity and caloric energy?”

He chuckled, and I remembered, bio-enhancer. “I might have some familiarity with the concept.”

“Well, I did some research. Most alphas seem to draw the energy for their powers out of the environment, sort of. They use bio-energy to control it, so after they use their powers for a while or do one of their giant attacks, they are drained. They need to eat, rest, sleep, and maybe work out a little to rebuild it.”

He nodded slowly.

“In my case, I have to use that bio-energy for every part of my powers, not just for control. I don’t have any environmental energy I can wrestle into shape. That’s why what I can do is so minor… I technically could probably use my abilities to bend a steel bar, but it would take a lot more energy than just picking the damned thing up and hammering it with a hammer until it bends. The larger something is, the more energy it requires to manipulate exponentially.”

He nodded, “So you could stick a one-pound pile of pennies and nickels together, but if you tried to stick one pound of solid nickel and copper together, it would be a lot harder?”

I nodded, “That’s exactly it. In fact, merging a pound of actual bronze is way outside of my energy pool. I mean, I could do it slowly, and it would look weird for a while, but eventually, I would get there… or I could do about half that in a hurry, burn out my energy pool, and then I’d have to spend a week relaxing, eating, and feeling like crap before I tried it again.”

“Power burnout.”

I nodded, “Exactly. I call it energy debt.”

“But it’s not that bad when you… heal, right?”

I shrugged, “That depends on the wound. A simple cut? Merging the tissue back together is child’s play if it’s inside of my range, but if there’s a lot more damage, dead tissue, or missing flesh, it gets exponentially more difficult based on actual mass. A simple slash is easy, a large third-degree burn could potentially be impossible.”

He looked at me seriously, “Why is it that I keep getting the feeling you are only telling me half-truths?”

I shrugged, “Because I am? Let’s put it this way… if I have to heal myself, I can bring a lot more of my bio-energy into play, because I am willing to sacrifice my body’s resources to stay alive, and I know what I am doing… If it’s someone else, well, unlike you I am not a bio-controller. I don’t really know what’s wrong with them, and just sort of think my powers into working. If I run out of energy, I have nothing left to offer them, because the resources I could pull on to heal myself are a lot less than what I can pull from THEM. Three inches, remember?”

He nodded, “That’s a lot closer… okay, I will buy that. Do you have a way of determining how low in energy you are? Like right now?”

I nodded, “Yep, I am running a little over ten percent. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to try Kellar. I hoped that they had a way of helping me improve my potential energy, instead of having to constantly walk around in burnout and eat ten times as much as anyone else just to hope for another one percent someday.”

He smiled slightly, “That and a favorable grant or possibly even a scholarship?”

I nodded, “Not going to lie. That’s the primary reason. I mean, yeah, I’d love to improve my power, but in the long run, my degree is going to keep food on the table and maybe support a family someday.”

He chuckled, “Yes and no. Based on your display, I am going to tentatively assign you as a support class 6.”

“What?”