Assessment, Scott Summers...

“Afternoon, Scott. Adjusting to life without glasses, I see.” I’d had him meet me up on the top of the Baxter Building.

His hazel eyes crinkled as he looked at me. “You don’t know how liberating it is, not having to see everything in red, and not worrying that I’ll destroy everything I look at.” He sighed as he looked around at the blue sky, black rooftop, and the white on the waves and floating in the sky.

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t necessary, either. Some microcams broadcasting images onto your retinas could have let you see the world in color. The brain squad is working them into a new visor so you don’t lose color when you need to use your optics.”

“Really?” I could tell he was really touched by that. “Thanks! Wow, I should have been more curious about the possibilities...”

“You been talking to the other boys in your group at all?”

“Yeah. Surprised you haven’t gotten to Warren yet. But they all agreed we’d stick together through high school now that we can without a problem.”

“He’s coming.” Warren was kind of enjoying going out and looking pretty plain and not attracting so much attention from others. Dirty blond hair, freckling, broader and flatter features... he didn’t even really look like he was in the same family. “This is about you, however.”

I pulled a visor out of my Masspack, and handed it over to him. It was somewhat different from his old one. Instead of having only a long, narrow slot with ruby quartz, it had a central circular ‘eye’ in the middle of it, too, truly letting him look like a one-eyed shooter.

“Kinda heavy,” he noted, hefting it.

“Yeah, it’s an experimental model. They want to make sure it works, and they can shrink it down later. Hank had your measurements, so it should fit. Put it on.”

He sighed, and closed his eyes. With practiced skill, he put it on, letting it clap over his ears. He looked back and forth a bit awkwardly. “Oh, hey, you put those microcams in here!” he blurted out happily.

“Better. Turn that dial on the right side, and take a look across the river.” He obligingly turned and did so, looking out from the edge of the roof of the Baxter Building and at the buildings across the East River.

“Oh, nice, telescopic vision!” he exclaimed.

“And you can use it like a sniper scope,” I told him. “The top of the apartment block over there should have a target set up for you to take a shot at.” And Jean waving at him.

He scanned for it, working the dial, and zoomed in. A few seconds later, a narrow beam of red light flashed out of his central ‘eye’ as he clicked the lens.

-Bull’s eye!- Jean /reported from across the river, her telepathy crackling into the coms as the magnapsium there absorbed it.

“Looks like it works. They want to put in night vision and stuff, but there’s still some limits on the optical tech out there they could stuff in. They’re working on it, tho!” I gave him a thumbs-up.

He was staring across the river at the small hole he’d punched in the target. “I didn’t usually have that much range with my beam,” he admitted after a breath.

“You’re focusing using the telescopic lenses, a much more condensed beam. Normally, you’d have to spend psi to reach it, sure. It’s possible you could even go microscopic with your beam, with the right lenses.”

“Oh.” Beat. “Spend psi?” he asked.

“You never realized you were spending PP when you were really charging up your optic beam there?”

“Uh... no?”

“Your default beam is based on how much PP you’ve got in your Core. When you overcharge your beam, you naturally spend that PP, and so your default beam afterwards is a bit weaker, right? Overblast, and your beam can literally gutter down to nothing.”

He nodded slowly. “I’ve never gone all the way down in the field,” he admitted, “but we did it a couple times in training. I had to discharge into the sky with nothing around...”

“Probably because you’d blow out the wall of your training room if you didn’t,” I agreed. “You know what a Cantrip is?”

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“Uh, that’s the term for an infinitely repeatable psionic attack, as long as you have any PP in reserve, if I recall?” He’d hastily read The Core Disciplines after getting his eyes back.

“That’s right. Your optic blast is a Cantrip.”

It took him a second to process that. “Wait, that means... my optic blast has levels?” he blurted out.

“Yes. Overcharging is basically taking it from Level Null to I, II, and maybe III.”

“Uh, wow.” Codifying his skills and training was naturally helping him align his thoughts. “Wait, does that mean my optic blast can do... other things?” he wondered.

“If you are willing to spend PP? Yes, it does, as we’re going to demonstrate. First, do you know WHAT your optic blast actually is?”

“Professor X says my eyes are a dimensional aperture-“

“You’re inside an active Interdiction,” I interrupted him. “You wanna try that again?”

He paused. “Oh,” was all he said.

“You were testing your beam against Mrs. Richards and Jean earlier. Did you notice any difference in their force fields?”

He frowned, considering that. “Well... they were similar, but I’d say Jean’s were... slicker, I suppose? Smoother?”

“And do you know why?” He shook his head. “Jean’s force fields are pure force energy, frozen kinetic fields. Susan’s field is aerokinetically grabbing air molecules and holding them steady. It’s similar to a solid stone wall compared to a brick wall. Jean’s field will also hold sonic attacks at bay, but sound will go through Susan’s, and both of them are permeable to pure light.

“Your optic blast is obviously not pure light, or it would act like light, and not be stopped by a transparent force barrier.

“Your optic blast is actually similar to Susan’s power. However, where she is throwing around air molecules or holding them steady, you are a projecting psychokinetic, constantly streaming out kinetic force. However, in your case, it rides on photons, which makes it visible and easier to direct and focus for use.”

“But where does the light come from, then?” he had to ask.

“You know you can absorb energy too, right? Like, you can shoot yourself with your own blast, and it won’t do anything, I believe? You passively absorb light energy all the time. It certainly doesn’t take any more energy to make your beam red than some sunlight falling on you.”

“Oh.” He thought about that. “That’s why I can make my optic blast bounce off stuff that light shouldn’t reflect off of...”

I nodded. “Correct! Psychokinetic force riding on photons. If you want to, you can bounce a beam off a paper plate and punch through a steel wall with the ricochet.”

“Huh. And how does that work with my beam leveling up?” he asked, suddenly serious.

“I asked Hank, and he said the records show that you had never been tested for compatibility with any other color of quartz after they found that particular hue of ruby quartz for you.

“So, we analyzed the wavelength of light attached to it and went looking for harmonics of it, then I made some E-quartz in different hues. There’s a dial atop your central eye there. Flip it over.”

Hesitantly, he reached up and slowly clicked it over, making sure he was looking at the sky in case he blasted his lenses right off.

The lenses went from bright red to an equally bright orange.

“My God...” he muttered when nothing happened.

“Take a shot,” I advised him.

He reached up and tapped the lens, and nothing happened. “Uh?” he asked, when nothing happened. “Broken?”

“No. You’re expecting to release an orange blast, but you aren’t spending the PP to do so.”

I could almost hear the bell go off. “Ohmigod.” He stared at the sky, and tapped the lens again.

A bright and thick beam of orange light flashed into the sky, vanishing into the distance.

“Wait, something was wrong about that,” he blurted out. He waved at the air above him. “The air... feels warm?”

“Jean has another target for you across the river. Make sure the beam bounces off the steel behind it, and stay focused on it after you shoot it.”

He turned back, dialed the scope back in, held steady, controlled his breathing, and tapped the visor.

I watched the line of orange reach out at the speed of light, and bounce straight up into the sky.

I also saw the flames spiraling up off it this time from this angle. I also saw the paper target at the far end flare up and burn away quickly.

“This... this isn’t a force beam!” he blurted out.

“Correct. It’s much closer to a standard laser. That’s a heat beam. Instead of slamming kinetic energy into something in a wave, you’re directly imbuing and agitating it into motion, raising its temperature thousands of degrees instantly. Instead of pushing it away, you’re pushing it in place. Jean, any marks on the steel?”

-A hot zone about six inches across, with a brighter spot in the middle,- she /reported.

“So it doesn’t bounce as clean as the null beam,” I noted for him. “Which also means you can set a whole lot of different targets on fire at once,” I mused.

“Wow,” he murmured. “Are there more colors?”

“Yes, but you probably can’t activate them all. Would you like to try yellow next?”

He turned to look at the sky, reached up to his visor, and flicked it over to a soft golden layer.

He test-flicked it, and nothing happened. He turned back to the distant target, a new one already in place. He took a deep breath once again, aimed steadily, and tapped his visor.

The crackling and boom of the shot literally blew him off his feet in astonishment. I watched the bolt of lightning bounce into the sky, and a bunch of people on the ground doubtless looked around, wondering where the storm was in the blue sky.

-Right into the ground wire,- Jean /sighed thankfully on the other side, the target blasted completely apart, naturally enough.

“Electron stripping and redirection, sucking in the ambient voltage and carrying it along the beam path. Congrats, you’ve got a thunderbolt shot, Mr. Summers,” I encouraged him as he got a little awkwardly back to his feet.

“I was not expecting that,” he mumbled, dusting himself off. “It sounds like you were?”