I nodded slowly, meeting each and every one of their eyes. “Yep.” And let that sink in. “And just imagine when they come looking for a blade baby... and find six of ‘em. And me.”

Their faces all changed, visualizing that. Mindclaws around their hands...

Brekko was thinking faster and further then all of them. “Can we trust you?” he asked.

I just held up my hand. “You’re asking the wrong question. I’ve shown you my colors. What you should be asking is... how can we get this lady to trust us, a bunch of greens?”

They all looked at one another, and even Brekko looked a little downcast, but then straightened. “You say you can give us a Claw like that, and train us, show us the ropes. Nobody here is willing to do anything else but use us up and throw us away. You willing to teach us, show us shit like you’re saying, stuff we couldn’t even imagine... fuck, yeah, you can count on us. I’ll do whatever you say, girl!” The others all agreed with quick nods. This was like a golden opportunity come from Heaven. Turn it away? As if!

“Well, then, here’s the deal. I’ll take you in, I’ll Open you up as fellow Nulls, and I’ll train you all, including the baby blade. But you’ll have to agree to a contract to do that, a psionic geas Tatted right onto your brains.

“You’ll be my gang, as well as my students. I’ll have shit for you to do. That shit will help you get stronger, stay on the path, get more independent and able, give you focus for your life, the kind of focus that’ll bring you out of this place.

“You’re going to give me all of your time until you are twenty. At twenty, we sit down and talk, and either you decide to stay on, or you find a way to repay me, and you walk.

“If that’s okay with you all, then we’re good to go. Follow me, and we’ll get you initiated, and your first lessons will start.”

“Where you live, girl?” Brekko had to ask. The fact that I could even do such a thing showed I was way up the power scale from them.

“You will address me as Sensei, or Sage Sama,” I said in a clipped voice. “That’s a sign of respect. I will be your teacher, and I know more than you. I am not your boss, your sis, your mate, or your girl. I am your instructor and your guide. You will call me as such, and if you can’t bear to do so, then fuck off.”

“Sage Sama, where you live?” Brekko rephrased the question sort of respectfully.

“Right there.” I pointed, and their eyes followed my finger, and they hastily swore and looked away.

“You live in Habberblok?” They all looked at me as if I was crazy.

“To be precise, I live in Habberblok in the Top Fifty.” I let that sink in, and they all gaped at me. “And if you choose to follow me, at some point, so will you.”

Hook, set! I had them. There was cool, and there was “She lives in the place that kills people that look at it too long”...

-------------

“This is floor 157. Nobody stays here, so we’ve got our choice of rooms,” I pointed out to my new cohort of six teens, who looked a bit jumpy. The whole floor was indeed totally abandoned, and given how close the Top Fifty was, it wasn’t surprising. Davro was especially twitchy.

I pointed them to chairs probably near as old as the building around a couple tables of equal pedigree. “Sit. It’s time to Mark you.” They swallowed despite themselves at the contract they were about to enter, and took their seats around one table, and I set down my case of Inks on the other. “Brightboy Brekko, you’re first...”

My Claw was gold. He looked at it, and chose to believe in my colors...

---------

-You may open the Door.-

I watched them staring at the Door floating in their minds, very obvious, impossible to ignore, a Door that had not been there before.

I was getting about two goldweight value of Karma a day. At such a rate, I would make Ten in Melee in about a year and a half, if I did nothing else. Me being who I am, even if monstrous loads of Karma were all Sealed up and waiting to return to me, I wasn’t going to be waiting all that time to get it back.

Still, the steady stream was more than enough to start regaining my Marks. I had to focus on the mental ones, of course, or it would interfere with the Heavy Gravity Training I’d started. That was fine, more brains never hurt me.

They hesitantly approached the Door, and pushed it open.

I looked at their green souls entering, their single Marks obvious, and they gawked at my golden one, girded with nine. They were tiny and small and inferior, and, well, I was me.

-Holy fuck!- /squeaked Brekko, gaping at me, and the others /thought similar things. It was their first experience with anything like telepathy, and suddenly being able to feel that they were indeed vastly mentally inferior was a very humbling thing, even to Smart Guy.

-This is the Markspace, an /tellepathic space formed by the connection of your Marks through me. Through your Marks, you may speak with one another mentally across any distance, swiftly and precisely.

-I will hear everything you say in Markspace, because you are using the back of my head as a chatroom. So don’t go talking about childish subjects, girls, sex, or similar things unless you want me listening in and commenting on your lack of discipline. I don’t need my head filled with drivel.-

They all made hurried /agreements.

-The majority of your instruction will be taking place here, because I’m not going to waste time with the misunderstandings of your perceptions and the limitations of words. For instance, I want all of you to do THIS.-

The /broadcast was overwhelmingly precise. Go into your brain. Feel the power burning at the two points of your heart and your guts. Drive it up your spine to your brain, radiate it over your skin, and condense it at your hand.

“AHHH!” six voices screamed in unison as their arms snapped out, and then they gaped in real life.

Davro, especially. Because all six of his buddies had hands glowing with emerald light, much like his own mindblade!

-Six of you are standing at a crossroads. Davro has already diverged from your paths. He is a Powered, one of the great lucky stars of the human race, with potential to become something great and exciting with relative ease, if he has the will and the drive to get there.

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-The rest of you are like me.- Every one of them blinked in shock. I really wasn’t a Powered?

-Powered walk a lot of roads, but the famous ones are the Psion and the Psi-warrior. A mindblade is a clear indicator of the PW path. Given your lack of mental gifts, Davro, not being keyed as a Psion should come as no surprise to you. You all can see that Brekko is the most mentally gifted of you, but it should come as no surprise that even he has a very, very long way to go.-

Disgruntled, they still had to agree. The evidence was right in front of them. They all stared, mesmerized at the mindclaws on their hands, and then looked up.

At the claws extending four inches past my fingers, like translucent golden power fists... on both of my hands.

-There are things you will learn together, and things you will learn apart. The six of you are not like Davros. He is Powered. I have taken the liberty of making your choice for the rest of you, and kicked you down the path of a Forsaken.

-As of right now, you are Null Psions. Davros will be different from you, capable of things that you simply cannot emulate.

-You will be capable of killing people like him.-

There was some strange shuffling mentally as they all considered that. It wasn’t a bad trade, actually. Davros certainly was wondering what to think.

-Davros is a water gun. You are water barrels. As brothers in arms, if you trust one another enough, you will be able to fill the water in his gun.

-I do not think I should have to tell you what that might mean for you as a psi-user, Davros.-

Davros swallowed. He could draw on the strength of his friends? That would be... absolutely incredible...

-The power of a Null like us is limited by the power of our souls. You have not opened that power, which we will do now.- I held up my right hand, and they mimicked the motion as the instruction washed over them.

And not giving them time to think, I drove it through the chakra point of my left hand. Before they could think about it, so did they.

“Aaaaaah!” they all screamed, and their Souls began to bleed into their psyches.

I smiled. We were off and running...

------------

“Kneel,” I said indifferently, and the pale, white-faced lads behind me staggered to their knees, all the way, no questions. They were trying not to look at what they could not see, only feel, and the death it represented. Their Nulls weren’t strong enough to keep it out yet, nor Davro’s Will.

“Claws out.”

Despite their misgivings, as I snapped my golden Claw up, they snapped their emerald Claws and Blade up. Much less sharp and defined than my own.

I set down a brazier I’d made of common bronze, which I’d etched and inscribed myself, finding it amazing that smithing Skills were still relevant. Magic interacted badly with psi in this universe, but trying to make vivic flame interact badly was just impossible. All it did was purify unnatural energies. Trying to corrupt it would just feed it. It was Reality’s unnatural energy to other realities!

“Above us are the one hundred and twenty thousand previous residents of Habberblok who were turned into brainslaves and killed thirty-four years ago. Their souls have been caught in a state of eternal anguish and anger by the interaction of Warp energies and the massive psionic assault from the Mentats and other forces who came in to cleanse the Cult who did this to them.

“They LOATHE mentalists. They despise people who control others. They are, in general, very, very hostile to anything that lives and intrudes on their eternal damnation.

“But you are here to help change that.”

They all stared at me as if I was mad. I put my Claw into the brazier.

Vivic energy spiraled around it, and seemed to dissolve into smoke, the unwhite fire rolling up and forming a cloud.

A cloud, with someone visible inside it.

It was a young woman, dressed as a ganger, leathers, tats, sliced hairstyle, dark makeup, studs, the works. She had a sneer on her face as she looked down at them, and her eyes were empty and hollow, frozen forever in a grimace of pain and fear at her death.

“Meet Chalice. She was mind-fried and turned into a puppet in that attack. I helped her track down her older sister, who had married outside the blok, and let her know she was okay.

“In return, she’s agreed to ride my Claw, and vouch for me among the dead. She can see what I can’t see, and Emperor’s Teeth, she gets pissed when she sees psi abuse or highspires abusing downers.” There was a visible waver in my Claw, and it became kind of spectral. As I lifted it away, the unwhite flames of vivus were attached to it.

They all stared at my Claw, which had all its metallic edge, but now they could see right through it.

“With the aid of your patron, you’ll be able to hit things that think they are immaterial, and most importantly, bring the vivic flame in to cut and cleanse things of the Warp.”

Their eyes were a little round. Okay, very round. They were gangers, after all, scrappers in a shitass world trying to survive. This suddenly got pretty surreal.

“That’s right, boyos, you’re going to be working with the ghosts of Habberblok! You wanted to be something special, something more than you thought you could ever be... this is your chance.

“Brekko, step forward and put your claw into the flame.”

The smart kid swallowed as I pulled my hand away, and took one shaky step forwards, putting his green, tight-fitting claw-gauntlet into the flames.

The smoke changed color, from gold-spotted to green. Naturally, there was nothing else above it.

“Elders of Habberblok, my disciple Brekko is here to earn your trust. He would carry your favor into battle against those who wrought such ill upon you. Step forward, and name him a task to complete, to prove his worth and virtue, and satisfy you, that he may carry your name forward in battle against the darkness that devoured you!”

Brekko swallowed, and I could almost hear the cheeeeeeeese he was thinking as I said all that, and very, very seriously, too. It was too much like a kid’s serial, of the pompous and lofty Coronal Knights, and...

A ganger stepped into the smoke. Lean, scarred, one side of his head marred by what looked like plasma fire, his shoulder and arm eaten away. His empty eyes met those of Brekko, spectral lips parted in a sneer, and he reached down to touch Brekko’s claw.

Brekko gasped and went absolutely white, feeling that undead caress against the manifestation of his will. He closed his eyes, endured, shaking from head to toe, and finally nodded.

“I’ll do it,” he promised. “Gebbo, I’ll get him for you and your sister.”

The undead ganger just grinned nastily, and faded away from the mists.

I waved Brekko back, and he retreated, breathing more freely with each step back he took.

“Your task is your own. You don’t tell anyone it, because the dead don’t speak. You can ask me to teach you HOW to do something, that’s fine. It doesn’t have to be done now, or ever. But you won’t walk up here and be a knight of the dead until you accomplish it. It’s your quest, and you complete it.”

Brekko met my eyes, and nodded slowly, clenching his fist.

“Davro.”

The kid swallowed and slowly stood up. I could feel the anger of the spirits flare as he timidly put his mindblade into the flames, and fearful green motes swirled up.

“I need a wise man here. This kid lost his grandfather, who was the only one keeping him straight in life. Yeah, he’s a psi... but he’s a psi who wants to be something like a Coronal, not one of those rat bastards who did what they did to you.

“I want someone willing to forge him into a weapon against the shit of this world.

“So, Elders of Habberblok, my disciple Davro is here to earn your trust. He would carry your favor into battle against those who wrought such ill upon you. Step forward, and name him a task to complete, to prove his worth and virtue, and satisfy you, that he may carry your name forward in battle against the darkness that devoured you!”

Davro gulped aloud. Okay, this cheese was being repeated, which meant it had advanced from cheese to ritual.

The vivic fires flared up, and an old man stepped into the mists.

His face was drawn and hanging, lined with wrinkles, his shoulders were sloped, he was slender and small.

But there was a hardness and sharpness around him the ganger hadn’t had, a level of danger that said this was a spirit that had seen and done some shit.

That old and gnarled hand descended to touch the sparking mindblade. Davro’s eyes fell back, and he almost fell over.

“Y-yes, Sergeant!” he gasped. “I understand!”

Beneath the dread there was respect that couldn’t be hidden. The old man nodded, and faded back beyond the flames.

Davro retreated without being told, his head down, his mind spinning.

“Jimo.” The big ganger quavered, but advanced. I addressed the air. “Jimo’s a decent kid who’s fallen on hard times. He needs someone to nag him and keep him on the right path. Is there a mother willing to adopt him?

“Elders of Habberblok, my disciple Jimo is here to earn your trust. He would carry your favor into battle against those who wrought such ill upon you. Step forward, and name him a task to complete, to prove his worth and virtue, and satisfy you, that he may carry your name forward in battle against the darkness that devoured you!”

Jimo swallowed as he put his mindclaw into the flames, and in the green smoke, someone stepped forwards...