Willow
Outside Pop-Hopper ‘Village’, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
While Willow and the others might not know how to make traps, they’d still agreed to harass the hoppers. In particular, they had decided to basically follow Willow’s original plan but with some important changes. First, they wouldn’t be trying to sneak into the camp and steal the sun-child stones as the first step. Instead, they just found some rocks that looked vaguely similar and made a big deal about stealing them in front of their prisoner. They weren’t entirely sure it had worked as intended, and none of them were going to be winning any awards for their performances, but they’d given it an honest attempt.
Once their bait was set, they had untied the pop-hopper after instructing it to ‘be good’. As soon as they’d untied it, the thing had bolted. No one chased the ‘clever’ creature as it cackled and screamed insults regarding their collective intelligence. That done, they’d promptly broken camp and went in search of a new base. This time they were a bit more careful, trying to find somewhere they’d have solid visibility of any scouts that might stumble upon them and a clear escape plan. None of them were willing to assume their new camp wouldn’t be discovered by the expected retaliatory force.
“Hey Jonah,” Naomi asked from where she was working on creating more rope. They had a bit of time to kill before they had to get back to their previous campsite to monitor for the enemy and they were using it to try and prepare in ways they thought might help with the upcoming phase two.
“Yeah?” He looked up from his own braiding at her. Willow followed his example while keeping her hands moving in the familiar pattern necessary to intertwine the smooth fibers in her fingers.
“You have a kind of augmented reality system that’s outside the UICI. Can you use it to create a party and party voice chat?” His eyebrows shot up, then dropped into a frown of concentration as his eyes went out of focus as he began searching through the interface.
“That’d be pretty awesome if you can!” Willow encouraged. They’d wanted to use the UICI for that, of course. It was entirely possible. Assuming one had the funds to pay. When Willow had received rank 2 currency from her ‘contribution’ to that faction database, she’d assumed that it’d be extremely useful. She could convert it down to rank 1 or 0 currency and have plenty of money for lower tiered stuff, right? Wrong.
It wasn’t possible to convert downward, only upward. Which, in her opinion, was one of the absolute stupidest things she’d ever heard in her life. She had to use it as rank 2 currency. Which also explained why she’d noticed some services which had different versions with ‘Rank 1, Rank 2, Rank 3’ tacked on. There was a rank 2 ‘voice only virtual connection’ module, of course, but it cost a full one thousand R2 EBs. The rank 0 version only cost two hundred. The whole system was clearly rigged.
“Looks like I can do that, yeah. It’s going to cost one mana per minute and I have a total of forty mana. My other abilities also cost mana, so I’d guess we’ll have somewhere around fifteen minutes max before I’ll be out.” While it wasn’t long, it wasn’t short either. Especially in a fight.
“Should we test it now?” Kent nodded as Naomi’s suggestion and suddenly Willow saw a box flash in front of her, similar to the UICI default windows, but orange instead of blue.
PARTY INVITE
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[Jonah Locke] has invited you to his party.
Accept/Decline
Like the UICI, it was intuitive enough to interface with and Willow accepted immediately.
“…Two three four, testing.” She looked over at Kent, who was silently staring into space. She heard him continue but saw he wasn’t moving his lips at all. “This is a test of the party system, can you both hear me?”
“I can.” Naomi answered. Her voice sounded shockingly dull, almost robotic. Apparently the voices projected weren’t exactly the same as the real thing. Though, Kent’s sounds pretty much the same. Wonder what the difference is. Also, I wonder what I sound like.
“Yep!” She pushed toward her party. Then followed up, “How do I sound?”
“You’re clear.” Followed immediately by Kent’s, “Perfectly normal.”
Naomi glanced at Kent, apparently picking up the odd tone in his response, “How about me?”
After a moment’s hesitation Kent answered, “You kind of sound… Flat? Almost robotic.”
“Oh.” There was a brief pause before she sent a somehow toneless sigh, “I think you hear how I sound in my own head. I make sure to sound… Better… Out loud.”
“Huh, that’s interesting. I thought everyone’s internal voice sounded like how they heard themselves speak.” Kent said with clear curiosity. Willow shrugged when he looked her way, she had no idea. She thought in her own voice, but she also hadn’t really thought one way or another about how other people might think. I’m still not thinking about others very much, am I? I’m trying! I mean, I’m careful to talk to both of them all the time! But… I don’t feel like I’m thinking about them much other than that. Willow frowned down at her fingers, finishing a length rope and putting it to the side to start another.
“The world and my thoughts are kind of disconnected. It’s kind of like being in control of a puppet. It’s gotten a bit worse since I spoke my insight. My mind is very clinical. It’s why I had my insight in the first place.” After a few moments of silence Naomi continued, her words slower and more hesitant, “It makes it hard to connect with people, or empathize. Until I died, my emotional range was almost nothing… I’d have days where I stayed in bed and just stared at the ceiling, because I felt nothing and couldn’t think of a reason to get up. It’s been slowly going back to how it was and I don’t know why.”
Before Willow could say anything, Kent replied, “I don’t know what that’s like, exactly… But I definitely get not knowing how to connect with people. I have trouble understanding emotions if they aren’t directly spoken. My mam told me one time that when I was young she didn’t realize that I didn’t understand when she was angry. She thought I kept doing things that made her mad on purpose.” Willow glanced up at him, seeing a sad look in his eyes. He shook his head and continued, “Anyway, I definitely feel things. I just have a hard time understanding what others are trying to express. Ah… Not that I’m trying to make this about me or anything, I’m just trying to say I understand how hard it can be to not ‘click’ with people easily.”
The trio worked in silence for a bit, before Naomi spoke back up, “Thanks. I appreciate you not saying I’m weird.”
Willow saw Kent’s head snap toward Naomi in her peripheral vision and then heard his mind-voice, “Why would I say that?”
“Most people do.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t think you’re weird. Just different than I am, but most people are different than I am. So… I don’t know, does it matter?”
“Does not feeling much of anything matter?” Naomi clarified.
“Yeah, I mean, if that’s how you are then it’s just how you are.” He shrugged, “It doesn’t seem like it’s a problem or anything… Or is it? You said you didn’t get up some days, so maybe it is a problem?”
“I… Well it was a problem before… I haven’t had any trouble getting up though. Having a reason to get up makes it simpler. I want to help you and Willow, so I get up to help.”
Although she felt a bit bad about cutting in with her friends actually talking without her encouraging them for once, Willow wanted to clarify something, “You also have your own goal, Naomi. It’s not just to help us.” She purposefully made it a statement rather than a question, almost a demand.
“I do?” The mental question was actually colored with the slightest bit of confusion.
“The last part of your insight is that you don’t want to be empty anymore, so you’re going to have to work if you want to change that.”
Willow turned to look at Naomi, their eyes locking for a moment before she answered, “I don’t want to be… But I don’t know how to change it.”
“I don’t know exactly either, but step one is getting up and searching. It’s not possible to change without trying to. We’ll help you however we can, too! Right, Jonah?”
“Of course!” Jonah sounded almost eager and Naomi turned to look at him. “It’s like a puzzle, but way more important. I’d be happy to help! For the emotions thing, it seems like we have a fairly good lead to start investigating and thinking about. You had stronger emotions immediately after arriving from Earth, so that probably tells us something. We just need to figure out what.”
Seeing the slight raising of Naomi’s lips, Willow felt that Ke- Jonah had already started helping. If I’m going to push Naomi to change the thing she doesn’t like about herself, I need to change what I don’t like too. Starting with thinking about people more… And it’s probably not very nice of me to think about my friend using a random name they don’t like.
She turned to look at Jonah, and groaned, He just looks like SUCH a Kent!
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The scheme had worked! Willow grinned over at K- Jonah, and Naomi. Jonah nodded at her and she got his party request. Accepting, she immediately checked in, “Pheonix, here!”
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Jonah’s sigh came through the chat loud and clear. “Why are we using call signs again?”
“Prism, here.” Naomi came online.
Another sigh, then, “System, online.”
Willow quietly pumped her fist, “Heck yeah! Party P.P.S. is officially online! What’s the plan, boss?”
Naomi answered blandly, “I’m still not sure why I’m supposed to be the party leader. Jonah has to coordinate everything, and you’re always the one coming up with ideas.”
“Jonah gets lost in his interface too much and I get too hyper-focused. You’re perfect for the job, don’t worry!”
“I suppose. Well if I’m lead, Jonah what are we looking at?”
Jonah’s eyes went entirely blank, his pupils vanishing. It was the only physical indication that he’d entered what he called his ‘RTS view’. It wasn’t that Willow was jealous that he had so many different cool abilities, it was just that she wished she also had as much variety. Though, he’d explained that he felt his gaming systems mana was as much a limiter as a helper. For example: while he had a lot of game-like system abilities by default, he said he thought he’d only be able to improve aspects which were controlled by his gaming system with xp. At least for now.
“I see thirty pop-hoppers. Let me try… Yeah. Here.” As he stopped speaking, Willow received one of Jonah’s game-interface prompts asking her if she’d like to accept the mini-map he’d shared. She agreed and immediately a small map appeared at the top left of her view with green and red dots marking themselves and their enemies. Oooo, neat!
“All of them are between levels one and six. Considering Willow is level fourteen, she could probably solo all of them.”
“Wait, I’m level fourteen? Really? What level are you and Prism?” She forced herself not to look at Jonah, keeping her eyes on the clearing where she knew, thanks to the mini-map, the pop-hoppers would very soon be arriving.
“I’m level two and Naomi is level one.”
“It’s Prism! We’re in the field!”
A deep sigh. Before they could continue, Naomi cut in, “Time to go, Pheonix. Your job is to distract and kill as many as you can without getting bogged down. If you can pull enough of them away I’ll kill them as I can. I don’t think I can take more than one at a time. System, you keep up our coms and map. Can you ping the map if you need to?”
A pause, then Willow felt her direction pulled to the map and saw a bright yellow point which flashed for a moment, then faded.
“You can, perfect. You’re in charge of keeping us informed of any changes to the battlefield. If you’re discovered: move toward the clearing, assuming it’s safe enough, and inform us. We will both start retreating toward your position. If I start to get overwhelmed, let Pheonix know so she can come bail me out. If things get really bad, come help me yourself. If Pheonix ends up in a bad situation she will try to retreat and we’ll all run. If she can’t retreat, System and I will rush toward her to create an opening so we can all get the hell out. We clear?”
Willow loved the cool military-like way Naomi, Prism, delivered the overview of their plan. They’d spent hours coming up with it. She signed off, “Pheonix clear.”
They’d also spent hours talking about how they wanted to run “operations.” They’d agreed it was important to have an etiquette worked out ahead of time. While Jonah wanted to use more gamery lingo and manners, Naomi thought it was too casual and might let Jonah in particular disconnect from reality too much and take it too lightly. He’d conceded the point. Willow had pushed for the spy-flick like setup with some military sounding stuff thrown in. Eventually they’d all agreed, though Jonah still didn’t like the call-sign idea for some reason.
Naomi had actually been the one to offer it originally, saying she’d read that it was a good way to build a different state of mind which could be switched to when needed and distance any trauma a bit. Willow wasn’t sure about any of that, but she loved nicknames. So she’d brainstormed and come up with good names for them all. They hadn’t had better ideas than hers, so they went with what she came up with. The group name… I can’t be expected to come up with all bangers all the time. If we think of something better we’ll change it.
The first pop-hoppers came waddling into the clearing. They weren’t moving at their fast tree-ponging speed, which meant they were awkwardly step-hopping from foot to foot. It was slow and pretty hilarious looking. Fortunately, they’d watched pop-hoppers enough that the visual comedy wasn’t enough to distract any of them. Not that I’d ever been distracted and snickering at how some stupid monsters walked when I should have been paying attention. Nope. I-
“Begin!” Naomi’s voice broke Willow from her thoughts and she leapt up, sprinting toward their enemy with a wide smile. She felt Prism running behind her and poured on the speed. The first four pop-hoppers were just reacting, raising their almost-real spears and screeching in challenge, when Willow arrived. She tore through them like a gale-force wind. A wind which ripped spears from hands and left its victims stumbling and bumbling behind.
She managed to steal three of the four spears, with the last popper being too far away for her to reach it to deprive it. Instead, she graciously gave it another weapon by viciously throwing the final purloined spear, catching it hard in its left shoulder. It screamed and dropped its spear in pain, which was almost as good as having taken it. Then she was past the first line and could see the main force. Dozens of punching bags, er, enemies. She entered her focus and went to town.
In this fight engagement, Willow’s personal goal - outside of the operation objectives - was to find an optimal level of her focus for low-level confrontations. She knew she could just go full force with her focus and tear the fodder to pieces, but she was equally sure these weaklings were far from representative of the normal skill level in the world. So while she couldn’t hone her fighting skills, she could work on her efficiency and magical abilities.
She pulled the mana down to a bare trickle. She pushed the tiniest speck of her unnamed aspect into the mix to improve her control over the ability. Concentrating, she pulled the grey-out effect back entirely, flexing her will to make her ability only improve her capabilities and not impact the environment at all. With all of her discipline mana focused on just its internal effects, they were noticeably stronger than they would have been if the energy was split between external and internal. Her senses were sharper, instinctive reading of the flow of battle clearer, her mind processed more quickly, and her body responded perfectly and without delay.
Yep, magic is still the coolest thing ever. She slipped between two pop-hoppers as they leapt at her, lifting her arms at just the right time to snatch their spears. The two spears she already had in her left hand both impaled her attacker on that side - trading two spears for one. Continuing forward, she spun her two new weapons to face her enemies. She flicked the one in her right hand forward, pinning a hopper to the tree via his bulbous stomach. The left spear spun to bat away a sharpened stick thrown at her. Alright, this is pretty good. I can keep this up for a long time and it’s plenty. Let’s reduce a bit. Reducing the amount of mana flowing into her ability even further, Willow pressed on thrusting and swinging her stolen weapons. She lost and gained new weapons as she danced through the enemy ranks. The hopper’s numbers quickly became more of an impediment to them than to her, as she perfectly took advantage of every gap small enough to slip through and punished each over-bunched group of enemies.
Each time Willow cut through another group of enemies, she reduced the amount of mana flowing into her ability. Finally, she realized she’d stopped channeling mana at all and scowled in annoyance. These stupid things aren’t even strong enough that I need to use my mana at all to beat even this many of them? I figured I’d start taking hits or something at some point… She stepped to her left as she felt the spear coming at her from behind. Her right foot lashed out in a back-kick and she heard a crunch. Another spear came flying at her from the right and she caught it as she spun, position herself so she could press the hand of a lunging hopper forward, redirecting it directly into the eye of one of its fellows.
Alright, well then let’s see how fast I can finish this. She gathered her discipline mana mixed with the barest hint of the other kind, just enough to let her remove the external effect. While preparing the energy, she’d maintained her smooth dance through the weak, but large, group of monsters. She suddenly crouched, then pushed her mana through her ability in a burst. It was mostly instinct that lead her to leap directly into the air, not something she really planned out. She found herself flying, tens of meters above the ground. She laughed manically, the sheer joy of it nearly overwhelming, but she was still focused and didn’t forget her situation. Taking inspiration from her understanding of what discipline meant, and therefore what she could use the mana which was its essence for, she fed more into her ability.
While the world wasn’t slowed, she had plenty of time for thought with so much of the mana flooding her ability. Willow felt she had all the time in the world to decide what her next move would be, but also felt the need to decide quickly. I want to reposition myself, but I’m in the air. My discipline mana doesn’t really let me do anything that I couldn’t do myself already, it just makes me way better at it. Kind of like super-charging a skill.
The other mana, though, did let her effect the world. It let her stop time for people, and mixing it with her focus mana let her remove the one external effect it did have, or alter it. Oh. Duh. Without further thought, she named her second mana.
NEW MANA ASPECT NAMED!
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CONGRATULATIONS!
You have successfully created and registered a unique, previously unregistered, mana aspect instruction into the CHM!
To reward your efforts, and for meaningfully contributing to the CHM database, 500 R2-EB has been awarded!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You have registered a meaningful description for your unique mana aspect INSTRUCTION
INSTRUCTION
To impart discipline upon the world, one must instruct.
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As per UICI cultivation privacy provision 2219.A.33, the CHM is unable to provide third parties with access to information related to your private cultivation techniques without your consent. This includes your newly created ability.
Would you like to share your ability with Sentekko(F)?
Declining the final request out of hand, Willow channeled a bit of her newly named instruction mana and told the air to be solid. It ignored her. Shoot. Willow fell. She splaying herself out for half the descent, then flipping a couple times at the end to bleed as much energy off as possible. When she landed, it was directly on top of a hopper. She was somewhat disappointed that the earth didn’t shudder and split in a huge radius around her while she stood unphased. Instead, she landed slightly harder than usual, breaking her landing pad badly.
Right, the ability itself is a limiting factor according to that rank two packet I got. I should finish reading that. Well the ability was developed based on my prior visualizations and use… But it can clearly be manipulated. What if…
The pop-hoppers had mostly all stopped to stare up when she jumped and were still staring at her. Only the true battle geniuses among them were starting to raise their weapons to charge their terrifying enemy with skipping leaps while she appeared distracted. The next moment those “smartest” hoppers found themselves badly regretting their proactive approach. Many of them screamed as the energy from their powerful legs completely failed to move their bodies, all of which were grey and frozen in time.
Grinning, Willow was about to continue the experiment of choosing individual parts and pieces to freeze, therefore throwing the battlefield into more chaos and causing the creatures to literally harm themselves, when she heard Jonah’s - System’s - voice, “Fallback when able, another troop with roughly a hundred pop-hoppers is approaching. ETA three minutes.”
Too bad… Giving her playmates a sad look, she turned and rushed back toward where she knew Prism was kiting four pop-hoppers to relieve some pressure for her to retreat if needed. Before she arrived, though, Naomi managed to kill each of them. Less than forty seconds after Jonah’s warning, they’d managed to extricate themselves and ran in the opposite direction to where Jonah was hidden and keeping watch.
“You aren’t being pursued, the few hoppers you two left alive are turning around to meet with the others.” System reported.
“Rendezvous at point A.” Prism ordered.
They carefully made their way through the forest toward a space they had pre-prepared with materials they intended to use to camouflage themselves from any pursuers.