Installation 1.6

December 27, 2010, Dev's House - Brockton Bay, 9:33 AM

The last three days had gone by in a blur, apparently walking the bureaucratic gauntlet increases intelligence, two days of immigration paperwork combined with my habit of reading through all of them and trying to understand how much the country had us by the balls, that had pushed my INT to 23. Then there was wisdom training, online games of chess and Go, reading rational fiction (it was fun, even if it didn't help), reading philosophy articles - intensely gruelling when you're not doing it as a passtime, but I got those 5 points and got my WIS upto 20 last night, so I could finally turn on the mental interfaces and get rid of the annoying blue boxes.

The mental interface was a wholly different beast, I had expected the boxes to just move from my physical field of view to my mind's eye, some of them actually did, like the observe results; likely anything that had to do with the Akashic Records just became mind-eye prompts, but rest of the alerts were more like distilled concepts injected into my conscious thoughts. Like someone else thinking at me, (trust me, feeling the AI's snark was far more cringeworthy than just reading it). Replaying my own recorded messages mentally came with all the thoughts and emotions that were there during recording! And replaying Rob's message gave me the same mindfraying sense as I got when I dipped into the source of mana, not doing that again, I value my mind thank you.

Oh well, at least now I didn't have to gawk, pantomime and mutter at the air to work the Gamer system anymore, and the menu and options seemed much more nuanced and customizable than their visual counterparts, like there were much more finer controls, advanced options. This was power user mode, it felt like I could push into them with my mind and tweak their source code if needed. There was a Macros and Scripting option now, which came with the warning that it needed a lot more INT and programming skills before I try them - It was sort of insulting, I considered myself a pretty nifty programmer.

Spamming observe constantly had pushed it to level 12, and it wasn't looking like it would get any higher if I didn't have different kinds of things to observe. Post level 10 it started giving me stats for people, and much more detailed descriptions, which I abused the hell out of at the Hebert's christmas party, we attended for only 20 minutes or so, because we had to get back to the towers of paperwork. It was overall uneventful, but I got to know a few things.

Firstly, Taylor and dada were intelligence monsters, Taylor had 24 base INT (which her depression kept debuffed to around 15 mostly), and dada is a ridiculous 37!

Secondly, everyone else apart from Taylor and me had NPC tags, and titles followed some weird rules, Danny's friends Kurt, Lacie and Alexander had titles, while their stats and descriptions were decidedly mundane (apart from strength and vitality, they were dockworkers after all). While a Retd. Col. Hendricks (Lvl. 18 Army Veteran) who was a neighbour, and had superb physical and mental stats (all stats were above 20!) despite being a senior citizen - didn't have a title. I figured it was an Akashic Records thing.

I also spent last two nights trying out different training methods: push-ups and sit-ups trained strength, doing them past fatigue trained vitality; juggling, sleight of hand, katas (I only know a few) and tap dancing (don't you judge me!) trained dexterity. Intelligence and wisdom were already my bitches now. Charisma, yeah, only thing that trained it was social interaction, I only got a few more points there at the party. And also any one kind of training, when sustained, started giving diminishing returns. But I realized I didn't need to eat or sleep, unless I needed to quickly recover hp, or get rid of pesky status effects - still felt like eating at regular intervals though, I guess the psychological part of hunger wasn't gone, just the biological dependency had vanished. And I wasn't complaining, I like eating.

Finally, I managed to squeeze three levelups from creating and completing quests for myself (attending christmas party, finding out training methods for all stats, training INT and WIS to at least 20, training all stats to at least 10, and helping with the dishes) and got some very fancy new skills (Speed Reading, Philosophy, Lying, Juggling, Dancing and Dishwashing - I kid you not), among which only lying was of any actual use, but it did confirm that my worldly knowledge and efforts could transform into mundane skills. A bit of training and Uber would be grovelling at my feet.

After I was done stroking my ego looking at my skills, I got ready to go to the market, the fridge and the kitchen were both quite bare of actual foodstuff, off I went to remedy that.

Lord's Street Market in the morning was a bustling place, lots of people, lots to observe, lots of shopping, apparently haggling was ok in the individual shops, not the departmental stores, good to know. I tried my best at bargaining, got a few measly discounts here and there, but picked up another charisma point. A bit more trial and error gave me a Negotiation skill, I started haggling with renewed gusto, within an hour, I'd leveled the skill up some and gotten some kitchen appliances at almost 30% discount! This skill thing was growing on me, I made a note to try and experiment doing various practical activities to see which developed into skills.

Once I came out of the market, I walked into a narrow side street, confirmed there were no cameras nearby, then walked into a deserted alley, and put all the bags in the inventory, they were getting cumbersome. Mental interface meant that I could manifest the inventory anywhere on my person, didn't have to be in front of me. I would make a superb thief.

Walking out of the other side of the alley, I checked the maps, the boardwalk was only about a couple kilometres from where I was. First time in the country, might as well do something touristy, I headed off towards the sea at a steady run, might as well make it a training thing.

My stamina was apparently high enough that a non-stop 2Km run didn't net me any points, I wanted to try sprinting, but it would attract eyes. The run was fine because my sweatshirt and sweatpants were passable as workout wear given the season. I got a Running skill though, which I was sure could be developed into a mover power with sufficient practice.

The boardwalk was nice, a bit more sophisticated than the average Indian beachfront (I'd gone to a lot of them while traveling with dada in a quest to conquer our hydrophobia), quite a bit more expensive too, even if I haggled here all my purchases would be overpriced. This was the first time I saw people over level 20, the security guards dotting the place all over sure looked the part. Observing them, I realized from the descriptions that the level was because of the fact that they were all armed with batons and tasers, some had knives too. So the levels I saw were sort of a threat assessment and not a general measure of their stats, because these guys only had above average physical stats and mostly average or below average mental stats. In simple words they were hired goons, and some of them with pretty nasty habits, descriptions of their favourite activities left me pretty disturbed; rape and torture being mentioned more than once. I wondered if there was any way I could get these psychos caught... aaaand I got a quest for it, with a meaty XP reward, oh well, I didn't have any ideas to act upon immediately. Would have to think upon it later.

I came upon a very neat looking cafe which was advertising some exotic teas, time for a comfort drink. I went to the counter, ordered a chrysanthemum tea and some freshly baked brownies, then sat down at a corner table, grinding Observe. So many little stories of their lives, some of them quite sad, like those two girls who were sitting near the center, they were actually quite good looking. The pretty brunette's description mentioned her whole shtick being a faked cutesy persona which she used to cling to whoever was at the top of her social circle, then using that position to string along a number of boys simultaneously. While she was nasty, the hot ginger was way worse, she actually had a sociopathic status effect which gave her a -10 wisdom debuff! Her thing was that she needed to constantly humiliate her ex-friend to feel superior, all because she was once attacked by gangers! She needed therapy, and a proper spanking (Not that kind of spanking! Mind. Gutter. Out!). Even their titles marked them as Bitch 1 and Bitch 3! The thought that I'd actually have felt attracted to these people if I didn't know their backstories was revolting.

Thankfully my expensive comfort tea arrived, I took a moment to Observe the waitress; college student, trying to make ends meet, I'd leave her a decent tip. As the waitress left my field of vision, I saw the girl standing at the counter, must've not seen her coming in. Her label had me almost choking on my drink! I Observed her immediately.


Sarah Livsey alias Lisa Wilbourn / Tattletale

Title: Smartest Girl In The Room

Class: Inadvertent Supervillain

Level: 29

HP: 210/210

SP: 9.7K/10K (parasite Shard Points)

STR: 10

VIT: 14

DEX: 31

INT: 21 +100 = 121

WIS: 18 -10 = 8

CHA: 15

Desc: Lisa triggered with parasite powers after her brother committed suicide. She loves to show off her intelligence and hates to be called stupid. After running away from home, changing her name and living on the streets, she was forcibly recruited by Coil to form the villain group Undersiders. She is currently unhappy with her lot and looking for a way to escape Coil's clutches.

Power: Pericognition (Passive). Can deduce huge amounts of information from minimal cues, imagine Sherlock on MDT-48. Can cold-read people from microexpressions and body language, can guess passwords, can suss out secrets with minimal effort. Power-induced aggression makes her confront people with sensitive information to emotionally destabilize them.

Status Effects: Aggressive. (power induced) -10 WIS, +100 INT


The girl was still placing her order, she was around my age, very good looking, okay she was hot, the freckles and green eyes all the more adding to the effect. When I read her description I knew I'd end up involving myself with her somehow, she was the second person without an NPC tag, and a cape to boot! I was definitely going to help her out of her situation! And the tea was brilliant! I decided to buy some of it later. Focusing back on how to help Tattletale.

While I was busy concocting rescue fantasies (a tad bit hormonally induced, I'll admit in hindsight), she finished placing her order, then turned around to look for a seat. Her gaze sweeped past me, then turned back to focus on me, her eyes wide with surprise. At that exact moment Gamer's Mind slammed down on all my emotions, my thoughts cleared up and I suddenly had a much better grasp of the situation.

She was Tattletale, she was a 'Garam' supervillain, she had no idea who I was. She had power over one of the more successfully understated villain teams in the city. Coil, the shadiest most 'Thanda' supervillain in Brockton had power over her. Her MO was knowing and using secrets. She had just looked at me and was surprised.

She might have just realized that a complete stranger knows her too well.

She started walking towards me, and that grin was not friendly at all.

"Hi Aveek! May I join you?" She pulled out the chair in front of me.

I was in big trouble if this went wrong.

Gamer's Mind, let's see how good you are. I mentally grabbed the fine controls of the skill and got ready to play a game.

QUEST CREATED!

Defeat Tattletale!

Dominate Tattletale in verbal combat!

Success: 5000 XP + Increased relationship with Lisa.

Failure: She'll be your enemy! + Coil will be after you!

[ACCEPT/Y] [DECLINE/N]