Tutorial - 3.2

January 3, 2011, Hebert House - Brockton Bay, 1:03 PM

Now Taylor was a fresh teenage parahuman, her I could convince. On the other hand, Danny was a grown-up flustered parent, well above my pay grade, for him I had to bring in superior firepower - I called dada. He arrived soon after we reached the Hebert's place from the hospital.

They were all sitting in the living room, Taylor was talking about her triggering, dada was explaining cape dynamics, Danny was reeling under revelation after revelation, tensions were high. So I made some tea.

Danny managed to take things mostly stoically, the few tantrums he could have thrown were preempted by dada. He was reassured when he was told of the growing nature of my power and the ultimate clincher was the realisation that we were much more paranoid about security than he would ever be. Taylor mostly sat drinking her tea and absorbing all of the conversation around her. It went pretty smoothly, I didn't even have to bring out the trump card that was Sophia's cape identity.

Danny was given the second Plot Armor fruit, Taylor was still very skeptical of the whole extraUniversal power thingy, she relented when I privately told her that her corona gemma was actually a link to a transDimensional alien thingy (I still was keeping the whole xenocidal parasite bit under strict need-to-know). Danny ate the fruit with some trepidation, and announced to us that it tasted like a rum ball. I shrugged and gave him the same caveat about permanent damage that that I'd given dada.

Finally I turned to Taylor and asked formally, "So, your options currently are to go solo and listen to your power pushing you to take out Lung on your first outing or something. Alternatively, you can join the wards and be a good little government-controlled child soldier. Option C, you could team up with me and actually do some good."

She gave me an exasperated eyeroll, "How nicely worded options. Ease up on the propaganda Aveek! I'm in." My snark was contagious.

I shrugged, "I call 'em as I see 'em."

She huffed, "Sure you do. So what did you do to have the PRT eating out of your hands?"

"You saw the videos, I sent the Clements one and called in a master scare."

"Which would have you jailed for fearmongering. What did you really do?"

I smirked, "Give it time, you're smart enough, you'd figure it out."

She sighed, "Is it something you can't tell me?"

"Yes, not something that I'm at a liberty to share right now. If you can't figure it out in a week, I'll tell you. Anyway, you're still tired, both of you need to rest. We'll do the power sharing thing tomorrow. I don't think you're going to school tomorrow?"

She shook her head, "I don't want to go to school at all, even if the bullying is over, I just don't want to go there."

I nodded, then turned to dada, "Dada, I listened to you, I joined school, I went to school, and this happened, you still keen on me having social interaction? And Mr. Hebert, I don't think social interaction is your concern, if it is education, then I can guarantee you that Taylor can ace any college exam day after tomorrow. Do we still need the waste of time that school will be for us?" I'd already seen the (currently disabled) option to allow sharing of knowledge skills in the party menu.

Danny looked undecided, dada sighed, "Look, I still think social interaction is important, but school may not be the right thing. Aveek, you've got a week to figure out an alternative. I'll make some excuse for you at Winslow, but if you can't give me a plan to have regular normal interaction with your peers by then, you're going back there."

"Sir yes sir!" I saluted. Then looked at Danny, Taylor was giving him puppy eyes. Given her whole glasses-girl shtick and the current situation, Danny melted, "Whatever you decide kiddo, but you are getting a GED." She nodded vigorously.

I excused myself to go back home, Taylor retired to her room, I warned her to rest and not do too much power testing for that day. Dada took the opportunity to discuss business with Danny, and to bitch about having to take care of superpowered teens I guess. I left them to their devices.

Back in my room, I applied mana boost and decided to do some new experiments, the last few days had taught me that even if I binge-absorbed books 24/7, the list of things I wanted to learn was seemingly endless, so I'd decided to keep about 4-5 hours per day for knowledge absorption, it would let me absorb 7-10 books per day on an average.

I opened my inventory in visual mode, then mana scanned it. Got a result, when I tried to open it I got a warning that I needed dimensional physics and more INT. Dammit! I was getting tired of this, I opened my status, INT and WIS already were at 29 and 24, they were not gaining points from good thinking and decision making anymore, I decided to finally use some of my accumulated stat points and boosted them up to 50.


Aveek SenSharma / Maker

Title: The Gamer

Class: Aspiring Promethean

Level: 14

HP: 1520/1520 HP Regen. 1.9%/s

MP: 1725/1725 MP Regen. 5%/s

STR: 17 + 20 = 37

VIT: 19 + 20 = 39

DEX: 16 +20 = 36

INT: 50 + 10% = 55

WIS: 50

CHA: 17

Staus Points: 15

Desc: You're a snarky git who inconvenienced half the school, A police squad, three heroes and two PRT squads to get your way, congratulations!

Status Effects: none.


Raising your INT to 50 has evolved Basic Mana Capacity to Medium Mana Capacity

50% larger Mana Pool

Raising your WIS to 50 has evolved Meditation to add the Mana Analysis subskill.

Now you can analyze mana scans with extra focus and deeper understanding while meditating.

Taking the good decision to finally use your stat points improves your WIS by 1.

Yes yes, AI, you're a total dick. Although I didn't even notice when I got another level, I trawled through my messages and found it, ah, the reaching Level 10 quest completed and gave the XP to gain another level, cool. Anyway, this was brilliant! Now I could start putting some real meat into mana construct training! And finally start making some headway into the scans.

My status was looking pretty decent, constantly training Mana Boost had increased its benefits significantly, I needed to train more DEX though. And the cape name I'd only thought about has already been applied, ugh, thank you for deciding on my behalf, dick AI.

But first, dimensional physics, I opened Wikipedia and downloaded all the pages relevant to dimensions. Then started absorbing them one by one, Meditating to hasten the process. Phew, that took two hours in total, but now my Physics knowledge skill had a proper dimensional physics subskill, only level 3 though. Wait, I remembered something very obscure I'd once come across, thank you 50 INT! I went into the darknet forums, took a while to find the right page, but there it was, a leaked copy of Professor Haywire's notes.

I tried to absorb the notes but it needed a higher level in Mathematics, fine! I started downloading university level math textbooks, and all the wikipedia pages in the math section... Okay, too many pages, I'd need to be selective about them or else I'd be meditating for days. More learning ensued.

Five more hours later, I had a dimensional math subskill too. I took a break and went down to grab a snack, dada was home, he handed me a sheet of paper with 7 names. I made a mental note of the names and burned the paper with Mana Laser, he just scoffed and muttered "showoff!" Whatever, I made us some tea and pakoras, discussed a bit about which subjects he thought I should put more focus on learning - apart from finance and accounting that is. I had a graduate's level of understanding in both, but dada's shenanigans still looked like magic to me.

I went back to my room, and finally was able to absorb Haywire's notes. There, one hour and 22 levels in dimensional physics later, I was ready for some real SCIENCE! I was already meditating, I gave an inward glance at the hole in the universe through which the source of Mana connected to me, with my new understanding I could somewhat fathom how it could exist, but the details and where it came from were completely beyond me.

Anyway, I opened up the scan of my inventory, ah, this was pretty simple, a pocket universe with a different measure of time and no gravitational constant, with holes leading to each item, anchored to my own body in this dimension. Pretty neat. It was actually not so simple though, there were many things about it that I still could not understand, like how the change in the universal constants could be reproduced, or how a hole was being kept open. But I knew enough to try something.

I came out of meditation, Oh wow I got XP for analysing the scan! Awesome! Ah, it made sense for gamers who'd go the pure tinker route. Anyway, back to doing SCIENCE! I held my hand out, then willed the Mana to emerge and create a pocket dimension anchored to the location where I was (Anchoring it to myself would obviously be catastrophic if I tried to enter it). Nothing happened except for the warning from AI assist that this was not a safe operation. Dammit!

I reduced the AI assist level, held out my hand and tried again. A rush of creation went through me, I had the distinct feeling that I could define exactly what would be in it. But it solidified before I could focus on it. And reality cracked.

Shit! I was in empty space! My hp was dropping steadily, and the spike of depressurizing pain was very disorienting! Shit! Shit! I hurriedly collapsed the dimension, and I was back in my room, the crack in reality closing with a whoosh...

That was heady, but foolish, okay, I turned the AI assist back up, waited a while for my HP and MP to regen back. This time I had a plan, I held out my hand again, collected the Mana, prepared the intent for the AI to take over the details of the creation, and released it. Reality cracked again.

I was still in my room, but everything looked... less real. I scanned my bed, oh, it was a construct, only surface level realism, but with somewhat realistic physics. I went down, my whole house was as it is, the lights glowed, but the switches did not work, the kitchen appliances didn't work at all. I opened the front door, at least the latch and the hinges work. I came out, my whole neighbourhood was here, but deserted. The sky was a uniform grey, the trees looked stony. Huh, so the AI decided to just recreate my surroundings. I could exploit this in a lot of ways though.

I tried to fold a grey leaf, it just broke like thin glass. At least I could test some destructive skills here. I aimed my palm at a tree trunk, gathered 1000MP mana, shaped it into a line and manifested it into pure force. A thin line appeared on the trunk, and the tree started toppling.

Whoa! I stepped back as the top of the tree collapsed with a huge crash. The trunk was cleanly sliced through, as was half a wall of the next building, I was already Mana boosting, I ran at the wall and hit it with a solid kick, the wall collapsed, the slice had gone through the next wall too, I kicked through the door in that wall and went into the adjacent room, the slice had gone through another wall and had finally stopped halfway through a table. Yeah, this skill needed a bit more experimenting, and I should start low. At least I had a way to test these things now.

I experimented a bit more and found out that I could simulate a force-punch with 50MP through the whole area of my palm, a shotgun blast with about 300MP, a sniper shot with 500MP through the fingers, and a lot more stuff. I tried electricity conversion, just ended up electrocuting myself, will need to devise a delivery mechanism, it still could work as a touch-taser though.

I walked back to our living room, stood right in front of where dada should be sitting and collapsed the dimension. Dada was right there, shrieking like a little girl, drawing a gun and oh fuck he shot me!

"What the fuck! Don't scare me like that!" I didn't even know he'd gotten a gun! He used to carry back in India. The mugging incident must have affected him heavily. But whatever, that was pretty badass.

"You just shot me." I deadpanned.

"Well yes I know you could handle it, while I wasn't sure it was you."

"When did you get the gun?"

"I used to carry one back home y'know? It felt uncomfortable without one, so I got some contacts here."

"Good thing it's silenced."

"Of course it is. It's semi legal, the paperwork will not survive a deep check."

"That was pretty badass of you though. Even the shriek."

"Ahem. That was... a method to startle the opponent."

"Sure it was dada, sure it was." I walked back to my room. Oh look, I got a skill! It was called Instant Dimension, at level 1 was the empty ID for training or movement, more options to be available at higher levels.

I spent the rest of the night grinding the skill. At level 5 it let me create mooks for training. I created one with mooks. There were two greyish lvl 10 strangers in my room! And they were attacking me! Haha! This was so much fun! I tried a few of my martial arts moves, worked like a charm! Then tried the touch taser, fried the first guy, but managed to knock out the lady, she was shaking badly though. I got XP, meagre, but it was XP! And more XP for the nonlethal takedown than the lethal one! Thank you AI for again being my conscience, you're a lovable dick.

I opened my door, more mooks! Now this felt like a game! I went to town.