NOVEL WEB 13: Arbitrary Measurements
When I first gained my abilities, interaction with them through a mental interface had allowed me both to boost my physical and mental abilities as well as get lasting superpowers shaped by my needs, desires, and the amount of power I'd accumulated. The numerical representation for physical and mental abilities had used an odd scale; numbers one to ten had represented human levels of ability, from inept adult to maximum human potential. From eleven to twenty, things like strength or agility compared to animals, while mental abilities compared to humans assisted via technological means. Beyond that I only had comparisons from my physique, which had matched increasingly powerful machines.
Even without the influence of power effects, the scaling increased deceptively quickly. From "strongest man" to "bull elephant" to "armored truck" to "locomotive", each jump in strength scaling represented nearly an order of magnitude of difference. Compared to comic book feats though, lifting a single mountain was as far beyond me as lifting a supertanker was to a normal human. This is where powers had come in.
Originally, powers had been individually ranked by their overall effect, from rank 1 where by themselves they might match a strong human to rank 4, where fighting whole groups of enemies with that power alone was possible. Power progression had come along with increases to physical and mental abilities advancing in parallel. Looking at the new interface, all that had gone out the window.
Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y10m9d
Known skills:
Points: 13/206
Chronal Leap, Empowering Regeneration, Focused Invulnerability, Force Adjustment, Force Awareness, Forcefield Creation, Forced Acceleration, Greater Proximakinesis, Immutable Force, Instant Action, Lasting Force, Retributive Defense, Super Suit, Spatial Distortion, Spatial Leap
Attributes: Might 48, Agility 24, Reason 6, Vigilance 12, Ego 24, Luck 6
Word of Force: Power IV, Control III, Versatility IV, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope II
Word of Self: Power IV, Control III, Versatility III, Number of Effects III, Range II, Scope I
The biggest change was that powers had been renamed into "skills" and no longer had ranks at all, whereas the two lines under "attributes" indicated that my abilities had been pooled under only two broader powers; my ability to manipulate force and my ability to enhance myself. Instead of being spread across multiple separate powers, all my available power was concentrated into those two pools.
The change in the interface echoed how my powers worked post-Invasion, at least in approximation, and it was a good reminder that what I was seeing here was a mental construct describing my abilities based on both scans and my own memories, not an actual system dictating how everything worked. That came with as many potential pros and cons as the changes to my abilities themselves and needed some thorough testing.
"Everything OK in there?" Liz asked after I'd been silently contemplating the changes for some time.
"It seems to be working," I told my two minders. "Is there a way to test that what it shows is actually correct?" Because if you ever got a game-like interface, trusting what it told you without checking would be dumb... especially if the interface came from some not-so-friendly ally's magical scanning device.
"I assure you, my scanner is accurate," Liz proclaimed confidently. "But far be it from me to prevent you from testing your powers. The base's gym has been considerably improved since you broke that hydraulic press."
"Do we need to bring the machines in here, or something?" That would be quite inconvenient.
"No. The anchor ring takes care of that," Liz explained, pointing at the glowing band around my middle finger. "With the detailed scans to get a baseline and a memory delve complete, you could call up the interface anywhere, at any time. The ring alone is sufficient for recording changes through everyday use."
"Convenient." I wondered what else the ring recorded. Being a magical item enchanted through Liz's metal-themed magic, there was no way to tell what it actually did from looking at it, even with my senses being able to look at its internals.
As Liz, Agent Stone and I left the scanning chamber behind, I wondered if the convenience of the interface was worth being tracked by the government and Liz in multiple different ways.
xxxx
"How much... is that?" I asked as I strained under the ten-foot-wide, fifteen-foot-long metal cylinder. Liz made a gesture and the cylinder grew minutely longer within the frame of metal rails that kept it upright as all my muscles protested. My body strained further, making even talking difficult as copious amounts of sweat rolled down my skin.
"Six hundred tons..." Liz said, then made a note in the PDA she had at hand. "Are you sure that's without any powers, just raw physique?"
"Why would... I... lie?" Holding up a lump of tungsten heavier than the largest passenger planes ever was already hard enough. Why make the test last any longer than it had to, supernatural endurance or no? It wasn't as if the exact numbers would matter for much longer.
"The strongest enhanced human we previously measured could only lift three hundred and eighty tons," Agent Stone informed me. "There have been those stronger, but it was due to superhuman size which is categorized as a power rather than the baseline everyone gets for having powers at all."
"Cool to be number one, I guess," except six hundred tons was less than I thought my strength had been. On the other hand, I'd done my measurements under a different gravity, using hand-crafted measures and my own senses so I was bound to have made mistakes. "OK, changing to Proximakinesis."
I slotted that particular "skill" into my first pool of magical energy, the one the interface called "Word of Force". Almost -but not quite- in the blink of an eye a third of the raw energy in the pool flowed in, for lack of a better term, the shape of the "skill" and became Proximakinesis. Paying close attention let me track how that bit of my power turned into the ability to apply force on contact. Over the course of several seconds the cylinder of tungsten became lighter and lighter as more of its load was taken from my physical muscles and handled by my power.
The process surprised me in two ways. First, that Proximakinesis could exert more force by itself than it ever had before and secondly that it no longer was a reflection of my physical strength. There was no sense of fatigue that carried over, no strain, nothing that made it a projection of my own physical strength but a power entirely fueled by the energy invested into it. And secondly, that as long as I paid attention I could control the forces exerted both more finely than I ever had and with a sort of mental feedback that helped with that fine control.
Complex things I'd only tried before in desperation, such as preventing a friend from bleeding out by holding his wounds closed per individual blood vessel, would now be routine even without using additional powers or requiring my entire focus to do. Plus the amount of force I could exert unaugmented was nothing to scoff at.
"Eleven hundred tons..." Liz muttered. "You're using that unfair physics adjuster now, right?"
"Yes, because your ability to both create, move and magically alter massive amounts of metal is fair," I shot back and rolled my eyes. Liz's powers didn't even work via magnetism or telekinesis, the metal seemingly moving by itself for no apparent reason. "And no, I'm not using Force Adjustment. Now let me try something else..."
Suddenly, the by now enormous cylinder slipped as Proximakinesis momentarily deactivated. My body strained to hold up the weight by itself but my legs simply folded and I toppled under the cylinder. By the time Proximakinesis reformed it was too little, too late, and the tremendous impact of the cylinder crushing me between its bulk and the armored floor of the tunnel was deafening.
"Ow!" I most eloquently exclaimed. In my defense, the whole thing felt like someone twice my size sitting on me... but only momentarily. Force Adjustment had activated on its own, slotting in the first pool of power and lessening the impact. Apparently, my powers could now activate reflexively, just as if they were extensions of my own body.
"What the hell did you do?" Liz demanded before lifting the cylinder with her metal manipulation. "This is serious testing, not a time for you to play games!"
"Well I did try to test my second pool of powers. There was just a minor delay I did not expect." Yeah, understatement. Proximakinesis worked just as well under Word of Self - or almost. It felt stiffer, less flexible, and its ability to extend through contact to other objects to exert force at a distance was almost nonexistent. In return, the sensory feedback felt a lot more detailed, as if the power truly was an extension of my body, something that acted more naturally, though resulting into less conscious control with it.
"Well, don't do it again!" the older girl demanded with a huff.
"Why? It's not as if you couldn't fix any damage to the equipment in moments. Reshaping metal is what you do." Hell, the huge cylinder had not even existed before the testing session had begun.
"Because if you don't take this seriously I won't help you again," she hissed and gave me a good glare to boot. "We're doing science here, not fooling around."
"I thought the only difference between science and fooling around was writing things down?"
Liz screamed, the pair of ginormous metal statues came to life, and the careful, professional testing devolved into an impromptu combat session...
xxxx
Half an hour later, I was finally convinced; punching into solid tungsten alloy is the opposite of fun. Especially when it's a magical alloy and thus resistant to my attempts to disintegrate it with a single touch. Not that this saved the giant statues in the end, because Force Adjustment still worked externally and even without it I'd proven strong enough to shatter the alloy bit by bit. It had just taken a hell of a lot of punching, especially with Liz fixing the damage almost as quickly as I could make it, and had left my knuckles bruised and aching before rapid recovery had kicked in.
On the other hand, blowing off some steam had made us both calmer and less snippy with each other, which let the rest of the testing progress far more quickly. It turned out that many of my powers could work with both Word of Force and Word of Self, though with subtle differences between them. Manifesting them with energy from the former tended to make everything more mechanical, more precise and controllable. Doing the same with the latter made every boost more natural and seemingly an extension of my own body's abilities.
Then there were the "skills" that only worked with one of the two pools. No matter what I tried, neither Forcefield Creation nor Lasting Force worked as self-buffs. They were explicitly skills that extended beyond and were separate from myself, thus they clashed with the second power pool's theme. Inversely, Chronal and Spatial Leap did not work with the Word of Force, and Empowering Regeneration was clunky and slow when forced to manifest as a force effect.
Super Suit on the other hand worked just fine as a force effect, for a given definition of "fine". It produced even more flexible and effective designs, without needing to rely on my own skills as a seamstress-or lack thereof. The trade-off was that everything it made was translucent at best, scaling back to entirely transparent if I did not pay attention. Not something I'd be using in the field any time soon.
Ultimately, the greatest difference was that all the "skills" scaled to the same overall level of power instead of developing individually. They no longer were different powers but ways in which I could use my only two actual powers. Their limitations hinged on the limitations of the power itself, and those could be changed by spending points on the rankings.
"Power" was quite obviously the raw strength of each effect; the fourth rank made Proximakinesis capable of lifting locomotives and Force Adjustment enough to multiply a given force by a factor of twenty - both much, much higher than they'd been in the climactic battle of the Invasion.
"Control" was how much precision and fine detail I could get out of my powers; at the third rank my powers were more precise than any human fingers, or even mundane tools could get.
"Versatility" was all the different uses I could put a given effect in, such as selectivity, contingencies, even simple automation. At the fourth rank, power use could be as versatile as any purely mechanical devices.
"Range" and "Scope" were how far from their point of origin my powers could extend and how great an area they could affect. They were the weakest areas of my abilities, the reason I still had Proximakinesis instead of Telekinesis and how despite their development most of my abilities applied at touch ranges at most. That was OK though. It was better to focus on having more raw power than more range, because with enough speed range ultimately became less important.
"Number of Effects" were obviously how many "skills" I could have going at once. Six slots seemed too few and I was tempted to immediately increase it. The thirteen points representing my untapped, not yet invested power would be more than enough for it, but I held back. Six slots were enough for all my general, overall "boosts" so one more wouldn't increase my raw combat power. It would increase my versatility in a fight... but was a bit of extra convenience worth the expense? There were countless powers out there; trying to match them with versatility was a fool's errand. Overwhelming power so that tricks became irrelevant had helped me survive through an invasion of magical aliens; I was not about to change things now.
"I think we're done," I told Liz and settled the latest iteration of the tungsten cylinder slowly to the ground. At twelve thousand tons it might have pierced through the floor had I let it drop and then Liz would have chased me out of the base.
"Finally!" the brunette exclaimed. "I'm going back to my forge. Don't call unless aliens are attacking, or something."
"The General will be pleased with the new information," Agent Stone told me as we walked back to the residential portion of the base. "Now that we have a more complete picture of what you can do we can better plan actual missions. We could start solving all those problems threatening the whole country." He seemed happy with that development, so I left him to deliver the good news and write the reports.
Now, what was the quickest way to make all that data obsolete without showing my hand?