Chapter 104

Chapter 104: Cementing Gains

Jack inevitably had to check up on Bo, so he popped over a mem-text. <Doing alright? Give me a link when you can.>

Quickly thereafter… “Ugggggggh,” came the zombie noise from Bo, injected into his brain.

“Hnnnngh,” Jack replied.

“I agree. Holy fragsicles, I feel like a train rolled over me and back several times. Yet also pumped full of energy. Shit is warped. Sucks.”

“Yeah. I got the kitchen sink eye mod. I’ve got eagle eyes! It’s trippy and extraordinary. In particular. Because the rest is nuts, too. You should see my abs.”

“Ew. Muscles. No thanks. Never understood the appeal. Who wants to hug a brick wall, anyway?”

Jack chuckled. “Soft bod only, for you, eh?”

“In a boyfriend. I’m alright with my bodyguards having bulletproof abs. Like Highfive. Like you. So, I guess I approve.”

“I’m so thrilled. It’s a real honor to guard a princess, after all.”

“Queen. Anyway, I’m sure Ira will absolutely love them. She’s into that. You should show them off to her.”

Jack felt his lips scrunch up of their own accord. “Bo, you seriously need to-”

“So, do you want to know what I got?”

Jack sighed. “Sure.”

“Check this out!” A picture was sent along with, of Bo’s face, which was otherwise the same except for stark red irises of intricate aesthetic depth.

“Great. You’re a vampire now. I’ll have to pack a stake in my gear, just in case.”

“Don’t expect me to suck you.”

“I… definitely wasn’t expecting that.”

She actually giggled. “Okay, I’m maybe a little off, right now.”

“What else did you get?”

“Guess.”

“The endurance mods.”

“Sharp. Yeah. It’s basically cheating to abuse my ability more. Stupid to take anything else.”

“I wouldn’t say that, considering other stuff can keep you alive.”

“I prefer living fuller to living longer. That includes kicking more ass with my abilities. Let me guess: you took all the boring shit?”

“Are the eyes of an eagle boring, Bo?”

“But that was only twenty minutes. What else?”

“Puncture quick-healing and the shock damage mod.” He didn’t feel inclined to mention the extra mod crammed in. It felt too much like bragging, ‘I’m such a special boy!’ Bo would literally tease him in exactly that way, too.

“Called it. Boring.”

“Call it that when we get wind-knocked five meters or some shit, and I’m popping up immediately, while you’re left moaning and groaning on the ground.”

“Challenge accepted, nerd.”

Jack snickered. “Well, I’ll let you get back to being giddy, and whatever bizarre things that result, which man was surely never meant to know.”

“A wise decision. But, hey, I owe you one for this.”

“Nah, don’t worry about-”

“Don’t give me that shit, Jack — this is massive. I owe you, and there’s nothing you can say to change that. If you ever need something, don’t hesitate. Got it?”

Jack sighed. “Ehhh. Fine. Bye for now, Bo.”

He disconnected. As he got up and went into the kitchen to get some juice, he started feeling guilty about needling Lindsay about an ‘extra’ favor for having to wait for Stitcher’s meeting. As it turned out, it was far beyond a mere meeting and well worth the wait. Priceless, perhaps. Assuming he lived through their sparring session, that is.

It had been a bit since he’d talked with Lindsay. He sent her a Mem-text. <Stitcher is certainly interesting. She did more than merely offer advice. I’m like Jack 3.0 now. Got the enhanced vision mod, healing, etc. Anyway, pretty sure I should owe you in the debt comparison, so let’s just forget about that extra favor.>

Lindsay apparently wasn’t busy right then, as she immediately replied. <Even Big Brat Jack can learn humility?! Next, you’ll tell me pigs fly! Kidding. Jack, let’s be real: if you needed something, I’d make it happen anyway, so what does it matter? I’m glad Stitcher got back, though. We could’ve used her expertise with Neex a good while back, now.>

<Would she have ended up meeting me even without your leverage?>

<Dunno. Maybe? Not really a certainty, with how she focuses on things.>

<Just how powerful is she, anyway? Classified intel, I suppose.>

<That’s right. Sorry. I can say: very powerful.>

<Mmn. Worth a shot. I’m going to spar with her later, by the way.>

<Oh, Goddess. Good luck.>

<Should I be worried?>

<Absolutely. But you’ll be fine. You’re in good hands. Hypothetically.>

<That qualifier ruins your encouragement.>

<She doesn’t spar much. I think she’s a bit too cavalier with what she considers ‘macro-simplicities’ compared to gengineering. She can’t heal someone from a smear on the floor, though. Hypothetically, she’s under control. Hypothetically, her intense absent-mindedness on ‘irrelevant matters’ is a side effect of ancient genius, and not developing dementia.>

<Right. She’s really old. Is there also corruption?>

<There’s always some, Jack. She just happens to be both resistant and the most diligent in monitoring and clearing it. So to speak. She tediously fights the side effects by her own methods, and has still had brain surgery three times. All three of them involved debate with Central on the risks, particularly the last one. I couldn’t tell you who actually won, either. I’ve seen the transcripts, and it's like a bunch of Socrates-era philosophers going at it or something. Rhetoric that melts your brain.>

<Wow. Should I just cancel the sparring session?>

<Up to you. You’re a big boy. I’m sure your life will carry you to risks far greater than this. Anyway, I had a second, but I'd better go. Grats on your match, by the way. I saw some of it. That was a thing of beauty, dude. Not just my bias talking, either. I can’t say much, but I’ll cheat a little to tell you that the performance is impressive on many metrics, and likely to matter to the right people. Actually, there’s your favor, huh? I broke protocol for you. Sinned. So we’ve even now!>

Jack grinned. Compliments from his original shifu were special things, and rare lately. <Awesome. I’ll take it, thanks.> Considering it slightly assuages my guilt to have gotten too much out of the deal, it’s the ideal result from this convo. <See you around, eh?>

<Yeah, if I ever get a break! I even missed a family thing recently. Things are hectic. Been never-ending. Anyway, later!>

There was no ‘tone of voice’ to the Mem-texts, but he still felt like he had detected serious strain and stress from her.

Can’t do much about that, sadly.

Well, he could try one thing. “Mini, can I have something sent to her office, desk, or whatever? Even though her location might be classified.”

“Of course, Jack. We have routing procedures that will handle it, as long as you’re already cleared to know an agent’s identity.”

“Alright, then. Give me some options for big ass bouquets of flowers. Something attractive but as neutered romantically as possible. Platonic colors? No hearts? I dunno. Not roses…”

Jack picked out a breath-takingly expensive ‘Friendship or Celebration Bouquet’ with a lot of vibrant colors and the sort of delicate, classy aesthetic Lindsay probably had as a default standard of expectation. He sent it out for delivery with a card reading:

Thanks for everything, Shifu. Stay strong. 
— Jack

🌑 🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕

Jack proceeded to get progressively back into his groove, able to work out to some degree in spurts. He was largely possessed of a bottomless appetite in feeding the ‘new machine.’ And constantly thirsty and pissing. Mini advised him to drink even more, too.

With some trepidation, he went for a run. He brought shades to cover his eyes against the brightness. His vision might have protections, but it still didn’t change the way he perceived the brightest environments on the first day of his adaptation to the new normal. Typical indoor lighting had become similar to sunlight, and anything brighter was too intense. 

The good news was that he could handle ‘bright indoor lighting’ better already, and shades made the ‘big circle run’ not bad at all. He practiced his focusing abilities here and there on people. Those runners who’d once been mere blurs were seen much more discernibly as they moved past. When he visualized whether he could aim some sort of shot at them in the brief flash he had, he thought he at least had a snowball’s chance in hell. That was an improvement!

Partially because of the sparring session coming up and partially because he simply had a shitton of stuff to get reacquainted with, Jack mosied over to Power Park in the early afternoon and started a long training routine designed for low fatigue drain and high precision. That was the most logical strategy with so many things to get used to. Fortunately, his endurance was significantly higher than just a day ago. With a SOFT of 87%, he could do that for an hour and dip one grade. 80% was over two hours, so it was a good target when planning on breaks throughout the practice.

Since he’d already pumped up Throw, he focused on every other weapon category to bump his accuracy, utilizing his new eyesight and neural mods, which effectively had enhanced his processing speed, as it were. It wasn’t massive, and mostly needed his eyesight to usefully leverage it, but it was noticeable and perhaps even ‘targeted’ at helping him hit things. To hunt and kill.

He worked with cables, tendrils, spears, blades, hammers, and other blunt objects to leverage the full dimensionality of his improvements. He went through the sequence of weapons three times, seeing rapid gains in all of them. He added a little more Throw practice since Power Park training was a lot more rigorous than toying around in his quarters.

From there, he moved on to defensive training, knowing he could make strides with Evasion as well as Parry. Indeed, his potential at parrying bullets out of the air had vastly improved. On the other hand, his timing needed reacquaintance across the board to get back to what it was. Oddly, being able to see the bullets so easily warped his prior strategy of prediction. Fortunately, compensating only took about twenty minutes, and then he was increasing the speeds, and even parrying new calibers and velocities on the first or second try.

When he switched to crossbow bolts, they moved so slowly to him, and his power was so improved, he could curve them back 180 degrees! 

He went back to handgun rounds and found ‘stopping them’ also far easier, as he could track, stop, and move to the next on semi-auto. The dream of the movie style ‘block and shoot back’ was entirely possible! Pointless and inefficient, but doable.

That intimidation aspect, though!

Evasion didn’t see quite the same gains as powers, as he couldn’t move his body fast enough to keep up with his eyes. It did mean he could roll with blows better, and as long as he was anticipating something, his assessment of ‘where to be’ as an attack launched was stellar. His ability to multitask, moving his body while doing something else with his powers, also seemed improved, though it remained rather tricky to track two things at once at high speeds.

Better than before: that was the key thing.

Because of the strong focus of his session and the limited time, he only had a little bit for the ‘backlog’ of getting used to Interpret 2.0, or training up Wall Art. But he squeezed it in. His neural mods sadly didn’t help much with sensing via his powers, but they did help setting up Fieldsense from greater ranges, as he could see the clouds more acutely from further away. That had benefits, as he could spy them visually, then move them around corners and such.

He realized, as he focused more on Interpret, that it was actually already helping integrate vision improvements into his power use with Control. They worked together quite fluidly, improving his instinctual movements and feel for the positioning of weapons and targets.

Briefly, he experimented with the fine-grained new fields he could fashion, anchored around him, and then fought against a few sims inside the field, using it primarily as another dimensionality to targeting… 

Holy shit.

It was like multiplying his targeting information. The instant something moved, he had a tickle in his brain. As the target continued to cascade through the field, more information came on where it was, and then his eyesight was feeding him even more, triangulating his understanding of ‘where they were’ in an uncanny, magnetic way.

He had a long way to go practicing it enough to really understand how best to exploit it in the myriad of scenarios he’d face in the PACCs or in reality, but he knew he increasingly needed to steer toward this effect and have a field propagating. It just kept getting more and more useful the more he used and developed it. Hypothetically, he could get quicker and better at attacking through them at minute points. Bunching and bundling material down to a concentrated point — likely from a small area of already more concentrated powder, because the fine fields he was making were highly diffuse and of minuscule mass — then transmuting it to a tiny weapon right on top of someone. He wasn’t even close to that at useful speeds or effectiveness at range, but it was a hell of a trick if he could ever get there. 

Regardless, the sensory benefits were already well worth practicing until second nature. It was something like… turning an environment into an ‘attunement’ of his element. It wasn’t quite like a water controller in a pool, but perhaps it was like that controller in a very humid area.

He had to cram in some Wall Art training and use Augment more. The attribute could be feathered into normal generation to some degree, but it was better when it was slower — that is, reinforcing an existing structure. Fortunately, Transmute helped conduct that quicker, and he immediately noticed his Fluidity technique applied to Augment use just as it did to Control — it complemented changing shit to improve the core stat function, and thus expedited improvements even more.

Jack started fashioning steel walls, reinforcing them, bracing them against impacts, and repairing them when damaged. It was among the most straightforward of things he’d ever practiced, only defeated by perhaps Lifting. Then again, he’d only just started, and being the last thing practiced, his creativity might’ve been rather spent. He nonetheless poured himself into it until it was time to take a break and grab some food. He wanted to be as close to 100% as he could be for the Stitcher duel.

Control: Cord has improved to 2.7!

Control: Throw has improved to 3.5!

Control: Cloud has improved to 1.6!

Control: Spear has improved to 1.2!

Control: Strike has improved to 0.5!

Control: Collect/Collect (Sphere) has improved to 2.1/3.0!

Interpret: Fieldsense has improved to 0.8!

Transmute: Fluidity has improved to 1.1!

Evasion has improved to 4.1!

Parry has improved to 1.0!

Parry had added a new modifier: +Speed. This improves Parry only for the purposes of countering/offsetting high-speed attacks.

Wall Art has improved to 0.3!

Radical.

In terms of comparisons, he knew his teammates had some high techniques, a few in the 6.X range and a few in the 5.X, for their biggest Control specialities. The enhancements were definitely going to help narrow the gap. Getting accuracy values to 4.X was really respectable. He’d need it especially if his Control wouldn’t be increasing even for his next level. That was set in stone to be Create, for the rare opportunity that multiples of five gave to improve that, and thus his actual Allotment and raw power. Only an idiot would give that up, even for accuracy as a Controller. Especially when he had many ways around hard accuracy limits.

When he’d trained against Homage, he’d had a Throw of 1.7 or so, if he remembered right. That was enough for Homage’s boosted Evade to eclipse both Control and Throw. He knew a comparison of G.P.E. also affected things, as whoever was rawly just physically faster had a lot of leverage. All around, with multiple gaps narrowed, he’d probably be hitting Homage way more consistently if they had the same sparring session.

As Jack was eating, he got a Mem-text from Stitcher. <Can you be ready in 15? In your suit.>

Jack blinked as he was biting down into a roasted potato. <Sure. Where?>

<Platform Fishbowl.>

Jack’s blood ran cold, and he froze, not even chewing his food. That was a top secret location no one knew jack shit about, other than it was in the shape of a fishbowl and flyovers were exceptionally banned. <That’s not inside the tower.>

<Astute.>

<Am I really authorized, Doctor?>

<You are now.>

<What exactly is in there?>

<Not much. Memories and debris. Just another modular locale, separated for more dangerous testing scenarios close to home. We used to use it more for training, but now they have all the fancy safe-tech in its place. In any case, it’s exceptionally durable, which suits my purposes.>

Jack involuntarily swallowed his half-chewed potato, which caused him a coughing fit as he almost choked on it. He scrambled for a drink. <I have to admit to a degree of worry about all this.>

<That’s normal, Cadet. Nerves. I won’t hold it against you.>

Jack barked a hysterical sound that definitely wasn’t a laugh, running a hand over his face and letting out a final little cough. 

She couldn’t possibly want to kill me, after doing all this for me. That’s just silly. Right?

Stitcher sent another Mem-text. <You’ll be guided to a car to take you. See you there!>

Grand. <Yes, Doctor. See you then.>

His appetite rather spoiled, Jack cleaned up and got changed. Hopefully, it wasn’t his final trip out from the tower.

🌑 🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕

A small, but heavily-armored self-piloted military vessel took him out through the open air to Platform Fishbowl, which was pretty much as advertised — a village-sized dull metal cup tapering into a funnel for a bottom. It was completely opaque and ominous. Naturally, a fishbowl implied that there was full transparency, adding irony to the name. 

It was a darker twilight out — as Antarctica was transitioning into the dark season, it was going to be rather frequent. It was cloudy on top of this, and it looked to have rained recently. It struck him how much clearer he saw details compared to before. The light wasn’t exactly sterling, but it was quite ample for him.

He was all eyes when the vessel proceeded over the lip, literally popping his head out of the window into the roaring wind, to see ‘top secret’ with his now superior eyes.

The inside of the bowl was rough-looking, mostly stone flooring with pockets of earth, and contained what appeared to be a few modest concentrations of abandoned buildings. A few, at most, were fully collapsed, but looked as if a bomb had dropped on them. One singular, multifaceted building stood apart, undamaged and dwarfing the rest. It might’ve been a research facility, but it was clearly also long abandoned.

All-in-all, it was rather disappointing, considering the wild imaginations that typically ran through the public about the place. His uncle swore they did ‘alien shit’ here. Autopsies or something like that.

Never meet your heroes and never meet your top secret bases, apparently.

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Note: And so Lindsay suffered flowers-induced utter devastation of the heart and perished. RIP. The last words spoken to her by a coworker were reportedly, 'Damn. I need to get me a platonic boyfriend, too.'