[Saturday July 11, 2pm]
Saturday afternoon was more difficult. I'd spent most of the week practicing stuff Paragon-Kara did. Combat skills, hovering, and working with simple lightning bolts. Nothing fancy, just the low-power stuff anyone in Atlas with a couple of batteries and a pair of charged gloves could pull off. I'd been reteaching myself Fate's brand of martial art, trying to get what was in my head programmed into my muscles, so I wouldn't have to think about it when I needed it. But that afternoon was a different ball game. Literally.
Marvel-Kara had a few extra options my alternate third didn't. The other half of my hero heritage could not only manifest electricity, but could Stunt kinetic energy. Stunting was developed in the game mechanic as a way of growing the character. See in the old Marvel rules, you never grew your character's stats or baseline powers. You could never afford it. So instead you found ways to make your power pull off "stunts" based on the power. That was how you grew the character. A good similarity in Paragon was that I was an electrical zapper with some basic skill. The other powers, like ball lightning, tesla cage and so on... those were stunts. They were finding ways to use raw electricity that changed how the power behaved in some way. Well my alternate source had a kind of "omni" energy power that was based around electricity. But she could stunt kinetic energy if she wanted to. And seeing as how that meant I could do body-hugging forcefields, I really, really wanted to.
How did I do this? Well, basically I had the cousins start throwing balls at me. My objective was to find whatever mental trigger it took to put up a forcefield. I'd know I succeeded when I stopped feeling the impacts.
We tried several times before calling a halt. Roughly two hours had gone by, I hadn't managed anything that I could detect, and I was sore all over from impacts. I gingerly sat down at the picnic table and buried my face in my hands.
"This isn't working," I mumbled.
"I noticed that," my aunt said, sitting down beside me. "Know what I think? I think you're thinking too hard." She grinned as she said it. "I think all you need to do is know it will be there, and it will."
I looked over at her, eyebrows raised in disbelief. "If that was the case, I wouldn't fall in the pool so often."
She chuckled and straightened my hair. A part of me noted that her doing that still creeped me out a little. "That's because you don't really believe yet. That you can do all these things for a reason."
And that was the other reason I'd been concerned about telling them. They're very powerfully religious. They accepted easily enough, much to my surprise. But they're not above trying to drive their viewpoint home when they get the chance.
"That aside," I began, "how am I supposed to believe it won't hit me when I see it coming at me?"
She tapped my nose with her finger. "And that's why they're hitting you." She picked up what she'd been working on and bustled off. "We're having spaghetti tonight. Do you like meatballs?"
I laughed and answered while going over what she'd been saying. I walked over to the nearby treeline and just started walking along. I pulled a few mental tricks I'd been taught - both by Fate and my own martial arts training many moons ago, and calmed my mind. I considered that I had an invulnerable field around me, and couldn't feel pain. It just was. I kept walking, thinking it over, focusing on my breathing, and just feeling the breeze toss a few errant locks of hair around.
Eventually, I reached the corner, where the line of trees ran across the back of the area they'd cleared for farming, a long time ago. I didn't think it through, and I didn't alter my thoughts. I just struck the tree.
No pain.
The whole tree shivered. I could benchpress a tractor. Not a tiny thing you rode around your house doing the lawn with, but an eight foot high John Deere farming tractor. I'd also learned a lesson about action and reaction trying it, but I think I covered that elsewhere. So my punch wasn't inconsiderable. Still keeping myself in that zoned-out state, I walked into the woods and found a large rock. Punched it.
Still no pain.
Considering the fact that I had an invulnerable field around me, I paused, set myself, and smashed it as hard as I could.
The rock split with an atrociously loud crack. I didn't feel a thing. And a quick look showed no blood or broken bones either.
Later that day, I still got pelted by volleyballs. I had to work on keeping it up while being distracted. But I knew it was possible. I could actually do this.
Now I just had to master flying.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.
Saturday afternoon was more difficult. I'd spent most of the week practicing stuff Paragon-Kara did. Combat skills, hovering, and working with simple lightning bolts. Nothing fancy, just the low-power stuff anyone in Atlas with a couple of batteries and a pair of charged gloves could pull off. I'd been reteaching myself Fate's brand of martial art, trying to get what was in my head programmed into my muscles, so I wouldn't have to think about it when I needed it. But that afternoon was a different ball game. Literally.
Marvel-Kara had a few extra options my alternate third didn't. The other half of my hero heritage could not only manifest electricity, but could Stunt kinetic energy. Stunting was developed in the game mechanic as a way of growing the character. See in the old Marvel rules, you never grew your character's stats or baseline powers. You could never afford it. So instead you found ways to make your power pull off "stunts" based on the power. That was how you grew the character. A good similarity in Paragon was that I was an electrical zapper with some basic skill. The other powers, like ball lightning, tesla cage and so on... those were stunts. They were finding ways to use raw electricity that changed how the power behaved in some way. Well my alternate source had a kind of "omni" energy power that was based around electricity. But she could stunt kinetic energy if she wanted to. And seeing as how that meant I could do body-hugging forcefields, I really, really wanted to.
How did I do this? Well, basically I had the cousins start throwing balls at me. My objective was to find whatever mental trigger it took to put up a forcefield. I'd know I succeeded when I stopped feeling the impacts.
We tried several times before calling a halt. Roughly two hours had gone by, I hadn't managed anything that I could detect, and I was sore all over from impacts. I gingerly sat down at the picnic table and buried my face in my hands.
"This isn't working," I mumbled.
"I noticed that," my aunt said, sitting down beside me. "Know what I think? I think you're thinking too hard." She grinned as she said it. "I think all you need to do is know it will be there, and it will."
I looked over at her, eyebrows raised in disbelief. "If that was the case, I wouldn't fall in the pool so often."
She chuckled and straightened my hair. A part of me noted that her doing that still creeped me out a little. "That's because you don't really believe yet. That you can do all these things for a reason."
And that was the other reason I'd been concerned about telling them. They're very powerfully religious. They accepted easily enough, much to my surprise. But they're not above trying to drive their viewpoint home when they get the chance.
"That aside," I began, "how am I supposed to believe it won't hit me when I see it coming at me?"
She tapped my nose with her finger. "And that's why they're hitting you." She picked up what she'd been working on and bustled off. "We're having spaghetti tonight. Do you like meatballs?"
I laughed and answered while going over what she'd been saying. I walked over to the nearby treeline and just started walking along. I pulled a few mental tricks I'd been taught - both by Fate and my own martial arts training many moons ago, and calmed my mind. I considered that I had an invulnerable field around me, and couldn't feel pain. It just was. I kept walking, thinking it over, focusing on my breathing, and just feeling the breeze toss a few errant locks of hair around.
Eventually, I reached the corner, where the line of trees ran across the back of the area they'd cleared for farming, a long time ago. I didn't think it through, and I didn't alter my thoughts. I just struck the tree.
No pain.
The whole tree shivered. I could benchpress a tractor. Not a tiny thing you rode around your house doing the lawn with, but an eight foot high John Deere farming tractor. I'd also learned a lesson about action and reaction trying it, but I think I covered that elsewhere. So my punch wasn't inconsiderable. Still keeping myself in that zoned-out state, I walked into the woods and found a large rock. Punched it.
Still no pain.
Considering the fact that I had an invulnerable field around me, I paused, set myself, and smashed it as hard as I could.
The rock split with an atrociously loud crack. I didn't feel a thing. And a quick look showed no blood or broken bones either.
Later that day, I still got pelted by volleyballs. I had to work on keeping it up while being distracted. But I knew it was possible. I could actually do this.
Now I just had to master flying.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.