Bab 1: Spark, catch
But no one really was able to explain how they knew their powers did what they did.
How could I explain that I just knew that there were five minuscule motes of power… no potential sitting in the back of my mind. That I could somehow sense a sixth slowly growing to join them.
I blinked for a moment. Though it was a relief to know that I wouldn't be limited to five sparks forever.
What told me that these sparks could become powers, that I could merge these sparks to fuel the creation of more powerful abilities.
And why, despite all this knowledge did I not know the strength of the powers I could make.
I suppose it was fortunate, that I had tried to go big with my first power, though I admit that flight had always been a childhood dream of mine. And the idea of flying as fast as Legend was amazing.
Still, I was lucky that when the spark couldn't fill out the shape of the power in my mind, it simply collapsed and returned to my stockpile.
With my leg broken, I didn't really have much I could do. After attempting to make a regeneration power - and failing - I quickly realised that it would have probably outed me as a cape instantly.
Still, it would make sense to try and make something at least.
Sighing, I pulled the wheelie chair with my laptop on it back over and started looking through the latest threads on PHO. And then I paused.
Secondary powers.
It was a pretty common thing, that even though a cape tended to have one major power, they also tended to have secondary powers that made them work. Like how Fume was immune to her own fumes.
My power had secondary powers - or at least, I could think of it that way, the ability to hold the charges, for example. But I didn't know how big of a charge I needed to make a power.
So why couldn't I fix that?
As the sixth spark settled in my mind I absently pondered why I suddenly gained a spark. I could even feel another one growing. Why now? I had had my power for several days at this point, and at no time did I gain more sparks. Would I get five more and then have to wait a week for more sparks?
As I fleshed out my power, I quickly realised that I wasn't really describing one power. At least, not one that I could make right now. The Power Studio, as I had tentatively titled it was everything I wanted in a power that would allow me to make other powers. Effectively an entire tinker power, now that I thought of it. But I'd tried to make powers like this previously. And failed.
But the way I organised it, I could see how it was made up of smaller powers. One allowed me to perfectly focus on multiple things at once and think more quickly so that I could use it in a fight. Another allowed me to instantly recall any information I had previously held in my mind, as well as freely modify it, as well as unlimited memory to go with it. The last was effectively a tinker power, that would help me improve and optimise my powers, allowing me to know not only what the cost of the original intended power would be, but also what similar powers I could create with more or fewer charges.
I suspected that the last power would be beyond me, but I wanted to see if I could do it.
As expected, attempting to do it all at once failed, but I was still optimistic, I trimmed away at the tinker portion, removing the ability to optimise powers for charge amounts. Still not enough.
It was only once I had trimmed back the mental acceleration and reduced the number of threads to ten that it clicked. One charge squeezed into the idea, expanding and then burning away. I winced at the wasted power, feeling it burn away into expended smoke. Still, I felt the effects immediately.
I named the power Mindscape, and I could already get a sense for how my mind was splitting into different trains of thought, each unerringly focusing on different ideas. It should have been overwhelming, all of the different lanes of hyperfocus, but each was as clear as crystal.
I could remember everything I had ever done… including where I had left my Hero pins. I excitedly pushed myself up and used the chair as a brace as I carefully hopped my way over to my closet. Ignoring the pain with literally superhuman focus, I held myself up as I pulled my ratty old backpack off it and began digging through the rain-cover compartment. Pulling out the four collectors edition pins that I had lost years ago I excitedly put them back in their place of honour on the shelf.
As the second spark bloomed in my mind I slowly wheeled myself back to the bed.
With another spark available, I tried to add the other parts I was missing. I quickly dropped the mental acceleration, deciding to save that for a standalone power, since it was probably a pretty decent power to try and optimise.
Instead I focused on the power creation aspects. I struck on something with with thinking of this as a tinker power. Because that was what my power really was. A tinker power. I made new powers.
I wasn't like a trump, and just got powers, I made mine.
So I started thinking of what I would need to do to expand it. I thought of an analysis power, that would let me figure out the best powers for a situation, A more general power tinker.
But in the end, I wasn't able to do it. I sat there for hours, trying to figure out what I could get away with, but in the end, it just came back to this.
Evaluator took form in my mind, and it simply took my designs and rated them, on how many charges they would take to create. It did however return fractions of a level. So, as I considered full set of abilties, I knew that it would require a level four charge. Which I knew meant that I would need sixteen charges. And that was just for a basic set of 'inspiration from this situation', 'optimise power for this charge' and 'best way to construct this power' I wanted from that power set.
Putting that aside, I considered the mental acceleration power. I was actually able to get a lot out of it, even for a single charge. And as I played around with it, I found I could eeke out a bit more. At first, I considered it a thinker power, planning around the infamous thinker headache, and I managed to go up to more than a ten times acceleration while still remaining in the single charge.
But then I thought…
I don't actually need to have a thinker headache.
And that was when I discovered something about my power. I called it the recharge mechanic. If I was willing to let my powers recharge, even if it was just locking out the power, no headache required, I could seriously boost how effective it was while it was working.
And I may have figured something else out… my powers seem to stack. I coils analyse a different power configuration with every one of my ten lines of thought.
And I bet if I had mental acceleration, it would apply to all of my lines of thought.
The real test, of course, would be to see if I could stack another multi-threading power on top of my current one.
It also seemed that simplicity was a real help in terms of power design. My mindscape power took eighty-three percent of a charge to make, and making the memory ability by itself would only take a tenth of a charge.
Dedicating a single charge to simply allowing myself as many lines of focus as I wanted meant that I could spawn hundreds of lines of thought. Well, a little over a hundred.
And I just got another charge.
A line of thought spun off to contemplate the pattern as i considered my options.
As it was, my powers weren't great, but I didn't know how often I would be getting more of the charges.
I'd gotten two in the span of minutes, before the next taking hours to form.
But I still had more than I started today with. I had powers, and I wanted to be able to defend myself at least.
I considered my options, and paused a moment as one of my lines of thinking ran into a wall.
I couldn't even get a number for replicating Eidolon's power.
I tried describing their power, and got a level of 9.53. But if I tried to just copy their power outright, it didn't work.
I couldn't actually copy any cape. Almost like my analysis power wouldn't accept 'replicate this power' as an input. Even a simple power, like Grue's.
As I let my other lines of thought explore different ideas for powers, I tried to consider what it meant that I couldn't copy powers.
I thought through the power creation process for a moment before I landed on it.
I needed a solid concept of their power in order to replicate them. I couldn't just reference their powers and create a copy.
Which meant I could create something similar, but not necessarily the same.
I held no delusions that my first attempts at power creation were somehow better than the powers that other capes had. I probably wasn't making the best use of my charges, given that I had already discovered mechanics that would have let me make my powers orders of magnitude better, just with the feedback from Evaluator.
Actually… why couldn't I see how it was supposed to be done?
I Evaluated a power that would let me analyse another cape's power. It took a little while but limiting it to touch range, and removing any storage inherent to the power, in addition to any other optimizations meant that I could scrape the sensory power down to a Level 3.
Expensive, but doable. If I hadn't spent those two charges, I would even have been able to do it now.
I could feel a seventh charge nearing completion. If I was lucky, I'd even be able to make that power today.
I probably wouldn't though.
I would spend these two charges to make a more combat viable power. Something I could use to protect myself if anything happened.
I knew I had to be careful, so I wanted to make sure my powers were as effective as possible. I had two charges to spend, and I wanted to make sure that whatever I got out of it was worth those two charges.
I started wandering through PHO as I thought of ideas. I didn't really want to go out and fight, not until I was a lot stronger, at least. I just needed something that would let me fight off gang recruitment and get away, probably protecting someone in the process.
I needed to make the powers strong, so they had to be simple, and possibly have a cooldown to amp them up a bit more.
I paged through the PHO versus boards for a while looking at the various powers for inspiration.
I needed simple powers, at the end of the day.
As I continued scrolling, I heard a knock on my door, "James? Can I come in?"
"Sure thing mom!"
The door opened as mom carried in a plate, "I heard back from the doctor, and he said that once the pain in your leg is manageable, we can get some crutches so you can get moving, but you are probably not going back to class until after winter break."
That was a lucky break, I mean, I was only skipping a week of school, but it meant that I could focus on building up my powers without worrying that I was accidentally letting things slip.
Staying home and staying quiet was probably the best thing I could do.
"I'm going to talk to you teachers about making up those exams, or coming just for the exams, it's going to be difficult to get time off to drive you there."
"Dave got his driver's licence recently he'll drive me over if you make him some of your cookies."
"That would work."
"Just don't forget to study, James."
I sighed, "I will mom, don't worry."
I sighed as I realised that, as a cape, my family was always going to be a weakness. I'd need to consider my ability to protect them when I designed my power.
It was hours of scrolling through various threads and wandering through rabbit holes as I ate dinner before I stumbled into something.
I'd wandered into some of the older sections of PHO, from back when capes were being compared to comic book heroes, and I had found some inspiration in the simpler fictional powers.
Generic telekinesis would be amazing, but I also wanted to project constructs like the Green Lantern.
And by splitting the power into two, I had managed to get something decent for my two charges.
Or perhaps three… Given that another reached maturity.
Did I want to use all three?
I contemplated different powers and considered them.
One power was the same regardless of which option I used, it would let me use my power at a distance, at a single point, or within a volume I specified. The module by itself was relatively simple, especially with some tweaking, and granted me a surprisingly decent range. A single charge would allow me to extend my powers out about a dozen yards. Enough that I could seal off an alley, maybe. I was even pretty sure I could tie the activation into my multiple lanes of thought
I considered making one power in line with what I had previously considered, the ability to generate force. The power was stripped down to the point of effective uselessness by itself, but paired with the previous power, I could focus that one charge on producing nothing but force energy and projecting it.
Slowly scaling up the amount of power I could put through the ability, I knew that I could get away with a lot.
But I knew I could get away with more.
If I spent another power, I could get away with a lot more. I'd realised early on that two powers working in concert could do more than one power that took a level two charge.
Having one power that simply built up and stored a charge, and another that drew from that reserve to feed into the shaping power meant that I could get significantly more force out of the equation.
Granted, there were limits to that, breaking down powers to get more powerful simple parts only went so far.
It also had the downside of having to co-ordinate those powers, though I'd probably end up making a proper power to solve that problem in the future. Right now, I had enough spare lines of thought to make things work until I felt more comfortable about it.
Even so, just that alone didn't make it equal to a level two charge. The storage power simply built up whatever raw energy fueled my powers, and was simple enough that it was providing as much energy as a level one charge could. But my conversion power. That wasn't even using a fifth of a full charge. Even with the ability to entirely drain my reserves in a fraction of a second, it was simply such a minor power that it didn't take up an entire charge.
So I expanded on it. I added more energy types, allowing the ability to convert into light and heat in addition to kinetic force. I even tried for gravity, but that was a little too much. Instead, I used up the remaining space with a power amplifier, that would amplify the output that would be pumped into the shaper.
With a ninth charge nearing completion, I decided to push for that little extra.
As that new spark was being born, three others were quickly consumed into their new forms.
Projector, Reserve and Convertor took shape. Each was a little refined, but Projector especially, as I remembered to add a component that allowed me to control the directionality of the power as it was emitted within the volumes. And I remembered to generalise a bit more for the converter, creating heat, kinetic or electromagnetic energy, as well as managing to simplify things by not limiting output to one kind of energy.
Smiling widely, I reached out with my new powers and fired them off in concert forming an invisible plate that brought one of my textbooks from my desk over to me.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone