Chronicling The Chain (Self-Insert Alt-Chain)

[LucianoWrites]

Premise: ​

A self-insert chain beginning in Chronicle. The first jump will only last about the length of the events of the first film. Have links to the Essential Body Mod (I'm purposefully using an older version), and Chronicle.

Chapter 1:​

[Alert: Initializing The Chain

Hello there [Jump-Maker]! You have died. Congratulations. Those of us tasked with creating jumpers recognize that this is an odd thing to celebrate, but the reason we believe this is a moment for celebration is because you have been selected to go on a chain of your very own.

Your contributions to the discourse around what your world recognized as a hobby were a small part of expanding the community and promoting what some in your world saw as a fun and creative way to spend time. The jumps you made, coupled with the hours you spent with friends conversing about chains and your sincere passion for the subject matter touched the hearts, for lack of a better word, of several benefactors.

Because of this, coupled with the untimely circumstances surrounding your demise, it was thought just by numerous benefactors to reward your efforts by sending you on a chain all your own. Please inform us as to what jump you would like to be your very first.

Also, as a general note: we have not erased memories of your death but for the time being you will not remember them. This is to allow you to more easily adjust to your new circumstances once you begin to transition into your new life in whatever destination you opt to visit.]

I attempt to open my eyes, or at least perceive anything other than the strange floating text box that seems to be "ahead" or "in front" of me. I struggle for what feels like several seconds before giving up.

The contents of the alert are alarming to say the least. I have died, apparently, and I must admit that that is less than optimal on my part. I should feel more strongly about that, but truthfully this is the first time I've been awake in some capacity and not felt any pain or physical discomfort in a long time so that strongly dulls the sadness I might otherwise feel.

Plus I get to go on a multiversal journey, and it's hard for me to be sad about that. I always liked seeing new places and even if this is some sort of freaky illusion my brain is putting together as a sort of afterlife the prospect of going on this journey is still exciting enough to rouse the adventurer in me.

I momentarily wonder if I'm dreaming, but if I am, a sudden effort on my part to wake up doesn't work. I mentally sigh and decide to consider the question I was challenged to answer. If I'm going on a chain I need to select my first jump…

I don't know if I actually have benefactors to entertain, or what happens when I die, so I guess I should start off small. A part of me is tempted by the prospect of visiting Generic First Jump, but I also realize that I don't love the lack of consequences to it and I also don't relish the prospect of spending a year in ten different worlds before I can begin to experience any real, long-term growth.

I consider going the standard route of going to Pokemon Trainer. It's a perfectly serviceable jump, but I also don't want to be a companion-type jumper and one of the big draws of Pokemon Trainer jump is the chance to snag a pokemon companion. It is a good jump, but I don't really want to be there for a decade…

I consider my own list of potential first jumps, including ones I've actually used as parts of chains. This unusual list includes jumps as fairly rough as the jump for the old Codemasters game "Overlord", as well as ones as somewhat standard as Super Mario 64, Luigi's Mansion, and Animal Crossing. I spend several minutes, or the equivalent at least, musing over the list of somewhat safe or at least survivable first jumps before I find two that catch my eye.

One is Generic Cartoon World, which is a fun, if powerful first jump. Some of the perks there are great for surviving jumps, and the items themselves are roughly as powerful. The other is Chronicle, which is a jump that is near and dear to my heart. A jump about three superpowered teens that offers jumpers a free superpower with no explicitly defined upper limit? That's… that's an option I can work with.

If I could grin I'd do so as I attempt to project my decision outward. I'm unsure of the mechanics of this liminal space, but after a few seconds pass where all I do is attempt to inform whatever entity I'm speaking too of my decision, the contents of the floating text box change.

[Alert: Decision Made

Excellent! There will be some unique conditions to this particular jump that will be options you can select to affect future movie jumps when you are designing your builds for the jumps in question. For this jump you will receive a Creative Mode Token, but only for this jump barring exceptional activities on your part in the future of your chain. Additionally you will only be here for a few months: from the beginning of August to the end of November and you cannot take items from this jump on the rest of your chain. In future parts of your chain these restrictions will be lifted.

While you will have all of the abilities the jump offers you, you will be considered a drop-in narratively and will be… dropped in on your first day of senior year, where you will be classmates with the protagonists.

This is partially intended as a balancing mechanism given the speed of the growth of the main perk here, and also to allow you to acclimate to jumping broadly without having you getting overly used to this setting before tearing you away again. Now please decide the essence you wish to gain for the sake of your Essential Body Modification Supplement build. You will only gain the freebies associated with the essence for the duration of this jump, but you will have the ability to make purchases that refine your body mod further in future jumps.]

The news that I can't take items with me is disappointing. There are a few exceptional items in this jump, particularly an item that allows me to share my telekinesis, but I also know of a jump that lets me buy stuff from other jumps so if I can go there someday I can just buy the cavern later. Still, not being able to take it right away is a bit of a bummer even if it's only a small disappointment amid a sea of fascinating news.

I consider the choice posed to me by whatever system is informing me as to what's going on. The Essential Body Modification Supplement is my favorite body modification document, so to see it presented to me in all of its glory is pretty sick.

The essences I always had the most affinity for were physical ones. Back when I was… alive I was extremely fond of essences that made me a solo-fighter and allowed me to get up and endure tremendous punishment. That said I also had an affinity for evil jumpers and creating real assholes, and while I don't want to be a hero or whatever I also don't want to be a monster.

I study the different options before me as I find that I can effortlessly recall the contents of the supplement. This is probably a supernatural effect for the convenience of whoever is being entertained by my mild scheming, to allow me to make the choice that most reflects what I've got going on inside my brain. Still, it's beneficial to me and I'm not the sort to look this particular gift horse in the mouth, at least not right now.

Of the different options I could choose from there are four that stand out to me. The essences of the assassin, brute, explorer, and healer are all pretty rad even from just the angle of their freebies. I also accidentally discover that I can access the list of perks I possess from Chronicle, just so I know what I'll already be working with.

At first glance the assassin essence is the most intriguing. It offers a range of fascinating tools, particularly the first tier of the "Morphic Form" ability, as well as "Polyglot", it makes my social skills fiat-backed even in gauntlets, and grants me resistance to things like fear and peer pressure.

That said, the other essences are also fascinating. The essence of the healer grants me things like energy drain and a big brain when it comes to biomedical stuff, the essence of the brute offers me the handy power-toggle ability, and the essence of the explorer eliminates my need to breathe. I mull this over for several seconds before I ultimately decide to go with the assassin essence, and as soon as I make this decision my surroundings begin to change.

For several seconds I feel as though I am standing in the middle of a kaleidoscope, my surroundings are enormously blurry and confusing. I take nearly half a minute to allow my surroundings to gain definition and clarity and when they do I realize that I am standing in the middle of a hallway connecting a living room and a kitchen.

In front of me is a door leading out of what I know, as a drop-in, is "My" house. I don't even have parents, but I do have a backpack… The backpack reminds me of something thoroughly unpleasant. The school bus is on the way.

High school again… I don't love the thought of THAT part of this, but my perks should make it easy enough for me to at least do passably well in a school in the early 2010s. There's an interesting "Social Butterfly" perk that promises to help with studying, and a part of my particular body mod build helps reduce mental fatigue so I should be fine. My backpack already has some books in it, and so I can tell that a lot of stuff was smoothed over to make this transition as easy and painless as possible, which probably explains how I know that the bus is on its way.

I put my hands on myself and feel muscles I never possessed in life, and as I study my body I am quickly swept away by a storm of delight as I find that I really am not in pain anymore even now that I'm… alive, again. I take a few cautious steps and I almost cry when I find that I don't even feel any discomfort in my leg, which plagued me for almost the entire last decade of my life due to unpleasant health things. A part of me still wonders if this is a dream, but it's hard for me to ignore the growing sense of wonder and excitement I feel.

I glance down at myself and find that I am taller than I was during my first life, and my thick arms are noticeably darker than they were when I was on the version of Earth I come from. As a Hispanic non-binary person who was masculine presenting during my first life, my new form seems to allow me to look as I feel which is nice. I can also feel the powerful strength coursing through me since my body has been amplified to peak human in every physical respect. I am wearing an outfit appropriate for a male student, some jeans and a t-shirt with a generic logo on it.

I check my pockets and find a wallet with a debit card and a folded up letter containing the information needed to use the card, some cash, and an ID. In my other pocket rests a key and a cell phone with a sticky note on its back which says its number and the passcode needed to unlock it. I quickly devote everything here to memory before taking the sticky note and the letter and cutting them up before throwing them away.

I unlock my cell phone and glance at the time. It's early in the morning, about ninety minutes before school begins. I somehow know that the school bus is coming in a few minutes, and so I opt to go ahead and begin my day in full even though a part of me wants to experiment and see if I can already use the best part of this jump from a superpowered point of view: the telekinesis. That said, I really do want to engage with the plot of the film and so I wouldn't want to miss my first chance to interact with the characters. I exit my house and find that I live in a small suburb.

"Yep, that's Seattle…" I remark as I study the distant metropolitan skyline. It is nothing like the small city I lived in just yesterday relative to my perspective, but it does remind me of the massive cities in Latin America that I lived in growing up.

It is cloudy today, but it doesn't look like it'll rain. I head to the area in front of my house and turn around to study it while I wait for the school bus.

My new home is decently small, only a one story thing, and seems to match every other house in the row. The lawn is plain and undecorated which helps differentiate it from the other houses here, and I take a second to memorize the numbers on the door and the mailbox to make it easier to get back here in the future. I also notice that there is no car in the driveway of my home, which makes sense since I didn't drive before I became a jumper and have received zero new knowledge. I get a few minutes to patiently memorize every detail I can make out, and thanks to perks I possess I doubt I'll be forgetting what I've seen anytime soon, before the bus arrives.

The thing slows to a stop right in front of my house and I step abroad and greet the bus driver, only to turn and see the motley group of teenagers who are also riding the bus. They all glance at me curiously, and some of them eye me in ways that make me roll my eyes but only internally. I don't need the first impression I make on people in this new world to be that I'm an asshole.

I step towards the back of the bus even as the thing begins to move again. When I find a seat I slide into it with a level of dexterous finesse I did not possess during my first life.

The bus speeds up now that I'm seated and I myself wonder what to do during this time. I could try to be social, heck that might even be a smart thing to do, but when I mix socialness and stealthiness to glance at my surroundings and eye the inhabitants of the bus I don't recognize anyone here from the film. I opt to pull out my cell phone and use it a bit before school.

The device is decently modern, for 2012, and it reminds me of the phone I got in 2013 which remained the phone I'd use until my demise a little over a decade later. I begin to surf the net, and I take this time to familiarize myself with the world as it was a decade and some change before my death.

As I move closer and closer to the school I find that life in 2012 feels fundamentally more serious than it did in 2024. The goofiness of the last few years, in ways that are amusing and at times horrifying, has made it hard to take the world seriously. In 2012 things feel more solid and set in stone, despite how radically different this very version of 2012 will feel in a few weeks.

By the time the bus reaches the average looking high school I've had time to reacquaint myself with a lot of trends from the middle of 2012. I've even had time to set up the shadows of various social media accounts, such as Facebook and Twitter, complete with creating emails for myself. As everyone around me begins to get up and move to exit the bus I decide to wait until almost everyone is gone before joining that chaos. I do take advantage of the moment a student with a partially opened backpack begins to walk by and I try to reach out with my mind and move one of his open zippers. I have to suppress a joyful shout that builds in my throat when the zipper, over a foot away from me at this point, is abruptly moved by my mind!

I CAN use telekinesis already. Now that's exciting. What a sick start to my chain.

A/N: I have multiple chapters of this out on SpaceBattles & WebNovel, which is why I feel safe beginning to crosspost it here. People are enjoying it and we're speeding right along.

 

[CmirDarthanna]

Is this the one with no growth and development limit?

 

[LucianoWrites]

Is this the one with no growth and development limit?

Click to shrink...

Yes it is the one with no known upper limit (a script can be found online for the sequel that never happened, partially because the original screenwriter is a monstrous dickhead, and in it the telekinesis can be used to self-heal and recover from sicknesses. It's wild.). I love this form of telekinesis.

 

[LucianoWrites]

Chapter 2:​

In the minutes since I discovered that I already have access to the telekinesis which stands out to so many people as the central thing around which this jump revolves I have entered the school and gone to the building's central office. I am now standing in front of an older secretary who is looking at me in a way that is deeply inappropriate for an adult in her fifties, given that my current form is that of a barely legal teenager.

I silently wait as she converses with one of her colleagues, making inappropriate remarks about me in a language that one of my body mod perks, "Polyglot", is allowing me to vaguely understand but not one I can specifically name. All the while she continues to leer at me.

During this time I've even learned that I have a distinctly Hispanic accent. The sort of accent that some movie characters have. This is definitely new, as back during my first life my English was accented like I was a northerner, even though the most north I ever lived was in the upper part of the Bible Belt. It was really weird since Spanish was my first language and I spent my childhood equally in Latin America and the continental United States.

The sound of a printer fills the air as I awkwardly wait for the woman to finish printing off my schedule. This is the first time I consciously realize some of the negatives surrounding some of the perks I am now a proud owner of.

Chronicle is a fascinating jump because it offers powers that go well beyond the danger level of the setting itself. In a lot of ways someone could argue that it's designed to be a training jump. The perks that are the most damning for me in this situation belong to one specific origin, that of the "Social Butterfly". The perks are designed to enhance one's natural charisma and one shallow but still powerful facet of that is their attractiveness. The very first perk, free to anyone who chooses to be a "Social Butterfly" is named "Chad 101" and it is a powerful freebie.

The perk is the reason why my current body is what English speakers would call "A looker". It enhances every facet of my natural charisma, including my looks. I always thought it was a part of the best origin in the jump, and even as I experience one of the downsides to it my opinion remains unchanged.

I still don't love the idea of creeps of any age getting obsessed with me, but this too is part of the jumper experience. It's not all boss fights and harems, sometimes it's just day to day living and ordinary problems.

The woman glares at the printer when it finally stops making noises and she violently grabs the schedule and gives it to me. I politely thank her and manage to resist my revulsion when she makes a sickeningly sweet offer to call a student to guide me to my classes, which thankfully haven't started yet, and I manage to turn down her offer and tell her that I'll just ask around. She bids me farewell and asks me to come back anytime I need help. I exit the office and find myself in a busy hallway.

This school is different from the ones I went to high school in, it seems much more chaotic here. I study the students and look for one who seems to be about my age, or even Steve, Andrew, or Matt themselves. I have to look for a few moments before I distantly spot Matt Garetty, hanging out with a pretty teenage girl who if I remember correctly is named "Casey" and is his occasional romantic partner.

I begin to fake mild confusion as I tilt my head down and study the paper. I make my way over to the two teens and accidentally bump into Matt. He turns in annoyance, a look of mild inconvenience on his face, but before he can talk I speak.

"Whoa, man. I'm sorry, I wasn't looking where I was going. This school is so much bigger than my last one." I remark, apologetically. This causes his expression to soften in curiosity as he sizes me up.

"Ah, you're good. Are you new?" He asks, and I nod at him.

"Yep. And a senior too." I tell him, which causes him to wince as he imagines how rough that'd be. I nod appreciating the sympathy. This actually happened to me back before my chain. My parents and I moved around a lot, all the way to my senior year of high school. I had it even worse then, than I do in this scenario. I started my senior year in one school and finished in another, in a whole other country.

"Ah that's too bad. Don't you have a student guide?" He asks, sympathetically. I glance at him and at Casey who is eyeing us with amusement and sympathy before I move a bit closer to the two of them and explain what happened in as quiet a voice as I can.

"So the main office lady was like… eyeing me up and down, y'all. Like in a… bedroom sort of way. It was weird. I took my schedule and dipped." I confess, and this makes Casey's look of amusement turn to one of sympathy. Matt eyes me and nods, not in agreement with the secretary but in agreement with my decision.

"Shit that sucks. Here, let me look at your schedule." He says, and I happily hand him the piece of paper the secretary handed me. He looks it over and studies it for a few moments before beckoning Casey over.

"Aren't you in this class? With Andrew?" He asks, and Casey smiles and nods at him.

"Cool, do you think you can take him to it? Maybe see if Andrew can guide him to the other classes on the list?" He asks and she agrees and smiles at me.

"I'm Casey, and this is Matt. What's your name?" She asks, not having seen it on the paper. Matt glances at it and even as I look at Casey I can see him squint at it as he wonders how to pronounce the thing.

"I'm Luciano, but you can call me anything simpler than that, so long as it's vaguely like my name. I've gone by Luc, L, Lucy, or even Luuchi." I tell her, and Matt by extension. "Luuchi" is pronounced Luu-chi. The two of them smile at me, and when Casey gets a text on her phone she glances at it, spots the time, and gives Matt a kiss on the cheek before telling him we need to go. He nods at her and says farewell to me, telling me we have the same lunch and that I can sit with him, Casey, and his cousin Andrew if I want. I grin at the man and follow Casey so we can get to class.

The walk to the classroom is relatively brief, and we manage to get there a full three minutes before the bell rings. As soon as we walk in I spot Andrew sitting in a back corner, looking both concerned and pensive. I walk over to the teacher, a man in his late twenties, and hand him my schedule.

"Good morning, I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Luciano, a new student." I tell him, and he smiles at me though the smile contains trace amounts of pity and interest.

"A new student and a senior?" He asks, and this begins a conversation I've had hundreds of times and had mostly forgotten about after I stopped being a student. We engage in a short back and forth before he tells me to pick any seat, and I tell him I'm looking forward to being his student. I almost, out of a long forgotten reflect, tell him my mom will email him tonight, but I manage to avoid embarrassing myself that way. My mother was a teacher while I was in school and she knew all of my teachers by name hours after I got home on the first day of any new school I joined.

I walk over to Andrew's corner and take a seat next to him. He looks at me curiously and I decide to feign ignorance for now. While I was talking to the teacher Casey sat down near the front of the classroom. When she turns around she spots me near Andrew and grins at him. He looks at her curiously, but doesn't say anything, right as the bell rings and the teacher, Mr. Kopinsky, gets the attention of the students. I glance at him and opt to pay attention to the class, even though I know what today is: it's syllabus day.

I pay attention to the teacher as he assures us that this will be a fun math class, an oxymoron if I ever heard one. At the same time he selects a student near the front, not someone I know, and has them hand out syllabi before stating that there is a new kid in the class and motions towards me. I nod a bit awkwardly and get up as he tells me to introduce myself.

"Hi there! I'm Luciano, I'm from Puerto Rico, and you can call me Lucy, Leo, Luc, or anything like that if you struggle with saying my name. I'm excited to be here." I tell the group, and I sense curious, intrigued, and even envious glances.

I sit back down and listen as the teacher begins to lecture us about the sorts of subjects we'll be covering. I'm lucky and this is not some sort of IB or AP level course, so if I study and apply myself I can probably eke out a high enough grade to be fine. As I listen to the teacher drone on, I begin to hear other things as well.

My senses are at peak human level. They aren't supernatural or anything, but even being at peak human level is enough for me to be astoundingly perceptive.

I easily listen to murmured conversations and the countless small sounds my senses allow me to detect. There are students taking notes on the subject matter of the teacher's lecture, students chewing gum, students on their cell phones, the professor writing on the board behind him, and quieter noises that are harder to make sense of. I also hear the quiet sounds of students exchanging items, and when I glance at one of the students on the other side of the classroom I spot a small ball made of paper, notebook paper, making its way closer to Andrew and I.

"No way…" I quietly murmur as I wonder if the thing is actually intended for the man of the hour, Andrew. The ball eventually ends up in the hands of someone that many people would describe as a "Jock". He's a larger looking lad, dressed in some sort of cheesy sports jacket. He snickers and without looking flicks the ball of paper towards Andrew.

I don't even bother trying to hide my intervention. Andrew closes his eyes as he spots the ball, leaning away from it in hopes that it won't hit, and so I opt to exert myself just a touch and flick my pencil towards the ball with telekinesis.

The sensation of grabbing the pencil with my telekinesis is a strange one. I instinctively understand the telekinesis partially because I was a big fan of the film so I know that one way to use the power is to visualize it as a tool that I can wrap around something and manipulate that way, which is why I attempt to use it. It works but the pencil feels heavy, and even though I know that this is only due to my inexperience, struggling to even move a pencil is a bit disheartening. Although I suppose this will make my later feats all the more impressive…

The pencil is very lightweight but even so it's still a bit too much for me in my current state. The object is chucked through the air and spins until it hits the ball and the collision drains both of momentum, as I sense blood begin to drip down my nose. I silently sigh and I reach into my backpack and pull out a notebook so I can tear off a bit of a page to use to wipe my nose. Thankfully at this point no one is engrossed in my presence so no one spots me do this, and I manage to do it just quick enough that when Andrew wonders what happened he looks around and only sees me fiddling with my notebook and the small ball made of notebook paper harmlessly on the ground.

The rest of the class passes by uneventfully. One minor thing I discover is that the easiest way to use telekinesis is to apply physics to it, which I discover when I begin to roll my pencil back towards me. This feat is far easier for me to do than something as dramatic as chucking an inert object through mid-air.

Casey walks up to me and Andrew and introduces us. I shake Andrew's hand, and listen as Casey reveals a bit of advanced social jujitsu she happens to know and talks Andrew into walking me to my next class, one which I happen to have with him anyway. She does all of it in the span of forty seconds, and in almost no time at all Andrew and I are walking down one of the school's hallways.

"So you're from Puerto Rico?" Andrew asks as we make our way down the hallway. I appreciate him attempting to make conversation.

"Yep! I transferred here from a high school in Ponce, which is a city on the coast." I reply, smiling at him as I think about the city. I'm not from there, but one half of my family was so I actually did spend a fair portion of things like holiday and summer vacations with family in the city.

"That's cool! Did you like it there?" He asks, as we inch closer to the class. I nod at him before answering.

"I sure did! I'm actually only here to get experience living on the mainland. This is the most English I've spoken in one sitting in years." I say brightly, taking advantage of my accent. I do speak Spanish fluently but it feels… odd to make this part of my backstory. Andrew seems interested in it and begins to ask me questions about Puerto Rico as we make our way to the class. We step into the English classroom and I tell him to save me a seat as I go to the teacher and hand her my schedule before I repeat the familiar song and dance of introducing myself to a teacher and revealing the obvious fact that I'm a new student.

The teacher is a nice-seeming Asian woman and she, graciously, lets me finish my latest performance of this all too familiar routine quickly. In minutes I am seated next to Andrew and I am listening to her deliver the customary first day spiel. One aspect of being a jumper I will not love is listening to this kind of thing over and over, for centuries potentially. Which is a shame since there are many nice jumps that involve being a kid or a teen and going to school.

A student near the front of the class is selected by the teacher and she begins to hand out syllabi. I diligently pay attention to the lecture the teacher is giving us about the important global literary classics we'll be reading this year.

In moments like this I am grateful for the existence of one particular perk in my arsenal that has already helped me out immensely in math class: "I Just Do My Best At Everything". This long-named perk is a handy thing that allows me to do my best every time I do something and helps protect against distractions and other small realities that normally prevent people from doing their very best every time they try something. The perk is actively aiding me as I listen to the teacher's lecture. It will definitely help me when I have to read the books the teacher is assigning.

The rest of the period, until lunch is quick. My perks are already proving their worth, even beyond my telekinesis. As soon as the bell dismissing us for lunch rings I get up and on my way to the door several different students approach Andrew and I, ignoring the lad but focusing on me. This is not super fun to see, so I ignore them and call out to the future antagonist, curious to see what I can do to do away with the plot.

Andrew's story is a tragedy born of neglect and abuse. He is failed by multiple institutions and several individuals before the story comes to an end. To save him, to save a lot of people actually, all it really takes is one person who doesn't fail him. I have perks inspired by the person who comes the closest, the one who starts everything off, and these perks are extensions of his personality, things about him taken just a touch farther than they go in the film, and I believe that since I'm armed with this… There's a real chance I can prevent the tragedies that are destined to shake Seattle and this school in the surprisingly close future.

"Hey man, let's go grab some lunch." I tell the person at the forefront of my thoughts. He grins at me and comes along instead of sullenly walking away from the situation as I imagine he would if I weren't so proactive. We begin to walk towards the cafeteria, him guiding me, and I wonder if I've spoken to Andrew enough that the perks I'm thinking of will already go into effect.

That's not the only reason I make conversation with the bullied teen. Andrew is actually pleasant company, and I think something about the prospect of a new student energizes him because he is active in the conversation and seems much more lively than I remember him being early on in the movie.

"Yeah, so my mom is fond of these old movies. She really likes musicals and I'll be honest my biggest exposure to Puerto Rico is probably watching like… 'West Side Story' as a kid." He tells me as we enter the cafeteria. At this remark, I feign as though I'm in pain and this elicits a quiet but not silent peal of laughter from him.

"Don't get me wrong the musical is a classic, Rita Moreno is a global treasure, but that's the extent of your exposure to PR?" I ask, and he smiles at me as he nods sadly.

"I'll have to expand your knowledge of my homeland sometime. There's this guy… I think his name is Lin? He's Puerto Rican and if your mom loves stuff like 'West Side Story' I think she'll like his stuff. He wrote this hip-hop musical about a bunch of Hispanic and Black people in New York City. I bet he's gonna be big if he continues to make stuff." I add, vaguely referencing In The Heights which does exist at this point in time, but unable to reference the thing that will make Lin truly famous: Hamilton. It hasn't come out yet, I don't even know how much of it has been written at this time.

Over the course of the next few minutes, the two of us struggle through the line in the cafeteria. I experience visceral memories of the wild wastelands of my high school experience, which was actually ending the year this film came out, as we work to get through the ordeal together. When we have our trays full of what American schools very loosely dub "food" we study the cafeteria.

Truthfully between my perks and my appearance I could probably sit anywhere and be fine. That said, I do want to do something plot-related right now so I opt to look for Matt and Casey. It takes me a second to spot them, but when I do I lightly elbow Andrew and nod in the direction of his cousin. The bullied boy follows my nod and spots his cousin before smiling and walking towards the two of them. I follow right after him, excited to be moving so smoothly.

Right now if I carefully engage with Matt and Andrew, befriend the two of them, and simply steer them towards the party where they go to the cave, I am doing just fine plot-wise. I'm reasonably certain that right now if I do nothing but maintain this trajectory created by what I've already done the initial events of the movie will unfold as they are meant to. I could circumvent the entire plot by simply preventing them from visiting the cave, and while I'll keep that in mind I don't really want to prevent the plot from at least beginning.

"So there's this YouTuber that I watch that has this video camera," Casey says to Matt as Andrew and I sit down. "She said she actually got started filming videos in high school. She'd make video diaries and stuff." The teen tells her boyfriend. This seems to intrigue Andrew, and as Matt turns and greets Andrew and I, I can sense he notices his cousin's interest too. This is fascinating because the audience who watches the movie Chronicle don't ever actually see this.

The events of today are taking place before Andrew gets the camera, and this must be the moment that actually inspires him to get the one he has and uses throughout the film! There is something weirdly exciting about actually, physically seeing the events or background of a film play out in real life.

Funnily enough, I actually had cameras that I used in high school to take pictures of myself and my friends. For the sake of better-remembering stuff when I got older. That… feels a bit too weird to think about right now.

Matt and Casey begin to talk about philosophers and the sorts of insights they'd have on the weirdness of high school. I myself chime in on occasion and I find myself quickly being sucked into a conversational flow that is mildly amusing.

Lunch quickly passes and before I can really blink the rest of the school day also passes. I go to four more classes before the end of the day, two of them somewhat shorter than others. When the day comes to an end I have all afternoon to kill some time, and then the weekend to look forward to. It turns out that today was Friday. I also have Matt's and Andrew's numbers, for what that's worth.

All in all the day has gone incredibly smoothly. I did exactly what I wanted to do, and I made friends with two of the film's three protagonists. That said, now I need to work on getting stronger.

I am currently standing in front of the small but pleasant-looking home I apparently own, mail in hand. I am as certain as I can reasonably be that I do not have parents but if I actually do have some in this world, basic "Drop-In" rules suggest I won't be bothered by them.

It's actually kind of nice to not have to worry about parents or anything like that, though I fully plan to wait and see just in case I do have some. I don't want to assume that an actual jumpchain works just like the game that people in my homeworld said it would until I have more experience and have visited more jumps.

I decide to stop studying my front door and walk into my living room. When in my living room I look for a mirror or a reflective surface so I can practice one of the more unusual abilities I possess. I have to go to the kitchen and grab a glass so I can see my face. I assess my own face, and even practice making different facial expressions. To be fair, until earlier today this was NOT my face so I think I should be given some grace for not being intimately familiar with it.

I'm sure any benefactors watching this must be curious about the oddity of my actions here but there is a purpose to this strange sequence of actions. As I study each centimeter of my face I commit the subtle edges of my current appearance to memory.

In my current form, I stand a nice six feet tall. An interesting facet of one of my new abilities, "Morphic Form" is that I can shift my height by eighteen inches, either becoming taller or shorter as I wish. What this means is that at will I can become seven and a half feet tall, or four and a half feet tall. This is but one application of this rather unusual ability, which also allows me to otherwise shapeshift so long as I remain within the general scope of my base species: a human.

Once I've memorized my face I begin practicing my shapeshifting capabilities. I start fairly simple, making slight alterations to my basic facial structure and minute adjustments to my height. This feels odd but in practice is remarkably simple.

So long as I can focus on the alterations I want to make and don't get interrupted while the changes are occurring it seems to just… work. The sensations I feel are subtle but they are mildly off-putting to the extent that I feel them.

I spend the rest of the afternoon testing my abilities and also texting Andrew and Matt. At first, I am content to only practice one thing at a time, such as spending time experimenting with how far I can take alterations to things like the length of my hair.

Partway through the afternoon I put on the television and surf the channels until I find one that is playing a show in another language. I focus on it and clock it as Japanese, which is a handy language to know. I leave it on in the background and allow "Polyglot" to work while I continue to familiarize myself with my odd new power.

Something that some people could like about Chronicle is that it only gives one true superpower: telekinesis. Since this is my first jump, I only have two true superpowers at the moment: my handy shapeshifting ability and my telekinesis. I have a plethora of supernatural traits and peak-human attributes but my direct, explicit superpowers, especially right now on my first day, are my shapeshifting ability and my baby-level telekinesis.

In time this form of telekinesis will become something well and truly terrifying, a sort of conceptualized envisionment of telekinesis that allows me to do things like heal myself at enhanced speeds, fly, create forcefields, and perform all sorts of other psychic feats but for now… Well, today when I attempt to practice my telekinesis I struggle to do feats as simple as getting a pencil to stay aloft in the air for a few seconds without experiencing mild pushback in the form of a short-lived nosebleed.

Eventually, the sun sets and I continue to work on training all of my abilities. I make a quick dinner consisting of some ramen, which serves as a comical reminder of my college years, and I continue to work on my powers.

I am luckier than Andrew, Steve, and Matt will be when it comes to this sort of thing in a number of ways. The first and most important thing separating all of us is that I have access to my powers before they do. I don't know when they'll be getting their powers, it might actually be next week as in the film the very day that Andrew first brings the camera to school is the day of the party where Steve, Matt, and apparently some other people who don't get powers stumble across the cavern in which the thing that grants them their powers.

In addition to that important difference, I don't have the distractions, of varying levels of seriousness, that they have to deal with. For better or worse I'm alone in this alternative version of Earth, which keeps me from having to deal with abusive or negligent parents or having to worry about the future beyond the next few months. This setup allows me to focus on honing my powers since I have no reason to focus on anything else. I can't go to college even if I wanted to, so this is just a brief chance for me to learn about my abilities.

I also have matured versions of their most pronounced personality traits as mini supernatural attributes. I have an innate knowledge of philosophical teachings thanks to Matt's geekier side, I have an intuitive understanding of social situations thanks to Steve, and I have a litany of curious abilities derived from the tendencies of Andrew's that have yet to really manifest. These minor perks are decidedly supernatural but in terms of raw impressiveness they do not have the flashy piazza of telekinesis, even my underdeveloped form of the power.

I fully explore the house briefly before I go to bed. The small home feels rather cozy and by the time I am laying in bed, I have familiarized myself with the various things I seem to own. I have minimal amounts of every supply I'll really need, from toilet paper to basic and easy-to-prepare foods like ramen and canned spaghetti. I also have enough money on my card that so long as I don't recklessly spend it I can easily last at least part way through October with no financial issues.

I eventually fall asleep and begin to idly dream of fantastical landscapes and amazing superpowers. When I awaken I will be keenly aware that my subconscious is apparently filled with thoughts about what it means for me that I'm on a chain…

 

[LucianoWrites]

Chapter 3​

The weekend turns out to be powerfully productive for me. Having a full forty-eight hours where I can devote every waking moment to honing my mastery of my odd abilities, coupled with my peculiar array of perks, is fantastic when it comes to training.

On Saturday I begin the day by carefully honing my actual, pre-chain skills. I cook a quick, but real, breakfast, and in doing so make a minor error when it comes to cooking some bacon. This allows me to experience the effects of one of my good boy perks "I Get Knocked Down Again", as I gain the knowledge of how to avoid repeating my mistake. This is the first time I have felt the perk and it's certainly humbling but at the same time it's a bit exciting. Even mistakes can serve as learning opportunities for the truly wise but with this so long as I am humble even I can learn from my fuck-ups.

After breakfast, I continue to practice using my abilities. I find that it is considerably easier to use my telekinesis even after practicing it just a few dozen times yesterday. I think my perks are mixing together, they have to be really, for me to improve so much.

I find that I can roll much larger objects but I can even lift something like a remote control and move it much easier than I could move a pencil yesterday. I don't dare try to do something as fine as actually press a button, not yet, but still, even this is a marked improvement compared to what I could do before.

My "Morphic Form" ability continues to be handy. As I practice this particular ability I imagine a number of ways I could deftly utilize this ability to work around the plot of the film…

Andrew's descent into madness and fairly short-lived villainy comes at the hands of his father. The abusive asshole routinely berates and beats his son, and without him, the film would go radically differently. If I become strong enough I could easily mix my two abilities and murder the man before the events of the film even truly begin. Hell, even right now I already have enough tools in my arsenal to kill the man if I can just create an opportunity to get him alone, and I think I could pretty easily get away with it all things considered.

I throw myself quite fiercely into training my abilities. I practice doing a range of things with my telekinesis, mostly focused on manipulating objects of various weights. I don't have enough raw power to get really creative with this ability just yet, plus for now if I could just do something as fine as lift a pencil and successfully write a sentence that'd be a freaking miracle.

I practice my shapeshifting and delight in taking the form of various celebrities. This is definitely the niftiest way to utilize this power for mischief, and I could easily use it to go wild and have a ridiculous amount of fun if I felt like embracing the potential of the low tier of this ability that I happen to possess.

The thing about the first tier of "Morphic Form" is that as radical as it is, there are strict limits to it. I can't add or remove limbs, and I can only modify my height and weight by a quarter of my base form. Since I'm a nice six feet tall that still gives me a lot of wiggle room, but it's hardly all-encompassing. I can't impersonate anyone below four and a half feet tall, and I can't impersonate anyone who has a number of physical disabilities, and if I could that'd radically open up the sort of mischief I could get up to. Still, even now this ability is very powerful.

I also have the television in the living room on in the background. I have the television turned to international, non-English news. I am listening to a European anchorman talk about events in Greece in Greek.

Two things I appreciate about the assassin essence are two of its three "Mastery" perks. The essence's freebies when it comes to the mastery perks are "Social", "Subterfuge" and "Martial". The "Martial" mastery perk makes a lot of sense when it comes to being an assassin, after all an assassin needs to be good at combat for when the time comes to complete the tasks they are hired to do. The social and subterfuge mastery perks also represent logical facets of being an assassin.

Social skills are good for getting assassination contracts and otherwise profiting off of one's work. Subterfuge skills are fantastic when it comes to setting the exact conditions that are best for any particular assassin to apply their life-ending skills. That said there's an uncanny power to where these two facets of assassin work and life in general meet. I can do a lot with their intersection, especially since I can not only shapeshift it's a part of my body-mod. I can shapeshift even in jumps where I take drawbacks that reduce me to my in-jump abilities and my body mod, so long as I'm not in a gauntlet!

I spend the entire day practicing my powers, and I even train my actual body. I go into my backyard and I diligently run laps around it to get some cardio in. I only stop to make dinner, and afterward, I resume practicing again. I go to bed at around eleven at night, and I again dream of fantastic places and incredible powers. The multiverse is waiting for me…

When I awaken on Sunday it is roughly seven in the morning. I get up and feel the subtle effects of "Even Bad Guys Need Sleep" a perk derived from Andrew's part of the story. This perk subtly improves my ability to sleep by guaranteeing my safety when I sleep and allowing me to rest more fully.

I glance at my darkened room and I realize that I need to do minor, school-related things today. I get out of bed and I quickly go and make breakfast. I apply what I learned from yesterday's mistakes and I am delighted to successfully make a delicious breakfast.

When I begin my training for the day, I am seated in front of a small dining room table and have my papers spread out before me. They consist mostly of assorted syllabi, all of which a parent needs to sign. I do so in their place, coming up with names for them on the spot since by now I am as sure as I can be that in this world I don't have parents.

I reach out to my surroundings with my telekinesis and this time I do practice things that require some level of finesse. I start off by doing something as simple as lifting an apple into the air and spinning it while holding onto the thing. This requires the equivalent of multiple hands due to the nature of how my telekinetic abilities are manifesting so far, and while it's a bit taxing I know how important training like this is for fine manipulation.

Telekinesis in any form is a strong, fine ability to have. That said, there are more effective and creative uses for telekinesis than chucking trucks at someone, and if I only ever focus on honing my upper limit for telekinetic manipulation and ignore the idea of fine, dexterous manipulation then I will only ever be a bruiser.

I eventually switch out what I am doing for telekinetic exercise and go from manipulating one thing in multiple ways at the same time to manipulating multiple things that are not close to each other. I do this by placing small objects like silverware and paper plates in different parts of the kitchen and living room, and lightly grabbing and moving them with my telekinetic abilities.

This is taxing, but I quickly adapt to it. I want to be an adaptive, flexible telekinetic warrior and to do that I plan to develop an array of exercises to push my abilities.

I spend a brief portion of the afternoon exercising, and to do that I actually go for a run around the neighborhood I live in. This is a rewarding exercise for me on a mental level because it is something I used to do as a teen but lost the ability to do in college. Being able to just go for a run without experiencing truly debilitating pain is… remarkable, after around a decade of enduring a slowly worsening physical disability.

Just feeling the rush of moving quickly across the pavement without an iota of pain wracking my knee is something astounding when for years even subtle movements caused me to experience flashes of pain. I know I have these incredible superpowers but given how rough my last few years on my homeworld were, health-wise, I think the happiest I've felt since I arrived in this world is how I feel when I'm on the sidewalk just casually jogging.

Given the decade-long duration of standard-length jumps I'll only be approaching the end of my third jump when I'll have been jumping for a length of time as long as I was confined to my home world. I wonder what I'll think of the disability that made my last few years on the version of Earth I come from when I have more jumps under my belt…

When I return home from my run I immediately make a small dinner. It is nothing special, I don't care to try and eat highly nutritious meals right now, but it'll get the job done as far as food goes.

After dinner I continue to hone my abilities further still. I decide to experiment and see what's the heaviest thing I can now lift, and I begin by lifting an apple. I am delighted to find that it is easy for me to do so. This is not a huge achievement by any means but it's a strong start.

I continue to experiment with larger and denser objects of various shapes. I am especially delighted when I find that I can lift things like knives with no serious difficulty, though it is considerably harder to lift a larger knife than it is for me to lift an apple. I ultimately find that I struggle to lift things as large as some decently sized fruits, and I can barely move anything heavier or thicker than a cutting board. It's a decent limit, given that I've only one afternoon, and two days to really practice this ability.

When I am laying in bed, shortly after having taken a shower, I find myself lost in thought. I contemplate the bizarre realities of the situation that I'm currently in… Being on a chain is incredible, and terrifying.

Over the course of the last few days a part of me has been slowly coming to terms with what it means for reality itself that jumpchains are actually real. I have been trying to process what it means for history and science that benefactors are real, and that it is possible for a human to be shunted into a new universe and survive.

This is forcing me to redefine my relationship with my favorite media, since now I have to consider that even the simplest games are at least aspects of some universe somewhere. It has me questioning what it even means to be someone who makes jump documents in the first place! Do jump documents exist in a platonic sense, independent of humans and through some esoteric process suffuse the jump maker who creates the jump document in a given universe, or are jump makers somehow able to allow benefactors to send jumpers on journeys to an infinite number of settings with wholly original jump docs ahead of time?

It is bizarre to have to seriously think of these things as fully real, but it is necessary if I am to survive. A real jumpchain seems like a grand journey, and it is, but it's also more than that. A lot more.

Right now in a few years I could, if I had a death wish, decide to go to the SCP-verse and contend with metaphysics and pataphysics beyond my current ability to properly conceive. I could visit all sorts of Backrooms continuities and deal with things like the fascinating if perhaps a touch convoluted, concept of limspace systems in the Liminal Archives continuity, which has a wholly original jump document separate from the more generic Backrooms jump document I made and shared in the universe I come from.

I have no desire to die again so I, of course, won't be visiting anything Backrooms or SCP related until I have something like the sort of protections afforded to me by the likes of Generic Cartoon World, or some other decently high-power setting.

That said, I already have some powerful stuff in my toolkit. My telekinesis is growing at an impressive pace, and in months I don't doubt that I'll be able to match the feats performed by Matt, if not Andrew's own chemically and emotionally enhanced abilities, at the end of the film. Plus I have some decently powerful meta-knowledge of a wide range of settings which could allow me to punch above my weight class so long as I don't fuck around.

Going further beyond my explicit, external powers like shapeshifting and telekinesis I have… what could be described as a "Noblebright" ability in the form of "A Helpful Hand". I have a berserker power in the form of "Misery Loves Company". I have an uncapper and a superpower-specific creativity booster in the forms of "Lifting Yourself Up" and "Supernatural Savant". I also have an underrated gem in the form of a powerful social perk named "The Game Of Life".

For someone like me, as in someone doing more than theory-crafting some build for a game, social perks are worth way more than the points they'd cost. My ability to befriend people and to use my words as weapons is more dangerous than my telekinesis is, both right now and in general.

Any jumper with the right superpowers or eldritch pet can scare someone into doing their bidding but that just means that someone scarier could get the frightened supplicants to turn on the tyrants they swore to obey. Real power, in a very meaningful sense, can be found on the tongues of the cunning, the charismatic, and the ones who can persuade you to join them without fear or coercion, but through words, presence, and their ability to inspire belief.

If Steve had survived the events of the film and lived to grow up he would have been terrifying. He was more than a superhero, he was popular, and while some folks may struggle to recognize the real power of that, every superhero who has some level of popularity passively benefits from it.

I fall asleep thinking of the critical, life-changing nature of some perks that on a jump document may not sound particularly worthwhile but in a real jumpchain are positively transformative. I have more dreams of what I could be and could do in the future. When I awaken I will quickly get ready for school, use telekinesis to deftly manipulate my backpack, and make a quick breakfast before I run out to the bus stop and get whisked away to do more learning and to have chances to further befriend Andrew and Matt.

 

[sundrawnshadow]

finally a MC with common sense and survival instinct

 

[LucianoWrites]

Chapter 4:
In school I was always good at one aspect of participating in class: engaging with the teacher. This particular skill of mine has not atrophied with disuse, even though before my chain the last time I was in a school was as a substitute teacher some years before I died. Truthfully I wasn't bad at participating in group work with my fellow students and I wasn't unpopular either.

As a student I had a certain skill at tutoring people in subjects I was good at, and I was a good listener so both teachers and students liked me enough for me to get by. I learned from visiting different schools for sometimes only a year at a time that someone needed flexibility and courage to excel in school. I have not lost those talents.

"Hey, uh, you sure?" I ask a classmate as I look at his paper, gesturing at a specific answer he's put down with a pencil I'm using to answer the questions on my own copy of the worksheet we're working on. Our math teacher, benefactors bless him, is letting us do group work. It's a bit odd for a math class but I appreciate the chance to interact with my peers.

I am trying to encourage my classmate to look at his paper and revise one of his answers which I can absolutely tell he got wrong. He looks at it for a few seconds, swayed by the concern in my voice, before realizing that he did one of the final steps of the equation wrong and revising his answer.

"Thanks!" He tells me, smiling brightly. We're part of a trio that includes Andrew, who makes this look easy. I never imagined that Andrew would be super into math, and he's not, but he's also not bad at the subject. He's certainly better than I am, but he's also considerably less talkative since we're working with a third person.

I know that today is not the start of the events of the film. Andrew did not bring the camera to school, which he does on the day the movie gets set in motion. This is good, it means more time for me to hone my abilities before Andrew, Steve, and Matt get theirs.

I've only been at school for about eighty or so minutes and a part of me is dreadfully bored by it. I mean this isn't stopping me from being fully present, perks I own allow me to be both bored and also 100% here mentally, but I've personally always struggled when it comes to being enthralled by math. Thankfully my diligence and actions here are having consequences.

I have a multifaceted mind that is capable of parsing through sensory information at rates that are pretty damn impressive. One excellent way this manifests is that it allows me to keep track of multiple conversations, and with "Polyglot" I can gain fluency in languages just by doing this. I can hear multiple quiet conversations. In some of them, my classmates express interest in learning from me, watching as I have occasionally guided Jonathan, the student who I just encouraged to double-check his work. Over the last few minutes I've had to stop and help him understand the steps in the mathematical formulas we are using for today's lesson.

Andrew, Jonathan, and I are working diligently and occasionally looking over each other's work. I have the sense that I am doing my work perfectly due to the subtle and not-so-subtle enhancements that have been laid on my brain.

As I casually return my attention to the math sheet a part of me begins to casually theory-craft about where to go from here. I don't mean this in a direct, immediate sense, but on a bigger, more challenging scale.

I need to seriously think about where to go from here, jump-wise. It's already been a few days, and my time in this setting is extremely limited. I'm leaving somewhere between Thanksgiving and November 30th, and it's currently August 6th. I have, at most, 117 days left here. Previously such a time left like a lifetime but now… now it feels like a single heartbeat.

I glance at Andrew and my thoughts turn to him. A part of me wonders what would happen if he doesn't get a video camera, but I've already seen the way he lights up at the thought of having a video diary of his own. Of having a… record of his life. His video diary meant a lot to the version of him I watched some years ago, it became a lifeline and something he valued and in this reality the seeds have already been sown for him to get it.

If the only change that occurs at the beginning of the movie is that Andrew doesn't have a video camera, as an in-universe consequence Andrew shouldn't get powers because he'd not be asked to come down to the cave… Although if I were a screenwriter and I still wanted the movie to happen but without the found footage angle I'd just have Matt, Andrew's cousin, go and ask him to join the two as they explore the cave. So even if I stop Andrew from getting the camera, he could still get powers.

I am also cognizant that it'd be good for me to go ahead and ice his dad. I could do it on the day of the party, since there's nothing requiring that I be in the cave with the trio…

As a part of me is lost in thought I continue to work on the school work I am assigned. I am grateful for my perks which remain active even when I'm not committing the fullness of my attention to the work on the paper in front of me. "I Get Knocked Down" allows me to correct the tiny mistakes I make on occasion, and when we grade the assignment I find that I have completed it perfectly. This marks the beginning of a trend that I will continue to observe throughout the rest of the day.

For multiple reasons I find school to be a bit of a breeze. I am not flexing my intelligence to any benefactors or anyone else who might be able to watch my chain, as the primary reason why school is so easy for me is perks. More so than any particular specialized intelligence on my part, my perks pick up a lot of slack and allow me to find studying to be easier than it was back in my native reality, between "I Just Do My Best At Everything" and "When I Get Knocked Down" I am able to breeze through lessons, especially when my senses are heightened by my body mod and I can easily absorb every little thing my teachers attempt to convey even if I only overhear their comments as opposed to actively listening to what they've got to say.

This allows me to easily focus on what will be my primary priority: interacting with Andrew. Thanks to this when lunch rolls around I find myself sitting with Andrew, Matt, and Casey again, and listening as Casey talks to us about something neat.

"So do you guys wanna be in my video series?" She asks. I bite into a school-cooked french fry as the others look at her in surprise. Andrew eventually laughs lightly and decides to ask something.

"How are you gonna film this video series of yours?" He wonders, giving her a curious look. She is ready for the question and immediately replies, while smiling at him.

"Birthday money. Plus I actually have a job at the mall." She says, both brightly and quickly. This answer satisfies Andrew, while Matt asks a followup question.

"What do you plan to film?" He asks, grinning at her as he drinks some milk out of one of those weird cartons that schools provide their students with.

"Everything. I'll be making a 'Vlog' and posting regular videos." She shoots back with a satisfied grin. She emphasizes the "V" in "Vlog" quite heavily while laughing at her own quippiness. When she replies to her sometimes boyfriend I simply smile as I reply.

"Sure. Do you know when you'll be getting your camera?" I wonder, causing her to shrug.

"I get paid this Wednesday so I might get it as early as Thursday." She tells us, and I make a mental note of that. I have a feeling, because she said that, that the events of the movie may kick off on Friday. She has her camera at the party that the trio of protagonists attend and is filming for her vlog shortly before Andrew leaves the party and gets found by Steve.

The rest of the day passes by quickly. More classes and more interactions with students. I do enough interactions with students other than my main trio of friends that I trade numbers with some of my other classmates, and even text some, before the school day comes to an end.

Back home I do my homework, the first real assignments of the year, before I begin to well and truly train my telekinesis. At this point the ability is strong enough for me to do things like open kitchen cabinets with it and for me to create multiple telekinetic arms that are all strong enough to easily lift basic cooking ingredients and kitchen utensils. The ability is becoming strong enough for it to be something viable and handy in real life without being in a niche situation.

I passively listen to a YouTube video in Russian as I work on dinner. I use telekinesis for simple tasks, such as moving objects, I don't think I have the finesse needed to use my telekinesis for anything that requires precision, or anything wherein too much force would be bad, I am surprised to find that for the first time I can make dinner with assistance from my odd superpower, even if I can't use the ability for anything precise just yet.

After dinner I clean for a bit while continuing to hone my telekinesis. As I reflect on the current uses of my ability I realize that right now I can probably use it for combat. Telekinesis in combat is not solely about lifting opponents up and slamming them down, which is something that is definitely beyond my level of raw power, but it's about interacting with foes and the environment in ways that alter the flow of a fight.

A telekinetic who only lifts opponents up or tosses them over cliffs in a fight may not be a bad telekinetic but they are a boring and uncreative one. A clever telekinetic uses telekinesis to make opponents miss their strikes, to disarm opponents, and to make a fight not only more dangerous for them but actively harder. I plan to use telekinesis to deprive my foes of opportunities to even know who I am.

As I lay in bed while the day comes to an end I focus on the ceiling above me. I lightly touch it with my telekinetic abilities and push slightly against it, like I'm using telekinesis to do an upside-down push-up. I faintly sense the solidity of the wall, and I smile. This is new. This exercise is one I've done before but I've never gained information about what I'm touching with the telekinesis. If I can find a way to consistently gain knowledge of what my powers touch that would be wildly powerful.

When I fall asleep I dream of the sorts of worlds I could visit and the sorts of characters I could meet. I wake up early Tuesday morning and I begin to get ready for the day. For the next three days I fall into a bit of a routine.

I wake up early, get ready for school, and then do as most teens in this country, in this age, do and go to my classes. I don't find them challenging, which is good, and during class I interact with Andrew a good deal. He slowly starts to seem happier and more outgoing, even learning to talk to some of our classmates, and I can intuitively piece together that this should be the result of my good boy perk.

I also get something very important: Andrew's address as he invites me to his house over the weekend. This is surprising given his relationship with his dad, but he loves his mom very much so that might help offset whatever reluctance he'd feel towards inviting a friend over. Helping her is actually a part of my long-term plan and so meeting her matters a good deal.

Every day after school I go home and train. I continue to gain experience with the ability. I also continue to diversify the training I do with the signature power, and incorporate exercises that require precise amounts of force, such as writing sentences and drawing things. This is the first area where I experience meaningful difficulty, and I go through an embarrassing number of pencils, crayons, and paper before I begin to gain any real finesse with my handy telekinesis power.

When Friday rolls around and I arrive at school I spot Andrew before he spots me and what I see makes me smile. At what feels like long last, Andrew has the camera that marks the beginning of this world as I know and understand it. The sight of the surprisingly goofy teen with the thing brings a smile to my face, especially in this alternate universe where stuff is already beginning to improve for him.

I walk over to him and smile curiously at the camera as he spots me. There is something different, in a good way, about this version of Andrew, and for a moment a part of me wonders if it'd be better for me to trust in my perks and not bloody my hands with the blood of Andrew's father.

"Hey man, I wasn't expecting you to… volunteer for a documentary's crew. What's with the camera?" I ask, a light grin on my face as I study the thing. It is a decently large, somewhat old (relative to my world anyway) camera. Andrew smiles at me from behind the thing.

"I got a camera! I told my mom about Casey's idea for a video diary and she really liked it. She snuck me some money to get this last night. She wants me to film her as we like go to the doctor and stuff." He tells me. I overhear quiet snickers and not-so-quiet remarks that almost certainly go unheard by Andrew due to the chaos of the early morning traffic.

Andrew and I begin to walk to class, and he asks me if he can interview me for his series. There's something mildly amusing about the thought of being in the videos that constitute the film even in-universe so I agree to be interviewed. This causes him to excitedly ask me to hang out over the weekend, and I tell him we already planned to do just that, which is true.

We reach class together and sit down in the back of the math class. Andrew still has his camera but now it's in his backpack, taking up an awkward amount of space. As class begins my thoughts turn to what I'm considering doing later today…

The thought of making Andrew's dad pay a bloody price for his crimes stirs a part of me. That said, I could also help the man by befriending him, which is something I could do without much difficulty in a range of ways thanks to my perks. If nothing else Andrew seems happier, and if I overly intervene instead of continuing to be a meaningful but mostly subtle presence, I could wreck things.

The day begins with a quiz and I am delighted to find that it is very easy for me to do. Math was easily my weakest subject in high school so to have this level of ease with it now makes me feel positively brilliant. This marks the start of a good day, one that culminates with me walking to the bus and watching Andrew and Matt get in Matt's car. I know precisely what they are going to talk about. For now I need to decide on which course of action I'm going to take…

I've been invited to the party Matt, Steve, and Andrew are all destined to attend by a friend of Steve's. If I want to go, I can do so. Annoyingly going to the party guarantees I lose my best shot at doing away with the single biggest factor contributing to Andrew's moral collapse, but would also preserve the integrity of the plot and give me the circumstances which most easily allow me to befriend Steve.

A part of me is thrilled at the prospect of having the chance to make this choice, but another part of me sees this and wishes I had a cloning perk, since with one I could easily head to the party and ice Andrew's dad at the same time. That'd mean that I'd have it all. Cloning perks are essential and I really should try to get one as soon as I can.

When my bus reaches my home I step off of it and realize that I need to make my decision soon. I only have a few hours, and I need to call a taxi to get wherever I ultimately decide to go. One of the drawbacks of not driving is that I have to depend on others to get places, something both unreliable and time-consuming even under the best of circumstances.

 

[LucianoWrites]

"Sometimes you've got to believe." I tell myself as I look out my window and wait for a taxi. My decision here was one that was surprisingly easy to make.

I hate abusers, but I believe in the potency of my perks. I am choosing to trust the power of something that costs choice points, and something that has already been shown to subtly be working. For now, I am going to let Andrew's dad live. This means that I am going to ensure that when the trio of teenagers destined to do great things go spelunking, I go with them.

I am dressed in a casual and solid button-up shirt and a pair of nicely pressed jeans. This is easily the most dressed up I've been during my chain so far. I always had an odd relationship with fashion growing up in my native reality, and for the last decade of my pre-chain life I was physically disabled in such a way that walking, while possible, caused me mild pain at all times. Such pain could be exacerbated by many different types of clothing, and adaptive clothing was sometimes difficult to find, so I prioritized comfort over style.

Whenever I catch glimpses of myself I feel a bit of mental discomfort. The clothes are not uncomfortable, nor do they cause me pain, but to see my new body dressed in, for me, nice clothes is… weird. I guess it's because it's still hard for me to look at any reflective surface and instinctively recognize myself, so seeing this new body dressed in clothes I'd normally not wear in my old form further emphasizes how odd my new reality is.

The sun is beginning its daily descent, and as I look at the sky a part of me wistfully wishes I could have more fun exploring this city. I never got a chance to visit Seattle before I arrived here a week ago, in fact there were only two occasions in my life that I was somewhere in the continental United States that was not directly on the East Coast.

Shortly before I went to college I visited Minnesota with my parents as part of an athletic competition they were participating in. It was a fun trip. I also got to spend Christmas during my senior year of college with the family of a, at the time, partner in Los Angeles. I don't think I ever left the actual city during the entire time I was in California. And now I have a few months to kill in Seattle, a city I first really heard of because of iCarly, and then learned more about because of Chronicle. It'd be good for me to broaden my earthly horizons before I go galavanting off to Hyrule or something.

I study the beautiful sky as the thought of Hyrule makes me wonder about where I should go next, jump-wise. That's a thought that's been on my mind a decent bit lately. I am quickly approaching the day when I have less than one hundred days left in this universe, so my time here is limited and feels limited.

The taxi appears in the distance and I quickly exit my home, locking my door behind me, while I continue to muse about where I should go next. When the taxi reaches my house I step into it and give the driver the address of the party. We depart quickly and in minutes we are on the freeway heading towards the distant party.

Assuming I have some level of meaningful autonomy with regards to what sort of jump I should go next there are a number of intriguing options I could choose. If I want to ensure my longevity and safety in the long term I need to visit Generic Cartoon World sometime relatively early in my chain.

That particular jump is enormously powerful, even if not in the same sense as a jump that lets you chuck asteroids at people or grants you omniscience. The jump is monstrously powerful from a quality of life angle, in that it grants access to assorted items and perks that hit way above the weight class of the setting, such as a hilariously powerful cloning perk, a just about absolute defense against supernatural abilities, and items that give their owners access to stable income, housing, and the ability to quickly zip across a setting.

Another strong early setting would have to be Generic Werewolf, which is great for future alt-form shenanigans and also just a strong jump in general. With telekinesis plus my social perks I should be fine in Generic Werewolf so long as I don't act like a dumbass or a megalomaniac.
And then there's the gimmicky settings like Luigi's Mansion which is a jump that lasts a single night and if I go I can get access to science perks that would be incredibly valuable early on. Science perks are always good, especially if I don't want to become hyper invested in magic and keeping track of a thousand different internal magical systems.

The taxi races through Seattle as I wonder about where to go next. We zip past the space needle, as I momentarily wonder whether or not I should be brave and go visit Generic Creepypasta as my next setting.

Back in my native reality Generic Creepypasta was one of my absolute favorite settings. The jump is devoted to the world of internet horror and to digital legends like Jeff the Killer, and Slenderman, even letting jumpers who visit the setting become such spooky specters themselves.

The problem with that setting is that it's decently dangerous. It's certainly much more dangerous than this setting is, and if I go from here to there that's a pretty substantial leap in power. An ideal strategy would probably be to go to Generic Cartoon World, snag the defensive stuff there, hone my telekinesis and any new abilities I get while hanging out with cartoons, go to Generic Werewolf, grab what I can get from there, and then to Generic Creepypasta…

For not the first time a part of me wonders about the underlying metaphysics of what happened to me and the broader implications of my fate. I was not anyone particularly special on my native Earth, I was at best a prolific but not well-known writer, and that's perfectly fine with me. I was happy, as much as I think I could have been at least. I was fond of different websites like Reddit, Questionable Questing, YouTube, and I was working to spread knowledge of jumpchains to new parts of the internet. I was even doing an okay-ish job of it, all things considered.

There are jumpmakers and community members who are way more prolific in the community than I ever was. Are they fated to embark on chains of their own? Would that be what they wanted when they died? Because in my case embarking on a chain is as ideal an afterlife as I could imagine. Not only was I not religious, I was also a passionate writer and theorycrafter and so the thought of having a chance to experience a chain for real, as scary as it could be, always delighted me.

I was an atheist and a humanist, and I was a good deal more well-known in those spaces than I was relative to the global jumpchain community, but if someone was a Christian and also a jumpmaker I don't know if it'd be right to steal them away from the afterlife they wanted to go to…
The ethical considerations of jumpchains are staggering to consider. And weird.

My taxi enters a neighborhood surrounded by a dense forest right at the edge of Seattle. I study my surroundings with a smile on my face as I realize how close I am to the start of… something. I'm not sure what, exactly, given my presence here is a factor that is definitely going to subtly and at times not so subtly change things, but I know that I am about to witness a beginning. And beginnings are always exciting.

When the taxi stops in front of the house where the party will take place the sun has fully set and the meter ahead of me indicates a frightening amount as far as what I owe the driver. I pay the fare, having known it was going to be brutal, and resolve to walk home if need be. The driver gratefully accepts the cash I give him, and drives off with a crooked smile on his face.

I turn my attention to the party, and even from a distance, outside of the house I can hear dozens of voices discussing a myriad of topics. I can also hear incredibly loud music, music so loud that even a normal human can hear it from outside of the house. It's a good thing the home is mostly by itself, its closest neighbor is not immediately visible, so I suppose its inhabitants can afford to be a bit loud.

I walk over to the house and when I step in I am immediately spotted. The first people to spot me, numerous guys on a few different sports teams at school, cheer and raise bottles and glasses. I nod at them and grin brightly, finding it easy to feign interest. This is definitely an instance of two of my mastery perks mixing together, intersecting and empowering each other.

I march over to the teens and let them hand me a soda. The lot of them are excitedly gossiping about who they've seen at the party. I stand with them and listen as they excitedly chat.

Now that I'm inside of the house I can even more easily hear countless conversations. All sorts of subjects are being discussed within the various rooms of the home we have invaded. I can hear familiar voices, including ones belonging to both of my friends from math class, who, to my surprise, seem to be together somewhere in the distance. I can also hear Matt off in the distance, but I don't hear Steve. It's possible he's outside and already uncovering the cave.

I consider moving this along for a brief second. It's mildly tempting for me to go ahead and set things in motion but as I think about doing that I remember what I was thinking about on my way here: I should try to have fun when possible. I don't know if my next setting will be someplace with an Earth, hell I don't even know if I'll get to pick my second destination, so I should try to relax sometimes.

I focus on the present and opt to engage the boys in conversation. I'm surrounded by three of my peers, all of whom wear clothes a touch more casual than my own.

"So there's this girl I'm looking for. I saw her earlier, but she's got this big ass camera. It psyched me out." One of the guys tells the rest of his peers and myself. I pretend to wonder who he could be talking about before I feign a face like I've just discovered a big secret.

"Do you mean Casey? I overheard someone say she was starting a… video diary or something." I explain, and the guy smiles at me, nodding at my remarks. I actually only vaguely remember that she had a camera all her own that she sometimes used during the movie. I'm pretty sure one of it's canon appearances is during a quick time she is visible during the party…

"Yeah! It's… pretty intimidating trying to approach a girl recording you. I don't want her rejection of me to be something she can rewatch." He remarks, displaying a touch more thoughtfulness than many teenagers might display in a moment like this. And it's quite helpful since he would be rejected.

"You know that Casey… has a boyfriend right?" I ask him, and this makes his eyes widen in shock. I can tell that no, he did not in fact know that. The other guys in our group let out small laughs as they watch color flood the man's face. He quickly, and quietly, thanks me for saving him from embarrassment. I grin and pat his back, happy to have helped keep him from making an unfortunate mistake.

The four of us converse for several minutes before I excuse myself. The boys kindly bid me farewell as I move to go and mingle among the partygoers for a bit longer. I make my way past various groups spread throughout the party and I do so in a way that allows me to gradually move towards a specific part of the house: the backdoor.

I know that Andrew is destined to appear outside after a tense confrontation with someone who dislikes that he is filming the party. I can't remember the hyper-specific thing that the person doesn't like but the confrontation leads Andrew, who will have been told by Matt to go and mingle with other people, to go outside. Steve finds him after Matt, Steve, and a few other students first find the cave, and the three of them go into it together, encounter the source of their powers, and then, for a while, no filming occurs. I just need to be in the cave with them.

I find myself in the stately kitchen of the house, able to clearly look out the window and peer at the backyard, before I settle into a comfortable spot. During the time I've taken to reach my destination Matt's voice has vanished, presumably he's gone off to discover the cave.

A number of guys and girls are here getting snacks and looking over a healthy stockpile of assorted drinks. I elect not to focus on that, and instead
make casual conversation with some of the people who appear here that I happen to already know.

In the distance I am able to easily hear an excited, if a touch awkward, reunion when Casey runs into Andrew. I get to listen as they both try to talk about their cameras but the conversation proves to be impossible over the loud volume of the background music. After a while they give up and part, which happens mere moments before a drunken asshole spots Andrew and accosts him. It turns out that the drunken dickhead thought
Andrew was filming his girlfriend and threatens him, causing Andrew to flee the scene in a mixture of embarrassment and fear.

Meanwhile I'm casually speaking in Spanish to a handsome teen trying to get help and hyped up before he approaches a girl at the party. I give him some tips on what to say in Spanish as I listen to a distressed Andrew sullenly stalk towards the backdoor. I physically spot him as he pulls the door open and speedwalks out into the backyard.

I stay with the fairly popular student I'm conversing with for perhaps a minute more before I guide him, verbally, to a place where he feels reasonably ready to go and try to talk up the girl. He thanks me for my time and when we part ways I go after Andrew, walking out of the party and moving to the forest-facing backyard of whoever owns this house.

The backyard is impressively dark. Right now it's only eight thirty at night but over here by the forest all the light seems to be gone so it looks much later in the evening than it actually is.

Andrew is sitting in the grass, away from the part of the backyard that is faintly illuminated by the house lights. I approach him and when I reach him I immediately sit down next to him and glance at the teen.

"Hey man, what's going on?" I ask, as though I don't already know what happened. Andrew spots me and a conflicted smile crosses his face.

"Luciano I… I didn't know you had made it." He tells me, a sad look on his face. I smile at him and look him in the eyes as I tell him to tell me what's going on. He hesitates before sighing, and looking down so I don't notice the tears in his eyes as he speaks.

"Some asshole… threatened me earlier. He was making a big stink because of the camera." Andrew tells me, and I watch as he relaxes a touch. I can tell that this is the result of a perk, my good boy perk specifically. He seems a bit lighter now.

"It was stupid. He was just being a dick, but between that and other stuff it just got to me." He explains. I nod softly and glance at the night's sky.

"Do you want to talk about the other stuff?" I ask, as I hear the distant sounds of footsteps approaching Andrew and I. There is a quiet moment where he thinks about how to answer my question.

"We… I do. I just don't want to do that today. Not at this party." He tells me, and I nod. I can respect that choice. A party is hardly the scene for him to divulge his genuinely tragic backstory. I hear Matt and Steve excitedly approaching us, coming from the depths of the forest, and I decide to just sit with Andrew for a spell.

The silence is, to my surprise, not at all awkward. It is a pleasant silence, the sort born of trust and acceptance. Andrew fiddles with the camera, and I can sense him wondering what to do, as Steve steps past the tree line, followed shortly by Matt. I tap Andrew's shoulder and point in the direction of the pair, who are excitedly chatting about the hole. They actually walk past us, before Andrew calls out to Matt, which represents a curious change in the film's plot. Matt hears his cousin and turns to face the two of us, an excited look on his face.

"Andrew, you've got to come see this. Luciano, you too." He tells us, grinning almost manically at the two of us. He approaches us and reaches out hands for us to grab onto and help us up. Andrew is the first to get up, taking Matt's arm, even as Steve approaches the two of us and sizes us up.

Steve is a tall black teen with a cocky, infectious smile and a friendly demeanor. He has a positive energy and seems delighted to be with us. He introduces himself to the two of us, but unlike with the film Matt subtly stands up for his cousin by pointing out that Andrew and Steve have actually met before, which elicits a smile from Andrew and a more shocked, but still happy look from me. I quietly wonder if this is due to my time here and my friendship with both cousins, as my good boy perk would actually help Matt be more willing to stand up for his cousin. I take Steve's hand and introduce myself, before Steve tells us that Matt, a few other teens, and Steve all found "Something crazy".

"Hey, can you take your camera and record what we found?" Steve asks, a curiously energetic look in his eyes as he looks at Andrew. Andrew looks at me curious to see what I see. I don't hesitate and nod at him.

"Seeing 'something crazy' sounds fun. It definitely beats the idea of being in there all night." I say, before pointing back at the party. This remark gets a small laugh from Matt who nods in agreement. Steve grins at me and Andrew nods after thinking about my response. This excites Steve who is happy to quickly begin to guide us towards what I know is actually the source of strange, and exciting, superpowers.
Our journey to the cave begins with us leaving the party and venturing into pitch black woods.

 

[LucianoWrites]

The trek through the darkened woods is not a long one. Only one event of note occurs as we make our way through the dark woods: I faintly hear an incredibly loud sound that seems to come from underneath me as much as it fills the air around me. It's almost like listening to an earthquake. We venture past several rows of trees, in the dark, for perhaps five minutes before we eventually find our way into a clearing where moonlight illuminates our surroundings.

Andrew lets out a soft gasp when he spots what has his cousin and his cousin's friend all worked up: there is a deep hole in the ground not far ahead of us. It is a weirdly circular pit only twenty or so feet from us that we are quickly walking towards. When we reach it the four of us surround it and peer down.

The hole stretches about eighteen feet down and there are strange ledges that any climber could hold onto to get in or out of the cave without having to drop or ascend eighteen feet in one move. Some weird light seems to faintly pulse throughout the cave, allowing us to barely make out that the whole thing is a soft shade of blue on the inside.

"Andrew, are you getting this?" Steve asks, an amusing grin on his face as he peers into the small cave. Andrew silently nods as he positions the camera above the hole and points it straight down into it. Steve surprises everyone by walking to the edge of the pit, turning, and beginning to climb down it. While the other two make quiet protests about Steve's behavior I decide to skip ahead and also begin to climb down the pit. I do so a touch faster than Steve, partially thanks to my enhanced body, and so I actually touch the cool floor of the area before he does.

"Nice!" He says, offering me a fist bump when we're both down the hole. I pound his fist with mine and we both look up. Steve looks at Andrew and gestures for him to come on down, while I tell the teen to toss me the camera.

Matt hesitates but begins to climb down after us after a few moments of quiet contemplation on his part. Andrew looks at me concernedly and I simply reassure him that it'll be alright before motioning for him to toss me the camera again. I watch a thousand thoughts go through his head, before he nods and drops down to the floor of the area just outside of the pit. He moves so he can come as close to handing me the camera as possible rather than just tossing it to me.

Andrew eventually drops the thing and I gracefully catch it. I hand it to Matt who takes it carefully and I help Andrew quietly descend down the drop so he can join us. When he's with us in the pit I turn and study what lies ahead.

Ahead of us lies an eerie tunnel, occasionally illuminated by flashes of blue light which radiate out from a distant chamber I can barely make out from here. If I can barely make it out I bet the boys can't see it. Inside of that chamber is the thing that started this all: a crystalline mass that radiates some sort of aura-like field of what must be radiation. My friends don't know any of that just yet.

I decide to coax the story along and indicate that we should go deeper, a suggestion which thrills Steve who takes the lead. The rest of us follow after him, determined to keep an eye on him and each other.

We slowly make our way through the tunnel. It is a long but narrow thing, very slowly sloping downwards, there is barely enough room for two of us to stand side by side. The boys comment on the pulses that provide the ambient illumination, annoyed by their short duration, curious as to their origin, and trying to time them.

I think it's probably something like a heartbeat, though I don't reveal this bit of meta-knowledge that I happen to possess, and it quickly stumps Matt. He is the one trying to time them, but it quickly becomes apparent that it's too irregular for him to reliably time it. Partway through our journey a shockingly loud sound emanates all around us, and I have to feign being in pain for a moment and act like I'm hurt like the boys are so as to not give away my abnormal status. Some of my body mod perks render me immune to discomfort from sensory overstimulation, at least at this level of overstimulation as this is not an intentional attack of some sort.

It takes us about twenty minutes, and a lot of subtle encouragement from me, before we finally reach the chamber. As we approach it the boys spot the mass which is going to change their lives, and they excitedly converse about it, and beginning to move much faster down the narrow tunnel. When we reach the chamber all of us stand in front of what I know, according to the original intended canon as envisioned by the movie's screenwriter, is dubbed a "Mogo", a Massive Organic Geodesic Organism, or something like that.

The monster we are seeing is a beautiful, if frightening thing. It is a wall-sized crystal mass with vine-like substances that extend outward from a large lump of solid crystal. The monster itself is gigantic and it is one of the walls that surround us in this chamber. Strange vein-like lines of dark substances cut across its crystalline body. There is something genuinely fascinating about it, even if it's also utterly terrifying.

Steve, demonstrating both foolhardiness and remarkable courage, and making my job a bit easier, steps towards the crystalline face of the monster. The boys don't know that they are looking at its equivalent of a head, but I do, and as Steve approaches it, a small part of the mass parts, like an electric door sliding open to allow someone in or out of a store. This allows a small tendril made of sharp crystal and covered in dark vine-like growths to appear from within the mass and snake sinuously towards Steve.

The tendril is occasionally internally illuminated by the same blue glow which provides us with the illumination Andrew has relied on to make filming in this cavern possible. I study the tendril and faintly register a quickening of my heart beat.

This is my first encounter with the supernatural, and it makes sense for me to be reacting to it with a bit of an elevated heart rate. The tendril seems focused on Steve, and I wonder if it's currently making a last ditch effort to dominate us, and this is just it failing… Well, it's succeeding enough to render the group speechless but that's not because of its abilities, the reason we're speechless is that no one here has ever actually seen something like this in real life. It is frightening, fascinating, and rather novel and there is something about that mixture that is amazing.

According to a drawback from the Chronicle jump doc this particular member of its species was slain and when the boys encountered it in the film's timeline the thing was in the midst of its death throes, which is why it failed to enslave the trio and only gave them telekinesis in the canon timeline. The ability to bestow telekinesis is something these freaky monsters can do, by they turn people they give telekinesis to into mindless drones members of this species use as a means to gather food. It is destined to die soon, and there's no way my presence here has altered that, but I still don't love Steve's fascination with the mass.

I grab Steve's shoulder and lightly pull him back, something he doesn't really try to resist as he gawks at the writhing tendril. As I pull him back a bead of sweat appears on his forehead, but it is pulled from it and hovers in midair, causing all of us, including me, to look at it in amazement. The thing is slowly pulled towards the tendril, and when it touches it the tendril shudders, and the cavern around us subtly vibrates.

A small bead of blood begins to drip out of Steve's nose, and I try to pull him back before he abruptly collapses, causing Matt to let out a gasp of shock and fear. I kneel beside Steve and get ready to pick him up. Matt tries to say something right before he is sent flying out of the chamber by a force that I am surprised I can perceive: a nearly imperceptible wave of energy that emanates from the snake-like tendril. Andrew looks at me and places the camera on the floor to come and help me with Steve, only to be sent flying back as easily as Matt was. I brace myself and imagine my telekinesis wrapping around Steve and I like a blanket protecting us from the psychic elements.

To my shock this is enough to make the monster not able to attack Steve, since he remains unmoved by the creature's next actions, another attempted projection of telekinetic power. Sadly for me, I guess in its frustration it gets a final rush of adrenaline as it immediately turns to me and when it hits me with a wave of telekinetic force I feel as though someone has just punched my brain. This completely decimates the blanket of telekinesis I was using to protect Steve, but doesn't immediately harm either of us.

I am relieved for half a second as my brain recovers from the beating it just endured right before I feel a powerful wave of telekinesis paralyze me, lift me off the floor and send me hurtling out of the chamber over the span of about two seconds. As I'm being shunted out of the room I reach out with my telekinesis and send Steve careening towards me, my telekinesis amped by the adrenaline coursing through me.

Under other circumstances I'd feel excited by the knowledge that I can do something like this without having an instant brain aneurysm, even without being in a chemically induced altered state of mind, but I only barely have the wits and presence of mind needed to brace myself as Steve's flying form closes the distance between us and hits my stomach. Thankfully my body mod makes me strong enough to tank the hit, feeling pain rather than any real injury, and I begin to reposition Steve. I work to sit him up as he begins to come to his senses, groaning in pain.

I almost don't notice the boys as they reach me and Matt helps Steve up and Andrew, with surprising force given his thin frame, helps me to my feet. He turns towards the chamber, right as rocks begin to fill it, and we hear another incredibly loud noise reverberate all around us. I take Steve's hand and force him to look at me.

The cavern is still vibrating so I mouth, rather than speak, one word. Run. He nods at me, and the four of us begin to dart down the tunnel.

The sound continues to emanate from all around us for several seconds before abruptly ending. When it ends Steve's eyes begin to refocus and he seems to immediately grasp the situation, suggesting he was in a supernaturally fascinated state but not truly unconscious earlier. He quickly picks up the pace, as we feel the tunnel suddenly start to cave in behind us. I urge everyone on, and in minutes we make it to the end of the tunnel and the pit that leads us in and out of the thing. The last of the cave collapses behind us as we all begin to climb out of the pit.

I am the first one out of the thing and I spend a minute helping my comrades out of it. When we're all out of the cave we all lay on the ground of the clearing a small distance from the pit and look up at the night's sky for several quiet moments.

Steve is the first of us to get up. He sits up and leaves, not saying a single word to any of us. While getting up he stares at the pit with haunted, frightened eyes. None of the three of us who have not left say anything and we continue to look up at the night's sky, our minds undoubtedly wondering what the fuck we just saw and no doubt trying to process everything that has just happened.

I myself am not immune to that sensation. It's one thing to see something like that in a movie, it's a whole other thing to have been physically there, experiencing it in real-life. It might seem like just a weird encounter when watching what just played out on camera, but to actually be subjected to the nearly invisible attacks of the monster and to be unable to do much of substance in the wake of its abuse is… legitimately scary, even though I didn't feel super scared in the moment.

It all happened so incredibly fast, taking little more than a few minutes from start to finish, so it was hard to have thoughtful, appropriate reactions in the moment. Looking back, knowing that it's over, feels good. I also definitely know that it's over, between the noise cutting off abruptly and the tunnel collapsing in real time… Yeah, that portion of this story is definitely over.

I eventually get up and say farewell to the boys before walking back towards the party. I know they are destined to get back home safely, same as Steve, so I need to begin heading back myself. I walk towards the party, and then past it, without reentering it.

The journey home is a long one. I make it back to the city after walking about an hour down a series of roads surrounded by woods, and from there ride a bus part way across the city. All of this is reasonably safe, even if I'm a bit surprised to find that this version of the city has late night public transportation.

I walk the rest of the way home from a bus stop not terribly far from the suburb I live in, and manage to crawl into bed, exhausted, at around three in the morning. I fall asleep almost instantly, and don't have dreams I remember when I awaken sometime later.

I get up, feeling remarkably refreshed after the events of last night, and check my phone. It is currently ten in the morning, and I have multiple text messages from Andrew, Matt, and Steve, which is a curious way to learn that Andrew created a group chat for the lot of us to try and piece together what the hell happened.

I type out a text saying I just woke up, in the midst of a flurry of text messages that are the boys exchanging conspiratorial messages about what the fuck happened last night. I get alerts on my phone denoting the reactions everyone has to the message, even while all three continue to go tin-foil hat in the background. I shake my head, and head to the kitchen.

I make breakfast and immediately hurl myself into my training. I almost immediately notice that something about my telekinesis feels different, and within minutes I am recalling last night's achievements.

Last night I did two things of note while encountering the mogo. The first thing I did was create a forcefield which successfully blocked something. I did so by imagining a blanket of telekinetic power enveloping me and the other person I wanted to protect: Steve. Additionally I was able to pull Steve, not only a late teenager but one with a solid, muscular build, towards me. Pulling or pushing someone is not as difficult as lifting them up outright but Steve must weigh somewhere between 150 and 200 pounds so to be able to even move him, especially as much as I did, is a serious feat.

As I get into my training, really feeling the power of my telekinesis after last night's shenanigans, I begin to try new things. I experiment with moving decidedly heavier objects than I did on Thursday, such as a table in the living room. I am delighted to find that not only is this something I can do, I can do it fairly easily!

I experiment in other ways as well, trying to figure out how precisely to call and shape the forcefield I used to protect Steve and myself. To do this I go on a journey to a superstore partway through Saturday afternoon and buy a BB gun, and return home ready to try and use it on myself, to see if
I can block the pellets that such things use.

I don't immediately succeed with this, but after a few hours of repeated experiments I manage to pretty consistently figure out how to call up the forcefield and apply it to specific parts of my body. This is a neat trick, and when I do successfully it the ability prevents the pullets I'm using from touching me at all, slowing down even their dizzying speed to nothing in the span of a few milliseconds. I spend the totality of Saturday evening honing this ability, trying to well and truly master even this limited form of a forcefield.

This is downright revolutionary. A forcefield is a fantastic example of defensive telekinesis, and if I can figure out how to strengthen the forcefield enough and also how to apply it in such a way that it totally surrounds me at all times, I can become virtually invincible. Hell, even the thing's ability to block BB pellets is staggering.

I go to sleep on Saturday a few minutes later than usual, my mind racing with thoughts about my newfound telekinetic ability. When I awaken I resolve to more forcefully train this ability, and I make breakfast even as I train both normal telekinesis and my forcefield at the same time. I hold the BB gun aloft with telekinetic hands and aim it at where parts of me that I focus on protecting with the forcefield.

I carefully and slowly take a breath and squeeze the trigger of the gun as I exhale, allowing me to fire the weapon at myself without damaging the handy toy I happen to possess. The gun's ammunition, a tiny pellet, explodes out of it and rockets towards me. It hits my barrier, focused on my hand, and is successfully repelled! It lands on top of my hand, completely inert, like someone tossed it to me by hand, as opposed to if it was shot out of a gun.

"Yes!" I almost shout triumphantly. I've now taken a serious first step towards mastering practical, usable telekinesis that is more complex than
"Pull fleeing enemies towards me" or "Push a car trying to hit me away from me". This is where the fun begins, where, with enough experience I can do things like write stuff with telekinesis, or stand in the middle of a battle, being attacked by foes on all sides and use telekinesis to endure their blows.

All of Sunday is spent with me slowly honing my ability to telekinetically multitask. I practice doing more than one thing, even more than one mere type of act, with my telekinetic abilities. I use telekinesis to clean while continuing to work on my forcefield, or change the channel with telekinesis while opening and closing different cabinets in the kitchen.

I do what little homework I have on Sunday afternoon, carefully and slowly continuing to practice my skills all the while. The homework is easy and it takes me scant little time to do it, I even practice doing multiple types of homework at the same time with telekinesis, very carefully and slowly writing bits of answers to a question for another class with telekinetic penmanship.

When I lay in bed somewhat late in the evening on Sunday I know that I'm about to enter another routine. My meta-knowledge makes this clear to me, and though I know I could speed up the process I don't particularly care to do so. In the wake of the encounter with the mogo the movie flashes forward to a period maybe a month or so after the events in the cave.

During this time Andrew, Matt, and Steve have discovered their telekinetic abilities and have even reached a point far beyond where I began, able to pretty finely manipulate objects as heavy as a baseball and as fast as one can be when chucked by decently athletic teens. I, unsurprisingly, have already exceeded this point pretty significantly, but I still need to work hard and push this power as far as I can in the time I have left.
Andrew, towards the end of the film, in a moment of stress appears to have unconsciously caused lightning to strike one of his comrades, and at the end of the film is lifting, carrying, and hurling buses. He is in a chemically altered state during this time, and highly emotional, but even so this feat is still wildly beyond my abilities. I can't even fly, yet.

When I awaken on Monday I start the day off at school, where I eat with an excited pair of teenage psychics, who seem to have not yet discovered their abilities. I don't have any classes with Steve so my communication with him is limited to text messages.

The day ends uneventfully, and I go home to further train my abilities and do homework. This begins a routine that will last me the remainder of the month and all the way through the very first few days of October. This routine is simple: During the week I go to school, interact with Matt, Andrew, Casey, and a small group I gather that begins to do good deeds throughout the school, people that I subtly use my social perks on to gather the beginning of a following. This part of my schedule never meaningfully changes, even in the beginning of October.

During the weekend I do a few hours of volunteering with my group of friends, which includes Matt, Andrew, and now Steve. I do this to ensure that my influence on them is not a temporary, or limited thing. I need this for a long term plan to help Ms. Detmer, since Andrew's family is too poor to help her get cancer treatment.

I initiate this plan at the end of August, working to get donations together to ensure that Karen, Andrew's mother, can get the medication and treatments she needs to survive at least to the end of November and thus my time here. Beyond that… I don't know. Andrew and I begin to collect donations pretty quickly, and thanks to my popularity we are able to get enough for Karen's short term treatment in a few days.

When I am not volunteering on the weekends I am training. For the month of August I keep my training simple and hone my abilities to as razor-sharp an edge as I can before I do something new on the first weekend in September. The first weekend of September I decide to train my powers in the real world, and use my abilities to explore Seattle and subtly stop crimes. I do small things like mess up people who try to snatch purses or who grope people, focusing my time and energy on small criminals who'd make someone's day worse but opting not to fight with serious criminals like muggers or other violent assholes.

I knock people unconscious by doing things like making them trip on something hard or, on a few occasions, break their bones with telekinetically lobbed objects. I also do this rather subtly by taking advantage of my peak human senses so no one ever connects me to the small-scale heroism and vigilantism I perform. This training proves to be quite handy because it helps me get used to using my powers in the wild as opposed to in fairly controlled, predictable settings and situations.

During the last two weekends of September I take things up a notch and I make use of my abilities in more dangerous situations. I stop drug deals in rougher neighborhoods and even help a family whose house is on fire with my telekinetic skills.

I even begin to experiment with newer, finer applications of the particular sort of telekinesis that the boys are developing and that I've gained the ability to use to a decent degree by doing things like healing. At first I focus on healing myself, using my powers when I get injured to address the injuries, replicating a series of feats that Matt could, theoretically, perform according to a sequel devised by the screenwriter of the original film. It is only after I have healed myself from injuries as serious as penetrative wounds inflicted by somewhat heavy debris I get struck by during the last weekend of September that I try, successfully, to heal an innocent bystander hurt during a drug deal I stopped.

At this point my telekinesis has reached the level where I can hold the average adult aloft if I want too, though I can't do anything utterly wild like send someone flying. My forcefields are also now able to completely surround me, something which I have them do passively thanks to "With Great Power Comes Great Leisure", an Andrew-inspired perk.

When October rolls around Andrew is the first person to reveal that he has telekinesis to us. He shows us what he can do by holding a lego building in mid-air for a few seconds before blood begins to drip down his nose. Steve reveals what he can do during the first full week of October by tossing a football to Matt and suspending it in mid-air some distance between the two of them, a feat which is a touch more impressive than what he does during the baseball test scene in the movie, which hasn't happened yet.

Today is October 6th, and Matt, Steve, and I are all packed into Matt's car. Andrew is fiddling with a new toy, a camera that Matt bought for him earlier today, and we're heading to a "Mysterious destination" that Matt is hyping up for us. We're in the outskirts of the city, not terribly far from where Andrew lives apparently, and I know what's about to happen.

We reach an empty clearing and Matt parks the car. When he does we all get out and I grin at Andrew, ready to have fun holding myself back and revealing my own telekinesis. I've told the boys I can do what they can do, but I haven't actually shown it off just yet.

 

[LucianoWrites]

"Alright guys, we're here to capture it on film. Remember that." Andrew tells us, clearly thinking like a camera person. The boys and I are gathered around Andrew and he surveys the landscape ahead of us.

I toss a baseball, one graciously provided to us by Matt, and easily catch it. The ball is solid and heavy enough that controlling it will probably prove decently challenging for the boys, even though enough time has passed for them to easily be capable of moving this much with their minds.
Unlike me they are normal, and have correctly opted to balance facets of their lives with training their newfound abilities. I can't blame them for their decision to try and balance honing their abilities with other facets of life. They have their whole lives to think about, and because of the weird way American society is set up their high school years very much impact the rest of their lives for better or worse. I have previously endured American high school, and a Honduran high school, and my time as a nomadic army brat definitely shaped facets of the course of my first life.

They are not as lucky as I am, since I possess both meta-knowledge of their lives specifically, and also perks that are more often than not greater versions of attributes of theirs. That said, it's not like I haven't made sacrifices for my choices. I am still enrolled in high school, and I have no meaningful social life, nor have I had one for the two months I've been here. I've gone to exactly one party in the time since I "moved" to Seattle, and the only occasions I've gone out for anything other than school or buying groceries I was going out to fight crime or volunteer.

I've been the definition of a straight shooter the entire time I've lived in this city, living a life that is almost robotic in its coldness. Plus there's the added fact that I have had to live in this world knowing that any meaningful relationships, be they friendships, rivalries, or romantic relationships I make are doomed to be temporary, even by the sometimes cruel standards of a jump, lasting barely one hundred days. I don't have the same sort of future the three of them do, but mine is also costly and difficult to achieve.

Andrew spends a minute positioning Steve and Matt before tossing Steve a baseball and clicking his camera. I watch, fascinated, as Steve proceeds to beam Matt with a baseball, Matt failing to catch the thing at all. This action makes Andrew laugh raucously but I check on Matt and find that he is fine. For the next few minutes the two boys work on honing their abilities on camera, slowly but surely becoming better with telekinesis before my very eyes.

At first Matt struggles to catch the ball with telekinesis at all, and to be fair a baseball, while a lot slower than a BB pullet is a deceptively fast object. It doesn't help that Matt is perhaps the most normal with regards to his growth when it comes to telekinesis in the film. Steve is the one who discovers how to fly, and Andrew has remarkable potential when it comes to things like sight-less telekinesis. Matt is the closest I can imagine to normal of the three but persistence pays off and in time he is impressively manipulating the ball, catching it in mid-air and even tossing it back to Steve.

After Matt and Steve swap places Matt is the ball tosser and Steve becomes the catcher. The very first time he throws the ball he immediately catches it in mid-air and makes it a screwball so sharp that he zips it in a full circle around him and then beams Steve with it, causing Andrew to almost bust a gut with laughter.

Something that is very stylistic of their telekinetic abilities, in both Matt's and Steve's cases, is that they prefer not to gesture when they use their abilities. The three boys avoid the stereotype of indicating telekinesis with body language, carefully working to gesture as little as possible. They simply look at and focus on the objects they are manipulating, as opposed to doing something like moving their hands to indicate their focus. It's a nice little detail that makes their telekinetic abilities stand out amid their peers, though in the future other telekinetics on television and in movies will also lightly ignore this reused idea.

After a few more minutes Andrew calls Steve over and has him hold the camera while positioning me across from him. When I am in place Andrew looks at me and nods. I nod back and grin, ready to have fun.

At this point I've had time to think about how to cloak my skill with my telekinesis. I'm certain that I have more skill with these abilities in every facet than my companions are, due in no small part to how much I've carefully trained and the time I've sacrificed honing these abilities. I also don't want the boys to know that so I've mentally constructed a strategy that will allow my telekinesis to differ from theirs, even if I don't mind indicating that I'm a touch stronger than them.

"You ready?" Andrew asks, looking at me with a smile. I nod, grinning back. He tosses the ball at me and as it speeds towards me I opt to move my hand to stop it. I dramatically flair my hand out and point it flatly at the ball, while effortlessly grabbing it in mid-air. I move it closer to me before I will it to stop, mere centimeters from my outstretched hand. The boys cheer, and I allow myself to smirk.

I toss the ball into my hand and then toss it to Andrew, not at him but to him, and when he catches it I smile and with a gesture cause the ball to leap out of his hand. This makes him gasp in delight, and he quickly uses his telekinesis to grab the ball and return it to his hand. He seems very happy as he studies the object and I wonder if he never considered using telekinesis to manipulate something in someone's possession.

In the film the first evidence of Andrew's descent into villany that is hyper explicit and intentional on his part is when he rips someone's teeth out of their mouth so he clearly learns this idea at some point… Still it is fascinating that I have unintentionally taught someone something about telekinesis.

For the next few minutes Andrew and I practice our abilities. I continue to behave like a damn jedi or something and make all of my uses of telekinesis hyper obvious and deeply physical. I work hard to make the trio think that for me to use telekinesis I require grand gestures and obvious movements. I also work to make them think that my telekinesis is roughly on Matt's level, maybe a touch behind it, as opposed to revealing the fact that I already know secret techniques that even Matt won't learn until years from now.

Eventually Andrew swaps me out for Steve, and I get to watch the two of them work on their abilities together. As I do Matt daps me up and I look at the viewfinder on the camera he is now holding. We watch the boys show off their telekinesis and Matt occasionally laughs whenever something unfortunate happens and I opt to be the group mom.

This proceeds for about an hour in total, with all of us rotating out until we've each gotten to play advanced catch opposite every other person in the group. During this time I watch the ease with which all of them use their abilities increase. It's not dramatic or anything but it's a marked, visible improvement in their telekinetic durability. I can see how the boys become the telekinetic monsters they are meant to become as we all practice and steadily hone their powers.

In a way it's almost like all three of them have "Supernatural Savant" and "LIfting Yourself Up", two of the capstone perks the jump document for this universe offers jumpers. By mixing both of the perks together, a combo which would cost 900 choice points and that's assuming whoever does it is a "Drop-In" like me, one would have tremendously enhanced training abilities even if neither perk is explicitly a training booster, a perk that amps up the speed at which training improves their abilities.

If I succeed at creating a future where all three boys survive then their telekinetic abilities will be monstrous someday…

Eventually Andrew is satisfied with the footage he's captured and we opt to go to a diner and grab some lunch. It's currently early in the afternoon and earlier today we were volunteering so we've all worked up an appetite. Within minutes we're eating and as we eat Matt reveals a bit of what he thinks about these powers.

"So I think… it's like radiation. You know, from back in the cave." He tells us, and this causes me to smile as I put down a burger I ordered.

"So we're like… spider-people? Isn't that how Spiderman happened, he was just some guy before he got bit by a radioactive spider?" I ask, feigning ignorance about the true origin of all of this. Matt grins at me and nods his head.

"Kind of, I guess. I'm not sure if the radiation just burned away the part of our brains that kept us from being telekinetic, or if it somehow changed us, but I think that's the explanation that makes the most sense. After all as far as we can tell no one else went into the cave and no one else seems to have powers." Matt explains, which causes the boys to nod at him.

"I guess that makes sense." Steve replies as he dips one of his fries into ketchup on my plate.

We eat while quietly discussing the oddities of our abilities. Partway through the conversation I decide to go ahead and say something that will save us all a lot of pain and heartache.

"So we need to go ahead and set some basic rules about this before we do anything else with it." I explain, which causes both Steve and Andrew to frown but neither of them try to rebut my remarks.

"We have special abilities. It's like being a gun owner, but our abilities are a lot more dangerous. We need to promise to not use this on other people unless we're protecting ourselves or others. Because right now we're chucking baseballs but just days ago we were struggling with pencils.
This is growing stronger as we use it." I explain, my last remarks a lot more serious sounding than I normally opt to sound.

I allow a beat to pass before saying anything else. The boys have been affected by my social perks but I've deliberately worked to not expose them to the full effects of my Steve perks until now. I have wanted to avoid over influencing them on a direct level until now.

My social perks are strong. I'd say that they are actually my strongest perks, at least out the gate. I've mostly avoided using the capstone perk, one which makes me an eerily powerful master of socialness and an idol-like entity, even on other people. For the most part I've been content to use the non-capstones, but I'm making an exception for this.

"Look I just want us to think about this from an outside perspective. How would anyone here feel if some asshole had been in the cave instead of us and they used these powers on us as a prank, or because they were petty and we pissed them off?" I ask, and I feel that question hammer home my point.

"These abilities are awesome. They are, in a very real sense, world-changing. We are… psychic, for lack of a better word. But demonstrably so. Right now it's baseballs, but even that is fucking world-altering. Imagine if this continues to grow? Imagine if this is only the start?" I ask, aware that my words are changing the mood of the conversation. I allow another pause to happen.

I feel the weight of my words, backed by the potency of my perks, to drop on my classmates. Ethically charisma perks are deeply suspect, especially ones as powerful as "The Game of Life", Steve's capstone perk, but I am using it to save truly countless lives and it's genuinely not mind-control even though it feels strong enough to be mind control. It's the sort of deep-seated charisma that pierces the minds of bigots and murderous assholes and sways them.

Right now I am not conversing with people so close-minded. I am talking to regular teens who are riding the high of feeling special and who, if not for my intervention, would make tragic, and believable, mistakes. I am determined to stop them from making those mistakes.

"I'm sorry for killing the mood, but I… I just imagine if an asshole had been in the cave and not us. And I don't mean an 'Asshole' in the same sense as a regular teenager might be considered one, but like a genuine monster. The thought of a killer or worse getting these kinds of gifts and having free reign with them is scary. And so is the thought of us using these abilities recklessly." I explain, and this causes Matt to nod at me.

"Yeah, you're right. These powers are awesome but they are a responsibility. We have them, we need to use them carefully." He admits, before smiling.

"I can be cool with the idea of us having rules for these abilities. I definitely think the idea of only using these abilities with other people for self defense or to protect other people is good." He acknowledges. The others also agree, and we decide to continue our discussion of this later on over text.

I smile and the rest of lunch passes by without incident. Once we've established that rule I momentarily wonder if we'll get the chance to see if we'd actually stick to it. I don't have to wait long for that.

We go to a nearby grocery store and the boys and I grab some groceries for me. I explained to them that I live alone a while ago, and while they've never been to my house they've seen pictures of it.

While I shop for groceries the boys are still mischievous and as I explore the store I wonder if this scene is what inspired the "Secrecy Insurance" perk which is a two-part perk in the jump document for drop-ins that allows people who see powers in real-life to try and rationalize them away, while also providing other protections in case a jumper's powers are discovered in such a way that they can't be denied. The boys are pretty obviously the culprits in a series of small scale, harmless pranks throughout the store but no one catches them or suspects them of any wrongdoing.

The scene that plays out around me does differ from the scene in the film, as this is an exact moment we as viewers get to watch. The boys do not accidentally knock somebody over with their powers, which does happen in the movie, and the scariest prank they do is give a little girl the fright of the afternoon by making a teddy bear float in front of her. For now it seems that the boys are serious about their commitment to not using their powers on people!

I pay for my groceries and while traveling to the car I have to persuade Steve not to use his powers on a car that was badly parked, but I still keep him from accidentally damaging someone's vehicle. When we're in his car Matt asks for my address, which I give him, and we begin to drive home. I am tense during the first part of the drive, as this is a critical moment in the original timeline that marks the beginning of a serious tonal shift. And it involves a car and a bad driver.

We reach a hilly road and begin to drive down it, only for the unlucky motorist I have long dreaded seeing to drive up behind us. The driver is a dickhead and pulls up unreasonably close to us, which frustrates Matt and he audibly complains. I keep my focus on Andrew, aware of what he must be thinking about doing. I keep my eyes on him, doing so subtly but focusing more on watching him than on hiding my gaze.

We drive for several minutes with the driver behind us remaining firmly up our car's ass. I continue to watch Andrew, and when we pass by a sharp turn where the driver behind us should have taken a telekinetically induced offroad tumble I relax and internally sigh in victory. The driver eventually turns when we cross an intersection somewhere along Seattle's edge, and this allows me to well and truly celebrate.

Andrew was meant to push the driver's vehicle off the road and, unintentionally, into a nearby pond. This action would almost kill the motorist, and would result in Matt taking action to save the man, call for help, and being the one to propose rules, as well as Andrew beginning a downward spiral when his friends reorient their priorities in the wake of almost killing someone. I have now well and truly altered the timeline since no major conflict happens here!

We reach my home and the boys help me unpack my groceries. They get a tour of my home, and spend some time here before they go home themselves. When they do I sit in the living room and actually relax. I watch television, genuinely watching it for entertainment value instead of to hone my "Polyglot" ability, and I contemplate the myriad of changes I have caused today.

This is a monumental win, one that is the result of my careful and targeted intervention in the plot. For months I have worked to arrive at this point, spending truly hundreds of hours in school, socializing over the phone, and even volunteering all for the sake of this specific moment. By preventing Andrew from being forcibly isolated from his friends and feeling separation so quickly after getting so many new friends, even ones that were not named characters in the film, I have thrown a wrench in destiny. It's far from over, and I plan to continue to intervene in ways both big and small, but this is still something.

At one point during the evening I use my powers to do my homework, so I can spend tomorrow doing real world training. I eventually go to bed, and when I wake up on Sunday I text everyone a lot more actively and energetically than I have been over the last few weeks. I purposefully cultivate the idea that before I used my telekinesis with the boys I was still a bit cautious and that this is me in my relaxed state.

I also redouble my efforts with regards to training, spending the whole day throughout Seattle and more aggressively using my powers than ever before. I spend the day protecting the streets and working to help people. Come Sunday evening I return home, and I do things like make dinner and study for school while continuing to refine my usage of my abilities.

The next few weeks pass by in a blur, though subtle changes occur to my schedule. As I take steps, both big ones and small ones, to the finish line for this jump I carefully rework my schedule.

On Monday, just two days after I watched Andrew resist an impulse to be mischievous and accidentally change someone's life forever, I begin to spend more time with him. He and I go shopping for clothes after school and I purposefully help him get new clothes, guided by a worker at a clothing store, which helps him look a lot cooler on Tuesday and this results in him getting more positive attention. I also talk him into going to the school's weekly AV club meeting, and we get to see Casey and other classmates of ours who are into tech.

These two things result in our circle of friends expanding even as early as later this very week. It brings out new sides to Andrew, who struggles to adapt right away but still goes out of his way to be kind and slowly comes out of his shell. Matt notices this and quietly thanks me for what I've done, and I tell him that it was a group effort. Lots of Matt's own actions helped his cousin, I just got Andrew to cross several important finish lines, and we're still not done.

Over the next three weeks Andrew continues to thrive. At the same time Matt and Steve, both of whom were already as successful as they wanted to be, continue to thrive as well. I myself am content where I am, and I continue to steadily hone my abilities, even figuring out how to begin to properly use my telekinesis on myself and eventually unlocking the ability to hover over the second weekend after I established the rules we'd operate by.

For some reason the ability to fly is a skill I can't quite grasp, almost always flipping in mid-air when I try it. I guess all of us have specialties, and I've already figured out techniques like healing and force field generation, but for some reason flight is just something beyond my reach.

Before I know it another iconic scene is playing out before my eyes. I am standing in an abandoned lot with Matt and Andrew, having been called here by Steve. I know what this means: a powerful ability, one of the signature powers of the trio, has been unlocked by Steve before it was unlocked by me. Given all I can do it's a bit surprising that the power that Steve is moments from revealing is one he figured out how to do before I did, but the man is skilled with his powers.

"Where is he?" Matt asks as he looks around the abandoned lot. We can see Steve's car, and I know where the skilled superhero is, but I don't want to spoil what's about to happen. All three of us get a text from Steve and Andrew is the one who reads it first.

"Look up." He quietly says even as he follows the instruction and suddenly gasps. He taps my shoulder and points skyward, and when I look up I have to feign surprise. Steve is hovering in mid air, and before I can say anything he begins to carefully, consciously descend. Steve has learned how to reliably fly. This is, in my opinion, one of the coolest powers of the Chronicle trio and even though I could do all sorts of things before they could, it still kind of stings that freeform flight is a skill I just can't grasp yet.

 

[sundrawnshadow]

I kinda agree with the statement but you should have some methods to reduce stress using your powers in a manner the benefits you it can calm you down provided you control how often you do so it's not like drugs where doing it once makes you do it again you have to be very weak-willed to just keep being an asshole or something if no one else has powers you have no one to truly challenge your group so you need a outlet to direct that urge stealing is not the best idea tho if its criminals that's less of a issue but using it to your advantage is ok not doing so is like saying because I'm a genius I won't make FTL possible it's going to hurt people or Im naturally good at running but because I have that talent I shouldn't run (you get the point) anyway sorry for the rant and great chapter1

 

[LucianoWrites]

Flight. As a physically disabled person, freeform flight was one of the end-all be-all powers I always dreamed about. It… kind of hurts to see someone who started using these powers weeks after I did, someone who has only played with them as far as I know, already capable of doing something I've dreamed of doing.

Steve carefully drops to the floor and smiles at us. There is a look of triumphant joy on his face, and it's hard for me to fake the smile I flash as I approach him. My body mod helps shore up my subpar acting skills in the bummed state I'm in, so he doesn't seem to notice.

"Flight… Incredible." I exclaim, and my words are limited but sincere. To see him at his apex, creatively using these powers, is actually incredible. I am jealous, a not-fun-feeling to be experiencing, but I can still acknowledge how incredible this achievement is.

"It's not easy. I learned how to catch myself sometime ago. Having the strength and finesse needed to move around was a much bigger hurdle." Steve admits. This is true, there is something weird about trying to fly using telekinesis.

It's a combination of a thousand different skills, and it requires remarkable finesse. I suppose Steve's specialty is telekinetic innovation, which is unsurprising but to see that he exceeds me in that regard is fascinating.

"Here, why don't you all try it?" Steve asks, before turning around and telekinetically leaping onto the top of his car.

"Let's start with you, Luciano." Steve says, before gesturing for me to join him. I do as he asks, and join him. To do so I subtly flex one of my abilities: a telekinetically enhanced physique.

I leap from where I'm standing and land on the car next to him, doing so by allowing my telekinesis to infuse my muscles. The boys are all surprised when they see this, gawking at me with amused and amazed looks.

This is a wholly original technique that is, as far as I can tell, something only I know how to do with this version of telekinesis. To do it I take the telekinetic energy that I utilize to manipulate objects and infuse it into my muscles and other body parts. The energy surges through me whenever I do this, allowing me to perform superhuman feats like leaping the twenty something feet that separates me from the top of Steve's car. I've also mimicked super strength using this ability, though that's not something I plan to do here and now.

I do not doubt that my skill with these abilities far exceeds Steve's own. I have sacrificed my time here to hone these skills to a fine edge. Still, Steve is a specialist, a true, natural one. His skills are his own, not the result of perks mixing and meshing together, and intersecting with a nerd's passion for superpowers.

"That's… well, that was sick." He exclaims, grinning at me. I grin back, happy to have had a moment that was sick, even if the moment is less impressive than Steve's was. He turns and looks at our friends, before jumping off of the car. In mid-air his momentum completely stops and he begins to float in front of us.

"So right now I'm just catching and holding myself." He states, and I look at him and nod. I proceed to mimic him, leaping into the air and almost immediately catching myself with my telekinetic grip.

I am suspended in mid-air, and this part of telekinetic flight is simple enough. I can hover indefinitely, I've even done it for as long as an hour before, in my house.

The others quickly replicate our actions, and soon enough all four of us are hovering in mid-air. Steve proceeds to slowly and stiffly move his arm, and Matt and Andrew look at him in confusion. I share their confusion for a few seconds before I realize what he's doing.

"You're… you're using telekinesis on your arm, aren't you?" I ask, and Steve grins at me. He nods brightly and proceeds to slowly ascend upward.
It's fascinating to me that his approach is so different from mine. I've taken to infusing my body with telekinetic energy, which is very different from what Steve is doing. I work with my telekinetic energy, using it to supplement my own physique, as opposed to literally moving my body with telekinesis. My method of telekinetically manipulating myself is efficient, but not thorough, but Steve's approach is the opposite. I suppose that's why his method works for something this advanced…

I slowly wrap my telekinetic grip around my arm and practice moving it back and forth. It feels unnatural and unwieldy since I can easily harm myself by overextending a limb. I actually injured myself this way on accident, which is why I've avoided doing it.

I lightly focus and wrap my telekinetic grip around my legs, careful not to grip myself too tightly. I inhale and when I exhale I slowly lift myself up, gently rising up and successfully beginning to fly in a stiff but mobile manner. Meanwhile Matt flips in mid-air, face planting but after a best indicates that the real damage is to his pride. Seconds later Andrew begins to ascend with me, and when he is beside me he grins at me like we're kids in a candy shop.

"This will take some getting used to." I say as I glance at the floating teens. Matt tries to fly again, fails, and then on his third attempt manages to slowly float up towards us. His success with this is interesting… I wonder if I slightly misunderstood how the perks inspired by them work. It seems that they have some sort of plot-given version of their perks, and my real advantage is that I'll be taking these traits with me into the future, coupled with, still relevant, meta-knowledge. As I am right now I am still stronger and more diverse, telekinetically, than them but now that we are flying…These teens are my equals, superiors actually, in the air.

We are maybe fifteen feet off the ground and we take some time to orient ourselves, with Steve watching us with a confident grin etched across his face. He seems perfectly at ease in the air, hovering and moving with the grace of someone who has been doing this for days, at least.

I glance at him from time to time, determined to soak up every aspect of his actions. I watch as he seems to relax even more and get more used to utilizing this power, improving in real time. His movements become subtly finer and more natural seeming, and I feel a pang of envy as I study them. There is something mildly unsettling about the ways that the teens can take steps towards mastery over their powers that are so swift that one can see them make small breakthroughs even in casual training sessions.

Steve laughs as we practice flying, and eventually challenges us to try and catch each other. He calls it "Telekinetic Tag", with the only rule being that we don't use our powers on each other and in time we are sailing through the air, darting towards each other and flinging ourselves with our powers. The teen is physical enough that I suppose he sees this as a fun idea, and to be fair it actually does sound kind of fun in a teen-boy sort of way.

Steve's natural charisma seems to enthuse my friends, and the more we roughhouse and unconventionally train, the more we seem to enjoy it. Steve is fairly relaxed and somewhat out of the fray, due in no small part to the casual confidence he exudes as he twists through the air. He radiates the strange confidence of a real-life superhero and I can sense that my companions are afraid to try and go after him, not wanting to
wound their egos.

After a few minutes have passed I carefully dodge a lunge by Andrew and watch as Matt sets his eyes on his cousin. Meanwhile, my eyes flicker in the direction of the best flier of the four of us, and decide to go after him.

I toss myself towards Steve, a smile on my face as I move through the sky. I am not particularly adept at this form of movement, but I am athletic enough that even as I move through the sky I can angle myself in such a way that each time I stop myself and reorient myself I am able to get closer to the person who I intend to tag.

Steve, almost immediately spotting me, decides to play along. He deftly dodges my first lunge, and seems to dance around me, and for the next few minutes I amuse the two of us by dancing, in a manner speaking, with him. For all of his strengths, and there are many, he also has weaknesses. Steve is not aware of his surroundings, and as I pressure him and keep moving after him he seems to get tunnel vision, intently dodging me even if it is easy for him to do so.

And, for what it's worth, though I have weaknesses I also have strengths. I am at least tactical enough to position Steve so that he is right in the middle of Andrew, Matt, and I, and as I watch the ways he moves in mid-air I begin to steadily memorize each of the subtleties of the ways he moves. At some point I gain enough knowledge of Steve's movements that I become reasonably certain I can mimic them and incorporate them into my own moveset, to begin to truly master this ability.

At some point Andrew and Matt stopped chasing each other and began to hover in the air, motionlessly. Their eyes are locked on the chase I've been engaged in, and with each failed attempt at catching my friend I sense them wanting to participate more and more. They hover as Steve keeps his eyes firmly locked on me, and grins the sort of confident, shit-eating grin that only teenagers can truly flash people with.

I dart forward, moving faster than I've previously moved, and nod at Matt and Andrew. The two of them nod back, and when Steve dodges my lunge Andrew lunges as well. Steve, hearing his friend, is able to avoid the midair tackle, but when Matt sprints at his friend Steve is not able to dodge the attempted tackle. Steve gets the wind knocked out of him and Matt laughs as Steve reels back.

I call out to Matt and tell him to bring Steve down, dubbing Steve the "King of Telekinetic Tag". This gets a pained chuckle out of Steve, even as Matt lifts him up and we all begin to descend. When we land we check the time and find that it's slowly getting later in the afternoon.

"Hey Luciano, can you go over to my car and pull something out of the passenger's seat? I made some lunch for us." Steve tells us, asking me to do him a favor. I am surprised at this but I don't argue and I walk over to the car Steve owns and use the embellished, theatrical brand of telekinesis I have established that I use to open the unlocked vehicle and retrieve two coolers. They float towards me and I then gesture in the direction of the teens I have befriended. When the boys grab the coolers, they playfully rib Steve who smiles good-naturedly at them.

We take a break and unpack the food, some sandwiches and sodas, before beginning to eat. Andrew eats in mid-air and I grin up at him as he floats, seemingly for dramatic or perhaps comedic effect but I suspect that he is actually just devoted to training his powers and likes to do so whenever he can. A part of me admires his willingness to do this openly, since it's something that, of the four of us, only Andrew does.

"So… where do you guys want to go?" Andrew eventually asks, between bites into a sandwich. The rest of us look at each and then at Andrew. Steve is the first one to speak in the wake of the question being asked.

"What do you mean, my guy?" He wonders, turning to look at Andrew.

"Well we can fly. So that means we can… kind of go anywhere." Andrew replies. I let out a quiet laugh in response to this before volunteering an answer.

"I wouldn't mind flying back to Ponce. After graduation, I mean." I remark, causing Andrew's eyes to light up. Seeing the teen's eyes sparkle with such sincere joy is odd to me, but not in a negative way.

This plot point was always a bit odd to me. In the film this is a scene wherein the protagonists discuss the possibility of traveling the world using their powers after graduation. Even if someone can fly that doesn't actually mean that they have unrestricted traveling abilities in a world like this.

People need passports, money, linguistic abilities, and more to successfully travel from country to country, but I suppose this is part of the realism of them being teens; idealism and dreams that have not yet been tempered, or destroyed, by the unfairness of adulthood The more I think about it, the more my opinion of this plot point softens, something which is a bit unexpected but not something I find myself disliking.

"You know… That sounds pretty cool. The Caribbean!" Andrew says, smiling at me. I smile back, and wait for someone to volunteer an answer. Eventually Steve comes up with an answer, his normally confident grin relaxing into something softer and more sincere.

"I'd love to visit D.C.," Steve begins, and as I hear that I turn to him and also relaxedly grin. "I want to be a politician, so I think visiting the city where all of the big stuff happens would be pretty fun." He says, before gesturing grandly.

"I want to see it all, man. The Capitol, the White House, the Smithsonian. Every part of it." He remarks, excitedly. When he's done talking there is a lull in the conversation as we continue to eat. I half expect Matt to speak up, but it's actually Andrew who volunteers his dream destination next.

"I want to visit Tibet." Andrew tells us, a small, almost nervous smile on his face as he reveals this. I smile at him, and motion for him to continue talking.

"I've done a lot of reading about these Buddhist monks. I think their whole deal is interesting. It'd be so fascinating to visit Tibet and talk to them in person." Andrew tells us, which visibly excites Matt. Steve is less interested in this, but he is still excited at the sight of Andrew opening up and talking about his honest feelings.

"That's awesome man! Yeah, let's do it. All of it. Right after graduation." Steve tells us, speaking a bit more seriously than he usually does. We all laugh and continue to eat, enjoying this moment.

When we're done eating we train our ability to fly for another hour before packing our stuff up and getting ready to say our farewells. Once all of our stuff is in our cars, Steve looks at Andrew with a crooked smile and proposes something a bit kooky.

"Hey Andrew, you know I just had a cool idea." He says, an impish glint in his eyes as he studies his friend. Andrew looks at the popular senior with a curious expression.

"Yeah?" Andrew asks, a softer look on the once moody teen's face.

In the weeks since we've met Andrew has had chances to change and grow. Even before I helped him harness the small amounts of popularity he has gained as a friend of Steve's and a friend of mine, and as a member of my group, he has started to look somewhat healthier, and now seems much happier. He idly smiles at people, seems relaxed, tutors our classmates, and even eats lunch with people other than Matt sometimes. He looks different, and radiates a changed energy compared to before.

"You should compete in the school talent show!" Steve exclaims, speaking with the same exuberant energy that has allowed him to be a wildly popular member of the student body. Andrew scoffs at this, but Steve doesn't stop talking.

"I'm serious dude, think of the cool-ass magic tricks you could pull off? We're telekinetic man! And you, you're the master at cool, small stuff. You can do all sorts of illusion tricks with the way you use your telekinesis." Steve explains, correctly explaining that Andrew has a fine level of skill with things like dexterous manipulation of small objects. Andrew is mulling it over and Steve launches into an energetic speech on the subject, reminding Andrew of the ways that Andrew has used his particular abilities to pull off all sorts of intricate acts.

"What would it take to get you to participate? Luciano being your assistant?" Steve asks, looking at me with a questioning gaze. This remark amuses me, but I suppose it's pretty easy to clock how close Andrew and I am, even without knowledge of our powers. I flash him a quick smile and then look back at Andrew. I am a bit surprised to see Andrew's eyes unexpectedly glow with a mischievous glimmer all their own.

"Do you really want me to participate in the show?" He asks Steve. Steve nods at him, and this makes Andrew's own devilish grin widen.

"Okay, then volunteer with me." Andrew adds, and this makes Steve simply smile at him.

"Sure. I'd be happy to volunteer with you." The teen responds, with zero hesitation. This makes Andrew stop and eventually stammer out an affirmative response to the accepted invitation. This interaction is amusing to watch, but I think a part of it highlights how Steve inspired his own line of perks. The lack of hesitation, willingness to commit to things, and the way that he knows that of all of us, Andrew would be the best to be the lead in the talent show, are all facets of Steve's nature. It's very interesting to just watch Steve do social interactions and navigate social encounters.

The talent show is in the last full week of October, three weeks from yesterday October 5th. It's also a major plot point, but one that will undoubtedly play out differently in this altered timeline than other events have.

Once Andrew agrees to participate in the talent show we get in our cars and go our separate ways. I am taken back home, and when we are all back home we exchange text messages about the talent show. I do not train today, having already trained a good deal with the boys, and so I relax and do my schoolwork today instead of tomorrow.

On Sunday I devote the day to training, and practice flight in the safety of the back half of my home. I get it down enough that I can at least hover instead of walk, and when I go to bed I realize a fun way to be part of the plot and the talent show without competing in it and thus potentially usurping the limelight from Andrew.

When I go back to school another instance of fairly boring activity begins. For the next two weeks I am mostly a regular student, and I mix in feigned concern for the SATs, which I lie to my friends about to maintain my facade as a normal student when they begin to talk about college applications.

The two weekends between October 6th and October 26th pass by in a blur. During both weekends I amp up the volunteering I do, and I eventually make a move that, if it works out, will further shield my time in this setting and lessen the likelihood of Andrew falling into villany: I ask Andrew to hang out after the talent show even offering him a place to sleep, a full week before the event. He, always excited to have an excuse to get out of his house and thankfully not having had any serious reason to rationalize that he has superpowers and could do anything he wants to people without them due to my positive influence and interference in his life, happily says yes.

During the week of the talent show I eagerly ask to volunteer and work behind the scenes. I am given the task of organizing the student volunteers and work directly under a teacher I've not yet met, a middle-aged Latina who is the school's drama teacher. To my slight annoyance I get roped into being the M.C. for the talent show, though I suppose this is not surprising given the combination of my popularity and the fact that I asked to volunteer at the show.

When the day of the talent show arrives school passes by in a breeze. It is easy for me to get good grades, and even easier for me to behave in a friendly manner to my peers. When the school day ends I go to the auditorium we are going to use for the show and oversee the final leg of our efforts to get it ready.

Before I feel as though even a few hours have passed a flurry of voices tell me to go and get dressed to serve in my official capacity as M.C., and even as I am in an empty dressing room putting on the formal clothes I've been asked to wear I can hear the teachers who are working this event welcome parents over a nearby, temporarily discarded headset. I also know that Steve and Andrew are getting ready as well.

I look at myself in one of the dressing room's mirrors and let out an exhausted chuckle as I check and make sure that I am finished changing. I'm dressed in a suit and tie, at the insistence of the school, and to see myself finely dressed in this new body is truly bizarre. I only get enough time to give myself a once over before I hear multiple voices tell me to make sure I'm in position in one minute. I nod and begin to dart towards the school's auditorium, ready to begin to move towards the last few weeks, and to see the culmination of all of my subtly meddlesome efforts.

 

[LucianoWrites]

I willingly allow my social perks to be fully channeled the instant that I get the signal to go ahead and step out onto the stage. As soon as I do I feel their potent weight, and when I am visible I myself get some scattered applause. I feel some subtle changes to the way I am perceived, firmly aware of the keen power of the social perks I normally purposefully taper down.

"Good evening parents, teachers, staff, fellow students, and friends of North High!" I begin, speaking into a microphone clipped onto the edge of my shirt. I am hit with a fair amount of applause which serves as a nice little ego boost.

"We, the members of the student body, are happy to welcome you to our lovely auditorium, and out of the cold late-October night. We hope you are having a fine night so far. If not, fear not, for I have many friends who are sure to entertain and amaze you all!" I declare, shortly before I begin to go through a list of people and organizations I have been asked to give a "Special thanks" to.

"Now, please give a warm welcome to the first performers of the night and some of our youngest and most energetic students, the Tumbling Triplets!" I declare at the end, and as excited applause fills the auditorium I subtly signal towards the triplets waiting in the wings and dart off the stage.

Three students, one boy and two girls dart onto stage, smiling as they sense the applause shift focus from my words to their actions. They begin to put on a very talented gymnastic show for the audience. The show lasts just over five minutes and the instant that the music they put on to accompany their performance comes to an end I wait for the applause they receive to reach a natural crescendo and once it begins to taper off I dart out onto the stage and the triplets, spotting me, begin to walk off of it.

"Weren't they fantastic folks? Let's hear it one more time for Tommy, Tara, and Taylor!" I say, causing the audience to burst into applause once more. I smile and wait for the somewhat artificial second round of applause to begin to die down before I speak once more.

"What a lovely group. But that's just one act in tonight's star-studded performance and I am delighted to have been given the chance to introduce you to the second act in tonight's show, the Musical Marys!" I proclaim as I immediately begin to move off the stage and give the space to a diverse group of teens, all named Mary, who come out and immediately begin to play a rock song. They have no instruments other than guitars, presumably for the sake of making their performance easier to accommodate and possible to put earlier on the schedule.

Once I am off stage I dart behind where anyone can see me and use my special sort of telekinetic physique to dart over to the other side of the auditorium and reach my friends. Matt is standing with Andrew and Steve and the two performers are dressed in, in Andrew's case a rented and ill-fitted tux, and in Steve's case a more properly fitted, if less formal, suit. I grin as I approach them and playfully gesture as though I'm taking a picture.

"Hello gentlemen. Are you nervous?" I ask, smiling at the trio. They all look at me with differing levels of relaxedness.

"We got this!" Steve declares even as he walks up to me and non-verbally insists on a chest bump. I oblige him, and internally laugh given the elegant clothes we're wearing.

"I'm glad you're excited, since you're gonna be Andrew's lovely assistant." I tell the man, and he smiles at me, good-naturedly. Matt looks a bit nervous, but does a good job of hiding it. This is curious, and I plan to follow up on it, but for now I'm content to keep this check-in shallow. I've worked hard so far and I am determined to balance everything, which means making sure I'm aware of what is going on elsewhere. Andrew and
Steve tell me about their planned performance for a few minutes while the Marys play.

In the background I can hear the Marys beginning to approach the end of the set they submitted to the teachers tasked with organizing the show. I excuse myself and remind my companions that the duo will be going on stage as the act after the next one, a reminder they are thankful for.

Welcoming the next act is easy, and as I step off stage I spot Matt stepping into the seating area of the auditorium and walk towards where Casey is sitting.

I distantly hear a soft thud in the distance as I exit the auditorium stage, resounding dully. Curiously I begin to shapeshift, aware of the handful of cameras the school possesses and the fact that none of them are here, and equally grateful for the fact that this act is a stand-up bit that should last at least a few minutes.

I morph my form, taking on an appearance indistinguishable from my own: that of a shorter blonde girl who, given my outfit, is dressed very goofily. I don't want there to be any chance that I could be recognized, but I'd also rather not do more harm than is necessary such as by knocking everyone out, which is an option but one I'd rather avoid.

I step into a hallway that is, understandably, empty. Another dull thudding sound, one that I am fairly certain is someone being slammed into a locker, resounds from somewhere else in the school. I decide to investigate it, and dash down the hallway. I grimace as I hear the sound of flesh hitting metal, followed by a whimpering noise.

I dart between hallways and I find myself grateful that this school doesn't have much of a budget and can barely afford cameras in classrooms and far fewer in the hallways.

I reach the distant hallway where the sounds came from, and I am surprised to see a face that I recognize. One of the large gang members from the actual film, the men that Andrew robs as the movie enters the final act, is standing over the crumpled form of a nerdy-looking student that could be some sort of underclassman. Specifically it's the guy who jokes about Andrew having a gun before he gets telekinetically assaulted by the teen.

This is… deeply weird, and represents something wholly original, but the man is towering over the defeated nerd and I know, one way or another, that I can't do nothing in the face of whatever is going on. I make a snap decision to overwhelm the thug with a touch of violence and to do so in such a swift move that he has no opportunity to process whatever is happening. Fortunately this is an area where speed and force require no real finesse.

I glance at the hallway and study it as the thug begins to beat the crumpled form of the teen. There are no cameras, which makes me smile, and so I glance at the man's leg and reach out with my telekinesis, preventing him from launching another kick at the downed student by suddenly preventing him from moving closer to his victim. I don't bother putting on a show, as no one here is looking at me, and so I simply reach out and forcefully grab the man with no visible signs that I am responsible for what is occurring here.

As I lift him up I get a vague sensation of what he'd feel like if I were using my hands to do this instead. This is a new facet of my abilities, one I've only been experiencing for a few days, but it is interesting and sometimes even helpful when I use telekinesis in minor ways such as by allowing me to feel food I am in the middle of cooking, or allowing me to do things like feel if a gun is loaded without going through a variety of motions.

Lifting the man up is hilariously easy and a part of me is delighted that I am able to flex my real strength for once. The man's sudden paralysis, as far as he can tell, causes him to make quiet, confused noises, the sounds partially strangled by the telekinetic grip I have him under. Thankfully he's too far away to be heard by anyone else, especially over the sounds coming from the distant auditorium and so before he can make more noise I violently ram him into the wall he is next to.

The noises he makes in confused protest are abruptly cut off, and I sense him crumple as his body dramatically seems to just switch off. I feel him lose consciousness which under other circumstances would probably be something beyond my ability to sense but given how abruptly he stops squirming… Yeah, he's unconscious.

I hold him there, and wonder how to proceed while I use my abilities to snatch his wallet, open it up and look for any identification he's got on him. I take his cellphone and I glance at and memorize the driver's license he's got on his person. His name is Joshua Raddison. I halfway consider taking the cash he's got on him, like I'm in a video game, but I quickly content myself with removing the stuff from his possession. I place his wallet and his cellphone, including everything but his ID, in a trashcan and only return his identification to him. I don't want to make it easy for him to do something like call a taxi out of here in case my power fails or he otherwise somehow escapes.

I glance at the teen that the gang banger was beating to look at whether or not he's conscious. The figure remains on the floor, and I grimace as I wonder how badly they've been beaten. I take advantage of my skill at doing multiple complex tasks, the area I specialize in as a telekinetic, to turn the teen over and begin to inspect his fallen form. I find that I can't feel anything requiring immediate attention, and so I turn to a nearby locker and forcefully open it.

The locker is open long enough that I can puppet the asshole's fallen form and safely push him into it. I hold the potentially murderous asshole there for a few moments before I relax, able to have a rare opportunity to flex "With Great Power Comes Great Leisure", an ability I can use to allow me to sustain my powers that normally require focus and concentration without either thing. This doesn't make such abilities cost-free, as I still have to use some of my total concurrent capacity for telekinesis to maintain the hold I have on the man but with this I can even sleep and keep him there without worrying about him going free.

I have ideas on how to handle this guy but I can't do much right now, since I don't want to kill him and I don't have time to interrogate him right now. I push the bully into the locker and move some papers inside of it to obscure the opening and make it hard to notice something off about it. I then shut the locker before I turn my focus to the teen and use my telekinesis on him just enough to keep him from turning and facing me in case he wakes up. Once I'm done I turn around and dart out of view.

I begin to speedily bound back the way I came, even as I morph back into my base form. The moment I'm out of view I let go of the subtle grip I had the teen under, so if he wakes up he'll be able to move freely.

As I move towards the auditorium I wonder what is going on here. A part of me was wondering if I'd be able to finish this jump without a big and decisive confrontation of some sort, and a tiny portion of me was pretty sure if I made tonight go off without a hitch and kept Andrew from a fateful party I'd stand a good shot at achieving a sort of "Best ending" for this setting where everyone survives and is happy. I don't believe I missed something, but I'm definitely going to need to do some investigating sometime, since this was weirdly close to the talent show and featured a background character from the film, a nameless goon who gets demolished and was now demolished by me.

It'd be kind of cool if I could have some dramatic confrontation with a villain and do some more good before I leave the setting, but not if this complicates my efforts to give this story a better ending than the one it gets canonically. In my head a debate rages between different views on how weird it is that a background character from the film appeared in the school given my significant, plot-changing efforts to fix this setting, and one of the prevailing voices is that I'm being paranoid and thinking too much about a weird coincidence.

I hope that voice is right, but at the same time since this IS a chain I'm participating in a freakish reality show for nightmarish beings that stand head and shoulder above gods in power. I need to remember that.

I return to the auditorium right as the teen comedian is finishing his set. I relax, putting a somewhat false smile on, and get ready to make my next appearance in my capacity as an M.C.

I spot Matt and Casey and listen to him smugly tell her to keep watching the show as she wonders why he's so excited. She doesn't know what is going on and though neither of them can see me I smile, basically at their expense. The teen on stage provokes a fairly solid peal of laughter from the audience with a brutal burn at the expense of the principal, who seems to take the joke in stride and the comedian glances at me. I nod at him, smiling, and he grins back, suddenly getting up when the laughter dies down and thanks the audience for coming out tonight. When he steps off stage, to a hefty amount of applause, I step into view and as I reach the center of the stage I hear stage hands dart onto stage and move props and items around behind me.

"Well friends we're about a quarter of the way through tonight's programming and I'm so excited to announce tonight's next performers. Representing the class of 2013, I am happy to be able to tell you that you are about to watch a show of illusion. What you're about to see will make you question if you can trust your eyes, or if you've been duped by clever tricks and astounding misdirections. Please give Andrew Detmer and Steve Montgomery a warm welcome!" I remark, to excited applause, and as I walk off stage I can hear my finely dressed friends step into view.

I get off stage just in time and turn only to see Andrew trip and drop a bunch of playing cards onto the floor. He painfully overacts and feigns dramatically at Steve, who pantomimes for Andrew to pick up the cards.

Andrew nods at this and then uses telekinesis to dramatically cause the cards to fly up into the air in front of him, and as the cards fly up into the air an array of passive noise throughout the auditorium comes to an abrupt end. A silence falls over the audience as they stare at the impressive telekinesis on display in front of them. Andrew smiles and then he flares his hand up towards the cards, which seem to respond by dancing towards his outstretched hand. When the last card reaches settles on the reformed deck, an enormous applause breaks out, amazed people completely unable to process what they've just seen. I myself grin, and lean back against a wall just behind me.

For the next few minutes Andrew and Steve astound and amaze the audience with a range of telekinesis-powered tricks. Steve is happy to take a minor role, not needing the certain boost to his popularity this display will cause, and Andrew does a variety of things like hover while pretending to stand on a tightrope, or juggling and holding various balls aloft. Some of these tricks hit harder than others, with the initial trick and him hovering while pretending to balance on a tightrope being the most popular, but all of them are quite popular.

I use my telekinetic physique to dart behind the stage and to the other side near the performance's end. When Andrew and Steve end their performance they both dramatically bow and smile at the enraptured audience. I go on stage as they leave and celebrate their amazing performance shortly before I welcome the next act, a group of students who put on a traditional dance from Mexico. The next hour is filled with me diligently doing my job, and smiling when I hear things like Andrew going over to his family, including Matt and even his dad, all of whom are truly astounded by what he's done.

The show eventually comes to an end, and when it does I exit the stage one final time. As soon as I step off the stage there is a flurry of activity as people begin to leave the school. I know that some folks won't be leaving right away, but I decide to momentarily return to the auditorium once most folks are gone and I spend a few minutes subtly helping the people left with the task of cleaning the stage and the auditorium.

I do this in two ways: the first is that I carefully help with lifting things, using my telekinesis to allow me to do the work of more than one person, and I also use my telekinesis to help other groups of students and a handful of adults lift heavier objects like props or instruments, since some bands who performed use things like drums as part of their sets. This work is well-received by my friends and the teachers there, who are amazed to see me work even in the suit I'm wearing, which I handwave away as wanting to do my part to make sure every part of the show is a success.
When I leave the auditorium this time I am surprised to see not only Andrew but also Andrew's parents and Matt waiting for me. They spot me as I step out of the auditorium and walk towards me, all with broad smiles on their faces. When Ms. Detmer, who is looking surprisingly healthy all things considered, reaches me she hugs me abruptly and I am taken a bit aback by this.

"Oh Luciano it's… it's so nice to meet you." She tells me, her voice incredibly soft and filled with an amount of emotion that is not surprising, given all I've done for her and her family (in more ways than she can imagine), but it's still a bit intense.

"Hello Ms. Detmer. It's so nice to meet you too." I tell her, softly. She eventually stops hugging me and steps back, a bit embarrassed but when I smile at her she relaxes.

"How are you feeling?" I ask, looking at her and allowing genuine emotion to flow into my eyes. She is, in some respects, one of the most pitiable characters in this film, married to a man who abuses their child, unable to meaningfully help her son, and dying all the while. This question causes her to smile.

"I'm still alive, in far less pain than I was even a month and a half ago, and I just watched my son astound an entire audience filled with people. I'm… I'm feeling jubilant." She says, confidence infusing her voice the more she speaks. Andrew takes her hand and smiles at his mother. I turn and look at Richard Detmer, unsure of what I'd feel when I finally met him in person.

Richard is surprisingly tall, and he holds a cane that he tensely clutches as he looks at me. There is a softness in his eyes that I never would have expected. His hand shoots out and he begins to smile as he looks at me.

"It's very nice to meet you Mr. Gonzalez. Your friendship has helped Andrew a lot, and your efforts made it possible for my wife, for Andrew's mother, to get the help she needs and deserves and to finally put a face to the name is nice." He says, speaking with a level of warmth that I never would have expected from the closest thing this film has to a primary, overarching antagonist. I take his hand and shake it, smiling quite sincerely as I take in the broad impact of my good boy perk "A Helpful Hand".

The three of us begin to converse and as we do I see a level of happiness I never got to see light up Andrew's face in the film. He seems at peace, as happy on the inside as he is on the outside, and this allows me to feel the impact of my actions and the choices I made this far in ways I truly never expected.

"A Helping Hand" allows me to be a balm for my friends and those I speak to. It is an immensely powerful perk in hands that are properly patient, as it causes those who feel its effects to experience a series of events that allow their problems to go away. As I speak with Mr. Detmer I realize that over the course of the months I have spent befriending Andrew the perk has allowed the abusive man to relax in ways I cannot name, and in his relaxed state he has become a better person and done, very decidedly the bare minimum and stopped hitting his son.

At the same time, my perk has had other effects on Andrew's life as well. We have spent hundreds, perhaps as much as over a thousand and a half hours speaking in some form or another, and while we are not together every second of every day our conversations have been deep and profound and our friendship is genuine. I've done this as a preventive measure to make sure I reduce the likelihood of Andrew descending into villainy as much as possible, but Andrew has also genuinely become a friend of mine during all of this.

To see that my efforts have borne fruit beyond what I imagined in my wildest dreams and most light-hearted mental revisions to this particular script is… it's a good feeling. Especially since while some of this is the results of a perk, some of it is due to my own efforts.

I have worked to raise money for Ms. Detmer, and even encouraged Andrew to pay it forward by getting him to think about how he can help other people suffering from cancer, through actual hard work. I've volunteered at places where I raise money for Ms. Detmer, and while at times I've used my perks to get a leg up, other times my hard work and earnest desire to get Ms. Detmer what she deserves has been enough to motivate people who hear the story of how I'm working to raise money for my friend's mom.

For the next few minutes we converse and I get to see the ripple effects of my perks mixing together. I am reminded, firmly, of how much more there is to being on a jump than just getting superpowers and fighting bad, or good, guys. At times I have to work to not let the emotions I am feeling bubble up to the surface. To see Andrew so genuinely happy, to know that his mom has what she needs, and to even see Mr. Detmer, who wasn't always the asshole he is in the context we meet and get to know him to the limited extent the movie lets us, be so calm and so proud of his son is… It's a remarkable feeling. It reminds me of what happens when heroes, both super and ordinary, work and succeed at making life better for people.

Andrew didn't get to this new place in his life solely because of his telekinesis and the friends he has that are telekinetic. Andrew's confidence, a healthy result of him getting new friends, allowed him to grow as a person and become a braver, happier, figure, which snowballed and let him make new friends. I played a role in this, a huge one, but at times it was Andrew himself who made the right decisions, and now I can see the way he has been impacted by his friends and by his experiences. I can also see that my earlier hesitation and my decision to trust in my perks was the right one.

When I first arrived in this world I was tasked with choosing between forcefully carving a new path by acting on the meta knowledge I possess or trusting in my perks and slowly pushing and at times pulling people and events in a new direction. By trusting in perks like "A Helping Hand", rather than relying on my knowledge of scripted events, I was able to subtly build paths by which the plot could change slowly but surely. At times it was tempting for me to act on my meta-knowledge, but by trusting in the perks that are embedded in my soul and by being there for my friends I slowly built a new way forward. I gently nudged events along, for the most part.

The rest of the night passes by uneventfully. Andrew spends the night, and when I text Matt about a look I saw on his face earlier he tells me that he was nervous about the performance. We hang out on Saturday and I slowly come to believe he is telling me the truth here, and when Sunday comes along I train my abilities, eager to hone them further.

On Monday morning, long before the sun comes up, I finally move and begin to well and truly put my abilities as an assassin to the test. At around three in the morning I am beside the school and I walk a circle around the institution wearing the face and clothes of a fully made up man, mixing and matching my features to come up with a face no one has ever seen before. I stay away from where I know cameras to be, until I approach a window where I know not one camera has been placed. I open it using my telekinesis and float into the school.

Once inside I rely on my perk-backed instincts for stealth and make my way to where I stored the bully I dealt with days ago. I reach the locker and telekinetically open it. The figure inside has a body that is in complete disrepair, and he has definitely done some stuff to his pants. I don't release my telekinetic grip on him and instead begin to move the man out of the locker. I keep his eyes shut and smile.

"Hi there! We're going to have a talk, Joshua." I say, putting on a halfway decent approximation of a gruff man's voice. I leave the school, staying out of view of the few cameras which survey a handful of hallways, and in time we've fully exited the school and are on our way to a more out of the way location so I can figure out why the man was bullying a teen.

 

[LucianoWrites]

Joshua Raddison is having a rough go of it, a period of rotten luck that has now lasted a few days. Hours before his life was changed forever he was given a simple task; go and intimidate a little nerd who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and saw something he wasn't supposed to.

The twenty-year-old has the stocky build of a football player, and is more than willing to grab weapons and use them to give himself another edge over the teens he is normally tasked with intimidating or roughing up. He goes to the nerd's school and, at first, his luck seemesfantastic. He nabs the nerd while the student attends a talent show and is on his way back from the bathroom. The bully is able to sneak into the institution thanks to memories he has of his alma mater.

He roughs up the student and is in the middle of leaving a few bruises on him when he is suddenly and forcefully stopped mid-kick. He doesn't have enough time to initially process whatever is going on before he is suddenly and violently swung, by an invisible force, into a nearby wall, which immediately knocks him unconscious.

The next time he awakens he is stuck in a locker, though he doesn't know this, and can't move. This causes him to panic, but the initial panic he feels is small compared to what he feels when he realizes that he can't even scream! He can breathe, but other than that he could not call for help, or do anything of substance. This revelation haunts the man to his core, inflicting a level of terror that is so haunting that it etches itself onto his soul, provoking the birth of a new phobia.

For the next day and a half Joshua exists in an uncomfortable position, unable to even call out for help. During this time the only relief, and it was very short lived, he feels is when he discovers, to his almost immediate shame, that the mysterious force keeping him still isn't going to prevent him from expelling things that'd otherwise build up in him.

In time the figure begins to drift in and out of consciousness. The final time he regains consciousness before something of importance happens is actually just minutes before the locker is supernaturally opened.

The man feels a wave of relief wash over him when the locker opens. He excitedly tries to move but experiences a crushing wave of despair when he finds that he still cannot move. The despair intensifies abruptly when he begins to move but still cannot scream, and he realizes that he is being moved against his will. His head is turned and he finds himself facing a nearby door leading out of the building before being violently wrenched out of the locker.

"Hi there! We're going to have a very nice conversation, Joshua." Utters a gruff voice, from somewhere behind the hardened criminal. This voice penetrates Joshua's heart and fills it with a dark, intense fear. Joshua, despite being seen as nothing more than an effective gang banger, is not stupid. He knows when he is powerless. He recognizes his inability to resist the man who has decided to interact with him.

The man feels helpless, very truly and literally a prisoner in his own body, as he is psychically taken to the door he is pointed towards. When he reaches the door his body is pressed against the thing's bars to open the entrance into and exit out of the school. Joshua grimaces internally when he feels the cool metal of the door's bar pressing against his defeated, still bloody form as he is used to open the door, his captor able to be more gentle but not particularly feeling like it. \

As Luciano humiliates the figure, aware of how dark this is but knowing that he's doing it to understand why various crimes have happened and willing to grapple with that, he uses his telekinesis on a nearby trash can and retrieves the cell phone he deposited in it sometime ago. The phone is pulled into the air some distance away from the telekinetic, who touches it with telekinesis and watches as it blinks to life. Notifications appear on the thing's lockscreen and Luciano reads them, though he can't see the complete content of various messages due to the fact that the thing is locked.

Luciano slowly carries Joshua, using his telekinesis with a level of ease that he doesn't show his fellow telekinetics, past a football field and into some woods outside of it. As he telekinetically carries the beaten, mentally exhausted figure, he begins to casually hum. He is enjoying this.

The jumper is learning from this, humming as he listens to the subtle creaks and groans of the man whose body he is using his powers on. It is an activity unlike any that he has done the entire time he's been jumping, as even at his most aggressive he has, at his very most proactively, merely stopped crimes from occurring and then left. This is something else entirely.

The jumper is holding someone captive with plans to interrogate them. He knows he won't need to be brutal, he knows that by setting things up this way he's already won, but he also knows that in the future, depending on the jumps he elects to visit these kinds of activities will be necessary. He is using this as a chance to practice skills he may need in the future, skills he plans to be good at for the day when he has to use them and can't so thoroughly control and dominate the circumstances by which he interrogates someone.

The two figures wander into the woods, and Luciano grins at the gangster he has captured. Once the two have wandered a fair deal away from the school the telekinetic releases most of his grip on the figure he's captured, causing the man to fall to his knees.

"You can move. Somewhat. And you, my friend, owe me some answers." Luciano remarks, still using his gruff sounding voice. He has adopted a new form, one that is distinctly different from his true form.

The telekinetic crime stopper currently looks like an older white man wearing ragged-looking clothes. Joshua attempts to turn and look at his attacker, but the effort fails when Luciano simply uses telekinesis to prevent him from doing so, not even glancing at him as he does this, and forcefully stopping the criminal from turning enough to be able to face the figure responsible for this grim abduction.

"Ah, you must think you're clever. The second you get your freedom you try to turn and look at me. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now that that's not clever, my friend." Luciano darkly says, before laughing quietly. The sound is incredibly intimidating given the circumstances by which Joshua came to be in Luciano's tender care.

"You owe me some answers and I'm a chatty sort so I thought it best that I extract those answers from you somewhat… unpleasantly. But how unpleasant, beyond the baseline we've established just by the circumstances that have led to us becoming acquaintances, is up to you. Now I'm going to ask you a question and you're going to answer it honestly." Luciano tells the man. Joshua says nothing, and waits for the question.

"Nothing to say in response? Good boy. What is your cellphone passcode?" Luciano asks. He is met with silence at first, and after a few seconds he sighs and with a grim look at his foe he forces Joshua's head to the ground and begin to put light pressure on his neck. He ratches up the pressure, slowly over a few seconds, until Joshua stammers out the digits that Luciano then inputs on the device he retrieved out of a trash can minutes ago.

The instant that Joshua confesses the code Luciano smiles and lightens the pressure he is putting on the criminal's neck, allowing the dirty figure to breathe more easily. When the code is entered it is accepted by the phone, and Luciano mentally files it away in case he needs it in the future.The powerful telekinetic begins to explore the phone, looking for anything he can take from it without ever actually touching the thing.

"Oh hey, Raddison you didn't lie! That's nice of you. That was smart." Luciano replies, smiling so broadly that traces of it feel audible. The powerful psychic purposefully reveals that he knows the man's last name, which sends a slight chill up Joshua's spine. The criminal is not completely hopeless, intellectually, so he already put together that it was very likely that his captor knew about his identity before asking him this question.

"Okay Joshua, I want to really hammer home the sort of situation you're in. You're tired, hungry, thirsty, and in pain. Someone is somehow able to puppet you against your will, move your body without your permission, and already knows your last name. It's… well it doesn't look good now does it?" Luciano asks, before forcefully using telekinesis to make Joshua nod. The adventurer chuckles darkly as he watches the display, really hamming up how powerful his abilities are and how willing he is to use them.

"Why were you at the school?" He asks, shortly before letting go, telekinetically speaking, of the man's neck and head. Joshua doesn't hesitate this time.

"I was given a job. I had to rough up a student, someone who saw something he shouldn't have." The criminal confesses, immediately violating America's national no-snitching policy in the wake of the alien power he is now grimly facing. Luciano listens to this and the look on his face becomes thoughtful as he listens to the revelation. When Joshua is done, Luciano nods and smiles appreciatively.

"Okay, well that's a start, my friend. Now who gave you the job? Who were you working for?" Luciano asks as he mentally files away the information that Joshua came to the school as part of some criminal assignment. Joshua also does not hesitate to divulge what he knows.

"It was a guy a friend of mine knows! His name is Matthew. He lives over in Shallow Heights." Joshua reveals, and Luciano inwardly notes that the criminal is loyal, first and foremost, to himself instead of to this "Matthew" person.

"Shallow Heights" is the name of the region that Andrew lives in, and Luciano inwardly sighs as he wonders how far this is going to go and what sort of actions will be required of him. Luciano's eyes flicker back to the cellphone and he navigates through various menus, until he finds a stream of messages from someone named "Matthew" that he begins to read even as he thinks about what next to ask.

"Do you know why you were tasked with the mission you were assigned?" Luciano asks, unsure of whether or not to expect an answer to this question. Joshua, however, does not disappoint the telekinetic pseudo-teen.

"Nathan saw something he wasn't supposed to. I was tasked with making sure he knows to stay silent." Joshua admits, which is intriguing and also very dumb. Luciano knows better than to think that gangsters are intelligent, but the baffling stupidity of this leaves him dumbstruck for a moment.

"So what if Nathan… isn't a coward?" Luciano asks, his voice lowering as he asks this question. Joshua falls silent, and then shrugs.

"In that case, someone else might be asked to intervene. And the results, normally, would be a bit worse than this." Joshua remarks, grimly. Luciano nods at this explanation, and begins to feel increasingly compelled to act.

"I see. In that case I suppose I have what I need from you." Luciano remarks, causing Joshua's heart to begin to race.

"Wait, what's going to happen to me?!? Joshua remarks, even as Luciano again seizes control of the man's body. Joshua stops moving, his body suddenly in Luciano's telekinetic vice-grip. Luciano tightly grips the man's throat, enough to keep him quiet, through skillful use of his particular brand of telekinetic power. At the same time Luciano finishes the text conversation between the two criminals, and mentally notes that as stupid as Matthew is he's not stupid enough to have texted Joshua about the crimes the bruiser has been asked to do.

Luciano's speciality as far as telekinetic things go appears to be control. He is capable of deft skill with telekinetically manipulating multiple objects at the same time, so much so that he can even clamp down on mobile objects or living beings. It is his focus on control that allows him to render the energy he uses to manipulate things inert enough that he can infuse it into himself and freely empower his physical actions.

Luciano lightly taps the phone four times, three of which are to enter numbers, and the fourth of which is to initiate a phone call. The phone rings briefly before someone picks up.

"Hello this is 9-1-1, what is your emergency?" A voice asks on the other end of the call. In the silence of the woods the phone call is loud enough that Joshua can hear the voice. Joshua's eyes widen as he begins to more fully dread whatever is about to happen next. Luciano uses telekinesis to manipulate Joshua's limbs and then begins to punch himself in the face.

"I need the police! I'm in the woods between North High and the old country roads. Someone is… attacking somebody!" Luciano loudly exclaims, as he moves the phone closer to Joshua, who continues to be telekinetically manipulated to punch himself. The speaker on the other end of the call is about to say more, but Luciano deliberately hangs up the phone before she can. Luciano then immediately smiles and completely paralyzes the man, still totally unaware of Luciano's appearance, even in his disguised form.

The telekinetic glances up at the tallest of the nearest trees, and opts to take advantage of the dark. He silently begins to fly up into the canopy of the tree, and begins to wait. It takes a few minutes before a cop car arrives nearby, and when they do the superpowered nerd smirks darkly.

One facet of Luciano that is wholly his own, not something awarded to him by a perk or a part of an origin, is his on-the-spot creativity. In his past life, he was a writer and he long daydreamed about what he'd do if he had superpowers of his own. Telekinesis was one of his favorite superpowers in his first life, and in the time since he acquired it himself he has honed it into a strikingly effective, and at times terrifying power. He is thinking of ways to use it in even more terrifying ways than he has already used it, eager to experiment with this power and learn what are the limits of what he can do.

The flashing lights of the nearby cop car begin to cut through the gloom of the early morning darkness enveloping the woods. Luciano silently watches from atop the tallest trees, his stealthy presence nearly undetectable as a single cop exits her vehicle and looks into the densely wooded area, looking for someone, or something in it to approach and investigate. Luciano silently intervenes, by making Joshua get up and begin to awkwardly shuffle towards her.

Internally Joshua begins to freak out as he feels his body being puppeted against his will, and in his desperation, he even begins to pray, to internally cry out for divine intervention. He tries to scream as he robotically shuffles towards the cop but the sound is strangled when Luciano, flying between branches to keep an eye on the criminal he's hunted down, uses telekinesis to lightly pinch Joshua's throat, keeping the sound from escaping.

The captured criminal reeks and the first thing that alerts the cop out of her vehicle that something is off is when she is suddenly olfactorily assaulted and smells something truly horrendous. She winces and cringes, rearing back from the woods right as a flash of light illuminates the criminal whose face is partially covered in long-dried blood who is being forced to approach her by an eerie foe capable of forcibly paralyzing his enemies and depriving them of their bodily autonomy.

Joshua, still puppeted by his true captor, seems to awkwardly lunge at the cop, who cries out as the seemingly deranged criminal speedily closes the distance between the two. This causes the woman's partner to dart out of their vehicle and brandish a stun gun. He immediately fires the thing, even as the female cop punches the face of the figure she believes to be assaulting her, even though he is actually nothing more than a prop in a play she does not know she is an actor in.

Luciano faintly feels the impact of the woman's fist as it hammers Joshua's face, a hilariously dull echo of it, and he grins as he releases his grip on Joshua. The criminal is hit by the projectiles violently expelled from the stun gun moments ago, and begins to violently tremble as he falls back, weakened by the circumstances of his capture, followed immediately by days of undue stress placed on his body by what he endured during his captivity, all of which is exacerbated by the damage he has just endured.

Joshua immediately passes out as he twitches due to the combined damages of the punch to the face and the stun gun. Luciano darkly grins and turns and flies away from the scene. He uses the woods to fly part of the way home and then walks the rest of the way, only to take a quick shower, learns that school is cancelled for the day as authorities investigate an odd occurrence that occurred near the school earlier today and see if it has any connection to blood found in a hallway as well as a foul smell that emanates from the same part of the school.

Luciano is excited to text his friends as he readies himself to follow up on what is going in Shallow Heights. He gets dressed, morphs into a new form, and uses his phone to arrange for a taxi to come and transport him to an area close to Andrew's neighborhood, so he can follow up on what he learned from Joshua.

 

[LucianoWrites]

I exit the taxi after paying the driver and look at the community center I asked the driver to take me to. It is in a state of mild disrepair, and though I can hear people in it I can also hear the structure subtly creaking and groaning. The driver drives off as soon as I shut the door behind me, and I begin to walk toward Andrew's neighborhood.

I am in a rougher part of Seattle and I'm currently in the form of a young, redheaded woman. I chose a form that would appeal to a range of rougher, less pleasant men. This is all for the sake of expediting my ability to get noticed and to get men to drop their guards so I can trigger an encounter with someone I can use to figure out where Matthew is located, or potentially even come across him without having to have an encounter before I get to see him face to face.

Internally I'm still riding a strange high in the wake of my encounter with Joshua. To be fair to me it's only been a few hours since that encounter but having so thoroughly defeated the criminal who attempted to send a message to a high schooler was exhilarating. I really like the way I dispatched the criminal and the criminal charges I ensured that he will definitely need to deal with. It was fun, in a mildly concerningly dark kind of way.

I've previously stopped crimes but until a few hours ago I never had a direct face-to-face encounter with a criminal. This is an almost completely mundane setting and I have one of the most hilariously flexible superpowers imaginable so I can rely on my own creativity rather than just having face to face encounters with people that end with me telekinetically giving them wedgies or something.

I have stopped crimes and criminals a thousand different ways and my preferred method of stopping a crime is to make it look like criminals fell and passed out or were the victims of coincidences. I never had a serious reason to have a dramatic, direct encounter with a criminal since I've been able to stop them without them even considering the possibility that a specific person is responsible for their inability to flee the scene of the crime or make a clean getaway.

A part of me is excited by the chance to openly test the facets of myself that have been influenced and changed by the essence I chose at the start of my adventure. My assassin essence has been handy in some respects but it's never really gotten a serious chance to shine, since I mostly focused on being somewhat of a support character among my friends and have fought crime indirectly.

I reach the outer edge of Andrew's neighborhood and find myself walking down a sidewalk that allows me to reach all sorts of rundown, shoddy-looking houses. At a glance someone might think this part of the neighborhood is empty but my keen senses allow me to know that this is not true. I can hear soft sounds from behind closed doors and I can glance at the streets and sidewalks and see faint traces of footprints and tire tracks, with the most recent ones being decently fresh. The houses here only seem abandoned, there are definitely people using them.

I keep walking, purposefully doing what I can to seem oblivious to my surroundings. A part of me likes putting on this kind of performance since I can be mischievous and fairly aggressive without risking that someone will discover my identity. "Morphic Form" is a great perk for superheroes and vigilantism.

As I walk deeper into the neighborhood no one approaches me. This does not mean I'm not spotted. I overhear distant, muffled conversations identifying me by the features I've chosen to make prominent in this guise and I have to deliberately hide my smile. I'm currently walking in the direction of Andrew's house but it's basically on the opposite side of the neighborhood and if I get too close to it I'll definitely stop and start to move in a new direction.

I glance at my phone and see that the group chat the boys and I are all a part of is pretty active. That's a good sign that Andrew is distracted and is probably just doing normal stuff which is exactly what I want. I've done a good job of hiding my true skill and the range of powers I possess and I want to keep that up now that I'm in the home stretch of this jump.

A part of me momentarily considers going on the attack, in a manner speaking. Given my telekinetic abilities it'd be pretty easy for me to get someone to come to a door, show me their face, and then force them to let me in so I could plan a trap for my foes but if that's done poorly it could end with Matthew and his cronies being on guard, and that might complicate things.

In an ideal situation I'd be able to catch Matthew without anyone around. If I can, it'd be pretty easy for me to arrange his downfall in a number of ways, potentially even involving the maiming and injury, or worse, of some of his allies. I could even involve the police again, but at the same time if he gets away it could go badly unless I scare him shit-less like I did Joshua…

I continue my exploration of the neighborhood, well aware of where Andrew lives and staying away from the street his house is on. If I somehow run into him, so long as I'm not actively using my powers I should be fine since I'm an effective enough actor and I have social perks backing me up. If worse comes to worst I'll use the full weight of "The Game of Life" to give me a way out of here.

In a future jump, I'll probably make more active use of that perk… Honestly, it feels a bit too powerful for this setting, though since it is a powerful, crystallized aspect of Steve's personality that I get to take with me moving forward it makes sense that it'd be so heavy.

"The Game of Life" is a perk that enhances my natural charisma to truly absurd levels. Whenever it's fully activated I can study someone for a few moments and learn how to best shift my mannerisms and behaviors to suit them specifically so I can most easily befriend them, persuade them to agree with me, do my bidding, or otherwise act as I need. I even imbue people I've persuaded to my position with a copy of some of my charisma which allows them to be effective, efficient missionaries of mine.

This perk also works on groups, meaning that so long as I can talk to foes and they can be reasoned with, even groups of enemies can be turned into loyal allies. Most of the time I've spent in this jump I've consciously tapered this perk down, only minimally allowing its effects to surge through me unless I was doing something worth using this for.

I'm not morally opposed to this perk and I've both made full use of it in rare moments such as when I was persuading the boys of the importance of the rules and made more subtle use of some of its specific features. I've used it to get a leg up during volunteering in general and fundraising for Andrew's mom specifically, and I stand by that decision. Keeping her alive is not only the right thing to do on its face, keeping her healthy, and happy has helped Andrew and Mr. Detmer.

The perk is powerful and in future settings careful use of it will be essential to my success. It's one thing to have the ability to block sword blows with a burst of telekinesis, it's another thing altogether to be able to persuade the ones who want to cut me down to not only stop but to work with me against others who want to stop or even hurt me.

I wander the neighborhood for a few hours and begin to grow annoyed with my lack of results when I fail to find the person I'm hunting. If Matthew is who I suspect he is, an incredibly minor character from the Chronicle film who has an unfortunate encounter with Andrew as the film begins a dizzying race toward its climax, then he should be here and I should be able to find him even during the day…

I close my eyes so I can focus on the different voices around me, opting to momentarily rely on my peak-human senses for a short while to allow me to continue to move safely. Parsing through multiple conversations takes me a few moments, before I eventually hear someone say something about Matthew, repeating something he texted to the man. The sound is muffled and the person is clearly looking at me through a window of some sort. I begin to walk in the direction of the voice, putting on a pleasant smile as I open my eyes and spot the house he is in.

When I reach the house I release the mental hold I have on "The Game of Life", before I knock on the front door. This sound causes a panic to erupt from deeper in the house, but after a few moments footsteps begin to approach the front door and in a scant few seconds I see someone peer at me from the other side of a peep hole in the door. The person eyes me up and down, no doubt admiring the end result of my eerie shapeshifting ability, before they, he, opens the door.

"Hey, what do you want… little lady?" One of the house's inhabitants, a tall Asian man, asks me. He looks a little like the guy that Andrew rips the teeth out of partway through the film, but is somewhat more tan than he is. I listen for a second to make sure the house is empty and when I determine that it is I smile at the man. I begin to study him, opting to use this as a test case to see how effective "The Game of Life" is when it comes to making a nominally normal, neutral enemy an ally of mine.

"Hello! I hope you're having a good morning. I've come to talk to you about the dangers posed by gangs and drugs in this neighborhood." I say, and as I study him I automatically make minute adjustments to my posture, body language, and even tone in ways that are meant to heighten his receptiveness to my message. He eyes my curves but listens to me, and then nods for me to keep going.

"Well this neighborhood was identified as one of the most dangerous in southern Seattle according to research done by the Seattle Sentinel and just this morning a man from this neighborhood, Joshua Raddison was arrested by the police near North High." I explain, and this causes his eyes to widen in genuine shock. I frown and nod at him, to affirm and cement his reaction as being an appropriate one.

"There is a problem in this neighborhood. It affects us all." I state, and he nods, taken in by the reveal that Joshua was arrested.

"I don't know every step to fix it but I can think of one step that would help. Dealing with Matthew, the head of the Stone Street Snakes. Doing something about him would make this neighborhood a lot safer. It'd send a message that we don't tolerate crime here, if we go after the head of the snake. In… multiple manners of speaking." I say, confidently. I added that bit a touch less confidently, but it was all an affectation that I put at the end there to tailor my words to this man specifically. The Riverdale-esque name is not something I made up, it's apparently the name of the gang according to the newspaper, though that part is definitely something that was not canon to the film.

I watch him mull over what I'm saying. I tailored the words to him specifically, guided by my instincts of what would work best. He is unsure of what to say in response to what I've said so I decide to hammer home what I am saying here.

"Friend, just imagine if you were Connor Morgans. Connor is an innocent high schooler who went to the hospital the night of the North High talent show, rushed there after being discovered beaten to a pulp not far outside of the talent show. The police are saying that he was beaten by Joshua, very possibly at a gang's behest for something his family reported last week. So long as the gang is around, or at least led by a violent asshole like Matthew, innocent people are in danger. Families could get shattered by this." I tell him, my tone gentle even though my words are harsh. It doesn't take him long to nod at me in agreement with what I'm saying.

"Okay… Yes, you're right! We need to do something about Matthew, or else people here can't feel safe. But how can I help? I'm… I'm one of the snakes." The man confesses, and I put on a shocked face. I hadn't known he was a member of the gang as a matter of fact but it's hardly surprising that a young man in a neighborhood with a known gang is a member of said gang.

I take this time to consider how powerful this perk is on a practical level. I never gave the man my name or even explained how I know the stuff I know and he is now strongly contemplating betraying his friends. The part in the description of the perk that talks about how someone who has this can approach who fundamentally disagrees with them and only needs a few words to get them to rethink their positions was not kidding or exaggerating. This is a hell of a weapon to have in my arsenal…

Also, Matthew needs to get more loyal minions. This is the second of his guys I've flipped, and I mean the first was more a mercenary who had already been defeated and humiliated by me but this guy lives in this neighborhood and should be afraid of, if not actively loyal to, Matthew. I genuinely don't know how much of this is perk power and how much is just Matthew not being a good leader.

"Cancer doesn't just cure itself or go away on its own. Sometimes to fix something you've got to just deal with it head on. Let's talk to Matthew. See if he can accept that he is a part of the problem and endeavor to do better." I tell the man, who nods at me. He invites me inside his home and I step in, smiling as I get ready to do some mischief.

The man shows me his text history with Matthew and I learn that his name is Randall. He tells me the story of how he met Matthew and came to be a part of the gang, a simple one of being in the neighborhood where the gang was from and the gang opting to recruit him, even going as far as to do the trite gang initiation ritual of having him commit a crime at their behest which they keep evidence he did to use as a weapon against him in case he ever flips, which explains his earlier hesitation.

Over the next few minutes, we craft a text message that asks Matthew to come over. As we work on it together I sense some of my charisma seeping into Randall. He still doesn't even know my name. I begin to plot and scheme while Randall and I work on the text, and come up with a plan that ensures a firm resolution to all of this.

At the same time what I'm seeing play out in front of me is a firm reminder of the real power of a jumpchain compared to just going on a journey that leads to multiple worlds. Perks are powerful.

My perks allow me to do more than just lift objects with my brain, they've allowed me to completely transform the trajectory of someone's life, of the lives that intersect with his, and so far they've definitely allowed me to save at least one life. Steve is still alive and that's because of me.

Randall and I wait some minutes before he gets a text from Matthew. Its contents are simple: Matthew is coming. I suggest Randall write down a letter saying that he is leaving the gang and when he is done I forcefully put him to sleep with telekinesis. I feel bad for doing this, but this ensures a nice neat resolution to the story here, as far as I can tell.

I hide in a spot where I can see the front door of the house and where I can't be seen until someone knocks on the door. When they do I open it and I see Matthew, who I correctly theorized was one of the gangsters from the film. He is surprised to see no one behind the door and steps into the entryway, curiously. The instant that he does I paralyze him with telekinesis and smile.

By forcefully puppeting him I have the criminal himself inelegantly close the door behind him, and I make him awkwardly shuffle into the small living room in the house. I also have him close some curtains in the living room to ensure that no one can see into it. When all of this is done I step out of my hiding place and slowly move towards him, staying out of his field of view. Twisting his head so he can't see me I move closer to him and I use telekinesis to grab some paper and pencils and I move them so he can see them. They float in front of him and I write out instructions I intend for him to follow.

I release my grip on the criminal's hands as I telekinetically give him some paper of his own and a pencil for him to use, even as I telekinetically write that he needs to write down a confession as to all of the crimes he's done. I instruct him that his hands are free and that as a testament to what I can do to him he is about to experience something unpleasant.

He reads this aloud, having actually been reading all of my messages to him aloud, right before I telekinetically wallop him in the chest. I wait a second and then do it again, harder, before using my remotely controlled pen and paper to inform him that he has no choice here, and that he will do as he is told.

I wait for him to be done with this and then I move the letter away from him telekinetically. I give myself a beat to read the litany of crimes he is confessing to, even as I telekinetically instruct him to text one of his criminal associates and get them to come to his address, while emphasizing that they must come here as soon as possible. It only takes fifteen minutes for the first of the people I intend to victimize to arrive at the house, and when they do I pull on the telekinetic strings I use to maneuver Matthew over to the front door and when he opens it I forcefully paralyze his criminal associate and drag the two of them inside the house.

I don't love what I do next, but I have Matthew punch his paralyzed friend, and beat the man into unconsciousness, ensuring that the man's fingerprints are all over the criminal I've tricked and trapped. And I spend the next two and a half hours repeating this process for several other people, only stopping and finally having Matthew call the police after five different gangsters have been beaten half to death, seemingly by the same figure acting alone.

"I… I need the police, and I think I need some medical people too. There was a brawl at 983 Ridgeback Road. Several people are unconscious, they've been physically beaten. It's a group of criminals." Matthew utters as he peers at a knife that I am telekinetically holding to his throat. The thing is dangerously close to his neck. I use my telekinesis to tell Matthew to confess, and he admits that he is the leader of a gang and that there has been a brutal disagreement. I smile, triumphantly, when he is done confessing, and then I take the butt of the knife and I slam it into his face, knocking him out.

I telekinetically tap the phone, ending the call, before I smile and exit the house. I walk away from it, but stay close enough to it that I can hear when the distant sounds of sirens fill the quiet neighborhood. It is only at this point that I opt to leave, satisfied by what I've done here.

I return home and enter a routine that will last me between now and November 30th, the end of the jump. I resume my normal activities of training on the weekends, working hard at school, volunteering one day a week, and doing my best to be a good friend to the people I've met. A few days after I have my fateful encounter with Randall and Matthew their arrests become public knowledge, but Randall is quickly sent into protective custody because he immediately indicates a willingness to testify against his former companions, information I learn from classmates related to police officers with loose lips.

On the 30th of November I do not hang out with anyone or even go volunteering as I normally would on a Saturday. I spend the morning of the day wondering how whatever happens next will happen. While curiosity about how the transition from jump to jump will occur is at the forefront of my mind, in the back of it I muse on what I have achieved. I kept everyone alive, all three of the teens, Mr. and Ms. Detmer, and even the original characters I met during the jump. No one but the boys knows about superpowers at the moment, which is nice. I even experimented with my own powers and can do everything the boys can do and stuff that they can't. My achievements are, in all honesty, pretty cool.

I consider saying goodbye to my friends, and struggle with the fact that that's something I want to do. The reason this is a struggle at all is that I know that it's basic jumpchain lore that time freezes on the worlds that someone visits on a chain when they leave to continue their adventure so if I said goodbye it'd feel weird, since assuming I spark, I could just go to my favorite worlds and step back into my old lives on them. Still, it's tough for me to not say goodbye so I find myself needing a distraction.

I go on a jog a few minutes before noon, which turns out to be a significant decision. Right when time should go from A.M. to P.M., I get to see the world freeze. I am on the sidewalk next to the road and can see cars driving, moving down the road and before my very eyes they slow to a complete stop over the course of a few heartbeats. I look up and see distant planes stuck in the sky, and I let out a soft laugh.

It looks like it's time for me to go. I turn around and begin to walk back towards the house I've been living in. I should have some important decisions to make in the next few minutes, at least relative to my perception of time, and I think I need to go home to be able to make them.

 

[LucianoWrites]

This is a bit of a surprising decision but I am posting multiple chapters for a special reason. In Chapter 12 of the original story I end up sending... Myself, kind of, to Skyrim and Generic Werewolf. I like that decision, and I intend to keep writing that version of the story, but I am going to be posting an alternative chapter 12 that sends Luciano to a different setting. I like short, unique-length jumps that don't focus on how long a jumper is in a setting, so I'm going to keep working that angle. I have an idea that I really like for our next jump. If you want to see the ORIGINAL version of this, click here to go to SpaceBattles and read it there.

There ARE more chapters there than there are here. Not a huge number, but a few more.

 

[LucianoWrites]

Special Note:

We are going an alternative route to a different jump, a hybrid of Generic First Person Shooter & The Liminal Archives Backroom Jump. We're still using Creative/Quest Mode, since this is an alt-chain.

Chapter 12:


I reach my home and note how still it is. As I step into my front yard and reach for my keys I wonder if I'll be able to open the front door seeing as time is frozen. I stick the key to my house into the lock and when I jiggle it I am delighted to find that it still works. I tremble nervously as I feel the door unlock and I push it open. I don't know what I was expecting, but whatever it was isn't what awaits me.

The interior of my house doesn't exist anymore. What waits for me on the other side of the door is a hallway, not the one that should exist but a wholly new one, and a machine that faintly resemble ATMs waits for me at the other end of the hallway.

I silently make my way to the machine, reminiscing on the memories I've made in the months since I've arrived here. In ways both big and small my powers have allowed me to alter this setting, and that knowledge makes me feel powerful emotions as I reach the machine. The device brilliantly comes to life, turning on and displaying a congratulatory message.

"Hello [Luciano], congratulations on your survival and success in Chronicle! Now the time has come for you to choose whether or not you'd like to continue on your chain." The machine informs me. I wonder how to proceed, before I think to myself that I fully plan to continue on my chain. When that thought crosses my mind the text on the machine begins to change.

"Excellent! Now please allocate a total of 200 Essence Points across various perks in the Essential Body Modification Supplement." The message reads. As soon as I finish reading it I get to see what I can buy, as the message is replaced by a menu showing me the various sections of the document I get to use to spend my points.

At the moment my body mod is simple. All I have are the freebies given to those who select the Essence of the Assassin, none of which are particularly unusual other than my morphic form ability which is what lets me shapeshift. Because of my body mod I have a peak human body, immunity to normal diseases, poisons, and other debilitating things. My needs are reduced, I have heightened senses, reaction time, and I am greatly resistant to things like fear or mental fatigue, I'm a natural polyglot, I have enhanced skill in battle. deception and social interactions.

Other than my ability to shapeshift my body mod does not grant me any unique superpowers. I have a chance to change that, but doing so in any meaningful capacity would cost me if not my entire budget then most of it.

I contemplate my current condition for a few moments. As I am right now, according to my body mod I am mostly a peak human. I scan the different sections of the body mod, "Physical", "Mental", "Spiritual", "Skill Perks", and "Supernatural", reviewing the different options available to me.

The first perk I end up choosing is the second tier of "Heightened Reactions", which only costs me a quarter of my points. With it I am immune to being caught off guard, which is particularly powerful when fused with my perk that makes me immune to harm while I'm sleeping. I also grab the second tier of "Reduced Sustenance", which costs me fifty points, and the first tier of "Regeneration", which also only costs me fifty points. This reduces my budget to fifty points, the last of which I spend bolstering my innate mastery of fighting by purchasing "Tooth and Claw", a fighting perk that innately boosts my ability to brawl using my own fists. As soon as I make these choices, which is as easy as thinking about the perks I want to buy the screen shows me an overview of my four perks and asks if those are the ones I want. When I inform it that they are the message on the screen changes again, thanking me for my purchases, and then displays a new message.

"A new quest mode setting is available. Selecting it will allow you to begin to embark down the 'Monster Lord' build you once devised, beginning with granting you access to a Creative Mode build for 'Generic First Person Shooter'." The message reads, causing my eyes to widen.

There are multiple facets to this message that matter. The first is that apparently quest mode, something I devised during my time on Earth, is a real thing in a jumpchain.

During a standard jump in a normal chain, a jumper gets a budget of choice points they can use to purchase perks, items, and companions. This also comes with them getting everything they purchase at the start of a jump, and those things being fiat-backed, that is being guaranteed to work in other settings. Quest mode is a different take on those ideas, allowing jumpers to select an origin or two depending on the number of origins in a jump, get all of their perks and items, and then earn the rest by engaging with the setting in ways appropriate to the origin in question.

For example, if someone went to a Minecraft jump that had an origin for Steve, the game's default protagonist and other origins such as one for illagers, they could select the Steve origin and get all of its stuff from the start of their jump. If they then entered the jump and behaved like an illager for a while they'd gradually earn illager perks and items, all of which would become fiat backed at the end of the jump. I created this system because it blended the promise of creative mode builds with a narrative incentive to engage with a setting and to be entertaining to a benefactor. It seems that what I created resonated with actual benefactors…

The message also mentions a hypothetical build I once devised that I dubbed the "Monster Lord" build. This build revolves around three generic jumps, Generic First Person Shooter, Generic Protagonist 2, and Generic Action RPG. I created a build that took key perks and items from all three jumps and allowed jumpers to travel across all three jumps separately and gradually become a "Monster Lord" type foe: someone capable of using abilities reminiscent of a final boss in a Japanese Roleplaying Game or a Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

In my hypothetical build someone begins with Generic First Person Shooter, an originless jump that revolves around being a player character in a Call Of Duty, Halo, or Doom type world. This jump grants mechanics and aspects to jumpers that stem from this genre, such as automatically regenerating health, the ability to get power ups from downed foes, and even the power to turn fallen enemies into zombies.

The jump is a powerful, largely combat focused jump, but I don't think that it's the setting I'm going to be visiting. The message says I will be granted access to a build, almost like it's some kind of frontload, and not the actual setting. As I think about this the message changes, revealing critical information.

"You will be teleported to Level 1 of the Liminal Archives continuity of the Backrooms. This is where the quest mode aspect will kick in. From here you will be tasked with reaching and exiting level 12 of said continuity's central setting, The Ruined City. You will be given access to the items, with a few exceptions, and gain the perks of the levels, as each origin in-jump corresponds to a specific level, as you enter them. You will be able to find and guide others out, if they join you on your journey and you will always be able to, eventually, find ways out of levels if you can survive. Your chain will only continue once you leave level 12." The message reads, causing me to pause.

The Backrooms is a noted hellscape, and even the Liminal Archives continuity, which is one of the less brutal ones, is notorious for being not fun. In it are things like radioactive cities, levels that are impossible to see in, and all sorts of sanity assaulting effects. That said if I have generic first person shooter… Well, if I have that jump in my back pocket, especially an unlimited creative mode version of it, coupled with my telekinetic and social abilities from Chronicle there's a chance.

I purposefully try to project a question to the machine now that I know that it reads minds. I focus on the machine and repeat my question over and over in my head. It takes a few seconds of this before the message changes.

"If you do not accept this offer now, while it is still early in your chain, it is unlikely that your benefactor will make this offer again. At the moment it appears likely that the next three jumps on your chain will be similar hybrid jumps, fusing one of the generic settings you will be gaining powers from with other, objective-based settings." The new message reads, which makes me grimace. I'm not surprised by this, but I am disappointed. This also confirms that I do have a benefactor, somewhere.

My monster lord build is one of my favorite builds. It's one of a handful of builds I ever sketched out even using standard chain rules, just to see what it'd look like if I ever had the chance to make it a reality. And now a chance to harness it on my multiversal escapades is being dangled in front of me. I sigh and decide that the best way to test my months of work in Chronicle is to actually be brave. As soon as I inform the machine that I am accepting the offer made by my benefactor I do something vaguely like lose consciousness in the sense that everything goes black for a moment.

I don't feel myself actually lose consciousness as blackness surrounds me. After a few seconds a scrawling wall of text appears in front of me denoting what I've gained as far as perks and items go. I see all of the perks and items from Generic First Person Shooter take up a plethora of space in my field of view, and mentally grin as I read through them.

The sight of them makes me feel like playing the Doom theme. I also gain access to a large backpack that is supernaturally large on the inside and is filled with my first items, including two sets of weapons, meals, Backrooms metals, and various other utility things that will undoubtedly be incredibly handy if I opt to save other people and travel with them through the liminal hellscape I've decided to tackle.

Some items, such as a mech, have special markings that denote that they are only usable in some specific places for the duration of my time here, which makes sense. If I could freely use a mech in all of the levels of this version of The Backrooms I think I'd be unstoppable.

After what feels like a few minutes I go from being surrounded by darkness to standing in the middle of a bizarre office room, one wherein several rows of sepia-toned plants are growing out of soil in front of me. The room is illuminated by fluorescent lights which hum harshly and fill the air with their unpleasant droning. I feel a large backpack on my back, and I realize, with a smile, that it's one of my new items. I look around and am surprised when my vision is suddenly partially intruded upon by a large notification.

[Alert: Welcome To Outpost Apollonian

This area is a safe haven, one that is classified as a 'Property-Type Item'. In it crops can grow, no hostile entity can step, you have electricity, clean water, and other essentials. This area follows you throughout the Backrooms and will follow you in a different form in future jumps. This item, coupled with your packed pack, are your items from this setting. Enjoy them and use them effectively to safely navigate this unnatural hellscape.]

I read the notification, smile faintly, and watch as it vanishes. Once it's gone I take a beat to familiarize myself with my surroundings before I reach into my pack and retrieve a single gun. The thing is a pistol and I study it for a moment, including checking that it is loaded, before beginning to inspect myself.

I am wearing black body armor and my face is warmed by a comfortable mask. I am basically completely unidentifiable, and wearing handy armor that, in my hands, is a powerful shield foes need to find some way to deal with. I have holsters all over me and I tuck the gun away in one of them.

One of my key items is my arsenal, of which I functionally have two. This comes in the form of two items named "Fighting Tools" and "Your Gear", both of which are stockpiles of modern arms, body armor, and other such things. These items synergize incredibly well with "Infinite Ammo", an item from Generic First Person Shooter which gives me as much ammunition as my allies and I need of any sort of weapon.

I take a deep breath, allow my eyes to linger on the small farm in front of me for a few moments, before I turn and look for a door out. I focus on my goal, escaping this place, and as I do I spot a small door on the other side of the room I'm in. A split second later a thin, glowing line appears ahead of me, a manifestation of "Quest Marker" a handy new perk that allows me to know how to reach my objectives by showing me a direct path to where I need to go. I begin my trek to the end of the outpost, and quickly reach the door leading out of the room I'm in.

When I step out of the room I find myself in a narrow hallway still defined by the signature features of this level: the sickly colored wallpaper, the empty rooms, and the fluorescent lights. The glowing line continues ahead of me, and ignores several empty door frames that line the side of the wall ahead of me. At the end of the hall, the furthest point I can see, is a closed door.

I begin to walk towards it, and as I step past the empty door frames that are between the door and myself I glance into them and spot several rooms. Some of the rooms have beds and other valuable essentials, which I mentally take note of. When I reach the edge of the hallway I open the door and step past it into what I immediately identify as a normal part of the level.

Ahead of me stretches a large room characterized by the same annoying traits as the other rooms I've been in and seen: fluorescent lights, sickly yellow wallpaper, and an office-room design. At the corners of the rooms are mounds of fungi, large unsightly things that many unlucky wanderers have definitely been forced to eat. The glowing line I've been following continues to trail ahead of me, surely pointing me towards whatever exit will lead me out of here.

"The only way for me to leave is for me to go through." I remark, as I begin what will surely be an incredibly long walk.

 

[LucianoWrites]

The glowing line leading me deeper into the backrooms guides me to the end of the room. I reach it without incident and follow it as I step into another hallway connecting various sets of rooms.

A part of me is a bit surprised to find that no monsters or any sort of goofy liminal nonsense happens to me as I slip out of the room. I am thankful, of course, but it's a bit weird. I don't look this gift horse in the mouth and I continue my walk, navigating down a narrow hallway with cautious eyes.

My senses are alive in new ways right now, allowing me to hear the hum of the lights that quash any hopes of silence from a disturbingly long distance away. "Super Soldier", a perk I now own, magnifies my capabilities to four times peak human, which is a hilariously high bar especially in a setting like this, and this allows me to be certain that there is nothing of note nearby.

I begin to experience the monotony of exploring the backrooms almost immediately. Minutes turn to hours as I familiarize myself with an eerie landscape made up of mono yellow walls, bizarre hallways that lead to nearly identical rooms, and the annoying hum of the walls.

During this time my sole companion has been the long thin line I follow endlessly. The "sights" I see are bizarrely similar, with only slight variations. After a while I begin to entertain myself by looking for minute differences between rooms and hallways, sometimes things as minor as counting how many piles of mushrooms exist in a single room or hallway versus how many I spotted in a room I passed by an hour ago. All the while I diligently follow the glowing line.

At this point I've learned to trust my perks. I've seen firsthand how reliable they are, and I know that the ethereal trail I'm following is guiding me towards my destination: a way out of this bizarre, desolate wasteland. I keep my eyes open as I wander through the unnatural, supernaturally empty space.

As I wander deeper and deeper into the surreal and indifferent wasteland I'm now in, I find myself remarkably grateful for some very surprising perks. "Reduced Sustenance" is a godsend that allows me to wander nonstop for what must be close to twelve hours before I begin to feel even the slightest pang of hunger, and "Mental Resistance" allows me to simply focus on moving towards my destination.

Eventually I do begin to feel some actual hunger. When I do I pause and study my surroundings, all while I recall everything I currently know about my current situation and the new items, all of which are fiat-backed, in my possession.

The first thing I know is that I am trapped in the first level of the backrooms. The second thing I know is that I can leave, so long as I can survive the treks I need to undertake to make it to exits situated throughout the levels. I also know that I have remarkably valuable items in my possession, things that wanderers and survivors would quite literally kill for, invaluable objects like bottles of almond water and various meals and consumables.

I also know that I "possess" a wandering safe haven in the form of "Outpost Apollonian', a place that supposedly follows me throughout this strange place. I pause my trek, in the middle of a hallway, and decide to experiment with one of my more valuable abilities: "Quest Markers". I envision myself heading towards the outpost, and after a few seconds of focus I watch the line begin to move of its own accord. It is now leading me into a room not far from my current position.

I follow after it, curious to see where it leads because it is not telling me to go back the way I came. I only have to wander for five minutes, exploring just a small handful of rooms and cramped hallways before I find myself in front of a real, working door. I grin when I open the door and spot the exact hallway I walked through to exit the outpost at the start of my journey.

I walk until I'm in one of the small rooms that has a bed and when I reach it I sit down on the floor and take off my backpack. I open the thing up and I look through it, finding a range of items. Of immediate importance are things like a large book that I retrieve from the pack, and my stockpiles of weapons, as well as a number of meals packed into tight, generic packaging.

I retrieve one and begin to eat, enjoying a meal consisting of rather cold meats and plain veggies. I eventually down some almond water and shiver in delight as I feel the cool liquid begin to help me relax. The valuable nutrients within the restorative liquid immediately work with my new perks to help me recover completely from the stress I endured during my arduous trek this far into the backrooms.

While I adjust to the sensation of life in the backrooms I use my telekinesis to open the book and begin to read it. I immediately discover that it is about the backrooms and so I commit to reading some of it every day.

The first part of the book is all about the backrooms broadly, explaining things like "Splicing", an ability that I myself possess thanks to two perks, and the nature of items like almond water. I skim this section, making sure to note the big details all while speed reading. I grin when I reach the section about the part of the backrooms I'm in: "The Halls".

This level is this continuity's version of a classic backrooms environment: the dreaded, sometimes insanity-inducing, monochromatic office room. I take my time and read through the books notes on this level. I knew about this version of the backrooms long before I embarked on my chain which is helpful and this book confirms that what I recall about this continuity's take on the entrance to the backrooms is mostly correct.

There are minor details that I had forgotten about during my time in Chronicle. One important example of a thing I didn't recall is that it actually is possible to find other people in this version of this level and that it's possible for people to form settlements and even cities, but that those cities are impossibly rare. I could find one, if I wanted, but that's because I possess a hell of a power in the form of "Quest Markers".

With "Quest Markers" if it's possible for me to find something and I want to find it… I can get to it, eventually. This simple fact is greatly reinforced by my telekinetic abilities, which tremendously enhance my ability to reach locations since I can do things like fly with ease.

I spend an hour intimately familiarizing myself with the section of my book on this level. By the time I'm done I feel a bit tired and so I take the container I just emptied and put it in my inventory, causing the thing to vanish as it enters a realm I control. My new abilities are tremendously helpful and I fully intend to make use of them to make this trip easier.

I walk out of the room and through the hallway until I find myself in front of the closed door leading in and out of the outpost. When I do I place a hand on the door and activate a new power of mine named "Lock Down" which freezes the door so completely the only way for someone to open the door is if I say so and only if I undo my power.

Once I do this I take a few minutes to memorize every square inch of this space and to explore it fully until I find that there are no other entrances or exits. This means that I am as safe as I possibly can be, a fact which helps me relax as I walk to one of the bedrooms and almost throw myself onto one of the beds. I fall asleep almost instantly, not even bothering to undress.

I wake up sometime later and immediately check my surroundings. I am unsurprised to find that I am safe, and so I immediately get up and begin to move. I telekinetically grab my backpack and put it on as I focus on my broader goal of exiting this level and eventually the backrooms altogether. This causes the glowing line I used yesterday, as far as I can tell, to reassert itself in my vision and I begin to follow it again.

I reach the door leading out of the outpost, unfreeze it, slip past it, and then freeze it again. In minutes I am in new territory, venturing deeper and deeper into the backrooms. This marks the beginning of a period that lasts for a while, after a few days of monotony I stop keeping track of the days, but I do know that eventually about a month must have passed...

My days begin with me exiting my outpost, which never fails to be more than a short walk away from me, and going on a painfully long walk. During the walk I busy myself by doing small things like reading my book or tending to the arms I now own, and each walk lasts an entire day.

I spend at least a dozen hours, usually closer to fifteen or sixteen, a day walking. I do not encounter any other living beings, and occasionally I come across the long abandoned ruins of things like makeshift homes or even massive rooms where multiple homes and other "buildings" made from scraps of carpet fill out rooms that are easily multiple miles long.

My days end with me slipping back into my outpost and locking it down. When I do I eat a single meal, drink some almond water, and do some light reading, take a quick "shower" in a bathroom like area within the outpost that has enough space for multiple people to use it at once, and finally go to bed. This routine lasts a full week before anything noteworthy happens.

On my seventh day in the backrooms I finish off one box of meals. Each of the compartments within my backpack is larger than the backpack itself, and I assume my backpack can only contain the boxes where individual items are safely stored because of some combination of liminal surreality and fiat-backing.

I deposit the empty box into my inventory, and go to bed unworried because I am already cognizant of the basic rules about this kind of thing: fiat-backed items tend to replenish themselves if given enough time, unless their descriptions explicitly forbid it. When I wake up and leave the room I've claimed as my bedroom I immediately find a new box of meals waiting for me.

I immediately use my telekinesis to stuff the box into my backpack, grateful for some basic confirmation regarding my long term survivability as well as the fully supernatural nature of my backpack, which momentarily opens up wide enough for me to put the box inside of it before returning to its normal size.

Other than this, and a nearly identical event concerning a box within my backpack containing almond water some days later, my first… month or so in the backrooms passes without incident. There is something brutal, psychologically about the difficulties that come with a month of true isolation in a landscape as desolate as the first level of the backrooms. I do not suffer, a lot at least, during this time because of my items, meta-knowledge, and perks, but I know that normal people would not have as good a go of it as I've been having.

Normal people would lack my resources, probably the single most helpful sort of things I possess, and they'd lack my meta-knowledge and perks. With my items anyone made of decently stern stuff, psychologically, could survive like I have been so far.

Maybe thirty three or so days into the world's longest hike something breaks the monotony of my trip so far: I encounter something. Something is a powerful word, since I am in another long room and on the far end of it is a single and strange animal.

The room I'm in is as yellow, damp, and unpleasant as any other room so far in my journey has been, but it differs in a single, powerful respect: it is occupied. Each of the four corners of the room is filled with large mushrooms, and my powerful senses allow me to determine that the creature on the other end of the room is currently going to town on one particularly large mushroom, wantonly devouring it. I use my truly superhuman vision to study the monster and note how powerful its muscles seem to be, all while taking advantage of several of my new perks.

I am affected by a number of perks that affect my senses, some of which also affect my surroundings. One of the big perks at work right now is "Super Soldier", the perk that makes me a true superhuman by bolstering every aspect of me to the extent that if someone were to quantify my physical stats they'd be four times greater than those of a peak human. At the same time I'm getting to see the practical impact of other perks which have not been especially notable since I've been by myself, such as "Overclocked FPS" which allows me to see the world at a rate that makes everything around me look like it's in slow motion, which synergizes with "Slow Down", a perk I've been using to passively enhance my speed.

The thing in the distance is a hound, a gigantic, incredibly aggressive, and worryingly common type of entity encountered throughout multiple backrooms continuities. Hounds can be described, perhaps overly simplistically, as the backrooms version of something approaching a caricature of wolves, if you made them incredibly dumb and astoundingly aggressive. I am a powerful, perk-packed being, and I am still tempted to turn around and take a longer way to reach my destination rather than to try and deal with the beast ahead of me.

A perk, one of my new ones, prevents me from feeling fear in a traditional sense but the sight of the beast ahead of me still makes me do mental calculations as to whether or not it's worth taking the time to engage the animal when I have viable ways to get around it. I could easily backtrack and take an alternative route so I don't have to deal with the monster, but at the same time if I avoid this encounter then I lose out on a valuable resource…

In Chronicle I would have been considered a social-type jumper: a jumper who focused on social aspects of life and whose primary means of navigating the world was to use social relationships to my advantage. My telekinesis was a powerful secret weapon, but it was something that I kept a secret and that I tended to avoid using in big situations. With the perks I received when I first arrived here my strategy can change.

In this setting I can be a powerful hunter, and the perks I received from Generic First Person Shooter incentivize such a strategy… In my repertoire of death and destruction, I possess perks that allow me to kill enemies and raise them as zombies under my control and I have an ability to summon generic versions of enemies I've faced and defeated as minions that serve me and follow my commands.

It takes me a few seconds to decide that this is as good a chance as any to practice some of my newer, more game-changing abilities. I reach into my pack and pull out a sniper rifle, even as I begin to activate "One Shot". "One Shot" is a perk that lets me charge an attack, increasing its damage output. I kneel and look down the scope of my gun so I can aim my attack as effectively as possible, even as perks begin to subtly stir and come to life within me.

Experience that I "have" (thanks to perks) that I never earned with guns and other ranged weapons begins to guide my most minute of actions, subtly guiding me and making my inexperience with these kinds of weapons a non-issue. I feel myself grow increasingly familiar with the weapon I am using even as my next attack passively continues to grow in power while I study the gigantic beast I am about to kill.

I spend a full minute charging my attack before I sigh and take the shoot. I feel the recoil of the gun, but my enhanced strength coupled with my innate, perk-granted knowledge of this kind of weaponry allows me to endure the vibrations and watch as the bullet rockets towards the distant beast. Even with my perception of reality the bullet speeds through the air before slamming into the flank of the monster. The bullet penetrates the beast and I immediately feel it die as multiple perks work in sync to increase the damage done to the beast.

Energy surges into me as the beast dies, and I sense my most useful perks affect reality as a handful of objects materialize next to the fallen monster. I have perks that warp reality in game-like ways such as materializing supplies whenever I defeat an enemy and causing me to feel energized whenever a foe falls.

I smile as I feel an opportunity to raise the monster, an opportunity which I take when I close my eyes and willingly expend a small amount of energy. The extra energy I just gained fades from my body, which is not a pleasant sensation but I take the loss in stride as I begin to walk towards the corpse which is already beginning to get up.

I take a beat to reach the beast, and when I do I immediately get a chance to make use of other perks I now possess. The creature still has a surprisingly large hole in its body, precisely where my bullet slammed into its torso, and I intend to heal that. I watch as the creature turns to face me, moving in slow motion, and I sigh in relief when it looks at me passively rather than with nearly mindless hatred. Dark blood spills out of the hole, and I watch as it pools beneath the monster.

I point a finger at the monster and I make use of "Bullet Hell", a perk that lets me fire projectiles even without a gun, that are color coded and enact a series of effects depending on the color. A green projectile rockets out of my finger and touches the head of the canine, instantly beginning to heal the beast. In seconds the bullet hole that marked the end of the hound's life seals itself, its thick hide stitching itself back up. I watch the flesh mend itself and am slightly grossed out by the sight of it but I am still thankful that I have this handy ability.

By the time the process is done the hound looks exactly how it did in life, and it continues to regard me with an impressive passivity. I study the hound with a smile and I activate "Respawning Mooks", which causes a menu to appear in my mind's eye that currently denotes two types of enemies: "Gangsters", and "Hounds".

"Gangsters" being on the list is interesting since it means that my adventures back in Chronicle are, at least in this regard, carrying over. It also means that I can summon human minions even without cloning myself, which is an ability I can now do.

"Hounds", of course, are also on the list. They are the only other direct option on the menu, but there are two more sections on the thing that I opt to investigate: "Upgrades" and "Vehicles". I scan the "Upgrades" section first and note that I can purchase things like ranged weapons for my summoned gangsters, and enhancements to the hounds that make them larger and more deadly. The fact that I have to purchase ranged weapons for my gangsters means that by default they must not come with them, but the ability to spawn bodies, even and especially human ones, that I can command and incorporate into my strategies is intriguing and an ability I will definitely be leveraging sometime in the future.

When I study the "Vehicles" section I am delighted to see that I can purchase vehicles of various sizes, which if purchased will allow me to summon, desummon, and then resummon a pair of vehicles a few times a day, and each time they get resummoned they get fully repaired and refueled. This would tremendously improve my ability to traverse this landscape, as well as my ability to help others across it if I start a faction of my own. I spend a moment studying this menu, before wondering if I can somehow earn some "in-store" currency or something to purchase the upgrades and vehicles, before a notification appears and urges me to put something in the menu.

I walk over to a mushroom and rip it from the floor. Doing so takes me a moment, but when the mushroom is in my gloved hand I lift the thing and watch the menu ask me if I want to turn the fungus into in-store currency. This makes me smile, and so I allow it to consume the fungus, which causes the thing to disappear and for me to get a single unit of currency from the store. I wince at the sight of the exchange, and I decide to experiment with other things I can gather and sell, to see if everything only gets me a single unit of currency or if the fungus is unique for some reason.

 

[LucianoWrites]

Chapter 14​

Mere minutes after I killed the monster sound fills the air in the room. Distantly a pair of generic, "Respawning Mooks" style hounds, work on harvesting mushrooms, while the zombified hound I created when I slew the first entity I've encountered since I arrived here is beside me awaiting orders.

I myself have begun the grind of working to obtain a few thousand in-store units of currency so I can purchase upgrades for my minions. I study the zombified hound as I consider the different options available to me in the upgrade menu.

Currently I have two types of spawnable minions: gangsters and hounds. The upgrades for hounds are cheaper than the ones for gangsters, because the ones for hounds make them bigger, stronger, and do not give them new forms of attack. The upgrades for gangsters, on the other hand, do give them new abilities, particularly a ranged attack in the form of guns. Expanding the abilities of my minions, rather logically, costs more than upgrading their existing abilities.

If I want gangsters to be as powerful a minion-type as they can be, I need to purchase the gun upgrade for them. As it stands right now I could outfit them with some of my spare weapons but doing so would cause me to risk losing the guns and I don't know how fast such weapons replenish. Thankfully ammo is a non-issue since I have an item that gives me the ability to create ammo in a range of forms with no difficulty, sadly ammo without guns isn't all that useful aside from when it comes to things like grenades.

Distantly one of the hounds rips a mushroom from the floor. I don't even turn and look at the thing, I simply use telekinesis to lift the fungus into the air and bring it to me. When it is in my possession I put it in the menu and watch how much currency I have increase by a single unit.

I take a single step and activate one of my abilities, "Always Cover", an ability which lets me manipulate things I'm in contact with. I target the carpet underneath me and I manipulate all of the carpet I can, which is all of it in a range of five meters around me. The stuff is concentrated into a single thick ball that I grab and put into the menu that allows me to summon minions and upgrade them. The floor underneath the carpet is simple stone, almost like we're actually in a poorly decorated cave…

I am delighted to find that this time I get five units of the currency, and this significant leap makes my goals feel much more possible. Especially since every room in this blasted place has carpet…

I shut my eyes and utilize an ability I've never actually used before: my power to clone myself. This vital ability allows me to create three clones of myself and in seconds I am perceiving reality through a curiously video-game-like split screen. My eyes are closed but the eyes of my clones are not, and our minds are connected, allowing me to effortlessly use their senses as well as my own, and allowing them to do the same thing.

I open my eyes and look at them curiously. They are all dressed in full body tactical armor like I am, and no one can see our eyes or any part of our bare bodies. One of them wields a large shotgun, another holds a combat knife, and the final one is holding a rifle, all of which are sourced from my "Your Arsenal" item.

I nod at them and they instinctively know what I want them to do. For the next few minutes we get to work tearing up portions of the carpet in the room and depositing the clumps of carpet in the menu, steadily clearing out the room. Once we're done I have almost 250 units of currency in my menu, and that brings a smile to my face. When we're done we begin to move again, and this becomes an infrequent part of my daily routine, but with a slight twist.

For the next few days my new retinue, which consists of my summoned hounds, the zombified hound, my clones, and myself, continue to venture deeper into the backrooms. Periodically my two clones will take a hound and split off from the rest of us. During this time they'll go a few rooms away and extract the carpet in the room for the sake of slowly increasing how much currency I have. They'll then use flight, telekinesis, and some of our other newer abilities, like parkour and post-peak-human speed to rejoin us, or head straight for Outpost Apollonian if we've been out exploring for hours and hours already.

Our trip here would be massively extended if I extracted the carpet from every room I've explored, and it'd create a massive, unignorable trail leading to us if we did that. A part of me sincerely wishes I could have gone to Generic Merchant before I came here. There's a perk in there that lets me turn stuff into money, which would be incredibly handy right now.

This is the only modification of note made to my schedule in the wake of me defeating the hound, though I do endeavor to hone my telekinetic abilities and to continue to train my powers so I'll occasionally work to perform varied telekinetic feats while my party and I brave the loneliness of the backrooms. We continue our long, unrelenting expedition, and days turn to weeks, which eventually turns into a period of time roughly equal to a month and a half.

On my seventy-seventh or so day in the backrooms my party finds ourselves in front of an unusual sight. We are standing right at the edge of a hallway and directly ahead of us is a vast… sea of some sickly looking, wine-colored fluid, covering the submerged floor of the room. I study the scene ahead of me and I note that the line I've been following unrelentingly for weeks not only leads us here but stretches ahead of us and disappears at the other end of the mile-long room.

"Alright… I guess we can only continue by flying across the sea of carpet fluid." I remark, before I lift myself up with my telekinesis and I am quickly joined by my companions. I desummon the hounds, able to just summon them again on the other side of the sea, and I use telekinesis to lift the zombified hound into the air. The thing passively stares at me and waits for me to do something.

I warn my companions to make sure their telekinetic force fields are on, and I reinspect my own for a beat. I am quickly satisfied when I feel that the thing is still operational, which takes me grabing one of my pistols and using it to impact the force field that surrounds me.

In the wake of the new perks I've collected my Chronicle force field is actually only one layer of protection out of several, but I am still delighted to find it operational and protectively covering me. My clones discover the same thing, and in no time at all the four of us, plus the undead hound, are sailing through the air high above the noxious fluid covering the eroded floor beneath us.

We all sail through the air, each of us individually using telekinesis. My clones are as powerful as I am, making this ability truly terrifying even in the hands of a baby jumper, and what's more is that this ability allows me to train my powers at four times the rate that I normally could. This is one of my favorite cloning perks aside from the one in Generic Cartoon World, Stunt Doubles, which lets me make ten clones rather than three, even if it has other limitations that make it less useful in some respects than this power is.

We leisurely sail through the air above the sea of life-threatening fluid. The stuff is one of the "Objects" identified in my book on the backrooms, I recognize it from the color and the fact that there is so much of the fluid, as the book states that it's not uncommon for wanderers to find a sea of the stuff in sections of the level. I think it wouldn't harm me, due to perks I possess, but I'd still rather not find out and I know it'd harm my minions if I let them wade into the stuff since they are so much shorter than I am.

My companions and I sail above the wine-colored ocean, unbothered by the fluid. As we traverse the strange ocean, I am allowed to see an example of how powerful perks from another setting can be. Even something as simple as flight is an unparalleled power in this particular setting, since so many threats are confined to the ground.

With this power I could fight a hundred hounds and be hilariously unbothered by them since they lack the ability to fly. There are flying threats in this version of the backrooms, which does differentiate it from any version of the liminal archives I'm familiar with, such as female deathmoths, but they are rare and they'd make valuable targets since if I hunt one I can summon more of them. Gaining flying allies and servants beyond my clones would be incredibly handy, since it'd mean that my faction could take to new heights and utilize ranged weapons more effectively than we can at the moment.

We fly for several minutes, continuing to move above a vast sea of noxious fluid. The fluid, normally a real danger to anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in limspace is not at all able to affect us. Eventually we follow the line long enough that we see a room that is not covered in the unnatural stuff. When we reach the room we all land on it, and I grin beneath my mask. My allies fly over and past me, taking the hound with them, and when we are all settled I turn and look down the long stretch of rooms we've flown through.

I watch the sea for several moments as one of my clones resummons my minions and begins to explore the small room we're in. Behind me the line stretches on for an unknown length, going deeper and deeper into the level. I eventually turn my attention back to my allies, and nod at my clones and minions. We resume our journey into the backrooms, but don't have to wait long to come across more excitement.

We make it a few rooms past the wine-colored sea without any sort of surprises but about an hour after our adventure we reach a narrow hallway and I faintly hear the sounds of distant conflict. The soft, at this distance, sounds of violence reach my ears, and I hear a very human pained cry emanate from somewhere in the distance, some rooms ahead of me. I glance at my clones and hounds and urge my followers to follow me before I sprint off towards the source of the sounds.

I begin to move, making use of my new max speed for the first time. My new physique comes with a new baseline for my speed, elevating me past a normal peak human in terms of both speed and endurance. I take advantage of this, coupled with "Super Sprint", a powerful perk that lets me activate a short-lived burst of speed that moves me at four times my normal max speed, which was already multiplied by four when I became a "Super Soldier". This speed is further enhanced by my ability to speed up my own movements with perks like "Speed Up" and "Speed Down".

In nanoseconds I reach the end of the hallway and then I am charging through the next room, a large and empty space. The slowed sounds of some distant conflict reach my ears, louder now, and I continue to dart towards the conflict. My enhanced physique coupled with my powerful perception allow me to trust my instincts as I race towards some mysterious conflict, unsure of what I am about to see.

I feel "Super Sprint" recharge when I reach the end of the room I'm in and I activate it as I enter the next space I'm running through. I feel my body rocket forward as I begin to approach the source of the commotion.

I dash through a few connected rooms and cross a distance of a few miles in a handful of seconds thanks to the fact that I'm actually running thirty-two times faster than a peak human can. My surroundings blur as I speed through this part of the backrooms.

I eventually reach the source of the sounds and I am unpleasantly surprised when I find that I can't see a thing. I'm at the end of a large room and ahead of me is a hallway that is pitch black. This is one of the rarest types of rooms on this level in this continuity, a space where light refuses to illuminate the gloom and a home for a particularly savage type of entity.

The sounds emanate from somewhere ahead of me, and I reach inward and activate a new perk: "Advanced Sensors". This perk causes there to be a visual overlay that allows me to perceive reality in new and advanced ways.

Whenever I blink my vision changes, allowing me to do things like see in the infrared spectrum, and with x-ray vision. This allows me to perceive the large room ahead of me, and the conflict that is occurring within it.

The room ahead of me is a large square space, and in the middle of it is a woman who is on the floor, bleeding. Four strange creatures surround her, monsters with the forms of gigantic cats and with Cheshire Cat smiles: Smilers.

Smilers are devious bastards that in this continuity cannot stand the light, and so hostilely attack anything they can lure into the dark that has technology that can be used to project light. I retrieve my pistol and I dart forward, aiming the gun at the smiler closest to the woman. I fire two rounds and the sounds of the gun cause the creatures to begin to turn towards me, moving in slow motion even as the bullets speed towards the entity.

I make my way to one of the smiles further away from the woman and I hit it with a closed fist, even as I use gestureless telekinesis to assault some of the other monsters. The cats are massive, the size of panthers at least, but they weigh surprisingly little. This works to their disadvantage, allowing me to lift them into the air and toss them towards their ally.

The bullets hit the smiler and the beast lets out a piercing yowl as it is critically injured by the first bullet. The second projectile kills them, and I watch as the fact that my foes are in close proximity to each other come back to bite them. The second bullet inflicts grievous harm on my foe, and does more than enough damage to end its life. I sense the ability to summon smilers under my control suddenly become a thing I can do, and watch as the smiler closest to the deceased one suddenly roar in pain as the excess damage leaps from its deceased pack-mate to it. This noise stuns the other smilers, and I telekinetically toss the third smiler, the least harmed of the monsters, towards its friends even as I point a finger at my foes and release a powerful burst of lightning at them.

"Arc Railgun" is how I can do this, a perk that grants me offensive-focused electrical abilities. The lightning dances through the air between my foes and I before it hits one of the smilers, the one I punched. This causes the cat to mewl in pain, even as the electrical energy begins to surge towards the cat's nearest companion. I glance at the fallen woman, and use telekinesis to reach out and ungracefully pull her towards me. She skids across the floor, groaning all the while, and when she's away from the monsters I use "Always Cover" to create most of a dome around the two of us.

Carpet and stone begin to surround us, and as it does I reach into my pack and pull out a grenade. I pull the pin and then I toss it at our foes, some distance away from us. When the thing clears the dome I close it completely and move the woman behind me. A few moments pass, though due to my enhanced perception it feels like forever, and then I feel, and hear, the explosion of the grenade. The fallen figure beside me groans in pain, as she feels the floor beneath her vibrate slightly. I turn towards her and I focus on a neat trick I can now do.

The air around me begins to warm up as I turn on a handy ability I possess: "Healing Aura". Normally this ability would cause the air to heat up and for me to light up, and in fairness my thermal vision detects this, but since I'm in some bizarre room that defies physics I can't see such a direct change with my mundane vision. I watch as the woman's wounds begin to close, and as her overall state begins to improve. It is not tremendously fast, but it's still happening before my eyes which signals how quick it is and the fact that it's faster than my own body-mod granted healing factor.

"There there, I got you." I tell the woman, even as I purposefully slow down my perception of reality so that I can match her speed. I kneel down and pick up the light figure, even as I mentally tell my clones to stay here. I unmake the protective dome I created with a thought, and I adjust my goals so that my line is guiding me towards my outpost. I see the line with my thermal vision and I begin to follow it. She groans in pain as I take us towards my rather odd mobile home.

Reaching the outpost takes us a few minutes of walking through the dark and right when I reach the room where the door is located I step into a room where light works. This allows me to see the woman, and actually take in her details.

She is a somewhat short, surprisingly tan brunette, dressed in casual clothes that are clearly made from some carpet, indicating that either she is a skilled tailor or that she has been here long enough to find other people who can make clothes from the carpet. Some of her body is exposed, but nothing intimate. Her wounds are healing, cuts becoming less deep and eventually healing altogether. She is still not all here, mentally, and I can tell she is still in pain. Something that surprises me is that she has dog ears, somehow, and I have no clue how that's possible. They are real things, naturally affixed to her head, above her human ones. Her mind is a mess, something I can feel due to my proximity to her and a handy psionic ability set I possess.

I reach the door, open it with telekinesis and step past it, desummoning one of my clones so that I can use him as a guard in the outpost just in case, and order the other two to secure the area where the door is located even as I take the woman with me into my outpost. I step into one of the nearby bedrooms and place her on a bed placed on the floor.

I sit down in front of her, and as she slowly begins to return to her senses I reach into my pack and withdraw a meal secured in a plastic container and a bottle of almond water. I open the bottle before I slowly approach her and hand her the thing. She has a dazed look in her eyes, but I can see her wits are slowly returning even as she reaches out and takes the bottle from me. She seems confused at the thing and only moves when I pantomime the action of drinking the bottle. She mimics this but as soon as the liquid touches her lips her eyes widen slightly and she begins to regain some semblance of autonomy.

The more of the bottle she downs the more her wits seem to return to her. Her eyes widen when she finally, fully, perceives me. To be fair, I am a mysterious figure who saved her from a dark room and a horrible fate, and I am also dressed in full combat-ready body armor, wearing a mask that covers my entire face. I look… scary.

"I… My mind is still a mess." She says, speaking with a surprisingly deep voice, seconds after she finishes the bottle and looking at me in confusion and… something else I can't quite recognize. I nod at her.

"It's okay. You're safe. I rescued you from a pack of smilers." I explain, succinctly. She trembles when she learns this and I give her a second to take in this news.

"My friends… My mom." She says, after a few seconds of processing what I said. My eyes widen when she talks about her mom, as the implications are bizarre.

I'm unsure of whether or not she is somehow mentally broken by this place and thinks she's in a place where she can reach her mom, or if her mom is actually in the backrooms. If her mom is here, is this woman a native of the backrooms, someone born and raised here or has she somehow encountered a relative in the backrooms, a space easily the size of continents if not whole planets?

 

[LucianoWrites]

Chapter 15
The young woman eyes the stranger as she utters a half-formed thought. The figure before her, who claims he has rescued her, eyes her in confusion but his own face is hidden behind a mask which covers and obscures all of his facial features.

The minds of both strangers begin to race. The woman reaches out and takes the meal she has been offered. She unwraps the meal and smells it, her senses enhanced beyond those of humans. She mentally assesses the scent of the food, a meal consisting of some meats and veggies, all of which are kept cold but compared to other food that can be found on this level this is practically a three star meal. She eventually determines that the food is safe, and begins to eat it.

Luciano watches her and when she begins to eat he is satisfied and reaches into his pack, causing the girl to glance at the pack. It is a normal-looking, if a bit on the larger side, object and when Luciano retrieves a meal from inside of it she is a bit surprised. The meal is nearly identical to her own, but has a bit more meat than hers does. He also pulls out a bottle of almond water and he begins to drink it. The woman's savior takes off his mask, and allows his social perks to fully come to life, as he begins to eat.

Luciano looks a touch older than he did in Chronicle giving him the appearance of someone in their very early twenties. He has a handsome face with a skintone matching that of a typical Latin celebrity, but his eyes are a jade green color. He is distractingly handsome, especially to someone used to the unkempt and scruffy appearances of people who have been trapped in an eldritch landscape for decades.

The two are quiet for some time as they work on consuming their food. During this time questions half-form in the wolf-girl's mind as she begins to fully study her surroundings. The fact that she's on a bed is enough to raise some questions, and as she parses through her memories of what happened to her she begins to wonder more things.

Luciano's mind is also abuzz with activity. He studies her as he eats his food, and for the first time since he arrived here wonders if he will have to take a significant detour from his mission.

"So… you have friends and family right? Like here, in the backrooms?" He asks, looking at her curiously. She glances at him and nods.

"I was born here. But I do know that 'Here' is not… 'Everywhere'." She explains, demonstrating a vague measure of awareness of "Baseline Reality" the term used in Luciano's book to describe Earth and the mundane world. A part of Luciano is excited as he comes to grips with the fact that this woman is a true native of the backrooms, someone who was born and raised here and who has only heard of baseline reality through stories from those abducted by the backrooms.

"My mother is also a native of this place, but her father and mother are both from the other place. They work for the United Nations and Colonies of the Backrooms. My mother and I have been… We're different." She explains, and Luciano nods at her. It's obvious she's different. She is some type of dog or wolf girl. The organization she namedropped is one of the biggest factions in this particular limspace system, an attempt to build something vaguely resembling a coalition of civilizations in the backrooms. Luciano knows of it, both as a fan of the liminal archives and as someone with the book he possesses that documents all sorts of facts about limspace.

"I'm from the place some call 'Baseline Reality'. The same… general place as your grandparents." Luciano replies, causing the woman to nod unsurprisedly at this fact. He looks at her curiously when she does this, and she lets out a small laugh when she notices his curious gaze.

"Your equipment seems new. Clean, even. I've learned enough about this place to know that if someone here has new stuff that suggests they are a recent arrival. Even if someone lives elsewhere here it is difficult to keep their equipment clean." She remarks, a statement which Luciano learns from. That is a fascinating, if unsurprising, giveaway as to his nature as a new arrival. He falls silent as he considers what to say to her.

"Hmm… I've been here a few months now and I still have so much to learn." He admits, which causes the girl he rescued to smile.

"I could teach you, if you want." She states, confidently. He glances at her and this time he's the one who smiles.

"You want to do that? I mean I'd be happy to have a teacher, but I want to make sure you get home safely." Luciano tells her, causing her to gasp.

"That's really nice of you. I don't know if I can get back though. I'm not from this place. I'm far from home." She confesses, which causes Luciano to eye her curiously again, and this time she frowns.

"I'm from a different part of this world. I come from an outpost in a place with a sky. A land of long fields and farms. Not this… weird office. I've been here for a few weeks now, but it wasn't by choice that I came. I just haven't found a way to the next space." She reveals, pronouncing the word "Office" like it's foreign to her. Her statement is fascinating, though, since she has revealed that she is from one of the few levels Luciano needs to travel though to reach his destination with a sky.

The rest of her description also reveals something important, and Luciano instantly notes what she is saying. She's far from home, and to get her back to her birthplace will take a long time. Of the twelve levels Luciano has to venture through to get to the woman's birthplace, the level this woman is from is the 10th, the Almond Fields.

"Well… I mean I could use a travel partner. Do you want to join me? I've been looking for an exit for some time now, and you're telling me that there are other places here. Even one with a sky! I've heard of such things, from journals left behind in ruins, but I didn't know they were real until now." Luciano tells her, opting to continue with the narrative that he is from this setting's version of Earth. The girl's eyes widen when she hears his offer, and she nods brightly at him.

Luciano is unsurprised that she wants to travel together. His powerful social perks, coupled with what he did in saving her life, would work together to steadily get her to trust him. His offer to get her back to her home is also a kind and generous offer, which would definitely raise her impression of him further.

"I.. I think traveling could be neat! Traveling together I mean." She states, excitedly. Her new companion grins at her and the two begin to talk for a while. After an hour and a half have passed, enough time for his social perks to have had more time to work their magic, Luciano opts to begin to trust her a little.

"This place is my base. It's… weird. I mean you may understand it, seeing as you're a native of this place, but this outpost seems to follow me. It is never more than a short walk away from me, even though I've definitely walked for thousands of kilometers in the months since I arrived here." Luciano explains, causing the girl, Gianna, to look at him in confusion. The two stated their names to each other sometime after Luciano offered to escort her back home.

"That's weird. I've never heard of anything like that." She admits, straightaway. Luciano laughs, unsurprised by this. The only place he's heard of something like this is in his book, and even then there's nothing about the base moving and following whoever it is its designated overseer.

"Well you'll get a chance to see it in action tomorrow." Luciano remarks, lightly. This causes Gianna to smile happily. The two of them converse for a short while longer before Luciano decides to give her time to rest.

"I'm gonna go to bed. There are other rooms here, bedrooms even. I'll show you the bathroom before I go though." Luciano informs her, before he takes her stuff and wills it to vanish. This confuses her, but the look of confusion only persists for a few moments before she accepts it. The weirdness of the backrooms coupled with secrecy insurance is enough for the wolf-girl to just accept that there is something different about Luciano without asking questions.

Luciano takes a beat to show her to the bathroom lurking in the back of the bedroom. He teaches her how to use the shower, something that took him a beat, and then bids her farewell. As he leaves he uses "Always Cover" to give her a door and some semblance of privacy, while taking advantage of the cover provided by the thing to station one of his clones beside the door and out of view of the wolf girl. His clone immediately uses a tricky perk to seemingly splice out of existence, a Generic First Person Shooter perk named "Wall Hack".

Luciano steps across the hallway separating the rooms and uses "Always Cover" to give himself a door as well. He quickly sits on his bed and begins to do some reading. A few minutes later the explorer opts to go to bed, and moments after that he is out like a light. His clones remain conscious, able to be fueled by his own sleep while remaining fully alert and aware.

The wanderer, equipped with potent perks for sleeping, is able to get the few hours necessary for him to be operating at his peak, and when he wakes up he silently checks in with his clones. All of them are quick to report that nothing new happened while he was asleep, a fact which he is thankful for. He quickly orders the clone tasked with keeping an eye on Gianna to go and join the other clones, which the creature is quick to do.

Luciano dons his mask and retrieves some of his items from the inside of his backpack before he slips out of his room and goes to his new neighbor's room. As he does this he orders his minions and clones to go ahead and venture down the path the group will need to brave to reach the exit to this level. He wants them to scout ahead, and ensure that Gianna and him have a safe, uneventful day.

Luciano knocks on Gianna's door and the noise awakens the canine-human hybrid. She quickly tells him she is just waking up and he tells her to take his time before sitting down.

---

My enhanced senses allow me to hear as Gianna gets ready. I glance at the stuff I have for her, and wonder if she'll like the equipment. I'm already fully dressed, as I go to bed dressed in my gear and the only thing I need to put on is my mask each morning. I close my eyes and look at the world through the senses of my clones, watching as they begin to follow the glowing line.

I've spent months here so I'm hoping we're close to the exit. Gianna distantly washes her face, and spends a few minutes getting ready, before she calls out from the bathroom, yelling to make sure I can hear her. I glance at what I have for her.

In my lap is a set of body armor, a knife, and a cane. The stuff comes from my pack, but from two different sections of my pack, one of which is filled with gear for fighting and the other of which is filled with gear to make it easier to walk through dark or lightless places. I don't know if Gianna has any experience with guns, and while I could teach her I'd rather not do so here.

Eventually the wolf girl steps out of her room and smiles when she sees me. I grin back and get up, before handing her the stuff. She takes it and studies it.

"I have some stuff for you. We're going to head out through the dark room… dark rooms? I'm not sure which is the proper term here. We're heading through them again. This stuff is how I was able to get to you. I also left behind a trail I can follow even without my eyes." I explain, somewhat cryptically. Gianna takes this news in stride even as she begins to put on the body armor. She slips the knife in a holster on the armor, and takes the cane with a curious look.

We quickly leave the base and in minutes are in the dark room again. Gianna is wandering around using her cane, while I use my supernatural senses to see through the gloom and follow the line leading me further into the backrooms. I call out to Gianna, able to confidently know that there are no enemies here, and she follows my voice.

My clones are outside of the darkness, a few rooms away, and they are carefully inspecting it to ensure there are no dangers that might endanger my companion or myself. Gianna, meanwhile, has no idea that I myself am supernatural, despite her seeing me use my inventory, and for the time being I'd like to keep that the case. For now I'll make this leg of our journey a carefree hike.

We explore the darkness, with me keeping my eyes peeled to make sure nothing suddenly appears in the gloom, while Gianna follows the sound of my voice. It takes us about an hour of wandering through the dark before we suddenly step into an illuminated room. I am unbothered by this transition, but when Gianna makes it she needs a minute to adjust.

I give her that minute and ask her for the cane, while my clones enter a distant room where a trio of hounds are tearing the place up. They dispatch the monsters with frightening efficiency, making full use of my abilities to defeat the monsters and then turning them into currency rather than raising them as zombies. This act raises the amount of units I have in the store by a significant amount, which is quite nice.

When we begin to move again it is not particularly fast. By myself I can move at full speed unimpeded by any concerns for other people, but with a companion I have to regulate my pace. I have to be patient, while Gianna moves and take into account her stores of energy as well as ensure she follows after me. A part of me is tempted to allow her to see the glowing line created by Quest Markers, but I don't want to start giving her serious reasons to ask questions.

We slowly explore a few rooms before Gianna needs to sit down. Because of Gianna and her only average speed, as well as the enormity of some of the rooms, it's been a few hours since we left, and when we enter a small hallway Gianna stops me.

"Can we take a break?" She asks, and I smile and nod at her. We sit down across from each other and I put my pack on the floor next to me.

I reach into it and pull out a bottle of almond water and a meal which I quickly hand to Gianna. She gratefully accepts them and looks at me curiously.

"Can… I help you?" I ask, slightly amused by this. She explains that she wants us to eat together.

"Oh! I… I only eat once a day. I'll eat when we are back in the base." I explain, which causes her to frown and try to give me the stuff back. I brush off her attempts, before expanding on my remarks.

"Back in baseline I got used to only eating once a day. I don't need to eat as much as other people do. Just eat, it's important you keep up your energy." I remark. She hesitates but eventually accepts this and begins to eat.

We get up a few minutes later and continue to venture deeper into the backrooms. Our day of exploration is, thankfully, uneventful. When it ends we go back to the outpost, and I give Gianna a brief tour of the place.

"This is… a lot bigger than I thought it would be." She confesses when we find ourselves back in the hallway after I gave her a brief tour. I nod and grin.

"That statement pretty efficiently sums up my whole experience with this place." I reply, causing her to smile at me.

"This is a weird place. I've come across rooms big enough to house entire farms, barns and all, with ceilings so high I couldn't see them." Gianna states, and after what I've seen here I believe her. I get out a meal and almond water and give it to her and then get my own and begin to eat.

The rest of the "night" is relatively uneventful and from here we begin a new routine, one which differs from my last routine mostly due to the slowed speed of travel. It takes us a week to reach a place of any real importance. Where we reach though, is a place of great importance.

On my eighth day of traveling with Gianna we step into a gigantic room, one multiple miles long where the carpet covering the floor slowly fades away and is replaced by dirty concrete.

I already know what this space is: it's a "Gradient", an area where one level gradually gives way to the next, and where travelers can safely and reliably travel back and forth between levels. In this case one end of the room is in the level known as "The Halls", the very first level all wanderers who find themselves in the backrooms limspace system land in, and the other end of the room is in the level known as; "The Basement". My clones arrived here a day ago, but there were no monsters.

"Okay… Finally, some variation." I remark, grinning at Gianna as we step into the room. I shiver as a new notification appears in my mind's eye the second I step fully into the gigantic room, and I feel my clones despawn all of a sudden.

[Alert: Welcome To The Basement

You have successfully escaped one level of the backrooms. Now you are entering The Basement, and to celebrate this you now have three new perks: 'Natural Detox', 'On Your Toes', and 'Cat Walker'. Congratulations! Now use these perks, and your others, to aid you and your new companion.]

The notification continues, somewhat, and provides me with descriptions of the perks. The first one is an immune-system booster that helps me resist the effects of radiation. The second perk gives me spatial awareness and discipline and various other traits designed to help me survive encounters with entities. The final perk is meant to help me survive if I need to climb the area where the next level is the most dangerous, catwalks high above the majority of the level, that are crawling with entities. It gives me luck, enhancements to my running speed, and boosts to my long-term planning that actually enhance me noticeably even now. My grin relaxes as I step more fully into the room.

It'll take Gianna and I a few minutes to fully cross this place and enter a new version of a familiar space: a narrow hallway. This time the walls are made of gray bricks and the floor is hard concrete. Gianna stays close to me as we walk down the lengthy hallway, and I glance upward and see the blinking lights of the eerie catwalk high above us. I can distantly hear the sounds of entities roaming the catwalk, particularly the heavy footsteps of hounds.

One level down, eleven to go.

 

[LucianoWrites]

The concrete underneath Gianna and I is stern, solid stuff. It's also hard on our legs and unpleasant to walk on. We take our time and slowly explore the narrow hallway, and after walking for about fifteen minutes Gianna asks for a break. I oblige her and we sit down and face each other. I look at the wolf girl and opt to ask her something.

"So do you know where we are?" I ask. She shakes her head and I let out a light laugh.

"So I came across some journals written by other wanderers. I believe we're in a level called 'The Basement'." I explain, knowing precisely where we are already. I watch her listen to my words and then nod in acceptance of my lie.

"This level's main gimmick seems to be the temptation to find some way up there," I remark, pointing directly up. Gianna looks up, following my finger. "It seems that those catwalks allow people to speedily traverse the level. They are also positively covered in monsters." I explain.

I'm pointing at illuminated catwalks that dart across the air above the part of the level Gianna and I are on. The catwalks are brightly illuminated by lights that are put on their sides, and are bright enough that they could be likened to stars. I glance at them and thanks to my powerful senses I can see the outlines of various monsters, including flying ones, dashing around the catwalks. There seems to be next to no logic behind their movements, but they are frantic.

Gianna and I are quiet for a few moments, which turn to minutes, before I get up and walk over to the wolf-girl. When I reach her I take off my backpack and hand it to her. She gives me an annoyed look and I let out a quiet laugh even as I explain what I want to do.

"I want you to get on my back. I'm giving you my backpack so there is space for you." I explain, which causes her to noticeably brighten. She quickly puts on the backpack and then almost as fast as she donned the backpack she gets on my back. I let out a laugh and I get up quickly before I begin to walk again.

As I begin my journey with Gianna on my back I will one of my clones to spawn and then appear behind me. Gianna is focused on surveying the scene before us so she doesn't notice when my clone appears and takes off into the air above the hallway. I also summon one of my clones as backup for me, but have him stealthy phase into the wall closest to me, so that he can stay hidden just in case Gianna and I need an extra set of hands.

I transfer my consciousness to my clone heading towards the catwalk, allowing it to serve as my true body while it pilots the body that is giving Gianna a piggyback ride. As I float into the air I glance at the catwalks that dot the skies above the level. My understanding of the loud noises filling the air becomes more precise as I draw closer and closer to one of the platforms. I stop when I get about three-quarters of the way up because of something I see.

Now that I am some part of the way up towards the catwalk I can make out some of the monsters on the thing. I see some familiar foes like hounds, and creatures I was expecting, like female deathmoths, as well as wholly new things like brown balls that move of their own accords at tremendously high speeds; "Rollers" a type of entity found throughout the Liminal Archives.

I also see something deeply disturbing chasing after a hound. There is a silent creature that moves like a thin, speedy slug, with yellow, parchment-like skin and a face that it seemingly fashioned on its own by cutting into the part of its body that it uses as a head with a knife, cutting out thin slits for eyes and an eerie smile onto its face. I recognize it as something that absolutely should not exist here… It's a partygoer.

Partygoers are nightmarish entities and the most dangerous enemies of humanity in multiple Backrooms continuities. They also don't exist in either my book or to my knowledge in the continuity of the Liminal Archives, unless it represents some original, native expansion to the backrooms that has not been discovered by wanderers yet. The horrifyingly sadistic creatures are capable of turning humans into more of their kind through a painful process that is absolutely irreversible.

As I dart closer to the catwalk I see more creatures that should not be here. A pair of faceless, but otherwise human-seeming beings carrying stone spears dart across the catwalk, chased by several hounds. They are facelings, another type of common backrooms entity that is not documented by my book but are known to exist in multiple continuities.

Seeing the possibly impossible entities doesn't make me stop my approach, if anything I move faster because of it. Partygoers have no ranged attacks and are truly horrific threats to humanity but would almost certainly be incapable of doing me any harm due to my multitude of defenses, and facelings are human-like in morality and temperament, just as capable of being friends as being foes. I want to kill the partygoer and save the facelings.

I fly over the side of the railing where the partygoer is chasing after a hound, seemingly having intimidated it, and I don't hesitate. I launch a gestureless telekinetic assault on the monster that begins with me lifting it into the air above the catwalk.

The creature weighs relatively little and as I move it into the air it begins to screech. I glare at the beast and without any sort of gesture I motionlessly rip its arms off with my telekinesis. I then mildly exert myself and wrap a telekinetic fist around the creature's head. I grunt as I rip the thing's head off, violently ending its life and causing some of its blood to begin to drip onto the catwalk. I sense a new ability emerge within me: the power to summon generic, obedient partygoers, indicating that I've killed it since for me to unlock the ability to summonable minions of a certain type I have to kill or defeat one of their kind.

"What a terrifying power." I remark even as I turn to the hounds chasing after the facelings and raise a hand in their direction. I focus on the monsters and emit an invisible wave of force that explodes out of my hand and sails through the empty air between the canines and me. When the power hits the hounds they are violently hurled off of the narrow catwalk and sent hurtling towards the floor of the basement. The facelings do not stop running, and I hear the noises of monsters turning their attention towards me. I watch the facelings, even as my other body continues a tireless trek down the hallway.

A trio of female deathmoths, gigantic moths the size of decently large dogs, dart through the air towards me and spew acid in my direction. I do not bother gesturing in the direction of the globules of acid but I do telekinetically grab all three orbs and make them cease their movement. I feel the warmth of the acid, but it is not enough to harm me, thanks to my particularly sensitive version of telekinesis.

This stuns the deathmoths who stop in midair and hover not far from the orbs. I grin as they do this, and I begin to deftly manipulate the acid, turning the orbs from simple orbs into something else: weapons. I precisely grab specific chunks of acid and mold them into thin spears which I then lob at the monsters, aiming for their eyes and wings.

The acid strikes the monsters, causing them to hiss in pain and begins to deal critical damage to the gigantic insects. I continue to use the acid as a weapon and as the monsters begin to weaken, I strike their heads with the acid, aiming at their damaged eyes. When one of them dies I immediately reanimate it, and I summon generic versions of the creatures.

I point at the undead moth and I fire a green energy bullet at it. The bullet collides with the monster and causes it to begin to heal, its wings and eyes regenerating milliseconds after the bullet impacts the beast.

I use my telekinesis to slay the moths, instinctively reanimating them and firing off more restorative energy bullets their way while I turn my attention to the running facelings. I swiftly summon my final remaining clone, intending to use him as backup and as a protector for the facelings. He commands the death moths I've summoned and all of them fly to the air above the facelings as hounds and "Rollers" begin to close in on them.

My clone lifts the "Rollers", balls of only somewhat living skin that move around by rolling and are incredibly hostile to anything other than other rollers, into the air. I watch as the rollers, each of which is about a foot big, stop rotating. My clone then telekinetically crushes the balls, compressing them into orbs that are only an inch big, and I sense myself gaining the ability to summon rollers. The deathmoths that obey my clone begin to spew acid at the hounds chasing the facelings, and my clone turns the acid into the acidic equivalent of Magic Missiles, guiding them with strategic focus into the legs and faces of the canines. At the same time, I sense the clone turn his attention more fully to the facelings.

"You can do it!" The clone shouts, using a quirky perk we possess to forcefully conjure shields around the different facelings. The shields are thin, forcefield-like structures that will absorb damage and protect the facelings. The perk itself lets us, "us" being myself or my clones, utilize several techniques that bolster our allies, and the shield is just the one that is the handiest at the moment.

As my clone begins to escort the facelings I move onto the catwalk and I study my surroundings. I am not on an intersection so there are only two directions that non-flying foes can approach me from right ahead: head-on or behind me. Hounds are darting towards me, and I gesture in their direction, knocking them off the platform.

I smirk as the howling hounds abruptly begin to wail, and when they hit the floor beneath the catwalk their wails suddenly end. I try not to relish this, but I am currently actively protecting both specific facelings and humanity, and near-humans, more generally.

The next few minutes pass in a blur. Gianna and I make our way out of the hallway and find ourselves in one of the gigantic labyrinthian rooms that constitute the majority of the spaces I've encountered so far in the backrooms. My clone accompanies the facelings to a ladder that connects the surface with the catwalks and uses telepathy, a product of a perk, to urge them onto it. I murder countless monsters, all of which are simple beasts. I swap my consciousness with that of the clone protecting the facelings, and in doing so I find myself floating beside one of the creatures as it urgently descends the ladder.

It takes five minutes but the facelings both make it down the ladder safely and when they are on the ground floor of the basement I land next to them. They have smooth, featureless oval heads, lacking any hair, eyes, noses, eyes, or other such features, but clearly and deliberately study me. I also study them, even as my sight is drawn to a notification that appears in my mind's eye.

[Alert: Anomaly Detected

These creatures, along with the 'Partygoer' you encountered and defeated should not be here. They represent a break in reality, even more so than the backrooms themselves do. You would be doing this world a service if you protected them and helped investigate how they came to be here. You would also be rewarded for such efforts, particularly if you fought against hostile, alien entities such as 'Partygoers' whenever you encounter them.

For now, as a reward for stepping up and protecting kindly entities, accept this.

Special permissions: [Quest Mode] [Generic Worldwalker] activated. Initial tier unlocked.]

When I reach the bottom of the notification I read the name of the jump and I blink. It is not one I recognize. A split second later I hiss as I feel new powers spring to life within me. I gain an instinctual awareness of them, one innate and as familiar to me as though I've spent years studying them.

Most of what I have gained are not new powers, but rather new traits. This includes things like enhanced familiarity with my own powers, due to something dubbed "Prior Training", and things like "Traveler's Dedication" a perk that allows me to easily motivate myself. I do gain new direct powers, such as the ability to create mental maps and mark them to effortlessly recall points of interest. I also gain a handful of new items, such as a new pack which spontaneously manifests on my back and is already filled with a number of goodies.

I am also suddenly and painfully aware that this means that I am not being sent to instances of universes, toys that can be played with, but actual and real universes that fully exist. My benefactor, or benefactors, do not seem to know why entities that are not native to this canon are appearing, unless this is part of a deliberate plan on their part.

I turn and look at the facelings when the notification disappears. I reach into my pack and grab some food, handing it to them with a smile. I feel the effects of some of my new perks take hold within me, allowing me to detect their joy as they grab the food.

"Hey guys… Let's try to get you someplace safe, huh?" I ask, smiling at them as I feel "Quest Markers" shift. The perk, perfect for guiding me towards new destinations, creates a new glowing line for me to follow. I sense that it will guide me to a place where the facelings can be protected, which on this level probably means some sort of outpost for the UNCB or something to that effect. The facelings nod at me, having already been subjected to my perks, and when I turn in the direction of the glowing line the creatures dutifully follow after me. I am grateful for social perks, old and new alike, as I begin my secondary trip.

Eventually Gianna and I decide to settle down for the night. We retreat to the outpost, finding it after a brief walk, and find that it has taken on the basic aesthetics of this level, with a harsh concrete floor and ugly brick walls. We eat and I go to rest, only to have to make a decision regarding a perk named "Professional Expertise". This perk gives me a decade of experience in a profession, but I have to pick the profession. I elect to take the decade of experience and put it into that of a doctor specializing in wilderness medicine so I can more fully leverage my unusual healing abilities.

When the facelings and I settle for the night I make use of my abilities to do my best to safeguard the area we are in. I use "Always Cover", and a few other abilities to make it hard for enemy entities to reach us. When I'm done I don't bother explaining my abilities to the facelings knowing that my perks (including a new one I gained earlier today) will cause them to internally make up some explanation for my powers that doesn't terrify them. No matter which canon they come from, they are from a version of the backrooms home to much scarier stuff than a telekinetic who can manipulate the environment. We all quickly fall asleep.

The next few days proceed relatively peacefully. I alternate between piloting the body of mine that is with Gianna and the one accompanying the facelings, and I quickly get used to using both my new items and my new abilities. It takes us about a week of traveling before I finally achieve one of my goals: I reach the place "Quest Markers" has been sending the facelings and I: the edge of a settlement in the middle of one of the massive rooms that is a common sight throughout internal biomes in this bizarre space.

The facelings and I all look at the large settlement as we approach it. I place a hand on the shoulder of one of the facelings and activate a technique that puts a shield on it and its friend, even as we begin to get near a wall made of stone that marks the outer boundary of the settlement.

"Here we go…" I remark, worriedly.

 

[LucianoWrites]

Hello! Generic Worldwalker is a... not quite new jump originally by Edrogrimshell that was adopted by Vanvoid. A fantastic update to it was created and posted on Reddit last night. I really like it. All our lad has is the 100 CP and free stuff, but that's not nothing.

 

[LucianoWrites]

I cautiously study the imposing stone wall the settlers have erected around their home as my companions and I step closer and closer to the boundary, and one of a number of doors that would permit passage through it. My mask is off and my face is nothing like my normal face.

I currently have lightning-blonde hair, a pale face, and oceanic blue eyes, a far cry from my visibly Latin true face. This is a defensive measure to ensure that if anyone here sees me they won't recognize me if they come across my other self later on, and also to give the settlers in here a normal-looking person to talk to.

The facelings are wearing masks I made using some of my "Today's Supplies" items, which actually came in quite handy here. Their faces are covered, and since mine isn't I'm hoping that'll lead to the wanderers who erected this settlement to believe that I'm the leader of our group.

I mentally review my powerful slate of social perks. Names like "Game of Life", "Charming Action Hero", "Personable", and "Merits Of Your Own" all come to mind as I dwell on my powers, ones I hope will be strong enough to give me a chance to make trusted allies.

As my companions and I draw nearer to the door, I hear overt movement. Someone nearby is not trying to be subtle about the fact that they've detected us. Thankfully we are not trying to be subtle ourselves. We don't need to be, we have protection not only in the form of myself but also in the form of my allies.

I am currently being given cover by a clone who is nearby, invisibly watching over my companions and myself. The clone of me with Gianna is also receiving the same treatment; being offered cover by a powerful, dangerous clone who is utilizing some of our perks to skillfully avoid detection. In both cases, our clones have access to our weapons and are ready to use them just in case, though one thing about this version of the backrooms is that it is noticeably less dangerous than many continuities and entities just aren't common in the spaces I've visited so far.

When we reach the door etched into the stone wall I boldly step forward and knock on the door. My companions, creatures who've had plenty of time to acclimate to my presence and to adjust to the idea of showing me not actual deference but something more akin to friendship and trust, shuffle nervously as all of us hear movement from behind the door. The thing is solid, and does not have a small window or any peepholes to look through, so I am unsurprised when someone opens it and I find myself face to face with a decently tall woman.

"Hello, uh…," She says, as she studies not only me but my also faceless companions. I look at her and decide to immediately interject.

"Hi! My name is Henry, and I'm a wanderer. These folks," I say, pointing to my companions who both wave a bit energetically. "Are my friends. This is the first outpost I've ever seen. I came from some other place a few days ago, after arriving here, generally speaking, months ago, met my friends, and when we saw here we just… we just about cried." I remark, lying but not as fully as one would expect. The woman, a white lady who seems surprisingly fit, looks at me sympathetically when she hears my story.

My social perks are fully active right now, and I can feel them working. I perceptively study the body language of the woman as she listens to my story and I subtly adjust my own body language to mirror hers and make her feel comfortable with me. Additionally, I can empathetically sense that she is not a naturally wary person, though she's also not a fool or hyper-trusting.

"Hi Henry. My name is Joanne. Welcome to the small town of Stoneboro. We're a part of the UNCB, but if you're new you may not know what that means. We're pretty friendly towards visitors but… We do like to see people's faces." The woman tells me, and I inwardly grimace. I move to my companions, quickly thinking as I try to ready myself for what's about to happen.

If I were in any other canon traveling with facelings wouldn't be as big a deal as it is here but in the Liminal Archives facelings don't even exist. This was confirmed when I first met these two, both of whom are friendly, personable entities in a continuity that is not known for having many of those.

"So you're about to see something a bit surprising. I'm hoping that you really are friendly towards visitors." I remark as I gesture for my companions to take off their masks. If need be I can intervene with telekinesis, but I really hope it doesn't come to that.

"Heh, I've seen a lot, Henry. You sound a bit green behind the ears, but even folks who were born here are routinely surprised by what they see." The woman states. I pick up on a number of different things from her statement with the biggest being that she is, like me, not a native of the backrooms. It's a bit less clear if she's new or not…

She lets out a quiet gasp when the facelings remove enough of their masks to reveal that they have no eyes. Inwardly I smirk, unsurprised by this, and I sense the woman tense but to her credit she doesn't run or do anything reckless. Her breathing becomes more erratic as the facelings continue to remove their masks, and reveal more of their perfectly smooth heads.

"What am I… looking at? Am I looking at new entities, or the victims of some horrible level?" She asks, and I sense my allies tense up in response to her words. I whisper, telepathically, for them to relax and they do so, having recognized me as their unusual but trustworthy friend due to the circumstances of our initial meeting and the very powerful perks I began to fully use almost the minute we met.

"These are entities. They are known as 'Facelings'. They are sapient, and can be as friendly and sociable as humans can be. These two are the first I've seen here, but in baseline they are known elements, known entities, of some fictional version of the backrooms." I remark, opting to mix in elements of the truth with certain, powerful, falsehoods. She glances at me, her eyes now filled with skepticism aimed squarely at me.

"You're new, aren't you? Or at least relatively new. How do you know all of that?" She asks, her eyes revealing a quick wit and a good intuition. I frown as I hear her questions. I also gesture for my companions to put their masks back on. They dutifully do as they are told, which is good for me especially since this is part of their first impression. Showing that they are receptive to cooperation with humans, and about as intelligent, in their first interaction with UNCB officials and representatives will particularly good for helping people get to know them.

This fact is true even without one of my new perks but it is especially true with it. A new perk I possess is named "Living Legend" and it guarantees that my deeds, at least so long as it is active, will spread like wildfire and will be exaggerated to the point that they become more like myth than concrete, correct retellings of my deeds. I haven't had a chance to use this power since I got it, but seeing as I am the jumper equivalent of a charisma main this perk will become a key part of my repertoire pretty quickly once I get to interacting with people.

I'm actually quite excited by this perk because at some point I'd like to go to Generic Spy Thriller and my favorite origin in that jump has a perk that synergizes incredibly well with "Living Legend". Still, Generic Spy Thriller is a bit too mundane for me to really want to go there sometime soon.

"When I first got here I quickly came across journals of people who were researching the first… 'Level'. The people were long dead by the time I discovered their journals, which were in a ruined campsite in The Frontier. The researchers had heard of the UNCB and used their jargon. I'm assuming they had encounters with UNCB scouts or something, their journals didn't clarify the precise nature of how they first met UNCB people. But I was a fan of backrooms media, which has become increasingly popular over the last few years. I've only been in the backrooms for about two months." I explain, turning my attention back to the woman, offering a vague story but one that sounds more or less plausible. The woman listens to the story and I watch her compare it to what she knows about this place. She eventually sighs and accepts what I've told her.

"I see… Still, a new entity type? I mean, probably new. I've been here for a full decade and never seen anything like them." She remarks. She opens the door fully and gestures for my companions and I to come into the town. We do as she signals for us to do and she gestures for us to follow her.

We are in a small space dedicated to watching the door, a cramped space that is clearly designed to be defended and to serve as something akin to a death funnel if the town is invaded. Flying entities are pretty uncommon, though this alternate version of the liminal archives does have deathmoths, so this isn't perfect but it's perfectly defensible under normal circumstances. The facelings obediently follow after me, and as we move the woman proceeds to ask me some questions.

"So, what did you do in baseline?" She asks, curiously. I smile at her and chuckle as I tell her a lie but one I can easily back up.

"I was a wilderness doctor." I remark, and this intrigues the woman who guides my companions and I out into a small town square. A number of people turn and look at us curiously, some of them having overheard my remarks just now. She glances at one of the men who overhears me and gestures for him to take her place. He nods back at her and walks towards where my group just came from, presumably taking over her shift as a guard.

Wilderness medicine is a discipline of basic medicine that focuses on the sort of life-preserving and life-saving medical practices used by doctors in remote areas and without advanced medical infrastructure. This is the sort of medicine that saves lives in forests, atop mountains, and deep in deserts.

"You were a doctor? Like with a medical license? Or with a doctorate?" She asks, and I let out a loud laugh at this question.

"I have a license from North Carolina. I practiced medicine in the rural community of Dellview, not super far from Charlotte. Wilderness medicine is a specialty that focuses on practicing medicine in less than ideal circumstances. It's the sort of medicine that is used by some first responders, though with a bit more finesse than they might have, since first responders are not always trained doctors." I reply, utilizing my knowledge of my home state from my pre-jump life to come up with a lie.

"In that case… We don't have much in terms of medical supplies, but we have some medicine and I think if you want to quickly befriend folks I can think of a way you can quickly become essential here." She tells me as she guides my companions and me towards a stone and carpet building in the middle of the square. We step into it and find ourselves in a foyer.

She guides us past the foyer and into a small dining room area. We are told to sit and that she needs to retrieve somebody. I do as I am told and the facelings mimic me. As I sit down and relax I mentally focus on my clones.

One of my clones is beneath me, hidden underneath the floor of this place just in case I need support. My other two clones are together, though one is hidden from view, and the other is escorting Gianna towards the edge of the level. Their path and their plan are simple: just keep walking.

I study the room, noting the presence of a considerable amount of furniture fashioned from the hard concrete I've acclimated to walking over. My new perks have helped a good deal when it comes to getting used to navigating this new level. Walking on hard concrete for hours at a time is tough, but perks like "Wanderer" and "Flow" make it a touch easier mentally and physically respectively.

Another thing that helps is the idea of finding new things to scan, which I do with the mental focus it takes me to do somewhat advanced math like I did back in Chronicle. "Scanning" something refers to when I use a new ability of mine: "Analysis". This ability allows me to gaze at anything of substance, be it furniture, a small animal, or a person, and gain a basic understanding of it.

This is a "Worldwalker" perk I have made healthy use of in the time since I've gotten it, scanning the entities that madly dash across the catwalks, scanning the facelings, Gianna, the objects I've come across, and anything I can scan to practice and hone the ability, since I innately suspect that it can grow stronger with time and practice.

It takes a few minutes before someone new steps into the small room my companions and I are in. This time the figure who stands before us is an older-looking man with a thick white beard and the complexion of someone I'd peg as Middle-Eastern. He has a kindly-looking face and he smiles at us.

"Hello wanderers, My name is Ali. I was told, by Joanne, that the three of you have made an interesting discovery," The man tells us, a gentle smile on his face as he speaks. His English is very lightly accented but I can still hear the traces of something older in it, something softer. I smile at him and nod, even as he sits down at a table across from me.

"Good… morning? Who even knows anymore? As I'm sure Joanne told you, I'm Henry. These are my friends, they, as far as I know, don't have names. Please take off your masks." I say, turning to address the facelings partway through my remarks. They nod at me and remove the masks they are wearing, doing so over the course of several moments and when the top parts of their heads reveal their lack of facial features I see the man's eyes widen.

"Whoa… That's-" The man begins to exclaim. The sight of the featureless faces of the creatures does take some getting used to. He falls silent as the masks fall away and reveal their fully smooth faces. I nod at him and smile sympathetically.

"It does take some getting used to." I remark, lightly.

"These creatures are facelings. They are a type of entity. They have temperaments that are almost as varied as those of humans and are only a bit less intelligent than we are, at least according to stuff on the internet in Baseline. I suspect they are actually as intelligent as humans, they certainly seem to be. I came across these two when they were fleeing the catwalks, using a ladder to climb down and when I helped them they became my friends." I reveal, smiling at my companions. I can distinctly feel their happiness at my remarks using empathetic perks. Ali nods as he takes in my remarks.

"A friendly type of human-like entity… Remarkable." The man exclaims once he's had time to take in my remarks. I smile at him as he begins to speak about the brief history of friendly entities in this variation of the backrooms.

To make a short story even shorter there is one known friendly entity in this version of the backrooms. A strange being, according to its own written testimony a former human, named "Hans Kirsne", is a skeleton that can be found wandering this version of the backrooms and protecting people from each other and from other entities.

All other known entities and entity types are either neutral, in several cases, and outright hateful, in several more cases. The discovery of a friendly entity type, especially one that has more than one instance, is considerable news.

The man insists on fully documenting everything possible about the facelings. He is more excited about them then he is when he remembers that I am a doctor, and while his reaction mildly surprises me I kind of get it after a while.

I am one person, in one part of the backrooms at a time. I mean… I'M not, but to him and to the best of his knowledge I appear to be. The facelings represent the discovery and emergence of a whole new faction in the backrooms, one that can be interacted with peacefully and on friendly terms. Alliances can be made, and new growth can occur. And actually spreading information about them is critical so that if more facelings emerge in other levels members of the UNCB know to protect them when possible and befriend them whenever they can.

Over the course of the next few hours I am interrogated relentlessly and eventually new people are brought in to question the facelings. The researchers struggle to communicate with the facelings, and in fairness to them even I can't do it easily unless I communicate mind to mind using my perk-granted telepathy. After a while I begin to get questioned in place of the facelings, and I helpfully answer rather truthfully, utilizing my telepathy to acquire the best answers to the questions of the researchers.

I even discover some stuff while doing this, such as that the facelings do not have memories before they appeared on the catwalk, seemingly spawned by the same processes that may spawn other entities, and I learn that the facelings can consume things by causing them to… despawn, for lack of a better word. That particular discovery is fascinating, but does explain why they've asked me for food during our long march. I never interrogated them about it because it felt rude to do so, but learning this is still nice.

The day eventually comes to an end after a truly grueling series of interrogations, and I end up promising to tend to the needs of the injured, to the best of my ability, the following morning. My companions and I are given permission to use a small room in the building as our home while we are here, and we do so. When the day comes to an end I am the last of my clones to go to bed, with Gianna and that clone of mine going to bed hours before I get to dos so.

I fall asleep almost instantly when I find a corner of the room to sit down in. This marks the beginning of a new routine, one that begins the very next morning and will last for the better part of a month.

Gianna and my clones with her continue their ceaseless wandering, while the facelings and I get a chance to settle into life in Stoneboro. I pass my days using my skills as a doctor and my more supernatural perks to help injured wanderers and settlers, and my faceling companions agree to be subjected to tests and to help humans learn about them, which I help with whenever I am not tending to the needs of patients throughout the small town. The people throughout the town who are less research-oriented and scientifically-inclined than Ali and his cohorts are wary of the facelings but with me as a bit of a go-between and mediator they learn to relax around the entities, and I quickly become well-liked for my essential skills and my sincere desire to help people. In time a small building is erected for me to use as a place of business, and I quickly find myself settling into a new role: that of a healer and therapist.

My social perks work collaboratively and synergistically to make me a beloved figure that people come to trust in days. Perks like "The Game Of Life" allow people to naturally like and trust me, while some of my other perks like "A Helpful Hand" work while I tend to people and talk to them. This has a slow but noticeable ripple effect of promoting unity and getting people to gel, which slowly lowers the number of injuries I get, most of which I heal using my perks more than actual medicine since no real medicine exists here other than almond water.

When a disruption to this neat routine comes, it doesn't affect my faceling companions and this me, but actually involves Gianna and the me with her.

 

[LucianoWrites]

Gianna studies our surroundings from atop my back. She has a small gun in one hand and is cautiously peering at the most surprising aspect of the environment we're in. Other wanderers look at her, their faces revealing to some degree the surprise and confusion her presence makes them feel.

No less than five people are looking at us, and all of them are armed. We're in the middle of a room on the smaller side, and this is one of the few rooms we've come across with a ladder leading up to the catwalk. I let my face be a neutral mask as I peer at the five armed, and wounded, wanderers.

"Cosplay? Here?" One of them, a girl who can't be older than her mid-teens, asks. She is holding a spear with a stone tip, and I spot the faint blood on it. I begin to move to head past them, but one of them steps forward and gestures for me to stop. I glance at him with a nonchalant look and continue moving, before he raises a roughly made stone hammer and this time I give him an annoyed look.

"My friend and I have places to go and you have wounded people to tend to." I remark, flatly, as I switch some of my perks on and ready myself for what might be an inevitable conflict. Well… inevitable might be a bit strong.

A part of me is curious as to what would happen if I took on and defeated a human. My last conflict with a person was before I arrived here. Fighting someone rather than something with my current, potent, power set has not happened yet so I don't fully wield my social perks. Sooner or later I'll have to use my powers on a person, so I might as well see what will happen if I just use them now.

"We outnumber you and I think we'd benefit from that toy of yours more than you do." The apparent leader of the group counters, a predatory smile on his face as he nods at the small gun in Gianna's hand. She growls at him and points the gun at him, which causes the teen to take a step back and put her spear in front of her.

"Enough. Just let us walk past. There's no reason for anyone, anyone at all, to get hurt here." I remark, harshly. My tone of voice causes the girl to look away from Gianna and look at me. My clone moves through the ground beneath Gianna and I and sneaks past the group but doesn't emerge.

I could easily handle these wanderers if I were by myself but with Gianna, this moment is more complicated. I can still win, even non-lethally, but I don't know how non-lethal I want to be.

The others in the group have not made any aggressive motions, but they are not contradicting their apparent leader or at least mouthpiece. I don't know how to handle them, so I order my clone to scan them and their minds. I sense engrams of them, mental dossiers on whatever I "Analyze" that fill a back corner of my mind whenever I use this ability on people, appear in my head even as my clone silently uses my stranger abilities on the wanderers. I smile and ask Gianna to get off my back for a moment.

"Are you sure…?" She asks, looking at me and I nod slightly. She does as I ask, and when she's off my back she takes a few steps back, peering out at the people in front of us. The gun remains in her hands, and over the course of the last few weeks I've been slowly teaching her how to use it so while she's not the most reliable shot in the world she's competent enough and I can course correct her attacks with my telekinesis anyway.

My clone's actions allow me to learn that the other humans with the belligerent man are not fond of him but they fear the consequences of disunity if he succeeds. They are all just cowardly, due in part to having seen the man in action before and knowing that he is a threat in a fight.

As I look at him I subtly feel the effects of "Priority Target" activate. PT is a perk that lets me understand the relationships between others, and it gives me the instincts needed to know how to safely navigate and dismantle a complex web of interpersonal relationships. I've used it before, in Stoneboro, but never offensively like this. I get the sense that if I soundly defeat this guy I can easily cow the others into putting down their arms.

The man is a tall figure, with the build of a quarterback. He is wearing multiple layers of clothes, definitely for the sake of defending himself against simple entity attacks. That tactic might work against hounds, maybe even make partygoers have to work a bit harder for their kills, but it wouldn't work against me. He wields a handmade stone weapon, specifically a maul.

I fully turn on various auras I possess that I normally leave off, abilities which have not been helpful in the time since I entered the backrooms since until now my enemies have not been human and/or social. These powers have ominous names like "You're All Going To Die" and "Harm Aura", and they allow me to debuff my enemies just by being close to them.

I focus on the man and hit him with a particularly nasty effect by targeting his ego. I don't say a thing and instead I lock eyes with him as I activate a power named "Impatience". This power takes hold of the man immediately, and he snarls at me as he opts to lunge at me.

"Impatience" is a perk that messes people up by filling them with levels of recklessness and suicidal courage. Normally the perk affects multiple people at once and is diluted by that, but I am focusing it on the lone belligerent who feels like trying to mess me up which causes it to be dramatically focused and far more powerful. Time slows, thanks to more of my perks, as he lunges at me and when Gianna moves to raise her weapon and fire it I gesture for her to relax. She hesitates but doesn't take any shots, and I grin as I watch the bully charging at me move in slow motion towards me.

I dart towards him, making full use of my superior agility to effortlessly close the distance between the man and myself. He doesn't get a chance to even widen his eyes before I lash out. I extend my arms and use my bicep to knock the asshole's handmade hammer out of his hands, even as I continue moving and proceed to fully tackle him. The moment that I make contact with the man's bulky frame I activate my charging ability and send the man sailing through the room. He lands ungracefully on his back and blood begins to seep out of his eyes. The blood is because of my aura, which passively damages my enemies internally, though at the speed that I am moving, I doubt he'll even really feel the damage caused by my blows.

The sheer speed of this set of movements is blinding and I'm not done yet. I charge towards him and pounce on him when I reach where his fallen form lies. I will electrical energy to fill my fist as I punch the man's chest. Electricity enters him and I feel him begin to seize and spasm as my power rocks his body. I retract my fist and get up before I stop purposefully speeding up my perception of time.

"Dumbass." I remark as man's allies turn in confusion. The man is out cold but alive, and when the people accompanying him see him I hear several shocked gasps. I glance at the man's followers, and study them more.

There are two men and two women. One of the women is a dark-haired girl who has the energy and appearance of a high schooler, though she's probably an upperclassman, and the other girl is a tanner girl with lighter hair who has the same apparent age as me. Both of them are armed, the dark-haired girl with the spear, and the lighter-haired girl with a handmade knife. The two guys with them are both on the shorter side with the same color of hair and are actually related, being two brothers according to the engrams I have of them and they are between the ages of the two women, maybe about the same age as college freshmen.

The others are paralyzed with fear, but I make no moves to approach them. I haven't used any powers, other than my electric fist, and I'd rather not use my powers on these cowards. I glance at Gianna and nod for her to come over to me.

"Does anyone here think they can fare better against me than… your boss?" I ask, as Gianna joins me. The others pause, examine me, glance at the jock, and then shake their heads. I nod at them.

"Good. Now can you retrieve your man and go away?" I state, glaring at the lot of the wanderers. I take a few steps away, Gianna follows after me, and we watch as the conscious men step forward and retrieve their comrade. When they return, dragging the unconscious asshole who wanted a fight, I look at them and decide to ask them a question.

"Why were you up on the catwalk?" I ask. The one to answer is one of the women.

"We are adventurers. We were following up on rumors about a mythical vault located in the middle of the level. According to some old wives tales it's filled with treasure." The girl remarks. I glance at her curiously.

"The… 'middle' of the level? How would you get there?" I ask, legitimately curiously. She points straight upward and I sigh, nodding as a lot of different things suddenly make sense all at once. For a second I'm silent before I mentally test something: I reach inward and mentally make following up on the rumors that these dummies heard a goal of mine. The instant that I do a part of the glowing trail I've been following branches off and snakes upward to the catwalk. This is annoying but not surprising.

I mentally order one of my clones to follow this particular line of inquiry curious to see where this'll lead. My clone does this without hesitation, and I mentally thank the figure before turning my attention back to the scene in front of me. I watch as the figures quietly thank me for not killing their companion, and then run off in the direction Gianna and I came in.

When they are gone I turn to my companion and I ask her if she wants to continue walking. She nods brightly at me and we continue our journey.

The thing about the backrooms that I have found that the media I was familiar with didn't prepare me for was the long stretches of boredom. I know people tried to convey the vastness of this place, but nothing short of actually being here can properly prepare someone for the incomprehensible vastness of this place. Gianna and I wander for hours before we call it quits. When we do I lead us to my outpost and we begin to rest.

At this point I trust Gianna enough that I don't bother using my perk to make an object immobile on her door. I do utilize a handful of my abilities to summon generic gangsters and station them on the outside of the outpost, but that is mostly to keep out any entities, or to give me advance notice that some are lurking around. Meanwhile my clone in Stoneboro is tending to patients in the community and endearing himself to them.

As I get in bed and prepare for the night ahead I will my clone to continue traveling. He's been following the quest trail for several hours now, and has passed by hundreds of entities that are patrolling the catwalk high in the skies above the level. Clever usage of perks allows my clone to avoid notice while still studying the monsters and by the time I, my true self, am awake my clone has a full report for me noting that it has flown over a few settlements and that it has seen several monsters from more deathmoths to goddamn partygoers.

In minutes Gianna and I are back out in the open and while we get moving my clone in Stoneboro wakes up and gets ready to start the day. One subtle thing that has changed since last night is that there is a pink aura around Gianna's head that I instinctively, supernaturally know is a manifestation of the "Dating Minigame" perk. This curious thing lets me know the sort of relationships people are willing to have with me, and I intuitively know that a part of Gianna's heart is open to us changing our relationship from just being friends and travel partners to being something… else. Something "more". I think about the possibility of us being something more while we get going.

This marks another moderately uninterrupted period of travel wherein Gianna and I get to go and get our cardio in every single day while one of my clones follows up on the rumors of treasure. My clone in Stoneboro is busy living a decently domestic life and is getting plenty of chances to hone the powers of "Living Legend", "Professional Expertise", and even "Prior Training"; a perk that gives me a decent threshold of experience with powers and skills I will be gaining throughout my chain.

During this time I quickly realize that if I were on a normal chain and this was a period-based jump Stoneboro and the UNCB would be perfect for me… I could easily stay on this level and spend my days here as a doctor, helping people and making use of my perk-granted experiences to subtly guide a community. My chain, however, is not normal and I will not leave this place unless I reach level 12, The Ruined City, which is something that is further complicated by the bizarre breaks in reality occurring that allow entities from other continuities to slip into this particular multiverse.

Gianna and I continue our ceaseless wandering, making our way towards some hatch or something that should allow us to slip into the level known as The Sub-Basement. For the next few days Gianna and I steadily make progress, gradually wandering through mostly peaceful hallways and large rooms, only occasionally encountering traces of monsters or having to avoid corpses tossed down to the ground level from the catwalk. All the while my clone ethereally darts above the catwalk, covering dozens of miles a day thanks to our significant abilities related to motion, travel, and flight.

About a full week passes before anything of note happens, as our days tend to be fairly monotonous and one note, but when actual events occur they are significant. And this is no exception: my traveling partner and I find ourselves at one end of the largest single chamber I've ever seen. What's more is that in the distance we see the second settlement I've encountered so far in The Backrooms, an utterly gigantic city with full buildings made from stone that stretch hundreds of feet into the air but still don't quite reach the catwalks that dot the skies and provide much of the illumination that makes vision possible for normal people. I see distant figures armed with fully modern weapons and as Gianna and I approach the city I opt to let her take the lead here.

When we reach the edge of the city we find ourselves getting in a long line of disheveled-looking wanderers who have certainly lacked Gianna and I's luck or my perks and items. Gianna looks at me surprised when we get into the line, and openly questions my judgment.

"You know that if this is a UNCB city we could potentially find a way to communicate with your mom right? Or at least find other travelers heading deeper into The Backrooms and thus travel a touch more safely." I remark, surprising her and making her smile. She beams at me, apparently having not considered the possibility of inter-level communication (which is admittedly an unlikely prospect), or at least the more real possibility of safety in numbers and us making friends we can use and be used by as a means to get into the deeper reaches of the level.

There are levels much safer than here, so there's gonna be plenty of people who want to brave some of the dangers of the next handful of levels to get to a spate of safe places. If we can find some of them we can gather a small party and venture as a group towards the areas that are a bit more dangerous than here like The Sub-Basement and The Electrical Station.

I nudge Gianna to take a slight leadership role as we approach the city's entrance, and she willingly takes the lead, knowing that I support and trust her. When we reach the entrance, the gate that separates the city from the rest of the gigantic chamber, Gianna approaches a guard who is tasked with the unpleasant duty of interacting with visitors and deciding who should be allowed entry and who shouldn't. I curiously follow close behind her, eager to see what she does and to determine if any of my perks will need to be used…

The Game of Life is in play right now, having suffused Gianna over the months we've been traveling together. It should be strong enough, at least coupled with Gianna's status as a citizen of the UNCB, that we can at least enter the city… I am a touch concerned regarding Gianna's unique heritage as some sort of hybrid, but if worse comes to worse I'll intervene and protect her. She happily darts towards the guard and cheerfully introduces herself, causing me to laugh as I walk towards the two.

 

[TrueHam689]

thanks for the chapter

 

[LucianoWrites]

Chapter 19

"Hi there! My name is Gianna." Gianna chirps cheerfully as she boldly approaches the guard who serves as a sort of gatekeeper and works to keep out dangerous people. I scan the man and get a sense of his heart, allowing me to realize that his loyalty to the city is sincere.

"Hello Gianna, why do you want to enter New Benning?" The man politely asks. Gianna's eyes widen when she learns the place's name.

"I'm a UNCB citizen and I want to learn about New Benning!" She almost barks, but she has a sweet and excited voice so it's quite endearing. I can sense the subtle improvements to her native charisma, which is probably quite high innately, brought on by The Game of Life. The perk is one of my secret weapons and it is minorly contagious so long as my allies are using it either for our mutual benefit or in the name of my goals and objectives.

"Hmm… Where do you come from?" The guard asks, and this elicits an immediate reaction from Gianna.

"The Almond Fields! I'm from the settlement of Mrovhah-Kozudia." Gianna tells the guard, repeating things she's learned about herself from our interactions. A few weeks ago I began to share my book with her, having used "Transmogrification" on the book I own to make it reflect different pieces of the cover story I told her several months ago. The book is filled with information on the different levels throughout this bizarre multiverse of horrors, and one of the levels it has information on is the level known as The Almond Fields. She talks about her family and explains that she got separated from them one day and then ended up in The Halls shortly before encountering me. I nod at the man who nods back at me.

"And now we're trying to get me back home. I'm hoping that we can learn the way back home and also make some friends who'll come with us at least part of the way." She tells the guard who pauses and considers what she has revealed. Eventually, he turns and looks at me before asking me what my deal is. I grin at him, something he can sense even beneath the mask I'm wearing.

"I'm Luciano and I'm a wanderer who showed up in The Halls a few months back. I survived because I came across some notes created by wanderers who had set up a small camp not super far from where I first arrived. I met Gianna and saved her from a bad end and we decided to explore together. I don't really have any long-term goals or anything…" I remark, lying at the end.

I don't tell people about my final objective. The Ruined City is the level at the very end of the normal, somewhat easily comprehensible levels and it, as far as this version of The Backrooms goes, is a brutal gauntlet of a level. People would think I'm crazy if I said I wanted to go there. They'd think I was even crazier if I said why I wanted to go there since I don't have one of those "People believe you when you tell the truth" perks. For now, one of my biggest reasons to protect Gianna, in addition to it being the right thing to do, is the fact that she provides me with a fantastic cover story for why I'd choose to leave the relative safety of a city like this one.

The guard considers my explanation and I watch as he feels the effects of the social perks I am armed with. The effect doesn't hit him like a truck, partially since I'm not super interested in using them to get this guy to abandon his home, but I watch him contemplate the tale Gianna and I have told. That's not to say that we're lying, especially since Gianna isn't lying, but more to articulate what's going on from her perspective. The man is quiet for several moments before he nods at us.

"Alright, so I'm gonna let you in. My advice is for you to go and see The Hatch and then head over to a pub or something. Inside you'll find plenty of people who want to venture deeper into Limspace. If you really can fight then there'll be plenty of people who want to go with you." The man advises, and Gianna happily nods at him while I also nod respectfully.

"If you're really from The Almond Fields you're very far from home. The fact that you even know about that level suggests you are, though, but I've never seen anyone from there this 'close' to Baseline…" The guard tells us, and though I don't say anything internally his remarks worry me.

I've also never heard of someone going from Gianna's birthplace to The Halls either, it wasn't listed as being possible in canon or even in my book. For a while now I've wondered if it was a manifestation of the same stuff that makes it possible for entities from other continuities to slip into this place. There's no actual reason for me to believe that the partygoer and facelings I encountered earlier in my travels were somehow the first entities from an alternate reality to slip into this universe.

The guard in front of Gianna and I speaks, seemingly directing the sentence towards no one. He says "Let them in", and then gestures for us to walk past him, which we do after Gianna thanks him for his time. We step past the guard and no one tries to stop us.

We walk at a brisk pace as we step into the city, and I'm quite glad that I'm wearing a mask as it allows me to hide the goofy smile on my face. Ahead of us, we can see wide streets and countless people wandering the popular roads in the distance.

I guard and guide Gianna as we step onto a sort of handmade sidewalk. The roughly hewn sidewalk feels a touch uncomfortable but at this point, I've built up a somewhat staggering amount of endurance seeing as I've walked for hours every day for well and truly hundreds of days in a row at this point.

I tap the wolf-girl's shoulder and point in the direction we're heading, which is presumably the direction of the hatch that will lead us to The Sub-Basement. I am guiding Gianna in the direction of the Quest Marker's glowing line, and we take several minutes and march past countless people and small, simple vehicles.

The city is a bizarre set of structures, large and impressive buildings made from concrete and other materials present on the level. I study and occasionally scan the various buildings around me, just in case I can get a perk that allows me to create generic versions of the stuff in my internal database from nothing but mental energy. Such an ability would be handy if I ever get to visit Minecraft.

The skies above us gleam with the flicking lights of the structure known as The Cogwell Matrix, the bizarre maze of catwalks and pathways that are infested with monsters. Some of the buildings in the city are tall enough that their tops are not a world away from the lowest-hanging rows of catwalks and for a second I wonder if the roofs of those buildings are patrolled by guards... They'd have to be, for the buildings themselves to be habitable, right?

Gianna and I continue our journey deeper into the city, walking past restaurants filled with people who scream the names of orders at customers and at the chefs. The distinctive scent of some gross mushrooms, presumably harvested from The Halls, fills the space around several of the buildings.

Gianna and I get to walk for a decent bit of time before we reach the outside of a large circular building and I note how the Quest Marker trail leads into it. The inside is obscured somehow, but my companion and I are able to step inside the building with no real difficulties and when we step inside of it we find ourselves in an intimate chamber where a small hatch is covered by a strange manhole cover. We look at it and then at each other before nodding.

"Okay so here's the way out. Cool." Gianna says as she approaches the manhole. I smirk at her and chuckle as she studies it. The wolf girl seems impatient, and to be fair I get it. This is the first time in a good long while that we've made progress that actually feels like progress and we both know that we need to take a minute and catch our breath before we dive into a whole new Limspace. I allow her to study the hatch, memorize every detail of it, and finally come to grips with the fact that for a short while, maybe a few days maybe a bit longer, we're gonna be here. Eventually, I walk up to her and place a hand on her shoulder.

"Come on, let's head to a pub." I tell her. She stiffens for a second before taking a deep breath, relaxing, and turning around to face me. We march out of the space and step past people who head into it. As we walk away from the building I hear the sound of the manhole cover being lifted and then the soft sounds of someone bravely beginning to walk down it. I silently offer them a word of luck as my companion and I head back into the city.

Before long we find ourselves inside of a seedy pub somewhere in the city. The atmosphere is tense, and I can spot numerous people peering at us with leery looks. I study them in turn as Gianna and I step toward a large bar at the back of the establishment. When we reach the space a man smoking a cigarette, something I never thought I'd see in The Backrooms is idly cleaning a glass. I decide to take the lead this time.

"Hello, my name is Luciano and my friend and I," I gesture to Gianna who waves brightly. "Are looking to recruit a party to head deeper down. Mind if we… just let you know what's up with the two of us?" I ask and the man grins. He kneels and grabs something from the other side of the bar before placing it on the barrier between us. I glance at it and am surprised to see that it's an old-fashioned piece of paper, a contract.

"I take it you're new here?" The man asks, a glint in his eyes. I nod at him and he lets out a dark laugh.

"So there's a way to do things in this city, my new friend. We don't have anything resembling a standard economy, everyone here offers services in exchange for access to a basic suite of rights." The barkeep tells me, his eyes glowing with sinister delight.

"Those who work have access to a basic set of rights, such as the right to a meal, the right to water, and the right to a place to sleep. Others who come here have to trade to get such things and are usually not going to get lucky." The slimy man tells me. Gianna looks at the man and glares in annoyance.

"Alright, let me read the contract." I remark, causing the man's eyes to widen in surprise. He slides me the paper and I begin to scan it.

I actually don't mind the prospect of staying here a beat and catching my breath. This is a normal ass city, in The Backrooms, I have no clue whether or not I'll find many more of these during my journey throughout this place, and very importantly, I have enough social perks between Social Butterfly from Chronicle and Generic Worldwalker's whole deal that I can definitely deal with the ramifications of this when the time comes for Gianna and I to bounce. I also have other perks that can help here, especially Railroaded which is a Generic First Person Shooter perk that allows me to draw all the action and plot to me, which basically guarantees that when I want to leave I can force circumstances and stuff to bend so that I can get out of the contract and leave. And that's assuming I don't decide to use my social perks to slip out of here.

Gianna looks at the contract, studying it intently, but her gaze eventually becomes unfocused as she gets bogged down in the thing's legal jargon. The contract, to my surprise, is pretty boilerplate. If I sign it I will be promising that I will work for forty hours a week, doing various tasks throughout the pub, and in exchange I get a small bed to myself in a communal space and a meal and some water every day. The contract stipulates a term of a month but also says that it automatically renews unless either party, the bartender or myself, say otherwise in a period up to a week before the renewal would take effect.

I sigh and sign the contract, aware that it's not some nefarious thing meant to try and legally entrap somebody but is just a reasonable list of expectations and an outline of just compensation in this new society. Gianna gets annoyed and huffs at me when I sign the thing.

The bartender is surprised by this and seems to be impressed by my initiative as he quickly reaches down to the underside of the bar and pulls out another piece of paper. I quietly wonder if this is the result of a specific perk, Charming Action Hero, a perk that allows me to show my best qualities to those I meet and make excellent first impressions. It seems to be, but regardless of whether or not it's a perk or just me having an instinctual affinity for the bartender, he is quick to grab some more paper.

"I like your decisiveness! Seeing as you've been bold, I'll go ahead and be bold as well. Each day some tavern worker goes from place to place collecting a list of all of the people who want to go on adventures. Just write your name, where you work, what skills you have, and what level you want to try and get to, or if you don't have a destination in mind write that down, and then I'll show you the ropes of your new job. Starting tomorrow you'll be working in the mornings and early afternoons." The bartender, who then tells me that his name is Jonathan, explains. I do as he says, writing down my name and Gianna's name, and explaining that we're both seasoned travelers who know The Backrooms well as well as outlining our intended destination: The Almond Fields.

The rest of the day passes in a blur. I get to training, a sort of brief orientation for what to expect in the days to come. I get told about how the city allocates several examples of Limspace minerals to each restaurant and business to use and to power assorted electronics and to do things like cooking and cleaning. I even get to try my hand at making a simple recipe using a small Backrooms mushroom. I don't do well, my I Get Knocked Down perk activates almost immediately but the end result isn't inedible so that's good. Plus I know I can get the hang of it, between I Get Knocked Down and a new Generic Worldwalker perk named Accelerated Learning which amplifies how fast I learn stuff by a significant margin. It'll just take some time.

When the day comes to an end I get told about the nearest communal space: a place not far from the tavern where some of the city's workers rest after and between shifts. Gianna and I quickly get going, minutes after leaving the two of us are in a large shared living space, and Gianna is sitting on the bed looking at me expectantly. We don't have much space or any privacy, and I chuckle as I look at her.

"No. Come on, the bed is yours." I remark, and the wolf-girl glares at me with an annoyed look.

"You're the person working and you want to sleep on the floor? Nope." She exclaims. Around us, various people are milling about, some of whom are eating a small meal. A few of them watch us enviously, some women jealous of Gianna, and some men jealous of me, some women jealous of me, and some men jealous of Gianna, while others chuckle as they watch us, under the mistaken impression that we're in a relationship. It's a sensible view to have, all things considered… Two attractive young people in a space like this, bickering like this, especially in a world as messed up as this one.

We bicker, playfully, for a short while before I talk Gianna into accepting the bed for tonight. I get comfortable, to the best of my abilities at least, on the cool stone floor and shut my eyes. In seconds I hear Gianna pass out, and I don't blame her. We've gotten used to a certain routine and this disruption to that routine is exhausting in its own right. I watch her for a short while before I feel myself drifting off to sleep as a strange notification appears in my mind's eye. I don't get a chance to read it as my eyes shut and exhaustion overtakes me.

I feel… strange as I come to. I instinctively realize that something is off when I see normal electric lights over me and a bizarre white ceiling of some sort. A fan whirs overhead and I feel oddly weak as I begin to get up.

I lift myself, enough to sit up straight at least, and realize that I'm on the floor of some positively out-of-place convenience store. The shelves are all empty, and not far from me is a strange cashier or employee of some sort who is frantically studying something in front of her, but her back is turned to me.

She is a short woman with black hair in pigtails, and I watch her as I get up. As I do something I do must alert her to my presence because she quickly turns around and smiles at me. Her eyes are obsidian orbs, and I quickly look away from them, thoroughly unnerved.

"Hi, Luciano! I'm glad you're finally awake." She tells me cheerily. She beckons me to walk towards her, and, seeing little other choice I do as she motions for me to do. All the while I study the store, and I note that the windows and the doors leading outside are all covered in mist. I look inward and find that the only perks I can feel within me are my Body Mod perks, and I dislike that. When I reach her she smiles at me.

"I have some stuff I want to tell you, but out of curiosity can you speculate as to where you are right now?" She asks quizzically. I look at the place and glance back at her. There is a strange familiarity to this place that resonates within me for reasons I can't articulate but I also can't quite figure it out. After a while, I begin to comment on my surroundings.

"So this is a store of some sort but it's bizarrely empty. There seems to be no way out, or at least no clear way out, suggesting it is something akin to a personal pocket dimension. You have a human-like appearance but your eyes…" I remark, as I suddenly realize what this might be. My eyes widen as I look at the stranger in front of me.

"Is this some sort of Essence Shop?" I ask, and this causes the woman to squeal in delight and grin mischievously at me.

Essence Shops are a slight variation on the setup of the Essence Meta CYOA, a real-world, collaborative Choose Your Own Adventure I was fond of before I embarked on my chain. They are a spin on the basic narrative setup that enables someone, in-universe, to get their hands on Essences similar to the Essence of the Assassin which is my base Essential Body Mod essence. In an Essence Shop someone can find an essence and buy it and them embark on the adventures the person actually doing the choose your own adventure in real-life has planned for their characters.

"Kind of! I'm impressed you got that. Was it the empty shelves?" She asks, a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. I chuckle awkwardly at her attempt at a joke, still powerfully confused as to what is going on. She notices this and sighs, but I can hear the humor in her exhalation. A bit later she looks at me with a mildly more serious look in her eyes.

"So I am in a bit of a bind. I'm something a touch above your pay grade, as you are little more than a slightly anomalous jumper but I made a slight mistake and I need your help to fix it." She tells me, cryptically.

"I'm more than willing to compensate you for your time and troubles," She says, as a small bottle suddenly appears on the countertop that separates her from any customers she may someday, sometimes, have. "But you see I am the reason why some things from the self-contained Backrooms multiverse encompassing the collective realities described in Backroom continuities are… glitching. There is a way to fix it, but I can't do it." She tells me, frowning.

"At the moment you and your benefactors are the sole figures who understand what is occurring, to the limited extent that anyone does. Your benefactors would struggle to intervene directly, and if I do then I make things worse. My very nature is corrosive to this kind of fractured reality, and your benefactors interfering would be… weird. You, on the other hand, have developed a very slight resistance to the sort of energies you'll be exposed to if I have you act on my behalf." She states, cryptically.

"In exchange, I wish to give you three boons. The first boon is one I will offer you regardless of your choice, the Essence of Afarkaup Avarkostir," She says and I feel my heart skip a beat when she says this.

What she has just offered me is something I created. A real-world version of an invention of my own design, an essence I made which gave those who selected it as part of the Essence Meta CYOA the effects of a popular, well-known perk from a specific jump document. The perk is an incredible game-changer for almost any jumper in the way that it modifies our ability to train and even just exist, tripling any positive outcome from our actions while deeply mitigating the negative consequences of our actions. I desire it, very deeply, and I feel my heart pound as I look at it.

"I will give you the effects of the cause of all of this trouble and chaos, the Essence of the Commanding General, and I will teleport you to the Almond Fields. In exchange I need you to go and collect, and drink, three potions scattered throughout here, throughout The Sub-Basement, and The Electrical Station. Each potion contains a fragment of The Essence of the Commanding General, which itself confers upon its imbiber the powers of two combat and conflict-based jump documents. I was in the process of preparing to Inspire someone with it when I lost it and it blinked through realities until it crashed here, sending local multiversal energies through this continuity." The creature states.

I pause and consider the offer on the table. I eventually look at her and ask a question.

"If I take you up on your offer will this fix the damages caused by the essence ripping through reality?" I ask, and this causes her to beam at me and nod excitedly.

"Yes! If you can get rid of the potion, or rather the potions, then yes the barriers between realities will have a chance to heal. You are a multiversal being so your body can naturally weather multiversal energies but this reality is not so shielded so the energies are corroding and breaking down the natural walls that keep each reality in this multiverse apart." She states, and this makes me nod. I put my hand on the bottle she put between the two of us.

"I'll do it. Partygoers being able to wander around here sounds like it might just be the start of the dangers to this reality if I don't act." I state, pragmatically. The entity, something I've dubbed an Essence Entity in some of my pre-jumpchain stories, grins brightly at me. I sense my hand suddenly phase through the bottle and I touch the liquid within, which causes me to gasp as I feel it suddenly seep into my skin. The power of Afarkaup Avakostir suddenly infuses me and I feel its power coursing into my cells and suffusing them with powerful creative energy. The entity smiles at me darkly.

"Excellent! The first of the potions you need to down is one of the objects located in the middle of the level, in the supposed treasure trove some people believe exists there." The entity tells me, even as I see my surroundings begin to blur.

"Okay… You're waking up. You'll remember this dream. Thank you. And good luck. If you complete your task I'll keep my end of the bargain." She tells me with a cheery look. I grin back as I watch my surroundings fade into nothingness and then suddenly wake up in the room I was just in. The notification appears again, and warns me of a "Strange, outside reality being" drawing near. I check my internal stores of energy and my perks and I notice a new one: Afarkaup Avakostir in my possession. I glance at my internal inventory and am delighted to see that a part of the essence and perk are working already: I now have three of every item I had before I fell asleep.

The perk and the essence are real… How remarkable.

In the distance, I hear someone approaching Gianna and I and waking people up so we can get ready for work. I mentally check in on my clones and I am unsurprised to see all of them diligently doing the tasks they were told to do. I grin as I get up and awaken my companion.

 

[LucianoWrites]

The Essence Of Afarkaup Avarkostir
This essence tastes like the feeling that accompanies watching a really good prank's punchline. All parts of this are optional, and you can ignore the expanded math if you like the base version of this from the jump better.

• By downing this essence you have simultaneously gained a multiplier and a divisor, one that always works to protect and help you. It functions based on the power of threes.
• As an example of how this essence works, let's say that a motel room costs forty-five dollars a night. In order to get to sleep there one night, you'd only have to pay five dollars. The basic math here is that the cost of the room is reduced to fifteen dollars, and each dollar YOU pay has the same value as three dollars. If you paid forty-five dollars, you'd be able to stay in the room twenty seven nights (since the end results of things ALSO get multiplied by three, so it goes from staying nine nights (the base math) to multiplying that initial nine by three) without anyone finding it odd.
• As a further example of this, in order for you to make one meal, you'd only need one-third of the ingredients, one-third of the time, and any meal you'd make would be three times as good and could feed three times as many people.
• This functions for EVERYTHING, not just things you buy, sell, or make. You'd only need to study or train a third as hard as anybody else, and you'd see greater gains from it then they would. You only need a third as much sleep, food, or water, and every bit of sleep, food, or water you get is three times as potent and sustaining as it'd otherwise be, effectively reducing your needs to a NINETH of their base. So a human adult male, who normally needs (roughly) 2,500 calories a day only needs 277 (roughly) calories a day with this essence. Adult human men need about 7 hours of sleep a day... you only need forty five minutes.
• You get three times the stuff when you purchase something, and that's only if you purchase something at the third of a cost you'd pay. If you pay the full price, the three times becomes nine times, given how this maths out. This does not negatively affect the original owners of the things, so if you buy one packet of noodles your noodles will multiply post-purchase, effectively instantly producing the two ADDITIONAL packets from nothing. No one will question this unless you yourself point out how odd it is.
• Additionally, you can tell anything's exact value with a glance and you can buy it even without being able to find the owner and even without the owner's consent. This means you can buy something like a national park, or one's house, BUT you do have to pay the cost. The money paid will transfer over to the owner, or in the case of something unclaimed like a tract of land that belongs to no one, the money will vanish.
• If you make a deal that requires something more esoteric then exact, literal money you can substitute stuff, so long as SOME effort at equivalency is made. A deal that requires a human soul? Have some lifeforce instead. You need to give up your freewill for a bit? How about they can command your servants to do something basic once a day for a while instead? There has to be SOME effort at an equivalent exchange, but this is real loose.
• Things that are YOURS are known to be yours and people can determine not only that they are claimed but who they are claimed by at a glance. You will know who stole something of yours if they dare to do so, and can track them unerrringly.
• Things lent to you function at their full power, and are considered YOURS for the duration of the loaning period. This means that if someone loans you a weapon but does not set a "Return by" date, the thing is yours and can even be used against them to its full effect.

 

[LucianoWrites]

"Good morning Gianna!" I remark cheerily as I lightly touch the wolf girl's shoulder. This is, in all honesty, the cheeriest I think I've been the entire time I've lived in The Backrooms. She stirs quietly, and as she does I begin to process the significant effects of the essence that I made which is now flowing through me.

Afarkaup Avarkostir is a phenomenally powerful "Capstone" perk, the most expensive, most powerful perks that would be discounted to someone who takes a specific origin. My other capstones right now are The Game Of Life, I Get Knocked Down, Supernatural Savant, Lifting Yourself Up, and Misery Loves Company, all of which are perks that give me viable strategies for dealing with assorted foes and existing in a range of capacities. Gianna sleepily wakes up as I continue to contemplate the stunning fact that I have AA this early in my chain.

AA is a stunningly powerful quality of life perk that, before I began my chain, was the sort of thing I dreamed of having in real life. At its core it gives me a rather peculiar ability that even I, in my obsessive fascination with jump documents, have only ever seen in a handful of other places: an internal multiplier and divider that warps reality in ways that revolve around threes. The basic gist of it is that it reduces things by a third of whatever they are supposed to be when doing so would be beneficial to me, and then triples something when doing so would be beneficial.

On a very simple, superficial level the essence-granted version of the perk is a neat thing that allows me to do stuff like pay a little more than a dollar and a half for something that costs fifteen dollars, or sell something that costs twenty dollars for what amounts to one hundred and eighty. My Essence version of the already strong perk takes it to its natural logical conclusions in ways that the original perk sometimes stops short of, doing things like slashing things such as my bodily needs in the same way it slashes prices I need to pay for stuff.

Gianna silently gets up and rubs her eyes as I decide to flex one aspect of the essence-granted perk by studying my environment. I examine Gianna's clothes and as I do a price tag appears in my mind's eye which informs me of the cost of her clothing. I am fascinated by the fact that the price tag has multiple currencies, from a normal dollar amount to a series of pictures of various items, which is a reflection of the effects of the boost to the perk some jumpers can choose to invest in. I grin at my wolfish companion and help her get up.

"Good morning…" She says, sleepily as she studies me.

"You seem weirdly cheerful. Did I miss something?" She asks curiously and I allow my smile to widen as I laugh lightly.

"No, I'm just excited to be here." I explain, only somewhat lying. I am excited to be in a city, one with people at that. Not only are some of my strongest abilities my social ones, I actually have some unique new ways to engage with my stuff now, ways that make it worth it for me to share my stuff. I take off my backpack and place it on her lap, which is enough to instantly and fully wake her up. She pauses as she looks at me and I laugh lightly before beginning to explain what I am doing.

"I'm giving you my backpack. I was planning to give it to you earlier, but in all honesty things got so hectic yesterday that it slipped my mind. I have other ones so it's cool, just take this one." I reveal. Her eyes widen, and I can sense the joy she feels as she looks at me with barely hidden emotion. She takes the backpack and her expression just melts into one of ecstatic joy.

For a moment a clever part of me wonders about something I hadn't contemplated until just now… How are items like Outpost Apollonian going to be affected by AA? My items are fiat-backed, including the outpost, so logically I should have three of them now but I'll need to investigate that on my own sometime.

"Okay so let me tell you how my backpack works." I say to Gianna as I open the thing and reveal its internal components to her. Her eyes widen as she sees its interior for the first time. I quietly smile as I allow her to take it in.

"I'm giving you permission to use this, which means it will register you as a full user. This matters, as anyone who steals it will not be able to use the backpack or what is inside of it." I reveal, confidently. This is true, it's a component of AA that is one of its mightiest traits given how powerful fiat-backed items can be. Even my current items include several arsenals, body armor, and what is effectively unlimited personal scale food and water. Theoretically someone has all they really need to survive this, usually, not super dangerous continuity of The Backrooms just in the confines of my backpack.

"Whoa… how does it work?" Gianna asks, logically. I contemplate how to respond before giving her an answer.

"It's an anomalous object. It doesn't follow the rules of baseline reality but follows some bizarre Backrooms rules. Until now we've never had to be apart, but since I'm going to be working… Well, while I'm working I'd like for you to go around and see if you can figure out a way to contact people on other levels. I don't know if inter-level communication is possible, but it's important for you to keep busy while we wait." I state, causing Gianna to nod at my remarks. The next few minutes pass in a relative blur as we begin to get ready.

As Gianna and I get ready for the new day I reach inward and contemplate something curious. I have an internal menu courtesy of Respawning Mooks. Respawning Mooks is one of my ultimate perks, an ability which allows me to do a lot with a little as even now I can spawn a handful of minions of assorted types and use them however I wish. One of the mechanics of this perk that matters a lot right now is the fact that this perk comes with the ability to buy assorted upgrades for my minions, upgrades which cost points that are a part of some internal facet of the perk itself.

A neat fact is that I can also spawn "Wanderers" now, who like the gangsters spawn into existence armed with melee weapons. This is in the wake of my encounter with the annoying would-be bandit from a while ago.

I glance at the upgrade prices and am delighted to see that they have been slashed as a result of AA. I do not have a clone I can spare at the moment that I can use to farm resources which is a shame since I can think of one surefire way to get a lot of in-store currency quickly… the catwalks.

The reduction of the prices for upgrades is so intense that a handful of them cost just over a thousand points, so much lower in cost that I'm actually not far from being able to earn them right now. I contemplate having a clone focus on gathering resources but I opt not to do that for the moment.

AA is a training booster, in addition to everything else, and it also reduces how much training I need to actually improve. This facet of it synergizes well with Lifting Yourself Up which is handy since LYU is an uncapper, a perk which removes hard limits on things and allows me to improve supernatural abilities. LYU has always assured me that someday my cloning ability, currently something I can only do with Four Players, will become a perk that allows me to create more than three clones.

Feeling a flash of inspiration I decide to test how conceptual I can get with AA's ability to allow me to know how much stuff "Costs" and focus on FP. This causes a notification to appear in my mind's eye telling me that I'm a week from FP improving, in the form of a clock that is winding down but one that winds down three seconds for every second that passes.

This is an excellent moment and I have to purposefully keep myself from cheering to hide my joy. This means that in a little under two and a half days, at least according to the math I do in my head, I will be able to create a fourth clone.

This news carries me as I walk to work. Gianna accompanies me and tells me she plans to go and explore the city today. I tell her that's a good plan, and I trust her ability to stick to it.

All the while my other clones are busy. One of my clones is with me, and ready to watch Gianna's back, while my other two clones engage in more substantive work. One of them is busy accruing social capital in Stoneboro, and the other is working on the mission the Essence Entity gave me and steadily making his way towards a fragment of the so-called "Essence of the Commanding Warlord".

I have a theory about the peculiar name of the essence the entity wants me to retrieve, kind of, but for now I don't want to get overly excited in case I'm wrong. If I'm right though, that essence is no joke…

Eventually I make it to the pub I'm going to be working at and Gianna and I split for the time being. My clone, using Wall Hack, is able to follow Gianna as she heads off to explore the city. I "clock into" work and begin my shift. Jonathan is quick to have me work as a waiter, and I am very happy to feel the effects of various skill boosters and learning boosts amplify the speed at which I adapt to what proves to be a very hectic and busy first day.

AA has immediate and noticeable effects on my life and my work. I feel my instincts adapting at profound speeds to the work I'm doing and the context I exist in, and it feels good. Each order I jot down and get to the kitchen, where several men and one woman are hard at work, allows me to improve the various skills I use as a waiter, from my "Normal" speed to my senses, to my skills with speedy memorization. Additionally I take this time to practice something I haven't really been focusing on as much as I should: my telekinetic abilities.

My unusual speciality when it comes to telekinesis has always been subtle and sensory things. Back in Chronicle I was the only one of the quartet I was a part of who could do stuff like create telekinetic feelers through which I could sense my surroundings, as well as the only one of us who really honed the fantastical art of manipulating multiple things at once. Normally over the course of the film the boys demonstrate some facet of subtle and sensory skills, but my targeted intervention and the nature of my perks prevented Andrew, the most dangerous of the boys, from having the motivation to take his telekinetic abilities in the right directions needed to really develop the same skills I honed.

I am careful in how I hone these abilities but I still make use of them. I do things like slow down a falling utensil enough for someone to catch it, or make sure people aren't stealing and foiling the few attempts to steal I detect with my unnatural abilities. When the day comes to an end Gianna returns to the pub and finds me, eager to tell me what she explored which mostly consists of her having done a few laps around the city and seeing about doing something like getting vehicles or asking about whether or not there are libraries in the city. We make our way back to the place we're going to be living in after we eat a brief, shared, dinner.

This marks the beginning of a new routine, one that proceeds with little changes of note for the next two and almost a half days. On each day I get a chance to show off my skills in a different area, from being a security guard for the restaurant to being in the kitchen, and each time I'm in a new place my prodigious learning speed really shines. When the improvement timer winds down I feel my Four Players perk essentially become a Five Players perk and I almost instinctively clone myself.

My clone appears nearby in an empty room used as a makeshift bathroom, before immediately using a perk I've almost never used named Cloaking System to turn invisible and walk out of the pub. The clone then uses their telekinetic ability to fly to take off into the skies above New Benning and darts off away from the city. The clone has violence on the mind, and I am delighted to allow it to indulge in what it's thinking about.

When the being reaches the part of the catwalk far from the city that is crawling with monsters like hounds, rollers, and other baddies, I sense it equip a powerful rifle and begin to unload on the enemies. I can faintly sense what is occurring to my clones even without focusing on them or them directly telling me, and internally my hands shudder with the faintest echoes of the recoil of the gun my clone is using on their foes.

The clone is an adept fighter, able to deftly use our assorted abilities to cleverly and efficiently lay waste to enemies. When a foe falls the clone will skillfully use telekinesis to reach out, grab the corpse, and turn it into multiple units of Respawning Mooks currency, and also uses various items of ours to their advantage, particularly Infinite Ammo, a hilariously powerful item that allows us to always have ammunition close at hand.

The clone is an unyielding beast in battle, effortlessly flying and inflicting carnage on the mass of supernatural monsters gathered on the catwalk. It especially enjoys using perks which reward violence, and I have no small abundance of those in my possession such as MDK a perk which makes me increasingly deadly for a short while after every time I kill or drop a foe and which stacks with itself. This perk builds on other perks such as Overkilling which causes excessive damage to leap from one foe to another, provided the enemies are close enough.

Minutes of the carnage atop the catwalks turns into hours and I am delighted when I make enough of the strange in-store currency I need to begin to purchase upgrades for my minions. I begin by purchasing guns for the gangsters, which my clone immediately uses to summon two tatted up gangbangers who hold pistols and who are immediately lifted into the air by my clone's telekinesis. The newly formed three man squad begins to rip and tear into the swarms of entities atop the network of catwalks.

For the next few days my clone continues to carve a brutal swath through the endless hordes atop the flicking catwalks. As they do this I gleefully take advantage of the synergies between Respawning Mooks and AA to purchase new upgrades for wanderers, who my clone also summons to have a small pack of lackeys that can help corral enemies into places where even single shots can devastate them when enough instances of MDK increasing the damage of each of my clone's strikes overlap with Overkilling.

My clone knows better than to go ham on these foes, since we have weapons like grenades and rocket launchers which would be hilarious in a battle like this but would also potentially allow monsters to more easily reach the floor of the level. I refuse to be the cause of so much carnage, especially if I can't stick around and fix my mistakes.

In time we earn enough points to purchase upgrades that allow us to do things like buy upgrades to the speed of the deathmoths and to the size of hounds, but for now I don't bother summoning any such monsters. I don't need to summon them and there is a cap on how many of any one type of being I can summon at a time, a cap which is slowly inching towards improving but a cap which is pretty tight right now.

A full week of work and near constant carnage atop the matrix before I gain enough in-store currency to purchase the ability to summon and desummon my first vehicle from within the menu. The vehicle is a four wheel dune buggy, and is an incredibly handy thing that I eagerly buy the ability to summon. It is a handy, slim vehicle perfect for allowing Gianna and I, and any companions we will eventually meet, to be able to efficiently travel across The Sub-Basement when we eventually go there, as well as surely helping us traverse places like Gianna's home and even me if I eventually get to The Ruined City.

As my clone continues their rampage across the catwalks I myself revel in the unbridled potency of my social perks and my ability to learn and train at stunningly superhuman rates. I get more and more work and on days when I am not cooking I get to make more and more friends.

I enjoy the stability of having a regular job and being in one location in much the same way that my clone in Stoneboro enjoys this kind of thing. And he distantly appreciates the reward I received as part of my quest to stop this reality from breaking down due to the lost essence somewhere in the level, since it allows us to more easily make medicine and to extract a hilarious amount of utility out of the scant few medical supplies we can fashion in this level. What's especially powerful, though, is the impact of Living Legend mixed with our steadily increasing amount of skills.

In both New Benning and Stoneboro I feel the profound social impact of my learning speed mixed with the heroic potential of Living Legend in the steady increase to the number of people who go to the pub. When I'm busy in the kitchen the number of people who request dishes I make, such as a mean mushroom stew, skyrocket. By the time each of my shifts comes to an end I see more and more people with the same auras as Gianna, indicating a romantic and sexual interest in me. In time I spend more and more time in the kitchen, which is probably good for the restaurant given AA's unique ability to allow me to use only a third of the food I need to make a dish and the fact that each dish I end up making is tripled.

During this time my other clones continue their work, doing minor things in the case of my clone tasked with protecting Gianna, and ceaselessly moving closer and closer to the middle of the level in the case of the other clone. About eleven days after I first enter New Benning, my most important clone, the one following up on the quest given to me by the Essence Entity, finally reaches a place where the glowing trail we can see produced by Quest Markers changes direction and dips beneath the catwalk. My clone, able to fly, easily descends to ground level and I finally spot the exterior of the infamous vault in the middle of the level.

My rampaging clone desummons the minions he has accompanying him, allowing their respawn timer to begin to countdown, just in case my clone at the vault needs some assistance. The vault in front of my clone as I opt to switch consciousness with him is a large thing made of some local metal. We switch places, perception-wise, and I find myself in front of the door.

I take a cautious step towards the thing and I am surprised when I see it seem to glitch out momentarily like I am in a video game. The sight unnerves me, though I recognize that this is a hopefully harmless and short lived instance of reality wigging out due to the proximity of the essence, somewhere beyond the vault door.

I put a hand on the door and feel its firmness and rigidity ensure that I won't be breaking into it with ease. Thankfully I am not a hammer when a scalpel will do, I am an impressive multitool capable of an array of feats. I shut my eyes and walk forward as I will Wall Hack to activate. I step to where I should collide with the vault and instead I phase into the barrier, and for a split second everything is dark. I immediately move forward, and when I do I find myself in the unlit interior of the vault, but my way forward is illuminated by the glowing trail of Quest Markers.

On this side of the vault I am also surprised to distinctly hear the sounds of motion and activity… Someone else is here, somewhere. I glance in the direction of the sounds, which come in a direction way off from the trail I need to follow, and am surprised when the floor beneath me glitches out abruptly. The effect is harmless to me but it's visually jarring and emotionally disruptive. I huff in annoyance and glance in the direction of the trail before I begin to follow it. Hopefully when I get my hand on the essence and drink this portion of it down stuff can begin to stabilize…

 

[LucianoWrites]

This is gonna be relevant soon so have a link to the version of Generic Worldwalker that came out some time ago.

 

[LucianoWrites]

The original link doesn't work, but some homie created a Backup. Let's gooo!