Psycher Chronicles

Chapter 55

Mission Complete

(Hasty)

Exhale.

Finally, after years of being stuck. After years of being told she had messed up, that she would never be able to achieve the next phase of existence she did it, Hasty managed to finally make it through her bottleneck and become a Tier II Reaper, whatever that meant.

Actually, just being able to know that she wasn’t alone was a relief in and of itself. For the first few years, being the only one of one was a badge worth wearing with pride. Particularly as she could cut and choose the best of all abilities from others as she saw fit.

Yet, her growth was stagnant, as she had been stuck at the pinnacle of her evolution for years. Unable to improve her Attributes further. Unable to find any new or interesting Abilities. Worse, the Abilities that she did have seemed to pull and strain her body in ways she found most uncomfortable.

What use is it to be able to summon forth a fire, if it feels like your entire body is on fire while doing so?

Yes, having an impromptu pyrotechnic display is always nice and adds a flare of danger while singing a song about getting back at your ex, but did it always have to feel so painful?

Now, her body felt like it was once again able to grow, that there was another limit to how much she could grow and achieve in this lifetime. How she a girl who came from nothing with little more than a love for singing rose to the heights of stardom, and now not only did she find someone else that shared the same plight, a kindred spirit that she could finally talk to about everything, but she had made it.

Pausing she once again reread the prompt that flashed in her eyes when she first met and touched hands with ReaperOne, A.K.A. Misha Tulley.

Mission Completed: You managed to meet ReaperOne before the next scheduled uplink.

Reward: One Full Upgrade, now Tier II. 1.0 Body upgrades.

With that she saw the upgrade take place as her body that felt like it was near to bursting was finally able to relax slightly. Almost as if she had been in a cocoon for too long and was just now able to emerge and spread her wings.

Tier -II

Alternate-1: Speed and Stamina Build.

Ability Bonus: Sense Danger (3), Feral Weapons (2), Increased Durability (1), Enhanced Comprehension Speed (1), Commanding Voice (2), Allure (2), Enhanced Senses (1): Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell, Increased Attribute (1): Agility, Stamina;

Elemental Focus (1): Fire, Water, Earth, Air

Secondary Focus (2): Lightning – Prerequisite (Fire and Air)

Secondary Focus (2): Ice – Prerequisite (Water and Air)

Secondary Focus (2): Metal – Prerequisite (Earth and Fire)

Harvested Slot: NA

Physical Characteristics:

Strength: 14.9 -> 15.0 / 16.9

Dexterity: 14.9 -> 15.0 / 16.9

Agility: 20 -> 20.4 / 25

Stamina: 20 -> 20.4 / 25

New Abilities Available:

Warrior Class: Alpha (5)

Worker Class: Coven Leader (5)

Ruler Class: Primal Matriarch (5)

Looking at her sheet, she felt oddly relieved and impressed, particularly with the fact that she could finally break the fifteen-point threshold for both Strength and Dexterity, thanks to her one point in physical enhancements. That and the idea of finally being able to get new and powerful abilities caused something deep within Hasty to stir with excitement.

These were the powers of group leaders, those that would force those weaker in Tier ratings to combine their power and become more effective as a single cohesive unit. With these options, Hasty realized that she could now control and direct groups of the different classes to join her and do her bidding. That part of the sheet made sense, the new Abilities. Though there was one new section that took her a moment to think about, only to come up with no real answer to what or why it was there.

Pausing Hasty didn’t know what to make of the Harvested Slot. Though looking at ReaperOne, Hasty was fairly certain that the answer to what the Harvested Slot was could be answered by the senior, who seemed to carry herself with a refined dignity that only comes with age.

When she had first been assigned the mission to find the other Reaper, she was at first slightly angered by the fact that the other Reaper had somehow managed to learn some sacred insights that let Misha progress faster than her. Yet, after meeting the girl, it was apparent that she had something deeper to her.

Even now as she spoke only to her so-called friends about their life, ReaperOne remained oddly quiet and composed. Almost as if she only came to meet Hasty for the sake of the mission and nothing more.

Seeing the almost casual indifference to Hasty’s stardom, Hasty tried a different approach for understanding more about this enigmatic leader.

“So what would you like to do, now that we are all here in Pittsburgh?” Hasty asked.

SQUEALS!

The two friends ate up the comment hook line and sinker, while ReaperOne just continued to look on with a contemplative stare.

At first Hasty thought of this mystical ReaperOne as a rival that she would somehow have to best. Yet, through all things she held herself with a calm measured pace that never seemed to get too excited or too withdrawn.

Also staring into her emerald eyes, there was an electric potency that was unmistakable when just glancing at her. While it was clear that the girl before her was almost half Hasty’s age, she carried herself with the poise and dignity of someone who was royalty.

Perhaps it was only a matter of inevitability before she was overtaken by this emerging star, which was why the powers that be had clearly forced the change over that much faster. This of course set off a whole slew of ideas in her mind, where it implied that not only were the beings that provided these amazing powers and abilities constantly watching and monitoring, but they were able to see the potential of others before they had a chance to fully manifest themselves.

Realizing this and so many other oddities about what was happening, Hasty slowly found her mindset changing from the childish anger at being passed over by someone clearly younger and presumed to be inexperienced. To having a more begrudging acceptance of what had happened.

Regardless of how the rest of these tours went, Hasty was certain of one thing, that changing her entire venue and coming back to the states to search for the ReaperOne had definitely been worth it, as she was now excited to see a fellow kindred spirit, and quite possibly the little sister she never knew existed.

***

(Misha Tulley)

Interference.

If Misha had to describe everything going on around her at the moment it would all be summarized in that one simple word, interference.

First, there seemed to be ancient Psycher code particles transmitting constantly, but they were broken transmissions. Even taking into account the fact that different signals could be broken up, spliced, and then recombined later with vowels and letter combinations at similar frequencies the words she was picking up made no sense.

For Queen. Through

The Redemption Genocide.

As far as she could tell this was what the two Psycher codes were. The fact that they were Psycher codes was unmistakable, though they were clearly cruder models of the language, that or were being transmitted or replicated by people that only knew how the words should sound and not how to write them.

Honestly, Misha didn’t know if this was her seeing the work of a fellow Psycher, or if this was a Bakshee’s imitation of a semi-literate Psycher.

Clearly the person that put together this communication never had to build and rebuild countless communication systems for the mothership that would then be transferred out to the rest of the fleet. Nor did this person really know how to have overlapping bands produce one coherent and encrypted thought process that was incapable of being intercepted by the enemy.

The entire thing was just infuriating, and that was while she was waiting in line at the mall for the Hasty person to show up.

Fortunately, once Hasty appeared, things reacted quickly.

First upon contacting Hasty’s hand a hidden pulse relay response was released. The whole thing was rather odd and ingenious, basically inside her body was half of a dormant activation code that by itself just looked like random spliced code that was ultimately meaningless. Given how much random code was in her body that served no function, this improper coding seemed to be par for the course with the Bakshee.

Yet, after touching hands not one but two strands of code completed a connection. The first was the update to her applied mission state. The second was an external pulse of energy that apparently informed fleet command that the first provided mission was completed, when, and how much time remained. No doubt these factors would go into the future application of other missions, along with showing how interconnected the planet they were on was. Had it taken close to the full year, then the planet of course would be considered underdeveloped from a technological and mobility standpoint. Had they been able to interact almost immediately, it would show a greater degree of communication and transportation capability. Given that they were able to accomplish the implied task within a month showed high marks for being an interconnected world and that people on the world were able to move about fairly quickly.

At least, that is what Misha would have taken in from those measurements. While she couldn’t count on the Bakshee being as observant as she was, Misha knew that underestimating your opponent was always a foolish endeavor. Also, her apparent misclassification of the so called junk code strands within her organo-tech showed that her assessments might not all be fully accurate, and that she might need to work on inherent biases if she truly wanted to continue to improve herself.

That said, the message that was provided for her was somewhat underwhelming.

Mission Completed: You managed to meet ReaperTwo before the next scheduled uplink.

Reward: One Full Upgrade, 1.0 Body upgrades.

Yes, finding out that she had hidden code within her body that was waiting to be used to form completed bonds with others was both amazing and disparaging. Amazing in the fact that it could be done so flawlessly that Misha herself didn’t recognize the dormant code for what it was. Then disparaging in that this was all the mighty Bakshee could apparently do with such an impressive feat of coding that it went beyond her notice and scrutiny.

Then of course there was the seeming automatic upgrade that went on without any real work or effort.

Tier -III

Alternate-1: Speed and Accuracy Build.

Ability Bonus: Double Growth Rate.

Improved Harvesting (2)

Harvested Slot: Heightened Danger Sense (6)

Additional Harvest Slot: NA

Yes, from that upgrade a new Harvesting Slot was now available, meaning that she could try to find yet another Ability that she truly wanted and use that to build upon.

The fact that she went ahead and got Tier III right off the bat without needing to have her Attributes upgraded fully made her feel sort of empty inside.

Physical Characteristics:

Strength: 15.2 -> 15.3 / 18.9

Dexterity: 21.7 -> 22.1 / 30

Agility: 21.7 -> 22.1 / 30

Stamina: 15.2 -> 15.3 / 18.9

Yes, she distributed the one point equally in a one, four, four, one manner, but it still felt hollow with how little she was truly able to utilize the new capabilities of her new upgrade.

It wasn’t until she looked at her Reaper Abilities that her mind about the sudden changes to her body and system were suddenly halted. As for the first time in a long time she actually had not one, but three new options available.

New Reaper Abilities Available:

Class Evolution Growth (2): Warrior, Worker, Ruler.

That was it, not much for description on these Abilities, though from what Misha could tell or what she felt she could infer from the different Abilities was that with these new abilities, Misha might be able to selectively evolve the Attributes, Abilities, and the ultimate role that different groups within each major class can and will evolve.

Pausing for a moment, she realized that this was huge. The ability to specialize different groups to excel at one particular aspect, or to be able to adapt to certain harsh conditions over another would be invaluable with some of the planets that were noted as habitable, but unoccupiable due to terrain features and poison ratings. With this, Misha felt that it might be possible to biologically engineer groups of people who could survive on those harsh planets.

Then pausing, Misha realized that this thought was a half-implanted memory, half mentally provided recruitment thought on how to improve not just this world but others as well.

Following the thread of the thought, Misha was once again surprised to see the intricacies of the neural circuitry that the Bakshee were so famous for. This was literally an implanted memory, had she not been aware of the foreign thought taking root in her mind, who knew what could happen.

This of course, led her to the memory of how parts of her own mind were recently ripped out due to her hastily constructed network of interlinking thoughts to inanimate objects.

Misha had been sloppy, the fact that she let her mind get so stretched out that the simple act of breaking a connection caused her mental pains was a rookie mistake. Yes, she had never been trained on how to create such intricate networks on hostile territories before, but that didn’t completely excuse her from doing things like constantly keeping links open to her mind. That was the first issue, as the constantly open connections would allow for quick and violent feedback pain loops that would cause problems.

Focusing on that, she locked down her mind, making sure to only reconnect with her mentally established links if and when she wanted to.

Pausing, Misha thought for a moment then realized that was a good first start, but that she still needed to do more.

For now though, she was now protected against outside mental attacks coming into her mind. Now she had to try to see just how many more dormant thoughts were still lying in her mind, like live wires just waiting to be inadvertently touched.

Yet, before she could get too far down this train of thought, she was pulled from her own mental protections that she was putting in place, when she was asked.

“What do you say?” Darcy asked excitedly.

Pausing, Misha could see out of the corner of her eye that J-Sweep was also trembling with excitement and barely able to contain herself.

Realizing that something was apparently said and almost unanimously agreed upon, Misha could only fault herself for not being at least partially aware of what was happening around her.

Then not wanting to show she wasn’t actually paying attention to her friends, she decided to go with their clear excitement.

“Sure,” Misha said.

Squeals.

At that both Darcy and J-Sweep began to shake and scream with excitement as Darcy reached out her left hand to grab hold of Jasmine’s. Then only a second later did Misha look down to see that Darcy had place her hand overtop of Misha’s.

Looking down, she wondered when that happened. Then she wondered why it didn’t seem to bother her, as she almost always felt awkward while being touched. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Darcy was a mundane, Misha thought to herself. Yet, before she could get too lost in her own thoughts, Hasty spoke up giving some understanding of what exactly Misha had apparently agreed to.

“In that case, I’ll make the reservations right now.” Hasty exclaimed, then turning to the formal secretary to her side, she just stared.

“Oh, now you remember I’m here.” The formal secretary said, clearly joking as she began texting feverishly on her phone.

Seeing the phone, Misha reached out her mind and mentally connected to the device, reading its contents and then relaxing slightly at the idea, as the secretary’s text was fairly easy to comprehend.

Ms. Hasty has requested a spa day for herself, and three guests.

And like that, the status of being recognized as Hasty’s Helpers would officially begin.