The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

I continued with my self-assessment.

Impact Resistance. This gave me a straight-up resistance to impact and bludgeoning damage equal to my Might bonus, and reduced falling damage by ten feet per Wrath on top of that.

I’d Crystallized that to ALL types of physical damage, and with Roll With It allowing me to vent kinetic energy, I had DR 10/- right now... which was basically like pounding on someone made out of steel. I could probably take most small-arms fire...

As I got stronger, it would only go up. Right now, I could pancake from twenty feet up without any side effects, dispersing the impact over my body and into the ground. No injuries from falls, yay!

Covalent Bonding and Repulsion. I could force electron exchange by contact, basically fusing together myself and whatever I was touching in the area, as if we were welded together topically. Or, I could reverse the effect, repelling myself and the object from one another.

Notably, no kinetic energy creation involved in the latter, although if I didn’t want to be pushed away, I’d need to be braced. Look at who could use the opposite effect to create a perfect anchor...

The nominal effect was creating absolute friction on demand, i.e., I could stick to things, regardless of how slippery they were. The opposite was both creating an instant repulsion effect and going frictionless, i.e., I could slide on anything, or repel things from my skin.

Or, you know, shoot something down a tube by repelling it away from me. Or, if it was focused finely enough, cut something in half. The latter effect seemed like something that could ride really nicely on a Versatile Unarmed Strike...

I didn’t know how powerful the effect was yet, although just my toes or fingertips were strong enough to support my weight easily...

Healing Factor: I converted Health damage above 0 into temporary damage at the rate of Con/Health Bonus per hour, much like a Melee Class Vigor effect. That meant that dangerous wounds would close up and mend themselves, bleeding would stanch off, and the like. In another hour, they’d be gone entirely.

The Improved version extended that to lethal injuries below 0 Health (but not death), including the like of broken bones, and increased the effect by Wrath dice. It wasn’t Fast Healing, but it was certainly far faster than any normal human.

I’d have to build on it with the Toughness Mastery, of course...

Enhanced Climbing gave me a base Climb speed of half my ground speed, the climbing bonus that came from it, and the ability to Take 10 on all Climb checks. Given my perfect grip, strength to weight ratio, agility, and ability to avoid taking dangerous routes, this was entirely feasible. I could scamper up a wall almost as fast as an average person could move horizontally.

Increased Reaction Time was basically the slow-motion effect. In practical terms, I could take additional mental actions during a time period because I thought so fast, and I could see things which would be blurs of motion to normal people. This effect also scaled with Wrath. Every +2.5 was another doubling of reflex speed... and I might be powerful enough to actually adjust myself in time during slow-time, too...

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I had a bunch of things to think about.

The Pact wanted me to gain Levels in something, anything, and grow my Pact strength, and thus all the fun little things it had given me.

I wanted to get my spellcasting back. Not exactly the same thing. It was plain that my spellcasting had already been extremely impacted by this damn Pact, as my spellcasting style had completely changed with it, rendering much of Ael’s previous arsenal of spells moot... and requiring more magical rules abuse to get them back.

The Tropes system wanted to shove me down one of the three Paths... and I didn’t want either one it was shoving me towards, since I was picking Magic over Skill or Combat.

I was hoping Skill wasn’t totally locked, but I’d find out if I tried to take a Skills-centered Class, I guessed.

In the meantime, it was time to pawn some stuff, which first meant some groundwork.

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May 4, 1974.

I kind of rocked on my feet. That was... almost back when Aelryinth was born. Given I was fourteen physically right now, this girl had been born in the 60’s? Earlier, if that was an old cryo tube?

The paper I’d nabbed was full of interesting things that diverged a whole hell of a lot from the world I knew...

One, the President of the United States was nobody I knew or remembered... and was being talked about like a foreign power. Wasn’t America coming off Nixon and going into Ford back then? Did the ‘same as normal world, but with supers’ change that much?

Two, news on superhumans was definitely a major topic, with stories about fights between them and incidents in places around the country involving them, not just here.

They didn’t seem to be concentrated in New York, either. LA definitely had heroes active here...

I looked down towards the water, and the skyscrapers there. Sitting above the top of the highest one was the Aerie, the home of LA’s local supergroup, if the early morning paper was any indication. It was floating on some sort of geomagnetic repulsion ABOVE the skyscraper, so trashing the building wouldn’t do anything to the HQ.

Pointedly, to belong to the group you had to be able to fly by some method, a fact noted in passing with the story about action at the hospital last night. Hawkeye and Angel had been there, and their opponents had been a terrorist organization called the Askari, apparently going after one of the patients there, and thwarted by the deeds of the two daring heroes...

Uh huh...

The big superhero team seemed to be the Champions, who were based down in San Francisco. There wasn’t a lot of information in the article I read on them, but Hercules seemed to be prominent.

They had broken up another Lemurian infiltration event with some explosive violence down south off the coast. Apparently, there was some bad blood out there.

There was news from New York. Apparently, a new supergroup sponsored by Ferrus Technology had been formed out there, and both The Patriot and what seemed to be the Norse God Thor were involved, and there’d been a big fight with The Brute involved.

The article seemed to convey some expectation, as New York seemed to only have vigilante, street-level crimefighters, not any real powerhouses. An armored hero and a Norse God was New York finally getting into the big scene of super-heroics. Luring the Patriot out of DC was also a big event.

The clothing styles and commercials were not what I remembered of the Seventies, and many of the companies had different names. The cars were actually more stylish, with fins and curves, but burned cleaner and quieter, as if the motor tech was more advanced. Neo Mechanics, Duke, and Vonsky seemed to be the major auto brands.

I didn’t recognize any of the luxury brands but Gucci and Rolex. There was a lot of hyperbole about futuristic technology and superior manufacturing and Coretech psionic this and that being waved around...

They had psi-tech, it was the ‘super-science’ here. I even saw photos of guys in flight packs, then realized they had been around the hospital last night. Apparently flying tech was still pretty pricey and not for civilians.

Also, I got the current price of gold, platinum, and silver, and noticed there were asterisks by each, and several other minerals, for some reason, which took me a moment to realize meant non-Energized.

They knew about Energized materials. A little bit more searching found they were called ‘Weird Isotopes’, as in, their roots were known, but they definitely didn’t act like things on the Periodic Table.

That meant the value could skyrocket if they were Energized. Unfortunately, that would have to wait until I could Cast my III’s...

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A pawnshop wasn’t hard to find. I just asked somebody on the street, smiled sincerely, and got directions. Then it was a matter of getting some miles in on shoes that still didn’t fit, but I stuck them to my feet so they didn’t slide around and it wasn’t an issue.

I was getting odd looks, and when I saw the first school bus go by as I was walking around, I realized why. The people were probably thinking I should have been on the bus, not trotting down the streets. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be, and I ignored them all serenely, having other things to do, mandatory schooling age or no.

The bells rang on the door as I walked in, giving the place a once-over. Lots of guns and jewelry on display, always among the best sellers; and some electronics that looked ten or fifteen years early, including flatter-screen monitors that shouldn’t have come in until the 00’s.

Whatever this place was, it was decades ahead of the Terra that Aelryinth had grown up in.

The man behind the counter was older, swarthy, and exuded the slimy eyes of a born haggler and someone who knew how to take advantage of others. I couldn’t fault him for it, as it kept him in business, but that didn’t mean I had to be an easy mark.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” was the first thing he asked, looking me over.

“Home-schooled,” I replied immediately, and his brow furrowed. Not a thing yet? Tch. “Mom doesn’t trust the schools. Too much government dogma, she says.” He could get behind that, and shrugged. It took all kinds, and Los Angeles had always had its share of nutjobs, which, if my walk down the street just now was any indication, hadn’t changed at all.

“Anyways, I was in the park before dawn, and I saw a bunch of clothing spread out on the green. I nabbed it all, and I got lucky for us both.” I slapped down two rings, a pair of earrings, two necklaces, a bracelet, and then slowly and carefully laid down the man’s Rolex.

His eyes opened, then narrowed at the display.

“Gold is sitting at $203 an ounce. This is 16-karat, this is 18, these are 18, and these earrings are 21.” I pushed the gold off to one side meaningfully. “This is a men’s gold model Explorer III, the Space series. It retails for twelve thousand dollars, which means a store will buy it back for half that, no questions asked. You equal that, I’ll sell it here instead.”

Before he could open his mouth, I was pointing. “Bring out those six rings. If one of them is worthwhile, I’ll swap for the two here. Weigh the necklaces, the earrings, and the bracelet; I’ll take the gold value by karat and you can charge for the craftsmanship as you see fit. Do you want the Rolex or not?”

He was blinking at me, obviously having been caught wrong-footed by my very dry and well-delivered cascade of information, and had to revise his bargaining position appropriately. “Whoa, whoa! How do I know this stuff isn’t hot or something, especially with a kid bringing it in?” he protested.

“Picking up stuff people abandon on the ground is nowhere under the definition of ‘stolen’, especially without any identifying marks or materials,” I replied acerbically. “Furthermore, do you want me to go look up the penal codes on liabilities of pawn shop owners regarding non-stolen materials they come in possession of? You can’t lose a dime on this, and you’re going to double your money or close to it.

“Or do you think you’re going to find a Space Explorer for a mere six grand that isn’t hotter than the Phoenix anywhere else? And where are those rings?”

My attitude was far more convincing than my age. I was very confident and in control of the situation, and he could feel it.