Sidekick by Carl Stubblefield (spicy books to read TXT) 📕

with augments, so I make sure to use the term ‘augment’ when I’m referring to someone relying on something artificial to give them their powers, and Minmax for true supers.”

“Wait, wait. How can anyone get stronger if you don’t have a display to allocate those points? You would be stuck at base levels, right?” Gus furrowed his brow trying to make sense of it all.

“Now that you mention it, that is something.” She tapped her lip with a finger as she thought for a second. “The only thing I can think of is that the assessors must be allocating your points for you, somehow. They must be able to see your abilities too, because they usually are the ones who devise your course corrections in the curriculum.”

“I don’t think I’d like that.”

“It’s either that or figure it all out on your own without the academy’s help. Anyway, if you turn out to be a Minmax, they push you and push you. They make speedsters travel faster and faster until they find their limits. Supers have to lift and move heavier and larger objects to find the extent of their skills. I’ll be honest—I’m a little pissed that they never mentioned level ups and stat point adjustments. A lot of things make more sense now, though. I wonder if we could have skipped a lot of pain and suffering if we could have seen and raised our stats ourselves as we grew.”

“Probably your typical control freaks.”

“That could very well be true. The more I think about it, assessors and trainers must have known about stats and how to increase them, because they talk about them in generalized terms and trainees are familiar with them; it’s just that I have never personally seen mine before today.”

“What else did you see in your display? What affinity are your abilities?”

“Energy manipulation is what I specialize in. It’s a broad category involving all forms of energy; mine probably would be sub-classified as fundamental force or very small particle manipulation. I can ionize matter and control free radicals. They can be very destructive to DNA or other biological matter. Basically, I am manipulating electrons and oxidizing tissue. I can hover by maintaining a constant spray of energy underneath me, getting a small amount of lift, but it’s not true flight. I think I’m on the threshold to upgrade the skill to a better version though.”

“Well, maybe you’re focusing on the wrong things. Nick says it’s not a spray of particles that moves you when you fly. Isn’t that how you described it? You know about ether, so what if you tried the same process but left out the ‘spray’ aspect?”

“I… I don’t know how I haven’t seen that, but you’re probably right. Thank you, Gus.”

“Sure. But how do you get the control to manipulate something as small as an electron? My brain is short circuiting just thinking about it.”

“Powers in energy manipulation take much longer to train for exactly that reason. The training involves honing the mind’s ability to access the power to interact with such small particles. I remember being trained to create a funnel of ether to direct my power to function like a shotgun or by using a more focused tube formed of ether to create basically a beam of energy. You drill those so much that the power becomes intrinsic to your nature and as much a reflex as muscle memory.”

“Could you show me? I’m still learning about ether and how to manipulate it. I’m sure there’s things I’m overlooking.”

“I have forgotten a lot of how they got us to visualize it. I really haven’t thought about ether for a while either, to be honest. It is kind of abandoned once you find the extent of your powers, kind of like taking off training wheels for a child.” She stopped and looked upwards. “Maybe that’s kept me from developing certain skills. You’ve been kind of innovative with how you’ve experimented with things.” Biting her lip she nodded, making some mental commitment to herself before continuing. “I’ll try to remember and share what I can.”

“Daphne, can we share that type of information? Display to display?” Gus asked.

“You better believe it, buster,” came the smooth reply. Gus fist pumped, settling when Aurora rolled her eyes as she waited to continue.

“Sorry, go on.” Gus sat straighter in his chair.

“Finally, there are supports, who help other supers with healing effects or stat boosts.”

“How exactly does that work? I get how it works in a game, it’s just ‘magic,’ but if I was a healer, how would my Nth cause healing in another person?”

“You know, I really haven’t thought about it. You take it for granted after a while.”

“I can answer that one,” Daphne interjected. “First, you need to know how stats allow Nth to function. The higher a host’s stats, the better they can integrate skills encoded into the quantum server. It functions much like when you upgrade a personal computer. If you have more memory, you can run more complex operations. A better graphics card can render better images at a higher frame-rate.”

“That still doesn’t explain how supports work though,” Aurora pointed out.

“What you term support powers as a class would better be described as ‘conversion.’ The manipulation of one type of matter into another and the conversion of energy into matter are parallel abilities. When things get very small, it is much easier to convert back and forth from energy to matter. Support classes specialize in performing these effects remotely, on others. For healing, an Nth can generate a remote field where, by expending energy, damaged tissues can be reformed into healthy tissues and infused with energy to boost performance. Stat boosts are similar, they can cause a temporary increase in a person’s stats, allowing their Nth to function at a higher level. Occasionally this translates to increased processing power due to a larger network of connected Nth, other times because of reaching a critical increase, an Nth is able to function more effectively.”

“What