Chương 18: 17: Sinister Influences

I walked between trees and sparse undergrowth, thick silvery mist limiting visibility even more than the thicket normally would. Flying would have been faster, running all out almost as quick, but both would have been good ways to get horribly lost, miss the school and wander for days with no landmarks to guide me. I kept my pace down to a slow walk, unwilling to miss any details I didn't have to.

'Too little, too late', a whisper of unease at the back of my mind seemed to say. Away from the warmth of the campfire and alone, all the things I'd missed and more I reckoned I didn't yet know I had did not sit easily in my mind. The wet, muddy ground settled into a gentle downwards slope and at least one worry faded away; this really was the way back to the school.

When the city plans were being cooked up in some corporate office, someone must have thought that schools closer to nature would be good for us teenagers, never mind the time wasted crossing couple of miles to get to and from them every day. Ours had been built south of this forested hill, the trees left untouched to provide... ambience. Not the worst decision by far given the privately funded, planned and built nature of Destiny, Florida and the rumored state opposition...

and I was trying to avoid thinking about what had happened. The ground evened out, the trees grew sparse, and the tops of two very familiar buildings peeking through the mist just a few hundred feet away made me slow to a stop. The shorter, square, flat roofed concrete box that was barely visible over the thicker lower level of fog was where over a dozen people were hiding, huddling in the dark and hoping the monsters did not notice, waiting for things to get better. My absence had probably been noticed.

What would Tomio and Julia say? The big guy would probably shout, argue, tell me I shouldn't have left. Double Trouble would just throw around the usual snide remarks, maybe call me flaky and unreliable, the double-faced hypocrite. I could already picture everyone's reactions, even Dr. Beth's mocking salute. Getting back there... I was ambivalent on whether I should. Even if they needed my help - and they definitely did - all of them were long overdue for a wake-up call. Tomio's insistence on hiding, Dr.

Beth's non-involvement in any decision-making, most of the kids not having a single power for self-defense. The narrower, longer profile of the main building loomed ominously over everything in the vicinity. Even all the way out here it looked sinister, leeching out the cheer the lighthearted banter with the Midget had left me with. Just seeing it came with the urge to turn around and walk away, but I refused.

Out of sheer spite, I immediately took a step forward, then another and another and in moments I was running towards the school's perimeter fence. Through the bars the silhouettes of a dozen shambling monsters seemed to mock me, so I leaped over the trivial twenty-foot obstacle, landed in their midst and started swinging. Wading through the few normal zombies still left was less a fight and more pest control.

A kick here, a punch there, a grab and throw at the ground with superhuman strength, soon my brand-new costume was covered in gore. No strategy, no plan, just cutting loose on some easy targets because they were in my way. Almost wholly detached from the action I kept tally of my own moves and stance, their rough and haphazard nature no matter how graceful and dance-like they seemed at first glance. It struck me how they were not merely close to dancing; some of them actually were dancing.

I didn't have any martial arts training worth mentioning, merely the occasional self-defense class over the years that was proving woefully inadequate. No, not inadequate; wrong. Much of what I did worked because I was superhumanly fast and strong now, but the moves themselves were a bit off, not quite fitting my new height, reach or ability. An Agility score of nine and Ego of eight could apparently tell what was wrong now that I had time to think of it, but how does one fix something like that?

Before I could come up with an answer, someone grabbed me from behind. It was sudden and surprising enough that I lost a step and might have fallen down if not for near-superhuman sense of balance. I was pulled off my feet instead, an instinctive response with Proximakinesis coming a split-second too late to prevent it and suddenly a dead man with bulging muscles and overgrown with wiggling black roots from head to toe was way, way too close.

I took a step back from the plant-zombie walking around outside the main school building, fight or flight reactions clashing into a useless tangle as its fist struck my solar plexus with bruising force. Air exploded out of my lungs and a staggered, then another blow hammered into my head. I fell and a storm of blows rained down on my front. I brought my arms up to cover my head but otherwise didn't... couldn't react. No! I wouldn't be some monster's meal!

I got up as its blows slowed down to a fraction of their previous speed, Forced Acceleration and Force Adjustment responding to my call even as Proximakinesis pulled me upright. I deflected a slowed-down jab with one of my own, the monster's forearm breaking at the impact. Then delivered an uppercut that shattered its jaw and threw it off-balance. With a loud yell, I threw myself at it, grabbed its head with both arms, started pulling and didn't stop until I ripped it off its shoulders.

Panting over the truly dead corpse, more from the outburst than the effort, I noticed my hands were shaking so I clenched them into fists until my nails bit through my full bodysuit and into the meat of my palms. About to stomp on the corpse until it was crushed into a greasy smear under my boots, I also noticed it looked far too normal. Yes, it was bloated. Yes, its veins were unnaturally pronounced in the sickly black of burst blood vessels against too-pale skin...

but there was no sign of roots, wiggling or otherwise. Falling back from the body as if it were radioactive, I turned around, fell to my arms and knees and vomited on the pavement. xxxx xxxx I'd thought I had been OK after that nightmare in the school building? I'd traded quips with a girl I hadn't ever seen before after waking up naked in the mist-covered, probably monster-infested woods?

After passing out from injuries and sheer agony from a fight I'd fled from, avoiding becoming some monstrously mutated plant's puppet by the narrowest of margins? I wiped my mouth with my least gore-covered arm, stumbled away from my own vomit and sat on the ground to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. Regeneration worked on repairing the bruises but it was way slower that fixing cuts and gouges, or even acid damage.

It wasn't that I hadn't taken enough bruises for it to adjust; bruises were simply less critical and affected far more volume of flesh than other wounds. But these weren't the thoughts I needed to be thinking. Why had I felt so... normal after waking up in that girl's campsite? How hadn't the very natural freak-out I'd just had happened back then? We'd just sat there by the fire, eaten and talked, spoken about... nothing much, really. Nothing important; I hadn't even shared my name after learning hers.

Every hair on my arms rose as that thought went through my mind and I shivered. But she'd known my name, hadn't she? Responded to questions, thoughts I hadn't spoken out loud at all. For some unfathomable reason, that had struck me as perfectly normal back in that campfire. Now? Now I was freaking out as much from that encounter as from the fucking plant-zombies. She'd messed with my mind. She'd messed with my MIND! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! How much had she learned?

How much had she changed beyond just making me calm and happy? She had me confident I was ready to walk back into the school and own it and it had taken mistaking a bloated brute for one of the plant-zombies to snap out of it. Had she even been a little girl at all, or were my perceptions messed with along with my thoughts? Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m7d Powers [4/21 pts] Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

Force Adjustment II Forced Acceleration II Progressive Regeneration III Proximakinesis II Super Suit I Attributes [2/21 pts] Might 13, Agility 9, Reason 2, Vigilance 3, Ego 8, Luck 1 Oh, another power-up. Two of them even. Must have happened during the second half of my fight with the plant-zombies when I'd bigger issues than tracking kills. The Attribute points I set aside for the time being. Four points for powers...

I was so tempted to get the next level of Force Adjustment, enhancing all my combat abilities significantly... but that was not why I'd turned to the blue boxes just now. More raw power would be good, but not much use if someone could just wiggle their way into my mind and forced me to think whatever they wanted. I needed something to stop that, something that would mesh well with my own abilities preferably but if not, mental defense took precedence.

Force of Personality I: presence and will are a tangible force repelling external mental or social influence and pushing your influence on others. Forceful Rejection I: push against attempts to remotely alter you mentally, emotionally or psychologically. Overpowered attempts are reflected. Immutable Force I: Resistance to all alteration except through physical means, immunity to supernatural fear and slow effects.

Mind Barrier I: a shield around your brain and mind, barring the reach of external influences unless overpowered or physically bypassed. Mind Protection I: all your recovery abilities and powers extend to your brain and mind, at low speed but high effectiveness. I immediately dropped Mind Barrier from the short list. It could be overpowered and physically bypassed and I had no illusions I was the stronger person with powers out there.

Worse still, to keep up with people who invested heavily into mental bullshit I'd need to invest just as much into it. Force of Personality was just as quickly dropped as well; I wanted to protect myself from being forced to act against my will, not do the same thing to others. Forceful Rejection had great karmic potential if invested in, but it only working against "remote" effects was a huge gap in its protection. The remaining two powers were both good.

Both would do what I needed, but Mind Protection helped with recovery rather than prevention. Immutable Force was also broader, making it harder to be affected by any alteration that wasn't physical and gave two outright immunities. In the end it was better to not be affected in the first place rather than have to recover from it so I spent a point on Immutable Force. Then I spent two more points to get it to the second rank.

Immutable Force II: Resistance to all alteration except through physical means, immunity to supernatural negative emotion or entrapment. There was no tangible difference on the outside, nothing that felt immediately different on the inside... except a few moments after getting the second rank of the power the lingering calm and false confidence from the campfire encounter, the confusion as those emotions clashed with apprehension, uncertainty and yes, my fear for the plant zombies...

all shattered and were replaced by clarity... and rage. How did I not see it before? No... I'd had misgivings, suspicions even. They were simply paved over by the Midget messing with my mind. Now I just wanted to wring her neck for the invasion of both privacy and decency, stab her with that metal rod she so liked. Leaping to my feet, I kicked the corpse so hard it burst. There would be a reckoning I promised, if only to myself. But powers were not everything.

Hesitating only a little, I spent an attribute point on Vigilance and all my senses sharpened. The stench of rot and blood hanging heavily in the air, the foul smells my nose had become dead to after repeated exposure, they returned with a vengeance. The acrid tang of ash in the air, almost hidden by the high humidity came to my attention for the first time since the first day with all the portals. My vision sharpened and I could see a bit better in the mists, further, with greater detail.

A jumble of sounds at the edge of my hearing seemingly grew stronger and clearer, less noise and more distinct sources only a bit too far and faint to identify. Even how my body suit hugged my skin or the hard pavement under the soles of my feet vied for attention. Then it was my thoughts that changed, clarified. They didn't become faster or more complex, my understanding didn't deepen, just my awareness of what I felt and thought grew and a glimpse of potential reasons why I felt or thought that way came with it.

Hesitating no longer, I put the second point into Vigilance. Noticing things I hadn't before was exactly the boost I needed to never get ambushed again so I went all-in. The range and detail of my senses grew to the point I could glimpse details twice as far away as before and form a picture of what was there much better. Those were not random swirls in the mist; they were monsters shambling about.

I was not safe here standing in the open; there were a dozen enemies in hearing range slowly getting closer from behind. The details I'd missed and fallen for the plant-zombies' tricks were now glaring errors of judgement in my memories and the way the Midget's influence had bent my thoughts out of shape was... not exactly obvious but I could at least see the signs there.

Even my physical condition was easier to assess, the last vestiges of bruising cleared away by Regeneration, the tension stress brought to every muscle, the growing hunger battling with mild nausea in my gut. Most of what I currently felt and thought was unpleasant. I needed to take a rest; a real one, not one imposed by mental alteration. With an increased awareness of... everything, really, I was no longer certain the Midget had done what she'd done out of evil.

Oh, I was still pissed at her, so furious I didn't know what I'd do if she suddenly turned up... but she hadn't taken advantage of me. She'd cleaned me up, given me somewhere nice to sleep for a few hours, kept the monsters away to give me the time to do so, even fed me and asked for nothing in return. Maybe... maybe messing with my head was some misguided attempt to make me feel better, to relax? It would have even worked had I not noticed...

right until I would have marched up to the mutated plant with every confidence of victory and gotten myself killed. I turned my back to the main building, shook some tension off my shoulders, and walked towards the cafeteria and the other survivors. This was not running away; this was taking time to recover from my failure, warn everyone of the new threat and prepare properly against it. Next time I would not have to flee.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m7d Powers [1/21 pts] Force Adjustment II Forced Acceleration II Immutable Force II Progressive Regeneration III Proximakinesis II Super Suit I Attributes [0/21 pts] Might 13, Agility 9, Reason 2, Vigilance 5, Ego 8, Luck 1