Chương 5: Duck, Duck, Goose

"You do not have... any numbers?" We had been taking a breather after barricading the music classroom's door with Miss Crow's prized grand piano when Mandy finally revealed why she wasn't using any magic of her own. By then all three of us were pretty worn out and Jerry had sprained a wrist because newsflash; pianos were heavy and not putting any points in strength during apocalypse season was dumb, no matter how high your intelligence score was.

"I don't have those boxes you're describing at all," the redhead admitted with a dejected sigh.

"At first I thought it must have been some sort of mistake, not getting anything from that first zombie. But after the second went down I realized it wasn't true. I did get something from both, it just wasn't like yours... either of yours, I mean."

"No character sheet? No list of abilities at least? Doesn't have to be numbers; tokens, cards, even vague flowery descriptions of what you can do would do." Mandy shook her head minutely and our resident nerd looked momentarily stumped.

"Maybe it's hidden? Try thinking or saying 'System', 'Character Sheet', 'Stats', 'Attributes' or any variations?"

"Those didn't work." The shorter girl frowned.

"They didn't feel right either. Trying was like... when you're certain you're doing something wrong but can't remember exactly why?"

"Like trying to solve a problem you didn't study the theory for?" I asked.

"Exactly! Like I had an answer I thought was right except something warned me it was all wrong." Yeah, we were all familiar with that particular feeling, we were high school students.

"Maybe those weren't the right commands. Keep trying till it works?" Jerry suggested. Mandy seemed unconvinced, as if that suggestion, too, was wrong and I suddenly had an unpleasant thought.

"I'm not sure that'll get anywhere any time soon," I told them both.

"When I'd been trying to find the right healing power out of my list earlier, the options had been literally too many to count. How do we know that's not the case with Mandy's magic?"

"Can't be," Jerry countered.

"There's only so many words that would make sense for something like that."

"No, the two of us just got unbelievably, ridiculously lucky." He opened his mouth to interrupt with that mulish scowl he got when he felt he was right but I talked over him.

"It's magic from another world. Why does it have to make sense for us? Earth alone has, like, five thousand languages today, who knows how many in all of history. Another world could have just as many of its own."

"Well obviously the system has to be understood by the users," he countered.

"We understand it, so it must have some magical translation."

"Do we?" I pointed at the other girl as exhibit A.

"Mandy's difficulties aside, there's two more things you're not considering. If there is a system for magic wouldn't it have security like bank accounts or nuclear missiles? If there is no system wouldn't that mean there would be no easily understood rules on how magic works?"

"That last bit you said... it feels right?" Mandy suddenly added with a faraway look. Not like Jerry when he was staring at his invisible character sheet or, I guess, myself when doing the same.

"A step in the right direction anyway. It feels more nebulous than anything, yet warm?"

"Screw you guys-""In your dreams, nerd boy!"

"-I know what I'm getting for my second skill." Then he stopped, stared at me, then Mandy, then back at me, his face darkening ominously as he recoiled before the classroom went dark. I guess a blush didn't look the same under the blue light of his lightning.

"Not funny..."

"I disagree," I shot back in sing-song... then Mandy elbowed me. The mild ache lingered for a second or two then was washed away by the constant low buzz I'd been feeling since getting Progressive Regeneration. Best hurried power choice ever.

"Shut up! I'm putting all my points into Intelligence..." Because of course he would. I rolled my eyes, not that anybody could see in the dark. He'd be regretting that choice the next time we had to run from zombies.

"... and learning Observe. Now I'll be able to see everything about your stats and abilities whenever I want!"

"Really?" There was a scrape of metal then a loud clang as the other girl all but fell off her chair in her eagerness when a solution to her troubles presented itself. I'd have liked to believe I'd have been less nervous in her place but the chance to get magic in our kind of deadly situation? Yeah, no.

"What can you see? What!"

"Err..." a moment of silence, then...

"It doesn't work in the dark, must be able to see what I'm observing." I didn't say anything but all of us were thinking it, especially Jerry himself if his annoyed look was any indication when lightning once more cast the room in a flickering play of blue light and shadow.

"... that can't be right." He looked at me, eyes narrowed and literally gleaming with a faint white light.

"No, it's working. Might 5, Agility 4, Reason 2, Vigilance 3, Ego 4, Luck 1, right? Your stats are weird but there. Same with name, description, and that regeneration power... no level though."

"That's because I don't have a level." Also, because his power was weird, not mine.

"What about Mandy?"

"All I'm seeing is a candle." He threw his hands up and looked like he was about to kick something.

"There's you Mads, or rather an exact image of you coming up in the Observe results that's semitransparent. Then in it is a candle that somehow feels like two candles? Ugh, feels. It's supposed to be numbers, why am I getting feels?"

"Maybe... maybe we're going about this the wrong way." I recalled what Mandy had said earlier, how magic was supposed to be magical and fantastic, not make sense. How my own powers list had responded to my needs without my needing to make detailed, precise requests.

"If all of what we've been suggesting so far was proven wrong, what would be right? Mandy, what can you feel is right about your magic? Could you get it to do something in your own way?"

"The candle that Jerry mentioned seems spot on? It feels warm like one... it grew... about doubled... when I offed the second zombie...

"She closed her eyes, bit her lip in a cutesy expression of focus that had me struggling not to giggle and pinch her cheeks, and went on mumbling." get it to do something... it's a candle..." She cupped her hands as if holding something fragile and then the lighting of the room changed. No more was crackling, harsh purple-blue electricity the sole source of illumination. A tongue of yellow flame like a large candle or a small torch formed between Mandy's palms without burning skin, or anything else for that matter.

The other girl's eyes opened and she silently stared in wonder at what she'd done. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"It's... beautiful," she whispered and I didn't think we were meant to hear. The flame's color changed, turning orange and blue for a moment even as it dimmed, then it burst into near-white brilliance like an incandescent light bulb. It flew up, orbited Mandy's head three times, vanished and reappeared instantly across the classroom, split in two. The pair of smaller flames flew closer, orbiting Jerry and me.

Jerry's shifted and spread into a barely visible blue almost the size of a fist, mine became a tiny glowing point of dark red that radiated warmth. Mandy had been right; magic was magical and fantastic. xxxx xxxx Much as I'd have enjoyed picking some power as awesome-looking and cute as Mandy's dancing flame, we still had a school full of zombies to deal with and who knew what else in the city beyond. So I went with the practical approach, no matter how tempting Summon Six-Legged Cat was.

And no, Jerry was a lying liar who lied. There was no way he hadn't at least read over a dozen cat-related skills from his list, minimum. First things first; I took off my sneakers, loosened my belt, and put another attribute point into Might. Beating them with a sharp metal stick or whatever else was at hand had been our primary method of dealing with the recent infestation of walking corpses so far, and greater strength meant not getting nearly as easily grappled and eaten by zombies.

It also meant carrying more, barricading doors or moving obstacles more easily, climbing faster, leaping further, running more quickly, even tiring less because everything seemed lighter. But Might was not just strength; it was also toughness and health and stamina. Improving it in any dangerous situation was a no-brainer regardless of the drawbacks.

Taking precautions had been good, because the moment the attribute increased from five to six I shot up another two inches, maybe more, my shirt creaked ominously against my broadening shoulders and my too-tight jeans actually tore in a couple of places. The clasp of my bra was digging into my back and the less said about how uncomfortable my panties felt, the better. My balance didn't actually change; except for becoming slightly more toned, my proportions remained the same.

For me, it was as if everything became slightly smaller... and a great deal lighter. I did a back-flip followed by a standing vertical leap onto a desk then one completely over another. There were NBA players that couldn't have done the same and it didn't seem particularly hard. A triumphant whoop drew my attention across the room where Mandy had burned through a desk with a tiny orb of fire. It was great to finally get some ranged firepower, even if it wasn't as powerful as a handgun would have been.

None of our powers were nearly as good as guns yet when it came to damage, and wasn't that a sobering thought? The explosions we'd seen across the city had looked like magic artillery. But there was far more to any situation than who had the bigger stick, ironic as it was for someone with a very large, very pointy stick to say so.

Without Jerry's Observe skill revealing key information Mandy wouldn't have been burning through wood from across the room now and that paled in comparison to his Electric Touch lighting up the room as a side effect. Left to fumble blindly in the dark we'd have died a dozen times over. It was with all of that in mind that I approached the dreaded list of powers. The simplest option would have been to improve my existing regeneration directly.

It would cost both my remaining power points, but the results looked promising; Progressive Regeneration II: slowly recover from harm, the faster the more hurt you are, the longer such harm lasts and the more you've been similarly hurt. Even if the baseline recovery remained just the trickle it was now, scaling with how badly hurt I was had already proven a major boost.

Scaling with the duration of the injury meant that normally crippling, permanent damage would actually recover faster, and scaling to repeat injuries meant an adaptive defense. But was it worth two other rank one powers? As before, the main issue with deciding was the options being potentially infinite and limitations on time. We still needed to find food, proper shelter, and to see what was happening in the rest of the city before something worse than zombies crawled out of a portal and blew up in our face.

My earlier discovery that the list responded to requests and needs, even vaguely worded ones, would be of tremendous help but there were still some... minor snags.

"Show me the three strongest powers I could get with one point." Solar Empowerment Nova I: after 2000 hours of total daylight exposure become a million times peak human for 1 second. Multiple charges can be stored. Retributive Annihilation: after being maligned to unspeakable extent, in the presence of those responsible, turn your mass to antimatter and spirit to banefire. Universal Chronostasis I: once per day halt time for the entire universe while you're focused.

All are aware through this and know you caused it. Yeah no, not things I'd pick now or even saw myself using ever. While the list contained some absurdly powerful options, the exact details seemed to balance out so that no one power was more useful than another. The whole list could not be read and specific requests were bogged down with too many situational or even useless abilities, but maybe some clever wording...

"Show me the ten powers I would shortlist for the current situation, if I had enough time to read the list and make comparisons." Focused Invulnerability I: once per minute choose a single target and a specific action. Ignore the target's attempts at that action. Force Adjustment I: forces applied to or by you can be adjusted up or down by up to a factor of 2. Automatic application vs harm. Dilated Perspective I: sped-up mental processing allows bullet-time awareness and reflexes but no actual physical speed boost.

Instant Action I: exert five minutes worth of maximum effort to perform a second of actions instantaneously. Personal Forcefield I: invisible, intangible, flexible, skintight protection equivalent to heavy plate armor. Proximakinesis I: apply up to 100 pounds worth of force to any one target you touch at the point of contact. Retributive Defense I: harmful effects prevented, reduced or restored by one chosen defense are transferred to the originator.

Sheath of Caledfwich I: in a given second you cannot be hurt more than halfway to death from full health. Excess harm is nullified. Singular Invulnerability I: once per minute you may choose to ignore any one effect for 1 second. Automatic trigger vs lethal hits. Super Effort I: exert five minutes worth of maximum effort to perform a second of actions at several times your normal ability. Now we were talking!

Take that, you infinitely-long list of ninety-nine percent stupid powers, we just skipped straight to the good stuff. Now to see what made the most broken combo for a zombie apocalypse.