Chapter 75: Fellow Humanisms
Jack set about showing the disguised, dubiously-humanish Neex around — he could not think of her as ‘Ira’ in private, disguise or no — starting with the immediate living room. She got to see some pictures of his family, as he’d dug out a few that were in frames to sit on the top of a cabinet. She asked who everyone was. She got to see his dad from when he was a kid, when his mother had taken a candid picture of them playing ...
2025-08-14 15:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 74: Stars of the Show
The supernovae floating before Jack’s perceptions contorted into discernible code, which Jack rapidly read with burning excitement.
Long Bomber
Interpret +1.0
Any use of Throw has greatly increased range, accuracy, and intuitive steering capacity. Double the normal maximum range, and within this zone, accuracy and steering have minimal penalties even to the maximum, a...
2025-08-11 15:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 73: Decompressing
After the nurse took a moment to disconnect him from his IV, Jack was soon digging into piles of food, eating furiously from a metal tray suspended over the bed. The nurse was pretty much in and then out, sensing his hunger — perhaps slightly frightened of it — and letting him eat in relative privacy, lest he be seen being a pig. He was actually quite grateful for that.
He tried not to be too loud while stuffing ...
2025-08-07 15:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 72: The Lesser of Terrors
As Jack ‘stared’ as best he could through the peripheral vision of Shreddy’s dreamscape, he suddenly felt a certain trepidation or reluctance. It took him a moment to realize the feeling was a translation from Shreddy himself, and Jack puzzled out what it was.
He’s afraid. He doesn’t want to look there. He’s avoiding it, even distracting himself to deny the way this scene must<...
2025-08-04 15:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 71: Mere Shreds Within
As Jack began struggling to ‘will’ himself forward, he paused and marveled at what he saw ahead. Great activity.
The tendrils surrounding the ‘amoeba mind’ struck out, wrapping around black rot and ripping it out, all in one swift, coordinated movement at many angles. The first strike was enough to make him wonder if Q-Loth couldn’t succeed with Shreddy after all — massive amounts of the ‘growth’ were ripped of...
2025-07-31 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 70: It Ain't Over till the Blob Sings
What a damn mess. I hate The Dreamer.
Harvesting various sources of metal around the apartment, Jack thoroughly restrained the compromised Agent Lopez over the course of a few seconds, binding his wrists, forcing them behind him, then fusing the bands together. Simultaneously, he did the same at his ankles and knees, and then collapsed the mostly re-constituted Jackette around the agent’s hel...
2025-07-30 16:55:01 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 69: The Mettle of Training
The trio of agents Lopez, Sato, and Jack slunk up to the apartment door. It was in an annoying spot — right smack at the end of the middle of a ‘T’ hallway, which was strange architecture to Jack. But he supposed he wasn’t an architect. Fortunately, no one was visible down the length of the new curse of their apparent luck.
There were some muted sounds of a TV program from beyond the door. Jack sent a Mem-text to t...
2025-07-28 15:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 68: Men In Black
Being processed through Operations was indeed a rush, nearly a whirlwind, but he was led by the hand the whole way. The disguise-making was conducted in rows of chairs vaguely like in a salon, but the agents were in full body suits, goggles, and light breathing masks. He had to take off his jacket and shirt, and a large contraption hanging down from the ceiling completely encapsulated his head and suctioned at his neck and shoulders. He w...
2025-07-24 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 67: Quirky Allies
As Jack stared, he heard murmurs and groans from around the room, but also laughter, which revealed that the majority of it was sarcastic — various utterances intended to take the piss out of friends. ‘Aw, shit, not him again!’ and so forth.
“B-but you were-, you had-” Jack sputtered at the woman in front of him, unable to parse it and fighting off his prior embarrassing memories involving her. His brain immediat...
2025-07-21 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 66: Task Force Homebody, Operation Kettle
InSite was one of the minority that didn’t clap. He glanced at Jack briefly, and then the ACKBOSS gestalt flared with the comment, <You’ll have to excuse me, Jack, but I’m a bit too jaded for that.>
Steel: <No worries. I’m just glad Light isn’t leaving me hanging.>
Lighthouse: <Never. Ins is just duty-bound to go against the grain a little bit. You know, here and t...
2025-07-17 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 65: The Asset, Agent Steel
The chocolate cake, emblazoned with the text, ‘Congratulations, Jack, The Unstoppable Stallion of Eden and Slayer of Bratzilla!’, was a beautiful, beautiful thing sitting on the table of the meeting room Jack and Lindsay had arranged to partake of it in. Using his phone, Jack took a video of it with Lindsay in the frame — now wearing thrown-on extra athletic fatigues — asking her what it said.
She rolled her eyes. ...
2025-07-14 15:00:10 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 64: Execution
After his extensive R&R, Jack’s first order of business was Calibration. It was only slightly different in routine thanks to the Bondmaking Imbue increase… he was aware of outside connections seemingly from out of nowhere, branching into his greater Allotment construct, rearranging and adjusting in their interlacing slightly, within the greater process of expansion improvements. Groovy.
Level in...
2025-07-10 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 63: The Last Anchor
Memoria’s silence persisted as her eyes were cast off, a mild frown on her face.
Jack felt a pang of impatience. His heart was beating faster, in suspicion, in worry, his mind both reaching for the answer and pushing it away. “Are you going to tell me who?”
She met his eyes evenly. “Do I need to? Hmm. It seems I do.” She paused, folding her hands in her lap. “Agent Nonpareil Vim. Who still lives, by the way. On ...
2025-07-07 15:00:14 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 62: Indulgences
Screamer was quiet and still for a while, keeping hold of Jack’s hand and content to enjoy the moment of peace.
Jack asked, “So, how do you feel?”
“Empty,” she replied. “The… calm before the storm. Calmer than ever. Too sweet.”
“The storm doesn’t have to come this time, Screamer. It won’t. You won’t let it. Keep the calm. Don’t let it pass you by. Hold to what made it. You remem...
2025-07-03 15:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 61: A Rising Cry
Tendrils whipped and reached out, ensnaring his soul, and Jack was swallowed by the depths and the void.
I am the guide. I will see and I will face it, too. I should. An alloy of strength awaits.
Out of the void, light seemed to grow from inward and highlight forms in front of him, frozen as if hit with the pause button. A fallen ATV vehicle at the bottom of a ravine amid rocks, higher above a road pa...
2025-06-30 15:00:15 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 60: Redressing
Jumbled-up masses, the weights of dreams turned into nightmares; he resisted the terrible stresses of memories, which turned them into jagged fragments. He refused, he refused, he refused. The friction between two contrasting wills made his mind and body fevered.
Down the road in the driver’s seat, the lure of relief, worry for Vim, hope to make it far enough, cavalry — drones — en route, ambush around a corner, explo...
2025-06-26 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 59: Choice of Three Mutations, Go!
He was within the starry void of space, that place of meditational Calibration conjured for him by Memoria. She was there before him, brighter than the stars and seemingly made of them, a loose outline of a giant angelic being with eyes like supernovae. That last was new.
The whole universe felt charged, felt excited, bristling with potentiality. The construct of his powers, loosely felt extending from his...
2025-06-23 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 58: Don't Doze on Him
Jack tossed the flail forward hard in time with the whistle, slinging it through the air-
Wham. As soon as it left his fingers, he staggered as he felt a wall of grogginess hit him like a train, driving him senseless for a tiny, split moment. Alarm bells then went off and carried him back out, adrenaline screaming, ‘Nooo! Threat levels maximum!’ His eyelids physically drooped as he struggled with his footing briefly, and ...
2025-06-19 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 57: Don't Let it Go to Your Head
“The mind,” Jack repeated as he blinked a few times, trying to parse it. Right. The word ‘Phantasmal’ can’t be for nothing. He sat back down and took a deep breath. “Mmn. Like the terror effect that paralyzed me for a moment. It was unnatural enough that there was some sort of distortion. I remember… fighting to resist, to push back against it. I barely did.”
“Yes.” Agent Marrakech stared back a...
2025-06-16 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 56: Spooks and Lies
True to Lindsay’s claims, the day did not have any meetings or training with her. Instead, he had a training guide plan via Mini that he could follow, or alter if he desired, and was to utilize either her or Lifeguard while in Power Park for any simulation input, or whatever else he needed. If he slacked off too much, Lifeguard was watching and would step in, but Lindsay told him he had plenty of leeway. A mix of combat practice and ...
2025-06-12 15:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 55: Accelerated Substance
Shaper of Metal
Material Controller (Metal)
Primary Mutation: Channel Memorite
Governing Attribute: Create
Magnitude (Pressure): 130 (100%); (Force): 104 (80%)
Fitness: Excellent; G.P.E.: 23% Evasion: 2.4
Level: 1.8
Allotment:
2025-06-09 15:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 54: Spicy
Jack’s classes proceeded steadily. He memorized laws and procedures and attempted to help Highfive do the same with after-class studies, bridging things between the dry deliveries of their professor and the necessary breakdown that Highfive more easily absorbed. He’d get it, just in his own way, essentially. Jack also got him on point by ‘trading’ watching Smegheads In Space, Season 2, if they got through the study targets...
2025-06-05 15:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 53: Leaps, Bounds, and Parrying Bullets
Jack trained like mad in the days that followed, honing his basic power operations and expanding his combat applications hour by hour and day by day, together with the grind of physical training and excessive bulking up with nutrition. The latter did finally tone down a little bit, which was kind of nice, as he stopped being hungry literally all the time. And he filled out gradually, his muscles becoming mo...
2025-06-04 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 52: Not Quite Drowning
Neex swam ahead of him to the little cave entrance in the mass of false coral, making a few clicking noises. Two clownfish could briefly be seen, but just as quickly, they darted away, likely from his approach.
He came up alongside Neex and peered inside the dark cave, seeing some shadowed movements within.
“It seems they’re shy,” Neex declared, “but they’ll get used to you with time!” She blinked ...
2025-06-02 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 51: Abode of the Octogirl
Beyond the noisy airlock was a shockingly spacious area much like the inside of a furnished house or large loft, made out of a combination of steel support structures and hardwood. There was an immediate living room area with comfy couches, a patterned rug, a TV, and a kitchen area visible on the far end with stylish stools and a long, white central countertop table. To the right were stairs leading up to a second level, but it was a level with...
2025-05-31 15:00:13 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 50: A Satisfying Grind
No sooner than Jack saw black in front of his eyes from the rig than it was removed by a nurse. He sat up, feeling a ghost of real fatigue, though for the most part he hadn’t strained himself that much.
Your Level has improved to 1.6! Please enter the trance and Calibrate, as this changes your total Allotment.
Temporary Control grade increased to 1.8!
<...
2025-05-29 15:00:11 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 49: Superpowers Dueling
Jack was fast to move the sphere — but Boiler went into a whole new gear, arcing just outside of its range at a ludicrous speed. His entire sphere whiffed it, and then she was in his space faster than he could’ve ever imagined.
He had just thought the promised burst of speed had already been seen. Nope. It had been saved just for that moment.
She led into a full-charge punch, her fist comi...
2025-05-27 15:00:21 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 48: HRVR
As Jack got up to shower, he asked, “So, Mini, want to tell me what the interaction involving Hardiness is?”
“Because it is a raw physical expansion, the effectiveness of Hardiness is multiplicative to what Aquatic Adaptation allows for your endurance of specific hazards. Namely, your biological resistance to pressure and decompression sickness is doubled at Hardiness grade one. It’ll triple it, instead, at grad...
2025-05-25 15:00:09 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 47: Market
The meetup was in the park, but in an area he’d usually avoided in his routes due to more traffic and less forest cover. But it did have way more drinkable water fountains, as the more ‘official’ running area. Their location was basically just ‘brain-marked’ like an X he marked on a map interface.
Gotta love the innate Mini-map.
A dozen people were in sight, jogging mostly, as he followed a path past many hedges a...
2025-05-23 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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Chapter 46: Laugh Maniacally With Me!
Jack settled right back into the grind of physical training and exercise over the next day and a half. He’d been quickly assessed as good to go for power training right after his lunch with Highfive, too, which was pretty awesome after also having just had the big duel with the snakey bastards. It was a good damned day for progress!
He was able to get used to and practice with the Fragile Spike techn...
2025-05-21 15:00:12 +0000 UTC
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