While Tamia and the Cyberdogs were retrieving the bomber schematics, Afton was relaxing by the poolside with a 'Sex on the beach' cocktail. His server was that annoying Psyker called Shani who's apparently able to see the future... That, or she just has a vivid imagination. "Hey, heads or tails?" he suddenly asks the girl out of nowhere.

"E-excuse me?" Shani stutters out, taken off guard at being asked something. ​​

"I'm going to flip a coin, is it gonna be heads or tails?" he asks again.

"Eeer, heads?" she guesses, not looking confident at all.

Afton just lightly shakes his head, flicking the coin up high before drawing his weapon and shooting a large hole into it. The coin flies off into the distance with a new hole as Afton turns to Shani, "Your talent didn't see that coming, did it?" he asks.

Shani continues looking into the distance where the coin had flown for a minute before composing herself and shaking her head, "N-no sir..."

Afton nods and is about to lie down and take another sip of his drink when a notification appears in his peripheral.

[WELCOME TO LEVEL 52!!]

...

Had he done something to achieve that?... He wants to ask Glados but realises that time was stopped, so he'd have to try afterwards...

[Points : 1]

[Stats]

[Perks]

[Mutations]

Afton decides to check the Perks this time... While he was sure he'd take another mutation involving his plant arm, taking a look wouldn't be a bad idea. He opens the Perk page and is immediately blinded by the thousands of Perks available to him... These weren't apparently restricted by level or what the Fallout games had, no, these included and improved anything he'd ever done, achieved, or had experience in. A few that had caught his interest were;

[SwordMaster] : Boosts damage dealt with swords by 200% and increases attack speed by 100%. Afton was curious at how many Perks he could take that simply upgraded his swordsmanship... Though, his plans for the future would be better off adopting a 'whip skill'.

[Perceptive Intuition] : Ability to detect invisible things around you, also allows user to sense when they are being watched. This Perk essentially gives you the superhuman ability to sense someone's gaze on you, which is pretty broken in Afton's honest opinion, and that's not even including the invisibility detection.

[Grit your teeth] : User can work through pain with ease, enduring agonizing pain while maintaining combat effectiveness and even retaining steady hands throughout. While Afton was already pretty good at handling pain, the ability to retain steady hands through it would be a great boon to anyone, though, this was especially effective on him considering his regenerative abilities.

[Puppeteer] : Ability to project your voice elsewhere. Afton had no idea just how much this Perk included... Could he throw his voice to the Think Tank from Primm? Or was it just limited to a single building? He supposed he wouldn't know until he bought it, something he was reluctant to spend points to test.

[One of Us!] : While your mutations have alienated you from regular folk, Mutants are more than willing to take you in as their own. +200% reputation gain with Mutants of any kind (Supermutants, Ghouls, etc). The reason why Afton was interested in this Perk is because almost everything in the wasteland could be considered a mutant. A guy with three ears? Mutant, A Deathclaw? Abomination and Mutant. A Psyker?... Now, that was the question... Getting a huge reputation boost with any Psyker would be an incredible ability.

Psyker's were rare but invaluable resources to anyone who had them... Even someone with a relatively tame mutation like Scorpion-Man had been man-handling the gangs and thugs in Freeside. He didn't even have training! Consider that! And that's not even speaking of the other powers Psyker's might possess... If Shani could see into the future, there might be the Magneto of Psykers somewhere...

Regardless, none of the Perks he'd looked through seemed good enough to stray from his current plan for mutations. So, he looks back at the mutations and selects;

[Beauveria mordicana flagellum] : Enables user's arm to extend, stretch, and flex.

His current arm's ability to change shape was limited by its mass, forcing him to shift material from other parts if he wanted to make it longer, thicker, or denser. This mutation would solve that, stretching and flexing were good, but the keyword was 'extend', as since it was differentiated from 'stretching' it essentially meant adding extra mass... Of course, he needed two more Perks to achieve what he really wanted, but his current two mutations were good enough for use as of now.

So, without waiting another moment, he takes the Mutations and watches as time resumes. Once it does he looks down at his peculiarly coloured plant arm and begins testing it out. First things first, testing mass manipulation.

He doesn't do much, simply making his arm slightly bulkier than it was before, afterwards pulling his fingers to see how far they could stretch individually... By the end of it he looked like a particularly creepy Aye-Aye.

Seeing no real limits to his current testing, he stretches his arm out ten feet away, letting it hang over the pool with ease while the other maids watch... Shani herself was watching with shock and not a small amount of horror.

After holding it out for a while Afton pulls his arm back in, he'd need to test this further as ten feet didn't even feel close to the limit. He lays back onto his chair and looks up at the sky while asking thin-air "Glados, are there any combat operations happening at this moment?"

A panel in the floor opens up and allows a small drone with an orange eye to appear, "There are two combat operations in progress, creator. The first is one of our Cyberdog patrols that ran into a migrating group of tunnellers, the second is the group under officer: Tamia, who led a group of specialist Cyberdogs into a nest of Cazadors." the AI states.