I spend some time helping Glassmetal in the lab; they dealt with some tinker tech there and it was always interesting seeing it all working.

“Why don’t you make some gear like that” I asked him, seeing him sort through crates of contraptions

It’s an energy problem,” he explained “the things I create are made by changing ceramic into an atomic or even quantum level, I can create something akin to circuitry and make it a superconductor, so I can unleash a lot of energy through that, but when it’s not being powered by my core it doesn’t really work, it’s not really compatible with electricity.

“And why can’t you make it compatible?”

“The changes I make are stuff that degrade too quickly if I don’t maintain them myself, ceramic is not something that turns into a stable superconductor at room temperature, what I’m doing is basically using my manipulation to hold what I want in the shape that I want.”

“Hmm, I get it, like holding a cannon with duct tape.”

“Pretty much, it feels safer than that though.” Glassmetal chuckled. “You said my power has a lot of cognitive functions, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right”

“I imagine that if I didn’t have those, I’d just manipulate ceramic, like some earth shapers, but more limited.”

“Yeah, you be terrible outside of a tea shop. You can’t even manipulate what you’re not touching.”

“Hey, I could make a cool armor.”

“Ooh, there’s an idea, huh? Why don’t you use one of those?”

Glassmetal stayed quiet

“You got one already huh” I said, burst into laughs.

At dinner with everyone gathered at the table eating together, LED called attention to everyone.

“So, we need to train as a team.” LED started his announcement. “We don’t really have some fancy things to help us though and going for another self-appointed mission at this time would be crazy, so I’ve come up with a way for us to help each other.”

“We train by fighting each other in smaller teams. And I convinced Glassmetal to make some courses and things for us to fight.”

“You can make battle robots?” I asked, interested.

“If I had the robotics expertise maybe, but I can certainly make puppets, they’ll only work while connected to the ground in the marble room, but sure.”

“That’s already amazing dude.”

“Swordjuice also will train with us. We’ll start tomorrow using one vs the rest exercises. This way we can see what each other can do in various situations.”

“What time we’re going to do it?” Payback asked

“Morning,” led answered without hesitation.

“Oh no no, let’s do it in the afternoon,” Spotlight immediately protested against

“Sigh, sure that’s fine as well.” LED conceded, not seeming in the mood to argue.

“Well, I’m pumped.” I said, only Swordjuice seeming to share my excitement.

We finished dinner and went to bed. Tomorrow would be a full day. I talked with Swordjuice and she agreed to get some training in during the morning before the team exercise. I wanted to see what I could get from her powers this time.

I was once again in the very familiar marble room. Swordjuice was standing directly against me. We had already had breakfast together, amicable, talking the whole way. Her excitement for powers and getting stronger was intoxicating, and she seemed really eager for our fight.

She was wearing an actual uniform this time. It had multiple pouches, which I presumed contained her pills or other shenanigans like that. She had knife holsters throughout her uniform as well and most noticeable a mace. Not just a baton, an actual mace with a heavy metal head.

“Looking ready for war, Swordjuice,”

“You’ve grown by leaps and bounds even if you just got your powers Matrix, I won’t be left behind”

When did I instill this sense of rivalry in her? It wasn’t my intention at all, but it good to see this kind of spirit in the younger generation.

“I noticed something Matrix,” Swordjuice continued. “I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough, I knew how to fight sure and I knew how my powers work, but talking with you really opened my mind, the frustration of not being able to go on mission only pushed me more, I set to experiment, the whole day, every day, trying to push my power further and further.”

“Well, lest see what you learned then,” I said, preparing myself for the fight.

She nodded firmly. I noticed the design on her pouches on the left side. It was the same one that would expel pills like before. Form it came not a pill but a translucent little ball similar like a gem.

She popped it in her mouth, already on the run for me. A sheen covered her. It was silvery but comparing it to the last time I had seen it would be a disservice; extended much thinly; it was of a much deeper color, and she controlled it through her body actively. I could see she didn’t even nick the ground this time

This was on another level. Our eyes met. I could see her happiness at being made it this far, this much more powerful. We really were alike in this sense. As she approached me literally cutting through the air, I felt a pressure, a familiar one.

This is something I had encountered before, and together with my now much deeper connection to my Matrix, I could control it much better. We were attacked by this exact same thing, and what was the solution. I pulled, and the transformation came. My smile matched Swordjuice’s.

I was covered in the earthy scales just like last time, Swordjuice didn’t waver she was coming at me directly for the throat I could tell she had psyched herself up to that because I wouldn’t die from it, it was an incredible move, actually train to do something like that without really hurting your training partner was extremely rare.

And it was the right strategy as well with a power like mine, not that it would work anymore, even if I wasn’t able to call preemptively on my transformation like I was doing now, something that I attributed to experience, if I had encountered a power or a specific situation before I could better prepare myself to it.

It was a reaction, although a preemptive one. And maybe only made possible because I had encountered so many things that let me grow into understanding and manipulating matrices.

Something was weird, though. She saw that I was armored. She was still two steps to reach me but she didn’t change her strategy even one bit. I didn’t see a point in dodging though so prepared myself to counter attack.

What I didn’t expect was the extend that her ability got stronger.

She came like a freight train. The silvery aura around her tightly coiled around her skin, as her face was settled into concentration and determination.

I was prepared to deflect her arm and put her in a lock as soon as it started slipped from my armor, but it instead entered swiftly into my skin.

Her hand punctured straight through it like it wasn’t even there. My higher reaction time entered the game as I directed her hand out. It ripped through the side of my neck as I jumped to the opposite side.

The silvery energy that had been tightly controlled by Swordjuice exploded outwards toward the ground as she lost control of it.

My neck returned whole into place, the armor forming over it again as I looked stunned at the result of Swordjuice’s power. There was now one of those giant deep slashes through the solid marble, just like something out of bleach.

I looked at her as she swallowed her queasiness, seeing me perfectly intact.

“How...” I asked simply.

“You want to stop to talk, really?” she asked, challenging me, so she had more tricks in her sleeves. Fine. They would be all mine at the end of the fight, anyway.

“Come at me then, show me everything you got.”

I entered a ready position, my matrix accompanying me together into one. I’m sure I could get her powers much faster than I had Araphel’s.

It was time to get serious as well.

She came at me again with what was left of the silver energy, and this time, instead of taking it on, I deflected it around me. I could see her attack coming more easily, even if my body didn’t move that much faster than a normal person. It was still a little better, and there was still more to improve.

The grounds were getting covered in rent in all directions as she couldn’t hold on to the energy when she committed to an attack. It must be mentally taxing to control this much of the concept at once.

Swordy fought like a baseline human in terms of agility and strength, but she was well trained. I didn’t know her backstory, but it must have included a lot of formal training, as she had good reflexes and knew her way around a fight.

I needed to learn to be more proactive myself.

Her arm came again at me after a tricky interaction and instead of dodging I pushed my matrix to take another route, her arm lunged into my midsection.

Completely ineffectively as it had turned into shadow, she got jolted by the electricity and jumped back. The region reformed, and I realized two things.

The good one was that I could feel some parts of it were made of the purple flesh now, that was ever stronger than a normal human musculature and I couldn’t quickly and without pain turn myself into a purple alien,

The second was that while this was extremely effective at making me invulnerable to physical attack, even that little energy that escaped had taken from my matrix to reconstruct, which was probably what made it regrow as the purple type.

But dodging like this would tire me much faster and to become the purple man, I would really need to overtax my energy levels, maybe before bed?

“Surprised?” I asked.

“Op cheater,” she took another pellet. It was like jelly ball instead of a pill.

She took it, the energy levels around her spiking and then diminishing as she focused on controlling them.

I attacked this time and form already a tether between us.

To my surprise, as I was punching her, she punched back without hesitation.

Our fists met and my arm snapped back, destroyed by blunt force.

I spun around as my arm reformed; I had felt her matrix move when she lost control of the energy and took it back, so it was her power controlling the energy maybe a could read her attack better through that, but I decided instead to try to understand why she was much stronger than before but her power was exactly the same.

She came attacking me this time, launching shock waves of force, fracturing everything around her, even my bones, if I didn’t get far enough in time.

I tried to attack her again, but she just unleashed her control on the energy, making it turn into a defensive shroud of kinetic energy.

Very effective. This was the blunt force she could take from the weapons, I realized, once again much stronger, though. Her power was the same, and I reread it,

Like reading a book that I had read once, but when I was barely literate, now fully fluent, I could take much more.

Her powers could identify concepts relating to weapons, the stronger concept-effect that was what defined the weapon, the minds of people, then it could manifest these concepts physically in the form of a liquid that fell from the weapon. As long as the liquid still existed, that specific attribute would not exist in the weapon, when used on something, by a human swallowing it or Swordjuice infusing it into another material.

The new material or person would get the attributes for a while when the effect ran off. The original weapon would have that attribute again. It was most interesting in people, as it added the concept similar to a new power into the matrix. What was how she could then control it as a shroud around her.

But maybe that was only her and other people would have a much more difficult time if their powers couldn’t differentiate the concepts to affect them.

All that still didn’t tell me how she could unleash such force. I don’t think she found a weapon with a cutting power this strong, but it surely might be possible with a weapon created by another powered.

If it wasn’t quality, it must have been quantity.

“The number of weapons you’d have to go through to get this effect, it surely took a while.”

“Oh, figured it out finally. Sad you can’t copy it,” she said, managing to even sound a little apologetic.

“No, it’s fine. It was a good strategy to get yourself more powerful, and you can get even better learning to control the shroud with more mastery.”

“You really found a way to get stronger Swordjuice,” I told her earnestly. “You surely will raise in the ranks in no time.”