At first, it tingled.

Every simulated nerve in her body buzzed in a strange way. It was hard to describe… like the feeling of the sun on your skin when you walked out of a cold dark place, or the feeling you get from ASMR but throughout her entire body. She felt light, and good, and warm, and all fuzzy, but most of all she felt powerful.

That feeling was mostly a waste though because she woke up in her mindscape, as she had expected while her body, or well, brain, got used to the new changes to her physiology.

She hoped Bac would explain the Max what was going on. She should have said something, but she had completely forgotten. Deciding not to dwell on it because nothing could be done at this point, she decided to take a stroll around her mind, Yes, a stroll as in walking. She had a body here. Why wouldn't she? It was her mind after all. Shelly looked down at herself checking that nothing had changed since the last time she was here.

Still about 5’8, slim figure, longish legs, chocolate caramel skin with the birthmark on her ring finger looping the third segment in lighter skin, she was wearing a skirt and button-down dress-shirt both differing shades of purple.

To finish her inspection Shelly summoned a mirror, her face was its usual cuteness or so she thought at first. A heart-shaped head and pouty lips, long eyelashes, and a nicely shaped nose. Her hair was, as always, a curly mess, just the way she liked it. Her most striking feature, in Shelly’s own opinion, was her eyes; upturned almond-shaped they were heterochromatic. one was a deep brown like freshly turned earth, the other had been a very light blue, that was apparently no longer the case. Now her left eye was now a swirling mix of orange and yellow, it seemed to glow without giving off light, everything about it reminded her of the sun, marred only by the pupil that sat in its center, which contrasted heavily like a black hole consuming the star from inside. It was a shock for sure when she noticed it, but it was beautiful almost hypnotic as the colors swirled and shifted. She was sure she could live with the change.

If only it existed in real life…

Now that she was done with her self-perusal, it was time for that walk.

A path formed in front of her, cutting through the weird echoing void of standing in her own surface thoughts. She stepped onto it walking up the path. Heading deeper into her psyche and sightseeing as she made her way to her true destination.

There was the manifestation of her childhood memories in her simulation in the form of the little brick house doc had made for her to spend those years in.

There was her Ego in the form of a version of her current body with an overly large head, she had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

It, as always, was standing in front of the gate of crippling fears and anxiety as if guarding it, she was happy to let it. That was a place she would rather stay far far away from.

Finally, she came to a stop in her true destination. A mental home base if you will.

It was a perfect renderization, formed from her own perfect memory, of the Doclabs facility before she had awoken with Bac. Although unlike the real one, in this one she could actually walk around. In here was the core of her being, the parts of herself that she wouldn’t be Shelly without, all guarded and safe under this roof. She stepped into the door and headed down the hall, stopping at the stairway her and Bac had been unable to progress down. At the bottom was a large set of training rooms where metas had practiced things like new abilities or just general combat skills. Heading into one of the rooms she at first tried to use one of her new photokinesis abilities. It didn’t work, but she wasn’t shocked if she had those abilities yet she wouldn’t still be here. That hadn’t really been her reason for coming to this place anyway.

Over her life, shelly had read a lot of books. Many had been STEM content or non-fiction informational texts, a lot had been fiction, from fantasy to sci-fi, and a lot of manga (and a greater than she would ever admit chunk of hentai).

A bit of it, a larger portion then you would expect from someone in her circumstances, was martial arts instructional manuals, Shelly had read over the details of everything from kendo to jujutsu, from simple techniques to difficult styles. And with her unforgetting mind, it was like the books were seared into her brain.

She was just never able to practice them, except for when she came here.

When she was in her mindscape she had her body and could move however she wanted, hopefully building muscle memory for the future, she wasn’t sure if that worked here.

Still, she moved through some simple taekwondo drills, as well as practicing some stretches she had read over in a Jiu-jitsu handbook.

After that was done, she began the serious work, one by one she moved through the motions of every form she had seen in books so far.

She had no idea how long she was at it, but by the time she was done she was sweating and sore, odd since this place and her body were just mental constructs.

That had still been only a warm-up.

Next was the fun part, using her considerable brainpower shelly formed a dummy on the other side of the room, it was easy as this entire place was within her mind.

She formed her opponent out of mental images splitting off a part of her focus to control its movements. With her preparations, complete Shelly took a ready stance, the dummy taking a similar position. It stepped forward throwing a kick at Shelly’s head. She dodged backward throwing a punch of her own at the puppet's throat it slipped to the side, countering with a punch right to Shelly’s gut. The breath rushed out of her as pain, which she was not at all used to feeling, caused all parts of her mind to lose focus, the dummy disappearing as a result.

Groaning Shelly took a second to catch her breath. Her stomach still sore she took her ready position again, creating the dummy once more and letting it adjust into a ready stance as well. then she charged. She tried to tackle the construct into a grappling hold and managed to get her arms around it before it retaliated flipping over and throwing her to the ground, Shelly landed on her back but managed to roll to avoid a punch that hit right where her face had been, she kicked up catching the dummy’s ribs and causing it to fall off balance and onto its butt. Shelly sprung up and in a quick motion brought her knee into the dummy’s face. The strike hit with enough force That it would have broken an actual person’s nose causing the dummy to dissipate once again.

Shelly fought a few more rounds against the dummy alternately winning and losing in about equal amounts, she was really fighting herself in the end after all.

At first, she avoided using her telekinesis, trying to work with her body specifically, once she incorporated her power things began to get a little more one-sided… in the dummy’s favor.

It was absurdly hard to manipulate her telekinesis and move her body at the same time. Like trying to hold your breath and run a mile, it was like both tasks were using up the same resource in her brain. The attempt to do both brought her old headaches back with a vengeance. Though they weren't nearly as bad as she thought they should have been, If that was because of Bac’s training or the fact that this place was within her mind and thus the pressure from pushing on the world was less, she didn’t know.

The why didn’t really matter, what mattered was the fact this exercise was leading to her receiving a lot of bruises. Wait? Could she bruise here? It FELT like she could.

This thought ran through Shelly’s head as the puppet clonked her in the face and promptly disappeared.

“Okay… Just a few more rounds.”