In the end we broke four more stones over the course of two hours, different people trying to capture the energy before it fled. The closer to actually empty of energy you were seemed to provide a little bit of additional energy, but still not enough to make it seem worth it.

And it should be. Picking apart what Joe had said, they used these 'broken souls' to jump their cultivation up. He'd eaten the soul of the blackberry bush to get his next breakthrough, but it didn't sound like the bush provided the entire breakthrough.

I sighed, playing with one of the leftover rocks for a moment, eyes unfocused as I felt at the energy in it. I didn't draw external energy in myself, so figuring out how to direct this stone's energy into me wouldn't be any easier than the testers had earlier.

"You do realize, you don't always have to be the one to discover and figure out everything, right?" I focused again, looking across the desk to where Brent was sitting. "The whole point of having other people in the Seekers, and having access to the military, is quite literally to throw more people at a problem to try to solve it."

Brent gave me a half smile. "Yes, pretty much all of the groundwork is yours. And you'll probably be at the forefront of dozens of new things. But one person can't do everything. And not in one day."

"Yeah, but how many of those dozen things are actually going to be new?" I waved the stone around. "Like this thing. We're duplicating work we pretty much know the elves did. How many more things are we going to learn that could have been shared and built on faster?" I didn't think I was quite ranting, but I was probably close. "I vaguely understand wanting to be special and be the next Goku with energy beams, but damn it why not be the next Roshi instead and actually make something of it?"

Brent chuckled before almost sliding into a full out laugh before I pinned him with a stare.

"Sorry. But it is funny. You do know that for every person like you, willing to push forward and share what you've learned, there's at least a thousand people who are quite happy to just take whatever they can and just wallow in their mediocrity? And dozens more that would take anything they learned and monopolize or monetize it?" He paused. "And those numbers are probably low."

I slumped. "Yeah. I know. But it still sucks." I blew out my breath and looked down at the geode again, tossing it between my hands. "So, question. Any possibility of tracking down one of the elves and me trying to get them to explain this? Weren't your guys following Joe still from last week?"

I got a nonplused look. "You want to attempt to talk to the terrorists that want to likely kill you. Again. Interrupt whatever possible operations are being run to try to track down their leadership and other cells. Just to try to negotiate with someone who tried to take your head off."

Shaking my head at that, I answered. "I don't want to talk to Barry, no. Tried that and failed. But there's others right? It's not just those two, and they can't all be frothing at the mouth."

"Terrorists usually are. Or cultists, if they were being honest about their Earth versus the alien comments." Brent disagreed. "I can't stop you from going back to Rolla and wandering around until you get accosted by someone, but I can decide to not point you at anyone we're tracking or in the process of arresting or other actions."

"Give it a few days, someone will figure it out here. You've also got a good chunk of the US military following your footsteps and it's only been two and a half days for anyone to try to build any techniques up. Remember, most people would have been doing the same thing you were and trying to cycle all of their energy into overflow, so that blocks any passive energy use techniques from being used."

I paused at that. "Yeah, and Melissa did take weeks to figure hers out from first principles…" I trailed off.

Brent gave me a smile. "Exactly. Try working on something else. For example, I've got the reports of all the soldiers across the nation. Most are I-1 or I-2, but there are people already at I-3 and looking to move up. You're going to lose your lead on them."

"I-1? I-2? What's that?"

Brent laughed again. "Sorry, the military is already making acronyms. What breakthrough levels they have. We know the alien calls it the Initiate's Realm, so I-1 would be one breakthrough. So you're an I-5 in military parlance. I know the fourth and fifth ones were much harder for you, but people are going to catch up eventually."

I thought back. It'd been six weeks ago or so when I made that double breakthrough. "I've been just a little busy." I replied back defensively. "You know, elves, moving here. The damn rains that only very recently stopped? And aren't you going to tell me not to risk myself like with these?" I held the geode up again.

Brent gave a great sigh. "You've already been forging that path, you're the one leading everyone else up the Initiate's Realm. The geode thing was because it wasn't a one off thing, or something that only you could uniquely do. Take some time for yourself though." He then grinned at me. "We don't need you standing on the third step of a staircase to help us up. We need someone at the top of the staircase to keep the alien from knocking us all down."

"Fine." I stood, tossing the geode onto his desk. "You deal with that, I'll try pushing further."

~~~

Brent sat staring at the geode for several minutes, until a beep from the computer next to him pulled his attention away. Looking at it, he raised an eyebrow. Nearly fifty an hour. Nicole normally keeps with traffic instead of outrunning it.

The programming on the traffic cameras had to be upgraded when people routinely started running twenty plus miles an hour, as they were starting to error on people moving faster than the slowest posted speed limits.

It also let them try to figure out everyone's general max speed. Nicole herself had shown inconsistencies when she was being tested, so facial recognition had been slaved into the system to keep an eye out on everyone for better baseline and knowledge.

Heaving a sigh, Brent placed a call. After a moment, an older man dressed in a well pressed suit projected itself into the chair Nicole had recently vacated. He had a look of no nonsense about him, and his light blue eyes did not reflect the thin smile he showed Brent upon appearing.

"I was denied removing a threat to Ms. Firen's wellbeing, and now she's explicitly asking to figure out how to use those people to further our understanding. Which is eminently a good idea if we're not going to be ending whoever we possibly can and neutralizing the rest." Brent started in. "Seeing as how I've been basically locked out of any information on the group, you're lucky I had a good reason to redirect Ms. Firen instead of giving her what little I do know and standing back. However, she's not going to stay distracted forever and she does still have friends in Rolla. You're playing with fire, and it's not a lit match."

"Your time spent advising as an insurgency specialist is showing, Brent." The man's already thin smile vanished. "However, the ELF cell has been claimed for counter operations. They'll be managed and once integrated, we'll forward any necessary details to you for dissemination to your project. In the meantime, you're dealing with a bunch of civilians, led by a twenty-one year old woman. You shouldn't be having any issue keeping them on focus."

"Kyle, my focus is 'get Nicole to discover more about this power and make it accessible to the military.' It does me no good to let her get focused on something already done." Brent scowled at the other man. "We have plenty of safe and effective results considering it's been barely two months since I was brought into her group. Why are you risking fucking something up with this, just to try to co-opt an actively hostile group?"

The man was quiet for a moment, his eyes flickering to a screen unseen on Brent's side of the call. Finally he nodded and did something on his end. "Alright, you're flagged as read in. China. The orient might have been the biggest hit with all the tectonic plate shifting, but that hasn't stopped the Chinese from laying claims to wide swaths of land. From other operations we already had running over there, their military is actively conscripting anyone and everyone that shows more than a bit of this power. Death rates are through the roof, but they're basically iterating through ten thousand different things a day."

He looked at Brent. "Your group is projected to provide a high level of civilian improvements, and release them. We need something more offensive, and Firen's fight with the ELF cell showed we're quickly getting outside of normal capability to deal with it. We need a countermeasure in case the Chinese or anyone else decides to walk or ship an army at us. Additionally, the US military started out highly projected into other countries. We have limited ways to get our people back now, without sending troop carriers we don't really have to get them."

Brent didn't say anything for a long moment. "And what, you think I couldn't redirect the Seekers into a more military mindset? I wouldn't want to, but if they need to learn to protect themselves more and share that out-"

"No." Kyle interrupted. "Analysts think the Chinese are going to burn through their viable military population fast enough in their expansion that we'll only have to repel them a few times. Domestic and internal applications of this power are going to be what see us through whatever the hell the alien throws at us next. We just need our own viable throwaway force to fend the Chinese off and possibly provide a measuring stick for your girl's group. Once we're done getting targeted by our enemies, we can expand ourselves."

"I don't particularly like this idea."

Kyle frowned now. "Why? It gives you an answer as to why we're not taking out the ELF cell and why your entire operation is being left to grow more or less organically."

"You catch that tiger by the tail, what do you do with it next?" Brent asked rhetorically. "You're not going to be able to internally sabotage an operation you have zero idea how it works. Whoever you get in with the elves isn't going to have enough ability to sabotage anything that won't get caught out."

"Leave that to us."

Brent sighed again, rubbing at his temples. "Since I don't appear to have any choice, fine. Do I already have access to anything you might have collected yet?" Kyle nodded. "I'll review it then because I'm damn sure not going to wait for you to parcel shit out to me. I make no promises about keeping any of the Dantian Seekers from trying to remove the elves if they become an issue they can't ignore."

"Appreciated." The projection blinked out.

"God damned generals prepping to fight the previous war." Brent groused, fingers flying over the keyboard as he accessed the new project, throwing a look at the geode Nicole had left.

Already, it was approaching statistical significance that whatever Nicole was teaching or showing off happened easier and faster than anyone else. The largest percentage of US I-3s per dantian lit people wasn't anywhere military, it was Rolla. And more specifically, the groups that had been training under Nicole's direction. The second largest was oddly enough in Whiteman, where Nicole's short timed boyfriend was stationed.

Sergeant Clay was even in the middle that of, having been conscripted as a trainer when it was discovered he had more training and breakthroughs than most and had easily made I-3 since the guard's activation.

Alright Nicole, you asked me to take care of the geodes, and I have access to hopefully something to show for it. Let's see what we can find on the elves.