In the darkest hours Mia joined me in the classroom, the walls lit only by moonlight trickling through the window and a sole candle sitting underneath the window, as to minimize how much light emanated from the room.

In the time since Mia’s father’s death and our returning to the city guard, it had been troublesome to find alone time, let alone time to practice what my administrative access entailed.

It was obvious that I couldn’t discuss it with Alain or Javier. They were too married to their cause. While I trusted them, they weren’t sufficiently loyal to the team, which meant that anything they learned could be used against us, if the lines were drawn.

Of those were who were trustworthy, Vera was apt to have some concerns given her faith in the doctrine, let alone not having the proper mindset to be able to discuss the implications. That left only Mia, who I had to essentially scrounge an opportunity to see, given her work as a noble in the weeks following our encounter.

After one of her many speeches to the public meant to help quell the raging force behind the prey soul movement, I managed to corner her, hoping that we could work together to get some answers.

“There weren’t any better places to talk to me?” she quipped, furrowing her brows. Her subconscious movements picked at her dress, an unfamiliar attire for her skin. It had been quite some time since she donned this kind of clothing. I imagined it would take some time to get accustomed to it once again.

“Not without others present,” I replied, taking a quick scan of the area with my electroreception. No presences were close enough for me to be concerned about my words being overheard.

“Well? Say what you need to say then. I have another engagement in an hour from now and they’ll come looking for me if I dawdle. It’s a lot of work to clean up after one’s father’s messes, if that wasn’t obvious.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s been all too clear. What I wanted to do was schedule some time with you, to discuss your recent… success in achieving your third tier.”

Before I could even react her hands slid over my lips, a panicked look blooming on her face. “Shut it, Perry. What are you thinking stating that aloud?”

I pushed her arm aside, unwilling to be boxed in by my smaller friend. “I was thinking it merited some more investigation. Could we try and find some time to investigate further?”

“Perry, I’m standing right next to you and you already vetted the area. What do you actually mean by that?”

“What I mean is I’ve been holding out on you. I think I caused your rank up?”

Mia manifested her beak and pressed it against my neck, incensed to action. “Speak quickly. I have no patience and little time.”

“There isn’t a quick explanation other than I may be able to influence the boxes.”

She pulled back, beak withering into nothingness as she regarded me with equal parts curiosity and disdain. “The boxes? Those shitty little descriptors? What would that do?”

“I’m not sure, Mia,” I spat. “That’s why I want to test it out more with someone else. To confirm my results.”

She rolled her eyes at me, but I could see she was hooked at the possibility, thus reflecting our meeting this very night.

“You’re late,” I muttered

.

“How am I late? We agreed to leave separately as to not be seen coming here?” she sputtered, shaking her head in confusion.

“Great, it is you. Had to be sure that you weren’t somehow replaced.”

“You’re acting more paranoid than usual, and that’s supposed to be Alain and Javier’s job. Are you going to explain more for our testing or do I pretend this is all a delusion?”

“What, you don’t think it odd that you and Vera ranked up at at the same time during that fight with your father? No, no, don’t start, I can already hear your rebuttal that we’ve been training together for all this time, but that doesn’t quite account for each of our starting points.” Her open-and-shut mouth closed into a face of derision, followed by a contortion I could only read as consideration.

“Fine, explain what happened then. Don’t leave out any words, because if I’m going to help you replicate the efforts, then I need to know what steps you took to get to those results,” she replied, arms crossed. The moonlight sat around her body like a shining outline, giving her an imposing aura to back her demands.

I took one last scan of the area with my electroreception, noting no movement from our dorm room. If anyone was eavesdropping at this point, they must have more focused capabilities than my own, and no amount of checking would sufficiently block them out. I had to commit to the very course in front of me or end things now. “Let me start with what I think caused this. This is only a hunch, mind you, but it’s the only explanation I have to go off of. When we were dungeon delving, something jumped into me. This was when we were separated from the rest of the team. I thought it was just a trick of the mind, but now I’m not so sure.”

I swallowed, hoping that things could remain mostly as they were the more the words left my lips. “So during our fight with your dad, in an act of desperation I hoped for some way out of this. Some way to be stronger. That seemed to make whatever it was that happened to me respond, noting that I had the proper administrative rights—”

“Hold on,” Mia interjected. “Administrative rights? And hasn’t Javier told us not to rely on new techniques during battle?”

“For all that he’s told us that most of my successes seems to have come from mid-battle innovation, but I’m not going to be the one that tells him he’s wrong, Mia. And yes, administrative rights. I believe what I ended up seeing should be the same thing you would see, if you asked the same ask.”

“And what should I ask then?” she demanded, tapping her feet on the ground.

“Uh, let’s start with viewing your tier progress. Make your request, vocal or otherwise. In this instance, I’ll do the same for you.”

Launching Display

The box opened in response to my request, showing a deficit for Mia, having a negative 10% balance in terms of progress towards her fourth tier.”

I could tell by her wild glance that she was seeing the same thing I was. “How could I have a deficit? Why aren’t I just most of the way to the third tier?” she sputtered, falling back onto an errant desk.

“That’s… due to my involvement. You were 30% behind during that fight, but we needed you to be stronger now. Evidently I was allowed to push you ahead… given my administrative rights.”

“Why didn’t you do that for yourself?” Mia blurted out.

I tried to conceal my visceral reaction, but that would have required reflexes my emotions had yet to develop. “I did. It seemed to be not as effective for me as it was for you or Vera. It might be a false breakthrough, or may require waiting until I’ve progressed to a similar deficit to you to start. Who knows why it works as it does? That’s part of why I needed you with me, to troubleshoot this mess.”

Mia’s face took on a flurry of emotions, vacillating primarily through concern and rage and confusion before settling on a flat affect. “You did it to Vera too?”

“I didn’t know what other choice we had. It worked on her, didn’t it? I think I was too underdeveloped for it to do more than nominally push me forward. I’m at negative 40% right now. Maybe in another 10%, whatever that means outside of the boxes, I’ll be allowed full access to my third tier, seemingly arbitrarily delineation that it is.”

“Well? What else can you do with it?” she asked, ready to move on from her concern.

“I don’t know. I didn’t try much with it. Was afraid of what it could do. I didn’t want to try and risk anything and maybe fuck myself up further.”

“Fine, why don’t we start simple. Try to look at my techniques and see if you can up their proficiency or learn more about them then what’s normally written. Or at the very minimum, see the boxes I see. That could be useful in battle, to learn what techniques your opponent has codified.” Everything had faded to her excitement at the prospect of what this new opportunity afforded us.

I couldn’t deny that I was feeling similar levels of excitement. The opportunity to understand whatever had happened to me in the dungeon wasn’t an opportunity that could be understated, and having someone else to properly practice with would make this verifiable information as opposed to being attributable to an excited imagination hoping to connect two disparate items. Her confirmation of her status was already a weight lifted from my shoulder. Now the only thing left was wondering what was the limit of my authority.

“Alright, is there any particular one you would like me to look at first?” I asked, wondering how to key my request properly.

She pursed her lips, brows narrowed in thought. “No, surprise me. We have to confirm everything is the same, which means you have to start. Can’t have you lying out of shame.”

“You really think I would lie?”

“Out of shame, maybe,” was her repeated retort.

I pretended to be wounded at her accusation, holding my hand to my heart. It clearly didn’t impress her given her still face.

‘Give me information on Mia’s techniques,’ I thought, hoping that my access would do the work without needing any extra thought patterns.

Launching Display

I could see three boxes in front of me. It was a good thing I could read as they usually spoke the same content aloud. The old me would possibly have had trouble with this but the person I was now was able to understand the contents with relative ease. The gap being the wording that didn’t make sense to my head.

The first box seemed to have the most progress to it.

Technique: Mirror Image. Proficiency: 70%.

Inspired by the hummingbird’s speed, this technique captures the wonder of seeing two hummingbirds nipping at a flower for the precious nectar. Is it truly two birds? Or just one, moving so fast that it seems as though it’s in two places, dipping about in-between the blinks of your eyes? This technique splits the difference, creating trailing images that copy Mia’s movements with a scaling amount of efficacy, contingent on her proficiency. Current efficacy: 35%

That was a lot, perhaps even more information than was reflected in my boxes, not that I had properly revisited them in my fear of what my higher tier acceleration had wrought.

Technique: Two Heartbeats. Proficiency: 40%. Hummingbirds are known for their rapid movement, wings flitting around 80 times per second. This technique makes it easier to mimic their natural achievement, increasing the speed of the user at a rate varying with their proficiency. Current efficacy: 40%.

Didn’t realize that she wasn’t properly twice as fast. It sure looked like it, but not even being at full potential yet would make it ever the potent threat when her proficiency was maxed. I wondered if any other beast soul could compare to that level of speed magnification for the user.

Technique: The Thrum. Proficiency: 20%.

Consider this technique a derivation of Two Heartbeats. Hummingbirds were known for the hum of their wingbeats. In this, Mia conceptualized a technique that made that proverbial hum a weapon, making her vibrate at intense frequencies, to the detriment of anything that gets in touch with her, duration scaling with her proficiency. Current Duration: 2 seconds.

“Well? What do you see? Stop gawking and tell me,” Mia demanded, slapping the wood she sat upon.

I raised one eyebrow, staring at my companion. “So, you’ve got three techniques—”

Before I could continue Mia jumped in, “—But you already knew that.”

“If you would let me continue—”

“—Sorry, not another peep until you’re done speaking.”

I glared at her, hoping her need to interrupt had finally been sated. “As I have been trying to say, you have three techniques. Mirror Image, Two Heartbeats and the Thrum.”

Mia clapped her hands, enthusiasm faster than my mouth. “That’s great! No one knew what I called them yet.”

“I wasn’t done… again, Mia. I also was able to read your current proficiency with the techniques, as well as a summary of what they do. It even put actual numbers to how effective they were, even if those numbers were primarily percentiles.”

“You what?” she bellowed, running across the room to grab my arm. Her palms were sweaty, the excitement practically leaking out of her body.

“Tell. Me. Everything.”

“I can uh, transcribe the details later, if you’d like. There was a lot of words. I don’t want to repeat them all for you again.”

Mia pulled back, rolling her eyes. “Fine. That’s acceptable. I guess.”

I could tell she was still desperate for my words, her body tensed up, hands gripping at the table as a means of restraint. But I wasn’t fast enough, and I didn’t know how much time we had left. We had other priorities to attend to.

“I was wondering… should I try to advance you another rank?”

Her eyes bulged out, looking upon me with concern and outrage. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“Not really, but I think it’s worth testing. I had to approve it last time, so trying won’t inherently make it happen, alright?”

“Fine then. Do your worst. But perhaps just… try it on yourself again.”

I thought to whatever it was, wondering if I could rank up again.

Warning: User Has insufficiently integrated with current tier. Advancing further apt to cause harm to the user. Continue?

No, no no no. I did not want to continue if that was the options I had. I could tell my face had contorted into a panicked frown by Mia’s reaction.

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad. I don’t think I should push ahead recklessly for those kinds of increases, but maybe I can push ahead safely when we’re already on the threshold. But that might be a more case-by-case sort of situation. I certainly shouldn’t try now until the deficit is made up. If I’m interpreting this system, if you would, it seems to be purposed to gradually acclimate the body to the capabilities.”

“That’s an interesting theory. It would make sense but we would need to test it more. As for forcing the achievement of another tier, let’s try to not get in those situations if we can. Desperation is not a good circumstance to be in. Is there anything else you think we can study in the interim?”

“… Let me take a look into other features, but I think this is an excellent start if you don’t mind calling it a night now. Just knowing what I’ve done is real and not imagined already gives me room to explore the rest of the boxes. I’ll keep you informed though, of course.”

Mia exhaled through her teeth, trying her utmost to keep her smile from breaking. “I’ll pretend that you didn’t get me out of bed for this brief of a fact-finding mission and let you head out. Some people,” she muttered, heading out of the classroom.

“What? I didn’t want the others to get suspicious if they woke up now?”

“Whatever,” Mia said, winding around the corner of the classroom door, leaving me alone with the untold possibilities. I couldn’t stay up much longer. But I knew I would have a restful sleep that night, with somewhere to look for answers.