“Are we done then?”

“No not yet, we have a few more singles left, then we have hybrids. Let’s move on to the Railgun test.”

“A certain scientific railgun?”

“Let’s move you to 3:1”

“Oh yeah! Here goes nothing.” I happen to have a deep abiding love for the concept of a railgun. I bolt of something is squeezed out between two directed equal and opposing fields. It’s a principle that just looks cool. Compressing fields, increasing density. Introducing projectile. Initial acceleration, and boom there it goes. I hadn’t realized that I was already going through the motions...at least mentally. The indicator light for the focus went super bright. I ended up bringing up my hand reflexively before realizing the indicator had already burnt out. The testing containment room showed a clear trail and hole in one of the testing targets. “Uhm...looks like I have that one down to a mental command...I guess.” Having the good decency to look sheepish at her agape face over the screen.

“Wh-wh-what the hell was that! These numbers are terrible, but that output was phenomenal! I don’t know why your efficiency was so god damn awful, but that output registered at three times the highest recorded output coefficient. How did you visualize that?”

“Well, I visualized the opposing field oriented at 45-degree angles instead of the typical 90, to maximize the acceleration vector overlap. So that more of the field is overlapping. I also thought of the fields as being compressed down into their highest energy state. Kind of like how most of a neodymium magnets fields are much denser the closer you go. Then I thought about launching a projectile into those fields via a slingshot-style delivery system. A flick really.”

“So the details of the visualization, as well as the clearness of the image, might have something to do with the overall output. It seems to increase the cost as well. You might not be able to use that all the time. Currently, you are in an Aether rich environment, so I doubt you would notice the fatigue yet, but the cost on that is quite high. Powerful for sure, but think of it more like a “Big Gun” or your final form. Something to use only when necessary.”

“This isn’t even my final form!” I mocked with mirthful shenanigans.”

She sat and stared at my silly display. “Are you done?”

“...yes?”

“Okay these last ones should be less destructive we should be able to go back to the 2:1 room. I’m pretty sure the board is going to skin me alive for using the common rooms.”

“What’s left? The suspense is killing me.”

“We have fields and elemental bias left.”

“Fields? What are fields?”

“Well they can be force fields, deflection shields, absorption grids, It’s basically your defensive typing”

“Could I have more than one?”

“While not uncommon...unlikely? But hey, that’s what we are here for.”

The room switched back to the slightly disheveled 2:1 room. “I’m feeling kind of lost here. What am I supposed to do?”

“There will be some hostile pulses shot into the room at a humanoid figure. That figure will represent you and those pulses that collide with the dummy will be transmitted as feedback to you. They will be largely inert, shouldn’t cause you any damage, but they will sting. Your job is to do whatever comes naturally to you, to defend yourself from them.”

“When?”

“...”

“Hey? You hear me?” It was at that time. I knew when. “Oh holy crap, that feels so uncomfortable. Like frozen underwear, or pliers on my nipples. I guess we already started” I grimaced as stoically as I could manage. How does one defend? A shield? I guess a shield. The next pulse comes, but I miss deflecting it by the barest margins. Oh god, that feeling will never be okay. I prepare again, changing the structure of the shield in my mind. It’s similar to a Kite shield or heater shield. Although it looks like someone stretched a heater shield out and cut it in half, making a new shield out of one half. It was oddly asymmetrical, covered 2/3rds of the dummy in one direction. I raise my shield again, but the pulse this time comes at me from a different angle. I go with my back up plan as I was worried about making just a directional shield. I visualize taking the other half of my shield and forming a 90-degree bulwark in two directions. I barely get it up in time, but it has the added benefit of deflecting the pulse off course entirely. “Well I mean that worked. Not sure if I need to come up with something better though. What do you think?”

“I think it might be a little too specialized. It boasts great deflection strength, but its defensive area is kind of small. I mean if you hunkered down you could protect yourself from just about any Aether projectile we have seen to date, and even stop melee blows, which is a weakness many defenses have, but it won’t save you from AoE’s or other Field effects. Really the density and Aether solidification is top notch. Maybe we could try for a different shape or defense type as well? Absorb shields are pretty popular.”

“Popular? Well... if it’s popular, wouldn’t it be something that gets countered?

“You’re aren’t wrong, but that’s only showing up in skirmishes, they seem to be still effective in Monster mining.”

“Hmmm. Let’s go again. I think I have an idea.” Instead of imagining a bulwark. I focus and imagine a hungry field. Like a coalescing pool of hot plasma. Having it tear and break down everything it comes into contact with, to feed its burn. A reactive armor. Something that I could use to break down and recycle hostile Aether. The next pulse arrived on schedule. It evaporated into nothing. The field was still weak, just barely visible, but it was growing in strength as it fed on the surrounding Aether.

“Huh, that’s weird. Are your defenses in place? I’m not sure what happened to that last pulse, it just ceased to be. Even the readings in the room aren’t anything spectacular.”

“Yes, my defense is up.”

“Do you mind if I up the offensive?”

“As they say, ‘Hit me with your best shot’.”

“Okay. Here it comes. Commencing in 3. 2. 1.”

The pulse this time was far more dense. Far more dangerous. I could tell that there was some nasty feedback in store if I didn’t stop it. I doubled down on the image. A swirling hungry void pulling the raw broken down Aether back into a useable wellspring in front of me. I would stop this. I would use it against itself. The pulse clashed with the disintegration effect, and even though it continued to push and attempt to crush the void it was up against. It was like watching a car try and go up a hill without the benefit of any additional acceleration. A now rapidly shrinking car… I think I stretched that analogy a little too far. It within just moments of meeting the field was rendered into a not insignificant amount of raw Aether for me to use. My personal little puddle of Aether. “Hey! I think I got the hang of this one! It’s cool right?”

“What did you do? It reads on the sensors like a rapid decay of Aether, but I can clearly now get a reading of about the same quantity of Aether from you.”

“Well, I imagined a swirling plasma storm of Aether, if you will. An Aether system programmed to break down and convert Aether in real time.” I felt like that made sense.

“You did what? You actively broke down and converted Aether in real time? That’s insane. That was so fast! What was your loss ratio?”

“If I had to guess… maybe 10-15 percent loss?”

“That’s incredible. Yeah, I think with those two forms of defense you should be more than prepared enough for what you can expect to deal with. I think. I mean... you essentially just ground down a bowling ball as it was thrown at you. That’s intense.”

“Okay. So that’s good? Are we done?”

“Almost. We have some hybrid units to test. They are like combined focuses. We found out in our testing, that if we combined a couple of focuses together we could get interesting new results. Although the blast/burst one is essentially a combined type already, we found that we couldn’t really combine those two in the same way. It’s like it generates a fork in the road and you can only go down one of them, but we can pair up other ones with that, and still get interesting outcomes.”

“Okay let’s get through these. I am starting to feel a little fatigued.”

“Well, that’s pretty normal. You are expending an excessive amount of Aether, especially for a first time out. You are actually doing quite well considering the output you are achieving.”

“Great. So what's up first?”

“First we will try the dart homing + blast/burst.”

“Shouldn’t we just skip this? The dart thing was a dud last time.”

“It might be an incompatibility for sure, but the hybrids are where we usually get interesting results. We are going to switch to a 4:1 room. It probably won’t be flashy, but I can still get the readings I need.”

“Oooookaay. Am I good to go yet?” A small click occurred, and the room view switched.”

“Ready when you are.”

I tried to imagine a lance or explosive quarrel. I gave it an impulse to fire off. The broad-headed quarrel fired off and hit a target. It then proceeded to burst into tiny shards. Little spikes or quill-like munitions. “Well, that worked? I think.”

“Wow that’s good you even managed a submunition. It’s like you managed to pack some burst into your blast. This is very interesting. It was clearly added separately, but you managed to pack it together before loosing it.”

“Should I try the other way? Like attempting to use the burst side now?”

“Yes. Let’s continue.”

I tried to imagine a burst of little homing darts. I tried to ‘lock on’ to all the targets in the room as it felt pretty natural. “Here goes.” I pulsed the pack and a volley of small knife-like projectiles launched in unison and took off like needlefish after prey. They flashed in a dance of arcs each one homing in on a different target. One after another the ‘thok’ of them sinking into targets could be heard. “Well, that too seems to work. Maybe the dart alone is either too simple, or it overwhelms it when I try and use it by itself. After all, isn’t it like the very first focuses that people learn? Maybe I had too much output and not enough finesse to run it?”

“That is possible, we can put that to the test later.”