Congratulations!

You have reached Level 18!

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Potent Thaumaturge

Level 18

HP: 13

Body: 92

Stability: 93

Nerve: 93

Attunement: 93

Free Points: 170

XP to next level: 55511

Dear Lord, we’re fixing to go supercritical in just a few levels. Perry thought to himself.

Thankfully, only really big changes would net Perry that amount of XP.

I just need to stop making really big enemies, Perry thought. And research immortality so I don’t have to watch everyone I love die.

Of course that came with it’s own challenges.

One step at a time.

Perry divvied up the stats.

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Potent Thaumaturge

Level 18

HP: 13

Body: 135

Stability: 136

Nerve: 135

Attunement: 135

Free Points: 0

XP to next level: 55511

The jump from 91 to 135 represented going from 84X baseline to 725X baseline.

A cold sweat broke out on Perry’s skin.

What happens next level? 1451 points? Is it time to start hoarding points? Because after a certain point…more isn’t necessarily better.

Perry could practically feel The Tide watching him with interest, and it was only his slightly higher Stability that allowed him to avoid Watching it back.

Like watching an ant wake up and look back at the person watching them through the microscope. An animal moving with calculated purpose.

Perry shuddered and reeled in his senses.

Best keep things 3-D. Best pretend to continue being an animal until he knew the stakes.

May have to boost Stability a couple points higher in the future. The stakes of a slip-up are getting too high.

Perry glanced around at the surrounding people, laughing and high-fiving over defeating a Demon Lord. They seemed very…limited. All Perry had to do was release the tight leash on his senses, and so much information flooded in. They were little motes of light in a deep ocean that stretched out in every direction…Am I perceiving spacetime?

There were things…moving around them in, like sharks in dark waters. Things that’d always been there, but he’d never been able to see them. For a moment, Perry lost his focus and really looked at one of them.

It looked back at him. Mars waved. It took the form of a bit of errant wind wobbling a nearby bush and a man sneezing. They were part of this reality, but also apart from it.

Perry reeled his senses in again, like a kid who wouldn’t learn not to touch a hot stove.

I thought Stability was supposed to help with this.

At seven hundred times smarter than he’d been four years ago…Perry understood the concept of diminishing returns.

Still totally sane, though. Stability is high enough that this is freaking me out, which is a sign of a healthy fear response. Not crazy, just…expanded.

“Paradox, did you just get eight point six times stronger?” Tyrannus asked, a hint of despair in his voice. Perry was surprised the dragon actually noticed, given how gobsmacked he was by his first lady-dragon.

“I gotta go…talk to my dad.” Perry said, turning away.

Portal.exe.

Perry ditched, leaving Heather and Nat behind, seeking some answers to his current situation. Preferably from someone who knew what it felt like to not be human.

Perry stepped out into the street of Franklin City.

“AHAHAHAHAHA!” Dad’s Mechanaut voice rang through the streets, along with the terrified cries of pedestrians fleeing the scene.

“Witness what happens when Burger Joint fails to bring back the Spicy Mayo Burger as ordered by THE MECHANAUT! You beg for relief from mundane sauces, but the only remedy for your hunger will be my spicy patties of DEATH!”

He definitely has his formula down pat.

BOOM!

The side of a Burger joint exploded, and hundreds of dad’s insectoid robots swarmed out of the hole, carrying frozen patties and big plastic bags full of buns. One even had a fountain drink dispenser. Another had cups.

Perry was pleased to note that the side of the wall was made with his patented breakaway concrete. They’d be able to put it back together in a matter of minutes. Honestly one of his best inventions.

“You hosting another pool party?” Perry asked as Dad stormed out into the street. “Can we talk?” Perry thumbed toward his old lair, the motel formerly managed by Sophie that now acted as an informal party spot for supers due to its high tolerance for roughhousing.

Mechanaut’s oversized suit froze for a moment before glancing at the nearby news van and filming onlookers. To the outside observer, it wouldn’t’ve looked like that, but Perry’s senses were particularly heightened at the moment.

“Ah, PARADOX!, The son of my most hated rival stands in my way! He wishes to test his mettle, but he will soon discover that mine has been forged in the fires of HELL!”

Perry sighed as a chaingun popped out of his dad’s arm and pointed at him.

I guess we’re doing this.

The funny thing about Mechanaut’s weaponry: It was stage weaponry. Most speedsters and high-level supers were clued in pretty quick when facing him. Sure it still shot thousands of high caliber rounds that would easily tear humans to shreds and looked real impressive on camera, but that was just the thing:

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

It looked great on camera because he dialed down the speed just low enough to look good in the standard FPS of news cameras.

Any slower and it would feel chunky on camera, and any faster, the sound would bleed together, making it feel less like a chaingun sound than a nerve-rattling hum that modern microphones couldn’t quite capture.

Knowing this, Dad had settled on a measly two hundred rounds per minute, or just a hair over three rounds per second. Sounded good on camera, looked devastating to civilian passerby, but… To any self-respecting Speedster, or someone who’d gone up to seven hundred times human baseline, it wasn’t really that fast.

If someone was actually trying to kill Mechanaut, he used lasers. Speedsters still hadn’t quite figured out how to go faster than light. Not without going crazy or stumbling into the fourth dimension and never returning, anyway.

Perry walked around the hail of bullets, keeping them missing him as he approached, making sure he didn’t draw dad’s fire into anything important. Mailboxes, concrete walls, Paradox brand re-sealing asphalt.

That sort of thing.

Textbook super fight.

Perry unleashed a couple pernicious prisons and used the inky black tar to throw dad back through the wall of the drive-through Burger Joint.

People are usually cleared out of the building that’s been busted through already.

Besides, it was out of line of sight of the news vans and cell-phone wielding onlookers.

Dragor’s Kinesis.exe.

Perry lifted himself up and shot through the hole, his dad’s autonomous robots fleeing with what was obviously party supplies that their creator couldn’t be bothered to simply purchase.

“Dad, seriously, I’m not really in the mood for this.” Perry said as he landed in front of the mechanaut’s suit.

“Sorry Perry, gotta maintain my street cred. What’s up?” Mechanaut said, brushing rubble off his armor.

“I don’t really…feel human anymore,” Perry admitted.

Dad’s helmet popped off with a dramatic hiss of air tubes –which he didn’t need– so the balding professor could look at him with his own eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“I just hit level eighteen. I’m seven hundred times faster, smarter, and stronger. Everyone and everything looks stupid and slow, and I’m starting to see things and…What the hell am I supposed to do when the people I love look like mindless animals, and I can see the unspeakably huge things swimming through spacetime around us? And more importantly, what happens when the wrong one notices me looking back?”

“What’s gonna happen when I hit level twenty, dad? Is Perry still even gonna be here?” Perry’s voice choked a bit at the end of his question. With The System rapidly turning him into an idealized version of himself, there was no space left for Perry.

“Huh.” Dad grunted. “This is new. Listen boy, whatever you’re going through, you will get a handle on it. I know you. As for not feeling human…I don’t have much left of what you might call humanity. My soul had to literally rebuild itself from the ground up, and I don’t have many real memories of you before you were eight. I simulated many of them by scrubbing through security footage and embedding it as memory, but…they’re not real. Real memories have smells. Real memories fade, get corrupted, or idealized.”

Dad shook his head.

“Even with all that, even though I don’t need to breathe, or sleep, or eat, I still think your mom is the tightest piece of ass in all of Franklin and I’d simp for her any day.”

Perry broke into a half-chuckle, half-sob.

“Focus on your family,” His dad said. “That’s my advice. As for feeling like everyone is slow and stupid, why don’t you talk to Solaris? He feels that way all the time.”

“But…I’m still Perry, right?”

“Boy, that System can’t make you anything you couldn’t have become on your own.” His dad said, triggering a flood of relief. “Your mom has said it so many times that it’s easy to forget: You, Paradox Zauberer, have unlimited potential. You are still you and you will continue to be you, and if you catch the attention of the wrong cosmic being, maybe you’ll be able to do more than just kicking him in the nuts like your grandmother. The Earth needs people like that, who can look back at the things outside our reality and give them the boot.”

Perry heaved in a breath, and let it out, wiping the tears out of his eyes.

“Thanks dad. I’ll talk to Solaris.”

“Do that. He’s got some seriously valuable insight in how to handle being semi-immortal in a field of molasses-people.”

“Good. Now…” dad’s helmet flipped down.

“You mentioned being seven hundred times stronger? I’d like to see what that looks like.”

“Dad, wai-“

BOOM!

A forcefield deployed out of Mechanaut’s chest at the speed of magnetism, which admittedly was faster than Perry could move.

The field caught Perry in the face and sent him tumbling back out onto the street.

The concrete crumbled away from his bare skin like Styrofoam.

“Really!? Are you that much of a battle-maniac!?” Perry demanded as he stood.

“It’ll take your mind off things!” Mechanaut shouted as he charged through the wall. “Besides, we’ve never really had the opportunity to fight as Mechanaut and son…of Mechanaut’s most hated enemy!”

Perry rolled his eyes and slipped around the slow-motion charge and punched Dad in the side.

Clang!

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

While Perry could treat normal steel somewhat like play-dough, Dad was doping his armor somehow. If he had to guess, the old man was using some form of magnetism to lock everything in place and prevent it from moving, effectively making the armor harder than it had any right to be.

Perry dug his feet into the asphalt and shoved, sending Mechanaut flying into a light pole.

Honestly I don’t even keep track of the cost anymore.

BRRRR

Mechanaut whipped out his chain gun and began spraying Perry with lead.

Perry walked through them, not even bothering to dodge this time.

The impacts felt a bit like walking through moderate sized hail.

It stung a little bit, but not much more than that.

Dragor’s kinesis.exe.

Perry reached out with Dragor’s Kinesis and grabbed the chaingun, intending to rip it off.

The instant the spell made contact with Dad’s armor, Perry perceived an aggressive counterspell following the causal chain, intent on infecting him, warping his perception of the fight, and causing him to lose.

Perry dropped the spell before the counter hit him.

“Fool! I’ve been fighting Hexen for well over two decades!” The mechanaut shouted. “You’ll have to bring more than that if you want to defeat me!”

Perry wasn’t sure how his old man made what appeared to be a magical effect with technology, but at the highest level, it all blended together.

“If you can’t surpass Hexen, how do you expect to save these bystanders from my wrath!?” The Mechanaut asked, gesturing to a woman and her baby, seemingly frozen in fear.

That gives me an idea, Perry thought.

“You want an original spell?” Perry asked.

“Try if you dar-“

Paradox’s Time Out.exe

The restraint spell he’d invented from bullet grasshoppers when he was trapped on Manita by his uncle landed…on the mother and her baby, freezing them in place and rendering them immune to physical damage.

“I see, trying to save the…Umm, what are you-ACK!”

Dad finally lost his beat when Perry picked up the frozen bystander and her baby and began beating on the Mechanaut armor with them.

BANG, BANG, BANG!

“You know what? You’re right!” Perry said between swings with his improvised bystander-club. “This does take my mind off things!”

“Parado-“

BANG!

“Perry-’

BANG!

“Could you-“

BANG!

Mechanaut staggered back, his ten-foot-tall armor sparking where the soccer-mom had dented in the joints.

Perry set…He checked her purse.

Perry set Mary and her newborn Phillip down, leaning against a wall like a cardboard cut-out, not a scratch on them.

Perry snapped his fingers.

Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.exe

The scrying orb blinked and manifested a fifteen-story railgun in the center of the street, appearing around them.

The projectile in this case…The Mechanaut.

“Wait a min-“

With a thrumming pulse of electricity, The Mechanaut was accelerated to 16k M/s, or about 00.5% of the speed of light. Straight up.

Perry followed him up into the sky, using Dragor’s Kinesis to part the air so his clothes didn’t catch fire.

The mechanaut’s armor shed its rough metal disguise and liquified, turning into a spherical orb that cut through the upper atmosphere as it turned back at him, firing a death-laser.

HP: 12

Perry modified the refractive qualities of the air around him and scattered the laser after the first hit, approaching with the Pernicious Prison.

The Mechanaut armor split into thousands of duplicates the rough size and shape of crabs, scattering every direction while concealing where The Mechanaut was.

There were no dimensional wiggles to indicate his father had tucked himself away via shrinking or a dimensional pocket. He’d just vanished.

Perry’s eyes narrowed.

It was a trick. Since Dad’s body was robotic, it was fair to assume that the body itself could be considered an extension of his armor. If his armor could split into thousands of decoy crabs, there was nothing to say his body couldn’t do it too.

I can still perceive his soul, so where is he going to put it? It’s like a shell game.

Before he could pin dad down, the crabs coalesced into half a dozen highly mobile robotic hunter-killers, each the size and shape of a man, yet designed to move in a way that was distinctly inhuman to elicit fear and confusion.

Perry broke them.

While he was busy with the robots, a force built above him, seemingly coalescing from hundreds of thousands of discrete sources, bouncing off the upper atmosphere to punch him in the face.

Perry had to admire the ingenuity of bouncing an attack off the ozone layer. It was the mad scientist equivalent of hitting someone with a boomerang.

Perry tumbled back down to the ground, grappling with one of the killer robots, using the high-tech, ultra-hard death-bot with razor sharp claws to soften his landing.

BOOM!

HP: 11

Perry’s elbow shattered the robot’s chest, leaving it twitching in its asphalt crater as he climbed to his feet.

The other hunter-killers landed in a circle around Perry and unleashed a veritable blender of dimensional force blades reminiscent of those used by Dr. Replica’s Invisible Stalkers.

Perry felt a grin stretch across his face as he was forced to the limits of his speed, dodging blades at a rate that forced him to consider the molasses-like consistency of air.

This was no longer a show for the cameras, this was them getting warmed up. The cameras saw nothing but a blur and an electric hum. This lack of staging for the benefit of the public told Perry that he had his dad’s undivided attention, and that felt nice.

The action gradually escalated, but Dad eventually won due to both of them not wanting to actually destroy Franklin City, or each other. Since dad didn’t actually have a physical body, Perry eventually started slowing down.

Once that happened, Mechanaut sucker-punched him with a new suit of armor from out of nowhere.

Perry sighed, half-embedded in one of his concrete walls, his muscles pleasantly sore, but already recovering to full, stronger than they’d been twenty minutes ago.

“Thanks, dad. I feel better.”

“Thanks for taking it easy on me,” Dad said, giving him a thumbs-up.