I noticed a few messages in my inbox, ignoring them as I clicked on the cherry icon that launched the CBG app.
While I hadn’t played around with anyone’s abilities last night, I had checked my own to see if there had been some change after my little incident with Veronique.
Nope.
Everything was still the same, and I still had the same powers on deck: Jules’ negation ability, and Father’s healing and both of Grace’s powers.
The psychic shifter in mind, I navigated to her stats, just to give them a quick looksee.
Sabine, Subject S
Build: 008
Base height: 181 centimeters
Base weight: 54 kilos
Strength: 1
Intelligence: 9
Constitution: 4
Wisdom: 8
Dexterity: 3
Charisma: 6
Main: Psychic
Omnikinesis: 10
Second Sight: 5
Psychometry: 5
Telepathy: 7
Clairsentience: 5
Psychokinesis: 8
Hypnosis: 6
Nightmare Sight: 6
Telepathic Radius: 5
Main Second: Shifter
Speed of Change: 10
Texture Consistency: 10
Opacity: 10
Transparency Control: 10
Voice Match: 10
She was OP with her Omnikinesis, but it always helped us, and there really wasn’t anything I could think about improving aside from her Telepathic Radius, which would allow us to take minds from an even farther distance.
Bringing her Omnikinesis down allowed me to up her Radius by two points, which made her abilities look pretty well-rounded in the end:
Main: Psychic
Omnikinesis: 9
Second Sight: 5
Psychometry: 5
Telepathy: 7
Clairsentience: 5
Psychokinesis: 8
Hypnosis: 6
Nightmare Sight: 6
Telepathic Radius: 7
I didn’t mess with her shifter ability because she was maxed out.
Seriously.
I looked over to Grace and saw she had now taken the form of a Nepali woman, caramel skin, thick eyeliner and a red dot between her eyebrows. She looked like some type of Southeast Asian princess or something, enlightened.
You likey? she thought to me.
Not now, genius at work over here…
She laughed and turned to one of the bushes, bending over to give one of the yellow flowers a sniff.
I checked Ingrid out next and didn’t do anything to change her stats.
Ingrid, Subject I
Build: 3.2
Base height: 150 centimeters
Base weight: 40 kilos
Strength: 1
Intelligence: 3
Constitution: 5
Wisdom: 4
Dexterity: 7
Charisma: 5
Main: Beast Morphing
Beast Soul: 7
Morph Speed: 8
Beast Armor: 8
Maybe one day I would play around with her Beast Soul, and try to get to the bottom of what that was exactly. We definitely needed to do more training, which we could do back in Colorado. I could even take Manchester again and see if I could better get that form under control.
Moving on…
I didn’t really do anything to Michelle either, especially since we didn’t have our training ground to test some things out.
It would be fun to play with her Manic Warping, but this could also be risky.
This ability and Molecular Oscillation were how she moved through solid objects, or blasted to the kitchen and back with a hot cup of coffee without spilling it. Michelle could seriously warp reality, which was totally not something a fourteen-year-old hyperactive girl should be capable of doing.
Michelle, Subject M
Build: 012
Base height: 153 centimeters
Base weight: 35 kilos
Strength: 1
Intelligence: 4
Constitution: 6
Wisdom: 4
Dexterity: 8
Charisma: 8
Main: Enhanced Speed
Focused Time Perception: 6
Manic Warping: 4
Acceleration Resistance: 7
Molecular Oscillation: 8
Deceleration: 8
Aim Dodging: 7
Hyper-Accelerated Metabolism: 7
So, I kept the young speedster the same and moved on to the punk rock teleporter, a personal fave if I had to choose favorites.
Dorian Gray, Subject DG
Build: 7.543
Base height: 170 centimeters
Base weight: 49 kilos
Strength: 2
Intelligence: 6
Constitution: 7
Wisdom: 3
Dexterity: 6
Charisma: 8
Main: Ergokinesis
Overcharge: 2
Charge Capacity: 5
Charge Integrity: 5
Main Second: Teleportation
Tele-Sphere Radius: 6
Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10
Recharge Speed: 6
Restoration Speed: 7
Teleportation Rapidity: 5
Teleportation Distance: 10
Empathetic Teleportation: 8
Banishment: 3
Overcharge: 1
Dorian Gray was looking pretty good at the moment. She could possibly teleport a bit faster, but she already moved at a blazing pace, and from what I could discover, adjusting this hardly had any effect on her ability to get from point A to point B.
However, it would be nice if she could recharge faster, especially after a long teleportation.
With this in mind, I kicked down her Teleportation Rapidity by one digit and put that into her Recharge Speed.
This kicked her Overcharge up, which definitely wasn’t something we wanted, so I returned it to its normal state by bringing her Banishment down and her Teleportation Rapidity up. This did the trick, and putting one point in her Recharge Speed this time didn’t affect her Overcharge.
Main Second: Teleportation
Tele-Sphere Radius: 6
Conscious Spatial Awareness: 10
Recharge Speed: 7
Restoration Speed: 7
Teleportation Rapidity: 4
Teleportation Distance: 10
Empathetic Teleportation: 8
Banishment: 2
Overcharge: 1
I explained to Dorian what I’d done, and she nodded. “I don’t use Banishment as often as I should, and it’s not that hard to just grab someone and teleport away with them,” she said.
“Yeah, I never really understood why that was on your stat sheet to begin with, but I think there’s something about it that allows you to better judge your return to the battle. At least, that’s how I envision it in my head, or possibly the distance you can take them.”
“A lot of things go on in that head of yours, don’t they?” Veronique asked.
“Is that a cry for help in the form of asking me to check your stats, my dear?”
Michelle snickered; Ingrid started to laugh as well.
“You sure are funny this morning, aren’t you?” Veronique asked as she changed chairs, plopping down next to me. She turned to me, cocking her head to the side.
“Patience, young metal vampire,” I told her with a wink.
“You should be glad you’re not a telepath.”
“I am, and I don’t like what I’m seeing,” I told her.
In actuality, Veronique was thinking about fucking me. She kept saying, let’s fuck, let’s fuck, let’s fuck on repeat, which made Grace laugh as well.
“This is totally not how telepathy is supposed to work,” I grumbled as I returned to the CBG app.
Just a few more check-ups to go.
In the end, I didn’t do anything to Veronique’s stats, but I did look them over
anyway, as I always did when I checked everyone’s stats at once.
Veronique, Subject V
Build: 2.7341
Base height: 171 centimeters
Base weight: 50 kilos
Strength: 4
Intelligence: 6
Constitution: 7
Wisdom: 5
Dexterity: 6
Charisma: 2
Main: Metal Absorption and Modification
Wielding Capacity: 7
Adaption Speed: 6
Alloy Integrity: 6
Blood Metal Conversion: 7
Veronique was a force to be reckoned with, and there wasn’t a lot that could take her down. I wished at that moment that I’d had a little more time to spend with just her, but we had a mission to get to, and there’d be time for cuddling and humping at a later date.
Next I moved to Chloe, also not changing anything but giving her stats a quick check just for shiggles.
Chloe, Subject C
Build: 17.169
Base height: 185 centimeters
Base weight: 56 kilos
Strength: 4
Intelligence: 7
Constitution: 7
Wisdom: 5
Dexterity: 7
Charisma: 4
Main: Acoustokinesis
Sound Sculpting: 5
Acoustic Acceleration: 6
Sonoluminescence: 5
Rhythm Manipulation: 6
Sonokinetic Combat: 6
Sound Detection: 5
Sonic Stimulation: 6
Overcharge: 3
Echolocation: 5
That left me with the vector queen, Stella, who had a bored look on her face by the time I reached her.
“I’ve saved the best for last,” I said, hoping to appease her.
“Really, Gideon?”
“Hey, at least I don’t have to plug into your neck now.”
I brought her stuff up as I had a dozen times before, my eyes falling upon her Quantum Manipulation power.
What did it do? And how quickly would Emeril or Thanos get here if we tried to turn it up a notch? And equally important, how cool would the name ‘Quantum’ be for a main character in a GameLit novel? I almost started plotting this one out, but focused on the task at hand instead.
Stella, Subject St
Build: 002
Base height: 172 centimeters
Base weight: 48 kilos
Strength: 5
Intelligence: 5
Constitution: 4
Wisdom: 4
Dexterity: 6
Charisma: 4
Main: Vector Manipulation
Kinetic Energy Manipulation: 8
Quantum Manipulation: 1
Vibration Emission: 7
Inertia Negation: 3
Telekinetic Regeneration: 5
Tactile Telekinesis: 5
Deflection: 6
Velocity Manipulation: 4
Aversion Field Creation: 7
Overcharge: 3
I didn’t adjust anything, keeping Stella right where she was. I could do some more experimenting once we got back to Colorado, and if we really wanted to get creative, we could try to open up a black hole or something.
But not in a foreign country, dammit, especially one that had shown us as much hospitality as Nepal had.
Chapter Nineteen: I Think I’m Going to Kathmandu
Another message would come in from the Emperor of Japan at some point, but he hadn’t said anything since our last one.
I figured he got busy doing stately things, whatever it was emperors actually did. What a cool life that would be, to be born royal and famous and rich all at the same time, never having to experience poverty and never worrying where your next meal was going to come from.
Hell, the only thing royalty really had to worry about was being kidnapped by a terrorist group, and subsequently saved by a team of superheroes.
The good life, amirite?
From the videos and the pictures we had seen, Kathmandu looked a little too dense to blindly teleport there. We would have to be a little bit more strategic about it, but Ingrid had already heard from one of the hotel employees that the bus ride between Pokhara and Kathmandu could get a little rocky.
According to him, sometimes the buses came too close to the edges of the cliffs along the way and fell. He also told her that people had to sometimes move to the other side of the bus to prevent it from falling, to shift the weight...
Now, in this scenario, we would have superheroes on our bus, but still, I didn’t feel like taking a risky six-hour ride when we had a teleporter.
There had also been a suggestion that we could take a plane there, but pretty much everyone was against this, with the caveat that we would have to travel by air again one day.
I started checking out each of the smaller cities that surrounded Kathmandu.
Eventually, I stumbled upon a city called Patan, and looking at the pictures of it totally had me feeling some sick Mortal Kombat vibes. It looked ancient, mystical, alien even. And the place I focused on particularly was called Durbar Square, with its pagoda rooftops peppered with buildings with flat roofs.
I knew there would be people there, clearly, but if we picked one of the high rooftops, it would give us a chance to get our bearings and then teleport down to the ground, or float our way down, however we decided to do it.
So that’s what we did.
I showed Dorian a bunch of pics and she rubbed her hands together, a determined look on her face as everyone joined her. We were back in our superhero uniforms, with our Nepali clothing over them, the local stuff loose enough to actually do a pretty good job at disguising our super underoos.
“Everyone ready?” Dorian asked. She waited for confirmations before smiling and saying, “Here goes nothing.”
One purple poof later and we were standing on a high rooftop, Michelle’s hands coming to her mouth as she looked over the edge and saw just how packed the place was.
It was Veronique who took over from there, opening a window on another part of the building and telling us to get inside.
Once we did this, we were greeted by monks, not Tibetan monks, but something definitely Tibetanish. These ones wore different clothing than what I’d seen before in pictures and videos, the men in orange robes with big yellow sashes over them.
If they were shocked when they saw us all coming through the window, they didn’t let us know, courtesy of our favorite psychic shifter.
“How far is Kathmandu from here?” I asked one of the monks, who sat in front of a large idol smeared with red wax, dozens upon dozens of flower petals at its feet.
“Maybe eight kilometers,” he finally said.
“I could easily run that,” Michelle told us, her hands on her hips, a proud look on her face.
“I’m not gonna tell you that we need to stick together, because you already know that,” I said, turning to Grace and Chloe. “Let’s get out there and charter ourselves a van. The Hotel Himalaya is in a part of Kathmandu called Thamel, and we will probably want to take residence at a different hotel or hostel near there to scope it out. Remember team, there are better ways to get people than just blowing down the walls and taking everyone hostage.”
“Sometimes I do wish that was our style, though,” Veronique said.
Dorian smirked at her. “Yeah, you do.”
I waited for Raiden to step out from one of the buildings in Patan, lightning crackling around his eyes, ready for a fight to break out along the rooftops, ninjas leaping from rooftop to rooftop, flipping, spinning their staffs.
“It’s a very old part of Nepal,” Grace said as we approached the taxi stand.
There were men gathered around with vehicles, all of them looking at us considering we were the only foreigners in the area aside from a couple taking pictures of one of the temples.
“How old?” Michelle asked.
Grace scanned a few of the minds of the taxi drivers vying for our business.
I had already checked the area for any cameras, and had thankfully come up empty-handed. Still, with a group of beautiful women we would draw attention to ourselves, even if Grace were able to cast her power in a wider net now.
A man stepped forward.
“Right this way, Edward and Jill King,” he said, his eyes flashing white. We followed him to a large van, all of us piling in the back and the driver jumping in the front, immediately honking his horn at a man pushing a cart in front of us.
“Sorry,” Grace told Michelle. “And to answer your question about the age of this place, from what I gathered from some of their thoughts, Patan has existed in some shape or form for over two thousand years.”
“It’s that old?” I asked, looking at some of the buildings and their tiled rooftops. I could see some new construction too, and some renovations taking place. There was also a sign in English saying that reconstruction from the 2015 earthquake was still underway.
“That’s sooooo old,” Michelle said, looking out the window as our driver nudged onto a road.
Competition was fierce when it came to driving space, and I soon got in the habit of looking straight ahead, rather than paying attention to who we were sharing the road with, from cyclists to tractors, from small beater cars to an actual horse and buggy.
As we got behind a long line of traffic, the driver honked his horn, cursing, shaking a fist. Eventually, we saw what was causing the holdup: a cow had sat down in the middle of the road, taking a rest.
“Why won’t anyone move the cow?” Veronique asked, an annoyed look on her face.
“We are Hindus,” our driver said, Grace clearly giving him enough of his own consciousness back to answer our questions. “The cow is sacred.”
“But no one will move it out of the road?” Ingrid asked.
“No. If the cow wants to sit in the road, the cow sits in the road,” the driver said.
“You are honking your horn at it,” said Michelle.
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