A Game of Supers (The Gamer/Original Superhero Setting)

[Kinni]

Author's Note: I may be biting off more than I can chew, but here it is. My own contribution to the Gamer fic genre. This time, the ability works in a pretty different manner. There are no levels, quests, grinding, eating books or things like that. The only thing the ability does is tell you what skills you have and praise you when you get better at them. This alone is more than enough to make it an amazing ability, as you'll hopefully see in time. Let's start, then.

-0-

Your name is Iara, you are fourteen years old and you have a pretty strange superpower.

Okay, let's back up a little. There are worlds where having any superpower at all is pretty strange, but you don't live on one of them. In fact, the world you live in is positively crawling with superpowered individuals, ultratechnology, magical powers, psychic powers and even more esoteric stuff.

And still, you are pretty sure your power is pretty up there in terms of strangeness.

Essentially, your power catalogers the skills you know and alerts you when you get better at one of them. Initially, you even seriously wondered whether your ability even qualified as a "super" power, since it didn't seem to be all that amazing.

However, that all changed when you discovered one amazing fact about your power.

-0-

"Strange... Why I am not getting any more 'experience'?" You said.

You had been repeating the same punch over and over, as part of your Muay Thai training. It wasn't anything serious, but you always felt nice whenever you heard the little noise and message of 'experience gained' that sounded on your mind when you were improving.

However, it seemed to have stopped. Until, somewhat frustrated, you threw a much wider punch than before.

'Experience gained'

The sound came again, and that got you confused. Why would such a sloppy punch give experience when the better punches didn't?

-0-

Eventually, you did a few tests, and the results showed that you had really underestimated your own ability.

Doing all kinds of different variations on the attacks gave more experience (there wasn't a numerical thing, but you could tell), and repeating attacks slowly started to give you less and less experience, until it ran out.

The conclusion you reached was that getting experience wasn't simply a matter of repeating motions continuously, but instead, every single new move and every single variation you trained counted as extra 'skill', and repeating the movements was simply 'mastering' them, getting enough skill that you could replicate them perfectly no matter the situation, and when they were already mastered, it made sense that repeating them wouldn't give you anything else.

This discovery led to an entire week when you were absorbed in the development of your skill. Quickly, you began to understand more and more. You started to deliberately vary your attacks in terms of height, angle, power, and everything you could think of. You began attacking while moving in several different ways, and you began training several different things at the same time. You experience gains started to increase dramatically.

You got the feeling that this kind of improvement was something that simply couldn't be matched by any standard training regimen. It was like having an absolute master who also had intimate knowledge of your body, was constantly guiding your efforts and always knew when you had learned something properly, thus allowing you to go to the next part immediately. You could literally feel yourself getting stronger.

You decided to abandon your Muay Thai lessons, because that kind of sudden improvement would be pretty much impossible to explain, but you still wanted to get better, so you had to get creative.

You looked up videos of matches and demonstrations, you pored through old manuals, and you even did a few tests yourself, always guided by that short 'experience gained' message. And when even that wasn't enough, you started doing "shadow boxing", imagining all kinds of different opponents and scenarios to sharpen your skills.

You even got a new skill for it:

Shadow Boxing Level 10

- The skill to create mental scenarios that help the user in training. At this level, you can create the images of any opponent you have an adequate amount of information on, to a level where it is almost like actually facing them.

But of course, your main goal was to reach as far as you could with your Muay Thai skills, and you definitely outdid yourself.

Muay Thai Level 15

- A martial art developed for warfare, born in the country of Thailand, then known as Siam. At this level, you can be considered a near master, with skills on the level of soldiers who actually used it in battle in times past.

And while you were working with attacks using your off-hand, you ended up getting yet another skill, this time one that seemed pretty generally useful, and so you trained it seriously.

Ambidexterity Level 9

- Some people are born being able to use both arms with equal dexterity. But what most people don't know is that it is also possible to develop that sort of dexterity with sufficient training. At this level, you can use your left hand with decent skill.

And after that week, you decided something important. Your power was definitely something impressive, and it would be enough for you to stand out in the world of supers.

Supers. People with abilities and skills that went beyond the norm. They were an important part of the history of the world, with the first records of supers dating back to the 1600s, but it was only in the last century that they started really becoming common.

The most powerful supers were names known by everyone all over the world. Heroes like Darkness Princess, Maelstrom and the Four Guardians. Villains like Principality, Victory and the Flow Group. You knew that you were still far behind the level of those titans, but you hoped to one day be counted among them.

And of course, you were going to be...

[] A Hero...
-[] … That protects people. You don't want others to suffer.
-[] … That defeats villains. You want to punish the wicked.
[] A Villain...
-[] … That achieves control. You want power to manipulate the world itself.
-[] … That follows their desires. You're not sure what you want, but none will hinder you.

Of course, there was also the possibility of being a neutral, but you simply rejected that out of hand. You were not sure if your power has influenced you, or this had simply been the way you were all along, and you didn't particularly care, but the idea of not using your abilities directly in the struggle between heroes and villains simply seemed to be anathema to you.

And considering that you would have to do things one at a time, it would be worth it to do some research on the local superpower scene, so that you didn't go into things completely blind. But what should you research first?

[] The Heroes
[] The Villains

Also, you wanted to start soon, but you didn't want to start immediately. Just to start, you still needed to make a costume, and there were so many skills you could develop as well.

[] Write-in costume appearance (or post an image)

So, besides making a costume, what should be your plans for next week? (Choose two)

[] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed. (Will raise one level of Muay Thai, two levels of Shadow Boxing and two levels of Ambidexterity)
[] Learn another martial art.
-[] Taekwondo
-[] Jeet Kune Do
-[] Karate
-[] Write-in
[] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[] Lock picking
-[] Acting
-[] Self-Hypnosis
-[] Acrobatics/Parkour
-[] Write-in
[] Research your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action has to be taken three times to get full effect)
[] Write-in.

 

[Kinni]

Name: Iara Medea
Age: 14


Thanks to Lazyminx for the image.

Skill List:

Shadow Boxing Level 17

- The skill to create mental scenarios that help the user in training. At this level, you can create the images of any opponent imaginable, and also create the images of complex situations with small details.

Muay Thai Level 20

- A martial art developed for warfare, born in the country of Thailand, then known as Siam. At this level, you have comprehended the very essence of the art, and reached the very limits of what can be called Muay Thai.

Ambidexterity Level 17

- Some people are born being able to use both arms with equal dexterity. But what most people don't know is that it is also possible to develop that sort of dexterity with sufficient training. At this level, you can use both hands with precision rivaling those of experts in handcrafts.

Acting Level 20

- The skill to act out a role, in a way that can fool viewers. At this level, your acting prowess can be called perfect, with only supernatural means being able to detect your true self.

Meditation Level 20

- The skill to reach inside yourself and obtain a better understanding of your own mind and behavior. At this level, meditation is not any more thought intensive than simple rest, and your level of self-knowledge has attained the point of mastery.

Cloth Work Level 12

- The skill to work with thread able fibers such as wool and silk, altering and manipulating designs to suit your purposes. At this level, you can adjust your designs based on the situation and still achieve great effects.

Survey Level 12

- The skill to observe places and determine information from them. At this level, you can already be considered an urban recon specialist, but you still have things to learn.

Knife Combat Level 17

- The skill to handle a knife effectively in combat. At this level, you are a knife master, having reached a level of precision with your knife work that can be considered an art in itself.

Self-hypnosis Level 14

- The ability to put oneself into a suggestionable state and implanting triggers to manipulate their consciousness. At this level, you can influence yourself to a certain point even without external aids, and with them, you can create suggestions that go extremely far.

Parkour Level 15

- The skill to move fast through a complicated series of obstacles, like a city. At this level, you are beginning to take parkour to a level beyond any actual practioner, given that it is a young art.

Disguise Level 16

- The skill to conceal your true appearance by faking another one. At this level, given enough resources, you could even pretend to be a specific person with a great chance of avoiding exposure.

Lock picking Level 13

- The ability to break through locks and related security. At this level, you can easily and quickly get through any most locks with very little equipment needed and you can pinpoint security flaws on most places.

Cold Reading Level 15

- The skill to gather information on people based on even the tiniest details. At this level, you are capable of picking up information from someone even through the smallest details, and even if they are trying to hide it from you.

Mental Discipline Level 9

- The skill to maximize the potential of your mind. At this level, you can memorize things with no effort, and sort information into distinct groups for easy access.

Animal Taming Level 1

- The skill to teach animals skills and behaviors that they are smart enough to learn. At this level, you understand a bit about taming, but even the simplest tricks are beyond your teaching capacity.

Personal Manipulation Level 7

- The skill to understand what makes people tick and how to make them tick your way. At this level, you can seize opportunities to manipulate people based on their emotional state, with a big chance of success.

Exotic Technology Level 1
- The skill to understand and reproduce technology beyond your knowledge. At this level, you can understand basic information about how something works if you have time to do tests.

Mastery List:

The Fist of Aggression

- The essence of Muay Thai are the fierce attacks aimed at quickly disabling opponents. By reaching this essence, you are now instinctively aware of the most efficient ways of causing damage to opponents, even when not using Muay Thai.

The Glass Mask

- The essence of Acting is assuming a role without losing oneself. Upon reaching that essence, it is like you have an invisible mask that can hide your true self. It is now like you have two different minds, one on the surface and one deeper down, and that second one is harder to reach from the outside, making it an amazing mental defense, among other qualities.

The Shard of Self
- By seeing the self as multifaceted, you can now recognize the Gamer ability as something both from within and without yourself. This realization will be important for your future path.

 

[Kinni]

[X] A Villain...
-[X] … That achieves control. You want power to manipulate the world itself.
[X] The Villains
[X] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[X] Acting
[X] Research your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action has to be taken three times to get full effect)

You have always felt a desire for power and control. And now that you had the opportunity, it would be sad if you didn't try to take over the world, or at least as much of it as you were able to.

And with your motivation set, you had three things to work on for the rest of the week (besides going to school, which was a necessity as long as you lived in your parent's house). The first of them was researching the local villains.

They would be your first rivals once you entered the super villain world, and researching them would help understand some of the strategies and tactics that would be useful for you in the future. And essentially, there were four villains of note who were currently active in the city.

The first and most straightforward one was Rampage, a brute with super strength, durability and the ability to create explosions from his hands. He was a thief who most often stole jewelry, but he also had a lucrative side job as a "distractor", attacking someplace to draw the attention of the heroes while his client did his own thing. He was the most successful of all the supers in the city, in the sense that he got to act all around the country and fought all kinds of battles.

The second one was Inscrutable. A mad scientist type whose specialty lay in recycling, being able to use all sorts of materials to build her inventions. Despite that, she wasn't that impressive, specially in comparison to the top tier inventors in the world, like Dr. Mechana and Supreme Commander. Her style of inventions was standard, based around shields, laser beams and robots. Her crimes were mostly focused around trying to obtain territory.

The third was Mystic Mind. A rare type who possessed both psychic and magical abilities, she was much less impressive than that made it sound, being a small city villain. Her magical abilities were focused around flame, ice and earth spells, while her psychic abilities were mostly limited to telekinesis, though she could also read a person's mind via touch. She was apparently insane and her criminal acts ranged from random killings to acts of property destruction, all ordered by her "master", according to her.

Finally, the fourth was Light Mistress. Her power was the ability to turn light solid and form it into shapes she could manipulate. She was the most popular of the villains in the city, since her criminal acts tended to be more along the lines of threatening restaurants for free food and stealing parts of the sidewalk. Apparently she was the type who enjoyed the attention, including the fights against the heroes.

All in all, there were a lot of opportunities to be found, but they were definitely not something to be underestimated.

Another thing you did during the week was explore the city. You didn't get all that much done, mostly figuring out how the different areas in the city worked. Though you did manage to discover a place that was renting out trailer-sized storage spaces, which could be a good thing to have if you could get enough money.

But going back to generalities, the city could be divided into six spaces: One was the administrative area, with the mayor hall and other buildings of the type. Another was the commercial/residential zone, with small and medium businesses sharing space with habitations, along with two shopping centers in different places. A third was the "rich area", a gated community with a huge amount of mansions. Yet another was the 'poor' part of town, where not a lot of the city money was spent, and a lot of it was in decadence. The final one was the "transport zone", with an airport, train station, bus station, as well as the connections with the main roads.

Finally, the last thing you were working on during the week was developing your acting skills. That was certainly something that would be useful in a variety of situations, so you worked hard.

You tried the standard acting exercises, you developed characters in your head and tried to act like them to the smallest detail, you spoke many different phrases in a variety of different tones, trying to master emotional enunciation. And of course, you also used your ability to deduce which exercises were the best, which in this case meant a lot of surprisingly heavy training to achieve better control of the body.

And the result was:

Acting Level 12

- The skill to act out a role, in a way that can fool viewers. At this level, you are an excellent actress, being able to assume roles even with little information on them, but more information makes your performances more difficult to see through.

It was definitely worth the efforts you had put in during the week. But now, it was time to decide the plans for the next week. Since you researched the villains already, you should do the same for the heroes, but other than that, what will you do? (Choose three)

[] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[] Learn another martial art.
-[] Taekwondo
-[] Jeet Kune Do
-[] Karate
-[] Write-in
[] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[] Lock picking
-[] Urban tracking
-[] Self-Hypnosis
-[] Acrobatics/Parkour
-[] Write-in
[] Research your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action has to be taken two more times to get full effect)
[] Write-in.

 

[Kinni]

A. N: So, this was definitely planned, and not at all like I completely forgot about the costume thing. I have no idea what you are talking about.

[X] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[X] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill
-[X] Meditation
[X] Research your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action has to be taken two more times to get full effect)

It had taken you two weeks, but you had finally finished making your costume ('your first costume', a voice in the back of your head whispered), and you were satisfied with what you had been able to achieve with your limited resources.

Visits to sports stores had allowed you to pick up quite a collection of protection equipment, all of which were incorporated on the costume (some of which were bought using your reserved money, some of which you got your dad to pay for). You also managed to get a good deal on a used pair of soldier boots, which were comfortable and practical.

For the actual clothing part, you grabbed one of your dad's old black pants and followed some instructions from the internet to modify it, fitting it to you, and weaving lines of silver cloth vertically on the legs to change its appearance. You even got a new skill for it:

Cloth Work Level 3

- The skill to work with thread able fibers such as wool and silk, altering and manipulating designs to suit your purposes. At this level, you are capable of some small modifications, more if you're following another design, but your general ability is still minor.

For your torso, you used one of your own shirts, a gray featureless long sleeved t-shirt that would be similar to tens of thousands of others at least. Over it, you would wear a heavy coat with a hood you had found in yet another thrift store. It had grabbed your attention due to possessing a large number of deep pockets on the inside, which would be useful.

Among the protection items you got, there were also some rather high-quality gloves that didn't affect your dexterity too much. And for your face, you got two masks: One of them being in that small style that only hid the bit around the eyes, while the other was a mouth mask "ninja-style", to cover most of the face.

You also got three useful objects to put in your pockets. A baton, a knife and a flashlight. All in all, producing the costume completely wiped out your money reserves, even with your dad paying for some of it, but it was definitely worth it. It was good protection, good concealment, it didn't hinder your movements much, and it even had style, at least you thought so.

You took a lot of care in hiding it, all parts in different places, just in case.

Besides that, you were also developing a whole new skill. You had chosen meditation, because you eventually wanted to learn magic, and while there were no instructions in the subject to be found on the internet (obviously), but it was reasonable to assume that having an inner understanding and self-control would help with it.

The experience of learning meditation was... interesting.

It quickly became clear that the gamer ability was a double-edged sword in this case. Meditation required an inner calm and peace, but the quiet sounds of 'experience gained', that let you know that you were on the right track, also broke your concentration and made it harder to keep going.

Still, you pushed through, slowly learning to sharpen your focus and make even the distractions seem like nothing. It was difficult to tell how exactly you were improving, given the lack of direct substance of the skill you were trying to develop, but eventually, even the 'experience gained' messages ceased disrupting you, and progress became more steady.

Still, you had not managed to get as far as you had expected at first:

Meditation Level 10

- The skill to reach inside yourself and obtain a better understanding of your own mind and behavior. At this level, you can relieve stress relatively easily, and even without actually meditating, you have a better focus and ability to remember details.

You also decided to work a bit more on the skills you already had, getting them closer to mastery.

A lot of effort went into training your Muay Thai, going further and further beyond what you thought were the limits of the martial art. You had to train your flexibility to a higher degree, just to be able to do some of the movements that were becoming necessary if you wanted to gain any experience at all. You only gained a single level of it, but considering that you were fairly sure that level 20 was the maximum, this was already good.

Muay Thai Level 16

- A martial art developed for warfare, born in the country of Thailand, then known as Siam. At this level, you can be considered a near master, with skills on the level of soldiers who were considered skilled even among the users of this art in war.

Shadowboxing was something that had a lot of potential uses, and you found to your surprise that your training in meditation actually made it easier for you to get better at it, since your focus helped with imagining more and more complex scenarios down to the smallest detail. Your gains were great:

Shadow Boxing Level 13

- The skill to create mental scenarios that help the user in training. At this level, you can create the images of nearly any opponent imaginable, being able to adjust even when you don't have adequate information by creating multiple versions of the opponent with different details.

And of course, your extra training in Muay Thai also helped with increasing the skill level you had in Ambidexterity. More and more, you felt that you were getting closer to true perfection, since you actually managed to write your own name with your off hand.

Ambidexterity Level 12

- Some people are born being able to use both arms with equal dexterity. But what most people don't know is that it is also possible to develop that sort of dexterity with sufficient training. At this level, you can use your left hand with nearly as much precision as your dominant one.

There was also acting, which surprisingly was also something that shadow boxing helped with (you were getting more and more certain that there was a deep level of connection in between all skills at some level), since your efforts to visualize things down to the smallest detail led you to start to notice all kinds of small physical tells and quirks that you added to your performances to make them even more perfect.

Acting Level 15

- The skill to act out a role, in a way that can fool viewers. At this level, you are an extraordinary actress, being able to assume roles based on the situation with a high degree of perfection. In most situations, people will believe in your acting without question.

And since you had already gained the cloth work skill before the beginning of the week, you also trained with it for a bit, which was enough to level since the skill was still low-level.

Cloth Work Level 6

- The skill to work with thread able fibers such as wool and silk, altering and manipulating designs to suit your purposes. At this level, you are capable of some medium modifications, more if you're following another design, and your general ability is starting to show some promise.

And finally, the last thing you did was to keep going with your investigation of the city. This time you went more in depth, trying to get a mental picture of how all paths connected together, and explore the most hidden nooks and crannies, as well as making mental notes of all interesting places of note.

The commercial/residential area of the city was where you lived, and it was actually the most interesting part of the exploration, since you found out so much that you never knew despite living in the place for a while. There were a lot of small, family stores that sold all sorts of things, a lot of service places like hairdressers, a lot of small hidden areas that were created because the city had been built haphazardly and without a plan...

And of course, you memorized the location of all places that could have valuable things to steal, either for simple value, like jewelry, or because they could be useful for yourself, like electronics.

You couldn't get into the gated community, and the administrative region was interesting, but not something that would be immediately useful for you, but the poor area of the city was another place you could see potential in.

There was very little police presence, and the people there seemed to be withdrawn and closed off, and you saw a few suspicious signs of possible criminal activity. It was a place full of secrets and difficult for the law to penetrate. You would have to check it more thoroughly later.

After that, the transport zone seemed almost boring, though you made note of the fact that it was very easy to lose someone there. And after all that exploration, you actually got something else interesting:

Survey Level 3

- The skill to observe places and determine information from them. At this level, you are capable of seeing a few things the amateur eye wouldn't catch, but there is still a lot of information that could be gained.

A new skill. That was nice.

You were already thinking of how to make your debut, but there was still time to prepare some more, so what were you going to do for the following week? (Choose three)

[] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[] Learn another martial art.
-[] Taekwondo
-[] Jeet Kune Do
-[] Karate
-[] Write-in
[] Now that you have weapons, it would be good to gain skill with them.
-[] Learn baton combat
-[] Learn knife combat
[] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[] Lock picking
-[] Urban tracking
-[] Self-Hypnosis
-[] Acrobatics/Parkour
-[] Write-in
[] Finish the research of your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action will also raise the level of survey to 6)
[] Write-in.

 

[Kinni]

Author's Note: And here it is, like I said. Also, now it's time for an important decision.

[X] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[X] Self-Hypnosis
[X] Now that you have weapons, it would be good to gain skill with them.
-[X] Learn knife combat
[X] Finish the research of your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action will also raise the level of survey to 6)

Your hero research was interesting, specifically because it was harder than the villain research, despite the fact that you had only two targets of research.

And the reason for that was the fact that the two heroines of note in your city were strangely secretive.

Swordmaster's actual power was up for debate, and there were a lot of debates about it in forums. What was known was that she carried at least a dozens swords at a time, and she could do different things with each one.

And her "loadout" changed from appearance to appearance. Some of the swords she used almost always, like the one that gave her telekinesis and the one who could manipulate temperature, while others were rarer, like the sword that manipulated gravity and the sword that could shoot a petrification beam.

No one knew whether those were magical artifacts she could create, or technological apparatuses, or even if her ability simply used them as a medium to work in some manner.

All in all, she was a super that had power and versatility enough to be on the A-list, except for one critical aspect: None of her sword abilities ever lasted long. It appeared that they had an extremely limited "fuel supply", often forcing Swordsmaster to keep changing what she was using mid-battle. And apparently she had no way of bringing more than a dozen of those swords at a time. So, she was very limited and had to be sparing with her power use.

Still, she could not be underestimated, because you never knew what she might throw at you, or what clever applications for her abilities she would figure out.

The other superheroine of the city was even more of an enigma. She was called Shadow Crusader, and besides only going out at night, she seemed to have a strange knack for avoiding cameras, to the point where the only confirmed pictures of her were ones which had been taken from long distances and showed few details.

Still, eyewitness accounts agreed on the matter of her appearance, but that was pretty much the only thing that agreed between them. Some witnesses sworn that they had seen her turning into shadow, while others said she could only control shadows. Some witnesses reported her needing certain objects to be able to use her powers, while others claimed they had seen nothing of the sort. Some theories even said that she did not have any powers at all, and only pretended to have them by using smoke and mirrors together with technological implements.

All in all, she was an incredibly enigmatic figure, who mostly kept herself to fighting normal criminals, but had also managed to defeat each of the major villains of the city at least once, though some of those accounts were unreliable.

Really, meeting the two in person was going to be an interesting experience.

Apart from that, you also decided to train with your new knife, deciding that you should have at least a little skill with using it in combat in case it was necessary.

At least in the beginning, you did as would be expected, practicing all sorts of slashes, thrusts and quick movements for drawing and guarding, together with the footwork that would help with that. But later on, you found yourself most often thinking about self-defense manuals instead.

One of the most common things in those manuals were things like "how to defend from an attacker with a knife", and you pretty much felt that it was a lesson in "how to NOT use knives in combat". Full body stabs were incredibly easy to counter, and you soon realized that the best knife strategy in terms of hand to hand combat was holding it close and slashing at an opponent's limbs when they try to attack.

But of course, you wouldn't be satisfied just with the standard techniques. You also used your shadowboxing skill to create opponents for you to practice counters for all of the common anti-knife counters, as well as fights against all sorts of opponents, and even facing multiple fighters at the same type, all armed.

By this point, you wouldn't say you were a master at knife handling, but you surely at least earned the moniker of "expert". And your power agreed:

Knife Combat Level 12

- The skill to handle a knife effectively in combat. At this level, you are an expert on the art of the knife, capable of dealing with all kinds of scenarios.

But you also decided to train yet another skill during the week: Self-hypnosis.

It was a strange subject. Hypnosis was a skill that was incredibly hyped in media, but in the real world, there were debates about whether it even really existed.

However, the idea of being able to manipulate your own mind freely really appealed to you, specially considering the possible implications of that for your learning of other skills.

So you looked at a lot of things on the internet, making several tests to see what was legitimate and what was just fiction, and eventually you came upon a few solid ideas:

The first was that hypnosis was essentially based on trust. You needed to trust the hypnotist for the suggestions to have any effect, which wasn't a problem for self-hypnosis, because it just meant you had to trust yourself.

The second was that long-term, suggestionable people were actually the worst possible targets for hypnosis. That was because while they would accept suggestions easily, those suggestions would also be pushed out easily as they received input of any kind. You did a few tests and managed to determine yourself to have a high resistance towards suggestions, which meant that any that managed to get through to you would probably stick around without needing much reinforcing, which was useful.

The third was that it self-suggestion was actually very hard. Normal hypnosis involved the user adapting to the circumstances of their particular target in real time, which obviously would be impossible to do if you were in the process of being hypnotized.

You had to use recorded messages from yourself to make it work, and even then it was difficult because again, tapes could not change based on the situation, so you had to keep predicting your reactions to each stage of hypnotism to make it work, frequently having to change the tapes to adapt to what you learned about how you reacted to the hypnotism attempts.

It was frustratingly slow going, but eventually you did manage to attain some success.

Self-hypnosis Level 8

- The ability to put oneself into a suggestionable state and implanting triggers to manipulate their consciousness. At this level, you still need to use external aids to implant suggestions, and the range of their capability is limited.

As such. Just to test things, you created a trigger to allow to to fall asleep more easily, and it worked readily enough, though it wasn't good enough to make you sleep if you were on an uncomfortable position or in a bright place.

Having done that, you decided to go after a more useful trigger. One which would help her learn more easily. The results were... mixed.

You did indeed have a capacity to understand things better while under that trigger, but it didn't filter out any information, which meant you were constantly beset by distractions from even the smallest sources.

You would definitely need more practice if you wanted to really turn self-hypnosis into a notable skill.

But the most fruitful part of your week was definitely finishing the survey of the city. You wouldn't say you had discovered all the secrets in it (your level of survey wasn't nearly high enough for that), but you now had a better knowledge of the workings of the city than pretty much anyone else.

Your last step in the survey was exploring the city during the night. A teenage girl walking alone at night would definitely be suspicious, so you borrowed one of your dad's old coats that had a hood and used it to disguise yourself. Considering how good you were at acting, it wasn't difficult to pass the impression that you were old enough to go anywhere you wanted.

You went to nightclubs and bars, and not only the big places, but also the seedy ones that normal people avoided. You talked with people (disguising your voice), but you mostly listened, getting them to tell you all sorts of interesting stuff.

And what you found out was definitely useful.

There was some kind of shadow war going on between the two biggest gangs in the city, the Red Claws and the Inscrutables. The Red Claws were a more typical gang, involved in the drug trade and "protection" business, while the Inscrutables, as the name indicated, were the minions of the villain Inscrutable. They were much less numerous than the other group, but frequently had access to some of her technology. They were the rulers of the weapon black market in the city.

As you had expected, most of the gang stuff happened on the poor part of town, which was pretty much controlled by the gangs, but there were also lower scale conflicts on the main part of town, mostly on the edges, where law enforcement wasn't readily available.

Surprisingly, most of the useful places you found weren't actually in the part with the most crimes. Instead, the place "you can sell stuff without problem" (a fence) was actually in the commercial part of town, and the "best place to get good equipment" (weapons) was actually in the transport zone.

Probably the most interesting thing in the poor zone was "The Girl". A person who lived in a certain house and had some kind of connection with Rampage (No one could agree on what, whether she was his girlfriend, sister, daughter, childhood friend or whatever. No one even knew her real age) to the point where you could contact him through her.

You also found out a lot about the territory of the gangs and how they worked, to the point where you could interfere in them if you wished.

But perhaps the strangest thing was Light Mistress. While you managed to find out stuff about Mystic Mind (mostly things like "don't go in that place, she appeared there and killed someone once), there was apparently no reliable information about Light Mistress, even though she was a more "public" sort of villain.

All in all, a very fruitful exploration, and you even managed to level you Survey a bit more too.

Survey Level 6

- The skill to observe places and determine information from them. At this level, you have some skill in figuring out interesting things about places.

Now, one thing that wasn't quite as good was the fact that you had been really bored during school. While you hadn't gained some kind of "academics" skill (which really made you wonder how exactly your ability worked) the side effects of the skills you were developing (like meditation) together with the simple fact that you were learning to be really efficient with things meant that you were doing extremely well in school. So well that you were getting bored during classes.

So you thought of a possible solution. Considering how far ahead you were, you could probably use the class time to train some of your abilities. Obviously a few of them would be impossible to surreptitiously train, but some were genuine possibilities. So, you wanted to use the extra time to train:

[] Ambidexterity. Writing things with both hands at once is still a good exercise.
[] Meditation. Trying to block out the distractions would be good.
[] Shadowboxing. Try to imagine even more complex figures and scenarios.
[] Cloth Work. You can do a few things under the table.
[] Something else? (Write-in a new ability and how you're training during class)
[] More than one thing? (Write-in two or more, but will have diminishing returns)

And with that said, it was time to plan out what you were going to do for the next week. However, there was an issue.

Maybe it was a consequence of your ability, or maybe it was just how you were, but you simply could not wait any longer to do something. Even if it was something small, or something that would take some time and only pay off in the future, you had to take your first real actions in the world of Supers. With that in mind, you were planning to:

[] Rob a store. Survey had gotten you information about places with valuable things and low security, and you knew a fence.
-[] Write-in any specific plans.
[] Make a contact. You knew someone who knew Rampage, and if you could forge a connection, this could be useful for the future.
-[] Write-in any specific plans.
[] Research a gang. The Red Claws had a pretty interesting structure, and you thought it could be possible to take advantage of that for your own goals.
[] Infiltrate a gang. The Inscrutables had a surprisingly lax policy for accepting new members. You could potentially infiltrate the gang and eventually deal with Inscrutable directly.
[] Something else? (Write-in)

And thanks to your plans, you wouldn't have as much time for training during the week, but you would still have to think about what to train. (Choose two)

[] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[] Focus on raising the level of a specific skill (Write-in)
[] Learn another martial art.
-[] Taekwondo
-[] Jeet Kune Do
-[] Karate
-[] Write-in
[] Now that you have weapons, it would be good to gain skill with them.
-[] Learn baton combat
[] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[] Lock picking
-[] Urban tracking
-[] Acrobatics/Parkour
-[] Write-in
[] Write-in.

 

[Mother Nyx]

Inscrutable stood in her workshop, busily tinkering away at her latest effort. She would not call it a weapon yet, not until it could be used as such.

Still, she felt she was close, she knew she could get it to work. Whatever answer eluded her, she knew that it was in reach all she needed was...

She closed her eyes with a sigh. It was stress. Merely that.

Things had picked up in the recent month and she could feel both the pressure and the promise of victory.

The Red Claws had been pawing at their borders and the heroes snatching at the scraps that broke free. Yet, with all that, she knew that she had the upper hand.

She felt her lips curl into a smile. All of them thought they had her measure.

A part time gang leader, small time tinker and arms dealer. She had let them think so while she built her power base.

She had been careful, almost too much so, to not push past what they thought her and her people were capable of.

But, with the actions of the Red Claws, with that bitch Crusader thinking she could attack her. No.

It was was time to pull back the curtain a bit.

This, this in her hands might not yet claim to be a weapon but she had made several others that could and it was time to see how they could do in the hands of her people.

Yes, it was time.

 

[Kinni]

Worldbuilding: Masks and Killing

The use of masks, as well as the Names for alternate identities actually has a shorter story than you'd imagine. While there are reports of supers doing that in the 1800s, they did not become mainstream until the 20th century, where the two most notables supers of their age, Gestalt the heroine and Century the villainess, used masks and hid themselves under those names due to their own reasons.

The two started their activities at the beginning of the century, and only died in the nineties, allowing their influence to spread around the super community, which also started exploding around that time. By the 30s, it was common to see masked supers, and by the 50s, it had become an unwritten rule, best shown by the fact that Darkness Princess, the first heroine in history, who had been active for centuries (and is in fact still active), received that title and started introducing herself like that, when she had spent the previous centuries going by her real name, Isabella.

Still, unmasking is a pretty common issue. Villains are always unmasked when they get caught, and there are many heroes who also lose their secret identities due to various issues. The game of the double life is a dangerous one.

Now, onto the matter of killing. Low-level superbattles rarely result in killing, with only some villains on that level making it any sort of practice, and heroes who do so are definitely criticized.

However, things are different on the higher levels. Killing becomes much more common for both heroes and villains. There is even a villain with a 100 million dollar bounty on her head and that is considered normal. The top superhero team, The Yellow Force, has multiple members with kill counts, including their leader. The Four Guardians, who are some of the top in the hero world, frequently kill villains who they consider to have "crossed the line".

On the other hand, the top 2 superheroines in the world, Darkness Princess and Maelstrom, are on the other end of the spectrum. Maelstrom has only killed once (a villain called Mother of Darkness that definitely deserved it) while the Darkness Princess has managed to avoid killing even once in centuries (mostly because she can seal people's powers, and many of her captures ended up being judged and executed). This is part of the reason why they are seen as the best in the world, because they are good enough to not need killing.

 

[Kinni]

Taking a Look: Iara Medea

Iara is a short girl, only five feet tall. She is a brunette with green eyes that weights around 105 lb. Since her mother died when she was young, Iara has been raised only by her father, who spends a long amount of time working, leaving her alone at home.

Her financial situation is well-off, and she never had any particularly close friends. At school, she moves between several groups, without really being a part of any of them. Her reputation is that of a smart girl who is pretty introverted.

In terms of clothing preferences, Iara likes variety. She doesn't like to use the same sort of clothes for too long in a row, and instead changes from dresses to pants and from shirts to vests with a high frequency.

 

[Kinni]

Author's Note: I wanted to have this done yesterday, but had to do a thing with family (we went to watch the new Blade Runner. I didn't like it, found it far too plodding and meandering, with many subplots seeming tacked in)

[X] Meditation. Trying to block out the distractions would be good.
[X] Infiltrate a gang. The Inscrutables had a surprisingly lax policy for accepting new members. You could potentially infiltrate the gang and eventually deal with Inscrutable directly.
[X] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[X] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[X] Acrobatics/Parkour

No one even noticed it as you spent less and less focus on the classes. You made sure to test yourself once in a while just to make sure you still were doing good enough academically, but the classes were no longer a place for studying for you.

Instead, you used them to train yourself. You slowly trained your skills in ignoring the distraction in class (mostly the teacher) to the point where you were able to achieve actual meditative trances even in the middle of the classroom, something which was almost unbelievable given the way you started.

And you were getting better and better at it, with your focus sharpening even more, and your meditation reaching a point where it was having appreciable effects on all your other efforts.

It was actually enlightening to feel it happening. You hadn't even realized that you had been getting more and more stressed in recent weeks due to your constant training and planning, but your new abilities in meditation alleviated almost all of that invisible stress, and you that led to an amazing increase in the efficiency of everything you were training.

Of course, all that improvement wouldn't have been possible if you were only meditating during class, but you also trained it during your free time, and the final result for your skill at the end of the week was:

Meditation Level 15

- The skill to reach inside yourself and obtain a better understanding of your own mind and behavior. At this level, you can relieve even deep seated stress as well as easily filter out distractions while focusing. Your mental abilities are also significantly improved, even outside of meditation.

You again decided to try a broad approach on your skill training during this week. You were actually trying to train every one of your skills, and the results were good.

First, there was your initial skill, Muay Thai. It was definitely your best combat skill, and it was getting harder and harder to train as you reached ever closer to perfection. Still, there were some things you could do. You got one of your dad's old cameras and recorded yourself performing all sorts of different moves, then you watched the tapes.

By looking closely, and imagining yourself in the role of an enemy, you could see all sorts of small flaws and wasted movements that could be taken advantage of. You repeatedly visualized all sorts of different ways you could improve these movements, and slowly optimized your skills based on it. The results were undeniably impressive.

Muay Thai Level 18

- A martial art developed for warfare, born in the country of Thailand, then known as Siam. At this level, while you haven't become the best of all time, your skills are already enough to classify as master level.

One of the things that helped with it were your training in two of your other skills, Shadowboxing and Ambidexterity, which was normal, considering they were skills you originally got by training your Muay Thai.

And of course, you were also training those skills at the same time. For Shadowboxing, your new insights in meditation helped a lot, allowing you to reach the level of being able to visualize complex situations involving multiple opponents, all of them different. The sheer amount of detail you were capable of focusing on all at once astounded you.

And for Ambidexterity, you took to calligraphy, writing in incredibly precise and detailed forms, and you trained in doing it using both hands, and then using two hands at once, slowly improving your abilities.

Your skills leveled up satisfactorily:

Shadow Boxing Level 16

- The skill to create mental scenarios that help the user in training. At this level, you can create the images of any opponent imaginable, and also create the images of complex situations with multiple varied opponents.

Ambidexterity Level 15

- Some people are born being able to use both arms with equal dexterity. But what most people don't know is that it is also possible to develop that sort of dexterity with sufficient training. At this level, you can use both hands with more precision than most ambidextrous people.

But by far, the skills that most benefited from your new level of skill in meditation were acting and self-hypnosis.

Acting was specially impressive. It was an art of the self, of manipulating your own reactions, and as such it benefited from a greater self-knowledge and self control. You combined it with your Shadowboxing skill in order to perform some of the most impressive plays that had ever been written. You examined your own emotions and controlled everything about yourself, slowly reaching a level in which no performance was beyond you.

While self-hypnosis, while not quite as impressive, was still very much improved. You new level of self-understanding made you capable of predicting your own state of mind more easily, which allowed you to reach a new level of complexity in your mental triggers.

You redid your learning mental trigger, finally reaching the point where you could say it was worth using, and you had some ideas for possible new triggers to add, though you could tell it would be best if you increased your skill a little further before that.

All that said:

Acting Level 18

- The skill to act out a role, in a way that can fool viewers. At this level, you are one of the greatest actresses who ever lived, creating and performing roles that can fool even people who know the truth.

Self-hypnosis Level 12

- The ability to put oneself into a suggestionable state and implanting triggers to manipulate their consciousness. At this level, you still need to use external aids to implant suggestions, but their complexity is fairly great, capable of doing things even most hypnotists would consider impossible.

Besides that, you also worked on your newly gained weapon skills, using your recent martial arts training as a guide to approach the issue from the best path. You trained in mental scenarios against multiple opponents, and eventually decided to forgo the knife entirely, and train only with mental constructs of all kinds of different knives, to increase your experience.

The results were telling:

Knife Combat Level 15

- The skill to handle a knife effectively in combat. At this level, you are almost at a level of a knife master, having reached a level of precision of your knife work that makes it seem like it is part of your body.

Finally, you also trained in two skills that could not be any more different, Survey and Cloth Work.

For Survey, you hit the books, looking up any information you could find about residences, building codes, zoning legislation and related topics. You ended up learning a lot more about architecture than you ever wanted to know, and eventually you reached the point where you could tell quite a few things about a place just by looking at the outside of it.

For Cloth Work, you mostly followed instructions, doing a lot of needlework to create all sorts of complex configurations and patterns of cloth. You could already see a few ways to improve your costume, but you felt like it would be better if you waited until you had more than simple cosmetic upgrades in mind if you wanted to change it.

Cloth Work Level 10

- The skill to work with thread able fibers such as wool and silk, altering and manipulating designs to suit your purposes. At this level, you are capable of even complex modification, but you still have a lot to learn if you want to do things yourself instead of simply following designs.

Survey Level 10

- The skill to observe places and determine information from them. At this level, you can already be considered an urban recon specialist, but only a low level one.

And those were the skills you improved during the week, but there was something else you did: Developing a new skill in parkour.

It was incredibly fun.

Okay, like anything, the beginning was mostly work, you made your research and practiced the initial moves until you had them down, before moving on to more advanced stuff and little by little learning the ways in which each part could be applied.

However, once that was done, and you had reached the point in which you could start tracing your own routes through the city, the sense of exhilaration made it all more than worth it. You kept pushing yourself further and further, doing routes that included more and more difficult tricks and going through the routes faster and faster.

And it definitely paid off:

Parkour Level 13

- The skill to move fast through a complicated series of obstacles, like a city. At this level, you are an expert in the art of parkour, being able to move well even through places you've never seen before, while place you know you can go through with astonishing speed.

And finally, there was one last thing you did during the week, and it was probably the most important thing: You started the process to infiltrate Inscrutable's gang.

The reason you had chosen that was because it was a good way to start your interactions with the world of supers without revealing yourself unnecessarily. The gang didn't even require for their members to reveal their real identities in order to join, and that was the thing that really decided for you.

Of course, first you made some preparations. The members of the gang all used the same identifying mark, a mask of the same type as Inscrutable's (that covered the top and the sides of the face) but your age was a problem, so you bought a bit of makeup and watched some tutorials to learn how to apply it in order to make yourself seem older, adding to it by wearing clothes adequate to the age you were trying to pretend (around 24).

Perhaps inevitably, you got a skill out of it:

Disguise Level 3

- The skill to conceal your true appearance by faking another one. At this level, this skill is only enough to change a few things in you, but observant people will be able to see through it.

Still, joining the gang wasn't exactly straightforward. You had to talk with quite a few contacts, that would point you in the direction of other contacts, and you were fairly sure there was some kind of screening process involved. You had to go out at four separate nights and wander all around the city.

But eventually you managed to get right to the front door. You were inside an old, abandoned house. There was an actual member of the gang right in front of you, a woman who looked to be about thirty two years old and gave off an air of command.

"So. You are the one who wants to join our group?" She asked.

"I am." You answered simply.

"Why do you want this?"

"I want to feel less restrained." You said.

She looked at you and seemed to think for a bit, then she nodded "If that is what you truly want, I suppose I have to give you a chance." She looked at you piercingly "You will have to complete a task if you want to be counted among the ranks of the Inscrutables."

"What do I have to do?" This was also something you had heard about.

"You need to steal something." She said, then walked over to a bag on the floor "Specifically, you need to steal something from a member of the Red Claws.".

"Something specific?"

"No." She took out five pieces of paper from the bag "Just something valuable." She handed the papers to you "Choose one of those five targets and do it. I will be here to receive it in one week."

And after that, she left the house, while you were examining the papers.

There were five targets in all. Five different houses that went from rich to middle class. But "rich" was a relative term, even the richest house wasn't part of the rich part of town (though the owner actually had his main residence there).

After some thought, you decided to steal from:

[] The Richest house: It was one of the extra homes of a certain city personality called Ian Trevor (there were rumors that he was connected to the gangs, and apparently they were true). There was no one actually living there at the time, but there were pretty advanced security measures in place.

[] The second richest: A house in which a family of four lived. Apparently the mother was a drug supplier for the gang. There wouldn't be as many security measures, but you would have to deal with the people inside.

[] The well-off house: This one had only one person living in it, and that person was away for most of the day, but on the flipside, there were four guard dogs protecting the place.

[] The less well-off house: This one didn't have any extra security measures, but there was a family of eight living there, and there was pretty much no time in which the house wasn't occupied.

[] The middle class house: Probably the safest option for a first time thief. There were three people living there, but the house was left alone for long periods, there weren't any extra security measures, and the place it was in was reasonably private. However, since this was a test, you would probably not get a great grade with this.

That decision made, you had to think about how to actually execute your theft. You had an entire week to research and plan before then, and you decided that you would first obtain some extra information by:

[] Hiding a camera pointed at the house to record things. It would allow you to execute surveillance without needing to spend excessive amounts of time on watch.
-[] Write in the focus of your surveillance (comings and goings, security measures, etc)
[] Calling the owners and scamming them into giving extra information. The info you received about the targets included telephone numbers, so that was easy.
-[] Write in the focus of your information gathering (security measures, house schedule, etc)
[] Something else? (Write-in)

And since this would only take part of your time, you still had to decide what you would do for the rest of the time. It would be good to train something that would help in your crime... (Choose two)

[] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[] Focus on raising the level of a specific skill (Write-in)
[] Learn another martial art.
-[] Taekwondo
-[] Jeet Kune Do
-[] Karate
-[] Write-in
[] Now that you have weapons, it would be good to gain skill with them.
-[] Learn baton combat
[] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[] Lock picking
-[] Urban tracking
-[] Cold reading
-[] Write-in
[] Write-in.

And you also had an important decision to make. Now that you had a hypnotic trigger that could help you learn things, you should use it, but it would only be effective for the training of a single skill.

Of the skills you're training or learning this week, which one you wish to help with the trigger? (Write-in)

(If the winning skill turns out not to be one of those that are being trained, the result will be the most voted among them, or chosen by dice)

 

[Kinni]

A.N: So, this really should not have taken this long. Well, here it is, Plan away!

[X] Plan Girl Scout (Pending)
[X] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[X] Lock picking
[X] Focus on raising the level of a specific skill (Disguise)

You had decided to be slightly daring and try to rob two places instead of one. One of them would be the easy mark of the middle class house while the other one was the significantly harder target of the second richest house.

The first house would be simple, since you could probably break into it without a lot of trouble since you had decided to learn lock picking that week. The second house would be significantly harder, but you already had a plan in mind that made use of the abilities you already had.

In essence, you wanted to pretend to be a girl scout. You had the acting skills to pull it off, and your disguise ability was another thing you were working on during the week. Getting a girl scout outfit on your size and a few boxes of cookies to sell wouldn't be all that difficult, and then once you were inside, you could subdue everyone there with your combat skills and rob the place.

To make matters even harder to discern, you wanted to try and pretend that you were even younger than your actual age. Ten years old seemed like a good age. The right use of makeup and fitting on the clothes would help, but it would be your acting skills that would have to carry most of the burden.

Of course, you were still going to use a camera to execute surveillance of your targets, and you were flexible enough that you should be able to make changes to the plan based on what information you were able to gather by yourself.

Speaking of information, you had pretty much tore holes on the pages of information you had received about the targets you were going to hit, to the point where you had basically memorized everything important.

There was distressingly little information. The middle class house was home to a pair of siblings of "around thirty". Both of them had jobs, the sister was a secretary in a law firm while the brother was a teacher in a nearby school (thankfully not the one you studied in, because that would have been too weird), and due to that the house was left empty for long periods of time, which was the one of the reasons why you felt it would be easy.

Apart from that, information was decidedly scarce. It mentioned that the sister was connected with the gang due to often serving as a messenger in between it and the firm (which was the reason their house had been the target), it also had the exact location of the house (on the edges of the residential zone, far away from the most traveled spots). And that was it. There was not even a description of the house.

As for the second target, there was only a tiny amount of additional information. The family was composed of a mother, a father and two kids, one of 13 and the other 10 years old, both boys. The boys had school in the afternoon from monday to friday (it was one of those schools that separated morning students and afternoon students), and they both spent their saturday mornings on extra activities, the 13 year old learning guitar, and the 10 year old at swimming lessons.

As for the father, he was practically a non-issue, being a programmer and systems analyst that spent his Sunday with family, but during the week he only got home at night.

The mother, on the other hand, was a big enigma. As already mentioned, she was an important asset to the Red Claws gang due to her work as a drug supplier, but that also meant she did not have a steady schedule by the necessity of what she did. There were reports about her driving all over the city at irregular hours, but nothing concrete.

The only piece of additional information was the notice about a security camera positioned to watch the front porch of the house.

So, in order to get more information, you placed cameras watching both locations and left them recording throughout the week. Meanwhile, you were training skills which you felt would be useful for your crime.

One of those was a completely new skill: Lock picking. And you got shocked to see how easy it was to learn and use. Reading reports from locksmiths, you quickly learned that no lock was completely secure. It was fairly easy to replicate keys even from a photo, and that was if you even wanted to open the lock instead of breaking it.

And then there was the fact that houses frequently had security flaws that most people wouldn't even think about. It was easy, for example, to unscrew the air conditioner unit of a house, remove it, and enter through the hole. And that was not even thinking about the fact you could straight up buy "bump keys", which you could use to pick locks as well as obtain detailed information about using them.

You searched for information about the most common lock types, and looked at local locksmiths to get a sense of the kinds of locks people would buy in the city. And finally you practiced, opening up the locks in your house without the use of keys, to get used to the technique.

And the results:

Lock picking Level 11

- The ability to break through locks and related security. At this level, you can easily and quickly get through any normal locks with very little equipment needed.

And then there was another thing you trained, your ability to disguise yourself. For your plan, it was very likely that you would be seen, and so it was paramount that you could disguise your true identity. You went all out, even using your self-hypnosis trigger to make your learning easier.

Weirdly, shadowboxing was perhaps the skill that helped the most with your training. And that was because you could use it to create mental images of yourself and look at them from various angles and pick out any possible flaws in your disguise.

You became even better in your use of makeup, but perhaps even more important was how much more you learned about the distinct ways you could conceal yourself based on the clothes you were using. As such, one of the things you got for your disguise was a specific hat with a tab that you could use to conceal your face depending on the angle you were observed. You really focused a lot on that skill during the week, and the results did not disappoint.

Disguise Level 14

- The skill to conceal your true appearance by faking another one. At this level, even direct inspection will have trouble seeing through your disguise, as long as it is not too unreasonable.

One the other hand, your training at school didn't have that much visible effect. You managed to slightly start being able to perceive things around you even during meditation, but that was clearly something that would need to be trained further.

Meditation Level 16

- The skill to reach inside yourself and obtain a better understanding of your own mind and behavior. At this level, you can relieve even deep seated stress as well as easily filter out distractions while focusing and also not being completely blind to the world. Your mental abilities are also significantly improved, even outside of meditation.

Still, the later levels were harder to gain than the earlier ones, so it still felt like progress.

But finally Thursday arrived, and there was no more time for information gathering, so you collected your cameras and looked through the footage.

There was quite a lot of it, but it was worth going through it all in order to find even the slightest inkling of additional information.

For the middle class house, there really wasn't that much to see, mostly because there wasn't much activity in general in the house and surroundings. You did take a note about some activity, which meant that you were able to narrow down the times that would be better to make your attempt.

You were going to do it Friday, in order to have time to perform your second crime before the end of the time allotted. But besides that, and considering that you wanted to have time to perform your second robbery if you decided to do it on the same day, you decide to set things up for:

[] 08:00 AM
[] 01:30 PM

Besides that, the only thing of note was that, on the Wednesday, the sister came back home earlier than usual, and carrying some packages. It was definitely suspicious...

Now, something much more interesting was the information gained from watching the other house. That place and surroundings were truly full of activity, but you could summarize the useful information you had obtained with a few short sentences:

- When the mother was alone in the house, she got visited by different people four different times during the week. All those people seemed to be delivering packages to her.

- After receiving those visits, the mother always did some things on the camera, which meant the recording system was probably local.

- The mother did indeed go somewhere else more than once, but she did not take the family car, instead calling a private transport.

- While the mother was alone in the house, you caught a glimpse of her in one of the side windows more than once. That would not be that strange, except that you never saw anyone else there.

It really wasn't that much, but you did manage to ascertain a few things about the times in which the neighborhood was quiet, which brought you to the next question: When were you going to put your plan into action:

[] Friday Afternoon: The mother would be alone at home and there wouldn't be much chance of discovery by the neighborhood, but there was a chance she would receive one of those unexpected "visits".

[] Friday Evening: The whole family would be there, including the children, but there was very little chance of unexpected events.

[] Saturday Morning: The mother would be alone again, but the activity of the neighborhood would be high, and thus the chances of discovery.

[] Saturday Afternoon: Only the mother and the children would be there. Low chance of neighborhood attention and of unexpected events.

You had narrowed down the best times to act among those four periods, in order to reduce chances of danger, although it would never be completely safe. Of course, that was all based on your earlier plan, but now that you had new information, perhaps you should change a few things. You never really did think of how to restrain your victim(s) while you robbed the house, for example.

So, now was the time to make your final, detailed plan.

[] Write-in (Plan Girl Scout is assumed as the base unless specified otherwise in the vote)