Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 0.6.8
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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Without Alchemist hovering nearby to hog the manual, Wally actually completed the mill in record time.
Moving it up the stairs and into one of the unoccupied bedrooms near where Alchemist was staying though? That was a bit beyond him.
He was super fast, not super strong.
Kinda.
Alchemist's grumbling about 'Necessary secondary superpowers' ended up making a lot of sense when he got the guy to actually explain it. Wally didn't really feel like he had super regeneration or some measure of enhanced durability, but at the same time, he also didn't have arthritis from logging more miles than most cars could survive.
Either way, he wasn't lifting the machine and lugging it around the mountain.
That's what Superboy was for!
And it only took Wally two and a half minutes to find him. Sitting alone in the room Wally had commandeered to run his own experiment. Just watching the four mice kept in individual cages.
Three of them had superpowers, to varying degrees, while the fourth one did not.
This wasn't the first time Wally had found him here. Connor wouldn't talk about it, but Wally was pretty sure there was some odd sort of kinship between him and the lab rats. When Karen was being pulled off into girl stuff and nobody else was engaging with him, he'd just find his way back to this room and watch the mice.
Kid Flash sort of understood. He'd done the same thing more than once. It had actually been kind of relaxing to just sit and talk to them like they were people. It had also been kind of nice to train Connor in how to take care of them, to make notes and observations.
It sort of felt like a connection, a real, human connection.
"You learn anything new, big guy?" Wally unfolded a chair and sat next to him, looking at the mice. Looking at the voltage display over three of the cages.
Gauging their individual strength in superspeed had taken a bit of work. Two of them, the ones dosed with the Garrick and Allen formulas, would get on their exercise wheels and tear off faster than he could keep track of. The third one, significantly slower than the other two, he could just barely keep track of.
His solution? He stole the idea from a show he used to watch as a kid, something about pre-teen operatives and spies fighting against adult tyranny. In a few episodes, the kids used hamsters and their wheels to power backup generators.
Wally had retooled that idea a bit. With Alchemist's help to make the parts out of the same weird, black metal as the rod mill used, he'd set it up so that the three superpowered mice would generate a current when they ran and he could then run the average results of a multi-meter through an algorithm to figure out how fast they were running.
"I think Pinky is getting tired faster than before? He's not running as long as he did last week." Wally nodded almost absentmindedly as he took the clipboard Connor handed him and started looking it over.
Inky, the Garrick mouse had remained consistent. Blinky, with the Allen formula had actually increased its endurance. Clyde, the control mouse, remained within standard tolerances. The only one fluctuating significantly was Pinky. The West formula.
Food consumption had gone up in the case of Blinky and Pinky, but not for Inky or Clyde. Pinky was producing more waste, though.
That... Was also consistent with his own experiences.
"Any luck trying to weigh them?" Wally finally asked once he got done reading.
"No." Wally gave Connor a moment to continue that, but nothing else was forthcoming.
"Alright. Think I could get your help for a minute? Alchemist and I built something, but it's too heavy for me to carry." Wally got up and started to top off their food, noting absently that the superpowered mice were watching him with much greater intensity than Clyde was.
"Sure." Superboy stood up to watch him as he worked.
These might have been lab mice, but that didn't mean he had to be cruel, not like that one scientist.
Not like Desmond.
-----
Player One had kept up her training after Wonder Woman had left.
She was getting close to the last training bonus she could get for Strength, the counter sitting at a frustrating nineteen of twenty.
She'd already gotten the maximum for Agility and Dexterity, but only had about half the bonuses for Intelligence, Will and Endurance.
She'd earned one bonus point for Luck, but she wasn't even sure how she did that.
She'd waved when Robin and Batman had entered the training room, but they hadn't waved back.
Rude.
Watching them was really impressive, though! Batman was almost like the kung-fu movies made fighting out to be, like poetry in motion.
Robin was different. When he let loose, it was more brash, more sudden and opportunistic but lacked planning, strategy.
In the three rounds she saw of their training, it always ended the same way. Robin would try and go in for a strike at a presumed weakness and, when he overextended, Batman would literally just grab the offending arm or leg and throw him out of the ring.
Then Batman had held up a hand to answer his communicator and rushed off, which probably meant trouble.
Robin stayed behind, though, so probably not any kind of serious trouble.
She wasn't really sure what to make of the boy wonder, not really. He hadn't had a whole lot to say to her after Santa Prisca, just a mumbled apology after Batman had a talk with him about something and then he'd kept his distance.
She kind of thought he blamed her for the mission being a failure.
He went through a cooldown phase for a bit, did some stretches and then left with a backwards glance.
Player One went back to doing squats, sit-ups and push-ups.
It was boring, it was tedious and honestly she didn't enjoy it. It did give her time to think, though.
She'd hit a wall. The cave I.D. was consistently proving to be too hard to handle, the monsters that appeared past the first boss were just too strong.
Or too beefy. They had a hard time hitting her, but she couldn't cause any real or significant damage to them.
She'd been trying to avoid it, he weirded her out so, so much but... She was going to have to ask Alchemist for help.
Or at least advice.
He seemed to just know things, especially about The System. But half the time, he just acted so... unsettling.
"Hey-o." She nearly flipped when the boy she was thinking about spoke up from the doorway. "Any word on when Wonder Woman will be back?"
Right! That! She'd almost forgotten.
"I haven't heard anything." He stepped into the padded room, a comfortable distance between them, and started stretching. "Hey, uh... Can I ask you something?"
He was slowly bending over to touch his toes when he said "Go for it."
"I'm... Kinda stuck, in my new I.D.. Do you have any suggestions that could help out?" There you go, see? That wasn't so hard.
"Sure, can think of a few. What kinds of games are you familiar with?" He stood back up fully and brought his arms up over his head.
"Shooters. I used to love shooters." Though she never played anymore.
"But you went with a sneak attack, melee, critical build?" She glared hard enough he could feel it. "I'm not criticizing, alright? I'm not. Everybody needs a ninja. Have you considered adding some utility spells to your list?"
He was a magician. Of course he'd go with suggesting magic.
She didn't know what she'd been expecting, honestly.
"I've got seventy-five MP. How much do you expect me to do with that?" She had way more Stamina Points than she did Magic Points, and the Stamina regenerated significantly faster.
"Honestly? You can do a lot with that. You could cast my repair spell seven times with that, use healing magic a few times, grab some buffs to multiply your stats for a few hours or change the way you're hitting your enemies... There's a lot of options, really. And crafting, you can't go wrong with crafting. I picked Alchemy half because it's a little bit of everything." That... Huh.
He was making a good point. She had a versatile build, and adding some niche skills or utilities wouldn't be a -bad- thing, would it?
"What about your perks? I've been getting the stuff that makes me better at what I do but the main options are about taken." She wasn't sure how to answer that. He'd actually been spending those? She'd never been able to decide what she wanted, there were just so many options!
"I've got a lot of points left... Is there anything specific you think I need? I'm having a hard time with specific enemies, trolls." Her damage output was good, but they just kept getting back up!
"Alright, look. I'm not going to tell you how to kill me." Kill him? What? Why was he grinning?! ...Oh, troll joke. Hah. "Well, I can't help you too much there outside of giving you something, but I can make a few suggestions if you want?"
She nodded at him.
"For perks, look for things that make what you already do better. Things that increase your stealth, health and maybe defense or hit points? Maybe grab the elemental perks for fire or acid, too. Trolls regenerate health, but those two things interfere with that. Here." He handed her a scroll.
A scroll! Of all the things she'd expected this... Wasn't at the bottom.
-- Do you wish to learn the spell --
-- Carthus Flame Arc --
-- Level 1 --
-- Cost: 30 MP --
-- Coat weapon or hands in flame for (90 X (1+(Skill Level/100))) seconds causing ((INT+WIL)/2) X (1 + (Skill Level/100)) additional fire damage! --
-- Y/N? --
Obviously she clicked yes! That would be perfect!
The scroll exploded into a burst of light as the spell slotted itself into her menu.
She didn't miss the look of envy on Alchemist's face, but she couldn't bring herself to feel too bad for him.
Magic! She'd finally learned some magic!