It was, Emma thought, fairly natural that her powers as an Untethered be so extraordinary. She was the main character after all. Putting aside the not-inconsiderable benefits to her ego, which was growing by the minute, she found herself enjoying the purely practical results a good deal as well. Being able to see her own stats, digit for digit, meant that she could track her own progress to exactance. Push her abilities, know how they were coming along. It got all her dopamine receptors gushing juice like…Well, like they always did when she started grinding in a new RPG. Except this time, they were gushing a whole lot more. This time it felt real.

Days passed as Emma worked, studied, asked Larry questions and got a mix of prickish snark and actual answers in return. Aexilica was in and out. Though she'd forgotten about her hunger the first few hours upon returning, the Focus had sort of eaten everything else away from Emma's attentions, it had come back with a vengeance, and her new roommate had been nice enough to cook for them both.

She was still mommy, even if Emma couldn't say it outloud. She'd think it. That'd show her.

Emma's days were spent practicing. After the first of those days, she was not allowed to do it inside the house. This was completely unfair, and showed blatant discrimination against her as a user of cool magic. Aexilica, what with her mildly superhuman strength and speed, was not disallowed from being inside, but apparently blowing craters the size of bathtubs in the ground was an outdoors activity.

Well, that much could be sort of understood. What really bugged Emma was needing to do it out of the town too. People really did get pissy about damage in public spaces, she'd found. Almost made her want to bomb them even harder.

Larry turned out to be a great help in explaining the finer nuances of her new abilities beyond what instinct and observation could tell her. Emma knew already that compressing her energy made it heighten in lasting power, she'd trial-and-errored her way to that. What was news to her was that she could compress it even more than she had been. It just hadn't occurred to her to try that yet, nor the techniques of how.

By projecting Energy from her fingertips, and giving it some extra time to build up, Emma was able to make…Well, not a lance. Nothing like a lance. A scalpel. A pencil-thin cutting beam which, she found, did an excellent job of slicing trees entirely down rather than merely blasting chunks out. Used with heat instead of kinesis, it could actually liquefy sections of stone into molten sludge as well.

There were drawbacks. Area of effect being so limited meant Emma was looking at a good deal less lethality for larger, softer targets. A needle through something's leg might be penetrating deeper than a fistful of flesh being ripped out, but it wouldn't kill nearly as reliably.

She pictured the cyclops. Would he have died sooner, or later if she'd put a hole in him instead of a crater?

Emma found that she exhausted herself by using her powers, too. Really exhausted herself. About six lances was her absolute limit. Not great, even if that limit hadn't come to bite her so far. She went to bed the first night equal parts satisfied and concerned. She'd learned a fair amount about her powers. Strengths, and weaknesses.

The next day she woke up hungry, ate more, hurried out. Emma continued blasting away, surprising herself by managing nine shots. She looked at her stats again out of interest to see if anything had changed- Larry, fortunately, had explained her the meaning of certain things.

Attunement was what she wanted, the reflection of her raw power.

Fundaments:

Energy 1, Matter 1, Force 1, Entropy 1, Cognition 1, Space 1, Time 1

Crafts:

Alchemy 1, Talismans 1, Enchanting 1, Animacy 1,

Cores:

Attunement 10, Mastery 3

No, no change in Attunement. Mastery though…

"What is Mastery?" She asked Larry, while waiting to catch her breath back. With luck she'd recover more of her mana- if that actually was whatever her reserves of magical energy was called- by doing so. The head groaned, having been woken from a nap by her question.

"For Untethered it's…Uh, basically your skill. Control."

"It decides what I can do?" She prodded. He hesitated.

"Sometimes, I mean high Mastery is needed to make certain things work at all, but…Well, does physical dexterity allow you to be a top-class shooter?"

Emma thought about that. To some extent, obviously, it did, but she imagined most of the difference was made by other things. Spatial judgement, experience, the firearm itself. She could see what he was getting at.

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"So what does it do then?" She asked.

"Mostly, it helps you be more efficient with what you can already do."

Everything clicked at that. Emma hadn't gotten more powerful, she was just wasting less of her own powers. She went to bed that day managing a single extra shot, bringing her record up to ten. She'd experimented some more, too, asking Larry about other applications of her Fundaments and trying to replicate some of the interesting aspects.

As usual, Energy had all the interesting parts. Matter was catching up now though.

"I've seen Untethered conjure physical matter and shape it with a touch. I've seen them create constructs of pure energy when they needed something solid more quickly. I've seen forces affect entire areas, reversing gravity and the like."

"Time slowing?" She pressed. "Teleportation?"

Larry tried to shrug. Emma deduced this only after watching him sort of wiggle for a few seconds, then get angry.

"Once or twice." He snapped. "But that's well beyond you."

Emma knocked him over again, then got back to work.

"How will I know when I unlock a new power?" She frowned.

"If your Focus doesn't tell you, then you'll need to go off your gut but…You should know. A sort of instinct, a feeling."

Well that was helpful. Emma had all the womanly intuition of those girls who sent Ted Bundy fan-mail.

She kept her work going, sadly managing a mere thirteen lances today…But not minding. Because when she checked to confirm the suspicion that she'd upped her Mastery, she saw something new staring her in the face.

Fundaments:

Energy 2, Matter 1, Force 1, Entropy 1, Cognition 1, Space 1, Time 1

Crafts:

Alchemy 1, Talismans 1, Enchanting 1, Animacy 1,

Cores:

Attunement 10, Mastery 4

Emma was actually pissed off to have exhausted herself too early to properly test her powers, but she still had enough in the tank to do some experimentation. Larry's hints helped. Though he'd never had the advantage of directly talking through an Untethered using their powers, his from-afar experience proved valuable enough. Testing out some of the directions he proposed for her, Emma soon discovered just what she'd gained the power to do.

Between her exhaustion and the late hour, that was all Emma had time to uncover on that day. And the early morning of the next brought an altogether different task for her.

"Up." Aexilica ordered, sharply dragging Emma from bed with the sound of her voice alone. Then, as she tried to nuzzle her pillow and drift back asleep, physically dragging her from it with the strength of her muscles. Emma just sort of went flying, rolling along the ground and stopping literally halfway across the room. She groaned, gasped. Felt air that was altogether too cold and too dry for a place so similar to South bloody America, and grumpily began to sit up.

"Bitch." She scowled. "What do you want?"

Aexilica was about as impressed by Emma as usual. She'd been sleeping in her underwear, the only clothing from the real world she'd found consistent use for. Emma had hoped that the other woman might have seen something she liked. If she had, she didn't make it apparent.

"I don't want anything. I need to go on another hunt-and-kill mission, and I-"

"You need my help!" Emma leapt to her feet, excitement bubbling up instantly. "Ha! This is perfect, I've learned tons of new magical stuff, you're gonna be amazed trust me. When do we leave!?"

Aexilica looked suddenly queasy.

"This is serious work." She frowned. "I'm not doing this for fun, or for thrills. If you come with me, you follow my lead and you behave sensibly, alright?"

Emma wasn't really listening. Sensibly? Sensible was using your badass magic powers to…She felt the message sink in suddenly. No, she knew better now. That cyclops had caught her in this exact state and it had almost been the end of her. Emma wasn't sure what would happen if she died in this hallucination of hers. Maybe she'd get to respawn, maybe it would just end. Maybe she'd wake up in a hospital wing with lots of big-breasted nurses taking care of her.

But magical powers was a lot to gamble on losing in any case.

"Alright." She replied at last.

Aexilica eyed her at that, scepticism shining from her features like metal hot from a blowtorch.

"That's it?" She said with suspicion. "I was expecting more…Trouble."

"Yeah, well, I was expecting less trouble last time." Emma shrugged. "Almost died. I'll focus now, pay attention and watch your back. You watch mine too, right?"

"Right." Aexilica looked rather pleased. The expression didn't last her long of course, Emma would've been worried she was hallucinating inside her own hallucination if it had. "Then hurry up and get ready to leave, I don't want to spend any more time on this job than is necessary."

Emma did, and found herself actually trembling as she pulled the clothing on and readied herself to march out and fight. What was it? Nerves? She didn't think so. Eagerness…Maybe. There was some of that there, and she had no illusions to the contrary, but Emma had gotten a handle on it now. She wouldn't be letting her emotions run away with her.

"Are you scared of dying?" Larry asked her, making Emma jump as he did. It pissed her off, but she knew that snapping would only let him know he'd gotten to her.

"Not…Really." She replied, surprising herself with the truth.

"Because you still don't think any of this is real." Larry guessed. Emma looked at him.

"What are you getting at?" She shot back. This was odd. He wasn't just trying to fuck with her, or speaking out of boredom, there was information he thought he was missing here. Something that bothered him enough to fish for it.

Larry didn't respond. Emma just caught herself before she continued. That would only confirm that he was getting to her. She wasn't sure what he'd do, knowing that, but it didn't seem like a bad idea to keep him knowing as little as she could.

"Ah, I think I understand." Larry continued, slowing Emma as she was halfway to the door. "You like it here. More than all the giggling and shouting conveys I mean, you really like it here. You feel some sense of freedom, is that it?"

"Fuck off." Emma hurried out, slamming the door behind her and taking off at as brisk a pace as she could manage. Perhaps if she walked fast enough, she'd outrun the words Larry had left rattling around in the back of her mind.

Freedom.

Freedom from what, exactly? From not having cool powers? From not getting beaten up and almost killed constantly? Not that either of those things was actually happening, of course. No, it was just in her head. So what sort of freedom did he, knowing what she thought, think she found herself getting?

It irritated Emma that she couldn't just turn around, storm back and shake him for the answers. Not without giving him some sense of satisfaction at least.

That was unthinkable, so she continued on.

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