3 Powers

In the back of my mind I felt my own personal power and the number of abilities I possessed increasing quite dramatically. Even before the system could inform me of the powers I possessed my sharpened mind was automatically aware of them.

If I opted to adopt the "Druids and Demons" approach to making sense of my powers they were optimized to make me a potent fusion of the "Scoundrel" and "Brawler" classes. To begin with, I had access to the full suite of tier-one black powerset powers, which were an incredible mix of abilities for someone with my innate powers.

Those powers were optimized to allow me to be a sneaky intruder capable of hiding in plain view with a deadly touch that I knew I could use to be extraordinarily mischievous. The truest superpower of this set, at this particular tier, was that it gave me the ability to cling to any surface as easily as if gravity were somehow shifting for just me, allowing me to walk on ceilings with ease, sprint on walls, or otherwise perform a number of gravity-defying stunts. The other, most supernatural, superpower in this set was one that allowed me to manipulate my shadow in a number of ways, but most intriguingly as a storage space or as a remotely controlled vessel through which I could make use of my other powers.

Every other power in this set was either more subtle than that one or just an "ability" that someone with high enough points in charm and grace would have been able to do anyway, but I did not mind that at all.

With these powers, I could easily get up to the sort of mischief that was perfect for me. I wanted to make use of these abilities and to practice each of them, especially since I possessed numerous other powers innately. I had powers from each powerset that the system had described to me, which was extremely exciting to me.

The other most fascinating set of powers that I had received came from the green powerset, and the powers I had gotten from that particular set would have set my imagination ablaze had I been a child. They were powers over two schools of magic: enchantment and transmutation!

With enchantment magic I could ensnare senses, subsume wills to my own, and transform perceptions, but with transmutation I could alter physical properties and even transform something into something else entirely, which was obviously tied to my own nature as a changeling. These were the two schools of magic with the highest synergy to my own innate nature, and that was immensely exciting.

When the system began to talk next I found that I already understood what it was telling me. It gave me a quick rundown on my abilities, which was totally unnecessary to me since my mutated mind was more than capable of effortlessly making sense of what the system was trying to tell me. In fact, thanks to my mutations, my subconscious mind was fully aware of what was going on with regards to my powers, including my own attribute scores.

"Now that your powers are awakened, you are aware of them, and understand the bare basics of your abilities... Are you ready for me to return time to normal? Once I do, it will be up to you to ask me questions and to decide what to do. Your powers, your destiny, your objectives, are all your own." The system asked me, filling me with both excitement and nervousness. I was about to nod, before realizing that I ought to speak with my whole chest, be proud of my litany of powers and the amazing adventure I was about to embark on.

"I am. I know my powers, my mutations, and I believe that I can make the most of them. My supercharged mind, combined with my other abilities... I'm excited to utilize my powers and eventually purchase new abilities." I exclaimed, even as I took a few careful steps away from Alejandro. As I did so the boy began to slowly move and glance at me, his eyes slowly widening as he realized that he was so close to me. I chuckled and grinned at him, to which the boy began to smile back.

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The school I attended was the American Academy of Honduras, a private, multinational school located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras's rather vibrant and exciting capital city. At the moment I could hear the distant sounds of frantic city life, from the off-putting sounds of crime, to the hectic noises of traffic and busy restaurants.

I possessed what I could argue was a fairly "standard" set of superpowers, but each of them was an incredible power that was worth taking the time to practice and hone to the furthest extent possible. For now I focused on utilizing the first of my powers, telekinesis, to further sharpen my senses.

I not only possessed telekinesis, but, very importantly in this scenario, an innate mastery over my abilities, considerable comic-book knowledge to fall back on, and my intensely sharpened mind. I focused on my eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and the rest of my body, and visualized a potent layer of telekinetic energy suffusing me. As I did, and the energy responded to my intent, I felt my senses sharpen even further, allowing me to make out conversations in dozens of languages across as many miles with so much ease it was like I was a participant in them myself, or smell someone's perfume who was over four miles away from me.

My enhanced mind allowed me to sift through all of this information without being overwhelmed, and as I did so I realized that even though my mind was enhanced to truly absurd degrees there was still a lot I was lacking. For instance, I only spoke English and Spanish, and though I spoke both fluently, I could hear dozens of languages being spoken throughout Tegucigalpa.

If I wanted the ability to truly understand what all was going on throughout the city I needed to master as many languages as possible. I possessed a mutation entitled "Linguist" that could help me with that, since it allowed me to learn languages through touch, but that still meant that I needed to touch someone first.

I began to walk to my first class of the day, a history class taught by one of my favorite teachers as I reflected on the incredible potency of my new mind. As I did I crossed by various parts of the private school I attended.

The school was divided into areas which kept students of similar grade level close to one another. Unsurprisingly, the high school was further back in the grand campus of the academy, as the buses were primarily used either by international students such as myself or by younger students, since older, Honduran students at the academy tended to have private chauffeurs, and thus could easily use the school's back entrance. As I made my way out towards the high-school area, students, especially older middle school students and younger high school students, began to notice me and mentally comment on my new appearance, which I could overhear thanks to my new telepathic abilities.

I was now aware of the changes my body had undergone, and the reality-warping that had occurred to many of my possessions. For example, despite my incredible growth in height I had clothes that still fit me properly, which should not have. I was also revising my memories and noticed other things, such as the changed face on my student ID which showed a somewhat reasonable transition for me to have gone through "over the summer" and thus allowed my newfound appearance to vaguely make sense.

My new appearance, and the comments I was getting as a result of it, were a direct result of two things. The cause for my new appearance, and the attention it got me, was the potency of the "Airbrush" mutation, which was an incredibly powerful mutation that transformed the appearances of those who possessed it, giving them the sort of incredibly attractive physical traits the most handsome or beautiful superheroes possessed. The far less dramatic but still significant cause of the remarks I was getting, was that I now possessed an "Aura" which surrounded me at all times and made those around me far more likely to begin to experience romantic attraction or more general fascination and awe towards me.

I could control the feelings the aura caused people to feel at will, and for now had settled on it causing women my age to become romantically interested in me, and to cause everyone else to begin to admire and be fascinated by me. This effectively exacerbated the impact of my physical perfection, and also granted me considerable more sway over others than it would have, since my aura's effects were minuscule but exacerbated the effects of my physical beauty, and my charm attribute, which was like every other attribute of mine in that it had innately been elevated to a number beyond twenty, the normal human maximum.

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As I approached the high school area of my school I began to think about the fact that each of my attributes was beyond twenty. That meant that even starting out I surpassed a peak human in every respect! I had an innate intellect surpassing that of superheroes I had grown up idolizing, a strength somewhere in the middle-tier of superheroes, and abilities beyond theirs as well.

My strength score was thirty, and that was mixed with me possessing knowledge that each number beyond twenty is already truly superhuman. Thirty was the lower end of my scores too, since my charm score was a solid forty one at the moment, my intelligence and wisdom were both thirty five, and my toughness and grace were both thirty seven. Plus since I was uncapped in every attribute I could easily steal more points and elevate everything to truly incredible degrees, unless I opted to invest them in more abilities.

I was also lucky to be in my school, since with even a glance I could tell that someone like myself was in a veritable feeding ground. I gazed at my fellow students and saw that they possessed considerable scores across the board. I saw people with fourteens in multiple attributes, which were truly stellar scores and marked someone as approaching the upper end of normal human performance, and I even saw a few people with fifteens or sixteens in places like intelligence or charm, which, assuming the comparisons to "Druids and Demons" remained apt, were incredible scores.

The resources that the rich possessed in a nation like Honduras meant that they could raise their stats to be truly impressive, even if they couldn't see them laid out like I could. They could hire impressive tutors for their children, get various surgeries that augmented their health, spend days honing their physiques, and effectively do most anything that they, as humans, could really want. I fully suspected that if I met the parents of some of my classmates they might possess scores in the late teens as well, which made them targets that the calculating part of my mind wanted me to feed on.

My mind was now a sprawling thing that was far closer to a supercomputer than a mere brain in a skull. I could consciously sense the firing of neurons and was consciously aware of every function of my brain. And of course I possessed a number of mental abilities as well, such as telepathy, telekinesis, and mind-control being just a few of them. Those abilities were perhaps my greatest at the moment, despite the surprisingly diverse set of powers I possessed, since with them I could easily give myself opportunities to feed on the attributes of those around me. I decided to test them while making my way to class.

As part of the first test of my powers I reached out with my will and sought to read the minds of every person I could who either attended or worked at the school, and who happened to be close to it at the moment. An instant later a staggering amount of information filled my mind, but I was able to sift through it with ease.

I was able to read the minds of every single student who attended my school, every teacher, every other professional in the area, and the minds of hundreds of people living in the area surrounding the school, quite thoroughly and instantly, which put me at a surprisingly high level of mental power, as well as afforded me access to considerably influential information involving the plots and schemes of several Honduran politicians whose children attended this school.

"So... reelection? How curious." I muttered, almost impossibly quietly, as my mind began to put together different, nominally unrelated facts that I now knew thanks to my test. I knew of dastardly schemes put together by politicians and whispered in the presence of children, which could, if allowed to come to pass, alter the course of nations.

On a more personally important note I now knew precisely which students liked each other throughout my school, as well as of illicit affairs that teachers were having with parents and the family members of various students. My telepathy was eerily potent and with it I was able to instantly sort through someone's entire life, effortlessly absorbing their skills, memories, and knowledge, which was stored away in my mind and allowed me to immediately begin to make use of my grey powers, since the abilities and skills used by those whose memories I had sifted through were able to activate some of those skill-based superpowers.

Some of the teachers at my school had doctoral degrees in fields like chemistry, mathematics, biology, and other prestigious areas. Thanks to their hard work and my own creativity I was now at a level at least equaling theirs in an instant, and had the ability to mix and match their skill-sets. I instinctively knew that this would make some classes, like my calculus class, incredibly easy, while making others like history, more fun.

This also helped with one of the issues I had: my need to learn new languages. I was able to instantaneously add languages like German, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and even a few indigenous languages, to my verbal and mental repertoire of languages, which in turn allowed me to understand many of the conversations I was overhearing.

By the time I made it to the high school area of the academy I attended I was smiling broadly, even when the first of my friends saw me, waved at me, and began to approach me. There was an equally broad grin on his face as he stepped towards me, wearing a version of the school's uniform that he had artificially weathered so as to give it a somewhat unique look.