Schooling 24-09 (Summus Proelium)

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A/N – as a reminder, this chapter takes place slightly before the events of the recent Commissioned Interlude. And if you haven’t read that, which came out a couple days ago, you can find it right here

Through the rest of the free period and all of lunch, Amber and Paige helped me run through a bunch of tests with my various paints. They wanted to help me get firm numbers on exactly how the paints affected things. Or at least as firm as we could manage. Which basically meant writing a lot of things down while using varying amounts of paint. And measuring a lot. 

First, however, they tested my ability to navigate a dark room. Paige brought in some chairs and the two of them blindfolded me while moving the chairs to various positions. I was able to navigate my way through the room from chair to chair perfectly. Somehow I knew exactly where they were. On the other hand, I had no idea where Paige and Amber themselves were. If they were in my way, I would bump right into them without any clue. My extra-special navigation sense only extended to objects and things like plants, not to people. And, apparently, not to the clothes they were wearing or anything. Furniture, walls, that sort of thing I could sense just fine. I had no idea why it worked that way, but it did. We tried multiple variations of that with the same results. I could sense my way through perfect darkness as long as there wasn’t a person blocking me. Paige also borrowed a couple frogs from the biology room, with basically the same result. I couldn’t sense them. I could sense the flowers Amber set up, but not people or animals. 

Both of them also wanted to test my aiming ability. Under Paige’s direction, I put multiple targets on the wall of varying sizes. Then I marked lines on the floor at different distances that she measured out. No matter how far back I moved or how small the target was, I was able to hit dead center with shots of my paint. Then Paige handed me a baseball, and I did the exact same thing. I could chuck the ball from the far side of the room, roughly thirty meters away, and hit a target the size of a dime. I could do the same thing with that blindfold on, as long as I looked at the target first and had the image of it in my head. Nor did anything change when Paige had me try with a paintball (hah) gun. I could still hit every target just fine with little effort.

“Okay, that’s not fair,” Amber noted while shaking her head. “Super accuracy and navigating in the dark would be like… main powers for some people. For you it’s just extra.” 

“Yeah, but I still don’t get to teleport or phase through walls,” I retorted. “So you’re ahead of me on that. Plus your super speed is a lot faster than mine. And I’m pretty sure your invulnerability tops my orange toughness.” 

We teased each other a little more like that before getting to the actual paint testing. Starting with purple, since that was relatively easy to measure. Basically, Paige brought us over to that bench press and we tested how much each of us could lift without any help at all. In my case, it was… not great. But in my defense, I was small and–yeah. I could do like forty-five pounds. Which felt pretty sad, but that wasn’t anything new. There was a reason I’d gotten into skating and running rather than something like the hammer toss or discus throw.

Amber was a bit better than me on that front, getting up to about eighty pounds. Then there was Paige, who, without any help at all, was able to lift five hundred pounds. The bench press, which she had brought in before I even arrived, was one of the special Touched-Tech variety. Rather than have a bunch of heavy discs on it that had to be moved on and off, the bar itself simply increased its own apparent weight (really just how much it resisted being lifted up from the resting position) based on what you input into the little display thing on the side. This one could go all the way up to about eight thousand pounds of resistance, though you had to input a special code to go that high and basically promise that you were Touched and had a Touched spotter. 

Once we had a baseline for how much we could lift, I started with the paint. Rather than just painting our hands or anything like that, Paige had all of us measure ourselves and then worked out how much of our bodies I would need to paint to do five percent of the body, then ten percent, and so on. She had me mark lines on our bodies with a different paint color, starting from our feet and going up. Then all I had to do was fill in that amount and activate it while we were lifting. 

After a lot of testing, we found that, at least in the smaller amounts, it didn’t really matter how much paint someone had on them. Anywhere up to about ten percent did the same thing. Namely, it tripled someone’s strength. So I went from being able to lift forty five pounds to being able to lift a hundred and thirty-five. Over that, the strength increase went up more for every ten percent of the body that was covered. At twenty percent of coverage, strength was increased by four times, thirty percent increased it by five times, forty by six, fifty by seven, sixty by eight, and so on. It continued that way all the way up to full body coverage strength, which increased strength by twelve times. With basically my full body covered in paint except for my eyes and mouth, I could lift five hundred and forty pounds. 

All of which also meant that Amber went from lifting eighty pounds to lifting nine hundred and sixty, and Paige increased from five hundred to six thousand. Which was a bit more impressive than Amber and me. 

So after testing all three of us multiple times, that was what we came out with. From a tiny bit all the way up to ten percent coverage, it was a flat three times increase. Adding more increased that all the way up to a twelve times increase for full body coverage. That was a good enough test for me to call it definitive, though Paige wanted me to try it on the others eventually so we’d have more data points. I was also pretty sure she drooled a little when she said ‘data points.’ Which was kinda weird, to be honest. 

In any case, from there we tested speed by running from one end of the room to the other. We did that a few times without any paint in order to get a baseline. The distance was, according to Paige, exactly thirty meters, or slightly over the length of a professional basketball court by a few feet. We ran from one end to the other, then back again, which was about sixty meters. That time, I actually beat Amber. She was able to run that distance in nine seconds, while I made it in eight. In my case, that was a speed of seven point five meters per second. Paige, of course, beat both of us with a six second run, or ten meters per second. She was really fast when she wanted to be. 

Again, we did the same ‘add paint five percent at a time’ thing. Every percent of our bodies I covered in paint increased our speed by two percent. So, with half of our bodies covered, our speed was increased by one hundred percent, making us twice as fast. I was able to make the run in four seconds, boosting my speed to fifteen meters per second. Amber did it in about four and a half seconds, raising her speed from six point six to thirteen point two meters per second. Then there was Paige, whose time dropped from six seconds to three. She was doing twenty meters per second. 

Once I covered our entire bodies in green paint, our speed was increased by two hundred percent. Which dropped my sixty meter run time down to about two point six seconds, or twenty-two point five meters per second. Amber got down to about three seconds, and Paige could now run it in two seconds, given her speed increased from ten meters per second with no paint, to thirty meters per second with her entire body covered. 

Of course, I was also able to simply paint a green line on the floor and speed people up that way. I’d already tested that once when I first got my powers, and had clocked myself at about a thirty mile per hour run that way. That was a speed of thirteen point four meters per second, or just slightly under how fast I was with half my body painted. 

The results were basically the same in this case. Our sixty meters was just under four percent of a mile. With the green line down and active, I was able to run the sixty meters in just about four point five seconds, as opposed to my four second time while half-covered. The other two got similar results, so I was willing to go out on a limb and estimate that running on a green line was roughly equivalent to having half our bodies covered. Close enough, anyway. 

Then there was the yellow paint, which we tested the same way. Half our bodies being covered lowered our speed to about fifty percent of what it should have been. I went from being able to run sixty meters in eight seconds, to needing sixteen seconds. Or it would have, if my paint lasted that long. Paige took how far I’d gotten in that ten seconds and extrapolated from there. She did the same thing with the full coverage. Full coverage took speed down to about ten percent of normal speed. When I was running flat-out, or trying to, I was actually only able to move about three quarters of a meter per second. After the full ten seconds of the effect, I had only moved a bit under eight meters. Ten seconds to run twenty-five feet. At that rate, it would’ve taken me almost a minute and a half to run the full sixty meters. If, again, my paint lasted that long or I kept renewing it. 

Again, the other two had similar results, and yellow paint on the floor was roughly equivalent to having fifty percent of our bodies covered. 

And it wasn’t just personal speed that was slowed. Everything slowed down. Or sped up, depending on the paint color. We timed how long it took various objects to fall without any paint, with green paint, and with yellow paint. Again, all that seemed to matter was what percentage of the object was covered. If it was completely covered, even if the object was small, it got one hundred percent of the effect. Dropping a coin completely covered in yellow paint made it fall at ten percent of its normal speed. 

Of course, those were the relatively easy colors to test. Strength increase, speed increase, and speed decrease. We knocked those ones out of the park. We still had orange toughness, red pulling, blue pushing, black silencing, white light, and the pink…. bouncy/stretchy bit. Those were going to require a bit more creativity.

For multiple reasons, they were going to have to wait. Not only did we need more equipment for testing those, but we were also out of time. Both our free and lunch periods were about over, and none of us wanted to deal with having to explain ourselves for skipping class. Not to mention the attention all three of us doing it would attract. Besides, Paige said she had some ideas for testing the red and blue paints, but we were going to have to go somewhere else to do it. Still, it was nice to have some actual numbers to go with some of my paint. The fact that they definitely increased things by a percentage rather than a set amount was… very interesting. It made me wonder how much I could end up helping someone who already had significantly enhanced strength or speed. 

Before we left, however, Amber asked, “And you’re absolutely sure you don’t have any other colors you haven’t found? Pink was the last one?” 

My head bobbed. “I’ve tried every color I can think of, and nothing else comes out. That’s it. Red, blue, green, purple, yellow, orange, pink, black, and white. I can adjust the shades of them and all that, especially when I’m making instant-pictures. But it doesn’t change the effect. Light purple does the same as dark purple as long as it’s covering the same amount. Surface area is all that matters, not shade.” 

“But where does the navigation-sense come in?” the dark-haired girl demanded. “I mean, I have the ability to sense what direction I’m facing or moving because that’s tied directly into my power. I can even understand why you have the artistic power. That’s linked to the whole making paint thing, sort of. Like, you can subconsciously sense and control exactly where the colors are going, to the point of making perfect pictures. I guess that makes sense. But how are you sensing where objects are in the darkness?” 

“Are you sensing colors?” Paige asked. “I mean, maybe it is basically the same thing. If you can make perfect images because you control exactly where the colors are going that perfectly, maybe you can sense colors in the environment. Colors you’re not even responsible for making.” 

I shrugged helplessly. “If that’s true, how come I can’t sense the colors on your shirt, or the color of your eyes, or anything like that. Remember, my navigation sense poops out completely when it comes to living things. Or anything you’re wearing, anything in your pockets, and so on. If it’s on you or connected to you, I can’t sense it. And that’s a lot of colors to just be blind to if this is right.” 

“Maybe that’s just a weakness you have,” Amber offered. “Your power doesn’t work on living beings or up to a certain distance around their bodies.” 

“It works on plants though,” Paige put in. “You used it to get around the dark forest when we were… you know.”

I nodded. “Right, so it’s just animals that block it. Wait, hang on, is that the source of my aiming power too? I mean, if I’m subconsciously sensing where colors are and all that, maybe I’m just sensing exactly how to get one color to another. The color of the ball to the color on the wall, or whatever. Or the specific part of that color. I dunno. Shapes, colors, all that. Maybe that’s it? Is it as simple as just ‘my ability to create images is so good it extends all the way to knowing where every color and thus every object in the environment around me is, and exactly how to move one color slash object to another?’”

We needed to get to class, but Paige had me do one more test for that. Namely, I threw a tennis ball at both of them while they were standing still and also while they were moving. Including while they were moving with green paint speed boost. My aim was good, especially for the standing still part, but not nearly as perfect as it was for non-animal targets. I was generally able to hit them, just not very specific parts of them if they were moving too quickly. 

“Okay, so I think you guys are right,” Paige finally decided. “Somehow, you have some sort of ‘shape and color’ sense or whatever. That’s allowing you to navigate and aim things, as well as draw perfectly. It seems to get disrupted a bit by animals. But it still works somewhat even then, since you can hit us. I think you just have a hard time consciously using it that way. It works enough for you to make one color hit another, like when you throw the ball, but not specifically enough to hit a certain part of that color. The whole animal slash human thing disrupts your sense, for some reason.” 

I was still thinking about that, and what it meant as we carefully left our secret room (or the Ministry’s secret room, rather) and made our way back to the regular school area. 

Honestly, I knew that Paige had thrown herself into this so firmly specifically to distract herself from worrying about Irelyn. But that was okay, it was past time for me to actually understand how all my powers worked. If I was going to get better at all this, I needed to understand exactly what I could do. Especially when it came to things like my navigation sense and accuracy, which were apparently derived from the same thing, if our theory was right. 

So yes, Paige was obviously worried. And I was sure Sierra was as well. But hopefully, we would be onto the next stage of the rescue plan by the time school was over. Assuming nothing went wrong, Wren should have the location tracker thing ready by then, and we could use that to find out exactly where Breakwater was, then use that to make them get Irelyn and Trivial off the island. 

But of course, tracking down the location of the world’s most secure and dangerous supervillain prison, and then forcing the leaders of that prison to do what we wanted them to was hardly the most dangerous thing on my agenda today.

After all, I still had to go over to Arleigh’s for dinner. 

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