Frostlich1228
Well-Known Member
DarkGemini24601 and Frostlich1228: “Unlocked Potential”
Five days ago...
1607 Hours, July 28th, 2038
Somewhere over South America
Onboard the Avenger
Floor 3, Central Block
Psionics Laboratory
The newly-constructed auxiliary laboratory had a somewhat eerie, otherworldly feel to it. This was largely due to the contrast of lighting. At the workstation for the lab’s designated scientist/engineer duo - which had a slightly lower floor than the rest of the curved walkways in the chamber - bright blue lights from a large monitor, some smaller screens, and an abundance of stationary lights created one color. On the roof, illuminating the walkways and the workstation from behind were harsher red lights, mixing with the blue in places to create a violet tinge. If either of the siblings within the room were bothered by this, it was not clear, for they seemed not to notice. They were too absorbed in their work.
Marx came to the entrance, the lights from under the door putting him on guard, reminding him of the enemy they were fighting. He brought his hand to the door, slamming against it a few times to get someone’s attention.
“Edmée, could you get that?” the voice of a man with a French accent asked another in the room.
“Kind of busy right now…” a woman replied irritably.
“Ah, yes, that elerium core does not look… particularly stable. I’ll leave you to that. Dominguez, if you would be so kind…” the man requested.
The door unlocked with a mechanical click, and slid open. In the room there were currently four people. Two of them stood off to the side. One had opened the door, and was a man of African-Hispanic descent with flat-topped black hair and simple brown eyes. He smiled at Marx, stepping to the side to allow him to walk in. This gave the Russian a better look at the other soldier present - a Norwegian with mildly spiky black hair and distinctive faintly gold-colored eyes. As for the two staff members, they both had short brown hair and green eyes, though the brother had speckles of a violet color in his irises. He stepped away from his work for the moment to greet Marx, while his sister continued to work on some sort of octagon-shaped device.
“Are you here to get tested like the other two?” Edmé inquired.
“I suppose so…” Marx hesitated, the interior looking exactly how he always imagined an Advent lab would look.
The Norwegian picked out Marx’s discomfort, and noted, “don’t worry too much about it. From how the Doc described it, both stages are pretty much painless.”
“Indeed. We are not barbarians, there is a harmless way to do these things,” Edmé insisted, folding his hands into his coat pockets.
“I’m not exactly concerned about the pain… This is the tech of our enemy.” He stated plainly before considering that most of it was.
“Well, I will admit that we adapted much of it from them… however…”
“...psionics don’t belong to the aliens. As we found out before our arrest, they are something that exist to some degree in each and every human being,” Edmée finished as she completed whatever it was she was working on. She dusted her hands off, turning to face the three soldiers.
“Not going to lie, the idea of that still creeps me out a little,” Maxwell stated, running a hand over the top of his hair idly.
“Just think of psionics as voodoo. That’ll make you feel better,” Christoffer joked with a grin, which earned him a punch in the arm from his squadmate.
“All this seems like magic to me anyway, even though I know it’s not…” He stated, nodding towards the siblings, “You’re right though… Anything it takes…”
Edmé clasped his hands together. “Alright, you three. The first step is going to be fairly simple. My sister has a device that will allow her to apply a simple scan. While it won’t awaken any powers, it will tell us what your potential is. The most common level of aptitude is a V4, which means that while you have psionic potential, it’s not enough for you to be able to use it freely. If that ends up being the case, the second testing phase will not be necessary.”
Edmée picked up what looked like an electronic tablet of some sort, and held it up to Christoffer. “Simply hold still.” A slot on the left side opened up, a filtered gray light washing over the soldier from head to toe. “Mark Strand as a V3,” she informed her brother, who pulled out a clipboard and began writing. Then the first hatch closed and a secondary slot opened up on the right, this one shifting from a red light, to violet, to blue, to green, to yellow, and finally orange. It was when the yellow was hitting Chris that the tablet chimed. “Yellow Major.”
The entire process took a few minutes, and once the engineer was done she moved on to Maxwell next. He was written down as a V4 with Violet Minor, and finally the elder sister came to Marx. “Let’s see…” She ran the first test. “V3.” And the second. “Orange Major.”
Marx seems surprised that anything was found at all, “And what does that mean exactly?”
“Well, the level means that you, like Christoffer, can be awakened through artificial methods,” the younger brother explained. “As for your color… psionics correspond to the six different slots on the color wheel. To my knowledge - both from what ADVENT has taught humanity and from what I have discovered on my own - there are five different unique abilities in each slot, and a repeating ability from another color as a sixth. To discover what your origin ability is, you would have to go through the awakening process.”
“And that entails?” Marx asked.
“Five days in one of the testing tubes,” Edmée answered, pointing to the enclosed chamber where three capsules filled with some sort of watery gel sat, illuminated by violet lighting. “In that time it will be as if you’re having an extended dream. When you wake up, you should have access to your starter power.”
“Well then, let’s get this over with. A week, you say?”
“Minus the weekend, of course,” Edmé specified.
Marx nodded, stepping through the doorway and up to the capsule, pulling himself inside. He looked back out into the room, taking a deep breath in preparation. As Christoffer did likewise, his vision faded away, and he fell into a deep sleep.
1711 Hours, August 2nd, 2038
Ice-covered Thurston Island
Onboard the Avenger
Floor 3, Central Block
Psionics Laboratory
When Marx awoke and was helped out of the capsule by Edmée, it felt colder. There was a heater in the main room now, though there hadn’t been one placed in the testing chamber. “Easy now… take a moment to get your bearings,” the engineer requested.
“Everything’s blurry,” he said as he leaned on the capsule behind him, “Is it done?”
“It is.” Once he and Christoffer had recovered from what amounted to a brief period of stasis, they were taken back into the main room. Edmé was standing there waiting, with a large metal plate on the floor containing an assortment of rocks that he had acquired from somewhere.
“Marx, we have discovered your ability to be Terrakinesis. As it might sound, you are able to warp and shift the rocks and stones that make up a planet’s crust,” the scientist informed the soldier.
“So I can control the earth? Shape it how I like?” he confirmed, still groggy.
“Indeed. I wouldn’t attempt it on a mass scale, but I can see that ability being particularly useful for defensive purposes, and possibly offensive ones as well,” Edmé affirmed. “Feel free to test your Terrakinesis out with the material I have brought in.”
Marx turned his gaze to the collection of rocks the scientist had cobbled together, “So I… just think at them, or...?”
“Psionics operate based on the willpower of the psion,” the scientist explained. “You simply have to direct your mind upon them, and the rest will come to you naturally.”
Marx turned his thoughts to the earth in front of him, focusing on the idea of the stones moving closer, at first it was slow, the stones only moving a few inches, but they approached quicker as Marx concentrated harder, flying off the table and hovering in front of him. The Russian brought a hand up to touch one of the gravity-defying stones before they then fell to the ground with a loud thunk.
Edmé nodded in approval. “As for you, Christoffer, you have an ability we like to call Blackout,” he informed the Specialist. “It allows you to nullify the senses of a target… at first, you may only be able to pull off one. For an easier target, you could test on-”
“No,” Edmée said adamantly. “He can practice it on you.”
The younger brother sighed. “Very well.”
Christoffer raised an eyebrow, and then lifted a hand. “Well…” Marx was now able to see a pair of yellow threads escape the Norwegian’s palm, and collided with the scientist’s eyes. For Edmé, everything went completely dark.
“Fascinating…” he mumbled.
“Terrifying is more like it,” his sister contested.
After awhile, the scientist’s vision returned. “And there you have it.”
“And these abilities will grow stronger as we practice them?” Marx confirmed.
“Fairly quickly, actually,” Edmé informed him. “From what I understand, the development of a psionic ability happens fairly quickly. About… seventy to eighty percent of it. The other twenty percent of refinement is likely what sets apart human psionics from the storied Elders.”
“And you can, of course, learn more as time goes on. How far each psion can develop varies,” Edmée added.
Marx took a look down at his hand, thoughts about what he could do with his newfound abilities filling his head. As he looked back up towards the siblings, he spoke, “Thank you, I’ll be sure to put it to good use…”
Five days ago...
1607 Hours, July 28th, 2038
Somewhere over South America
Onboard the Avenger
Floor 3, Central Block
Psionics Laboratory
The newly-constructed auxiliary laboratory had a somewhat eerie, otherworldly feel to it. This was largely due to the contrast of lighting. At the workstation for the lab’s designated scientist/engineer duo - which had a slightly lower floor than the rest of the curved walkways in the chamber - bright blue lights from a large monitor, some smaller screens, and an abundance of stationary lights created one color. On the roof, illuminating the walkways and the workstation from behind were harsher red lights, mixing with the blue in places to create a violet tinge. If either of the siblings within the room were bothered by this, it was not clear, for they seemed not to notice. They were too absorbed in their work.
Marx came to the entrance, the lights from under the door putting him on guard, reminding him of the enemy they were fighting. He brought his hand to the door, slamming against it a few times to get someone’s attention.
“Edmée, could you get that?” the voice of a man with a French accent asked another in the room.
“Kind of busy right now…” a woman replied irritably.
“Ah, yes, that elerium core does not look… particularly stable. I’ll leave you to that. Dominguez, if you would be so kind…” the man requested.
The door unlocked with a mechanical click, and slid open. In the room there were currently four people. Two of them stood off to the side. One had opened the door, and was a man of African-Hispanic descent with flat-topped black hair and simple brown eyes. He smiled at Marx, stepping to the side to allow him to walk in. This gave the Russian a better look at the other soldier present - a Norwegian with mildly spiky black hair and distinctive faintly gold-colored eyes. As for the two staff members, they both had short brown hair and green eyes, though the brother had speckles of a violet color in his irises. He stepped away from his work for the moment to greet Marx, while his sister continued to work on some sort of octagon-shaped device.
“Are you here to get tested like the other two?” Edmé inquired.
“I suppose so…” Marx hesitated, the interior looking exactly how he always imagined an Advent lab would look.
The Norwegian picked out Marx’s discomfort, and noted, “don’t worry too much about it. From how the Doc described it, both stages are pretty much painless.”
“Indeed. We are not barbarians, there is a harmless way to do these things,” Edmé insisted, folding his hands into his coat pockets.
“I’m not exactly concerned about the pain… This is the tech of our enemy.” He stated plainly before considering that most of it was.
“Well, I will admit that we adapted much of it from them… however…”
“...psionics don’t belong to the aliens. As we found out before our arrest, they are something that exist to some degree in each and every human being,” Edmée finished as she completed whatever it was she was working on. She dusted her hands off, turning to face the three soldiers.
“Not going to lie, the idea of that still creeps me out a little,” Maxwell stated, running a hand over the top of his hair idly.
“Just think of psionics as voodoo. That’ll make you feel better,” Christoffer joked with a grin, which earned him a punch in the arm from his squadmate.
“All this seems like magic to me anyway, even though I know it’s not…” He stated, nodding towards the siblings, “You’re right though… Anything it takes…”
Edmé clasped his hands together. “Alright, you three. The first step is going to be fairly simple. My sister has a device that will allow her to apply a simple scan. While it won’t awaken any powers, it will tell us what your potential is. The most common level of aptitude is a V4, which means that while you have psionic potential, it’s not enough for you to be able to use it freely. If that ends up being the case, the second testing phase will not be necessary.”
Edmée picked up what looked like an electronic tablet of some sort, and held it up to Christoffer. “Simply hold still.” A slot on the left side opened up, a filtered gray light washing over the soldier from head to toe. “Mark Strand as a V3,” she informed her brother, who pulled out a clipboard and began writing. Then the first hatch closed and a secondary slot opened up on the right, this one shifting from a red light, to violet, to blue, to green, to yellow, and finally orange. It was when the yellow was hitting Chris that the tablet chimed. “Yellow Major.”
The entire process took a few minutes, and once the engineer was done she moved on to Maxwell next. He was written down as a V4 with Violet Minor, and finally the elder sister came to Marx. “Let’s see…” She ran the first test. “V3.” And the second. “Orange Major.”
Marx seems surprised that anything was found at all, “And what does that mean exactly?”
“Well, the level means that you, like Christoffer, can be awakened through artificial methods,” the younger brother explained. “As for your color… psionics correspond to the six different slots on the color wheel. To my knowledge - both from what ADVENT has taught humanity and from what I have discovered on my own - there are five different unique abilities in each slot, and a repeating ability from another color as a sixth. To discover what your origin ability is, you would have to go through the awakening process.”
“And that entails?” Marx asked.
“Five days in one of the testing tubes,” Edmée answered, pointing to the enclosed chamber where three capsules filled with some sort of watery gel sat, illuminated by violet lighting. “In that time it will be as if you’re having an extended dream. When you wake up, you should have access to your starter power.”
“Well then, let’s get this over with. A week, you say?”
“Minus the weekend, of course,” Edmé specified.
Marx nodded, stepping through the doorway and up to the capsule, pulling himself inside. He looked back out into the room, taking a deep breath in preparation. As Christoffer did likewise, his vision faded away, and he fell into a deep sleep.
1711 Hours, August 2nd, 2038
Ice-covered Thurston Island
Onboard the Avenger
Floor 3, Central Block
Psionics Laboratory
When Marx awoke and was helped out of the capsule by Edmée, it felt colder. There was a heater in the main room now, though there hadn’t been one placed in the testing chamber. “Easy now… take a moment to get your bearings,” the engineer requested.
“Everything’s blurry,” he said as he leaned on the capsule behind him, “Is it done?”
“It is.” Once he and Christoffer had recovered from what amounted to a brief period of stasis, they were taken back into the main room. Edmé was standing there waiting, with a large metal plate on the floor containing an assortment of rocks that he had acquired from somewhere.
“Marx, we have discovered your ability to be Terrakinesis. As it might sound, you are able to warp and shift the rocks and stones that make up a planet’s crust,” the scientist informed the soldier.
“So I can control the earth? Shape it how I like?” he confirmed, still groggy.
“Indeed. I wouldn’t attempt it on a mass scale, but I can see that ability being particularly useful for defensive purposes, and possibly offensive ones as well,” Edmé affirmed. “Feel free to test your Terrakinesis out with the material I have brought in.”
Marx turned his gaze to the collection of rocks the scientist had cobbled together, “So I… just think at them, or...?”
“Psionics operate based on the willpower of the psion,” the scientist explained. “You simply have to direct your mind upon them, and the rest will come to you naturally.”
Marx turned his thoughts to the earth in front of him, focusing on the idea of the stones moving closer, at first it was slow, the stones only moving a few inches, but they approached quicker as Marx concentrated harder, flying off the table and hovering in front of him. The Russian brought a hand up to touch one of the gravity-defying stones before they then fell to the ground with a loud thunk.
Edmé nodded in approval. “As for you, Christoffer, you have an ability we like to call Blackout,” he informed the Specialist. “It allows you to nullify the senses of a target… at first, you may only be able to pull off one. For an easier target, you could test on-”
“No,” Edmée said adamantly. “He can practice it on you.”
The younger brother sighed. “Very well.”
Christoffer raised an eyebrow, and then lifted a hand. “Well…” Marx was now able to see a pair of yellow threads escape the Norwegian’s palm, and collided with the scientist’s eyes. For Edmé, everything went completely dark.
“Fascinating…” he mumbled.
“Terrifying is more like it,” his sister contested.
After awhile, the scientist’s vision returned. “And there you have it.”
“And these abilities will grow stronger as we practice them?” Marx confirmed.
“Fairly quickly, actually,” Edmé informed him. “From what I understand, the development of a psionic ability happens fairly quickly. About… seventy to eighty percent of it. The other twenty percent of refinement is likely what sets apart human psionics from the storied Elders.”
“And you can, of course, learn more as time goes on. How far each psion can develop varies,” Edmée added.
Marx took a look down at his hand, thoughts about what he could do with his newfound abilities filling his head. As he looked back up towards the siblings, he spoke, “Thank you, I’ll be sure to put it to good use…”
