Marvel: PS - Chapter 5 - Testing Powers (Patreon)

(Word Count: 2,740)

That night I wondered just what my life is now turning into. It seems like I'm fixed onto the SHIELD track. Which was a bit of a shame since I didn't have the freedom of a hidden identity anymore. Not that it truly mattered, since now I don't have anyone to protect by hiding my identity. Plus, all the heroes are connected to SHIELD at some point anyway, it's not like they had secret identities for long.

Still, I’ve kept Disintegrate and Shadow Clones a secret so far. It's good to have hidden cards, but is it worth it? Couldn't they help push me to fully master those too? I can't fully trust SHIELD until Captain America brings down Hydra, but that also brings down SHIELD. Could I somehow convince them to keep SHIELD to reform it into what it should have been before? No, it already did that in the Agents of Shield series, the problem is that it disconnected itself from the Avengers and became too small.

I sighed. This is too complicated. I can at least trust Natasha and Clint to protect me until I know I can defend myself. Until then, keep my other skills a secret. My Teleport's a measly 20 ft right now, I won't be able to escape if Hydra attacks right now 

There are probably cameras everywhere in the house, the only possible safe place would be the bathroom. Possibly. I'll have to just trust they're not there. I can use Shadow Clone in there and they can Teleport out to find somewhere to study or practice. I've already sent some out tonight to find good spots to practice in private. I also spent the whole day with Clint and Natasha, so they'll get my daily skill uses in for me.

Natasha told me we'll be going into the SHIELD HQ for them to gauge my powers. It's kinda useless to me since the status screen tells me all the parameters to my skills. The only ambiguous part would be the "Strength" in Disintegrate. I mean, I know it's referring to how powerful it is, but how much is "1" strength exactly? Same deal with Regenerate's "Heal Strength." That would be the only part of this that would be useful to know.

M:PS

"Make a barrier as far away from you as you can, please." One of the men in lab coats with a clipboard said.

A 2D bluish green circle appeared 5 feet from me. I spun it around me like a saw blade for fun. I could only move it 1 meter per second, but when you’re right up next to something that can cut you in half, it felt pretty fast.

The scientists all stepped back a few feet. "Please, don't do any of that. A 2D plane can be very lethal.”

I laughed sheepishly. “I'm sorry. But you don't have to worry! I can change the shape to what I want, and I've learned to curl the edges! So it's not a 2D edge right now, see?” And I touched my finger to the edge of the circle, and nothing happened.

“Cough Moving on, how long can you maintain that shield?"

"1 hour." They all scribbled on their papers.

"How much force can it resist?" 

"I guess around 600psi." More scribbling.

"How do you know this? Have you tested it before?"

"No, it's just an intuitive guess. I've looked up how much force a normal man can punch, around 150-300psi. My barriers can block those, but it can't block the punch of someone trained, like a boxer's punch which is around 2,000psi. So it's between 300-2,000psi but my intuition tells me it's on the lower end of that range," I said, not entirely spouting BS. It's true that I had a sort of mystical/tactile feel to how my barriers react to forces hitting them. It really did feel like a decent punch came close to the limit. Not like there was any flexing though, my barriers were very inflexible and brittle, which is why they shattered entirely like glass when something overcame them.

“Next, we will be checking how complex of a shape you can make. We'll show you a shape, and you copy it.”

The ran through several different shapes, like square, triangle, rhombus, hexagon, a star, a heart. Then weird distorted shapes. Then they had me do 3D shapes; A cube, a sphere, a pyramid, even a dog. The 3D shapes needed to be a lot smaller, because the total area of each side couldn't be more than the Area parameter of the skill. I couldn't really get a dog shape just yet, but I did manage what looked like a really bad balloon animal.

“Can you change the color?”

I blinked. That was something that I hadn't even thought of. I tried. Red, yellow, green, blue, purple, and various other monotone colors. I could shift the colors with some amount of concentration. Then they tried splitting the colors, blue on one half and red on the other, or green in the center and orange around it. However, I couldn't get a clean split, and it all ended up being a sort of gradient. I also couldn't do a different color on either side of the barrier, what was on one side, was on the other.

Regardless of the mixed results, the very fact that I could influence the color at all got me thinking of producing full on illusions. Physical Illusions. If I got good enough, I could conjure the 3D image of a person. It would be silent, of course, and I would have to control it manually, but just the fact that I could do it in the future was amazing. It was really worthwhile coming here just from these ideas.

It showed that there were degrees in skill aside from the Skill Parameters in the system. 

‘Can I make it transparent?’ I thought. An invisible 2D plane of death.

I tried, and it only got to about 50% transparent. I was sure that with more practice I can push it to 100% invisible. ‘Mwahahaha!’

By the end of the color test, I was mentally exhausted. It was as if I was back in college, just coming out of one of my finals.

One of the scientists asked, “Could you impose restrictions or rules inside your barriers? You know, like in anime?”

“I really doubt it, but I can at least try,” I said. One of the scientists ran off and came back with a small mouse that could fit in the tiny boxes that I could make. Nothing we tried worked even in the slightest. It made me wonder. If I had placed my Barriers as a utility skill instead, would I have been able to do this? Or is there some sort of skill evolution available in the future where I can unlock more things from my skills? I don't know.

"Try slicing through this steel pipe."

I did. The first pass through, it sliced cleanly, without any resistance. The second pass through I didn't get a good edge alignment and the resulting sideways force on the side of the barrier shattered it. That got them scribbling a lot on their clipboards.

"Can you make another pane?"

"Sorry, I can't right now. You'll have to wait another 10 minutes before I can use it again." I explained.

"Very well then. Perhaps we can try your Teleport ability for now. How long of a cooldown do you have for this?"

"5 minutes. Though, actually, can I take a break? I'm so exhausted I can barely think straight."

“Oh! Yes, let's take a break then. If you wish, we can even call it here and continue tomorrow,” The lead scientist said.

The doors on the side opened and in came Natasha and the eyepatched man himself, Nick Fury. 

"Hey, Natasha!" I called. She smiled back at me.

"Hey, Amy, having fun?"

“I’m exhausted, but they actually gave me a lot of ideas on what to work on. I didn't even think to use my barriers for anything else, but now I'm wondering if I can use them to make full on illusions! This was great! We were just about to take a break.”

“It seems we came at a good time. Amy, this is my boss, Director Fury,” Natasha introduced.

“Hello, sir,” I said.

“It's nice to see you in person, Ms. Fulton. I hope my men have been treating you well?” Fury asked.

“Just call me Amelia or Amy. I'm too young to be ‘Ms.’ anything. And yes, sir. They've been great! I think they were more excited about testing my powers than I was.”

“Well, Ms… Amelia, you happen to be the only person we know of that has superpowers.”

‘Really? I'm the only one?’ I pondered. I had requested to be placed in the MCU universe, so there were no mutants, but there was the Inhuman group. ‘Weren't there generations of these people? Though maybe SHIELD was being kept in the dark by Hydra? Sky's mother was captured and experimented on by a Hydra agent, though I forgot his name. And what about Ghost? That girl had quantum phasing powers. Maybe they don't count her because they know how she got it, and what it does?’

"Speaking of healing," Fury spoke up, pulling me out of my thoughts. "You said you can even Regenerate lost limbs. To test, we wanted to start off small with my lost eye."

I shrugged again. It would detract from his coolness a bit, but having both eyes was more useful. Besides, I wanted to test it against a flerken inflicted wound. As for my break, it didn't actually take any thought or concentration of mine to use Regenerate. It was an instantaneous cast, and the spell would just do its own thing in the target body.

Though, thinking that now, it made me wonder if I could influence the regeneration if I didn't just “cast and forget”. Could I concentrate the spell into a specific part of the body to get a greater effect? I don't know. My brain is too tired to think about this right now.

All the scientists came over and started attaching a load of sensors to Fury. 

“Okay, you are clear to proceed, Amelia,” one of the scientists said.

I cast Regenerate. Fury felt the change and took off his eyepatch. Everyone watched over the course of the skill's 4 minute duration as the wounds around the eye slowly faded to thin lines, and the eye itself, which was barely alive and milky white, slowly cleared up and the color returned.

I frowned. There was something off about it though. It felt like it was working against something a bit, and as a result it didn't heal all the way. The eye looked like it was fully restored, but you could still see thin scar lines around it.

"That's weird, Mr. Fury. It felt like something was fighting my healing. It should have healed all the way, but it didn't. You must have been hit by something really weird."

I could see the rest of the scientists glance at each other in shock. I bet I just added to Fury's legend, like, what did Fury fight that caused persistent injuries?

"That seems right, my eyesight in my left eye is still blurry, but it's much better than being totally blind."

"Give me another hour and I can use it again, that should fully heal you!"

"I appreciate it. Thank you, girl.”

"And how much do you appreciate it?" I ask with a grin. "Maybe a few thousand dollars worth?"

"Amy!" Natasha exclaimed, a bit shocked I was trying to fleece her boss.

"No, no, Natasha, it's alright. The kid has every right to charge for her services." Fury said with a wry grin. "So, Amelia, how much do you want for your continued healing services for SHIELD?" 

"I'm not too greedy, I'll only ask for $10,000 per use of my Regenerate ability. That should be much cheaper than any life-saving surgery, and I can restore lost limbs that's impossible for normal doctors. Don't worry though, you can consider healing your eye as a gift." I say cheekily.

Fury shook his head in amusement at this little girl negotiating, but before he could accept, Natasha jumped in.

Natasha quickly switched sides and backed me against her boss. “Hold on, Amy. You're underselling yourself here! Surgeries can cost a lot more than a mere $10,000! You should charge at least $100,000, if not a million to restore limbs! That's something no doctor can do, only you. Don't worry about overcharging, SHIELD can afford it. Then, when you graduate school, you won't need to work, because you'll be set for life!”

I gaped at her. ‘Was I really underselling it that much? A whole million?’

Fury looked betrayed, giving Natasha a look that said, “This motherf*****.” She gave a cheeky grin in reply.

I thought for a bit. “I don't want to be too greedy in healing people, that feels wrong… so how about $100,000 for healing injuries, and $500,000 to heal missing limbs?” 

"Unless surgery's required, most injuries just need to be stitched up and given time. How about $1,000 for healing injuries, and $100,000 for missing limbs? Double if it’s life saving,” Fury countered.

“Yeah, but time is valuable! An injured agent could be out of action for 2 whole weeks, or even several months! $50,000 for injuries, $250,000 for limbs, double if life saving.” I had to haggle back. Sure, it didn't cost me anything, but Fury's prices were just too low for something so valuable.

“I also have to think about my agents’ mental health, they may be healed up immediately if you heal them, but they may not be ready to return. $5,000 for injuries, $150,000 for limbs, double if it's life saving.”

I frowned. “That’s true… Ahem, I mean! What about my time? I'm apparently expected to be going to school again,” I shot a glare at Natasha, “What about when I suddenly need to be pulled out of classes? And there's the injuries that can't be stitched up! How about a range between $1,000 to $20,000 for injuries going on a case by case basis depending on how bad they are, and $200,000 for limbs, but rates triple if it's an emergency!”

Fury thought for a bit, doing some mental calculations. “You've made progress healing my eye, but a lost limb is another story. We've got one of our agents here who recently lost his leg to a grenade. If you can Regenerate it back, then you have a deal."

I grinned, this whole SHIELD business just got a lot better. Now I could potentially be making over a million a day. Not only that, but actually healing people will help my skill level faster. I was barely getting anything from healing the simple bruises I had before.

After finishing up with the scientists, testing and finishing healing Fury's eye, it was about two hours later that we all made our way to the medical wing within HQ. There we found several agents who were resting. One of them was wrapped up in casts and bandages. The most notable though was the lack of one of his legs.

I was pretty confident that my Regenerate would be enough though. Fury's eye only took two uses because it was a flerken wound.

"We'll need to remove the bandages around the stump, they'll get in the way." I said.

With a nod from Fury, one of the nurses unwrapped his leg. I then cast Regenerate, and we all watched as their leg slowly reformed and like I thought, Heal Strength of 4 was enough to fully restore the leg. Not that I could tell from all the bandages, but I also knew that the rest of his wounds were healed too. I couldn’t “localize” the skill to focus on one part yet, so it affects the entire body as a whole.

"There we go, all set!" I said, then giggled at a thought. "He's going to be tripping out of his mind when he wakes up."

"It looks like you have yourself a deal, Amelia. You're hired," Fury said.