I stretch my arms, take a sip of water, and step out of my car. It's time to figure this shit out.
I'll need to find someone to help me test my skills, and once I experiment for a while I'll try to level up my Strength and Dexterity by working out.
Since Mateo wants to get stronger too, I walk up to his car and knock on the frame since the window is cracked. He jumps up from his laid back seat and squints, looking out at me. His eyes are red and he looks like he's been crying.
"Hey, uh, do you want to try to figure out what our skills do?" I ask, which feels awkward even to me.
"Yeah, sure, let's go." Mateo says, opening his door and watching me for where to go next.
I look around and spot Alex at the edge of Sheila's group of around twenty people now. It looks like he's just listening to what's being said, not really participating. I start walking over to them but stop, turning to Mateo and telling him my plan to test out my skill. He nods and walks up to the group, as he gets close the people near the edge glance back at him before looking back towards Sheila, and he stands next to Alex.
Yeah, people are on edge right now. I'm sure Sheila has already spread news of the goblins, and people were already scared of the wolves, so it makes sense. I would use them to try to train my skill, but since three people so far have had guns I feel like that might not be very safe.
I walk back and hide behind Mateo's car. He's going to try to get Alex to follow him to my car, and I'll try to sneak around when he passes me. I'm fairly certain he doesn't have a gun. Soon enough I hear them talking and getting closer. I try to think about hiding, slowing my breathing and staying low and close to the car.
My heart is still beating pretty quickly from anticipation, but I feel pretty sneaky. They pass by me and I slowly creep around the corner, peeking my head up over the hood of my car to look at them. I feel a subtle tingle all over my head, which seems to stop the moment Mateo locks eyes with me. Interesting. He knew I was going to be there though so let's move on to the next part.
I slowly creep out behind Alex moving along the hood, standing as I do. The tingle comes back, all over this time, but it's more intense by my feet. I don't know how or why but I know I'm harder to hear, my footsteps and breathing sound quieter even to myself. I stop a few feet away from Alex and nod to Mateo. He keeps glancing at me and I'm afraid it's going to give me away and invalidate the test.
"...sure where he is. Oh hey, look at what that drunk dude is doing now!" Mateo will say and point right past me, at the crowd. Alex turns around and the tingling intensifies all over my body for almost a full second as he looks right past me. Then his eyes focus on me and the feeling dissipates.
"Oh shi— what the fu…!" Alex shouts as he jumps back, " Oh, it's you, thank god… Where the hell did you come from?"
"Sorry, I was testing out my skill," I say, "it kind of lets me hide, a little bit."
"Yeah no kidding, you almost gave me a heart attack." He says, "Don't fucking do that again please, do you know how stressed out I've been ever since I heard about the goblins? I was out there… In the forest with them."
"Oh, uh, sorry, I'll try not to scare you again. Do you… Want to join us and try to figure out what your skills do too?" I reply.
He sighs and shakes his head, saying, "Okay, yeah, why not. I have [Adapt] and [Enhanced Sight]."
So what I've learned from this test is that whenever my skill is in effect I get a tingling feeling. This feeling seems to be localized to whatever is hurting my ability to hide. For example, whenever my head was visually exposed to Mateo, the skill had to work to hide it. And it likely dampens my footsteps somewhat judging by the tingling near my feet.
Once I get exposed, as in the thing I'm hiding from knows I'm there, the skill seems to stop working on it. Like how Alex took a while to spot me while Mateo and the wolf spotted me pretty quick since they had an indication I was there. Mateo because I told him where I'd be and the wolf because it probably smelled me. So [Suppress Presence] probably blocks sound and vision somehow, but not smell? Maybe the wolf just had a really good nose.
I'm also curious if Alex's [Enhanced Sight] helped him see me any faster? And [Adapt] sounds like it could be pretty powerful. We walk across the median where it's less cluttered and stand in a circle.
"So what did you guys see when I was hiding before?" I ask Mateo and Alex.
"Well, when I went to look behind the car where you said you were going to be, I didn't see you at first. I knew you would be there though and when I started looking I noticed something fuzzy in my peripheral. When I looked towards it I suddenly saw you peeking over the hood." Says Mateo.
"Yeah it was something similar for me." Alex says, "I turned around and looked at the crowd behind you, but it was like I had a blindspot or something was wrong with my eyesight. I focused on the feeling and squinted, trying to focus my eyes, when you were suddenly right in front of me."
It sounds like Alex's skill really did help him spot me faster, though he noticed something was wrong pretty quickly regardless. I should try again on someone else without a vision based skill. Later though. I want to test [Water Manipulation] right now and see what else their skills can do.
Slinging my backpack over to my front, I pull my water bottle out and take a sip. I have a little under half a bottle now and we still don't have a clue as to where more water is. For now I guess I'll just try to use the skill to move the water inside the bottle, maybe I can make it swirl around or something. If I get good enough with it, who knows, maybe I'll be able to pull water straight out of the air.
"Hey Mateo do you have a lighter or anything? Maybe we can use it to train your sk—" I start to say, but I'm cut off by the sound of multiple people screaming from the bus to our left. This isn't the double decker bus with the wounded on it, but there are still about five or seven people who run out screaming about a fire.
Sure enough some smoke starts coming out of the cracks in the windows and I can see the flickering tips of fire peeking out the bottom. It doesn't look like it's spread that far but, I glance down at my mediocre reserves of water, I don't think I can help much.
Smoke billows from the bus, getting denser by the minute, and sending a large dark plume into the sky. The fire has really started to spread now. The people from the bus group up and stand not far away, watching the bus slowly burn. A couple of people from Sheila's group also meander over, but I don't see her anywhere. I guess she also figured it was a lost cause.
"Hey, Mateo, maybe you can like, try out your skill while the fire is still going." I say, "You have [Fire Manipulation] right?"
"I mean, yeah, I do, but…" He starts
"But what?" I ask, "This is a good opportunity to at least get a feel for the skill, I was going to suggest a lighter but this might be even better."
He looks at me with a weird face but shakes his head and agrees, walking a bit closer to the bus and putting his hands out like he was feeling the heat from a campfire. Someone from Sheila's group laughs at that, and a few of them shake their heads, but Mateo doesn't even glance in their direction.
While he's doing that I stare at the water in my bottle, trying to just will it into moving with my mind, but it feels like I'm missing something and I can't quite figure out what it is. Alex is just standing around not sure what to do, and I feel bad since I asked for him to be here, so I propose we train both our skills at the same time. I'll hide using [Suppress Presence] and he'll try to find me with [Enhanced Sight]. Good old hide and seek.
At first I try to hide in more obvious spots, poking my head around cars and such, because I want to focus on that tingling I felt before. I believe that feeling is the skill taking effect, and I want to see if I can figure out how to activate it manually. The issue is that Alex obviously knows that I'm hiding nearby, and as I found out earlier that means the skill isn't as effective, so the tingle hardly lasts for a second as he finds me quickly every time.
That just means I have to try harder though, and I end up crouching fully behind cars and moving around them. It helps more than I expected, and Alex has to look for me a bit longer now, allowing me to to focus on how the tingling feels and where it comes from. He really seems to be getting quicker at it now though, even when I think I have a good spot or have moved out of his line of sight, he somehow spots a part of my hand or foot or something and finds me.
It isn't until I try hiding under a car that I realize something though. With how I'm positioned I can't see him walking to my left, but I know he's close, and judging by the tingling he's gotta be looking near me. Once again, I focus on the sensation as I hide, deep in thought trying to get a grasp on how it works, until Alex taps me on the left arm and says, "Found you."
"Fuck!" I shout as I jump, hitting my head against the bottom of the car, "Son of a…"
"Oh, crap… Sorry, I didn't mean to..." He starts, but I quickly clamber out from under the car and interrupt him.
"No, don't worry about it, I got lost in my thoughts. Did you see me before you tapped on me?" I ask.
"Yeah uh, I mean it was a little hard to focus on you, but you were just lying down there, so I thought it'd be funny if I poked you… But, in hindsight, that was my bad, sorry." He replies.
"Again, no worries, you actually might have helped me out." I say.
See, before that happened I had figured the skill didn't work anymore once I got spotted, but I definitely felt the tingling all the way up until he poked me this time. That means the skill can probably be used all the time, not only when I'm trying to actively hide from something specific.
I also kind of figured out that the tingling starts from inside my body and works its way to my skin. It's not an instant effect either. With my arm for example, it starts at my shoulder and works its way down to my fingertips, a slight tingle spearheading the charge from inside, which then expands outwards to the skin until my entire arm is enveloped top to bottom.
Focusing on my arm again, I try to replicate the effect, but I'm still unable to summon the tingles on command. I know it comes from my chest somewhere because no matter what part of me the skill tries to hide, my chest always tingles first. If I get someone to test the skill out a few more times I can probably figure it out.
Alex says something and I lose my concentration, looking up from my arm and seeing Mateo walking over to us, grinning. The bus behind him now a blazing husk that continues to billow a thick, dark smoke.
"I did it!" He says happily, "It was like I could feel the fire and like, push it kinda."
His eyes go wide and he throws his hands up before we can say anything, "Oh! But I didn't actually touch the fire, you know." And he grins widely, "I could feel it with my mind!"