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SoK Chapter 132
🕑 Added 2025-04-28 15:00:17 +0000 UTCA/N: Bonus chapter from reaching 250 faves on RR. I think I'm gonna implement things like this for AR this week. I can't imagine that any of you will mind that, will you? ;) I'll mention it here whenever that ends up happening.
With how high his Attributes were, TJ didn’t really need to sleep. He didn’t mind giving the invitation he had to the two runaway kids, but he also didn’t know them well enough to sleep soundly when they were already in his house. He didn’t think two mid-level Dirt tiers could do much to him, but he’d hate to be proven wrong on that. Beyond that, if they got the idea to ransack the house while he was happily sleeping away… well, he’d regret that too. So, in short, TJ spent the night awake, looking through what things he had that might be useful for him now.
TJ tossed a massage gun over his shoulder as he looked through the closet for the third time. Other than food, there really wasn’t much that would help him here. Sure, there was metal in various corners of the house that could be forged or twisted to serve as a weapon, but Primal Savagery prevented him from using it. He didn’t have any good wood either, so there was that. Zombie movies taught him how to improvise things… Divine Primitive Craftsmanship taught him how to create things. His weapons were sharp and his equipment was magical. There wasn’t anything around here that would help to keep him alive in just a couple hours when the sun rose and the monsters returned.
As he stayed in his room, trying to make sure he didn’t wake up or freak out the kids, TJ quickly realized that there wasn’t much for him to do. His room was already searched through, and he didn’t need any of it. In the garage were some long-forgotten vegetable seeds that he hoped he could do something with. Given how the world seemed to be trying to return to its original state, maybe the spinach, broccoli, and tomatoes he’d failed to grow last year would thrive.
That was something to look into tomorrow, though. TJ sighed to himself and sat down, his back leaning against the single door into his room. There were four hours left until he was going to get up and make breakfast. He wanted to see what progress he could make on teaching himself Lightning Manipulation until then, and Meditation would be his best bet on what to do until then. After all, it granted a 100% increase to his ability to gain enlightenment. But… was he really going to do this? He wasn’t sleeping because he didn’t want any unwelcome surprises. Meditation would be even harder to pull himself out of, especially if he somehow managed to throw himself into a Tribulation.
Eventually, he decided to just bite the bullet and do it. First, though, he decided to Call a Storm that’d give him a little bit of a boost in case anything did go wrong. He activated Divine Transformation and sacrificed 2000 of each resource into Stormcaller. If he then channelled Stormcaller for a mere six minutes, that’d end up lasting… 400 minutes, or less than half an hour under seven hours. Yeah, that’d be good.
Without thinking about it further, TJ sent his consciousness into the sky. He wasn’t going to channel the Skill for much longer this time, but he put almost twelve times as much power into it. As such, he felt his mind spread much further, pulling moisture from pools all around the area, from Tempe Town Lake, from water features in front of malls, and from the ground itself. TJ knew that he didn’t need for a Storm to have rain to count as one, but he wanted the rain, and especially, the lightning. If it was constantly rumbling for the next six hours, then he should be able to make good progress on figuring out how to control nature’s fiery fury. In fact, with that in mind, TJ channelled the Skill for eight minutes instead, trying to ensure the Storm would have sufficient power to show him what he might be missing.
As he pulled himself out of the storm, letting the skies vent their emotions however they wanted, the winds laughed and tried to convince him to stay. After all, wouldn’t it be wonderful to dance among the lightning and push and pull the clouds wherever he wanted? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful adventure, and something that taught him a lot?
He needed to deliberately ground himself as a person to get back to his body, but it wasn’t nearly as demanding as the winds had been many times in the Tutorial. Still in his coatl body, for a moment, TJ thought about it. After several minutes’ thought, though, he came to a decision. Whatever the reason for this change may be, TJ couldn’t say. He just centered himself back in his body and felt the influence of the Storm fill him through his Authority. There wasn’t anyone else in the bounds of it that had any conflicting Authority, he could feel it. For a while, TJ wanted to explore that, to see what he could see and learn, but he pushed himself to focus. Instead, he looked inside himself and lost himself in Meditation, taking note to come out of it at 6:30.
Meditation was a strange experience, with his focus not being on recovery. TJ hadn’t ever thought about it, since he’d gotten the Skill and then had a deadline threatening him. Now that he didn’t have anything else to do but was using the other half of the Skill, the experience was different. Instead of a weightless and almost dreamlike quality, his Meditation was surrounded by clouds. Had his Skill taken his consciousness to the real clouds that flowed and billowed overhead? TJ couldn’t say. Even so, TJ could see lightning as it flickered back and forth all around him.
Though he’d never Meditated as a coatl before, TJ could feel a difference in the way the storm treated him as a Storm Coatl instead of a regular coatl. The storm wanted his approval, his attention. It wanted to be directed by him, like how he had in his Tribulation, creating a lightning representation of himself. He’d been so limited, hadn’t he? He’d been focused on cutting and pushing things with wind, but he hadn’t embodied the storm. Where was the pride and rage? Where was the indomitable fury that shredded sails and beached boats? Where was the pride that struck down that which stood tall in his presence?
Lightning wasn’t the wind. Wind wished for freedom and movement, to be respected and cared for.
Lightning demanded humility and obeisance. If the wind was denied, it would blow and cut, but it was easily thwarted. Lightning would strike that which stood tall. Lightning rods were forced to redirect the fierce fury of the skies, they couldn’t stop the lightning’s attack. If the rods weren’t perfectly created, the lightning would burst through and burn whatever humanity attempted to protect. Yes, the lightning couldn’t be convinced or forced. Only persuaded.
Would TJ offer himself as something for the lightning to pass through? As he was, no, he couldn’t. Perhaps he could pull lighting into his body and electrocute whatever he was touching as much as he did himself, but that was foolishness. So how could he convince the peals of thunder and the cracks of lightning to give him heed? In his Tribulation, he’d seen some push lightning through weapons and items, but he didn’t want to contain the lightning inside of himself or an item. No, he wanted to deem what would be struck and from where.
As TJ continued to think about that, the System flashed in the corner of his vision. Already, it was time for him to leave his Meditation and get ready for the day.
When he grumbled and deactivated Divine Transformation, TJ heard quiet voices in Junior’s room. He, again, deliberately didn’t listen, and instead grabbed an unopened box of pancake mix from the laundry room. Then, realizing he had no milk, eggs, or water to make them with, he grumbled and grabbed a large mixing bowl from the kitchen before taking it outside and placing it in the middle of his backyard, away from the house and the oleander bushes in the corner of the yard. Then, while the rain continued to fall, TJ looked up at the stormy skies.
Lighting continued to dance through the clouds while thunder rumbled nearly constantly. He could feel that he’d made progress towards Lightning Manipulation in that Meditation, but he was still quite a ways off from gaining the Skill. Even so, his Semi-Divine nature assisted him with understanding the process of gaining a Skill. He was understanding the general idea of the Skill, he just needed to continue to make progress in this way. For now, though, there should be enough water in the bowl to mix up the pancakes. Then, he’d need to cook them on a pan on the grill. So much was less convenient now…
Then, the thought of how he might be able to get his electric range to work if he got Lightning Manipulation figured out crossed his mind. That’d be huge. Maybe even enough by itself for him to take the Skill if it was offered again…
Nah. He would choose the best Skill available. But it was a thought that crossed his mind.
When TJ poked his head back inside to start mixing up the batter, Mimi poked her head out of the hall and into the kitchen.
“Hey there.” He said as he whisked the water and mix together. With a hopeful glance, he looked into the cupboard where the baking powder and other spices were, but now, those were all gone too. “You sleep alright?”
“Mmm.” Mimi responded, seemingly unsure of how to respond.
“It’s raining pretty good right now.” He offered, pointing out the window. “If you feel dirty, I bet we can find a bar of soap or something for you and Sam to use and take a shower out there. Monsters aren’t going to appear for another hour. Now that I think about it, maybe I should take myself up on that offer… Anyways. The rain’s pretty chilly, but you should have high enough Vitality to be fine, and I can offer towels. Pancakes sound good?”
TJ was well aware he was rambling a little, but he didn’t care. The two kids were still around, and he would help them out as best as he could manage.
“Um…” Mimi responded and TJ went silent. After maybe ten seconds, she said, “Can we have some water? For the toilet?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll get a bucket for you.” TJ nodded and jogged out of the kitchen and into the backyard. One of the 5-gallon buckets was still mostly full, and he carried it in. “Since there’s no water, you’ll wanna pour this into the bowl, and—”
“I’ve done this before.” Mimi interrupted, then her face flushed as she realized she had. TJ took that as a good sign and handed over the bucket.
“I should have known.” He chuckled. “You and Sam have any problems with pancakes?”
“No.” Mimi responded as she took the bucket. TJ saw then that she was just as tall as he was, though that wasn’t hard to do. He was only a hair over five and a half feet tall, so most men towered over him and many women were the same height. She also seemed surprised to notice that but didn’t say anything.
“Sweet. I’ll have to do them out on the grill cause I don’t have any gas in the house, but they’ll be ready in 15 minutes.”
“Ok.” Mimi nodded and turned back to walk to the bathroom in the hall. TJ carried his mixing bowl and a pan outside to the grill. He’d never done pancakes on a grill, but it couldn’t be that different from doing them on a gas stove. In fact, it really wasn’t, but the handle got real damn hot as he was cooking so he needed to go inside to get a hot pad to keep himself from getting burned. The first time he’d touched the handle, it’d merely been uncomfortably hot instead of giving him blisters immediately. Being reminded of how much he’d changed from what he’d been before was sobering, but TJ didn’t allow himself to worry too much about it. Instead, he made the food and placed them on a plate under a baking sheet to keep them dry. Then, once the food was prepped, he brought it inside to the waiting siblings. They seemed surprised that he’d made them food as well, and TJ was struck by the desperate need to go kick the shit out of their parents. Instead, he smiled and gestured to the cupboard where the plates were.
“I don’t have juice, but I do have plates and I think I’ve got some syrup hiding somewhere. Wanna set the table?”
