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Connor sat with his back against the wall, a little bit away from the slime, and held his palm out towards the opposite, empty wall of the shack. He had placed the weapon he dubbed "Caliboard" into a gap in the floorboards so that it would stand upright as a sort of target.
Think real hard, and try to notice a draining effect? He mulled over the slime's previous words. Apparently the "contact" function included a log, which was convenient...but what if you had a chat with someone that covered several hours of dialogue? Connor wondered if this was like one of the group chat apps he used for gaming, and if he could create his own "server" and copy-paste or pin messages from other groups that he found useful. Something else to experiment with. But for now...Magic! But be careful, because overdoing it is painful...Right...
A blip appeared in the corner of his vision, which he scanned quickly--oh! The slime was right! If they could break things down so efficiently, their own body could be used as a water filter! Which brought up another interesting possibility...
Contact: "Slime"
Good idea! That makes me wonder, though--can you basically read the chemical composition of anything you take in? In some video games there are things like "Crafting" and "Alchemy" systems that let a player take, like, a magic herb or something and turn it into beneficial potions and whatnot. If you could do that, it opens up a lot of potential...Ah, wait, I'm getting distracted. Hold on a bit.Connor liked optimizing things. The idea of turning life into a videogame, where he could actually tell his efforts were making a difference via numbers on a screen as opposed to the "real world's" painful process of continual trial, rejection, error, screw-up, setback, and worthless rewards, made him absolutely giddy.
Especially if it meant he could be powerful for once in his cowardly, miserable, self-loathsome life.
So, Kinetic Magic. Briefly Connor mentally reviewed a vast number of animated television shows, video games, novels, internet commentary, and amateur writing (of his own design) where a character tried to "learn magic." For once, wasting his life had become somewhat useful.
It's not an "element" like fire or water, so I doubt doing a kung-fu move and projecting my energy would produce any results. The slime can't talk and none of us have anything besides the clothes...or gel...on our backs, so verbal and somatic components must not be essential. So that leaves...what, self-visualization?
Applied force. Force was mass times acceleration, so was magical energy being converted into both of those things, or at least somehow imitating them while being incorporeal? And "applied" force was...work, maybe? Scientifically, the measure of force exerted on an object over a distance? So the simplest form of that was...a push?
Connor wiggled his fingers, then clenched his hand like he was trying to strike someone with an open palm--not that he actually knew how to do that, but he'd seen lots of action movies. He looked at Caliboard, and focused his mind. He imagined...a ghostly, pale blue aura, enveloping his whole body. Extending from his arm. Shaped into a wispy, disembodied hand. Stretching across the distance. Pushing against the board.
He felt...resistance? In his mind? He gulped. His heart beat quickened. He pushed harder.
The awkward, scary, and uncomfortable sensation of using a muscle for the first time--something else he had never experienced outside of gym class and a short lived attempt (exactly two days) at accomplishing a "Hero for Fun" exercise routine--that sensation pumped through him. He pushed harder.
The mental wall gave way. What should not have been physically possible became real.
A cyan shimmer in the vague shape of a hand--like a bad artist's sketch--formed in front of his palm. As slowly as Connor himself would've pressed a barbell, it drifted towards Caliboard and pushed against the flat top--paying no mind to the rusty nail--until the plank creaked. That sound caused Connor to blink and jerk back on instinct. He let out the breath that had been under oceanic pressure in his lungs.
"HO. LEE. SHIT!" He looked at his own hand, which trembled as a smile most people would associate with serial killers and supervillain clowns threatened to rip his cheeks apart. "I can do magic! I can do magic!"
He thrust his palm towards the board again. The image was faster, the power came faster. The push was more violent this time--like the numerous times in elementary school Connor had tried to protect himself from a bully, knowing nothing more than to shove them, try to get them away from him. The spell was projected faster, striking the board hard enough to lever it a few inches to one side--its other end made another squeaky noise as it ground between the floorboards.
That memory darkened Connor's mood, but didn't discourage him in the least. Again he pushed, this time physically mimicking the motion with his own arm. The two-by-four was shoved free of its admittedly shoddy brace, and clattered to the shack's floor.
Connor didn't realize he was on the verge of hyperventilating, his face flushed as a bead of sweat made its way down his cheek. But it wasn't due to the drain of the magic--he could feel it, like the way an actual athlete feels after fully warming themselves up--but his own excitement had his stomach trying to leap into his throat.
How many times can I cast this!? How hard can I push?! How far? How fast? It was shaped like a hand just like I imagined--can I shape it into something else?!
He spun in place, now facing the wall and still seated. He placed his hand flat against the dark boards, and imagined a second one made of magic. This time the effect wasn't immediate--but slowly, haltingly, Connor's body slid backwards across the floorboards until he was an arm's length away from the shack's wall. He kept pushing, the sweat of real effort joining the bead of excitement on his other cheek, and his body scooted another span, then another. Soon, he had almost pushed himself clear across the shack using only his magic.
About ten feet before it can't reach the wall anymore! He heaved an enormous sigh--he had to stop not-breathing when he did this. Maybe, what, like twice as hard as doing a pushup? As he put a hand on his chest to try and stifle his panting, he noticed the real drain--like he'd just tried to sprint across a football field. But the speed at which I moved my own weight...Maybe I could get more but...The slime's right, this could definitely get painful...
And once again, the bullies flashed into his mind. Pushing them away had never worked, had it? No. They always kept coming. Even trying to hit them with a closed fist--a weak, scrawny, desperate fist, small and useless just like the loser it was attached to--!
Connor clenched his fist, and his other hand covered it as if he'd somehow injured himself. He sniffed as he screwed his eyes shut, trying to focus on what he could feel. The magic now running through his veins.
This isn't enough. He took a forcibly slow, deep breath. Applied force. Work. How do I get more work out of something? Ninth grade physical science class. He needed to start simple. Pulleys? Too complex. Levers? Was he meant to magically recreate the fulcrum, or the arm? No. Simpler. Inclined plane? No, it'd still be just a push...A wedge?
The example of a wedge, in his mind, was an axe being swung into a log. His heart leaped with realization. Humankind's first use of technology--no, of weaponry! First it was just their fists, then blunt clubs! Then clubs with wedges in them, and then...
Blades!
He calmed himself, and now with his back against the opposite wall, he extended his hand once more. He did not release the magic, but merely formed its shape in his mind. With his imagination he crafted a 3D environment, similar to something a computer modeler would use for animation and rigging.
I can rotate an apple in my head. Proof that I'm not an NPC. he thought, sardonically.
He formed the same hand he had been using to push with. It was actually a little clearer now than it was when he cast it for real, but not by much. By practicing more, he was sure he could shape it up--but he needed something useful, and he needed it quickly. Every moment they spent in this new world without a means to defend themselves was another moment of living in fear. And Connor had lived like that long enough, thank you very effing much.
The hand's "model" was pinched and pulled by Connor's mind. First it lost detail, becoming a simple polygonal block instead of some imitation of an articulated human hand. Then he thinned one edge of that block, rotating it to be sure he had what he wanted--an edge, yes. Like an axe head. But if he wanted a blade, it needed to be...
Thinner. More taper. Not just thin at the edge, but less...long? Width from another angle? He didn't know what the flat back of the axe was called, but he shrank that. As far as vertical length, he stretched that out a little more. What else?
Foru-ded wan sou-zand timu! Superior nihon steeru!
A slight curve. He wasn't sure how to reflect the next idea in his "3D Mindspace" but he tried to "concentrate" the mass, make it denser, harder. Like it was being compressed. He imagined dragging the blade down an actual whetstone, though he'd never done anything like that either.
Then it stood out in his mind, alone among a black void. He opened his eyes. Almost on instinct, he changed the position of his hand. Instead of extending his palm, he folded all of his fingers but the index and middle. And as he took aim at the far wall, and summoned up his magic, he swept those two fingers in a short arc.
"Cut!" he ordered the power.
He felt more resistance this time and clenched his teeth as the power released. In his mind he imagined swinging a machete as hard as he could. There was a crack and snap, a blue arc flying through the air--!
And now, a single board in the dilapidated wall bore a mark. Like someone had taken a pocketknife, and tried to carve a straight, diagonal line into it. At least six inches long, not quite an inch deep. These boards were dry, bug-eaten wood...but still harder than flesh, and thicker than skin. If Connor could land that on an attacker's wrist, or neck, or across the eyes...
Again, he smiled like the villain of some cheap slasher horror-flick.
Then he gasped and fell to one knee, one hand over his face. As he blinked and slowly took his hand away, looking at it and growing pale, he sent the Slime an update.
Contact: "Slime"
Gud news: Magic work. Can Jedi push stuff and shoot swords. Bad: Nose bleed, head hurts. If I hav aneurysm plz w8 48 hrs b4 eating me. Thx.The young man laid back on the floor and panted, chest rising faster and then slower. His nosebleed soon stopped as he pinched the bridge, and he realized after a few minutes the headache wasn't actually terribly debilitating--he was just, in all honesty, a big wuss. No, this was definitely just from getting too excited. He probably couldn't cast that cutting spell more than a handful of times, at least not in a row, but he didn't think he'd damaged himself permanently.
He'd rest, and then...well, then he had to decide how to face the outside world. It made a bubble of laughter rise from his throat. New world, same problems.
