Published at 12th of August 2022 9:14 pm

Book 2: Chapter 78: Concept

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Dan meditated for the first time in months. He sat in t-space, floating in that great nothing, and considered the nature of his own abilities. It was something long overdue. Yes, his power had gotten stronger, and yes, he’d grown more skilled at using it, but he had devoted little thought towards understanding the underlying mechanics of it all. He lacked a strong concept upon which to focus his abilities. It was something between a decision and a discovery. It was up to Dan to decide his concept, but if it did not properly fit his existing powerset then he might forever limit himself.

How annoying.

Dan had been putting this off for some time, reveling in his peaceful, idyllic life. He had never stopped training with his veil, but he’d grown satisfied with growing the, admittedly vast, array of abilities he currently possessed. Everything he could do was an extension of his veil, and its relatively simple power to transfer matter from one dimension to another. It wasn’t anything new, so much as a new application of what he already had. Dan suspected he might need more in the coming days.

Riots had broken out in Miami. It wasn’t the only major city after Austin to riot, nor was it the first, but it was definitely the closest to Dan. It had been only a handful of days since Champion’s face had accused the federal government of illegal kidnapping, internment, and experimentation. The country wasn’t falling apart by any means, but Dan couldn’t have imagined this level of civil unrest in his old home, to say nothing of the authority-obsessed Dimension A.

There were protests all across the western United States. New Mexico was the origin of cosmic radiation, and itself and its neighbors held a paradoxical relationship with Naturals. These states were the first to suffer during the early years of heroes and villains, when powers ran rampant. The citizens there had long memories; some still lived who had seen the disastrous battles between powerful Naturals that occurred in the years leading up to the Vigilante Acts.

Yet, Naturals were also family. They were friends. They were lovers and children. Most individuals alive today had grandparents, or parents, who had lived during Champion’s era. Some were even Naturals who had survived by laying low and never using their abilities. The kind of people who encouraged laws against themselves, as they’d seen the damage an unrestrained Natural could do, and feared their own power. These same people had once looked to Champion, and the People of Chicago, with hope that there could be a better way.

Now here he was, declaring that they had been right. There had been a better way, and it had been stolen from them by those in power. It was an enticing message to some. Enough to take to the streets. Conflict was all but inevitable.

Dan needed to get stronger. He needed to better understand the forces he was playing with. He needed a reliable path upon which his abilities might grow. And so, he meditated.

Dan really only had a single power: his veil. The brilliant blue pool of energy that suffused his body and wrapped around him like a skintight suit. He could move, manipulate it, feel it like an extra limb. It senses were almost tactile, and it was only through experience and constant practice that Dan could use it like radar.

His veil, in turn, only had a single ability: to transfer objects between dimensions. It was Dan’s understanding—and Dan’s was the only one that mattered— that his veil existed simultaneously in the Gap, and in Dimension A. It pulled him, and whatever else it could grab hold of, between the two realities with effortless ease. It was like a hallway between dimensions, letting Dan step seamlessly between the two.

Yet, it also shielded him. The Gap was not meant to be seen by mortal minds. It had driven Marcus Mercury mad on more than one occasion, with only the man’s power over his own biology bringing him back to himself. Even then, his abrupt disappearance had Dan thinking that sanity had never quite returned to the man. The Gap was dangerous, but to Dan, it was harmless. His veil protected him like an aegis, and he could extend that protection to whatever it touched.

But that was it. That was his power: his veil. Everything else, his ability to manipulate his own movement, to almost pause time, to drain away his own emotions, they were all products of his mastery of the Gap, and his Navigator. The latter presented a puzzle to which Dan had no answers. He instinctively felt that it was both a part of him and not, the eldritch thing was connected to his veil, yet Dan was uncertain if that had always been the case. It was the interpreter between Dan’s will and his power’s expression, but Dan did not think of it as part of his power.

After all, it was only through his veil that he’d seized control of the creepy thing. Before that, it had simply loomed in the Gap, slurping away at his consciousness like some kind of listless, many-eyed leech. No, Dan decided, his Navigator was something separate. It was not the source of his powers. It was exactly as he’d named it: his Navigator. It offered his power directions, and nothing else.

He let that thought settle into himself until it became doctrine. He examined the long, thin thread connecting him to the tiny cloud of eyeballs that represented his Navigator. He nodded with satisfaction after a long moment. Nothing had changed. This was the way of things. His mind was what determined fact here, in this place. In the Gap it didn’t matter what was real; it only mattered what you could fool yourself into believing. Humans were very good at lying to themselves, and Dan was even better than most. He’d done it for years, and likely still was to some extent or another.

With the matter of his Navigator settled, he returned his attention to his veil. A Concept did not need to be something powerful or primordial. It didn’t even need to be a concept, necessarily. He simply needed to decide the core identity of his power, to solidify its limitations and abilities. Everything else flowed from there. In practical terms, Dan wasn’t sure what it would accomplish, but he had some intriguing theories.

Dan could not use his power directly on other humans, with some very specific exceptions. While that was good in some ways, it was tremendously inconvenient in many others. He could not transport other people, nor could he use his veil as a direct weapon against them, generally speaking. This was because every human that Dan had ever encountered was shielded from Dan’s veil by their own innate connection to the Gap. Marcus had theorized the Gap as the source of consciousness, and that cosmic energy simply catalyzed this innate connection, allowing some of the Gap’s infinitely changeable nature to leak out into reality.

Dan didn’t know the truth of it, and he didn’t much care. The fact of the matter was that he couldn’t use his power directly on other humans. Yet, Anastasia clearly could. She’d used it on Dan multiple times, and he’d been told by multiple sources that it had always been a favored tactic of hers. Why could her power affect others directly, but Dan’s could not? Well, Dan had a theory: Anastasia’s Concept.

Maybe it was because her concept directly touched upon something that people experienced. Pressure was a broad term that affected humans in myriad ways. Or maybe having a concept simply granted power, and between Anastasia’s age and experience, she could work around the barrier that stopped Dan’s veil cold. He didn’t know the truth of the matter, though he suspected the former.

He considered his own power, how it acted, how he used it, and what he wanted it to be. He wasn’t picking something out of a hat; this process was more an internalization of something already true. No amount of squinting could make his power something that it intrinsically wasn’t, and Dan’s own perspective tainted the possibilities. Dan didn’t need something powerful. He didn’t need some binding concept of reality. His power could be as unexceptional as he was. He’d make do.

The core of his veil was transportation. Movement, from one place to another. But that was too broad. It fit poorly, to Dan’s mind. His power was more focused, more specific. His mind kept drifting back to a hallway. His veil acted like a corridor between the Gap and the real world. It was nothing special, its purpose mundane, yet entirely necessary. It was a path, a trail, a—

No. That wasn’t it either. Dan was forgetting something important. The most important thing of all, that which had first led him to trusting his own power. His veil protected him. It was a shield from the outside forces, in the Gap, and in the real. It was more than something walked. Its purpose was two-fold. It was…

Dan blinked, as the obvious struck him.

His veil was a door; the gate between dimensions. It served as both protection and passage. The thought clicked into place with the ease of something long known, but never before understood. Dan opened his eyes and summoned his veil. It bubbled off his skin, sky blue cerulean shimmering before him. He stared into the translucent liquid, seeing nothing different, yet feeling a shift in his very being. It wasn’t a change. His veil was no different. It was Dan who was different. His perspective had shifted, and with it, his understanding.

What difference that would make to his power, Dan didn’t know, but he aimed to find out. Dan stood up in the darkness of the Gap. He cracked his knuckles, stretching upon the not-ground, and smiled.

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