This... Is gonna hurt...

Each of us saw the Boss, Sarah was the first to turn to me, the new wave hadn't started yet. It's like they were waiting for me to choose to start or back out. "Zane? Any idea's on what that one can do?" I shook my head for a moment. "This is new territory for me, but if I had to guess, those tubes look to be pumping some sort of **** into his body. I'm guessing it makes him stronger and probably feel less pain... I'd think the plan would be Jenny and Penny deal with him while the rest of handle the thugs?" I asked Sarah, getting a nod in return. I prepared to hit start as I dispelled my clones from the library and summoned them around me, there were fewer flying thugs this time so I'd focus on them first. Try to free up Angel so she could move with less worry.

Ice woman tried to freeze Bane, he broke out of it rather quickly though, only taking a few seconds to break the ice that formed on his legs. The enemies came charging at us, while Bane set his sights on the last that attacked him, Colossus was quick to change his target though, Wolverine moving in to help her with the huge wrestler. Cyclops put her focus on the ranged enemies, my clones charging at the thugs to slow them down with me sending replacements as the Titan's sized ones got closer. Gambit, Shadowcat and Psylocke each moving to deal with the brutes and trying to be careful with the Titan's. Shadowcat phasing through them and tricking them into hitting each other, it was helping but things were getting rough quick. Angel was able to take a rocket launcher off one of the thugs, using it to take out a few Titan's before it ran out of ammo. The flying ones were dealt with, the ranged ones were gone, nearly half the brutes were dealt with, about 10 of the Titans were down and the normal ones were charging at us.

Colossus suddenly went flying past us, she was missing a chunk of health already, looking back I saw Wolverine slicing the tubes to pieces, Bane yelling out in rage as he spun around and charged her through the wall of a building, I saw her health bar dropping in little chunks as I saw Bane charged through several more walls before coming out the other side of the building. Bane throwing her to the side as she struggled to get up, her body trying to heal the damage fast as it could. I moved without thinking, it was stupid but I got between her and Bane, feeling my power move in a new way, the colors blue and purple covering my fist as I punched out at him. I looked on in surprise as a massive car sized fist of energy suddenly shot out, smashing into Bane and sending him back into the building he'd run Jenny through just half a minute before. Colossus had gotten up, stomping over and looking mad, she broke the walls for the building still supporting it's weight, the entire second floor dropping down onto him. All of us seeing a massive chunk of Bane's health bar just vanishing, about 1/4th which put him nearly down to half now.

Shadowcat started gathering up ranged weapons, handing them off to Angel so she could get shots off on Bane. Ice woman preparing to try and freeze him, slow him down while Colossus got ready to attack him again, Wolverine healing quick as she could as she got back to her feet. Which left Gambit, Psylocke, Cyclops and myself to deal with the remaining thugs, my clones dealing with the normal ones easily as the remaining Titans came charged at us. Laser blasts, Exploding cards, Psychic damage all brought the Titans down one by one quickly, but my clones were being overwhelmed with numbers. I fired off beam attacks from my fingers as quickly as I could, trying to slow down the titans and hopefully do some damage, I ended up combining purple and white at the palm of my hand and when it hit a Titan it exploded with kinetic ****, sending several Titan's flying back. I used it again, feeling my powers strain a bit stopped me from a third one though, I needed more time to recover so I could use it again. We fought on, Bane climbing slowly out of the rubble only to get blasted by Cyclops as she tried to make him stay down. That was enough to get him down to half health, then the fight changed, Bane suddenly pulling something out and moving to inject his neck, Cyclops and I both shot at it before he could inject himself, managing to shatter it.

He roared in rage, then we saw a timer of 30 seconds popping up WARNING REINFORCEMENTS INCOMING. Cyclops turned her attention to unleashing her power on the titan's, trying to bring them down as fast as she could, Betsy and the rest of us joining in while Wolverine and Colossus braced themselves to slow Bane down. He didn't move though, putting a finger to his ear as he yelled out something in Spanish I couldn't catch, I kept my focus on the Titan's and my clones, trying to bring them all down as fast as we could wasn't easy. Thankfully we worked through the remaining ones just in time for the timer to hit zero, vehicles pulling up, more masked looking wrestlers charging at us with knives and guns, several of which had their own **** system attached to them. Between the ranged attacks of Gambit, Cyclops, Angel and myself though we managed to bring them down faster than the titan's, looks like there's only a few brutes among them. No more Titan's was a relief, but these brutes carried heavy machine guns. I threw my shield up quick as I could and started to block their bullets while I launched orbs back at them, my clones and I forcing the reinforcements back while the others focused on Bane.

Then we saw the timer for reinforcements appear again, this time with X3 next to it, Cyclops unleashing her full power at Bane as his health bar was shaved down further and further. The team's efforts getting Bane down to low health right as multiple enemy cars arrived, Bane picking one up as the soldiers got out and throwing it at Ice woman, Shadowcat grabbing her and phasing them both so the car passed them harmlessly, then it bounced right over Gambit's head. Bane went to chuck another vehicle, the others focused on trying to bring him down while I held off the wrestlers as best I could, throwing lightning, green orbs and energy fists out at them if they got too close... But I was starting to get overwhelmed, my clones getting gunned down, I wasn't strong enough, wasn't fast enough, wasn't smart enough to deal with this many at once. It only got worse when one snuck around behind me, I ended up stabbed in my back for losing track of that one, just above a kidney. I don't know how any of them would have noticed, they needed to be able to focus on Bane anyways. I felt the knife starting to withdraw, preparing to stab again into me as a clone tackled them off me. That stab had come out of nowhere, I took a lot of damage from it as a result, nearly half my health bar gone from that alone. I saw the blade was serrated, right before a brute stomped a boot across my face.

I saw a flash of energy and found Psylocke fighting them off, keeping my shield up to try and stop the bullets, the gun wielding enemies starting to spread out more, trying to get around it. Psylocke picked me off the ground, Gambit rushing over and using her staff to cause an explosive wave to disorient the enemies. It bought us a bit of time, enough for her to throw out more explosive cards at the crowd as I struggled to stand, my right leg feeling numb. I covered myself in my red healing energy just in time for Gambit to get back to us, looking back we saw the wrestlers getting up, another car arriving as they drew guns on us. I needed something to stop them, something that would slow them down or take their focus, something that could deal with them quickly. I found myself pulling at my power again, what I got was some sort of Yellow Hardlight Construct in the shape of a massive beast, it was a towering creature of muscle with a trio of horns, it roared out and charged at Bane's soldiers, the bullets not even slowing it down as it ran through several of them, goring two brutes at once before flinging their bodies away and attacking again.

"Zane? That was you right?" Betsy asked, looking surprised. "Y-yeah, it's a bit of a constant strain, but it's not working." I didn't notice the blood trickling from my nose, couldn't feel it even. The strain felt like a muscle that was becoming overtaxed but I couldn't stop until we got past Bane. That's when we noticed the soldiers firing at us again, too many angles to protect, I needed the shield to cover more space, so I pushed it further. My shield suddenly pulled back closer to us, creating a bubble around us that had me basically sandwiched between Gambit and Psylocke, both women caught by surprise as the bullets broke against my shield. Finally the bullets stopped, I looked over to see Wolverine with her claws stabbing through Bane's neck, she looked furious as she sliced through and took his head off completely. The last chunk of his health being taken off as his health bar shattered and his name vanished, the few soldiers left vanishing with their boss now gone. I stopped using my powers and collapsed to the floor, Betsy and Rayna both catching me as the success screen appeared and asked if we wanted to continue. I barely had the strength left to hit the leave button, pulling us all out as I found myself being practically carried out of the danger room as I lost consciousness.

When I came too I was in the infirmary, I groaned as I started to get up, only to hear a firm voice "Stop right there Zane." It was the professor, he had a serious look on his face as he walked up towards me. "You gave us quite a scare young man, near as Helen could tell you overused your powers. Stretched them too far, too fast. You have to be more careful, whether your going to be working with the team in the future or not." I must have looked miserable, I certainly felt it. He explained I wasn't in trouble, said he understood that I wanted to learn to control my powers fast, explaining that it wouldn't help if I ended up putting myself and the team at risk though. With that he wished me good luck and left? I didn't have to wonder why for long, an angry looking Jenny came stomping into the room, yelling at me for how reckless that was to do. The party had been disbanded sure, but the others weren't too happy about me pushing my powers like that either.

I got released only after I showed them a screen showing my health was fine, a little alert showing that I wouldn't be able to use my Hardlight Contructs for the next day possibly 2. I was moving slower than normal sure but did they have to order me to rest as much as I could until I recovered? I was still able to use my clones to read through books in the library at least, so my progress in learning more about science was getting better thankfully. I spent the next few hours relaxing, recovering and using my clones to try and do what I could in the library, eventually though I found myself being wrapped up in a hug by Kali.

Her short blue fur rubbing against my back as she held me tight, her massive breasts pressing against my back as her arms wrapped around me. "You need to be more careful Cher~" I heard as Rayna sat down next to me, her legs crossing as her thick thighs squished against each other in a way that could only be described as heavenly. She smiled as she caught me looking at her thighs, Kali giggling behind me as I felt her purr against my back, sending a light little vibration through me. "Indeed, you've only just joined us but we don't want anything bad to happen you Liebling~" Kali purred into my ear, nuzzling her cheek against mine as she leaned over my shoulder a bit more. "I'll take it easy, I will certainly try to be more careful from now on." I assured them, then remembered I still needed to take care of a few things in my room. I tried to get up to walk there but Kali wouldn't let you go, I told her I needed to do some stuff in my room and found myself teleported there before she pushed me back onto my bed. "Now REST, you have a date tonight still remember~?" She purred out before teleporting away.

I had plenty of time before the date began, so I figured I may as well turn in the quests now and get the leveling up taken care of. I watched as my experience from the two assaults I'd done and the quests I'd turned in all pushed my experience bar up, my level raising higher and higher as my jaw began to drop more and more. I saw that I had gained some massive chunks of experience, then I saw the levels on some of my skills go up as well. It took me a minute to get over the shock, finally able to relax and focus on spending the new absurd amount of stat points I'd gotten. Which only increased when my retroactive stat point gain per level ups increased to a total of 5 per level up. It took me around 10 minutes to come to a decision, trying to think about how badly things had gone in the last ****, how easily my clones got tore through, how I got so strained from overusing my powers. I needed to pick a focus, I was trying to do too much at once. I had thought to up my physical stats to try and close the gap a bit of how bad I was at close combat but decided against it for now, thinking I should focus on my strengths first instead.

My new level hitting 60 with my stats reaching... STR: 25 AGI: 25 END: 28 INT: 60 WIS: 60 CHA: 50 LIB: 30
I saw that several powers leveled up now as well. My clones had leveled up against, further increasing the rate they learned as well as the max number of summons. My Hardlight constructs leveled up a bit too, Blue Shield LVL 4, Green Orb LVL 4, Red Medic LVL 3, Purple Lightning LVL 2, with my new Yellow power being LVL 1 currently. Apparently my yellow power allowed me to summon creatures and weapons that would attack nearby targets automatically. I started listing which combo's of the powers I could make currently as well, Green/Purple making Shock Orbs, Purple/Red creating Explosive Beams, Purple/White allowing me to empower and send out energy punches. I hadn't found anymore yet but I was curious to see what else would appear.

Then I got what the system informed me were perks from certain stats raising to the next milestone. Congrats on reaching STR 25, your muscle becomes more well defined as your bodies health improves further. AGI 25, you are able to think and move faster, your getting better but have a long way to go before you start catching shields. END 25 your bodies fat melts away, your masculine look improves and voice deepens slightly. INT 50, your brain works faster, you are able to use a higher percentage of your brains power and your bonus to the damage/healing your powers can do increases further. WIS 50, your powers improve in efficiency further, strain lessens considerably, backlash from bigger wishes is now reduced. CHA 50, improvements to deals you make, discounts for purchases, increase in price for things you sell all increase, your chances of getting better rewards from quests improves. Holy hell that was quite a bit, most of it sounded pretty great too, that last one would be especially helpful with all the quests I would likely be doing.

With that taken care of I decided to try and relax, already planning to do some Solo assaults once I had recovered. I wondered why that had been such an increase in difficulty though, looking through my menu's I found the answer. Turns out raising the number of party members past 4 turned it into a raid group, which also bumped up the difficulty a HUGE amount. I proceeding to smack my head for not thinking of that before, sending a small army of clones out to study at the library I began to wonder if I should pick up my rewards before the date time arrived... It would be better to do it now rather than risk losing the rewards, so I slowly moved my way down towards the control room for the Danger room, only to find Jenny standing in my way. "You going somewhere Zane?" She looked like she was considering knocking me out and dragging me back to bed. "I was gonna go and retrieve the rewards from the **** waves we did, if I don't get it done before morning I could lose them completely. After that I was gonna head back to my room, once I figured out what to do about Dinner that is..." I explained carefully, Jenny walking ahead of me leading the way. "Don't worry about dinner, Rayna volunteered to cook dinner, though I think she was trying to join your date with Helen tonight~" Jenny smiled back at me.

We arrived and I just collected the rewards into my inventory directly, I'll check it all out later and... wait... When did my Inventory slots increase? What had previously been only 10 spaces had increased to 50, around 30 of which were taken up with numerous different things, including the stacked materials from before. I was down to 45 Nth metal, 4 cases of molten Adamantium, and 7 large chunks of Vibranium stacked into 3 of the 20 something slots filled up, each of the others with a ? mark over them as though my system was waiting for me to pull them out before telling me what they were. With that taken care of I headed back upstairs under Jenny's watch, and from there to my room. That's when I got a notification that solidified my plans to level up more.
Congratulation! You nearly meet the stat requirements to unlock the datapad! Stat requirements remaining: INT 100 WIS 100 CHA 100. Unlocking the datapad will grant access to information about Nth metal, how to work with it, and allow you to begin working on your first prototype Warsuit!

I stared at the screen for a few moments, looks like this might be the best way for me to go after all! Just as I thought that there was a knock at the door, I opened it to find both Helen and Kali there, each wearing casual clothes before they walked inside...

(Cher - meaning Darling or loved one for those that don't know. Yes I got a message about this.)