Tanya awoke to someone tapping her head.

She sat up slowly. It was nowhere near as painful as the night before but she felt very stiff. Rubbing her eyes, she saw a strange bleary shape in front of her until her vision cleared.

Holy shit.

Before Tanya was a hand, ghostly white with sparkling black nails and it rapped its fingers on the table impatiently.

It worked? It worked!

Tanya leapt to her feet and tilted her head to look all the way around it. There was something so uncanny about how two-dimensional it looked, like something drawn and plastered into space. But it moved perfectly with her eyes, as three-dimensional as anything else. She reached forward to touch it and it scuttled back, stamping one finger down on the table. Technically she wasn't certain it was stamping but an anger radiated around it, like being able to tell just from someone opening the door that they've had a bad day at work.

She noticed the space on her arm. The spot where the tattoo had been was bare, smooth skin. It was nothing like Adder's had been and she was so relieved. The black bubbling ink and echoes of him screaming were gone, but the tension had remained. It had been a long time since she'd seen that spot of skin without a tattoo, not that the bare spot was as strange as the tattoo walking across the table in front of her.

"'Ello, I'm Tanya. What d'ya want me to call ya?"

The hand bent its knees—well—fingers and clicked, Tanya suddenly saw the Tattoos area of her Interface. The finger tapped through it with different popups appearing until it was only showing its own stats. Tanya was completely floored. Was this floating in the air in front of her and she'd never noticed before or could the hand access things only she could see?

* * *

Information

Name: Assistant

Wielder: Tanya Angelo

Type: Sentient

Level: 1

Attributes

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 15

Vitality: 10

Concentration: 6

Will: 17

Abilities

Mind Meld

Can access your interface, memories, and thoughts to varying levels including all of the information and experience you have tattooing.

Versatile

Can learn Sentient, Tool, and Weapon Type Tracks.

Boons

Mana Core

Minor Boon - Amped Up

Charges: 10/10

Contains a Mana Core accelerating growth, speed, power, and precision.

True Touch

Minor Boon - First Wield Bonus

Gains access to a Unique Track known as Prophetic.

* * *

Prophetic? What the hell would a bleedin' hand do with prophecies?

Tanya read it hungrily, this was the first tattoo she'd get to keep and it looked…alright? It was weaker than both the others she'd done, she was hoping it would have higher Dexterity out of the gate, but she wasn't very sure how high Dexterity really got either.

System, what's a normal human Dexterity, and what's like…Usain Bolt?

All Attributes average 10 and early 20s is the highest your world has achieved without System Intervention.

Searching…

Usain Bolt: Retired Earth Sprinter who is widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time.

I cannot divulge Interfaces without a pact although—

The voice got slightly less robotic.

A champion sprinter wouldn't necessarily have the highest Dexterity.

So it's more like what I do? Hand-eye coordination, that sorta stuff?

The voice went back again.

Error: Restricted Information.

Nah, that don't make sense. It'd probably be a mix, like subsets of stats.

Tanya was still staring at the hand crawling around her table. Its nails clicked against the wood with each 'step.' She was deep in thought. If stats were actually an amalgamation of different substats she wouldn't be able to just raise it with tattooing alone.

System, can you tell me the subsets?

Error: Restricted Information.

Tanya groaned and rolled her eyes. Every time she found a way for The System to give her information it was fleeting.

The hand on the table balanced on its end, it was like a flat line—as if someone had taken to it with a cleaver and then covered it over with the same white somewhat skin of the rest of it. It flicked its fingers at her a couple times.

"Did you just shoo me?!" Tanya exclaimed. She couldn't help but grin.

The hand stayed on its end, making the hand shape of a sock puppet, and then nodding.

"What the fuck. Come on, apocalypse, why does me assistant hate me?" Tanya said.

The seriousness in her voice cracked her up. She laughed—and then laughed at the fact she was laughing—until her stomach hurt.

The hand pulled up its Interface above its head. It was uncanny seeing the text boxes attached to something. Floating above the hand, it was attached in some way so that as the hand moved the box above it moved too. If Tanya looked closely she could see a thin tendril attaching the text box to the hand itself. It really did feel like an identification thing in a video game.

Once the hand found the section it wanted, it pointed at it. Tanya looked closer. It had opened a smaller menu about how it was created, showing that the three intentions were Emotive, Dextrous, and Non-Hostile. The hand was pointing at Emotive.

"Are you tellin' me the reason the hand hates me is 'cause I gave it Emotive?" Tanya said, half to the hand and half to the world generally.

The hand hopped back onto its fingers and twitched its pointer and ring finger. Tanya assumed that was a shrug. She sighed, then laughed again. This was ludicrous and incredibly impractical, but she'd be lying if she said it didn't make her inner child very happy.

The Interface was still open above the hand. Tanya noticed that they were numbered.

* * *

1. Emotive

2. Dextrous

3. Non-Hostile

* * *

She wracked her brain trying to remember which order she said them in. She was sure she wouldn't have said Non-Hostile last—she'd have said it first.

"Wait, System, do the order of intentions matter for a final tattoo?"

She could feel the pause. It was like The System had taken a breath before the error message. Maybe it was pondering if she was close enough to confirm it? It felt like it was tempting her to say more.

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Tanya flopped on the chair and crossed her arms.

I said Emotive last…

"I reckon… the order matters 'cause the last Intention ya leave the creation with is the one it feels the strongest. Fits with me instincts 'bout not 'avin' too many Intentions—each one before the last don't 'it as 'ard as the one before it."

It began as a faint unspooling deep in her chest as if a thread she hadn't known existed was loosening itself. Her breath caught, not from fear, but from the oddness of it. The air around her thrummed, not loud, but persistent, like the faint hum of something alive.

And then it passed. Not with a jolt or a crash, but like an exhale she hadn't realised she'd been holding. Everything settled back into place, but the sensation lingered—a subtle, strange alignment, as though something inside her had quietly clicked into place.

* * *

Congratulations!

You have unlocked a new Ability.

* * *

The Power of Intention

Level 1

Intention is the core of your tattoos. Through clear intentions, you can influence the effects of the designs you create. The more Intentions imbued into a tattoo, the weaker or less controlled the effect will be. Intentions given closer to creation are stronger than those further away.

* * *

Tanya whistled slowly. Now she was getting somewhere.

"System, I'd like to reformat me Interface."

Interface Menu Loading…

Tanya stared down at her interface. She had lots of headings now; Information, Attributes, Abilities, Pacts, Tattoos. How could she streamline it?

Seeing the full menu to change things took up most of her vision. If she concentrated properly she could just about see the world around her through it, but it was dimmed to make the text stand out better. She started fiddling with the sections, moving them around with her finger—well—with her mind. The finger helped her visualise it better, plus it made her feel like she was in a sci-fi movie.

Everything she focused on gave her a bunch of different arrows to show her what she could do with it, everything from just swapping places to condensing and often even pop-ups for set designs to reformat it. Attributes were the wildest. It had options to change the heading, or even change what was being tracked altogether. She recognised some of the options like "Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma" and "Strength, Agility, Intellect, Stamina, Spirit." After staring at the options for a long time she settled on leaving it as was. If The System had chosen this as the default category for measuring, it was likely for good reason.

There were half a dozen "add-ons" including perception and weapon-specific skills, and a bunch more that weren't in any language she understood. She assumed The System wouldn't offer anything she hadn't thought up herself. 'Mana' and 'Health' were the most tempting. It was interesting to her that Health wasn't a standard thing to track. She supposed it was that sheets like these were rarely useful in combat and changing a complex array of numbers into a single digit was reductive.

Not that any of these numbers ain't a massive simplification of what they represent…Or are they?

She added in HP to see what it would look like, just to see that it wasn't a specific add-on, it was an array of different add-ons. The simplest was a single digit but it had a bunch of variations with mind and body or tracking things like adrenaline too. The most complex showed an outline of her body with multiple digits for each part and a dozen others for various less physical health. She was honestly a little smug that she'd been offered it if she was right about them being linked to ideas and understanding. Not that that meant she'd use it, however. She imagined that it might be useful for a detailed fighting class focusing on improving their HP in different areas, but her Summons would hopefully remove much need for that level of body awareness.

From what she could work out from the calculations, health seemed linked to Strength and Vitality, but from her dip into high Vitality making her Summon, she wouldn't be surprised if concentration was in there somewhere too.

If she'd continue to make pacts with people for their information then surely having everything on was best. She hunted around for settings before finding an area about what she wanted to see of other's Interfaces.

Alright, this is officially too much.

She toggled "all" just to see what it would look like and she was immediately hit with a searing pain in her head. The size of the text was so small that she could barely read it and she still had to turn her head to see what went off the edge of her vision. She panicked, fighting against her lack of thoughts through single-minded pain. It wasn't working. The panic set in harder. Her assistant came into view, fingers tensed as it staggered closer through the black mask. The words over where it would be faded out so she could see the hand clearly. It forced its fingers into a click like it had before to bring up its own, and the interface went back to before.

Tanya breathed heavily for a moment. Clenching and unclenching her fists to remind herself of what was real. She staggered backward into the squishy leather of the sofa and flopped down.

"How did you—oh, higher Will," she said to the hand. The hand slammed itself on the table and then flipped her off.

You get me psychic pain too then? Noted.

Tanya furrowed her brow. She needed to work out how many sections she could handle surely, the more she could see the more of other people's interfaces she could see too, unless…

She beckoned Adder's Interface into this menu instead of her own. It was about as easy as everything else had been, just think about it intentionally enough and it appeared. Then she focused on the complex "HP" addon from before and it integrated seamlessly. Her eyes flicked between his Attributes and the new HP breakdown.

It lines up. I can see all of this?

She clicked through a few more sections confirming that it really did work on everything. She truly knew now why The System mentioned restrictions, this really was a goldmine of information. Tanya spent a few minutes comparing her information to his, not that it really taught her much. She felt like this menu would be incredibly useful if she got some more people to compare but as is he was so much higher in level that all she could really garner was yes he really is higher than me.

It was whilst she was staring at the information that she noticed something, there was a tab called 'current.' She focused on it and it pulled up another identical stat sheet side by side, except it wasn't identical. Her Attributes were all different. The current one said:

* * *

Attributes

Strength: 7/9

Dexterity: 13/16

Vitality: 1/10

Concentration: 3/7

Will: 2/13

* * *

As she stared at it her Vitality ticked up to 2/10.

These ain't traditional stats, they're limited pools that get used up.

It blew her mind.

The lack of Mana as a tracked heading made far more sense now. She'd noticed it was 10, same as her Vitality—but now she knew they actually were the same thing. The fact that her physical stats had gone down too was interesting. She focused on her body and felt the heaviness of her eyelids and a grumble in her stomach. She'd have to wait to confirm it but she expected she was just tired from the hours of work and strain of Amped Up.

That's why HP is an opt-in tracker. It's a mix of existing stats.

Tanya was almost salivating. She'd not been this into a game system since her Magicka era. She flipped between feeling glad and guilty about it; glad because this was her life and the new system that governed her life being good was positive, and guilty because this wasn't a game, not really.

Tanya tried out different options and different layouts until her Vitality was a bit higher again and standing up didn't turn her legs to jelly. She was happy with what she'd ended up with. It was similar to before but she'd condensed everything down, knowing she could open them to see them fully with just a look. It wasn't anything very special but she liked how she'd formatted the levels next to the titles in the list view so that it would be easy to use as she grew. Plus there was some useless stuff she could hide like species and age to fine-tune it further. In reality, there was no reason to keep her class up either, but every time she saw it she felt a spark of pride and joy in her chest and that was the sort of feeling she wanted to get as much of as possible. That all made room to include her hands Interface too. She'd have to condense it down at some point but as Assistant was her only Summon so far, she wanted to see it level in real time.

* * *

Information

Name: Tanya Angelo

Number: 10056

Class: Tattoo Summoner

Level: 2

Attributes

Strength: 7/9

Dexterity: 13/16

Vitality: 4/10

Concentration: 1/7

Will: 5/13

Abilities

More than Meets the Eye (2), The Power of Intention (1)

Achievements

Worthy, Unique Circumstances, Bite of the Street, Holler at the Gods

* * *

Tattoos Wielded

Name: Assistant

Wielder: Tanya Angelo

Type: Sentient

Level: 1

Attributes

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 15

Vitality: 10

Concentration: 6

Will: 17

Abilities

Mind Meld, Versatile

Boons

Mana Core, True Touch

* * *

Tanya pushed the menu away, pleased with her handiwork.

Her plan was to sort this until her Vitality was less scary before training her apprentice but her Concentration reminded her that she saw stat sheets whenever she closed her eyes and that it'd taken a suspiciously long time to remember the word apprentice. She decided it was best to do that tomorrow.

1/7 Concentration. Ouch.

She looked over at the hand. It was filing its nails with a nail file that it balanced impressively between two other fingers. Tanya didn't recognise it. She had no idea where they'd gotten it.

"Now we rest, tomorrow we train," she said to the hand.

It stopped filing and then scuttled to one side and then the other as if looking around to say 'Who me?'

She was slightly delirious in that late-night kid at a sleepover kind of way although when she glanced at the clock it wasn't even 9pm.

For now, she'd rest to get her Attributes up again. She doubted having Concentration that low was good for getting things done.

Her head was full of ideas for the next day, scattered and just too fast for her to grab onto them.

"You," she said to the hand, "Are gonna be me secret weapon."

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