The clock tower was supposed to be open to the public, but the current mayor has continued to delay the public opening, so I feel a little bit better about my plan.

  Taking a furtive look around to see if there’s anyone looking at me, I quickly activate my power and drop through the floor to some kind of underground maintenance room. At least that’s what I think it is?

  Would it be better if I just walk through the front door? Are there more cameras at the ordinary entrance or down here?

  This way makes me feel way cooler.

  Sunglasses off, I stare up at the ceiling. “Now let’s see.” Gazing off into nothingness, I do the best I can to use my mind map to come up with a path upward.

  Nope, not again. I’m not going to say that again, and ?hopefully, no chance that anybody can quote me on that.

  I go back to doing my mental mapping. Even with my mental map expanding as I’ve adjusted to my abilities, it does not bring me nearly as far as I want it to.

  But I know how to go further in the underground part of the area without accidentally getting into water.

  Stepping through a nearby wall, I focus on the new information stepping into my range. I’m looking for a way to go up as high as possible.

  Ideally, I can go all the way to the top.

  Not including the elevator.

  I want to parkour ninja warrior my way up to the top somehow.

  For mostly the coolness factor.

  A few wall-walking adventures later, I’m pretty sure I have found a way up that should bring me inside the clock tower.

  I don’t think I can clear the distance in a single leap, but there’s some open space I can use to pull myself up.

  I’m feeling a lot better about trying this, with all of my partial phasing practice. And I only need to focus on partially phasing, unlike my lab escape attempt so long ago.

  Breathing a few times in quick succession to psyche myself ?up, I take a half step before leaping up, solidifying an arm to latch onto something as the bottom half of my body dangles below.

  Thanking the super power god's above for the increase in upper body strength I slowly begin making my way up solidifying the parts of me to get hand and foot holds while I keep most of myself phased aiming for a space where I should be able to unphase fully.

  Upon getting to the spot, I manage to fully solidify and breathe a sigh of relief.

  I have an impending sense of danger when I stay inside something for too long while phased.

  The between-wall crawlspace isn’t nearly as fun as I thought it was going to be. I thought this was going to be a spy movie type thing, dodging and weaving between gears.

  At the moment I’m just sort of existing in this crawlspace.

  What’s the point of sneaking in like this as if I’m some kind of super spy if I don’t do at least something cool?

  Maybe there can be a pendulum to swing across.

  Pushing off gently because I really don’t want to hurt the building by pushing off of something too hard.

  Gently touching down in the bathroom, I glance around. My eyes aren’t any better in here than they were inside the wall.

  Out of curiosity, I try flipping the light switch to see the lights flicker to life, almost blinding me.

  Though I didn’t think people were doing anything in this building, ?why would they still have electricity?

  I turn the lights off though, just because I don’t want to accidentally up their electricity bill for no reason.

  Free from the bathroom, I explore, mapping the place.

  The aesthetic of this whole place is steampunk with all the fancy cogs and gears, at least on the first floor.

  Within the walls, I feel pipes moving water and air throughout the building to various purposes.

  Walking through a couple more walls, I put together a picture of the next floor.

  Willing to at least postpone my goals of parkour clockwork ninja warrior, I walk through another door before making my way up the stairs.

  I really should’ve looked up the buildings plans before coming here.

  From the top, I’ll be able to see the entire city. That means I have a lot of stairs to walk up, don’t I?

  I’ll check each floor to see if there’s a more fun path that I can discover, but I’m willing to go through the easily accessible section before using my ability to move on.

  The next two floors are more of the same, but behind the door to the fourth floor, I can feel a myriad of things moving about.

  Since this is a normal pair of stairs, what's on the other side shouldn't be dangerous.

  Mentally adding meditation to my list of exercises to grow my powers, I concentrate on pushing my awareness out.

  Confusion about how my mind map works aside, I am now in a place that's significantly more interesting to move around as a phaser, time to put the proverbial money where my mouth is.

  “Don't accidentally hold on to something that's spinning really fast or could crush me. I still don't know how fast I can heal, but I'm in no hurry to find out.” I say, phasing most of my body except my feet. And after a second of consideration, my hands go solid as well.

  Safe from any swinging traps aimed at my center of mass, I scamper my way up the scaffolding using the maintenance ladders

  I launch myself off ?the ladder, phasing fully as I pass through some pipe before solidifying enough of my body to grab onto the next ladder.

  My head jerks around wildly as I look around for my next acrobatic attempt. There’s so many fun options if I can figure it out.

  Ten feet to my left over there is a pipe that I could land on or use as a stepping stone if I could get through some of the gears.

  A proper safe space is up to my right in the form of a catwalk people use to check what feel to be gauges up there.

  Below me is a slowly spinning gear that’s grinding against a bunch of equally slow gears, but I’m going to presume just because it’s going slow does not mean safe to screw up on.

  Not sure if having my body ?mostly phased works against my ability to launch myself, I solidify fully.

  On my next jump, I’ll try being almost entirely phased on takeoff to see if there’s any noticeable difference for me.

  I throw myself to the left, immediately phasing all of my body as I coast through both air and what I think is metal.

  Ever thankful for my augmented strength and reflexes, I’m not going to just catch myself with my hands as I twist through the air enough to slam stomach first into the pipe folding around it as if it’s my lifeline.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  As I realize how close my head is to something spinning, I phase more of my body as I pull myself to my feet, balancing on top of the beam relatively effortlessly.

  To be fair, it is quite large. I can fit my feet on it comfortably, but it is still a circular object that normal people won’t find easy to stand on.

  The hypothesis I’m forming is that perfect awareness of my relative position to everything else in conjunction with all the physical bonuses I have is increasing my coordination way faster than my other skills.

  With my new position, new paths upwards open up, but more than that, they feel significantly more attainable for me.

  There’s a pulley going up though I don’t know if I want to take that ride just yet.

  I can leap to another pipe and survey from there.

  I could try to ride up that slow-moving gear.

  There’s another ladder that I could jump for. The ladder network ?here is almost more confusing than the actual system.

  Though besides looking cool, I don’t know what the system is supposed to do.

  A small, boxy-looking thing finally enters my detection range on the pulley and that I can either hold on to or stand on.

  At the speed it’s going, I have three seconds before it’s going to get here.

  On one, I take ?a breath, trying to calm my slamming heartbeat.

  And on two I bend slightly, hoping to put some more spring in my step because I definitely do not want to undershoot this.

  Three!

  I leap through the air, phasing all of my body except my hands, which I move around to avoid colliding with anything.

  As I soar through the air, I make an effort to solidify my feet, angling them to land on the box.

  Which was great up until I flew past it, having overestimated just how much oomph I was putting into my jump.

  I curse as I swing my arms around my fingers, just barely managing to grip ?the pulley itself.

  Too late to worry about rope burns or cutting myself on the chain, I grip as tightly as possible, swinging around until I can get my second hand on it.

  On the upside of all of this, I’m going up, so now I need to find somewhere to swing too quickly before I get taken somewhere where my hands can’t stay on the rope and I’m stuck in freefall.

  Gears spinning so fast they’re a blur? Negative.

  Network of pipes where I would have seven in me to stand on one of them? Not a chance.

  Catwalk that’s fifteen feet away from me? I don’t know if I can go that far, but it’s looking like the primary option.

  Building up momentum, I zero my focus on the catwalk. I don’t know if I can take the time to find a perfect option, so I have to take the option that I have in front of me.

  I’ve got this.

  Swinging a few times to build up momentum I hurl myself forward arcing through the air glad that I at least have the foresight to not let go until I’m above the catwalk and I don’t have to build up nearly as much horizontal momentum and gravity can help me out.

  The rattling of the catwalk as I slam into it hip first isn’t ideal, but it stops soon enough, hopefully meaning I haven’t broken anything.

  The more of this stuff I do, the more I’m positive that I need to put parkour lessons on the things I need to do.

  Maybe I can take a stunt actor class to see how they do all of that ridiculous stuff when they don’t have a pulley system to help them.

  Now sitting, I look at my hands, trying to see if they're torn up at all.

  My hands sting something fierce, but I don’t feel any blood, and while it hurts to flex my hands or make a fist, there’s nothing that screams in pain.

  Tapping my hip, I wince in pain. It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but I’ve been landing on my side a lot, and it’s starting to show.

  A few minutes just sitting there, letting the pain go from a new and sharp reminder of my questionable decision-making process to a dull throbbing ache.

  Now feeling cognizant of what’s going on around me, I take a moment to check with my map to see if there’s anything interesting, and the one that catches my eye is the break room.

  I take the normal route through the catwalk to the door. Checking to see if it’s locked, I’m a little surprised to find that it opens. Maybe whoever came in here last didn’t lock it?

  I mean, I get it. The only people that would know how to get here are people who know how to navigate the scaffolding maze or people like me who can cheat.

  Coughing slightly to help get the dust out of my lungs, I hold my breath as I flick the light switch on, bathing the room in fluorescent light.

  Marveling at being able to use my normal eyes, I move to the faucet, checking to see if it has clean water, or any water attached to it.

  After spitting angrily for a little bit, what I think is clean running water flows out, beginning a valiant battle to clean the dust in the sink.

  I pause its fight to use it to clean off a plastic cup that had been hiding in the cupboard.

  I lean on the counter before realizing just how dirty the thing is, and I take some time to wipe down the counter.

  If I start making regular visits to this place, I’m going to bring a super genius-made Roomba so that it can fight these battles for me.

  Peeling off the sunglasses, I use my actual eyes to take a glance at my injuries. As cool as the mind map is, there’s nothing that can compete with using my normal senses. At least for now.

  While my hands are a little red, there’s no ripped or peeling skin, which is ideal. Though the bruises from the past few power outings are still there but they’re healing well.

  And my hip reveals a not exactly pleased color, with my skin already beginning to turn an ugly shade of purple.

  Unable to stop myself from being at least a little stupid, I poke my injury a few times before I can finally sink it into my thick skull that yes; I am actually injured and no poking it will not make it go away any faster.

  I heal faster than a normal person, but I’m nothing like some supers.

  Twisting around to try and do some stretches I’ve seen online. I’m pretty sure I’m good to keep going while I ache and direct contact hurts. Nothing feels so bad that I should go home and rest a bit.

  Though I’m going to be a bit safer about phasing through and jumping around the place.

  The network of ladders and walkways is a maze in its own right, so I can call it training on my mind map as I try to trace the right way easier.

  After finishing my glass of water, I place the cup back before slipping on the sunglasses once more.

  Making sure that I haven’t left anything behind, I turn the light off before slipping back into the mayhem, putting a hand back to slow the door down enough so that it gently clicks shut instead of slamming shut.

  Taking twenty seconds to trace out as much of the room as I can with my mind, I set off feeling at least eighty percent confident that I know how to get to the highest point.

  Turns out it was not a way to the top but a dead end, but I got here without having to backtrack at all.

  I am pretty sure that I can figure out how I want to get up.

  It takes me roughly three tries before I get up to the next floor. Well, it could be several floors, I guess, but I am out of that chaos room full of moving bits.

  I’m not going to use the elevator. I don’t know why I am so against using the elevator, but I do not want to, so I’m going to continue going up even without the elevator.

  I can’t find any particularly interesting ways up besides the elevator or the stairs, though with my moral issue with using the elevator, ?that means I’m going to take the stairs.

  One set of stairs later, I think I’m on a maintenance floor. There’s lots of levers and switches that are tempting, but I refrain from pulling any.

  No accidentally breaking anything.

  Outside the ladder up into the unknown, there’s not much else to see. Another reminder I need to improve my senses.

  At the top of the ladder is a massive room, perfect for superhero operations. Casting my mental net out further, it reveals even more to me.

  Multiple rooms, bathrooms, a break room, and even a few easily convertible living spaces.

  As I spin around it hits me. This entire place was designed to have a living space at the top of the clock tower.

  A large one to boot.

  There are even a few aerial entrances, not that you could land a plane up here. It would only work if someone could fly.

  Whoever built this place, built it specifically for supers to have a good base of operations.

  If that was the case, was it wrong of me to take it?

  I spent nearly half an hour running through the space, taking everything in. It would be perfect, even if I had nothing to put in here.

  There was also the fact I wasn’t going to be a hero. Once I was done using this place I would tell Travis.

  Back to exploring.

  As I phase through my final barrier, I clamber up onto the roof.

  Looking out, I finally understand the meaning of my breath being taken from me. From this high up, I can see nearly everything in the city. There’s no tinted glass blocking my view.

  At least there’s nothing blocking my view once I take my sunglasses off.

  Now free, I gently set myself down on the roof, sitting down to look out at everything.

  From the top of the clock-tower the city looks so much bigger than I could imagine.

  The idea that there’s so many people in this city is ridiculous.

  And the part that’s bothering me the most is that somewhere here there’s this group of kidnappers going around taking people and turning them into supers for what?

  I don’t know if I want to do this whole hero thing, but I will stop them.

  As soon as I feel ready with my skills, I’m going to scout out their base and give all of that information to Amelia.

  I don’t know what level of hand to hand ability I need to feel confident in my scouting, but I want to be able to fight long enough to escape. I should reach that point soon, right?

  I drop down back into the grand foyer of my temporary super base.

  All the glass that allows me to watch the gears whir as the water takes them whichever way.

  You also have an amazing view.

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