Spirit 1.5
Amy woke up feeling utterly refreshed. As soon as she opened her eyes, she was ready to get out of the bed and face the new day. She sat up and brushed the hair out of her face.
Her eyes blinked a few times. Her alertness was unusual, she decided. It was like she just experienced the best night of sleep she'd ever had.
She turned and let her legs off the side of the bed, reaching out for her handheld mirror on her nightstand.
Then she noticed a folded piece of paper sticking out of the first drawer.
She thought back and didn't remember putting it there. Did Victoria leave a note for her, she wondered. But she couldn't think of any reason her sister wouldn't have simply told her last night. It wasn't her style to leave notes.
She deftly took the note and unfolded it.
As promised, I have healed you as you have healed me. You saved my life, and this little bit cannot possibly repay what you have done for me, so I remain in your debt. Please take care to sleep on a more regular schedule, and consider finding time to relax. You were overstressed and sleep-deprived, creating imbalances in your body which might have led to much more serious health complications over time. I restored the balance of yin and yang in your qi but the imbalance will return if you maintain your current habits. If you are in need of further assistance at any time, please call me at ###-###-####. This is my home phone number, so you can leave a message if I don't pick up. When I get a cell, I will notify you immediately.
—Taylor
Amy's eyes widened upon reading the note. She quickly shoved the note deep into her drawer.
So that was why she felt so much better this morning. She took the mirror and looked at herself closely. The bags under her eyes were gone, and her skin looked noticeably brighter.
She put the mirror down and stared at her drawer containing the note.
At first she didn't know how to feel about it. Most patients she healed never really gave anything back to her in exchange. Some gave her cards, or tokens of appreciation, but none had given her anything of actual substance until now.
But she also never consented to being healed. Was it even just healing, or something altogether more sinister? Sometimes she was really frustrated with her patients that refused to let her heal them, especially that one patient who threatened to sue before she started to always ask for consent. But now that she was the one being healed, she better understood how they felt.
She shuddered and blushed, thinking of what might have been done to her while she slept.
'But I kind of did give consent, didn't I? She told me she would heal me and I nodded. I didn't exactly say no…'
She didn't expect the girl to come in the middle of the night to heal her while she wasn't conscious, when she didn't even leave any contact information.
As she got up to do her morning routine before school, she had only one thought on her mind.
'Does this mean I have a stalker?'
O O O
"Are you alright, Ames? You've been awfully quiet today. More so than usual, I mean," said Vicky shortly after they landed in front of the school.
"Y-yeah, I'm fine. Nothing wrong at all," Amy said quickly, looking away from Vicky's inquiring eyes.
"Huh. That's a mighty suspicious answer, you know?" Vicky stepped around to face her.
"No, no, I'm really fine. More than fine, actually. I feel great!" Amy said, smiling awkwardly.
"You're hiding something…"
Amy sighed. "Vicky, please…" She kept walking forward.
"Well, I'll admit, you do look great today. Happier, too. Must be something good then!" Vicky followed after and quickly got back beside her. "Let me guess, you met someone? A boy you actually like?"
"Wh-what? No way!" Amy's panicked expression merely served to confirm Victoria's thoughts.
"Oh Ames, I'm so happy for you! It's about time!" Vicky gave Amy a hug. "Guess I can cancel the double date tomorrow."
Victoria was ignorant of the rapid thoughts that flew through Amy's mind. The hug was raising all sorts of emotions that Amy didn't know how to handle. It felt wonderful, but Amy knew that Vicky didn't feel the same way about her. She had a boyfriend, after all.
Amy was torn between her guilt for thinking her incestuous thoughts, and the need to correct Victoria's misunderstanding. There was nobody else in Amy's heart. A girl she just met a few days ago couldn't possibly replace her feelings for Victoria.
"It's really not like that…"
Heedless of Amy's protests, Vicky continued after releasing the hug. "Actually, why don't you bring him along? I'll tell Dean not to bring the other guy, but we can still have a double date! I'd love to know who managed to get your attention, after all those guys you rejected."
"No, I can't! We aren't dating!" Amy immediately replied, then immediately regretted it.
Victoria's head flashed around and there was a glint in her eyes that said 'I got you!'
"I knew it! You really did meet someone!" She exclaimed victoriously. "So tell me, who is it?"
"Nope, no way! You're misunderstanding!" Amy clamped down and quickly rushed off.
"Ames!" Victoria groaned. "Come on! You can tell me!"
"Not a chance!"
O O O
Taylor skulked in the shadows and observed the person of interest.
The target of her observations made her way through the crowds of students and sat down in a classroom.
Taylor hid atop a tree in the courtyard, watching closely for potential threats.
It was boring, mind-numbing work, but she had little else to do at the moment, and she was used such things. There were not likely to be any real threats in the school, but she couldn't make much progress with cultivation for a short period after breaking through to a new stage.
It took a bit of time for her body to fully stabilize in the new stage, so it was not efficient to do heavy training for a few days.
Instead, she trained her spirit sense. While the spirit sense grew alongside her base cultivation, it was also possible to train it separately.
For example, while she had a primary sense range of around two hundred meters in radius and a secondary range of two kilometers, that didn't mean she had total clairvoyance over the area. Far from it, in fact.
It just meant that she could attempt to sense other qi and spiritual signatures within those ranges, and be aware of significant shifts and movements.
There were easily over a thousand students in the school, and she did not have the capability to individually perceive them all simultaneously even within her primary range, or even count the total number of complex lifeforms. Currently she could only directly sense the signatures of those marked, like Panacea. Everyone else in her primary range she had to focus in on to clearly distinguish from one another, while in her secondary range she couldn't clearly distinguish individuals from one another at all. She also couldn't perceive inanimate objects yet except walls and floors by extrapolation.
Her sense focus took time and was limited in quantity, which is what she was training in.
Over the next few hours, she eventually determined several other abnormally strong qi signatures within the student body. She counted at least five notable signatures besides Panacea, and including Panacea's sister whom she saw flying Panacea to the school. It was still possible that there were more she failed to detect.
She mentally went through the list of Wards she was aware of. Rumors were that the Wards all attended Arcadia. There were five Wards of the appropriate age, so the number of notable qi signatures, after removing Glory Girl from the count, didn't match the number of Wards. There were a few different possibilities then.
The first was simply that stronger qi signatures didn't necessarily imply that they were capes or that capes necessarily had stronger qi signatures than usual.
The second was that not all the Wards were in Arcadia as the rumors said.
The third was that she simply didn't find all the signatures yet.
It mattered little regardless, however. She did not particularly care to identify the Wards or get involved with them. Her only aim was to change her fate before time ran out. This was little more than a training exercise for her to develop her spirit sense and better understand the nature of cape powers.
The rest of the school day passed peacefully as Taylor continued her spirit sense. She did not find any more strong qi signatures within the school.
O O O
Taylor watched from a nearby rooftop as Panacea exited the school with her sister and a boy in tow. The boy was one of the five notable qi signatures Taylor detected earlier.
She observed closely and saw that Panacea appeared unhappy. Her qi had signs of imbalance again. How could it have changed so soon?
As the three walked away, Taylor followed closely behind them, but always staying out of sight.
As she continued to observe, she noticed the glares that Panacea occasionally gave that boy whenever he wasn't looking.
After about ten minutes of walking, the three of them walked into an alleyway with a dead end and turned around.
"Come out. We know you're there," the boy called out.
Taylor stayed hidden and didn't react.
"Look, you've been following us since school was over. I don't know why, but whatever it is you want from us, I think we can try to resolve things peacefully. Let's just talk face to face, alright?"
Experienced in such matters, Taylor still didn't move. He might have been bluffing still, or there might actually have been somebody else also following them with powers that hid them from Taylor's spirit sense somehow.
"We know you're hiding on the rooftop to our left. So are you going to come out, or do we need to come to you? You do realize that Glory Girl here can just fly up to you, right?"
So it was her they detected after all. That was intriguing to her. She had thought herself well hidden, perhaps not with any advanced stealth techniques active, but still good enough that a mere mortal couldn't have noticed without significant training in counter-tracking.
She acknowledged his skills mentally and decided to show herself.
O O O
The whole day had been very stressful for Amy. Victoria just wouldn't stop pestering her about who had supposedly captured her heart. There was nothing to reveal, because Amy didn't like anybody but Victoria!
However, Victoria didn't relent and even got her boyfriend Dean to try to figure things out. Dean, always acting like a gentleman, naturally rebuffed Victoria's attempts and tried to assure Amy that he would not pry into her secrets. Amy hated how fake he was. He could read her like an open book with his emotion reading power, so what need did he have to pry?
Eventually school was over and Victoria forced her to hang out with her and Dean, probably in the hopes of learning more about the mysterious person who they believed Amy was smitten with.
As much as she didn't want to be around Dean, she couldn't deny a request from her sister to hang out. At least she could keep an eye on Dean and make him uncomfortable with doing anything overly affectionate with Victoria. She knew that Dean knew about her intense dislike of him and his status as Victoria's boyfriend.
Then Dean suddenly whispered to them that they were being followed. That immediately made her very concerned, a concern that her sister clearly shared, judging by the momentary flaring of her aura.
Years ago, when New Wave had went public with their identities, one of their members was attacked in her civilian identity and killed.
That assailant was executed by the E88, whom the assailant had hoped the killing would impress. After that, there were no more attempts to attack them in their civilian identity, but the possibility of a repeat incident couldn't be ruled out.
There was also the possibility of a villain that was desperate to get Panacea's healing services and couldn't go to her when she volunteered her services at the hospital.
Either way, there would probably be a fight, and Dean, being in his civilian identity, wouldn't be able to help without exposing his own cape identity.
"We know you're hiding on the rooftop to our left. So are you going to come out, or do we need to come to you? You do realize that Glory Girl here can just fly up to you, right?" Dean called out one last time.
The chance of a fight breaking out was very high. She saw her sister's fists clenched and ready to rocket up onto the roof.
Then a shadow leaped over the roof and bounced off the opposing wall before landing with a crouch in front of them.
Amy's mouth fell open, her eyes widened in shock.
"Taylor?!" She exclaimed.
Dean and Victoria both looked back at Amy. "You know her?" They asked in unison.
"Hello, Amy." Taylor stood straight and nodded to her neutrally.
"Why are you—are you actually stalking me?" Amy asked with outrage as she stepped forward.
Victoria's aura flared as she turned back to Taylor aggressively.
"You've been stalking my sister?" She demanded.
Taylor's eyes shifted to Victoria immediately.
"Cease your attempts at attacking my mind, mortal. Were you not the sister of my saviour, I would consider slaying you for this insult," Taylor ordered.
"Mortal? The hell do you think you are?" Victora's aura rose even higher while she cracked her fist against her palm in a threatening move.
"Vicky, your aura!" Dean whispered loudly. "You can't use it on a civilian like this! She has no mask on!"
"She's clearly a cape if she can resist it!" Victoria retorted, floating up into the air.
"Don't confuse me with your lot. You may have powers beyond regular humans, but you are still mortals with no foundation in the Dao. This is your last warning. Cease at once, or I will stop you myself," Taylor ordered again, expression unchanging.
"Damn, you're just asking for a beat down! Here's a warning of my own! Stay the hell away from my sister or I'll make you regret it! Now go away before I make you!"
Taylor frowned. "So be it. I warned you."
O O O
(tho its kinda bad how spoilery is sometimes..)
