Street Cultivation, page 18
She wasn't fading, she was on fire. Rick wasn't sure what to do, so he just sat down beside her and felt her lucrima. The sphere hadn't been consumed, but he felt an enormous ether void - that must be the flame burning hotter than usual. Since she didn't even seem to notice his presence, he tried to take her hand, slowly peeling her clenched fingers away.
Abruptly they snapped to grab his hand, gripping tightly. Melissa closed her eyes and made a soft painful sound, but he wasn't sure what to do. When he extended a stream of lucrim like usual, her spirit sucked it in like water on parched ground, so he extended more to her.
By the time it was over he felt exhausted and drained, but the fire seemed to be quenched. Melissa finally turned her head to focus on him, her entire body relaxing gradually. She let go of his hand and instead reached up to touch the side of his face.
"Thank you... I knew you'd... come for me..."
He held her hand in both of his own and maintained eye contact, keeping her from drifting away. "I'm glad you're alright now, but what's your condition?"
"It hurt a bit, but I actually made a shell... just a weirdly stiff one..." Melissa started to gesture to herself, then jumped a bit. Rick tracked her gaze and saw that she'd noticed Lisa standing in the doorway. The older woman was watching them with a smile on her face. "Oh... hi..."
"Hello, Melissa," Lisa said. "I've heard good things about you from your wonderful brother."
"Yup... really wonderful..."
Rick nodded between them. "Melissa, this is Lisa, the massage therapist I help train. She has lucrima techniques that should be helpful to you, if you still feel like you're carrying too much tension."
"Yeah, I am. That's just what I needed." Apparently feeling better with each passing moment, Melissa sat up and gave him a hug. "I can't believe you actually brought someone here. You're the best brother ever."
Smiling broadly, Lisa stepped backward from the room. "I'll give you two some time alone, okay? Melissa, I can give you a massage that should help loosen your lucrima and heal soul scarring, but it's not something to get into while you're feeling uneasy. It would probably be best after another round of exercising when everything is stiffest, if you're up to that."
"I'm feeling a lot better now thanks to my big brother! Just give me a few minutes to get back on my feet."
"Of course." Lisa backed out and closed the door.
Though for a moment Rick wondered what Lisa would think of their apartment, he soon turned back to Melissa and raised an eyebrow. "Okay, I get that you'd be grateful, but you are really playing this up. Are you sure you're okay?"
To his surprise, his sister giggled. "Oh, I was absolutely playing it up. Did you see how Lisa was looking at you?"
"What?" He just stared at her, prompting her to stifle another giggle and pat his shoulder.
"Big bro, guys who can be nurturing are really hot. Lisa's heart was just melting over there."
Though he felt immense relief to see his sister teasing him again, Rick just scowled and swatted her hand away. "Okay, I think you've had enough to drink."
"No, no!" She laughed and leapt to grab the bottle before he could take it. "I'm going to do just what she said and do the exercise again. In fact, I think with everything I've learned I can handle all the rest of this at once. If her massages can really do what she claims, then that should be perfect. It won't be exactly a permanent shell, but I'll be in better condition than I've ever been."
"Lisa is a professional with clients who have hundreds of thousands of lucrim. I'm sure she'll be able to help you, so if you're feeling up for it, we can try now."
Melissa's smile faded and she looked at him in concern. "That means she's really expensive, right? Can we afford this?"
"No, ah... she was insisting that we don't have to pay. I still want to, but..." He trailed off as Melissa smirked at him. "What is it now?"
"So she's offering to help you for free, huh? Yeah, I'm sure she's just an especially kindhearted individual with no interest in you whatsoever. Yup, that's definitely it..."
Rick rolled his eyes and stood up. "Okay, if you're healthy enough to mess with me, you're healthy enough to give this a try. Let me know if you need anything, otherwise I'll leave it to you."
As he walked out, he saw Melissa drinking everything remaining in the bottle of philosopher's elixir in one breath. That much high intensity elixir would have knocked him out, yet his sister was fine. When he felt her lucrima it didn't feel large or healthy, still a burning void within a shell, yet he had to admit that from the outside, she certainly seemed to be doing much better.
He and Lisa chatted for a bit, but soon Melissa called her in. They closed the door for the massage, leaving him abruptly alone.
When he started to sit down on the couch he practically fell into it, his body heavy. Perhaps it was the lucrim he'd poured into his sister, or perhaps his body was just exhausted from the stress. Though he couldn't entirely relax, he at least felt as though the worst was past.
With no current crisis looming, he was able to focus on his exercises again. They felt a bit like familiar friends now and it was good to focus on his own lucrima. His new core had grown, just as it was meant to, which was encouraging. When he began repeating Buffet's Buffer, he was surprised how much good he got out of it again. Apparently all his recent work had produced new gains to harvest.
Had the massage only lasted a short time, he would have been completely content. But as time extended on, less pleasant emotions began to creep in. He found himself thinking about how much he had spent recently and how much of his own lucrim he had drained. If he had invested those back into himself, how far could he have come?
Immediately Rick felt intense guilt and he tried to shove the thoughts from his mind, but he couldn't deny that he'd felt them. Maybe that made him a bad brother, but he was only human. Still, he was a human being who loved the only family he had left. It had been worth the sacrifice.
When the door opened he leapt to his feet, but Lisa raised a finger to her lips as she exited. He looked past her and saw Melissa curled up in bed, apparently sleeping peacefully. There was no shivering or draining and when he checked the medical app, it still displayed an ether void value, but also complete stability. That was probably their goal for now.
"Well, that was intense." Lisa spoke quietly and padded closer to him, having taken off her shoes at some point. "I feel incredibly drained, but it was worth it, just to experience a client like that. I had to stretch myself a bit, but I gave her what she needed to finish her work."
He wanted to reassure her again that they'd pay, but other issues came first. "So she's formed a stable shell?"
"It feels that way to me. The first one was dangerously brittle, but when I helped her relax she caught on quickly. I'm no expert on her medical condition, so I can't make any real promises, but I feel like she's in excellent shape."
"That's a huge relief. Thank you, Lisa."
"Oh, no problem." She dropped down heavily onto the couch and sighed heavily. "If you want to thank me, let me stay here tonight."
"Uh..."
Lisa went from tired and relaxed to flushing and waving her hands abruptly. "I didn't mean like that! I'm just really drained, and even if I restored my lucrim, I don't think I'm safe to fly. So let me crash at your place and in the morning I can check on your sister again. That's all I meant."
"Right." Rick nodded slowly. "Of course you can stay. We owe you a lot."
"It feels weird to be sitting while you're looming around. Sit down."
Since she seemed insistent, Rick sat down beside her. Lisa sat back against the couch, not quite touching him. She seemed far more relaxed than he would have been in a stranger's home. He wasn't sure what to say, so found himself drifting back to the subject of payment. "While I won't be able to pay your fee right away, I'm earning enough that I-"
"Oh, stop it." Lisa looked at him with a frown that slowly became a smile. "I'll be offended if you keep talking about payment like that. We've been sparring together long enough that we're friends, aren't we? Friends should be able to help each other."
"I... thank you, Lisa." He smiled back at her.
It was a warm, comfortable moment. But it was less warm because over Lisa's head, he could see into his sister's bedroom. No longer asleep, she had sat up to listen. When he met her gaze she wiggled her eyebrows at him. He wanted to groan, but that would just have led to uncomfortable questions with Lisa, so he kept his expression neutral.
"I admire you," Lisa said quietly. "I had two little brothers growing up and I don't think I could ever have taken care of them the way you take care of Melissa. Honestly, I'm not that close with my family at all. It's nice to see an older brother who cares so much..."
As she spoke, she leaned against him a little more, pushing against his arm. Rick resisted the urge to react at first, not sure if it would be the wrong move, but eventually decided he was being stubborn. He put an arm around her shoulders in a merely friendly way, supporting her while she rested. It was just companionable silence, that was all.
Over Lisa's head, Melissa made a circle with her thumb and index finger and then poked one finger from her other hand through it vigorously, grinning all the while.
Despite the circumstances, Rick grinned back and rolled his eyes at her. He wasn't sure if his sister was right or what he thought of such a development, but it didn't really matter. The fact that his sister was joking with him again was a significant sign that things were actually okay.
He felt certain that meant something new would go wrong shortly. But for a time, at least, he was at peace.
Chapter 24: Past the Storm
Rick woke up, groggy and disoriented, and for a moment was convinced that he'd been kidnapped and taken to some remote location. That would fit with how his life usually went.
Then his mind reengaged and he remembered that after some arguing, he'd slept on the floor the previous night. There were rumpled blankets on the couch from where Lisa had slept, though it seemed that she was already awake. Not in the living room with him, which meant that there weren't really very many options for where the other two could be.
When he got up, however, he found that neither of them were in the bedroom. Just when he started to worry, the two of them emerged from the bathroom.
Rick blinked at them a few times. "Did the two of you go to the bathroom together in the same house?"
"There's only one and we both had to get ready." Melissa stuck her tongue out at him, then turned to Lisa. "You wanna stay for breakfast? I'm pretty sure your only options are expired cereal and also expired cereal, but you can mix the two if you want a really crazy time."
Lisa smiled but shook her head. "Sorry, but I need to run to work."
"Oh, sorry, did we mess up your schedule?"
"No worries, I'm actually closer than I would be normally. I just had a lot of appointments scheduled for today." Lisa stepped up to Rick and stood awkwardly - for a moment it looked like she might shake his hand, which would have been incredibly uncomfortable, but she settled for just smiling at him. "I'm glad I could help the two of you, Rick... I really am. I'll see you at the gym, alright?"
He nodded. "Sure, see you next time."
With that she headed out of the apartment. After lingering on the walkway for a moment, glancing back, she stepped over the railing and lifted into the air. Instead of watching her go, Rick walked back inside and locked the door slowly, knowing what he was going to face when he turned around but delaying it while he could.
"I like her a lot." When he turned, Melissa snapped her fingers into double finger guns. "If you know what I mean."
"Oh, I wouldn't dream of standing between the two of you."
"Haha, you'd better not be dreaming of it, ya perv." Abruptly his sister's smirk dissolved into a softer smile. "Rick, for the first time in so long... I feel like I can beat this. I always thought I'd just need to take what I could from life before... well, the inevitable. But now..."
Melissa shook her head slowly and moved forward to embrace him. Rick wrapped his arms around her and held her for a while, like they hadn't since they'd been much younger. They'd spent a lot of time sitting side by side, but after making it through such an experience, they needed the connection.
When the moment had passed and she started to pull away, though, he couldn't resist. "It's still inevitable, you know. We're never going to be rich enough to become immortal, so medical condition or not, we're gonna die."
She grinned and punched him in the stomach ineffectually. "Way to ruin the moment, bro."
"Sorry, I guess that's your job."
"Seriously not messing around for a second, I do think Lisa is into you. She doesn't have as many social circles as she used to and her clients tend to view her as just a contractor. Plus she has creepy types, given her job. I'm not going to push, since it's your life, but I'm sure she thinks of you as a friend instead of just somebody she pays to beat up."
"Wait... did you get all of that from the very first time the two of you met? I guess that's the connection between women..."
Melissa rolled her eyes. "Or, you know, she spent several hours helping to save my life - that tends to break the ice a bit. I was nervous and so she started talking to calm me down, and we had a lot of time to talk."
"You don't have a lot of time right now, though - you need to go to school." When Melissa groaned he just kept talking over it. "I know that it seems ridiculous, but they were already pretty upset about yesterday. But it's just half a year now, then you'll graduate."
"Yeah, I know. Just a huge letdown after everything else." She went to get her things, but kept glancing back at him as she got ready. "There's something I wanted to ask you about before I go, just something odd with the solution we found. I considered asking Lisa, but I did just meet her. Besides, this feels..."
He stepped closer, concern on his face. "Are you alright?"
"I think I am, but that's why I wanted to check. See, you suggested that I was supposed to push the lucrim away from the fire where my soul should be."
"It's not that you don't have a soul, it's that the form isn't what you'd commonly expect. The exact terminology of 'soul' is a bit of a misnomer bec-"
"Aw, shut up, let me pretend to be a soulless abomination." Her smile faded quickly and she stopped gathering her books, focused on him. "The problem was that I couldn't push the lucrim. I saw what you wanted me to do, but it was just too difficult."
"Creating a lucrim shell with an empty space inside it is both complex and counter-intuitive, so I'm not surprised. But when I sense you... it feels like you created a shell anyway. What happened?"
"Well... I kept trying, which made me think a lot about the flame. I'd always held back since it was called a void, thinking that I'd fall into it, or that focusing on it would make things worse. But when I started focusing on the flame, it didn't feel so... so wrong. When I touched it, for a moment it didn't burn me... it got bigger."
Rick listened in silence, trying to keep his face neutral. He hadn't seen Melissa this serious in a long time, and her eyes wandered, never quite meeting his.
"So I... worked with that. I made the flame burn really hot for a while and just... burned the inside of the sphere until I'd hollowed out the entire thing. It did backfire when I went too far, and I'd have been in trouble if you hadn't come to help me. But..." She finally looked at him, playfulness gone to reveal vulnerability. "That wasn't wrong, was it? I didn't... break myself somehow?"
"No, I don't think so." He pulled her into another quick hug. "I'm not an expert, but what you've built feels stable. Just keep an eye on it and don't worry unless something changes drastically."
"Oh, that's good. Everyone was so happy and I was just sitting there, wondering if it was all ruined somehow. I mean, I'd prefer to know for sure, but just hearing you say that helps me feel better."
"Actually, I think I can do better than that." Rick pulled out his phone and navigated to the medical app. "If there's anything seriously wrong, this should give us an alert."
[Melissa Hunter
Lucrim Generation: 6514
Current Lucrim: 426
Ether Void: -100]
It was odd that the ether void value sat at exactly -100, but he decided not to focus on that to avoid making her nervous. Instead, he flipped to the in-depth tab that showed the value over time. "See? Last night when things stabilized, the void value jumped up - or down, I guess - to negative 100 and it's stayed there ever since."
"And that's good? You actually look at that app a lot more than I do."
"Yes, it's good. Normally even when you were doing fine there were constant little fluctuations. Earlier I spent a lot of time looking at them, seeing if there was any kind of pattern that we could use to predict when a fit would occur."
"Aww, you did? You never mentioned that!" Melissa smiled at him, some of her nervousness fading. He brushed aside the sentiment, now very focused on the numbers.
"It never did any good, but I can promise you we haven't seen stability like this before. Now, it's weird that it's at negative 100 instead of 0, but I think you don't have any reason to be nervous."
"That's a relief, it really is."
"But beyond that, your numbers are way different. Here, let me access your lucrima portfolio..."
[Name: Melissa Hunter
Ether Tier: N/A (minor)
Ether Score: N/A (minor)
Lucrim Generation: 6514
Current Lucrim: 426]
[Melissa Hunter's Lucrima Portfolio
Foundation: 1950 (Lv I)
Lucore Mass: 3464 (N/A)
Steel Lucore: 1100 (Lv I)
Total Lucrim: 6514]
He'd seen it before, but hadn't quite believed it until he saw her full portfolio. It was natural that his sister would have increased her generation rate given the high quality philosopher's elixir she'd been drinking, but this was explosive growth. That could only mean one thing.
"You've developed a mature lucrima soul, sis. You're not a minor anymore."
