TWLA 06

"This is never ending," Jeremy muttered to himself as he stripped his companions and used their suits for modesty cover.

With all the know-how he possessed, he put the first aid kit through its paces. His job was actually made a bit harder by the small pieces of fix stone stuck here and there. Where those pieces were too close to an antler splinter, it was healing wounds closed. It was an interesting revelation that he used to its full advantage.

What frustrated him was how his own powers paled in comparison to the magic stones that had been transformed from his flare out. Still, knowing that his power had a predatory relationship with the corrupted energy was invaluable. He also learned that he wasn't actually a magical healer. That much was true despite it appearing so.

His power consumed and pacified the corruption. It 'fixed' things made wrong by it in the process. Healing and repairing things was a byproduct of the primary effect if it took place near or in a wound. Considering how his head had been 'fixed' as well, his power probably predated on and restored any kind of supernatural twisting. He chuckled at a stray thought inspired by video games. He was like that one hard to find NPC that could turn cursed items into the best ones in the game for a 'small fee'.

Working from largest problems to smallest as quickly as he could, he was switching between the two of them fairly frequently. It prickled his pride a little that he wasn't even as 'sporty' as Rain Maker but he had just came off the tail end of a year of hardcore textbook thumping. His light manual labor at the grocery store hadn't made up for dropping track and field. And it made him a little uncomfortable to realize he might have been hitting the sweets a little too hard on top.

He muttered, "I needed a little extra caffeine and sugar to get me through the crunch, alright. It's hard to stay ultra focused on boring stuff like Social Studies and History...Math... Some of the History stuff wasn't actually that boring."

Lost in contemplating what it would take to put on himself what they already had, he got caught ogling by the faster recovering King again.

Following Jeremy's eyes to where they were admiring Rain Maker's flat and tight stomach, King said with an unseen devilish smirk, "You can touch if you want. Practice using your senses across the surface. You might learn something useful."

Rising heat to his face vanished in the wake of being given permission to do something that he'd wanted to try since Rain Maker had done it to him to show him how to close and open his channels. Turning to King with a guileless face, he placed a hand near where a stray piece of shrapnel had stuck in King's flank. He wasn't sure if he had gotten the whole thing out or not and thought that would be a good place to start.

Somewhere between amused and annoyed, King said, "Why the hell are you touching me?"

Plowing onward Jeremy replied, "Well, I didn't think you would be a pervert who would give me permission to touch an unconscious girl. Who was I supposed to think you were giving me permission to touch, myself? Besides, I don't know if I got everything out of this spot. It healed over a little too fast for me to be sure."

With a muttered growl about breaking fingers if they roamed to places they weren't welcomed, King laid back down with a clenched jaw. Prodding someone else with supernatural senses hadn't came as easy to him as trance had. But after only a small handful of hissed warnings and a knot raising knuckle to his head, Jeremy finally got the hang of using just enough force to see past without actually going into the springy envelope of energy that surrounded King.

There was a small splinter of antler still under the skin but it was deep enough that a cut to get it wasn't going to be fun or pretty. After explaining the situation, the agitated tyrant gave him permission to try dissolving it with power instead. That part turned out to be easy but only because King knew he was doing it and didn't fight the invasion.

What to do with the finely busted and pacified pieces of corruption filled antler seemed pretty elementary to Jeremy. There was plenty of partially or poorly recovered injuries throughout King's body. Some were from the driven out black stuff and some was from shrapnel but there were older and deeper bits too. Jeremy couldn't feel them clearly through the surface of King's aura or with his current expertise but he didn't need to. Whether instinct or biology, the tyrant's body, primal mind and spiritual consciousness knew what needed fixing.

With a shuddering gasp, Jeremy felt sudden resistance as King growled ominously, "What are you doing now?"

"Well, it would take just as much effort to remove it as it would to use it for something. Why not stitch up the little holes and smooth over some rough spots with it? I mean, if it's not a problem," he replied.

He knew when King accepted, even before getting a dire warning of painful consequences for screwing up. The grip holding back the movement of his power relaxed and he went back to work. As his power went deeper, more small pockets of corruption were found which led to more spreading 'wellness'.

Fear of retribution and knowledge of how deep healing felt had him wanting it to not hurt and be as beneficial to his 'patient' as possible. His talent had answers for that too. He wasn't consciously aware of how that further set the way his talent worked and how that affected what converted corruption turned into to fix things.

The moment he started feeling 'wrongness' building within himself, he was snapped from focus. A little light headed and thirsty, James sat back and looked to the tyrant for a verdict.

A slack jawed and slightly blissed out King seemed to recover some composure after a few breaths and said, "That didn't suck."

At some point during the therapy session, Rain Maker had woke up and was looking at her leader in concern. "Blue fish. Hooked bait or cake?"

King, who was rinsing himself off at the pool before donning a fresh frog suit, immediately sat down and light tranced for a little bit. "Red fish. Cake... German chocolate cake and an ice cold drink in a hot bath and a happy ending massage all rolled up in one. Habit forming but not addictive or mind controlling."

Her concern swiveled to Jeremy. "You passed the first nixing threshold and earned a stigma for that. Since you are the way you are, that's probably not a big deal. But, be more careful."

Splashing some conjured water on her hands, she approached him and ran her senses over his face and neck along with her wet hands.

Noting his confusion, she said, "We have have some coded messages we use. When we know you better, we'll teach them to you... First threshold is the forming of a stigma, a non-human mark. For most, it's something that's permanent. I can already see signs of it receding but there will be a tell-tell that it was there.

"For you, it was your eyes. They were monochrome fuzzy like TV static. The edges will probably always stay a little fuzzy and broken up," she added.

Edgy and a little panicked, he tried to fix them but it just made his eyes ache. Using his powers in any way made the little dots move around. They even floated and danced a little past the surface of his eyes in the air. In that state, his black and white vision would strengthen and there was a shadowy backdrop, a warped echo of an image, to everything that hurt his head to focus on.

"No use sitting around, petting each other's cats. The remaining stones changed by Blue Jay's flare out are all burning out. This little pit's going to turn into a twist pocket soon. Get everything together. We're heading to base," King said.

While Jeremy rushed around with his companions to gather everything up, he could feel the return of the corruption filtering into the geode, attaching to the bits and pieces of oily colored magic stones still partially or fully embedded around them. Soon enough, it would start emitting a pressure that would push the corruption into them, even with their channels closed. It really wasn't safe to stay any longer.

A handful of 'short times' later, they were getting close to base. The plateau Jeremy had seen in the distance seemed like a logical choice for one and he hadn't been wrong. The thing was, as they got closer, he could see that the plateau was a lot bigger than it looked in the beginning. Without help, it would have taken a 'long time' to find the hidden entrance to the cavern trail that led to the base.

"Should we take the absence of nixed as a good or bad sign, King?" Rainmaker asked.

The tyrant looked like he was about to laugh before his face grew grim. "Since when is anything out of expectation, good? There's a possibility that a sweeper team cleared the way. But, how long's it been since you've seen a decent one of those?"

She replied downheartedly, "Not since you nixed. There's been a few that could get an objective group from point A to B and back with a decent success rate but no one wanted to fight more than they had to."

"Then we're dealing with a dead, deserted or dank base," King muttered.

Jeremy asked her, "What's a dank base?"

"An intelligent nixed or a nightmare in charge. It never lasts that long. Most of the base will die or nix out while the operators help us take control again," she said, the haunted look coming back.

Disturbed, he asked, "Why would they let it happen in the first place?"

"Better some than all... When the nightmare Terzek was in charge, it was one of the most productive times for them. If that thing hadn't tried to cross over to Earth, it might still be in control... Please, I know you're curious but I don't like talking about that time," she said.

He swallowed forming questions back down and let it be. He didn't have much of a clue what a creature called a nightmare might be but it didn't sound good. He decided to wait until there was a good moment and ask King to help him flesh out the mental 'monster manual' and basic survival stuff. It sounded like the kind of questions least likely to annoy the guy.

Hit with a prickling feeling of building wrongness, he called out, "Whatever fish! Cover your mouths. We're breathing something bad in."