Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

Her entire foray didn't take more than a couple of hours, but by the time she returned to her apartment, Captain Hays still had not replied. She sent the same message to the HAMA club captain, Walter Richards and was now waiting for a reply.

In the meantime, she hurried to Scarlett's side, worried that something might have gone wrong. When she opened the bedroom door, she sighed in relief to find her friend still out of it. Irrational fear didn't succumb to logic after all. But the problem was that she had no idea how the parasitic worm would react. She used her Mien to put Scarlett to sleep, but she wondered, belatedly and when she was already halfway to Brookshield, that the worm might not have been affected by her influence. Looking at it now, she had been correct. But thankfully, with the rest of Scarlett unconscious, it wasn't able to do anything.

Yuriko penetrated her Anima perception into Scarlett. She tuned her Invisible Edge to affect only the worm's Anima, then formed the Edge right inside the woman's brain. A careful incision and the worm's Anima was cut away. Yuriko used her own Anima to pull the excised stuff out of Scarlett, then snuffed it with Radiance. But the job wasn't quite done yet.

There was a hole in Scarlett's Anima the width of her fingernail, right on her brain. As with the muggers, the flesh around the hole would start to weaken, and considering this was the bit of her that wasn't quite as replaceable as a finger, Yuriko couldn't just leave it be. Nor did she plan to, anyway.

She sat in a meditative pose, and in perfect synchronisation with her true body, launched herself into the dreamscape. Squeezing Quintessence out of the threads took both true body and incarnation, since she couldn't reach the threads with just one body otherwise. It wasn't much of a coincidence that there was enough Quintessence to form a droplet of Ambrosia. She just didn't drain the threads completely now. It had come to the point that the number of threads surrounding her dreamscape body had exceeded the point where she could create a droplet every other day, but that didn't mean she did so on that schedule. The threads could hold more than the minimum needed to squeeze out a drop, and she wasn't in the habit of draining the threads every chance she got. Mostly for situations like this when her incarnation body might need Ambrosia.

She processed the Quintessence into Ambrosia, and then her incarnation body took hold of it, enfolded it into her Anima, and returned to the material plane. The droplet was isolated within her Anima, then inserted into Scarlett's head. Yuriko released the droplet into the gap, but allowed it to brush against Scarlett's Anima first, which stained the Ambrosia with the smol girl's colours. She also infused the droplet with the need to regenerate Scarlett as well as make her tougher to hurt.

The Ambrosia melded with Scarlett's Anima seamlessly and the gap closed. Yuriko inspected Scar's brain and heaved a sigh of relief to find that there were no detrimental effects. At least physically. She didn't know what changes may have already occurred within the girl's psyche. Worse, she wasn't sure if Scarlett was the only one infected. From the lack of response from the two captains…she worried.

What could she do, though? She didn't know their addresses. She might wrangle something from the school registry…actually, she could find their address there! The problem was that she only had another droplet of Ambrosia to spare. So who would she help?

"Hays, probably," Yuriko muttered. "Or whoever I get to first. I should also notify the Protectorate?" She was a bit doubtful of that considering they already dropped the ball on the matter. They didn't discover the problem earlier, after all. Either way, she wasn't about to leave Scarlett by her lonesome while she recovered.

"A sleepless night, it is." Yuriko sighed.

Scar's room didn't have a television set, so Yuriko settled on her vigil in the living room. She kept her perception trained on her friend, but Scarlett didn't so much as stir from her enforced slumber. She let up on that demand and a more natural sleep took over. However, she wasn't sure how long it would take for the other girl to wake up now. Perhaps it would take longer than she expected.

Sighing to herself and quite tuckered out of simply meditating, Yuriko pulled the remote into her hand and switched on the TV. Meditating would blind her senses anyway and make sitting a vigil pointless.

She browsed some shows, listened to and watched some music videos, even found some of her own ads—that she was a bit embarrassed to watch. Showing off her figure was a fair way to attract attention and she was reaping the benefits of fame, at least in the dreamscape sense. She was also quite well off, and if the goal of being a celebrity was amassing wealth, she could stop now and still have the funds to pay for a suitable lifestyle for decades…

She didn't know how much of the populace admired her, but the rate at which the threads grew in number had not slackened. Clearly, there was still much potential to be had. However, she was growing weary of the busy schedule. She had less time to explore her Ennoia now, or train beyond basic conditioning and fitness. The intrigues and interludes of Altered villainy were suitable distractions, but she had slipped up with the Unfettered…

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No, she hadn't. She had no way of knowing that they would have struck while she was out. She couldn't remain on guard for people she only had a passing acquaintance with, especially not with the amount of power her incarnation body could bring to bear. Besides, the tower spirit told her to live life, not to shackle herself. This foray into the upper levels of the tower already paid off with the Bladeless Sword, so it wasn't a loss. She also didn't want her bodies to combine, at least until she knew how to separate again. Incarnations were a useful tool to accelerate growth, so she was loath to give them up. Besides, having her incarnation body scratched an adventurous itch.

"..increase in Altered Human violence has been noted over the past few weeks…"

"..-ight at the docks as members of the notorious Caplan Gang and the Duad. twelve injured, two deceased…"

"...series of robberies on the southern coast, most involving methods that were confirmed to be extraordinary…"

"...brutal attack…"

"...several hundred deaths in what appears to be a gas explosion accident in downtown…"

Yuriko frowned at the snippets of news broadcasts she came across while channel surfing. Well, she saw other things too, but the gist of the news seemed to include violence and crime. About half were of reports within Neo Prism City…

"Why aren't the Protectorate doing anything?" she wondered. They'd certainly been rather busy the last time she checked…last year? She also hadn't sensed any new rifts forming, but that could be because the daemons got better and subtler.

Was it any of her business?

She rested her chin on her palm while leaning on the armrest. It was, wasn't it? She was living in Astoria now, with no way to leave unless she cut across the dimensional barriers. Something she wasn't sure her incarnation body could survive, at least, not without a Colossus or better powered armour. If she had access to Fri'Avgi, it would be another advantage, but for some reason, the Anima Telum was locked within her true body's Anima. She might be able to pass her around in the dreamscape, but she suspected that would only be possible if the artefact spirit was awake. Fri'Avgi was still recovering from her exertion when Damien took over Yuriko's body, despite it being nearly a year ago. At the rate she was going, it might take another decade. Not that it mattered much. She barely used Fri'Avgi to fight now. Research, yes, but her true body was better suited to do that than her incarnation.

Something was happening, and she didn't know what. Even worse, she had no idea who the actors were other than the Unfettered and she didn't know them well enough to figure out how clever they were.

For that matter, there were more Altered Humans than she expected. Was it a coincidence that she encountered one earlier today? What were the odds of that? Was it also possible that Carina's bad luck travelled through the myriad layers of dimensional separation to affect her incarnation body too?

That was an amusing thought, but Astoria wasn't a place she could act with impunity. Aside from the fact that there was another Ancient in Astoria, or more likely, in another part of the world, she had an odd feeling that there were deep undercurrents that could pull her under. It wasn't anything overt, just the general malaise, and more a gut feeling. Perhaps a better way to put it was what she felt through the amalgamation of millions of threads latched onto her dreamscape. She might not hear individual whispers, but she could feel the general mood. Most were desperate to latch on to something they could live vicariously through, or something they could freely admire, which was why her particular strategy to gain fame was working. She didn't mind the wealth, though it certainly helped, but it was the connections and the easy access to Ambrosia that were necessary.

Her star was rising steadily as a model/actress, but perhaps it was time to spread out to another slice of the pie? Should she take the chance to increase her fame as a cape?

That was a relatively new designation for Altered Humans, actually. It was recently passed in Congress, and she couldn't help but notice it when it was spread all over the news. Capes were Altered Humans who chose to hide their civilian identities and assume a heroic or villainous persona. A catch-all term for superheroes and supervillains, in particular, and the terminology slotted into the government machine suspiciously smoothly. Add to the growing cycle of violence, along with the ongoing paranoia and discrimination towards Altered…

Perhaps assuming a proper cape identity and being seen about would create a new way to attract admirers? Videos and photos of capes were certainly prolific in the Network. She grabbed her phone and allowed her browser to recommend articles for her perusal, and about five out of eight of them were about heroic capes fighting villainous ones.

Hmm, perhaps it would make it more convenient to assume such a persona with more forethought than just covering her face. Where would she get a costume, though, and should she keep her old identity as Yuriko? It wasn't actually a very good alter ego, honestly, even if nobody got it here, heh.

So what? Buy or have a better costume made, interrupt crimes, and gain extra fame? She would honestly do better sticking to her celebrity path. The only caveat was that she'd get the itch to fight every now and then. And while her true body fighting scratched that itch a little bit, that only pushed the desires back. She also needed to test the Bladeless Sword more stringently, and how viable using that Ennoia for her core would be. Should she quit school, too? She made more Torries as a celebrity than anything else could, and if she devoted the time she saved for heroic work, that would accelerate her Ambrosia production too.

And she'd be able to counter and destroy threats like the Unfettered before they could inconvenience her. So become more than an occasional cape to get thrills, huh?

She mulled over her thoughts all night. She took a few minutes every hour to meditate, but otherwise kept her vigil.

Around eight o'clock in the morning, Scarlett woke up. And her Anima was projected about a quarter inch beyond her skin.