Chronicles of the Exalted Sun Child

"Are you certain?" Yuriko asked Scarlett, who was currently hyperventilating. "Deeper breaths, Scar, come on."

Scarlett, still half in costume, nodded and attempted to calm herself. Yuriko wasn't certain it would really help, especially since even slight asphyxiation wouldn't really knock the smol girl out all that long. Probably not long enough to reset her mental state.

They were flying back towards the apartment, with Desire following through the cracks of reality. This close, Yuriko could feel the other move, though she couldn't sense through the link.

Or could she? It was the same thread that connected her to Desire as it did to everyone else. It was thicker and corded with the power of oaths, which allowed a wider channel to funnel her Intent through if she wanted to. It felt like it would be a violation of Desire's sense of self though.

I am yours to do as you Will, master.

That was true, yet Yuriko had to abide by the lines she drew that she shouldn't cross. The repercussions were clearly laid out if she didn't. It wouldn't be an immediate fall, she was sure. It would take centuries, probably. One little slip at a time, until she came to a point that when she looked back, she wouldn't be able to see the original lines she drew on the sand.

The difference, my master, is that I offer freely.

There was that, but was it truly freely offered when her power, her Mien and her heritage wrapped up Desire's mind and altered it to fit her whims? She swore herself to be bound, and the circumstances of that were binding or death. Except the binding was tighter and more all-encompassing than she expected, especially when the Chaos Lord used the binding as the core of herself once she evolved.

"I'm sure," Scarlett finally said. "I…have no proof, but I could feel it. They're involved."

"I see," Yuriko murmured.

Considering that Scarlett's Alteration was due to exposure to the Unfettered's sick games, it wasn't unthinkable for her to develop some kind of instinct or fear response. She also owed it to her friends to do something about that filth. That she hadn't been able to was galling, though it was mostly because she couldn't find them.

Ironically, her best method of tracking was through the threads, and unfortunately, none of the Unfettered had threads. Or rather, if they did, they had better control of their emotions than the vast majority of people. There was also the chance that they were simply drowned out by the number of threads entangled with her dreamscape body and territory. The only threads she really allowed to touch her were those of her loved ones and friends; the rest were held at bay by her Mien and the mists.

"We'll deal with them, I promise," Yuriko said. Scarlett nodded. They arrived back home after a few minutes, and she helped Scar clean up and get ready for bed. Desire emerged from the sublayer and helped with Yuriko's evening ablutions before staring hopefully at the bed.

"Not tonight," Yuriko said, and Desire sighed morosely.

The apartment only had two bedrooms, and unless Desire spent the night in Yuriko's bed, she volunteered for the couch. Not that the Chaos Lord needed much sleep anyway, or rather, she spent her rest cycles in between the layers of reality where she could restore her Chaos reserves. That was the oddity with them, come to think of it. Chaos Lords needed an external supply of Chaos and couldn't produce their own. At least, not without hurting someone.

She piled her looted Glimmer packs on the desk and sat down to examine them. The tubes contained pills rather than raw powder or whatever the drug was really made of. She doubted it was mundane chemicals, and wondered if they were infused with esoteric energies instead. The first tube she opened and retrieved the pill without using her hands, but the moment her Anima touched the capsule, the thing evaporated.

She could feel an infusion of something as it tried to penetrate her Anima, but her automatic defences neutralised it the instant it tried, much like what happened when she imbibed the spiked drink during the after-party.

Yuriko frowned as she tried to parse the sensations. But it was too brief and had taken her by surprise. It was a good thing she had a few more to use otherwise, she would have wasted the entire evening.

"Is it my Anima or the Radiance infused within? Or perhaps the Ennoia energies?" she murmured. There was a hint of both Ennoia energies within her Anima after all, though she couldn't really afford to waste the capsules by finding out which ones caused the melting…although…hmmm.

She retrieved two kinds of containers from the warehouse. And upon a closer look, both were called Glimmer. However, the singular capsules in the tubes were labelled Glimmer vA, while the second type were bottles that contained ten capsules and were labelled Glimmer vB. The contents were subtly different, too. The vA capsules were coloured red, while the vB capsules were half red and blue.

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The instructions didn't indicate what the differences were, and…in a bout of brilliance, Yuriko thought to check online what Glimmer variations did. A quick check with the search engine showed her results varying from the dictionary meaning of the word, possible uses, and a few other instances where the word was used as either a product or a company name. Finally, she found the correct meaning in a network bulletin board that warned of narcotics and their negative effects on physical and mental health.

Glimmer was up there along with substances called heroin, pot, weed, and a few other street name narcotics. She remembered Bril and Speedy busting gang bases that contained such drugs before. Either way, Glimmer was an additive to other narcotics, and it was banned if it was added to other banned substances. Mixed in with beer or wine, it was actually mild enough to be completely fine with the law, although it did have some addictive properties, although it didn't have any noticeable withdrawal symptoms. That form of Glimmer was labelled vC. There was nothing online about vA or vB.

"Curious."

Well, one way to find out was to ingest the capsules. She knew it had an effect, considering what she saw Tentagirl and Aviator do during the fight. Based on that, it either enhanced reflexes or accelerated mental activity, or it affected Altered powers directly.

"That's a bother," she muttered after a couple of minutes' thought. She didn't have an Altered power despite what everyone else thought, and she wasn't about to give Scarlett drugs. She wasn't sure if the A and B variations were more addictive, though she guessed it was, based on how the other two capes looked after they were captured. They looked like they hadn't slept in days, with sunken cheeks and deep, dark circles under their eyes. Normally, those wouldn't have been visible under their masks, but the circles were wide enough to show on their cheeks. Veins also visibly throbbed on their necks and jaws, and their eyes were bloodshot.

So, no. She wasn't going to experiment by feeding the drug to her friend. Still, she could find out a lot of things from plain observation. Starting with what the interior looked like.

With her kinesis, she fetched a couple of platters from the kitchen and floated them into her room. She briefly checked Scarlett, who was currently curled up in bed, though she was probably still awake. Desire was in the subspace, and the building was generally quiet.

She opened the bottle, thinking that with ten capsules, she could afford some mistakes. The first one was when she tried to pick up a capsule. Her fingers brushed against three others, and all four of them melted.

"Oh yeah." She slapped her forehead. Her condensed aura sat just above her skin, but notably still outside of it. That didn't narrow down what caused the melting, so it was four out of ten capsules wasted. She sighed and retrieved a set of tweezers from Scarlett's grooming kit. From there, she carefully used the thing to pinch a capsule out of the pile and moved it to another platter. Then, she retrieved a tiny pair of scissors, used to cut hangnails, she thought, and snipped the capsule. The scissors weren't quite sharp enough for the job, and if it had been her friend who used them, she would have carved a jagged line across the capsule. But blades and all sorts of cutting instruments were part of Yuriko's Ennoi, and regardless of how dull the pair was, it was razor sharp under her hands.

Snip.

With a careful nudge, she opened the capsule, then used the tweezers to tilt the blue half of variation B and poured out the powdery contents. She did the same thing with the red half, though she made sure there was a separation between the two. The powders within looked identical to each other, but only at first and mundane sight. She infused Animus within her eyes and scanned for Chaos and other esoteric energies, humming as she did so.

There was esoteric energy infused into the powder. It wasn't anything she recognised, and by that fact, she figured it was the same energy that triggered human Alteration. The red half of the pill had denser energies, but it was fading quickly. A blink of an eye later, and it was all gone, leaving just the mundane ingredient behind. She examined the capsule itself and noticed traces of runescript lines inside. It was just a simple concept, she thought, as she pieced together the working. Preserve? Stasis? Either one worked, though it was missing a good half of the character. A look at the other side showed her that it was both meanings cleverly interlocked so that when both halves of the pill were formed, the runescript characters melded and reinforced each other.

"Clever," she murmured. It saved space and was efficient. Her own runescript enchantment skill was nowhere near that level, though she knew Damien, while no specialist, was powerful enough that he only needed to impose his Intent on an item to enchant it.

A bit of his memory unfolded within her mindscape. A scene where an enchanter lectured upon a podium, stating that the art and science of runescript enchantment was founded on studying the effects Primordials imparted into their belongings.

Yuriko shook her head, then left that musing to her true body. Focus was needed on the drug.

What has she learned so far? Runescript enchantment on a possibly industrial scale? Alteration energy within the narcotic? If a mortal partook of the vB or possibly vA, would they become Altered? For that matter, was that what the Unfettered used to induce or help induce Alteration to their captives? Those cretins had a lot to answer for.

She used her Animus to create a lens in front of her eyes, enlarging what she focused on by a factor of ten. She closely examined the remaining powder, but couldn't really see what made them different from each other. It wasn't as if the particles were all uniform in size and shape. She poked the substance on the blue side with her Anima, and this time, it didn't melt away.

So.

It was the esoteric Alteration substance that was the cause of it, and if it reacted so badly with her Anima, then perhaps that was the reason why she couldn't get more than a glimpse of it.

"There's probably a detection spell that will do it for me…" She muttered to herself. Her true body was currently indulging Gwendith's lusts, and it would be rude to pull out her grimoire in the middle of lovemaking.

She examined both piles instead and noticed something she'd overlooked. There was a single particle that was about twice the size of every other one. It was perfectly spherical, though now completely inert. It was on the red side of the capsule, so she repeated the poke.

That sphere, and only that one thing, melted away.