Chapter 46: Melissa's Technique

For a few days her brother had been out of sorts, throwing himself into his training, but that day when he came back from work Melissa was glad to see him in a better mood. That was good timing, especially given how things had advanced with her. She straightened up from her place on the couch to grin at him.

"No ambushes by Jack today?"

"Nope, all clear. I actually managed to find another anomaly, too." He kicked off his shoes and walked into the kitchen area to find something to eat. "Everything okay here?"

She nodded and decided to hide her eagerness via some more mundane questions. "Yeah, it's all good. How many more anomalies do you need, though? And when are you going to run out of them?"

"That's actually a really good question." He glanced back at her, momentarily serious again. "The quotas are increasing such that it seems more like they're trying to eliminate people than actually creating a fair work environment. No one in the top ten is in danger of falling behind just yet, but I worry they're leading up to something."

"Yeah, and things will be coming to a head with Jack no matter what." She kept a smile off her face and searched for something else to talk about. "Any progress on that secondary foundation thing?"

"Sort of. Emily insisted on an appointment with Delsin and we're going to go meet with him soon. I hope we might get some answers, but I'm not sure. Uncle Frank said that I should go with an M-type foundation. It would take an investment of all the lucrim I'd been storing up, but it's true that it would massively increase my generation rate quickly. I don't know, though..."

Her brother was mindlessly eating cereal out of the box, eyes staring off into the distance. Dang, she'd just wanted to distract him, but now she'd brought up something serious. Melissa hopped up to lean over the back of the couch and look at him directly. "You're thinking you don't want to?"

"Yeah, maybe so." He swallowed and then set the box down absently. "For so much of my life, Uncle Frank has been my source of advice for everything... it feels really weird to disagree with him about something. I mean... he's the most successful member of our whole family, and he's obviously given a ton of great advice..."

"Relax, bro, I'm not going to judge you. Uncle Frank is great, but nobody's perfect. What are you thinking?"

"Well, the overhead on an M-type foundation is really heavy. If you're set up in life and know what you want, I can see how it'd be a good investment. But in my position... when I run the numbers, there's a good chance it wouldn't work out. It could turn out more like a demonic bond and I could end up with a nasty aura leech."

Though she hadn't planned for things to get anywhere near that serious, Melissa did her best to give her brother what little advice she could. "You don't need to decide ASAP, right? I mean, I know you need to decide soon for training purposes. But you could talk to Delsin and get information about his foundation so you can make a full decision, right?"

"Yeah, I definitely could. You're right." Rick shook his head and abruptly looked at her. "Alright, now what is it that you've been so eager to tell me?"

"Aww, dangit!" How had he known? Her brother could be so oblivious sometimes, then sometimes he just saw straight through her. Still, she couldn't even feign annoyance for more than a second before she leapt up in excitement. "I know exactly what Lucore I want! I've actually been working on it for a long time, doing a bunch of research. Heather was really helpful, and Emily showed me some designs online..."

She eagerly went over her plans, intentionally moving around the main surprise. Her brother came to sit down beside her, always reliably interested in such details. It felt great to be able to talk about those things with him, though she could see that he was trying to put it together in his head. Though she dragged it out, eventually he just addressed it directly.

"Alright, I think I get the theory. I was nervous about using your Steel Lucore for another purpose at first, but I get how that could be a stable system. From the specs, it seems like it could work and I don't see any problems in your lucrima soul. But what are you using it to do?"

"That's the best part!" Melissa went and got one of the embarrassing books, opening it to the drawing that had started all this. "This is a heavily modified version of an old technique called 'Manifest Destiny' - now don't read the text! The creator believed a whole lot of ridiculous things! Just look at this part where it talks about the effects."

" 'Manifest Destiny brings out the destiny of the user's soul, displaying outside the glory within...' " He understood immediately, eyes slowly rising to meet hers. "It's a method of weaponizing an aura spark, but for you..."

"That's right!" She couldn't help but throw up her hands triumphantly as her brother became the first person in the world to learn the truth of her technique. "It should manifest the ether void outside me, but in a controlled state! That way I don't just devote so much of my generation rate to keeping it from killing me, I can actually use it."

"You're crazy... but in a good way." Her brother grinned at her as if he couldn't quite believe it. "Are you sure that it will work and not backfire on you?"

"Oh, I did all the usual safety things. Testing theoretically and with other substances and small amounts. But I haven't actually tried to use it for real." Melissa was still grinning like an idiot and struggled to get it under control. "Rick, will you help me test? I don't think anything will go wrong, but after you've helped me so many times, I think you're the best person to be here if anything does."

"Of course." He got serious much faster than her, of course, getting to his feet. "I won't say that I'm not nervous, but if you've done all the research, then we have to give it a try."

"Great!" Melissa shot up, got into a combat stance, and closed her eyes. A few seconds later, she opened one again. "Uh, give me a sec. I put a whole buncha safeguards in place."

He nodded and stood at a distance, giving her time. Melissa tried to calm down, not thinking about what she hoped to accomplish. Instead she just reached down and touched the sphere she'd built around the void where her soul should have been. Then she reached inside...

All the lights in the room dimmed and she let out a yelp of surprise.

Everything snapped back to normal the next second. She grinned sheepishly and pulled herself back together, again focusing. The task wasn't so difficult, she was just nervous because this time was for real. All she needed to do was touch the flame and not let it burn her. There was nothing to burn, she was the flame...

It surged from within her, this time stably. Melissa opened her eyes and saw that an aura had lit up around her, but that was the wrong language because it was no normal aura. Instead of casting light around her, it seemed to drink it all in. The void was outside her core, yet it wasn't a threat. Not to her.

She took a step forward and something felt strange. When she looked down, she saw that her foot was sizzling into the floor, burning the carpet. Melissa let out a cry of panic and tried to pull back the effect, unsuccessfully. Dang, it was harder to control than she thought, but...

Without warning her brother lunged in to tackle her, his arms wrapping around her. She had a moment of true terror, afraid that the aura would consume him, yet somehow Rick resisted. He actually might have been able to smother it and save her if she had been out of control, but it wasn't anywhere near that bad. Melissa withdrew it and just leaned forward into his arms.

"It's okay, bro, I'm fine. Just wasn't completely controlled."

"You're sure?" He pulled back and looked at her, concern obvious in his face.

"Absolutely sure." She wanted to hug him again, but she was also excited about the technique. "What did it look like? Was it badass?"

Rick stared at her for a while, then shook his head with an odd grin. "Yeah, it was. I've seen black auras before, but yours was... I don't know, it was like it leeched the light out of everything else. Intense in a way that was just... different." He looked down and frowned, noticing some burns on the carpet for the first time. Melissa hadn't realized there were so many and now felt a surge of regret, but Rick just smiled. "It's a potent effect, though. You should be proud."

"Actually, it should have done more than that. I don't know if it's because you're more used to it, but your lucrima soul didn't react anything like people at the gym." Melissa pondered that for a moment, trying to figure it out, but in the end she was just too excited. She tried her technique a few more times, at first not getting it due to fear of overshooting again, but eventually getting a handle on it.

Finally she stood with her void manifested around her and she felt amazing. Nothing had felt like this since the first time she had discovered the "cure" for her condition. And she was glad to have her brother standing nearby, grinning back at her in pride.

"Congratulations, sis. What are you going to call it?"

She blinked, not having thought much about that part. "I don't know, I think the original name sounds kind of cool."

"No, you can't run around with a Lucore named 'Manifest Destiny' in your portfolio. Maybe some people won't recognize it, but that's just asking for trouble. At best people will get the wrong impression." Her brother folded his arms and examined her thoughtfully. "I'm surprised you don't already have a name picked out. Howling Black Destiny Inferno or something."

Melissa giggled. "I'd never choose such a ridiculous name! Maybe Ultimate Howling Black Destiny Inferno of the Sublime... now there's a name..."

"Well, you have time to decide. Even if you don't register the Lucore, you can still rename it on your end."

"No, I want to now, I just..." She let the flames dissipate and just stared into space. "I don't know, I'm really coming up with nothing. You name it, bro!"

"Me? But I-"

"Do it! Something cool. Maybe kind of similar to the original name, but changed a bit..."

He protested that he wasn't good at names, but helped her brainstorm anyway. Eventually they came up with "Manifest Destruction", which Melissa thought was amazing. Sure, it'd be goofy to shout it out like she was in an old movie, but if she actually built the technique up to the level she wanted...

Abruptly she looked down and realized just how much of the carpet she'd damaged in all her attempts. Part of the couch was looking pretty damaged too. Melissa winced and looked at her brother guiltily. "Uh, sorry. I'm sure I can stop it from doing that once I get more practice. But we probably lost our security deposit, didn't we?"

"Oh, don't worry about it." Years ago that would have been a disaster, but now Rick just shrugged. "It's not all that much compared to a better apartment and the landlord was probably going to cheat us out of it anyway. Besides, a skill like yours is worth a lot more than that."

Melissa lunged in to hug her brother, this time without any void flames around her. Their embrace felt even warmer.