Chapter 9: Picking Up the Pieces

When he woke up the next morning, Rick felt surprisingly refreshed. Oh, there were still three aura leeches inside his soul and his strength was still diminished, but he felt ready to take on this new challenge. Of course, it was his life, not just a challenge, but he wasn't going to back down.

It helped that Melissa was already awake, munching on a bowl of cereal in her room. When she heard he was awake she came out into the main room and they had a normal breakfast, not talking about anything serious and just joking with each other. Almost like it had been years ago, when they had been children with no other concerns.

Though Rick still resented his parents for leaving him with such a debt, he'd come to terms with it. He hadn't been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and he'd never been a Birthrighter, handed everything for free. It would have felt wrong to just be granted a powerful core in return for nothing - if he gained power, it would be power he earned himself.

Eventually, though, he saw the time and realized that he had to go. Melissa groaned and grabbed his arm ineffectually. "Are you sure you have to go? You can't get another day off?"

"Fat chance of that. If World War V happened tomorrow, Jimmy would still want me to come in the next day."

"And if the whole strip mall got nuked?"

"I'd have to put in overtime to rebuild it."

"Haha, I'm not looking forward to getting a job after I graduate." Melissa let go of his arm and just patted it. "Have a good time at work, then. But eventually we've gotta spend a whole weekend just lazing around like we used to, okay?"

"Yeah, sure." Rick smiled at her one more time, then grabbed his keys and headed out the door.

On his way to work he thought over the coming day. It was likely to be a fairly boring one, since he only had a few scheduled clients, not including Lisa. That meant a lot of time with walk-ins or trying to persuade new people to sign up. But it also meant he had plenty of time to work on his own issues.

It took him longer than normal to run to the strip mall, since he'd grown used to a bit of extra speed from his lucrima. The difference between 15,000 and 11,000 wasn't much - pocket change to many warriors - but it meant every part of his body was working just a little bit less efficiently. His foundation especially was struggling to maintain itself.

That was his answer, he realized abruptly. What he needed most of all was free lucrim to destroy the aura leeches, which meant he needed the fastest possible profit. Though it might not be easy to improve his foundation, it was definitely the least efficient part of his lucrima soul, hence the most room for improvement.

Rick cut off all extra strength to his body and forced himself to run the rest of the way on purely human stamina. He was already pretty frugal with his energy expenditure, using practically nothing compared to the people sprinting through special lanes or flying overhead, but he could improve. Every drop of extra power he could squeeze out of himself would go into improving his foundation and giving him an edge.

When he arrived at work, he found that Henry was sparring with Darin. Rick kept his eyes down and tried not to look at the difficult client, just checking in with Jimmy and changing into workout clothes. But he wasn't able to avoid attention entirely, as Darin noticed him on his way out.

"So, it's the little genius." Darin cast him a scornful look. "Did you get weaker? What could you possibly blow so much lucrim on so quickly?"

"Family emergency." Rick kept a polite smile on his face, though it was a struggle.

"Right, always a 'family emergency' with your type. Does that mean you knocked up some poor girl?"

Before Rick could answer, Henry hopped up beside them, grinning like he didn't notice any tension at all. "Great progress today, Darin! Look forward to seeing you next week!"

Darin grunted. "Sure, next week." He gave Rick one more look and then stomped out of the gym. That left it entirely empty, though the lull wouldn't last for long.

As soon as his client was out of sight, Henry glanced over with an apologetic shrug. "Just don't let him get to you. But are you doing okay, man?"

"Had some rough times." Rick did not want to explain what happened again, especially to coworkers. "I'm going to need to play catch up. Hey... I'm not sure how to ask this, but you do some fights on the side, right?"

"No need to whisper like it's something super illegal." Henry did glance toward their boss and lower his voice, though. "The cops look the other way when it comes to the underground fights, since we're sort of under the umbrella of legit organizations. It's a hobby, anyway - why?"

"I need extra lucrim right now."

"I get that, but... I don't know if I'd recommend it." After an awkward pause, Henry dropped his gaze. "Look, man, I won't lie: the lowest tier of fights is brutal. People aren't there to see skill, they want to see people kick the shit out of each other. And the way you are right now, you'd go in the lowest tier. I didn't get out until I managed that demonic bond."

Rick sighed and nodded. That was the answer he had more or less expected.

"And if you didn't guess it, you don't get any health care. Hell, Jimmy doesn't give us any health care." Henry said that part louder in the direction of their boss, who flipped them off without looking up from his magazine. "Now me, I'm on my parents' healthcare plan until I'm 25, so I just have to keep myself alive. But if I'm not pretty strong by the time I'm on my own... I think I'd probably quit. Just not worth it."

"Yeah, I can see that. Thanks, I was just asking." He had far too much to lose, so the risk didn't seem worth it. Instead, he'd just have to see how far he could get on his own.

Most of the rest of the day blurred past. In between sparring, or while outside trying to attract new clients, Rick did his best to search for new foundation techniques.

True, looking for lucrima techniques on the internet was not exactly glamorous. But his family had no secret arts, he couldn't afford access to the big skill databases, and he had no way of entering one of the hidden sects. The internet was the best he could do. Besides, everything was fiercely debated on the lucrim forums, so even if it was a bit difficult to sort through it all, he did get quite a bit information about many of the basic options.

By the end of his shift, he thought he'd made a good choice. He was usually experienced enough to have good instincts about these things, but just in case, he went over to his boss's counter and displayed the Wikipedia article about the technique on his phone.

"Have you heard about this one, boss?"

"Buffet's Buffer?" Jimmy glanced at the phone briefly and shrugged. "You could do worse. The problem is, everyone thinks they can do the technique, but most actually can't. Most people online who say they're doing the Buffer technique are just aura masturbating, basically. If it was that easy to make your foundation more efficient, everyone would do it."

"I get that, but most people online said that it's more likely to work if you've been exposed to heavy lucrim fluctuation."

His boss actually looked up at him for a moment, then grunted affirmatively. "Give it a try, kid. You'll probably hit the limit of what you can do with it for now pretty soon, but you won't waste your time until then."

Having his plan confirmed, Rick walked back across the gym to one of the meditation machines. They were nothing fancy, just metal contraptions with comfortable seats that allowed for either straight meditation or combined muscular exercise. Rick placed his hands lightly on the bars and pushed them just enough to feel tension through his body, then focused on the technique.

In the past when he'd tried to improve his foundation, he'd quickly realized that he was accomplishing nothing. It was just too central to the same power he was using to try to make the changes. Yet he was surprised to find that he almost immediately made progress, summoning his aura and then folding it on itself.

Getting beaten by arrogant Birthrighters... draining all his lucrim into his sister... fighting his uncle... enduring the aura leeches... Rick took all of those violent fluctuations in his power and converted them into fuel.

When he completed the exercise, he had partially condensed his foundation. His aura was just as strong as before, but it now required a smaller investment of lucrim to maintain that strength. Almost 200 less, according to his phone. That meant he could reinvest those lucrim into his cores, though instead he sent them toward the aura leeches.

They thrashed within him and then went quiet, sated by the surge of power. For a time he felt rather light and he knew that he was going to be glad he took his uncle's advice. According to the internet, the leeches partially fed themselves and partially absorbed power to pay off the debt. Just letting them drink normally, they'd barely pay off one lucrim a day, which meant it would take an absurd 26 years to pay it all off.

He wasn't letting those things stay inside his soul for that long. Lucrim he pushed into them were lost to him, but they got him far closer to being free of them entirely. In the long run, it would pay off.

Over the next several days, Rick focused on repeating the Buffer technique. Unfortunately, the value of it decreased each time. Still worth repeating, and he enjoyed the improvements in efficiency, but it was obvious that he needed more experience to get more out of it.

Next Thursday, it was finally time for another session with Lisa. She came in just a bit late this time, apologizing and quickly tugging off her jacket to spar. When she really looked at him, though, she hesitated. "Wow, Rick... are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He moved out onto the mats, but even as she followed she kept staring at him.

"Are you sure? I can't feel the source of the leak, but it feels serious... if someone did that to you, you should really press charges."

"No, it was completely legal. This is the Birthright Core my parents left me." He sounded incredibly bitter and regretted it, but Lisa only nodded in sad understanding.

"That's absolutely awful. My parents are far from rich, but they've always tried to take care of themselves so they'll never be a burden on their kids."

"Let's just spar, okay?"

He managed to work off some of his frustrations sparring with her, though Lisa struggled to suppress herself down to his new level. After knocking him to the ground for the third time, she pretended to be tired and headed to the side. Needing some time to recover, he went with her.

"Is there anything I can do, Rick?" She handed him a water bottle, at least not pitying him. "I don't like seeing you like this."

"Actually, I wanted to ask about that. My parents' debt is being taken via aura leeches... I know you can't just remove them but is there anything you can do to make them drain less or something like that?"

"Afraid not. There are some lucrima massages that will ease the pain, or make them sleep temporarily, but those aren't real solutions. They just loosen up your body so you can use your lucrim more effectively, so they don't do much to help the underlying problem."

"That's fine. You actually knew more than I expected - have you worked with aura leeches before?"

"More than you'd think." Lisa sighed and leaned back against the wall. "There are some clients - mostly fighters or businessmen who have gone into debt - who decide to accept that they'll never pay them off. Instead they just find ways to deal with the drain. If they can increase their overall lucrim generation rate more than the drain, they figure they can mostly ignore it."

Rick blinked, not having even considered that option. It definitely wasn't a choice for him, not when the leeches took such a large percentage of his strength. "That sounds like a rough way to live. Though I guess it's good that you get regular work."

Lisa laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't say so. Aura leeches make people feel a bit creepy, so I'd rather never work with them again."

He wasn't sure if she was intentionally cutting off any possibility of him asking for direct help. Not that he would have asked. Back when she'd become a client, he'd figured out that there was no way he could afford her massages, at least not the ones that had an impact on lucrima.

In any case, Lisa didn't treat him any differently and they kept up their normal schedule. Rick threw himself into his work and his exercises, making as much progress as he could. As his uncle had suggested, he started receiving offers for demonic bonds, but he turned them all down. Practically aura leeches by another name, that much was becoming clear to him.

Days later, he found himself walking to work on another Saturday. He had to resist checking his progress too often, but since it had been two weeks since the disastrous meeting with the lawyers, he decided it was worth it. Rick pulled out his phone, scanned his aura, and looked over the results thoughtfully.

[Name: Rick Hunter

Ether Tier: 18th

Ether Score: 153

Lucrim Generation: 20,650

Effective Rate: 11,500

Current Lucrim: 1541]

[Rick Hunter's Lucrima Portfolio

Foundation: 7750 (Lv II)

Offensive Lucore: 3575 (Lv II)

Defensive Lucore: 6100 (Lv IV)

Birthright Core: 1944 (Lv I)

Birthright Core: 1108 (Lv I)

Aura Leech: -4860 (Stage II)

Aura Leech: -2857 (Stage I)

Aura Leech: -1368 (Stage III)

Golden Lucore: 10 (N/A)

Gross Lucrim: 20,650

Net Lucrim: 11,500]

It was decent progress, much better than average for a period of two weeks. But it wasn't enough. Melissa had been completely healthy during that span, but it was only a matter of time before she had another fit. In an emergency he could buy more medicine for her, but he was usually too lucrim-starved to be able to help her if there wasn't time for that.

Though he didn't like the idea, as he walked to work he convinced himself of it. When he entered, he was glad to see that Jimmy was gone, leaving Henry at the counter. He glanced up and smiled.

"Hey, man, what's up?"

Rick took a deep breath. "Can you get me into the underground fights?"