Maxine glared angrily at Poison Emperor Guan since she was too weak to do anything else. She was still angry at him for polluting Earth with his essence. However Poison Emperor Guan didn't seem to even notice her glare as she felt his spiritual sense enter her body through the hole in her arm. It spread throughout her body. He better just be giving me a medical examination. Afterwards, he pulled out a small vial from a pouch at his waist. After unstoppering the vial, he knelt down and propped her head up and brought the vial to her lips.
"Drink this. It's medicine," Poison Emperor Guan said and when he saw that her mouth remained closed, he continued, "You may not feel it, but you damaged your muscles, nerves and essence pathways when your essence surged earlier. If you do not drink it, you will be bedridden for at least a month."
Maxine struggled to open her mouth only alittle. Poison Emperor Guan poured the medicine into her mouth. It was the vilest tasting concoction that had ever graced her tongue. If she weren't immobile, she would have spit it out reflexively. Poison Emperor Guan ran his finger along her throat and it caused her to swallow the vile stuff. After it entered her stomache, she felt a warmth flowing throughout her body. It felt amazingly good. However she still couldn't move.
"You should be able to move some by this evening and walk by tomorrow. It will take at least three days for a full recovery," Poison Emperor Guan said and glanced at the golden bracelet on her wrist as his eyes started to smile, "Hellen, it seems you have awoken. I have missed you greatly."
"I have missed you as well, my love," Hellen replied using her spiritual sense in such a way that Maxine could listen in, "I know you don't have much time to stay here, but can you answer a couple questions before you go?"
"I think I already know what you will ask, but yes I can," Poison Emperor Guan said.
"Did you fuse our daughter's soul with another?" Hellen asked.
"Yes. The things that she did in the future were monsterous. Cutting the limbs off the one man that she liked and torturing him were the kindest things she did. I didn't want that future to come to pass, so that is why I fused our daughter's soul with another," Poison Emperor Guan said. That sounds way too similar to what the Maxine from the other timeline did to Patrick. But why did she like him? I didn't find any memories from the original Maxine that included Patrick.
"Why did it have to be the soul of a young man?" Hellen asked. Huh? I don't recall ever telling Hellen that. She must have figured it out somehow.
"The fused souls that survived in the past were always of opposing genders," Guan answered, "And that young man's soul complimented our daughter's perfectly."
"That wouldn't have been necessary if you found better people to raise me," Maxine chimed in with her spiritual sense.
"I know," Poison Emperor Guan replied sorrowfully, "I must depart now. I wish I could stay longer, but I cannot risk revealing that you live or that your mother's soul persists. At least, not until you are at least gold stage, Maxine." Maxine watched as Poison Emperor Guan levitated slowly off the ground and once he was roughly fifty feet into the air, he turned into a streak of light that soared into the heavens. Maxine had expected violent winds to batter her as well as a thundering sonic boom. However none of that happened. I wonder how he kept that from happening.
Maxine was curious about something and asked, "Hellen, how long do you suppose Patrick and the others will be unconscious for?"
"Within half an hour," Hellen replied and began to tease Maxine, "You don't have to worry about your boyfriend. Your father was rather gentle with him."
"He's not my boyfriend, Hellen. I thought I already told you he isn't interested in me," Maxine responded.
"I think he is interested," Hellen said, "Your other friends charged at the man that shot you while Patrick was running towards you and he tried to protect you from a far superior being."
"I am the strongest person in our group. Of course he would check on me first and try to protect me when I collapse," Maxine retorted.
"I could always ask him about his intentions when he wakes and end this dispute," Hellen teased.
"Don't you dare," Maxine told her. She didn't want to strain the fragile friendship she had with Patrick. It was already hard for him to see her as a friend considering she had the face of the person that tortured him in the previous timeline.
"Fine, I won't ask him," Hellen chuckled breifly before her tone became more serious, "Hmm? Your friend Maxwell is waking up. He is quick to recover."
Maxine extended out her spiritual sense and watched as her previous self got to his feet. He shook his head a few times and checked Meagan and Jack to make sure that they were alive before jogging over towards Maxine and Patrick. Maxwell checked on Patrick before he saw that Maxine was looking at him.
"Maxine, what happened and who was that?" Maxwell asked, "And what the hell was the deal with your eyes when you killed that essence beast?" Huh? Something was up with my eyes?
"A middle aged man knocked you guys out with his spiritual sense. I don't know what his name is," Maxine replied using her spiritual sense since she hadn't recovered the ability to speak yet, "Nor did I get a good look at his face, but I did see his eyes. They were golden with green specks in them." Maxine figured that half-lies would be better than outright ones.
"Golden? That's wierd. Your eyes turned golden while you were killing that thing," Maxwell said as he gestured towards the crushed Tempest Weasel.
"My eyes havn't ever changed colors while I was using my essence in the past," Maxine said. Not unless I did it intentionally anyways. However Maxwell didn't answer because he got distracted as Meagan made some groaning sounds. He ran towards her to help her to her feet. Shortly after Jack woke up and finally Patrick.
The four of them started talking about the appearance of Poison Emperor Gaun. While they did that, Maxine checked out her left arm with her spiritual sense. The bone in her arm had been hit directly. At the point of breakage, there was a half-moon shaped piece missing from both pieces of her broken arm. That's not a pretty break. I have no idea how long it will take me to heal from that. However she did notice that whatever medicine that Poison Emperor Guan gave her seemed to be accelerating her healing process by a huge margin.
After studying how the medicine was working, Maxine noticed that her friends had yet to even ask if she needed help getting up. She got annoyed and growled at all of them through her spiritual sense for one of them to carry her to the transport truck since she couldn't move. Patrick found the whole thing amusing as he picked her up in a princess carry. She might have enjoyed it if she was able to keep her head upright, but instead she was as mobile as a ragdoll at the moment. Patrick was careful not to jolt her wounded arm and was going at a nice slow walk. It would take them close to half an hour at this pace to get the transport truck. She found it odd that Meagan wasn't making a fuss about Patrick carrying Maxine. That girl was very possessive.
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After being carried for ten minutes, Maxine was getting extremely sleepy for some odd reason. She figured it was a combination of completely draining her essence and the medicine that Poison Emperor Guan gave her. She fell asleep before they made it to the transport truck.
Maxine woke up to something sharp was poking her in the bend of her right arm and opened her eyes to see what was going on. She was in a hospital bed and a doctor just managed to put an IV needle into her arm. Maxine saw that he had a look of triumph on his face after putting the IV needle in and she guessed that he had quite a bit of trouble getting it past her tough skin Her skin was at a point where even a gunshot from a normal handgun would only give her a bruise. It was no surprise that they couldn't pierce her skin without difficulty. A quick glance revealed that her left arm was in a unique looking splint of some kind. It immobilized her arm while giving access to the wound caused by the guass rifle.
The doctor noticed that Maxine woke up and asked her to see if she could move. It seems like the doctor knows about my immobility. Maxine tried to move her hand and managed to wiggle her fingers slightly. However she still wasn't able to move well enough to talk just yet. The doctor asked her to move other parts of her body, but the most she could do at the moment was wiggle. He took a few notes on his laptop before he left the room. A few minutes after the doctor left, Maxine expected that her mother would arrive any second, but instead it was General Jones that walked in. Well this is unexpected. Is he perhaps feeling guilty for trying to kill me? However as soon as she saw his smiling face, she knew that he didn't feel guilty. He was probably pleased that she couldn't move.
"Good evening, Miss Levings," General Jones said while maintaining his smile, "From what I have heard, you are almost completely paralyzed. Nerve damage is a nasty thing. You are lucky to be able to breathe considering how extensive it is. And don't worry about Corporal Smith. He is being severely disciplined for his assasination attempt on you." Maxine wanted to kill him with a vengeance, but had to control herself. It would be so easy to kill this bastard. One order to the ravens in his shadow and he will be an eyeless eunuch just before death. But I can't do it here. It would raise too many questions. I need to be patient. General Jones continued to pace in the room for a few moments while smiling at her. "Would you like to know something interesting?" General Jones asked while clearly not expecting an answer, "Earlier today we detected a powerful essence signature from the bangles you freaks carry on you. It matches perfectly with the first reading we ever recorded. I have long suspected the emergence of essence on Earth was not a natural event, but a triggered one. I believe it was caused by the same person that we detected fourteen years ago. We even managed to acquire a picture of him when he had first appeared. Take a look." General Jones pulled out a sheet of paper and held it infront of Maxine. It was a picture of Poison Emperor Guan in normal clothes. They even had a full view of his face. He looks like a ordinary person, like what you would expect from a store clerk. However there was no denying it was him just by the eyes. Why the fuck is he showing me this picture.
Maxine looked at General Jones and he continued, "I am not certain if you are aware, but we have done certain studies to see if you freaks pass on your abilities to your offspring. Unfortunately, those studies found that it was inconclusive. However we did discover one interesting thing. Parents and children share very similar essence wavelength patterns. It is almost as good as a DNA test as long as we have sufficient data." Oh, fuck me. However, Hellen was oddly silent as if this wasn't even a concern. "The only problem with this test is that it takes time to analyze that man's essence wavelength patterns and compare them against our database to see if we have any of his relatives on file. Although the chances are low, I have a strong feeling that we do," General Jones said while looking directly at Maxine with a vicious grin. Yeah, I definitely need to kill this fucker in the most painful way that I can think of. Because if anyone gets wind of this, I don't think I will be able to live on Earth anymore. Just because I am the daughter of the man that polluted Earth with his essence, I will be far more hated than even Hitler. Wait. Hellen hasn't reacted at all since General Jones started speaking. Maxine thought for a moment before it hit her. God damn it. I got all excited for nothing. There is no way he can get me based off the data he has. Maybe if Poison Emperor Guan was my mother instead of my father, they might have me. The idiot probably doesn't realize that essence cultivators generally possess an essence wavelength similar to their mother and almost never their father. It is possible that he is here to scare me into an admission. Maxine stared at General Jones for some time without betraying even the slightest hint of fear in her gaze. They stared at each other for awhile until the doctor from earlier came back. He immediately yelled at General Jones for disturbing his patient and chased General Jones out of her room. Maxine used a portion of her concentration to keep an eye on General Jones through the ravens she had in his shadow. She wanted to make his death seem like he fell prey to some essence beasts. Having her ravens tear him apart while he putting gas in his car sounded perfect.
Right as General Jones was leaving her room, Maxine heard Silky yelling. Although she couldn't hear exactly what Silky was saying, Maxine knew the gist of it. Silky wanted to see Maxine and was making a huge fuss about it, probably because Silky could sense the extent of Maxine's injuries through the spiritual mark within her mind. A few seconds later, Silky ran in through the door with ease since hospital room doors were wider than those at her house. As soon as Silky laid eyes on Maxine, she quickly came to Maxine's side and examined her broken arm.
"Mama, who hurt you?" Silky asked softly, but Maxine could see anger in each of her six eyes. She couldn't blame Silky for feeling that way since Maxine was quite angry herself.
"Don't worry, Silky. The person who hurt me is already going to get punished and I will take care of the one that ordered it," Maxine said through her spiritual sense, "Now where is Grandma Claudia?"
"She was right behind me a few seconds ago," Silky said as she looked towards the hospital door while looking alittle guilty. However Maxine extended her spiritual sense and found that her mother was calling for Silky.
"You ran too fast for her, Silky. You know that she can't keep up with you," Maxine said, "Now stop being silly and go let her know that you found me. She is still next to the elevator." Silky went back out of the hospital room. While Silky was away, Maxine noticed, through her ravens, that General Jones was getting in his car to drive home. He still had that smug expression on his face. However Maxine saw that his fuel gauge was rather low. You have to be kidding me. Am I really that lucky? However as he started up his car, a small meteorite pierced through his windshield and hit him in the groin. Charred blood and guts splattered all over the insides of the vehicle. General Jones was still alive, but he wouldn't be for much longer. She could see the horror written all over his face as he stared at his mutilated body.
Maxine couldn't believe such a thing could happen by chance as she watched medical personel run up to General Jones' car and bring him into the hospital. Why do they even bother? He no longer has a large intestine, his manhood or hip bone anymore. It would be kinderto just let him die. A few moments later, Hellen finally spoke through her spiritual sense, "I see your father's throwing arm is as accurate as ever. He was quite angry when he discovered that man was responsible for ordering the attack on you."
"How did he knew that General Jones was the one that ordered that attack?" Maxine asked.
"He saw the man that attacked you, but he wanted to find out if there was anyone else involved," Hellen responded, "After watching your attacker, he discovered that General Jones was the one that ordered the attack and decided to only punish that man himself. Fortunately, your father understood that if he poisoned General Jones, it would implicate you. Hence the meteorite." In a way, Maxine felt relieved that she didn't have to kill of General Jones herself. She never did like killing people. Now all she had to do was recover and pray that they killed the right iron stage beasts.