I'll admit, I blanked for a moment trying to parse his question. "What the hell? Highly dangerous and likely self-harming? Where the hell do you get that from?"

"Nicole." Mike cautioned me, but I waved him off.

"From your own data." Gary smiled thinly. "Your method induces the creation of an unknown foreign object in the body and in what you call breakthroughs it spreads. You know what else starts small and spreads through the body? Cancer."

I started to rebut him before he continued. "And even worse, your procedure is easily triggerable in everyone apparently. At least before people with power were a smaller number and it didn't literally infect them. You're doing the alien's work for him, killing us all off."

"Are you about finished?" I seethed, noticing there were more people now listening into our conversation, with several people apparently recording. "I am not doing the alien's work. I am doing everything I can figure out how to actually get to a point we can beat him. Either by actually beating him or at his own shit. I have no clue what a heavenly realm is, but getting there first means he'd go away according to his own words."

"And you believe those words? Maybe you're just deluded instead of explicitly doing the alien's work." The newsman said, still waving his little handheld. "Are you normally this angry? Perhaps increased aggression is a side effect of your procedure. It would be nice if the side effects of your procedure had actually been studied so we could know."

I snapped my own hand out, grabbing his wrist and stilling the handheld and narrowing my eyes at him. "You're going to twist anything I say however you want it."

I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Don't, Nicole." Mike said again. "Just have him talk to Danny."

Gary looked placidly at his own hand, giving barely a tug. "Are you going to attack me? I'm fairly certain I can't stop someone capable of lifting what you did in that video, if it wasn't staged."

It'd be easy, I realized. A little squeeze and I could probably snap his wrist. Easier than when I'd gripped through the vending machine and I hadn't even really recognized doing that until afterwards.

"Twist this instead." I said instead, energy surging. "Art of Awakening: [Dantian]." I wasn't being nice about it as my power crashed against him and I felt a glimpse of what my power echoed against, something outside my vision but outlined by my power and the asshole newsman's own self.

Pretty much everyone I could see flinched at my words.

"What-What did you do?" He seemed to have trouble controlling himself as I let him go.

"Gave you the instructions on how to light your dantian so you can see if increased aggression is a side effect yourself." I turned, finally seeing Mike who had a worried look on his face. "I should have taken you up on your offer, Mike."

"I don't want to do whatever it is! How do I get it out of my head?!" He was half panicking now. "You're going to be thrown in jail for assault! Make this stop!"

"I let your hand go. I didn't attack you." I shrugged before turning and walking out.

"Nicole, what the hell?" Mike asked me as we got outside. I shook my head and kept walking to his truck, before slumping down next to it.

I was shaking a bit, but I couldn't tell if it was anger or frustration or anything else. Even just adrenaline wearing off.

"I probably shouldn't have done that." I muttered.

"You think?" Mike shook his head, offering a hand down to me. I grabbed it and he pulled me back up. "Though he was probably hoping for bigger reaction. He was pretty much asking for it." He pulled me into a hug and I just held on for a moment.

"Hey, you! What the hell did you do to Gary?" I heard shouted and looked back towards the dorm. There was someone else storming out towards us.

Mike stared at him and he startled to a temporary halt. "If we're not willing to deal with them, we should probably leave."

"I'm going to run to the lake. Meet me there?" I mumbled against him.

"Run?" Mike questioned and I nodded my head. "Be careful on 63, but I'm going to follow behind you."

I squeezed a hug into him then took off. Probably startling Mike and the other guy, considering I startled myself at how fast it was to dodge between cars and get onto the actual road.

Long strides ate up the road as I ran, dodging other pedestrians with an ease I wasn't expecting. People almost seemed like they were standing still as I moved around them. I blew through a crosswalk in what felt like maybe six steps and was passing the athletic fields before I realized how fast I was moving.

I stopped for a moment, getting some really strange looks from the people on the street. I'd gone half a mile in maybe three or four minutes and it wasn't even a stretch. But it felt good to just let it go and move. How much had I, had we, been holding back?

I cycled, let go, and just flat-out ran. Dodging people started to get actually difficult as I was afraid to even bump into them now as I'd probably end up throwing both myself and them from the collision. A step sideways and I was running in the bike lane, keeping up with some of the actual vehicle traffic somehow. Wind from my own run blowing my heavy braid backwards, exhilaration pumping as I pushed myself as hard as I could.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I wondered at how fast I was running. Away the thought darkly crossed my mind for a moment, before I shook it off.

The light ahead at Lanning was red and traffic was going across, but I didn't want to stop. I had an absurd amount of forward momentum built up however and the bike lane was clear all the way up to the light. There was a car turning right though, crossed into the lane.

"Screw it." I whispered in the last few seconds as I came up to the light at full speed. "Spirit of Simone, don't fail me now."

I kipped up, starting my first turn moving faster than I had ever before. My palms pressed heavily into the ground and I saw my braid swing through the air as I pushed off with my hands, getting probably ten feet forward as I landed with a crouch exactly where I'd hoped to right at the car.

The guy driving had wide eyes as he stared at me as I came out of the crouch in a hard push into the next flip. It was unfortunate the ground didn't have the normal bounce a vault run would have, but it didn't matter at this point. Hands out, I pushed down as hard as I could on the hood of the car halfway through the flip, giving myself more lift for crossing the car.

And wasn't expecting nearly the air I got, tumbling madly through the air across the entire street coming back down in a half roll instead of neatly landing. I rolled off a shoulder onto my back, sliding a little bit before coming to a halt and managing a final push that somehow gave me enough push to come back onto my feet.

I looked myself over, shocked that my clothes were barely even scuffed. When I'd thrown myself further than I meant to, I'd expected to come away pretty badly roadrashed if not worse.

Apparently, others had too, as traffic had come to a halt and the guy whose car I used as a vault was halfway out of it to check on me. "I'm OK." I called while patting myself over one more time, catching my breath.

The guy hesitated before getting back in his car and I waved him off.

At least the shakes I had from the news guy were gone, even if that jump had been about as dumb as answering any questions.

"Maybe I should just wait on Mike." I told myself, looking back up 63 to wait. Even caught by traffic he shouldn't be more than a few minutes behind me.

I sighed. There really hadn't been a way to get out of that conversation well once it started. I should have ignored him. Should have taken Mike up on just going over to his place. But no, I had to just rush in.

I continued to grumble at myself until I saw Mike's truck slowly coming down the road with him watching all the pedestrians. Looking for me. I waved him down and he pulled over.

I got in with a smile.

"You left your bag at my truck." Mike shook his head. "Also, How long were you waiting on me? You tore off faster than I thought you could from the parking lot and then ran two miles." He looked me over. "You OK?"

I thought about it. "I was only running for about five minutes. Damn. And yeah, I'm OK. You think there's going to be a lot of blowback from what I did?"

"Probably. I don't have Danny's number, so call him and let him know what's up. Maybe between him and the DARPA guy they can figure something out."

He pulled up the dialer for his truck and I punched in Danny's number from my own tablet. By the time he'd answered, conferenced in Brent, and I explained what had happened, Mike had already gotten to the lake and pulled up.

Brent sighed over the call. "I hadn't expected someone to put enough together literally today to get someone here, otherwise I would have given you some idea of what to expect. I apologize for that."

"So what do I do then?" I asked. "I'm going to bum a couch from Mike tonight, but what about tomorrow?"

"We can likely put some pressure on the school for interruption of the dorms by letting that happen, but that's more reactive." Brent replied. "You're drawing a paycheck, it'd probably be reasonable to get a rental of your own instead of stay at the dorms." He hesitated. "You could also withdraw from the college completely, which would reduce your time there to anything you're doing as Seeker business."

"I'm still managing classes. Maybe not do full time though. I still want to get a degree." I answered.

"It will continue to expose you, but as you will. You're now a much more visible public figure." Brent cautioned. "That being said I believe I can handle this particular reporter problem, however I'd like you to just push anyone else directly to Danny or myself until we have some time to come up with better general answers and teach you how to actually evade questions you don't want to answer."