Parkarka stood up, looking away. It had been some time since anyone moved. “I’m sorry, Jana, I really am.”

“That doesn’t fix anything…” the other girl said, mostly recovered yest still slumped on the ground.

Parkarka walked to Jana, then kneeled to hover her hands over her arm. The cuts, scratches, and bruises on her body faded away. She then walked behind Jeremy again. “I know,” she said regretfully, pain in her words. “I made a mistake. I should have known that you trusted me, I shouldn’t have been afraid to lose face. I know that…so, sorry. If you want to tell everyone what I did…I won’t stop you.”

With her parting words, Parkarka flew away, off toward the horizon.

After another half minute, Macy walked into the clearing and stood above Jeremy, still kneeling to hold Jana’s hand.

He met her eyes. “Thanks.”

The psychic master nodded. “I did what any self-respecting woman would do,” she said. “And you did what only a…half suicidal child could do. We can call it even.”

“I don’t understand, but suure…?” he said questioningly.

“It seems like the peril, of sorts, is over, so I must return to my settlement. I’ve already said this, but if you need anything, you have my number. If you’d like, I can hire…erm, ‘train’ you as a disciple of mine while we search for these ethereal people. They are related to your search for your sister, no?”

He nodded. “Yeah, apparently.”

She nodded. “But I should get back to my limo before some unforeseen event turns its crushed remains into a gag.”

“Heh, be careful out there,” he said, waving as Madam Illuma walked away.

…

“Hmm…” Blue hummed with curiosity, sitting beside a squatting Yellow. “I think our time here has ended, for the time being. Would you agree, my trouble-making friend?”

“Troublemaking?” Yellow said with an offended expression. “Please. I had not intended to cause trouble.”

“Says the man who stabbed a girl with a sword.”

“Guiltbearer isn’t a sword, it’s a concept.”

“Potato potaato,” Blue retorted. “I don’t see any philosophers naming their theories on ethics ‘Utilittearerian principle’ or ‘Virtuebringer of ethics’.

Yellow snorted in annoyance. “I guess I’ll see you later, then.” He suddenly disappeared into quickly dissipating yellow sparks.

“That sure got on his nerves,” Blue commented. “Well, I will take my leave as well.”

“See ya,” Jeremy said.

They nodded, then vanished into more blue sparks.

…

Jeremy looked at Jana.

“Huh?”

She’d seemed really injured, scathing sears cut across her body from Parkarka whip, yet now, her battered skin was unscathed, but after Parkarka healed her, she looked totally uninjured.

He quickly looked away.

“Umm…Jana?”

She grumbled, “Uhh?”

“Are you…okay, now?”

“Yeah…” she said, quickly and quietly, brooding evident in her tone.

“Mmm…”

Jeremy didn’t want to ask her to, but Jana realized what was bothering him and let go of Jeremy’s arm.

When she did, he quickly took his shirt off and flung it at Jana.

“You’re wearing ice armor and all but…”

The condensed ice covering the girl suddenly melted into a small flood, giving her space to put the shirt over her wrecked clothes while Jeremy looked away. It didn’t fit well at all due to her…sizes. Jana shuffled through her pants, which were only hanging on to her waist by a thread, and pulled out her phone, covered in ice. She chucked it to the side. “At least that’s fine…” she muttered to herself.

“Yeah, the phone’s pretty useful.”

Jana suddenly created a wall of opaque ice between them for a moment, and when it fell, her pants and underwear were in her hand, opaque ice armor substituting them. “Maybe I could sell this permafrost stuff as a new fashion trend…” she muttered with a bored tone, throwing her clothes over her shoulder.

…

After a pause of silence, Jana looked to the side. Then, she glanced at Jeremy, who awkwardly shuffled through his pockets, quite cold without a shirt.

“Why…would you do that?” she asked angrily. “You ran right between us. You know how dangerous that was, right?”

“I know.”

“Then why?”

“Because I knew you could stop,” he said with a nervous shrug. “I trusted you.”

“Trusted me?” Jana said. “Why…I was furious. Do you know how easily I could have not paid any attention?”

“I dunno, sis!” he said. “I just did what I had to do.”

“You’re an idiot…” Jana choked out, trailing off.

“What?” Jeremy couldn’t quite hear her.

“I said, you’re an idiot…” she quickly trailed off again.

“What are you saying so quietly?” he asked.

“I SAID, you’re an idiot,” she finally said with some gall.

“Tsundere,” he simply said, crossing his arms and closing his eyes with a smirk.

“Bruh.” The smirk was met with a fist slowly shoved in his face. “Do you think I don’t know what tsundere means?”

He grabbed the fist then crept it away. “Kinda…” he said, embarrassed at his presumption.

“Like I haven’t heard it before…” she muttered, before grabbing Jeremy’s hand and tugging him along with her. “Let’s just get out of here. And get me some-Move!”

“OWOWOW! Stop that!” he said as she tried to force him to move, practically pulling out his arm.

“Why aren’t you moving?!” she asked with genuine confusion.

“Bruh, I’m stuck.”

“Huh?” Jana blinked.

Jeremy threw his hands down to address the ice binding his shoes to the dirt below.

“Oh, sorry about that.”

————————————————————————

Their shoes pattered on the dirt, quiet.

Jana put out fire and cleansed ice as they walked, sometimes flying up to get a look on the area.

It had been about fifteen minutes of the two walking absently through the forest, idle, when Jana finally addressed the fight. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“What?”

“Fought.”

“I…did not expect you to say that…”

“Surprise surprise,” she said sarcastically. “But I’m not dumb. I wasted a fuck ton of money, doing that.”

“That’s what you’re concerned about? And how, exactly, did that cost you cash?”

She shrugged. “My image isn’t great, but I’d rather not make it worse…What I mean is that I plan on donating for repairs. That’s gonna cost some serious cash.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Well, aren’t you responsible?”

“Yep.”

…

“But…” she continued. “I’m sorry to you. If I got sent to the hospital, you’d be stuck here, and…stuff.”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For saying sorry.”

Jana grumbled. I’d be a jerk not to.

“…So…how come you were fighting without a barrier, somehow?” he asked.

“You noticed?”

He chuckled. “I didn’t get a good view, but I guess I have an eye for spotting invisible barriers.”

“Huh. Well, another ability of mine expressed itself.”

“You mean you gained it?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’m pretty sure abilities aren’t even predetermined anyway, by now.”

“They aren’t?”

“Nah. We used to think of psychics as having ‘genotypes’, which determine what abilities they get at birth, and ‘phenotypes’, how they’re expressed. The terms come from genetics, but unlike DNA, we can’t learn someone’s psi-genotype with their blood or whatever. That was always how we categorized them, since psychic kids usually had similar abilities to their parents, but…”

“That’s not the case? Didn’t Samuel say that a psychic had those predetermined RGB values or whatever?”

“Yep. But those only determine a range of abilities, not the abilities themselves. I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, from the top of my head, but maybe abilities actually adapt to a psychic’s wants? Like, I can now enhance my body, which is interesting, considering I’ve spent the past two years getting swole AF,” she smiled as she flexed, her muscles looking a little less impressive hidden behind Jeremy’s sleeves. “And Parkarka can heal people…which would make sense, cause’…well, she cares about helping people. And your sister…”

“She probably wants to communicate with people, if we’re doing our psychoanalysis episode,” But let’s not end like whatever the fuck Evangelion was supposed to be. “Mind reading, telepathy…Well, y’know, she’s an extrovert and all.”

“Hmm…I think that’s enough pseudoscience for a day,” Jana said. After a pause, she muttered, “Ugh, this is gonna be annoying.”

“What is?”

“Everyone who doesn’t want super psychic business to stay our business. Gah! I bet everyone’s gonna paint me the villain cause’ I beat up Parkarka…hmm…” she glanced at Jeremy. “You haven’t asked so…”

“I know,” he said. “Yellow told me. The same thing happened to him the same way it did to Psychi.”

“Yeah…” Jana muttered. “The bitch lied to everyone…”

“So…are you going to tell people?”

She waved him off. “Pfft, yeah, no. Fuck that. I have better things to do. I just bluffed I would.” Kinda…

Jeremy sighed. That explains how Parkarka got angry as well. She seemed like a nice girl…

As the two of them finally walked from the treeline and up a suburban road, Jeremy asked, “So what are we going to do, now?”

“Go home, I guess,” Jana said. “Get some sleep…put on my clothes…Yeah. That.”

“Then you leave?”

“Probs,” she said. “You know how it is.”

“Yeah.”

When they sat back down at the gelato shop after Jana changed clothes, nobody but the worker nearby anymore, most of them out and about surveying the destruction or tucked in their homes, scared away by the now halted catastrophe warning(as the rarely used siren for super psychic attacks was often dubbed in the recent years.).

Jana, jealous of Jeremy’s remaining gelato, brought out her credit card and slapped it on the scared worker’s counter with a smile, saying, “Gimmie a caramel peanut vanilla. And add a tip of a thousand dollars.”

“A…tip? We don’t do…” he began, before trailing off, glancing side to side, then taking the card in silence.

She glanced back at Jeremy. “Actually, double up that order, please?”

Not long later, Jana walked back merrily with two cups and slid the other to Jeremy, who’d finished what was left of his last.

“You were kinda asking for it, not gonna lie,” Jeremy muttered as they flew back.

“Sure, but who interprets double up that order as ‘double the tip, too’?” Jana said.

“Someone who knows you don’t care.”

“Still…it’s illegal,” she said with an exaggerated shrug.

“My gosh,” he said, gasping and putting a hand to his mouth. “Causing mass destruction, property damage(probably), endangerment of life, destruction of wildlife, and artificial climate change I can understand if you’re angry, but god forbid the minimum wage worker double the tip. That’s illegal.”

“See? Exactly my point!”

The trip back was a fairly quiet one. Jana was very exhausted, but powered through the slowly setting sun, determined to get them back to Canada by the end of the day. She had been happy with relative silence, using it to listen to music with her slick black jogging headphones. She didn’t have the capacity to talk for long after the battle.

After about six hours, the terrain had turned to no more than ice and water beneath them.

“Think we’re close to the north pole?” Jeremy asked suddenly.

“Yes,” Jana said quickly. “And before you ask, no, I’m not stopping there. The place is boring anyway. And traumatizing, since it’s where I first learned Santa Claus was fake.”

“Huh. Most kids learn that any other way, but you do you, girl.”

…

“Hey, wanna look up what’s on the news?” Jeremy asked. “After what happened,” he added.

“Sure…” Jana quickly took her phone out then pulled up a news app, where she then tapped on a video named, {Parkarka’s official statement on her battle with Jana in Coela.} (2 hours ago)

She unplugged the speakers as the video of Parkarka briefly loaded.

It showed her shuffling through a crowd of paparazzi, flinging questions toward her. The questions seemed to blatantly assume Jana was the person to cause their dispute. It was entirely reasonable, though it felt mean spirited. It wasn’t like the practically-billionaire was too perturbed by it, though.

When the woman got the center, she took a random microphone presented to her and said, “I know people are worried about what happened between Jana and me. Some people are probably considering placing the blame of our haphazard…spat on her, through means such as economic sanctions on the Psychic League and the like…” She glanced to the side, pausing. “But I want to ask that nobody punish her for this.”

There was another pause. “I understand that Jana doesn’t have a good reputation as a psychic, and I understand that she has a history of causing fights like these but…I want to stand up for her today. Jana Pontoon is a good person, even if she’s young. I can’t speak for everything she has done, I don’t know her well enough, but time and again she’s proven to me that she does everything she can with how little experience she has to make the world better.” She was nearly silent as the reporters waited to hear what it was all building up to. Jana could see through her familiar brave face, and could hear the slight shudder of her voice better than anyone else. “I will take full financial and moral responsibility for what happened today. Also, because this is personal business, I won’t be giving any statement on why this happened. Thank you for listening.” The short video then minimized.

Jeremy looked up to see Jana’s jaw quivering as she cringed, her hands tightening only a little bit.

“Are you…crying?”

She quickly wiped her eyes. “N-no,” she thinly lied. “I don’t do that.”

“Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t choose to. They’d be uncomfortable if they froze.”

“E-exactly,” she said through clogged sinuses, her voice hoarse. “I can’t accidentally freeze them, can I?”

Jeremy suddenly leaned against her shoulder, basking as her psychic ability caused the frigid air to lose its chill.

While he fell asleep not long after, Jana couldn’t do the same. She was on the wheel, after all.

They took only four more hours to get to his house, where Jana landed the platform.

“Hey, wake up,” she lightly said, tired.

Jeremy stumbled up, then toward his doorway, crashing against the door, where he proceeded to rub his face against it with a smile, saying, “Home sweet home, my dear door.”

Jana wasted no time floating everything up, then opening the door for the waking Jeremy to fall forward into. “How long has it been since we left, do you think?” she asked, walking their gear in. She never re-locked the door…

“Dunno…” he said with dramatic sluggishness. “Fifteen hundred days, you think?”

“Maybe a few digits less,” she responded, organizing everything into piles before the TV.

“Hey,” he said, digressing as he opened the pantry. “Want noodles…ramen…I have no idea what the difference is, honestly.”

“Maybe ramen is wavy?” Jana spitballed. “But sure, I’ll eat.” She yawned. “I need some excuse to stay up till the usual sleeptime of Canada. Jet lag’s a bitch…”

“Yeah,” he said in a light, dreamy sort of way, as though to say, ‘relatable’. He immediately began making the ramen. Jana, on the other hand, fell onto the couch then used her force powers to manipulate the remote, turning on Jeremy/Psychi’s streaming service then boredly browsing it without moving a hand.

“You know,” Jeremy said after a while, when she couldn’t find anything interesting. “We were on a television show once.”

“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t.”

“Well, the episode was about us,” he said between loud chops of a knife. “It’s called ‘A Psychic’s Life’. They did forty-minute episodes on different psychics across the globe, and we were just a good fit. They filmed it back when my parents were alive.”

“Oh?” Jana said, interested. “Are you implying we should watch that? Not to make you feel bad or nothin’, but you’re definitely going to cry if you watch it.”

“Ehh, I’ll be fine,” he insisted.

Jana tested out the show, watching the first episode while Jeremy made their dinner, and once he was finished, she let him do the honors and bring the bowls to the table while she paused then sat up, giving him space.

“Here you go,” he said, setting her bowl on the coffee table. Jana leaned over her ramen with an appraising expression while he waited with anticipation for her to take the first bite.

She decided to drag things out, using her fork to flip through the ramen as she thought aloud. “The broth is pretty thick, we’ll see how good it tastes…there’s plenty of veggies…maybe the peas aren’t enough protein for me, but whatever…plenty of noodles, and it looks tasty.” She set the fork back into the soup, then put her hands together and jokingly said, “Itadakimasu,” before…

Jeremy watched with distaste as noodles hovered from the bowl one by one into Jana’s mouth, where she slurped it all up as one continuous noodle, staring him right in the eye with a smug glare.

He bopped her head with the back of his fork after a moment of building annoyance. “Stop that! It’s bad manners to eat with your powers, and you’re pissing me off!”

She snickered, rubbing where he’d hit her. “See? Pissing you off totally warrants assault.”

“It does when it’s me,” he said solemnly, crossing his arms. “So, how is it?”

“Really good. You know how to make ramen, gratz’.”

“I try.”

“So,” she said, averting her attention to the TV as she navigated to episode 3. “You sure you want to watch this?” It’s kinda personal…

“Sure. Do you want to start?”

“Yup, let’s do this.”

The video began loading, then fell into fullscreen, the episode beginning…