Evelyn, standing alone, locked outside the jewelry shop, saw the blast wave approaching her at some 700 miles per hour. There wasn't even time to brace for impact.

A flash of crimson light encased her body entirely, it consumed every last wisp of the red ethereal power that she had absorbed, and even drew additional energy out of the ruby pendant to power the barrier that shielded her. Just for that one moment of impact, Evelyn heard and felt nothing from the outside world. Then the shield fell. She swayed slightly from the reverberations of the shock wave. As sound returned, she heard smashing glass from inside the jewelry store, followed by pinging and tinkling noises as items continued to break and fall. She looked up to see the entire contents of the store in shards and ruin.

But the colors! Never before had Evelyn seen such a dazzling display of light and color. Glowing tendrils of myriad tint and hue erupted from the display cases as if from bursting balloons. They weaved through the store, intertwining, expanding and filling the space like colorful vines of fireworks grown in a flash. Within a moment the store became fogged over from floor to ceiling with opaque light, sparkling and dancing as the glass continued to spin and fall.

With the glass door shattered and the display cases emptying, this fog of light and color pulled itself toward Evelyn. It swirled rapidly around her and drew itself into her as a brilliant maelstrom of condensed power, with Evelyn at the eye of the storm.

She felt the now familiar fizzing sensation in her head, this time more than ever, as her whole body became saturated with this energy. The overflow that erupted back out again mixed with the storm around her, and continued in an endless cycle.

The last two times she felt this, she had only felt the red energy, and far less of it. It had seemed like a lot at the time, but that was a teacup to this ocean. Now every color was present as well, all vibrating in their way with the full spectrum of tones and frequencies that comprised this new and yet ancient form of power. It brought a sudden influx of sensation and memory, it tugged at her beliefs and formed itself into shapes in her thoughts. She... she knew things.

Evelyn looks at the bars that blocked her from entering the store. She still couldn't shape the energy the way she wanted to; it still didn't fit like the right kind of glove for her to have that level of control with it. But given how much energy those display cases had contained, what Evelyn lacked in fit and control she could make up for in sheer overwhelming quantity.

Drawing from the power swirling all around her, Evelyn raised her hand. With a motion like she was wiping grease off a window, she wiped the metal bars right off the surface of existence. Reality reshaped itself at her touch, and the bars turned to liquid under her hand without even bothering to get hot first. The metal splashed to the ground to solidify again at her feet as a puddle-shaped chunk of stainless steel.

She stepped over the door frame where the glass used to be, through the hole she had made in the security gate, and finally into the showroom. She was looking for "yellow". At the moment she was fully saturated with it, just like all of the other colors. But given how much effort she had put into getting here, she wasn't about to leave empty handed.

Evelyn was no expert on gemstones, but it was glowingly obvious which color a given gem was attuned to just by observing the color of smoke pouring out of it. Yellow was the most urgent for her to acquire, but the new memories buzzing through her head reminded her that a reserve of a few other key colors would come in handy. She found a few items that erupted most strongly in the colors that she wanted, and put the jewelry on, making sure it would sit with the gemstone making direct contact with her skin. That last requirement wasn't critical, but her new memories suggested it would help.

Healing herself was trivially easy, now. Within seconds of entering the store, even her scars were gone. However, one detail caught her attention. Not only was the energy the wrong shape for her to control, the energy also pushed her into the wrong shape, too. She wouldn't have noticed this dissonance if she hadn't already gotten so much practice in working with this stuff over the past hour. And she wouldn't have realized the implications if her practice hadn't been centered around her medical knowledge. If left unchecked, the divergence between what she was and what the energy was trying to do with her could have disastrous results over time.

This would be straightforward to fix, though. She couldn't control the shape of the energy, that much was certain. But she definitely could control the ways in which the energy would affect her. Her strange memories made this part clear. After all, the energy wasn't alive in itself, it didn't have its own desires or intentions. Rather, all that Evelyn would need to control, at a fundamental level, is how she affected herself. She just needed to make sure that her own new instincts were the correct shape.

Evelyn took a moment to establish some boundaries for herself. She defined the parameters and limits that would allow her to remain real, to remain herself. Her mind was still fizzing and sparkling full of all of the possible colors, all of the various kinds of power that this new reality had to offer. This meant that, at the moment, the natural shapes of that energy were clearly visible, imprinted on Evelyn's beliefs and vague recollections. She worked her way through those instincts and feelings, one after another, and picked out the differences between the creature she knew she was and the beast it would otherwise turn her into. With that, she made the necessary updates and imprinted the corrected pattern in a way that would make it automatic for herself going forward.

This process took what felt like forever, and it consumed a truly staggering amount of that glowing energy, more in a moment than a typical person might experience in a lifetime. By the time she had finished, Evelyn was completely exhausted. Beyond exhausted. She had already been exhausted before she even got here. Now she was so tired that she had run out of words to describe it. She just needed to sleep.

The blood loss problem had long since been resolved along with all of her other injuries. And not only that, she now even had a second layer of protection, as the automatic aspect of this energy now had a corrected pattern to work from. It would gradually repair her body from injuries she didn't even know she had instead of just slowly turning her into some dangerously powerful monster. Through her efforts, now this colorful energy that swirled around Evelyn would simply keep her safe. It was done.

She was safe now. She could sleep now.

So, in the middle of the jewelry store that Evelyn had recently robbed; laying on cheap, dirty carpet covered in broken glass; amidst a twisting storm of brightly glowing fog of every color; and in a city full of despair, buried in rubble, and set aflame; there in that place, Evelyn finally fell asleep.

----------------------------------------

Evelyn drifted slightly awake. She must have heard something. It didn't matter, she started drifting back to sleep.

"Evelyn!"

That sounded like David. David was nice. She liked David. Evelyn smiled.

"Evelyn, are you OK?"

"Mmmm", she agreed. That meant yes. David would understand. She went back to sleep.

"Evelyn, are you hurt?"

OK, that was the same question just the other way around. Why was he asking the same question twice? She scrunched her face in annoyance. Rather than answering that dumb question, she tried to drift back to sleep. There was a piece of glass poking into her back, and another poking her leg. Evelyn shifted around to get more comfortable.

She felt a hand near her knee moving her leg slightly, and then another hand as well. It seemed like David was trying to assess a leg injury the way Evelyn learned to do in med school. Wait, David wasn't a doctor, was he?

"What happened to your leg, Evelyn?"

She slowly inhaled, about to tell him the whole story before realizing that it would be a lot of words. Right now she actually only wanted to say zero words. More than zero was too many. "Mmmmmm" she groaned as she exhaled again. The groan was more than she wanted to say, but less than he wanted to hear. That made it a good compromise. David would understand. But then he started talking again, making it practically impossible to sleep.

"Was it really injured? Or... It seems like..." then David stopped talking. He apparently didn't know what to ask, so Evelyn didn't bother to answer. She wasn't going to wake up for dumb half-questions.

He seemed to be letting her rest now. No more questions. Much better. She sensed his hand again near her shoulder. She didn't have any shoulder injuries; what was he looking for?

Ah! That was quick. Evelyn was impressed. He had already noticed that the scar was gone. She knew it bothered him. He blamed himself for her accident as a kid, as if he could possibly have known everywhere an energetic ten-year-old would be playing. David still didn't understand how much he had helped her. He had been there, he played silly games with her and kept her distracted from all of the stuff that was going on with her mother. She didn't want him to worry about that scar anymore, to not ever think about it again, which was why she tried to hide it around him. So, it was the very first scar she removed when she discovered that it was possible.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

David traced his finger across where the scar had been. Evelyn smiled. He wouldn't have to worry about her anymore. No matter what happened, she could fix it. Even her scars were gone, as though none of life's accidents had ever even happened. She pressed her cheek to David's hand as she smiled; she could even protect him now.

That was a pleasant thought. Evelyn the guardian. She continued to smile to herself as she drifted back to sleep.

"OK Evelyn, come on, wake up." His voice was more insistent this time. Hold on, that was David's "it's time to get up for school" voice. She hadn't heard that sound for years.

"What happened here?" came another voice from much further away. This sounded kind of like her friend Samantha, except perhaps a bit older. But then, Samantha herself would be older now too, right? She hadn't seen her friend since high school.

"Are you OK, Evie?" That voice was her dad. Her bedroom was starting to get crowded. There was a crunching sound of someone walking around.

No, it wasn't her bedroom, her bed didn't have broken glass in it. If this wasn't her bedroom, she had no idea where she was.

David lifted her hand as if to get her to come down for breakfast. "Come on, Ev, wake up," he said.

Evelyn opened one eye. She could risk a little light to figure out what was going on. David's concerned face filled most of her vision; she'd been expecting him but it was still a bit much. She was laying on the floor in some sort of store with a lot of broken glass in the carpet. She begrudgingly opened the other eye too, the first eye having called for backup amidst the confusion.

"Hi," David said, "I have questions."

Evelyn took in where she was, and the recollection finally flooded back in. The car crash, the walking, the jewelry store, all of it. She wasn't surprised that David would have questions; Evelyn had been through hell and back and probably looked and smelled like a week-old disaster. First, though, one puzzle piece didn't fit:

"Samantha? Why are you here?" Evelyn groggily asked.

"Good to see you too, Evelyn," Samantha snorted.

Fully awake now, Evelyn sat up, collected her thoughts, got a drink of water from David's backpack, and finally began answering the parade questions they threw at her. Yes, she had been injured, and no, she was no longer injured. How? Well, that was complicated. Yes, she had gone to the jewelry store to get more of that glowing smokey stuff, but Evelyn was a little foggy on the details. She didn't entirely remember everything that had happened before she fell asleep.

The waning light from the shattered window showed that the sun was close to setting; perhaps two more hours of light remained. The gems all around had largely stopped exuding colored vapor. While a few wisps remained here and there, the store was nothing like the brilliant splendor that had greeted Evelyn earlier. She sat up against one of the broken display cases, and David stayed next to her. Her dad found a chair, while Samantha perched herself on top of a counter, with her knees pulled to her chest.

Through their discussion, it came up that her dad had managed to draw a few specific conclusions that Evelyn was able to confirm were in fact true. First, the glowing vapor was actually just a visible manifestation of some seriously potent power. The utter destruction Evelyn had brought to the security gate was clear proof of that, even though she could no longer explain how she did it. Second, the different colors could do different things, and different gems produced different colors. The details eluded her, but she could remember that color mattered. Third, it did in fact affect your mind; the substance brought with it some level of awareness, somehow. The knowledge it provided was mostly accurate, but not entirely, as though it came from an outdated source. Evelyn knew she had understood this all completely and perfectly during the height of her experience, but she could no longer remember the details. She at least remembered that it had all made perfect, logical sense once you understood it, and that was good enough for Gary.

"Is the stuff dangerous, though?" asked David. Because, of course David would ask that.

Evelyn began to answer and then stopped. She cocked her head to the side, began to answer again, and stopped again. She didn't like any of the possible answers. She knew a few things, but had discovered some other things, and it was just all so fuzzy right now. There was only one detail she could be absolutely certain of:

"It's not dangerous for me."

That earned her raised eyebrows all around.

From that point, the discussion became a bit more subdued and concerned. Evelyn tried to assure her companions that whatever the problem might turn out to be, the people around her probably wouldn't have to worry. Or perhaps they wouldn't have to worry as much; she couldn't remember. Evelyn felt like she should be able to counteract whatever complications showed up over time, and they left it at that.

With the more urgent details covered and as it became clear that they were about to leave, Samantha got a distant expression on her face and sighed. She glanced outside, then at Evelyn, then back outside, and finally she looked down at her hands and frowned.

"Spit it out, Samantha," said Evelyn.

"Ok, so you said you were able to heal yourself, right? Like, you were injured and now you're not?"

"Yeah?"

"So, can you do it again?"

"Do you have something particularly dangerous in mind for me?"

"No, I mean, can you heal other people?"

"Hmm," Evelyn felt like the answer was complicated, but she needed a moment to remember why. The answer was definitely "yes" in theory, but she was sure that something was in the way.

"It's a mess out there, Evie," Samantha continued, "I don't know what you've seen so far, but it's really bad. Lots of people are hurt. We were in a hurry to find you, but now that we've done that, I was going to go help where I could on our way back. First aid and all that. But, well, you..." Samantha gestured vaguely at Evelyn, "It seems like you could do more."

That got Evelyn thinking a bit harder on it. The more she considered it, the more certain she became. It was possible, but there was a catch.

"I think so, yes," said Evelyn, "but it would take a lot of red and yellow--"

Evelyn stopped, she'd been working with this stuff for hours, but now that she was discussing it out loud, an important detail needed to be established. This had been absolutely grating on her for the past ten minutes.

"What do we even call this stuff?" Evelyn asked.

"Glowing blue vapor?" Gary offered.

"That name is truly awful, Dad."

"Luminescent energy?"

"That's even worse."

"Ethereal power?"

"Ohmygod Dad, you suck at this."

"What even is it?" asked Samantha. "I don't think I understand what we're trying to name."

"Well, it's like," Evelyn started, and scrunched her face in concentration, "OK, you use it to do stuff. It's like magic, almost, except it actually works. It's the magical energy that you use to make things happen. It's technically more complicated than that, but that's how it feels."

"Ah. That's called mana," said Samantha with no delay.

"Cool," said Evelyn, "OK, so it takes a lot of yellow mana if you need to create new tissue or red mana if you--"

"Hold on," David interjected, "Mana? Like, from video games?"

"Tabletop games," corrected Samantha, "video games just borrowed the idea."

"Sure," said David, "but is it really a--"

"I believe the term was originally from folklore and religion," Gary contributed.

"Still," David moaned, "it's not a very serious word. This isn't a game."

"Nobody is calling this a game. Words are just sounds with meaning," said Gary, "and this is the word that has this meaning. It fits."

"Someone's going to get hurt if we pretend this is all fun and games," David grumped.

"People are already hurt," said Samantha, "and we're arguing about what to call our crazy magic juju. The name is simple and it works. But if you come up with an even better word then we'll change. Agreed?"

David huffed, and Evelyn continued:

"Anyway, we'll need a lot of red and yellow mana, and we don't have very much right now. I think that white can become anything, except it's inefficient. And let's see," Evelyn paused looking up at the ceiling, "blue I think can be used for diagnosis, but you don't need much. Just the natural amount is probably enough in most cases."

Evelyn felt like her mouth was moving twice as fast as her brain, but as she spoke the words seemed like they were true. She had likely known this stuff perfectly well an hour ago, but now her words were practically a surprise to even herself.

"The natural amount?" asked Samantha.

"Your body will collect and hold a certain amount of mana on its own, so you don't need to draw it in from crystals," Evelyn explained.

"Crystals? Not just gemstones?"

"Mmm-hmm."

Gary's eyes went wide, and his mouth made an "O" shape.

"They're good at collecting mana, but they can only store so much. That's why it kept pouring out a while ago. It was collecting too fast and overflowing. But now it looks like it's slowed back down to normal speed, so this has suddenly gotten a lot more difficult. The jewelry will help, but honestly," Evelyn looked around at her companions, "even if we took every last diamond, ruby, and sapphire in here, how many people could we actually help?"

"And have we decided to become jewel thieves now?" added Samantha.

That last question hit hard. They had unquestionably broken into a jewelry store. Under the circumstances, nobody was coming to tell them not to, but the idea made all four of them to varying degrees uncomfortable. In every disaster in memory, the most selfish parts of humanity turned to looting. None of the four wanted to think of themselves that way.

"Who owns this store?" asked Gary, "Perhaps we can simply talk to them about borrowing the gems? If we're saving lives..."

"This chain is owned by one of the international diamond cartels," said David, "No franchise owner. No responsible party. Nobody to ask. Just a distant corporation."

Samantha made an anatomically implausible suggestion about where that particular company could stick their diamonds. They'd all seen the reports on the company's human rights record.

"Unless I missed something," Gary mused, "that whole organization ceased to exist entirely about an hour ago."

"How do you know?" asked David.

"Because I just figured out what caused the technology to fail," Gary said with a satisfied smile.

"Then what happens to all this stuff?" asked Samantha, waving her hand.

"Hmm. Banks would be gone, too. Same with financial markets. Actually, it's hard to imagine any corporation surviving. Electronic record-keeping just turned out to be the death of modern property." Gary looked pensive for a moment. "Realistically? The jewelry has no owner. The original owner doesn't exist and the creditors have no records. The only remaining evidence that the merchandise exists is the merchandise itself. So, I suppose it will eventually belong to whoever walks by and picks it up. Like salvage." He concluded.

"So..." Samantha didn't want to be the one to say it.

"You think you can use it to save lives?" Gary asked his daughter. Evelyn just nodded.

"OK," he stood up, "Evie, point out everything you think you might need and we'll put it in the backpacks. We're borrowing it for emergency purposes until we hear otherwise, so try to keep it separate from our own stuff."

The team got to work clearing out the displays. In the end, nearly all the gems were taken; everything could potentially be useful, and it didn't make sense to try to sort them. A few minutes later, they packed up, climbed onto their horses, and headed back the way they came.