I would like to say that my new re-awakening led to a sea of endless power. I would like to, but I would be lying. I was still a little weaker than I had been when I had been sporting my own personal modifications, but it felt more… whole. Not disconnected, like the whole time I had been using my earlier physical modifications, it was like I was wearing enhanced power armor that wasn’t exactly part of me.

The hardest part was keeping the energy slowly flowing. Supposedly it would soon become an instinct, just something that naturally occurred even when I was asleep, but for right now it was a near constant, if minor, effort.

Speeding it up took much more effort, but when I did… well… let’s just say that it increased my power absorption as well as temporarily boosting my strength and speed, but it took a toll on my exhaustion, and left me starving. Too bad I didn’t have an emergency shirt, and never really had enough savings to put any kind of money supply into my hiding places, or I would have gone to a diner for food instead of basically cleaning out the food supply in the hideout.

Deacon was carefully packing up the now freshly cleaned needles into a piece of boiled canvas as I tore into an old MRE that had probably been expired for decades. It tasted like crap now, but it had probably tasted just as bad fresh off the assembly line, and at least it and the one next to it were filling me up.

“So what do we do from here?” she asked.

I chuckled, “I honestly have no clue. I figured I’d head back to the academy, they are bound to have noticed I was missing for...about a day?”

She nodded, “That, and a lot of people were asleep. I’d guess almost a day by this point. The surveillance was deactivated, and the maintenance tunnels were active, but it took almost half an hour for you to wake up and for us to get past the border.”

“I will probably have to go on foot. I seem to have more energy potential than before, but I don’t really have a way of measuring it until I can get back to the academy. If I had money I’d probably grab some clothes and more food from an all-night store, but I seem to have accidentally left my wallet behind.”

“I would help with that, but the only funds I have are Farmer’s marks, and in a city, almost no one will accept them except importers. The moment an importer noticed I had them, they would try to find out why, and likely reveal who I am.”

“So how are you going to survive?” I asked. Not that I should care that much, at this point I considered us even.

“That’s why I asked what we should do from here. I am not sure. I was raised in the sect, and then we immigrated, and the survivors wound up getting bound by the various farmer factions. I haven’t ever been anywhere where I wasn’t ordered by someone.”

“You have never been free? In your whole life?”

She shook her head, “No, my spirit root was discovered when I was a small child, and I was taken in by the sect. Since then, I have just served.”

“How old are you?” I asked. Yes, technically rude.

“Six.”

“Huh?”

She looked thoughtful, “Umm… wait, let me translate. The world I came from was very different from here. Most mortals would live around twenty-five years before age claimed them. Our years were set up differently. There was a wet season, a growing season, a harvest season, a fallow or dry season, a second wet season, a growing season, a harvest season, and then a cold season. Each of those cycles took about three years. So I would be, locally, between eighteen and twenty-one years old.”

I sighed, “Alright, I thought, at least according to the books I read, that you could be like, hundreds of years old.”

She laughed, “No, we were a small sect. Your lifespan does dramatically increase with each stage you accomplish, but I wasn’t very accomplished in third-stage body refinement. Once you complete a stage, your lifespan doubles, more or less. Wealthy families and powerful sects pack their children full of ascension resources at an early age, to get them through body refinement early, and then after puberty, they race through body tempering. If you aren’t at the first condensation stage by the time you hit your fifth birthday, you are never allowed to join most sects or are… removed if you are in one.”

“But body refinement three is super low?”

She nodded, “Alchemists are a different breed. Our education is far more important than racing through stages, especially since we can create pills and elixirs to extend lifespans, ease stage transitions, and boost cultivation. That’s why the age that we learn the fastest is crammed with education and training for alchemy instead of trying to cultivate as quickly as possible.”

“So you can, and do, take your time?”

She nodded, “That’s why the Maxwell group will probably be hunting me for the rest of my life, as will any other Farming Family that finds out I have escaped. A decent Alchemist can create formulas that can even enhance chaotic cultivators. Baelfire was a… I guess you’d call it a class two? Her gift is fire creation and immunity, but she was just a trickster before she took improved awakening pills and enhanced cultivation philters. I think right now she’s rank five, and Magazine is technically rank six, but he’s powerful enough now that my skill isn’t high enough to create a philter strong enough to have a real effect on him.”

“Other Wings of Jade Sect members have escaped before, I am sure that there are sect resources and safehouses somewhere, I just… don’t know where they are, or how to contact them. I also don’t know if there are any in Empire City.”

“What do you use to make your pills and potions?”

She shrugged, “The bodies of monsters, spirit beasts, or kaiju. Spirit herbs can be gathered far outside the cities where monsters tend to gather to absorb the energy. Special ores that have been steeped in energy, and some basic materials for keeping everything together, like purified water, distilled alcohol from essence-enriched fruits and grains, just the normal stuff for any alchemist.

“Do you have powers? I mean, other than potion-making.”

She nodded, “Yes, I can detect essence fluctuations and biological integrity, like how many spirit roots you have and where your nerve meridians should flow, that’s a basic alchemist gift, called spirit sensing. I can also produce and control fire and heat on a small scale, which is called alchemist’s fire.”

“Small scale?”

She nodded, “Short range, I can heat a small cauldron to pretty high temperatures, or start a campfire. When I progress to later stages, alchemist’s fire can get pretty powerful or even be used as a weapon, since nothing can put it out, but that’s a long way away. I am also pretty good with a staff and usually have an array of potions and poisons I can use in an emergency.”

Ugh, sometimes I hate my head. I was feeling… guilty, at the idea of leaving this naive little dumpling to her own devices. Crap. She was broke, never lived in a city… and her powers were even worse than mine when it came to needing preparation time. If she needed resources to use her potion-making skills, especially the ones that come from the deep wilds, sending her out alone would be a death sentence.

I would give her about a week before she turned into some gang’s bitch or lab slave, maybe both. Unless she left the city, in which case I’d give her less than a day before she became something’s light snack. If she got really lucky, she might get killed by a random thug or picked up by the Maxwells or another Farmer family, since they made it a practice to infiltrate the cities and try to poach any alphas that fell under the BSA’s radar.

I was neither the first nor the last low-power alpha to get smuggled out of the city by a Family acquisition team. You were either too weak to be useful, or too strong to be bothered. If you were strong, they were almost guaranteed to start making attractive offers, but if you were too weak and not protected by the BSA or a corporate group, you would probably wind up in a hover truck with a bag over your head like yours truly.

Ironically, she would probably make a damned good support…

I sighed deeply, why should I feel guilty? She was the most important member of a black-bag team that tried to kidnap me. I should be sending her on her way with a smile and be happy she was out of my hair and would be getting what she deserved. Then again, making the ‘hard choices’ was one of the reasons I never wanted to be active, and preferred the idea of being support. Heroes were the ones who decided if a villain could be rehabilitated or if they were simply too damned dangerous and had to be eliminated, not me.

Her beauty had nothing to do with my decision. It shouldn’t anyway. If she were an ugly man in this situation, what would I do? Dammit, I’d do the exact same thing, I wasn’t being manipulated, plus she still had a lot of information and skills I could use, and otherwise, I’d probably lose it forever.

“I think I know where… We can go.”

***

Linker looked at me skeptically, probably as much because I had walked into the recruitment center bare-chested and shoeless as because of what I was asking. “I don’t think we have ever had a sponsored student ask if they can sponsor another student.”

I smiled, “Learn something new every day. But seriously, she has helped me dramatically increase my energy abilities. Right now I could probably heal someone whose heart is missing as long as they were still breathing. Remember that pound of change? I could probably merge an entire two pounds at once right now, maybe even more. Deacon here is an enhancer, a solid one, and I want her on my support team.”

“Right now, would I even need a sponsor if I walked in the door? Or would you or someone working under you be frantically scrambling to find the perfect scholarship before I walked back out?

He laughed, “Good point. Enhancer, you say? That’s odd, I am not detecting any quantum signature at all. You aren’t doing this just to get a girlfriend a free ride, are you?”

Deacon smiled slightly, held out her hand, and a flame appeared. It was blue and flickered strangely, but I could feel the heat. “I was raised outside of the cities and BSA influence. One of the very first things I learned was how to hide my energy signature, it was sort of a… survival mechanism.”

“Survival mechanism?”

She nodded, “Yes, where I came from we had drainers, and very aggressive recruiters… Like put a bag over your head and you wake up in a restraint collar type recruiters.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Drainers?”

“Yes, Alphas who were able to strengthen their power permanently by sucking the power, and the life, out of weak alphas. Sort of like the Necromancer, sir.”

He nodded, “That sounds rough, but without being able to trace your bio-energy, unless you can show me something stronger than a minor flame summon, I won’t be able to classify you as higher than a class two.”

“Is a class two good enough for me to sponsor her?”

He sighed deeply, “Yes, it is… but unlike your deal with Glacier Girl, she doesn’t have any school transcripts, and I can’t provide a registered power graph. That means her sponsorship would be the real deal, and you’d have to help keep her off of academic probation.”

“What kind of classes would be needed?” Deacon asked.

He shrugged, “You’d have to take classes or test out of a lot of basic subjects, subjects that you’d have to take remedial courses for, such as American and world history, basic science, mathematics, and introductory English. If you can’t at least test for a basic level for remedial courses, you’d need to attend special courses, on your own dime, to get caught up to educational standards and then wait at least a semester.”

She nodded, “I was well educated, although I might require remedial American and World history since the farmer families taught their own version of those subjects.”

“You are from a farmer family?”

She shook her head, “No sir, my family was enslaved by a farmer family. One of the reasons I am interested in attending is that it will keep me in the same year group with Jacob, and the school is usually a much tougher nut for farmer recruiters to crack than it was recently.”

His eyebrow shot up, “You know about that? That’s being kept high-security confidential.”

I waved a hand, “I was the one they kidnapped, sir. I met Deacon over the course of our escape.”

He started tapping away at his computer. “That helps. We can bring you in as a refugee instead of a mystery guest. Do you have a real name? Super names won’t work under the circumstances, and I’d also like to know which family had you so we can use the leverage against them if they try to attempt another acquisition.”

We had carefully discussed what we would and would not talk about to a truthseeker, while we had walked to the center. “I don’t want to state which house, sir. I don’t want to be the center of a political kerfuffle. But I can state that both Magazine and Baelfire were part of the acquisition team, and both were prepared to create an incident.” Deacon mentioned.

He nodded slowly, “Magazine is already kill-on-sight in any of the associated cities. Baelfire was recently warded off and cited for unauthorized operation in a flight zone. Was she searching for you?”

I shrugged, “She was looking for me. That’s why I laid low for a while.”

He nodded, “Well, we don’t have much information about her, other than a few suspicious incidents without any proof… but it’s hard to collect evidence when a crime scene is completely vaporized. But if she kidnapped you, that’s enough of a felony to swear out a warrant and restrict her from entering a city zone. Do you want to press charges?”

I nodded, “Yeah, but it can wait till I get back to the academy. She and Magazine were leading the team that broke in and got me, but I was not conscious at the time.”

“Lo Sabrina,” Deacon spoke up. “Or I guess here surnames are last, so Sabrina Lo is fine. I won’t be using the name, Deacon, however, it has poor associations and could attract too much attention.”

He tapped on his keyboard. “Blueprint said you were an enhancer and you displayed elemental fire production… is there anything you can give me as to your alpha abilities?”

She nodded, “Yes, I can enhance concoctions made from plants and animals acquired in the wilderness zones, as well as advanced chemistry. It is called alchemy but doesn’t follow the guidelines of the alchemy taught at the magical schools. I can't create homunculi or shapeshifting magical brews, but I can create a huge number of baseline potions and pills. Minor healing, permanent power enhancement, broad-spectrum antidotes, it would probably be more appropriate to refer to it as mystical medicine than it would be to compare it to the alchemy practiced by magical schools, which are spells sealed into liquid form.”

He nodded, typing away. “Do you know what you would prefer for an alpha identity? I can run it through the database for an IP check.”

She looked lost in thought, but I grinned, “Can I put a suggestion in the hat?”

Linker shrugged, “Is it offensive?”

I thought about it. “Some might think so. I don’t, but then, I might just be thinking about the matching costume.”

He sighed, “Go ahead and hit me with your young man brilliance.”

“Candystriper.”

He facepalmed. “You just want to see her in a sexy candy-striper outfit.”

Deacon, or I guess, Sabrina, was looking back and forth at us in confusion, “What’s that?”

Linker sighed, “Candystriper was a nickname for a nursing assistant about fifty or more years ago because they wore red-and-white nursing uniforms. The term has fallen out of favor because it was deemed offensive before the FAAFO when the ideologist power blocs took over the media. Now it’s more of a male power fantasy about a healer girl that dresses in a vibrantly colorful outfit with an extremely short skirt, and it’s more of a sex thing, like a French maid rather than any sort of realistic representation.”

“Nurse… Nurse…” Sabrina was thinking. “With a hint of Darkness. Umm… Night Nurse? With alliteration?”

I laughed as Linker facepalmed. “That’s even worse. A night nurse is a girl that hangs around in case a medical problem comes up in the night.”

She looked at me in confusion.

I looked down at my pants. “Something comes up in the night? Get it? She takes care of it?”

She blushed, “Sorry, that wasn’t slang I heard before. But I like Nurse, it’s much less aggressive than poison master or drug dealer. My names are pretty bad because I wasn’t raised in English. How about just Sabrina?”

I looked at Linker and he smiled a little, “Not bad, I mean, it’s connected to her real name, but she doesn’t have any family here yet. She might get some flack if she starts calling herself a witch, but otherwise, it should be fine.”

Sabrina nodded, “Okay by me. The families don’t know this name.”

“Sabrina it is.”

***

“Wait, I am confused. Another support?” Candace asked me, after the whole nightmare of coming back to the academy, endless questions about the kidnapping I had to mostly dodge, and some paperwork affirming eyewitness accounts of a supervillain, Magazine, associating in a criminal enterprise with Baelfire, identity unknown.

I nodded to her. Most of the others were out. “Yep. Sabrina, this is Candace. Candace, this is Sabrina. I am going to put her on the suite system to complete her academic screening and assign her to the last room. She can meet the others when they get back from class, but I plan on getting in a workout in my secret garden.”

Her nose wrinkled. “Secret garden? Really? You make a sewage tunnel sound pornographic. Hi Sabrina. No offense, but don’t we like… get a vote or something?”

Sabrina looked at Candace with confusion, “I’m sorry if my presence bothers you, are you his lover? We aren’t having sex.”

Candace coughed, loudly, “No… no… I just… this team is brand new, and we are still learning to rely on each other. I just don’t know what the power dynamic is supposed to be. Most teams are led by their primary anchor, which is me, but in this case, the secondary anchor is leading. Her name is Mindy.”

I sighed. “Okay, I need a team, but not to put too fine a point on it, Mindy is lead, but I have to do what I feel is right for the team. Sabrina is more valuable as a support than you can possibly imagine, so I had to make a unilateral decision. I don’t mean to be harsh, but you do have a choice. I would hate to find another anchor, but if you force me to do so, I will.”

Candace sat down heavily. “I am not threatening anything, I am just wondering what the hell makes her so special that you just completely blow off the opinion of the rest of the team without even talking to us about it.”

I looked at Sabrina, “Would you like to explain it, or should I?”

Sabrina sighed, “I have sort of an idea, but you ran with it much farther than I expected, so I just went with the flow. Umm… I am an alchemist. Where I come from, that’s considered a valuable thing, although it is less so here because most people don’t know what that really means.”

Candace nodded, “Potion chucker? Do you make bombs? Kind of cool. I guess we could use more area effect attacks if we get into another invasion or monster siege situation.”

She shook her head, “Not that kind of alchemist. More like the pill and potion-making kind.”

“Like healing potions? That’s amazing, but we already have a team healer… everyone will try to poach you and just say it’s fair.”

Sabrina looked at me helplessly, and I nodded, “Okay, remember my problem?”

Candace nodded, “Wait, did you like, fall in love with her? In two days?”

I growled, “Not that problem, the power problem. Dammit, if I could spank you I would.”

She smiled a little, “Promise?” and then nodded, “Yes. The big one.”

“Well, Sabrina knows how to get around it… helped me get around it. She’s like… a superhero therapist. With the right tools and ingredients she can expand almost anyone’s powers, and the healing potions, and temporary buffs, and a ton of other things I can’t understand.”

Sabrina nodded, “Power Therapist is a good title. I could help expand your power core, and if you agree, there’s a chance we could disconnect you from the chaos realm and help you reconnect with your guide.”

“My what?”

“Your guide… the spirit wind over the mountain? He is very unhappy that you are tapped into the chaos rift instead of drawing on your spirit energy. You could be a powerful shaman, but you are linked to the destructive energies of the rift and he is not happy with you using it to support the gifts he’s given you.”

I looked at Sabrina askance, and Candace paled, “What? What? You can talk to spirit guides?”

She shook her head, “No, but I can analyze your aura, and right now, it’s charged with Chaos essence… your guide cannot get in, and he’s projecting unhappiness at you using your affinities, the song of the south wind and the strength of immortality, in order to become a basic thug instead of the powerful spirit warrior he hoped you would become. It should be possible, with time and a lot of work, to sever your connection to the outer darkness and allow his energy back inside as your people need.”

“Wait,” I said, “are we talking about cultivation?”

She nodded, “Yes, she has a powerful spirit hawk bloodline. If we can find the right materials for a bloodline awakening pill, probably the seven heaven blue yin-yang pill, it could purge the chaotic essence and allow her to reconnect with her true bloodline’s energy.”

Candace looked a little breathless, “Seriously? You sound like my grandfather.”

Sabrina smiled, “Your grandfather most likely carried the bloodline. I think Chaos awakens most alphas because it is so damned prevalent, but magic is in the air of this world now… She would have to be cleansed, but she should be able to connect to her true power, and her advancement would not be blocked like it is now.”

“What do you mean, blocked?”

Sabrina shrugged, “You are using a sort of energy that is antithetical to life. It is natural, but so is feces, that doesn’t mean you should eat it. It chokes this world because of the Q-bombs years ago, chokes it to the point where some natural processes, like radio waves, cannot even cut through it anymore. It’s like living in a wasteland of radioactive fallout, but all of the alphas are eating radioactive food because it’s EVERYWHERE. It won’t kill you immediately, but it does corrupt you and the world itself, and it chokes off your ability to advance towards your eventual natural stabilization point, or even immortality and ascension.”

Candace nodded slowly and then looked at me. “Okay, she’s convinced me, you have my vote.”

I chuckled, I didn’t think I needed her approval but it was nice to have. “I will bear that in mind.” Technically, the only approval I needed was Mindy, but at this point, Candace, Akyo, and Abigail’s approval stood fair to make the team run a whole lot smoother.

Six people. Four active, and two support. I was planning to get a non-alpha into that sixth slot, which was the maximum team size for competition, and maybe hopefully another guy so it wasn’t quite as choked with estrogen, but each of my new teammates filled a valuable role. And if, as Sabrina claimed, the ether energy that most alphas used was indeed as horrible as we thought, then this new team had a secret mission that might be needed to save the entire world!

No pressure, it must be a Tuesday.