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A.N:

"Japanese"

'English'

[Signs]

*Thoughts*

-SOUND EFFECTS-

(AUTHOR'S NOTES NUMBER)

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Chapter 3: Ripples

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The rest of the day flew by for Hikaru. As soon as the bell rang, he dashed outside and over to the tree. Sotaki was nowhere in sight. Hikaru blinked, pondering this turn of events. *Where did he go? He told me he'd be here...*

Hikaru looked around. By chance, he saw the dirt under the tree had been disturbed into a pair of near-identical shapes. Fortunately for Hikaru, he'd been exposed to stereograms before and knew what to do. Gently crossing his eyes, he looked at the shape.

Before his eyes solidified an arrow, pointing up. Glancing up, Hikaru saw a backpack hanging off the top branch. Recognizing it as Sotaki's, he started to scramble up the tree. Unfortunately, he was too weak to get very high, and was exhausted by the time he was sitting on the second branch from the bottom.

As he sat panting, he slowly relaxed. As his eyes focused beyond the horizon, the world started shifting. When he closed his eyes and opened them again, the world was different. Again he saw the lines of color running through the earth, but this time he saw a floating ball of white right in front of him. Curious, Hikaru reached out. As his hand neared the ball, he heard a voice in his mind. *Dingdong, Hikaru! If you've found this my experiment was a success.*

What the heck was that? thought Hikaru, just as Sotaki jumped down from the branch right above Hikaru and removed a few spare leaves from his clothes.

"Wha-What? Why didn't I see you?" spluttered Hikaru.

"Psionics."

"What? You used your mind to turn yourself invisible?"

"No. Invisibility is pointless. Even if they can't see you, they can still hear, smell, and touch you. What I did was make myself part of the environment, like a wall. That way even if you climed past me you wouldn't have touched me."

"What do you mean, 'like a wall'?"

"It's quite simple. Think about a wall. It's not in any space in your map of the world, but it does define your conceptual map. You don't pay attention to it because most of the time it's not 'THERE'. By surrounding myself with an aura of treeness, for all uses and purposes you wouldn't have distinguished me from a small branch on the tree."

"Are there any other applications?"

"Of course there are other applications. Besides just making yourself part of the scenery, you can make yourself more intimidating, you can send messages over long distance, you can read minds... heck, just about anything.

"Psionics are a good place to start, but they're the equivilant of a BB gun in terms of power. Dark magic is harder, but it has plenty of offensive spells, and anyone who's mastered dark magic can cast a few small spells from the light domain.

"Of course, all of these skills are useless if someone decides they don't like you and simply punch you out. That's why I'm going to start training you in the brakes before the gas, so to speak."

Hikaru was puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"The first thing you need to learn is discretion. Many a fledgeling sorcerer has been crushed because he revealed his power too early. Until you're capable of holding your own against an initiate of all three skills, I forbid you to reveal your powers or use them on anyone but me, unless I say otherwise."

"All right. Now, you said you'd train me. Could we do that now?"

"Sure. The first thing we're going to do is practice psionics. Right now we're going to practice drawing power. You've seen auras, right? Well, seeing is part of psi, but doing is a vital part as well. What's your favorite thing in the world, the thing you feel most comfortable with? Some people say electricity, some people say water, some say fire, some say sunlight, some say the Earth, or other planets. Personally, I use music, but it's important for you to learn how to draw from at least one source."

Hikaru pondered that, and finally realized what his source was. "I always feel safest in shadow. Darkness is stifling, and light is too sharp, but shade is the middle ground for me."

"All right! Shadow is a fairly powerful element; it's most useful for concealing and distorting things, and it specializes in survival and balance. So what I want you to do is to relax like you did before, and look at the shadow of the tree. Focus on shadow while relaxing."

Hikaru sat down carefully, and tried to achieve the state he was in before he saw auras. As he relaxed, the world shifted again. Blinking, he saw that the shadow of the tree was pulsing with it's own energy.

In the back of his mind he was aware Sotaki was telling him that he could move the shadow. Barely trying, he caused the shadow to flow over the ground toward him. Wrapping it around himself like a cloak, he marvelled at how soft it was. With this power around him, he felt much more confident and comfortable. Like this, he could take on the world.

Suddenly, a snapping noise broke Hikaru out of his trance. He turned and saw Sotaki looking at him. Oddly enough, his vision was still filled with auras. "Well, that went better than expected. You must really like shadow to have gotten it that fast. What you did was channel the shadow 'into' you. If you keep doing that, you'll build up a stock of power. Some people keep power in crystals or rocks. The upside to that is you can carry power around, and you can shield rocks much more easily than yourself, and you can store different types of power. The downside is that you have to carry around rocks, which are heavy, or crystals, which could be valuable. Both can be stolen.

"For now I just want you to look at the world when you've got a psi-charge. After you get bored I'll teach you how to tune that out, or at least down, so you can see things normally. But after this lesson I want you to look at everyday things using your new sight, and see what you can figure out.

"For now, don't try to fool around with any energy besides shadow, and if you start feeling like you're losing control even for a second just toss the energy away."

Hikaru spent the next two minutes looking around, and walking around the neighborhood looking at sights with new insight. After a while he noticed that his usual path to and from school stood had little bits of dark-grey flecked with white floating about five feet off the ground.

Sotaki, who was following behind at a distance, noticed that Hikaru had stopped. "What do you see?" he queried.

"Dark grey flecked with gold is hovering in a cloud above my path to school. Is there any particular reason for this?" Hikaru was amazed how much more in-control he felt with the shadow around him.

"You know, there's one thing you've failed to look at."

"What's that?"

"Yourself."

Hikaru glanced down at himself, and was surprised when he noticed an aura of the same color as the cloud surrounding himself.

Sotaki launched into another lecture. "You see, the reason you think of something as 'yours' is because you've let your aura encompass it. You've heard tales how a noble samurai's sword has responded to his need, or noticed how sports teams play better in a place they're not just familiar with but are comfortable with?

"That's because of Telekinesis. Telekinesis, or TK for short, is a skill that's usually quite exhausting, but handy nonetheless. Most people perform TK on a daily basis but don't realize it. In order to perform TK, you need one of two things. Either you need to familiarize yourself with an object to the point of considering it YOURS, or you need to saturate an object with an aura really fast. In the case of the samurai, his sword became sharper and faster in response to the Samurai's TK in terms of the edge. The sports team stumbles less because they 'convince' the landscape not to put a rock under their feet."

Hikaru was pondering this when the auras slowly faded from sight. His confidence fled, and he nearly collapsed from exhaustion.

"What... happened... there?" he gasped out.

"You ran out of juice." Sotaki said solemnly.

Hikaru was puzzled. "What? But I drew shadow from the tree."

Sotaki nodded. "Right. But what do you think shapes that shadow?"

Hikaru's eyes widened in realization. "Oh."

"Yes. You ran out after a VERY long time for a beginner. You've got a lot of talent. You just need to practice your holding, drawing, and control and you'll be able to hold a decent amount of energy 24/7.

"Now, I want you to take a breather. I think we've done enough psionics for today. After you recover, we'll take a stroll downtown."

"Why? Where are we going?"

"To see if we can find us an arcade."

****

Hikaru's mastered the basics of one skill in zilch time, but he's not gunna get off that easily on the rest. Can anyone see what an arcade has to do with any of the other two skills?

Also, I'm wondering if Hikaru should end up with anyone. I'm going to be doing some Akane-bashing ahead, and I sincerely doubt the Knights of the True Fiance would really stand up for a Hikaru-Akane pairing, much less anyone else. So, the polls are now open.

Email me at with your opinion. The better your reasons, the more votes I'll cast in a particular category.

Ukyo : 0

Shampoo : 0

Nabiki : 0

Kasumi : 0

Some other Amazon : 0

One of the SM cast : 0

One of the Tenchi cast : 0

No one : 0

Akane : -10