AN: This probably isn't necessary, but I feel a need to have a small disclaimer about what I'm writing about. I do not actually believe in psychic abilities or the paranormal. I just find it interesting to think about and enjoy suspending my disbelief long enough to write something about it despite my own disbelief. If anyone does believe in anything I write about and is offended by my portrayal of it, I apologize, but I am not writing this to promote any belief in the subject at hand.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Just a reminder, the small bit about the psychic school was the basic idea from the anime and manga 'Psychic Academy' but this is in no way a crossover fic between the two stories.
The next day, Lisa entered her soon to be open shop early and sat down with clear rectangular prisms that looked to be made of crystal in several boxes in front of her. Pulling out one of them she placed it on a wooden cutting board and grabbed a long, thin, sharp knife that almost looked like a giant needle and started carefully and painstakingly drilling a hole at the top. Once she had drilled a hole the entire way through, she reached over to the ball of twine next to the boxes and cut a length off with a switchblade. She then strung the prism and reached into a smaller box that had bead-shaped crystals. Placing one of the beads on either side of the crystal, she then tied off the twine tightly and cut off the excess twine. As she started focusing on the nearly completed amulet she happened to see the mirror in front of her start to warp.
Sighing, she walked over to it and waited for the reflection to settle.
"We noticed that you brought Kaiba to the school," Ray said without anything in the way of greeting. "Does this mean he's awakened?"
"You realize you're asking the impossible, right?" Lisa asked irritably. "Out of all the people it could have been to be a psychic on the verge of awakening, it had to be the biggest skeptic I've ever met. I'm going to have a hard enough time simply convincing him, forget actually teaching. I'm hoping that the belief I think I saw in his brother will work in my favor and Kaiba will come to humor him. Mokuba may not understand everything, but he did see that what I did yesterday helped his brother calm down and become the rational person he's known for being."
"How soon?"
"If I get extremely lucky I can have him able to at least enter the sixth plane in a month, but that would be pushing it. Remember, his mind nearly fractured and needs at least a few days to heal. If I weren't pressed for time I'd wait a month before even trying to teach him anything, but in this case I'll have to trust in my charms and his own strength," Lisa answered after a moment's thought. "So what's the unreasonable time Anna's giving me?"
"Can you do it in three weeks?" Anna asked, walking next to Ray. Lisa hesitated for a long moment in thought before slowly nodding.
"It would be pushing it, but assuming that everything happens the way I need it to and he's as fast a learner as I suspect, I think I can do it in three weeks. I can't do anything for at least two days, though."
"Right. The grace period," Ray said.
"His mind's in bad enough shape and I've already broken about a dozen different rules of etiquette along with almost completely fracturing him. I'm not going against the grace period. It's the closest thing he has to recovery," Lisa said when she saw that Anna was about to protest. That said, she started turning away to walk back to the table when she stopped and turned around.
"By the way, if you interrupt me when I'm making my charms again I'll break every mirror here and then I'll kill you." She then broke off the connection and walked to the table, sitting down in front of the crystal. She took several slow, steady breaths, feeling the familiar tingle in her skin, mainly in her hands as she attuned herself to the psychic plane.
"Note to self: teach Kaiba about secondary skills as soon as possible," she thought before slowly pushing the psychic energy collected in her hands into the prism as well as the two beads. Once she finished she opened her eyes and then carefully studied the spirit strengthening charm she had made, reading the energies of it. She let out an annoyed growl when the energies coming off of the charm told her that it was pretty to look at, but as far as its properties went, the charm was a dud.
"Perfectly good waste of energy," she said in annoyance before letting out a sigh. "Maybe I can use it as decoration for the shop. I doubt most people even believe these charms do anything anyhow, a few duds won't hurt my store."
She pulled out another crystal and had just started drilling a hole when there was a knock at her door, which startled her enough to make her jump. This caused the blade to slip and slice into her palm. Quickly making sure her blood didn't get onto the crystal, she wrapped it until she could properly take care of it. Irritated at this, she walked over to the door and opened it quickly. Whatever she was about to say, however, died on her tongue when she saw that the people on the other side of her door were none other than the Kaiba brothers.
"The brothers Kaiba," she said with a grin. "Didn't expect to see you here."
"I'm only here because you've somehow convinced Mokuba that you're not a fraud. I intend to prove that you are."
"Fine, in the meantime I get to try and prove that I'm not," Lisa said with a shrug, unwrapping her hand and looking at the wound. It was long, but not deep. Ordinarily she would have let it go, but decided that this could work in her favor.
She quickly went into the sixth plane and sought out and then found a magic card called Rain of Mercy. Merging with it slightly, she looked as it went to work and rained on her hand. As Kaiba and Mokuba watched, the wound healed itself and she left the psychic plane.
"You're more than welcome to look for anything technological that could give that illusion, Mr. Kaiba," she said. "In the meantime you interrupted me as I was doing something important, so I'll ask you to look around quietly."
As Kaiba studied the room, Mokuba quietly sat down and watched Lisa work.
"What are you doing?"
"Well, as I said I make my pendants by hand," Lisa explained, not looking up from the crystal as she carefully drilled into it. "The back room has all of the important things," She added, nodding over to the door in question. "You're free to look, but don't touch anything. Some of the things back there are dangerous and as I can barely afford to open my shop, I definitely can't afford a lawsuit." As she spoke, she strung the prism and beaded crystals up and tied it off before focusing intently.
As Mokuba and Kaiba watched, the crystals all began to glow a lilac color, getting steadily brighter until it was almost at the point that they had to shield their eyes. Slowly the glow died down and when they looked what were once clear crystals were now a light lilac color. Lisa held it in her hands for a moment and smiled.
"Great. This one's not a dud like the last one." She then looked up at Kaiba and Mokuba. "Would you like a brief tour? It's not overly interesting, but it might be informative. Or it could bore you to death. One or the other." She stood up and opened the door that she had indicated to Mokuba earlier.
This room looked to be about the size of the front room that Kaiba and Mokuba came in through. One half of the room was filled with tables with boxes that had artificial lights over them and tubes and bottles that looked to contain chemicals. The other half of the room contained a large stone wheel connected to what looked similar to a sewing machine pedal.
"This is the only non-supernatural thing that I do in my store," Lisa said. "I grow my own crystals back here, though the exact process I use is my own secret. Do me a favor and stay away from the tables. I don't want something to spill on anyone by accident." She walked over to a box and looked in it, seeing the crystals were fully-grown, she picked the box up and set it on a table next to the wheel.
"I use this to smooth the crystals. This is one of the more dangerous steps," she said. "There's probably an easier, not to mention safer, way to do this, but I prefer this method." She carefully grabbed a prism-shaped crystal and placed it very gently against the wheel and very slowly pressed down on the pedal after placing on goggles and a thin pair of gloves gloves. After a few somewhat tense moments she turned the crystal and placed a different side of it against the wheel before repeating the process several times.
"Now for the scary one," Lisa muttered, grabbing a circular crystal. Carefully holding the crystal, she pressed down on the pedal. After several long moments she finished two circular crystals and placed them in two empty boxes on a table that was near the door.
"Like I told your brother, Kaiba, this room has dangerous things in it. You two are welcome to spend as much time as you like here. Especially since this store doubles as my home if you saw the door out front, but if this door is closed and you know for a fact that I'm in there, do not disturb me. I make one mistake with my crystals and I'm in trouble."
"And just what would you have here that would interest either of us?" Kaiba asked.
"I'm a psychic, not a savage," Lisa answered, walking to the door that led to her living area and unlocking it.
"Right. Your garden will definitely bring me here daily," Kaiba said sarcastically.
"I'm allowed a hobby, Mr. Kaiba," Lisa said. "Follow me. There's exactly one room without a mirror in it and I don't want to be interrupted again." To humor her brother, she agreed to have several mirrors in her house and at least one in her store, but the need for privacy led her to have a room in her house without one. While not as large as the Kaiba's house, it was still large.
"If you could barely afford your store, how do you have enough money for this house?" Kaiba asked.
"Ray's and my parents travel a lot on business. They don't have much to do with us, but they still provide us with a decent amount of money every month as well as... collection items, so to speak." She opened a door and revealed shelves upon shelves of books, several of them rare and all of them well-read.
"This is my sanctuary. I don't like to be interrupted when I'm reading so there aren't any mirrors in this room." She walked over to a dresser and opened a drawer, pulling out a box and opening it, removing two keys.
"I know that the chances are slim, but if for some reason you two decide to come here, this will let you into the store and my house." To her surprise, both of them took a key and placed it in a pocket.
"I believe you still owe me an explanation," Kaiba said.
"Always to the point," Lisa muttered, indicating that they should take a seat. "Ask whatever you like, and I'll answer them to the best of my ability."
"How exactly did you awaken these alleged psychic powers? And why did you choose me to do so?"
"As for how I did it, it's simple," Lisa said, taking off her pendant. "In order to change my crystals from the clear color you saw earlier to the colors they are sold at, I infuse them with psychic energy. The one that I gave you is the one that only psychics wear. It unlocks the ability in a person and then helps control it. It also helps the awakening be easier to bear as I've said. Why I chose you..." she hesitated for a moment before continuing, "I didn't. This pendant doesn't do anything for someone who doesn't already have that ability. It also doesn't awaken a psychic that isn't already on the verge of awakening already. Don't blame me for your abilities, blame your cards. They were the ones who told me. The Genie told me that you had the potential. The lamp told me that you were suppressing this potential. Polymerization told me that your normal life and the supernatural one you refuse to acknowledge were fusing, which means that you were on the verge of awakening. And the Blue Eyes White Dragon told me that you had the physical and mental strength to handle it."
"Why were you the one sent here?" Mokuba asked. "Were you the best in your school or something?"
"Actually I was fairly average. There are several card-speakers and several more who's amulet making is a primary ability and not a second one. Don't ask, I'll explain in a minute. The reason I was chosen to come here is because I was qualified in a different way. Anna said that she saw a fractured awakening when she said that there was a need for a psychic to be awoken. Before I met Kaiba, I didn't think it was possible for someone's awakening to be more fractured than my own. As a result I'm usually picked to awaken psychics that we either suspect or know will fracture."
"What causes a fracture?" Mokuba asked.
"I was going to explain primary and secondary abilities next, but since you asked about fractures, I'll explain that instead. Like I said yesterday, a fracture happens when an awakening psychic rejects the things he or she sees and hears. Everyone does so simply because of how impossible it seems at first. So they'll cling to logic, and reason and essentially hope that if they ignore it long enough it will go away. This puts stress on the minds mental safeguards, which causes them to break eventually. If the psychic doesn't either start excepting this or gets help by way of a charm, the mind itself will start to break under the impossibility of what's happening. How bad a fracture is depends both on how hard the person is fighting and how long before he or she gets help.
"Now before you ask about primary and secondary abilities, let me explain. Every psychic has a thing that comes naturally to him or her and, after he or she has been trained in it, requires almost no effort to tap into. That is the primary ability. There is also another ability that, while it takes more effort to tap into is also a fairly natural thing. This would be the secondary ability. In general psychics will address their skills in order of primary ability and secondary. For example my primary skill is that of a card-speaker, and secondarily I'm a charm maker. So I would call myself a card-speaking charm maker. My brother is a mirror-gazing pyro. And so on. The secondary ability usually is one that has to be found through practice, though sometimes it can be sensed."
"Why haven't you tried again to make me use these alleged powers?" Kaiba asked, disbelief evident in his town.
"Grace period," Lisa said simply. "When a mind nearly fractures or goes through a lot of stress as yours did, there is a two day grace period to allow the mind to recover."
"One last thing. I have proof that you're a fraud," Kaiba said. "Your pendant that you claimed would keep me from seeing and hearing the illusions you somehow planted in my mind didn't work."
"What?" Lisa asked, genuine shock and surprise in her face and voice. "That's not possible. I may only be a secondary charm maker, but I'm good at it. That pendant should be working." She quickly cleared a space on the table and shuffled her deck quickly as she entered the first plane. Cutting the cards, she placed the first four on the table and flipped them over one by one.
"All of them magic cards," she said quietly, regathering the cards and repeating the process several more times. Each time the result was the same. The first four cards were always magic cards.
"Kaiba, I need to see your deck," she said urgently. "Mokuba, I need you to go into my store and go into the room you two first found me in. That's where I keep my cards for people without decks. I need you to make as many fourty card decks as you can. It doesn't matter what the cards are. Just make sure they have a balance of monster, magic, and trap cards."
Perhaps it was the urgency in her voice that did it, but the two siblings wordlessly did as she asked, Kaiba cutting and shuffling his deck and handing it to her without question, though he wondered why after he had done so.
Flipping over the first four cards, she again had four magic cards. "Again," she said, handing his deck to him as she shuffled her own. She barely noticed twenty minutes later when Mokuba came in with two dozen forty card decks, only pausing long enough to ask them to cut, shuffle, and hand them to her. After each deck had been cut, shuffled, and read twenty times, each time being cut and shuffled in a different way as before, Lisa sat back with a worried expression.
"If my math is right, we cut and shuffled decks 520 times. Ten for mine and Kaiba's decks, and twenty for the ones Mokuba brought in. Every time the result has been four magic cards. I've done many readings since I came to my abilities, but never have I had results of the same types of card more than maybe four times in a row. Kaiba, you can think I'm a fraud all you like. You saw me flip the top four cards of each deck, and most of the decks you and your brother shuffled yourselves. You cannot claim that I rigged those decks to have all magic cards. Especially since the majority of them your brother put together."
"What does it mean?" Mokuba asked, seeing that Lisa looked worried and almost frightened.
"It means that I might have to go against the grace period," Lisa said. "The psychic plane is represented in magic cards when do readings. For every result to be four magic cards, it can only mean one thing. The cards are telling me that the veil between the psychic realm and this one is weakening. It's very possible that this will be Dartz all over again."
"What do you mean?" Mokuba and Kaiba asked at the same time.
"I mean that the cards are coming to life. And unless we can repair the veil, people could die."
AN: It took me six chapters, but I'm finally getting to the actual plot of the story.