Part Two
Chapter Seventeen
Being ordinary sucks.
Exceptions
Kusuo lay spread-eagle on the dojo floor, panting, sweating, aching, and exhausted. His friends weren't much better, if at all. Like Kusuo, Kuboyasu was on his back, groaning into the tatami mat floor, while Hairo was jackknifed with this face and knees on the floor and his bare butt in the air after a particularly enthusiastic judo throw from Urameshi had ripped his hakama cords. Shun was also face down, but he lay straight as a board with his head turned to the side. His eyes were rolled back, and he was foaming from the mouth from a love-tap to his solar plexus.
Somehow, inconceivably, Nendou was not only still conscious, he was still going. Nendou flowed in and out like water sliding soundlessly around a rock. He didn't try to land a hit on Urameshi, even he wasn't dumb enough to think he could, but he wasn't being hit either. From his position on the ground, Kusuo could see Urameshi grinning from ear to ear as he tried his hardest to hit Nendou anywhere. It had almost become a game, and the only way to win was for Nendou to lose.
Urameshi ducked and swept at Nendou's legs, but he jumped backward, neatly flipping over in a show of gymnastics proficiency that would have had a professional gymnast dropping his jaw. Unfortunately, over the last hour, Urameshi had grown increasingly accustomed to Nendou's insane athleticism and managed to put himself at just the right place as Nendou landed. He threw a punch that slipped through Nendou's guard as he threw up his crossed arms and struck the teen squarely in the chest. Nendou flew across the room and slammed against the back wall of the dojo with a riotous tremor and a resounding crack. He slid to the floor, blinking wildly, and his face split into a monster grin.
"Dude! That was awesome!"
Urameshi's eyes went wide in surprise, then he threw his head back and laughed. "Oh man! I can't even say when the last time was I had so much trouble with a human. Well, a human other than Kuwabara. That guy's a freaking tank. But then, you don't seem too far behind."
Crossing the dojo—and stepping over Kusuo and his prone friends like they weren't even there—Urameshi stopped in front of Nendou and offered his hand. Nendou grasped it with a grin and let Urameshi pull him to his feet with so much ease, it almost looked like Nendou had levitated.
Urameshi patted Nendou's shoulder. "Your Origin must have had one hell of a crazy-ass power, Kid. I could barely see you, never mind touch you."
Nendou canted his head. "What's an Origin?"
"Ah, right. You're all in the dark." Urameshi tucked his hands into his jean pockets and settled into a casual slump. "Your Origin is the person your soul was before you died and came here to become Reborn. We don't know much about them other than they existed; Kuwabara's tried to get a better read on the situation, but he says someone's blocking his clairvoyance. And let me tell you, someone who can block that guy has got to be scary as shit, so we haven't tried to do much more digging. He says we'll find out when She's ready. Whatever the hell that means."
Stepping away from Nendou, Urameshi nudged the four downed boys in the ribs with his bare toes. Kuboyasu and Hairo groaned, but Shun just gurgled unresponsively. Kusuo managed to shimmy away, which got him a respectful eyebrow raise, but otherwise, Urameshi was very unimpressed.
"All right, kiddies. That's all for today. Kaidoh, good job. Your aura spiked a few times, punching a couple holes in your seal. Saiki." Urameshi's brown eyes locked with Kusuo's as he frowned. "Are you sure you have a seal?"
Kusuo's brow furrowed, his chest heaving a little less as his body recovered from the beating he took. "Why?"
Urameshi shrugged, hands still comfortable in his pockets. "Just saying you didn't react the way I expected. Your aura spiked, sure, but it spiked the way an ordinary person's does when put into a dangerous situation. You had sharp flares when you were surprised that kept spiking when you channeled your emotions into your attack. It's powerful, no doubt, and there's definitely room for improvement, but it doesn't cut off the way Kaidoh's did."
Kaidoh sat up, eyes glimmering, with his hand in the air like an elementary schooler as if he hadn't just been blacked out on the ground. "I don't understand what you mean. How does my aura cut off?"
Urameshi sighed and looked around for a bare patch of wall. He sat down with his back to it, legs in lotus, and rested his elbows on his knees. "Okay, so, preface, I'm not the best guy to go to for an explanation. It's all hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo to me, and trust me, granny's rolling in her grave at that admission, but I'll do my best."
By now, Kaidoh had successfully roused both Kuboyasu and Hairo, and all five boys worked their way to their knees so they could sit in seiza across from their lackadaisical teacher. Urameshi had his eyes closed and lips pursed in concentration as he thought. The boys shared a quizzical glance between them but stayed silent and waited.
"Hmmmm…Okay. I think I've got something." Urameshi opened his eyes and stared the five boys down. "Everyone—human, demon, apparition, whatever—is born with two types of energy, life energy and spirit energy. Life energy is exactly the way it sounds; it's the energy your body naturally creates in order to keep you alive. Life energy is what makes you able to think, makes your heart beat, makes your blood turn oxygen into carbon monoxide—"
"Carbon dioxide," Hairo, Shun, and Kuboyasu corrected.
"Whatever. Do I look like I care? Anyway, life energy is the thing that makes life possible. The other energy is spirit energy. Now, like life energy, spirit energy is pretty self-explanatory; it's the strength and power possessed by a person's soul. Most people have pretty average levels of spirit energy." He pointed at Shun. "Not much different from the way yours looks when sealed. The combination of a person's life and spirit energies is what creates a person's aura. The things they like, the environments they grew up in, personality quirks, etc. all effect the way someone's aura looks.
"Now, when your spirit and life energy are both strong and whatever, they kind of give each other a boost; sort of like how the battery in a car creates the spark that gets the engine going." Urameshi held his hand out as little lances of electricity seemed to spark across his palm. Everyone but Kusuo leaned in for a closer look; fascinated. "The stronger the spark, the bigger the explosion, but once you learn how to control the spark, or life energy, you can learn how to control your spirit energy. And once you have control of your spirit energy…"
The sparks of power seemed to explode into a glowing, pulsing sphere of blue-white light that hovered docilely over the center of Urameshi's palm.
"Whoa!"
"Oh, wow! That's so neat, Guy!"
"Whaaaaaaaaaat!"
"Holy shit, is this for real?!"
Urameshi smirked, obviously feeding off their enthusiasm. "That's nothing. With really good control…" He shifted his hand into a gun and the glowing ball migrated to the tip of his right index finger. "Spirit gun."
The glowing ball shot out like a bullet and slammed into one of the small statues lining the dojo shrine. The statue exploded in a spray of stone shrapnel.
"Whoa!"
"Oh, wow! That's so neat, Guy!"
"Whaaaaaaaaaat!"
"Holy shit, is this for real?!"
Urameshi smirked and blew across the tip of his finger as if it were a smoking gun. "And that's only the beginning."
The dojo door slammed open, the ofuda ripping right down the middle, and everyone jumped; even Urameshi. All six whirled around to find Yamato Nadeshiko standing in the door frame, arms still wide as she braced herself between the sliding doors. She was glaring at her uncle as aura rose off her like wisps of smoke, raising her long hair in an artificial wind that would give Medusa's writhing snakes a run for their money in creepiness. The entire scene would have been much scarier if she didn't still have that stupid lollipop in her mouth.
"Yu-ji," Yamato said with so much false sweetness, Kusuo's spine snapped straight of its own accord. His only consolation was the other guys straightened as well; even Urameshi. "I'm absolutely certain that surge of spirit energy I felt on my way here wasn't a spirit gun going off in my specially created dojo." Her expression sharpened to a poisoned glare. "Right?"
Urameshi tucked his hand behind his back as if it was a real gun and laughed nervously. "No, no, no, no, no! Of course not! Would I do something so foolish? Ahahahahaha! Um, wow! Look at the time!"
He looked down at his left wrist, which had no watch, and shook his head. "Well, damn; as much as I'd like to stay, Keiko's gonna need help with the dinner rush soon."
Urameshi jumped to his feet and shoved his right hand into his pocket while offering the boys a two fingered wave with his left. "All right, well, make sure you say your good-byes to your families this weekend, and we'll see you bright and early on Monday!"
He ruffled Yamato's now limp hair on his way out, a sweatdrop forming on the back of his head at her unrelenting glare.
"Ja, Nadi. Suki desu yo!" He took off running without a backward glance leaving Yamato and the boys alone.
Yamato scowled at her uncle as he disappeared into the temple maze. "Pussy."
Hairo and Shun choked; they obviously hadn't expected that, though Kusuo couldn't imagine why. Despite her name, Yamato was hardly the paragon of feminine subtly and grace. Actually, she was probably overcompensating because of her name.
"So." She spun on the boys with her hands on her hips and a glare on her face. "I'm guessing by the destroyed Buddha that Yu-ji was telling you about the different energies?"
Four obedient nods. Yamato frowned as the silence stretched, then snapped, "And?"
The five boys exchanged varying degrees of uncertain glances before Hairo shrugged and spoke up. "Life energy powers the body, spirit energy powers the soul."
"And if you have enough of both," Shun chimed in like an eager puppy. "You can make them explode!"
Yamato grunted and stepped into the dojo, sliding the doors closed behind her back. "More or less. Did he get to psychic energy yet?"
Hairo shook his head. "Not yet."
"Hn. Probably for the best. Yu-ji isn't a psychic himself, so he doesn't really get it." Yamato took over her uncle's place against the wall and sat cross-legged. Fortunately, she'd changed out of her school uniform into a yukata and hakama set like the boys, so she wasn't flashing them. Except her hakama were red instead of blue, and with her low ponytail, she looked like a miko. Thinking about it a little more, Kusuo realized she probably was a miko.
"Okay, so, recap." Yamato sat straight-backed with her palms settled on the balls of her knees as she looked the boys over. "Life energy comes from the body; spirit energy comes from the soul. Any guesses where psychic energy comes from?"
Shun raised a tentative hand. "Um…the heart?"
Yamato pinned him with a flat stare, but Kusuo jumped in before she could respond with her usual snark.
"The mind."
"Exactly." Yamato scrunched her face at Shun in a quick display of disgust before switching her attention to the group at large. "Like life and spirit energy, mental energy exists within everyone, but very few people have enough to actually use it. Manifesting psychic powers means that the user has an abundance of all three energies; however, the power levels are rarely perfectly aligned. People with stronger mental energy than body or life energy have the spark needed to become psychics. Their manifested powers vary widely and are usually shaped by their personal aura. For example, someone who is good at sports will probably manifest a physical power, like super-speed or strength, while someone who is better a book learning might get a power that lets them absorb and process large amounts of data."
Kusuo nodded to himself, thinking of Akechi. The guy couldn't fight to save his life, but he had the greatest mental processing power Kusuo had ever heard of, beyond even himself at his psychic peak.
"There are, however, exceptions." Yamato raised a hand and pressed it over her heart. "I have an unusual amount of all three energies; spirit because of my dad, mental because of my mom, and life because I'm a badass. But even then, spirit and mental are my strongest energies. I can look at a person and read their future like your blonde gyaru friend, except I can see dozens, hundreds, millions of different possibilities while she only sees the most likely at that specific moment."
Yamato shifted her lollipop and eyed down the line of boys from Nendou on the right to Hairo on the left. "The five of you are strongest in your spiritual and life energies—especially so in spirit energy, which is probably because you're all Reborn. Most of you also have a pretty balanced level of mental energy, too. Not enough to project psychic powers, but more than enough to make you smarter than average. Nendou is the only real exception, but that's only because he has more mental energy than the rest of you. He isn't as dumb as you probably expect. He's just smart in different ways."
She turned her attention to Nendou, who met her purposeful stare with a blank, happy expression. "You're very good at reading people, aren't you? You know when they're happy or sad, confused or scared. When they're hiding something or if they are justified in keeping their secrets." She tilted her head to the left and Nendou mirrored her. "You're an empath. And a pretty powerful one at that."
Nendou shrugged. "I don't know about all that, but people are people, and they got the right to be their own type of people as long as they don't hurt nothing. None of my business what kind of people they want to be."
"I think I understand now why Natsu's so taken with you." Yamato cracked a genuine smile. "The world would be a much better place if there were more people like you, Nendou Riki."
Yamato shook her head and her usual half-glare settled back over her face. "But enough sentimental shit. Yu-ji filled me in on his way to the gate, so I know your strengths and weaknesses pretty well. I'll draw up a training chart for each of you to start on Monday, so you'd better get your shit together over the weekend. I don't care what you have to tell your parents, if you want a chance to survive what's coming, you'll be at the school bright and early Monday morning."
Shun's jaw snapped closed, and he looked away, scratching his flushed cheek. His mother probably had plans for him to attend summer cram school. Yamato waved them off.
"Go shower, you stink. After you're changed, you can meet up with Kazu-ji at the main house. He'll cut you a path home." She pointed at Kusuo. "You hang back. I have some words."
Kusuo almost, almost, rolled his eyes. When do you ever not have words? Still, he did as bid and stayed put while his groaning friends forced themselves to their feet and meandered out the door. Nendou led the pack, practically bouncing with unburned energy. Kusuo grew even more exhausted just looking at him.
Once the guys were gone, closing the door behind them, Yamato stepped forward to stand directly over Kusuo's prone form. She bent over to get a bit closer, her low ponytail falling over her shoulder, and Kusuo noticed—in a purely clinical way—that Yamato actually was very pretty when she wasn't talking. Her honey-brown eyes were almost gold and the rich, chestnut color of her hair looked almost black in the dim dojo lighting. If her cousin Natsuko hadn't come to PK Academy as well, Kusuo could easily see the school dividing down the middle in a bloody holy war between Yamato and Teruhashi as the two factions fought to the death over which girl was God's true Chosen Angel.
Thank kami for small favors. Having Natsuko around would be a pain, no doubt, but at least it would stop Teruhashi and Yamato from becoming an even bigger pain.
"Oi." Yamato snapped her finger in front of Kusuo's face with a frown. "Are you even listening?"
Kusuo quirked an eyebrow. "How can I listen if you're not saying anything?"
"Smart ass," Yamato snarled around her lollipop as her frown deepened to a scowl. "Sit the hell up; I need to run some tests."
Kusuo took half a second to debate whether it would be worth the extra pain to be belligerent or if he should just comply. He decided to comply; but only just.
Sitting up in a lotus position, Kusuo suppressed a pained groan as his entire body ached in protest. He honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd been in so much pain, but he had a strong suspicion the answer was 'never.' Still, at least he wasn't as bad as Shun; the poor guy had been literally dragged from the dojo by Kuboyasu on one side and Hairo on the other.
"What sort of tests?" Kusuo asked as Yamato took a seat directly in front of him. She was so close, that her knees almost touched his own.
"Oh, you know." She shrugged. "A bit of history, English comprehension, some math."
Kusuo offered her a deadpanned expression that Yamato returned with an added eye roll.
"The hell kind of tests do you think? Yu-ji said your power doesn't feel sealed, so I want to make sure you didn't screw something up." She held out her hands, palms up. "Hands. But don't press them into mine; let them hover a few centimeters. It should be just close enough to pass warmth between us."
He did as requested with little hesitation. Better to get it over with sooner than later.
Yamato closed her eyes and hummed softly, her fingers occasionally twitching upward to tap against his palm in a sporadic pattern. Her expression grew progressively stormier as frustration and disbelief warred across her face.
That's probably not a good sign…
Sweat beaded her brow, and her breathing grew ever more labored as her tapping grew more frantic. It almost felt like she was trying to reach through his flesh to pluck his veins and muscles like strings on an instrument.
Did she mistake my hands for a koto or is she having a seizure?
That was the same moment Kusuo realized Yamato wasn't breathing.
That's definitely not good.
Should he slap her out of it?
Fortunately, Yamato came to herself with a deep, rasping gasp, though she kept her teeth clenched so she wouldn't accidentally drop, or inhale, her lollipop. Her palms scraped against his as she collapsed backward, and Kusuo came up on one knee—hovering over her with one hand on the ground—to make sure she hadn't just died. Not that he would miss her or anything.
But I really don't want to explain to God why the death of His psycho niece isn't my fault.
She was breathing again—long, deep breaths, which was good. In the middle of drawing a breath, Yamato cracked an eye to meet Kusuo's passively curious gaze.
"Thanks for catching me, Jackass."
Yare, yare.
"Never mind; that's not important." Yamato propped herself up on her elbows and took one last, steadying breath. Her ponytail had come loose, leaving several strands to fall over her face that she pushed aside with her whole hand. "You said your brother made a seal for your powers."
Kusuo nodded even though it wasn't a question.
"How did it work?"
Kusuo shrugged.
"Don't give me that shit! You expect me to believe you're the kind of guy who just takes whatever medicine the doctor prescribes without asking questions?"
Kusuo was absolutely not that kind of guy. He'd made Kusuke explain in excruciating detail exactly what would happen, how, and why if Kusuo put that gross looking thing in his head. The fact that Kusuo understood almost none of it was inconsequential.
Like I'm about to lose to that idiot by asking questions.
Okay, so it was a little childish, but after the crazy robot cat incident, Kusuo knew that Kusuke wouldn't do anything to actually hurt him. Well, pretty sure…somewhat sure…
Yare, yare.
"The explanation was very technical."
Yamato scoffed. "Well, it's good to know you're an idiot. Better to learn that now than later."
Kusuo glared, but she waved him off. "Maa, maa. Keep your pants on."
Sighing, Yamato propped her elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist as she stared Kusuo in the eye. "I just looked at about 1.5 million of your future threads trying to determine the best way to get your powers back, and do you know what I found?"
You're going to tell me whether I answer or not.
"In all 1.5 million futures—" Called it. "—not one of them showed you getting your psychic powers back."
Kusuo stared. What?
"You didn't just seal your powers, Saiki, you made them disappear. And as far as I can tell, they're gone forever."
