57 – A New Pet

[Kaleidus]

The aftermath of the Behemoth battle was chaos across the world. Economic, ecological, religious, and all sorts of other kinds of disasters spread.

The one consistency was fear. Fear that another country could be wiped out next time, fear of capes like Phir Se with that much destructive power when the details leaked, fear of the Endbringers that had been holding back so much.

There was a small bit of hope in Scion, but the mood was predominantly one of mourning and fear.

Footage from the battle had been leaked as well, since most of it had been livestreamed from afar until everything was destroyed.

Eidolon had won new fame for his solo segment against Behemoth, as did Flechette for cutting Behemoth in half, among other feats. Her role in the joint S-Class Task Force working with CRUCIBLE inevitably came out as well. Hydra and his dreadnaught was a major topic on PHO, too.

A private debriefing conference was held between the leaders of CRUCIBLE, the PRT, the Protectorate, and the Guild, in which it had been agreed that the S-Class Task Force would continue coordinating Endbringer battle strategy and they would aim to contain and kill Endbringers going forward.

Lily had been a relatively easy convert without even using any Master powers on her, after the numerous revelations I'd provided about the PRT, Cauldron, the Entities, corruption in the justice system, etc. It also helped that she seemed to have developed a crush on Paige that currently went unreciprocated as Paige seemed to think she was just a big fan of her music, spending inordinate amounts of time with her ostensibly helping with songwriting and tuning instrumentals. Even though she officially remained only an exchange officer with us, we treated her as part of the team and she disclosed the classified information the PRT had on us without prompting. She also told us everything that she reported to Piggot and Armsmaster honestly during the periodic meetings she needed to have with them as an official Ward. I was already aware of the information, but it clearly showed where her true loyalties laid.

Still, things changed, and some of the fallout of Behemoth hit us closely as well.

A lot of capes from Brockton Bay who'd joined the battle against Behemoth had also died this time, unlike the Simurgh battle in which everyone from Brockton miraculously survived.

Kid Win, Gallant, and Velocity died during the command center and medical camp collapse. Browbeat, Brandish, and Battery died at various other points. Manpower died from a berserk cape following the Morrigan's scream.

Assault and Triumph had not been successfully recovered after being marked as wounded in the field and were presumed dead now that India had been erased.

Victoria had been maimed badly, with the entire lower half of her body pulverized, but Taylor had kept some bugs close to her so they were able to recover her and send her to the medical camp, at which point Amelia managed to keep her alive until Scion mass healed the capes at the medical camp.

New Wave was down to just the Pelhams now. For Amelia, the loss of both her adopted parents had not hit as hard as it might have if she hadn't already been estranged from them. Even so, as the team comforted her, she'd confessed that it didn't feel good that she hadn't even talked to them before they were suddenly gone; especially Mark, who despite being not fully there, hadn't been unkind to her.

So together with Taylor and Lily as moral support, she went to visit the Pelhams. I decided to stay away since they might still have suspicions of me being a Master and it would be better for them to see that Amelia had other female friends her own age on the team. Paige wanted to go but her identity could be controversial, especially as a Master herself, so she also stayed back.

The Pelhems were hosting Victoria in their home now, and her reunion with Victoria had been one of many apologies on both sides, but they could not go back to their previous closeness either. She promised to visit more often, but didn't stay very long, though she promised to attend the Dallons' funeral and left them a communications line in case they needed any help.

With the stability of Brockton Bay, I'd decided to kick off the commercialization and merchandising plans I had for CRUCIBLE, and Paige's songs now played a significant role in it due to her increasing popularity. We even started to sell songs with very minor emotional effects as a way for people to cope with the stress from everything that was happening in the world.

Because we had a lot of money, way back when we had broken her out of the Birdcage, I had taken over Paige's case, and hired new lawyers to submit an appeal to a higher court. A symbolic appeal without her presence, or so people thought, but I had other plans. I'd put Calvert on handling this while I was away, with oversight from Offensive Bias.

Soon after we did so, the Simurgh had destroyed Boston and its court buildings. The process of appealing and all other legal cases had stalled for almost a month, then the Massachusetts courts had ended up temporarily moved to Brockton Bay as the most secure city in the state that was also nearby.

The sitting judges in Boston had conveniently died so they needed to be replaced, and with a variety of methods, we had managed to convince the governor and other relevant parties that judges sympathetic to cape rights with a positive view of CRUCIBLE should be installed.

As a result, our appeal had moved forward much faster than anticipated; and with our superior team of lawyers retained through Calvert's connections, on top of the influence we had on the court, a decision was quickly made to overturn the lower court's decision without a retrial shortly after the conclusion of the Behemoth battle.

Thus, Paige was exonerated, and publicly unmasked in a press conference in which we claimed that we had swapped her out on her way to the Birdcage and left a power-produced decoy clone to be imprisoned in the Birdcage.

Because we knew that the PRT already suspected Ostinato, we had allowed Lily to find out early on, telling her all about how unjust and terrible it was, and letting her report back about it. It had been acknowledged and then nothing was done, while the PRT continued to classify the Birdcage breakout, preferring to let people believe that the Birdcage was secure, so we anticipated that they wouldn't say anything to contradict or stop us, And they didn't.

There were many who responded negatively to this development, but despite the fear of the Simurgh and its destruction of Boston, the outpouring of support for Paige drowned out the fearmongers once the details of the case had been widely known, including the gross mistreatment she'd received in court and in temporary prisons.

It helped that Offensive Bias hacked every social media site and used bots and fake accounts to massively amplify the positive responses while suppressing and criticizing the negative ones. The conventional media side was a bit more difficult, but there were as many pro-parahuman journalists as there were anti-parahuman ones. Still, the media was overall inclined to take exposés, tragedies, and scandals to deliver shocking and bad news to the public, so they were eager to focus on the scandal of the prosecutorial misconduct and the new story Paige was now free to tell: about her ex-boyfriend being an asshole that emotionally abused her, then left while telling her to give up on her songs, before coming back to try and claim half her earnings after she became successful.

The result of all this was that within days, all of her songs had exploded in popularity due to the amount of attention her case had brought to her, topping the national charts. The new ones with the emotionally soothing effects were the most popular, but even her old ones made sudden comebacks.

Before I left the plane, I'd made some additional plans with Offensive Bias and Calvert to use our Thinker and data processing capabilities to find other ways of making money and continue acquiring more resources on Earth Bet.

We didn't really need it, seeing as we could get whatever we needed from our resource extraction operations, but it couldn't hurt to do so either, especially to subtly acquire more political influence.

Taylor proposed cleaning up the docks, so that was added to our plans as well.

Medhall had fallen apart with Kaiser gone and his civilian identity still missing, and as he was the largest shareholder decisions could not be made, so we acquired another pharmaceutical company and then poached most of their employees.

This company then became a vehicle to produce drugs with Amelia's expertise. But rather than having her create new drugs, which could get us in trouble with the Tinkertech regulations, we instead offered a service in which other early stage drug development companies could either pay us a large cash sum to have Amelia conduct a power-based analysis of the drug's mechanism of action and effects during animal studies and human preclinical phase 0 trials, or give us the rights to develop the drug further if they couldn't afford to pay our prices.

This analysis was easy and near costless for us, but provided incomparably high predictive accuracy for drug safety and efficacy, allowing researchers to stop candidate drugs that weren't good enough, with the potential to save many billions of dollars for the industry.

Yet those drugs that were good candidates still needed to go through the normal regulatory process, and there was no real competition with existing jobs because it was an entirely new type of service, even if it did eliminate a lot of wasteful research activity. We predicted that investors and industry groups would have no interest in lobbying against this, because it was profitable for everyone involved and made investments far less risky once it had Panacea's name vouching for the drug.

For us, it was especially powerful because many startups did not have the financial resources at the early stages of preclinical trials to proceed further due to the risk of failure involved. By taking the option of sharing or selling licensing rights to us with predetermined terms in lieu of a cash payment, they could either proceed as partners with us or stop pursuing a dead end path. And because their valuations were so low before Panacea's analysis, we could negotiate deals to gain the lion's share of profits for a good drug, while having no capital risk for ourselves if the drug was bad.

Once we had the rights, we could either flip it to other big pharma companies for a huge payout, or take it through clinical trials ourselves. That whole process would take ages, so I preferred the former option. Either way, it would be an easy way to make billions given enough time.

Unfortunately time was something we did not have in this plane, and money wasn't that big a deal either, so it was just something we did because we could, rather than any major priority. And if the knowledge of some miracle drug eventually became useful on some other plane? Just a nice bonus if it worked out.

O O O

Tower of God - 4 years after the Floor of Tests

[Interlude]

In the dead of night, on the 25th Floor, Ship Leesoo stood across from Khun on a deserted platform.

"Khun, are you really leaving with Rachel just like that?" He demanded.

"I have to. I'll make a new team and keep her away from you guys. I'll find out the truth…and kill her if she really betrayed him," said Khun.

"What's everyone going to think? How am I supposed to explain it?" Leesoo asked. "Leaving so suddenly like this…"

"I'm sure you can come up with something. You're a good leader, Leesoo," said Khun.

"Ah…damn it."

"We'll meet again, later. Keep climbing up, I'll assemble a strong team and then catch up with you guys."

O O O

A cloaked figure jumped down from a tall building and stopped in the middle of their path.

Team Ship took up guarded stances. Anak went forth with her hook to attack.

"Wait, Anak!" Lessoo shouted.

The figure blocked Anak's strike easily, then pushed her back, much to her shock. She hadn't met anyone that could so easily overpower her in a long time.

"Is this how you greet an old teammate?" The figure asked.

"That voice and cloak…" said Hatsu.

She lifted her hood, revealing the face of a smirking Androssi.

"Witch!" Anak growled.

"Princess Androssi!" Leesoo exclaimed. "It's been a long time. What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to rejoin the team. If you'll have me? Been waiting for ages on this Floor," she said.

"Of course we will!" Leesoo said.

"What? Why are we letting her join the team? We don't need her!" Anak shouted.

"We could use the extra firepower, now that Khun and Rak have left," said Hatsu.

"But where's Axion?" Leesoo asked.

"He's right here," said Androssi, taking out what looked like a Shinsoo bomb with an unusual pattern on it, with a dark blue at the bottom to light blue in the middle and white at the top, wavy lines separating each section.

There were cries of surprise and wariness as she pressed the button on the ball.

But when the ball opened, there was no explosion, instead, something came out of it and enlarged before flying up to Androssi's shoulder and then curling around the back of her neck to settle its head on the other side.

It was a winged creature reminiscent of a baby dragon in the western style, with smooth dark teal skin, the same color of Axion's armor in its default form.

"What the heck is that?!" Leesoo asked.

The creature only made a noise that sounded like a meow.

"Why did he turn into that…?" Anak asked with a complicated face.

"Axion went off to do some things by himself, and left me with this little cutie," said Androssi while maneuvering the dragon from her neck into her arms and petting it.

"But what is it? Why did you say that was him?" Hatsu asked.

"Because he was imbued with a basic imprint of Axion's will, so he listens to me. And under some circumstances he can transfer his full mind to it to join us for the tests with a small fraction of his real powers," said Androssi. "When his mind isn't in there, we can call him Axie! Haha!"

"What…really? I've never heard of an ability like that before," said Leesoo.

"I was surprised too," said Androssi. "But it turns out he's an Anima of sorts."

"Amazing. Looks like we aren't the only ones that got stronger, huh?" Leesoo looked around at his team with a smile.

O O O

In a dark chamber somewhere on the 20th Floor

[Kaleidus]

"Hmm…" I pulled the squirming parasite out of the container and then carefully dropped it towards the Regular I'd strapped to the table who looked on in fear with a mouth that was being forcefully kept open.

A soundproofed Shinsoo field blocked his scream as the parasite went in.

I held another denser bubble of Shinsoo filled with my mana around the Regular's head, monitoring the parasite as it slithered towards his brain.

Behind me, a tank of some small Shinheuh swam around.

The Regular struggled against his straps uselessly, and then the parasite stopped and tried to escape. It flew out of the mouth, and then exploded as the Shinsoo and mana became too volatile.

I also lost control of the mana in the Regular's brain, causing that to explode as well.

"Unfortunate…well, I got enough data already I suppose. Doesn't seem like I can replicate this type of control in any reasonable amount of time," I said.

On this Floor, many Regulars were desperate to advance and become E-Rank by passing the final test.

Below the 20th floor, Regulars could only live in the Inner Tower where Regulars took tests, but after becoming E-Rank they obtained the right to live in the Middle Area and could live a much better life even if they stopped climbing. Those who gave up below the 20th Floor would be kicked out into the Middle Area as well, but they didn't have the same status or rights in Zahard's Empire.

But the difficulty of this floor was a huge jump from the previous ones, so a lot of Regulars failed and had to retake it multiple times at a high cost to pay the test fees, medical bills, equipment maintenance, and their living expenses.

That created an opportunity for some unscrupulous actors to take advantage of them. For example, there was a loan shark company called 'Lurker Cash', that lent money to Regulars to take the tests, and once they were severely indebted, they would propose certain life threatening solutions to pay back the debt, like selling their organs.

It was therefore a matter of mutual interest for me, under the name of Dr. Dua, to cooperate with them in recruiting test subjects for experimental enhancement research. I offered to pay well, and the Regulars were more inclined to take this option than to sign away their organs, and Lurker Cash saved me the trouble of getting the subjects myself.

Since I didn't have a permit from Zahard's Empire and this type of research was of questionable legality to begin with, I couldn't exactly advertise it. But, with Lurker Cash offering it only to those who were already deeply indebted and had no other choice, it was easy to keep this under the rug.

The parasite I was researching now was not really a high priority item of mine, but since I'd chanced into finding one, I decided to take a look at it. It was a sort of control that was easily resistible and crude, yet simultaneously complex enough in the mechanism that the water spirits could not make heads or tails of it and neither could I, at least not without a willing participant and perhaps many long years of research.

Over the years I'd become an Anima as planned—with multiple methods of controlling Shinheuh.

The water spirits themselves already had mental dominance magic back in FoZ, it was only a matter of figuring out how to get them to do it. Now I could do it on non-sapient creatures pretty easily, and they'd also been taught to control Shinheuh with Shinsoo methods as well.

The magic version had some serious drawbacks that were never shown in the FoZ story as Cromwell used the Andvari ring carelessly and forced the water spirits to do his bidding. The biggest problem was that in order to do it, the water spirits had to separate a smaller mass of spirits from themselves and send it into the target, on top of spending a lot of mana to maintain control against their magic resistance. So obviously they didn't like to do it, and just like the wind stone spirits, without a sufficiently large concentration of spirits, the separated portion would start to dissipate and die after the mana ran out.

But to invest a sufficiently large portion to keep it self-sustainable would weaken the original stone, and me by extension, especially since I now had water spirits all over my body to do various work and strengthen my overall connection to them. Not worth it at all unless the target was extremely powerful or valuable in some way—but if the target were too powerful, there was always the risk that the fragment I invested would actually be taken over or destroyed.

So if I wanted to create an army of cannon fodder like Cromwell with a high level spell—which would also incur the corrective force unless commanded by my summoner, I could now do that, but that was mostly pointless.

The Shinsoo version only needed Shinsoo, but like all real Anima, it required maintaining and refreshing the flow of Shinsoo in my Bowl and training the Shinheuh over time with that flow. There would certainly be uses for that, but like Yu Hansung warned me, the whole thing was a big time sink and for somebody who already had much stronger abilities it had questionable utility. I would need to find and/or modify special Shinheuh for it to be meaningful. Compared to the magic method though, it was something that could be done without any planar backlash or sacrificing anything valuable.

I also had a bigger project that was far more useful to me, combining the water spirits, a basic familiar spell, and a new version of the Armoriont, which I'd completed shortly before I split up with Androssi.

Essentially, I'd developed a familiar spell based on Fate principles and the same mechanisms in Agate, plus what I'd used to connect to the water spirits in the first place.

Since the Armoriont was meant to serve as armor, and barely functional without a symbiotic user, a new organism was required to be the familiar.

Amelia and I named it the Beastiont.

The new Beastiont could no longer fully regenerate from a very small mass nor could it serve just a thin layer of armor. But in exchange, it was much more efficient at freeform shape shifting as a much larger mass, and could act as an independent entity.

It had a number of templates for mimicking Earth animals, Halkegenian creatures, and also Tower shinheuh, as well as a mix of their biologies and body parts, but still primarily made of the same nanocellulose material. This required a core to incubate from, which continued to be a vital organ no matter which form it took. If it took too small a form that couldn't hold the full core, like a bird, then it was stuck in that form. Though as long as I had one core, it could split and make more.

It was still called an "iont" because like the chimera titan Amelia first created, it could be melded with a human user possessing the Bionanite Swarm and an Armoriont.

Or, it could simply carry sufficient neural tissue to have a mind of its own.

By making a magic familiar out of a Beastiont, I could control it without being physically connected to it and imbue a bit of my will into it along with a store of mana to do things.

If I then added a mass of water spirits into that, it became capable holding a much more powerful will imprint that I could connect to from a vast distance, and even of absorbing Shinsoo to convert into mana along with the water spirits' normal abilities, but much weaker while having to recharge a lot more.

This made it suitable as a semi-autonomous and intelligent puppet, but whose body was almost entirely substituted with the special nanocellulose-based biology. Without human organs getting in the way, its durability, transformability, and regenerative powers were much better.

The completed one I'd given to Androssi used the Halkgenian Rhyme Dragon DNA as its base template. Even without magic, its body was an impressive specimen.

When I was busy and couldn't control it, Androssi could bring it around as a pet that could understand basic commands from her. Then, for the actual tests, I could find somewhere quiet to project my will into it and participate in the tests as a Regular. I had actually asked the Guardian if this was allowed, and it was. As long as I had an avatar and consciousness present for the test, I could be registered as a Regular even if my main body was somewhere else, and the Guardians would recognize it. It only needed me to buy a second E-Rank Pocket in order to prove my qualifications to the Zahard Empire test administrators.

Once the climb got a bit boring, I had split up with Androssi to advance my research further while pursuing some other objectives.

So far the Beastiont Familiar was a useful gimmick for some specialized purposes, but although its physical power and durability was impressive for a mere puppet, it wouldn't be good enough to contend with the top of the E-Rank tier, and my ability to channel spells through it was quite limited.

The water spirits could refine some mana but barely enough to keep themselves and the Mystery that kept my will there sustained with the ability to connect with me, and I had to be pretty close by in order to supply any mana to it—being on a different Floor made that impossible, so even if I connected to control it, its abilities were quite pathetic compared to me.

Because of the invested water spirits, it was capable of using very basic Shinsoo to manipulate the Pocket for registration purposes. But otherwise, I was unable to project the ability to use Shinsoo from myself.

And it took an incredibly long time to create, to imbue my will into it and make it a proper familiar responsive to my will, possessing the necessary magic power to support itself. The first one took an entire month to complete, and even though I could probably cut that in half now that I knew how to do it properly, it was still a very long time. It was just that I had a lot of free time on my hands in between the tests on each Floor.

So the next logical step was to find ways to support, enhance, and/or control people with good potential of their own. So that I wouldn't need to rely on creating full familiars myself.

What was the point of this? Well, there were many. The most obvious one was that a great mastermind should not simply charge at the front of the battlefield and risk themselves like that. I needed minions that would willingly do that for me instead.

Some teammates like Androssi were fine on their own, but some teammates would need assistance and power ups. They might need healing…or modification…

It was also a way to do things through loyal intermediaries without people necessarily knowing I was behind it. Or, alternatively, to become a symbol of my power the same way Zahard adopted princesses.

But there was a more fundamental reason that I'd chosen to separate from Androssi and take a break to do this research instead of just climbing further.

Training and growing stronger through climbing naturally was good, but there were certain things I needed to do as a magus and plane traveler to advance myself that could only be accomplished through research.

I was able to unlock more of the known powers of the water spirits without too much trouble and just trained with them to get better, but that wasn't the same as developing my own spells. Even if I could now get the water spirits to heal or control things, why should I only rely on them?

To develop my own Mysteries, I needed actual experimentation, and I needed much larger quantities of test subjects. The same was true for all abilities I wanted to advance for myself, even aside from magecraft or spirit magic.

I needed to build a stronger base of understanding for all of my powers, and their interactions with the world.

The fact was that nothing could be expected to be absolutely universal in every plane. Even those powers that did seemingly work in different planes, could still have different interactions and results when in a different environment. Like the Kaleidostick's reference inputs, the water spirits' water manipulation, or Shinsoo's behavior elsewhere.

It was not good enough to be merely capable of casting a spell or having an item/aid that could do it for me. I needed to get good enough to be able to adapt to local circumstances, if things did not work the way I expected them to, and to achieve similar effects while taking advantage of local rules and powers.

I'd always gone for low hanging fruits first to be efficient, but now…I finally had the time to work on this before I needed to move again once canon events picked up.

In a couple of years, Baam would re-appear, while Ship's team would have gone up to the 30th Floor. That was also another reason I'd chosen to split up from Androssi.

Unlike other worlds I'd been to so far, this was one where fate was extremely powerful, and the enemies were so numerous and powerful behind the scenes that I had little reason to change anything. Not only that, despite having a decent knowledge of the plot up to the second season, there was simply not enough information about the wider setting, especially at the higher levels.

So this "downtime" in between the major plot events was the perfect time for me to work on other things and improve some of my magic fundamentals. And since Androssi did not mind giving me the broad order to research interesting powers to continue providing some shielding from the planar's corrective force, I could afford to use some magic for this research even far away from her.

I would have problems if I tried to use too much power because Androssi was too far away to support me and not aware of precisely what I was doing, so the shielding was quite weak, but it wasn't a big deal so long as the contract held, making the consequences relatively minor. I might get suppressed afterwards and be forced to lay low for a while but I'd still be able to use my powers in small bursts if needed.

O O O

5 years and 10 months after the Floor of Tests

[Interlude]

"Not again…" Yihwa groaned as she walked dejectedly through the streets away from the Regular testing centre. "How could this happen? Now I'm in debt and I still haven't passed…"

She went back to her room in silence and darkness, lying on her bed, staring at the headband that she'd taken off.

On one side of the headband was a flower symbol and several glittering blue jewels.

"I'm an elite…I can't ask my family for help when I'm not even an E-Rank Regular yet! Everyone will laugh at me…especially not like this…I can just imagine them now…'oh, did the Yeon Family's Flare burn all her teammates again?' …ugh!"

She sighed, then eventually got back up, trying to cook food to save some money. "Ahh!"

The food was burnt, and then shortly after the stove exploded in flames as well.

"…"

Half an hour later, her stomach was growling and she was forced to hit the streets again, looking for a place to order decent food.

She went past all the fast food and low-end places, then stopped at a more expensive looking restaurant and bar.

Through the window, she looked on with envy at some Regulars celebrating, probably having passed the test so they were having some fun before the scheduled transport to the next Floor.

Then she looked at the menu posted beside the door, and hesitated while glancing again at the Regulars inside. 'I really shouldn't…'

"Hey beautiful, what are you doing standing all alone out here and looking sad like that? Your date stand you up?" A group of men approached her suddenly, eying her with their hungry gazes like she was on the menu.

"No! I came by myself," she said. "I'm just looking."

"Oh, why don't you hang with us then? We can cheer you up and buy you some drinks, or maybe a meal if you want?" One of the guys said while getting closer to her.

She slapped away the arm that tried to snake around her shoulders.

"No thanks, I'm fine!" She said. She had a pretty face and nice body, so this happened all the time. 'Men are such pigs!'

"Tch!" The guy stepped back with an angry expression. "I was just trying to be nice, bitch! Whatever boys, let's go!"

'Trying to be nice…as if! Like I don't know what you want from me,' she thought.

The whole group gave her dirty looks before going into the restaurant.

She checked her point balance, then her stomach growled again.

'Ah…maybe I should've just accepted it…I just have to smile and nod for a bit, right?'

She loitered there for a while, unsure of what she was doing. Was she waiting for somebody else to come by and make the same offer? Trying to decide whether to go in and spend herself further into debt?

'...I don't have to do anything with them…that's right, I can just eat my fill, let them pay for the food and then go on my way…yeah…since they're trying to take advantage of me, why shouldn't I just take advantage of them back? As long as I don't give them what they want, I win!'

She caught the eyes of several other guys and groups that went in, but perhaps it was because they saw the altercation earlier, or because her expression was unfriendly and she couldn't force herself to smile, nobody else approached her.

A tall man with disheveled shaggy brown hair, shaven stubble that ran along the whole underside of his chin almost up to his ears, wearing sunglasses and a neat dress shirt, walked over with his hands in his pockets. He stopped in front of the restaurant, seemingly looking at the menu as well.

He gave her a glance, then paused. "Hm?"

She sneaked a glance back.

The sunglasses were translucent, so Yihwa could tell that the man was staring at her and brazenly roaming over her body as if the sunglasses hid his perverted intentions. Her cheeks flushed a bit but her own eyes darted down and she resisted the urge to tell him off. 'He could be handsome if he cleaned up a bit…it could be worse…'

Out of the corner of her eyes she could see the man continuing to stare at her.

"H-hello?" She looked back up and said hesitantly and forced a slight smile.

"Hey. You here by yourself?" He asked casually, eyes going back to her face.

'At least he knows how to be polite,' Yihwa thought. "Yeah. I was just trying to decide what to get…I'm trying to save up for the tests so I have to be careful with my budget…" 'Come on, take the hint…!'

"Really? Then this probably isn't the best place for it. This place doesn't look budget friendly," he said. "Cooking for yourself is the best way to save."

"I…I'm really bad at cooking," she admitted through gritted teeth, hiding her face from him.

"Well, there are some cheaper places down that way, I think?" He said, pointing down the street.

'Oh come on, why does he have to actually be one of the nice guys that are actually helpful?!' Yihwa raged internally. 'I can't just ask him directly…'

"Um…but it's unhealthy, and I don't want to mess up my diet," she said, gesturing to her body. "It's a lot of hard work to keep my figure, you know?"

The man then tilted his head while looking at her body again, as if he hadn't noticed her beauty. 'What's with that act…he was definitely checking me out earlier! Does he think I didn't notice?'

"I guess you are quite pretty. Must be pretty high maintenance, huh? Heh, glad I don't have to deal with that. Well, good luck deciding then, miss," he said, before waving and turning.

'What…WHAT?'

She grabbed his shoulder and turned him around before he could leave. "Did you just call me high maintenance?! What do you mean you're glad you don't have to deal with that…?" She asked darkly as her body began to burn up.

'Eh? Oh no!' She tried to rein it back in but lost control and promptly exploded in fire.

There was the sound of shattering glass and as everything around them was scorched.

When the smoke cleared, she looked in horror at the damages she just caused, and the man who'd fallen onto the ground in a smoking heap.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" She worriedly rushed over to check if he was still alive. His clothes were ruined, but he got up and dusted himself off as if nothing had happened, to her shock.

"Haha…so this is a real hot temper…" He said, chuckling as if it was no big deal.

'He isn't hurt…?'

O O O