1.9

1.9

I opened my eyes to pure darkness. I couldn't tell where I was. "Well... that can't be good." Oddly enough I suddenly realized I was falling. Idly I thought I'd realize I was falling pretty quickly... I wonder why it took a few seconds. Probably has to do with no discernible features anywhere, just solid black. Though now that I look it looks almost like black rose petal print on the walls peeling up... and popping out... Ok that's kinda creepy. "Wait, if I'm falling why aren't the walls moving 'up'... whichever way that is?" No one answers. Not that I really expected a - HOLY SHIT!, the 'roses' just closed to bulbs and re-opened, each with a large eye in the center of varying colors. Ok, I take it back, THAT is creepy. I stretch my hand towards one curiously and it extends from the wall toward me. When I touch the petals they feel brittle, but don't break. When the 'rose' nuzzles my head I pet it, stroking along the top. my hand slides down to its stem which is absolutely -covered- in thorns. On contact I can feel my hand get cut, when I pull back there's no blood, just the -feeling- of being cut.... An impression, or an intent pushed upon me.

It takes me a few minutes while I'm looking around, but everything seems to have stopped in time, well all but me. I think I know what's going on. "I'm in a dream aren't I?" The walls shatter into rose petals revealing a blue sky with soft clouds below me. The petals crumble to nothing in the light but the eyes all rocket in different directions streaming light behind them until they disappear. "Heh, I haven't had dreams, or at least remembered having dreams since... well, since I got my power. I wonder if it's been keeping me from dreaming?" Again there's no answer, but I'm not expecting one. I decide to try out lucid dreaming. I create a floating island filled with mechanical life forms that constantly change shape and are always in motion, like robust clockwork. I decide to hit a six-legged clockwork moose with a Mana Bolt. Pain flashes through EVERYTHING as there's a blast of teal radiating outwards from me to infuse the entire little 'plane' my dream was taking place on then --------

*Groan* Monday morning, oh how I loathe thee. I roll over to look at the clock... and about that moment I remember my room is a disaster, so I'm sleeping on the couch. Of particular note is the couch is not nearly as wide as my bed. *Thump*... "Yep, it's Monday." I sit up off the floor and lean backwards to pop my back. The couch is not the most comfortable thing in the world. Should have just built a flight enchantment and slept on air. Sadly that would have left me with no sleep to design the thing. I scratch my head for a moment. I mumble to myself "I feel like I had a really crazy dream. Huh, I haven't remembered -any- dreams since I got this power. Eh, no big deal." I push the thought out of my head.

I can hear my mother moving around in the kitchen so I get started with my morning routine. In the shower I realize I feel a little strange. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first, but after a while I realized I felt like I had a cold, like my head was stuffy and my equilibrium was off. I decide to shrug it off, It's probably because I used so much mana yesterday when I'm not used to it. That and the stupid mistake I made with the enchantment early on. -God- that hurt, never making that mistake again, pain is a good teacher. I debate for a moment and decide I need to know if my magic is working so I draw from my aura and make a foxfire orb. Yep, it's there floating. I can't really feel anything wrong, though for a moment the orb does feel odd, but then it returns to normal. "Strange. Oh well, as long as it works." I finish up and the rest of the morning is straightforward... right up until I leave the house to see Taylor standing there. I blink "Um, Hey T... This isn't the school. Actually, when did you find out where I live?"

Taylor smiles and gives a slight wave "I'm going to Arcadia now, and I found where you live from the PRT since I needed to get in contact with you anyway..." She trails off, then looks either direction before leaning forward with a whispered hiss "Will, what the hell are you doing? Turn it off!"

I tilt my head at the crazy person, but she seems pretty convinced. "Alright, I'll bite, what is it I need to turn off?"

Her eyebrows furrow "You don't know? Your eyes, they're teal, turn them off."

I roll said eyes, "My eyes are 'emerald'. It's just the light or something"

She glares at me "Damnit Will, I'm not stupid. Your eyes are teal and -glowing-"

I think for a moment then nod "I must have a cold. I'm staying home today, see ya T. Have fun at Arcadia and don't let the cool kids pressure you" I give a wave and turn around to go back inside but she grabs my arm

"You're taking this well, what if they don't turn off?" When I look over my shoulder she looks concerned.

I shrug "What's it matter? Either I can do something about it or I can't. If I can't then I get to be my own nightlight, and everyone knows who I am. Personally, secret identities are a pain anyway, and not being able to keep it a secret is a pretty good excuse for getting rid of the secret part."

She shakes her head, "Okay, I get that but for -right now- it -is- a secret. This might go away in a day or something, or maybe you can get contacts. Either way you can't go back inside, when your parents think you're sick they'll check you out and they -will- notice something like 'glowy eyes' as not being normal."

I have to think for a couple of seconds to understand what she means. "Um, I may have missed telling you, but my parents already know about me. I flew my mom around the hotel room the other day. I told'em right after the kidnapping thing." I stare at her for a moment longer "I'm assuming this means you -haven't- told your parents?"

Taylor winces a little "Could you.. stop that please? My mother passed away a while ago. It's just my dad and me.... and no, I can't tell him. He's already stressed enough, I can't tell him his daughter is planning to go off and beat people up for the greater good."

I shrug "Up to you T, -I'm- not going to judge." My mind jumps tracks and now that I think about it, I wonder if I'm developing laser vision?... Oh! X-ray vision! "Hey, T. Stand still for a second." I face her and back up, then squint and stare -intently- at her torso. - okay, her chest. "No, you can't cover up, then I -know- it won't work." and now there's a wasp in my face and she's glaring at me. I sulk and attempt puppy eyes but she doesn't seem to be buying it. Time to attempt guilt "I thought we were supposed to help each other? You know, be there for the other if one of us needed a hand?"

She puts her hands on her hips and now it's a death glare "Let me get this straight, you need my -boobs- to see if you have super eyes!?"

I nod sagely "Yes, exactly. The experiment would also help in my recovery since I had two traumatic experiences yesterday, and this would help to overwrite them. That is, if the X-ray eyes would start working." I hit my palm to my temple a few times, maybe there's a loose connection and it'll help.

She rubs the bridge of her nose and mumbles "Thank god for small miracles." then she looks back to me "You. " she points, apparently to ensure that I know 'you' means me. I play along and look behind me, then around at the -nobody- that is around then point to myself mouthing 'who me?'. She ignores it and continues "I want 'backup' when I'm ready to go out. I should have my suit ready in a day or two... Is that alright?" She... actually seems kinda nervous, like she thinks I might refuse. Oh, it must be the Arcadia thing, she's probably worried I see it as her ditching me.

I nod "I'll be ready, besides, it's actually really fun to go around like that. I had a blast yesterday."

She rolls her eyes and snorts "Ha, ha, That's just -sooo- punny."

"No one appreciates me. Now get going or you're going to be late for your first day. Unless you -want- to be late, then come on in, I can whip up some breakfast and my mother can tease us mercilessly about me finally bringing a girl home."

She shakes her head "No, I'm going to class. See you later, and next time you go out you give me a call. We need some experience working together if we're going to back each other up."

I bow "Yes oh great and wise Queen T" then I turn and head inside. Taylor waves and heads off to what I assume will be where a bus picks her up. I mumble to myself "Apparently she spoke with the PRT. I'll have to ask what they got worked out later."

When I get inside I yell out "Mom, I'm home."

She yells back "But I -just- got rid of you! That's it, you are un-grounded! get off my floor."... so I cast my flight spell and hover, I feel a little strange again, but just for a moment, it almost feels like curiosity -inside- my mana. Odd. I hover over to the kitchen table where mom is working on her laptop.

"Mom, I think I'm sick, my eyes are glowing."

She doesn't even look up, "It's probably just extreme levels of radiation. Don't worry about it, it'll go away on its own."

... "Kay. I'm gonna go take a nap."

She calls after me "Don't sunburn your eyelids."

I laugh and go lay down on the couch and drift off to sleep.

"Well, that's an odd feeling." When my consciousness started to fade and I could feel it drifting towards a dream, the dream seemed to -look- at me and change. "Uh-huh. That's not ominous -at all-." Suddenly I was standing on top of the hotel we had stayed at the night before last.... and the sky was bright teal instead of blue. I looked around and there was no one on the streets, any cars I saw were empty and so were the buildings. "Okay, so this is a little odd, but nothing seems to be happening. Eh, may as well explore." I cast flight on myself then used a boost enhanced jump to rocket a good distance, and started to fly around. It seemed any place I hadn't gone before just repeated things I knew. Buildings I hadn't been inside before had a layout I expected, or copied from another building.... but there was nothing to do. "Aren't dreams supposed to have things happen? Particularly those dreams that have awareness." I think for a few moments "Ah, maybe I'm being mind controlled and this is just my consciousness trapped. With how last week was I wouldn't be surprised."

After considering for a few minutes I try a combination of things to get out of a dream, falling, and dying both should do. I'm not too concerned because in reality the void between auras doesn't feel like my aura, and here, although I can only control my normal aura, I feel like it's overlapping another 'my aura', as in, this entire place is suffused with it. So I fly a good ways up. "Here goes nothing." I cancel my flight spell and fall. I don't seem to be waking up, and fear is building inside me. "I really hope I'm right... and I really hope this doesn't hurt"

A short few moments later and I realize I was HORRIBLY wrong. My entire body is SCREAMING in pain. Black out levels of pain but my mind wouldn't fade, I felt it all in extreme clarity. I scream out "AGH! STUPID IDEA!" followed by a string of curses. Far too slowly the pain starts to fade. I feel like I was laying there for twenty minutes as my body eventually repaired itself enough for me to stand. "Son of a BITCH that hurt. NOT doing that again. What they say about not feeling pain in dreams, yeah, that doesn't apply to -magical- dreams apparently." Idly I consider the fact that I just attempted to kill myself in a magically altered dream where 'you die in the dream you die for real' really -could- have been possible. 'oh well, live and learn. I'm not doing -that- again anyway.' I glare at the sky when I consider the source of this situation "Screw you, magical subconscious me, you're an ass."

A ray of light suddenly pierced the sky and struck the ground with a thunderously, at first I'm worried I just poked the sleeping dragon, but when the dust clears I see, kneeling on the ground, a woman clad in heavy bright silver armor... with bright white feathered wings. I blink then look back up at the sky "... If this is an apology you may as well go all out and give me a few more." Another twenty pillars of light suddenly slam down from the teal heavens in various parts of the city. I'm a little stunned, I wasn't -actually- expecting that to work. "Huh, alright, fine, apology accepted." I nod and give a thumbs up to the sky.

I go ahead and re-cast flight on myself and hover closer to the angel. On a closer look, her helmet had no eye slots and it was shaped like a heavy beak and covered all but her jaw and lips. I call out to the angel "Hey, how's it going?" Her head snaps up and her wings flare out. I mumble to myself "Okay, that's surprisingly intimidating..." She then pulls a handle off her belt and light flares outwards shaping a bow... which she aims at me, then draws back, and a burning bright arrow of light forms. I grumble and glare at the sky "Of COURSE the angel girl couldn't be -nice-, that's just too much to ask." When I look back at Ms. Bird Lady (Angels are nice, she's just an angry girl with wings) I'm pretty sure this isn't going to end well. I dodge the moment she releases the arrow, it doesn't quite graze me but I can still feel the heat sear my skin. For an angel wannabe she really doesn't seem to be big on diplomacy. Well, no need to fight, place is big enough for all of us, I just have to avoid the -other- twenty angry bird women I'm sure are wandering about. I give my flight spell a burst of power and launch away.

I manage to avoid her for about ten minutes, then out of nowhere an arrow of light blasts through the air beside me and burns through the brick wall to my side turning it to ash in a three inch diameter. I pale, I don't even know if I can block that, and it looks like it would -really- hurt. Not to mention if I go down she could just stay there and hit me again the moment I recover... "Worst. dream. ever. Well, it can't hurt to have the shield up just in case." I dive to the side and into a building to give me some time to build my shield.

When the angel that's been chasing me steps into the building I was hiding out in, I decide diplomacy and 'live and let live' aren't working. We're down to 'physical diplomacy'. So I blast her with a high charged Foxfire orb from the other side of the store. Should give me plenty of room to avoid the worst of the shockwave. She doesn't even try to dodge, it blows her back against the wall but doesn't so much as crack or dislodge her armor. "Huh... So she's stupid, can't see my spells, overconfident or bluffing." She's not moving and I don't -think- she's bluffing, so I go to check on her. If she's unconscious maybe I can restrain her and get some answers, though asking my subconscious for things has -not- gone well for me so far.

Once I place some construct shackles on her I figure I should have some time before she comes to, so I stop and consider my situation. "Let's see, yesterday was the first day I've really gone out that much with my power for any real period of time, and I was having a lot of fun with it... Maybe subconsciously I was holding back from really accepting this suspicious power... So current theories are either I used too much and this is some sort of mana corruption, or my subconscious finally accepted it and this is the result of that part of my mind being suffused with mana or embraced by my core or... whatever has happened to my head to let me use this stuff. This -could- just be my subconscious on a mana high or something. I just hope it doesn't go crazy in the 'I want to be the real Will' way."

Not really getting much further with my thoughts and not wanting Crazy Bird Girl to suddenly wake up and try to murder me again, I go to check on her. Then I notice -why- her armor didn't come unlodged. It's been grafted to her or something. Her skin around the connecting points has grown around and fused with the metal with jagged scar-like tissue. I shudder at the sight and glare where the sky would be if the ceiling wasn't there "That's kinda sick, you know that?" then turn back to the bird girl. There -are- twenty more of these out there so I have to figure out how to deal with them so I don't get trapped here. I notice her weapon on the floor to her side, so I try to grab it, it -would- be pretty useful and it's powerful. When I touched it, it flared bright white and nearly burned me. "Okay, so no cool light bow of death. Oh well." I use a boost to toss it away from her, then proceed to lightly slap her face to try to get her to wake up. When she comes to she goes rigid and immediately tries to fight the shackles, I have to reinforce the things, she's -strong-. Like low brute level strong, I won't be able to make the shackles hold against that for -too- long. Should be long enough though. I notice something odd, she hasn't vocalized any sound at all, not even a grunt when I hit her now that I think about it. "Hey bird girl, what's going on here?" She stiffens and her face turns to me. She opens her mouth and a low harmonic sound starts to flow out, and with it I see a golden aura produced in waves flow from her. The taste of the mana is familiar but I can't quite place it.

The moment I realize I'm thinking of her as 'cute' and 'strong' and 'why do I have her shackled? She's a being of divinity, everything else was just miscommunication' I SLAM my Astral Shield into place. "Shit, that's what Glory Girl does! What the hell!?" Then the golden mana shifts to a blackish dark purple color and I can taste the change from inspiration to fear. Then her skin cracks, feathers drop from her wings which are replaced with webbed bat-like wings. the silver armor turns black and blood starts to drip down the portion of her face I can see.

I jump backwards as her strength suddenly skyrockets and she breaks the manacles. Well, I tried diplomacy, live and let live and physical diplomacy. Now she's coming at me with those vicious looking black claws. I roll my eyes at myself, I'm not sure if it's my idea or my subconscious poking at me, but I decide I could try removing the helm since there could be something controlling the dream creature. I boost myself to the ceiling and flip so I'm standing up there now. This causes her to tilt her head up to look at me. I use the fact that my aura extends a little over eight feet now to form a blunted Mana Bolt at an angle below where I assume her line of sight is, and launch it straight under the helm to rip it up and off her. It tears the scar tissue and throws the helm backwards revealing short black hair with two stubs where horns have been sawed off and showing her eyes to be entirely golden with a single vertical black slit. Then she SCREAMS and there's a huge blast of the fear aura. Luckily my Astral shield had been up, but it flares brightly all around splitting the wave around me.

"Okay, I understand the scream, that -probably- hurt. How about we have a nice chat now?" A deep growl reverberates through the air around her and I see the aura gradually changing to bright red. I can taste pure rage on it and I can practically see the spark of intelligence in her eyes dull down to bestial rage. When she blasts off the ground she clips me, my Force Shield flares and saps it's full charge, shattering, but it -still- didn't stop the momentum of the, now, demon girl. I scream in pain as she clips me and it sends me flying through a wall, I swear I broke several bones there. "ARGH, shit! fuck this, we're going with violence!" I super charge a fireball so even if I miss I hit. She starts sprinting through the hole in the wall as I release the spell I was charging. The crackling ball of energy blasts toward the ground in front of her and explodes into an inferno around her. She ROARS in a moment of defiance as the flames consume her, but when the flames sputter out an instant later, all that's left is a crumpled charcoal form with slagged black armor. Moments later it explodes into black fire and motes of light. "Well, I think that answers whether or not I can save and talk to them" Having decided, I replace my shield and recover. I also decide I'm not going to prod them into powering up. Instant kills would save me a -lot- of pain.

I feel another bird girl show up in my aura. Now that I don't have any reservations about it, I make a super charged Mana Bolt and blast it through her chest with all the force I can muster. It looks like a bolt of teal lightning exploded out her back and she instantly bursts into black fire and bright light. I wait and ambush the few others that were drawn by the first bird girl's scream, then go hunting the remaining bird girls until I've eliminated all twenty one. Each one may as well have been a clone of the first. Now that I don't have to worry about trying to keep them alive it was almost too easy. Once all the angels were gone I gave a sigh. "There. No more fear of eternal pain. Now I just have to figure out how to get out of here."

I really need to stop talking to myself. I think Murphy waits for it before he throws his law at me. The sky trembled with an ominous thunder and a gigantic white pillar of light crashed in front of me about forty yards away. when the light and dust cleared there was a two story tall red beast covered in grafted white steel plates and chains with golden embellishments and a golden pseudo halo. The creature was primarily a huge red, six legged land dragon, only from the front legs and up instead of a serpentine neck there was a giant armored masculine torso. The armor was similar armor to the bird girls I just finished with. Seriously, this whole dream has been insane, my subconscious is a little fucked up... or maybe drunk on mana.

The creature roars and waves of purple black aura roil outwards from him. I feel the fear aura blast around my astral shield, it's plates glow briefly from the pressure of the aura but it holds. I see the waves of fear crashing through the city to its edges. "Well, either it escalates after this, or this is the 'boss'. I guess it's time for more violence." I blast the creature with a super charged Mana Bolt - which gets deflected by the giant metal plates. "Well, There goes the easy method." I fly back out of range so I can more easily dodge whatever he decides to shoot or throw at me. Luckily he seems to just throw rubble. Once my mana recovers I start alternating super charged fireballs then super charged Foxfire where the metal has melted down to break down plates and chains, then fly back to recover mana and repeat. Sadly it didn't seem to be doing much, though I did manage to shatter some chains.

"Ugh, This is going to take forever."... Then I suddenly feel really stupid as the solution hits me. I fly in a burst of speed away from the creature and zip around a few buildings and alleyways to lose him. Once he loses sight of me he seems happy to just wander the main roads.

I land in a building, my Astral Shield pushing away the waist deep lake of fear built up through the city. "Alright, I should have all the time I need. Let's plan this out. Physically this guy is damn near invulnerable. If physical attacks don't work my next step is energy. Shockwaves of force and heat are able to destroy some of the metal but I honestly don't think it's doing much actual damage. I don't have access to electricity yet... need to put that on the list. Okay, so that pretty much gets rid of my whole repertoire of spells. An ongoing theme here is emotion auras, so astral attacks are the obvious choice against an invulnerable beast. Now, how do I even -develop- an astral attack?" I sigh as the answer is pretty obvious, though I dreaded it. "... I guess I need to see it in action."

I focus all my energy on watching how the fear aura is going to affect me, and I brace myself for it. Interestingly enough I can actually reach -into- the fear aura. I assume it's because, as this is a dreamscape, this is part of me. Now that I'm prepared, I drop my shield slowly and watch the fear aura be semi-repelled by my own, but where it touches I can feel my aura being corrupted and turning into fear. When I press my consciousness toward the corrupted section I can feel it's like an impression I would apply to mana. It throws me off for a moment because I -can't- apply it to mana I'm molding.

After what feels like a couple of hours of testing I realize how the basics work. Pushing emotion into my aura is easy enough, the problem is, the emotion distorts to nothing when I try to grab the mana that holds it. All it really means for me is, until I figure out more I can only push emotions onto people within my aura, and even then, it's difficult to infuse it into my aura and hold it there, but it only taxes my concentration, not my mana.

"Ugh" I stand up and stretch then rub my eyes now that my senses pull out of my aura. "Well, I guess it's time to go hug it out with a giant monster. Let's hope calming it works. If it doesn't, maybe I'll put him to sleep so I can find a vulnerable spot" My shoulders slump as I complain, "This is such a pain." I step out of the building and glare at the sky "This is all your fault. If my day is gone when I get out of here I'm going to be pissed. I didn't take a sick day to deal with this crap."

"Alright," I take a breath and build up my shields and flight spell again "Let's go hug a giant monster that can probably kill me by sneezing." I fly into the air to look for the creature. That takes about all of two seconds since he's gigantic. Luckily I'm behind him. "Maybe I can sneak up on him?... Probably need to stop talking to myself if I want that plan to work. Shutting up now." I fly toward the creature at a good pace while converting my aura to Relaxation, Relief, Calm, Sleep. 'Woah, that's an odd feel' I think to myself. The feeling tried to 'corrupt' my body for a moment until I moved the aura directly around me to destabilize the emotion. Going to have to watch out for that in the future. I get close enough that my aura barely touches his, which only extends a half inch beyond his skin, putting me roughly eight feet away from his body. I'm right behind and slightly under his shoulder blades so he won't see me just from glancing. He's stomping through town and causing tremors with every step. It has to be similar to seeing Behemoth in action... After a few moments I see the soft feather white of my aura start to influence his. His is the teal color of everything in this dream, but it seems immune to the fear aura filling the streets, which lucky for me, allows my calming aura to gradually spread through him. He starts to slow down his patrol as he becomes affected by the overwhelming -calm- and -relax-. It takes several minutes but eventually he stops and seems to sag, he keeps jerking like he's trying to fend off sleep, but eventually the giant body crashes down and he folds up to start snoring.

I breathe a sigh of relief "Whew, alright... now what?" Suddenly the aura that infused -everything- started to draw into the creature. The sky regained its blue and I could feel a void between auras again. When the aura pulled into the monster I felt in control of everything, like it was a normal lucid dream. About that moment cracks started to spread through the creature and, slowly, pieces of it break off and float into the air dissipating into teal light, showing the creature to have turned into a shell housing something bright inside. I don't want to mess with this because for all I know the thing could restructure suddenly leaving me with an angry giant monster again.

When the shell finally fades fully, there's a mana construct of a girl around my age curled up asleep in the middle of where it was. Her hair was like the foxfire effect from when I compress mana, and she had wispy tendrils of teal light sprouting from her back as if they were wings. I wonder if the fact that my subconscious is a murderous pixie girl should tell me something? I reach out with my focus to grab the dreamscape, hopefully so when she wakes up she won't start this whole thing again, then I walk up beside her and start poking her cheek repeating "Hey, listen. Hey, listen." to wake her up. She wakes up with a start and I can feel her push back against my control for a moment, then seems annoyed and starts to sulk.

"Okay. First things first. Why the hell are you a girl?"

She looks at me with an 'are you an idiot?' look, then I suddenly get a flash of an image in my head of a huge macho muscle man hanging around in my mind.

I blink for a moment then nod conceding the point. "Alright, I guess I -would- prefer to share my head with you rather than that. Now that -that's- out of the way, next, we need to work some things out." I create a bucket of glue over her, then dismiss the bucket leaving the glue to fall, followed by feathers (lucid dreams rock). "That is for the crap you put me through. It would have been worse but I -did- learn something from this. You'll stay feathered for the duration of this dream, got it?"

She looks a little disgusted but nods causing feathers to flutter.

"Next point, can you talk?" I ask.

She nods and I get a flash of semi-nonsensical images until they even out and I start to make -some- sense of it, such as showing the answer to my first question as being a flash of the macho man image.

"Alright, it's communication, good enough." We talk for a while working out how sharing my head is going to work. From what I can work out she is a fragment of my subconscious so I called her Shard, because fragment is just too long. The fragmentation of my subconscious causes me to panic a little, I mean the subconscious is -kind- of important, what happens when it shatters and pieces decide to be conscious? Isn't that where insanity comes in?... Oh well, we'll see what happens I guess. We ended up working out a deal, she's allowed a good amount of freedom, and I'll try to expand it, but she follows my orders when they come up. The problem is, I had to pound this into her head over the course of another hour. She has the memory of a goldfish. She gets the gist, but not the details.

Satisfied with the results I question Shard "So, how do we get out of here? I'm not trying the falling thing again."

When she tries to pull on my mana I release a little to her and I can feel a slight buzz in my head, but she creates an ornate door and presses a small amount of mana into it, which causes it to hum. She then motions to it.

I figure 'what the hell', and open the door... to see a flash and suddenly I'm feeling sick and the world is spinning very fast. No I change my mind, I'm rolling in mid-air. Idly I realize Shard is holding the reins on the flight spell currently causing the immediate predicament and I can feel her in my head like a tiny presence just to the side and behind me. From the flash of imagery I put together that she doesn't know how to stop. And she's trying to give me control. Great, I have to deal with sleep flying. I'll have to ask Glory Girl if she ever has to worry about flying in her sleep. I grab the spell from Shard, then start flailing and pushing trying to stop the ride before I hurl. When I start flailing I can hear my mother snorting and laughing. "Don't just stand there recording, help me get down! I'm gonna throw up - Urk!" I know she's recording this. It's what I'd do.

She justifies, "I needed evidence to show the priest I was going to call. I wanted to know how they'd react to a 'real' exorcism." I hear the tripod being set up.

"Urk" I'm feeling really sick but at least I'm slowing down. Apparently Shard feels uncomfortable too. Good to know she gets the results of it with me, serves her right. Eventually I stop spinning, and manage to hold down my breakfast, but I stay floating. I don't trust my balance for walking. I dizzily look at my mother. "So, what happened on this end?"

She smiles brightly and stops the recording, then hops over to the TV to rummage around until she's got it setup for playback. She says "I didn't get the recording of when you put the same piece of toast in the toaster four times, but I got everything else." she hits play and I groan.

Apparently Shard had -some- influence, but it was more like sleepwalking than her controlling things. I guess whatever I did in the dream consolidated her 'self' or maybe gave her understanding or something. I hope it did anyway because I don't want to let her in public if this is what she's really like. I watched the video as my body floated up to my mother from where it had been playing with the toaster, pointed at the sun and mumbled "Turn it off."

My mother had replied "I'm working on it, honey."

I floated back to the living room and yelled out "I need pants!" Important to note, I was wearing pants already. Mom, being who she is, gave me a pair. I glared at them, then chewed on a leg before declaring "They aren't shiny enough." Then hugged mom, the camera was right in my face showing how horrified I looked when I whispered "It's raining -penguins-."

Mom gave me the helpful advice that "Dogs can shake off the rain"

That's when I started spinning.

Now that the video was over, I turn in the air to glare at my mom "You're evil."

She just tilts her head "Says the guy that was spinning in the air threatening to vomit everywhere."

I close my eyes still feeling like the world is turning. "Point." When I open them again I look at her, "Hey, are my eyes still glowing?"

She nods "Yep, bright and glowy. A Shame really, your eyes were your only selling point."

"Thanks mom" I say dripping with sarcasm. Then I roll my eyes up a bit putting my attention on Shard. "Hey Shard, can you go to sleep for a bit? Don't worry, I'll wake you up soon." I feel a flash of annoyance from her but the presence in my head backs away out of my awareness. I look back at my mother "How about now?"

She nods "Oh good that's a relief, some girl might actually take you off our hands now." She thinks for a moment then says "Just make sure to introduce her to us before bringing her to your room, I don't want another Sophia incident."

I call up Shard again, I did promise after all. Then I glare at mom "You know that wasn't my fault. She did that on her own."

She nods but says "I know but I didn't get to tease you about your first time bringing a girl home. It's really too bad she was crazy. You're supposed to drive them to insanity -after- you weasel your way in, like what I did with your father." She crosses her arms and her eyes harden a bit "Now, who is this Shard person that gives you glowing eyes?"

I just shrug "She's a fragment of my subconscious that somehow gained a sort of awareness or intelligence and trapped me in a dream until I put her to sleep. Now we share my head but she has agreed to follow my orders as long as I let her experience life a little."

She sighs and deflates "When I suggested you get a girlfriend I didn't mean to force you into creating an imaginary one. Just remember, until you can introduce her to us you can't take her to your room."

I roll my eyes, "Yes mother."

Things after that were pretty normal apparently the whole dream issue only took until noon. I pulled out my notes and added to some ideas and wrote out information on aura based emotional influence. I doubted it would work on someone experiencing extreme emotion like rage, but for people feeling normal emotional levels it should work. I'll need to come up with a way to make it more effective. I end up coming up with an idea for Shard to push whatever mana/aura she has into mine since it -should- be the same, in order to dim my eyes without turning her off. It takes a couple of hours to get it working, but we manage to figure it out.

Around six I get a call from Taylor "Hey What's up T?"

She sounds nervous "Will, I'm being followed."