Healing Pulse

I did feel a little bit worried as Lauren and I returned to the main room of the underground base.

On one hand, it was definitely because of Wildthing. She was, as the name implied, completely wild and I had the feeling that I was never going to feel safe around her in the future. I'd have to come up with some kind of anti-Wildthing countermeasure, just in case.

On the other hand, though, it was also because I had to face Greave and Allen again.

I'd screamed and yelled about quitting the team, and now I was just turning around and going back into the room. I either looked absolutely bonkers or a total arse, maybe even both.

Part of me wanted to offer an apology, but I likely wouldn't. After being attacked by an eight-foot-tall beast that looked like it had just walked out of a horror movie, I was pretty sure that I had been justified in everything that I'd said.

Not only that, villains operated on a certain code. A large part of that code was based around face, your reputation. If I apologised it'd lose me even more face than coming back was going to.

Just as I'd expected, walking back into the room ended in an awkward and uncomfortable silence.

Wildthing was sitting on a chair at one of the tables, bouncing her leg with agitation. Fortunately, she had stayed in her human form, so I didn't need to worry about coming up against another weird abomination. She rolled her eyes as she saw me, but she didn't say anything about it.

"Thanks for coming back," Greave said, a little bit of a grin on his face. "That would have been a really sucky end to this recruitment attempt."

The welcome was nice, but I wasn't able to really bask in it for very long as a wave of nausea and dizziness washed over me. Oh yeah, I was still dripping blood all over the floor. That was a thing.

"Right, before this whole situation gets any more screwy, Allen do you think you can help Tristan out here?" Lauren said, carefully leading me over to the couch. "He's lost a lot of blood, and if it goes on for much longer I'm going to start getting pretty worried."

Lauren all but pushed me down onto the sofa, it didn't take much effort considering how unsteady on my feet I'd become. I wasn't quite lying down, but I wasn't sitting up either. I was just sort of slumped in the corner, where the arm of the chair met the back, with my arm laid out palm up.

"That is one nasty jab," Allen said as he rose up from his own lying down position.

He wasn't wrong, either. There was only one main area of injury on my hand, the spot where Wildthing had jabbed her tendril tail straight through my palm and out the other end. The area around it was red raw and inflamed, and I tried not to think about the fact that my muscles and bones were visible through my flesh. I was surprised I wasn't screaming in agony, but I guess that's what shock did to a person.

"But hey, that was pretty cool," Allen said as he scooted over closer to me. "Who would have thought the nerdy loner crafter could take down Wildthing in a single blast. Kudos to that."

I shot him a withering glare, or at least I attempted to, but with how dizzy I was feeling I wasn't sure if the feeling behind the attempt was really conveyed. If I was feeling any better, I would have been excited over the fact I was going to get to see how Allen's power actually worked. As I was, though, I was just hoping that it worked quickly.

"Healer?" I asked, my voice shaky.

"Uh… Sort of. I'll explain when you're, you know, not bleeding to death on my sofa," Allen said, his tone only half joking.

The boy put his hand on my shoulder and I immediately felt better. A wave of soothing heat radiated out from his point of contact, travelling down my shoulder and straight into the injury in my hand. The heat came in pulsing waves, focusing on that point burning so hard that it almost hurt.

"Damn…" I mumbled, relief oozing from my tone. "Your power's uh… nice."

Allen snorted at that, "Yeah, it's gonna make you feel pretty good for right now, but when it's over you're going to be incredibly hungry. My pulses are basically speeding your metabolism up, forcing you to heal at an accelerated rate. Shouldn't be much longer now."

A few moments later Allen lifted his hand away. The moment the contact stopped the warmth disappeared, and all I was left with was a gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach. I growled hungrily.

"Uh… sorry," I said sheepishly, placing my hand over my stomach. "You weren't kidding, were you?"

"Nope," Allen said with a snort.

I started laughing at that as well. Before long, Greave and Lauren had joined in with the hysterics, though Wildthing elected to just sit brooding at the table. Clearly, she didn't get the joke.

Greave went over to the kitchen area and started fixing some food, I could only imagine he felt bad about not being able to stop Wildthing before she managed to make her attack.

"So, if you're not a healer, Allen, what are you?" I asked, genuinely curious about his power.

He didn't say anything for a moment, and I was worried that I'd offended him by pushing the question.

"Basically my power allows me to project energy pulses through a certain area around me, stronger if I have direct touch. Using those energy pulses I can basically restructure matter, force things to do things they wouldn't usually do, that sort of thing," He said nonchalantly as if what he'd just admitted was the most normal thing in the world.

No wonder this team had never been caught, all of them were off the charts.