Country of Champions 1

A mature woman's voice said, "Vitals are good. With the increase of brain activity, our neurologist predicts he should wake up in a day or two."

A somewhat gravely toned man's voice said, "What's the bars look like?... I know you're not supposed to release that kind of information on a minor until a guardian's given permission but it's a sh*t show, Karen. I can't spin a tale around a kid getting powers after trying to kill himself.

"If I have the bars, I can make something believable no matter what kind of mental state he's in after this. A picnicking family saw the light show and the dad's the one who gave chest compression. They've been spreading the story around for the last day. I got to get ahead of this before we have a suicide pandemic of idiots trying to force some kind of mythical awakening."

Karen was silent for a moment before there was a rapid series of finger taps against a hard, plastic sounding surface. "None of this is official yet. S-bars show possible C-class mystic potential and E-class magic augmentation. The aural bloom scan almost looks like an impressionist picture of the sea. No signs of external control or spiritual damage. And the haziness around the head points, heart and... sacral point isn't anything you wouldn't expect to see in a teenage boy. I expected to see a darker heart point considering the situation but anyone can have a moment of weakness or stupidity, I guess.

"The M-bars are a mess but that's nothing new. Preliminary scans show a minimum D-class genetic deviation, E-class esper sensitivity... and F-class pheromone production but that's-"

"A good spin point. Not very many boys would be willing to admit running off a cliff to escape a molester but many would. It also lets us set the awakening point BEFORE the jump," the man said, as if everything was satisfactorily solved.

Karen angrily said, "No. F-class is little more than a generically nice smell. You try to sell that and it feeds the 'they made me do it' defense against everyone else with the same deviation. It's sick and it's wrong."

Mark sighed. "Everyone ALSO knows that a person's traits can be exponentially amplified for a short time after the awakening point. It doesn't feed any 'assailant is the real victim' narrative, Karen."

"Oh, so an F-class awakening being strong enough to stir a person to attack a 'scratch and sniff' when they first awaken doesn't feed the f***ing narrative, Mark!?" Karen practically screeched.

The man kept his frustration in check but it could be heard in his voice. "Approve this. I can put some polish on it to keep it from drifting that direction... I promise you."

Unable to keep quiet any longer while they gave up useful information, Orison opened his eyes and said, "If you're going to pull some crap from the gutter, go with a successful reversal of possession. Outsider tries to get me to kill myself, I fight for my life and soul at the thirteenth hour and manage to succeed with a little assistance from another special who wants to remain anonymous... It lets you sell a story that's awareness positive, downgrades my from psych watch to psych evaluation and lets Karen direct her attention to patients who likely need her help more than I do."

As a person who actually cared for Orison's well being, Karen said, "Is that the truth? Is that what really happened, Austin?"

The young mage said, "Orison, please. My name's Orison Cantrip and always has been. I've tried telling people that a couple of times and no one wanted to hear me. I could have family out there that actually knows me and couldn't find me because I had a lisp when I was little... To answer your question, it's the truth I want to tell. No, it's not the truth but the truth is sad, embarrassing and will haunt my steps for the rest of my life when all I really want to do is move on from it and enjoy this new lease on life I HAVE."

Mark looked piercingly at Orison and said, "I'll run with this. I'll even slap your corrected name on there after a little verification but if you burn me on this, I'll bury you. Are you CERTAIN this is the truth you can sell and there won't be any surprises to kill it? Last chance, because backlash won't be landing on me if this turns rotten."

The young mage said, "It's air tight, removes any need to fight witness testimony and will make the community at large more agreeable to whistle blowing. I like it. You like it and Karen can accept it after she makes sure I'm not a bipolar on a temporary up spike."

She said, "That's not really wha-"

Mark cut her off. "You heard him... Add a full telepathy and empathy battery to his tests before you clear him. I'm going to get a mind sweep for manipulation done before I leave. Prepare to get rolled up, just in case."

The man quickly exited and left he staring at the hospital room door in mild panic before looking at Orison with uncertainty.

He shrugged. "Do what you need to do but I have a quick question before you go running to make sure I haven't licked your brain. What's S-bars and M-bars?"

Looking a touch more relaxed, she said, "The Spectral Bar Series and Mutation Bar Series are two sets of tests that measure energy signatures and genetic expressions."

She went on to explain quite a bit. Most of it was dry but there were a few pieces of useful information mixed in. She was an esper mutant herself, D-class extra sensory. It was perfect for a doctor that specialized in diagnostic testing for not only supernatural traits but hard to determine medical problems. Once Orison had been scanned clear of passive manipulation expressions, Karen was called away more than once to utilize her prized ability.

Delaying the third interruption, Karen said, "Mark added a couple of extra batteries and I'm obligated to see them through... You're going to be here for at least two more days and after that, a suitable dorm will be assigned to you where you'll have to complete some safety boards and testing for educational purposes."

"Who exactly is Mark, a government PR guy?" Orison asked.

She said, "He's this hospital's resident Bureau of Supernatural & Mutant Affairs representative. He also serves as a community liaison. Public relations is part of his job but so is public safety when it involves the differently advantaged.

"I'd love to stay and answer more of your doubtlessly endless questions. It's good that you know as much as you can cram in... Sadly, the reward for competence is more work. I'll get a little more time penciled in with Genevieve. She can answer more of your questions after she's done with the interview portion of your psych evaluation.

"It'll be a little intimidating and stressful but don't take it personally. Some of these tests are uncomfortable but none of them are dangerous. You'll be fine and you'll be kept so busy this time will fly by and become a distant memory in no time."

She wasn't wrong but she also downplayed. Being cut, burned and flash frozen with micro-precision might not have hurt per say but some of the places that those tests had to be done on made him want to cry for a lot of reasons. To say that they had measuring the supernatural down to a science wouldn't be accurate but they most definitely had a decent standardization that made it hard to fudge. The most important parts he needed to hide, hid themselves or he would have been in some trouble.

Over his time there, he also did a little self examination. His space and soul ring were so sub-dimensional that it took him time to trace his own connections. The soul shell that served when this form was little more that a hollow proxy became the point of expression for his actual soul. It made him wonder how the bars would look if they could measure the raw. He wasn't nearly crazy enough to find out.

There wasn't much deep self evaluation he could do at the hospital but he did carefully look into his space. His soul ring was about three times larger and more sturdy while the white hole in the middle widened from pin hole to fresh crayon tip. It was hard to measure but he could feel that the essence radiation it threw reached a much larger area.

The strangest change was his plane. If all the 'astral plane' like obscuring mist that protected the more fragile parts from his casual sight was taken into consideration, it was quite big but only a small fraction of it was revealed. There wasn't a large variety in his plants but they were all just as real feeling as himself and quite well aged. That was excellent news when it came to the handful of mature ginseng, lotus and a large patch of vividly blue agave that stretched into the astral mist furthest away from the vital water pool.

Hidden deep within obfuscation was the eternium 'sun' of the plane and his conduit which he could feel had returned to a fragile state and required time to recover. The space itself wasn't capable of being eyeball calculated anymore and the churning borders where more violent than ever. It was no longer that safe for items of low dimensional origin in his space, regardless of where they were kept.

There were also very few free floating motes of eternium. Once they past a certain point of the radiation field of his white hole and spun out beyond the pull of his plane, they drifted and dimmed into the vacuum of the space itself. It suggested that something fundamental and beyond his understanding happened to all the inert essence.

After acknowledging the return of living elemental laws, Orison turned to his stash of goodies. There was a ruby ring and that was it. He panicked momentarily before he realized that his remaining items were all packed inside of it. It still wasn't that impressive. Aside from what was originally in it, there were some mundane boundary items and a few new things that he'd explore more in depth once he had some privacy. He feared that was a long way away.

Placing himself into meditative trance, he tried to feel out what the next climbing step required and didn't get much of an idea beyond taking a different but important step, becoming a tier four. It wasn't that precise but it was a nebulous kind of idea. He felt like it wouldn't take much to reach for the next rung of power but it also equally felt like a bad move at that time.

As an image, his tower was solid, sturdy and near flawless but it lacked the wide foundation a much larger structure would need to continue being stable and durable later. What he had was a masterpiece of spiritual structure but it was only a short thing. If he rushed the process of building to new heights he'd ruin what made what he had so good to begin with.

It was obvious that more knowledge, wisdom and personal life experience would make for a transition with better potential. Assuming, of course, it was balanced with an eye for time taken because emotional and spiritual baggage could accumulate quickly and stifle potential in other ways. Fortunately, he wasn't completely clueless to what he needed beyond a little full living and this world most definitely had more of it if the translations of the magi's collection proved insufficient.

Done with his self inspection, the young mage turned to getting an idea of the new reality laws he'd have to adjust to for his abilities to work and immediately felt a hint of instinctual threat. There was far too much around the clock observation going on to do anything meaningful. And if there had ever been a time to be as low key as possible, his current situation was one of those times. There was literally no safety net if he messed up. That didn't mean it would always be so.

The S&M Bureau had a political nemesis call the League of Extraordinaries. Powerful supernaturals and those with abilities that were in danger of exploitation were protected by the League but he had no doubts that those the Bureau found first would never get the chance to seek that protection. Orison had his doubts about the League's altruism as well but if it boiled down to serving or being exploited by a cabal of potentially sympathetic authority figures or subordinated by a mildly antagonistic government agency, the choice was clear.

There were a few facts about his current reality that had the young mage worried as well. The existence of extra-dimensional planes was an open secret and that meant mid-dimensional entities and organizations were almost guaranteed to be somewhere in the world. There was also a predatory undertone to the will of this world. It passively fed off its inhabitants.

Every 'mystic' type on the planet was an emitter. That meant they produced the essence they used or it was provided by a patron from elsewhere. The world gave not one bit and even siphoned from models in a way that mimicked conditions on the world he'd previously been on. The only upside was that inert spirit essence wouldn't be shoved down his metaphorical throat with every use of his space.

He had a sneaking suspicion that something was keeping this reality from ascending to the mid dimensions. It was far more powerful than Amoril was and far more stable as well. Regardless, it had to be close to the dividing line because there was a subtle pressure exuded by the place that gave Orison the feeling that less structurally stable entities would find themselves seriously suppressed if not partially invalidated.

All of his pondering and speculating came to a crashing halt on the second full day at the hospital. Genevieve was no joke. Her expertise and subtle talents pushed Orison far beyond what his community college level psychology education could cope with. It took every bit of self restraint he had not to dial down his emotional sensitivity or retreat too far into his meditative training. That meant dealing with one continuous rolling damage control on reveals.

It didn't feel good to be read like a book while he tried to pen scribbles in an attempt to hide things. Orchestrating angry outbursts while reeling in genuine ones left him feeling mentally drained but she didn't stop. Two hours of sharp tongued nastiness lead to another hour of neutral interrogation after a ten minute break. While she took a lunch, he took a written battery. He received his while she read that battery and visually analyzed him to the point he didn't want to eat but made himself do it anyway.

At the end of her 'interview' that Orison had many more colorful names for, She said, "Would it have been so bad to show me the real you?"

He responded simply, "We're not friends."

Almost whimsically she said, "We could be. There's no rule saying we couldn't after my official job is done."

"No, but there are social norms and conflicts of interest that would make such a thing extremely impractical," Orison said bluntly.

Genevieve adopted a hurt expression and said, "Since when did friendship require being practical?"

He said nothing.

After an uncomfortable silence, she became neutral faced again and said, "I'm recommending a three month observation period before you're released. You exhibit strong indicators of being self harming and unstable. Borderline schizophrenia aside, I also believe you might suffer from a subconscious case of gender dysphoria and I'll have you enrolled in a class on how to explore those potential feelings. Is there anything you'd like to add?"

He nodded. "The last part was an oversell."

She smiled. That smile looked and felt genuine.

"Really? It's the only part I think is true," she said, appearing as if she was holding back her amusement.

He thought, "Does this world have 'Silencing of the Lambs'? Buffalo Bill, I am not, H*nnibal!"

Sighing, he added, "I'm comfortable with my gender identity. I actively pity and even fear certain physiological and social obstacles that women face. Assuming it's further down the road, the idea of becoming a father of a child I'd need to help raise isn't unpleasant. If I was the one responsible for giving birth, I don't think I'd feel the same way.

"As far as other pieces of personal information you might be able to pry out of me using false pretenses, the list isn't long. I think I'm slightly more petty than the average person but I have a sense of proportion when indulging in that. I enjoy the feeling of being nude when I have privacy or in an environment where such a thing can be done comfortably and safely.

"Although, today I've discovered that having someone stare at me while I eat if they're not eating DOES make me uncomfortable. It probably would even if it was a safe and comfortable environment. Outside of that, I'm done sharing today."

Orison closed his eyes and started meditating. She tried to pull him back in but he had resolved to shut her out completely. He didn't even care that he wasted his time to ask her questions because he could tell she wasn't done poking at him and never would be. He had made the mistake of being 'interesting'.

She showed him that he wasn't the only one capable of being petty by having him placed in a 'safe' room overnight. She also gained approval for the telepathic esper that was sent to ask question about his mystic source to question his sudden extreme antisocial behavior at the end of their session. He spent the night feeling like he was waiting to face the final boss of a game that had been too hard to be fun.