Whether he was using his innate ability with illusions or something else, I wasn't entirely sure how the little fox was doing it, but after paying attention, I could almost see his silhouette submerged in the darkness, stalking…
I would have to ask him how he did that later; in case it was something that could be taught, of course. It would certainly be a useful tool to learn. The old, trusty ninja trick of disappearing into the shadows when things go wrong could be a real lifesaver. On the other hand, appearing behind people to scare them to death was a fantastic way to pass the time and play a few pranks, especially if you combined it with the right setting.
The result had the potential to be delicious…
Snapping out of my thoughts, with a smile stretching beyond the natural limits of my mouth, I discreetly pointed at my shade with my thumb so my exotic group of friends would grasp what I'd just noticed.
As if reading my mind, the ghostly bird was the first to figure out my intentions, looking at my shadow and raising an eyebrow, seeming somewhat intrigued. The hyper-developed lobster wasn't able to grasp exactly what I was trying to say, since he didn't have our Ghost-nonsense, but it didn't take long for him to understand that something was up.
Placing two fingers over my rather unnatural smile, I signaled them to remain silent while I activated my extrasensory sense, which, after much deliberation, I finally decided to name as Phantom Stare, referencing the Ghost Rider's Penitence Stare.
That triggered a reaction I didn't expect.
Once named, that strange power that had accompanied me since I was 'reborn' consolidated, forming a new move almost instantly, as if it had been waiting all this time to have a name so it could finally be born. Its initial characteristic was still there, allowing me to see the world's aura with wonderful clarity, but I could sense that some extra qualities had been added. Some… properties it didn't have before.
Curious by nature, I revved up my thoughts again with a quick pulse of Calm Mind, seeking to understand the changes that had occurred to the oldest, yet newest, tool in my ever-expanding arsenal. The illusory fox spying from the shadows could wait a few seconds; it wasn't like it would take long with my perception of reality totally accelerated anyway.
Focusing, I tried to visualize my moves, just as I did the night before, but a better idea occurred to me. Until then, I'd been experimenting with my powers more instinctively than intentionally, and I had the feeling that I wasn't doing it in the 'right way', if such a thing even existed.
Moves were something quite esoteric, after all. I doubted there was an exact science behind them, seeming incredibly personal, but I still felt like I was missing something. I could break down the principles that made them up to isolate them, compare them, put them together, and learn new moves from them. However, the truth is that I'd been doing that based on what I felt, so I'd never bothered to check where in the nine hells they were even stored, and that was something so basic that it intrigued me.
Without a second's hesitation, I turned my gaze inward and entered into my own soul again, much quieter than the first time. If there was any 'place' where something like moves could be stored, it was my soul, so some details (probably many) must have escaped me the last time I was there.
Knowing the way, in a blink of an eye I found myself back in the same triangular hall, as if I'd never really left. The pink mist of Calm Mind surrounded the walls of my soul, more metaphysical than solid, and the almost continuous flow of aura that crossed them converged in the center, swirling and filling the room with that pure energy, free of any meaning, which I could mold at will, after an emotional outburst, or simply by knowing how it worked.
That… place, if you could call it that, was as bewildering as ever, though I noticed some changes, and without a 'my friend is dying find a solution fast' timer, I was able to focus my attention on some things that I overlooked on my first visit. Just as planned.
On one hand, the 'wall of my mind' still looked like a broken stained-glass with some fragments missing, floating scattered around it, but I saw that some cracks had been repaired, and the gaps were being filled. I didn't know if that was a good or bad thing, as it felt like parts of my old me were being replaced, but seen from another perspective, this was something that, although in a less extreme way, was already happening normally.
Part of growing up means looking at the parts of yourself you don't like and changing them, after all. This just… accelerated the process. Nodding to myself, I reminded again to find a good psychologist and looked away at the other thing that had caught my attention.
Focusing my gaze on the center of the room, I saw that my potential, my 'essence', seemed to have recovered part of the piece I had torn from it to trigger Cap's evolution. It wasn't much, almost nothing, but it was more than I'd expected when I made the decision to sacrifice it the day before.
At that rate, it would take it months, maybe years, to return to its original size, but was somewhat comforting to know that it hadn't been consumed forever. It was good to know that my potential wasn't something fixed, but something that could continue to grow. Something unlimited, something… infinite, as one of its most famous names indicated.
Maybe there was some way to speed up the process, but at that point I was already satisfied with that, so I looked away from the shapeless ball and started to focus on the things that I hadn't paid attention to the first time I was there; and oh boy, let me tell you that there was neither one nor two, but three big things that I'd completely ignored before, which made me wonder what else I'd missed.
At the points where the walls that made up my soul met, three 'columns' rose up, holding (or being held by) them.
Well, to be fair, saying they were 'columns' was rather generous; pillars was a better name for those things. These were not identical, each one had a different shape and structure than the other two, but all three shared one thing in common. The three pillars were formed by something similar to the potential energy contained in the center of the hall, as powerful and multifaceted as usual, only more… diluted?
No, diluted was not a good description. The energy I felt in them was almost identical to what I already knew, but it lacked its most distinctive quality: it wasn't potential, it was already realized.
It was what it was, and I saw no way to shape it without destroying it. I could build upon it, but its foundation was immutable. Completely static… but, at the same time, much more stable. Much more reliable.
Interesting.
Curious as always, I approached the pillar that converged between the 'wall of my mind' and the 'wall of my will'. Perhaps by instinct, perhaps by chance, I had the feeling that this was the one that would clarify my most immediate doubts, so I began to examine it with all my attention.
Of the three pillars, this one was the most ordinary. It resembled like a simple, not very tall concrete column, and most of it was covered in tiles that reminded me of the ones in my old apartment's bathroom. Blinking slowly, somewhat astonished to see something so mundane in such a place, I didn't let the surprise take up much of my time and squinted, staring at the tiles.
They weren't symmetrical, most of them weren't even square and it was a bit painful to look at them, but at least they were perfectly distributed, leaving no empty space in the two-thirds of a column they occupied.
Some were larger than others, looking more prominent and powerful. Some shone with a different color than the almost ubiquitous dark purple and sandy brown, with one meadow green and one egg white standing out among them, both being part of the group of the largest ones located at the base of the pillar. Anyway, they all shared one characteristic in common: their lines.
Those lines drawn on all the tiles diverged to a greater or lesser extent, all different and unique, although I noticed that there was a certain order in the chaos. Some patterns were also repeated among some of them, forming almost hypnotic mandalas that I could study for hours…
Losing myself among the colored lines, I spent a good while analyzing the differences in the strokes until a spark of inspiration struck me. Those were my moves. The reason I had re-entered into the confines of my soul was before me, and I must add that they were quite different from how I had visualized them until then.
While I had been imagining them as arcane spells, made up of multiple complex layers that I had to analyze to, hopefully, isolate the concepts that comprised them to create new 'moves' or incorporate said aspects into existing ones to enhance them; my soul told me that these magical and mystical things I had been playi—… I mean, studying, were nothing more than simple bathroom tiles with pretty patterns, all carelessly scattered in a column located in a corner of my soul…
Letting out a sigh, I thought that reality was always more disappointing than fiction.
Yeah, the 'core' was the same, no matter how ridiculous it sounded. Things composed of 'basic principles' that distinguished them from each other, making them unique in their own way; every-thing with a distinct 'power', 'type' and 'effects'… But I couldn't deny that I was expecting something very different.
It could have been literally anything else and it would have been easier to accept; hell, pure code encrypted in my soul would have been more understandable than that, although less practical since I have no idea about coding. At least it would be something less abstract, something easier to study than... this.
However, that was the way things were, and I could only accept it and adapt. Shaking off my disbelief, I began to associate each tile with my moves, which turned out to be much easier than I expected. While the feeling of familiarity the tiles conveyed was a little disconcerting at first, the strangeness disappeared when I remembered that they were, after all, the metaphysical manifestation of my moves, and no one was more familiar with my moves than I was.
Giga Drain was obvious, being that bright green tile I mentioned earlier and standing out as my only Grass-type move in my arsenal, but the rest wasn't much harder to figure out. Ascending the column, it didn't take me long to identify the nearby tiles: Harden, Shadow Ball, Sand Tomb, and Shadow Bone.
These were the five moves I had practiced the most since I woke up on the beach transformed into a Sandygast, being the base on which I had relied from the beginning. Therefore, I knew them very well and it would be simple to take them as a basis to study the rest in the future.
Following close behind, almost with the same size, a little higher were Shore Up, Iron Defense, Sand Attack and, surprisingly, Calm Mind. Much smaller and with slightly rougher strokes, the Shadow Punch, Astonish, Hypnosis, Heal Pulse, Bullzone and Dig tiles were stacked at the top of the column, at least of the tiled part, and were accompanied by few others that I had no idea what moves they represented.
These were very tiny, with hardly any details, as if they hadn't yet fully consolidated. That led me to think that maybe I hadn't learned those moves yet, or perhaps they were missing a name too. Deciding to leave those 'unfinished tiles' for another time, I turned my attention to the cause of my descent down this rabbit hole: Phantom Stare.
Its tile had the size of a 'standard move', so to speak, although being the newest, it was the smallest of them. Even so, the drawing engraved inside was one of the most complex, if not the most, with a large number of rough lines that I still didn't know what they meant… Although I was eager to find out.
All of that was new and interesting, after all…
Squinting in a moment of lucidity, I debated for whether it was worth pursuing this or whether to save the juicy part for another time; one where I wasn't standing in front of my friends, striking a silly pose, with a ghostly fox stalking me from my own shadow, to be exact.
My little trip had already brought me many things, many more than I expected when I gave a half-joking name to one of my oldest powers. Wasn't that enough?
I had been immersed in my own thoughts for a while now, even having delved into my soul once again, and although thanks to Calm Mind no more than four 'real' seconds had passed, I could feel a slight headache looming in the corners of my psyche, increasing every moment I kept the move active.
There had to be some downside to something like that, right?
If I continued with this any longer, the migraine that would strike me wouldn't care about my literal lack of brain (which I theorized was what was allowing me to take Calm Mind to such stupid extremes in the first place), and it might also even have some long-term negative effects if I overdid it.
I wasn't sure of the consequences of doing that after all, and I wasn't eager to find out too. I could always continue with this later… right? It's not like I'm in a hurry or something…
Fuck it.
Dispelling my doubts, I focused my attention on the tile embedded in the column and began to analyze each line inscribed on its surface. Considering hypothetical futures was prudent, but wasting the momentum I had just because of 'possible negative effects' was counterproductive. I knew myself well enough to know I would put this on hold until I remembered it existed again, which could easily be never considering how my memory worked.
The migraine I'd get afterward would be epic, no doubt about it, but that was a problem for future Sandy; she'd figure out something to deal with it.
Concentrating on the lines, little by little, at the speed of a drunken snail crawling on the hot asphalt I began to notice their patterns. I wasn't exactly skilled at it, and starting with the most complex and unknown tile I had wasn't doing me any favors, but after a while I managed to isolate some distinctive strokes.
Excited by the progress, I tried to compare these patterns with those of my other moves, looking for similarities, but unfortunately, I couldn't discover much. I was pretty new with this after all, having barely figured out which tile represented each move, so I couldn't work miracles. The only thing I could identify about my new power was its flinch property, almost identical to the one Astonish had, and that it was Ghost-type, as its dark purple color indicated.
Honestly, with that alone it would be a pretty good move. Pushing back an opponent with a glare is not only cool as hell, but incredibly useful too. Considering that 'turns' don't exist in real life, I could link Phantom Stare with any other attack, exploiting that moment of weakness to execute a super-killer-combo, or taking advantage of those valuable seconds to recover a bit with Shore Up and position myself better.
Sure, I still had to test how long the affected enemy would remain petrified and if it had a cooldown or something, as well as its cost in aura and 'mental energy' so to speak, but if it was decent, that property alone would make it a regular tool in my combat style… and Phantom Stare was a bit more than that.
After analyzing it, I could see that my ex-extrasensory sense was composed of three main patterns, three 'basic principles'. I had already deciphered one of them; the chance to inflict 'flinch', but the other two were a complete mystery, and I was pretty sure their core was one of these unknown pieces, since flinch used to be just a side effect.
The capacity to see aura had to be one of those mysterious patterns too, and perhaps was the main one, but I wasn't entirely convinced by that idea. Something it could do before it consolidated as a move was a tempting proposition, building around it seemed logical, but I also wasn't sure I wanted to apply normal logic to a tile embedded in one of the pillars that held up my soul…
Oh well, I guess it didn't matter that much. I would find out sooner or later, knowing that there was something hidden in this move was more than enough.
The rest of the pillars and things could wait; it's not like I'm planning on hanging around here for that long to begin with. I'd already had enough for a five-second session. My curiosity had been satisfied for now, and I would also like to test the effects of my new move in a more… practical way, just like I'd done until then.
I could also ask Yezalel my questions, she must have known something with her age and experience. I had to see her soon anyway, and extending our conversation with metaphysical doubts that she might not have the answer to seemed like a good way to start a date.
Snorting a short, sarcastic laugh, I decided it was time to get out of my own head and braced myself for the impending headache, though it didn't help much. As soon as I returned to the 'surface', the worst migraine I'd ever had in my two lives hit me like a train and nearly made me lose my balance.
Maybe I'd exaggerated a bit by doing all that…
Stumbling a little, I held my head and, through the stars that clouded my vision, I saw my friends' worried looks and said:
"Okay, this may not have been the best of my ideas… You wouldn't happen to have an aspirin, right?"