Edna Wanita stomped through the underbrush at a speed no human woman could hope to match, especially not the elderly. Her hair in a loose light silver braid was floating behind her as she moved, along with her robe, and though she was still gaining speed it somehow looked as if she was casually jogging.
Meanwhile, a very flustered and panting Itsumade sprinted after her as fast as he could and was still losing ground. His panic was rising, but he maintained his speed instead of pushing himself to keep up with her. He would get there, unless he ran himself to death that is.
Also meanwhile, Nova gently stepped along the path she had made in a slight daze, wondering why her body had now changed for its third time. What that could mean for her future? She still had a very strong desire to meet up with her father, especially after the process of her spirit energy clearing up her mind when she had first touched the charm spell's pathway, but since she had become a wyvern she didn't think now was the best time. In fact she didn't know if she would even be able to sneak into her neighborhood just to look at him. She was very conspicuous as a bright white, very large Ayakashi.
Well she had changed twice, a third time wasn't out of the question, but the question was how.
Snapping her out of her thoughts, a figure moving so fast she had trouble keeping up with it even with her newly enhanced eyes, which she had no time to remember that they had already been better than human sight as a snake and had just been upgraded twice more, grabbed her around the neck.
Rearing back, Nova noticed something falling and realized it was her backside. It's surprising how easily people can adjust to things, even going from the long neck of a snake to a short human neck and almost back again, and not remember that they can't see their own ass in one form like they can in another.
Suddenly she could no longer move as the person had locked her head down at the base of her jaw, and following that, the rest of her was held down by a second figure who had arrived a few moments later only to jump on her pretty much after the fact.
"Young lady, I need you to lay still."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Y... 'YES, MA'AM'?! JUST LIKE THAT? NOVA WHAT THE HELL?"
"Hi, Beil. Well I'm not sure what happened but I'm this thing now," she said with inappropriate nonchalance. Shouldn't she be a little more surprised? Maybe even afraid of his Nana tackling her like a football player? Well maybe she could be if Nana wasn't emitting a crazy amount of aura that was relaxing her like a warm salt bath.
"A calming spell? Shouldn't it be working on him too?"
"It is good that you have enough self awareness to feel the difference between your own sense of calm and the artificial. And yes, normally, but I enjoy his reactions. Now shut up, I need to focus and you need to enter into meditation. Do you know how to do that?"
"Yes."
"Good. Please begin." Nova calmly did as instructed and relaxed herself back into her subconscious. Beil, on the other hand, had gotten up off of her and was throwing a little tantrum for himself, even in spite of his Nana's comment. Seven-hundred years, one goddamn malfunctioning body. Like... a month and a half and three increasingly powerful forms? What was her soul made of, titanium?
It was not in fact titanium, but it was as strong as carbon fiber in the sense that it was almost unaffected even after the rapid-fire upgrades which was entirely unheard of. Not only her soul, her core was also completely intact. Something was stupendously odd about the whole thing. This chance to not only discover a new level of soul power, but dip her hands into a new level of controversial information about the capacity of the core, was enthralling. Wanita was looking all over it, piece by piece, inspecting for irregularities or contusions, and was very surprised when she found nothing damaged. She began looking for scars or signs of healing when the environment seemed to sharpen upon the arrival of Nova's subconscious.
Nova looked around until she spotted a figure moving around her core and went to see what Wanita was looking at, but instead of the old lady in a tunic the woman in front of her was a roaring twenty-something with unnaturally pink hair. She wore a gorgeous full length and flowing white dress with a train and a black satin sash, long sleeves that stretched down like tassles and faded from white to black, and several black ribbon bows reaching down a single thick braid that made them look like petals growing on a pink vine. When she turned to greet Nova, both analyzed eachother.
While Wanita studied Emilia's freckled face and sharp jawline, Nova recognized Wanita's black eyes and posture. Both smiled at around the same time and, skipping pleasantries, got right down to business. Wanita showed Nova the size of her core, let her know that it was three times bigger than it should be for the amount of time and experience she had as an Ayakashi, and that it needed to be monitored carefully.
She then proceeded to start explaining everything Beil had neglected to mention. First and foremost, spirit energy was almost exactly like mana in the way it worked when casting spells; however, the difference was that mana was raw particles of the elements and that mages, what Beil had simply called mana users, could not often dice into themselves as freely as Ayakashi and Yokai could. Sure they could detect what their mana cores could hold, how much they had left, and what primarily they could do with it if they had the proper training or instincts, but neither Augmentors nor Clerics could phisically manipulate the energy as she could by just manhandling it into submission.
The fact that she had figured out how to break an ongoing spell before she had even learned to cast one on purpose was ridiculous, and even then her energy was not subservient, almost like it had it's own will.
"Nova," she said calmly, but a slight anxiety was leaking from her voice and Nova docused fully on her.
"You need schooling, desperately."
Almost instantly Nova's attention span shattered. Even if Wanita had such a serious tone, Nova fought against the increasing repulsive feeling rising up in her throat. For sixteen years she was harassed, ignored, judged, excluded, mocked, used, roughed up, stolen from, beaten, cheated, and mislabeled by the entire student body and staff of her primary and secondary school systems.
From pre-kindergarten until third grade, everything was fine, for the most part. Her mother and father fought a little but the rest of her life went by without a hitch. Then forth grade arrived and almost immediately things started to feel strange. Kids were cranky, adults who had to deal with them were on edge, and Emilia was just trying her best to finish her homework so she could go home and play.
When music class had come around one day, she was practicing her recorder when a bratty little boy who obviously got whatever he wanted had come up and snatched it right out of her mouth, clacking it on her already sensitive teeth. In pain and feeling robbed, Emilia stomped over and wordlessly snatched it back, but unlike her quiet anger and justified reaction, the boy burst out into obnoxious angry tears and tattled on her for doing exactly what he had just done, yet she was the only kid the teacher punished. She tried telling her teacher that he had started it, but the boy kept making up things that she had done to get his way and she didn't stand a chance.
Kids had noticed her gentle nature and started to tease her and tear her down in order to become popular: denying her chances to work together on group projects and if they were forced to team up they wouldn't do their share of the work, sneaking off with her pencils and erasers and sometimes her lunch money, sweetly asking her for favors which she would gullibily accept and then never paying her back, talking about her behind her back within earshot so when she looked at them they would smirk to provoke her. If she reported them to her teachers she was just told to ignore them or she was only reassigned a seat. Any good kids she tried to make friends with were either too shy or afraid to be ostracized or picked on with her if they hung around her too long, and if instead they hurt her they were usually praised and taken in by the bad groups.
So she started to believe that the golden rule was either just a saying told by those in charge to make the weak treat the strong with more respect than they could ever hope to expect in return, or an ignorant ideal situation that could never be achieved. She hated school.
Her mother vanished one day when she was around fifteen. Some of the kids backed off, fearing her reaction or taking pity on her which tasted bitter sweet after their relentlessness all this time, while a few truly cruel kids told her it was her own fault, that she ran away because her daughter was a piece of shit or spread rumors that she had killed her mother.
Emilia snapped and began fighting back against any idiot teenager that dared to bully her, threaten her, or even just make stupid comments about her. She ignored the snooty teachers and pretty girls, she rejected the boys when they flirted with her because not one wanted to spend time to get to know her. She was done just taking it like a punching bag. She was put in detention repeatedly for screaming at the not-so-subtle kids that put gum in her hair or orange juice in her backpack during class, then counseling when one teacher noted what all was said about her which helped nothing and worried her dad, then suspended for two weeks for jumping into a preexisting dogpile of fighting kids just to get her frustrations out and also bite that one chick who scoffed the day she tried wearing something nice for a change. Finally, she was expelled. She hadn't even looked at who it was, they had somehow felt the need to say that she was plotting her dad's murder next and her only reaction had been blacking out, whipping around, striking them so hard their nose had broken in four places and they had lost a couple of teeth, and then she had proceeded to beat the ever living snot out of the kid with no memory of who she was, where she was, who this piece of trash was that was turning blue and red from her knuckles, or why she even did it when she finally snapped out of it in a choke hold by the campus police.
Because she wasn't even sixteen, no charges were held, especially after several eye witnesses had stepped forward to defend her actions. Apparently the kid she had turned into a human burger patty had been the instigator of not only several previous fights around the school for the past couple of years, he had stinkbombed the principle's office, took part in acts of vandalism and thievery, and beat up multiple younger kids in the past few months.
So in her mind her reputation had skyrocketed and kids all around the school were singing her praises, complimenting her, acting mostly genuinely friendly for the first time in as long as she could remember. In reality she had always been looked up to by the quiet kids who were each fighting their own battles, and silently thanking her for taking the brunt of the bullying.
Either way, their complete switch creeped her out, if she was honest with herself, but she swallowed her pride and, so wouldn't seem like an unapproachable weird kid, she smiled at the hypocrisy, accepted their small talk, and tried to get herself to relax. It took practice, and over time she managed to develop a habit of slipping into meditation when she started to feel overwhelmed, hence why it was so easy for her in the present.
It took the rest of the two years she had left in high-school but she became one with the students. She made a few loose friends and went to parties. She snuck a beer and realized she hated it. She started to move on and focus on what was really important. She got her grades up and graduated, and even if it was just a passing grade, she was truly proud of it. So was her father who almost immediately began teaching her the next step to his trade.
He had long since taught her the basics, like spinning clay or coiling, hatching with slip to stick pieces together, but now he was starting to teach her all of the techniques that he used to make the intricately detailed look to his work. He taught her the four primary ceramic types: Earthenware like terracotta, Stoneware soaked in glaze, Ball clay, and Porcelain. He let her run the kiln on her own. He let her mess up as many times as it took to get it right.
The day she dropped a shelf of finished ceramics, instead of punishment as she had come to expect from all her teachers, he taught her how to recycle the shattered redclay pottery. He took one of the finished bowls and taught her the art of Kintsugi, or repairing it with gold. This particular work stuck with her. He took something that was broken and not only fixed it but made it better than before. She kept that bowl in her room up until the day she died.
So the unsavory taste in her mouth upon the mention of school was instant and justified, but Nova swallowed the anxiety in her throat and tried to refocus on the goal Wanita was trying to help her reach.
"And why do you think I need to be in school at my age?"