“Amy, you’ve seen glimpses of a wider cosmos. I’ve had it crawl into my body and try to steal my soul. Language lacks the mechanism to represent the magnitude of it. Our minds are too limited to grasp the scope. Only the soul can truly understand, but that’s not a viewpoint you want, believe me.”
“You’re right that I don’t understand. I want to, though. I want to see a wider world. If there really are all these magnificent things, I want to see them for myself.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no. You'll get more than most because you're family and I'll see you safe. You’ll see things, as the world starts to change, but you’ll see them on the news, with everyone else. I will never show you the true wonders that are out there. You’ll keep seeing only glimpses, knowing that amazing things are out there while you’re trapped in whatever’s left of this world’s mundanity.”
“You really have changed, Jason. You never used to have this vindictiveness inside you.”
“It was a parting gift from my closest friend,” he said, turning to look at the helicopter. “Looks like your husband is going to take us for a ride.”
Right after he spoke, the door of the helicopter slid open to reveal Kaito.
“Come on, honey,” he said. “Erika won’t leave me alone until I fly this thing. Jason, we can do her magic when we get back, right?”
“Sure,” Jason said. “No rush.”
72
OPTIONS
“I told you before we went on our helicopter ride that you were a tricky one to find a combination for,” Jason told Amy. They were in her kitchen, along with Farrah, while Kaito watched the girls in the backyard.
“The issue is that you don't have the training to be a fighter,” Farrah said. “With utility sets, the best bet is to leverage life skills, but you're a politician. I'm not saying that doesn't involve skills, but they’re not the kinds that are as easy to leverage as being a cook or a sailor.”
“We have a combination here that we think will work for you,” Jason said.
“It’s a combination that political leaders in my world often use,” Farrah said. “It’s centred around knowledge and perception.”
“What if I don’t want that?” Amy asked. “I’m comfortable with my political capabilities as they are. What if I want some proper magic powers? Fireballs and lightning bolts.”
Jason and Farrah shared a glance, Farrah snorting a laugh.
“Jason said you might say something like that,” Farrah said. “That’s why we prepared another option for you to choose from. Just to be clear, I don’t think this is the way you should go. This is a raw combat combination, and you have two little girls. It’s not the time to go throwing yourself into danger with no training.”
“Which is something we’ve also taken into account,” Jason said. “We’ve picked out a combination based around what I call the Thadwick Principle. It’s all about maximising damage output and minimising skill requirements.”
“The idea,” Farrah said, “is that you pump out a lot of power very quickly. We’re envisaging a scenario where your family encounters some manner of unexpected threat and you can respond with extreme force. You won’t be up for an extended fight, but you’ll be able to finish a short one definitively. This is something like my approach, by the way.”
“The combination is built around the gun essence,” Jason said. “Guns are relatively easy to learn to at least a competent level. They also make a strong platform for humans, who are better at magical special attacks than full-blown magic spells.”
“The big thing you’ll need to learn is mana management, which I can teach you,” Farrah said. “As I said, the burst-of-power approach is how I operate.”
They waited for Amy to respond as she considered their proposal.
“Guns,” she said finally. “That isn’t exactly fireballs and lightning bolts.”
“You understand the basics of an essence combination,” Jason said. “Three essences, combining to make a fourth.”
He plucked three cubes out of the air to plonk on the table, one after another. The first was gunmetal grey.
“Gun essence,” he said.
The next cube looked like glass containing a swirling mix of red, orange, and yellow.
“Fire essence.”
The last was a dark blue cube with lightning arcing about on the inside from a central orb, like a plasma sphere.
“Lightning essence,” he said. “Your husband conjures up a helicopter. What we’re talking about here are flamethrowers and lightning guns.”
Amy trepidatiously reached out to pick up the lightning essence, then turned it over in her hands as she examined it.
“It’s tingling my fingers,” she said.
Jason and Farrah waited. Amy had seen essences before, but this was her first time holding one in her hands.
“Lightning gun?” she asked.
“Lightning gun,” Jason said.
Amy nodded to herself, a smile playing over her lips.
“Alrighty, then.”
As they rode back to Ken’s property in Shade’s car form, Jason bowed his head, rubbing his fingers into his temple.
“Part of me still wants to have nothing to do with them,” Jason said. “I left and cut them out of my life for years and I’m not entirely convinced that wasn’t better.”
“It’s a mess,” Farrah said, “but if you start carving up your family, you can’t do the things you want to do.”
Jason, Farrah and Hiro had been going through long discussions about the future. Jason was no longer just hopeful of going back to the other world, but certain it would happen. He needed to know that the family left behind would be able to handle whatever came in the wake of magic going public.
Originally, that had been built around Erika and her family, but if they ended up joining him in the other world, that would obviously change. He was not fully convinced that was a good idea.
“It’s coming up on time for you to put aside family concerns, at least for the moment,” Farrah said. “We'll essence up your parents and then it's time to focus on our development. I need to get a handle of my new power levels and it's past time you did some more aura work. You've been putting it off.”
Since accepting the World-Phoenix’s blessing and the transfiguration it engendered, Jason’s aura had become more powerful than ever. It had reached the point where his once-excellent control was no longer able to finesse his aura as well as it had in the past. Even before that point, he had occasionally lost control during moments of emotional distress.