Despite her flighty nature, Ariel, who surprisingly liked it when I called her Pixie in or out of costume, was a decent conversationalist. Well, the reason she was probably a decent conversationalist to me was when she went off on a weird technical subject; I was actually extremely interested.

  She looked very much like her sister when she was in civvies, in this case, a rather nice black dress that was reasonably low-cut and shoes that were cut like low heels. I wasn’t sure if it was their experiences or the makeup she was wearing, but she felt like she was a bit younger than Abbey, despite being exactly the same age.

  I knew the two were different; they had a different focus, since Abbey was much more interested in rumors and conspiracies, while Pixie was more interested in what sorts of technology were coming out, and was quite invested in learning more about my ideas for bigger and better suits.

  But when she started ranting about DARPA, I couldn’t help but grin at how eerily similar their rants were. Except for the hair, it was almost identical. They even sounded alike and had the same criticisms of the government’s technological control programs.

  “So, wait, is the MDA back in DARPA’s hands?”

  She nodded, “So is NASA, and they tried for the BSA and SDA, but those were a lot more regulatory than they could handle.”

  “SDA?”

  She shrugged, “Sorcerous defense agency. They kept the title even though they also wound up becoming a repository for widgeteer stuff, because it’s all about maintaining and using short-term enhancements, like enchantments and widgets that will end with the creator’s lifespan. Magicians call them the SDA retirement fund, because literally half their fund goes into maintenance for widgeteers and sorcerers in retirement, to keep them alive as long as possible so their stuff doesn’t break.”

  She shrugged and picked up a sausage taco. Italian-Mexican fusion doesn’t sound like it would work, but it weirdly does. “I expect SDA to try to crawl up your ass if it hasn’t already.”

  I was a little confused, which I covered up by eating a garlic fajita bread. “Why? I’m not a widgeteer or a spellcaster.”

  She smiled a little, “A lot of their older people have really long lifespans due to mad science or spells, but usually when someone’s trying to keep themselves alive forever, they forget about things like systemic decay, senility, or even regeneration. It doesn’t help that by the time most of that type starts fearing death, they are already halfway down the road to wandering around aimlessly, wondering where their wife who’s been dead for forty years put their car keys.”

  “Ah. You know that I can’t actually roll back someone’s age, right? Not and preserve their memories or whatever makes them… them. I don’t know if it’s some kind of soul spirit thing or if the human brain just dies when it gets filled up or something, but as far as I know, lifespan is directly related to factors I just don’t understand, like essence level or whatever magical crap sorcerers have figured out.” I was not actually certain of that, but even a girl I was taking out on a date was not getting that out of me.

  “Yet.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You don’t understand it yet.”

  I smiled a little, “At all. As far as I know, when someone dies, there’s some kind of thing that hangs around for a few minutes. If I can blueprint them before that thing goes away, whatever it is, they seem to be fine. If not, then I blueprint a dead body. It just seems like whatever it is that sticks around is all too ready to take off like a shot when someone’s pretty old.”

  “Have you tried to blueprint someone that’s been dead for longer?”

  I shivered, “Twice. And both times, I was a zombie for a week. Not doing it again. I was trying to figure out if there’s a way to bring my dad back, but… There isn’t.”

  She waved a breadstick at me, “Sorry, I asked. They are worried about some of them croaking just because… well… they are wired up six ways from Sunday. Some of those guys are over a hundred years old and have been on life support for thirty years in a coma. They still can’t find a replacement for the Droma system protecting Seattle, for example. The moment Steelheart dies, so will Protector One, and the West Coast will probably get wrecked because the Pacific averages higher-ranked Kaiju in a wave. Hell, Japan is probably the only thing that’s really protecting San Angeles.”

  I shook my head, “That’s crazy. The West Coast has like six times as many Alphas as we do. I mean, sure, they have the occasional tier eight Kaiju, but I also know that there are at least two class eights that live in San Angeles. Not to mention the hordes of lower tiers that are perfectly fine.”

  She shrugged. “Wealth.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Even after the Kaiju, the West Coast still has some of the best farming and production lands in existence. Interstate trade and media have made their alphas wealthy.”

  “So?”

  She sighed and looked at me seriously, “If you had a job that pulled down six figures just because you have an awesome class three gift, would you really go and risk your life on the sea wall just for a pittance in bounties? I mean, monster hunters is a good gig if you can survive it, but that’s because that’s all they do, train teams for maximizing bounties.”

  “Bounties?”

  She looked at me with the same sort of confusion I was looking at her, “What?”

  “What bounties?” I asked. I mean, I knew about the bounties that the monster hunters got, since that was how they got paid.

  “The bounties. For working on the sea wall during a break.”

  I was just gawping at her, “Bounties?”

  She looked shocked, “Yeah, I thought you had been in several waves before?”

  I nodded, “Yeah, but until the recent one, I hadn’t been able to help much, just a little healing. My armor wasn’t strong enough… heck, I wasn’t strong enough to even repel climbers.”

  She sighed, “And each time you did, you were dressed as a different supervillain?”

  I shrugged, “It was kind of my thing. Custom supervillains for a custom nemesis.”

  “And you never realized that the reason that known thugs went to the wall was not just nobility, but because they could get a solid no-questions-asked paycheck, especially if their power was something awful that could only be used for destruction?”

  I shook my head, “No. I thought… I was stupid again, wasn’t I?”

  She nodded and sighed. “I take it you weren’t really social with other known bad guys?”

  “No. SSS was a stunt company. I didn’t do the real crime thing. That’s a good way to wind up in prison or dead.”

  She looked at me oddly, “Stupid hero, and here you were struggling to pay rent. I am pretty sure that when you didn’t show up to collect them, the bounties were recycled. They probably weren’t much, but if you healed people, they likely tried to sign over an assist. People are grateful when you close up a wound so they can get back to earning a payday.”

  I shrugged, “Well, at least I have some money now.” It was only two years, after all. My dad struggled for 14 years to get his company off the ground, and at least I never had to sleep in a box or go dumpster fishing. Sometimes I barely squeaked the rent or lived off Ramen for a few days, but something usually came up, even if I had to zombie myself for a day or two to pawn something.

  She nodded, “True. And I am pretty sure that you got a good bounty for Orcules. I know Kali did. That reminds me. When are you going to unlock my power like you did my sister?”

  I sighed deeply, “You know it’s really…”

  “Intimate, yes, I know. I am more than fine with it.”

  I nodded slowly, “I want to try something different, this time. Mostly because you and your sister are twins.”

  She looked at me and bit her lip, “That’s kind of a big ask, I mean, we have never done that sort of thing, but…”

  I shook my head quickly, “No, not that. I mean, sort of that, but not involving sex. When people are rerouted, there’s a lot of instability that I have to fight through, and then I have to try, and both draw them into passing back energy at the same time I am trying to pass it through to them. I was wondering if, perhaps, passing the energy to your sister, and then to you, before drawing it back to me might help stabilize things.”

  “No,” she said firmly.

  “No?”

  She nodded, “No. Abbey told me what it felt like. Even if it doesn’t involve sex, I am NOT going to be doing that with my sister. Kali? Sure. Sabrina? Why not? She’s cute, but I am not going to be playing bed games with Abbey. You want a three-way with her at the bottom and me on top? We can work something out, but I don’t do the sex or near-sex thing directly with her.”

  “Sabrina?”

  She nodded, “Yes, the alchemist. Wait, you haven’t asked her for help yet? I mean, she doesn’t get her energy the same way that you do, usually, but alchemy is her thing… I bet she’d have an easier way to set up the connection, or you might even help her unblock some of her cultivation. It’s all about growing, striving, and trying new ways to reach the heavens, right?”

  I nodded, leaned forward, and kissed her hard, right on the mouth, over the table. She was surprised at first, but seemed to really appreciate it, even if her mouth tasted like tomatoes and garlic. I pulled back after a moment and brushed my card over the pay edge of the table. “Can we rain check that walk?”

  She smiled slightly, “After that kiss? Fine, but I am going to want another one, especially if you are ditching me… without the bill, I guess.”

  I grinned and tacked on a discretionary tab and tip. “Have dessert or more drinks on me, you gorgeous supergenius. I owe you!” I looked around and immediately poofed, heading back to the dorm.

  ***

  Sabrina was in her lab. She was taking a few lab courses, but because she wasn’t even a registered citizen of the country, they were paid audits and uncredited… although I was pretty sure that her lab director would happily write a reference for her.

  “Sabrina! I need your help. But I need to know if it’s okay.” I said into the door’s comm panel. I went ahead and headed back to the pit, since she wouldn’t even accept a message while she was working, but I was surprised when barely five minutes later her door buzzed open, and she came out of the chemlab smiling. “Hey, Jake. What’s up?”

  “Sorry if I have been ignoring you.”

  Sabrina shook her head, “You haven’t been. I mean, the whole locking ourselves in our lab for long periods thing is sort of the natural state of most alchemists. After your little round-up in Jersey, and the reagents from the wall, I am going to be in wonderland for the next few months, at least.”

  “I need you to help me with something.” I started to describe the energy flow patterns when we broke through Abbey, and how we sort of half-dual cultivated.

  She nodded along with the explanation, and asked me a few descriptions as I described it, before smiling, “I have heard of something sort of similar to that before, called coterie cultivation, but it’s halfway on the line between demonic and righteous practitioners.”

  I nodded, kind of energized. “Would you like to try that? With Candace and me? I know you aren’t linked to chaos like most…”

  “YES!” she almost shouted over me.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Huh?” I was a little shocked.

  She lowered her voice quickly, “Yes, I very much would! I have seen the results of dual cultivation, even on people with a path like mine; it is astonishing. But it’s not something that alchemists usually have access to, because either a demonic cultivator just wants to use you as a cultivation vessel, or it’s something that only certain… I mean, even if it’s not true dual cultivation, I have seen the advancement results from coterie cultivation.”

  I nodded, “And you think it will work if there’s more than just two people?”

  She nodded, “I don’t know how to do it myself, but you seem to have figured it out. I very much want to try. The road of the alchemist is very, very challenging, and most of us die before achieving our first breakthrough.”

  I looked at her in confusion, “What… I mean, why?”

  “Because Alchemists don’t train in their internal space, only their external. Most of us focus our senses on our auric realm, instead of internal alchemy, specifically because external focus is the difference between a dabbler and a real alchemist. The thing is, even if we have the talents to make something like a white lotus yin-yang breakthrough pill, which I do, we might never gain the materials needed to create it.

  “But purification pills? Those I have the materials for, thanks to our interrupted gathering trip. I believe that if we take a purification pill just before you attempt to coterie with Candace and me, the energy pressure and density from what happened with Abbey should be enough to passively clear most of our dantians, maybe even enough to allow us to form a foundation!”

  She seemed very excited now. “Once we have a foundation, it’s a LOT easier for you to detect your base even if you are externally focused.”

  I nodded, “It sounds like the path of the alchemist has a pretty steep learning curve.”

  She shrugged, peeling off her lab coat to reveal a nice blouse and jeans combination. “Yes and no? External focus is easier to gain than internal focus, and as long as you are willing to stay in the mortal tier, your potential for creating great medicines is almost unlimited. With the right materials, a mortal-tier alchemist can live a thousand years.

  “But yeah, the first breakthrough, where you begin to become a true qi gathering cultivator instead of just a well-preserved mortal, is an instant steep cliff. Not just because of the material requirements to make a decent breakthrough pill, but because of the tribulation of fire.”

  “Tribulation of fire?”

  She nodded, “Something I am hoping you can help me get past. Once an Alchemist breaks through to a true qi gatherer, they gain their fire. If they are using cheap or badly-formed breakthrough pills, they will only have a black or red fire, which is barely better than using normal heat sources and won’t offer any additional control or purification to improve their alchemy.

  “But the tribulation of fire is… painful, and destructive. If you try to gain a fire you are not capable of controlling, you can burn out your cultivation or even die at worst. The level of fire you have, barring some kind of special treasure or divine power that improves your fire, is the hard limit for an alchemist, both on their advancement and their lifespan.”

  “So where do I come in?” I asked, intensely curious. This was a weird way of power advancement I had no idea about. It didn’t feel… right, or like it would match me, but I guess every path is different.

  She blushed, “Well, my current potential maximum is orange, because of my root strength. Most of my secondary meridians are cleared, but it’s not safe to try and clear your primary meridians until you are past the first tier, or else they are likely to kill you.”

  She looked a little nervous, “But if you can pressure my chi the way you did Abbey, you could use that pressure to force open some of my primary meridians and allow me to control a more powerful flame. Especially if I… reach for a color beyond my current abilities, and you could heal me during my tribulation.”

  “So wait, you mean, once you get energy flowing, you want me to find your… primary meridians, like your heart, lungs, bones, brain, and use the essence pressure like a firehose to force them open, and then fix the damage that comes from it, and then keep you alive while some kind of fire tries to burn you from the inside out?”

  She nodded, smiling. “Yes. That’s basically it exactly. That’s what a yin-yang breakthrough pill does, but the only breakthrough pill I could create right now would be a spirit herb breakthrough pill, and it wouldn’t unleash any of my primary meridians.”

  I shook my head and walked over to grab a couple of root beers from the fridge, offering her one. “Okay, I think maybe you are going to have to educate me a little better. I sort of know what the primary meridians are. Maybe you should give me more background.”

  She nodded, “I could do that, the Serenoid could probably do it too, but again, I am an alchemist, and she is an alien. There are probably minor differences. Just like Akyo’s information is shrouded in ancient history and legend, so it might be wrong too.”

  “Just...what you know will be fine.”

  She nodded, “Okay, everyone has nine bodily meridians, or paths, that essence flows through to empower your body. Hands, feet, hips, shoulders, head, and spine. There are also secondary meridians, but those are not really counted as primary points, because they are tied to the nine bodily paths, like your elbows, knees, chest, and most of your muscle groups. Also, there are acupuncture points all along these paths. Clearing their bodily meridians will open up the points, but some people will use acupuncture or acupressure to help clear their paths.

  “You also have nine primary meridians, which most people cannot even start to open until they hit the qi gathering stage, and most won’t touch the last one until they are golden core or nascent soul.”

  I held up my hand, “Okay, slow down a little. Let’s start from the beginning. What are the stages?”

  She chuckled, “Oh, right. Well, the first stage is body refinement. That’s the part where you improve and purify your body to be able to even touch cultivation. That’s where most humans are innately, but the actual levels within that stage are kind of flexible, and everyone has a different perfect diet. You are still vulnerable to normal diseases and poisons, obviously, but every normal person falls within that stage, usually close to the bottom.”

  “Qi cultivation, or qi condensation, the second stage, is where you learn to start dragging in energy, refining and cleaning it up, compressing it, and running it through your channels to reinforce your body. Where you are at right now. There’s no tribulation to get to the qi cultivation stage, but most people simply can’t do it due to weak spiritual roots, lack of self-discipline, education, or simple talent. But the second stage is where you start gaining an enhanced lifespan, which is usually enough to get even people with little talent and weak roots to this level if they try hard enough.”

  She sighed, “This is where the real monsters live. Undead monsters that can suck the life out of others to fill their qi, spirit feeders, and even demonic cultivators that can sustain their lives indefinitely. It’s also where you can start learning tricks and techniques for using your qi. Wire-fighting chop-socky movies, and most rank four and under alphas would be at this level, but chaos energy cheats your body into thinking it has a condensed wellspring when it doesn’t.”

  “After that comes the foundation stage, where the solidified qi in your dantian vessel becomes the new foundation for you to build your immortal palace on. Basically, your chi is so dense that you don’t have to circulate it through your dantians anymore; it just naturally flows like a giant wheel slowly spinning and attracts chi with little effort. After that happens, you don’t have to meditate to cultivate anymore, but you still might use abilities or techniques. You will also need to find a new foundation-level method to match your new soul lands.”

  “Again, a lot of the more powerful alphas, rank five through eight, can sort of use techniques that shouldn’t be possible because their connection to chaos energy shortcuts through the whole stage. Even Candace, if you break her chaos connection, might be dropped down pretty far, but the fact that she even popped as an alpha is proof that her roots are strong enough to get back into the qi cultivation stage easily enough, especially when you show her how to spin her core.”

  I nodded, “Cool… what next?”

  She smiled, “After that is where stuff gets weird, and I am mostly relying on hearsay. You are likely to have a tribulation when you pass into the foundation establishment stage, but considering that you disintegrate yourself and reassemble your whole body simply to travel, I doubt very much that what it is will be a real challenge.”

  “Once you have established your foundation and reinforced it as much as possible, you start building your soul palace, golden core, mind city, or whatever different cultures call it. The WAY to do it varies hugely, and might include things like soul structures that let you hold special abilities, or it might just focus on building the strongest possible structure to hold your soul, like a perfect golden sphere.

  “Alchemists almost never can get to that stage, because the tribulation is… internal. Soul demons, or memory chains, or faith tests. Nasty stuff. Alchemists work in the realm of the physical and tangible, and usually aren’t much on the spiritual or metaphysical side of things. Then again, at late-stage foundation establishment, most alchemists are capable of almost living forever with their own creations.”

  She tapped her teeth and then took a sip of the root beer I gave her. “After that comes nascent soul, where you send a part of your psyche to actually exist inside your soul palace. I think, because of the weirdness of alpha awakenings, you actually awakened your nascent soul early, while you were still in the very first stage of qi gathering. The things you can do on a moderate scale, like breaking down matter, minor reality alterations, spirit sense, and even projecting your aura realm to heal or change things in your vicinity, are all classic nascent soul abilities.”

  She giggled, “Your memory, though, well, that’s a straight-up enlightenment technique. That’s why you can use nascent soul abilities, albeit very weakly in comparison, at such an early stage. Your nascent soul travels someplace, your memory allows you to know how to recover your body, and your power rebuilds it inside the realm of your aura. If I were an auric mage or formation master, I’d be desperate to figure out how you did that.”

  She took another drink of root beer and then put the empty in the trash. “The world I came from couldn’t support anything more powerful than golden core. Nascent souls could still live there, but if they tried to really use their abilities, they would cause great swaths of destruction. Materials also have stages, just like people do, but it’s a bit more complicated because people love labels.

  “Golden core and above literally drain essence from an area unless you actively suppress it. That’s why Nascent souls don’t stay in mortal realms like this one for long. If you were a true nascent soul, you could probably soak up all the chaos Essence on this world in a few days, but even if you were just a golden core, you should be powerful enough to at least repair the shield that allows this world to exist as a mortal realm in such an energy-rich part of the Universe.

  “Above nascent soul, there’s true soul formation, which is where you start getting pretty powerful. Like putting out mortal suns, powerful. Your soul space becomes so powerful that you can start creating a realm inside of it, a true realm, and projecting it out into this universe. You become a sort of demigod, I guess.

  “After that, your body and your soul become one and the same. You sort of ascend. There are supposedly even more stages after that, but I don’t know much except that the last two are sort of god or something, and you can create or destroy entire universes. It gets a bit grandiose after gold core.”

  “Can we go back to the part about Earth and energy-rich?” I asked, curiously.

  She laughed, “Right. Uhh… this is where it gets sort of stuck between religion, legend, history, and theory. Earth, in all of its incarnations across the multiverse, is sort of a battleground or core nexus. A lot of versions of Earth, including Earth Prime, are sort of… protected breeding grounds for humans, and have some kind of protection from any energy higher foundation from entering so that humans can exist as mortals.

  “They are balanced like a chain on a framework of needles. It’s complicated. But all of the Earths, regardless of their actual name, are balanced between the elements, the neo elements, the planes; they are sort of a midpoint of everything.

  “Have you ever heard of that game, with the morality alignment?”

  I nodded, “Yep, a lot of tabletop RPG’s have that.”

  She nodded, “It’s sort of like that, only in like… eight dimensions. Surrounded by layers of chaotic radioactive essence. Realms scatter in all directions from that alignment. Monsters like Kaiju are usually creatures or spirits from one of those other alignments that either show up and start consuming Earth’s delicious essence, usually from thinking beings that refine it for them to gobble up, or native creatures that have been corrupted by chaos essence and crave power, again, the cleanest and tastiest of which are people.

  “My version of Earth, well, it was HUGE, by huge, I mean that it was big enough that nascent soul cultivators could survive there even if they dared not use their power. This Earth? A Golden core would probably be its maximum, and I think Q-bombs were a way that human technology found to temporarily enhance an explosion to the level of a nascent soul cultivator… which literally ripped holes in this world’s protective barrier. On my world? A Q-bomb, unless it was insanely powered, probably would just create a big boom.”

  I sighed, “Thank you, now I have a much better idea of what I am doing, at least until it comes to the foundation thing. After that, I am not sure who I should talk to.”

  She shrugged, “The spirit folk. Even if they haven’t been able to ascend in thousands of years, they probably have access to other realms or even stories that could give you a clue, maybe even a method that will work better for you in the foundation stage than that crappy Serenoid starting manual.”

  She looked at me curiously, “Unless you want to become a Serenoid? Clearly, they implanted a Rudric bloodline in order to enhance their magical affinities. Most righteous cultivators would call that short-sighted, since a bloodline like that would prevent anyone from ascending to true soul stage. If their homeworld isn’t powerful enough to support more than nascent soul, it would make sense to become as powerful as you can through bloodlines.”

  “Then again, I am an alchemist. External factors like bloodlines, divine flames, root regrowth, and external treasures are the only way we ever even get past chi condensation. All I know is that if you let her give you a Rudric bloodline, it’s likely to make you more powerful, and then she’s liable to beg you to give HER a new bloodline.”

  “What, human?”

  She shook her head and looked at my waist meaningfully.

  “Oh, right. I get it. Wait, you think the Serenoids are man-starved, too?”

  She nodded, “Cultivation is man-starved at every level except the very top, for a lot of reasons. Fewer males have a strong enough root to cultivate, which is already a huge drop. Males are also more prideful, tend to get into more fights, which are usually deadly for cultivators, and the ‘young master’ factor alone tends to kill off ninety percent of them before they ever get past the condensation stage.”

  “Young master?” I asked curiously.

  She scratched her head, “They tend to be more powerful at every stage, but because of that power, they also tend to overreach their own abilities far too easily. That either kills them or destroys their cultivation. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of young mistresses, arrogant jade beauties, and insane fairies, but they tend to get themselves killed a lot less.”

  “As advancement gets more difficult, women are also likely to settle at their peak instead of pushing past it. Once you get into golden core, the outrageous disparity starts to settle out, until the very top, where more men challenge the heavens and gods themselves in the quests for power. Up until true soul, though, there are usually considerably more women than men.”

  I nodded, “Well, you know more about this than I do. What do you think the chances are of something bad happening if we try this?”

  “Qi deviation? Probably pretty slim, especially if you take purification pills first, which I have already done. I mean, you made it work once, and you don’t have to separate me from the stream of chaos, which is a very good sign.”

  I grinned, “What’s your price?”

  She laughed, “For the pills? Exactly what you are doing. Take me with you. I might ask you for something later, but as far as I am concerned, this is my new sect.”

  I nodded, “Then grab some pills, and I will try to grab Candace.”