Feedback, Knockback

The pink-haired woman walked into the hall, approaching one of her dark-clad subordinates…

A man in denim overalls drove a dolly loaded with boxes down the hall…

A jovial blond man and a tall brown-haired woman animatedly talked as they headed into the main workroom…

Several men in well-worn attire took their coffee break, taking sips in between letting off bawdy jokes…

John shuttered as he returned to his own awareness, a splitting headache throbbing against his temples as light burned his eyes.

John blinked away the Status screen and realised he was now lying on the floor with his head propped up on what felt like a pillow and something cool upon his brow. He moved a hand towards the cold object resting above his eyes, lifting it into view to see it was one of those first aid cold packs, the chemical within crunching under his fingers.

'I passed out?' John thought, letting the cold pack fall back on his forehead as he rested on the pillow under his head. 'What the hell happened?’

He furrowed his brow as he recalled what he could from his Observe. 'I remember seeing that woman talking to one of her henchmen, but that switched over to some guy pushing boxes around. And then it was a scene of some blond guy talking with a tall woman before it shifted to just some guys taking a coffee break.’

John shifted his head slightly, bringing the wall into view. He stared at it for a moment, hesitant to use Observe on it.

'Normal Observe should be fine, right?’ John half wondered, half implored to the higher power that was plugged into his powers. When no response from on high came, he let out a breath and cast his informative Skill upon the wall.

John closed the screen. Before he could ruminate on what Observe revealed, the rapid tapping of Aeolia’s taloned feet echoed from down the corridor, quickly bringing the winged woman around the corner, and John turned his head in her direction.

She hurried into the room, arms laden with several metal first aid kits and a worried frown upon her face. Preoccupied with her burden, she didn’t notice that John was awake and dropped her spoils upon a desk she had pulled out of the central meeting room.

“OK,” Aeolia said in a hushed voice, opening the kits and pulling their components out, “let’s see. Pain-numbing potions, anti-swelling salves, fever cream, normal ass mundane stuff. That’s all we had!? Damn it! I don’t even know what went wrong or if any of this stuff’s going to work.”

“I wouldn’t mind that pain potion thing,” John croaked, slowly starting to raise off the floor, causing Aeolia to stiffen at his unexpected remark before turning to face him.

“You’re okay,” she said, rushing over to him and, somewhat forcefully, pushed him back to the floor. “No, you should stay down. Don’t know what went wrong and it’d be better to….”

“Psychic Backlash,” John said, interrupting her even as he went along with her less than gentle ministrations. “At least, that’s what my powers are telling me.”

“‘Psychic Backlash’,” Aeolia echoed back as she dashed back to retrieve a pain-numbing potion.

“Yeah,” John replied, “it’s messing up my Intelligence and Mana Regen for the next hour.”

Aeolia was silent as she handed him a small vial containing a light pink solution.

“Thanks,” John said, Observing the vial.

John shifted upward, rested on his elbow and downed the potion like a shot. In an instant, his headache halved in intensity and a pop-up manifested before his eyes.

Dismissing the pop-up, John settled back down, twisting onto his side so he could face Aeolia.

“So, what happened to me?” John asked.

Aeolia’s face twisted and she avoided eye contact with John. “For a second you just looked at the wall, then it looked like you got punched in the face and just fell down.”

John hummed as he processed the information, trying to work out just what had gone wrong. He missed Aeolia’s continued discomfort until she blurted out, “I’m sorry!”

“Wha,” John said, pulled out of his musings by Aeolia’s sudden apology.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, voice heavy with emotion, “I’m sorry you got hurt because of me. Damn it, everything’s gone to shit and I keep fucking things up!”

John pushed himself to a seated position. “Hey, it’s not a big deal. I’ll be fine in an hour….”

“No,” Aeolia’s rebuttal was loud, echoing in the empty Barrier, “I’m the person who told you to use that power on the wall. That makes me responsible. ‘A leader who doesn’t take responsibility for those under their command doesn’t deserve the title’.”

John took the last line as a quote, one that Aeolia seemed to take quite seriously. Despite the weight Aeolia placed in that statement, John felt he needed to challenge her on that assertion.

“I get that,” John said, shifting into a sitting position, “but I’m not some soldier under your command. I’d like to think I’m your friend.”

“Like that makes what happened any better,” Aeolia retorted. “I still made you do something that hurt you and….”

“I want to help you,” John said firmly, forcing himself to his feet. “Hell, I’d be dead if you hadn’t been tracking whoever threw up that Trap Barrier and crashed in. Besides, now I know my powers can backfire on me. What if I tried something with more of a downside? Could have set myself on fire or been launched into orbit. A few minutes knocked out and a headache afterwards sounds like a great deal in comparison.”

Aeolia looked taken aback by John’s comments and made a point to not meet his eyes. “You shouldn’t be so quick to latch on to somebody in the Abyss. It’s a good way to get taken advantage of.”

Her eyes widened when she realized what she had just said. “N-not that I want to take advantage of you. I mean….”

John couldn’t help but to let out a chuckle. “I get it. You wouldn’t be all bent out of shape if I was just some kind of throwaway person.”

“Right,” Aeolia said softly. “But I was taking advantage of your powers. I don’t want to be like that.”

“We came to an agreement, remember?” John asked with a smile. “You helped me, I’ll help you. And right now, I don’t think I’m holding up my end of the bargain.”

Aeolia returned his smile. “Okay, you win. But I think we should look at that thing you found in Zeph’s room. See what whoever sent it wanted to say to him. ”

“Might be the best idea,” John said, turning to face the wall. “But I want to work through what I saw from the wall first.”

“You saw something?” Aeolia questioned, unable to keep a degree of excitement out of her voice.

“Something is the right word.” John recounted as he frowned at the wall, “I jumped from memory to memory. The first one was what we were aiming for, but it ended too quickly, and I didn’t hear anything. Then it shifted to a scene of some guy hauling boxes, a blond guy talking to a tall woman with brown hair…”

Aeolia’s breathing hitched and John paused and shot her a glance. “I guess those two were part of your guild?”

“Sounds like Thomas and Sandra,” Aeolia said sadly. “He was probably going on about his newest tinkering idea. But I thought your ability could only show the most recent events?”

“That’s what the sheet said,” John replied, “I should have only seen the last two minutes, but something about this wall threw Observe out of whack. Hell, I think I was seeing stuff from outside the Barrier. This building’s just a copy of the one outside, right?”

“Yeah,” Aeolia answered, “there are a few alterations like our quarters, and we’ve got power and plumbing, but for the most part it's the same as the one outside.”

John nodded. “Then I think that, for the purposes of Observe, this wall, and the one outside, are linked in a way that my powers couldn’t handle and gave me the backlash.”

“I guess that means trying to follow the trail isn’t going to work,” Aeolia said somberly.

“Unless we can find evidence of where that lady went and I have something to use Observe on, then yeah,” John muttered. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s alright,” Aeolia said softly, taking a calming breath before adding. “Honestly, there isn’t much more to the base. A few storerooms that were completely emptied. And since you can’t use that ability of yours on something copied, our only lead is that card.”

Taking that as his cue, John withdrew the business card from his Inventory.

“Guess that answers the question of whether it was shrunk down from a normal card,” John commented as the card, in all its tiny glory, sat in the center of his palm.

Aeolia leaned over and looked at the mini-business card. “Looks like whoever sent this knew Zeph was an AvenFae. Want me to grow it up?”

John shook his head. “No. I think it might be best to use my Dark Observe first, see if it reveals anything, and I can’t be sure if magic being used on something will affect what event I can see.”

“You really up for that?” Aeolia asked, a touch of nervousness entering her voice.

“Yeah,” John replied with a smile. “Headache’s barely noticeable anymore, and hopefully, the most recent significant memory will show me whatever this thing was meant to tell your brother.”

“Alright,” Aeolia said hesitantly.

John took a breath, drew in two Mana from the crystal, and cast Observe on the tiny card.

The harsh white light of a computer screen served as the sole light in the darkened room, illuminating a winged figure that leaned forward to read what was displayed on the screen. Yellow eyes peeked out from a fringe of black hair as they tracked back and forth, taking in the information that appeared on the screen.

After a moment of reading, the young-looking man leaned away from the screen, giving his raven-black wings a flex, and pinched his well-defined nose between long thin fingers, before trailing those digits to scratch his chin in thought.

”Well,” he said, “looks like I’ll have to show this to Thomas after tomorrow’s job. Never thought that a chat about the Tri-Fold Nature Theorem would lead to a business offer. A steady stream of income would be nice.”

His eyes glanced down towards the lower corner of the screen, then he brought a hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn.

”Guess that’s my cue to head to bed,” he said, hand reaching towards the screen. “‘Lia’d kill me if I wasn’t in top shape tomorrow.”

John blinked as he returned to the present, the transition easier than the prior uses. He lifted his head to see Aeolia watching him with worried eyes. He shot her a smile.

“Well, I know how to get this thing to work,” John said, giving the hand that held the diminutive card a little shake, “just got to stick it onto a computer screen. Or at least that’s how I think it works. The vision started after your brother had already stuck the card to the computer.”

“Did,” Aeolia said, “did Zeph say anything about it?”

“Nothing specific,” John answered. “He did say it was some kind of business offer and that whoever sent the card did so after a conversion about something called the ‘Tri-Fold Nature Theorem’. Any clue about that?”

“No,” Aeolia said softly, “I always tuned Zeph out when he’d go on about how magics worked or whatever new idea some researcher came up with to explain something or other.”

She took a deep breath to steady herself. “That all?”

“Yeah,” John replied, “vision ran out right before what I guess was him taking the card back. Ready to go see?”

“We’ll need to find a computer first,” Aeolia said, her voice a mix of sad regret and burning determination. “All the ones we had here were either taken or are too smashed to run.”