Auric Sensitivity

John sat cross legged on the pavement, his clothes re-equipped, as his summons surrounded Layla curiously. Calista and Omorfia poked and prodded her with aura coated hands, searching for an explanation. Elora and her squads marched about, securing the perimeter. Ignis sat next to John, and he gave her as many pats as his health could take.

“Master,” Calista turned to him after a few minutes, “it seems she is extremely sensitive to ambient magic.”

“Auras specifically,” Omorfia continued, “her senses are uniquely attuned to the magic that creatures keep close to their souls and use for their spells.”

“And why would that make her pass out on contact? Am I hurting her?” John’s eyebrows furrowed as he took burn damage petting Ignis and worried about the effect of his aura on Layla.

My aura is mostly fire, would I be burning Layla as much as Ignis burns me?

Calista shook her head as she answered him. “She feels… pleasure… when she comes into contact with your aura. I don’t know if she feels that way with every aura but it’s clear that being near you is euphoric for her.”

Omorfia smiled, and John saw a dangerous glint in her eyes for a second before she spoke up. “She feels the same way I felt when I first met you, master.”

What was that look about?

Layla stirred into wakefulness, stretching and blinking slowly.

“Layla? How are you feeling?” John asked her as she sat up.

“I feel amazing,” she replied dreamily. She smiled brightly for a second, then a dark look passed over her face, followed by a very confused furrowing of her brow and a pout.

“I-”

“What’s wrong?”

Layla pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around herself as she gave John a tortured look.

“I should… I think I should… I think…” Layla mumbled a few sentence fragments before falling silent again.

“Layla?”

“John, I-” Layla steeled herself with a deep breath. “John. I can barely stand to even sit close to you right now, you’re driving me insane as we speak- I’m so overwhelmed by everything that you are, I- I- I just, I’m-” She shuddered, a flush coming across her cheeks. “John, please just hold me for a bit longer!” She opened her eyes wide, as if surprised by what she said, then let out a shrill laugh. “I need to get used to being close to you or I’ll never- I’ll just- I ahahaHAHA- John, JohnJohnJohnJohn!”

She smiled much too wide at him, her hands framing her face as she stared into his soul and let more shrill laughter ring out into the barrier.

I broke her. She’s gone nuts, she was totally fine until just now. I need to put her back to sleep and think of a solution.

John reached out tentatively to Layla, and she mirrored him with a shaky hand, still cackling. Their fingers intertwined, and her laughter quieted, replaced by rapid breaths. He pulled her towards him, and she practically lunged into his embrace. She shuddered and spasmed as he held her tight, until she passed out again.

“Calista, Omorfia? Can either of you suppress her sensitivity somehow? She clearly can’t take even being near me for extended periods of time.”

John thought back to Enchanting class, and how Layla had just sat quietly next to him, likely suffering in silence.

There was a flash of light in front of him, and as he blinked the afterimages out of his vision, he heard a familiar voice.

“Idiot. I told you to go eat and what do you do? Finally fuck a human girl, I guess…”

“Hey, Sera. I did… a lot more than that, actually…” John felt a hole open up in his gut as he recalled his actions against the gang members. He’d been trying to forget it.

Sera’s voice was surprisingly soft as she responded, “I know, John. Just teasing a little.” She ran her hand through his hair and he felt a wave of comforting energy fill him. “You do need food, though, so I brought some snacks to tide you over.”

She offered him a granola bar, and he took it silently as he laid Layla gently on the ground and stood to speak to Sera eye to eye.

“So! Lover boy needs a quick fix for his first girlfriend?”

John narrowed his eyes at Sera as he chewed the granola.

“Luckily for you, suppression is my specialty. It isn’t a permanent solution to your little love barrier, but it should help you two get to know each other without… whatever it is that just happened.”

“Suppression? I thought your powers were healing and a nice sword,” John grumbled through a mouthful of granola.

“Ha-ha, very funny…” Sera seemed lost in thought for a bit, and a flash of white code scrolled across her eyes before she turned to him with a pensive expression. “You actually won’t do something stupid if I tell you how my powers work. You’ve matured.”

“Wha-?”

“Eat and listen, save your questions for after.”

John sighed and took another bite of the granola bar.

“Good. Let’s start again with the basics. I am your Deity-Assigned Guardian Angel. It’s my purpose in existence to watch over you and do everything in my power and within my jurisdiction to keep you alive and well. The deity that assigned me to you is The Developer, your patron goddess. This is important because the deity that assigns the angel basically gives the angel their flavor text. As a goddess of programming and gaming and all things computers, there wasn’t much angelic inspiration to specialize my form and power. As an

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there were some good perks to-”

Sera tilted her head in confusion.

“You couldn’t hear that could you?”

John swallowed his mouthful of granola and shook his head.

“No, just the windows xp error sound about a million times and deep fried.”

Sera raised her eyebrows. “Deep fried error sounds. Didn’t she just explain what that was to you?”

She winced and put a hand to her head.

“Okay, got it, will avoid that topic for now.”

John finished the granola bar and Sera handed him another.

“The gist of it is, as an Angel class entity, I come standard with healing and either basic melee or basic ranged. Devvy used some of her unique resources to upscale me and grant me advanced swordsmanship as well as a form of future sight.”

Devvy? The Developer? Am I allowed to call her that? Feels wrong.

A system message pinged into existence in front of his face.

No.

Sera stuck her tongue out at John smugly before continuing her lecture.

“My future sight revolves around you. More specifically, any decisions that would lead to life threatening situations. Every time you make an important decision, or at least what my powers deem as important, I can see the consequences across all the multiverses all the way up to how you die. There are countless futures that may or may not pan out for us in this timeline, and with each important decision I can see which open up to you and which close themselves off to you. Some decisions will and have left you with a worryingly desolate life to **** likelihood. Some decisions will and have left you with absolutely no chance of dying ever, only living forever and kicking it with Devvy for eternity. It’s within my power to see what decisions you make and what futures open up to you because of them, but it’s only rarely within my jurisdiction to warn you or advise you. Your little run-in with the Warden was one of them. From what I can tell, Devvy wants me to steer you away from Champions you aren’t ready to face and that’s about it.”

Sera reached into her inventory and pulled out a bottle of water, handing it to John right as his mouth became too dry.

“That being said, it’s my duty as a Guardian Angel to guide you as best I can, not just steer you away from the biggest threats you could possibly come across.”

Her tone softened yet again.

“You need to trust me, John. I’ve seen all the timelines, I know which ones give you the best chance at living a good life. It might… suck… like really, really, suck… in the moment, but the direction I’m nudging you in is the direction with the least dead ends.”

John felt the pit in his stomach reopen.

“Sera, what are you implying?”

“John, I-”

“Sera, what did you make me do?”

Rageflame sputtered into wisps of embers as John tried to control his emotions.

“John, listen to me!”

“Why did they have to die, Sera? There was almost a hundred of them, Sera! A hundred kids my age, all of them dead and by my hand!”

“John, no-!”

“Sera, they had families! They were human just like me, with hopes and dreams and wants and needs!”

Rageflame subsided, as his anger was quickly overwhelmed by sorrow. The system dinged but John was too busy spiraling into despair to read it.

The flames of his aura sputtered out, and in their stead came a tidal wave of anguish, the orange waters of pure mana that surrounded John at all times manifesting physically as his chest heaved. He sobbed, and another wave manifested closely behind the first, both of them splashing down at his feet and collecting into a small whirlpool. He fell to his knees with a splash and another sob, sending another wave into his whirlpool. Sera reached out to comfort him but he smacked her hand away with a wave. He wiped his tears away and sniffled, turning a rage filled gaze on her. Dark puffs of air floated off him, growing larger and larger as they flew higher and higher, soon covering the ceiling of the small barrier. Thunder rumbled, and rain started to fall. Another system ding tried to get John’s attention, but he was focused on Sera.

“You… what the FUCK do you mean by ‘the best chance at living a good life’, huh? How the HELL am I supposed to live a good life with the blood of a HUNDRED people on my hands, huh? A HUNDRED families have very good reason to hate me and hunt me down now, and you say it’s so I can live my best life?”

Red lightning flashed across the clouds overhead, arcing round and round before John wrung his hands through his hair and screamed in frustration. As he screamed, the lightning struck Sera, and her armor manifested to protect her. Red sparks shot all around her full plate, but the only pain in her eyes seemed emotional.

“I TRUSTED YOU.” More lightning struck, and winds started to whip up.

“You were sent by a god to keep me safe and watch over me and all you did was throw me into battle after battle until I snapped and killed.” The wind drove the rain into Sera’s armor, pattering violently against it while completely avoiding everyone else in the barrier.

John shook his head and scrunched up his face, trying to fight off more tears, but they fell anyway and brought with them more sobs. More and more waves of mana manifested into water as he cried into the wind, falling to the ground and swirling around his kneeling form.

Omorfia pulled Layla away from the whirlpool, sitting with her in her lap close to the edge of the barrier while Calista strode towards John with Elora on her shoulder. Ignis nudged John’s shoulder and whined as Calista hugged him from behind. Elora stood stoically but exuded sympathy towards her master.

The storm abated, and an eye opened in the swirling hurricane above. Sunlight streamed down and shone on John and his summons as they comforted him, but the storm continued to lash out at Sera under the darkness of the cloud cover. In the hush of the eye, John murmured to his summons.

“Don’t ever let me lose myself like that again… I can’t… I refuse to become a monster just because I can… to kill just because it’s convenient…”
They all made soft sounds of agreement as they continued to comfort him, the storm above and the whirlpool below ever so slowly diminishing.

Sera’s eyes glowed white with code as John cried in his storm, and she cast her vision forwards again, double and triple checking the best case scenario she would have to nudge John towards now that he’d taken the first step. Whether he liked it or not.

~.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．~
A petite blonde young woman stood on the roof of Ashcroft Academy, clad in what seemed to be a skin tight spandex suit. She faced off stoically with a ragtag gang, though group aesthetic cohesion doesn’t mean much in the Abyss.
Farthest to her left was a balding, heavy-set man in an aged lab coat stained with oils and blood, eyes obfuscated in blood-tinted goggles made from silver, and brass wiring reaching up from the nape of his shirt like veins. A host of small items and fetishes hung from gold and silver chains all across his body, some pinned to the coat or his ragged, oil-stained cargo pants, and the strange scientist-mechanic look was completed with thick black boots braced in glittering steel. He hissed at her, his mouth revealed to be entirely filled with a menagerie of multi-colored metal teeth.
Farthest to her right was another man. He was tall, terribly so at nearly two inches over six feet, and had the appearance of a Basque or Frenchman with a petite nose that was almost comically so. More comical, were the situation not so dire, was the out-of-place trappings: a Japanese kimono of a bright sky-blue on white with patterns that suggested roses rising from flames. At his side were two long, red sheathes of polished wood, each topped with a hilt that could not be more set apart from one another: one being a ragged lump of lead barely fit to be considered a handle topped by an oblong, almost melted-looking guard, and the other featuring a golden pommel, a silk-wrapped handle in blue and white, and a manji guard of gold-plated steel. The latter seemed bound with thin silver chains that kept it tightly wrapped and sealed in its sheath, and the former was toyed with by the sole thumb planted on it.
Next to the scientist-mechanic stood a man clad in only a blood soaked loincloth. The man was a hodge-podge of African, Middle-Eastern, and Chinese heritages, making a beautifully soft-faced man that still managed to look menacing with the help of glittering red eyes and a mouth full of bestial fangs.
Between the weeb and the barbarian stood a dark skinned woman. She would be beautiful if not for a hideous fusion of flesh and energy, or for the expression of pride and righteous anger. Her fingers shaped into claws, and her hair became a towering pyre as she gazed hatefully at the blonde woman. Her right arm was made of flames, fusing with her body at her shoulder.
The blonde woman stared at them and spoke calmly, though the words didn’t make it into the vision. The group was unmoved by her words, and began to attack her. The vision went out of focus, blurring as it moved to the opposite side of the roof where John was Parkouring his way up. Sera manifested beside him with her sword drawn alongside all of his summons as they charged into the hellish fray.

~.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．~
A pink haired young girl knelt by the side of a hulking man as he lay on a bare mattress, an IV with glowing blood feeding into his arm. They argued animatedly, and though Sera couldn’t hear what was said, it was clear that the girl wasn’t getting anywhere with him. Suddenly, he backhanded her and she flew across the room. She crashed into a table laden with lab equipment, sending glass shards everywhere.

The vision changed perspective again, blurring and refocusing outside of a rundown arcade where John stood his ground against a **** of masked and armed intruders. Cloaked in sparks and surrounded by his summons, the enemy fire could only get lucky shots in on him.

~.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．~
Two young women stood on the roof of a building across from Firesmith Academy, looking down on empty barrier streets. One had long dark green hair with glowing lines under her right eye. There was a red gemstone embedded in her chest, and from it traced more glowing lines outwards to her fingertips and down towards her crotch. A complex bundle of fabric cinched by bands of metal served as a skirt, and cups of a glass the same red as her gemstone served as a bra. Her caramel skin was marred by inky blackness from her fingertips and towards her chest, where it spread outwards in a chaotic and jagged pattern. The other had short light green hair with glowing lines under her left eye. More lines traced over her skin from neck to crotch and from arm to arm. A simple ragged cloth wrapped around her chest to serve as a shirt, and a complex bundle of fabric held up by bands of metal similar to the other woman’s skirt sat at her waist. The same inky blackness also marred her hands, though it only traveled down to her forearms.
The pair of them stared intently at the empty barrier, but as time passed a single car screeched and squealed past their building. Following the car was a group of nearly a dozen other cars, seemingly racing through the barrier. One screeched to a halt at the base of the building they stood on, and out of it stepped John with Sera at his side. They climbed to the top of the building to meet the two young women, and the four of them had a calm conversation. The vision ended with the two women exiting the barrier and John getting back into his car.
~.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．~
A gang of six girls were up to mischief in an alley between two buildings, two standing watch while the other four calmly but quickly made a spray paint mural. Their delighted grins were impossible to hide as the art slowly came together, featuring a wild array of sigils and symbols amid a field of flowers and a starry sky. A hand signal came from one of the girls on watch and in an instant all six of them took off running down the alley, only to be intercepted by a hulking mountain of a man. The girls brandished street weapons threateningly, but the man was unfazed. Three more identical men blocked the path to the main street, surrounding the girls. Just as one of the girls began to swing her baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire, white light flashed and reality suddenly shifted.

Sera stood on the rooftop above them, with John by her side. He leapt down into the mass of bulging muscles that was the trio of burly men and engaged them in combat. The vision faded to black as the girl gang joined the fight in earnest, with flashes of showy magic and dirty mundane tricks.
~.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．~
Bands played in the Mitchem Park amphitheater, classic rock blasting from the stage and into a large crowd. Covers of smash hits interspersed with brand new originals worked the crowd into an energetic frenzy. This is the atmosphere musicians aspire to live in and create: the perfect night. A crimson haired beauty took the stage, holding a bright red bass guitar. She flashed a confident smile and struck a powerful pose before beginning to strum the riff from “Treat Her Right” by The Commitments. The drummer joined in soon after, in time with the beauty’s shout of “Hey!”
Just as the guitar player joined in and the beauty began the first line of lyrics, reality shifted, and the world took on a sickly gray hue. The crowd of cheering concert rockers was replaced by a horde of groaning zombies. The crimson haired beauty stood alone on the stage, her rhythm lost as she looked out to where her audience had just been. The horde writhed, squelching and groaning into the silence as it shambled generally towards the only living creature in the barrier.
Then, in a flash of light, appeared John with Sera in full angelic regalia. The horde recoiled from her presence, then began to split in pursuit of the now two living creatures. John summoned Ignis, Calista, and Elora before rushing headlong into the fray. A fiery passion lit in the bass player’s eyes as she began to strum anew, the intro riff to “Hysteria” by Muse magically amplified and roaring into the barrier. The vision ended as red magic enveloped John and his summons, buffing them in some way.
~.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．~
Sera nodded solemnly to herself, her visions solidifying her resolve as more of John’s lightning struck her armor.
I refuse to let another of my chosen die an early meaningless ****. This one, this one will be different. He’ll live a magnificent life of luxury, the absolute best outcome possible.