Seraphina's Cure (jarlo)

8

AN: I apologise for the long wait. I need to make this story just a bit shorter than I would have liked to, and I'm really sorry. I'll try to make the story really good though, I just have a lot of stuff to do outside of write this and very limited time to do it. I have been prioritising this over quite a few things, so I hope that it's still okay.

Everyone crowded around Seraphina as she searched for news articles on people who had suddenly become high tiers.

"It looks like there's a new vigilante. Red beams?" Sera said, frowning.
"Yes, and they're taking down more of those people. This is good, we have more people fighting against the system." Claire added.

"Ok. So, it looks like in a neighbourhood with a new high tier. Daniel Smith. It shouldn't be too hard to take him down. Used to be a 2.1, now, his ability level is 3.6. And his ability is Electric Whip, kinda like Cecile's ability but it can't be manipulated as well. It's like a really long whip, and there's only one of them." read Seraphina.

"Where is he located?"

"-------" Arlo read out from Seraphina's computer.
"That's not far from here. Let's go now, while it's still daylight."

***

Daniel was defeated pretty quickly by Arlo, Sera, Claire and Leilah. Leilah assisted in the questioning while Arlo and Claire rescued the hostages.
Daniel was tied up on a chair in his office, surrounded by desks and blinding white lights, refusing to answer questions.

"How did you get all that power suddenly? Did Volcan give it to you?" questioned Sera angrily.

"No, and even if I did, why would I tell you? It's not like you would let me live." Daniel replied.

Frustrated, Sera kicked his chair leg.
"We're gonna let you live, but we're taking your ability away."

"And how do you plan to do that? I've heard of ability dampeners but - "

"Ability dampeners? What do you know about them?" Leilah interrupted, stress colouring her voice.

"Just on the news. There was a report of some high tiers losing their ability."

Sera swore under her breath.

"Sera, let's take him back to the lab," Leilah said.

Arlo and Claire rounded up the scared civilians. Surprisingly, they weren't grateful, and were just scared that Arlo and Claire were going to take advantage of them like Daniel had. Claire was by no means a high tier, but she was, on average, one of the more powerful people in the room. The most powerful one would have been a 2.4, but most of them were close to cripples. 

Clearly the civilians didn't want to talk to them, so they let them go.

Walking up from the storage space of the building, Arlo and Claire argued about the morality of the next step.

***

Arlo and Leilah dragged the handcuffed man into Arlo's apartment. Leilah had decided that taking the man to the lab would be a bad idea, since that would raise suspicion, so they stuck to their original plan; take his ability and let him go.

Rolling up her sleeve, Leilah grabbed a syringe, filled with a thick liquid the colour of orange highlighter.

Daniel had settled into silence, staring blankly at a wall while he sat tied to his chair. He didn't even flinch when Leilah jabbed him with the syringe, slowly pushing the liquid into his bloodstream. It bubbled up a bit at the tip, the red blood and orange frothing together.

"What is that?" inquired Claire, staring in fascination at the liquid glowing through his skin, outlining his veins.

Grinning, Leilah stood back.
"That, my friend, is an aura condenser. As you know, people's auras are their abilities, and John is an aura manipulator. So, this mixture should, in theory, somehow make his aura manifest into a physical, tangible, form."

"So... That's not exactly helpful, since I would gain his ability." Sera complained, heart sinking.

"No, because a person can only ever have the ability they are born with. Well, I mean, you could get it, but I'm pretty sure you still have your ability, it's just suppressed. I don't think they 'took it away', per se. You would just gain his power and not his ability, unless you really had your ability 'taken away', but from what you described what happened to you, I'm pretty sure that nothing was taking away, maybe just suppressed." explained Leilah.

Taking Sera's nod as a cue to keep on going, Leilah neatly put the syringe in a box, and took off her gloves.

"Now, we wait. Anything could happen, so keep an eye out for something out of the ordinary."

Leilah had barely finished speaking when a scream escaped Claire's mouth.

Everyone looked at Claire, who was pointing at Daniel. So they turned their heads to Daniel.

He was unconcious, having a sort of seizure, shaking violently in his chair. The same mixture of blood and orange aura-condenser that bubbled up from his wound was frothing out of his mouth and eyes, and his whole body glowed with an orange light. As they watched, the orange light turned to a indigo, which was the colour of his aura.  Quite suddenly, it stopped, and the seizure ended, the froth dissipating into purple vapour.  The vapour gathered into a circle at the top of his head. And it fell to the ground as if it had developed solidity, which it had.

A small indigo star-shaped cookie lay on the ground.

"Well that's... unexpected." Leilah chuckled.

"Do I eat it?" asked Sera, staring incredulously at the small biscuit.

"No, you have to leave some for him." reminded Leilah.

"This feels really weird. Am I eating someone's ability?
What the heck, I've seen weirder things."

Resolve strengthening, Sera picked up the cookie and snapped it in half. She left one half on the kitchen bench next to what she thought was a pair of pink feathers (they were actually Arlo's earrings) and took a bite into her half of the cookie. It tasted sweet.

Sera chewed, aware of Claire, Arlo and Leilah all staring at her.
She swallowed the last of it, still in disbelief of the fact that someone's aura had manifested itself as a cookie, of all things.
All of a sudden, she felt a surge of power that emanated from her stomach, into her chest, her limbs and her head. She choked on the remnants still in her throat, coughing and wheezing into her arm.

"Seraphina! Are you okay?" cried out someone with concern, she couldn't tell who.

She rose up from hunching over to cough into her arm. Her vision was tinted with a light azure blue, the glow so familiar yet so foreign. A colour she thought she would never see again.