Saint Joseph School

She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but sitting in the lobby of MAGI felt different, better somehow, than sitting at one of the numerous doctor’s offices she had been to in the last few weeks. Lucia slid down into the heavily padded chair and sighed. Ah yes. Atmosphere. That was it. The smell of musty books and old leather instead of antiseptic and bleach. Warm lighting from table and corner lamps instead of cold fluorescents.

Why hadn’t she skipped to this step earlier? It seemed so obvious now, even if it hadn’t been before. How much time had she wasted, dealing with people who couldn’t possibly have helped her?

Of course, at the moment, she wasn’t even sure if MAGI were the right people to help her. Yesterday’s meeting had seemed to reveal very little, leaving all involved very frustrated. So little had been accomplished.

It was rather strange actually. Despite everything that had happened to her over the past few months, she never really thought about where her powers could have possibly came from. It wasn’t until yesterday, when the answers to an endless-seeming string of questions was “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure,” that she realized that maybe she should be able to point to something. Before, she had been content in not knowing, in not needing to know. Now, she wanted to know, and the more she thought about it, the less sense any of it made.

Lucia sighed, and slumped further in the chair. How was she supposed to figure out how to get her powers back if she couldn’t remember how she got them in the first place?

Was it all a fluke after all? Would she be back to “normal” forever?

Oh God, she hoped not.

“Lucia Adriaens?” a woman’s voice, heavily accented, startled Lucia out of her thoughts. She looked up to see a older woman, dark brown hair streaked with grey, dressed in clothing that suggested an origin in native Mexico. Though she hadn’t met the woman before, Lucia liked her at first sight. She seemed nice.

“Buenos dias. I am Xochil Sanchez. Will you come with me, so we can speak?” Lucia nodded as she stood up. The woman smiled and turned, leading Lucia back through various hallways and open spaces, occasionally stopping and peeking through a door, as if looking for something specific. Finally, after a few minutes, Xochil stopped at one door, and after checking inside, gestured Lucia to enter.

Lucia walked in, and suddenly paused as a wave of moist heat washed over her, rich with the smells of a hundred exotic plants. After a moment, the temperature seemed to settle down as her body acclimated itself, and she stepped over to a small wicker table and chair set and sat down. The woman sat down across from her.

“My colleague Azuria told me about your current...condition. I admit that it intrigues me, which is why I agreed to see if there was anything I can do to help, even though I am only here in Paragon City for a few days.”

“You see, Lucia, I am a curandera, what you might call a shaman...or a healer. My people use many kinds of plants to heal diseases, and to induce visions. I can see those visions, if I am in contact with the person having them, as if those visions were my own.”

“People here are concerned about the fact that you seem to have no idea where your powers came from. Now whether or not you never knew, or your ordeal just caused you to blank all of it out, it does not matter. Azuria hopes that I might be able to gather some insight into the nature of your powers, and hopefully be able to help you regain them.”

Xochil reached into a pocket sewn into the inside of her long vest and pulled a small vial, filled with a greenish-cloudy liquid.

“Now, I’m going to be honest with you here, Lucia. I can’t guarantee that what you’ll see will be pleasant, or that you will see anything at all. I can’t guarantee that what we find will help at all. All I can promise you is that nothing in this will hurt you physically, and that I’ll be here with you while you are going through with this.”

Lucia paled slightly, but quickly regained her composure, and reached for the vial.

“Lucia. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She uncapped the vial and drank the contents, cringing at the bitter, burning taste.

- - - - - - - - - -

Lucia looked up at the darkening sky through the glass ceiling, and sipped at the large glass of orange juice that Xochil had insisted she drink. The bitter taste of the extract in the vial was still in her mouth, but the strange cloudy shapes in her vision were finally starting to clear. She should be able to go back to the quad soon.

It seemed that this was yet another disappointment. If there were any visions, only Xochil had seen anything that she could make sense of, and she wasn’t saying anything much. Lucia could remember very little of the past hours; she gathered that was not how it normally worked from the disappointed look on Xochil’s face. The curandera had left the room ten minutes ago, and hadn’t yet come back. She settled back in the wicker chair and waited, draining the last of the juice as she did so.

The door clicked slightly as it released from the latch and swung inwards. Lucia turned to see Xochil walking back in, a small envelope in her hand.

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to help you much, Lucia.”

“It’s alright. You did your best.”

Xochil pressed the envelope into Lucia’s hand. “I don’t know how much this will help, but I hope something will come out of it.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s probably safe for you to go back to school now, if you’d like. I’ve certainly kept you here long enough. Buenos noches.”

- - - - - - - - - -

Lucia made her way through the winding hallways of MAGI, past many rooms, many shut, but some partially open, offering views of strange artifacts in cases, strange creatures in cages, and other strange and wonderous things. A few turns later found her completely lost, so she slipped in through a set of double doors into a large room that appeared to be MAGI’s main library. She nodded to the man seated behind the counter, and decided to spend a little bit of time wandering before she attempted to find her way out of the building.

She wandered through the aisles, at random pulling out books partway to peer at the covers. Many of the books were written in languages she could not even recognize, much less understand, but a few were written in the more familiar Latin, French and German. In this portion of the library, it seemed, there were very few books written in English.

She continued her wandering down the aisle, running her finger along the spines of the books; intending to move to a section of the library containing books of a more modern type, when her finger caught on a book already pulled part of the way off the shelf and send the volume toppling to the ground with a THUD.

She bent over to pick up the book, and froze in her tracks as she gazed at the page that it had fallen open to. A complex diagram, hand drawn and already fading from age, was scrawled across the left hand page. The right hand was filled with notations in what she recognized as Greek, with other notes sprawled in the margin in a different hand, in Latin or French. But what had caught her attention was the symbol drawn directly in the middle of the diagram.

It wasn’t exactly the same as the one she had been seeing in her dreams, but it was similar enough that five minutes later Lucia was making her way across town to the school, the ancient volume carefully tucked under one arm.

This could be important. Maybe someone at the school will be able to make some sense out of this...

Kris sat at her desk, in the quad, just staring at the wall. The book with the information on Grier's Syndrome struck a chord with her. Maybe that was why she seemed, at least to herself, to be so clingy. Maybe she had this diease. But, if that were true, she should have already been in the institution, or in a grave. Grier's patients rarely made it past the first year of their illness.

Kris pulled her attention away into an old, familiar subject. Latin. Kris reached over, and opened her old latin book, her mother had bought when she was Kris' age, in Port Oakes. She flipped to a random page, and began reading. It had been too long, really. Nothing like the medical books or the music sheets she read constantly. This was the language that founded Western Civilization, and hid secrets from the world. It was the so-called "dead language."

Thinking back to what she had read, she considered that maybe she might really have the disease. So many happy memories were in this room, and she felt happy in here. Maybe she was soaking up residual emotions. Who could tell? Maybe she was letting Drama into her life. Lycia would say to get a grip, and then bat her with a pillow. The door opened, and Kris smiled to see it was Lucia.

"Heya, Lucky! I was wondering if it was going to be me and the flower all night," the redhead joked cheerfully. "What's that ya got? Nice book!"

"Well, I certainly wasn't about to sleep in the lobby of MAGI tonight, that's for sure," Lucia quipped as she made a beeline for her bed, flopping onto it with a slight bounce, and kicking off her tennis shoes.

She paused slightly, and the smile on her face faded slightly when Kris asked about the book, to be replaced with a look of confusion.

"I don't know if it's good or not. I can't read a word of it. But something tells me it's important..." She opened the book on her lap, and started flipping through it carefully, looking for the diagram again, frowning slightly in concentration. Page after page after page of diagrams, charts, and tables, and strange symbols, some like, and some unlike the one she'd seen.

Kris got up from the desk, and walked over, taking a look at what was there. Oddly enough, she knew all three languages on the page! She could help out alot, if Lucky would help her!

"...in the fifth hour of the final phase of the full moon, the darkness binds barriers, so that none may pass..." Kris read the latin notes, before browsing the greek print. "I can read this, Lucky! It's written originally in Greek, and has both Latin and French notes! Can I help? Please?"

Clearly, Kris was excited, as she clasped her hands, and gave her best asking face to her best friend. This was the best things she had seen, ever! She hoped that Lucky would let her help.

"It looks like it is instructions for something...you can read it?" Lucia looked up, eyes widening. She flipped over one more page to find the diagram that had caught her attention earlier, and handed the open book to Kris.

"What do you make of this?"

Lucia leaned back against the wall, and sighed. If she was going to have to have the whole book translated, it was a good thing that it was relatively small.

While Kris looked at the book, she opened up the envelope that Xochil had given her. Inside was a small piece of paper, folded into quarters. On it was scrawled something is trying to contact her. something benign, I think. Below it was a single drawing, reinforced over and over again until it seemed like the ink would bleed through the paper...

The symbol again.

This all fit together somehow...hopefully the book would give her the last piece she needed.

"Lucky," Kris asked. "Does this have anything to do with the symbol on the wall? The one you washed off? I mean... Apparently, this calls upon some Holder of Secrets guy, but your symbol looked a little different. So, maybe this spell creates a communication conduit of some sort. All we have to do is find out who that symbol of yours is. Wouldn't want you to get in touch with the Devil or anything."

"You saw that? I thought you were asleep..." Lucia focused her attention back on the scrap of paper, deep in thought. The symbol had been in her dreams almost continually for the last few weeks. Had she ever seen in before this all happened?

Yes.

She had.

She became aware that Kris had been talking, and stuggled to figure out what she was talking about. Something about a communications link.

"The Devil? No...I don't think it's him."

Lucia looked up suddenly.

"Kris... I think it's the angel. I think she wants to talk to me."

"The angel," Kris asked. "You mean one of the angels you used to see?"

The red haired teen thought about it, and considered practicality in application to the diagram. Id this was a diagram for a mystic phonecall, then they already had the number. All they needed to do was make the call. She needed to read more.

"Lucia, I have an idea, and think it will get you the right answers for a change, sweetie! We're back in business!"

Lucia's eyes widened. She had hoped that this book would help, but she hadn't expected it to come so easily.

And answers? Finally? She could only hope.

"What do you have in mind, Kris? And what do I need to do?"

"Okay... We might get a little detention, but I propose we go over this book tonight and tomorrow," she replied. "Then, once we have the translation of the book and notes, we use it. It's like a mystic phonebokk that tells us how to make a call. And, thanks to your drawing, the other morning, we have the number to call."

Kris grinned ear to ear. She was actually smart enough to figure this out. No Tankers, Scrappers, or Blasters needed. Just the two of them.

Lucia grinned back and nodded. With Kris helping her, she knew she could do this.

"Let's get to work then"

- - - - - - - - - -

When Kris had said she had wanted to spend last night and today studying the book, Lucia hadn't quite expected that her roommate had meant non-stop. She flopped to the bed with an exhausted sigh and looked out the window at the moonless, cloudless night. In retrospect, she should have known better.

So she had spent the better part of the last thirty hours running all over Paragon City trying to find materials for the spell as Kris had translated them. White candles, purified sea salt, incense...she looked over at the series of small bags tucked against the wall. Hopefully it would be worth the money buying all this had cost her.

Lucia looked over at her roommate. It had been difficult, reminding Kris to do simple things like eat, and rest. She was so absorbed in the translation, it was almost scary. A large pile of loose paper, covered in a rushed scrawl, sat at Kris' right elbow.

It was late, and Lucia had barely slept since two days ago. She was so very tired. She laid back on her bed, and stared at the ceiling...willing herself to stay awake...

...the loud sound of a book being triumphantly slammed shut startled her awake. She turned over on her side, and looked over at Kris, who had turned to face her and was grinning from ear to ear.

"Is it finished Kris?" Lucia wondered if she'd finally be able to convince her roommate to get some sleep now.

"Is it ever," Kris said the toll of the past thirty hours on just her jubilant voice. "I've cracked all of the translations, chunked the info that wasn't apparently relevant to the situation, and sketched a new diagram, and changed a few words to reflect our call to the angel belonging to the symbol. It's not in there, but, that book is WAY useful! Too bad we can't keep it, huh?"

Lucia stared for a few moments at Kris as though she had grown an extra head. She could hear the fatigue in her roommate's voice, and yet she was still cheerful, and effervescent as though she had just awakened. Kris was going to need her sleep, and so was she.

"Kris," she yawned. "Let's try to at least get a few hours sleep? This is going to be rough enough as it is. You do realise you picked one of the most villain active areas in all of Paragon City to do this, right?"

"Yeah. You're right," Kris nodded. "Let's try to get some rest."

The next few hours passed by like an eternity, and before the alarm had even gone off, the two girls had gotten up, and gathered their things. This was it! Zero hour!!! A few short hours later, they could see the faint form of Striga on the horizon, as the transport made it's way there....

As they stepped off the transport and onto the island, Lucia couldn't help but shiver. Not just because it was cold, though the predawn hour could hardly be called warm, but because she was afraid. The last time she had been here, she had difficulties getting around. And that was when she had her powers! She clutched the bag full of supplies close to her chest, suddenly feeling very vunerable.

"Come on, Kris. Let's get this over with." Lucia walked forward as quickly as she could, keeping her eyes peeled for both the gangsters and soldiers that wandered these areas. Surprisingly they made it to their destination with no harassment.

Kris climbed up a pile of crates stacked outside of a warehouse, and jumped up on the roof, landing with a soft clang as her shoes hit the metal roofing. She reached down to take the bag from Lucia and then helped her up as well.

"So, what's next Kris?" Lucia asked as Kris sat down to pour over her notes, flashlight in hand, though carefully shielded to prevent the light from broadcasting their location to anyone who might be looking.

"Ummm...you take the sand, and mark out the diagram on the ground...err, roof." She handed the piece of paper over to Lucia.

Lucia squinted, trying to make out the diagram in the dim light. Fortunately, Kris had had the foresight to copy the diagram over in dark marker, as opposed to pencil or pen, and after a minute, Lucia was able to make out all the details. Working slowly, she drew the diagram with the white salt, carefully pouring it out in a thin but constant stream, as Kris directed her in a hushed voice.

Twenty minutes later, it was done. Stepping back, and brushing her hands on her skirt, Lucia surveyed the result. Just so. She nodded in satisfaction. A meter wide circle, filled with lines and scrawled symbols. And in the middle, the same symbol she'd seen for so long. Not just a symbol it seemed, but a sigil. She quickly walked around and set the 5 white votives in their spots, almost, but not quite equidistant from each other inside the edge of the circle.

"Lucia, it's almost dawn." Lucia looked over at the quickly lightening eastern horizon. The sun had not yet peeked up yet, but Kris was right, it was any minute.

It was time to begin.

"Keep watch Kris. We don't know how obvious this will be..." Lucia set down the diagram sketch, and grabbed a different sheet of paper. The actual ritual. It would have been better if she had time to memorize it, btu the book was fairly clear that this could only be done in the "dawn after the dark of the moon." The time was right, the conditions were right, and she was not going to wait another month to try this.

Now or never.

She walked slowly around the outside of the circle, silently lighting the candles. When she returned to the bottom of the circle, she knelt down in front of a small copper bowl, filled with incense. She lit it, breathing deeply as the strong, pleasant smell filled her nose. She looked over to the east. The first sliver of the sun was rising above the ocean.

Now!

She began to chant...

Kris had been meticulous in her writing of the chant. She had written it so that even Biff Hannigan could recite it, and not screw up. As the sun became an arc of light, there was a strange sound of wind and fluttering wings, Lucia was finishing the last stanza of the chant, and there seemed to be feathers forming into a cloud of the sorts, and some sort of sparkling light or lights. For a few momensts occaisionally, Kris could swear it was as if there was some sort of form within, but there was no time to investigate further. From down below she heard a voice.

"What's going on up there? Come down, nice and slow. Identify yourself!"

Council...

Kris looked to the two one last time, and hoped this worked. She hated Striga. Guns and rockets were a bad, bad thing. She hoped she could be enough of a distraction so that Lucky could do her thing.

"Alright. I'm coming down," she exclaimed. "I have no weapons. I'm just a schoolgirl, okay?"

Before she even made it to the ground, one of the men kidney punched Kris, and the five large men closed in on her. Springing back up, she tore into the firstman with her powers, and the rest jumped back as the pinkish energy boiled off of her eyes. Kris made a good show, but she was a healer, not a fighter. She had managed to take down three, one had run for re-inforcements, and the fifth one suddenly exploded into the form of a large lupine Warwolf.

He snatched the mentalist up, and sniffed at her. Then he saw it. Attached to her necklace, where she kept her medbadge, was her Silver Bullet Pendant. A low growl emmanated from the beast, and Kris swallowed hard. The sound of several heavily booted feet approaching could be heard. This was going to hurt...

Lucia heard the voices, the sounds of fighting, and the shouts. At the back of her mind, she was worried about her roommate, all alone down there. But she didn't have time to stop now. The form materializing in front of her was comfortingly familiar.

Kris would understand. Kris had gone down there to give Lucia time. Somehow, Lucia knew that.

You found us. We had begun to worry. A melodious voice whispered from inside the cloud.

Lucia simply stood there, speechless. Finally she managed to reply. "Were you mad at me? You left. I didn't see you in the dreams anymore..."

Not mad. Never mad.

"Why did you leave?"

The link was broken. When we tried to come back, something kept us out.

"But that was weeks ago. What stopped you later?"

We could not come unbidden.

"You did before!"

This was different.

A scream shattered the air. Kris.

"I don't have time for this. Kris is in trouble. Help me!"

Is that truely what you want?

"Yes! Hurry..."

Step into the circle...

Lucia hesitated, then kicked off her shoes and stepped inside the circle, careful to not disturb any of the lines. Almost immediately, the cloud of feathers broke apart, and reformed, swirling around her. A crystal clear ringing filled her mind, as light poured through her, repairing the link torn by the Fortunata's attack.

The light faded and the feathers vanished into the air. Lucia stood alone in the circle.

We are with you. Fear not.