This was such a bad idea, such a terrible idea and yet here you were pushing your already exausted body beyond the limits of what should have been possible.
While this certainly wasn't the most impressive display of power when you compared it to say, a game character or movie effects, it was you whom had accomplished this and you whom had called it into being.
This was no game, this was better.
This was the real thing and you were going to hone this ability to bend reality over and make it do as you pleased. You would surpass the most badass fictional characters, you would shine beyond the most badass real life person who had ever been.
They would write stories about how you, Alyssa, had been the most spectacular figure to ever grace this planet.
And all you had to do was believe, as it took the edge off the creeping sense of exaustion as fatigued turned into pain.
Oh, that pain was bearable now, but if it continued to blossom at the rate it was setting in at, it would become agonising before long.
You could feel the heat of that pain in your chest as it burst into a sensation of warmth, spreading through your torso as you took deep breaths.
You were calm, you were in control.
The pain was managable.
The pages of the books about you stirred as your ever increasing focus pushed to move the air faster, to get moving in a nice steady vortex about you.
Nothing too special, just a circuit of air pressure manipulated by you that could turn the pages of the open books.
Only... You could feel the pain in your chest blossom once more as you found yourself out of breath.
Okay, now was a good time to stop, you were thoroughly exausted and you had pain blossoming from the inside out, that was now starting to spread out to your shoulders and hips. Now WAS a good time to stop.
So why wasn't it stopping?
Why did the current of air seem to be picking up speed still?
It was starting to reach the point it was noisily flipping the pages of the books about you and whipping your hair about your face, but you couldn't allow it to get out of your control.
Okay, you just had to figure how to stop this, take a moment to breathe and relieve some of the fatigue and pain you felt, then push to make it cease sooner, rather than later.
It was no different in a sense than the incident with your tea earlier this day, where you had lost control, though that had been when you'd completely relaxed control and gone into a hysterical state of mind. Such a point of view wouldn't help you here, but it did suggest that you were going to have to be guarded in future.
If you could accidentally do this, there would be no end of trouble.
Perhaps a push in the opposite direction - a counter current to oppose the flow that you had going now, would help dissipate the force in play a little faster.
After all, for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction.
Or something.
You should have paid more attention in physics classes.
But it told you the gist of what you needed to visualise, a counter-force to slow the accelerating current of air, to push against the force you'd put into play so that energy would counter energy and it'd dissipate.
It almost took your breath away pushing against the force of the current, but you had to do so despite the way that you could feel pain spreading out like fire to your extremities.
No pain, no gain.
But seriously, fuck this pain, this was horrible, you could feel muscles cramping as if they were oxygen deprived, your joints aching as if they had been punished.
And your skin felt as if you were aflame as you reached a feverish temperature.
It seemed to be working though, it seemed that the swirling current of air was slowing, that you could finally breathe easily, and...
And...
Oh...
Oh no.
It was starting to move in the other direction.
Why, why was it starting to move in the other direction?
Why was it accelerating at such a pace, for that matter?
Had you simply fed more energy into it and told it to turn around or something?
You didn't know how this worked or how you were supposed to stop it!
You were being buffed by a miniature tornado now as the air about you quickly kicked up to gale force, howling as it cast the books about you about the library - as the shelves bolted to the floor rattled and the books upon them were knocked off one by one.
And here you were, in the eye of the storm, wide eyed in horror as your powers went completely out of your control despite your best efforts to handle them.
You were too exausted to do anything about it now as you'd burned all the energy you could muster to try and counter it already, and there was the librarian, rushing out of their corner to yell at you.
Only you couldn't hear a thing they were saying over the howl of the storm that raged about you, you could only tell that they seemed angry - at least until they realised you were staring back at them in wide eyed terror.
And the storm raged all the more fiecely.
You didn't know what you had unleashed here, yet you knew as the librarian attempted to get closer - only to be buffted back by the screaming winds that howled about you - that you would either have to get out of the eye of the storm now and accept that you'd be flung into the shelves, or you'd be trapped here until it subsided.
But here you were, pinned back against the chair, your body feeling like jelly now as your leaden limbs refused to respond.
No, you had to stand up and fight, find reserves that ran deeper than you'd ever found before, push until your body screamed for forgiveness.
The flesh was weak but the mind was stronger.
Your breathing was ragged from a combination of being stolen away by the storm and your exaustion, yet you pushed onward, you forced yourself to start to rise.
The arms of the chair creaked as your weight was placed upon them, as you rose slowly.
Oh, that pain you felt was an exquisite burning sensation that shone brighter than the sun in your mind, yet it was primal fear that had you struggle onward and upward.
You had to do this, you had to escape, you had to survive.
You had to-
...Shit.
Your hoarse screaming was dampened by the winds as you were torn from your precarious position and hauled into the air by the winds that trapped you - briefly - within them as you rose several feet above the ground.
Then, with an almost callous disregard for whom had brought them into being, they cast your form aside.
You twirled through the air as you slammed into the skeletal structure of the now bare metal shelves, tortured metal screaming as the first shelf buckled under the force of your impact and you flipped over it, over the next one.
And clipped the third row of shelves, as you felt the sensation of heat and warmth blossom inside you in a new manner.
Something was wrong though, you couldn't move, you were simply left laying on your stomach over the shelves, legs over one side, arms over the other as the raging winds continued to buffet you.
You were... Hurt too much, or stunned, you didn't know, you couldn't do much more than-
Why weren't your arms responding to your efforts to move, why were your legs just hanging there, why was-
Everything was going dark and you could see blood - your blood - running freely from... You didn't know if you'd bashed your nose, gashed your face or it was coming from your mouth, you had no sensation apart from that fuzzy wamrth that blossomed within you.
You felt tired, oh so tired, but at least you didn't hurt.
You'd just... Close your eyes...
And when you'd slept this off, you'd get up.
That sounded good right now.
And so you found yourself face to face with... Yourself, with your body as it lay motionless atop the shelves it had landed upon.
From this angle you could see red seeping through the chest of that powder blue hoodie you wore, you could see a gash in it where it'd been torn open by the jagged metal of the shelf you'd slammed into and...
Were you...
Dead?
No, that was impossible, wasn't it?
This had to be an out of body experience, or a delusional dream from the combination of... Everything.
But your efforts to interact with your body were met with no response.
Worse still, as you leaned to look at your face, you could see lifeless eyes staring blankly at the floor beneath you.
"Oh god, my head," echoed the voice of the librarian as they struggled to their feet, clambering upwards as they used the shelves near them as a support. Only for them to freeze as they looked dirtectly at you. Well, not so much as you, as you, as you lay over the shelf. "Hey, are you-" they started as they reached for your wrist, as they braced themselves against the dying winds that still buffeted the room.
"No pulse... Shit. What do I do?" came their fearful words as they brought one hand up to their face, covering their mouth as they took half a step backwards.
"Hey, I'm right here, can you hear me?" you started, only for the woman to take another step back, turn, then-
She stepped right through you.
She couldn't hear you?
Maybe if you focused, maybe if-
"The boss said the LPD c-" came a familiar voice from the halls as the door to the library opened, only for it to be cut short as Millicent's form arrived. "Alyssa!" she screamed, as she rushed over to shelves, repeating the same efforts to find your pulse as the other had, only this time you could see the horror in her expression change to one of denial.
You watched with a detatched fascination as she slapped your cheeks, as she shook you, as she begged and pleaded with you to wake up, telling you that this wasn't a good time to go to sleep.
Maybe you were wrong about her in a few ways.
You couldn't trust her too much given her employment in this agency, but she actually did care about you as a person.
...Though this wasn't the best time be concerning yourself with this.
You had the issue that you were sort of...
"I'm dead... How the fuck do I fix this?" you whispered to yourself as you watched Millicent's efforts to rouse you continue for some moments more before she turned to the horrified librarian.
"Call the fucking medics you slack jawed moron!" she yelled as her anger had the librarian snap to attention, rush over to the phone on the other side of the room and hurriedly start babbling into it.
Millicent on the other hand slumped down with her back against the shelves you lay atop, burying her head in her hands as she suddenly seemed very small.
You didn't know if she could see, feel or hear you, but you figured that if there was anywhere you wanted to be here, it was beside her.
And so you sank down beside her, allowing your growing sense of detachment to calm you as you placed a hand upon her shoulder - reassuringly.
You didn't care if she knew or not, it felt like this was what you were supposed to do right now.
Of course, you couldn't tell her everything'd be fine.
Even if she could hear you, telling her that everything'd be fine would be far from reassuring given you were-
"Millicent, can you hear me?" you asked, wondering if you could indeed make yourself heard.
Only it was met with silence.
"Millicent, please, it's very important that I know if you can hear me or not."
Further silence.
"Damnit, answer me!" You growled as you reached to pinch her side, only there was no response to this either.
The doors burst open as a team of medics rushed in, as the boss made his way in pale as a ghost behind them.
The librarian, hysterical now over the entire incident babbled their side of the story almost incomprehensibly to the boss, only his attention was drawn away from their sobbing to you.
As in, you.
Not your body.
"Alyssa, your irresponsibility has-" he started in the tone of one trying to assert their authority so that they could command a situation they had no bearing over.
"What the FUCK, she's dead, yelling at her like a fucking idiot isn't going to fucking help anyone you momental fucking moron!" snarled Millicent as she rose to her feet, her one hand snapping up to point at where you lay, as the medics busied themselves about her.
Even as you watched them starting to take your body down from atop the shelves, you could see the mans attention snapping back and forth between you and your body.
"That's... She's stood right..." he mumbled as he pointed right at you. "You can see her, can't you?"
"I don't see anyone there." Millicent's voice came in a measured pace.
It was the calm before the storm once more, though this time a woman was about to explode and a man was about to die.
Or so it seemed, anyway.
"Alyssa, can you hear me?" he uttered aloud, slowly, in the kind of tone someone'd use when trying to talk down to someone with a disability.
"I'm dead, apparently. That doesn't mean I've suddenly become stupid."
"I... Okay, can one of you tell my secretary to inform the LPD there's no issue so we don't need them," he started, before turning his attention back towards you fully " Alyssa, We're going to do everything we can to-"
"Uh, Sir, this is... There's not much we can do here, her ribs have been broken and..."
"And what?" you asked, half turning your head to look at the group huddled about your form. Your hoodie was visible to the side, ruined now with the way it was torn and bloodied, though angling yourself as you could, you couldn't see around them clearly enough to see just how seriously hurt you'd been.
You could see glimpses of your form, bone visible through your chest, a gash on your side, but they were-
"She wants to know what."
"Uh... Okay. Her ribs look like they punctured her heart."
"Okay... Can you prepare her for surgery?"
"Sir, she's not..."
"Historic documents of immortals - such as herself - have told us that they can recover from injuries such as these. Repair as much as the damage as you can to expediate her recovery."
"Uh... Yes sir."
Wait, was that...
Bastards, they'd cut your top off to check you like this.
Oh, this wasn't on.
This was what it took to rouse your ire once more, to snap you back from that detatched and blissful sense of disconnection you felt. It was time to...
...Make your anger known, punch one of them, topple a book case, anything! (Spark power revealed as Dream Walker)
...Tell them to pull those ribs out your heart and punch one of them yourself! (Spark power revealed as Unkillable + Seven Fold Healing Rate.)
...Get up, walk it off and complain that they'd ruined your clothing. (Spark Power revealed as Delayed Regeneration.)
...Take command of the situation through the boss, he could see you, hear you... (Spark power revealed as Divine Voice.)
...Approach this in another manner. (Players choose Alyssa's other thematic upgradable power.)
Dream Walker - When sleeping or incapaciated, Alyssa can continue to act if she chooses to do so in a projected form. Does not come with any boosted ability to recover from injury.
Unkillable - While Alyssa can be incapacitated via poison or injury, death an inconvenience at most and she'll come too after a short while. Alyssa additonally recovers from injury at a vastly accelerated rate - a single days rest is equivilent to a weeks.
Note: Unkillable is the ugradable portion, seven fold healing is not.
Delayed Regeneration - While Alyssa can be injured and slain easily, a short while after any injury is inflicted it will begin to rapidly knit.
Divine Voice - Much as Millicent may, or some other immortals have been known to, you may sway the opinions of others with suggestion. Be wary, for it is not a flawless power.