Cousin Amber- Meeting Chris

Story by MigeYeFoxe on SoFurry

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#4 of Cousin Amber

And we get to meet the second of the actual main cast for this story. The Core are there, they do play a role in the events of the story, but they aren't the main focus. The story's about Amber and the people who choose to live with her in her decrepit little home.


On the way there Amber notices that there seems to be someone following her. The thing is that whenever she looks around to get her bearings and see him, if she were to go and see what he's doing he just bolts away instantly. But no matter what she does, she doesn't really get the impression of him having any ill intent with her. He's just some kid that's following her through the city. Feeling the need to see what all is going on.

"Can I help you?" She asks as she puts a hand on his shoulder to make sure that he can't just run away.

"You're really her, aren't you? Amber?" he asks, not seeming at all threatening. Being able to look at him a bit more closely. He's not particularly unattractive. About average looking all things considering. But definitely somewhat disheveled looking and fairly dirty looking, as if he had been sleeping outside recently. But he didn't seem to be trying to trying to beg for money. Not that she had any money on hand to give anyway, she only had her card.

"I am she, yes," Amber says in response. "Why are you following me?"

"I was wondering. I mean," he stammers. "You know Amethyst, right?"

"Well, yeah," Amber says in response, "we did work together. Why?"

He fidgets for a moment as if trying to come up with the confidence to say what he's trying to say. "You wouldn't have any hints on how she manages her power, do you?"

Amber stares at him intently with the third eye and nods slightly for why he would be approaching her. "I assume you are having trouble with your own power?" He doesn't immediately respond back to her, but instead looks away embarrassed and kicks one leg against his other. "Tell you what. I'm on my way to the dump the government left me by way of my severance package. So if you follow me there and take out all the trash that's probably all over the place then I'll give you my full attention for an hour. And I'll help you figure out how to work on your ability so that you can use it at a reasonable level and get better after that. I'll even go so far as to spring for dinner while we're at it. Though nothing fancy of course."

The boy nods and Amber looks back at her phone, letting it get reacquainted to her position. Thankfully she didn't jump far so her phone didn't freak out too much. Typically most GPS programs tend to freak out when suddenly jumping large distances and then need to re-find themselves. But with the short jump it just thought she moved very fast. And so she continues on her way to her new home.

"So will your parents mind you being out so long?" Amber asks.

"Don't have any. I've been in the system for years. So long as I don't get arrested for anything, at this point they don't really care what I do," he says a bit more calmly than before.

"I'm sorry?"

"Eh, don't be. You had nothing to do with it. Dad died of cancer and mom died in a car accident years back. Anyway, I'm Chris."

"Katherine," Amber says.

"Not Amber?"

"Well Amber was my code name when I was in the Core. Katherine's my real name. Not entirely sure I'm allowed to keep using Amber or not. Their agreement didn't really make that all that clear."

"Well is it all right if I just keep calling you Amber? It'd be a bit too weird for me to start calling you Katherine."

"Eh, shouldn't be all that much of a problem. Not like everyone else won't keep calling me that when I look like," she gestures at herself as best she can while still carrying all of her stuff.

Her comment leads to a very quiet walk. When they do finally reach the building Amber is both somewhat impressed but at the same time not at all thrilled at the prospect of living there. She's not entirely sure what it used to be, but it is definitely three stories tall with a few really big holes in the walls. It was probably either an office building or a small apartment complex. She won't be able to tell more until she goes inside. But it is far larger than she was expecting and does look at least structurally sound as far as she can tell. It was probably a building that was perfectly serviceable but ended up as collateral for some powered individuals some time ago. She doesn't think it was her group, she'd remember having a mission this close to the base. Might have been an Earth Core that took care of it. But after the altercation the damage was probably too extensive to easily repair and was too unsightly for anyone to remain.

"That's your new home?" Chris asks skeptically.

"Apparently," Amber responds. "I'll keep an eye out for us as we go through, make sure that nothing happens. Anyway," Amber shrugs, "might as well head on in and see how bad the damage is and how much I'll have to put into this place to get it even livable. And like our agreement, you take care of any trash that needs to be dealt with."

"And if there's rubble? Am I responsible for that too?"

"No," Amber says, not wanting to be too cruel. "Only things that are trash. I'll manage the rest later on."

It turns out that having him come to take out the garbage was a wasted effort. The Core must have already hired someone to clear out the worst of the issues already. There are clear signs of where something was staining the carpet. But everything has been given a good once over by a cleaning crew as far as she can tell. Means the ground is at least stable enough. And once Chris has also seemed to notice that there really isn't any garbage to take out Chris relaxes somewhat, seeming more interested in checking it out rather than looking for what he would have to remove. The floor seems sound enough as they're moving around, though that doesn't necessarily mean that the ground is good. A lot of the walls don't so much look rotten as structurally weakened. Probably quite a few of the walls will have to be torn down and rebuilt for the place to be truly back to a fully working condition. But that can wait till later. The water doesn't look all that good but it is at least running. Probably will need to clean that out as well. At the very least means that they can use the bathrooms. Once done with a general sweep of the house she sighs and turns towards Chris.

"So what do you think of it?" She asks somewhat sarcastically.

"It's a dump."

"Yep. Well, trash or no trash a deal's a deal. Let's go over to the alleyway by the side of the building and I'll see if I can't get you to be able to use your ability much more effectively," she says while leading them back towards the exit. Seeing no real reason otherwise instead of taking the stairs the entire way down she simply walks over to the hole in the side of the building and then uses that to teleport the two of them back down to the ground. Chris takes a moment trying to grasp what just happened, though Amber wasn't too concerned at any real risks given she was moving such a short distance that he might not have even registered he couldn't breathe in there. But there's not enough down here to really test him here. "Be right back."

She takes a deep breath and then hops up to the roof, overseeing all the things around her. She obviously didn't want to take anything that could be considered stealing or quite likely to be destroyed by the act of someone running into it at high speed. There was a dumpster alongside the building. And seeing nothing else she decided to jump over to a nearby store and buy some cardboard boxes. It was somewhat difficult to walk through the store in that regard with so many people looking at her, but she focuses on the task at hand and tunes out anything else that may be going on. As soon as she's paid and left the store to avoid any complications of them thinking she might have stolen anything she hops back over to the alley.

"Sorry about that," she says, somewhat pleased that he didn't decide to just ditch her. It wouldn't be all that big of a deal he did decide she wasn't coming back, but she would feel bad about having promised that she would help him and he though she was pranking him and left. "Was half afraid that you would have thought I ran away from you."

"Well it's not like I don't know where you live," he jokes. "So what are all those?"

"Obstacles. Things to be in your way between one end of the alley to the other that I don't particularly care if get ruined a bit. You want to be able to run and not keep hitting everything, right? Well if you hit these, who cares. You completely destroy them all and I'm out like twenty bucks."

Amber goes about setting things up, putting them all over the alleyway. Once done she's walks over to the side of the alley that Chris had sat down at.

"Okay, now," Amber begins, sitting down for the moment on the curb. "The problem isn't so much with your ability as it is your eyes. Your body moves fine. I think Amethyst could possibly run a bit faster than you if she were to use all her abilities at once. But the main thing is that you are literally running faster than you can keep up. Your senses are not powered. Heck, compared to these things," she points at the large triangular ears on top of her head, "some of your senses are worse than mine even without abilities."

"So how does telling me my eyes suck help me with my problem."

"Your problem is that you are relying on running full speed like everyone else and then assuming your senses will account for that. It won't. You're simply too fast. Let's say it takes about half a second for your eyes to see something and your brain to have enough time to not only interpret what you're seeing and then react to it. At the speed you're able to do, in that time you're already at the other end of this alleyway. Meaning anything between here and that wall over there is too close for your eyes to process in time. This is true even with Amethyst. Granted she can use her wind abilities to help inform her quicker when something is coming, but she never goes full speed in any tight environment, she just would never respond in time. Also of note she runs significantly faster when she is under my Third Eye. Because then she can see the results of her motions and act accordingly. What I'm going to do and what we're going to spend the next hour on is I'm going to open my third eye for you and then you're going to do quick little hops. Don't try and make it to the end of the alleyway in one burst."

"So your solution to help me use my ability is to use it less?" he asks.

"No, just don't try to cross the entire distance all at once. Find a short distance you know you can make no problem, run to there. Then stop and get used to what all you see then move again. This will probably help you in dodging as well. Since you're constantly changing directions and not running at a specific speed it will become extremely hard for some to get a good bead on you. If you can get the hang of moving like this it simply becomes a matter of how quickly can you react to your new location that'll determine your speed. As for doing it, try something like this. I'm going to go to the other side in small hops without my third eye."

Amber stands up and plots out her route beforehand and then takes a quick deep breath and makes a series of quick little teleports, covering the distance in four seconds. She probably could have done it significantly faster but she was intentionally taking her time so as to make it more obvious. She then teleports back to her original position and sits down. She gestures at him to try, "My third eye is open," she says as she gives him access to her ability.

Christopher stands absolutely stunned for a moment, though that's to be expected. It can take a bit of getting used to learning how to even interpret the data that is being given by her third eye. The others in the Gem Core had had countless hours training on how to use it effectively to the extent it would barely phase them whenever they were given the ability. For someone who has never seen it before it would take a while not only to get used to seeing it the future but how to properly manage their own actions to take advantage of it. Finally, he takes a deep breath and tries to run down the alleyway and ends up tripping over one of the boxes she had set up, having decided to go as far as he could manage. Amber hops over, picks him up and returns him to the start after fixing the box back to normal. Thankfully he doesn't seem to be all that scuffed up by tripping over the road, so he must also be at least somewhat more durable than a normal human would be. He grunts and stands back up, clearly frustrated and tries again. Using her own vision she can tell what actions he's planning on taking. It's not so much that he's even trying to take her advice but rather instead is trying to use the third eye to navigate through all the obstacles all at once. Admittedly that is something Amethyst might be able to pull off, but most certainly not with someone who hasn't had much practice operating with the third eye open. After a few more attempts at this she closes her eye for him for a moment.