Shattering Humanity-Chapter 294: "If You Can’t Take Care Of Yourself Properly, You Shouldn’t Be Expecting Others To Do It For You."
So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength, and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down
Therefore the wise avoid extremes, excesses, and complacency."-Tao Ta Ching Chapter 29
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She stops herself and looks at Tristan. The love of her life grabs her hand tightly and she smiles before continuing.
Stephanie: "Something was whispering to me in my head. Telling me to release my anxieties.
It was telling me, I could protect the world if I wanted to.
I could save everyone..."
MamMon DæMon: "Well that certainly was the goal, Dear."
MamMon DæMon: "The plan was to show you all the StealthSeiõrStar and it’s effects, but nowww..."
She stares at Stephanie, then at Isfet, Icythis, and Bethany.
MamMon DæMon: "But now, we should do a little bit of training to prepare for our Holmgang in a few days.
Don’t you agree General?"
[MamMon DæMon’s Forest]
Running through the dim forest, Bethany and Stephanie are alone.
Stephanie has her golden lime green SanguineSoulSeiõrShield active.
In the grip of her right hand, the SharedSanguineSoulSeiõrShield is around a baseball and Bethany has a wooden Bokken training sword.
Ichythis: "Here!"
Appearing from a row of trees, Icythis and Isfet, both with Bokken training swords as well are sprinting to keep up.
While looking away, Stephanie hears Bethany block an attack with her wooden sword and looks ahead.
Bethany has stopped and is in a defensive stance. Holding her sword vertically in front of her, head on a swivel.
Bethany: "Get rid of it Steph!
They’re engaging!"
With her lime green and gold SanguineSoulSeiõrShield covering both her entire body and the baseball, Stephanie winds up like a softball pitcher.
Taking a commanding step forward, releasing an underhanded softball throw, she zips the baseball covered in her stunning SharedSanguineSoulSeiõrShield right by some trees and Icythis catches it.
Once she catches the Seiõr covered baseball, the smoking sprinter becomes engulfed in Stephanie’s SharedSanguineSoulSeiõrShield as well, but only for a brief moment before it fades.
Icythis: "Holy shit, she wasn’t kidding! That transferable energy booster of her’s feels freaking amazing!"
A chuckling Isfet is right next to her, but the one eyed woman is alerted by her symbiote, and she deflects an attack from a fast moving, dark, shadowy figure.
Isfet staggers backwards from the incredibly powerful strike but recovers and with her only available ocular sensor, she scans around for the next incoming attack.
Isfet: "You go on ahead, I’ll try and stall whichever one of them it is!"
Ichythis nods. The suddenly head movement ashes her lip perched cigarette and the physically built woman goes into a full sprint through the Seiõr grown forest.
By herself, without Bethany, Stephanie ends up catching up to the strong woman and Icythis tosses the ball backwards.
The Sanguine Savior for the Erinyes side catches the baseball and it gets covered in her personal color of special universal energy.
Icythis: "Hey, do you think you could share that energy of yours with me again?"
Stephanie is immediately surprised by the request.
Icythis: "I already knew about Seiõr’s existence cuz of Laban, but I didn’t know there was that much of a difference between someone’s accepted energy and the Seiõr that is snowing from the usually cloudless skies or the aura from these alien eyes."
Stephanie smiles while running and focuses on her newest partner.
A matching lime green and gold aura begins to pulse from the tall woman in front and around the training sword in her hand.
Icythis: "Goddamn this shit feels like a narcotic when it hits, girl!"
Stephanie blushes while they continue running through the magic made forest.
Ichythis: "Hey!"
Stephanie perks up while running a few feet behind.
She doesn’t answer, but Icythis knows she has the girl’s attention.
Icythis: "You play ball before the apocalypse too?"
Knowing how to properly underhand speed throw, Stephanie smiles from the recollections of her softball years.
Stephanie: "I was being recruited as early as a freshman in high school, by collegiate and professional teams all around the globe. Just to be their softball team’s Ace pitcher."
Icythis: "Noo shit aye?
And here I was, gunna tell you about how my sister and I won D2 states in high school, but humble me up why dontchya?"
The softball prodigy blushes but looks upset while remembering her sports career.
Stephanie: "Unfortunately, I had torn my rotator cuff on the last out while trying to pitch a perfect game in a decisive Game 5 of our state’s D1 championship series."
Taking advantage of her buffing magical energy, Ichythis hops up and lands on a bottom branch. In stride, she leaps to the next branch on the next tree and so on while talking to her teammate below.
Icythis: "Jesus Christ... Talk about the perfect storm of a tragic sports tale. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖
So that shoulder of yours, it never healed back to normal I’m guessing?"
Stephanie shakes her head, the baseball in her right hand.
Stephanie: "It was only me and Tristan supporting my four little sisters as if they were our own children at the time. We had no medical insurance."
Icythis: "Tsk.
Vinland, go figures.
A bright career, snuffed out because of a country without universal healthcare."
Stephanie: "I wouldn’t look at it like that, Ms. Icythis."
Icythis: "Hm?"
Stephanie: "When you have a country that allows more freedom to it’s people, sometimes those people abuse those freedoms.
For example smokers and the morbidly obese..."
Icythis looks at the cherry lit at the end of the cig in her teeth.
Stephanie: "When you allow your citizens to make life choices or engage on a lifestyle that could very well be the catalyst to their demise, it shouldn’t be the responsibility of others to pay for your mistakes.
The people who benefit from a form of universal healthcare, take away funds and doctors from those who are sick or hurt, not from their own choices but simply from misfortune."
Icythis chuckles. Witnessing first hand the mindset of the novice advanced Seiõr user.
Icythis(thinking): *She’s right.
Kaylee had told Hugo and I while we were smoking, thousands of times, we didn’t have funds in the budget for our own personal health insurances.*
The branch leaping woman takes a drag from her cig, releasing her smoke in the form of a sigh.
Icythis: "I guess you got a point...If you can’t take care of yourself properly, you shouldn’t be expecting others to do it for you."
Stephanie nods.
Icythis: "Well, if anything, Hollywood probably would have bought your name, story, and likeness just to make a movie that has a more positive ending."
Stephanie smiles politely but is bothered by the memory.
She suddenly gets a tingling sensation from her SeiõrSense. Stopping and taking a back step, Stephanie barely dodges Isfet’s wooden training sword.
Isfet: "I apologize Ms. Stephanie, but I was beaten."
She takes a few more swings at Stephanie’s hand holding the baseball but the surprisingly agile young woman goes untouched before Icythis comes in between them.
The two Bokken training swords clash and SharedSanguineSoulSeiõrShield Icythis backflips. The magical armor around her flickers a bit.
Icythis: "Go Steph!
You’re our best chance to score!"
Stephanie sprints passed them but Bethany drops down in front of her from a tree above.
In a dark manner, Bethany’s creepy smile makes the fleeing Stephanie shiver in fear.
Bethany: "Ohhh Stephyyy.
We’re in the middle of the dark woods together.
You better be careful, or else some weirdos might want to pin you down and take advantage of you, leaving you naked and equally satisfied."
From out of nowhere, a swipe from a Bokken *CRACKS!* her over the head.
Tristan: "Go Steph! The open field is 100 yards behind me!"
The scared, teary eyed Stephanie becomes relieved and nods at her love with confidence as she continues.
Now alone, Stephanie is sprinting through the forest, heavy, high pitched breathes. The light from the tree line is in her gorgeous sight. She smiles but not before the sight of Esau appearing from behind a tree makes her come to a sliding stop.
Esau: "Hand it over and I won’t break both your hands, woman."
Stephanie gives the man a lime green Below Sanpaku scowl and she grips the baseball tighter.
Stephanie: "I’m sorry, but I am a competitor too.
Everyone else has put faith in me to throw this ball through one of those windows.
So you’ll have to take this baseball from my cold, dead-"
Esau appears behind her.
Esau: "If you insist."
His hand goes to grip Stephanie’s right wrist but it whiffs through an afterimage.
The man’s left forest green eye and right IceEye widen, unaware of Stephanie’s ability to use such an advanced technique.
The man looks around and sees a strain of the young woman’s brightly colored hair disappear behind a tree.
The top heavy, muscular man sighs and starts walking in the same direction with the wooden blade resting on his shoulder.
Esau: "Winning isn’t worth it that much.
I’m not even trying to kill her anyway..."
