Part XV

They worked on the exercise until Xander could summon the white ball of light at will.  "So what do I do with it?" he finally asked, tossing it from one hand to another.  He could feel the weight of it in his palm, along with a faint buzzing feeling.

"Pretty much anything you want," she replied, twirling her own ball of light upon her finger.  "You imagine what you want it to do, and stay focused on it as you throw it.  Say I want to blow a hole in that wall over there -"

"Please don't do that."

"No, I won't," she reassured him.  "But just say that I did.  Here, how about I demonstrate with that half-empty bag of chips?"

"Um...how about the one over there that's already empty?"

She rolled her eyes.  "Alright, fine, I won't destroy your precious chips."

Xander blushed.

"Anyway, I would just picture it puncturing a hole right through the bag, and [I]know[/I] that it's going to do that, and then throw it."  She tossed her ball of light at the bag, and, with a sizzle, it passed right through the bag, leaving a gaping hole in the material, and disappeared.

"Wow," Xander said, "I thought it would have hurt the dresser or something, too."

"The key is focus," Cee told him.  "You have to keep your intentions clear.  If you don't, it'll just keep blazing through whatever is behind it, on and on until the energy runs out.  Now, of course, it takes a lot more energy to do that to demons than it does to do it to a bag of chips.  You really have to dig deep, and you have to keep your cool.  You'll only get one or two good shots like that during a fight."

"So what do you do if you miss, or if it doesn't work?"

"Well, we try to wear them down with regular weapons first."

"Like...?"

"Like swords and arrows and bullets and stuff."

He stared at her, nonchalantly leaning against the wall.  "You're not serious.  I have to learn how to wield a sword?"

She grinned at him.  "That would be pretty -"  She cut herself off, biting her lip.  "It would be helpful."

He rubbed his hand over his eyes.  "This just keeps getting better and better," he said wryly.

"I have faith in you, Pudge," she told him.

"You've got to be kidding.  I can barely walk from here to the door without knocking something over, and you expect me to take up fencing?"

"Not fencing," she said, her face serious.  "Those swords will break right off in a demon's chest."

"Okay, whatever.  You think I can actually do that?"

"You didn't think you could do that, did you?" she said, pointing at the ball of energy that was still floating above his outstretched palm.

"Yeah, well, that didn't require any...physical activity," he retorted bitterly, squeezing the energy in his hand.  It felt strangely squishy when he did that, almost like one of those stress balls filled with sand.

"I think you'll surprise yourself, Pudge.  You may not be the quickest fighter, but I'll bet you're damn strong and can take a lot of damage.  You can be our tank."

He snorted at her usage of the gaming term.  "Right."

"Seriously, Pudge, you can do this.  Whether you know it or not, you were born for this."

He gave her a look.  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?  I don't think many demon fighters were born with this kind of physique," he said cynically.

She looked him over, her eyes lingering just a bit too long at his midsection, causing him to squirm uncomfortably.  "You're special, Pudge.  We've been looking for you for a long time.  And so have they."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he repeated.

"As far as we know, you're the first person to be able to smell them.  They can cloak themselves from sight, and even from Ken's knowing.  But your nose?  They have no defense for that.  It was foretold -"

"Wait, wait, wait.  'Foretold?'" he scoffed.  "Now you're going to tell me that there's some kind of prophecy?"

"Well..."

"You are.  Geez."

"I'm not going to tell you.  I'll let Ling explain it; she's the expert."

"Geez," he repeated, shaking his head.  He mentally ran over all the weird stuff that had happened to him these past few weeks, from the Fuom appearing in his room to the guy at the mall guessing his weight to being told he was a psychic bloodhound and everything else.  His life was going to hell.

"Hey," Callisto interrupted his thoughts, "what was that?"

"What was what?"

"That...what happened at the mall?"

"Oh, uh, nothing," he sputtered.  Of course, trying to put it out of his mind only caused an instant replay of the scenario, the black-eyed guy's leering face causing him to shiver.

But he could tell from her face that she had seen the whole thing as he'd thought about it.  "And the food court this morning?"

The same thing happened.

She cursed loudly.  "Come on, we have to go to the house and tell the others."

"What?  Why?  I'd really prefer if nobody else knew about all that," he pleaded with her, his face flaming.

"Oh, Xander, it's almost cute how naive you are."

"What are you talking about?"

"Those weren't people giving you a hard time.  The Roene demon has been following you."