Sarah gave a few tentative kicks into the air. She chuckled, before breaking out in laughter. With a final pulse of healing ki, her body became fresh as new.

Freedom.

Even as she ran out of breath, she couldn’t stop giggling.

***

Sarah’s life underwent a massive overhaul afterwards. Arthur reluctantly released her from her prison, and Erica let Sarah stay in her house. It was a large building, too large for only two people. When questioned, Erica sheepishly replied that the previous owners were evacuated, opening the house up for military use.

If Sarah still had had her memories, she might have questioned why the military was using civilian buildings, and whether that was legal. Erica would’ve responded by describing how the local military infrastructure was overloaded by soldiers being brought in from adjacent regions to help quell the alien invasions.

While Sarah didn’t suddenly remember everything, Isabela’s purification helped bring to light some of the memories that were suppressed. As such, Sarah Clay regained her last name, although not much else.

For a couple of days, Sarah felt disconnected from reality. All the new stimuli disoriented her, which didn’t help her deal with her emotions. Erica was concerned for her, and tried to cheer her up by giving her good food and plenty of modern entertainment. It didn’t work very well, especially as Erica was extremely occupied with running tests on alien samples, leaving Sarah alone in the intimidatingly spacious building.

The aliens didn’t stop just for her, however, and soon enough Erica was unable to deter Arthur from having what he described as a “simple talk” with Sarah in his office.

“Normally, a civilian like you would be evacuated. However, as we still don’t understand much about the alien species that invaded Earth, you will be kept under observation here,” he dictated.

“If you can, please try and teach my soldiers how to use your supernatural abilities. It would be greatly appreciated.” His voice was calm but firm, and despite his wording, Sarah instinctively knew that Arthur wasn’t asking her.

“Feel free to take part in drills with the rest of the soldiers. If you ever want to use your abilities for good, to protect those in need, you’ll need some training.”

And with that, Sarah was shooed away, having done nothing but nod the entire time. She was lost in thought for a while afterwards, collapsing on her home’s couch once she got back. Her mind kept returning to Arthur’s last sentence.

I’ll need to train to do good? What defines doing good?

If any other person asked that question, the person would most likely already have their own answer in their head. Sarah’s moral compass, however, was hit hard by her memory wipe. She didn’t have a subconscious gut feeling that would help her decide what was “good”.

In that aspect, Sarah was remarkably similar to a child that needed to be told what was good and bad. Children often had to have lessons repeated for them to stick, or be punished to take them seriously. Sarah, however, had a developed self-control, and only needed to be told once.

Arthur’s clumsy attempt at manipulating Sarah into becoming a soldier therefore had more profound effects than he would realize. At the end of Sarah’s introspection, the concept that protecting others equated with good had imprinted itself on her brain.

That night, Sarah told Erica that she wanted to become a soldier. Erica’s face paled at the confession, and tried to talk her out of it, but Sarah’s mind was set.

As such, instead of having Erica bring home breakfast, Sarah followed the woman to mess hall the next morning. The pair followed a growing stream of soldiers to a brick and mortar cafeteria, and added themselves to a line extending out of the door.

“Oh no, we came too late. Now the line’s so long,” Erica complained.

Sarah wasn’t listening, however. She could sense too many gazes landing on her, and it was making her uncomfortable.

“Why are so many people staring at me?” she finally whispered to Erica. The blonde woman stopped and noticed the situation for the first time.

“I’m sure they’re just curious because you’re the only one not wearing a uniform,” Erica said.

“I hope you’re right,” Sarah replied.

After waiting fifteen minutes, the two girls got their plates of bland but nutritious food and made their way to the tables. Erica dragged Sarah to one table in particular, where five people were just starting to eat. Two men and a woman were wearing military uniforms, while two men were wearing similar uniforms to Erica that made Sarah identify them as scientists. In actuality, the scientist uniforms were Navy-styled, as was custom for the Public Health Service which included the Center for Disease Control.

“Hi everyone! This is Sarah, the girl I’ve been talking about. Sarah, these soldiers are Peter, Jack, and Marilee, while these two are my assistants-slash-colleagues Randy and Adam.” Erica positively bubbled as she introduced Sarah to the people she’d become friends with. After a moment of awkward silence, Erica elbowed her and whispered, “Say hello and introduce yourself!”

“Hello. I’m Sarah, and I’m somebody who lost her memories, so please forgive me if I don’t quite get all of the social customs yet,” she hurriedly said.

“Nice to meet you, Sarah,” Jack replied. Randy and Adam examined her like she was under a microscope, while Peter and Marilee remained silent.

Erica scoffed in irritation. “All of you but Jack have no manners,” she grumbled, leading to a few chuckles and breaking the tension.

Over the rest of the meal, Sarah stayed mostly silent. Randy, Adam, and Jack cast curious glances at her, but Erica would always intervene to prevent them from interrogating Sarah. Everyone had been there to witness zombie-Sarah’s supernatural ki abilities, but Erica didn’t want them to dig up bad memories.

When the group stood up to leave, Sarah pulled Erica to the side.

“Why are Peter and Marilee so hostile to me?” she asked.

Erica hesitated. “They got roughed up a bit when you were rescued. They told me they don’t blame you, but I guess they’re still not comfortable around you.”

Sarah thought about it and came to a decision.

***

There’s the tall building. It should be just to the right, Sarah thought. A white brick building came into view, bearing the name Pebbletown Hospital. She passed through the double glass doors and passed a note from Sergeant Major David to the receptionist, who directed her to the third floor.

After exiting the elevator, Sarah found herself in a long hallway lit by white LEDs. The walls were littered by glass doors connecting to rooms. She walked forward, seeing groups of injured soldiers resting on beds, talking, and reading novels behind the transparent doors. Sarah finally spotted Peter and Marilee. She knocked on their door before entering.

“Hi, Peter. Hi, Marilee,” she greeted. They greeted her back, confused at her appearance.

“I wanted to apologize for how I hurt you. I’ll pay you back,” Sarah declared.

Instantly, Marilee said, “There’s no need. You didn’t hurt us; the mold colony did.”

“Still. I want to help you.” Sarah then grabbed Marilee’s hand. She transformed some ki into regeneration ki, which she pushed into Marilee’s body. Instantly, minor scrapes and the long gashes on her chest glowed green and healed. Within a couple seconds, she was fully healed.

“W-what?” Marilee sputtered. Sarah moved to Peter and did the same to him, healing his broken ribs.

“This is just a little trick I learned from copying the mold colony.”

Sarah left immediately without giving them time to thank her. Peter and Marilee’s gazes softened as they stared at the socially awkward girl.

***

Sarah spent the rest of the morning healing all the soldiers in the hospital, following Sergeant Major David’s instructions. Earlier, she had voiced her desire to help out to Arthur, who then directed her to David, his second-in-command. David had crafted a schedule for her. The next item on her list led her to an open field where soldiers were running drills.

An old, short man with graying hair was leading the group. The drill instructor never stopped yelling, pushing the soldiers to work harder.

Sarah walked up to the man. “Are you Pietro Ormanno?” she asked.

“That’s me, girly, and I’m busy right now,” he responded curtly before resuming his yelling. Sarah was annoyed by his tone of voice. She just handed him another note from David and crossed her arms.

Pietro’s face soured as he read the note. “Justin! Get over here!” he yelled.

“This girly here has something supernatural to do to you. I don’t like it, but it’s the Sergeant Major’s orders.” He reluctantly pushed the soldier to Sarah, who gripped his wrist.

Sarah flooded the man’s body with her ki. Her goal was to somehow activate the soldier’s ki abilities. Sarah wasn’t confident, but if the mold colony could unlock ki abilities, she could probably do the same.

Simply flooding the soldier’s body with ki didn’t seem to work. If anything, the ki seemed to become stagnant and stale. Sarah mentally slapped herself as she remembered how the ki in her own body always revolved in flowing cycles. She exerted her will, forcing her ki to move in turbulent swirls in Justin’s body.

It was too hard for her to keep every bit of ki flowing in a cycle. Often, she would accidentally lead two streams of ki to collide, ruining the flow. Every time that happened, Justin would wince in pain.

Drill Instructor Ormanno was gradually losing his patience, and was on the brink of ripping Sarah away from putting the soldier in more agony. Luckily, right at that moment Sarah felt a foreign ki swirling in tandem with hers.

Sarah smirked. She was right- swirling her ki stimulated Justin’s body to start producing ki of its own. She retracted her ki, and yet Justin’s body retained a meager amount of cycling ki.

“It worked. Justin, you now have ki in your body. Try and get a feel for it while I do the process on the others.” She turned to the Drill Instructor. “Mr. Ormanno, would you call over another soldier?”

It took four hours for Sarah to run through everyone, including the Drill Instructor. Many of them were patients she had just healed in the hospital, already back in swing.

For the rest of the day, Sarah taught the group as much as she could about ki. By cycling her own ki through their bodies, she was able to help the soldiers sense ki very quickly (Sarah felt a bit jealous- it took her so much effort to sense and manipulate ki when possessed by the mold colony). She mentioned the need for ki to cycle, ki’s ability to reinforce the body, and the ability to infuse intent into ki.

Ki intent was the hardest to explain. Sarah did her best, even showing her regeneration ki, but it was much too early for the soldiers to create ki intent. Luckily, Sarah wasn’t expected to have a huge effect in just one day.

She thought back to her meeting with David.

“Sarah, your gift with ki places great responsibility on you,” the Hispanic man said, his face solemn. “Our soldiers cannot fight these alien races for long. Supernatural abilities are tearing through our fighters, and our only hope is to fight fire with fire.”

“What does ‘fight fire with fire’ mean?” Sarah asked. David sighed.

“It means the safety of our nation relies on our soldiers gaining their own supernatural abilities,” he replied.

“So, you want me and Isabela to teach others? Sure!”

David smiled at her response. “Thank you. I knew I could count on you.” Then, he frowned. “However, Isabela is not cooperating. She requires all of her students to join an organization she’s a part of, called the Order of Virtue. Unfortunately, it’s an international organization, and therefore our soldiers cannot join.”

Sarah joined David in frowning. “Isabela isn’t helping…? So she’s not a good person?”

“It’s complicated. Isabela is willing to assist the army, but she won’t share her secrets.”

“Well that’s fine! As long as I figure out how to spread ki, then the number of ki users will grow exponentially! We don’t need mages anyway.” Sarah harrumphed.

The meeting ended after ironing out a few details of her schedule.