It'd taken Ash over week to learn to convert his energy into fire and for a specific ability. Robert had taken a month of cycling just the water portion of the external energy to shift himself over to being water.

I strongly doubted Barry had managed to figure out how to convert his own energy into metal in the half day he'd been lost and fighting spiders.

I still prayed for a miracle. Water Water Water! As the fire flared at me from the puncture in white hot flames, my energy did not shift to water and suffocate the fire. Did not shift to earth to shield me.

As the first flames hit my right shoulder to begin its searing destructive work and a scream started crawling out of my throat, a miracle of protection did not occur.

But as I continued flooding every erg of power I had out of me, I felt for the barest fraction of a moment a shift. A motion that I couldn't explain even if I had been rational. I shoved harder at that motion even as I felt like I went up in flame, and as my energy hit the car directly my energy became for an instant tangible.

The destroyed wreck of a car was hit with a force that didn't just move it, but threw it like a child having a tantrum. The ton of car lifted with no visible means and rocketed away like it had been swatted, crashing high against a nearby tree and turning into a giant fireball as the entire thing went up in flames.

Screams and adrenaline coursed through me as Barry stumbled, his balance lost as his weapon lost contact with a suddenly missing vehicle. He tipped to the side and myself with him and I planted a foot, trying to spin to break his wrist and pin him. Only for my spin to literally throw him over me and crashing into another tree dozens of feet away as I swayed, quickly brushing away the flames that had caught on my shirt...but hadn't really burned me?

I felt scooped out, nearly as bad as the last time I'd used the Art of Awakening. I wasn't completely empty though and urged my dantian to spin even as it and I ached. I needed to keep up, but the loss of that much energy was making me half drunk, half drugged, and all sorts of out of it.

I glanced to the side, hoping to see my friends. Ash and Melissa were thrown off to one side but staring at the fireball. Karen lay flattened against the ground arms over her head where the car had been, unmoving. I swayed again for a moment in fear before she looked up at me.

I looked back at Barry who was climbing to his feet unsteadily. The tree I'd thrown him into had a huge depression from where he'd hit. He stared at me for a moment from a distance I was honestly surprised to throw. His cycling, which seemed to be solely focused into his weapon and earth technique, skipped a beat and I could almost feel the energy he was feeding into the earth technique becoming unstable.

My shoulder ached like hell, but there weren't any more flames on my clothes. No melted skin from being held to the fire for the second I was.

"I threw you back, Barry." I got out, my mind a little loopy as I tried to make a point. "No one else, me." I waved wildly towards the burning fireball in the tree. "You tried to kill me and my friends, I got rid of that too." I didn't have a weapon, the last few pieces of the car either too far away or entirely too destroyed to be useful.

It didn't matter at the moment, I raised a fist at him. "And if you don't throw away that stupid weapon, sit down, and give the fuck up, I'm going go find a spider around here to feed you to. You can find Joe that way."

Barry just stared at me for a long moment as I felt my dantian generate more energy, clearing up my head just a bit more.

The stray thought hit me that it'd be nice to have a few dozen of those geodes right now.

Barry took a moment to stare at the burning car in the tree, turned back to where the car had originally been at. He stumbled forward for a minute before more of his dwindling energy flared into his earth technique. "What did you do, Firen?"

"I wasn't kidding, Barry. Throw the damn thing away and give up. There's not a jail in the world that can probably hold you at this point and even after this I still don't want to kill you because killing you means I've killed someone and you can't really take that back." I rambled. "But I really want to make sure my friends are OK and you standing there not giving up means I can't check on them."

My energy finally lapped into my first breakthrough. Great, another nearly thirty or so times and I'll be back up to full. It cleared my head a little more though, and I realized Barry probably hadn't used nearly as much energy up as I did in that one instant, but I was already pulling back to even on what I could feel he was still holding.

"If I have to go through you to be able to check on my friends, I'm going to do what I have to."

The metal tip of his weapon dulled and Barry pulled the bent bar slightly, letting his hand slip through. He tossed it away, but only like ten feet. I could move that far in like a second if I needed to.

"Fine, check your friends." Barry moved and sat even further away from his weapon. Thankfully also away from the others. "I still want to know what you did."

I mostly ignored him, half stumbling over to Karen first. "You good?"

Karen was hyperventilating. Probably the definition of not good. "It was blowing up in my face! Then, then it blew over my head!"

Scrapes on her arms. No blood on her face. "You're good for the moment. Don't change that." I helped her sit up.

I managed to walk straight over to Ash and Melissa. I eyeballed them both even as my energy continued its slow rise. Something vaguely told me I was about as right as Karen was at the moment. "Good?"

Melissa nodded. Ash shook his head and somewhat held out his leg, where a piece of shrapnel was lodged into his lower leg behind his shin. "I'll survive though, no worries!" Ash said looking unsure at my face.

"We need to get you to the military guys. Maybe they have something. Or they can at least get us to a hospital." I nodded to myself. That made sense.

"Firen, I still want to know what you did." Barry spoke up again and I glared at him. "For a moment, your energy felt like this place. No alien, no taint. What did you do?" His voice was pleading and demanding in equal measure.

My energy finally filled enough for my second breakthrough and I felt an unknown pain ease. And with that, definitely confirmation something was still wrong. "I'm glad you're finally realizing I'm not working with the alien. But my friends first, remember? And since your car decided to impale my friend, I need to get him safe first."

"Fine, whatever. Lead the way out, I'll follow." Barry stood and I finally felt the energy in him let go, the earth technique fading into nothing before his cycling stilled completely. Barely over one breakthrough's worth of energy.

I shuddered for some reason at the feeling, Barry leaving himself nearly empty. "You first, follow the rope. I wonder if the guard heard the car explode?" I leaned down, grabbing Ash and picking him up, staggering for a second as I did. Ash grimaced but didn't say anything.

"Did you hear an explosion?" Melissa asked, and I turned to look at her. Holding the radio. Oh. I wonder if he'd gotten back with a bigger gun?

"Negative. Did something blow up? Over."

"The car." Melissa answered. "We're coming back. Ash got hurt, something in his leg. And with a possible problem person." She eyeballed Barry.

"Understood. I'll let them know we need a medical kit. Over."

Ash was doing his best to keep it compressed, which was honestly fairly impressive since I didn't see much blood flowing. "Half a mile back, you good?"

"If I say yes, do I have to walk it?" Ash asked with a pained chuckle.

I didn't say anything, just shifted a little to keep him in a bridal carry and started walking.

"What did you do, Firen." Barry insisted from where he was standing, taking short breaths.

"Later. Walk."

~~~

"Put him in the back of the jeep and get him to a hospital. We've got his leg in a partial tourniquet for the blood flow, but you need to get it out and stitched up. Beyond us here." One of the military guards said. "Hopefully they've got something that can actually stitch you there."

"Oh yeah, third breakthrough. Normal needles can't really draw blood." Ash gave another painful laugh as I lifted him again and then moved over to the Jeep, settling him in the backseat. "This sucks."

By this point, I felt back up to about my fourth breakthrough, which fixed some sort of deprivation I hadn't known I could cause. I still felt really far away though.

"Karen, Melissa. Get him to Phelps, I'll catch up."

Karen climbed into the back with her boyfriend while Melissa drove, getting turned around and about peeling out leaving.

"Now will you finally tell me what you did?" Barry demanded and I turned to him.

And my adrenaline finally dropped and I sagged, tears welling up.

"Ma'am?!" I heard. "Is she going into shock?"

Barry sat down against one of the trucks with a wince, ignoring the guard with a gun trained on him as he watched me and I watched him. I watched him.

~~~

I snapped out of it suddenly and it was dark, with some sort of bandage on my shoulder.

"About damn time, Firen." I heard a voice behind me. Why was I staring at the wheel of one of the trucks? I turned and saw Barry and several guards, more than I recalled being there originally. Who were the new guys? "About damn time you snapped out of it." Barry repeated himself.

"Now, are you going to tell me what you did? It's the only reason I'm still here after all." He glared at a soldier, the one that had been holding a gun on Barry. Earlier?

"I panicked and threw everything at the fire." I could hear the dull tone in my voice as the imagery from earlier flashed in my head. "Somehow managed to make it physical to blow the entire car away."

"I don't care about that, congrats you survived. Might have been different if I'd had a chance to tamper with the car batteries ahead of time. But right before you hit the car, you did something. The energy you were throwing around felt different. Like the forest, it didn't have the damn alien's feel all over it. You did something where your power didn't taint everything around it at that moment. What was it? Do it again. If you're not working with the alien, do it again and prove it to me."

I laughed. It was all I could do. "If I knew what I did, or how I did it, I'd do it again." Damn it, now he gives me a way to show I wasn't working with the alien?

"Need me to try to kill you again?" Barry asked with honest curiosity.

I immediately started cycling energy, glad it felt more or less back to normal. "Fuck no and fuck you. I'll figure it out." I shook my head, ready in case he decided to push it anyways.

"That's not it. You're just dumping alien energy into the planet again." Barry looked disappointed then turned and walked away, giving a generous sidestep to the scoop out in the road, then glared at a guard that stepped up to stop him.

"Barry." I called and he paused. "I stand by what I said before about my friends. And if we get into a fight again, I'm not going to assume how strong I need to be based on training. I'm just going to hit you as hard as I can until you stop moving."

"Right." He chuckled and continued walking away.

I debated stopping him then, since he still felt like he barely had a breakthrough worth of energy and literally wasn't cycling. But forcing him into a fight now was counter-productive to checking on Ash. But why wasn't he up to full energy again as well?

I looked at all the military around me and sighed. "Alright, who's going back to Leonard Wood? I need a ride to Phelps in Rolla. And maybe someone's phone."