Mü, Part 14

Yeah, I know it has taken me forever to finally get around to posting these again. I managed to finish my 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo and now I'm going to start posting them again.


The Past

“Again.” The voice through the speaker system blared down at Lynn. She closed her eyes again and concentrated. She shifted the ball in her hands toward the slot for it a few hundred meters away. There was a blare as the sensors recorded that she was off by several inches again.

“That is enough Lynn. Please report to the results room.” She sighed and opened her eyes again. The Esper level test was going badly for her. She had hoped to have gotten better but it seemed that it hadn’t happened.

When she arrived the the results room she receives the paper with her results on it. Like it had three months ago the paper said that she was a level four Esper. Three months and her results hadn’t improved at all. It had been nearly a year since her power had increased at all. It had been nearly a year since she had started her special training. Maybe is was about time that she gave up on that and continued with her real training again.

She sighed and slipped the piece of paper into her pocket. With the end of year Esper tests over it was time for her to enjoy her new years eve. She didn’t really have any plans, most of her friends were going to go celebrate their increased scores however Lynn didn’t really feel like doing it. One of them had managed to reach level 5 this time, Lynn was happy for her but it also made Lynn feel inadequate.

Lynn had managed to reach level 4 before her friend and now she had been passed by, in fact most of them were beginning to get better then her. She wondered the streets of the University District trying to decide what to do. Nothing however stuck her interest and she ended up reaching her apartment. She unlocked her door and slipped inside. She could have probably teleported inside, she was capable of short personal teleportations but it seemed like too much of a pain.

She sat down on her couch and flipped on the TV. It was talking about the new year and what the different news casters were planning for their new years resolutions. She remembered the resolution that she had made last year and felt regret at not having accomplished it. She stared at the remote that she had set down on the coffee table.

She closed her eyes and mentally reached toward remote willing it into her hand. When she opened her eyes the remote was still on the table. Of course it was still on the table. No teleporter had managed a reverse teleporation, the ability to move an object at a distance to the teleporter. She had told herself last year that she would be the first one to do it, that she would spend all year trying to accomplish it.

It had been a year since then. A year of trying and failing to do the impossible. She hadn’t initially thought that it would be impossible, she had thought that if she just put in the time and effort to try it then she would be able to do it but life wasn’t that easy.

She had tried everything she could think of. She had thought that she would be able to bring things back through the spacial tunnel that was created when she moved an object somewhere else but that proved to be a faulty assumption, the spacial tunnel collapsed after the object finished moving through it and the attempts just ended up making things explode. While some people might think that would be useful it was hardly what she had been attempting.

Reversing the tunnel didn’t seem to work. Whatever it was that she did to create it in the first place was enough beyond her that she had no idea how one would reverse it. So in the end months of wasted effort was spent trying to accomplish something that dozens of Espers before her must have already tried and failed to do.

Now she had a year of failure to show for her stupid new years resolution. If she had practiced the standard way then maybe she would have been a level 5 too now. She looked at the TV again. There were only a few minutes left to go until midnight. It looks like she really did fail last year’s resolution. It was probably better just to give up.

She wondered what she should make for this year’s resolution. Maybe she should aim for becoming a level 5 Esper, that seemed like an reasonable goal. Most people’s powers peak out at around there so she should be able to accomplish that too.

She stood up and moved toward her balcony, opening the door and stepping outside. It was cold but not to much so. Mu was almost always a reasonable temperature. The concentrated for a minute and then opened up a spacial tunnel to move herself onto the roof. Once it was completed she panted, it was always more tiring then she expected.

She laid back on roof and stared up at the stars. She had always loved looking up at the stars when she had been a child. She father had been an astronomer and had told her all about the stars. The brightness from the city all around her made the stars dim and difficult to see but she could still make out many of the constellations.

She didn’t mind being a teleporter but she had really wanted to be able to fly. If you had asked her what Esper power she wanted it would have been telekinesis. Powerful Espers with telekinesis were capable of lifting themselves in the air and flying.

She reached out her hand toward the sky as if trying to grasp at the stars. What was it that she really wanted. Why was it that she was trying so hard at this stupid resolution. She wasn’t really sure herself. The stars seemed so far away, so very far away. How far would she need to reach to catch them.

She heard the tolling of a bell somewhere off in the distance. It was almost midnight, it must be the countdown before the new year. It would be easy to just give up on her resolution and pick up a new one, one that she knew she could accomplish. But what then, won’t that just be the same as giving up. Was it wrong to give up on an impossible task. Lynn just didn’t know.

The bell tolled for the seventh time. She felt like she was running out of time to decide what to do. A silly idea really, the changing of the year didn’t really mean anything. The bell tolled the eight time. How high could she reach, she wanted to know that. It was part of the reason she had volunteered to be an Esper in the first place. If she gave up know would she ever be able to reach the stars.

The bell rang the twelfth time and Lynn sat up. She should probably get back to the apartment. She looked up once more at the stars. She wasn’t ready to give up now. It didn’t matter if it took another year or ten, she wasn’t going to give up on making her resolution. Espers were supposed to do the impossible, however was her plan any different.

She stood at the edge of the roof and looked down at her balcony. It took her a moment to focus and open the tunnel to it and she stepped through. Stepped through? She stood on the balcony and walked through it in her mind. Somehow the process seemed different then it had a couple of minutes ago. She stepped through the mental steps she had used to teleport herself. They seemed clearer to her then they had previously.

There was something different about how she teleported herself and how she teleported objects. She closed her eyes to remove the visual distractions. Then she opened up a tunnel in preparation of teleporting herself. However she just stood there keeping the tunnel open. Then she reached out, felt herself being pulled in by the tunnel. The remote on the table, she felt it, like she was touching it with her fingers. It was like she was letting her senses, her awareness, get sucked through the spacial tunnel. She could feel the remote like she was holding it in her hand, then in a random stab in the dark she open up another tunnel, this open leading back to herself. She funneled her awareness through the new tunnel and then, she was holding it.

The remote was in her hands.