The forest wasn't just thick, it wasn't just moving. It was actively trying to eat us. Or something.

It was fine while we were moving, much to my surprise, seeing how much everything moved. The waving branches would brush against us, the vines would lick against our bodies, which felt very weird but wasn't inherently dangerous.

The real problem was when you stopped moving. If even for moments, roots, and vines would appear to ensnare you. Similar to how I recall some of the spiky climbing vines that grew in the garbage near our house. You'd watch them from one day to the next, and their little tendrils would make such tight wraps on any protrusions that they looked like the thread on a bolt.

Similar would happen to any unfortunate limb that stood still for more than it took to place the next in front of it. We paused to decided what direction to go in, and all of us had to flex our energies to dislodge plants so aggressively entangled that anything below the point of contact would start to loose circulation.

Now, it wasn't hard to dislodge them either, although that had its own strange repercussions. The plants seemed to really like Nebula, and would seek it out even more aggressively than their usual behavior. This lead to a thickening of the foliage right around us every time we stopped, as the act of disentangling ourselves would draw more.

Walking was nothing when you had what had to be superhuman stamina, but being forced to constantly take steps like that drained you mentally more than anything.

But it didn't matter what you thought about it. Even when I carried everyone above the forest to rest, the entire canopy curled upward at an alarming rate and damn near chased me into the sky. It terrifying to watch; doubly-so when you were the target.

I wound up razing a fairly decent section of the foliage to get us out of that particular pickle, and had no great ambitions to place myself in that position again. Holding up three people while trying to control my powers enough not obliterate myself an my erstwhile guests put me pretty much at the limit of my ability to control them, so much so that our levitation got pretty shaky as I was composing the sweeping blast that scoured away all the trees and vines.

The gains I'd had with visualizing and controlling the nature of the Nebula were helpful, as I managed to contort my Nebula into a state where it more closely resembled Viktor's fire Alignment than my own natural one. Even after we landed there were little flames here and there, scorching the roots that inevitably popped up to investigate all the sautéed salad I'd just created.

I released my control and we hoofed it out of the irregular form of the destruction post haste, not wanting to hang around in case there was some sort of mega-plant boss or something like that.

That's how I came to where I was at now, walking while thinking hard about how to make this easier on me, since I was still feeling the strain of my previous endeavors.

Obviously the whole doing two things at once wasn't my strong suit, so I was tripping and otherwise unsteady even more than normal. But I did have an idea, and I was reasonably sure it wasn't as a result of a tree-induced concussion.

Focusing inward as I continued to walk, I thought back to when we'd first arrived on planet, and sought to short-circuit the flow of Nebula out of my skin, instead wrapping it back around as I'd done before and suppressing my aura.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

It took a few tries to get it right as I hadn't had much cause to be doing it recently. I had a ton of Nebula, sure, but what I didn't have was a ton of pressure behind it. Not when I wasn't trying to, anyway.

It took a few (dozen) tries, but eventually I got it. With an almost-audible pop, my aura disappeared, as envisaged with my special sight anyway.

I didn't say anything, wanting a good control for my little experiment. That said, I was around some pretty perceptive people, and Viktor almost immediately noticed.

"What did you change?" He asked, leading with a question - as any good scientist must.

"Why?" I asked, feigning a bit of ignorance. It probably wouldn't work, I knew I had the world's worst poker face.

"The plants are ignoring you."

I looked around. It was true, my trick had worked!

"I surpassed the Nebula escaping from my skin by recirculating it before it could leave," I told him, giving as much detail as possible. I didn't want to have a round of twenty questions after all that brain work.

"Oh, of course," Celistar said, and then she shut hers off to the point that if I hadn't been looking at her, I would have had no idea she was even there. Was that how I appeared to other people?

I will admit that I hadn't even realized how much of her aura I had been picking up until it was just gone. It almost felt like there was a hole where a person should be, but the plants really didn't seem to like it much, actively recoiling from her.

"Yours is much more… refined than mine," the other woman told me. "I did not expect that."

"What makes you say that?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"Your presence melds with the world to the point you're background noise. I can tell from experience that I'm basically a walking anomaly when I do this. The problem is that I can't seem to adjust it between on and off."

"That's usually my problem," I said, "but I mean, having them run away is success in my book."

Just then I felt Viktor switch off the same way the two of us had. He looked at his hands, flexing them, and seemed satisfied.

Probably wanted to make sure that it wouldn't affect his ability to produce fist-centric violence.

Now, his aura was there, but it was just above the background noise. The plants would move towards him, but at such a slow rate that it didn't matter. It was more like a group of women fondly waving at him as he passed, the thought of which made for an amusing mental image.

István didn't seem at all surprised that Viktor got there first, just shaking his head. We all were moving, and now that he was the only target, the pressure should have went up, but it didn't, which was confusing.

The plants reached out for him, the same as ever.

Well, they did, but over the next fifteen minutes, his presence gradually lowered before it vacillated back and forth around a minimal point of blending with the world. I could only really see it with my special sense of vision, unless I concentrated really hard.

Somehow, the constant tick tock up and down made it really hard for me to determine exactly where he was relative to me.

"You doing that on purpose?" I asked, noting that the plants seemed to have the same trouble I had, just aimlessly twitching through the air in random directions.

He blushed.

"I'm ashamed to admit I can not constrain it immaculately. It is as though it wishes to move out of my grasp if I clamp down on it."

"Don't worry about it. It's probably the most effective approach," I said, pointing at the foliage. "Look, the poor things are confused."

"So they are," he said, stopping and leaning in for a look.

"If those eat your eyeballs, it's not my problem," I said with a laugh, moving past. I'd be a liar if I thought that my provocation would have any effect on his actions, and I was correct.

"Well, any approach aside from yours," Celistar pointedly pointed out. While pointing at me.

She did have a point, though.

The plants had zero reaction to me at all. They'd actually stopped moving entirely when I would pass, only to pick it up again for the next person.

"That's okay," I said, with big, shit-eating smile. "We can't all be as awesome as me."

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