John had pictured many scenarios when he asked Claire for her opinion on her father's actions. In an ideal world, she would have scolded him for his wicked deeds, and he would have seen the error of his ways and made an unbreakable vow to never again brutally murder another human being. He had also been braced for the possibility she was a vicious little psychopath beneath those wide, weepy eyes, and she'd turn around and tell Curtis how much she adored the thought of him spilling blood in her name.

Somehow, he hadn't prepared himself at all for what actually happened.

It started mostly on script. She looked at John and said, "I wish he hadn't."

For around a second, John hoped he was about to receive something close to his ideal scenario, if packaged a little differently from what he had in mind.

Then she turned and looked at her father and finished her thought with a quiet, "I wish I was still dead."

Her voice was as hoarse and weak as ever, and yet there was a strength of conviction in it that easily matched, and perhaps even surpassed, the steely resolve with which Curtis had declared there was no length to which he wouldn't go to keep his daughter safe.

The lack of reaction on John's part wasn't because he kept his cool in the face of an unexpected situation. It was because even his subconscious didn't know how to respond to this development, and his conscious mind had left the building, carried off into a world of utter bewilderment that left him unable to form even a facial expression.

Curtis, on the other hand, seemed to age ten years in a single broken heartbeat. His expression set the record for most emotions cycled through in the span of a second, before finally settling on something like devastation. His eyes were wide and wet, lips trembling, brows furrowed. "Claire… baby…"

"It hurts, daddy," she whispered. "I thought I was finally free. But now…"

Abruptly, John felt like he was intruding on a private moment. He turned away and did his best to switch his ears off as a whispered conversation continued between father and daughter, turning his attention to the hospital and its unconventional demolition.

Every few seconds, another explosion would rock the building, sending showers of rubble cascading into the air. The ground shook with every hit. Between the blasts, he could faintly hear a voice shouting, presumably one of the five attackers calling out taunts to Curtis. It wouldn't be long before they realised he'd gotten out—they must have had a way to know he was there in the first place, plus their knowledge of this daughter implied they possessed info-gathering capabilities. It wouldn't surprise him if the Gundam guy had a high-tech sensor suite or something. When they decided to check the area, they'd find their target only a hundred metres away.

And if John was spotted alongside him, he doubted he'd be able to talk his way out of it. They'd peg him as Curtis' ally and there'd be no convincing them otherwise, he was sure.

And yet, he couldn't bring himself to interrupt Claire and Curtis' hushed conversation. For several reasons. Obviously, there was the social awkwardness of barging into an emotional heart-to-heart. That would be way too awkward. More than that, though, he held out some hope that, while this wasn't exactly the way he'd hoped his question would play out, it could end up leading to the desired destination.

Despite himself, he caught snippets of conversation.

"—so tired—" Claire hissed, before wheezing a low cough.

"—been so strong, tried so hard—" Curtis insisted just as quietly.

"—hurts so much—"

"—can't give up now—"

"—everyone I know—"

"—your mother—"

The left wing of the hospital finally collapsed in on itself with an angry rumble, sending up a plume of dust that reached almost as high as the building had. It rolled outwards like a cloud, flowing through the trees at the boundary of the hospital's grounds and flooding into the park.

Fuck's sake.

John was forced to briefly interrupt the father-daughter confrontation, rushing back to grab them both and teleport them another hundred metres away, before pushing along the sarcophagus a little further. It didn't get them completely away from the dust cloud, but the thicker part of it was only up to Claire's waist by the time it reached them. Still, the air was suddenly far lower quality than it had been a moment before, and that couldn't be good for a kid who already didn't seem to be breathing very freely.

Sure enough, the girl broke into a coughing fit within three breaths of the dusty air, doubling over and having to hold on to the stone prison for balance. Predictably, her father's concern redoubled.

"Claire!" he called out to her with a strain in his voice that might not have been there before the revelations of the last minute, and John felt him wriggle around in his sarcophagus.

With a sigh, he let the stone prison disperse. He was on guard just in case, ready to activate Accelerate and Aurora Blade the guy's head off his fucking shoulders if he tried anything stupid, but the man was on his knees at his daughter's side in an instant, holding her up and whispering comfort to her as she coughed and coughed.

"This is why!" Claire whined between wheezes, sounding all too much a child in that moment as she slumped into her father's arms. Her shoulders started shaking, and little sobs hiccuped out between coughs. Curtis clutched her close, looking mildly shell-shocked.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

John found himself wondering how old she actually was. Curtis hadn't said. Her appearance made it hard to tell, what with the pale, sallow skin, the hairless head, the thin, frail limbs, et cetera. Definitely not a teenager yet, but he wouldn't be surprised if she'd hit double digits recently.

Whatever the answer, she was way too young to want to die. Teenage angst wasn't supposed to kick in until you were a teenager, and even then it typically wasn't supposed to sink to that level of darkness. She'd been dealt a shit hand, lost, and then pulled back into the game only to have the exact same shit hand slapped down in front of her by the dealer. And then, to look across the table to find that her own father had been the one to pay to get her dealt back in, and he'd murdered hundreds of the other patrons in the casino to do so?

Yeah. That's probably not a nice situation to be in.

John felt awful for the girl. He really did. If she still had a system of her own, there could've been some hope. All it would take was a level up, and she'd be healed. Or perhaps there would've been some spell in her menus that would've dealt with the cancer—then again, probably not; the bastards behind these systems didn't seem like the types to provide an easy solution to her suffering.

But that doesn't mean there are no solutions to her suffering at all, John thought. It was hard to imagine the showrunners behind the systems could have foreseen and accounted for every eventuality.

John delved into his Aura menu and went straight for an obvious Spell. It took up all of his remaining Aura for now, but he deemed it worth the expenditure.

Unlocked Biomancy Level 6!

-16000 Aura

Current Aura: 150

Seeing his Aura count dip down to just above zero for the first time in days was deeply depressing, but it was offset by the new knowledge that injected itself into his mind. Biomancy, as expected, worked only on himself, giving him a 3-D map of his body that he could peruse down to the cell level, and manually manipulate on a micro or macro scale. A few days ago, he would have been caught between disappointment and elation; it was great for him, but being unable to heal others took the shine off it a bit.

Now, he was mostly unbothered. Still frustrated a bit, but he'd been expecting it would only work on him; the system didn't seem the type to grant abilities that positioned the user as a secondary character in the storylines they were involved in. He hadn't for a moment believed that Biokinesis would work on others.

Not immediately, anyway. Not without a few tweaks.

But to make those tweaks, he'd need Aura. The best way he'd found to farm Aura was, in his experience, to look cool while fighting. He could stand around here and make a bunch of lame quips at Curtis and Claire until he got what he needed, but that risked coming out with a joke that didn't land, putting him back at square one.

Admittedly, going and fighting the furious five came with the risk of death or worse. But that was far preferable to an awkward silence after a failed joke, so the decision was an easy one.

He looked up at the hospital. The explosions had stopped, but the cloud of dust was roiling like there was still action going on inside. He could just about see the still-standing wing of the hospital, and there were light sources glowing within. The five were probably searching the place. It wouldn't be long before they realised Curtis wasn't there, or whatever sensory abilities they had available alerted them to the fact, and then they'd start searching, most likely.

John still wasn't sure whether he should let them have Curtis. If anything, he was leaning more towards the eventuality that he'd throw the guy to the wolves as a distraction while he got Claire out of there.

But that would involve having to take care of a sick kid on his own for a while, and fuck that. He had nothing against children in the abstract, but that sounded absolutely awful. The awkwardness was already giving him shivers, and it hadn't even happened yet.

He looked at Curtis. "I have an ultimatum."

Curtis looked back at him, hugging his daughter to his chest. His eyes were cautious, but he gave a nod.

"I heal whatever's wrong with Claire," he said.

Curtis opened his mouth to protest, but John held up a hand to cut him off.

"I heal her, and you use those wings to fly you right the fuck out of Watford, and never hurt another human being again."

Curtis' mouth closed, then thinned to a grimace.

"Let me amend that," John said, realising how unreasonable that was in the current state of the world. "You promise to never kill anyone again, and I'll heal your daughter."

Claire was looking at him now, too, eyes red-rimmed. "You can do that?" she asked in a small voice. There was no hope in it, quite the opposite. Not one atom of her being allowed her to believe things could get better, not after what she'd been through.

To be fair to her, he wasn't completely confident he could do it, either. 75% sure. Maybe 65. 60 at minimum.

"Yes, I can," he said anyway, because this seemed like the best solution to the problem facing him, and so he was going to do his best to make sure it happened. He stared at Curtis. "And I'll take it a step further. You don't just stop killing people, but you help people. You become a fucking paragon. A goddamn hero. You travel the country and you save everyone you can. For every single one of those 500 you killed to get your kid back, you have to save one thousand."

"That would be 500,000 people," Curtis growled. "There might not be that many of us left in the entire planet."

"Too bad. That's the number you have to aspire towards if you want to save her," John told him, unwavering. "Actually, no. I'm not going to be that much of a dick. I'm going to heal her because she deserves a real second chance at life, and then you're going to be so goddamn grateful to me that you'll do exactly what I say."

Or else, he hoped was being implied here. He didn't try to glare, out of concern it might come across as distinctly unintimidating and ruin his whole shtick.

Silence settled between them. Dust rolled through the air, thick on the ground like a roiling sea of mist around their ankles, while lighter particles drifted through the air, looking like millions of fireflies as they refracted the light of the burning sky.

Finally, Claire's fingers clenched in Curtis' robe, and his glare softened to a frown. He bowed his head, pressing his face into the top of his daughter's skull. It seemed like a familiar gesture, as if it was a habit of his to rub his face in her hair, when she still had it.

"I'll do anything," he said.

Then one of his arms exploded.

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