Sun took the keys nervously as he said, "Of course… I was just distracted. I mean, I've never seen you in clothes other than those meant for training and you look so… beautiful." His face turned faintly pink as it was a bit embarra.s.sing to say such words; especially to someone he liked.

As Sun took the keys from her hand, Elizabeth thought, 'How'd he react if he knew I used to be a guy?' Her smile morphed into the hideous grin of schadenfreude she usually displayed, as she fully intended to tell Sun right then and there, after thinking of the hilarious reactions he'd give her.

However, as she started to speak, a feverish shock-like sensation crippled her body and froze her mouth as horrible feelings of insecurity and helplessness ensnared her body. For some reason, it seemed like the scariest thing she could imagine was continuing, and even after trying to suppress the irrational burst of emotions, there was barely an effect.

Elizabeth's strange behavior did not go unnoticed, as Sun worriedly asked, " Are you ok?" Out of anxiousness, he placed a hand on her shoulder without even noticing.

The moment his hand connected, Elizabeth felt the paralyzation ease up. She could only voice out a weak, "Yeah..." before she returned to normal and took Sun's hand to lead him down to the first floor. She didn't notice, but even after calming down, her hand never let go of his; it didn't even loosen its grip somewhat. It was only after arriving before the car that Elizabeth noticed and quickly withdrew her hand.

The trip back to her house was uneventful and quiet. More than anything, because Sun was the personification of "Defensive Driving" and would refuse to give anything less than 100% of his attention to driving. In this time of inactivity, Elizabeth opted to digest the contents of the Neutral Enchantment Creed she had received from her last hidden quest. Since it was a short ten miles to her house from the dojo and it was currently mid-day — when rush hour had yet to set in — by the time Elizabeth was done going through the Creed of Neutral Enchantments, she could already take in the sight of her house's neighborhood.

Elizabeth got out and opened her gate to let Sun part the car outside the garage before she awkwardly returned to invite him into the house. Upon understanding the amount of consideration behind her moves, or lack thereof, she made the spontaneous decision to make up a reason to get Sun to enter with her. After all, if she followed through with her original intentions of leaving him outside to wait as she searched for pieces of DNA, it would be extremely rude. She could at least invite him in and cook or something…

Elizabeth took Sun to the kitchen and cooked some simple snacks; the kind served at parties or gatherings. She laid out a plate of crackers and various meats and cheese before asking, "You want something to drink?"

"Water's fine..."

"Oh, ok..." Elizabeth filled up a cup of water for him before saying, "Help yourself to the TV in the living room, I'll be back in a minute." That was the extent of her hospitality as nothing else came to mind. Thus, she left in search of DNA; whatever form she found it in was acceptable.

Elizabeth returned to her room — at least her room in this house that is — and after ransacking her closet and combing through piles on top of piles of extra large s.h.i.+rts, hoodies, sweaters, pants, and pajamas, she finally found a couple pieces of loose hair that matched her previous body's DNA.

As Elizabeth was putting away the clothes she'd pulled out whilst searching for DNA, she found the headband and armband Jane had gifted her when she started her Muay Thai training. She had forgotten about it as her thoughts just before leaving the house to live somewhere else temporarily, completely obfuscated minor details like what kind of apparel she'd be taking with her. Only her bare necessities were taken in the interest of time and because she wasn't really thinking with a straight head at the time.

Now that she was back to her house and possessed a less stressed demeanor, she chose to correct her previous blunder and carry the clothes she'd bought — the ones from the first side quest that she left behind — as well as these gifts from the dojo back with her. Elizabeth wrapped the hairs she planned on taking back with her onto one of her needles from her acupuncture kit before tossing the kit atop all the clothes she would take back with her.

She put on the headband and armband to lessen the number of things she needed to balance and made her way back over to Sun. Looking as ridiculous as she did, it was no wonder that Sun asked, "Do you want me to help you carry all that?"

"Nah, I got it. Anyway, now that we're here and alone, I might as well heal you up and fulfill my promise from earlier." Elizabeth said as she set aside her clothes on the kitchen table and reached out for her needles.

Just as she was about to place her hands on his s.h.i.+rt to remove it, a sudden realization of her own comfortability with Sun caused her to stop and frown slightly. Elizabeth retracted her arm as she said, "T-take off your s.h.i.+rt..."

Sun complied and showed no reaction to being pierced by Elizabeth's needles. His injuries were extremely minor compared to the things Elizabeth had dealt with previously, so it was to no one's surprise that she restored Sun to a perfectly healthy state after just a couple minutes.

As Elizabeth started withdrawing her needles out of Sun's body she said, "Mhmm… It seems you followed through with my suggestion to stop galvanizing anymore Qi. This is good; very good..."

"Right..."

"So, the reason I asked you to do so is to once more fix your foundation. You see, my uh… outburst the other night was because I thought you had decided to intentionally ruin your own foundation even after I gave you a shot at cultivating. I realize now that I misunderstood and hope you don't hold it against me..."

Sun flashed Elizabeth a carefree smile as he wholeheartedly said, "You know you didn't even have to ask for my forgiveness, right? You wear your heart on your sleeve and in cases like these, I think it's a good thing..."

"..." Elizabeth didn't know how to respond to forgiveness like this, so she just stayed quiet for a short time. When she started speaking again, she ended up coming off a bit uncaring as a result, saying, "...Ok. going back to my misunderstanding, I realized you don't know anything about spirituality, so let's start with the basics. Spirituality can be thought of your energy's parameters. In the same way your physical body has parameters for strength, resistance or defense, speed, and endurance or stamina, your spirit has parameters for strength and perception. You train with fire so the easiest way to understand the effects of training spirituality would be in comparing the quality of our personal fire. Go ahead, show me your personal flame..."

Sun, as man obsessing over training since the time he'd been stripped of his talents as a pract.i.tioner, naturally had his curiosity piqued by Elizabeth's speech. He held out his hand and activated his Fire Qi and a weak and barely-visible pink flame appeared in the center of his palm. Elizabeth activated her personal fire at almost the same time, yet her fire wasn't at all like Sun's. Her personal flame was recognizably red and burned at so stably that if Sun weren't close enough to feel the heat radiating out personally, he'd guess there was just a static image of a flame hovering atop Elizabeth's palm.

"See the difference? Even if you are almost a full Stage ahead of me, my flame easily beats yours because the potency of my spiritual parameters vastly surpa.s.ses yours, and if you notice carefully, what we're comparing is your Qi with my Inner Strenght. Now, before you get depressed or something, calm down and listen. It's still relatively easy to correct your foundation, even more so after my most recent breakthrough in strength, so strap in and memorize these mantras so we can get to fixing your foundation."

After pa.s.sing Sun some pa.s.sages and mantras from her Basic Flames Control Manual, to get him ready for meditation, she said, "To fix the problems with your foundation you're going to have to strip away the old foundation you already set up. So, for now, stop galvanizing Qi and focus on meditation. I'll check up on your progress from time to time and after your spirituality matches your rank in cultivation, we'll "replace" your foundation."

After settling the matter with Sun, Elizabeth felt a bit better now that she thought her karma had evened out with her compensation eliminating any hostility her needlessly harsh actions of yesternight might have generated. It probably wasn't the healthiest way to view her interpersonal relations.h.i.+ps, but at the moment, she couldn't deny that this was the most accurate way to describe her thought process.