They're lucky he did cut his thumb. Ame was a few seconds away from stabbing herself through the arm, for the same purpose.

Ame does her best to stretch Axiom beyond simple repair, seeking not just better health, but optimal health. Not only is it worth the effort in its own right, its also good practice. Her Unique Skill has definitely leveled up from when she first got it, even if it seems to do so more subtly than other Skills.

A few of them wonder if she can undo permanent contraceptive potions they took before retiring. (This takes some extra effort and seems to stretch the Skill, but is possible!)

It's certainly gotten faster, and it no longer requires her to reach a meditative state at all, merely an intense focus will do.

When she takes a break for lunch, a young woman in similar dress sidles up to her out of an alleyway as she passes. She looks healthy, but seem to radiate a sort of listlessness and hopelessness. She's visibly nervous, too.

"...Hey. I heard you're doing healing."

Most of the extra effort in undoing the contraceptive potions actually comes from her having a real hard time thinking of the effects of a permanent contraceptive potion as less optimal than not-that. She refrains from giving the ones who request it weird looks but it really feels like unhealing rather than healing, when she does it.

It makes her wonder if maybe Axiom takes their mental body image into account when she uses it on someone else? Or maybe, it's possible to use Axiom to hurt, as well as heal. Something to test, next time someone tries to kill her.

Ame promised to meet Elizabeth for lunch, but when she steps outside and sees this similarly-dressed girl's demeanor, she stops. There are many possible explanations for this, all of them suspicious.

"I am."

Ame pivots and pulls the stranger back into the concealment of the alleyway.

"Why are you out here instead of coming in with everyone else?"

"I'm not on their list. For a whole bunch of reasons. What's more, what I need might not be something you can do. What did you think of the Grail Church?"

"I didn't think anything of it in particular. Now, what reasons."

She hesitates.

"...If the Church learns about me, I will die. That's the big one. I'd show up funny on their medical tests."

Shit. In retrospect Ame doesn't know why she's surprised. She was deliberately making waves. Was she expecting that to not stir anything up?

Ame stares at the other girl, eyes piercing.

"Alright. What do you need me to do? And are they gonna wanna kill me over it?"

She shifts uncomfortably.

"...I don't know. To both. I could learn what exactly your Skill does and then guess if it'd fix what's wrong with me and if they'll be upset about it."

"There hasn't yet been anything my Skill couldn't fix. Tell me what's wrong."

"Something unusual that is really best kept a secret is wrong."

Ame gives her a flat look.

"I'm not going to guess at whatever you think you're hinting at. For all I know you're talking about a politically seditious tattoo you got while you were drunk. You came to me. If you're not going to tell me what you want healed, what do you want?"

"It's not a tattoo. It's-

Can you turn me human?"

Raised eyebrow.

"You realize that doesn't really clarify anything. It might be possible. Or I might not be able to, yet. Or it might depend on what you're starting as, if you're not human. You're gonna have to be more specific."

She stares for a long moment, a calculating look in her eye

Then she sighs, says, "Right. Sorry to take up your time." Turns around, and starts walking down the alley.

Ame frowns.

"Wait. Please."

Ame follows her.

"I want to help you. It sounds like you need me more than all the happy employees I saw today, combined. Whatever it is you're so afraid of, I don't want to ignore that either."

She leans against a wall again.

"...This is made up, to be clear. It's all a lie, but it will maybe illustrate my position, the - considerations - are about the same. Let's say, hypothetically, there's a family, a clan. This clan has secret flower-based assassination and stealth skills. They use potions and indoctrination to condition their children to be assassins and use these flowers, in the process giving them nonhuman physical characteristics, an indelible mark to those who know how to track it. And if you don't want to be a flower assassin? Well, you can't go giving away the secrets, so you'll have to stay inside all your life. If that mark was gone, though, a flower assassin gone rogue could find a new name in a faraway city and be rid of the clan."

"...this is about the Waltmanns, isn't it."

Ame shakes her head.

"If you want me to attempt to 'remove your mark', I will try. But my Skill needs to be aimed. There's no way around that." Ame pauses. "But. I'm less certain it needs to be aimed by me. How do you feel about an experiment?"

She snorts in surprise. "The Waltmanns? No, no." Pause. "Well, they might be unknowing informants to the assassin clan, under the counterfactual I've established. But they're not the masterminds*. As for experiments, all I know about you is that you're a high-level healer of some kind. I don't know if you get feedback, what kind of aiming it needs, what it actually does."

*"They're not the final boss"

"All you'd have to do is meditate as hard as you can on the difference between the way your body is and the way your body should be, while I touch you. It'll either work, or nothing will happen. Either I can only bestow the effects, or I can bestow the effects and the aiming. I don't know which is true, yet. I don't get feedback."

At least, not yet. She hasn't gotten feedback before, but she hasn't really tried to get feedback from Axiom in a while.

"Worth a shot, if you're still offering. What's the worst that could happen?"

Ame doesn't dignify that with a response. She just holds out her hand.

"This isn't a condition, I'll still try if you say no. But if this works, you will be in much less danger. So if this works, I want you to tell me who the 'final bosses' are."

"...I don't think I can tell you without exposing myself to a lot more risk. I vanish and an adventurer starts poking around? Adventurers do that. I vanish and an adventurer knows exactly where to look? I must have betrayed them, they'll look a lot harder. Give me a second to focus, please."

She sits cross-legged on the alley floor. She takes deep breaths. She extends a hand.

Ame tries not to pout.

She takes the other girl's hand, and... tries something new.

For one, can she get feedback, yet? And if she tries, can she channel the [mind > body] aspect of Axiom through or from or with her subject's mind instead of or in addition to her own?

She can tell when the Skill is active by a distinct and unmistakable sensation now! She can also use the target's mental image instead of her own, but not yet a mix of them.

The other girl shudders and there's a brief glimpse of a body that's tall and night-black and - Then she's the same girl in front of Ame again, wobbling and then needing to adjust her skirt a bit.

"...Ugh, cold loveless waste that was unpleasant... Huh. That... Helped. Didn't fix it entirely."

"So bestowing the aiming does work. Good to know."

Ame is probably advantaged here by not knowing what the fuck she just got a glimpse of, and thus feeling no alarm about it. But she wants another glimpse.

"My Skill's effects are linear. We can keep going until you get all the way there, or as close as you actually can. It just takes concentration."