It took three days for Sammi to recover enough mentally and wake up. Frankly, I was rather glad she’d remained unconscious, it gave her the rest she needed in order to recover from some of the trauma.

When she did finally wake up, it was suddenly, and with a scream, jolting me out of the light sleep I’d been in on the bed next to her.

“Shh, Sammi, it’s okay, you’re safe. We rescued you. You’re at home.”

I made her look at me, then hugged her, holding her gently as I whispered comforting words in her ears and stroked her back, exuding a feeling of love and safety through our touch. Even with that, it took quite a while for her terrified sobs to give way.

Finally, she calmed enough to speak.

“R, Rynn. Th, Thank y, you.”

“You’re my sister. Of course I’d help you.”

She didn’t need to say what exactly she was thankful for. I knew. Her mind was a mass of confusion, the thought racing inside her head a mile a minute, but I was able to pick up on them.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No. Not right now.”

“Then I’ll wait. Just know that talking about it might help you to sort through your feelings easier. It’s very therapeutic. Or so I’m told.”

She tried to laugh, but it came out as a bit of a sob.

“Are you ready to get up? We’ve been feeding you what we could, but I’m sure you’re probably hungry. Or I could bring you something?”

“I’ll get up.”

I got out of the way and she stood up, her legs a bit shaky from disuse and distress. I reached over to steady her, but she shook her head.

“I can do it myself. Why don’t you go get the food ready. I’ll get dressed and be down in a few minutes.”

As requested, I left the room and headed to the kitchen. I did keep a telepathic eye on her, ready to rush back to her side if I needed to. Fortunately I was worried for nothing. She moved a little slow, but had no troubles getting dressed.

I was just plating the food when she took a seat at the table. The food was nothing special, just some soft and easy to digest food. While she wasn’t starved for a long period of time, it was still important to not but anything too complex in her body until we were certain she was well enough.

She started eating, and I joined her with my own food, the same thing she was eating. Just because it had to be easily eaten didn’t mean it couldn’t taste good.

After she’d eaten, we made our way to the living room. She didn’t want to talk yet, and was well enough trained by me to keep control of herself and not leak her thought unintentionally. Or at least not do so now that she had regained enough control to do it.

So we watched some movies.

Sammi had woken up just before lunch, and the rest of the family was away, so we were uninterrupted for long enough to watch two and start a third before dad got home. Mom was away, helping to deal with the results of the rescue raid, though I’d texted her to let her know that Sammi was awake. She wanted to come home immediately, but was needed, so she just increased her working speed.

Dad had a job, so even when he helped the Avengers, he had a limited time to do so. But now that he was home…

“SAAMMMIIII!!!!”

He threw himself at her, trying to hug her. I caught him in the air. He’d have hurt her had I not done so.

“Dad. Do you want to kill her? We’re aware that you’re happy to see her, but please take a moment and get yourself under control, okay?”

He nodded, took a few deep breaths, then moved to hug Sammi in a way that wouldn’t crush her bones or suffocate her.

She of course had started laughing at this scene, earning her a pout from dad that only made her laugh harder. Ah, laughter is an amazing medicine.

After Sammi finally reined herself in, we all sat down together in the living room and chatted. Not about anything that had happened, but just mundane topics like we always would back before she’d left on her journey.

I could see the tension in Sammi when certain topics were mentioned, but I did my best to steer the conversation to something else. Dad wasn’t the best at reading the room. Neither was I, but I’d gotten a lot better at it since being reincarnated.

When dinner time rolled around, us girls went and prepared the food. Dad could cook… but it was better that he wasn’t in charge of doing so. He was able to do the prep well and make delicious food, but only if he was able to remain on task. He frequently got lost in his thoughts and the food ended up burning. He wasn’t as bad if someone was watching over him, but me and sis were better off without having to handle him.

We kept the menu simple, since Sammi was still recovering. Soup and salad with grilled chicken atop it.

Following dinner, dad went off to his study to work on something, while Sammi and I returned to the living room. A movie was put on, but I was only half paying attention. We were snuggled up together, but I needed to keep my hands busy, so I was sewing plushies.

I had a goal, though the timeline for it was extremely long, years if not decades. I was going to make a plushie for every pokémon. As I was doing it as a hobby, I only finished one every one to three weeks. It depended on how busy I was.

When I caught Sammi watching me, I offered her some fabric and we worked together on it, ignoring the movie.

---

It took a week.

I knew that Sammi wasn’t happy, but wasn’t going to force her to open up before she was ready. Instead, I was there for her. Always ready to help her out and distract her when her negative emotions started to overwhelm her.

When she was finally ready, I was there for her. Mom too. Dad got kicked out of the room. We all loved him, but he wasn’t the best person to talk to about feelings.

She broke down multiple times as she spoke, but we were there, talking to her, reassuring her, and ready to listen when she was able to speak again.

After that night, she started getting better. She still hurt, but she was pulling herself back together, along with a little help from me. She could rebuild her mental defenses herself, but having a psychic help made the process easier and faster.

It was during one of these rebuilding sessions that something unexpected occurred. I’d reached a tendril of psychic energy to my sister, but it felt like she responded to it. Sure she knew I was there, and there was interaction between our minds, but this was different. This was closer to…

“Sammi, can I try something?”

She tilted her head, confused, but nodded. She trusted me.

I reached out and touched a specific part of her mind, and there was a reaction. She must have felt it, and frowned.

“What was that.”

“Give me a bit, I need to be sure.”

I tried again, using a bit more force, getting another, stronger response. Then I spoke to her. Not physically, but mentally. Not the way I usually would as a psychic to a non-psychic, but as one to another.

She responded, though she actually spoke, not having realized anything was off.

I started laughing, making her look at me in confusion. It went on for long enough to make her start pouting, so I reined myself in.

“Sorry, sorry. I just learned something I’d never suspected.”

“What?”

“Well sis, it seems you were a latent psychic. Congratulations!”

She gave me a blank look for a moment, then consternation crossed her face.

“No! You can’t be serious!”

“Yeah, I can be. The stress of….that… seems to have awoken your hidden powers. I’d tested all of you, and didn’t detect it before, so I’m really surprised by this. And…” Sammi started crying. “Huh? What?! Please don’t cry! I’m sorry!”

I started getting flustered, thinking I’d upset her, but she just shook her head.

“Don’t apologize. I’m not sad, I’m happy! Even though I was hurt, I got a gift that will let me be closer to you. I always envied you for being able to do so much that I couldn’t.”

“Yeah. I know. You tried not to think about it, but I could tell.”

“I knew that you knew, but you were still there for me, even when I wasn’t thinking the nicest things. And now I’ll be able to do stuff too!”

Her face took on a huge grin as thoughts of ridiculous psychic feats crossed her mind.

“Yeah, that one’s not gonna happen any time soon. Now that we know you’re psychic, I’m going to have to train you, and it’ll take a long time before you’re able to do much. You’re also going to have to put in a lot of work. Just because I make it seem effortless, doesn’t mean it is. Like any muscle, you’re going to have to build your strength up slowly.”

Aww, her smile turned into a frown. I regretted making that happen, but I couldn’t let her have delusions of grandeur. There were too many risks if I let her go off half-cocked and she got herself hurt, or worse.

We got to work. She was already used to me linking to her, but now we did it a little differently, allowing her to ‘see’ and feel what I was doing so she could learn. I also supplied her with my own power so she could continue to practice after her own core was emptied. She didn’t have much, so it’d be a long time before she would be able to do much on her own.

Mom and dad were not informed of Sammi’s new abilities. She wanted to keep it a secret until she got better so she could wow them when the time came. It came in handy that the two of them were used to us always hanging out together, occasionally breaking into laughter without a single word passing our lips. Silent conversations were a great way to keep secrets to ourselves.

Although, mom had her ways of getting us to give up some of those secrets. She also had her own sources feeding her information about what happened at school when we didn’t want to tell her certain things.

Mom must have realized something was going on, but she didn’t pry, thinking it was something that Sammi was more comfortable sharing with her sister rather than her mom. We might not be legal adults yet, but mom trusted us. Most of the time.

We stayed out of sight, not wanting to draw the attention of the Evil League. However, I still needed to do stuff to work towards bringing them down, so I disappeared from time to time, getting Sammi to cover my absences.

Most of the time, I left my pokémon at home with Sammi. They were too young and impressionable for some of the stuff I was doing, plus they were both psychic, and interacting with them helped Sammi improve her own abilities.

When she’d been able to talk to them, and her own espeon, Lori, she’d been so excited she almost gave away the secret to our parents. She wasn’t yet at the level where she could converse with non-psychic pokémon yet, but she was improving. She was really looking forward to being able to talk to pokémon directly, rather than going through me or one of the others, so she was working really hard.

When I was there, I tutored her in psychic powers, as well as the etiquette I’d learned from the uncorrupted psychics. When I wasn’t I was working to make the world a safer place for us.

I was taking the fight to the EL, especially since we now knew where many of their bases were.