2

Getting Some Answers

Time: Seconds later

Place: Courtyard inside the school

Susan rushed to Saito's side as he collapsed, the only one to do so. She looked him over, getting a 9 on her first aid check. As finding the "status of individual" was only a 5, while "assessing condition" was a 10, she knew he was still alive but not what was wrong. She tried another Magic Sense, getting even worse, an 8. Due to the strength of the magical field now surrounding Saito, this was still more than enough. She grabbed his hand and looked at the still glowing runes now seemingly burned onto it.

"Okay, some sort of Saturn magic is being burned into him. We need to get him to the infirmary where someone can watch and make sure he survives the process." She turned to the only adult who seemed to be there. "Mr. Colbert, right? Would you like to do the honors or should I?"

"Infirmary?" he asked, walking over and looking down at them both. "We don't actually have anything like that here. Maybe we should though, come to think of it."

"What?" Susan exploded, popping back up. "What if someone got really hurt? Isn't learning magic a bit dangerous?"

"Not especially," he replied. "If someone seriously took ill their parents would be informed and a healer would be brought."

"Fantastic," she muttered.

"In any case, he should be fine. I've never seen a familiar spirit be knocked out by the ritual, but then, it's not been done with a human before, either. He won't die, that would negate the point of the whole thing. For now, let's take him to Miss Valliere's room. She is responsible for him now, after all. Then we can take you to see the principal."

"Fine," spat Susan. "Maybe he'll know of some magic to get me out of here and back to what I'm supposed to be doing."

Mr. Colbert swished his staff around, and Hiraga rose gently into the air. He led the way through a set of doors at the far end of the courtyard and the students were excitedly whispering amongst themselves.

"For now, get to know your familiar a little better, I'll be back in a moment," he called to them.

The group walked down torch lit corridors, not unlike those of Hogwarts. She didn't see any moving paintings or stairs that rearranged themselves, so it seemed even though this place might superficially resemble the school she had known, many details were different. Louise unlocked her door and Hiraga floated inside, onto the bed.

"I'll have to put some straw down for him to sleep one," Louise remarked, looking around the room. It was pretty stark, with a small table, dresser, bed, and closet within view. The candle had lit itself as we had come in and-

"Wait, what did you say about straw?"

"He'll need some. I wouldn't want him to sleep on the bare floor. I'm not insensitive to his needs, after all."

"Straw? He's not a horse, he's a person! He'll sleep in a bed just like you do. I don't know how things are done around here, but you've seriously screwed up two different lives with your shenanigans, the least you can do is show a little respect."

"Shenanigans?" shrieked Louise. "I did the ceremony properly and got my familiar spirit. This plebeian."

"You are not going to treat him like an animal."

"I'll treat him any way I want. It's none of your concern."

"I think it is my concern. Someone has to make sure he's doing all right, and you don't speak his language!"

"If you do, I'll make you regret it!" She brandished her wand.

"What are you going to do, fail to cast another spell at me?"

"Girls, please!" said Colbart, finally stepping between us. "Now is not the time."

"Oh, but I think it is," countered Susan. "Much better to set the expectation right at the start than to have to try and change her behavior later. She expected an animal, fine. She got a person, and she needs to change her attitudes accordingly."

"I'm standing right here, and my name is Louise!" she growled.

"Something can be worked out, I'm sure," Mr. Colbert said wearily. "For now, let's bring you up to see Mr. Ottman."

"Fine. Sparkle, you mind staying?"

"Not at all," she said, jumping up on the bed and sitting down. "I'll need to start seeing what magic I can and can't use, anyway. Besides, I'm the one with the healing magic, should I feel he needs it. Sun should work, I mean they have a sun, don't they?"

"Yes, if we're going to be stuck here we'll need to know what, exactly, our limitation are." She looked towards the ceiling. "You could have been a little more specific about this, Inari."

"Who?" asked Mr. Colbert.

"The being that- never mind. Come on, which way?"

The group trooped up to the principal's office, which Mr. Colbert knocked on and entered. Inside was... well... Dumbledore. Old guy, with a white, long, wispy beard, and wearing a pointy hat and gray robes. The only thing missing were the glasses.

"I'm not sure what I was expecting," remarked Susan.

A gnarled staff sat behind him, making Susan wonder if somehow these people "graduated" from using wands as they got more powerful, as Mr. Colbert also walked with a staff rather than a wand. Or did people that used a staff as a focus just start out more powerful, or was it a personal choice?

Also in the room was a young looking woman with green hair, which Susan wondered about. I'll have to look and see if that's common, I wasn't really paying attention to that kind of thing earlier. She looked over at Louise. Though I suppose if pink isn't remarked upon...

"Well, well, what have we here?" asked the principal, leaning forward in his chair.

"Mr Ottman, this is Miss, uh... I didn't get your last name."

"Susan Felton. Nice to meet you."

"And nice to meet you," the principal replied. "This is my aid, Miss Longbill."

"Hello."

"Hi."

"So, what can we do for you? I take it this is about the excitement I saw in the courtyard a moment ago?"

"Yes, sir," answered Mr. Colbert.

"Ah, Miss Valliere, what have you done now? Wait, you haven't summoned this girl as your Familiar Spirit, have you?"

She looked embarrassed.

"No," Susan answered for her. "She summoned the boy currently recovering from the experience in her room. He went unconscious after she kissed him and magic started swirling around him. I just happened to be in the way at the time."

"In the way? I'm afraid I don't understand."

Susan sighed. "Look, the short of it is, other worlds exist. I'm from one. He's from another. I left my world to seek my father, who travels between them fighting a malignant entity I have termed "The Darkness." It was just our bad luck to collide in the space between worlds, knocking a friend who was traveling with me into yet another world and stranding us both where we are now. She has the means to follow my father, I have the spell to return where I came from. Both of which are useless or out of reach at the moment."

"Astonishing!" said Miss Longbill. "I never would have imagined it. How many worlds are there?"

Susan turned to her. "I passed through a space with countless doors of light. I couldn't begin to give you a hard number."

She looked impressed.

"That is certainly a unique tale. Please allow me to extend my official apology on behalf of the academy. Whatever we can do to assist you, just let me know."

"Thank you, I appreciate it. For the moment, I need information and some quiet. I need to know what kind of magic is still available to me. At least one kind, which would allow me to access my book of magic, is not. If others aren't as well..."

"I'm not sure what that means, but as I said, whatever we can do. I would love to learn about magic from another world!"

Susan saw that he was looking at her somewhat excitedly, and decided he was probably telling the truth. After all, how many times in your life do you meet someone from another reality?

"But first things first. Louise here brought someone that seems to be Asian, and he doesn't speak your language. Mr. Colbert says you don't have translation magic?"

"Perhaps somewhere in the archives?" asked Miss Longbill, looking at Mr. Ottman. He shrugged. She explained, "We haven't needed any magic of that sort in hundreds of years. Not since the language of the world was standardized."

Huh, that's the first intelligent thing these people have said to me so far.

"I could take care of the problem myself, if I had access to my spellbook. Sadly it wasn't something I needed on a regular basis myself, so I would have to research the spell from scratch if you can't help. That'll take time. Meanwhile, it seems this sort of screw up is somewhat expected of Louise? Something about grades?"

Louise glowered at her. "My spells tend to explode, I admit. But I'm getting better?"

Susan could tell even she didn't believe it. "Wait, you backfire every spell you try to cast? How are you still alive?" She turned to Mr. Colbert. "Why wasn't this looked into before she started tearing people out of their home dimensions?"

"We have hundreds of students to teach here," he hedged. "We can't spare the attention for just one."

"Oh, I see. So you just let her continue failing, causing destruction and whatnot, rather than looking into what might have a simple solution. I see."

"What do you mean?" asked Louise. "What simple solution?"

"I don't know, I've been here less than an hour. But it seems to me that if your magical energies are that erratic, you either need a better focus than that wand, an additional focus apart from it, or just plain more practice in the basics. Or maybe you're trying to do a type of magic you shouldn't be attempting, like if I tried to do wand magic. I'm actually not even sure what would happen in that case, I never tried it."

"I... I don't want your help in any case."

"I wasn't offering my help, I was just wondering if anything like that had been explored. There's a reason your magic messes up. If you can't be bothered to research the reason, don't expect me to. Wait-" She turned back to the principal. "I take it you don't have character sheets here?"

"Have what?"

"Character sheets." Suddenly Susan was holding hers, and everyone strained to get a good look at it.

"Where did that come from?" asked Miss Longbill.

"I guess not." She put it "away" again. "Just a thought. To answer your question, I have no idea. It just comes when I want to look at it. Sparkle, that's my cat, she's the same way."

"Fascinating," said the principal. "You carried some of your physical law into our universe." He leaned back in his chair again. "Astonishing."

"Yes, well, it's normal for me. So just to be clear, you don't have any sort of magic to move between worlds, right? Just summon creatures from them? If I could just step through to a world where I could use Pluto magic for two minutes I would be far better off."

Everyone shook their heads.

"Super. Then I am stuck here, it seems. We both are." Her eyes narrowed. "By the way, you haven't had any trouble with beings trying to take over your world or anything, have you? Ancient evils? Magic energy disappearing and you can't figure out where it's going?" Again, they all shook their heads, somewhat more concerned. "Oh good. Maybe The Darkness hasn't noticed your world yet. I can tell you more about that later, so you can prepare if it ever does try sucking your dimension dry of energy. For the moment, I'm going to see what Planets I can cast from and take things from there."

"Miss Valliere, why don't you go see to your Familiar Spirit?" asked the Principal. "We'll also take a peek through the archives, see if there are any books that detail your condition from past students. Maybe there is something in our libraries that could help."

"Oh, thank you very much!" she said, surprised. She gave a small bow and left the room.

"Jean, if you could work with Matilda to check the archives for some translation magic? I think that would ease our other new guest into things here. And I'll have to meet him, once he wakes up."

"Of course, sir," said Mr. Colbert. Both of them left as well.

"Odd that you seem to speak our language perfectly."

"Hiraga said he heard me speaking his language perfectly. I think Lady Inari, that's the being that gave me the ability to go between worlds, did something to me. And didn't bother to tell me, of course."

"I see."

"Now, if you want I can get out of your hair to do some magical tests, or if you're interested..."

"I am interested. You mentioned the planets- Are you talking about physical planets? I can tell you about our solar system, if that would help."

"Maybe. I know you don't have a Pluto, that's for sure."

"No, our six planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. And of course we have two moons, but maybe I shouldn't assume all worlds have two."

"No way, we only had one! Interesting, I'd love to know how that happened. Anyway, it seems three whole branches of magic will be denied to me, but I better check just to make sure. Let's see, I'll try to make a little water, that would be a good test for Neptune. And I could manage a spark for Uranus without any trouble, normally. Let's see how it goes." Naturally, it went terribly, both grade-0 spells she tried to use didn't even fizzle, as she found she couldn't even make the check in those skills. "Great, so what can't I cast?" she asked herself, getting out her character sheet again. "Eleven spells, including my favorite combo of Hypnotic Field and Energy Drain. Oh crap, I can't use Spell Symbol either? AARG!"

"So your world actually has more planets than ours? I would have thought something like that would be somewhat constant."

"Me too. And you say you have two moons? I wonder..." Susan looked thoughtful, looking at her character sheet again. "Would you mind if I cast a minor spell on you? I only know three Moon spells, and only one would actually show if what I'm thinking of works."

"I suppose, if it's not harmful."

"Oh, no, it won't hurt a bit. It just confuses opponents for a second."

"You may proceed."

"Thank you. Dazzle!" she cast, and where usually small motes of light would dazzle the senses of the target, in this world she got a huge flash that made him cry out. She got the sense that his Delay went up by 12, rather than 6, as it should have. This still was hardly noticeable, and the principal shook it off.

"Yup, moon spells have a double potency. To think my magic actually relies on the physical bodies that populate the solar system." She shook her head. "That hardly seems worth it."

"Interesting spell," Mr. Ottman remarked. "What do you other 'moon' spells do?"

"Tell me the direction of north and let me see in the dark. Like I said, not very useful to have at double strength. Now if you had two suns..."

"Our planet would have been burnt to a crisp and life would have never evolved here."

"There is that. All right. For the moment I'll head back to Louise's room, so Hiraga doesn't wake up and freak out when he can't talk to anyone. I'll take stock and see what my next move is going to be. I can still fabricate and imbue things, if you think unbreakable swords or armor, or magical items might sell for a good price on this world I can at least earn a living that way."

"Unbreakable you say? What about wands?"

"Oh sure, wands too. Staffs, anything."

"I think we could work something out. Do you think you can find your way back okay?"

Susan barked a laugh. "I have No Sense of Direction. In a castle this big I would be lost in a minute."

"Very well. Motsognir?" From Mr. Ottman's shoulder a mouse perked up. "Can you lead her back to Miss Valliere's room?" The mouse squeaked and ran down his robes to the door. "You don't mind following a mouse, do you?"

"Oh, is he your Familiar Spirit? He's so cute! I don't mind following him."

"Great. Come and see me whenever, my door is always open to you. Oh, before you go, would you mind terribly doing a guest lecture on your type of magic? I think some of our students would be quite interested, and in stories of other worlds! Plus if there are magical skills we could learn from other worlds, we'll employ you to teach them!"

Susan shrugged. "Sure, only have a rating 2 in Speaking, and no rating in Teaching but I'd be glad to compare our magics sometime. I can put a few points in Teaching if there's something I can really teach. We can talk about it sometime in the next few days."

"I look forward to it."

"I'll see you later."

As Susan walked behind the mouse, she thought about what being stranded here meant. Would Inari even be able to tell I was here? She didn't open a door to check on my father or anything, she sent me to do it. That suggests no. My father's magic could open a door to her world, but that's Pluto. Without that planet or something similar to draw upon, how will I ever get out of here? Strange that she didn't warn me that I might find a place like this, only that magic might be different between worlds. Probably that key she gave me doesn't depend on planets, given she's the lady of magic or whatever my father said about her. Could I somehow contact her in a dream? How do I know she even sleeps? This is going to be a long journey.

Having arrived at Louise's door, she gently knocked and heard a faint "come in," from the other side. Louise was sitting at her table, staring at Hiraga. "No change?" she asked Sparkle, who perked up from the bed. She shook her head. "I could cast Awaken on him, and I've been monitoring this magical change that's he's been going through. It's concentrated in his hand now, so hopefully he'll wake up on his own soon. If he doesn't, I guess we'll have to think about what might happen waking him up magically."

"We can decide that when the time comes. You know what spells we can't cast?"

"The last three planets, unless I'm missing something?"

Susan nodded. "Yup. No more energy stuff for me. That's going to be a handicap."

"Are you just going to ignore me, then?" asked Louise.

"Why no, would you like a scathing remark of some kind? I thought up several on the way back here."

"No," she pouted.

"You realize Inari played us?" asked Sparkle.

"What?"

"Yeah, thought about that while I was just sitting here. Remember that key she gave us?"

"That I stupidly gave to Luna? Yeah."

"It wasn't stupid. You were showing her that you trusted her with your dad's future. I thought it was sweet. Anyway, we know your dad came to your world... because you were born there."

The implication of that took a second to sink in. "I could have just gone home and gone on from there!" she shouted, eyes wide. "I might have only been one world behind him! Not to mention I would have wound up at home anyway! Oh, she's so getting slapped when I see her next."

"Uh, might I recommend not slapping the higher order dimensional being? She could probably crush you like a bug, despite what she looks like."

"Mentally. A nice mental slap in the face."

"Thank you for clarifying. So, what next?"

"Nothing much until the local magicians do some research. I offered my services fabricating and such, so we'll have an income stream, at least. And I want to make sure my imbued items still work. Actually, should have tested that before offering, now that I think about it. Oh well."

On her person Susan had her ring with Legion in it, and the knife of Alleviation which worked just fine. She was able to test it by bringing out her Somatic Beretta and put it back, damaging her hand by one point. The knife easily healed it, so at least she knew even without the outer planets, she had a lot of options should something try killing her. Of course she couldn't reload the Beretta, all her ammo was in her now inaccessible Pocket Dimension. Of course all the food in her Personal Dimension was going to go bad, even refrigerated as it was. She had it stocked with long lasting items, but it looked like she might be here for a long, long time.

The rest of the afternoon was spent discussing (and discarding) various plans with Sparkle, and nearing sundown there was another knock on the door.

Louise opened it, and a younger student was standing there with a cart loaded with food.

"I was told to bring this to your room," said the boy. Louise stepped back and let him in. "Will he be all right?" he asked.

"Hopefully," said Susan. "Now that food has arrived we'll try waking him up. I doubt he'll want to miss this. Thank you."

"I'll be back in a little while to take the dishes back."

"Thanks."

Louise just made which Susan took to mean "of course you will," and the boy left again.

"He's been stable, nothing magical has happened in a while," remarked Sparkle. "Do you want me to wake him?"

Susan nodded. "Go ahead. Worst thing that could happen is he goes right back under again, and we leave him until he's ready. He had quite a shock, after all." She glared at Louise, who it seemed was waiting to be served, as she wasn't getting any of the food off the tray. Susan turned back to watch Sparkle touch Hiraga and cast Awaken on him. Magical energy swirled, and he groaned and opened his eyes.

"Oh, so it wasn't a dream."