Chapter 9: A Perfectly Normal Day

"speech"

sound effects

"Spells"

System

Text, such as books and newspapers

Ring, ring, ring, the sound of a mechanical clock rattled in what could only be described as a hotel room, it was bland, boring and unoffensive. A fair skinned slender hand slammed onto the clock, causing it to turn off, and with a groan an ebon haired young lady crawled out. Having stumbled into the shower she stared at her reflection in the mirror, it still surprised her just how easy it was to change her appearance so heavily, a different hair colour, letting her curls stay out, a few fake scars, a beauty mark and using a bit of magic to change her face a bit. That all it took was making her jaw and brows a bit sharper to make along with a few minor features to make her unrecognisable to anything short of a detailed study. But how easy it was to fool magical Britain with a bit of magic and makeup wasn't the most important of things, clothing herself in muggle exercise gear she left the building, and ran.

Running eh, had you told her she'd be running daily just three months ago, she'd have agreed, but would have thought it would be from he who must not be named, rather than simply the start of her workout. Her Japanese had improved a whole lot over the month she'd been here, the potion she'd taken before arrival had taken her to level 150, she was at level 179 by now, and considering that most natives were at around 220 was she really doing quite well. She didn't have her prosthetic on currently, the things were rather bulky right now, and needed constant recalibration, but they would she getting a tester mark 2 today, and from what she'd heard from the rest of the team, was recalibration a whole lot less necessary for them.

She sent a wave towards a young male Kitsune, and received one in return, she'd gained a bit off a reputation around the area, especially so with the Yokai, apparently a 5'4 human chick throwing a drunk 200-pound 6-foot Okami through a window isn't normal, who'd have thought. That a drunkard of a Tengu somehow thought that it was an appropriate place to ask a bloody stranger to marry them didn't help, especially not when he wound up flying through the same window, now who'd have thought going for a drink would get her a level. Returning to the hotel after a good thirty-minute run, she took the stairs to the basement, she found quite a well-furnished gym, she could only be thankful that magic didn't break the physics surrounding someone, would have made training strength a hell of a lot more difficult. She wasn't a quidditch player, she'd never needed to bulk up so to speak, but she'd always been fit, constantly walking around Hogwarts made sure no one there wasn't, but now? Now she was toned, she wasn't buff, but her muscles were well defined, more on the lean side yes, but well defined non the less.

She'd been training quite a bit since getting back to the living, if she couldn't care for her baby boy herself, would she be dammed if she couldn't kick anybody's ass through the seven hells by the time she could. If that meant needing to put in years of constant work so be it, she would keep her baby safe, he was hers, she'd willingly thrown her life down for him once before and she'd do it again in a heartbeat.

The physical part of training was by far and away the most difficult part of it, simply due to several exercises being impossible, or at least a whole lot more difficult with only a single arm. That it hadn't been something she'd done before her experience certainly made it more difficult, but she'd found a number of exercises that worked. Her magical training was a whole lot easier; she'd been training that for years after all, but the greatest bonus she'd gained from it had been the cottage and coming to Japan. The library back in the cottage was a personal collection, it had a number of original spells in it, some old potter ones, but a hell of a lot of the spells there were originals. Coming to Japan had, beyond helping her with getting a prosthetic, allowed her to learn a number of spells unique to area, the biggest areas she'd improved in had been healing, cleansing and elemental magic. What healing could do was obvious, but cleansing was an incredibly interesting matter. At its most basic was it the art of removing evil spirits, exorcism, yet it also had a number of other uses, it could be used to help with the removal of curses, mind manipulations and a number of other things.

The reason why Japans had so much more magic in these areas was cultural, Britain had a history of conquest, they had slaughtered and conquered for centuries, so their spell work reflected that. They had incredible amounts of offensive magic, they specialised in destruction, bombardment spells were something they were masters of. A fact quite a number of people don't realise was how many British wizards had fought in the world wars, they had a number bombardment-based army killers more than capable of being mistaken for muggle weaponry at the time.

Japan on the other hand had a history filled with internal strife, oh certainly they'd had some highly ambitious leaders, but the sengoku jidai had ended a bit less than a century before the statute of secrecy, a century and a half of internal strife followed shortly after by a heavy focus on isolationism had changed their view of the world. They'd mastered the elements, a subsection of magic somewhere in between charms and transfiguration, it had been incredibly important for their sieges at the time, their castles were made with magic weaved into their very foundation.

Their healing and cleansing magic had come about not only because of their culture, but also the local magical nonhumans, Yokai was an incredibly broad description, similarly to fey in Europe, they were far to varied for them to be described in a singular sentence, however a number of them had abilities linked to possession and similar things, their focus on cleansing magic had been born from this. An oddity about Japan was how deeply intertwined magic and religion was here, their holy servants, Miko, had become so synonymies with magic that the rituals that their non-magical counterparts carry out today are magical rituals. Whilst muggle Miko couldn't say cast spells, are the rituals they carry out able to help maintain the local magical defences.

For that was the biggest difference between magical Britain and Japan, the British hid in little isolated communities whilst the Japanese hid plain sight, their academies were well known to muggles, they just thought them to be highly picky in who they let study there. She honestly enjoyed the Japanese choice far more than the British one, being able to simply take a regularly scheduled portkey to Tokyo, Kyoto and a number of other cities around the country was a godsend for someone like her, being able to simply go and see the sights, find some quite sushi shop and have a delicious meal, it was incredible.

Lilly was seated by a large mahogany table, a silver arm being attached to her missing arm, after it had been attached, she picked up her goblin made spear, she'd started using it normally after a week, but tacking that old dwarven heavy spear had been worth it simply for their expressions. She settled herself into a relaxed defensive stance, in front of her was a man in his mid-fifties his hair was going grey and he was certainly getting up in his years, in his hand he held a Nodachi, and with a signal from Kurasawa the two of them got started.

Her opponent simply by necessity was an aggressive fighter, his stamina wasn't as great as it had been back in his heyday and with his blade being as large as it was, he needed to finish the fight before he ran out of energy. In terms of his stats, he had two different status effects, the first one seniorgave him a percentage-based decrease to his physical stats, the second poor shape gave him a percentage-based increase to stamina usage, and that brought about an annoyance she'd found with the system, she had a stamina bar, her stats increased it along with a shape skill, the problem? It was hidden from her. she'd manged to find that a couple of her more unique skills had an effect on it, namely combat techniques, specifically magical techniques, the basics of it was that she channelled magic through her body in order to achieve certain results, unfortunately that magic put her body under strain causing her stamina to be depleted faster.

But she should focus on her fight here, her opponent charged her, his blade coming in a diagonal line from his own right, she backpedalled and struck his blade off to the side before moving spinning her spear to hit him with the butt of the spear, only for him to step towards his blade, moving it upward into a defensive position. Tacking her own stance, this time a far more offensive one, she jumped forward in a lunge, when he backpedalled out of the way she didn't attempt to stop her momentum, but rather used it to send her legs outward in an attempt to trip him. Even though she caught his leg, his prosthetic one, she'd managed to build up enough momentum to actually move the thing. And her opponent let go of his sword moments before spinning in such a manner that had his sword still been in hand, he'd have landed a cut on her shoulder, it would have been worse had she not started moving the moment she hit his leg.

The two of them at this point got up and took their original stances, before they continued trading blows, the two of them switching between each other in terms of who took the initiative. This fight, if you could even call it that, was about cheeking how the prosthetics reacted to shocks of differing levels, along with how differing areas were affected by those shocks. Whilst it had been possible to create prosthetics with transfiguration, were they however only able to replace a hand or foot, anything larger than that was simply too difficult to properly attach. One of the main reasons why transfigured limbs weren't used all to often was due to the nature of how most people lost those limbs, dark magic, the problem with losing a limb to dark magic is that it causes curse scars, and whilst the exact effects depend on the magic used, they all had some magic disrupting effects. This was part of why the prosthetics that were being made here were using mostly mechanical effects to achieve these prosthetics.

Part of why they were constantly needing to recalibrate the prosthetics was due to magic, it was the reason why a muggle couldn't brew potions, even if they were to brew it exactly as specified, magic simply changed reality around it. It was why that electronics could easily explode when close to powerful wizards and witches or in highly magical places like Hogwarts. Whilst there are several ways to work around this, the problem is that no such methods had yet to be created that could keep up with lords like Dumbledore, Grindelwald or Voldemort, r in those extremely magical places like the ministries and ancient schools. It was why they worked in a magically isolated room, and whilst they were working here on the prosthetics another group was doing research into how to hold the magic out.

After having done the day's physical testing the equipment they moved onto the magical part of it, those of them that had been doing the physical part of it were given a bit of a break as those either purely magical in training or those highly skilled in wandless magic took the scene. Lilly took her seat along with Akira and a few of the other physically inclined ones, that she was one of three women there might have been slightly worrisome if not for the other two being bloody brilliant. The first one, Nakagawa Kuromim, was Akira's girlfriend and the daughter of Nakagawa Yakeru and Miyazaki Akahana, a successful businessman and high-ranking diplomat respectively, that she was a terror with an axe certainly made sure no one would patronise her. The other one Takeda Hanako was a first-generation witch but from an old Japanese family and had been taught in the way of the blade since she'd been a little lass and was a prodigy of the blade, oh and she was a vampire.

She herself was the youngest person here, and one of a few foreigners, that the other foreigners were all of Asian decent just made her stand out even more, thankfully had it not tacking all too much to "convince" them not to baby her, that every man winced at how she "convinced" him wasn't her problem. After the magical part was over, they had lunch, which whilst nowhere near as rambunctious as meals at Hogwarts, was this still considered quite rowdy by Japanese standards, at least that's what the others told her. that she and a few other had agreed to take turns with providing food to the others was interesting and meant she got to try food from several differing cultures, that she was the only European meant she had quite a few more choices available. It was her turn to today, and she had decided to take something her dear Alice had introduced her to, traditional Spanish tapas. She'd included a number of cheeses and Iberian meat products, olives, Croquettes, calamari, fish, omelettes, and a few non-Iberian things.

After lunch it was time for the afternoon work, if the morning work was about finding weaknesses, then the afternoon was about finding strengths. Here they tested the very limits of their work, weather that be through raw magical strength or techniques. On her own favoured techniques was based purely around piercing any object, this was achieved through the use of two sub techniques, the first one was enhancement, specifically vitality enhancement, through her system t worked by granting a percentage-based increase to her physical stats based on her magical ones, this increase could both be split evenly between all of them or focused on certain ones. The other one, mana blast, was usually used for movement rather than offense, it worked by releasing a blast of magic, often through one's legs, in order to generate momentum. She however was using a variant of this technique, remote blast, this technique worked by creating a ball of magic and then detonating outside of one's body. The way she used them for this technique was to enhance her strength and endurance whilst releasing a blast just behind the butt of her spear in order to generate a large amount of momentum.

For the magical part they tested how differing forms of magic could break it, how resistant they are to transfiguration, extreme temperatures, blasting curses, disintegration curses and a number of other more obscure ones. A completely normal day.

Even if not wholly normal day for everyone, especially not for the blacks.

"What do you mean you wants your bastard of a son out off Azkaban?!" Druella black shrieked at her best friend Walburga black.

"I mean that I don't want that filth associated with our lord, do you honestly want anyone associating that muggle loving filth with your beloved Bellatrix? That they want him to take her place as our lord's right hand?" Druella practically spat out the part related to her eldest, "I, most certainly don't want him thought of as my beloved Regulus better, I'll be dead before allowing that to enter the history books." The shear righteous anger in her voice would have many willing to believe follow her, well those associated with Voldemort would.

"Then how would you suggest that we go about proving him innocent sister?" Cygnus spoke in a deep baritone for the first time since Druella had brought up her plan.

"the trial, or lack there off, I play it as some concerned parent wanting to make sure their "precious little baby" was treated properly rather than simply thrown in jail." The sarcasm in Walburga's tone was thick enough for it to be cut with a knife. "If that doesn't work, we play that of the heir card," her face seemed to scrunch up at calling him that, "no major wizarding Family will allow the precedent of an heir imprisonment with so little evidence, but actually acknowledging him as an heir should be our last resort." Walburga's hate for her eldest was so clear that it couldn't be mistaken for anything else.

Cygnus sighed, "You do realise you'll need Arcturus's help if you want to get him out, especially if you want to play the heir or desperate mother card." Cygnus was giving his sister a significant look as he stated this, even as she slumped in her chair.

"I know, I simply thought it would be easier to get him to agree if I had discussed it with some of the other members of the house, ideally I'd also have spoken with Cassiopeia, but you know difficult it is to get a hold of her now a days. You however have quite a bit of influence are some of my closest and could probably offer me some good advice." Her gaze had hardened at this point, and as she met her brothers gaze, was that black will clear in her eyes.

Cygnus met his wife's eyes as the two seemed to have a silent conversation Walburga sipped her wine, she knew damme well that if the two of them chose not to help her she'd never get her will through, and that dammed son of hers would continue to taint the legacy of their lord. With a sigh Cygnus spoke up. "things are happening, plays are being made I know nothing off, after Arcturus's supposed visit to Gringotts has he been acting differently, Dumbledore has been making moves, Malfoy semes to have unnatural success recently, and I don't know why any of this is happening, and I don't particularly like that, so while we will be assisting you, will you also be assisting us in our goals." Cygnus's gaze now held that same will as his sister.

The grin that appeared on Walburga's face was vicious, and without a moments hesitation she responded. "Deal" little did they know, just how much this choice alone would change history.

an

hey back with another chapter for you lot, and sorry for being a moron and forgetting to post this yesterday…

but well have a lovely Christmas and New Year's Eve.

peace

Lama blade

edit forgot line breaks and the proper title