I have a little story to tell you.

A few years back, I freaked out from a minor accident – some kids were laughing at me on the playground, and I curled up on the ground, hands over my ears, beginning to not be able to hear them.

I wanted to shut them out. I was a girl, and a girl couldn't play with the boys. I wasn't allowed on the structure, I was nothing but an illness.

And I did. Within a heartbeat I was completely deaf.

And when I came to that realization, at first I was super surprised.

Then I panicked.

Then I screamed.

Then I really lost my shit.

I was about six when that happened. After about an hour of running around the neighborhood and tripping on my tears, my hearing came back to me and I keeled over from mana exhaustion. For a few years after that I couldn't tell you how I avoided using magic, but I tiptoed around the things I told myself I wanted.

"I want you to shut up" was a big one. I was so worried I'd somehow remove people's lips from their faces or something stupid like that.

In middle school, I picked up track and field. I wasn't much good at it, but it was a chance to stay out of the house after school, and there were a lot of opportunities to make friends; since I didn't really stand out on my school's team of sixty-three students, no one really approached me and I never approached anyone else. That was sixth grade, and I was devastated.

Then one time, in the straggler's heat (the losers from every team were assigned to the same heat), I was racing away in third place. The sun was unbearable, and I was furious with myself.

God dammit, I wanted second place so badly! First place would have taken a miracle, but second place, at least give me that! I wanted to top those kids off as if my life depended on it. My lungs were scraping so dry of oxygen, I remember midway through the 400x meter:

"Oh god, I wish I couldn't feel the burn"

and I took a deep breathe,

and I couldn't feel it.

I couldn't feel anything.

I pounded my feet so hard in that last 200 that they bled on the insides of my shoes. My form was absolute trash, and I'm pretty sure I was zigzagging all over the track: but lo and behold, I crossed the finish line in first.

That was the first time I ever singlehandedly won something, and I was so excited until I passed out from draining myself.

When I was pulled back into my miserable little reality by concerned teachers and huddling teammates, I felt like the center of the universe.

It was then and there I decided to really practice my unnamed skills. I tried every day, sometimes with success, sometimes will utter failure. I never really knew what it was I was doing, but I learned to stretch myself in several ways: for example, when Mom started cooking dinner downstairs and I could hear it, I'd try to smell it. Or, when Hiro was talking on the phone to a girl in the middle of the night (he did that surprisingly often for a kid who's never had a legit girlfriend), I could stretch myself through the walls dividing our rooms.

Then I got really good. I could hear Takao writing furiously at his desk, Dad flipping the papers, and Mom humming down the street. I could smell dinner, drugs on the kid next to me, and alfalfa on the equestrian girl in the back of the classroom. I could see the individual eyes on a dead fly and count every freckle on the Scottish kid's face when he gave a presentation.

You get the idea. But I really capitalized in middle school on nullifying my sense of feeling – at first I tried to feel a lot more intensely than usual, but that was nothing more than a painful drag; but if I tried to not feel at all, I could run faster, jump higher, and heave as many push-ups as my concentration could allow.

But once I was on the all-star relay team in eighth grade, my new skills didn't help my popularity as much as I hoped it would. At the end of the day, I was a sour bitch who only spoke in sarcastic tones, and it's hard to get along with people when they want nothing to do with you.

I was the MVP of the track team that year, but no one clapped for me when I took my award.

When I brought it home, I threw it away. I took to testing my nullification skills through cutting myself, which became a regular habit until Takao took notice.

He made me stop.

And that's that.

This is how I became a self-taught, crappy mage.

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I wonder if I should tell Archer. I feel like he might regard me a little more kindly, if he knew the complete extent of what I could do; hell, he might even respect me a little.

Ah, who am I kidding. I don't even respect myself.

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I figured our heroine could use a little bit of a background, so here's her self-discovery.

Expect another update awful soon