Apocalypse…

That is something I never thought will happen in my lifetime.

The next day, I managed to make some progress on figuring things out...

~Line Break~

Shelby slowly walked out of her bedroom in her robe. She sleepily rubbed at her eyes as she made her way to the bathroom to get ready for the day. Once again, she hardly got much sleep. This time, she fully blames her husband for that. That man was just insatiable!

"Man I am sore…" Shelby muttered to herself as she disrobed and turned on the shower. She eyed the toothbrush on the counter. Shrugging, she decided to put some toothpaste on it and then hopped into the shower with it, deciding to brush her teeth AND take a shower.

"Saves time… La la… la la… la la…"

She then hears Sydney cry. Shelby groaned, not wanting to deal with her daughter right now. "James! You do it! I am taking a shower!" She yelled out to him. She hears him groan in response.

"For the love of pound cake!" James headed out of the bedroom in annoyance and into Sydney's room. Smiling, she continued to brush her teeth and also take a shower. It didn't take long for the crying to stop. Perhaps she needed a diaper change?

"Woah! That's a wet one! I think you broke a record, Sydney!"

"Figures…" Shelby was glad she didn't have to deal with that. As she was doing two tasks at once, she thought about that spell she somehow wanted to look at. What was it called? Epitomus… Sacrifice Zilbalba? For whatever reason, it seemed important. However, it is a dark spell that should not be used ever… and it is also not relevant to what she is trying to find out. Well, the only relevancy she can think of is that if worse comes to worse... She stopped there, not wanting to think about that further.

"Why would anyone want to use that spell? Maybe evil people… I know I wouldn't use it…"

She shook that thought off. There were far better things to think on… Like where to go next to continue her research so she can finally get Ambrose to make a speech about it to the entire Spiral! They must do something to keep the magic in the Spiral stable. She shudders to think what happens if they are too late to act. Nothing like this has ever happened before, so she doesn't know what to expect. Wizards need Magic in order to survive. They were born that way.

After finishing both tasks, she jumped out of the shower and placed the toothbrush away. She grabbed the towel and proceeded to dry herself. Before she opened the door to go get changed, James walked into the bathroom with Sydney in his arms.

"She is sucking on her thumb again… you know what that means…" James said in a teasing tone. Shelby rolled her eyes then smiled. She took Sydney gently into her arms. Immediately after doing so, the baby girl latched onto one of her breasts.

"Frisky today aren't you little one?" Shelby giggles as her daughter fed off of her. James gently ruffled the little patch of hair on his daughter's head.

"Heh, she must be like me…" James then whispered the rest of the sentence in his wife's ear. Shelby blushed a deep shape of red from that. She lightly smacked him in the arm for that comment.

"Oh, James, be quiet… Don't embarrass me in front of our daughter like this…"

James laughed in response. He then looked at his daughter fondly. "5 days… 5 days until she is just a year old! It seems like yesterday we just had her…" Shelby nodded in response. Time sure does fly. James then looked at Shelby, remembering something. His wife stared at him back, wondering what he was thinking.

"Shelby, mind telling me about that graph in your research room?" James asked her, folding his arms. The purple haired woman was a bit shocked that he found it. She even hid it in a good place. Guess James has his ways. Not that she blames him; a spouse would get curious about what the other is doing.

She cleared her throat, before deciding to answer him. "That, is a graph of the magical levels of the Spiral. It is uh… decreasing 1.6 percent each year." Shelby wondered if James would even believe her, but when she looked into his eyes, she knew that James did not doubt her.

James scratched the back of his head, sighing. "That would explain the news recently… How long were you intending to keep this from me?" Shelby looked down at her daughter who was still feeding off of her before looking back at him. She knew she should have told him when she first discovered this.

"I am sorry, honey. I just… didn't think you would believe me… because my fellow scientists and Ambrose sure didn't." Shelby explained, feeling guilty from keeping it from him. James smiled and placed a hand on his wife's shoulder.

"Then they are idiots. You are the one of the greatest scientists in Wizard City! No, in fact, you ARE the greatest scientist!" James threw his hands up as if adding emphasis to his statement. Shelby blushed and gently smacked his arm.

"Stop it, I am not."

Her husband smiled, but then thought about the magic decreasing. "So, Magic is decreasing by 1.6 percent every year? Jesus. That is a scary thought. Without magic we might as well all be dead…" Shelby wanted to point out that IS what is going to happen without their magic, but decided against it. James placed a hand under his chin in thought. He wondered how the hell can they convince Ambrose that this whole thing is happening? It is obvious that they needed to do something quick before things go horrible.

"I just don't know what to do… How can I give proof that this is happening? Ambrose won't believe the graphs I made and my fellow Scientists are of no help either…" Just as she finished that sentence, Sydney had stopped feeding and let go of her breast. She placed Sydney over her shoulder and began to pat her back softly. "I spent all day yesterday trying to find proof to show him… but I came up with nothing. Supposedly it is a Virus… but I can't seem to find anything of the sort…" Sydney let out a burp after that and she went back to being cradled in Shelby's arms.

"Well, let me help. I do have the day off today." He suggested. James took his daughter from his wife's arms and decided to play with her, poking her stomach, making her giggle. Shelby looked at him with a smile. He is actually going to help her out? Oh how she loved this man!

"Thank you, honey. That means a lot to me…" She gave him a brief kiss on the lips. She then thought for a minute. Was there something James can do to help her out today? James watched her think for a minute as he held his daughter.

"You can start helping me by checking out some books from the library about things that drain magic… maybe something evolved…" She told him. James nodded. That was a simple task for him to do. Perhaps he'll read the books himself so Shelby doesn't have to.

"Anything else?"

"Not at the moment." Shelby walked into their bedroom and grabbed the fresh pile of clothes she would be wearing today. A red shirt, a black lacy bra, black panties, a purple skirt, and knee-high socks. She placed them on quickly and then looked at herself in the mirror.

"Just do that for me and to make sure you take Sydney with you so you can look after her." Shelby told her husband as she applied some makeup.

"What are you going to do?" James asked as he went to go get his raincoat. The weather outside didn't look pretty nice. It was threatening to rain soon. Seems like the weather lady was right.

"Going to a few places and ask some questions. If this whole thing is because of a Virus… I need to see if anybody feels different recently…" And that was what she was going to do! She'll get the proof she'll need to convince Ambrose and get something done about it! With that, she grabbed her raincoat, placed it on, then headed outside.

~Line Break~

Kelsey clicked her tongue as she stared at the Math quiz in front of her. She gently tapped her desk with her pencil, thinking hard on question 2. 'What is the Derivative of sin ((u/x)^n+x^k) with respect to x?" Oh how she hated Math with such complicated problems such as these. She would much rather be doing magician tricks than doing this!

First week of school and she gets bombarded with a quiz. She blew raspberries and got up from her seat. She might as well fail this quiz. It is just one quiz, she'll do better on the others. She took her quiz and walked over to the Teacher's desk. Handing it over to her teacher, she told him she was going to the bathroom.

"My, you didn't seem to try at all on this quiz. You should have at least attempted some of the questions." The teacher mused as he looked at the first question she answered. It was correct, so he went ahead and gave an F grade. She got one out of 12.

"Whatever. Going to head to the bathroom now."

Kelsey headed out of the classroom and then shut the door softly behind her as there are still students finishing the quiz. She sighed and trailed her hand through her raven locks. She really wasn't in the mood for math. Heck, not really in the mood for school either.

It was eerily quiet in the hallway. Normally there would be hall monitors out and about, but there don't seem to be any at this time. She turned right and headed towards the girl's bathroom. She was about to head in when she heard heavy breathing coming from inside. Kelsey arched an eyebrow and then placed an ear to the door, trying to listen in.

"Oh my god… oh my god…"

That voice… that was Victoria! Alarmed, she headed into the bathroom. To her surprise, she sees Victoria looking at herself in the mirror, dabbing her neck with a wet paper towel. Her eyes wandered over to where the stalls are and to her shock and horror, she sees a girl on the ground, blood pouring from her.

"Vic… what the hell happened..?" Kelsey placed a hand over her mouth. Victoria turned to her, scared out of her mind. The brunette threw away the wet paper towel and quickly locked the bathroom. She then grabbed Kelsey by the shoulders.

"I didn't mean to! She… she bit me with those… fangs of hers…" Kelsey eyed the fang marks on Victoria's neck. A vampire bite… Her neck was still bleeding. But… if she was bitten… How did she not turn? Also, wasn't she supposed to be woozy? Vampires are supposed to suck your blood.

Kelsey took very deep breaths and tried to be calm about the situation. Her best friend has just killed… a vampire… so it seems and she was bitten. "So… that girl was a Vampire… but how are you not one and more importantly… are you woozy at all?"

Victoria paused for a second. "Um, now that you mention it… I don't really feel woozy, I mean she was sucking me for like maybe 3 seconds before I…" She shuddered, not believing that she did that. She wanted to cry, but not in front of her best friend. She was supposed to be the strong one.

"I do feel… drained of something though. It is definitely not blood. Granted she did drink some from me as expected from sucking on my neck, but that doesn't seem to be what she was draining me of…" Victoria looked over at the stall. She felt so guilty… "I didn't want to kill her, I just wanted her off of me. She like crawled underneath the stall and proceeded to attack me… What should I do? Am I going to jail?"

Kelsey bit her lip. Her friend was in quite a predicament. She's not sure the authorities would believe that she killed a vampire on self-defense. She opened the stall door and got a closer look of the dead vampire. It looks like Victoria shoved her so hard against the wall, she cracked her skull and died. Hmm, shouldn't a Vampire die by being stabbed through the heart or something?

Also, she knew this girl. She met her 3 days ago while shopping. She didn't have any fangs or looked any different. So…

"I-I don't know… I am at a loss for words…." Kelsey sighed, feeling so bad for her friend who was trembling in fear. "We'll see where this goes… Hopefully you won't get set off to jail and get expelled from school…"

~Line Break~

Shelby decided to start in the Wizard City Shopping District. There weren't that many wizards around at this time of day, although no one really shops here anyways. They do their business in Bazaar 99 percent of the time. She is rather surprised this place hasn't shut down from bankruptcy yet.

"Hmm, who should I ask? I need to collect a good amount of data and if all possible, which I doubt, I can maybe get a DNA sample from them so I can do some experiments. Sure, the doctors found nothing, but I am WILLING to try and figure out what this "Virus" is."

One thing that doesn't sit right with her though… How did that man who died… get his eyeballs ripped out of his head? Did somebody do that to him? Or was it a result of losing magic. Or maybe even the virus itself? All possibilities. All of them quite horrible really. Putting that thought to the side for the moment, she headed towards the robe shop, hoping to ask the person working there and anybody inside about how the feel when using magic a lot or in general. She stopped however, when she felt a rain drop land on her face. She rubbed the offending water off her face and looked up to the sky. Dark clouds covered the sky, threatening to burst with heavy rain. Then, without warning, it came down hard, drenching the city with water.

"Good thing I brought my raincoat..." Shelby mumbled as she put on her hood. She watched as many wizards from around the area run to take cover from the rain. As she walked towards the robe shop, she felt slightly weaker for some reason. Shelby wrapped her arms around herself, as if she was cold, but in reality, she is just getting weaker. "S-Strange..." How did that happen? Is there... something with the rain?" Being daring and testing a theory that formed in her head, she put her now wet hand to her face. She licked the water off of it and contemplated on the taste... It was slightly bitter... Just then, her body got a bit more weak.

"Oh god, there is something in the rain... What is causing it?!" She reached into her pocket and pulled out a her science kit. She got a vial out and caught some of the rain drops. After collecting a decent amount, she closed it shut with a cork and put it back into her science kit. If her theory is correct, something in the rain is causing people to be weak... weak from the rain draining them of their magic. If the Virus is associated with the rain, they are all in big trouble. The big question is, what is causing it... and how can she stop it?

"Well, I better take shelter for now. If I stay in the rain any longer..." She trailed off as she ran to the robe shop went inside. She didn't want to think about that right now. She needed to do her survey!

~Line Break~

Kelsey laid on her bed, quite depressed at today's series of events. Just a little under an hour ago, her best friend, Victoria, was arrested on the charge of murder. The best outcome she can hope for is that she gets acquitted since she did it out of self-defense. There is evidence to prove that. The bite marks and all, so they have a pretty solid case. The raven haired girl is still worried though as this is the first time in history that a person was on trial for murdering what might be a Vampire, so she is not sure what will happen there.

A flash of lightning shook her out of her thoughts. She jumped up and looked outside her window. It began to rain heavily outside. She was glad to be inside. She hated the rain. The raven haired teen sighed and decided to head out into the living room to watch some TV just to get her mind off things. Her parents were out of the house... again. They leave so many times, they might as well just have abandoned her to look after the house all by her lonesome. Another flash of lightning shook her out of her thoughts. No matter how many times she hears it, she was always scared by them.

Quickly sitting down on the sofa, she turned on the TV and turned it to the Cartoon Network channel. Nothing like some cartoons to make her take her mind off things for a while. She sees that she was now in the middle of a Courage the Cowardly Dog show. Just before she got absorbed into it, an annoying rumble and ring came from her pocket. The teen pulled it out, not bothering to check the number on the cellphone and answered it. "Hello?" She didn't hear anything for a few seconds before the voice of a computer answered.

"Hello. Please stay indoors for the remainder of the day. The rain is causing some issues with some of your fellow citizens. We strongly advise that you do not go outside for any reason lest you risk putting yourself in danger." Kelsey looked out the window, still seeing the rain heavily pouring down from the sky. Nothing seemed to be happening outside besides that. In fact, besides a few cars driving by, there was nobody outside in the rain.

"The rain should settle by 2:00 AM. We thank you for your cooperation." The call ended and Kelsey slipped her cellphone back into her pocket. That was highly unusual. Calls like that rarely ever happen. However, why can't she go outside? The rain doesn't exactly hurt anyone... unless it is acid rain... but it looked like just normal rain to her. How is it causing problems for people that they'd need to call people about it. Just what is going on?

"Well, let's see what the problem is. I am going outside to see." She said to no one in particular as she got up from the couch and went outside in the rain. The rain seemed harmless enough as she let it get herself wet. After a minute of that, she didn't feel any other change... besides being cold. She looked around the area. Her neighborhood seemed to be quite peaceful... nothing dangerous at all.

"Must have been a prank or something..." She muttered to herself. She went back inside, annoyed that it wasted her time. Unknown to her... if she stayed outside for at least another few seconds, she would have caught a glimpse of something really out of the ordinary running around.

~Line Break~

Shelby sat inside the Sandwich Restaurant in Downtown of Wizard City. She was eating a Cheesesteak because she was really hungry after surveying at least 100 people. Only 25 of them actually had some experiences of being tired when using magic only a few times. Would 25 people really be enough to convince him?

Also, this begs to question… Was she infected with this Virus? It has been a LONG time since she used magic. Well maybe she was exaggerating… It has only been a year. She didn't need to use magic or practice magic. She was a scientist. She wasn't like those Questers that go and fight monsters for a living. So, it is not like she knows if she is or not. Perhaps she will test it out… maybe?

Shaking her head, she needed to stop thinking about it for right now. She eyed the daily newspaper on the rack next to her table. Shrugging, she picked it up and began to read the headlines for today.

5 Mentally Ill Wizards attack other Wizards at the Wizard City Hospital!

Late last night, 5 Wizards that had been taken in because of their mental illness, had attacked other Wizards that were visiting the Hospital. Doctors say that they keep murmuring about "Being Drained". After security stopped them from beating the other Wizards to death, they kept on saying, "I want you drained…" As of now, nobody knows what they mean, but it could be just the talking of the mentally ill.

"Those poor Wizards…" Shelby folded the newspaper and hung it back on the rack. That kept her mind off things for a bit. She hoped those that were mentally ill got 'better' soon. No one should go through that. Ending her thoughts with that, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the vial that contained the slightly bitter rain she collected. She definitely needed to do some experiments on this if she wants to find out the truth of the matter. However, her lab is closed for the day, so she can't do that right now.

"...Hello..." Shelby almost dropped the vial from shock and looked at the owner of the voice. It was a female android. Wizard City has been having a lot of those around recently. They only just appeared a year ago thanks to the discovery of making AI very human-like. This android has blue hair, blue eyes, very pale skin, and she appeared to wearing a full body suit in black and blue.

"H-Hi..." Shelby would never say this out loud, but she finds the androids strangely attractive, especially this one. She shook her head of those thoughts. She was a married woman for crying out loud. She should not be ogling androids... especially in public! "Can I help you with something, miss?" She asked, wondering what an android is doing here. They don't eat. The only way they get energy is by going into sleep mode to recharge, but that's it. Perhaps she was owned by somebody and was brought here?

"May I see that vial you have there?" She asked in her polite human programmed voice. It astounded Shelby that Science has developed this far. Going back to the request at hand though, she looked at the vial she held and contemplated on whether or not to hand it over. It stopped raining, but it is not like she can't just get more samples if the android decided to take it for good. Shrugging, she nodded in response. The android gave her her thanks and examined the vial. Shelby doesn't see it, but she can tell that the android was busy scanning the contents.

"My scanners say that this liquid or H2O is intoxicated with some chemicals from a wand factory. It also holds a virus that greatly weakens magical life..." Shelby's eyes widened at that. Not only did she not have to do the experiments herself, but now she knows more info on this virus thanks to this android. What luck. "I can tell that you seem to be quite enthusiastic about finding more about the strange water you collected. I only wanted to help out." The android continued, giving her a soft smile.

"Do you happen to know of a way to combat the virus?" Shelby asked, almost begging for the answer. The android merely shook her head in response.

"I am sorry... I lack data required to figure that out. All I can do is trace what's in it and where it came from."

"Answer me this then, is everyone around here infected with the virus?" Shelby asked, jotting down some notes so she won't forget it later.

"Anyone who has been in direct contact with the rain are infected, I can say that much. That excludes androids like me however. It does not affect our artificial bodies after all." She said that last part with a bit of sadness, seeing how she wasn't totally human. Shelby contemplated that for a moment, before she realized something.

"Wait, shouldn't you have already known about this since you probably been outside in the rain for at least once?" The android smiled, seeing where her thought process went to.

"Very observant. However, I have not been in direct contact with the rain. I was built here and was commanded by my master to never leave the building for any reason. So this is the first time I have scanned the rain. Before you ask, my scanners have a limited range unlike my fellow androids so I couldn't have just scanned the rain outside." She answered, effectively ending any questions Shelby would have brought up. She handed back the vial and Shelby placed it back in her pocket for safe keeping.

"Well, thank you for helping me out, miss..." Shelby trailed off, waiting for her to fill her in. "Dagna Will is the name that was given to me" The android gave the scientist a firm handshake before heading into the kitchen to probably do some work. Guess she didn't need Shelby's name unless she already scanned her for one. The scientist went back to her lunch while thinking about all the info she was given. So apparently the Wand Factories around Wizard City and probably the rest of the Spiral are causing rain that has a virus in it to weaken magical life and effectively draining them of their magic. If that isn't proof, she didn't know what is. Tomorrow she will definitely have a talk with Ambrose tomorrow. This was a huge discovery.

4 days until the End of the Spiral…

Angel: If any old readers are reading this, I do have chapter 6 written up, but I will put that up once I upload a couple of updated chapters a day. You will see the update soon. Don't worry. That is all.