Xander Quest Chapter 345: Another Magical Summer 17, a private fanfic

"It gets worse when they die. Or don't die, as the case may be."

There is a brief silence.

"...you're not saying they're immortal," one of the masters states, rather than asks.

"I'm not. Well, not in general," you clarify. "I'm certain that some warlocks HAVE made deals for eternal life, and some of them may have even gotten it to stick. But there a lot of different kinds of 'immortality', and I suspect that the number of warlocks who've managed to get one of the good kinds is a lot smaller than the number of those who've just arranged not to die of natural causes - or gotten themselves dragged into some horrible Outer Plane or Nightmare Dimension of Endless Suffering, where Time doesn't pass normally, and where they've been kept 'alive' ever since."

"'You asked for eternal life, not eternal youth, eternal sanity, or eternal bodily wholeness!'" Briar says in a nasty sort of tone.

...

Why does she sound like she's quoting someone?

Again, there is silence as the masters consider that.

"And as a reminder," you add, getting back on track, "all supernatural debts get paid eventually, unless you die first - which is a lot less likely when you're immortal, and a lot less of a get-out-of-debt guarantee when you're carrying a piece of your patron's soul around inside of your own."

"Oooh," somebody whistles, sucking air through his teeth. "They always know where 'their' warlock is, don't they?"

"Either that, or they can find out VERY fast," you agree.

You do clarify that not EVERYTHING is doom and gloom and Endless Suffering for warlocks. Some patrons offer better terms than others, some people are better-suited to the powers given to them and the impact that has on their lives, and some folks have really good friends who stick by them even with all the weirdness. And of course, there's always those one-in-a-million cases where somebody just Wins At Life - in this case, riding the train of dark deals and ever-increasing power-ups all the way to some form of apotheosis. Such IS pretty much the ultimate goal for most of the really serious warlocks, and even if vanishingly few of them have ever pulled it off, the success stories make it clear that there's a genuine possibility for others to do the same thing.

That leaves one more category of magic-user for you to cover, the one that is nearest and dearest to your heart...

"Now," you say, looking at Master Nielson, "let's talk about sorcery."

With some reluctance, you ask Briar why it sounds like she's quoting someone.

"Oh, that? That's from one of Mom's bedtime stories. The main character is a young fairy-"

Because of course it is.

"-who has to use all her cleverness to perform a series of 'impossible tasks' for the warlock that's captured her Hylian partner, and means to use them both as spell components and dinner. So, the first thing the warlock demands is that the fairy bring him the crushed wings of ten fairies-"

Oh, boy.

"-and she comes back with ten sets of insect wings, covered in all the fairy dust her friends could muster."

And he buys it, because arrogant evil warlock in a story?

"That, and the fairy hid her own wings and got a friendly beetle to carry her around, so that it looked like she was determined enough to save her partner that she'd torn off her OWN wings when she couldn't find a tenth fairy. That impressed the warlock, whose next task is for the fairy to go steal a ritual from a local witch without being seen or getting caught."

Briar pauses, leadingly, and you think about it for a moment.

"The fairy just went and asked the witch for help while invisible, didn't she," you state.

"Pretty much!" Briar confirms. "And the witch was perfectly happy to help her get one over on the warlock, so she 'accidentally dropped' the scroll with the instructions for the ritual outdoors - with some 'helpful' modifications that she knew the warlock wasn't smart enough to catch."

"And what was the third task?" you ask.

Because there's always a third task in these stories. It's tradition.

"The warlock needed a human heart for the ritual, so he gave the fairy one day to get one, or else he'd use her partner's. She can't think of a way around it, so she goes to her partner's parents to ask for help. She's thinking - really unhappily - that one of them will surely give up their own life to save their kid, but instead, BOTH of them volunteer, and then refuse to let the other die, and their love for the kid and each other is strong enough that it ends up creating a Heart Container."

"Wait, what?" somebody in the audience asks.

You take a minute to explain that whole "Heart Containers as manifestations of Love" thing, adding that the nation where Briar originally comes from is VERY magical.

"...it would have to be..."

"So," Briar resumes her story, "the parents hand over the Heart Container with their blessings, and the fairy and her beetle have a whole little adventure getting it back to the warlock's lair just in the nick of time. The warlock DOES think that it's kind of cheating, but a divine relic is even BETTER for the ritual sacrifice he had in mind, so he takes it and does the ritual while the fairy is freeing her partner. Just as the kid gets loose, the spell is completed, calling up a demon that's bound to grant the warlock one wish. He demands eternal life, and the demon agrees right away, which surprises the warlock - but not as much as when the fairy and her partner run into him from behind, shoving him into the summoning circle."

Because what bedtime story is complete without a little murderous revenge?

"No, no, it wasn't murder," your partner quickly states. "Because they didn't kill the warlock, and neither did the demon; it just snatched him up and dragged him back to the Underworld with it, saying that he'd get to live there forever, and if he didn't like the consequences, it was his own fault for making a bad wish."

...

"A grim fairy tale, eh?"

"Literally, even!" Briar then shrugs. "Of course, I'm leaving parts out, and Mom tells it better anyway."

No, no, you appreciate that she kept the time limit on the lecture in mind.

If she's going to tell Zelda that story, you'd like to be there to hear it yourself.

"Sure! Though I was thinking I might wait another year or two, just to be sure that she's able to follow the story and grab the lessons, you know?"

Fair.

Anyway, where were you...?

Ah, yes.

SORCERY.

You begin by recounting the key difference between sorcerers and other magic-users, this being that, where others must acquire power through study or prayer or bargains, a sorcerer is essentially born with their power, or at least the potential for it, needing only some spark to fully awaken the magic. Arising internally as they do, a sorcerer's powers are shaped by his own identity and ideals much more than other forms of magic, and consequently are largely unique - which makes them very difficult to provide universal strategies for.

Still, you persevere, noting that, while sorcerers technically do not require patronage or artifice to utilize their innate powers, many of them do utilize such external methods and energy sources to supplement their personal skills and reserves. As such, identifying and taking away spellcasting tools can be a useful tactic for weakening a sorcerer, even if only by denying or complicating their use of specific spells and rituals.

After all, most sorcerers are still going to have at least a few combat spells they can throw around even when stripped of all reagents, focuses, and other items.

While it's not unheard of for a sorcerer to learn how to physically fight-

"Case in point," you note, gesturing at yourself.

-most of them prefer to rely on their magic for defense, with allies being a close second. They generally have plenty of the former to throw around, and as for the latter, sorcerers tend to have strong, compelling personalities, which makes it relatively easy for them to draw attention and get on people's good sides. Not every sorcerer is a master of mundane charm, to be sure, and few go so far as to develop genuine leadership skills, but as diplomats, negotiators, and actors, they can do quite well for themselves.

"Though becoming con men, rabble-rousers, and bullies is also pretty common," you admit. "Sometimes we can go both ways at once, depending on who we're dealing with and who's watching, and of course, magic can help in either respect."

The flip side of being so outgoing and strong-willed is that it's easy to annoy or exhaust people of a more introverted nature, and it can sometimes be difficult to get along in organizations that expect and enforce certain codes of conduct and adherence to a chain of command over face-to-face interactions.

The fact that sorcerers have a lot of magical energy to throw around, generally aren't shy about using it, and can generally wreck a room or even a small building at a moment's notice - and then do it AGAIN, quite possibly many times in succession - also tends to make a lot of people understandably uncomfortable.

"A novice-level Fire Elemental sorcerer can't throw Fireballs around, of course," you note, "but he could grow into that level of ability without too much trouble, and in the meantime, a few blasts of Burning Hands make for a decent substitute, at least for anything that gets close enough."

Or, you know, when you have Reach Spell Metamagic.

The borrowed memories of your Shadow burning down bloodrats are going to stay with you for a long, long time, but in a GOOD way.

Thinking of metamagic, and how sorcerers' close connection to their powers allows them to alter spells on the fly with greater ease than most (when they've bothered to learn the techniques, at least), you drop a few cautionary words about the practice into your lecture.

Being able to increase the range of a projectile or the size of an explosion, dial the raw power of a spell up or down to fit a changing situation, or switch elemental properties around so that a "Fire"ball thunders or freezes while a Cone of "Cold" shocks or burns... even if typical sorcerers generally can't push these tricks as far as you can, they still have SOME affinity for such skills, which represent one more card in their hand, one more unpredictable element that a prospective opponent has to worry about.

Or, for that matter, that a neighbor needs to keep an eye out for.

Even if the full variety of sorcerous powers is impractical to cover in the time you have, you are able to give the masters a run-down of certain broad approaches to magical combat which sorcerers tend to favor, such as those who throw around directly destructive effects, those who use summoning or mind-control to make others fight for them-

"Rok," the Octorok sighs.

"Yeah, some people are just lazy or jerks that way."

-and those who alter the conditions of the battlefield - or those ON the battlefield - to give themselves an edge. Only very powerful sorcerers are able to truly excel at more than one of these jobs, but most figure out how to shape their emergent magic in such a way as to let them at least stay relevant in other areas, when their preferred approach is either inappropriate or unavailable.

As an example, throwing Fireballs around is usually not a good way to convince people to welcome you into their settlement with open arms, unless you're blowing up a pack of demons in the process; conversely, a sorcerous con artist who gets by on supernatural charm is going to be in trouble if he tries to talk a thirsty corpse-demon out of making him its next meal.

"Being pretty does tend to attract those parasites," somebody grumbles.

"I mean, that IS true," you admit, "but I was getting more at the fact that the undead are immune to a lot of Enchantment Magic."

"...oh. Wait, they are?"

"I mean, Enchantment Magic is generally meant to work on the brain, or whatever chemicals are in the body. Most of the undead don't have those things anymore, at least not in any kind of working state."

"Huh."

After covering the broad categories and general tactics for dealing with them, you don't have too much more to say about sorcerers.

And then Master Nielson speaks up again. "And how would you describe your capabilities, as a sorcerer?"

You know you probably shouldn't do it.

You gave your word about holding back on your use of magic, and while Power isn't just magic, it's still an exotic and potent form of supernatural energy, one that you know has a tendency not to play nice with magical effects. Even holding back to a reasonable degree, you can't be one hundred percent sure that a burst of Power won't set off the School's security ward again.

More than that, you know that part of the reason Master Nielson keeps poking at you is because of his rivalry with Lu-sensei, which is something you, as a student, shouldn't be getting involved in. You've also been directly counseled by another of the teachers against just this sort of one-upmanship.

And yet.

And. Yet.

While unleashing MAXIMUM POWER would certainly be breaking the letter and spirit of your promise, simply relaxing the metaphysical hold you keep on your aura is a far lesser matter. Your suppressive skills are such that you're pretty sure you can give the audience an idea of the extent of your Power without actually breaking your word, and your Aura of Power doesn't have the range of your actual Power techniques; it's unlikely to affect anything that isn't actually in this room (or adjacent to it), and the only active magical effects whose sources are in that area are your own current set of spells.

Even then, your Aura alone hasn't ever disrupted your magic. Leaked through Abjuration spells and given you some baffling Divination readings, yes, but not actually knocked out the spells in question.

As for Nielson... you SHOULDN'T be involved in his grudge, yet he insists on making it so. He's been less objectionable about that than he could have, and less so than you think he MEANT to be: the sight of your Summoned eight-armed Assistant and Illusionary display when he first entered the room definitely took him aback; and he's looked reluctantly interested, even impressed, at various points in your lecture and with the magical audio-visual accompaniment; but even taking that into account, he clearly hasn't quite given up on trying to score a point against Lu Tze through you, or just being annoying.

And whether martially, mystically, or socially, it is ultimately against your nature to let someone keep annoying you without some measure of response, to... discourage further irritation.

So..

"I," you say, not only relaxing your hold on your Aura, but giving it a little outward push as well, "have the Power."

The room goes still for a moment-

*Slap*

-except for Lu-sensei, who just facepalmed-

*Slap-slap-slap-slap*

-and the Octorok, who has reached backwards to steady himself as he leans away from you, looking at once amazed and alarmed.

You don't leave your energies blazing, of course, nor do you simply show off and leave it at that. They need context to properly appreciate the significance of what you just did.

The audience can wait for a second, and could probably use the time to get their own thoughts in order.

"Are you alright, Assistant?" you ask, turning to the Octorok.

"O-octo, rok!?" comes the wide-eyed, wondering response, before your summoned helper has a sudden realization and bows so far forward that he's practically planted his face on the floor, several arms stretched outward in obeisance. "Rokto! Rokto!"

...

Gained Octorok E

Well, on the positive side, he didn't just ask you if you were a god. At least not literally.

On the negative side, he asked pretty much the opposite, right before asking for mercy.

"You had to know that was coming," Briar sighs.

Yeah, it really isn't a surprise that a Hyrulean monster encountering an exceptionally powerful young sorcerer who bore the remnant energies of the Triforce might wonder if they'd found an incarnation of Ganondorf. Even if Assistant has probably never directly encountered the divine relic-

For some reason, you have a brief glimpse of a dark altar holding up a huge glass jar full of dark vapor and floating monstrous forms, a red-tinted golden triangle hovering ominously before it.

-or at least not in its entirety, the Triforce is simply too important and too central to the existence of the monsters for one of them to fail to recognize it. And that's assuming your past self didn't lay some sort of enchantment on his minions to allow them to detect the Golden Power and bring it, or rumor of it, to him.

You can definitely see him doing it.

...actually, you can practically HEAR an ominous voice demanding, "Bring me the Triforce!"

You quickly shake THAT thought off before it can go anywhere.

"Stop that, and straighten up," you tell Assistant firmly, but not angrily.

"Octo!" He stops immediately and does as told, while you consider what to say.

You're not about to reveal the truth in front of this entire audience, but you might owe your Assistant an explanation - and while you're at it, you might also want to get the idea that you're Ganon Reborn OUT of his head, so that if and when memories of this summoning work their way into the consciousness of the actual Octorok, he doesn't start a new Cult of the Demon King or something.

"I'll explain later," you say quietly. "For now, just act like before and keep assisting."

"Rok!" That gets you a salute.

"And... sorry if I startled you."

"...to."

While you don't exactly like the idea of telling the whole story to an effective stranger, even a helpful one visibly on the verge of worshipping you - which, is honestly half a reason NOT to tell someone something all by itself - in this case, you think you have to provide some context, to make sure the Octorok doesn't get the wrong idea about you and your whole... situation.

You aren't sure how one of the Demon King's minions will react to being told its master's soul has been reincarnated in another world, let alone as a kid who has no plans of going back to Hyrule any time soon or of starting up the whole Reign of Darkness thing again if and when that trip DOES come about, but this is an opportunity to find out the answer to that mystery in a relatively safe environment. And you can use a few spells and other abilities to make sure nobody overhears you, and to get an idea of how Assistant really feels about the matter.

But that is for later; right now, you have a lecture to conclude.

Turning back to your audience, you clear your throat. "Right, so, what you all felt just now was my PARTIALLY unrestrained aura. To try and put it into perspective, most spellcasters don't give off a presence like that until they're actively casting spells, and even when they do, the energies involved are weak enough that the most common methods of magical detection can't pick them up for longer than a few minutes after the fact - maybe some hours, for high-level casters, or as little as a few seconds, for the weaker sort. If I'm not holding my power in check, I feel like that ALL the time, and I leave a trail that can be picked up for DAYS. I have to keep Abjuration spells to block out supernatural detection running twenty-four/seven, just to make sure that I don't have half the supernatural population of my hometown freaking out and hunting me down."

And they WOULD hunt you down, whether to kill you before you could kill them, demand lessons, or - you spare a sidelong glance for a certain summoned cephalopod - offer praise and beg for guidance.

Knowing your luck, the latter bunch would be doomsday cultists, fanatical would-be crusaders, or something similarly troublesome...

Looking at the audience, you aren't sure if they believe what you've just told them, or if they're still getting over their first encounter with Power, but nobody seems to be inclined to argue with you.

"Any questions?"

You look around at your audience.

The masters trade glances.

One hand goes up.

"Yes, sir?"

"What exactly IS your Assistant, anyway?"

Assistant blinks. "Octorok?"

Okay, not the sort of question you were going for, but on the other hand, yeah, you can see why this guy might be wondering about the cephalopod in the room. From the way other members of the audience are leaning in or looking on, he's far from the only one.

Seeing as how they've been good enough not to let their curiosity interrupt your lecture, you decide it's only fair to answer the question.

"He's what's known as an Octorok, a monster native to the same land that my partner Briar hails from."

"...so he's a kind of fairy?"

"Hey!"

"Rok!"

"...or not," the teacher corrects himself, leaning back slightly from the offended glares.

"Definitely not," you agree. "I don't think I've ever heard of an Octorok turning up in Faerie...?" You pause to check with Briar.

"I mean, they do come through the whirlpools in Lake Hylia pretty often-"

"Octo," Assistant says with a nod.

"-and every once in a while one of them will fall through the cracks in the Lost Woods-"

"To." The Octorok shrugs, definitely not surprised by that statement.

"-but they don't wander very far in either case, and I've never heard of any stable populations."

Privately, you wonder if that's because the Fae drive the Octoroks out and kill them, or because the Curse that underlies the existence of even Hyrule's naturalized monster population binds them to the kingdom? You can certainly understand the Fae being territorial, especially against what are ultimately demon-spawn, but you DID meet that mobogo hanging out at the edge of Lady Chloe's domain.

Then again, maybe it's a matter of power? Even that giant Octorok you summoned on that quest for Fae ores wasn't as powerful as the demonic toad-thing, and the more typical varieties like Assistant are much weaker than their huge cousin, which would make them easy prey for a lot of Fae predators.

...

And now you have an image of Kat chewing on a tentacle-on-a-stick stuck in your head.

"Anyway," you say, shaking your head as you get back to answering the question, "Octoroks are not Fae - and just for the record, unless you're dealing with people like Briar - tiny, winged, glowing people, kind of chatty and with short attention spans-"

Some glances shift to your partner to see her reaction.

"He's not wrong," Briar admits.

"-calling a Fae a 'fairy' is both incorrect and an insult. And believe me, you DON'T want to insult the Fae."

"Ah. In that case, I apologize to you, Miss Briar... and Mister Assistant?"

"I accept your apology."

"Rokto, rok."

"And so does he."

Gained Octorok E+

"On a related note," you add, "you probably won't ever encounter an Octorok. They're not native to Earth, Briar's homeland is too far away for the convenient methods of planar travel to be much use, and to the best of my knowledge, nobody else summons them. Though if you DO encounter one-"

"-watch out for rocks, and please get in touch with me about it."

"Wait, what do rocks have to do with this?"

You look at your Assistant.

Your Assistant blinks, smirks, and subtly points the tip of one tentacle at the guy asking the question.

"Rok?" he asks, all innocently.

Getting away from that sideline, you take a few more questions-

"Is there anything else we should know about fair- I mean, Fae?"

"That's a whole other lecture," you reply.

"Or a whole series of them," Briar adds.

"Yeah."

-on various topics-

"What would you say the most effective weapon against magic is?"

"In closing, I will say that whether or not you believe my appraisal of my own capabilities, it would be better not to use me as a benchmark for other sorcerers - and in fact, it would be best not to treat ANY magic-user as a 'standard' for other magic-users. Rather than the WAY they use magic, it'll be the circumstances, the location, and the individual which really determine how dangerous the encounter is. Every magic-user is capable of something, and many of them will have abilities you won't expect or have any reasonable way to prepare for, but ultimately, even the most powerful and well-prepared have limits on how much they can do in a given period of time, and how long they can keep doing it. No one's omnipotent."

"No rok."

Assistant slumps in disappointment. "Rokto..."

You turn, cast a Spell to Summon a Monster-

*Poof*

-and nod at the skeletal Stalchild that manifests before you, clad in rusty chain and clutching a chipped sword, before turning back to the Octorok.

"Why is its head so big?" somebody mutters.

"Are the undead supposed to be so... weirdly cute?"

Assistant joins your audience in blinking in confusion, before a look of delighted understanding crosses his face. He faces the undead, takes aim by holding up one tentacle and squinting past the tip, then swells up-

"What in the-?"

*Pittoo!*

*Sma-crunch!*

-and fires a rock about the size of your fist from his snout with enough force that the undead target is sent staggering backwards, dry old bones cracking and bits of busted rib falling to the floor.

The Stalchild doesn't appear to know how to react to this. Granted, it IS a mindless undead, but most of the time, such entities are sufficiently unfriendly to the living that just being within their sensory range will prompt an attack, much less when they've been damaged. And yet, all Hyrulean monsters have the same ultimate origins, giving them a measure of kinship in spite of their diverse forms. Perhaps the unprovoked assault by one of its own is confusing the skeleton?

Whatever the case, the Stalchild hesitates for a long moment before - in the absence of orders to the contrary - it raises its weapon and advances-

*Pittoo!*

*Sma-crunch!*

-only for the second spat stone to smash its skull and take it right off the spine.

The Stalchild's decapitated body stands there for a moment-

*Thunk-ka-thunk*

-as its cracked and half caved-in head hits the floor and rolls about for a moment.

As it comes to a stop, you think the dull points of light in the pits of its eyesockets may be glaring at you.

Then the body collapses with a clatter of bones, before all vanishes into a fleeting puff of skull-smoke.

Assistant raises his tentacles in a victory stance. "OCTO!"

You turn to the audience and say, "That's what rocks have to do with it."

"...well, I did ask..."

"Speed and surprise definitely have their place," you answer the question. "It's a fact that almost all spells take at LEAST a few seconds to cast, and if you can close the distance and land a blow or three before the caster can finish, you've got a good chance of breaking his concentration and ruining the spell. And a surprise in combat will ruin anybody's day, if they're on the wrong side of it."

The masters nod. "But...?" the one who asked the question inquires leadingly.

"But, as good as those are, I would say that the best weapon against magic is accurate information. Knowing ahead of time what your opponent CAN do and what he's LIKELY to do will save you a whole lot of trouble."

"And a boot to the head is a great equalizer."

Your closing remark draws some chuckles, and there is a round of thanks, grateful nods, and various comments.

"Sorry, Timmy Two."

The Stalchild does not appear appeased by your apology.

You shrug, not really fussed about it.

"The skeleton's name is 'Timmy'?" someone with the option of anti-eavesdropping magic, you'd feel better about waiting to discuss Hyrulean matters until only people really read in on the subject were in the room. As such, you go ahead and spend several minutes navigating the waters of the post-lecture... thing, accepting the thanks, hearing out the commentary, and taking the opportunity to make a few inquiries about your presentation.

What was helpful, what was extraneous, what could have been done better, that sort of thing.

"For my part, I could have done without the overhead illusion," one of the masters says.

"It seemed like a perfectly reasonable choice to me," one of his peers replies.

"I'm not saying that an audio-visual component to the presentation wasn't helpful, or that doing it with magic didn't help to make a point," the first guy returns. "I just found it a bit distracting when I started seeing THROUGH the screen."

There are some nods of agreement and understanding at that.

You have to admit, it's not much of a surprise that some of the masters were able to see through your modified Major Illusion; the basic form is not that powerful a spell, and your alterations to its formula didn't exactly make the results harder to resist - rather the opposite. There's not a whole lot you can do about that, though, given you were already pushing the agreed-upon limits of your spell use.

There are some similar remarks about the Shadow Conjured items, as well as suggestions that you have a slightly larger and more varied selection if you mean to pass them around like that.

Maybe you can use Minor Creation for those next time?

When you're asked if your two future lectures will include new material, or if you'll largely be covering the same topic, you have to admit that you're more inclined to the former-

"Better to let the expert inform the students than for us to try and recount all of that information secondhand, after just one sitting."

"I know I'd never be able to explain the octopus."

"Octorok," several voices correct him, you, Briar, and Assistant among them.

-which leads to some further remarks, and discussions about class schedules and how to choose which students get to attend.

Gradually, however, the lecture hall empties out.

Even better, Master Nielson leaves without making a further pest of himself.

"It's traditional."

"...it is?" the man asks.

"It is," you say firmly.

"Octo?" Assistant wonders, looking from you to Briar.

"...yeah, kind of," your partner replies. "A tradition is just a really widespread habit, right?"

As much as you dislike having to pass up an opportunity to make a witty remark, you do have other things in need of doing, and probably shouldn't draw out this round of conversation any longer than you absolutely have to.

Even as you express your personal preference, you have to admit that you aren't sure if the masters know their students well enough to sort them out using this metric. This branch of the School of Five Elements is a lot bigger than Lu-sensei's modest training hall, making it that much harder for the adults to keep tabs on any single student, and they're further disadvantaged by the fact that most of the students don't live in the area, and hence wouldn't see these particular teachers as often as you meet your own master.

There is also the fact that, where Lu-sensei could reasonably say, "We live on the Hellmouth, EVERYBODY needs to know about magic, just in case," there are simply too many students at the School for this to work.

So you offer a second qualifier, suggesting that they pick out people they trust NOT to go haring off to find magic-users to fight.

You would rather not spur on any anti-magic vigilantes.

Those particular masters nod at your words and leave the room wearing thoughtful expressions, while tossing names back and forth.

At a certain point, the room has cleared out enough that you're able to withdraw from further conversation and focus on cleaning up after yourself. Assistant has already helpfully gathered up the Shadow Conjured props, and you take the time to look them over with your Mage Sight as well as your Mark One eyeball. This isn't just you putting on a show to encourage the remaining masters to move along, it's also you checking out how well your improvised "Shadow Prestidigitation" has held out.

The answer to that, incidentally, is "Not bad, but not perfectly." At first glance, the wand and other props still appear to be intact, but when you focus and peer through their outer appearance, the shadow-stuff underneath is visibly flaking apart and wavering.

This makes sense. Whatever the effects it's been used to create, a single casting of Prestidigitation normally only lasts an hour - it's been rather longer than that, and your ritual up-casting didn't include any special allowances for extending the duration, so it's honestly impressive that these things are still holding together. That might not have been the case if they'd been getting put to use...

Regardless, you dismiss the illusions one-by-one. Your overhead Major Image has already lapsed, thanks to you finally releasing your concentration, and while you leave most of your buffs in place on the grounds that they'll be useful to you in a moment, you make a point of dismissing the Spell of Ventriloquism, just in case.

By this point, most of your former listeners have departed, with Lu-sensei - after a quick exchange of looks and gestures - having obligingly gathered up those who remain and drawn them into a conversation while nudging them towards the door.

For a little extra security, you cast the Spell of the Silent Table around yourself, the Octorok, and Briar, the latter riding on your shoulder and keeping an eye out for would-be eavesdroppers while you discuss a somewhat sensitive matter.

You also focus your Mental Sense on the monster before you.

"To?" Assitant inquires.

"It's later, and I promised you an explanation. So... and before I start, no bowing."

"...rok?"

Having decided to give the Octorok the whole truth, you admit that you have Ganondorf's soul-

"OCTO!"

"I said no bowing!"

-no small amount of his power-

"Including the tendency to summon Hyrulean monsters if I don't focus on something else," you note.

"To-to," Assistant says, nodding as if that made perfect sense.

Being fair, from where he's standing, it undoubtedly does.

-and even some of his memories. You emphasize, however, that you are NOT the Demon King of Evil Reborn-

Assistant gives you a dubious look at that.

-and that you have no plans of becoming so OR returning to Hyrule-

And now he looks like he might be about to cry. "T-to?"

-because it turns out that Ganondorf was and is under a terribly potent ancient curse-

"ROK!?"

-which he appears not to have known about, and which you, personally, have zero desire to set off, now that you know it's there.

"And going to Hyrule, meeting someone from Hyrule who carries 'the Blood of the Goddess' - which at this point, is basically any Hylian, Shiekah, or Gerudo - or running into Link would do that," you conclude.

Assistant hesitantly raises one tentacle, points at himself, and asks, "R-rok?"

"No, meeting you was fine. Partly because you're here as a summon instead of in person, partly because you're a monster, and partly because I've already summoned an Octorok before."

"Octo?" He seems curious.

"There were these Fae fish that needed a lesson..."

Assistant huffs and makes a dismissive gesture. "Ock."

Aside from requesting that he not reveal your existence to others - provided he remembers it through the summoning - do you have anything to say to or ask of Assistant on this matter?

"They were taking notes from the River Zora..."

No sooner have you said this than Assistant's eyes go flat. "Octo? Rok, to, octo rok! To rok, ock, rok ock to!"

A certain amount of tentacle-flailing, puffing up, and color-shifting outrage accompanies that outburst, and if not for your Spell of Tongues, you wouldn't have caught most of the Octorok's little rant.

It would seem that there is something of a rivalry between Octoroks and the fallen Zora, arising from the fact that, while both species are amphibious and capable of attacking at range, Octoroks have been loyal servants of the forces of darkness since time immemorial, whereas the River Zora are - to put it in Assistant's magically translated words - "a stuck-up bunch of fishy-come-latelies." Assistant also claims that Zora are smug about their armored scales, rending claws, and especially their ability to spit fire, never mind that most of them are cowards who hide in deep water where attackers can't reach them...

Well. That was a land- er, a floating mine you probably could have done without swimming into, but at least you'll know better going forward?

Gained Octorok E++

...you WERE going to say something about the Goddesses, but considering Assistant just flipped his mantle and threw out a line that shows he takes some pride in his species' history of service, you need a minute to re-phrase the thought.

And to buy yourself that time, and maybe give him a chance to brag, your brain comes up with: "A question?"

"Rok?"

"Octoroks can spit rocks-"

The look he gives you is not quite a "duh."

"-that much is obvious. But, can you spit different KINDS of rocks?"

Assistant blinks, and then proceeds to explain that his kind do not magically generate the stones they spit, instead scooping up stones from their environment, swallowing them into a secondary stomach, and then regurgitating them at need. That said, it's not quite as simple as it sounds.

Assistant cups two tentacles together and (gently) spits a fresh stone into them, holding it out for you to look closer. When you do, you see that the "rock" is actually a collection of several smaller stones, sort of glued together by a thick not-quite-spittle, not-quite-phlegm substance that doesn't seem to have a name among Octorok-kind, or at least none that your spell offers a translation for. The stuff remains liquid and non-viscous while in the Octorok's stomach, which not only ensures that their "payload" doesn't get all gummed up together, but also lubricates the stones and helps them to move around.

This is important, because Octoroks, like other cephalopods, are capable of compressing their bodies to a remarkable degree, a trait that enables them to escape predators and pursue prey by squeezing through surprisingly small cracks and crevices - which would also explain why they turn up in so many ruins and cave systems, now that you think of it - but would be compromised for an Octorok that was carrying a bunch of fist-sized stones around in its gullet. A bunch of thumb-sized rocks are much easier to work with, not to mention easier to find in the first place.

As for the kinds of rocks, Assistant says that every Octorok has their own preferences. Some go for smooth, rounded stones, which are easier on the stomach - and indeed, if an Octorok carries a set of rocks around long enough, the constant mutual friction tends to wear them down - but other Octoroks favor stones with relatively sharp edges, greater or lesser density, or even carrying deposits of certain minerals.

Assistant doesn't specify what sorts of minerals, just "shiny rocks of different colors."

After all of that, Assistant adds that elder Octoroks are said to be able to imbue magic into their attacks, making rocks hit harder, more accurately, and over longer distances, and even to imbue them with elemental forces! ...but that might just be fish stories.

"Never seen it yourself, huh?" Briar guesses.

"Rokto," he replies, shaking his head.

Eh, fair.

You're surprised by how much of this is new to you, but then again, whoever originally gathered the information presented in the bestiary section of the Hyrulean Holy Books probably wasn't in a great place to overcome the language and allegiance barriers, assuming they would have thought to ask.

Dissecting Hyrulean monsters is also generally impossible, given how their bodies burst into energy and smoke upon death, and LIVE examinations are the sort of thing you doubt the Goddesses would have condoned.

...

Why are you two looking at me like that?!

The chance to boast talk at some length about the subtleties of his kind's primary mode of attack has visibly improved Assistant's temper, and it's also given you time to think about what you mean to say next - thankfully, you're able to keep two different trains of thought going at once, so you could work on your phrasing while still following the many "ocks," "tos," and "roks."

"To go back to what I was talking about," you begin.

"Rok?"

"When I mentioned that Ganondorf was under a Curse, you reacted with alarm. I take it, then, that you don't like the idea that his will was not entirely his own?"

"Rok-to," Assistant replies, shaking his mantle from side to side. "Octo rok, to, rok octo."

Ah, that makes sense.

You aren't surprised to learn that Hyrulean monsters aren't as personally bothered by curses as most other beings. Some of that has to do with how many of their own kind can wield such dark magic for themselves, whether by infusing curse energy into their attacks to inflict greater harm, by bestowing temporary penalties of a specific kind on their prey, or by working a proper permanent curse. That last is mostly the territory of trained spellcasters like Wizzrobes, while the middle ground is best represented by the Bubbles.

The fact that Ganondorf is well-known to have created various monsters using powerful curses as a medium undoubtedly plays a role in the general tolerance for such things among his servants. Demise's influence almost certainly has a hand in that as well; Navi DID use the title "Source of All Monsters" when she passed on the Goddesses' information on the Curse to you, and given the ancient Demon King basically created GANONDORF out of a curse, he might well have had - and used - the same capability to spawn monsters from curses.

Which would mean all the monsters of Hyrule's many ages of history were not only descended from a Demon King, but from the CURSES of one. That actually might explain a few things, like how even after thousands of years of more natural reproduction, Hyrulean monsters still go out in puffs of smoke, rather than leaving corpses...

Anyway, there is a difference between being able to USE curses or having your ancestral origins AS a curse, and actually BEING cursed yourself. An experienced curse-caller, like Ganondorf was, knows what he's doing and can choose the results of the magic. Someone UNDER a curse has no such control, and for Assistant, who just spoke with pride of his kind's long history of loyalty, the idea that the lord he and his have served so faithfully since time out of mind wasn't in control of his own actions is concerning.

"So you understand, then, why I don't like the idea of being taken over by that Curse, and used as a disposable tool for somebody else's vendetta?"

"Rok," Assistant says firmly, with a single nod.

"And you understand that I need to avoid Hyrule until I've found a way to break the Curse?"

"...to," the Octorok admits glumly, nodding again.

"I'm glad to hear it. After all," you add, "if I find a way to break MY connection to that Curse, I can probably do the same for you and yours."

"Octo!?"

"Think about it; you might not be cursed yourselves, but if the Curse was using Ganondorf for all those years, and you gave him your loyalty for just as long, then you were being used, too. How many of you have died for a dead demon's grudge?"

"...rok," Assistant says sadly.

"And what rewards have those deaths earned?"

"Ock," the monster grumbles bitterly.

"That's right. So what do you owe the Curse that's tricked you, used you, killed you, and left you with nothing to show for it?"

"Rok!"

"That's right!"

"And I will BE that rock!" you continue with some heat. "Straight to the forehead, with enough force to leave a scar that persists for the next thousand- no, the next TEN thousand years! For my sake, for your sake, for the sake of EVERYONE that Curse has ever used and cast aside!"

Assistant forms mock-fists and pumps them into the air. "OCTO!"

"BUT!" you add sharply, before taking a breath to calm yourself. "But."

"...rok?"

"I can't be that rock right NOW," you state. "First, I need to work out how to break the Curse's hold on me, in a way that doesn't... backlash. You've heard about curses, so I assume you've heard about what a pain they can be to break, and what can go wrong if the attempt fails, or even just doesn't succeed quite well enough?"

"Ock," Assistant nods, shuddering. "Rok."

"Picture something like that happening with a soul-curse."

Assistant blanches. Considering that his skin is normally a solid red, that's saying something.

"Yeah. So I need time to find the answer, and until I have it, I need to avoid the things that would set the Curse off. That means staying out of Hyrule, staying out of contact with the Goddess's blood, staying FAR away from the Hero-"

Assistant makes a gesture of warding at that.

"-and for safety's sake, keeping knowledge of my connection to Ganondorf out of the hands of anyone that might be inclined to USE that information, such as, for example, summoning me to Hyrule."

Outside of the Triforce-wielding Hero - who almost certainly WOULDN'T do it - you have your doubts that there's any single entity currently active in Hyrule with the necessary mastery of Summoning Magic to pull off summoning you. After all, Shadow Alex barely managed that.

But ritual magic is a thing, and one of the things it can be used for - even if you've never had the need for such - is to combine the efforts of multiple spellcasters and even untrained individuals into a single working that's greater than the sum of its parts. A perfect example of this is the story you've put together from Briar's account of her years in Hyrule, the lessons of your tutors, and the contents of the Hyrulean religious texts, concerning the efforts of Ganon's surviving loyalists to kill Link and use his blood in a dark rite to revive their master.

They failed, obviously, and between the efforts of the Hylians to hunt down the remnants of the demonic army, as well as the simple passage of time, it's pretty likely that the monsters who were involved in that plot are all long dead. But the point remains, they had the will and the means to make the attempt - and if the current generation of Hyrulean monsters finds out that their lord's soul has reincarnated, you just KNOW that they'll try to take advantage of that somehow.

"And that's why I have to ask you that, if and when you remember this summoning, you not tell anyone about me. For my sake, for your sake, for your people's sake, and for the sake of all the other loyal monsters..."

"Rok?" Assistant inquires.

"...yes, even the River Zora."

"To," the Octorok grumps.

"They got used, too."

Assistant grumbles some more, but doesn't seem to have a good comeback to that.

"So, my faithful Assistant," you say next. "Can I count on your support in this endeavor, and your silence?"

"Octo!" he assures you, giving you the tentacle-tip up of affirmation.

"Thank you. I look forward to the day when the monsters of Hyrule are free of that treacherous Curse, and able to live their lives by their own will, without being hunted down by Hylian armies and Heroes-"

Assistant makes that warding gesture again.

"-just for existing."

"Rok to, ock?" Assistant asks dubiously.

"...I mean, from what I've seen of Ganondorf's memories and what I've read in this world's history books, war sucks for everybody involved. If both sides were willing to give peace a chance, even if it was only because the Goddesses' Chosen-"

Once more, Assistant makes that sign. Is that just because He Who Shall Not Be Named or Titled is part of that category, or are the monsters wary of Zelda, too? It could go either way with her, really, for while you know that she's been held prisoner by the Forces of Darkness on numerous occasions, you also know that she survived those experiences and played a key role in Ganondorf's downfall just about every time.

You keep speaking while that thought is going through your head.

"-and I were there yelling at both sides to stand down, they might find that they liked it. Then again, they might not. But as long as they weren't fighting for the Curse or because of it, that would still be better than the current situation." You shrug. "Still, that's a problem for the future. Fingers and tentacles crossed that it'll be a better one, where we can all enjoy the life-giving winds of Hyrule."

"Octo?" Assistant... does not seem to know where your remark about the winds is coming from.

"Sorry, it was something Ganondorf said once. At least, I'm pretty sure he said it, and I wasn't just dreaming it."

"To?"

"Yeah, most of what I 'remember' about him is from my dreams. It can make things a little unclear."

Is there anything else you want to discuss or do with Assistant?

He does know that gesture doesn't actually do anything without some power behind it, right?

I think he's doing it more to show comradery with the Octorok than anything else.

Not upset about the implication of your Chosen being an evil force in need of warding off?

First of all, these are technically the bad guys, so the usual good/evil thing is flipped. And secondly, my boy has worked hard to earn his rep.

So he has.

"Thank you for your help and your silence, and have a pleasant day."

Assistant salutes. "Octo!"

"Bye!" Briar adds, waving.

"To," comes the response in kind.

And then you dismiss the summoning-

*Poof*

-and he's gone.

"So," Briar asks, as you bring down the Spell of the Silent Table. "What do you suppose the odds are of that coming back to blow up in your face?"

"I'd say no worse than any of my other interactions with Hyrulean entities," you reply. "For starters, there's the summoning memory bit. Assistant's not a trained magic-user and doesn't even have any innate supernatural powers that would help him focus on accessing that sort of information, so he may legitimately never remember any of this."

"Sounds reasonable," your partner agrees. "And I suppose the next bit is that you have his promise?"

"That, and his loyalty to Evil Past Me," you admit. "And it's not just the typical 'evil minion serving the evil overlord for evil kicks' sort of loyalty."

"No?"

"I had my psychic sense going while we talked, and Assistant felt legitimately concerned when I told him Ganondorf was Cursed, and fully in support of that Curse being broken." You shrug. "Of course, what he might decide to do AFTER that is entirely up in the air, but like I said-"

"-future problems," Briar finishes, nodding.

There are still a few masters hanging around outside the classroom where you gave the lecture, but as Briar informs you, none of them did more than glance in your direction once or twice early on in your private chat with Assistant. You spend a little time talking with them before excusing yourself, deciding to take the remainder of the hour before lunch off to rest and recover from your presentation.

After that, your meal awaits-

"You were teaching the teachers?"

"What was it like?"

"Did any of them fail the class?"

"It wasn't that kind of class, you little punk."

"That's the kind of excuse that somebody who failed WOULD use!"

-along with some conversation.

You don't want to spoil the contents of your remaining lectures for those who will be attending them, and neither do you feel the need to subject your previous class to a "review" of the lesson. And you have not yet spoken of your adventures in wider Faerie...

"But, the teachers!"

"Hush, you, I want to hear about the fairies!"

"Don't call them fairies," you remind that girl.

"Not unless you're talking about little ones like me," Briar adds, somewhat unhelpfully, from where she's sitting in her human form.

"You're taller than I am!" that first kid complains. "How is that-"

*Poof*

"Ta-da!"

"...right, you're actually tiny."

"Magic is confusing, isn't it?" a third person comments.

Meanwhile, another guy is squinting really hard in Briar's general direction. "How are you guys seeing her when she does that?" he asks in frustration.

"Alright, so, my second major trip to Faerie came about because I sort of accidentally inspired Briar's family to make themselves a Death Machine-"

"Wha-?"

"How do you 'accidentally' do that?"

"Define 'Death Machine'."

You have to backtrack to the events of your previous birthday party to explain-

"An ancient Buddhist ROBOT from another WORLD? Fighting a VAMPIRE?"

"Sounds like something out of a manhua..."

"I'd read it."

-but once you've got the basics established-

"Who doesn't want their own super fighting robot?"

"I'd rather have a mecha, myself."

"Those are just giant robots!"

"Are not!"

-you're able to move on to the reason why you took the trip in the first place, and from there to the actual events of your "prospecting trip."

"Clap your hands and say, 'I believe in fairies.'"

The guy who's having trouble seeing Briar in her normal form isn't the only one who gives you a funny look at that remark, but he's one of about three you see actually raising his hands to give it a try.

*Clap-clap*

"...I believe in fairies?" he says.

"Try again, and don't make it sound like a question."

*Clap-clap*

"I believe in fairies."

"Try again, but louder, and with more focus."

"No, seriously, are you just messing with-"

"Put your heart into it!" you interrupt.

*Clap! Clap!*

"I BELIEVE IN FAI- WHAT THE-?!"

"Wait, what?"

"Did that actually WORK?"

"I just- for a second there, I- hang on."

And then he tries again.

"If you're really having trouble," you offer in between claps, "try finding a small stone with a hole through it, and looking through that."

"How well does that work?"

"Not as well as when the rock's enchanted..."

Between how much talking you've already done recently and the fact that the masters might get upset by it, you decide to stick to a normal tone of voice for your narration.

However, honesty and your sense of drama compel you to admit the truth. "I feel obligated to note that, since the trip was being made with an audience, I spent most of it SPEAKING IN A TONE MOST DRAMATIC, TO ENSURE THAT THE LADY BOTH HEARD MINE WORDS CLEARLY, AND WAS ENTERTAINED THEREBY, YET NOT SO LOUDLY SO AS TO AGGRAVATE MINE PARTNER."

Half the room is staring at you, and the only reason that portion isn't greater is because most of the rest are either laughing or frowning at the people who are laughing.

You pause, coughing once to clear your throat, and then add, "I will not be speaking that way today, but please try to imagine that I was."

"No magic?"

"I can't really think of a spell that's appropriate," you reply somewhat evasively.

You have several methods for elevating and projecting your voice, or for making it SEEM that you were, but within the bounds of your agreement and - perhaps more importantly - the limits of the masters' patience? Yeah, not really.

So you commence your account of the Quest For Fae-Ore, describing the people you met along the way-

"A fairy catgirl!?"

"...magic fish? Really?"

"Puppets haunted by...? Oh, that's awful..."

"A spider-woman!?"

"Wait, she's married to a TREE? How does that even-?"

"I knew it! I knew toads were evil!"

-and the challenges you faced simply investigating the deposits.

"You bribed her with food? Seriously?"

"A giant octopus!?"

"...that's... kind of sweet, but also kind of sad..."

"Food again?"

"Are all little fairies idiots?"

"Some of us grow out of it," Briar sighs.

"A COOK-OFF!?"

Even accounting for the unfortunate bit about the Skull Kid and his puppet-friends, the possibility that some arachnophobes are put off by your meeting with Liantiel, and your "deal" with the demonic mobogo, there is one part of your prospecting trip that is distinctly nastier than the rest.

"...you just said that kids who die in some spooky forest have to haunt creepy PUPPETS," the guy says slowly. "Do I even want to know HOW it gets worse?"

You explain that the puppet part only comes in when a Skull Kid manages to find the body in time, and is a way of allowing the unhappy spirit to come to terms with its untimely passing and then move on. Naturally, you also have to explain what a Skull Kid IS, at least briefly.

"...uh-huh. And what happens if one of these Skull Kids DOESN'T find the body in time?"

"Assuming none of the other benevolent residents of the Lost Woods find it?" you state, shrugging. "Then it generally rises as a kind of undead skeleton called a Stalchild."

"Of course, that tends to happen even WITH a Skull Kid's intervention," Briar notes, "but in the latter case, the soul isn't caught up in the transformation, and the body STAYS as a Stalchild, instead of transforming into a more powerful form of Stalkin over time."

"...okay, yeah, that IS worse."

And of course, in this case, you managed to speed up the whole process of acceptance by briefly (and safely) reuniting the poor kid with his mother.

Yeah, you should probably make sure everybody hears this next part, because it's a decent example of how the Fae can react unpleasantly to trespassing and other offenses, and also how they can twist the wording of an agreement around even among their own kind, let alone with mere humans.

"Fair warning," you state. "This next part is a bit nasty."

"What, the haunted puppets and the spiders weren't bad enough?"

"Listen, and judge for yourself," you state simply. "So, even though I had Lady Chloe's permission to go prospecting in her territory, one of the ore deposits I wanted to check out had been sort-of claimed by another Fae Lord..."

And you recount the warnings about the grimstalker, its nature, and the honored-in-the-letter, violated-in-the-spirit agreement between Chloe and her counterpart that led to the little murderer's presence and ongoing desecration of that neck of the woods.

You explain how, upon reaching the edge of the grimstalker's territory, you announced your presence, your intentions, and the fact that you had the Great Fairy's permission to secure a sample of the sungold - and of how the grimstalker respected Chloe's word just enough to let you finish harvesting a sample of the mineral.

"And then, once I had the rock in my pocket, the little wooden creep shot me in the back."

"Wait, what?"

"But that's cheating!"

"You had permission and everything!"

You look around, waiting to see and hear if anybody gets it. None of the younger students do, but some of the older ones are looking thoughtful or even confident, and the teachers are wearing similar expression, where they aren't telling the kids to settle down.

"I had permission to GATHER the gold," you state clearly, "and the grimstalker allowed me to do that. But I neglected to SAY that Lady Chloe gave me permission to come and go unharmed, which meant that the moment I had the sample, I was fair game."

...

"Oh, wow, they're rules lawyers?"

"Man, that's just cheap. And he shot you in the back, too?"

"But you made it out, obviously."

"Yeah, what did you do to the jerk?"

And here comes the part you were concerned about.

"The Fae are expert rules lawyers," you reply to that one remark, because it REALLY bears repeating. "They may the original rules lawyers, unless the devils beat them to it."

"Devils? You mean those guys in red pajamas with horns and pitchforks who lose music contests?"

...there is so much wrong with that statement, you aren't even sure where to start.

Popular culture has SO much to answer for.

"No," you say firmly. "I mean devils as in the armies of Hell."

"Aren't those just demons?"

"NEVER say that where a demon or a devil can hear it," you say firmly. "You'd be incredibly lucky if ALL they did was kill you."

"...erk."

"Getting back on topic, when you're dealing with one of the Fae, never assume that they're going to adhere to the spirit of an agreement - because they won't."

"What not even the nice ones?" That's said by one of the girls sitting with Briar, who's looking at your partner as she speaks.

"Speaking as a reasonably nice Fae," Briar says.

"If not a nice, reasonable Fae," you interject.

"Hush, you. As I was saying, no, even the nice Fae will take advantage of the letter of a contract to benefit themselves. Half the reason for that is so that we stay in practice for dealing with our jerk cousins, and another quarter is to make sure YOU get the practice - because better you earn that experience from friendly pranks and temporary losses than by losing everything you have to the REALLY sharp bargainers."

The girl looks like she doesn't know how to take that.

"...what's the last quarter?" somebody else wonders.

"Because it's amusing," you and Briar say together.

"There were a lot of angry ghosts who had bones to pick from that guy."

Your statement is greeted with a brief silence.

"Don't you mean 'with' him?" you're asked uncertainly.

"I meant what I said," you reply. "Maybe they didn't actually take the bones WITH them, but the body was NOT in great shape afterwards." Looking around, you offer to the room, "When a bunch of angry undead Fae pop into existence LITERALLY screaming, 'Bloody murder!' they don't pull their punches against the thing that killed them."

Lunch comes to an end before you're able to get to the rather quieter events of the second day of your mining trip.

Given you have a trip to make this afternoon, you decide to spend the hour after lunch in one of the academic classes. The one you pick ends up being mostly review of things you actually already know from your time at Sunnydale Elementary, just with some slightly different cultural context, which you've previously encountered in other lessons at the School of Five Elements.

In other words, nothing special.

Around two o'clock, you bow out of invitations to a following class and go looking for Instructor Guan, who seemed to be in charge of the Fish Run, at least for people your age.

It doesn't take too long to find the twenty-something teacher, and she temporarily leaves the class she was minding in the hands of one of her peers-

"Don't give Instructor Dan TOO hard a time, kids," the lady says.

"We won't, Instructor Guan~," the class sing-songs, even as some of them visibly size up the young man.

Instructor Dan considers those looks for a moment before turning to Guan. "Please hurry back."

She just smiles.

-and takes you to one of the offices, which has a map of the local area spread out along one wall. Ink has been scrawled along the laminated surface in a number of spots, most of which clearly have nothing to do with your task, so even if you're curious - and you are - you put them out of your mind and pay attention as Instructor Guan traces out "the usual route."

The first stretch is straightforward enough - just follow the main road from the School to town. Thanks to your bus trips to and from the now-ended exhibition, you know that the road doesn't have a proper sidewalk, but since there's basically no traffic to or from the martial arts academy in the course of a day, you can just use the road itself, at least until you get closer to town. The major obstacle here is the distance between the School and the coastal town of Changdu.

The second phase will be navigating the streets of the settlement. You didn't do any actual exploration of the place over the last few days, and while you did get directions, comparing them to the map now proves a little unhelpful. It's partly the contrast between the mental image conjured by words in your head and a flat picture on a wall, partly the time that's passed since you got those directions, and partly the fact that you had a bus full of kids being "helpful" at the time.

Still, with Instructor Guan's assistance, you're able to map out where you want to go, and some of the mnemonic tricks you use in your magical training help you to commit the route to memory.

Part Three of the task is identifying yourself to the fishmonger, which will be done via the order sheet Instructor Guan writes a brief introduction on the back of, then properly signs and hands over to you, advising you not to lose it.

Into your pocket that goes.

"What about payment?" you ask.

"Already handled," Instructor Guan assures you.

"Don't trust the kids with the cash, huh?" Briar guesses.

"That is what School legend claims of the master who originally came up with this exercise," the young woman admits wryly. "The rest of us have kept it up as part of the tradition."

Fair enough.

The last obstacle will be making your way back to the School before the fish spoils. You'd already decided against conjuring fish, to preserve at least some of the authenticity of the experience, but you hadn't ruled out exploiting your Arcane Pocket's mild environment and stasis-like influence on its contents, or just casting a Spell of Preservation on the fish. You spoke with Lu-sensei about it, and he agreed that there were no rules against using such methods, both of which can be reproduced to some degree via ki techniques.

He also noted that you're not up to using those particular techniques just yet, which his peers may or may not be expecting, based on how most kids your age - actual or apparent - wouldn't be capable of using those skills either.

Then again, you HAVE made quite an impact with magic, especially after this morning's lecture, so who knows?

While there is a certain temptation to carry the fish openly, if under the effects of an improvised preservative spell, the only real reason for doing so that you can consider even halfway-seriously is the one that calls for getting the full, authentic experience.

Of a long-distance food run.

Yeah. Not exactly a lot of "experience" there that you haven't already obtained an equivalent to elsewhere, like in your many, MANY runs into and out of Sunnydale.

Throw in the fact that advanced ki techniques are implicitly allowed, leaving comparable supernatural methods on the table as well, and the outside but non-zero possibility of Issues cropping up along the way that could result in spoiled fish, and you'd prefer to stow the stuff.

If the genuine deal is THAT important, you can always conjure a box with the approximate weight and volume of the fish you'll be hauling...

Anyway, with your route charted and approach set, you thank Instructor Guan for her time before heading back to your dorm for a quick bathroom break and to change into a fresh pair of socks.

You are going for a run, after all.

"All set?" Briar asks, as you kick your shoes against the floor a couple times, some minutes later.

"All set," you reply.

At about ten to three in the afternoon, there is no real crowd to see you off, everybody still being in one class or another. The group doing drills in the courtyard notice you, some of them waving or nodding when they have a second to spare, while others remain entirely focused on their performance.

"Thank you," Instructor Guan laughs softly, "although it's probably already too late for that."

Well, you tried, and if it doesn't save the poor guy, it can at least minimize his embarrassment, right?

"Fair enough."

And then she's off in one direction, while you head in another, returning to your dorm.

You don't see any point in waiting, and so, with a final wave to those people who are present to see you - and a few such gestures in return-

"Good luck!"

"Remember to pace yourself!"

"Be ready for the smell!"

-and then a grateful nod at the last tidbits of advice they throw out, you turn and start down the road.

Initially, you go at a brisk walk. This is the first time you've actually traveled down this route under your own power, and you want to get a sense for what it feels like, both in terms of the asphalt beneath your shoes and the air around you. The heat and humidity are not great, but they take second place to Sunnydale on some of its worse days; in terms of pure temperature, the conditions rate a distinct third place, if you count a couple of your trips into the desert.

Still, you're used to weather like this, you're dressed for it, there's a light breeze going, and you've got the Environmental Adaptation technique besides. Your hydration is also covered, thanks to the Spell to Create Water and a number of empty bottles currently stashed in your pocket, and the former can double as a means of cooling off if you really need it.

With that in mind, you pick up the pace, moving to a jog, and then to a run. Once you're comfortable with the change in pace and think you have the measure of the terrain and the climate, you pulse a warning to Briar that you're going to speed up.

"All set!" she calls from your shoulder.

And then, you focus your ki and REALLY start moving.

It occurs to you that while you've been making extensive use of Body Flickers for your long-distance ground travel, your understanding of how other variants of Ki Enhancement function in that role is a bit underdeveloped.

While you don't have any abilities that would allow you to make trips like this FASTER, you might be able to do so more efficiently than just chaining high-end Body Flickers together, while still keeping your travel time reasonable.

And even if that proves not to be the case, you'll at least get a better idea of how well your other techniques stack up to the Body Flicker.

With that in mind, you decide to go with Body Enhancement. It's your newest technique with speed-boosting applications, so it's not going to be as effective as the others, but by the same token, it's also the one you have the most to learn about, and hence the one most likely to see meaningful improvement if you test it out here and now.

And as for the speed issue, there's always Ki Overload~.

"Here. We. Goooo-!"

"Yiiii-huuuuh?"

From the sudden shift in pitch and the note of curiosity that enters Briar's exclamation, she's noticed that you aren't tearing up the turf at your maximum rate of acceleration.

Still, you're getting a pretty good turn of speed out of the combination, something a fair bit closer to what your current full-strength Ki Enhancement would look like.

Gained Body Enhancement E+
Gained Ki Overload C++

One thing you notice which briefer, lower-intensity prior uses of this technique hadn't revealed is that, without the equivalent focus on your mental abilities, this level of Body Enhancement causes things to get a bit... fuzzy, at the edges. You aren't suffering from tunnel vision or blind spots or anything like that, and you can still see things coming in time to adjust your course, it's just that where you'd be able to take in something's location, shape and color, and some details of its appearance when using a comparable degree of Ki Enhancement in this manner, Body Enhancement doesn't let you get past the second stage. Your recall of the trail behind you is poorer as well, and it's harder to pay attention to anything past the sound of your own footsteps, breathing, and heartbeat.

Then again, compared to how the world starts streeeetching out into off-color blurs when you're using Body Flicker, this is downright unremarkable. Something to be mindful of, rather than something to worry about.

You keep the Overloaded technique running as long as you can, which turns out to be ten minutes and change, the effort you're putting into the run being enough to tip it over into the "combat or similarly straining activities" category and eating up its energy accordingly. It's fine, though; you've got plenty of gas left to fire it up a second time.

Gained Ki Endurance E

By the time THAT use is starting to run low, you figure you're close enough to Changdu that you should slow down anyway, both to watch for traffic - vehicular or pedestrian - and to help sell the polite fiction that the School of Five Elements is just a bunch of Perfectly Ordinary Martial Artists teaching Perfectly Ordinary Martial Arts to people's kids.

"Oh ho!" an older lady calls out from a yard, as you approach. "A new face trying their luck at the fish market?"

"Yes, ma'am!" you call.

"Good boy! Be sure to watch out for the cats!"

"What was that about cats?" Briar asks with some interest and a slight concern.

You're already slowing down to get more information about that. Jogging in place, you repeat your partner's inquiry to the woman.

"Oh, I've said too much-"

"Please, ma'am?" you ask. "Nobody mentioned cats, and while I'm not allergic or opposed to them or anything, I would kind of like to know what it is I've volunteered for - even if it is too late for me to get out of it."

She laughs at that, and then agrees to fill you in.

It would seem that, over the many years the School has been using this particular forming of training, the local feline population has gotten wise to the opportunity for an additional source of food, and developed their own skills for exploiting the situation.

"Housecats, strays, and ferals alike, toms and queens both," she chuckles, leaning on her low fence. "Shameless little opportunists that they are, they'll try everything from begging and charming to outright theft or chasing the carrier until he gives up and throws them a fishbone, so to speak."

You have your doubts that common cats could keep up with somebody moving at Body Flicker speeds, or that they'd keep up the pursuit for someone using Ki Enhanced speed. UN-common cats, on the other paw, might be able to manage something, and Lu-sensei has dropped enough hints about unusual training practices since you started studying under him that you can't escape imagining having to fight your way through a clowder of minor monstrous felines.

"Have they ever attacked anybody?" you ask.

"They've been known to scratch from time to time, or to jump on someone, but that's as far as I've ever seen it go myself, or heard from people I'd trust to be telling the truth. And that sort of thing usually only happens at times when the fishing has been bad, or when there are too many cats on the streets - neither's the case this year, so you should be fine."

Hm.

Thanking the lady for her time and her counsel-

"Happy to help out such a polite young man!"

-you resume your course to the fish market.

"What do you think, Briar?" you ask, once you're out of earshot of the older woman.

"I think, or at least I am starting to think, that maybe I should have stayed behind..."

Thinking over what the lady said, you consider using ki to strengthen your clothes, just in case any cats are feeling free with their claws. Your grasp of the technique is such that you can't reinforce everything you're wearing in one go, but one application for your shirt and one for your pants isn't a great hardship.

You give a moment's thought to using Ki Overload to enhance the protection, but given that you still haven't eliminated the physical glow and are moving into a populated area with a fair amount of traffic, your concerns about secrecy have you deciding not to use that extra boost.

Gained Ki Reinforcement E+

Besides, you ARE "armoring up" in anticipation of running into some less-than-friendly small cats. An Overload would be going overboard against something like that.

By dint of being a lone American kid in a Taiwanese community, you certainly draw your share of attention, but most of the people you pass on your way through Changdu don't give you a second glance. A number, however, come to the same realization the lady in her yard did, and applaud your participation in a local tradition, offer warnings about the cats-

"Best not go east down Tenth Street; they're doing some road work there."

"But mind the crossing if you go down Ninth Street, there's a blind hill."

"Mind the cats, but watch out for the dogs, too!"

-and other local hazards.

You try to encourage your partner-

"Training? I might as well tell you to go wrestle a Lynel!"

Well...

"WITHOUT magic!"

...okay, that would be problematic.

"Yeah, and that's assuming it was just one-on-one! How about dealing with five or six at a time?"

...

You wrack your inherited memories, but you can't recall a time when even Link ever went up against that many Lynels at once. Then again, that may simply be because it happened when Ganondorf wasn't paying attention; Hyrule's a big kingdom, and nobody short of the Goddesses could keep track of everything that was going on in every corner of it at all times.

...

You DO recall the King of Evil having a squad of the brutal feline centaurians guarding his stronghold atop Death Mountain, but whether Link fought them all at once, took them on one at a time or in smaller groups, or even just found a way to slip past them, is a question you can't answer. You do know that Lynels are both very territorial and very proud creatures - judging by the sense of grumbling annoyance in the half-complete memories, getting that many of them to work together wasn't easy even for Ganondorf - and it's entirely possible that they would have ignored any orders to gang up on the Hero and faced him one-on-one on their own accord, for the sake of honor, glory, and showing that they weren't afraid of some Hylian boy in green.

-but, yeah, she's not buying it.

"Would you rather take on human size?" you offer.

"I am not helping you carry fish, Alex."

...
...

Well, in that case, you suppose it falls to you to protect your partner from the dreadful claws of the furry menace.

"My Hero," Briar says wryly.

...must she capitalize that word?

"Yes, I must."

You can handle a few dogs, especially if they're just showing up to bark at a bunch of cats.

"And if they aren't?" Briar wonders.

Then you'll deal with that when it becomes a problem. You're sure it won't be an issue, though...

You slow down slightly as you pass a telephone pole, taking a second to reach out and knock on it for luck.

Shortly thereafter, the market comes into view.

Briar gives you a suspicious look at that.

"Really, Briar," you continue, "I'm hurt. Do I honestly seem that fishy to you?"

"Find a cat and we'll see."

"If he tries to eat me, I'm a fish?"

"Well, I suppose you could also be a chicken. Or a rat..."

"Ha-ha."

The fish market is a mix of outdoor stalls, shops, a couple of processing plants, and the port facilities just beyond. At a glance, there appears to be anchorage for upwards of four dozen craft in the "boat" range and perhaps half a dozen small ships, but probably three-quarters of those docks are empty at the moment, their registered vessels no doubt still out to sea. The boats that are present - for none of the ships are in - are offloading their catch of the day, some to employees of this or that business, others directly to their intended consumers, and in at least one case, with the clear objective of taking the fish home.

It's noisy, but in a good way.

It also smells, in a way that would probably be less bothersome if it wasn't so unfamiliar to you, or if you hadn't put so much effort into learning to pay attention to what your nose tells you. When the wind shifts for a moment, you actually miss a step as the aroma of FISH intensifies.

"The first hurdle!" one of your spectators cries. "Can he endure it?"

As you move towards your destination, checking the signs over shops and on street corners, you also keep your eyes peeled for the presence of animals. There are quite a few gulls in the area, being their noisy selves, and you spare a moment to wonder if you'd be in danger of being dive-bombed from above if you were planning to carry the fish. You also spot some cats, more of them in this one place than you'd see on a typical walk around Sunnydale... which isn't really saying much, considering Sunnydale, but you didn't see this many cats that time Balthazar and Dave gave you and Lu-sensei that tour of New York, either.

None of the felines are paying much attention to you-

"I see you back there, Fuzzbutt. Yeah, you just keep on walking."

-although at least one notices your partner's presence on your shoulder.

You don't see or hear any dogs in the area, and there's not a sign of any rats, but bugs are in evidence, and you shoo away a few that venture too close.

Soon enough, you see the signs you want, leading to one of the warehouse-like buildings on the docks. You proceed...

There are some odors in this world, much less the wider cosmos, for which calling upon supernatural methods of personal atmospheric purification and/or isolation would be the appropriate and even necessary response. The manifold and sometimes toxic stenches of potions gone wrong; the deathly murk of an undead-infested tomb; the literally deadly reek of a Cloudkill Spell - these are all good reasons for such measures.

The aroma of a well-maintained fish market on a sunny afternoon is none of these things. More to the point, it's the sort of smell that regular people can and do endure without issue or complaint, and hence the kind of thing you should also be able to do without resorting to mystical shortcuts.

And so, you let out one breath, take in another, and in the space in-between, work on not reacting to the things your nose is telling you.

Gained Iron Stomach D+++
Gained Scenting C+

In the process, it occurs to your that your Environmental Adaptation technique is still going. Whether or not it's responding to the ambient aroma is another matter. You don't THINK it's making you any more or less sensitive...?

"His eyes, they do not water!"

"His nose, it does not run!"

"His lunch, it is not lost!"

Briar has mentioned before that animals can generally see her, due in part to being so much more a part of the natural world than typical humanoids, and also not being "smart" enough to ignore or rationalize away the things their senses tell them. At the same time, she's never had as many bad things to say about hungry birds, predatory insects, or even the bats at Castle Shuzen as she does about cats, which suggests that felines are either more aware of her than other animals, or more prone to acting on their awareness. And while you could certainly see the latter, you're curious if the former applies.

"It kind of does," your partner admits glumly. "First of all, cats are predators, so they tend to investigate the things they spot, on the off-chance that it's food or fun, and between the night vision, rotating ears, keen nose, and whiskers, they're pretty well-equipped to spot things, especially things around their size. It's relatively easy for humans to ignore fairies because you're so much bigger than us that the noise you make just moving around can drown us out pretty easily, while your senses of touch and smell aren't sharp enough to pick us up unless we're basically in your faces. That leaves sight, which is honestly the sense our imperceptibility works BEST against."

You nod.

"Second, cats are most active in the twilight hours around dawn and dusk, which are transitory periods and the times of day when Faerie is naturally closest to Earth and other mortal realms. That gives them a certain affinity for the forces and entities of Faerie, even though they're still very much mortal themselves. And finally, even aside from that Fae association, cats have a long, LONG history of being mixed up with magic, whether it's as witches' familiars, favored animals of various gods, or just symbols of fortune - good or bad."

Hm.

Anyway, you enter the business - identified simply as "Yu's Fish" - and immediately note that it's several degrees cooler in here than it is out on the street. The fishy smell, while still present, is much less pronounced, and there are freezers along both walls, some of them upright, others like chests.

"Welcome, welcome to Yu's!" the burly fellow behind the desk greets you. "Ah, a stranger, looking American... would you happen to be Alex Harris?"

"I would," you reply. "Would you happen to be Yu?"

"I would! Yu the Younger, if you wish to be formal - the shop is actually named for my grandfather."

Family business, then. Cool.

And then, because you can't quite resist the temptation, you say, "Well, then, if Yu knows who I am, I suppose Yu would have a delivery for me to make?"

"Yu does!" the fishmonger replies with good cheer, clearly catching the bilingual joke. Stepping out from behind the counter, he opens one of the deep freezers, hauls out a wooden crate full of fish slightly less than a foot long, a foot wide, and about half a foot tall, and sets it down on the floor in front of you as casually as if it only weighed a few pounds. "Standard delivery for the School of Five Elements."

...that's a bit bigger than you were expecting, and you're kind of regretting that you didn't bring a Bag of Holding, because you're pretty sure you don't have enough room left in your pocket for THIS much fish.

Fortunately, you know the Spell to Shrink Items.

Once again, you find you must pause in your quest to inquire after certain details from the locals.

And in short order, you learn that students getting a little teary-eyed from the smell of the docks and the market isn't too unusual. As you might expect, the worst reactions tend to come from "city kids" who aren't used to the environment, particularly on summer days hotter and more humid than this.

"Not only is the smell worse, then, but there's no escaping it," one of the men says sagely.

"Of course, the School usually doesn't send students on the BAD days," another guy admits, "but every once in a while, somebody earns a punishment detail - or so I'm told."

Runny noses are a lot rarer, unless the kid in question was already fighting a cold or something. One of the older bystanders mentions hearing about a boy who hadn't known he was allergic to fish getting assigned to the Fish Run, and having to make a trip to the hospital as a result.

Considering that seafood is a major staple of the local diet, you have to wonder exactly how somebody could go a decade or more without realizing they were allergic to fish, but it doesn't sound like the elder has many details.

He DOES mention that the allergic kid supposedly WASN'T one of the ones who started vomiting, but the question of just who gained that unfortunate distinction turns out to be a topic of some debate among the community.

One group swears there was a boy who, in trying to be clever and avoid the cats by going out the back of the shop, laid eyes on the whole fish-processing... process, and found it disagreed with his delicate constitution.

"Fish heads!"

"Their lifeless, staring eyes!"

"Guts!"

Another bunch holds that an entirely different boy, while attempting to dodge a cat that tried to jump on his precious cargo, somehow ended up falling into a dumpster full of refuse, bursting at least one over-full bag of fresh fish guts.

Ew.

A third party proclaims that the other two sets are entirely wrong, and it was a girl whose attempts to escape feline pursuit saw her running into a member of a rival school and getting fish all over them, starting a fight that saw fish flying.

"And then between getting smacked over the head with a raw eel-"

"It was a shark!"

"Nonsense, it was a snapper!"

"-and kicked in the stomach too soon after lunch, well, the expected thing happened."

You have the distinct impression that some of these tales may have grown in the telling.

"Now, I know how this must look," Yu says helpfully, "but rest assured, students your age and even younger have been hauling crates this size back to the School in good time for decades."

"Good for them," you reply absently, as you calculate the dimensions of the container. "However, I'm going to be doing things a little differently."

"...oh?"

"If you could stand back...? Thank you." Deciding to make a show of this, you clear your throat, hold your hands forth, focus your magic in a manner most Un-Subtle, and let the ham flow. "By the Power invested in me and the laws of metaphysics most malleable-"

"Wait, are you glowing-?"

"-I command thee, O Crate of Fish!" You fire off the incantation of the Spell to Shrink an Item, adjusting the targeting parameters to count the crate and its contents as a single item, as opposed to grabbing only the box, the pile of fish, or even just one. Fortunately, this spell was designed to be fairly forgiving about such things...

As you finish the spell, you declare, "SHRINK!"

*Pomf*

And like that, there is a tiny plush crate of fuzzy fish sitting on the floor, less than an inch across at its widest.

Fishmonger Yu stares in silence for a moment. "...so. Magic, huh?"

"Magic," you agree, reaching down to pick up your "cargo."

"Well, that IS a first for me." He eyes the shrunken crate for a moment. "Does that have any particular effect on the fish?"

"Not really. I mean, if they get dirty or cut or burned up like this, that'll carry over when they go back to normal, but as long as they're made of fabric, they can't really spoil, now can they?"

"...I suppose not." Yu considers it for a moment longer, then shakes his head. "Do the masters know you can do things like that?"

"They're aware of my non-martial skills," you admit, "but as my own teacher put it, they may not have considered how much those skills actually allow me to do."

In fairness, you can't really blame them for it. Magic is a pathway to a great many abilities, and your versatility is downright ridiculous even by the standards of experienced master spellcasters, as Ambrose and his drinking problem can attest.

Yu nods. "I just ask because, well, after all these years of watching kids gripe about unpaid child labor and then run away from the cats, sending you off with a tiny novelty token feels a bit unfair to your predecessors, you know?"

"If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying."

"That said," you add, before gathering your energies a second time. "Hear me, O Forces of Creation!"

"What, again?" Yu wonders.

"What are you up to now?" Briar asks suspiciously.

"I call upon thee to bring forth a Reasonable Facsimile of the Intended Weight of my Labors!"

One minute later...

"And now, O Replica Crate of Fish, I bid you, APPEAR!"

*Poof*

And like that, there is a new box of fish sitting on the floor. It's the same size as the previous one, but with the "fish" being wooden carvings, all of a single piece with the crate. The details aren't too bad, as far as wood trying to pass for scales and staring eyes goes, but the lack of paint is a definite drawback - at least until you apply a Spell of Prestidigitation to give them a more accurate color.

"Could I trouble Yu to briefly pick up the crate, to confirm that it has the proper weight?"

"Yu could do that," the fishmonger replies agreeably. He does hesitate a moment before squatting and lifting with his legs, as if unsure of the weight of the load - or maybe just about laying hands on something he saw appear out of nowhere - but once he's moving, the reluctance in his bearing and expression quickly disappear. "That feels pretty close to the crate I gave you, to within the weight of a fish or two," he confirms, before setting the box down again.

"Thank Yu."

He just grins and nods at that.

Is there anything else you want to say or do before leaving Yu's Fish to face the furry gauntlet?

"Verisimilitude" is the word you think you want to use, for what you're trying to invoke with this (real) crate of (fake) fish, and so after adding a splash of mostly-correct color to the wooden scales - which admittedly looks fake up close, but is at least semi-realistic from the distance most people and cats should be seeing it from - you try to apply that particular aroma which lingers here in the shop and over much of the docks.

*Sniff-sniff*

...

You think you got it? It's a little hard to tell against the olfactory background noise...

Guess you'll see shortly. Or... smell, shortly... or maybe not smell?

Preparations made, you take a cue from Yu and squat down before grasping the crate. Lifting with your legs-

-okay, yeah, that is a good but not unmanageable weight. Somewhere in the range of a heavy bookbag, or maybe a football or hockey player's tote bag with his gear inside. It'd be much easier to carry this weight on your shoulders, but you're pretty sure you could get it all the way back to the School as-is using just ordinary muscle power, although your arms would likely be complaining by the end of it. The question is how the increased speed of whichever ki technique you'll be using to shorten the journey once you get out of sight of town will add to the jostling... but that's a problem for Future Alex.

Fishmonger Yu does you the favor of getting the door, and you nod in thanks again before stepping outside-

"Nyan?"

"Maoooo..."

"Nyao?"

"Mya."

"Yeeeep!"

-and then taking a sudden step backwards, because Din above, that is a LOT of cats. At a glance, you'd say there must be thirty felines sitting around on the sidewalk, perched on crates, windowsills, or that one fire escape, and otherwise just looking in your direction. Black and white and brown and grey, coats of single solid colors, others of swirling mixtures, and yet more of patches, and all the eager, not-quite glowing eyes, some green, some yellow, one or two blue...

Careful. They can smell fear.

Slowly, you turn to regard Yu, who is grinning. "This is why you got the door, isn't it?"

He nods, grin only widening. "Seeing how you first-timers react to the furry welcoming committee is one of the little joys of the job."

Turning back to the cats, you consider how best to handle this.

"I will remember, Yu."

You say it in a tone that promises payback in kind, someday.

"I've actually heard that one before," the man says with an easy chuckle. "This'll be the fourth time, in fact."

"...did the ones who said it before manage to take their revenge?" you ask after a moment.

"Eh, one kid a couple of years ago never got around to it before his stay at the School was over." Yu shrugs. "I figure he either hasn't come back since, or has managed to keep from getting assigned to the Run."

You nod. "And the other two?"

"They tried, at least. The first of them said it back when my grandfather still ran the place, and I was working here part-time after school and during the holidays," the man recounts. "I admit, I laughed at him more than I probably should have, and since we were around the same age, he thought to show me why that wasn't a good idea when I was just some small-town merchant boy, while HE was a big important city-boy AND a trained fighter."

You frown at the implications of that. Repaying a prank with a counter-prank is one thing, but seeking violent retribution is quite another, and unbecoming of a proper martial artist.

"Of course," Yu goes on, "one doesn't grow up around sailors without learning a thing or two about the rough and tumble side of things, nor does a town spend a century and more neighboring and regularly hosting members of a school of martial artists while remaining ignorant of their lessons. And while that boy had the foresight to bring a couple of friends along, I wasn't exactly short on friends of my own when they found me. Three on one, they could have taken me without breaking a sweat; three on five, and we made them feel it; and that was before a couple of the adults stepped in."

"And the other time?" you ask.

"Ah, now that boy had a much better sense of humor. The next time HE came to town for a fish run, it was with a water pistol full of some essence of catnip. Zapped me a few times with that and then took off laughing when most of the cats mobbed ME instead of chasing him."

Payback almost EXACTLY in kind. No doubt Ha Ha would have approved.

Taking a breath, you step forward.

The cats collectively perk up expectantly, and some of them start forward - Yu slides the door shut behind you, before any of those can get close and try to slip in, but even without turning around, you can sense that he's still there, watching through the glass to see how you handle this.

And the answer to that is, you advance at a walk.

This swiftly has cats curling about your legs, some of them clearly just begging, others pressing against you hard enough that you have to wonder if they're trying to trip you, or at least slow you down.

"Meow."

"Nyan?"

"Purrrr..."

"It's like a preview of the Kitty Hell," Briar groans.

For your part, you press onward, minding your footing and keeping one eye on the nearby elevated points - including the rooftops - just in case a particularly enterprising feline tries to get the literal drop on you. As you advance, you let your senses out, sweeping the crowd for signs of supernatural activity.

Mage Sight turns up no active spells or magical powers in play. The cats, especially the adults, have a certain magical feel to them, that legacy of millennia of association with supernatural forces making them just a bit more "super" than wholly "natural," while still shy of the spark that denotes supernatural abilities.

Ki Sight comes back with the expected readings of animal life-force, and some lingering traces of human energy on the better-kept cats, but nothing more.

Mental Sight finds even less than that.

And Spiritual Sight-

-you pause in mid-stride, which seems to encourage a number of the cats. More come forward from the group, while others press up around and behind you. This just gives you a better read on the spiritual energy that's touched most of the clowder, a presence that isn't very strong, but also definitely isn't human. It feels like another cat, but bigger, stronger, and just... MORE, than the little ones gathered around you.

"Alex," Briar says, a little nervously.

Your senior's choice to resort to squirt gun-delivered smelly vengeance was proportionate, thematic, and non-violent, making it an example of behavior worthy of acknowledgement - but perhaps not of emulation, at least not exactly.

Some forms of humor are funniest when they occur spontaneously, or at least independently, while others are most entertaining when fresh, and grow less so with repetition - when they don't lose their charm entirely after the first time.

And quite aside from that, you have the power of the Goddesses and magic on your side. Surely, you can come up with something at LEAST as amusing as zapping somebody with cat-attracting smelly water?

With that in mind, you let Yu know that when the time comes for you to take your revenge, you shall NOT attempt to squirt him with liquid catnip.

The man squints at you. "Isn't that just what somebody would say to put me off-guard before they DID pull out a water gun?"

"...some might," you concede. "But I am not them."

"No offense, but I think I'll be keeping an eye open all the same."

"As you like."

It was one thing when the Fish Run was just a weird martial arts practice that could have naturally encouraged certain behaviors among the local feline population, but the involvement of an actual supernatural entity changes matters.

"Do we have to?" Briar groans.

"Maybe not HAVE to," you admit, "but I CHOOSE to."

She sighs and shifts a little closer to you on your shoulder, but doesn't offer further comment or complaint. At least not yet.

The phantom feline presence is faint enough that passive Spiritual Sight won't let you track it, so you focus and bring your perception up-

A low, wary yowl runs through the catty collective, and those members nearest to you back away for a moment as your spiritual signature goes from "nothing to be worried about" to "nothing to be worried about, except for how said nothing happens to be projecting a cone of focused sensory energy."

You sweep the clowder and the surrounding area for a moment, getting more sounds of uncertainty, and then you can almost hear the collective blink of feline surprise when, instead of continuing up the street in the general direction of the School of Five Elements, you take a right and head down a side-street, following the faint trail.

...

"They're following us, aren't they?" you guess a short time later.

"Not only that, but they appear to be multiplying," Briar reports.

Yeah, that would make sense. While you haven't heard anything, not only is the presence of "cat" in your other senses getting a little stronger, but the amused calls of, "Wrong way, kid!" and "Trying to lose them? Good luck!" and other such things from the local humans have died off, leaving only baffled and slightly nervous looks aimed more behind you than at you.

"...are there really this many cats living around here?" somebody mutters.

You resist the urge to turn around and try counting. You suspect you might not like the number you reached.

The spectral route eventually leads you into the back alleys of Changdu, where you start seeing more cats ahead of you. Some of these, older animals with stronger life-force signatures and a more concentrated touch of the spiritual energy you're tracking, are positioned atop old boxes and bins and in shadowy corners as if sitting watch over the area; further on, you start seeing nests, clusters of kittens too little to roam peeking out at you from behind stolen bits of cloth and padding, while their mothers and some cats too old to get around easily watch on with distinctly unfriendly intent.

The trail comes to an old building that looks quite abandoned, entering through a garage door that's rusted in a half-open, half-shut position. You could fit underneath it, though you'd have to get down on your knees.

Of course, if you're about to enter into the lair of something supernatural and mean no harm - and you don't, because you've yet to see any indications of ill-will from whatever this is - you should announce yourself first.

You quickly cast the Druidic spell, and once it is active, you reach out and knock on an unrusted part of the door.

*Bang-bang*

...

"Hello?" you call.

...

You try again, hitting harder and raising your voice.

*BANG-BANG*

"HELLO?"

There is a sound that most people would hear only as a feline screech of shock, but which your translation spell interprets as, "WHAT NYA-!?"

*Crash!*

"MROWR!"

The sounds made by the many cats gathered behind you register to your ears as ranging from startled to amused.

"Well," Briar says, sounding like she's trying not to laugh herself. "This meeting is off to a roaring start."

"Meow, my head," a light but masculine voice moans from inside the open-doored garage. "What is i- I mean, who DARES intrude uponya lord while he naps!?"

"GREETINGS, O LORD OF CATS."

"NYA!?"

*Bang*

"I AM A STRANGER IN THESE LANDS, COME TO PRESENT MYSELF TO THE MASTER OF THIS DOMAIN, AS IS PROPER," you continue, "politely" overlooking the shock and clamor from inside the garage.

"Why- I mean, GOOD! That is good! Myanners! That you have them and use them and... such." There is a distinct air of verbal flailing in this response, probably not accompanied by the physical sort, or at least not that you can make out from where you're standing. After a moment - in which you graciously say nothing and allow your host to gather his no-doubt sleep-addled wits - there is a cough. "So, Well-Myannered Stranger, might I have your nyame?"

"I AM KNOWN AS ALEX HARRIS, O FOREMOST OF FELINES."

"...a curious nyame," the still-unseen cat-spirit muses, the sound of his voice coming closer. "Have you traveled far to be here?"

"FAR INDEED, O WISE WHISKERED ONE."

There is a pleased chuckle as a furry pair of feet come into view past the rusted garage door. "I thought as such," the entity muses, as he ducks to exit his lair. "I have nyever before met a cat who claimed a such strange NYA!?"

"AND YOU STILL HAVEN'T," you note with amusement, as you look over the supposed master of this alley and its furry residents.

You have met supernatural felines before. The catgirls back at Kahlua's birthday party were (mostly) using human disguises, and while Cat the Fae catgirl showed her feline heritage openly, she was still distinctly humanoid - probably due to her Fae heritage, the Fair Folk generally going for forms that humans would consider attractive, for reasons ranging from personal taste to better hunting camouflage.

The lord of the cats of Changdu is not like them. He's far closer in appearance to that angry feline creature you've seen at a distance in the Shuzen domain, such that instead of seeming like a human who's been made up to look like a cat, he's clearly a cat that's trying to look like a human. He walks on his hind legs rather than on all fours, he's wearing a polished but very well-worn sleeveless vest over a t-shirt only a few threads away from being "torn," and he's got a paper crown that looks like it might have come from some fast-food restaurant's kid's meal balanced awkwardly on his head.

He is also about two and a half feet tall, and on the skinny side.

"You!" he both protests and accuses, one paw - shaped rather more like a hand, you note - coming up to point at you. "Humyan!"

"INDEED!"

"But humyans can't speak in Cat!"

"AND THAT IS STILL TRUE," you reply. "I AM ACTUALLY SPEAKING CHINESE-"

"Nya?"

"-I AM JUST USING MAGIC TO TRANSLATE."

"Oh, that makes sense." He pauses, suddenly looking nervous. "Uh... you aren't looking for a familiar, I hope?"

"NO, I ALREADY HAVE A MOST EXCELLENT PARTNER. SAY HELLO, BRIAR."

"Hello, Briar," your partner responds with perfect timing and tone.

"Oh, good," the king of the cats of Changdu sighs. "And, uh, hello. You may address me as His Grace, Sir Fluffy."

You eye him for a moment, short fur and all.

That aside, do you have anything in particular you wish to say to or ask of His Grace, Sir Fluffy, King of the Cats of Changdu?

"AS YOU WILL, YOUR GRACE."

If His Grace, Sir Fluffy wishes to be addressed as such, then that is how you shall call him, even if it does seem a little inaccurate.

"FORGIVE THIS HUMAN HIS CURIOSITY, BUT..."

"Nyes?"

"YOUR GRACE'S COMMENT ABOUT FAMILIARS CAUGHT MY ATTENTION. I PRESUME PAST TROUBLE WITH MAGIC-USERS?"

"Nyes," Sir Fluffy sighs.

"SHOULD I BE CONCERNED?" you inquire. "I ASK ONLY BECAUSE ANYTHING WHICH MIGHT CAUSE ISSUES TO A CAT OF YOUR GRACE'S MAGNIFICENCE IS SOMETHING WHICH MIGHT CAUSE GREAT PROBLEMS FOR ANY NUMBER OF HUMANS."

And if so, you'd prefer to know whether you should look into the matter yourself, or if it would suffice to leave things in the hands of the masters of the School of Five Elements.

Sir Fluffy puffs up proudly at your flattery. "Well, nyes, when you put it that way..."

Through the occasional nya and meow, he explains that long, long ago, when he was but a kitten, he had the misfortune to be bound to a minor human magic-user. His Grace doesn't specify what type, but from his remarks about the caster in question doing a great deal of reading and writing and complaining about "numbers and rules and other humyan sillinyess," he was probably a wizard. Not a very good one, either, from the sound of things, whether in terms of ability or morality.

It's one thing to use magic to try and improve your own lot, such as by shoring up your recall and concentration before a test or putting protective wards on your possessions, and something else entirely to use magic to sabotage others' honest efforts or steal their belongings. And it's another thing AGAIN to carry on like a mystical bully and NOT expect the forces of the cosmos to eventually seek a balance.

A wizard should know better, but this one appears to have fallen into the trap of thinking that just because he had some magical ability, it was a license to do whatever he wanted and could devise the spells for, as often as he could cast said spells, and to whomever he wished, without consequence. Because surely, no mere mortals could contest with the powers of one blessed by Heaven with authority over the forces of the universe-

"Did he really talk like that?" Briar wonders.

"Oh, nyes," Sir Fluffy sighs.

-especially not a School of overly-muscled brutes so blinded by their pride in their ability to punch things that they could not see the worth of the TRULY gifted or grant him the favor he was due!

"...WAS HE KICKED OUT OF THE SCHOOL, OR DID HE NOT GET ACCEPTED IN THE FIRST PLACE?"

"The latter."

"AH."

Anyway, long story short, Sir Fluffy's original headache eventually found out that throwing minor nuisance spells at students of a school of martial artists is not a recipe for a long and successful career as a magic-user. Once they'd identified him as the source of their supernatural problems, the students went to their masters, who called in a much more capable spellcaster to bind the boy's magic and then sat down with his parents to explain what was going on.

In short order, the would-be wizard saw his magical talents sealed, his books and implements confiscated or destroyed, and his familiar unbound - much to said familiar's relief - before he was shipped off to a boarding school with a good reputation for strictness.

"Though the boy himself was nyo prize, I continyued to reside with his family for most of the following year," His Grace recounts. "His mother did wonderful things with cooked fish, and his younger sister was a properly respectful attendant."

"...IS THAT WHERE YOUR GRACE'S NAME CAME FROM?"

Between your home life and visits to various overseas friends, you know a thing or two about little sisters, and "Sir Fluffy" is a name you could see some of the more innocent and whimsical of them giving to an older sibling's pet, even if said elder brother or sister had a different name for the animal in question.

...actually, that would just make it MORE likely.

"An excellent guess," His Grace approves, "and a correct one. He who presumed himself my master had some ridiculous title he insisted on using whenever he compelled me to do his bidding-"

The crowd of cats assembled behind you yowl ominously at that, either frightened or angered by the situation their king is describing.

"-and I was quite pleased to abandon and forget it in favor of one of the much more dignified names his sister had properly asked my opinion of."

And there you go.

"Alas, our association could nyot endure. When my bothersome binder returned home from his nyew school some turns of the myoon later, he seemed a changed boy, and I was content to ignyore him as such. And so I awoke one nyight to find him attempting a ritual with the aid of some strange device, which he claimed would re-forge the chains that he had previously held me in and reawaken his power."

You frown at that. If Sir Fluffy's former master had been a witch, reestablishing the familiar contract should indeed have returned his magical power to him, bindings or no, but a wizard's familiar isn't the same thing. Rather than a conduit through which a patron entity contacts and empowers the caster, a wizard's familiar is a channel for the wizard's magic alone. In a very broad sense, the WIZARD is the patron, and his familiar something not entirely dissimilar to a warlock - except for the part where a warlock's soul is forcibly altered, whereas a familiar's is merely linked to their partner's.

Not that such isn't a change in and of itself, but it's neither as deep nor as permanent as what a warlock does to himself for the sake of power.

In any event, His Grace says that he lost consciousness during the ritual, and that the last thing he clearly remembers is his would-be master screaming in pain and falling forward, breaking the ritual circle. Sir Fluffy took that opportunity to run for his fuzzy little life.

"And the nyext thing I clearly knyew, I was here among the alleys, a bit myore and a bit less than the purrfectly handsome young cat I had been," he concludes. "When I found my way back to the house, the family had departed, and long enough beforepaw that their scents were fading. What became of them after that, I nyever knyew."

"AN UNFORTUNATE ENDING TO SUCH AN ASSOCIATION," you commiserate.

"Nyes, I have regretted the loss of such good servants over the years. Ah, well." His Grace shrugs. "Inyany event, that was myay first encounter with human magic, and I have had to put up with some further annyoyances of the sort since then."

There was an old woman who kept a whole house full of cats, and who Sir Fluffy, in his own purrs, "waged a myost valiant struggle with, to mainyatain myay freedom and release myay people from her temptations."

Honestly, it sounds more like the lady was just taking care of a bunch of strays and wanted to help His Grace out, but you don't say that aloud. Nor do you comment on how his "inyevitable victory" came about due to Time carrying the old girl off, leaving the cats to their own devices - most of them becoming Sir Fluffy's original subjects, and the ancestors of many in the current generation of his kingdom of cats.

There was another spellcaster who spent some years catching and impounding "my loyal subjects," returning runaways to the homes they'd escaped and using many of the ferals as cheap experimental subjects.

The older cats in the group hiss and spit at the memory of that one, and yowl with menacing triumph when Sir Fluffy describes their "final battle," which sounds more like the cats taking advantage of the man being smacked by one of the Masters of the Five Elements and THEN running into a rival magic-user from out of town, before managing to break contact and stagger back to his workshop to fort up and try and recover for the next round - only to get mobbed by a mass of furious felines.

"And then there is that strange girl who keeps asking me to make a contract with her," Sir Fluffy says in bafflement. "I have tried telling her I have nyo idea what a magical girl is, but whatever magic she has, it doesn't let her understand Cat, much less speak it."

Oh?

You were already considering offering His Grace and his subjects a feast of conjured fish in exchange for some assistance in pranking Yu, but this sounds like it might be an another means of payment.

You are something of an expert on the subject of magic, as well as on the subject of young girls, and if your understanding of the particular subset of "magical girls" is not quite so extensive, you are nonetheless reasonably familiar with the notion and well-equipped to approach and deal with one of them, whether you're talking about a young practitioner of a more traditional style who just likes the modern aesthetic, or someone whose powers have manifested as seen in modern anime and manga.

And if there is a Dark Organization running around draining life, happiness, and/or Other Unspecified But Important Things from people? You're well-prepared to deal with THAT, too - though from His Grace's account of things, as well as the lack of concerned comments about "mysterious fainting spells" or public disturbances from the denizens of the School, you tend to disregard that possibility.

It really does just sound like Sir Fluffy has been harassed by a girl who's a little too invested in her comic books.

"IF I MAY, YOUR GRACE?"

"Nyes?"

"A 'MAGICAL GIRL' IS A MODERN TAKE ON THE CONCEPT OF THE WITCH OR WARLOCK..."

You explain the topic.

"...well, thenya. That does put things into perspective. Still, as much as I can appreciate a humyan with propurr respect for the magical superiority of the cat, I am nyot in the habit of handing my power out to complete strangers who think themselves entitled to it."

"I QUITE UNDERSTAND, YOUR GRACE. AS MY MAGIC GIVES ME THE MEANS TO BREACH THE LANGUAGE GAP, WOULD YOUR MEOWSOME MAJESTY BE OPPOSED TO MY ASSISTANCE IN EXPLAINING THE MATTER TO THE GIRL, THAT SHE MIGHT BE PEACEABLY CONVINCED TO APOLOGIZE AND LEAVE YOU IN PEACE?"

"Why, it's as if you're reading my mind, good Alex!" Sir Fluffy pauses. "...er, you aren't...?"

"WHAT HUMAN COULD COMPREHEND THE MIND OF A CAT, YOUR GRACE?"

"While you are nyot wrong, I was more concerned about having my thoughts read at all," Sir Fluffy replies.

Ah. Well, that answers the question of whether or not he would LIKE you to have been reading his mind.

After taking a moment to assure His Grace that you are not intruding upon his thoughts-

"MY PARTNER CAN VOUCH FOR ME IN THIS."

"Yeah, I'm kind of hooked into his brain right now, if Your Grace recalls how that feels."

"I do, alas. An experience I recall less than fondly and am quite pleased to be long done with... still, it is good to knyow."

-you get back to the matter of the deal.

Normally, a cat would have no compunctions about allowing one helpful human to chase off a more bothersome human, and would likewise see no reason to offer payment for such a natural service - though the cat might deign to allow themselves to be petted. However, since you, Sir Fluffy, and the would-be magical girl are all creatures of the supernatural, a certain amount of payment would be wise, to avoid incurring debts.

How fortunate, then, that you know someone in need of some light-hearted pranking.

"Ah, the man of fish-boxes!" Sir Fluffy exclaims. "Yes, we knyow him, as we did his grandfather before him; their game with the young ones from the school has been a pleasant source of fish, chases, and proper shows of respect and fear for my people."

"THEN WOULD YOUR GRACE OBJECT TO PLAYING A FEW TRICKS UPON THE FISH-BOX MAN?"

"Hmmm... he HAS refused to allow my people entry to his businyess, or to grant them his leftovers. A gentle scolding may be inyorder... though if my people are to fulfill this request for you, they would nyaturally nyeed to be paid."

There is a murmur of eager anticipation from the assembled cats.

"SO THEY WOULD. AND IT WOULD NOT DO AT ALL FOR THE PEOPLE TO BE PAID WHEN THEIR KING WAS NOT."

"Indeed it would nyot," Sir Fluffy agrees with smug satisfaction.

Once you have paid the cats, do you wish to deal with the magical girl immediately, or later?

"What, really?" Briar asks.

"THEY ARE DOING ME A FAVOR, AFTER ALL."

"Yeah, but is it really THAT much of one?"

"I MEAN, I FED THE MOBOGO THIS WAY, SO..."

"...yeah, I suppose even cats aren't THAT evil."

It takes you a few minutes to explain exactly how you mean to pay the cats, and then to find a spot where you can cast the spell you have in mind. The sky is clear, but the alley is not exactly clean, nor does it really have the necessary space for a bunch of low kitty-tables...

In the end, Sir Fluffy graciously allows you and his people to make use of his lair. You sit down just outside the door - box of fake-fish to one side, drawing interested looks from the audience - and look in at the old garage, which has some clutter here and there: old tires; rusted car parts; NOT rusted parts; lost tools; boxes in varying sizes; tarps; and more, all of it placed such that a cat would have great fun climbing over, perching on, or sneaking through it. Still, things look somewhat cleaner than the alley, and if you break the tables up a bit, there seems like there'd be space enough.

Once that's determined, you get on with the magic. Being divine in nature, the Spell to Create a Heroes' Feast is something you'd normally need to expend the effort of a seventh-tier casting to invoke; the only way you can really bring it down to your previously agreed-upon level of magic use is by sacrificing some of its capacity to feed people, leaning on your divine spellcasting training, and offering up a quiet prayer that you're able to hide the results.

Every so often, you have to throw a warning gesture into your spellcasting, in order to shoo a particularly curious cat away from your delivery.

Whether you succeeded in hiding the spell or not, the Feast takes form-

"Oh, meow!"

"Food!"

"Fish!"

"Num-nums!"

"Cream for the kittens!"

"FISH!"

-to the general approval of the cats, who hurry past you - and in a couple of adventurous cases, over you, either hopping onto and over your lap or clambering up your back - to get at the meal.

There is, fortunately, enough for everyone, the size difference between the humanoids this spell is typically meant to feed and the cats it's feeding now playing in your favor.

You'll deal with the magical girl another time. You have an errand to finish running, and Sir Fluffy and his people have a Feast to finish.

"Nyes, nyes," His Grace says quickly, as he sits down at the head of the highest table. "By all means, be onyour way. We shall speak of businyess when next we meet, Good Alex."

"Alex the Good Human!"

"Bringer of Fish!"

"FISH!"

"Omnyomnyom..."

...

It takes you a minute to pull your eyes away from the spectacle of a feline feast, but eventually, you are on your way.

Gained Language (Feline) D

Leaving the happy noises of feeding cats behind you, you make your way out of the alley and back along the route you took from Yu's Fish.

"Took a wrong turn and got lost, huh?" one of the pedestrians asks.

"Nonsense," you reply. "I always know exactly where I am; it just isn't always where I intended to go."

He laughs. "Well, on the positive side, you lost the cats! ...most of them, anyway."

You glance over your shoulder to see what he's looking at, and sure enough, you're being tailed - ah-ha-ha - by a lone, rangy tom whose aura reads as no weirder than any of the other mundane cats residing in His Grace's domain.

Your Spell to Speak With Animals has lapsed and you don't really feel like re-casting it for just one cat, but you can make out a certain wide-eyed eagerness in the way the animal is watching you and the crate in your arms.

"...he thinks he's got these fish all to himself, doesn't he?" you muse aloud.

Briar and the man on the street both start laughing, if for slightly different reasons.

You head on up the street in the general direction of the School of Five Elements, keeping to the pace of a light run-

"He's after you, kid!"

"Better watch out, he looks like a fierce one!"

"Seriously, though, where DID all the other cats go?"

"Is it just me, or do those fish look a little weird?"

-and navigating the commentary as well as the geography as you go.

The lone cat stays with you, although after a time, he starts falling behind, looking a bit winded and a lot more disappointed.

"And now the lonely hunter realizes the difference between cornering his prey with the aid of the clowder, and being forced to stalk alone," Briar narrates.

Not going to lie, you feel a little bad for the furball, especially since he's missing the Feast.

After that, you see no further cats. You do spot a few birds giving you considering glances, before apparently deciding not to bother - whether that's because they aren't feeling hungry enough to get motivated, don't care for their odds without the distraction of a bunch of cats, or are disappointed by the lack of felines to mock with their success, you aren't sure.

You also pass a couple of dogs, both of whom perk up when they see a strange boy with a box that smells of fish, only to whine and look around in confusion when no cats appear to chase or pester you.

Not too long after that, you're leaving Changdu-

"How'd it go?" the lady who was in her front yard earlier calls, now leaning out of what is probably her living room window.

After that, you hit the main road out of town, and start speeding up.

Whether due to guilt, a weakness to begging expressions, or a fondness for small animals, you decide to feed this cat as well.

You don't have ten minutes to spend casting the Spell to Create Food and Water, if only because you expect this fellow will wander off in search of an easier meal before then, but between that ritual, the Spell to Conjure a Heroes' Feast, and your general grasp of Conjuration Magic, you think you can probably create one fish just the right size to feed a cat...?

Several minutes of subdued effort later, a silver-scaled form slightly larger than a sardine takes shape atop the false-fish in your crate. After checking quickly to make sure the cat is still following you, you suddenly "stumble" and "accidentally" drop the fish-

"Look out!"

"Catch it!"

-which hits the road and flops once-

"Look out again!"

"Here he comes!"

"Rowr!"

-before it's snatched up by a speeding fuzzball.

"And there he goes!"

"Oh, so close to a perfect run! Better luck next time?"

Eh, you're fine with this.

"I may have made some friends."

"Fed the cats, did you?" the lady asks with a knowing look.

Balancing your crate with one arm, you raise your other hand with your thumb and forefinger slightly apart. "Maybe just a little?" you venture.

"Heh. Well, it looks like you've still got MOST of a crate, there, so PROBABLY no harm done - but don't be surprised if the masters assign you extra lessons!"

You think you'll be okay.

You HAVE used your Body Flicker in conjunction with your combat kit, which is... hm, actually probably a bit lighter than this conjured box even when taken all together, not to mention the difference in how you carry the respective weights. Your Warmage's Robe mostly rides on your shoulders, your Blessed Blade sits either in one hand or on your waist, your Boots go on your feet, and the Vambrace of Force Shielding goes on your one arm. The crate of fake fish, though, is putting its weight on your arms - or at least that's where you're FEELING it the most, lifting with the legs or no - and you don't have a lot of experience just holding something this heavy like that, let alone at super-speed.

Okay, there were some instances of hasty looting in Silbern, but much of that involved sacks and bags, which allowed you to use a shoulder for added support - and it was only for comparatively short distances.

...well, no, some of the distances in the immense Quincy fortress were anything BUT short...

Anyway, it's worth testing, so once you're out of sight, you fire up the standard Body Flicker-

"Hang on."

*Zoom*

"Whooooaaaa-!"

-and then take a minute after dropping back to normal running speed to see how you feel.

...

Yeah, it doesn't really seem to make a difference this way.

Shrugging, you step into another Body Flicker, Overloading it to try and make up a bit of the time you lost from talking to Sir Fluffy.

The streeeetching feeling and washing-out of colors is considerably more pronounced this way, but you aren't seeing that blue-shift Lu-sensei has demonstrated in the past. You wonder why...?

Regardless of that, as the School of Five Elements comes more clearly into view up ahead, you notice that there is an actual crowd gathered around the main entrance - fifty or more people, at a glance.

While you are tempted to call on your Illusion Magic to add a little humor to the proceedings, it's more of a passing impulse than a serious thought, and when muddled by your inability to pick a single idea and stick with it, you end up deciding not to bother and just save your magic.

The fact that you are able to pick Lu-sensei out of the crowd at a certain point and would therefore be at some risk of ENLIGHTENMENT if he thought you were being needlessly silly may have contributed to your final decision. Slightly.

In any event, your conjured crate of fake fish has served its purpose. Pausing in your advance, you dismiss the box and take the shrunken plush crate out of your pocket, willing it to return to its normal size and consistency. Once that's done, you resume your now-jogging pace up the road to the gate, holding the container and its delicious, smelly cargo above your head in a triumphant pose.

"Aaaand time!" one of the teachers calls, holding up a stopwatch. "Seventy-one minutes and thirty-three seconds!"

Wait, you were being timed!?

"Of course!"

"Everything is training!"

"And how can we tell if the training is working if we don't know how much time it takes you to run the course, or if you've improved since your previous attempts?"

...

...so how'd you do?

"That depends on how you look at it," Master Vincent comments. "For a trainee with little or no access to ki, this would be excellent time. For a student capable of using Body Flicker to the degree your master has described... less so."

"On the other hand, the fish are still fresh! ...like, really fresh, wow..."

"Old Man Yu must have gotten these straight off the boat, huh?"

"We're eating good tonight!"

The instructors, having witnessed more of your arcane prowess than their students - and more recently, at that - give you some suspicious looks.

"Still," one of the kids in the crowd comments, "we were expecting you back as early as half an hour ago. Did you get held up in traffic, or were the cats really mean today?"

Lu-sensei says nothing, eyeing you with a sense of wary anticipation.

Man, it's like he doesn't trust you to stay out of trouble! Which, based on past evidence, is only fair, but STILL!

"About that..."

"...I may have made a deal with the King of the Cats of Changdu," you announce.

Everybody in earshot falls silent, except for Lu-sensei, who doesn't even facepalm this time, instead merely sighing - fairly audibly amid the sudden stillness, it must be said - as he looks skyward and beseeches the heavens for patience.

Hang in there, old man.

"...they have a king?" somebody asks in disbelief.

"Talk about your thankless jobs..."

"Is THAT why there's always so many of them hanging around, no matter who goes on the Fish Run or what time of day it is?"

"How do you make a deal with a cat?"

"But," you add, raising your voice to carry over the commentary, "I should probably talk with the masters about the particulars."

"Aw, no fair!"

"You can't just lead with an opening like that and then leave us hanging, man!"

"I would really like to know if we're in danger of being at war with the Kingdom of Cats or something, and I cannot believe I just said that..."

Those masters that are present - a quick head count comes up with five more, after Lu-sensei and Master Vincent - seem to be in agreement with you, and once the crate of fish has been handed off to someone who protested the lack of explanation about your most recent adventure a little too loudly, they usher you away from the crowd.

Almost immediately, one or more of them start doing something that makes their footsteps resound more obviously, though it also seems to be directing the bulk of the noise away from your group.

"Variation on Ki Step?" you guess.

"Functionally an inversion of it, mixed with Ki Projection," comes the answer.

Gained Ki Stomp F+

"Now, ARE we in trouble with the Kingdom of Cats, or something similar?"

"Actually," that master is interrupted by another, "start from the beginning and walk us through it."

"Yes, sir. So, I got to Yu's Fish in about half an hour..."

You proceed to recount how you noticed the touch of unusual spiritual energy upon the assembled cats, how you tracked that energy to its source and met His Grace, Sir Fluffy-

"I-is that seriously his name?"

"One of his names, anyway, and there's a pretty good reason for it, as you'll hear shortly."

-and what His Fuzziness was willing to tell you of his origins.

Upon hearing that the cat-spirit has faint ties to the School of Five Elements, even at one remove, the masters trade thoughtful glances.

"I don't recall any magically-gifted applicants with an attitude like the one being described," one of them says.

"Being fair, he could have been on better behavior. And he WAS supposed to have fairly minor talent, so he might well have seemed ordinary..."

"The binding narrows it down better, but not entirely," someone else comments.

That surprises you a bit. "How often does that come up?" you wonder.

"More often than you might think," you're told. "Every now and then, we get a student with untapped magical talent that starts waking up because of their training, or one with an active gift that they can't control as well as we'd like. Either way, it can interfere with their progress and be generally troublesome, so we have a couple of trusted associates willing to place temporary restraints."

"We're also a point of contact for the townsfolk when they have supernatural concerns," another master steps in. "Partly for our own skills, partly for who we know and can get them in touch with - or tell them to steer clear of, as the situation calls for. Disciplinary measures like you described are rather rare, but nervous parents wanting to... wait a while, before having to deal with a child's emergent talent, is relatively frequent."

Hm.

"We'll check with the other masters, see if anyone recalls the case," Vincent says, before turning to you. "Was there anything else that... Sir Fluffy said, which we should know?"

"Not so much that His Grace said, but... if you're having trouble identifying Sir Fluffy's former wizard, you might try looking through local obituaries," you reply.

Unsurprisingly, THAT gets all of the masters' attention.

"How so?" Master Vincent asks.

You repeat the cat-king's account of his once and would-be future master's attempt to forcibly re-bind him, and how that went badly for the caster.

"He MAY have survived that," you clarify, "but there's a reasonable chance that he didn't, especially since His Grace said that by the time he made his way back to the house, the family had moved. I don't have a timeframe on that, though; Sir Fluffy lost consciousness himself, not long after fleeing, and may have been in a state of shock and transformation for some time afterwards."

The masters murmur among themselves for a moment.

"-check with the hospital-"

"-go through old newspapers-"

"-town hall archives-"

"On a lighter note," you continue, once they appear to have reached a conclusion, "I was wondering what this branch's policy on animals was."

Once more, they are staring at you.

"You want us to train a CAT?"

"...I mean, I certainly wouldn't OBJECT to the idea," you admit, briefly imagining the New and Improved Sir Fluffy, Now with Kung Fu Action! "But I was thinking more about just getting His Grace into a healthier environment. For all that I've been calling him the King of Cats, he's basically living out of an abandoned garage, getting by on scraps, and with his main source of company being a bunch of non-awakened cats and the occasional magic-user making his life difficult."

"Counting yourself?" someone asks with a touch of humor.

"I was a purrfect guest, sir," you reply with an air of mock-offense.

Lu-sensei sighs, Vincent and a couple of the other masters chuckle (one openly, the other two trying not to let on their amusement), and the rest look a bit confused.

"...guess that joke doesn't translate so well, huh?" You shrug. "Well, by the end, they were calling me the Good Human and the Bringer of Fish, so..."

"Wait, 'they'?" one of the masters comments. "Do you mean that other cats were talking?"

"Oh, no, I was using the Spell to Speak With Animals to communicate more directly."

"Oh, just magic, then..."

"What's this about bringing them fish?" you're asked then. "The crate you were carrying seemed to be full, and I don't think Yu would have handed out extra."

"It was, he didn't, and I actually conjured the fish that I gave to the cats."

"You can just MAKE food?"

"Give me ten minutes and I can treat upwards of a dozen people to anything from bland trail rations to a supernaturally empowering feast," you say frankly. "Though doing the latter takes just enough magic that I can't be sure of hiding it."

And that's not getting into what you can and have done with Magnificent Mansions.

"And stray and feral cats don't eat as much at a single meal as a human, so..." you trail off.

"...wait, exactly how many cats are we talking about, here?"

"There were over thirty waiting for me when I stepped out of Yu's Fish. They all followed me back to Sir Fluffy's alley, which had at least as many cats hanging around - and we probably picked up some stragglers and opportunists along the way."

...

"Are there really that many cats roaming Changdu?"

"I always thought the students were exaggerating..."

"I always thought I was miscounting out of fear and confusion..."

"Maybe we need to rethink the Fish Run?" one of them offers.

The other masters stop and stare at their comrade.

"Let's not go crazy, now."

"It's tradition, after all."

"Yeah, it's still a perfectly functional method of training and discipline-"

"And free labor."

"-and free... I will smack you, see if I don't."

As amusing as this is, it's getting away from your question, but when you redirect the conversation, the masters are honestly unsure how to answer. Even leaving aside the possibility of actually training Sir Fluffy in some derivative of the Five Elements Style - which would take quite a lot of work, given the physical differences between the humans the art was originally devised for and the magically-altered cat it would be taught to - there is some uncertainty about how best to approach a supernatural entity, even if he HAS been living in their neighborhood for years or decades now without their notice.

...maybe BECAUSE of that, actually. They're sort of the local guardians of the supernatural side, and finding out that they missed His Grace's presence for all this time, even though he was just a step or two removed, has to be a source of some consternation.

Maybe they just need to talk with him face-to-whiskers?

You're very tempted to use the story of Master Walking Glacier, and how his induction into the School of Five Elements would have required some re-working of the style to accommodate a non-human student's divergent physiology, to help cultivate the masters' interest in taking on Sir Fluffy - but you refrain, largely because you first heard of the yeti disciple through Grandmaster Wen himself. Lu-sensei admitted at the time that he'd thought Walking Glacier being described as a yeti was just colorful language, not literal fact, and if he thought as much despite all his experience with the supernatural, odds are that his contemporaries are in a similar boat.

The only proof you have of the truth of the matter is Wen's testimony, and you're still keeping the fact that Lu-sensei has gained the means to summon the Grandmaster under wraps, until you can spring it on all the masters at the Ring of Trials for maximum impact. It'd be a shame to spoil that particular punchline if you didn't have to, and so, you choose not to.

Instead, you say, "If you'd prefer to meet Sir Fluffy and get his measure before making any decisions, I could take somebody with me when I go back to Changdu."

"Planning another Fish Run already?" someone says.

"Actually, no," you reply, "or at least not yet. His Grace is having problems getting a would-be magical girl to stop trying to make him her familiar, and I offered my services as an interpreter so that the whole issue could be sorted out."

...

"'Magical girl.'"

"Are we talking about an over-enthusiastic fan of the genre, here, or is there some kind of actual Chosen One living in town?"

"I'm pretty sure it's the former, but confirming that's just another reason to want to meet with her," you admit.

You don't know of any Powers that go around granting young girls enchanted items that unlock temporary magical transformations and the use of supernatural abilities, but reproducing the default powerset of costume change, physical enhancement, and special attack wouldn't be too difficult for even a relatively minor magic-user. Various types of female magic-users are at least magical girl-adjacent, and then there's the existence of the Slayer to consider, although you're pretty sure she doesn't have an animal companion or a transformation item...

"When were you planning to return to town?" one of the masters asks you.

"Sir Fluffy mentioned that the girl tends to show up in the evenings, right around twilight," you explain, "so I thought I'd teleport back to Changdu after supper."

At the mention of teleportation, all eyes turn to Lu-sensei.

"Why are you all looking at ME?" he demands.

"I mean, he IS your student, Lu..."

"And I have half a mind to make one of you go with him anyway, just so you'll better appreciate some of what I've had to deal with. Besides, the boy's teleportation is just weird, it isn't dangerous."

You are rather tempted to return verbal fire to Lu-sensei's remark about your teleportation skills, but it occurs to you that he's been shown to be both out of touch with his fellows and not on the best of terms with at least some of them. It's possible, then, that they're not generally aware of his ability to use the higher form of Body Flicker, and that he might prefer things that way, whether to avoid commentary or to keep it as an ace in the hole against certain people.

So you say nothing.

"Not going to defend your method of travel?" one of the masters inquires.

You shrug. "I mean, he's not wrong?"

Teleportation is a little odd to begin with, and your particular version has always been unusual even by those standards - but at least you're not seeing the Hellmouth every time you teleport away from Sunnydale anymore!

Anyway, by general consensus and dint of being the adult nominally in charge of you, Lu-sensei gets stuck with being the one to meet Sir Fluffy when you go back to Changdu this evening. The other masters will be speaking with their peers while you're out and waiting to see how this "diplomatic" assignment goes before making any decisions about their future association with the local King of Cats - if any.

For all you know, His Grace might be genuinely content with the way things are, or have requirements that the School is unable or unwilling to meet - you could definitely understand them not wanting to host a hundred or so cats, for example.

After that, you finish up your account of the Fish Run and ask the masters how much of it is safe to tell the students over dinner, because you're quite certain they will be asking.

"Leave out the prank," every teacher present says at once.

"Even with the historical precedent?" you ask with some disappointment.

"Even then," Master Vincent says. "In fact, don't mention those, either."

"It's one thing when a student comes up with the idea to balance the scales on their own, and also comes up with an appropriate response like the guy with the catnip solution guns," another master says. "But it's a different matter when all the students HEAR about this sort of thing at the same time, and maybe take inspiration from it - let alone if they decide to emulate the boy who chose violence as his first resort."

Ah. So it's not so much the idea of payback they object to, as of a couple hundred people getting in on the action all at once, and potentially making Fishmonger Yu's life hell for a while.

"Exactly. We've maintained a cordial working relationship with Yu and his family for generations, now, and the Fish Run is practical a staple of the community, as I'm sure you noticed."

The spectators DID seem to be enjoying themselves when you went by.

"It'd be a shame to ruin all that, don't you think?"

Yeah, you can see where they're coming from. You can explain feeding the cats some other way.

You spend the remaining forty-odd minutes until supper dodging questions and saying that the afternoon's events in Changdu will be covered in tonight's dinner theatre-

"Now, what's this about a King of Cats in Changdu?"

"It begins with the Fish Run..."

-during which you get to sample some of Yu's Fish in breaks around your account of your "adventure."

The fish is alright, incidentally. Maybe not up to the standards of the meals at the Shuzen or Drake residences, let alone one of your conjured Feasts, but somewhat better than various fish dishes you've had that were sourced through a supermarket.

After the meal and spending the better part of the following hour digesting in peace and waiting for the sun to get a bit lower, you meet up with Lu-sensei for your trip to town. Your teacher isn't alone, having dragged Master Vincent along.

"This was always going to be a working vacation for me," your teacher says, "that's just part of the responsibility of being a master in the School. I was just kind of annoyed that not even one of the others who was there offered to go with you. Showed a certain lack of trust and courage, not to mention foresight."

What's that?

"Well, I'm not going to be here after another week, am I? That just means any trust I build up with this entitled cat-"

Good one.

"-thank you. As I was saying, any rapport I establish with this individual isn't going to do the School much good once I'm back in California."

"Which would be why I got dragged along," Master Vincent sighs. "I still say Zen would have been a better pick for this."

"There's a difference between being good at maintaining spiritual health and being good at dealing with spirits," Lu-sensei replies.

That reminds you, you still need to sit down and discuss cleansing techniques and maintaining general spiritual wellness with that master... but later, later.

Adding one more passenger doesn't make a difference to you as far as teleporting goes, but before you blip across space and time, you take a moment to apply the Spell to Speak With Animals on the three human members of your party - Briar not having need of it. While you could apply the metamagic techniques necessary to affect everyone with a single casting, the result would only last for about a quarter of an hour; depending on how long it takes to find the girl who's been pestering Sir Fluffy, you might end up having to re-cast the spell several times, so it makes more sense for you to use single-person variants, each Extended to last upwards of a couple of hours.

Since you've got time, you use rituals for this, offsetting both the mana cost and some of your inability to wholly suppress the casting of fifth-circle spells. The following Spell of (Short Range) Teleportation is also cast via a ritual, although since you're invoking an effect you can't correctly pull off via metamagic - specifically, reducing its usual range of over a thousand miles down to just a dozen or so - you do have to put some of your own energy into it. Fortunately, the end result is only a third-circle spell, so it's cheap and quick.

The School disappears-

-and then you're standing in the back streets of Changdu, just down the road and around the corner from where some of Sir Fluffy's people were standing guard over the alley-lair proper this afternoon.

After all, it would be rude to just barge into His Grace's domain, even if you are expected-

"AHHH! Invaders from nowhere! Run away!"

-well, mostly expected. But apparently not "appearing from thin air" expected, you reflect, as you watch the only cat who appears to have been in visual range of your landing zone go tearing off, spooked by your unannounced arrival.

Lu-sensei looks around, frowns slightly, and then turns to his peer. "Still with us, Tucker?"

Master Vincent is staring off into space in a way you've come to recognize. "Green...?" he wonders.

"Green," your teacher agrees.

"And it was... waving at us?"

"Waving, greeting, burbling in tongues Man Was Not Meant To Know..." Lu-sensei trails off with a shrug. "You get used to it. Or possibly crack."

"...well, I don't FEEL cracked, if that's at all helpful. Maybe a bit strained, mentally..." He pauses, then shakes his head and visibly puts all of that aside, or possibly into a little mental box marked, 'Do not open.' Looking around, Master Vincent says, "I don't recognize the nearby streets. Where exactly in Changdu are we?"

"I'm not entirely certain myself," you admit. "I wasn't exactly paying attention to the street signs, I just followed His Grace's trail the first time, and then back-tracked on my way out. Not that there ARE many signs back here," you add, glancing around yourself.

From around the corner, there comes a sudden commotion.

"Invaders!"

"Defend the nest!"

"Make lots of noise to scare- hey, do you smell that?"

"I know that scent..."

"The Bringer of Fish!"

"He returns!"

"Fish?"

"Hurrah!"

"Yay, fish!"

The two masters look on, blankly, as a dozen or so cats that emerge from the shadows singing your praises in the hopes of getting another supernaturally delicious fish feast. Then the two older men turn to regard you, their expressions unchanged.

"THERE WILL BE FISH-" you begin.

"Myaaaayyyy!"

"Joyous night!"

"Bringer of Fish!"

"Best human!"

"Why is he talking like that?" Master Vincent mutters to Lu-sensei.

"I blame Batreaux," your master replies absently.

"Who?"

"-BUT IT WILL BE LATER," you continue, as firmly as you can manage.

"Myaaaawwww," every cat in earshot complains simultaneously.

"Terrible night!"

"Denier of Fish!"

"Meanest human!"

Wow, how fickle.

"I HAVE A PROMISE TO KEEP WITH SIR FLUFFY," you try to explain.

"But- but FISH?"

"I myean, he DOES owe the boss..."

"But on the other paw, fish."

"I can't argue with that."

"Fish!"

"AND MY WORD TO HIS GRACE MUST COME FIRST, FOR WHAT HUMAN WHO GOES BACK ON A PROMISE TO THE KING OF CATS COULD BE TRUSTED?"

...

"But, fish?"

"Nyo, nyo, he's got a point..."

"But he's also got the fish."

"Ugh, I hate problems I can't just claw until they go away!"

"What is all the nyoise about, nyan?" Sir Fluffy demands from further down the alley.

"Boss!"

"Sir Fluffy!"

"The Bringer of Fish has returned-!"

"-and he won't give us more fish!"

Oh, boy.

"I see. And the fact that there are two other humyans with him...?"

The cats fall silent and turn to regard Lu-sensei and Master Vincent.

"...wow, that's unsettling," the local instructor mutters.

"Remarkably so," your teacher agrees.

The cats turn back to their lord. "They didn't seem important?"

"Ouch."

"Ow."

Sir Fluffy facepaws and sighs. "Why is it so hard to get good help...?"

"IF I MAY, YOUR GRACE?"

"Please do."

"I DO NOT OBJECT TO PROVIDING ANOTHER MEAL OF FISH, MERELY TO DOING SO BEFORE I HAVE DISCHARGED MY OBLIGATION TO YOU."

"Ah! A feast to celebrate victory over this bothersome 'magical girl' creature!"

"...SURE, THAT WORKS."

"To victory over the silly human!"

"To victory fish!"

"TO FISH!"

"FIIIISH!"

"Nyes, nyes," Sir Fluffy says, trying to sound stern and dignified even as he licks his chops in anticipation of the second Feast of the day. "So spurread the word and gather my people, for tonyight, we eat well!"

"FISH!"

And with that last chorus of hungry eagerness, the crowd of cats breaks up, most of the members disappearing into the alleys. The watch-cats return to their posts at a slower pace than the rest, talking happily about the delicious fish they will "soon" be eating, and four more of the larger, more-mystical-than-average-feeling cats remain with their king, forming a loose perimeter around His Grace as a kind of lazy honor guard.

"...is the fish THAT good?" Master Vincent wonders.

"I used the Spell to Conjure a Heroes' Feast," you explain, speaking to the sensei in a normal tone. "That's the one I mentioned before, that whips up a supernaturally delicious and fortifying meal."

"And it was truly delicious," Sir Fluffy agrees with a purr.

"Ah."

"I AM PLEASED TO HEAR THAT IT SUITED YOUR TASTES, YOUR GRACE. BUT IN THE MEANTIME..."

"Nyes, we have a strange humyan female to confront and convince of the error of her ways. Let us be off."

And so you set out, accompanied by His Grace and his guards, the latter of whom wander here and there as you advance, poking their noses into dark corners and lighted cracks under doorways. You get the impression that about half of this is them looking for threats to their boss, while the other half is just to see what might be there.

As Sir Fluffy guides you to the part of his territory where the magical girl usually turns up, you introduce Lu-sensei and Master Vincent, explaining their associations to you and your reasoning for wanting to introduce them to His Grace.

"AFTER ALL, AS YOUR GRACE'S KEEN EYE AND CUNNING WIT NOTICED BEFORE, I DO NOT LIVE HERE, AND I WILL BE RETURNING HOME IN A FEW MORE DAYS' TIME. IF YOUR GRACE OR YOUR GRACE'S PEOPLE HAD FURTHER TROUBLE WITH ANNOYING HUMANS IN THE MEANTIME, I WOULD NOT BE AVAILABLE TO ASSIST, BUT THE SCHOOL OF FIVE ELEMENTS" - which roughly translates as, "Human Colony of Teaching Claws to Cut With Heat, Wet, Dust, Wind, and Surprises" - "MIGHT BE ABLE TO LEND THEIR AID. THEY HAVE, AFTER ALL, ASSISTED YOUR GRACE ONCE BEFORE."

"Myes, though that was long ago..."

Incidentally, Sir Fluffy does not remember the names or appearances of the members of the School that his ex-wizard was involved with. His Grace met a few of them in passing, as he was compelled to serve as the delivery method for a few of the jinxes his purported master cast on his perceived enemies, but it wasn't really that important to the much younger cat he was then.

His Furriness DOES remember the appearance of the magic-user who sealed his bothersome partner's magic and broke their familiar bonds, but "A tall male humyan with grey fur on his head and face, wearing long, soft robes that I recall thinking would have been ever so much fun to roll around and sleep inya, and smelling faintly of manyan interesting thing," isn't exactly a stand-out description among the mystical community.

Several of masters at the School fit that particular bill, save for the part where they lack the magical talent, and without even trying had, Master Vincent can think of half a dozen spellcasters who could be described in similar terms.

"What, even the 'smelling faintly' part?" you ask.

"Two of the men I'm thinking of are habitual smokers," Master Vincent informs you, "and another is an alchemist."

Ah. And alchemists, you know, usually smell a bit funny due to the various compounds they work with and the reactions - not infrequently violent - that ensue.

For his part, Sir Fluffy does not seem especially eager to associate himself with the School of Five Elements, but neither is he rejecting the idea out of paw.

Rather than try to push the matter further and risk annoying His Grace - or worse, convincing him to do the opposite of what you're hoping and decide not to have anything further to do with the School - you step back from the discussion to give the (Local) King of Cats and the (Currently Present) Master of the School of Five Elements a chance to talk amongst themselves.

In the meantime, you keep your eyes open for a girl with some magical potential.

...or anyone at all, really. You didn't give it much thought earlier this afternoon, focused as you were on tracking Sir Fluffy's spiritual influence over his fellow felines back to the source - and on keeping track of where the small army of cats was, just in case - but there weren't a lot of humans walking the side-streets in this part of town. Past a certain point, there weren't any at ALL.

The later hour hasn't exactly changed that. It isn't dark enough just yet for the streetlights to have come on, and while some people have turned on lights in their homes and apartments, other buildings - or parts of them - stand dark and seemingly empty. You spy a few "CLOSED" signs, some of them even written in English, hanging in various doors, and while the businesses in question are in good enough order that they're clearly still in use, the current hour, lack of activity, and absence of illumination has some of those structures approaching the same state of abandonment as His Grace's lair, if only in your mind's eye.

It's rather jarring when you consider the amount of activity coming from the docks, where the lights are definitely on and business is clearly being carried on. Some of the fishing boats that were still out this afternoon have clearly returned home ahead of sunset... but that's not your current concern.

After about twenty minutes go by without your party spotting another human being, Master Vincent pauses in his conversation with Sir Fluffy to inquire if he knows the actual name of the "silly human" that you're looking for.

"I have a nyumber of nyames for her," His Grace admits, "but she called herself 'Jia,' if I am pronyouncing that correctly."

"No family name?" the sensei inquires.

"Not unless that was one?"

"I've yet to hear it used as such," Vincent admits, before turning to you. "Would a single name be enough for you to track the girl magically?"

You quickly run through your options. Not having met the girl or seen her yourself rules out quite a few of your Divination methods, and your agreed-upon fifth-circle cap to spellcasting takes a couple more out of consideration.

The Spell to Locate a Creature, which served you well at the exhibition, probably won't help here. Leaving aside the possibility of the girl being out of range, you haven't met this "Magical Girl Jia" in person or seen her at a distance - at least not as far as you know - and you don't have a sample of her magical signature to help you trace her location, as you did the witches the other day.

Page-Bound Epiphany might work, but is dependent on someone having written down a useful tidbit of information. If Jia keeps a diary and has written about becoming Sir Fluffy's contracted magical girl, for example, then you'd be golden, but if there isn't something with that kind of specificity AND recognition of the girl's supernatural awareness in text somewhere, you'd be out of luck.

A Greater Spell of Scrying might also be able to do it, but given your limited information on and lack of connections to the target, there's a decent chance she'd be able to dodge the spell. Not only that, but to respect your agreement with Master Vincent, you'd have to cut down the spell's duration considerably; its normal period of activity is long enough for this to be viable, it would leave you with less than two minutes to try and figure out where the girl is.

Plus, it's intrusive. Spying on people you consider personal enemies or threats to innocent lives is one thing, but spying on a girl whose worst offense is being a bit silly about magic isn't nearly in the same category, and you HAVE caught people at bad times with some of your long-distance spells in the past...

There's also the option of just throwing together a Ritual to Find a Person, and seeing if that works.

You figure that you may as well go with the approach most likely to succeed, and then shore up your chances of success. Would using Ki Enhancement to augment your force of will - and by extension, the power of your magic - be superior to using a spell to achieve the same effect...?

Maybe not normally, but with an Overload on top, yes, that would work. So you do that first.

Master Vincent squints at you. "Are you... glowing?"

Only a very little bit. If it were slightly brighter, he probably wouldn't have noticed.

"Just preparing for the spell I want to use," you say, before reaching out to the ambient mana of Changdu.

Huh. It feels fuzzy, almost like a cat.

"Give me... seven minutes?" you ask.

They do, alternating between watching you and watching the surrounding area as you chant and shape the energies, modifying the basic formula of the Greater Spell of Scrying to cut its duration down almost as far as possible. Once it's prepared, you offer up a quick prayer to the Goddesses for luck, and let it go-

-and when the spherical screen pops into view before it, it conveys the image of a girl you'd guess to be twelve or thirteen, wearing pretty ordinary upper-middle-class clothing. As a bonus, you haven't caught her at any sort of awkward moment, or even in the privacy of her own home; instead, she's walking along a sidewalk, exchanging greetings with locals who appear to know her and expect or at least be resigned to her presence.

"Out late again, Jia?" one of them asks in disapproval.

"It's only seven-thirty!" the girl protests lightly. "It's not that late."

"Late enough for little girls-"

"I'm not little!" she says, even though objectively speaking, she doesn't come up to the shoulders of any of the small number of adults nearby.

"-especially with the boats getting back in and the boys feeling rowdy." The woman in question shakes her head with a sigh. "Hurry up and find your cat and then get home, dear."

"I will, I will... eventually," Jia adds under her breath, as she moves on a little faster.

You turn to Sir Fluffy. "IS THIS HER, YOUR GRACE?"

"Nyes, it is indeed."

"The silly humyan," one of his escorts murmurs disapprovingly.

"The troublesome one."

"She gives good ear-scritches."

Sir Fluffy and his other three guards turn to the fourth with disapproving looks.

Said cat blinks shamelessly. "Well, she DOES..."

"I believe I know where she is," Master Vincent says.

You have a man who knows the area with you, so why not make use of him?

"DO YOU MIND, YOUR GRACE?" you inquire politely.

"Nyot at all."

"Lead the way, sir," you tell Master Vincent.

He nods and turns right around, heading in opposite direction of the way you were going before you stopped to cast the Scrying Spell.

That figures.

As you walk, you speak. "SO, O GUARD WHO ENJOYS HAVING HIS EARS SCRITCHED..."

The other guards laugh, cattily.

The aforementioned ears turn slightly sideways in annoyance. "Nyes?"

"AS YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY INTERACTED CLOSELY WITH THE GIRL WE GO TO SEE, MIGHT I ASK WHAT NAME YOU PREFER HUMANS TO ADDRESS YOU BY, IN CASE SHE ASKS?"

"Oh, that is a good idea!"

"As expected of the Bringer of Fish!"

"Except when he's being the Denier of Fish."

"Well, yes."

The guard walks a little taller as he proudly declares, "Among cats, I am known as Roundtail."

You glance at the appendage in question, which is bushy enough to give it a certain cylindrical appearance; at the same time, the way its owner curls it from one side to the other as he struts along the sidewalk suggests another possible source for the name. Or maybe it's a bit of both?

"But among humyans," Roundtail continues, "I am Mao-Mao!"

...
...

"I thought Fuzzpaws was Mao-Mao?" one of the other guards interjects.

"No, Fuzzpaws is just Mao." Roundtail preens. "My name is more impressive."

"But Fuzzpaws got his name first."

"Doesn't matter."

"The first cat gets the fish," the other guard refutes.

"Names are different!"

You wonder if you should tell them that "mao" is literally just the Chinese word for "cat."

Not too long after that, you hit a properly-lit street, with some actual people around. Still not many of them, mind you, but enough that Sir Fluffy's size and, ahem, "royal attire" will likely draw some attention. Your Scrying Spell has already lapsed, so it at least won't be a source of attention-

"Is that you, Tucker?"

"Lu?"

"What are you two doing walking around back there?"

-but then again, the presence of two masters, a student, an unseen fairy, and a few cats all in a procession would do a lot to make up for that.

"What was that about colored rabbits, sir?" you inquire.

"Hm? Oh, it's just that the way, er, Mao-Mao-"

"Good humyan."

"-...thank you," Master Vincent says dryly. "Anyway, the manner in which he presented his two names happened to remind me of an old saying: 'Among men, Lü Bu; among horses, Red Hare.'"

You have no idea who they are. Also-

"Who names a horse after a bunny?" Briar wonders.

-yeah, that.

"It was a very fast horse, supposedly the fastest of its time, just as its rider, Lü Bu, was said to be the mightiest warrior of his day. That's the very, VERY short form, though. If you're curious, there's plenty of books about them in the library, both history and fiction."

Something to consider, you suppose.

It's quite possible that the cats have misunderstood the meaning of the "name" given to some of them. It's equally likely that they understand it correctly, and find being addressed as "Cat" or variations thereof by humans to be appropriate. Either way, you don't feel the need to start a conversation about it.

You had time to anticipate the potential awkwardness of having a mundane audience when your group encounters Jia, and so got started on weaving your old standby ritual to discourage attention well before leaving the shadowed and largely abandoned alleys for their brighter and more populated neighbors.

Not for the first time, the thought occurs that you should take a few days to work out a proper, formalized spell formula for this magic. You're just so busy all the time that it keeps being pushed down the list of priorities...

Anyway, Master Tucker and Lu-sensei are far enough ahead of you when you complete the spell that they aren't caught in its area of effect. That's fine though; you were more concerned with making Sir Fluffy's presence unremarkable, and he and his escorts are close enough for you to cover with the ward. The fact that there are five of them, all stronger than the average cat to some degree, would normally make them harder to hide, but you've used this very magic to make people accept the presence of a fairly large dog in a school for days on end, without protests being lodged after the fact.

Right now, you're on a street where the presence of a few cats is a pretty normal affair. That makes things a whole lot easier.

The two masters aren't affected by the spell, though they do notice it taking effect. Master Vincent actually glances over his shoulder a few times, appearing worried on the first occasion that somebody will be spooked by Sir Fluffy's presence; subsequently, however, he just displays a mixture of relief and bemusement as your magic keeps the peace.

And then the girl you've been looking for appears a little ways down the street, head turning this way and that as she looks all about for something. She has a faint but active magical aura, and is noticably probing the area with either her version of Mage Sight or a Spell to Detect Magic. She's not close enough for the effect to reach the cats yet, but Sir Fluffy still lets out an uneasy growl as Jia's gaze passes over him-

-and then meeps in surprise when she looks right past him.

"...onya one paw, I am pleased and amyused to be hidden from her," he notes. "Onya other, I am a little annyoyed to be ignyored."

"We could ambush the humyan, Boss?" one of the guard-cats offers.

"Let the humyans deal with her," another says dismissively.

"I can get her!" Roundtail Mao-Mao offers, visibly barely restraining himself from running to the girl.

While the idea of letting Roundtail Mao-Mao lead Jia back to you is kind of tempting, it would be quicker if you just got her attention yourself, and the surest way of doing that without also drawing the attention of the other folks on the street would be to use a little magic - something the girl will be able to sense that the rest of the people won't, or at least that they won't notice as clearly as she will, with her Mage Sight active.

On that note, you gather a small amount of magical energy and cast the Spell to Create an Arcane Mark, placing your emblem on the sidewalk in front of you and the cats. You opt for the invisible mode of the sigil, which Jia will be able to see thanks to her use of magical detection, and you make it as large as you can - about a foot across, as it happens - so that it's sure to catch her attention.

Sure enough, the next time the young lady's gaze turns in your direction, you can see the instant when she registers three large reddish-gold characters of an extremely foreign language phasing into view on the street. She starts, blinks in surprise, and then comes forward with an intent look and a complete lack of hestiation-

"Excuse me, misters," Jia says as she moves past the masters.

"...you are excused?" Master Vincent replies with some puzzlement, as he looks at whatever has suddenly caught the girl's attention, and sees nothing.

Lu-sensei just turns and glances at you, quirking an eyebrow.

You nod back, signaling that you'll take it from here.

-though not of manners.

For a moment, you can't help but think about how easy it would be for a Minion of Evil to spring an ambush on this would-be magical girl when her attention is so laser-focused on the target in front of her, especially when she's still not giving you or the cats anything in the way of conscious acknowledgement. Is that due to a simple lack of experience, or is she just foolish enough not to consider keeping one eye on her surroundings?

Jia stops about a stride away from the symbol and looks down at it, frowning. "Now where did you come from?" she wonders quietly.

"I put it there," you say helpfully.

Jia jumps in surprise as she looks sharply in your direction. "What the- where did YOU come from?!"

Thankfully, though part of her clearly wants to yell, Jia manages to keep her voice down to a fairly normal conversational level.

"I've been standing here since you came around the corner," you reply honestly. "I've just been encouraging people not to pay attention."

"Encourag-" She stops short, looks down at the Mark again, and then back up. "You have magic," Jia says plainly.

You mentally mark that down as a point in the "inexperienced, but probably not a dummy" column.

"I do."

"And I come in peace, on behalf of a magical being you have managed to annoy."

"But the only magical being I've met was- oh. Ohhhh..." She glances down at the cats, registering their presence now, but still not quite seeing through your ongoing spell to comprehend that Sir Fluffy is present. "This is about Prince Whiskers, isn't it?"

Definitely not a dummy. Making some less than ideal decisions, to be sure, but it seems to be more out of isolation from and lack of correct information about the supernatural world than intent.

Before things go any further, you formally introduce yourself-

"Jia," she says in return.

"Not going to give me your family name?"

"I mean, we JUST met..."

"No, no, it's the right call. For all you know, I could be a demon or something."

"...wait, demons are really real?"

-your partner-

"Hi, there!" Briar greets the girl.

"...hi? Um, I can't quite see you, Miss Briar?"

"Don't worry about it, that's normal for a girl your age, magic or no."

-the two old men who are hanging back a bit-

"Oh, you're from the School?" Jia asks, visibly relaxing at this.

"Well, Master Vincent is," you clarify. "Lu-sensei trained there, and we're visiting for the week with some other people."

-and of course, the cats.

"And last and greatest of all, I present to you His Grace, Sir Fluffy, King of the Cats of Changdu."

Jia's eyes go wide as she finally sees through your spell and finds the being she tried to convince to become her familiar standing before her.

"Nyes." His Grace regards you for a moment. "I nyotice nyou are speaking myore quietly than before, Good Alex...?"

"I don't want to attract too much notice from the other humans, Your Grace."

"Ah. Carry on, thenya." Sir Fluffy turns back to Jia. "So, we meet againya."

Jia stares at His Grace for a moment longer before slowly turning her head to you. "You were... REALLY talking to him just now, weren't you?"

"I was, yes."

"Magic?"

"I know the Spell to Speak With Animals, and while His Grace is more than just an animal-"

"Nyes."

"-he remains feline enough that I can include him within the magic's purview."

Such a thing wouldn't have worked with the more humanoid sort of cat-person, nor with many magical beasts that have cat-like forms or traits. Sir Fluffy, however, began life as a normal cat, and while his transition to his current state has made him more than that in some ways, it hasn't diluted his essential... cattiness. Which is a contributing factor all on its own, really, cats being as mystically significant as they are.

But your own mastery of Divination Magic undoubtedly helped.

"Could you... I mean, could I...?"

"I can, and you could; I was just waiting for permission. One moment, if you will..."

You cast the Spell to Speak With Animals again, using the same extended form that you cast on yourself and the masters earlier, just in case.

"There you go."

Jia frowns, possibly not feeling any different, but turns back to His Grace. "Can you understand me, now?"

Sir Fluffy huffs. "I could ALWAYS-"

The girl starts in surprise.

"-unyderstand nyou, silly girl."

"Silly."

"Bothersome."

"Pet me?"

Once again, feline eyes turn disapprovingly to Roundtail Mao-Mao, who has padded forward with his head raised to be in easier reaching distance of Jia's hand.

"Canyou nyot read the myood, Roundtail?" His Grace sighs.

"Don't care. Headpats."

...

You are not thinking of a certain undead harpy. Not. At. All.

Jia blinks in confusion at all of this, but when presented with a cat who is quite literally asking for the attention, it's not long before she crouches down a little and starts running her fingers through Roundtail's fur.

"Purr..."

"Traitor."

"Weak."

"Lucky..."

The first two guards' heads turn towards their remaining compatriot in surprise.

Sir Fluffy just facepaws again.

For your part, you can't help wondering for a moment if Jia has found a more acceptable candidate for a familiar, but when you look more closely at her aura, you aren't sure that she's capable of bonding with one, at least not at this time. Even then, a cat might not be a good choice for her, because the feel of her magic reminds you of ocean breezes, the crash and sigh of waves striking the beach, and the press of water, deep and dark and cold.

Yes, there's a certain fishiness to her power that most cats might appreciate, but the rest? Not so much.

Even if cats are not your most favorite animals in the world, you would be a hypocrite if you denied somebody a chance to show affection to a four-legged friend. So you give Jia and Roundtail Mao-Mao a chance to be affectionate.

...

"Are nyou donya?" Sir Fluffy asks after a beat.

"Neverrrr..." Roundtail replies in bliss.

His Grace nods. "Nyou're donya. Rateater, if nyou would?"

"Yes, Boss."

And the other three guards proceed to dog- er, cat-pile Roundtail-

"Nyoooo, my headpats-!"

-and drag him away from Jia.

She kind of stands there, hand half-outstretched, looking like she doesn't know whether to laugh, protest, or just ignore this development.

You clear your throat and get on with business, asking Jia's permission to do an active magical scan of her person, as part of clarifying the whole familiar issue.

She agrees, and is a little surprised that you hadn't already done so.

"Like you said, we don't know each other."

"And he has been told off for scanning girls without permission before," Briar adds cheekily.

Hush, you.

One short but detailed scan later-

"Oh, yeah, that is kind of awkward, isn't it?" Jia mutters, shifting under the probe.

-you confirm that the young lady is neither a witch nor a warlock, but rather a burgeoning sorceress whose powers are tied to the sea. Not in a way that suggests an inhuman lineage or a fundamental connection to the element of Water, but more of a link to the coastline, the waves, the winds above them, and the waters not too far below the surface, as well as the creatures that reside in these regions.

Some questioning turns up no history of magic in Jia's family, at least not that she's aware of - and she HAS been looking, using her basic awareness of magical energy to go over everyone and everything in her home and when visiting relatives, trying to figure out where her magic was coming from, to no avail.

While she doesn't come out and name her family, Jia admits that they've lived in Changdu for a long time - centuries at least, if her grandfather's stories are to be believed - and have been involved with the fishing trade for most of that time. Fishermen and fishmongers, boatmakers and netweavers, salt gatherers and cooks - if it's related to harvesting the bounty of the deep, somebody in her family has probably done it. Jia adds that her father is an exception to that, one of the "black fish" of the bloodline who got fed up with the whole damp and stinky business and found something else to do with his life. Unlike some other relatives who've made that choice, he stuck around town instead of moving inland-

"Something about landing a summer job when he was still in school," Jia says absently, shaking her head in that way which tells you she either doesn't remember the details, never knew them, or just doesn't care.

-and married her mother, who has a similar background and was just as happy to not marry a guy who smelled of raw seafood more often than not. Jia's the oldest of their kids, and while she's not any crazier about fish than her parents, she's been told that she swims like one, often by various aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents who laughingly pronounce it a judgment on her parents.

There might be something to that, to be honest. Not in the sense of any aquatic Powers visiting a punishment on the parents, but if both sides of Jia's family have lived in Changdu for so long and been so involved with working on the ocean and with its products, that would have long since associated them with the metaphysical forces of wind and wave. Two members of the bloodlines trying to separate themselves from that lifestyle while still residing in its area of influence would have built up a certain "pressure" as all those generations' worth of elemental impetus looked for a means to express itself.

Two adults, having moved into "drier" conditions only after they'd finished growing up, would be difficult for the still relatively weak and diffuse influence upon their families to have much effect on.

Their firstborn child? Much easier.

Taking into account her lack of other sources, you suggest to Jia - with Master Vincent's agreement and approval - that she stop by the School of Five Elements for one of your remaining lectures on the basics of magic, because she could REALLY use the information.

"Um..." Jia says while glancing upwards at nothing in particular, in the traditional manner of people trying to remember things that aren't fully clear.

"It was that long ago, huh?"

"I mean, I did say that people have been telling me I'm really good at swimming for a long time," she replies, "but I don't think I was actually using magic then? The first time I'm sure I did was probably last October, during Typhoon Dan. We had school the day before the storm hit, and I got caught in the rain on the way home. It wasn't a HEAVY rain or anything, not then, but I knew it was the first part of the storm, and I was worried because it had only been a couple of weeks since 9-21-"

Hm?

"-and all the adults were nervous about getting hit by a typhoon so soon after the 'quake-"

Ah.

"-and I was a little scared because they were upset," Jia goes on, having missed your brief lack of understanding. "So when the rain started, I kind of... panicked, a little." She's visibly embarrassed by this admission.

"And then magic happened," you state.

"Yeah, it took me another five minutes to run home, and I should have been soaked through by the time I got there. Instead, I was pretty much dry and... kind of wearing a suit of water?"

"...define 'suit of water,' please."

Jia tries. "It was like a fancy robe or maybe a dress, only made out of water or water vapor and sort of... flowing all around me, instead of splashing ON me or falling to the ground or blowing away. It didn't have any colors, then, and it was pretty thin and transparent, which is probably why none of the people I passed have said anything about it."

Either that or they've convinced themselves they were seeing things, you muse as you try to picture what the girl has described. It SOUNDS like it might have been a Spell of Mage Armor, with some aquatic influence...

"I mean, I CAN, but..." Jia glances over her shoulder at the other people still out and about in the gradually deepening twilight.

A fair concern, and seeing as how Jia probably doesn't want to step into a dark alley with all of you-

"Fair guess."

-you offer to put up an Illusion, specifically, a Spell to Disguise One's Self modified to affect another person. By magically projecting and enforcing the image of Jia as she currently is, you should be able to hide the manifestation of her spell - Illusion Magic may not be your strongest suit, but, uh, you think it's safe to say that you're rather better at it than Jia is at using her magic. And you'll still be able to see through your own Illusion, with a little focus.

So you do that, and once your spell is in place, Jia casts her own-

"Just so you aren't surprised, the suit does look different when I call it up now than it did that first time."

"How so?"

"You'll see in a sec..."

-and is subsequently wearing something that does indeed resemble a fancy robe or dress made of faintly luminous water, which swirls and flows around Jia without splashing or spilling beyond the bounds defined by the spell that conjured it. It hasn't replaced her outfit, instead taking form over her current clothes, but despite the added layer, Jia is able to move as easily as before, as if the robe has no weight or resistance.

You're also able to immediately tell what she meant about it looking different, as instead of being colorless and clear, the "water" - which is actually a stylized force-field of a very particular sort - carries the blue-green hue of the ocean, lined with foam-white about the hem and in tastefully placed ribbons.

It's pretty clearly an elemental take on the Spell of Mage Armor, if with a more colorful manifestation than your own version, even after you tweaked all your force spells to glow gold.

...

"This is what gave you the 'magical girl' idea, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah." Jia spins around where she stands, revealing more ribbons in the back and twined through her hair, as well as jewel-like bead clusters hanging off them, clicking and glittering. "Wouldn't you think so?"

You can definitely see where she's coming from.

Aside from the "Aquatic Armor" and Detect Magic spells that you've seen her use, anyway.

"Well, I can basically make as much water as I want," Jia replies. "Not all at once, but I can make enough to fill four milk or juice cartons at a time, about so big?"

Her hand gestures suggest what you'd consider a half-gallon container, so two gallons, give or take? That tallies with the Spell to Create Water-

"Of course, it all comes out salty unless I focus," Jia adds, making a sour face.

-more or less.

She also admits to being able to conjure a much smaller quantity of water with a lot more force behind it, enough to knock over small objects, break fragile ones, or bruise people. That sounds roughly equivalent to the Spells of Acid Splash, Ray of Frost, or other entry-level elementally themed attacks.

Aside from that, Jia also knows the Light Spell, and has managed to summon a fish-

"Fish?" one of the cats perks up immediately.

"Fish!"

-which flopped around and disappeared a few seconds later.

"Nyaawwww..."

"Even if I use it in water, the fish don't hang around very long," she sighs. "Am I doing it wrong?"

"No, that sounds like the basic Spell to Summon Monsters; it doesn't last long at all. But it's not LIMITED to summoning fish, you know?"

"...it's not?"

"I mean, it shouldn't be..."

All in all, a modest but useful little selection of magic.

"I also, uh, managed to kill one of my mom's houseplants," Jia admits with embarrassment.

"Ah, overwatering," Lu-sensei sighs, nodding in understanding.

"Actually, no, I kind of... sucked the water out of it by touching it."

...

"...huh," your master says.

Yeah, that sounds a little more concerning than the other spells Jia has described, so taking a minute to see what she's actually doing with that trick would probably help everybody involved sleep a little easier.

Since you don't know for certain what the power involves, you figure it's best to use a completely expendable test subject, called up via Summon Monster - which will have the additional benefit of showing Jia a different form of the spell.

You step back into the mouth of the alley and begin casting. You'd prefer to use a creature that wasn't self-aware for this, which makes undead a tempting option at first, until you take the nature of Jia's magic into account. It seems clear that her plant-killing ability drained the water out of her target, or maybe exposed it to a lot of salt, but either way, it's the sort of attack that wouldn't bother most undead creatures, which would make summoning them kind of pointless.

Also, you don't particularly want to freak the girl out. Even a skeleton can do that when it pops up from out of nowhere in front of a relative newcomer to the supernatural, and higher forms just get worse from there.

Summoning giant insects probably wouldn't go over too well, either, and the various mindless Hyrulean monsters that come to mind are a bit large for your current purpose...

Glancing around for inspiration, you notice a faded old picture on a box resting against one of the alley walls, depicting a crab of some sort.

Shrugging, you decide to go with it-

*Poof*

*Click-snap*

-and summon a spiky-shelled crab, which snaps its mismatched claws at the cats a few times-

"Nyipe!"

-as its eyestalks glance about.

"...well, it's not EXACTLY a fish," Jia says, looking down at the critter.

"I can summon something a little more terrestrial later, if you'd like, I just didn't want to perform this test on anything smart enough to remember and hold a grudge," you explain.

Jia frowns a bit, but then reaches out towards the crab-

*Snap*

-and pulls her hand back when it snaps a claw at her.

"Stop that," you chide.

*Click-snap*
*Burble*

Judging by the way the crab keeps making menacing motions at anyone other than you who gets too close, you don't think it understood you, Spell to Speak With Animals or no. Maybe it's too dumb to count as an animal, at least by the definition plugged into the spell?

Shrugging, you reach down and seize the claws, easily holding them while Jia moves in to touch the shell.

What happens next isn't actually a spell, but one of the more inherent abilities sorcerers occasionally manifest. The Elemental Water suffusing Jia's person and power reaches out through her hand, seeking its matching essence within the crab, and then just... tears it away.

The crab goes rigid in your grasp, and suddenly slumps-

*Poof*

-and disperses.

...

"I KILLED it?" Jia exclaims in dismay.

"Well, kind of..."

"But not really," you add, before Jia can start to freak out.

"...since when did death become a multiple-choice question?" she demands a moment later.

"Since magic got involved."

...

"Okay, fair."

Just to be certain, you proceed to explain the difference between the death of a creature that's actually present, and the "death" of a Summoned entity - and then for completion's sake, how beings brought forth via little-s summoning rituals like the Spell to Summon a Monster are entirely different from those who appear due to calling spells such as Planar Binding.

You do NOT start talking about the many other ways magic messes with the border between life and death. Realistic illusions, last-second healing magic, revival spells, undeath, ascension to higher, lower, or variant states of being, reincarnation, basically ALL of Necromancy... there's simply too many details for a street-corner conversation at ANY hour of the day, especially when it's not currently relevant.

Jia seems... not reassured, exactly, but at least to intellectually grasp the argument that she did not actually kill the crab. Having actually SEEN it "die" in front of her is just making it hard for her to get her head around the idea, although the fact that the crustacean vanished in a puff of non-skull-shaped smoke actually does seem to be helping her, there.

This leads you to summon another creature-

*Poof*

"You summoned me?"

-this time going with a simple Keese, which manifests hanging off your outstretched right arm.

"Is that a bat?" Jia asks with surprise, looking like she doesn't know whether to lean back or reach out to stroke the rather large fuzzy form.

"I did, and yes, she is," you answer each female in turn.

"How may I be of service this evening, Summoner?" the Keese squeaks. "Perhaps to chase away these contemptible cats?"

"Rrrr..."

"Scratch your wings!"

"Nyow, nyow," Sir Fluffy says with a little growl, "is that anyaway for a guest in another's territory to speak?"

The Keese huffs. "I am no guest of yours, Old Whiskers."

The aforementioned facial hairs quiver in annoyance.

"But I am His Grace's guest," you interrupt smoothly, "and I would appreciate it if you did not offer needless offense."

"As my summoner requires, then."

The Keese isn't thrilled to learn she's been summoned as a magical test subject, but she just sighs and gestures with the little clawed fingerlets at the tops of her wings for you to get on with it, with a certain world-weary resignation that makes you think she's done this sort of thing before.

Jia apologizes to "Miss Bat" and then touches her.

"Ugh."

As you guessed, a creature that doesn't have as strong a connection to the Element of Water as an aquatic life-form is somewhat less affected by Jia's water-draining attack.

"On a scale of one to Link, how would you rate your pain?"

In response to your inquiry, Briar and the Keese both huff in what may be amusement, annoyance, or a mix of the two, while Lu-sensei rolls his eyes.

Everybody else just gives you confused looks, not getting the reference.

"Perhaps a three," the Keese replies. "It was quite uncomfortable, but not as painful as being bitten or clawed. Also, I could really use a drink."

Jia brightens at that, and uses the Spell to Create Water to conjure a small, steady stream of fresh water, like an inverted fountain. While the cats back away, the Keese thanks her and quickly avails herself of the offering, not only sticking her muzzle into the spray but actively splashing about a bit, spreading the liquid over her head, wings, and body.

You get splashed in the process, but only lightly. You refrain from commenting on it, or about how the Summoning Spell you used will be running out shortly, at which time the Keese will no longer be bothered by feeling... dehydrated, you suppose would be the correct word.

In any case, with Jia's ability tested, you have no further need of the Hyrulean bat's assistance, so once she's satisfied herself and had a few moments to rest, you thank her and send her on her way.

"And thank you."

*Poof*

"...why does it look like a cute little skull?" Jia wonders, eyeing the smoke cloud.

Moving on from that smoke-skull matter, you inquire of Jia if she's aware of any other supernatural activity around Changdu, besides Sir Fluffy or the ki-users of the School of Five Elements.

"Well, there was the martial arts exhibition the other day-"

Of course she did. Good to know that she was paying attention, though.

"-but if you mean magical stuff that's NATIVE-"

You do.

"-then there's a few things..."

Jia mentions a couple of families that, like her own, have lived in the town "since forever," and have a few members who actually register to her Spell to Detect Magic, if only very slightly. From the description, you'd guess she's talking about latent magical potential, and quite weak at that. Jia's own abilities are nothing to write home about, the lack of an established magical heritage or active ties to a patron or the elemental energies of this region leaving her with a long-term potential that seems modest at best, but you'd be surprised if these other people she's talking about ever awoke their abilities without years or decades of work, or a life-threatening supernatural encounter. And even that might not be enough.

You also note that Jia doesn't drop any names, locations, or other descriptive qualities that might give these folks away. Still not completely sure she trusts you, or just being mindful of her neighbors' right to privacy? Either way, it's a good habit for her to keep up.

Aside from those unnamed folks, Jia also mentions a "cranky old fisherman" who shone the first time she took a look at him - and who must have sensed what she was doing, because he chased her off, shouting angrily and waving a large, freshly caught fish at her in menacing fashion. The handful of times she's seen him since, she hasn't picked up a thing, and he's STILL noticed her and run her off.

"Fish?" one of the cats asks hopefully.

"No, the last time he grabbed a wooden board from somewhere, and the time before that, he just waved his fist."

"Aww..."

"Would this old crank happen to be mostly bald on the top of his head, but with long grey hair along the sides and back, and a matching beard?" Master Vincent inquires.

"Yes."

"And does he go around shirtless more often than not, and spend days at a time out at sea by himself?"

"Yeah! Do you know him, Mister Vincent?"

"I think I know who you're talking about, yes."

"Is he ALWAYS so mean?" Jia complains.

"Pretty much," the master agrees. "And always has been, to the best of my knowledge. 'Some people are just born mean,' to quote a fellow master who was born and raised around here. Don't worry, though, he's harmless enough."

"Monsters from my partner's homeland just do that."

"Why?" Jia wonders.

"Weird stuff like that happens with a lot of supernatural creatures after they die or are forced back to wherever they came from," you reply. "You see it in demons a lot, and a lot of the monsters in Briar's homeland are either descended from demons, the direct creations of demonic magic, descendants of THOSE, or just demonic themselves."

"...your home has DEMONS running around?" Jia asks Briar with a mix of alarm and sympathy.

"Only sometimes!" Briar protests. You sense that she's about to follow that up by saying something like, 'At least it's not as bad as Earth!'

"The master or the fisherman?"

"Yes," Master Vincent replies.

You suppose you walked into that one. Still, if the masters of the Five Elements School know about this Cranky Old Fisherman and aren't worried about him or his abilities, you suppose you can leave it at that.

Aside from those people she's already mentioned and Sir Fluffy and his followers, most of Jia's remaining information about the magical side of Changdu is about locations of magical energy or activity, rather than individuals. There's a certain amount of magic to be found in and around the docks, often in the form of small charms and blessings whose origins the girl isn't really sure of, and every once in a while she'll spot something with magical potential in the stores she visits or passes in her daily routine. Jia has tried looking at the employees of those shops, but either they're all completely ordinary and unaware of what they're occasionally dealing in, or her scans are being blocked.

"So that CAN be done?" she asks, wincing.

"There's a first-circle spell called Magic Aura that can make small objects appear non-magical for at least an entire day," you reply frankly. "It doesn't work on people or against magic more powerful than simple Detect spells, but there are greater spells that can do either or both at once, while still being within the average spellcaster's ability to pull off."

The Lesser Spell of Nondetection comes to mind, as does its higher counterpart - and of course, your own Mind Blank, although you're quite certain that if there was anybody local who could pull off such a casting, the Masters would have warned you about stepping on their toes.

"Of course there are," Jia sighs. "Well, other than that, there's the pirate museum. Some of the stuff on display is magical, and the display cases for those seem to be as well."

Yo-ho?

In the end, you do not interrupt.

"And at least it's not as bad as Earth," Briar says, exactly as predicted.

"Excuse me?" Jia replies, offended and concerned. "What's wrong with Earth?"

"Well, for starters, there are demons HERE, too-"

"Say WHAT!?"

"-only since the majority of people have been convinced that the supernatural doesn't really exist, they have no idea of the sort of danger that's creeping around, or how to protect themselves from it. My homeland's got its problems-"

Boy, does it ever.

"-but at least most of the residents know not to try living next to or right on top of demon lairs, what sort of obvious dangers to look out for and what kind of precautions they can take. Not to mention that they can go to the authorities for help and not get treated like they're crazy for talking about monsters."

"Go back to that part about the demons," Jia insists. "You were kidding about that, right?"

"Unfortunyately, it is true," Sir Fluffy sighs. "My people and I are forced to deal with such creatures from time to time. There are nyone currently plaguing our home, or at least nyone that are interested in myaking trouble for cats, but they come and go, and at least once in a lesser cat's lifetime, something tries to lair here that requires my purrsonyal attention to chase off or dispose of." He shakes his fuzzy head. "Those are nyever good times."

You would imagine not. Domestic cats are capable predators for their size, but against things as big as humans - if not more so - they'd be at a distinct disadvantage, and even more so when those things were demonic in nature. Resistance or immunity to pure physical injury, unearthly fortitude, supernatural speed and reflexes, hazardous bodily fluids - any one of these traits could make a demon too dangerous to face, and His Grace's own enhanced nature and spiritual influence upon his followers would only make up so much of the difference.

It's pretty much a given that the colony must take losses whenever they're pushed to deal with something like that, and likely heavy ones, given that they'd have to muster in large numbers just to counter the size difference.

Then it occurs to you to wonder if something like this happens in Sunnydale.

You have prior committments tomorrow morning and basically all of Friday, the museum isn't open on Sundays, and you're going home after that. This leaves tomorrow afternoon and Saturday afternoon as available slots for visiting the place - it's not open Saturday mornings, as Jia and Master Vincent both inform you.

You decide to wait until the weekend to see what treasures are buried away in Changdu's pirate exhibits. Maybe you can invite your friends?

Speaking as a pet owner, a general friend of animals, and someone who would really prefer to stay on the good side of the Goddess of Nature for one lifetime, now that the idea of investigating the pet population of Sunnydale has occurred to you, it seems like something worth investigating.

I am okay with this.

For right now, though, you focus on finishing up with your first meeting with Jia. You've given the would-be magical girl quite a bit to think about for one evening, and aside from encouraging her, once again, to show up for one of your remaining magical lectures, you figure that it's best for her to be on her way home.

"Uh, yeah," Jia agrees. "So, tomorrow at ten or Friday at one?"

"That's right."

"...I might be able to make tomorrow's, but Friday is more likely," the girl admits.

"Already had plans?" you guess.

"Yeah, and explaining that I want to go to the School to learn about magic instead would... not go over great."

You frown. "...you haven't told your family?"

"I thought it was like on TV or in the comics!" Jia protests weakly. "And didn't you say the supernatural is supposed to be hidden?"

That's the popular attitude, anyway. You have rather different opinions in general, but especially when it comes to family.

As Jia goes on her way, you turn back to the cats. "And now, Your Grace, I believe there is an outstanding matter of fish in need of settling."

"Yes, fish!"

"Fish!"

"By all means, let us by onyour way..."

Jia doesn't live on or anywhere near something like the Hellmouth, which takes a lot of the immediate risk out of keeping her supernatural secret, but even so, you think she'd be better off telling her parents what she can do.

After all, however minor her abilities may be right now or for the foreseeable future, she IS still a sorceress, and Miss Akasha's warning about about power calling to power applies to her. Just look at how she managed to identify a bunch of local talents and hot spots, annoy Sir Fluffy, and meet YOU, all in the course of her first year with magic. It's a testament to the limited nature of her powers, her not-terrible judgment, and the policing efforts of the School of Five Elements - and the cats - that she's not had a more serious encounter in that time, especially since you now know that demons DO pass through Changdu on occasion.

Quite aside from mystical matters, there's the mundane stress of keeping something this significant a secret from people whose roof you're living under. You can't really speak from personal experience as to whether it'd be easier or harder to tell roommates or a landlord you weren't related to about your powers - Briar knew before she moved in, and your overseas friends and their families knew before any of your overnight stays - but it was still a weight off your shoulders to let your parents know the truth.

Sure, it got you grounded for a little while, but you'd been through a couple of deadly fights AND gotten yanked into another plane of existence by then. Jia has not had such... mixed fortune... and is likely to come out of telling her family the truth a lot better.

That said, there's no reason to force her to face that all by herself. You had Briar and Lu-sensei in your corner when you talked to your parents, and you can offer to be in Jia's corner when she tells her folks - or, if she would rather not invite a perfect stranger to her home, she could ask someone who has an upstanding local reputation to do so instead.

With that in mind, you ask Master Vincent if the School of Five Elements has an official "So, your kid is magic, now" procedure.

"As a matter of fact, we do," he replies. "We usually allow our young ki adepts the option of keeping their abilities secret, if they have the desire, skills, and judgment necessary to do so-"

That tallies with how Lu-sensei waited for you to talk to your parents about your supernatural talents on your own initiative, rather than forcing the issue.

"-because it's good practice for situational awareness and keeping one's talents under wraps in public."

"And also occasionally results in amusing stories," Lu-sensei adds.

"And also that," Master Vincent agrees, nodding sagely.

You and Jia regard the two old men with suspicion.

"But there are times when we'll tell the family ourselves, regardless of the student's wishes," Master Vincent goes on. "Usually because the student in question either cannot or will not control themselves, or because we're aware of some force or faction in their usual area of residence that would take an unhealthy interest in a new ki adept and their unwary relatives."

Those seem like reasonable motives to you.

"And while Miss Jia is not a practicing student of our School, if she would prefer that I or one of my peers be present to support her while she explains things to her parents... well, it would not be the first time that we have done such a thing."

"I'll... think about it?" Jia offers uncertainly.

Hm.

"I mean, if you'd rather, I could stop by-" you begin.

"No, no, that's okay, I'll really think about asking the School, it's just that if I bring a strange BOY home, Mom will be-" She pauses for a moment, searching for the words, and then just finishes with a heartfelt, "Ugh!"

"That's easy to deal with. Just tell her I'm only nine."

"Wait, what?" Jia looks you up and down. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Her expression and posture radiate doubt. "...is this just because you're American?"

"No, I'm big for my age back home, too," you reply.

Jia considers that a moment longer, and then shakes her head. "Well, whatever. I don't think Mom would buy that claim... or she might, and then start teasing me about younger men, ugh..."

It's like that, huh?

Well, you've made the offer; you'll have to wait and hear from Jia tomorrow or the day after.

She goes on her way, politely turning down Master Vincent's offer of an escort, and you gather up your companions and start making your way back to Sir Fluffy's domain.

"Fish, fish, fish, fish..." the guards croon in chorus.

Is there anything else you want to say to His Grace before you leave him and his people to their fishy feast?

It could be considered rude to give His Grace more things to think about just now, as that would detract from his enjoyment of the incoming Feast of Fish. Combined with the fact that there's nothing particularly urgent you need to discuss with him, you decide not to say anything of significance while returning to the alley lair.

Not long after that, the cats have assembled-

"Fish! Fish! Fish!"

"Give us nummies!"

-the Heroes' Feast has been invoked-

"Myay for the Bringer of Fish!"

"Myaaaay!"

"Best human!"

"Fish!"

"Om nom nom..."

"Myay for His Grace, for accepting the Good Human's tribute!"

"Myaaaay!"

"Best boss!"

"Nyom nyom- er, ahem, I myean, nyes."

-and you, Briar, and your two-master escort have bowed out and gone on your way, leaving the hungry little furballs to their meal.

"...that was a lot of cats," Master Vincent observes mildly, still a bit wide-eyed from the experience.

"It was at that," Lu-sensei agrees with a similar tone and expression. To you and Briar, he adds, "Was that entirely normal for a cat colony, or was Sir Fluffy's influence drawing in more of them than usual?"

You're no expert on felines, and Briar kind of goes out of her way to avoid them...

"I do, but I also know enough to say that group is definitely too big and too cooperative to be normal," Briar says. "Even when they live in colonies, cats hunt alone and keep their own dens - and the males usually live outside the colonies. That many toms in one place, and nobody posturing or growling to establish his territory and dominance? That's definitely Sir Fluffy's influence."

"So, they're usually more like tiny lion prides?" you guess.

"Not always, but they can be."

Huh.

Putting that aside, you begin the Spell of Teleportation, carrying your small group back to the School.

It's about eight-thirty when you get back, and while there's nobody standing around to greet you - which is probably just as well, since Master Vincent still needs a moment to recover from the disorientation of your teleportation - you do pass a couple of teachers on your way back into the School proper.

"How'd it go?"

"What did the cats have to say?"

"'Fish,'" Master Vincent replies.

One of the teachers blinks. "...are you quoting the Grandmaster, or...?"

The other is laughing, trying to say something that sounds like, "Clawed-pool!"

...

There's a reference there, you just aren't getting it.

Anyway, given the hour, you don't see much point in going off to do anything more this evening. Instead, you return to your dorm to read until you feel tired enough to call it a night.

You have another lecture to give in the morning, but did you want to try dreamwalking again this evening?

When you get back to the dorm, you are shortly reminded that you finished reading all of the books and pamphlets you checked-out and/or (not entirely legally) copied-out from the School's library.

Since you would prefer to be fully rested for your second day of lecturing, you don't go dreamwalking tonight, either, and consequently awaken at full strength.

Breakfast goes by-

"Seriously, now, what's this about a King of Cats and you making a deal with him?"

"Is he fluffy?"

"Does he purr?"

"Did he want fish, or petting, or for you to chase away the dogs?"

-without too much issue. After trading speaking glances with Master Vincent, you end up going ahead and recounting your excursion, but leave Jia's name out of it for the time being. The girl was being moderately sensible by trying to avoid revealing her whole identity to a complete magical stranger, and given she's a local in the same age range as a lot of the students of the School of Five Elements, there's a good chance that somebody you're sitting with would be able to recognize her and reveal her family name, and that they'd end up getting in touch with her.

You would rather not make Jia think you were going behind her back to discover things she'd wanted to keep private, and you don't feel the need to apply any social pressure to her decision-making in the form of other students stopping by or calling her over the phone - at least not yet. She will, of course, be revealed if and when she turns up for the lecture(s), but if so, that will be her choice.

...

Unless she shows up wearing a disguise or something, which you suppose isn't impossible, even if it would have to be mundane.

Get out a pen (or brush) and paper and practice your calligraphy.

Some people might wonder, "Why bother learning calligraphy in the modern day?"

For starters, there's the fact that the families of several of your friends and sparring buddies are either high-society, directly involved with the supernatural, or both. There's a certain amount of... you hesitate to say "snobbery," but perhaps "expectancy" works? Regardless, being able to not only write, but write well, is something of a point of pride in these circles, at least when it comes to formal events and the associated communications. This is particularly true with the unnaturally long-lived, for whom traditional methods are less "the way things have always been done" and more "that new-fangled nonsense that I still don't completely trust."

Whoever you're dealing with, an RSVP with all the fancy letters and flourishes done in fine ink tends to go over much better than block characters written in pencil or crayon, and nobody is apt to complain if your signature is neater and more legible.

There is also the matter of how better handwriting can potentially benefit your item-crafting endeavors.

Making scrolls isn't a difficult or demanding process by any stretch of the imagination, but the ones you've made in the past have still been a bit... underwhelming... compared to the examples you've picked up from other sources. Plus, you're currently only able to write such things out in English, which was probably a bit of an inconvenience for Akkiko when you traded spells with her a while back; improving on your Japanese characters would offer a somewhat user-friendlier method, and might allow you to offer a new service to Gen's usual clients.

There are also other magic items that you'd want better writing skills for. Certain sigils, the various enchanted tomes, even the temporary characters that need to be "written" upon or around various items in the process of creation - all of these and others demand a certain level of proficiency, which is inconvenient to have to fake using magic to shore up your skills all the time.

Plus, if your writing was ALREADY that good, and you added magic on TOP of that, you could get even better results for a number of things. So it's worth cultivating the skill regardless.

So you spend an hour or so working on your English cursive, then give your hand ten minutes of rest and a little ki-based massage before taking up a brush and starting in on your Japanese.

Gained Painting F++
Gained Penmanship D++

As you work, you wonder if you should look into getting writing guides for other languages. Learning how to write Japanese kanji kind of helps with Mandarin characters, but at the same time, the differences in the two languages could trip you up if you're used to writing (and reading) those symbols only the one way. English is in a similar place with French and German, which you know have a lot of little symbols that don't see much use in the former language...

Eh, thoughts for another time.

Jia's mistake in thinking herself to be a real-life magical girl was an understandable one, given the appearance of her Aquatic Armor and what little she "knew" about magic, but it still worked out to be a bit of an embarrassment for her.

Revealing that fact to the School would gain you little, beyond a momentary amusement, whereas keeping it should at least allow Jia to show her face around here without being teased.

...well, at least until she shows off that spell for the first time, and somebody comments on how it really does look like a magical girl costume.

Similar to Jia's situation, causing a momentary embarrassment for a Master of the School doesn't gain you any lasting advantage.

If it were Master Nielson, now, you might be tempted to speak up - or at least to suggest the idea to Lu-sensei - but as it stands, you see no point.

Setting up for the lecture goes a bit more smoothly the second time around-

*Poof*

"Octo?"

"Welcome back, my Assistant."

"Rok!"

-and as people start to file into the hall, you note that there is a significantly larger ratio of students to teachers than there was the previous day, not to mention how the audience as a whole tends towards the younger side.

Seniority hath its perks, and getting to listen to the new and potentially interesting presentation first WOULD be one of them...

On another note, Jia doesn't turn up. But she did warn you that it was unlikely she'd make it to today's lecture, so that's a minor detail.

If she misses tomorrow's presentation, though... well, you'll save that thought for when and if it proves needed.

In the meantime, you have young minds to enlighten to the wonders of magic.

Your second lecture on magic and things magical goes... well-ish.

The students, in general, have more pronounced reactions to your displays of arcane prowess than the masters did-

"Is that an octopus?"

"Rok."

"It TALKS!?"

-and once one of them is set off, there tends to be something of a chain reaction-

"He SPITS at people?"

"Cool!"

"Gross!"

-which eats up a minute or two every time before you're able to calm things down and continue your presentation.

The fact that you've been telling stories to these kids two or three times a day for half a week by now definitely has a positive impact on your lecture. The content of your dining hall tale-telling has been fairly wild in some cases, but the masters haven't outright contradicted you - at least not openly - only sought clarification or supporting evidence on certain points, which you've generally managed to deliver. This gives you some credit with their junior peers and students, making them more inclined to listen to and accept what you're saying about magic.

The special effects also help. Again, having seen some of your work in this area already, the class is less distracted by the displays than they might have been, but they're also not so jaded from your previous bouts of arcane showmanship for the cool factor of seeing magic being used to have worn off.

You do experience some issues and fatigue as a result of trying to keep control over this many kids at once without all their teachers around to lend (moral) support, and doing so for as long as you need to complete the lesson, but that in itself is a worthwhile experience.

Of course, while Assistant-

"How's his range?"

"How's his accuracy?"

"Does he spit acid, or poison, or poisonous acid?"

"Rok!" Assistant declares, looking a little offended by that last one.

-your conjured tools-

"Do they SERIOUSLY make magic wands with little stars on the tips?"

"So cute!"

"So lame..."

-and your adaptive illusionary displays get plenty of positive attention, people eventually start clamoring for more examples of magic.

"Fireball!"

Particularly of the "impressive" variety.

Do you give into these demands?

The argument can be made that the students, being much less experienced than their masters - and to a good degree, shielded by said seniors from the harsher or stranger realities of the world - would not have previously encountered much in the way of magic, not even the relatively popular low-level combat spells. From that perspective, a live demonstration of some of the magic that they should be on the lookout for if they ever get into a fight with a spell-slinger would be the right thing to do, wouldn't it?

Also, you just kind of want to set off some magical explosions. Because magic is cool, explosions are cool, and magical explosions are awesome.

You bow to the inevitable. "Does anybody know of a large, open training area that wouldn't be in use right now, and could stand to have a few holes put in it?"

The class falls silent for a moment.

Then it gets rather noisy for a while, as some forty under-twenty students, a dozen teachers, a fairy, and an Octorok make their way out of the lecture hall - to the bemusement of some of the classrooms you pass along the way - and across the grounds to one of the high-intensity practice areas located in the rockier part of the hills.

Along the way-

"Rok!"

*Splash*

-Assistant pauses to splash around in one of the ponds for a bit.

"Try not to disturb anything," you call.

"Ock-ock-ock, rok..."

You aren't sure if he heard you, or if he's too busy enjoying the water...

In any case, you reach the suggested area in less than ten minutes. As you look at the crowd, you note that you picked up some people along the way, as many of them teachers as students.

"Right," you begin. "So, you wanted to see some battle magic."

There are a few cheers.

"I'll start with a few of the basic attack spells..."

You proceed to demonstrate Acid Splash, Ray of Frost, and - with a little ritual work - equivalent effects of other elements. These are very minor effects, hardly the impressive display of potentially building-wrecking destruction most of your audience was hoping for, but you make a point of noting aloud that these spells are so simple to use that most casters who know them can use them almost without limit.

Also, considering your own power and affinities, some of the cantrips-

*Fwoosh!*

"Whoa!"

-are more impressive than others.

Next up are the Spell of Burning Hands-

*FWOOSH!*

"Wow!"

-which goes over much better, and also illustrates the power gap between cantrips and proper spells, and then the Spell of Magic Missile, which takes some setting up. The spell is designed to only target creatures, after all, making practicing or demonstrating it a little more involved than others.

"For my next spell, I shall need a volunteer..."

Assistant crosses his fore-tentacles in an X and shakes his head. "Octo."

"Oh, oh, me! Pick me!"

"No, me!"

"Uh, guys, he's blasting stuff, do you really-"

"YES!/YES!"

Since you have a couple of volunteers, you might as well make use of them.

"Hold on..."

"Are you kidding?"

"For real!?"

"I'll be careful," you assure Briar, the teachers, and the students who are looking at you with shock - as opposed to those who are staring at their two "lucky" contemporaries with concern.

You can understand where they're coming from; people should not be that eager to get shot at...

Anyway, it will be easier to illustrate the dangers of the Magic Missile with a couple of active defenders.

You split the pair up, have one of them stand to your left, another directly ahead of you-

"Come forth, Timmy!"

*Poof*

"Holy-!"

"Aaaah!"

"Is that a skeleton?"

"Cool!"

"Ick!"

-and then fill the spot to your right with good old Timmy the Stalchild.

"For the record," you state, as you gather mana for your next spell, "my Assistant had the right idea - and probably more stories than I do."

"Rok?" Assistant looks doubtful of that latter claim.

"Now, then," you say, turning and pointing to the guy on your left.

"Bring it on," he declares, dropping into a defensive stance.

"-I cast Magic Missile at the dorkiness!"

"Wait, wha-?"

*Shoom*

Target Number One is cut off and sent reeling back a step as a shimmering force-bolt flies across the space between you in less than the blink of an eye, slamming square into his chest.

"...ow," he says a moment later.

"That's what the weakest form of Magic Missile looks like," you state for the audience's benefit. "Modest force - although I've softened that for this demonstration-

"Could have fooled me..." Target Number One mutters, rubbing his chest.

"-high speed, incredible accuracy. As long as the caster can see their target at the moment they finish the spell, the Missile can and will go around corners, pass through tiny spaces, and avoid any mundane attempts to block or intercept it. And this-"

Target Number Two looks a bit less certain about where he's standing as you start to cast again.

"Uh, actually, could I- think fast!"

And then he turns and runs for it, a sudden surge of Ki Enhancement pinging at your senses.

"Good call!" Briar yells after him.

*Shoo-shoo-shoo-shoo-shoom*

"Ack!"

"But not fast enough!"

And down he goes.

"-is what a full-power casting of Magic Missile looks like," you continue. "Again, with the safeties on. If you run into an unfriendly spellcaster who can fire off that many Missiles at once, be careful, because it means they're probably able to throw fourth- or even fifth-circle spells at you if they want." Pausing, you glance at your sprawled-out volunteer. "You still alive, there?"

One of the things Batreaux warned you about when teaching you the Merciful Spell Metamagic technique is that it has its limits. If somebody takes enough hits even with that function applied to the spell(s) in question, it'll eventually add up to serious damage. You were pretty sure this guy was tough enough to take those hits, possibly even without the magical safeties-

"...ow," the guy on the ground wheezes.

-but it's always best to check these things again.

Gained Merciful Spell Metamagic

"And this," you say at last, turning to Timmy-

-who has turned and run for it himself, while you were demonstrating with the other two guys.

"...did you tell it to run?" Briar asks.

"I did not."

"Octo?"

Shaking your head, you resume. "As I was saying, "this is what a full-power casting of Magic Missile looks like WITHOUT the safeties."

*Shoo-shoo-shoo-shoo-shoom*

And just like that, there's a pile of broken bones laying amid the stones, a cracked skull resting atop it, glowing eyes glaring at you with a mix of helpless anger and piteous complaint.

"Take note, everybody: a lot of magic-users either can't or won't apply safeties to their battle-magic. For some, it's because they never got the chance to learn the technique; for others, it's because they feel if they've been pushed to use spells like this, then lethal force is merited; and then there are those who just don't care."

"I'll heal you in a second."

"Thanks," Target Number Two groans from where he lies.

Briar floats over and has a look at the guy while you're finishing the Magic Missile demonstration (and Timmy along with it), and when you move to join her, she mentions that some of Target Number Two's bruises are deep enough to be considered actual injury.

Looks like you either overestimated the guy's resilience, underestimated the force of your spell, or both. The damage is still nothing that your second volunteer couldn't recover from in a few days, provided he didn't do anything to aggravate his injuries, but given he's a practicing martial artist attending a School with daily exercises and spars, that was unfortunately not unlikely.

Just as well that you were planning to heal him, then.

You make a mental note to test out your Merciful Spells some more when you've got the time, and to be more restrained in their use in the interim, silently repeating Batreaux's cautionary words: "'Merciful' does not equal 'harmless'."

With that in mind, you gather the energy for Spell of Healing.

As you're working on Target Number Two, your gaze strays to the remains of Timmy, which haven't dissipated. You idly consider "healing" your Stalchild test subject with an infusion of necrotic energy-

*Poof*

-but then the Summoning Spell holding the undead entity here lapses, leaving only the usual skull-cloud.

"To," Assistant says, folding his tentacles together and bowing his head slightly, as if in prayer for the fallen.

Sorry, Timmy. Better luck next summoning, maybe?

Once you have Target Number Two back on his feet, you clear both of the student volunteers from the field and resume your demonstration, firing off an Acid Arrow-

*Sizzle*

"What kind of acid is that, anyway?" somebody asks.

"Magic acid, obviously."

-and a barrage of Scorching Rays.

"Death rays! Awesome!"

"Coo- I mean, ho- um..."

"Just go with awesome, man."

And then you come to the truly iconic spells, the ones that just about everyone aware of the existence of magic has heard about, because of where they sit in the arcane hierarchy: high enough to represent a level of noteworthy achievement, near the peak of "common" magical power; and yet low enough that virtually anyone who has to deal with unfriendly magic must be wary of the possibility that these spells will be used against them.

Which isn't even going into their destructive potential.

When applying touch-based healing spells, it's common practice for the caster to lay one or both hands somewhere adjacent to - but not DIRECTLY on - the target's wound(s). This helps to focus the caster's attention and efficiently deliver the energy where it's needed.

That said, it's not necessary for a skilled practitioner to be quite that specific in their application of healing magic - the existence of at-range and group healing spells are both evidence of how a properly shaped effect merely needs to touch the intended target(s) to go to work - and so instead of putting your hand on Target Number Two's battered chest, you just tap him on one shoulder and let the magic flow.

"How's that?" you ask a moment later, as you pull back.

"...better," he says, sitting up, and wincing slightly. "Still a little sore in places, but a lot better."

You nod. "Take it easy for the next few hours, get a good night's rest, and you'll be completely fine by morning."

Target Number Two frowns for a moment, and then brightens considerably as he turns to the audience - or more specifically, the teachers that are present. "Can I get an pass on afternoon classes?"

"Only if you're willing to work twice as hard tomorrow," one of the adults sends back immediately.

"...uh," the Target replies uncertainly, as he glances back in your direction.

"If you thought that was awesome," you say, "this next part will blow you away!"

*Crack!*

For reasons of lacking power and built-in safeguards, the Spell to Conjure a Lightning Bolt doesn't have the accompanying THOOM of a true thunderbolt, but the ripping snap and sizzle of the unleashed electricity-

*Cra-boom!*

-as well as the sound when it slams into the face of the cliff at the back of the practice ground, make for a fine sonic show in their own right.

"The classic and aptly-named Lightning Bolt," you declare. "Most effective when used to clear straight sections of hallways, narrow streets, and other areas where you've got a bunch of enemies lined up with not a lot of room to maneuver, but also helpful in punching an escape route through a swarm, or for a relatively precise high-powered strike against a single large or tough target. Not the best choice in open terrain, however. For that," you continue, gathering mana once more, "we have another classic." And, as you've done a few times before, you put that Lina Inverse spin on your delivery, letting the burning shot fly with declaration of, "FIREBALL!"

*Shoooo-boom!*

And with that, you have, if not nuked a solid third of the training area and a good half of the rock face behind it, then at least left it all scorched and smoldering.

"Whoa," somebody says, amid the crowd of suddenly wide eyes.

"As you can see, hear, and feel, the standard Spell to Create a Fireball isn't like a mundane explosion. The force is contained within the blast radius, with very little leakage of heat and almost none of pressure; this conserves energy, increases the potential damage to the intended targets, and minimizes the harm done to those outside the blast area. That said" - you gesture at the forty-foot-wide burn mark and cloud of thin smoke - "even a relatively low-powered Fireball can gut a house, and that's before you get into the possibility of it starting secondary fires."

You are uncertain exactly how to reply to that entreating look - and so, you don't, or at least not with words. Instead, you meet Target Number Two's mostly-unspoken enquiry with a bland expression and a wordless shrug.

This leaves him floundering for what choice to make, but in the end, he decides to compromise, offering to attend class normally, but to do light exercises.

The teachers seem to feel this is acceptable, though they note the one speaking for them collectively notes that he'll be watching to make sure "light work on account of minor injury" doesn't become "milking the situation to slack off."

After demonstrating your Fireball and providing an assessment of its function, you let the students know what they can do about it, should they ever find themselves up against the spell.

"Running" is Plan A, and a pretty good one for the ki adepts in the group. Even the students who are still working towards unlocking their energies would have a chance of getting out of the blast radius of a typical Fireball, if they saw it coming in time-

"Wait, does that mean there are non-typical Fireballs?" somebody asks.

"There are all kinds of them," you agree. "I can't demonstrate most of them, because I haven't learned the techniques required, but I know that it's possible for a spell like that to have its blast radius doubled, to actually generate a sonic shockwave in addition to its thermal effects, or for the flames to be harder to resist."

You actually DO know how to apply the latter Metamagic effect, or at least one version of it, but there's not much point in demonstrating a Heightened Fireball, as it doesn't look any different from a normal model to the untrained eye - and you aren't about to ask for volunteers for THAT.

Even a Merciful Fireball could cause some nasty burns, and that's without considering your aptitude for Fire Magic.

-while those with access to Ki Enhancement would have much better chances of getting to safety. Even when complete avoidance isn't possible, one can lessen the damage by focusing one's energies to resist heat and flame and then moving with the blast wave, rolling and spinning so that no one "side" of the body takes the full brunt of the Fireball's fury.

"Masters have been known to walk out of a Fireball without a scratch, or in this case, a burn scar," you state. "Though they've also been known to end up sacrificing a robe or a shirt in the process."

Some of the teachers nod at that-

"Is that why so many of them are bald?"

-before stilling.

"What," somebody croaks.

"I mean, if the fire can burn clothes," the first kid goes on, "then it makes sense that haAAAAHHHH!"

"Get him!"

"Come here, you little-!"

"Disrespect not the sign of your masters' suffering!"

And the three balding teachers chase the boy back towards the School proper.

You glance at some of the other masters who are still present.

"For the record," one of the older men says easily, the light of the midday sun almost gleaming off his hairless crown, "careless or deliberately unfriendly use of Fire Magic can, indeed, contribute to a premature loss of hair, and not just on the head. However, stress is usually the greater contributor."

...

You'll just leave that one alone.

Moving on, you add that attacking a Fireball's caster before he can finish conjuring the spell is another option, one you've actually seen used by your own teacher - who is not present to verify that, although from the looks on the faces of some of the other masters and the accompanying nods, Lu-sensei HAS mentioned your mutual first encounter with the Hawaiian Sorcerer. It's not an approach you'd recommend for students, as any spellcaster skilled enough to pull off a Fireball would be approximately as dangerous in close quarters as they are, let alone what could happen if the enemy managed to finish his spell and then set it off at point-blank range, whether intentionally or by accident.

For senior students and up, though, it's an option well worth keeping in mind - as long as the would-be Fireballer isn't obviously wrapped in an impenetrable forcefield, aura of flames, or something equally inconvenient, anyway.