Continued from [A Foxly Magical Hightower Party]
The story so far:
Previously, at the Hightower...
Jackie revealed the Endbringers and her otherworldly origin to Wilnell and Leah. They then entered the Hightower, a place of wonder, magic, and adventure. Misunderstandings were had and Wilnell offered Jackie some hot chocolate up in her rooms. The fox girl agreed, Wilnell brought them to her rooms via spatial warping provided by the Hightower, and Jackie learned that the Hightower is both far larger than it appears and quite doglike towards those it deems worthy. The blip in temporal access occurred right after Wilnell's invisible, intangible butler, Jeeves, revealed to Jackie that he has the potential to become sapient, and Jackie asked about souls...
##"Ah," Wilnell acknowledges Jackie's information. "Sounds like he's pretty close then."
She momentarily turns back to look at Jeeves and brings both hands to her chest, over her heart, clasping them. "I'll wait for you, Jeeves!" she dramatically exclaims, faux fainting back into the couch.
Jeeves' fluctuation most definitely communicates the raw essence of amused eye rolling.
A couple of moments later, Wilnell remembers Jackie's question, and her eyes light up. Literally, they momentarily glow, much like the other Synths Jackie has encountered. "Soul igniting?" she almost gasps, a look of glee on her face. She sits up and snaps her gaze to Jackie. "Oooooh. Teaching. Do you want the short version or the teacher's lecture?"
Like a deer in the headlights—or a Synth doing an intense computation—Jackie freezes, scrunching her brow as she massively overthinks her reply. To say no to more information goes against her nature. But there's so many other things she wants to hear about!
Eventually, after realizing she's paused for too long, Jackie utters a low "uh..." Then she chuckles at herself and spreads her ears in an attentive, sheepish expression. "Let's go with 'yes.'"
Wilnell cracks a grin at Jackie's clear conflicting interests. "Don't worry, I'll keep it easy on you, and you can come to an actual lecture or do some research in the Library for more in depth stuff. Sound good?"
"Y-yeah." Jackie smiles and looks down. "Sounds good."
Wilnell nods, then draws herself up and squares her shoulders as if in preparation. She opens her mouth to begin, then pauses, her eyes slightly widening. Her mouth closes and she furrows her eyebrows in thought.
"Uh... before I get to that... should I give you a crash course on Magic?" she eventually asks, sounding thoughtful. "Given you said you weren't from around here..."
"Oh. Yeah. That would help." Jackie wags one of her tails. "A few days ago I didn't even know it existed."
"Okay then," Wilnell agrees, smiling. "You're in for quite the wakeup call."
She straightens her shoulders again, closing her eyes, and begins to breathe in and out. She's clearly focusing on something.
A moment later, her eyes snap open, glowing. This isn't the glowing of Athena or Aceso, more akin to that of the glow that comes from a certain golden being. Only Wilnell's is blue, a dense fog slowly spilling off her eyelids and into the air. The very feeling of power suffuses the room. Yet again, the feeling is similar to that of Jackie's previous run in with glowing beings... only quite different at the same time.
And not remotely as powerful, of course.
A small part of Jackie, that bit which paid attention to Leah's example earlier, feels drawn not to Wilnell, but to that fog.
"Magic," Wilnell says, cracking a grin, "is simultaneously more wonderful, and more awesome, classical definition, than one would initially believe." Her voice has a slightly ethereal quality to it, as if she is speaking in echoes alongside normally.
She raises a hand to the ceiling and clenches her fist. It glows momentarily with that same blue mist, though this time interlaced with faintly brighter glowing circuitry, and flares.
The space around their couch seems to waver, a feeling of weakening emanating from the universe itself, and then that fog starts to flow into existence from various even weaker points in the fabric of thin air. From nothing, something comes.
The blue is darker than Wilnell's particular fog coloring, more reminiscent of the twelve tailed being that appeared to Jackie momentarily outside the Hightower. It is also entirely intangible, anyone able to pass their hand through the stuff as if it wasn't there. The fog does seem to respect the physical dimensions of things somewhat, however, as while it cannot be felt, it can be directed by passing limbs.
Wilnell smiles at the fog, fondly, as if remembering something, and then lowers her hand. "It is everywhere," she speaks reverently, still staring at the fog. "Mana, Ki, Magic, Ether, whatever you want to call it. Many civilizations have had different names for the same thing." She idly raises a hand and guides it through a bank of the fog, eddies swirling up in her hand's wake. "No-one knows where it comes from, nor why it exists. But we do know that it is vital to our universe's continued function..." here she trails off, staring straight into Jackie's eyes if she can, "and the formation of powerful Souls."
Magic is a blue fog, is what Jackie gets from that. Or at least a blue something.
No one knows where it came from or why it exists, but the universe would be broken without it.
Jackie blinks at that. Her universe seemed to get along just fine without Magic. Did something happen to this universe to make it dependent? Maybe it's like potato chips; once you start, it's impossible to stop.
Wherever it came from, magic feels like Rob, or the blue foxgirl. Wilnell's display catches the attention of some part of Jackie's mind, just like Leah's did earlier.
For an instant, Jackie wonders if she could get the twelve tailed being's attention just by focusing with her power, like she did with Tower. Then she pushes the thought aside, meeting Wilnell's gaze when Soul formation comes up.
Jackie leans in, a second tail now wagging along with the first.
"Souls... they are complicated, and until quite recently we didn't actually know a lot about them," Wilnell continues. "For the longest time in history the concept of science was anathema to the concept of magic. They were considered opposites, things that could never combine." The elvin woman snorts, gesturing to the room around them. "The Hightower is technically the Magical Sciences building of Eureka University, so you can see how much worth us modern Magicals put into that assumption."
She runs her hand through the now almost omnipresent fog once more, wistfully. "Even with that change, we still acknowledge that Magic acts almost opposite to how the rest of the universe seems to work. Thus why we have Magical Science, and not just Science with a field of Magic. Quantum Science is a similar distinction, which is rather ironic as Magic leverages the quantum world to do what it does in the first place."
Quantum Science, Magic Science, and Science Science. Jackie nods. From the sound of it, something big happened that changed how people look at Magic, hence the new kind of science.
Whatever it was that happened, it's something to look into later.
If any of the fog comes near Jackie, she would try to floof it.
The fog is present around their couch, thick enough to be everywhere. It clings slightly to Jackie's skin, almost like a full body hug, and she will have to shake it off of her to make it detach.
It feels slightly warm, though not in a temperature fashion. More like... something Jackie has always known, yet unnoticed before now. Something that feels like her even more than her body ever has. That something, she, is warmed by the fog and warms it in return. Something just under the surface of her skin. The thing that makes Jackie... Jackie.
"Souls are what makes us, us," Wilnell reveals. She indicates her body with her hands, waving them up and down her form. "Our bodies are material, they interact with the outside world. In a way, they are remote control vehicles for us, the real us. We, you and I, and everything else with a Soul, reside on a slightly higher layer of reality than our bodies or the physical world do."
She makes a series of complicated hand gestures, tracing out glowing transparent circuits in the air, and then taps the array. It glows brighter for a few moments, then morphs into a series of flat planes stacked one on top of the other. Wilnell points to the middle one and names it. "Reality. That layer is our physical universe." She then points to the one slightly above it. "The Soul Layer. That's where our Souls reside." Another, shorter, series of gestures from her hands causes a billowing, roiling field of that same fog to reveal itself between the two layers she's named. "And that is the Universal Magic Field, binding the two together. It is what enables us to even exist. As far as we can tell, most other universes have one, or something similar, but ours is the only one we've found with such an active field. It is from this field that Magic, the Mind, and all the things we can do with both, spring forth."
Reality has layers, like an onion. The physical universe. The Soul Layer. And the Universal Magic Field, which binds the two together. But there are more layers, at least if the visualization is accurate. Interesting. And if her old world didn't have magic, that's because its version of the universal field was inactive, like a dormant volcano, or... like Jeeves.
Unsubstantiated yet fascinating, the thought lingers in her mind, making her go still. Even her wagging tails slow.
Eventually she shakes her head, but her introspection continues. The fog now feels like it's warming her, somehow. Warming her soul.
Has it always been doing that?
As Jackie continues to fluff the fog, she comes to a realization. Jerry, her power, and the warm fog all have something in common. They exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship with her, like Tower and the mages inside it.
Jackie's eyes widen at the revelation, and she lets out a soft gasp. Then she looks up sheepishly at Wilnell and stops fluffing the magic.
Wilnell pauses her lecture with a kind, knowing grin. "Figured something out?" she gently asks.
"Can I use magic?" Jackie blurts out, predictably.
There are at least a dozen tantalizing observations she could have brought up instead, but none of them carry the same awesome potential as this one question. A question which she now realizes Wilnell must have been expecting for some time.
Wilnell blinks, then snickers at Jackie's excited question. "It would be a fluke on the order of a planet killing asteroid making it through Skynet's defense systems if you couldn't," she informs the fox girl. "Toting around a Magic attuned object with the mass of a small moon inside your brain shouldn't just enable you to do it, you should be quite powerful as well."
Then she rolls her eyes. "Still not sure how you got that and lived to tell it, by the way, but I'm enough of a Synth to not intentionally dig for Security Level 9 classified information from a *reality traveler*."
"Okay," Jackie says, trying and failing not to grin like an idiot. "Honest opinion. Am I cool and mysterious?"
"Cool?" Wilnell repeats, thinking about it. She shakes her head. "Nah. Cute, more like."
"As for mysterious, only in effect," she continues. "You, Jackie, aren't very mysterious at all, but events and circumstances surrounding you make me very curious." the elvin woman leans slightly closer and grins. "Cool Magic stuff and other universes are kinda my pet projects."
"Just cute and interesting?" Jackie pouts, as if puppy eyes would change Wilnell's mind. When, of course, it doesn't, the fox girl switches to a lip bite and a grin, her brown eyes bright and focused in the elvin woman's features.
Wilnell quirks her eyebrow and her lips upwards. "You realize everything you just did only made you more adorable, right?" she teases, winking.
Jackie covers her face with her tails and hunches into her shoulders. "No it didn't," she squeaks.
Wilnell inclines her chin and adds a dramatic flair to her words. "And so, the adorables continued," she starts narrating. "The young vixen attempted to protest her Cute rating, but then-"
Jackie wails in dismay and piles on more tails to cover her heated cheeks.
"-when confronted with the impossible to refute truth of her adorableness, endeavored to retreat from the world behind her many fluffy tails," Wilnell finishes, grinning ear to ear.
At length, Jackie peers through a gap in her tails while her ears peek up like twin periscopes in an ocean of floof. "Are you finished?" she asks in a small voice.
Wilnell closes her eyes and nods, still grinning. "Yep!"
"So it's safe to come out?" The gap in Jackie's tails widens.
Wilnell still has her eyes closed, but she tilts her head side to side. "Your adorables will only result in spontaneous hugging if you give me permission," she sing songs. Then she peeks open an eye at the foxgirl, grinning even wider, a hopeful shine to what little of her eye is visible.
"I mean..." Jackie pauses, her mental processes grinding to a halt even as her ears perk at the word 'hug.' One of her tails slips to reveal a smile. "Sure." Trailing off into an embarrassed mumble, she adds, "You can... also... pet," before burying her burning face back in the floof.
"YES!" Wilnell cries out, suddenly diving across the couch.
She wraps her arms around Jackie and hugs her tight, pressing her face against her chest. Her metallic hair falls over Jackie's head and tickles her ears.
She brings one hand up and starts petting the foxgirl's head. "You are fluffy and I will call you fluffy and hug you and give you cuddles!" she exclaims, squeezing.
Jackie barely has time to squeak in surprise before she's pulled into a tight embrace, her sensitive ears fully exposed to the Mage's enthusiastic attention. Delicate fingers and thick, metallic hair brush her fur, making her twitch and giggle.
A pair of tails wrap around Wilnell's waist, pulling her in nice and snug.
"Fluuffffyyyy cccuuuuuddddllleessss," Wilnell coos, continuing to pet Jackie's head with her hand. She then removes her hand and begins rubbing one of the tails around her wasit. "So fluffy! Did you turn the floof setting up to maximum or something?"
If there had been a setting for experimental, dangerous, and possibly illegal amounts of floof, Jackie would have gotten it in a heartbeat.
"I'm pushing the boundaries of floof science," she says with a lazy moan. Her eyes flutter closed, and she arches her tail into Wilnell's hand. "Any more is impossible... for now."
Wilnell giggles and scrunches Jackie's tail fur. "The boundaries of floof science, huh?" she teasingly asks, nuzzling Jackie's hair with her chin. "Yeah, I believe it. You're so fluffy!"
"Ah--haha, y-yup!" Jackie squirms, unable to resist the feeling of having her tails played with. A few shuddering breaths later, she counterattacks by flapping her ears against Wilnell's face.
"Pffhhght!" Wilnell splutters from the unexpected floof in her face and a little in her mouth. She slightly withdraws her head, spits out a couple of the hairs she accidentally managed to bite off, then goes back in so her chin can assault the culprit of her furry problem, Jackie's ears. "One two three four, I declare a chin-ear war!" she exclaims.
"Nooooo!" Jackie cries between giggles. One ear hunkers down against the chin-based assault while the other tickles Wilnell's nose.
"Wilnell Yes!" the elvin woman refutes, continuing her relentless chin-powered assault of Jackie's ear. She only sniffles a little from the nose tickling of Jackie's other ear.
This isn't a battle Jackie can win. Her ears are too sensitive. Just brushing her fur makes her nerves tingle, and a dedicated assault like this feels like electric jolts surging straight into her brain. Her giggles rise to little shrieks, and what once started with some minor ear twitches slowly intensifies into a full-body squirm, the foxgirl burying her face in the mage's bust in an effort to hide.
"Haha! Victoooory!" Wilnell cheers, causing her chest to bounce as she throws her arms up in the air suddenly and pumps them. "Snuggle victory is mine!"
The bounce brings a noticeable heat to Jackie's cheeks, despite her best efforts to hide how good she's feeling. She was able to keep it in check during the petting and head scratches, barely, but it's hard to ignore a face full of boob. And the petting feels insanely good.
She could get used to this, easily.
The messy-haired foxgirl has to wriggle a bit to extricate herself, and when she does she's panting for breath. "Tickles are no laughing matter," she manages, pouting and looking to the side.
Wilnell easily lets Jackie go, though with the foxgirl's tails wrapped around her, the wriggling to remove them is on her. "One must always be capable of laughing in the face of your own winning," she teases, grinning wide.
Jackie holds the pout for several more seconds, then starts to draw back, but her tails don't want to let go. She tugs at one with her hands, giggles, and looks wide-eyed at Wilnell. "Help, I'm stuck!"
Wilnell quirks her lips to the side in a silly grin. "Oh yeah, being stuck in a flooffy hug of your own making," she deadpans, reaching down to fluff a couple of Jackie's tails with her hands. "Definitely a fate worse than even death."
"Nooooo!" Jackie wails theatrically. Grunting with mock exertion, she grits her teeth and begins prying her tails off of the cuddly mage. One by one, the tails are wriggled loose, flopping down limply on the couch like fluffy snakes exhausted after a hard day's work in the snake pits.
When she's finished, Jackie flops herself back onto the couch, panting. She mimes wiping sweat off her forehead, breathing a sigh of relief. "Phew. That was a close one."
"A Herculean effort," Wilnell agrees, nodding and giggling. Jackie's tails changing position have absolutely no effect on her absentminded fluffing of them, the elvin woman doing a bad impression of a certain evil doctor stroking his cat. Only with two tails.
"I'm so proud of myself," Jackie preens while patting herself on the back with a tail. She holds up a hand to Abackpack. "High five," she says, and the Synth obliges with a tail. "High five," she says again, holding up a hand to the tail-fluffing mage next.
Wilnell jumps up from sitting a little to execute a perfect high tail. "Ya did great, kid," she starts to reference, landing back on the couch. "Now let's blow this party and test you!" She closed her eyes, tilts her head, and beams.
"Test?" Jackie perks up on the couch. Looks like they're going somewhere. "Come on, buddy," she calls to Abackpack, hooking one of her tails into the straps and slinging him on. "Where to?"
Wilnell grins even wider, opening her eyes. "Nowhere, we can test you here," she assures Jackie. She jumps off the couch and onto her feet. Her voice loses the Synth over and undertones and her eyes return to normal. "I've got a spare detection wand in my closet, and you may or may not actually be capable of wielding Magic. But we're gonna find out," she informs Jackie, turning back and waving. "Brb!"
Wilnell jogs out of the living room and down a hallway, turning left. She vanishes from sight of those in the living room.
"Oh." Jackie unslings Abackpack, gently setting it down on the couch and giving it a pat. She watches in amusement as Wilnell rushes off with a quick explanation and a "brb," noting how the elf woman's voice sounds subtly different but not knowing why.
When Wilnell turns the corner, Jackie rocks back and forth on the edge of the couch cushion, waiting for her return.
A couple of loud bangs and an actual party horn ring out from the direction of the room Wilnell went to.
A moment later, after a period of tense silence, the elvin woman yells "I'm okay!" to the living room.
The emotional presence that indicates Jeeves fluctuates through humor and exasperation, almost like laughter.
From right next to the couch.
He must be keeping an eye on Jackie while Wilnell does her thing.
He is also apparently capable of teleporting, given a moment ago his presence was in the kitchen.
I'm a locator. I locate things. Through the lines of her power, Jackie watches in amusement as Wilnell digs into what sounds like some crazy junk closet in search of the wand. Jackie is just about to offer help when she senses Jeeves practically laughing beside her. She turns to face him and would try to pat him with a tail. "Hey there, little guy. You come over for some hugs?"
Jeeve's fluctuation shifts to acceptance, but also slight regret.
Meanwhile, another loud bang, a clank, and what sounds like the bug zapper from hell emanate from Wilnell's room. She momentarily panics, but then jumps up and down, running around her room. Probably chasing something. "GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE SHIT!" she yells.
Jackie tries to hug the spot where Jeeves is. If that doesn't work, she'll wail melodramatically. "Noooo! Abackpack, help me! He's *right there*, but—but—but I can't hug him!"
Attempting solution... Abackpack thinks.
A moment later, air starts to sort of... funnel into the point Jeeves' presence hovers at. A slight wispy sound, like that of a small wind, emanates from him. Then a small orb of what can only be described as visible wind forms in front of Jackie.
Jeeves seems to look at himself. His presence conveys surprise, and happiness.
Attempt successful, Abackpack notifies Jackie. Basic air elemental golem body created. Anchored to Proto-Synth Jeeves.
"HAH!" Wilnell yells in victory. "Got you!" She jumps one last time and... doesn't come down.
She's hovering above where she should be standing.
Her exasperation grows. "REALLY?" she deadpans.
She begins moving back towards the hallway from the living room, though clearly not under her own power if her unamused, and nonetheless somewhat amused, state is anything to go by.
She sighs audibly. "Fine," she groans. "You win. Take me to the fox."
This is only Jackie's first real day seeing magic. She's witnessed dragons, a giant magic battle, and a city-sized tower that warps its insides for convenience. But she hasn't really seen a lot of magic close up. Not like this.
So when Abackpack funnels some sort of wispy wind towards Jeeves, Jackie can only watch in awe. There's something there, a kind of swirling essence, an orb of solid wind.
An air elemental golem, Abackpack calls it.
Just as Wilnell captures the testing wand and lets out her cry of triumph, Jackie lets out her own victorious squeal, launching herself at Jeeve's new golem body.
She's going to snuggle the heck out of him.
Jeeves' new wind body is surprisingly solid, allowing Jackie to succeed with her random tactical hug assault.
It also seems perfectly capable of remaining airborne even with Jackie clinging to it.
Jeeves is happy, both with his new body and with the hug. The wind orb is slightly chilly, and Jackie is warm, so it's nice.
Thus it is this scene that Wilnell witnesses as she comes around the corner of the hallway.
Being held above the floor, by her hand, wrapped around a flying (https://i.imgur.com/EK0bvR0.png).
Wilnell raises her eyebrows, seemingly unconcerned about her own flying object. "Why is there a tiny wind elemental in my rooms?" she asks curiously.
"Hugs!" Jackie explains, adding a little excited wiggle to her embrace. Then she does a double take at Wilnell hanging off of the floating wand. "Uh..."
"Hugs. Right," Wilnell acknowledges.
She follows Jackie's eyes to the wand she's hanging off of. She laughs, shaking her head, and looks back at Jackie. "Jackie, meet the wand we're gonna test your magical ability with," she introduces the thin wooden device. "*Just as soon as it drops me,*" she adds, mumbling.
Without any other fanfare, the wand complies. With Wilnell still a foot above the carpet.
"Oof!" the Elvin woman grunts, landing on her rear.
The wand seems to chuckle momentarily, if that's what it bobbing in the air means, and then zips over to Jackie's face, pointing straight at her nose.
Now that it's this close, the wand's emotions are finally visible. It seems to be immune to Jackie's power unless it's very close by.
"I'm okay!" Wilnell groans from the floor, pointing at the ceiling.
The wand has emotions. Because of course it does. If it has magic, it has emotions. The more magic, the ~~crazier~~ cuter it is. Or something like that.
Jackie is reasonably sure that the emotion she's seeing right now is excitement, though it's kind of hard to tell when she's cross-eyed like this. Gently patting Jeeves the Air Elemental goodbye, Jackie scoots back a few inches to get a better look at this testing device.
It's a wooden stick with glowing blue segments, and it's happy to see her. Smiling slightly, Jackie gives the thing a little wave and says, "Hey." Then she leans in conspiratorially and whispers, "Was that big, mean mage keeping you locked in the closet for no reason?"
Jeeves moves out of the way so that Jackie can get a closer look at the wand. He seems slightly annoyed at the wooden device. Not for anything it's done right now, the annoyance feels more long term.
The wand, presence flaring with mischievousness, bobs up and down in the air as if to indicate nodding. Rapid nodding.
Wilnell perks up from her position on the floor, sending the wand a narrow eyed glare. "Oh no you don't!" She refutes the wand's agreement. "No corrupting the innocent vulpine!"
"You poor thing," Jackie coos, her ears drooping in sympathy for the ~~lying~~ unfortunate wand. "This innocent vulpine will protect you. Do you need a hug?"
The wand bobs up and down even more rapidly. It flips over midair, intent and course for Jackie's hand clear as its handle approaches her fingers.
Wilnell just groans and collapses back to the floor.
Jackie would grasp the wand and hug the heck out of it.
The moment Jackie's fingers close around the wand, a new thread opens. Not one of emotion, or feelings, but one of existence. The wand pours into Jackie, and Jackie pours into it, with the little compressed center of power within her mind along for the ride. For the first time Jackie is aware of the immense sea of... some kind of power resting within her, only a little of which is going to fuel her normal emotion sensing.
There is also a much, much smaller reservoir within her, separate from the sea, but it seems barely there. It is tied to the larger sea, filling as it drains passively into the space around her.
But the connection is not that strong. Barely half of the wand's potential resonates with Jackie and her internal sea.
Even so, it feels willing, ready, and mischievous. The lights upon the wand begin to glow brighter, indicating its charged state.
The thing within Jackie seems to be curious, and allows some of its sea to flow into the wand. It is constrained by the connection's lack of strength, and so only about a third of what it would normally direct towards the wand manages to reach it.
The energy races up Jackie's arm, into the wand, through the shaft and, out the tip. It is warped, massaged, and changed within the wand's body, then allowed to continue into the world.
The hair on everything in the room stands up straight in the presence of a significant amount of electricity. A moment later a massive lightning bolt leaps from the tip of the wand and straight into the wall, burning through it as if it wasn't even there. The flash of light blinds, and the clap of thunder as air rushes back into the vaporized pathway thooms.
"Holy SHIT!" Wilnell yells, jumping up off the floor. She rushes over to Jackie and starts fussing. "Are you okay?!" She doesn't seem to have been affected by the flash or the boom much, though her hair is a frizzy mess. Somehow. Despite it being metallic.
The hole in the wall reveals warped space beyond it, a miasma of rainbows and a color which should not exist. Slowly the wall starts regenerating, atoms and molecules flowing into existence from nothing, briefly blue before resolving into their normal state.
The tip of the wand is scorched. The wood is slightly charred from the release of so much energy. Not that the wand seems to care! It feels giddy and somewhat pleased at having found such a effective way to cause mischief. It continually pleads with Jackie to fire another one of those off.
Every hair on Jackie's body stands on end as an electric bolt vaporizes a part of the wall. The sudden flash blinds her while the thoom leaves her ears ringing. Instinctively, she grips the wand tighter and hugs it against her chest, while her ears flatten against her head.
Her hands tremble. Heart pounding, body tense, she tries to blink away the greenish purple streak filling her vision. Eventually she sags, expelling a shaky breath.
Then the young mage—for she is one now, that much is clear—becomes aware of two things: Wilnell fussing over her, and the wand begging her to do it again.
No way is that happening.
When Jackie is finally able to use her vocal cords again, she articulates her thoughts with as much wit as she can muster: currently, a long, choked noise that sounds an awful lot like "meeeeeep."
Jeeves takes one moment to put his attention on Jackie, notices she's having a hard time, and blinks out of existence. He blinks back in to the kitchen, bustling about.
Jackie's hybrid wail/surprise seems to reassure Wilnell of her, while not entirely solid, at least mentally and physically intact state. "You okay?" she asks again, laying both her hands on the smaller girl's shoulders. A slightly amused grin graces her lips.
The wand continues asking for more lightning, while the wall finishes regenerating.
Jackie jumps slightly at the touch, perhaps expecting a spark of static electricity. When nothing happens, she slowly nods. "Y-yeah. Just a little b-bit..." She blinks. "Shocked."
Wilnell snorts, entirely unladylike. "That was bad," she deadpans, grinning.
She retracts her hands and holds one up to the death grip Jackie has on the wand, palm out. "Think we know if you've got magic now?" she asks, teasingly, as she waits for the foxgirl to give her the wand back.
The wand begs her to not be given back, continually pushing for more chaos.
Jeeves makes some clinks in the kitchen.
"Its soul cries out for chaos," Jackie says, offering a token protest. She wants to do more magic. Not necessarily here, at the expense of Wilnell's apartment, but somewhere.
"Trust me, I'm very aware," Wilnell reveals, rolling her eyes. "It's my back up tester wand. Less behavioral modulation, closer to the original wand core."
The sound of a compressed liquid filling a cup comes from the kitchen.
Wilnell narrows her eyes at the wand for a moment. "How much does it want to fire another one of those off?" she asks, grinning at Jackie again. She doesn't lower her hand, though, and puts her other one on her hip somewhat impatiently. "Because if the answer is what I think it is, and you have any undirected magic, I need you to give it to me before it can persuade your subconscious to do it again. We'll get you one more attuned to you so you can start learning."
"But, but..." Jackie relents with a sniffle, returning the chaotic wand to its owner. "I'll never forget you, Wanda," she laments, her ears drooping to the sides. "Our love was too pure and beautiful for this cruel world."
The wand sends Jackie a happy goodbye before Wilnell wraps her hand around the shaft, causing the connection with Jackie to go into inactive mode. It's still there, just dormant.
"Thank you," she says genuinely. Then she rolls her eyes and smiles affectionately. "Drama fox."
A moment later Jeeves pops up next to Jackie, carrying a cup of what is clearly fresh Hot Chocolate+... without any hands.
The cup is just floating in front of his new air elemental body.
Wilnell turns to the wand in her hand and looks unamused. "A completely unbound mana bolt? *Really*, 'Wanda'?" she asks it accusingly, accidentally using Jackie's nickname for it.
She seems to listen to the wand for a few moments, silently staring at it.
"I don't care if it was fun! You had no idea of her mana reserves!" She retorts back. "Just look at your tip! I'm gonna have to repair you now!"
The wand's response isn't vocal, but Wilnell repeats it anyways. "'Don't care, got hugs and guns'? You've been hanging around Artemis again, haven't you?"
The wand bobs in her hand, entirely unrepentant.
Wilnell brings her free hand to her forehead and sighs. "What am I going to do with you? No, I am not letting you sundive."
"Oooooh, thank you," Jackie murmurs as she accepts the drink from Jeeves. A heavenly scent rises from the warm mug, carried by little white wisps of steam. She inhales deeply, a blissful smile crossing her face, and she blows to cool the chocolaty brown liquid.
To her side, Wilnell and the wand are engaged in some sort of telepathic argument, the mage sounding more and more like a mother scolding an unruly child. Jackie's ears swivel in their direction, listening even as she continues to gaze into her drink.
When Wilnell starts throwing around names and terms Jackie doesn't know, the fox girl looks up. "Sundive?" she asks, curious.
Jeeves bobs in place, then blinks back to the kitchen.
Wilnell pauses in her scolding to look at Jackie. Her eyebrows rise when she realizes the foxgirl legitimately doesn't know the term. "Uh, 'Wanda' here wants to do some solar corona surfing," she informs Jackie, grimacing. She turns back yo glaring at the wand in her hand. "Nevermind that you're half made of wood, magic or not."
"I didn't know that was possible." The fox girl tilts her head, allowing her ears to flop to the side. "I guess with spaceships..." Wait, no. It still doesn't make sense.
If Wilnell doesn't elaborate, Jackie would take out her phone and look up how it works.
"They give solar surfing rides out of Mercury, but I don't know much about it," Wilnell answers Jackie, "beyond the fact that beings made of wood are not allowed to do it outside a heavy diver!" She looks and feels like she wants to strangle the still entirely unrepentant wand.
Said wand must be incredibly smug, if her scowl in its direction is any indicator.
Nodding, Jackie puts her phone back unused and takes a sip from her mug.
What a strange universe she'd found herself in. Back in her original reality, she'd been the only one to anthropomorphize everyday objects. A quirk of her powers, and if she was being honest with herself, perhaps a way of escaping reality. Seeking comfort in inanimate objects which could never use her, never control her, never betray her.
A long sip of hot chocolate washes away those melancholy thoughts, like waves rolling over a sandy beach. It was easy just to close her eyes and relax, enjoying a sense of peace that she hadn't known for a long time.
When she opens her eyes again, there's a quiet clarity to them. A smile tugs at the corners of her lips, and she takes a few moments just to smooth down her fur.
Wilnell continues scolding the wand for another minute or so. Then she looks to Jackie. "Just let me put this back in my room and we can go get you your own, okay?" she asks.
After gaining Jackie's agreement, the elvin Synth starts back down the hallway and into her room.
Jackie waves as Wilnell passes out of sight, before turning back to Jeeves and Abackpack. "My own wand, huh?" she muses. "That'll be awesome. Though I hope mine will be bit less... Wanda, you know?" Snorting, she beams Jeeves a wry grin.
Jeeves 'laughs' along with her, displaying his disdain for Wanda once more.
Abackpack thinks up. May be wand. May be other device. Magic attunement necessary.
Clicking and whirring sound from the direction of Wilnell's room. A few moments later, she enters the hallway once again, striding straight for Jackie.
"Well, now that 'Wanda' is settled," she begins, grinning wide, "I think it's time to visit a magic shop!"
When Abackpack says it might be something else, the first thought that comes to Jackie's mind is *hairbrush*. She props herself onto her feet, hoists Abackpack onto her shoulders, and stands, tails wagging and ready to go.
Wilnell nods at Jackie, noticing she's ready. "Alright then, follow me!" She points a finger to the roof and spins on her heel, right back down the hallway to her room.
Jeeves fluctuates his emotional state several times, seemably to get Jackie's attention, then pushes affection and something that feels like farewell to the front. He must have figured out how Jackie's ability works.
Jackie turns and waves at the huggable air elemental on their way out. "See you later, Jeeves!" Abackpack waves a tail.
Wilnell continues leading Jackie down the hallway past another short hallway to the left. It terminates in a closed door similar to the one at the entry to the elvin woman's rooms.
"That one isn't designed to be breached," she conversationally informs Jackie. "It is much, much more heavily protected. Cuz, y'know, it's my room."
The hallway continues forwards for a few feet. Suddenly their position in the Hightower shifts once more, much closer to ground level. The sound of laughter, conversation, and hundreds of people comes from ahead of them, and a bright light begins to illuminate the hallway.
"We're almost there," Wilnell says happily.
As Wilnell points out her private room, Jackie can't help but daydream about what kinds of wonders might be locked inside. Magic items too dangerous for visitors' eyes? Extra naughty wands, even worse than Wanda? Or maybe illicit magazines with spicy names. Enchantress Weekly: Ears & Gears Edition, featuring the hottest elves and the hottest spells. Maybe they'd publish these tricky little puzzles, like a bra that needs a special sequence of magic to unclasp.
If Wilnell looks, she would see Jackie's eyes glazed over, a funny little smile on her face.
Wilnell only checks back once to ensure Jackie is following her. She sees the dopey look and rolls her eyes. "My room's just a room, Jackie," she tells her. "Onward!"
The light grows stronger and the clamor resonates down the magical stone as they progress further.
"Fine," Jackie groans, quickening her pace to catch up with the long-legged mage. That's exactly what someone hiding illicit ear-and-gear-based literature would say.
The light and sense of outside continues to increase until it is all encompassing. The hallway abruptly ends, letting Wilnell and Jackie out onto (https://i.imgur.com/h0Lag4n.jpg)
A large, Gothic blimp hovers above the ground, anchored to several stone pillars with wrought iron chains. There are quite a few people here, mostly helping to unload the packages that are being lowered out of the blimp's gondola. There are hundreds more scattered about, doing various things and performing various actions. Some of them are trading. Others are demonstrating cool new magic to their peers. There's even a few students, denoted by their specific robes, following what must be professors based on their robes. A few magicals zip by through the sky, or methods of travel just as varied and distinct as their wardrobes. A dragon or two soar by the blimp, seemingly using it as flight practice.
Sweeping archways trace a path back out to some location that seems to be quite large, open, and easy to fly in. Directly in front of them, across the dock, multiple winding staircases ascend into a stone wrought building. The majority of the clamor and people noises are coming from inside.
"Huh, I guess Hightower wanted to give you a show," Wilnell comments. She points towards the building with all of the noise. "The market is that way."
"Whoa." Jackie exhales a breath as they step into the expansive dock, somehow having ended up outdoors. Except still in the Hightower, somehow. Rather than try to wrap her mind around that, she just tries to absorb all the sights and sounds of this strange, bustling place.
There isn't enough time to stop and gawk at everything, however. Wilnell points her to the market, and to the market they go. Though she does cast a curious glance back and ask, "What's with the flying ship?"
Wilnell follows Jackie's gaze towards the blimp, pausing her brisk walk. She tilts her head, her ears falling to the side slightly. "Hmmm," she muses. "This is one of the cargo docks. Haven't seen that blimp before... Maybe someone's just really into Gothic architecture?"
"I bet it's delivering, like, a thousand crates of hot chocolate," Jackie says, tails wagging at the thought.
Wilnell looks to Jackie, an eyebrow lifted. "Why would it be delivering that?" she asks confusedly. "We make it here."
"It is?" Jackie tilts her head up to meet her eye. "I'm going to need a tour. I must see the brewery." She rubs her palms together eagerly, then remembers she still has to meet Athena after this. "Later," she amends.
Wilnell grins cheekily. "You're addicted to that stuff now," she states. It's not a question, she knows for a fact. The huge grin on her face says nothing less.
The elvin Synth turns back towards the stone building, aligning herself with the leftmost staircase. "They have their own area in the Hightower, we can go see it... later," she says, winking at Jackie.
Then she continues forward, tossing the blimp only one more slightly confused sideward glance.
Proceeding alongside her, Jackie huffs at the accusation. "You might as well say I'm addicted to cuddles. I can stop any time I want."
"Oh yeah?" Wilnell asks teasingly, looking back over her shoulder.
She reaches the stairs and begins to ascend them, her shoes clicking on the stone. Her hand almost absentmindedly drifts to the stone ledge along the side of the steps and she begins to tap on the stone in random patterns.
"Aaaaany time I want," Jackie says. "It's not like I would explode like a bottle of Mentos and Diet Coke with the cap on."
Or would I? she wonders, unable to shake the gruesome image out of her head. Her brow knits together. The click click of Wilnell's shoes and the soft brushing of her tails against stone fill her ears as her eyes glaze over. She continues climbing the steps on automatic, lost to thought.
"Better safe than sorry," she says at last.
"Implode, it's definitely *im*plode," Wilnell continues teasing, before she jumps slightly as if suddenly realizing something.
She turns her head and grimaces in sympathy at Jackie. "N...not that I blame you, really, with your power's... side effects," she carefully states.
The truth is, entire months, if not years, of Jackie's life could be described as "literally starved for affection," a combination of needing hugs to live and not getting any. Her current obsession with hugs isn't merely an effort to make up for lost time; it is a compulsive need ingrained into her soul over a long, long time.
Jackie meets the mage's eyes and gives a barely perceptible nod, grateful for her understanding.
"Heh," Wilnell says, relieved. "Right. Well, you just gotta get it checked, that's all!"
They reach the top of the stairs and the elvin Synth turns left, passing under a huge stone archway. Dozens of people in various shapes and sizes flow in and out in two different directions. Wilnell ensures that she and Jackie join the inbound person river.
Now that they're on course again, her bright, cheery, and teasing manner comes flying back. "Hey, you won't have to be addicted after that. I know you still will be though," she teases, winking at Jackie. "Maybe your nickname should be Cuddle Fox."
Note to self: see Aceso, get prescription for hugs. Jackie ducks her head, hiding the growing grin pushing up her cheeks. "Yeah? And what's your nickname?"
"Professor Extreme Bunny," Wilnell reveals without hesitation, seemingly proud of her nickname. She holds her head up high and nods, grinning wide.
They flow closer to another archway, this one seemingly letting out into the sky. They are stuck in the river of people, everyone polite and unhurried.
As the swelling crowd carries them along, Jackie presses in closer to Professor Extreme Bunny, taking the chance to study the long curve of the elfin woman's ears. The words can I pet them are on the tip of her tongue.
Instead Jackie casts a glance back for a second and asks, "Why is there a sky ship inside the Hightower? Actually, how are we outdoors?"
Wilnell glances back with her and blinks. "For shipments," she explains easily. "It's a little difficult to navigate ground vehicles in this space with all the people." She looks around at the bidirectional river of people the two of them are part of.
"Also, we're not actually outdoors. This is still inside the Hightower," she continues, returning her attention to Jackie. A teasing and proud grin is on her face. "Neat, huh? We figured out this extreme spatial compression magitech from observing another world. We hadn't been able to compress it quite this much until the Temporal Observatory went online and found them." She sighs and shakes her head, frowning. "Just another example of why our ancestors were idiots for rejecting science."
"The McKlellan place?" Jackie asks. She remembers Jim mentioning something about a temporal observatory where they looked at different timelines.
Wilnell nods as they are pressed forward by the tide. "Yup. You've heard of it?"
The archway seems empty from far away, but upon moving closer, a barely visible field can be seen. Its swirls and multihued vortexes slowly travel across its surface. Each person that crosses the threshold glows slightly and briefly around their extremities, barely visible but still there.
"It sounded cool," Jackie confirms. "Think I might visit some time."
When they get closer, Jackie is able to make out some subtle glowing effect passing over everyone on their way through the archway. It reminds her a little of the sanitization field she and Athena used to clean up earlier, and she wonders if it will make her fur stand up the same way.
Just in case, she hugs her tails in front of her protectively as they approach.
Nobody going through the field even seems to notice it. A couple younger kids stare in awe at the swirls and colors, but the adults don't mind. It must not be affecting them.
A clear sky can be seen through the transparent field, though it is distorted.
"Yeah, it's cool," Wilnell agrees. "Just... when you do go, don't stare at the timeline quantum entanglement console very long." She huffs and rolls her eyes. "Someone thought it'd be funny to represent it in four dimensional magitech, and Organic eyes really can't process that very well."
Their river pushes them up to the field, only a few people in front of them.
Hightower Market
Beyond the archway's field is (https://i.imgur.com/cYt2Go8.jpg) The pathway continues down to a small landing, then to the right and under a massive dragon sculpture.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_52K0E_gNY0). Despite this, the internal city seems to be fairly laidback. The people amble down the stone beyond the archway in an unhurried pace, and noone seems too worried.
On the outbound side of the queue, a blonde man in a robe tries to go through the barrier... only for the object he's carrying to catch on it like a fly stuck in glue, halting his advance immediately.
The man steps back, letting go of the object. It's an orb-shaped device with glowing bits on it, similarly colored to mana and the blue lights on the wand that Wilnell let Jackie test her magic with.
It is also suspended in the colored field, red ringing it where it meets the energy.
Everyone around him, including Wilnell, looks to him curiously. He hangs his head back and sighs.
"Trust it to be the toy that I forgot," he mutters self-degradingly. A moment later he yanks the orb out of the field, back the way he came, and spins around to join the river entering the archway.
Right as Wilnell and Jackie pass by him.
He falls into step next to them and glances at the two women. "Hi," he sheepishly says.
Seeing nothing going on, everyone turns their attention back to whatever they were occupied by before the minor spectacle.
As they pass through the arch, Jackie is immediately hit with an impression of overwhelming weirdness. The market is colourful, magical, and vast. She's entering a place where spatial geometry seems to be more a suggestion than a physical law, even more so than in the rest of the Hightower.
It's a good thing she has Wilnell as a guide. Jackie presses in closer to her, just so they don't get separated in the crowd, though she does refrain from holding the Mage's hand. She's not a child. Just a little overwhelmed at the scope of the place.
Before she can do more to get her bearings, everyone's attention is drawn by a man trying to leave, only for the bauble he's carrying to get stuck in the archway's glow; a security field, by the looks of it. Anti-theft wards?
When the man just so happens to fall into line next to her and Wilnell, offering them a sheepish greeting, Jackie looks him over before returning a cautious "hey." She's sticking close to Wilnell's side for the moment, using the elfin Mage as a bit of a buffer between herself and the stranger.
Wilnell grins at the guy, hugging Jackie to her side in the same motion. *Protectiveness*, like a mentor and their student, forms between her and Jackie for a moment. That same feeling seems to extend to the man. "Missed the checkout orb?" she asks him cheekily.
The man sighs. He holds up the orb in his hands and nods. "Yeahp." He shakes his head, then returns the orb to his abdomen. "Got my kids' amulets, my wife's alkahest, but I guess I missed the toy."
Wilnell shrugs. "Easy thing to do, what with its inconveniently placed location at the *front door*," she comments teasingly.
The river of people continues to draw them down the long stairs towards the massive dragon statue.
"Yeah yeah, laugh it up," the man rolls his eyes.
"Do you need some remedial memory exercises?" she continues, eyes twinkling. She points over her shoulder back to the archway. "I mean, I'm getting Jackie here her first magic device, but I'm sure I could hop back to my Rooms and draw some up-"
The man looks resigned. "Four years and you still act like my Professor," he deadpans.
Wilnell closes her eyes and smiles sweetly. "Anything for a former, forgetful student of mine," she teases him.
The man sighs.
​
Amulet, alkahest, toy... Jackie listens quietly to what Wilnell's former student is saying. The more she hears, the more she wants to ask about everything, but it would be rude to interrupt the two mages who are just catching up. There will be time for questions later.
"How's the kids? And Oria?" Wilnell asks the man, genuinely interested.
The man smiles, a goofy, wondrously in love smile. "Great, as always. The kids have started having control problems, thus the amulets," he says. "And Oria is lovely as always." He looks over to Wilnell and his grin morphs from goofy to smug. "She apparently wants more kids."
Wilnell's eyebrows rise, her metal hair fluttering in the wind. "Oh ho ho!" she exclaims, gesturing to him. "Look at you Aveus, elemental rockstar!"
The man, presumably Aveus, sighs and rolls his eyes again. "Remind me again what your locker room nickname is?" he teases her back, waggling his eyebrows.
Wilnell scoffs, tossing her hair with her free hand. "I'll have you know I'm proud of my lewdacity," she brazenly and obviously jokingly fires back. She opens her eyes and winks in his direction. "Unlike a certain someone who couldn't take his eyes off a certain Earth elemental the entire prom night..."
Aveus sticks his tongue out at her. "It was worth it." His grin returns to that goofy lovestruck look. "She's amazing."
They pass under the massive dragon statue, its decorative teeth glistening in the light from the buildings and sky.
"I'll bet," Wilnell grins. "I've heard they're really good at rocking your world."
Aveus groans to the sky. "That was *horrible*, Wilnell," he deadpans.
"Sorry not sorry!"
Past the dragon statue are (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/ko...inal02.jpg) Some have less people, while the larger buildings' entrances are more constantly filled. Stores like 'Apptastic Apothecary', 'Good Gems', and 'General Runic Supplies' proudly display their logos and slogans in hovering magic signs, similar to the gigantic half transparent gears which appeared over the Hightower doors when they were unlocking.
Jackie listens with a half ear as the two mages catch up on each other's lives. They talk about kids, and locker room nicknames, all normal stuff.
The rock pun earns a roll of the eyes, and Jackie starts thinking of an air elemental pun for when she sees Jeeves again.
They reach the bottom of the steps. The flow of people splits up, everyone seemingly going in an entirely different direction. Some to shops right in front of the steps, others down pathways and corridors between buildings, and even a few into the sky. Why those few stuck to the steps until now is a mystery for the ages.
One of the stores immediately off the steps seems to be a Magical version of Starbucks. Literally, as the 'Magicbucks' above the archway entrance says. A very popular shop judging by all the people inside or sitting on comfy coffee shop chairs outside.
To the left is a massive building, tall and wide. Much wider than taller, though. Some kind of supermarket. 'Highmart' the hovering, glowing logo reads, a small three leaved leaf to the left side.
The right holds one of the major pathways with a lot more buildings down it. It seems to be the one Wilnell and Jackie will be taking given the former gently steering them towards it.
Aveus must be heading the same direction because he keeps up with them as the Elvin woman navigates them through the crowd. That or he just wants to talk to Wilnell. "So a magic device huh?" He asks curiously, glancing at Jackie as best he can. His eyes seem to shine with a nerdy gleam not unlike the constant look those in the Nexus wear. "What kind you thinking?" he asks Jackie directly. Nothing but genuine geekery drives his question.
Wilnell rolls her eyes so hard it's physically felt, a nostalgic grin on her face.
Jackie shrugs, turning to Aveus. "Don't know. Something fluffy and huggable?" After a pause, Jackie taps her chin, furrows her brow, and looks up in thought. "Maybe a red one."
Aveus chuckles and nods sagely. "Ah yes, fluffy devices. I suppose it makes sense given your clear appreciation for the Art of Fluff," he reasons, gesturing to Jackie's tails.
Wilnell also nods, just as sagely. "A fluffy wand for a fluffy fox."
"It's going to be great!" Jackie says, grinning. Then to make conversation, she asks, "So, what was that thing you said you got? The alka-whatsit?"
Aveus' eyes light up even more, literally this time. They begin to glow very slightly blue. The same blue as the ethereal substance that drives Magic, actually.
He turns to Wilnell and grins, raising an eyebrow.
Wilnell gestures back to him, shaking her head. "You're the Alchemist, not me," she reasons, passing the explanation off to the apparently giddy alchemist. She moves into a more passive role preparing to make sure Jackie and Aveus don't get lost in the crowds due to the obviously incoming magical geekout session.
Aveus nods and moves slightly closer to Jackie. His grin turns slightly geekily demented as he reaches inside his robe arm. He searches for a few moments, then pulls out a (https://i.imgur.com/R1nxdYE.png)
No matter which way he turns it, the substance retains its flat state with the opening of the pot. Some attention is attracted by the glowing dust, but it's mostly from younger people with their parents. A few people, clearly mages much like Aveus, momentarily stare at the pot and seem to approve of it, nodding before continuing on.
The substance seems to be radiating the same kind of power Jackie used to burn a hole in Wilnell's living room wall... only unrefined. The feeling it gives off is that of raw, distilled potential, just waiting for direction, though it is far more solid than the ethereal mana Wilnell showed her. And Aveus has a very obsessed attachment to the stuff.
This is illustrated by the fact that Aveus moves the pot so that his face is underlit by the glow, making his slightly demented grin even spookier. "*This* is Alkahest, Jackie," he reveals dramatically, waving his hand over the pot with much flair. "And it is the best thing since *sliced. bread.*"
Jackie can tell it isn't anything bad from the looks of approval, but Aveus' obsessive fixation is just begging for a wisecrack. Turning up her nose and narrowing her eyes in feigned disapproval, she says, "It's drugs, isn't it?"
A close observer might notice the corner of her mouth twitching up, the only sign that she's just messing with him.
Aveus is stunned. He stares at Jackie with his mouth agape, as if she's offended the very ground he walks on.
Wilnell, on the other hand, bursts out laughing. "DRUGS!" she cackles, holding her sides. "HAHAHAHAH! OH MY GODS YOUR FACE!" She points at Aveus' shellshocked look and laughs even harder. "I told you, I always told you someone would ask you that one day!"
"But- it's not-" he tries protesting, only to fall into an amused resignation as Wilnell laughs harder. The man notices Jackie's twitching lip and sighs. He closes his eyes and nods, accepting the situation. "Yeah, okay, maybe it looks a little like drugs," he acknowledges, taking the hysterical laughter of his friend in stride. "But it's not, I swear!"
"Right," Jackie says, deadpan. "And next you'll tell me you're just a 'glassware enthusiast' who definitely doesn't own what looks like twenty different types of bong."
"T-that is immaterial to the subject!" Aveus stutters, looking everywhere but at Jackie. "Those are for legitimate solution distillation!"
Wilnell can't even walk anymore. She bends down, her hands on her knees, and allows her metallic hair to bounce as she cracks up.
Aveus blushes slightly, looking around at the crowd. "Help me out here, someone!" He only half jokingly pleads.
Another man on the other side of the crowd yells back at him. "You're on your own, Alchemist!"
"Screw you too, Runemaster!" Aveus fires back. He sighs again and massages his eyebrows with his free hand.
The verbal shots fired may have seemed mean, but there is clearly just a friendly rivalry involved.
Jackie breaks down giggling, unable to maintain a straight face any longer.
Aveus, seeing Jackie got him yet again, settles into an amused and yet deadpan look. "Alright," he says, twirling the hand holding the alkahest pot, "get it out of your system." Gracious, magnanimous, and patient is what he's going for.
He isn't quite mysterious enough to pull that off, though, and so sets Wilnell off into yet another bout of cackling. She just gives up on standing, collapsing to the ground and rolling around.
Clearly this isn't the strangest sight the Hightower denizens have seen, as almost nobody seems to give a shit about her doing so. They just route around the three of them naturally.
It takes a while for Jackie to get the giggles out of her system. Mostly because every time she thinks she's done, she looks over at Wilnell rolling on the ground and cracks up again. Eventually however, Jackie gets it under control. She wipes a tear from her eyes, straightens up, and offers Wilnell a hand getting back to her feet.
Wilnell accepts Jackie's offered hand, actually needing to use it to stabilize herself. She seems sort of woozy due to the hysterics she's undergone. Despite her cackle rolling on the ground, though, she looks fine. Her metal hair isn't frizzed or twisted up and no dust seems to have managed to stick to her form hugging robe. Other than her slightly red eyes from the laughing crying she found herself doing, she still looks normal.
Namely, adorably pretty.
"Thanks, Jackie," she says. "Always good to have a helping hand." She brushes her hair away from her face and seemingly reflexively dusts off her chest, drawing attention due to slight trampoline properties.
Aveus shakes his head and sighs. "Jackie, in case you aren't aware yet, there's an entire set of spells and magic techniques dedicated solely to appearance," he states, waving at Wilnell's now smugly grinning and flawless visage. "How many you have active?"
The elfin woman attempts to hug Jackie across the shoulders to her side with an arm. "All of them?" she answers rhetorically.
Aveus raises his eyebrows. "Huh. That's rare." He looks her up and down, zeroing in on her metal-plated bust, then smirks at her face. "You just did a Greatest Show, didn't you?"
Wilnell doesn't reply verbally. She just shuts her eyes and sticks her tongue out at him.
Aveus rolls his eyes. He looks to Jackie and holds out the pot again. "Would you like to learn the incredible power of crystallized mana now, Jackie?" he teasingly asks. "Or we could continue mislabeling my profession's necessary implements. Your choice." He shrugs, looking entirely unconcerned about either result.
Wilnell gets a side hug from Jackie as the foxgirl considers the offer. "Incredible power, hmm?" She kind of wants to ask about cosmetic charms, but Aveus was a good sport about the teasing, so it's only fair that she hears him out. Give him a chance to show off his expertise.
Slowly, Jackie nods, turning to regard the pot with interest. "Alright. What can it do?" she asks, while in her head she wonders, Can I hug it?
Aveus' obsessed, geeky grin returns with a vengeance. He brings the pot back up to his face and sets the dramatic mood again.
"Alkahest," he begins again, stepping close enough to Jackie and Wilnell for the light of the dusty substance to illuminate the two of them as well, "can, simply put, do anything.*" He hesistates, tilting his head slightly, and corrects himself. "Or, well, *mostly anything. It's a fuel source for spells, a conduit, a catalyst, and in rare occasions, a very effective ignition source. It is the essence of Magic." He moves his hand in an arc, gesturing to the sky. "The essence of *all this.*" He looks back down at the pot and gains a wistful smile. "Mana in solid form."
He stares at it in reverence for several seconds before he's interrupted.
"He blew up my classroom," Wilnell notes to Jackie.
Aveus glares at her.
"Twice," she continues.
His glare morphs into a sheepish smile.
"I don't teach Alchemy either," she points out, grinning at him.
"You gave us homework!" he protests vehemently. "Due in the *past!*"
"As a joke," she responds. "I didn't expect you to actually break time open to deliver it."
Aveus's sheepish grin turns into a smirk. "Still did it!" he emphasizes, pumping his fist to the sky. He looks back down at Jackie and grins sheepishly. "Uh, yeah. So. Alkahest is very, very flexible. If you become an Alchemist or Runemaster, you'll quickly get very acquainted with this stuff."
"How does"—Jackie frowns at the pot—"*that* give you time travel?"
Aveus' eyes literally twinkle. It's a look very common in The Nexus, and one Jim, Jackie's Researcher, displays nearly permanently. It signals to everyone who witnesses the sight that an explanation of titanic proportions, and using far too many lengthy words, is incoming.
Wilnell hugs Jackie tighter to her side, leaning down slightly. "Tell me if you want me to stop him," she offers with a whisper into Jackie's right fox ear. She peers at Aveus out of the corner of her eye. "In the next, like, five seconds. Once he gets going there's no end."
Aveus is entirely oblivious to this offer, as his mouth is curling upward ever closer to a wide eyed grin.
"But he looks so happy," Jackie whispers back. "And besides, this sounds cool." Incredibly dangerous, but cool.
Wilnell shrugs, unconcerned. She puts her hands behind her head and leans back on the air as if reclining onto a semi-vertical lawn chair. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she says.
And then Aveus actually starts talking.
"Using the hypercondensed metacrystalline matrix making up this pseudo-stable representation of fundamental particles," he begins pontificating, gesturing around with the glowing pot, "one can direct other metastable subatomics into intricate Gordian knots. You then take the resulting coiled spacetime-ether fabric and weave it into a sixth dimensional vortex which puts pressure on the lower dimensions and removes the Heisenberg limit of matter and energy within their bounds due to exchanging non-mana quarks with higher dimensions, which of course causes the temporal causality continuum to slip-"
Wilnell rolls her eyes fondly, a wistful smile stealing onto her features. As nuts as she thinks he is, she's clearly quite proud of him.
Jackie's eyes glaze over at the jargon-laden barrage. She can only watch in horror as the alchemist goes on and on, making no sense whatsoever. After about a minute, when it looks like he's never going to stop, she turns pleading eyes to Wilnell.
Aveus clearly isn't stopping without intervention. He continues lecturing, almost unaware of the world.
It's so lecture-like that several people in robes less elaborate than his have begun attending it as if it is one. One man directs his hand at the ground, which almost immediately raises up into a stool-like outcrop. He then takes out an actual notepad and begins frantically scribbling. Yet another abrupt student hovers in the air, quickly typing notes on a tablet. Just a normal tablet, nothing magical about it. An actual merman rests on a ball of water and seems to be inscribing notes via a solid block of water. More and more arrive out of the crowd every few seconds.
"-and then after you've opened a sideslip corridor through the ether backwards along the nineteenth dimensional axis, taking a left turn at the nearest intersection with the fifteenth of course, a causeway opens between two points on the primary timespace planar zone-"
The rest of the crowd of the pathway seems unsurprised by this spontaneous lecture, simply routing around the growing observers. It helps that roughly a quarter of them have stopped to actually listen to Aveus talk about the intricacies of Alchemy.
Wilnell feigns being unable to sense Jackie's pleading eyes for a few moments, then sighs and turns to look into them. She blinks, then grins. "Those are adorable," she says, sounding as if she's barely keeping herself from squealing. "That much weapons-grade cute should be illegal."
"What do you say we slip away?" Jackie whispers into her ear. "I still want to hear about cosmetic spells." Hopefully those would be easier to understand than this post-graduate level lecture on time travel. Plus, they still need to go get her wand.
Wilnell considers her idea, glancing sideways at Aveus. The Alchemist shows no sign of stopping, somehow managing to hold an entire Master level lecture without any teaching expertise and with an Alkahest pot of all things.
The elvin Synth nods. "Yeah. He'll catch up," she agrees, removing her hands from behind her head. As she stands up straight once more she sends a jokingly worried glance his way. "...I think."
She waves goodbye to Aveus, who only momentarily manages to fire off a "I'll see you later Wilnell, Jackie!" to the two of them in one of the few moments he needs to draw breath, then spins on her heel and starts off down the path-street hybrid in the direction they were originally going. Slow enough for Jackie to catch up, of course.
When Jackie does catch up, she looks down at the foxgirl and smiles kindly. "You know, it may not be a wand," she gently informs her. "A magic device picks its user just as much as the user picks it. You could end up with a teddy bear conduit for all I know."
"Why does everything have to have a soul?" Jackie asks. There's Abackpack, Jerry, and now apparently a magic device that's intelligent enough to choose her. "Isn't equipment ever, like, just equipment?"
"Magic begets Magic," Wilnell offers, shrugging. She guides them to a side streetpath off the main street, one that threads between multiple buildings all selling things that look a lot more like the technology of The Nexus than anything Magical. "Souls kinda come along for the ride. If something has enough mana density, or as most people call it magic, it'll either have or grow a soul."
Two children playing chasing a ball suddenly dart in front of them and Wilnell reacts far faster than a human could, drawing two... runes? in the air in front of her and moving her and Jackie sideways around the kids without crossing the intervening space faster than an eyeblink. At least a normal eyeblink; Jackie just barely keeps track of her blurry actions due to her Legendary Vulpine keeping her senses at maximum human capability.
The elvin Synth stops and yells back at the kids. "Hey! Be careful you two!"
A "Sorry!" and another "Sorry Miss Bunny!" come from the dastardly ruffians, though they immediately lose focus and continue playing.
Wilnell sighs and rolls her eyes. "Kids," she says, shrugging. "What can you do?"
Jackie looks up at Wilnell, impressed. "Nice moves." Then suddenly something occurs to her. She looks between her fluffy tailed backpack and the professor. "How did Abackpack use magic? Doesn't it need a magic device?"
Wilnell grins. "Thanks," she says, then her brow furrows. "Wait, what do you mean?" She turns to the golden backpack on Jackie's back, confused. "Abackpack, you used magic?"
Affirmative. Provided fledgling entity Jeeves with physical form, the backpack thinks to them both.
Wilnell's eyebrows shoot into orbit. "The wind orb golem? That was you?!"
Affirmative, Abackpack answers.
"And you... what magic device did you use to shape the spell?"
None.
Wilnell stares at Abackpack, then Jackie, then the backpack again. "...Right," she finally says. "I'm going to ignore that flagrant use of what is clearly extremely classified magic research," she declares, pointing over her shoulder at the entrance to a shop named Mages' Beginnings, "and we are going to get Jackie a good magic device."
As you wish, Abackpack replies, sounding and feeling incredibly amused.
Either certain rules don't apply to Abackpack because of Rob, Jackie reasons, or my little telepathic Synth has been peering into some classified headspace. Either way, it's impressive, though she hopes it's the former.
Snorting in amusement, she gives Abackpack the equivalent of a headpat, then turns back to Wilnell as they proceed towards the shop. "Hey, I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like you used anything with those kids." To demonstrate, Jackie draws a squiggle in the air like Wilnell did.
Wilnell's face erupts into a gigantically smug grin. She turns around and walks backwards without any difficulty. "I did tho," she refutes, placing a hand on her chest. "My body. I'm a Synth, remember?" She gestures up and down to her entire form. "Organithetic sure, but there's still a disconnect between my Mind and my Body. Add an Empowerment to that, and, well..." she shrugs, looking pleased with herself. "The world is my Rune template. Literally."
They steadily approach the rather large store, and it is most definitely a store, known as Mage's Beginnings. There's a lot of younger teenagers and even some kids going in and out of the store, usually accompanied by adults. One pair skips out alongside another young teen, though she seems to be made out of water compared to their human appearances.
The store clearly seems to try and foster a friendly, open environment, as there are plenty of employees in various locations even outside offering explanations and demonstrations to the younglings.
The front of the store is decorated with tall pane glass windows and columns with gargoyles on top of them. A large archway leads inside, but aside from the bright, inviting interior and the warm feeling of excitement spilling forth the internals are blocked by the streams of people.
"Organi-what?" Jackie asks as soon as Wilnell finishes bragging. "And what's your Empowerment?"
The storefront is filled with eye-catching displays and strange-looking people all going about their business. No one bats an eye at the water girl. No one even stares at Jackie, despite her Legendary Vulpine form apparently holding some special meaning for magical types. Like this whole bustling, eclectic marketplace is normal for the people here.
Jackie is just thankful she has Wilnell to guide her, or else she'd definitely be feeling overwhelmed.
Still walking backwards, Wilnell seemingly effortlessly navigates through the people, guiding Jackie up to the archway entrance to Mage's Beginnings. "Ah right, not from around here," she ruminates, nodding her head. "Long story short I'm one type of the two hybrids that form when an Organic and a Synthetic have a kid. My mom is organic, my dad's a Synth, so I'm an Organithetic," she explains succinctly. "I'm the chaotic type. The other one is Synthganic. They're a bunch of wannabe Vulcans."
She pauses to allow a large group of young preteens guided by a man who looks like a teacher by them both while she explains the second part of Jackie's queries. "My Empowerment is actually really cool. Most Runemasters have to have something physical, or at least an object of some kind, to inscribe and execute rune sequences," she informs the foxgirl. Placing a hand on her chest and dramatically throwing her head back, she scoffs regally. "I don't. Anything that has atoms or molecules I can use as my medium. Atmosphere included." The elvin Synth gestures around to the air itself, if her hand waving at nothing actually indicates anything.
The fact that Synths and Organics can have kids together raises a whole lot of questions in Jackie's mind. Questions like, can she and Athena have kids? And how would that even work with Athena's fully organic body? But as quickly as the questions arise, Jackie mentally shoves them into a box, seals the lid tightly, and buries it six feet underground.
Latching on to the cool magic stuff instead, Jackie immediately follows up on that. "Okay, so runes in the air is special just to you because of your Empowerment. But the rest, casting spells using your body as a magic device, can any Synth do that? Like, can Athena do it?"
"I dunno," Wilnell shrugs. "Don't think she's ever really been tested for Magic?" she muses. Another shrug ripples down her shoulders... and chest. "You'd have to ask her, if she's ever been tested it isn't public record and she's messing with me about it."
They pass through the archway and find themselves in a (https://i.imgur.com/w4kUpNF.jpg).
Mage's Beginnings
Shelves line most of the walls of the store. Magic items can be seen everywhere, and it appears the store doesn't have anything missing. Potions, broomsticks, wands, amulets, statues, pretty much everything and anything one would ever hear of connected to or implemented in sterotypical magic is here. The stained glass windows continue up into the ceiling where they let in the sunlight, and great mosaics cover the remaining space. There must be hundreds of people in the store, an even denser version of those outside. In true Hightower fashion, no two shelving units or their contents are the same. Everything from a bazaar-esque small market in the center of the store to a railing-lined bookshelf with stairs on the far end are present. There's even an indoor tree. The bookshelf with stairs ironically doesn't have many books on it, that's reserved for the tall library stack shelf to the right.
​
"Welcome to your beginning as a Mage, Jackie," Wilnell says, allowing them to stop moving for a moment so she can take it all in.
​
Jackie stands there, spinning in a slow circle as she tries to absorb what she's seeing. There's just so much stuff! Books and scrolls, robes and wizard hats, wands, amulets, and more. It's all Jackie can do to keep her jaw on the floor.
"I want to buy *everything*," she says decisively.
Wilnell giggles at Jackie's declaration. "You can do that when you come back," she placates the foxgirl. She points at the corner between the massive staired bookshelves and the tree.
"That's where we're headed," the elvin Synth says, starting to guide Jackie around the busy central bazaar.
At their apparent destination two shelving units with what look like TV screens on their ends stand unaccompanied except by the rare person browsing through the items on them. The 'TV' screens alternate ads for magic devices, belying the nature of the shelves, and wouldn't look out of place in a normal electronics store. The number of different ads, device creators, and devices themselves seems almost endless. One of the short clips that crosses the right screen is of a young redheaded girl summoning a giant fire bear using a stuffed teddy bear device. Another is a wand that looks like it walked out of a steampunk enthusiast's wet dream. Yet another is a pair of gauntlets, both bulky and sleek for differing tastes, which wrap around the forearms and have a specialty in defensive magics.
"So I just need to find one that that I... get along with?" Jackie stops in front of the shelves, peering at whatever catches her eye.
"Yup!" Wilnell confirms, nodding. She reaches for Jackie's hand, gently clasping it in order to guide her in the proper direction. That being one of the lamps casting a weirdly solid beam of light onto the floor. With Jackie's agreement, the elvin Synth guides her to stand in the center of the circle the lamp casts on the floor. "It's easier if you use the detection system, though."
After five seconds of Jackie standing within the circle, the lamplight abruptly turns a distinct mana blue. The lamp seems to have some sort of intelligence, though it is significantly reduced from even the wand that Jackie held before. One part of his attention latches onto her, or rather that piece of her which is somehow her more than her body is, and another part of its attention rapidly flickers between the items on all of the shelves, not just the one in front of them.
"It's just doing what my power already does," Jackie says as she watches the lamp do its work, following its rapidly flickering threads of attention with her eyes.
Wilnell snaps her idly wandering gaze onto Jackie's face. "Your power can detect magic compatibility?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. "Huh."
\
The lamp seems to have narrowed itself down to a given set of items, three of which are on the shelf facing Jackie and Wilnell. The other thirteen are either on the shelf on the other side of the unit in front of them, or in the other unit entirely. Previously it was scanning the mall, but it keeps flickering back and forth between the ones it has found, a feeling of primitive confusion beginning to emanate from the deceptively normal looking lamp.
The closest item to Jackie is a barrel about as round as one of Jackie's tails is thick, made out of wood. There seems to be a spigot at the top of the barrel, denoting this as a keg. The semi transparent, wispy blue lettering below this keg reveals that it is a (http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/...bLarge.jpg).
On the shelf directly across from Jackie's chest is a golden breastplate. It is intricately detailed... And looks like it is made to fit someone like Athena. Or maybe someone even bigger. It's unlikely that the cups of this breastplate even have a bra size associated with them. Oh the canyon of flesh anyone wearing this would have... Despite the clear lack of protection the 'armor' provides, it is nevertheless an (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/35/2b/...b2608f.jpg).
Off to the side and down the shelf a ways, almost hidden behind a shield, an orange tail hangs down. It is attached to a fox plush toy, or at least what appears to be one, curled up and letting its long tail droop down. The (http://koesen-usa.com/wp-content/uploads...Animal.jpg) breathes and emulates life just like a real fox, furthermore enhancing the illusion.
The lamp seems to give up on any further narrowing. It sends a pulse to the items not on the shelf in front of Jackie, which proceed to start hovering and begin slowly making their way around the shelving units. They might be a while given their careful pace.
The lamplight shifts to a pleasant, confirming green to show it is finished. Green wispy lines extend from the lamp to the items it has located, the ones on the other side of the shelf included.
Wilnell stretches, curving her back and reaching for the sky with both her arms and her chest, then grins at Jackie.
"Looks like it's found your device-" she begins to say, then notices how many lines there are leading from the lamp. "...Uh, the heck?"
Jackie shrugs sheepishly, unable to hide a bemused smile. There's always some surprise whenever she's involved, it seems. "I'm popular?"
Turning back to the items, she immediately sees a keg, a breastplate, and a fox plushie. Several more are still behind the shelf, slowly making their way over to her position.
It requires an exercise in willpower, but Jackie manages to resist the temptation to immediately cuddle the fox plushie. Instead the sets it aside for last, mentally.
First the considers the breast. The very, very busty breastplate. Jackie spends almost half a minute staring at the bronze cleavage before shaking herself out of her daze. "Nope," she says. "Maybe for Athena. Don't think it'll fit me."
Next she considers the keg. This one Jackie just stares at, perplexed. How is that thing supposed to even work? Would she lug it around on her back? Maybe do it like some kind of circus act, where she balances on top of the keg and moves by rolling it around?
The keg earns a dismissive shake of the head.
Finally Jackie turns to the Fox of Fluff. Tapping her finger on her chin, she tries her best to look like she's giving it some serious thought. "Hmm... I'd give it a 5/5 for style. Maybe a 3/5 for practicality. I can carry a plushie with my everywhere, but I'd need a backpack..." Something to wear as part of a costume would be preferable, but she could see herself making the Fox of Fluff work.
Unsure of what the rules are here, and not wanting to commit to anything, she keeps her hands and tails to herself, once again resisting the urge to hug the device. Instead she gives the fox the slightest nod of approval before turning to Wilnell and the approaching dozen or so other devices.
Wilnell blinks in surprise at the lamp, then stares at Jackie for a few moments. "Popular," she parrots. "Huh."
She has the look of someone who is slightly out of their depth, both very familiar with the overall situation and yet encountering something they've never seen before. Curious, only slightly concerned, and interested. She looks to the green wispy lines extending from the lamp to the objects coming from the other shelves and raises an eyebrow. While Jackie browses the three items in front of her already, she tilts her head, clearly thinking. Nevertheless, she can't help but giggle when Jackie declares that the immovable breastplate would simply not fit her. "I think that'd be a little roomy for even Athena, Jackie," she jokes.
Wilnell watches the green line of the first approaching item as it comes around the left side of the shelf. Her eyes widen at just exactly what Jackie has proven to be compatible with. "Holy shit," she laments.
A pair of forearm bracers hover in front of her and Jackie in a soft green field. They have intricate patterns carved into them, along with what seems to be carvings of some kind of... if one didn't know better, rivets holding a band around what looks like a turbine system. These feed into a system of carvings that wrap around the gauntlets all the way to the front, a clear channel terminating just above the wrist. The very front surface of the gauntlets, facing the wrist, seems to have a slight semicircle depression immediately underneath the notch within the channel. They honestly looks like some kind of hand cannons, only in bronze-gold bracer form. The blue wispy lettering follows them, denoting them as (https://img1.etsystatic.com/009/1/670350...9_8ehx.jpg).
Wilnell turns to Jackie and just stares, her eyes wide open and jaw dropped.
"I take it these are pretty epic?" Jackie says, unable to hold back a smug grin. This whole display is making her tails fluff up with pride. She raises an eyebrow at Wilnell's expression.
As a bonus, the gauntlets look like something Jackie would actually wear. Light, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to work into a costume or mage's outfit.
Wilnell stares at Jackie for a few more seconds. "Yyeeaaaahahaha," she emphasizes, letting slightly incoherent laughter escape.
The elvin Synth closes her eyes and visibly resets herself, relaxing. When she opens them again she is stable. She looks at the Gauntlets and grins ear to ear. "Epic is underselling them. These..." she gently picks them up, the green glow fading and the wispy lettering dissipating, "I have no idea how or why you can use these, but the fact that you even *can*..." She breathes in and out, clear reverence for these gauntlets on her face. She looks to Jackie and nods. "These are very, very powerful weapons. And tools. For a starting item they're almost the best you can get."
Wilnell holds them out to Jackie, looking as supportive as she can through her obvious glee.
Meanwhile another three items come around the corner and hover behind and to the side of Wilnell, seemingly waiting to be examined.
One is a ball of pink-white energy with what seems to be an ongoing supernova of blue energy on the inside, sometimes escaping the orb in small arcs and waves around it before falling back in. Its label declares it a (https://ak9.picdn.net/shutterstock/video...humb/1.jpg).
The other two are identical, hovering right next to each other. They're crowns, that much is clear, though they seem less complex in regal than most Royal crowns one may have seen. Simple swirls are attached to the rim. They are apparently each a (https://orig06.deviantart.net/f5fa/f/201...6ydqk5.jpg).
While the twin crowns look rather plain, the Future Hero's Orb looks awesome, though Jackie is unsure just how exactly she's supposed to carry it around with her. She turns from the orb to Wilnell with a perplexed head tilt, then shrugs.
More importantly, there's a pair of gauntlets being offered to her. Gauntlets which have Wilnell's full and enthusiastic approval.
Jackie takes them with a mix of reverence and glee.
Wilnell gently draws her hands back and clasps them together in front of her waist. Her giddy smile only gets wider and she watches Jackie with great anticipation.
The gauntlets feel heavy and Jackie's hands. Not like a weight, beyond the rather obvious material weight, but more like they have a presence*. Something about them just seems more... *real*, than any of the other items. They also seem to have some kind of internal sea, just like Jackie's, only it's completely empty. It honestly feels more like a *void than a sea, even though the concept of that 'sea' is still present. Not quite hunger, but more like... potential.
Jackie's own internal sea seems ready and willing to fill the emptiness, but after the experience with the wand it is certainly waiting for her to call on it.
The gauntlets are just long enough to cover Jackie's entire forearm. They end before the bend of the elbow and begin just after the wrist. That doesn't seem to be a way to open them, so Jackie must just have to slip them on by threading her arm through them.
"If I push magic into these," Jackie asks carefully, "are they going to blow a hole through the shop?" The gauntlets are practically begging her to slip them on and fill up their internal reservoir, but after Wilnell's testing wand, she knows better.
Wilnell shakes her head. "Nah," she assures Jackie, "mana directors of this potential wouldn't be within the reach of children if they didn't have safeties." She comes closer and bends down, tapping the turbine blade looking carvings a couple of times. "If you're feeling a pull, it's probably just their reactors waiting to start." She stands back up and shrugs. "They're most likely self-sustaining from the ambient mana you or I give off once ignited."
Five more items come around the shelves to the right. Three nearly identical bracelet pairs with different colored gemstones, one color for each pair, hover in a green field. Those must be Benevolent Spectre's Bracelets. The unholy lovechild of a mace, a hammer, and what looks like a fat bat is next to them, a so-called Ghost's Cudgel. The final item is a pair of sandals with a wingless, serpentine dragon forming the jutes. The sandals are the Sandals of the Sea Serpent.
Absently, Jackie notices the latest items to arrive. None of them hold a candle to the Gauntlets or the Orb. After a moment, Jackie nods to Wilnell's explanation, then slips on the gauntlets and pushes her mana into them. "Let's get those reactors started, then."
"I haven't actually ever seen one of these start up," Wilnell reveals. She looks like a kid at XMas. "It's supposed to be so cool!"
The gauntlets slip on easily and settle on Jackie's arms like a glove. Even though they were a little larger than her arms beforehand, they certainly fit now. That presence they seem to exude spreads first through Jerry's covering of her arms, then her own arms, before linking up with something deep within her and suddenly feeling right. A warm comfort and steady potential bleeds over into Jackie from the gauntlets, providing self-assurance and absolute confidence in the gauntlet's abilities... and by extension, her own.
The potential seas inside accept the directed mana, filling rapidly. The huge reservoir inside Jackie doesn't seem to be hesitant now, thus the speedy transfer. Once the surprisingly large dual seas finish filling up, they emit all of that stored magic directly into the gauntlets.
All the carvings immediately light up, lines of glowing golden-blue streams of light highlighting the carvings. The small divets in the turbine blade looking carvings begin to glow with an inner light... and then suddenly two loud clunks ring out as they somehow draw into the surface of the gauntlets. The slight contraction is enough to allow them to spin around the gauntlet's surface freely, which they immediately start to do. A whirring sound accompanies the startup process, alongside a quiet crackling. Arcs of what looks like golden-blue lightning crawl along the surface of the metal encasing Jackies' arms. No harm is caused by them, beyond hair sticking up on end. Accelerating faster and faster, glowing more and more with every second, the obvious turbines spin up until they're spinning so fast they merely look like golden blurs. The crackling arcs subside, the whirring drops in volume until it's barely audible, and only a constant, quiet hum remains.
The gauntlet's sea begins to fill again, this time from the gauntlets themselves, and they send Jackie the feeling of being ready.
Wilnell's eyes are wide and she's grinning ear to pointy ear. "Yup!" she almost whispers. "Cool confirmed!"
"H-h-holy cow," Jackie says, having watched the ignition sequence wide-eyed. She holds her gauntleted arms up and turns them from side to side. Then suddenly she breaks out into a huge grin. "*So* cool."
The spinning turbines somehow slightly inside her arm don't seem to care about Jackie turning them in different directions. They just keep on humming.
"So I only know a little about these things," Wilnell sheepishly admits. "Mainly their cool factor and the fact they're insane mana direction systems. Runemasters don't generally have a use for, well," she gestures to the gauntlets haphazardly, "glorified elemental turbines with attached hand cannons."
She spins on her heel and marches over to the Future Hero's Orb, picking it up gracefully. Another heeled spin (she seems to be really good at those) with her hair flying out behind her and she marches back up to Jackie. "But I do know that this Orb is essentially an incredibly dense mana reservoir, and you've got the turbines already, so... battery time?" She smiles approvingly, holding the Orb up to Jackie.
Now that it's closer, the sea within the thing is plain as a road flare in the dead of night. It's not even trying to hide its presence like the Gauntlets were, the what amounts to solar flares of mana escaping the pink ball leaking the stuff like a screen door on a submarine. Or maybe more like waves upon a shore, given that's how it feels.
Even Jerry and Abackpack like it. The former just feels this, of course, but Abackpack is doing the equivalent of jaw-dropped.. or is that zipper-dropped, staring. Its tails are all still, hanging down, giving another impression of the slackest of jaws.
Jackie gingerly takes the offered orb with both hands. She doesn't know how this is supposed to work, but figures it will become apparent soon enough. "Heh. Who needs Alkahest when you have... whatever this is."
The Future Hero's Orb doesn't feel like an... well, an orb. The pink, transparent surface is ethereal, soft and yet hard at the same time. The sensation of solid stone and also loose sea foam comes to Jackie's fingers as she touches it.
The moment her fingers actually meet the Orb, it very obviously opens a potential connection with her. Unlike the Gauntlets or even the crazy Wand, this device is very, very loud. And yet, the sensation is that of a very large person being unable to lower their voice.
Only with magic.
And with soul shenanigans.
It's very confusing.
While the sea within this thing is only an eigth the size of the one of Jackie's... tagalong, it is none the less immense.
The Gauntlets also seem to get connection requests from the Orb. They forward their own feeling of query on to Jackie.
The gauntlets want to play with the orb's massive mana reservoir? Jackie gives them her permission, though she does wonder why Jerry and Abackpack were so excited about this thing. Then she forwards a mental query to Abackpack, asking what the big deal is.
The Orb seems pleased, though it was clearly expecting her assent. It forges a connection with Jackie first, which feels a bit like sticking her tongue in a power outlet... only for her soul. The sensation dies down after a moment.
Then the Gauntlets and the Orb create their own connections, and Jackie can almost see the ethereal wispy rivers of power flowing between them. The Gauntlet's internal seas almost immediately empty into the Orb's... and barely affect the level at all.
The Orb confirms a connection with Jackie's moon-sized magic bullshit organ, though neither exchange any portions of their seas beyond a small amount just to make sure the passing back and forth can even function. The Orb lifts off of Jackie's hand and begins to hover next to her shoulder, though it sends her the impression that it will immediately go wherever she directs it should she will it.
Magic device designated Future Hero's Orb contains similar mana density to tails, Abackpack informs Jackie, though clearly even that is a struggle given how shocked it is.
Wilnell beams at her, pride almost rolling off her. "And just to defy more of my expectations, I think that was the smoothest device integration I've ever witnessed," she declares, putting her hands on her hips. She nods at Jackie, an approving look in her eyes. "You can choose one more. It's not a good idea to overtax your... let's call it magic bandwidth, even with your bullshit reservoir." She turns her head slightly and eyes the obvious fox tail. "Not that it's unclear which one you're choosing next," she teases Jackie, winking.
There are still more items coming from the other shelving unit.
At Wilnell's remark, Jackie rubs her head with a tail sheepishly. "That obvious, huh?" Without waiting for the other items, she scoops up the fox plushie and cuddles it in her arms. Meanwhile she hugs the Orb with her tails.
"For reference, how much mana do mages usually have?" she asks Wilnell. "Compared to the Orb?"
"Yup," Wilnell nods sagely. "Called it."
She finds herself unable to keep from outright snorting at Jackie's second question. She holds her hands up to either side of her and moves them up and down. "Magic," she says, raising her right hand. She then looks to her left hand and raises that while lowering her right hand. "Normal." She drops both hands and shrugs at Jackie. "Pick one, pretty much. Everybody's different and has different aptitudes in magic." She shrugs again, frowning at the Orb. "Though... I'd say maybe... thirty? Yeah, that feels right, thirty times the mana capacity of a lot of the other beginners I've brought here to get items."
Jackie nods as if that's the answer she expected. "Now I just need to find a way to be thirty times more cool and mysterious, and I'm all set."
Wilnell seems to think on it for a few moments. The fox plushie, meanwhile, fidgets in Jackie's hands, still asleep. It nuzzles her wrist before settling down.
She abruptly snaps her fingers and points them in the shape of a finger gun at Jackie. "You could probably grab a Cloak of Mystery from one of the more specialist shops," she informs her. "I don't know if it'll make you more mysterious, your Cute rating is absolutely insane, but they generate SEP fields so you should at least be able to fake it."
Jackie snaps her fingers and fingerguns back. "Cloak of Mystery. That'll come in handy for when I inevitably make myself the center of attention again."
Wilnell giggles and nods. "Yeah. They're good for stealthy operations," she agrees. Her tone becomes teasing and she winks at Jackie. "Not that I think you can actually achieve being sneaky, miss stupidly high Cute rating hugfox with giant shiny magic dragon wings." She even sticks out her tongue.
"Maybe I could pick up some Christmas lights for my tails..." Jackie muses. "I wonder what I would even do on an infiltration mission. Hum the Mission Impossible theme while hugging every guard?" She tilts her head, trying to picture it. "Actually, I think it depends on context. Maybe the Protectorate really needs someone to infiltrate a den of evil hugfoxes? I'd be perfect."
Jackie's musing amuses Wilnell, and she chuckles. "I'm sure someone somewhere has made tail lights," she agrees. She shrugs, smiling apologetically at Jackie. "I've got no idea about the Protectorate though. I'm just signed up as a reservist for things like Chaosbringer battles or natural disasters."
Jackie takes on a far-off look as she tries to imagine what Wilnell would unleash against a Chaosbringer. If the Greatest Magic Show were anything to go by, it must be incredibly impressive. So impressive that Jackie can't even picture it, but still, the thought of that much firepower has her tails wagging subconsciously.
"Huh," Wilnell remarks, noticing Jackie's tails. "You're attracted to firepower too? Man, Athena really lucked out." She scoffs and shakes her head. "*Crazy overwhelming firepower obsessed Brick,*" she mutters under her breath.
"Hehe." Jackie looks down at her gauntlets, grinning and rubbing her hands together. "Going to have to give these a test run soon." She was planning a trip to the firing range with Athena, but now that she has firepower of her own, the priority goes up.
"Also"—Jackie holds up the Fox of Fluff and pets it—"I need to figure out what this does. Maybe I crank the tail and fireballs shoot out the mouth like a gatling gun? Or I fluff the fur to build up a static charge until I can blast lightning with my tails." Her tails wag and she snickers under her breath as she continues to fantasize.
Jackie striking the two gauntlets against each other causes a momentary flare of lightning to arc between the two of them. More flashy flair than actual lightning, though, given the small amount of mana present in the bolt.
Wilnell shakes her head, amused. "Pretty sure that's just a mana focus, Jackie," she tells the fox girl cuddling the fox plush and pointedly ignoring the entirely unnecessary gauntlet effects, "even if the animation system on it is impressive."
The elvin woman moves towards the fox and peers down at it.
The sleeping fox plushie doesn't seem to notice, dozing away peacefully.
Jackie nuzzles her face into the plushie's fur. "So no gatling gun fox? Well, it's still adorable."
Wilnell gives Jackie a wry look. "You have more than enough firepower with the gauntlets," she teasingly points out.
Her hand, seemingly without her knowledge, snakes up between her and the fox plushie that Jackie is snuggling. She only notices that she's petting the fox when the Elvin woman looks down. She starts a little, then sighs, shaking her head.
The fox shuffles a little under the snuggling and petting, letting out a contented whine.
Jackie giggles and snuggles the fox some more. Even Wilnell can't resist the cuteness!
The petting and snuggling of the faux fox by the heavy metal elf and the bigger human fox continues for a while, but eventually Wilnell manages to regain control of herself and draws her hand back.
She sighs happily and nods at Jackie's new equipment. "So, you wanna keep looking around the store, or shall we go pay?" she asks, pointing over towards the exit archway where a few stone orbs with tons of subtly glowing runes inscribed into them hover in the air. People pass by them and simply wave their items and what appear to be Alliance IDs near the orb, before leaving the store without worry.
Cloak of Mystery... but no. Giving in to her better judgement, or perhaps her desire to show off her new toys to Athena, Jackie shakes her head. "Better go pay." She looks longingly at her gauntlets, tails wagging lightly, then glances over to the checkout area uncertainly.
I never asked how much these were, but... Jackie nibbles on her lower lip and fidgets with some tail fluff. If it comes down to it, I don't really need two kidneys, do I?
Wilnell catches her glance to the payment orbs and laughs lightly. "Don't worry Jackie, the Hightower has a fund for brand new Mages," she explains, reaching into the crevice between her breasts. Out her hand comes, pulling out what appears to be a small, rounded flat stone with a single slightly glowing blue rune on it. "Basically, these are on me."
With that the elvin Synth spins on her heel and marches off towards the minimal line for the orbs, unhurried yet still proceeding. "Come on!" she calls back.
Squealing in glee, Jackie hurries to catch up, an act made more difficult by all nine of her tails wagging heavily, forcing her into what looks like a zig-zagging drunken jog towards the payment orbs.
Wilnell strolls up the closest free orb just after the person in front of them, who was previously the back of the 'line' for the checkout lane while they walked over to it, and spins on her heels again to wait for Jackie's... creative approach method.
She does try to at least look professional and patient, though it falls flat as she can't help but giggle at the tail driven drunken zigzag.
"I'm... coming... as fast... as I can," Jackie pants, pumping her arms for extra speed that all dissipates into sideways motion. It only takes a few moments to reach Wilnell, but it feels like longer. When she arrives, Jackie fake wipes the sweat from her brow.
Wilnell rolls her eyes, grins, and shakes her head fondly. "Just hold up each item to the orb so it can register them," she says, gesturing between Jackie's gauntlets and the hovering orb. She can't help but get in a little teasing, though. "Try not to get drunk fox on them, they aren't warded against that."
"Ha ha." Jackie begins by holding the fluffy fox plushie up to the orb, followed by the Future Hero's Orb and the gauntlets. When she finishes, she looks at the payment orb like she wants to hug it.
With each item Jackie passes within a few inches of the payment orb's surface, a different set of runes light up and the stone emits a pleasant sounding chime.
Once Jackie has passed every item she has by the orb Wilnell dramatically swipes the rune stone by it as well. It chimes normally again, then all the runes on it pulse in unison and it lets out a final sounding gong sound.
Wilnell returns the stone to her cleavage and turns to Jackie. "And like that, we're done!" she cheerily declares, closing her eyes and smiling.
"We are?" Jackie gasps, then throws her arms (and tails) up in the air. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" She bounces in a happy little circle around the orb, pumping her fists up and down.
Jackie playing an abrupt round of ring around the fox orb makes Wilnell grin even wider, though she does nod to the impatiently waiting, but understanding and also grinning, almost fondly, woman made out of what appears to be pure smoky darkness who comes up to the orb behind them.
She gestures to the exit archway. "Wanna go see if Aveus has finished his lecture yet?" she asks. "I'm sure he'd be willing to nerd out on your new toys just as much as he loves Alkahest."
Jackie turns to her, wide-eyed with several of her tails pointing straight up. "Yes!" She'd almost forgotten about Aveus. After giving a sheepish grin and a nod to the very patient and understanding woman behind them, the foxgirl slinks over to Wilnell and out of the store.
Wilnell leads Jackie out of the store and onto the walking side street. The Future Hero's Orb follows Jackie just as it's meant to, and once more they are among the river of people.
Wilnell stops, putting her hands on her hips. Her tall stature allows her to peer over many of the people in the relatively small flow of their side street. "Okay, now where did we come from?" she asks herself, metaphorically scratching her head.
Her confusion is understandable, given the side street lets out on both ends to major streets full of people.
What's not so understandable is her forgetting she's a Synth, so she should know the exact path they took.
We need to find Aveus, Jackie thinks. That shouldn't be too hard. Finding a specific person that they're both thinking about, especially a former student whom Wilnell knows personally, would be nearly trivial for Jackie's power.
"This way," Jackie says, a self-satisfied smile settles on her face. She doesn't even break stride as she passes Wilnell, following the threads linking them to the lecturing alchemist like it's the most natural thing in the world.
Wilnell blinks at Jackie's confidence, then sighs and closes her eyes. "Locator, right," she nods in remembrance. She mumbles a reprimand to herself as she follows Jackie towards the closer main street. "*And you're a Synth, stop forgetting that just cuz your body is rocking, Wil.*"
Jackie's foxy ears swivel to pick up Wilnell's words, which only cause her pride to swell even greater. Her tails fluff up and start wagging slightly, putting an extra bounce to her step.
She's totally right about the rockin' body, too, Jackie thinks, snickering quietly to herself.
They approach the primary street quickly due to Jackie's efficient maneuvering, which Wilnell has no issue following. If she cheats sometimes, walking simultaneously around and through people to keep up with the foxgirl tails peeking up like periscope from the river of people, oh well.
Once on the primary street, Aveus is immediately obvious. His crowd has only grown and at this point he might as well be on a stage, showing off multiple sorts of esoteric and specialized magic effects and spells to an awed audience. Of course, this is still a lecture, so even as he gestures with his hands and tosses a small bit of what is obviously Alkahest into the air to make a gigantic fireball in the sky he's still explaining everything he's doing.
"-And so, as you can see, if you imbue the alkahest with an elemental equivalent signature then it will draw from the background wave system and emanate the effect you intend-"
Once Wilnell catches up, Jackie nudges her with an elbow and nods to the lecturing alchemist. "He's still at it." If Jackie is able to, she would maneuver herself to the front of the crowd so that he can see them.
Wilnell looks to her former student and shakes her head. "Of course he is," she laments.
It is at that moment that Aveus' gaze alights on the two women in his continual spin. "Wilnell! Jackie!" he loudly exclaims, gesturing to them. "How was your trip?"
"Well we didn't fall down the lecture hole!" Wilnell shouts back.
"Haha!" Aveus bellows, laughing genuinely. "I can't help it, you know that!" Quite a few people laugh at or with him, nodding along. Including Wilnell.
He seems not to pay very much attention to Jackie's new items, either because he's too into his lecturing mode or he just doesn't see them. The two women are on the edge of the crowd, after all.
"He's probably going to ask you to show off your new toys for the crowd if we tell him about them," Wilnell warns Jackie, slightly leaning down to her level. "Think you're up to it?"
Jackie considers it. "The fox, sure. The ridiculously dangerous weapons that I've never used before? Eh..." She makes a so-so gesture, shrugs, and frowns.
"Both your fox and the gauntlets are safe, Jackie, they won't misfire like... Wanda," Wilnell reassures her, slightly smiling at the nickname that is apparently stuck like glue to her crazy wand. "And if you choose to use whatever function allows them to dump their mana, just fire them at the sky, the Hightower can take care of the rest. Hell, it can do it if you accidentally unload into the crowd." She puts a hand on her chin and absentmindedly rubs, in thought. "Well, at least I think so. The Hightower's safety systems have handled much larger magical discharges than those should be capable of dishing out."
Aveus continues his lecturing, this time placing regular geometric shapes of Alkahest in the air in front of him and is clearly charging them somehow, as an increase in their glow gradually spreads through the interconnected shapes from the center.
That seems a lot more reasonable than Jackie thought at first. Back where she was from, discharging a weapon you didn't understand in the middle of a crowd was a pretty good way to piss off the Protectorate. Then again, simply walking the street with a friend and a cute tinker toy was enough to piss them off, so maybe they were just pissy all the time.
Fortunately Earth Krac was a place where fun wasn't outlawed.
Tails wagging happily, Jackie nods to Wilnell. "Alright. As long as it's safe. Let's tell him and inevitably make me the center of attention again when things don't go as expected."
Wilnell shares Jackie's euphoria and grins, tossing her a dramatic thumbs up. "Sounds good!" She exclaims
Then she puts her hands to her mouth and yells towards Aveus, the only way he can hear her over the rapid series of hopefully controlled blue explosions occurring in the center of his elaborate mandala. "HEY AVEUS!"
He doesn't notice her calling him, just continuing to spout things about subspace and rapid mana ether excitement.
Wilnell sighs, shakes her head, and tries again. "YO, ROCK BONER!"
That gets his attention. He spins around to face the two of them, grinning widely. "WHAT, WILNELL?" he asks.
"JACKIE HAS COOL NEW TOYS!"
His eyes widen, his grin becomes positively maniacal, and he slashes through the exploding mandala almost without a care. It fades into dust that drops to the ground as he snaps his gaze to the Orb hovering near Jackie's shoulder. "An Orb?" he asks, eyes alight. "She can support that?"
Almost the entire audience, seeming to realize something cool and new is being shown, swivels to look at Jackie. Not a one of them mean her harm, and easily more than half are staring more at her magic items than her. Several hastily begin doing absolutely horrendous things to their recording methods.
Wilnell gestures for Jackie to hold her arms up. "And Energy Manipulation Gauntlets!"
Aveus' eyes widen even further and his jaw drops. "For a *beginner?!*" he asks.
"Yup!"
A wave composed of variants of 'ooh', 'wow', and 'holy shit' ripples through the crowd.
Jackie didn't think it was possible, but her tails fluff up even more as the crowd oohs and aahs at her cool toys. Beaming, she steps up next to Aveus and stops hugging her plushie long enough to hold it up proudly. "*And* a Fox of Floof!"
"Fox fluff for the fox god!" some dude calls out.
Aveus looks at the Fox, his eyebrows rising. "Three items, Jackie?" he asks her, awed... Not quite disbelief, but more pseudo acceptance on his face.
Cue another wave of 'holy shit', 'wow', and etc, this time punctuated by a few squeals from some of the clearly female members of the audience... and at least two males.
"Yessss," Jackie purrs, petting the fox as the turns around, showing off her toys to all the onlookers. Whoever called out "fox fluff for the fox god" gets an extra big grin from her before she turns back to Aveus.
Meanwhile one of her tails starts patting herself on the head.
The story so far:
Previously, at the Hightower...
Jackie revealed the Endbringers and her otherworldly origin to Wilnell and Leah. They then entered the Hightower, a place of wonder, magic, and adventure. Misunderstandings were had and Wilnell offered Jackie some hot chocolate up in her rooms. The fox girl agreed, Wilnell brought them to her rooms via spatial warping provided by the Hightower, and Jackie learned that the Hightower is both far larger than it appears and quite doglike towards those it deems worthy. The blip in temporal access occurred right after Wilnell's invisible, intangible butler, Jeeves, revealed to Jackie that he has the potential to become sapient, and Jackie asked about souls...
##"Ah," Wilnell acknowledges Jackie's information. "Sounds like he's pretty close then."
She momentarily turns back to look at Jeeves and brings both hands to her chest, over her heart, clasping them. "I'll wait for you, Jeeves!" she dramatically exclaims, faux fainting back into the couch.
Jeeves' fluctuation most definitely communicates the raw essence of amused eye rolling.
A couple of moments later, Wilnell remembers Jackie's question, and her eyes light up. Literally, they momentarily glow, much like the other Synths Jackie has encountered. "Soul igniting?" she almost gasps, a look of glee on her face. She sits up and snaps her gaze to Jackie. "Oooooh. Teaching. Do you want the short version or the teacher's lecture?"
Like a deer in the headlights—or a Synth doing an intense computation—Jackie freezes, scrunching her brow as she massively overthinks her reply. To say no to more information goes against her nature. But there's so many other things she wants to hear about!
Eventually, after realizing she's paused for too long, Jackie utters a low "uh..." Then she chuckles at herself and spreads her ears in an attentive, sheepish expression. "Let's go with 'yes.'"
Wilnell cracks a grin at Jackie's clear conflicting interests. "Don't worry, I'll keep it easy on you, and you can come to an actual lecture or do some research in the Library for more in depth stuff. Sound good?"
"Y-yeah." Jackie smiles and looks down. "Sounds good."
Wilnell nods, then draws herself up and squares her shoulders as if in preparation. She opens her mouth to begin, then pauses, her eyes slightly widening. Her mouth closes and she furrows her eyebrows in thought.
"Uh... before I get to that... should I give you a crash course on Magic?" she eventually asks, sounding thoughtful. "Given you said you weren't from around here..."
"Oh. Yeah. That would help." Jackie wags one of her tails. "A few days ago I didn't even know it existed."
"Okay then," Wilnell agrees, smiling. "You're in for quite the wakeup call."
She straightens her shoulders again, closing her eyes, and begins to breathe in and out. She's clearly focusing on something.
A moment later, her eyes snap open, glowing. This isn't the glowing of Athena or Aceso, more akin to that of the glow that comes from a certain golden being. Only Wilnell's is blue, a dense fog slowly spilling off her eyelids and into the air. The very feeling of power suffuses the room. Yet again, the feeling is similar to that of Jackie's previous run in with glowing beings... only quite different at the same time.
And not remotely as powerful, of course.
A small part of Jackie, that bit which paid attention to Leah's example earlier, feels drawn not to Wilnell, but to that fog.
"Magic," Wilnell says, cracking a grin, "is simultaneously more wonderful, and more awesome, classical definition, than one would initially believe." Her voice has a slightly ethereal quality to it, as if she is speaking in echoes alongside normally.
She raises a hand to the ceiling and clenches her fist. It glows momentarily with that same blue mist, though this time interlaced with faintly brighter glowing circuitry, and flares.
The space around their couch seems to waver, a feeling of weakening emanating from the universe itself, and then that fog starts to flow into existence from various even weaker points in the fabric of thin air. From nothing, something comes.
The blue is darker than Wilnell's particular fog coloring, more reminiscent of the twelve tailed being that appeared to Jackie momentarily outside the Hightower. It is also entirely intangible, anyone able to pass their hand through the stuff as if it wasn't there. The fog does seem to respect the physical dimensions of things somewhat, however, as while it cannot be felt, it can be directed by passing limbs.
Wilnell smiles at the fog, fondly, as if remembering something, and then lowers her hand. "It is everywhere," she speaks reverently, still staring at the fog. "Mana, Ki, Magic, Ether, whatever you want to call it. Many civilizations have had different names for the same thing." She idly raises a hand and guides it through a bank of the fog, eddies swirling up in her hand's wake. "No-one knows where it comes from, nor why it exists. But we do know that it is vital to our universe's continued function..." here she trails off, staring straight into Jackie's eyes if she can, "and the formation of powerful Souls."
Magic is a blue fog, is what Jackie gets from that. Or at least a blue something.
No one knows where it came from or why it exists, but the universe would be broken without it.
Jackie blinks at that. Her universe seemed to get along just fine without Magic. Did something happen to this universe to make it dependent? Maybe it's like potato chips; once you start, it's impossible to stop.
Wherever it came from, magic feels like Rob, or the blue foxgirl. Wilnell's display catches the attention of some part of Jackie's mind, just like Leah's did earlier.
For an instant, Jackie wonders if she could get the twelve tailed being's attention just by focusing with her power, like she did with Tower. Then she pushes the thought aside, meeting Wilnell's gaze when Soul formation comes up.
Jackie leans in, a second tail now wagging along with the first.
"Souls... they are complicated, and until quite recently we didn't actually know a lot about them," Wilnell continues. "For the longest time in history the concept of science was anathema to the concept of magic. They were considered opposites, things that could never combine." The elvin woman snorts, gesturing to the room around them. "The Hightower is technically the Magical Sciences building of Eureka University, so you can see how much worth us modern Magicals put into that assumption."
She runs her hand through the now almost omnipresent fog once more, wistfully. "Even with that change, we still acknowledge that Magic acts almost opposite to how the rest of the universe seems to work. Thus why we have Magical Science, and not just Science with a field of Magic. Quantum Science is a similar distinction, which is rather ironic as Magic leverages the quantum world to do what it does in the first place."
Quantum Science, Magic Science, and Science Science. Jackie nods. From the sound of it, something big happened that changed how people look at Magic, hence the new kind of science.
Whatever it was that happened, it's something to look into later.
If any of the fog comes near Jackie, she would try to floof it.
The fog is present around their couch, thick enough to be everywhere. It clings slightly to Jackie's skin, almost like a full body hug, and she will have to shake it off of her to make it detach.
It feels slightly warm, though not in a temperature fashion. More like... something Jackie has always known, yet unnoticed before now. Something that feels like her even more than her body ever has. That something, she, is warmed by the fog and warms it in return. Something just under the surface of her skin. The thing that makes Jackie... Jackie.
"Souls are what makes us, us," Wilnell reveals. She indicates her body with her hands, waving them up and down her form. "Our bodies are material, they interact with the outside world. In a way, they are remote control vehicles for us, the real us. We, you and I, and everything else with a Soul, reside on a slightly higher layer of reality than our bodies or the physical world do."
She makes a series of complicated hand gestures, tracing out glowing transparent circuits in the air, and then taps the array. It glows brighter for a few moments, then morphs into a series of flat planes stacked one on top of the other. Wilnell points to the middle one and names it. "Reality. That layer is our physical universe." She then points to the one slightly above it. "The Soul Layer. That's where our Souls reside." Another, shorter, series of gestures from her hands causes a billowing, roiling field of that same fog to reveal itself between the two layers she's named. "And that is the Universal Magic Field, binding the two together. It is what enables us to even exist. As far as we can tell, most other universes have one, or something similar, but ours is the only one we've found with such an active field. It is from this field that Magic, the Mind, and all the things we can do with both, spring forth."
Reality has layers, like an onion. The physical universe. The Soul Layer. And the Universal Magic Field, which binds the two together. But there are more layers, at least if the visualization is accurate. Interesting. And if her old world didn't have magic, that's because its version of the universal field was inactive, like a dormant volcano, or... like Jeeves.
Unsubstantiated yet fascinating, the thought lingers in her mind, making her go still. Even her wagging tails slow.
Eventually she shakes her head, but her introspection continues. The fog now feels like it's warming her, somehow. Warming her soul.
Has it always been doing that?
As Jackie continues to fluff the fog, she comes to a realization. Jerry, her power, and the warm fog all have something in common. They exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship with her, like Tower and the mages inside it.
Jackie's eyes widen at the revelation, and she lets out a soft gasp. Then she looks up sheepishly at Wilnell and stops fluffing the magic.
Wilnell pauses her lecture with a kind, knowing grin. "Figured something out?" she gently asks.
"Can I use magic?" Jackie blurts out, predictably.
There are at least a dozen tantalizing observations she could have brought up instead, but none of them carry the same awesome potential as this one question. A question which she now realizes Wilnell must have been expecting for some time.
Wilnell blinks, then snickers at Jackie's excited question. "It would be a fluke on the order of a planet killing asteroid making it through Skynet's defense systems if you couldn't," she informs the fox girl. "Toting around a Magic attuned object with the mass of a small moon inside your brain shouldn't just enable you to do it, you should be quite powerful as well."
Then she rolls her eyes. "Still not sure how you got that and lived to tell it, by the way, but I'm enough of a Synth to not intentionally dig for Security Level 9 classified information from a *reality traveler*."
"Okay," Jackie says, trying and failing not to grin like an idiot. "Honest opinion. Am I cool and mysterious?"
"Cool?" Wilnell repeats, thinking about it. She shakes her head. "Nah. Cute, more like."
"As for mysterious, only in effect," she continues. "You, Jackie, aren't very mysterious at all, but events and circumstances surrounding you make me very curious." the elvin woman leans slightly closer and grins. "Cool Magic stuff and other universes are kinda my pet projects."
"Just cute and interesting?" Jackie pouts, as if puppy eyes would change Wilnell's mind. When, of course, it doesn't, the fox girl switches to a lip bite and a grin, her brown eyes bright and focused in the elvin woman's features.
Wilnell quirks her eyebrow and her lips upwards. "You realize everything you just did only made you more adorable, right?" she teases, winking.
Jackie covers her face with her tails and hunches into her shoulders. "No it didn't," she squeaks.
Wilnell inclines her chin and adds a dramatic flair to her words. "And so, the adorables continued," she starts narrating. "The young vixen attempted to protest her Cute rating, but then-"
Jackie wails in dismay and piles on more tails to cover her heated cheeks.
"-when confronted with the impossible to refute truth of her adorableness, endeavored to retreat from the world behind her many fluffy tails," Wilnell finishes, grinning ear to ear.
At length, Jackie peers through a gap in her tails while her ears peek up like twin periscopes in an ocean of floof. "Are you finished?" she asks in a small voice.
Wilnell closes her eyes and nods, still grinning. "Yep!"
"So it's safe to come out?" The gap in Jackie's tails widens.
Wilnell still has her eyes closed, but she tilts her head side to side. "Your adorables will only result in spontaneous hugging if you give me permission," she sing songs. Then she peeks open an eye at the foxgirl, grinning even wider, a hopeful shine to what little of her eye is visible.
"I mean..." Jackie pauses, her mental processes grinding to a halt even as her ears perk at the word 'hug.' One of her tails slips to reveal a smile. "Sure." Trailing off into an embarrassed mumble, she adds, "You can... also... pet," before burying her burning face back in the floof.
"YES!" Wilnell cries out, suddenly diving across the couch.
She wraps her arms around Jackie and hugs her tight, pressing her face against her chest. Her metallic hair falls over Jackie's head and tickles her ears.
She brings one hand up and starts petting the foxgirl's head. "You are fluffy and I will call you fluffy and hug you and give you cuddles!" she exclaims, squeezing.
Jackie barely has time to squeak in surprise before she's pulled into a tight embrace, her sensitive ears fully exposed to the Mage's enthusiastic attention. Delicate fingers and thick, metallic hair brush her fur, making her twitch and giggle.
A pair of tails wrap around Wilnell's waist, pulling her in nice and snug.
"Fluuffffyyyy cccuuuuuddddllleessss," Wilnell coos, continuing to pet Jackie's head with her hand. She then removes her hand and begins rubbing one of the tails around her wasit. "So fluffy! Did you turn the floof setting up to maximum or something?"
If there had been a setting for experimental, dangerous, and possibly illegal amounts of floof, Jackie would have gotten it in a heartbeat.
"I'm pushing the boundaries of floof science," she says with a lazy moan. Her eyes flutter closed, and she arches her tail into Wilnell's hand. "Any more is impossible... for now."
Wilnell giggles and scrunches Jackie's tail fur. "The boundaries of floof science, huh?" she teasingly asks, nuzzling Jackie's hair with her chin. "Yeah, I believe it. You're so fluffy!"
"Ah--haha, y-yup!" Jackie squirms, unable to resist the feeling of having her tails played with. A few shuddering breaths later, she counterattacks by flapping her ears against Wilnell's face.
"Pffhhght!" Wilnell splutters from the unexpected floof in her face and a little in her mouth. She slightly withdraws her head, spits out a couple of the hairs she accidentally managed to bite off, then goes back in so her chin can assault the culprit of her furry problem, Jackie's ears. "One two three four, I declare a chin-ear war!" she exclaims.
"Nooooo!" Jackie cries between giggles. One ear hunkers down against the chin-based assault while the other tickles Wilnell's nose.
"Wilnell Yes!" the elvin woman refutes, continuing her relentless chin-powered assault of Jackie's ear. She only sniffles a little from the nose tickling of Jackie's other ear.
This isn't a battle Jackie can win. Her ears are too sensitive. Just brushing her fur makes her nerves tingle, and a dedicated assault like this feels like electric jolts surging straight into her brain. Her giggles rise to little shrieks, and what once started with some minor ear twitches slowly intensifies into a full-body squirm, the foxgirl burying her face in the mage's bust in an effort to hide.
"Haha! Victoooory!" Wilnell cheers, causing her chest to bounce as she throws her arms up in the air suddenly and pumps them. "Snuggle victory is mine!"
The bounce brings a noticeable heat to Jackie's cheeks, despite her best efforts to hide how good she's feeling. She was able to keep it in check during the petting and head scratches, barely, but it's hard to ignore a face full of boob. And the petting feels insanely good.
She could get used to this, easily.
The messy-haired foxgirl has to wriggle a bit to extricate herself, and when she does she's panting for breath. "Tickles are no laughing matter," she manages, pouting and looking to the side.
Wilnell easily lets Jackie go, though with the foxgirl's tails wrapped around her, the wriggling to remove them is on her. "One must always be capable of laughing in the face of your own winning," she teases, grinning wide.
Jackie holds the pout for several more seconds, then starts to draw back, but her tails don't want to let go. She tugs at one with her hands, giggles, and looks wide-eyed at Wilnell. "Help, I'm stuck!"
Wilnell quirks her lips to the side in a silly grin. "Oh yeah, being stuck in a flooffy hug of your own making," she deadpans, reaching down to fluff a couple of Jackie's tails with her hands. "Definitely a fate worse than even death."
"Nooooo!" Jackie wails theatrically. Grunting with mock exertion, she grits her teeth and begins prying her tails off of the cuddly mage. One by one, the tails are wriggled loose, flopping down limply on the couch like fluffy snakes exhausted after a hard day's work in the snake pits.
When she's finished, Jackie flops herself back onto the couch, panting. She mimes wiping sweat off her forehead, breathing a sigh of relief. "Phew. That was a close one."
"A Herculean effort," Wilnell agrees, nodding and giggling. Jackie's tails changing position have absolutely no effect on her absentminded fluffing of them, the elvin woman doing a bad impression of a certain evil doctor stroking his cat. Only with two tails.
"I'm so proud of myself," Jackie preens while patting herself on the back with a tail. She holds up a hand to Abackpack. "High five," she says, and the Synth obliges with a tail. "High five," she says again, holding up a hand to the tail-fluffing mage next.
Wilnell jumps up from sitting a little to execute a perfect high tail. "Ya did great, kid," she starts to reference, landing back on the couch. "Now let's blow this party and test you!" She closed her eyes, tilts her head, and beams.
"Test?" Jackie perks up on the couch. Looks like they're going somewhere. "Come on, buddy," she calls to Abackpack, hooking one of her tails into the straps and slinging him on. "Where to?"
Wilnell grins even wider, opening her eyes. "Nowhere, we can test you here," she assures Jackie. She jumps off the couch and onto her feet. Her voice loses the Synth over and undertones and her eyes return to normal. "I've got a spare detection wand in my closet, and you may or may not actually be capable of wielding Magic. But we're gonna find out," she informs Jackie, turning back and waving. "Brb!"
Wilnell jogs out of the living room and down a hallway, turning left. She vanishes from sight of those in the living room.
"Oh." Jackie unslings Abackpack, gently setting it down on the couch and giving it a pat. She watches in amusement as Wilnell rushes off with a quick explanation and a "brb," noting how the elf woman's voice sounds subtly different but not knowing why.
When Wilnell turns the corner, Jackie rocks back and forth on the edge of the couch cushion, waiting for her return.
A couple of loud bangs and an actual party horn ring out from the direction of the room Wilnell went to.
A moment later, after a period of tense silence, the elvin woman yells "I'm okay!" to the living room.
The emotional presence that indicates Jeeves fluctuates through humor and exasperation, almost like laughter.
From right next to the couch.
He must be keeping an eye on Jackie while Wilnell does her thing.
He is also apparently capable of teleporting, given a moment ago his presence was in the kitchen.
I'm a locator. I locate things. Through the lines of her power, Jackie watches in amusement as Wilnell digs into what sounds like some crazy junk closet in search of the wand. Jackie is just about to offer help when she senses Jeeves practically laughing beside her. She turns to face him and would try to pat him with a tail. "Hey there, little guy. You come over for some hugs?"
Jeeve's fluctuation shifts to acceptance, but also slight regret.
Meanwhile, another loud bang, a clank, and what sounds like the bug zapper from hell emanate from Wilnell's room. She momentarily panics, but then jumps up and down, running around her room. Probably chasing something. "GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE SHIT!" she yells.
Jackie tries to hug the spot where Jeeves is. If that doesn't work, she'll wail melodramatically. "Noooo! Abackpack, help me! He's *right there*, but—but—but I can't hug him!"
Attempting solution... Abackpack thinks.
A moment later, air starts to sort of... funnel into the point Jeeves' presence hovers at. A slight wispy sound, like that of a small wind, emanates from him. Then a small orb of what can only be described as visible wind forms in front of Jackie.
Jeeves seems to look at himself. His presence conveys surprise, and happiness.
Attempt successful, Abackpack notifies Jackie. Basic air elemental golem body created. Anchored to Proto-Synth Jeeves.
"HAH!" Wilnell yells in victory. "Got you!" She jumps one last time and... doesn't come down.
She's hovering above where she should be standing.
Her exasperation grows. "REALLY?" she deadpans.
She begins moving back towards the hallway from the living room, though clearly not under her own power if her unamused, and nonetheless somewhat amused, state is anything to go by.
She sighs audibly. "Fine," she groans. "You win. Take me to the fox."
This is only Jackie's first real day seeing magic. She's witnessed dragons, a giant magic battle, and a city-sized tower that warps its insides for convenience. But she hasn't really seen a lot of magic close up. Not like this.
So when Abackpack funnels some sort of wispy wind towards Jeeves, Jackie can only watch in awe. There's something there, a kind of swirling essence, an orb of solid wind.
An air elemental golem, Abackpack calls it.
Just as Wilnell captures the testing wand and lets out her cry of triumph, Jackie lets out her own victorious squeal, launching herself at Jeeve's new golem body.
She's going to snuggle the heck out of him.
Jeeves' new wind body is surprisingly solid, allowing Jackie to succeed with her random tactical hug assault.
It also seems perfectly capable of remaining airborne even with Jackie clinging to it.
Jeeves is happy, both with his new body and with the hug. The wind orb is slightly chilly, and Jackie is warm, so it's nice.
Thus it is this scene that Wilnell witnesses as she comes around the corner of the hallway.
Being held above the floor, by her hand, wrapped around a flying (https://i.imgur.com/EK0bvR0.png).
Wilnell raises her eyebrows, seemingly unconcerned about her own flying object. "Why is there a tiny wind elemental in my rooms?" she asks curiously.
"Hugs!" Jackie explains, adding a little excited wiggle to her embrace. Then she does a double take at Wilnell hanging off of the floating wand. "Uh..."
"Hugs. Right," Wilnell acknowledges.
She follows Jackie's eyes to the wand she's hanging off of. She laughs, shaking her head, and looks back at Jackie. "Jackie, meet the wand we're gonna test your magical ability with," she introduces the thin wooden device. "*Just as soon as it drops me,*" she adds, mumbling.
Without any other fanfare, the wand complies. With Wilnell still a foot above the carpet.
"Oof!" the Elvin woman grunts, landing on her rear.
The wand seems to chuckle momentarily, if that's what it bobbing in the air means, and then zips over to Jackie's face, pointing straight at her nose.
Now that it's this close, the wand's emotions are finally visible. It seems to be immune to Jackie's power unless it's very close by.
"I'm okay!" Wilnell groans from the floor, pointing at the ceiling.
The wand has emotions. Because of course it does. If it has magic, it has emotions. The more magic, the ~~crazier~~ cuter it is. Or something like that.
Jackie is reasonably sure that the emotion she's seeing right now is excitement, though it's kind of hard to tell when she's cross-eyed like this. Gently patting Jeeves the Air Elemental goodbye, Jackie scoots back a few inches to get a better look at this testing device.
It's a wooden stick with glowing blue segments, and it's happy to see her. Smiling slightly, Jackie gives the thing a little wave and says, "Hey." Then she leans in conspiratorially and whispers, "Was that big, mean mage keeping you locked in the closet for no reason?"
Jeeves moves out of the way so that Jackie can get a closer look at the wand. He seems slightly annoyed at the wooden device. Not for anything it's done right now, the annoyance feels more long term.
The wand, presence flaring with mischievousness, bobs up and down in the air as if to indicate nodding. Rapid nodding.
Wilnell perks up from her position on the floor, sending the wand a narrow eyed glare. "Oh no you don't!" She refutes the wand's agreement. "No corrupting the innocent vulpine!"
"You poor thing," Jackie coos, her ears drooping in sympathy for the ~~lying~~ unfortunate wand. "This innocent vulpine will protect you. Do you need a hug?"
The wand bobs up and down even more rapidly. It flips over midair, intent and course for Jackie's hand clear as its handle approaches her fingers.
Wilnell just groans and collapses back to the floor.
Jackie would grasp the wand and hug the heck out of it.
The moment Jackie's fingers close around the wand, a new thread opens. Not one of emotion, or feelings, but one of existence. The wand pours into Jackie, and Jackie pours into it, with the little compressed center of power within her mind along for the ride. For the first time Jackie is aware of the immense sea of... some kind of power resting within her, only a little of which is going to fuel her normal emotion sensing.
There is also a much, much smaller reservoir within her, separate from the sea, but it seems barely there. It is tied to the larger sea, filling as it drains passively into the space around her.
But the connection is not that strong. Barely half of the wand's potential resonates with Jackie and her internal sea.
Even so, it feels willing, ready, and mischievous. The lights upon the wand begin to glow brighter, indicating its charged state.
The thing within Jackie seems to be curious, and allows some of its sea to flow into the wand. It is constrained by the connection's lack of strength, and so only about a third of what it would normally direct towards the wand manages to reach it.
The energy races up Jackie's arm, into the wand, through the shaft and, out the tip. It is warped, massaged, and changed within the wand's body, then allowed to continue into the world.
The hair on everything in the room stands up straight in the presence of a significant amount of electricity. A moment later a massive lightning bolt leaps from the tip of the wand and straight into the wall, burning through it as if it wasn't even there. The flash of light blinds, and the clap of thunder as air rushes back into the vaporized pathway thooms.
"Holy SHIT!" Wilnell yells, jumping up off the floor. She rushes over to Jackie and starts fussing. "Are you okay?!" She doesn't seem to have been affected by the flash or the boom much, though her hair is a frizzy mess. Somehow. Despite it being metallic.
The hole in the wall reveals warped space beyond it, a miasma of rainbows and a color which should not exist. Slowly the wall starts regenerating, atoms and molecules flowing into existence from nothing, briefly blue before resolving into their normal state.
The tip of the wand is scorched. The wood is slightly charred from the release of so much energy. Not that the wand seems to care! It feels giddy and somewhat pleased at having found such a effective way to cause mischief. It continually pleads with Jackie to fire another one of those off.
Every hair on Jackie's body stands on end as an electric bolt vaporizes a part of the wall. The sudden flash blinds her while the thoom leaves her ears ringing. Instinctively, she grips the wand tighter and hugs it against her chest, while her ears flatten against her head.
Her hands tremble. Heart pounding, body tense, she tries to blink away the greenish purple streak filling her vision. Eventually she sags, expelling a shaky breath.
Then the young mage—for she is one now, that much is clear—becomes aware of two things: Wilnell fussing over her, and the wand begging her to do it again.
No way is that happening.
When Jackie is finally able to use her vocal cords again, she articulates her thoughts with as much wit as she can muster: currently, a long, choked noise that sounds an awful lot like "meeeeeep."
Jeeves takes one moment to put his attention on Jackie, notices she's having a hard time, and blinks out of existence. He blinks back in to the kitchen, bustling about.
Jackie's hybrid wail/surprise seems to reassure Wilnell of her, while not entirely solid, at least mentally and physically intact state. "You okay?" she asks again, laying both her hands on the smaller girl's shoulders. A slightly amused grin graces her lips.
The wand continues asking for more lightning, while the wall finishes regenerating.
Jackie jumps slightly at the touch, perhaps expecting a spark of static electricity. When nothing happens, she slowly nods. "Y-yeah. Just a little b-bit..." She blinks. "Shocked."
Wilnell snorts, entirely unladylike. "That was bad," she deadpans, grinning.
She retracts her hands and holds one up to the death grip Jackie has on the wand, palm out. "Think we know if you've got magic now?" she asks, teasingly, as she waits for the foxgirl to give her the wand back.
The wand begs her to not be given back, continually pushing for more chaos.
Jeeves makes some clinks in the kitchen.
"Its soul cries out for chaos," Jackie says, offering a token protest. She wants to do more magic. Not necessarily here, at the expense of Wilnell's apartment, but somewhere.
"Trust me, I'm very aware," Wilnell reveals, rolling her eyes. "It's my back up tester wand. Less behavioral modulation, closer to the original wand core."
The sound of a compressed liquid filling a cup comes from the kitchen.
Wilnell narrows her eyes at the wand for a moment. "How much does it want to fire another one of those off?" she asks, grinning at Jackie again. She doesn't lower her hand, though, and puts her other one on her hip somewhat impatiently. "Because if the answer is what I think it is, and you have any undirected magic, I need you to give it to me before it can persuade your subconscious to do it again. We'll get you one more attuned to you so you can start learning."
"But, but..." Jackie relents with a sniffle, returning the chaotic wand to its owner. "I'll never forget you, Wanda," she laments, her ears drooping to the sides. "Our love was too pure and beautiful for this cruel world."
The wand sends Jackie a happy goodbye before Wilnell wraps her hand around the shaft, causing the connection with Jackie to go into inactive mode. It's still there, just dormant.
"Thank you," she says genuinely. Then she rolls her eyes and smiles affectionately. "Drama fox."
A moment later Jeeves pops up next to Jackie, carrying a cup of what is clearly fresh Hot Chocolate+... without any hands.
The cup is just floating in front of his new air elemental body.
Wilnell turns to the wand in her hand and looks unamused. "A completely unbound mana bolt? *Really*, 'Wanda'?" she asks it accusingly, accidentally using Jackie's nickname for it.
She seems to listen to the wand for a few moments, silently staring at it.
"I don't care if it was fun! You had no idea of her mana reserves!" She retorts back. "Just look at your tip! I'm gonna have to repair you now!"
The wand's response isn't vocal, but Wilnell repeats it anyways. "'Don't care, got hugs and guns'? You've been hanging around Artemis again, haven't you?"
The wand bobs in her hand, entirely unrepentant.
Wilnell brings her free hand to her forehead and sighs. "What am I going to do with you? No, I am not letting you sundive."
"Oooooh, thank you," Jackie murmurs as she accepts the drink from Jeeves. A heavenly scent rises from the warm mug, carried by little white wisps of steam. She inhales deeply, a blissful smile crossing her face, and she blows to cool the chocolaty brown liquid.
To her side, Wilnell and the wand are engaged in some sort of telepathic argument, the mage sounding more and more like a mother scolding an unruly child. Jackie's ears swivel in their direction, listening even as she continues to gaze into her drink.
When Wilnell starts throwing around names and terms Jackie doesn't know, the fox girl looks up. "Sundive?" she asks, curious.
Jeeves bobs in place, then blinks back to the kitchen.
Wilnell pauses in her scolding to look at Jackie. Her eyebrows rise when she realizes the foxgirl legitimately doesn't know the term. "Uh, 'Wanda' here wants to do some solar corona surfing," she informs Jackie, grimacing. She turns back yo glaring at the wand in her hand. "Nevermind that you're half made of wood, magic or not."
"I didn't know that was possible." The fox girl tilts her head, allowing her ears to flop to the side. "I guess with spaceships..." Wait, no. It still doesn't make sense.
If Wilnell doesn't elaborate, Jackie would take out her phone and look up how it works.
"They give solar surfing rides out of Mercury, but I don't know much about it," Wilnell answers Jackie, "beyond the fact that beings made of wood are not allowed to do it outside a heavy diver!" She looks and feels like she wants to strangle the still entirely unrepentant wand.
Said wand must be incredibly smug, if her scowl in its direction is any indicator.
Nodding, Jackie puts her phone back unused and takes a sip from her mug.
What a strange universe she'd found herself in. Back in her original reality, she'd been the only one to anthropomorphize everyday objects. A quirk of her powers, and if she was being honest with herself, perhaps a way of escaping reality. Seeking comfort in inanimate objects which could never use her, never control her, never betray her.
A long sip of hot chocolate washes away those melancholy thoughts, like waves rolling over a sandy beach. It was easy just to close her eyes and relax, enjoying a sense of peace that she hadn't known for a long time.
When she opens her eyes again, there's a quiet clarity to them. A smile tugs at the corners of her lips, and she takes a few moments just to smooth down her fur.
Wilnell continues scolding the wand for another minute or so. Then she looks to Jackie. "Just let me put this back in my room and we can go get you your own, okay?" she asks.
After gaining Jackie's agreement, the elvin Synth starts back down the hallway and into her room.
Jackie waves as Wilnell passes out of sight, before turning back to Jeeves and Abackpack. "My own wand, huh?" she muses. "That'll be awesome. Though I hope mine will be bit less... Wanda, you know?" Snorting, she beams Jeeves a wry grin.
Jeeves 'laughs' along with her, displaying his disdain for Wanda once more.
Abackpack thinks up. May be wand. May be other device. Magic attunement necessary.
Clicking and whirring sound from the direction of Wilnell's room. A few moments later, she enters the hallway once again, striding straight for Jackie.
"Well, now that 'Wanda' is settled," she begins, grinning wide, "I think it's time to visit a magic shop!"
When Abackpack says it might be something else, the first thought that comes to Jackie's mind is *hairbrush*. She props herself onto her feet, hoists Abackpack onto her shoulders, and stands, tails wagging and ready to go.
Wilnell nods at Jackie, noticing she's ready. "Alright then, follow me!" She points a finger to the roof and spins on her heel, right back down the hallway to her room.
Jeeves fluctuates his emotional state several times, seemably to get Jackie's attention, then pushes affection and something that feels like farewell to the front. He must have figured out how Jackie's ability works.
Jackie turns and waves at the huggable air elemental on their way out. "See you later, Jeeves!" Abackpack waves a tail.
Wilnell continues leading Jackie down the hallway past another short hallway to the left. It terminates in a closed door similar to the one at the entry to the elvin woman's rooms.
"That one isn't designed to be breached," she conversationally informs Jackie. "It is much, much more heavily protected. Cuz, y'know, it's my room."
The hallway continues forwards for a few feet. Suddenly their position in the Hightower shifts once more, much closer to ground level. The sound of laughter, conversation, and hundreds of people comes from ahead of them, and a bright light begins to illuminate the hallway.
"We're almost there," Wilnell says happily.
As Wilnell points out her private room, Jackie can't help but daydream about what kinds of wonders might be locked inside. Magic items too dangerous for visitors' eyes? Extra naughty wands, even worse than Wanda? Or maybe illicit magazines with spicy names. Enchantress Weekly: Ears & Gears Edition, featuring the hottest elves and the hottest spells. Maybe they'd publish these tricky little puzzles, like a bra that needs a special sequence of magic to unclasp.
If Wilnell looks, she would see Jackie's eyes glazed over, a funny little smile on her face.
Wilnell only checks back once to ensure Jackie is following her. She sees the dopey look and rolls her eyes. "My room's just a room, Jackie," she tells her. "Onward!"
The light grows stronger and the clamor resonates down the magical stone as they progress further.
"Fine," Jackie groans, quickening her pace to catch up with the long-legged mage. That's exactly what someone hiding illicit ear-and-gear-based literature would say.
The light and sense of outside continues to increase until it is all encompassing. The hallway abruptly ends, letting Wilnell and Jackie out onto (https://i.imgur.com/h0Lag4n.jpg)
A large, Gothic blimp hovers above the ground, anchored to several stone pillars with wrought iron chains. There are quite a few people here, mostly helping to unload the packages that are being lowered out of the blimp's gondola. There are hundreds more scattered about, doing various things and performing various actions. Some of them are trading. Others are demonstrating cool new magic to their peers. There's even a few students, denoted by their specific robes, following what must be professors based on their robes. A few magicals zip by through the sky, or methods of travel just as varied and distinct as their wardrobes. A dragon or two soar by the blimp, seemingly using it as flight practice.
Sweeping archways trace a path back out to some location that seems to be quite large, open, and easy to fly in. Directly in front of them, across the dock, multiple winding staircases ascend into a stone wrought building. The majority of the clamor and people noises are coming from inside.
"Huh, I guess Hightower wanted to give you a show," Wilnell comments. She points towards the building with all of the noise. "The market is that way."
"Whoa." Jackie exhales a breath as they step into the expansive dock, somehow having ended up outdoors. Except still in the Hightower, somehow. Rather than try to wrap her mind around that, she just tries to absorb all the sights and sounds of this strange, bustling place.
There isn't enough time to stop and gawk at everything, however. Wilnell points her to the market, and to the market they go. Though she does cast a curious glance back and ask, "What's with the flying ship?"
Wilnell follows Jackie's gaze towards the blimp, pausing her brisk walk. She tilts her head, her ears falling to the side slightly. "Hmmm," she muses. "This is one of the cargo docks. Haven't seen that blimp before... Maybe someone's just really into Gothic architecture?"
"I bet it's delivering, like, a thousand crates of hot chocolate," Jackie says, tails wagging at the thought.
Wilnell looks to Jackie, an eyebrow lifted. "Why would it be delivering that?" she asks confusedly. "We make it here."
"It is?" Jackie tilts her head up to meet her eye. "I'm going to need a tour. I must see the brewery." She rubs her palms together eagerly, then remembers she still has to meet Athena after this. "Later," she amends.
Wilnell grins cheekily. "You're addicted to that stuff now," she states. It's not a question, she knows for a fact. The huge grin on her face says nothing less.
The elvin Synth turns back towards the stone building, aligning herself with the leftmost staircase. "They have their own area in the Hightower, we can go see it... later," she says, winking at Jackie.
Then she continues forward, tossing the blimp only one more slightly confused sideward glance.
Proceeding alongside her, Jackie huffs at the accusation. "You might as well say I'm addicted to cuddles. I can stop any time I want."
"Oh yeah?" Wilnell asks teasingly, looking back over her shoulder.
She reaches the stairs and begins to ascend them, her shoes clicking on the stone. Her hand almost absentmindedly drifts to the stone ledge along the side of the steps and she begins to tap on the stone in random patterns.
"Aaaaany time I want," Jackie says. "It's not like I would explode like a bottle of Mentos and Diet Coke with the cap on."
Or would I? she wonders, unable to shake the gruesome image out of her head. Her brow knits together. The click click of Wilnell's shoes and the soft brushing of her tails against stone fill her ears as her eyes glaze over. She continues climbing the steps on automatic, lost to thought.
"Better safe than sorry," she says at last.
"Implode, it's definitely *im*plode," Wilnell continues teasing, before she jumps slightly as if suddenly realizing something.
She turns her head and grimaces in sympathy at Jackie. "N...not that I blame you, really, with your power's... side effects," she carefully states.
The truth is, entire months, if not years, of Jackie's life could be described as "literally starved for affection," a combination of needing hugs to live and not getting any. Her current obsession with hugs isn't merely an effort to make up for lost time; it is a compulsive need ingrained into her soul over a long, long time.
Jackie meets the mage's eyes and gives a barely perceptible nod, grateful for her understanding.
"Heh," Wilnell says, relieved. "Right. Well, you just gotta get it checked, that's all!"
They reach the top of the stairs and the elvin Synth turns left, passing under a huge stone archway. Dozens of people in various shapes and sizes flow in and out in two different directions. Wilnell ensures that she and Jackie join the inbound person river.
Now that they're on course again, her bright, cheery, and teasing manner comes flying back. "Hey, you won't have to be addicted after that. I know you still will be though," she teases, winking at Jackie. "Maybe your nickname should be Cuddle Fox."
Note to self: see Aceso, get prescription for hugs. Jackie ducks her head, hiding the growing grin pushing up her cheeks. "Yeah? And what's your nickname?"
"Professor Extreme Bunny," Wilnell reveals without hesitation, seemingly proud of her nickname. She holds her head up high and nods, grinning wide.
They flow closer to another archway, this one seemingly letting out into the sky. They are stuck in the river of people, everyone polite and unhurried.
As the swelling crowd carries them along, Jackie presses in closer to Professor Extreme Bunny, taking the chance to study the long curve of the elfin woman's ears. The words can I pet them are on the tip of her tongue.
Instead Jackie casts a glance back for a second and asks, "Why is there a sky ship inside the Hightower? Actually, how are we outdoors?"
Wilnell glances back with her and blinks. "For shipments," she explains easily. "It's a little difficult to navigate ground vehicles in this space with all the people." She looks around at the bidirectional river of people the two of them are part of.
"Also, we're not actually outdoors. This is still inside the Hightower," she continues, returning her attention to Jackie. A teasing and proud grin is on her face. "Neat, huh? We figured out this extreme spatial compression magitech from observing another world. We hadn't been able to compress it quite this much until the Temporal Observatory went online and found them." She sighs and shakes her head, frowning. "Just another example of why our ancestors were idiots for rejecting science."
"The McKlellan place?" Jackie asks. She remembers Jim mentioning something about a temporal observatory where they looked at different timelines.
Wilnell nods as they are pressed forward by the tide. "Yup. You've heard of it?"
The archway seems empty from far away, but upon moving closer, a barely visible field can be seen. Its swirls and multihued vortexes slowly travel across its surface. Each person that crosses the threshold glows slightly and briefly around their extremities, barely visible but still there.
"It sounded cool," Jackie confirms. "Think I might visit some time."
When they get closer, Jackie is able to make out some subtle glowing effect passing over everyone on their way through the archway. It reminds her a little of the sanitization field she and Athena used to clean up earlier, and she wonders if it will make her fur stand up the same way.
Just in case, she hugs her tails in front of her protectively as they approach.
Nobody going through the field even seems to notice it. A couple younger kids stare in awe at the swirls and colors, but the adults don't mind. It must not be affecting them.
A clear sky can be seen through the transparent field, though it is distorted.
"Yeah, it's cool," Wilnell agrees. "Just... when you do go, don't stare at the timeline quantum entanglement console very long." She huffs and rolls her eyes. "Someone thought it'd be funny to represent it in four dimensional magitech, and Organic eyes really can't process that very well."
Their river pushes them up to the field, only a few people in front of them.
Hightower Market
Beyond the archway's field is (https://i.imgur.com/cYt2Go8.jpg) The pathway continues down to a small landing, then to the right and under a massive dragon sculpture.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_52K0E_gNY0). Despite this, the internal city seems to be fairly laidback. The people amble down the stone beyond the archway in an unhurried pace, and noone seems too worried.
On the outbound side of the queue, a blonde man in a robe tries to go through the barrier... only for the object he's carrying to catch on it like a fly stuck in glue, halting his advance immediately.
The man steps back, letting go of the object. It's an orb-shaped device with glowing bits on it, similarly colored to mana and the blue lights on the wand that Wilnell let Jackie test her magic with.
It is also suspended in the colored field, red ringing it where it meets the energy.
Everyone around him, including Wilnell, looks to him curiously. He hangs his head back and sighs.
"Trust it to be the toy that I forgot," he mutters self-degradingly. A moment later he yanks the orb out of the field, back the way he came, and spins around to join the river entering the archway.
Right as Wilnell and Jackie pass by him.
He falls into step next to them and glances at the two women. "Hi," he sheepishly says.
Seeing nothing going on, everyone turns their attention back to whatever they were occupied by before the minor spectacle.
As they pass through the arch, Jackie is immediately hit with an impression of overwhelming weirdness. The market is colourful, magical, and vast. She's entering a place where spatial geometry seems to be more a suggestion than a physical law, even more so than in the rest of the Hightower.
It's a good thing she has Wilnell as a guide. Jackie presses in closer to her, just so they don't get separated in the crowd, though she does refrain from holding the Mage's hand. She's not a child. Just a little overwhelmed at the scope of the place.
Before she can do more to get her bearings, everyone's attention is drawn by a man trying to leave, only for the bauble he's carrying to get stuck in the archway's glow; a security field, by the looks of it. Anti-theft wards?
When the man just so happens to fall into line next to her and Wilnell, offering them a sheepish greeting, Jackie looks him over before returning a cautious "hey." She's sticking close to Wilnell's side for the moment, using the elfin Mage as a bit of a buffer between herself and the stranger.
Wilnell grins at the guy, hugging Jackie to her side in the same motion. *Protectiveness*, like a mentor and their student, forms between her and Jackie for a moment. That same feeling seems to extend to the man. "Missed the checkout orb?" she asks him cheekily.
The man sighs. He holds up the orb in his hands and nods. "Yeahp." He shakes his head, then returns the orb to his abdomen. "Got my kids' amulets, my wife's alkahest, but I guess I missed the toy."
Wilnell shrugs. "Easy thing to do, what with its inconveniently placed location at the *front door*," she comments teasingly.
The river of people continues to draw them down the long stairs towards the massive dragon statue.
"Yeah yeah, laugh it up," the man rolls his eyes.
"Do you need some remedial memory exercises?" she continues, eyes twinkling. She points over her shoulder back to the archway. "I mean, I'm getting Jackie here her first magic device, but I'm sure I could hop back to my Rooms and draw some up-"
The man looks resigned. "Four years and you still act like my Professor," he deadpans.
Wilnell closes her eyes and smiles sweetly. "Anything for a former, forgetful student of mine," she teases him.
The man sighs.
​
Amulet, alkahest, toy... Jackie listens quietly to what Wilnell's former student is saying. The more she hears, the more she wants to ask about everything, but it would be rude to interrupt the two mages who are just catching up. There will be time for questions later.
"How's the kids? And Oria?" Wilnell asks the man, genuinely interested.
The man smiles, a goofy, wondrously in love smile. "Great, as always. The kids have started having control problems, thus the amulets," he says. "And Oria is lovely as always." He looks over to Wilnell and his grin morphs from goofy to smug. "She apparently wants more kids."
Wilnell's eyebrows rise, her metal hair fluttering in the wind. "Oh ho ho!" she exclaims, gesturing to him. "Look at you Aveus, elemental rockstar!"
The man, presumably Aveus, sighs and rolls his eyes again. "Remind me again what your locker room nickname is?" he teases her back, waggling his eyebrows.
Wilnell scoffs, tossing her hair with her free hand. "I'll have you know I'm proud of my lewdacity," she brazenly and obviously jokingly fires back. She opens her eyes and winks in his direction. "Unlike a certain someone who couldn't take his eyes off a certain Earth elemental the entire prom night..."
Aveus sticks his tongue out at her. "It was worth it." His grin returns to that goofy lovestruck look. "She's amazing."
They pass under the massive dragon statue, its decorative teeth glistening in the light from the buildings and sky.
"I'll bet," Wilnell grins. "I've heard they're really good at rocking your world."
Aveus groans to the sky. "That was *horrible*, Wilnell," he deadpans.
"Sorry not sorry!"
Past the dragon statue are (http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/ko...inal02.jpg) Some have less people, while the larger buildings' entrances are more constantly filled. Stores like 'Apptastic Apothecary', 'Good Gems', and 'General Runic Supplies' proudly display their logos and slogans in hovering magic signs, similar to the gigantic half transparent gears which appeared over the Hightower doors when they were unlocking.
Jackie listens with a half ear as the two mages catch up on each other's lives. They talk about kids, and locker room nicknames, all normal stuff.
The rock pun earns a roll of the eyes, and Jackie starts thinking of an air elemental pun for when she sees Jeeves again.
They reach the bottom of the steps. The flow of people splits up, everyone seemingly going in an entirely different direction. Some to shops right in front of the steps, others down pathways and corridors between buildings, and even a few into the sky. Why those few stuck to the steps until now is a mystery for the ages.
One of the stores immediately off the steps seems to be a Magical version of Starbucks. Literally, as the 'Magicbucks' above the archway entrance says. A very popular shop judging by all the people inside or sitting on comfy coffee shop chairs outside.
To the left is a massive building, tall and wide. Much wider than taller, though. Some kind of supermarket. 'Highmart' the hovering, glowing logo reads, a small three leaved leaf to the left side.
The right holds one of the major pathways with a lot more buildings down it. It seems to be the one Wilnell and Jackie will be taking given the former gently steering them towards it.
Aveus must be heading the same direction because he keeps up with them as the Elvin woman navigates them through the crowd. That or he just wants to talk to Wilnell. "So a magic device huh?" He asks curiously, glancing at Jackie as best he can. His eyes seem to shine with a nerdy gleam not unlike the constant look those in the Nexus wear. "What kind you thinking?" he asks Jackie directly. Nothing but genuine geekery drives his question.
Wilnell rolls her eyes so hard it's physically felt, a nostalgic grin on her face.
Jackie shrugs, turning to Aveus. "Don't know. Something fluffy and huggable?" After a pause, Jackie taps her chin, furrows her brow, and looks up in thought. "Maybe a red one."
Aveus chuckles and nods sagely. "Ah yes, fluffy devices. I suppose it makes sense given your clear appreciation for the Art of Fluff," he reasons, gesturing to Jackie's tails.
Wilnell also nods, just as sagely. "A fluffy wand for a fluffy fox."
"It's going to be great!" Jackie says, grinning. Then to make conversation, she asks, "So, what was that thing you said you got? The alka-whatsit?"
Aveus' eyes light up even more, literally this time. They begin to glow very slightly blue. The same blue as the ethereal substance that drives Magic, actually.
He turns to Wilnell and grins, raising an eyebrow.
Wilnell gestures back to him, shaking her head. "You're the Alchemist, not me," she reasons, passing the explanation off to the apparently giddy alchemist. She moves into a more passive role preparing to make sure Jackie and Aveus don't get lost in the crowds due to the obviously incoming magical geekout session.
Aveus nods and moves slightly closer to Jackie. His grin turns slightly geekily demented as he reaches inside his robe arm. He searches for a few moments, then pulls out a (https://i.imgur.com/R1nxdYE.png)
No matter which way he turns it, the substance retains its flat state with the opening of the pot. Some attention is attracted by the glowing dust, but it's mostly from younger people with their parents. A few people, clearly mages much like Aveus, momentarily stare at the pot and seem to approve of it, nodding before continuing on.
The substance seems to be radiating the same kind of power Jackie used to burn a hole in Wilnell's living room wall... only unrefined. The feeling it gives off is that of raw, distilled potential, just waiting for direction, though it is far more solid than the ethereal mana Wilnell showed her. And Aveus has a very obsessed attachment to the stuff.
This is illustrated by the fact that Aveus moves the pot so that his face is underlit by the glow, making his slightly demented grin even spookier. "*This* is Alkahest, Jackie," he reveals dramatically, waving his hand over the pot with much flair. "And it is the best thing since *sliced. bread.*"
Jackie can tell it isn't anything bad from the looks of approval, but Aveus' obsessive fixation is just begging for a wisecrack. Turning up her nose and narrowing her eyes in feigned disapproval, she says, "It's drugs, isn't it?"
A close observer might notice the corner of her mouth twitching up, the only sign that she's just messing with him.
Aveus is stunned. He stares at Jackie with his mouth agape, as if she's offended the very ground he walks on.
Wilnell, on the other hand, bursts out laughing. "DRUGS!" she cackles, holding her sides. "HAHAHAHAH! OH MY GODS YOUR FACE!" She points at Aveus' shellshocked look and laughs even harder. "I told you, I always told you someone would ask you that one day!"
"But- it's not-" he tries protesting, only to fall into an amused resignation as Wilnell laughs harder. The man notices Jackie's twitching lip and sighs. He closes his eyes and nods, accepting the situation. "Yeah, okay, maybe it looks a little like drugs," he acknowledges, taking the hysterical laughter of his friend in stride. "But it's not, I swear!"
"Right," Jackie says, deadpan. "And next you'll tell me you're just a 'glassware enthusiast' who definitely doesn't own what looks like twenty different types of bong."
"T-that is immaterial to the subject!" Aveus stutters, looking everywhere but at Jackie. "Those are for legitimate solution distillation!"
Wilnell can't even walk anymore. She bends down, her hands on her knees, and allows her metallic hair to bounce as she cracks up.
Aveus blushes slightly, looking around at the crowd. "Help me out here, someone!" He only half jokingly pleads.
Another man on the other side of the crowd yells back at him. "You're on your own, Alchemist!"
"Screw you too, Runemaster!" Aveus fires back. He sighs again and massages his eyebrows with his free hand.
The verbal shots fired may have seemed mean, but there is clearly just a friendly rivalry involved.
Jackie breaks down giggling, unable to maintain a straight face any longer.
Aveus, seeing Jackie got him yet again, settles into an amused and yet deadpan look. "Alright," he says, twirling the hand holding the alkahest pot, "get it out of your system." Gracious, magnanimous, and patient is what he's going for.
He isn't quite mysterious enough to pull that off, though, and so sets Wilnell off into yet another bout of cackling. She just gives up on standing, collapsing to the ground and rolling around.
Clearly this isn't the strangest sight the Hightower denizens have seen, as almost nobody seems to give a shit about her doing so. They just route around the three of them naturally.
It takes a while for Jackie to get the giggles out of her system. Mostly because every time she thinks she's done, she looks over at Wilnell rolling on the ground and cracks up again. Eventually however, Jackie gets it under control. She wipes a tear from her eyes, straightens up, and offers Wilnell a hand getting back to her feet.
Wilnell accepts Jackie's offered hand, actually needing to use it to stabilize herself. She seems sort of woozy due to the hysterics she's undergone. Despite her cackle rolling on the ground, though, she looks fine. Her metal hair isn't frizzed or twisted up and no dust seems to have managed to stick to her form hugging robe. Other than her slightly red eyes from the laughing crying she found herself doing, she still looks normal.
Namely, adorably pretty.
"Thanks, Jackie," she says. "Always good to have a helping hand." She brushes her hair away from her face and seemingly reflexively dusts off her chest, drawing attention due to slight trampoline properties.
Aveus shakes his head and sighs. "Jackie, in case you aren't aware yet, there's an entire set of spells and magic techniques dedicated solely to appearance," he states, waving at Wilnell's now smugly grinning and flawless visage. "How many you have active?"
The elfin woman attempts to hug Jackie across the shoulders to her side with an arm. "All of them?" she answers rhetorically.
Aveus raises his eyebrows. "Huh. That's rare." He looks her up and down, zeroing in on her metal-plated bust, then smirks at her face. "You just did a Greatest Show, didn't you?"
Wilnell doesn't reply verbally. She just shuts her eyes and sticks her tongue out at him.
Aveus rolls his eyes. He looks to Jackie and holds out the pot again. "Would you like to learn the incredible power of crystallized mana now, Jackie?" he teasingly asks. "Or we could continue mislabeling my profession's necessary implements. Your choice." He shrugs, looking entirely unconcerned about either result.
Wilnell gets a side hug from Jackie as the foxgirl considers the offer. "Incredible power, hmm?" She kind of wants to ask about cosmetic charms, but Aveus was a good sport about the teasing, so it's only fair that she hears him out. Give him a chance to show off his expertise.
Slowly, Jackie nods, turning to regard the pot with interest. "Alright. What can it do?" she asks, while in her head she wonders, Can I hug it?
Aveus' obsessed, geeky grin returns with a vengeance. He brings the pot back up to his face and sets the dramatic mood again.
"Alkahest," he begins again, stepping close enough to Jackie and Wilnell for the light of the dusty substance to illuminate the two of them as well, "can, simply put, do anything.*" He hesistates, tilting his head slightly, and corrects himself. "Or, well, *mostly anything. It's a fuel source for spells, a conduit, a catalyst, and in rare occasions, a very effective ignition source. It is the essence of Magic." He moves his hand in an arc, gesturing to the sky. "The essence of *all this.*" He looks back down at the pot and gains a wistful smile. "Mana in solid form."
He stares at it in reverence for several seconds before he's interrupted.
"He blew up my classroom," Wilnell notes to Jackie.
Aveus glares at her.
"Twice," she continues.
His glare morphs into a sheepish smile.
"I don't teach Alchemy either," she points out, grinning at him.
"You gave us homework!" he protests vehemently. "Due in the *past!*"
"As a joke," she responds. "I didn't expect you to actually break time open to deliver it."
Aveus's sheepish grin turns into a smirk. "Still did it!" he emphasizes, pumping his fist to the sky. He looks back down at Jackie and grins sheepishly. "Uh, yeah. So. Alkahest is very, very flexible. If you become an Alchemist or Runemaster, you'll quickly get very acquainted with this stuff."
"How does"—Jackie frowns at the pot—"*that* give you time travel?"
Aveus' eyes literally twinkle. It's a look very common in The Nexus, and one Jim, Jackie's Researcher, displays nearly permanently. It signals to everyone who witnesses the sight that an explanation of titanic proportions, and using far too many lengthy words, is incoming.
Wilnell hugs Jackie tighter to her side, leaning down slightly. "Tell me if you want me to stop him," she offers with a whisper into Jackie's right fox ear. She peers at Aveus out of the corner of her eye. "In the next, like, five seconds. Once he gets going there's no end."
Aveus is entirely oblivious to this offer, as his mouth is curling upward ever closer to a wide eyed grin.
"But he looks so happy," Jackie whispers back. "And besides, this sounds cool." Incredibly dangerous, but cool.
Wilnell shrugs, unconcerned. She puts her hands behind her head and leans back on the air as if reclining onto a semi-vertical lawn chair. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she says.
And then Aveus actually starts talking.
"Using the hypercondensed metacrystalline matrix making up this pseudo-stable representation of fundamental particles," he begins pontificating, gesturing around with the glowing pot, "one can direct other metastable subatomics into intricate Gordian knots. You then take the resulting coiled spacetime-ether fabric and weave it into a sixth dimensional vortex which puts pressure on the lower dimensions and removes the Heisenberg limit of matter and energy within their bounds due to exchanging non-mana quarks with higher dimensions, which of course causes the temporal causality continuum to slip-"
Wilnell rolls her eyes fondly, a wistful smile stealing onto her features. As nuts as she thinks he is, she's clearly quite proud of him.
Jackie's eyes glaze over at the jargon-laden barrage. She can only watch in horror as the alchemist goes on and on, making no sense whatsoever. After about a minute, when it looks like he's never going to stop, she turns pleading eyes to Wilnell.
Aveus clearly isn't stopping without intervention. He continues lecturing, almost unaware of the world.
It's so lecture-like that several people in robes less elaborate than his have begun attending it as if it is one. One man directs his hand at the ground, which almost immediately raises up into a stool-like outcrop. He then takes out an actual notepad and begins frantically scribbling. Yet another abrupt student hovers in the air, quickly typing notes on a tablet. Just a normal tablet, nothing magical about it. An actual merman rests on a ball of water and seems to be inscribing notes via a solid block of water. More and more arrive out of the crowd every few seconds.
"-and then after you've opened a sideslip corridor through the ether backwards along the nineteenth dimensional axis, taking a left turn at the nearest intersection with the fifteenth of course, a causeway opens between two points on the primary timespace planar zone-"
The rest of the crowd of the pathway seems unsurprised by this spontaneous lecture, simply routing around the growing observers. It helps that roughly a quarter of them have stopped to actually listen to Aveus talk about the intricacies of Alchemy.
Wilnell feigns being unable to sense Jackie's pleading eyes for a few moments, then sighs and turns to look into them. She blinks, then grins. "Those are adorable," she says, sounding as if she's barely keeping herself from squealing. "That much weapons-grade cute should be illegal."
"What do you say we slip away?" Jackie whispers into her ear. "I still want to hear about cosmetic spells." Hopefully those would be easier to understand than this post-graduate level lecture on time travel. Plus, they still need to go get her wand.
Wilnell considers her idea, glancing sideways at Aveus. The Alchemist shows no sign of stopping, somehow managing to hold an entire Master level lecture without any teaching expertise and with an Alkahest pot of all things.
The elvin Synth nods. "Yeah. He'll catch up," she agrees, removing her hands from behind her head. As she stands up straight once more she sends a jokingly worried glance his way. "...I think."
She waves goodbye to Aveus, who only momentarily manages to fire off a "I'll see you later Wilnell, Jackie!" to the two of them in one of the few moments he needs to draw breath, then spins on her heel and starts off down the path-street hybrid in the direction they were originally going. Slow enough for Jackie to catch up, of course.
When Jackie does catch up, she looks down at the foxgirl and smiles kindly. "You know, it may not be a wand," she gently informs her. "A magic device picks its user just as much as the user picks it. You could end up with a teddy bear conduit for all I know."
"Why does everything have to have a soul?" Jackie asks. There's Abackpack, Jerry, and now apparently a magic device that's intelligent enough to choose her. "Isn't equipment ever, like, just equipment?"
"Magic begets Magic," Wilnell offers, shrugging. She guides them to a side streetpath off the main street, one that threads between multiple buildings all selling things that look a lot more like the technology of The Nexus than anything Magical. "Souls kinda come along for the ride. If something has enough mana density, or as most people call it magic, it'll either have or grow a soul."
Two children playing chasing a ball suddenly dart in front of them and Wilnell reacts far faster than a human could, drawing two... runes? in the air in front of her and moving her and Jackie sideways around the kids without crossing the intervening space faster than an eyeblink. At least a normal eyeblink; Jackie just barely keeps track of her blurry actions due to her Legendary Vulpine keeping her senses at maximum human capability.
The elvin Synth stops and yells back at the kids. "Hey! Be careful you two!"
A "Sorry!" and another "Sorry Miss Bunny!" come from the dastardly ruffians, though they immediately lose focus and continue playing.
Wilnell sighs and rolls her eyes. "Kids," she says, shrugging. "What can you do?"
Jackie looks up at Wilnell, impressed. "Nice moves." Then suddenly something occurs to her. She looks between her fluffy tailed backpack and the professor. "How did Abackpack use magic? Doesn't it need a magic device?"
Wilnell grins. "Thanks," she says, then her brow furrows. "Wait, what do you mean?" She turns to the golden backpack on Jackie's back, confused. "Abackpack, you used magic?"
Affirmative. Provided fledgling entity Jeeves with physical form, the backpack thinks to them both.
Wilnell's eyebrows shoot into orbit. "The wind orb golem? That was you?!"
Affirmative, Abackpack answers.
"And you... what magic device did you use to shape the spell?"
None.
Wilnell stares at Abackpack, then Jackie, then the backpack again. "...Right," she finally says. "I'm going to ignore that flagrant use of what is clearly extremely classified magic research," she declares, pointing over her shoulder at the entrance to a shop named Mages' Beginnings, "and we are going to get Jackie a good magic device."
As you wish, Abackpack replies, sounding and feeling incredibly amused.
Either certain rules don't apply to Abackpack because of Rob, Jackie reasons, or my little telepathic Synth has been peering into some classified headspace. Either way, it's impressive, though she hopes it's the former.
Snorting in amusement, she gives Abackpack the equivalent of a headpat, then turns back to Wilnell as they proceed towards the shop. "Hey, I don't see what the big deal is. It's not like you used anything with those kids." To demonstrate, Jackie draws a squiggle in the air like Wilnell did.
Wilnell's face erupts into a gigantically smug grin. She turns around and walks backwards without any difficulty. "I did tho," she refutes, placing a hand on her chest. "My body. I'm a Synth, remember?" She gestures up and down to her entire form. "Organithetic sure, but there's still a disconnect between my Mind and my Body. Add an Empowerment to that, and, well..." she shrugs, looking pleased with herself. "The world is my Rune template. Literally."
They steadily approach the rather large store, and it is most definitely a store, known as Mage's Beginnings. There's a lot of younger teenagers and even some kids going in and out of the store, usually accompanied by adults. One pair skips out alongside another young teen, though she seems to be made out of water compared to their human appearances.
The store clearly seems to try and foster a friendly, open environment, as there are plenty of employees in various locations even outside offering explanations and demonstrations to the younglings.
The front of the store is decorated with tall pane glass windows and columns with gargoyles on top of them. A large archway leads inside, but aside from the bright, inviting interior and the warm feeling of excitement spilling forth the internals are blocked by the streams of people.
"Organi-what?" Jackie asks as soon as Wilnell finishes bragging. "And what's your Empowerment?"
The storefront is filled with eye-catching displays and strange-looking people all going about their business. No one bats an eye at the water girl. No one even stares at Jackie, despite her Legendary Vulpine form apparently holding some special meaning for magical types. Like this whole bustling, eclectic marketplace is normal for the people here.
Jackie is just thankful she has Wilnell to guide her, or else she'd definitely be feeling overwhelmed.
Still walking backwards, Wilnell seemingly effortlessly navigates through the people, guiding Jackie up to the archway entrance to Mage's Beginnings. "Ah right, not from around here," she ruminates, nodding her head. "Long story short I'm one type of the two hybrids that form when an Organic and a Synthetic have a kid. My mom is organic, my dad's a Synth, so I'm an Organithetic," she explains succinctly. "I'm the chaotic type. The other one is Synthganic. They're a bunch of wannabe Vulcans."
She pauses to allow a large group of young preteens guided by a man who looks like a teacher by them both while she explains the second part of Jackie's queries. "My Empowerment is actually really cool. Most Runemasters have to have something physical, or at least an object of some kind, to inscribe and execute rune sequences," she informs the foxgirl. Placing a hand on her chest and dramatically throwing her head back, she scoffs regally. "I don't. Anything that has atoms or molecules I can use as my medium. Atmosphere included." The elvin Synth gestures around to the air itself, if her hand waving at nothing actually indicates anything.
The fact that Synths and Organics can have kids together raises a whole lot of questions in Jackie's mind. Questions like, can she and Athena have kids? And how would that even work with Athena's fully organic body? But as quickly as the questions arise, Jackie mentally shoves them into a box, seals the lid tightly, and buries it six feet underground.
Latching on to the cool magic stuff instead, Jackie immediately follows up on that. "Okay, so runes in the air is special just to you because of your Empowerment. But the rest, casting spells using your body as a magic device, can any Synth do that? Like, can Athena do it?"
"I dunno," Wilnell shrugs. "Don't think she's ever really been tested for Magic?" she muses. Another shrug ripples down her shoulders... and chest. "You'd have to ask her, if she's ever been tested it isn't public record and she's messing with me about it."
They pass through the archway and find themselves in a (https://i.imgur.com/w4kUpNF.jpg).
Mage's Beginnings
Shelves line most of the walls of the store. Magic items can be seen everywhere, and it appears the store doesn't have anything missing. Potions, broomsticks, wands, amulets, statues, pretty much everything and anything one would ever hear of connected to or implemented in sterotypical magic is here. The stained glass windows continue up into the ceiling where they let in the sunlight, and great mosaics cover the remaining space. There must be hundreds of people in the store, an even denser version of those outside. In true Hightower fashion, no two shelving units or their contents are the same. Everything from a bazaar-esque small market in the center of the store to a railing-lined bookshelf with stairs on the far end are present. There's even an indoor tree. The bookshelf with stairs ironically doesn't have many books on it, that's reserved for the tall library stack shelf to the right.
​
"Welcome to your beginning as a Mage, Jackie," Wilnell says, allowing them to stop moving for a moment so she can take it all in.
​
Jackie stands there, spinning in a slow circle as she tries to absorb what she's seeing. There's just so much stuff! Books and scrolls, robes and wizard hats, wands, amulets, and more. It's all Jackie can do to keep her jaw on the floor.
"I want to buy *everything*," she says decisively.
Wilnell giggles at Jackie's declaration. "You can do that when you come back," she placates the foxgirl. She points at the corner between the massive staired bookshelves and the tree.
"That's where we're headed," the elvin Synth says, starting to guide Jackie around the busy central bazaar.
At their apparent destination two shelving units with what look like TV screens on their ends stand unaccompanied except by the rare person browsing through the items on them. The 'TV' screens alternate ads for magic devices, belying the nature of the shelves, and wouldn't look out of place in a normal electronics store. The number of different ads, device creators, and devices themselves seems almost endless. One of the short clips that crosses the right screen is of a young redheaded girl summoning a giant fire bear using a stuffed teddy bear device. Another is a wand that looks like it walked out of a steampunk enthusiast's wet dream. Yet another is a pair of gauntlets, both bulky and sleek for differing tastes, which wrap around the forearms and have a specialty in defensive magics.
"So I just need to find one that that I... get along with?" Jackie stops in front of the shelves, peering at whatever catches her eye.
"Yup!" Wilnell confirms, nodding. She reaches for Jackie's hand, gently clasping it in order to guide her in the proper direction. That being one of the lamps casting a weirdly solid beam of light onto the floor. With Jackie's agreement, the elvin Synth guides her to stand in the center of the circle the lamp casts on the floor. "It's easier if you use the detection system, though."
After five seconds of Jackie standing within the circle, the lamplight abruptly turns a distinct mana blue. The lamp seems to have some sort of intelligence, though it is significantly reduced from even the wand that Jackie held before. One part of his attention latches onto her, or rather that piece of her which is somehow her more than her body is, and another part of its attention rapidly flickers between the items on all of the shelves, not just the one in front of them.
"It's just doing what my power already does," Jackie says as she watches the lamp do its work, following its rapidly flickering threads of attention with her eyes.
Wilnell snaps her idly wandering gaze onto Jackie's face. "Your power can detect magic compatibility?" she asks, raising an eyebrow. "Huh."
\
The lamp seems to have narrowed itself down to a given set of items, three of which are on the shelf facing Jackie and Wilnell. The other thirteen are either on the shelf on the other side of the unit in front of them, or in the other unit entirely. Previously it was scanning the mall, but it keeps flickering back and forth between the ones it has found, a feeling of primitive confusion beginning to emanate from the deceptively normal looking lamp.
The closest item to Jackie is a barrel about as round as one of Jackie's tails is thick, made out of wood. There seems to be a spigot at the top of the barrel, denoting this as a keg. The semi transparent, wispy blue lettering below this keg reveals that it is a (http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/...bLarge.jpg).
On the shelf directly across from Jackie's chest is a golden breastplate. It is intricately detailed... And looks like it is made to fit someone like Athena. Or maybe someone even bigger. It's unlikely that the cups of this breastplate even have a bra size associated with them. Oh the canyon of flesh anyone wearing this would have... Despite the clear lack of protection the 'armor' provides, it is nevertheless an (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/35/2b/...b2608f.jpg).
Off to the side and down the shelf a ways, almost hidden behind a shield, an orange tail hangs down. It is attached to a fox plush toy, or at least what appears to be one, curled up and letting its long tail droop down. The (http://koesen-usa.com/wp-content/uploads...Animal.jpg) breathes and emulates life just like a real fox, furthermore enhancing the illusion.
The lamp seems to give up on any further narrowing. It sends a pulse to the items not on the shelf in front of Jackie, which proceed to start hovering and begin slowly making their way around the shelving units. They might be a while given their careful pace.
The lamplight shifts to a pleasant, confirming green to show it is finished. Green wispy lines extend from the lamp to the items it has located, the ones on the other side of the shelf included.
Wilnell stretches, curving her back and reaching for the sky with both her arms and her chest, then grins at Jackie.
"Looks like it's found your device-" she begins to say, then notices how many lines there are leading from the lamp. "...Uh, the heck?"
Jackie shrugs sheepishly, unable to hide a bemused smile. There's always some surprise whenever she's involved, it seems. "I'm popular?"
Turning back to the items, she immediately sees a keg, a breastplate, and a fox plushie. Several more are still behind the shelf, slowly making their way over to her position.
It requires an exercise in willpower, but Jackie manages to resist the temptation to immediately cuddle the fox plushie. Instead the sets it aside for last, mentally.
First the considers the breast. The very, very busty breastplate. Jackie spends almost half a minute staring at the bronze cleavage before shaking herself out of her daze. "Nope," she says. "Maybe for Athena. Don't think it'll fit me."
Next she considers the keg. This one Jackie just stares at, perplexed. How is that thing supposed to even work? Would she lug it around on her back? Maybe do it like some kind of circus act, where she balances on top of the keg and moves by rolling it around?
The keg earns a dismissive shake of the head.
Finally Jackie turns to the Fox of Fluff. Tapping her finger on her chin, she tries her best to look like she's giving it some serious thought. "Hmm... I'd give it a 5/5 for style. Maybe a 3/5 for practicality. I can carry a plushie with my everywhere, but I'd need a backpack..." Something to wear as part of a costume would be preferable, but she could see herself making the Fox of Fluff work.
Unsure of what the rules are here, and not wanting to commit to anything, she keeps her hands and tails to herself, once again resisting the urge to hug the device. Instead she gives the fox the slightest nod of approval before turning to Wilnell and the approaching dozen or so other devices.
Wilnell blinks in surprise at the lamp, then stares at Jackie for a few moments. "Popular," she parrots. "Huh."
She has the look of someone who is slightly out of their depth, both very familiar with the overall situation and yet encountering something they've never seen before. Curious, only slightly concerned, and interested. She looks to the green wispy lines extending from the lamp to the objects coming from the other shelves and raises an eyebrow. While Jackie browses the three items in front of her already, she tilts her head, clearly thinking. Nevertheless, she can't help but giggle when Jackie declares that the immovable breastplate would simply not fit her. "I think that'd be a little roomy for even Athena, Jackie," she jokes.
Wilnell watches the green line of the first approaching item as it comes around the left side of the shelf. Her eyes widen at just exactly what Jackie has proven to be compatible with. "Holy shit," she laments.
A pair of forearm bracers hover in front of her and Jackie in a soft green field. They have intricate patterns carved into them, along with what seems to be carvings of some kind of... if one didn't know better, rivets holding a band around what looks like a turbine system. These feed into a system of carvings that wrap around the gauntlets all the way to the front, a clear channel terminating just above the wrist. The very front surface of the gauntlets, facing the wrist, seems to have a slight semicircle depression immediately underneath the notch within the channel. They honestly looks like some kind of hand cannons, only in bronze-gold bracer form. The blue wispy lettering follows them, denoting them as (https://img1.etsystatic.com/009/1/670350...9_8ehx.jpg).
Wilnell turns to Jackie and just stares, her eyes wide open and jaw dropped.
"I take it these are pretty epic?" Jackie says, unable to hold back a smug grin. This whole display is making her tails fluff up with pride. She raises an eyebrow at Wilnell's expression.
As a bonus, the gauntlets look like something Jackie would actually wear. Light, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to work into a costume or mage's outfit.
Wilnell stares at Jackie for a few more seconds. "Yyeeaaaahahaha," she emphasizes, letting slightly incoherent laughter escape.
The elvin Synth closes her eyes and visibly resets herself, relaxing. When she opens them again she is stable. She looks at the Gauntlets and grins ear to ear. "Epic is underselling them. These..." she gently picks them up, the green glow fading and the wispy lettering dissipating, "I have no idea how or why you can use these, but the fact that you even *can*..." She breathes in and out, clear reverence for these gauntlets on her face. She looks to Jackie and nods. "These are very, very powerful weapons. And tools. For a starting item they're almost the best you can get."
Wilnell holds them out to Jackie, looking as supportive as she can through her obvious glee.
Meanwhile another three items come around the corner and hover behind and to the side of Wilnell, seemingly waiting to be examined.
One is a ball of pink-white energy with what seems to be an ongoing supernova of blue energy on the inside, sometimes escaping the orb in small arcs and waves around it before falling back in. Its label declares it a (https://ak9.picdn.net/shutterstock/video...humb/1.jpg).
The other two are identical, hovering right next to each other. They're crowns, that much is clear, though they seem less complex in regal than most Royal crowns one may have seen. Simple swirls are attached to the rim. They are apparently each a (https://orig06.deviantart.net/f5fa/f/201...6ydqk5.jpg).
While the twin crowns look rather plain, the Future Hero's Orb looks awesome, though Jackie is unsure just how exactly she's supposed to carry it around with her. She turns from the orb to Wilnell with a perplexed head tilt, then shrugs.
More importantly, there's a pair of gauntlets being offered to her. Gauntlets which have Wilnell's full and enthusiastic approval.
Jackie takes them with a mix of reverence and glee.
Wilnell gently draws her hands back and clasps them together in front of her waist. Her giddy smile only gets wider and she watches Jackie with great anticipation.
The gauntlets feel heavy and Jackie's hands. Not like a weight, beyond the rather obvious material weight, but more like they have a presence*. Something about them just seems more... *real*, than any of the other items. They also seem to have some kind of internal sea, just like Jackie's, only it's completely empty. It honestly feels more like a *void than a sea, even though the concept of that 'sea' is still present. Not quite hunger, but more like... potential.
Jackie's own internal sea seems ready and willing to fill the emptiness, but after the experience with the wand it is certainly waiting for her to call on it.
The gauntlets are just long enough to cover Jackie's entire forearm. They end before the bend of the elbow and begin just after the wrist. That doesn't seem to be a way to open them, so Jackie must just have to slip them on by threading her arm through them.
"If I push magic into these," Jackie asks carefully, "are they going to blow a hole through the shop?" The gauntlets are practically begging her to slip them on and fill up their internal reservoir, but after Wilnell's testing wand, she knows better.
Wilnell shakes her head. "Nah," she assures Jackie, "mana directors of this potential wouldn't be within the reach of children if they didn't have safeties." She comes closer and bends down, tapping the turbine blade looking carvings a couple of times. "If you're feeling a pull, it's probably just their reactors waiting to start." She stands back up and shrugs. "They're most likely self-sustaining from the ambient mana you or I give off once ignited."
Five more items come around the shelves to the right. Three nearly identical bracelet pairs with different colored gemstones, one color for each pair, hover in a green field. Those must be Benevolent Spectre's Bracelets. The unholy lovechild of a mace, a hammer, and what looks like a fat bat is next to them, a so-called Ghost's Cudgel. The final item is a pair of sandals with a wingless, serpentine dragon forming the jutes. The sandals are the Sandals of the Sea Serpent.
Absently, Jackie notices the latest items to arrive. None of them hold a candle to the Gauntlets or the Orb. After a moment, Jackie nods to Wilnell's explanation, then slips on the gauntlets and pushes her mana into them. "Let's get those reactors started, then."
"I haven't actually ever seen one of these start up," Wilnell reveals. She looks like a kid at XMas. "It's supposed to be so cool!"
The gauntlets slip on easily and settle on Jackie's arms like a glove. Even though they were a little larger than her arms beforehand, they certainly fit now. That presence they seem to exude spreads first through Jerry's covering of her arms, then her own arms, before linking up with something deep within her and suddenly feeling right. A warm comfort and steady potential bleeds over into Jackie from the gauntlets, providing self-assurance and absolute confidence in the gauntlet's abilities... and by extension, her own.
The potential seas inside accept the directed mana, filling rapidly. The huge reservoir inside Jackie doesn't seem to be hesitant now, thus the speedy transfer. Once the surprisingly large dual seas finish filling up, they emit all of that stored magic directly into the gauntlets.
All the carvings immediately light up, lines of glowing golden-blue streams of light highlighting the carvings. The small divets in the turbine blade looking carvings begin to glow with an inner light... and then suddenly two loud clunks ring out as they somehow draw into the surface of the gauntlets. The slight contraction is enough to allow them to spin around the gauntlet's surface freely, which they immediately start to do. A whirring sound accompanies the startup process, alongside a quiet crackling. Arcs of what looks like golden-blue lightning crawl along the surface of the metal encasing Jackies' arms. No harm is caused by them, beyond hair sticking up on end. Accelerating faster and faster, glowing more and more with every second, the obvious turbines spin up until they're spinning so fast they merely look like golden blurs. The crackling arcs subside, the whirring drops in volume until it's barely audible, and only a constant, quiet hum remains.
The gauntlet's sea begins to fill again, this time from the gauntlets themselves, and they send Jackie the feeling of being ready.
Wilnell's eyes are wide and she's grinning ear to pointy ear. "Yup!" she almost whispers. "Cool confirmed!"
"H-h-holy cow," Jackie says, having watched the ignition sequence wide-eyed. She holds her gauntleted arms up and turns them from side to side. Then suddenly she breaks out into a huge grin. "*So* cool."
The spinning turbines somehow slightly inside her arm don't seem to care about Jackie turning them in different directions. They just keep on humming.
"So I only know a little about these things," Wilnell sheepishly admits. "Mainly their cool factor and the fact they're insane mana direction systems. Runemasters don't generally have a use for, well," she gestures to the gauntlets haphazardly, "glorified elemental turbines with attached hand cannons."
She spins on her heel and marches over to the Future Hero's Orb, picking it up gracefully. Another heeled spin (she seems to be really good at those) with her hair flying out behind her and she marches back up to Jackie. "But I do know that this Orb is essentially an incredibly dense mana reservoir, and you've got the turbines already, so... battery time?" She smiles approvingly, holding the Orb up to Jackie.
Now that it's closer, the sea within the thing is plain as a road flare in the dead of night. It's not even trying to hide its presence like the Gauntlets were, the what amounts to solar flares of mana escaping the pink ball leaking the stuff like a screen door on a submarine. Or maybe more like waves upon a shore, given that's how it feels.
Even Jerry and Abackpack like it. The former just feels this, of course, but Abackpack is doing the equivalent of jaw-dropped.. or is that zipper-dropped, staring. Its tails are all still, hanging down, giving another impression of the slackest of jaws.
Jackie gingerly takes the offered orb with both hands. She doesn't know how this is supposed to work, but figures it will become apparent soon enough. "Heh. Who needs Alkahest when you have... whatever this is."
The Future Hero's Orb doesn't feel like an... well, an orb. The pink, transparent surface is ethereal, soft and yet hard at the same time. The sensation of solid stone and also loose sea foam comes to Jackie's fingers as she touches it.
The moment her fingers actually meet the Orb, it very obviously opens a potential connection with her. Unlike the Gauntlets or even the crazy Wand, this device is very, very loud. And yet, the sensation is that of a very large person being unable to lower their voice.
Only with magic.
And with soul shenanigans.
It's very confusing.
While the sea within this thing is only an eigth the size of the one of Jackie's... tagalong, it is none the less immense.
The Gauntlets also seem to get connection requests from the Orb. They forward their own feeling of query on to Jackie.
The gauntlets want to play with the orb's massive mana reservoir? Jackie gives them her permission, though she does wonder why Jerry and Abackpack were so excited about this thing. Then she forwards a mental query to Abackpack, asking what the big deal is.
The Orb seems pleased, though it was clearly expecting her assent. It forges a connection with Jackie first, which feels a bit like sticking her tongue in a power outlet... only for her soul. The sensation dies down after a moment.
Then the Gauntlets and the Orb create their own connections, and Jackie can almost see the ethereal wispy rivers of power flowing between them. The Gauntlet's internal seas almost immediately empty into the Orb's... and barely affect the level at all.
The Orb confirms a connection with Jackie's moon-sized magic bullshit organ, though neither exchange any portions of their seas beyond a small amount just to make sure the passing back and forth can even function. The Orb lifts off of Jackie's hand and begins to hover next to her shoulder, though it sends her the impression that it will immediately go wherever she directs it should she will it.
Magic device designated Future Hero's Orb contains similar mana density to tails, Abackpack informs Jackie, though clearly even that is a struggle given how shocked it is.
Wilnell beams at her, pride almost rolling off her. "And just to defy more of my expectations, I think that was the smoothest device integration I've ever witnessed," she declares, putting her hands on her hips. She nods at Jackie, an approving look in her eyes. "You can choose one more. It's not a good idea to overtax your... let's call it magic bandwidth, even with your bullshit reservoir." She turns her head slightly and eyes the obvious fox tail. "Not that it's unclear which one you're choosing next," she teases Jackie, winking.
There are still more items coming from the other shelving unit.
At Wilnell's remark, Jackie rubs her head with a tail sheepishly. "That obvious, huh?" Without waiting for the other items, she scoops up the fox plushie and cuddles it in her arms. Meanwhile she hugs the Orb with her tails.
"For reference, how much mana do mages usually have?" she asks Wilnell. "Compared to the Orb?"
"Yup," Wilnell nods sagely. "Called it."
She finds herself unable to keep from outright snorting at Jackie's second question. She holds her hands up to either side of her and moves them up and down. "Magic," she says, raising her right hand. She then looks to her left hand and raises that while lowering her right hand. "Normal." She drops both hands and shrugs at Jackie. "Pick one, pretty much. Everybody's different and has different aptitudes in magic." She shrugs again, frowning at the Orb. "Though... I'd say maybe... thirty? Yeah, that feels right, thirty times the mana capacity of a lot of the other beginners I've brought here to get items."
Jackie nods as if that's the answer she expected. "Now I just need to find a way to be thirty times more cool and mysterious, and I'm all set."
Wilnell seems to think on it for a few moments. The fox plushie, meanwhile, fidgets in Jackie's hands, still asleep. It nuzzles her wrist before settling down.
She abruptly snaps her fingers and points them in the shape of a finger gun at Jackie. "You could probably grab a Cloak of Mystery from one of the more specialist shops," she informs her. "I don't know if it'll make you more mysterious, your Cute rating is absolutely insane, but they generate SEP fields so you should at least be able to fake it."
Jackie snaps her fingers and fingerguns back. "Cloak of Mystery. That'll come in handy for when I inevitably make myself the center of attention again."
Wilnell giggles and nods. "Yeah. They're good for stealthy operations," she agrees. Her tone becomes teasing and she winks at Jackie. "Not that I think you can actually achieve being sneaky, miss stupidly high Cute rating hugfox with giant shiny magic dragon wings." She even sticks out her tongue.
"Maybe I could pick up some Christmas lights for my tails..." Jackie muses. "I wonder what I would even do on an infiltration mission. Hum the Mission Impossible theme while hugging every guard?" She tilts her head, trying to picture it. "Actually, I think it depends on context. Maybe the Protectorate really needs someone to infiltrate a den of evil hugfoxes? I'd be perfect."
Jackie's musing amuses Wilnell, and she chuckles. "I'm sure someone somewhere has made tail lights," she agrees. She shrugs, smiling apologetically at Jackie. "I've got no idea about the Protectorate though. I'm just signed up as a reservist for things like Chaosbringer battles or natural disasters."
Jackie takes on a far-off look as she tries to imagine what Wilnell would unleash against a Chaosbringer. If the Greatest Magic Show were anything to go by, it must be incredibly impressive. So impressive that Jackie can't even picture it, but still, the thought of that much firepower has her tails wagging subconsciously.
"Huh," Wilnell remarks, noticing Jackie's tails. "You're attracted to firepower too? Man, Athena really lucked out." She scoffs and shakes her head. "*Crazy overwhelming firepower obsessed Brick,*" she mutters under her breath.
"Hehe." Jackie looks down at her gauntlets, grinning and rubbing her hands together. "Going to have to give these a test run soon." She was planning a trip to the firing range with Athena, but now that she has firepower of her own, the priority goes up.
"Also"—Jackie holds up the Fox of Fluff and pets it—"I need to figure out what this does. Maybe I crank the tail and fireballs shoot out the mouth like a gatling gun? Or I fluff the fur to build up a static charge until I can blast lightning with my tails." Her tails wag and she snickers under her breath as she continues to fantasize.
Jackie striking the two gauntlets against each other causes a momentary flare of lightning to arc between the two of them. More flashy flair than actual lightning, though, given the small amount of mana present in the bolt.
Wilnell shakes her head, amused. "Pretty sure that's just a mana focus, Jackie," she tells the fox girl cuddling the fox plush and pointedly ignoring the entirely unnecessary gauntlet effects, "even if the animation system on it is impressive."
The elvin woman moves towards the fox and peers down at it.
The sleeping fox plushie doesn't seem to notice, dozing away peacefully.
Jackie nuzzles her face into the plushie's fur. "So no gatling gun fox? Well, it's still adorable."
Wilnell gives Jackie a wry look. "You have more than enough firepower with the gauntlets," she teasingly points out.
Her hand, seemingly without her knowledge, snakes up between her and the fox plushie that Jackie is snuggling. She only notices that she's petting the fox when the Elvin woman looks down. She starts a little, then sighs, shaking her head.
The fox shuffles a little under the snuggling and petting, letting out a contented whine.
Jackie giggles and snuggles the fox some more. Even Wilnell can't resist the cuteness!
The petting and snuggling of the faux fox by the heavy metal elf and the bigger human fox continues for a while, but eventually Wilnell manages to regain control of herself and draws her hand back.
She sighs happily and nods at Jackie's new equipment. "So, you wanna keep looking around the store, or shall we go pay?" she asks, pointing over towards the exit archway where a few stone orbs with tons of subtly glowing runes inscribed into them hover in the air. People pass by them and simply wave their items and what appear to be Alliance IDs near the orb, before leaving the store without worry.
Cloak of Mystery... but no. Giving in to her better judgement, or perhaps her desire to show off her new toys to Athena, Jackie shakes her head. "Better go pay." She looks longingly at her gauntlets, tails wagging lightly, then glances over to the checkout area uncertainly.
I never asked how much these were, but... Jackie nibbles on her lower lip and fidgets with some tail fluff. If it comes down to it, I don't really need two kidneys, do I?
Wilnell catches her glance to the payment orbs and laughs lightly. "Don't worry Jackie, the Hightower has a fund for brand new Mages," she explains, reaching into the crevice between her breasts. Out her hand comes, pulling out what appears to be a small, rounded flat stone with a single slightly glowing blue rune on it. "Basically, these are on me."
With that the elvin Synth spins on her heel and marches off towards the minimal line for the orbs, unhurried yet still proceeding. "Come on!" she calls back.
Squealing in glee, Jackie hurries to catch up, an act made more difficult by all nine of her tails wagging heavily, forcing her into what looks like a zig-zagging drunken jog towards the payment orbs.
Wilnell strolls up the closest free orb just after the person in front of them, who was previously the back of the 'line' for the checkout lane while they walked over to it, and spins on her heels again to wait for Jackie's... creative approach method.
She does try to at least look professional and patient, though it falls flat as she can't help but giggle at the tail driven drunken zigzag.
"I'm... coming... as fast... as I can," Jackie pants, pumping her arms for extra speed that all dissipates into sideways motion. It only takes a few moments to reach Wilnell, but it feels like longer. When she arrives, Jackie fake wipes the sweat from her brow.
Wilnell rolls her eyes, grins, and shakes her head fondly. "Just hold up each item to the orb so it can register them," she says, gesturing between Jackie's gauntlets and the hovering orb. She can't help but get in a little teasing, though. "Try not to get drunk fox on them, they aren't warded against that."
"Ha ha." Jackie begins by holding the fluffy fox plushie up to the orb, followed by the Future Hero's Orb and the gauntlets. When she finishes, she looks at the payment orb like she wants to hug it.
With each item Jackie passes within a few inches of the payment orb's surface, a different set of runes light up and the stone emits a pleasant sounding chime.
Once Jackie has passed every item she has by the orb Wilnell dramatically swipes the rune stone by it as well. It chimes normally again, then all the runes on it pulse in unison and it lets out a final sounding gong sound.
Wilnell returns the stone to her cleavage and turns to Jackie. "And like that, we're done!" she cheerily declares, closing her eyes and smiling.
"We are?" Jackie gasps, then throws her arms (and tails) up in the air. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" She bounces in a happy little circle around the orb, pumping her fists up and down.
Jackie playing an abrupt round of ring around the fox orb makes Wilnell grin even wider, though she does nod to the impatiently waiting, but understanding and also grinning, almost fondly, woman made out of what appears to be pure smoky darkness who comes up to the orb behind them.
She gestures to the exit archway. "Wanna go see if Aveus has finished his lecture yet?" she asks. "I'm sure he'd be willing to nerd out on your new toys just as much as he loves Alkahest."
Jackie turns to her, wide-eyed with several of her tails pointing straight up. "Yes!" She'd almost forgotten about Aveus. After giving a sheepish grin and a nod to the very patient and understanding woman behind them, the foxgirl slinks over to Wilnell and out of the store.
Wilnell leads Jackie out of the store and onto the walking side street. The Future Hero's Orb follows Jackie just as it's meant to, and once more they are among the river of people.
Wilnell stops, putting her hands on her hips. Her tall stature allows her to peer over many of the people in the relatively small flow of their side street. "Okay, now where did we come from?" she asks herself, metaphorically scratching her head.
Her confusion is understandable, given the side street lets out on both ends to major streets full of people.
What's not so understandable is her forgetting she's a Synth, so she should know the exact path they took.
We need to find Aveus, Jackie thinks. That shouldn't be too hard. Finding a specific person that they're both thinking about, especially a former student whom Wilnell knows personally, would be nearly trivial for Jackie's power.
"This way," Jackie says, a self-satisfied smile settles on her face. She doesn't even break stride as she passes Wilnell, following the threads linking them to the lecturing alchemist like it's the most natural thing in the world.
Wilnell blinks at Jackie's confidence, then sighs and closes her eyes. "Locator, right," she nods in remembrance. She mumbles a reprimand to herself as she follows Jackie towards the closer main street. "*And you're a Synth, stop forgetting that just cuz your body is rocking, Wil.*"
Jackie's foxy ears swivel to pick up Wilnell's words, which only cause her pride to swell even greater. Her tails fluff up and start wagging slightly, putting an extra bounce to her step.
She's totally right about the rockin' body, too, Jackie thinks, snickering quietly to herself.
They approach the primary street quickly due to Jackie's efficient maneuvering, which Wilnell has no issue following. If she cheats sometimes, walking simultaneously around and through people to keep up with the foxgirl tails peeking up like periscope from the river of people, oh well.
Once on the primary street, Aveus is immediately obvious. His crowd has only grown and at this point he might as well be on a stage, showing off multiple sorts of esoteric and specialized magic effects and spells to an awed audience. Of course, this is still a lecture, so even as he gestures with his hands and tosses a small bit of what is obviously Alkahest into the air to make a gigantic fireball in the sky he's still explaining everything he's doing.
"-And so, as you can see, if you imbue the alkahest with an elemental equivalent signature then it will draw from the background wave system and emanate the effect you intend-"
Once Wilnell catches up, Jackie nudges her with an elbow and nods to the lecturing alchemist. "He's still at it." If Jackie is able to, she would maneuver herself to the front of the crowd so that he can see them.
Wilnell looks to her former student and shakes her head. "Of course he is," she laments.
It is at that moment that Aveus' gaze alights on the two women in his continual spin. "Wilnell! Jackie!" he loudly exclaims, gesturing to them. "How was your trip?"
"Well we didn't fall down the lecture hole!" Wilnell shouts back.
"Haha!" Aveus bellows, laughing genuinely. "I can't help it, you know that!" Quite a few people laugh at or with him, nodding along. Including Wilnell.
He seems not to pay very much attention to Jackie's new items, either because he's too into his lecturing mode or he just doesn't see them. The two women are on the edge of the crowd, after all.
"He's probably going to ask you to show off your new toys for the crowd if we tell him about them," Wilnell warns Jackie, slightly leaning down to her level. "Think you're up to it?"
Jackie considers it. "The fox, sure. The ridiculously dangerous weapons that I've never used before? Eh..." She makes a so-so gesture, shrugs, and frowns.
"Both your fox and the gauntlets are safe, Jackie, they won't misfire like... Wanda," Wilnell reassures her, slightly smiling at the nickname that is apparently stuck like glue to her crazy wand. "And if you choose to use whatever function allows them to dump their mana, just fire them at the sky, the Hightower can take care of the rest. Hell, it can do it if you accidentally unload into the crowd." She puts a hand on her chin and absentmindedly rubs, in thought. "Well, at least I think so. The Hightower's safety systems have handled much larger magical discharges than those should be capable of dishing out."
Aveus continues his lecturing, this time placing regular geometric shapes of Alkahest in the air in front of him and is clearly charging them somehow, as an increase in their glow gradually spreads through the interconnected shapes from the center.
That seems a lot more reasonable than Jackie thought at first. Back where she was from, discharging a weapon you didn't understand in the middle of a crowd was a pretty good way to piss off the Protectorate. Then again, simply walking the street with a friend and a cute tinker toy was enough to piss them off, so maybe they were just pissy all the time.
Fortunately Earth Krac was a place where fun wasn't outlawed.
Tails wagging happily, Jackie nods to Wilnell. "Alright. As long as it's safe. Let's tell him and inevitably make me the center of attention again when things don't go as expected."
Wilnell shares Jackie's euphoria and grins, tossing her a dramatic thumbs up. "Sounds good!" She exclaims
Then she puts her hands to her mouth and yells towards Aveus, the only way he can hear her over the rapid series of hopefully controlled blue explosions occurring in the center of his elaborate mandala. "HEY AVEUS!"
He doesn't notice her calling him, just continuing to spout things about subspace and rapid mana ether excitement.
Wilnell sighs, shakes her head, and tries again. "YO, ROCK BONER!"
That gets his attention. He spins around to face the two of them, grinning widely. "WHAT, WILNELL?" he asks.
"JACKIE HAS COOL NEW TOYS!"
His eyes widen, his grin becomes positively maniacal, and he slashes through the exploding mandala almost without a care. It fades into dust that drops to the ground as he snaps his gaze to the Orb hovering near Jackie's shoulder. "An Orb?" he asks, eyes alight. "She can support that?"
Almost the entire audience, seeming to realize something cool and new is being shown, swivels to look at Jackie. Not a one of them mean her harm, and easily more than half are staring more at her magic items than her. Several hastily begin doing absolutely horrendous things to their recording methods.
Wilnell gestures for Jackie to hold her arms up. "And Energy Manipulation Gauntlets!"
Aveus' eyes widen even further and his jaw drops. "For a *beginner?!*" he asks.
"Yup!"
A wave composed of variants of 'ooh', 'wow', and 'holy shit' ripples through the crowd.
Jackie didn't think it was possible, but her tails fluff up even more as the crowd oohs and aahs at her cool toys. Beaming, she steps up next to Aveus and stops hugging her plushie long enough to hold it up proudly. "*And* a Fox of Floof!"
"Fox fluff for the fox god!" some dude calls out.
Aveus looks at the Fox, his eyebrows rising. "Three items, Jackie?" he asks her, awed... Not quite disbelief, but more pseudo acceptance on his face.
Cue another wave of 'holy shit', 'wow', and etc, this time punctuated by a few squeals from some of the clearly female members of the audience... and at least two males.
"Yessss," Jackie purrs, petting the fox as the turns around, showing off her toys to all the onlookers. Whoever called out "fox fluff for the fox god" gets an extra big grin from her before she turns back to Aveus.
Meanwhile one of her tails starts patting herself on the head.
My Stories: The Only Winning Move Is Overwhelming Firepower | Ancient Legos | Shipping It Stargate Style | Fourth
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"And thus humanity discovered intelligent life, only for it to immediately troll NASA and buzz call towers" -DodoDude
Other Things: TCGM's Nexus Discord Server | FFN Review Reply In Page | Planetarily Annihilating Self Insertion Discord Server
"And thus humanity discovered intelligent life, only for it to immediately troll NASA and buzz call towers" -DodoDude