It is a Sunday morning, the breeze is coming from my window making the curtains gently swing, my room is surprisingly clean, I decided to clean a bit to help me, with what you may ask?, well I'm currently sitting on my bed with my legs crossed, I'm taking deep breaths and focusing my mind on a single thing, the Magical Girl contract, I'm currently meditating because I technically haven't even mastered Aether manipulation until I can get a good look at the contract, or so Sauriel told me, I'm trying my hardest to visualize the contract in many ways.
Imagining my hand searching around a drawer and pulling a document, doesn't work, isolating a piece of aether from my pool and projecting it as the contract? also doesn't work.
I eventually get to the most ridiculous idea, I imagine a mouse double-clicking a PDF document titled 'magical girl contract' and opening up a PDF file, this makes the tip of my index finger feel warm, so I raised it, and the contract was projected in front of me, Sauriel, who was sitting next to me 'sleeping' wakes up.
"Is that really how I make this thing show up?" I'm disappointed at the realization of how I'm supposed to make the contract appear.
"Well, I don't know how you imagined it, but it should be in the most familiar with you?" Sauriel explained.
[That makes sense, I'm way more into computers than books or documents, but it doesn't eliminate the ridiculous factor of this whole thing!!!].
I look through the document, it still says the same stuff as before but now it is filled, the part that most piqued my interest was the terms and conditions, I was in a hurry last time so I didn't get enough time to read it, so now I look closely at the first 7 terms.
[[Magical Girl Contract: 'Terms & Conditions]]
1.-The client will be provided with the necessary tools to become a 'catalyst'.
2.-The client will also have the opportunity to find a suitable 'weapon' and enough time to develop its 'unique magic' to an acceptable degree before coming into direct action.
3.-The client will be provided with Aether medical care in case of graves injuries sustained while in battle.
4.-The client will be provided with a 'Servant of Gaia' as a guide, the servant's level will be defined by the importance of the client in question, The servant has the responsibility for the client's actions and growth.
5.-The client will inherit the responsibilities of a 'Magical girl', this includes neutralizing uncontracted 'catalyst' which may come in many forms, such as 'Devils', 'Natural Magic Users' and 'Fallen Angels'.
6.-The client has to be registered in the rankings of magical girl weekly to grasp the client's progress and capabilities.
7.-The client doesn't have the responsibility to interfere with uncontracted individuals that are residing within Gaia's Realm.
"Okay, I have a lot of questions about this contract now that I can actually see it" I look at Sauriel.
"I will answer to the best of my capabilities" Sauriel prepares to give me actually useful answers.
"It says that it will become a 'catalyst', what does that mean?" I'm remembering that is a different term than the one used for the star insignia, which was 'Catalyzer'.
"That how we call individuals capable of using Unique magic" He explains.
I think for a second, reading term 5 something comes to mind, "By how this is worded, devils can use magic as well?".
"Yes, but that they are capable of using it doesn't mean that they know how to use it or what it is, most of them are in the same situation as you we're 4 days ago" Sauriel said with a straight face.
[OOF, that's a low blow to my self-steem].
"Ok, I understand... it also says that you are a servant of Gaia, who's that?" Gaia is a name I have heard before, I forgot to search for it.
Sauriel seem surprised about my question, "Gaia is the place where we came from, your race used to call us 'angels' and 'otherworlders ' when we first came into contact, so those 3 words refer to us, which is kinda confusing".
[Again with the incomplete answers, but from this, I guess they thought in the past that Sauriel and his peers were angels? I mean he's just a cat so who would think that? the Egyptians?].
"Fallen angels, what are those?" I ask Sauriel once again.
[I mean I can get a good idea of what that term means, I'm not that stupid... I think].
"Rogue angels, they are angels that have abandoned their positions as high ranking individuals in our forces, although they are very uncommon they still exist within Gaia and Earth" Sauriel pondered for a while, "You don't have to neutralize them if they are in Gaia as that's not part of your responsibility, and I doubt you will see one in here" he ended.
I look at the document again, and what Sauriel said was true, term 7 did point that I technically only need to care about earth problems, but the number of questions that it brought up was too great for me.
[Too much exposition, kinda want to relax for a bit].
"Thanks for answering Sauriel" I walk to get myself ready to go out.
"No problem, I'm contractually obligated to guide you" he answers.
[You don't have to put in a way that makes it seem like I'm forcing to answer, you stupid cat].
I go out to the shopping mall, I needed a breath of fresh air to collect my thoughts further since I had received way too much information in the week, so I needed to shift my perspective.
[First, let's organize, thing number one it's my magic, it seems to be in working order as I now can use it in more ways than just putting a wall, I can't do a lot with it but unlike the explosion thing this had a lot more possibilities... or so it seems, anyway my magic is now there so it should be easier to beat devils since I don't have to rely only on kicks and punches, the contract on the other part does seem legit, It wants to encapsulate everything but fails miserably, I could probably find a loophole if I truly tried, but kinda don't wanna anger God yet].
While I'm walking in the street, I'm fixing the little cracks in the grounds with my 'earth magic' that I decided to call, although manipulation is a better name for it I prefer this because its easier to say in battle, I see some potholes on the road and fix them, it appears pavement is included in 'earth magic' which is useful in the concrete jungle.
Although I don't like being in public, having a hoodie cover your head makes you a bit more comfortable, people do give you weird looks but the hoodie makes it hard to notice, I get to the shopping mall, the reason I went in here was, of course, manga and anime section of the store, it was on one of the far corners of the mall.
They are selling 2 things that I wanted, new volumes of a manga that I wanted to continue reading, I was supposed to buy this last Sunday but couldn't because of Magical girl training, the other things were because of figurines, I look at the stand that housed them, nothing picked my interested which worried me, I would be excited over which figurine to get, but now it seemed a bit dull.
[Could be that seeing them in real life raised my standards a bit too much? no no no that can be it, right?].
My thoughts are a bit naive but genuine, I unconsciously liked the clothes that this generation of magical girls wore, they were a bit more diverse than the figurines led you to believe, me being a prime example of it, my transformation clothes are a perfect fit, so are Magda's and that Military girl, totally different from the homogeneous primary colors and whites from the figurines, I still liked them, but not much as before.
[is this what they call 'expanding your horizons' ?].
Not knowing whenever I had poor or good taste anymore, I look through the figurines once again to see which grabbed my attention, I saw one but it was weird, it was marketed as an 'old magical girl' she was dressed in a witch outfit similar to Vera but it was more traditional, it has cyan accents, and her hair was a pale blond, she didn't have a broom like Vera, her eyes were closed so I couldn't see her eye color, this was normal magical girl stuff, but her chest size was just out of this world.
[F cup].
It was extremely weird so I ask the store clerk about it.
"Well I don't know a lot about that stuff, but I can say that she appeared in the first years of magical girls" he said.
[First years? so the outfits are not that consistent as I assumed, Good information I guess].
The new world seems a bit more complicated than marketing makes you think, I ignore those feelings trying to see if there are any cool figurines, but nothing, I get a message from Sauriel as I'm still searching for something interesting.
"Amy got some aether readings close from here" Sauriel said, in my head which I still find creepy, but is useful for communicating in populated areas like this one, so I begin walking towards the location indicated.
As I get closer and closer I start recognizing the scenery, the building and roads are familiar, eventually, I reach the destination and get to know where I was heading, it is my high school.
[How depressing, going to school on a weekend, Wait it is Sunday, so then...?].
I begin to recollect my information and come to the conclusion, there must be a lot of commotion if I'm needed because Akari is already in school because of the football tournament, sure enough, as I get to school I begin to see the devils, they are occupying one of the schools outside areas, the one students dubbed 'Second campus', although the school held a tournament they were currently in the football campus since it was in the middle of the tournament.
They were 3 devils in total, 2 of them were the previously mention Trashcan Devil, but they were considerably larger, the 3rd devil was like a bunch of piled paper and folders, somehow it maintained the shape of a giant hand with an eye in its palm, the ink in the papers moved constantly making a different drawing of random characters, it's pupil made of a combination of black and red ink that moved to see it's surroundings, I stared at it since it was floating around while moving its fingers along.
Akari is fighting the 'Paper Hand' Devil by moving her wand and tossing boulders at it, it was working but not by a lot, it seems that the paper was mostly undamaged since it got off the way before it hit it.
[Weird, how is it even holding its shape if it's like that?]
I see that one of the Trashcan devils approaches Akari by the side while she is fighting, so I make the desition to try a long-range move, I raise my left leg and stomp the ground, a rectangular rock the size of a drawer is ejected from the ground in front of me as it reaches eye level I pull my hand back and punch the rock with all my strength while putting aether into the concept of 'fire upon impact', My closed hand touches the rock, It immediately is pushed at great speeds towards my objective, it loses half it's initial speed but it still crushes the Trashcan completely forcing the Trashbag inside to eject itself.
"Amy!!!" Akari noticed me, but her shout also made the paper hand devil notice me, it back off a bit to have me and Akari in its field of vision.
"Heard you needed backup class rep" I say.
[I'm I condemned to talk like this when I'm fighting?].
Akari's eyes light up as if I had said something cool, she nods and explained, "The hand devil does not receive damage from physical attack so I've been watching it with magic but I'm running out of bullets".
"I see, leave it to me" I begin using my magic by throwing my hands down, The paper devil senses my aether and immediately flick its finger, it shoots 'stiff' paper at us.
[Change of plans!!].
"Rock Wall".
I raise my hands up in the air, the ground raises forming a thin wall made out of hardened dirt, the paper sheets impact the wall but they stop midway, once the paper was stuck in the wall it became normal and flapped around in the wind, Akari defended herself by stopping the paper mid-air with her wand and launching it back, the paper became normal midway so the attack didn't even land.
I stomp the ground once more, this time a bunch of rocks the size of cherries was ejected into the air around us, Akari acknowledged it and stop them mid-air, she shoot a bunch of them at the paper devil, they were effective at getting rid of the paper sheets, but it wasn't enough, suddenly my hairs spiked up, my aether sense had picked up something.
I turn left and see a Trashcan Lid flying straight at me, it's way too close to kick back, I make a spike of dirt impale the lid to stop it, the lid ends up only a few meters from me.
"Class rep I will take the Trashcan first so we can focus on the Paper hand later" I said confidently, Akari agreed and began using the rocks as ammunition
[I could take these guys before, so I should be able to manage them].
The Trashcan devil is charging in, I walk slowly while looking at it, I wait for it to come near me, I close my eyes to focus, 5 notable aether signatures, they feel like breathing, the 2 behind me feel erratic, they are taking a lot of air and making constant breezes, they belong to Akari and the Paper devil, 1 in front of me, it's equally loud but more composed, it belongs to the trashcan devil, and the last prominent, it is steady and silent, but it is noticeable if you focused on it, is slowly approaching me.
[Wait... just wait don't be as impatient as before, it can be easy if you just wait].
Suddenly, the sneaky aether signature burst in activity, it is approaching from the left side at a rapid pace, the Trashcan and this signature will converge on me, I open my eyes, I make a tiny wall 3 feet tall in front of the Trashcan devil, it stumbles and drops on the ground, I turned to left and kick in the direction of the aether signature, I see it belonged to the trash bag devil that was ejected, the devil backed off last second so my kick missed.
"That's not all".
Following the motion of my kick, a ground spike suddenly raises from the ground impaling the Trashbag, it convulsed for a second before going completely limp, I turned to the Trashcan devil that stumbled, it's scared that the trash bag was impaled before it stood up I send a bit I made a diagonal pillar shoots of the ground behind the devil, it hits it sending it flings it my direction, The trashbag devil tried to bail its trashcan, it fails and a do a hop while coating my right leg in aether.
"Roundhouse Kick".
I hit the trashcan head-on, I dented the trashcan so much that the devil inside was completely crushed, it gets thrown towards the wall of the school, it hits the school wall and falls on the ground.
"Done!! now we caaa.." before I finish talking I see something on the school windows, there's a figure observing us, I get closer to see it better, I recognized it.
[The green-haired girl that wore a lab coat that I saw last Monday!!, what is she doing here??? is she seeing the football game and got distracted? wait... wasn't there 5 aether signatures?].
I begin thinking, the girl noticed me, I waved at her, she seems to be somewhat surprised and dumbfounded, aether sense picks something approaching really fast, I turned around while putting a wall, this time is a lot thicker and wider to protect the windows from being broken, loud thuds are heard, I make my wall crumble and see the Paper devil, it's looking at me and the green-haired girl.
"Class rep!!! take this and shoot it!!" I point at the crumbled wall, Akari nods and picks the broken rocks via telekinesis and shoots at the paper devil, I touch the ground with my hands, I start raising a big wall behind the devil without being noticed, I feel my whole body becoming colder the more I use my magic, this wall is being a heavy burden.
"I will crush it completely, help me out with altitude class rep!!" I shout at Akari, she looks at the paper devil.
"I see, will do!" Akari seems a bit hopeful of this plan.
I shoot out into the air a stone tablet, I jump on top of it and Akari uses telekinesis on it to move it around, so now I'm flying thanks to Akari while she is also throwing rocks at the enemy, the devil notices me, it does a 'finger gun' some of the paper in the tip of the gun start folding.
[What is it doing???].
Akari and I prepare to dodge anything, abruptly the paper devil shot a bunch of paper planes at me, they were extremely fast so most of them grazed me, I look at the missed paper airplanes and they were coming back, My floating platform starts falling, but the paper planes stop and immediately fall to the ground, the floating rock I was standing regains its floatiness.
"Sorry, got to remove the airplanes from the fray!!" Akari said.
"Should have told me first but okay" I snapped back.
The paper devil shot more paper airplanes but this time I dodge them, I could jump in any direction to dodge because Akari would always catch me before I fell, I got close enough to the paper devil and high enough where I could discern its 'middle'.
[All devils have a 'core' in them, the Paper Hand shouldn't be an exception, so I just need to destroy that].
I prepared to throw a punch by lowering my center of gravity and putting my right hand back, I started preparing to pour most of my aether into my magic, it should be a single burst so needed to prepare, once I felt it was the right amount, I dumped it into my 'spell', my body felt extremely cold and my vision blurred for a second, but I quickly regained composure.
A large Square stone tablet the size of my entire room popped out of the ground, it was slowly flung in front of me, it was enough to block my vision of the paper devil, I begin pouring the rest of my aether into my hand, the devil tried to retreat but was met with the large wall I created earlier.
"SHIELD BASH!!!".
I punched the stone tablet with all my might, it is launched directly into the devil, It crushes the paper into a nice sandwich, A sound of glass breaking is heard, then the papers convulse a little, the ink from each paper drooped to the ground before the paper turned normal, it was moved by the gentle breeze, the rock I was floating on slowly descended, I hopped off it.
[it's done, it was nice to do it].
"AMY!!" Akari jumped at me and hugged me, I froze for a bit since Akari never really touched me before, she was clean unlike me so some of my dirt got on her magician outfit, the top hat oddly suits her curious personality.
"Now, now class rep, we need to clean up this stuff" I say while pushing back Akari, although it felt nice I got way too nervous and started sweating, Akari nodded.
[That's enough Magical girl acting please let me be normal].
We began fixing the battle scene a bit differently from how I did it with Vera because I had earth magic I could automatically seal most cracks and those I couldn't Akari fix herself.
[Oh wait what about the green hair.. and she is gone].
"I'm gonna go inside the school to check something" I say to Akari, she nods and waves me goodbye, I go into the school searching for the green-haired girl, I run through the hallways and eventually I found her standing in the middle of a hallway.
"You what are thinking by watching me???" I asked the green-haired girl, she didn't move, so I moved closer to see what was happening, I hear her talking, she was talking to someone, I get close enough to see who she was talking to.
[The President of the disciplinary committee??? What is he doing here??].
I shiver a bit, with a height of 175 cm (5'7" ft) A well-buttoned white long sleeve shirt, a black belt holding his black dress pants that are special to the committee, jet black hair that somehow was darker than mine in my untransformed state, she had a black gakuran hanging in his shoulders with a red band attached to his left sleeve of the gakuran trough a safety pin with the words 'discipline written in them, he was looking down on the green-haired girl with his sharp grey eyes.
[That's not good, Douglass Lark is the definition of danger and bad news].
"What are you doing in this school Lab coat girl?" Douglass asked the green-haired girl, she was nervous seeing him.
"Uhmm... I was actually".
"Spit it out faster" Douglass interrupted her, he didn't seem to have the patience for intruders, he started searching inside his gakuran, he slowly pulled out a silver tonfa and put his guard up, the green hair girl was visible startled by this, but couldn't move from fear.
[Is he really gonna beat her up???].
I jumped in front of the girl "Hey what are you doing here?".
The girl and Douglass turned to me, "Oh heyy~ Lark" I asked nervously.
[Please don't beat me up, just listen for a second].
"What are you 2 doing here??" he didn't let his guard down.
I approach the girl and up my arm over her shoulder "We got lost, we wanted to see the football tournament, do you happen to know where it was".
[Please don't notice that it is a lie, or if you do please let us only with a scolding].
Although I'm a magical girl, fighting Douglass was not on my list of things to do.
"Mphh... I see... the football tournament is held in that direction, turned at the second corner" he pointed towards the football campus.
"Thank you, have a good day" I pushed the girl into the hallway until she started walking herself, Douglass only look at us for a few seconds before resuming his normal patrol.
[Uffff... at least he takes the patrols more seriously than us].
"Uhhh, thank you?" the girl asked.
"No problem, now I have some questions for you, what's your name?" I ask her.
"Hui Kaku".