"What is magic?".
"Not again!!!".
I'm currently with my notebook and pen while sitting on a worn-out couch, ready to take notes about this 'class' that Hui is providing me, Hui's great training plan was explained to me in great detail, but I lost interest because she avoided the main point for far too long, but basically, she wanted me to learn the basics of magic, then have me research and experiment with my unique magic for some time to determine what could be feasible done, the basic 'learn theory and then practice it', it was a good plan I must admit, but that doesn't remove the fact that she overused that question already.
"Well, I need to drill into your head what magic is for you to take it seriously!!!" Hui said while looking smug, I frowned and relented.
"Okay, okay, Magic is the ability of the 'catalyst' to make emotion/feelings into physical phenomena, apparently it takes aether as a fuel".
"Nice, that's only a part of it though, as you might know since you are pretty physical for a Magical girl, with those muscles" she makes clear eye contact to my biceps, which slightly increased due to my rank going up.
"Don't mention it Doc!!!" I say while pouting.
"Don't call me doc!! I'm a SCIENTIST!!" Hui says as she 'shows her outfit'.
"Yeah, whatever you say DOC" I say while glaring at the lab coat.
"he~ anyway, you might realize that aether can be used in its pure form while inside your body to strengthen or expand your senses, do you know why this happens?".
"Not a clue!!!".
"Well, at least you're honest..." She gives me a disappointed look.
"I considered it my strong point" I proudly say, which only earns me a sigh from Hui.
"The basis is simple, it still a hypothesis but I believe that aether is the main thing that generates our senses in the first place, it is wise to understand that not having it means not feeling anything" I immediately raise my hand, Hui looks at me curiously as to why.
"Yes, Amy" she says while pointing at me, as if we were in a class, although I'm the only one here.
"When I signed my magical contract I was in a hurry, so Sauriel..." I give a death glare to Sauriel who is sleeping beside me, he shivers a bit even though he is not awake, "decided that he would manipulate my aether, so I almost got exhausted from it, causing me to effectively lose my senses, it was extremely uncomfortable and I still have the occasional nightmare about it!!" Hui ponders for a bit while ignoring the last part of my statement.
"I see, now this is interesting, now I'm 1000% confident about my genius!!!" She exclaims while laughing maniacally, I give her an awkward stare and she eventually composes herself after a few seconds while pushing her glasses up so they don't fall on the ground because of the sudden movements.
"It also makes this class more effective, of course!!" She says while evading my eyes, from embarrassment.
"Yeah..." I say while trying not to chuckle.
"Okay then, since that's how it works, then the reverse would also be true, by pouring some aether into a specific part of your body, or more clearly, the part of the brain and nervous system correspondent to those senses, then it will increase its sensitivity, making you almost superhuman!!!" She explains while drawing on the blackboard.
"Mmmm...I have only put aether into my head to make my head think faster, but that's it".
"Okay, let me think about it for a second, then, we will get you ready to try it out," she says not putting much thought into it, focusing on her drawings.
I decide to do this test earlier with the most important of my senses since it would be easier to detect than something as vague as 'equilibrium sense' or vestibular sense, I opted for sight since it also should provide some utility that I desperately needed, I concentrate and begin the process, I feel the aether coursing through my body as the warm lazy river, carelessly washing over every single cell, I agitate the river and the flow starts to change into a small vortex, with its epicenter at my eyes, slowly, my oculars start widening and a warm feeling starts being obvious in me.
[Nice, I really like this feeling].
I then try to imagine this course of energy traversing from my eyes to my brain through the nervous system, I do since I guessed that upgrading my eyes will only upgrade my eyes, so my brain will not be able to handle the new information, so I needed to also upgrade the vision part of my brain, so I slowly do that as to not overwhelm me.
My vision gets better and better, my field of vision starts widening slightly allowing me to see beyond was is humanly possible, every single detail from the extremely small cracks on the rocky ground as well as most particles of rust being expelled by the pile cars outside the cave is being processed in my brain, I admire in awe as the world starts feeling 'sharper' and more defined by the second, the leaves get scarily detailed, I see the ray of the sun get brighter, the imperfections of my own skin, the pores that it has, even hui's hair gets so detailed that it's hard to look at since every single strand get processed.
After a few seconds, something else changes, it takes a second for me to notice, the colors started changing slightly, from their usual unmuted browns and greys, the start saturating, the brightness star augmenting while the darker color gets even darker, new colors start seeping in the environments where they shouldn't be, reds stars slowly washing over the metal cars while greens and blues plagate the sky pulsation every couple of second making it seem like a strange wave that changes the very essence of the sky, then something even more amazing happens.
[Holy f*ck].
Something indescribable, colors start merging between each other as they enter my eyeball to create something new, the world explodes with different colors but with clear patterns, the violets and pinks belonging to the far off space, while the reds washed over the hotspots, merging into a warm cozy and almost self satisfactory... color...
Looking at it, I get reminded of clear and arranged flower gardens, the warm feeling of the new dried out bedsheets, looking into it I get pulled to the times where everything was completely nice and had no worries, where I was completely myself with my friends, I stare at it flabbergasted, I have a myriad of emotion blasting through my brain trying to process what was happening until I only reach an answer, I turn to see the color on other things, noting a pattern of it being in the heat spots.
A new color, indescribable, only being even able to grasp its 'feeling' by comparing it to other things, it was completely out of my control.
[...]
The color changes into the cooler spots, these being the shadows, color on the contrary of the previous, calm and collected, but frightening nonetheless, something reminding me of Lark, reminding me of the 'cold fury' that my mom can show, the color of 'cold'.
I stood there speechless at the show of colors that were being presented until another new happened, the sky started pulsing washing over a line of different colors, more new colors, they don't even get the time to register the first one as they throw more into the sky, flashes of a meaning dark, resembling the times when the thunder would fall out, reminding me of how I woke in a cold sweat, a color of intimidation, that flashed in and out the atmosphere if it was shot out, another color appeared, this one reflected out everything merging with every other color making a ton of new combinations that I just couldn't even process.
[Oh god what is happening...]
Slowly, the colors start being peppered with strange spots, a color that could only be described as 'danger' being blasted into every single thing that the sun touched, as if a bullet crashed into it and inevitably reflected into my eye, my eyes get warmer an warmer but I'm too focused to notice it, more of these 'particles' keep appearing, I can't get what these are until something starts annoying me.
Seering pain infested my eyes, I feel as if needles started getting introduced into my eyes, piercing and wobbling around aimlessly as if carving in a child drawing, the heat started rising exponentially starting to also burn not only my eyes but also my head, I feel as if I'm getting a high fever while also tearing up, I can't with pain.
"AHhhhh..."
I instinctually cover my eyes with my hands to prevent more light from entering it but also to touch my eyes to check if they were alright, it was a futile attempt at blocking light, some of the colors ignored my hands completely and went through, bypassing my eyelids and entering my eyes, I could 'see' with a color reminding of constant danger, it felt awful, intrusive and somehow, traitorous, I could not bear anything the pain that I was feeling, I started crying and shedding tears as I stopped doing everything, from pouring aether into my yes to guiding it through my eyes and brain, the whole thing taking a few minutes to stop since my emotions of pain boosted my aether, coupled with the fact that I have inadvertently boosted my pain receptors by pouring aether into them, I was screaming like a banshee.
[Ow... it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much, I... please make it stop. please... I will do anything just make it stop already!!! I don't want to DIE!!!].
As I started cursing everything, Hui grabbed me and hugged me, trying to calm me down so that my emotion wouldn't grow any further, eventually, my aether stop coursing through my eyes and receded into its lazy state, spreading evenly along every inch of my body, the burn on my eye was still present but it was becoming more bearable as time passed, I decided to maintain my eyes closed for a lot more than necessary so that wouldn't happen again, almost frightening to opened them again, I was still crying my heart out.
I slowly opened my eyes and see the situation, my vision is distorted, I panicked for a second before noticing that I was still teary, I wiped my tears and look up, Hui is hugging me with an extremely worried look, I look into her eyes, she is panicking thinking of everything that could occur to me, and regretting everything that leads to this, she eventually composed herself, but instead of letting me go, she hugged me harder.
"I'm so sorry I jus-".
"Don't be, it was my fault" I say while looking away, in shame.
[Godammit, she told me to wait and I didn't].
I could not face Hui, the pain that I caused her was my fault, and still, was worry some for me, since getting her to hug me and be taking care of me, felt good, which was something I considered not healthy in any way, The blackboard was pushed away a bit and was pinned, so it showed the backside.
"I shouldn't have done that without your authorization," I say while trying to sound as fine as possible when knew I was not, I was completely mentally exhausted and could barely speak without needing assistance.
"Even if that's the case... I should have warned you beforehand, I was just too... dumb to realize that" She says, I only hugged her back.
"..."
I couldn't do anything else, I was out for a few minutes, and blaming myself was the only thing I knew how to do, I had no social skills to make her not feel responsible, even though I was the impatient one.
After a few minutes, she helped me get my bearings and test my vision again, it looked, normal... too normal.
"It's weird, I don't think I can go back anymore" I say, completely dejected from reality.
"What do you mean?" she says while making sure that I don't do something stupid again.
"I saw... something interesting".
"YOU SAW? Don't tell me you test it out with your sight first" she said while looking at me, I lowered my head in acknowledgment.
"One of the most important senses" She said while leaning into me, I hunched my back to make myself smaller, out of shame, I really wanted to disappear at that moment.
"And you risked it with the possibility of being blinded?" She questioned me while towering over me, I only nodded, she sighed loudly.
"Whatever, let's get you checked out at the do-"
"No, I'm fine"
"I don't think you're the doctor here, dumbass" she said while looking quite proud.
"Tsk" I said, completely acknowledging her.
"I knew this was going to happen, this is why I'm just better" Both of us glared at Sauriel, who immediately regretted speaking in the first place.
"Not the time, Sauriel" I said, while slowly getting on the couch.
"Yeah read the room, idiot cat" Hui said while cleaning the dust on her lab coat.
"I will get my eyes checked out, don't worry, but since we will not be here that often then I would prefer to remain here" Hui only looked at me while raising an eyebrow.
"I promise I will not try anything without asking, EVER, again"
"Good, at least we will get some training done, but I will continue explaining since you didn't let me end" Hui pushed the blackboard back into place, I notice it had previous scribbles connected to a diagram, the diagram was a circle with 3 words inside and 1 outside, the 3 words inside where 'body', 'Intelligence' and 'aether' while the outside rod was 'life?', the inner world where connected in weird ways and it was obvious that this side was used constantly.
As she spins the blackboard back into its original place, it showed me a list of things that apparently I was going to do, the first one was 'learn to control the input of aether' she immediately pointed it out and looked at me.
[Ah... I see, she knew that I didn't have that great of control so that didn't happen, ugh... should have waited a bit and I would been fine].
"Anyway, we will learn a bit of control, but before that, anything else that you discovered?" Hui said while taking her own pens to take notes.
"Yeah, I saw something really strange..." I hesitate to answer.
"Spit it out" Hui said annoyed.
"I saw... a new color, I think?".
"WHAT?" she jumped from the shocking revelation, she stared at me demanding an explanation.
"Yeah I have no words, I just... did see that" I shrug off since I have no idea of what happened, Hui shook her head and started pondering for quite a while about what I described, I started by saying what I was doing until she interrupted me with a hypothesis.
"Okay I have an idea of what happened".
"What is it?"
"By putting aether into your eyes, you probably expanded the overall range of wavelengths your eyes and cones were able to detect, therefore letting you see more than you should be able" she explained while looking concerningly at me.
"I... kind of understand, I saw more light that should be invisible, but is this that bad?".
"You expanded what you could see in the invisible spectrum of light, but by what you said, it was limitless, you saw electromagnetic waves, x-rays, gamma rays, alpha particles, micro and radio waves and so much more even, that should make you completely blind and given you a comma from how much information you received, but you only got a seeing pain in your eyes so that's a mystery, heck, even being blinded by the amount of stuff you saw would have been lucky".
"...".
[Fuck, what is this? I almost blinded myself with all the energy coming from the sun? what the fuck? I'm extremely lucky... wait, do I have plot armor or something?].
"How much aether do you have, Amy?" she said.
"Ehh... around a big lake now since I'm a 3 star" Hui widened her eyes and began scribbling on her notepad, after a while, she spoke.
"That's why you could stomach it, and even made it possible, your abnormal aether reserves are not well controlled Amy, we will focus on that".
"Okay..." I say reluctantly.
"Now I'm determined, I will put the strongest foundation possible so that you can accomplish what you want" Hui said while looking at me, her eyes fueled by extreme curiosity and determination.
[it's probably gonna hurt, but I kinda deserved it].