[How did this happen?]
["Coincidence, fate call it what you want, but this was bound to eventually happen so don't stress about it"]
Sauriel sai as a voice in my head, trying to get me to rationalize the current event, 2 of my friends, in my house, eating the food that y mom prepared while she was present and fighting each other, an awkward atmosphere that should discourage more talking, but it instead made my mom more interested in the drama currently taking place.
"You should be mindful of your words, being this bashful won't get you everything in life you know?" Hui said condescendingly, making the already cold atmosphere more awkward than it should be.
"Bashful? your attitude tolerance is not that great I see, I don't know how could the nerd get along with Amy at all!!" Mary exclaimed while waving the fork with a piece of steak in eat, and then proceeded to eat with a smug face, irritating Hui even further.
"Nerd? is that all you have to say you gyaru wanna be!!" Hui said while standing up in anger, Mary immediately swallowed her food and began standing up.
"What did you say?" Mary's unusual cold tone made me freeze up, Hui only grin a little.
"The truth" Hui said as she snickered at Mary's wild reaction, Mary started pulling her sleeves up showing her tan lines and well-built body.
[Damm, even with Mary being more sporty than me I am still more buff than her...]
"Wanna fight" Mary said while pointing at the door behind her flawlessly without even looking, showing how she knew the layout of the house after all the night she spent here.
"I already won the battle of wits by making you try violence, the only language you know" Hui retorted in a matter-of-fact tone, I felt fear after seeing Mary that furious since she was not one to 'actually' get angry.
[I need to defuse the situation now!!!]
I began to recall how things came to be this way.
⌈ A week earlier⌋
As Hui said the training was changed since the eye incident, to be fair it was my complete fault but Hui still apologized for not warning me enough and getting me to change the entirety of how I saw the world, after all, it felt extremely weird but somehow, it felt 'right', the feeling could only be comparable at having bad eyesight and putting on clean glasses and seeing how the world became 'defined' and 'sharp'.
Anyways the training changed completely into more of a 'foundation training', it was meant to put a strong foundation for more future training specialized in magic,
ironically, this training was the conventional type of training that I had in mind when Aqua said for the first time, it included basic exercises to build up strength like push-ups, handstands, leg work, weights, and more of the sort which was a breath of fresh air for me. I'm really a person that 'takes orders' rather than 'delivers orders', although I had my moments.
My training with Aqua, Vera, and Akari certainly was useful, since it was focused on combat, but this type of training really made me a lot more pumped than before, since exercise made the feeling of 'warmth' that aether way more noticeable and pleasant.
[Damm those must be some strong magic chemicals, I wonder if it's related to dopamine?]
I also had to run, I already did that occasionally as a hobby since running was a fairly easy activity to do and it came with an extra benefit that not that many people know, it makes you enter a trance state if you get accustomed to it. So I used this on several occasions to solve some of my problems as opposed to 'thinking on the shower' or 'sleeping on it'.
The amount I had to run was around 7 km every day, to be fair it wasn't a lot, especially when taking into account that the entire perimeter of the scrapyard would make it so that it only took 5 laps in order to reach the 7 km mark.
I already made the question about why I needed to have my training in the scrapyard as opposed to a normal deserted place, it was for my 'magic foundation' training that needed the 'extremely special properties that the scrapyard possesses', or so Hui told me.
This is already a known concept, but exhausting your aether reserves would make you unconscious, but it would also make the amount of aether you had increased a bit, of course, this was useful and so Hui always exhausted her aether reserves. This was fairly obvious when she made the point that she would faint when she made 2 clones of something, but after rigorous training, she could multiply 120 objects before fainting.
[Big change of course]
That was why the scrapyard was needed, my aether reserves are those of a large lake, a bit under Aqua's but still extremely large in comparison since Hui's was about the size of a public pool, which is not a lot now that I think about it, even Akari has more than that. because of this large aether reserve of mine, I needed a lot of things in order to exhaust myself from all the aether to grow.
In my previous fight against Marchosias, I was exhausted but I didn't faint immediately because of my unusually tough constitution as a melee fighter [Not cute at all!!!], and because I advance into a 3-star magical girl, therefore my aether reserves were amplified and slightly refilled.
[So basically, this could be compared as your character being healed when they level up in the middle of battle, I truly am a mere JRPG character, maybe my destiny is to fight God or something]
["It has been done before... but please refrain from doing so"]
[Where was I? oh yeah the Aether and scrapyard]
I discovered that my fight against Marchosias only exhausted half of my reserves, what made me tank so much aether before even fighting was bending the metal container, since it was a new-unpolished-raw-stupid-spur-of-the-moment-and-many-more-degrading-adjective-technique it made me waste half of my aether.
So I began bending metal to exhaust my aether reserves, truly a genius Idea that I devised with the guidance of Hui, who would later flaunt in front of the angel of guidance Sauriel.
[Deserved to be honest]
["Maybe, but I did give it my best shot"]
[Your best shot could be comparable to throwing me to fight in the streets]
["..."]
[Yeah thought so]
It was actually harder to bend the metal in the scrapyard because of what type of metal it was, mainly aluminum and steel, since they were cars the purity of the metal was undeniable and trying to bend it was an almost impossible task, actually, it would be impossible if not for my massive amount of aether.
The feeling of trying to bend metal was weird since the minuscule traces of earth present on the metals were almost reaching the atomic level, it was basically like pushing a wall to the side via grabbing the 2 nails that are embedded in it.
[Yeah not comfortable at all]
But still, I progressed, first, I started refining how to bend metal faster without the need to pour more aether, then I made the process easier by trying everything that came to mind in order to find more orderly methods as to not waste even a drop of aether, because this ability will surely be used way more as time goes on, since metal is better than rocks in many cases.
I must emphasize that I was 'bending metal apart' so I was grabbing a door of a car and splitting into two without me ever touching it, tougher than simply moving it as a platform or projectile, those still needed skill but it was a whole different world compared to ripping apart melted steel.
As for how long was this going on was around 2 weeks since it was odd of me to actually enjoy training so much, especially since we were on summer vacation I decided to make Hui one of my friends, even though I already considered her one, I knew her kind would not think of me as one unless I state it.
As for accommodation, I asked Hui about her situation in her home, since A normal child would not have to sleep in a scrapyard on the third day of training, she didn't want to talk about it at first but I guessed her situation.
"Your parents either hate you or neglect you enough because of your intellect that you boast about, thinking that you are mature enough to know better or something even more ridiculous" I said to Hui after she denied me of talking about her house.
"..." She looked at me, her eyes full of confusion, judging me as if I was a stalker that knew about her life.
"I have a friend in a similar situation to you, although her parents are way more vocal about their 'hatred' towards her," I said while dismissing her eyes, I look at the sunset while sitting in the scrapyard, reminiscing about how my mother thought about Mary's parents.
'A parent can never truly hate their child, but only a few unfortunate ones can notice before it's too late' My mother said to Mary when she came to our house crying and thinking about running away from her own home, It was truly heartbreaking seeing such a lively person just breakdown in front of you. What startled me more were my mother's words, sounding as if from experience.
[I don't hate my mom, and she doesn't hate me, so how come she is familiar? what type of grandparents do I even have]
Hui decide to take my kindness and actually started almost living with us, of course, my mom would not live it down and started teasing her and me because we would go out every morning somewhere and return in the evening, eventually, I said it was because of workout.
"Oh really?" My mom said teasingly, clearly doubting my reason, I decided to just walk up to her.
"Yes. really, I have proof" I said while crossing my arms in front of my mom, who is just drinking her morning coffee at the table while Hui si just looking at us while pretending to be focused on her phone with no apps.
"Then you would show your mother that you're not lying, right?" She said as she put her now empty cup of coffee, still with a small smile plastered on her face.
"Of course, but if I show you, then you would need to listen to one of my requests in the future" I said while nodding as if what I said was completely rational, my mom tilted her head in confusion, and Hui was started to question where I would go with this.
"Alright, then show me your 'proof' my daughter" My mom said confidently that I had nothing to show.
[TO be fair, a magical girl otaku that hates responsibility would be one of the last people on a list titled 'buffed people that work out' so yeah, I don't blame you for losing]
I grab my shirt and pull it up with a grin of victory plastered all over my face, I hear as my mother audibly gasps at the view of my incredible well-defined abs that could grind steel in them.
[Not cute, but at least now mom owes me a favor]
After that, My mom stop her teasing, although that was not the favor I was going to ask for it would help me and Hui not feel awkward when returning home.
One of the things that I also started to do was question things since the new information provided by Hui and Sauriel really didi flip my worldview a bit too much so I needed a strong foundation of knowledge.
First, was my vast amount of aether, where did it come from and why me exactly?
Hui came up with a bunch of theories about that and started to rule out some of them based on the extremely basic information that we would receive from Sauriel since he also didn't know why didi I have that monstrous amount of aether, and so we came up to a few conclusions that could be either true or false.
The amount of aether is directly related to one ranking, emotional state, and traumas
Blood lineage was at play
My relatives used magic
Random mutation
Fate or something (Sauriel's suggestion)
Not a good look since many of these aren't even that good of an explanation, the first one was basically confirmed to be true, but Personally, I don't have that much emotional trauma, and my ranking even if it increases the size of the 'container' by a 'pool', it pales on comparison when my comparison when compared the ocean.
The second and third one was basically the same, none of my relatives that high of aether, and since Sauriel is a high angel he would be able to detect not only the amount of aether but also if they are hiding it with a seal, but none were the case. My family simply doesn't use magic, I even had my dad checked from afar to be sure, he was actually below average.
[Makes sense, he's more of a 'magic is useless' type of guy]
The only abnormality was that my mom's 'soul' age was a bit too much compared to her biological age, she is currently 32 years old but she is 50 mentally, which is a bit too high. some people's soul age was more than their physical because of encounters with devils, but she didn't seem to even have ever encountered one.
[TLDR, she is older than she should be, and there's no conceivable way to justify it, I can't even ask her because I would out myself as a Magical girl to my mom]
Outing myself like that was definitely not that good, I'm not prepared if she hates me for it
[Irational? maybe, but is not like hiding it is killing her... right?]
The second thing that I needed to research was the names for my magical girl group.
Hui gave me some handy guidelines to take into consideration and an explanation for them.
Meaning: since Magic is based on emotions, words need to have some 'meaning' to evoke emotions and power up magic, therefore meaning should be considered, be it that you created yourself or take it from some myth, legend, or even public figure.
Consistency: some sort of system gives it meaning, for example, symmetry, polar opposites etc...
Inspiration: it must be mean something for each individual.
They were good guidelines, I still don't even have the members noted, But i didi a rough draft that was promptly stolen by Sauriel and he decided to use them to select the candidates.
He first needs to make the rings with the 'cringe' symbols I drew out of my imagination, then he would need to find the people who would become part of my group.
[He will somehow f*ck it up, I'm sure of it]
After that, I just passed the day until Mary came, HUi and Mary were formally introduced and became hostile towards to each other since my mom teased them both.
⌈ Present⌋
I immediately look at my mom to see her reaction to the current of events, she was focused on the face of my 2 friends and then looked at me and smiled at me, her eyes conveying to me that she was not going to stop this until it actually got physical, I paled and she only snickered a bit.
[Stupid mom, got corrupted by stupid tv dramas]
I gulp all of my drink and just put my plastic cup down as hard as I can to make them both stare at them
"Shouting in my house and fighting is not right! if you're going to act like that you better leave" I said while looking at both of them.
[Was I too harsh? I hate it]
I decided to 'take control of the situation' as for Sauriel's word in order for me to test if I could be a 'leader' of the magical girl group.
Both of them bowed apologetically.
""We're terribly sorry"" both of them shouted.
"Good, now just get along for today, none of you are better than each other just enjoy the night while it last" I made up something nonsensical because of my nervousness.
[Please just stop fighting!!!]
Mary takes my words and settles down on the table and continues to eat while HUi also does the same, but she gives me a glare, her eyes stating that she is confused at my stupid statement as it implies something, she just doesn't don't know what.
[Niether do I Hui!!]
After dinner, Hui and Mary decided to stay for the night, I decided to toss a coin to see who got to sleep with me since these two would not share a bed even if their life depended on it.
Hui won, but Mary started another argument that ended in them actually sleeping together reason being? they didn't want me to sleep with the other one, I just sighed and sent them to their room, as for me, I passed my mom while on the way to my bedroom and she said while passing.
"Already a love triangle? you make your mother proud" she said and printed to her room, not leaving me the chance to reply.
[Take back what I said, I hate you]
After my sound sleep, I was visited by Sauriel with the list of my magical group, I read all the names and roles that I invented, and paled.
"YEP, we are going to die"