The next day, at the office, nobody makes any comments about his absence the day prior. And so, he is back to the routine he has had for the past weeks. He gets a job in the morning; some boggart that has to be taken care of, and he takes Dee along. It's a quick job, and they're back in the office before a full hour has passed.
Upon entering the cubicle, Dee plops down on the floor. "Ugh. I'm dying," they groan. Her cheek is squished against the cool surface of the floor, making her words sound muffled.
Kit too, lets himself drop down onto his chair, exhausted. The worst days of the summer are here, and going outside, even for a little while, makes you feel like the sun is trying to melt your brain right out of your skull. Which is nothing compared to having to walk a whole half an hour under that heat. Kit is sure his soul is already halfway to the afterlife.
Now Kit really wishes that A/C in the office hadn't kicked the bucket. It had never worked that well to begin with, but it was something. The day had been very cloudy so far, but curiously enough, there was no wind whatsoever. It had been unnaturally dry, even for summer. In fact, the summer months in this area were usually humid, not dry. Kit couldn't really put words to it, but this weather gave him a feeling that there was… something going on. Like the calm before the storm, when all wind would stop, and a stillness, a stillness not unlike death, would smother the world under its blanket. The sensation that something was coming… He couldn't shake it off. It made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle, and a shiver runs down his spine, accompanied by a drop of cold sweat.
"— Kit! Hey, Kit!" Dee breaks into his thoughts, reminding Kit of where he is. "Are you listening to me?"
"No. Sorry." He shakes his head to clear it. He can't be letting his mind be wondering like this. "What is it?"
"I was asking you where everybody is."
"What?" He stands up, looking over the cubicle's walls. Effectively, there is no one else in the office apart from them. Well, there is Jessica, but that's because she's basically a fixture in the office. Not seeing her here would be like the sky falling down. Or something like that. But Kit truly hadn't noticed the place was empty. "...I don't know," he confesses, letting himself sink back down to his seat. His stomach does a weird twist; something about the place being empty only adds to the feeling of unease he had before.
"You don't know?" Dee sits up halfway.
"No…" Kit tries not to let the worry show on his face. "But they're probably just out on jobs. They'll be back soon!" He winces internally at how forced the cheerfulness in his voice sounds.
Dee obviously notices, and her eyes narrow suspiciously. "...If you say so."
They lapse back into silence, neither wanting to move. The atmosphere in the cubicle feels heavy, and not just because of the heat.
Finally, Kit has had enough. "Dee." he stirs in his chair; the sweat has made his clothes stick to the back of the chair, and they make a loud noise as they peel off. "Get up. You can't be lying on the floor."
"But it's cold…"
"Dee," he repeats, "get up."
Dee just makes a noise in the back of their throat.
"You have to get back to your training." He places the stapler with a dull thud at the opposite edge of the desk.
When Dee sees the stapler, she immediately grimaces. "Can't I do anything better than trying to make a stapler float?" She covers her face with her hands in a dramatic gesture, and starts wailing miserably. (He'll have to make sure Valentine doesn't let Dee watch any more of her shows.)
He sighs. "Dee…"
"I feel like I'm performing the worst spell in the entire history of the world, of the universe!" They continue. "Like, what kind of lame ass magic is it to just make a fucking stapler float?"
"How do you expect to get anywhere if you can't even handle the basics?" Kit shoots back.
Dee is lying on her stomach, resting their chin on the floor; like this, both are directly staring at each other. Dee opens their mouth to speak, but closes it again without saying anything. She turns their head and murmurs something under their breath. At this point, Kit doesn't bother asking them. He already knows what they probably said. After a while, as if making a herculean effort, Dee pushes themselves up from the floor. Dragging their feet, they come to sit in the chair across from Kit.
Dee stares at the stapler in front of them quizzically, still not making a move to start training. "How long did it take you to get 'the basics,'" she makes air quotes around the words, "like you say, covered?" she asks.
He thinks about it for a while. Truth be told, he doesn't really remember how long exactly, but he knows for sure it didn't take him as long as it apparently was taking Dee. He won't tell her so, though. He doesn't want to discourage them, but he also feels sort of bad lying to them. In the end, he arrives at a compromise. "I took my time, but you're not me, so it'll take you your time," he replies. This, is not a lie per say, but it is also not the whole truth. "But you won't get anywhere if you keep lazing around and refusing to practise."
Dee just stares back at him, 'that wasn't what I asked' written all over their face. She grabs the stapler, rests her chin on the table and stares at it, a frown forming on their face. After a few seconds, she gets it to start floating a few centimetres off the desk. "Hey, hey Kit!" they half shout at him, despite there not being even a metre's distance between them. "Look!"
Kit looks up from the paperwork he had just started. The stapler is moving in a gentle back and forth motion, and Dee follows its movements with her eyes. He's amused to see Dee's excitement over so little, but there's a small twinge of pride at them having achieved to control the object's movements, even if only a bit.
"Now try having it do more complicated movements," he answers.
Dee gives him a look, but complies. They frown once more, and after a second or two, they get it to trace a circle in the air. At this point, Dee is basically glowing. After having it go in circles a few times, they let it drop back onto the desk. When it lands, Dee looks at him grinning from ear to ear. "So can I finally stop practising with the stupid stapler?"
"Mhm." Kit nods.
Dee cheers. But they abruptly stop when Kit lays a book in front of her. "Again?! You want me to do the same thing?!"
…It seems they had caught on pretty fast this time. "You need to fine tune your magical energy control."
"I know, I know! You've said that already! Ugh," Dee groans, "I feel like I'm getting nowhere…" Dee continues to rant, complaining about almost all things under the heavens and about how unfair it all is. Kit simply lets her voice fade into the background of his mind and just continues working on his report about this morning's job. But soon, he feels a pencil hitting him in the forehead.
"Ow!" He rubs the spot where the pencil had hit him. "Why'd you do that?!"
"'Cause you weren't listening to me!" She raises her hand again, another pencil ready to be thrown.
"Okay, okay! I'm listening now!" He puts up his hands in a placating gesture. "Now put that pencil down!"
With a huff, Dee does as they're told. "I don't want to be doing the same thing over and over again…" they whine. "Why can't I do something else? There has to be another way to learn the basics, no?"
Kit taps his chin. "Hmm…" Dee might be right. It must be pretty tedious to be doing the same thing over and over again every day. Perhaps a change of pace would actually be good. "OK. Let's try a new method."
"A new method?" Dee's eyes widen with hope.
"Mhm." He gets up from his chair. "Just wait here a minute, alright? I'll be right back."
Kit heads to the backroom, and the door opens with a creak. The backroom is actually more like an entire archive. There's the main room, but it extends into the building's basement, and the lower floor is teeming with old reports and other papers. It's no wonder why Gnocchi never seemed to finish organising this place. But hidden somewhere in here, there should be some textbooks on magical theory. It's only a matter of finding them…
Kit heaves a long sigh. He's going to be down here for hours, no?
Those textbooks just have never been used; not with Mousie, not with Gnocchi. When they arrived for their apprenticeship, both of them were well versed in all the basics. An apprenticeship; it wasn't meant to teach a person how to control magical energy from scratch, it was supposed to expand on their already existing knowledge and help them specialise in one of it's fields. It wasn't exactly like attending a magical academy, but it was pretty close to it. If a child were to start an apprenticeship, they would not be required to continue attending a standard school. By thirteen, which is when apprenticeships and magical academies started, the basic areas of learning had been covered, so there was no problem.
Apprenticeships would usually be done at one of the offices the Bureau had in the person's respective area. Being a government entity, they had branches across the entire country. In all major cities and towns an office could be found. But other private entities, not aligned with the Bureau, could also offer them; it was just that they had to get special permits in order to do so. And since the BMA was the one in charge of all things magic related, they were also the ones to give out permits.
Kit didn't know how acceptance for apprenticeships with private companies worked, but for the Bureau, it was left up to the criteria of the master to decide if they wanted to take in someone as a student or not. They could run the tests they wanted, and if they decided their level was not enough, they could turn the kid away.
An advantage to doing your apprenticeship at one of the Bureau's offices, was that it prepared you better for when you took the magician's licence exam. Textbooks were available for free at every office, something that wasn't the case at other places. And now Kit was, for the first time in who knows how many years, going to put them to use.
He heads down to the lower level of the storage room. If those textbooks were to be anywhere here, it would be down there.
After what felt like days, but was probably closer to a few hours, Kit finally manages to locate a crate containing the texts.
With a huff, he picks it up and carries it up the stairs and all the way to his cubicle. Much to his surprise, Dee has patiently waited for Kit to come back.
"Here." He dumps the entire crate next to Dee, and it makes a loud thud as it hits the floor. "This is the new method."
Dee's eyes almost pop out of her head. "You want me to read all of that?!" she cries.
"Not all of them…"
"Impossible! Not doing it! I'd rather die before reading them!"
"Dee." Kit sighs. "You don't have to read all of them."
Dee doesn't seem to hear them, and just continues shouting. "You can't make me do this! My eyes are going to melt if I have to read all those books!"
If your eyes were to melt, it would be from watching TV so close to the screen, Kit thinks.
"I'm going to run away! I refuse to do it! I refuse!"
"Dee!" Kit raises his voice over her shouting.
Dee jumps. "W-what? What is it?"
He rubs his temple. "Just try reading one. Just one!" he says before Dee can start shouting again. Dee pulls a face. "You'll see it's not that bad. You might even like it." Kit genuinely doesn't see what the problem with reading is. So he doesn't see why Dee is raising such a fuss over reading just a single book.
"That sounds like something a nerd would say," they mutter.
Kit splutters. "You–!" The nerve of this child!
"Kit." Jessica, standing at the entrance to the cubicle, is looking at him funny. He hadn't even heard when she approached. "You have another job."
"What?"
"You have another job," she repeats.
"Another one?"
"Hey, don't take it up with me. I just assign them. If you want to complain to someone, go to the Director. Though you're going to have to wait for that, since she's not here at the moment."
With a sigh, Kit takes the file from Jessica's hands. He scans the document's contents, and he's surprised to see he recognises the address. This is the same neighbourhood as the protection barrier for those chickens. All other information is pretty scarce, only mentioning something about some dead birds. He hopes he's not going back because more chickens have been abducted.
"You should hurry it up. The person who called sounded pretty freaked out."
"I see…" He rises from his seat. "Dee, do you want to come along?"
No answer.
"Dee?"
"Go by yourself!" She crosses her arms across her chest, turning her face away from him. Looks like they're mad at him.
"Suit yourself, then." He takes out a book from the crate and places it in front of Dee. "Make sure she reads it, okay?" he tells Jessica.
Jessica makes a non-committal noise. "Eh. I'll see what I can do. But know that I'm not too keen on the idea of losing a hand."
He supposes that's only fair. He'll take what he can get.
When he steps out of the office, the heat is even worse than it had been inside the office. The sun is pouring down with a renewed vigour, as if it were actually trying to melt everything underneath it. There are no people out and about, understandably so. But even with the heat, the atmosphere is too quiet. The entire world seems to have come to a standstill. Not even the chirping of birds, or the buzzing of insects can be heard. In fact, it feels like the area has been encased in a vacuum, sucking out all life from it. Once again, the hair on the back of Kit's neck bristles, and the impending feeling of doom comes to rest heavy in his navel, lodging itself like a stone.
With quiet steps, he starts heading towards the address on the file. Throughout the entire way, he doesn't encounter a single person. It looks like the unnatural stillness has settled over the entire town. Streams of sweat pour down his back and neck, and not all of it is because of the heat. But just as he's about to round the corner onto the designated street, something falls out of the sky, landing right in front of his feet.
With a sinking feeling in his gut, Kit looks down only to find the body— no, the corpse— of a small bird lying at his feet. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, until one examines it more closely. Instead of looking like a bird that has just died, parts of its body have already started to decompose, and maggots are already crawling around. A few metres down, a person screams.
Ignoring the bird for now, Kit rushes to where the scream seems to have come from. Along the way, he sees more dead birds, in a similar or worse state as the one he'd first seen, littering the entire street. When he reaches the source of the commotion, he sees a young woman, standing in the middle of the road. Several birds, these ones more bones and maggots than anything else, are lying around her.
"What- What is this?!" she shrieks. When she sees Kit, she only screams louder.
At the noise, several people come out of their homes to see what is happening. When they see the birds, several of them blanch.
"Calm down!" Kit shakes the woman by the shoulders. "You need to calm down!"
The woman only struggles to break out of his hold. It looks like all rational thoughts have left her, and she just shakes her head, sobbing. "No! No! Go away! Get lost!" She slaps Kit, and as a reflex, he loosens his hold on her. As soon as she's free, the woman sprints down the street, soon disappearing around the corner.
Kit just stands there, dumbstruck. What had been wrong with that woman?
From the crowd that has formed, another woman, older looking, approaches him. "You…" her voice is shaky, and there is a wild look in her eyes. "Are you here to fix this?"
"I–"
"You have to fix this!" The old woman clutches at her head. "You have to!"
Kit takes a few steps back.
"You have to!" She falls down to her knees, hugging her body tightly, rocking back and forth in a swaying motion.
But just as Kit is about to help her up, several dozens of birds fall out of the sky all at once. The people on the street all scream, and then, blood starts raining from the sky.