So, I'll start this off nice and simple.
FoundmyselfintheSCPversewiththeabilitytocopyandandmagicaltalentstomyownbutihavetospendthirtyminutesaroundthecopytargettodosoiknowthisbecauseijustdodonotaskme.
Didn't get that? Me neither.
Basically, I woke up and found myself here. In a empty house that didn't have a single piece of furniture. And apparently I was in like… 170,568 dollars of debt. How did I know that? Because of the very kind letter on the floor. Right beneath the rope this version of me and had used to kill themselves.
Simply put, I was screwd. No money, no family, no friends, no bitches. And I only had one way to get myself out of this funny little predicament. At least, I can't be bothered to find another method. In my short few minutes standing like a fool, I had discovered that my ability to copy, not steal, magical talent had come with a nice little start bonus.
And with that bonus, I had managed to create a small flame of rather cold flames. Like barely enough to burn you if you stuck your hand in it for a few seconds. But that was more than enough for what I had in mind.
Taking a strategy from the one of the most popular board games of all time—monopoly—if you can't pay rent, go to prison. In this case the prison being the SCP foundation. Was it a risky move? Unbelievably so. Honestly now that I think about it it's incredibly dumb. A better move would be to rob a bank. But, that case would get passed over to the SCP foundation eventually. Meaning I'd get identified as a hostile SCP rather than a friendly, albeit dumb one.
It was a contest between my pride and my fear of the bank. And my fear of the bank won every time.
Its not like the SCP foundation wouldn't eventually find me. In fact, depending on how advanced they are in this universe, they may already be on my tail with my current little display of magic. So I should probably get a move on, yeah?
Getting up from my crisscross position on the wooden floor, I began my descent down the stairs and to the front door. Taking my first breath of fresh air since I suddenly woke up here, I prepared myself mentally for what was to come. Living life normally was never my strongsuit. So perhaps I have a talent for not dying by horrendous reality eating monsters?
After thinking that, I made my way through a crowd and eventually reached some sort of alleyway. A camera pointing directly at me. Waving at it, I began to condense the barely hot flame as I had before.
The Merlin before me had a secret. He was actually a magician, not a very good one, but still a mage. Not your slight of hand one either. The owner of this body had actually tried for many years to do mote advanved magic than a gust of wind. But failed because of two ressons. Time is money, and he didn't have a proper channeling method for it. With him conveniently making the basic channeling method right before he committed suicide.
The Three Shapes of Magic he called it. A huge overestimation of what he had discovered, yes, but it didn't make it any less useful.
The circle, the square, and the triangle. Each of them vital for success of a magic spell. Lets start from the bottom and work to the top. If someone channeled their magic into the shape of a square and put an intent and an adequate amount of mana behind it, it would create a component. Components were what made the magic happen. Although you could just smash something with a huge amount of mana, you'd never make it into a fireball without components.
If someone channeled their magic into the shape of a triangle, it wouldn't do much on its own. But if made before a square, and the square was placed into it, it would contain the square and its component untill activated. This was needed as otherwise you wouldn't be able to make even a fireball. As if you made the component for flames, it would make a brief burst of fire before fadding. Only if you had a second component that mandated the fire stay active would it work.
If someone channeled their magic into the shape of a circle, it would contain the triangle that contained the square. Circles were used for especially complicated spells, as triangles are enough for the basics but can only be applied to one thing. As a side note, you cannot put triangles in triangles and squares in squares, but you could put circles in circles.
I began to condense the not very hot flame by first creating a triangle and then three squares in it, [Create Flame], [Keep Flame], and [Flame Follow Hand]. After shoving a not very large portion of my mana into the triangle, I watched in fascination as a flame burst to life in my hand.
Waving my hand in the air, the flame followed. After doing this for a good thirty minutes, I left the alleyway and returned back to the place the previous me and been living. I don't know if what I did actually meant something, but I could hope.
Although I didn't know if I should hope to be captured by the SCP foundation…
Sitting on the empty floor of the house, I began to frantically test and experiment with my magic. As I didn't imagine the foundation would let me test it that much. After about thirty minutes of testsing, I had come up with my first decently complicated spell.
{Fire Ball} was made of the components, [Create Flame], [Keep Flame Burning], [Contain Heat], [Contain Flame,] [Enhance Heat], and [Track Target]. The spell was powerful enough to burn a whole through the floor and into the earth underneath.
Happy with my creation, I waited for a little while to recharge my almost empty mana before I started to test the other elements. {Earth Binding}, {Lightning Bolt}, and {Flash Bang} were created after a lot of effort. My brain nearly melting in a quite literal sense. It appeared that creating and using intents for components drained the brain power wuite effectively.
Yawning, the pull of sleep won against me.
————
Waking up in a different place than I had fallen asleep, I knew the foundation had captured me. The place I now found myself in was not that different from a small bedroom, the only difference being that the door to exit was a steel one. And a quite thick one at that.
Now, I need to act.
Getting off the floor I had been so rudely plopped on, I stretched and spoke out loud for all viewers to hear. "I figured." Before I promtly sat on my bed and began to test a little magic. But not long after I was interrupted. A male voice boomed through the room, "You figured what? SCP-657?"
I frowned, "What is a SCP, and am I being called one?" The voice responded, "SCPs are objects, places, or people that have anomalous properties outside of mundane understanding. Now, you figured what."
"I figured that, if I had magic, and seemingly nobody else had it. Then there must be some place or organization that they go to. Or are contained in. It appears to be the latter." I said smoothly, my heart definitely not ready to jump out of my throat.
Hearing somesort of typing coming from the other end of the speaker, the voice spoke again. "That was quite observant of you. Nobody ever really stops to think if they are not the only one with reality altering powers."
Silence followed as the typing on the keyboard intensified. "You know I can hear that, right?" I said. "Oh." The keyboard sounds stopped as I internally facepalmed.
After a few minutes of silence on both of our ends, the researcher spoke again. "Honestly, I thought you would've been freaking out right now. But you aren't, so thats good on you. In a few minutes, you aee hoing to get interviewed by the people I work with. The SCP Foundation, commonly abbreviated to just The Foundation."
That was to be expected. "Can I ask you something?" I said. "Sure," he replied. "You think I'll be able to practice my magic in the future? Can I do that right now even?" … "Right now? If you tell me how your magic works, I'll let put in a word about researching it and allow you to use it right now, as long as you tell me in advance what you are trying to do."
Hm… was that a deal I wanted to be part of? No. Not really. They would undoubtedly want to study my magic anyway, and he was just trying to trap me into giving away information.
"No thanks."
"Well then you better prepare yourself for your interview."