The body can acclimate to just about anything, it isn’t the main reason why humans are the dominant species, but it is a contributing factor. Stay in a warm climate long enough and your body will adjust its baseline tolerance to match, same with cold climates, arid environments, and all the others that can be thought of. All this to say that when she opens her eyes and takes in the light fully for the first time in however long, she can’t help but squeeze them shut and let out a little yelp of surprise. The sound is like blood in the water to a shiver of sharks, so many voices bombard her and make her headache so much worse. Some are questions, others asking how she’s feeling, all of them much too loud.
“SHUT UP!” she yells through a hoarse throat, and thank all the gods that may or may not exist, they do. She tries to lift her left arm to nurse her headache, only to be met with a flood of pain, as though she just broke a damn. She whimpers as she nurses her arm, it’s in a sling, or at least an attempt at a sling, there isn’t really much bone left intact to act as a support. Ahhh fuck, she forgot about that.
She opens her eyes slowly to find that she’s back in the bunker. Her friends and the House folk all surround her with varying expressions from concern to astonishment to incredulity. She groans, Sasha and Aki have a lot more bandages wrapped around them.
“How long has it been?” she asks
“Two weeks!” Rania says it like an accusation, and loud too, which causes her to flinch, making Rania back down with a sheepish expression.
Alex takes that in for a moment “two weeks? How is that possible?” She asks.
Elian perks up, “that's what we’d like to know, we’ve got a bet going for if its bionics or cybernetics”
Alex stares at him, how does she word this? Or should she just tell them straight up that she’s a magical girl? Maybe a demonstration would be better, but first…
“Can we shelve this for now? I really, really, need to use the bathroom”
-
One very long trip to the throne of shit later, Alex is still stumped on if she should admit her secret or not, it’s not like they’re completely ignorant, they saw her in the warehouse afterall, and what it did to her. None of which makes sense. Now they’ve seen another impossibility and she wonders if it's only their disbelief of the mystical that holds their minds back from that conclusion. In what world do either bionics or cybernetics keep her body from starving to death? Then again, it’s this world that lets her make funky pale green-ish blue hands to pluck out a Heretics eyes, so maybe she should spare the judgement there.
“So?” Elian asks, on the edge of his metaphorical seat, the old man really needs to invest in some furniture, “which one is it? I’ve got ten thousand on bionics.” She gives him a look, ten fucking thousand? How much do these goons get paid?
“Hah!” Fergus exclaims “I knew it! It was cybernetics, pay up you gangoons, little old Fergus is gonna be rich!”
Ah fuck, she can’t in good conscience let so many creds exchange hands over a misunderstanding. But how to phrase this? She’s not sure if she should use any magic to prove it considering how broken her soul still is right now. Barely stable from the many tendrils keeping the pieces together.
Sasha seems to notice her dilemma and speaks up for her, “It’s neither” she says, causing all pairs of eyes except Aki-
Wait, is Aki missing an eye?
“She can literally do magic” Sasha says while Alex stares at Aki’s face, there’s a fresh, pink scar on the side of his head. Going from his right eye, running along the side of his head until it cuts off in the middle. The boy seems uncomfortable at the attention but Alex doesn’t care, she walks towards him in a trance.
She can hear laughter at Sasha’s statement, and how she adamantly defends herself about Alex’s magic juju. Alex doesn’t pay attention, she stops in front of Aki and puts her hand on his face, staring at the missing eye. The others seemingly have noticed, if they’re silence is anything to go by.
“What happened to your eye?” Alex asks with a steady voice. Aki puts on a weak smile.
“What, you like it?” he says with feigned confidence.
“Akihiro, what happened to your eye?” Alex asks again, more firmly this time.
Aki chuckles “what? Not even gonna deny it?”
“Akihiro,” she says in a demanding tone.
Aki shrugs “sewer rat got a lucky shot, she’s dead now though so I guess she wasn’t so lucky”
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Alex pulls him into a hug with her right arm “I’m so sorry” she says.
“It’s fine” he whispers “I can get it replaced, I’m just glad you're okay.”
Alex stays there for a while before letting him go and turning to the House members, she has a half formed idea of how her magic works and she thinks this’ll be relatively cheap.
She forces her left arm to move.
Taking it out of the sling and slowly, ever so slowly, she waves at them.
The pain is almost worth the looks on their faces
-
Learning that magic is real apparently hits a lot harder for adults than it does for kids because hot damn are they coping. They’re having a full blown existential crisis right in front of her eyes.
“C’mon just move the can, it shouldn’t be that hard.” Sophia coaxes.
“I told you, I don’t want to risk breaking my soul right now, it’s pretty fragile.”
“How is nudging a can going to break your soul?”
“You’d be surprised”
“Am I living in a simulation?” Fergus mumbles “How can fucking magic be real?”
“Get a hold of yourself man!” Elian shakes him by his shoulders “this is all real, it’s just fucking stupid.”
“I wiped the ass of a magical girl…” Rania says with amazement.
“That's pretty rad actually” says Yorin, the last house member “hey Alex, can you teach us magic?”
Multiple pairs of eyes zoom in on her like hawks.
Oh boy, how to say no to this without outright saying no?
“I wouldn’t bother” Sasha says “me and Aki have tried, and she is a horrendous teacher, all mumbo jumbo about how you have to ‘use your will’ to do shit”
As soon as she finishes her sentence, the House members go to their cans of tin and stare holes into them.
-
It’s been an hour and they’re all still trying, Alex is prepared to console them, as she tried to console Aki and Sasha, but she’s not really sure how that’d work with an age group so above hers. It might be considered insulin, she doesn’t know. She’ll try anyway, they’ve been good company.
“I did it!” Rania cheers, bringing her hands up above her head in jubilation before grabbing said head, “holy fuck you weren’t joking, that fucking hurts.”
Alex stares dumbfounded at the woman, “you…you did it?”
The woman nods with pure joy on her face, “want me to show you?”
Alex nods slowly and stands up to move closer to the woman, as does everyone else. Sure enough, as Rania stares at the can like it owes her money, it moves, rolling just a little bit towards her.
“Did I just teach magic?” Alex asks to no one in particular.
“Nope,” Sasha says with a cheeky grin, “I’m pretty sure I did.”
-
“Do not push past the headaches, that’s how you break your soul, then you’ll have to make a deal with a demon and that’s no fun for anyone, except maybe the demon” Alex says
“Demons are fucking real!?! And you made a deal with one?” Rania asks.
“Not important.”
“That sounds pretty important.” Elian points out
“She hasn’t even gotten started on the gods yet” Aki smirks.
“There are gods?!?” multiple voices exclaim.
Alex gives Aki a flat look, which does nothing to deter the serene smile on his face.
-
Only after explaining that yes, she has met two separate gods, and no she can’t assure them that she’s not possessed because that’s what a possessed person would, did they continue with their impromptu lecture. Starting of course with cybernetics.
“So I don’t really know how it all works, but apparently you should avoid cybernetics like the plague if you're using magic?” she says sheepishly.
Rania looks down at her chrome arm, then points to her artificial eyes.
“I don’t know how it works! All I was told was that I should ‘avoid cybernetics as much as possible’. Who knows, maybe it just makes magic harder?” she says hopefully.
“I was the first of the chucklefucks to learn this shit Alex, I don’t think it has anything to do with that.”
Alex throws up her hands
“I don’t know! None of this shit is consistent, and finding out anything about anything is just a guessing game at this point. Maybe I’ll tell you once the magic society gets back to me.”
They all glance at each other, then back at Alex and immediately she realises her mistake.
“There’s a magic society?!?”
-
Now that everyone has gone back to their collective task of nudging an empty can, Alex can finally be left alone in sweet silence as she nurses her headache. She can cope, for now, but if it doesn’t get better she thinks she’ll go insane. But she’s sure it won’t, every magic related injury has healed, she just has to give it some time.
She cradles her left arm in its sling, she’s not really sure how she’s gonna heal that. Other than bionics at some point, but she doesn’t really have that option available to her right now. There are plenty of bionic clinics in the Tallwinds, but she doesn’t think she can convince them to operate on a dragon.
But she can’t fight with a very, very broken arm. Sure she could one hand her Tengu but…actually where is her Tengu? She gets up and goes to the main room, beelining towards Aki who’s staring at an unmoving can.
She taps him on the shoulder and he turns to face her.
“Aki, where’s my Tengu?”
Aki scratches the back of his head, “Sorry” he says “we lost it after the fight with Goliath”
All eyes-
“Don’t even!” she yells at them before turning back to Aki.
“What about my Reison?”
“Oh, that’s in the storage area.”