Upon reaching the Scion Faculty, Max checked the lecture hall and found it empty. He looked around and found a sign at the entrance that said the Practical Training Room was on the third floor. Once again, it was written in both English and Japanese. Max noted that it was quite amicable of the academy to go through so much effort to accommodate their foreign attendees.
He wasn’t certain whether he was quite ready for a practical lesson on magic. Mahō No Gakusei actually showed very little with regards to how classes worked. The magic he could recall them using in fights was actually quite robust. Where they learned such advanced magic, he didn’t know. It was especially confusing because the students were capable of performing devastating elemental attacks from the very first episode. So, as far as he was concerned, practical lessons were no place for someone as clueless as he was.
He walked up to the third floor, looking for a sign that showed which direction to go for the practical training room. He looked down the two opposing corridors, finding Jin standing in the corridor to his left. He walked up with a look of puzzlement.
Jin seemed to be in thought, which Max had apparently just intruded on. Hearing Max’s voice startled him.
“Why are you standing out here?”
“Oh, sorry! I was told to wait for you.”
“Something going on?” Max looked around.
“Yeah,” Jin smiled. “We’re getting our first practical lessons today.”
Jin opened one of the two doors in the middle of the corridor that led to the training room.
“Any idea of what they expect you guys to be able to do?”
“Honestly, your guess is as good as mine,” Jin admitted.
The door opened into what looked like a large dojo. The walls were all dark brown wood, with a lighter brown coloured wood floor, and tatami mats in the centre. There were no windows, but the room was well lit and didn’t feel stuffy in the slightest due to its size. It was definitely not proportionate to the rest of the faculty building, and looked significantly smaller from the outside. The rest of the class was sitting on the floor in front of Mashima, who looked past them to see the two young men entering.
“Try not to keep us waiting next time, Mr Tenebri.”
There was a strange and annoying emphasis placed on the way she said his last name. She was clearly not happy that he had gotten his way. She lowered her gaze to address the rest of the class, who were all staring at Max curiously. He wasn’t wearing a uniform like everyone else, and he was still wearing his shoes.
“Max!” Jin called out from the door, gesturing towards a large wooden shoe rack at the entryway. Max looked down at his feet and took off his boots. He assessed the compartments awkwardly, and it seemed like his boots wouldn’t fit into any of them, so he just dropped them on the floor next to the shoe rack.
He and Jin sat behind the rest of the students and Max took the opportunity to get his first proper look at those around him.
Yep. I believe I am now looking at the main cast.
He remembered watching a show where the protagonist recognized that he was in another world when he saw that the people around him all had uniquely coloured hair: so brightly and yet so naturally coloured that they couldn’t possibly be hair belonging to any normal humans. Max wondered if he’d have accepted his being trapped in another world sooner if he had seen this class earlier.
There were students with pink, white and blue hair. While Max wasn’t familiar with dye, he could tell that each strand of hair on each student’s head was most likely there from birth, and untouched by artificial colours. This was a stark contrast to the people outside the classroom, who all had more naturally occurring ‘real world’ colours on their head.
On his assessment, he noticed that a girl with thick-rimmed glasses was watching him intently. He knew who it was, without needing to recall that he had seen her the previous day. It was Natsuno, whose name was annoyingly lodged in Max’s head due to anime Jin’s incessant screaming. The glasses – one of those contrived devices used to establish drama amongst the characters – made her face look a lot smaller than they did in the anime.
He decided that, since she was staring, he would stare back. He realised that she must have been trying to use that idiotic plot device on her face to read his mind, because she quickly turned away when she noticed he was watching her as intently as she was watching him.
“Now, as I was saying, I want none of you to take what we do here to be a slight against what I imagine many of you are capable of,” Mashima addressed the class. “I know that some of you have already had much more extensive training in physical combat and mana manipulation, so what we need to do today might seem juvenile to some degree, but please, bear with me for just a little while.”
“The goal today is simple.” Mashima stretched out her hand to her right. “Maybe you’ve seen it once or twice on campus. It's a very easy method to learn control of your internal mana.”
Out of a light green glow beneath her palm, a tray of large fresh eggs suddenly appeared on the floor.
Max raised his head a little to see better.
Oooh, I’ve gotta remember that one, he thought. It would certainly have come in handy in his near-death experience from the previous night.
She picked up one of the eggs and showed it to the class.
“We’ve got a normal egg here. You crush it, it’ll spill all over the floor, and you’ll be stuck cleaning up the mess.”
She tapped it firmly on the matted floor till it cracked, split it open and let the contents spill. Surprisingly, none of what leaked out touched the floor. Instead, it hung in the air, as though suspended in time in an eternal stasis. She held up the cracked egg and the contents began to flow back in, the two cracked halves of the shell seamlessly re-joining. It looked as if, in the doctor’s hands, time was being reversed.
The class was clearly impressed, as there were some audible ‘ooohs’ and Max once again committed what he saw to memory. Anything he could learn about what fit the logic of this world was useful to him. Also, whatever she did looked really fucking cool.
Mashima put the egg back in the tray.
“Normally, for today’s activity, you’d use a coin. It's more solid and takes some effort to bend and shape. Your task for this class is to move around an egg instead, using entirely your own mana. Not that you have much of a choice now.”
She smiled and snapped her fingers. Behind her, an aircon-like machine in the corner of the room stirred to life.
“Slowly, you’ll start to feel the natural mana in the air of this room disappear. Any attempt to use it will be pointless. I understand that things may start to feel uncomfortable, but it is all part of the training.” Mashima gestured towards the eggs. “Each of you will receive three eggs, since this is your first class. We also have a newcomer, and I’m sure he wants to take advantage of every opportunity he gets to learn.”
Everyone’s eyes fell on Max so blatantly that he felt like his name was just used in a math question. He shut his eyes and attempted really hard to resist the urge to them all that he could buy and eat as many apples as he wants, so they could all fuck off.
“The rules are thus: if all three of your eggs break, you fail the task, and will automatically be removed from the running for Class Rep’.”
The class didn’t seem too bothered by this, despite the serious look on some of their faces. Max looked at Jin, who looked relatively calm. He was glad. He hoped it meant that the task was simple enough to perform. Maybe even he could pull it off.
“This is a joke, right?” the red-haired prick that Jin and Hitomi were watching in class earlier said out loud. “This is a waste of our time. I thought we came here to improve our abilities. Not play these little magic games.”
“Well then, how about you give it a shot?” Mashima psychokinetically picked up an egg. “Here’s a freebie.”
She lobbed it in his direction. The students next to him scuffled away as he caught the egg and kept it suspended in the air.
“See?” he smirked, maintaining control with what looked like relative ease. “Nothing but child’s play.”
Upon moving the egg just slightly, it was instantly crushed, spilling yolk all over the would-be usurper’s shirt and face. The class broke out in a raucous laughter and the young man looked furious.
“You dare make a fool of me?” he scathed.
Mashima folded her arms confidently.
“You did that all on your own. If you can’t even do this, then you’d better start taking notes. Or would you rather run off to tell daddy and mommy that you can’t even play this ‘little magic game’?”
Hitomi threw a handkerchief at the fool. The redhead caught it and scoffed.
“I don’t need your handouts.”
“It's not a handout. I expect you to clean and return it in pristine condition by tomorrow morning,” Hitomi retorted.
“You–” the redhead began furiously.
“Sawada,” Mashima cut him off fiercely, causing him to face her in fright and force himself to calm down. He reluctantly made use of the handkerchief.
Max realised he hadn’t seen Hitomi when he came into the dojo. He spotted her sitting in the back row. She noticed him eyeing her, and quickly gave him the finger while childishly sticking out her tongue before facing forward.
He made a gesture of spitting on the floor in her direction in return.
“Your goal today is to make this egg float for no less than one full minute,” Mashima continued. “As Mr Sawada so graciously demonstrated, it’s harder than you’d expect. Now, each of you, come get your first egg.”
Max waited till everyone else got up to retrieve their eggs. Jin sat waiting with him, apparently also not a fan of mingling with the crowd.
“Come on you two,” Mashima called to them as Hitomi picked up an egg of her own. “Don’t be shy now.”
The two got up and Max let Jin pick one out first.
“Which of these was the one you cracked?” Max asked curiously.
“These eggs are all the same. All of them are perfectly suitable for the exercise,” Mashima looked up at him curiously from the floor. He couldn’t deny that she looked cute and kind of short from where he stood, with her legs crossed and her arms folded beneath her bosom.
“I wasn’t worried about that. I just wanted that egg. Which one is it?” Max asked again.
Jin was watching him with a raised eyebrow. Max wanted to try the same spell she did earlier and see if he could fix the egg as well as she did. If he couldn’t get it right, it was better not to share his intentions and make a fool of himself.
“This one,” Mashima picked up the egg and handed it to him. “Do not make me regret letting you into class,” she added, unnecessarily.
The room was big enough for everyone to move their eggs around freely. There were already one or two cracks, and little ‘crap’s being muttered by the students.
Jin stood a little ways from Max, unsure of when to start. Hitomi was already focused on raising her egg from her open palm without crushing it. Jin decided to try the same thing, and opened his hand with the egg in the centre of his palm.
Feeding it as little energy as he could, the egg raised very slightly, before shooting into the air and getting crushed against the ceiling. He dodged out of the way of the falling yolk and shells, nearly crashing into Hitomi.
“I’m so sorry,” he bowed apologetically after narrowly avoiding her.
Her egg dropped from the air and she caught it without incident. She laughed and smiled at him.
“Don’t worry about it. Go get another one.”
Jin sighed in embarrassment. He knew this would happen. He often had a hard time exerting his mana on things outside of his own body, and he often ended up breaking things even when using external mana. He was quite worried about the mess he had made and looked up towards the ceiling where his egg had splattered. The spot was clean. He shifted his gaze down to the floor beneath to see the remnants of the egg fading into bright green embers.
Impressive conjuration, he thought. The eggs were made entirely of mana. Mashima was clearly painfully aware of the potential mess the class would have left behind otherwise. Jin smiled at the realisation that Mashima purposefully let Sawada clean up the mess he made, when it would have been too easy to simply let the egg dissipate.
Jin turned to watch what Max was doing, and couldn’t help but stare with widened eyes.
Max was moving the egg in the air as if he were juggling a rubber ball. With a smile, he made the egg orbit his one hand and float over his head, before suspending it above his other hand.
Mashima, moving among the students and distributing advice, noticed Jin’s expression, and stopped in her tracks to watch the newcomer’s performance. Some of the other students, including Sawada, were watching the display as well.
|“Wow… he’s really good. Wonder if he already has a study buddy…”|
|“How are we supposed to keep up with that?”|
|“Man, I can do that! I just didn’t get enough stretching in this morning.”|
|“Yeah yeah, whatever you say.”|
|“Hey, I totally can! Just lemme stretch and you’ll see!”|
Hitomi paused her efforts to eye Max in confusion.
|“What are they feeding these foreigners? She got the boobs and now he’s got the moves!?”|
“Where the hell did this come from?” Hitomi asked Jin quietly. “Wasn’t he adamant about not believing in magic? Who is this person?”
“I’m… honestly not sure anymore,” Jin admitted quietly.
Max was entirely engrossed, but upon noticing that he was being watched so intently, his fluid movement became staggered, causing him to drop his egg in a messy splat.
“Shit!” he bent down to pick up the shells. “I was doing so well.”
He was still being watched. He shifted his gaze all around the classroom, noting the students’ curious faces.
“Uh… was I doing it wrong? Did I fuck it up?” he asked confusedly.
Mashima closed her eyes and let out a long, disapproving sigh, as the rest of the class awkwardly returned their attention to their own eggs.
“What? Is there shit on my face or something?” Max asked to no response, awkwardly wiping his clean face.
“Uh…” Mashima cleared her throat. “Keep trying, everyone. You all gotta suspend an egg for at least one minute before the day is over. We have all day, so please take your time.”
Jin and Hitomi kept their gaze on Max.
“That was pretty amazing,” Jin said as he walked up to him. “It's like you’ve done this before.”
“You lied to me,” Hitomi interjected.
“Lied to you? About what?” Max asked sourly.
“You said you couldn’t do magic. You know how much I actually worried about you, idiot?” she folded her arms in anger. “So I suppose that makes you an arrogant bastard and a liar.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“I didn’t lie to you,” Max argued, “and you don’t gotta worry about me, lady. If anything, you’re the most likely thing to kill me on this campus, you goddamn…” he stammered, his eyes falling on her chest, “whale tits!”
“It's Hitomi!” she crushed her egg in her hand. “My name is Hitomi!” she fumed and turned to get herself another egg.
“Miss Brighton!” Jin called out to her, quickly turning to Max. “What’s your deal with her?”
Max looked down at the broken shells and yolk on the floor. He noticed the sticky shells in his hands, suddenly becoming fixated on them and ignoring Jin.
“Look, if you wanna stay at my house, you’re gonna have to learn to be more considerate and respectful with how you treat people,” Jin added sternly. “Especially Miss Brighton.”
Max was still not listening.
“Are you hearing me?” he put his hand on Max’s shoulder.
Max's head suddenly perked up, and the room around them began to shift unnaturally.
In a strange hyper-speed, Jin saw all the events that had unfolded in class playing out in reverse. He saw Hitomi come back to address him and Max. He saw the anger quickly drain from her face. He saw himself and her walking back to where they were watching Max from. He saw himself nearly stumble into her and then back into his original position where he first tried to move his egg, which then fell from the ceiling intact and whole. He saw himself and Max walking up to the front, Max speaking to Mashima as he did before, and then the two of them walking backwards to the spots where they sat at the start of the class. He saw all the students move to the front to return their eggs, before also returning once more to the spots in which they sat when Max and Jin had arrived.
The world around them was devoid of colour, everything and everyone awash with black and white, except for the two of them, who were still as colourful as they had been before whatever it was that Max had done. Mashima was speaking to the class. There was a strange dullness to her voice, as if it had been devoid of any resonance. Max and Jin were standing in the far end of the training room, watching themselves listen to her.
Jin, still holding onto Max’s shoulder, turned to him and saw that he was as equally shocked as Jin was.
“What is this?” Jin’s voice had a strange ethereal quality, as if he were speaking in a big empty chamber.
“I… I don’t know,” Max stammered out in a similarly echoing voice. “I was trying to do the spell that Dr Mashima did to repair her egg.”
“How does that lead to this!?”
No one in class seemed to hear or see them.
“Wasn’t she reversing time!?” Max cried. “I was trying to reverse time. I mean, on the egg at least. Not on the whole friggin’ class.”
“Max, those eggs are made of mana. They’re a conjuration! She can restore them to whatever state she pleases,” Jin explained. “I don’t think a spell to reverse time even exists, and if it does, I don’t know a single person that knows how it works.”
“Well how was I supposed to know that? I don’t know the rules of magic. Then…” Max looked around, gesturing at the room. “What is this? Where are we? Is this like... Domain Expansion?”
“I don’t know what this is,” Jin looked around tentatively. “Hmm… sometimes, in telepathy, it's possible to see images and events play out from another person’s memory. It looks pretty similar to this. Maybe we’re somehow revisiting the memory or some vision of what happened just a few moments ago.” Jin walked up to the student at the far right of the class. “Look, I don’t think they even register our existence.”
He reached out to touch the girl’s shoulder, his hand phasing right through her. With his hand inside her, the girl’s body became noticeably transparent, and seemed to become opaque again once he pulled his hand away.
Max walked up to his past self.
“Sheesh, look at this ugly prick.”
“That’s you,” Jin remarked flatly, walking around the dojo to look at the other students. Natsuno was quite engrossed in what Mashima was saying, and once again there was a determined look in her eyes that was unmistakable, even with all the colour drained from existence. She sure did take this course quite seriously.
“I know, I just didn’t realise how badly I needed a haircut.” Max moved in closer to his other self’s face. “You fucking loser. Eat a goddamn sandwich.”
“Do you really need to be doing that right now?”
“My eyes look a little different than I remember,” Max said, confusedly looking deep into his own annoying face.
Max.
Max looked up to see where the voice had come from.
“What’s wrong?” Jin looked around to see what Max was looking at.
“Uh… Nothing, I guess,” Max looked back at the class to see the other students gawking at Mashima’s egg trick.
Max.
“Dude, are you calling me?” Max asked Jin.
“No, I haven’t said a word.”
Max!
“You’re seriously not hearing that?”
“I’m not hearing anything.” Jin looked around cautiously. “Is someone else in the class here with us?”
They looked around, but everyone’s colourless eyes were still gazing forward.
ADAM!
“Who said that?” Max’s eyes widened as his search became more frantic.
“Max! I don’t know what’s going on, but we seriously need to reverse whatever spell this is.”
“You’re right,” Max’s eyes kept searching the room. “We need to get out of here.”
They walked to the back of the dojo where they were standing before.
Jin put his hand on Max’s shoulder.
“You know how to fix this, right?” he asked.
“No, but like most of my academic endeavours, I’ll wing it.”
“That doesn’t inspire much confidence…”
“Don’t worry about it. I haven’t failed a single assignment so far.”
Max grinned and closed his eyes. For a moment, nothing happened. His face turned serious, and he slowly looked up.
They were still in the past.
“Is it not working?” Jin looked around.
“I guess,” Max smiled defeatedly, “this is probably something you’re gonna have to report, huh?”
Jin remained calm. “You heard about that, did you? Reading my mind again?”
“I didn’t really have to,” Max said quietly.
“Just be wary of them, Jin,” he continued. “It may not bother me much, but that Chancellor is hiding something. Same as Mashima. I’m not saying that they’re bad people, but they seem to be willing to put lives on the line for whatever their goal is. Our lives, and their own.”
Jin remained quiet, listening attentively.
“So just be careful, in case I make it back to my world before anything actually happens,” Max added.
He knew that this would likely be the case. In the anime, the story practically sped through the year, and they were already in the second semester without a main antagonist when he stopped watching. He didn’t plan to stick around for that long, and he knew that Jin was probably going to win whatever fight lay in store for him. Nonetheless, something about the impending danger had the higher-ups freaked, and that was cause for at least a modicum of concern.
“I believe you,” Jin said calmly. “I’ll watch my step. And even if they asked me to watch you, know that I’ll still help you find Jane. No matter where she is.”
Max enthusiastically nodded his head with a wry smile.
“You anime characters really pelt out cheesy lines like that, huh?”
“Us what?”
“Never mind.”
Max closed his eyes and, this time, actually concentrated. The world around them sped forward through everything that had just been reversed. The students, including themselves, all returned back to the positions where they had stood when Max accidently sent himself and Jin to the colourless world of the past.
The two opened their eyes to see Hitomi storming off in anger. Both of them sighed in relief.
“You good?” Max asked.
“Doesn’t seem to be any negative side effects. Are you? What was it that you were hearing?”
“I don’t know. But I’m gonna try to avoid ever doing whatever the hell that was again.”
They eyed a very annoyed Hitomi aggressively trying to make her new egg float.
“By the way,” Jin returned to his chiding tone. “As I was saying–”
“Fiiiine,” Max interrupted. “I’ll stop messing with blondie. But just know, you’re really ruining my visit to Japan.”
“With everyone,” Jin insisted sternly. “If you keep making enemies, it’ll only make things that much harder for yourself. And for me.”
Max was focusing on the shells in his hands again. This time, the yolk and cracked shell pieces that had spilled retracted from the floor. The egg started to bizarrely repair itself, with the yolk being swallowed into the centre as the broken shell pieced itself back together to make the egg whole. It certainly looked as if time had been reversed, even if that wasn’t necessarily what was really happening.
“Ha!” Max exclaimed. “I got it!” he smiled at Jin, noticing that Mashima and Hitomi were right behind him.
“I don’t understand. You can manipulate her conjuration?” Jin asked. “Why didn’t your shells dissolve? How are you stabilising the form of the mana?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, dude,” Max said blankly. “I just did what I saw Mashima doing.”
“Very interesting,” Mashima smiled and walked off to advise some other students.
“Jin,” Hitomi said rather sternly. “You think we can talk after classes?”
Jin blushed a little. “Uh... sure!” he smiled, scratching the back of his head. “I’m free.”
“Bring this idiot with you, please,” she said as she walked off defiantly to a spot further from the two.
“Sure…” Jin mumbled as she walked away. He turned to see Max shrugging at him.
There was a crack as Max’s egg broke again.
“Shit!”
***
The Scions spent the rest of the day focusing their efforts on keeping objects afloat. Hitomi managed to move her second egg around for about a minute. Natsuno impressively managed to move her own for almost three minutes, and Max was sent to sit in a corner because he kept breaking his egg intentionally just to practise restoring it.
He did manage to move his egg. For nearly five minutes he sat in the corner floating the egg around in his boredom before setting it down on the floor. Jin managed about fifty-five seconds on his third egg. Two students couldn’t get it done for more than thirty seconds, and were thus disqualified from participation in the fight for Class Representative. Jin had insisted Mashima disqualify him as well, but she said that anyone who managed to move their eggs without crushing them for fifty seconds to a minute did enough to qualify. Eventually the class was required to pair up, Jin being forced to pair with Max.
“I’m not gonna punish anyone else by sticking them with him. He seems gifted, but even I might lose my patience and wring his neck once he opens his potty mouth,” Mashima confessed to Jin quietly.
Surprisingly, Max was a good partner, despite how bored and whiny he was. They were allowed to use a coin for the second half of the lesson with the goal of passing it between partners for two minutes, and Max’s control was good enough that his passing it to Jin was a lot more gentle than he could reciprocate. Once or twice it felt like Jin was giving too much, and by the end of it, the coin was considerably bent and misshapen due to his overexertion.
“I’ll say it again; I know this task may seem childish or pointless, but this is to help regulate the control you have over your internal mana,” Mashima explained as she weaved through the pairs all straining to maintain the flow of passing back and forth their coins at a good and even pace.
“Come Friday, you’ll wanna make sure you can stand your ground without using so much force that you accidentally kill your opponent. While we’ll have measures in place to prevent serious injury, not everything will be within our control. A mage is only as strong as the power they have over the mana inside and outside of themselves. Learn to master this control and you’ll be that much closer to reaching your full potential as Scions.”
“The goal before the end of the week will be three minutes individually, and five minutes in pairs,” she went on as the class came to a close. “So please practise at home, but don’t go wasting your parents’ food and breaking random eggs. Any old object will do.”
Some students gave out audible sighs of exasperation, clearly exhausted from the exercise. Internal mana use could be extremely draining on the stamina, but there wasn’t much protest from them. Everyone’s mind seemed to be focused on the tournament. Everyone’s, except for perhaps Max, who wasn’t sure he wanted any part of the fight.
“You should go out there and win it,” Max said as they were getting their shoes at the end of the day. “I’m only just beginning to learn what I can do. I don’t think I’m ready for a fight against serious magic just yet.”
“You’re really gonna say that after what happened last night? Or today, for that matter?” Jin asked, picking up his bag. “I think you’re being far too modest.”
“That guy last night was a fucking chump. A coward who probably couldn’t stand up to a high schooler if it came down to it. Believe me, he’s dry bread compared to what these Scion kids can probably do.”
“Sheesh,” Jin sighed as they exited the class, the last ones out after everyone else. “You call us kids like you’re an old man. You’re a Scion too, you know? You can’t just separate yourself from that anymore.”
“I’m twenty-one years old, dude,” Max raised his eyebrow at Jin. “That only means one thing. I’m way too old for this class.”
“Seriously!?” Jin stopped and recoiled exaggeratively. “You’re sure your back’s not hurting from the long day, old man?”
“Shut up!” Max gave him a little shove. “Wait, then how old are you?”
“I turn nineteen this year.”
“Good god,” Max’s head sank. “I’m practically ancient to you snot-nosed brats.”
“So were you in your third year at university?”
“No. I originally wasn’t gonna do university at all. I wanted to get a job. Find my own place to stay and just live quietly. Jane was the one who convinced me to study, but by that point it was too late to apply. So, because I started a year late, I was only in my second year before I got stuck here.”
As they reached the stairs to the ground floor, Jin wondered if he should be more respectful to Max. He knew he shouldn’t have asked Max’s age, because he was speaking so casually to Max for the entire time that he had spent in Yōsaishima; quite shameful behaviour for an underclassman.
“Pack that shit up and dig a hole for it,” Max intruded on Jin’s thoughts. “If you start calling me senpai, I will physically punch you in the dick.”
Jin laughed nervously. It was exactly the kind of attitude he expected from Max, and it was actually quite relieving.
“Will you stop doing that, please? You’re making it hard to think freely when you’re always listening,” Jin chided him.
“Eh, it's not like I can help it,” Max gave a sly grin.
“I’d have believed you if the fact that you’re lying wasn’t completely written all over your face,” Jin argued.
They reached the ground floor to see Hitomi waiting for them at the entrance.
“Hey,” Jin called out. “Sorry we kept you waiting,”
Max slowly started shuffling away in the opposite direction from the other two.
“No worries, thanks for co– Where is that idiot going?” Hitomi shut her eyes in annoyance.
Jin turned to watch as Max’s awkward walk turned into a run, but before he could get away, Jin had already grabbed his arm and was pulling him along as he screamed and squirmed in protest.
“Don’t worry about him. He’ll play nice, or he’ll sleep under a bridge.”
***
Kitsuro Imiya sat at his desk and thought about the preceding events of the day. He looked at the picture of his family and realised he hadn’t had his wife’s cooking in nearly a month. She was an amazing cook, and nothing store-bought or restaurant-ordered could fill the gap in his stomach that now existed in her absence.
Nevertheless, the presence of the outsider – the new ‘Scion’ – confirmed that he had made the right move in sending his family away. If the enemy was making its move, then the efforts he took to protect his loved ones would not be in vain.
Imiya didn’t want to believe that he had put a dangerous criminal in the hands of a first year student, but what else was there to believe? That Max was just a victim of the Gate? With magic so powerful that it could reach out and affect not only the entire student body, but everyone on the staff as well? No.
Even if Max were from a world where no magic existed, he was magically inclined. A little too magically inclined for someone his age apparently. The Chancellor decided he had to be vigilant. But he also needed to prepare himself. Mashima had the right idea. The strange young man was to be observed and kept close. An enemy in the hand is worth two in the shadows, and at the present it seemed shadows were looming everywhere, fogging the academy’s view yet exposing them to the eyes of the unknown. On this thought, Tanaka knocked on the Chancellor’s door. Imiya beckoned him inside.
The overzealous Tanaka bowed dutifully upon entering.
“Sir, what is that boy doing roaming freely on our campus?” he asked with a tone of outrage and betrayal.
“I’ve decided that we will take the boy in,” Imiya responded curtly. “It seems he has power resembling that of a Scion.”
“That makes him all the more dangerous!” Tanaka flared. “We cannot afford any unforeseen variables, sir. It's best if we apprehend him and hand him over to the Minister’s task force.”
“Izunoto,” the Chancellor cut him off in a menacing tone. “Do you really take me for some kind of fool? Do you have so little faith in my abilities as a leader?”
“No, sir!” Tanaka bowed apologetically. “I was in no way insinuating anything of the sort.”
“Then trust that I will not be so foolhardy as to put our school at risk without reason,” the Chancellor commanded sternly.
“Forgive me, sir!” Tanaka stayed in a bowed position.
“Stand up straight, Tanaka!” the Chancellor raised his voice. “You’re here to assist me. Not serve me like an animal.”
“Yes, sir,” Tanaka stood up and straightened out his suit.
“The boy is being monitored. I have a feeling that his being here will no doubt serve our purpose. Perhaps it will force the hand of our adversary. He didn’t come through that gate for nothing.”
Imiya stood up from his seat and walked over to Tanaka, putting his hands firmly on the Vice-Chancellor’s shoulders.
“Stick to your role, and let me play mine. Do not doubt that I have the school’s best interest at heart.”
He dusted off Tanaka’s shoulders and took a step back.
“Make sure that Mashima watches that boy closely. We will need to be prepared should our enemy make their move.”
“And what about the Minister, sir?” Tanaka asked sullenly. They both knew that the Minister would not be impressed with Imiya’s decision, nor would the other members of the Initiative.
“Let me handle the Minister and the others,” the Chancellor returned to his desk. “For now, return to your duties.”
Tanaka paused and bowed without saying anything further. He left the Chancellor’s office, and upon hearing the office doors shut, he wiped off the part of his clothing where the Chancellor’s hands had been a moment ago.
Reckless old fool, Tanaka thought. This game you play will not end well for you.