I woke up with a printer through my wall, and a missing window too but that's not as important. Looks like the fight between the librarian and the armored one stretched throughout the night, and judging from the sounds I'm hearing outside, it hasn't stopped yet.
"Can you two be done with this already? I have work to do!" a man yelled while standing on his balcony, before walking back into his room, just in time to dodge the printer that crashed and destroyed the very same balcony that he was standing on, "you have to pay for that!"
The librarian, Manniemaru, then slid down the street, creating a trail of busted up concrete as she rolled down the road. The armored one then appeared from above, crashing down to where the librarian was laying, kicking up a cloud of dust that obscured the two. When the smoke cleared, the armored figure stood triumphantly over the maybe dead(?) librarian who was now currently lying down inside a fairly large crater. The armored woman placed her hands on her hip and raised her head high, based on the body language alone, she must be feeling pretty smug right now. She held the pose for a couple seconds before deflating.
"Gah! Fuck! What if I accidentally killed her!!" the armored woman grabbed her head in fear, she then crouched down and began poking the unconscious(?) body of the librarian, "hey, hey! Wake up! Come on now!"
The librarian stirred as her eyes clenched before snapping open, "oh thank the mindpool-" the armored one's expression of relief was then cut short by a swift punch to the head, the resulting impact denting the helmet by quite a huge amount and subsequently launching her a good distance down the road.
"What the fuck were you on about?" the librarian, Manniemaru, coughed, wiping the blood away from her mouth, "based on how you were fighting it seemed very clear that you wanted me dead. What's with the sudden change of heart?"
"Urgh," the armored one rolled around groaning before sitting up, "I was about to call for a truce but it's clear that you want to keep fighting."
"Huh? How did you come to that-"
The armored woman then jumped up and slid across the road as if there were no friction, catching Manniemaru off-guard with the quick approach, the armored one jumped up and delivered a drop kick right to the librarian's head. launching her downwards into the road, creating an even larger crater than before. The armored woman didn't let up and kicked Manniemaru's head like a football, launching her into the hotel that I'm staying at. I sighed, today was going to be a very long day.
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This librarian bitch just doesn't know when to give up now does she?! I held out my hand for her, offered her a way to stop this fight, a truce! But what did she do? Spat on it, that's what! I'll show her what's what! And then I'll drag her defeated and unconscious ass right back to the Director! Yes... yes! That way I'll get that new piece of armor for sure for sure!! I caught myself cackling as I followed her body into the hotel that I kicked her into, the front entrance completely destroyed as glass shards litter the floor, crunching beneath my boots as I climbed through the rubble. Manniemaru, the librarian I was tasked to antagonize and trick into a fight, was now lying down on top the receptionist desk, I approach the body, ready to haul her right back to the Director. We've been fighting for several hours now, she must be getting fatigued! This makes it much easier for me!
I walked closer... and closer... and closer... slowly so that I won't be caught off guard by any tricks that she might cook up. The Director said that she's very cunning and resourceful, so I must be vigilant at all times-
I twisted my head just in time to avoid a pen flying towards my helmet's slit at an alarming speed. I was about to turn my head back to look at her but circumstances dictate that I must keep my head at an angle so that she can't get any cheap hits in. I slowly approached her, crab walking with my head turned the other way, the only reason why she's throwing pens must be because she's too weak to fight physically! Slamming my fist down on my open palm, I deducted that I must be a genius or something! Still, walking like this gives me no visibility at all! For all I know, she could be escaping right about now! So I'll just twist it slightly to get a quick look-
My head snapped back into position as a hail of pens come flying towards my head, clanking uselessly off of the side but who knows how much damage they could deal to soft flesh? They were moving quite fast, I'll tell you! Speaking of, receptionists shouldn't have this many pens in their possession! I would know of course, I was a hotel receptionist once, but that job's behind me now, not enough fighting I say. Since she can't really do anything to me right now, maybe I'll ruminate (ooh big words) on her abilities...
Hmm... separation magic and repair magic... a master at both types, quite rare but still achievable in a person's lifetime... hmm... but how does that relate to the pens-
Ah ha! I got it now! I slammed my fist down on my palm again, man I'm such a genius! That librarian bitch must've separated one pen and then immediately repaired the two halves! Effectively creating two pens for her to use! But how can she create something out of nothing... hmm... ah no matter, it's magic! Shit just happens sometimes! I laughed out loud, before realizing that no more pens were flying my way anymore, I twisted my head to look at the receptionist table, or rather what's left of it, to see that... SHE'S GONE?! GODS DAMN IT!
I panic, wait no! I shouldn't be panicking! She couldn't have gotten far! Lightening the friction underneath me, I slid around the lobby... to the outside.... and then back to the lobby, this time looking under every nook and cranny... SHE'S NOT HERE!!
Now I panic. FUCK! I then completely remove the friction beneath me, this time sliding as fast as possible, rounding the entire block in only just a few seconds, and the librarian was nowhere to be found! DOUBLE FUCK! Slowing down in front of the hotel, I tried to think of any way that she could've escaped! Because I couldn't have been standing there thinking for that long now was I? It's time to rewind the tape of my mind... the library encounter blah blah blah not relevant... the beginning of the fight- that's right! She said that she saw someone from somewhere before!! I have great hearing! And eyesight too!!
Before I tackled her right out of the library, she was talking to some guy... looks real dopey, wearing a buttoned-up shirt... would've looked dapper if not for the garishly bright pink tee he had underneath, the man was a complete enemy to fashion it seems... Now I got it! Very distinct looks for me to track down and everything! All I need to do now is to kidnap his ass and ask some questions! From the looks of it, he's also magically inept! This'll be so easy!!
I dashed, or rather slid, over to the registry area of the hotel, the receptionist table still in tatters. Rummaging around in the rubble, I found the box I was looking for. The words 'Visitor ID' written and taped on the plastic container. Cracking it open, I began sifting through the numerous IDs of the residents here in the hotel. Hotels around here in Jest required you to take a headshot of yourself to be printed onto your very own key-card and badge, this decision was unanimously agreed as a bad move but the ones in charge kept it around anyways. People just figured that it was a way to monitor anybody with magic who could wreck the city and to give the police, as useless as they are, and easier time at tracking people, while other, more paranoid, people thought it was to monitor all people.
Pfft... As if they want to monitor magically inept people! What are those guys going to do? Steal things the old fashioned way?
While this policy did annoy me somewhat when I was still a hotel hopping hooligan, since it took precious minutes out of my life, now I find myself appreciating it, even thanking it for allowing me to track people down easier. I rummaged through the container before finding the ID I was looking for, let's see here... bright pink tee, check... ugly-ass button-up, check.... all seems to match up, and his name is Connie Vi Lang? Heh, he must be real popular in high school with a name like that. Lang sounds like wang, hehe...
Now's not the time to be amused! After fully memorizing the name of the kidnapping target, I place the ID back into the container and the container back into it's original space. Now's the time for me to abuse my connections to the Director! The city citizenship registry should be somewhere in fourth street, which is... a ways away. I sigh, at least sliding there will be fun... for a while.
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Meanwhile, in a dark alleyway just four minutes away from the ruined hotel...
"You say a word about where I am and I'll tear your lower jaw off, am I understood?" I nod, it was not everyday that you get abducted by a deranged librarian, "good, I don't know who that armored bitch was, but I know that I saw you from somewhere, and I got some questions. First, what were you doing in the storage room?"
"I got teleported there," the librarian looked like she was about to actually rip my jaw off, "it's the truth! I swear!"
"Improbable, but then again, shit just happens sometimes," she sighed, "I saw you hiding when I was fighting that flaming bastard, what were you doing inside an abandoned mall anyways?"
"I uh... got scared of the fight and ran somewhere where I can hide and wait." I scratched the back of my head sheepishly.
"By Chance, you are a coward."
"Hey! Give me a break! It was my first day in the city!"
"Now's your third day here, right?"
"Yeah? Why?"
"Seeing as how you're more tired of the fights than afraid of it now, I'd say that the city's imparting more of itself onto you."
"Oh shoot, never figured that," that was interesting, the fights were turning more and more into annoyances than actually something I should be afraid of, "am I turning apathetic?"
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"Yes." How blunt.
"Never mind that! Why'd you take me in the first place?" I ask, sweat beading on my forehead, "I mean... I'm not good at fighting, or anything really..."
"I took you because I have questions that need answering, and now you've answered them, so truthfully I have no uses for you anymore."
I'm going to be killed! "Please don't kill me..."
"Ha!" she laughed, before coughing, "damn I forgot I was injured for a moment there, anyways, I'm not going to kill you," I sigh in relief, "but now you're involved with me and that means that people like that armored bitch will be coming after you from now on." Shit.
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Meanwhile, on the Light Sphere, or the 'sun' for those lesser than the one living on the Sphere...
The Light Sphere's unusually cool this time of year, must be reaching the peak of its eleven-year cycle I see. Even though solar activity rises, the number of coronal holes, or sunspots for the lesser people out there, increases also. Although, calling the Sphere 'cool' is probably not the right choice of words here. Despite having more sunspots, the Sphere is still delightfully skin-searing like usual. It's like a microwave, no scratch that, it's more like a convection oven with the top element turned all the way up, not red hot, but white hot.
In fact, the temperature here doesn't change that much, the sunspots are nice, and everywhere else is well, you know. Thankfully my body has adapted to this environment, aside from my eyes, they're still adjusting at the moment, constantly vaporizing and regenerating over and over again until the magic gets it right. What use to felt like millions of microscopic needles poking on every part of my body now feels just like a stiff, warm breeze on my skin. Or maybe that's just the solar winds rending and flaying me every second that I'm here, blah, it's all a matter of perspective.
Speaking of perspective, maybe 'adaptation' might not be the correct word to describe my power, it gives lesser beings the idea that I can still somehow be destroyed. Foolish and unrealistic, I might say. Anyways, the Light Sphere's quite fun when you're not fussing over imminent vaporization, I mean, I can clap my hands right now and cause the ever shifting magnetic fields of this place to intersect and shoot out at the Created Realm, causing untold millions in damages all across the world. I'm not going to, obviously not right now, since it won't affect Jest, which is my real second target here. Something about that place just makes my head spin, it just makes my fingers curl and my fists tighten, gives me this niggling feeling in the back of my head that won't go away no matter what I do.
I shouldn't get hung over trivial stuff like this, I have more important things to do! Like clapping my hands for instance.
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"Scientists in Jest has reported another mass coronal ejection heading towards our planet, thankfully, with the help of magic, our city of Jest can remain safe and sound! Although the same can not be said for other places around the planet, unfortunate stuff indeed. We'll get back to you after this short commercial break."
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That always put a smile on my face. Seeing the expelled plasma whipping itself across the void that is, not much can make me smile anymore on accounts of, well, living for a very very long time. While I pride myself in knowing everything that ever was, there are some questions pertaining to the subject of myself that I have little to no clue about. Such is the nature of my magic, because, let's be honest here, for something so powerful to be given to me by pure chance is improbable, one might say impossible even though there's no such thing. Another question that I would sometimes stew over would be how magic works, because it can do truly wondrous things while at the same time fail at the most mundane of tasks.
Magic allows me to walk on pure superheated plasma yet it can't cut things but rather only separates them? How uncool. The distinction between separation and cutting is, despite the whining of some lesser people, not important in the slightest. In what realm would having two objects that are halves instead of two halves of an object be significant enough that warrants the distinction? It's stupid, the ones down at the Created Realm seems to have a problem with overthinking things, no such thing as explainable magic I'd say.
To explain magic is to do away with the magicalness of it, magic's only magic because it's unexplainable, it's unknown, what people don't understand they label as magic. Many mages from ages past have tried, and failed, to explain magic, to develop a magic 'system' as they call it. I find that to be hilariously stupid, because at what point does the magic stop being magic and becomes just a very advanced science? It's some sort of Ship of Theseus, but with understanding instead of ship parts. Speaking of Theseus, I wonder how he's doing lately? Probably still swimming around the mindpool I bet, Eskel was never one to have special treatment for important people.
This whole magic system rant got me thinking, did the magic in my Realm have a system to it? Something that grounds it? Something to explain why it does what it does? Probably not, magic in its current state is uncontrollable and limitless, people can fling magics, or 'spells' as the lesser ones call it, without consequence, maybe they're just not flinging them hard enough, who knows? I have known many magic-users that almost died because of their excessive use of magics, maybe it's just a skill thing, that the magic-users of today are more competent and better at restraining the output of their magic, thereby preventing death upon casting.
It's good for the lesser beings, yes, but I feel like this robs magic of some of its more... interesting and fun elements. Fights nowadays are just slugfests, two magic-users going toe-to-toe has been reduced from a spectacle to a boring and slow battle of attrition, but who knows? Maybe things have changed, it's been over a century since I've been down there with the lesser ones in the Created Realm. I'm just itching, dying even, to get down there and show them who's the number one magic-user in all of the realm, void excluded. But patience is a virtue, and I do want to hang out here on the Light Sphere for a while longer, watching the pillars of orange-white plasma shoot up hundreds of millions of paces high is really interesting.
Oh, and I can't reenter without a dramatic entrance, and dramatic entrances require good timing. Timing is key after all.
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Meanwhile, in the catacombs of Jest...
Bones. Bones. Bones. Bones. Waving skeleton. Bones. Bones. Bone- Wait a damn minute.
I whipped my head and my flashlight towards the waving skeleton as quickly as I could, to confirm that what I saw earlier was actually real and was not a bone-induced hallucination. Yep, yep, it's waving at me alright. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, it's still there! So it is real! Skeletons can indeed move on their own! Suck it Tom! Piece of shit, always outperforming me in Archaeology School, and he has the gall, the actual audacity to not make use of his degree and become a newscaster instead! Prick, it's as if he went through Archaeology School on a whim, what a waste of good effort!
"Hello flesh man!" the skeleton kept waving at me, how unnerving, "I can't help but notice that you're in my private property!"
"Private property? This is the Jest catacombs, it's been a historical site for hundreds of years!"
"Yeah, well," it crossed its arms, "I own it now, so it's mine."
"You can't just-"
"Nope! Not hearing it!" it then plugged it's ears(?), it doesn't have ears, last time I checked there were no ear bones, "it's my home and you gotta get out of here!"
"Wha- I- How- How are you speaking to me right now?" I started with a new line of questioning, seeing as how all of my previous ones were flat out refused, "you don't have vocal cords, right?"
"Wow! You're smart for a flesh man! Your head flesh must be pretty big!" It nodded, "but you are correct, I am speaking to you via my Skelepathy, I am Skelepathically speaking to you right now!"
"Why is your mouth moving then?"
"To not freak people out."
"Ah, I get it now," I nod, Archaeology School did not teach you how to deal with sentient skeletons and now I wish they did, "no... no I don't get it."
"What do you not get, flesh man?"
"Damn it! I know magic's fucking stupid sometimes but this is just absurd!" I scratch my head in frustration, "unless there's a new spell out there that can reanimate skeletons? Maybe?"
"Oh no no no! Magic can't do that yet," it assured me, not very reassuring since its a skeleton and all, "I'm the only one of my kind! Promise! Maybe."
"You're the only sentient skeleton in Jest? Somehow I don't believe that."
"Hey, it's up to you what you do and don't believe in, even if the evidence is right in front of you," am I being snarked by a sentient skeleton? "anyways flesh man, what's your name? My name's Eskel and I think we're going to be meeting each other a lot in the future!"
"..." gods I hope not, "name's Archie, and what do you mean by that last part?"
"Oh nothing for you to worry about," it waved off my question, "anyways, have fun doing whatever down here! I'll see you soon! SKELEPORTATION!"
The skeleton, or Eskel now I guess, then dropped down into a pile of nondescript bones, not a skeleton, just a pile of random assorted bones on the ground. I rub my eyes and sighed, I'm going to need a pretty hard drink after this. But now's not the time for drinks! I have catacombs to explore, even if I just finished talking to a sentient skeleton, maybe I'll be able to use Eskel as a way to rub it in Tom's face! About how I, the great Archaeologist Archie Arbolt, found the first sentient skeleton! Then and ONLY then will they finally appreciate me for who I am and my achievements also!!
I'll show them all! All about how Archaeology isn't just about licking the dust off of ancient relics or sifting through piles of sand for a fragment of pottery or rummaging through the dirt for absolutely nothing of value! It's about the discovery! The adventure! The connections to other things that would make sense in the future! I'll show them! Feeling the adrenaline leave my body, I immediately sat down and breathed heavily. In truth, that whole little encounter with Eskel left me shook a little bit, since that damn skeleton showcased some forms of unknown magic that seemed quite dangerous. I sat down and thought, thought real hard about my actions, about how I almost fucked myself by antagonizing something that I don't understand.
I could've been eviscerated! Or worse... obliterated.
But still... I do feel some relief in being an archaeologist, being far, far away from other people is the biggest plus anybody could ever ask for in a job honestly. Thank gods I'm not an astronomer like Dan, ugh, what an idiot, spouting some nonsense about there being a 'man on the sun' or whatever. I might not know a lot about astronomy or astrology or whatever the fuck, but even I know that people can't live on the sun, magic or not. Sometimes I worry about Dan, I really do, most of his theories are either unhinged or utterly stupid, I worry about him snapping one day and going crazy, I liked the guy, I really do, he seems nice and all but there's just this air of unhinged energy around him.
Same thing can be said about all of his co-workers also, albeit with less sympathy this time since I don't know them as well as Dan. They act more like yes men than actual scientists and astronomers, always sucking up to the top brass, and sometimes it just feels like the only thing they care about is a promotion rather than the pursuit of science and scientific knowledge. Jest has a problem with corruption that's for sure, I'm no politician, but I can see buillshit from thousands of paces away. I sigh, maybe I should've gotten a cushy desk job rather than walking around with my neck deep in some skeletons. Too late to switch careers now I guess.
I sometimes think about leaving Jest altogether, because with the news going on recently I've been getting worried. The increase number of street fights, especially ones involving librarians, has been really scaring me lately. I would leave but the sun keeps shooting out radiation or whatever so now I'm effectively stuck here until the people outside of Jest can restore their power grids. Widespread blackouts across continents seem to be more common nowadays.
Maybe Jest isn't so bad after all, if you just ignore all the fights and danger that is.