My powers were plain.

The scientific community categorized it as Universal Linguist. The ability to read, and speak any language known to sentient life.

Ancient scriptures? Easy, though the changes in grammar sometimes made it annoying to rewrite. Especially the much older languages.

Those pictographs on a cave wall? Yeah, it was about hunting animals. With your male genitalia. Riveting.

So I passed time, traveling around the world. I saw and talked to the locals. I was able to gain protected passages through rather hostile lands. All for the ability to translate things for various people.

Museums and Collectors of archaeological treasures. Those paid some big bucks to transcribe.

Not enough to make me rich, but enough to jump around the globe.

A few hours jotting down the findings, and then a week or four in a country. I spent more time on tours then I did in the office. Something that agreed with my mental health as I was rarely stressed, and often saw amazing vistas.

Not a bad lifestyle, but not exactly sustainable in the long run. How many artifacts where there? How many cared to pay to have it translated?

While others flew or altered the very fabrics of reality, I could read and write.

It wasn’t the best, or the most flashy. It was mine though. Something that no one else had.

As the sole known Universal Linguist, I had inadvertently cornered the market. No one else was offering services on custom translations on the scale, and precision I could. There were professional translators, but they were locked down to only one or two languages. I was not.

At least I was making a neat scrapbook out of my projects. No one ever complained so long as I never referenced where I found said artifacts.

It was a journal of sorts. Proof of my existence.

I chuckled at the thought of someone in the distant future, translating my journal. I hope they would get the witty banter I scribbled into the margins.

—

Then I found it.

In the island nation of Japan. In the remote northern area of the Kyoto Prefecture. I met a priest who ran a local shrine.

This man was also a practitioner of the mystic arts. A traditional Japanese esoteric system called Onmyodo. It meant ‘The Way of Yin and Yang’.

Mister Takahashi, current head and caretaker had a set of paper dolls. These heirlooms were handed down for almost two thousand years. They were the greatest thing he had inherited and were considered more valuable than the shrine itself.

The Takahashi family was once an esteemed family of Onmyodo masters. Today they were a normal family by Japanese standards. One that had more sway religiously then they once had politically.

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Mister Takahashi desired to see if I could exam the faded set of scriptures. They had were written in the 10th century. Handcrafted by the most prominent head of the Takahashi clan.

The pay was good, and it was enough to let me stay in Japan for a full season. I said yes.

Like many collectors and those who had heirloom pieces, the writing was rough. I could understand it, but chicken scribbles were chicken scribbles.

I recreated the writing on another sheet. Then I double, triple, and quadruple checked it. This was one of my more frustrating jobs. The delicate calligraphy was annoying to reproduce, but it was also an interesting challenge. This was the first job in a while to peak my interests so.

The language wasn’t quite Japanese, despite its resemblance to it. It was as if everything was a mash of Chinese, Japanese slang words.

The sentences had little addendums. They referred to the classic 5 elements, yin and yang, and the Heaven / Earth polarity.

The current head of the Takahashi clan had provided special inks. A combination of human blood, and squid ink, to recreate the original scriptures. These instructions were faithfully recorded and they were nearly perfect translations when I looked over the family's journal entries.

This family was smart enough to do the occasional update to the older records. New journals with the new generation to signify the changes in eras. Pretty smart.

My job then got tougher when I started work on the dolls. It was slow. I couldn’t use a pen, as it was to thin. So each line had to required forethought and patience. I had to learn calligraphy to repair these heirlooms.

Hours of practice turned into days. Days into weeks. Weeks into months. I didn't even realize the changing of the seasons until an autumn leaf fell into my morning soup one day.

Then I was ready. I laid out my tools, and the dolls were to be worked on this auspicious day. Brushes were the best tool, and I retraced the fine and rather delicate work.

It was lucky that newer, small brushes were easy to create and use. It must have been a nightmare for the ancient people to have to make precise tools back then.

Time melted and blurred as began I work.

The design was both simple, yet intricate. Words overlapped at times, creating unique hybrids that could mean several things. Confusing, but with my powers, legible.

It was quite beautiful when I finished. The long set of commands that would empower, and grant false life to an object.

It was quite cute, the wording and imagination.

I refolded the paper. It was still somehow flexible despite its age.

The dozen paper dolls lined up. A nice display of the refreshed words. With how the sentences crisscrossed, it was less of a set of instructions, and more of a work of art.

Mister Takahashi smiled as he stared at the repaired dolls. In his hands was my payment. With a satisfied smile, he handed it over.

As a final joke, I gave the man the list of commands.

Fly.

Speak.

See.

Dance.

Empower. (Magic ritual via command seals)

Mister Takahashi laughed and spoke the command to dance.

We stared, and they did not move.

We laughed.

The first doll stood up and began to flex its limbs.

Our laughter died.

Then the second. The third.

A dozen dolls began to hover over the table I used across the two weeks for repairs.

They danced. They made jingling sounds that I had, at the time, though odd. Now it made sense as they began to chime during pauses. They were doing a basic ritual dance to promote one's positive karma.

We stared as they finished their dance, and then laid down. Still, as the day I saw them.

Mister Takahashi stared. Then teared up as his family’s legacy became vetted. They were not a family of frauds and tricksters. They held prominent titles and stations for centuries. Though they had fallen from great heights, they were never lairs and charlatans.

I stared down at my hands. As specialists doing great work, and great deeds.

Maybe. Just maybe.

Universal Linguist wasn’t a D class power after all.

If I could do this with paper, then what else could I use?

The thought of metals and other materials came to mind. As did the vast stores of work I had done before.

Other ‘mystic’ systems. Norse. North American.

It was all there, in my journal.

Which had now included Japanese mysticism.

If those worked, and I began to combine them…

Wouldn’t I become something more?

I said my goodbyes to the shell shocked man. My job here was done, and a new world awaited me.

With a skip in my step, I made my way down to the room I was boarding in.

I pulled out my phone and began to look for other artifacts.

It was time to do some serious reading.