What? That’s what he wanted to ask. Well, he guessed she could go first, Serah had seemed to imply that Mr. Garry wasn’t coming around any time soon so it wasn’t like the whole brain suck thing was actually that pressing.

“Here? Room 202? I’ve been literally sleeping in there. Don’t you have a gym credit?” The orchestra room was the non-stop butt of a running joke if he recalled. There was a giant tuba propped up against the window. Though since that was precisely why he’d pulled the bed and drawn the curtains maybe it wasn’t so obvious as he’d originally thought.

“Huh, so that’s who drew the drapes.” Kim said and she pivoted at a corner.

“Uh, actually, you don’t want to go that way.” Ed stopped at the cross section.

“What? How else would we nab some lunches?”

“No I mean, um, let’s take a detour.”

While he was pretty sure he’d imagined it because they were too far away, he swore he could hear a frantic couple of particularly faint moans from around the bend.

“So, well, you know that Chamuel guy?” Kim nodded hesitantly as he raised a hand over his head as if to demonstrate the height difference. While she’d been somewhat reluctant at first, she was now following him curiously as he took them down the exterior route to the lunch hall. “That’s his, um… “How was he supposed to say this? “Turf?”

Kim chuckled nervously. “He’s not gonna like… eat me or anything, right?”

What! Why did everyone always jump to that conclusion?

“No. Pretty sure that’s only ghouls. At least around here. They’re all stuffed down into the trailer high though so I don’t think you need to worry about that sort of thing.” He inspected her carefully. “You didn’t, um, transfer down there right? Err, I mean, I tossed you my deal. So, like, time to pay up? What’s that deal with the whole priest thing?”

She jumped up onto a railing, sticking her arms out a bit to balance as they walked up the steps to the cafeteria.

“Aight, so, you're never going to believe this but I’m—” She made a karate pose, followed by what he was pretty sure was some sort of over exaggerated kung fu movie sound effect. “—a fucking ninja now!”

Ed’s brain did a fart, he blinked a couple times. Then he realized he was standing still so he jogged a bit to catch up. Yeah, no.

“Those don’t exist.”

“Yeah huh! Zombies, vampires, ninja’s totally exist bruh!”

She was definitely pulling his leg here.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

“So, first of all, I think you need to be Japanese.”

“That’s racist.”

Ed shook his head, “Look, there’s just, so many things wrong with—”

He was cut off by the sound of a soft fwip and the tail end of what he was pretty sure was some sort of small knife with a talisman stuck to the end of its very circular hilt was now sticking out of the grass.”

Slowly, he backed up from the side of the stairs where it had landed and cast a farsight spell. He pulled out his phone. ‘What is that throwing knife with a ring on its hilt called’

“Look, just because you have that doesn’t make you a ninja.” Ed deadpanned.

Kim raised an eyebrow at him. “Are those magic ritual circle glasses?”

“Yes, and they make me a wizard.” He wiggled his fingers into the air imperiously. “I call down on thee lightning!”

Kim coughed out a laugh. “Ok Mr. wizard. That’s your name now by the way.”

“Right. And your new name is super ninja.”

Kim winced and she hopped down off the rail. “Yeah ok, no I admit I just nicked that off a shelf. Christ that’s bleh. Truce?”

“Deal.”

She retrieved the knife and slipped it back into her jacket before dropping to sit on the edge of a wide stone flower bed. There was a long wall of glass that separated them from the cafeteria and she seemed to be staring at it as the kids trickled out to the halls. “But I guess more seriously; pastor Harris hooked me up with some sort of, uh, what’d he call it again? Junior exorcist, inquisitor, acolyte instructor? Something along those lines, there’s this whole class thing and it’s super uptight, so like, yeah.” She tossed her hands up to do a rather sarcastic looking jazz hands. “Woopie! I’m part of the secret shadow world too now? That’s why I can see you. I guess. It’s still kinda freaky how everyone just kinda slips over you with their eyes.” She squinted at his eyes. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to see magic.”

Ed cut the spell. “It’s one of the first ones I learned. Made for babies apparently, the inscribed circles are there to provide a sort of physical guide for the mana pathways. My running theory’s they made it look like a magic circle because it looks cooler that way. There’s absolutely no reason for the shape otherwise.”

Kim snorted. “Ok. Not gonna lie, you’re kinda blowing my expectations for what I’ve heard about mages.” She made an explosion sound effect, then she bounced up off the planter. “Looks like the're pretty much gone now,” She rattled the door handle. “You got a trick for this?”

“Uh, yeah actually.” He walked up to the door and pushed a bit of his aura through it and to the other side.

This was actually kind of the whole point behind magecraft now that he thought about it. One of the first things he’d learned was that spells were something pretty much anyone (who had a spark) could perform and that mages in general were kind of at the absolute bottom of the supernatural hierarchy, at least as far as true magic capacity was concerned. A dragon might simply wish it and it’s aura would crush a mountain, while here, trying to channel all of his aura into a tiny prick to cause the smallest of physical changes to his environment was somewhat mindbogglingly hard.

It made zero sense that he could cut down a tree with a mere fraction of what this was costing him and when he’d asked Serah she’d actually given him an answer for once. ‘That’s one of the founding reasons behind the formation of the Clocktower. Mages simply don’t know.’ Yeah, what a horrible answer it was though.

Finally, and after dipping below a good half of his stamina bar, the handle on the inside nudged down with a click and Ed hastily pulled open the door as he let the structure dissolve.

Unstructured telekinesis was a rather advanced sort of spell, and while there were synths that did the job too, despite it being much more costly, this was honestly way easier. Though it also might have also had something to do with the fact that he didn’t know either of those things. This was definitely something he was going to look into later.

“Got it.” Ed huffed. And he made a slight bow and a hand gesture like a butler guiding her in. “Ninja’s first.”