• Mahoutokoro School of Magic, Japan •
• October 13th, 12:00 PM •
[Tsunade Senju]
As she slowly opened her eyes, she saw only one thing. For a disorienting moment, Tsunade saw only the dazzling, blinding brightness coming from the opened window at the foot of the futon.
Fluttering her eyelids rapidly as she tried to blink the world into shape, she swung her arm irritably, causing the window to shut with a "baam".
She sat up, rubbing her eyes and stretching her arms and back before yawning and finally standing up.
Craaackk.
The sharp sound of wood cracking beneath her legs made her stop. She looked down and squinted. 'Really?' she wondered incredulously. 'My physical changes cannot be that exaggerated.'
She took another step, this time her leg sinking deeper into the hardwood floor, sending small splinters flying further than before.
'Or maybe I am wrong,' she conceded.
Taking a deep breath, she snapped her fingers, making a green circle appear with a cursive and stylish imprint of her name—Tsunade—written inside the small circle at the center. The two additional concentric circles contained different writings, mostly in various runes, symbols, and scriptural languages.
She felt her body become wet and soapy before being rinsed and dried shortly after—her pajamas included.
'What a nice spell,' she thought, a little pride seeping into her thoughts as she unconsciously puffed out her chest.
This was her new magic. Not the cleaning effect itself, but the green magic circle—one of the pillars of her new healing magic: the Restoration branch.
Tsunade sat back down on the futon, her movement making the floor groan and crack.
'Did I get fat?' A horrifying thought appeared in her mind, making her move her hands frantically, manifesting another green spell circle in front of her—a diagnostic spell.
She felt a wave of soft, bubbly, warm magic run through her from head to toe, making her exhale softly at the sensation.
She didn't dwell much on her new—and obviously much more accurate—sense of magic, and instead brought up her Archive screen to check the results of the spell.
Unlike traditional scanning spells, where the caster instinctively learns what happens in a localized area as they cast, her new magic was much broader.
It used magic to gather accurate data on everything about the body, but the downside was that it required one's mindscape to be truly massive to bear the strain. She had, of course, found a workaround by using the Archive as a medium. Now all that data got stored in her personal data collection archive, where she could sort it and transfer it elsewhere.
"I really am a genius," she mumbled through a wide grin.
Shaking her head to dispel her narcissistic thoughts, she brought her attention back to the Archive, where she stared, blinking owlishly at the screen. The data written before her was a far cry from what she remembered.
She had gained a few pounds, but that wasn't important anymore because now she knew the reason. She knew the reason for everything.
She knew the reason for the age regression during the process.
She knew why the body and mind returned to a more youthful and vitality-filled state.
She knew how the magic grew during the process.
"This is huge!" she muttered, baffled and mystified by what she was seeing. "This is concrete evidence and data proving and disproving a lot of speculation and theories!"
Now she felt silly for freaking out over possibly gaining weight. Of course she had gained weight; her body had gained more than just that. There were new muscles, denser bones, thicker and wider blood vessels, as well as a larger and far more active neural network.
The promotion ritual had done many things. It had filled her body with magic, meaning there was far more magic in her blood and bones than ever before. That provided more than enough energy for the body to optimize itself—healing all accumulated micro-tears and fractures, as well as eliminating many imperfections that plagued the body.
That meant she hadn't regressed in age. She just looked the way she should. What she had gained was years of life expectancy in the form of more magic.
Denser magic. More active magic.
"Albus Dumbledore is a fucking prodigy," she chuckled, disbelief underlying her tone. "Most of his theories are true. This is beyond genius…"
She caught herself midway and stopped. She'd better not say this out loud, lest Kaito somehow hear her and become even more unbearable than he already was.
She sighed and decided to calm down a little, so she flopped back onto her futon, opening another Archive screen and clicking on the simulation option.
Her surroundings melted away like snow, and suddenly she found herself on a large, circular stone platform with grass and trees nearby. She knew this location—it was her favorite training ground.
She shook her head as she felt her body still lying down in her room. This was not real. It was just a hyper-realistic illusion where she could gain a much better understanding of her strength while also physically benefiting.
It was a complicated process, but the underlying principle was that for a small amount of time and magic, the Archive worked as a bridge to help her achieve a state of mind over body—an unconscious control over her new strength.
She took a few deep breaths, straightened her back, held her arms in a karate-chop position, and began to move slowly in a peculiar form that took her forward, backward, and sideways.
"Hupp!"
She let out a yell as she suddenly sprang into action, executing a roundhouse kick before shifting, using the momentum to rotate her upper body and pivot her hip into a backhanded punch before jumping back.
She continued this for several minutes—throwing punches, side kicks, high kicks, and axe kicks. Her style was a bizarre thing that focused more on kicking and offense than one would expect from a well-rounded martial art.
"Huuuffff."
She exhaled slightly as she stood back, her form relaxing as she began to move her limbs in strange, dance-like motions—soft and dreamy.
That, too, came to an end a few minutes later as she started to grin. Bloodied bodies appeared on the floor all around her, groaning sounds filling the space.
"Okay, now this looks like a proper way to test my new magic."
She walked up to one of the groaning, faceless bodies on the ground and extended her hand. A green magic circle appeared in her palm, and she focused on reverting his body to its original shape.
That was her magic: Restoration. To draw upon information registered in the body and the world, and spend magic to will the change to happen—to return whatever part of the body to its previous state.
A simple concept, but very difficult execution—something she had intimately understood back when she was trying to create it while banking on the state of enlightenment.
'I did have very limited information back then,' she justified to herself. But now it didn't matter.
It had only worked thanks to that Flitwick person finishing his own ritual while she was deep in hers. If he hadn't, and if the Archive hadn't supplied her with information about magic circle creation and manifestation arts, she would have failed.
It wasn't that she lacked data per se. On the contrary, she had it in spades. She had been trying to create restoration spells—much like "reverto," "reparo," and "episky"—that also worked on the body at large for ages now.
What she hadn't accounted for was how to translate what she wanted in a way the world and magic understood. She had theories, but even those were half-arsed.
Sure, magic—as Albus Dumbledore explained—is a very low-level and highly optimized form of reality manipulation, but even reality has to understand what you want to convey. Otherwise, it could get very messy.
That's where the circle came in handy. It allowed her intent to be clear while also organizing, selecting, and sorting the staggering amount of data the body and the world held.
For example, to restore someone's leg, the amount of time and magic spent would depend on how long it had been since the patient lost said leg. This wasn't time magic; she couldn't just reverse time on an organ.
She needed the magic circle to filter and sort through all that accumulated and very chaotic information and translate what she wanted at the same time…
'I still can't believe I can do this now,' she muttered as she clapped her hands together, making several circles appear at once. She felt her magic drain at an alarming rate.
She staggered back and stopped what she was doing, watching as the simulation collapsed on itself and the illusion shed and dissipated into reality.
She let out a content sigh as she felt her magic refill—much faster than it used to.
Looking up at the ceiling, her eyes gained a distant look.
She smiled. A goofy smile. A happy smile. A content smile.
She had done it. She had created a new brand of magic. Healing magic.
'Grandpa would have been so proud…'
She shook her head and stood up, heading toward the bathroom. This time her steps were lighter and more energetic.
'Nothing can ruin this day for me…'
X_
• Auror Training Rooms, Ministry of Magic •
• October 13th, 12:01 PM •
[Rufus Scrimgeour]
Inside one of the smaller Auror training rooms, Rufus found himself blinking rapidly as a golden light started to flicker at the edge of his vision.
'Another one?' he thought, annoyed, but opened the Archive to check anyway.
His eyes roamed the screen for about a minute as he read the announcement and the subsequent summary breakdown of the new magic. He rubbed his eyes and read it again, just to make sure what he was reading wasn't some kind of illusion.
It was not.
'Someone really created a healing magic of such potency?' he wondered, bewildered and a little daunted too—because what else was possible…
Some Japanese woman had just created a healing magic that restored health. This was not a magic he knew of, or thought possible for that matter.
Sure, the past couple of days had seen a spike in new magic creation, but most of them were either bizarre or just common.
Like Professor Flitwick's circle creation and manifestation that came out five or six days ago. It was strange, but still within the realm of possibility. It didn't do much else other than open a new path to wandless magic.
It hadn't come out of nowhere either. The principles were always there. It did require one to have a certain level of proficiency with a lot of basics and new things to create their own magic, but it was all there.
Not this. This magic required someone like him… him… a senior Auror with years of experience, to actually sit down and study just to qualify to read it.
Not like the magicks he had seen so far. The Fire Maker magic that came out yesterday, or the Syrup Maker magic that came before it—all of them were easily accessible to everyone.
There were some more bizarre magics, like the one created by the Weasley twins: that Fart Maker magic. It was just there, under the prank section, holding the place for the fastest ever created magic.
People were in some kind of creation frenzy, and here he was, still trying to get down the basics of Alastor Moody's addition to combat magic.
'And failing too,' he groaned into his palm as he sat down on the floor. The feeling of the cold stone grounded him to reality.
It was a profoundly disturbing feeling—that sense of loss when you don't know why or how it came to be.
The sense of fear that makes one wonder if he will ever be enough.
Rufus thought himself old enough to not have these self-pitying feelings anymore. He thought he had accomplished enough already, and that only taking over Amelia's post for a few years before retiring would make his career a notable one.
It was not enough anymore. Not since everyone started creating the most inane magic like they were ordering candy from Honeydukes.
'Is this what my life has come to now?' he asked himself. 'Me, alone in the middle of the day, in a training room, failing to grasp the concepts of new combat applications and principles?'
'Well, it's better than being stuck monitoring the situation in St. Mungo's,' he tried to comfort himself by imagining how miserable Kingsley must be right now.
He smiled a little as he imagined the scene. It was a nice distraction, but it didn't help much.
Because while Shacklebolt would certainly be busy, he was also the current acting head of the Ministry of Magic's Law Enforcement Division. Sure, he was left taking care of the rising issue of stupid and deranged wizards trying to gain power without having the proper foundation—leading to them being unconscious and transported to St. Mungo's—but he was still doing his job.
Ffffoooooooohhh~
He exhaled sharply and took a deep breath right after. He repeated the action a few more times until he returned to his calm self.
There was no need to be hasty. He was Rufus Scrimgeour, and he would create something grand. He couldn't let those small, insignificant achievements of barely-known people distract him from his goal.
Power required one to strive to achieve it—not cower at the sight of the first bump in the road.
Yes, he was going to achieve greatness, and that started with him mastering the mana zone and mana skin skills created by Moody. He needed to deepen his foundation to build a taller wall.
'Now, let's try this again.'
X_
• St. Mungo's, Director's Office •
• October 13th, 2:00 PM •
[Kingsley Shacklebolt] (current acting head of the Auror Office because Amelia is on vacation)
"Eight more wizards and five witches have been admitted in the last hour," Theodore Williamson, the current director of the hospital, informed him. "The situation is getting more and more out of hand…"
"Can we build more medical tents outside?" Kingsley asked, hoping for a positive answer.
"We can add three more tents, no more," the director said, finality in his voice. "I don't have the manpower to keep up with more than that."
"Can we do anything to wake them up faster?"
"Not at the moment, no," Theodore shook his head. "They have to wake up by themselves, but from what we can tell, the only side effect of failure is depression…"
He gave the director the flattest stare he could muster. That was the reason he was here—the reports he got of wizards and witches crying hysterically and apologizing for disappointing Mother Magic, swearing to be better, and all that commotion they caused.
The Janus Thickey Ward of the hospital was packed. They had to commission three ICW-licensed mind healers from outside of Britain to come just so they could keep up with the influx of patients.
"Okay, we have already contacted Professor Dumbledore, and he promised to compile all the relevant information and evidence on the consequences of trying to prematurely advance, and announce it to the whole world," Shacklebolt informed the director, getting a quiet nod in return.
"Is there anything else I should be aware of?" he asked, inwardly praying to anyone who was listening to get 'no' for an answer.
"Not at the moment, no."
'Oh, thank Merlin…' He didn't get to finish the thought.
"…but we would like for you to leave most of the current Auror force to keep things orderly here while we work…"
'Of course…' He cursed his luck again for probably the hundredth time today. 'And now I have to go find others to help me keep things running…'
"Okay then," he nodded and stood up, extending his hand for a handshake. "Inform me immediately if there's any issue."
"Absolutely."
He didn't like how readily and happily the man replied. It gave him a bad feeling, like something cold sliding down his back, making him shiver.
'I need to get out of here before I get stuck,' he thought dramatically, 'forever.'
He turned around and walked out of the door, heading directly toward the Floo Network entrance. He glanced at the trainee beside him and gave him simple instructions before leaving.
'Now, let's go ahead and tackle the next problem on the list.'
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