The Red Hand

A few days later, the girls came over to Akagi's house. It was early December, and the cold weather outside meant that Christmas was only a few weeks away. Kana, Mika, and Naomi were going to do their Christmas shopping the next day, and currently, they were sitting around the living room table drinking tea served by Mizumi. Akagi was busy elsewhere and told Kana she would return later, so Mizumi was left with them.

"Where is Akagi anyway?" Mika asked. Akagi hadn't been here when they arrived, so she was curious.

"I believe she's dealing with some magical testing," Mizumi said as she brought in a plate of cookies for the girls to eat. "Some members of her family are quite skilled in magic, and I think she wanted to start testing their abilities in this world." She'd been helping with magical training in addition to ferrying material and personnel into the pocket dimension for the construction of the Spirits new home.

"Must be nice to have magic," Mika complained. "I wish I could use it. That would be so cool!" There was no indication that magic spread into the world at large post-FWO, and Mizumi said nothing she did would cause a mass awakening of magical ability in random people.

"Hmmm." Mizumi scrunched up her face in thought. "I think it should be possible for you to use magic, maybe." Mizumi's words caused Mika to get excited.

"REALLY!" Mika yelled as she grabbed onto Mizumi's shoulders. "Tell me how!"

"Too close!" Mizumi tried to wriggle free of Mika's iron grip but found herself trapped.

"Mika, calm down. You're scaring the poor girl." Kana was trying really hard to hold in her laughter at Mizumi's plight.

"Ah! Sorry." She let Mizumi go and scratched her cheek in embarrassment. "But, can we really use magic?"

Mizumi sighed and dusted herself off. "I don't see why not, though it would take some external assistance first."

"External assistance?" Mika cocked her head in confusion. "What does that mean?"

Mizumi tapped her chin and thought for a moment. "So, basically, all living things have a flow of magic throughout their body. My kind calls them magic circuits. They're essentially an invisible pathway that flows throughout someone's body and channels magical energy." She continued. "In my world, these grew just like your bones do, and over time they would gradually get bigger and more robust, enabling larger overall pools of magic to be used."

"So it's like an organ?" Naomi asked.

"Kind of. That's actually not a bad way of thinking about it." Mizumi nodded in approval of the comparison. "These circuits allow one to channel magical energy that ones own body generates or from the natural environment around you. Though, this world lacks any real amount of magical energy, so you're almost entirely reliant on what your body generates itself." Mizumi shrugged.

"How does the body generate magic?" Naomi was quite interested in this topic, especially since she was considering going into medicine in the future.

"The circuits themselves generate magic. The best way I can explain it is to imagine that the magic is your blood while the circuits are your veins and heart combined in one." Mizumi sighed since she wasn't the greatest at explaining this to those with no magical knowledge. "Basically, the circuits circulate the magic and are also responsible for generating enough to fill the pathways. This means that you have a set limit to how much magical power you can use at one time. It is possible to exceed this via other means, but doing so could damage your body and the circuits." Mizumi's expression made it seem like she'd seen this happen before.

"Does the magic power come from food? Or does it just generate without the need for any input?" Naomi had started writing down notes.

"Yes, energy has to come from somewhere, after all." Mizumi smiled seeing Naomi so interested. "Without a proper diet, you can't generate the magic to fill the circuits, and your abilities will plummet. This does mean that your nutritional needs increase the more magic you expend." She knew most great mages had even greater appetites.

"Fascinating! So then, what is the difference between the people in this world and those from yours? Why don't we have these magic circuits? You said our bodies can generate magical energy, so why haven't we seen it?" Naomi was really getting into this whole magic thing. Mika was having a hard time following the explanation, while Kana just nodded along.

"I can't be completely sure, but this world's lack of magical energy likely made it so that life here is closed off to magic completely." Mizumi's eyes glowed for a moment as she scanned Naomi's body. "Your body completely lacks magical circuits and in fact, there isn't magic anywhere within it."

"So how can we use magic if we lack those circuits?" Kana interjected. "If our bodies evolved not to need magic or have those circuits, shouldn't it be impossible for us to use it?"

"No." Mizumi shook her head. "All you need is some magic circuits, the rest will handle itself. In my world, from time to time you saw individuals whose bodies were born without them, and with a simple procedure you could force the pathways to open, and the body would naturally generate them as intended." Mizumi had actually done the procedure numerous times over her life, so she knew exactly what to do.

"So you could do that to us!" Mika was happy to hear this news.

"I could. However, without explicit permission from Akagi, I will not do so." Mizumi didn't want to give the blue-haired girl the bad news, but if the choice was between disappointing Mika and angering Akagi, she wouldn't risk upsetting the Demon who held her people's lives in her hands.

"Makes sense." Naomi was writing in her notes. "There's no telling what might happen if you messed with our bodies. We'd be the first people in this world to acquire magic and it's possible there would be negative side effects. Our bodies weren't meant to have magic circuits, so there's no telling what might happen." Naomi agreed that caution was necessary.

"Yeah, and having magic start appearing might cause further chaos. Onee-chan and the others are already crazy, but if regular people start getting access to magic, I can't imagine things would be peaceful." Kana gave a nervous smile as she imagined the chaos that would unfold.

"I can speak to Akagi about it, but I imagine she won't exactly be thrilled with the idea of me experimenting on you three." Mizumi sweated imagining the pressure, and she knew that any issues would be detrimental to her and her people's well-being.

"I volunteer!" Mika put her hand up. "I want to be able to use magic, and I trust you to do it!" Mika's bright smile blinded Mizumi with its radiance. Even the water spirit was no match for Mika's bright aura.

"I appreciate your faith, but until I get the go-ahead from Akagi, I can't help you." She recoiled from the brightness of Mika's smile.

"We'll just have to talk to her about it when she gets back." Kana shrugged. "But for now, I would say that caution is best, Mika. You wouldn't want to end up crippled or in endless pain or something would you?" Kana looked at her friend with a sharp gaze.

"T-true. I guess I can wait." Mika sat down and gave a pout.

"Besides, even if I were to do the procedure today. It would still be months before you could properly use the new circuits, and it would be a very long time before you could cast magic.” Mizumi figured it would take people completely unfamiliar with magic quite some time to get used to it.

"Though, Kana." She looked at the girl. "Are you sure you can't use or sense magic?" Her question confused Kana.

"Me?" Kana didn't understand. "I can't use magic. Why would I be able to?"

Mizumi thought for a moment before speaking. "While your soul seems human enough. I question if you might not have been influenced by Akagi at some point."

"What?!?" Kana's eyes widened at Mizumi's statement. "What do you mean influenced."

"Well, you've spent more time around Akagi, and during one's younger years the soul is particularly susceptible to influence from especially strong power sources." Mizumi continued. "From what I've seen and been told, Akagi was likely not actually a human, even before FWO. I wouldn't be shocked if your soul was influenced or changed by your close proximity to her. It's rare, but I have seen it a few times in siblings where the weaker one's soul is changed or altered by the stronger one."

"So wait, you mean being near Onee-chan changed me from being human?" Kana panicked slightly at that thought.

"No, I don't think so." Mizumi shook her head. "Recall, it's only a possibility rather than a guarantee. On top of that, you should have seen some signs of change or influence by now, so if you say that nothing out of the ordinary has occurred with you, then you were likely not influenced by Akagi." She looked at Kana's soul with her eyes and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Kana let out a breath hearing that she was likely not affected. "That's good to hear, I guess. Not exactly sure how comfortable I would be changing into something like Onee-chan." Kana gave a wry smile.

"Yeah, kinda makes me feel bad for those who returned from FWO and had their bodies changed." Naomi put away her notes. "It would be kinda freaky to just wake up in a completely different body or even as a different race."

"Being in the game for as long as they were probably mitigated the issue." Mizumi speculated. "Most took to their new forms pretty well from what I've seen." Kana knew that Mizumi didn't really feel bad about what she did to the players, and her indifference to the plight of those transformed and the potential harm done to them kind of annoyed her.

"Yeah, but a few of them haven't," Naomi noted. "And there have been plenty driven out of their families and towns. Heck, that's why Libra exists, isn't it? Because so many had everything taken from them." Many, but not all, of Libra's members had lost their family, friends, and place in the world upon returning. Elna was one of the more famous examples since her family disowned her. Akagi's actions probably didn't help the perception that returnees were dangerous, but she couldn't care less if her actions impacted others.

"If we become able to use magic. I imagine we'd be treated no differently than the returnees. It might even be worse since we willingly became strange." Naomi continued. "We'd be a threat, and since we were just normal people, I guarantee more people would come after us. If we do decide to go through with this.... we need to be careful." Naomi looked up at Mizumi. "How many people can do this procedure?"

"I'm the only one in this world that can do it," Mizumi said. Other spirits could as well, but info on the other spirits was being restricted for the time being.

"Good, and how many people know about it?" Naomi asked.

Mizumi thought for a second, sticking her tongue out unconsciously. "Just the people around Akagi. I haven't told anyone else. Even Hishya doesn't know."

{That was kinda cute.} (Kana x Mika x Naomi)

"That's for the best," Kana added in. "For now, you should probably not tell anyone outside of Onee-chan's family unless she tells you. I imagine she's going to want to restrict this information."

Mizumi nodded in agreement. "My thoughts exactly."  Akagi hadn't really said anything about this, but she figured that keeping it on the down low was for the best.

"Well, now that we've talked about magic. We should move onto our shopping list, we're heading to the Kyoto Mall tomorrow and we've got lots of things to get!" Kana decided to steer the conversation toward the impending Christmas shopping, she was also planning on getting things for Akagi's upcoming birthday in January.

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Inside a warehouse not too far from Kyoto stood a winged woman and a large green ogre man.

"Are you ready for tomorrow, Hijax? All those shoppers who think they can ignore us are in for a rude awakening." The harpy woman smiled as she asked. Her voice was cool and seductive, but the glare in her eye was terrifying.

"Your damn right! I never thought you and I would tear up Kyoto together, Sumeralia." His loud voice boomed, shaking the windows. "We've left Kyoto alone until today, and those idiots probably think we're too afraid of Akagi to attack the city." He gave a loud belly laugh. "If that idiot shows up to stop us, we can take her. She ain't so tough anyway, still don't understand why Herlex was so wary of her. I imagine he'll be quite annoyed we went off script. Oh well, we can hit Nara afterwards anyway."

The two broke into laughter, confident in their ability to deal with Akagi should the need arise. Completely unaware that their actions tomorrow would push the world closer to destruction.