On Up and over

Stories of Those Who Left and Those Who Arrived

If you were given the option to leave everything you know behind, forever, and start anew in an unknown place, would you choose uncertainty? Would you choose to leave your loved ones, your home, your friends, and any familiarity with the world around you?

Most people won't. Most people didn't.

Those who did chose to leave for many reasons, the main ones being boredom, curiosity, and desperation.

There were also those who didn't fit into any of these categories; the children who wandered too close to their Door, the people who jumped at the chance to back out of all previous responsibilities, and one person who happened to stop walking just as their Door opened beneath them.

'What are these Doors you speak of?' you may ask. They are Doors. But what does a door look like? Picture it in your mind. Is it wooden? Once painted a bright firetruck red, now peeling and chipped? Metal and bolted shut? A curtain over a gaping hole in a wall that you swear was perfectly whole yesterday? Or maybe more abstractly, a portal. A disk of light. A large hole where your bathtub drain used to be. A whirlpool in the lake behind your house.

Picture it. You know where it is. You know how to get there. It will take you somewhere else.

Approximately 70 million people left Earth for the week the Doors were held open. Approximately 7 Billion were left. 'What happened to Earth?' you may ask. 'What did those who were still on boring old Earth do?' you may continue.

But Earth is not so boring. But that is not our story.

For the place those who Transferred arrived was a new land, an unexplored and uncivilized terrain. Within the first week a great many died, as humans are wont to do. From lack of resources, accidents, suicide, unfortunately inhospitable drop points, or encounters with the local wildlife.

But humans are resourceful, and there was an energy that permeated everything on this planet. An energy that could be used to program the universe- magic, if you will.

These are the stories of but a few of those who Transferred, who made themselves important enough that they were remembered for centuries to come, or not at all. These are the stories of the Kings and Queens, the Presidents and the Judges, the Martyrs and the Prophets, the Arbitrators and the Kingpins.

This is the story that happened after the Transfer.

+×+×+×+×

This will be a sort of continuation from my previous year's novel, as I've found that in order to be able to write the political climate I want during the main story 200 years in the future, I need to know who influenced the formation of the countries, legal systems, and not-so-legal systems.

Money doesn’t buy you happiness, but it can easily buy you companionship and excitement. And that’s all Li Jie wanted. Happiness was some idealistic concept, while adrenaline was tangible. Gambling was a rush, fighting was moreso, and manipulating the collapse of his “close” circle of friends, turning them all against each other or trapping them in socially destructive situations they couldn’t escape, that was fun. That was rewarding. Plus, he could always buy more friends, and buy the ex’s silence. As long as he had money to spend, people would be inevitably drawn to him. His looks didn’t hurt either. He’d once been told by a (very flirtatious) bartender that he was “just the right level of masculine, with a pretty, disarming face”. He thought that was an oddly poetic way to describe anyone. He was just good-looking. He had worked to tone his muscles sure, and he knew he was also naturally gifted with pleasant features. He understood that he was attractive. But everyone kept telling him, describing his body as if he didn’t already know what he looked like, as if he didn’t see his reflection every day. You’re so pretty, with your strong eyebrows and soft jaw, I wish I had a face like yours. Your eyes are a striking dark brown, they look almost black- I feel like you can see into the deepest parts of my soul. Your teeth are just shy of too perfect, your shoulders are broad and emphasize your waist, your dark tan skin is so even, you’re so tall... It became annoying after a while, honestly, but people who liked him for his looks were easier to find (and manipulate) than those who liked him for his personality. 

He’d been using used his looks to his advantage since he was just a little heir-to-be, not even 4 and his father had already taught him a multitude of ways to get what he wanted. (So proud of his little heir, his little copy-paste son.) Then came the teenage years, the inevitable pushback to his dad’s authority, and suddenly all the little things his father had taught him were used in (comparatively) undesirable ways. After a few years of rebellion, his father doing everything he could to “set him on the right path”, Li Jie realized that as long as he didn’t completely ruin his public image, he was still going to inherit everything. He had good business sense, was skilled at tempting others with deals that only seemed too good to be true, and was one of the few people privy to the more unsavory deals his father’s company had made. And he was his father’s only son after all.

Later on, Li Jie would realize he had become too complacent, he’d been having too much fun out in the world within his own circles and wasn’t paying attention to his father’s social antics. But in those few weeks, he was just grateful for the unexplained ebb in his father’s constant pestering. Then, at a large company function just a few months before Li Jie’s 22nd birthday, his father, wearing that disarming smile he wore when watching a client sign a contract, called for attention. He announced publicly that his son, Li Jie, heir to his company, had fallen in love- and was going to marry the beautiful daughter of his closest friend and business partner as soon as he was legally able to. The applause was genuine, his father was not. Li Jie stood up (smile matching his father’s), turned to the lady who’d been sitting to his left, kissed her hand, and decided he hated them both.

Li Jie was trapped. He couldn’t expose his father’s lie without discrediting him (and therefore the company he still hoped to inherit). He couldn’t call off the marriage without damaging his ties to the company’s closest ally. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t see a way out, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to find one. Unfortunately, his father seemed to realize just how far he was willing to go to avoid the marriage. Before Li Jie could prepare any sort of revenge or counter-plan, She moved in. The family’s house was big enough to house her in her own wing, but his father obviously thought his son would give in with enough pressure, as her things were put in the room immediately adjacent to his own. But never let it be said Li Jie’d go down without a fight.

He couldn’t count the amount of girls he’d brought home, only to “accidentally” leave evidence of his forays strewn about for his fiancee to find. He didn’t sleep with all of them, he didn’t really want to, but he made sure to make it look like he did. He hoped that his openly cheating would throw her off. It turned out she was just as stubborn about this marriage as his father, but she still made it abundantly clear she didn’t appreciate his childishness. He left his room in shambles every night he could, clothes not his own thrown over his bedposts, half drunk beer littering the floor, and leave the door open, hoping she’d see. Hoping she’d just leave. Then she’d send in a maid to clean up an hour before sunrise, and by the time he finally woke up for work, she’d be smiling in his doorway, glass of water and painkiller in hand, asking about his night. It was as infuriating as it was passive-aggressive.

He spent less and less time at home, heading out immediately after work, moving from one bar to the next until he was barely sober enough to hail a taxi back before he’d pass out until business began the next day. He was losing his touch, with people and with reality. He distanced himself from a few friends before he meant to, and he didn’t pay some enough to keep their mouths shut about his drinking habits. His father eventually told the house staff to keep him at home when he wasn’t working. The house’s bar was stocked well enough anyways.

He felt trapped in his own life. His room was infuriatingly clean every morning, his business activities were repetitive and aggravating, and his nights were filled with alcohol-fueled rages against the people who’d outwitted him, betrayed him, left him behind. When his thoughts strayed to the irony of it all, how he’d wrought much of his torment himself, those were the nights he drank most of all. And through this all, the wedding approached.

When Li Jie felt it, the passage, the opportunity, the escape, he decided he’d rather leave than deal with his life as it was. He spent the night sober for the first time in weeks, planning how to best leave his life behind. Should he fake his death? Too dramatic, he didn’t want his father to turn it into a publicity opportunity. Release the records of every illegal deal his father had made? No, knowing his father, he’d find a way to blame hackers or an unhappy ex-partner. He decided on a middle ground. He sent off the records, encrypted of course, to the people who’d stuck with him the longest, telling them they’d be able to decode it in due time. He told them there’d be an email with the key sent out in a few weeks, a few months, a year, and when they got it to sell off the information to the highest bidder. Don’t take less than ten times the first offer.

The next morning Li Jie was still up 2 hours before sunrise, meticulously and quietly destroying everything in his room, ripping the pillows, cutting the mattress open, pouring the wine he didn’t drink the night before over the name brand clothes piled in the center of the room. He left his laptop intact, throwing it underneath the remains of his mattress. That thing needed to stay hidden at least long enough for him to leave. Then his father could tear apart the room looking for him, for signs, trying to find why his only son had left everything he’d ever given him. Then he’d find the laptop. He’d read the only file saved on it, read it and try to understand his runaway son’s feelings. Then he’d regret everything he’d done. At least, Ji Lie hoped he’d regret it. He hoped his father would care at all.

Li Jie escaped his house through the garden door, strolling with purpose and silent footsteps past the marble sculptures he’d longed to touch as a child, past the ornate wooden doors and archways that led to parts of the house he never cared to visit. He carefully threaded his way through the colorful flowers and out-of-season fruit trees until he got to the fence, climbed over, and traced the outer wall of his ex-home until he finally saw something that didn’t belong to his father.

He followed the main street for a while, conspicuous in his high collared black trenchcoat, but he’d rather be noticed than recognized. He headed towards where he knew it was, turning left down a small alley, and stopped underneath the uncharacteristically raised ladder of the fire escape behind one of his old haunts. Eyes darting about, he spied a few cardboard boxes piled in the corner, one collapsed from the water dripping onto it from the gutter above, but the others appearing sturdy enough. He dragged them where they needed to be, carefully stepping up, and leapt as high as he could- barely managing to grab the lowest rung. He was grateful his muscles hadn’t degenerated too much despite his recent less-than-healthy habits, and pulled himself up.

When he reached the roof, he saw it. Or rather.... he felt it? It was invisible, but he could feel a sort of a heat emanating from the far edge of the building, and there was a definite distortion of light in the shape of a vertically stretched oval. It was reminiscent of a large lens, with the image showing through it seemingly twice as close as it should be. Li Jie thought it fascinating, zig zagging to watch the image showing through it stretch as he approached it, before he realized he’d have to walk through it. No, scratch that, he’d have to jump. There was no way about it; although it had appeared to be on the roof when he first peeked over the top of the fire escape, it was definitely hanging suspended in space at least 2 meters away from the furthest point Li Jie could reach. Shit.

He considered going home for all of 5 seconds before he reminded himself he’d already sent out the emails. Sure he could cancel the ones yet to be sent out, the ones with the keys, but the files were out there- and they would be cracked eventually, with or without his help.

There was no going back.

He breathed deeply, stretching his legs, cracking his back, and stepped back a few paces. It shouldn’t be too difficult, he encouraged himself, he should be able to reach it easily, he’d done similar stunts before when he was still allowed outside. But the thought of jumping off the roof with absolutely nothing to catch him if he missed.... well at least his father’d suffer socially from losing a son to suicide.

He laughed frantically, the familiar and sorely missed fight or flight kicking in. This was crazy. He was crazy. He dropped his coat to the ground, relishing in the feel of the cool air on his sweating body, the freedom of being out of the house on his own again, the adrenaline coursing through his limbs, his brain, the rush. It had been way too long. He’d almost forgotten how great it felt to live. He took a running stance, left leg behind him, lined up, and pushed. His feet hit the cement below rhythmically. Go faster. Left. Right. Left. Faster. Right, left, right left right left-

Time: 12:30-23:07 (not straight I’d die)

Words: 4451->6917

[today’s wordcount - 2466]

//I warned you. This thing is long, but there is a pillow fight.

Just go on

Ardor swooped down towards the main plaza, pulling up just short of crashing into the ground. She could feel flow of magical energy maintaining her ‘wings’ slow and then cease, the effect ending as she had programmed it to. She shook her hands out, trying to get the feeling back into them after having to hold them out for so long, and started to quickly jog towards the Northern spoke of the city’s [branching] streets, hurrying to her specialization class.

The building that magical theory classes were held in could be described as large and imposing, if one hadn’t entered it before. While from the street it appeared to be a somewhat towering monotonous grey rectangle, on the inside it seemed as if it was designed to resemble the whimsical dreams of a child.  The floors only pushed out halfway from the far wall, eliciting the idea of a bookshelf stuffed full of dolls and miniature furniture. There were people sitting in the corner, hair hanging down towards the floor a few dozen meters below (on purpose, of course, any magic major worth their salt knew how to adjust their personal gravity to encompass their whole body).

        As Ardor pushed through the thick sound-proofed doors approximately 1 min before her specialization class, she hurriedly searched for the location it was being held today. Top floor? Nope. Left side? Not there either. Eyes wide as she quickly glanced around, she found the telltale signs of flashes of (… green?) lightning as one of her classmates, also studying with a focus in energy, showed off his new idea to the instructor. Probably manipulating the frequency of the light given off of the electricity he was known for using. Also possibly, she thought as the universe adjusted to place her where she needed to be, changing the speed of the flow of electrons themselves to change the color.

She caught her balance quickly when she dropped a short distance to the floor, striding through the center of the heavily pillowed recess. She aimed for her favorite bag chair closest to the back wall, but Jitter finished with his fancy lightning demonstration before she even had a chance to plop down.

“Ardor.” Professor Savvy glanced over her fellow student’s shoulder at her attempt to temporarily escape from presenting. “Would you like to show me your progress next?” Jitter, the lightning specialist, turned to face her, smirking and tossing his dark hair out of his face when he saw which of his classmates was being addressed. After a quick nod of dismissal from the professor, he strode past her to the group whispering in the back, finger-gunning at her as he passed. She reluctantly abandoned the possibility of relaxation and turned to face her inevitable doom.

“Well…” she began, nervousness trickling into the dregs of her now fading confidence. “I originally couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t already been done before, you know, since my field of study is kind of very well researched and has been constantly since the beginning of, like, everything.”

Was the professor’s smile growing more forced? She couldn’t tell. Shoot. Explain now, excuses later.

“But! But then I had an idea!” She interjected. “Most studies have been about observing the effect of magic on organic matter, or testing the limits of enchantment.” her excitement was building alongside the volume of her voice, “But not many people care about the magical energy itself, and the way it moves and can spontaneously cast and flows where it’s needed and….” She cut herself off. She’d been babbling again.

But Prof. Savvy was smiling. “That sounds like the type of thinking I’ve come to expect from you.” He gestured encouragingly for her to elaborate.

A matching smile broke out on Ardor’s face. “Thank you! Alright. So. Rather than trying to do something that’s been done before in a slightly different way, I thought that I could try to manipulate the energy itself to do...” She paused, thinking. ”...How about I just show you.”

She took a deep breath and a step back, closed her eyes, and focused. She felt the subtle almost-pressure on her skin, the air buzzing with unutilized potential. She concentrated, pushing herself, stretching her perception of her surroundings until they reached nearly to the edge of the cubby-like room. The distribution of magical energy was pretty even, considering. The constant spellcasting at different points in the building caused a sort of slight wind, wherever magic was consumed more quickly flowed to fill the vacuum.

She brought her hands up in front of her, not because it was necessary, but because it would help her better conceptualize what she was about to do. She pictured her hands, gently held out, palms up, steadily filling with distilled energy. She felt the tingle of magic fill her cupped hands, and slowly, almost reverently, began a sort of washing motion, spreading it across the backs of her hands, in-between her fingers, up her forearms. It was meditative, and she found herself relaxing further into the calm solitude of her own mind.

Ardor, hands covered in dripping gloves made of things intangible, began sculpting. She felt the give in the energy floating free in the air as she pushed, it’s desire to be uniformly dispersed causing it to flow away from her grasping fingers. But she wanted it to stay where she put it. It would stay where she pushed it to.

It was like working with wet sand, the magic collapsing into softer shapes as she tried to create. But she was succeeding, albeit slowly. Continuing to reach and grab, scoop and pull, after what seemed like both an eternity and a fraction of a second, she paused. She could sense the space in front of her where the magic was denser, and there, floating in front of her tightly closed eyes, was a space vaguely shaped like a heart, packed densely with magical energy.

She sighed heavily, the heart and her gloves evaporating back into the surroundings as she opened her eyes, focusing them on her teacher’s beaming smile.

“That was quite unexpected!” He began, his hand reaching out to proudly pat her on the shoulder. “I was almost sure your demonstration would end after the trick with your hands, but to use the innate properties of magic itself to manipulate its flow was very creative!”

She beamed, her smile growing even wider with each word of praise. “Did you like the thing at the end?” she asked, her excitement practically bubbling over.

“You mean the concentrated area of magic? It was impressive, but I’ve seen you do something similar, that’s not what I found to be your strongest point.” Ardor’s smile faltered slightly. “The method you used to create it was different than any other I’ve seen you try, and being able to think in different ways is one of the most important skills anyone can have! I’d say you did very well, despite any nervousness you might’ve harbored earlier.” He squeezed her shoulder in dismissal before turning to the pile of bean bags in the far corner, calling one of her classmates over for their turn at attempting to impress him.

Ardor was confused, and.... somewhat hurt. “It was a heart, not just a.... nevermind.” she trailed off, shuffling dejectedly to the group of students nervously distracting each other from the inevitability of their own presentations. Although admittedly it was sort of messy, being her first real attempt at that sort of thing, what she’d made was undoubtedly heart-shaped. Why didn’t he see it? Did she imagine the feeling of the magic bending and shifting to her will? Did she only think she’d succeeded? But no, that’s ridiculous. She knew that detailed magic manipulation was possible, she’d turned the thought over in her head for the past few months and there was no reason it wouldn’t work. Plus she’d been sure of herself while she did it, and that counted for a lot when casting. So then why...?

“Ardor!” Shell reached for her hand as soon as she got close enough for the scrawny blonde to grab it. “Sit sit sit! Tell us how you did! I’m freaking out a bit, I need answers.” Ardor was yanked down into the soft sea of stuffed things, and decided to forget the disappointment of her professor's comment in favor of socializing with her friends.

“Ahh! You butt! Dragging me down to my death.... death by bean bag.” She half-heartedly complained as she sprawled, stretching her legs out across Shell’s lap. Jitter tossed a pillow at her head, landing it square on top of her upturned face. “Death by pillows and bean bags, what a way to go.” Her smothered voice died off. “You know. This is really comfortable,” she muttered as she closed her eyes, heaving a dramatic muffled sigh into the soft darkness enveloping her. Maybe she could just sleep until the group discussion later. She’d done it before, there’d be no harm done if she... just....

Shell and Jitter both tickled her just as her mind started to fade out, Shell for fear of her own upcoming evaluation, Jitter joining in to have an excuse to annoy her. Ardor shrieked offendedly as she was jolted awake, assaulting Jitter’s smirking face with the pillow he’d armed her with. The small tussle devolved into a pillow fight, which quickly grew to include the other students sitting nearby as a few throws inevitably went wild.

They all collapsed against each other after a bit, breathing heavily and occasionally relapsing into giggle fits. But the not-quite silent comfort in each other’s presence was not to last, as one of Ardor’s classmates, a towering visible-light specialist named Fervor, was called over from the mound of people to replace Era- who from the look of it seemed to be very confident in how their presentation had gone.

Shell didn’t waste another second. “ERA! Era! I might be going next there’s only like 3 people left who haven’t gone and I need to know how your thingy went so I can mentally prepare myself! Spill!” She reached out to snatch Era’s hand, who deftly avoided the clumsy grab.

“My evaluation went perfectly, obviously,” they sneered, casually flipping their long braids over one shoulder, “The prof thought my idea was ‘could definitely be developed into a final project’.” Ardor could practically see the arrogance drip off of every word they said. “I demonstrated how one could use one’s metabolism to generate excessive heat,” they leaned in to the tangle of students, pausing for dramatic effect, “...and turn one’s own body into a weapon.”

Ardor started making a quiet chirping noise.

“Oh my frick Ardor don’t be a jerk it was cool I was totally cool-” Era started indignantly.

But Ardor had successfully rekindled the laughter that had died out only moments before. After attempting to interject, “You don’t unders-” “It was really inter-” “SHUSH for once!”, Era sighed loudly, eliciting even more giggles from the pile of humans on the floor.

“Well if you all are going to be like this then I have no choice!” they announced frustratedly, before jumping on top of the carelessly stacked students.

A chorus of ‘no’s and ‘I’m dying’s were wheezed out of those unfortunate enough to be on the bottom of the heap. Ardor was one such person, feeling her body gradually being crushed into a gross chunky pulp, but she had a plan. However, that plan involved moving her hands, which were pinned under the rather nice backside of one of the other students yet to be reviewed.

“Psst. Nest. Can you...” She wiggled her fingers for emphasis.

“Oh! Whoops. Yeah let me see if I can....” He whispered, shimmying carefully under the weight of a half dozen other young adults. After a couple seconds of forceful wiggling and a few sharp twists, Ardor’s hand had been freed. Time to enact her devious plan.

She reached up to Jitter, who happened to be notorious for his extremely ticklish sides, and attacked. Era and Shell, the only two unlucky enough to be on top of him, were thrown violently off the pile, landing haphazardly on a fluffy mound of pillows. With the weight above her drastically decreased, Ardor managed to toss off those that remained, Jitter glaring at her defensively from across the remains of the people tower.

Their energy spent, the students lay sprawled across the floor, some on bean bags, some on pillows, some being used as pillows. After a time, Fervor returned, upset that xe’d missed the rise and fall of yet another great human-pile. Shell promised that she’d make sure to include xim next time, before heading over to her own long dreaded evaluation.

Ardor passed the time by covering herself in anything within reach, eventually burying herself completely beneath a lumpy blue bean bag and a few of the heavier pillows. Her mind felt like it was tied to the bottom of the ocean, bobbing in and out of coherent thought. She allowed herself to stop thinking, drifting into the calm darkness of sleep.

Her face was unearthed much too soon.

“Ardor it’s time to get uuuup. Come on,” Shell crooned as she removed the protective layer of poofy things. Ardor groaned quietly, sitting up, head hanging, and held her hands out in the general direction of the annoying voice that had woken her. Shell sighed before grabbing the offered limp hands and yanking the tired child to her feet. “Hey. It’s time for group discussion. Don’t you want to force other people to listen to your ideas?” Ardor perked up, opening her eyes slowly against the ambient light.

Group went as it usually did, everyone bringing up issues or ideas they had relating to their own studies, and the others responding in turn with insight from their own perspectives. At one point they spent nearly half an hour discussing exactly what ‘heat’ meant, and whether it would be more magically efficient to transform visible light into heat, or to create heat as a by-product from a magical process of some sort. Ardor spoke for the side with the least supporters, switching whenever she convinced anyone.

Professor Savvy dismissed them all after only 4 hours of class time, sending them off with a thought exercise for when they next met.

“What is the most dangerous potential usage of your specialization? Whether it’s dangerous to a person, the environment, or the world as a whole is up to your interpretation. Figure out how you could horribly destroy something important, and then come up with a way to prevent or fix it.” He smiled congenially as he spoke, waving them off to enjoy the rest of their day.

Continuing on with the passage from yesterday, this is a quick little bit before I go all out tomorrow to make up for past failures. Prepare yourselves. >:3c

Time: 00:39-1:19

Words: [378 new] -> 4506

The view from the roof was something else. The sun had already risen, so the sky wasn’t ‘streaked with pinks and purples’, but with the light that peeked out from above the opposite side of the valley Ardor could see the whole of the country laid out before her. The cities and villages closer to the oceanic border were still hidden in shadow, a few lights flickering in the distance to compensate. The forests across from her perch were mostly shaded as well, in contrast to the terraced farmland and the sparsely placed residential buildings to both her sides. On the other end the capitol was glistening, Haven Falls curving gracefully around and beneath the largest building where The Queen (and Her parliament) resided. The city below was her destination, and if she was judging the wind right.... It was going to be a fun fall.

Ardor stepped back, slowly, judging the distance to the far edge of the roof. When she touched the raised edge with her back heel, she stopped, pausing. Closing her eyes, she focused on feeling the magical energy around her. Well, it was more like ‘seeing’ than feeling. But it wasn’t quite ‘sight’. She often compared it to temperature. Similar to how infrared radiation was not seen, but felt by the skin; to her magical energy was just another form of radiation. It was just...not electromagnetic.

She took a long slow breath, focusing, and told the universe of a mistake it had made. ‘There is no magical energy around me,’ she said, ‘there is only space.’ And the universe rushed to fix its mistake. Magical energy began pushing into the low-pressure area surrounding the energy specialist, adding to the energy that was being hidden there. Ardor breathed deeply. Sometimes she could convince herself she could taste magic as well. As her trademark grin spread wide on her face, she took off running, telling the universe again, that it was wrong. ‘I weigh precisely 8 kg. My arms interact with air as if they are wide and flat, and very large.’ She pushed off the roof as hard as she was able. ‘I am fast. I move at 20kpm in my current direction of movement, and do not slow until I am within 10m of solid ground.’

She flew.

Shrieking with abandon, Ardor tilted her arms to be parallel to the sloping mountainside, dipping low enough to skim the tips of the trees before shooting off straight across the dale towards the nearest city. She would never tire of the ecstatic giddiness she felt gliding fast across the high skies of the valley. While the view from up above was in essence the same as any other vantage point above a certain elevation, the feeling of the air currents twisting around her, the dizzying vertigo she felt from looking down with nothing but a kilometer of air to catch her, and most of all the slow, sliding movement of the world below her, (almost bestial, as if the planet itself was a single living organism) made all the difference.

As Ardor shot off to her destination, wind whipping across her skin, she had a horrifying, stress inducing revelation. She’d forgotten to do her homework. Shoot! What was she supposed to have done again!? Something to do with her specialization in energy manipulation.... Oh! Right! Think of some hypothesis to test in your field of study! She’d had a few days to think of an idea to try, but nothing had come to mind. Now, on the way to the class where she’d have to explain to the teacher exactly what she planned on studying for the next few weeks, the ideas were already forming as she flew.

Funny how procrastinating made the brain work faster.

The effect of magic on the brain! If only she could pick something as extensively researched (and published). There was a topic that had been picked apart since humans first Transferred. While it would be cool to study how the human brain and magical energy interact, there wasn’t much more to know. What hadn’t been discovered by scientists had been revealed by the Arbitrators and other similar organizations.

What else could she experiment with.... Well, there was one thing she’d always wanted to try and do. Would her teacher think it was odd? Yes. Would they dislike it? Probably not. Would she actually be able and allowed to test it? 

....Maybe.