Only one thing to do.
Let there be light.
Runes sear across the endless void, burning power at your direction.
You paint with a brush of willpower and a palette of Grief.
First comes light, photons shed out of the aether.
Then comes matter, moulded of firmament.
Then comes order, marshalled in disorderly lines.
You
are, and you
will.
A step forward, onto a familiar rug. Another, this one longer to cross a familiar squashy pillow. One to the side, avoiding a familiar glass table.
One more step brings you to the window of Mami's apartment.
A twist of will, to clean up the footsteps dirtying your home.
You reach out, brushing the window with your fingertips. It's cool under your fingers. You breathe in. Faint smells of that shampoo Mami uses, and shares with you. The gentle scent of tea, lingering in the air. Last, residual fragrance of vanilla, spilled while making breakfast.
The window clicks unlocked, and swings open under your will.
You lean against the window sill for a moment, looking down. The rumble of Mitakihara City in the evening reaches your ears, the evening light bathing the city in fiery oranges and soft-edged shadows.
You step forward, through the glass, and you walk on, through the air.
Outside, you can feel the bulk of your Grief, still
there. And yet... it's
far away. Distant.
You continue onwards, striding through the air. Mitakihara melts away, and reforms into a enormous cavernous room. Huge, two meter tall tiles of grungy, off-white material rise from formless void, assembling into enclosing walls, and you can feel the faint thrum of machinery under your feet. Turqoise lights form a glowing track on the floor, and you trace them backwards.
Back out, through a shuttering set of steel doors, hissing open before your arrival.
You step back into the real world, and look around. The sky's still overcast, the sun barely visible through the dense, grey pall. The cool wind is a sharp contrast from the warmth of the Barrier, of
your Barrier, but not an unpleasant one.
You take a breath, absently checking the time on your phone. You'd spent...
...
Half an hour. Half an hour had passed.
You glance quizzically back at the entrance to your Barrier. It hangs there, gleaming gently. Runes etched in silver fire hang form a border to the entrance - your own words.
Es werde licht.
"Huh," you mutter under your breath, checking the time again. You... Guess you were just lost in that?
You step back into the Barrier, finding yourself in the dirtied white of the testing chamber again. Hmm. You walk a perimeter lap about the featureless chamber, and then back to the steel door of the entrance again, eyeing your phone, and when you're outside, you glance up at the sun again. That
seems about right.
Well, a little less time than you'd expected for experimenting, then, you muse as you step back into the Barrier.
Interestingly, you don't feel the same... nauseating sense of
wrongness a normal Witch Barrier gives you. Probably because it's
your Barrier. You somehow doubt that that'd be the case for your fellow puella magi, though.
... your fellow puella magi, yes. You're... you're still pretty sure you're not a Witch. You think.
You hope.
You shake your head. Time's a-wasting. You wander through the chamber... the antechamber of your Barrier, you suppose. Stairs rise out of the ground with faint humming noises, each step clicking into place one after another, and you ascend.
Out. You want to exit at the rooftop of Mami's apartment block, and you turn your
will towards it.
Another steel door forms in front of you, shuttering open as you approach, and you step through, promptly finding yourself-
-wind rushing through the air as you fall, a constellation of Grief surrounding you-
-your Barrier entrance, hovering in the air behind you.
... That's sort of annoying.
You reorient in mid air, longcoat flapping out behind you. A moment later, you crash to the ground, shattering concrete under your feet, sending a billowing wave of dust and sand rippling out. You straighten to your feet, dusting yourself off.
You click your tongue, considering the Barrier opening up above, maybe seventy metres up. Hmm. The one down
here is gone, but did it just move, or...? Maybe you need a spotter for that.
You click your tongue in annoyance. Alright, next experiment... Well. You'll need the Barrier entrance back down here. It responds readily to your will, and a stray thought brings the Barrier back down to ground level. You absently check your phone again - a few minutes more before you should be headed to Mitakihara Middle. Time enough for one last experiment.
"
What are you doing?"
Your head snaps up, and you glare at the white form perching on the top of the rusty old fence surrounding the warehouse. Kyuubey's tail swishes through the air behind it as the Incubator fixes you with its unblinking, expressionless red stare.
[] Write-in
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Sorry. Been a very busy few days for me.
The next vote will probably bring you to lunch, so include that in your votes, too. A little conversational direction would be nice.
