The first result is a listicle of Little Rituals To Try If You Think You Might Be Magic. Candle lighting, cleaning, putting someone to sleep, making a loud noise, condensing moisture into dewdrops.

Well.  Sure.  She'll take a look at that cleaning one, it seems actually practical unlike most of the other cantrips.  Prestidigitation, here she comes.

Maybe also the sleep spell if it can self-target or quick-cast in self-defense...

Does it say why the rituals are designed that way at all?

The cleaning spell apparently involves reciting a short poem in sotto voce while also making three simple hand signs (the Tiger sign from Naruto, I.E. hands clasped with index fingers pointing up, then both palms up separate, then two clenched fists against each other) in time in a cycle- with the meter, and tapping the surface to be cleaned.

It does not say why. Very bottom-barrel clickbaity writing quality, here. Festooned in ads too. In this case for incense, 'energy crystals', and overpriced health supplements.

...If it's stupid and it works...

Well, it's still stupid, but it does, probably, work.

Does it describe what clean is, or is she meant to supply that herself, spell-writer?

It magically loosens and unbinds 'filth'. It notes that stubborn stains may require repeated applications, and that you should wipe down or rinse afterwards to remove the loosened material. It does not repair damage, such as permanent loss of dye to bleach/acid, fire damage, etc.

"...Well, here goes nothing."  She'll just...  Use some scribbled-on paper as her test subject, Thinking Really Hard that the carbon is totally filth.  ...Huh, you could maybe use this to undye clothes...

She also sets up her phone to record this test.

It feels like she's trying to insert the wrong key into a lock, when she tries this.  (While wearing boxing gloves, for good measure.)

...Maybe if she thinks about what clean is instead?  She's going to need to start a blog of her own about this, at this rate...

That one fits.  The paper is now less pencil-marked, after she raps it on the desk.

...Yeah, that's...  That's evidence.

Fuck.  Existential crisis later.  Right now, she has learning to do.  To the library!  Because she has a funny feeling they're going to have better resources than Google.  Surely they will have proper research available, no matter the headache she might get beating her head against the jargon...

...Is there going to be jargon?  It's not as if she saw a Mage Studies major in the catalog...  Would that be anthropology?  It'd probably be anthropology.  Study of humans and whatnot.  Maybe that's a good place to start looking, too.  That and psychology; there's a significant element of thinking in the right way that's evidently involved here...

Well, she is pretty good at perspective-taking when she remembers to try, at least.  Most of the time.

...Hey, wait a minute, if that spell is making a pop culture reference, where are the Jedi?  Can she use the Force?  That would be so fucking cool.  (She adds 'and pop culture' to her to-look-up list.)

...Damn, now she really wants a lightsaber.  (In the coolest possible color, which is purple.  Or maybe in octarine...  Would that one be powered by crystallized narrativium?)

She's positively buzzing with ideas and theories and wonder that she'd long since resigned herself to the lack of.  It wasn't like she was special enough to be magic.

(Except she apparently was.)

Regardless of her rushing thoughts, however, the library awaits.  Who knows what lore awaits this seeker of knowledge within its storied walls and quiet halls?

This is a university library, and the contents lean very academic. Much less fiction or bookstore-reading. And the overall academic view on magic appears to be... Not skeptical, exactly, they admit it exists, but kind of 'collectively throwing hands up about understanding or verifying any of this'. There's some stuff on anthropology, psychology, and history as regards magic. There are few hard scientific studies. There doesn't seem to be an encyclopedia of magic that anyone agrees is actually correct or definitive.

Things that very probably exist: 

Magical girls.
Puchuus.
Demons, or at least succubi. There's apparently a special law for them as regards medical licenses in the state of New York.
Tinkers/Mad Scientists/Artificers. People who make magical objects. Some of them have been studied in engineering papers, to much bafflement.
Tentacle monsters, apparently, are plants.
"Lesser" Magical Girls- Puchuu have stated before that they don't recruit everyone because not everyone has the same potential.
A lot of folkloric monsters have various amounts of evidence for their existence.

Interesting.

And if they're throwing their hands up about it, that smells like a research opportunity.

...She is not a mad scientist, she did not cackle.  The present thunderstorm is a coincidence.

Hmm.  ...What's that about succubi and medical licenses in the state of New York, anyway?  One wouldn't, normally, expect to put those words together.  But it feels like a string to tug on.  ...Why is she tugging on strings, you ask?  Because they're there.  And because she can get a clearer picture of things when they interact with other things, like medical bureaucracy, that she already (kind of) understands.  ...And because she's following Obi-wan's advice and trusting her feelings, which think that this seems like a good idea, for...  Reasons.  (No, it's not rampant lesbianism.  Really.)

Succubi can have said licenses even if they are not a US citizen, and can choose to take alternate forms of some of the tests. They have biomancy magic, apparently.

Huh.  Cool.  She wonders how transhuman they can go about it.

...Where was she?  Spell design?  Was she anywhere near spell design?

...Okay, no, she was at 'magic replicates, but in a soft-science way'...

So what does happen if she just makes something up, anyway?  That's leaping, like, several dozen steps ahead, but...  She really wants to try.

...Later, though.  What's the demography of practitioners look like?  Has anybody put together a survey or something?  She feels like she's likely to be an outlier somewhere on that scale just based on her history, but for all she knows this is normal - though the (probably fictional) precedent of Hogwarts et al. suggests that she's coming to the field a bit late.  (...Is Hogwarts based off a real school goes on to the interminable research pile.)

...And if one wanted to get in touch with a succubus with a medical license, for medical purposes - how might one go about that, anyway?  What do succubi even want?  ...Presumably, currency.  Possibly other things, too, though, because where else could the mythos she's all too aware of have even come from?

(She's had thoughts about solving some of her problems that way, but until now, they'd all seemed like only distant fantasy.  Much like magic, despite how much it intrigued her even before she found out that she had any.)

...She needs to talk to somebody with a research-oriented background about maybe putting together some experiments, speaking of, and if she goes poking into too many things too fast, she might break blinding - as much as it's even possible to blind yourself in experiments you'll be integral to performing - so while she's googling things like "biomancer near me", she also pulls up the faculty pages and sees if she can find some names that're on any of the papers (metaphorically) in front of her.

One study posits about a 1 in 13000 rate of people having magic in America. Doesn't seem heritable. No relevant genetic markers.

There doesn't seem to be a comprehensive survey of lifestyle conditions. Puchuu near exclusively recruit young teens, and disproportionately girls and the queer community. Commonly mentioned traditions include Magical Girl, Witch, Wizard, Druid, and Tinker.

Succubi want magic energy, which they extract through sex. No apparent long term effects, can't rule either way on potential for addiction.

Tentacle monsters are kind of... Mindbreaky? There's a whole three shelves of medical knowledge on trying to deal with it.

...That thing about tentacle monsters is vaguely concerning!  And a good thing to know before she encounters one!

...Witch, wizard, druid, tinker - what, still no Jedi?  Or would they fall into the druidic category - and how much should she be reading into the analogy from D&D, anyway?  ...And speaking of classes - Hey!  Where are the monks!  What kind of Eurocentric bias is this?  Surely the xianxia tropes don't have no backing in historical practice!  (Yes, she just used a double negative, no, she's not changing her mind, hypothetical telepathic pedants; while she is given to pedantry herself in most circumstances and therefore shouldn't throw stones, anyone suggesting that it's inappropriate to use a 'not ... none' construction here, when she expects that there are very few admissible bits of evidence in the first place, let alone evident connections, can bite her.)

(Magical girls, being rather a sort of soldier rather than necessarily a practitioner's methodology, are...)

(...Rapidly thrown into the bucket labelled 'warlock/pact-bound', when she thinks about it for five seconds.  She's vaguely surprised by having made this decision, but...  It does make sense.)

...Coming back around to some of the earlier lines of thought, she does find herself thinking that you could put the stereotypical cultivator 'monk' somewhere in between wizard and druid, but she's still bemused that the Middle Kingdom's ample historical record hasn't seen more review...

And, well, the rest of Asia, too.  The king who fell off his horse in 670-something and failed to keep it from the history monks to then become a Tumblr meme would like a word.

...Say, what about shamans?  Are they lumped under druidry?  It would make an amount of sense, but it rankles her sense of definition.

...Ugh, this state of knowledge, in the Internet age, is going to frustrate her, she can tell.

Time to put on some good calm thinking music and get her priorities in order.

...Alright.  So.  Her priorities are as follows:

1. Make sure she is not going to be eaten by a grue.
2. Make sure she is not going to be assassinated by a shadowy cabal that doesn't like magic being scienced or conscripted for some stupid war by the government or the Puchuu or any such thing. (This has a very low presence in her threat model, but it's still high priority because she'd really hate to miss it.)
3. Determine what professional niches are available to her based on the fact of having magic.
4. Determine where she stands in relation to the expected power and capacity of average practitioners.
5. Develop training/paradigm to maximize amount of cool and/or useful shit she can do.  She'd like to break entropy over her knee, please and thank you.
6. Actually make useful knowledge of what magic is slash how and why it works more widely available, if she can find any!

...Okay, those last couple things are more of an unordered priority list at this point, but it's more than she had five minutes ago. Now she just needs to...  ...Talk... to people... ...if she can even find any.

Oh dear.  That might be the hardest part of this whole endeavour.  ...Maybe her academic advisor will have contacts?  It's not like she wasn't already slated for a meeting soon enough...

The library does not offer her a solution to this conundrum.

It wouldn't, no.

She shoots off a quick email to the academic advisor in question to the tune of "This just in: I have had a Sudden Life Event and need to re-evaluate the suitability of my degree program; would the scheduled advisory meeting be suitable to discuss that", except with more painfully formal academese.  The response will get there when it gets there, and the meeting's already scheduled anyway.  Right now, with that taken care of, she's going to turn to her greatest informal knowledge resource, to see if she's miraculously rolled a 1-in-13000 chance: her collection of Random Internet People.

Setting her status to "halp, I'm apparently magical, what *do?!*" is not exactly a thorough search, but it'll get to the people she wants to see it soon enough, regardless.  If nothing else because she doesn't even normally use that field and someone's bound to ask.

Her academic advisor is happy to discuss whatever she needs. Here is her current calendar if Alex needs an earlier appointment.

The internet is the internet, but it seems nobody immediately comments. Not in the first, like, sixty seconds, anyway.

Re: email: ...Would the 2:30 timeslot today work?

As for the Internet: Yeah, that's about what she expected to begin with.  She's got a few people she's going to tell directly - though maybe she'll wait til there's slightly more to tell, because at this point it's almost all questions, and certainly no answers; she's noticed that most people don't really like that sort of conversation much - but this is more of a fire-and-forget sort of thing.

(...Maybe she'll tell a couple of her closer confidantes right now.  Just for emotional support.  It's been a day and it's barely started.)

(...Augh, she's going to have to tell her parents about this.)

Her advisor can do 2:30 today if it's just a 20 minute meeting. If they go over they can continue on the regular meeting day?

It's probably not a bad idea to do that that way, given that there's likely to be research that needs doing; she's on her way over to the office now.

She arrives several minutes before 2:30, accompanied by an unearned, unfounded, and unwelcome feeling of impending doom.  Has she mentioned she hates talking to people.

Her assigned advisor is also a TA, has a lot of kitch on her desk, and seems to sound eternally tired.

"Hello Alex! Come on in. I, uhhhhh... I pulled your file up but I don't know what we're talking about today. Are classes going okay?"

"...Urgh, not exactly," she grimaces, knowing that she's kind of started falling apart a bit, lately, even if she's hanging on by the skin of her teeth - "but that's not actually what prompted my email.  Nobody's dead, in case that's the sort of surprise you're thinking about, but it's probably easier to just show you than tell you.  If you wouldn't mind?"

She pulls up the video of her successfully de-penciling some paper.  It was... Take seven?

"And I guess, the thing is, I don't really know what the - expletive," clearly self-censored, "I should do about that, academically, let alone personally."

She watches it three times, not seeming to get it.

"...I'm, uh, obviously not really able to talk about it, but you're not the first such case in this university, if this is what I think it is? It does seem like... Maybe a time to pause and take stock for a semester, if that's what you want."

"...Well, what do you think it is?  I don't want to be talking past you.

"...Though I do want to say that I hope that the reason you can't give any particular advice is because of, well, client confidentiality, rather than - other possible causes, I guess.  I don't think anyone has half a clue if there are limits to what magic can do to those not able to defend themselves from it..."  ...She shudders.  "But I guess the question is, could I even pursue some related course of study here, and then furthermore should I want to.  There's so little in the library that's worth the time I spent reading it, though I'm getting the feeling that that's maybe the whole entire field's problem."

"I think you've become a witch- Or, a magical person. We do not share personally identifying details of students. I'm not sure I can even describe when or how many. It's better not to touch it."

"I think I'm not actually anything in particular yet, based on my limited understanding, but I do have some underlying capacity to do magic, which I would like to study further and perhaps even publish upon, if nothing else to remedy some of the positively dire lack of proper understanding thereof that afflicts even some researchers in the field.  I mean, really, a paper that concludes that you know just as much nothing as you started knowing is a waste of grant money, and there's a couple of those that're not infrequently cited to.  Admittedly, a lot of those were about attempting to reverse-engineer the work of Tinkers, which is kind of obviously not going to go very far unless you're doing something absurd in turn - but still, it gets me right in the pride.  So, Ms. Green, I'm asking you for some academic advice: Is there a course of study here that points that way?  And is there anything that you feel you should inform me of, otherwise?"

"Uh... My brain is saying physics? But no. You might have to give me a day to research that one. I wouldn't want to steer you wrong by guessing."

"Mmm.  Yeah, I figured you might.  I was actually thinking of anthropology and-or psych as the sort of go-to, oddly enough.  That or an outside chance of lit being effective; I'm already finding myself itching to deconstruct the various bits of symbolism in that random cleaning spell to see if I can figure out why it has you do those particular things, you know?  ...Well, no, I can't really presume that you do know, but that's part of my thought process.  There was a literary reference on the webpage and I ended up like three books deep in that rabbit hole before I realized there weren't too many people looking at 'why' instead of 'how'."

"Well, we don't have any courses on doing magic. We also don't have a degree focused on studying it. Some of the individual courses that study it, maybe? Why psychology and anthropology exactly? Those are both fairly different from your studies so far."

"Because they feel like the right sort of lens to look at mages with.  Because there's cultural influences upon effective practice of magic, as evidenced by the way different - clades?  Castes?  I'd say 'classes', but I'm already having to beat off my D&D-based assumptions with a stick - of casters exist, and I want to understand them, and hopefully synthesize some more unified theory.  And I know I'm in a CS-department major, but I figure that if there is such a thing as a psychology hobbyist, I'd probably qualify; the mind has always fascinated me even if I couldn't really turn that into the typical career of a Psy-D or equivalent since I'd burn out in a heartbeat.  Compassion fatigue and all that.  And then there's that old canard about most psychologists falling into the field because they want to figure out what the heck is going on in their own brain, no matter how likely to backfire that plan is.  The stigma against self-diagnosis, while harmfully overblown, does have some basis in evidence.  ...I guess I have a bit of a head start on figuring myself out, at least...  Anyway.  I'm not awful at the little toy problems we get here, but I do have to say that there were, I guess, expectations that threw me down this path, that haven't really panned out - programming is practically the family business - but, well, now that table's well and truly flipped.  Once I actually muster the courage to mention it, I guess.  That might...take some time."

Her advisor rubs her temples in thought.

"It feels like the tendency to put things into neat little boxes might not be the best way to think about magic? Then again, studying it in any real way for academia like you want to do... Is essentially putting magic in boxes. Anthropology makes some amount of sense to me the more I think about it. The study of people- And what are all the magic-users but people? Even the pet-things are people, I'm pretty sure."

She shrugs.  "Absolute heck if I know.  But other animals are generally more intelligent than the median human gives them credit for, as far as I understand, so I suppose -

"...Wait, are you talking about the puchuu?  The ones that recruit Magical Girls?  Yeah those are definitely a kind of people.  I mean, they use language, yeah?  And not just in the way that some have tried to debunk Koko the gorilla over.  Or even that African Grey parrot who coined a word.  They have abstract relationships and philosophies and everything.  ...You alright?  I feel like I've inadvertently given you my - strictly metaphorical - headache, which really wasn't my intent...

"Anyway, I'm not sure that what I want is to study magic for academia's sake - I'm no tenure-track professor - but what I do know I want to do is to study it.  To do science.  To - perform the fundamental inquiry of looking at something and asking why it happens that way; to form hypotheses and then try my damnedest to disprove them.  It feels like a lot of existing research is busy getting sidetracked with how, though I'll admit I'm also curious about the hows as much as the whys.  And if that path goes through academia proper, to obtain the necessary support, then - well, so be it?"

"...Anyway.  Next meeting, we get down to the brass tacks of it?  I figure you might need some time to gather a potential course list.  But it's been - " she checks the time - "Long enough that I'm worried my next tangent will overrun, and I think I've gotten what I needed to say to you all out there already?"

"Advising you is literally my job, and I always seem to have a headache. Don't worry too much. I'll take Advil or something. And I'll talk to the department head and some advisors from social sciences, figure something out. Actually, wait. How secretive do you want to be about this?"

"I don't have the faintest clue how to begin to determine whether I should be keeping this quiet.  I don't see why I'd need to do that, but clearly everyone else who has magical capabilities does keep a lot of secrets, so - why do they?  I don't know, and I'd really rather like to, but that same opacity is why I have no idea whatsoever of what might be reason to keep this secret.  That said, I don't think I'm doing all that good a job of it to begin with.  So, I guess, don't tell all and sundry, but it's not like I haven't been telling my friends or anything."

"Okay. I'm really not qualified to talk about anything but classes... But talk to me if you need to. We'll keep our other meeting on the schedule and, uh, I'll hopefully have answers for you then."

"Here's hoping.  Good luck - and thank you; I know this is kind of a big ask."  With nothing else left to say, she makes her way out.

Has anyone turned up in her DMs in the last thirty minutes, perchance?

There's at least one, and possibly more.

From OcularStone:

magic?

And in reply:

Yeah.  Like, for-real reality-bending-to-my-will magic magic, not 'got handed artifacts by an inscrutable bunnycat' magic.  Admittedly I've only used that to, like, 'clean' a sheet of paper, so far, but it's definitely a thing.  And I have no idea what to do with this information, because I never expected it'd happen to me.

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

...My thoughts exactly.  But yeah I've just kind of - run out of available information on what to - do, or expect, or whatever.  And, lacking local contacts, I'm hoping the Internet has answers.  That aren't obviously woo-peddlers.  You might have a magic spell on your website, random article with a bunch of cantrips, but that doesn't mean that those 'energy crystals' you're trying to tell me are any less scammy.

OcularStone said:

I mean

Clearly MGs are real

I'm looking at a wiki now and there's at least one that is crystal themed 

I mean I guess.  But if someone had cracked mass production on that sort of thing surely even us plebeians would have heard of it?  You know how it is with tinkers.

Do share the wiki BTW?  My search-fu has proven insufficient.

OcularStone said:

https://fakewiki.magicwatcher.com

MG watchers

Internet says magic is v rare

You're right hard to find anything that looks legit

U ok?

I'm...

Rattled, but otherwise fine?  Kind of vaguely worried that there's gonna be some sort of reason there's no legit info out there, but other than that...  I dunno, it's just.  Sure, this might as well be happening?  I'm looking forward to getting to do some hands-on work developing and experimenting, if I can swing it.

What's the wiki like?  What does it focus on?  Are there any magical girls near her?

So the thing is

It's been bothering me a lot actually

I am pretty sure it is in fact true that some magic people get to be ageless

And

fuck

The wiki focuses on the 'careers' of known Magical Girls! Where they appear, what their powers are, Where Are They Now? (most Magical Girls seem to non-euphemistically retire when no longer teenagers?), what their hobbies are, obsessive ranking and speculation on puchuus and the seemingly always renewing menagerie of things they fight, Versus Debates. Lots of Versus Debates. 

There's a fanmade power scale that goes from F to A to S, SS, and tops out at SSR (with nobody currently living granted that rank, the example of Madoka from PMMM is given) (They seem to think PMMM is obvious shameless edgelording/metaphor for puchuu exploitation, and not based in reality at all- MGs never stick THAT closely to their theme, and don't get wishes, anyway!).

There appears to be Discourse about how public their civvie identities ought to be. And how people who try to dox Magical Girls tend to mysteriously fail to find anything and/or forget they tried that and/or disappear.

...And?  Like.  That's neat...?  Are they doing anything weird with that capacity?  I don't know why that's bothering you and I can't really help if I don't.

 

...Also, is it just me or are the puchuu running some sort of Masquerade/Veil thing with, like, black-ops black-bag bullshit.  That feels like it's absolutely a thing.  Fucking dammit.

...So are there or aren't there any magical girls in her area, retired or not, that she could contact?  She has questions, dammit.  Even if she's maybe going to have to beat off puchuu with a stick.  ...Okay maybe she'll try that later when it would be harder to vanish her.  Instead of now.

Everyone should have that

It's

I can't say anything about that except

Everyone should have that

There would still be like

War

But

ASDFVWEARYGBFSDTGHCSDAFGFAWCXFASWCFDAVSDFCVSAEFXCSAEFCASDFCS

The wiki does show at least one Magical Girl who is active in this city! It's actually a magical boy, Starshield Savior, whose theme appears to be star-speckled sheets of dark blue energy made into something physical, mostly as shields or flying platforms.

...Yeah.  You're right about that.  But there's only so much magic one person can do, let alone sustain, I think.  And we don't even know how it works.  Still, I'll put it on my to-do list.

OcularStone leaves a checkmark emoji on that message but has no further immediate comment.

A while later they send a link to a Google Doc apparently full of summarized internet research.

lmk if this is...

too much?

not what youwant?

Well, to do that she'll first have to read it, but she thinks it sounds good!

It has a bunch of random notes and observations:

Magical Girls always seem to have something for attack, something for defense, something for movement, and something for utility

Witch spells all seem very home ec? Weather, healing, cleaning, fixing, etc

Wizards are monks?? All about zen and control your center and direct the flow of energy

...Huh.  Well, that answered some questions she didn't know she was asking.

This is pretty useful; thanks, dude.  I guess the next question is how on earth one goes from 'okay so you flipped a lightswitch by being annoyed and half-asleep' to 'recognizably an [X]'...

Yeah idk

You should write down all the magic you do

And when and what and how

Did the paper cleaning feel

Exercise-y?

Trying to estimate your possible rank

I don't think it felt exercise-y?  Like, the trick I needed to get was thinking the right way rather than doing anything in particular, aside from, like, dealing with the clumsiness inherent in trying to move a limb that's been asleep for a decade.  ...Wonder if there's a spell for that sort of power-assessment thing.  I mean, there's gotta be.  But I don't know what it is if there's one standard.

And yeah, I'm planning on documenting everything I can.

...I honestly really do wonder if magic is basically all in the thinking about it, power levels aside.  Because it'd be cool as fuck if I could actually use the Force.

I have no way at all to tell.

I can't believe in the existence of p-zombies.  So there's bound to be some way.  And if there isn't yet, then I suppose I'll have to make one.

??

oh

OcularStone is Typing...

OcularStone is Typing...

It sounds like magic is a mental thing only sometimes from the blogs I'm finding

If they're not BS

But I also feel like necessary != sufficient

Also

Depends on what you mean by the force

Replicating stuff from star wars is one thing

The actual force is another

True enough!  But we'll find out!  Hopefully within the next year or so!  Assuming somebody's willing to put things together for doing this as proper research!  I don't have enough executive function to make the legwork happen on my own, but I've got some ideas!

hums opening bars - and refrain - of "Come Together" by the Beatles, contemplatively.

If it looks like it might work out, you're gonna be one of the first people on my list to share with.  You think about the right things.

Beep boop, I am science advisor, +5 to magic research dice. My loyalty quest is the fountain of youth.

sksdajlasds

more of a special projects advisor, ne?  this is Magic Research Quest, you know.  ;P

...Frankly I bet the succubi already have at least antisenescence as a spot treatment.  ...dunno how one goes about politely asking them things, though.  Gods, if it's anything like some myths imply, I will die on the spot.  Of embarrassment.

I mean

Have you heard the thing where "Changeling Children" were probably autistic?

Wait

Where was I going with that...

OcularStone is typing...

Oh

Right

I kind of suspect most myths have a grain of truth to them somewhere

So uh

That should probably be confirmed by... Research.

Yes. Research.

Have I heard, I will practically go LARPing that now that I have an excuse.  Man, which Court would I even be?  And from which typology for that matter...

Uh, anyway.

Right.  Uh.  Research.  ...That I should definitely...do at some point.  Dear gods.  On the one hand I really must know, if I'm gonna start swimming in the ocean.  On the other hand I'm not certain I could survive collapsing my uncertainty into knowing.

...I'll be back in just a minute.  Gotta get the gay panic attack under control.  (This statement intentionally left ambiguous.)

The woman OcularStone knows only as StandaloneCheese is silent for more than the promised minute - but not very long - as she...investigates how one would make (polite!) contact with a succubus, and the requisite diplomatic manners.  If such information does in fact exist in the college library's card catalog.

Not in an easily-findable and obviously correct fashion.

There's demonology books. They're either historical or under 'fiction'.

...Historical, s'il te plait.  Ideally, by primary sources...?

If she wanted a pop-history analysis of myths, fairy tales, and legends of demons from the 5th to the 18th century- That does describe several rituals meant to supposedly summon/bind/control/drive off succubi- Then she has it.

...God.  Dammit.  Well, it might be better than nothing, at least.

She doesn't expect they're in the phone book.

...She'll check that too, though.

...Er.  Probably not the literal phone book.  But, hell, maybe even that if it's digitized enough to be searchable.  ...Or she could do some bibliomancy in the classical mode, for all she knows.  Wouldn't be impossible.  Would be effort she's leaving off for if her first resorts whiff, though.  Spell design feels like she might be trying to run before she can walk, and all.  ...If she had local contacts worth mentioning...

But she doesn't, really, unless a recognizable magical girl walks in here and she gets over her social anxiety right quick.

...Not impossible, that.  The Force is with her, she knows, and that's...  A warm comfort.  But still, in the words of a children's book Viking, vastly improbable.

Searching the internet for how to find succubi gets her porn. And then urban legends and old forum posts asking the same question (usually answered by 'lol noob' or similar), when one turns Safe Search on.

There's at least one actual website that at least heavily implies it's run by succubi? It's very vague vagueness for 'Tantric Wellness Wholesome Aesthetic and Healing Spa'. By appointment only.

She will fucking take it.

Hello,

My apologies in advance if I have erred in my reading of the implications of your website, but it is heavily implied that that this business employs at least one ...if succubus is not the correct term, my apologies, but that is what I was able to find - and I hope that this letter may be less rude than attempting to construct a summoning from Middle-Ages accounts and first principles, if indeed it finds itself in hands that would be qualified to answer that question.

I am...

Relatively new to the field of organized magical practice - but it is a relatively prominent piece of knowledge, in my studies so far, that succubi do biokinetic magic.  I have approximately all the questions on how it works and what it can accomplish and how on earth it's so predictably affine with succubi as to form almost a trope trying to beat down the doors of my brain and storm the page, despite myself, but there is also a - personal matter that I would like to seek a medical-magic consult on, and ideally treatment for, if that is a service that can be arranged for within a student's budget.  ...Or possibly in alternate methods of payment, though I would not wish to be too assuming, especially off of such scant records as I've yet found.  (It's not like my health insurance couldn't be pressed into covering this, anyway, for a cost in $USD; they're required by law, I'm pretty dang sure, I'm just - not sure I have the energy to try and fight them about it if they put up a fuss.  Though I assume that you have better lawyers than I could, given some of the laws that have very pointed exemptions.)

Again, my apologies, should I have made any faux-pas.

 

With hope,

-- AJM (she/her)

And to OcularStone:

Well, apparently there's a tantric holistic wellness jargobabble that isn't, actually, too far to dare consider approaching, nearby.  So I emailed them instead of actually doing that.  ...Especially since they did say by appointment only.

If this goes horribly wrong, I guess I told me so.  Wish me luck?

It's not like sex is a bad thing

I can just hear the christian screaming but

that's stupid

A lot of people would be perfectly fine with it and that's fine

>.> I mean

Maybe they're gaslighty or manipulative and actually it sucks? Or is problematic?

If they need sex to survive

Murgh

I'm rambling

It's a lot better than wanting to be paid in blood or souls or something

After the last text:

Sounds like a rich people scam

Maybe tell someone you know local where going?

<.< nervous

The email to the clinic is not immediately answered.

...Well, you're not wrong that my issues around walking to their door came from the cultural attitudes.  Even if I quite agree with you on the morals, I seem to have internalized far too much shame.

 

...Would sure be nice if I had anyone local to tell; I don't have people like that.  Guess I could tell the academic advisor, though, uh.  Don't wanna.  Or I could plausibly do one of those fancy deadmans-switch things.  That seems more... comfortable, insofar as preparations for my disappearance under suspicious circumstances can be.  Maybe also forward to the local magical girl if so...

I'm not demanding any personal info but like

I'll follow sealed instructions if you stop responding

This is obviously the most important thing I'll do all week. Maybe month. Probably not year given the uh

You being magic and wanting a ??research coordinator??

Uh

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

I don't want to be friendly and helpful JUST because maybe magic??

I wouldn't trust you to do that if you were, but you aren't.  I've known you long enough to get at least that much of an understanding of your character.  Besides, you put your potential ulterior motive(s) right on the table and I happen to agree with them.  Rational self-interest suggests that I pull you in here before someone else I don't know as well tries to make themself a better candidate, in self-defense.

asdf

Anyway if the cleaning thing did not feel hard at all you're almost certainly at least a C on this scale

That's good news.  Annoying that it's so vague, though.  ...Speaking of spells, I don't suppose you've found any others lying around?  I could probably try to improvise from my collection of literature, but I'm, well, fretting about messing something up.

There's a bunch

I haven't been throwing them at you because I don't want to

idk

Prejudice the condition

Break the double blind

Mmm, true.  Dammit, I want to do more magic, but I also don't want to - accidentally explode or anything.  That would, you know, be bad for our chances of immortality.

Think you're up for trying a spell without knowing what it's supposed to do? To test the mental hypothesis?

Sure.  Gimme a few, gonna get somewhere that won't mind some sort of misfire very much.  Or do I need supplies for this one too?

Cup of water, salt

Put the salt in the water

Alright.  How much salt, how big a cup?  Or, I mean, does it mean 'a cup' the unit or a cup the object?  Any special procedures...?

No, we just need salty water. Whatever size. Just enough to taste salty, doesn't have to be ocean level.

Alright, one cupful of salty water plus intent-to-do-some-sort-of-magic coming up, I guess.

...That shouldn't be too hard to round up, at least.  She'll go for a small one; she has little disposable cups and she's sure there's a packet of salt around here somewhere...

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

Try not to form expectations about the magic? If that's even mentally possible when you have to focus to DO it?

Touch the outside of the cup and stare at the water. Imagine the impurities within it- Salt, and also minute minerals. Focus on wanting to separate everything within the cup by type. Still focusing on it, set the cup down on grass or dirt, clear of anything fragile for about five feet and back off.  Then chant five times: As Below, So Above. Then walk up, pick the cup up, and pour it out on the spot.

...Maybe you should've picked something that doesn't have English chants with a clear intentionality behind them.  For future reference.

I know enough about Latin to not trip over my own tongue without breaking the blinding if I don't actively try to break down the words by roots I know?

"This is Alex Marche, I'm out here running another spellcasting experiment; I've had a friend pick out a spell and try to relay the instructions without telling me what they do.  Though I'm not sure that was successful, but I'm not sure I can successfully record my expected expectations without - solidifying them into something that will definitely interfere with testing the requirement that the mage not know what they're actually doing.  ...I'm not sure if he's testing whether spells are required to exist, actually.  I don't actually think he could tell me."

She will edit the instructions in, as-delivered, in post.

"Anyway.  Here we go.  Attempt 1."

And she does her best to proceed without expectation of how the spell might act, should it indeed exist.

All she is certain of is that it is invoking a principle of sympathy, and - separation?  The pouring-out of the cup, though, she has successfully formed no particular belief about, even if she might guess at some possibilities when left to her thoughts.

She's not left to her thoughts when she's busy casting, after all.

"As Below, So Above, As Below, So Above, As Below, So Above, As Below, So Above, As Below, So Above -" and pour -

Her fingers slip from the lock at the last step, the key released from her unsteady hands before it could be turned.

This is not a complete spell.

But it does leave behind the salt.

"...Well, it felt incomplete.  Like I stuck a key in a lock and then it fell out because I didn't turn it.  But the salt stayed put how I visualized.  If nothing else I've got a decent line on distilled water, hey?"

She debates, for a moment, whether to try and press the button to end the recording on her phone via magic or walking over normally.

Eventually, she chooses to walk.  Though not before recording a last few thoughts...

"Originally, I suspected that this could've been some sort of trace-mineral sifter, like some sort of magical equivalent of panning for gold.  But I wasn't sure, given the direction of the chant, that it really was; the thought fell from my mind before I cast.

"This suggests a further experiment; that will be another recording, or multiple, if and when it happens."

Annnd send the video.

Experiment thoughts: Do spell with intent to perform what your instructions say the spell should do, do spell with intent to do what I maybe thought it could after you break blinding.

Interesting!!

And answering a niggling doubt he's never going to mention, too.

What my instructions say, then what you thought? Or what you thought, then what my instructions say?

I think we test "do what your instructions say" first.

Gimme a sec, I'mma do it.

"Experiment number two, take one; I'm going to see if I can get the spell that didn't complete in experiment one, to complete by referencing the friend who gave me the instructions' understanding of its mechanics."

And so she forms and holds the intention to perform the spell OcularStone knows to be accomplished by this procedure -

- and the key doesn't fit anymore.

"...Same non-result; the salt separated, but the wider effect, if any existed...

"This felt more like I was trying to use the wrong key, than that I let go of it before the spell completed.  That maybe it could be forced with enough power, or something.

"...I have some ideas on how to actually ease the working of that, by the same sympathetic principles, but, mmm.  For another time."

She stops the recording.  Sends it.

Spell jammed, rather than not turning.  Hmm.  I guess now is...  Actually I should try to perform my suspected result both before and after you tell me the design intent.

:sparkles: :sparkles: :magic_wand: :sparkles:

Ha!

So, then.

What happens if she focuses on sifting the trace minerals from the dirt, as a logical consequence of the spell?  (While still, of course, recording and explaining what she's trying to do.)

Though there is that pesky thread of doubt...

As Below, So Above, is, after all, backwards, to accomplish that purpose.  It's what knocked that suspicion off to begin with.

...Well.  She believes it to be unsuitably backwards, so it is therefore unsuitably backwards.  The psychosomatic 'lock' doesn't turn that way, even if it does feel closer.

"...Hmn.  This one felt more like trying to turn a good key - or at least one that fits - the wrong way.  I suppose that invalidates the need to try it after seeing if I can cast this particular spell knowing what it's supposed to accomplish, at least.  Chanting and doing all the walking back and forth, it's tiresome." 

(...And frankly kind of dysphoric, honestly.  A lot of people like her voice, she gets 'ma'am'-ed often enough - but she's never felt quite right about it; it's like the actual vocal cords, or at least her body-image thereof, are out of place, and it slips easily into the default (and, therefore, bad) register if she's not consciously paying attention to her speech.)

...Send the recording...

So what's this supposed to do, now that we know I can't get it to do this particular thing?

It's supposed to make it 'rain' in a very local area, for watering a garden or de-fogging.

Huh.  You'd expect it to have an area delimiter.  I guess that's more part of the visualization...

...I wonder if that could serve as a power metric.  By way of max volume at specified humidity, or something.  's reasonably standardizable, and it would...  Oh, hmm, I don't know, actually...

Anyway, experimental procedure design aside, I'm gonna make sure this works like it ought to now that I know how it ought to work.

And, amazingly enough, it does.

Woo!  Fistpump!

Also she didn't get rained on, either!  Woo!  Fistpump!

And work it did.  Video attached.

A pause.

Well, we haven't disproven the hypothesis yet.  So I guess we can upgrade 'spells require user intent' to a possible theory.

We're also probably not doing actual science.

We should think of things to measure about magic

Total water produced vs humidity? Subjective experience of tiredness?

Internet chatter is sounding like people have mana bars, like, maximum magic per second output, and separately, a tank and regen rate

Also did you read this scary shit about tentacle monsters?? As if women didn't have to be on the lookout for NORMAL sexual predators already???????

I did read the scary shit about tentacle monsters, yes.  I'm just glad that they're ultimately a Tinkertechy superstimulus, rather than an ontology-altering one, and therefore we don't have any particular need for the SCP Foundation.  ...Wait, shit, the fucking Kyuubey-ass -- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, while my mind runs off gibbering in fear and I contemplate the potential necessity of a SCP tattoo, I can at least let you know there's the smallest possible silver lining to the existence of those things: apparently the, uh, permanently afflicted, do potentially live longer, even controlling for magical potential.  Though the data's shaky.

Kyubey?

Oh. L.

The world is scary sometimes

But we kind of just do what we can

Sorry for making it especially salient

It's not like nukes don't exist. I wonder if Puchuus are on that.

Nukes are at least physical threats rather than onto-epistemic ones.  You can bunker from a nuke.  You can't immunize your cognition from the death parrot.  Or maybe you can but assuming that you can do it for all possible memes is -- hubristic.  Let alone the antimemes!  I don't know why I haven't been eaten by the spiders!

...How the hell are we still alive?

Presumably because magic doesn't work like that? Or the Kyubeys really are protecting us muggles from horrible shit?

If the Ring Video were real some chucklefuck would have posted it to YouTube and we'd have heard warnings not to watch YouTube anymore

Or something

I don't think there's anything we can usefully do about a hypothetical lurking apocalypse we don't know about is what I'm saying

Maybe there's something that's like tentacles that is less... Publicly acknowledged

But... Procedure is the same? Learn magic, learn how magic works, etc?

Yeah I mean I guess.  Could be that it's, like, also dependent upon the viewer having...

Hm, no.  Surely being obsessed with MGs doesn't have a particular correlation with magic talent.

Maybe the Kyuubey thing is also done by way of brain lesions?  Ugh, hypocrite that I am, I trust my brain chemicals to tell me they are brain chemicals.

Haaaaate this threat category, hate hate haaaaaaaaate it so muuuuuch, augh, why...

Gaslighting sure ain't fun, especially if it may or may not be magic gaslightning

I don't want to look at a head-exploding picture, either!  Though I do suppose there's a certain self-censoring element to that in that you'd likely have to invoke the concept to use the concept...  ...I, uh, need to go ask the cognitive science department something.  Motherfucker.

...Do we even have one of those, actually...

Anyway, I'm going to go see if there's anybody who can tell me if there's a use-mention distinction on the neurological level!  :smilinggrimace:

Back in a bit!

She googles.  She JSTORs.  She searches arxiv.  She finds no definitive answer, but it seems there might be people trying and failing to prove that could exist.

It's somewhat reassuring, at least, to suspect that the only time creating BLITs is likely to be possible, let alone feasible, is in a (self-extincting) death curse.  That you'd have to expose yourself to a dangerous meme, while it was dangerous, before you could possibly inoculate yourself to it.

...She suddenly wanders off into the weeds of wondering whether people with aphasia have problems casting things, but catches herself before she gets too far.

...I'm back.  Signs cloudy, but point to "memetic attacks are effectively bombing your own position".  Better than nothing.  Standing down from high alert for now.

...She checks her email.

Alex has an email from the clinic:

The Tantric Wellness Wholesome Aesthetic and Healing Spa prides itself on its careful discretion and devotion to privacy.

We do employ succubi, and we do offer medical care that is based on magical means, including sex transition care, under select circumstances and certain conditions.

Please note that while we offer services including sex therapy and education, STD screenings, and treatments for sexual organs and/or dysfunctions, the spa staff, regardless of species, do not have sex with clients at our clinic. Any instances of harassment are grounds for a permanent ban and other actions. You can read our Commitment to Goodness here [link]. We advise looking at other organizations employing or composed of succubi for sexual interests.

For most clients, payment for services is preferred in cash, and appointments should be made well in advance. Possible alternate arrangements, especially in reciprocal magical services, can be discussed during your orientation appointment, which lasts 1-2 hours and is $90 (non-refundable).

Please fill out the attached form and return it through the SecureForm portal (click here for instructions) to book an appointment to discuss your options.

Of course.  Thank you for your candor.  Do you take insurance?

She can fill out the form, sure.  She's not busy.  Once that's done, though, and OcularStone informed with a 

Heard back from the succubus-hiring people and these guys are definitely medical practitioners; their client-facing software is medtech, there's nowhere else this janky -

-- Well.  Just because she isn't in immediate panic, doesn't mean that she's not still thinking about defending herself from memetic hazards.

And what better to defend against memes with, than other memes?

Onto the blank pages before her spill instructions.  Or things that could become them, given time.

Fragments of thought, like "Rule of Three vs. total threat surface coverage - make nine?", and "What does the black moon howl?  -- WORKS for challenge-response portion" and "Initiant/respondent divide?  Needs to be collapsed for self use", diagrams of dramatic lighting and drafts of a three-monkeys-esque design.  "Sacrifice potential to create coghaz as defense against allowing them in?  Is that necessary?"

The phrase "There Is No Antimemetics Division" is scrawled and underlined in her characteristically shambling handwriting.

In one of the corners, there is a small sketch labelled 'Magneto helmet?  Dorky but memetic...  Unsuitable prop-dependency, though.  Logo can be improvised, especially w/ Type-Blue overtone.  Blue Sharpie or w/e.'

...I worry that I am about to throw myself into the deep end.  Why I'm actively designing a ritual to protect against cognitive hazards when I've barely started doing any magic is quite beyond me to explain - at least, as anything but anxiety.  And I just got done saying I shouldn't need to worry about that sort of thing outside of, like, death curses or some shit.

But damn it all, I appear to be doing it anyway.

At least send me what you're working on first so I can properly document it?

'A cross section of the spell development process' or smth

Here's a google doc we can both edot [link]

Most of our procedures are elective and ineligible for most insurance. We take insurance for some procedures that are considered medically necessary, but mostly prefer not to interact with those systems.

I'm doing this pen-and-paper; easier to do this without having to struggle with image editors.  Here's what I've got so far, though.

...I should really invent brain-machine interfaces.

And to the medical people:

I rather intend to wring every penny I can get out of my insurance, when it comes to gender-affirming care.  They deserve it - plus, the law's on my side as far as what must be covered, at least where my billing address is.  Not quite as sure of the regs around here, which is kind of surprising, considering.  But so noted.  I'll expect to have to do paperwork about it, or something.

That sounds like something to do slowly and carefully

After comparing our schedule and your provided availability, we can set an appointment from 10:30-12:30 this coming Saturday. Is that acceptable?

Oh, definitely.  But it equally definitely needs to go On The List.

It'll do.

OcularStone is writing up an experiment log in the shared Google Drive folder.

Thank you, your appointment is confirmed. We are looking forward to seeing you.

So is she, random biosculpting place; so is she.

...

She takes a break from fiddling with the ritual state to answer a suddenly-occurring question.

"This is Alex Marche, I am once again recording an experiment; the procedure is as follows.  Step one.  Say 'Let there be light' while in the specific mindset of doing a dramatic invocation.  Step two.  Expect this to produce a magic light.  ...Step three, see if this replicates without the actual saying-words part, maybe, but frankly I just want to see if this works."

She pauses.  Takes a sip of a drink.  Intones - "Let there be light."

And there was light!  About one lightbulb's worth of it, falteringly at first but coming with greater ease as she gets more annoyed with the whole process.  Or 'with additional repetition', but that's the same thing.

With focus, she can shift the color-spectrum a bit 'warmer' or 'cooler', or reshape the 'bulb' into a few primitives like 'possibly bendable cylinder' or 'CFL swirly-whirly thing', but - it's plain old white light.  It's certainly not, despite her best efforts, suitable for lasers.  On the other hand, it is, still, light, from nothing.

"Amazingly enough, that worked."  Even she can't tell whether she's being sarcastic.

"...I wonder if I could make 'Tea.  Earl grey.  Hot.' by the same throughline.  Something for another time, I guess."

"...Right now, though, I'm just going to keep being kind of quietly amazed at the bit where I'm having tangible effects upon the world by wanting really hard.  Even if I swear I have all the finesse of a drunken gorilla attempting to play basketball, at the moment.  ...Anyway.  Alex out."

End video, share video, apologize to OcularStone for all the profanity in video...

Back to work; she has an anti-cognitohazard to design and hopefully implant stat.

It is getting late, by the time she approaches a complete design.

Perhaps the night emboldens her unduly, because, having finished this spell in some form, she proceeds to do something that a slightly less impulse-driven version of herself would call this present moment out for even contemplating -

She begins to cast it, insofar as one can cast what is, essentially, a short film script.

She hasn't quite worked out a one-speaking-part version that hits all the right notes, but she'll fix that in post - by which she means that as part of constructing the giver/recipient framework while still being one person, she will have done this ritual three times.  That will suffice to cover the power deficit.

(She believes it will, at least.)

So she cuts some lights, cues some others, puts some tape on a bulb just so, sets up for recording...

And proceeds to speak her parts, in their proper order.

"This world is not a world in which the SCP Foundation is known to exist, because were it to exist, I would perforce not know of it.

"That does not, however, mean that its name does not hold weight, when magic is real and words have power.

"That does not mean that its sigil cannot be a protection against things that go bump in the dark.

"In the eyes of the Foundation - or, at least, those parts of it vaguely familiar with the GOC - I am a Type-Green, or Type-Blue; a reality-warper, a practitioner of magic.  Something strange, something anomalous.  Something that stands out, that is special.  But the Foundation cares much more about what something does than how it does it, when they write these things down in their neverending quest to understand and render safe - and what I intend to do is nothing less than fulfill the Foundation's mission statement.  I intend to use the accumulated work of the Foundation to secure, contain, and protect.  I intend to make a general inoculation against cognitohazards, and spread it onwards via this ritual.

"A cognitohazard is, in its basest definition, information that is dangerous to know or perceive, because the act of processing such information exposes you to harms much worse than mere consternation or displeasure.  Perhaps you have heard of how hard it is to not think of pink elephants?  That is a benign, neutered version of the true danger.  Pink elephants are a strange thing to think of, but they will not hurt you merely for having thought of them.

"It is against those things that harm through understanding, that harm through perception - knowing or unknowing - that we must defend ourselves.  That we shall defend ourselves.

"We shall secure our minds from tampering - contain and isolate these hazards somewhere they cannot hurt us, so that we may better protect ourselves and others from those that would do us harm.

"If you have reached this point, you know what to say.

"What does the black moon howl?"  Silence, to eclipse the wills of those who would be gods.

"What must you remember, when the world itself would forget?"  There is no Antimemetics Division.

"What will we build, upon this Foundation?"  Safety.  Comprehension.  Peace.

"Good.

"Now go forth, and know that you stand completely protected from all sorts of cognitohazardous problems.  So I have said, and so mote it be."

So mote it be indeed.

It's time to pass out and hallucinate vividly for many hours, Alex.  You need the rest, after pulling that off.

The process of refining a ritual like this, until it clicks into place- Not entirely smoothly, not entirely cleanly, much more a 'close enough' fit than one that was made to fit together- Is half aesthetic, half logic, and half intuition. (Yes, that's three halves.)

But it does click into place. It feels like an internal brace, a block of concrete unreality standing in her soul, smooth glass geometry laid over itself in squares and hexagons: Protection of the mind from deviations. From curses, from virii, from unnatural shifts. A return to center.

OcularStone stops constantly bothering her to document what she's working on some time around 11 PM.

She's up until an ill-advised, if still somewhat self-consistent 4, sending the occasional status update.

And then the last few recordings are her going through the ritual.

Her dreams include the odd if somewhat explicable (given her recent thoughts) scene of SCP personnel securing a van-size six-tailed fox whose fur is made of fire. It complains to her that it just wanted to talk, then explodes and vanishes from the containment cell.

And also plenty of other semi-comprehensible dream things.

"I trust that my men would not have reacted this way if you had not attempted to do something untoward," O5-A says to the exploding kitsune.  "But come in peace and peace will be kept.  I bear you no ill-will; my work is to understand and defend, not to aggress."

That was, frankly, far more comprehensibly incomprehensible than her usual dreams.  And she succeeded in something in that part.  Hoo boy, she's gonna need to actually start a dream journal.

I think I made that ward just in time, yikes.  There was a kitsune? in my dreams last night that pissed off a Site staff, complained that she just wanted to talk, and exploded.

OS messages again at about 9 AM:

I have Actual Work TM

We're not being scientific about this at all

If you hoped to do an academic paper

But I'll do my best to summarize everything and try to

idk 

Make a general model of magic?

And later:

Research suggests some entities target newbies in various ways

For recruitment, scams, deals, kidnapping... Eating

And a lot of them are sensitive to active magic use

Succubi are frequently mentioned to be at least.

So uhhh

Yeah

...Yeah this wasn't particularly scientific.  Sleep-deprived me has horrible impulse control.  But it was clearly necessary, even if it probably also sent up the flare that drew attention to me to begin with, I think.

Good luck with your Actual Work (tm).

...Huh, I wonder if that was what a Tinker fugue is like, come to think of it.  And I can at least lay out the design theory.  Try to reverse-engineer what matters and what's set dressing.  ...Though there's a sense in which the set dressing matters in and of itself...

...I should probably really make sure I can use the Force for self-defense, in other news.  If, uh, eating is in the cards.  Because getting eaten would be bad.

Time to find the campus LARPers...  There's gotta be some.

She might even have met any, through a potential mutual interest in videogame music performance.

...Anyway.  She's going to poke at her ward a bit, see if she can get some information on what happened overnight --

Report begins:

At 0737 Eastern, entity-0001 entered the defended area oneiromantically; entity-0001 merits at least Uncontained(Euclid[2])[!]/Keneq[3]/Warning[3] designation under ACS, and plausibly Uncontained(Keter[3])[!]/Keneq[3]/Danger[4], if its oneiromantic abilities are substantially equivalent to its physical capabilities.  It is unknown whether Entity-0001 qualifies for any Esoteric containment class.  At 0740 Eastern, entity-0001 attempted to deploy a thaumaturgy with perceptual effects targeting the visual system, tentatively classed Decommissioned(Safe[1])[0*]/Vlam[1]/Caution[1].  Entity-0001 retreated when cautioned.  Site-AM did not sustain damage during this exchange.

Report ends.

-- ...She is only a little bit surprised at this.

...Well, apparently my brain or magic groks enough of the SCP technical style to serve up an incident report when I ask the ward I made for information on what it blocked.

Secure. Contain. Protect.

First hypothesis: Magic requires thinking of things in ways that match cultural zeitgeist and this is why lots of spells call on similar things- Salt circles, pentagrams, candles, chants, etc.

Second hypothesis: Magic is based almost entirely on users' will and imagination, with patterns the user's brain can imagine or understand being those that occur and reality.

Underlying mechanism for either of these: ??????

How to test: ???????????????????????

Ain't that the truth.  Part of the reason I'm switching majors to the 'soft' sciences if I don't get caught up in something.

I think we have some data on - required volume?  Something about cultural saturation...

...Hm, I feel like I might actually be feeling the effort on this one, too.  Like, I can definitely feel the weight of this ward.  Dunno what in particular caused that yet, but I'm leaning towards 'it's hard to do this' over 'not enough base oomph'.  ...I wonder if mana capacity expands with exercise, like muscles?

What, find some obscure fanfic that uses really weird tropes and patterns and try to spell off those?

Yeah, something like that.  Use someone's random worldbuilding they never published or w/e.  See if it still works like this or if it only works as well as an invocation of the shared tropes.

And try throwing a spell that references things I have no knowledge of at me, I suppose, though I think those blogwitch spells are dang close already.

Brb looking up the weirdest spell I can

Do you know much about India?

Unfortunately I know more things than I should to properly be considered blind to the cultural milieu; I've read enough stuff that dealt with Hindu mythology in some form to understand the principles.  And it overlaps with like, cultivator shit.  Try Africa, I don't know nearly as much as I'd like to about the whole damn continent.  ...Which is to say, I know Anansi exists, and little else.  ...That or...Hm, South America is probably out, too...  Maybe Mongolia?  Or non-Hindu and non-Islamic stuff...

...This is going to be a huge fucking pain, isn't it.

Yeah. All we can do is give it our best shot.

Or design something as purposefully context-free as possible.

I wonder if I could do something like mantle a D&D character sheet.  The game itself has enough cultural saturation, and I've certainly got some characters...

Why don't you brainstorm a lot of possible spell ideas and then we see which ones answer the most interesting questions? I'm looking for something african now.

Will do.

- Charsheet manifestation

- ...Do those like-to-charge-reblog-to-cast posts...actually do anything?

- His Great Noodly Appendage, &c., &c..

- What about canon characters?

- ...Hey wait a minute why aren't there more furries, or am I just blind?  Is it some sort of medical license thing?

- If you make a replica of a legendary object, will it reify?  Do you need to make it if you're the wizard who wants one?

- Did anyone say The Gamer.  I'm saying The Gamer.  I want me some inventory hax.  And leveling up.  And quest tracking!  Like.  Yes please.

- Would that one technique where you fuel your Force use off of a big explosion or whatever fast-moving objects you've got, work as far as magic is concerned.

- Did Rumpelstiltskin actually happen, and what would the economic implications of spinning straw into gold even be.

- If there are multiple claimant personae to a name, e.g. Mab, Titania, and you invoke the generic... who wins?  Is it dealer's choice?

- Oh dear I hope I can't cast that one on accident.  Possing off the fae is bad.

- ...Is the multiverse real.  I mean we've got any evidence in favor from the physics being nominally indeterminate at the "where are all those rolled-up dimensions going" level...

- ...How many ways to casually tell physics to take a hike are just lying around somewhere, anyway?  What's the equivalence of hypothetical thaums to joules?  Is the second law of thermodynamics actually valid?

- These aren't spell ideas, are they.  Uh.

- I wonder if you could actually manifest 'rupees' by breaking enough pots with the right sword.

- Narrativium manipulation: It's a million-to-one chance.  Million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. (GNU Pterry.)

- ...What's even up with the transmissible sorts of supernatural creature, anyway?  Like, vampires didn't come from nowhere...

- I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

- Summon Bigger Fish?

- I'm horrible at having ideas.

- Light spell plus prism = more directed light spell?

- Really need to get Eschew Materials...

- ...Actually, what if I did go LARPing...

- Okay that's a horrible idea because it just might work and then where would we be.  (Having liability issues because spells aren't supposed to actually get cast at a LARP, that's where.)

- But I do want to see if I can make a lightsaber.  Lightsabers are cool.

- ...I mean there is the company that makes actual lightsabers/handheld cordless plasma cutters...

- But I dunno, it wouldn't feel quite the same without the shiny rock.

- Speaking of: Structural Grasping.  And other Shirou Emiya bullshit.

- Mythological matsci?  Orichalcum?  Beskar?

I'll organize it

So I notice

You're going down the witch path pretty hard by doing rituals for everything

We might want to try some druid magic or wizard magic instead

To start you on the path of the Fake Jedi

Eh?  Nah I did a ritual for this on account of it being the sort of thing that rituals are good for.  I expect combat evocation et al. to turn out a lot more 'wiz'/dru.  Telekinesis is no good if you have to take a bunch of effort to do it.

Combat evocation seems to be an MG thing

There's this blig [link]

Blog*

Where a retired MG called Majestic Millinier Millie (lol?) talks about how combat magic feels similar to playing soccer

Training into muscle memory, with a dash of strategy on top

Rituals are - for building power to a point, or for careful construction of something specific.  ...Which suggests that I'm gonna want to get hands-on if I want to make magic items at any point.  But that doesn't mean that...

Hmm.  How to explain my intuition here...

Wizard spells are suited for the sort of thing you want to call kinesis.  And if any methodology is going to be suited for divination - and familiars, and suchlike - I'd say that's druid flavor.  Though, funnily enough, I bet there's also druid rituals...

...Right, this seems like it might get complicated.

One moment, please.  Thinking.  Need better buckets, or sth..  MG data is very...specialized.  But she's not wrong about how I expect it to feel, sort of.

Ooh, a blog.  She can't get too distracted reading it but she'll grab a couple interesting-looking posts while she's thinking about how spells should or could be assorted.

It's inactive since four years ago, and pretty sparse before that. Maybe once every couple of months. Final post is a long rant against people calling her a faker. Interesting standout articles:

That Time I Went to Outer Space

Why the Army can't fight monsters

So what does magic ACTUALLY feel like?

No, Puchuus aren't evil, and here's why

Yeah, I power up from sex, so what?

Right.  So.

Hmm.  Internal/External, Physical/Mental, and Personal/Cultural?

Creating this octet of...

...Yeah, this is starting to make sense as a potential casting classification scheme.  Or is this more about casters again...

Internal Physical Personal: Cultivators.

Internal Physical Cultural: Culture Heroes?  MGs?  ...Not sure this is the right bucket.  Bards?

Internal Mental Personal: 'Wizards', meditative casting

Internal Mental Cultural: Priests, invokers???

External Physical Personal: Tinkers.

External Physical Cultural: Ritual casting.

External Mental Personal: Tricksters?  Power from the perception of others?  Not sure.

External Mental Cultural: Psychic team bonds and whatnot.

...Yeah this turned out to be about casters again.  Dammit.  That's not what I wanted, brain!

She'll take the last two articles, and 'rant about people calling her a faker', please.  For now.  The adventures in space do sound interesting.

She does, however, still have spell-typing to figure out.

Spell classification...

I feel like there is a pretty direct analogy from what I just brained up to cover spell casters, but hmm.

Three elements of a spell, maybe.

Symbology, Control Structure?

Hmm.  Passive/Active is right out.  Conscious/Subconscious?  Or something about agency...  Rassafrassing.  This should work but it doesn't.  So what am I missing?  What makes spells distinct?

Great fucking question, past me, that's what I've been trying to figure out for the past umpty!

I feel like it's gotta be something about...

Where you put some thing in the spell.  How the spell itself is -- scaffolded!  Aha!  Yeah.  That seems like it might work.

...But then what makes the scaffolds distinct?  We've come back around to where we started!  Augh!

Hm.

I think maybe you can classify spells by whether their symbols are personal or cultural, whether those symbols are invoked by physical or mental means, and whether it is held onto or released?

Ugh, it's still not quite hanging together...

It does seem like I could be getting closer, though.  But I wouldn't bet on it.

This is...  Awfully annoying.  I want there to be a model!

...Oh hmm.

For various reasons the word psychosomatic came through my head, and now that I think about it, psychic/somatic feels better.

Thinking or doing, I guess.  ...But that's physical and mental dressed up in slightly fancier words!

Phfff...  Maybe I should just steal the idea of spell components.

...Oh.  I know what it is.  It's preparation requirements.  And whether the agency of an active effect is your own, I guess?  Definitely sold on preparation requirements being a notable distinction.

...Prep: Psychic, Somatic, Material, Focal?  ...Not quite, let's try that again...

Preparation: Mental or Material?

Symbols: Personal or Cultural...?

Casting: Psychic or Somatic.  ...Okay, actually, I think it's likely that you really want both of those in a good spell, that Light cantrip was a real pain - but what predominates, I guess.

...Yeah.  This feels like it might actually make sense to sort by.

The rant seems fairly typical for a content creator who has gotten the wrong end of an internet bandwagon, basically declaring that she doesn't want to deal with death threats and doxxing attempts and it's better to just vanish, fuck you haters. And no, she still won't reveal EXACTLY which former-MG she is, stop trying to guess. The comments are. Interesting.

'Puchuus aren't evil': According to this blogger, they discuss philosophy and the ramifications of their actions all the time? And will accept well-reasoned debates, sometimes even changing their policies. Yes, they don't listen to cops, because ACAB. No, they don't count as cops themselves, they're not enforcing laws and imprisoning people. Yes, they sometimes erase memories, but that's because of trauma. No, they don't steal little girls' souls. She wasn't forced into it and she was actually advised to quit twice during her career, and she eventually retired from active Magical Girling, like most do. Yes, sometimes MGs die, but sometimes ordinary little girls die, too, so.

'Power up through sex': Apparently Magical Girl style casting finds itself massively boosted in flexibility and power by strong emotions. Hopes and dreams. Leaning into them and reveling, living your best life. And guess what one of the strongest, most persistent human emotions is? HORNY. When she downranked from S tier to A tier at around 19-20, her Puchuu coach advised her on sexual meditation techniques, which let her keep hitting S consistently for years more. She argues that being fucked thoroughly has saved lives by keeping her at top form, and if you hate it because a prude, lol u mad.

I want to remember that we have little idea what the heck we are looking at, magic wise

Classification systems are only useful when the classifications are relevant

And models should be considered hypotheses to be torched until further notice

I could sort all the shit I'm finding according to these classes

Or according to SCP ratings

But I'm not sure that's USEFUL? For anything but satisfying the 'put thing in box' part of brain?

Very true.  I just...Find a world-model with even bad boxes, a lot easier to work with.  Especially when I'm being asked to make things.  Because even if the boxes are bad I can see how they might be bad a lot easier.  Or something.

But what got us onto this tangent was originally your concern that I'm approaching my spells too witchy?

So like, there's already classification systems in play.

...Not that it matters too much.

I think I've got this under control, though?  Like.  I can use the Force.  Even if I haven't actively tapped it yet, I know for a certainty that this will work.  And the amount of telekinesis to carefully stop bloodflow and KO any human opponent, is minimal.  And replicable by human hands.  's how sleeper holds work.  I think that's the name, at least.

So it's not like I'm gonna be out of shit to do if something comes down to fighting.  ...Even if I vaguely worry that I would end up Sith-ing instead of Jedi-ing, that way.  ...Then again, it's not like the Sith Code is some horrendous abomination, it's just that the Sith practitioners are kriffing idiots.  Have I gone on this rant at you yet?  About how the Sith stupidly enslaved themselves to their fears by stoking fear in the hopes that it would give them power they had no real need of with their chains broken, and created this awful defect-defect equilibrium of horrible?

Because that is absolutely my headcanon here, Rakata or no Rakata.

...Or, in other words, the Sith Code ought to produce the tantric practitioners (and the ADHD/autism hyperfocus junkies) to the Jedi's ascetic Zen Buddhism.  Hell, with a little nudge, you could really make a Sithy order of warrior-monks.

Hmm.  There's a thought, I guess.  Use a different Code to try and interact with The Force, see what happens...

I almost think your mental ward thing is more Cultivatory than Witchy

Especially if it ... gave you an SCP report, something you didn't specifically try to design in

It's making me nervous on your behalf

Cultivator stories are full of shit like 'failed breakthrough fucked up my meridians and crippled me'

So are you going with sorting things like this for now? Preparation: Mental or Material? Symbols: Personal or Cultural...? Casting: Psychic or Somatic

I'm not certain I'm going with anything in particular, yet.  Just that it feels like there's a way things are shaped that my brain is picking up on, and I'm still trying to put into words.  This happens sometimes.

And yeah, that does...Mmm.  It makes sense?  But I don't want to think into reality something that needn't be true, as far as assuming dangers.  Because we don't actually want Chaos to exist, and all.

It does feel like it's more of a...

Cornerstone technique?  I'm not sure how to describe my intuition here.  But it was meant to be a grand thing, a solid, enduring, ha, foundation, that I could build upon - and a grand thing was what I got.

Something that felt bigger than myself even though it was my hands and my words and my choices.

It's so hard to explain the...

It's...

This is like one of those times when, despite all reasons to feel and believe to the contrary, I Know that it'll be alright - and I've never been proven false by those.  It's like one of those.  ...It is one of those.  Holy shit.  ...Yeah.  I get why you'd be worried.  You're not in my head.  But I promise you.  I've never had feeling like this explode on me, and it's not going to start now.

OcularStone is typing...

OcularStone is typing...

Yah sry, you're the one with magic here in the end

Google says the 'just knowing' thing happens w magic sometimes so

(Around this time, someone pushes an envelope under her apartment door sill and/or mail slot)

Huh.  Wish I'd known that, I could've gotten started sooner.

...Did she just see someone walk up to the front of her house (well, 'her' house, that is technically shared, and, y'know, a rental,) through the blinds?  They didn't knock or anything...  Huh, what's that there?

...I've got surprise under-the-door mail, it seems.  Hm.  You got anything for screening mail in your spell compilation?

Hold on

(pause)

I have a 'detect poison' and a 'detect trap'?

Gimme plskthx

Kinda tempted to roll my own detect spell, ngl, but better tried and true.  Do you have any 'detect disease'?  Not sure if that'd scan like a poison.

Uh

How about 'disinfect'?

He sends them; Detect Poison is a witchy spell, detect trap seems Wizardy (it describes a state of hypervigilance and focusing on sending out a gentle pulse).

Disinfect seems useful to have on hand in general.

Hypervigilance, you say.  Did you mean, "weaponize what's probably a trauma response?"

She hopes she has what she needs for the witchy spell, just in case, but she does think that the wizard spell will likely give her enough data.

The wizard spell actually means something very particular, and uses a whole paragraph to describe it!

('Not in the sense of paranoia or fear, but of vigilance and caution. That of a bureaucrat checking every line of a contract; That of a soldier knowing that danger lurks around the corner. You must also focus on the principle of illusion; (That is, be aware of your own perceptions and how they can lie to you; Your mind is a fallible machine- Exercises on this can be found in ch. 1)- By focusing on the principle of illusion and on personal danger resulting from it, and on overcoming it, your magic will be primed to highlight differences in what your mind sees and the truth of the world.') 

And a whole page of advice on how to tell if you're getting close or not! And mentions that this is the very most basic version.

Mmhmm.  She knows.  She can be incredibly poetic about emotional states too, when she tries.  Doesn't really change the key things she's tapping into to get there, though!

...Dear gods, this spell is incredibly florid considering how much of it is very thinly veiled CBT/DBT exercises.  I'm half expecting to read something about 'wise mind' and lose all suspension of disbelief.

...In the "I'll burst out laughcrying because good gods why is everything like this" sense, not, like, a breaking the spell, sense.

Can probably get it to work, though.  Especially w/ the right music on hand...Hmm.  Which music do I want, actually...

...Ah, yes.  This will do.

Opus Magnum Solving 6, don't fail her now.

The envelope sits there. Menacingly.

...Is it a trap, though?

She does not detect any traps. Or poison, if she tries the other one.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

Well...It didn't detect trapped.  I'm gonna open iiiii--

Detect magic?  Why did I not try that first...

Uh

There's some references to doing it better or more precisely?

I think you're supposed to detect magic naturally

I found something for 'tracking spell traces'?

Oh, if it's supposed to be something I have out of the box I bet I can work that out.  Do gimme the spell trace tracker though please.

Magic Bloodhound.txt

(Appears to be a Druid thing? About falling into tune with all the natural flows of the world, and detecting the one that's out of place, then following it. It 'goes better if you have experience in the terrain you're attempting to track through, or familiarity with the specific location'.)

Hm.  Seems ill-suited to close work.  Doing it live it is, then.

Annnnd she will just be, meditating, for a bit.  Close her eyes, steady her breathing, put calm open music on, listen to the world and its magic and focus from there onto the letter in her hands...

There's a little bit of foreign-ness to the letter? If one were to render it from magic-sense into synaesthesia- A slightly spicy smell. And incense-y, maybe. A hint of old stones and settled earth.

Her own signature is overpowering it, washing it away. It seems to be the equivalent of body heat or scent, not anything structured.

...Huh.  Magicians leave passive traces.  ...Letter seems inert, so, wish me luck.

Time to open what she's only almost certain is just going to be, like, a courtesy call sort of thing, after all that effort.

How many times did you check this before you opened it?

Lol.

Most of my friendly warnings aren't even necessary, it seems. Nice super secret agents metaphor. Don't believe everything you read on the internet, and watch out for the stupid and hungry ones.

Want to meet somewhere (public) and chat about the wonderful world of magic?

W

And a phone number, and there's detailed line art of a smug six tailed fox at the bottom, burned into the paper in a display of pyromantic precision.

Ah.  It seems that my dream visitor does honestly want to chat; she gave me a phone number.

She muses, for a second, over whether she should do something like get a burner phone.

...That seems like far too much effort.  Her threat surface isn't the right shape for that, anyway.  Though she maybe should actually start using Tor.

Texting Foxy Dream Lady Kitsune?:

So I heard you might be the vixen of my dreams.  I can't really take the credit for the Foundation that caught your eye, for all that I did build one, but I can say I'd like to chat, too!  University center's ice cream place sound good?  I feel like I could stand to make up a *little* for the explosive encounter we had; you're hardly some black agency spook like I was worried about when I thought about the people who'd be interested in me.

Fair reaction tbh? I was going to prank you, soz.

Ice cream is fine with me. You'll recognize me since we met at night and sparks flew... Right?

...Be careful

And take notes. Obv.

Is what OS messages her.

To fox lady:

Pranks are a world away from black-bag conscription by personality rewrite or w/e, which is the sort of thing I'd been freaking out about.

And I do bet I could, alright, you have a distinctive signature when I'm looking - but in the interests of not leaving our next meeting to quite as much chance, I'll be wearing a university sweatshirt and this bracelet.

(Attached is a picture of the bracelet (but not her), one of those elastics with round beads; most of them are purple rocks, but it has a full rainbow of pride colors as a sort of accent segment.)

To OS:

OFC.  I'll be as safe as I can; I can only hope that's enough.

Uwu, you like my perfume? *blushy blushy*

C u soon

I'll be there in ~15 mins.

And off she goes.

Alex's contact is...

...Pretty obvious. A full fox head, long claw-like fingers, shoeless paws and a tail visible as she lounges on one of the plastic chairs. Nobody else seems to notice, though.

Wave wave smirk.

Alex waves!

She has a funny feeling she knows what her ward will tell her if she checks it, so she doesn't feel the need to bother.

She swings into the booth seating opposite the fox lady with surprising economy of motion for someone who clearly finds themself spending much more time behind a screen or in a book than out in the field.

"Well, hello there!  Fancy seeing you here - we met last night, but I don't think I caught your name?  Or what you'd prefer to be called."

"I've had a bunch of names. You can call me Wren. How 'bout you? I don't actually know yours. As you might've guessed- Everyone else sees a cute girl instead of a fox, and I can slap down something to make them decide we're obviously talking about a book or something. Yea or nea?"

Alex shrugs.  "That's your prerogative; I've already decided to be relatively open about the magic thing, but you haven't.  You can call me Alex, by the way."

"Then I shall. Don't ask me to do big magic demos though. I don't get it for free, unlike you."

Her metaphor for everything is, apparently, fire. Near invisible blue-white embers trace a wide sphere around the table. Something settles into place.

"Anchored to the table, not us, so we can go order ice cream fine. I think you said you'd treat me~?"

"I did indeed, and I sha'n't back down from my word."  Oh no, she's doing a flirty voice...

Send help, she's too gay for this!

Wren snickers.

"I like cookie dough. Or strawberry."

Alex orders...

Well, let's just say that Death By Chocolate isn't meant to be literal, but she's giving it the ol' college try anyway.

"And I'm covering hers."

Cookie dough AND strawberry, then.

When they sit down again, Wren says, "I imagine you're holding back a lot of questions. You can let it all out."

"So.  Many.  Questions.  Yeah.  Uh.  ...Shit, what were they?"

Alex's palm, meet Alex's face.

"Okay there are at least a couple that're coming to mind.  Probably.  Sometimes I could swear I'd lose my own head if it wasn't so firmly attached...

"So, how'd you find me, anyway?  I'm guessing the ritual?  It felt a lot bigger than anything else I've yet tried and clearly magic leaves traces behind just from the magician existing.  And who, or what, else might be looking?"

"The failed attempts more than the successful one, but yes. The ritual." She taps her nose. "Foxes like me are good at sniffing out magic, but succubi, other demon types, hungry ghosts, nightmares, puchuus, werewolves, and vampires aren't bad at it. The big news that's good for people like you- Is that the Puchuu Mafia will absolutely murder magical beings who fuck with the status quo." Shrug. "So I'm not gonna kill muggles or unaligned sorcerers without a really good excuse."

She nods.  "...Is there a lot of that going around, then?"

"Murder? Tribalism among magic types? Unthinking menaces? Kinda, yeah. That's what happens when some people can literally ignore cops. I mean, puchuu girls are the magic cops."

"Well ain't that just great.  By which I mean absolutely terrible.  ...I'm kind of surprised the Puchuu didn't try for me, to be honest; I have an unfortunate rule-following streak."

"Maybe they didn't notice you. They're not infallible. And I might be overselling the doom and gloom. I don't think existing while magic is actually more dangerous than existing while black in inner chicago, for example."

"Being as white as bread and mostly raised in suburbia as I have been - though I suppose there was that time where the sperm donor was in the city and I split weekends - I'm not sure that works as an effective point of comparison, but I guess that's not a bad sign.  Comparatively.

"...I should hope that the police brutality is not as much a threat as that, though."

She makes a waffling motion with one pawhand and licks her ice cream.

"Most of Lilith's brood aside from a couple varietals, like succubi or dryads, have it bad from them. Sorcerers are mostly fine unless you go around collecting skulls or robbing stores and so on."

"Ouch.  ...Wait, whomst?  Is there really a Lilith by way of the Biblical apocrypha that that sounds like?  Damn.  That's not something that I was expecting to be meaningfully truthy, though having thought about it for five seconds now I can't say I know why I wouldn't have, given that, like.  Succubi demonstrably exist.  Though there could have been evolutionary pressures...  ...It's not like there aren't gonna be half a dozen occult traditions quote-mining the book of Enoch or what have you, anyway.  ...Though the question of the potential historicity of that apocrypha would be rather open in ways mere quote-mining couldn't possibly achieve, despite the overall lack thereof in Genesis...

"...Interestingly enough, they have actually found something that looks like it could've been Noah's Ark recently-ish, to boot."

"...Or is 'Lilith's brood' more of a cultural thing, than a matter of actual known descent?  That would fit different models.  But the way you said it...

"Well, you sounded like Lilith was a person who made design decisions, to be using the term varietals there."

She feigns sleepiness at the bible talk, then blinks twice.

"Lilith as a specific individual may be apocryphal- Disciples, an Empire, a legend, a tradition- But yes. 'Lilith's brood' refers to monster species which have reliably heritable magic, are people, can take humanoid form, and must get their magic from some external source, not generating it. The mother of monsters, the story goes, was put out that sorcery is decidedly not heritable, murdered all her sons and daughters, and then designed new ones."

"Huh.  The murder's not okay but the other bits seem pretty cool.  I do rather agree with her that it's rude of the universe that only some people get to be and-or do magic, as of yet.

"...The possibility of sharing is somewhere on my ever-growing to-do list, though."

"Stronger sorcerers than you have tried to spread sorcery."

"I'm sure.  But that just means that, to steal a line from Edison, we know three-thousand ways to not make a lightbulb.  And human imagination is vaster still than filaments."

She looks taken aback, then smiles. More genuine than smirky this time.

"Okay, I've decided I like you."

Yay!  Oh, hell, she's blushing.  And she needs to respond to the conversation!  "That's good!  You're pretty!  Um!  I mean!  Um!  Pretty likeable!  Too!  Um!  - oh dear - but I mean - I cannot possibly retract a true statement but I hadn't meant to actually be so forward as to say that particular thing in response even though it's true...?  Oops?"  ...Now she's blushing even moreso.

Her tail is wagging. She ducks her head and snickers.

"Cute. A girl does like compliments~. Ahem. I'm not one for romance right now. Still miss my last spouse..."

Contemplative look.

"Casual sex is fine though."

...She is not actually spontaneously combusting of gay, is she?  Right?

"...I'm pretty sure Sappho of Lesbos herself would astrally project out of Ancient Greece and whap me upside the head if I lied and said I wasn't interested, despite the bit where I'm currently rolling to disbelieve that this is a thing that could happen in my life, and not someone else's life that's gotten switched with mine through a celestial bureaucracy clerical error."

"Oh, I can show you some things Sappho would approve of... Nobody believes good things can happen to them until they do. But really... You did win the cosmic lottery a little bit. I'll admit the magic is part of what makes you attractive to me. It's a nice smell. I enjoy it. I also like messing with people a little bit, and flustering them via flirting is one form of that. But consider... You've spontaneously generated a pretty darn solid mental defense structure, and you're approaching this whole thing with diligence, caution, ambition, and kindness in your heart. It's not just luck."

She is very flustered!

"I'm, touched that you think so.  I wouldn't have thought myself that exceptional, even with the magic."

"There's exceptions and there's exceptions."

Wren has somehow ended up with a little bit of ice cream on her snout.

"Before we get too deep in the useless zone though, I really have to warn you about a couple things. Your foundation will take care of the worst sucker punches but you should practice something for physical-ish combat. Also, have you found stuff on the tentacles? They're nasty. Leftover bio weapons from the Janeway Cult."

"I'm gonna hate doing it, but yeah, I know, I've gotta be able to survive a fight getting physical.  I figure I'll start doing Jedi practice.  And I've found enough on the tentacles to know that I really don't want to end up caught by them.  Scary little fuckers."

"They're remarkably resistant to extermination, unlike the inventors. As for combat, even something like a fire spell you can snap off quickly, or little charms of physical protection, is a lot better than nothing. Escape tools are better yet."

"Ayup.  Good to know.  ...Mmm, I wonder if I could do, like, some sort of fancy rune tattoo thing...  Get the benefits of props, without the risk of being deprived of props."

"Ooh. I've met tattoo mages. They tend to be hard to undo if you fuck up, is my caution."

...Smirk.

"You're seeing about some corrections from some succubi, right? You could get a womb tattoo, once you have a womb to go with it."

"Hyaa..."

"...Oh no, you've gone and nerdsniped me about trying to take the difficulty of undoing out of tattoo magic instead of distracting me with lewd thoughts.  I wonder if there's much use of metamagic or component systems..."

She giggles. "Think about the kinds of effects a tattoo might have instead? I can maybe see about an introduction to a guy named Aoba later. He does the Maui thing- Tattoos of his accomplishments, that give boons related to said accomplishments."

"Heck..."

"...That does seem like it might be useful!  Very solid 'makes what you're good at better' sort of thing."

"The other major thing I've seen was people meditating on symbology and geometry- I don't remember much of it, except pentagons for expansiveness, triangles for stability, and squares for precision. Hexagons for growth. Sorcery is always ultimately personal, though. You can borrow spells but don't use them as a bible."

She nods.  "Yeah.  Though I suspect there's also kind of a necessary element of noöspheric saturation, like - if I came up with some random never-before-seen rune language, I'd need to tell people about it before it could start working properly, as more than a focusing aid for wizardry and/or artificiery.  It'd need expression.  ...Though come to think of it, I find myself wondering how that works with the Tinkers-ala-Worm, whose whole hat is doing things where nobody understands how the fuck that works - or, no, that's gotta be some sort of applied conceptual reification...but then...hmm...

"Surely then the ultimate Tinker would be one wielding the principle of reification itself as their fundamental tool - and oh how we should fear that ever such a genius arises.  There are too many things that really shouldn't be, no matter that perhaps they could."

She shudders, and takes another bite of ice cream to distract herself from the dread design she has just drafted.

"...Please forget what I just said.  I don't want to give any wannabe gods ideas.  I don't want to give me any more ideas like that one.  That idea," of a self-reinforcing loop of metaphysical throw-weight, "would've been bad enough before it started having ill-defined but indubitably consequential ontological implications at me."

"Tinkers? They're not making technology. They're making magic items, with some of the details supported by mundane details of construction. That's the whole point. You can feel magic in a tinker's stuff. Hell, I can eat the magic out of a tinker's stuff.

...And out of cute girls."

"...Yes of course they're magic, we know they're magic; the question is how they're magic.  And at least one potential answer has terrifying existential implications!  ...I should build a Hume detector."  Notwithstanding that she's terrified that it will work.

"Hume?"

"Another SCP thing - it's a putative measure of realness in, well, a world full of reality warpers.  A measure of the weight of an ontology, to be poetic about it.  ...Actually, I stand corrected, a measure of the inertia of an ontology."

"Oh, spiritual weight. The ability of a thing to resist hostile magic. Sometimes called authority."

"...Motherfucker."

"What implicates do you imagine this has because I'm not seeing it?"

"...Be glad that you have not had the paper-thin veneer of reality ripped off of Azathoth's dream," she says, positively haunted.  "I don't think it's healthy, to see from this particular perspective."

"...Kay. I'll just completely ignore your concern since you won't explain it, then." Eye-roll.

She sounds annoyed, and starts scarfing down what ice cream remains.

"It's not like every passing whim of yours is rewriting peoples' minds. A rock is pretty sure it's a rock. A slab of neurons likewise."

"I'm sure they are.  But I'm not concerned about my impact, anyway.  I'm but a speck of dust in the eye of the universe, hoping that it won't blink."

But for all she knows, the whole damn universe is an idle daydream of SCP-239.

"I'm sorry.  It's..."

A pause.

"I can no longer truly believe that reality is real, I think, without - self-deluding.

"And not in the solipsistic sense that that sort of sentence usually gets thrown about.

"I might exist and have experiences.  But it's impossible to disprove the existence of Azathoth, if things can exist more than others.  And if Azathoth decides I don't exist, that I couldn't exist - then I have no true defense, for all the tools I could use to mount it are Azathoth's to take away.  Not that Azathoth would care about me, unless I become Azathoth."

"Oh. I misunderstood. I, uh... I can't help you with that."

"...I think I need more ice cream.  And possibly a hug.  Not that I'd dare presume."

"I will hug you. And buy the second round of ice cream."

She stands, goes around the table and hugs. Tail is involved in the hug.

"...I've always operated on the principle of 'change what you can, accept what you can't', personally."

...The hug is nice.  She...  Maybe cries a little bit, too, overwhelmed by a numinous, nebulous Emotion.

"...Yeah.  And I mean, by the same token that we can't prove Azathoth doesn't exist, we can't possibly meaningfully prove that Azathoth does exist either, so it's...

"Kind of moot, on a 'and what can I even do' level, short of somehow usurping the throne of 'the most real' - but it was still a shock to the system from assuming that reality is fundamentally real.  And I have a horrible tendency to jump straight to the worst-case scenario, when I'm weighing out innumerable possibilities."

...This round of ice cream is the pastel to her earlier death-by-chocolate's goth.  Light and fruity.  Sensational.  She eats it carefully, slowly, trying to ride out the aftermath of an unpleasant revelation.

"...What's the spell you've had the most fun with?  Or, like, do you have any cool stories?"

"I don't really have spells so much as three foundational techniques. How about the time I helped a samurai rob a train?"

"Oooooh, do tell."  You have her attention!  And her random pre-knowledge that yes, actually, there could have been samurai pulling off train heists in the Old West(tm)!  (Thanks, Tumblr.)

So it turns out the samurai was seeking revenge for an American arms dealer who had taken a lot of silver and silk in return for guns, and never delivered. And also the arms dealer was a greed demon, who consumes precious things for magic power. Mr. Samurai showed up in San Francisco sticking out like a sore thumb and fought the local mob, winning because he was a latent sword-sorcerer who never realized it.

So Wren sees him running away from a bunch of Tongs with guns, yanks him to the side and kisses him, putting an illusion of a random white couple over the pair so the thugs run by-

And the rest is a pretty typical wild west romp. They just miss the greed demon, but they get a whole safe full of gold, and the samurai goes home with the money.

It's an interesting story!  Really helps take her mind off of the things she's trying to not think too much about!

"I'm kinda surprised there isn't already a movie of this.  It'd make a good one."

"Magic and samurai and the wild west all in one? I can just see some creative type slamming it for 'lack of coherent vision'."

"More like 'a magical samurai chases the path of his honor into a den of rustlers and thieves, and must reckon with age-old questions of right and wrong as he tracks down the arms he was promised - but never delivered!'"

"Hmm, maybe. I don't know how making movies works much. Ooh, I didn't include the part where we made a deal with a pack of succubi to hitch a ride north on their steamboat-bordello. We'd rather attracted the attention of the US Marshals, you see. We went up to Alaska looking like telegraph operators. Now, I don't know what happened behind closed doors... But he was certainly a lot more relaxed on the trip to Alaska than he was getting to Oklahoma."

"Oh my.  And here I am, about to walk into a massage parlor, this chronically pent up...  Regardless of whether it's permitted at the clinic, I half expect to fear for my so-called virtue afterwards!"

"Oh yeah, succubi are a treat. Probably the most successful of Lilith's Brood. And in my opinion, older societies without modern medicine might have had a point but now the only virtue in that is making getting rid of it as fun and filling- Ahem, fulfilling, as possible."

And boy oh boy is she incredibly flustered by that idea!

"I surely can't say I disagree!  Not that I've any practical experience with it, ah, heh..."

Smile.

...Wren hums thoughtfully.

"So... It's debatable if karma is real, but it's definitely true that one acquires a reputation. I like breaking in virgins, so to speak. Because I want to share the joys, to make them squirm and moan... But this is not necessarily the best thing for everyone, ne? You only get one first time, even if over-emphasizing it and worshiping it is unhealthy... Best to start off on the right foot? I know it sounds like I'm contradicting myself. But- If you'll have me as your guide, I think it'd be best to think and talk first. About what it would mean for each of us. And to take our time, either way. If after some consideration, you decide 'fuck it, do me'... Very well! You'll have thought about it, and decided."

The blush is incandescent, and the nod is firm.  She needs a minute to restart her words engine, but, "That seems like it would be a good idea.  Clear expectations.

"I wouldn't have sex with just anybody and everybody, I'm not quite that casual even when you peel the anxiety off of me, but, I think you're meaningfully already not just anybody if we've already shared an existential crisis.  And it's not like I'm coming into this completely blind, as was; I've not done anything physical with another before, but the theater of the mind allows for many sorts of performance, so, you know.  I have a few ideas of things that seem fun.

"And for what it's worth, I think you're not contradicting yourself by calling a first time special, because it is new - but discouraging the fixation on firsts that everyone promotes.  Obsession is bad, y'know?  And not liking obsessions doesn't make you a hypocrite for enjoying being part of something special.

"So, uh, if you're still as goshdarned pretty as you are right now, and you're still as interested as you are right now, then, after the clinic's done their thing perhaps it would be fun to go for a test drive?  Really, I'd say even before that is up for grabs, I just know I want to do something special to commemorate the occasion, and goodness knows I'm no party girl."

"Hmm... Yeah, I am very casual about it. Anyway, that doesn't sound bad. Indeed we're not strangers- I'm hoping for friends with benefits as a final equilibrium. More magical friends is rarely a bad thing. I'm not up to any major shenanigans right now, mostly just petty ones. Taking a temporary retirement from magical affairs, as much as one can. I will admit I'm a little partial to penises, personally, but delighting a new you would be fun too. Just so you're aware, they're going to have essence sinks. A device that you can push all your mana into, which measures it and stores it for later. A full-scale remodel, as it were, is probably going to take a week or two even if they let you go into mana debt for it instead of paying up front. It's hard to judge your natural mana output just from being near you, but based on your ward, you'll probably be paying it off for weeks to months. They'll know a lot more precisely than me, of course."

She nods.  "I have to admit I haven't yet quite decided whether that's staying or going.  Though, well, option value, hm?  I suppose we'll see what comes out of my body map.  Essence sinks...  Interesting.  I'm kinda wondering if there's also an effective throughput measure to go with the volume..."

"Well, flow equals size divided by time."

"Plus recovery during that time, though?  Though, true; I'll have to make a note for science purposes when I do see."

"Mmhm. Oh. If you want me to show off some magic tricks, you can willingly pass a bit of magic to me. I'm not a precision instrument but I could guess. Foxes like me have a lot of ways of absorbing mana, but none as efficient as a species entirely dedicated to one."

She holds out a pawhand.

Y'know, she would like that.  "Sure, I can do that if you'd like.  Seeing cool magic can only help me do more cool magic."

Now, how can she do this...

Well, first, she needs to have a good feeling of where her mana even is.  Her spiritual limbs are still a bit numb, metaphorically speaking.  But that doesn't mean that she can feel nothing.  It's a bit dim, but she can, still, feel.  And her ability to feel out spellforms is helpful, as well.

So it is with steady breathing and closed eyes that Alex's hand finds itself holding Wren's hand-paw, carefully feeding just a little bit of her mana reserve into the kitsune through this shared intimacy.  One percent.  One percent of that thrumming potential that overflows the bounds of her soul.  No more, no less.  If Wren needs more magic...  She'll ask.

Alex can feel Wren's existence nestled next to her own.

What she pushes to the surface might or might not be one percent... Actually, it's probably significantly less than one percent. It doesn't move all at once, but in a sluggish, restrained flow. There's barely a teeny tiny trickle. It's a little awkward to hold it to that level, like standing on one's toes.

The moment it reaches the surface of her skin, the energy vanishes from her awareness.

After fifteen or twenty seconds, Wren says, "You're giving me just a teensy bit, right? This is maybe... Two or three thaums a minute. Which is tiny."

"...Rassa...frassing...move, dammit, this is my magic it should do what I tell it --"

Fine.  If she can't be Ms. Nice Gal, if she can't coax the mana to the surface smoothly - then she will grab on and pull.

"Woah!"

This is a lot more sudden. It comes in a big chunk, with a sudden lurch and an uncomfortable feeling a bit like coughing. She can feel the mana outside of her for a few moments, until it slips away into Wren.

"Okay! That was a bunch more. Okay, finesse will come with practice. That was... I want to say a couple kay-thaum? What a succubus would call about one and a bit 'O'. Do you have a sense of how much of your reserve it was?"

...Does she?

Ehhh.  Maybe she does.  It wasn't a huge chunk but it wasn't a tiny piece either.

"I'd hazard definitely less than a tenth, probably less than a twentieth, but also definitely more than a hundredth.  It wasn't a huge chunk.

"...Can't fucking believe my mana sense needs glasses," she mutters.  "Though I guess I'm barely started."

"You've been aware of it, what, a day? Little baby sorcerer. Don't worry about it. Hrmm... So your total capacity is probably in the ballpark of twenty to sixty-ish 'O'? Rule of thumb is that you make three full tanks of mana a week... So sixty to two hundred a week. Probably above one hundred. Depending on the going rate for mana from your succubus clinic, that's anywhere from three weeks to twenty going on the extremes of my guess for prices - six hundred to twelve hundred - and your output, if you push all your magic into that and don't reserve any for yourself."

She nods, when she's done blushing.  "Beats 'like five entire years and then also major surgeries to potentially mixed results' to hell.  And that's assuming there's no low-hanging fruit on the mana accumulation front.  Like I mean I've gotta assume that people have, in fact, tried plenty of things, but I already found myself having thoughts about how one might use that geometric tattoo thing to create something useful."

"There's been a lot of work on the mana accumulation front. Long story short, intense emotions, and maintaining them for as long as possible while doing the magic. It boosts both ability to push out magic fast, and ability to generate more, especially since regen naturally goes up a bit when the tank's low. I would dare say thinking about how you're going to get the body of your dreams - and maybe have a lovely meetup later~ - would count."

"Mmhmm!  But I mean potentially affecting the base rate somehow.  Instead of the emotions multiplier.  So like, starting from the thingamajig..."

And now she has pulled out a pencil and a post-it, and started sketching.  "You frame the entire construction as a hexagon, because it is both grow-ing and emblematic of the growth you wish to encourage, and then you trisect it to make six stability triangles to support your hexagon of growth, and then you infix six squares of precision like so, creating more triangles, and then you have created another hexagon and you can re-utilize both the external and internal space - you put another layer of squares on the inside, which makes another hexagon, and another layer of triangles on the outside, so you have extra stability and more precision, and you can keep on with fractal triangle-square-triangles on the 'outer' segments..."

"I mean, am I missing something?

"Maybe even wrap the whole thing in a circle because of the infinite non-sidedness of it and whatnot, how every point is unique but indistinguishable..."

"...You're welcome to try it. I just predict a fat lot of nothing. Because nobody seems to know how to touch the ineffable thing that mana comes from. You could maybe get my meat-to-mana thing or dryads' sun-to-mana working? I'd think Lilith would have done tattoos, not monsters, if they worked... Now, is there a nice park or something I can make a big notice-me-not and show off in?"

"...Those gosh-darned ineffables.  At least I probably don't have to worry about some sort of Azathoth accumulation arms race..."

"And, yeah, I know a couple places we could go to for that."  There's a big empty space around the back of her apartment/house, if nothing else.

Wren pats Alex on the legs, her tail snaking under the table to do so, then quickly finishes her second round of ice cream and daintily wipes her muzzle with napkins.

"Hmm, so, conclusions... We go for a nice short walk right now. I'll show off a bit- I have shapeshifting, illusions, and fire as foundational concepts, but you can get moderately creative- And then I offer to be a reference for magic stuff, and to try and bail you out if you get yourself into trouble and call me, and wish you well on your body spa appointment?"

"Sounds like a plan!"

"Mmhm..." She bounces up and leads the way.

Wren's... Tail... Sways very nicely, doesn't it? Almost like it's deliberate. Swish, swish.

She declares the nearby park good enough.

Blue flames incinerate her suit-like clothes as she poses, arms wide and giving an impression of nudity covered only by fire, to then reveal a moderately skimpy shiny red dress. Some details about her body are different now- She still has the fox head and the tail, but everything else looks almost human. She spins and dances briefly.

"Tadaaaa!  Any requests? Scenes from that little adventure I told you about? Maybe some purifying flame- Burn away tiredness and stress?"

"Oh, please do."  She might not say it aloud, but if that actually works she will absolutely owe Wren one.

"Okay. It looks a bit scary and it might sting a little, and is not a sleep replacement, but here you go. Yelp if you want to abort."

Wren holds up a wide, two foot sphere of lazily shifting blue fire between two hands.

"Touch it whenever you're ready. I'll be gentle~."

It takes a moment to overcome the flinch reflex.  But it doesn't feel too hot, no matter how close her hand skims, so - in it goes.

...There's a lot of stress for this fire to burn.

It stings a little. More the way a hot shower, or sudden emergence into daylight, does than anything else.

Wren slowly expands the flames up her arms, and then over the rest of her body. It gets a little intense, like scratching an itch over 100% of your body.

...She just...  Melts, stumbling into Wren for support as the constant tension that's been holding her upright for who knows how long, releases.

It feels like what a baptism should be (for all that it never was).  It feels like a liberation.

Also a hug.

She lets it taper off slowly once she's used about as much mana as she was given.

"You might want to go nap. Good dreams tend to happen after that."

Yeah.  She's gonna do that.  Note to self: do something really nice for Wren.

Also let OS know she wasn't eaten by a grue.

Heya, just wanted to let you know I have not been eaten by a grue; I am going to take a nap now.  Notes later.

Memory is fallible!

asdf

ok ok you're there not me

slep well?

I have in fact slept well, thank you for asking.

Notes so far:

- Fantasy racism exists because of course it does

- The standard succubus unit of mana-measurement is called an 'O'

- Lilith, Mother of Monsters, may or may not have actually existed

- Mana measurement tools already exist by dint of "pour your mana into the storage object"

- CW: Azathoth

- Kitsune are apparently the generalist of magivores/magic-converters

- I forgot to ask about fluffy tail.

- Field measurement of my mana capacity says ~5+-3% of my reserves is a couple kilothaums, whatever those are.

- It'll probably take a month or three to pay the succubi with magic for the sort of full reno I'm looking for.

- ~three 'full tanks' of mana / week?  Should ask about the emotional investment.  ...Should also really practice Sith-ing it up in case of Fuckery.

- Despite cw: Azathoth, no known method to increase mana generation from base rate.

- Magic tattoos.  They're valid foci.  Wonder if I could do some fancy chameleon thing, too...

- Do not think about the consequences of spiritual weight too hard unless you're prepared for an existential crisis to mug you.

- Wren is apparently old enough to have been part of some absolutely gonzo shit in the Old West.  Note to self: What even is a sword saint or w/e, that's clearly a type of practitioner - is that a precursor species to MGs?

- Magic environments are ~as dangerous as inner-city Chicago, apparently.

- Tentacle monsters "left over from the Janeway Cult"???

-- Who the fuck is that?

- Wren has three techniques: Fire, illusion, shapeshifting.  Not generalist-capable???  Interesting line of distinction.

- Purifying fire is...  Incredibly useful for people who have anxiety, n = 1 sample size.

- Dryads charge from sunlight; investigate whether/how UV lamps work?

Wren is, I assume, a kitsune? :susongeneralprinciple:

Janeway Cult: Apparently a really nasty mobster style magical gang, according to internet history. Witch + demon alliance. 'Puchuu/Janeway fights blew up some of the Appalachian Mountains' nasty.

Indeed she is, or at least claims to be with little countervailing evidence.

 

...Holy shit that's what did that?  Damn!

Yeah. Uh, well below nuke levels but some forests burned down and stuff.

Sword saints would be 'Internal Physical Personal' if they're making themselves faster and stronger with magic? You put 'cultivators' in that bucket.

Mmm, but a Sword Saint Tee Emm, has a sword, you see.

Eh.  Typing them can wait.  It's not like we're about to fight one or anything.  ...Narrative convention willing, at least.

Are guns legal to own (without tons of kerfuffle) in your state?

I feel like you should have one or equivalent magic if someone's describing magic as 'inner city'

The inner city isn't actually THAT dangerous, but it's memetically pretty dangerous AIUI

Absolute heck if I know.  I'd rather Not, though.  And yeah, I'm not sure what they meant by that really.

So like I said, I should really start figuring out how to meditate like a Sith.

Do let me know if/how I can be more useful than random notes and organizing

Will do.  You have better search luck, anyway.

...Alright.  She's going to go find the campus LARP group, and then, tomorrow, is her consult.

The Tantric etc etc Clinic/Spa/Whatever looks very fancy and expensive. The waiting room has armchairs, modern art, and a TV playing nature footage.

"Are you here for an appointment?" Asks a very handsome receptionist.

"I have an initial consult at 10:30."

"Alex Marche, correct? It looks like your assistant today will be Rebecca. Typically, the assistants go through some of our options and makes a broad plan with you, and then you speak to the appropriate doctor or doctors to review things in more detail. Here's the intake paperwork we need. Looks like you already did most of it, so it'll just be one consent form today..."

Paper is handed over. It's just saying she's agreeing that all the contact info and medical history is accurate.

"Once you file that, I'll show you to a waiting room where you can relax and wait for Rebecca. Please let me know if you have any questions."

She looks it over.  (She knows she input it to begin with, but she's going to double-check this anyway.)

"...Looks like everything's in order.  And I have rather a large number of questions, but they're for the professionals, I believe."

"I can only imagine."

Waiting room: Get. It's comfy, almost cozy. Armchair, desk with office chair, wall screen (off), bookshelves, minifridge with drinks.

Rebecca shows up after a few minutes, knocking and waiting to be acknowledged before entering, tanned and small-framed. And pretty. Evidently the clinic does a lot of work on their own employees, perhaps as a sort of advertisement.

"Hello, Alex. I'm Rebecca. How are you feeling today?"

"...Less terrified than I thought I would be," she muses, "which is surely going to help."

"I can imagine. It can be difficult to confront how you look and feel. Especially when you're considering changing it drastically. My notes say you're interested in biokinetic magic treatments, and in alternate payment."

"Those notes are indeed correct.  I've heard a few things about how alternate payment might work, from second- or thirdhand sources, enough that it's probably sufficient for you to quote the going rate; at the moment, though, I am not particularly well-informed as to what succubus biokinesis is used to best effect in accomplishing, versus what's expensive to reach for."

She subtly makes a hard-to-read face when she says 'succubus'.

"So, many succubi do traditionally have sex with people as payment for services. This allows them to take some magical energy, which even non-magical people have a small amount of. The succubus doctors associated with our clinic prefer not to do that. Are you a magic-user, yourself? If so, there is still an alternate option."

"That is, I expect, the option to which I was already referring.  I'm quite aware of the clinic's policy, and I would not dare violate it.

"Incidentally, since I saw you make that face and you might, actually, know, is there a word that's preferred over that one?  Considering all the, implications, that I would love to avoid here if I but knew how."

"Oh, no, they embrace the label. It's just that some patients are difficult on the policy we just discussed."

"Ah.  Yes, quite.  One does unfortunately tap into certain memes when one starts using words like tantric to describe business practices, no matter how justifiably - but no still means no."

"...That diversion aside, where were we?  Oh, right, payment options.  And what the unit mana buys."

"Yes, I know, it's supposed to be a way to quietly hint at them without outright stating it... Which is verboten, for some reason. So, biomancy can do a huge variety of things, with an emphasis on gradual changes backed up by subtle changes in body chemistry, cell structures, and so on. Most of our clients stick to optimizations within the normal human range. Enhancements beyond the human norm are an option, but typically custom and discussed directly with your doctor. We also offer transgender care, which is a fairly common request. Overall, biomancy services can be divided into four broad categories: Hormone and cellular changes, skin and body sculpting, major alterations- Such as genital surgery, or regrowth of damaged nerves in the spine, and finally fertility and prenatal care."

She turns the wall screen on, then navigates to and picks a before/after image of someone's back and arms. The 'after' photo has no moles, no hair, no blemishes at all, and a different shape. The changes in the lines are subtle, but undeniably feminine. "Here's an example of the results of six sessions of skin and body sculpting."

She nods.  "Well, I can say I certainly have no interest in fertility at this time.  Everything else though...

"...Huh.  Couple of loose neurons just bounced together, and I suddenly found myself reminded of the guy who gene-edited out his lactose intolerance.  Wonder if having that sort of resource makes for good ritual fodder.  ...I doubt that's within your particular scope of practice, though; you're here for the artistic bits.  Or, insofar as that goes.

"...Hm, come to think of it, though, I had an offhand thought of attempting to - ping off of my proprioceptive sense, sort of, to serve as some sort of baseline...  I'm almost certain that none of those were quite the right words to use, but I'm sure you've had enough people with phantom sensation of what should be there to get what I mean?  Would that be, useful?  If I can pull that out of my ass?  ...Pardon my language."

"I'm not familiar with magic outside of the details of our biomancy services. That said, if you're interested an interview with Dr. Marleth, we do sometimes pay for magic spells depending on needs, greater than the amount of mana expended on them. The only reason I'm not throwing out specific numbers yet is that we don't know how much you can produce. I'd say the average person who has magic at all, can produce something like five units per day. But we don't know your numbers yet."

"I'm certain I'd love to talk shop; that said, I don't actually have that spell yet.  I'll definitely put it on my to-do list, though.

"Mm.  Which unit?"

"We refer to them as 'Oghams', or 'O's."

"Ah.  Yeah, I have like at least four times that much mana on me right now, estimating extremely conservatively.  Probably more like forty, if we use the middle-ground estimates.  I'm sure we'll find out exactly how much soon enough, though."