diatuooc | Test Drive #3

Test Drive #3

Lightning Crash

The weather over the floating island of Ascelion during spring months is best described as "hellacious"; its elevation puts it right among the worst of stormclouds and fuels their thunderous fire as they sweep past it and electrically scrape against its sides. Rain is frequent, but lightning is almost constant, along with thunderous rumbles that roll across the city and the open spaces of the Magicademy like waves.

But today is particularly bad. Webs of electricity crackle through the sky, jumping from cloud to cloud or grounding themselves on towers of the Magicademy angrily. None of them seem to endanger the students, but there's a first time for everything, isn't there? As titanic fury threatens to tear the sky in half, do you risk stepping into the outside? Does the infrasonic rumbling trigger fear or terror in your gut, as such deep waves are known to do? Perhaps you've learned a spell that will protect you. Or perhaps you've poorly learned a spell that may or may not protect you...

Wand Wrong Way

The rumors around campus speak of a small and musty store deep in the Merchant District, on a side road to a side road, where only those in-know go to find items that would surely draw too much notice if displayed publicly. Powdered dragon tail, eye of sphinx, swords Forged with magic-cutting spells, and most valuable of all, the Gateway Wand. Surely this legendary wand, in which the full power of Sundering hums, could get you and your friends back home.

Rumors are pretty lousy with directions, though. The Merchant District offers ample chance to get lost, to get distracted, or to stumble down the wrong alley and find hoodlums all too eager to extract "tolls" from the lost and seemingly helpless. Does your adventure become disaster? Does this rumored shop even exist?

Pantalones Giganticus

At its heart, Modification seems like the most simple of schools. What could be more simple than arithmetic? Therefore, Modification also has the steepest and most shocking learning curve of all, as it rapidly balloons to more complicated mathematical expressions, more variables in the formulae, and above all more chance for error.

So really, the mistake is an honest one. Any hurried student, probably in their third or fourth year of study, could accidentally introduce an unnecessary factor into their equation. That is probably why your pants are now sized for someone four times large than you. (Not four sizes. Four times.) Worse, this has happened to EVERYONE -- the entire population of the Magicademy, student and staff and faculty alike, are trundling around in blown-up bloomers, too-large trousers, not-conveniently-sized knickers... you get the idea.

Now the bad news: to fix the error in formula and restore your pants to normal size, someone else has to get in them with you.

Labwork

Not every magical disaster is caused by some wayward student you don't know. Many of them are caused by you instead. To wit: you're on the spot in one of the magical labs, being called on to demonstrate a technique more advanced than others you've mastered so far. Failure is expected, and the wards should prevent any injury to others from a miscast spell. But will the sparks of your magic just sputter out and die? Or will you inadvertently mispronounce, misform, misshape, or miscalculate in a way that brings chaos to you and your lab partner?

(You could also manage to succeed in casting the spell, but that isn't very fun.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Of course it did. I label my materials properly, and grind them precisely, and make sure they are quality." Even if Yotsuyu had to personally harass the botanists involved--which she often did. A small price to pay for perfection, in her mind.

"I do know what I am doing. At least when it comes to alchemy. I am no magitek technician, however." Nor were there any here, so there, he was out of luck.

"Yeah, well, scientist you know. At least not all tech isn't working Potter-style. Otherwise I'd go nuts out here. I'm still missing the lack of Friday."

Tony sighed a little at the loss of his personal assistant AI. "So now what? Do we just turn this in for credit or something?"

"That is usually how it works, yes." The turning it in for credit. "There should be a rack for the vials on the teacher's desk."

Her potion was probably already there. "You might want to get used to carrying a chapbook. I take copious amounts of notes." Not just for Alchemy, but all of her other classes, as well. Yotsuyu wasn't much of a kissass, but clever and determined? In spades.

"Just like study hall, except study hall doesn't explode when you use things wrong." remarked Tony, placing the vial on the teacher's desk as he labeled it with precise handwriting.

"Chapbook check. Got one. I called it JARVIS."

"I do not know what 'study hall' is," Yotsuyu admitted. Though it did sound like something that might be beneficial. So long as there were no explosions...

She furrowed her brow at the man, now, because his words were, and continued to be, strange. "I do not understand, do you name your chapbooks where you are from?"

"Study hall's where you do things for extra credit back in college, although it's mostly used for goofing off." replied Tony. "As for me, I invented my way through college. Of course I graduated when I was 13."

"By now my "chapbook" would have been talking and sporting a AI that I wrote myself."

"Ah. I do not know what this...college is either..." And a brow lifted. Well, it wasn't as if she couldn't match arrogance with arrogance. Yotsuyu did not want to think where she had been at thirteen.

"Assuming that the magic here allowed such a thing, I suppose, yes?"

"It's a place of higher learning, although when you learn everything you need to learn early, it becomes just another picture on the wall," replied Tony, placing the vial on the rack.

"Never say never. I could just Dr Strange my way through this and figure something out."

Test Drive #3

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