Liam stands in the middle of Aiden’s training field.  Twenty shadow clones of Aiden jump, back flip, and roll circles around him.  Three dive for the same area, but instead of crashing into each other and exploding, the upper most clone flips around and arcs his back to do a back hand spring.  The bottom most clone drops onto his knees, lowers his back onto the ground, and slides over the dirt.  The third clone dives between the two.  He hits the ground once with his hand and uses that momentum to spin like a screw between the two before landing and continuing on his way.  The clones, during that entire ordeal, make various hand and arm gestures.  

He looks towards Aiden at the far end of the field and says, “This is a mess.  Is it even working?”

Aiden doesn’t break focus from his shadow clones.  He adjusts their formation by having them add a hand seal of two palms placed atop of one another during a spin kick before saying, “I told you to bring a book.  Do want to borrow one of mine?”

“I didn’t think I’d be standing here for over an hour!”

“Then sit down!  I never said you had to stay standing!”  Then, without break his gaze over his ritual, he speaks to Kalani, “Mind taking something to him?”

Kalani perks up from the beginner alchemy book she’s borrowing from Aiden.  Confusion laces her voice as she says, “Won’t I get in the way of that dance thing your clones are doing?”

“This will be pointless if I can’t make them adjust to sudden interferences.  Try ramming into them while you’re at it.”

“Fine, fine.”  Kalani grabs an introductory text to spirit magic and hurls herself into a thicket of shadow clones.  Despite how four clones are twisting around each other, they coordinate a gap for her to fly through.  

She then flings a spray of rocks towards a second clumping.  The clones jump, twist, and spin in order to avoid the being pelted.  They continue unfettered by the interference.

Kalani clicks her tongue and attacks a random clone.  It avoids her punch by leaning to the side and her kick by hopping.  Shen then trips and falls flat on her face as it spins around and escapes.  In none of her attempts did she come close to even grazing a single clone.

While shouting the words, “You suck!” to Aiden, she hands the book to Liam and returns to her seat outside the ritual circle.  

Aiden says, “Easy?  Hard?  How was it?”

“Shut up!  Hell, why are you even bothering with something like this?”

“Because large scale magic circles are stupid.  They’re okay for sneak attacks, but after that, anyone can use them against you.”

“No duh!  I know that!  Can’t you just use the ley line like usual?”

Aiden gives a flat, “Rituals require vast areas of space to be performed.  They can’t be transmitted through ley lines.”

Kalani stares at him.  Knowing Aiden’s bad habit of never fully explaining himself, she says, “And?”

“Trying to send a spell up stream against a ley line is harder than telling an ant to swim against a riptide.  Nothing, not even the fabled, oh so call mighty, dragon, can stand against the planet.  This will be my backup for whenever I’m downstream.”

Kalani whacks Aiden across the back.  She then winces and shakes her hand in pain.  “Ow, that stings.”

Aiden makes a few more adjustments to his ritual and sighs.  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry.  I’m doing this ritual as a way to steal mana from Eric in my match against him.  Even if I were to fill my reserves, I get the feeling it won’t be enough.  I’m also using this opportunity to develop other ritual based spells.  Those are mostly being discovered by accident though.”

Kalani huffs.  She sits back down and says, “Was that so hard to say?”

After almost an hour Aiden shouts out to Liam. “Hey, let’s move onto the next stage!  Run around and keep out of the ritual’s center!”

Kalani rests her face upon her hands as watches Liam try to destroy a shadow alone.  “Are all magicians like this?”

“This?”

“Spending hours on research and development.  To me, being a magician only meant being able to cast flashy spells and slay evil apparitions.”

Aiden remembers back when he was four.  His parents explained to him that mana is created by the chakra points.  They broke down the leading theory of how they create and refine mana before telling him that his are flawed.  Instead of just a few hours of rest like a normal person, he needs to wait months to fully recover his mana reserves.  They told him he’d never become a proper magician.  He says, “That’s one type of magician.  The kind everyone wants to be…”

Liam stops moving.  He looks himself over and then rushes towards Aiden.  “What did you just do?  What’s happening to my mana?”

Kalani’s jaw drops.  She slaps her forehead and says, “You didn’t even tell him the point of all this?”

Aiden laughs out and says, “It was quite tasty, thanks!”

Liam’s jaw drops.  “You’re draining my mana!?  Is that even possible?”

Aiden stares at Liam for a bit.  “Isn’t that the entire foundation to what Sifu teaches us?”

Liam is taken aback.  He averts his gaze as he says, “Ye-yeah, I guess you’re right.  How’d you even come up with something like this?”

Aiden gives a sheepish laugh.  “By accident.  Before I met Sifu, I tried creating a spell that would let me draw mana from nature and ended up with the proto-type to this instead.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

Kalani follows up Aiden’s blank stare with another slap to his back.  She winces and tries to ignore the sting as she says, “The details!  I’ve never even heard of magic involving acrobatics before.  You called it some sort of ritual?  That kinda makes sense seeing how complicated the whole thing is, but what was that?”

Aiden says, “To be more accurate, it’s called a living magic circle.  Unlike drawn static magic circles, moving objects are used.  The idea was that it would provide flexibility in casting magic back.  This was before alchemy was created and the ability to generate magic circles on the spot with it.  It’s biggest advantage now is that it can’t be usurped by opposing magicians.”

Liam suppresses a sigh at Aiden’s incomplete answer and says, “And how have we never heard of it before?”

“Cause it’s flawed and entirely impractical.”  Aiden goes to end his answer there, but a glare from Kalani convinces him otherwise.  “Magic circles require precise details.  Just a single blemish can lead to a failed spell, or worse, an explosive backlash.  That means a ridiculously high degree of coordination is required for a successful living magic circle.  Furthermore, while people can learn to preform one, those movement will only serve for that circle.  Every new spell requires a different performance.”

Kalani, seeing that Aiden finished, adds, “Which means they are very easy to disrupt and hard to use.  Okay, so why are you using it?”  She then realizes how Aiden will answer and adds, “As in, if it’s so impractical, what makes you confident?”

Aiden is cut off by her sudden addendum.  He reorients his thoughts and opens his mouth to speak.  That’s when Liam adds, “And don’t just say because of your shadow clones.  What makes them so special.”

Aiden again stops as his reply is cut off.  He frowns in irritation, wishing they’d think about it themselves instead, but still says, “Like I said, living magic circles are very easy to disrupt.  Just pushing one person out of sync is enough to ruin the whole thing.  Fixing it is possible, but requires awareness over the entire operation.  Although coordination for a circle could be trained, a misstep isn’t something that can easily be fixed on the spot.  It’s pretty much why every society that’s ever researched it abandoned it.

“My shadow clones are something I developed after studying Omyuoji teachings and Shintoism.  They are directly linked to my mind.  How they move is entirely decided by me.  I can give them a degree of autonomy, but in the end, it’s all my discretion.  If something goes wrong, I’ll be able to fix it on the spot.”

Kalani says, “There’s… no way that’s as easy as you’re making it sound.”

Aiden shrugs.  “Do this against multiple enemies would be pretty difficult.  In a one on one, as long as the attention is on me, I’ll manage.”

Liam says, “And what else?  From what I understand about magic is that magic circles need to be solid.  I mean, aren’t shadow clones basically just holograms?”

“Light… if trapped within a container, will contribute to the containers mass as relativistic mass.  Shadow clones can be considered contained light. Also, shadow clones are made of my mana.  Heck, I could even explode them if I wanted too.  Mana is energy and energy, according to Einstein, equals mass of the body multiplied by the speed of light, squared.”

Kalani and Liam stare at Aiden with blank expressions.  She says, “What?”

“…Shadow clones fulfill all the requirements.  Think of it like this, charged batteries weigh more than uncharged batteries.  Actually, puppet masters and necromancers could also utilize living magic circles if they wanted to—”  

Kalani says, “Stop, stop, stop!  No random tangents!  Focus on your match against Eric, first!”

Liam says, “You do have a plan to fight him, right?”

“Of course, from what I can see, he’s a guy who prides himself on his talent.  I can more or less guess his reactions.”

Kalani smirks, “Oh, I like where this is going.”