Briar was finally settling into life at SEYA. Working as an independent MG hadn't been bad, but there was a lot to figure out on your own, a lot of equipment an aspiring hero needed, and a lot of things that could go wrong if either of the previous were lacking.

They had, of course, been offered membership to the… academy both when they first contracted and many times afterwards, but they didn’t want to move away from their family. It had taken a lot of effort on the part of their parents and the friends that knew they were Livewire, but eventually they convinced Briar to go.

In hindsight, it would have been the right choice at any point in time. There were some benefits to working on your own or with a small group of mostly local independent MGs- especially in the quieter parts of the country. However, what SEYA offered was too good a deal to pass up. Almost every MG in the US- or really any part of the americas, western europe, and those whose countries weren’t part of the relevant treaties but could still manage to make it- at bare minimum tried to get counseling and the non-member support offered. Access to the Breach predictions, demon official database, and some funding could go a long way for anyone.

Actually being there was a whole other level of amazing. Everything on the campus was both free and high quality for the ‘independent civilian contractors.’ Which, as it turned out, had been a little too much for what Briar was used too. They were mortified it only took four days of getting anything they asked for to start acting so entitled.

As they looked at the clock telling them it was time to get ready for the start of training, Briar shuddered at the memory of their confrontation with Devil. It was all so stupid and cringe and stuck-up of them. Even if her face brought up… disturbing memories, that was no excuse for swinging first. A fact reinforced by how getting their ULE ripped from their control felt like someone grabbing and tearing their nerves out of their body.

Briar knew MGs sometimes played tug-of-war with their powers- and had even participated once or twice- but what had happened couldn’t even be generously interpreted as a form of contest. It said something about how awful it was that Briar didn’t even remember getting stabbed, gassed, and crushed- although that might have been due to the concussion that they also sustained somewhere along the line.

Getting dressed in a more nondescript hoodie and pair of pants than they usually wore, Briar started heading towards the fields where some of the more experienced MG would be acting as teachers.

When Briar arrived, they noticed an odd fuzzing in the shadows of the predicted future. The uncertainty was somewhat normal in areas with a higher ULE concentration, but it still put them on edge. As it turned out, always knowing the most likely future made even the chase of a surprise terrifying. The fuzzing only got worse as they closed in on the small group that had already gathered, but keeping in mind there were powerful MGs around helped assuage the discomfort. 

After waving back to one of the people, they noticed the fuzziness was higher around one figure in particular, but there was nothing too weird with that and it felt rude to stare…

After doing a double take to try and reconcile the contradictory assessment of the figure from their normal and temporal sense, Briar once again came to the conclusion they were probably supposed to be there and it wasn’t a big deal…

Knowing that should have been wrong, Briar took a really good look at the figure. Or tried to at least. Every time they put effort into scrutinizing the figure, Briar's eyes started to wander to someone else in the group. For example: it looked like there were three instructors: Necroferrum, Navy, and MAMC- shortened from Magically Assisted Moving Company. From what they remembered, all of them were very experienced and had totally different approaches to fighting. Since Briar had decided to fight in melee, MAMC would probably be their teacher-

Pausing at the feeling they were missing something, Briar took a look around again. This time, they knew the figure was familiar. The specifics of how were on the edge of their mind, so they squinted a little. From where they were standing, they were probably a fellow student.

Like the group of six Briar had joined. Disregarding the less interesting peer and Briar themself, three looked like they had at least a little time as an MG under their belt. No one was in costume, but it was pretty easy to tell by the fact that only one person looked to be extremely nervous, and the others had that feeling of magic to them- although from past experience, no one else seemed to be able to perceive it.

Once the instructors noticed Briar had arrived, they each did an obvious mental headcount, made faces, and did it again, before Necroferrum exasperatedly said, “Devil, can you… not?”

Instantly, the fuzziness in [Prediction Projection] massively reduced as Briar had a sudden epiphany of recognition for the figure as the MG that did a number on them.

Quietly gulping and turning away to look at anything else, Briar saw the instructors do another headcount before Necroferrum continued on to give a short introduction of herself and the other instructors as well as the general plan: a month or two of getting a feel for a wide range of weapons, general operational recommendations, public speaking and confidence lessons, and a little bit of time for relevant laws. After that they should have had enough time to figure out where they wanted to go with their powers and style- if they hadn’t already decided- and could be more directly tutored by being rolled into a real team with the designated tutor.

Somewhere in the midst of that, Navy went over to quietly talk with Devil. The fuzziness once again increased, but with the source identified it wasn’t a concern, so Briar focused back on Necroferrum’s explanation.

With the introduction to the plan over with, MAMC stepped forwards and pulled a soccer ball from a bag. “Now that the boring talking’s over with, we can move onto a fun team-buildin’ exercise. One at a time, me, Navy, and Necro will start at the half-ield line n’ try to score a goal. All of y’all just need to try and stop the single shot we’ll take. Easy, right? Oh, right: you can use anything and everything to try n’ stop us, an’ we’ll only use stuff that won’t injure you.” Briar was equal parts excited and understanding of the fact this would only end one way. 

Just before the clump of students could gather up, Necroferrum cut in with a teasing and cheery tone, “Devil, you’ll be trying separate from the others. And no sharing ideas. We’ll flip a coin to see which group goes first.” When Briar looked over to the person in question, they saw she was annoyed but clearly had been expecting this. Continuing on, the teacher told Devil, “since you’re on your own, you get to call it- while it’s still in the air please.”

[Prediction Projection] made stuff like this trivial to Briar since the weight, air resistance, effects of gravity, and other factors remained fairly constant between coins of the same type and thus easily predictable. In fact, Briar hadn’t lost a coin toss they called since becoming an MG.

“Can I check out the coin first?” Devil asked right before Navy went to flip the coin. After getting a small nod, she walked over, standing oddly close to the instructor as she looked at the coin. Devil must have really been taking her time to scrutinize it, since Briar found themself blinking back into focus after having apparently spaced out.

With no more interruptions, Navy flicked the coin up, with Devil calling heads- still standing right next to the other MG. Briar’s perk told them that it was most likely that the result would be tails, with some variation coming from the height the throw would be caught. Just before the glinting object returned to the hand that had launched it, Devil moved and Briar found themself once again realizing they had spaced out. Oddly, everyone else, including Navy, also looked fleetingly distracted.

It must have been nothing, since Navy just slapped the coin onto the back of their other hand and showed off that it was indeed heads. Briar was confused, but had no time to voice their concerns before MAMC declared, “looks like our solo is going second. That means the rest of y’all should get plannin!’”

Verifiably_a_human

Hello again. This past Friday at 3am during a bout of insomnia, I had an epiphany about a more realistic explanation for how Silvia’s horns and tail work- not that it matters all that much to the story. 

For context, in general, when explaining the weird and magical thingamajigs I hold myself to a standard of what you might say to an elementary school student about the topic. Being at least marginally more educated than that myself, I enjoy straining my understanding of science and engineering to grasp ever more firm bases for the imaginary tech in this story. So if you’re into that sort of thing, here you go:

Spoiler

The previous explanation was that the lantern on the tip of the tail shines a special ULE which is partially reflected by every object around- with that reflection being picked up by the horns.

Even within the very few solid traits I have given ULE, that explanation would not work. Sure, it gives an easily understandable explanation for the reality of what’s happening, but would definitely fall under ‘lies-to-children.’ First issue: ULE on its own does not give off any light, and if it did that would only happen due to conversion from ULE to light. Second, ULE cannot reflect anything due to being pure, unassigned energy that only responds to thoughts directed at it.

 

In ‘reality,’ the mechanism is, of course, more complicated (and not entirely thought out at this point in time since I don’t want to flush out an imaginary branch of intentionally confusing physics).

 

Let's start with the tail. While it does contain ULE with the purpose of acting as a source for a readable response, the ‘light’ it creates is actually the light-speed propagation of the force one packet of ULE exerts on all others (similar to gravity). Almost all ULE existing in matter stays within a certain small band of ‘polarity’ which allows it to maintain its special properties, meaning that any highly sensitive measurement devices tuned to this polarity would be drowned out by noise and effectively made useless outside of isolated environments. 

To get around this, the ULE packet in the tail is modulated between a limited set of theoretically infinite ‘strange’ polarities that act much like how some theories predict strange matter would. When the force of this strange ULE propagates as a setup-wave, a small portion of normal ULE would briefly slip into this much more stable, lower energy polarity and propagate their own force of that polarity- although below the threshold needed to cause this effect in other packets. Almost as soon as this happens, the other packets of ULE would reconvert the strange packet back to the normal level of energy and chaoticness.

 

At the same time that is going on, the horns are each maintaining a set of ULE packets attuned to an arbitrary number of the most recent strange polarities. The increased stability of these states allows for easier reading of the forces exerted on that specific polarity of ULE by the transient packets set up by the tail. As the setup-wave propagates outwards, the directions and magnitude of the force exerted on the monitored packets within each horn also shifts, allowing for the generation of a 3D image. 

 

With this setup, the maximum range, refresh rate, and level of detail are each inversely proportional to the others, while increasing with the available computing power. As range increases, it takes longer for a response to be heard as both the set-up and response waves are limited to the speed of light. Because of this, a specific polarity needs to be monitored for longer, meaning new polarities are listened to less frequently. An increase in available computing power allows for the maintenance of a larger number of unique strange polarities among the horn’s listening packets. If more detail is desired, more power needs to be put into processing the signal before it is sent to Silvia’s brain.

Maximum range and detail are also affected by signal degradation due to an equivalent of the inverse-square law and a higher level of noise as a larger volume being scanned means there is more normal ULE to randomly adopt a currently monitored strange polarity.

 

Final note: don’t let this explanation get your hopes up for the future. If I have an epiphany like this for some other facet of the world I’m building, and can’t naturally integrate it into the story, I’ll add it in an author’s note like this. As I’ve said before, I prioritize writing something new over editing existing chapters, so both blatant and sneaky ret-cons and contradicting explanations are bound to occur. I hope if you either have a much better memory than me or are binge-ing this series, you chalk this up to Silvia giving an inconsistent narration or accept I’m 100% definitely confirmed to be a human and nothing else and thus am capable of making mistakes.

 

Thanks for reading!

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