Mitsuko turns out to be a pretty quick learner, and while she hadn’t really done much manipulation-level magic, her perception is pretty decent, which makes up for it. The bigger issue is her lack of science education, but that is to be expected from someone her age. She thinks the concepts sounds familiar, and disappear into a room, returning with a school book.

She flips through it before finding what she’s looking for, handing it to me in the beginning of a chapter. I can’t read it, though. And besides, while it’s commendable that she’s read ahead to see what she’ll learn about through the year, the book won’t really help, since I’ll just teach her the bits she needs to know anyway. Which is mostly just the practical effects of a few physical laws.

That said, I still make her read the headings and bullet point lists to me and tell her which ones sound relevant for this, in case she wants to study later. After that I move on to mana perception, both passive and active. She struggles with the active part, as it requires her to directly control her mana, but picks it up pretty quickly.

Though not far enough to fully have it down before her mother interrupts and says dinner is ready in five minutes. Oh well.

“After this the next part would be to practice mana manipulation, which I suggest you do by sending out some mana and shaping it to mimic small objects. Once you can do that well enough to dispel the Understanding spell, we could move on to aspect magic, and with how fast you learn, you could probably learn -very- basic shapeshifting in about an hour.”

“” Her mother says. “”

“Well, that depends. I’d like to get something to eat myself, but I could return in an hour for another session of-” what time is it? Oh it’s that much “-two to three hours.”

A quick discussion later I agree to return in an hour and a half, and I’ll probably stay even if it becomes a bit later than initially planned, provided the client want that, of course. I think she’ll be able to learn aspect magic in that time, though. It’s pretty straightforward once you can shape mana, and people seem to pick that up quickly when I control their mana to do so.

Reina suggest I eat at their cafe, but I decline, stating that I want to eat japanese. I have a suspicion the small place she points me to belongs to a relative or a friend or something, but whatever, the karaage is great.

Since I have almost an hour left after eating, I take to the sky to continue exploring Tokyo from above. I’ve already made a rough map of the various parts of the city, or at least a few districts that are notable from above, and worked my way outwards in a spiralling path, a couple hundred meters above most buildings.

I’ve gotten quite far out over these few days, not that I take long to just scout an area from the air, and even had the foresight to not dive and fly between the buildings, since that might get me in trouble. I mean, I’m pretty sure they have no law forbidding such, as their laws haven’t quite caught up to the fact that people can fly yet, but no need to be the reason why one gets made.

Eventually I reach a rough-looking area with what appears to be abandoned buildings and unfinished building projects, though I don’t know if I’m technically in (or above) the city anymore. Either way, the low buildings, and lack of variation lets me fly a lot lower, and I do a quick air-blast under my wing to roll out of the way of a magical projectile.

Oh wait, fuck, I hope I didn’t hit anyone with that!

Circle down and, woah, another one? Okay, if someone is actually trying to harm me, then I’ll play along and return fire. One lazy turn later the assailant -or assailants- step out from their cover and launch some spells at me.

I dodge by yanking myself diagonally towards the ground with force, which proves redundant as the glowing beacons of mana are easily unraveled and dissipated.

With my body vertical, I bring my wings back, one, two, four, five, no, six, people, of which three attacked. You guys get off easy.

I do a powerful flap to complete the theatrics, sending three bright orbs to impact the ground next to the people I didn’t see attack, while three heating bolts home in on and impact the attackers. Upon impact, I weave a secondary spell and use the remaining energy to give them a great big shove, knocking two off them off their feet.

That’s when one of the people I intentionally missed scream and turn to run away from the little orb next to him. Run away from the glowing orb? Good idea. They’re not gonna do anything, but they don’t know that.

For absolutely no reason whatsoever I pick the one who managed to stay on his, no, her, feet to land next to, magically creating a small blast of air as I hit the ground harder than I usually would, then shapeshift away my wings and put a still taloned finger at her forehead. As the cherry on top, I also magically pressure everyone.

“Schakk. Ma’t.”

Her body goes completely rigid and her eyes dilate, then gravity catches up and she falls on her butt.

“Keh keh keh.” Now this is an appropriate moment for a slightly unhinged, evil (or at least chaotic neutral), laughter.

Maybe a bit too much, though. Naw, in this kinda situations ‘too much’ would be actually causing harm and/or making someone piss themselves. So I just keep staring at her, snapping my head, and a glowing hand, towards anyone that moves.

The girl mumbles ‘You… something bird…’ ‘you said it was just a bird!’ or something like that? Oh yeah, let’s borrow their understanding.

I easily connect to half of them, but the other half, one spectator and the two other attackers protect themselves.

“Huh.” I guess I should’ve expected them to have at least this skill, given that they managed to send spells all the way up to where I was flying. I mean, now that I think about it, the first ones were outside my mana range, so either they are stronger than me in that regards or I wanna learn the trick.

“” Replies attacker #1

“Oi, I take offense to that.” I speak in plain english.

“”

“He talks, yes. Tell me, how did you manage to get your spells all the way up to me?”

“What’s it sayin’?” Asks attacker #2, who seems to be growing less afraid of me and more belligerent. Didn’t pay attention in english class? Well, every anime school has its delinquents, I guess these guys are that kind of crowd?

“It’s speaking english.”

Astute observation, girl, I’ll relieve you of the pressure for that.

She visibly relaxes and breathes in, then tenses up, closing up her body with a yelp.

“” Attacker #1 exclaims, making to march against me.

Even a stare doesn’t stop him, so I get more physical and hold him back with force.

“I just relieved her of the pressure and-”

I sniff the air. That smell… it’s slightly…

“Ooh.” Now she peed herself. Something about flags… “Great.”

I kneel and bow my head. “Gomenasai.”

The others should understand that, with or without the spell, but for the next part I enclose us in a sound barrier.

“I’m… sorry, I didn’t- I-”

I look between the others, scratching the back of my head. Ahh, talons are great for that. #1 looks slightly confused, but is still struggling against my magic, #2 just looks really confused, and the spectators have gotten together and seem to be whispering to each other. Or talking, I wouldn’t know.

“Look, I know a magic to, err, dry things. It’s not perfect, and it won’t really clean you, but it can probably make it less visible?”

“What are you- are you help me? Why?”

“I’m Lars Eikeli. The others can’t hear us right now. And I’m using a spell on you and two of those over there,” I point with my thumb, “to understand japanese, in addition to the few words I know. I reacted on instinct to the first spell, and then I played along. You should understand me better as well, by the way.”

#1 has realized he can’t fight it with physical force, and I have to use more and more mana to maintain the bindings.

“Your boh- that guy is about to come charging over here, want me to dry it or not?”

She looks to the ground, or -following her eyes-, to the slightly dark patch of her knee-length skirt, then at me and nods weakly. It’s not pure water, but I can manipulate it just as much, so I draw it away from her clothes and evaporate the water with a combination of heat and forcefully changing it into a gas with aspects.

“Tzank you…” she mutters.

Just in time, too, as her- the guy breaks loose. So I let go of the sound barrier and reach out a hand to the girl. Hmm, the result is pretty well hidden. I suspect it will feel icky, but at least she doesn’t embarrass herself in front of her friends. Er, I don’t think that’s within normal human smell limits? Unless they go down on her or something, but at that point it’s really not my problem.

With her back on her feet I take a step back and hold up my hands in the ‘calm down’ pose.

To my surprise she barely spares him a glancy before turning to one of the spectators and ask someone by name if ‘Ehhhkli’ is that person they like so much.

The girl she referred to answers ‘yes’ without even thinking. Realization strikes a moment later, and she utters my name, pronouncing it far better than her friend, or most people I’ve met here for that matter.

I have a fangirl, apparently. I have fans, of course, normals fans of something that I happen to be the creator of, that may or may not be female, but she actually goes full fangirl. As interesting as it might be to chat, I check my watch and realize the time, so after telling them to not randomly attack animals (or people), and the fangirl that I will be in japan tomorrow too, I return my wings and to the sky.

Halfway through my takeoff I realize knowing that I’m still in japan tomorrow doesn’t really help her get in touch, but it would be awkward to turn around so sucks to be her, I guess.

I get back to the cafe with some time to spare, so I order a smoothie while I wait. When she comes back with the drink, the maid-waitress asks if I’m here to speak with Kuramoto again, and yeah, I am. Before the agreed upon time, and more importantly, before I finish the smoothie, Mitsuko comes to pick me up, so I pay and drink up.

“Sorry about the delay, I thought I might as well get something to drink while I waited.”

“”

She takes me back to their apartment and we immediately get to the point and before I know it she has good enough control over her mana to dispel my mind spells. Even then, I manage to get past her defences a few times before she know how to fully stop me from affecting her.

“You’re doing great! Now I’ll teach you aspect magic. Remember how I made you wrap your mana around things? Observe.”

Still mana linked, I draw on a bit of her, but mostly my own mana around my ears, attuning the mana to the Cat aspect, and apply it, making the pointier and furrier.

“However, this requires you to have some understanding, some affinity, for the aspect you’re using, and you gain that by observing it, in this case in a cat, and using it. There’s no cats here, but the elemental aspects are easier to learn anyway. They are… less useful on your own body, though.”

I illustrate by fully taking on the water aspect on my body below the chest and shoulders, causing my arms and legs to turn slightly blue and semi-transparent, then seemingly into water.

“Eeek!” she ‘shouts’ in mock horror, closing her legs.

So I split my arms into several tentacles. “What?”

Her eyes go big and she actually scrambles backwards, I return to normal and repeat myself; “What?”

“”

“No, I turned partially into a water elemental that could do a job application for an ecchi or ‘H’ work. And it’s just physically, I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

“Oh.”

“Well, maybe if a lady-friend wanted it.”

Oh, that was too much, she’s beet red.

“*Ahem* Moving on…”

We don’t even need the full two hours before she’s good enough that I bring out some animal puppets for her to learn from. Puppets aspects always feel a bit… artificial to me. It’s not like the aspects I base them on is wrong or anything it’s just… No I guess it’s too ‘correct. I can make a dog which is like, just Dog. But a normal dog wouldn’t be just Dog. It would be 99% Dog with hundreds of tiny and small imperfections and other aspects.

Makes puppets great to learn from, though, and by the time our lessons are done she can shapeshift both herself and me (as long as I let her, anyway; otherwise my mana will reject hers), and have somewhat picked up aspects for both cats and dogs, as well as some of their evolutionary cousins. What that means is that I don’t have to shapeshift her; she can do that herself when she goes to work.

I make sure to warn her that she should be careful which parts and how she shapeshifts, though; the brain for one you probably want to never touch, but even other changes can be potentially dangerous if not compatible with the rest of your body (like giving yourself too weak lungs or heart), or affect in in more subtle ways, with hormones and whatnot.

So I get paid and pack up and leave promising to come back in the afternoon to check up on them and hear her impressions. I don’t have much scheduled, just a few continuations and meetings that had to be moved.

The big one is Moriyu, and I head to them after a knocking out couple smaller tasks. Since I don’t have anything I particularly need to do I end up hanging out with the chief engineer and we, somewhat unplanned, make a scale model of their mecha, complete with experimental prototype versions of the power systems and such.

That means it will be the strongest scale model mecha in the entire show, obviously, and that little joke gets a hearty guffawing laughter from the man.

When I eventually have to leave, we’ve made a few iterations, and even made them able to be remotely controlled via mind magic. I suggest they can sell something like this as battle toys, but he struggles to do anything beyond just keeping it upright, so the new user friendliness needs some work. I guess it’s easier for me with all my experience with various forms and puppets - with a tiny body you have a different relationship to the laws of physics.

It’s a good idea, though, if they/we can refine the control a bit. Uh, a lot. The target demographic should be able to pick one up and learn to do something fun within probably one hour, but they can still be hard to master, especially if you want robo fighting tournaments.

When I enter the maid cafe I am greeted by the sight of waitresses that are split about fifty-fifty between plain human and some degree of kemo. Some of them even have tails, meaning they went through the effort of modifying their uniforms to work with them. Most of them, unlike that girl over there keep pushing down her tail to stop it from lifting her skirt.

“Hello, Lara!”

“Hi, Mitsuko. You seem to be doing well?”

They are doing well indeed; the place is a lot more full now than yesterday. That’s some terrifying speed of advertisement. Or maybe word of mouth; I see a lot of the same school uniforms on the customers. At any rate, I give them a few tips and experiences from modifying clothes for nonstandard forms, having to start from the beginning after a few sentences as both Mitsuko and another waitress, with droopy dog ears and a long-furred tail, bring out their notepads to take my order, uh, write down my tips.

Well, seeing how they seem happy I pull out my phone to call her grandmother for that juicy bigger contract, but as I find her number I get a call which I accidentally accept. Well, it’s Thomas, my handler/the military contact back home, so I would probably take it anyway.

“Ye’hllo, Eikeli here.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Japan.”

“…”

“I’m in japan. I’m flying back home tonight, is there something important?”

“So you’re not with the wolfkin?”

“Nah.”

There’s a short pause.

“Some of the wolfkin have entered the city.”

“And?”

“They’ve entered the city!”

“Yes, I heard that, but is that a problem? Are they, y’know’ doing anything they shouldn’t?”

“Not yet, they’re just… walking.”

“Well, don’t make it a problem, then. If Tåke or some of the other leaders are among them they can understand speech. Just don’t use complex words or concepts. Just send a police officer to them and ask what they’re doing here.”

I take a moment to breathe.

“Or just follow them and tell them to stop if they’re about to do something bad. They’re not stupid, and the more learned ones will recognize a police uniform; even most others will know ‘stop’.”

So there’s that; in the end it seems like they will send two officers, ask them what they’re doing, and ask if they can come with them. If I understand the wolfkin correctly there’s a certain chance they won’t do anything until after questioning the officer(s) though.

“Sorry about that. Uhh, where were we?”

I, my phone, call…

“”

“Ahh yes, thanks.”

The call is quick and to the point, and an hour later I have a written contract that essentially gives them licence to teach their employees shapeshifting and use it in their business, and in return I will get both an upfront payment, and a certain percentage of their increased profits the first year, for the the next five years.

I spend the rest of the day sightseeing and looking around to see if there’s any souvenirs I’d like to bring back to my family. I end up buying a small plastic bag worth of japanese candy, and that’s it.