[MISC] Welcome To The School

[Dave Van Domelen]

			 "Welcome To The School"
	           copyright 2020 by Dave Van Domelen
	  		A Sources of Magic story

=============================================================================

[Now, at The School, and in trouble]

     Various forms of magical destruction rained down randomly around us as I
herded the cluster of little girls towards shelter.  If we'd been an actual
target, I knew we'd all be dead...but even dealing with deflected shots and
outright missed attacks was straining my janky self-taught magic shields.
The boost from my tablet wasn't going to be enough to get us to safety.
     "Susie, I need..."
     "I'm in costume!  I'm PrimaPink!" the girl insisted, briefly ignoring
the hazards to do a quick twirl to show off the frilly pink outfit.
     I really didn't like being responsible for kids.  It's why I'd tried to
stick with university work.  Hell, I didn't even like being responsible for
college students.
     "PrimaPink, I need you to cast your Support on my shield, can you do
that?  And if any of you think you have Support figured out, please help." I
tried to keep the frustration out of my voice.  The handful of rainbow-clad
elementary schoolers didn't deserve any of my snark.
     No, that was ALL reserved for the people who got me into this mess.
     Assuming I survived.  And they did.  
     Not for the first or last time, I really regretted unlocking those
equations....

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[One week ago, somewhere in central Washington]

     I looked around.  No one visible, not that I could see very far outside
the clearing I'd hiked to.  According to my map app, no one lived within an
hour's walk, and everything I'd been able to look up said this area wasn't
particularly popular with either casual hikers or serious ones.  It was as
good as I was likely to get in terms of isolation.  And it was a nice day for
a long walk from the nearest road...a little cool for early autumn, just
enough breeze to keep the bugs moving.
     "Now to see what I can really do..." I muttered, and focused on the
hyper-lattice my research had turned up.
     Slowly, I rose into the air, wobbly but with enough control I didn't
shoot above the treetops.  Bouncing off my office ceiling that first time had
not been fun.  Who knew that deeply contemplating 8-dimensional pure
mathematics would turn out to be the key to magic?  Obviously, not something
I could publish, so I was going to have to change the direction of my
research fast before the tenure clock ran out, but my every instinct screamed
that flying into a department meeting would at best alienate professors who'd
assume I'd rigged some sort of wire-work.  And frankly, I'd read enough bad
comics as a kid to have no desire to be the first superhero or anything along
those lines.  
     No, this was very cool, and maybe someday I'd link enough stuff up to
risk going public, but for now it made for one hell of a hobby.  Might be
worth sounding out a few of the people working in my field, though, see if
any of them are secretly flying around too.
     Carefully, I drifted around the clearing, staying low enough that any
fall would just be embarrassing and not leave me with a broken leg miles from
my car.  
     "Still too wobbly to want to do this indoors, but hey, gotta crawl
before you can run," I mused aloud.
     Landing, I ran through some of the permutations I'd devised in the
lattice.  The real reason for this trip wasn't just to practice flying, it
was to see what some of these other "spells" did.
     "A simple inversion should move everything except me...I hope."
     Concentrating on the revised lattice was difficult.  Hell, any sort of
visualization of higher dimensional constructs gave even the most gifted
abstract mathematicians a headache.
     Nothing seemed to...wait.  I looked down, and saw the grass bending away
from me in all directions.  I relaxed my concentration, and the grass
returned to vertical, aside from gently swaying with the breeze.  "Where's
something I can...ah, there," I picked up a small rock from the edge of the
clearing.
     I tossed the rock up as straight as I could, then focused again.  
     It would have been nice if it had actually bounced, but the fact it
veered sideways when it got close to me was still proof of concept.  I had a
defensive shield.
     "Okay, movement, defense...now to find offense.  Maybe focusing the
shield on a single locus...."
     "I'd strongly advise you not do that, Professor Gray," a woman's voice
came from behind me.
     "Gah!" was my eloquent response as I spun around and fell over on my
backside.  I tried to throw up the shield between us, but I was too rattled.
     "Relax, I'm not here to hurt you.  But if you attempt any destructive
magics, those who would come to hurt you will definitely pick up on your
presence.  You're lucky I was monitoring the Pacific Northwest when you had
your breakthrough," she said as she *drifted* forwards.  The words were meant
to be reassuring, but the hovering was less so.  She looked somewhere in
indeterminate but well-preserved middle age, her hair up in a bun.  She was
dressed like a hiker, but at the moment those hiking boots weren't touching
the ground.
     I decided that the brief indignity of scrambling to my feet would be
worth it, and brushed the grass off my pants as I did so.  "Okay.  You know
magic too.  I guess you're here to recruit me for something?  And sell me on
how someone Not Nice also wants to recruit or maybe kill me?"
     "More or less.  I considered sending an owl, but that joke got old years
ago.  And I'm told it's a bit problematic, too.  My name is Ms. Cerulean, and
I do represent a place where you can learn to properly and safely develop
the mystic powers you have rather," she raised an eyebrow as she looked him
up and down, "unexpectedly developed."
     I frowned.  "What, I don't meet your standards for wizards?"
     She chuckled.  "I'm afraid it's worse than that, unless you're rather
more open-minded than most people.  But let me just ensure our discussion
remains private," she gestured in an arc, blue sparks trailing from her
fingertips, and a crystal dome briefly fell like rain around the clearing,
then vanished from sight.  "There."
     "Nice sparkles, Ms. C."
     "Yes, my divinations...and googling...spoke true.  You are definitely
the model of an antisocial mathematician who uses sarcasm as a defense
mechanism to keep from having to get too close to people.  I'm afraid that
you will need to unlearn some of your defense mechanisms if you're truly to
master your new powers...it is in the nature of your magic to seek friendship
and even love."
     "How do you know what my magic is?  You've seen me cast two spells, and
since I've never heard of you I kind of doubt you're one of the handful of
people who can even start to grasp the mind-bending nature of my research
focus.  And yes, I don't really like people, I barely put up with my teaching
load.  I picked my specialization in part because there's so few people who
know it, so I don't have to deal with crowds at conferences."
     Cerulean sighed.  "Fortunately for me, you're not my responsibility once
I introduce you to The School."  I could actually *feel* the capitalization
of that word.  "You did well to find an entirely new path into magic, but you
clearly aren't one of the handful of people outside of the magical community
who have the right *research focus* to understand the nature of magic," she
threw my own snark back at me.  Ow.  "And most of those we keep a careful eye
on." 
     "Enlighten me.  Elevator pitch."  I crossed my arms, remembered that
doing that was a sign of defensiveness, and uncrossed them.
     She shrugged.  "A long long time ago, magic was everywhere.  Then it
wasn't.  The School is one of the places that guards and guides the handful
of people who reconnect to magic, and we know enough about it that I can in
fact tell what kind of magic you have from casting even a single spell."
     I raised an eyebrow.  "Then it wasn't?  Could you elaborate on that?"
     "I wish I could.  Thousands of years ago, maybe longer, something
happened that locked away most of the magic in the world.  Our best guess is
that this was the price of preventing some horrible fate or binding up a
terrible demon.  It was long enough ago that no archaeological trace remains,
although it's possible that the removal of magic retroactively wiped away its
traces...magic is not bound to the same linear causality as the world we
know."	  
     "No one cast a spell to figure it out?"
     "Many have tried.  Some even survived the process with their sanity
intact.  There are also several very old entities who claim to remember the
time before the calamity, but even the ones not proved to be frauds have been
unreliable and they contradict each other.  So, there used to be magic
everywhere, and nearly everyone could use it to some extent...and then there
wasn't." 
     "But it's not completely gone, or you wouldn't be floating there and I
wouldn't have needed to come out here," I countered.
     "Of course.  But it's like...do you know how to use a slide rule?"
     "Um, no.  I mean, I could figure it out if I wanted to, but why?"
     "Once, in living memory, everyone in your field and related fields knew
how to use them, and owned at least one.  Now, nearly no one does.  In
another generation, there will be almost no one other than collectors who
have them, and fewer who can use them.  It didn't even require a memory-
mangling calamity in that case.  People who can use magic are far rarer than
people who use slide rules, and many started off self-taught in both cases."
     "Right.  So, you came to offer me a spot in a magic school," I failed to
make it sound capitalized, "where I can expand on my skills.  That's going to
interfere with my day job...I don't suppose you have online courses set up?"
     Cerulean shook her head.  "Some are working on something along those
lines, but the warding is the main issue.  No one yet can cast a strong ward
via an internet connection, and it's generally safer to keep everyone inside
The School until they can cast their own wards."
     "I guess I could do a crash course in wards first?  I already figured
out a basic shield spell, I'm sure one of your teachers could give me
pointers on how to improve it...once we got past the field-related jargon
differences, anyway."  I wasn't keen on having to make up an excuse to use
medical leave time, but I was even less keen on the idea of someone showing
up during my class to "recruit" me to a Dark Army or whatever.
     "Your source of power doesn't lend itself to hyperfocus, unfortunately.
You'll need a reasonably balanced course of study at first."
     "Source of power.  You've brought that sort of thing up a few times.
How is my source different?  And...why are you surprised *I* accessed it?"
     "Very roughly speaking, modern humans can unlock magicl power in three
primary ways: Items of Power, Words of Power, and inheritance due to being
descended from one of the few magical survivors of the calamity.  Most of the
Items of Power capable of unlocking magic in an otherwise normal person are
under tight guard...not all of them under *our* guard, unfortunately.  You
can learn to create your own lesser items that help you focus your existing
power, though."
     "I guess I found words of power via higher math?"
     Cerulean chuckled.  "No, you didn't.  Oh, it has happened before,
there's a few names you might recognize from mathematics who accomplished it
and became Wizards.  Your 'spells' would not work for anyone else, the way
Words of Power can, unless they also manage to unlock the deeply dormant
magic you somehow inherited," she smirked ever so slightly.
     "Spill it.  What's so funny about inherited magic?  Does it say
something embarrassing about my ancestors?  I always thought grandpa Joe was
a bit weird."
     "Oh, your grandfather was certainly weird in a mundane way.  No, until
your breakthrough, as far as we knew there was one absolute fact about the
expression of the inherited magical talent...."

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[Five days ago, at The School, location unknown to mundane ken]

     "A school for Magical Girls," I said, disbelievingly, for what must've
been the thousandth time since the encounter in the forest.  Inherited magic
was only expressed in women, and almost always very young women.  Girls.
     No, I wasn't XXY or a transman or anything like that.  Boring cismale
with no uncommon genetic tricks aside from, apparently, magic.  They had a
genetic test for that now, too, and confirmation came in today.  I'd be
talking to some Wizards later on, to see if there was anything at all about
my hyperlattice that was magical, but the admissions people at The School
suspected that it was less the details about my mathematics and more that I
was in the correct state of mind at the time to unlock my...Magical Girl
Powers. 
     "At least we had an opening in faculty housing," a voice came from the
doorway.  "Your situation was enough of a regulatory nightmare without trying
to stick you in the dorms."
     "Oh, hi.  I'm Mark Gray, but you probably already know that.  And you
are...?" 
     "Grant Simpson, I teach elementary math and science here," the skinny
blonde man stuck out a bony hand to shake.  His hair was thinning and he was
showing some wrinkles, but probably wasn't too far over fifty.  
     I shook his hand.  "So, not everyone at The School," I'd figured out how
to say the capital letters, "teaches magic?"
     "Of course not!  We may be hidden from the outside world and answerable
to no mundane authority, but we still think the regular educational standards
are a good idea.  We're not some sort of Hogwarts clone that teaches the
girls magic but leaves them utterly unprepared for life.  Gotta have some
totally mundane trained educators alongside the magic teachers.  Okay, I do
study hermetic magic on the side, but I'm no Wizard, I've never showed even a
glimmer of power.  It's helpful when one of the advanced students needs an
advisor for independent study, though, so I guess I do teach a little magic.
A rare case of 'Those who can't do, teach,' actually being true.  But mostly
it's grade school stuff, like I taught before The School recruited me."
     "Bachelor's or Master's?" 
     "Doctorate of the Arts in Mathematics, although I didn't earn it until I
was a little older than you are now.  A class here, a class there.  My
Master's was in education, though, I wanted to be able to teach at public
schools.  B.A. in Math.  Yes, you may now look down on my credentials, Doctor
Pee-Aitch-Dee Gray," he smiled and stepped out the door, gesturing for me to
follow.
     After I did so and shut the door behind us, he continued, "I'm not just
here to show you around, I'll also be mentoring you in teaching, since you
don't have *my* credentials in that regard."
     "Teaching?  I'm here to learn."
     Grant chuckled and pushed through the outside door.  Wherever The School
was, the weather was magically controlled and the campus gave the impression
of always being nice outside.  "Right, but you only need part of the
curriculum.  Since our students take most of the regular classes their
non-magical peers do, they only spend a few hours a day on magic.  It turns
out that this is about all that can be done safely, trying to increase the
magical courseload puts too much strain on novices.  I'm afraid that applies
to you too...no cramming, you might literally turn your brain inside out.
Especially since brain plasticity goes way down in adulthood, you might find
you need to take it easy compared to the girls.  
     "But since you obviously don't need most of the non-magical courses...
you might want to sit in on some of the Secret History classes...that leaves
you at loose ends most of the day.  And we may be magical, but we're not
miraculous...there's still paperwork and regulations.  It's WAY easier to
'hire' you as a math instructor and let you sit in on the magic classes than
to try to change all the red tape that assumes all students enroll as preteen
girls."
     "So, back to the bottom of the TA totem pole, teaching algebra and
trig?" I sighed.
     "Oh, don't look so glum.  There's actually been interest in a calculus
course for the advanced students, but no one was available to teach it.  I'm
qualified, just too busy.  We can get that going next term, by which time
you'll at least have the experience with this place to avoid student pranks."
     "I don't suppose the gremlins or whatever you unleashed on my
university's computers to justify my 'sabbatical' could find a way to give me
official credit for teaching high school courses?  Might help for the service
component of my tenure."
     Grant shrugged, then opened the door to an ivy-covered building much
like those on the campuses where I had spent much of my 29 years of life.
Dad was a literature professor, so I hung around his campus a lot, especially
after Mom died.  My "teenage rebellion" had been math, not rejection of
academia overall.
     "You might find you like it here better, but I'm sure something can be
arranged.  Might have to be a position at a different school, one where we
have people inside and can pull mundane strings, but I'm sure you won't be
left unemployed if you decide to return to the real world once your training
is complete."
     "That's *really* an option, not just something they tell girls to keep
them from freaking out?"
     Grant stopped as we got inside the foyer.  "The magical life is always
optional.  Never forget that.  We're not stealing children and turning them
into an army, we're helping them learn to protect themselves.  Most of our
graduates go back into the mundane world, complete with convincing diplomas
from a private academy and ample opportunities to take all the standard
entrance exams for college.  Hell, I hear sometimes barely enough stick
around to replace the staff here as they retire.  Yes, we stay in touch with
all our graduates, and a few of them actually form very very secret
'superhero' teams, but they're all able to keep themselves hidden from
unwanted attention before they leave."
     "They're...we're stuck here until graduation?  That's gotta suck for the
little ones," I frowned.  "What about the ward Ms. Cerulean put on me after
we met?"
     "Oh, no.  It's not that bad," Grant reassured me.  "Like you said,
people can be warded externally.  Those last a couple weeks before needing a
refresh, enough for students to go home for visits and holidays.  There's
even talismen students can sign out if they need to be gone for longer than a
ward will last, although they have to be worn at ALL times, which can be
inconvenient.  It's no worse than any other exclusive boarding school that
has summer classes.  But no one can safely leave for good until they learn
how to maintain their own wards and refresh them regularly."
     "So, if I show a knack for the hiding magics, I could get out early and
do the rest of my studies over the summers?"
     "Anything's possible, I guess," Grant nodded.  "I mean, you're already
an impossible student, no reason to do six impossible things before
graduation.  Anyway, this is the main lecture building.  The pedagogy is a
bit behind the times, but at least it's no longer stuck in the 19th Century
like it was when I started here."
     "Teacher offices in here too?"
     "Some.  Mostly some common prep spaces.  This building is mostly the
elementary and middle school programs, only the faculty who teach exclusively
at those levels generally have private offices here, like me.  The rest of
the mundane faculty share space with the high school classrooms.  You might
need to share an office there at first with our other newbie, but whenever we
have to move the school they tend to add rooms as needed.  Usually after
graduation."
     "Move...the school?" I blinked.  I think I blinked audibly, like a
cartoon character.
     "Yeah.  This is a hidden place, but no concealment is perfect.
Eventually clues add up, and those who'd like to get in unannounced can
figure out where we are and how to get in.  Annual moves have kept us safe
for decades, and it's not like anyone enters or leaves by mundane means
anyway.  If you need to go visit family in Washington, the doorway will let
you out somewhere convenient.  Oh, and it's important to secure all your
personal effects before a move, so they don't get left behind or accidentally
moved inside a wall or something.  Anyway, the magic teachers are in the
heavily reinforced building over there," Grant pointed at a structure visible
through the foyer windows.  "That's actually our next stop.  Before you can
start any magic learning, you need to be fitted for your...uniform."
     "PLEASE tell me I won't have to wear a sailor suit and skirt," I
groaned.  
     "No guarantees, but I agree that no one needs to see that...."

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[Two days ago, Prima Class afternoon session]

     Miss Vermillion gestured to me as I stood awkwardly at the front of the
room.  Her long blazing red hair suited her name, and like Cerulean I
suspected she'd changed her name to match her old Magical Girl persona.  Now,
though, despite the almost anime-red hair, she gave off more of a wholesome
"schoolmarm" vibe.  "Class, this is Professor Gray, I told you about him
yesterday.  Some of you may have him in your math classes eventually, but
he's sitting in on our classes to learn how to use his own magical powers."
     To their credit, none of the girls asked anything adorably mortifying
like, "How come he's a Magical Girl if he isn't a girl?"  I suppose Miss
Vermillion had explained all of that yesterday.  The girls weren't all the
same age, Grant had told me that the magic classes weren't connected to the
mundane cohorts.  Prima was all the first year students, regardless of age.
Sometimes there were teenagers in Prima, but this batch all looked to be
elementary school kids.  Graduation to Secunda or Tertia usually happened at
the end of the year along with mundane promotion, but particularly talented
kids could apply for magical rank early.  I intended to be particularly
talented.  After Tertia, they tended to have unique "classes" named by
whatever students qualified that year.  The newest advanced class was Team
Smile, for instance.  Graduating Tertia was enough to leave the school,
though, so the advanced classes tended to be a little smaller.  Bigger than
I'd expected, but a lot of the girls wanted to graduate high school with
their friends even if they weren't interested in learning more magic.
     "Professor Gray, as a reminder, we use regular names when in regular
clothing, but use codenames during uniform exercises.  For example, Karen
here is called PrimaBlue when in uniform."
     "If SecundaBlue doesn't get into Tertia this year, I might have to
change my color," Karen frowned.  "That's bad luck."
     Miss Vermillion smiled and shook her head.  "Yoriko is coming along
nicely, I'm sure the SecundaBlue slot will be open when you're ready for it,
Karen."
     "But she's sooooo bad in the classes we're in together," Karen
grumbled.  I sympathized...being held back by classmates was an all too
frequent part of my own gradeschool experience.
     "What's your color?" a girl with pink ribbons in her hair asked me.
     "Gray, like my name."
     Before the dubious expressions of the class could erupt into objections,
Miss Vermillion added, "Because his situation is quite unusual, we felt he
might not resonate with any of the traditional Colors.  But he does resonate
with his own name, which is sort of a color, so the Sorting Committee decided
he would be PrimaGray.  This also means that if he progresses at a different
speed from the rest of you, he doesn't have to worry about being held up by
anyone or holding anyone else up later," she added with a look at Karen.
     I had strong suspicions that the art teacher on the committee had pushed
hard for my codename too, for the pun value.  Primer Gray indeed.
     "While there's many things that make him different from your fellow
Primas, he draws from the same wellspring of magic you all do.  Right now,
he's having to catch up on about a month's worth of material, so please be
patient with him.  And just because he can fly on his own does not mean you
can yet," she fixed me with a look that pretty much said, "Do not taunt them
by flying, or I will make things very difficult for you."  Ah, the Teacher
Glare.  I'd been its target many times in my life, but hadn't mastered it
myself, which made my service classes particularly wearying.
     "Now, if Professor Gray will take his seat, we can resume our lesson on
Support Magic," Miss Vermillion nodded me towards a fortunately adult-sized
desk that had been moved into the room for my benefit.  This was all going to
be full enough of humiliation without trying to squeeze into or sit on top of
a tiny desk.
     "Support Magic may not seem exciting, but it's one of the simplest *and*
most versatile ways you can use your magic," Vermillion continued as I sat
down and started skimming the current material on the enchanged tablet I'd
been provided.  The mundane classes might still lag a bit on the latest
advances, but they took the magic classes seriously.  It was essentially a
late model tablet augmented magically to act as a very minor Item of Power.
Actual wands and stuff had to be earned during Tertia, but the tablet did a
decent job.  I'd tried it out in my apartment, and it made flying a lot
easier.
     "Sometimes mocked with terms like 'Care Bear Stare,' you shouldn't put
it down...what you're doing is lending your strength to a teammate so that
their magic is stronger.  You will all eventually choose one or more
specialties, very few Magical Girls are good at everything, just like no one
is good at all mundane skills.  But you can still help out at any task by
using Support Magic to help your teammate do what she...or he...does best."
     Oh, that awkward pronoun recovery wasn't going to happen every day for
the foreseeable future, nooooo.

	       *	      *		     *		    *

[Fifteen minutes ago, Practice Grounds Five]

     "Okay, make sure you're all spaced out enough," Miss Vermillion gestured
at spots marked on the field.  I tried to ignore the ominous scorch marks
here and there.  Especially the ones I'd been responsible for.  "When you're
ready, focus on your Color and reach deep inside for your magic.  Don't worry
if you fail to transform right away, this is why we practice."
     Oh, last practice had been fun, and I meant that in the most sarcastic
way possible.  This was one part of Magical Girl life that popular media
actually got mostly right.  Summoning our uniforms externalized our magical
power in a rather intense light show...but energy is energy, and it could get
out of hand at times.  They don't usually show Glitter Green detonating
nearby cars when she transforms.  Fortunately, none of the other Primas had
enough raw power to do more than burn the grass.  My fail had been rather
more...spectacular.
     "The uniform doesn't just look pretty, it protects you from harm and
helps you focus your other magic, so it's worth doing.  If you can't hold it
on your own, that's okay too.  Like I told you in the classroom, maintaining
your uniform is like using your muscles.  At first you get tired quickly, but
with exercise comes endurance.  You don't realize you can walk for hours
until you do it," she gave me a little grin.  Apparently everyone on staff
knew I'd hiked out to the middle of nowhere the day I got recruited.
     Mutters of "pink pink pink pink" or "bluuuuueee..." filled the practice
field.  I'd analyzed my megafail and was pretty sure I could keep using
mathematics as a focus.  But the construct I'd come up with last night didn't
seem to be getting me anywhere.  At least I wasn't putting a divot in the
turf.
     Then someone else put a divot in the turf.
     "No!" Vermillion shouted, looking up.  I followed her gaze, and saw
several distant winged figures.  "Everyone, this is what the drills are for.
FORCE TRANSFORM!" she gestured with her sceptre and suddenly we were all in
uniform.  
     "Ow," I winced.  It felt like someone had forcibly shoved me into a
tuxedo, and some of the girls actually cried out.  Fortunately, my uniform
did have more in common with a tuxedo than with the frilly skirts the other
Primas wore.  More like a gray jumpsuit with some tuxedo styling here and
there, and a cross between a cape and coattails.
     "Sorry, but you need all the protection you can get.  Professor Gray,
can I trust you to get the students to the shelters?" she asked.
     "Um, I think so?  There haven't been any drills, and I've been busy
catching up on my lessons, but I think I know where that is.  Does this sort
of thing happen a lot?" I gestured at the wheeling attackers, who had been
joined by several of the teachers in a magical dogfight.
     "Almost never!" she replied frantically.  "Either someone got lucky and
found a flaw in the shields, or we have a...not your problem.  SHIMMER
VERMILLION!" she shouted, transforming into an absolutely no-nonsense combat
rig that bore very little resemblance to the frilly outfits of my fellow
Primas.  It was more like something Tony Stark would invent, but without a
full helmet.  The little skull clip holding her hair back into a ponytail was
a touch disturbing, though.  "I need to get up there, you need to get them to
the shelter!"  Tapping the side of her brilliant red and copper headpiece,
she shouted, "Vermillion online!  Where ya need me?" and took to the air.
     "All right, everyone, you've done the drills, right?" I asked, trying to
not wince as another bolt of energy landed nearby.
     There was a chorus of frightened uh-huhs, although I was a little
concerned by the combative look on Karen's face.  
     "Okay, lead the way, I'll shield us."  I'd typed my shield formulas into
my tablet too, and they still worked pretty well, even if my transformation
formula was a bust.  The air shimmered slightly as a dome appeared around us,
stronger than my first try back in the forest, but I knew it was still barely
apprentice level work.

     And that brings us back to the present, with what I can only assume is
hellfire raining down at random, combined with rainbow colored friendly fire.
They weren't kidding about not building a magical army here, there was no
real unit discipline...just a lot of Magical "Girls" ranging from about my
age to positively grandmotherly mixing it up in aerial combat with what I
guess were demons.  I'd read that they did monthly faculty combat training,
but like any "weekend warriors" it only went so far.
     It felt like forever, but it was probably only a few minutes before we
reached the warded doorway and entered the bunker.  Other students and
mundane faculty milled about nervously inside.
     "Ah, you weren't caught out in it?" Grant greeted me.  Several of the
Primas clung to him...I was still almost a stranger, but he taught all of
them math and science.
     "Oh, we were out in it, all right.  But PrimaPink and PrimaGreen here
are very good at Support Magic, and they let my sh...not very good shield
spell stand up to a couple of stray shots, including some rather un-friendly
friendly fire," I tried to smile reassuringly.  More quietly, I added, "I
take it there aren't a lot of course hours spent on looking behind what we
shoot at?"
     Grant sighed.  "There's rather a lot of it, actually.  But how many
partial differential equations can you solve without reference right now?
Use it or lose it.  A few of the teachers spent some time in a combat team,
but most of them are more landlubber than sailor scout."
     "Vermillion said this sort of thing never happens, but this bunker seems
in good shape, lots of signs of use."
     "Oh, regular drills.  Plus we tend to use them during promotion exams,
just in case someone tries a spell too powerful to control.  We lost part of
the old gymnasium that way a year after I got here.  But actual attacks?
Never saw one myself.  I looked it up, the last time anything hostile got
inside was 1958, and that was a scrying spell that formed a pathway for the
thing it was observing."
     Suddenly every tablet and phone in earshot pinged.
     "All clear," someone behind me said.
     I looked at my tablet.  "Hey, what does this symbol mean?  I don't
recognize it from the tutorial."
     Before Grant could answer, a girl who I guessed by appearance was
TertiaYellow sighed, "Emergency School relocation.  Reloc always screws up
internet for days even when it's a scheduled move.  Fffrosting," she caught
herself as she realized she was the center of attention for both younger
students and teachers.  And the weirdo in the gray uniform.
     "Well, can I hope that my second week will be boring by comparison?" I
smiled wanly.
     "DON'T JINX IT!" several Tertias and Primas shouted all at once.

===========================================================================

Author's Notes:

     Yes, "...Hope You Survive The Experience!" is the implied subtitle to
this story.

     This started as a dream, in which I was the viewpoint character.  I
decided that trying to just write it up as-is would come across as creepy and
Gary-Stu-ish, so I set it aside.  But after a few days, I decided that I
could keep the core premise but shift enough details to take some of the edge
off of my own objections.  And I really wanted to get some version of the
story out onto the page.  
     The basic premise was "STEM professor accidentally finds magic, but it's
Magical Girl magic and he has to go to Magical Girl School, but at least he
can work as a teacher during the time not spent learning magic.  The school
is attacked during his first week and he has to use his janky self-taught
magic to get a bunch of little girls to safety."  Also, I distinctly recall
saying to the elementary math teacher showing me the large lecture halls that
while I didn't think much of their pedagogy, at least they tried to cover
regular classes and it wasn't "some Harry Potter ****."  Yes, in addition to
all the other "JKR is problematic as hell" stuff going around lately, I also
find her vision of Hogwarts to be deeply offensive on a PROFESSIONAL level.

     Disclaimer, most of what I know about the Magical Girl genre is second
and third hand, from social media posts (meme-heavy), some inspired-by
stories (Princess Holy Aura by Ryk Spoor, Jade Street Protection Agency from
Black Mask), skimming the Glitter Hearts TTRPG, and watching maybe eight
episodes of the "Glitter Force" translation of one season of Precure (which I
am informed is an injoke heavy partial deconstruction of Precure in a similar
way to how Power Ranger RPM treated the super sentai genre).  "There used to
be magic, and then something horrible happened" does seem to show up a lot in
the source material and derived material I've read.  Anyway...my grounding in
the genre is skewed at best, albeit better informed than I ever expected to
be.

     Ms. Cerulean doesn't have any particular inspiration other than "the
brainy one" (I think the blue magical girl tends to be the smart one, but I
may be wrong) and she's basically The School's talent scout.  Or one of them,
anyway.  She's big on divination magic, but doesn't have global range so she
has to travel around keeping a third eye open for any emerging powers.  While
she might notice a Words of Power breakthrough, her spells are very focused
on the inherited Magical Girl power type.
     Grant Simpson is pretty much right out of my dream, including the "has
no magic but likes to study hermetic wizardry" bit.  The name I made up when
writing this story...my dreams tend to not have a lot of named characters, at
best location names like chain stores.
     Miss Vermillion was definitely on one of the secret Sailor Scout or
Pretty Cure teams after graduation.  Her inspiration is "What of Yokho from
Gurren Lagann was in a magical girl show instead of a super robot shot?"
Maybe a little "PowerPuff Girl Blossom grown up" as well.
     Mark Gray himself leans a bit on stereotypes of Pure Mathematicians as
seen by physicists, I'm afraid.  With bits and pieces of professors I've had
classes with or worked alongside.  His snark comes mostly from a math major
friend of mine in college (who was also in some of my Champions campaigns,
including the original Academy of Super-Heroes campaign).  Not liking to
teach was one of the ways I differentiated Mark from me, as I do like to
teach.  Not sure I'd want to teach elementary school students, though.  I
resisted the temptation to have him know too many SF/comics references that I
know, so passed up a few opportunities to do so in the story (such as Johnny
Quick, or the Asmiov story about a guy who learned to negate gravity and
essentially flew into a faculty meeting while denying he was doing anything
unusual).  I tried to avoid real math terminology, but I might have
accidentally jargoned together some actual things people in Pure Math work
on, for which I apologize.

     Anyway, getting this written got most of my thoughts on the topic out
onto the screen.  It had better have, given how much exposition there is!  At
the moment, I don't really see anything else I need to write in this setting
(and I really should get my ASH arc finished one of these years), but if
you'd like to write stories set in this world, drop me a line.  I guess if it
becomes relevant, the "imprint" is Sources of Magic, or SoM.  While no one
brought it up on screen, Wizards aren't exclusively male, but it's like STEM
fields...traditionally male-dominated.  A few generations ago, female Wizards
were assumed to be weird Magical Girls, but they're gaining more respect and
recognition now, especially since they test negative for the Magical Girl
Gene.  (Yes, this is still a sore point in the magical community.  For the
longest time it was assumed there was a hard gender divide, like in Molly
Ostertag's Witch Boy series.  Mark isn't the first to challenge that in
general, but he is the first to do so from the Magical Girl side.)