Blue Archive: Clock Tower Trinity [OC-Insert] [Blue Archive/Nasu]

[Nihilo]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NS3jDtntpooWGX5Rp9DBq7OgYXGURdQmrwJ4oWzj5Aw/edit

 

[Nihilo]

Learning Magecraft With Fukajo-Sensei! [Canon Omake]

Another day, another lesson for the Applied Magecraft Club, only recently official thanks to Chie's insistence on filing the relevant paperwork. Their clubroom, such as it is, isn't much more than a leased study room recessed into one of Trinity's many basements. Kaika personally prefers her dorm room, but having and using the clubroom is apparently a requirement and it isn't worth raising a fuss about.

"Alright, yesterday we finished the fundamentals and with that safety protocol test fresh on your minds, it is the perfect time to introduce you to one of the things I want you to treat like a live bomb." Kaika says with a smile belying deep, deep irritation at the topic at hand. A snap of her fingers and Paimon projects a handful of disjointed symbols on the blackboard, the demonic VI making sure they hold no real power. "Welcome to the crash course on Egyptian hieroglyphics."

Hantei, Kinben, and Chie sit at the old desks provided for them, notebooks at the ready. Chie and Dachi hum happily, smartphone at the ready to record the coming show. The pair of enforcers pay rapt attention, suddenly treating this lesson VERY seriously.

"To reiterate, I do not want you to interact with this at all if you can help it. I'm only teaching you enough to identify and, if worst comes to worst, stabilize it if you can't just get me or one of my kids." Kaika says with her hands splayed, this bears repeating. "I cannot overstate this, it's the most volatile, hateful warding and curse system I know. Part of Atlas' service to the broader Mage's Association is ensuring the mistakes made with it throughout Africa remain quarantined."

There was also the mother of all mad scrambles to keep the goddamn british mundanes from dooming them all in their eagerness to grind mummies into snuff powder, but that was outside today's lesson.

Hantei and Kinben stare at the picture for a moment. They share a look, and their hands shoot skyward immediately. "Kaika-senpai? Is there a way to tell, at a glance, when hieroglyphics do or don't have a spell attached to them?"

"I was getting to that, but yeah. It's actually really easy to tell due to how they all interact with the noosphere. I will teach you a very simple trick that barely even rates as a curse to tell if you're in range of one and where it is, although it isn't infallible." The magus says, before massaging the bridge of her nose. Divine spirits deliver her from the nonsense that the Egyptians cooked up. "Okay, SO, the fundamental nature of the Egyptian system is that of the meme theory. Every time you read, write, recite or hear a segment while you're in its range? It siphons your ideation to grow stronger, but only the parts being interacted with. Which is how you can locate it, you set a tiny curse that's just a blob of light drawn to anything that feeds on ideation and watch where it goes. You already know how noosphere daisy chaining works, so I shouldn't need to tell you, but–"

"Isolate, isolate, isolate." Her students chant by rote.

"Exactly. While the ancient tombs could encompass enough territory to ensure nearby settlements kept on fuelling the damn things, anything that isn't a massive complex is going to top out at a radius of ten kilometers. If it's just a vessel rather than a chamber, it shouldn't go further than a tenth of that." The impromptu sensei says with a smile, "Now, this is very much someone's search for an easy empowerment system dooming an entire culture to playing with fire and live snakes whenever they want to use their system. The only way to make it work is to have mental simulation capabilities that'd make Atlas green with envy. Can I get some guesses as to why?"

Chie raises her hand excitedly. "Because you can't check your own work?"

"Yyyyep. You have to write everything in one sitting without reading back, otherwise you'd activate incomplete or decoupled parts. So you need to get everything figured out in your head from the start, but it gets worse." Kaika says with the slightly manic grin of someone warming up for a rant, "Not only do you need to account for everything from the the meaning of an individual symbol to the sentences they form to the wider narrative, you need to account for any given coherent part of it being repeated without the others and thus gain power above the others. The only way around this is to weave a flawless regulator network throughout the whole thing on top of whatever you're trying to accomplish, so the load is distributed. Even that won't help you if you don't consider the full implications of it gaining power endlessly, there are still sectioned off parts of Egypt to this day because improperly planned 'get lost' curses mangled the fabric of space beyond human repair. Back in the day gods could help, but with their retreat to the Reverse… they aren't going anywhere unless either Counter Force takes issue."

Kinben and Hantei pale, scribbling furiously into their notebooks. Chie glances at the pair in concern, and Dachi chirps in worry. Kaika continues, absorbed in her lecture.

"Here's what I want you to do if you ever find something done in this style. Step one is covering it up so nobody reads it, the brain can't help but see symbols and try to process them and that's enough for it. That's why I'm going to teach you how to read them, it does feed it more but you know how to shield your ideation to make up for the difference, so it's better if you have an idea of what you're dealing with. Step two is using that trick I mentioned to see if it is active, I will also teach you how to make the blob of light give you a sign of whether it is active and most importantly if it is stable. From there it depends. If it isn't active, double check with structural analysis and, once you have them, your mystic phones and VIs to make completely sure. If it is active but stable, you immediately evacuate everyone from its range. After that, ideally you should just call me or one of my kids in, but if needs must use either a camera drone or your own phones to take some photos blind and check it over outside the range. If it is active and unstable, one of you sends an emergency message and the other gets to work on these sequences to siphon and diffuse the ideation and any magic energy it may have gotten its hands on. As for how to gauge the magic energy levels, we covered that two weeks ago, but to give a quick refresher…"

Paimon obligingly displays the requisite data.

The speed and density of the information on offer is almost overwhelming. However, Hantei and Kinben are too focused on taking notes to ask Kaika to slow down. It isn't until Nother pulls on her shirt that she notices the issue.

"Whoops, sorry. Okay, let me go over it slower this time. And feel free to interrupt me with questions, as always." The magus says, pale complexion making her blush stand out like a flare.

"Can we really afford to interrupt you, though? These lessons are EXTREMELY relevant to our day-to-day lives. Here, take a look at this." Kinben presents Kaika with an ancient looking flier. She takes one look at it and reels back in shock. The paper, advertising an 'Abydos Oasis Festival,' is festooned with decorative - yet entirely accurate - hieroglyphics.

"Since the Abydos district went into decline, you don't see new stuff with it anymore," Hantei explains. "But there's a LOT of old stuff still in circulation, whether in private collections or abandoned buildings lost to the sands. And since Trinity has sent forces to assist Abydos recently…"

They are given the rare treat of Kaika breaking her composure and engaging in her mastery of the other kind of curses, her stream of expletives pinballing throughout all of eurasia and flickering between BC and AD like a crack-addled hummingbird.

Nother, beautiful caring kind Nother, conjures a bag of ice over the poor girl's head before she can start overheating. That's the magus' cue for shifting to box breathing.

"So. Looks like today's clubwork is writing an anomalous hazard primer for the JTF and Sisterhood. Again."