“Well, that was unexpected.” after hearing about another emergency announcement, Caroline walked out of the auditorium with a frown: “How would this even work? I guess it wouldn’t impact us that much.”

“I guess it’d impact me a little bit - I’d have to practice my array creation with the chemical labs and the reserves for magical material closed.” Jason sighed, “I wonder when the audit program finishes would we be able to go back.”

The emergency announcement was a bit of a shock to almost everyone, because the message of the announcement was that the Grant Academy was going into lockdown effective immediately. This meant that no one would be able to go in or out of the academy without explicit permission from the administration; and the importing of all goods, including food, and other material used for research and student use, would be halted for a short period until a strong and strict vetting process was established.

And this would not be a full lockdown internally, because Principal Hawke assured everyone that all school utilities that are deemed safe from the pollution of the forbidden material would remain functioning per usual, and all activities in academy that do not have to do with any kinds of magical material would still be able to continue.

“Yeah, I wonder what would happen to our duel.” Aimee sighed and asked Caroline and Jason: “Have you heard anything? Either from Professor Barnes or those two that challenged us.”

“Strangely, no.” Caroline scratched her head: “I would think maybe that needs to go on hold - I do wanna kick those little shits’ asses though.”

“Yeah, but you’d still need to think of a tactic for my sister here.” Thomas said: “It’s been a few days, I think they’d have plenty of time to research guns and detectives and have a plan ready. The surprise gun tactic would not work next time.”

“How about a much stronger crossbow?” Jason asked: “I mean, if you’re fast enough you can still hit your opponent with a strong shot. Too bad your specialty is not fire, otherwise there’s just multiple kinds of modern civilian weapons I can try to make for you.”

“How about just swift and brute force? I mean, screw magic, just go in with your weapon of choice and bash the shit out of him, before he can even conjure up a spell.” Caroline asked: “You are police officers so you have the advantage here. And since the fight starts with both people in close proximity it actually makes more tactical sense that way. You have a training session tonight right? Can we try that?”

“Well, that would be very neat if it worked. They’re just wizards with limited combat experience right? Applying a similar tactic to the serial killer - go with the unexpected non magic attack. If they’re expecting you to use a gun, then you can use a knife, a hammer, or a baton or something.” Jason thought for a short moment and smiled: “I don’t suppose the academy-wide lockdown would forbid us from training together - let’s try that this time.”

At the same time, Professor Atkinson and Dolores were having a rough time accepting the news.

“This is bullshit! We have energy stones and gems incoming, without them we literally can’t proceed with our research!” Dolores cursed when she walked out of the common auditorium: “It’s supposed to be here just next week! And we can’t even go out without some kind of permission? What the fuck!”

“Don’t worry, I think we still have some reserves of energy stones.” Professor Atkinson tried to console Dolores: “If we use it with caution and frugality it should be enough to last us till the lockdown is lifted.”

“No, professor, we don’t.” Dolores sighed: “We increased our use of the energy stones because of the analysis of the hail - at our current rate we’d be out of energy stones in less than a week unless we cut our usage.”

“Okay. So we need to apply for some extra support or temporary loan from the academy while we conserve our resources.” Professor Atkinson went silent for a short moment, then sighed and said: “It’d be better if we completed the analysis, so we can present this to the funding committee.”

“Would that help?” Jianmen asked: “Professor, I have read some of your reports - with results and theories like that, as I said before, your funding situation made no sense. There are some hostile individuals in the funding committee that are working against you aren't there?”

“Yes.” before Professor Atkinson could stop her, Dolores answered without hesitation: “It’s Lauren Biggins, she used to be Professor’s rival scholar, until she got into administration and became a political hack with power trips for years and axes to grind.

“Dolores, stop, Lauren is a fine scholar.” Professor Atkinson voiced his concern, yet even Jianmen could tell from his tone that he did not truly mean the word “fine”.

“Okay, is there a way to ask for department aid then? The department should have some reserves, if the administration has been following resource reserve and conservation guidelines. I think this lockdown can qualify as an unintended and unpredicted shortage. And they should accommodate short term research needs. ” Jianmen thought for a while and asked.

“That - that’s a good idea. Dolores, let’s start with that.” Professor Atkinson nodded in slight relief: “And let’s prep some demo for our Department Head - to make a better case if needed.”