Preparations

For the rest of the week Gaius did exams, played and trained with Reiko, and studied the particulars of Touki and Senjutsu, in order to be a more effective teacher.

Coming Thursday it was time to choose his courses. He followed Akechi’s recommendation, Intermediate Martial Arts, taking three of his hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That took care of his ki side classes, and left him with five hours, since another two were taken by the classes he had to teach. After thinking about his needs and most likely role he thought that he'd probably see combat, and his sensing abilities may give him an edge on investigation and infiltration.

He chose Basic Combat Magic, an intermediate course which obviously taught combat magic, but that was only half of the curriculum since it also taught how to fight against a mage's most likely enemies. It took two hours on Thursdays and Fridays. For his infiltration needs he chose to take the Ward and Curse Breaking course, which took another two hours, on Mondays and Wednesdays. Finally he had one hour left so he chose Everyday Magic, which taught quality of life magic, which had many uses, even out of it's intended field.

He went to administration to submit his choices and to ask for something that worried him.

“Doesn't the japanese school year in April? At best I'd begin at the end of the year and have to repeat the year.” He asked the receptionist.

“Yes and no. Yes, the Japanese school year begins in April. No, our school year begins in March, when winter ends and Spring begins, our system is older than the japanese one.”

His fears assuaged Gaius returned home and began to prepare for the school year. One of said preparations was to buy magic supplies, and so he went to Morioka’s.

When he entered the shop he found himself in front of a well-built man manning the register, instead of Morioka Fudo. The man welcomed him warmly.

“Welcome to Morioka’s. I see you are a new face, do you want help in choosing your products?” He said in a steady voice.

“Actually I came on Sunday, with Saito Akihiko.” Explained Gaius with a smile.

"I see. You are the man that bought our blue bird! What have you named it? How's it doing?”

“His name is Reiko no Kiseki. He's doing fine, though I think he wants to see a little action. He's pretty self-sufficient, he can hunt his own food and he only wants to stretch his wings once in a while. He does seem to prefer fruit to other kinds of food, but your son told me that he's omnivorous.”

“He just has a sweet tooth, don't worry. You shouldn't feed him too many sweets though, that'd be bad for his diet.”

“Thanks.”

The conversation died for a minute before the man facepalmed and shaked his head.

“My apologies, I've realised I know your name but never gave mine. I'm Morioka Ken.”

“It's a pleasure to meet you. Let me formally introduce myself, I'm Gaius Atiius Quadratus.”

“Honoured to make your acquaintance.” Ken bowed. “If you need any advice on taking care of Reiko come to us. I specialise in appraisal, curse breaking, and crafting, but my wife has a knack for taking care of the little buggers.”

“I'll do so, thanks. You do have a nice collection of artefacts in this shop.”

“Yes I do. Many are replicas of things I've found in my expeditions to dead mages lairs, or ancient ruins. Both me and my wife still go on expeditions, though we stopped while Fudo grew.”

“That sounds interesting. I'm going to take a ward and curse breaking course, any advice?”

“Sure do. Remember to never touch anything you haven't examined, I always cast little detection spells on everything, even my clothes each morning. That's the way to avoid having your nose rot. Also you should…”

They continued speaking for a while, before Gaius remembered what he'd come for.

“... and that's why Incan mummies are worse than Egyptian ones, and both are better than draugrs. So now you know not to read the strange books you find in ruins. Next is to remember to that draugrs don't burn easily, they are dense but also have a cold aura, and so its best to electrify them and while they're down, off with their heads. For dealing with undead unicorns…” Ken was explaining, before Gaius interrupted him.

“Sorry to interrupt, but I came to buy some things.”

“Oh, right, sorry for rambling on and on. What do you need?”

“Mathilda Potter’s A Protector's Best Friends: A Guide to the Most Effective Basic Combat Spells for Law Keeping, Auni Olanrewaju’s A Guide to the Most Common Dangers for Man in all Countries, Ramón Gomez’s Identifying Curses and Wards: How not to Wake the Ancient Protectors in Ruins, Le Zhi Lam’s Curses Most Dangerous, Nathaniel Johnson’s Common Wards and How to Make Them. And finally Morioka Ena’s Magical Beasts and How to Avoid Them Mauling your Face. Huh, any relation with the last one?”

“Wife. Hold on, I'll get them now.” He went to the book section and began browsing through it, before returning with several books in hand.

“We had all of them. Anything else?”

“Do you have anything on Touki and Senjutsu, need to give a class on the former, and the later's related.”

“Oh yeah, Fudo did say something about Touki. All right, we should have some articles about those wait a moment.” He went to the back of the shop and returned with a cart of articles.

“This is all we've got. 245,531 yen for the books. At 1000 yen per article and 300 articles, 300,000 yen for the articles. 545,531 yen total.”

“I'll buy it all.”

"Come again!"

Gaius said goodbye and left, returning home. There he began to read the articles, and finished preparing for his classes. He then went to the Branch Heads to put a request.

“I would like to get approval to include all my Touki students in this Saturday's special class.” He said to the Mas.

“Why?” Asked Ma Jian.

“Because they will all know about my and the girl's Senjutsu, and Senjutsu and Touki are best explained together. Don't worry, I won't teach them Senjutsu, just it's relationship with Touki.”

The Ma siblings began to discuss, and decided to approve the request, with one condition.

“Very well, as long as you allow one thing. We have approved Akechi’s request but we'd like you to allow Jian to participate in your classes. The skill you showed with Touki is something we hadn't seen before, and we'd like to teach it to all our Touki users. Jian will pass on your classes to the others. Is that acceptable?” Confirmed Ma Jiang.

“Of course.”

The request approved, Gaius went to prepare the field he was assigned for Saturday's class.

Next day, after school hours Gaius had his first martial arts class, in which he was taught how to throw a man that charged at you.

The combat magic class was a bit more involved. Gaius headed to the classroom 05.12.MG.006 where he met the courses teacher, Yoshioka Tadame, and she explained what he had missed.

“We've taught basic combat Patterns, which you already know, thankfully, and one spell, the arcane shot. It is equivalent to a professional boxer's punch, so not very powerful, but it is highly effective against spiritual beings, you should practice out of class, given your achievements in the summoning department I'm not worried about injuries, but be careful. Thankfully you came early, otherwise with your teaching workload you’d have trouble catching up.”

They entered the classroom and the woman presented him.

“Hello class. We have a new student in our hands, meet Gaius Atiius Quadratus. Gaius you can sit over there, next to Miss Araki Kotone.”

Gaius looked at the red fox haired girl and was startled. He whispered to Yoshioka.

“Is that a good idea, after all I'll be…”

“It's exactly because of that. She's been distracted lately, your presence will scare her straight.”

After that Gaius headed to his seat, and presented himself to Kotone.

“Hello, I'm Gaius as you've heard. I hope we can work together well.”

“Likewise.” She said, absentmindedly.

“Also, I'm you Senjutsu teacher, miss half kitsune.” He whispered in her ear.

“Eeeeeh!” Kotone jumped, astounded at the bomb that had been dropped in her lap.

“Miss Araki, is there any problem?” Questioned Yoshioka.

“N-no, no problem at all Ma-am.” She answered while throwing glances at Gaius, squirming at the same time.

Some students began whispering.

“What do you think he said, something scandalous maybe?”

“No, I looked at the new Touki course and the teacher has the same name as that guy. So now she's seated next to one of her teachers.”

“Ow, that's harsh.”

“Settle down class. Today we'll study one spell that you'll use through your entire career. Judgement Light. This spell is a work of art, created originally by priests of Apollo in Ancient Greece, it has since been modified, improved and adapted by all religions.

This spell requires two things, a ritual invocation to some sort of light, good aligned deity or divine being, and the spell Patterns themselves.

The first requires for the Pattern to include the name of the being with a summoning ritual. The one in the blackboard.

The second is the combination of Light, Gather, Concentrate, Seek, Destroy, Evil and Smite. The Direction is in the blackboard.

This spell is a staple of all those who fight evil beings. It's silent, fast to cast, and it autonomously seeks its target, dealing more damage to evil beings. Furthermore it's inoffensive towards good or innocent beings, limiting friendly fire. It is also easy to multicast and scales up nicely with the magical energy input. So in translation, barrages of seeking evil smiting light beams.

Depending in what being you involve the effect will vary. For example the best variations for Shinto are Amaterasu, who triples power, and Tsukuyomi, who doubles power and makes the beams capable of phasing through matter. Use the ones that are most appropriate for the situation.

For buddhists, Ākāśagarbha gives better manoeuvrability to the beams. Amitābha grants a burning effect and double power to the beams. Mahāsthāmaprāpta triples the power of the beams. And Avalokiteśvara triples the number of beams.

For christians any angel does it. Practically all of them give some effect, so just choose the one you like amidst the grimoires.”

“And Voodoo?”

“I have no idea about Voodoo, choose yourself, sorry. Any questions?”

“Wouldn't it be better for a christian to invoke God?”

“NO! No! Bad idea, good question. Christians mustn't use the name of God in vain, as such never use it as long as there's another option, no matter the spell. Never use that one except in times of extreme need, it can cause spells to go haywire otherwise. Is that all? Good, begin practicing. Remember that the summoning is the most difficult part.”

The students began to form Patterns but most failed at the invocation.

Ten minutes passed when the classroom was lit by a golden light. Yoshioka smiled and said.

“As expected, our own expert on Summoning is the first one to get the spell. Congratulations, Gaius. Now keep practicing until you have a 100% success rate and take a second to activate the spell.”

Gaius smiled, this was the first combat spell he ever learned, he now felt like he was off to a good start.

That night Gaius entered his house when a blue bird appeared in front of him. It then moved to his shoulder and stood there.

“Felicitatem, please get off. You're heavy.”

The blue bird moved its head as if offended and trilled.

“No you aren't fat just big. Now get off I need to finish tomorrow's plan.”

However Reiko didn't move, and instead pecked at his hair, before flying through the window to the yard down bellow. Gaius was intrigued and went out again, jumping through the window.

“Ok, what do you want to show me?”

The blue familiar ascended to the air and began glowing with a soft light.

“I already knew you had ki, birdbrain, I… Wait no, that's Touki, why can you use Touki, Reiko?”

The bird trilled in response before descending onto Gaius’ head.

“You mean me? So the familiar bond allowed you to upgrade already? Huh. Faster than I thought it'd be. If so I should begin gaining your abilities soon. What do you think I'll get, intangibility? Flight? Fire eating? Freething breath? I wonder what our combined ability will be. Good job Reiko, you are going to be very useful once the bond settles in. Good bird.

I need to name your species. What would be a good name?” Gaius stopped to think for a while.

“Icebird? *Peck* Ow, so that's a no. It's a good pun though. Fire eater bird? *Peck* Ow, stop that! Just shake your head if you don't like it. Pecking bird?*Shake* No then.

Bluebird? No too similar to Bluebeard. Umm, Glacian? Not appropriate, right. Miracle bird?...”

Gaius kept suggesting names, and Reiko rejecting them until after three dozen names Gaius thought of one.

“Hmm, what about, Blue Spectral Pyrokrotitis? I describes you and sounds good.”

At this Reiko trilled and nodded before taking flight and doing a few acrobatics.

“You really like that one. Alright, I'll have to submit the name to the ICMA. Your scientific name shall be, Devoratrix Ignis, Latin for devourer and fire.”

Gaius watched Reiko a bit longer before returning home and filling and sending the application.