10 months after integration 2 months before connection pillar activation.

Jessica was exhausted. Her hair was frizzy as she let it out of the ribbon she had used to hold it back. It sprang to life around her, releasing the heat it had been storing all day. She sighed at the relief, as she picked out her next uniform, and placed it on the bed. She began looking for her stupid towel. She didn’t want to use the ones the unit provided her. Those were too itchy. Her momma had sent her eight new ones in her first care package after she complained about it in an email. She had traded the others for various things she needed, but she had kept one. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t find the darn thing!

As a second lieutenant in the Magical Corp, she warranted a small, one person room in the outpost's basement that acted as both her after hours work station and bedroom. As the head teacher in the mag-corp training program, and manager of the magical school for the African Fort, she had stacks of profiles of potential recruits and students that nearly filled the space.

The tiny desk she had was little more than storage for the ‘urgent’ cases. The ones that the brass thought might cause an ‘incident’ without proper training. There were more and more of those as people grew in levels. Practically every day, her office and living space grew more cramped with the three-ring binders, despite how diligently she worked to clean them out.

Every day she had three intro courses that helped those new to mana manipulation learn to control their powers. Then in the afternoons she had three intermediate classes that helped mana users grow more efficient with their work. After those, she met with each ‘new’ urgent case one on one, at least once more if she thought it was needed, so they could learn to control their powers and plan their progression into the future. Those meetings funneled people into her beginners’ course, which lasted for a week. After that, the graduates would get on a wait list to enter the intermediate course.

She was worried she would need to cut the intermediate courses completely out of her schedule. But luckily, Major Dawson had informed her that help was on the way. Three more teachers from the magical corp HQ in the US would be on the transport arriving that afternoon. It was the last civilian transport, and would hold most of the civilians living and working in the small college town. Most of them would be instructors that taught various skills. Almost none of them would be actual masters of those skills, much like Jessica herself.

“There you are,” she said. Jessica reached and grabbed the now dry towel from under a stack of ten binders left to the side of her bed. “I’m going to have to tell Steward to watch where he’s placing these things.” Corporal Stewart was the head steward. He was also the only steward for their little installation. Part janitor, part cook, part anything the small officers corp needed, the Corporal was technically a steward in training, having not yet transferred through officers training. As with almost everyone else soon to be flooding into the town, Jessica and Corporal Stewart shared a common trait. They would be students, as much as they would be teachers of the skills and abilities they hoped to pass on to others.

“There’s a reason I haven’t even thought about opening a journeyman course.” She grumbled as she walked out of her office and down to the small trio of showers set aside for the female officers. They separated the showers into male and female, a luxury not afforded in every installation or field assignment. But here, there were six male showers, and three on the female side. Which made sense to Jessica. There were fewer women in the military. Though the difference in service numbers was somewhat eased in officer ranks compared to regular enlisted, the men still outnumbered the women by nearly three to one. That grew even worse in the field. No one needed an HR director, engineer, or accountant in a combat zone.

Inside the shower Jessica stripped, washed, and after a scandalously luxurious fifteen minute warm water shower, she dried herself with her mamma’s hand made towel, got dressed in her new uniform she had brought with her, and walked back to her office and living quarters, the towel wrapped around her hair.

As she entered her office / living quarters, she pulled the towel off and it sprang back to life around her. She didn’t want to go bald, but the heat dried her hair, which was made worse by the need for regular showers, and the crappy bar soap the army supplied her with. She did everything she could to avoid having to shave her hair. Of course, when her mamma had sent her some hair oils meant for black hair in her last care package, it had been a major blessing.

Jessica opened the small box she stored on the top shelf in her quarters and pulled out one of the small vials of oil. She poured some of it onto her hands, and rubbed it gently into her scalp first, then into her hair. Her hair was shorter than shoulder length, which was regulation when not in a combat zone or assigned a specific combat role. But, instead of acting nice and falling down like everyone else’s hair, hers was practically designed to poof out into an afro. A curse she got from her daddy.

A smile crossed her face, as the difficulty with her hair reminded her of him. He had been gone four years, a heart attack took him just a few days after she started highschool. He had been a loving, kindly man. Who had worked hard to earn a paycheck to keep their family fed and a roof over their heads. In Detroit, that kind of hard work and determination wasn’t always rewarded. Particularly in a union man like her daddy had been. But he always took extra work to build their savings and provide a comfortable life for them, not reporting what he earned on the side welding as a private contractor to the union like he was supposed to.

“They’d just take half of it, and the government would take the other half,” he said when she asked him about it. She finished her hair and put the box of oils away, as the memory of him ate at her heart. She didn’t want to cry, but the tears flowed anyway. A mixture of happiness at the memories she had of him, and sadness at his passing. She didn’t sob, that type of grief had long since been cried out. She whipped at her wet eyes with the sleeves of her clean uniform, cleaned her hands off in her small sink, and then got back to work.

The files were short, usually just a cover sheet with the person’s demographic info, followed by a summarized characteristics sheet and a definition of the potentially dangerous trait, skill, or ability the person had that scared their bosses. At the back, there was usually a brief letter written by the person detailing why they thought they might need the help. Most of them were the same, short, filled with the same information as before, with maybe a bit of an edge of fear thrown in.

“Alright Mr. Oswald, we’ll meet up tomorrow.” She put his name into her data pad in one of the empty time slots along with his email. That would automatically send him orders to meet with her that overrode nearly every other order. Including punishment duty. Her orders were taken as seriously as a doctor’s demand to see their patient by the brass. Perhaps more so.

She kept reading. Most of those that leadership sent her in the urgent category were not actually urgent. They were just new abilities or traits no one knew what to do with. She added those to the waitlist for the intro classes. The handful who had abilities they didn’t know how to control, or who General McIntire sent her way, were automatically included for personal assessments.

Finished with the last urgent case, she sighed and looked at the clock. “11pm.” She said. Jessica had never grown used to the military’s version of time keeping. Though Max seemed to use it instinctively. She understood it, she just didn’t like it. It’s not how she thought. “I guess it’s because I never went through basic training?” She asked no one, before stretching, taking off her uniform and crawling into bed. She shut her light off and drifted off into deep sleep.