I wonder what that little bird meant when he said that I’d end up as a magical girl anyway. If I had to guess, he probably meant that the circumstances would change, and I would have more incentive to dive into the wonderful, wonderful word of magic. But then again, there were also other possibilities. Maybe, some new enemy would attack me with I’m with my friends, or during school, and then I would have to accept my powers to save them, or something like that. I’m not going to ignore the possibility that he might just bring his friends and coerce or trick me somehow. After all, he didn’t look trustworthy at all, smoking cigarettes in front of his client. What a terrible recruiter he is. Yeah, after meeting with him, I want to live an ordinary life even more. He said that there were places where magic was more common, or something, but I wonder what he meant. Even if I did come from such a place, I wouldn’t entrust my career to something so frivolous. I bet being a magician isn’t even enjoyable. Then, he wouldn’t have any shortage of temp workers. It’s like he wasn’t even trying to impress me. The problem is, he didn’t talk anything about payment. That wouldn’t be a huge incentive for me, but still. There’s always something suspicious about an adult asking teen girls for their time for free. I think right now, I’ll go out with my friends as I planned. I was sure I saw them come for me. The absolute best way to think is to let the decision ripen out in your head, even if you are completely 100% that you’ll say no. Only, I think tonight might be a little weird. We wanted to go to the movies, but this time we have to watch my friend’s little sisters. That seriously limits what movie we can watch. We’re almost high schoolers. It’s natural for us to have a little more freedom in that regard, but not this time. Anyway, we pretty much let them pick the movie. It was one of those fluffy children’s films. Awful. It was one of those B-list movies about how friendship and peace always triumph. Before I fell asleep in the theatre room, I saw that only children and their caretakers watched it. I shouldn’t have, though, because then the girl we had to babysit took the suggestion to fall asleep too. That would have been fine. There are still plenty of days left in the world to watch movies, I guess. But then, while we were waiting outside for our ride home, the lights suddenly turned off. And not just the theatres, but the parking lot’s too. In fact, the whole block went dark for at least ten minutes. Except for the two little sisters, we were all young adults, but still, something like this had never happened in Luminaire city before. A few stars of the Milky Way were shining over the city. Personally, I wasn’t startled, not a bit, but it was the first time I even considered the possibility of a city-wide blackout. We got phone calls from the parents too and it seemed that the blackout affected our neighborhood. Yeah, after that was taken care of, there was nothing frightening about the stars. The power came back in a few minutes, and we were taken to our warm houses. End of story. Yeah, right. The next day the first thing I did after breakfast was to not watch the Saturday cartoons. I took my notebook, expecting answers, and knocked on that same bench I sat on the day before. As expected, the horribly uncharismatic bird thing arrived as flashily as he had left. “Do you have anything to do with this?” “Hey, hold on kid. You know how far I had to travel. I was scanning the suburbs for more willing candidates than yourself. I’ve been working for almost eight hours straight, and I just teleported fifteen of those distance units. Um, fifteen miles. And you have the audacity of asking a question. Not even ‘hello’ or anything?” He was right, “I’m sorry about that, but something ominous happened last night. The entire city’s power went out for minutes at a time.” “I wasn’t here last night, but that’s what I was going to tell you about. For certain reasons, we’ll have to do with yourself. “Hey, aren’t you getting a little ahead of yourself?” “Don’t interrupt your elders.” “Just tell me what’s going on.” “Okay. Huh. You think you’re so smart, girl. It’s because the criminal who we’re after set up a huge barrier that blocks magic movement to and from the city. There’s no way that we could bring in any outside help. In fact, that spell even blocks transmissions, and the one other official that’s down on this forsaken world is another Avian. We’re made of so much magic, that we can’t even physically walk across the barrier. Since we’re not exactly combat officers, we’re essentially stranded and the criminal can do whatever they want. That’s why we have to rely on temporary magicians like you. And so far, we’ve only found like two humans who have the ability. But, but, but, but: Since you’re so eager, I can’t even explain all of that or answer questions.” “Jeez. Take it easy,” If I understand correctly, he’s the one that’s being hasty, and he was like that yesterday too. “I’m sorry sweetie, but we Avians really hate this place. The people here can’t even see us because they have no magical capability. We’re dispossessed to being good recruiters, but the ones they send here…” I let him reflect for a while. “For now, you just have to know that someone dangerous is in this town and you’re like half of the available magicians. They’re also the one that caused the darkness last night.” Was that so hard to say?