“Please make an appointment like everyone else.” The two men dressed in business suits reminded her after kicking her out of the building.

“This is an emergency! I’m trying to save innocent lives! The daemons are planning a large attack! Just let me into that stupid room and talk to them so I can help by warning people!” Zoey tried to reason.

“Heh, daemons aren’t smart enough to plan anything. Go and play somewhere else, kid. We, adults, have important business to do.” Asshole One scoffed.

“I’m eighteen. I’m not a fucking kid!” Inner Zoey flicked him off along with Tink. The assholes looked surprised to see Tink doing the same thing

“Yeah, a mature adult would swear at a person in a higher position than them and raise their middle finger at them.” Asshole Two shook his head while keeping his gaze on the fairie.

“You’re pissing me off when all I’m trying to do is save people’s lives! Is it really so hard to believe that the daemons are planning an attack on the magji community when they’re already cooperating and grouping up together!? It’s not that crazy!” Inner Zoey tried to argue.

The two assholes started ignoring her, and Zoey felt an itch coming from her fists. She wanted nothing more than kick their asses and make her way up to that stupid room. As she thought about the possible lives at risk, she felt it was reasonable to beat them up and make her way to The Council. Just as she was about to act on her heroic urges, she received a phone call. Zoey picked up after seeing it was Prometheus. She made some distance from herself and the assholes to talk in peace.

“Do not do whatever you’re about to do.” He warned her, sounding out of breath for some reason.

“How do I save the most amount of people for this?” Zoey got to the heart of the subject matter.

“Tell those that you care about to train themselves for the upcoming event. I’ll be sending you a magji tool soon to help protect your loved ones when it's time. It’ll aid them in avoiding getting caught up in the situation so that you can focus all your attention on the situation.”

“Can’t I stop it before it happens!? I can’t save everyone if I don’t know when it happens or where.”

“You can’t stop it. My magji shard is telling me that no matter what you do, this will happen.”

“That’s bullshit!” Inner Zoey didn’t like hearing that. “I don’t believe in that shit that the future is set in stone. I’ll go find out more about this and stop it before it happens. Even if I have to be the one to do it!” Zoey’s emotions were running high.

“Zoey, wait!” Prometheus’s voice was cut off as Zoey hung up the phone and rushed off.

Tink followed behind her, fully caught up in Zoey’s agitated emotions. They easily caught up with the track star. Zoey made her way to the next location of her case. She eventually slowed her pace down to a jog from a full sprint when she realized that she looked like an insane woman running through the city at full speed.

“Where are we going, Zoey?” Tink balled their fists up.

“To get more information about the attack,” Zoey said.

“What about telling your friends to start training?” Tink reminded her.

“Right. Just in case, I can’t change this, no matter what. It's better to warn the people I can.” Zoey texted her magji friends. She told them to train up for a major daemon attack coming soon in the magji world and get those that they care about to a safe or protected place.

Of course, Zoey was spammed with questions, but she didn’t ignore them for the task ahead. She gave her phone to Tink for safekeeping and told her to press the microphone button. Tink would then repeat Zoey’s answer for every text being read out to respond. Zoey calmly entered the butcher shop filled with paying customers as she restrained her mahna. She leaned against the wall as she held up her hand and activated the magji technique, Barrier!

A pulse of mahna shot out from her palm. A dome of mahna that sought to expel everything non-magji formed itself around the butcher shop. Zoey was slightly startled to see that the people around her began to sleep where they stood instead of mindlessly walking out of the store. She didn’t think of anything or use the technique differently from how she always used it. Did the mahna decide on its own what was the best way to affect the non-magji inside?

Now that Zoey thought about it, having all these customers suddenly appearing outside the store would be strange. They’ll start questioning each other when they ‘wake up,’ try to walk back in, and then back out for the others to question why the hell did they just walk in to walk back out or something else she can’t think of right now. It was a better solution to have them sleep inside until she was done. Zoey was curious about what type of magji could be done to make people just fall asleep like this. Being able to put people to sleep on command would be useful.

“The daemon is in the back.” Tink sensed it.

“Alright.” Zoey hopped over the counter and made her way to the back.

The daemon was fully alert after she used Barrier. Zoey could hear some banging from further back and upped her speed. When she made it to the back, there was a dented door with multiple locks on it. Something from inside was trying to get out, and this made Zoey wonder what the fuck was up with this store. As she waited for the daemon to escape, Zoey tried to reasonably understand how a normal person captured a daemon.

It was locked in his freezer. The daemon had to make its way into the freezer on its own, or the human lured it in there. There is a lot of meat in this store, so it isn’t impossible that he used meat to bait it. But if that was the case, wouldn’t he have already tried to report it? Magjistars would’ve already dealt with this if he involved the police. This case wasn’t a recent or new case either. Multiple magjistars have failed, unofficially raising the grade of this case up to C-Grade.

The daemon bent the lower half of the door and revealed its appearance to Zoey and Tink. It was the size of a huge dog, but it was more monster reptile than a dog. Jet-black scales covered its entire body, a drooling gaping maw filled with sharp teeth, a long tail, and four legs. It clawed at the floor as it repeatedly banged its body to fit underneath the door and rush at her. Zoey frowned as she saw it. This daemon didn’t look like it could speak…

Zoey raised her fist and brought it down like mighty lightning from the heavens on top of the head of the daemon. The daemon stopped squirming and let out a deep whine. Zoey placed her hand on the side of the daemon’s face and began draining its mahna. Unlike what she did with those other two daemons, this time, she didn’t drain the daemon dry.

“Can you speak?” She asked with her hand still on the daemon, just not actively using Mahna Gathering Bomb.

“Sssss.” It softly hissed, and Zoey frowned. She gave it another chance to speak.

“Hello? Can you understand me?” She tried again.

This time it didn’t respond, and Zoey cursed as she drained all of its mahna. She pocketed the magji shard and made her way out of the butcher shop, pissed that she wasted her time on a daemon that probably wasn’t even involved with the daemons involved in the attack. The barrier shattered as soon as Zoey walked out of it. She asked for her phone back and began responding to her friends.

“Maybe this will be a good lesson for you,” Prometheus said to her in a voice message. “Here are some locations that will help. Good luck.” Prometheus sent her multiple locations throughout the city and even outside the city.

Zoey looked up at the sky and saw that most of the day was gone. She hesitated. Continuing into the night wouldn’t be bad. Victor told her that daemons are more active in the night than day, but it wasn’t like they were a migrating type. Once a daemon found a good hunting location, it would stay there until it was discovered by magjistars and killed. Rarely do they move their hunting spots unless they can’t find any humans to lure. Zoey would get a lot of progress done if she went hunting for them at those locations right now. Maybe she could even stop the whole attack itself if she could find the location of that poison daemon!

“Let’s kick some daemon butt!” Tink could see the sparkle in her eyes.

“Right.” Zoey nodded as she sent a text to her magji contacts, telling them that if she didn’t text them in the morning that something had happened to her at one of the locations she shared with them. “Let’s go.” Zoey headed to the nearest place.