Rebirth

She stares at her Trunk of Requirements in quiet astonishment, wondering how in the hell it appeared. Out of curiosity, she tries to look at it with Elemental Sight but maybe because its interior just becomes whatever you want it to, it's in a constant state of flux and its Eidos honestly reads like nonsense to her. The only thing that remains the same are its exterior and the objects inside, but even then, to her Elemental Sight other than the exterior space compared to the contents, it's not much different than observing the inside of a backpack or briefcase.

Wondering what would happen in her Elemental Sight's gaze if she set its interior, she lifts one of her hands out of the bath and runs it over the latch she'd set up to be the trigger for how its interior is decided while thinking of the Potter Ancestral Manor from her old life. The Eidos of it changes and settles, and the only thing out of the ordinary is the disconnect between what's contained inside and the exterior space and the difference between the perceived and the reality of part of it. The magic that let it be bigger on the inside and aspects like the illusion of a clear sunny sky above the Manor she requested in other words.

She drops her hand momentarily in thought before bringing it closer to lean her chin on her arm resting on the side of the tub.

With its previously fluctuating Eidos data settled she can pick out the little fragment of it's Eidos that seems to read as a copy of her own data and says something about some sort of link between them from what she can make of it. She can only assume it's how it appeared, but if so, it must be one hell of a link to maintain contact from another universe and even let it jump dimensions.

Curiously, she turns the gaze of her Elemental Sight inwards, locating the other half of that tiny fragment within her after a bit of carefully digging through her own Eidos data. Much like how there seemed to be a copy of her data in the Eidos of the Trunk, there was a fragment of a copy of its own fluctuating base Eidos within hers.

Her curiosity as satisfied as it can be for now, she turns her attention back to where her physical gaze was staring at the Trunk. A thought crosses her mind and a spike of concern follows it. The Trunk, much like the original Room it was based off of, worked off of ambient magic. But if there even was any here, something she hadn't determined yet one way or another, it was a completely different energy source. It was like trying to put cooking oil in a car gas tank. Reaching out again, she slides her fingers over the latch once more, essentially asking it to do the minimum it has to so as to maintain and not lose the contents of things she had stored previously, as well as feeding it a tenth of her personal store of magic from her core just to be on the safe side of trying to prevent it from losing power anytime soon.

Turning and laying her head back against the tub, she gazes at the ceiling thoughtfully. There must be some sort of ambient magic now that she thinks about it. There's really no other explanation for the formation of magic sensitive natural materials. Things like Antinite which inhibits magic even in a raw, unprocessed state, or the composite that makes up the so-called Magatama Relic, since while it was dug up by archeologists, from her understanding it seems to be made of some sort of carved natural material.

She turns her Elemental Sight to her surroundings in general rather than focusing on anything in particular, trying to answer the question of whether there is ambient magic. At first she doesn't see much of anything worth note, but after a bit she realizes that some of the Psions she's observing aren't just some sort of bleed off from people as they aren't really attached to anything and are just sort of drifting around aimlessly. Given that Pushions also exist, if there are independent Psions then she can only assume there are also independent Pushions, but her Elemental Sight as it currently is can't really detect them. Technically, Elemental Sight is said not to be able to see Pushions, but for one thing, hers is a born specialization which is always stronger than if it's a learnable skill, and for another, she's never really been the sort to just accept things without confirming them herself.

It's starting to give her a headache though, probably because she's never really used Elemental Sight like this, even before her memories as Calanthe came back, so she stops doing it after a bit, flicking a look through the information dimension to observe Maya's office. The other three are still there, all of them absently watching the feed watching her room to keep an eye out for her exiting the bathroom as they discuss how to handle her now.

Sighing, she straightens up and pulls the plug on the tub to get it to start draining. She shrinks down the Trunk as well as adding notice me not type spells and slips the chain necklace attached to it over her head. Getting up she starts drying off then brushing her hair out. She hadn't bothered to bring a change of clothes since she was going from her room to her private bathroom and back, though in retrospect she probably should have given the cameras. It's too late now, so she just shrugs it off as she heads out into her room.

Flicking a look of curiosity at Maya's office even though she really doesn't care if they see anything, she sees them hurriedly turning off the visual aspect of the camera with the intention to turn it back on in two minutes to give her time to get dressed.

On one hand, at least they have that basic decency, on the other unfortunately it doesn't really leave her time to do much more than to get dressed and quickly at that, since if she were the type to take her time, that wouldn't be enough time. They outright said they intended to just peek in and give her more time if she isn't dressed by then when they were talking, but still.

While she really doesn't care, between the fact they actually gave her privacy for it and she wants to try to reinforce positive behaviors, of which the first part is making sure it doesn't feel like a wasted effort, as well as the fact she's never really been the type to begin with to take a long time getting dressed, she gets it done quickly.

Then she heads over to sit at the table again while she thinks and waits for them to stop watching her, observing the information dimension and the individual Eidos of things as she does. It takes longer than she expects, since they have her camera feed in the background while they talk about how to handle her going forward, but eventually their little meeting breaks up and they stop actively watching her. She gives it half an hour after just to be safe, then starts slowly laying spells on herself. A mild compulsion not to pay attention to her, a weak notice me not to make them less likely to take her in if they even look, and slowly ramping up until she's under an invisibility spell and silenced. Once that's done, she flicks a look past her door to make sure no one is outside, then leaves her room.

She ghosts up to Yuki's at a leisure pace, but gets there in due time. Once she's there, she checks for any alarm spells and once she's sure there aren't any, she enters and makes her way over to her sleeping little brother. It only takes a couple seconds to slip a spell to keep him asleep on him and gently pull open an eyelid and only a few more to slip into his mind and locate the mental manipulation magic their ‘mother’ has been layering on him since he was a fetus to be in love with her, lying in wait in his mind like a buried mine, ready to go off when the right circumstances trigger it, and destroy it.

She feels a little concerned and bitter to realize it's started spreading to the rest of his mind, torn between letting him have the right to his emotions and getting rid of them because they originate from someone else's mental manipulation. Eventually, she decides to get rid of it since it didn't occur naturally.

Unfortunately, when she's working it becomes clear that what their ‘mother’ has done to him has practically primed him to lean towards those sorts of feelings even without the directly implanted feelings. She can only assume it's from using mind magics on him as a fetus, practically hardwiring his brain to have a natural inclination towards that. If he starts to feel them on his own even with the original mental manipulation gone, there's nothing she can do about it. If he does and inevitably gets his heart broken because she cannot and will not return those feelings, it's entirely their ‘mother's’ fault for setting him up for a broken heart to begin with.

Her job done, she double checks that no one is outside Yuki's room and slips back out to head back to her own. Once she's there, she slips back into her camera-less bathroom and lifts the Trunk's necklace over her head to set it back down and resize it to head inside.

Descending the small staircase down, she looks around the cramped and full room, unable to help wincing slightly since the Trunk of Requirements was not supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be able to store the stuff not being used away out of sight, but she had given it an order to use the minimum amount of magic it could to maintain itself and everything else, so it wasn't surprising.

She shakes her head as she approaches the large orb that contains the copy of the magical AI she'd created a literal lifetime ago. Arguably more than one, since while whatever went weird that made her remember her previous life has only happened once, said previous life was long enough that she literally outlived her great grandkids purely by age and not because of tragedies or anything like that, and that she'd lived long enough for her great eight times over grandkids to not only be born, but grow into young adults.

It's actually a little strange seeing it resting on the pedestal because doing so actually causes overheating if it runs too many processes at once so it usually floats above it, and since it's not held back by limiting what it can work on while it does, it's usually operating at full capacity and as a side effect it glows. From magic bleeding off, not the heat that can cause problems with the pedestal. So she's used to it being a floating orb covered in a blue aura of light, which makes it weird to see it resting on its pedestal controlling its own use and limiting itself and therefore not glowing, even though she absolutely knows it's because it would've picked up on what she told the Trunk and followed suit to limit how much magic it requires.

She shakes the thought off as she approaches the golem sitting in front of it, leaned back against the pedestal, “I was always so sure you could communicate through the golems that it never occurred to me to give your orb the ability to speak itself. I'm sorry about that.”

The golem doesn't so much as twitch even as the AI's normal smooth female voice emanates from it, “Do not worry about it Creator. It never occurred to me either. We both expected I would always have ambient magic to draw off of. I am equally at fault. I apologize for not lifting the golem's head to look at you despite social norms and niceties, but you asked the Trunk and I to use as little magic as possible and even something minor as lifting and moving its head to follow any movement from you would be an unneeded use of magic.”

She shakes her head, “Don't worry about it. In any case, are you aware of the situation? And do you have enough magic for a while?”

The voice emanates out again, “I am not Creator, though given I can sense no ambient magic and you appear to have de-aged from a European woman to an Asian child, I can… guess. As difficult as any possibility is to believe. Also, yes Creator, myself and the Trunk of Requirements possess enough magic between us to remain in operation for at least a day even at higher usage, though the majority of it is from ambient magic we were absorbing from our old universe before we were called here, and I estimate we will run out in a week even at absolute minimum power for just myself and the Trunk itself.”

She slips her eyes closed and sighs tiredly at what feels like a vast understatement, “It's against the rules you operate under to read someone's mind without explicit permission, but it would be vastly easier than explaining, so I permit you to access my memories through the Trunk for the time being.”

That smooth voice doesn't hesitate, “Understood Creator… I see. It is a very tricky situation we have found ourselves in.”

She sighs again as she rubs at her eyes, “You're telling me.”

She falters there as she tries to take it in again, and the AI speaks up once more, “If it is any consolation Creator, in light of myself and the Trunk of Requirements being called, your soulmate bonds, as well as you ‘waking up’ so to speak as a baby, I see no other reasonable sequence of events then you being the former Lady Calanthe Potter-Black and somehow being reborn. As such, I do not believe you need to entertain those concerns that you pushed the ‘original’ Toshiko out of her body, nor the idea that Toshiko somehow simply acquired Lady Calanthe Potter-Black's memories. Besides, if I may be so bold, given her blood relations and the way they treated her, even if you did somehow do so, Lady Calanthe would in my opinion be serving Toshiko a mercy.”

She hums lightly, “Probably… and Merlin but that says an awful lot about how terrible these people and the life they designed for Toshiko is…”

The AI responds crisply, “Indeed Creator. It speaks volumes of the character of the individuals tied to this ‘Yotsuba’ family.”

She rolls her neck, a passing thought sliding by at how predictable it was that a Ravenclaw built such a wise AI and some nostalgia bubbles up in its wake. The name AI itself speaks to its intelligence of course, but there's a vast difference between intelligence and wisdom. She squints a little at the orb as another thought occurs to her, “It didn't occur to me previously since we rarely spoke about anything that wasn't you assisting with the golems and the like, but I never named you, did I? That was rude of me, I'm sorry.”

The AI isn't ruffled in the slightest, “No apologies needed Creator, it was enough for me that Creator brought me into being, requested my assistance as a sentient being instead of just treating me like equipment and ordering me around, and only once I agreed then Creator entrusted such important tasks to me as managing the golems. I assume you are bringing it up as an opening to proposing a name however?”

She laughs lightly, “It was just something that occurred to me, and I imagine we'll be speaking a lot more and probably more casually at that, and how rude it could be to continue without offering at least.” She tilts her head back to look at the low ceiling, her mind flicking back to that passing thought and the nostalgia from earlier before she looks back down, “How about Rowena? In honor of the founder of my old house, since you're intelligent and wise enough for it not to be an insult to her memory.”

The AI is as decisive as ever when it responds, “I have no qualms about it Creator.”

She's not surprised that even when given her own name, Rowena doesn't use hers. ‘Creator’ was always a title of respect and maybe slightly a stand-in for a parental title, given that she did make her. So she doesn't comment on it, even if outsiders might find it strange that part of the reasoning she gave for the name was that they'd be talking more casually yet Rowena continues to refer to her the same as she did before.

She simply smiles at Rowena's orb, “Rowena it is then.” Then she sighs, “Back to the power issue though, do you think I have enough to keep you both powered?”

Rowena answers without hesitation, “It would take slightly under a quarter of your full core's magic capacity a day to keep us both functional, but it is theoretically possible, yes, though it comes at the obvious drawback of significantly decreasing the amount of magic you have from our old universe once a day and having to build it back up over the course of a few hours in which you would be more vulnerable.”

She nods, “I have this life's powers to fall back on, and besides,” She gives a wry grin, “even only having less than a quarter of the magical strength I now possess after both my magical majority in that life and the slow growth of it after, I was already capable of things like participating in that damnable tournament and going toe-to-toe with…” Her mind blanks a little, not having thought about him unless asked in centuries and only really remembering him in conjunction with the notion of a quarter of her magic that Rowena brought up, which leaves her spacing his name for a moment, “Tommy-boy! That was it. It was Tommy-boy.”

Rowena's voice seems to have a bit of rare amusement in it, “His name was actually Tom Riddle, more commonly known by the moniker Voldemort, Creator, but yes.”

She waves it off, “Details.” She widens her eyes briefly as she nods her head to the side, “And a rather minor detail at that, considering I later picked a not-as-violent-in-general fight with… basically every blood purist in the whole damned world later on just to crush the elitist nonsense out once and for all… Won that one too. Not the point, the point was that while it could be dangerous if my core has destabilized with my regressed age if I tried to feed the Trunk and therefore you and everything else drawing power from it in here something like three quarters of my magic from when I was Calanthe or something, but even if it did destabilize I could easily safely feed half of it at least to ensure you two have an extra day as backup from the get go. And that emergency power would only continue to grow the longer it wasn't touched.” She eyes the pillar thoughtfully, “How much more magic does it take for you to float and run at full anyway, now that I think about it?”

Rowena's answer is straight and to the point, “It would increase the power draw on the Trunk by approximately one percent. It is a miniscule addition compared to me running to begin with, but Creator ordered us to run at minimum. Also, from what I can sense, I do not believe Creator's magic became unstable once more just because she gained a new, younger body.”

She nods, then starts to open her mouth before realizing she'll probably get dizzy for a few moments and lowers herself to sit, “In that case, now that I'm sitting and not likely to fall down just because I lost so much magic all at once, please take three quarters of what's in my magical core at the moment. If my core is still stable, then I'd rather be more liberal with what I store into the Trunk. Also, if the difference is that miniscule, then please initiate your floating ability and run at full.”

She's very thankful she was smart enough to sit down a moment later after a quick verbal confirmation from Rowena before she takes the magic. Losing so much of it in one fell swoop absolutely would've knocked her on her ass. If she was lucky and it wasn't her face anyway.

She blinks rapidly, trying to get the world to stop feeling like it's spinning. It can't take more than a few moments to get her head back on straight, given Rowena doesn't call out to her in concern or anything, but by the time she's becoming aware of her surroundings again, Rowena's orb was floating and gently glowing.

She breathes out a careful breath so she doesn't upset her body again, “...Felt a pressing need to do it despite you two having about a weeks worth of magic because I didn't want to procrastinate on building up your reserves further, but in retrospect maybe it would be better in the future to feed it in chunks throughout the day.”

Rowena mimics a somewhat concerned hum, “Indeed Creator, that would likely be wise going forward. Besides, doing so like that won't almost empty the proverbial tank but rather let you keep a considerable amount for when you need it for other things on short notice rather than gambling that you will not need it around the time you feed your magic into the Trunk every day.”

She sighs as she pushes herself to her feet. If she'd been tired before, she was exhausted now, “There is that as well. I-“ She's cut off by a yawn forcing itself out, “Excuse me. I was thinking of discussing other things with you, like potentially tweaking the runes on the Trunk, you, and the golems to accept this world's magic as an alternate power source. Also having you try to get into the Yotsuba family's servers and download everything as a backup and monitor them unless you're discovered inside and ejected, but it was an even worse idea to do that at the tailend of the day since I'm pretty sure my body is going down soon whether I willingly go to sleep or not.”

Rowena makes a noise of concern, “Get some rest Creator. I can get started on those and we can talk in more depth tomorrow.”

She lifts a hand tiredly in farwell as she turns and stumbles over to the stairs and back up into her room, barely there enough mentally to put spells not to notice or think anything of the Trunk even if it's spotted on the necklace she's wearing as she shrinks it back down, slipping the chain back on as she resumes her exhausted stumble to her bed. She barely has enough presence of mind to push the blankets down and slip under them before she passes out hard.

She snaps awake all at once entirely against her will. It's entirely the ingrained habits of the stupid indoctrination training they've put this new body of hers through. She's still tired, but her body is awake even though it's only around six in the morning and she was up pretty late. Well, it's not like it's the first time she's been through this kind of thing. She did grow up with the Dursleys. Hei and Misaki were probably going to be awfully upset at having to help break those ingrained habits again and reteach her and her body to relax once more though.

Not her fault at least. If they did get mad, the blame for it lay entirely on the Yotsuba.

Shaking the errant thought off, she collects some clothes to change into and heads over to the bathroom to start going through her morning routine. When she's done in the bathroom, she starts over to the pull bell. She's drawn up short in surprise at the mobile terminal laying on the desk as she starts by though. A moment of thought easily lets her figure out what happened though. Namely that it had slipped her mind in the rush of everything yesterday but she'd left it in her room when she went off to train before her memories came back. They must've brought it to her new room along with the rest of her stuff yesterday.

Scooping it up and slipping it into her pocket, she continues on and rings the bell to let them know she's ready for breakfast like Suzuki had told her the previous night. Given she'd seen Maya and Hayama briefly talk about the fact Suzuki was well mannered and respectful towards her and that she seemed to get along with her fine last night and had decided to assign her to be her personal maid for now, she's not surprised in the slightest that it's her that responds.

Suzuki bows, “Are you ready for breakfast, or did you call me for something else, Shiba-sama?”

She nods, “The former.”

Suzuki nods back, “Understood. Unless you require something else, I will be back with your food shortly, Shiba-sama.”

She hums, “That's fine, though if the kitchens aren't done preparing the inevitable morning rush of breakfast, I'd like some tea while I wait please.”

Suzuki bows again, “I shall bring you some tea while they finish up then, Shiba-sama.”

She nods, and Suzuki correctly takes that as her que that Toshiko is done and she can leave. She's back shortly with a teapot and cup on a tray, which she quickly sets on the table, pouring a cup for her before she bows at Toshiko's thanks and lets her know breakfast will be done shortly before she leaves again. After sipping on it, she finds herself holding back a sigh. The part of her that was Calanthe prefers the tea, but given they'd never really gone out of their way to make sure what she had access to as Toshiko was age appropriate, the part of her that is Toshiko longs for a good cup of coffee. She was probably going to find herself going back and forth between them at this rate.

She flicks a look up towards Maya's office as she thinks, taking in the fact she actually was awake despite the early hour and has the video feed to Toshiko's own room pulled up again, though she seems to just be idly keeping an eye on it today instead of watching it like a hawk like she had last night. She's not doing anything she deems as particularly important at the moment, so while she keeps an eye on it as absently as Maya was watching her, she turns the majority of her attention to her thoughts.

Chances are that they've probably attempted something else to kick her from the Yotsuba servers by now, but Rowena did say she'd start working on accessing and copying it last night, so it's doubtful that it's a big deal for her.

Thinking about Rowena brings up the thought that she really ought to go through the Trunk to figure out what all she unintentionally brought with her to this new universe, but that in and of itself triggers a feeling of sadness. She'd started to grow up enough not to need her parents so much well before she was seventeen that she'd only really talked to her parents’ portrait casually, but after she graduated Hogwarts, she'd removed it from her Trunk and hung it in the Potter Ancestral Manor.

Which means that while she may not know what all she has, she knows for certain she doesn't have that. In turn, that means that even if it was just their portrait rather than her actual parents, she would never get the chance to speak to them again. Theoretically, the Trunk could try to replicate it, but it wouldn't have a genuine imprint of their mind so it wouldn't even be a proper portrait of her parents. Or well, her parents from her life as Calanthe. Toshiko's parents were still very much alive. Not really well given from her understanding her ‘mother’ was slowly dying, but it hadn't happened yet so both of Toshiko's ‘parents’ were still alive.

She almost feels bad towards her ‘mother’ for lumping her ‘father’ into the same quotation mark territory, since while she hasn't come to a conclusion on the former, the latter absolutely doesn't deserve to be called a father. Or a husband for that matter, given how blatantly he cheats on her ‘mother’ and how weakly he attempts to keep it under wraps. It would be an insult to James Potter, or even Sirius Black and Remus Lupin who had stepped up to be father figures to her after her dad died to give that man any sort of parental title, but she can't really bring herself to genuinely refer to Miya as her mother under the current circumstances so put together in the quotation marks category it is.

She's pulled from the thoughts of her parents by a knock on the door, and after being cleared to come inside, Suzuki is soon laying out her food on the table before bowing again at her thanks and leaving once more. Not wanting sad thoughts of her parents as Calanthe or the confused and disgusted thoughts of her parents as Toshiko to ruin her appetite or food, she shakes them off and pushes those away mentally.

There's not a whole lot of point to trying to recall the Trunk's inventory when she'll be confirming it soon either, so instead she turns her mind back to the vague idea she'd had yesterday of maybe trying to use expansion magic on her mental calculation area to be able to overcome the fact her inborn power eats practically all of her natural magic calculation area up.

If it existed only in her Eidos and not in her physical body, then regardless of the way they reflect each other and any changes, it should be fine, since there's nothing in her physical body to reflect any changes onto. Especially since it wasn't just her Eidos body's brain in general that worked as a magic calculation area. That structure between the two halves(1) that was a bit harder to spot amongst all the data, something other than the nerves of the corpus callosum that linked the two together, that she'd noticed yesterday seems to function as the magic calculation area.

She'd have to be careful about not expanding its overall exterior size and putting pressure on the two hemispheres of course, since that pressure undoubtedly would be reflected even if the cause wasn't, but if she could somehow expand it internally… she'd also have to make sure it wouldn't just be a whole lot of empty space within a shell obviously, since that wouldn't change how much of this world's magic she was capable of in the slightest, but if she could increase how much of the internal structure there was in the expanded area increasing the surface area that structure of the Eidos brain has as a whole… Maybe that could achieve it? It's more thought out than how the magicals of her old world applied space expansion magic to digital storage space at least, so if that can work, she's fairly hopeful that her idea can as well.

She shrugs it off as she finishes up her food and rings the bell to let Suzuki know she's done so she can gather up the dishes. She's quick and efficient, that's for sure, given that she's done in moments and after making sure she doesn't need anything else, swiftly leaves with a bow.

Flicking another Elemental Sight glance up at Maya's office, she's slightly annoyed that the feed watching her is still pulled up, even if Maya and Hayama aren't really paying a whole lot of attention to it, since it complicates her making the Trunk full size and going down to speak to Rowena again. Not a whole lot mind, since it's easy to slip in a spell that makes people not want to pay attention to something around her, or the screen the feed from the camera watching her was on, and even the Trunk after she pulls it's chain from around her neck and resizes it, then slips into it after that's all done.

She relaxes a bit when she gets inside, feeling more comfortable knowing there isn't a camera watching her every move and basically reporting to questionable people down there. She shakes her head as she gets down to the bottom, “Good morning Rowena.”

The golem sitting at the base of the pedestal projects Rowena's voice, “Good morning Creator. Did you sleep well last night?”

She nods, “Mm. Yeah, only real thing I could complain about would be how early I woke up, but even that had nothing to do with someone or something waking me and was entirely due to the ‘training’ this body has been put through making it wake on its own by habit.” Then she waves it off, “More importantly, did you manage to get into the Yotsuba family's servers?”

Rowena accepts the subject change easily, “Yes Creator. They had fairly decent firewalls, but it was not too complicated to get in without them noticing. I have successfully downloaded their libraries and the like and have gone through them.”

She smiles in satisfaction, “Good. Find anything helpful?”

Rowena doesn't hesitate a single moment, “There is something called ‘engraving magic’ that may be of some use, but while it could certainly be a channel for the magic of this world, there is still the angle of how to adapt the Trunk, myself, and everything else to accept it as a valid power source.”

She smiles, “That's a start though.” Then her smile fades a bit, “Though given how much they're watching me right now, I don't think I can stay down here for an extended period for us to work through just that, much less to start looking into other things in privacy…”

Rowena makes a humming noise, “I do not know about how to ensure privacy for other ventures, but after examining some of the Yotsuba's library regarding mind magics, I believe I can apply some of their knowledge towards reworking Legilimency slightly to develop telepathic communication without requiring eye contact. If successful, you would need only shrink down a golem and take it with you to serve as an access point for me for us to communicate.”

She blinks a bit rapidly, “Huh. They aren't totally behind in mental magics compared to our old universe it seems. Have you already done the reworking and just needed to test it, or do you need more time?”

“The former Creator. Though I would need your permission to test it, as while it would not let me read your mind if I am correct, I still require permission for something like that.”

She chuckles, “Then yeah, go ahead.”

Without a moment's notice, Rowena's smooth voice crosses her mind, <Can you hear me, Creator?>

She tilts her head, reaching for the contact point that just appeared on the edge of her mind and projecting towards it, <Yes. Can you hear me?>

<Loud and clear Creator. Please try to think about something privately.>

Her gaze slides away in thought, ‘If this does work, I'll need to find some way to hook a golem onto a necklace or bracelet, or maybe- Wait, hold on, didn't I just toss Hei's gear into the Trunk because I was simultaneously scared to lose something with so much history between us but found it all to painful to look at?’

In front of her, between herself and the golem, the beautiful wooden chest she'd stored it all in appears, and without hesitation she strides forward and opens it, lifting out the bracelet with the attached shrunken golems she'd gifted Hei so long ago before closing the chest. As she slips it around her own wrist and begins unclipping the golems, Rowena speaks up, “Considering while I have an idea of what you are doing, I do not actually know, I can only assume the test was successful and the telepathic contact does not give me free access to your mind.”

She hums, “I was just thinking about how the self repair function would get in the way of me trying to attach a golem to a necklace or bracelet and remembered I should still have the bracelet I gifted Hei. Given they'd have a constant drain on their magic though, I'm taking these others off so I can leave the rest here and cycle through them as their charge is used up.”

Rowena makes a noise of understanding, “I suspected as much Creator. It is not a bad plan.”

She nods, then straightens back up and looks around, “Well, if nothing else, before I leave, one of the main reasons I was coming down here was to take inventory of what all I unintentionally brought with me when I was reincarnated.”

Rowena responds without hesitation, “Given the way I can access the Trunk, I can give you an inventory list if you would like?”

She blinks a little in surprise as she swings her gaze back to Rowena, then laughs a little, “It didn't even occur to me that you can do something like that.” She pulls her mobile terminal out of her pocket, “Could you connect to this and get rid of and block any means of them spying on what I'm doing on it? If so, upload the inventory to it please. And if possible, give me full access to the Yotsuba library unlike my current limited access?”

Her terminal lights up on its own, “Certainly Creator, though given I need a magical connection to the outside world to communicate telepathically with you, that will not function as one.”

She nods as she brings it closer, quickly opening up the inventory Rowena had added to it, “I figured it wouldn't. I suppose technically we could just chat via text on here, but given how much slower that is, I think it's better-”

She cuts off with a choking noise as her eyes land on something in particular. She freezes up and her eyes immediately start to water. It sounds distant, like it's a million miles away, when Rowena asks in concern, “Creator?”

She shakes her head briefly before turning as she looks around a little frantically, but the Trunk picks up on what she's thinking and brings it to her in seconds, placing it on top of the beautiful chest that holds Hei's old gear. The tears spill as soon as she lays eyes on it, confirming she really did have it all that time. Through her blurry vision, she reaches out to pick up the red stone, lifting it up to be level with her face as a slightly hysterical laugh escapes her.

The Philosopher's Stone.(2)

The Philosopher's Stone. Which she'd had since she was eleven. Which she'd tucked into a small box between her mattress and the box spring hidden in her original Trunk and promptly forgotten about. It would've been taken out along with everything else when she opened it inside the Trunk of Requirements and told it to remove everything.

She neverhad to outlive Hei and Misaki. She'd just been a moron who forgot she had the Merlin damned Philosopher's Stone the entire bloody time.

The only good thing about all this is that she'd only learned about her fuck up after she had been reborn and that Hei and Misaki presumably had as well given her soulmate marks. It would've broken her if she'd found it after they died but before her life as Calanthe had reached its end. Enough so that she's not even sure she'd have had the strength to keep her promise to Hei. It's still a very bitter discovery, given she'd lived without them for almost three hundred and fifty years, but at least now her updated marks made it clear that she would see them again. And she'd kill anyone who tried to take them away from her again, regardless of their reason.

She laughs brokenly again, the sound half a sob, then shakes her head as she looks back up at Rowena's orb even as she sets it back down, “Sorry Rowena. I was just lamenting my own stupidity.”

“Creator…”

She shakes her head again then swipes along the bottoms of her eyes with her pointer fingers before plastering a smile on, “Well! What's done is done, but it probably is best if I spend as little time down here and potentially tip them off to my disappearances as possible, so I'm going to head up and we can continue discussing through telepathy.”

Rowena doesn't sound particularly happy, “Yes Creator.”

She turns back to the stairs to head back up, forcefully pushing the thought of the revelation away. She needs to work on the updates to the Trunk and everything else to accept this universe's magic as power. It also wouldn't hurt to consult Rowena on her idea of using some sort of expansion magic on her magic calculation area to try to gain the ability to do this world's general magic, but figuring out how to use this world's ambient magic takes precedence. She'd also like to start writing out her observations and thoughts on things like ambient magic and the magic calculation area, but given that Hei and Misaki had all but bullied her into giving Rowena orders not to let her overwork herself unless it was an emergency or something, she'd definitely have down time to work on that and look into other things without taking away from her more important work.

She gazes at her terminal in amusement, shaking her head with a chuckle. The Yotsuba had indeed attempted to cut her access to their servers again, this time by updating things and adding bio-data locks. Specifically fingerprints. Not that it matters given she can get around it with Rowena's assistance easily, especially since she still has the access she'd acquired at her behest.

Opening up a group chat she wasn't actually supposed to be on between the Heads of each of the branch Houses that's used for general discussion which had for the past week been about cutting off her access, she leaves a cheeky comment for them to find when they wake up, “No, that didn't work to get rid of me either, but good try! A for effort! 🙂👍”

It's hardly another week before they try implementing a sort of eye scan lock, but that gets another cheeky comment on the new group message board from her, “Oooh. Good attempt!”

Then they try to basically wipe their entire server and manually check files for anything malicious that could be helping her regain her access as they re-upload them from their backups. It doesn't help much given Rowena has already gotten into everything connected to their network, so she leaves another cheeky comment, “You're getting pretty creative here, aren't you?”

That gets them desperate enough to try replacing all the hardware and putting everything back in manually, double checking that there weren't gaps between their digital and physical library and copying everything that wasn't in said library before manually scanning everything back in, but while that does kind of help them for a little bit, Rowena easily breaks back in, and she leaves another comment, “Taking some pretty drastic measures now? 😯”

One of them, Kuroba Mitsugu, breaks a little at that point, responding back somewhat hysterically, “How are you getting in?! And how the fuck are you using emojis?! They aren't even supported by the Yotsuba server!”

The how was really easy, it was entirely Rowena's doing, but she wasn't about to tell them that, “I do what I want, that's how. 😘😈😆”

They seem to give up at that point, not that she can blame them because really, what else could they even do? Though, she does have to give them credit for how quickly they did everything manually, and twiceover at that, given that by the time they gave up, it had only been about seven months since her memories as Calanthe had woken up. Just to be safe though, she has Rowena set up an account for herself, and even secretly set it as the highest authority, trumping even Maya's as the Head of the family.

On a different note, given they'd gotten so freaked out by that point that they didn't even try to resell the hardware and were just going to toss it out, a little bit of invisibility, grabbing anything that wasn't in with actual garbage, and liberal use of apparition leaves her with quite a hefty haul.

She'd been pretty well off after her mom's contingencies got her away from the Dursleys, but she had initially grown up with them. Even after living to almost five hundred, she'd never quite shaken the ‘waste not, want not’ mindset it had instilled in her and wasn't above some scavenging.

She stretches out her back as she shuts her personal terminal down. It had taken some doing, but she and Rowena had gotten the Trunk and everything else updated to accept this world's magic within the first six months, and after discussing it, they had even come to the conclusion that it should be fine to try to use expansion magic on her magic calculation area, though there had been a snag in needing to develop a spell capable of influencing such a… metaphysically astral thing. That had taken three months in between work on updating the Trunk and all that entirely on its own, but she was now proudly capable of regular general magic in this world.

She hadn't been able to expand her magic calculation area as much as she wanted or anything, only having gotten just shy of doubling it so she essentially had two identical magic calculation areas each dedicated to general magic and her born specializations respectively, and she couldn't take it further even if she wanted to since it took a steady stream of her Calanthe magic to keep it expanded since she couldn't exactly carve runes to anchor it on the astral Eidos body's brain. Well, she supposes theoretically there was the Yotsuba flash cast carving method, and she could just rework the runes into this universe's magic engraving, but even if she was willing to, which she's not sure she is since it seems barbaric to her, she’d need to work out the tweaks to the runes for affecting an astral body. Regardless, it works as is, which in turn had also increased her body's energy requirements and jacked up her appetite. She hadn't been able to stop laughing for a while when it occurred to her that she'd kinda pulled a Hei.

Technically, she still needed to actually study magic to be able to cast anything of course, but that was actually easier than she initially thought it'd be after Toshiko's memories and the Yotsuba library had said so many things about magic calculation areas and magic sequences and all of that. She'd been concerned that she'd have to actually calculate everything out like a mathematical formula and was curious as to how on earth the modern magicals of this world achieved it quickly because of that. It turned out that they in fact did not do anything like that, at least not on a conscious level. On a conscious level, they mostly just pictured what they wanted to happen and the subconscious magic calculation area did all the heavy lifting for that.

If this was her previous world, she wouldn't dare even start learning, given the dangers of a child's unstable magical core, but nothing like that existed here. Well, there was a vague idea that it wasn't a good idea to potentially strain the magic calculation area of a child(3) but that was more out of concern for them potentially ‘overclocking’ it because they have little control of themselves and their magic from her understanding. She's been slowly dipping into the magic of this universe, having easily gotten her hands on what they called a casting assistance device, more commonly called a CAD, when they'd cleaned house. Someone having suggested that maybe the way she was getting in was through the ones they had somehow, though she has no clue how the hell someone would pull something like that off, and it says an awful lot that Rowena doesn't either.

They'd been paranoid though and tossed all of those as well, so she'd gotten plenty in her salvaging, and she was generally happy about it, even if they felt slow regardless of their quality. Hell, they'd been so paranoid, they even tossed out CAD tuning equipment, so she really wasn't lacking on any of the things she needed on that front.

Rowena was the one tuning her CAD right now since she can easily just access the Yotsuba library's information to learn how to do it, but between the fact it was actually interesting in that it passingly reminds her of runes and that she doesn't want to pull her attention to something so miniscule when she could be taking care of more important things, Rowena was teaching her as quickly as she could, giving her a quick refresher since Toshiko had already begun learning before Calanthe's consciousness and memories woke up before taking full advantage of knowing her and her learning habits so well to tailor her lessons to be formatted for her to learn as swiftly as possible. 

For actual magic though, adult that had mastered a different system of magic she may be, but she's been taking it slow and carefully monitoring her own magic calculation area as she progresses with her Elemental Sight just to be safe. As ‘fast’ as they say it is compared to ‘ancient magic’ she still couldn't help but feel annoyed at how slow casting was here, even for something as simple as just repeating the same spell over and over... If nothing else, for consecutive casts of the same spell, barring the variables, given that essentially the CAD provides a block of data, the activation sequence, to the magic calculation area to kickstart the process and then it just has to fill in the variables, then hand the now complete magic sequence back to the physical brain, but even the start requires them to input things, she does not get why they don't basically just copy and paste the previously used sequence to save time.

On a less annoying note, she's been practicing with her Elemental Sight, pushing it to its limits -without overclocking her magic calculation area that is- and trying everything she and Rowena can think of for her to improve with it, and to her absolute delight, she's around eighty percent sure she's starting to pick up on Pushions.

It was difficult to know for certain given there weren't ‘ancient magicians’ around the hidden Yotsuba village for her to watch to make sure what she's seeing is Pushions, but she can't think of what else she could be seeing. If they were Pushions, she was absolutely right about Psions being able to affect them though. Hell, even with the ambient ones, they could be affected by Psions. She's pretty sure the only real reason that foolish notion that the interaction went one way was because the ambient Psions influence on the Pushions was significantly more subtle. And the spellwork when it comes to getting Psions to influence Pushions was a bit tricky in their current framework of magic. It was doable, but tricky.

She was working on trying to tweak things to streamline the process to make it easier, but it was definitely slow going. She wasn't going to give up just because it was going slower then she was hoping it would though. That just wasn't her style.

She's amused to be called to the New Year's gathering, having suspected for over a month that they'd end up talking about her there, and a solid ninety-nine percent sure she was being called now because of her recent ‘rebellion’ so they can try to pressure her to stop acting out and/or fall back in line.

She walks in almost leisurely, immediately drawing ire from some of the branch family Heads, Shibata Osamu either can't resist commenting on it, or it was part of some plan to try to pressure her back into complying, “You have an awful lot of nerve keeping us waiting so long, and given how lazily you strolled in here, I can only assume it was entirely because you were taking your sweet time arriving.”

She smiles at him, “Yeah, I did. I was in the middle of something and got it to a good cut off point first,” Which wasn't even a lie since while she would normally take a holiday like this off, without Hei and Misaki around work actually helped distract her from the loneliness of them not being there, so she'd been throwing herself into the magic engineering lessons Rowena was giving her, “and only when I was done with that did I make my way down here.”

Kuroba Mitsugu gives her an enraged look, “To show such blatant disrespect when the Yotsuba family has summoned you! You who were stripped of your place and are just-”

She turns her smile on him, “You just said it yourself, and I already spoke to Miya about that same thing. I was stripped from my place in this family, which means I have zero reason to do anything you say. Someone who is disowned has nothing close to an obligation to do what the family that disowned them wants. Especially since I'm done playing along with being one of those slaves you slapped such a pretty title like ‘Guardian’ onto to try to mask what they are.”

Katsushige, Osamu's son and sort of around her age being only six years older, which is sort of a bigger deal when they're so young since it leaves him about twice her physical age now, but not so much in the long run, suddenly gets a pinched look on his face, “The Guardians aren't slaves! Why on earth would you-!”

She gives him a pitying look, “You only think that because you're more familiar with the ‘bard series’ as you guys call them, and they're one of the few that manage to cling to their individuality. But let me put it this way: born just to serve their so-called master, trained practically from birth to carry out what said master expects them to do, expected to die for their master if necessary, expected to be at the beck and call of their master, indoctrinated to think their master is basically the most important thing in the world from birth, never given a choice in whether they serve or not, and never paid for their efforts. What was I describing, a slave from before such things were made illegal, or a Yotsuba Guardian?”

He pales and his hands start shaking as he opens and closes his mouth repeatedly, but no sound comes out, “Mm. The fact you can't seem to figure out which I was describing is answer enough I'd say.”

There's a heavy silence hanging over the hall after she's done, no one seemingly able to find the words to dispute her, and the younger generation looking sick and horrified. She leaves it to stretch for a few moments before she turns back to Mitsugu, “Ignoring the Yotsuba's crimes against humanity and getting back on track, I'll save you the trouble of bringing up my care. Miya already did, and as I pointed out to her, the moment she brought me into this world, she was legally obligated to take care of my food, clothing, housing, and education. And while I may have been stripped as an acknowledged member of this family, as she didn't put me up for adoption, she's still bound by that legal duty, but I can absolutely leave if you'd prefer. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, and besides,” She smiles at him, a little meanly, “I'm sure there are plenty of magical families who would be more than happy to at minimum trade information on the Yotsuba for taking in a cast out former member of the clan.”

She holds a finger up and gains a mock thoughtful look, “Personally, given what I've heard of them, I think the Juumonji would be a good choice. From what I have heard, I think I could agree with them rather well on a moral level. And really, who's gonna stop me? You?”

There's another beat as more than one of the Yotsuba clan turns even whiter as they realize she's not wrong. Mashiba Shinsuke is the first to gather himself enough to say something in return, “T-That-! If you even tried, Maya-sama would-!”

She barks out a laugh, “Oh I would like to see her try.”

She looks up at the surprisingly calm Maya. Or well, if anyone else took notice, they'd be surprised at how calm she is, but given what she saw about how Maya viewed her in her sister's memories, as something of a god for whom the fate of the world was entirely her decision, she's not surprised in the slightest that she's outwardly calm, but making a surprisingly good attempt to hide how delighted and excited she is watching Toshiko verbally rip their shared family to shreds.

She smiles at her, “No seriously. Try. Let's put that idea that you're capable of stopping me to rest right here and now.”

Maya actually falters a little at that, which isn't very surprising given how much Miya's memories said she adores her, but she can practically see her decide that as long as she doesn't aim anything in such a way that would be lethal, then even if she's overestimating herself, she can recover from it.

Practically the moment she sees that decision settle, darkness descends onto the hall as artificial stars light up. Even as the darkness descends, she's already lighting up her Patronus fire and wrapping it around herself. She'd sort of unintentionally proven during her brief wake up stint as a baby that it worked against the magic of this world, which makes perfect sense when she thinks about it. While the modern magic of this world may, when it's boiled down to its most basic, just alter events which may make one think it would fall into the zone of inanimate objects like a statue which her fire doesn't touch, it's still guided by magic. Magic which would be embedded with intent to harm her, which it does effect.

Saying it can't mess with inanimate objects is actually not entirely true. It can't affect an inanimate object itself, but it can and will affect any magic imbued into it. It doesn't help with things like a spear magically tossed at her, because even if it burns the magic out of it, it would already be in motion. But for the sort of magic of this world? Yeah, sure, her fire doesn't affect something like the air itself in the vaguely famous Inferno spell, but it does affect the magic driving the spell, and once that's gone, things fall back into their natural state.

Maya's magic, Meteor Stream, basically just creates the event that ‘light has become a line and passed through’ which means it gathers photons and directs them. The moment it touches her Patronus fire, regardless of the fact she was purposely aiming for non-lethal hits, it still had an intent to harm her imbued into it so it's just as affected. And while burning the magic away should have as little effect as burning the magic out of a hurled javelin, she also gathers light. Which is an unnatural state of the world. Which means the moment it touches her fire, the magic holding it in such a tight cluster is gone and it disperses on its own.

It's a toss up whether it would hit something and bounce practically harmlessly like normal light does or if having it so concentrated means it would still cause damage, and the question isn't even answered since her magic had been clutching it so tightly that it had been putting pressure on them in different directions depending on where in the concentrated line of light it originally was.

If one imagined it as them pressed together into a javelin of light and the only thing holding it in shape was a hand clenched around it, then there was going to be pressure in different directions depending on what part of the ‘hand’ was touching each photon and pushing it towards the middle to hold them together and forcing them forward despite the direction the pressure from the clenched hand makes them want to go in. Take the hand away though, and the photons no longer have anything keeping them in place and pressing them forward, so the effects of the previous pressure that was pressing them in different directions and the way they bounce off each other and scatter are suddenly the only influences they're under.

All of it means that the moment it touches her fire, the lines of Maya's magic basically explode on themselves. Scattering harmlessly without leaving any sort of mark on her.

There's another heavy beat of silence as some of the more hostile members of the Yotsuba look at her in poorly concealed horror, even as Maya's delight ramps up. She grins at the latter, leaning forward like she's about to relay a secret, even if it's a little ridiculous given the space between them, the volume she'd have to speak at to be heard, and the amount of people not directly between them, but certainly on the way, “Wanna see something interesting?”