30 Day OTP Challenge: day 7: Cosplaying

It’s a sufficiently unusual occurrence that you have to dig around in the Wizard's Manual a fair bit to find it.

Most potential practitioners of the Art make the acquaintance of wizardry through the direct and usually rather obscure action of the Powers that Be. The probationary-wizard-to-be comes across something unusual: an odd book or a peculiar computer or tablet, a voice that speaks to him or her alone, an object that somehow holds knowledge inside it and whispers it into the heart. Sooner or later the finder progresses through this initial discovery to the personal Choice offered by the presentation of the Wizard’s Oath, and (if it’s accepted) to the Ordeal that follows.

But sometimes matters go differently. Sometimes—for reasons best known to Themselves, normally having to do with something private but important in the potential wizard’s makeup, some situation making a personal touch the most effective—the Powers call in presently-practicing wizards to assist in the delivery of the Manual or “induction instrument”. These so-called assisted inductions can be (seemingly) very simple, or sometimes fairly complex.

The one presently in progress would probably qualify as the latter.

“Are you ready?”

“No, because I can not keep this hair under control!”

“Stop fussing. And hold still or the stealth spell’ll slip. No no, not that way!”

“I told you, the hair…! It’s all over the place, it’s trying to strangle me, I swear, did you forget an inhibitor variable on that routine?”

“Two secs, I’ll have a look — “

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30 Day OTP Challenge: day 8: Shopping

You’d have trouble getting a definitive estimate of how many people pass through the Crossings on any given day. For one thing, the management has some reason to obfuscate the stats, specifically for security purposes. But regardless of the exact transit numbers being hidden, no one would argue the concept that a lot of people don’t go to the Crossings just to go somewhere else. Many go there just to go, because it truly is a stunning tourist destination..

Others, however, go to shop. Some go there to help others shop. And some… are less open about their motives.

***

Two young women, one almost a head taller than the other, materialize together on one of the blue-glowing hexes of the Gate 330 area. This forcewalled region of the wide white-shining Main Concourse floor is a “hard” target set aside for legacy gates like the oldest ones on Earth, which is where these travelers have come from; a routing via a dedicated catenary system in the New York suburbs, linking (for energy-saving purposes) through the old high-powered gate at Chur, and popping out here.

Reflexively the young women, seasoned travellers both, glance around them for a second after they manifest to make sure that none of the adjoining hexes are live: a smart move, as even in a facility this sophisticated, it only takes one software glitch combined with one careless moment to leave a person literally and physically bridging two different worlds. Once they’re sure the neighboring hexes are dark, they stroll off and out into the Concourse: a girl in blue jeans and a couple of layered tops in rose and green, under a short denim jacket; her companion in layered skirts and a force-braced camisole with red chase-light embroidery, keyed to her pulse.

“So, the emmfozing….”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“You were going to tell me how you got into it.”

“Yeah, well, you know how it is. Once you start grenfelzing, one thing just kind of leads to another…”

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