Author's Note: I'm using another word doc to write this story, so sometimes I fail/forget to paste everything
"What's up Jon?" Karyn greets him as he gets on the bus. "I didn't see you at the usual stop, so I assumed you might be skipping because of the stone."
"I wouldn't be spending time with that dangerous thing unless I had all the time in the world to think. It's difficult enough to get a wish correctly phrased." Jon glances at Karyn's breast unconsciously. "Speaking of which, have you gotten used to your changes?"
"No." Karyn interjects, "And quit staring at them, you're making me uncomfortable."
"Sorry, I just kind of looked at what I was thinking about." He says as he looks out the window. "Huh?"
"What?" Karyn asks.
"Oh, nothing. For a second I thought I saw someone running alongside the bus."
"You didn't wish for anything yesterday, did you?"
"I did?" Jon trails off. He could have sworn he made two wishes the other day and one of them was to know what magic was, but he couldn't remember what they were exactly. He turns back to Karyn. "I thought I did. I just can't remember what exactly I wished for. I want to say I ended up in an alternate universe and woke up this morning feeling nothing out of the ordinary."
"Are you feeling alright?" Karyn asks concerned.
"I'm not sure." He looks outside the window just to think.
"Did you wish for something like time travel?"
"No, I think it was knowledge. Like, I still remember some of the things I wished for, but my memory seems to be returning back to its original state."
Karyn just looks even more concerned now. "Tell me if think you're starting to get dumber. We might need to wish your memory back to normal."
Jon pulls out the box in his pocket and fiddles with the lid, taking glances at the stone. "Yeah. I'm not worried, but it's not out of the question yet." Making sure he's not touching the stone he speaks cautiously. "I just wish that I knew what changed."
---- Leon's Perspective ----
"Unbelievable." Astred's voice is the first thing I hear once I'm hiding on top of the bus housing the artifact.
"What?" I reply while making sure my shadow magic is keeping us hidden from sight.
"It's a wishing stone." She says exasperatedly.
"Wish? You mean like a philosopher's stone?"
"No, I mean a wishing stone. Ugh, this is bad."
Sakura looks at her panicking form. "Why are you so worked up?"
"Because it's going to be impossible to contain that much energy. This is like a nuclear bomb level of magic power."
I sit down on the bus. "Calm down Astred. Just tell us the details of this artifact."
She takes a deep breath, "Alright." She says reluctantly. "From what I can gather, is uses its tremendous power to take possibilities from both the mind of the individual holding it and what could have happened in the past. It then projects it on a extremely wide scale much like the Reality Warping Device people use in our world to recreate media or the past in a virtual reality. The worst part is that is changes the minds of those who see but did not hear the wish so that they acknowledge it as real."
"So the changes aren't real?" I ask.
"No, they are very much real. If we consider that it's not uncommon to bring a piece of tech from the within the RWD to our world, then we can consider the changes that occur to happen in a similar fashion." She explains.
"Biological change still seems a bit far-fetched, but I'll put that aside for now." I sigh. "I knew the mind control theory was scrapped in the Kingdom project, so I never expected it to have been tested in this fashion."
Sakura pipes in. "You never did tell me what that project was about."
I shake my head. "You're better off not knowing. It was a lot more cruel than it was supposed to be. I only stayed with it because I felt I had to."
The bus stops at a very generic school building. We all are about to get off when Astred stops us.
"Hold on. There's one more thing. If the stone or the user enter a different world, the influence of the stone gets reset. I don't know to what extent, but at least most of the wishes get reversed."
I nod to her as we shut her off. "Good to know."
Sakura and I jump down from the top of the bus with the bike in tow. I dispel the dark bubble surrounding us that basically made us invisible and make my way to the school building. A voice yelling across the campus catches our attention. We turn toward the voice startled, only to realize it's only a teacher reminding the students that today is picture day.
"Actually," I say to Sakura. "This might work to our advantage." A flash umbrella materializes in my hands. This is my weapon of choice, which can be easily configured into three forms. The first is the ball and chain form which balances my combat strength with my magic strength; the second form is a flail and shield form which prioritizes combat over magic; finally, the third form is a flash umbrella which enhances my magic. That's the one I'll use to blend into the school today.
