“This is stupid!” The girl made no effort to hide her annoyed-ness. “Do the reading already!”

  “Ah, y-yeah. For the boy, right..?” The guy immediately regretted assuming anything, but the boy just really seemed like he wasn’t all there. Normally it’d be very surprising if anyone their age didn’t know what kind of magic they were attended to, but if it's that guy, he wouldn’t be the least bit shocked.

  “Yes! Do the thing!”

  “Whew, y-yeah, doing it.” He barely managed to hold back a sigh of relief. For the first time in months, his instincts were actually right! Things were finally looking up for crystal ball guy.

  He cleared his throat, calling once again upon his vaguely mystical-sounding voice. “First, we will test your elemental attunement.”

  He did some semi-mystical hand movements over the crystal ball. Within, a vague purple swirling began to dance around the crystal ball. Moments ter, the swirl split off into five separate little balls, all hovering within the crystal space.

  They each bore a different color – Red, green, brown, blue, and white respectively.

  “Alright, now rest your hand over the ball.” The guy receded his arms and pced his hands on his p. “Don’t touch it. Just hover above, and let your magic seep through…”

  “okay.” The boy does as he’s told. His right arm raises, and his right hand hovers just above the ball.

  His left arm, meanwhile, just flopped around.

  Crystal ball guy was confused, until he peeked up at him. He immediately recoiled at the sight.

  The boy’s left arm seemed pretty normal, so long as it was unmoving and covered by a long sleeve. Now that it was moving, though, it resembled the untamed seas, the entire length of the arm unnaturally shifting like a wave. It was as if there was no bone or muscle at all, just a thin fleshy tube of semi-solid liquid.

  He couldn’t bear to watch, but at the same time he couldn’t look away.

  The girl ughed, almost keeling over from the sheer joy of the sight.

  “Aaah it- it never gets old! Haaaah, you look so stupid! Ahh…”

  “What the he- Wh-what’s wrong with him- is he okay???” Obviously the answer was ‘no,’ but the guy still had to ask.

  “Yeah, he’s fiiiiine.” She continued to ugh about it as she expined. “His arm got bsted by some serious magic crap st week. His bones basically turned to dust and his muscles just straight up died. I tried to heal ‘im, but that crap is BUS-TED. I don’t think that’s ever getting healed, unless my teacher shows up again. Hah…” She looked longingly into the crystal ball for a moment. “Anyway, his whole arm basically turned into jelly and I have no idea why. But it’s hirious.”

  “B-But is he- Are you- Does it hurt?” He shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  “Nah, I don’t think he feels anything, pain clearly doesn’t work on him.” The girl casually shook her head. “He’s very bad at getting hurt.”

  “… it is likely true that what i am feeling is likely not the same kind of ‘pain’ experienced by most humans.” The boy finally spoke up, his semi-getinous arm still wriggling. “but there is some kind of stimution present. a distinct unpleasantness whenever it moves or i recall it. at least a desire to fix it. or make it not happen again.”

  “I-If it’s bad, then wh-why are you doing that???” The guy was rapidly nearing the end of his rope.

  “she seems to enjoy it.”

  “Yeah.” The girl was nearing the end of her chuckling. “It’s very funny- I like looking at it.”

  “that is good. that exceeds the unpleasantness.”

  “That’s… Sweet???” It was hard to say, at this juncture. “Uh, regardless, that line’s just for effect, one hand should be fine… So, uh, please put that thing away.”

  “okay.” He stopped wriggling, and his arm once again rested at his side, once again becoming rather unassuming.

  “Alright, uh, just- do the magic now.” The guy implored, eager to take a lengthy break after this.

  “okay. how do i do that?”

  “Wha? I dunno, you just… Do it, I guess?” The guy wasn’t entirely sure what the question was.

  “oh, okay.” So, he did it. Just like that. It’s just that easy.

  Shimmering magic seeped through is fingertips and into the surface of the crystal ball. The orbs within began twisting and swirling around before combining and expanding and exploding and splitting off into… Five multi-colored orbs, just as they were before.

  To reiterate: there was nothing special about the orbs, none of them glowed or anything. They just returned to their original positions.

  “You didn’t do it right, idiot.” The girl unamused-ly scolded the boy.

  “unfortunate.” The boy began reaching his hand away.

  “Do it again!”

  “right.” The boy put his hand back over, and resumed.

  The result was the same.

  “Are you just a complete moron or-“ She accusingly shifted her gaze towards the guy. “is your stupid crap just broke?”

  “Uh, wait, hold on-“ The guy crabbed the crystal ball off the table, and started poking at it. The image within shifted colors randomly, the mystical colors seeming to take the form of options on a menu. “looks good…” He muttered to himself, before raising his hand slightly above the ball.

  The orbs collected and exploded into faintly glowing white and red, which themselves combined into a single, very pale orange orb.

  “Yeap, looks like it’s workin’ fine… But give it one more go, just in case.” He put the orb back on the table, and gestured towards the boy.

  “okay.” He did the thing again.

  Very same result.

  “Oi, moron, you didn’t do anything, it’s still freaked.” The girl looked at the guy as though he were dirt.

  “N-No, it’s working, it’s just an atypical result. See, he’s-“

  “AH!” The girl smmed her hands on the table and leaned forward, her eyes sparkling as a smile consumed her face. “HE’S SPECIAL? DOES HE HAVE SUPER-AWESOME IMMESURABLE MAGIC SUPERPOWERS?!”

  The guy leaned back uncomfortably. “Heh, n-no. Well, he’s kind of- I mean, it seems that he’s not elementally attuned at all.”

  “SO HE CAN DO ALL KINDS OF MAGIC!?!?” She practically squealed with delight.

  “W-Well, no. Uh, quite the opposite, actually.” He leaned back further. “To be abundantly clear, he’s a little weaker than average…”

  “Ah.” Her face instantaneously returned to neutral. She resumed her original position, crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. She huffed. “Laaaaammme…”

  “B-But it’s not all bad!” He leaned forward again. He was unsure why he had to console the girl instead of the boy, but he wasn’t going to question it at this point. “Sure, he’ll have a harder time with basic elementalism, but he should be more easily inclined towards miscelneous magic! That could be cool, right?”

  She sighed. “I guess…”

  “i do not know what any of that means. tell me.” The boy wanted to appease the girl, but his thirst for knowledge won out, this time.

  The girl continued to sulk, while the guy turned over to the boy. “O-Okay, well, elementalism is like, generation and control over the basic magical elements, y’know, fire, water, earth, wind and light. Miscelneous is just stuff that doesn’t use those. It’s usually harder and less natural. So, basically, you’ll have a harder time with the basic fundamentals, but the harder stuff will come a little easier. On top of that, it looks like your overall magical capacity is a little lower than average… But that’s fine! Y-You can work on that! You could even work to attune yourself to elemental stuff, if you wanted! So, there’s no reason to be discouraged!”

  “okay. noted.”