Dark All Day (Takashi Agera)

Dark All Day (Takashi Agera)
Date of Cutscene:	06 March 2024
Location:	Dusk Zone
Synopsis:	A window into Takashi's privately-voiced frustrations.
Cast of Characters:	Takashi Agera

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Riventon slammed his back into the tree. Well. It was sort of like a mockery of a tree, its branches that ended in roots above, and the leaves that ran between them could have been purple puffy clouds. <<Meister. I can dispel->> Axion began, but Riventon just slammed his ice covered back into the tree until the violence alone dislodged the magic binds. "IT WAS JUST ONE OF THEM." Riventon yelled to the sky, sending a cluster of strange birds with teeth scattering from the trees. "It was. Just. One. KID." he said, breathing heavily. <<Meister. That One Kid is an enforcer and has training you do not have access to.>>

"Alright, what about the guy with the blue hair who punted me into next Tuesday with a shockwave that I only survived because of the reactor purge." he asked, still stomping angrily down the upside down forest path. <<Energy signatures did not match any known experiences.>> "Yeah, that's right, he just came out of nowhere and KICKED MY ASS."

Riventon kicks a rock and it bounces down the path before gravity seemingly inverts on it and it shoots off into the sky, because the Dusk Zone takes reality as a suggestion at best, and does not color inside the lines.

"You know as well as I do how much data we have on things like this, Axion." the boy says as he continues into the deeper Dusk Zone, the twin landmarks of Clover and Obsidian Tower's reach into the Zone behind him as he continue into the unknown, the unknowable. "That thing inside Hotaru. That energy reading from Soryuu Shrine that evening. The tremendous energy readings from that little girl Chrono's often with. Hell, even when pushed, Sunbreaker's energy output." he says. "All of this information and data and thinking, all of this time, and I'm not at the level of any of them. I'm not just supposed to be a genius, I AM A GENIUS, and yet I'm still being outstripped by random people who don't even know Newton's Laws - but that's okay because MAGIC doesn't give two damns about Newton's Laws either."

Riventon lets out a sound of frustrated annoyance and a Dark Energy blast just annihilates some poor creepy reflection of a tree.

<Meister. Your time was spent on Hotaru and Hematite.>> Axion reminds him. <<You have not yet given this your full focus.>>

"Yeah, well, looks like we need to put some focus in on it now. The two of them are out of their danger now, at least temporarily, though. One way or another... and the time I spend dwelling on that is time I'm not spending putting myself into a better position to achieve what I need to. Maybe I'd have been in a better position to help them if I just focused on understanding the things that could grow my own understanding of the fundamentals of magic... if there even are such things.

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One of the strange suns of the Dusk Zone moved left-to-right in the sky as Takashi rested, now out of henshin, his back against a tree that looked rigid and solid but was actually fluffy and soft as he leaned into it. Even though the Dusk Zone had multiple suns, their light seemed to only change the hues and colors of the world - never brighten it. Around him, Axion was displaying several video screens - in sets of two. The upper one was an image of something, or at least as much as he had. On the screens below each was terrifically complicated looking equation and technical readout on it. Nanoha's blasts. Sailor Moon's purification - the one that had left the scar on his outstretched arm. Cure Peace's thunder. Chrono and Rashmi's attacks. The blue light of King's Pillar, the spears of Ginga Otome. The rockets of Puella Red, the singing of Yellow Pearl Voice. Sailor Venus' Crescent Beam Barrage. Ahmya Karashima's webs. Pluto's Dead Scream.

Takashi using his hand to reorder them, shifting them left and right and around each other. To try to read the data. Each one of them should have been a point of data, each one a little hint into how magic worked. But they didn't coalesce around any unifying theory, any equation, any sensible way to understand all of these different sources of magic. Even sources of magic as similar as Chrono and Rashmi - one training the other, both device mages - still had no unifying constant.

He scowled at the data as he bit into a strange blue apple, the inside of it fizzing angrily like a shaken up soda as he did so. Somewhere in all of this data had to lie an answer. Just maybe not 'the whole' answer, but... If not to magic itself, then an answer to the power he sought, the power he felt was missing. Surely, even if he couldn't have their power, he could force his energy to emulate the end results. Takashi refused to believe there was any human - any creature - who had more potential strength than him. He just needed to unlock it - by whatever means necessary.