Shizuo was concerned, while he stood in attention in front of about ten men and women -half of them karslanders wearing either white coats or green uniforms quite unlike their usual designs, the other a group of gallian, liberion and albionese civilians- inside a non-descript hangar he had time to regret losing control on the squadron's victory party after a sailor had broken a beer bottle on his head.
After beating the crap out of an entire bar worth of patrons, a squad of military police and a single decommissioned witch who had tackled him through a window he had expected a long stay in the local jail at best unless commander Fuchida took the effort to release him in order to properly whip him as Imperial Navy tradition dictated against those who tarnished Fuso's reputation.
"State your name, rank and unit for the record."
"Shizuo Heiwajima, Flight lieutenant. Imperial Navy Kanjo Kōgeki-ki squadron, St Malo Air Group."
"Do you know how to read and write?"
He swallowed his anger at the question, unlike others who thought of him as a brute the voice of the man held no contempt. "I'm a graduate from Etajima Naval Academy with a degree in cartography and completed the naval pilot course."
"Oh. Excellent. That means you are good with numbers and visualizing information on a visual medium. That will make the later stages of calibration easier."
Instead he had been released by the same one legged albionese witch who had ended his rampage, eye still black from his last retaliatory punch, who immediately took him to a lab in which he had been subjected to a physical examination far more intrusive than what Etajima ever performed on him as a cadet, all while he was asked by Doctor Gericht, a karslander thin as a reed with some old style glasses and short white gloves, lot of uncomfortable questions about the last five generations of his ancestors on both sides of his family, most of which he couldn't answer since his parents were peasants with a particularly bare family registry before they were adopted as retainers by the Kuroda House and even they weren't capable of tracking where his Oni blood came from.
"And what does Oni-Blooded means?" That was really hard to explain to the gaijin, it wasn't as if he had the blood of an actual ogre, or as if an antecessor was one, at least he didn't think so.
"As the priest of the shrine back home explained to me, I'm like those witches born out of the big families, just that instead of animal tails, ears and great magical powers I get a short temper, great sake tolerance and a mean right hook." Whatever the origin those traits had become a weight dragging him down all his life he didn't add.
The man made some notes in his notebook before continuing the interrogation. "If it is not hereditary how do you know you have blood of Oni?"
"Back when I was ten I beat the crap out of an older boy. That wasn't rare, I used to get into fights like that all the time but when his dad showed up and tried to cane me I beat him too, and people took notice. An old hag from a cadet branch of the Kuroda family came in to investigate and declared me Oni blooded." Afterwards parents told their kids to stay away from the Oni and he spend most of his childhood being volunteered to the town's priest assisting in blessings, practicing calligraphy and donating his blood to make ofuda and meditating while sitting on a cold stream as a form of purification and patience training.
A few more inconsequential questions came afterwards, including a basic and not as basic arithmetic quiz before he was let to a chair in the center of the room with doctor Geritch turning away and started giving instructions in german while one of the assistants began translating to the spectators.
Geritch took a seat in front of what looked like a large telephone switch boards, filled with wires, switches and multiple colored bulbs, with the one contrasting part being a large blue crystal sphere in the middle.
"Minimum voltage to the analyzer, let the bulbs heat up slowly." The doctor confidently ordered, meanwhile he was unceremoniously strapped into a chair with a helmed uncomfortably similar to one of those electric chairs that sometimes appeared in liberion yakuza films. A green crystal connected to thick cables was put on his left hand while the left has handed a metal rod.
The following instructions from the scientist didn't help dissipate that image. "Set the output at one breaker, and rhodochrosite filters. Input… The Leutnant is a big, strong man. Three breakers, rhodonite filter."
With a surprisingly comforting voice the doctor quietly addressed him. "When we activate the devise you are going to feel a small jolt. Do Not Worry. The machine is completely safe, it is simply a natural consequence of mana circulating through your body."
Then he turned a number of switches and the strange contraption started buzzing, and with it came the jolt -more like being electrocuted- starting on his head and travelling through his body, unlike anything he had ever felt before, and curiously enough not painful at all.
He could feel a pulse behind his eyes that was hard to describe, as if his senses were all mix up, akin to a badly tuned radio station filled with white noise but with light, but also he could feel a somewhat familiar smell…
"It smell like ofuda…"
"Ofuda?" Geritch asked.
He took a couple of seconds to find the correct words in english. "Paper talismans, magic."
"Excellent, excellent." Without talking the doctor made an upwards gesture to the man in the controls who slowly turned a dial. It felt as if he was drinking lukewarm amasake during New Year's Eve.
"Doctor, input circuit is fully open, no detectable feedback." A young man said from his left and slightly behind him.
"We are injecting you with environmental mana, normally the human body generates a small amount of magic, enough for normal body functions and thinking but not much else. It also receives additional magic from food and through breathing to complement it. This machine artificially gathers that external magic –mana- and force feeds it to your body. We are going to allow you to absorb a set amount and then measure the output." The doctor said in a loud voice, talking not only to him but to the entire gathering.
Then in a lower voice. "Feeling your magic pool has been described as if you bladder is full and you Can Not piss. Many of the children I have worked with have accidentally soiled their pants so if you start feeling that way tell the assistant."
"Are you serious?" Now that the image was in his head he could actually imagine it as if the magic, the Ki as the priests of his hometown use to call it, was feeling his lungs with warm liquid.
"I am always serious in the middle of a magic experiment, it is why I have a much cleaner record than Schugel. If that happens we are not going to be able to disconnect you from the machine without spoiling the tests and you are not allowed to release the orb or the rod neither but Erick has a pan and a privacy screen ready so just hold it."
"I'm not going to piss while that boy holds my ding!"
"I can always ask Olga to help you instead if that is more comfortable to you?"
"No, I'll manage somehow." He answer, swallowing once more the expletives he wanted to yell.
Afterwards they fell in uncomfortable silence, or at least uncomfortable for him, the man he now could confidently call a mad doctor was too busy writing notes while his subordinates read numbers out loud.
"We are reaching the one hundred and fifty units of external magic. I believe we are ready to do the mana-magic conversion test. Olga, open the output device main circuit. Calibrate at ten, then dial down until the variance is at plus minus one. We will start our measures from there."
"Genau" the girl, Olga said with a nod. Then started manipulating the controls with many of the bulbs in top of the machine turning on.
"Needle idle at ten units. Opening breaker number one." As a paper of the recording drum was filled with a continuous line resembling some of the radio beacons he had worked with during his short stay in the Kaga he felt the slowly tricking energy filling his lungs starting leaving his body.
"Magical flow detected, needle between plus six and plus eleven." Olga continued.
"Good, magical output is higher than expected for a first time. Mark the moment it stabilizes at base twenty and from there we will measure input/output loss ratio." Hearing that everything was going according to plan, even if he didn't understood the specifics, was enough for him to release the iron grip he had on the magic from the moment he heard that there was a chance he was pissing himself in public if he slip.
Grave mistake.
It was instantaneous, one moment Olga was doing adjustments to the paper drum and the next a loud noise of crystal shattering and a faint smell of smoke rising from the machine.
"Overload, full overload of both circuits!"
"Leutnant, hands up now!" The commanding tone of the doctor cut through whatever disbelief he had, he immediately dropped the rod and orb and raised his hands up high, almost dislodging the helmet in the process.
He was about to speak but the figure of a fully manifested albionese doe witch interrupted him.
"Bloody hell, what just happened?"
"Overleutnant Tennant, this is what happens when we use low magic detectors on a mage with high reserves. The fuses are designed to withstand up to two hundred units of magic per second, the rhodochrosite up to twice that. Both burned up before the gold laden breakers had the chance to trip."
"Bollocks, I'll tell the boffins we're suspending the demonstration. How long 'till you can set a new one? This time something that holds."
"Suspend? This is not an uncommon incident, in the military academies it happens frequently as the trainers underestimate the development of young mages. Olga and Erick are already checking the analyzer, but unless something unexpected broke then it is a simple matter to replace the filter and the fuses for the correct ones for use with trained mages."
"Good, herding the boffins for a second demonstrations would be a pain in the arse."
"I have assisted Doktor in Magical Engineering Adelheid von Schugel in high performance orb experiments before. I have no sympathy left for you."
"What kind of arse is this guy that everyone believes I'm prim and proper by comparison? Wait, don't answer, better off not knowing. How long then?"
"Fifteen minutes if we make use of this unscheduled pause to connect a test orb and proceed to do testing of a more practical nature."
"A test orb already? Captain Schwarzkopf expected a few weeks of basic magic training before we could reach that point with new recruits."
"Well, normally recruits dedicate many hours using training tools to build up their reserves and will not burn through the testing device on their first time. That is at the very least a C-Class magical reserve dumped into the output machine while configured to measure traces of magic. All in all while forceful it demonstrates that the leutnant has both the magical reserves and the magical output to operate a test orb without having to build up his stamina."
"Gomen… I mean sorry!" He was deeply bowing. Unlike what other people thought, whenever he broke something in one of his rampages he felt sorry about it, even if in the moment he was too furious to recognize it. This time however there was no red haze to take the edge off his embarrassment.
"What for? Accidents happen, you were referred to me due to your prodigious strength, it should have been obvious you were already manipulating magic and therefore had a pool of it available beforehand."
"No, I carelessly allowed the… magic to flow to the machine once you said everything was going well."
"Oh, wonderful. Manipulating the magical reserves comes even farther into the curriculum, your eventual trainer will be delighted to shave a few days of training."
"Ha, knew that getting hold of a fae-touched was a fine idea. Worth the black eye."
"Fae-touched?" He questioned. "I'm Oni-blooded, don't know what a fae is."
"Fae-touched, incubus, oni-blooded, all the same to describe extraordinary males. Different name, same thing. Let me go tell the academia nuts we're resuming in a jiffy."
