Professor Smith's field office was drab and sparsely decorated. None of the buildings on site were anything else, of course. Pragmatism had won out over pleasant aesthetics in the construction of the facility, which considering the sort of work that was being accomplished here was probably for the best. Even if some of the more aging academics loved to do nothing more than complain about it nonstop.

Edison, interestingly enough, was not part of that camp. Despite Lucy knowing that his office back on campus was much more lavishly decorated than the one here was, the distinct lack of furnishing didn't seem to faze him at all. To her, the place felt more like a padded cell than a proper work space, and yet he hadn't given a single complaint on the subject.

Though, that wasn't to say he hadn't found anything else to complain about…

"You're trying to force it too much again," he boredly repeated for the umpteenth time. "This should be simple for you. Start over."

Lucy groaned. It was always that same, bored tone that got to her. The utter disinterest in it needled at her sense of pride in her own work. But, she did as instructed.

The so-called 'simple' task was one of those tricks generally regarded as at the very bottom of the magical totem pole: making random crap hover. More than half the Domains had a way to make it work, to varying degrees of versatility. But, that probably wasn't the real reason it was so popular as a starting point for most mages. There were plenty of other low-level spells specific to different schools of magic that were much easier to pick up, actually. Privately, she guessed it was used simply because people thought it looked cool.

Today she was told to practice with a small, elliptical piece of plastic that weighed about as much as an eraser. Edison had given her a sneak peek at the intended result, and of course made it look trivially easy… for the one time he'd displayed the act as an example.

After that, it was straight into the deep end. She was handed a training focus, and told to keep at it until she 'figured it out'.

She'd lost track of how many times she'd heard that in the past hour. Much less the hour before that. It felt like she might be better served smashing her head against a brick wall, for all the progress this supposed 'training' was making.

"Urgh… How am I supposed to know what's forcing it and what isn't if you don't give me anything to work with?!", she complained.

"You're not supposed to know. At least, not in the way you're thinking right now. It should… hm. How do I put this…?"

The professor drummed his fingers against the desk in thought, casually motioning her to continue her efforts while he thought up the right words. Her face scrunched up in frustration, but she followed along regardless. Just because she hated the current stage of the process, didn't mean she was willing to let it beat her, either.

Licking her lips in concentration, she gripped the handle of the training focus just a little bit harder and started from the very beginning. Her thumb rested comfortably on the conversion glyph that served as the bridge between the crisscrossing network of ley lines underneath the metallic surface, and what little scraps of ambient mana already circulated in every living creature. Like a trickle of water from a tap, she let the exchange process take hold of her once more, offering up energy she was unable to make use of on her own for that of the fabled Domain she was grasping at straws to even attempt mastering.

Even the process of creating Domain mana by oneself had to be trained rigorously. Everything did. It had been considered a great leap in progress the other day when she'd finally been able to track the process occurring within her own body by even a sliver. At least, the professor had considered it in that light. She just felt like she should have been at that point long ago.

The Law Domain mana slowly feeding into her reached a familiar tipping point, a critical mass that demanded application. Once again, she attempted to use it to lift the piece of plastic on the table in front of her.

It wobbled back and forth just a hair to each side, just for a split second. But, it did get into the air ever so slightly, ever so briefly. Just like it had the last fifty times or so.

"Overcorrecting…" Edison exhaled slowly as he spoke that one word, shortened down from his original in-depth explanation of the problem about a half an hour ago. He'd had to repeat it quite a few times, and Lucy imagined he was liable to repeat it quite a few more going forward.

Not 'supposed' to know? Knowing the little bit I've managed is only just barely making this possible to begin with!

Time dragged on with failed attempt after failed attempt. The professor was still taking his sweet time picking the words he wanted to say carefully. Very, very, very carefully, apparently. She almost wondered if he was doing it on purpose by the time he actually answered the question.

"…You remember multiplication tables?"

Lucy scoffed, frustrated that the long wait through countless more poorly-guided attempts had led to something so base.

"Well, Of course I do. What kind of a question is that?"

"The most important one, if you want to do this right the first time," Edison snapped back. "Now, pay attention."

"When you learn the basics of multiplying, public schools start out by handing out a small chart demonstrating solutions for simple equations, and offer a basic explanation on the principle, right? After that, it's drills upon drills on those same few problems over and over until you understand them intrinsically. You keep going until you no longer have to think about the answer, you just can write it down the moment you see it. The same has to happen here. Only problem is that magic doesn't always like to conform to a neat little chart. It takes very specific conditions for mana to behave the exact same way every time."

"Enchantments," Lucy guessed.

"Precisely. Regular casting is nowhere near as controlled of an environment. There's differences between mages, locations, bloody time of day seems to have an effect every now and again. There's no one size fits all solution. Just sheer repetition in as controlled an environment as possible, with the right training aids, to get a feel for the process as it happens. Over, and over, and over. And over."

"But… this is getting us nowhere!"

"Not nowhere, just nowhere noticeable. There's always going to be a little bit of progress, no matter what. Do that enough times, and you get a grain of understanding. Then with one, you get two. Prior experience builds on future encounters which build on even more distant future encounters, and with enough dedicated time and effort you can eventually match those who had their talent given to them from the start."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"That just… sounds like trial and error using existing magic as a base."

"It is! Exactly that! Tedious as hell, I know, but it's the only chance most people get. And, more importantly, the only method that makes any real progress outside of the one-time boost Ghost of Tolkien provides. And unfortunately, many are going to be stuck playing catch-up to those lucky few. The smart ones understand that. Most don't."

Putting down the training focus for a moment, Lucy decided she needed a short break to properly process what he was saying. "I take it that… this is the method you took to learn magic, then?"

"God, no." Edison snorted almost derisively at the thought. "I'm a through-and-through hypocrite on that front. Or, well… I was."

She raised her eyebrow. "And this is supposed to make me feel better about my odds?"

"It's not a game of odds, it's about persistence," he corrected. "Listen for a moment, and you'd see where I was going with this."

Edison cleared his throat. "Just to clarify, yes, I started off as a petty little shit when I first ended up with magic. Easy to feel untouchable when you can do something literally nobody else could, as I'm sure you can imagine. What started small got out of control, one thing led to another, and, well… ultimately I pissed off some very high seats in government."

"So how's that any different than right now?"

He chuckled a bit at the response. "Cheeky brat. What changed was that I got an outside perspective on magic. I went from traveling the world without a care in the world to suddenly having four other mages following me around like I held all the answers. Which, for the record, I didn't. I had to make a bunch of them up as I went. And in making those answers," he paused to emphasize his point, "That is where I got perspective on the other ways of uncovering talent."

"In short," the professor summarized. "Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, you're not going to be the one with the head start in the equation. But hard work beats talent every time talent decides not to work hard. It's all about passing that initial hurdle. Scale the process of breaking that limit to batches of hundreds of people at a time, and you begin to see the reason why Liverpool Institute is practically swimming in cash."

She nodded. At least this was making sense to her.

Professor Smith appeared thoughtful for a moment. "If you're looking for a way to push past this, there is one method I could recommend."

"Please yes," she practically begged. "Anything at this point would be better."

Edison shrugged. "If you say so."

He pulled out his wallet, and withdrew from inside a single, weathered coin. It looked like it had seen quite some history.

"Take this coin with you," he instructed, "and toss it in the air until you can predict the arc of it beforehand."

Lucy was puzzled. "You mean, while I'm holding the focus? I'm not sure how many times you want me to flip this, but if it's just every chance I get then the mana exchange rate would be too slow-"

"No focus," Edison clarified. "Just the coin. Keep flipping it over and over, every chance you get. No questions. No excuses. When you come back tomorrow, we'll see how far you can get along in the process after finishing the mundane practice."

"But… aren't I supposed to be studying magic?"

"You are. And you will be. Just… trust me on this one, and you'll see what I mean eventually."

She wasn't seeing the connection. Was this some sort of prank she wasn't in on? It certainly wasn't out of the realm of possibility, at this point.

But, at the same time, she was willing to give it a shot. If for no other reason to see how the punchline might pan out. As their lesson came to a close, she took the coin from him and walked out, carefully observing it before stowing it away in her jacket pocket.

< -|- -|- >

"And that's all he said on the matter?'

"Afraid so… Sorry if the sound's starting to get annoying to you, by the way."

"Eh, it's not too noticeable. Are you sure you can't take a break from it for five minutes?"

"I really would like to… but something tells me the sooner I work this out, the sooner I'll be able to get to sleep tonight."

Later that day, in the Cloudpiercer workshop, the trio of students found themselves undertaking the very important task of taking a few hours to do absolutely nothing of importance.

Every effort had been taken to make sure that nothing could interrupt this sacred meeting of the minds. Tasks had been delegated, schedules had been cleared, and padlocks had been placed over all the doors, just in case. It might have been a bit overkill, considering nobody but a few maintenance workers ever came this way now that the machine was in power accumulation mode, but after the hustle and bustle of recent events nobody wanted to take chances they didn't have to.

And yet, somehow, Lucy had managed to bring work in with her. The possibility that she might actually be her own worst enemy was slowly rising in likelihood, but at least the other two were being supportive of her efforts.

"Maybe this will take some worries off your mind," Konstantin interjected. Ever since he'd started regularly interacting with leading academics, his English had been improving by leaps and bounds. Granted, his accent was still there, but that didn't really bother any of them anyways.

"I've been told by Agent Blackthorne that there's talk of giving us the option to train successors in the operation of the Cloudpiercer," he explained. "Something about it being wasteful to confine us to one project that's already succeeded, if I understood him properly. Doesn't that sound nice?"

She made a so-so gesture, still flipping the coin with her other hand. It fell a little to the left of where she'd expected.

Damn.

"As much as I'd like things to be done here soon…", she replied, "I feel like anywhere else would be further away from tangible answers as to just what exactly is happening in London."

"Still hung up on the great mystery?" Ffion grinned from ear to pointed ear, clearly excited about the topic despite – or perhaps because of – the sense of danger underpinning the whole topic.

"I checked out some of the forum posts that news guy mentioned, and it turns out that rampant discussion doesn't even begin to cover it! There's one page in particular I liked, a bunch of amateur engineers discussing how they could one-up our big government project with a fraction of the budget. So far, their best idea's been to dangle a camera off the edge of a high-altitude balloon and snap a few photos."

"Would that even work?", Lucy asked quizzically. Another coin flip arced up, but this time her estimate of the apex was a bit short.

"Well, theoretically, up until the point of actually trying to get the camera back. Apparently, that was one of the first things the military tried. They… lost a bit more than just the camera."

"…I see."

Her instinctual flipping of the coin continued through the ensuing silence. She felt awkward just following through with the motion, at this point. Like she somehow considered the disappearance of some poor military observer was less important than her own practice.

That's it, she decided. This has to be the last one, otherwise I'm going to go insane.

Lucy took a long look at the coin. Studied every edge, every faded contour, just for a brief moment. Felt the weight of it between her fingertips. Recalled the dozens upon dozes of arcs that had sailed through the air in prior attempts. The amount of force that had gone into most of them. Rough estimates, anyways. Might as well put them to use… somehow…

Her thumb flicked upward, quick switching to extending out her index finger face up to catch it once it had gone airborne. The tiny metallic disk spun in the air mesmerizingly, rolling end over end as it traveled upward to hang in the air momentarily at perfect eye level…

Then gravity brought the coin down, and it landed perfectly on the pad of her outstretched fingertip.

She was at a loss for words. All she could manage at first was a sound.

"…Huh."

"What? What is it?" Both of them leaned in closer, trying to make sense of what she was thinking.

"I guess that's what he was talking about," was all she could think of to say.

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