Fairies are real

There was an unusually low number of people in Gardenia Park this afternoon, Nick stretched his senses around himself, but still hadn't noticed a single living soul. Since this column was in a public place, he had to monitor the surroundings, but there was simply no one around.

"How long 'till you get there?" Marie's bored voice sounded in his left ear, "I voluntarily agreed to make sure that the map functions normally from around the globe, but I didn't expect that you would want to walk to the column on your own two feet." She sighed dramatically and Nick heard the rustle of paper on the other side of the connection. "Oh, by the way, Catherine sent us another pack of music from the past and the future."

Nick groaned loudly. "Seriously? The woman invented a computer that can see the internet of the future and uses it to steal music?"

"It's still not our future, but the future of some other universe. People grow horns on their heads there, Nick is definitely not something from our world." He heard the sound of a notification about the received message and sighed doomily. "But they make good music and Kurt Cobain is still alive there, even if he walks around with a hole in his cheek."

Jumping over a crooked stump, Nick ignored Marie and continued walking, whistling some cheerful melody to himself.

"... Really? The silent treatment? What have I done this time?" The girl asked irritably.

A branch snapped under Nick's foot and he stopped abruptly, mentally cursing to himself. He had not broken a single tree branch for nine years in a row, his record was sixteen years without a single broken branch, now he would have to count from the beginning. "Nothing, I just didn't feel like I wanted to talk. Can you reset my 'days without broken branches' counter to zero?" Nick glared at the branch with annoyance.

"Wait a second," Marie was silent for a couple of moments. "Is this the counter to the left of 'days without getting rid of corpses' or to the right?" Nick frowned and began to levitate a couple of centimeters above the ground towards the sensor, his feet sparkling with soft purple lightning.

"They are signed," he replied, "but this one is hanging on the left." Each of the ten sorcerers had their own space for counters filled with complete nonsense, whether they wanted it or not. And Nick's "days without broken branches" counter was the least insane of all.

"Yes, but they were signed by Patrick, he has no hands, Nicholas." Marie argued. "Oh, you're there. Congratulations."

Nick blinked and stopped the spell, falling to the ground and breaking another branch. "Fuckin'- ah, it doesn't matter anymore," he looked around and frowned even harder. The column was nowhere to be seen. "Another missing sensor? Shit, I thought I'd just have to fix the yellow one and go home." He grumbled and his gray eyes filled with purple light, allowing him to see magic.

His natural eye color has always been gray, but when he conducted streams of mana to his optic nerves, they turned purple. The only condition for using this spell is a carved magic circle in the eye of a sorcerer or wizard. For ordinary wizards, this was not such a big problem, but for immortal sorcerers, who were near-damn impossible to injure, it was hell.

Running his eyes through the forest around, he stopped at a small hill that just glowed with mana. "Bloody thing got stuck under a hill, gonna dig it up. I'll keep you updated." Nick raised his hands towards the hill and small purple magic circles swirled on his fingertips.

"Oh, goodie, I will know everything about your digging, how joyous." Marie deadpanned.

-=-=-=-=-=-

At the same time, at the other end of the forest, one very strange girl was fighting for her life.

"[Rising Sun!]" She shouted and a wave of golden sunlight erupted from her right hand, which burned the monsters around to a crisp.

These monsters were very strange creatures. Dark red bodies, yellow eyes with vertical pupils, huge hand-like front paws and short legs. They looked like angry baboons, ready to tear a person into small pieces.

The girl wore a sparkling orange, one-shoulder gypsy crop top and short shorts, with knee-high high-heeled boots of the same color. Her hair was braided in two pigtails with orange tube ties, and she had a light blue headband on her head that kept her bangs from falling over her eyes. But the most noticeable and unusual part of the fairy was her wings, looking like three leaflets with the color of powder blue inner leaflets with teal tips.

In her left hand she held a light blue scepter, with which she often fought off the attacks of strange red creatures that surrounded her. "Just how many of you are there?!" She screamed in frustration and hit the ground with her staff, sending a dozen sun rays into the ghouls.

One of the monsters was sent flying at their leader from the force of the blast and hit his huge yellow palm squarely. The red monster was already preparing to jump into battle again, but the two-meter humanoid creature clenched his hand into a fist and crushed it into a million glowing particles. "Ghouls! Finish that fairy!" He shouted in anger.

While the fairy fought off the endless attacks of the ghouls and the troll with the last of her strength, no one knew that an unexpected witness was carefully watching their battle. Bloom hid behind a thick tree trunk and watched in shock as the girl with wings used magic. Magic! It would have been the best day of her life if this fairy hadn't been fighting and losing in front of her eyes.

One of the ghouls crept up to the fairy from behind and with a quick jump was able to cut her side with his sharp claws. The fairy screamed in pain, but managed to respond with a sphere of pure sunlight. It whistled through the air and hit the ghoul's body, blowing it into small pieces.

The troll, noticing a new wound on the fairy's body, ran at her with a furious cry and while she was distracted, knocking her down. The ghouls immediately jumped on the girl and pinned her body to the ground, her scepter flying out of her hand right at the troll's feet.

"Not so great now, are ya'?" The troll sneered down at the girl and picked up the scepter from the ground.

Bloom couldn't just sit back and watch this anymore. If she doesn't do something, this girl will be killed! With an explosion of courage, she emerged from her hiding place, her mind trying to find a way to at least distract the monster so that the fairy could counterattack. Grabbing the nearest heavy-looking stick, Bloom threw it with all her might at the troll's head. "Let her go!"

The stick bounced off the troll's head and he recoiled from the fairy, the girl immediately took this chance into her hands – quite literally so – and opened both her palms, hoping that her savior would think of closing her eyes. The fairy's palms sent out blinding waves of light directly into the wide-open eyes of the troll and his minions. Searing heat spurted from her body and burned those fools that pinned her to the ground, but this spell took away her last strength. She couldn't do anything more than watch.

Bloom, fortunately, thought to close her eyes, the powers of the fairy obviously lay in the field of light magic, so she did not see what exactly happened. But when she opened her eyes again, most of the ghouls had been killed, and the troll was standing right next to her.

"Wah!" Bloom screamed and tried to jump away from danger, but one of the surviving ghouls caught the leg of her jeans, ripping it apart. She stumbled and fell to the ground, falling under the mercy of the enemy.

The troll rubbed his eyes with his free hand and looked out over the battlefield. The grass was burned and the ground covered with heat abrasions, the trees around him were now scarred by sun magic spells, his ghouls were almost completely killed, and he himself could only see blobs of color. But his mission was accomplished. He got the scepter of sun and moon fairy! He will not disappoint his mistresses!

Picking up the little red-haired girl by her legs, he growled, "Did you think you could be of any help? How stupid. I'll rip you apart and then I'll deal with her!"

Bloom's face was white with horror, she could be in a better place right now, but here she was. Ready to be murdered. But looking into the red eyes of the monster that held her life in his hands, she refused to die. Red-hot determination bubbled up in her heart and she pushed this strange feeling out of herself with all her might.

To Bloom's surprise, a fiery Chinese dragon burst out of her chest and swirled around her body. The troll was thrown away from her body, and the staff remained next to her. "Did... Did I just...?" She muttered as she watched the dragon fly into the sky and explode into a million fiery sparks.

The fairy rose to her feet, her side still stained with blood, but the wounds had already disappeared. "Wow, that was strong! But let the skillful fairies deal with the big evil troll," she said with a confident smile and picked up the scepter from the ground. She spun it over her head and it turned into a yellow circle of light. But as soon as she brought it to the ground, a wide arc of heat shot from the scepter that burned the remaining ghouls.

The troll got to his feet and scowled towards the two girls. "We'll meet again, blonde." He growled and with a wave of his hands disappeared into a purple cloud of smoke.

The fairy sighed heavily, leaning on her scepter. "Thank goodness they're gone," she glanced at Bloom and smiled wearily. "I'm tired." With those words, she collapsed to the ground, her clothes transformed into completely different ones.

"Hey!" Bloom ran up to the fallen fairy, Kiko jumped after her. "Oh no, we need to take her... Where? Will the hospital be able to help a fairy?"

While she was deciding what to do, she didn't hear someone approaching her from behind.

-5 minutes ago, on the other side of the park-

Nick had already finished replacing the sensor, the problem was that somehow – magic, if he had to guess – a piece of the column had been bitten off. By someone very big with very sharp and strong teeth. Replacing the metal and cutting out the characters would have taken longer than creating a new one, so he simply took out a new column and stuck it in place of the old one.

"Well," Marie said, "now the map of America is working again. The only thing left to do is fix the sensors in Canada, Israel, Uganda, Alaska-" She paused for a second, but this time because Joylin decided to return at that moment.

"Guess who found the entrance to Rasputin's cursed catacombs?!" Joylin immediately approached Marie, and judging by the sounds, picked her up in the air.

"Put me down, you insufferable woman!" Nick heard the unmistakable sound of a thunderclap and Joylin's scream right after. "That's better. I'm busy right now, you can talk about your incredible adventure later."

Joylin howled softly, then stopped abruptly. "Are you just watching someone use magic in Gardenia Park?"

There was a beat of silence.

"What?!" Two voices said at the same time, but only Marie continued to speak. "Nick, there's activity south of your position. But there's something weird going on there, the sensor is only picking up spells, not the wizard using them."

Nick frowned, what Marie was talking about was almost impossible. Sorcerers used their inner mana and connection to various dimensions to cast spells. Wizards used only their connections with various dimensions, which were also easy to detect using sensors. To cast spells with no mana in one's body, one has to control the power of a fucking dimension, which wasn't good news for anyone.

Joylin apparently also understood what he and Marie were thinking, because the girl immediately fell silent, a sign that she had become serious. "Do you need backup?"

"Not now." Nick was already running through the woods, not even touching the ground, but pushing off the hard air beneath his feet. Marie couldn't give him the exact location to teleport, so he had to find everything himself.

When he was close enough, Nick saw something exciting. A dragon of pure magical fire rose into the air above the park and exploded, giving him an idea of ​​exactly where he needed to go. "Found it, closing in on the target." He cast a spell on his eyes, broadcasting the image directly to the screen at Marie and Joylin's base. This caused his eyes to turn purple, but that was the last thing he had to worry about right now.

Muting the sounds around his body, Nick went to the clearing of the forest and looked around, his brain stopped for a second. Bloom sat next to the blonde girl, holding her head on her thighs. Even from his seat, he could see the strange clothes and the ridiculous... thing that was holding her hair. But what really made him stop was the state in which the clearing was. She was simply covered in the marks of the battle. There wasn't much, he'd seen much more terrible aftermath of battles in his life, just a glance at Mandela County – or the lack of it – proved it, but even that was enough to show the potential of whoever left these scorch marks.

"Contact. Two suspects. Bloom Price and an unknown girl in the cosplay of the princess of fuck knows what." He spoke flatly, but received no answer.

Nick approached Bloom from behind, not even trying to hide the sound of his steps so as not to scare the girl. She wss mumbling something about fairies and hospitals under her breath, completely ignoring everything that was going on around her. She was so out of it that Kiko noticed Nick before her. The rabbit began to pull on Bloom's torn trouser leg to get her attention, but even so she didn't react.

Sighing heavily, Nick crouched next to Bloom and snapped his fingers in front of her face, it did the trick and her head turned in his direction. "Nick! You have to help me! She was fighting this- the fairy drove the troll away, but I don't know what happened to her! We have to help her!"

Nick carefully looked at Bloom and the "fairy" on her feet, trying to feel at least a drop of mana from the girls. Bloom was clean and so was her new friend, but from the ring on the blonde's finger, he felt so much magic that he almost flinched from the result. Either someone put a star in the thing, or this artifact held the soul of some kind of fantasy star-eater.

"For starters, are you okay?" He calmly asked, looking down at her leg. There was a bruise in the shape of a huge hand on her slightly tanned skin, and Nick was very interested to know where it came from.

Bloom's brain finally stopped pumping adrenaline through her body and she began to feel pain in her legs. With a wince, she rolled up her torn trouser leg to look at the bruise. "I'm fine, it'll go away in a couple of days. At least nothing's broken."

"I can't detect any magical creatures nearby. The troll has either disappeared or is lying dead somewhere in a ditch." Marie muttered, looking through his eyes at the signs of battle all around.

Coming to a decision, Nick gently took the fairy's head and placed it on the ground to take the weight off Bloom's legs. Through his fingers, he sent a spell into the blonde's body, checking her condition. She was fine, except for a little exhaustion.

Then he touched Bloom's bruise, the girl hissed from the contact, but that hiss died in her throat when she saw a magic circle appear on Nick's hand, terribly similar to the one she saw on the cover of the book in his house. A purple circle built itself around his fingers and Bloom could only watch in shock as her bruise disappeared before her eyes.

"W-what?" She muttered.

Nick could only sigh, he did not like to show his power to new people, but right now it was better. 'I can always erase her memories later.' A dark thought flashed through his mind, but he decided not to think about it right now. "C'mon, let's go to my house. I think I'm the best choice in America right now to help your new friend."

Picking up the blonde in his arms, he gave her a piggy back ride and walked towards the exit of the park. Bloom followed him as if in a trance, Kiko in her arms. Her day was getting weirder and she didn't know what to do. Bloom only hoped that soon Nick would be able to explain what was going on.