"Wha-whawha- what's consecutive?! Eh, is this right?!" she dropped down and started doing a few pushups.
"Oh, that's actually very good. Just… Yup, she's tiring." Mary smiled at the other two. "All right. Same for you guys. Wouldn't be fair, otherwise."
"Yeah, yeah," Tatsuki groused before performing her own rep. Forty pushups honestly wasn't a big deal to her. If anything, it was a good warm up for whatever came next. Chad was having an even easier time of it than her, it seemed.
Soon enough, they were done, and poor Orihime was exhausted on the floor, having barely made it before her arms gave out. Not long into her panting, two more people joined them, a blonde woman and a boy around their age, each carrying some fast food bags.
"Got some burgers," the blonde announced, holding one up. "And chicken sandwiches if you don't want red meat."
"My Norse blood needs beef. Gimme," Mary said before having a wrapped burger passed to her, quickly ripped open, and chomped upon. "Oh, by the way, can you take a look at Miss Arisawa there?" she asked while indicating Tatsuki with her head. "No Nail."
"Oh! Well, that's possibly a big deal." She set the bags down and walked over, offering a hand. "Viktoriya Serebryakova. Wizard of Seven. You can call me Vicky."
"Arisawa Tatsuki. …Student. So…you know magic?"
"I do. But I also started with a large reservoir of manna, also known as magic energy, which caught some eyes. Not all of them good. Do you know anything about magic?"
"...No?"
"Hm, well, to explain, magic is the physical embodiment of change phenomenon through energy transference guided by human intent or intellect via the… Did you explain the Tree of Life to them?"
"'Ore or 'ess," Mary answered through a mouthful of fries.
"Via the branches of the Tree of Life," Viktoriya ended. "In order words, you use a physical energy amplified through your spirit to affect your body and the world around you. We were told you summoned fire and beat a Hollow to death."
"The monster? Yeah, I did that. You're saying I did that with magic?"
"Yes. It's rather rare for advanced magic to suddenly appear like that, but it has happened in the past. Normally, for someone to use magic, they need years of training and growing their Tree or a Nail. You not only had a large amount of manna, you had somehow tapped into it and expressed it as fire and bodily reinforcement."
"And that was…physical power?" the cat asked. "Not spiritual?"
"The sources of magic in our world are physical phenomena. The motion of the wind, the turning of the Earth, the friction heating the mantle and core, the currents in the ocean, and the light of the Sun are all the biggest ones, both because of how important they are in reality and the symbols connected to them. And even smaller sources are really just nodes built off of them. The food we're eating was fueled by the Sun's light, ate of the earth, was watered by the rain from the ocean, and so on. However, it is the spirit moving these energies through us, at the end of the day."
"Interesting. I never got much of a chance to investigate human magic."
"What kind of magic does a cat have?" Tatsuki asked before she found herself holding a bag to dig through for a sandwich.
"That will be for later. Right now, you should be learning this one, it seems."
"Yes, but we'll have to start small and gauge from there," Vicky pointed out before reaching over and tapping Orihime's shoulder. "You look a little tired. Exercise?"
"Forty pushups," the girl pouted.
"That's it? I thought she would have gotten you running around the block by now."
"Need to see where they're at before we start pushing them," Mary pointed out before sipping from a soda bottle and sighing. "Can't just make them tear themselves apart. They're only 15."
"What?!" the boy shouted, almost dropping his pack of fries. "No! There is no way," he yelled, pointing at Yasutora, "that guy is only 15! He cannot be younger than me!"
"I turned 16 back in April, actually," the larger, half-Mexican teen corrected them. The Nail Bearer did not look comforted by this fact.
"That's not much better! You're still almost a year younger and look like you fist-fight bears!"
"Don't be such a whiner, Grant," Vicky admonished him before turning back to Orihime. "Anyways, your arms must be sore. Here. Requiescat et sanetur. Sanatio Manus!"
The wizard's hands glowed gold, and the glow extended to Orihime before sinking into her arms.
"Oh, warm!" she said before touching at her biceps. "They're all better!"
"Were those the magic words?" Tatsuki asked.
"No, I was just taught to use Latin as a form of focus. You can technically do it with anything, languages, numbers, colors. You can even do it purely with thought, but the real point of them is to bring all of your focus onto your intent by processing it clearly. Since I have to translate it in my head and pronounce it, that means I'm very careful with each meaning of each word expressing that intent."
"And that's also how we're going to be catching you up," Mary pointed out, making Orihime stare forward empty-eyed as she realized what she meant. "No need to wait for a recovery period. Just make sure you're eating enough, and we can do this pretty much constantly. And once we're sure you're all good in body, we'll work on the next step."
"What's that?" Tatsuki asked "Mind? Body?"
"Nope. Once we get you through the 2nd Gate of Sacrum, it's Yesod. Foundation. Ego Identity."
