Getting the Magic in Me [Spirit Hunt]

Some corner of John's mind noticed the odd stares people shot at him - he had too keen an eye to miss them - but for all the sign his expression gave he might as well have been blind. He was perfectly aware that people found him and his choice of attire odd but he had long since stopped caring about what other people thought of him. He was perfectly content on his own, so long as he could continue to pursue his hobby. And that, as it happened, was exactly what brought him to Shibuya 104. Tucked away in a corner of the top floor, sandwiched between a second-hand book store and a clothing store that seemed to deal exclusively in black, was a small store called "The Wizard's Hat". It was constantly dusty, the owner was superstitious to the point of paranoia and much of the merchandise smelled like decomposing flesh but for all that, it was by far John's favourite store in the mall.

He didn't bother greeting the owner as he entered, an old, white haired man who eyed him suspiciously and made a warding gesture in his direction, muttering something in a language that John didn't recognise. He ignored the man as easily as he had ignored the stares on his way there and began to peruse the goods on the wooden shelves. There were ancient looking times written in a dozen dead languages, glass bottles of various unidentifiable substances, talismans of metal, wood and something that looked suspiciously like bone and more objects that defied classification or description, though it was probably a safe bet that PETA would not approve of much of the merchandise. John on the other hand was unperturbed as he moved from a display case of what had once been a mouse to a necklace of tiny fangs. He had seen far more gruesome things in that store before.

John had no specific item he was looking for on the shelves, he rarely did. Rather, he generally spent some time browsing before buying whatever seemed most intriguing. He had thusly amassed quite a collection of amulets, protective talismans and esoteric texts. Some he had discerned to be fakes, mere novelty items no more magical than most card tricks, but others seemed to lack any reason to doubt them. Of course, he had no proof they were legitimate but the fact that he had never been struck by lightning, possessed by a demon or stabbed seemed to suggest that at least some of the mystical protections were working. It seemed likely that this trip would net him another charm or two and nothing more, or at least, that seemed likely before he noticed the statue behind a large, wooden chest at the back of the room that purported to be capable of trapping ghosts inside. He had almost passed it by when his eyes seemed to move towards it of their own volition and something about it instantly captured his attention for reasons he couldn't quite explain.

Kneeling down on the slightly dirty ground, he struggled with the heavy chest, managing to push it aside only with great difficulty. The statue, now that he could examine it more closely, appeared to be the curled up figure of some sort of demon. It was mostly purple but with a white face that was fixed in a toothy grin. Two downwards pointing horns seemed to confirm it as a demon. It was displayed in a seated position with its legs drawn up to its chest and it's arms, ending in large, red claws, wrapped around them but on the statue's chest, just above its knees, John could make out the rather incongruous image of a smiley face. So bizarre was this feature that his initial assumption was that the statue had been vandalised but on closer inspection, the design wasn't painted on or carved by a juvenile amateur. It was clearly either the work of an extremely talented vandal or else was a part of the original statue.

"What exactly are you?" John wondered aloud as he reached out to grab the statue and examine it more closely. The moment his fingertips brushed against the statue, his vision was drowned in a blinding light and it felt like an electric shock ran through his body, leaving a sense of pins and needles in its wake. When his vision returned, he was lying on his back and panting heavily, completely bewildered by what had just happened. He groaned, disoriented, and raised a hand to clutch at his head but froze halfway there for it was not his hand that he saw approaching his face and not just because it was clad in a red glove. A quick count confirmed that yes, there were only three fingers on that hand. Three sharp, red fingers, more like claws in fact. Claws exactly like those which had been on the statue, in fact. Struck by the sudden inspiration, he sat upright and looked over at where the statue had been. Had been, as it had apparently vanished into thin air but the chest was still present. The chest that was now taller than he was in a seated position. A glance down confirmed it; he had been transformed into a replica of the demon portrayed by the statue. Not just a demon, he realised with a start as a name came to him out of nowhere. Impmon.

"What's going on back there?" the owner's irate voice demanded as he rounded one of the shelves, scowling fiercely. "You'd better not have-" he began only for his jaw to snap shut as his eyes came to rest on the creature that was Jonathan Dearsbourne. He stared at what he could presumably only identify as a monster and John stared back, both momentarily stunned and unable to decide how to react. That silent standoff lasted only a few seconds before the owner settled on a reaction: abject terror. With a wordless cry of alarm, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of salt and iron dust which he hurled at John. It hit John but failed to provoke any reaction beyond mild irritation and the part of John's mind that insisted on analysing everything he saw noted that whatever form of demon this Impmon was, it apparently didn't have any weakness to iron or salt. The rest of his mind was still trying to comprehend the fact that he had apparently been transformed into such a creature, leaving him unable to consciously think about how to deal with the situation he had found himself in.

Unconsciously, however, was a different matter. His body, or rather, the body that he suddenly found himself in, immediately reacted to the act of aggression, futile though it may have been, reflexes pushing him to his feet and jumping high into the air, over the shocked store owner's head. Twisting around in mid-air with far greater agility than he could ever hope to achieve in his human body, he found himself snapping his fingers and drawing back his arm. Acting on pure reflex and adrenaline and with no knowledge as to why, he found himself shouting the words that came unbidden to his mind. "Night of Fires", he shouted just as a small fireball burst into existence in his palm. Before he could even fully register the surprise that such an act should have caused, his reflexes carried his arm forward, hurling the fireball straight at the ground beneath the store owner's feet, where it exploded with a bang. The elderly man staggered backwards with a strangled scream of fright, only to trip over his own feet and bang his head against the wooden chest on his way to the ground. He immediately clutched at his head with both hands, groaning loudly in pain and momentarily disoriented enough to forget about the other person - er, creature - in his shop.

With his reflexive counterattack completed, John momentarily stood in place, his newly green eyes wide and his mouth opening and closing silently. As the man placed his hands flat against the ground and began to rise, however, enough of his cognition kicked in to prompt him to run out of the store as fast as his legs could carry him. Thankfully, there was nobody outside the store in this oft-neglected part of the mall and he was able to make it to a restroom and close himself in a stall without being seen, although the lock remained out of his reach. With the immediate threat gone, he began to think through the situation. Whereas many people in such a scenario would have panicked or worried, John was somebody who had spent much of his life searching for real, irrefutable instances of magic and as far as he was concerned, he had found one. Clearly that statue had contained the spirit of this "Impmon", and by touching it John had somehow drawn its power into himself, transforming into a copy of it. Or something like that. John was a little too excited to properly think about the exact specifics of how the transformation had worked but he did manage to rein his emotions in enough to address the most immediate problem: undoing the transformation. While this was easily the most significant event in his life, it wasn't exactly feasible to spend the rest of his life in the body of a diminutive devil. He had to find out how to change back to human and preferably how to trigger the transformation at will.

As it turned out, he needn't have worried about that. As soon as he thought about his desire to revert to his human form, the same glow that had overtaken him in the shop returned. He was more prepared for the bizarre sensation this time and when it faded, he instantly glanced down at himself and confirmed that he was once again human. He grinned and quickly focussed on changing back but this time there was no light, no feeling of magic. His grin vanished in an instant as he tried again to transform, to no avail.

"No, it can't be gone," he gasped, heedless of anybody who might hear him outside the stall. "The magic can't be gone already, it can't-" he began to panic only to pause as he became aware that he was holding something, something that he distinctly didn't remember picking up prior to either of his transformations. A glance towards his hand revealed that something to be a small, electronic device of some kind, black with a golden grip along one side. Momentarily disheartened by the technological appearance of it but resolving to remain optimistic, he tried pressing buttons at random. For the first two, nothing seemed to be happening but on the third try, the screen lit up and displayed an image of the statue that had caused his transformation in the first place. His breath hitching with excitement, he began to press the buttons more slowly, trying to figure out what they did. Pressing the same button again seemed to toggle the screen on and off and pressing the two above that caused the image to slide off one side of the screen only to reappear from the other side. John was no tech wizard but he quickly guessed that those buttons were meant to cycle through options, which implied that there might be more of these statues. Sparing a moment to grin at the thought, he quickly returned his attention to the final button, on the side of the device. Pressing down on it, the familiar light began to shine once more and a grin spread across his face.

As the light faded, it revealed that his grin as Impmon was eerily reminiscent of the one on the statue. Taking a moment to snap his fingers and confirm that he could conjure up another fireball before snuffing it out, his grin grew even wider.

"Alright, looks like I've finally go some real magic. Now I just have to figure out what I should do with it."