{NO ONE'S POV}
Rose looked away quickly.

Talica gasped. "That's true! Rose knew about the hideout and now the process of becoming a Mage of One. I didn't question it before, but..."

"She knows too much because she's too nosy." Mimi gestured to Rose, face twisting with irritation. "She just had to be a hero and interfere when she saw an injustice. It ended well for us though. I was able to prove that it's possible for a human to become a base for the Magic of One. Unfortunately, the problem with omniscience and omnipotence is that, when a subject is given near infinite magic power and doesn't want to cooperate, they try to escape."

The air became very still as the three other Fairy Tail mages processed Mimi's words.

"Remember when I got in a fight with my parents?" Rose whispered.

"You were gone for weeks..." Talica's eyes widened as the realization dawned.

"I ran away, but after a day I was hungry and gonna go back home. I came across a kidnapping attempt by accident. I jumped to save the kid, but was pulled through the portal instead."

A wave of magic power flowed through the air as Nashi, Talica, and Silver prepared to attack. Their auras were thick and oppressive and full of anger. They wouldn't stand for anyone hurting one of their own. Many of the scientists cowered in fear.

"Bastards..." Nashi choked. "I'll kill them!"

Rose stepped forward and held out a hand, silently urging her team to stay back.

"Don't stop us!" Silver yelled at her.

Rose looked back sharply. "We promised to report back to Master today. Plus there's Eiji to consider. You three go ahead. I'll handle this."

"Are you sure?" Talica asked.

"I'm the one person Mimi won't hurt. Besides, I don't mind helping out with their research, if it ensures that you four can get out of here safely."

Mimi looked so eager, she was drooling. "Of course. They can walk through the front door without any fear of retaliation. You're the only one that I want!"

"No way! You're seriously going to help them?!" Nashi asked Rose incredulously.

Rose nodded. "Why not? I haven't forgiven them for what they did to me, so it'll be fun to see the looks on their faces when I show them the true power of the Magic of One that they seek."

The other three protested, but Rose winked. She had something up her sleeve. They decided to trust her, promptly being escorted out of the hideout. True to Mimi's word, they were not attacked.

Rose insisted on waiting until her teammates were out of sight. Then she raised her arms grandly. Mimi was buzzing with excitement.

Letters begin to glow on and under Rose's skin. They covered her arms, her legs, her abdomen, her back, her chest—rows and rows of letters permanently carved into her skin. Rose's bones ached as magic power flowed where it normally wouldn't.

Eiji was lucky they had caught him so early in the process. The arms were first. Most didn't survive having all four of their limbs carved on.

Rose summoned a blob. "Here you go."

Mimi stared in disbelief. Rose knelt and poked the blob affectionately. It jiggled for a second before settling into its semi-elliptical shape.

"Where's the rest of it?" Mimi asked.

"This is it." Rose gestured to the blob. "This is what you wanted. Behold the Magic of One."

"No." Mimi backed away in horror. "No! It can't be! My life's work, for this?!"

"Think about it." Rose mimicked Mimi with a nasally voice. "The Magic of One is every type of magic at once. It's wood magic, but it's also fire magic so the wood burns, but it's also water magic so the fire is extinguished. Every type of magic has a weakness, and all of those magics are combined. It contradicts itself simply by existing and is unable to retain a proper form, ending up as a totally harmless blob."

Mimi looked down at said blob.

"The original magic wasn't some ultimate power that was divided in order to weaken it. If magic is alive, then splitting the Magic of One into all other types of magic was a form of evolution, an improvement." Rose said smugly. "So much for your life's work."

"There must be more to One! This calls for research! I must make a hypothesis!" Mimi insisted.

"Go on then." Rose smiled, an odd glint in her eyes. "Watch it carefully."

Mimi called for all hands on deck. Soon, the rest of the scientists present in the guild hideout came to the room that Rose was in. Some were complaining about loosing time with their own research.

One Dream was a large guild. Mimi's research in finding One was their primary goal, but most of the members had other side experiments that they were working on. The only similarity between all of their research was that it was deemed unethical. This is what drove the scientists to make a dark guild.

Rose summoned enough blobs for them all to study, as big as they wanted.

She also demonstrated how she was able to shape the blob into whatever she wanted, but it wouldn't hold that shape if she wasn't focused. She couldn't change any other properties of the blob, like its color or texture. It remained a blob.

Something odd happened as time progressed.

The scientists who were most closely observing the blob—such as under a microscope—began to dissociate. Their eyes glazed over, one by one.

They softly muttered, "I stare into the blob and the blob stares back."

None of the others noticed. The more they watched the blob, the more they wanted to continue watching it. They thought that they must know its secrets, thus failing to observe their surroundings.

The chant grew in volume as more people began to repeat it. "I stare into the blob and the blob stares back. I stare into the blob and the blob stares back."

One scientist—a rather young fellow who had followed his teacher into the guild as a helper—entered the room with a pitcher of water. Rose had asked someone to get it for her, saying that she was parched. He was the only person to volunteer.

He looked upon the cultish chanting scientists and frowned. Confused and concerned, he shook his teacher's shoulder, asking what was going on.

The scientist didn't notice his pupil. He was completely entranced by the blob under the microscope, eyes fully gazed over so his irises were black. Then a trickle of blood came out of his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The scientist slumped forward, his head hitting the desk with a thud.

"Sensei, are you okay?" The young man asked.

"He's not gonna respond." Rose said calmly.

"What happened?" The student researcher looked around at his guild members, then back at Rose.

Every other scientist besides the young man was enthralled by the blob to some degree. Rose was unperturbed. She knew this would come to pass if one stared at the hypnotic blob for too long.

More scientists were no longer chanting. They keeled over without warning and remained motionless.

"I should've mentioned the side effects first." Rose walked forward, stepping over the seemingly-asleep members of One Dream.

"What side effects?" The student researcher backed away nervously.

Rose's actions weren't overtly threatening, but he felt more bloodlust from her than from the other three mages who left combined.

"One is infinite, but our brains can't comprehend infinity. So when you look too closely or for too long at the Magic of One, your brain cells are continuously firing. It's hypnotizing. You can't look away as your brain tries to make sense of the insensible."

"I don't follow." The student researcher admitted. He wasn't made a helper because of his smarts.

Rose smiled. "Our body's immune system is amazing. It fights off hundreds of thousands of bacteria and viruses every day. Apoptosis is one of the ways it deals with diseased cells. When the body thinks that a cell is diseased, it triggers that cell to implode so the disease doesn't spread to surrounding healthy cells. This self-destructive process is called apoptosis. So when a person stares into the blob for too long and their neurons are firing continuously, their immune system believes that these neurons are diseased. It triggers mass apoptosis of brain tissue and essentially turns their brain into soup."

The student researcher blinked in horror. He looked around at all of the corpses of scientists, seeing them in a new light. The blob was still everywhere, so he quickly covered his eyes in fear.

"You're okay." Rose said in her typical monotone voice. "Magic doesn't hurt its caster, so I'm immune. If I can catch it in time, the brain death is minimal and only leads to a few minutes of amnesia. I usually avoid this method, but they were the exception. You seem nice though. Get out while you can."

"Thank you!" The student researcher cried. He turned and ran out of the hideout.

The young man vowed to turn his life around. No more bad experiments for him. And he would never talk about what he saw, in case the scary girl decided to finish her revenge against One Dream.

Rose sighed. "I guess that's that."