CH3: A Cold Encounter
Touma Kamijou was walking the streets with his two friends, Motoharu Tsuchimikado and Pierce Aogami. They were all just coming from a very, very long detention session thanks to one of their 'playful' fights.
"Why were we held so darn late?" Touma sighed. "Just my luck."
"I'd be more than willing to stay if it was with Miss Komoe," Aogami waves his hands in the air.
"Cheer up Kami," Tsuchimikado says in his usual happy tone. "Just think of the nice food that'd be waiting for you when you get back."
"Ugh...!" Touma stopped and drooped. "I'll be lucky if there's even any food at all."
"You guys deserved that for being such troublemakers."
The three guys turned to see a familiar classmate headed their way with a small bag of groceries.
"Fukiyose?" Touma asked in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"Grocery shopping," the girl held out her bag.
"This late?"
"Hey, I just realized I was lacking in supplies and finding just the right ingredients and the best fruit isn't easy you know!"
"Right right right..." Touma starts walking away with Tsuchimikado and Aogami.
"Don't just casually ignore me! Urgh! Are you three off to another fight?"
"Why would we want to do that?" Touma asks tiredly. "Besides, what kinds of trouble could we possibly get ourselves into?"
"You're always getting into trouble Kamijou! Like-"
*BAM*
"-that."
Touma's body feels total pain as he tries to get up. His friends watch the crash scene, there was a blue haired Tokiwadai student sprawled on top of him. She too begins to recover.
"Kamijou, are you alright?" Fukiyose suddenly sounded concerned.
"Just my luck!"
"When it comes to girls, you always get the luck Kami." Tsuchimikado jokes.
"Why? Why? Why is it always you?" Aogami curses the skies.
"Ah!" the girl gets up and bows quickly. "I'm so sorry, are you hurt?"
"I'm fine, I'm just..." Touma stops his response to notice an injury on the girl. "You're bleeding."
"Huh?" the girl looks at her leg. "Oh, it's nothing. Ah!" The girl jumps a little bit. "There's no time for this!" Mist suddenly started to flow out from her feet and she stepped in place, making skating blades at the bottom of her shoes. There were some frozen pillars at the edge of her feet to keep her balance while she stayed still.
"Get out of here now!" the girl pulls her feet up, breaking the ice columns and began skating away. "It's dangerous here!" She called back before skating away at full speed and turning a corner.
"Who was that?" Fukiyose asked.
"I dunno, but she was a real cutie!" Aogami observed.
"It looked like she was in trouble," Touma concludes as he was helped up by Fukiyose.
"No, she trying to get away from trouble," Tsuchimikado mentions.
They all turn to see a big group of delinquents headed their way.
"Sorry, Fukiyose," Touma apologizes. "It looks like I'll be getting into a fight after all."
"Tch," Fukiyose scoffs. "But did you have to drag me into it too?"
"A knight must always protect a lady," Aogami starts a casual conversation. "Then they get a lady as a reward!"
"You and your crazy fantasies," Touma mocked.
"There's only one way to find out if that's really true," Tsuchimikado smiles.
"Hey you!" One of them yelled, a big muscular type. "Which way did that Tokiwadai chick go?"
"We don't know," Touma shrugged.
"You're lying!"
"Whether they're lying or not," said a smaller one, with a red headband around his head, and wears a leather jacket, quite possibly their boss or leader. "She's already long gone."
The big one backed off and stood next to the leader.
"What did you want with her?" Touma questions.
"We just wanted to get to know her better, that's all. But the witch just froze one of my boys and booked it. Since we can't get to her now, we've got all this pent up frustration that we're going to unleash on you."
"Is that right...?"
"Get them boys!"
XXX
"Stop?" Lilian stopped skating and looked behind her. "You're right. Do you think they gave up? ... Go back? Are you crazy? ... Well I have a bad feeling that your bad feeling is going to get us in trouble again!" Lilian reluctantly skates back.
XXX
The four classmates were actually doing a fairly decent job of holding their own despite being heavily outnumbered.
"Aha!" Aogami throws one of the gang members to the ground and charges the nearest one. "Hiiiyaaaaah!" Aogami rams his fist into the nearest guy's chest. "AAOOOWWW!" The blue haired boy jumps back, reeling in extreme pain from his hand. As he shakes hand, he turns to see that the one he tried to punch was the big muscular one.
"Nice try fool," the big guy mocks. "My ability can strengthen my body until it's as hard as steel."
"Now that's not fair," Aogami whined.
"Have you ever been punched by steel?" the big guy wind up a fist and aims it at Aogami's head.
*BAM* *CCCRRRAAACCCKKK*
"Yo, what is this?" the big guy's fist hit a wall of solid ice. His punch was still hard enough to greatly crack the wall, but luckily for Aogami, the fist didn't go through.
Everyone stopped fighting momentarily. The leader searched the battlefield and found the blue haired Tokiwadai girl that they were chasing.
"Get back!" the girl yells as her hands are covered in mist. "Huuuaah!" She throws the mist at the ground between the group she ran into, and the group she was running away from. Both sides regrouped into their factions as a wall of ice separates them.
"Why?" the girl asks. "I told you to run. Why are you fighting them?"
"Because I can't stand guys like that who cause trouble for everybody else," Touma answers without looking at her.
"Are you insane?"
"Yep," Tsuchimikado answers for him. "He's always been a do gooder."
"This is for world peace after all," Fukiyose declares.
"What kind of knight gets saved by the damsel?" Aogami pouts.
"You're all crazy!"
*BAM* *BAM*
The group watches as the big guy starts pounding on the ice wall with his hard as steel fists. The wall begins to crack greatly and is on the verge of breaking. The blue haired girl sets up another, thicker wall of ice just as the big guy broke through. He then starts pounding on this next one.
"That won't hold them for long," the Tokiwadai girl mentions.
"Yo," Tsuchimikado calls. "You got a name Miss Tokiwadai?"
"A-ah... It's Sterling. Lilian Sterling."
"You idiot!" Fukiyose bonked Tsuchimikado. "You're supposed to introduce yourself first!"
"Guys!" Touma calls out.
The big one steps back as the smaller one with the jacket steps forward. This one picks up a broken chunk of ice from the ground, he could just barely pick it up with one hand. That shard begins to glow a purple color. The rest of the gang rush back a little as the leader tosses the glowing ice shard at the wall.
"I don't like this," Tsuchimikado tells everyone. "Everyone move back!"
"What is he doing?" Lilian asks out loud.
"It must be his ability," Touma mentions. "But what kind of power does he have?"
*BOOM*
The ice chunk explodes and sends ice shrapnel in their direction. Luckily they were far enough away that there was no damage, just clouds of smoke.
"Get 'em boys!" they heard the leader call out, followed by a roar of a dozen delinquents.
Everyone braced themselves for another round.
"Leave that Tokiwadai girl to me," the leader orders his gang away.
Lilian stood still, nervous and uncertain.
"You must be wondering what I did to your ice, am I right?"
Lilian didn't move, aside from a slight tremble. Her blue eyes showed fear yet determination.
"It's nothing much," the leader reaches inside his pocket and takes out a few coins. "Watch." The coins begin to glow with the same light as the ice chunk from earlier. "I can stir up the potential energy in any object I can touch. The bigger it is, the longer it takes to charge, but that also means there's a lot more energy stored up. Of course all that stored up energy has to be released in some way."
"The explosion..."
"That's right..." the leader throws the coins in her direction.
Lilian stretches her arms, the mist following her hand solidifies into a wall of ice in front of her, and she hopped back. The leader's coins knock on the ice before exploding, destroying the wall and scattering ice debris everywhere.
When the smoke clears Lilian notices the gang leader kneeling on the ground and picking up some of the shattered ice.
"Oh no!"
"Oh yes!" the leader charges up the small bits of ice and hurls them at her.
Lilian makes another shield and jumps away before the explosions. This time the leader didn't give her time to relax, he threw charged coins through the cloud. Lilian barely noticed them in time to set up a skin tight defence, decreasing the damage from the blasts. The girl's body is blown back and slams onto the concrete, unconscious, a thin layer of ice that covered her entire body cracked and shattered all about.
"Sterling!" Touma knocks away an attacker and heads for her direction.
"Kami, stop!" Tsuchimikado warns.
Touma stops and was almost tackled by the big guy who slams onto the concrete with a loud thud. Touma had to deal with a couple more gang members as the big guy gets up.
"The boss wants to deal with her personally," the big guy tells him. "Anyone that wants to get in his way, has to get through me." The big guy charges Touma once again.
The gang boss picks up a large piece of ice from the ground, but he barely gets a grip on it with one hand. He charges the piece of ice and it begins to glow. "This is goodbye, girlie." The leader tosses the glowing ice towards her body.
XXX
Author: I actually forgot what came next, her name or her design. Let's go with her name. I definitely wanted her to be a foreigner (non-Japanese), European-ish names are easier for me to get attached to.
Originally, I wanted an ice themed name to match her powers, that's where 'Isolde' came from. But there doesn't seem to be any solid definitions for it, a few places say it means 'ice' and 'rule' or 'ice' and 'battle', but it's commonly referencing a story called "Tristan and Isolde".
Then I realized that having an ice name for an ice girl is too coincidental. But I liked the uniqueness of it, so I kept it as a middle name.
I tried coming up with a different name, but came up uncertain of what to use until I noticed Mikoto's flower pins. Then I searched up flower names, I went with the lily (I can't remember the exact reason why), or rather I used 'Lilian' to give it a more name-y feel, if that makes any sense. It was then I decided to do the whole 'ice flower' thing, and it gave her a mini theme. But besides the whole flower thing and her name, she really has nothing to do with flowers. She's an ice girl first and foremost.
As for the last name, I wanted to see if there's any names I can use relating to silver, my favorite color. Then I find out about something called 'sterling' silver, it sounded like it could fit for a last name, so I went ahead and took it. 'Sterling' has the meaning of 'excellent' or 'little star'. Well, she is the 'little star' of this story, any 'excellent' parts on the other hand, we'll just have to wait and see.
So all together her name can come up as 'Excellent ice battle lily'. XD That really doesn't match Lilian's soft personality does it?
Notes: The big guy of the gang, I made up his power with no influence in mind. But now when I look back at it, it's like Colossus from X-Men, except his skin stays as skin and doesn't actually turn to steel, just becomes as hard as steel.
The gang leader on the other hand, I went ahead and used X-Men's Gambit's power. The ability to charge up an object's molecules to set them to explode. No staff or anything like that, just touch and boom.
