Author's Note: Another Chapter, another lack of Reviews. Read, Review, Favorite and Enjoy!
Chapter 7: Military Applications of Ancient Magic
The various students of First High School filled into the assembly hall where the up coming debate between the '2 Course Protest Group' and the Student council was about to commence. Tatsuya had taken the role of a sentinel on the right side of the stage, Klaud with her 'Gaudy Staff C.A.D.' as several Course 1 students had so bluntly choose to dub it was on the left side of the stage. Like most of his fellow students, Tatsuya didn't see the need for a C.A.D. of that size, but Ancient magicians were infamous for a lack of stream lined efficiency though generally speaking they were vastly superior in everything else. After all, he witnessed first hand the power of that staff not even thirty minuets ago. More important than Klaud however was the audience, a Large number of students were wearing the red, white and green armbands of Blanche. If the situation were any different, he would have clobbered them on pure principal already. As it was though the student council, including his adorable little sister, were trying to negotiate with these people to keep something bad from happening, and that made this important enough to make sure it went smoothly.
"Let the games begin." Klaud muttered as she watched the Student Council President Mayumi Saegusa walked onto stage and stand in front of the microphone.
"We will now begin the Debate between the 2 Courses Protest group and the Student council. As a Start, I will allow my opponent Kinoe Tsukasa to begin the debate by bringing to light the infractions made against the course two students." Mayumi stated before stepping back and rejoining the rest of the student Council with Klaud.
"As a start." Kinoe stepped forward before the microphone. "The treatment that Blooms receive over weeds is clearly preferential..."
"Excuse me, club head." With Mayumi's interruption the attention was once again on her. "But you are aware that referring to the course 1 and 2 students as Blooms and Weeds is a clear violation of the school rules."
"That it is isn't it? And in spite of that, I cannot even walk the halls without being referred to as a WEED!" Kinoe snapped in anger. "A plant, that is considered to be a pest because it sucks up precious nutrients and in the process chokes out and hinders other plants that people actually want to cultivate and grow!" All throughout the assembly hall, various course 2 students bitterly tightened their hands into fists, clearly a great deal of students felt the same as he did. "But by all means, we are not here to state what we all already know." Kinoe stated as he calmed down and readjusted his tie. "As I was saying before I was interrupted. The Treatment that Blooms receive over Weeds is clearly preferential. As a start, by school law only Blooms are allowed to join the student council. Magic focused clubs consisting mostly of Blooms receive the lions share of the yearly budget. Finally, Blooms receive actual proper instruction on magic where as Weeds are merely given access to the reading materials and are expected to teach themselves magic. I can look up magical formula on the internet, if it was that simple we wouldn't even have magical academies!" Taking a second deep breath Kinoe slicked back his hair as he calmed down. "Thank you, that is all."
Clearly, Kinoe had a lot of pent up anger, and he used this assembly to vent that anger.
"To address your concerns." Mayumi once again took the microphone and spoke to the school. "The various clubs are given whatever fraction of the budget that they receive based on how well they perform and what results their clubs generate. For instance, the soft ball team, a non magical club composed mostly of course 2 students, receives a larger portion of the annual budget than the Kenjutsu club, a magic focus club composed mostly of Course 1 students. As for your second concern, the Student council is indeed by school law composed of course 1 students, in spite of the fact that magical predisposition is not a primary skill required to manage a school. I myself could list off a number of names of individuals in the second course who would be excellent additions to the student council." Klaud caught Mayumi shooting both her and Tatsuya a warm knowing look at that last point.
"For your third point, the matter of the second course students receiving proper magical instruction, this is at the core of the 2 courses issue." Taking a deep breath, Mayumi prepared for what she intended to be a long speech. "Although this is not a well known fact, and on the contrary a huge effort has been made to cover up this mistake, but the origins of the two course system can be traced back to two things. The first is a clerical error. Due to a typo on the original form which ordered the first batch of uniforms for the student body, instead of two hundred uniforms with the flower emblem that is the symbol of our school, we instead got 100 uniforms with the emblem and 100 without. The second issue is a lack of staff, simply put, due to various issue's like modern society's massive dependence on magic, and the on going war with the other major super powers, the school was unable to employ enough staff to educate the 200 students at the school. Instead it was intended that during the first year the course one students would receive magical education, then during the second year course 2 students would receive magical education and so on. Only instead the error was discovered, and in order to hide their embarrassment the first magical academy created a cruel lie, and the eight other magical academies that were modeled after this one copied that lie." Various students suddenly started whispering among themselves at the startling revelation. Tatsuya saw Klaud moving, getting into a fighting stance with her staff and choose to follow suit. "So as many of you now realize, the situation we now live in, is not the result of malice or a belief of superiority, but simply a mistake that was never corrected, as are many cruel realities."
Suddenly a crash sound echoed throughout the room as several canisters producing smoke were thrown through the windows. Klaud reacted immediately, before the canisters could even hit the ground she aimed the business end of her staff at them and fired several bolts of freezing air at them solidifying their unpleasant gaseous contents. At once the doors were kicked in and in came several surprised soldiers wearing gas masks and carrying assault rifles. Ill prepared for a assembly hall that was full of conscious students, the group were not ready for the combined assault of both Tatsuya and Klaud. Firstly, Tatsuya fired his multi-variant psion wavelength attack at the soldiers, granting them severe vertigo. Then Klaud produced tiny wings from her ankles and some how used that to jump to the ceiling before bouncing off of it and launching a drop kick on one of the soldiers. However one of the soldiers brought out his orange C.A.D. and hit Klaud with a wave of anti-magic, unexpectedly causing Klaud to poof into the form of Klaud's belt with Card Holster, a single card separated from the rest floated down and landed in the loop formed by the belt.
"The Mirror?" A confused soldier asked reading the card. "What the..." That was the last thing that soldier said before he received a blow to the top of his head that rendered him unconscious.
"Tatsuya." Tatsuya turned around and was met with the sight of Mayumi, Katsuto and Mari. "Is there something you'd like to tell us?" Mayumi asked tapping her foot with a displeased expression on her face.
"Simply put, Both Klaud, Miyuki and I have known about the attack being planned on the school by Blanche for a few days now. In order to try and stop them Klaud went to confront them by herself while leaving the rest of her cards here to cover for her." Tatsuya explained while he fed the Mirror Card some more psions. At once the card resumed Klaud's appearance.
"Thank you Tatsuya, I admit that those Antinite bracelets are rather unpleasant." The Mirror-Klaud stated with a warm smile on her face. "Now that we know the fighting's started perhaps it would be wise to recall the one on the roof." Mirror-Klaud stated pointing at the ceiling. At once a green ball of light floated down from the ceiling and upon touching Mirror-Klaud's hand the light ball turned into another card, the Arrow. "Thanks for the warning Arrow. You too Ice."
"Wow. Ancient magicians are terrifying." Mari stated, prompting Katsuto to silently nod.
"It's not so bad." Mirror put both of the cards in question back into the deck before she continued. "We can be thought of as being similar to your specialized C.A.D.'s but each one of us has our own minds, an artificial intelligence as you people would put it that automatically makes proper adjustments."
"No wonder people are scared of Klaud. What's the situation like outside?" Katsuto stated a look on his face which strongly implied that he wasn't scared in the least bit.
"About thirty men armed with Guns and Antinite and helped by a large number of course two students have invaded the school and are taken entire clubs hostage." Mirror-Klaud explained, before she pulled out the deck of magic Card's and fanned them out. "But these guys can eat them for breakfast! With Tatsuya's or Miyuki's psion count, it would be easy to have one or two of us brought out at a time. But if it was deemed necessary, we were given permission to grant our power to the students to help defend the school."
"Klaud's card's." As if he wanted to test the authenticity of Mirror's duplication power, Katsuto patted her on the head. "I've heard of magic that can create facsimiles or duplicates, but to this degree. If one card is capable of this level of magic, then it makes me wonder what the rest of you can do."
"If you'd like to find out, I already know what we can do, so what I need to know is what can our volunteers do?" Mirror-Klaud stated smiling darkly.
It took the enemy soldiers a few minuets to realize that the team they had sent to take the auditorium had been incapacitated. Fearing the worst they had come prepared with the use of a Tow Missile launcher. One soldier readied the weapon and aimed it at the auditorium. The Missile that was fired from midair, was suddenly viciously struck down by a magical arrow and exploded harmlessly.
"What the heck!?" On the roof of the auditorium Mayumi was armed with a magical bow and glaring down hatefully at those who had invaded her school. "What the heck!?" Suddenly the doors of the auditorium were blown off of it's hinges, and out from inside the auditorium, several students with a mysterious glow in their eyes emerged.
"Students of First High! Cards of Klaud! I will now be giving the orders to repel the invaders of our school!"
"Damnit!" Just as the solider was about to fire again, his entire right arm holding the missile launcher was cut off by Takegawa wielding the sword card.
"Not on my watch!"
Tatsuya used the Time Card to repair the damage to the doors making them as good as new, followed up by using the Lock Card to seal the building with the bulk of the students inside. Those who had exited the building consisted of Erika Chiba, Tatsuya Shiba, Miyuki Shiba, Leonhart Saijou, Katsuto Juumonji, Mari Watanabe, Mayumi Saegusa, Takeaki Kirihawa and of course Mirror-Klaud.
"I will now be giving the orders. Mari, Sleep, incapacitate those from our school!"
Although they were helping the members of Blanche with their terrorist attacks, those people were still from their school, and the chances that they had been forced to help them somehow were still very high. So for the first move in their campaign, Mari, whose magic created a variety of mists using air born gasses and then distributed them in a controlled manner by manipulating the wind, was mixed with the power of the Sleep card, which as the name would imply puts those affected by it to sleep, took down all of those who were from First High.
"Erika, Speed, removed those traitors from my line of sight!"
At Mayumi's second command, Erika who was already rather agile to begin with but was now further enhanced by the speed card, rushed through the growing No Man's Land nimbly picking up the students and dropping them off to safety.
"Katsuto! Shield! Cut off their escape!"
Katsuto of the Jyuumonji clan, the pride of the first laboratory whose specialty was the creation of massively powerful magical barriers, now had his power dramatically enhanced by the card that embodied that very idea, slammed down those immovable unbreakable barriers in the path of the Blanche soldiers who had foolishly walked into their territory to begin with.
"Leo! Power! Finish them off!"
The fearful solider's turned their attention back to the monstrously powerful students and was met face to face with Leo, who used his ridiculously enhanced strength to rip out a huge chunk of the pavement and then threw it onto the terrified soldiers.
"Tatsuya, Miyuki Mirror and all the others! There's a group of them going for the school's archives! Intercept them!"
At once the remaining members of the strike ran towards the school's archives where they intended to finish their enemies off once and for all.
