Rurouni Familiar

Chapter Nine

"Strength before weakness."
–The Stormlight Archive

Soujiro returned to the inn with a smile on his face. In the beginning he had smiled because there was nothing else he could do, then out of habit, and now … now he didn't know why.

Everyone in the group was present on the ground floor. He checked them off mentally. Louise, Wardes, Guiche, Kirche, Tabitha. Louise and Wardes sat at a table together. Louise looked up at him and looked away quickly. Wardes looked at him and his gaze didn't shift.

Kirche, Guiche, and Tabitha sat at another table, Tabitha reading a book, and the others with half empty glasses and a bottle of wine. "Hey, Soujiro's back!" Kirche said, noticing him. "We can have even teams now!"

Soujiro approached them, but he didn't sit down. "Teams for what?"

"Teams for games to kill time," Kirche said. "It turns out that this quaint little town is also dead boring, so we're going to have to make our own fun." She smiled at him meaningfully–meaningfully in that she seemed to mean something by it, even if the meaning was lost on him.

"Neat! What game are we playing?"

"We were just about to decide, cutey," Kirche said. She motioned toward a chair next to her. "Have a seat while we work things out." He sat down and Kirche put an arm around him. Louise turned away and gripped her wineglass more firmly than before. "I'm thinking something along the lines of spin the bottle, truth or dare … strip poker."

Guiche fainted, falling out of his chair. "Is he okay?" Soujiro asked. He must have had too much to drink. And so early in the day, too.

"Oh, don't worry about him," Kirche said. "We can play without him."

"You can play without me, too," Louise called from her table. "And before you come up with an even worse game idea, I'm just going to come out and say that I'm not going to play anything you come up with."

Kirche rolled her eyes and shot Soujiro a smile. "That's just nature's way of telling you that you haven't had enough to drink yet."

Louise scoffed at that. "Please, Kirche. If I were drunk enough for that, I wouldn't be conscious."

"I'd be fine with that," Kirche replied.

"And that goes double for my fiancé and my familiar!"

Soujiro looked at Wardes and smiled at their shared situation, but Wardes glowered at him in return. Fun guy. He was like how Soujiro imagined that the police officer Saito would have been if they had gotten to know each other better, only with a cooler hat.

"Are you ever planning on not monopolizing all the guys?" Kirche asked. "Because I would love to mark that on my calendar."

"Is it okay if I pick the game then?" Soujiro asked. He always liked games, and would sometimes play Go with Miss Yumi when he wasn't out on missions, even though he never won. Everyone was looking at him except for Tabitha (who was reading) and Guiche (who was unconscious), so he kept talking.

"There was a game that my last master, Mr. Shishio taught me." Louise wrinkled her nose at that and glanced down. Was she jealous or something? Well, that made sense. Not everyone could be Mr. Shishio. "It's called Dodge. You take twenty archers, line them up, and–"

"Where are we going to get twenty archers?" Kirche asked.

Soujiro shrugged. "Maybe there's an archery range where we can borrow some? Where do you usually get archers when you need them?"

"I've never needed archers before," Kirche admitted. "But go on. I don't know where you're going with this, but I like the way your lips move."

"So you take these archers, line them up, and –"

The main door of the inn burst open and in walked a man in a suit of armor–carrying a bow! And it was huge, too, at least twice as long as the bows they had in Japan. Soujiro always assumed that archers avoided armor so they could feel the wind better, but maybe they did things differently in Halkeginia. And with the bows and arrows so much bigger, maybe a little thing like the wind didn't matter as much.

Behind the man came another man in a matching suit of armor carrying a matching longbow, and then another man, and then another. Soujiro didn't count all of them, but there had to be at least twenty.

He stood up. "Perfect! Maybe we could ask them to …"

The innkeeper, a fat man who had tried to conceal the bald spot on his head by rearranging his remaining hair, approached the archers. Soujiro didn't catch what he said, but he sounded angry.

Then the front archer knocked an arrow in his bow, pointed it at the innkeeper, and drew it back.

The innkeeper stepped back, a look of surprise, fear, and even betrayal crossing his features. If you're weak …

If you're strong … and the archer released, and the arrow flew through the weak man's chest and into the wall behind him. The innkeeper looked down, confused, as his white shirt turned red.

Louise screamed, and Wardes kicked his table over to use as a barricade and yelled at the others to do the same. Tabitha closed her book.

"On second thought, nevermind," Soujiro said with a smile. "Those guys look busy." And it didn't look like they were going to have time for games anyway.

The rest of the group, including Guiche who had woken up, huddled behind the tables as the archers killed everyone else who wasn't quick enough to find cover. Soujiro sat back down on his chair and watched.

"Soujiro!" Louise hissed.

Soujiro tilted his head to the side to avoid an arrow. It wasn't the first one that was aimed at him, but it was the first one that he had needed to dodge. "Yes, Miss Louise?" He didn't look at her when he spoke. He hoped she wouldn't take it as a sign of disrespect, but the archers demanded his attention.

"Get over here!"

"Sure thing." He darted over to her table. "What do you need?"

"I need you to not die as we figure out what to do!"

Part of Soujiro wanted to point out that not dying had been exactly what he had been doing, and indeed what he had done throughout his entire life, but it didn't seem like the right time.

"It is too much of a coincidence to take them for common robbers," Wardes said. He peaked around the edge of the table, but pulled back as an arrow glanced by him. "If they are a group of mercenaries hired by the Reconquista, then they'll have a main force waiting for us to use up our magic on the expandable front liners."

"But how would they even know about us?" Louise asked, curled up next to him.

"Questions for a less perilous time, my dear," Wardes replied. "Whatever the case, it would be unwise to engage them directly, if possible."

"You know," Soujiro said thoughtfully. "Arrows run out just as much as magic does."

Wardes narrowed his eyes at him. "What's your point, boy?"

That swords are better. "My point is that I was telling everyone about a game I used to play earlier. It goes like this."

He jumped out from behind the table and into plain sight of the archers. "Hey, look at me! I'm a target!"

The archers rained arrows down on his position, so he changed his position and sidestepped the arrows. Only a few of the archers had bad enough aim to miss him by five feet, and those arrows were far enough apart to stand between.

If they were smart, they'd start to shoot in volleys and scatter their shots more. Soujiro would need to draw Derflinger to block soon. It had been too long since he had practiced catching arrows in flight, and those arrows had been much smaller. Or maybe he could get close enough to cut their bows? Louise had forbidden him from killing anyone, but …

"Soujiro!" Louise shrieked. "Get back here!"

What now? He darted back to behind the table. "Yes, Miss–"

"You idiot!" And she hit him.

But she wasn't her anymore, and Soujiro was no longer there, if only for a moment.

He was back in the home he grew up in, and a child once more. He may have left when he was seven, but he did grow up there, far more than he had ever wanted to.

A half empty jug of saké smashed into his head, shattering. If you're strong … A sheathed sword across his face. If you're weak …

A sword drawn, reflecting the distant lightning from the coming storm. "It shouldn't matter much if we kill him."

you die.

Die.

Die.

Die!

"Try not to die, will you?" Louise said, and once more he was back at the inn.

Soujiro rubbed his head where she had hit him. Mr. Shishio had taught him to kill, but he had never hit him. "Yeah, sorry about that, Miss Louise."

Wardes eyed him cautiously, and Soujiro smiled at him in return. "Anyway, I suspect that the mercenaries will have blocked all the exits, so we'll just have to make a new one," Wardes said. He turned to the other table with Kirche, Guiche, and Tabitha. "Would some of you care to facilitate a distraction?"

Kirche peered around the edge of her table. "For you, handsome, I'd facilitate anything, but we're as pinned down as you are."

"Fire." Tabitha said that. That was possibly the first time Soujiro had heard her speak.

"That would be great," Kirche said, "but until our friends over there stop shooting at us, I won't be able to get more than a few sparks off in their direction."

Tabitha waved her staff. "Oil." A pot of oil floated out of the kitchen and upturned itself over the mercenaries.

Kirche grinned. "And that's why everybody loves you. Ignite!" The oil burst into flame, and the mercenaries' armor did nothing to keep out the heat as they burned.

"That was … surprisingly effective," Wardes said. The arrows stopped falling. "Now we just need to–"

"Yes!" It was a new voice, coming from the direction of the burning men. "The smell! The charred meat! I must have more! There must be more!"

Wardes pointed his sword wand at the wall. "Air Hammer!" he said, blasting a hole through it.

The newcomer cast a spell of his own. "Inferno!"

Wardes flew out the hole with Louise at his arm–literally flew, which seemed to be faster for him than running–and Kirche, Guiche, and Tabitha were only a moment behind him.

Soujiro, though, saw the opportunity to study an enemy's attack and took it.

The enemy himself was tall and thick around the arms and shoulders. He wore a cape like all mages seemed to, though his was frayed and scorched. His tan skin was covered in scars, especially around his face. He had short, white hair, a square jaw, and a metallic eye patch covered his right eye that seemed to be stapled to his face.

Of course, when it came to burn scars, the man had nothing on Mr. Shishio.

The flames started above his head from a massive iron mace that looked like it could smash as easily as cast spells, and they spiraled outward as they fell like an inverted tornado. Fire enveloped the tables, the chairs, the screaming mercenaries as their armor flared white.

Before the flames reached him, he turned to run and got out of the inn just as the outer walls exploded. Fortunately, the blasted stones and burning wood moved even slower than the flames, and Soujiro could outrun those easily.

"It's time to make some hard decisions," Wardes said. He walked briskly, cautiously away from the burning ruins of the inn. "If the Reconquista has already discovered our movements, and we have no choice but to assume that they have, then we lack the resources to face every challenge they throw at us. We'll need to split into two groups, one to make a mad dash for the objective, and the other to delay our enemies."

"Bait," Tabitha interpreted.

"I prefer the term 'distraction,'" Wardes said. "Louise absolutely must reach Albion."

"But I …" Louise started. "You're right." She didn't look like she appreciated her vital nature, which Soujiro didn't understand. Being in the "important to be kept alive" category was the best place someone could be.

Wardes nodded. "And of course I–"

"I found you!"

Wardes looked over his shoulder at the mage with a fondness for burning people and who seemed happy to see them. "Good luck." He grabbed Louise and shot into the air like an arrow.

"Lucky," Soujiro said as he watched them go. "I wish I could fly."

"Move!" Kirche yelled as the rest of them darted behind a building.

Soujiro looked behind him and saw another fire spell coming towards him, but it was different from the first one. Instead of the spiral pattern, this one looked more like a wall of flame that spread across the width of the street and was twenty feet high, rushing towards him. He could have jumped over it, but he didn't know how deep it was, and the ground it passed over was probably too hot to be fun, so he followed the others.

"Okay," Kirche said. "I like a guy who's willing to live dangerously, and is not currently wetting himself–" She shot a glance at Guiche. "–but that was cutting it a bit too close, don't you think?"

Soujiro blinked. "Um, okay."

Kirche smiled. "Well, Tabitha, I promised you hot guys, and if that psycho is less than a square-class fire mage, I'll join a nunnery."

"Not funny," Tabitha said.

"Yeah, you're right. I'd make a terrible nun. So, any ideas?"

Tabitha paused for a moment. "Double-sided attack."

Kirche nodded. "Sounds good. Do you want front or back?"

"Back." Tabitha shot into the air, not as fast as Wardes, Soujiro noted, but still pretty fast.

"Sorry," Guiche said. "But what's going on?"

"Oh, right," Kirche replied. "Tabitha is circling around back, and the two of us are going to attack him at the same time, and hopefully he won't be able to block both of us."

"I see," Guiche said. "And what will the rest of us be doing?"

"Um, since you're a dot mage, and you're not a mage at all … why don't you two just stay here and look pretty?"

Guiche puffed out his chest a bit. "This is the job I was born for!"

Kirche flew away, leaving Soujiro alone with Guiche. That made sense. Soujiro didn't know either of the girls well, but they seemed like they were used to working together. Still, the whole situation seemed off somehow.

"Hey, Mr. Guiche? Do you ever feel like you're on the wrong side?

"What? That's ridiculous! Soujiro my boy, we are on a mission for the Princess! What better side could there be?"

"People we don't know are trying to kill us," Soujiro explained. "My last boss sometimes said that it's always better to be on the side where you're trying to kill people you don't know."

Guiche frowned. "Were you a soldier before?" He shook his head. "No, that sounds more like a mercenary."

Soujiro smiled, not answering. "Well, you can stay here if you want, Mr. Guiche, but I'm going to go out and change my side."

"What? Hold on, you don't mean that you–"

Soujiro stepped out from behind the alley where they had been hiding … and into a burning world. People who had a preference for thatch roofing quickly realized just how flammable straw was, and the streets were scattered with panicked townsfolk looking for help, safety, or water.

All the chaos made it easy to pick out the enemy, standing, as it were, in the eye of the storm. Around him, instead of screaming, running men and women, there was silence and charred corpses. Soujiro arrived just in time to watch Kirche and Tabitha attack the man, Tabitha in the distance behind a stone tower and Kirche standing on a nearby wall. They cast their spells, a blast of flame from Kirche and a slew of icicles from Tabitha. Both attacks were swallowed up by the man's Inferno.

And then came the counter attack.

A pair of flaming eagles sprouted from the tip of the man's mace and soared screaming towards the girls. Tabitha managed to dodge her eagle as it exploded against the watchtower, but Kirche tried to block it with a fire spell of her own.

And then she screamed.

She fell from the wall, clutching her arm where her sleeve had burnt off entirely, her wand nowhere in sight. Her cry drew the man towards her like a wolf towards a wounded deer. He flew through the air and landed next to her, but before finishing her off, he … stopped to savor the moment.

And that moment was all Soujiro needed. He moved and stopped between the two of them, and he smiled. "Hey, Mister, I hate to interrupt you while you're working, but I never got your name."

Having strangers trying to kill you is a sign that you're on the wrong side. It was always better when it was someone you knew who was trying to kill you. Some old Chinese guy that Mr. Shishio had read about, Sun Tzu or something, talked about that sort of thing a lot.

The man didn't look at him. He just stared ahead with his one unmoving, unblinking eye. "Who the devil are you?"

Soujiro smiled again. "Oh, I'm sorry, that was rude of me. My name is Seta Soujiro." He glanced around at the burning buildings. It looked like his flying friend, Henya had passed through, whose many good qualities didn't include subtlety. "And I must say, you really know how to make a first impression!"

"Soujiro," he repeated. "The Tenken?" He grinned like a man not too concerned with feigning sanity. "God warned me about you."

God? Well, Soujiro only knew of one person who called him Tenken. "You know Mr. Shishio?"

"Yes!" he said fervently. "I met Him, heard His voice, felt His presence. To one like me who sees heat instead of light, it was as if the blazing sun descended to the earth and wrapped Himself in flesh and fire." He closed his eye (his blind eye?) as the memory faded. "But in response to your question, Soujiro the Fallen, my name is Menneville." He raised his mace and Soujiro heard Kirche rising to her feet behind him. About time. "God, may He burn eternal, told me to kill you."

Soujiro grabbed Kirche around the waist and pulled her out of the way, which was a distance of several buildings when one took Menneville's fondness for spells with large areas of effect. He didn't know if there was going to be much of a town when they were done, but protecting the town was never their objective; distracting Menneville was.

Soujiro imagined that Menneville would be pretty distracted if his head fell off his shoulders, but Louise had been rather firm about whom he was and was not allowed to kill, and the friendly neighborhood pyromaniac wasn't on the list.

A sword that protects the weak...

He never had gotten the hang of that philosophy.

"What the …" Kirche said after he set her down back in the alley with Guiche. "How did you do that?"

He shrugged. "I just put one foot in front of the other. You've seen me do it before."

"Trust me, there is a world of difference between seeing and feeling." She managed to wink at him before she winced. "Founder, if I knew that third degree burns were going to be involved, I would have stayed at home."

"By the way," Guiche said. "I'm assuming that the plan didn't work out, so I'm not going to embarrass you by asking about it, but how did your hair not catch on fire when your arm was burned?"

Kirche rolled her eyes. "I use fire-proof conditioner. It takes too long to grow my hair out like this to loose it to a spell gone awry."

Guiche's eyes lit up. "Do you have more?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Why? Are you two planning on rubbing each other down with it?"

"Um, I would not have phrased it thus, but …"

"I don't. And even if I did, you'd just boil instead of burn. Not much of an improvement. No, I am willing to admit that we are all in over our pretty little heads, and we need to get out of this place while it's still only–argh, my freaking arm!–only a figurative hell hole and the maniac's lake of fire isn't done yet."

Guiche gasped. "Run away? But that would dishonor us in front of the Princess!"

"If you want to go and get extra crispy, be my guest," Kirche replied. "I'll be sure to send Her Highness what I can find of your ashes. As for me, as soon as Tabitha gets back, I'm jumping onto her dragon and flying straight home where I have a nice bottle of burn ointment waiting for me."

Just then, Tabitha returned. There was no fanfare, no ostentatious comment to announce her presence. Soujiro respected that. He respected anyone who could drop out of the sky subtly.

"Information?" she asked.

"And speak of the Tabitha!" Kirche said. "We need to get out of here before Mr. Hot-in-a-Bad-Way runs out of city to burn."

"Information?" Tabitha asked again.

"What, about him?" Kirche asked. "He's out of our league, and if Wardes wanted us to distract him more than we already have, then he should have given me a kiss for good luck."

"He's blind," Soujiro said. "He said that he sees heat instead of light."

Kind of like Usui, also blind, but with hearing so sensitive he could practically see sound. Soujiro remembered one time when Usui fought Mr. Shishio when the latter wasn't in the mood to humor him. Mr. Shishio slammed his sword against the floor and the clang disorientated him for the split second it took for Mr. Shishio to end the fight. There was an expression that he was fond of. How did it go again?

"Every strength is a weakness, kid. You just need to know how to use it."

"Maybe we could blind his other senses with a flash of heat?" Soujiro suggested. "But considering the fire he's been throwing around …" He shook his head. "Nevermind. Bad idea." Picking out the weakness behind the strength was something that he had never been able to figure out. "Menneville–that's his name, by the way–he's also working for my old boss." And had been in contact with him at some point over the past two days, Soujiro realized.

"Right," Kirche said. "I was kind of distracted when you two were chatting, but your old boss … is that the guy the maniac referred to as God?"

Soujiro nodded. "Yup."

"And … that doesn't strike you as odd?"

He shrugged. "Not really. Mr. Shishio is very charismatic." And Mr. Shishio always had a way of attracting freaks and monsters.

Guiche snapped his fingers. "I've got it! If he sees his enemies by body heat, then a construct with no body heat at all should be invisible to him!" He waved his wand, shaking petals off his rose that turned into suits of armor. "Go my Valkyries! Show the evildoers what it means to challenge the House Gramont!"

The suits of armor floated into the air in exactly the same way bricks didn't, and then were engulfed in fire and were reduced to floating, and then falling, piles of slag.

"What?" Guiche demanded. "How?"

"Specific heat capacity of metal," Tabitha said.

Guiche blinked. "I … know what all of those words mean individually."

"Together," Kirche explained, "they mean that your plan accomplished nothing at all."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Soujiro said. "I'm pretty sure those Valkyrie things gave away our position."

Guiche's face fell. "So … I suppose we should be leaving now."

Tabitha put her fingers in her mouth and whistled, a shrill noise that would have brought Usui to his knees. Her big blue dragon Sylphid arrived, sticking its serpentine neck into the alley. "Kyuu?"

With only one working arm and no wand, Kirche needed Tabitha to levitate her onto Sylphid's back, and Guiche floated up after her. Soujiro hesitated. Wardes had told them to distract Menneville who seemed singlemindedly focused on wanton destruction … but Wardes was not the boss of him, and Louise had been rather silent on the topic.

Besides, Soujiro had always wanted to fly, ever since he had seen Henya do it. He hopped onto Sylphid behind Guiche.

"Take them home," Tabitha said, still on the ground.

"Kyuu!"

"Aren't you coming with us?" Kirche demanded.

Tabitha shook her head. "Enemy."

"What? You can't be serious! If both of us together couldn't face him, what makes you think you can handle him alone?"

"Plan."

Sylphid backed out of the alley, spread its wings, and flew, while Tabitha remained behind.

WWW

Plan was a mild exaggeration, used to calm Kirche's (hopefully) unnecessary worries. There was a spell that Tabitha had never used before, had never thought that she would need to use, and had only memorized because she had been interested in the theory.

Self-induced hypothermia had so few practical applications.

One part wind, one part water. "Cold Blood."

The effect was instantaneous and nearly sent her into shock. Her arms and legs didn't feel much different, but her chest felt like she had drunk a gallon of ice water and a headache hit her like her skull had contracted more tightly around her brain.

It wasn't even a cold day, late summer, but the human body could be exceptionally picky when it came to homeostasis. Tabitha didn't know how long it would take for the spell to kill her–testing the life expectancy of hypothermia victims was generally frowned upon–but she would have enough time to kill one blind pyromancer.

She took to the air and found the man–Menneville, Soujiro had called him–meandering towards their alley. He lacked focus, stopping to ignite nearby buildings that hadn't yet caught fire. Fortunately, all of the inhabitants had already fled. Hopefully, all of the inhabitants had already fled, otherwise she'd be honorbound to help them, which she could not afford to do. She took her chivalric oaths more seriously than most knights, who seemed to be one part performance and two parts presentation. She hadn't decided what she thought of Wardes yet. He had run away, abandoning them to fight Menneville on their own which made sense logically and made him look bad, so that was already two points in his favor.

She flew closer to Menneville. She was faster than him, in theory. Flight was a wind spell, and she was a triangle-class wind mage, so unless Menneville had a strong secondary wind specialty, she'd be fine. Unless hypothermia killed her first.

Between fire and ice, which will catch me?

He didn't seem to notice her. Even when she floated in front of him...

He froze. His one eye didn't follow her, so he really was blind, but he seemed to know that someone was there. He … tilted his head slightly. Like a lizard. She had read about that behavior. It had something to do with repositioning the ears to better triangulate sources of sound. She floated away slowly, making less noise than a breeze, and landed on a nearby rooftop.

She could only cast one spell at a time, which meant that she couldn't fight and fly simultaneously. Long lasting spells, like Cold Blood, could be maintained in flight, but for anything else, she needed to land first.

On the rooftop, she mouthed the incantation of a spell as Menneville continued on beneath her, still unaware. She gathered, condensed, and froze the water in the air, forming an icicle above her head, when her plan fell apart.

Menneville spun around, raising his mace, a look of panic in his eye as he cast a counterspell, and Tabitha thought, Of course. If he can sense heat, he can sense cold. It was rather unfortunate that she didn't know any temperature-neutral offensive spells.

Menneville's blast of fire was focused on the icicle, not her, giving Tabitha enough time to get out of the way.

"Clever little thing, aren't you?" he said. He spoke loudly, as though he still didn't know where she was. "I wonder how you'll burn?"

You'll likely not find out," Tabitha thought. She was already starting to feel sluggish and drowsy, and if she died of hypothermia, her corpse would remain the same temperature as her environment, invisible to him.

It wasn't much of a consolation, but it was better than nothing. You burned my book, you burned my friend, but you won't burn me.

She tried to think of a backup plan, possibly something involving braining him with her staff, but her brain didn't function quite as well at room temperature.

And that was when Soujiro showed up.

Menneville shot a blast of fire at him before he had a chance to speak, which missed entirely. The boy was fast. Tabitha respected that. Speed beat strength more often than not. Her uncle was unfortunately living proof of that.

Still, she didn't like working with strangers. She was shy, a trait that had more to do with trust than with fear. Tabitha knew Kirche well enough to work with her, not because she knew that Kirche would never let her down–to believe anyone to be infallible was to invite disaster–but because she knew that Kirche would fail her predictably. Louise's familiar Soujiro, though, he was an unknown quality.

But all of that was irrelevant, because she had no choice in the matter except how to respond to it.

"Do you wish to die, boy?" Menneville demanded. "Do you wish to burn?"

"No, but thanks for offering," Soujiro replied. "I just dropped by to ask how Mr. Shishio was doing. You seem to be friends with him, and I've only seen him once since he died."

Died? A puzzle that Tabitha didn't have time for. She conjured another icicle far away from her. Menneville incinerated it, as well as everything nearby. And then he sniffed the air, as though checking to see if he could catch her scent. He scowled, and threw another blast of fire at Soujiro. "You will not mock the name of God!"

"Why not?" he asked, as though he were at a dinner party instead of a deathmatch. "He has enough of a sense of humor. By the way, does he still send his most annoying minions on pointless suicide missions?"

"Shut-up, brat!" Another wall of fire burned out a section of the city, but even a square-class mage couldn't keep up that level of firepower indefinitely, and after he was out of willpower, Menneville would just be a large man with a mace. Was that Soujiro's plan? She didn't know him well enough to say, and she didn't know anything about the man whom he called Shishio and Menneville called God, but it seemed to be getting under his skin.

"My friend, Cho," Soujiro continued, on the opposite side of him, "whenever he went out on a mission, the rest of us would bet on whether or not he'd come back alive. I bet against him every time, and every time, he lived! And then this one time when he wasn't on a mission at all and just wandered off to harass a swordsmith's son, and of course he would run into a legendary manslayer." He threw up his arms in exasperation. "Really, what can you do?"

"You can die!" He raised his mace to cast a spell, and as soon as the fire formed, Tabitha threw an icicle at him from behind. His fireball twisted in mid air, arced around, shattered her icicle, and exploded on the spot where Soujiro no longer stood.

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that," Soujiro said, sounding bored. He gestured toward an empty building opposite of Tabitha. "What do you think, Miss Tabitha? Does any of this make sense to you?"

Menneville shot a series of blasts at the empty building, reducing it to rubble.

And Soujiro laughed. "Man, I can't believe you fell for that! Sorry, I'm sorry Mr. Menneville, I shouldn't laugh. Really, Henya couldn't have done a better job with demolition. You don't know him, but Henya was another friend of mine. He flew with dynamite and anorexia instead of magic. Do you have dynamite here? It blows up."

Menneville seemed tired, finally, and despite his passion that would make Kirche look stoic, he seemed to realize that his attacks weren't effective. And he grew cautious.

"I sparred with him once," Soujiro continued. "Ranking dispute, you know how it is. Henya took to the air, and I, being, you know, subject to gravity, dodged his explosions until he ran out of dynamite and had to come down. And let me tell you, that took forever. Afterwards, Mr. Shishio took me aside and told me that I should have–"

He vanished, reappearing on the other side of his opponent. But this time, his sword was out, with a light sheen of blood. "–cut the fuses off."

Menneville's arm fell off, hand still clutching his mace, severed at the elbow. His one eye opened wide and he screamed, more out of shock than pain.

"And as usual," Soujiro continued, still smiling, "Mr. Shishio's way was always better."

"No," Menneville said. He lunged for his mace, and Tabitha had less than a second to respond.

She didn't know why Soujiro cut off his arm instead of his head anymore than she understood why he spent so much time chatting when he seemed fast enough to end the fight in the beginning. Maybe he wanted to capture the man. But no matter how valuable a captive Menneville could be, they didn't have the resources to keep him. Guiche had used up all of his willpower, Kirche was injured and wandless, and Tabitha herself would be incapacitated for the next few days. And as Louise's familiar, Soujiro's main responsibility was on her way to Albion.

So she made the only logical choice.

She sent a series of icicles through his thoracic cavity. As he reached for his mace, she heard him say, "Burn! The world must BUR–splurk."

Those weren't the last words she would have chosen, but that was far from the worst decision Menneville had made that day.

WWW

Shishio stood over the corpse of one Walter von Wagner, whose midday nap had been interrupted by eternal sleep via a sword to the chest, when he felt something crack in his pocket.

There was nothing especially important about Wagner. He was a distant relative of the Germanian emperor, but he was third in line to the throne after the imperial family was thoroughly slaughtered, making him a mild–and now a solved–obstacle.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a locket, one of the many magical items he carried with him. It was a simple thing, a tiny sealed portrait on a gold chain, designed for long distance lovers who wanted to keep track of each other.

Most of Halkeginia was like that, as though the world had been formed by little girls and aged romantics. Anywhere on the continent, one could buy a love potion on the black market which could deprive its victim of any semblance of reason for nearly a year, and yet no one had ever thought to use it to hijack an army. Or a kingdom.

The locket was just like that. Across Halkeginia, young people exchanged them when they became engaged. The miniature portraits inside aged accordingly, so even if the arrangement had been made while the participants were children, they would still be able to recognize each other.

It also cracked when the person in the portrait died, which is why Shishio carried one for all his major agents.

An exceptionally strong mercenary he had picked up, Menneville, had just died, his image shattered in Shishio's hand. Unfortunate. Another one of Shishio's servants would procure and preserve his corpse for later, but still he couldn't help but appreciate the advantage of instantaneous information. Before his death, he would have needed to have been near a telegraph, and even those had their limits. Why no one else had seen the practical uses of these lockets, he could not imagine.

These people, this world … they were pretty. Not beautiful, just pretty, petty, and cheap, like flowers in the garden while the house was on fire. And if there was one reason why Shishio had been summoned to this silly little world, it was to deliver a message.

The house was always on fire.

WWW

A/n And here is yet another chapter. These things keep on appearing on my computer. I don't understand it, but until proven otherwise I'm going to blame keyboard gnomes. I would like to once again thank all the people out there who have left and who continue to leave reviews on this story. If it weren't for you, I would give up on fan fiction and go out to get a real job. Ha! Who am I kidding, I would just spend more time playing video games.

If it wasn't clear, Menneville was the guy who led the bad guys during the hostage situation and was later killed by Colbert. He only showed up during one episode, and I'm guessing you weren't paying too much attention to his name when that episode had a (temporary) character death, but since I haven't involved Fouquet yet, he seemed like a good choice.

Also, I have a beta now, and no longer need to carry the burden of proofreading on my own. See all the spelling and grammatical errors that aren't there? That's because of Croniklerx. Thank you, Croniklerx. You have made the world a better place.

Finally, I would like to announce that this story is now on TV Tropes! If you look under the Familiar of Zero fanfic recs, you will find a link that will take you back here. I don't know who put it up there, but I'm guessing that it's someone named Ghingahn. Thank you, Ghingahn. You have made my dreams come true. I love it when people do that for me.