The morning of the Familiar Expo dawned bright and early, and Louise awoke in a good mood. "Good morning, everyone!" she chirped. "Did you sleep well? Or had a nice night? I still haven't figured out if you actually sleep or not..."

S A T I S F A C T O R Y

Ramiel's answer seemed a bit more curt than usual, its normal smooth blue surface broken up by what seemed to be thousands of fractal layers, each one gleaming in the sun as it seemed to focus its power through thousands upon thousands of dimensionally refractive lenses, dissipating the destructive force and leaving a single spot of azure light beamed down onto the bedroom wall.

Louise tilted her head. "Is Ramiel okay? It sounds a bit more listless than usual..."

"Oh, the pyramid's fine, probably." Mr. Compress said.

Louise looked between the wall and the familiar army. She took a breath. "I'm... going to ask more about this later." She climbed out of bed and threw some water at her face until she felt a bit better. "I'll be going to breakfast," she told Ramiel as she pulled her clothes on. "I need coffee. Will you be okay in here?"

Neo chuckled, assuring her new master that yes, they're all fine. Thus satisfied, the girl headed off to breakfast.

"DARLING!"

Correction. She headed off into a Zerbst bosom that was blocking her way. Louise mrgled. "Founder's sake, why must my life involve dastardly boob demons?" she lamented quietly.

The lament only earned her a suffocating hug. "Louise, my darling! How was your night? Are you ready for the Familiar Exhibition? Think you can go one performance without blowing something up?"

Louise extracted herself from Kirche's grip, scowling at the obnoxious Germanian. "No," she snarked, "we're planning on blowing up a moon and establishing ourselves as the Supreme Leaders of Halkeginia. None shall question the awesome might of Louise the Supremely Destructive and her demonic army."

Taking advantage of Kirche's utterly baffled expression, she slipped past the Zerbst and hid behind Tabitha. "I was never here," she murmured at the bluenette.

"Inefficient," was the equally quiet response. Nonetheless, when Kirche shook herself off and tore right past the pair, Louise couldn't help but smirk smugly at the quiet mage.

"But effective," she noted.

"She'll return," the other girl pointed out. Louise just grinned and slipped into the opposite direction. There was more than one way downstairs, after all. And hey, maybe the Snowstorm wasn't that bad after all, despite the company she kept?

~~~~~~~~

One kettle of coffee and a hearty breakfast later, Louise and Ramiel stood in the main courtyard. Well, Louise and most of her Familiars, Grimes laid belly down and Ramiel hovered above the ground while shifting into various eldritch shapes, but who was counting?

"We'll probably go last," Louise whispered to her familiars. "Old Osmond most likely wants Tabitha to provide a finale - a dragon is a dragon - and expects to leave us the postscript. But we're going to provide those fools with a Grand Finale instead! Are you prepared?"

"Hell yeah, we are! We should settle for what we got, ambience is important." Twice stated

Silently, Ramiel collapsed back into its normal octahedral shape, waiting patiently for the time to cut loose and show off just what it could do.

Most of the other familiars were, in a word, kind of dinky - as were their performances. Montmorency had taught her frog to hop. What excitement. Guiche just pranced around with his mole. Yawn. Kirche taught her salamander to breathe fire. Pathetic Zerbst.

Tabitha rode her dragon. Okay that was kind of impressive. But she'd seen people ride their familiars before! Even ridden on her mother's manticore! So... That wasn't that impressive or anything...

And so, Louise strode onto the stage. "Ladies and gentlemen!" she boomed. "You thought the exhibition was impressive so far? You haven't seen anything yet! I, Louise Françoise de la Valliere, and my familiars, Team Nocturne - we will give you a spectacle you will never forget!"

She gestured grandly at her familiars. "Observe!"

With a pause for dramatic effect, Ramiel floated to center stage, humming quietly at first before bursting out into a high pitched whine that grew and grew and grew, almost deafeningly loud before its entire form erupted into a geometric display of fractal dimensions, shifting and twirling in impossible manners, crystals forming out of thin air as its true form coalesced, the massive crimson core almost crushing the stage before it took to the air. As the hum changed pitch to become a scream, the core glowed and pulsed with light before hundreds of thousands of beams of light refracted through Ramiel's form, flashing between dimensions and into strange geometries, reflecting in impossible manners and shifting through millions of colors. Ramiel's scream became a song as the lights shone brighter, becoming a glittering jewel in the sky as it sang the glory of itself, of its power. Finally, to finish off its performance, Ramiel fired a lance of light into the sky, bursting with heat and power as it refracted through Ramiel's body and split into a hundred crimson beams, spinning and flashing before dissipating in a flash, with Ramiel folding back in on itself and slamming back into its smaller form with a resounding, echoing clang. Vathek lit some of the lasers with a blue hue, Snatcher walked out in a blue dress, telling Vathek's story through his eyes, Roman and Neo busted a move, it was basically wanton chaos. And then Tenko ended the performance with a shockwave of digital energy, asserting the dominance of Team Nocturne.

There was a stunned silence. Dozens of faces stared up at the stage in pure shock. Louise thought she heard a gulp somewhere among the crowd. She grinned in satisfaction. "You may clap."

Hesitantly, as if realizing that the wrath of God in all its fury was not about to descend on them, the audience began clapping. Smatteringly at first, and then growing in fervor as the assembled students and professors showered Louise and her familiars with cheers and adoration. Well, mostly just cheers. Louise might have just imagined the rest. Still, all was right in the world.

~~~~~~~~

Mathilda de Saxe-Gotha couldn't care less about some magical upstart with an overpowered familiar. No, her care was all about the job at the moment. A job that, with everyone else distracted, became a whole lot easier.

She could, however, find a few choice words of thanks to the aforementioned overpowered Familiar - just as she was once again inspecting the vaults, a beam of frankly ridiculous power had simply punched right through! It seemed that luck was firmly on her side now.

Quickly and with great agility, she had scaled the wall and rappelled herself into the vault itself. Honestly, it was a mess. It looked less like a treasure room and more like a dusty attic. But she knew that there would be treasure within. Her contractor had assured her as much.

The Staff of Destruction would be there, and she would steal it for them.

...oh.

Now she knew why that bird, how it could speak, she wouldn't want to know, had insisted she use her golem - the Staff was enormous. Clearly a Titan-class weapon. She shuddered to think what the woman would use it with, but at the end of the day it was none of her business, really.

Mathilda formed her golem. Along with some of those shadow things. Heartless, Diablo called them.

~~~~~~~~

It was pure coincidence Louise glanced that way. Nonetheless, she blinked at the sight of an enormous siege golem and an army of shadow things over at the Academy Vaults.

"Is anyone else seeing that?" she asked rhetorically. No one answered. They were entirely too busy cheering at her. Or they were simply too afraid of her familiars to stop. Either way, it was becoming somewhat irritating at the moment.

Louise tilted her head as the golem pulled something out of the vault. It appeared to be an enormous red staff with two prongs on it. She sighed.

"Ramiel?" She asked (well, less asked and more stated) towards her familiars. "Looks like the school is being robbed. Think you can do something about it?"

F E A R

Ramiel immediately began shrieking in a way no one had heard before- in complete and utter panic. Its form rippled as it screamed, spikes impaling into the stage as it shucked its smaller form and immediately burst into full on titan sized battle mode, its core glowing with hellish light as it almost instantly fired a beam on pure reflex- a horrid, shrieking, crimson flare of light that tore through the sky just barely above the golem's head that just barely missed boiling Mathilda alive out of sheer luck.

"Let's go whoop some shadow ass!"

He dashed through the crowd of Heartless, dodging something he could see out of the corner of his eye. Before Mathilda's eyes, several Heartless suddenly became chalk drawings on the floor and walls.

"Let's see your tricks handle this, young fool!," Yule Man called out.

"Special delivery of death, assholes!," Bad Humor added.

Both of them unleashed an icy surge. Mathilda noting that it tasted a lot like vanilla. Guilt bashed some in with a hammer he got from the forgers, Gorefield gave a cat-like cry as he raked his claws over several Heartless faces, drawing plenty of shadow. Foxfire fried some alive, Daybreaker fried several with his solar energy, while Ableblade smashed a few with a summoned zweihander. And every single one of Team Nocturne butchered the Heartless like it's nothing. Twice sighed.

"Things are getting too out of hand."

"I think I prefer it this way. The more kills, the better." Rude Twice retorted.

Louise blinked. "D-do I want to know?" she asked no one in particular, idly weaving past the spikes. "Do you recognize that thing?"

Ramiel continued shrieking, shrinking back down slightly before erupting into an even larger mass of spikes as the golem began to flee, fear shifting into pure and unholy rage at the sight of the lance.

A B O M I N A T I O N

Ramiel began to spin, the forest of spikes extending until it was larger than the entire castle, branching out and backwards before collapsing down and folding into itself, becoming the shape of a star and unfolding larger, larger, LARGER, until Ramiel let out an almighty SCREAM and unleashed a full power beam with such force and fury that the impact of the beam against the staff caused the entire golem to shatter from the mere shockwave, before those broken pieces erupted away in a burning hail of molten magma, melting and blowing away from the thunderous atomic heat of Ramiel's power.

Sighing, Louise palmed her face. "And we were doing so well..." she muttered. "Is it dead now?"

"Maybe, lil sis." Magne said.

Ramiel almost purred with delight, shrinking back down to normal with a loud, ringing clang, like unto a bell announcing the death of the thing that had frightened it so. It still seemed a bit shaken, its form ever so slightly asymmetrical compared to its normally flawless geometry, but it was far from the spiky, horrid mess that it had been mere seconds previous.

Louise took her familiars in. Then she took in the molten slag and burning rubble in the distance. And then she took a look at the completely horrified audience. "You can resume clapping now," she deadpanned. Then she hopped off the stage and marched towards the carnage. "You can stay here if you want," she told her familiars. "I'll go make sure it stays dead."

Honestly, she was kind of concerned over how blasé she was over the entire situation, but chalked it off to having an awesome familiar who clearly needed some reassurance.