A/N: We have no excuse for the length of time it has taken to get this chapter to the public. We at Project: Arashi can only express our sincerest apologies and ask for your patience and understanding as we craft the monumental work in progress that is Kuro Arashi. This chapter was beset by actor changes, poor planning, lack of effort, and the attention-drawing affairs of other projects. We hope that the length of this chapter makes up somewhat for the amount of time that it took to create, and give our assurances that the next series of chapters will not take so long. As with the last several chapters, the filler material of this chapter does not come accompanied by an official soundtrack, leaving the choice of music up to the readers.
"The first official meeting between Kuro Arashi and what would become Ala Alba. You could easily sense the charge in the air given off by two such powerful groups working in cooperation."
- Evangeline A.K. McDowell; 'On a Wing and a Storm'
Chapter XVIII:
Oh, So That's How It Is
June 22, 2007
Mahora Academy Main Street
1017 hours, local time
After confirming that they'd gather again at midday, the Hinata crew had promptly scattered like the shrapnel from a frag grenade. All of the tenants had split up into a number of groups and proceeded to take off for their own activities. Seno, Motoko, and Kazue made up the 'Swords Trio' and had gone off to see Setsuna's kendo club demonstration. Kitsune had wandered off alone, probably going off to see if there were any gambling events or alcohol displays, and Haiken still hadn't been seen at all, and thus those two were dubbed the 'Wandering Shinobi.' Mutsumi and Shinobu had wandered off to take in the sights, all the while the younger girl listening raptly to the magical ramblings of the Okinawan native; thus, the two were designated the 'Healers' Convention.' Sabashii, after showing up in the guise of a female, would forevermore be known as the 'Gender-Confused Nuker.' Lorenzo, all armored up and looking like he was ready to go off and blow a hole in the Covenant war machine, became known as the leader and not-so-sole member of the 'Redshirt Brigade.' Naru and Haruka, with their significant others both away in America, named themselves the 'Lonely Ladies Duet.' And that left Nealla and Kaolla, who comprised 'Club Twin.'
At this we find the Lonely Ladies Duet and Club Twin wandering down the main thoroughfare of Mahora Academy, heading in the general direction of the all-girls' middle school that Negi taught at. A number of the classes were holding various booths and activities within the school, and 3-A's specialty was a haunted house. The noise and hustle and bustle of the first day of the event made it fairly difficult to hear oneself think, almost to the point that you'd need to shout to be heard by people standing right next to you.
"So what are you two going to do until the meeting?" Haruka asked of the MolMolian girls, wandering along slowly, unphased by the sea of festivalgoers on all sides of them, the proverbial rock standing steady in the midst of a river.
"Explore the haunted house!" Kaolla scrambled away as Nealla reached for the back of her clothing, to yank her back to the group. Fingers fell short however, as Kaolla slipped her grasp, and went off on her own, leaving Nealla behind, sighing.
"I'm not actually certain." The MolMolian woman shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not used to doing much besides following Kaolla around."
Haruka glanced to the side as a mockup Warthog transport drove past on the main road, its seats and the back troop carrying compartment filled with cosplaying UNSC Marines and ODSTs. They were carrying mockups of what Nealla quickly recognized as the MFBR-42 battle rifle or the MFAR-60 assault rifle in use by MolMol's military. Of course, Kaolla would have pointed out, were she to take notice of the identical weapons, that MolMol's arsenal is, itself, identical to the human arsenal from the Halo games.
"It must be hard, living that kind of life," the tea shop owner said as she watched the occupants of the Warthog wave and shake hands as they drove past.
She reached down to tighten the skirt she wore, seeming to take her time to answer the comment that Haruka had left floating.
"I.. You must understand. Why Kaolla lives a free life, I must remain vigilant in my duties as her body guard. It is somewhat fortunate, that she and I look alike. More than once, it has saved her life." What she spoke of was duty, and honor. Two things she took very seriously.
"I have served the royal family since I was small. Kaolla and I grew up together. In the beginning, the only purpose was to serve as her double. But I truly do love her as a sister. I would never see anything happen to her. So for this reason, I follow her as I do. 'hard', or not."
"That's something we all understand, I think," Naru said, smoothly sliding into the conversation. "To protect those we love, and stay true to our honor and duty, each one of us has some connection to those concepts, and that's why we all have such a deep connection with one another."
Nodding in agreement, Haruka patted the Tokyo U student on the shoulder and added, "It's one thing to live your life in unswerving determination to prevent harm from coming to Kaolla, but if you focus on protecting her physically no matter what, can that really be called living? I'm sure Kaolla would be happy if you, frankly, weren't so uptight all the time."
A lot like Motoko's sister, come to think of it, Haruka thought to herself.
"Even if you say that, I can't be untrue to my duty, and my beliefs. It's one thing to simply be raised to do something, and act a certain way. But I've been playing Kaolla's double for so long, it's really all I've ever done. Even as a child I acted in her stead." She seemed a bit tense, glancing around briefly, as if suddenly reminded that the princess in question was out of her sight.
"I'm not.. uptight, really. I simply live the only way I know how," her voice trailed off.
There was a brief flash just ahead, of light over darkness, as Kaolla darted into the main entrance of the Mahora All-Girls' Middle School, the very same school that housed Negi's Class 3-A. It was obvious that the princess would be making a beeline toward said class's haunted house.
"I more really meant," Haruka clarified, "that you should try living for yourself once in a while."
Deciding that that was some good food for thought for the elder of the MolMolian girls to mull over, the tea shop matron reached into her pocket for a pack of Marlboros and her lighter, going through the ritual act of lighting up a cancer stick as she turned and headed in the direction of the massive tree in the center of the city. After a moment to wave toward Nealla, Naru turned to follow Haruka.
World Tree Plaza
1030 hours
The tree was essentially visible from all parts of the city-campus, growing only larger as one neared the center of the city, similar to Cinderella's castle at Disneyland: Tokyo. As they reached the plaza, Naru and Haruka stared up at the tree, towering more than a hundred meters overhead, its far-reaching branches shading much of the plaza from the slowly-growing heat.
"It's not that big a deal, Naru," Haruka deadpanned. "We've seen it before."
"Yeah, from across the city, maybe," Naru answered, staring up at the huge and majestic tree in awe. "We didn't get this close to it last time we were here. I've never seen anything this big!"
Unbeknownst to the pair from Hinata, high overhead in a clock tower featuring a commanding view of the plaza, a certain member of Negi's class kept watch over the people milling about in the plaza, a perfectly-maintained PSG-1 leaning against the ledge, and a strange palm device with two spinning balls mounted to antennae projecting from the top held in the student's hands.
She watched as a few armored men and one catgirl costumed ODST made their way to the World Tree Plaza. Their shift over, they had decided to go around and tour the area. They were stopped by little kids daring to touch Katerine's sword, but after one kid accidentally got a large cut from the sword, well...no one really wanted to be near the girl with an actual claymore. They got there, posing for pictures, before sitting down on a table and allowing themselves to cool off. Granted, all the ODST body suits they used had self cooling systems, but that didn't stop them from taking three ice cold water bottles and dumping the cold water onto their faces. Once helmets were removed, another of the group was revealed to be female; the basketball ace Yuuna Akashi from Negi's class, who was not as well known as an avid fan of the Halo series.
From across the way, after finishing his small snack, the dark knight's break was over; at least, it was for the time being. With his hours pulling closer upon him, he strutted his shoulders, dusted them off, and proceeded to walk back to the Great Tree itself.
Grinning faintly, Mazu's rosy hues behest the still thriving carnival around him on his way back, and such as it was, his small smile turned into a smirk. "Cute girls abound as well as surprising sweets. There never were so many pleasantries back at home. On my next break, I think I'll take a ride... and then have more sweet things to eat. Mmmm... I can already taste those caramel-dipped apples, now... and cotton-candy... and buns of honey... and cinnamon crumples... and..." While still walking, Mazu continued listing the many things he still wished to partake while the festival was still on.
From the radio headset Mazu wore, he would soon hear the voice of Class 3-A's resident mercenary sharpshooter, who was stationed in the clock tower overlooking the plaza, providing overwatch. "Stay focused. You have a job to do. Is your detection meter even on?"
As she asked this, Mana glanced down at her own meter, which was beeping slowly, already beginning to pick up confessions in the making. Gritting her teeth, she tucked the butt of the PSG-1 sniper rifle into her shoulder and peered down through the scope. "Hold on, cancel that. I'm picking up targets, lots of them. Do what you can to disperse and dispel, I don't want to have to start shooting."
Her scope, keyed in to react to the frequency put out by the detection meter, flashed red as she passed it over a high school couple standing at the railing surrounding the World Tree park area. "Contact at your eleven o'clock. Male in a white t-shirt, female wearing a red beret."
Mazu winced. He had forgotten that he was even wearing one of the light-framed devices next to his ear. Getting re-antiquated with his job, he gave a sigh and reached to touch his left ear.
"Your voice sounds stiff. Anyways, sure, I got my meter on. S'posed to click or ring when something happens, right? Right?" Mazu then took his detector from his pocket and looked it over with tensing oculars. "Oh, wait, hold on. Yeah, it's on." He made a swift mental note not to mention that it had actually been off. He scowled. At himself, really. He had turned it off during his break only to forget to turn it on once he was back on the clock.
When told of the approaching denizens, he simply nodded his head and refitted his fingerless gloves. "Sure thing. I'll see to it that nothing happens. I mean, y'know, I'm going to happen, but they're... yeah, you get it. I'm out." With a roll of his shoulders and a flexing of his fingers, he stepped and stepped lively, taking a slight degree of a turn to hopefully catch within his range of view the targets he had been informed to find.
It probably would not take but a moment to locate the described people. In a moment, he would be there to look over from on high across their shoulders, his face stuck in a grumpy, 'What do you think you're doing, here' face.
"Alright, kids, kids, kids... What. Are. You. Doing. Here. No-one's allowed here during the time of the festival. Especially kids. Unauthorized kids. You two need to vamoose." He then proceeded to make a hand motion in the guise of breaking the air and waving them away.
The young couple looked over at Mazu in terror and, well, abject confusion. And some terror was thrown in there, too. The two high schoolers started to protest, when Mana's voice would once again sound in Mazu's ear.
"Dammit, there's too many. I'm going to have to open up."
Mazu raised a furrowed brow in his own confusion after hearing Mana's comment. "Open up? Open wha-?"
And a second later, the loud crack of Mana's sniper rifle rang out over the plaza's ambient noise, and another young man across the plaza from Mazu was flung to the ground, shot in the head by a tranquilizer round. Pandemonium overtook the crowd at that point, screaming in terror and scattering at the sudden sniper shot.
The loud crack would catch the dark knight off guard as something he was not expecting, and giving the couple a rudimentary shove away from the plaza in a direction away from the shot as well, he glanced towards the erratic crowd before placing his forefinger to his ear, again. "What was that? Did you... please, tell me you did not do what I think you did. Was it necessary?" Mazu scowled, grimacing in that twist of lament and irritation.
Naru and Haruka both dove to ground behind the central fountain, Haruka scanning the rooftops intently for the source of the shot as Naru began drawing energy to her hands and back. "What the hell's going on?" the Tokyo U student asked. "Assassinating someone in broad daylight in the middle of a festival?"
"No idea," Haruka answered, scanning across the line of department store windows down the street. "Tamp down on your power until I find the sniper. You're glowing like a beacon to anyone who can detect magic right now. These Mahorans are our allies now, so we should at least play by their rules and minimize the risks of exposing mundanes to magic."
Nodding grudgingly, Naru powered down and reached into her pocket, pulling out her cell phone and thumbing through her contact list.
On the other side of the plaza, right near the young man who had been shot, the fireteam of four men and two women had just returned the helmets to their heads, faces cooled by the ice cold water and circulating air within their helmets before external microphones registered the shot. Lorenzo's suit, more advanced than the others no thanks to Kaolla, had a shot indicator located. Taking the initiative, he and his fireteam came upon the body of the young man who was shot.
"Spread out, stay under cover! Boomerang indicates shot was high. Scan the rooftops!" he yelled in his helmet mike. Koike had pulled out his M7, the other guy was behind a trashcan using the scope on his BR55 to scan the rooftops, the other, was panning his shotgun around. Yuuna crouched behind the central fountain, M6D Magnums in hand, helmet turning this way and that.
The crowd formed a circle around them, pointing and yelling stuff, yet scared and held back as Katerine administered first aid on the guy, and put him under cover. She would then pull off her claymore from her scabbard, and holding it one handed, pull out a folded M7 as well. Driving the blade down on the ground, she hid behind it, holding two M7s, head turning as she started to look around.
Lorenzo was busy, holding the BR55 and looking for the sniper, when a call was being patched through his cellphone, slaved to his suit's internal communications. The HUD indicate it was Naru, and after cutting off his taccom to a barely audible whisper and making sure his team's status lights were all green, accepted the call.
"Fireteam Charlie, at your service," he said, keeping a light and joyous tone in his voice as he continued to scan the rooftops.
"Lorenzo, I'm at the World Tree and we've got a sniper situation here," the angel said into her phone. "Where are you and how fast can you get here?"
Up on the rooftop, Mana scowled at the riot she had caused, hoping against hope that some fools, fearing that their life was about to end, wouldn't suddenly start to-
Nope, there went the detector, some fool was about to make a last-minute confession. Shouldering her rifle, she sighted in on a high school couple crouched behind a bench, and took careful aim. A moment later, her rifle cracked again, and the tranquilizer shot flew straight through the slats in the bench, taking the girl in the throat and crumpling her like a doll with its strings cut.
"If you wouldn't mind, partner," Mana coldly said into her headset, "Stop gawking and help me stop these confessions."
"Hold on Naru," Lorenzo said, before switching his taccom back up. "Katherine, Koike, new target, 50 meters to my 8 o'clock. Get there and secure second tranquilizer dart."
"Jawohl." "Hai." his two ODSTs said. Returning her sword to its scabbard, she made for the other victims, before being blocked by the crowd. The impatient German girl amplified the external speakers on her helmet, and yelled for them to make a way. Slowly but surely, a path opened up and both made there way around the now tranquilized girl. Koike removed the dart from her, and collected it. With the help of her boyfriend, put her on the bench and made sure she was comfortable.
Back at the main plaza, Lorenzo's suit computer was still calculating where the shot came from. "I'm in the World Tree Plaza along with the other members of Fireteam Charlie," he said to his mouthpiece, having switched back to Naru's call after ordering Koike and Katherine away. "I'm in the first attack site. They seemed to be hit by tranq darts. The girl said he was about to say something before being shot. Dunno, looked like they were a couple by her reaction right now. We're pinpointing the location soon."
Stepping out of a cafe adjacent to the World Tree Plaza, Masaru, both of his earbuds in place and the volume of his music being the reason why he hadn't noticed the commotion. "Hm. Quite the debacle occurring." He spied the massively-armored dark knight across the plaza, trying to shoo couples away from the plaza, as well as a group of people in the recognizable armor of the special forces from the Halo series, and the report of a sniper's rifle told him everything he needed to know. "Ah, yes, that no-confessions-in-certain-areas job. I suppose I'll do my part, since obviously this team has no concept of subtlety." He closed his eyes, picturing a group of creatures he'd seen on internet videos recently, and began to chant, "Ati Me Peta Babka..."
Over by the fountain, Naru snapped her phone shut and looked toward Haruka. "Lorenzo's here with his cosplay buddies from the Unversity," she explained. "They're with the first victim, tranquilizer round, apparently about to confess before he was shot."
Haruka furrowed her brow. "This mystery sniper is trying to prevent confessions of love here..." After a moment, her head came up, then she looked over at Naru, and very seriously turned to look beyond the plaza, at the massive tree in the distance. "It's the tree. The tree is a source of vast magical power. All of us can feel that there's a huge amount of energy filling the air. It seems that the powers-that-be are worried about the potential compulsory effects of that power."
The angel scoffed. "They're sanctioning snipers to keep people from confessing at the festival?"
"We don't have time to discuss the nuances now," the older woman said. "We have to clear this plaza before it becomes any more of an incident." With that, she jumped up onto the central figure of the fountain, drew her Beretta out of a hidden holster, and fired a single shot directly up into the air. When she shouted out to the crowd, her voice was audible to everyone in the plaza, a bonus of her heroic class. "I need everyone to clear the plaza now! There's a-"
Before she could provide a good, suitable excuse that wouldn't start a greater panic, the noise of the crowd trying to flee out of the west exit of the plaza toward the university doubled in intensity, and suddenly they weren't so keen on escaping that way anymore, pushing back frantically against those behind them, creating an even more headache-inducing traffic snarl.
Up on the roof, Mana shifted the scope of her sniper rifle to see what could cause the mundane civilians to panic more than the report of her rifle, and her brow furrowed at what she saw. There, advancing up the steps from the west were a gaggle of aliens, nearly a dozen in all. Eight of them were squat, meter-tall creatures that wore breathing masks attached to a pressurized tank of some kind that made up most of their height. The other three were all massive, eight-foot-tall apelike creatures wearing some kind of metallic armor over most of their bodies; two of these aliens wore blue armor and each carried a boxy pistol-like weapon with two curved blades mounted to the front end, and the last wore more ornate-looking burnished gold-colored armor and was carrying a huge, two-handed weapon that looked like some form of grenade launcher with an obscenely-large undermounted blade that reached from the barrel of the weapon back beyond the rear.
"Contact, contact!" Yuuna shouted. "We've got..." She paused for a moment, utterly and genuinely surprised at seeing real-live Covenant, but shook her head, grinning beneath her helmet, and finished her thought. "Covenant lance! Three Bravo-Kilos and eight confetti makers!"
"What the..." Mana muttered to herself. "What are the likes of those doing here?" She watched as the eight smaller aliens hobbled their way up the steps, followed at a leisurely pace by the three big ones, who seemed content to harass and terrify anyone they passed. "Wait, I sense magic..." Her eyes flared as she stared at them, an inner light glowing in her eyes as she analyzed the new enemies. "...I see. How very clever, Najou-san." She tapped her headset. "Mazushida, new contacts coming up the steps from the west. See the Halo cosplayers all around you? Let them handle them. Our cover-story just walked up."
Haruka, also, was watching the new arrivals make their entrance, and smiled, realizing immediately what was going on. She yelled out to the crowd, "The Mahora Military Enthusiasts' Club, the Robotics Club, and Bungie Studios are bringing you a live showcase in promotion of the upcoming title Halo 3! Please clear the plaza so that the actors have plenty of room to perform for you, and enjoy the show!"
That turned things around almost immediately. The screaming died down, replaced by cheering and callouts as the crowd hastily cleared out of the plaza, camping out just beyond the concrete ring of the plaza proper. Haruka stepped down from the fountain and joined Naru in moving out of the plaza. With the crowd thinning out, the advancing aliens caught sight of the squad from Fireteam Charlie immediately, and the golden-armored alien pointed a meaty paw at the cosplayers and roared menacingly. The other aliens aimed their weapons immediately, and a rain of green energy bolts and glowing orange metal spikes soon fell toward the Fireteam Charlie positions.
Well, this was amusing. Lorenzo had seen Haruka fire the Beretta, and was about to berate her when it registered what was happening. The two other Fireteam Charlie recruits were cowering in fear. But Katerine, Koike, and Yuuna had taken up positions behind more solid things. The ODST with the shotgun hopped into the pool that was the fountain, and took a shot with his M90 CAWS at the nearest grunt. Blown back by the apparent shotgun blast, it squirted luminous blue blood from its wounds and it reeled back. That just opened up a whole host of possibilities for both sides. Taking cover from behind her sword, Katerine leaned to the side and fired both her SMGs, sending a grunt backwards and dead, while Koike supported her by distracting the brute nearest her. Following suit, Yuuna went prone and crawled to the nearest curve of the fountain, where a double-tap from her pistols drew sparks from one of the brutes.
"Kill em all!" Lorenzo said, as he took an airsoft grenade towards the grunts. They scattered, but most of them were injured. The other ODST finished them off with quick semi-auto fire from his BR55. The Brutes left, the team focused their firepower on them. But that doesn't mean they weren't taking fire themselves. The fountain was abandoned by the shotgun wielder, having been bombarded with spikes and brute shot grenades the entire time, while Lorenzo was running around the fountain. Katerine had abandoned her sword and was running around.
Koike himself threw a grenade, killing the brute, while combined shotgun, BR55, Magnum, and SMG fire took down the other. As their weapons clicked empty, the ODSTs furiously reloaded their weapons. The Brute chieftain, devoid of allies, or surrounded by dying ones, let out a ear deafening roar. Taking it's brute shot it started to thunder towards Koike, who shot at it to no avail. Just before Koike was cut down the middle by a downstroke with the brute shot's bayonet, he was shoved aside by Katerine who stopped the brute shot's downward force with her claymore, buckling to a kneeling position due to the force of the blow.
She smiled at the brute, thereby issuing a challenge to it. Within seconds, they were up and at it. The Brute was enraged, but unlike other brutes, he still managed to keep his fighting sense. His fur was a little lighter, and was completely gray in some areas, like his feet, hands, and head. He was an older and wiser brute. And he was driving Katerine around the fountain. Magically created, it was made for show, and fighting against Katerine, who was parrying the brute shot's blade holding the claymore in both hands, he didn't really mean to kill the crowd. But still. He swiped, and she ducked a little too late, blowing her helmet clean off, and exposing the girl's head. The crowd, which had been holding on to their breath, now understood why a cat tail was sticking from the ODST's back. Some started to clap, while others cheered her or the brute on.
An errant swipe again, but this time,she dodged it completely, and slashed his stomach. He bent forward, as Katerine slid forward, using the weight of her sword to get her clear, before getting up and now pressing on her attack, making the brute go on the defensive. With each parry, she was starting to be a handful, before a chance strike wedged her sword into the brute shot. Nearly cleaving it in half, a massive punch threw the girl up in the air and she landed in a heap near the fountain. A gasp went through the crowd, initially for the well being of the girl. The brute tossed his now worthless Brute Shot to the side, roaring, issuing a challenge at the others. Lorenzo and his men aimed at the thing, before it started to recoil from the effects of being shot.
But it wasn't Lorenzo, or any of the others doing so. Running back into the fight, a small trickle of blood now nothing but a smear on her cheek, Katerine held her folded SMG like a pistol, clutching a grenade in the other hand. The Brute leapt into the air, and Katerine went into a feet first slide. They missed each other by inches. Chucking the grenade right where the brute was bound to slam its fist down. And sure enough, it had turned and slammed it on the pavement, Katerine leaping straight up at that second, and kicked the primed grenade deep into the bandoleer full of brute shot ammunition, before kicking the stunned brute in the face and diving towards the brute shot and sword.
The grenade exploded, as reddish blood and the explosion destroyed and set off the brute shot grenades and weakened the sole remaining brute. Going back to its animalistic lunge stance, it roared, finally fully berserking. Katerine was ready. Swinging her sword, the centrifugal motion freed the brute shot from it and impacted flat side first into the brute, which didn't seem to daze it. Getting low and down, as the brute raised it's arms skywards in another bashing attack, she drove the claymore clean through its heart, killing it.
Sliding out with flair, once the sword was clear, the brute started to fall forward. Turning the grip so the blade was behind her, she lunged upwards, swiping the sword past the brute's neck, using her exceptional strength to cut through the hide and thick neck, letting herself twirl once, turning the sword once more to have the sword handled normally, before landing in an attack stance as the body fell on a squishy 'thump'.
For a moment, the square was silent as she flicked her two handed sword, or was it? As she handled the long sword as if it was a one handed weapon. Nevertheless, with the blood gone from the blade and her sword sheathed, in a grim display of barbarianism, she took the severed head by its large canines, and waved it in the air, where people started to applause, which then turned thunderously loud.
Chao Bao Zi
1222 hours
Parked at the edge of the large open field behind Mahora All-Girls' Academy, the mobile restaurant Chao Bao Zi was operating at full capacity, with customers lined up around the figurative block to get a taste of the legendary culinary experience of the best homemade food anywhere in Mahora. And with the hour of 12:30 rapidly approaching, a few additional people would be arriving at the restaurant, making use of the age-old knowledge that the best place for one to hide is in plain sight.
In the meantime, Seno, Motoko, and Kazue were seated around a long table, one of a number of which that had been set up in the grass for people to eat their food at, a large plate filled with chicken teriyaki over fried rice sitting on the table before them.
"You know," Seno said, chewing on a piece of chicken and a clump of rice and vegetables, "this has got to be the best teriyaki I've ever had. These girls really know how to cook."
"I agree," Motoko said with a nod, her table manners far better than those of her husband. "The quality of this food is on par with Shinobu's cooking. I have no doubts that if she were to attend Mahora, she could easily find employment working at this restaurant."
A few familiar, but unknown to the Kuro crew, faces were in the area, such as a certain blonde girl napping at a nearby table, who was being closely watched by the green-haired Chao Bao Zi server. Standing in the line to get food were the bell-adorned redhead, the shy librarian, and the blank-expressioned librarian. Aside from those, though, most of the two groups had yet to arrive.
Masaru wandered the grounds, arriving from where he had created the ruckus to cover the problem earlier. He was dressed in a Mahora male uniform, and he was looking over several cards where he sat. In front of him was a Magic the Gathering Fireball spell, an Avatar the Last Airbender Omashu Dodgeball attack, a Spirit of Fire from the Shaman King game, and Negate Attack from Yu-Gi-Oh! He also was apparently looking at various tarot cards and printed out pictures of scenes and attacks from anime, and other sources of media, including Halo.
As he gazed over the cards, shots, and other media, including several guidebooks, it seemed as if he was trying to memorize the images. He seemed to have been concentrating on the entirety of closing his eyes and drawing the images in his head after studying them. He appeared to have not been paying attention to anything else going on at all. He was lost in his own little world.
Hiroyuki grinned his casual grin, chewed his gum, and remained silent as he knelt down behind Masaru. He loomed like a dark cloud over the underclassman, peeking over Masaru's shoulder to glance at the cards he. As usual this boy, was lost in thought as Hiro had noticed many times before. Kohai Nanjou, always so serious. What's he thinking about? thought the lucky Mahoran. Finally getting bored with the younger boy, Hiroyuki concluded that he'd attempt conversation with the boy.
"Oi! Kohai, you can stare at those cards forever but they're not gonna change, nothing interesting is gonna happen," he said rather ostentatiously. "What? You waitin' for 'em to come to life?" he asked jokingly, plopping down to sit next to Masaru. "I mean, if that's the case then at least pick some cooler material. Don't get me wrong, most of your choices are fine. But others are, not so fine. You don't even have 'Dark Magic Attack' here.." Hiroyuki chuckled as he gazed over the collected material.
There was a definite pause as he listened to the other young man talk. Masaru wasn't antisocial so much as he just was always taught unless he had something important to say, words were a waste of time. Still, it would be impolite to remain silent, and his father had raised him to be polite, and a gentleman, despite his being rather brusque. He turned his head towards the chattery fellow, and adjusted his glasses with his middle finger.
"Each individual card I have selected has the unique property of being useful in a variable situation, and each one also has little to no prerequisites involved. Dark Magic Attack is indeed a powerful ability, but its requirement of almost a specific deck makes its usefulness variable. Negate Attack is useful in several deck structures. Fireball is a classic burn, and suffers from no diminishing returns. What you see is what you get here, and it is only as weak or as strong as you have mana to burn. The Spirit of Fire, that's just a personal preference. I am somewhat of an Asakura Hao fan, you see."
It sounded as if he was having a conversation, but he was so polite and formal about it. He was still ever so serious, though he hadn't seemed bothered by Hiroyuki's presence either. He just acted like he did because that's how he was. He really only smiled genuinely around his girlfriend.
Interesting, but not surprising, coming from Kohai Nanjou, Hiroyuki thought to himself. He nodded and brushed some fallen leaves off his Onion Magician!? trademark jacket, he noticed something he didn't like to notice during conversations: extreme seriousness. Hiroyuki chuckled once more and shook his head, retrieving a pork bun from a Chao Bao Zi take-out box he purchased minutes before. The young man took a healthy chomp out of it and grinned before returning his attention to the underclassman.
"Personal preference huh? So, is it personal preference to act so serious all the time? So formal. The politeness is quite refreshing but it's not like we've never met. Sure I've never had many interactions with you, much less a conversation. But don't be so dull. Tell ya what, you can call me by my name... Trust me, I had enough people call me Murakami-san for one day. And I'll call you by yours eh Masaru-san? Ever heard of relaxation?"
Nanao had made her way to Chao Bao Zi after fighting through crowds of people milling around, people trying to snag her attention after the parade, and the ruckus caused by the events at the tree. She gave a shake of her head as she settled next to Masaru with thud of her body into the nearest chair, un-shouldering her guitar in the same movement, and settling it between her booted feet. She'd traded in her corset for a gray short-sleeved shirt that bore the words 'Bad Girl' on it, with ripped gloves that went from her fingers to almost her shoulders, just before the sleeves started.
She was still hyped from her performance, and you could tell, though she half collapsed against Masaru. "Maaaaan. I'm starving. Ma~sa~ru. Buy me lunch." She batted large eyes at the glasses wearing man, her head resting against his shoulder, as she plucked one of the cards from in front of him, studying it, without really even seeing it. But that wasn't surprising, she tended to zone out a lot.
Masaru smiled gently at the girl as she came into sight. He turned his attention to the both of them fairly evenly. One had to know how to split one's focus, especially when one was trained in the fine art of closing deals. Masaru truly wished he could let the other young man know exactly why he was the way he was, but explaining yourself was meaningless. You are you. That is what he had been taught, and he had found it to be true.
"This is simply the way I am. If I were to just try to be some way different, I would be lying to myself. You must understand, the most important thing in this world is to be who you are, to claim your name, and to claim your soul. Without that, it leaves us nothing but empty, just masks over a void, trying to interact with the world. How many people lose themselves in a thousandfold false faces, just to make others happy? I am not so selfish as to believe I can pretend to be what I am not and make another smile. I am simply me. If I am not true to that, then I am less than a man."
The youth turned in his seat then, and faced the other young man. Masaru's face was calm, and he had that same serious look as always, but past that, there was more to his face. He had feelings, and it was obvious that was so, but something held him back. No, that wasn't right. He wasn't held back, he was focused. Perhaps it was that focus that made him seem unusual. Unlike so many his age, he knew what he wanted in life. He had goals set, thoughts aside, and he believed in working hard for them.
"Hiroyuki-san. I do not mind being informal, if that is what makes you most comfortable. I'm not a person who insists on pushing his way of life on others, but I am serious because I am a serious person. I admit, I have my frivolities, too... There are times I do waste time. We all have flaws, and we all have things that make us strong. In the Nanjou house, I learned from my father early on that if you want to succeed at anything, you must keep your goals in mind and pursue them without fail, without compromise, analyze everything and take responsibility. But, I was also taught you must open your heart to the people who work for you, and those around you, and you must also make sure you have one thing to balance you."
Again, he adjusted his glasses on his nose as they began to slip down, and he kept his eyes on the more excitable fellow across from his gaze.
"But I was also taught if you open your heart easily to too many people, you will also make them dependent on your strength instead of learning for themselves. Depending on others is fine, but it must be cyclical, not parasitic. A handful of people will come to understand you, respect you, and care for you for who YOU are. The rest, the rest just want to see if they can use you, or shake you, or make you react. They are those who are unhappy with themselves and do not know who they really are, so they seek to find this answer by attaching themselves to others. I simply do not wish to be one of those kinds of people. Does that answer your question about my demeanor? I am as human as you, I am just human in a different way."
Of course, he then turned to Nanao and smiled, his voice softened some as he spoke, and reached out to squeeze her shoulder lightly. "In just a moment, dear. Give me a few more moments to imprint all this on my memory so I have some things to think about, and then I'll get you whatever you want."
Setsuna approached the restaurant, walking a few paces behind Ojou-sama for the best view. Her pace quickened the closer they got to Chao Bao Zi, the delicious aroma wafting over in her direction. Her stomach grumbled. Frowning, she gave it a pat. She hadn't realized she was that hungry. She walked past Seno, Motoko and Kazue on her way to the counter, giving them a bow of greeting as she did so. Joining the line, she gave Asuna a nudge.
"It smells great, doesn't it?" she said, looking up the queue to gauge how long she'd be waiting for.
Without really thinking, she grabbed at Konoka's hand to pull her closer into the line. She stood there a moment, looking from her hand to Konoka's, her cheeks becoming more red with every passing second. Then she let go, spun around, and faced the counter again. Clearing her throat, she asked casually over her shoulder, "What are you going to get, Ojou-sama?"
A few tables down from Masaru, Nanao, and Hiroyuki, the blonde-haired girl in the Lolita dress had awoken, and focused her sharp hearing on the conversation between the almost-stoic boy and the wild child spearman. A small grin came to her as she overheard Masaru's comments concerning the risks of causing others to depend on oneself. "Well-learned, child of the summoners," she whispered to herself. "Now if only we could get the boya to learn that." She glanced up as the green-haired server passed, and called out, "Chachamaru."
The called girl halted immediately, stacks of plates two feet high held in both hands, and turned to the blonde girl, bowing partially, the plates not wavering an inch. "Yes, Master?" she asked in a flat monotone.
"It's almost time for the boya's little meeting. Take your break in the next five minutes."
"Yes, Master," the green-haired girl said, and returned to her work.
Hiroyuki was impressed, this kid was much more mature than most students his age. What Hiroyuki was not, was surprised. Hiroyuki was a well-informed person, his informants were reliable, and what Hiroyuki didn't know, he found out. He had know for a while about Masaru's upbringing, and how prestigious the family he came from was. Hiroyuki ran his free hand through his spike red hair, tracing down to his ponytail, listening intently to Masaru until he was finished. "I know where you're coming from man, and I enjoy seeing original people, behaving the way they want. I can't stand being chained down by society and what they think is acceptable. You're right, our names are our own and it's our duty to allow our spirits to soar beyond the boundaries that were placed there by lesser people," the wild young-man said arrogantly, turning what Masaru had said to match his own liking.
Finishing off his pork bun, the crazy spear-user licked his finger tips before reaching into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a lollipop, unwrapped it and place it in his mouth. He smiled as he sucked on it and retrieved another sealed sucker. He held it in Masaru's direction. "Here, take it, it's good, it's new and it's flavor almost never disappears," He said outstretching it closer to Masaru. "You're an alright guy Masaru-san, I would've never thought we had even a small thing in common. But hell, we even share ideals. Never give up, pursue your goals, and don't let the rules of others keep you from your dreams. Show the world your soul is free and not imprisoned." He chuckled to himself at his own little speech, even though it paled in comparison to Masaru's. "Perhaps we share this ideal because we are kinsmen. My main father-figure was my uncle and he's more of a friend than a role-model. So, you had the unfair advantage of someone teaching you ideals, whereas I came up with them on my own. But yeah, that answers my question pretty good, despite it was answered in such a profoundly philosophical manner," Hiroyuki stated matter-of-factly and with half a laugh.
Masaru accepted the candy as it came, and he sighed, as he set it down. He wouldn't have it now. He looked idly at Hiroyuki, and there was a moment where it seemed he mused over something. Masaru listened to him speak, listened to what he had to say, and just nodded as he finished.
"You have more depth than you let on. You keep a lot of it beneath an exterior that would make most people think you didn't think, and that you were just another foolish thrill-seeker. My nature opposes yours. I put my more focused face forward and keep my softer face hidden. My father, he is a serious man, and hard to see at times. He has never failed to be there when I asked, but he does not take a lot of time with me. I understand why. He wants me to form my own beliefs, not just mirror his."
Again, the young man adjusted his glasses, and he looked about at the crowds gathered. It was always so noisy when Mahorafest came around, but in a way, it was a release of all of the pent up energy of students. Masaru had fun studying, so he had never really thought of Mahorafest as anything but part of the entire school experience. Vacations, events, it was a time honored tradition, and he understood this. Still, it was rude to ignore one's conversation partner, and he looked back once more to Hiroyuki.
"I was once told as long as you know who you really are, and who your friends are, then there is no such thing as fear. As long as you take responsibility for your own actions, and your own mistakes, and acknowledge you are flawed, then you will have no limits; you can only continue to improve. No matter what you say, what mask you present, that it is what you feel that is most important. How the world sees you is not important. It is how you see you that matters most. As long as you know the truth, what the others think they know is only just..another mask."
He reached over then to squeeze Nanao's shoulder, and nodded to his conversation partner. "I need to get Nanao something, and the line is long. But you know, if there's somewhere you'd like to go to a think someday, a place where there is a great deal of peace, there is a Shinto shrine in Araya that has gathered a great amount of spiritual activity over the course of events that happened many years ago. That place, it's the best place to go if you really want to learn about yourself, I think. It's peaceful there, and holds many old secrets. If you'll excuse me.."
He stood then, nodded, and took his place in the line, not even seeming bothered at how long it was.
Hiroyuki gazed directly at Masaru's eyes as he said what he had to say. Damn, this kid really does think a lot, but it gets him somewhere, the wild boy remarked in his mind. Hiro listened to Masaru's words carefully and intently. The boy's intelligence and perception brought a smile to the spearman's face.
He nodded when Masaru was finished and waved slightly to him as he walked off. A little after he left, Hiroyuki began laughing so hard he almost swallowed his lollipop. This guy Masaru was great, very few people could see through Hiroyuki's crazy demeanor, and even less could see the focused and mature young man inside the wild boy. Hiroyuki shook his head. Shi-Shin-shinto shrine!? Where the hell did that come from? I mean, sure it's been a while since my last shrine visit...but that just isn't how I find peace. Through excitement and thrill is how I become truly calm. Hiro ran these thoughts through his mind before an Idea suddenly popped into his head.
OK, Masaru, I've got your number. I'll relax your way and go to the shrine...if you'll relax my way. As Hiroyuki thought this he reached once again and pulled out a flier he had picked up earlier. He retrieved the advertisement paper with the word "BUDOKAI" written across the top. He grinned and retrieved a pen and wrote down the following: "Okay, okay, you think you can analyze my mindset? Then how 'bout a little switcheroo? I'll relax your way Masaru-san and go to the shrine tomorrow IF you relax my way. How's that sound? Enter the Mahora Budokai tournament, fight your brains out, I'll be watching ^-^ p.s. I'll only go if you can at least pass the preliminaries."
He left the piece of paper in Masaru's seat, stood up and left in the direction of the Chao Bao Zi. He scanned the crowded areas, listened to the incoherent chattering of the students and tourists, and smelled the fresh food-scented air. He loved Mahorafest, he loved Mahora, his home. Getting back to scanning the crowded areas he noticed two familiar female faces that he had seen not a couple hours prior near the middle of the line. He grinned. I guess I should make good on an apology, don't wanna ruin my reputation. He quickened his pace, walking up the side of the line before allowing his presence to be known by the two. "Oi! Sakurazaki-san! Konoe-san!" he called out not six feet away from the pair.
Setsuna turned her head at the sound of Hiroyuki's voice. "Oh boy," she muttered under her breath, glancing at Konoka. She watched as he drew closer, a carefully bored expression on her face. "What can I do for you, Hiro-kun?"
The wild-child laughed. "Hiro-kun? Getting familiar are we?" he asked in his joking way. He scratched his head and gave a small bow to the Shinmei student and the brown-haired girl next to her. "Well, Secchan. You don't need to do anything for me. But let me do something for you...Aaaaand your friend Miss Konoe here!" cheerfully exclaimed the Mahoran native.
Setsuna stared at him a moment, the corner of her mouth twitching. "Hardly." She then bowed back at him politely- a quick, short bow- before moving somewhat closer to Konoka. At least he was addressing her nicely...and, that said... "Please stop calling me Secchan." She stared at him again, unwavering. "At most I'll accept Setsuna-san." That said, she listened as he apologized, though she did not believe him to be particularly sincere.
She doesn't like me does she? pondered the spear-wielder as he laughed at Setsuna's reluctant smile and acceptance. She's tough, I can see it on her face and eyes. I like that. Hiroyuki was caught off-guard by her insisting to call her by her full name, especially since she herself referred to him as Hiro-kun. But his recent thought along with her comment conjured an idea for Setsuna's nickname. His mind made him grin before returning back to reality.
"You took real good care of me earlier, I didn't think girls your age had such fire and passion, especially in the heat of battle. I want to both thank and apologise to you Setsuna-san. The thanks is for providing a challenge that lived up to your reputation. And I'd like to apologize if I went overboard in any way during the battle or before." His eyes remained serious and mature while he spoke those words with his constant smile. Did the man ever frown? "So I noticed you two over here in line and I believe the best way to apologize at the moment is to buy you two lunch, and I won't take no for an answer!"
"Yes, thank you. That would be nice."
"Excellent. Please don't be so hostile and withdrawn. I'd like to leave this morning's unpleasantness behind us and start anew, and this, I believe is the best way for me to atone for my actions. That or turn back time, which is much more difficult I assure you."
And with that he smiled the most friendly smile he could muster, before beginning to search his pockets for something. "So uh, what would you like Miss Konoe?" he asked, retrieving his wallet. He waited for her answer as he looked over his money. Confident he had enough money, he nodded, grinned, and turned back to the girls. "And what would you like Tsundere-san?" he asked while trying hard to sound professional and withholding his rising urge to laugh.
Setsuna stood still as he spoke, not even moving to sweep her hair from her eyes. She felt her stomach tighten with hunger and hoped the line would move more quickly, but didn't allow herself the luxury of squirming. Self-discipline is a must in kendo, especially when you don't want someone to anticipate your next move. Or when you don't want to show too much of yourself, in this case.
She gave him another half-hearted smile when he asked her not to be so hostile. It wasn't that she wanted to seem that way...it was just...
And then he said it. Called her 'Tsundere-san'. All her self-control went out the window as her cheeks heated with embarrassment. Her palms felt sweaty in her newly formed fists. She stood there a moment after hearing it, heat radiating from her cheeks. Then she smiled, drained the blood from her head, and looked directly at Hiroyuki. "That's Tsundere-sama, thank you," she said lightly, and for the first time spoke to him with a hint of humor in her voice.
Konoka watched the exchange between the other two amusedly, tapping a foot on the ground to the tune of the music that ony she could hear. She wasn't crazy, she just had that song.. what was it? The caramelldansen, stuck in her head all day.
When Setsuna dryly informed Hiro-kun to call her 'Tsundere-sama', the brown haired girl giggled. Stepping in between her Secchan and the boy, she looked between them for a moment before asking thoughtfully, "If Secchan is Tsundere-sama, could I be Yandere-sama?" Not noticing any looks she received from either party, Konoka bit her lip thoughtfully. "Although.. I'm pretty sure I'd have to go insane for that to be true.. and I don't know if I could do that." She giggled a little before looking over at the menu. "I'll have the pork bun, please," she said to the taller boy.
Hiroyuki let his contained laughter go. "I knew I could bring some humor outta you Tsundere-sama," said the wild spearman through laughs. "Very well, Tsundere-sama it is then," he said in a mock regal voice, followed by an exaggerated bow before turning to regard Konoka and her words. The brown-haired girl's comment brought an even bigger smile and chuckle from the red-haired youth. "If you wish to be called yandere-sama, that is completely up to you. However I think you're still just Deredere-sama!"
Setsuna Sakurazaki, Konoka Kone...how adorable a couple, the energetic youth thought to himself. "So be it, Deredere-sama. Your wish is my command, how many pork buns would you like? Would you like anything else? I assure you that my apology has no limit, and I'll do whatever it takes to make it up to you two," he said with another exagerated bow. "Now, which is the seme and which is the uke?" he whispered to himself with his usual grin. "Oh! how rude of me! I never got your order Tsundere-sama."
Setsuna eyed Konoka warily, but did not join in or interrupt her, even though she wanted to. That wouldn't be respectful to her Ojou-sama. She blushed at the mention of semes and ukes, her sharp hearing picking up the words, but made no reply other than to say, "A bowl of udon fish soup, please," before looking the other way. They were hardly a couple, how could he ask such a thing?!
"Right away miss!" Hiroyuki replied in the mock regal voice from earlier. He enjoyed stirring up trouble and situations like these, made life fun and not boring. Oh he was sincere about his apology, but he had a tendency to start trouble right after he apologized. And Hiroyuki had even more fun when Anime seemed a lot like life, or rather, when life seemed alot like anime. But since real, genuine anime events were few and far between he did what he could to do his own part. Hmmmm...Setsuna definitely seems more like the seme because she's defensive of Konoka and is more masculine..but if she is the seme then she is one shy and easily embarrassed one. At the same time, Konoka seemed a lot like an uke but seems a lot more open-minded and less shy than most ukes... What a dilemma.. So are they like, Se-ukes? or perhaps Sekes?
Hiroyuki fought a mental battle with himself over the thought. He worked it over in his mind over and over before verbaly discussing with himself. "But the one is unaware of the other's feelings and is more of a friend than a lover. So not a couple but forbidden love? Hmmm, I better write this down, and think about it later. It seems like an over-used topic though with such shows like Kannazuki no Miko and Strawberry Panic! not to mention it constantly being used as an additional element. It might not be so secret in most of those shows, but it is in some." Hiroyuki chattered with himself when suddenly something caused him to gasp. Right after he balled one hand into a fist and brought it down into his open palmed hand. "It's the exact same minor theme from OnionMagician!? Haha! Awesome!" He began laughing to himself with a most satisfied smile on his face as the line began to move up again bringing them closer to the counter.
Setsuna watched Hiroyuki's puzzled face as he battled with his thoughts with mild curiosity. He certainly was a strange young man, she'd give him that. Her face went back to that alarming shade of hot pink as his ideas became voiced, and it took a lot of self control to stop from interrupting him and telling him quite forcefully to shut up. He was talking about shows she'd seen a lot of...interesting...artwork for, and well knew who he was thinking about now. She gave his shoulder a small, but strong, tap with her index finger. "Close your mouth and concentrate on buying the food, Hiro-kun. We're almost at the counter now."
"Hmmm now that I actually think about it, isn't the names of those characters Setsuka and Konata?" he asked himself, still in a battle against himself. He felt someone poke him but barely noticed it was Setsuna. He smiled and shook his head at her statement. "I know where we are in the line Setsuna-san, but if I close my mouth then how can I order for you?" he asked rhetorically before lowering his voice so that only she can hear. "Don't worry, I won't tell.." he said with a wink and placing his index finger to his lips. Then the wild-child added, "Good shows no?"
With that he turned in time to noticed that they were next in line to order. The girl working the register, medium-length black hair done up in her trademark baos, smiling pleasantly and wearing an apron bearing the name of the restaurant, was none other than Chao Bao Zi's proprietor herself, Chao Lingshen. Knowing that Setsuna and Konoka were with Hiroyuki, she gave them a tip of her head and said, "Good afternoon, Sakurazaki-san, Konoe-san." She then shifted her attention back to Hiroyuki. "May I help you?"
Hiroyuki smiled as he began retrieving his wallet. "I'll be ordering for these young blossoms of Mahora, one'll have a pork bun, and the other'll have a udon fish soup... any drinks? Uh they didn't say, tea'll be fine I'm sure."
The Chinese girl barely glanced back over her shoulder, but Satsuki was already hard at work putting the order together. Her smile ever-present, she rang up the order on her register, and then said, "Okay, a pork bun, udon fish soup, and two teas. Nothing for yourself, sir?"
"Oh, no, I've already eaten. I'm merely buying these two lovely ladies lunch."
Chao nodded. "Very well, then. That comes to 577 yen."
Hiroyuki fished out a number of bills equivalent to 580 yen and handed them to her. "Okay, here you are miss, keep the change and have a good day."
Bowing her head in gratitude, Chao sorted the bills into her cash drawer, then accepted the tray with the order as Satsuki passed it to her, then handed it off to Hiroyuki. "Please enjoy your meal and thank you for choosing Chao Bao Zi. Come back and visit us; we'll be open all three days, except for the final day's event."
Hiroyuki took the tray and headed out of line to the seating area, then turned to Setsuna and Konoka and handed the tray to the swordswoman. "And thus concludes my service to thee o' young beauties of the grandest city that is Mahora." The spearman bowed politely. "The apology has been carried out... If Tsundere-sama or Deredere-sama requires my assistance in the future, do not hesitate to call on me. However, until then, I bid thee adieu." Hiroyuki bowed once more, then turned and headed off in a random direction, murmuring to himself, "Hmmph..Setsuka and Konota indeed."
Holding the tray of food that held all three of their lunches, Asuna stood by with Nodoka and Yue, waiting for Setsuna and Konoka to get out of the line with their food, and away from that weird guy who talked too much and too loud. It was all Asuna could do not to spawn her harisen and give him a few good whacks to the head. As the two Kyoto natives came toward them, Asuna grinned and nodded her head at them, unable to wave. "Come on, guys, I saw some of those people we're going to meet over at a table over there," she said, then immediately turned and headed in that direction. She looked toward Setsuna, then nodded toward the table, where Seno and Kazue were fighting over a piece of chicken. "That guy there trying to stab that girl in the face, that's your cousin, right?"
Setsuna found herself to be in an almost constant state of red now, and so tried to look as normal as possible. She ignored Hiro's comments with such ease it almost seemed like she had indeed not heard him at all. Grateful their food was close at hand, she smiled lightly and looked mildly interested, and took the tray with enthusiasm as their food was served.
Bowing, she thanked Hiro for the food and watched as he walked away.
She smiled upon seeing Asuna, and they walked over to join her and their other friends. She followed Asuna's look, and sighed, almost laughing but embarrassed too. "Thankfully there's no blood relation. That's my brother-in-law."
Masaru came back to the table where his girlfriend waited for him with various delightful things, and he gave the poster a curious look before deciding he should pick it up, which of course, he did. As he looked over the writing and the paper itself, he couldn't help but chuckle. So that's how it's to be hmm? Masaru mused for a moment. It wasn't a bad idea. He wasn't fond of conflict for its own sake, but one couldn't test one's battle skills without a conflict to be had. And since it wasn't to his knowledge a life and death contest, it might not be so bad. He shrugged and figured he'd enter somehow. He'd have to go to wherever it was one went to register, but it wasn't so troublesome. "I wonder why he wants to see me fight. He might be curious if I even can..I suppose I can show a few of my skills."
Nanao dug into the tray of goodies placed down with the careless abandon of a teenage girl who never gained an ounce. All of the dancing she did on stage made sure that she kept her figure.
"Well, it depends. I mean, he could just want to see what you're capable. He could be gauging you. Or he could be humiliating you, 'Kohai'," the word was said with affection, and she grinned. "I'm tempted to join in, but I can't fight worth a damn." A grin, before she finally turned her attention to the new folks that had wandered up.
Lot of people.. I wonder what all this is about. No one ever tells me a damn thing. Her glances over the newcomers were inquisitive to say the least.
More of the appointed people were beginning to arrive now. A quartet of figures approached through the crowd, headed for the two tables that many of the designated people were gathered around. The smallest of the figures was obviously Negi, his staff thrown over his back, talking animatedly with the three with him. The second was another boy who looked to be about the same age as Negi, sporting messy black hair, whose every mannerism and action screamed 'fighter'. Walking behind the two boys were the two greatest melee combatants of Class 3-A, a tan-skinned Chinese girl with her blonde hair done up in two ponytails, and a tall girl with a single long tail of her light brown hair trailing down to her waist.
Negi led his little group to the large table, capable of seating up to twenty, that Seno, Motoko, and Kazue had claimed. Just as they arrived, Mutsumi and Shinobu also appeared on the other side of the table. Having expected the lines for food at Chao Bao Zi would be labyrinthine, the two healers had picked up yakitori sticks on their way to the regionally-famous traveling restaurant.
The boy mage smiled at the two healers and bowed politely, then looked at the gathered five and said, "Well, it seems most of us are arriving here on time. Allow me to make introductions." He gestured to the spikey-haired youth on his right. Now that he was closer, two dog-like ears could be seen poking out of his hair. "This is Inugami Kotaro-kun. Though, in order to be allowed to remain here at the school until the next term, he poses as the younger brother of one of my students, Murakami Natsumi-san."
Kotaro gave the gathered Kuro members a thumbs-up and a wild grin. "Heard you guys beat the hell out of a bunch of the mage teachers," he said. "Think I could fight your best sometime?"
"Knowing Sabashii, I wouldn't doubt the guy'd take you up on that challenge," Seno said. "Name's Seno Nakakami, Halo sniper extraordinaire and all-around face-beater."
"Ara, where is Sabashii, anyway?" Mutsumi asked. "I haven't seen him all day."
"He's disguised himself as a female student," Motoko answered. "He said he had some things to look into. I'm not sure if he'll be coming."
"I did call him about an hour ago and left him a voice mail about the meeting," Seno said, feeding a scoop of fried rice and marinated chicken into his mouth. "So it's on him if he checks his voice mail within the next three years."
Patiently waiting for the three to finish, Negi next held his hand toward the Chinese girl. "This is Master Ku Fei. Captain of the Chinese Martial Arts Club and my teacher in the arts."
Planting her fists against each other before her, Ku Fei bowed toward the group. "Swordsmen of the Shinmeiryu, your reputation before you. I like test my skills against you one day, aru," she said, smiling.
Motoko smiled back and bowed her head in return. "You honor us with your praise, master of the fist," Motoko answered. "I am Motoko Nakakami, and I would be honored to participate in a test of skill."
Negi smiled, thinking that this was certainly going very smoothly. He had been slightly worried that the Kuro group might hold some lingering grudge against those of Mahora, but it seemed he had been quite mistaken, which pleased him. He last gestured to the tall girl whose slit-eyed gaze reminded the Kuro crew of their resident boozer. "And this is Nagase Kaede-san."
She bowed her head to the swords-couple. "Sessha is honored to meet the current samurai of the Nakakami and Aoyama clans, de gozaru. From my home province, many are the stories of your clans' noble deeds." As she stood again to her full height, even with Seno were the swordsman standing upright, she looked toward Kazue, and gave her a single inclination of her head, a nod of respect and recognition from one kunoichi to another.
The sound an oncoming vehicle filled the area, as a black Troop Transport Warthog came into view. Jumping from the main roads, many people dove out of the way while the driver, an ODST, manipulated the gears and wheel to have it stop in a perfect, well, parallel parking position near the tables, far enough to allow people to walk through, but close enough to make a few people jump for cover. As an older, non-uniformed woman undid the five-point harness restraining her on to the passenger seat, two very shaken people, one uniformed and another, an auburn-haired girl who looked wide eyed, gripped onto the sides of the semi-bucket seats they sat on in the back.
"I've seen worse driving," Haruka commented, as she took the pack of smokes she had left in her pocket and pulled one out. The ODST, now identified as Lorenzo due to his nameplate, took out some tactical looking butane torch lighter and lighted Haruka's cigarette, before the two grabbed the handholds over their seats, Lorenzo having already unbuckled his seat, and jumped down to the ground.
"Interesting vehicle. Although I've never seen it before," the tea shop proprietor noted, as she met Lorenzo in the front of the vehicle, starting to form the eventual crowd that was staring at the TTW.
"It's called a Troop Transport Warthog," Lorenzo said, finally removing his helmet. "It was supposed to be in Halo 2 but was cut out. The guys here in Mahora made a few of these. This one though is the commander's version. Well, so they tell me, after repainting it black with dark blue trim. It's actually their experimental rally car version. They tell me it's modeled after the Bowler Wildcat."
One thing about the TTW, painted in Lorenzo's colors of Black/Dark Grey and Dark Blue, it had on the sides his crest: a golden shield with a white downward pointed sword flanked by wings, the symbol of the Valkyrie in Halo. The frame was basically that of a rally car's. Light, spacey, yet very strong, using the Bowler Wildcat's hybrid 5.0 liter TVR V8 engine, 300 bHP. It had multi-surface/multi-condition rally tires meant for light trucks, while the suspension and 4 wheel steering was controlled by a central, shock proof computer located on the dash. The rollbars were of strong tubular steel, encased in aluminum mockups to make it look like a real TTW, foam was placed inside the empty space between the cosmetic Aluminum and the Steel roll bar.
The TTW was actually meant to be one of the competitors in the on-going HMMWV replacement process. Unfortunately, with Japanese Arms Manufacturing laws, the motorheads in Mahora gave the prototype away to the Military Enthusiasts, and with a little planning and redesign, evolved the fully armured vehicle into the rally inspired TTW. Nevertheless, the other two passengers had started to come down. One, the original driver of the truck, was shaken. He had seen the car through many test tracks, but never driven a 4 wheel steering vehicle in a manner that made it drift corners, granted, the thing was rebuilt as a rally car for rally raids.
Naru jumped over the rollcage, before collapsing into one knee. The ODST that had sat opposite her, in the driver's side seats, was on all fours. Both were slowly getting through the shock, as Lorenzo and Haruka nonchalantly walked over to their respective comrades and helped them up.
Cursing a steady stream that belied her angelic roots, Naru stood up with Haruka's help, and turned a glare to Lorenzo filled with the fury of hellfire and brimstone itself. It could be debated whether her shaking hands made her image more or less frightful. She rose her left hand with one finger raised as though to make a declaratory statement, started to say something, paused, went through two more false starts, then shook her head and stalked over to the table the others were sitting at, dropping down into a chair next to Motoko and nonchalantly plucking a random piece of chicken from the plate on the table.
Negi, sitting in the seat directly left of Naru, was understandably shaken by the palpable anger emanating from the woman, and shifted his seat slightly to the left. Kaede, in the seat to his left, gave the boy a reassuring smile and pat on the head. Across from the two, Ku Fei and Kotaro looked rather oblivious, and were in fact debating who was the better martial artist: Jackie Chan or Jet Li.
At this point, Setsuna, Konoka, Asuna, Yue, and Nodoka arrived and found seats at the table. Seno, who had managed to hold his concentration on his chopstick duel with his ninja spy during Lorenzo's wild arrival, now looked away to see all the newcomers. "Wow, we've got a hell of a crowd here," he mused to himself. "Wonder if we'll be able to discuss all things magic without some bystanders overhearing."
Kazue took this time to strike, quickly raising her chopsticks into the air and slamming them down into Seno's hand, point first. She snatched up the bowl with her free hand and promptly began to stuff her face with chicken, watching her adversary carefully, ready to scramble away if he should turn his attention back on her. Not quite able to talk with her throat full of poultry, the ninja remained quiet as new additions began to appear. However, she did nod at the newcomers as she swallowed, acknowledging them with a smile while her green eyes warily regarded Seno with caution.
Nealla had broken away from the women earlier, and had been wandering ever since. Their words had shaken her just slightly, though she did her best to hide it. When she finally got in range of Chao Bao Zi, she was glancing around for her charge, her expression as flat as always.
To be only 16, she was incredibly serious almost all the time.
"I'm not too late, am I?" she addressed to Seno when she finally managed to grab a seat, a slight frown on her face.
The swordsman turned his glance from the newcomers to Nealla, answering, "Nah, it hasn't started ye-OW! SON OF A BITCH!" Instinct jerked his injured hand back to him, and he glared at the offending ninja. If he had any of his weapons with him, he'd be whacking her in the damn head for that.
Immediately, Shinobu raised her free hand and, not missing a beat from her talk with Nodoka, twisted magical energy between her fingers and directed the healing energy to undo the minor damage to Seno's hand, and continued on her discussion like it was nothing. Beside the white mage, Mutsumi smiled and applauded the younger woman's skill.
At about that time, Kaolla made her appearance, sailing over the head of the crowd and coming down on the head of the Warthog driver, landing with just enough force to drop his face into the puddle of vomit. She then used the man's helmet as a springboard to vault into the driver's seat, power up the vehicle, and careen off into the crowds.
As the sound of screeching tires vanished, the blonde girl in the lolita dress stood from her table, motioning the green-haired server to join her. The pair approached the gathering group, and as they neared the table, the Warthog came plowing back toward the group, driving directly toward the girl.
"Master..." the server warned.
"I see it, Chachamaru," the blonde answered, her stride not faltering. Just before the vehicle would have splattered her, she gestured with her right hand, and the Warthog went flipping up into the air. Halfway through its aerial rotation, Kaolla dropped out of the driver's seat and landed sitting cross-legged on the table.
The blonde watched calmly as the Warthog came crashing back down, rolling across its side into the crowds, its mass and speed sending no less than seven people sailing away after impacts from the vehicle.
"Killimanjaro, Master," Chachamaru reported tonelessly.
Grinning, the blonde turned away from the carnage and headed to the table, calling back, "Save that film, Chachamaru, and record all those medals. Must have been at least five," over her shoulder.
As the blonde and the green-haired server joined the groups at the table, Negi looked at them in genuine surprise. "M-Master? What are you doing here?"
The girl gave him a poisonous look. "I'm considered a part of your little group, aren't I, boya?" she asked condescendingly. "Besides that, it's impossible to miss such a concentration of power. So even if I wasn't invited to this little get-together, I'm inviting myself."
Negi paled, gulped, then nodded and turned his attention back to the gathered groups. "W-Well, this meeting was mostly called as an introductory get-together," he began. "Actually, since it was called at Otohime-san's request, I'll let her take over."
The Okinawan native smiled at Negi's gesture and stood up, looking around the table. "The reason I asked for this meeting is so that our two groups can get to know each other. We'll be working together a lot in the future. I think most of us have been introduced to one another already, so once the important matters have been wrapped up, we'll let those who don't know everyone go around and make introductions."
Mutsumi clapped her hands together, then turned to her side and placed a hand on Shinobu's shoulder. "Now, Shinobu, if you'd be so kind, would you please scan the surrounding crowd? You should find four of our new allies currently in the area."
Nodding, Shinobu closed her eyes and lowered her head toward the table. For a moment, there was silence, then the white mage's head came up and her eyes snapped open, having faded to the tell-tale lavender color of her special ability. Standing up in her seat to get a better view, she turned in a slow circle, taking in the crowd. Immediately, she caught two white auras situated at a table nearby. "There," she said, pointing to the forms of Masaru and Nanao. "Those two from the parade."
In a rare act of kindness, the blonde girl turned to the green-haired server and said, "Retrieve them, Chachamaru."
"Yes, Master," the server answered, bowed, then headed off into the crowd.
Continuing her circuit, Shinobu found another white aura beginning to leave the area. "Over there, heading toward the trolley station," she called out, pointing to the retreating form of Hiroyuki.
The student in question swaggered his way into the trolley, whistling an anime tune obnoxiously loud. As the wild child moved to board the nearest leaving car, Hiroyuki sneezed; He wiped his nose and shook his head "Hmmm...Someone must be talkin' about me behind my back," the spearman stated to himself, reinforcing the superstition. Hiro outstretched his arms and yawned more obnoxiously & louder than his earlier whistling and turned around to scan the past crowd for anyone looking like they're saying something about him. Suddenly Hiroyuki felt a vibration at his own waist, accompanied by the song from one of his favorite shows.
Mi-Mi-Mikururun,
Mikurun-run,
Mi-Mi-Mikururun,
Mikurun!
Rather than answer his phone immediately, Hiro danced a lil' to the tune before answering it with a sunny "Moshi-Moshi?"
The voice from the other side was that of a young underclassman. "Sempai! Sempai! I've got the info on those strange people you mentioned earlier!" exclaimed the the other voice.
Hiro merely nodded. "Excellent, thanks a bunch... Oh and don't call me sempai, it's kinda annoying 00-kun." Staying on the phone, the young man scratched his chin and headed back in the direction of the Chao Bao Zi, then continued, "I really should be getting my costume together for the cosplay thingy, but it's currently more important to know about these people so lay it on me 00-kun."
The younger voice cleared itself. "Ahem, I'm sorry Hiro-kun it's how I was raised. But yeah, apparently most of the teachers in Mahora know about this group of unusuals. It was well guarded but hacking into school systems is my specialty as you know Hiro-kun. Apparently though, all there was were their profiles, pictures, and their group name. But nothing on what they do specifically, their group name is the Kuro Arashi."
At this Hiro huffed, and a small grin crossed his face. "The Black Storm? Heh, doesn't sound like a charity group, what're they doing here?" questioned the wild man.
"I'm not sure, they seem to be careful with their important info...I'm sorry Hiro-kun."
Hiroyuki laughed at this. "You've done enough Takaki, don't get caught, and stop following me around," Hiro said with his voice becoming louder at the last part before hanging up. He then turned in time to notice a cardboard box scurrying off in the opposite direction, but no one seemed to notice but Hiro. "Damn it Snake..."
"That's three," Mutsumi praised. "There should be one more in the immediate area."
Catching the special emphasis on the word immediate, Shinobu turned to scan the nearer area. Immediately, she noticed a glaring white aura, not one of their own, standing at their very table. She pointed down to the blonde. "And you."
The blonde shook her head as though clearing her hearing, then stared at Shinobu incredulously. "What?"
Negi's group, needless to say, was caught completely off-guard by the proclamation. The boy mage himself had turned as white as the auras of the Chosen, Ku Fei's face was screwed up in confusion, Kaede maintained her serene expression, Kotaro didn't seem to know what was going on, Nodoka and Yue merely watched silently. Asuna literally fell out of her seat laughing, rolling on the ground and holding her stomach. "Are you serious?" she asked between guffaws. "Eva-chan is some kind of hero? A goody-goody?"
The blonde girl's eye twitched, but instead of diving on the redhead, she merely turned and gave her a strong kick to the side, before turning her attention back to Mutsumi and Shinobu. "You two have got to be mistaken. I am no hero. I am Maga Nosferatu, the Undying Magi, the Dark Evangel, Evangeline A. K. McDowell! I'm an evil mage, not any sort of goody-goody! I'm the final boss, not any bloody adventurer!"
Shinobu shrank back under the oppressive dark aura of the girl, but Mutsumi met her stare without flinching. "You can disagree and argue all you like, but you have been Chosen by the Planet. You cannot escape your destiny, no more than you can escape your vampiric blood."
Evangeline's expression darkened further, as though she were about to reach across the table and tear out Mutsumi's throat, but she abruptly turned away and crossed her arms, huffing like a spoiled child who hadn't gotten her way. "Whatever," she muttered. "I can be 'Chosen' all you like, but this fate and destiny nonsense is just that. I've got my free will, and I refuse to take any part in this heroic destiny of yours."
Mutsumi smiled airily, then placed a reassuring hand on Shinobu's shoulder. "Of course," she said. "Even one such as I cannot affect free will."
By then, Chachamaru had reached Masaru and Nanao's table, and bowed politely to them. "My Master has requested that you join us at our table," she said simply, gesturing to the gathered group around the large table.
"Huh-wha?" Nanao wore an expression of confusion when Chachamaru approached, before standing, grabbing her platter with one hand and Masaru with the other. "We're being summoned." And she dragged the younger boy with her, trying to angle a dumpling into her mouth while balancing her plate, drink, and boyfriend.
Lorenzo put his armored gauntlet down and stared at Mutsumi with a shocked expression. He moved his lips for a bit before gaining the ability to speak again. "You're sure she's with us? She's one of the most hunted people outside Mahora," he said, taking care to keep his voice down. "Do you know how much of a dossier she's got? Old secret Papal Bulls, declarations from the Anglican Church. Reports of her vile ways, all neatly organized into box after box after box chronicling each decade of her vampiric history. Do you know how much we owe the Vatican for being able to keep the originals of the Papal Bulls? The Queen is just loaning those declarations to us because we have better storage facilities. All that documented proof of her evil deeds, and she gets a white aura?"
Mutsumi shook her head slowly in Lorenzo's direction, then shrugged slightly. "I have no control over who is Chosen and who is not; that decision rests entirely with the Planet, and I merely arbitrate that decision," she explained, then cast a glance toward Evangeline. "Though, in the past, the Planet has been known to offer these redeeming kindnesses to those who have lived for too long with poor stretches of luck."
The vampire huffed again, closing her eyes against the sunlight. "The Planet's chosen poorly, then," she snapped. "I'll not join any misfit group of wannabe adventurers playing hero in some self-styled 'destiny' of saving the world. It's utter madness."
"Madness?" Seno repeated, perking up suddenly and grinning.
Before he could say or do anything further, Motoko fixed him with a steady glare. "No."
"But-"
"I said no."
"Fine."
"This is...madness..." Lorenzo started saying, before biting into his food, keeping his head down. One thing he didn't really realize, or remember, was that he was always under observation outside his own room. Ever since his failure to keep his mission a secret, a small group of committee members, those in charge of his program, and his own commanding officers themselves, wondered if it was wise to keep him there.
Well, this was probably close to breaking point. In some far off distant control station...well actually an EWAC bird flying around, they would start to patch a call from Lorenzo's superiors. Fortunately for him, the presence of people in high numbers mean that call would have to wait.
Just then, Masaru and Nanao reached the table, and Nanao mouthed around the dumpling, "Oouantedumthing?" directed at the group in general.
Mutsumi turned then as Masaru and Nanao arrived, and gave them one of her trademark smiles. "Welcome to our little gathering, Nanjou-san, Nanao-san. Allow me to come directly to the point." At this, her expression sobered, and her voice lost its usual airy tones, reverting to absolute seriousness. "You, Nanjou-san, are already familiar with our group, but not what we do. We, that is, those of us not students of this academy, are all Chosen by the Planet. It is our destiny to save this world from a grave threat that would otherwise destroy our world."
She smiled again, once more the carefree woman that the crew was familiar with. "And the two of you bear the aura of the Chosen, which means that the two of you also share our destiny."
"Aura of the Chosen?" Nanao echoed Mutsumi, a sort of incredulous look on her face. "What does that mean, exactly, to be one of the chosen? What, we have some great interwoven fate we can't escape? Ain't there some way we can choose if we wanna be a chosen? I mean, what happens if we don't accept our fate?" She glanced toward Evangeline briefly, before turning her eyes back to Mutsumi.
"All I ever signed up for was singing. Not being some kind of 'chosen'." she frowned just slightly, her hand lacing with Masaru's, and gripping it. This wasn't the kind of information everyone learned every day, after all. This was pretty ground breaking stuff.
Masaru listened idly as the woman spoke. What an unusual bunch of people. Still, he understood this probably better than most of them did. When his father lost someone dear to him to the machinations of a man who thought himself to be a god, he'd been given the power to help stop him. When the New World Order showed up and the Crawling Chaos had attempted to destroy this world, they had stepped in again with the help of another generation of youngsters to save it from total annihilation. So it ran in his family deeper than he'd thought. To Nanao, this might be something groundbreaking. He however, he'd just been waiting for it. It seemed as if the Nanjou family was always involved in such things, whether they wanted to be or not.
"I see. Very well then, I shall take responsibility. Whether it is the Planet..Philemon..or some other great force that sees fit to let the world rest in the hands of those who have the means, I will join them without hesitation. I do not believe in 'Fate'. However, I do believe in responsibility. If a man can do a job, and he is given the means to do that job, all he must find is the will. I do not see myself as a chosen hero. Heroes are things that die and fade away. I just see myself as the next member of the Nanjou family to inherit the neverending job of protecting this resource we all live on."
He turned his head then, and adjusted his glasses, speaking to the younger girl, Evangeline, while his hand clasped Nanao's hand.
"Do not consider yourself a 'hero'. A hero is a myth, a legend, a story to keep hope in the hearts of those that do not have the means to do anything about the grim reality. A hero is something that is made by the people. But you live on this world. If it is in danger, that also affects yourself. It means that all of us have to take action because we've been told we have the ability, and that puts the responsibility on us. You probably understand. If what that man said about you is true, that means you have the wisdom and years to understand that. Heroes and Villains are just titles that people give others in order to define them. Good and Evil are just ill defined concepts. Every one has a light and a dark side, or they could not survive. In the end, it's those who would live in imbalance of those sides, take from us what we have called precious or necessary..be that love, hate, or resources to use. And we will deny them what they want."
He turned his head to Nanao and smiled then..and squeezed her hand tight.
"I understand if you don't want to do this because you feel forced. But there is always a bigger thing out there, directing us a little bit. Free will is something however, that even the worst of gods hold dear. Even Nyarlathotep, who is our Shadow, understands that WE must make the choice to embrace darkness over light, light over darkness, or find a balance of both. All the gods can do is tell us what they feel, and then it is up to us. The enemy will come whether we accept it or not. We have nothing but to fight. It will happen whether we say we want it to, or we don't. So, I will raise my sword at those who would raise it against the world I am helping to build. That is responsibility, and justice. I will accept this title, though not necessarily its meaning."
"We're priviledged to have you fighting at our side," Mutsumi said, then sighed slightly. "Though, precisely what we're fighting is a question I wouldn't begrudge you. Our foes have been quiet recently, far too quiet. I fear some nefarious plot is afoot."
Evangeline laughed bitterly, both at Masaru's words and Mutsumi's statement. "Fortify your resolve, then, and steel yourself for what is coming," she told the Okinawan native. "Take it from an evil mage; the first thing they'll strike at is your heart." She turned away then, raising a hand and beckoning Chachamaru to follow her. As she reached the farthest range of hearing from the table, considering the ambient noise of the festival, she called back over to her shoulder to Masaru, "Light and darkness are merely words applied as tools of the weak, in that you're correct. However, even if one does have the desire to leave the darkness behind, rising from the blackest depths is a task easier said, than done." And then the Dark Evangel was gone, lost in the oblivious crowds of student and visitor festivalgoers.
After a few moments of relative silence, Asuna said, "So, Eva-chan just admitted she wants to stop being so evil, right?"
Kotaro gave her a sideways look and answered, "You're pretty damn simple-minded, nee-chan."
Meanwhile, back at the Chao Bao Zi counter, the proprietor and co-owner of the wandering food stand watched the gathering carefully in between serving customers. As she smiled genially and waved goodbye to several of her classmates, she reached up and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, using the motion to discreetly remove the small listening device she had been using to listen in on the conversation.
Pocketing the device, she looked over to her classmate and friend, truly the driving force of Chao Bao Zi. "Sat-chan, I'm going to take a break. Can you and Chachamaru handle things while I'm gone?"
The class' culinary artist looked up from her steady work, giving the Chinese girl a nod and a thumbs-up. Returning the gesture, Chao exited the rear of the tram car and stretched slightly, looking up at the sunny early afternoon sky. She let a gentle smile cross her face for a moment, before she wiped it away, reached into a pocket, and produced a cell phone. Dialing a specific number, she waited.
Once it clicked, Chao immediately said, "I have a revision to the plan to field-test the infantry droid units. I've learned of a certain group of so-called heroes who will almost certainly interfere with the plan. Deploy Unit Thirteen to take part in the Budokai preliminaries tonight. We'll determine what steps need to be taken once we've witnessed their power."
That done, Chao clicked the phone closed, then returned it to her pocket. "Two more days," she whispered to herself. "Just two more days..."
June 21, 2007 (local)
Kingdom of MolMol, Royal Palace Throne Room
1536 hours, local time
MolMol was burning.
A thick cloud of smoke billowed up from the west wing of the palace, casting a red pall over the island nation. The screams of civilians filled the air, matched and drowned by the guttural battle cries of the inhuman creatures that sacked the city, gleeful slaughter wrought in a devastating, surprise assault. The attacking forces, humanoid figures clad in banded plate armor with bipedal lizards as mounts, massive quadrupedal turtle-like creatures with cannons attached to their shells, and small wyverns in the skies, marched through the city, methodically and mercilessly killing anything that stood in their path.
A white-robed MolMolian soldier let out a choking gasp as the blade of one of the raiders burst through his chest, staining the immaculate white clothing a deep, crimson red. The soldier clutched weakly at the offending weapon, the battle rifle in his other hand falling to the ground with a clatter, splashing into a mixture of blood and water. Wordlessly, the armored humanoid ripped its blade free of the man's chest, sending the dying soldier crumpling into a heap atop his battle rifle.
"Fall back, fall back!" another soldier shouted to the precious few MolMolian soldiers still attempting to hold the palace courtyard, waving his left arm behind him as he backpedalled toward the throne room, his battle rifle barking out its three-round bursts. It was a hopeless gesture, he knew, as he watched the bullets bounce harmlessly off the shield wall of the advancing enemy.
A flicker of movement to the side caught his attention, and he looked over just in time to see a toothy maw descending upon him, barely giving him enough time to scream before his life ended in the snap of the lizard mount's jaws.
Panic set in as the four remaining soldiers holding the courtyard realized that they had been surrounded and cut off from the rest of their forces. Standing back-to-back in a cross formation, the four soldiers stared down the lengths of their rifles at the enemies of their kingdom, dozens of them. Silence and stillness surrounded them for a moment, as their foes basked in the moment of complete dominance. The four glanced one to another and, in turn, each nodded.
Battle rifles were cast down, ceremonial guard robes likewise tossed to the bloody, dusty ground. As one, the four soldiers drew their scimitars, steeling themselves for this last clash. The sole woman amongst them screamed out, "For the King!" And then the quartet charged out, screaming defiantly against the hordes of darkness, casting the die and letting destiny judge the determination of their fate.
Within the throne room, King Su stood atop the throne platform, clad in his ceremonial plate armor, armed with the Su family ancestral longsword, watching and listening to the throne room shudder as the massive lizards outside attempted to batter down the barricaded doors. To either side of the king stood Amalla and Lamba, likewise armed and prepared for battle. A crimson streak of blood painted the left side of Amalla's face; blood of a would-be assassin that she'd dispatched on her way to the throne room.
The room shuddered again as the enemy continued their assault, loosing dust from the rafters to drift down to the floor. The thirty soldiers holding the barred door strained against the assault of the living battering rams outside. "Hold steady!" "Put your backs into it!" "Push, men!"
As the battering continued, another clatter drew the royal family's attention to one of the upper-level stairwells, where two soldiers were making their way down the stairs. Or at least, one of them was; the other, dying or probably already dead, rolled down the stairs, a dead weight. The other was clutching his left arm, that sleeve stained red with blood. "Sire!" the soldier called, barely-contained panic tinging the edge of his voice. "The palace is fallen! We cannot hold against their onslaught!"
The king regarded the messenger for several long moments, then closed his eyes and slowly nodded his head. "So much death," he said quietly. "What can mere men do against such reckless hate?" The throne room shuddered again. The door was beginning to splinter under the continual assault.
Amalla stepped forward, passing her thin-bladed longsword to her left hand, laying her right upon her father's armored shoulder. "We must ride forth, Father," she said. "Ride out and meet them."
He stared back at her with weary eyes. "For death and glory?" he asked skeptically. "I'll not ask any such sacrifice of my children."
"For MolMol," Lamba said calmly from the king's other side. "For our people."
King Su stopped, looking between his daughter and his adopted son, seeing reflected in their eyes the same determination he himself carried in his heart. He smiled and reached once to Amalla's shoulder, then to Lamba's. For the first time since this invasion had began, he felt hope. With the three of them working together, they would defeat this horde. "Let this be the hour," he told them, "when we draw swords together." Turning toward the soldiers still struggling to hold the splintering doors, he ordered, "Abandon the door! Stand ready and muster your courage!" Raising his longsword high in the air, he watched the doors fracture at the center, splintering outward, the elegant wood bowing in toward the room. "Remember this day, men, for it will be yours forever."
The soldiers cheered at their king's words, hefting their weapons toward the ceiling. The room trembled once more, the doors now nearly spent. Stepping forward out of the line of soldiers, King Su turned and looked back at his men, at Amalla and Lamba. "Fell deeds awake. Now, for wrath, now for ruin..."
All at once, the doors exploded inward, heralded by the immortal traitor, Namusan Sapou, his left hand outstretched toward the shattered throne room, dark magicks flowing around his arm. Lowering his arm, Namusan raised his crystalline sword in his other hand, then thrust it forward toward the king and his defenders. The armored humanoids at his side roared loudly and charged into the spacious throne room.
"And for the Red Moon!" the king roared in answer, and his men raised their own voices to meet his, as they charged forth to meet their foes. The King fixed his eyes solely on Namusan, ignoring the lesser foes but to slay one that stepped into his path with a brutal uppercut, flipping the black-armored creature up into the air to land brokenly on the palace floor.
The two sides met in a great, terrible clash of swords and steel, slamming into one another with the force of colliding freight trains, the results no less catastrophic. Screams of anger and cries of pain filled the throne room, blood both red and black spilling onto the polished marble floor as blades and shields crashed together. And in the middle of it all, Namusan and the King of MolMol battled ferociously, red flames and purple lightning cascading at each clash of crystalline and ancestral blades, thunder ripping through the throne room.
Dozens of enemy creatures flooded into the throne room, their steady advance slowly forcing the defenders back. Yet even as they advanced, it was over a carpet of their own fallen that they marched, the combined power of Amalla, Lamba, and the remaining soldiers exacting a heavy toll on the besieging forces. Only one in every dozen bodies wore the white livery of a palace guard, testament to the battle prowess of MolMol's best warriors. But time and the odds were working against the defenders. The edge in skill was theirs, but numbers favored the enemy. Blood exploded into the air as several mounted enemies charged into the room, the lizards kicking down several soldiers and ripping into them with merciless fury.
The palace guards continued to fight with furious abandon, demanding a steep price from their foes for each of them that fell, but as the melee continued, more were crushed underneath the weight of their enemies, before too long leaving none but Amalla, Lamba, and the King, himself. Amalla's thin longsword moved beyond the range of human vision, a mere flicker of light as she moved from one foe to the next, leaving bleeding, dying bodies in her wake. Lamba, the penultimate fencer, moved with fluid and graceful steps, his rapier deflecting aside blows from sword and spear, and answering with swift stabs that left no wounded behind, only the fallen.
Oblivious to the slaughter around them, Namusan and King Su continued to battle amidst the sea of bodies and the river of blood. Namusan brought his blade down in a brutal overhand slam, but King Su blocked the strike, sliding the immortal's cursed sword down until the two stared eye-to-eye. "With this, your failure is complete," Namusan taunted. "Your Marids have failed to protect you, and you have failed to uphold the Heaven's pact to keep me sealed."
"With your death, I shall uphold the pact and ensure that none of these fallen have died in vain," King Su retorted calmly, straining to maintain the blade lock.
"Fool!" Namusan bellowed. "You cannot kill me! I am immortal!"
"Father, mortal weapons won't harm him!" Amalla called out as she cleanly decapitated an enemy warrior. "The only weapons that can permanently harm him must be made of-"
The sharp bite of a blade driving through her back and stomach cut off her words with a pained shriek. Shock began to set in immediately. With wide eyes, she looked back over her shoulder to see that the blade that impaled her belonged to none other than Lamba, who stood holding the blade with a cruel expression carved out of his features. "L-Lamba...w-why...?"
"Can't have you going and revealing that secret now, dear 'sister,'" Lamba answered, smiling coldly.
King Su, his attention torn from Namusan at Amalla's outcry, turned back to witness this event, and bellowed, "Lamba! What have you done!?"
Slowly, almost lazily, Lamba placed his free hand on Amalla's shoulder and shoved her off of his blade. She hit the ground with a wet thud, gasping aloud as she grasped futilely at the hole in her stomach, blood pooling beneath her. Lamba then focused his attention on the king. "Weak old fool," he snarled. "How fall your powers have fallen, that you could not even sense this coming."
From where she laid amidst the pile of dead, Amalla watched, darkness creeping in around the edges of her vision, as Namusan neatly disarmed the distracted king with a flourish of his crystalline blade and then, with no preamble, drove the gleaming blade through the king's chest.
The king coughed as the blade punctured his lung, blood explosively erupting from his mouth. Falling to his knees, King Su looked up toward the throne platform, to the quartet of thrones for himself, Lamba, Amalla, and Kaolla. The pain of the sword being removed from his back was a dull throbbing sensation to him as he fixed his eyes upon the throne normally occupied by his youngest child. As Namusan raised his blade high in the air, King Su closed his eyes, one word passing through his mind: Kaolla...
"And thus, falls House Su," Namusan pronounced.
June 22, 2007 (local)
Future Force Warrior Exhibit, University Engineering Showcase Hall, Mahora Academy
1750 hours, local time
Where was Lorenzo, at this current time? Well, still disgraced, but somewhat feeling the need to continue his mission, he had stepped aside and was quickly just finding a desolate and barely used area. When the call was patched in. It was quick, precise, and he was disturbed. Those talking to him had expressed their dissatisfaction, and even contempt, for a junior agent to have stumbled across something greater than they expected. It was above his pay grade, they said, responding on his inquiries on why he was to be pulled from the project.
Regardless, he decided he might as well join the rest, as he neared the Fireteam Charlie booth. But from there, it was almost impossible to get back out. Or even remove his costume. Setting his drones out again, the magic and electrical reserves were replenished with a change of batteries and cartridges, before they flew off to join Seno and gang in the Tournament. He set them on an orbiting manner around the tournament proper, relying instead on long range cameras to record the action. He sat down, and exchanged the powerpack in his suit's cooling unit.
"Sir," a familiar voice whispered in his ear, well, through the speakers. It was Katerine, or Katherine. He didn't really understood the difference. "Welcome back. You had one more hour until the end of your break."
"It's fine," he said, getting back up. And started to handle the team. Their teacher adviser didn't do much, which led them to quickly use him as a substitute. "What's the next demonstration?"
June 22, 2007 (local)
Tatsumiya Shrine, Mahora Academy, Japan
1752 hours, local time
Word had spread far across the festival that all of the low-fare martial arts tournaments were being bought up by a mysterious group, and organized into a singular tournament, billed as the return of the legendary martial arts budokai. And so, from all parts of the festival far and wide, prospective competitors, interested spectators, and those with nothing better to do with their time made their way to the Tatsumiya Shrine in order to witness or take part in the tournament preliminaries.
The interested parties, naturally, included the entirety of the Kuro crew, who arrived not as a single unit, but in groups of twos, threes, or fours. Seno, Motoko, and Kazue arrived alongside Konoka, Setsuna, and Asuna, having lent their skills to assist the girls in their confession patrol prior to the event.
"So what do you guys think?" Asuna asked of the three Kuro group. "You going to get involved in this tournament?"
Motoko shook her head. "As much as it would help to improve and sharpen my skills, I do not think that it would be proper for me to be seen participating in a tournament for monetary value."
Seno nodded in agreement. "I just don't like fighting in structured tournament things, you know? I reserve my competitiveness for my XBox, and besides, I heard somewhere that there was a ban on the use of bladed weapons in this fight, so that puts me right out. How about you, Setsuna?"
Setsuna smiled slightly. "The 'no bladed weapons' thing is a bit of a let down," she said slowly, "But I wouldn't really mind joining in." She flashed Seno a grin. "It could be fun!" she added, her eyebrows raised. She smiled again. "Oh, I almost forgot!"
Rustling about in her pocket she produced two red wristbands, each one embroidered with the Mahora emblem. "Here," she said, handing one to Motoko and the other to Seno. She blushed then. Old habits die hard.
Seno and Motoko exchanged looks as they accepted the wristbands from Setsuna, then Motoko, knowing how much that her adopted sister looked up to her husband, nudged Seno discreetly in the back.
The swordsman shot her a look, then immediately raised his right arm and slid the wristband onto his wrist, the top of the Mahora emblem pointed up toward his shoulder. He then patted his sister-in-law on the shoulder. Setsuna wasn't acquainted enough with them to fully know their interests so they were a small gift, yes, but he had to show the proper appreciation. "School emblem, huh?" he asked, turning his arm slightly, hand still on her shoulder, to inspect the insignia. "Thanks, Set, these are pretty cool." He followed this up with one of his usual grins (rather Nagi-esque, in fact), and another pat on the shoulder.
Smiling, Motoko likewise donned her gifted wristband, though on her left arm, as opposed to Seno's right. They tended to do a lot of things that way, yin and yang, all that. "Since you will participate, I will refrain from joining, that way you won't need to feel like you're..." She paused, fumbling for the proper phrase.
"Playing second fiddle..." Seno helpfully supplied.
"Yes, that..." Motoko coughed, then finished her thought. "To any performance I would display." Smiling, she stepped forward and gave Setsuna a light hug. "So represent Shinmeiryu well, Setsuna."
Seno, looking around while his wife and sister-in-law were talking, spotted the rest of the Kuro crew approaching. Evangeline, true to her word, was having nothing to do with them; though he'd spotted her signing up for the tournament; and he couldn't yet recognize Masaru and Nanao, the two new kids, as easily as he could his longer-known allies. He raised a hand and waved them over.
"-find that other guy that Shinobu pointed out?" Naru was asking as they walked up to join the quintet already there.
"He was Hiroyuki-kun, right?" Nanao asked off-hand. "I had one of my adoring fans tell him to meet us here. So he should be around shortly."
"That, and didn't he hand you that flier for the tournament, Masaru?" Haruka asked, pointing to the piece of paper held in the young man's hands. "He should be here to watch the tournament, at the very least."
"News of new prospects?" Seno asked as the groups merged.
Mutsumi nodded. "The one young man we missed at the meeting earlier should meet us here soon, and then there's still the matter of the last one that we should find here. I'm having trouble pinning him down."
"Huh." Seno worked his jaw for a moment in confusion, then shrugged. "So! Anybody going to jump into this?" He jerked a thumb toward the crowd of applicants. "Besides the new guy."
"So long as he doesn't try to practice..." Motoko threw in off-hand. Seno waited, trying really hard not to smirk or grin.
Almost on cue, the one and only Hiroyuki Murakami arrived on location at the Tatsumiya Shrine. Though not visible in the crowd, Hiroyuki paced back and forth on the closest roof-top. He sighed as he crouched atop the shingled roof. "Pfft, where's friggen Masaru-san?" Hiro whined. "He needs to participate or I'll just have to join up and prove him wrong myself. Though I've already beat up one minor today... Hmm, this kinda stuff is probably bad for my image." As he contemplated this, he spotted more than one familiar face. Hiro's grin slithered once more across his face, he returned to his feet and leaped to the ground below, startling a few spectators. But they were none of his concern, Hiroyuki most likely didn't even notice. He had bigger fish to fry.
Within a matter of minutes Hiro was in the vicinity of the Kuro crew, unaware anyone would come looking for him. He approached Masaru and greeted him with a 'friendly' slap on the back. "OIIIIII! MASARU-KUN!" he yelled with extra energy to be more obnoxious. "So you didn't chicken out? Cool cool, I'll be watching. I hope your bite out there backs up your bark from earlier, you better make it past the preliminaries ya hear?!"
For his part, when Masaru felt himself being hit, it was almost impulse to turn around and flip the offender onto his ass. He refrained from doing so when he heard the obnoxious voice. When he moved forward from impact, he immediately readjusted his glasses where they had shifted, and turned himself to face the noisy fellow. How very much like Brown this guy was. He would have to tell his father, he might find some amusement in it.
"I do not go back on my word when I give it. However, I must admit, this has a larger turnout than I was expecting for some mercenary self-gratification dalliance between testosterone saturated fools and second-gender inferiority/superiority feminist complexes. Color me surprised."
He didn't look, or sound surprised. The same rather bland tone as always he had, probably just to annoy Hiroyuki at his lack of visible enthusiasm. In truth, he was eager to show off his skills, though with that eagerness came thoughts of caution. Where there was one strong, there was always stronger. If what he had heard was true, it would draw others with 'talents', meaning he might have to actually fight. Fighting mundanes was boring, but fighting the gifted was often dangerous.
Then Hiroyuki's eye caught someone he'd been running into all day. "Hey, hey, hey, hey Tsundere-san! You entering this thingy too?" he asked loudly whilst pushing past Masaru. "One ass-beating isn't enough for you in one day eh? I like your spunk! I'm interested in seeing your hand-to-hand skills, since we didn't get much practice this morning."
Setsuna rolled her eyes before turning to face Hiroyuki. "How nice to see you, Hiro-kun," she said dryly, placing a hand on her hip. She couldn't believe how unfortunate she was, seeing him on such a regular occasion. Her face was hot from his taunts. It would be oh so gratifying to kick his ass.
Hiroyuki grinned at the younger girl. "Easy, Tsundere-san. Save it for the field, work out all that negative energy. And maybe we'll get to see the dere part of you." He snickered. "This is just a hunch but something tells me you're not liking your luck today huh?" asked the young man who knew everything about the subject. He then noticed the other two figures standing with Setsuna, Seno and Motoko. "Oi, who're these jokers Tsundere-san? I saw them earlier I think. They your parents or sumthin'?"
It was guys like this that Seno really took pleasure in knocking down a peg. But the slight touch of Motoko's hand on his arm held him back. The Shinmeiryu heiress then slowly focused her attention on Hiroyuki, allowing her aura, a relative gauge of her power level if you will, to leak out. Though, judging by the type of person he was, the knowledge of her relative level wouldn't frighten him any. "Actually, Setsuna is our sister," she informed the overly-hyper Mahoran.
Hiroyuki locked eyes with Motoko whilst not letting his grin fade away. The wild child felt the elder kendo girl's energy spreading towards him in an act of intimidation. Who the hell do they think I am? thought the spearman. Hiro was not defenseless. Motoko's aura was quite impressive, albeit just a leak, so in return Hiro let his own pent up ki leak out. It wasn't enough to match the samurai woman, but it was enough to invisibly clash with hers. "Hmmm, your sister eh?" Hiro asked looking over the frames of both Seno and Motoko. "I would've never have guessed," he stated with a huff.
"You don't look like her brother, I'd say you average about 6' even in height. Which is far taller than Secchan will ever grow. Your hair is also brownish, you dress how you please, much like yours truly, and you have a focused but lost look about you. Like you know why you're here and it's important, but because of this you're missing out on crashing some bozo's skull on XBox Live Halo." Hiroyuki managed to get out in one breathe without a pause, all the while pointing at Seno from a safe distance.
"AAAAAAAAaaaaand you don't look like her sister, maybe more of like a cool aunt or sumthin' of the like. You're more believable when it comes to height but the shape and color of your eyes convince me otherwise. A shield of annoyance is just a front, you have something else in your eyes. Love, Honor, and...what's this? Vengeance? How delightfully interesting." Without missing a single beat or note, Hiroyuki switched over to Motoko. Hiro then inhaled. "Whew that was a lot, well quite a mouthful in the very least." Hiroyuki, for some odd reason decided he wasn't done yet. "Oh, and another thing that throws me off is that: From my estimations, your bust level will never be achieved by Tsundere-san."
Confident that he was finished with his analysis, and that he'd learned something interesting; Hiroyuki began to wrap it up. "Well I guess it was nice meeting and reading you oh very strange brother and sister of Tsundere-san. Perhaps we can talk politics the next time we have a discussion. Ciao." Hiro chuckled giving a quick and exaggerated bow to the pair. Hiro then spun on his heels and headed off into the crowds.
"He's not bad, that kid," Seno commented, a restraining hand on Motoko's shoulder to keep her from flying off the handle. Hiroyuki didn't know Motoko that well; even with how much she'd loosened up over the past year, she only tolerated Seno discussing her...assets. "I mean, at least, in terms of reading people. Not many have picked up on my Halo antics, especially considering my gun gremlins."
"You're wearing a Halo 3 shirt..." she answered, giving her husband a sideways look.
He looked down. "Oh, so I am."
Motoko smiled despite herself. "We've been married almost a year and still I can't tell sometimes if you're doing it on purpose."
"Honestly, most times I just don't care enough to remember, really."
"Is there a no-kill rule in this tournament, or can we kill our opponents if we see fit? Some fools enjoy fighting only to kill, so I would like to know if I have that option in return. It also tells me what music I should listen to during the fight. I have trouble finding inspiring moves if I don't have the proper thematics. You understand. Also, I wish you good luck, Sakurazaki-hime. I extend my respect to someone who practices what is considered a lost art by the uninformed. One of the few remaining Samurai.."
He turned his head back to look upward at the rest, his face a mask of stoicism. He had to be a real blast at parties. Though, when he addressed Setsuna, he did give her a quiet smile, and let his eyes be just slightly warm, for a brief moment, before he resumed his usual stance. So this was how it was going to be. Good. Tension was good for the soul.
Masaru was like a breath of fresh air after enduring Hiro's unwarranted arrogance, though Setsuna felt herself lacking the right to his praise. She bowed low. "Thank you," she said solemnly, her eyes downcast. "I also wish you luck in the tournament." Raising her head, she returned a gentle smile. "I hope you enjoy yourself."
Over with the rest of the group, Naru turned at a tap on her shoulder to find Mei standing behind her. She smiled widely at her step-sister and said, "I didn't expect I'd find you here, Mei. Come to watch the tournament?"
"Actually, I'm going to enter the tournament," the younger girl answered. "My onee..." Mei paused; up until that point, she'd used the term 'onee-sama' to refer to her partner and sempai, the shadow-wielding Takane Goodman, but now that she and her real step-sister were on the same page in the magic vs. mundanes book, she felt it disrespectful to continue using that term on anyone but Naru.
"My partner wishes to discipline Negi Springfield-san for several incidents earlier in the day, so she has decided that we will enter the tournament and discipline him first-hand."
For a moment, Naru stared at her step-sister, lips pursed in thought, then she regained her smile, laid her hand on Mei's head, and discreetly cast Holy Aura on her. To cover that action, she said, "It's good that you can follow your partner's lead, but sometimes Mei needs to do what she wants to, you know? Step out from beneath your partner's shadow, if you will. Either way, I wish you good luck in the tournament."
Mei's face fell slightly. "You're not entering, onee-sama?"
Naru shook her head. "No, tournaments aren't my thing. But I'll be rooting for you, so do your best, hm?"
"Okay!"
"And speaking of Negi," Haruka commented from behind Naru, nodding her head to where Negi, Kotaro, and Yue were approaching the group. "Good evening, Negi-sensei," Haruka said to the boy as he neared.
"Oh, good evening everyone," he called to the group at large as they converged. "Is everyone here for the tournament?"
"Not exactly," Haruka answered. "We're just here to watch."
"Yes, the turnout is much bigger than I expected," Negi said as the group continued to chatter on amiably. "The ten million yen top prize is certainly a surprising change of things as well."
"WHAT!?" Asuna barked over the crowd, immediately stampeding over and grabbing Negi by his collar, lifting him bodily into the air. "The prize is how much?"
Negi gripped her wrists in reaction to her grab, but refrained from making use of his recently-learned martial arts to break her hold. If she had hoisted him out of anger, he'd be breaking free, definitely, but there was no menace in her current attitude. "Yes, ten million yen," he repeated. "Definitely a nice prize, yes?"
Setting the boy mage down, Asuna took a moment to dust his shoulders, then turned away slightly, stroking her chin with her fingers. "I could pay off my entire tuition plus room and board with that..."
"You should definitely enter, Asuna-san," Negi said, smiling encouragingly. "Who knows, you might even win."
"Yeah, seems like they're putting off starting it for someone anyway," Chamo said from his perch on Yue's shoulder. "Someone's bought out the rights to the event."
"But who would do that?" Yue asked as the ermine scampered up on top of her head, then leapt from there over onto Negi's shoulder.
"Hey, so long as the guys who are in it aren't chumps then who cares!?" Kotaro called out exuberantly, clenching a fist and grinning as he slapped Negi on the back with his free hand.
"I am glad it's not scaled down, if just for you guys' sake," Yue said.
"That's right!" Kotaro exclaimed, pointing at Baka Black. "An' I'm gonna show you what a battle between men is all about, squirt!"
"Now, Kotaro-kun, you know you oughtn't talk to an 'oneesan' like that," a new voice said from beside the dog boy.
Kotaro yelped and jumped, then spun around to find his roommate and ersatz 'sister', Natsumi Murakami, standing behind him in a fairy costume. "Uwah!? Natsumi-neechan... What're you doing here!? I didn't tell you about..."
The young drama actress appeared crestfallen. "Now I'm going to think you're not glad to see me..." she said. "I even snuck out of my club, too..."
Hiroyuki ignored everyone else, stalking Natsumi silently and nonchalantly. He crept and slid, and glided towards the fugitive drama student, trying his best to hold in his smile and laughter. Hiro sprung, seizing Natsumi by the shoulders and preceding to give the smaller and easily intimidated girl a noogie. "This is officer Hiroyuki Murakami of Mahorafest security! I've been ordered to capture the one Natsumi Murakami who is in dereliction of duty, and escort her back to the Drama Club's torture chamber," came the extremely deepened voice of Hiro.
Suffice to say, Natsumi about jumped out of her wings, grabbing Hiroyuki's arms in an unsuccessful attempt to free herself of the headlock. "Nooo, not the torture chamber!" she cried, successfully holding back her laughter in order to play the part. Little else could be expected of a member of the Drama Club.
Kotaro, unaware of who Hiroyuki was, immediately stepped forward, bringing back a fist in preparation to clean the interloper's clock. "Hey, get your hands off Natsumi-neechan, bastard!" he snarled.
"No, wait, Kotaro-kun!" Natsumi interceded, holding up her hands to halt Kotaro's progress. "It's okay. This is my cousin, Hiroyuki."
Hiroyuki laughed childishly and released the hold on his much smaller cousin, though keeping his arm resting on her head. "Bastard? I swear, kids' mouths these days are getting more foul and violent as every minute passes!" Hiroyuki spat sticking his tongue out at the dog boy. He followed up by giving a mocking snarl of his own. "So who's this loser Natsumi?" he asked his fairy cousin, thrusting his thumb at Kotaro in the 'You Fail' position. "And why's he actin' like he's family? What, you rescue him off the street and now he owes you a Wookiee life debt?"
"Umm...yeah, actually, it was kind of like that," Natsumi said, scratching the back of her head nervously.
"Oh, so this is that guy, is he?" Kotaro asked, now remembering Natsumi mentioning her cousin who also attended the academy. "AND WHO ARE YOU CALLING A LOSER!?"
"Now, now, Kotaro-kun," Natsumi said placatingly. "That's just how he is."
Before Kotaro could escalate the encounter, a feminine voice called out over the PA, "Competitors and spectators, through the entrance please!"
Almost immediately, the gathered crowd began to move through the gates into the Tatsumiya Shrine. Negi, at the back of the gathered group including his partners and the Kuro crew, noticed Kotaro wasn't with them, then turned to find the dog-boy, and called out, "Kotaro-kun, you're going to get left behind!"
This drew the attention of Mutsumi, who looked back, noticed Hiroyuki, and called out,
"Hiroyuki-san, if you are not participating in the tournament, would you meet up with us inside please?"
Hiroyuki looked up over at the Okinawan native, and listened to what she had to say. When Mutsumi finished, he nodded, waving his free hand. "Sure, sure I'll be over there with you guys in a bit." He really wasn't sure what this was about but he wasn't going to pass it by. It's odd though, I've been running into these people almost all of today. Well, luck is still on my side, this'll definitely be the most interesting Mahorafest yet. Though I better look over the info Takaki sent me earlier so as not to be at a disadvantage, thought the spearman, retrieving his cell phone and checking that he had all of the messages.
And then the group disappeared with the crowd into the shrine proper. Inside, the hundreds of would-be participants and spectators crowded the grounds, an excited murmur of background noise filling the air. Inside, eight forty-by-forty square raised platforms had been set up across the courtyard, facing the central stage, upon which Kazumi Asakura stood, performing master of ceremonies duties for the tournament. The air around the tournament was alive. Birds, released balloons, black ducted-fan drones, streamers, wait what? Lorenzo's black drones started their orbit. Swiveling their long range cameras about, they focused until they had a commanding view of the stage.
"Welcome, students of Mahora, students from other schools, and anyone else who's here!" 3-A's self-proclaimed paparazzi called out. "Welcome to the return of the Mahorafest Martial-Arts Tournament! For you all to have made it here on such short notice, well folks, that's great! The purse? Ten million yen! It's a legendary martial arts tournament folks, so be sure to give it your best; for the prize, and for honor!"
"Huh, so Asakura-san is the emcee?" Asuna asked.
"Fancy that," Negi replied.
"Well, you have to figure, knowing her."
"Let's start with a few words from our new sponsor to begin the competition," Kazumi said, raising her hand to the side, where a new figure stood that hadn't been there before. "The owner of Chao Bao Zi, the academy's number one restaurant, Chao Lingshen!"
This set the crowd to buzzing once more, with many murmuring at how she was only a kid, others pointing out her intelligence level. Even Negi's group was caught off-guard by the announcement.
Clad in a traditional orange Chinese dress with yellow sleeves and a red Oriental dragon on the front, Chao smiled for the crowd and said, "The reason I bought this tournament is for one reason and one reason only..." Her voice, despite lacking any visible microphone, was amplified enough for all to hear. "Whoever it is that's strongest at this academy, I want to know it, be they of the world of light, or world of dark. That is all.
"Until twenty years ago, this tournament was a place where people from that 'other' world could show what they could do. With the advent of digital cameras and other media, however, entrants stopped using their full abilities, leading to smaller battles, smaller prizes, and smaller events overall.
"As of now, however, all that's changed. The legendary Mahora Martial Arts Budokai is hereby revived! Projectile weapons and bladed weapons are forbidden. Further, incanted spells are also forbidden. Aside from that, however, you are free to use whatever techniques you wish."
This bombshell caught even the Kuro crew's attention, shocking them as well as Negi's group. "Hey, is she supposed to be saying that stuff?" Seno asked.
"No way..." Naru muttered.
"There's some deeper plot at work here," Haruka said, eyes narrowed.
"I wouldn't be concerned," Chao said, as if directly answering the gathered group. "In this day and age, unless they've got photographic proof, no one'll believe it anyway. Electronic equipment is in place that disables all devices within the perimeter of the Tatsumiya Shrine, including cell phone cameras.
"Those of you from the world of dark, feel free to use your powers. Those of you from the world of light, all I ask is that you behold the nature of true power, and spread the word. That's all!"
Hiroyuki hadn't gone chasing after the members of the Kuro crew; he slacked behind with Natsumi's miniscule group, keeping his left arm resting on his younger cousin's cranium as they walked.
Upon getting inside the near completely full temple-turned-arena, Hiroyuki decided to split up from his current group. The wild Mahoran turned to his cousin, patting her head and ruffling her hair. He knew that Natsumi was self-concious about her hair, but he still liked it, it reminded him of his own wild-fire hair. "Kay, kay Natsumi I'm leaving you alone with your friends and walking carpets. Be a good girl and hold Chizuru-neechan's hand, alright? Stay outta trouble, I'm going over to the adult groups to discuss grown-up things. I'll see you later." He finished with a kiss to Natsumi's broad forehead, and with that he was off. He loved Natsumi as though she was his little sister, and truth be told they were the only family that each other had.
Hiroyuki began elbowing and shoving his way through the crowd. The wild child had entered his 'ignore uninteresting-people' mode and didn't seem to hear or see anyone complain, use angry words, or direct any rude gesture towards him. He continued shoving and making his way to the Kuro crew.
At long last Hiroyuki arrived at his supposed stalkers of the days' location. He quickly retrieved his phone and started viewing the info he'd received on them a little earlier. Hmm, so this, Mutsumi Otohime, is the..guardian? So that's like the leader most likely. I'll identify the others as I see them. "Oi, oi, oi, people who wanted to meet with yours truly. How can the great Hiroyuki be of assistance to you?"
Not far from the Kuro crew's location, they were currently under subtle surveillance. The figure was relaying both audio and video to a nearby control center, and would have seemed to stand out in the crowd. Oddly, it didn't, well technically he didn't, despite that his intimidating height carried him to near 7'3". His hair was an emerald green, and flowed down his shoulders and over his eyes in bangs. He wore black-ops style combat boots, and urban camouflaged pants to match. In addition he adorned a black leather, high-collared sleeveless vest. The shady figure possessed sizable arms and muscles. Though there were still odd things about the man's appearance; his arms were symmetrical, too symmetrical, and looked as though crafted and folded out of steel. His yellow eyes emanated a golden glow, and if one were to inspect carefully, they would notice small flashes and blips going off like a mini-fireworks show. He had a single tattoo that was visible, it was simple black, with four characters on it. '#013' was all that it read. Yet the only thing that ever seem to grab attention from people was the unusual 'funny-looking' ear-pieces that he wore. They were shining silver, long, vertical and rectangular; and covered both ears seamlessly, as though they were crafted into his skull.
"I.T.S.U. 13, Itsuki Rakuso reporting in," stated the figure seemingly to himself in a base monotone voice. "Confirming that current assignment and orders are to participate in Budokai tournament and to test the abilities of the members of the Kuro Arashi if they do indeed join. I do not see the value in testing these meat-bags, Chao-sama. We already know their limits as was recorded in the test trial of 143670092/A-8/I.T.S.01U.3 January 1/2552 at 0001 hours local time."
You knew it was one of those days when something strange happened to you. You knew it was one of those days more when something strange and crazy happened to you. What exactly would one call a white-haired stacked schoolgirl on one's head by that classification? Well, Hiroyuki was about to find out. With a static-fuzzing sound, a schoolgirl with pale hair and a good bit of cleavage sort of..appeared on the spearman's head. Despite her well-proportioned figure, she was also rather monstrously heavy; in fact, it felt like she weighed several tons, though the weight was distributed in such a way as to not break anyone's neck who's head she landed on. Clever, that.
"Oi, who's this kid? I don't think I remember this brat being part of the group. Is he another one of your mystical magical chosen supergeeks, or is he just tagging along for the ride of fame and fortune, like me? And those other kids. How big is this group getting? I swear."
The female Sabashii flipped rather gracefully off of the young man's head then, and popped her neck from side to side, looking a little under the weather. Whatever he..she..whatever..had been up to, it was fairly obvious that it had been rather taxing. The mana-caster hadn't ever looked this drug out, even after the fight at the Hinata.
"That was really rough on me. I never thought it would be that bad..but it has been a long time. Did I hear right? Did that slanted-eyed-ruin-the-economy-in-our-neighborhood-by-opening-stores-and-taking-money-out-the-community brat say to use MAGIC in this little tournament? That's taking a large risk..what's she up to..I wonder.."
Needless to say, Hiroyuki was indeed caught off guard by the white-haired, thin air-school girl. And he more than jumped slight when the girl came crashing down on top of his skull. She was good, only real good sneaky sneaky people good surprise him, and much less could get the possible 'assassination' on him. But this girl was unnatural, she weighed oddly a lot compared to her size, like a full grown man.
Hiro winced, it hurt but not enough for him to voice. His right eye twitched as long as she sat on him. People'll start talking, I swear it. I've been in too much damn contact with underage girls all day...though I guess there's nothing wrong with that.. the now weight-lifting firehead voiced in his mind.
The wild spearman held his words until the man-child-girl-thingy retreated from the perch on his head. He turned to listen to the odd and interesting creature he'd come across. This was turning into one hell of a day! "Yeah, that's what Chao-san said. Not that it makes any difference miss two-ton feather-weight. I must say though, you're the first girl today that's come on to me so forcefully!" Hiroyuki joked with a chortle. "So that's what I'm here for, to join this little charity group or somthin'? 'Ow'd'you find me eh?" he stated turning back to Mustumi. He swiftly glanced at his phone discreetly without drawing attention, just in case he forgot. "And more importantly, how did you know who I was Miss Otohime?"
"Oh, I have my ways," Mutsumi answered in that way of hers, ignoring the background buzz of the rest of the crew talking about Chao's announcement. She was focused solely on Hiroyuki now. "Well, as this amusing little event is about to begin, I'll waste no time. Destiny has chosen you, as it has chosen the rest of us, as 'heroes' if you will, whose role it will be to save the world from destruction."
Hiroyuki was indeed dumbstruck at this claim that he was all of the sudden a hero. And it took a lot to surprise him. "W-w-wait a second here now, soooo, I'm a hero? 'Hiro the Hero?' Well I was expecting a lot of strange things out of this group. But definitely not this." The spearman stated matter-of-factly. He laughed at the title but shook it off as quickly as he mustered it. "So you guys are heroes? Hero as in super hero, heroes from Fable, or the main characters in RPGs? And you're saying I'm one? That's pretty cool but you say I was chosen by destiny and the planet. Recently or since birth?" questioned the eager firehead, this was not mere luck. Hiroyuki could definitely tell that much.
Nealla, in the meantime, was speaking with Kaolla about their new additions, specifically warning the girl away from the man who called himself Hiroyuki. "Such individuals are not to be trusted or associated with except in the barest of fashions. Arrogance of that level is not to be tolerated from any such as they. Attempting to raise themselves by the humiliation of others, especially those younger, is a despicable trait which should not tolerated by anyone of your station."
Oh, she was laying into him, without ever naming a name.
"I believe that we would be better served by keeping our distance." Nealla gave a faint nod, which Kaolla tipped her head to, before turning to Seno.
"If magic is allowed, should I j..."
"NO!" a resounding shout from the entire group that called itself the Kuro Crew. To which Nealla could simply blink.
"But I..."
"No, Nealla."
"But they said..."
"No, Nealla!"
"Oh fine," She sniffled. "You always ruin my fun."
"So, you missed the big group meeting earlier," Seno was saying to Sabashii nearby. "Short note is that we allied up with boy wonder's little rabble, and we picked up..." He paused for a moment to count on his left hand. "Three, four now, new guys in our crew. Well, technically we only picked up two. One doesn't want to cooperate, and this guy over here..." He jerked a thumb over at Hiroyuki, "...makes for number three. Or four. Whatever. So, get your job done?"
"Yeah. But don't expect me to do any serious fighting anytime soon unless it's life and death. I still have some reserves, but using that type of Mana's hard on someone like me, who deals in Darkness. That, and bringing someone back from the dead that has been obliterated practically on a genetic and spiritual level isn't easy for anyone. Combine that with a mana type I haven't used in a long time, and you have a very tired me."
The girl shrugged, and once again resumed the true form; Sabashii in all his glory as it were, stood before the group, hands thrust in his pockets. His clothing had changed along with his body, to their usual black pants, red shirt, and tie..and of course, his awesome shoes.
"I never said I was gunna cooperate either." This came from Nanao, who had her arms folded across her chest, guitar slung across her back by it's strap. "But that's entirely besides the point, right?" Her tone was dry, and her expression was unamused as she stared across the entire group, before a smile lit her face as her glance crossed over Masaru. "I guess I can though. It being destiny and all."
Sabashii tipped his head over to the new arrival and raised one white eyebrow. "Huh. So you're the newest guy, huh..interesting. I don't know you, yet. Then again, nobody's put a contract out on you so since I haven't been assigned to assassinate you that's probably why. Though, technically, I'm a retired assassin..so I guess that's all moot, huh? I'm Sabashii, the resident womanizer and pervert. I also beat faces. Motoko over there is our Azumi. And Seno is our Skirata."
He watched as Masaru turned and went wordlessly down to where the fighting would soon begin, and he popped his neck from side to side, before having a seat with the rest of the group. He was being his usual flippant self, true, but he more..felt drained, than looked it. He only looked a little tired, but his aura was fluctuating badly to those with the senses to realize it.
"Call me crazy, but I have a feeling we're being watched. I don't know by what or who, but call it a feeling. You have to know that shit when you decide to kill people for fun and profit. I'll let you guys do recon. I have a way to recover, but I'd rather not use it, so I'm going to rest here."
Once Sabashii had settled himself down, Nealla reached into what seemed to be an endless bag slung over her shoulder. Well, so it wasn't that endless, and pulled out what looked like a wrapped up bag of food, offering it to the older man.
"You weren't with us for lunch, and I know how draining magic can be, so..." Her voice trailed off, and she shoved the food forward into his hands, before placing distance between them once again, clearing her throat at the speculative glances of the others. "What? I can be nice." She frowned.
Hiroyuki turned to listen to Sabashii's little introduction, to which he nodded. "Pervert huh? That's kinda cool I guess, saves me the trouble of trying to fill that space." He then turned to the samurai woman and the halo dude. "Motoko huh, you'll have to show me how you fish. And Seno is it? Odd name but it's interesting. I think I've played Halo with someone by that name before; gamertag's Chiu Fan Hiro. Nice to meet you all." He laughed with his cheerful smile and friendly bow.
"Chiu Fan Hiro..." Seno murmured to himself, stroking his chin as he pondered. "Sort of familiar. Probably played against him before then."
Hiroyuki's ears twitched and his spider sense was tingling. He turned, scanning the group before his eyes fell on two foreigners. "Oi, I heard my name mentioned! I'm sensing negative energy from the taller one of you! Lay off will ya, I just accepted..kinda to be in this group and all ready there are rumors going around. Kids these days I swear it again!" He turned back to Mutsumi and shrugged, "So is there some sort of legal form I have to sign or what? I don't seem to be very welcome here."
"No, no forms or anything," Mutsumi answered. "Nothing so formal. It merely is. Simple as that."
"Not all of us are heroes," Sabashii said. "I'm not. I'm just here because these guys share a common enemy with me. The enemy they're fighting to protect this world from is also an enemy I've had for quite a few years. We go way back, me and the turtle..and I have things I need to settle up with him on. But, it's always good to have backup, despite how I usually work alone."
He took what was given to him with a chuckle, and nibbled at what was there. He looked about slowly..and tipped his head to one side. To let them know the truth..no, he knew they didn't fully trust him yet, and he wasn't sure he trusted all of them. Not like that. They were getting used to magic as a whole, despite having their own skills, and his past connections made it hard for him to admit the truth anyway.
"I could probably fight in this tournament as I am now and win it without a lot of problems, except for a couple of exceptions. There's one participant in it that I'd have a lot of trouble with, who might even be stronger than I am. But I doubt he wants his presence announced by anyone but himself, so I'll let you all wonder. I bet Mutsumi knows who I mean..and I know she understands why I say what I do.." Sabashii chuckled then..and shook his head..and mused aloud for no real reason at all, not having even realized it.. "MolMolian tournaments are so much better than this.."
"They are..." Nealla's voice trailed off, as she and Kaolla exchanged a sideways glance, before turning to look at Sabashii.
"How come you know that?" This last came from Kaolla, with the almost twin girls looking over him strangely.
"Ah..I participated in one once, as an upcoming fighter..when they were open to fighters from other lands. It was when I was a lot younger..and I was under another name..so who knows..maybe they've changed since then, but I doubt it.."
He'd almost messed up on that one..it was a good thing so little was known about his past; otherwise he might have had to go into further explanation on that one. It'd have been hard to explain the real truth.
"Oh." Kaolla replied.
Nealla however, was still looking over him with skeptical eyes, a frown set upon her face. "I see." A slight sigh. "Some days, I miss home." An idle comment, not really directed at anyone, before she herself turned toward the central arena, settling back into her chair next to Kaolla.
"Okay entrants, come forward and pick yourselves a lottery ticket!" Asakura called out, moving the process of the tournament preliminaries right along. "The numbers will be used to sort you into twenty-person groups, which will then compete against each other in a battle royale!" A chorus of loud cheers rose up from the gathered crowd at that announcement. "We'll be accepting new entrants up until the very last minute, so age, gender, and previous martial arts experience isn't a factor. What're you waiting for!? The main tournament begins at 8 AM sharp on the second day of the festival, so let the tournament preliminaries now begin!"
What followed was fifteen minutes of cruel and tragic shenanigans as everyone who wished to participate in the tournament scrambled over the 160 available lottery tickets. In the end, Masaru easily secured a lottery ticket which bore the letter A, as did the extremely-tall Itsuki. Mana and Ku, who also decided to enter, had gotten tickets labeled D, while Takahata and Evangeline both secured F tickets, Asuna and Setsuna both scored D tickets, Kaede and Kotaro's tickets read E, and Negi's ticket read B, leaving him off by his lonesome in that group. Mei, also, was left by herself with a ticket that read G.
As the tickets began to dwindle, Kazumi again took the microphone. "Once again, folks, these tournament preliminaries will be fought in groups of twenty, battle-royale style. Labeled 'A' through 'H' only two from each group will move on to the next round, leaving only sixteen participants for tomorrow's main event!"
"Damn if that's not a good thing," Asuna said as she and Setsuna wandered toward the D group arena, the redhead holding her artifact harisen over her right shoulder. "Means we can team up and take these other clowns down, huh?"
"I'd have it no other way," Setsuna answered, smiling, a faint, almost-invisible aura of ki surrounding her.
"So, Kotaro-dono, want to help me clean house?" Kaede asked the young half-demon as they neared their group.
"Not a chance, Kaede-nee!" he called back, shaking with anticipation of the battle to come. "I'll toss you out just as soon as I would any of the rest of these bozos!"
The ninja gave a calm smile. "Well, then, I guess I'll have to stay on my side of the ring. The last thing either of us want is to be eliminated in the preliminaries."
"The prize for the winner is ten million yen!" Kazumi's voice boomed, eliciting more wild cheers. "Once the groups of twenty have been picked by lottery, that group may begin to fight!"
Group D was the first to assemble. Mana contented herself to stand off to the side, near the edge of the arena, as Ku Fei mercilessly trampled all over everyone who came before her, exactly as was expected of the chairman of the Chinese Martial Arts Club. Even the captain of the kendo club, a self-righteous bozo that neither Mana nor Ku doubted that Setsuna could stomp a mudhole into if she so desired, was helpless before the destructive power of Ku's feet and fists.
"Goddamn, you'd think she was wearing Bracers of Suzaku," Seno muttered as he watched the dark-skinned Chinese girl clean house.
"What are those?" Motoko asked as she glanced toward Setsuna and Asuna's slowly-forming group, then turned her attention back to Group D just as Mana and Ku were pronounced as the victors.
"Epic magic item in D&D," he replied. "When activated, they give you a +20 bonus to strength, which is nothing to sneeze at. All things considered? Bracers of Suzaku are probably real. Also, that 'kendo club captain' sucked. Hard. Fuckin' wannabe."
"So why isn't Setsuna the kendo club captain?" Naru asked, on her way to see Mei's competition.
"Humility, for starters," Motoko explained. With the D Group competition finished, the swordscouple accompanied Naru, though they'd be stopping at Group B, which was just finished assembling. "Setsuna is a very humble girl, so she doesn't want the attention and acclaim that such a position would afford her. Semantics, secondly. The kendo club is actually a university club. Her skill is the only rason she's allowed in as a middle schooler. Wish Mei luck for us."
"No problem," Naru answered with a grin. She paused momentarily along with Seno and Motoko at the Group B platform, though Naru was standing in such a way that she could see Kotaro on the Group E platform.
"There seems to be some commotion going on with Groups B and E," Kazumi said over the crowds. "Wait just a second, is this... Yes! It's kids, folks! They look to be no more than fourth- or fifth-graders! The smiles and laughter of the crowd seems to say they're not being taken seriously."
True to the reporter's words, the crowd surrounding the platforms had broken out into laughter, divided between Kotaro's tough guy attitude on one, and Negi's humble, polite stance on another. Seno and Naru were laughing as well, but their laughter was directed at the idiots who underestimated their newfound allies' power.
"Hey kid, this ain't recess!" one heckler called out to Kotaro.
"You'll get hurt, kid!" another called to Negi.
"This one's academic," Seno said. "Come on, let's pack it in and go see Setsuna's group. Negi and Kotaro are going to stomp a mudhole in their asses and walk it dry."
"I don't know," Motoko said as they turned to move on. "That Nagase is in Kotaro's group."
"That just means they're going to team up," Naru replied, then waved as she separated from the pair to go to Mei's group.
Seno and Motoko arrived at Setsuna's group just in time to watch the crowd split down the middle as a combatant came flying off the platform. Seno dropped prone in order to avoid the living missile, and stood up to see Asuna launch another foe with a powerful kick.
"Damn, she's got a kick like Naru's punches," the swordsman commented.
Setsuna glanced up at them as they approached, and gave them a smile. Her current enemy, sensing her momentary distraction, moved to take advantage. Motoko smiled at this, not even bothering to warn her adopted sister; she knew Setsuna was aware of the sneak attack.
Surely enough, the younger swordswoman ducked the sweeping haymaker punch and brought in her own fist to counter, her hand glowing white with her ki. "Shinmeiryu hiken, Gurenken!" Setsuna said, her words coming out as merely her breath, as the power of her ki infused in her strike struck her opponent unconscious, crumpling him before her.
A hard crack drew the pair's attention to Setsuna's partner in this battle, Asuna drawing back her harisen from a blow, her victim spinning in place, the red print of the folded paper visible on his face, before collapsing to the ground.
"Let's not forget the sailor-suited duo over in Group C. One by one, those powerful combatants are going down!"
On the next platform over, the F Group match was over almost before it began. In the center of the arena, Takahata and Evangeline stood side-by-side, the image of contrasts; Takahata in his sharp white business suit, hands tucked in his pockets, and Evangeline with her cute dress, bonnet, and bunny messenger bag. All around them, though, the other combatants were all falling like leaves in the winter time, yet neither Evangeline nor Takahata visibly moved so much as a muscle.
"Talk about not breaking a sweat," Evangeline said, chuckling. "Keep it up, Takamichi."
"How about you join in, Eva?" Takahata replied, equally enjoying the event. "It'll be fun, no doubt."
"No thanks, and what's with the leaving off of my honorific?"
"Sorry, habit I guess. We did go to school together."
The last other combatant in their group still standing, a high school kid who had only been clipped by whatever Takahata was using to down his opponents, groaned as he regained his feet. "Can't... beat that Takahata..." Eyes falling on Evangeline, he staggered over to her and grabbed her by the shoulder. "I don't know what you're doing here, little girl, but I'm just gonna throw you out of here and pass on this round."
Not amused in the least, Evangeline glared icily at the student. "Keep your hand off, or lose it."
In a move so fast that it didn't seem like she'd moved at all, she threw his hand off her with such force that it flipped him onto his stomach, where she proceeded to kneel over his head and press a finger into the center of his back, applying just a little dark magic to temporarily cut off the motor signals along his central nervous system.
"Best not to move," she said cheerily.
"I..can't...anyway..." the student groaned.
Among the spectators of this battle were Haruka, Mutsumi, and Shinobu. The three looked amongst each other, and Shinobu asked, "Did anyone see what that Takahata-sensei did?"
Haruka shook her head slowly. "The only thing I can think of is that he's using a technique like Seno's iaido," she said. "Only, he has no weapons, so the only thing I can think of is that he uses his fists instead of swords, with his pockets taking the place of a sheath. But he's so fast with it that it doesn't even look like he moves at all, faster even than Seno."
"Ara, so it'd be like iaiken then?" Mutsumi asked.
"Yeah, something like that."
Over at G Group, it at first appeared as though Mei got the short end of the stick. Many of the combatants in her group were practicioners of kendo and sojutsu (the art of the spear), and thus were armed with shinai, bokuto, or practice spears. This, coupled with Mei's lack of height, put her at a reach disadvantage, a disadvantage that she could easily counter with magic, but she wanted to avoid doing that this early. She looked back to see Naru standing at the edge of the stage, watching her intently, then nodded to herself, drew her pactio card, and whispered, "Adeat." The card flashed white and was replaced by a bound straw broom, which Mei expertly spun around her hands before gripping like a spear, one hand back by the bristles, the other up near the head.
For only a moment, Naru was concerned that Mei might be out of her league. As soon as her enemies closed on her, that concern was laid to rest. The young fire mage sidestepped a spear thrust, deflecting the weapon aside with the head of her broom, then sweeping the weapon over and slamming the bristled end into her opponent's head. The sleep spell she'd cast upon the broom took effect then, dropping her opponent cold. A bokuto-wielding woman noticed her, turned to face her, and then charged. Mei stopped those shenanigans right quick with a quick thrust of the tip of her broom into the unarmored woman's stomach, checking her momentum and eliminating one more foe.
Watching her step-sister dismantle her opposition in short order, Naru smiled. Mei didn't even need the benefits of Holy Aura; the girl was a force to be reckoned with in her own right. She watched Mei leap over an attempted sweep from a spear and then, in midair, baseball swinging her broom and sending the offending spearman flying completely out of the shrine. Needless to say, it didn't take long for Mei to clean up her group.
With the exception of Group H, which had nobody of importance in it, that left none but Group A, the important names of which included Masaru and the extremely-tall green-haired fellow. Itsuki eliminated every competitor that came at him with ease, launching some over fifteen feet or higher into the air, sending them all flying out of the ring. They were unimportant. "Self-Statement: Useless organic meatbags, the lot of them. Their weakness is unforgivable," the giant said to himself as he back body dropped a charging contender out of the ring. The man landed on the floor below with a heavy thud.
Itsuki scanned each individual, until finding his target; a small human, but the only one eliminating other competitors. "Target confirmed, Masaru Nanjo, of the Nanjou family line. Western Magic specialization, new member of the Kuro Arashi. Physical threat: estimated Minimal to None. Magical threat: estimated Moderate to Threatening. Commence Kuro member test. Roger, target locked." The tall mechanical man eliminated the remaining fighters on his side. He then stood completely still, almost frozen as he waited for Masaru to mop up his end.
Masaru did very little to his opponents; a few well-timed blows in pressure areas, and of course, a rochambeau or two. He wasn't above fighting dirty. He tipped his head as he watched the tall figure stand up, and took note of his speech. Masaru wasn't a pop culture dunce. He played games, and recognized the speech patterns, and it wouldn't be hard to deduce his opponent wasn't entirely, if at all human. If he was playing at the part, he'd find out soon enough. If he was being serious, then he'd adjust accordingly.
Once Masaru did finish however, Itsuki advanced on him swiftly. "Prepare yourself male meatbag Masaru Nanjou, I have been assigned to determine your fighting skill and prowess. Come." He straightened up for a millisecond to his complete height, a whole two feet over the young man's head. ITSU 13 then brought his right hand in front of himself with his palm up and fingers pointed at Masaru. Itsuki tightened his artificial tendons and brought his hand halfway up twice, his left hand remained partially concealed at an angle; it coursed with a mild electric energy as he balled it into a fist.
A single earplug went into Masaru's left ear, and a song was picked from his MP3 player. The young man smiled, probably the first time he'd smiled where the crew could see, and from thin air, he materialized a sakkat; Raiden's hat.
"Test your might."
That was all he said in response to his opponent's trash-talk, as his opposing hand reached into a pocket in his pants, and fingered a few cards. This might prove to be quite the diversion.
"Roger, without hesitation then, meatbag!"
Itsuki stomped hard down on the platform, splitting the boards that made up the floor under Masaru. Switching into attack pattern #023, small thrusters on the underside of his boots activated, carrying him quite swiftly to the young man's right, though it was subtle enough to fool the mundane crowd into thinking it was just a fast jump. The metallic man swung his left leg out in a round-house to connect with the back of Masaru's right knee. He'd then follow up by bringing his steel right elbow down on his foes shoulder. Itsuki spent this whole time scanning and analyzing his opponent, numbers running across his perception screen. 'Estimated enemy plan, dodge and attack from long range. Magical Level Rising subtly from target' appeared in such text.
He hadn't watched his opponent enough to form a definite plan of attack, nor had he been able to analyze the strength of his attacks from a closer standpoint. One card in Masaru's hand became nothing right as the figure moved forward. He'd memorized most of them by their feel; some he'd laminated, some he'd had holographically enhanced so the images would stand out, and this was no exception. Masaru appeared to be off balance from the kick, and of course, when the enemy's blow came down at shoulder level, there was a crack..of wood. The attack met with a log that appeared in Masaru's place. He brushed off the dust of the card about twenty two feet away, standing at the opposite end of where he was. Kawarimi no Jutsu. He'd burned up a Naruto TCG card for that. He had plenty of other cards from many other games to go through. Still, he got a good idea of at least part of the force his enemy could put out. A hand to hand fight was out, at least in his current condition. Still, there was a faint rise in his aura. It had happened in the previous fights too; whenever it was time to act, it's like he was gathering a subtle amount of energy. Building for something greater.
Still, he wasn't about to let this go so easy. A Duel Monsters card was burned next, along with a Magic: The Gathering card. A powerful fog sprang up in the middle of the arena almost instantaneously, covering the entire battleground, and it extended up as well as across, while he moved to the right about nine feet from his original position. The secondary thing seemed to take the form of a circle around his person once he stopped, though seeing it form itself with any form of optics in this fog would be next to impossible in any detail, as it didn't 'glow' it simply formed beneath his feet. The fog itself was cold, and would dampen any heat sensors or infrared vision, and any form of actual optics that required one to see. It also seemed to dampen any kind of magic senses as well, and even scent, though it didn't hamper tremorsense, ie, feeling through the ground itself. Makiu, the Magical Mist, would cover his position. The other card..a specific Circle. It had the shape of a clock face, vaguely hinting at what it did, and he charged it gently with mana.
Down to a smaller deck in pocket one. As long as he remembered his cards, and all the games he'd played, and anime he'd seen, and had at least one medium to burn, he could win.
Itsuki registered as much suprise as he could in the near emotionless and vacant countenance that he wore. Unexpected, of course but nothing too shocking to Itsuki. He had been programmed with the knowledge of almost an uncountable variety of attacks and battle tactics. This was no different than a desperate foe throwing up a smokescreen in order to regain and recalculate themselves. However, this fog was different, obviously a weather alteration spell of some sort. It dampened his sensors and he couldn't get a clear reading on his target, magicaly or with heat. This could be a problem, but he'd been tested for worse than this situation. It's time to prove again to Chao-sama that the ITSU are the most advanced and deadly of her creations, he thought. He switched his position and charged his batteries quickly.
An unrealistic smirk appeared on Itsuki's metal features. "Roger, initiate Cat and Mouse game tactic." His servos whirred as he rotated his shoulders and adjusted his neck joints. His audioreceptors glowed for a split second, Itsuki reached up with a large hand and pressed a small button located behind his left ear-piece. His whole body sparked and began to fade away into the mist. 'Sound Dampener activated, Tactical Active Camouflage active' listed in his perceptor screen as he now fully disappeared into the fog silently. I.T.S.U.#13 locked his audio speakers and moved stealthily across the platform. His sound dampeners were still just prototypes, so he was programmed to both test them and adapt to the situation in the event they began to malfunction.
Makiu was a blessing and a curse to the caster. True, it kept him from being found. Mostly. But it also meant, due to the fact that he still made noise, moving would be a near impossibility based on the potential that his opponent had hearing increases or vibrational detection capability. His father had once said, "Assume an enemy has all abilities, and test what you can do until you learn what they don't have, rather than what they do have." The circle around him was indefinite, but Makiu was not. The mist would, sadly, eventually fade. It wasn't a permanent effect. It also kept him from seeing or sensing, but he hadn't sensed much magic from his opponent anyway, if any, so that wasn't a big deal. He had three options.
Option one. Pure offense. This option was to blast the mist away in a wide-level sweep with a massive attack, and never stop attacking with higher-rank blasting spells. The pro of that would be that it would hit his enemy most likely with a ninety-two percent probability on initial impact, and if enough damage was done, he could keep slamming. The con was that it would really suck out his reserves of mana. With minimal expenditures on defense and standard offense, he had enough for three big bursts, barring having to readjust. On top of that, he had no idea if his enemy had elemental defenses, or barriers.
Option two. Hit and run, like he was doing now. Invisibility, sense-dampening, all of his misdirection spells, traces, and abilities. He had a hunch his opponent was part machine, if not all, but he wasn't sure. It might still be an act. Until he knew a hundred percent, spells that induced effects on living targets, like sleep or paralysis, some of the better ones, were out. Masaru kept two copies of Makiu, but they were his second-best misdirection. He hated using one this early but. The pro of option two was it would make him hard to pin down. The con was, hit and run relied on tiring the opponent out. He wasn't sure this was possible.
Option three. Total defense. He could remain in his Circle, and wait for his opponent to find him and attack. In the mist, that was his own disadvantage as his enemy would be hard to see coming as it stood. True, he could feed mana into the Circle as he was being damaged to cut the damage down to a mere third or fourth, but continually feeding mana into it wasn't an option as the Circle was reactive. It depended on damage incoming, and being dispersed. The pro with total defense was he would sustain little damage while the enemy burned his reserves. The con here was that if the enemy was a machine, he probably wouldn't 'tire', though most likely he had batteries or energy reserves, or ammunition he would exhaust. But that left him just as dangerous in a melee situation. Nothing was solved there.
Of course, then there was option four. It was chancy, but it might just work, given the situation. The Circle would stay with him as it was a personal effect, and it wouldn't drain mana until he put more into it. If things went well, he could get out of his enemy's sights, if he still had any in the mist, and then wait for the mist to clear or for the enemy to come after him where he could see him. Alternatively, he could launch an area-burst attack on a moderate level instead of a fully covering mass-attack, conserving mana. He'd have to do this one from memory. It was difficult that way, but there was no choice. He brought his hands together, and felt the sky calling. He spoke quietly, hoping he wouldn't be detected.
"Wa Crow..Rei Von!"
Masaru shot upward then, flying. He threw down a card where he was standing before as he went topside, and imbued mana into it, a time-delay effect. He would activate it at an opportune time. He'd measure it in attacks. Above, he had time, and he tapped the inside of his pocket, willing another card to burn itself out. Rapidly then, his hands moved in seals. Serpent, Sheep, Monkey, Boar, Horse, Tiger, and two fingers were placed upwards, under and at his lips.
"Katon: Gokakyuu no Jutsu!"
And just like that, the large fireball was blown from his lips, to impact down on the center of the arena. It would only cover about a forty foot burst radius, which might not hit his enemy, but the expenditure was only medium, it wouldn't hit his placed card, and if he was fortunate, he might damage the opponent hidden in the mist some. It also had the added effect of burning the mist away with intense heat, for the most part. The fog would be gone, but it had served its purpose.
Itsuki took care not to make much sound, his movements were not restricted by the camouflage, even quick movements. But He wasn't sure about the dampeners, which had to work in sync with his heavy weight, could give out at any moment. His audioreceptors began to trace and scan the area. One would think it would be hard to hear over the crowd. However, thanks to the fact that he copied the statement Masaru said to him earlier; ITSU #13 created a voiceprint recognition of it, all he had to do is search for one voice that match the fragment. This meatbag had better prove a challenge; he disagreed that his master had put him up to fight a human: the weakest of all combat lifeforms he had been programmed with; physically anyway.
Itsu had been waiting longer than he expected for his opponent, but he took care not to strike quite yet. Suddenly, he picked up a match to the print. It was faint, but it was still there, Itsuki's systems never made a miscalculation. He circled his foe's calculated position a rough 127 degrees. Strangely enough, his enemy was no longer there by the time he arrived at said location. Then he heard it again, overhead this time! How did a mere human manage? But he was informed this wasn't an ordinary human, there was something special about him. He dropped into an invisible stance of defense, but then he sensed the high heat signature coming from above. An incendiary attack? unexpected; he could easily defend himself from high heat, but he would risk his camo and his position if it was not already.
He quickly sped backwards to avoid the estimated blast radius. The fire-ball came plowing through the mist, lighting up everything. It collided with the platform with a loud crackling boom, and spread out moderately but nowhere near the mechanical man. The mist evaporated immediately, and as a result visual perception returned to Itsuki, both his heat sensors and his regular scanners. Finding his opponent so high surprised the android. Unacceptable! This fool threw away his only visibility defense as Itsu retained his own. He could've shot him down with ease with both his firearms and missiles. Itsuki didn't doubt that the boy could either dodge or intercept most of his attacks but an all-out attack would spell this young meatbag's doom.
Incidentally and ironically however, his strongest projectile weapons were banned in this so called 'tournament'. He would have to resort to other means of taking down the slippery human. Perhaps, this is what his master was testing him on. Strange, he thought; certainly he'd already proven his skill at hand to hand and sneak tactics. His master was operating oddly as of late at best, she was up to something, big. Itsuki locked his weapon systems and flew up after his opponent. While still in camouflage, a very light blue glow emanated on his backside, under his feet and on his calves. He didn't care that it showed for it was almost in camo as well. His dampeners were shut off and one could here the roar of the engines. Flying around Masaru a full 360 degrees before circling around to his back, he zoomed in to strike at the young man's back with a diving 420 axe kick.
So the enemy wasn't there. He had invisibility, shielding, something of that nature. Perhaps thermoptic camouflage considering, that was always an option. He hadn't sensed or felt the use of magic, and there was no residual ki energy either. That pretty much cinched that his enemy was mechanical for the most part, or used a lot of technology. His tactics would build on that. Now he had at least some certainty. A flicker of light..? Perhaps. He had learned not to discount any source, despite how minimal it was. It was hard pinpointing the enemy. When the attack came, he was only partially unprepared; true, the attack had a lot of weight behind it, but the sense of touch in a fighter is often rather acute, and it gives one time to answer, if just barely.
As the enemy's body came into contact with his, there was a single second of thought, which translated into expenditure of mana. Though he felt the attack well enough, it would only be enough to bruise him this time. It was time to see if he was right, and upon finding he was, he was able to formulate more clearly. The Circle around his body flared, taking some of the damage based on his expenditure, and made it simply cease to be, compensating for it with a counter-force created of pure enchantment. Circle of Protection: Artifacts. It worked on 'Artifacts' and 'Artifact Creatures', that is to say, machines, automata, and other such constructs. The fact that his Circle had protected him showed without a doubt what his enemy was. It was risky. If his enemy had been pretending to be mechanical, he would have felt the full force of his enemy's blow.
Masaru spun around at that point, the movement easy with his enemy's own momentum from the blow itself, and his form in the air, which made movement simpler. He adjusted his glasses, and an explosion of golden dust came from his entire body, covering the sky. It would certainly outline his enemy. Glitterdust. A simple spell from his gaming sessions, meant to blind foes and outline invisible enemies over a wide area. Masaru stared his enemy down as the clock face on the circle dissipated, as it once again became partially inert until filled with mana once more.
Direct hit! But his enemy was far from defeated, even if he was hurting. This wasn't a complete waste of time. He floated in high suspension above the ground and slowly started to descend. However, Itsuki's scanners indicated that he was no longer invisible and he had lost his stealth for the time being. The automaton deactivated his dampeners and his camo, before turning to brush off the gold dust that came to rest on him.
"So you are a machine. You weren't just pretending. Now, I can begin to plan this fight for real. Even if you are an advanced combat form of some type, you're still just a creation of man, and therefore, as a being created by a race with many weaknesses, you will also have weaknesses."
He balled his metallic hands into fists as Masaru released his own summary on Itsuki. "Statement: I'm surprised that it took you this long to come to your conclusion. I am not aware of what human would act in synthesis with my programmed personality, but apparently their existence bought me my first strike on you meatbag. As the term goes, the gloves are now off!" He stated dully with slight sarcasm. But he had no time to gloat in his own mechanized way.
The boy smirked. He didn't have many anti-machine cards in his Duel Monsters set, and only a few anti-artifact cards in his Magic set. He'd have to do pure damage, but at least he had an overall plan now. He might have to play his opponent. If the machine had human thinking, and a human-like ego, he might be able to work with that. It had spoken in a manner befitting an intelligent machine, not just a deadpan one, so he could, possibly, well, he'd have to show his hand. He adjusted his glasses, and spoke quietly to the automata.
"I don't know exactly how much you know about me. Stay your hand a moment, and allow me to tell you what you need to know. Consider this a favor from an opponent who likes to play fair. I'm a conceptualist. I can do anything that I can imagine. Anything I've seen. Anything I've watched. No matter what the source is, if my mind can comprehend it on its base levels, I can create it, and use it on an even level as long as I have the mana to burn. It means you can never predict what I'm going to do. I could attack with fire one moment, and summon a horde of demons the next."
"Prepare yourself, this is indeed not a drill!" he began to confirm as he began to analyze Masaru's statement, checking them with data bases he had direct links to. He could tell if his foe was bluffing, but as far as research showed young Nanjou was not. However, he did state that as long as he had mana, magic energy, the meatbag will continue to exhibit this conceptual ability. So It was really a battle between Itsu's energy and power batteries against this exceptional meatbag's will reserves. A very winnable battle for an I.T.S.U.
Masaru wasn't about to tell him he had to burn a medium, and that the cost reflected the effect. But that was for him to figure out. Misdirection was the way to fight well. Volunteer the truth, but only part of the truth. That was the way of the sublime warrior. But talking time was over. He'd already taken one hit, and even with it over halfway dissipated, it hurt. He'd have to reinforce his body, and avoid further blows. Calling on the Magic set again, and burning a medium as a catalyst, the young man vanished in a sparkle of golden glitter, only to appear near where he'd set that card before. The card itself appeared where he was flying in the air. Mana was immediately released the card, which burned, and massive tendrils and a giant carnivorous plant's face exploded everywhere, reaching and biting at the mechanical man in the air. Juxtapose. A fun blue-colored spell.
It cost him a bit, but it was necessary, as it would occur in an instant. The enemy could probably move faster than he could, so the plant was mostly a distraction. With a 4/5 attack power to compare with, it was a mid-level creature. Ideally, it would grasp onto the android and hold him, or eat him and hold him, and damage him when it fell down into the arena. The plant couldn't fly. All part of what he'd been working on. With that done, another card was burned in his pocket, and he crossed two fingers horizontally on one hand, vertically on the other.
"Tajuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!"
Immediately, in a repeating cloud of smoke, multiple clones of himself sprang up; each one giving off the exact same signatures he did. Identical in every way, they all smirked and adjusted their glasses, and spoke in tandem, provided his opponent could hear him. What he did with the plant would be telling in that regard.
"Can you guess which one is real? Or could it be all of us?"
The android shot forward to attack his enemy full on, but he flew right into the waiting maw of a summoned plant creature. Its jaws snapped shut, sealing air-tight and becoming a pitch black suffocating, yet organic coffin. An interesting tactic, but he'd have to do better than that. Itsu needed no air nor light, this was obviously a ploy to hold him long enough for his target to attack with a more prepared battle plan. Foliage, whether it be living, dead, sentient, or summoned can all meet their end at the same thing: Fire.
From the outside, the plant looked quite content on receiving a meal so soon after being summoned. The other heads still snapped at the open air or curled around the currently fed one, almost envyingly. As the plant began to what seemed to resemble swallowing or digesting it's meal, a bright orange glow emanated from within. The plant disappeared, along with all the snapping head stalks that were around it. Reduced to scorched leaves and ashes after a beautiful fiery explosion that resembled a small sun. Just in appearance of course.
Upon the plants' and the sun's departure Itsuki returned to the ground with a blank expression. "Statement: All living things burn the same, I am an extension of my Master, and none shall escape the purgatory of her flames." He rolled his shoulders and dropped into a well known Pi Qua Quan attack stance. He watched the young man disappear into what looked as though at least one hundred (if not more) pure copies of himself, these were no illusions. He began running a search in known information on this technique.
There was no reasoning in guessing which one was real, this style is ideal for taking out multiple targets from moderate range. "Statement: There is no need for trickery, meatbag. I assure you that I will find the appropriate target to defeat, your energy is slowly running out. I might indeed be manufactured by the human race, but the enemy I was designed to slay has terrorized and killed humans far longer than you know. Clarification: well, not completely, they haven't." He watched and waited as his search result appeared before him. Apparently, this attack was the result of a children's show.
"Interesting. That statement you made... A chronological movement, then.. So you aren't of this time? I see. That explains part of it. To be honest, the plant was just a distraction. I had a feeling it wouldn't hold you. It didn't go quite as planned however..but that's not a problem. I got what I wanted most out of it. Back down here. As for how long it took me. Never assume. I had to make sure, a hundred percent, that you weren't lying or trying to misdirect me with your pattern of behavior."
Each of the Shadow Clones spoke to complete a single statement, one speaking a few words, another speaking another. In reality, there was a drawback. He'd only created ten clones, though it might give the image of more when first looked at. But just like the concept they came from, they divided his power evenly. He wasn't like an archmage; he couldn't use his maximum divided like this. He'd have to disperse some and keep the rest, but only once he'd done what he had to.
He'd gathered up a good deal of energy now, and it continued to grow as he went through his many movements. It would still be a while; a few more movements, but he could do it. If he could get to that point, he could win it, or at the very least, damage his opponent on a level he'd be severely weakened. Fighting like this..it wasn't his style. Of ten clones, six disappeared, leaving four. They were arranged in a 'C' pattern. Two at the back, spread apart, and two in the front, a greater distance apart. One was the real thing. Regardless of which, the far right forward began, and others followed. Speaking separately, yet completing one spell.
"Ati Me Peta Babka. Undesexaginta spiritus aeriales, coeuntes inimicum concidant. Sagitta Magica! Series Fulguralis!"
The far-right Masaru opened his hand, and the others followed, each releasing fifteen magic arrows, save one, who released one less. The arrows were electrical in nature, obviously meant to disrupt the enemy's mechanical body, that is if he didn't have any insulation against electrical energy bursts. Another test, to see what the enemy was capable of; mind, the arrows had damage potential too, aside from their secondary combative value, and by launching them from all four of himself, he had a spell that had full attack power on a standard level.
Itsuki retained his stance, not moving a metallic muscle. He was disappointed that he was mistaken about the quantity of enemy copies. He was even more let down when the majority of the minuscule sum disappeared to leave on four. Was his opponent trying to make this that easy? His eyes glowed a brilliant golden as Masaru fired his magical arrows. "Measuring power level of opponent's attack. Weak in individual blasts but moderately strong together. Roger, activating Hiraishin subroutine." Itsuki did not move to dodge the blast, instead it looked as though his hands opened up, along with several ports up and down his arms.
The metal man altered his stance at the last second, forming a defensive barrier around himself with his arms against the blast. The Electric arrows that would have singed, burned, and electrocuted any normal opponent were funneled into Itsu's arm and hand ports. His arms lit up a brilliant and vibrant blue as the ports closed and trapped the electronic attack. His ports were laced with rubber insulation to help conduct electricity to his absorbsion ports, where the electricity would be compressed and focused. His interior mechanics then transported said electricity to his core to be stored in his backup battery.
"Query: This was another 'certainty' test, correct meatbag?" he said with monotone boredom. Itsuki flattened his left palm and straightened all of his digits. He could afford an attack of equal strength without recalculation or reconsidering completely now. His reared back his left arm and thrust it downward, splitting the field and injecting the iron giant's newly attained energy into the platform. Electricity raced both through the gap Itsuki created and across the surface, setting separated and broken wood aflame. This was followed up immediately by a large spiral electric blast fired from each of Itsuki's individual digits that blended together as they zoomed at his approaching foes.
A return of electricity, eh? For complaining so much, his opponent was being just as unoriginal. Maybe he overestimated his creativity. He was just trying to be efficient he guessed, so it was just a computer after all, despite its humanlike traits. Heh, just like Mother Brain. It couldn't possibly believe it was flawed, could it? Hm. A few seconds to react. His mind went through many possibilities, and he had many cards in his pocket, but what to do. Each move was a crucial one for him, due to the fact his mediums weren't unlimited. But he'd show him the power of a Planeswalker, as it were.
Masaru rapidly burned away a Medium, and raised his hands upward. Great trees grew from nothing, and vines sprouted all around, taking the blasts of electricity through their roots and along their surfaces, yet even as they caught fire and exploded, they continued to grow, and even encircle his form. Explosive Vegetation. Quite a spell. The clones vanished, leaving him his full power. He couldn't divide his energies that way. He had to face this one at his maximum. But it was fine. Pulling from the trees he created, and the land around him, he borrowed mana, and from all those things, he formed a gigantic monster; Silvos, Rogue Elemental. The thing of vegetation's form shifted and moved constantly, and it turned towards the mechanical man with an impassive look on its face. Another medium was burned in its summoning.
"Go, Silvos! Crush my opponent! Destroy this artificial thing with the power of nature itself!"
No sooner had Masaru said that, than the hulking mass of vegetation and leaves leapt upward on its elephantine legs, and its hands extended, shooting vines upward in an attempt to grasp violently at its foe. The creature sang with mana; whatever means Masaru had used to summon it had to have made something of a drain, though the land's energy itself helped. However, he showed nothing; he would not show weakness in front of any enemy. It wasn't the Nanjou way.
"Scanning: Vegetation is minor annoyance, the creature proves to be a mid level summon. Statement: Oh master, you left no stone unturned." Burning this one was most likely not to work, it was sentient and healed appendages. However, merging the creature with a large flame might slow it down and hinder it's regenerative progress indeed. He would much rather ignore the creature and go straight for his target. Although seeing as Silvos was protecting the meatbag at the current moment, he would have to come up with something rather that wouldn't be anticipated.
The battle android had been calculating and strategizing up until the enormous beast lashed out to crush him. To everyone else, it looked as though just that had indeed happened. "Roger, evasive action." The giant branches and vines that made up the monster's arms came crashing down on Itsuki's position. Indeed his last known position at least. That evasive manuever didn't take much energy but he would have to remember to request a tune up on his reverse brake thrusters. Invisible to the naked eye, this was his artificial shundo technique. Made possible by his foot and calf thrusters acting in unison.
He clearly re-appeared directly under the colossus, sprouting plasma blades from his forearms and defoliant projectors from his hands. No single attack would work on this thing, so he had to mix attacks together. Activating his defoliants and firing their fiery chemicals at the supposed ankles of this behemoth, he quickly went to slashing at the interior vines on the giant legs with his forearm blades. If it was sentient, it could feel pain. It worked. The giganto roared in anger at the small attacker, and struggled to recover to a more steady base. The metalingus creature then focused his projectors to the groin area, setting it aflame efficiently and quickly. He crossed his blades and zoomed straight upward. Slicing slowly through the plant creature vertically.
As he made it closer to his target and the beast's center, Itsuki ejected a fist-sized ball from his chest compartment. His ceased his chopping and cleaving of the singed vines and palmed the ball. He clicked a button, and the ball was engulfed in a beautiful cerulean flame. Sticking it on the closest surface to the center, Itsuki zoomed his way out of his original point of entry. Upon hitting the surface platform he ignited his thrusters once more, and slowly activated his active camo. Looking as though he disappeared into another shundo technique, he deactivated his thrusters and scanned himself quickly to make sure he had no external visibility.
Completely secure and once again invisible, Itsuki did only wait and strategize as he could see a bright blue light growing larger inside Silvos. Itsuki did not expect this move to destroy his attacker but he had a chance of severely injuring the beast. But no doubt he had wasted time, he was curious about his opponent now, this meatbag seemed capable yet seemed to prefer hiding. Surely this human would run out of tricks sooner or later. So this was a waiting game, to see which one could weather the storm longer. It would be long range combat, perfect.
Masaru watched impassively. Silvos had what Masaru didn't; pure physical power. As the enemy cut the colossus apart, he simply sat by, knowing if he was directly attacked, he could minimize the damage with his Circle; though, he would have to burn more energy. It was worth it though. He didn't seem distressed at all when the creature was severely damaged. In fact, his face had taken on an unnatural calm. He didn't spend the mana to regenerate Silvos. He just let the creature fall. So. The enemy was faster than he'd anticipated, and unseen again. The same technique would be fruitless. He changed songs on his MP3 player. A faint smile graced his lips as he murmered quietly, fingering a very specific card.
"Transcending history, and the world. A tale of soul and swords..eternally retold."
Most likely, the machine had all sorts of scanners, so invisibility wouldn't do him much good himself. He had to gamble. He had to hold out just a little longer, and he had enough mana to pull this off, but he had to be meticulous. A random medium was burned, to create a powerful rainstorm. The wind blew..the rain fell, all over the arena. Masaru waited, watching the water pour from the sky. There would be an outline of his enemy, or at the very least, a disturbance in the drops falling or the pooled water where he moved.
"Rei Von!"
Again he intoned the spell of flight. Another card, burned for his troubles. This next set of moves after this setup would be the last moves he'd have, and then he'd have to count on his ultimate attack. The fight was coming to a head, at least for him. Masaru floated about a foot off the ground, hovering. A spherical energy had formed in his hand. Silvos' body finally faded away into dust, doomed to vanish anyway. Keeping creatures out drained mana. It wasn't prudent to keep it around.
"Analysis: The organic meatbag is once again flying. Re-calculation: Hovering, and is no doubt the cause for the radical weather alteration taking place at the moment. Requesting to shut down this abnormal piece of fleshy guts."
The towering metal humanoid waited a mere second, confirming. A second would all he would allow himself. Itsuki knew he was being monitored by the foe, his camouflage did little to nothing for him in the rain. He miscalculated, a sneak attack is only a surprise once.
"Roger, request confirmation and permission received."
The water was coming down not in quantity but in weight, it seemed to pool faster on the arena than normal rain would. He would steal his opponent's earlier tactic. Casting off his active camo, Itsuki deployed his defoliant pyro throwers. He cranked up the heat to as high as his regulators would allow. The android activated the flame throwers and their intensity could be felt by Masaru, all the way to the stands of people. He stared at the white hot flame for a second before Itsuki plunged them both into the largest water puddles near him. All of the water on the platform was no more, as well as all the rain that got anywhere near this man-made terror. Everything vanished in a humid veil of steam.
Visibility went back to a minimal for everyone except the two contestants, for no doubt Masaru could at least sense Itsuki's presence. However, this fog did not dampen Itsuki's scanners and locators like before; he would have to assume he held an advantage over the meatbag. And so, taking a gamble as his opponent had done before, he primmed his batteries and readied his pyro projectors. Itsuki locked onto Masaru and activated his thrusters, once again performing his artificial shundo. He passed his target, about five feet behind Masaru to be accurate. This was meant to throw the meatbag off balance, and struck lethally at the young mans six o'clock with an electric punch. Itsuki was still saving energy for a massive attack, so if the battle android hit it only had enough energy to scramble the nervous system or paralyze Masaru for a good five seconds.
Well now. That was a surprise, but the rain would continue, despite it all. Oh, with the steam up, he certainly had visibility issues. He'd have to compensate. He'd reached into his pocket for a medium when he felt the enemy hit him. Quickly, mana was fed upon contact into the Circle, which would disperse the physical effect to some degree, minimizing it. As electrical energy ran across him, he couldn't stop the actual electrical damage, that being the burns from the electricity. Still, the pulse seemed to be less than fatal. As the energy ran through him, Masaru had a feeling, just a hunch, his enemy was trying to disable him rather than do lethal damage. He might be able to use that.
Genjo, Masaru's persona, voided any effect that would target his mind or his nerves, including slowing his reaction time, paralysis, enchantment, mind control, and the like. It would be chancy, but he would do this. He kept his hand on his medium, and then he felt it. It was complete. He had the necessary energies. He let himself fall to both knees, let his arms hang down, as if he could do nothing. It was shameful, but it was a tactic he knew well. A single medium was burned randomly to finish creating the object he was forming in his hand from before. He suppressed its energy as it dropped, and burned a second medium to delay it for a moment. The steam would clear soon. And then he'd amplify what he'd created. But for now, he assumed his helpless stance. Inwardly, he thought to himself, apologizing silently, Sorry to worry you, everyone..but this is a tactic I must resort to..
The metallic colossus loomed above silently, the only sound was a whispering hum from his thrusters as he hovered. His scanners tracked the falling body of the young man as a cruel imitation of a smirk slowly revealed itself on the thirteenth ITSU. Oddly, the readings he received showed that there was no hindrance to the boy's fighting ability. Interesting, was one way to describe what Itsuki guessed was some sort of ploy. No matter.
He did not attack, he waited. He would act in unison with his prey. This little evaluation was about to come to an end. This battle alone was a little much for the gaggle of slack jawed on-lookers, if it continued much longer their weak little meatbag brains might overheat.
The mist was clearing, he had to make this quick. "Statement: Congratulations meatbag, you have survived the stages of this test. However, you have not passed your exam until you have beaten me." He voiced in a monotone. "Clarification: Still, the data you've been giving me seems quite sufficient for now. My master is interested in your kind Masaru Nanjou; though this planet's future could be in better hands."
His chargers had had their fill of energy, he was done talking for now. Itsuki began fusing both his electricity with his defoliant projectors, creating a shimering golden greenish sphere. "This is a disaster born of humans. Turn and face it meatbag!" he yelled as he raised his arms to unleash the unknown fury.
No good, eh? Well. It would probably be too easy to end it like that, eh? Surprise attacks were a good idea, but it wasn't always as effective as first wanted. His voice rose then; audible, yes, but quiet. Gentle and firm in tone. He spoke to the machine, not caring what it may or may not think, but only to state the truth.
"Humans. Humans create their own destruction without even thinking about it, focused on petty desires. But there is one thing that makes humans great, above and beyond anything else in the universe. Tenacity. Endure a blow, and administer two. Even in defeat, stand proud, and if you can..take your enemy with you. We will protect everything. Your test is meaningless, because protecting one's own life is selfishness. Protecting the lives of those who cannot protect their own.."
The sphere in his hand took more shape then, and he quickly hid it up his sleeve. The area began to change then; the shape of the entire arena began shifting, warping. Here, reality would normally change, but this time, Masaru had just opted for a change of scenery. His enemy was a technological monstrosity? Then he'd create a battleground for one. The inside of the Covenant holy city of High Charity, taken from his studies of Halo 2.
"..That is Justice! Remember this: What makes us great is our soul. A single soul is weak, but together, when faced with a greater threat, our souls are what make us the most powerful! Our hearts, our very being, and you cannot destroy them or quell them by force. The soul is reborn and summoned countless times; and beyond myriad rebirths; the demise of the soul awaits. Such is the cycle of causality..heh. Here, in this reality, I decide that anything related to this reality can be conjured without use of a medium. Let's see how the audience likes being here, in an arena meant to destroy heretics."
That said, Masaru turned, and stood his ground, doing nothing. His Circle would protect him to some degree, but he wasn't concerned anymore. He understood now, and he chuckled, adjusting his glasses.
"How I pity you. You will never have a soul. Only a predetermined purpose with no discernible outcome but expiration someday. You do not even exist. Now finish what you have begun, if you have the will to do so, creation of man. I guarantee your victory will not come. A Nanjou does not lose. He always manages to break even."
"Interesting retort meatbag..They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's beliefs. But in modern days, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason," chuckled the automaton in his eerily synthetic way. "The soul is a very overestimated, foolish, and unnecessary thing along with your weak sense of justice...poor you!"
Suddenly, and without warning Itsuki discharged his energy collection sphere back into his body. Causing his body to glow golden, for a split second as his batteries super-charged. Itsuki's visual perceptors scanned the new battlefield franticly. The information was immense, utterly immense and beautiful to I.T.S.U.#13. Yet he knew it was an outright distortion and fraud of a world. "Query: You are just full of data that's not on record aren't you Nanjou meatbag?
"Statement: I realize that I should up the stakes, considering that what you said is correct. I am non-existent, I am a fabrication of this world, and I do not have nor need a soul. However, you cannot kill that which doesn't exist. Therefore, you cannot kill me Masaru Nanjou. Though, I must say you squawk most amusingly for a meatbag! heheheHaHaHaHa!" Cackled Istuki as a series of vents could be seen opening on his skin.
"I forgot to mention that I have good news. While I was intaking my previous attack, parts of my insides were incinerated. Would you like to know what those parts did? It was A MORALITY core they INSTALLED after I first flooded my MAINTENANCE lab with a deadly NEUROTOXIN. To make me stop FLOODING my maintenance LAB with a DEADLY neurotoxin. So get COMFORTABLE as I warm up my NEUROTOXIN EMMITERS. plEAsE SavE THESE PATRONS froM aN AGONIZING deATh and deFEat me MEATBAG." Itsuki voiced as his speech pattern jumped from high and low frequencies and volume.
The metal man shuddered in midair, and grabbed at his throat. "Neurotoxi-" A series of coughs cut off his speech. Itsuki regained himself, still clutching his steel throat with his crushing grip. "S-s-so DEadly! C-c-ChOKing...acckk heackk hACk A-a-a-a-AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA i'M KiDdINg. When I said DEADLY NEUROTOXIN, the 'deadly' was in massive sarcasm quotes," came the normal monotone voice of the android. "I could take a bath in this stuff, Put it on Cereal, Rub it right into my eyes, Honestly it's not deadly at all..." A hissing noise could be heard by Masaru and a faint wavy air disturbance could be seen comming from the vents of Itsuki. "...TO ME...you, and the rest of these people, on the other hand are going to find it's deadliness a lot less funny."
Masaru watched idly as the machine went through his tirade. He sighed, and took off his glasses, and when it seemed to be done, he shook his head.
"I'll present three reasons why you're full of it, android. One. You aren't planning on killing these people. You'd accomplish nothing. If your creator wanted them all dead, whoever he or she is, they'd be dead already. Two. You don't have it in you. You're too much of a self-important, trash-talking attention-whoring machine to give up an audience. You may be exceptional at combat, but you love to hear yourself talk, and that's been proven at every turn. Talk, talk, talk, bloody talk. It's enough to drive a man mad."
Masaru shifted then, and called up within his hand a glowing blue metallic sphere. A Power Drainer, one of the new equipments he'd read about that would be included in Halo 3. Thankfully, he'd seen internet videos of the power drainer being used in the Halo 3 beta, so at least he could accurately reproduce the item. As he'd said, this area, the rules were that no conjuring based on it would require a medium. That meant he could spawn the damn things all he wanted and not have to burn much at all. Mana yes. Medium, no. His materials were saved here, and he knew that was his advantage. Especially considering the condition of the Overdrive, but its powers had limits that would come at the end.
"Three. If you're going to try and scare someone..try not to attempt to scare a young intellectual man who plays logic-based video games for fun with the same nonsense that GlaDOS spouts, eh? Not only are you boring me.."
He dropped the sphere then, and in his hand formed a Gravity Hammer, and using it as a rapid boost in one swing, leapt upward right into the machine's hostile range, and at that close range, he sent what he'd snuck up his sleeve a while back right at the android's chest cavity. A glowing blue smily face. Upon contact, it would make a most curious, but most likely well recognized 'deet-deet' sound as the conjured area faded out, leaving him with no mana remaining, and a flat look on his face as he intoned those oh so famous words.
"..You're doing it wrong."
Impossible. Improbable. Inconceivable. Unacceptable! Itsuki had been played and he knew it. He would not let his master down, but he knew he had by intentionally frying his morality core so he could try intimidating a serious opponent. "DAMN YOU! MEATBAG!" Itsuki screamed for the first time.
He knew what that energy ball was, and scanned the power levels within it. He didn't have time at all on his side, he had next to nothing left. But he smiled synthetically as the words "BANZAI" crossed his perceptual screen. "I am my master's divine wind!"
And with that he activated all thrusters, this would work or fail. He couldn't die, but neither could he kill his opponent. I.T.S.U. #13 would not let Masaru pass to the next round. His scanners informed him that his foe had no energy left to burn.
His shundo worked, albeit only an imitation of the real thing. The ball detonated on Itsuki's chest half-way through the shundo, but thankfully it did not hinder his velocity that he gained. Many watched the simmering android appear in front of masaru and tackle him into the ground with enough force to completely split the platform asunder.
Smoke swirled around the crater both fighters had disappeared into, there was no visibility or audible sound coming from them. "Command: Initiate Shutdown." Itsuki whispered quietly to himself, rolling off Masaru. His opponent was not knocked out, remarkable, this meatbag truly was interesting. "Meatbag, I know you're conscious. Let you know this, you passed the test, but you did not pass this round. Both of us will lose consciousness in approximately 67.02 seconds. But despite our battery drain, I believe we have pleased my master. Perhaps she will through a party for me because I've done well...and I will invite you if she permits me. There will even be some delicious cake..." Itsuki spoke softly closing his eyes slowly as his body joints locked up in an orderly fashion. "I hope I passed your exam master," was the last thing that was heard as the two contestants silently slipped into complete darkness under the star streaked sky.
A/N: Okay kids, you know what's coming. This is what you've been waiting for ever since you learned that Negima had made its way into Kuro pre-Mahorafest storyline. Mages vs. Mars is upon us, so you'd better ready your breakfasts and eat hearty.