The purposes of creating this story are for exploiting the possibility "If it is Mukuro Hoshimiya Shido Itsuka meets on that fateful day, will he take another path, by holding her hand and following her to wherever she goes, leaving everything else behind, instead of becoming what he is in the source materials?" mentioned in HansenHan's story "Shido's Escape from this Dangerous World"; also for novelizing several magnificent images of Shido and Mukuro's couple-pairing published on Pixiv, illustrated by 星宮家の翼騎.
My gratitude to HansenHan and 星宮家の翼騎, for generously bestowing me this wonderful inspiration.
Prelude: Close Encounter of the Mukuro's Kind
April 10th, Night
Shido Itsuka lazily leans on a sling chair set on the balcony of his home, and is enjoying Sphärenklänge, Walzer, Op. 235, composed by Josef Strauss, as well as the starry night sky of late spring, with a glass of beverage in hand. Despite having finished the special training "to become the Goodwill Ambassador for Homo sapiens and Spirits" long ago, he's still a busy man of occupation: Reverse-engineering advanced technologies brought by the Spirits and putting the results in good applications, like replicating and combining Spirit-originated techs with Earth-based techs, even sometimes being put in charge of suppressing criminal activities, terrorism, and repelling those who have ill intentions to Spirits. Shido himself is quite an enthusiast regarding his duties, as he once said "money's good, the scenery changes and they let me carry the Licence to Kill", and on the other hand, this is also the very reason for him to cherish leisure time even more, since a sustainable development starts with a good balance between on-duty and off-duty.
But — a very big "but", at the night of this fateful day, something, many things, will never be the same.
"Is that a satellite? Or a spacecraft? Maybe a space station?" Since the dawn of the Space Age, there're always light-dots representing human-made, off-atmospheric vehicles passing through the night sky, and they've been thoroughly cataloged in timetables by different individuals and organizations. However according to those timetables, there shouldn't be any orbiters transgressing the sky dome above Tengu City tonight. "So what is that? A UFO?" Shido can't help joking about the light-dot that catches his attention, which is moving through the canopy of stars with a perceivable speed. Then he immediately regrets about his previous joke, for that uncatalogued light-dot becomes brighter and brighter, also moves faster with each passing second, an evidence of being caught by Earth's gravitational pull and is falling to the city.
In minutes, it turns into a meteor, then a meteorite.
Jumping off from the sling chair, Shido rushes into room and ascertains the position of the meteorite's crash site via a computer. Finders keepers, laws in this country support the first one who finds an ownerless treasure to claim his discovery, and a massive meteorite in good condition is extremely valuable, so it's impossible for him not to check out the crater for recovering what's left in it.
Thirty Kilometers West of Tengu City's Outskirts
April 10th, Night
Shido teleports himself to his destination thanks to a certain portable device "Individual Teleportation Pack" — replicated from one of the basic capabilities of a Spirit — medium/short-range self-teleportation. The crater is right in front of him, but unnaturally, it's enveloped in a layer of soft light of golden color, instead of venting sizzling steam or smoke. "I've heard of iron meteorites and nickel meteorites, but this, a meteorite formed by gold? Or some unknown radioactive elements?" The (male) protagonist activates another portable device, replicated from another basic capability possessed by Spirits — materializing combat gear (Astral Dress) from quantum-level — to conceal himself into a fully-enclosed NBC-proof exoskeleton suit.
(On a side note, Shido himself participated, even led the R&D and field tests of aforementioned technologies/equipment; and on another side note, the position of this crater will be where Le Château des Délices is constructed, not necessarily a coincidence)
Stepping forward, the boy surveys the fresh depression on the ground, then draws a preliminary conclusion "It's too priceless to be placed in my humble cottage". For there is no meteorite in the crater, but a girl in status of hibernation.
And this girl is a bishoujo with unearthly beauty.
Her face is like being designed by a famous Japanese cartoonist with utmost carefulness; her skin is flawlessly snowy; and despite petite in figure, her voluptuousness largely surpasses Barbie, not to mention being further amplified by the purple, constellation-patterned sleeveless cheongsam with long hems and thigh-slits, also with a wide opening above chest, plus by the high-heeled thigh-boots. In addition to such top-tier configuration, she also has golden hair almost fifty percent longer than her body-length, which is partially bonded into two buns by ribbons and looks like a flowing golden river for being moderately curly and being fanned-out. Even Shido had already seen hundreds of different attractive females during his "special training", but she's a completely different story and his heart skips a beat upon seeing her, the only thing he can think of is Kaguya-hime, the fabled Moon Princess featured in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.
So what he will do? Bringing this hime-chan home and isolating her from the outside like what transpires in that famous folklore? Of course not. Agreed, Shido Itsuka is never a saint, but it doesn't mean he never has a clear sentiment of prioritizing his duty above his personal gain. Stepping back, the bishoujo's finder takes out his communication device.
"Adding auxiliary power units here, here, and here, should be able to relive electricity surges and increase transportation distance…" Somewhere in Tengu City, Kotori Itsuka and Origami Tobiichi are studying a hard-light hologram projected by a device resembling a pool table, which turns out to be a large-sized teleportation platform. Just when the screen-wall nearby displays the transmission from Shido.
"I'll hang up immediately if you're not inviting us for midnight snacks." Kotori jokes.
Origami: "What you want to say is 'I'll hang up immediately if you're not inviting us for midnight snacks and a threesome sex in your bedroom'."
Shido simply shows them the crater. Seconds of silence, then Kotori and Origami sprint to the door in unison and subsequently get themselves stuck in doorframe.
A struggling Kotori: "Back off! I'm going through!"
Origami: "You're the one to back off!"
"Gals, I have a better idea: Teleporting yourselves to my position." Shido, watching the drama via video communication, says calmly. A dew of sweat, with manga-like visual effects, appears on each bishoujo's head, respectively.
"Gimme the sitrep." Half an hour later, Shido enters a special single infirmary ward.
"She's alright." Origami drives at the blonde beauty on the sickbed, who's still in hibernation and is being monitored by numerous non-invasive probes of futuristic designs: "She's been asleep for millennia like we did, it'll take time to wake up, like warming up a machine."
"How long until she wakes, can you be more specific?"
"I can't. After all, we Spirits are ultimate bio-weaponry lifeforms, not machines."
"Fine." Shido switches to another topic: "Minor question: I find it's hard believe you two, as Spirits, have no idea about the fact that a Spirit can come to existence in outer space."
Kotori: "Well, large portions of our memories are inaccessible as we mentioned before, like 'Where we came from' and 'Who created us'. We don't know why, maybe out of our creator's concern of maintaining confidential info from being leaked."
Shido: "That's exactly why I'm more and more convinced that your creator, no matter being what a genius scientist and a gifted engineer, is not very smart, even kinda stupid." The silver-haired bishoujo and the red-haired bishoujo don't express any objections.
(Mio Takamiya & Shinji Takamiya: Why we sense our feelings are hurt?)
"I'll take over from here." The boy tells the gals to leave him and…for lack of a better word, "the extraterrestrial visitor" alone. According to the special training he completed, as the Goodwill Ambassador for Homo sapiens and Spirits, his primary duty is approaching the Spirits and establishing lover relationships with them, for neutralizing their hostility and achieving a peaceful coexistence between the two races. Based on this job description, he must make contact with them ASAP, and in the best-case scenario, letting the very first human seen by a Spirit being none other than himself, the difficulties of follow-up work will be greatly reduced.
"Such a crime." Watching the sleeping beauty's peaceful and innocent expression intently from close-range, Shido can't help sighing in heart: "Who can expect this angelic golden fairy is actually a demonic doomsday weapon? That's exactly why I always want to confront the Spirits' creator face-to-face." The day is breaking, he stands up and moves to the windows to look outside for a while, also slightly adjusts joints of his waist and limbs, before returning to his watching on her.
Then he finds her eyes has opened and are looking at him. Golden-colored irises, as if rare and precious ambers. So beautiful…his heart skips a beat again.
"おはようございます。" The Spirit opens her cherry lips and greets the boy with a gentle smile.
"おはよう。" Shido also smiles gently to her, as if they had known each other since a long time ago.