"…so can you tell me where my sword is?" Ky Kiske slid himself off of the table and got into a standing position. He was feeling tired and a little achy, despite the painkillers that this Doctor Ling had given to him. Even so, he willed himself to focus on the immediate problems at hand: he was hungry, in a place he didn't recognize, Dizzy was missing after that incident in France, and now the doctor had informed him that his sword was gone. Things just found a way to get worse.
"What does it matter?" Litchi asked, "It's just a sword, you can get another one, can't you?"
"You don't understand," Ky gasped, then calmed himself down and explained, "that sword is one of the original weapons that was used to defeat the Gears. There is a ton of magic imbued within that sword. If someone else got their hands on it, who knows what they could do with that kind of power?"
Litchi thought for a moment. "Would this weapon be a Nox Nyctores?"
"A what?"
"A Nox Nyctores."
"What the heck is that?"
Litchi rubbed her forehead as she tried to think of a way to explain this in words the foreigner could understand. "Basically, a Nox Nyctores is a weapon or item imbued with magic, like you said. It essentially channels seithr through the item and uses it to amplify the user's own power, but the tradeoff is that the seithr being channeled through the item has a way of amplifying the user's emotions the more it is used. The weapon you describe, this 'Fuuraiken,' sounds quite similar. If it were a Nox Nyctores, you would be experiencing some form of withdrawal symptoms about now…"
"Whatever kind of weapon you call it, I need to find it as soon as possible!"
"…guess I spoke too soon." Litchi scribbled down something else on a notepad, "Tell you what: I'll help you search for this sword of yours if you can help me with a problem of mine."
"I don't have time for this, Doctor. I have urgent business to..."
Ky suddenly paused as Litchi pressed the blunt end of a pen directly under his chin and leaned in uncomfortably close to his face. Litchi was no longer smiling. "You want to find a sword you lost in the lower levels of Kagutsuchi. I want to find a lost friend of mine. You take the deal, help me with this, and I'll try my best to help you find your precious weapon. Or if you want to leave, just pay your fee for the painkillers and I'll let you limp out of here with whatever manly pride you want to keep. Your choice."
"Doctor!" Linhua shouted. "You can't threaten the patient! He shouldn't even be standing!"
"No…it's my choice." Ky gritted his teeth. The painkillers Litchi had given him had helped numb the pain after his fight with Bang, but he had gone through worse back during the Crusades against the Gears. He had to get back down to the lower levels of the city and find the Fuuraiken. If he didn't get it back, the responsibility would fall on his shoulders.
The one time I wish that weirdo Anji was here, and I have no clue where to find him…hell, I wonder if he's even in this world? Is anyone? Am I the only one here?
"So, what do you say?"
"I'll do it."
"Good." Litchi smiled as she pocketed the pen. "I've just got to grab a few things, we're going to make a quick stop first."
"A quick stop? Where?"
"Nothing big, just checking up on the Kaka Clan."
"The Kaka Clan?"
"You've got a lot to learn, Ky." Litchi ducked back into the office and grabbed some medical supplies, stuffing them into an insulated duffel bag. Then she grabbed a few notes about her friend's last known location.
Meanwhile, next to the bed, Ky posed a question to Linhua, "Is she always this tense?"
"Not always." Linhua replied, "Recently she's been a little on edge, obsessively working behind her desk from time to time, but she's a real nice person at heart. I mean, she was nice enough to set up this clinic in Orient Town, to help those who can't afford to go to the hospital."
"You mean they charge people lots of money to get healthy?"
"Yeah. The care is top notch, but if you don't work for the Library or know someone who does, a couple visits are enough to put you in debt for the rest of your life."
"That's horrible…what kind of government would do such a thing?"
"The same one that blew up Ikaruga in an instant?"
"Ikaruga?" Ky remembered hearing that name recently. "The Library? Damn, I thought the politics of my world were complicated." Linhua stared at Ky, dumbfounded. "What's the problem?"
Linhua shook her head "How could you live on this world and not have heard of either of those groups? At least tell me you've heard of the Great War of Magic or the Six Heroes or the Black Beast?" Ky kept his mouth shut. "C'mon, they teach this stuff to children! There's even a picture book about it!"
"You'll have to excuse my assistant," Litchi stepped back into the room, carrying a couple of bags on her shoulders. "We haven't had many customers today, and she's had to deal with being stuck in here for awhile."
"You sure you're gonna be okay, boss?" Linhua whispered to Litchi. "I mean, not only are you going down to the lower levels, but this guy seems to be a few stones short of a Go set. I'm not sure I trust him."
"Don't worry, Linhua. You know me, I can handle a few idiots here and there." Litchi adjusted her panda-shaped hairpiece to emphasize the point. "Lao Jiu hasn't let me down yet."
Linhua shook her head, but decided to accept Litchi's response. "Well, someone's gotta stay and watch the shop, guess I'll do it. Good luck Doctor, and be safe."
A couple of hours had passed, and the white-haired man with the large red coat was getting incredibly tense. He tried his best to hide it, but his foot kept tapping as he surveyed the crowd. He looked at the world map next to the ticket booth: the next stop on his list was the city of Kagutsuchi, where yet another library stood, just begging for him to come.
"What do you mean, cancelled?" A woman in a fur coat shouted, standing outside the ticket booth. "I've had this seat reserved for weeks! I have family to visit! An opera to attend!"
"I'm truly sorry ma'am." The young clerk behind the window stammered, "But the Port of Kagutsuchi has been damaged, and we can't send any more transports until we receive confirmation that it's safe to travel to that city. We are working on other ways to…"
"Get me the manager! I demand to speak to someone in charge!"
The man shook his head as he stood up from the bench. Apparently, the Port of Kagutsuchi was damaged when some pirate airship crashed into it. People were pissed off that the tickets they paid so much for were worthless for now. But for him, it presented an opportunity. The NOL would be too busy dealing with the damage to worry about him, and besides, if he couldn't stow away on an airship, he'd do the next best thing…as soon as his contact arrived anyway.
"Heeeey, Shinigami Dude!" A young punk with headphones around his neck waved to the white-haired man from afar as he weaved through the crowd towards him. "Heeeey!"
The man could only shake his head in disgust. Apparently, "subtlety" and "tact" were foreign words to these people. "You think you could be a little louder?" He growled at the messenger. "I don't think they heard you in Kagutsuchi yet."
"Relax, man. Not like anyone around here wants trouble."
"Look, do you have the stuff or not?"
"Do I have the stuff? Look here, buddy." With one fluid motion, the messenger slipped the backpack off his shoulders and showed the contents inside to the white-haired man.
"…I don't recall asking for a stack of porno mags."
"What?" the young punk looked inside, then blushed, "Aw shit, hold on a sec." He started rummaging through the pack, then eventually located the items he meant to show. "Here you go, custom-designed to help you get in and start the fireworks. Just like last time."
The white-haired man grimaced at the accent of the young punk one more time before reaching in and collecting the scripts: A stealth charm that would keep him relatively out of mind against anyone who wasn't really searching for him, barrier magic to help protect against some basic weaponry the NOL troopers usually carried, a few portable explosive devices and a hacking tool to deal with the act of destroying the Library itself.
"So, Ragna, now that I've done my part…" The messenger held out his hand. Ragna dropped some change in his hand. "Thanks for your help fighting the tyranny of the Library for us. Gotta jet now, Shinigami Dude."
Ragna glanced at the stealth charm as the messenger ran away. If it could hide that guy from the eyes of most people, then it really had to be powerful. Hopefully he wouldn't use it all up trying to hide from those monsters in the world below. Then again, the last one didn't exactly go as smoothly as he had hoped…
It was a relatively simple plan at first…well, simple for Ragna the Bloodedge anyways.
"Hello ladies, gentlemen, and tourists of the Novus Orbis Librarium!" He shouted out in a crowded main hall. "I am Ragna the Bloodedge, and I'm giving everyone here one chance to escape with their lives, before I bring this Library down to the ground!"
Some stood dumbfounded at the man who had stepped into the building and shouted out this proclamation. Others slammed the panic button and ran, their meager salaries not giving them the motivation to confront this person. Some NOL guards surrounded him with various weapons ranging from short swords to rifles, all in disbelief that this idiot could possibly be the SS-class threat the Librarium had warned them about.
"Only 10 of you? Good, I was hoping to wrap this up before dinner." Ragna braced himself for the coming onslaught, hoping that enough civilians got out in time. He really didn't want to be saddled with any more deaths on his conscience than what was necessary.
"Oh come on!" One guard shouted, "He's just one man! Take him down!"
Three guards holding guns fired them at Ragna's body. Ragna whipped out his giant sword and managed to block two of them, but a third hit him in the chest and dropped him to the ground.
"That's it?" The leader of the guards seemed confused, "This is the SS-class threat? How pathetic." He raised his sword up to cut off Ragna's head, already thinking about how he was going to retire on the massive reward the NOL promised for it, but he never had the chance to bring it down as Ragna brought his own sword up and stabbed the guard through the chest, the tip poking through his back.
"That hurt." Ragna grunted as he pulled his sword out of the guard's body. "Even with this healing power…that freaking hurt."
At that point, a few more guards dropped their weapons and ran screaming out the front door, their steps echoing in the mostly empty hall except for the few guards who decided to continue fighting with Ragna the Bloodedge. After all, just one bullet took him down, so it wouldn't be that hard to finish him off, right?
Ragna proved them wrong. He cut through every single guard stupid enough to stay and fight in that main hall. A leg here, an arm there, and a head rolling across the floor marked his presence as Ragna flicked the blood off of his sword and walked to the stairway. Someone here was smart enough to shut off the power to the elevator, so he was going to have to take the long way down. And he was sure that these weren't the only guards foolish enough to challenge him.
Eventually, he managed to get down to the basement level after cutting through several more NOL guards who were either very brave or very foolish. He went about completing his task: overload the power generators that kept the Library running, and place special explosives on them to amplify the destruction and level the building. He restarted the console using the code that he acquired from his contact, but just as he was about to enter in the information, he thought he heard a voice calling out to him over the PA system:
"Raaaaagna?"
He tried to ignore it and continue with his mission, but something about that voice sounded familiar. The voice of a light-hearted young girl…
"Raaaagna? Won't you come and visit me? I'm getting so lonely without you here."
Ragna jumped back as a cluster of flying blades planted itself in the floor where he stood a moment before.
"You're not cheating, are you? That would make me soooo sad, Ragna."
Ragna reached for his sword, but then found himself floating an inch above the floor, unable to gain any traction. The figure that appeared before him appeared to be some kind of small human-shaped robot. The mouth and the hair seemed to be the only indication that there could be anything human about it at all. What the hell was the NOL doing here?
Ragna watched as the robot flew towards him and started cutting him in several different places all over his body. He could only block a few of the strikes. There were simply too many blades to deal with "Who the hell are you?" Ragna shouted, trying to ignore the pain racking his body. "What do you want with me?"
"Awww, you don't know who I am?" The girl's voice on the PA system started to sob a bit. "I'm disappointed Ragna, I thought you were better than that. If you can't do your best, then we can't become one, and that would make me sad."
"So the NOL put some money into an advanced security robot? That's supposed to scare me?" Ragna clenched his artificial fist tightly as a dark aura slowly covered it. "Don't fuck with me!" He leaped up into the air, batting half the blades away with his sword as he closed the distance to the robot. Granted, it wasn't too hard in this small room, but it took substantial strength to break through the localized gravity field.
Ragna swore he heard the robot started spewing out some odd language. Warning, unable to maintain field, anamoly breaking through temporal rift. Recalculating. Recalculating. Recalculating. Ragna kept his eyes on the prize, not letting himself get distracted as his glowing fist smacked the robot in what passed for its face, sending it to the ground.
Before it could get back up, Ragna grabbed his sword and prepared to behead the creature, but just as he was about to do it, the voice came again, "Why are you doing this, Ragna? Don't you love me anymore?"
It couldn't be her. It couldn't be the girl Ragna thought it was. She was dead. She had been dead since that incident with Jin. But why did that voice sound so familiar? Why did this robot's face seem similar? It couldn't possibly be related, could it?
Recovering…launching attack.
Ragna felt invisible blades rise up from the ground and pierce his legs as the robot girl got back up from the ground and then hover a few centimeters above it. Though there was no blood, he felt as if his kneed had just failed him and he sat kneeling on the ground. He couldn't believe it, but then he remembered something Jubei once taught him, "No matter how good or how fast your opponent may be, just one mistake is all you need to turn a losing battle into a winning one." Apparently, he wasn't the only one who knew this lesson.
The physical blades that seemed to have a mind of their own separated from the robot and flew in a sweeping motion at Ragna's neck. Ragna grabbed them with his mechanical hand, then stood up, trying to ignore the pain racking his legs, trying to shut it out like Jubei had taught him awhile ago. This robot girl wasn't going to give him too many more chances.
Error: unable to use physical damage, recharging seithr content for rift access, recharging…
"Having trouble with these?" Ragna asked, still grabbing hard onto the small blades with his mechanical hands as they tried to reset themselves in a defensive position around the robot girl. "Here, allow me to give them back to you…WITH INTEREST!" He leaped into the air again, just like last time with his specialized "Gauntlet Hades" technique, shoving the robot's own blades through its face with some added seithr coursing through his artificial hand. After a bunch of sparks flew out of its caved-in face, the robot collapsed in a heap.
"Oh Ragna, I knew you could do it!" The voice returned over the PA system, even though the robot girl ceased to move. "I just know we're going to have so much fun together! I look forward to seeing you at Kagutsuchi, my dear brother!"
"Brother? What the hell are you talking about?" The PA system went silent as Ragna waited for a response. Finally, he decided to go back to his original mission of destroying the Library, and walked back to the computer to finish his work. He could figure out this weird turn of events later.
[A/N: at some point I'm going to pick a consistent format and stick with it. Review section is open for any praise or complaints.]