Honestly speaking, she really didn't know what was going on anymore.
Her eyes kept glancing at the corpse ridden streets on the way to the airport terminal and she suddenly felt the urge to vomit. What she was seeing was sick.
Just what kind of person would even do such a thing?
She didn't know, nor did she really want to understand why.
If something was wrong, then it was wrong, and that's just how life should be.
"How far away is the airport?" she asked while maneuvering up over the low-rising buildings. The streets were too packed with ghouls, and there was no guarantee that they would reach the airport in time if they took the open streets.
The man she was talking to was presently seated on top of Raising Heart which floated just beside her.
Rather than speak to her right away, the man's attention was focused on her weapon which she couldn't really blame him for. It was probably his first time seeing such a magic weapon that he definitely couldn't help being curious.
"It's called Raising Heart," she gave the name out causally, after the man failed to answer her previous question.
He shrugged after hearing the name, yet it sounded suspiciously like the man had said 'I already know' in reply, but she chalked it up to the stress of the situation getting to her.
At the very least, she now had the man's attention again.
"So, how far away is the airport?" She repeated.
"A couple more miles from here," he answered curtly. "It's currently hidden behind the high-rise buildings, but we'll be able to see it after we pass the next few buildings."
The man scanned the horizon before pushing back a couple strands of his auburn coloured hair and frowning.
She could understand why.
In all the time the two had spent travelling, they hadn't encountered even a single individual in need of aid. This meant to say, that the entire city was already overrun. In the worst-case scenario, there would be no survivors.
The fact that the man had been able fend for himself for so long in the ghoul infested city was remarkable. After all, it was commendable for someone without magic to do such a thing.
She subtly scrutinized the man beside her.
On appearance alone, his clothes differed from the average individual due to the fact that he was basically in a combat uniform. She'd helped the man onto Raising Heart, so she'd felt how sturdy his black combat vest was. Coupled with the black combat pants, she was of the impression that perhaps the man was sent in from the army?
It made sense to her in a way.
Something this big and wide-scale, there was no way that the rest of the world would not know of it. She'd be surprised otherwise because she could not understand the value of hiding something as major as this catastrophe. Therefore, it was likely that the man beside her was part of a recon team surveying the situation before further military intervention.
"Say, what's your name? And what do you know of the situation?" She asked him up front. "I'm Nanoha Takamichi by the way," she introduced.
He looked at her for a moment, and by 'looked,' she meant really looked at her. It was as if he was unable to understand her lack of knowledge. Regardless, he just sighed before scratching the back of his head.
"My name is Shirou Emiya," he supplied helpfully. "And as for what's going on, I thought that I was the only Magus who could be clueless about the moonlit world, but I guess I was wrong."
Her brows furrowed minutely.
Again, the term 'Magus' was used.
What even was that?
Perhaps it was a term assigned to the army personnel for the soldiers sent to deal with supernatural oddities? It didn't sound like too much of a stretch in her mind, and judging from how knowledgeable Shirou appeared to be, he must have had dealt with similar instances before.
Rather than question Shirou on his terminology, she decided to wait and hear him out.
"I'm a wandering mercenary that goes around saving as many people as I can," Shirou admitted while keeping pressure on his leg wound.
For her part, she was still inwardly kicking herself for her earlier blunder.
Shirou continued his explanation, ignorant to the shame present on her facial features.
"In this instance, I'm working with a special task force known as the Enforcers who deal with the emergence of ghouls," Shirou paused and pointed at the walking dead around them. "The things we're dealing with right now, and their progenitors."
"Progenitors?" She echoed his words, not missing the fact that the so-called progenitors were the identified cause of this sick mess.
"Dead Apostles, Vampires if you will," Shirou said in all seriousness.
She startled, her eyes widening. She didn't know the term 'Dead Apostle,' but she did know what a vampire was. However, weren't they supposed to just be monsters of myth and folklore?
They weren't supposed to be real.
"So, you're a Vampire Hunter?" She asked to clarify.
Shirou seemed put off by the title, but he reluctantly nodded because that was literally the objective of his current job. "Honestly, I'd prefer it if you just called me a temporary Enforcer for the time being."
She nodded at his request, not seeing any harm in it. Still, there were many more questions that she wanted to ask like how a normal human got involved with Vampire slaying? Moreover, the biggest question was how he and the other Enforcers ordinarily dealt with a ghoul outbreak?
Now would definitely be a good time for that kind of answer.
The faster that the ghouls were dealt with, the more lives could be rescued.
She opened her mouth in hopes of asking, but Shirou dashed away her enthusiasm,
"Details later." Shirou narrowed his eyes and hardened his expression. "The airport's coming within view."
She had more questions, in fact, she had many, however, Shirou was right. Now wasn't the time.
Like Shirou, she could now see the airport terminal directly ahead of her. It had a large strip with a long paved run way where six planes were parked at their respective terminals. Of the six planes, five were already damaged or were not properly secured to the passenger walk-on bridge.
This left only one plane which was operational.
Around the airport, crowds of ghouls were banging on the steel-meshed fences. The place looked secure, but she along with Shirou were quick to discover a breach in the fence that the ghouls were already crawling through.
"Damn it," she heard Shirou curse beside her.
She glanced away from him in mortification. She was the one who had shot him and prevented him from doing his job. In which case, now it was her turn to do her part. The appearance of a supposed Jewel Seed could wait for later.
Just as the two were nearing the airport, she suddenly dug her heels onto the ground and leapt up to the roof of an adjacent high-rise building. Raising Heart followed her along with Shirou on top of it.
For his part, Shirou was staring at her in confusion which soon vanished the moment that she spoke.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not taking you any further." She put on a hard stance and willed for Raising Heart to deposit Shirou on the roof top.
He fell and landed on his butt, yet the drop wasn't by much so Shirou hardly felt anything. Instead, he was staring at her with incredulousness.
"You can't be serious," he said to her.
She just gave him 'the look,' one that Shirou appeared to be used to because his expression fell.
"Stay here," her tone was curt. "Leave this to me."
Fast healing or not, even now she could still see that Shirou's leg wound had yet to fully heal. Being able to see the white of the bone was a good enough indication if any.
Evidently, Shirou could see that too, but he just didn't care. It was as if he didn't place any value in his own life with how determined he appeared to want to fight her on the issue.
However, she raised a hand when it looked like he was going to protest and glowered. "Enough. You're injured." She'd been trained by professionals in a military type setting so there was a certain authority in her voice. Her eyes narrowed. "Don't make me knock you out."
Perhaps he could see that arguing with her would get him nowhere so he eventually just sighed and relented. "Fine," he sounded exhausted. "But you've got to block them all. No one is to get on the plane."
Obviously.
There was no way that she was going to allow the ghouls to get out of the city and spread the infection outwards. She wouldn't be so stupid. Not when the objective was both clear and concise.
Her mind made up; she didn't put much thought into the depth of Shirou's words.
"No problems. I can handle it."
She crouched low and prepared to leap off from the building before a hand placed itself on her shoulder.
She craned her neck to see Shirou looking at her solemnly.
"Remember, block them all." He looked haggard, almost pained when he spoke.
Right.
Block them all.
That didn't seem so hard.
She nodded once more before jumping and making her way towards the airport
For one reason or another, she felt a chill travel down her back.
She shrugged the feeling away.
She silently landed on the ground; the noise of her feet largely muffled by the shifting and distribution of her weight moments before landing.
Raising Heart was the most visibly conspicuous for stealth as far as weapons go, but in this case, she used it as a distraction. Willing it through her mind, she made it circle to the opposite direction from where she had landed to attract the ghouls over.
Gliding in the air, she made sure to bang it against metal structures to create as much sound as possible.
The ghouls looked over and gradually ambled their way out into the open.
Using the time where the ghouls were distracted, she snuck into the airport before hastily recalling Raising Heart to her side faster than what the standard ghouls could keep track of.
The airport was as empty as she thought it was going to be. Worse, it was a mess.
Papers lay strewn on the floor along with spilled drinks and mangled bodies that she made sure were actually 'dead' before passing them.
The sound of her heels clicking against the smooth floor was the only noise to echo down the hall that she was walking through. Better yet, to prevent her from making any unneeded noise, she sat on Raising Heart in order to float soundlessly.
Apart from the random ghoul that she ran into, the airport just felt like a long maze with both upper and lower floors. However, she didn't get lost because she'd always had an objective in mind.
The northern plane terminal. The only plane that was eligible to fly at the moment was located there.
Rather than just bar the path to the plane, she decided that it would be best if she just destroyed the plane altogether and eliminate the risk. Again, she found herself curious why Shirou had not done so despite what he knew of the situation. Moreover, if Shirou's objective had just been to prevent the ghouls from getting onto a plane and infecting other areas, why didn't he just destroy the entire airport? Assuming that Shirou was from the military or some kind of armed force, then he must have had explosives somewhere on hand.
Her first thought was that Shirou was unable to plant the explosives on his own because there were too many ghouls around. In which case, maybe she could do him a favour and just blast the place with a magical attack from a given distance?
She mulled over the prospect while making her way through the airport's interior, but froze when the real answer smacked her right in the face. She could see them from just off the edge of her vision.
People.
Living people.
Hundreds of them all huddled together and directly within view through the large glass window of the northern terminal where the pilots and citizens had made a barricade.
The city was gone, infested by ghouls. In which case, the planes were the only real way out so it was no wonder that many people had congregated together towards a viable exit.
With living people still inside the airport, it was no wonder why Shirou hadn't just destroyed the place.
Looking at where the people where, it was clear to her that the only reason that they were still around and not boarding the plane was that there were too many ghouls in the way.
Every living person was behind the barricade at the waiting-area side of the plane terminal. There was a small gap that they'd have to cross in order to reach the passenger walk-on bridge, but the journey was precarious.
From the looks of it, the pilots among the group of survivors, possessed the means to open the lock on the plane and directly operate it. However, just like the rest of the survivors, they were trapped.
Assessing the situation, she didn't waste another moment and directly charged in.
Raising Heart appeared like a bladed weapon, and it wasn't just for show.
It's edge could be plenty sharp, and coupled by its weight, it was no joke to assume that she could kill someone with a single swing of an arm.
Melee was the best for the given circumstance. If she fired off any magical shots, then there was a risk of alerting more ghouls to her location.
In that case, fight.
She held Raising Heart with both of her hands, and powered herself with magical energy to bolster her speed.
Presently, due to the distraction she had made with Raising Heart before hand, only three ghouls were left barring the way from the group of people and the plane.
She was confident to say that they stood no chance from the moment that she attacked.
Her feet planting into the ground, and the ghouls stupidly close to each other, she struck all three in the head with a single precise blow.
Silence.
She looked down the long wide hall that she had come from and breathed a sigh of relief when no other ghouls appeared to be coming.
Now came a different problem entirely.
The people who'd barricaded themselves for safety were staring right at her with apprehension and wonderment.
Seeing that she was a human though, and didn't appear to hold any animosity towards them, the people slowly began to take down the barricade that they'd set up.
It was at this point that she came to a dark realization.
She was standing between the people that she ought to be saving, and the only plane out of the city.
She recalled Shirou's words and suddenly shuddered.
How could she block them?
I-It wasn't right. This was awful.
Everything about what Shirou had asked her to promise just seemed wrong at this moment.
The people finished removing the barricade and were moments away from running towards the plane walk-on bridge, but faltered when they saw that she was standing directly in front of it.
"I-I'm sorry, but I can't let you go," she forced the words out.
She was faltering. She damn well that she was faltering already. However, she wasn't a little girl anymore and she knew that there must have had been some risks that she hadn't yet considered but Shirou already knew.
He didn't seem the type to abandon people for no reason.
That was why she had to stop them.
Raising Heart was held in front of her, but there was no strength in her grip. In fact, her hands were trembling, her lips pursed.
"What, why?"
"Hey! Weren't you sent here to help us?!"
"This can't be happening."
The people looked at her pleadingly, many even dropping to their knees. Of the entire city of people, only this handful of several hundred that had taken refuge in the airport were left.
Against her better judgment, Raising Heart lowered from its combat ready stance.
"Go," she relented under their gazes. "Hurry. I'll hold off any ghouls that appear."
The people looked at her with such gratitude that it was hard to meet their gazes. Moreover, it wasn't that she couldn't meet their gazes, but more because she was going back on her word.
The pilots headed in first, making a mad dash towards the plane cabins before the rest of the people promptly followed in a massive crowd.
In truth, it felt as if everyone would have had started pushing and shoving each other to reach the plane if her presence wasn't there to ensure their safety. She supposed that was a good thing because she'd heard that panicking crowds often resulted in death by trampling and that was something that she didn't want to see.
While overseeing the people moving to board the plane and feeling inwardly conflicted, a child accidently bumped into her.
She looked down and her eyes instantly widened when she noticed the distinct bite mark hidden by a bandage on the child's left hand.
She'd already seen and heard from Shirou what it means to get bitten by a ghoul, and that was why, her mind blanked on her.
The child's mother was quick to arrive and cover the bite wound with a piece of cloth. Thereafter, the mother directly attempted to leave.
"Wait, stop," she called out.
The mother's complexion paled considerably while pulling the child closer into a hug.
The mother definitely knew that the child was bitten; the pleading expression in the mother's eyes was evident enough and the way that the mother anxiously stared at her was heart wrenching.
Just like her, everyone alive within the airport understood what it meant for a person to be bitten. It was like the old zombie moves; they were infected.
She couldn't allow the child to board the plane, but did that mean that she'd have to wrench a mother away from their own kid?
The thought caused her to tremble.
Wait. Just wait.
Maybe they could get help.
This was real life, not the movies. There had to be some way to help instead of ruthlessly abandoning everyone who was infected.
Maybe Shirou might have a method, but there was no guarantee.
"Block them all."
Shirou's instruction came to the forefront of her mind, causing her to feel a sense of guilt and doubt. If he had a method to save everyone infected, then why would he have had insisted that she block them all? She'd promised him that she would follow through with his instructions, but now here she was 'allowing' people to board the plane terminal behind her.
What was she supposed to do?!
Battlefield experience or not, this wasn't a battlefield, it was her home. Earth.
This type of battle was different from all of the battles that she'd ever faced before simply because none of the people desperately wishing to be saved were 'enemies,' but instead 'victims.'
This was a war of morality.
This was playing God, choosing who lives and who dies regardless of good and evil, and she was the judge.
"T-Thank you."
Caught in her musings, the mother took it as a sign of pity and quickly moved herself and her child into the group of people moving towards the plane. The mother and the child, were quickly swept into the tide of hurried citizens.
"Ah, wait!" She called out frantically, but perhaps realizing the situation for what it was, the mother refused to respond back. Worse, there were too many people, making it impossible to locate the mother in the crowd.
Shit. Fuck.
No. NO.
This was bad.
She felt a weightlessness growing in her stomach, an abyssal pit with no bottom.
What had she done?
Moreover, she suddenly came to the realization, that perhaps there were many more hidden infected within the crowd of people boarding the plane. Everyone wanted to survive, and if revealing themselves as 'bitten' would guarantee death, then no one would ever logically bring attention to themselves.
It had only been a coincidence that she'd seen the infected child. No one else would be so careless to reveal themselves again.
Then now what?
Stop everyone from boarding?
There was no way that they would listen.
The situation only got worse.
Unlike her who'd floated atop Raising Heart, the moving crowd of people were making noise. A lot of noise.
A crowd of Ghouls appeared at the end of the large airport hall.
Panic was quick to ensue and she was still caught up on what her proper course of action should be. As a result, she just stopped thinking.
By stopping herself from thinking, however, wasn't that the same as handing over the burden to someone else?
Calm down. Breathe. You can do this.
Right. Just focus on the task at hand. Life was important. No one should be able to decide who lives and who dies.
Besides, even if this was the first time that she was dealing with a mass magic related infection, there had to be some sort of cure. She believed that there had to be because she didn't want to think about the outcome if there wasn't.
That kind of future wasn't worth fighting for.
Her thoughts ground to a halt, time seeming to freeze as she looked to the incoming ghouls and then to the crowd behind her.
Should she tell them? To warn them of the danger of infected people boarding the plane? They had a right to know.
However, how could she? Further panic would ensue and no one infected would be cooperative in the least. The fact that ghouls were coming was only making things harder. It was a rock and a hard place.
Her lips pursed together, and in order to focus her mind, she pinched the side of her stomach. Hard.
She chose not to tell them for the time being because she refused to believe that killing or abandoning others who were infected would ever be the correct answer.
She winced, but the momentary pain placed her body on auto pilot. She could see the ghouls approaching quickly and in response, she aimed Raising Heart to fire at them from a distance.
Aim for the head.
She took Shirou's advice seriously and never aimed for anywhere else since the damage could just be shrugged off.
In the mean time, the people continued to board the plane unaware of the hidden danger.
Those people will die because of your softness.
A voice whispered within her, a direct result of her guilt eating away at her.
Infection was fast. She'd already seen the way that a woman turned into a ghoul in a matter of minutes after being caught near the high-rise building that she'd first met Shirou at. Moreover, the fact that she'd hesitated and had allowed an infected passenger into the plane meant that even though she meant well, nothing good had come from her actions of giving way to the survivors.
She should have had maintained a hard stance.
The grip that she had over Raising Heart subconsciously tightened while she felt her insides constricting from self-doubt. She didn't know what to do anymore. Everything was spiraling out of control and at this point, a thought came to her mind.
'Kill everyone.'
Suddenly, she felt like she understood why Shirou appeared so pained and weary when last, she'd seen him. Perhaps he already knew that the situation would come to this, but for the sake of saving as many as possible, he forced himself into action anyway.
She suddenly pictured what sort of expression he'd make when he eventually realized that she didn't follow his words through and in turn, jeopardized the lives of the people boarding the planes. In retrospect, it would have had been far safer for the people if they had just remained behind the barricade.
After all, up in the air, there was no escape.
Stop.
Stop it right now.
No more. No more thinking.
This wasn't the time.
Fire. Just keep firing.
You weren't wrong.
There was still time.
These people still could be saved somehow.
She got into a crouched stance and leveled Raising Heart at waist height. It was supported by two balancers located at the tip of Raising Heart's muzzle where two blade-like surfaces converged together at the opening.
Magical power began to build and condense into a ball at the tip of her weapon.
Shocked gasps could be heard from the crowd of people still making their way towards the plane, and for her part, she paid them no attention. Given the situation, it was impossible to keep her magic away from common view.
It was either use her magic and reveal magic to Earth's populace, or let the people depending on her die.
She chose the former option.
She didn't care if the existence of magic was known. Not now.
"Raising Heart," she intoned her weapons name, a thrum of magical energy coalescing into several bands of ring-like structures around her. "Fire."
Her attack wasn't anything fancy.
The ball of magical energy that she'd gathered and focused at the front of her weapon shot out several energy beams that struck the heads of all the incoming ghouls at the front.
"Y-You, what did you just do?"
She stiffened, and glanced behind her.
Something inside her snapped when she realized that the people that she was defending were literally just gawking at her. "GO!" She yelled.
Jolted at her voice, the people resumed boarding the plane until there was no one left but herself at the entrance of the plane terminal.
She fired and fired and fired, till eventually, nothing was left.
Empty.
The open hall was now empty.
She tossed Raising Heart beside her, unwilling to hold it for the time being in favour of using her hands to steady herself against the wall.
She felt nauseas.
With the issue of the ghouls dealt with, it only left her more time to realize the consequences of her actions.
Minutes passed in a tense silence, and for her part, she kept staring at the plane through the glass window of the north side waiting terminal.
The pilots were the first to enter the plane, but for some reason, the engines have yet to turn on despite how desperate everyone seemed to escape.
A sinking feeling soon began to envelop her as the prospect of something already having gone wrong in the plane caused her to swallow nervously. Things weren't supposed to turn out this way.
A groaning sound abruptly entered her ears and it was close. Too close.
She swiveled on her feet to see a ghoul that had been hidden beneath a waiting seat suddenly arrive in front of her. Admittedly, she'd missed it in her inattentiveness, and she barely had any time to react.
"Duck," a voice carried in the wind.
What?
Confusion struck her first, but instinct prompted her to follow.
She dropped flat onto the floor and felt a rush of air and power whistle past above her.
Light gleamed from off of the corner of her eye, reflected by a hardened steel surface.
The ghoul in front of her let out a choked gag before falling limp to the object that pinned it by the head into the far wall.
She opened and closed her mouth, her throat suddenly feeling dry.
Smooth and pristine, it was a far cry from anything that she would have had ever expected for a projectile.
It was a twisted sword.
More than that, magic suffused its form from tip to pommel.
It was magic.
A magic that she reminded herself was all too rare to be found on Earth.
Her head snapped to the direction where the sword was launched from, and it was there where she saw Shirou's form down the hallway. A black bow nearly longer than he was tall, was held fast in his hands. The wound on his leg was accounted for by a make-shift splint.
She had no words.
She momentarily forgot the matter at hand as she suddenly came to the realization that Shirou was just like her. One of the rare humans on Earth who was born with the ability to use Magic.
In the words of the Space-Time Administrative Bureau,
An Exceptional Earthling.
Sorry for shorter update: Final Exams have officially started and I had to attend a course review session today to prepare for my first one. It's going to start getting busy these coming weeks, but if I manage my time right, things should go well regardless. Hope for the best, and thanks for reading!
Next Update: Fate in Time
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