Lazy writing is the best.
"Cid! Wake up!" Without even a second for her words to reach him, Claire Kagenou used her whole body's strength to flip Cid's bed and send him soaring through the air.
"Oof?!" Cid dove face-first to the ground, just barely missing his desk by a small margin. He actually had to use a bit of magic for it, as face planting the edge of the robust furniture wouldn't have been fun at all.
"Look at you, sleeping so soundly while the world's ending!" She huffed, moving her raven hair out of the way.
"Oowww… What are you talking about, sis?" Cid played dumb as easily as he breathed. Sensing the fluctuation of magic came to him naturally, he almost couldn't not do it since his training demanded all of his senses to be as sharp as his blade.
Indeed, the eminence in the shadows needed to be strong. But his senses had to be even stronger, magnitudes so, if he pretended to come and go unnoticed and not have others do the same to him.
(It also helped that he was partly responsible for the catastrophe his sister was talking about.)
Claire went to the windows and opened the curtains, revealing what looked like a dimensional hole floating in the middle of the sky.
"Look! Don't you see anything strange here? Can't you sense the wrongness coming from that thing?!" Her attitude wasn't too different from the usual though, so Cid felt confident in his next move.
"Eeeeehhhh?! The sky! There's something gross in the sky!" Masterfully unravelling his Mob Fu technique, Cid shook his arm while pointing at the sphere with countless seals around it.
Nailed it.
"Oh, Cid. You didn't even realise?" Claire asked with that mix between disappointment and encouragement she used on him all the time "No wonder you were sleeping so peacefully."
She still smacked him on the head, though. Like the ass she was "Get dressed. We have to be in the dining hall right now, this is important."
Cid grumbled while caressing his head, he continued to do so until Claire left. At which point he sped through his room to get himself changed.
She would be waiting outside, just in front of the door, but Cid's slime suit made changing clothes a process one thought away from completion. So he used the extra minutes to contemplate the spatial rift that he had (unwittingly) helped create.
"Kukukuku…" He laid his back on the edge of the window and laughed ominously (it was necessary). The last dive into his previous world scored him some cookie points with its inhabitants, and if he got lucky, the presence of Shadow Garden would spread through rumours and bounty hunts.
They supposedly got on the bad side of some big shots, but Cid couldn't care less about that. He cared about the name of Shadow being spread, taking roots in the dark. A presence no one knows about yet everyone knows by name.
Yes. That sounds super cool. The perception of this eminence had to go in that direction, so maybe next time he opened a portal he'd leave a few living 'targets' to spread his name even more.
But wouldn't that make it seem like Shadow could fail? That didn't sound as cool. Image is the most important thing, after all. Cid failed all the time, but Shadow needed to have a spotless record. He had to balance spreading a reputation with actually keeping the one he already had.
Certainly, an endeavour that would take time.
"Cid! Are you done?!" Claire yelled from behind the door "Or do you want me to go in and change you myself?!"
"I'm almost done!" Cid yelled back, sighing while cradling his forehead. He couldn't believe how easily his sister ruined the mood. Maybe a last one liner would help him cheer up "...The common folk look up and wonder, yet they ignore the mysteries hiding beneath."
Eh, close enough. Not something he could say as Shadow, but it'd have to do.
"Jeez, you're so slow." His sister scowled once he got out of his room "What if the school was in danger?"
"I'd be found with my pants down." Cid answered with little hesitation, earning him a smack on the shoulder.
"It's not funny! I'm serious, I can't always be by your side to protect you." Claire dragged him by the uniform's collar as she scolded him. She didn't seem too much unlike her usual self, so Cid took it as a sign that everything was alright.
"Let us be honest: Nothing's alright." Princess Iris Midgar stated while the people she had summoned to the room looked on "By now everyone's noticed the hole in the sky, and the magic circles sealing it emit so much magic that we might as well parade around proclaiming something happened."
"At least there's nothing coming out of the hole." Alexia Midgar, the second princess, pointed out while the school personnel nervously eyed the dimensional rift through the window "The magic set in place seems strong, so if we hurry we should be able to set up some form of contingency plan."
"That's the issue." The older princess closed her eyes, lowering her head as the words got stuck within for a moment "This is not our magic. Whatever's on the other side casted the sealing circles and is keeping the rift in check… Or in place."
Shock ran through the features of most of the gathered people, the second princess included. Although it became apparent some people already knew or at least suspected, especially the scholars. Those more savvy in the theoretics of magic and more esoteric concepts could've figured it out by now. And it didn't take a genius to realise the unlikeliness of the Midgar Kingdom managing to pull off such a feat in but a single night. The level of absurdity Princess Alexia had only seen once…
"Sister… Could it be that Shadow Garden is involved in this incident as well?" Alexia asked, closing her eyes a bit as the memory of Shadow's magic explosion almost physically blinded her for a moment. She knew no single spellsword could output as much magical power as the leader of Shadow Garden, so if there was someone that could have sealed off the rift…
"We cannot discard the possibility." The older princess replied with a severe expression "But for now whether this is their, or anyone else's responsibility, is irrelevant to us. We have to mobilise and be prepared in case the seals wear off. The hole is right above the academy, so it's imperative to take care of the students and allow for a smoother transition for the kingdom's forces."
"Fortunately, the rift seems to be shrinking." One of the more veteran-looking members of the Crimson Order commented "At least, that's how it seemed this morning compared to midnight. Compared to the assault on the academy, this incident is… Well. Not benign, but very tame if we don't account for the scale of power needed to pull it off."
The people nodded, even if gingerly. No one wanted to point out how much better it would be for things to be normal for once. Alas, the academy dedicated to building powerful magic warriors was full of cowardly people.
"Hold on." Claire Kagenou cut in when she didn't see any objections, raising a hand to respectfully take the word in spite of her scowl "I just left my little brother at the dining hall, and assured him everything would be under control. Princess, you are not suggesting we cross our arms and do nothing, right?"
"Of course not." Princess Iris assured the student without missing a beat "But our duties will be limited to letting the scholars do their job, and prepare everything needed if, or when, we evacuate everyone from the academy."
"You're thinking of using us as manual labour?" The younger princess asked what some were thinking, albeit more disappointed than scandalised.
"If needed be." In spite of the ambiguous response, Princess Iris' confirmed her sister's suspicion rather well "Not just us, but all personnel available not directly involved with studying the space hole. We have no enemy to fight as of yet, so we must prioritise everyone's safety."
"And if someone does come knocking at our door?" The Kagenou sister asked, frowning at having the attention robbed off her without the answers she wanted.
"We'll do regular patrollings." The red-haired princess answered, then turned to her second in command "Mostly to ring an alarm, our people must have their weapons available at all times. It might sound like extra work when we're not fighting, but we must be prepared for everything."
"These situations never get resolved easily." The man sighed but nodded "Understood. It shall be as you command."
The princess nodded, looking at the strange phenomena surrounded by magic circles through the window.
"I can't begin to imagine what sort of group would have this sort of power…"
"Are you sure it's a group?" Princess Alexia insisted.
"Alexia, there's no single individual that can possibly boast this much power." The elder sister sighed, raising a hand when her sister wanted to argue "It's just impossible. Neither Lady Beatrix nor anyone for that matter. It's just plainly impossible."
"Sirzechs-chan." The Demon Lord of Leviathan, Serafall Leviathan, spoke up to get her fellow devil's attention "I brought you a smoothie, wanna swap?"
"Ah, thank you." The crimson Demon Lord smiled, standing from his cross-legged position and accepting the drink "Give me a moment, Grayfia?"
The Demon Lord waited for his wife to act, staying within a very complex magic circle that reacted to the devil maid when she used her power.
The room itself shone with varying inscriptions that covered every wall, floor and ceiling of the building. Its complexity could only come from the likes of Ajukas Beelzebub, and its continued power could only be thanks to the likes of his fellow Demon Lords.
The circles Sirzechs occupied stopped glowing and the crimson haired Demon Lord stepped out, while Serafall stepped in before Grayfia activated it again and allowed it to continue doing its thing.
Neither Demon Lord wore their usual attire, but that didn't matter all that much. They weren't on official business, but rather answered the distress call they built into the town when they handed it to their respective little sisters. The dimensional rift worried them greatly, so they dragged Ajukas from his workshop and had him slap some devil formula together to keep the hole in reality contained with their demonic power.
The only downside? Ajukas was salty from being removed from his NEET crib, so he put the damn thing in a very uncomfortable place with a built-in mechanism (which neither knew how to undo) to vaporise any sort of comfort tools they tried to put in place. So the Demon Lord fueling the mechanism had to sit on the floor until the others had finished stretching and recovered from the sheer boredom of having a tiny fraction of their power taken away at a time.
But they would endure it. Because they had a smile to protect. For them, putting off their work meant nothing if it meant their bright, beautiful little sisters glow with appreciation to them.
It filled both with determination.