Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing in this fic except for a few OCs. Most of the OCs are taken from "Second Chances" by 'Fuujin of Shadows'.
If you asked her, Maya would easily agree that she was somewhat of an oddball in her family. After all the Yotsuba were known for being rather secretive and serious. So a sunny person like her tended to stick out in a clan full of people who looked like they were perpetually pissed off or plotting someone's murder.
Still, not even Maya could remain optimistic in the current precarious predicament that she had found herself in. After all, the last thing she expected when going out on a cultural exchange program with her fiancé was a group of armed people hellbent on kidnapping her.
It wasn't like she didn't try to fight back. She tried her best, as much as physically possible by a twelve-year-old but the truth was that she was horribly outmatched in terms of combat strength. The guards that had been assigned to them had all been killed and if it wasn't for the shock factor, Maya would have probably broken down then and there.
When her fiancé, who was supposed to protect her ran away from their assailants, Maya had lost all hope of escaping. She had resigned herself to whatever fate awaited her and from the depraved looks on the faces of her opponents, it wasn't a good one. A lesser person would have broken by now but Maya wouldn't allow her enemies the satisfaction of seeing her break.
However, fate apparently had something else in store for her as the situation she had found herself in changed once again within seconds. All twenty of the men that surrounded her vanished completely leaving nothing but a tiny blue flame and some ashes behind. It didn't take a genius to know that someone had saved her. While she was curious to learn how someone was able to cast magic through such a high concentration of Cast Jamming, she was more concerned with thanking whoever it was that helped her.
However, her unknown savior never showed themselves. Maya waited for a few minutes but no one ever came. Just as she was about to give up and try and contact her family, something unexpected happened.
A portal had opened up near her.
Teleportation magic was something that even Maya knew about. Although it was not considered to be as important as The Three Great Puzzles or The Cardinal Codes, the technique to facilitate teleportation was something that every magician wanted to get their hands on. However, the fact of the matter was that Space-time was an absolute even for magicians who could bend the rules of reality to absurd degrees without actually breaking them. But the fact remained that there was portal in front of her which connected to one of the Yotsuba's houses, right in front of her.
Maya was temporarily unable to react to what was happening in front of her but she soon felt that someone had cast magic on her. With the Cast Jamming gone, she could have resisted the magic but her instincts told her that it wasn't anything dangerous. The mysterious magician lifted her and unceremoniously dropped her into the other side of the portal before closing it. With that, she was truly saved.
It took her a little while to register her new surroundings. It was one of the older houses owned by her family which was currently not used by anyone. With no signs of anyone appearing, she decided to contact her family.
She took her personal communication device out and dialed her father's personal number. The call was connected almost immediately.
"Hello? Maya? Is that you? Are you alright?" The concerned voice of her father could be heard from the other side. Maya knew her that her father was a calm and collected person under ordinary circumstances so his panicking must have meant that he had heard about what happened to her.
"I am fine Otou-san. Somebody saved me."
"Really? Where are you right now? Are you safe?"
"I'm currently in our old house in Kyoto."
"How did you? Never mind. I'll come and pick you up right now and then we can talk." With that, the line was cut.
At the same time, The Yotsuba main house.
"Did you find something?" Yotsuba Yasuyo asked her husband. She had been worried sick since the news of the attack on Maya had been made known to them fifteen minutes ago.
"Maya just contacted me" Genzou replied. "She is currently in our old house in Kyoto, she said."
"Is she safe? And how did she get there from Taipei?" Yasuyo asked.
"I don't know. We'll have to ask her once we make sure that she is safe. For all I know, someone might have put her under an illusion that made it look like she was in Kyoto." Genzou was no stranger to Mental Interference Magic. His mother used it quite proficiently and both his wife and daughter were geniuses at utilizing it. There was a high chance that someone had put Maya under an illusion for some nefarious purposes.
"Wait! I'll come with you." Yasuyo said.
"No, you need to stay here with Miya. She's quite shaken by the news even if she is trying not to show it. She needs someone to be with her. I'll take Motosuke with me." Genzou replied as he finished dressing. He then dialed his brother's number.
"Hello aniki? Did we find her?" Motosuke usually liked making small talk with his family but it was not the time for such things and he knew it.
"Not yet but I need you to come with me to check something out. I just got a call from Maya that she was in our house in Kyoto. I want to see if it is true." Motosuke was the strongest in the Yotsuba when it came to combat. Even Genzou had to cede the title of the strongest fighter in the Yotsuba to his brother. On the off chance that it was an ambush, Motosuke's presence would help tremendously.
"Aniki, you know that it's probably an ambush, right? There is no way Maya can physically move from Taipei to Kyoto in under fifteen minutes.
"I know. But I still want to take a look. Maya spoke like she meant what she said and I don't want to miss any chance. Even if it is an ambush, we could possibly find out the culprit."
"I'll be right there."
Maya was bored. While she shouldn't have been bored since she had gone through an exciting experience, the fact was that she was bored. Two hours had passed since she had contacted her father. Since the house she was currently occupying was not in use, there wasn't anything in there that could keep her entertained. However, her waiting was done when she heard a vehicle pull up in the front yard of the house. Since the house was a Yotsuba property, it was impossible for someone else to enter the premises by opening the gates.
Her father and uncle were there, standing in front of the house.
"Otou-san!" She ran into the arms of her father who said nothing and simply lifted her off the ground and hugged her.
No more words were spoken between the father and daughter and soon they went back to the main house.
"So you are telling me that someone made every single one of your attackers disappear and opened up a portal from Taipei to here without them ever being seen even once?" The entire Yotsuba main family had gathered around their youngest who had been retrieved safely much to the relief of the clan. Genzou was currently questioning his daughter.
"Yes. I couldn't sense anyone near me as it happened." Maya replied. She was as stumped as they were.
"Is that even possible?" Genzou's question was aimed towards Eisaku who was the most knowledgeable among the Yotsuba when it came to magic.
"All I can say is that it certainly isn't impossible. The need for visual confirmation to activate magic can be circumvented to a reasonable degree using some specialized CADs. However, I haven't heard of anyone capable of accomplishing this feat with the ease that Maya described to us. From her words, we can infer that the magician in question used some form of Decomposition and those spells usually require visual input." Eisaku replied.
"Whoever it is, they did us a solid, right? Did you find out who is responsible for the attack, Nii-san?" Motosuke asked.
"It's Dahan. Once I got access to some of the deeper channels, it was easy to track them down." Eisaku replied.
"What about the young Saegusa? Is he still alive?" Genzou was a thoroughbred combat magician. The concept of fleeing from a fight was something that he was incapable of even thinking of. So the fact that his daughter's fiancé, (former fiancé if Genzou had any say about the matter) ran away while leaving her behind didn't bode well with him.
"The gaki's fine. He was taken in by the Japanese Consulate. The Saegusa are already trying to retrieve him."
"So, what are we going to do?" Motosuke asked. "Although the attempt failed, it is undeniable that Dahan has made an attempt at one of our own. We can't possibly let this slide."
"I have already made contacts with our contacts in the parliament. They are already preparing a bill that will completely cut our nation's ties with Dahan permanently." Eisaku replied.
"As much as I would like to turn that backwater country into a smoking crater under the sun, we can't retaliate any further without coming off as the aggressor, especially since their plan failed. Any excessive actions on our end will be used as fuel by the Anti-magicians since we haven't suffered any actual damages. Maya, go and take some rest. You should talk to Miya while you are at it." Genzou said.
"Kay."
With Maya gone, only the adults were left in the room. They were soon joined by Yasuyo, Yume, and her husband Juuzou.
"Now that Maya-chan is gone, what do you think about her mysterious benefactor?" Genzou asked no one in particular.
"Personally, I think it's a little suspicious." Eisaku was the first to respond. "The help timing was a little too fast to be a coincidence. It's highly likely that the person in question had prior knowledge of the event that was about to happen."
"Even if that is true, they still helped us, right? Being hostile towards a person that we don't even know when they helped one of us isn't right." Yasuyo replied and everyone seemed to agree with it.
"But still, are we sure that we still have no idea who is responsible for it? Did we get any form of communication from someone? Maybe someone from Dahan who knew of their plan was trying to escape from there by currying favor with us or something." Yume said. It wasn't unheard of for people, especially magicians to try and escape their birth country by currying favors with a foreign power. There were a lot of such magicians in Japan alone.
"Still, I don't think someone who could erase dozens of people in the blink of an eye could possibly face any struggle in escaping that backwater country". Motosuke added his opinion.
"Maybe the magician in question isn't able to use their abilities for a prolonged period of time. Especially, if they are using Decomposition like we believe them to be.
Decomposition wasn't a unique magic by any stretch of the word. By definition, it couldn't even be classified as magic since it dealt with the destruction of structural information rather than the alteration of such information like modern magic did. Although it was classified as magic, most magicians didn't consider Decomposition users as 'actual' magicians. Although the degree of proficiency in Decomposition varied between users, the skill to decompose multiple living targets within milliseconds was previously unheard of. However, the main issue with the spell was that it consumed a lot of psions to actually work. Due to the fact that the information bodies were being broken apart instead of being altered, the psion usage for Decomposition was heavy to the point where an average mage could only use it once or twice before running out of gas.
"I can hardly imagine that Dahan would let a potential flight risk out of their country. It doesn't make sense." Motosuke said.
"We are getting nowhere with this." Genzou sighed.
"Perhaps I can help you with it." A new voice sounded in the room as someone entered from the outside. However, no one in the room seemed to mind as the newcomer was someone, they were deeply familiar with.
Yotsuba Ayame was an obscure figure to everyone except her clan. While most of the magic community knew that she was the one who actually founded the Yotsuba clan by integrating the research subjects of the Fourth Institute, no one could say that they actually knew something about her. For the world, she was this mysterious figure who led the Yotsuba for two decades and mothered four children who were all top-class magicians. Ayame had been retired for more than five years after Genzou had taken the mantle of the head from her.
However, to her children, Ayame was a completely different person. Although none of her children would disagree with the fact that she was a clinical psychopath, she still had been a good mother to them. Even though she had sent them out for combat missions more times than necessary, as adults, they came to appreciate the experience. However, just because they loved their mother doesn't mean that they liked to deal with her any more than necessary. Genzou especially hated it since their philosophies for the clan were drastically different from each other.
"Hello, mother." Genzou was the first one to greet Ayame and the rest of the members present followed suit.
"I suppose with Mother's eyes, it would be easy to find the perpetrator, especially since magic is involved". Motosuke said to which almost everyone agreed.
"I did find the person. You don't even have to go to Dahan. He's right here in Japan." Ayame decided to drop a bomb on her family.
"What?!" Although the degree of reaction was different, Motosuke's exclamation summed up the general reaction in the room.
"But that's impossible". Eisaku added.
"That was what I thought as well but that portal that he opened up left a lot of residual psion that could easily be tracked back to Japan. Hell, the residue he left behind was more than what most magicians could manage to use in an entire day. Specifically speaking, he is somewhere in the city of Tokyo. Still, I couldn't pinpoint his location since he kicked me out of the Information Dimension before I could do it and then erased all traces of the Psion flow soon afterward. To that extent, I would also like to state that he has my eyes." Ayame explained.
The entirety of the room was stunned into silence by the revelation made by Ayame. The fact that someone could operate magic in Taipei while remaining in Japan, the fact that said person could use Teleportation Magic and the fact that he had Ayame's eyes all contributed to it. After all, Elemental Sight was Yotsuba's best-kept secret due to its ridiculous nature of being able to directly access the Information Dimension without any conceivable drawback. One of Ayame's biggest disappointments in life was the fact that she was unable to pass her eyes to at least one of her children.
"SO which one of you fathered a bastard?" Yume asked the question that everyone subconsciously wanted to ask. Genetics were an important factor in determining a person's magical abilities and the chances of someone outside the family tree manifesting the same abilities were slim to none.
"I didn't do it. Although I like to sleep around, I do it safely." Motosuke was the first to react. "It can't be Eisaku either." He added.
"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?" Eisaku felt offended.
"You are too much of a prude to even consider it, especially since you don't even do your wife regularly. Or maybe you don't do your wife regularly because you have someone on the side?!" Motosuke acted like he was solving some great mystery.
"No! I haven't done anything." Eisaku denied.
"Well, that leaves Aniki but I don't think he'll ever cheat on Nee-san." Motosuke said.
"Well, what do we do about this person? If 'he' knew Maya was going to be in trouble before any of us did, then 'he' has a lot of questions to answer." Yume said.
"I'll start the search". Juuzou said. "If we only have to search within Tokyo itself, we will be able to identify potential targets within three days maximum." Juuzou was the head of the Yotsuba's information network after all.
"I will leave it to you". Genzou said.
With nothing else to say, the meeting was dispersed while leaving behind nothing but headaches for all the parties involved. Unbeknownst to them another person was suffering the same headache as them in a different location.
Hello there. By now, anyone who has been a part of the fandom knows why I put that warning in the disclaimer. Anyways, that's chapter 2 and the next one will probably be Tatsuya's reaction to the fiasco. Canonically speaking, Koichi never ran away from Maya and lost consciousness before she was kidnapped but I don't like NTR, and him abandoning her seemed like a good reason to break their engagement.
I'll see you peeps in the next chapter.