Disclaimer; I don't own anything. Also, some of you who are reading this knows about this piece of literature more than I do. So, there's that.
"Good morning, pres."
"Good morning." Greeting the students as he walked to the classroom was something Tatsuya had to get used to. As the Student Council President, it was one of his duties to be as welcoming to the student body as possible.
A month had passed since his second stint at high school began, and Tatsuya could say that he was perfectly used to school life by now. The classes were now in full swing and most of the student body had gotten busy with newly started club activities as well as their studies.
Speaking of club activities, it wasn't without its drawbacks. Due to the limited number of students on campus, competition between clubs for members was fierce, even more than what he had to deal with in his previous life. In fact, a brawl had taken place between the newly formed Kendo Club and Kenjutsu Club over the use of the school auditorium in the previous week. Apparently, he was cursed to get caught up between said clubs even in his second life since it took place when he was in the auditorium for a quick check-up.
The incident didn't escalate too much because Tatsuya had taken care of it before anyone had gotten any serious injury but tensions between the two clubs were still high. For some reason, Erika's future parents mixed like oil and water. Out of all the members, they were the hardest to deal with. That said, Tatsuya had let the twins deal with it since it was their call and for the most part, there weren't any further problems.
Anna Rosen Katori, the daughter of a German magician who had eloped with a daughter of the Katori family, was a controversial figure in Tatsuya's old life. Her affair with Chiba Jouichirou had resulted in Erika's birth but ended up cutting her off from the Katori family. Since the Katori considered the Chiba to be their rivals due to both of them being specialized in Kenjutsu, the fact that a daughter of theirs had opened her legs to the Chiba clan's head enraged the clan to the point of disowning Anna. However, Anna had yet to fall for Jouichirou, and given how well they meshed, it would take a long time for that to happen.
Appearance-wise, the woman resembled Erika to a large extent even if she was almost a head taller than her future daughter. According to the information he could find, the woman was also very good when it came to Kenjutsu, beating Jouichirou in the Junior-high level Prefecture Tournament in the previous year.
As for Chiba Jouichirou, the man was considered to be quite good with the sword even if he was not considered to be a prodigy like some of his future children were. He had a decent build for his age, most probably due to the training he had from childhood. From what he knew, Erika had taken the brunt of the backlash for Jouichirou's decision to cheat on his wife with Anna.
As he was nearing the classroom, he heard someone familiar from one of the secluded hallways.
"Yuuzou-sama, how many times do I have to tell you to be a bit more confident in yourself? It's because you are so timid that they make fun of you." As far as he could tell, Ichihana Suzume was someone who was the epitome of a cool beauty. She rarely ever raised her voice when speaking and kept her cool at all times. Therefore, the fact that she was speaking to someone with a raised voice, surprised Tatsuya.
"But Suzume-san, those guys are scary. They make fun of me for no reason." Now that he had gotten a close look at the boy opposite Suzume, Tatsuya could guess who it was. That said, he decided to intervene in the situation.
"Are you alright, Ichihana-san?" He asked as he walked out of the corridor that had hidden him from the two people slowly, to not scare them.
"Pres? What are you doing here?" Suzume was startled.
"I was on my way to the class when I heard you. Is everything alright?" He asked again.
"It's nothing. Yuuzou-sama, please return to the classroom." She said to the guy opposite to her, who walked away after giving him a nervous nod.
"Who was that?" Tatsuya asked.
"That is Ichihana Yuuzou-sama. He is the heir to the Ichihana clan." Suzume said.
"Ichihana clan? Then he is?"
"My cousin. Second cousin to be exact."
"So, what exactly is the problem here? I did overhear something about scary guys. Is he getting bullied or something?" Tatsuya was well aware of what was going on. After all, Ichihana Yuuzou had been the one who had heralded the fall of the Ichihana clan from the Numbers system. Tatsuya had heard about how the Yuuzou of his time had been an outcast among the magic community due to his below-par magical strength and meek demeanor.
"I suppose it is better to tell you Pres. Yuuzou-sama is what you would call, shy. He has had trouble getting along with people since he was a child and this has led to him having trouble socializing with kids our age during the meetings between the Extra Families. I happened to find him here while I was going to class." She explained.
"You care about him a lot, huh."
"Well, yes. We did grow up together after all. He is like a little brother to me."
"If there's something I can do to help, just let me know." He replied to which she only sighed.
A few days had passed since he had that conversation with Suzune. He had been on his way to the Student Council Office when he ran into the Ichihana clan heir. The boy was training in the school's training center with what appeared to be his own CAD. He was activating some basic D-Rank offensive spells and judging by his casting time, wasn't getting the desired results.
"Might I ask you what you are doing, Ichihana-san?" Tatsuya casually walked up to the dejected boy and asked.
Understandably, the boy was startled for a moment before he tried, and failed to regain his composure. "Shiba-kaichou? I was just training. As you can see, I am not very good at magic." He said, with a dejected voice.
"I presume that you are worried about your activation speeds? It did look to be a bit slow."
"I was that obvious huh? Guess I just don't have any talent when it comes to magic."
"I wouldn't say that you lack talent per se. From what I could analyze, your abilities itself aren't bad." Tatsuya said. The boy visibly perked up as he said this. "If anything, it has more to do with your CAD and the actual spells that you are using. They are pointlessly cluttered with needless sequences that just don't match well with your CAD software." He continued.
"But Pres, this CAD is one of the latest models on the market. And the spells I use have been refined by our Ichihana family for years." Unlike Mikihiko, who had visibly gotten upset when he had pointed out the inadequacies of the Yoshida clan's spells, Yuuzou was more hopeful than angry. Then again, the boy did not look like he could get mad to save his life even if he tried.
"I can read Activation Sequences as they are cast." Tatsuya said while pointing towards his eyes. "I just happened to see yours as it was being cast." Tatsuya could understand why the Ichihana family went under, a bit better now. Alongside the ban on their signature spell which interfered with the human body by manipulating their nerves for being "inhumane", the fact that they were stuck using spells that wouldn't stack up to any halfway decent mage, probably accelerated the process. After all, might make right in the magical world and the Ichihana had no might to speak of.
"But that's impossible. Given the fact that even the smallest of spells easily had over a thousand characters, it would be physically impossible to read them in a second.
"I don't care if you believe me or not but I might be able to help you out." Tatsuya didn't consider himself a good person but he could relate to the boy on a spiritual level. After all, he too had struggled with basic spells in his past life.
Tatsuya could see the apprehension in the boy's eyes as he thought hard about whether to accept the offer. After a few seconds, he relaxed himself and gave a beautiful ninety-degree bow as he said. "Please help me."
"Meet me at the Engineering Room after school. We'll go from there." Tatsuya said before he said goodbye to the boy.
"Oh! You're here pres. I kind of thought that it was a prank." Yuuzou had been waiting for Tatsuya in front of the Engineering Room as he made his way there.
The Engineering Room, as the name would suggest, was a room that was designed for the use of students who had the ambition of becoming a Magic Engineer. Although there weren't many people who used it as of now, the room did have a Tuner that was comparatively state-of-the-art as well as several other machines to assist wannabe Magic Engineers.
"Here, put this on." Tatsuya said as he handed over the Psion Measurement Device to Yuuzou before sitting down on the chair. As the machine made the measurements, Tatsuya patiently waited for the data.
"You can take it off now." Tatsuya informed Yuuzou as the machine had finished taking the measurements. He then proceeded to read the data in its raw form, which decreased the room for error in analysis. Just as he had predicted, the boy's CAD was cluttered with needless software and bugs that harmed its performance. Once he had finished polishing the software to an acceptable degree, he focused his attention on the spells in the device themselves.
Tatsuya had to spend almost two entire hours, rebuilding the spells loaded onto the CAD from scratch to make it acceptable by his standards. While he could have reduced the activation time of the spells to nearly 500 milliseconds if he tried hard enough, he had stopped at 800ms to avoid suspicion. While 800ms might not be a particularly fast time in his timeline, it was more than fast enough for this era. Any more than that would have raised unnecessary suspicions.
"That will do it." Tatsuya said as he handed over the CAD to Yuuzou. "Let's try it out." He pointed to the testing device that was situated in the other side of the room.
"Okay."
"Ready whenever you are." Tatsuya gave the signal to Yuuzou who activated his CAD. The boy's magic activated visibly faster and soon the number 987ms was displayed on the monitor.
"How?!" Yuuzou was shocked. The fact that his activation speed had nearly doubled from his previous best of 1.6 seconds left him speechless.
"You need a bit of practice before you will be able to utilize it to the fullest. Just keep practicing and you will get better. Once you get better at utilizing this CAD, you will get better at using the school's." Tatsuya said as he unplugged all the devices before covering them. After all, without adequate practise, talent could only get someone so far.
"It can go faster?!" Yuuzou nearly screamed.
"Well, yes. You can get 800ms as long as you practice on almost all the spells in it." He replied.
"Isn't that like the max speed for the device used for the Entrance exams?" Yuuzou asked.
"That was particularly bad tester even for its generation. The more modern ones could go up to 500ms, or so I was told." Tatsuya was finished with his cleanup.
"Thank you, pres." Yuuzou once again performed a perfect ninety-degree bow. Tatsuya was beginning to suspect that the boy had a hidden talent for that.
"It's nothing." He shrugged before letting Yuuzou out of the room before closing and locking the door. They went their separate way after that.
By the way, he ended up getting scolded by his mom for being late so there's that.
"Thank you, Shiba-Kaichou." For some reason, Tatsuya found himself once again on the receiving end of another beautiful ninety-degree bow. Although, this one was from Suzume and not Yuuzou. Seeing the weird looks that he was getting from the other two people in the room, he quickly got her upright before asking, "What are you doing, Ichihana-san?"
"Yuuzou-sama told me everything. I Haven't seen him smile so much in a long time. I am extremely grateful, Kaichou."
"Don't mind it. I didn't do much. It will take a lot more than that for Ichihana-kun to overcome his trauma." Tatsuya said. "Just count it as that first step to overcoming his fears."
Before he knew it, the weekend had arrived. Normally, Tatsuya spends most of his off-time developing CADs or helping his mom clean the house but this weekend was different, for he had an appointment with Miya. She had called him out of nowhere and had inquired whether he was free on the weekend. Most people would have misunderstood this as an invitation to a date but Tatsuya knew Miya well enough to understand that this was probably a business meeting. Therefore, he dressed as casually as decorum allowed before making his way to the restaurant that she had invited him to.
As he reached his destination, he picked up on a familiar presence with Miya. As he expected, Yotsuba Genzou was there with his daughter. Putting his game face on, he made his way to the father and daughter pair.
"Good afternoon, Miya-san, Yotsuba-dono." Tatsuya greeted the duo.
"Did no one teach you that you should arrive early for a date, Shiba-san?" Genzou's face was unreadable.
"I was under the assumption that this was not a date. After all, Miya-san and I haven't had much contact for me to consider the possibility."
"You are not going to get a girl like that, you know? Anyways, do you know why you were called here?" Genzou asked.
"I don't."
"Well, you are aware of your uncanny resemblance to me, right?"
"I am. I have seen pictures of you, Yotsuba-dono, and the resemblance isn't lost on me."
"Believe it or not, that has caused a lot of problems for me in the past few months. After all, a kid that looks exactly like me that also happens to beat out some of the best among the new generation of the Ten Master Clans raised a lot of questions." Genzou explained.
"I see. That does seem troublesome. But, in my defense, I do look like my parents a lot." Tatsuya might not have been a carbon copy of Tatsumi or Mayuri like he was of Genzou, but his looks were quite similar to those of his parents to the point that saying that he was their son wouldn't surprise anyone.
"That I am aware of. However, I did have to look into things a little bit deeper to see if you were related to us and we did manage to find an interesting fact. One of the Shiba Clan's ancestors was a part of the Yotsuba. To be exact, your great-grandfather was a member of The Fourth Institute before he left because he failed to develop any magical skills."
"I am not sure what I am supposed to do with this information." Tatsuya was not aware of the fact that Genzou had informed him. After all, Tatsuya wasn't close enough to Shiba Tatsurou for him to be aware of the man's family history.
"Don't worry about it too much. I was just informing you of this. You might not know this, but the fact that you topped that exam has gotten you on the watchlist of many of the Numbered Families. So, you need to be careful about what you do next." Genzou said.
"I am grateful for the warning. I will try to be careful then. If that is all, I would like to take my leave." Tatsuya gave a light bow to both Genzou and Miya who had been listening in on their conversation without speaking up until now and left.
"What do you think of that boy?" Now that Tatsuya was gone, Genzou asked his daughter.
"I think he is hiding something. The fact that he managed to remain calm in front of Otou-sama, even if you weren't hostile speaks of experience. Experience that someone of his lineage should not have." Miya explained calmly.
"He could also just be ignorant of the situation". Genzou added.
"That is indeed a possibility but after observing him for more than a month, he is way too competent to be ignorant. Also, there is the situation of his abnormal engineering skills. Even some of the best Engineers we employed would struggle to pull off what he did in such a short period." Miya said. "Doubling the speed of a CAD no matter how poorly configured it is, would take a lot of time. But he managed to do that in under two hours. That is not something even I can do. Something doesn't add up."
"Whatever it is, the boy isn't hostile to us, for now. Your mother told me that much. You just need to figure him out without scaring him off. After all, he could be a valuable ally especially if he joins the family." Genzou said.
"So, it is decided that he will marry one of us?" Miya asked but there wasn't any displeasure in her voice.
"Nothing is decided for sure but mother has been hounding me to take a decision. I do not doubt that once she receives news about his engineering skills, she will be back." As the next in line to the position of the Clan head, Genzou liked to speak about the family matters to Miya. After all, she would eventually have to make such decisions in the future and it was better to train her as early as possible.
As the father and daughter pair returned to the family home, they came across an unusual number of servants running around looking excited.
"Hayama, what exactly is going on here?" Genzou asked his best friend and head butler of the Yotsuba family.
"Oh, Genzou-sama? It appears that Saeko-san is pregnant. She just informed us of the news."
"Really? I did not know that Eisaku had it in him."
Time is like a river. There are no guarantees that it will flow the same way forever. Sometimes it changes its path to a different direction on a whim. One thing was for sure though, whichever direction this river flowed, lives would be changed as a result. Whether the change was positive or negative, only time itself could tell.
That's it for today. Honestly, this chapter should have gotten out two days ago but life can't always go the way we wanted. Thanks to that we managed to hit a hundred reviews which is a big number for me. Thanks for that.
I believe I have told this already but I'll say it again that many of you reading this fic understand the lore of Mahouka more than I do and therefore every comment that points out any discrepancies from Canon information is very welcome. I have retconned the whole Ichihana and Ichihara thing (Can't believe I missed an entire section of the wiki when it was there) so thanks for that. As for Benio's first name, I didn't see it anywhere in the Wiki and had to make up one of my own so I have changed that as well in the previous chapter (It's just one or two words but it will help a lot in the long term.)
As for Me, Myself, and I, I get what you were trying to say (Yes, I read the whole thing) and I will address it in the future chapters. For now, I work under the assumption that Tatsuya in canon did everything he did out of spite for a system that was not kind to him. After all, what's more, poetic than a magician who was considered a failure to be the one who made the magician world better for all.
Before I go, I would like to ask all of your opinion on the use of Japanese words in the story. English isn't my first language and I can't accurately judge how the Japanese words might affect the reading.
I'll see you soon and as always, read and review.
Peace.