Disclaimer: The Rising of the Shield hero belongs to Aneko Yusagi. This fic was made non-profit, I just wanted to write something about this series.
English is not my first language, if you see something with a poor grammatical structure, mistake verb tenses, wrong conjugations, etc. please tell me to correct it. For me, it is a language development experience.
B/N: Fortunately, Kisame now has me (Milarqui), ready to fix all the stuff that needs fixin'. Let's get rolling!
The Shield Hero who came from another world
Prologue
Everything had started five years before.
The Iwatani family had been celebrating the Hanami festivals, taking advantage of the gentle weather and the spectacle of the cherry blossoms falling and blowing in the wind in a park near the elders' home in Tokyo. Such a beautiful, tranquil moment was to be enjoyed in the family, and it did not disappoint.
Their two youngest members, Naofumi and Saito, had decided to go out and explore the park, along with a girl they had met there, by the name of Kinomoto Shinobu. A girl with a positive attitude towards life that liked to make funny jokes, she was such a tomboy that there were times that the cousins wondered if they were actually talking with another buy, but in the end, they did not care about it.
It was a moment to enjoy the cherry blossom.
Elsewhere in the park, Naofumi and Saito's grandparents were talking with their friends. Naofumi's mother had gone to the car to get blankets for everyone, while his father and younger brother had gone to buy drinks. And Saito's parents... well, they had decided to stick close to them, so they could make some light-hearted fun of their son as he tried (badly) to flirt with Shinobu.
Suddenly, a blinding light came out of nowhere and enveloped them, stunning them, and leaving them disoriented for a time. Naofumi did not even know how long it took before the light vanished, only that he was suddenly in a stone chamber, and surrounding him were Saito, Shinobu, and Saito's parents, Natsumi and Mamoru, as well as sixteen more people confusing by, they whereabouts – and beyond that, several characters wearing white-gold colored robes, all of them exhausted but with satisfied smiles.
One of the latter, wearing more elaborate robes, had stepped forward and made a request of them.
"O! Brave heroes! Please, save our world!"
The man – who claimed to be simply known as the High Priest – explained that they belonged to the Tlautik Kingdom, and that they had summoned them because, to be honest, they were desperate for aid against a terrible enemy in war.
The largest, most powerful realm in the continent of Aztlan, known as the Chiltik Empire, had, several years before, drained all their natural sources of Luminita and Komok, two ores that had acquired great importance after being discovered several centuries before: the former could be used as an illumination source by putting it in a container with certain liquids that could make it shine like daylight for a year, while the latter could, if properly handled, double a person's magical power and greatly increase their stamina, making for more powerful mages.
The Chiltik Empire, being the largest realm, had great need of both materials, and as they lost their seams of both they had turned to the other domains in Aztlan, making trading deals for the materials in exchange for what they had in abundance. For a time, the deals had worked out just fine, and everyone benefitted from the trade.
Until the Emperor died. His successor decided that a drastic change in internal and foreign policies was required and reneged on all trade deals made by his father, instead of making demands that were abusive at best and outright robbery at worst. Needless to say, none of the surrounding realms was interested in that kind of deal.
The new Emperor decided that, if they would not give up what they had by word, then he would force them to do so.
A month after the failure of negotiations, he sent an army to conquer the Kalat Kingdom, not even bothering with formalities such as a declaration of war. Caught off guard, Kalat was not able to mount a proper resistance and fell two weeks after the invasion began. Given that Kalat was the realm with the largest deposits of Komok, it was a strike that could give them an edge. And, before others could react, they launched an invasion of the other nations in the continent.
The nations in Aztlan quickly decided to band together in an alliance to fight off Chiltik, but the edge the Empire had obtained allowed them to conquer three more nations in a few weeks, so the rest had pooled their magical knowledge, and the Tlautik Kingdom, the best when it came down to magic and its theory, had arranged the summoning that had brought the twenty-one otherworlders to Aztlan.
When it became clear that returning everyone to Earth was not possible, at least in the short term, everyone had reluctantly agreed to help in the war, mostly because they disliked the actions of the imperialist Chiltik, but also because they knew it would be their best chance to return home.
After some tests carried about by Tlautik's mages, it turned out that the process of summoning had granted them all certain superhuman abilities, but in the end, only six people, all of them married couples, had what the allied kingdoms needed to take to the battleground as heroes.
Saito's parents were able to do great work fighting Chiltik: Natsumi had Shadow Lantern, which allowed her to make herself invisible in a shadow while any source of light she used could only have an effect for her, giving her the chance to spy on the enemy and carry out what, on Earth, would be called "black ops", while Mamoru, with Robustness, could go into the frontlines and hold off hundreds of soldiers (even those that had been previously drugged with Komok dust) using just a shield. When Naofumi asked him why he used a shield, Mamoru just mentioned it was the tool he felt most comfortable with.
The Fredsfartøy, a Norwegian couple that had been caught into the summoning, were a curious pair: Helena was a tactical prodigy with the ability to create golems out of any material and then use them as if they were mechas, which allowed her to go into the main frontlines and lay waste to the enemy armies, while her husband Odin used his Administration skill to deal with the logistics of the allied armies, which was a lot more important than what it looked at first sight.
Finally, the Sagara, who had also been at the same park as the Iwatani, were the third couple helping the allies. Sousuke had a similar power as Helena's, but his golems were capable of dealing more damage while losing some endurance, while Chidori had a skill named Akashic Records, which essentially allowed her to access any information that could be useful by thinking about it, although it was not perfect, since accessing the information controlled by Chiltik was pretty much impossible.
All of this, however, did not mean that the rest of the otherworlders had decided to settle down and do nothing. Naofumi, for example, had joined Tlautik's royal knights, and the group he was a part of had run into a village that had been razed by a group of Chiltik's soldiers. By pure chance, Naofumi had managed to find a girl called Felicia, that had been left up for dead by the Chiltiki soldiers, and he had saved her life. Being the only survivor, she had come back with them.
The two had struck a great friendship from there, becoming confidants and partners-in-suffering when it came down to putting up with Saito and Shinobu, who had somehow fallen into a romantic relationship. For Naofumi, she had suddenly become his best friend in this strange world.
In the meantime, Naofumi had started to get tired of the war, and had decided to go for a more indirect method of helping by becoming a Merchant: this allowed him to aid by bringing supplies and gathering information that could be used in the fight.
It was then that he had made a disturbing discovery: several Tlautiki nobles were running a conspiracy that forced nobles' illegitimate children into prostitution. With the help of Felicia, Saito, and Shinobu, he had started to gather information on the corrupt nobles and saved a few of its victims. Three of them had decided to stick with Naofumi, feeling safer around him even if they did not feel safe around other men: Raphaella, Atalanta and Melissa had become good friends of his as well as they got to know him because he always made them feel respected and protected.
Things had turned for the worse when Felicia died of an accidental poisoning. Naofumi blamed himself for it, because he had been the one cooking that night, and one of the potatoes had, unknown to him, been in a bad state. For a few weeks, he had been despondent, but Raphaella, Atalanta, and Melissa had managed to bring him out of his shell. And, from there, he had somehow managed to fall in love with them. Raphaella had not wanted to share him with anyone at first, but Atalanta had managed to make her see the benefits of such an arrangement, and Melissa's enthusiastic support for the idea had made Raphaella cave in.
At the same time, Saito and Shinobu introduced two new girls to the family: Karin and Sofia.
Karin came from a rabbit demi-human family that owned the biggest Komok ore deposit in the Kalat Kingdom, and when they refused to hand over their mines the Chiltiki showed no mercy to her family: only she and her mother were able to escape, using an emergency teleportation magical object to reach Kostik. Seeking revenge for her family and freedom for her home, Karin had joined the army in order to fight off the Chiltik. Having little to no experience in matters of love, she had never shown any interest in either man or woman – until she saw Saito and Shinobu fighting to defend a bordering town. Becoming slightly obsessed with the duo, she had started to follow them. When Shinobu noticed her, she confronted the girl... and this had led to Karin joining them first in training, and shortly thereafter in their relationship.
Sofia, a kitsune with a prodigious control over fire, had joined them a couple of weeks later, but when asked about it none of them would ever share how it had happened: Saito just seemed to become embarrassed at the first mention, Karin ignored the question whenever it sprung and Sofia smirked while looking at Shinobu with clear want in her eyes.
Natsumi did not approve much of the polyamorous relationship her son was in, and she certainly did not like that her husband was supportive of it. Naofumi also knew that one of the reasons behind the two girls joining Saito and Shinobu was that they fed into the latter two's secret fetishes, things that Naofumi would rather not know.
The day Naofumi became eighteen was the day Raphaella told him she was pregnant.
Unfortunately, that same night was when the nobles behind the prostitution ring revealed what they had been plotting: a coup. They took advantage of their position to attack and kill the entire Tlautiki Royal Family and sent killers against the otherworlders.
The Fredsfartøy couple died in a landslide caused by a mysterious explosion that should not have happened, as they had not been anywhere close to the battlefield.
Sousuke's paranoia had allowed him and Chidori to survive the poisoned food they had eaten, but nonetheless, the damage had been done, and both of them fell into a vegetative coma that would take a lot of luck and work to bring them out of.
And the Iwatanis... for them it was worse.
Their refuge had been attacked in the middle of the night, and as they prepared themselves for the fight Natsumi had been the first to die, devoured by a creature none of them had ever seen before. Atalanta had died shielding Naofumi from an attack by the creature's tail. Mamoru had managed to hold off the beast for long enough for Saito to be able to get into the creature's guard and kill it, but not before the creature injured Mamoru beyond what Robustness could hold off, and while they were dealing with the problem Raphaella and Melissa had been abducted by someone. Before dying, Mamoru gave what was left of his shield to Naofumi.
"This... will be crucial in your future, nephew. Always keep it with you... and when you feel that your loved ones are in danger... give this shield to your weapon."
Naofumi, Saito, and the Saito's girls mourned the deaths, but barely had the time to do so before they had to run away, persecuted by the corrupt nobles' goons. It was their luck that they managed to reach the Kostik Kingdom, who had immediately taken them in while sending their pursuers into a snipe hunt.
From that day on, Naofumi had sworn that the kingdom that had betrayed them, the ones that had fought so hard to save them, would be subjected to what the ancient Romans called damnatio memoriae: he was going to destroy it so hard that people would forget it ever existed, starting from its name.
Meanwhile, the other allied kingdoms had an outright apocalyptic reaction. Having to deal with one of their allies turning on them, just as the Chiltik Empire increased their pressure with those new creatures they were summoning, was probably the worst that could have happened then. Even with said pressure, though, they had all agreed to help the otherworlders put down the traitors and rescue the captives.
Two weeks after the coup, a spy had found where the traitor nobles had holed up with the captives and confirmed that Naofumi's surviving girls were among them. It was clearly a trap, but everyone agreed that the effect of the trap would be diminished by the fact that they knew it was a trap, and they chose to spring it, nonetheless.
Everything that could go wrong went wrong. The rescue team had managed to infiltrate the castle, only for everything to go to hell just as their allies attacked. Naofumi, Saito, and the girls had been forced to fight for their lives several times in the space of a few hours. And, in the end, it had been all for naught: not only had both sides of the attack lost a lot of people but Raphaella and Melissa had been lethally injured by the nobles out of spite. Naofumi was out of his mind at losing the three women he had fallen in love with, as well as his child, and Saito of losing three friends he had loved to see happy along with his cousin.
It had taken them a while to recover from the loss, but when they did... the Iwatani cousins had gone on a rampage.
With the help of their friends and allies, they had turned the tables of the war. Every battle was an overwhelming defeat for the Chiltik armies, and suddenly not only were their armies outplayed but they were also outnumbered. Their soldiers defected, surrendered, or died, their mages gave up or fainted from overuse of magic, their nobles done for one way or another.
Finally, after five years of fighting, Chiltik's capital fell under siege. Their last army attempted a last-ditch strike, hoping to force them into suffering horrible losses – only for a cunning strategy developed by the allied kingdoms to wipe out Chiltik's right flank, forcing the rest to retreat behind their fortified citadel, whose 35-meter-tall walls would have been a daunting protection against anyone.
But Naofumi was not anyone. Empowering the shield that had become his weapon, seeking to put an end to those that had killed his loved ones, he opened a massive hole through the citadel's walls and immediately jumped through the hole, followed by his family and companions. The forlorn hope suddenly turned into an enemy rout, as Naofumi kept saving his friends from being struck, while anyone foolish enough to get close to him got bashed by his indestructible shield.
Anyone foolish enough to attack him from a distance got countered by his shield's laser beam.
Fortunately, that had been truly the last battle of the war. The allied kingdoms had managed to unconditionally win the war, and Chiltik had been forced to an agreement that could be considered punishing if it were not for what they had already done.
With the end of the war, the survivors slowly began to return to what they did before the war. Naofumi, broken by the loss of the girls he had liked, had decided to turn his efforts into a new objective, while Saito had instead begun to settle down with Shinobu, Karin, and Sofia.
All of them had earned themselves battle names due to their actions on the battlefield, given to them by the soldiers and people that had witnessed their feats.
Shinobu had been called the Unstoppable Spear. Her skill with the spear was the best bar none, anyone that thought they could stop her had just made their last mistake, and she had been the one to capture Chiltik's leaders, including the Emperor.
Karin was nicknamed – much to her horror – the Bloody Bunny and the Red Rain Dancer, because her kicks were so strong that people struck by them would just explode in a fine rain of flesh and blood, some of which fell on her clothes, but most fell all over the battleground.
Sofia had become known as the Green Fire Fox: her green flames were the biggest things she did, but those green flames were strong enough to melt anything they met. Even her own allies got nightmares from seeing what happened to anyone that was in the way of her flames.
Saito was lucky enough that he was just called Jack-Of-All-Trades: thanks to his unusual abilities, he was able to create new skills out of nothing at any moment, which allowed him to do very well in every task he went through and surprise his opponents during battle.
As for Naofumi... it was actually related to what had happened when they were summoned and tested. The man who had checked Naofumi's skill list had taken one look and had decided he would never be a hero. Then Naofumi had proven how good a shield could be in a fight, and everyone had started to call him Shield Hero, something that wound him up to no end, even if he just knew there was no way to make people call him something else.
Six months had passed since that fateful day, and 20-year-old Naofumi Iwatani, along with his cousin and the latter's wives, were praying in front of the burial place they had arranged for Saito's parents and the four girls that Naofumi had lost all too early, wishing they could have all been there to celebrate their victory – and also because Naofumi was ready for the next stage in his life, and he had wanted to say goodbye to his uncle, aunt, and lovers.
"Are you sure you want to return, Fumi?" Saito asked.
"Yes, Saito. This world has only taken from me... and I don't want to give it anything else."
"You know they are going to be asking questions, and that they are not going to like the answers."
"I know... but I'm tired of this world. I may not have had a great relationship with my parents, but I miss them, and my brother, and our grandparents."
"In the end, it's your decision, Naofumi-sama," Sofia said as she hugged him. "But you need to cry in your own way. I know you will contact us eventually."
"My wife speaks the truth, Nao-san," Shinobu commented, doing her best to hug him as well around her six-month pregnancy. "You know you can come back whenever you want, and if you really need it, then we'll do our best to go to you."
"I will miss you, Naofumi. I hope the next time we see each other; you will be happy and with someone who loves you," the four-month-pregnant Karin stated, kissing her husband's cousin's cheek.
Saito wordlessly hugged his cousin as well, and when he was done, he tapped Naofumi on the head and the chest, making Naofumi shine in green light. Naofumi just rose an eyebrow in question.
"I don't know if you'd have been able to keep the skills you have gained here, so I just made it, so they are a part of you, as much as your genes."
"The same way Null Sickness runs in the family?" Naofumi asked, and Saito laughed, remembering how the two of them and his mother had that skill, which, according to the mage that had analyzed it, had existed before the summoning, like Naofumi's Animal Whisperer skill. At least it had answered a lot of questions about the family.
"Something like that. Good luck in the way, Fumi."
"Same to you. With three wives in your life, you're going to need it."
"You are saying that like it was something awful," Shinobu replied, amused.
"Did I? I'd say I didn't."
Naofumi turned to leave, but then he looked at Sofia, musing on that question he knew he should not ask, but curiosity was pushing him to do so.
"Before I go... can you answer a question, Sofia?"
"What is it, Naofumi-sama?"
"Why did you start going out with this lot?"
"NO! GO AWAY, NAOFUMI!" Saito shouted. Clearly, he did not want that to be known, but it was too late, as Sofia began to answer.
"It'll be a pleasure to share, Naofumi-sama. Shinobu-sama has wonderful magic fingers. That's the short version. The full version is-"
"Never mind!" Naofumi replied. He had heard more than enough and knew that anything else was likely to be too mind-harrowing to deal with right now. "I have realized I don't want to know anything else about it. Stay happy and for heavens' sake, never tell anyone about it. Bye!"
And with that, Naofumi disappeared in a flash: one of the skills he had gained in the past years was the ability to teleport anywhere he desired, and now he used it to go to the capital of the Kostik Kingdom because there stood a new summoning circle.
In the past six months, Naofumi had spoken with the greatest minds among the Allies' mages and priests to seek the solution to his request, and eventually, they had managed to create just what Naofumi needed: a summoning circle that could summon him back home.
The allied kingdoms did not want him to leave, because of all the good he had done, but nonetheless, they respected his desire, and out of a willingness to compensate him for everything that had happened, they had ordered the best of the best to design that circle. And it was now that the circle would be first used.
Appearing in the throne room, Naofumi was immediately welcomed by the Kostik king, someone that had become his friend in the past five years.
"Thank you for helping me in this task, Your Highness," Naofumi said.
"It was an honor to help you, Hero Naofumi. Without you and your fellow people, we would have likely been under Chiltik's yoke already. It is a shame you wish to return to your world, but I can understand it. Nonetheless, I am obliged to ask one last time if you would be willing to remain. My daughter and my nieces are quite keen on you and would likely want to marry you, and I could name you my heir, to rule when I become too old or when Lady Death calls for my name."
"I'm honored for the offer, but I need to say no, Your Highness. I miss my family, and I miss the chance to have an easier life. I hope you can understand."
"I assure you; I do. It's a shame this world will lose one of its greatest champions, but better that than keeping you here against your will. May you find the rest you deserve and the happiness you want, my friend."
"Same to you... my friend."
Both men shook their hands as a last goodbye, and soon Naofumi was entering the inverted summoning circle. Kostik's High Priest and his assistants began the chant to revert what had happened to him five years before, and as the magic poured into the circle Naofumi could feel how the power grew. A strange noise began to be heard in the room, dreadful and loud, but soon enough, the pitch increased beyond human ability to hear, and Naofumi wondered how high the frequency of the sound would go by the time the spell ended. It was as this question left his mind that a flash of golden light surrounded him, blinding him as he felt himself falling for a distance before hitting the ground.
Fuck, that hurts, he thought, although the pain would be acceptable if it meant he was back home.
Then he heard a voice that rose all the red flags in his mind.
"O! Brave Heroes! Please, save our world!"
As his eyesight recovered from the last assault, Naofumi turned to look aside, and saw three people about his own age, all of them carrying different weapons: a sword, a bow, and a spear. The four of them were surrounded by people wearing tunics, clearly finished after a long ritual. And when he looked at his hand, he noticed a small heater shield there, one that seemed to be affixed to it no matter what he did.
For fuck's sake... not again.