Once more we tread this all too Familiar ground! (FoZ Discussion, Part 16)

Hence the "besides socially imposed by other people, of course."
In other words, do the runes/magic/whatever impose some sort of penalty/backlash, or if it's "poof, no more familiar bond."

But Dan that is precisely the point!

Wario is ridiculous, and ridiculously overpowered. That plus the Gandalfr runes....... nothing can stop him in Halkeginia, don't you want to see the greedy bastard derail Joseph and Pope Mcdongcopter's plans? And he would solve the windstone crisis! Afterall windstones power airships and as such would be worth a lot of money. As we all know nothing can stop Wario from getting money, he'd dig those suckers out and sell them all on the open market within a year at most.

Now imagine other Mario Characters summoned. Yoshi might be fun, but Bowser the Gandalfr would certainly be interesting. Considering some of the things he has done it is likely his forces would eventually find him and march into Halkeginia. The thought of Joseph's forces (including the Jormungdr's) being curbstomped by an army of Koopa Trooper's and Goomba's just brings a smile to my face.

No more familiar runes

But nothing was said about him being summoned as well.

...You've got me there Gafgar...though I wonder who will try to call him out on his 'condition'?:drevil:


Then again such a story would become a tale of a troubled young man stuck on another world becoming a hero while winning the love of a young woman trying to justify her own self-worth after the ridicule and mocking of her peers.

> http://forums.spacebattles.com/showpost.php?p=6940804&postcount=93

Very interesting.

Robo. One of the Twilight snippets is mislabeled. Screwball's Aberrant snippet from thread three. That's the name of the actual game that's being crossed, Aberrant. It came out in 1999.

Thank you. I tried PM'ing him, but he NEVER returned my PM. I'll fix that real quick here.

Homing. This is Louise we're talking about. She can't aim worth a damn.

Personally, I prefer the knockback of concussion missiles to overload missiles for Louise's aesthetic.

You're a horrible person.

Am I the only person who finds it bizarre that Agonizers and Shredders are one-handed weapons?

...*snerk* ah watch Cromartie High School on youtube and you'll understand.

She summons the silent Freddy Mercury lookalike with suspender pants and no shirt.

Would he still have his huge ass horse?

Of course!
what is a man w/o his horse?

A man who doesn't want to live forever?

One with a dog instead? Or perhaps a cat person.

I did a short last topic that didn't get on the Index as well.

Is that what happened to Sasha?

I don't think Sasha even appeared again after stabbing Brimir. No one knows what happened to her. Hell, I don't even know what she and Brimir supposedly looked like.

http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/images/thumb/0/0f/ZnT14-091.jpg/414px-ZnT14-091.jpg

There they are with Brimir commenting on how Saito's another Gandalfr

I remembered something on the Killer7 snippet...
Is Samantha the descendant of Siesta?

Having insomnia can do that to you...
anyways, considering that I need to compensate for Henrietta's physique...
Are there any guns that she can held and can be suppressed/silenced?

Picking guns for her is hard...

I comprehend shit-all about the current discussion, but at least this. Is. Done.

This snippet was so damn awkward to write. It’s buildup, mostly, with no action.

Should I just skip the plot and get to the action-y parts?

Edit 1: Sasha looks kind of like Henrietta minus most of the chest, especially with that hairstyle.

-0-0-

Ordinarily, Louise was not a morning person. She generally needed half an hour or more to just claw her way out of bed and another half hour to get ready for morning classes. She always managed to be on time in the end—for all her temper and insecurity, she was a disciplined person—but doing so took a near herculean effort.

But not today.

Today she threw off the covers and practically somersaulted out of bed, humming a cheerful tune as she dressed herself and combed her hair. She skipped to the door, just barely checking herself from breaking into song (that would have looked ridiculous under any circumstances).

Kirche von Zerbst was waiting for her on the other side. The buxom redhead started opening her mouth for the first volley of mocking, but then stopped in confusion when she saw the giddy grin on Louise’s face.

“You look happy today,” Kirche said. “Although I don’t understand why you’d be so cheerful given your upcoming disownment.”

Ordinarily that comment would have drawn out the screaming demon of Louise’s ire. But not today.

“Want to know why?” she replied, smirking at her rival.

“Very much so.”

Louise made a grand sweeping gesture in lieu of responding, beckoning Kirche to follow. Still bemused, the taller girl trailed after the Valliere scion as she strode down the halls of the tower like some conquering warrior-queen. Eventually they came across a servant girl mopping a stretch of hallway.

“You there,” Louise said imperiously. “My familiar requested a set of servant’s quarters last night. Take us to him.”

The maid blinked in confusion. “Y-Your familiar, ma’am? I’ve never…may I have a description of him?”

“He’s black-haired, blue-eyed, and about as tall as Zerbst here.”

The maid’s mouth formed an ‘O’ of recognition. “You must be looking for Mr. Hiraga. Right this way, ma’am.”

Kirche and Louise exchanged confused glances. Neither of them was blind to the resentful attitude of the commoner staff towards the noble students, they had just never cared all that much. On the other hand this particular maid hadn’t spoken Saito’s name with the same clipped, frostily polite way she probably would normally. That was strange.

“Alright then.”

They followed the servant out of the tower and across the massive greens of the Academy interior. The maid led them towards the wall connecting the Earth and Water Towers and the cluster of squat, long buildings there—presumably the servants’ quarters. As they got closer Louise could pick out a tall figure emerging from a doorway. When Saito caught sight of them, he began jogging towards them in a rather un-noble-like manner.

“Good morning,” he said when he got there. He nodded a friendly greeting at the maid, who smiled back and curtsied. “Miss Siesta, Miss Valliere, Miss…um…”

“Zerbst,” Kirche supplied, smiling charmingly at him. “Kirche von Zerbst, of Germania. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister…?”

Louise had the sudden urge to test the effects of her explosions on a human being.

“Hiraga,” Saito replied. “Saito Hiraga. Likewise.”

She nodded. “You’re a mage, aren’t you? That’s the only explanation that fits Louise’s enthusiasm this morning and your being human.”

“You’re sharp, Miss Zerbst.”

Louise interrupted there. “That’s all well and good, but why don’t you and I go to the Alviss Hall, Mr. Hiraga? You must be hungry.”

“Some breakfast would be nice,” he agreed. “But…ah…you’re not going to invite your friend…?”

“The Vallieres and the Zerbsts have been mortal enemies for five hundred years.”
Saito mentally cringed. “Oh. I see.”

Louise inclined her head. “Shall we go, then?”

He hesitated for a moment. Truth be told, he didn’t want to follow Louise into that nest of hornets, the Academy dining hall. From what he’d heard while he was faking unconsciousness, the “noble” students were a bunch of status-obsessed divas that had too much time, money, and power on their hands, with the only possible exceptions being Kirche, Louise, and that quiet blue-haired girl.

He’d much rather go to the staff kitchen. He’d much rather eat with gentle, friendly Siesta or the boisterous, jocose chef Marteau. But he couldn’t, in good conscience, make himself a nuisance for them a second time.

“Okay, then. Lead the way, Miss Valliere.”

-0-0-

Saito cast a quick wind spell to muffle his growling stomach.

He hadn’t been able to eat anything at all. The second he and Louise entered the Alviss Hall, three hundred pairs of eyes had zeroed in on him as finely as laser designators. Nobody had said a word. Nobody had done a thing. The students all just stared unnervingly at him.

Oddly enough, Colbert hadn’t looked particularly happy with his discomfort. Maybe the professor had thought Saito would snap under the attention and start murdering the children left and right, which in reality was about as likely as a…as a…a very unlikely thing. Well, that was one thing Saito could respect about Jean Colbert. His protectiveness of his students wasn’t an act after all.

Now he was standing outside Louise’s classroom, listening to a Professor “Chevreuse the Red Clay” expound on the topic of earth magic. He listened more out of curiosity than anything else; because wind was his primary element, he hadn’t taken any of the more advanced earth magic classes when he was a student.

And apparently she was a triangle mage. Bah. Saito doubted that the professor was anywhere near that weak—she was more likely a square earth, square water mage. Maybe she was just saying that for the benefit of the stranger leaning against the outside of her classroom.

“—who can explain what earth magic is used for? Mr. Gramont?”

“We use earth magic for construction, transmutation, and crop quickening.” The boy sounded somewhat bored.

“That’s three of ten in general; very good. Anything else?”

Saito could think of three more off the top of his head—worker golems, irrigation, and his line of work. Namely, killing other people in the service of his country, although he used wind and water for that.

Another student, a girl, named off the other ones.

“Good, very good. Now, today’s lesson is on transmutation, the production of one substance from another.”

A second later there was a collective ooh of awe from the students.

“Is that gold, professor?” an eager voice asked.

Chevreuse laughed. “I’m flattered, but no, this is just brass. Only square-class earth mages can transmute gold. I am, alas, merely a triangle mage.”

That wasn’t exactly true. A skilled mage with the assistance of a focuser could generate gold using triangle or even line spells. But Saito supposed that given this place’s apparent shunning of modern magitechnology, square was the limit for high-level transmutation.

Still, every single one of the students should have had at least square-level power already. Given the dearth of surviving blue-blood magical families, Second Reconquista was willing to accept genengineered mages who, in many cases, simply wanted to have children but couldn’t get the necessary permission from the government.

That was one thing he had to keep an eye out for. If he ever somehow managed to come into violent conflict with the school faculty, it would be an unpleasant surprise to find out that “triangle” magic actually meant “triple square” level magic.

“Transmutation is a staple application of earth magic,” the professor continued. “We use it to produce a material necessary to maintain civilization—that is to say, metal. Mining may yield far more product overall, but transmutation gives instant access to various metals for reagents and materiel for all mages.”

Saito could just barely hear a muffled yawn from one of the students. Chevreuse snorted in amusement.

“Boring? Alright then, children, let’s have some practice with transmutation. Who wants to try first? Miss Valliere?”

The silence was almost deafening.

“P-Professor Chevreuse…” Kirche stammered. “Y-You can’t possibly be asking the Zero to perform magic! It’s dangerous!”

“Yes, I am, Miss Zerbst,” the professor said sharply. “And in this class, we do not call fellow students insulting names like “Zero”. Am I understood?”

“Professor, every time Ze—Louise tries to cast magic, she always fails!”

Louise finally spoke up. “Shut up, Zerbst! I summoned and bound Mr. Hiraga, didn’t I? I can perform magic better than you can, just you wait and see!”

Kirche moaned in horror. “Cover! Everybody take cover, now!”

There was a deafening clatter and squeak of desks being shifted and the soft bangs of human backs hitting wood. Saito narrowed his eyes and reached for the doorknob, but it opened before his hand got there. The blue-haired girl, with her book under her arm, stepped out.

“What…why are you leaving?”

“Explosion,” the girl replied simply. She studied him for a moment. “Square wind mage. Line-class water.”

He stared at her, openmouthed. “How did you…?”

“Later,” she said. She pointed inside. “Explosion. Ice shield. Immediately.”

Saito looked inside, where Louise was raising her wand over a chunk of rock on Chevreuse’s desk. For the life of him, he still couldn’t understand the students’ fear. Constant failure of magic? Dangerous? Explosion?

How were those connect—oh. Oh crap.

His body had made the connection long before his mind had. His hand was already plunging inside his jacket pocket, yanking out his wand, and—there was no time to charge inside the classroom, Louise had already completed the wand motions for basic transmutation—leveling it at the desk—

The explosion bloomed from the rock, rendered in slow motion courtesy of the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Adrenaline quotient achieved.

The limiter released. It was like a series of flood gates opening just barely ahead of the torrent of willpower flooding into his wand at the command of a word of power.

Saito and Louise finished casting at the same time.

The first thin film of ice coalesced over the rock. The leading edge of the detonation effortlessly shattered the frozen water vapor, but then two more films appeared twice as fast, then four more, then eight, then sixteen, until a dome of ice a good twelve inches thick had materialized between the shock wave and Louise and the professor. The new mass shoved both of them back a few steps, but the explosion rebounded harmlessly against the ice shield.

It had taken all of a tenth of a second for this to happen, but it felt to Saito like a century had passed. He moved into the classroom, wand raised, the blue-haired girl trailing him, and crossed over to Louise.

“Are you alright, Miss Valliere?”

She nodded dumbly, still staring at the ice shield. He followed her gaze to his construct and noted uneasily that half of the ice’s thickness was missing, presumably vaporized by Louise’s “magical failure”.

In the back of the classroom, Guiche de Gramont cautiously raised his head over his tipped-over desk. His eyes went wide when he saw the front of the classroom buried in ice, and went even wider when he glimpsed the wand in the hand of Zero’s commoner.

“Miss Tabitha, did you do that?” he croaked.

The girl shook her head. “No. The commoner. Saito Hiraga.”

A commoner, casting magic? Impossible. Tabitha must have meant that sarcastically.

And in all fairness he deserved it. He’d been planning on challenging the “commoner” to a duel in front of the entire student body at lunch for his impudence in claiming to be a noble. His speech would have been suitably epic and impressive to the girls; he would have dealt a karmic punishment to the criminal, humiliating him and the Zero at the same time, and maybe even scored a night in his dear Montmorency’s bed.

Now that he’d found out that the “commoner” was really a disguised mage, and a powerful one at that, his plan seemed suicidal. “Saito Hiraga” would obliterate him in ten seconds flat, if he was lucky to even survive that long.

Malicorne crawled over to him. “Guiche, are you still going to challenge him?”

Guiche gave his friend an incredulous look. “Of course not, you idiot. Would you want to duel a mage like that?”

It was an absolutely ridiculous notion. He’d get slaughtered as badly as if he were dueling against Viscount Wardes or the Heavy Wind herself.

-0-0-

Ooh, foreshadowing. Thoughts?

Here’s the raw power (and raw power only) scaling: Karin > Saito > Wardes.

No. More then that, unless this is a second snippit of something (in which case where can I find the first) I'd suggest explaining how we got to this point, either with a snippit of the summoning or with some flashbacks or some excuse for one of the characters to explain what happened.

Looking forward to more of this.

@unicorn: They have an index for this thread you know, it's kind of on the first page...

It's there... look for Future!Saito as the title.

It's Future Magical Saito.