"Stagnation is a plague. A curse. A disease.
Ergo: Sow the seeds of change, and no matter what, reap the wheat that grows.
Even if those grains bear nothing but chaos."
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Disclaimer:
In this present universe that I am writing this piece of fanfiction in, I am not, nor will I ever become, the owner of the rights to Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai, Fate/stay night, Angel Notes, Angel Beats!, Mahoutsukai no youruu, LuckyStar, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Hellsing, Full Metal Panic!, Batman, Boku wa tamodachi ga sukunai, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cromartie High School, Warhammer 40,000, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Mobile Suit Gundam, Spongebob Squarepants, Discworld, Super Robot Wars, Dr. Pepper, The Forgotten Realms, Resistance: Fall of Man, Devil May Cry, Pulla Magi Madoka Magica, Touhou, Darker Than BLACK, the country of Belgium, Steins;Gate, Watchmen, strawberry pocky, Monoploy, Durarara!, Castlevania, Strike Witches, How I Met Your Mother, or Burger King.
This also probably isn't what you think it will be, either.
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It's time to go KaleidoGoggles blind while you try to unwind, because it is time to get this started.
- Wizard Marshall Kischur "Big Kahuna" Zelretch Schweinorg*
*commonly attributed
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Author Notes:
The song Kohaku plays is "Days" by F.L.O.W
"Last night I was rescued by a magical girl, and quite frankly it was the most terrifying experience of my life."
The atmosphere at the lunch table where the four friends were seated changed drastically from carefree and social to incredulous and disbelievingüEll because of such a simple and seemingly-harmless question being asked amongst the friends: "Anything interesting happen to you, lately?"
"Are you bullshitting me?" Arihiko Inui finally managed to unceremoniously blurt out after about a half minute or so of decidedly awkward silence.
"If only I were..." Shirou Emiya replied.
"..." Shiki Tohno could only respond to this bold revelation by blinking incredulously from behind his glasses and quietly stirring the bowl of pho noodle soup that he had chosen for his lunch today in a subdued manner, as if trying to cope with the bizarre information he was just told about.
"Give him a chance, Arihiko," Issei Ryuudo said while pushing up his own pair of glasses in a dignified manner, attempting to no doubt act the part of the Student Council President to a tee and get to the bottom of this. "Personally, I'd like to hear out Emiya. I want to hear how this story goes."
"Hey, so do I. But that still doesn't mean that it doesn't sound ridiculous." Arihiko defended himself after he managed to get over the initial surprise. "But seriously though, Shirou. I want to hear this one, too."
"Yeah, would you mind elaborating?" Shiki asked after he shook his head briefly, waking himself out of his shock-induced stupor.
"Well, alright then guys." Without giving it much thought, Shirou decided to oblige them. After all, he couldn't just leave his friends hanging like this. After all, stories were meant to be told, especially this one. Even if it was rather traumatic (or at the very least just plain surreal) at the time it had happened...
"Okay. Well, it all started like this," Shirou began, "As I said, it all happened last night..."
[ * Ka-FLASHBACK * ]
The moon shone brightly and the night was warm and pleasant in that city of science, knowledge, untold pretentiousness and (more-than) occasional debauchery. These were perfect conditions that allowed for Misakfunyuki City's healthy nightlife to flourish. A time when the streets would be filled with her citizens enjoying the lively nocturnal hustle and bustle. Because of this way the city was that night, a young man known as Shirou Emiya naturally assumed he could walk through a dark, abandoned alleyway with no consequence.
As many a wise person knows, "to assume makes an 'ass' out of you and me."
'Damn it, why target me?' Shirou thought to himself as he regarded the group of muggers that were slowly closing in on him. 'I don't look like I'm that rich, right?'
Sure, he attended a respectably prestigious private school, a certain St. Galahad Academy, one befitting of the upper crust of medium-high society. Sure, as befitting of a school of its caliber, St. Galahad's ( more commonly referred to with its second name; "Nasunobare High" ) uniform certainly gave the impression of a serious student. The buttoned shirt, the tie, the brick-red jacket and slacks ... it definitely gave of the vibe of an academic with a little green always handy. It also didn't help his case that Shirou was carrying fully loaded bags of groceries either, which also inferred that he might have more than a little money on hand.
"All right, rich kid." A particularly scruffy looking vagabond sneered, "Hand over the cash." The way he flipped and twirled his switchblade denoted that he was no stranger to roughing up good citizens so that he could make a quick buck. The other delinquents murmured in agreement and proceeded to perform other pre-mugging acts with their weapons of choice with mixed results ranging from intimidating to flat-out corny and impossible to take seriously. Such is the result when one decides attempts to -- and fails at -- juggling more table legs than he has hands.
They were not getting any money out of Shirou. Even if he hadn't spent all of the money he had on hand on restocking his refrigerator, he still would not allow the ruffians to have their way with anyone. At that moment, Shirou cared not for whatever backstory or motivations they had for turning to lives of petty crime, even though he could understand the desperation required to compel someone to embrace such a lifestyle, there was no way he could support that. Shirou believed that everyone had a choice when it came to justice, when it came to doing the morally right thing. There was no way at all that he could support that. Especially if they involved themselves with him, then he would retaliate accordingly and beat into them the error of their ways if push ultimately came to shove.
"Sorry everyone..."
Gates in his sub-consciousness unlocked, opening wide for the flow of energy. Prana coursed through his circuits like sparking electricity. With his hands hidden behind his back in order to somewhat preserve the secret of magecraft from the impetuous mundanes, Shirou could clearly picture the image of the famed sword in his mind's eye. He recalled the sword, recalled the weight of the weapon, the bite of the blade, the sturdiness of the handle, the history and power that it knew. Shirou recalled the entire structure, the whole of the sword's framework.
"But I'm afraid I can't let you do that."
Shirou Emiya turned the illusory image he saw in his head into hard reality. With a flash of prana blazing down his arms, the ideal weapon was given shape, form, and substance.
That night, the Torashinai roared into being, ready to shred, tear, and deal more than a fair share of moderate to severe blunt trauma with its bamboo blade. For Shirou did not want to seriously harm the muggers, just beat them down hard enough so that they could no longer attempt to relieve him of his valuables. Even with just the Torashinai, it was Shirou's opinion that it still felt like this was somewhat bordering on "overkill" territory. A shinai it may be, but it was still the crystallization of the pride of the Fujimuras, and taking into account the rage it contained by virtue of its classification as a demonic sword, albeit a low-tier one, this was still a weapon not to be taken lightly.
Still, it felt a lot better than being armed with just a table leg. Which was more than he could say about one of the group of budding degenerates.
"Crap!" One of the men spat upon seeing the shinai, "Where the hell was he hiding that thing?"
"This might be tricky, Izaya," A mugger grasping a bicycle chain with thumbtacks glued to it voiced his worries to the one who had far-too many broken table legs to be of any practical use.
The so-called Kazama urged the rest of his hooligan friends on, unphased as he was by the sudden appearance of a certain demonic shinai -- not that he was acutely aware of the wooden sword's status as a demonic weapon in the first place, it should be noted. "Tricky, schmicky, Kyohei! There's only one of him, and a whole lot of us! Odds are in our favor, boys! Grab his wallet and any valuables!"
Like the water of a surging wave filling up a footprint with tidewater, the thugs rushed Shirou. His grip on the training sword's handle tightened with impending tension. His amber eyes narrowed, he stood his ground as firmly as a tree, and he drew himself into a position ready to strike at a heartbeat's notice. The fight would be tight, brief, and incredibly violent and fast-paced. People would get hurt, both sides would be relentless, and neither willing to give ground to the other out of blatant stubbornness.
Or at least, that's the way it should have been, were it not for one overlooked detail that was even more highly improbably than anyone in that exact alley getting struck with lightning that very moment. The extremely sudden and completely unexpected appearance of --
"It is I! The one! The only! The most fabulous, cutest and sexiest of all the supernatural spellcasters, Magical Girl Amber!" The fox-eared girl with the red hair and golden eyes in the short-cut brown maid outfit proclaimed to the high heavens, proudly standing on top of the nearby apartments like a classical hero of justice and flamboyantly twirling her broomstick.
"What -- " Izaya began.
"-- The --" Kyohei followed-up.
"-- Hell?" Table-Legs finished.
"Hoo boy." Shirou groaned.
"Fiends! Scum! Scoundrels of the earth! Bastards of the ghettos! Slumdog Would-Be-Millionaires! You will not lay a hand on this innocent student, not while Magical Girl Amber is on the job! While you are in my city, your injustices will not be suffered by the likes of me!"
"Eh? The hell you gonna do about it, Sailor Nothing? Shoot us with you Love-Love Beam?"
"Nope." Magical Girl Amber smiled happily in response to this snide remark. But her smile was not a happy one, it was a smile to be seen in nightmares, the last thing one would witness when cornered in a back alley before their entrails would decorate the walls like cheap graffiti. An alleyway that was suspiciously similar to this one... "Something even better~"
A somewhat famous -- or rather, "infamous" -- man in a mask once said that the city "screamed like an abattoir of retarded children". Now, replace "retarded children" with "petty criminals who are only marginally smarter than the formerly-mentioned 'retarded children' being mauled by flesh-eating dandelions which spontaneously grew from the cracks they were rooted in while simultaneously being firebombed to near-death from a barrage of Molotov cocktails and gallons of homemade napalm and are screaming like little girls in a in an amusement park's funhouse", then that statement would not be too far off the mark and would have deftly described what had just occured. In addition, the aforementioned infamous man in a mask would more likely than not find the entire situation a rather hilarious one, albeit in a grim way.
Regardless of the matter, what commenced after Magical Girl Amber gave her final message to the mooks was, extreme, at the very least.
When the carnage was over and done with, the mysterious -- yet so-very familiar -- magical girl alighted upon the ground just in front of Shirou and began strutting towards him, wearing a look that contained an amalgam of satisfaction, pride, and a hint of fox-like mischievousness. Shirou had to remind himself to keep his eyes away from her tight-fitting red thigh-highs, that tantalizing space of exposed white skin between her stockings and the hem of her skirt, and to definitely not stare at her swaying hips for any amount of time longer than a millisecond.
"There's no need to thank me, good citizen," The girl saluted and winked at Shirou, very much heedless of the chaos she had wrought moments before. "But please, do so anyway: I live off of praise. Washes away despair and all that."
"Kohaku, I can handle myself, you know?"
"Ah, ah, ah. I'm not my mild-mannered and incredibly pretty alter ego right now. When I'm on duty I want to be referred to as 'Magical Girl Amber'. I need to maintain my professionalism as a crime fighter, after all."
"If this is what counts as professionalism then I'd hate to see your interpretation of 'casual crimefighting.' " Upon hearing Shirou's comment, Magical Girl Amber simply chuckled and flashed a foxy grin. "What you did was just brutal, you know."
"Please, I'm not that harsh. I'll have you know that I called the hospital for them before I set out to do some justice, because I foresaw that something like this would happen."
"Really? And what did you tell them?"
"I just told them that some crazy woman cosplaying as a magical girl was firebombing a streetgang in a back alley and that they should probably send in the fire department to contain the damages. Also, that they shouldn't skimp on sortying the emergency vehicles, because it was going to be a mess. They should be getting here reeeaaaally soon~"
Shirou resisted the urge to facepalm, all the while holding an antsy Torashinai in his hand the whole time. "You really are brutal, you know?"
"Oh? Am I? I'm just blunt. Besides, what exactly were you going to do to that posse of vagrants, Shirou-kun? You were just going to inelegantly beat them into unconsciousness with your pet shinai over there, weren't you?"
"That's entirely different!" Shirou defended himself, gripping the sword tightly, "They still wouldn't have had to gone through that!"
"But the end results of our methods are exactly the same, we just use different means to achieve them. Besides, it's not like I killed them."
"Still, Kohaku, I --"
Magical Girl Amber childishly knocked herself on the head and stuck out her tongue. "How rude of me! Where are my manners? Silly Amber. I forgot to ask you the name of your friend~"
Shirou was about to question the existence of this so-called friend before he realized that Kohaku was referring to the tiger-strapped bamboo blade he held in his hands. He hefted the shinai so that he could display it better for Magical Girl Amber. "This sword? It's called the Torashinai."
"There is no Torashinai! Only Zuul!" The voice of a demon screamed from the depths of the training-sword.
"Please be quiet, 'Zuul'. Magical Girl Amber is trying to talk to me."
"Are you going to send me back into your Reality Marble? Please don't make me go back! Dainsleif is two-faced, and Muramasa is always so mean to me!"
"But this conversation is kind of meant to be personal."
"I can be quiet. I won't listen, either. Just please don't send me away back to your Hill of SwordsüEust yet, if only for a little longer..."
"I don't know...."
"Oh please! Please! PLEASE! I'll do anything you want me to ... provided I can do it, because I don't have any arms or legs."
"You're the worst demon ever, you know that? No wonder you were able to be sealed away in just a shinai."
*sniff*
"Fine, fine. Go back to sleep, Torashinai. Your work here is done."
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! MILK FOR THE KHORNE FLAKES!"
"Don't push your luck."
"ZZZZZZZZZZZ..."
With that, Shirou decided to keep the Torashinai around for a little while longer and proceeded to cram the sword into one of the grocery bags. Following this decision, he turned to regard Magical Girl Amber once more. "Regardless of that, you shouldn't have gotten yourself involved like this."
"I'm just returning a favor. That's all. I'm in your debt, you know."
"You don't have to be, Kohaku. In fact, you shouldn't feel like you have to owe me anything. I told you that you should not tie yourself down to the past, especially not one like yours. I said that you should live the life you want for yourself, and I meant that."
"Why Shirou-kun, this IS the sort of life that I want for myself, and it's all thanks to you that I can make this a reality!" Shirou's cheeks flushed slightly at this confession. Not noticing, or not letting it be apparent that she noticed, she raised one of her soft hands and tenderly caressed Shirou's jawline. "Besides, are we so quick to forget about particular things?"
His mind started to go blank when that reminder of hers brought up memories. "T-that's, that was jus- just..."
"You're cute when you get all flustered and shy, do you know that?" Magical Girl Amber cooed at him, her hot breath tickling the inside of his ears. Her soft fox-like tail intentionally and evocatively brushing against the front of his pants as she strutted away from him.
'Is that a real tail?' he thought, 'I think it must be, with the way she has so much control over it. Is this what the power of magic is capable of? I wonder...' Shirou's mind began to briefly wander to dangerous thoughts that were not meant for this time or place.
"Can I at least give you a ride home?" Magical Girl Amber asked, "It's my self-appointed duty to ensure that the good folk of this city remain safe in these dangerous times."
Shirou figured that he could not exactly turn down that offer. Even if his past actions had somehow caused this distortion in Kohaku, she certainly seemed to mean well, if nothing else. "Sure. Why not? We should at least get going before the ambulances arrive. I'd rather not be questioned by the authorities." He agreed, also taking note of the klaxons in the distance that drew ever closer.
"Oh, that's wonderful, Shirou~!"
Shirou grabbed hold of the groceries and the dormant Torashinai. "I never knew you had a car though. Are we going to be hailing a taxi instead?"
"No. No car. No taxi."
"YouüEon't have a car?"
"Nope." Another one of her trademark smiles danced across her face. It sent chills up Shirou's back. "Something even better~"
Broomstick.
"Are you kidding me?"
"Come on, hop up already! We're giving this puppy a twirl!"
"I have a bad feeling about this..."
Magical Girl Amber urged Shirou. "Less talking, more broom-riding!"
"Alright, alright. Might as well get started then." Without further ado, but still battling with strong feelings of apprehension and second-guesses, Shirou sat on the thin piece of wood.
"You all ready, Shirou-kun?" He only nodded, the internal conflict sneaking through to the surface to display itself on his face. "Kiki has nothing on uuuuuuuusssssss!"
He did not believe it.
There was no way he could believe it.
Yet...
Here it was...
Happening right to him...
The broomstick was actually flying.
However, his amazement at this turn of events was short lived. As soon as the broomstick had gained altitude, it began banking and janking a jerking and dipping like a drunken monkey decided to have a swing at flying it. It was jarring and sudden. Its erratic nature made it difficult to get used to its motions, and Shirou was hard-pressed to stay on the soaring broomstick, much less hold on to his groceries all the while.
Why was it like this? How could something be flown this badly? Was it the fault of the broomstick, that possessed piece of warp-tool? Or was Kohaku's giddy attitude at the moment the reason for these hair-raising shenanigans?
Shirou was inclined to believe in the latter theory.
Following an intense midair u-turn, Magical Girl Amber yelled over the sound of the rushing air. "How are you doing back there?" Shirou could not say anything, and he looked like he was fighting a losing battle with a tag-team of intense vertigo and ungodly motion sickness. He straddled the thin broomstick between his things, and Shirou still miraculously clutched to the bags of groceries, and judging from the manner he clung to them one would suspect that those were his only anchor to sanity at that given moment. "How about I put on some music to liven up this tense mood, huh?"
No real response, but that was more than enough for her.
"I hope you like F.L.O.W!" Kohaku yelled over the rushing air as the pop-rock music blared its raging funk into the midnight air for all to hear.
"I wanted to go for something that had some really sweeping sounds to it! Something that made you really feel like you want to fly! Something that inspires an urge to hop on a flying deathtrap, tame it with your skills and grit, and ride that thing off into the sunrise, striving for a bright tomorrow!" Magical Girl Amber yelled her explanation to the desperately-clinging Shirou while keeping her focus straight aheadüEherever 'straight' ahead could currently be considered, that is. "Does any of this make sense to you?"
A muffled yell could only barely be made out.
"Sorry! I can't hear you over the sound of happiness!" She yelled again, urging Shirou to repeat himself. She turned towards him, only to notice that something was quite off. "Oh shoot! I lost Shirou-kun off the back port bow!"
"Such misfortune!" Shirou wailed while falling from the sky.
Somewhere, in another city of science and knowledge, a certain Touma Kamijou abruptly sneezed.
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Putting it lightly, the ride to Shirou Emiya's house was tumultuous at best, and bowel-clenchingly terrifying at its outright worst. To the great relief of a certain member of the party, eventually the magus-student and the magical girl's journey finally reached their destination of Shirou's residence. In all of his days, Shirou Emiya never knew when he had moved faster than that time he got away from that broomstick and scrambled maniacally to the front door of his house. He may have been incredibly relieved, but something deep inside of him urged him that he could not just leave things like this. What that meant for him, then and there or in the long run, he did not know, only that something just needed to be done.
"Listen, Amber, about tonight..."
"I know. I understand. I just wanted to pay you back and help out for a little bit, that's all." Kohaku's tone sounded soft and gentle. It contrasted with the image that she had put up before, the one of the eccentric, mysterious, incomprehensible hero of justice. It further clashed with the goofy and fun persona that she had at school, which directly flew in the face of her old personality, the one she had back in those early days when he first made acquaintances with her. It went against the emptiness that she had known for a very long time. "I hope you can allow me that even if it is just for this one time. I will not intrude on you anymore if you do not wish it."
"That's not it at all, Kohaku." Even so, Shirou could not help but crack a twinge of a smile. Even if he probably knew that she would probably not keep her 'promise' for the sake of her attachment to him. She had nothing but the best intentions at heart, so in the end, could she really be blamed? At least, in the 'wrong' way? "I just wanted to sayüEou really helped out back there, in your own weird way."
"Does this mean that I'm allowed to help you out whenever you're in a pinch?" Her foxy grin, brimming with trouble. Enticing, enticing trouble. Though she may have been akin to a doll those times before, that was all in the past, a past so different from now that it felt as if the years had been abandoned and scattered to be forgotten for a very long time. Hers was not a doll's smile; that was a smile meant for the living, to be shared with the living.
And Kohaku, she was alive.
"Feel free to go on ahead."
"I'll hold you to that, Shirou-kun~"
Kohaku waved an enthusiastic goodbye to Shirou from the top of her broomstick. She rocketed off to parts unknown, her flying skills seemingly even more haphazard and whimsical than they were before. It might have been because of that final talk that he and Kohaku had before she went,
Interesting events had taken place in those few hours since the start of that night. A night filled with stories crammed with pressed-for-cash ruffians, man-eating dandelions, talking swords, daredevil broomstick flight patterns and much more. His actions in the past may have served as a catalyst to Kohaku's current personality, and probably led to a few of her current character traits and mannerism (for better or for worse), Shirou could find not a single reason why he could ever regret a thing like that. To be able to help someone find their happiness (even if such happiness came from a path like that), to touch a life in the best way possible, he would never be able to regret that. Not with seeing so many smiling faces nearby.
Just the way a hero of justice was meant to be.
He sighed, shrugged, smiled, and hoisted the groceries bags -- plus one sleeping Torashinai -- over his shoulders. At any rate, he'd have one hell of a story to tell his familiar when he made it back inside the house.
[ * Ka-UNFLASHBACK * ]
The silence around him was utterly deafening. If one were to listen very closely, then they would have been able to hear the rest of the far-off cafeteria-goers milling about and casually shooting the breeze as if nothing had happened at all.
Just then was when everyone at the table burst into raucous laughter.
"That's hilarious!"
"Eheheh, that really is something."
"Pffft! And you're serious, too."
"This is no laughing matter, guys." Shirou iterated when he was finally able to get a word in edgewise amongst the hearty guffawing. "I must have fallen off that damn broomstick at least five times until I had to wrap my arms around her waist for dear life."
"It is! It totally is a laughing matter! Or at least just weird as hell." Arihiko wiped tears of laughter from his eye with a big smile on his face. "And she's a girl that attends this school, too? That's just too wild!"
"Hey. Don't go telling anyone about that, alright? Her identity does not leave this table, understand?"
"Even if I did go around spilling the beans about who Magical Girl Amber really is no one would believe me. It's like everyone in this place has some sort of weirdness censor installed in their brains, or something. But really, I'm not saying anything. The secret is at least safe with me."
"Thanks, Arihiko. I owe you one."
"You owe me a lot more than that, Shirou." Arihiko grinned toothily at his friend.
Shiki scratched his head absentmindedly. "Did she really set fire to a gang of muggers and feed them to a forest of carnivorous dandelions?"
"No. She feed them to the carnivorous dandelions, thenset them on fire." Issei corrected.
"Sounds about right."
Issei pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose once more. "Talk about disproportionate retribution. But when life gives you lemons, you make do with what you have. "
"So, Shirou, when's the next time you going to see her?" Arihiko waggled his eyebrows and moved in closely to Shirou.
"It's not like that! We're not like that! She just turned up. That's all." Trace hints of pink flashed on Shirou's cheeks. "Kohaku is only a friend of mine, anyway." Somebody at the table coughed a cough that sounded suspiciously like 'stalking you' and 'in-denail'.
"Man, I was hoping to get her autograph." Arhiko genuinely pouted, though he exaggerated his emotions for the sake of comedy. "You could end up as an item, you know."
"I kind of doubt that." Shirou scratched the back of his head, clearly knowing something and not willing to share that certain something with the rest of his threads.
"That's right. You have been spending too much time with Caren, after all. She's rubbing off on you." Issei cooly affirmed and expertly changed the subject as he sipped his ice-cold drink.
"I do not. And what makes you say that?" Shirou inquired of Issei's claim while dipping his spoon into the bowl of food before him.
"You're eating mapo tofu for lunch."
Shirou involuntarily grimaced, blushed, and looked down at his tray of food. Sure enough, a half-eaten bowl of mapo tofu plaintively stared right back at him, almost as if the spicy dish were sad that it had been unacknowledged this whole time by the one that was eating it.
"First of all: for your information, I'm eating this stuff because it tastes good. Secondly: it's not what you think it is. It's not like I'm spend so much time with her by choice or anything like that."
"Good point," Shiki replied. Spying an opportunity to needle someone else's lovelife instead of being on the receiving end of it, a tricky smile uncharacteristically snuck onto his expression, which gave Shirou the chills just looking at him. The impending knowledge that his friend was going to do something that would no doubt embarrass him further was a harsh mental attack against his defenses. "You'd rather hang out with that other foreign-exchange student, wouldn't you? After all, she hits your fetish points just as well as Caren does."
"As if you'd know what they are!" Shirou blurted instantly, his face burning a brighter red than it had ever before during that entire conversation. Too little too late, only then was it that he became aware of the highly-incriminating reaction he had and desperately tried to undo what could not be taken back. "I mean, I do not have fetish points!"
"Which foreign exchange student? We have quite a few, you know."
Issei chuckled manically as he briefly let his composure slip the leash and let himself get caught up in the moment. "Does it matter? As long as they are a cute girl, they will do. After all, Emiya is not the hard-to-impress, picky type."
"Shut up, Issei. You're making me sound easy."
"If you're not too busy ganging up on Emiya, then I have a little announcement to make." A voice called to the group of friends that immediately grabbed all of their attention.
Shinji Matou -- the smooth as butter self proclaimed "gentleman and scholar" -- elegantly leapt around the lunchtables and nimbly weaved through the tight crowd with the grace of a wild impala, yet there was a sense of urgency in his movements as he ran towards them. If anything were capable of making that young man move the way he did, then it was something that had to be seriously world-movingly significant.
"This just in! A bunch of girls got into a fight in the courtyard! Get over there! It's going to be legendary!"
--vand apparently that qualified in Shinji's books as something world-movingly significant.
"Okaygoingnowlater." Shirou forced himself to abandon his delectably spicy and flavorful mapo tofu and was the first to leave the table. Not out of a youthfully juvenile and base desire to witness a group of young women fight each other for whatever reason, but so that he could leave this incident far behind him as he possibly could for the time being. The girls would provide an excellent distraction for the rest of his group, which would in turn allow him to escape to elsewhere to other places..
"As per usual, perhaps this may be entertaining." Issei was still firmly set to the so-called "Bro-Mode" at that time, so he had no problem with leaving his lunch half-eaten as he dignifiedly walked over to the location as quickly as he could while maintaining the personal image of the Student Council President that he strived so hard to preserve and project. Shiki just up and left his food and the table with nothing but a nod.
"Mmmm, foreigners..." Arihiko's mind was still lost somewhere else in a nice and happy place. That was when he caught up with the rest of the world. "Whoa! Girl fight? Gotta get there ASAP and abuse my cameraphone!" If Shinji's running could be compared with that of a fast yet graceful gazelle, then Arihiko's was doubtlessly reminiscent of a cheetah on speed. Never had the school known a normal human to have run that fast for the promise of catfighting, and nor would it ever again.
Key words: normal human.
Far across on the other side of the cafeteria, at a table where several of the female students were seated, a conversation of a similar nature was being had at that same exact moment.
But that, fair observers, is a story to be told for another day.
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TALES OF NASUNOBARE HIGH
( not a Role-Playing Game owned by NamcoBandai )
= Chapter I =
{ - All stories have to start somewhere, so why not right in the sort-of middle?* - }
*because doing things In Medias Res can only either grab the reader's attention off the bat due to the inherent mystery present in that form of storytelling, or make them confused as all hell
:/
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The Ryougi Shiki After-show Show
"Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki..."
Chanting happily to himself, Lio Shirazumi jabbed the plastic knife into the sub sandwich over and over again in a way that would have made Jack Torrance proud. The way the mustard flecks and the shred of lettuce flew into the air with each wild stroke of the utensil was almost poetic, in an odd, demented way.
"Good afternoon, Lio." Mikiya Koktou politely greeted his lovably unhinged friend as took a seat at the lunch table, a safe distance away from the bleached-blonde. "What are you doing there?"
"Making lunch for Ryougi Shiki~! She's going to love it~!" Lio was of course referring to the dissected mess before him that was previously recognizable as a sandwich. The way Mikiya figured it, regarding the rate of success that "lunch" would have in wooing Ryougi Shiki over, a snowman stood a better chance of playing chicken with a lava flow and coming out as triumphantly victorious in the end. Still, he didn't need to or want to wound Lio's delusional pride -- why would he, when Ryougi was perfectly capable of doing that by herself? -- so instead he merely wished him the best of luck.
"Good afternoon, Mikiya-san." Fujino Asagami said to him, a faint blush glowing on her porcelain-white cheeks.
"Good afternoon to you too, Fujino." Mikiya smiled at the girl, taking care to use her given name.
"Thank you, Mikiya-san," She replied quickly and quietly, hiding herself in the attention she was giving her own lunch as fast as she could. In contrast to Lio's or Mikiya's meals, hers was a far more traditional Japanese-style box lunch.
"Hey Mikiya. What's up?" A boy with red hair sitting next to the blushing Fujino Asagami asked him, his fork digging into the plate of pasta he had chosen for his own lunch.
"Not much, Tomoe. Just passing time until Shiki gets here."
"I don't see why you should waste so much time waiting on that girl, Nii-san." Azaka Koktou scoffed as she claimed a spot by her brother's side when she sat at the table.
"That's because Shiki is our friend, Azaka. Friends do these sort of things for one another unconditionally."
Peeved by Mikiya's simple, truthful reasoning, Azaka responded accordingly by grumbling under her breath. "It's just lunch, she's not going to care if youstart without her or not. The way she makes you wait is just rude."
Mikiya shrugged and innocently chuckled. "Well if it bothers you that much, then why don't you go ahead and eat without waiting for me?"
"Th-that's different!" Azaka instantly blurted. She was so caught off guard that the girl had practically wailed her defense, making it seem as if there were more to it than there appeared to be.
"Yo."
Before the topic could be pursed any further, Ryougi Shiki had shown up as if she had appeared from thin air, her lunch apparently a single carton of ice cream and just one bottle of water.
"Ryougi Shiki~!"
"Good afternoon, Shiki-san."
"Hey there, Shiki..."
"Hello Shiki."
"About time you showed up, and I see your eating habits are still the same."
"RYOUGI SHIKI~!"
As soon as Shiki nonchalantly sat at the table on the other side of Mikiya, something strange immediately transpired.
It was as if a light switch were flipped into an "ON" position, although a more apt comparison would liken it to a dynamo being tripped and overcharging everyone sitting at the lunch table with untold measures of raw energy. Their minds felt as if they would flip inside-out, swell, turn to mush, burn-out and freeze up at the same time. That moment, they could even feel the presences of their very souls, souls that felt as if they would rupture like water balloons and disperse into nothings and return to the state of the void. The extreme discomfort, the absolute knowing from a constant and instant input of ever-changing yet immutable data, the utter wrongness of it all they had just experienced only lasted a miniscule fraction of time, but the effects still lingered, rewriting their souls and natures permanently.
But then they got better.
"Well, that was weird," Mikiya commented, his tone only implying that something only slightly out of the ordinary had occurred instead of what felt like the entire re-writing of the fabric of reality. "Why do I feel like I'm a part of some inside joke that I'm not getting?
She scooped a heaping mouthful of ice cream in her spork and took a bite. "Because you are."
"I'm sorry, I'm not following you, Shiki."
"Let me ask you this. Do you know of anything weird? Anything that seems downright strangethat you should not know of?"
"Umm let's see here...yes. Actually. I suppose so."
"That was within my calculations."
"Heh, Carnival Phantasm." Tomoe snickered before quickly shutting up and looking downright shocked at what he just said.
"Shiki...is this what I think it is?"
"Simple explanation: I killed the Fourth Wall, and you all just felt its repercussions." Ryougi Shiki sipped from her water, the bottle crackling beneath her dexterous fingers. "That's how I am able to meta-reference like this, and that's how you will be able to do the same."
"What? How on earth are you able to do that!"
Ryougi Shiki merely flashed the spork that she was holding as an act of confirmation.
"Normally, I wouldn't believe this was happening, but now that all of these strange otherworldly details keep pouring into my head, I now know just how much sense that this actually makes."
"Of course it does. After all, if it exists then I can find a way to kill it." In order to prove a point, Shiki stood from her spot and slashed through Lio Shirazumi where he sat with her spork. But instead of splattering gore and sliced bone following tracing the arc where she "cut" the boy like a red line to the sun, there was no sign of any damage. "Right now I just killed Lio's obsession with me."
Or at least, none readily apparent.
"Gah! What happened to my sandwich?" Lio gasped, as if he just woke up from a either a deep dream or a really intense acid trip only to find out that everything that happened in it was indeed very real. "It looks like bread salad now! And it was a turkey club, too......"
Azaka's eyes grew wide with realization. "My God she really is telling the truth!"
"Sheesh," Lio continued to grumble about the state of his lunch, unaware of the dirty knife he was clenching tightly in his fist. "At this point I might as well just blend this thing all into some weird smoothie if it's this torn up. It literally looks like baby food right now. What a waste..."
"It's official guys: this is not the Leo we know." Tomoe confirmed.
Fujino looked up from her lunch. "Umm, everyone? Do you know what I just realized? The story we're in has a hilariously engrish title. Should we worry about this?"
"For the sake of ironically comedic value, I'd say you should not worry your pretty little non-tragically gang banged head about it."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing."
Mikiya adjusted his glasses once more. "Alright then Shiki, you made believers out of us. So what exactly are we doing here, anyway?"
"We're bonus content."
"Bonus content?"
"Exactly. We're what awaits all the readers at the end of the chapter, and we can do just about anything we want. We can sum up any noteworthy events that happened in the latest update in our own words, but more often than not we usually end up in various hijinks of our own." She expertly tossed the empty ice cream carton into a distant garbage pail and then proceeded to drink the rest of her water in a sitting before continuing. "But the real reason weare all here is because the admittedly large cast with significant roles who will be appearing in this story is so great, that -- at best -- most of us will only get the odd-cameo or reference here or there. This way, we get ample representation in every installment of 'Tales of Nasunobare High', and as a result do not become underused."
Mikiya raised an eyebrow. "Basically, we're like a cross between the Tiger Dojo and Mystery Science Theater 3000, only with Kara no Kyoukai characters."
Ryougi Shiki nodded. "Essentially speaking, yes."
"So what now?"
"Nothing. We're done this time. I've explained what needs to be explained, so there's nothing else to."
Her talk was suddenly cut off when a flashing brilliance began burning like a protostar a short distance away, shining like a miniaturized sun, scattering everything that wasn't nailed down with flaring electrical wind. The light subsided a millisecond later, and in its place there was a strange device the size of a sports utility vehicle that glowed with an brief, intense heat. Glowing lines drew themselves into the flank of the object, and the perimeter they had drawn opened up like a futuristic door.
At that very moment, that was when things became even more interesting than they already were in a very short amount of time.
~The Ryougi Shiki After-show Show
SEE YOU NEXT TIME!
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Ergo: Sow the seeds of change, and no matter what, reap the wheat that grows.
Even if those grains bear nothing but chaos."
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Disclaimer:
In this present universe that I am writing this piece of fanfiction in, I am not, nor will I ever become, the owner of the rights to Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai, Fate/stay night, Angel Notes, Angel Beats!, Mahoutsukai no youruu, LuckyStar, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Hellsing, Full Metal Panic!, Batman, Boku wa tamodachi ga sukunai, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cromartie High School, Warhammer 40,000, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Mobile Suit Gundam, Spongebob Squarepants, Discworld, Super Robot Wars, Dr. Pepper, The Forgotten Realms, Resistance: Fall of Man, Devil May Cry, Pulla Magi Madoka Magica, Touhou, Darker Than BLACK, the country of Belgium, Steins;Gate, Watchmen, strawberry pocky, Monoploy, Durarara!, Castlevania, Strike Witches, How I Met Your Mother, or Burger King.
This also probably isn't what you think it will be, either.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~X~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's time to go KaleidoGoggles blind while you try to unwind, because it is time to get this started.
- Wizard Marshall Kischur "Big Kahuna" Zelretch Schweinorg*
*commonly attributed
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Author Notes:
The song Kohaku plays is "Days" by F.L.O.W
"Last night I was rescued by a magical girl, and quite frankly it was the most terrifying experience of my life."
The atmosphere at the lunch table where the four friends were seated changed drastically from carefree and social to incredulous and disbelievingüEll because of such a simple and seemingly-harmless question being asked amongst the friends: "Anything interesting happen to you, lately?"
"Are you bullshitting me?" Arihiko Inui finally managed to unceremoniously blurt out after about a half minute or so of decidedly awkward silence.
"If only I were..." Shirou Emiya replied.
"..." Shiki Tohno could only respond to this bold revelation by blinking incredulously from behind his glasses and quietly stirring the bowl of pho noodle soup that he had chosen for his lunch today in a subdued manner, as if trying to cope with the bizarre information he was just told about.
"Give him a chance, Arihiko," Issei Ryuudo said while pushing up his own pair of glasses in a dignified manner, attempting to no doubt act the part of the Student Council President to a tee and get to the bottom of this. "Personally, I'd like to hear out Emiya. I want to hear how this story goes."
"Hey, so do I. But that still doesn't mean that it doesn't sound ridiculous." Arihiko defended himself after he managed to get over the initial surprise. "But seriously though, Shirou. I want to hear this one, too."
"Yeah, would you mind elaborating?" Shiki asked after he shook his head briefly, waking himself out of his shock-induced stupor.
"Well, alright then guys." Without giving it much thought, Shirou decided to oblige them. After all, he couldn't just leave his friends hanging like this. After all, stories were meant to be told, especially this one. Even if it was rather traumatic (or at the very least just plain surreal) at the time it had happened...
"Okay. Well, it all started like this," Shirou began, "As I said, it all happened last night..."
[ * Ka-FLASHBACK * ]
The moon shone brightly and the night was warm and pleasant in that city of science, knowledge, untold pretentiousness and (more-than) occasional debauchery. These were perfect conditions that allowed for Misakfunyuki City's healthy nightlife to flourish. A time when the streets would be filled with her citizens enjoying the lively nocturnal hustle and bustle. Because of this way the city was that night, a young man known as Shirou Emiya naturally assumed he could walk through a dark, abandoned alleyway with no consequence.
As many a wise person knows, "to assume makes an 'ass' out of you and me."
'Damn it, why target me?' Shirou thought to himself as he regarded the group of muggers that were slowly closing in on him. 'I don't look like I'm that rich, right?'
Sure, he attended a respectably prestigious private school, a certain St. Galahad Academy, one befitting of the upper crust of medium-high society. Sure, as befitting of a school of its caliber, St. Galahad's ( more commonly referred to with its second name; "Nasunobare High" ) uniform certainly gave the impression of a serious student. The buttoned shirt, the tie, the brick-red jacket and slacks ... it definitely gave of the vibe of an academic with a little green always handy. It also didn't help his case that Shirou was carrying fully loaded bags of groceries either, which also inferred that he might have more than a little money on hand.
"All right, rich kid." A particularly scruffy looking vagabond sneered, "Hand over the cash." The way he flipped and twirled his switchblade denoted that he was no stranger to roughing up good citizens so that he could make a quick buck. The other delinquents murmured in agreement and proceeded to perform other pre-mugging acts with their weapons of choice with mixed results ranging from intimidating to flat-out corny and impossible to take seriously. Such is the result when one decides attempts to -- and fails at -- juggling more table legs than he has hands.
They were not getting any money out of Shirou. Even if he hadn't spent all of the money he had on hand on restocking his refrigerator, he still would not allow the ruffians to have their way with anyone. At that moment, Shirou cared not for whatever backstory or motivations they had for turning to lives of petty crime, even though he could understand the desperation required to compel someone to embrace such a lifestyle, there was no way he could support that. Shirou believed that everyone had a choice when it came to justice, when it came to doing the morally right thing. There was no way at all that he could support that. Especially if they involved themselves with him, then he would retaliate accordingly and beat into them the error of their ways if push ultimately came to shove.
"Sorry everyone..."
Gates in his sub-consciousness unlocked, opening wide for the flow of energy. Prana coursed through his circuits like sparking electricity. With his hands hidden behind his back in order to somewhat preserve the secret of magecraft from the impetuous mundanes, Shirou could clearly picture the image of the famed sword in his mind's eye. He recalled the sword, recalled the weight of the weapon, the bite of the blade, the sturdiness of the handle, the history and power that it knew. Shirou recalled the entire structure, the whole of the sword's framework.
"But I'm afraid I can't let you do that."
Shirou Emiya turned the illusory image he saw in his head into hard reality. With a flash of prana blazing down his arms, the ideal weapon was given shape, form, and substance.
That night, the Torashinai roared into being, ready to shred, tear, and deal more than a fair share of moderate to severe blunt trauma with its bamboo blade. For Shirou did not want to seriously harm the muggers, just beat them down hard enough so that they could no longer attempt to relieve him of his valuables. Even with just the Torashinai, it was Shirou's opinion that it still felt like this was somewhat bordering on "overkill" territory. A shinai it may be, but it was still the crystallization of the pride of the Fujimuras, and taking into account the rage it contained by virtue of its classification as a demonic sword, albeit a low-tier one, this was still a weapon not to be taken lightly.
Still, it felt a lot better than being armed with just a table leg. Which was more than he could say about one of the group of budding degenerates.
"Crap!" One of the men spat upon seeing the shinai, "Where the hell was he hiding that thing?"
"This might be tricky, Izaya," A mugger grasping a bicycle chain with thumbtacks glued to it voiced his worries to the one who had far-too many broken table legs to be of any practical use.
The so-called Kazama urged the rest of his hooligan friends on, unphased as he was by the sudden appearance of a certain demonic shinai -- not that he was acutely aware of the wooden sword's status as a demonic weapon in the first place, it should be noted. "Tricky, schmicky, Kyohei! There's only one of him, and a whole lot of us! Odds are in our favor, boys! Grab his wallet and any valuables!"
Like the water of a surging wave filling up a footprint with tidewater, the thugs rushed Shirou. His grip on the training sword's handle tightened with impending tension. His amber eyes narrowed, he stood his ground as firmly as a tree, and he drew himself into a position ready to strike at a heartbeat's notice. The fight would be tight, brief, and incredibly violent and fast-paced. People would get hurt, both sides would be relentless, and neither willing to give ground to the other out of blatant stubbornness.
Or at least, that's the way it should have been, were it not for one overlooked detail that was even more highly improbably than anyone in that exact alley getting struck with lightning that very moment. The extremely sudden and completely unexpected appearance of --
"It is I! The one! The only! The most fabulous, cutest and sexiest of all the supernatural spellcasters, Magical Girl Amber!" The fox-eared girl with the red hair and golden eyes in the short-cut brown maid outfit proclaimed to the high heavens, proudly standing on top of the nearby apartments like a classical hero of justice and flamboyantly twirling her broomstick.
"What -- " Izaya began.
"-- The --" Kyohei followed-up.
"-- Hell?" Table-Legs finished.
"Hoo boy." Shirou groaned.
"Fiends! Scum! Scoundrels of the earth! Bastards of the ghettos! Slumdog Would-Be-Millionaires! You will not lay a hand on this innocent student, not while Magical Girl Amber is on the job! While you are in my city, your injustices will not be suffered by the likes of me!"
"Eh? The hell you gonna do about it, Sailor Nothing? Shoot us with you Love-Love Beam?"
"Nope." Magical Girl Amber smiled happily in response to this snide remark. But her smile was not a happy one, it was a smile to be seen in nightmares, the last thing one would witness when cornered in a back alley before their entrails would decorate the walls like cheap graffiti. An alleyway that was suspiciously similar to this one... "Something even better~"
A somewhat famous -- or rather, "infamous" -- man in a mask once said that the city "screamed like an abattoir of retarded children". Now, replace "retarded children" with "petty criminals who are only marginally smarter than the formerly-mentioned 'retarded children' being mauled by flesh-eating dandelions which spontaneously grew from the cracks they were rooted in while simultaneously being firebombed to near-death from a barrage of Molotov cocktails and gallons of homemade napalm and are screaming like little girls in a in an amusement park's funhouse", then that statement would not be too far off the mark and would have deftly described what had just occured. In addition, the aforementioned infamous man in a mask would more likely than not find the entire situation a rather hilarious one, albeit in a grim way.
Regardless of the matter, what commenced after Magical Girl Amber gave her final message to the mooks was, extreme, at the very least.
When the carnage was over and done with, the mysterious -- yet so-very familiar -- magical girl alighted upon the ground just in front of Shirou and began strutting towards him, wearing a look that contained an amalgam of satisfaction, pride, and a hint of fox-like mischievousness. Shirou had to remind himself to keep his eyes away from her tight-fitting red thigh-highs, that tantalizing space of exposed white skin between her stockings and the hem of her skirt, and to definitely not stare at her swaying hips for any amount of time longer than a millisecond.
"There's no need to thank me, good citizen," The girl saluted and winked at Shirou, very much heedless of the chaos she had wrought moments before. "But please, do so anyway: I live off of praise. Washes away despair and all that."
"Kohaku, I can handle myself, you know?"
"Ah, ah, ah. I'm not my mild-mannered and incredibly pretty alter ego right now. When I'm on duty I want to be referred to as 'Magical Girl Amber'. I need to maintain my professionalism as a crime fighter, after all."
"If this is what counts as professionalism then I'd hate to see your interpretation of 'casual crimefighting.' " Upon hearing Shirou's comment, Magical Girl Amber simply chuckled and flashed a foxy grin. "What you did was just brutal, you know."
"Please, I'm not that harsh. I'll have you know that I called the hospital for them before I set out to do some justice, because I foresaw that something like this would happen."
"Really? And what did you tell them?"
"I just told them that some crazy woman cosplaying as a magical girl was firebombing a streetgang in a back alley and that they should probably send in the fire department to contain the damages. Also, that they shouldn't skimp on sortying the emergency vehicles, because it was going to be a mess. They should be getting here reeeaaaally soon~"
Shirou resisted the urge to facepalm, all the while holding an antsy Torashinai in his hand the whole time. "You really are brutal, you know?"
"Oh? Am I? I'm just blunt. Besides, what exactly were you going to do to that posse of vagrants, Shirou-kun? You were just going to inelegantly beat them into unconsciousness with your pet shinai over there, weren't you?"
"That's entirely different!" Shirou defended himself, gripping the sword tightly, "They still wouldn't have had to gone through that!"
"But the end results of our methods are exactly the same, we just use different means to achieve them. Besides, it's not like I killed them."
"Still, Kohaku, I --"
Magical Girl Amber childishly knocked herself on the head and stuck out her tongue. "How rude of me! Where are my manners? Silly Amber. I forgot to ask you the name of your friend~"
Shirou was about to question the existence of this so-called friend before he realized that Kohaku was referring to the tiger-strapped bamboo blade he held in his hands. He hefted the shinai so that he could display it better for Magical Girl Amber. "This sword? It's called the Torashinai."
"There is no Torashinai! Only Zuul!" The voice of a demon screamed from the depths of the training-sword.
"Please be quiet, 'Zuul'. Magical Girl Amber is trying to talk to me."
"Are you going to send me back into your Reality Marble? Please don't make me go back! Dainsleif is two-faced, and Muramasa is always so mean to me!"
"But this conversation is kind of meant to be personal."
"I can be quiet. I won't listen, either. Just please don't send me away back to your Hill of SwordsüEust yet, if only for a little longer..."
"I don't know...."
"Oh please! Please! PLEASE! I'll do anything you want me to ... provided I can do it, because I don't have any arms or legs."
"You're the worst demon ever, you know that? No wonder you were able to be sealed away in just a shinai."
*sniff*
"Fine, fine. Go back to sleep, Torashinai. Your work here is done."
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! MILK FOR THE KHORNE FLAKES!"
"Don't push your luck."
"ZZZZZZZZZZZ..."
With that, Shirou decided to keep the Torashinai around for a little while longer and proceeded to cram the sword into one of the grocery bags. Following this decision, he turned to regard Magical Girl Amber once more. "Regardless of that, you shouldn't have gotten yourself involved like this."
"I'm just returning a favor. That's all. I'm in your debt, you know."
"You don't have to be, Kohaku. In fact, you shouldn't feel like you have to owe me anything. I told you that you should not tie yourself down to the past, especially not one like yours. I said that you should live the life you want for yourself, and I meant that."
"Why Shirou-kun, this IS the sort of life that I want for myself, and it's all thanks to you that I can make this a reality!" Shirou's cheeks flushed slightly at this confession. Not noticing, or not letting it be apparent that she noticed, she raised one of her soft hands and tenderly caressed Shirou's jawline. "Besides, are we so quick to forget about particular things?"
His mind started to go blank when that reminder of hers brought up memories. "T-that's, that was jus- just..."
"You're cute when you get all flustered and shy, do you know that?" Magical Girl Amber cooed at him, her hot breath tickling the inside of his ears. Her soft fox-like tail intentionally and evocatively brushing against the front of his pants as she strutted away from him.
'Is that a real tail?' he thought, 'I think it must be, with the way she has so much control over it. Is this what the power of magic is capable of? I wonder...' Shirou's mind began to briefly wander to dangerous thoughts that were not meant for this time or place.
"Can I at least give you a ride home?" Magical Girl Amber asked, "It's my self-appointed duty to ensure that the good folk of this city remain safe in these dangerous times."
Shirou figured that he could not exactly turn down that offer. Even if his past actions had somehow caused this distortion in Kohaku, she certainly seemed to mean well, if nothing else. "Sure. Why not? We should at least get going before the ambulances arrive. I'd rather not be questioned by the authorities." He agreed, also taking note of the klaxons in the distance that drew ever closer.
"Oh, that's wonderful, Shirou~!"
Shirou grabbed hold of the groceries and the dormant Torashinai. "I never knew you had a car though. Are we going to be hailing a taxi instead?"
"No. No car. No taxi."
"YouüEon't have a car?"
"Nope." Another one of her trademark smiles danced across her face. It sent chills up Shirou's back. "Something even better~"
Broomstick.
"Are you kidding me?"
"Come on, hop up already! We're giving this puppy a twirl!"
"I have a bad feeling about this..."
Magical Girl Amber urged Shirou. "Less talking, more broom-riding!"
"Alright, alright. Might as well get started then." Without further ado, but still battling with strong feelings of apprehension and second-guesses, Shirou sat on the thin piece of wood.
"You all ready, Shirou-kun?" He only nodded, the internal conflict sneaking through to the surface to display itself on his face. "Kiki has nothing on uuuuuuuusssssss!"
He did not believe it.
There was no way he could believe it.
Yet...
Here it was...
Happening right to him...
The broomstick was actually flying.
However, his amazement at this turn of events was short lived. As soon as the broomstick had gained altitude, it began banking and janking a jerking and dipping like a drunken monkey decided to have a swing at flying it. It was jarring and sudden. Its erratic nature made it difficult to get used to its motions, and Shirou was hard-pressed to stay on the soaring broomstick, much less hold on to his groceries all the while.
Why was it like this? How could something be flown this badly? Was it the fault of the broomstick, that possessed piece of warp-tool? Or was Kohaku's giddy attitude at the moment the reason for these hair-raising shenanigans?
Shirou was inclined to believe in the latter theory.
Following an intense midair u-turn, Magical Girl Amber yelled over the sound of the rushing air. "How are you doing back there?" Shirou could not say anything, and he looked like he was fighting a losing battle with a tag-team of intense vertigo and ungodly motion sickness. He straddled the thin broomstick between his things, and Shirou still miraculously clutched to the bags of groceries, and judging from the manner he clung to them one would suspect that those were his only anchor to sanity at that given moment. "How about I put on some music to liven up this tense mood, huh?"
No real response, but that was more than enough for her.
"I hope you like F.L.O.W!" Kohaku yelled over the rushing air as the pop-rock music blared its raging funk into the midnight air for all to hear.
"I wanted to go for something that had some really sweeping sounds to it! Something that made you really feel like you want to fly! Something that inspires an urge to hop on a flying deathtrap, tame it with your skills and grit, and ride that thing off into the sunrise, striving for a bright tomorrow!" Magical Girl Amber yelled her explanation to the desperately-clinging Shirou while keeping her focus straight aheadüEherever 'straight' ahead could currently be considered, that is. "Does any of this make sense to you?"
A muffled yell could only barely be made out.
"Sorry! I can't hear you over the sound of happiness!" She yelled again, urging Shirou to repeat himself. She turned towards him, only to notice that something was quite off. "Oh shoot! I lost Shirou-kun off the back port bow!"
"Such misfortune!" Shirou wailed while falling from the sky.
Somewhere, in another city of science and knowledge, a certain Touma Kamijou abruptly sneezed.
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Putting it lightly, the ride to Shirou Emiya's house was tumultuous at best, and bowel-clenchingly terrifying at its outright worst. To the great relief of a certain member of the party, eventually the magus-student and the magical girl's journey finally reached their destination of Shirou's residence. In all of his days, Shirou Emiya never knew when he had moved faster than that time he got away from that broomstick and scrambled maniacally to the front door of his house. He may have been incredibly relieved, but something deep inside of him urged him that he could not just leave things like this. What that meant for him, then and there or in the long run, he did not know, only that something just needed to be done.
"Listen, Amber, about tonight..."
"I know. I understand. I just wanted to pay you back and help out for a little bit, that's all." Kohaku's tone sounded soft and gentle. It contrasted with the image that she had put up before, the one of the eccentric, mysterious, incomprehensible hero of justice. It further clashed with the goofy and fun persona that she had at school, which directly flew in the face of her old personality, the one she had back in those early days when he first made acquaintances with her. It went against the emptiness that she had known for a very long time. "I hope you can allow me that even if it is just for this one time. I will not intrude on you anymore if you do not wish it."
"That's not it at all, Kohaku." Even so, Shirou could not help but crack a twinge of a smile. Even if he probably knew that she would probably not keep her 'promise' for the sake of her attachment to him. She had nothing but the best intentions at heart, so in the end, could she really be blamed? At least, in the 'wrong' way? "I just wanted to sayüEou really helped out back there, in your own weird way."
"Does this mean that I'm allowed to help you out whenever you're in a pinch?" Her foxy grin, brimming with trouble. Enticing, enticing trouble. Though she may have been akin to a doll those times before, that was all in the past, a past so different from now that it felt as if the years had been abandoned and scattered to be forgotten for a very long time. Hers was not a doll's smile; that was a smile meant for the living, to be shared with the living.
And Kohaku, she was alive.
"Feel free to go on ahead."
"I'll hold you to that, Shirou-kun~"
Kohaku waved an enthusiastic goodbye to Shirou from the top of her broomstick. She rocketed off to parts unknown, her flying skills seemingly even more haphazard and whimsical than they were before. It might have been because of that final talk that he and Kohaku had before she went,
Interesting events had taken place in those few hours since the start of that night. A night filled with stories crammed with pressed-for-cash ruffians, man-eating dandelions, talking swords, daredevil broomstick flight patterns and much more. His actions in the past may have served as a catalyst to Kohaku's current personality, and probably led to a few of her current character traits and mannerism (for better or for worse), Shirou could find not a single reason why he could ever regret a thing like that. To be able to help someone find their happiness (even if such happiness came from a path like that), to touch a life in the best way possible, he would never be able to regret that. Not with seeing so many smiling faces nearby.
Just the way a hero of justice was meant to be.
He sighed, shrugged, smiled, and hoisted the groceries bags -- plus one sleeping Torashinai -- over his shoulders. At any rate, he'd have one hell of a story to tell his familiar when he made it back inside the house.
[ * Ka-UNFLASHBACK * ]
The silence around him was utterly deafening. If one were to listen very closely, then they would have been able to hear the rest of the far-off cafeteria-goers milling about and casually shooting the breeze as if nothing had happened at all.
Just then was when everyone at the table burst into raucous laughter.
"That's hilarious!"
"Eheheh, that really is something."
"Pffft! And you're serious, too."
"This is no laughing matter, guys." Shirou iterated when he was finally able to get a word in edgewise amongst the hearty guffawing. "I must have fallen off that damn broomstick at least five times until I had to wrap my arms around her waist for dear life."
"It is! It totally is a laughing matter! Or at least just weird as hell." Arihiko wiped tears of laughter from his eye with a big smile on his face. "And she's a girl that attends this school, too? That's just too wild!"
"Hey. Don't go telling anyone about that, alright? Her identity does not leave this table, understand?"
"Even if I did go around spilling the beans about who Magical Girl Amber really is no one would believe me. It's like everyone in this place has some sort of weirdness censor installed in their brains, or something. But really, I'm not saying anything. The secret is at least safe with me."
"Thanks, Arihiko. I owe you one."
"You owe me a lot more than that, Shirou." Arihiko grinned toothily at his friend.
Shiki scratched his head absentmindedly. "Did she really set fire to a gang of muggers and feed them to a forest of carnivorous dandelions?"
"No. She feed them to the carnivorous dandelions, thenset them on fire." Issei corrected.
"Sounds about right."
Issei pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose once more. "Talk about disproportionate retribution. But when life gives you lemons, you make do with what you have. "
"So, Shirou, when's the next time you going to see her?" Arihiko waggled his eyebrows and moved in closely to Shirou.
"It's not like that! We're not like that! She just turned up. That's all." Trace hints of pink flashed on Shirou's cheeks. "Kohaku is only a friend of mine, anyway." Somebody at the table coughed a cough that sounded suspiciously like 'stalking you' and 'in-denail'.
"Man, I was hoping to get her autograph." Arhiko genuinely pouted, though he exaggerated his emotions for the sake of comedy. "You could end up as an item, you know."
"I kind of doubt that." Shirou scratched the back of his head, clearly knowing something and not willing to share that certain something with the rest of his threads.
"That's right. You have been spending too much time with Caren, after all. She's rubbing off on you." Issei cooly affirmed and expertly changed the subject as he sipped his ice-cold drink.
"I do not. And what makes you say that?" Shirou inquired of Issei's claim while dipping his spoon into the bowl of food before him.
"You're eating mapo tofu for lunch."
Shirou involuntarily grimaced, blushed, and looked down at his tray of food. Sure enough, a half-eaten bowl of mapo tofu plaintively stared right back at him, almost as if the spicy dish were sad that it had been unacknowledged this whole time by the one that was eating it.
"First of all: for your information, I'm eating this stuff because it tastes good. Secondly: it's not what you think it is. It's not like I'm spend so much time with her by choice or anything like that."
"Good point," Shiki replied. Spying an opportunity to needle someone else's lovelife instead of being on the receiving end of it, a tricky smile uncharacteristically snuck onto his expression, which gave Shirou the chills just looking at him. The impending knowledge that his friend was going to do something that would no doubt embarrass him further was a harsh mental attack against his defenses. "You'd rather hang out with that other foreign-exchange student, wouldn't you? After all, she hits your fetish points just as well as Caren does."
"As if you'd know what they are!" Shirou blurted instantly, his face burning a brighter red than it had ever before during that entire conversation. Too little too late, only then was it that he became aware of the highly-incriminating reaction he had and desperately tried to undo what could not be taken back. "I mean, I do not have fetish points!"
"Which foreign exchange student? We have quite a few, you know."
Issei chuckled manically as he briefly let his composure slip the leash and let himself get caught up in the moment. "Does it matter? As long as they are a cute girl, they will do. After all, Emiya is not the hard-to-impress, picky type."
"Shut up, Issei. You're making me sound easy."
"If you're not too busy ganging up on Emiya, then I have a little announcement to make." A voice called to the group of friends that immediately grabbed all of their attention.
Shinji Matou -- the smooth as butter self proclaimed "gentleman and scholar" -- elegantly leapt around the lunchtables and nimbly weaved through the tight crowd with the grace of a wild impala, yet there was a sense of urgency in his movements as he ran towards them. If anything were capable of making that young man move the way he did, then it was something that had to be seriously world-movingly significant.
"This just in! A bunch of girls got into a fight in the courtyard! Get over there! It's going to be legendary!"
--vand apparently that qualified in Shinji's books as something world-movingly significant.
"Okaygoingnowlater." Shirou forced himself to abandon his delectably spicy and flavorful mapo tofu and was the first to leave the table. Not out of a youthfully juvenile and base desire to witness a group of young women fight each other for whatever reason, but so that he could leave this incident far behind him as he possibly could for the time being. The girls would provide an excellent distraction for the rest of his group, which would in turn allow him to escape to elsewhere to other places..
"As per usual, perhaps this may be entertaining." Issei was still firmly set to the so-called "Bro-Mode" at that time, so he had no problem with leaving his lunch half-eaten as he dignifiedly walked over to the location as quickly as he could while maintaining the personal image of the Student Council President that he strived so hard to preserve and project. Shiki just up and left his food and the table with nothing but a nod.
"Mmmm, foreigners..." Arihiko's mind was still lost somewhere else in a nice and happy place. That was when he caught up with the rest of the world. "Whoa! Girl fight? Gotta get there ASAP and abuse my cameraphone!" If Shinji's running could be compared with that of a fast yet graceful gazelle, then Arihiko's was doubtlessly reminiscent of a cheetah on speed. Never had the school known a normal human to have run that fast for the promise of catfighting, and nor would it ever again.
Key words: normal human.
Far across on the other side of the cafeteria, at a table where several of the female students were seated, a conversation of a similar nature was being had at that same exact moment.
But that, fair observers, is a story to be told for another day.
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TALES OF NASUNOBARE HIGH
( not a Role-Playing Game owned by NamcoBandai )
= Chapter I =
{ - All stories have to start somewhere, so why not right in the sort-of middle?* - }
*because doing things In Medias Res can only either grab the reader's attention off the bat due to the inherent mystery present in that form of storytelling, or make them confused as all hell
:/
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- ] | [ -
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The Ryougi Shiki After-show Show
"Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki, Ryougi~Shiki..."
Chanting happily to himself, Lio Shirazumi jabbed the plastic knife into the sub sandwich over and over again in a way that would have made Jack Torrance proud. The way the mustard flecks and the shred of lettuce flew into the air with each wild stroke of the utensil was almost poetic, in an odd, demented way.
"Good afternoon, Lio." Mikiya Koktou politely greeted his lovably unhinged friend as took a seat at the lunch table, a safe distance away from the bleached-blonde. "What are you doing there?"
"Making lunch for Ryougi Shiki~! She's going to love it~!" Lio was of course referring to the dissected mess before him that was previously recognizable as a sandwich. The way Mikiya figured it, regarding the rate of success that "lunch" would have in wooing Ryougi Shiki over, a snowman stood a better chance of playing chicken with a lava flow and coming out as triumphantly victorious in the end. Still, he didn't need to or want to wound Lio's delusional pride -- why would he, when Ryougi was perfectly capable of doing that by herself? -- so instead he merely wished him the best of luck.
"Good afternoon, Mikiya-san." Fujino Asagami said to him, a faint blush glowing on her porcelain-white cheeks.
"Good afternoon to you too, Fujino." Mikiya smiled at the girl, taking care to use her given name.
"Thank you, Mikiya-san," She replied quickly and quietly, hiding herself in the attention she was giving her own lunch as fast as she could. In contrast to Lio's or Mikiya's meals, hers was a far more traditional Japanese-style box lunch.
"Hey Mikiya. What's up?" A boy with red hair sitting next to the blushing Fujino Asagami asked him, his fork digging into the plate of pasta he had chosen for his own lunch.
"Not much, Tomoe. Just passing time until Shiki gets here."
"I don't see why you should waste so much time waiting on that girl, Nii-san." Azaka Koktou scoffed as she claimed a spot by her brother's side when she sat at the table.
"That's because Shiki is our friend, Azaka. Friends do these sort of things for one another unconditionally."
Peeved by Mikiya's simple, truthful reasoning, Azaka responded accordingly by grumbling under her breath. "It's just lunch, she's not going to care if youstart without her or not. The way she makes you wait is just rude."
Mikiya shrugged and innocently chuckled. "Well if it bothers you that much, then why don't you go ahead and eat without waiting for me?"
"Th-that's different!" Azaka instantly blurted. She was so caught off guard that the girl had practically wailed her defense, making it seem as if there were more to it than there appeared to be.
"Yo."
Before the topic could be pursed any further, Ryougi Shiki had shown up as if she had appeared from thin air, her lunch apparently a single carton of ice cream and just one bottle of water.
"Ryougi Shiki~!"
"Good afternoon, Shiki-san."
"Hey there, Shiki..."
"Hello Shiki."
"About time you showed up, and I see your eating habits are still the same."
"RYOUGI SHIKI~!"
As soon as Shiki nonchalantly sat at the table on the other side of Mikiya, something strange immediately transpired.
It was as if a light switch were flipped into an "ON" position, although a more apt comparison would liken it to a dynamo being tripped and overcharging everyone sitting at the lunch table with untold measures of raw energy. Their minds felt as if they would flip inside-out, swell, turn to mush, burn-out and freeze up at the same time. That moment, they could even feel the presences of their very souls, souls that felt as if they would rupture like water balloons and disperse into nothings and return to the state of the void. The extreme discomfort, the absolute knowing from a constant and instant input of ever-changing yet immutable data, the utter wrongness of it all they had just experienced only lasted a miniscule fraction of time, but the effects still lingered, rewriting their souls and natures permanently.
But then they got better.
"Well, that was weird," Mikiya commented, his tone only implying that something only slightly out of the ordinary had occurred instead of what felt like the entire re-writing of the fabric of reality. "Why do I feel like I'm a part of some inside joke that I'm not getting?
She scooped a heaping mouthful of ice cream in her spork and took a bite. "Because you are."
"I'm sorry, I'm not following you, Shiki."
"Let me ask you this. Do you know of anything weird? Anything that seems downright strangethat you should not know of?"
"Umm let's see here...yes. Actually. I suppose so."
"That was within my calculations."
"Heh, Carnival Phantasm." Tomoe snickered before quickly shutting up and looking downright shocked at what he just said.
"Shiki...is this what I think it is?"
"Simple explanation: I killed the Fourth Wall, and you all just felt its repercussions." Ryougi Shiki sipped from her water, the bottle crackling beneath her dexterous fingers. "That's how I am able to meta-reference like this, and that's how you will be able to do the same."
"What? How on earth are you able to do that!"
Ryougi Shiki merely flashed the spork that she was holding as an act of confirmation.
"Normally, I wouldn't believe this was happening, but now that all of these strange otherworldly details keep pouring into my head, I now know just how much sense that this actually makes."
"Of course it does. After all, if it exists then I can find a way to kill it." In order to prove a point, Shiki stood from her spot and slashed through Lio Shirazumi where he sat with her spork. But instead of splattering gore and sliced bone following tracing the arc where she "cut" the boy like a red line to the sun, there was no sign of any damage. "Right now I just killed Lio's obsession with me."
Or at least, none readily apparent.
"Gah! What happened to my sandwich?" Lio gasped, as if he just woke up from a either a deep dream or a really intense acid trip only to find out that everything that happened in it was indeed very real. "It looks like bread salad now! And it was a turkey club, too......"
Azaka's eyes grew wide with realization. "My God she really is telling the truth!"
"Sheesh," Lio continued to grumble about the state of his lunch, unaware of the dirty knife he was clenching tightly in his fist. "At this point I might as well just blend this thing all into some weird smoothie if it's this torn up. It literally looks like baby food right now. What a waste..."
"It's official guys: this is not the Leo we know." Tomoe confirmed.
Fujino looked up from her lunch. "Umm, everyone? Do you know what I just realized? The story we're in has a hilariously engrish title. Should we worry about this?"
"For the sake of ironically comedic value, I'd say you should not worry your pretty little non-tragically gang banged head about it."
"Pardon?"
"Nothing."
Mikiya adjusted his glasses once more. "Alright then Shiki, you made believers out of us. So what exactly are we doing here, anyway?"
"We're bonus content."
"Bonus content?"
"Exactly. We're what awaits all the readers at the end of the chapter, and we can do just about anything we want. We can sum up any noteworthy events that happened in the latest update in our own words, but more often than not we usually end up in various hijinks of our own." She expertly tossed the empty ice cream carton into a distant garbage pail and then proceeded to drink the rest of her water in a sitting before continuing. "But the real reason weare all here is because the admittedly large cast with significant roles who will be appearing in this story is so great, that -- at best -- most of us will only get the odd-cameo or reference here or there. This way, we get ample representation in every installment of 'Tales of Nasunobare High', and as a result do not become underused."
Mikiya raised an eyebrow. "Basically, we're like a cross between the Tiger Dojo and Mystery Science Theater 3000, only with Kara no Kyoukai characters."
Ryougi Shiki nodded. "Essentially speaking, yes."
"So what now?"
"Nothing. We're done this time. I've explained what needs to be explained, so there's nothing else to."
Her talk was suddenly cut off when a flashing brilliance began burning like a protostar a short distance away, shining like a miniaturized sun, scattering everything that wasn't nailed down with flaring electrical wind. The light subsided a millisecond later, and in its place there was a strange device the size of a sports utility vehicle that glowed with an brief, intense heat. Glowing lines drew themselves into the flank of the object, and the perimeter they had drawn opened up like a futuristic door.
At that very moment, that was when things became even more interesting than they already were in a very short amount of time.
~The Ryougi Shiki After-show Show
SEE YOU NEXT TIME!
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