Here we go, its own thread.
One: Pissed-off angel's karaoke.
To loosely quote John McClane: How can the same shit happen to the same guy, _twice_?
Apparently, very easily.
One moment I was getting ready to get on my way, and hoping the Trouble Twins hadn't demolished too much landscape when it turned out I hadn't been there after the Crossing that I'd been snatched out of, the next I was standing in the middle of a crater with a cloud of dust slowly dissipating around me, and a sense of deja vu.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Two weeks ago, more or less, had passed since the end of the most recent and hopefully last - if Nathan, Medea and Tohsaka were to be believed - Heaven's Feel.
The world was still there, which I suppose counted as a good thing. The city as well ... mostly. Which ... was a marked improvement over the last time I'd gotten into a scrap of this size.
Though that place had already been more or less devastated when we got there, so maybe that doesn't exactly count.
The two Casters hadn't been opposed to helping me in my attempt to return to the path I'd been on when an Association member with more ambition than he had talent had decided to take part in the ritual. The process, now that the Grail and the rituals karmic interference were no longer a factor, proved to be easier than anticipated. Didn't even have to spring for a virgin sacrifice or anything.
So, there I was, the crumbling Servant contract lending the start-up power to the mandala the shinobi and the sorceress had come up with while I said my goodbyes.
Not that I had many to say, really.
Fraga, whom I'd mostly annoyed - I have that effect on a lot of people, it seems - had shown up ... alright, so maybe annoyed is too strong a word. She was a good comrade, and one I'd trust having my back to any day.
The two present Servant spellcasters ... Medea had proved to be surprising in many ways, and Nathan ... he was easy to relate to in such a manner that led me to believe this wasn't the last time we'd cross paths.
Or maybe it was, and I simply had an overactive imagination.
The Tohsaka sisters were present, and Ilya, my former 'Master', had just gotten done with breaking my contract a few moments before. The three were mostly around because Emiya was around. Likewise, his Servant.
Poor Shiro. He'd either die of heartbreak, or exhaustion. I had a thousand yen going on the latter, mostly because I figured there was already enough heartbreak in the world.
I was in the middle of contemplating a receding Rider - I think she was going to get refreshments or something like that - or more specifically, a certain leather encased part of her anatomy, when it happened.
The mandala flared, much to the surprise of the two Casters, I felt both drained dry _and_ better than I had during my entire stay in this reality as the contract finally crumbled, and the constrictions I'd had to deal with when using my Field went away ...
Though I had only a moment for elation, followed by an instant of vertigo, before the world flashed azure and ...
... I ...
... was ...
... gone ...
... the last thing I saw being both Casters' faces, looking on in consternation and not a little confusion.
The sensations that came with this Crossing were not wholly unfamiliar, I realized as I hurtled through the shifting in-between, and much akin to being pulled through turbulent waters by the rope you're holding onto. Only I couldn't let go.
Not dissimilar to the last time I'd gotten diverted in transit, which was one of the reasons I came _out_ of there with a bit of an attitude.
I didn't know what to expect. Part of me was hoping either Fujino or Kuga had managed to find some mystical or scientific mumbo-jumbo that latched onto me as soon as I was available, and I'd see the both of them and whoever they'd coerced, threatened, blackmailed or simply convinced to help.
The more cynical (and larger) rest was getting ready to end up staring into the barrel of some sort of esoteric weapon.
Which was what caused me to end up in a crater half as deep as I was tall.
Okay, there and then that wasn't saying much, but there you go.
What I hadn't been expecting was to end up in the middle of a spacious, grassy courtyard of some sort of castle-looking structure, surrounded by a group of roughly my apparent age every member of which was in the process of picking him or herself up from the ground.
Apparently, I'd arrived with a bit of 'oomph'.
Then I noticed the uniforms, black cloaks, the prevalence of ... well, I'd call them animals, but that sort of description doesn't quite do justice to some of the creatures present.
The whole thing had an ambiance that I can only describe as a mixture of *shudder*Harry Potter and *double shudder*Pokemon, and I suddenly felt the need to smell some exhaust fumes and cordite, feel concrete underneath my feet, and blow Genom Tower to bits.
You know it's bad when you get homesick for images of that, instead of Sylvie and Anri ... err. Right. Nothing. Nothing at all. Feel free to ignore that statement.
"Owowowowow," someone moaned, extracting themselves from where another of the ... 'students?' had landed on top of them and planted an elbow in their spleen. "Looks like Zero did it aga ..."
Which was when the person, a tanned redhead who'd be considered voluptuous for any age, took notice of the source of the blast.
Namely yours truly.
The big, and I do mean _big_, red lizard behind her reared in my direction, flames curling up from its nostrils.
I suppose I had only myself to blame, since it was only then that I realized that my Field was manifesting. Likely due to the surprise and the fact that I had full access to it once again, rather than having to work with a limited pool of power.
Meaning my wings were 'out', and I had a minor AT effect going, which I had to wrestle back under wraps. Something that did not go without difficulties ...
... the wild fluctuations of Absolute Terror were enough to make some of those collecting themselves go back down and scramble to get the hell _away_.
The whip of flame that seared its way in my direction from somewhere off to the side, as well as the sudden burst of same from the red lizard and a few more minor signatures made me discard that course of action and shift the Field to Absolute Territory, leaving the attacks to splash against amber hexagons.
Not exactly conductive to peaceful negotiations. Neither was my wanting to blow something apart very badly at the moment.
For purely stress relief reasons, you understand.
So I decided that, for the time being, discretion should be the better part of valor. Whereupon I let the energies of my wings' Field do their job, lift me into the air, and shot forward after making a complete about-face.
I left behind a courtyard of befuddled people, some of whom needed a change of underwear, and a big hole in the outer wall of the place.
I could have gone over it, but ... well, stress relief. It worked, too. By the time I'd hunkered down to evaluate my situation, I was back to being more or less level headed.
What?
Well, they should be glad I didn't take the Loki and Bartleby method to heart.
---
Two: Kamikaze Kaitou Katz
It's only when something you've taken as a given has gone away that you miss it. This is the honest truth.
I realized it was such when I started missing hamburgers. And showers. And let's not forget plumbing.
Not bloody likely, what with the smell and all. Gah. I'm reconsidering the whole 'not an outdoorsman' thing I've got going.
Don't know if it's not worse that I'd gotten acclimated to it by the time a week and change were up.
It wasn't as much of a problem as it would have been if I were _all_ human and not just 'mostly'. Not having to worry about infection, sickness, or other exceedingly unpleasant things like that which seemed inevitable given the local conditions was something I was infinitely thankful for.
Still, there was only so much of the local 'culture' that I could handle.
Hence my desire to get the hell out of dodge as soon as I could.
I could have likely come up with some sort of bull reason for my haste to get the hell on my way other than my level of personal comfort being less than I was generally prepared to accept ... in retrospect, that was as much bull than any other reason. I'd been stuck in a D.D. Battlemover for longer than I cared to remember, which was about rock bottom as far as personal comfort could go, and hadn't gone entirely mental during that time.
Well, never twice for the same reason, in any case.
Trying to make myself believe I was worried about Anri and Sylvie wasn't about to work. Both were highly competent, and had the equivalent of a small army with them last I could recall. One more pair of hands to shoot a gun wouldn't make a difference.
I _missed_ them, which was another thing altogether. Alright, not entirely, but by enough of a margin.
Same thing about Shizuru and Natsuki, save the army maybe.
They could take care of themselves, often more effectively than I could say the same of myself.
Which led me to skulking in wait, under cover of trees, waiting for an opportune moment ...
But I've gotten ahead of myself again.
I could start from the beginning, but that would make an already slightly lengthy retelling into something far too long and boring to bother with. Let's just say that before I managed to hunt down my first rabbit I found a type of berries that managed to give even my physiology indigestion.
The immediate reason for my cheap burglar imitation, staking out the very place I'd come out of the Crossing into at night and waiting for my momentary partner's 'go ahead' was the same one as always when I pulled something similarly ... odd.
Call me an easy dupe, but on the off chance of there being something here that was rumored to have a serious magical 'kick' to it - one that I had high hopes I could harness to let me Cross again - I was willing to go out on a limb to help steal said item.
After all, I doubt they'd be willing to part with something dubbed the 'Staff of Destruction' if I came up to the gates and asked for it. Especially not with the way I left last time I was one the premises.
And again, I get ahead of myself.
The 'they' in question were the staff and students of the Tristania Academy of Magic. Tristania being the name of the country I'd ended up in.
Irony of ironies, even without the Gift of Tongues every human/Angel hybrid seems to have manifested in one way or another, I would have been able to get by.
The other countries around were both familiar and not at the same time. Germania, Gallia, Albion, Romalia ...
I'd not only landed in history, I'd landed in alternate history.
Halkeginia was an equivalent of Europe around the 16th Century AD, with more than just a pinch of the supernatural thrown in for good measure.
As to how I'd found out about that?
It turned out that I hadn't needed to go out for information. It had come to me on its very own.
Looking as I did, that wasn't too surprising.
That is to say, I got mugged.
Or, well, they _tried_ to.
Considerate, though. Gave me enough information to let me at least get oriented, and threw in some money to sweeten the deal.
Just for that, I stayed happy with leaving off at broken bones.
After all, whatever healthy 'fellow' brigands were around the area, not to mention the local wildlife - oh, was that a wolf's howl I hear? - would be far crueler that I to them. Consider it poetic justice, if you will.
Given that information, I could blend into the populace somewhat well. The eyes and hair weren't something a cowl couldn't hide, most of the time, and even they didn't draw too much attention. Though there were a few times during which I did wish I had been able to pick up Gabriel's little shifting trick way back when ... oh well. Live and learn.
I moved from town to town, consulting the occasional mage about the peculiarities of their craft and trying to ferret out useful tidbits.
Technology wouldn't be getting me out of this jam. I knew that much.
Well, not unless Shizuru and Natsuki managed to hunt me down. I wasn't going to remain idle and just wait for that to happen, or to see whether it occurred at all.
Hence the research about the local magic.
Manipulation of external energies by those who had the talent, split into several element based classes and ranked according to the complexity of the weave they could create ... not par for the course, exactly, but not so unusual as to give me too many problems with comprehending the basics of how they did things.
Sadly, that alone wasn't enough.
Magic had pulled me here, magic could put me back on my path ... but unfortunately, the farther I got - which, admittedly, wasn't all that far - in my research, the more I realized that whatever happened had been a bit of a fluke.
So instead of trying to rely on something this unstable, I preferred to go and see about a tried and true method of travel.
At the barest of basics, it was still energy. My Field could work with that. Could maybe even harness a considerable enough reservoir thereof, which would allow me to attempt a Crossing on my 'own power' for the first time since End of Evangelion.
As I could hardly afford to pay for that sort of energy expenditure, or the sort of item that would likely come with it, there seemed to be only one thing to do ...
Causality seemed to conspire in my favor, since a week after I'd decided that I was contacted by a local of considerable renown in that line of work.
She called herself Fouquet, the Crumbling Dirt - the latter being her so called 'runic' name, and signifying that she was a mage.
Earth element specialist, too.
See? I'd learned a bit by that time. Not just that I didn't enjoy the gruel that seemed the universal breakfast food at most inns. Well, the sole one I trusted to any extent, anyway. Call me pedantic and picky, but I prefer quality in my meat. Sadly, expenses ... well, you know.
"You are Katz," she'd stated. Really, no need to ask. I was sort of distinctive, even in this land of odd hair colors. Case in point, Fouquet, with her _green_ hair. Lime.
She'd caught me at breakfast, as the case was, and in a mood that wasn't exactly enthusiastic so my answer, unneeded as it was, consisted of a brief nod and a return to my ale. I'd just gotten done with the gruel.
Better that than what passed for 'clean' water here most of the time, and the wine they served was too damn sweet for me to stomach for long. Hence, ale.
It had been kind of growing on me, though. I wondered what Albion imports tasted like.
Fouquet sat herself opposite me, and laid out her spiel. Thankfully, the chamber was mostly deserted _and_ the inn was known for its ... discretion.
Just the reason I'd picked it, really. Damn Germanian brigands. You put down two or three bands for a quick buck, and they give you annoying nicknames and start spreading silly stories that would likely draw the local mages' attention if I stayed too long in one place.
Basically, it had to do with a powerful magical item being kept within the vaults of the Tristanian Academy of Magic.
Well informed woman, that, to have caught my asking about similar items of power ... or I'd just gotten sloppy. Hadn't really had too much of a reason to seriously interrogate someone lately and all.
Trust her?
Oh, hell no.
Still, she was obviously well prepared, familiar with the place the item was held in, and capable.
After some discussion, during which I'd found out that what little I'd used of my apparent brand of magic - what the locals had taken my Field for, it seemed - had been noticed and relayed to her. Hence the offer, since the item in question was under some sort of expert warding that she thought she'd need help to get through.
We agreed to split the proceeds for cashing the so called 'Staff of Destruction', and I think I did a fair bit of bargaining. Enough, at least, to make it appear as if I wasn't going to snatch the damn thing at the earliest possible instant and use it for my own devices.
You know, like she seemed intent on doing.
You see, I'd known opportunists during my life. Been one myself, on occasion. And I'd known professionals. Also been one myself, though not quite as often as the latter.
She was most definitely the latter.
I wasn't _certain_ that she didn't just want to do this for the money. I had reliable doubts about it though ...
Oh, well. Makes it a bit more fair to plan to double cross the double crosser.
At least she wasn't a cross dresser.
There really wasn't much preparation to be done, and she'd mapped out the defenses around our target very well, making the whole thing simple.
Far too simple.
If I didn't know better, I'd have said that she'd had inside help.
Oh. Wait. I didn't know better.
The culmination being me sitting there, brooding, as I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And considered that, next time I do something like this, I ought to bring by a book.
Then Fouquet's signal came. A shudder of the ground, a cloud of dirt and dust rising from the opposite end of the Academy compound to that which I was watching, a feeling of a spell going off from that direction.
Deception is the mother of all warfare, or somesuch, and Fouquet had drawn the attention of pretty much every mage in that complex with that display.
It was time to get this party started.
---
Three: Sing this corrosion to me.
"And?"
"And, what?" I asked, tracing my fingers along the smooth stone of the tower's outer wall.
The Academy had been built within the confines of a pentagon, the bounds of which were drawn by the outer walls. At each point of said pentagon stood a smaller tower, with one big tower set right into the center - the outer ones housed dorms, the main one was the actual Academy building where they did the classroom educating and staff chambers, as well as secure rooms ...
The most secure of which was where I was trying to get into. Or rather, 'we'.
Fouquet didn't trust me any further than I did her, and whilst her pet golem delivered our distraction and noise, we would see about getting our objective out together.
Easier said than done.
"_Can_ you break the wards with that strange magic of yours?"
"'s why I'm here. Wouldn't do to just say 'no' and walk away now that we've gotten this far, would it? I can certainly give it the old college try," I replied. Studied nonchalance was something I'd learned to pull off with some effectiveness a while ago, if only to pick up another means to make people lose focus.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Energy is energy, make no mistake. Despite the fact that 'superstring manipulation' seems to be the closest I've come to really describing 'magic'. Or maybe it ought to be 'quantum shunts'.
Eh.
I'll ask Caster for a definition if I run across the guy again. He seemed to know what he was doing.
Right now, I could 'feel' Fouquet's not so little golem buddy on the edge of the Academy, making a nuisance of itself. For lack of a better description, the spells that were cast against it caused waves within a specific 'bandwidth' of the spectrum. Strongly enough that the so called 'wards' around the chamber we were standing in front of the door to were beginning to resonate.
It didn't make them any weaker, but it did manage to do something that would make this whole affair a whole lot easier.
It let me focus on them specifically, and actually see them. Well, see wasn't the best way to describe the whole thing, but it'd work in a pinch and I couldn't and still can't really think of a way to otherwise describe it.
Alright, so this would be harder than it had initially sounded.
I blinked, then blinked again as I noticed ...
The closest I'd ever come to making theories about 'magic' is that, in a way, it's like programming. You have a problem. You have a solution. There's a certain sort of way that a solution to a particular problem looks, when speaking of pure form, despite bits and pieces unique to the individual who'd come up with it. Let's disregard 'revolutionary' approaches for the sake of narrative consistency, hmm? When more people work on a single problem, the overall structures still seem alike, but small pieces here and there can let you see who'd done what.
That's an extremely simplified way of putting it, I know.
My point being, that I could see the overall shape of the wards, and they hadn't been put there by a single person. There were idiosyncrasies here and there ...
Normally, this would be the place I explained how I managed, by virtue of some hitherto unknown method, to circumvent or nullify the wards.
I'm gonna have to go with a 'no' on that account, though.
If I had hit them with raw power, trying to rip through, the anchoring would have had me tear the whole chamber from the masonry ... that'd be a no-go, then.
Focusing force into specific points in an attempt to go through that way ... also didn't seem to be likely to work.
The people who'd made these things were good. Very good. Good enough that the individual quirks worked together rather than working against one-another.
Any force, be it physical or not, was taken by the wards, and evenly spread through them, and later into the superstructure of the tower itself.
Annoying.
I'd been probing the door and front wall of the chamber with brief 'pokes', seeing how the spreading was accomplished when I remembered something from what Gabriel had pulled once upon a world.
Matter resonates, and matter and energy are, when you come right down to it, the same thing.
Gabriel had used harmonic resonance and dissonance to rip apart an AT Field once. Completely and irrevocably.
It had impressed the hell out of me, let me tell you.
So what if the same principle could be applied here? The situation wasn't, from a certain perspective, all that different. Well, other than a lack of Angel intent on killing yours truly.
I started with the probing again, though this time I wasn't as attentive to where the energy of the 'attack' was spread to as I was to how this was being accomplished.
I was starting to understand the initially chaotic-seeming mosaic of the wards and perceive it as it really was, starting another series of 'pokes' in a seemingly haphazard order that soon resulted in a growing ... 'pulse', I'd call it, of energy traveling across the nodes and strings of the vaguely spiderweb-like network ...
And then the wards were down.
Fouquet grinned, almost wolfishly, as she noticed this and went to push the doors opened.
They stayed put.
I used a pure force Absolute Territory blow to turn the obstruction into toothpicks.
A few minutes later, we were both making tracks out of there, the heavy looking case that I assumed held the artifact in our possession. Well, in her possession.
She'd conjured up a sphere of air around us both, and directed it across the landscape and _away_ from the Academy, seeming too intent on doing that to talk ...
Just as well. I couldn't very well admit that it hadn't been _me_ to take down those wards, now could I?
A few moments before they flickered out there'd been some sort of discharge at the far end of the network. No. Not discharge. Erosion was a better word. Entropy? Like something had twisted one bit of the wards out of alignment and the rest had followed in a massive cascade fault ... you get the idea.
'Damnit, I need to get back to civilization and more importantly, technology, if I'm starting to see things from that sort of perspective.'
I'll admit, I was half expecting Fouquet to drop the spell's hold on me ... it was pretty damn obvious that she wanted this thing for herself, not to sell it, which meant she had a use in mind.
Still, she didn't, and it didn't hurt me to play the fool for a bit longer. Or so I thought.
The last bit of the way, heading away from the initial flight path at an oblique angle, we did on foot. No need to alert anyone to our presence, after all.
Even if there wasn't much chance of running across anyone in these more or less secluded woods.
***
Four: he's not a man. he's a Cthulhu.
"There's a very good explanation for this."
I was met with blank stares.
"If only I could actually think of it ... I'm pretty sure there is one, though."
Because, you know, it's not every day the person you've sent search warrants and whatnot for shows up at your doorstep. Much less bearing 'gifts'.
To backtrack a little ... well, it was inevitable. For the record, there's really not such thing as honor among thieves. Or, I'd not witnessed it yet.
Mercenaries, sure. It's skewed and sort of twisted, but its there. Thieves?
We'd gone into this with some misinformation from both sides, and neither did a very good job of hiding it. Methinks.
It was just my bad luck to set her off. I don't really recall exactly what was said, only that Fouquet was trying to use some sort of weak story to eke out on the deal and get the Staff of Destruction first off the bat ...
"Look, if there's anything I've learned it's that everybody's got a sob story. I don't recall ever saying that I gave a flying fuck about yours."
Alright, maybe I was unnecessarily harsh. Maybe absolute zero's a little bit chilly. I'm sorry I can't be a perfect considerate gentleman for everyone (or, for that matter, anyone) but I've a tendency to be a moody sunva and really, something about Green-Hair just ... rubbed me the wrong way.
And if you think I was being sarcastic, then, well, you'd be right.
Sorry about that, send me the bill.
She blew up at me. Well, no, not herself. Blew the floor, the ground, the trees, followed up by a wall of dirt that had me nearly buried alive at the spot the smallish shack of a cottage had stood just moments before.
It really was terribly unfair, but I'd stopped playing fair about the time I'd had Largo nearly rattle me apart way back in the good old days ...
... you know you've got something wrong with you when you refer to something like that as 'good old days', methinks.
Hmm. New favorite word.
The Crumbling Dirt, or whatever her moniker was, was a good mage. Perhaps even an exceptional one.
Without very much training in how to resist a directed blow that wasn't even magical, not to mention physical.
Call me a sadist, I don't care. It's quick, it's effective, and doesn't necessarily involve massive property damage - important factor when you're involved in conflict around something fragile.
I've been trying to improve my subtlety, but I guess it's true what they say. It's easier to make more damage than the other way around.
Strumming her soul with my fingers, singing her fears with my words, killing her softly with terror ... alright, I'll stop now. Don't really have the voice for it.
The sining thing is really more Gabe's shtick, and s/he wasn't really much into the fear and terror and ohmygibberingsanitylosing ... applications.
Maybe it's just something that stuck with me after the mind to mind with Nagisa way back when, or maybe it's a bit of my own blackness from the places deep in the parts of my mind I'd rather not remember too much about come out to play.
Or maybe I just like to pimp my groove when I get all EMO.
So, after I extricated myself from my prison of dirt and grime, took a moment to tie Fouquet up so she wouldn't run when she came to again ... there's only so much a mind can handle before it blacks out, though there are ways of stopping that sort of reaction for the express purpose of ...
... damnit. Alright. I knew that bit hadn't come from me, though the information that came flowing along behind it only made perfect _sense_ in retrospect ...
'Nagisa ... if I ever meet you again, one of these days, I'll make sure to fillet you with a rusty spoon. Then watch you heal that up and do it again. And again.'
Some of the Angels really did reason on a plane totally unlike the one humans were used to. That they were connected to it was something we'd been aware of - Gabe, Rei, and to some extent myself - but while I can't speak for either of them, I'd never really delved into that occasional sensation of a brushing against my consciousness.
I was glad that I'd managed to get Fouquet trussed up relatively quickly, because a moment later I collapsed, a sensation not unlike being cooked alive flashing across my mind.
When I woke up, it was to cursing.
Came to would be a better way of describing it, though.
Wake up would imply that I'd dreamed, and I really didn't want to explore whatever it was I knew I'd witnessed in the interim. Not now, at least.
"Traitor!"
"You're just jealous," I brushed the accusation off and stood. Bit wobbly, but I managed after a moment. "Now, let's see."
The case looked to be heavy, solid, with the latch being the same ...
'Well, here's hoping this Staff of Destruction thing is the real deal. Homeward bound, I wish I was ... homeward bound ...?'
See, this is where poetic irony strikes.
I lifted the _thing_ from its case, glaring at the olive-drab coloring of the metal.
"Is this some sort of _joke_, Fouquet?" I glared at the woman. "It's a useless piece of _junk_."
"Joke?" she was puzzled. "That's the Staff of Destruction. A powerful weapon capable of slaying a dragon!"
I felt like throwing a tantrum. I felt like demolishing some landscape. I felt like taking the damn thing, unfolding it, and showing Fouquet just how 'powerful' it was.
I'd never claimed to be mentally stable, and bloody scraps seemed like such a good idea at the time ...
I got over it.
Put it back into the case. Closed. Locked.
It wasn't like I could do very much for my Crossing with an M72 LAW ... damnit.
_Think_, Griev-no-baka. You're missing something because you're to pissed to think about what ...
M72 LAW.
What in fnord's name, no offense Mal, was a rocket launcher from 20th Century Earth doing _here_, _now_?
I was pretty damn sure this wasn't a future Earth ... more like a past one, really ...
... they _had_ called me here, somehow.
Evidence suggests that something similar happened to bring the Light Anti-Tank Weapon here.
I sighed, heavily, gagged my prisoner, slung her over one shoulder, did likewise with the carrying case of the 'Staff' ...
Alright. The Academy did it. There was a chance they could undo it.
Back to the starting point again, I was off to see the wizards.
My arrival wasn't exactly subtle - touching down in the middle of a courtyard will do that. Also make for hurrying staff.
Now all I had to do was to haggle out a deal ...
... not one of my best attempts, but I managed. Somehow.
The green haired bargaining chip and the 'Staff' helped.
As for the rest?
I could just finish here. After all, you wouldn't really want to listen to the same old rambles over again. War, yareyare, betrayal, yareyare, lots and lots of stupid ideas actually working, and some not, yareyare, people dying, yareyare, people living, yareyare, how I ended up sleeping in the royal bedchambers, yareyare, and how _they_ showed up then and turned things on their heads. You know, that sort of everyday tripe ...
What?
Well, alright. I could be persuaded, if you insist.
It went something like this ...
END: Zero no Tenshi
To Be Continued in ...
Zero no Tenshi: Chop Suey
'Four' turned out a bit weird, mostly because of too much stress and coffee at the time.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
One: Pissed-off angel's karaoke.
To loosely quote John McClane: How can the same shit happen to the same guy, _twice_?
Apparently, very easily.
One moment I was getting ready to get on my way, and hoping the Trouble Twins hadn't demolished too much landscape when it turned out I hadn't been there after the Crossing that I'd been snatched out of, the next I was standing in the middle of a crater with a cloud of dust slowly dissipating around me, and a sense of deja vu.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Two weeks ago, more or less, had passed since the end of the most recent and hopefully last - if Nathan, Medea and Tohsaka were to be believed - Heaven's Feel.
The world was still there, which I suppose counted as a good thing. The city as well ... mostly. Which ... was a marked improvement over the last time I'd gotten into a scrap of this size.
Though that place had already been more or less devastated when we got there, so maybe that doesn't exactly count.
The two Casters hadn't been opposed to helping me in my attempt to return to the path I'd been on when an Association member with more ambition than he had talent had decided to take part in the ritual. The process, now that the Grail and the rituals karmic interference were no longer a factor, proved to be easier than anticipated. Didn't even have to spring for a virgin sacrifice or anything.
So, there I was, the crumbling Servant contract lending the start-up power to the mandala the shinobi and the sorceress had come up with while I said my goodbyes.
Not that I had many to say, really.
Fraga, whom I'd mostly annoyed - I have that effect on a lot of people, it seems - had shown up ... alright, so maybe annoyed is too strong a word. She was a good comrade, and one I'd trust having my back to any day.
The two present Servant spellcasters ... Medea had proved to be surprising in many ways, and Nathan ... he was easy to relate to in such a manner that led me to believe this wasn't the last time we'd cross paths.
Or maybe it was, and I simply had an overactive imagination.
The Tohsaka sisters were present, and Ilya, my former 'Master', had just gotten done with breaking my contract a few moments before. The three were mostly around because Emiya was around. Likewise, his Servant.
Poor Shiro. He'd either die of heartbreak, or exhaustion. I had a thousand yen going on the latter, mostly because I figured there was already enough heartbreak in the world.
I was in the middle of contemplating a receding Rider - I think she was going to get refreshments or something like that - or more specifically, a certain leather encased part of her anatomy, when it happened.
The mandala flared, much to the surprise of the two Casters, I felt both drained dry _and_ better than I had during my entire stay in this reality as the contract finally crumbled, and the constrictions I'd had to deal with when using my Field went away ...
Though I had only a moment for elation, followed by an instant of vertigo, before the world flashed azure and ...
... I ...
... was ...
... gone ...
... the last thing I saw being both Casters' faces, looking on in consternation and not a little confusion.
The sensations that came with this Crossing were not wholly unfamiliar, I realized as I hurtled through the shifting in-between, and much akin to being pulled through turbulent waters by the rope you're holding onto. Only I couldn't let go.
Not dissimilar to the last time I'd gotten diverted in transit, which was one of the reasons I came _out_ of there with a bit of an attitude.
I didn't know what to expect. Part of me was hoping either Fujino or Kuga had managed to find some mystical or scientific mumbo-jumbo that latched onto me as soon as I was available, and I'd see the both of them and whoever they'd coerced, threatened, blackmailed or simply convinced to help.
The more cynical (and larger) rest was getting ready to end up staring into the barrel of some sort of esoteric weapon.
Which was what caused me to end up in a crater half as deep as I was tall.
Okay, there and then that wasn't saying much, but there you go.
What I hadn't been expecting was to end up in the middle of a spacious, grassy courtyard of some sort of castle-looking structure, surrounded by a group of roughly my apparent age every member of which was in the process of picking him or herself up from the ground.
Apparently, I'd arrived with a bit of 'oomph'.
Then I noticed the uniforms, black cloaks, the prevalence of ... well, I'd call them animals, but that sort of description doesn't quite do justice to some of the creatures present.
The whole thing had an ambiance that I can only describe as a mixture of *shudder*Harry Potter and *double shudder*Pokemon, and I suddenly felt the need to smell some exhaust fumes and cordite, feel concrete underneath my feet, and blow Genom Tower to bits.
You know it's bad when you get homesick for images of that, instead of Sylvie and Anri ... err. Right. Nothing. Nothing at all. Feel free to ignore that statement.
"Owowowowow," someone moaned, extracting themselves from where another of the ... 'students?' had landed on top of them and planted an elbow in their spleen. "Looks like Zero did it aga ..."
Which was when the person, a tanned redhead who'd be considered voluptuous for any age, took notice of the source of the blast.
Namely yours truly.
The big, and I do mean _big_, red lizard behind her reared in my direction, flames curling up from its nostrils.
I suppose I had only myself to blame, since it was only then that I realized that my Field was manifesting. Likely due to the surprise and the fact that I had full access to it once again, rather than having to work with a limited pool of power.
Meaning my wings were 'out', and I had a minor AT effect going, which I had to wrestle back under wraps. Something that did not go without difficulties ...
... the wild fluctuations of Absolute Terror were enough to make some of those collecting themselves go back down and scramble to get the hell _away_.
The whip of flame that seared its way in my direction from somewhere off to the side, as well as the sudden burst of same from the red lizard and a few more minor signatures made me discard that course of action and shift the Field to Absolute Territory, leaving the attacks to splash against amber hexagons.
Not exactly conductive to peaceful negotiations. Neither was my wanting to blow something apart very badly at the moment.
For purely stress relief reasons, you understand.
So I decided that, for the time being, discretion should be the better part of valor. Whereupon I let the energies of my wings' Field do their job, lift me into the air, and shot forward after making a complete about-face.
I left behind a courtyard of befuddled people, some of whom needed a change of underwear, and a big hole in the outer wall of the place.
I could have gone over it, but ... well, stress relief. It worked, too. By the time I'd hunkered down to evaluate my situation, I was back to being more or less level headed.
What?
Well, they should be glad I didn't take the Loki and Bartleby method to heart.
---
Two: Kamikaze Kaitou Katz
It's only when something you've taken as a given has gone away that you miss it. This is the honest truth.
I realized it was such when I started missing hamburgers. And showers. And let's not forget plumbing.
Not bloody likely, what with the smell and all. Gah. I'm reconsidering the whole 'not an outdoorsman' thing I've got going.
Don't know if it's not worse that I'd gotten acclimated to it by the time a week and change were up.
It wasn't as much of a problem as it would have been if I were _all_ human and not just 'mostly'. Not having to worry about infection, sickness, or other exceedingly unpleasant things like that which seemed inevitable given the local conditions was something I was infinitely thankful for.
Still, there was only so much of the local 'culture' that I could handle.
Hence my desire to get the hell out of dodge as soon as I could.
I could have likely come up with some sort of bull reason for my haste to get the hell on my way other than my level of personal comfort being less than I was generally prepared to accept ... in retrospect, that was as much bull than any other reason. I'd been stuck in a D.D. Battlemover for longer than I cared to remember, which was about rock bottom as far as personal comfort could go, and hadn't gone entirely mental during that time.
Well, never twice for the same reason, in any case.
Trying to make myself believe I was worried about Anri and Sylvie wasn't about to work. Both were highly competent, and had the equivalent of a small army with them last I could recall. One more pair of hands to shoot a gun wouldn't make a difference.
I _missed_ them, which was another thing altogether. Alright, not entirely, but by enough of a margin.
Same thing about Shizuru and Natsuki, save the army maybe.
They could take care of themselves, often more effectively than I could say the same of myself.
Which led me to skulking in wait, under cover of trees, waiting for an opportune moment ...
But I've gotten ahead of myself again.
I could start from the beginning, but that would make an already slightly lengthy retelling into something far too long and boring to bother with. Let's just say that before I managed to hunt down my first rabbit I found a type of berries that managed to give even my physiology indigestion.
The immediate reason for my cheap burglar imitation, staking out the very place I'd come out of the Crossing into at night and waiting for my momentary partner's 'go ahead' was the same one as always when I pulled something similarly ... odd.
Call me an easy dupe, but on the off chance of there being something here that was rumored to have a serious magical 'kick' to it - one that I had high hopes I could harness to let me Cross again - I was willing to go out on a limb to help steal said item.
After all, I doubt they'd be willing to part with something dubbed the 'Staff of Destruction' if I came up to the gates and asked for it. Especially not with the way I left last time I was one the premises.
And again, I get ahead of myself.
The 'they' in question were the staff and students of the Tristania Academy of Magic. Tristania being the name of the country I'd ended up in.
Irony of ironies, even without the Gift of Tongues every human/Angel hybrid seems to have manifested in one way or another, I would have been able to get by.
The other countries around were both familiar and not at the same time. Germania, Gallia, Albion, Romalia ...
I'd not only landed in history, I'd landed in alternate history.
Halkeginia was an equivalent of Europe around the 16th Century AD, with more than just a pinch of the supernatural thrown in for good measure.
As to how I'd found out about that?
It turned out that I hadn't needed to go out for information. It had come to me on its very own.
Looking as I did, that wasn't too surprising.
That is to say, I got mugged.
Or, well, they _tried_ to.
Considerate, though. Gave me enough information to let me at least get oriented, and threw in some money to sweeten the deal.
Just for that, I stayed happy with leaving off at broken bones.
After all, whatever healthy 'fellow' brigands were around the area, not to mention the local wildlife - oh, was that a wolf's howl I hear? - would be far crueler that I to them. Consider it poetic justice, if you will.
Given that information, I could blend into the populace somewhat well. The eyes and hair weren't something a cowl couldn't hide, most of the time, and even they didn't draw too much attention. Though there were a few times during which I did wish I had been able to pick up Gabriel's little shifting trick way back when ... oh well. Live and learn.
I moved from town to town, consulting the occasional mage about the peculiarities of their craft and trying to ferret out useful tidbits.
Technology wouldn't be getting me out of this jam. I knew that much.
Well, not unless Shizuru and Natsuki managed to hunt me down. I wasn't going to remain idle and just wait for that to happen, or to see whether it occurred at all.
Hence the research about the local magic.
Manipulation of external energies by those who had the talent, split into several element based classes and ranked according to the complexity of the weave they could create ... not par for the course, exactly, but not so unusual as to give me too many problems with comprehending the basics of how they did things.
Sadly, that alone wasn't enough.
Magic had pulled me here, magic could put me back on my path ... but unfortunately, the farther I got - which, admittedly, wasn't all that far - in my research, the more I realized that whatever happened had been a bit of a fluke.
So instead of trying to rely on something this unstable, I preferred to go and see about a tried and true method of travel.
At the barest of basics, it was still energy. My Field could work with that. Could maybe even harness a considerable enough reservoir thereof, which would allow me to attempt a Crossing on my 'own power' for the first time since End of Evangelion.
As I could hardly afford to pay for that sort of energy expenditure, or the sort of item that would likely come with it, there seemed to be only one thing to do ...
Causality seemed to conspire in my favor, since a week after I'd decided that I was contacted by a local of considerable renown in that line of work.
She called herself Fouquet, the Crumbling Dirt - the latter being her so called 'runic' name, and signifying that she was a mage.
Earth element specialist, too.
See? I'd learned a bit by that time. Not just that I didn't enjoy the gruel that seemed the universal breakfast food at most inns. Well, the sole one I trusted to any extent, anyway. Call me pedantic and picky, but I prefer quality in my meat. Sadly, expenses ... well, you know.
"You are Katz," she'd stated. Really, no need to ask. I was sort of distinctive, even in this land of odd hair colors. Case in point, Fouquet, with her _green_ hair. Lime.
She'd caught me at breakfast, as the case was, and in a mood that wasn't exactly enthusiastic so my answer, unneeded as it was, consisted of a brief nod and a return to my ale. I'd just gotten done with the gruel.
Better that than what passed for 'clean' water here most of the time, and the wine they served was too damn sweet for me to stomach for long. Hence, ale.
It had been kind of growing on me, though. I wondered what Albion imports tasted like.
Fouquet sat herself opposite me, and laid out her spiel. Thankfully, the chamber was mostly deserted _and_ the inn was known for its ... discretion.
Just the reason I'd picked it, really. Damn Germanian brigands. You put down two or three bands for a quick buck, and they give you annoying nicknames and start spreading silly stories that would likely draw the local mages' attention if I stayed too long in one place.
Basically, it had to do with a powerful magical item being kept within the vaults of the Tristanian Academy of Magic.
Well informed woman, that, to have caught my asking about similar items of power ... or I'd just gotten sloppy. Hadn't really had too much of a reason to seriously interrogate someone lately and all.
Trust her?
Oh, hell no.
Still, she was obviously well prepared, familiar with the place the item was held in, and capable.
After some discussion, during which I'd found out that what little I'd used of my apparent brand of magic - what the locals had taken my Field for, it seemed - had been noticed and relayed to her. Hence the offer, since the item in question was under some sort of expert warding that she thought she'd need help to get through.
We agreed to split the proceeds for cashing the so called 'Staff of Destruction', and I think I did a fair bit of bargaining. Enough, at least, to make it appear as if I wasn't going to snatch the damn thing at the earliest possible instant and use it for my own devices.
You know, like she seemed intent on doing.
You see, I'd known opportunists during my life. Been one myself, on occasion. And I'd known professionals. Also been one myself, though not quite as often as the latter.
She was most definitely the latter.
I wasn't _certain_ that she didn't just want to do this for the money. I had reliable doubts about it though ...
Oh, well. Makes it a bit more fair to plan to double cross the double crosser.
At least she wasn't a cross dresser.
There really wasn't much preparation to be done, and she'd mapped out the defenses around our target very well, making the whole thing simple.
Far too simple.
If I didn't know better, I'd have said that she'd had inside help.
Oh. Wait. I didn't know better.
The culmination being me sitting there, brooding, as I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And considered that, next time I do something like this, I ought to bring by a book.
Then Fouquet's signal came. A shudder of the ground, a cloud of dirt and dust rising from the opposite end of the Academy compound to that which I was watching, a feeling of a spell going off from that direction.
Deception is the mother of all warfare, or somesuch, and Fouquet had drawn the attention of pretty much every mage in that complex with that display.
It was time to get this party started.
---
Three: Sing this corrosion to me.
"And?"
"And, what?" I asked, tracing my fingers along the smooth stone of the tower's outer wall.
The Academy had been built within the confines of a pentagon, the bounds of which were drawn by the outer walls. At each point of said pentagon stood a smaller tower, with one big tower set right into the center - the outer ones housed dorms, the main one was the actual Academy building where they did the classroom educating and staff chambers, as well as secure rooms ...
The most secure of which was where I was trying to get into. Or rather, 'we'.
Fouquet didn't trust me any further than I did her, and whilst her pet golem delivered our distraction and noise, we would see about getting our objective out together.
Easier said than done.
"_Can_ you break the wards with that strange magic of yours?"
"'s why I'm here. Wouldn't do to just say 'no' and walk away now that we've gotten this far, would it? I can certainly give it the old college try," I replied. Studied nonchalance was something I'd learned to pull off with some effectiveness a while ago, if only to pick up another means to make people lose focus.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Energy is energy, make no mistake. Despite the fact that 'superstring manipulation' seems to be the closest I've come to really describing 'magic'. Or maybe it ought to be 'quantum shunts'.
Eh.
I'll ask Caster for a definition if I run across the guy again. He seemed to know what he was doing.
Right now, I could 'feel' Fouquet's not so little golem buddy on the edge of the Academy, making a nuisance of itself. For lack of a better description, the spells that were cast against it caused waves within a specific 'bandwidth' of the spectrum. Strongly enough that the so called 'wards' around the chamber we were standing in front of the door to were beginning to resonate.
It didn't make them any weaker, but it did manage to do something that would make this whole affair a whole lot easier.
It let me focus on them specifically, and actually see them. Well, see wasn't the best way to describe the whole thing, but it'd work in a pinch and I couldn't and still can't really think of a way to otherwise describe it.
Alright, so this would be harder than it had initially sounded.
I blinked, then blinked again as I noticed ...
The closest I'd ever come to making theories about 'magic' is that, in a way, it's like programming. You have a problem. You have a solution. There's a certain sort of way that a solution to a particular problem looks, when speaking of pure form, despite bits and pieces unique to the individual who'd come up with it. Let's disregard 'revolutionary' approaches for the sake of narrative consistency, hmm? When more people work on a single problem, the overall structures still seem alike, but small pieces here and there can let you see who'd done what.
That's an extremely simplified way of putting it, I know.
My point being, that I could see the overall shape of the wards, and they hadn't been put there by a single person. There were idiosyncrasies here and there ...
Normally, this would be the place I explained how I managed, by virtue of some hitherto unknown method, to circumvent or nullify the wards.
I'm gonna have to go with a 'no' on that account, though.
If I had hit them with raw power, trying to rip through, the anchoring would have had me tear the whole chamber from the masonry ... that'd be a no-go, then.
Focusing force into specific points in an attempt to go through that way ... also didn't seem to be likely to work.
The people who'd made these things were good. Very good. Good enough that the individual quirks worked together rather than working against one-another.
Any force, be it physical or not, was taken by the wards, and evenly spread through them, and later into the superstructure of the tower itself.
Annoying.
I'd been probing the door and front wall of the chamber with brief 'pokes', seeing how the spreading was accomplished when I remembered something from what Gabriel had pulled once upon a world.
Matter resonates, and matter and energy are, when you come right down to it, the same thing.
Gabriel had used harmonic resonance and dissonance to rip apart an AT Field once. Completely and irrevocably.
It had impressed the hell out of me, let me tell you.
So what if the same principle could be applied here? The situation wasn't, from a certain perspective, all that different. Well, other than a lack of Angel intent on killing yours truly.
I started with the probing again, though this time I wasn't as attentive to where the energy of the 'attack' was spread to as I was to how this was being accomplished.
I was starting to understand the initially chaotic-seeming mosaic of the wards and perceive it as it really was, starting another series of 'pokes' in a seemingly haphazard order that soon resulted in a growing ... 'pulse', I'd call it, of energy traveling across the nodes and strings of the vaguely spiderweb-like network ...
And then the wards were down.
Fouquet grinned, almost wolfishly, as she noticed this and went to push the doors opened.
They stayed put.
I used a pure force Absolute Territory blow to turn the obstruction into toothpicks.
A few minutes later, we were both making tracks out of there, the heavy looking case that I assumed held the artifact in our possession. Well, in her possession.
She'd conjured up a sphere of air around us both, and directed it across the landscape and _away_ from the Academy, seeming too intent on doing that to talk ...
Just as well. I couldn't very well admit that it hadn't been _me_ to take down those wards, now could I?
A few moments before they flickered out there'd been some sort of discharge at the far end of the network. No. Not discharge. Erosion was a better word. Entropy? Like something had twisted one bit of the wards out of alignment and the rest had followed in a massive cascade fault ... you get the idea.
'Damnit, I need to get back to civilization and more importantly, technology, if I'm starting to see things from that sort of perspective.'
I'll admit, I was half expecting Fouquet to drop the spell's hold on me ... it was pretty damn obvious that she wanted this thing for herself, not to sell it, which meant she had a use in mind.
Still, she didn't, and it didn't hurt me to play the fool for a bit longer. Or so I thought.
The last bit of the way, heading away from the initial flight path at an oblique angle, we did on foot. No need to alert anyone to our presence, after all.
Even if there wasn't much chance of running across anyone in these more or less secluded woods.
***
Four: he's not a man. he's a Cthulhu.
"There's a very good explanation for this."
I was met with blank stares.
"If only I could actually think of it ... I'm pretty sure there is one, though."
Because, you know, it's not every day the person you've sent search warrants and whatnot for shows up at your doorstep. Much less bearing 'gifts'.
To backtrack a little ... well, it was inevitable. For the record, there's really not such thing as honor among thieves. Or, I'd not witnessed it yet.
Mercenaries, sure. It's skewed and sort of twisted, but its there. Thieves?
We'd gone into this with some misinformation from both sides, and neither did a very good job of hiding it. Methinks.
It was just my bad luck to set her off. I don't really recall exactly what was said, only that Fouquet was trying to use some sort of weak story to eke out on the deal and get the Staff of Destruction first off the bat ...
"Look, if there's anything I've learned it's that everybody's got a sob story. I don't recall ever saying that I gave a flying fuck about yours."
Alright, maybe I was unnecessarily harsh. Maybe absolute zero's a little bit chilly. I'm sorry I can't be a perfect considerate gentleman for everyone (or, for that matter, anyone) but I've a tendency to be a moody sunva and really, something about Green-Hair just ... rubbed me the wrong way.
And if you think I was being sarcastic, then, well, you'd be right.
Sorry about that, send me the bill.
She blew up at me. Well, no, not herself. Blew the floor, the ground, the trees, followed up by a wall of dirt that had me nearly buried alive at the spot the smallish shack of a cottage had stood just moments before.
It really was terribly unfair, but I'd stopped playing fair about the time I'd had Largo nearly rattle me apart way back in the good old days ...
... you know you've got something wrong with you when you refer to something like that as 'good old days', methinks.
Hmm. New favorite word.
The Crumbling Dirt, or whatever her moniker was, was a good mage. Perhaps even an exceptional one.
Without very much training in how to resist a directed blow that wasn't even magical, not to mention physical.
Call me a sadist, I don't care. It's quick, it's effective, and doesn't necessarily involve massive property damage - important factor when you're involved in conflict around something fragile.
I've been trying to improve my subtlety, but I guess it's true what they say. It's easier to make more damage than the other way around.
Strumming her soul with my fingers, singing her fears with my words, killing her softly with terror ... alright, I'll stop now. Don't really have the voice for it.
The sining thing is really more Gabe's shtick, and s/he wasn't really much into the fear and terror and ohmygibberingsanitylosing ... applications.
Maybe it's just something that stuck with me after the mind to mind with Nagisa way back when, or maybe it's a bit of my own blackness from the places deep in the parts of my mind I'd rather not remember too much about come out to play.
Or maybe I just like to pimp my groove when I get all EMO.
So, after I extricated myself from my prison of dirt and grime, took a moment to tie Fouquet up so she wouldn't run when she came to again ... there's only so much a mind can handle before it blacks out, though there are ways of stopping that sort of reaction for the express purpose of ...
... damnit. Alright. I knew that bit hadn't come from me, though the information that came flowing along behind it only made perfect _sense_ in retrospect ...
'Nagisa ... if I ever meet you again, one of these days, I'll make sure to fillet you with a rusty spoon. Then watch you heal that up and do it again. And again.'
Some of the Angels really did reason on a plane totally unlike the one humans were used to. That they were connected to it was something we'd been aware of - Gabe, Rei, and to some extent myself - but while I can't speak for either of them, I'd never really delved into that occasional sensation of a brushing against my consciousness.
I was glad that I'd managed to get Fouquet trussed up relatively quickly, because a moment later I collapsed, a sensation not unlike being cooked alive flashing across my mind.
When I woke up, it was to cursing.
Came to would be a better way of describing it, though.
Wake up would imply that I'd dreamed, and I really didn't want to explore whatever it was I knew I'd witnessed in the interim. Not now, at least.
"Traitor!"
"You're just jealous," I brushed the accusation off and stood. Bit wobbly, but I managed after a moment. "Now, let's see."
The case looked to be heavy, solid, with the latch being the same ...
'Well, here's hoping this Staff of Destruction thing is the real deal. Homeward bound, I wish I was ... homeward bound ...?'
See, this is where poetic irony strikes.
I lifted the _thing_ from its case, glaring at the olive-drab coloring of the metal.
"Is this some sort of _joke_, Fouquet?" I glared at the woman. "It's a useless piece of _junk_."
"Joke?" she was puzzled. "That's the Staff of Destruction. A powerful weapon capable of slaying a dragon!"
I felt like throwing a tantrum. I felt like demolishing some landscape. I felt like taking the damn thing, unfolding it, and showing Fouquet just how 'powerful' it was.
I'd never claimed to be mentally stable, and bloody scraps seemed like such a good idea at the time ...
I got over it.
Put it back into the case. Closed. Locked.
It wasn't like I could do very much for my Crossing with an M72 LAW ... damnit.
_Think_, Griev-no-baka. You're missing something because you're to pissed to think about what ...
M72 LAW.
What in fnord's name, no offense Mal, was a rocket launcher from 20th Century Earth doing _here_, _now_?
I was pretty damn sure this wasn't a future Earth ... more like a past one, really ...
... they _had_ called me here, somehow.
Evidence suggests that something similar happened to bring the Light Anti-Tank Weapon here.
I sighed, heavily, gagged my prisoner, slung her over one shoulder, did likewise with the carrying case of the 'Staff' ...
Alright. The Academy did it. There was a chance they could undo it.
Back to the starting point again, I was off to see the wizards.
My arrival wasn't exactly subtle - touching down in the middle of a courtyard will do that. Also make for hurrying staff.
Now all I had to do was to haggle out a deal ...
... not one of my best attempts, but I managed. Somehow.
The green haired bargaining chip and the 'Staff' helped.
As for the rest?
I could just finish here. After all, you wouldn't really want to listen to the same old rambles over again. War, yareyare, betrayal, yareyare, lots and lots of stupid ideas actually working, and some not, yareyare, people dying, yareyare, people living, yareyare, how I ended up sleeping in the royal bedchambers, yareyare, and how _they_ showed up then and turned things on their heads. You know, that sort of everyday tripe ...
What?
Well, alright. I could be persuaded, if you insist.
It went something like this ...
END: Zero no Tenshi
To Be Continued in ...
Zero no Tenshi: Chop Suey
'Four' turned out a bit weird, mostly because of too much stress and coffee at the time.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
