YUUKI - To Move Forward: Prelude 1

Log #676: Kingdoms

Chorus has extinguished hundreds of kingdoms, countries, and city-states, but only four major kingdoms have withstood the test of time: Ismira, Devarden, Dominic, and Viscor. This has been made possible for three main reasons: unity, mutual trust, and the Barricade. Without all three of those elements working harmoniously, the system of alliances between the kingdoms would undoubtedly collapse within months, if not weeks. Ismira is the head of humanity, ruled by Queen Arya. Devarden is the least formal of the kingdoms, and is famous for training the greatest Slayers alive. Dominic, a kingdom whose age has surpassed even that of Ismira, provides the four kingdoms with excellent guardians and police force. Viscor, by far the newest kingdom, is a flower that has yet to bloom.

-General Elvira Ramos

0090 BPE

The next few weeks passed like a blur: classes were assigned, friends were made, acquaintances were, well, reacquainted, and Sentinal Academy’s new school year was under way. During that time, I met my two older friends, Tyler Hawkins and Alex Sparrow, a.k.a. the Twin Beaks. They were granted the title a while back, eventually that nickname became the name of their band, and it kind of stuck with them for the last five years. The two troublemakers met me when, four years ago, they managed to dump an entire heap of hay on my head in an open baseball field. To this day I know not where the hay came from.

Things settled down fairly quickly, and within two months everything was normal, without anything crazy to shatter the peace.

Although I did meet her in those two months.

One day, about a month after school had started, as I was exiting my History class and heading for Shade Biology, I heard a girl’s cry. Without a second thought, I turned the corner of the building into an alley, where a girl with blond hair was backed into a corner, surrounded by three Silverwolves. Her face was composed, and in her hands she wielded a white baton, about the length of her arm. On the ground between them, two Silverwolves lied completely still. It didn’t take much else to figure out what had transpired.

Without warning, the two Silverwolves on the sides pounced forward, fangs yearning to tear apart anything in reach. With stunning speed, she ducked under both assailants, and landed a swift blow to each wolves’ bellies, knocking them to the wall she had been pinned against moments before. Before I could process what had happened, she leaped at the final Silverwolf, catapulting it into the air. It fell hard, making perfect contact with the other two in a heap of glistening fur.

Barely breaking a sweat, the girl twirled the baton around a few times, and fastened it back into her belt. I shut my awestruck mouth and walked over to the girl, who had just now begun to notice me.

“Hey, uh, are you okay? Not just anyone can walk away from an ambush such as, well, that, like you just did,” I commented, unsure of who exactly this girl was.

“Yeah, I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” she replied politely with a little smile.

It was obviously fake.

The girl appeared to be around 17 or so, her blond hair flowing beautifully down her shoulders. She gazed intelligently at me with crystal-blue eyes, and a face of angelic purity. The purple shirt under her silver chestplate hinted at modesty, while simultaneously creating a stunningly entrancing figure in combination with her crystal eyes. Her shoulders and knees also carried silver plating, but it appeared light enough to maximize mobility as opposed to prioritizing protection. Below her shirt, a similar purple skirt covered her legs all the way down to her knees. Her chest plate was adorned with small gems of myriad colors outlining the piece, as well as a fist-sized gem in the center. It appeared to be a ruby of sorts, sparking mystically in the sunlight. Her smile was brilliant; it seemed to have to power to light up the entire alley with one flicker.

“Well, that’s good to hear, m-my name is Kazuki, Kazuki Yuki. Uh, pleased to meet you!” I mirrored her polity smile, extending my arm.

“Hello, I’m Alison,” she responded cautiously as she accepted my handshake.

“Hey, uh, is something wrong? You sound kinda distant.”

She looked up at me, tilting her head slightly. “I...sound? What are you talking about?”

“Oh, um, was I not supposed to say that? Sorry, I just...”

“Hey, did I tell you to take it back?!”

“H-Huh?! I-I, uh...”

“Excuse me, are you stuttering? You makin’ fun of me?”

“B-B-B-” The more I tried to recall whatever I had done wrong, the more my words stumbled over their brethren, condensing into an intelligible blabber. Eventually I resigned, and a simple sigh signified my mental defeat. Meanwhile, the girl continued to snarl at me viciously.

“Hey, I’m not done with you yet, bucko! If you’ve got the gall to come up out of nowhere and just assert yourself into my schedule, then don’t even think for a second that I’ll just let you leave like that, got it?!”

“Hey, I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I just wanted to see if you were okay...”

“If I was okay? Do you hear yourself? I bet you were just about to toss out some quirky little one-liner, weren’t you? Bet you thought I was some pretty little damsel, huh? Well, now that you know the truth, how about you just scurry along to whatever puny little ditch you came from? What in the world even made you think that I needed your consideration?!”

“I...just saw that fight, and you looked so skilled it was unbelievable. But then, after you were finished, you had this sad look on your face, is all..” My speech had been reduced to a quiet simmer by her endless assault, and my heart sank slowly as I admitted my true, and rather embarrassing, reason for approaching her.

Silence, rather than another fit of incredulous scorn, filled the alley.

The silence lasted no longer than a second, but I was certain each millisecond was tangible in the dead quiet atmosphere.

And what replaced the silence was not exactly what I’d prepared for.

“Ha...ha...hahahahaha! Would you look at your face? You look like you just got lectured by the Duke himself! Ahahahahahah! Oh, jeez, man, lighten up, ’kay? Seriously, your reaction was priceless! Best I’ve seen yet! Whooo...” The strange girl took a deep breath, leaning on one of the building walls for support to suppress her waves of laughter. A few meters away, one of the Silverwolves began to stir.

“Oh be quiet, would you? What a party pooper,” she regarded the Shade with quick annoyance and another smack to the skull. It fell again, lying exactly as it had been previously. Meanwhile, all thought processes in my brain had ceased to focus on a new, overwhelming project: this inconceivable, indescribable girl laughing to hiccups.

She turned to me again, and cleared her throat. “Okay, seriously, that’s enough of that. Hey, you’re still here? Really? Hey, I’m kinda surprised. Sorry, I don’t find a lot of people who actually show decent concern for a ‘pretty little gem’ like myself, so a little guard is necessary. Also, it’s so much fun to see how people react to a real-life tsundere! Pretty believable, isn’t it?”

The more she spoke, the more my frenzied brain eased, until I could finally formulate something that resembled an intelligible response.

“Y-Yeah, that’s, uh, one way to put it. But really, are you okay?”

“You’re still asking me about that? If you’re really so concerned, don’t be, okay? I’m fine; that was nothing more than a warm-up. Anyway, how about we start that conversation again, okay? You said your name was Kazu...ki, right?”

“Yeah, Kazuki Yuuki. And, you?”

“My name’s Alison Chang. Pleasure to meet you!” Those simple words were nothing new; I’d heard them plenty of times in my life. Even the way she said them, in a warm, friendly, no-so-polite fashion, wasn’t anything special. But the smile that accompanied those words, Alison’s smile, lit up the alley with a brilliant light that surely nobody but I could actually see. At that moment, the girl in front of me looked beautiful, like a holy spirit who had met a measly human for the first time. Unaccustomed to these dirty little beings, the spirit smiled with the brilliance that every other spirit shared naturally, not realizing the power such a smile could have on mortals. I felt paralyzed, but a warmth unlike anything else flooded through me, and I couldn’t help but return her look with a smile of my own. Even if my smile was tiny and weak, I tried to share just as much warmth as the girl in front of me freely provided.

The scene may have felt as long as that, but in truth, little more than three seconds were spared for that single moment of perfection.

When my mind returned to reality, I remembered the other thing I had wanted to ask her. “Where were you just headed, by the way?”

“Oh, I was actually on my way to sign in to the office, wherever that is, when I was attacked by-” she gestured at the pile of wolves “-them.”

I nodded, then started as a thought occurred to me, “Say, d-do you want me to, well, take you to the office? Maybe?”

“Hm...alright, I guess I’ll trust you for now,” she responded quickly, a wink entertaining her kind features. “I might as well-”

Her next sentence was interrupted by the sound of three bells, ringing throughout the school. It sounded the start of the next class, and a one-minute safety net for late students to not get marked off as tardy.

“Crap, I totally forgot about fifth period!” I stood there for a moment, pondering my options. After a few seconds, I looked up at Alison, and smiled. “Well, I guess it’s okay to be late for one class. C’mon and I’ll show ya to the office.” She brightened up at the offer, and followed obediently, leaving the pile of trash in the alley behind her.

October came around, and I hadn’t seen that girl since that day in May. There was something on every Juniors’ minds, however, as the moment we had been waiting so long for had finally arrived. It was time to forge our very own weapons, unique pieces of equipment that signified the battle style of its beholder. A large portion of Juniors didn’t use their weapons much after Sentinal, considering that out of the three jobs we could choose, only Slayers used custom weapons. Guardians have the full arsenal of the military at their hands, and the ESF are a select dozen or so yearly prodigies who use jetpack-like devices called PLDs, and sleek longswords known as Duratanas. I was not to be swayed, however, to changing my career course. I would be a Slayer, and Twilight’s Fury my partner. I wasn’t entirely confident with the name at first, unsure of how it would fit, but in the end it worked out pretty well. But one thing at a time. First, we had to go through the three-month process every Junior must push through to obtain such a weapon.

During the first week of October, the project officially began, and all other classes were put on hiatus. Classes were divided into groups of thirty, and each class was assigned an instructor. Our instructor was Serena Fable, a strict dark-skinned woman in her late thirties? She spoke strictly, but not unkindly, as if she was constantly telling us that everything I tell you is important; do not interrupt me because we simply don’t have the time. She always seemed to wear a white lab coat, and her glasses had no decorations or color whatsoever. Her black hair was tied into a bun, and on her feet she simply sported brown sneakers, clean yet murky. Through the first week, she went over the basics of crafting such a weapon, what types of weapons were more relevant or simple as others, and why it was dire to not attempt something that was simply too difficult for you, since it wasted valuable time trying and failing to complete a project as such. She also provided the necessary calculations, conversions, and measurements of anything we needed, and after that was done, she sent us off to spend the rest of the week wherever we wished, so long as by Friday our base designs were sketched and measured accurately.

Unsurprisingly, many Juniors spent much of the day in the lab, asking for recommendations and advice on their creations. Even less surprising was the handful of teens who were not even close to the completion of their designs by Friday, and the one or two who had “completely forgot” about the whole thing.

They were punished accordingly.

The next two weeks of the event were based on finalizing the designs on the blueprints, retrieving materials around the lab, and beginning to forge the tools of war, piece by piece. The most popular bases were one-handed swords, snipers, machine guns, spears, bows, dual-pistols, rapiers, grenade launchers, and scythes. Many people took a risk and attempted fusion weapons, a combination of two different styles, often revolving between the two through some sort of button or switch. The switch then activated a mechanism in the weapon that transforms it into some other weapon. An example of this would be a scythe that is stored as a rectangular box, and when in action it extends fully into the scythe. For a fusion weapon, the user could unfold it halfway, and the tip of the scythe could conceal a barrel in which high-caliber bullets rocketed out. Another common design is a thick baseball bat that could be transformed into a grenade launcher, the mechanisms of the gun hidden in the thick bat. Such a combination proved extremely heavy, but for those who had incredible amounts of strength, it would just give a swing of the bat an extra punch.

Another more dangerous style of weapon making was known as elemental fusion. And when I say more dangerous, I refer to both user and opponent. When in the final process of the weapon’s creation, a student has the choice to fuse it with one of many elements. The science of it is still baffling to most scientists, despite rigorous research and experimentation, but essentially what it does is it allows temporary activation of one of numerous elements (primary elements being fire, electricity, ice, shadow, and wind) via some sort of switch, button, or position. An example of this power would be flipping a switch on your sword’s hilt and igniting the blade in a coat of flames. A more mysterious effect of elemental fusion would be applying the shadow element, which can faze through nearly any metal when activated for a brief period of time. Naturally, the more advanced elements such as shadow or wind were harder to successfully fuse, so not many students dared to attempt it, myself included.

At one point during this explanation, one of our classmates, Nicole, asked why “wind” was such a risky element to infuse. Ms. Fable was quick to respond.

“While Wind isn’t a terribly dangerous element when used modestly, it can easily be the most dangerous and terrifying element of them all very quickly. Assume you’re using it to blow back your opponents just a little bit. If you use too much of it at once, it can knock you back substantially, which in most cases would result in an automatic death sentence. It’s the second most unreliable and unpredictable element, and like Shadow, functions in a manner that is baffling to even the brightest researchers. I would highly recommend against it for anybody who isn’t an absolute master of control.”

Once we had crafted the separate parts of our weapons, Ms. Fable led us to the “Cauldron Room”. Officially, its name was the Artificial Fusion Center of Elements and Technology, or AF-CET. The Seniors called it the Cauldron Room because they claimed that everything that happened in there was “wizardry”. It was all in good humor, but they also spread rumors that the three scientists who were only ever seen within those walls were witches, always “tinkering with their spells”. The most obvious reason for the nickname was the fact that as soon as you entered the room, the first thing you saw were eight cauldrons lining the walls. In the center of the luminescent room was a massive machine that resembled a vertical tube, wide as a fully grown oak tree. The middle of the tube was some type of glass, and it created the appearance that the tree had just lost a horizontal chunk of its trunk, replaced by a thick glass tube of equal dimensions. The glass radiated a peculiar lime green, and the rest of the machine was a dull silver. It was connected to the room by thinner tubes that attached it to both the ceiling and the floor, with numerous tiny tubes stretching out in all directions on the ground, connected to each cauldron by at least ten tubes.

The cauldrons were large, but not massive; they were only about the height and length of an average adult torso. Four larger tubes came out from the sides of the main machine, each connected to an access panel of some sort. The most surprising aspect about the chamber was the floor; it practically sparkled white, without a stain or crack to be found. One of the girls in our class, Miranda Marinos, must have also noticed this, because she asked, “Hey, if this is a laboratory, then why is the floor so clean and smooth? I mean, what if you trip?”

To this Ms. Fable responded matter-of-factly, “The floors are sanitized every eight hours, so no germs or viruses can last long here. Also, any unnoticed chemical spills are wiped away, so it doesn’t contaminate any specimens or experiments. Like a clean room, we do our best to keep outside particles out. As for slipping, there is a coating on the floor that helps add traction to your step. Unless you try to fall, it should not be a problem.”

After the tour, Ms. Fable informed us that the entire building was full of AF-CET rooms, so taking turns was entirely unnecessary. The class was split up, and eight students were assigned for every cauldron room. We were told to transfer our weapon parts to our respective cauldrons, and the last week of October melted away into the first week of November. That week was spent teaching us all the different elements we could fuse, and many different combinations of weapons to try, until at last letting us choose our final designs and combinations. Then came the “moment” of truth, a 32 day period that consisted of eight parts, four days per person. While every other Junior stood around with little to do, one student was selected at a time to enter the AF-CET, and in a matter of two days (with breaks every night), the student left the room, never to return. No one was allowed to tell anybody what they saw within the room, and from the stunned look on Miranda’s face when she was the first to exit, the warning wasn’t even necessary. She simply stumbled out on the fourth day, clutching a something wrapped in gray cloth in her hands, weapon hidden from view. No one had ever seen Miranda Marinos with that expression, so I nervously walked over to her and asked, “Hey, Mira, you okay? I mean, what happened in there?”

All she could manage to respond with was, “Oh, it was... it was incredible...”

Then Ms. Fable called out from inside the room. “Mr. Yuki, would you please join me in the AF-CET; your session has begun.”

Four days later I emerged from the chamber, face slack with ecstasy, a deep black sword tucked in a gray cloth.

My black sword.

My Twilight’s Fury.