Will Work For Food[ZnT/Accidental Magical Girl CYOA][SI]

[Mgunh1]

Kinda sad that Derf is going out of the story. Maybe Louise for have wielded him?

Click to shrink...

I wouldn't count Derf out just yet. He may be a sword, but he is also a magical artefact. There is one other in ZnT lore who could conceivably wield him to his fullest effect...

 

[JadeKaiser]

Chapter 9: Peace Together (Part 1)

Surrounding Louise were trees, but the ground was covered in well-kept grass instead of undergrowth or fallen branches. She sat on some kind of wide chair on the side of a strange white stone path, listening to someone else who sat beside her.

"So I figured I would try making each color of glass match something else, you know? Glass means lenses, so if I focused magic into the different colored lenses that I make I thought I might be able to get it to do other things."

"Okay..." Louise's mouth formed the words of a reply without her input. "So did it work? Or do you think you can get it to work eventually?"

"It DID work!" the girl answered triumphantly. "I mean, I can't do all that much with it yet, but a red glass lens gives me a flamethrower like I wanted at least. I gave up on using blue to make a jet of water for now, but yellow and green make different kinds of energy blasts too! Not very strong ones so far, but still."

"Hey, that's some pretty nice progress! You've had a productive week, then." As her body turned and put a hand on the other girl's shoulder, Louise got her first look at her.

The girl looked about the same age as Louise's familiar, with blonde hair and green eyes. She was wearing a single piece of unadorned cloth that covered her chest while leaving her stomach bare, though Louise couldn't see if it was laced on in the back. Over it was some kind of open coat that seemed to shimmer and glitter in all colors of the rainbow, as though it was made of thousands of little slivers of differently colored glass. Seeing more was impossible, since Louise didn't seem to have control over where she looked.

The girl ducked her head with a blush, but a smile was there on her face as well. "Thanks. I wouldn't have thought of it if you weren't suggesting things before."

"You still figured this one out on your own though. All I did was get you thinking in the right direction. Or... however you would put it."

"Your drills helped a lot too, Sarge." Somehow, being called that was funny. Like an inside joke that Louise knew, even though she had no memory of it.

------

Louise woke from the odd dream to the creaking, shuffling sounds of Esther shifting on the second bed that had been brought by the academy staff, followed shortly by the soft scuff of bare feet on stone. Turning her head slightly, she spotted the outline of the older girl moving toward the window. The curtains were pushed aside to show the faint light of the growing dawn, and there was a distinctive *pop* followed by the faint orange glow of her familiar's cigarette.

"Y're 'p early."

"I wake you up? Sorry 'bout that," Esther apologised softly.

"'S no-" Louise yawned, "no problem. Had a weird dream."

"Same here. Nothing terrible, just… different times. You go back to sleep, okay? I'll wake you up in an hour or two."

"Mmkay." Louise rolled over to face the other direction, and soon fell back to sleep. This time, there were no dreams.

------Esther POV

"Miss Valliere, could you please stay for a moment? Your familiar can stay, as this concerns her."

Louise stopped and waited for the other students to clear out of the classroom before responding. "What is it Professor Colbert? Did Esther do something wrong?"

"Not at all." The man nodded affably towards me as I sat on one of the desks at the front of the classroom. "It concerns the familiar exhibition in a few days."

I raised an eyebrow. "Familiar exhibition? First I've heard of it. Sort of a talent show kind of thing?"

"A… ah, most likely, if you mean what I think," the professor, Jean Colbert if I remembered his name correctly, answered me. "The students who have summoned their familiars in the Springtime Familiar Summoning get to show off their familiars and any strange abilities they have, tricks they have taught them, that sort of thing. It's a fun bit of harmless competition, and it gives them a chance to show off how well they have bonded."

I nodded in acknowledgement, and he turned back to Louise. "That said, it has been decided that due to the irregularity of your summon, it would be unfair to put you in competition with the other students."

"What?" That was apparently not something that Louise had been prepared to hear. Not that I could really blame her. To her, the summoning was the one time she had done something impressive with her magic. Having the chance to show me off taken from her must hurt badly.

"It was a decision made by the majority of the staff, I'm afraid," the professor went on. "Esther is… well, put plainly, she doesn't really work in the spirit of the competition. As she is her own person and, I have been assured, a mage of sorts in her own right, she simply doesn't work for it at all. If she were a commoner that might be one thing, but as a mage…"

"I…" Louise glanced at me, and I shrugged. "You must understand, professor. I have been looking forward to this a great deal since the summoning itself. I am sure you have heard of how my fellow students think of me. This is…" she scowled angrily "was my chance to show them wrong."

Huh. I hadn't really expected that she would be willing to admit that outright. Was it my influence on her? I wondered.

"Ah, don't worry, you will still be given the chance to demonstrate some of Esther's abilities," the professor hastened to reassure her, however. "No doubt about that! It would be a horrible disservice if we kept that from you, especially with the princess coming-"

"What?!"

-----

"Kyu!" I scratched lightly under the blue dragon's chin, causing it to stretch its neck toward me, asking for more much like a cat. Louise was off doing… something, I wasn't really clear on what. Thus, when I saw Tabitha and her dragon cuddled up together with a book in the courtyard, I came over to say hello.

"Just like a big, scaly cat, huh?"

The dragon tilted its head, looking vaguely confused. It looked at Tabitha, then back at me. Then it shrugged. Honest to God, it shrugged. I mean, no way on all the Earths was that not deliberate.

"A very smart cat, then." I murmured as I sat down near its head. No sooner did I do so, than the dragon wrapped one foreleg around me and pulled me in to sit against its shoulder with a satisfied "Kyu!" Well, so long as it wasn't trying to eat me or anything.

"Sylphid." The dragon twisted its head around to where Tabitha could look it in the eyes. "Esther. Sylphid."

The dragon, Sylphid I guess, nodded with a "Kyu."

Tabitha looked pointedly at it. Her.

Sylphid looked about as sheepish as a dragon could.

I reached up to give her some more neck scratches, and all was forgotten. I wasn't all that uncomfortable, so I might as well relax and have a smoke.

-----

Louise looked at me strangely when she arrived a few minutes later. "What are you doing?"

"Clearly, I am petting a dragon." I nodded sagely. "Or giving it scratches. Close enough."

"I can see that." She glanced at Tabitha, who only looked up from her book for a brief moment before going back to her reading. "Why are you petting a dragon?"

I thought for a moment. "Why shouldn't I be petting a dragon?"

"Why should you be petting…" Louise paused. "Nevermind. We were going to work some more on figuring out my magic, right?"

"Sure. You want to pet a dragon with me, or should we go somewhere else?"

She gave me a vaguely unimpressed look.

Sylphid gave her a vaguely puppy-eyed look.

Louise eventually gave in and sat down, only to be immediately pulled in by Sylphid with an indignant squawk to rest next to me against the dragon's other shoulder. She struggled weakly for a second or two before huffing exasperatedly and settling in.

"The place we went yesterday," she began after a moment, "It was…"

"Confusing?"

"...I was thinking 'amazing,' actually. It's just… I could feel that place. I've never… never been anywhere like that. It felt like… like a home or something, all prickly and amazing and… right."

I sat up a bit in interest. "Really, now?" That could be a hint about something to do with her magic. "I've never heard of anyone having a reaction like that to just being in the Overcity, but it sounds kind of familiar." It did sound familiar. Kind of vaguely like what Marie described about being surrounded by pitch darkness on all sides. Not exactly the same, but… "Kind of cozy, like a firm hug?"

"Maybe." My patron scratched gently at some of Sylphid's scales on her side of the dragon's neck, earning a sleepy "kyu" of pleasure. She looked rather thoughtful. "Not exactly, but kind of." She paused. "I want it."

Alright, I was going to leave aside that last bit for the moment… "Sounds to me like your magic has something to do with the Overcity, honestly. Or at least they have something in common. I mean, I could be wrong, since I've only got experience with that sort of feeling from other people like me and our magic is different, but yeah."

"That was what I was thinking too."

"So," I continued, "probably a good idea to do at least some of our experimenting there."

Louise looked at me over the now-sleeping dragon's neck, surprised. "Can we do that? I don't see it working very well if we have to go all the way to Tristain every time…?"

"I have an ability that lets me dump myself and a part of my surroundings into the Overcity and back. Like most of my stuff, at base it's supposed to let me bring a battle there, then when the fight's done I can reverse it and be right back where I was without having wrecked stuff in the regular world," I explained. "Most of the Overcity is completely empty, and it changes all the time so damage there is never permanent. It's pretty good for training, too."

"Come?" Ah… I had honestly forgotten that Tabitha was sitting with us at all. Had she been listening this entire time? At some point she had pretty much set her book down entirely on her lap, so it seemed likely.

Judging by Louise's reaction, the same was true for her. "I- uh, that is… um, what?" She looked at me, silently asking me… something.

"I… don't think there would be a problem?" I asked Louise as much as stated. "It's up to you, Louise. Though, I'm curious why you want to come, Tabitha." So far as I was aware, there wasn't any particular reason to avoid the issue or keep things secret.

"Interesting." Well, that wasn't very informative. Of course, if I was honest there likely wasn't a whole lot more to be said just yet. She didn't really have any context for what we were talking about, so general interest was pretty reasonable.

Louise considered this for a bit. "...No, I don't really see why not. I mean, we aren't really hiding anything. If it was Zerbst, I would say no, but if it's just Tabitha I don't mind."

"Sylphid too."

Once again, Louise gave me an inquiring look. "No problem," I shrugged, "Like I said, it's supposed to let me bring a small battle there. It won't really be any harder to bring her than not."

"Then… alright? I guess Tabitha can come with. Do we want to do this now?"

"Not just yet." First, I had to explain some basics of Overcity safety to Tabitha and Sylphid. I was pretty sure the dragon would understand what I was saying.

-----End Chapter 9-----
A/N: Did you think I was throwing this back into the freezer? Shame on you. SHAME! The name of this chapter is a bit of a pun, since it is about a period shared between the characters that is both peaceful, and a time when they begin piecing certain information together into a greater whole.

 

[TMTMTM]

Good to see you didn't die again. This is a pretty compelling take on a genre of fanfic where the other people inserted more often than not just might as well be Saito for all the difference it makes to canon.

 

[JadeKaiser]

I wouldn't count Derf out just yet. He may be a sword, but he is also a magical artefact. There is one other in ZnT lore who could conceivably wield him to his fullest effect...

Click to shrink...

Very late response to this all things considered, but I may as well since I did on SB. Derf is gone. He might show up again in theory if someone buys him later, but I'm going to tell you right now that I have no plans for such. He'll find his way to the next Gandalfr who gets summoned, decades or more down the line, and they will have their own chance to use him, get rid of him, or stick him in a corner somewhere, but for the purposes of this story he's gone.

Esther has no reason to reflect the way that things are "supposed" to go with her actions, so she often ends up trampling all over them without really noticing. It's something I've been doing a lot in this story.

 

[Mgunh1]

Very late response to this all things considered, but I may as well since I did on SB. Derf is gone. He might show up again in theory if someone buys him later, but I'm going to tell you right now that I have no plans for such. He'll find his way to the next Gandalfr who gets summoned, decades or more down the line, and they will have their own chance to use him, get rid of him, or stick him in a corner somewhere, but for the purposes of this story he's gone.

Esther has no reason to reflect the way that things are "supposed" to go with her actions, so she often ends up trampling all over them without really noticing. It's something I've been doing a lot in this story.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough I suppose. I was just pointing out that, given Derfs nature as a magical artefact, Mjöðvitnir, the familiar of the Galian King Joseph, could conceivably wield him. Although, she would likely use Derf as more of a wand than a sword.

 

[JadeKaiser]

Fair enough I suppose. I was just pointing out that, given Derfs nature as a magical artefact, Mjöðvitnir, the familiar of the Galian King Joseph, could conceivably wield him. Although, she would likely use Derf as more of a wand than a sword.

Click to shrink...

Yes, I understood that, which was why I took so long to decide that I should respond. In the end I decided that I should, because I gave WoG on the subject on SB so leaving it open over here was a bit unfair.

 

[Nekotsuki]

Kinda of awesome story, i wonder if it will reach the scene where "don't be stupid, they have an army! Weeeelllll, we have those two. I don't think it will be fair for the army."