From the author of the Gun Princess Royale, the story of Caelem Desanto continues....

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Intro – III.
– I –
(Caprice)

Through the sensorium-field emanating from the anklets I wore, my link to the Valkyrie hiding in Pocket Space, nestled within its gun-metal grey Sarcophagus, I was able to understand the situation on the rooftop courtyard long before opening the door.

Because of this, I knew that I was too late to spare him injury.

I could only hope that I wasn’t too late to save his life.

To do this I would need to rely on the girl that had chased after me.

The buxom brunette – damn I envied her chest – cried out to me from the far end of a hallway as I was frantically searching the unfamiliar school for a way up to the roof.

For some reason, she had yelled out, “This way”, and then waved at me to follow her.

I did just that, and followed her into a stairwell.

She had a head start, and arrived at the top landing first, but immediately she had slumped to her hands and knees.

“Roof…top…court…yard….”

There was no need for me to nod, but as I jumped to the top landing, and touched ground beside her.

Then shock ran through me as I sensed the presence of a manifested Artifact about a dozen feet beyond the door.

In a heartbeat, my Valkyrie Maiden identified it for me: a Kavalier, equipped with a twelve foot long lance.

The armor’s Vector Core and Vector Fins weren’t summoned, so it wasn’t an Artifact, but a partially summoned Fragment.

Nonetheless, I knew that it would be a challenge for me to fight it on equal terms, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t ready to do so.

I also sensed a human body, a male by what the sensorium-field could discern, and he was badly wounded.
No, he was critically wounded, and he would die if I didn’t do something in a hurry.

*Brynhildr! The blood vial!

My Fragment responded almost instantly, and the black mist that announced a breach between Pocket Space and real-space filled the stairwell landing, blanking me and the voluptuous Amiella.

I reached into that mist that enveloped me, and prehensile metal tentacle delivered a vial of blood into my waiting hand.

With the breach still open, I used my sensorium-field to find Amiella and then rush to her.

Yanking her to her feet, I pressed the vial into her hands.

“Desanto is injured. You have to save him!”

“Wh—what?” she cried back.

“Take the vial. Inject it into his body.” I made sure she was clasping it securely. “Flip the cap open. Push the button to inject. Remember?”

I sensed her nod. “Push the button to inject.”

“No! Flip the cap open. Then push the button beneath it to inject!”

I should have asked her for confirmation but I was running out of time.

I turned, used the sensorium-field to find the door, shifted my mind into an overclocked state, and then threw the door open.

The black mist spilled out into the courtyard.

I stepped out of the rooftop hut and saw a girl wearing a bodysuit of silver and gold scales wielding a lance twelve feet long.

The weapon was like liquid mercury turned solid, and a high school boy hung helplessly impaled on the bladed end, his feet swinging gently in the air.

The boy’s eyes met mine for a fraction of a second, and then focused on the open doorway behind me.

I could sense Amiella standing there.

And I could sense the shock running through her body.

Then the girl with lance tossed him away, and he flew halfway across the courtyard, bouncing off a bench before flopping lifelessly to the ground.

With my mind still overclocked, I shouted at Amiella over a shoulder.

“Save him!”

Then I bolted toward the girl in the metal scaled armor.
*Brynhildr!

One of the misconceptions of modern warfare was the convention that only an Artifact could fight another Artifact.

That wasn’t true. Given enough firepower to bear, an Artifact could be overwhelmed.

Granted, they were powerful, often described as gifts from the myriad pantheons of the gods.

But they were not invisible. Far from it. And I was convinced the girl toward me wasn’t wielding an Artifact, but a Fragment, and thereby it was at a fraction of its power.

This was fortunate, as I had yet to unlock my Valkyrie’s Core.

I’d only been in possession of the Valkyrie Maiden for a six months.

I’d made progress unlocking its abilities and learning to wield them.

But now those six months of training were going to be put to the test.

If I succeeded and won this battle, he would live.

If I failed and lost, Caelum Desanto would die.

Never before I had felt such overwhelming pressure.

Never before I had held someone’s fate in my hands.

I was no longer the helpless child I was ten years ago.

I was Familiar, and a fledgling Valkyrie Meister, and I had the means to protect someone.

I had the means to make a difference.

I summoned Brynhildr out of its Sarcophagus, filling much of the courtyard with the thick, black mist that roiled as though with a life of its own.

The girl wearing the Kavalier armor may have been surprised to see me, but I didn’t think that was the case.

It was unlikely she had failed to sense me, unless her Fragment lacked a sensorium field and that was doubtful.

Yet for a heartbeat she stood in the middle of the courtyard, perhaps held down by indecision, before jumping back some twenty feet as the thick black mist continued to spill out of the breach between Pocket Space and real-space.

I feared she would run away, but she did not. catching sight of Amiella running along the edge of the courtyard toward Desanto lying on the ground on a pool of his own blood.

Within seconds, my legs and arms were wrapped in Brynhildr’s dark golden armor.

A moment later, the long wicked blades adorning my forearm gauntlets flicked forward into attack position.

The breach into real-space sealed as my Valkyrie’s Sarcophagus retreated back into the Pocket Space of its own making.

As the mist faded, the girl in the Kavalier Fragment got a good look at me as I stood on armored legs that ended in tapered feet, giving the impression I was standing on tip-toes.

At first she stared at me in shock.

That shock soon turned into horror.

And then horror gave way to rage.

Slashing the air violently with her lance, she screamed at me in fury.

“Valkyrie!”

The rooftop beneath her feet cratered as she launched herself at me.

In the blink of an eye, she covered the distance between us, and her lance clashed with my blades.

The ground trembled, and the air wavered as the shockwave rippled outwards in an ever expanding circle.

– II –
(Haruka)

A loud crash rang through the air.

Yet it sounded more like a boom.

I was running along the inside of the courtyard, hugging the fencing so to speak, when the rooftop trembled violently.

Then a thick wave of air washed over me.

I yelled out in fright, and covered my head and ears.

The air continued boom successively a number of times, and the ground shook in accompaniment.

There was loud grunting and yelling too, before an anxious respite occurred.

The silence that followed didn’t last long, ending when a shouting match erupted between the girl with green eyes clad in golden armor, and the other girl wearing the bodysuit of gold and silver scales wielding the long lance.

I wasn’t ignorant, and I wasn’t illiterate either.

I was sufficiently educated to know that the cold black mist in the stairwell landing was a clear sign the flat chested girl wasn’t an Aventis. She was someone far more dangerous, a Familiar, and she was equipped with one of the ancient relics that were occasionally salvaged from the depths of the Hurakan Nebula; relics used as long ago as the War of Supremacy.

I had often wondered why the Prides would allow Familiars to freely move about with such powerful weapons. It made little sense to me. Then again, there had been no serious incidents involving Artifacts and Familiars reported in the media for many years, not since the destruction of the superfreighter more than six years ago.

However, I had a strong suspicion that was about to change.

After all, how could this encounter on the rooftop between two Familiars not be considered an incident?

With that said, I chose not to mull the repercussions.

Time was a wasting. Every second was precious.

The shockwaves that coursed over the rooftop had knocked me down to my knees.

Taking advantage of the brief lull in the fighting, I picked myself up and ran over to Caelum’s body.

I wanted to scream when I saw him lying on his back in a spreading pool of blood.

Instead, by some miracle, I kept my wits about me as I dropped to my knees beside his body.

The device the flat chested girl had entrusted to me was shaped like an engorged fountain pen.

I hurriedly studied both ends.

Remembering the instructions the girl had shouted at me in monotone, I looked for the cap to lift.

My hands shook so much I almost dropped the device a couple of times.

After finding the end cap and popping it open, I then leant over Caelum’s body.

It wasn’t just my hands that trembled, but my whole body as well.

It wasn’t easy to ignore the blood.

It was torture keeping my gaze away from the enormous wound on his chest.

Not knowing whether he was alive or dead, I pressed the injecting end of the device against his neck, and then depressed the button.

There was no whoosh that I could hear of, and even though my body was trembling, I could distinctly feel the device shiver in my hand as it expelled its contents into Caelum’s bloodstream.

Truthfully, I didn’t know how injecting Caelum with the unknown liquid would make a difference. The wound was so large, I doubted an Aventis could live through the injury Caelum had suffered.

Dropping the expended device to the ground, I then stood up and proceeded to drag Caelum’s inert body across the courtyard to the farthest corner.

At some point in time, the fighting between the two Familiars had resumed, and I wanted to put as much as distance as I could between them and us.

Ideally I would have preferred fleeing with Caelum through the rooftop hut, but it was located on the opposite end of the courtyard, and I doubted I could get past the two girls unscathed.

Holding Caelum tightly, I watched the battle rage a dozen or so meters before me, hoping the combatants wouldn’t come near our corner of the rooftop.

Having smashed aside numerous benches and tables, the girls had cleared for themselves a wide area within which they could thrust, cut, and slash at each other.

The Artifacts or Fragments they were wearing amplified their speed and strength, and as they moved about the courtyard, their bodies blurred at times as they accelerated abruptly, making it difficult for me to follow their movements with my eyes.

The girl in the gold and silver scaled armor had yelled at the other girl for a while, but I had to admit that I’d been preoccupied with Caelum, so I hadn’t paid attention to what she was screaming in blatant anger.

I didn’t know who these girls were.

However, since she’d tried to kill Caelum, I considered the girl in the scaled armor as a foe.

What did that make the flat-chested girl? A friend? An ally? A defender of justice?

I had no idea.

In fact, I didn’t even know why they were fighting, and I didn’t know why Caelum had been targeted.

But one thing was clear to me.

If the flat chested girl in golden armor were to lose, then the other girl would most certainly finish what she started.

If that were to pass, I would be unable to protect Caelum, let alone myself.

Thus helplessly, I watched the battle continue to unfold, and prayed not only for Caelum, but for the girl desperately fighting to protect us.

 

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I'll post the next part shortly. Those of you who've read the Pride x ReVamp version will understand why Kaiser's X Blessing is so different.