The events in this quest... have been getting out of hand. Whatever canon there was, I've essentially trampled on and left behind long ago. People have complained, and while some want to continue, others want to leave this behind. To make matters worse, due to library restrictions, I don't think I can access the research relating to Nasu lore anymore.
Also, this quest was originally meant to be a quick break for me to regain enough muse for Kaleidoscope Online, but has completely gone on to be my main quest (meanwhile, Kaleidoscope Online will likely suffer a reboot if I ever get back to it, after having researched related media even more thoroughly since it collapsed).
So, I'm giving a choice.
[X] Let's keep going and see what happens! (Quest continues)
[X] The way this story ends... (Epilogue of the Future)
[X] Kill it with fire! (Abandon quest completely)
Adhoc vote count started by Random Tale on May 5, 2017 at 1:57 PM, finished with 21 posts and 16 votes.
[X] Let's keep going and see what happens! (Quest continues)
It's not a matter of us disagreeing, your statement was just flatly wrong. However, as the rest of your post was basically saying "screw accuracy, make some bullshit up", I see no point in actually attempting to discuss it in any capacity, as it would simply be an exercise in frustration for me.
It's not a matter of us disagreeing, your statement was just flatly wrong. However, as the rest of your post was basically saying "screw accuracy, make some bullshit up", I see no point in actually attempting to discuss it in any capacity, as it would simply be an exercise in frustration for me.
[X] The way this story ends... (Epilogue of the Future)
If you next quest involves Sekirei and/or the gamer.
[X] Let's keep going and see what happens! (Quest continues)
If your next quest involves none of those.
(Also, how good are Deadpool's and Kiritsugus fourth wall breaking powers, can they read our forum posts, can we directly communicate with them?)
Illya was gloomy as she returned to her room after school, Hayate and Fiore rolling in behind her. She wanted to go out, have fun with friends, and generally not care about the general state of Uminari. But someone had to manage the Moonlit side of the city, as as the Second Owner, it fell to her.
At least, this year, she finally had some assistance. Fiore Forvedge Yggdmillenia had taken to wheeling her wheelchair over to hang out with Hayate, and Illya had finally decided to drag the family's own wheelchair-bound girl into her room after school in order to have someone double-check her own work.
Both her mother and her aunt were busy working on manga, and her father was busy working on either being a hero or trying to get some supplies to keep himself alive longer. The budget was tight, so they couldn't really afford to turn their attention to making sure the Moonlit side of the city behaved itself.
And while the Yggdmillenia clan had more magi in it that were capable of functioning in the external world, there were still enough members that clung to old magi traditions that Illya had to keep a close eye on the paperwork that everyone generated.
For an idle moment, she looked out her window and imagined herself in Nix. Territory belonging to individual magi stretching for miles upon miles... lots of research subjects... She shook her head to dispel the image. It would not do to imagine such a place; not only was the United States determined to take its lost territory back, it was well known that typical Gaian Magi violated human rights often, and she had standards to hold herself to.
There was also the little matter that the United States had flat out lost patience and declared a War on Thaumaturgy, putting them at odds with not only Nix, but also Uruk, Korea, China, Egypt, and even Japan. While Japan was relatively safe across the sea, Nix was sitting on territory claimed from the United States; it would not do well to put herself directly in their warpath.
Illya looked through a few more papers. There was an invitation to the wedding of Chrono Haralown and Amy Limietta in February, she had to drag the family out to that... a hospital bill for Shirou, with a note that the country of Japan was paying in full for it...
She glanced up at the two girls also going through papers, casting a heavy look towards Hayate.
It had been clear for years that Shirou had very little sense of self-preservation. First with jumping into the fight between the daughters of two (then-)local families, then the discovery of nerve circuits, followed by the Jewel Seed incident, the fifth Holy Grail War, and the incident of Mitakihara... all in the name of being a hero. While he likely didn't know yet, when he finally woke up and started actually being called a hero, Shirou would likely be driven to more extremes to keep being a hero. The only time Shirou's self-preservation showed up was when there was a situation where he was the only one at risk of being hurt.
And instead of working to get the 'hero' out of Illya's younger brother, their father seemed to have a plan to put an albatross around Shirou's neck to keep him from running all over and being a hero.
Enter Hayate Yagami. Brilliant for her age due to studying in isolation for years, a heightened sense of perversion, wheelchair bound, and, for all practical purposes, completely defenseless in the current environment of the world.
If they could get Shirou to marry her, Hayate would be the perfect person to keep him from going off and trying to keep up with Nanoha Takamachi's renewed efforts to be a hero.
There were other considerations, of course. Fiore was also wheelchair bound, but she could easily take care of herself despite that; the fact of the matter was that Fiore was capable of magecraft, while Hayate, despite her abnormal potential, was not. That had been determined with Illya's father's weapon years ago. There was also the slow self-destruction of Hayate's body. While magi of both Gaian and Mid-Childan origin had ways to replace missing limbs, the artificial limbs of Mid-Childa required the user to use Od to power them, and Illya was pretty sure that the Puppetmaster was only offering her services just to taunt Illya's family (she could provide options to move Hayate into a better body, but will she? After what Illya's father had done, the price is out of range).
There was the option of artificial limbs, without any sort of magecraft supporting them. But those were even less practical than just leaving Hayate as she was, and they wouldn't deal with the slow self-destruction of her body. Replacing her failing organs with new donated ones would only just delay the problem, and it would be many years more before artificial organs were good enough for human use.
The problem was compounded, in Illya's view, that if Hayate's condition was fixed enough so that her body wasn't self destructing anymore, then the chain to keep Shirou down would be too weak to do its job.
There was a startled squeal, followed by, in succession, a few words in Italian, a gust of wind, screeching of wheels, fluttering of papers, and finally a perverted chuckle.
"Fiore-chan," Illya tiredly asked, "please don't use aggressive magecraft on Hayate. Hayate, don't grope magi that could kill you as easily as blinking."
Hayate had the potential to keep Shirou down, and safe enough to keep him from getting killed. Keeping that potential was tricky; too much effort, and the girl would be able to take care of herself well enough so that Shirou could go out and get himself killed, too little effort would result in Hayate dying from muscle and organ failure, also resulting in Shirou going out and dying. Granted, they had only discovered a way to reverse the damage done somewhat this past year, so they hadn't been able to put forth much effort in the first place, but now they would be more effective.
There was also the... questionable preferences that Hayate was starting to show. She was definitely attracted to other girls, as demonstrated by the now flustered Fiore (who usually had to deal with Hayate acting out about once every couple weeks). There was an attraction to Shirou, and a few other boys to a lesser extent, but she was primarily attracted to girls. It was better than what Illya had heard over the rumor mill that Nanoha wasn't attracted to boys at all, but the questionable preference had the potential to ruin the whole plan to keep Shirou safe in the future.
Illya didn't like the brother-stealer, but she could at least tolerate her for Shirou's sake.
Illya returned to pursuing the papers on her desk. There was the eighth report on the new 'Duel Monsters' trading card game, released by the Moto family head that year. The designer's original claims that it was a ancient game from Egypt had Illya promptly send a couple Yggdmillenia to investigate. After interrogation, the aging man relented that the 'ancient game from Egypt' was a marketing ploy to sell the game that promised to be the next 'Magic' (considering that the later card game's company's HQ was now in Nix territory, and few people wanted to fund that kingdom). It seemed that the magi from Yggdmillenia had finally gotten him to drop the marketing ploy completely, but not before a few of the youngest magi of Yggdmillenia had taken to learning illusion magecraft to play the card game more 'realistically'.
As long as they kept it small, so that there wasn't a 'White Eyes Blue Dragon', or whatever it was called, appearing to tear up Uminari, Illya wasn't going to order someone to stomp in on a children's card game.
Oh, there was a request from the Moto head himself on the next paper. He was requesting... Illya's mother's art for some of the new cards he was creating, and wanted permission to use her father's likeness for a new 'monster' called 'Magus Killer'. She'd have to pass it on, and see what her parents and aunt did with it.
There was a handful of work requests specifically related to her father. A request from a 'Hisui' to kill the Tohno head, a request from a 'Kohaku' to kill the entire Tohno family and herself... a request from the MBI head to work as a bodyguard again... a request from Iskander to be his primary counter-espionage agent...
The King was a point of contention in Japan, and especially in Uminari. Over the past couple of years, he had been slowly building his forces, getting people to join his growing army. The Japanese Government watched warily once they learned of his presence, knowing that he could easily turn people to his side, but also aware that he would be a good counter to many of the Moonlit threats that they faced. There was a standing warning to keep members of the JSDF away from the Heroic Spirit, in fear that he would recruit them, and propaganda manga from Illya's mother helped grow their ranks so that they would have a good check to Iskander's army in case he decided to start his conquest with Japan.
Of course, seeing the manga, the King of Conquerors recruited her to have a manga about himself. The resulting manga greatly improved his recruitment, enough so that he could make his next move, snatching both Mitakihara and Uminari from Japan.
Mitakihara could easily be understood, having suffered an attack from an abnormally large demon that year and the local government on shaky ground for being unable to deal with a bunch of tree demons (which, according to the local police force, seemed to know exactly when and where to strike and when and where to go into hiding, and seemed to be multiplying). But Uminari? That required an insight to the local politics.
The primary factor was the TSAB, the Time-Space Administration Bureau, and its lasting war against the being known only as 'the Cross' to try to preserve Mid-Childa. Casualties taken, with no damage inflicted in return, resulted in more and more problems slowly making their way to the surface of the organization. Funds misappropriated in the name of 'research', unjustified promotions, and accidents after mistakes... Desperation was making itself more evident even as immigrants started to make their way from guaranteed death on Mid-Childa to possible death on Earth.
A few instances of corruption had been useful for the Bureau. Chrono Haralown had joined up, and was quickly promoted to high rank due to a few successful missions, his mother's influence, deceased father's reputation, and there being an opening; despite many expectations of him going to fail quickly, his leadership role had been successful.
And desperation did result in benefits for the Bureau as well. Youth who hadn't even hit puberty were recruited to the TSAB to fill the gaps, and while some of them were capable of what could be expected of a simple Earth child soldier (with magic weapons), others, like Yuuno Scrya, went beyond expectations.
But despite individual instances of competent leadership, the TSAB was slowly getting on more shaky ground. It finally came to a head when their last attempt to find some way to destroy the Cross instead drove them further into the ground. Using the remains of a canceled 'Fate Project' and Einzbern magecraft notes, they had created a man called Jail Scaglietti to either find a way to destroy the Cross, or be a Lesser Grail to help them win the next Holy Grail War in order to use it to wish the Cross away.
Instead, the mad scientist stole a recently retrieved 'Shroud of the Saint King' and went into hiding, leaving behind notes of different ideas for projects unrelated to the Cross. That would have been only a small problem if it wasn't for the fact that some of those notes pointed to signs of potential human right violations that fit alongside typical Gaian Magi standards.
The TSAB did try to recruit a known killer of rogue magi, but the incentive had not been enough for Illya's father to take the job.
This opened up opportunities for Iskander's agents to more effectively subvert the TSAB. Having been denied the JSDF, the King had taken to recruiting individual members of the TSAB. When the combination of a manga promoting Iskander was published and it became known by a few in the TSAB that Jail Scaglietti had backfired on them, recruitment from the TSAB spiked. It was time for a change of leadership.
When just over half of the TSAB was secretly under Iskander's control through a few of his lower profile agents, Iskander made his move, demanding both the surrender of the TSAB and Japan to himself. Upon refusal, one of his aides started revealing all of the dirty laundry they had on the TSAB and gave the signal to the recruits in the TSAB to reveal themselves.
In the aftermath, about three quarters of the TSAB was absorbed into Iskander's army, while the last quarter was reduced to a glorified police force in Uminari.
This is not to say that the people of Uminari didn't have opinions about the matter. The most willing to speak up had been the major followers of the 'Church of the Saint King', who took the losing of the Shroud and a failure to retrieve it as a personal attack; the majority of them had turned to Iskander in anger, hoping that he wouldn't do anything with such a large blunder against them. Most other Mid-Childan immigrants were hesitant to join, but a handful that took the TSAB's failings strongly also aligned themselves with the King. Japanese locals in Uminari were also hesitant, as a whole, to join the Conquering King, but Iskander's personality did recruit a few hundred.
While Uminari was technically still under Japanese control, the simple fact of the matter was that with enough backing, it had fallen under sway of Iskander.
The bright spot was that Iskander's reach was limited. As a Heroic Spirit, he was tied down to a Mr. Velvet, who was barely capable of magecraft with most of his Prana tied up in keep Iskander in the world. And with him busy trying to keep up with all the paperwork in one area, Iskander couldn't do much, let alone fight, without risking his anchor of existence.
With a frown, she tossed a written invitation to join Iskander's forces into recycle and turned her attention to a note of personal activities from Yuuno. Thaumaturgicly enhanced pain pills was one of his planned projects for the coming year; a few notes on how he planned to do it, with the hope that it would ease the headaches he kept having because of summoning 'book demons' to help with his research. No harm... a desired servant for the upcoming Grail War... Merlin? Hopefully he'd be able to learn something from the most famous magus of all time. A note of beginning research on mental worlds... eh.
Illya sent the paper over to Fiore before turning to the next series of reports of other magi in Uminari. Requested projects, incidents resolved and repeating, updates to ongoing projects...
Sometimes Illya wanted to bang her head against her desk. No, you can't have a magecraft beam war on the rooftops of buildings downtown. No, we don't care who started it, or both parties sticking to non-lethal attacks. Yes, the property damage is going to be covered by the participants. Quit flying around with your devices, you're giving a few determined Yggdmillenia headaches trying to copy the effects and giving perverts down below a show. At least get those barrier jackets to have pants.
The local Gaian magi were not much better with their problems. No, you can't use the local temple to conduct experiments. Yes, they can use animals from the pet store for familiars. No, you can't refuse them service. Yes, she was aware of the Suzimiya girl's unusual ability to break any bounded field through touch. Yes, she knew that the girl seemed to be flat-out immune to bounded fields. Yes, she knew that the girl was aiming to be a Dead Apostle Ancestor when she grew up. No, you couldn't strap her down and dissect her to find out how or why she does it. No, not even if she has broken two-dozen or more bounded fields of yourself or your friends. Yes, kidnapping was still illegal.
"Illya-san," Fiore interrupted. "Isn't Scrya-san requesting to research Reality Marbles?"
Illya snatched the relevant paper back and re-read it. Magecraft pain pills to deal with backlash from demon summoning... big Servant idea for the Grail War... mental world research... yes, that last note was of concern; 'mental world' was just an uneducated name for 'reality marble'.
And Reality Marbles were one of the things that magi generally agreed were worth sealing designations. Researching them was dangerous to not only the researcher, but also to those surrounding them.
Still, Yuuno was a family friend. Illya would be writing a personal reply to him. A list of commonly accepted sources with approved information about what Reality Marbles were, an inquiry as to why he was researching them, and a warning to stop before she put out a notice for a sealing designation on him.
There was only so far she was willing to stick her neck out for him, after all.
Suddenly, Illya felt the bounded fields around the house strain and break before fading away. In Uminari, that typically meant one thing: that Suzimiya girl was nearby again.
She had calmed down over the course of the year, not chasing after the Nagato girl or Illya's half-sister anymore, but that was most likely because she was bothering most of the magi in the city, trying to get her hands on magecraft.
Still, as long as Illya restrained herself, it gave her an opportunity to use Sapphire again...
I suppose we're going to continue for a while longer. This is some of what Illya is dealing with, giving another view as to what is going on (Zouken, Jail, and Kyuubey will receive views sometime in the coming year.)
With that, we're continuing on, but for how much longer, I do not know.
Disclaimer: This quest may end with an Epilogue at any time.
