"So this is Fuyuki!"
Winter was a jolly time in Homurahara.
A strangely enthusiastic boy landed on Fuyuki as the lingering snow still colored its lands.
"Wow! There's a bridge! So many people! The sounds of advanced civilization! Veni! Vidi! Vici! End of Part 3! Part 4's theme will be 'Eat! Sleep! Game! Repeat!'!"
He joyfully extended his monologue. Something about it made it sound like a conversation, even though no one was around him.
What a mischief of fate.
The flow of worlds is metaphorically described as numerous parallel worlds gathering like tiny strings to form a greater rope, and this rope gathering with similar ropes, forming the shape of a well-grown tree.
In a handful of fine ropes, Gaia and Alaya bent in bizarre directions. Among those ropes, lies one timeline, in the center stalk of a flower of a deliberately odd color.
In this timeline, a young mage named Flat Escardos, a student of a Lord in the Clock Tower, took a trip to the land of the ritual his mentor once was part of.
This is a story in this oddly-colored flower.
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A few hours later
Fuyuki City
"Lemme see... Souvenirs for the professor? Check. Everyone in class? Check. Trimmau? Check. Reines? Check. Now if I'm reading this map right... A hotel in Fuyuki... Did they already rebuild the one that collapsed?"
The boy approaching his 16th year of age carried a cloth bag. One he didn't own at the time of his arrival. His monologue continued.
"Oh, but I gotta say hi to the Second Owners of the land before finding a place to stay! Rin already knows I'm here, so that leaves, uh, the people of the Makiri house? Also... there's this Fujimura Group. I think they're like the Yakou family of this city? Oh, Second Owners are management people, so it'd also be a good idea to say hi to the mayor! Greetings always matter!"
Had a proper mage heard the boy's words, they would felt a pang of stabbing pain in their heart, then applied stabbing pain to Flat's throat with extreme violence.
But fret not. Flat mutes his monologues with magecraft, so it's no threat to the concealment of the Arcane.
Although, if anyone complained that he wasn't supposed to say things out loud in the first place, he would have no way to argue back.
"But yeah, the mayor really escaped my mind. I didn't do any preliminary research on him. How do I find him? Do Japanese mayors stay in the city hall? Or do they work fom home like in the mayor simulator games?"
The boy lacking in mage common sense approached a trio of girls close to his age. Perhaps 1 or 2 years older.
"Ah, excuse me, sorry for the sudden interruption! Do you know where the Fuyuki mayor's house is?"
"What...?"
The bespectacled member of the trio looked at him with doubtful eyes.
"Hoh... You seem to be a tourist. Do you have any business in our mayor's private residence?"
"Sure do!"
(Wait a sec. The mayor is probably not a mage, right? Then what's the point of greeting him?)
The outsider's question brought Flat back to reason. Still without an answer to his internal questions, he continued his conversation with the three girls.
"Can you guess what it is...?"
"Are you trying to sound shady?!"
Hearing the boy's words, the black-haired girl with the boyish haircut loudly exclaimed her bafflement.
"Answering a question with a question scores you an F in the courtesy test! Do you know what kind of person does? Evildoers! Of the ilk that compares human lives to the amount of bread someone ate in their lives! Don't think you can get us to tell Citizen Kane's address to a dunce who doesn't even know the very basics of conversation!"
The girl with boyish hair spun her arms like a horizontal 8 symbol to protect the bespectacled girl standing behind her.
With moves swift like a black panther, the brave woman started shadowboxing, with the "infinity" aura still projected behind her back.
However...
"What? She lives in the mayor's house?"
"Agh-"
In an instant, the girl called "Citizen Kane" grips the head of the girl with boyish hair.
"Pray tell, for what reason do you forsake my personal information to a man whose shadiness you're clearly aware of...?"
"Aaaa, iih! Ureeroo!"
With a familiar scream, the girl with the boyish flailed her arms. On the verge of her descent to hell, she escaped her restraints and hid behind her other companion, a quiet-looking girl.
"Gh... I fell for a loaded question... But don't think you've bested me! One warrior remains ready to ambush you! I have the right! I have the right! Today is the day to heed my call and awaken Yukicchi's second personality: Gaia!"
"I thought we had dropped this character ages ago!?"
While the quiet girl merely reacted with a confused comment, Flat's whole body had stiffened.
"Pardon?"
In his shock, he blurted out an English word. Seeing that, the black panther spoke in a menacing tone.
"Where'd you get 'Pardon' from? His name is Pukadon!"
"Pukadon-sensei, the orchestra monster? Nice."
"Ah, aaaaah, I never expected someone from the anglosphere would get that reference... Huge win for the Amadeus of the Monster Kid universe."
While the black panther still processed the shock of the unexpected response, Flat nervously put the conversation back on track with a question.
"More importantly, who is this Gaia you just mentioned?"
"That's the part you react to?!"
"The name just sounds awesome... Is it something like 'me' and I? Or would you say it reminds you more of an amazing detective? Or perhaps a company of lesser ghosts combining themselves to form King Arthur?"
The black panther voiced her surprise at Flat's wave of nonsense.
"Damn, Mr. Strange Journey here is not only completely going along with our made-up lore, but he's also mixing in his own brand of 120% distilled chuuni juice! I don't think he's a bad guy anymore, girls! He's just too much like Gotou!"
"More like you, as I view it."
While the girl with the boyish cut argued about the results of her clever analysis with the girl supposedly called Citizen Kane, Flat bowed to the quiet girl called Yukicchi.
"Since Gaia is your second personality... Hello, Alaya! I'm Flat! Flat Escardos!"
"Who's Alaya?! Ah, but nice to meet you, Flat. I'm Saegusa."
Miss Saegusa bowed, revealing the other girls behind her, who still looked at him with suspicious eyes.
"I don't think this gentleman already cleared himself from the allegations of shadiness."
"Still, we have to treat him nice because he's a client at Maki's place."
In response to what "Yukicchi" said, the black panther looked at what Flat had in his hands. A cloth bag made in the silk fabrics store Eichouan. The flame in her faded away.
"Well, I already messed up the commercial treatment, so what now? Should I start treating him like a client, pretending the damage isn't already done?"
She was sweating cold.
When she thought the chaos would escalate, a hero came to her rescue, as unexpectedly as a surprise ninja or the Spanish Inquisition.
"Oya? Who is that I see? Mayhaps, Flathia-dono?"
Behind them appeared two boys their age.
"WHAT?! You know him, Gotou Gai?"
With brows more furrowed than a man dying of old age, the boy called Gotou Gai narrated his circumstances. The seriousness on his face went beyond the character he was playing.
"Mu... This one is indubitably the brother-in-arms I was meant to join tomorrow! Tsunokuma-dono and I are in the middle of our preparations to welcome him, as decisive evidence can attest to. For further details, read Gai, Wonderful Man of Intellect, published by Minmei Books."
The boy behind Gotou dizzily nodded with sleepy eyes.
Their words enacted a response in Flat.
"You two are 5-10 and Francisco? Hey! Nice to meetcha! Are you friends with Alaya?"
"Who is this Alaya?"
"Hoho, so Flat-dono's deck is centered around the Urban Legend engine with Hasshaku-sama and Spring-heeled Jack, but also techs in Charles Stuart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce to perform the special Rolls-Royce Is Unbreakable technique."
"You got it! I love how you can do anything in Great Battle of Heroes! In this one online match the other day I saw a Japanese player running Jack the Ripper in a Knights of Rounds deck and, ah, how do I put this? It was so emblematic of Japanese culture's 'anything goes' approach to world history."
"Oh, I can't speak as a representative of Japan as a whole, but as a representative of Homurahara, I feel a need to apologize for that."
"Whew, this was my first time taking an international trip to play Great Battle of Heroes offline, so there's a lot of I researched before coming. Turns out the Fuyuki Marathon Tournament is quite famous even in my country. That part with the girl in Bayonetta cosplay was really hype."
"Stop it, idiot, don't say the copyrighted name out loud!"
"Are you trying to get the Marathon Tournament sued?"
The misunderstandings were cleared. The citizens of Fuyuki continued their whimsical chat with the visitor.
Peace reigned on this Fuyuki roadside.
"..."
Except for the one stressed face who had been eavesdropping on most of the conversation from the shadows. In the end, she sighed, exhausted.
(He came here just to play Great Battle of Heroes offline? No magecraft-related reasons?)
Sajou Ayaka reacted with caution to her Clock Tower upperclassman's sudden appearance.
In this unforeseen situation, her priority was to keep a raccoon charge ready for whenever Flat put the concealment of the Arcane at risk.
Seeing the unfriendly atmosphere dissipate, she felt relieved and hid the raccoon in the tall grass, commanding it back into sleeper mode.
(Well, if anything happens, even if just a level 1 problem, I could simply go there and punch him... I don't have to worry too much.)
She spent her next few days getting a progressively worse headache from the Great Battle of Heroes caravan antics, while also physically giving Flat his own headache.
But that's a story for another day.
End of preview.
Not to be continued (?).
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Originally Posted by Arashi_Leonhart
