The Seeker Sokaris

[deviatesfish]

The Seeker Sokaris

Unknown Underground Location

The Giant’s Pit, Egypt

Age 14

Maiya sighed silently as she brushed her hair back.

Ever since I’ve known her, she has been the most Spartan, militaristic, of magus, yet she would leave her hair grown out and long. When I first met her, I had been rather spoiled, though I am still ashamed to admit that, and I had rudely pointed out how unwieldy her long, silky black hair is, especially for someone who was the apprentice of a legendary magus killer. She had frowned at me then, not too different from how her expression is twisted now, and told me simply that it was none of my business as long as she performed her duties.

And perform she did; Maiya was perhaps the best bodyguard I could hope for and a better friend than I had known. I had told her I didn’t want to see her, yet… something caused me to pick her when I need protection again. And each time, at the end of each expedition, of each mission, of each experiment, I would tell her I never wanted to see her face again. Yet it was I who requested her presence yet again.

“Could you hand me the instruments, please?” I called up, without looking up. In the three years that I have known Hisau Maiya not once did I realize, even now, how much I needed her. Perhaps it is as they say that one would never realize what they had until they lost it. But until then, I will not admit something so… embarrassing.

The black haired Asian woman complied silently and swiftly, as if she had already predicted what I wanted. Perhaps she did. But unlike my other associates, I never tried to violate her privacy. I hope I would never need to.

Sometimes I wonder what she is hiding from me, to have to come across the world to Egypt to work as a bodyguard for someone as unproven as myself. What was her past like…? Yet each time, I had been tempted, I held my hand back. Not once had Maiya betrayed my trust, and unlike the other associates of Atlas, who would whisper so behind my back and in the shadows, Maiya was by my side… always.

Something was bothering her recently, something… different. It wasn’t news exactly. She never hid how she studied under the magus killer Emiya Kiritsugu. Emiya had recently become nearly suicidal, searching for something desperately. The frown on her face… I didn’t like it. It reminded me of how she looked when I had touched a soft spot in her memory. I don’t like how she would seem so sad, with nonexistent tears at the corners of her eyes.

Maiya sensed my discomfort and she told me so by looking down at me intently. The expression of reminiscing left her face, replaced by one of cold, neutrality; she spoke softly, “Are you thinking about it again? My lady, they will promote you. You have made research achievements and progressed further than anyone in this organization for decades—“

I shake my head slowly, my violet hair swaying side to side softly. I am sure I had a grim smile on my face, but sometimes… “I predict that would not be the problem, Maiya. I am worried about the favor the director shall ask of me. Nothing is free after all, especially to alchemists,” I sighed, returning to my notes, jotting down my observations down absentmindedly.

“Equivalent trade, huh?” Maiya remarked sardonically.

I rolled my eyes at her. Even at that time, I had not realized she was of the few that I had expressed any true emotions to. “You know how the bureaucracy is, but I heard… I heard I’m to help a group from the Church, in southern Germany.”

I added that location specifically for Maiya. Her mentor was last known to be there. She would want to go I think. But surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, she stayed silent and attentive, looking down at me questioningly. I deduce that she is waiting for my permission, though I wonder…

I tell her the truth, “I am only fourteen, and yet, hunting a vampire should be nothing to me, Maiya.”

“And yet…?” She asked, quirking an eyebrow at me knowingly.

I sighed and browed my hair back. She knew me too well, far too well. If my associates knew, I may have to change that… but until then, perhaps I will enjoy this companionship a little longer. Only perhaps… “And yet, I have a bad feeling about this. It feels… wrong.”

“It is your choice,” Maiya remarked, before turning back to the ground, as if she had found counting the floor tiles so interesting. She knew I didn’t like her doing this. She has to know. Why wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she? Once more, I am tempted to just pluck an invisible thread and shoot it into her skull, just so I can stop speculating. But enough of that!

I shake my head, “There is no choice. I have a duty, and I have a mission. I will have to do it; the new just came in this afternoon, but it will not be until tomorrow morning that we will be dispatched to assist the… Church,” I mutter with distaste. It wasn’t hard to dislike the Church, certainly not for someone of the opposite faction, such as I, especially if I wish to ascend the ranks.

“Perhaps it would be prudent to prepare for the fight ahead then,” Maiya remarked.

I wanted to grumble. I had yet to finish my thesis yet, and this would be just as important as fighting some stupid blood-leech. And there are other things to do as well, my associates might offer some wisdom on which direction I should take, what I should prepare, or even what kinds of enemies I might have on this trip… both outside of the faction, and from within.

1. Prepare with Maiya

2. Finish the experiment

3. Talk to associates

4. Something else…?

[VelspertheCat]

Ooh. You had the same idea I did.

1. Prepare with Maiya

[deviatesfish]

I had the idea while we were bashing talking about a certain terrible writer who made a lot of these and a lot of polls, so I thought, hey, I'll try this too. So that's where this began. But perhaps i should run further updates through you... certainly will allow me to know for sure that something is good, if you proofed/edited it, Velsper-sensei!

[VelspertheCat]

I don't mind if you fire something over occasionally. This idea was one of the first ones I had been considering for Apostles.

[Techlet]

This is interesting.

1. Prepare with Maiya

Because after all, Nothing is true free, everything is prepaid.

[VelspertheCat]

It's free if you make a contract. No strings attached. Honest!

[Techlet]

It's free if you make a contract. No strings attached. Honest!

Only if you have no soul to sell.

[deviatesfish]

Anyway, I was thinking about making it so that Sion has an opportunity to participate in the Fifth.

[Techlet]

Sion summons Medusa?

Team Purple!

[deviatesfish]

Nah... well, depends on choices~ A few more votes and I'll update.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

2. To be contrary. Also, prudent choices get you bad ends in Nasuverse.

[Satehi]

2.

Because I'm interested in what it is.

[EnigmaticFellow]

1.

We need more Maiya in our lives.

[reborn214]

2
The enemy is always under prepared and harmless. No need to worry about them

[mangafreak7793]

1

[Fireburst7]

1

[nick012000]

4. Engage in teenage experimentation. Flirt with Maiya.

[Neir]

I would vote, but I don't know anything about Maiya. ;___;


Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut... 1.

[deviatesfish]

Prepare with Maiya

I had planned to work on furthering a private experiment that I had been working on for weeks. It started when I was taking into consideration of Maiya’s suggestion to utilize modern technology, despite the preferences of my colleges. It is fascinating what creative minds imagine; in this case, it is the minds of computer engineers that surprised me so. Going a step further than having separate partitions for their computers, modern engineers have found additional benefits to such slicing of memory… one of which is usage of separate operating systems on each partition and another being the redundant array of independent disks. While the benefits are minimal on a computer, for a magus, being able specialize in different magecrafts with each partition, or to be able to increase performance and/or redundancy of the mind…

…Well, I shall think about it later. Right now, I need to start packing my equipment and get ready, like Maiya said.

“You seem agitated, my lady,” my bodyguard remarked softly beside me as I stood up from my work and straightened out my clothing. She read my emotions, like always. Perhaps one day I shall be able to do the same, but until such a day that I spent more of my time studying her bodily language than my research, I will be in the dark to her emotions.

I grimace and nod a simple answer to her without saying anything. In moments the laboratory workshop is locked up and secured.

Maiya peers at me from my side and asks, “Perhaps a short practice session will help, my lady?”

I ponder her words as I pack my things in my room. Physical activity would certainly relax my nerves, as proven by research and many of my own personal tests on my own ability. I assume that Maiya is correct; that she could see something bothering me even when I cannot quite feel it. With a sigh and a toss of my purple hair, I twirl my twin pistols in my hands, preparing my mind for battle. “As expected, this body could use some exercise.”

“You shouldn’t speak so coldly, my lady,” Maiya poked fun at me monotonously, though she moved behind me as we moved to one of the many chambers of practice in the facility. “It is unbefitting of one so… young,” she said, thought to my ears, she sounded more like she was testing these words for herself.

“Enough talk,” I held back a soft giggle at Maiya. She was one of the few who could still evoke such a reaction from me anymore. I shrugged my shoulders slightly, allowing my muscles to loosen and relax. As such, like a bolt of lightning, my mind began to race, matching and then by far surpassing the abilities of my body.

Just as Maiya’s hands rose, slower and slower as my perception sped quicker and quicker, hundreds of thousands of calculations flashed in my mind. A thousand lines appeared before my eyes, each with a percentage of probability of occurring, each measuring the trajectory of her bullets. Many thousand more calculations ran through me, showing me each future action as I contemplated several hundred different strategies I had worked out specifically for defeating my bodyguard in this dance of death. Despite my urge to charge forward and attempt to end this instantly, I hold myself back.

Instead, a thin, nigh-invisible coil shoots out from between my fingers, snapping to the two likeliest places that Maiya would shoot, only to deflect her bullets a second later. I duck low and roll sideways, towards her, letting two whips uncoil from my palms and snap loudly at where Maiya stood just a second ago.

She had leaped towards me, charging directly as is her erratic style—shooting with one hand and using her other pistol like a blunt weapon, swinging at me three times in quick succession. I twirled my whip around, blocking all of her shots before using my pistol to parry her blows. Each attack left my arm numb, yet it allowed me to be within her range to tangle her guns together.

Her left leg shot up, snapping at my wrist before kicking my gun-wielding arm wide, throwing her weapons and my threads into the air. She flipped into the air, grabbing the guns just as I righted myself and pointed my pistol up at her—

—Our bullets met midair twice before she landed and twice more as she snapped a kick at me again. I ducked low, dodging her attempt at me, whipping three threads out as if I was clawing at the air. She coiled herself into the air, and jabbed at me rapidly, like a machine. I dodged the first blow and parried the second, but as I raised my pistol to slap her weapon away, forcing her shot to fly wildly into the ceiling, Maiya landed two blows on my shoulders as I tried to twist my body or to float with the blow—but the damage was done.

But this was a necessary sacrifice, one that is not permanent anyway. As she hit me the second time, my elbow and my knee flew together, like a pincer, smashing into her elbow. My other hand swung my pistol in, but she dodged backwards even as I held her elbow tightly. Before I could call checkmate, the clips from within my gun fell out and onto the ground. Somewhere along the fight, she had performed a sleigh of hand that resulted in this.

We smirked at each other, neither of us truly exerted.

“Enough warm up,” I remarked as I dropped my pistol aside. Maiya mirrored my movement as she placed herself into a solid stance; her breathing was even and unchanged through this entire clash. She nodded to me, and that was the signal I needed to know that she was ready.

…We sparred for several hours, until we were both sweating and tired.

As I closed the door to my room as softly and as refined as I could, I took several quick strides to my bed and collapsed. My long braid unwound itself as my face came in contact with my pillow, covering me in a mop of purple hair. I sighed as I peeked up at my clock. I have around eight to ten hours before the director will talk to me. Then maybe another hour before I must go assist the Church with a leech problem.

1. Take a shower with Maiya

2. Sleep

3. Talk to associates

4. Review my notes

[Neir]

4. Because talking with people is ooc for sion