Fulfill the mission. Protect the title of "Sirius."
This was the singular pillar of pride left supporting Lina's crumbling composure. Before coming to Japan, she had known minor setbacks—she wasn't a god, after all. In the Pentagon's grueling officer training programs, she'd struggled to pull anything higher than a 'C' in algebra and biology. In hand-to-hand combat drills, there had been a girl her own age—a literal monster of physical ability—whom she could never quite best. And as for piloting machinery? To put it bluntly, she was a disaster behind the wheel.
But in magic, she was peerless.
Angie Sirius, Commander of Stars. One of the strongest magicians on the planet. Everyone whispered it with reverence, and for the longest time, Lina had believed it with absolute conviction.
Then she came to Japan. And she lost.
The first encounter with the siblings had been on her terms; her retreat was a tactical choice, a "successful escape." The second encounter had seen her brought low by Tatsuya's "Kamikaze," yet even then, she had technically been bested by an unexpected ambush rather than a failure of her own magic.
But the duel with Miyuki had been a definitive defeat. Regardless of the circumstances, Lina refused to hide behind excuses. She had faced Miyuki head-on, and she had lost. That failure hadn't broken her; it had forged a cold, sharp resolve to settle the score.
Yet, in the very battle meant to reclaim her honor, Tatsuya had dismantled her. Even with the tactical-class weapon Brionac in her hands, she had been utterly defeated in a one-on-one engagement. Curiously, she felt no hatred for him. Tatsuya hadn't humiliated her; he hadn't even bothered to restrain her. The fight had been fair—if anything, the scales had been tipped in her favor. Tatsuya had simply surpassed her in technique and, more crucially, in sheer mental fortitude.
Still, that defeat threatened to erase her very reason for existing. "Sirius" was more than a rank; it was the symbol of USNA's global hegemony. The Commander of Stars had to be the strongest, a title bestowed upon the most powerful magician the nation could produce, drafted into service by any means necessary.
Externally, the reputation of Sirius remained intact. Tatsuya, Miyuki, and the powers behind them had no desire to see the "Sirius" brand tarnished. But while the world remained ignorant, the fact of her loss was a cold, hard stone in her gut. To justify her existence—to honor the girl she used to be, Angelina Shields, and the girl she had sacrificed to become Sirius—she had to prove her worth here and now.
When Tatsuya finally brought the battlefield into visual range, he saw her: the girl with hair like spun rubies and eyes of gold, hidden behind a mask, taking on three Parasites alone.
Against creatures that required no activation sequences and could manifest magic through mere thought, Lina wasn't giving an inch. She held the momentum, dictating the flow of the battle at a seven-to-three ratio. However, one Parasite was proving troublesome, possessing a pseudo-teleportation capability—a complex combination of inertia neutralization and high-speed movement. It was the only reason she hadn't ended the fight already.
Tatsuya had no intention of "rescuing" her, but he came to a halt and fixed his sights on the teleporting Parasite. Most magicians aimed with their five senses, tracking coordinates in three-dimensional space. But Tatsuya's "eyes" were different. He targeted the information itself. No matter how rapidly the target's coordinates shifted, as long as he could perceive the underlying data, the target was stationary to him.
Pseudo-teleportation was no more than a parlor trick in the face of his gaze.
"Leave it to me!"
The voice came from beside him. Erika, who had caught up just as he stopped, didn't hesitate. She surged past him, activating her own inertia control.
Pseudo-teleportation is only a threat when the opponent's hands, feet, and eyes cannot keep up. If the counter-attacker's raw speed exceeds the activation speed of the caster, the teleportation becomes nothing more than a pointless acrobatic display.
Erika lunged forward with Mizuchimaru—a downsized, CAD-integrated version of the Orochimaru blade, custom-tuned by Tatsuya. She moved in a blur of lethal acceleration, closing the gap to the exact spot where the Parasite, having kicked off a branch, was about to land.
Tatsuya pivoted. He shifted his aim from the teleporting target to a second Parasite that was attempting to launch a psychokinetic strike at Erika's flank. With a series of precise "Decomposition" bursts, he shattered the creature's limbs, pinning it to the forest floor.
In the same heartbeat, Erika's blade sang through the air, delivering a finishing blow to her target. As the host's body fell, Tatsuya thrust out his left hand toward the remains.
High above on the school roof, Mikihiko was hunched over a makeshift ritual altar. He had been left behind not just as a guard for Mizuki and Honoka, but because his Ancient Magic allowed him to cast long-range sealing wards. He threw his strength into the barrier, weaving a cage to prevent the Parasite from fleeing its dying host.
The seal wasn't perfect—not due to a lack of skill, but because of the nature of the magic itself. A sealing ward was never meant to be a snap-decision, improvised construct.
Just as the Parasite attempted to breach the boundary, a bolt of lightning descended from the heavens. It wasn't the refined discharge of modern electrical magic, but a strike of Ancient spirit-thunder. It slammed into the host's corpse, charring the skin and etching a series of geometric patterns and archaic characters into the flesh.
"One down!" Erika shouted, her voice ringing with triumph.
Tatsuya's "eyes" confirmed that no informational entity had escaped the charred vessel. But he didn't stop to celebrate. He fired a psionic burst into the Parasite he had crippled earlier. The host's body spasmed violently, its life signs flickering. Again, the sealing lightning fell from the sky, silencing the creature's struggles.
Two Parasites neutralized.
In the corner of his eye, another flash of light erupted—this one a modern electrical discharge from Lina's own magic. Her target was a blackened husk, but Tatsuya could see immediately that it was already empty. That Parasite had escaped.
Note: If she hadn't been chosen as Sirius, she never would have met Tatsuya... but at what cost to her heart?
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