Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Fan Fiction ❯ My Magical Gate Experience Was Ruined, As I Expected ❯ YGS: 9 ( Chapter 9 )

August 2017

In my prior two lives I was attracted to women, first because I was male, and in the second because I was broken by war and my hormones were barely working. When I died the second time in the street of Berun, I was barely pubescent at 14 years old and still only five feet tall. The doctors told me that experimental weapons systems and a bad diet were the primary causes of my height and development problems. In time I might have overcome those, but I didn't have time. This time around I had a good diet and excellent care and my hormones were normal for a girl my age. I liked men. I was a proper girl. I don't think I have a type. I just know when I'm attracted because I can feel it. Batou with his shirt off is nummy, but he's not the only attractive male.

Taishi goes to school with me, and we share a classroom. He contacted Batou because he was worried and wasn't sure we'd help him, though since the one who needed help was a classmate of Niisan. He came to the Service Club because his sister was staying out all night, or at least very late, and her grades were plummetting. Taishi was in cram school to get into Soubou, because it was a ladder into either stable careers or colleges which lead to good careers. She smelled of cigarette smoke and alcohol, and these were signs of her becoming a delinquent, or worse. There was such a thing as compensated dating, and Taishi was aware his sister was very pretty, with classic looks though silver hair. Just exotic enough to attract a businessmen with special needs. He was in fear for her. I admire that level of concern. I share it in worrying over my own brother, whose dark tendencies drive people away. After hearing the problem from Taishi, niisan and the club girls investigated a maid cafe, which might be a front for a brothel. A quick check of the working girls there and their schedule found it wasn't the place. The other was a high end bar at the top of one of the taller towers in Chiba, with a nice view of the port and very upscale. Niisan and Yukino and Yui all dressed up like rich college kids out of the town and I shook my head at the picture they made. Niisan looked like a Yakuza thug, and Yui crowded his arm, as did Yukino despite continuing to dislike him instinctively. They found Saki there working as a bartender. We all met the following morning at an American fast food burger chain and discussed it. I sat by Taishi and observed him and his obvious care for his sister, and my brother mentioned Scholarships, which somehow Saki had never heard of being available for cram school costs. Things improved and Saki cut hours at the bar, got back to studying properly, and found several scholarships for cram schools for the local Chiba university entrance exams. We have four different universities in Chiba. Yukino's sister attends one of them, for her ongoing science degree. A vexing woman.

Seeing Taishi and his love for his older sister I found him appealing. We started spending our lunches together. We got closer. I spend more time with him in high school, at Soubou, and we ended up keeping the Service Club going because it was more interesting than Student Council and that OTHER vexing woman who was stalking niisan, that Foxgirl Iroha. Did you know her Dad is a police detective? He even wears one of those tan trenchcoats, like a noir detective. And Iroha acts like one of those YouTube influencers. She drives even Yuigahama up the wall, and it takes a lot to annoy that girl.

Dating Taishi eventually lead to love and he proposed. And he's sweet and I like him, so I accepted after we graduated high school.

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The wedding was a lovely Christian ceremony, so quick and relatively cheap. We got an apartment together, bigger than we’d have in Tokyo, and Taishi had a job working as a junior salaryman at a local firm rather than waste time going to college. I got some patents made on my detection sensors and the general patent on the connection system to a smartphone app. Because it could be used for wireless monitoring of vitals, I found interest from a medical manufacturer in the Netherlands. It was a decent chunk of change for the royalty, and let us live in a slightly better apartment and eat a bit better food.

I spent hours a day writing novels about my adventures in Germania, holding back nothing. Being X might be amused to gain followers in a completely different reality. The first two light novels sold relatively well. There was a contract for fifteen more. It would help with the family finances, especially if I could get pregnant. Taishi wanted us to wait another two years, so he could get promoted and earn a bit more, in case I found raising kids interfered with writing my fiction memoirs. Fiction. Ha. I met with Yukinoshita frequently and we would debate the merits of various strategies and training systems while drinking coffee, and go for walks in the various parks around Chiba City. Apparently the city was the setting for a famous scifi novel over 50 years ago, but I just couldn’t see it. It wasn’t run down or seedy. We even had a monorail.

Sometimes we’d take the train into Tokyo, a good hours journey unless you caught the express. I tended to avoid that one and go later, with all the stops. We ended up in Shinjuku when I felt a huge mana pulse.

“Tanya, did you feel that?” Yukino asked in German, by reflex.

“Trouble. I’m activating my jewel. Are you wearing yours?” I asked, flipping the switch, and booting up my mini computer. It autoloaded the app and my sensors. The crystal started to glow brightly on my necklace.

“Let me put it on. There. Activating. What is that?” she said, pointing at a weird Greco-Roman temple appearing and growing more solid from thin air outside my favorite manga store and coffee shop. I drew on the rich mana emanating from the portal. I had never seen a physical magic like this, but it was very magical, and it leaked mana into the air like a mountain stream, then a surging river. Then I saw the eyes in the darkness within the portal. It was an army. Thousands.  

“I wish I had my rifle.” I couldn’t have said it better.

“Me too. I feel like I could fly. It feels like a lifetime ago.”

I powered up a voice hailer spell and shouted in loud Japanese: “Emergency. Clear the street. Seek shelter immediately.” I saw many startled faces and repeated myself and then flew 10 feet into the air and let myself glow like a radioactive firefly.

People moved THEN. A few stared, looking for wires or wondering what I was cosplaying as. “Move it!” I shouted in my Major’s voice. That got them going. I saw armor. I saw shields and spears. I ramped up my shields.

And I saw something flying out of the tunnel of darkness behind this… gate. Something like a small monoplane, only sinuous. It surged out through the opening at over 150 kilometers per hour, followed by another and I dodged instinctively. I was bigger in this body. It took more effort because of the mass, but there was so much mana here. Arrows started flying and it was a fight.

I heard gunshots from behind me somewhere and screams of wounded civilians, and more shouting. I wish I had my rifle. A couple dozen of the armored men were down. I swooped down and snagged a spear with an axe blade on one side, probably a halberd. This was not a ceremonial weapon. I used a spell and strengthened it and then spun and dove into the men striking a swath of men aside, knocking down a platoon worth into a mass of limbs and sharp instruments, blocking the entrance.

I spotted a car, its engine idling. I dove behind it, charged a push spell variation of the shield and cast it, flinging the car into these Roman invaders. There were screams. I cast another spell, one of ignition, aimed at the exposed gas tank and a shield behind it. It flashed, hit the shield in brilliant orange flame and bounced back. I used wind magic to spread it over the steel troops and heard many screams of pain and terror. I found another car, and repeated. And another car.

This is what you get when you invade my favorite manga shop.

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Summer Comiket was starting. Itami was on a train in Tokyo, and the Gate appeared in Shinjuku. I was dating Saki, and I’d just presented her with a ring when my phone triggered an emergency text message.

“No matter what happens, remember I love you, Saki. Now get indoors and away from glass.” I pushed her into the restaurant and seized my pistol as the first rank of spear phalanx neared us. Ten shots and twenty men in ridiculous iron plate armor dropped screaming in the road, their fellows bellowing. I fired the remaining rounds into a mounted knight and swapped magazines for my backup before taking cover. A hail of arrows punched holes into a trash can and broke the glass on a parked car a few feet away. The phone rang again. People were screaming and running into shops, which slammed their doors and in a few minutes, or maybe it was seconds, the street was empty of civilians. It was me, an arriving policeman with a revolver and a radio, and a horrible flapping noise overhead. Flying lizards? Fire breathing lizards? What have I gotten myself into?

Then I saw something terrifying. It was Komachi, and she was FLYING, glowing green, and shouting really loud. The street emptied completely except for the advancing armored soldiers and then she was so fast, darting like a bird, whipping past spears that bounced of the green sparking curve ahead of her. I don’t think she even noticed. She came back up with one of those spears and spun down and there were a few dozen men sprayed all over the place, some of them in chunks, torn apart and turned into projectiles. Then she darted back and hovered behind a car, gestured and shouted twice and it burst forward into the chaotic horde like a bowling ball. And then it was on fire, and the fire was all going into the tunnel and there were so many screams I had flashbacks to combat in Mexico, from another lifetime.

There was another girl, and I could swear it was Yukinoshita, firing a small automatic into the pile of men. But the bullets were glowing green and they exploded like artillery. And she was in front of a dozen cameras on the streetlights and buildings and the intersection. This wasn’t going to be hushed up. This was going to get huge. And then I heard roars and grunting and the burning cars were flung out of the gate out into the street and some kind of giant things, men shaped but over 10 feet tall, wearing armor and clubs surged past the girls and were followed by fast and agile troops in light armor and wielding short swords and clubs and manacles. I was out of ammo. I wished I had my rifle, and a belt fed Ma Deuce. A few hundred monsters and madmen in armor surged past us, dodging down side streets, attacking civilians attracted by the noise or not fast enough to run when they realized this wasn’t a cosplay event.

Shinjuku SWAT showed up with APCs and opened up with water cannons and eventually rifles. They started shooting. I showed my ID and grabbed a rifle from a wounded policemen busy on the radio with an arrow buried in his lung. I left him to it and grabbed his extra magazines, then started looking for either those ogre things or anybody who looked like they were being dragged back. These were slavers. Nobody who isn’t a slaver carries manacles like that in the battlefield.

There. POPOP. Down. The woman crawled away, behind a concrete planter and cowered for her life.

Another. POPOP. Neither moved. I hope that citizen was alive, if just unconscious.

A general officer with a crested helmet? POPOP. I don’t need prisoners.

Another officer? POPOP. Down and not moving.

Ogre? Two to the chest. Still moving? One to the head. Drops. Bullets work well on the ogres. The metal armor may as well be cloth to bullets full of lead. Tears through several men when ranked like this.

Three lined up. POP. Three drop, two screaming.

I heard later that the enemy recon unit, some mounted on horses which raced past me, killed over two hundred people on the way to the palace, where a good 3000 civilians were allowed inside the grounds because Itami, the lazy git, opted to be a hero and convinced the guards to open up, with rapid permission via the palace security. 3000 people avoided the meat grinder, and my fellow JSDF rapid response team opened up on the cavalry and infantry and mowed them down. They got some prisoners, mores the pity, but I would find that out later.

I killed over 70 men and monsters that day. The advance through the tunnel gate stopped. The slavers were shot down. I don’t think they got many of our citizens past me. And I got practice dodging arrows, though I had to be careful not to accidently clip Komachi, who kept flying around in front of the gate and flinging glowing rubble inside. It would go WAY too fast and then explode. I never knew Komachi could do that. I was always suspicious how she could speak fluent German, but never imagined she could fly.

She did that for a long time, until she got tired and landed. The SWAT were super nervous. I approached and waved them off, ushering her and Yukinoshita into a nearby manga shop. We left the door open, just in case she needed to fly out again and break some villains.

“Keep the door clear,” I reminded a nearby dazed civilian, staring at my best friend’s little sister. A jewel on her throat was glowing green. She kept floating off the chair she was sitting in.

“Well, that was a thing,” I finally said.

“Just like old times,” she agreed.

I hate my life. Saki found me a bit later. So maybe hate is the wrong word. She said yes.

End Part One

Begin Part Two