Zero No Tsukaima Fan Fiction ❯ Zero No Tsukaima Darkness Rising ❯ Welcome to the War ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Louise opens her eyes and looks around, she is inside a tent as the night before begins to slowly come back to her. "That girl, Rain she used a sleeping spell on me," she gets up and exits the tent. Saito and Seth are both outside arguing about something.
"You really should ask first," Seth keeps repeating to Saito but the response is barely audible, so quiet that Louise can't hear it. Seth just shrugs and finishes packing his things up into a backpack.
Louise prepares to start yelling at Saito but as he turns around she stops herself and just stays quiet. Saito is facing towards her but his eyes aren't looking at her but through her, he walks up to her and then slips around her into the tent. Before she can turn around he is already back out of the tent now with Derflinger in his hand, and walks by her again.
His complete ignorance of her forces her to speak, "Saito where are you going?"
".........."
At first she is confused at the complete lack of an answer, it's almost like he didn't hear her, but at such a close distance that would seem impossible, "Saito, where do you think you are going!?" This time she made sure that everyone could hear her, whether to embarrass Saito or to make sure he heard it, even she didn't know.
Saito takes a slow pace as he turns around and walks to her until he is a few feet from her, "I'm leaving, you obviously don't care."
Louise is shocked by his cold answer but instead of trying to tell him the truth about how she feels she blows up at him, "Fine Leave See If I Care!"
Saito turns and with Seth and the rest of the knights begin to walk off into the forest. Louise doesn't try to stop him at first but quickly runs after him, "Saito wait!"
Saito turns and looks her dead in the eyes with a look of complete indifference, "Yes, what do you want?"
She closes her fists together and squeezes as hard as she can, "Please don't go, I'd be lonely without you, to protect me."
"There is only one thing you could say that would make me change my mind, though if you said it now I don't think I'd believe you."
The words that he wants her to say, she can't bring herself to say them. She hates herself for not having said them earlier and tries her best to say them now, "S-s-s-s-s," she takes a deep, deep breathe, "SAITO I LOVE YOU!!!" The words shock her almost more than they shock Saito.
Saito looks into her eyes searching for something and then shakes his head and smiles, "You are lying Louise," Saito turns back around and walks away leaving Louise in the middle of the abandoned camp.
"Saito.......Saito!.......SAITO!!!!!"
Her eyes suddenly open, and she looks around, she is inside a tent a cold sweat on her brow from her dream, no, her nightmare. She tries to calm down but she can't seem to catch her breath. She almost gets up but she feels something on her skin, air, breath. She looks over and finds Saito fast asleep with his face tuck in between her shoulder and neck. His arm reaching across her exposed midriff. She almost freaks out but she quickly thinks back on the night and how Saito had left.
He must have came back after I was asleep that girl Rain must have put me into one of her nightgowns
She lifts the blankets at bit to see what the gown looks like and instantly puts it back down, under her breathe she begins to curse Rain, "its not a nightgown, its a short sleeve shirt with no bottoms, I'm just in my panties!"
Saito's hand suddenly flinches and Louise looks back at his face and his face now has a worried expression. Louise looks around to make sure no one can see into the tent. After passing her inspection she sits up and gently puts Saito's head in her lap. Once again she looks around the tent and after another passing examination she begins to run her hand through his hair until he calms down.
Meanwhile outside Seth and Rain are having a celebratory hug as they both have sneaked peeks into the tent, unnoticed and have found Louise actually caring for Saito.
"Wow I didn't think that would work babe," Seth receives a stern slap in the back of the head, "Sorry I forgot."
She quickly goes from happy, to angry, and back to happy, "I told you it would work, Saito is madly in love with her and she is just as in love with him, but you know we can't do that for them ever again."
Seth stops smiling and sits back down, "You're right, we might seriously mess some things up if we keep interfering.
Something suddenly seems very wrong, Seth looks around trying to figure out where his gauntlets are, "Rain...."
"The tent love..."
Seth quickly dives into his tent and out the other side as Rain runs around it and with Seth into the forest. Seth quickly pulls his weapons onto his hands as they keep running until they reach the clearing that Saito was at the night before.
"Rain...." His voice has expressed more words than he can at the moment.
"I know, me too."
A blonde emerges from behind a tree, "isn't that sweet, without actually saying you love each other you let your voices do it since you don't have much longer to live."
"We have dealt with your kind before." Seth chants something under his breath and his rune begins to glow on his arm, "Prepare yourself!"
Seth charges at the man and brings his full power down but the attack is dodged quite easily. As the man is backing away he pulls a knife out of a pouch at his side and throws it at Seth who is still committed to the punch. The blade cuts open his shoulder just wide of his neck as it whizzes past Seth. Seth doesn't let the cut change his attack route as he chases after the man and tries to connect again this time just grazing the mans side.
After the half dodged attack the man cringes in pain as a short but powerful shock runs through him.
Seth charges again this time feinting his punch and following up with a kick that lands flush with the blondes face making him spin around. Before he can get his barring Seth is already on him and connects with a straight right and and crossing left, each blow sending more electricity through the man.
"This is over!" Seth brings his left arm back and swings forward his runes glowing slightly brighter than before. The man suddenly uses wind magic to push himself to the side and catches Seth's arm between his arm and side. With a quick movement the man wrenches Seth's arm out of the socket and then slams his knee into Seth's left elbow hyperextending the arm severely.
Seth lets out an agonizing sound as he falls to his knees his left arm turned awkwardly and limp at his side
The blonde man kicks Seth right in the chest and knocks him flat on his back, "he'll be please that someone as low a level as me has killed you."
Seth squirms so he can look up at the man, "wouldn't count on it." Seth quickly sits up and captures the mans right leg. "Rain!"
The blonde turns his head to see that Rain has been condensing air the whole time that he's been fighting Seth.
"Fly!" The condensed air whips at the man taking the visible shade of a spear head in the dew of the early morning and hits the man right in the heart and pierces through his back. Seth lets go of his leg and crawls away from the now dead, but still bleeding body.
"Rain, I need Zion." Rain helps Seth back to his feet and places a kiss on his lips as they share a moment.
"That shouldn't have happened Seth. You should've played it safe until I had finished my magic." Her voice is angry, concerned, and loving all at the same time.
"I didn't want to make you have to kill someone."
His answer doesn't fuel the argument any further and Rain and Seth slowly make their way back to the camp. As they are getting closer they hear arguing followed by a ground shaking explosion. Rain runs ahead of Seth to find out what's wrong but before she makes it to camp she is stopped by Hina and Airo.
"You guys what is going on," Airo shrugs and Hina shakes her head, the only sound is Louise's voice, openly berating Saito.
Seth slowly makes it up to the three of them and just keeps walking, "Airo watch this..."
He slowly limps into the camp and walks right in between Saito and Louise and after a for more steps he falls to the ground.
Louise screams as the dust settles around Seth fallen body and Saito quickly runs over to him and turns him over, "What happened to you!?"
"Find Zion......." Seth passes out much to Airo's amazement but Airo didn't notice that there is a lot of blood coming out of a deep knife wound just above his collar bone. Saito puts Seth back down and runs towards the school with Louise close behind him.
Airo walks over to Seth to congratulate him on his ability to make the fighting stop when he notices the severity of the wounds. Airo quickly taps into his power and almost vanishes completely due to his amazing speed.
In a matter of minutes Airo has returned with Zion and he immediately begins to work on Seth's wounds.
Saito and Louise both return a little while later both still very worried about Seth. After bandaging all his wounds and setting his arm back into place Zion stands up and and gets some of the ash from the previous nights fire and draws an arcane symbol on Seth elbow.
Louise looks leans over towards Hina, "Why did he draw that symbol on Seth's elbow?"
Hina moves one of her bangs out of her eyes, "The symbol is a way for Zion to target a specific area easier, the symbol he is using right now seems to be the best for healing wounds, I've seen that one many times."
Zion's eyes stop glowing and he takes a sudden surprised breath, "He should be fine in a couple of hours."
Rain takes a deep relieved breath, "Well that's good, wait a minute......Zion where were you?"
"Ah, I was with Tabitha," Zion's face turns red.
Saito asks the very obvious question, "So you like Tabitha huh?" Louise gives Saito a very stern look.
Zion smiles, "Yes, she is a very interesting person."
Rain puts her hand on Zion's shoulder and smiles, "Well good for you." Rain turns to Saito and Louise, "Since it's pretty obvious Seth will never get around to it I'm gonna tell you guys why we are here. You two already know that we need your help and since you saw what shape Seth is in that this is a very serious problem. There is some man who has gone far out of his way to not be noticed. He has sent a few of his minions after me and the others. Thanks to certain powers of persuasion we have learned a few things about this guy. We haven't figured out what his name is but at least we know where he is based. There is a castle on a peninsula in northern Germania.
"So why haven't the Holy Knights gotten some help from a king or queen, I'm sure Louise can get the Queen of Tristain to help." Louise nods in agreement.
Rain shakes her head is disagreement, "That is not how we try to do things. We try to prevent things from happening before it could cause a war. Think about it if the queen of this country knew about someone sending soldiers into another country it could be a war on our hands."
Though Saito agrees with what they are saying he knows the difficulties of taking on an army, "Guys we really should go see Henrietta, I've already died once, I don't really want to chance it again."
"We can't do that," Seth slowly emerges from a tent, "We can't let Henrietta know about this. We can't let a war happen."
Saito stands up, "But what are we gonna do then, they will have hundreds of soldiers."
Seth smiles, "actually he keeps exactly one hundred soldiers. It may seem strange but this guy, is very strange, every soldier is ranked. I'd have to say that the guy me and Rain just fought, was probably number seventy."
Louise looks very surprised, "wow he must have been really trying to kill you for a long time, seventy is a really high number, if you where alone he may have even killed you."
Seth looks down at the ground as if he's ashamed, "Seventy is low, the numbers are reversed, the lower the number the more powerful. That guy could only use one kind of magic."
"So he has one hundred soldiers and number seventy was tough for you to handle?"
"Saito no one said this was going to be easy, we wouldn't have came looking for you if that was the case."
Saito looks back at Louise and then looks at everyone else in the group thinking deeply on what is the best course of action, "Alright, I'll come with you, you're coming too right Louise."
"Of course, as a noble of Tristain it would be shameful of me to not do my part to help." Louise puts her hands on her hips and looks at Saito as if he should already know that by now.
Seth takes a deep breath and heads back other to his tent, "Well that's good, I don't think we'll leave until I'm a little better so, don't rush yourselves okay?"
Saito and Louise both nod and head back to the academy.
"Well Rain we got the last piece of the puzzle now we just need to wait a couple more days."