It was the spring of 202X, and Yu Ichinose lived with his family in Tokyo. He slipped his arms through the black sleeves of his brand-new uniform. It fit perfectly, but that didn’t improve his mood any. What awful timing. Right at the start of his much-anticipated second year of middle school.
“I know it’s, like, a big national project and all, but do I really need to transfer schools?”
“Aww, don’t be such a grouch! Didn’t you see all that stuff online? You’ll get to have elf teachers! And elf classmates!” Saki, his seventeen-year-old sister, didn’t seem to get it.
Yu frowned at her from across their modest living room, situated in Kita ward on the north side of Tokyo proper. “You really believe all that? Don’t elves keep to themselves? I thought they all lived on reserves.”
“And where do you think your new school is? Ugh, I’m so jealous! They’re all so pretty, and smart, and elegant! Why can’t I be an elf?”
Mankind was no longer the only intelligent life-form to walk the Earth. It all started some thirty years ago, when an odd creature was captured in the south of France. If the little monster’s size and features weren’t enough, its violent tendencies and lack of cognitive reasoning certainly fit the fiends of European folklore after which they were named: goblins.
They called it the discovery of the century. But it didn’t stop there. One-eyed giants, hulking trolls, and even juvenile dragons were just a few of the sightings to follow.
Then, at the turn of the twenty-first century came the elvish migration. Fed up with the oppression of the magical ruling classes, six thousand elves fled their world, transcended their reality, and arrived in the one that Earth called home.
Yu had taken his sister’s claims with a grain of salt at first, but his arrival at the institute—a facility “for the upbringing and education of junior operatives for the good of the Initiative”—would quickly prove his skepticism wrong.
“Hello. My name is Aliya Todo. First-year middle school student. As you may have already noticed from my ears, I am an elf, but my father’s Japanese. It’s nice to meet you.”
“I can’t believe she was actually right,” Yu said to himself.
“My mom’s an advisor at this research facility. I’ll introduce you before long.”
The stoic underclassman’s small stature was no detriment to her beauty, and her blue-accented sailor uniform suited her well. Sharp ears poked out from her silky, ivory hair beneath a white beret. In short, she was astonishingly beautiful.
“Did you say research institute? I thought this was a school.”
“To a certain extent, you could say. Suitable young people are a rarity,” Aliya replied. “And before you ask, no, I cannot use magic and neither can my mom. I hope that doesn’t offend you.”
“Ah, so you lose your powers here. Is that how it works?”
“Yes. That is how it works.”
It didn’t take long for Yu to make friends with another boy his age—Takamaru Ijuin.
“So word is they chose us ’cause we’ve got some kinda aptitude for the nanomachines or something.”
“Oh yeah, we did go through all those tests. They even took us to that military base, remember?” replied Yu.
Ijuin leaned forward. “You know what I heard? It’s the enemy! The Anomalies from the other side! They’ve been hitting us hard, so the guys upstairs’re trying to get this next-gen nanotech tested and battle-ready ASAP!”
“What’s the rush? I heard Number Three’s been putting in work.” Yu recalled the military’s renowned fighter and their latest weapon. “What was it called again? That thing that does the whole superhero transformation whatever. The something-frame Mark III.”
“You’re thinking of Devicer Three’s A-Type Exo-Frame! I’ve got the limited-edition collector’s figure, man! It comes with the whole armor set and you wouldn’t believe the quality! Oh, and get this. Our group’s going to Yokota, so we’ll get to meet the guy in person!”
“Three himself? Wow. My mom and sister are huge fans.”
The women of the Ichinose household were enraptured with the Defense Force’s new superweapon, or rather, the man behind its mask. It was hard not to be, considering his face was plastered all over national television.
Ijuin nodded emphatically. “The guy’s a hunk. Everyone and their aunt knows him. But y’know, Aliya’s actually met him and apparently he’s kind of a jerk in real life.”
“Wait, for real? The TV makes him seem like Prince Charming, though!”
Earth was under attack by creatures unknown. The Anomalies, as they were called, were relentless. They struck without warning, at any time, in any place. But amid humanity’s seemingly endless struggle against the otherworldly came the elvish migrants and their sages. Their vast intellect brought a technological revolution to every known scientific field, and yet, it had little effect on battlefields across the globe. There was one thing that not even the combined wisdom of man- and elfkind could overcome: magic.
202X CE. This was the year that the Defense Force assigned middle schooler Yu Ichinose to the Initiative and stationed him in a nanotechnology research facility as a junior operative. It was also the year that disaster struck Japan.
That June, archmages from the other side devastated the Tokyo metropolitan area with spell-induced earthquakes and floods of untold proportions, submerging the greater part of the city beneath the waves, never to resurface again. The country lost its seat of government, and to make matters worse, both the Chubu and Kansai regions fell within the grasp of enemy portal-keeps—magical strongholds through which the anomalous threat invaded.
What was left of the government fled to Fukuoka, in the southern island of Kyushu, and issued an evacuation notice to every citizen of Japan.
Nobody was safe anymore.
XXX
It was December. The end of a tumultuous year. And Maizuru Bay was in flames.
Two destroyer warships lit up Kyoto’s northern waters in a fiery blaze, and every second threatened to be the vessels’ last. It was a grim sight. The Defense Force was Japan’s shield, and now the remainder of its paltry escort fleet was about to become wreckage at the bottom of the sea. Yu watched it burn from the shore.
“Some fight...” Ijuin muttered next to him, dressed in his plus-sized, black button-up. He was big for a fourteen-year-old.
“Everyone left after the Evacuation. All the warships. All the private liners. What are two busted up clunkers supposed to do?”
“Not much, I guess.”
The conclusion shocked no one. And Yu was no exception.
He was also fourteen and clad in the same black button-up as his friend. The two of them were supposed to be middle schoolers. Instead, they were here holding automatic rifles. Type 89s, to be exact. They were lightweight, as far as firearms went, but still a hefty 3.5 kilograms and almost half a meter long. Certainly not toys.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” Ijuin grumbled. “How are we gonna stop anything?”
“Wish I knew.” Yu couldn’t agree more.
They could count on one hand the number of firing lessons they’d had, and Yu was about as scrawny as could be. Ijuin wasn’t exactly the athletic type either, and he filled out his uniform quite well. Neither of them were cut out for this work, to say the least.
The boys stood out in the wide-open school courtyard, directly next to the blazing bay. The facility supposedly belonged to the Defense Force’s naval branch. Officials from the Force—the few occupants who were noncombatants—looked on with nervous expressions.
“We’re next, aren’t we?”
“We’ve still got a chance, Ijuin. If we can just run out the clock, we’ll make it.”
Over the bay, a brilliant green aurora rippled like a giant curtain above the crestfallen boys’ heads. Such a phenomenon would normally be impossible to witness in Japan’s Kansai region, but so was the floating fortress beyond the veil that created the enchanting spectacle.
An enemy portal-keep loomed overhead—a gravity-defying mass of rock with stone castle walls extending further into the heavens above. All it needed was a legion of armored knights and it would have fit the medieval aesthetic perfectly.
The JS Myoko destroyer launched an anti-air missile towards the flying castle. It rocketed upward, leaving a trail of smoke and flame behind, when suddenly, the missile sputtered out and slowed its ascent, before curving back down into the ocean below. Instead of the satisfying boom of an explosion, there was only a...
“Splash...” Yu couldn’t hide his dejection.
“Did you see that?!” Ijuin cried. “That had to be magic, right?! Right?!”
Then, the two felt the nanofactors within their bodies receive a message. The “voice” of Aliya Todo, Yu and Ijuin’s only female friend, echoed in their ears.
“My nanomachines are detecting magic in use. There seems to be a mage in the castle casting Projectile Protection, a spell used to shield against stones and arrows.”
“Since when do guided missiles count as stones or arrows?! Man, that’s kinda crazy!”
“That’s just not fair,” Yu sighed.
Yu had only recently gotten used to such high-tech means of communication. Commlinks allowed those augmented by nanomachines to speak telepathically with each other by way of resonance between their nanofactors, up to a range of about fifteen kilometers. Cell phones and radio seemed primitive by comparison.
Meanwhile, the battle raged on. A stealth fighter took off from the deck of the JS Izumo and fired on the portal-keep with its 25mm autocannon, simultaneously launching two air-to-air missiles. But the projectiles all met the same end as the last. The enemy’s magic sent the rockets and bullets careening pitifully into the ocean. But that wasn’t all.
“Dude, the plane’s going down!”
Yu couldn’t believe his eyes. “But I didn’t even see them get hit!”
Aliya’s voice returned.
“Sleep magic detected. The pilot must have lost consciousness.”