Zero, zero, zero. Louise shut her eyes as tightly as she could, scrunching up her noble, aristocratic features in the process. She clenched her hands. She was a noble lady, a high born young woman of the Valliere family, one of the few privileged enough to be blessed with magic. She could, no she would summon a familiar befitting of her.

Try one. Smoke, and the earth itself began to quake just the slightest bit. Pushing forward and trying again. Try two. More smoke, and the tremendous stone building behind her began crumbling at bit. 'Please,' she begged. 'Holy, beautiful, and powerful. Please. In the name of Brimir, no Brimir yourself if you hear this, please. Don't let me fail at this.'

It ran through her head like a mantra, like the holiest, most sacred, heartfelt prayer. She begged for another chance from the grim faced man, amidst the derisive scoffs and biting laughter surrounding her. He reluctantly agreed.

Try three. The ground was shaking, and suddenly, Louise felt as though her consciousness was being squeezed through a tiny tube, squeezed and morphed bit by bit, the same way her dresses had once been altered when they'd been packed the peasant's way. Pink eyes widened, or they would have if they had been there. As it was, her mind seemed to expand to let more in.

"Holy, beautiful, and powerful." The words reverberated throughout her, simultaneously skimming through every bit of her and judging her. "Your world knows not of the danger that awaits, and neither does my own domain."

"Holy, beautiful, and powerful. She needs this. She must learn how to remain separate from the second, for not even she can raise the dead." Brimir. It had to be Brimir speaking to her.

"Deus ex Machina," it said, and suddenly, Louise was whole. Her body unfroze, and a huge explosion nearly knocked her off her feet. The smoke cleared, and her body froze again.

"W-what?" Because there was no creature, no magnificent, fantastical beast that would awe her peers and teachers alike. She felt disbelief. Louise backed away from the crowd.

"Miss Valliere!" Colbert exclaimed, moving to the prone, pink haired girl in the center. He noticed that the girl was not Louise, but it was too late at that point.

The girl with the pretty, blush tinted hair and even prettier face, in the torn clothing nearly identical to Louise's own uniform, was covered in arterial spray as she ripped the knife out of Colbert's shoulder. He sank to his knees, and quickly succumbed to shock, before sputtering out a loud protest, which turned into spell.

"Fireball," he growled, and right there, her summon was nearly burned to a crisp. An inhuman scream resounded throughout the land, reaching higher and higher in pitch, until, with a jarring pause, everything seemed to be put in reverse. Louise watched her familiar's skin grow back, and the blood flow back into Colbert's body, with faint horror.

She saw the knife glinting again, but from her familiar's prone form. Louise found herself back in her previous position, before she'd stepped away in shock and shame. A mere moment later, she'd flung herself forward, hands up and terrified tears in her eyes.

"Please don't use that knife again!" she begged, trying to hold down the girl's limp, slim wrists. Louise startled at the sight of her peaceful face.

It was nearly identical to her own, if she had looked all of her 16 years, and had an overall sweeter looking expression. The picture of the beautiful, sleeping girl did not mesh at all with her violent actions, and certainly not with the charred creature she'd been turned into. Louise shoved the strangeness that'd just occurred behind her, intent on protecting her familiar.

Wide, rosy eyes, opened, almost mirroring Louise's own, except for the utter blankness there. "You remember?" she said, her voice clear and completely unconcerned.

"O-of course I do! And for that matter, what did you do?" Her eyes, so like roses, deepened and widened to the point the pink looked like a single red island amidst a sea of white, focusing on something only she could see. She calmed immediately, and her chilling, blank gaze rested on Louise for a single moment before she spoke again.

"Where am I?" She ignored Louise's question entirely, and slight girl could feel the annoyance bubbling up in her. Louise remembered then, that she, a noble mage, had summoned a peasant of all things. Disgust and shame welled up in her, and she turned to the forgotten Colbert, hyperaware of the teasing muttering throughout the crowd.

"I want to try again!" she demanded, as her disappointing familiar unashamedly examined the runes on her hand. Colbert unleashed a stern glare then, but Louise refused to back down.

"The Summoning of a Familiar is perhaps the holiest ritual you will ever complete, Miss Valliere. To even suggest trying for another familiar is a disgrace to the ritual itself." He eyed her with barely hidden contempt at that moment, and Louise, for all her pride at being a noble, felt like no more than a worm. She cowered.

"Complete the contract," Colbert ordered, and she approached the still blankly staring peasant and sealed the contract with a chaste kiss. Her familiar neither blinked nor reacted in anyway.

There was derision in the crowd, and Kirche came forward, haughtier than ever. "Louise the Zero," she trilled, inviting a whole new round of laughter, but that wasn't the end. "What is that supposed to be?" she started suddenly, having taken a good look at the familiar. "Did you just pull out a body double?" she scoffed, and Louise fumed.

"She's my familiar!" Louise protested, hefting up the girl with difficulty. She stood slightly taller than her, and Louise noted, with some jealousy, had a much larger chest. Kirche looked at her familiar in disbelief, and reached out to poke at her. Her familiar slapped out at her.

"It hit me!" Kirche cried out, and the girl's eyes focused on her with startling intensity and blankness.

"Gasai Yuno. I'm not human, but I'm not an it." She stated this all with a sort of sweetness in her voice the type that could only be found in the most charming of noble women. Louise started at the complete turnaround.

"So you mean to tell me," Kirche scoffed, looming over the smaller girl, "That Louise the Zero managed to summon an elf." The utter derision in her voice was met by swift laughter from the crowd, along with more jeers proclaiming Louise's lack of ability. Gasai smiled, completely captivating, and stated with the same sweetness, "Elf? God is more applicable in my case," she stated, startling the crowd.

"Come, mini-me," Gasai commanded, taking a firm grip of Louise's hand. When Louise blinked again, they were in her room.

The sudden stress and utter strangeness of the situation finally caught up to Louise, and she broke out screaming and sobbing. The shame, the horror, the confusion… They all compounded into one, and she collapsed to her knees.

"Why are you sitting like that?" Gasai asked, that sweetness in her voice not at all sitting right with Louise. Louise lashed out, suddenly standing and slapping the girl across the face.

"Don't you dare," she spat, literally spat in the taller girl's face, coming close enough to kiss, "Don't you dare think you can address me as though we are equals."

And then… Gasai showed her pain. Her hair was used to heft her well above the ground, and Gasai slammed her down hard enough to make her bleed. Her skull pounded, and Louise screamed as Gasai continued her assault. Gasai stopped just short of braining her on the ground, and Louise started to sob again, this time for a good reason, until Gasai picked her up again by the hair. Her once gleaming mass of candy floss strands were mussed and beginning to become covered in her slick blood.

Gasai's head tilted to the side quizzically, completely ignoring the pain radiating from Louise. She smiled again, her gaze filled with kindness, and her lips set into a deceptively gentle grin. "I don't know your name," she said, so softly it may have been a whisper. The familiar pride welled up in Louise, and she gathered herself enough just enough to introduce herself with poise.

"My name is Louise le Blanc de la Valliere," she stated with no small amount of haughtiness, hoping the small display of strength would help her. And just because she was a stubborn noble, and because the fact that this peasant, her very own familiar could and would absolutely kill her had yet to sink into her inexperienced, naïve mind, she added onto her introduction, "And I am your master." The sweetness, the gentleness, and anything pleasant and human in Gasai's expression chipped away completely, leaving only a furious, bubbling, raging monster there.

"Lou-chan, I am God. And I have no master," she snarled, and with an ugly laugh, very slowly ran a dainty, feminine hand through Louise's petite torso, slipping through muscle, bending bone, and squishing past organs as it met air on the other side. Louise choked first, not actually feeling anything at first due to shock, but began screaming as soon as she looked down and saw Gasai's thin, delicate wrist embedded in her body.

She was still screaming, that much she was aware of, when the world jarred and seemed to rewind. Louise felt all of the pain again, and faintly realized she must have been dying before as its intensity increased by the second as she went back. She felt the hand pull out of her, heard herself speak again, and finally, felt the horrible pounding in her skull diminish completely as she was repounded, and the blood seaped back into her head. When it was all over, she looked up from her position on the ground completely petrified.

"That was a good talk, right Louise-chan?" Gasai implored, sitting nose to nose with her, gaze completely innocent. Louise frantically nodded, and tried to back away, but a shockingly strong grip trapped her. "Mou, Louise-chan, my name's Gasai Yuno! But you can call me Yuno-chan!" she chirped, sounding exactly like anyone of her contemporaries when they deigned to act upbeat in lieu of the more common, and most of all more accepted, arrogant pride all nobles seemed to be born with. Louise swallowed down the bile that'd been rising up in her throat, and tried to look at least as happy as Yuno. A small part of her mind wondered what chan meant, but she knew that that hardly mattered in her current circumstance.

"H-Hello, Yuno-chan!" she exclaimed, unable to keep the quiver out of her voice. Yuno kept grinning, but got up to brush off something off of her skirt. The bile nearly spilled forth when Louise realized that it was bits of something that'd once been alive, though she thanked Brimir she could be sure it wasn't from her.

"Do you have any hair ties, Louise-chan?" Yuno asked, parting her hair. Louise shook her head, and Yuno shrugged a little bit sadly. The girl shook out her hair, giving it more volume and unwittingly increasing her likeness to Louise. She sat back down on the floor across from Louise, further than before, but still entirely too close for Louise's comfort. At that thought, Louise realized that no matter how far away Yuno might be, it would still be too close.

"So, tell me about yourself, Louise-chan," Yuno happily demanded, and Louise rushed to comply.

"O-okay! My name is Louise le Blanc de la Valliere, and I'm the third daughter of the noble Valliere family! I'm a second year at the Tristain Academy of Magic, and I'm 16 years old. My worst subjects are," Yuno cut her off with a slight frown, and Louise cowered both inwardly and outwardly.

"Stop that right now," Yuno ordered, and Louise froze. "You're sixteen? Really?" she asked, her face pensive. The normal flush of embarrassment at someone doubting her age was completely absent, and Louise slowly nodded, her eyes searching for any sign the bigger girl was about to attack.

"That's too bad. I was going to call you mini-me, but you're actually older than I am." She complained a whine evident in her voice.

"How old are you, if I may ask?" Louise requested hesitantly, and Yuno smiled in encouragement. It was strange that Louise, despite having nearly been killed by this girl literally moments prior (or was that forward? Louise would bet that she had been bleeding out at this moment in the before time) was actually calm enough to ask questions.

"14." The jealousy at the bigger girl's chest size grew even more then.

"We should go exploring together!" Yuno exclaimed, and Louise obeyed. They found themselves merrily (at least, Yuno was- Louise was just holding on for dear life) skipping down the corridors, with Yuno prompting Louise to explain various things about the school.

"This school teaches the four main branches of magic- that is, the four types of elemental magic, which include earth, fire, water, and air. As the only people who can use magic are nobles, this school is one of the finest places in all of Tristain, providing both meals and lodging suited for nobility." Louise lectured, and Yuno eyed her.

"What element can you use, Louise-chan?" Yuno asked, looking far too innocently curious for any good intentions behind that question. Louise hesitated, but decided she'd rather not nearly die and have to relive it again, that was, if Yuno even deigned to actually keep her from dying.

"I can't use any element," she mumbled, hoping that Yuno wouldn't hear, but her familiar evidently did.

"None? Well, you must be able to do something since you pulled me from my realm." Yuno stated with a grin. Louise was faintly shocked that the sadistic girl could actually use logic.

"Come on," she badgered, and Louise felt the stirrings of annoyance at the way a peasant was ordering her around, but her recently discovered common sense knew that it was best to comply with Yuno's wishes. She tried to make herself levitate, but succeeded only in causing an explosion large enough to frizz her hair and wreck her uniform. Now, she and Yuno appeared even more alike.

Yuno clapped her hands and squealed. "Amazing! Have you ever fought with that power?" she demanded enthusiastically, and suddenly, Louise could absolutely imagine using her power offensively. It would involve lots and lots of blood and guts, and it would be rather messy, but she could imagine it.

"No," she admitted slowly, "Though, now that you mention it, that would definitely be a step up from where I'm at now." Yuno nodded, and then pulled her behind a wall.

"There's the rude girl from earlier," she murmured, her eyes calculating. She eyed the torches around her, how they seemed to correspond with the intensity of Kirche's passion.

"Fire elemental?" Yuno whispered, and Louise nodded. A fear struck her then.

"Please don't kill her," Louise begged, and Yuno turned a confused stare on her.

"Why?" Yuno asked, as though she were speaking about, say, doing homework, or deciding where to eat a meal. It was terrifying to realize over and over again that someone literally valued life less than they valued their own hair, that people, real people, existed who could and would justify a murder with the reason 'Why not?', or even better yet, wanted a reason to not kill someone in cold blood.

"She's an important noble's daughter, and a first daughter at that," Louise explained, adding, "And the people here will hold me responsible for anything you do. So, please, Yuno-chan, do not kill her." Yuno shrugged, but wordlessly agreed.

Louise all but sank with relief, until Yuno grabbed her by the hand and dragged her forward. "Yuno?!" she squeaked, and the bigger girl was already speaking. Louise scurried back into hiding before Kirche could see her.

"Hi!" Yuno greeted with an exuberant wave, her face set in that innocent, carefree smile. Louise didn't know how to stop the impending disaster from happening, so she remained silent. Kirche blinked, breaking a kiss with her lover of the night.

"Louise?" she exclaimed with disbelief, specifically looking at Yuno's chest. Yuno giggled, high and girlish, before shaking her head.

"No no, I'm Gasai Yuno, remember?" Kirche blinked again, before her lips twisted into a devious sneer.

"Oh yes- what was it you said you were again, peasant?" she mocked, and Yuno's grin grew wider.

"God, harlot. I'm Gasai Yuno, god of space and time," she pronounced casually, as if stating her grade. Kirche's face flushed, and she stood.

"Uppity peasant. How dare," she spat, though not literally as Louise had made the mistake in doing earlier, "You call me a harlot? What'd you have to do to get here, hmm? Get down on your knees for the Duke Valliere?"

Yuno's eyes flashed, and her entire demeanor shifted again. Her voice lowered several octaves, and she spoke with her tone completely blank and her eyes utterly predatory.

"Nothing much, harlot-chan. I just had to win a game, kill some people, you know, fun things like that. It was great," she sighed, the moment over, and Kirche properly shell shocked, her skin pale under its normal copper tone. Yuno actually sounded wistful.

"Louise-chan! Come and say hi to harlot-chan!" Yuno waved her over, and Louise thought that it was an order she'd be happy to obey for once.

"Hi harlot-chan. It seems like you've met Yuno," she noted, and grabbed Yuno by the hand. "Let's go look at the stars, Yuno-chan," she suggested, and Yuno nodded happily. Maybe if she played her cards right, and used all of her political know how, she'd get Yuno to agree to not kill anyone.

Louise idly watched Yuno picked up a tiny pebble and use it to kill a small animal by hurtling it with deadly accuracy. Louise sighed and realized that asking Yuno not to kill anyone was probably more than the psychotic girl could handle.

'Well,' Louise thought to herself while looking for any silver lining to the bleak situation, 'At least I'm powerful enough to have summoned her,'. Because while Louise was doubtful about Yuno's claim of godhood, she knew for sure the crazed girl was much more than a simple peasant.

-Fin-