7/29/2018 -

Hey guys, it's me.

It's been a while, huh? Been busy. College and life does that to you when you're unprepared like me.

Anywho, I've been cooking up a plot bunny in my head ever since I finished XCOM 2: War of the Chosen, and I banged out like 3 chapters of this already. It'll get updated as it gets edited, and I hope you like it, since I thought I'd give a Familiar of Zero fanfic a shot.

Tristain Academy of Magic / Kingdom of Tristain / Halkeginia / 1326 hours -

Throughout the continent of Halkeginia, the Tristain Academy of Magic was renowned for its prestigious and wildly successful upbringing of young nobles from across the land. Children of everyone from Chevaliers to Dukes and even some of royal blood and heirs to their lands' thrones would embark on the journey merely to have the opportunity to attend. Their goal: the enrichment of their understanding of magic.

Whether it be casting, alchemy, brewing, or combat, the Tristain Academy of Magic took no small pride in its ability to turn even the most useless, weakest of mages into proper spellcasters. However, as the courtyard of the former military castle that housed the school grounds erupted with a burst of discordant sound, a flash of light, and a plume of smoke, there was no person in attendance who couldn't identify the exact cause.

Why, although the academy had had quite the reputation among the years for churning out great mages, one singular mage had been quite the thorn in the side of the institution for a little over a year's time.

Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière, youngest daughter to the Valliere name, one of the most famous and powerful families of Tristain, although studying at the prestigious magic academy, was not anything of a recognizable talent. Each and every spell she attempted to cast, regardless of function or method of casting, resulted in a rather spectacular explosion, the smoke plumes of which could sometimes be seen for miles around in every direction. Suffice it to say her lack of talent was something of a peculiar conundrum for many a tutor to attempt to solve, until a majority of the faculty simply stopped attempting to help, convinced of her ineptitude and lack of a magical future.

The young Vallière scion still possessed quite a studious mind, easily surpassing the other pupils in her year in terms of thaumaturgical* calculations, theoretical magics, and a slew of other, non-spellcasting subjects, but her brilliance was trivially overshadowed by her ineptitude for practical magic. In fact, her inability to cast traditional magic earned her a rather rude nickname: Louise the Zero.

However, the young Vallière was counting on the fact that her latest spellcasting attempt had little to do with actual spellcasting. In the Springtime, the second-year students of the Academy of Magic were to summon their familiars, creatures that would aid them in their magical activities from the day they were contracted until either party's death. The spell to call forth the familiars in question was a ritual, one that relied on a formula, a nondescript investment of magical power, and a generous helping of knowledge and luck. Nothing in the methods and tomes she studied for this day suggested that a mage's actual talents be required to summon a familiar, so she hoped that this one spell would be enough to have her be recognized as a worthy mage and that her ridicule would end.

But it seemed that fate had other plans.

"Ha! It looks like the Zero blew herself to the sky!"

That jovial jab at the diminuitive mage's expense was by none other than her schooltime rival. Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst was a redheaded mage who, due in no small part to her abnormally shapely body, exotic tanned skin, and sexually carefree demeanor - Germanians like her being infamous for such an attitude - attracted the male student body's attention in a way that the young Vallière, being diminuitive in both body shape and size, had never been able to, much to the latter's chagrin, even if she would never admit it out loud.

Kirche started to giggle at the sheer comedy of the situation, and most of her class opted to join in, save for a blue-haired slip of a girl near the back of the gathered group, who elected to roll her eyes and continue reading a book she held in hand. The teacher, one Jean Colbert, a middle-aged man with a balding head of hair and a pair of wire-frame spectacles perched on his nose, merely sighed at his students' antics, and opted to silence them with a stern tap of his magical wooden staff on the cobblestones of the courtyard.

"If everyone is quite finished, we should have a look to see if young Miss Vallière has sustained any injuries," he announced loudly. His words were able to shut them up, as even though the class may be unnecessarily cruel in their treatment of their classmate, due to the explosive nature of Louise's spells, no one especially wanted to see someone hurt, especially not due to magic. "Miss Tabitha, if you would."

The blue-haired girl's only indication of hearing her teacher's words was to wave her staff ever so slightly, conjuring a mild gust of wind and gently shearing away the smoke that had blanketed the courtyard. However, to their surprise, it was not Louise's familiar that they saw, neither hair nor hide of the young mage herself. Instead, what stood in the center of the ruined summoning circle was a tall figure, wearing otherwordly armor and possessing long, pure white hair and shimmering purple eyes, clutching an odd-looking musket, with a strange, claw-shaped object attached to its back.

? / ? / ? / ? Hours -

Louise groaned, awakening rather painfully to the feeling of something heavy lying atop her. Though small and physically less than fit, the young girl still sought to rise from her uncomfortable position and peer at her surroundings. Her aching muscles burned, but eventually her determination enabled her to push whatever was laying atop her off, which appeared to be some kind of rubble. She expected her eyes to burn at what would almost certainly be a balefully glaring sunlight, but found it to be, to her estimation, about dusk.

The young mage's first thought was, How long was I out?

The second was, Where in the world am I?

She appeared to be standing among the ruins of some sort of strange city. What was left of the buildings surrounding her led her to believe that this was once some kind of great metropolis, with what must have once been grand, luxurious buildings, given the sheer size of some of the structures. She also saw, in the distant skyline, a few peaks of monolithic pillars, which she guessed were some sort of strange offerings to a god. Brimiric monuments, perhaps?

No matter what way she looked at it, however, her surroundings were far and away not where she had been just moments prior. Gone was the grassy ground of the academy courtyard, and gone were the academy grounds themselves, replaced by this strange city she had come to find herself in. She shakily rose to her feet, brushing soot and dust off of her clothes, grimacing at the realization that her cleanly pressed and ironed Tristain Academy of Magic uniform was now in tatters and would need to be replaced. She walked out of the alleyway that she had found herself in and onto a street, briefly gawking at the sheer width of the construction, marveling at the fact that this ruined road was well over twice as wide as Bourdonne Street, the widest avenue in Tristainia.

The buildings were also a strange mix of architectures. The city played host to a perplexing mix of styles both vaguely familiar and completely alien to the young girl. Buildings clearly made of brick and stone and mortar shared space with indescribably smooth-looking, squarelike stone inlaid with now-broken glass windows. What were surely beautiful structures were now neglected and faintly overgrown with a short helping of vines and ivy, though otherwise the city looked dead.

However, what set her senses on alert were a collection of strange, incomprehensible glowing green pods of some sort littering the roads, billowing some sort of seaweed-like substance in the faint breeze. This, along with the stomach-churning presence of what appeared to be the corpses of people, frozen in their moments of death, seemingly in the process of fleeing something, set her ill at ease. Slipping her trusty - or not-so-trusty, so to speak - wand in hand, she plodded along the sidewalk of the road, careful to give the strange pods and corpses as wide a berth as she dared.

Eventually, the young pink-haired mage came across a group of figures standing around, twitching and moaning listlessly. She recoiled when she realized that they, although human in initial appearance, were buck naked and emaciated, with bony limbs and cracked and mottled green skin. She had, once upon a time, heard stories that her friends had told her, of a land to the east filled with the walking dead, beyond the desert into where the elven territories lay, where elves unceremoniously dumped human prisoners once they were finished using them for their nefarious gains. The stories were folksy in nature and wildly false, but the young girl could only recall the vivid images her mind conjured upon hearing them at that moment, and almost unconsciously backpedaled, every nerve in her body screaming to flee the scene at once.

However, in her attempt to flee, she stepped on a piece of broken glass. Her shoe mercilessly crushed it, producing a damnable sound that immediately turned the "zombies' " heads in her direction. She shrieked in fright at the sight of their faces, which only had a terrifying hole where their noses should have been, exposed, rotting teeth, and eerie, glowing green eyes. Instincts borne of years of stern, militaristic upbringing kicked in, and she raised her wand at the small group of zombies, the words to a magic chant on the tip of her tongue.

Ruins of Old Detroit / Eastern United States / North America / 1500 hours / May 16, 2035 -

The Skyranger, a highly-sophisticated Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft, developed on top of its predecessor from XCOM's early days, could deploy from Kansas in the former United States and reach anywhere from New Beijing to New Moscow in a matter of hours, a feat entirely unheard of by the militaries of yesteryear, especially one from a craft that was effectively a troop transport vehicle. It was a marvel of engineering, and with Elerium-powered articulated turbine engines, it had aged well and maintained relevancy a great deal into the decades since the founding of the alien-controlled ADVENT administration.

However, the XCOM operatives that utilized the thing still complained to no end about its less-than-comfortable seating.

Sergeant Matthew "Striker" Wilkinson rubbed his sore behind as the Skyranger's pilot, Firebrand, navigated through yet another bout of turbulence. He sat on his white-and-gray digital camouflage kevlar vest, in lieu of proper seat padding, to help alleviate some of the pains of dropship travel, but it really didn't help much. He held an old shotgun in his arms, entirely appropriate for him due to his status as Menace Two's Ranger.

In the back restlessly paced the team's Sharpshooter, Corporal John Mayberry, who checked, double checked, and triple checked his issued sidearm. He was unfazed by the rocking of the Skyranger, having grown up on a British fishing boat as a kid, nearly three decades ago.

The squad leader, Lieutenant Alice "Brandy" Richards, Menace Two's Specialist, was staring at nothing as she sat in her seat, her carbine hanging from its sling around her neck. The grizzled blonde from Australia was one for few words, and tended to let her skills do the talking. It was little wonder that she was one of the first Lieutenant candidates in the revived XCOM Project.

Across from him sat the team's Grenadier, one Private First Class Arnold Phillips, a black kid from New Brooklyn and a very recently promoted operative, who was still a little green behind the ears, and showed it, fidgeting nervously in his seat, cradling his machine gun as if his life depended on it.

Menace Two was one of the most senior of the half-dozen squads that XCOM fielded in this war, second only to Menace One, which had been present for the whole of XCOM's revitalization on February 28, where the squad ran a diversion for Central Officer Bradford, the de facto leader of XCOM in abscence of its legendary Commander, for Crasher One and Sergeant Jane Kelly so that they could reclaim said Commander. The fight had been as trying as it had always been, but with the Commander, casualties had never been so low in years and progress had never been as fast.

The green lights in the skyranger blinked once, and a projector lit up the darkened bay, displaying the general mission objectives, a picture of the AO, and the location. In the corner flashed an image of the Central Officer himself as he gave a last-minute debrief of the mission.

"Our sensors on the Avenger detected some indeterminate anomalous readings coming from the ruins of what used to be the city of Detroit. We don't know what exactly we're going to find there, but it seems that luckily, ADVENT hasn't seemed to see this energy reading as something that they want to look into. However, we do. Firebrand will be fast-roping you as close to the signature as she can, and you will have to secure the AO and find our mystery readings, then bug out. The Lost seem to be present in force, and there's no telling when they will overrun our objective. Operation Summoned Charm is now live. Good luck, and be careful, Menace Two. Central, out."

The lights suddenly switched to red, and a warning tone sounded throughout the Skyranger's cargo bay.

"We're in position to drop!" Firebrand's voice crackled over the craft's internal comms.

The members of Menace Two briefly checked their weapons to ensure that they were loaded, had cartridges chambered, and safeties were off before fitting on leftover gear. The Skyranger's cargo door rapidly opened, giving the inhabitants of the VTOL each a lungful of the musty air permeating the decaying city. A set of black ropes descended from the top of the cargo bay and to the ground, and Menace Two leapt from the airborne vehicle, using the ropes to reach the ground. The moment their feet hit the floor, Firebrand took off, leaving the squad to quickly scan the area with the muzzles and sights of their weapons.

Striker, callsign Menace Two-Two, took point, quickly running to and taking cover behind a building wall, covering the new sightlines opened up to him with his shotgun. The others followed, with Brandy [Menace Two-Actual] and Phillips [Menace Two-Four], to his left behind a derelict car, and Mayberry [Menace Two-Three], hunkering down behind a dumpster.

"Never get used to this goddamn smell..." Striker groaned under his breath.

"You got that right, brother," replied Four.

Suddenly, a plume of smoke appeared in the distance, followed by a muffled BANG.

"The hell wazzat? Bloody ADVENT?" Three hissed.

"Remember the debrief, Three?" Striker replied, "No ADVENT's supposed to be out here. Resistance cell?"

"No," Brandy spoke up, "Resistance won't be here. Only Reapers. Maybe Skirmishers." Another explosion in the distance. "Not them. Reapers stealth. Skirmishers stab. Lost like sound."

Brandy was right. The zombie-like horrors known as "The Lost" were easily kown to be drawn to the sounds of battle, and explosions were like dinner bells to them. Nothing drew their attention more effectively than a good frag grenade, save for the ultrasonic lures that Shen and Tygan developed in the last week. In fact, Four carried a cylinder full of the things in his grenade launcher, primed and ready for use.

The squad's earpiece communicators crackled to life, and Bradford's voice filtered through. "Well whoever it is, we need to get there, yesterday. If it's ADVENT, we engage the target and eliminate it. If it's a civilian or resistance, getting there now will minimize any potential casualties. Move it!"

Brandy quickly directed Menace Two to move up, the quartet of soldiers sticking to cover whenever possible, as a safety precaution. Still, they sprinted as fast as they could to the source of the explosions, which didn't seem to end.

"Damn, whoever's makin' it rain down there's makin' me jealous," remarked Four.

Suddenly, a figure dashed into view and ducked out of an alleyway. On instinct, Striker tracked the target with the bead of his shotgun, letting up when he realized that the target was a civilian.

And a rather strange civilian at that. She was a girl, young, possibly early into her teenage years, given her stature, with waist-length pink hair, covered in soot. A rather strange style, given the extensive amount of hair dye something like that would take. Granted, ADVENT gene therapy clinics were more than happy to "alter" people in their care and tailor their bodies to their liking, but pink hair was never one of the more popular gene mods. She was dressed in what appeared to be a tattered school uniform with a black cape, something that might not have been an uncommon sight in the more "out-there" private schools from two decades ago.

Weirdly still, she clutched what appeared to be a wooden stick in her hand. Lost dashers poured out of the alleyway in pursuit of her, and she did something that made Striker briefly question his sanity.

The pink-haired girl screamed something in an incomprehensible (to his ears, anyway) language. Then, a nearly-invisible beam of light emerged from the tip of the stick and struck the ground between the dashers, and an explosion blossomed in that very spot, instantly obliterating the dashers in hot pursuit.

However, there were still plenty of Lost trailing behind, and Striker plugged the first in its head with buckshot from his Auto-5 shotgun, prompting the rest of Menace Two to follow suit. Brandy's M4 carbine barked in short bursts, methodically taking down a Lost easily with each burst. Three's M2010 sniper rifle barked five times before it was empty, and the Brit cursed as he drew a Glock 17 and began gunning down as many Lost as he could see. Finally, Four's M249 SAW roared to life, scything across the Lost mass's upper bodies, effectively mopping up the rest of the ones in immediate pursuit. Just in time, too, as Menace Two's ammunition had finally run dry by then. When Four's SAW's belt finally depleted, the squad quickly took advantage of the lull in action to reload.

After Striker topped off his shotgun's magazine, he turned his attention to the civilian, who had backed herself to the wall of a nearby building and was staring at them with fear in her eyes and that explosion-inducing stick grasped firmly in hand.

"Qui es-tu?! Où suis-je?!" she shouted at them in a language that was clearly not English. Strange, given the region.

"Uh, anyone speak... whatever the fuck that is?" Four asked.

"It's French, Four," Brandy replied.

"So you do speak it?"

"No."

"What about you, Three?" Four asked again.

"Hell no, newbie."

While his squadmates argued over their ability to speak foreign languages, Striker was paying attention to the girl. Of course, he paid attention to her while behind a chunk of wall made of solid concrete.

The girl's eyebrows seemed to raise, in confusion or realization, he couldn't really tell from this distance. She seemed to take a breath to calm herself before speaking again, this time in a very different language than before.

"Do you understand me now?" her voice was timid, though not quite shaky like when she was attempting communication in French.

"Dammit, if you could speak English before, why the hell didn't you start with that?!" And leave it to Four to ignore subtlety and conversational conventions.

"Shut up, you dog!" ...And the diplomatic situation got worse. Damn newbies. "Who are you people anyway?"

"You don't know?" Striker asked, genuine confusion in his tone. Ever since their return, ADVENT had been slandering XCOM's name in their propaganda, whether that be radio broadcasts, news reporting, or wanted posters. In fact, the Commander and his bridge crew had been running a counter-propaganda campaign of their own as a little side project, distributing recruitment posters and the like in post-mission.

The girl shook her head. "You look like a bunch of mercenaries. While I'm grateful even to commoners for help in this kind of situation, I must return to the Tristain Academy of Magic posthaste!" Mercenaries? Commoners? Did she say magic?

Suddenly, howls pierced the silence. The girl's and Four's faces both drained of color as they realized what those howls meant: more Lost.

"Bradford, we've found the objective," Brandy spoke into her earpiece, "It's a girl. Also stirred up a hornet's nest. Requesting immediate evac."

This time, the voice that replied wasn't Bradford's, but Tygan's. "Hornet's nest is something of an understatement, Menace Two-Actual. It appears that the whole of the Lost biomass is attempting to converge on your position!"

"Indeed, doctor," Bradford cut in, "Menace Two, Firebrand is thirty seconds out. You need to hold off the Lost until you can evacuate."

"Who are you talking to? There's no one else here," said the girl.

"Affirmative, Central," acknowledged Brandy. "Four, deploy lures in the alleyways. Force them into chokepoints."

"Aye, ma'am!"

"All else, form a perimeter. Girl, here, now."

"What? Well I never-!" A sharp glare from Brandy shut her up. "Y-Yes, of course." Meekly, she complied with the Lieutenant's orders, huddling down behind a rusty trash can and attempting to make herself small.

Four's M32A1 grenade launcher barked six times and the lures were launched into the alleyway, just in time for a new wave of Lost to come swarming into the chokepoint, only for them to get mowed down by a fresh wave of bullets and pellets, courtesy of Menace Two.

Suddenly, a discordant screeching could be heard over the din of battle as Firebrand maneuvered the Skyranger into position. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the girl staring, open-mouthed, at the aircraft, its bulbous, yet angular fuselage and twin turbine engines obviously not something she had ever seen before.

"W-What in Brimir's name is that?!" She cried, apparently in disbelief.

The Skyranger's cargo bay opened, and a set of winch ropes fell from it. A small grid was illuminated with a series of spotlights hidden in the tail of the aircraft, an indication of the evacuation zone.

"Go! Go there, now! Grab a rope and get in the Skyranger!" Striker commanded, "Haul ass!"

The civilian girl did as she was told, making a mad dash to the Skyranger and grabbing onto the rope. She let out a squeak of surprise as she was hoisted into the cargo bay, and disappeared into the aircraft.

"Menace Two! We're leaving!" No one would object to such a command from Brandy, not in this situation. The squad tactically retreated, moving backwards to the Skyranger, still shooting into the mob of Lost as they went. Three went up first, followed by Four, and then Brandy. Last to go was Striker, who emptied the buckshot in his shotgun into the fast-approaching horde before grabbing hold of a rope.

However, as he felt himself being raised into the bay, he felt an abnormally-strong grip on his leg. Yelping in surprise, discomfort, and pain, he quickly drew a pistol from his vest's chest holster. It went against XCOM protocol for an operative to equip themselves with more than one secondary weapon, but Striker was always one for pragmatism in combat above all. The Colt M1911A1's grip was more than familiar in his hands as he quickly took aim at the snarling face of a Lost dasher that managed to snag him before he could leave. He lined up the crude, obsoletely-tiny iron sights to lie between the monstrosity's green glowing eyes and rapidly pulled the heavy military trigger of his trusty sidearm. The handgun's ten-round extended magazine was quickly emptied as eleven .45-caliber hollowpoint slugs smashed into the Lost, brutally killing it and freeing Striker to clamber into the cargo bay and catch his breath.

Firebrand quickly shut the cargo bay doors and piloted the Skyranger to swiftly vacate Old Detroit, to return to the Avenger, as was mission proper. The mission's After Action Report was projected into the back of the cargo bay, but Wilkinson hardly paid it any mind as Menace Two attempted to decompress just a little from their harrowing escape.

The pink-haired civilian girl's eyes darted around wildly before settling on Wilkinson, who dimly noticed that her eyes were pink as well.

"Who in the world are you people?" she asked in a voice that conveyed equal parts, amazement, awe, and astonishment, with a dash of fear mixed into the blend as well.

"We're XCOM," Wilkinson replied, with as much grandeur and finality that could be packed into a mere two words. Admittedly, he felt no small amount of pride saying that.

However, that pride was dashed - more like demolished, really - when the civilian's only response was to cock her head to the side and ask, "Who?"

*Thaumaturgy - basically the more mathematical and scientific part of magic, as far as I can glean from Wikipedia. Call it magic math or something, I guess. Also called wonderworking.

AN: So yeah. I've been away, and kinda been trying to keep my mind off of college come August, so there's really been no writing going on for the most part, save for this. I know a lot of my readers (whichever ones are still here anyway) are looking for updates on my other stuff, and for that, I'm sorry. Writer's block hits hard when you're busy and school killed any writing motivation I've had for the tail end of Senior year and summer's been pretty stressful.

Plus I gotta hang with the bois before we all leave and spread ourselves over the United States, like some sort of epidemic of perpetually poor, barely-functioning adults.

Hooray.

As for this story, it's definitely not going to be vanilla XCOM 2. I am going to try to introduce a few small new ideas I've had and expand the world a bit, starting with weapons, as you may have noticed. And as I've said, I have two more chapters written that need to be edited and another as a work in progress. We'll see where we go from there, kay?

As always, remember to Read, Review, Favorite, and Follow.

-AnonymousInsomnia.