A/N Hello readers, this here is my first story and attempt to delve into the fanfiction world after simply being a lurker for so long. I took interest in Familiar of Zero and it's fanfiction after reading the one and only Half Life crossover on here. After reading and reviewing so many other works I felt inspired to write a Halo crossover due to the lack of Halo crossovers of this type. I loved the stories where forces from Earth come to Halkeginia to show mages what commoners can do.

Anyway, read, follow and review. Any thoughts of yours about how to improve the story would be appreciated especially in these early stages or just post some ideas that you may have.

Here we go.

Chapter 1: Infinity for the price of one

Sol system, Earth 2558

UNSC Infinity, Bridge

"All engine systems green, life support systems functioning normally, and shield generators are functioning at one hundred percent. New crewmembers are settling into theirs roles quite well, replacement weaponry and vehicles loaded, and the new Strident class frigates are docked in the internal hanger bays. Lastly, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that Lowell will be serving his special 5 alarm chili in the main mess hall later this afternoon Captain."

The Infinity's shipboard AI, Roland RLD 0205-4, finished his report to Captain Thomas J. Lasky. Lasky was wearing the standard officer BDU much like most of the other officers working on the bridge save for the few crewmen wearing their colored crew uniforms. Roland like most other AI assumed a unique avatar and personality, in his case Roland appeared as a small orange projection of a WWII era bomber pilot. Infinity's bridge was a very busy place usually, but even more so today given the current deployment onto their next mission. Officers were running between weapons and nav monitors making sure everything was in order. The room was mostly illuminated by the various screens and the main holographic projector in the center where Lasky was currently leaning over.

"Update, our escort vessels are in position and we're ready to move on your orders captain."

"Thank you Roland, inform the other ship captains that we set out in exactly 10 mikes." Lasky responded. The captain then activated the intercom and addressed the Infinity's crew.

"Attention all hands, prep for slipspace jump, we will be depart on our mission shortly."

Lasky sighed; it felt like as soon as his ship returned from the operations on Requiem that he and his crew were already tasked with another mission.

Requiem.

He remembered Infinity's first foray into that damnable Forerunner planet, being a commander under Captain Del Rio. Remembered the ship was attacked by the Covenant Remnant and Prometheans, the scouting mission, and his reunion with Chief. It was something he had never expected, everyone thought the Chief was gone with him and Cortana never to be seen again. They uncovered the Didact's plans and the Composer, but Del Rio chose to abandon them on that planet just to save Infinity from a few scratches. Command wasn't too happy about him leaving the UNSC's most iconic Spartan and AI behind on a Forerunner planet full of hostiles. He knew ONI had been searching tirelessly for the other half of the ship Forward unto Dawn. When Rio was promptly removed from command of the ship they had awarded him a promotion to captain and was made the new captain of the Infinity. He was glad the first thing he could do with his new command of Infinity was to help the chief defeat the Didact when he appeared over Earth and attempted to compose all of humanity.

Chief wasn't the same after Cortana sacrificed herself to save Chief… the human race. Last time he saw Chief was when he talked with him on one the observation decks. Chief later disappeared completely off the radar, no one really knowing where he could have gone.

Then there was the second run in with Requiem. Command wanted to set up research bases on the surface but the presence of Jul 'Mdama complicated things, as well as having to harbor the criminal Dr. Halsey. The Forerunner artifact, which teleported Dr. Glassman and Spartan Thorne into enemy hands, had messed with Infinity's systems and led to the Promethean boarding of the ship to capture Halsey. When he was ordered to execute her commander Palmer had insisted on handling it herself, he tried to send the rest of fire team Majestic to save her in time but she was instead abducted by the Covies and likely assumed he had just wanted to kill her thanks to Palmer severely wounding her. Afterwards the only thing left was escaping Jul 'Mdama's trap as Requiem was sent on a crash course for the system's star.

And now after all of that the UNSC had plans to send Infinity on a diplomatic mission to oversee and protect a meeting of Sangheili and Jiralhanae diplomats while they negotiated a peace agreement to end the continuing hostilities between the two alien races.

Currently the Infinity was being escorted by several Autumn class heavy cruisers and Paris class heavy frigates. Additionally Infinity carried 10 Strident class heavy frigates inside her main structure. The current battle group was a force to be reckoned with.

"Roland, prepare to fire the slipspace drives. We're departing now."

"Aye Aye captain, I'll get right on it." Roland replied then his orange projection blinked out.

Lasky looked to the helmsman, another officer working on the bridge. "Lieutenant James, keep us on course for this outbound vector. Prepare for navigation in slipspace."

James turned away from the navigational console he was working on and addressed the captain. "Aye Aye captain, we're approaching Roland's final navpoint now."

Giving an affirmative nod to the helmsman Lasky used his data pad to contact Lieutenant Austen the ship's weapons officer. After tapping a few buttons on screen a live feed of Austen appeared.

"Captain Lasky to Lieutenant Austen, I need you make sure the sub vessels are ready to drop at a moment's notice. Also be sure that Marines are combat ready and ready to deploy at any time."

Austen gave a quick salute to the screen before asking. "Expecting trouble Captain? We are just babysitting some alien politicians after all."

Lasky rub the back of his head. "After this ship's recent history with all manner of threats internal and external I'd rather not take any chances this time."

"Aye Captain, I hear you. Last thing we need are some Brute and Elite bigwigs boarding the ship and talking our ears off with their politics. God knows everything in the Galaxy seems insistent on boarding this ship. Anyway, I'll get right on it sir, Austen out."

With that the video feed cut out and Lasky was again leaning over the holo table looking at the projection of Infinity and her escorts speeding towards the jump point. Lasky sat down in his chair and shut his eyes tightly while rubbing his temple.

"I have a feeling this is going to be one of those days." He grumbles to himself.

Unknown planet xxxx[?]

Unknown location

"Errgh. I just knew it was going to be one of those days."

A young noble girl quietly complained to herself about her current situation. Louise Francoise Le Blanc de La Valliere a strawberry blonde young woman was currently standing out in an open field along with her other classmates and teacher, Jean Colbert.

"Well done Miss Tabitha! A wind dragon, dragon familiars are not very common, very impressive." Mr. Colbert exclaimed proudly to Tabitha, the blunette class genius. She quietly returned to her place among her peers and began reading a book and seeming disinterested with everything else.

It was the annual spring time summoning ritual in which aspiring mages at the Tristan Academy of Magic would summon their very own familiars. Familiars are magical creatures who remain loyal companions to the mage that summoned them as well as help them in their daily duties as a mage, they are said to reflect the mages skill and power.

First that boorish Zerbst summons a rare fire salamander and now Tabitha summons a dragon. A dragon, for Brimir's sake how am I supposed to compete with that when the bar has already been set so high… that's if I can summon anything at all, Louise thought to herself already feeling defeated.

Her lack of confidence was not without merit, her experience at the academy and her attempts at becoming a mage was marred by failure after failure. While her bookwork and understanding of magic theory were remarkable, with her test scores even being better than Tabitha's at times, her practical use of magic left much to be desired. All attempts at actually using any form of elemental magic would result in explosions of varying size and destructive power, be it water, earth, fire, or wind. She had countless tutors growing up who tirelessly tried to find which elemental affinity was hers, but it seemed like she had none at all. Consequentially that was her biggest concern for to be mage and a noble, the magic wielding ruling class of the world; one had to at least be able to perform magic. Louise having yet to be able to prove that she is capable of magic would be undoubtedly expelled from the academy if she fails to summon a familiar here today. How would her parents react to a daughter who technically is not even a noble?

Maybe Mr. Colbert will forget to call on me; he's already gone through the rest of the class, Louise thought hopefully.

Jean Colbert, the balding and bespectacled academy professor pushed his glasses higher unto the bridge of his nose and spoke. "I believe with that we are finished here unless I've forgotten anyone."

Louise breathed a sigh of relief believing she had escaped her final judgment but then Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt-Zerbst the well-endowed redheaded Germanian transfer student spoke up. "Uh professor I think you're forgetting about the Zero, she's the last one."

Louise paled. If she had a license to kill just one person in the whole world she would use it to annihilate Kirche right now.

"Ah yes, Miss Valliere if you would please." Colbert spoke to Louise.

O.K I you can do this Louise, no pressure, Louise thought to herself. She stepped forward and drew her summoning circle on the ground which Colbert happily noted was perfect and a reflection of Louise's superb writing work. The other students instinctively started inching backwards to avoid the inevitable explosive catastrophe that is Louise's 'magic'. Montmorency Margarita La Fere de Montmorency another student who had long blonde hair fixed into ringlets spoke up as Louise was preparing her spell. "Why even let the Zero attempt the summoning spell? We all know what's going to happen; the explosion might even kill us this time."

Her playboy of a boyfriend Guiche de Gramont chimed in. "I'll be holding you responsible if any harm comes to my beautiful familiar Zero."

The other students suddenly worried for the safety of their own familiars shifted around nervously while murmuring among themselves. Before Louise could turn to shout at them Colbert quickly spoke up to berate his students. "Enough! I will ask that you all act respectfully and in a manner befitting your titles as nobles! I'll have no more of this 'Zero' nonsense from any of you, am I clear?"

The other students settled down and Louise was grateful to Mr. Colbert for that. With her preparations finished she turned to the circle, lifted her wand up high, and began to chant her spell.

Here goes nothing. "My servant who lives somewhere in the universe…"

Sol system, Earth 2558

UNSC Infinity, Engine Deck

Petty Officer Third Class Saito Hiraga walked along the narrow corridors of the UNSC Infinity towards where his work area in the ships main engine room. Saito, being 19 years old, completed his naval training at the rank of PO3 and was assigned to the Infinity as part of fresh batch of replacement crewmen. His duties were to work with the senior enlisted men and officers in learning to be an engine technician. Growing up in Tokyo, Japan he always had a fascination with the Navy's starships and technology so he aspired to join the Navy after high school. Getting assigned to the largest and most formidable ship in the UNSC fleet was an opportunity of a lifetime for him. He remembered how scared he was during the battle of Earth when he was 13 and how his uncle died in the battle of Cleveland. Then there was the New Phoenix incident a few months back in which the whole city was wiped out. Now he's here in the Navy to do his part to keep humanity safe from any threat.

Saito wearing his yellow working uniform approached the bulkhead that led to the engine one of the engine rooms. Two marines stood at each side of the metal doors and both took notice of his approach. One of the marines snapped to attention and saluted. "Sir, Lieutenant Robinson is waiting for all engine tech personnel on the main engine floor. He's right this way."

His marine companion and Saito both stared at him incredulously.

"Um, why are you saluting me and calling me sir?" Saito finally asked.

"Aren't you a petty officer? We're always supposed to salute an officer right?" he answered as if it was common sense to do so.

"He's a PO3 dumbass, that's pretty much the same rank as corporal!" The other marine chimed in.

"Well how was I supposed to know that!?"

"Dude how'd you even get through basic!? You're unbelievable and-"

Saito chose to ignore the two arguing leathernecks and proceeded through the bulkhead to his destination. The slipspace jump would be happening any moment now and Lt. Robinson wanted all techs on hand for a briefing. In fact the jump seems to have been delayed a few minutes from Captain Lasky's announcement of when they would be departing. I can't wait to some that chili in the mess hall later, got to get through the morning first though. Just remembered I still have to see about getting that damn data pad fixed at some point. How's a guy supposed to-? His thoughts were interrupted when a green oval of light abruptly manifested directly in his path.

"Whoa!"

Startled by the phenomenon Saito let out a surprised yelp and fell on his backside. Looking up at the sudden anomaly Saito saw the green oval floating in place where it appeared as it bathed the steel grey corridor in a green glow. Gathering his senses he quickly scrambled to his feet.

"Oh shit, is this some kind of alien attack?" Saito said while drawing his M6H sidearm, pointing it directly at the oval.

"We heard a shout, everything alright in here!?" One of the two marines from earlier shouted as they both ran into the corridor.

"What the hell is that!?" The other one shouted as they both saw to glowing anomaly.

Both marines brought their weapons to bear on the oval not being exactly sure what it was they were seeing.

"So I guess I'm not the only one seeing this thing?" Saito asked.

"Any idea what this is petty officer?"

Saito shook his head. "No Idea, it just appeared right in my face when I was walking down the corridor."

"I'll get on the horn with the el tee and let him know about this." One of the marines said.

He then got on his radio and started to report their finding to command. While that was happening Saito drew closer to the green oval against his better judgment.

"Whoa dude, I would get too close to that thing if I were you." The other marine warned.

Saito could swear he could hear a voice coming from strange thing, it kind of sounded like French but he wasn't sure. The marine with him must have heard the voice too. "Is that thing talking? Tell me I'm not the only one hearing this man? Hey what are you doing?!"

"It's strange, I feel like this thing is calling to me somehow." Saito says absentmindedly as he drifted ever closer.

"Oh hell no, I've seen way to many movies to know where this is heading." The marine then grabbed Saito and pulled him back quickly just as the oval seemed to have made an attempted to grab Saito.

Meanwhile with the other marine Lt. Robinson could be heard on the radio.

"Damn it! The slipspace drive is firing up right now; you three keep your eyes on the anomaly I'll get in contact with Captain Lasky."

"Aye Aye sir, we'll keep watch here." With that the marine clocked off the radio.

Just then they all felt the slipspace drive fire, no doubt making the tear in space time right outside the ship. At the same time the green oval started to pulse and bubble sporadically while making a high pitched noise.

"Uh guys, what's it doing?" Saito nervously asked.

Before either of the two marines could answer the anomaly 'popped' like a balloon and a green shockwave of energy exploded outward. Saito and the marines were all tossed back through the corridor impacting painfully on the wall behind them.

Sol system, Earth 2558

UNSC Infinity, S-Deck

Commander Sarah Palmer was overseeing the Spartan fire teams and getting them ready for combat as per Captain Lasky's orders.

She knew Lasky was no fool; they had already talked about the matter of this diplomatic mission earlier. It was obvious to both Lasky and her that the Covenant Remnant probably wouldn't take too kindly to the Elites and Brutes trying to make peace. Lasky had made it very clear that her Spartans needed to be ready for anything since they would be groundside acting as the bodyguard for the human contingent of the talks.

Before her she watched as armor techs hurried around the deck assisting Spartans don their armor and ready their gear. Some were having their energy shields tested while others were have their targeting sensors calibrated by looking at flashing light panels on the wall. Then she noticed Spartan Paul DeMarco just finishing his armor checks and approached him.

"DeMarco, I trust fire team Majestic is ready for action."

DeMarco turned and gave her a sharp salute. "Commander Palmer, my Spartans are all ready to go ma'am. We all know the stakes on this one."

"Glad you understand. You and your team will be with us groundside as security for the talks. Don't forget Hood, Lasky, and all those alien diplomats will be counting on our performance if shit hits the fan."

"Understood commander you can-"

Demarco was cut off by a sudden and violent shaking followed by a wave of green energy that passed through the hull of the ship. The lights went dark for a few moments before the backup power kicked in; bathing the Spartans and technicians in a dim red light.

"What the hell was that?!" Spartan Carlo Hoya shouted.

"Don't know man." Spartan Gabriel Thorne responded.

Every Spartan on the deck went on alert as soon as the ship started to shake, they were prepared for anything. Then they felt more shaking and the ship lurch forward abruptly.

Palmer turned on her radio and contacted to bridge.

"This is Commander Palmer to the bridge, mind filling us in on what the hell is going on up there Tom?!"

"Sarah now's not the best time!"

She could hear some frantic shouting into the background and Lasky turning to bark some orders at some crewman before returning to his radio.

"Get your Spartans secured and ready for anything, things are about to get bumpy!"

Unnerved by the state of panic on the bridge and lack of answers to her original question Palmer complied. "Aye Aye Captain, Palmer out."

Sol system, Earth 2558

UNSC Infinity, Bridge

The bridge of the Infinity was in complete pandemonium. Naval officers, crewmen, and marines were frantically manning their stations and jumping between systems that needed their attention. Monitors and warning lights were flashing as pretty much any system that had a warning alarm was sounding. Captain Lasky knew Palmer would get things under control down at the S-Deck.

Looking at the feed of one of the forward external cameras Lasky noticed something unusual and unsettling about the slipspace portal they were about to enter.

"Roland what are looking at here?! I need answers now!"

Roland's holographic avatar appeared on the center of the map table and directed attention to a scale representation of the Infinity and the portal. "Captain we're looking at is an anomaly with slipspace that has never been observed before. Despite our emergency shutdown of the slipspace drive the portal still persist and appears to be pulling us towards it. This coincides with the reported unknown entity that was seen near the engine rooms sending out a wave of energy throughout the ship. Upon contact with the slipspace drive which was firing the portal took on the current abnormalities we see now. I was unable to identify exactly what the energy emission was but I'm working on it."

"Roland's right Captain! The portal's trying to pull us in and the little wind Infinity has left in her won't keep us out of it!" Helmsman James interjected.

He was struggling to keep the ship out of the anomalous slipspace portal having the reverse thrusters firing as much juice as the damaged systems would allow. The portal had turned greened and was crackling violently with energy lashing out of its swirling center.

"Captains DeSanta of the UNSC Song of the East and Richmond of the UNSC Euclid's Anvil report that their ships are also caught in the portals gravity well and are struggling to free themselves." Roland reported.

"Tell all the other ships in the battle group to put some distance between themselves and the portal!"

"Already ahead of you Captain, I have all other vessels within 10km range pulling out to a safe distance."

The ship suddenly lurched forward increasing in speed towards the portal opening.

"This is it Captain, reverse thrusters aren't strong enough to stop us! We're going people!" James shouted in panic.

"Damn it!" Lasky got on the intercom and made a ship wide announcement. "Everyone hold on, things are about to get rough!"

With that the bridge crew held on to whatever they could as the ship entered the portal. Unable to escape the increased pull of the vortex, Song of the East and Euclid's Anvil also slipped into the portal right behind Infinity. With that the abnormal green portal dissipated and left the rest of the battle group intact and wondering where humanities most important ship had gone.

Unknown planet xxxx [?]

Unknown location

Currently a thick blinding layer of smoke filled the clearing where the students of the academy of magic had been performing their familiar summoning. Unsurprisingly Louise Valliere had created a rather large explosion upon attempting the summoning spell herself. Louise herself was now standing exactly where she was before staring blankly into space with her hair and school uniform slightly singed from the blast.

From his position Professor Colbert watched his other students wheeze and cough to get the ash out of their lungs with some throwing annoyed looks Louise's way. At least they all looked relatively unharmed save for singed hair, dirtied uniforms, and agitated familiars. "Is everyone alright?!" he asked. A collection of annoyed groans and mumbles was the only answer he received. Turning back around he noticed Louise's expressionless face staring into the smoke. Following her gaze he could see amidst the smoke her summoning circle and the area around it burned by the blast, nothing else. "… Louise."

Quickly turning around Louise responded to Professor Colbert with a desperate tone in her voice. "Please Professor, one more try. Just let me try one more time, I know I can do it."

"Louise."

"This was just a fluke; it should have worked this time. I just choked."

"Louise." Colbert repeated.

"This time for sure I'll just-" Louise made to go create another summoning circle but was stopped.

"Louise, you have attempted summoning a familiar several times before and have failed. Osmond's mandate was clear, today was your last chance." Colbert hated having to do this to her but rules were rules. "Today is the end of the line Louise, you know what happens next." He turned away unable to look at her face which showed how crushed she was. "I'm sorry Louise."

Louise's head hung low, she didn't want to believe Colbert's words but she knew they were true. Today was her last chance to use magic properly and prove she was a proper mage. Now she would be expelled from the academy for having no talent with magic and never be considered a mage. She would have to face her family, especially her mother, and she would be an embarrassment to the Valliere name. She would be useless to them and would be disowned to live as a commoner with no family name. Louise willed herself not to cry even as her eyes were already becoming moist, her classmates snickering behind her didn't help. This was it, her time a noble was over.

In slipspace, 2558

UNSC Infinity, Engine Deck

"That hurt a lot…" Saito picked himself off the floor with the help of a few more crewmen who arrived on the scene. "You guys alright?" He looked towards the two marines one of whom was rubbing his shoulder.

"Yeah we're fine, just banged my shoulder up a bit. Shit that was painful."

"Smacked my head straight into the wall, thank god for helmets." The other marine said.

One of the crewmen then spoke up. "Well if you guys are alright then we gotta get somewhere secure, shits hitting the fan right now."

"Yeah, captain wants everyone hunkered down and at their battle stations a.s.a.p." With that they all hustled away to their stations, Saito following closely behind.

His head becoming clear Saito took notice of the alarms and flashing lights blaring everywhere as well as the ship shaking periodically. The corridors were abuzz with activity as sailors and marines ran frantically to their stations while trying to figure out what was going on. "We were knocked out for only a couple minutes, what the hell happened?!" Saito queried over the chaos of shouting and alarms.

Another crewman spoke up. "Not really sure, but just as we were entering slipspace there was this green flash and then the portal got really violent and pulled us in!"

"Probably had to do with that weird glowing thing we saw earlier." Saito observed.

"Oh man this is bad, real bad." The marine that was with Saito said. "I bet we're being pulled back in time man, to a land before time and shit. Next thing is we're gonna be running from hungry giant reptiles in the ship!"

"Oh will you just shut your trap for once." His friend spoke to him. "Jeez, you could at least take our current situation seriously."

Palming his face Saito shook his head at the strange duo. Now wasn't the time for this he needed to get to engine control and maintenance to do his job. Spotting Lt. Robinson Saito approached him and saluted. "Sir, what's the situation here?"

The lieutenant, a raven haired man who looked to be in his early thirties, thought for a moment before replying, "I honestly have no idea Hiraga, the ship's reactor and power plants started going haywire for seemingly no reason. I need you to get to your station and do what you can to help the other get things up and running again, don't panic and just follow your team leader's orders they'll know what to do."

"Aye Aye sir!" Saito replied.

Robinson turned to the others present and addressed them. "I believe the rest of you have battle station to be getting to."

With that the other marines and crewmen each hurried off to their respective stations and duties while Saito made his way towards his own station. Looking over the monitor in his work area he saw exactly how much of a mess the systems were in. Reactors only at 30% power, main engines offline and the systems are not responding to any attempts to restore them. How we are supposed to fix this in the middle of slipspace is beyond me, Saito thought to himself. He also noticed that two cruisers were also currently in slipspace transit with the Infinity, both reporting systems malfunctions but not as bad as they were experiencing. Looking at the mess of malfunctions and warnings on the monitors around him he began to feel overwhelmed. What am I supposed to do here man, damn He considered consulting his more experienced senior crewmen but they all looked just as panicked and confused as him. He scratched the back of his head and returned to his console. "What did we get ourselves into?"

Just then the intercom system came to life again with another message.

"All hands we're coming out of slipspace, be on alert!"

Huh, that was a pretty fast slipspace jump even for a ship like the Infinity.

Above unknown planet 2558

UNSC Infinity, Bridge

For Captain Lasky things just went from worse to terrible. Whatever strange slipspace anomaly had taken his ship and two of his escorts had decided to spit them out in some random point in space. He was glad at least that it refrained from dumping them in the center of a star but right now the ship was hurtling towards a planet and with little to no engine power to slow down. "Roland I need to where we are!" Lasky shouted.

Roland's orange projection appeared on the command interface. "I already had my sub processes working on it as soon as we exited slipspace captain. I cannot at this time ascertain where in the galaxy we could possibly be, current star patterns match any known exploratory data. Also as you may have noticed we're on a collision course with an unknown planet that is roughly the same size and mass as Earth. Preliminary atmospheric and surface scans also reveal Earthlike atmosphere and ocean coverage as well. Also note that there are two moons in orbit around the planet, one red the other blue."

Lasky looked over the projection of the blue planet for a moment before coming to a decision. "Roland, prepare a flight plan to that will allow us to use whatever reverse thrust power we have available for a slowed decent and landing. We can still make a soft landing to prevent further damage to the ship." He counted himself lucky to at least find a planet like this to land on and make repairs being glad it was not some rocky planet with no atmosphere.

"I'm already on it captain, another one of my processes has already worked out a flight plan." During the ship wide system malfunctions Roland has split himself into thousands of different "sub routines" to assist with as many issues as he could. Even then Roland was nowhere near being pushed to the limits of his processing power, testament to why most UNSC ships have an A.I assigned to them. "Captain, the Euclid's Anvil and Song of the East report they have full engine power and will have no trouble slowing down. They'll escort us down to the surface."

"Alright then, put all remaining engine power to reverse thrusters! Helmsmen, put us on course for a soft entry into the atmosphere." Looking again at the projection of the planet and their current flight path Lasky realized that losing extra weight would help slow them down. "It'll help soften our decent if we lose some extra weight. Roland, tell the sub vessel crews to launch immediately."

"I'm on it." Roland replied.

As the Infinity began to enter the upper atmosphere her ten internally stored Strident class frigates deployed from her underbelly and fanned out. The loss of weight allowed Infinity to level out as she plowed through the upper cloud layer with her escorts in tow. So far it seemed that the landing will be gentler and more controlled than the crashing landing on Requiem.

"We've got a good LZ in a large valley roughly 5000 m up spin, I'll try to put her down gently but it's still going to be a bit rough!" Helmsmen James looked over the LZ one more time and reported something else. "LZ's mostly clear except for-"

"I see it James." Lasky replied. "Roland."

"I detected indigenous life forms on the planet surface during my initial scans sir nothing major, but then my scans picked up small settlements and cities. Intelligent life…" What had Roland and the bridge crew worried was the fact that a large pentagon shaped structure was also in the same general vicinity as their LZ and it was currently occupied by the locals.

"We can't avoid it now." Lasky finished. "Nothing we can do about it now the locals are definitely going to spot us, let's just focus on landing safe and sound first."

"Final approach ladies and gents, moving through cloud layer now!" James announced as he put all remaining engines power left into softening the landing.

Lasky got on the ship's intercom. "All hands brace for a hard landing!"

Unknown planet 2558

Large grassy valley

The magic academy students began leaving the grassy field and began to head back to the academy building with their new familiars in tow, all except for one.

"Tough luck Zero."

"There's always next time, oh wait there won't be one for you. Hah!"

"I guess we should call her commoner now, hey Zero I hear the school could use a few more maids."

Louise felt like she was on the verge of tears as she listened to her classmate's taunts. She was the only one left standing on the hill where the summoning ceremony took place; her head was hung down between her shoulders not knowing what to do now. It wasn't fair. Why did she have to be the talentless zero? Her peers were right; she would only be useful as some commoner maid servant at this point.

Colbert watched Louise in her distraught state and felt terrible for her, he knew she would likely lose her status and shame her family and wished there was something more her could do about it. He was about to reach out to her when low rumbling noise started to come from the sky. "What in the world?" he pondered aloud.

The other students heard it too as they all stopped and looked upward trying to find the source.

Then Montmorency spotted something in the clouds and shouted "Look! What in Brimir's name is that?!"

Louise who was too busy sulking to care about whatever it was that was make the noise perked her head up at Montmorency's finding. Coming through the clouds was… something she had never seen before or any of them for that matter. She beheld a giant oddly shaped object descending on them through the clouds and whatever it was it was massive. "W-w-what?" she muttered weakly as even more objects slowly made their decent on the larger one's flanks, though they were much smaller each one was still larger than anything she had ever seen.

"Are those meteors falling from the stars or something?" Kirche nervously asked her companion Tabitha.

Tabitha who was now giving the descending objects her full attention replied simply. "No."

"Then what-"

Then suddenly as the behemoth of a thing flew over their heads the air felt like it was vibrating and the ground beneath them began to shake slightly. The object then impacted into the ground a several kilometers north west of the academy and kicked up a considerable dust cloud and causing a massive tremor to be felt far and wide. More troubling however was that the other objects slowed down and came to a hover above the largest one.

Colbert saw this and immediately knew that these were not mere space rocks but… could they be ships or worse, flying beast of some kind? Not sure about his theory but not wanting to take any chances he ordered the students back to the academy immediately. "Everyone back to the academy right this instant, that's an order!"

Louise could only stand rooted in her spot on the hilltop completely shocked at the site of the colossal monsters that had just appeared to do Brimir knows what. First she fails to summon a familiar and prove herself a mage and now this.

"Louise we must hurry back now!" Colbert shouted in her direction when he noticed she wasn't fleeing back to the academy with the rest of the students.

"R-right." Snapping out of her shock Louise stumbled her way forward following the rest of the class back to the academy walls with the strange behemoths looming in the background. It was going to be a very busy few days.