Update 8/5/2015

i may/may not decide to merge this story with my other Third High fic, but just a heads up, this story will probably be integrated into the other one to give a "complete" third high series

i dont own mahouka

Striding down the hallways of Third High School, it was impossible for him not to notice the furtive glances thrown his direction and the nervous whisperings as he passed by his fellow students. It was understandable. Most of them had never seen a battlefield. Or two people trying to kill each other. Or even a dead body for that matter.

Ichijou Masaki chuckled to himself.

Who finds a dead body to be normal, or killing another human? But then again, we're magicians.

4 YEARS AGO: SADO

The sounds of gunfire and artillery shells filled the air. Smoke and ash choked everyone around and the taste of dirt filled everyone's mouths. Many of the surrounding buildings had collapsed under continuous pounding from enemy fire and rubble filled the streets. A few civilians huddled underneath fallen structures, caught in the ambush.

Ichijou Masaki crouched behind the charred remains of a van, CAD in hand. He gritted his teeth.

This wasn't what I was expecting when I volunteered for this.

Masaki had always heard stories from his grandfather of World War III. It had always sounded so heroic, beating back invaders, securing safety for the rest of the country. In his head he had imagined adventure and glory.

He found the reality of war to be much different.

War was nothing more than two sides trying to annihilate each other for the sake of survival. There was no heroism in this. No glory. Just death. Kill or be killed.

So this is what it is to be a magician.

Masaki felt a lull in the gunfire overhead. Deploying his Interference Armor, he took a breath and stood up, revealing his position. He leveled his CAD at one of the soldiers, and pulled the trigger. The man swelled unnaturally and suddenly exploded in a cloud of red, showering his comrades with blood and staining the ground red.

Rupture. The deadly Dispersal-type magic that instantly vaporizes all fluids in a given target. Seeing it in action was a terrible blow to the morale of the enemy assailants, and even more so seeing that its wielder was little more than a child.

The enemy soldiers attempted to take Masaki down with a few bursts from their assault rifles, but his Interference Armor intercepted the bullets. He pulled the trigger several more times, each invocation of Rupture whittling the ranks of the enemy down.

Masaki dropped to the ground, panting for breath and trying not to retch. Before today he had never actually killed anyone. But as of today, his hands had been stained with blood. In the end it didn't matter that his victims were of a different nationality from him; one dead person was the same as another.

Dammit Masaki! Get it together! You are a magician! This is what you were born to do!

Slowly his breathing stabilized.

You can think about the moral ramifications later. Now is the time to fight.

It's been a while since I've thought of that battle.

Masaki had arrived about 45 minutes early to school, and he didn't quite want to go to class yet. He had much to think about with all that had happened within the past few days, and as a member of the 10 Master Clans, he had been in the thick of it.

Scorched Halloween.

That event was what started it all. The global community was in a uproar. And it all came back to the weapons widely known as magicians. This event only served to remind most of the globes population that they were at the mercy of unknown powers. No other country had a way to defend against a force like that.

He was surprised to find that he had wandered into Third High's library. Though not as extensive as their rival's, First High's, as a high school affiliated with the National Magic University, its database was not too shabby.

Masaki took a seat and then logged in using his identity as a member of the 10 Master Clans. Hopefully that would give him access to more data. He sat back and stared at the terminal for a few seconds, thinking about explosion that day. He remembered a similar one a few years back. Okinawa, was it?

"Computer, pull up records in the past 4 years relating to battles at and around Okinawa."

Masaki scanned through the pages. It was surprisingly sparse, but one caught his attention.

"Great Asian Alliance. As I thought, the same explosion."

Parsing through the rest of the page, he only gleaned a few bits of information. Something about an 'Ooguro Ryuuya', though no mention of the spell used.

He leaned back in his chair. "Mahesvara". He had heard that word several times when watching over the captured soldiers at China Street. Some of them visibly flinched during the blast of the vessel.

Masaki sighed and his thoughts drifted back to the past.

Masaki broke cover, sprinting towards a cluster of enemy assailants hiding behind a felled building.

"Sh-"

The soldiers didn't even have time to finish their thoughts.

Leaping to the top of the rubble, Masaki swung his CAD in a semicircle around himself, targeting all the soldiers in his radius. Each trigger pull was accompanied by a desperate yell and a grotesque burst of bloody mist. Finished eradicating another pocket of enemy combatants, Masaki took cover where his enemies once had.

After several times of doing this, he had learned to ignore the mutilated corpses and splayed body parts across the battlefield. He barely noticed his once black battle suit was splattered and stained with the blood of his victims.

The rest of the squad joined him in his makeshift bunker. He felt the unconscious looks of his fellow soldiers glancing from the dead bodies to him and back again.

I suppose that would be a normal reaction.

A terminal buzzed and one of the soldiers answered. After exchanging a few terse words with the other end, he turned to the rest of the squad.

"The north coast needs backup; we're heading over that wa-."

Machine gun fire broke overhead, ripping the soldier into ribbons.

"GET DOWN!" Masaki yelled, deploying a barrier out of magic to cover the rest of the soldiers from overhead fire.

Dammit!

This was a problematic situation; the plane was flying too fast for him to target and shield the soldiers at the same time.

The plane exploded in a fireball, crashing into a strip of dirt a few blocks over. Masaki turned to see a figure standing atop a ridge, CAD in hand. Ichijou Gouki, Masaki's father.

Leaping across to Masaki's group of soldiers, Ichijou Gouki walked up to him.

"Good job shielding your men...and I'm glad you're safe." His father paused for a moment, scanning his team, "Since your squad leader was taken out, your group will be joining up with mine." The head of the Ichijou clan turned to the rest of the fighters. "We're heading towards the north shore. Take a break, we'll be up in 3."

Masaki climbed up next to his father, who decided to have taken a watch at the top of some debris.

"Otou-san, how is the fight going?"

There was a grim look on his father's face.

"The battle itself is going well, but the initial surprise attack cost too many civilian casualties. We're finding people throughout the battle field, so if you find someone, first priority is to get them away from this warzone."

His father turned back to the soldiers.

"We're moving. Let's go."

Not bothering with cover, he strode off into the battlefield. After a moment, Masaki followed.

Masaki made his way down the hallway.

Ooguro Ryuuya. I vaguely remember my father saying something about this guy at a family meeting. He's an unregistered Strategic if I remember correctly. Real identity unreleased to the public or even the 10 Master Clans. A person like this...could destroy the world. It doesn't seem like the explosion is limited in size given the battleship and Zhenghai Naval Port suffered the same fate yet on drastically different scales.

Ooguro Ryuuya. The Great Black Dragon. Masaki couldn't help but feel a little self-conscious.

What power…

But being a magician isn't all about power.

The enemy was laying down a heavy barrage of bullets. Not that it mattered.

Ichijou Masaki raised his CAD and triggered Rupture in quick succession, obliterating the enemy force.

"All clear."

The fight for Sado was pretty much over, with just a few small clusters of enemy combatants still holding out in pockets in the rubble of the city.

Masaki stood on a piece of concrete the jutted out unnaturally. It gave him a good view of the city. Or of what was left of the city.

What once was a picturesque small community by the coast had turned into a wasteland of ash and fire, the stench of blood filling the hot air.

Masaki ground his teeth in frustration.

Why? Why did this need to happen?

He had overheard his father talking with some of the other higher ups. Apparently the New Soviet Union had wanted a piece of Japan; synchronizing their attack with another invasion attempt at Okinawa, or so he had heard.

Masaki sat down heavily leaving back against what appeared to be a piece of sidewalk that had been overturned. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to regain some strength after expending his psions in the fight.

He heard some coughing; Masaki whipped his CAD around searching for the source. He was the only one in this vicinity; where did that come from?

Silence.

He proceeded to put the CAD away when he heard it again.

Is that coming from...underneath?

Masaki got on his stomach, peering beneath one of the collapsed buildings. Someone shuffled and a gasped for breath.

There's someone underneath here!

Masaki began shifting through the rubble trying to remove it.

It's no good! It's too heavy and I don't have any way of moving it!

Grabbing his terminal, he yelled into it.

"OTOU-SAN! THERE'S SOMEONE UNDERNEATH THE RUBBLE OVER HERE!"

A few seconds passed and a figure dropped from the air to land beside him; his father.

Making a few adjustments, Ichijou Gouki pointed the CAD at the rubble and activated his magic. All the debris flew outward from the epicenter, revealing the figure of a young boy, probably Masaki's age, lying in the dirt. He coughed a few times, but it was evident he was unconscious and that he needed immediate medical treatment.

"Stay here with him, son. I'm getting a medic." His father activated a magic and leaped away.

The boy groaned, obviously in pain. Masaki sat by him and took his hand.

"You're going to be ok. We're here to get you out."

Masaki wasn't sure what to do, but he kept talking to the boy. The boy's black hair shifted and his eyes opened revealing dark red irises.

"...where...what…"

"Don't talk, just rest."

The boy closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. Masaki stayed by his side until the paramedics arrived.

What is a magician?

Masaki strolled towards Class 1-A. That was the thought that had haunted him since that day. The recent events brought it to new light for him to consider.

He remembered all that he had done since Sado. The training, the fights, Yokohama.

To be a magician means to walk with death. It means to wield extraordinary power for a higher purpose.

Masaki rounded the corner and walked into the classroom.

It means to sacrifice your humanity for the cause when others can't.

As soon as he walked in a voice called out to him.

"Masaki!"

It means we have the power to take life.

Masaki turned with a smile towards his best friend, Kichijouji Shinkurou, also known as Cardinal George. The boy he found all those years back in Sado.

But it also means we can save it.

some of the side characters of mahouka dont get enough love. dont get me wrong, i love the main characters, but i just wanted to explore some of the supporting ones.

i tried to expand on the background of masaki and ask some of the more philosophical questions given that magicians are pretty much killing machines.

actually ive been wanting to do a sort of mini series following the third high characters, maybe this will be a prequel or something.

anyways, thanks for reading this, if u have any comments/ideas, feel free to message me and review!

thanks and see yall next time!