Part III

Louise was nervous, oh Brimir was she nervous. The exhibition had already started and it was almost their turn. She should have remembered the event much sooner. What if Ichigo had not have enough time to prepare. What if he decided to just not perform.

Her heart speed up and she frantically searched for reassurance. Anything that would calm her down. She almost jumped when she felt a strong grip on her shoulder. A quick glance reassured her that it was Ichigo who was holding her.

"Don't worry" he said with confidence, reassurance, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, "I'll make sure that the crowd will be impressed" he gave her a small smile as confirmation.

Louise felt herself calm down, her speeding heart slowing to a healthier beet and her breathing easing to accomplish her heart. She gave Ichigo a smile in return. What she didn't know or notice was what Ichigo whispered to himself next, which would have shattered her confidence into a thousand shards.

"They will be impressed, if only by the destructive power. They better be impressed." It was a dark mutter, sending shivers down the spine of those that were unlucky enough to hear it.

Louise having calmed down, could finally concentrate on all the other performances. Tabitha showed an impressive aerial performance with her dragon Sylphid, looping and dancing through the sky, impressively never even showing hints of falling off, even though her dragon was moving so much.

The cow Kirche was doing a, what looked like a seductive fire dance, moving just as much as her familiar Flame who was sprouting fire everywhere around her. Still she had to admit, even if only in her own mind, that it was somewhat impressive that Flame had the control to not hit Kirche with his flames.

Compared to that the womanizer Guiche showed a blasé performance, only posing in different Kinds of macho poses. Still she hadn't known that his familiar could even move in such a way. Should it's arms and legs even be able to move in such a way?

The next few performances after that weren't even worth mentioning. There was one student that made her bugbear float all the way up till one couldn't see it anymore, only to make it drop back down and catch itself in the last minute. The next one had been just as unimpressive as the familiar had just stood there and tried to sing. The one after that had made her dog familiar jump through hoops, very impressiv (please insert sarcasm).

Maybe she was a bit hard on their performances, their familiars just were not as impressive as the first ones, but from her and from the audience perception it just couldn't be considered anything other than boring. The most impressive performance should always come at the end, was the one thought she had. She only hoped that she, or more like Ichigo, as the last performer, would be just as impressive as she hoped.

"And now we come to our last performer of the day, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière with her familiar Ichigo." Professor Colbert announced their turn, which caused Louise's heart to jump right into her throat. Ichigo's hand landed on her shoulder a second time, giving her another reassuring squeeze and a small smile before he slowly strolled up onto the platform, Louise following right behind him.

Standing on the tribune sadly gave her a full view of all the audience, which also meant that the audience had an unobstructed view of her and Ichigo.

It didn't take long for the murmurs to start. "Where is the familiar" whispered one of them, "Why are two People standing on the stage", "Did they make some kind of mistake" asked the third. Louise wanted to disappear into the ground. Why hadn't she thought about that? Of course, they would question Ichigo's presence. Before Ichigo she had also never heard of a human familiar before, or well, a human looking one at least.

"Please remain calm. This is not some kind of mistake" Professor Colbert tried to calm the mass, unsuccessfully.

"I am the familiar of Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière. By her call, I have responded and have been summoned to protect and support her on her way, whichever way she chooses. I have agreed to do so of my own free will. The runes that have marked me should be prove enough."

Ichigo's calm voice penetrated to slowly rising alarm as if it was a light in a room filled with only darkness. He hadn't raised his voice, no he hadn't even seemed all that commanding, but something in his voice had called all the nobles to attention. An impressive feat for someone who's opponents where a crowd of nobles.

The crowd focused on him and her, an unpleasant feeling she had to admit. She had never liked the Attention, well negativ attention at least, but Ichigo didn't seem to have the same problem as her, showing his hands with the runes as if there was nothing wrong.

"A human familiar?" one of the nobles questioned quite loudly. "Is something like that even possible" questioned jet another.

"Any and all question may be directed toward Professor Colbert to my left after the performance is finished. It would be quite rude to everyone involved to continue disrupting the performance." Ichigo continued to say, ignoring all the voiced questions as if they had nothing to do with him. Louise had to suppress her giggling when she noticed Prof. Colbert's face. He didn't seem to be quite as happy to have that responsibility pressed on him out of nowhere.

Ichigo's words seem to have registered, because it didn't take long for the crowd to calm down and direct their attention on the two of them. Louise who had just calmed down again, felt her heart speed up…again. She wondered if it was unhealthy to have so many mood swings successively.

Ichigo swept his gaze one last time over the whole crowd, before he took a deep breath and started.

"This is a story which may or may not be true. This is a story that started with nether darkness, nor light." He suddenly said. Louise watched with fascination and horror as suddenly, without even any indication the entire world around them turned pitch black. There was no light, no sound to be heard expect Ichigo's slowly resonating words.

"First there was nothing. Nothing existed, nothing was all there was, it was devoid of all thing, living or not, no light and no darkness: It was the void." Louise had the suddenly feeling of something, something unexplainable inside her chest. Something seemed to resonate with this blackness.

"Then one day the Void suddenly shifted...suddenly compressed" and with his words the whole audience could suddenly feel how something was being compressed far above their heads, the blackness never receding.

"and an explosion took place, the big bang." And with his words Louise suddenly had the inexplicable wish to follow his words and make it happen. Without her even truly noticing she drew her wand, aimed at the point where the compression took place and fired, a phenomenal explosion taking place. Still there was no sound, only blackness, but it could be felt and the audience sweated. The explosion had caused a sudden rise of temperature. Followed quickly by a cool down.

"This explosion, the big bang, took not even a second, no, not even the second of a second" Ichigo's unhurriedly voice continued as if nothing had changed.

"In that one explosion, everything changed. This explosion created the very first particles. These particles were the first matter." And with his voice suddenly dozens of lights seemed to come into being all around them, above them, even some below them. Inside the darkness they glowed beautifully, seemingly calling to be touched.

"These particles spread throughout the whole void, touching and intermingling with each other, till they fused, creating something new, filling the void with darkness." The audience watched how the lights touched each other and slowly fused, becoming bigger and changing colors.

"They formed a kind of gas, a gas which continued to intermingle, continued to change and one day, long after the big bang, created light. Looking like a colorful cloud amidst the void." And truly, even as he spoke the lights seemed to intensify and multiply till right over their heads a cloud of colorful lights was born. It was beautiful.

"Of course, there existed not only one cloud, there existed thousands upon thousands of them. And all those clouds grew, slowly but surely. And just like us, when we jump and are pulled back to the ground, gravity pulling us toward the very earth we stand on, these particles called to each other just the same. They were pulled to each other and the greater the pull was, the greater the gravity, the stronger the particles were pulled together, spinning ever the more." The crowd watched as the beautiful lights seem to slowly gravitate to each other, creating a spinning motion till the whole cloud of lights seemed to spin and compress.

"They spun and compressed till the merged together into one huge matter. And so a star was born. Yes a star, like the ones you are able to watch every night when the sky is clear. Or even at day when you look at your sun." The colorful cloud of lights had merged into one being, glowing a beautiful golden color and radiating warms, truly resembling their sun. It looked as if ichigo had pulled it right out of the sky.

"The first stars were still young and huge. These stars burned, burned till nothing was left to burn, spreading light and warms throughout the whole Void(universe). But even stars can die and when they do, when they have nothing left to burn, they will collapse into themselves, becoming small in fractions of a second. If they have enough mass, if they are huge enough, the supernova that follows creates a black hole" And as he spoke the sun that he seemingly created was suddenly almost violently compressed within seconds and everything around them seemed to be pulled toward it. It truly was a black hole, sucking the surrounding clouds into it causing them to disappear."

"Still other clouds created stars, or planets throughout the void" He started to compress the different clouds he had previously created, compressing and spinning them like he had before. All around them stars and planets of different colors and sizes were born before their eyes. It was beautiful to watch.

The audience watched how the cloud right before between them and Ichigo as well as a few others right next to them compressed themselves and created stars and planets.

"and just like this, this planet, its moons and its sun, this earth on which you stand, on which you live, were born" and with these words the planets and stars between him and his audience took the position of their planet with its moons and sun, resolving around themselves, as well as the moons resolving around the earth, all while the earth resolved around the sun.

"You...all of you and everything around you are made of stardust and one day you will return to being stardust. And maybe one day the stardust that was once you will create something new, something equally beautiful." With his last words Ichigo cupped his hands and all the lights, the planets, the black hole and the clouds seemed to be sucked into them, disappearing into nothing, leaving only blackness and the Void behind. The light coming from his cupped hands seems to shortly illuminate Ichigo's face before even it disappeared.

Shortly afterwards the blackness waded and the audience could feel the sun on their skin again, appreciating the warms it seems to give.

Then the first person stood up, applauding, quickly followed by the rest of the crowd.

Louise would have blushed bright red from all the positive attention, had she not still been completely mystified and overcome by Ichigo's performance.

Ichigo gave her a curt nod toward the crowd as a reminder, to which she finally noticed that she still hadn't curtsied and they were still giving them an ear shattering applause.

She gave them and Ichigo a huge smile before she curtsied after which she and ichigo left the stage.

"That was brilliant." She heard the mutter of the crowd. Seemed like they had enjoyed the performance and had even forgotten all their prior questions about Ichigo being a human familiar.

"Wonder how they did all this" asked another with a thoughtful frown.

"That's unimportant. What I want to know is if what that boy said was true? Do you really thing that everything was created like that?" She asked her escort.

"That's blasphemy" Said her escort darkly. "Why" asked the lady in return "Brimir lived 3000 years ago, he managed to beat the elves and lead humanity into a bright future. There never even was anything about him creating the world we stand on. What happened before Brimir anyway?" She looked thoughtful to the ground, contemplating the new thoughts. Which her escort didn't seem to appreciate. He only didn't say anything because he couldn't really refute her words. Brimir truly hadn't created the world, but who or what then did?

Ichigo meanwhile seemed to have his own thoughtful scowl, looking at the balled fist of his right hand.

"What should I do with all this energy" He muttered to himself. "Almost hundreds of ceros and thousands of kido fires" He had of course only used the minimum reiatsu that was required, giving them only enough energy to be able to come into existence and glow prettily, but at the end of it it had still costed him quite a bit reiatsu to create them all. Ultimately there had been thousands of lights used inside the story.

"Can't release it here or there won't be anything left of the Castle or the surrounding area. Can't reabsorb it since I kept compressing and changing it throughout the performance." The people who would have heard that would probably have feared for their lives and all the lives around them would they have known what kind of power Ichigo had balled inside his fist right now.

Louise and the rest of the people were luckily ignorant of such facts. Louise gripped his sleeve and pulled to get his attention. As he turned towards her and gave her his full attention she gave him a shy small smile.

'Thank you' she seemed to radiate with her entire being to which she received an answering smile of the same type.

"My pleasure" Ichigo finally said, balling his fist ever so tighter. It had been worth it, even just for that little smile.