NOTE: Okay, right off the bat: I just discovered Familiar of Zero recently and am compelled to write this. Now, I've only seen a few episodes and went through the main storyline on the wiki pages. But I was so amused by how the characters of Halkeginia view modern technology as something beyond arcane.

I mean, I cracked up when I found out that the 'Staff of Destruction' was actually a rocket-launcher. Stared at the screen for 3 seconds before bursting into laughter. XD

Anyway, feel free to bash me if I'm not getting any of the characters right. Besides, this is just something that I got started on a whim and might add onto if I feel like it.

UPDATE: Okay, I've been rewriting this story again and been ironing out some the chapters to cover up some plot holes that I noticed. I hope you enjoy the edits (if anyone noticed anyway).

It was quite a sight to behold. The commoner stumbled back onto his carriage, nearly startling the horses into an uncontrolled gallop. There was no malodorous smell that he had expected. But he wished to cover his eyes from what appeared to be the site of an ancient unearthed burial ground.

He had travelled far from the Eastern lands and was nearing the Germanian border when a bright red banner piqued his curiosity. Thinking that a Germanian contingent was encamped nearby, he made to change direction until the thought came to him: Germania never endorsed a red banner—a completely red banner.

He squinted his eyes: the banner wasn't a banner at all. It flowed horizontally in the wind like a flag on a tall pointless spear, the edges of the sheet ripped. It was all in red except for a small yellow emblem on the far corner that he could not discern. Come to think of it, the flag was just a bright red, not bearing any coat of arms.

It bothered him then that if this were not Germanian, then it could be something else, something hostile—orcs or bandits or renegades. He did not know. But he weighed his chances. And against his better judgment, he abandoned the trail and pushed into the woods.

And by the end of the day, he was kneeling before a Germanian captain, feverishly reporting what he had come across and watching the soldier's brows rise with curiosity.

Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt-Zerbst did not bother herself with politics or state affairs when it came to conversations over the dinner table. However, she spared interest upon mention of a strange discovery just outside the Eastern border of Germania.

Seated across from her father was her cousin, Captain Wolfgang Weigandericht. And he was very animated in his description of their latest find, his eyes ever so glowing as he lightly gestured with growing intrigue.

"...nothing like it at all!"

"Not Elven in nature?" her father asked.

"No, none of it!" Wolfgang spaced his hands, much to the displeasure of the rest of the von Anhalt-Zerbst family. Wolfgang's manners seemed to be waning in his lively display. "Their muskets were technologically advanced. And they weren't even using musket balls."

"Come again?" Kirche turned her head at her father's inquiry, noting the growing curiosity in his voice.

"The ammunition for their muskets weren't musket balls. They were rather these long, pointy, lead sticks. Flat on one end and pointed on the other. Tubular as well."

"And what did the muskets look like?"

"Some of them were much like ours but slightly shorter and a bit heavier. Others were of an unusual design. When we took them apart, we found that the firing mechanism functioned to shoot a number of times consecutively before rearming. And that is not to mention the small telescopes that were mounted on top! It was completely astounding! Such feats of technology—"

"Now, now, Wolfgang," Kirche's mother remarked uneasily from her side, effectively grinding the conversation to a halt. "I believe that further talk of weapons over such a hearty meal would upset our appetite, would it not?"

Wolfgang dropped his hands on his lap and hastily bowed. "I apologize, my dear aunt. I could not help myself."

"Oh, that's alright," Kirche's father boomed, slapping the young captain hard across the shoulder. "Sehr gut. We could talk about it later. For now, let's enjoy the meal!"

"There is one thing though," Kirche spoke up, receiving her mother's glare and a look of stern curiosity from her father. "Pardon me for asking, but...where do you think these weapons are from?"

Before her mother made an attempt to further derail the topic, Wolfgang quickly chirped up his reply, "Well, we are surest on one thing: they're neither Elven nor Halkeginian."

The look on Saito's face remained after Kirche relayed as much as she knew. It was bothersome enough to know that Saito's home—an eerily similar planet called Earth—was so technologically advanced that the people there seemed to have forgotten magic long enough to embrace science as their means of getting by. But it became disturbing when the realization came that with the advent of technology came the development of weapons more powerful than any in all of Halkeginia.

Looking back, Louise Françoise Le Blanc de Hiraga de Ornièlleremembered how Saito became so confident at facing Fouquet after learning that the so-called staff of destruction was actually a really big gun from Earth ("I believe it's an M72 rocket launcher.") and the damage that it caused to the golem after firing its "rocket".

Along with the fact that Old Osmond received the weapon thirty years prior, most likely during the time of the Vietnam War, then it was more of common sense that these weapons were further developed over those thirty years.

"Saito, what do you think?"

Louise, who had remained silent for the duration of the conversation, turned to her husband, Saito Hiraga, a young man summoned from outside his home in Japan less than two years prior to serve as her familiar. The look he wore bothered her enough. "Saito?"

Hiraga closed his eyes, clearing his mind. Why does it always have to be the bad things that come here? Then he opened them, gazing deeply at the people gathered inside the Void tower of the Tristainian Academy of Magic—Louise, Kirche, Guiche de Grammont, and Montmorency Margarita la Fère de Montmorency.

"You most likely stumbled onto something big, Kirche. Too big for Germania to handle, I'm pretty sure," he answered slowly.

Had he realized that Germania was itself a military superpower, then others would have considered his assessment a grave understatement. Still, there was not much of a reply from them as a series of serious expressions. All of them however asked the same question: what does that mean?

"You said that the muskets you found were so advanced in design and fired consecutively without having to be reloaded, right?" he asked.

Kirche nodded.

"And that the bodies that carried them were all dressed in light gray fabric with emblems and britches. Right?"

Kirche nodded again, clearly asking with her furrowed brows where he was going with this.

"And that wasn't all."

"Do I have to repeat everything?"

Saito raised his hand before resting it on his chin. "No." His mind went back to the lessons taught in his classes back in Japan. All the history lessons and his curious ventures in the internet archives; the stories were coming back and they were something that Saito did not want to bring up. But after analyzing the information, it seemed entirely plausible yet so impossible.

"One more thing..."

"Just tell us what it is already," Guiche piped impatiently, ignoring Louise's glare.

"Did they have a red flag? Red or crimson? With a symbol on the edge or something?"

Kirche paused, her eyes looking downward. "He said they found one flag and that it was bright red with a yellow insignia. It was also on the uniforms of some of the bodies."

"Soldiers. They're dead soldiers," Saito deadpanned.

"What?"

"Red flag. Yellow insignia." Let me guess: a hammer and a sickle...or a star.

"You keep repeating what I just said. Is it something from Earth?"

Saito nearly paled. It is. For the first time since the Ancient Dragon crisis, the power of the Void mages would again be put in danger but not through dangerous consummation of magic. If his theory was correct, then a whole battalion of troops from Earth ended up here in Halkeginia with all their equipment and probably died off outside the Germanian border.

There were a lot of questions that began swirling in his mind that combed through the details of Kirche's account such as what exactly had killed them. But the fact of the matter remained: a division of well-armed soldiers crossed into Halkeginia and died here, their weapons—most of them, he considered—were now in the hands of the Germanians. And that was the least of his worries.

"Saito, Saito..."

He snapped out of his thoughts, looking at the small hand on his shoulder and then back at Louise's pink eyes, concern weaving through them. He forced out a smile.

"Seriously, are you alright? You're worrying us too, you know," Montmorency remarked.

"It's from Earth, alright."

Kirche tossed her hands up in the air. "Founder, finally! I thought you wouldn't say that."

"So there is another Steel Dragon?" Guiche asked.

"No. It's not an air division. It's more of a ground force that went through the Void without knowing it and probably ended up biting the dust before they could come into contact with anyone here."

A moment of silence followed as everyone digested what he just said. "So you're saying that someone summoned a whole army here?"

Saito shrugged. "Either that or they walked through a stray portal, you tell me."

All eyes promptly turned to Louise. She threw them all a desperate glare finding herself cornered, her husband in deep thought, staring at her as though she had committed a heinous crime. She stuttered. "D-don't look at me like that. I have nothing to do with it! I-in a-all honesty!"

"It's not that."

"No, we all saw the World Door." But is it even possible for it to stretch big enough to stomach a whole lot of troops in one setting? Unless they marched through in single file?

"So it has to be a really powerful Void mage then," Guiche began, rubbing his chin. As far as he or anyone else knew, there have only been a handful Void mages in recorded history since Brimir's passing—the deceased King Joseph of Gallia, his daughter Josette, Pope Vittorio of Romalia, the elf Tiffania Westwood, and Louise. Even then, none of them could have had the amount of power required to summon an entire army. Unless they were summoned by Brimir himself or so the theory would go.

"Or a stray element. Not one Void mage that we know of is powerful of ever summoning something that vast," Kirche rebutted. "Wolfgang said that the number of bodies went up to over fifty. That including all their weapons, rations, and machines."

"Machines?"

"Oh, I honestly forgot. Wolfgang wasn't sure what they were but this army also had 'Steel Salamanders' or something." The Germanian recalled Flame, comparing her familiar with her cousin's description of the things.

"Or tanks," Saito remarked, noting the confusion. He sighed. "War machines with large cannons."

"War machines?"

Saito raised his hands, spacing them apart. "Big steel vehicles with a large cannon, typically—"

"Typically?" Montmorency asked, the worry audible in her voice. "So it's typical for these machines to at least have a cannon?"

"Okay, so we get it. They're war machines," Kirche interrupted. "He said they found nearly twenty of them, covered in rust and rooted to the ground that they needed earth mages to move them."

"That's because they need fuel."

"Excuse me?"

Saito grunted. Explaining the functionality of modernity to them would further sidetrack what he wanted to know. Besides, he normally had a limited scope in military ordnance being the youth that he is lest the magic of the Gandálfr were to imbue him with such knowledge. "I'll explain later. You know what? I think this is something that Old Osmond should—"

"Are you sure about that?" Louise asked, finally making herself known after being ignored through most of the discussion.

"Remember the staff of destruction? It would probably be the same case," Guiche began before being cut off by Montmorency and then by Kirche until all three were bickering over the repercussions of divulging such a secret.

But their voices seemed to go mute in Saito's ears as he stared emptily into the wall. In his mind, he hoped that whatever these men brought with them were just conventional weapons. He looked back at the history lessons: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then the Cold War. And then the missiles. That brought another alarming question: considering the size of the battalion, did they have a nuke with them? He shook his head—it was ridiculous. No army wouldn't be that desperate to leave a warhead with their troops...

"...unless they carried them."

The banter between the magi ceased. "What?"

"...unless they were transporting..." Saito paled again into a deeper white until he made a realization that he hoped was false. "...it can't be. No." Ridiculous. It has to be.

"Saito?"

"Saito, is there something wrong?"

"You are really bothering us right now."

He looked at them, not sure of what to say next, his thoughts still focused on his seemingly absurd theory. Maybe they weren't transporting.

NOTE: By the way, this here is just the first segment of a really long story that I wrote down. I'm only posting the first part here because I'm not sure if the rest of the story would really fit in with the original elements of Familiar of Zero.

Still, I'm sorry if I pissed anyone off with inaccuracies. I just wanted to get this off my chest today.