Aiko is a Dis-asster 02:

Aiko is a Dis-asster 02: 

“There’s nothing here!” 

Artoria’s shout was the culmination of three days of searching, wandering, poking heads in odd little shops, inadvertent cosplay conventions, one very awkward sex cult meeting, Tamamo being chased by the Norwegian Society for Protection of Animals, and more. For all that search, they had found nothing but mundane Norway. 

“It’s just fucking Norway!” Tamamo raged, tearing up a newspaper with her teeth and tossing it on the ground. “Norway in two thousand fucking eight! Nothing happening here!” 

Artoria sighed. “I really thought we had something last time. Secretive group, meetings on a moonlit night, and it was just larping.” 

Artoria rubbed her eyes. “This is not going to work. At our present pace, we might find a hedge witch or something similar in twenty years.” 

“We’re going to have to broadcast ourselves, aren’t we,” Tamamo groaned, allowing her tight control of her magic to loosen. “Guess I’ll just walk around a bit exposed for a little while~” 

Artoria rolled the thought around in her head before nodding. “Can’t hurt to try, at least. Unless this world is just genuinely, and totally, magically dead there should be someone keeping an eye on this stuff.”  

Left unvoiced was the thought that if it was magically dead and a near mundane world caught up in Aiko’s convergence disaster, then it was going to be far more difficult to find what they needed to fix unless it just popped up on world news. 

With Tamamo lit up like a beacon to her magical senses, Artoria flexed her shoulders and decided to see if she could add her power as well. She flared her mana experimentally, feeling the alien yet strangely familiar power flow through her. She immediately broke out in a visible golden aura. In a city park. In public view of a coffee shop. 

The kitsune used that moment to pick up Artoria and carry her like a torch for some reason. “If you’re going to glow, I’m going to use you like a flashlight,” she claimed with a smirk, rubbing her cheek against Artoria’s with a smile. 

“Put — put me down!” Artoria cried out, legs kicking and slapping at Tamamo’s back. Her previous visible aura cut out as if a switch had been flipped, and only wiggling remained. 

Eventually, Tamamo set her down with a smirk. 

Artoria immediately pivoted to Tamamo. “You...” she huffed.  

“Heh,” Tamamo grinned, licking her lips as she looked at her with a vulpine grin. 

After a long moment, Artoria relented. “Fine. Lesson taken.” She was going to have to practice with her newfound powers to get this stuff down. The memories of Artoria’s life may be there, but the familiarity with using them was not. 

She looked around. Tamamo had deposited them a bit outside the city of Oslo’s outskirts along a quiet, wooded spot by the river. “I suppose this is more of a private and appropriate setting. We should take shifts flaring our power. Someone magical should be in the capital city of a bloody country. I can take over in two hours?” 

“Sure, just relax by the river and maybe fish up something for us to eat if you can,” Tamamo sighed. “We’ll probably be here for a long while.” 

Artoria shook her head. “I think I need to get a handle on my power. Fishing,” she muttered. Memories came to mind, mostly of a familiar yet foreign childhood on the outskirts of Tintagel Castle, wandering the brooks and hills and poking at frogs in the water in lazy afternoons before training with Sir Ector.  

Artoria blinked as the memories faded. That was happening increasingly often. Part of her felt concerned, but another part was fascinated with the deepening connection to Artoria’s memories. This wasn’t just reading about them in legend or even enjoying in animated form. This was so real, so tangible and yet utterly foreign to her own experiences, yet strangely familiar at the same time. 

Artoria shook her head and took a seat on a large rock. She briefly thought of taking a meditative pose, but that didn’t feel right. Instead, she simply closed her eyes and focused inward. 

Most magi had circuits to channel their lifeforce into usable energy. It was more complicated than that, Artoria knew, but that was the basics even if she now knew far more about them than she had in her life as an author. But the gist amounted to that that the more circuits they had, the more energy they could channel.  

Compare this to Artoria. Even in life, Artoria had been on another level, born with a full-on mana core said to be akin to a dragon’s heart slumbering in her chest. Its power had only grown in thousands of years wandering a Earth with Rhongoyminiad at her side. 

She hesitantly poked at it, and felt it roar to life, mana and energy flooding her body before she restrained it, like a sluice slamming shut. The power soon calmed down, but even so it left her body faintly tingly from that brief moment. 

She opened her eyes, glad to see it hadn’t bled into visibility. Tamamo hadn’t moved from her spot, nor had her magic output faded. Instead, she had curled up on a nice, sunny spot in the grass for a nap. 

Artoria couldn’t help but put a small smile at the sight. Soon after, she closed her eyes and resumed working on getting her mana core under control. She let it go, just slightly, and a pulse of power flowed through her, but far less than she had before. 

Progress. 

~~~~ 

One hour later, absolutely nothing had happened beyond a squirrel declaring blood feud with Tamamo. That is the only explanation Artoria had what was occurring before her very eyes. 

“Get back here you overgrown rodent!” Tamamo screeched, running after the squirrel on all fours in fox form. “I’m so going to eat you when I catch your furry ass!” 

An acorn soared through the air with disturbing accuracy to impact against Tamamo’s forehead. This was the third time this had happened. 

A screech of rage echoed shortly after.  

It was one thing to know her companion could be this, to put it lightly, ‘silly’. But it was another for her to see it in action. Albeit, the vindictiveness of the squirrel was frankly impressive. As was its ability to avoid Tamamo running up and down trees after it. 

They had surpassed normal animal limits by this point. Tamamo wasn't quite breaking the sound barrier or anything like that, but a gust of wind accompanied every single one of Tamamo’s leaps to try and catch the rodent. Leaps, Artoria might add, that the squirrel evaded.  That Tamamo hadn’t yet noticed  was noteworthy in itself, but maybe she was caught up in the moment. 

Artoria sighed and stood up. It was about time to put an end to this. 

Despite herself, she felt a little giddy. She had always wanted to try this, and the past hour’s practice meant she hopefully wouldn’t just blow up the surrounding woods. 

Deep within, her dragon core pulsed. Artoria breathed in.  

“That is enough!” A flare of power tore through the woods. Winds buffeted the trees, and her voice, already a shout, echoed through the trees with power and command.  A moment later, she added, “That means you Tamamo!” 

“He started it!” Tamamo called back, howling at Artoria with a harsh glare. “Fucker just attacked me for no reason!” 

There was immediate chittering on the tree branch above them that sounded suspiciously like laughter. “That goes for you too, raticate!” Artoria shouted. She hefted a small rock and threw it like a fast ball right at the squirrel which... 

It was already on another branch a foot away from her throw. Then an acorn smashed into Artoria’s head. It didn’t hurt, but it nonetheless rendered her speechless. 

“I say we have squirrel for dinner at this point Artoria,” Tamamo grunted. “It’s clearly mocking us and has attacked us for no reason. And since it’s cheating?” she held up a few talismans filled with curses and malice. “I doubt anyone will miss a single magical squirrel, right?” 

The squirrel hefted another acorn angrily. 

Artoria facepalmed. “Tamamo, there’s more going on here.” She looked up to the squirrel. “Care to speak up, Ratatoskr?” 

There was silence in the woods for a minute. Then, a deep, baritone voice belted out laughing. “Finally caught on, did ya ladies?” 

“I noticed a while ago but was hoping you would be mature enough to stop taunting my companion.” 

The squirrel sniffed. “I’ll have you know I am perfectly mature, but you’re wrong, lass. I’m not Ratatoskr, I'm his better son, Gorm the 1st! Pleasure to meet ya!” 

Artoria stared. 

Tamamo stared. 

“What? Got a problem with that!?” Gorm demanded, shaking a tiny fist. 

Artoria shuffled her feet. “No, to be honest I’m surprised Ratatoskr successfully reproduced.” 

“There is no way that pervy old squirrel reproduced,” Tamamo claimed, her expression blank and her tone dead. 

Gorm scratched his head. “To be honest, I am too. I didn’t think there’d be enough alcohol in the world for a girl to let him into her bed, but well, my existence is proof of that.” 

Artoria processed this, her own knowledge of the mythological squirrel, and promptly filed any thoughts of him successfully seducing someone under the “repress with all my might, find brain bleach, repeat until the thought is scoured from her mind forever more” category. 

“That aside,” she said carefully. “I am glad your pantheon sent someone to meet us, but I wasn’t quite expecting it to be you.” 

Gorm snorted. “Hate to say it, but you’re right. Normally it’d be some big balled braggart like Thor coming down to meet ya, but he’s stuck putting out so many fires it came to me. So, what you bitches doing down here and why are you broadcasting like you're two e girls selling your bath water to your rabid fans for 10k a pop?” 

“Unfortunately, while that sounds like a better idea than you probably think at the moment, we are literally calling for help in the case of an emergency with the source of her existence,” Tamamo jerked her thumb at Artoria with a grunt. “She’s basically fused with the physical manifestation of the tower that keeps the reverse side of the world from affecting this one too much, and in case you didn’t notice, shit got kinda fucked.” 

“I got no idea the fuck that first part means, “ Gorm noted, “but you’re right about shit being fucked. Felt like something ripped me asshole a new one and then recreated it a while back, and I ain’t ever heard Yiggy scream like that. Dad’s still up there tending to some of her branches. All the 9 realms been in an uproar dealing with shit, magic gone wild, and more. Even the big thunderhead himself looked tired, and believe me, I’ve tried to drink him under. Now what you mean by that tower nonsense?” Gorm asked. 

Artoria inwardly cringed, but she was already tired of this conversation. Giving an essay length explaining the mechanics of the Tower that Held up the World in Fate terminology was something she did not want to even try right now. Instead, she would show him.  

... 

God, this was going to suck. 

She called Rhongomyniad to her side. It was sluggish as before, and felt so utterly wrong, but it came into being in a flare of light. She held it up for Gorm to see even as pain blossomed in her chest. 

“So you got a pokey stick, what’s so impressive about that?” Then he looked closer. “Sweet Frigga’s tits the fuck is that shit and why is it so fucking wrong?” 

Artoria nearly faltered as the pain intensified. She dismissed it before the spear’s manifestation could do yet more horrible things to her insides. 

“That, is the manifestation of the Tower at the End of the World. Rhongomyniad,” Tamamo pointed out with a flick of her tails. “And it is currently the only thing keeping this world from melting like cotton candy in the mouths of a whole ass host of eldritch deities that want to nom something touched by the ass of Aiko.” 

For once, Gorm was silent. “This shit’s above my paygrade. I’m taking ya to Odin. Yiggy!” he shouted. 

A gargantuan root faded into reality like it had been there with a man sized hollow. Gorm hopped from the tree and landed at its base, touching the inside only for a long tunnel to appear that went far beyond what should physically have been present in the bus sized root. 

“Well? You two coming or not?” Gorm asked impatiently. 

Looking a bit worried, Tamamo placed a hand on Artoria’s shoulder. Artoria smiled her way before straightening back up.  

They followed Gorm into the hollow, the light of the world fading even as the wood sealed behind them. 

~~~~ 

AN: 

Kitsu: Foxxo has indeed fluffed around and found out. And with this chapter, the Foxxo and the Busty Spear Lady are going to be hopefully taking a step on the correct path. 

But just because it’s correct doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right. 

Hidden: Fun fact about this chapter, while brainstorming and chatting, we realized the implications of how utterly fucked the entire setting may be, and it’s even worse than our initial predictions. So that’s fun.   

Until next time. 

Kitsu: So yeah! Now I bet y’all would love to see more of this as it comes out, but I’ve had several people quit on my ass recently, so I’m going to be putting this on Patreon until I get ten chapters built up there, and only then will I be posting a chapter for every two I put up on patreon. 

Which means because this is a longer fic, we will be having a literal metric fuckton up on patreon long before it ends up anywhere else. Make of that what you will… 

Also, by the time you get this, I will be paying out my ass for a new scooter and my laptop I need for work and breaks, as well as getting around town and shopping! Plz do support me by joining my Patreon and Ko-fi, so that I can actually afford to pay the bills! https://aikoakiyoshi.carrd.co/  

HiddenMaster: I'd also appreciate the support support. Finally stepping into the world of actually posting my works rather than hoarding them like some dragon, so any support, comments, etc., is appreciated. 

Hidden's patreon and KoFi is here: 

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Thanks for reading and stay fluffy! :fox: