Date a live - spirit child

CH.6 Pendragon Vs Alexander

In the forbidden zone Ellen had arrived at around late noon, her bandersnatches on standby and ready to follow her within the next twelve hours. Her first reaction was to make her way to the city since she could clearly see it. Within only a few minutes and without being seen by the AST, Ellen made it to the city to begin her search for Shido and capture him.
Elsewhere inside the city Shido and Aki continue with the festival and Shido looks around for Saori but is soon convinced that she has left the area or hopefully this time. Shido was breaking into a sweat since while he didn't want to say it, he was heavily afraid of what she was capable of doing. Aki noticed Shido sweating and was getting a little upset that he wasn't saying anything.
"Shido what is up with you, you've been acting weird for last half hour and I know something is up so what is it?"
Shido hadn't realized how much he was sweating and since he was sure that Saori had left he decided to tell Aki what had happened. After Shido explained what had happened with Saori, Aki looked around the area with a concerned look and quietly said.
"That psycho was here!?"
Shido was surprised to hear Aki say that.
"You too Aki?"
"What?"
"Calling Saori a psycho, I mean..."
Shido lowers his head in depression. Aki felt ashamed of his words and apologizes.
"Shido I'm sorry, I didn't really mean it"
"I want to help her like I want to help Kurumi"
Aki taps Shido's shoulder and tries to cheer him up.
"I know you will Shido, I know you better than most people, and after all I am your son in sense"
Shido smiles and raises his head.
"Thanks Aki, I'm glad I have a son like you in a sense"
The two teenage boys decide to have a little fun to lighten the mood and they even sang a duet on the stage. They spent the next couple hours messing around the other booths and this went on until sunset and they decided to meet up with the girls.
Ellen was walking through the city and made her discoveries about DEM's downfall and the AST wizards all over the city, so she decided to lay low while feeling disgusted at this world. She then noticed something in the distance, the old DEM building that Tohka destroyed years ago after going inverse and thinks to herself.
"That looks like a good place to start"
Ellen walked by a café and she was seen by someone a woman eating a piece of strawberry shortcake and drinking coffee. The woman received her check from the waitress and compliments the cake.
"It was delicious tell your baker I am grateful"
"Why thank you miss we appreciate costumers like you"
The woman leaves a generous tip for the waitress and even the baker as she leaves clearly after Ellen. Back where Shido and Aki were, Shido then saw the DEM building in the distance and Aki notices his starring and becomes curious.
"What is it now?"
Shido decided to be completely honest with Aki on this matter since it concerned his mother.
"Well Aki that building holds memories for me and Tohka but I can't say that they're good memories"
This caught Aki's interest.
"Really? Well then I'd like to know more about it if you wouldn't mind"
"I don't mind but didn't your parents tell you anything about what happened?"
Aki shakes his head.
"No, my mom said that they had a unique past, but I think she didn't want to scare me so I don't blame her"
"Really? Then again maybe it was for the best"
Shido started having flashbacks of the more unique memories of Tohka, like when she destroyed a bridge, the time she broke several arcade games, and the time she saw him accidently kiss Yoshino. Then he decides to bring Aki to the building to tell him a little more about the incident at the building when Tohka went inverse, and meet up with the girls a little later.
"Would you like to learn more about her?"
Aki nods his head.
"Sure if you don't mind"
The two boys make their way over to the building while Shido talks about how he and Tohka met and the good times they had together so far. Aki was listening to Shido very closely until they reached the building which was actually open to the public with a plaque at the entrance that read: dedicated to one of the starting points of the terrorists fall. Apparently the building was now a war memorial for some reason. Deciding not pay any more attention to the sign, the two enter the building which was still damaged.
As they walk up the stairs they fail to see Ellen following them. She had decided to keep her movements slow to avoid being detected by the AST. Aki was feeling overwhelmed about the information he was getting but enjoyed learning more about his beloved mother. Eventually, they made their way to the top of the roof and that's when Shido decided to talk about the incident.
"Well Aki I've told about the good times, now I should tell you why this building holds an unpleasant memory"
Aki takes a deep breath since Shido had been building up to this moment and he was a little scared to learn something about Tohka that would be remotely negative or dark.
"Well, it went like this..."
Shido spent some time talking about the time Tohka was kidnaped by DEM and how she went inverse after she saw him get impaled by Ellen. While this was going on, Ellen was making her way the stairs and was beginning to have some thoughts about Shinra. While she was ready to obey Isaac, she wasn't trusting of Shinra and wondered why he needed Shido or what his endgame was. Despite this she willing to go with it due to her loyalty to DEM.
After Shido finished telling Aki the story about everything that went on that day, Aki clenched his fist at DEM for what they did to his parents but moreover he was shocked about what his mom nearly did.
"Wow I didn't think she was capable of that"
Shido quickly responded to his disappointment.
"But it wasn't her fault, she only wanted to help me and they pushed her into it"
Aki looked up at the sky which had turned dark from being late.
"Then I hate DEM"
Shido wasn't surprised to hear Aki say that and didn't oppose his statement since DEM did horrible things to Tohka. As he stared at the sky a voice cuts into their moment.
"If you have problems with us then maybe you'd like to share your complaints with me"
Shido and Aki turned and saw Ellen standing on the roof with a smile. Shido immediately recognized her from their last encounter.
"Ellen?"
Shido wasn't expecting to see Ellen, and Aki asked who she was since Shido was getting nervous.
"Shido who is this woman?"
Shido immediately told Aki who she was which may have been a mistake.
"She's the one that kidnaped Tohka and the one who caused her inversion"
Aki's eyes widened.
"She's..the one..who.."
Aki's body begins to emit a red aura; he was getting angry causing his powers to flux. Ellen simply stood there and stated.
"Shido Itsuka, come with me peacefully and no one will be hurt"
Shido remembered how strong she was and was considering just telling Aki to stand down since Shido was sure that he couldn't beat Ellen. Aki, however, was overcome by anger, entered his spirit form and charged at her with his sword in hand.
"I'll hurt YOU!"
Aki charges at Ellen and leaps into the air for a powerful downward slash and Ellen simply puts up a territory around of him knocking him down, and he grunts with pain from the shock. Shido ran over to check on him out of concern.
"AKI!"
As Shido ran over to him, Aki stood up and dashed at Ellen again hoping to attack her, but she doesn't move at all and instead puts up her territory again. Aki notices this and concentrates on summoning his guardian like he did against Saori, and succeeds in doing so, dispelling Ellen's territory. Aki's guardian resumes its place behind Aki after handing him the sheathed sword as he chooses to dual-wield his two swords together. Ellen becomes interested in Aki's display.
"Hmm now I'm curious"
Ellen unties her hair, equips Pendragon, and pulls out her sword.
"Very well, let's see how strong you actually are"
Ellen extends her arm and gives the "come on" gesture.
Downstairs at the bottom of the building, the woman who was following Ellen hears the fighting on the roof and decides to race to the top the fastest way she knew how.
Back on the roof Aki clashes both of his swords with Ellen, but he's no match for her and he actually was ignorant to a crucial fact, he wasn't ambidextrous and so his left hand couldn't handle one of his swords. Ellen berates him for this.
"Huh, so you didn't know your limitations, how skilled are you exactly?"
Aki just gets angrier at Ellen while Shido simply stands and watches until Aki drops the sword in his left hand and Ellen grabs him by the throat. Shido tries to summon Sandalphon to help a little but for some reason can't and watches Ellen continue to berate Aki for his amateur move.
"You idiot, did you honestly think that someone like you could defeat the world's strongest wizard?"
Aki considers using rending saber like he did against Saori but with Shido not being close enough to run away he decides not to manages to breath out an insult to Ellen.
"At least... I have modesty you arrogant woman"
Ellen tightens her grip on Aki's throat as his guardian fades and his armor disappears.
"My orders from Ike wasn't to spare anyone besides Shido, so you're no concern to me, you should feel honored to be killed by the world's strongest wizard"
Ellen casually tosses Aki over the side of the roof and Shido panics and runs over to the ledge to try to help.
"AKI!"
Ellen puts up another territory to knock Shido down to the ground as Ellen walks over to grab him as she thinks to herself.
"Clearly Shinra isn't as resourceful as Ike thinks, this was child's play and waste of time for me"
As Ellen walks over to Shido and attempts to grab him but is stopped by a territory from out of nowhere and actually this territory caused a great surge of pain that causes Ellen to drop to her knees and a voice says to her.
"If you lay one finger on him, I'll tear off that arm!"
Both Ellen and Shido look where the voice came from and to the shock of both them there was a woman equipped with a realizer hovering near the ledge where Aki was thrown and she looked exactly like Ellen only she had a pink dolphin clip in her hair and a little older, she had Aki in her arms passed out. She looked at Ellen with anger in her eyes and dashed over to Shido, but she looked at him her eyes became gentle and kind. She smiled warmly at Shido as asked.
"Are you alright Shido?"
Shido was confused but nods his head anyway as Ellen look-alike put Aki down next to Shido and gave a sigh of relief.
"I'm glad"
The woman turned her sights back on Ellen and gave her a look of hatred. Ellen got back up on her feet and was impressed with her look-alike and began asking questions.
"I'm impressed no one I know could put up such a powerful territory"
The other woman responded to Ellen's compliment coldly with an insult.
"That doesn't mean a thing coming from a dog"
"Excuse me!?"
"I have no interest in the barking of a dog slapped with a blue ribbon."
Ellen was feeling insulted by those words but didn't show it and instead asked.
"Who are you exactly?"
The woman looked at Shido and again smiled at him with gentle eyes as she answered.
"My name is Ellen Mira Mathers Itsuka"
Both Shido and Ellen's eyes went blank with surprise as time seemed to have stopped while the woman's introduction echoed throughout their minds.
Shido was the first to respond to the older Ellen words and sounds overwhelmed.
"Itsuka as in married as in you and me!?"
The older Ellen turns around and nods her head with her warm smile. Shido still couldn't believe what he had heard but wasn't going deny that clearly she was on his side. The older Ellen hugs Shido and says.
"I'll explain when I defeat this dog and don't worry she won't beat me"
The older Ellen moved towards her younger self as Shido trusts in her words since at this point he was ready to believe just about anything. The two Ellen's engage in conversation before fighting with the younger one talking with her fist clenched at her side.
"Why do you call me a dog?"
"Because you ARE a dog"
"Really because by the looks of things you and I are the same person"
"Not at all, we may be the same person in terms of counterparts but I am far superior to you"
"How so?"
"Because I'm not Ike's pet dog anymore"
Ellen became furious at her older self since she had basically admitted to betraying DEM.
"So you're a traitor, then yes you and I aren't the same but no, I am superior to YOU. I am the world's strongest wizard and you are a disgrace"
The older Ellen looks at Shido and asks with an innocent look.
"Was I really this annoying?"
Shido actually smirked a little since he found that a little funny. The younger Ellen on the other hand charges at her older self but is swiftly blocked by the older Ellen's sword. At first they appear to be equal but the older one manages to push her younger self back and send her flying backward. The younger Ellen is surprised by this since they have the same build and apparently the same realizer and quickly sees that in fact the older Ellen is using a different realizer since the older Ellen's had the Ratatoskr symbol on the left wing.
"That realizer was created by Ratatoskr?"
The older Ellen shrugs with a snicker.
"Quicker than I thought. Yes, this is not Pendragon, I've long disposed of that filthy realizer. This is Alexander and my dear sister-in-law arranged for its creation"
Ellen was also furious that her older self got rid of Pendragon.
"Why would you do that!?"
"Why? It's simple really, I wanted to sever all my ties with Ike and so I did."
Her older self was just making Ellen angrier by the moment and clashes with her again. Furious by this point, Ellen asks her last question to her older self.
"Why would abandon everything for him!?"
The older Ellen smiles as she answers.
"Because I have priorities I must protect, I can show you what those priorities can make me do if you'd care to try"
The younger Ellen tries to push forward, but her older self is too strong. Because the AST is too close around the area, Ellen can't use her more powerful attacks except her territory and she uses it to block a downward slash from her older self. However, as she puts it up her older self-quips mockingly.
"I knew you'd do that"
As the younger Ellen's territory goes up the older one places her own territory inside the other causing her younger self-pain from the shock, causing her to fall back to her knees again. The older Ellen looks down on her younger self and mocks her the same way the she mocked Aki.
" I had a counter ready. You should have known that I'd remember how you fight and that you'd be at a disadvantage against me."
The younger Ellen was trying to stand back, but her older counterparts territory is extremely damaging
"I'm the world's strongest..."
"Oh put to that to rest, fighting is about skill and knowledge, not a title. You have skill, but you didn't know I was using a different realizer, you didn't know that I'd have a counter for your territory, and you didn't know I was stronger than you"
The older Ellen approaches her younger self and the younger Ellen smirks through her pain as she utters.
"And you got so cocky you forgot that I can still move"
The younger Ellen rises up and launches the older Ellen's sword into the air leaving her without a weapon and cuts her hand. The younger Ellen then points her sword at her older counterpart and boasts to her.
"You may be me, but I am the clear superior between the two of us. I'm not a traitor like you, I have my pride, and you have nothing"
"One last thing you didn't know, you should have realized I wouldn't have let go of my sword so easily"
The younger Ellen then realizes what she meant, but it was too late as the older Ellen's sword impales her from the back around her stomach. She looks down to look at her injury and sees the blade sticking out of the front of her body. The older Ellen actually grabs the blunt end and starts pulling more the sword more through her opponent's body causing her to cry out a little from the pain.
Shido sees this and asks the older Ellen to stop with fear in his voice.
"Ellen stop it!"
The older Ellen hears him and stops pulling as she tells her younger self with a mocking tone.
"You're very lucky I love that man"
She lifts up her leg and push kicks the sword out her opponents back, leaving a very small hole where the sword was. The younger Ellen falls to the ground holding her injury. The older Ellen rushes back to Shido and puts her smile back on when facing him and she apologizes to him.
"I'm so sorry you had to see that Shido"
Shido regains his composure and responds to the older Ellen who unequips her realizer revealing herself to be wearing a blue sweater, a knee-length tan skirt, and brown boots, she wore her hair untied and slightly longer than her younger self.
"At least you didn't kill her and thank you for saving my friend"
"Don't mention it I'm just glad your okay"
"By the way, how'd you pull that off?"
"Oh it's simple, when she knocked my sword out of my hand I generated a territory near it and carefully put up more territories to bounce it and then when it was in proper position I bounced it at her without being noticed"
"Then you didn't aim to kill"
Ellen shakes her head.
"No, I don't want to kill anyone in presence, ever"
Aki wakes up and asks what happened but Ellen suggests they leave before the AST shows up and catches them. As they try to leave the younger Ellen stops them before they can go down the stairs by making insults to her older counterpart.
"You can't say you've beaten me, traitor if I used my full power you'd be on the ground instead of me. You only won because I was holding back"
The older Ellen without talking walks over to her younger self and kicks her in the face knocking her flat on her back, and grabs her by the shirt and explains something to her.
"No, I can because you're forgetting that I was holding back and I didn't need to. Let me ask you this, do you know why I'm better than you?"
"..."
"It's because I know how you think and you barely how I think. You didn't think about who you were fighting, you didn't think once that I would have a counter ready, and you didn't know that your cocky attitude would let me defeat you"
The older Ellen lets go of her of her younger self and walks back to Shido and proceed down the stairs with the younger Ellen furious at her older self.
"If you leave now then you forfeit, I haven't lost, and I'm still the world's strongest wizard"
The older Ellen looks at her younger self and shakes her head with disgust and the younger Ellen shouts.
"GET BACK HERE!"
She then passes out on the ground from her injury. Making their way down the stairs the three walk and Shido makes small talk with the Ellen who was actually was much different than her younger self and is actually a gentle woman and Shido was beginning to see how her husband would love her. Aki, on the other hand, was feeling sad because he couldn't even scratch the other Ellen.
" She beat me so easily. I feel so...useless "
Shido looked at Aki and was about to say something when Ellen actually cheered him up by saying.
"Don't feel bad about losing to her. Not many people I know can do it as easily as I did"
Aki felt a little better but still couldn't help but feel useless. Shido was wondering why he couldn't summon Sandalphon to help Aki he begins to theorize it's because Tohka and he are in different times, but that wouldn't make since her powers are inside his body. The two boys think about their own problems, but then they both realize something and shout out at the same time.
"OH CRAP THE GIRLS!"
Elsewhere in the city Akane and Kurumi were sitting in a hotel room they got since luckily Akane and Kurumi both had money on hand. Kurumi was asleep since Akane was supposed to keep an eye out for the boys from a window but decided to watch TV for a little while. She was drinking lots of soda to stay awake and was channel surfing a lot but then something caught her eye, a news report about a rogue DEM wizard being captured. Akane looked at the mugshot of the captured wizard and spit out her soda when she saw that the wizard looked exactly like Mana. Normally Akane would shrug this off but was certain that she was certain this Mana was from Shido's time and not a look-a-like.
"Well this just got freaking perfect"
Akane woke up Kurumi and ran back to the city since Shido needed to know ASAP. Outside in the forbidden zone another portal opened and a group of bandersnatches emerged, ready to capture Shido