Part 1
Blazers.
They were irregular people, found one-in-a-thousand, who could each materialize his or her soul as a weapon called a Device.
In ages past, they were called magicians and witches. The strongest among them could shape the flow of time using abilities that science didn't explain, and even the weakest were extraordinary. Though they were human, they possessed a supernatural power that surpassed human limits, a power unattainable by the common man through training or technology.
Nowadays, national militaries and even local police forces required Blazers. Yet great power brought responsibility befitting its status. One expression of such responsibility was the mage-knight system, the arrangement where Blazers must graduate from an internationally approved vocational school to receive license and social status as mage-knights―in other words, approval to use their abilities.
Hagun Academy was one of seven mage-knight academies in Japan, a school said to span more than ten times the area of Tokyo Dome[1]. Here, young Blazers spent day after day diligently polishing their skills as student knights.
And in Hagun Academy, Ikki Kurogane―accused of molestation and caught red-handed by dormitory guards―was brought to the board chairman's office. There, a beautiful woman in a suit was sitting on a sofa and smoking a cigarette. Kurono Shinguuji, the new chairman of Hagun, had finished hearing Ikki's explanation on the chain of events, and she replied in a tired voice.
"I see, so you were trying to atone for the accident of seeing her half-naked by stripping yourself. Are you a moron?"
"I thought it was an equitable, gentlemanly idea."
"You were definitely some sort of gentleman."
"No, I wasn't trying to be a lewd gentleman. ...Well, now that I think about it, I guess I did suddenly go on a rampage."
"Hah. In other words, after seeing her charmingly naked body, you lost control and took off your clothes without thinking?"
"...It might be how things happened, but could you please not phrase it like that? Aren't you making me sound like a really dangerous guy?"
"Even if you say so, Kurogane, try to imagine that scene after putting yourself in her shoes. In a dormitory with hardly any people because of spring break, you're suddenly interrupted by an unknown boy while changing clothes, and then he throws his clothes off too. How might you see him?"
"Like a really dangerous guy...."
After reexamining things from the girl's perspective like Kurono suggested, Ikki shivered.
"...Haa. I certainly did something unforgivable on Stella-san's first day of studying abroad. I really hope she won't start hating Japan because of this."
"What, you know about Vermillion?"
"I was too startled to recognize the face when I ran into her, but I remembered just a while ago."
Her name was Stella Vermillion, and she was a princess of the Vermillion Empire, a small European nation. It was big news in the media that she was studying abroad in Japan. 『A prodigy said to appear only once in a decade! Stella Vermillion-sama (15), the second imperial princess of the Vermillion Empire, enrolls at Hagun Academy after getting record marks!』 Ikki still recalled that article vividly.
"A real princess, and on top of that she enrolled as a student. She's amazing, isn't she?"
"She became number one by a wide margin too, far exceeding the average score for all the categories, and her aura capacity, a Blazer's most important trait, is about thirty times that of a regular incoming student. A monstrous A-Rank Blazer.... Compared to a certain F-Rank who's repeating a year because his attribute scores were too low, there sure is a difference. Don't you agree, 'Worst One'?"
