MSF High Stories: Mei-Ling and Tera, Chapter 1

Mei-Ling sipped at her tea cautiously.  Before her arrival at MSF High, she'd been quite used to a number of exotic blends, but nothing she'd tasted before had prepared her for the myriad of flavors the Orcs had devised since the inception of the Castaways Treaty Systems.  In their desperate bid to create a unique culture, they must have tried brewing every leaf they'd come across, and Mei-Ling's last experience, an unspeakably bitter tea concocted from the anselberry plant, had her on her toes.  This time, however, she was pleasantly surprised with her grunkroot tea, making the mental note that it seemed that Orcish teas with more harsh syllables in their names had a more sweet and fruity taste.

The selection of tea, as nice as it was, wasn't the sole reason Mei-Ling had started frequenting Barlich's cafe.  For one, it was one of the closest restaurants to the battle arena that wasn't one of the more high-class and similarly high-cost affairs, and after her daily sparring sessions it was nice to have a place nearby to unwind.  Secondly, the owner, Barlich, had come to her fights ever since she'd first started frequenting the cafe, and a part of her felt she owed it to him.  Most importantly, however, was the window her booth was situated next to, through which she had an excellent vantage point of the people of Mahou City making their way down the streets.  The city's size, host to no more than perhaps ten thousand people, was one of the strangest parts of this world to her.  Back on her home planet of Mythar, there was hardly a single village with such a low population, and such a group would still require outside infrastructure to maintain their relatively simple lifestyle.  Here, though, thanks to the advanced magical and scientific techniques taught at MSF High, the tiny stretch of land was able to sustain a strong economy that made the place into a scaled-down city, with only a few buildings taller than four stories but all the amenities of the megalopolises she had grown up in.

Thanks to the city's small size, nearly everyone walked wherever they wanted to go, though occasionally one of the few buses or someone's hovering science project would zoom by.  This gave Mei-Ling the perfect opportunity to practice another of her hobbies and watch the people as they went about their business.  Most of who she saw she knew only by appearance, nearly every face somewhat familiar as a fellow student or one of the many graduates or refugees that helped run the town.  It was always easy to tell a refugee from a graduate or a student, as those who'd been selected to attend the school tended to have some sort of outrageous equipment on their person.  Not that Mei-Ling could judge anyone for that.  Other than the occasional date, she almost always wore her qipao, a modified version of a traditional dress cut up to the hips to allow maximum freedom of movement, with tights and a pair of heavy boots.  Being dressed like that would have gotten strange looks on Mythar even if she was in her original Elven body, without her newly-acquired dark gray skin, red eyes, and silver-to-red hair, but here even with all of that and the solid, muscular body she'd been working to maintain, she wasn't much of a standout.  She smiled at that though, contrasting the diversity here with the racism she'd worked so hard to fight against in her home time period.  Even if the Golden Alliance had moved past that particular black mark on their record, she doubted that the citizens of her home faction would be so accepting of all that she would see on a daily basis.

Setting her tea down to start on the hamburger she'd ordered to go along with it, Mei-Ling singled out a few people walking down the street that she more intimately recognized.  Buster, a Martial Lupina, was walking along with Cassie, a Water Elemental.  Both of them were, like her, competitors in the Mahou City Battle League.  Buster Talino, a tall, muscular wolf-man in a trucker's cap, was in a different division from her, but his companion, Cassie, was one that Mei-Ling had fought before.  Though she'd managed to beat the blue-skinned girl in her last match, she was very appreciative for the chance to learn from Mei-Ling's kick-heavy technique.  Given the pair's freshly-cleaned looks, Mei-Ling surmised that they had just finished sparring with one another, and were likely chatting about their individual techniques.  That Buster's speech was peppered with pantomimed punches confirmed her suspicions.

Clutching a bag tightly and darting her eyes back and forth suspiciously, Tessa Voltaire was trotting rapidly down the street.  She was wearing an oversized trenchcoat to hide her identity from someone, but her shock of frazzled blue and white hair was more than enough to give her away.  Interesting, Mei-Ling thought to herself, to see her out during the daytime.  The poor girl had kept to herself ever since her partner Odenise broke off from her, taking their business with her.  She had always been pretty quirky, though, she it wasn't likely that she was out causing any mischief.  Tessa was certainly distracted, though, as stepping off the sidewalk into the crosswalk was too big a task for her brilliant yet stuffed-to-the-brim mind, and she took a tumble onto the street.  Thankfully, one of the alumni, a levitating Ghost with pale orange skin, helped her up and the scientific genius went on her way.

This continued for quite some time.  Mei-Ling's roommate Niu was still busy with her swim team practice, and it would be another half hour before Mei-Ling would need to set out to meet her afterwards.  Until she had begun coming here, Mei-Ling had preferred to keep watch over her roommate, feeling at least in part responsible for her transformation into a Dark Elf, the erasure of her memories, and the subsequent events that brought the two of them to MSF High, but Mei-Ling had finally convinced herself that Niu would be safe apart from her for a few hours every day.  Seeing familiar faces that she was able to trust, even rely on, helped her with this notion.  With her burger long gone, Mei-Ling continued to sip at her tea.  The tiny heating pad built into the table had kept it from going cold, yet another reason to frequent this place, she figured.  Unfortunately, this meant that when the sirens went off, Mei-Ling accidentally splashed herself with piping hot tea.

It wasn't the first time she'd heard them by a long shot, at least once a week they seemed to go off.  She, like all of the other denizens of the city, knew exactly what they meant by now.  Shadows were coming.  As incredible as Mahou City was, it wasn't without its downsides.  The largest of them is these, the shadows.  A side-effect of the multitude of spells that kept the city and its residents alive, clean, and healthy despite the circumstances, it was difficult to describe exactly what a shadow was, except that it was created from negative emotions the students of the school often harbored.  They could take the shape of a student's worst fear or their best friend, and had only one goal--find the student they had originated from, come into physical contact with them, and infest their mind with such powerful negative emotions that the student fell into a coma.  Niu had been the target of more than one such shadow, and Mei-Ling was immediately worried that this one might be headed for her.  Thankfully, she was just behind the school, and there would be plenty of powerful teachers, students, and various graduates present to stop the creature were that the case.  Mei-Ling pushed her worries to the side and ran to the cafe's main entrance, holding it open to assist the people walking down the sidewalk into the building to take cover from whatever was headed this way.

The others from outside quickly darted into the cafe, the less combat-ready among them ducking into booths while the better-equipped citizens steeled themselves for possible battle.  It wasn't easy to take on a shadow--the things were ethereal and each one seemed to have its own particular weakness, and it wasn't often that they stopped to fight with anyone other than someone close to their target.  Still, this was a city of heroes-in-training, and it simply wouldn't do to sit there doing nothing if there was some way they could help.  Mei-Ling was among those that barreled out the doors once they were certain everyone else was safe, taking positions along the side of the street and atop the buildings to get a better glimpse at what was coming.  It was none of these students that caught Mei-Ling's eye, though.  Walking slowly down the middle of the street, her arms outstretched, was a girl that Mei-Ling recalled from her classes wearing an expression that haunted the Dark Elf's memories.

The girl in the middle of the street was incredibly beautiful, with a gentle body shape and clear tan skin free of any blemishes.  Her aquamarine eyes, lavender facial markings and long green hair complemented each other perfectly, and she was dressed in a sort of robe with flared strands of fabric that flowed around her.  She was barefoot, but her feet were just as clean as the rest of her skin.  But it was her face, and the saddened expression upon it, that Mei-Ling couldn't help but focus on.  Immediately, Mei-Ling recalled her last moments as a High Elf on Mythar.  How she'd been paralyzed and left to watch as a mob-sponsored wizard used his powerful mind magics to erase the mind of the girl who would be her roommate Niu.  The look of utter despair as she realized that no one was coming to save her, that her situation was hopeless, it was the same as the expression on this girl.  Somehow, she knew that whatever was coming was coming for her, and she had already given up.  The girl had no reaction as someone from the top of the cafe yelled down to the street.

"They're headed this way!  Out of the street, there's too many of them!"

The last time she had seen someone in this state, Mei-Ling had been magically held in place, and it was only after summoning every last ounce of her willpower that she had managed to free herself.  This time, however, she acted quickly, running with all of the speed afforded by her powerful legs to grab the girl and run far enough away that the others would be able to deal with the monsters.  Just as she approached the girl, though, she lifted three of the fingers on her right hand, causing the asphalt to rapidly peel up under Mei-Ling, launching her away as though it were a pinball flipper.  With a hard thunk, she slammed into the corner of the building next door to the cafe, only barely regaining her balance before she slid off onto the sidewalk.  From up ahead on the street, she could see blasts of magical energy firing at the threat beyond, but they seemed to have little effect, as Mei-Ling got a glimpse of the shadows.

In her own experience fighting the beasts, she had grown used to them being various sizes, up to a particularly nasty 25-footer that she was only able to take down with the help of Vice Principal Kasumi's Handmaidens.  This, though, was completely different.  Instead of a few large shadows, what was approaching were what must have been thousands of smaller ones, each no more than a couple feet high.  Like an inky carpet of steaming darkness, they pushed their way through the students trying to fight them off, a few dissipating from the magical damage but the largest mass of them simply too much to deal with.  Mei-Ling shook off the pain from the hit, tensed her muscles, and made a second go at the girl.  This time, she took a mighty leap into the air, but without even looking in Mei-Ling's direction, the girl pulled her hand into a fist, and the large chunk of asphalt that had kept her away shattered into dozens of basketball-sized rocks, which spun around her in a barrier that pelted Mei-Ling relentlessly as she came closer.  Her jump was halted by the first few rocks, and the barrage drained her stamina away faster than she could gain distance.  Seconds later, the shadows, building into a massive wave as the ones behind were less damaged than the ones in front, crashed over the girl, the rocks she had been using to prevent Mei-Ling from getting any closer falling harmlessly against the street as the girl collapsed into the slowly shrinking mass of monsters funneling into her.  

Mei-Ling dove in to try and pull her out, but was only able to fish around blindly through the darkness, pushing the little creatures aside only to reveal more of them.  From within the cluster of shadows, she let loose with her ki blast techniques, disintegrating as many as she could manage, but by the time the mess had cleared it was apparent that more had found their mark than had been eliminated.  Through the steaming road below, she was finally able to recognize the shape of the girl.  Without a moment's wait, she picked up her limp body and ran to the school's infirmary, leaping to the tops of the buildings to take the fastest route.