Mini-Grand 5111 [Round 3: Menagerie]

Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.

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It was a peaceful evening in the small fishing town. The citizenry was, mostly, enjoying the sticky heat brought by this Indian summer.

Rising high above the town was a speck of blue in the golden sunset sky.

It grew and grew.

If you looked through it you could see clouds that had not been there before.

And suddenly high in the skies above the town was a flaming hunk of metal the size of a hotel. At one time it may have resembled a plane; you would be hard pressed to tell.

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Rannus' arrival in the town, a minute or so earlier, had been perhaps slightly more dramatic than intended. He’d appeared in the middle of a crowded bar to the confusion of the patrons within. His charm he had constructed on board the plane fumbled with the adjustment to the non-slanting environment and everyone in the bar was thrown backwards, causing drinks to be spilled, glasses to be smashed and tables to be tipped over. Rannus himself stumbled forwards but managed to find his footing before falling. He spun around to the spot where he had been appeared and began to trace shapes in the air, numbling magical incantations under his breath.

At this precise moment he was fixated upon the plane, upon the lives of the innocent people still trapped upon that metal contraption. He had little to no interest in this place for the time being. Though he had not had time to gauge the situation the voice that had forced him here had not mentioned anything about any impending doom that would be visited upon wherever it was that he was now located. But quickly his train of thought was derailed and his focus pulled away. Here in this world he had rediscovered something that had been missing for such a long time; mana.

While it was true it was not available in the high quantities that it had been in his homeworld pre-Crisis, it was more than he was used to. His fingertips tingled as the mana ran through his body. For a moment the giddy thrill of the mana almost tempted him to conjure some illusions; something big and showy but ultimately pointless. He had been quite adept at illusion shows back in his homeworld. He had to remind himself that there were more important things at stake and that he could not frivolously throw mana around like it was the good old days again. He forced himself back into that serious mindset and quickly completed the ritual he had began. It was a trivial matter now that the mana was flowing.

The ritual complete he turned on his heel until he found the nearest door, pushed through the crowd of confused drunks and stepped out into the street. The ritual had been a relatively simple one, one designed to give him information about where he had so recently been; what amounted to a set of magical co-ordinates that he could use. A couple of steps out of the bar and he was performing another ritual. A speck of blue opened high in the sky above.

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"Darn." Rannus said as the wreckage of Pan Asia Airways Flight 1727 plummeted towards the town.