Chapter Text
Stuck in a plain Jane-style neighborhood in Great Britain, one little girl by the name of Harriet Potter could only wonder if there was some sort of deity that was using her existence for its amusement. She looks about four years old, but she is 6; she is in her current state due to the malnutrition caused by the relatives she is forced to stay with. For her entire existence, it seems like she, alone, is the embodiment of everything they hate. This is reinforced by calling her a freak, making her do all the chores in the house, and being used as the scapegoat whenever something goes wrong in the household. What broke her already fragile heart was overhearing that her parents were not only alive but had chosen to abandon her to her current fate.
Working in the garden during a blistering summer sun, with no sunblock on her body, Harriet overheard her aunt and uncle talking.
"Bloody hell, why are we still taking care of the freak bitch?" Vermon grumbled. "Her freaky parents don't want the brat, yet they shove her onto us normal folks."
Hearing this, Harriet silently started to cry; she knew if they heard a peep from her there would be even more punishment for her.
"It's only thanks to the money that whore and the drunk are giving us that she's still alive." Petunia sneered.
Feeling her heart break even more, the child quickly finished her chores before being told to scram for the rest of the day. Wandering the town, her feet brought her to a church; one of the places that took care of her. Kneeling at one of the alters, she started to pray, though as she did so Harriet never saw a blonde-haired woman frowning in sadness.
"Dear Lord, why did mommy and daddy abandon me?" Harriet quietly cried.
Since the church was quiet, the priests and nuns heard her and felt their hearts go out to the child. They knew she had magic; however, the red tape and the jurisdictions made it so that it was out of their hands. However, that didn’t stop them from helping: tasks that had her outside of the Dursleys' reach were most successful. Sometimes though; such tasks weren’t always an option, especially when Harriet had to leave town with the Dursleys.
Since the discovery of her abandonment, Harriet felt dead to the world, as if the soul is gone and the body is just going through the motions and not caring about the alarming amount of injuries she acquires from her punishments.
Even at school, she's only a ghost that scares the other children, but the adults believed in the rumors the Dursleys spread about her being a no-good troublemaker; thankfully, some don't believe that rubbish.
On the more mystical side of things, it seems that at the core of her magic is struggling to fight against the shard of the soul who attacked her family resulting in her abandonment. Magic that could barely keep the soul shard at bay and next to no chance of actually defeating it permanently without something aiding it. It would only be years later that it would finally be destroyed.
A year later, there would be some unexpected luck for the enslaved child as the Dursleys would be forced to take her to France for some business. This would work well for them as they planned on leaving the child and continuing to steal the money.
Watching the Dursleys driving off into the distance after shoving her out the door as it was still moving. Harriet held her sprained arm to a random town near the beach, and upon reaching the sands there was an explosion, and seeing where it was the weird monster-looking creatures were rampaging. Having caught glimpses of the various newscasts on TV, it wasn’t difficult for Harriet to realize what the creatures were. Noise. Unknown beings were immune to conventional weapons that turned anything they touched into either dust or simply not leaving anything at all behind. She had only one option. Run and pray that the Noise didn’t catch her. Making a misstep and falling into a cave system, Harriet never saw a flash of blue and silver jumping from a helicopter.
Making her way through the dark system of tunnels normal children would cry and wail but for this child in particular she was used to the dark never understanding why people thought it was evil. Soon finding an aspect of light in the distance, Harriet kept walking towards it soon finding a cavern littered with armor, weapons, and bones. Making sure not to crush any of the bones, the child soon found a spear/Lance hybrid-type weapon that seemed to reach out to her.
"Take it." a voice whispered as if she, by the sound of it, was standing right next to her.
Slowly reaching out for the weapon, Harriet felt the earth shake, causing her to drop the weapon. Unfortunately, as it was tumbling about, the spearhead stabbed her in the heart, not deep enough to kill her thankfully. However, the result of this accidental stabbing was an explosion of magic that coated the girl in a bright light.
Underneath the bright light, the spear seemed to extend, twist, and unfold in places where it shouldn’t have been able to. The spear's tip seemed to grow several times larger than before until it reached a size where it was as big as Harriet herself. The tip then appeared to shatter into several pieces of metal that wrapped itself around Harriet in various pieces and transformed into pieces of actual armor. Once the armor pieces were in place, some kind of white goop started to leak out from underneath the metal pieces and connect the pieces before changing from a semi-liquid material to a material that clung onto Harriet’s body tightly while still fully allowing her to move around freely; forming an outfit straight out of an anime. Other noticeable changes are the blonde tints in her hair and the fact that while her left eye stayed emerald, the right eye was now purplish-blue. Groaning awake, Harriet looked at herself. "W-What happened to me?!" She said a bit louder than she was used to. Stumbling a bit in the shoes she had on, the child looked to the right and saw that the earthquake caused it to cave in; which revealed the beach. Stumbling out of the cave entrance, Harriet could see two young women combatting the Noise. In such an intense situation for a child like her, she wanted to curl into a ball however seeing one of the creatures about to attack the blue-haired woman from behind. Something inside her screamed to take action, so with the spear in hand the little girl waved it forward. Gasping in shock when a flag unraveled from near the top curling up like a snake launching forward, blocking the attack.
Not expecting this to appear in front of their eyes, the blue-haired woman activated the blades in her heels while the sword in her colleagues broke apart, turning into a whip. Both ladies then made quick work of the remaining Noise.
Seeing them rush towards her direction, Harriet frantically waved the spear in front of her, “D-Don’t come a-any closer.” she said.
“It’s ok. Little one the Noise is gone.” the pink one said, grabbing the spear so that it wouldn’t get in the way.
"Where's your family, little one?" the other lady asked.
“Who cares!? My parents abandoned me, and not only that! My aunt and uncle just left me here!” Asking about the girl’s family was the wrong thing to ask as the girl in question seemed to put all her year's worth of pent-up emotions into her sentences. "They're worthless pieces of shit who paid my aunt and uncle money to turn me into their fucking slave, making me do all the chores while punishing me if I make one tiny fucking mistake." she ranted as the armor vanished, replacing it with her civilian clothes. While the two older women were shocked at the profanities that left the child's lips, something that lasted a minute or two, tears started to swell. "The only thing I want to ask them before shoving that spear up their asses is why did they abandon me? Am I not good enough to be called their daughter?" She asked before she finally fainted from exhaustion and pain.
Catching the child before she hit the ground, the pink-haired woman turned to her comrade. "We are taking her and that's final."
Her friend nodded, not needing to say anything before calling a chopper to pick them up. While the pilots did raise a respective eyebrow at the sight of the girl in the pink-haired woman’s arms and the flagged spear in the blue-haired one’s hands, they knew they didn’t have either the authority or courage to question the woman’s decision.
“Tsubasa reporting. Mission accomplished, all Alca-Noise entities have been exterminated.”
“Mission Control copies. Did you or Maria discover where the Aufwachen Waveform came from?”
"Yes, however, we were beaten to it by a child who resonated with it on the level of Hibiki and the Durandal. We are returning to base along with our guest," she reported. Taking a seat next to her friend, though a small part of her wants it to be more.
Rummaging a hand through the child's hair, the pink-haired woman knew what it was like to be an orphan but never did she realized what it was like for her own family to abandon her, "Bonds of blood are pathetic." she said, "If her parents abandoned her then what use is there for the phrase ‘blood is thicker than water’?"
"Hey now, no need to talk like that." Tsubasa gently chides, "Not all families are like that. Hibiki's and Miku's families aren't like that." When S.O.N.G finally got around to informing the parents they were upset but were persuaded not to sue due to their daughters defending them.
Seeing as it would take a total of thirteen hours for a straight flight, the two women went to sleep with the child in their laps.
"So when do you think they'll finally confess?" one of the pilots asked, making small talk. Some of the members of their organization had an open bet on when those two would be a couple. Oh, they knew the backlash it might cause for the two singers to get married, although, some of those laws are slowly being abolished, as the times change.
“Yukine’s bet on a few months after their upcoming anniversary concert in a couple of weeks seems like a pretty safe bet. Not sure why she thinks that one of them will ask the question on live television during the concert in between songs and made an additional bet on that detail, though.”
“If she’s right about that detail, it’d mean that she wins the whole pot.”
“True. Let us then hope that she is wrong.” That prompted the two pilots to chuckle amongst themselves. Their passengers could hear their laughter but said passengers hadn’t heard their conversation. The adult passengers might have been able to pretend they hadn’t heard the pilots talking or simply ignore it, but the same couldn’t be said about the youngest passenger in the helicopter, who had managed to hear the pilots talking due to them not disconnecting the headset on the girl’s head, which caused her to start waking up and as a consequence waking up the other two passengers.
“Hello there, little one. Had a good rest?” Asked the pink-haired woman as the girl who had been sleeping in her lap sat up.
“Actually, yes. Thanks for asking, but where am I and who are you people?” Asked Harriet in return while curiously tilting her head to the side, unexpectedly making her neck release a surprisingly loud pop, causing the blue-haired woman to fully wake up, clearly not expecting to sound.
“My name is Maria. This is my colleague, Tsubasa.” Replied the pink-haired woman, now known as Maria, while placing a hand on the aforementioned colleague, now known as Tsubasa’s shoulder. While she didn’t say anything about it, Tsubasa seemed a little disappointed that Maria just called her a colleague and not something more… significant.
“As for where we are, probably somewhere over Eastern Europe or Western Asia heading towards Japan.” While Tsubasa’s revelation regarding where they were and where the helicopter was heading surprised Harriet, the girl didn’t seem to be particularly concerned.
“Not that I’m complaining, but why Japan?”
“Our headquarters are there and our mission was to retrieve the Relic you awakened.”