In the far-off world of Melromarc, Four Great Heroes are taken from their world and brought to the Kingdom of Melromarc to thwart disaster.
One of these heroes, Naofumi Iwatani, is given the Cardinal Shield as his weapon. However, in a twist, Naofumi already has experience in using magic in his world. Before he was taken, he was apprenticed at Kamar Taj under the Masters of the Mystic Arts.
A Special Kind Of Magic is a The Rising of the Shield Hero/Marvel Cinematic Universe Crossover fanfic by B1ack0ut that can be read on Archive of Our Own here
and Fanfiction Dot Net here.
A Special Kind Of Magic provides examples of:
- Adaptation Personality Change: canon!Naofumi started out as a soft-spoken otaku before being broken down unto a Knight in Sour Armor. Here, he is more of the Absent-Minded Professor-type who is more interested in learning the ins and outs of Melromarc and its magic system to even notice whatever conspiracies are going on around him.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Due to Mirellia revealing Malty's duplicity earlier than in canon, Ren and Itsuki gradually end up becoming friends with Naofumi. It helps that Naofumi genuinely helps them and has others willing to believe him to explain things to them.
- Adaptational Badass:
- Naofumi having Marvel sorcery powers allows him to go on the offensive more than his canon self.
- While Raphtalia was an impressive swordswoman in canon, here Naofumi manages to procure for her a Cool Sword forged from the remnants of Mjolnir. This newly remade Mjolnir is not only a near-indestructible sword with stats beyond normal parameters, but it has all of the same powers of the original hammer, including command of the weather and Instant Armor. By the time the Three Heroes Church starts to make their move, Raphtalia is essentially a demihuman Thor.
- Adaptational Explanation: The exact reason the king that Itsuki killed was overtaxing his people was never explained in canon. Here, his lands had an extremely poor harvest and he's using the taxes to try and recultivate the land.
- Adaptational Friendship: Due to Mirellia revealing Malty's duplicity earlier than in The Rising of the Shield Hero, Ren and Itsuki gradually end up becoming friends with Naofumi.
- Ascended Fanboy: It wasn't until Naofumi manages to get back to Kamar Taj with the Shield on his arm was he able to meet the Sorcerer Supreme Dr. Strange, a man Naofumi had admired for his entire stay there.
- Back from the Dead: Chapter 6 reveals that Naofumi was one of the victims of the Decimation, so this trope applies to his backstory.
- Batman Gambit: The book that teleported Naofumi to Melromarc was an anomalous addition to Kamar-Taj's library that Doctor Strange had found during his years as an apprentice. Rather than notify anyone about it, he left it there knowing — both through sensing its dormant power and use of the Eye of Agamotto — that it would eventually reveal itself in its own time.
- Death by Adaptation: Petra kills Beloukas.
- Didn't See That Coming:
- The Queen's Shadows are left flat footed when Naofumi is able to find them with ease, especially since they are using magic to augment their stealth powers. This is because Naofumi can sense the fact that they are using magic at all, meaning that their stealth magic might as well be them waving a banner with their names on it to Naofumi.
- Malty and Aultcray had no idea that Naofumi was already in contact with Mirelia when they try to throw a False Rape Accusation at him, throwing a wrench into their plans because he's got an iron-clad alibi.
- Dimensional Traveler: Using his sling-ring, Naofumi can travel between Melomarc and MCU at will.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- Naofumi meets Queen Mirelia much earlier that he does in canon thanks to having one of her shadows in his party and his Thinking Up Portals ability. Because of this, he manages to portal her to the castle when he is being accused of raping Myne/Malty. This not only provides an alibi for the Shield Hero (as he was with the Queen when he allegedly committed the rape), but she is able to kneecap the King's authority before he manages to pull any of the shit he did in the meantime.
- Chapter 6 has Naofumi outright butterfly out of existence the major problems that Ren and Itsuki caused (respectively, killing Wyndia's dragon foster father, whose corpse poisoned the land before turning into a Draco Lich for Ren and killing a foreign king for Itsuki, which sent the king's lands into chaos) by giving them a book that explains why these are bad things (respectively, revealing that Wyndia's foster father is not aggressive and that the king is facing his own problems).
- Hypocrite: Itsuki tut-tuts Naofumi for interrupting King Melromarc and asking why the Four heroes are expected to be their saviors with no training.Itsuki: Hey, no need to be rude to royalty.
Naofumi: You were literally just threatening them a moment ago. - Infinity +1 Sword: Naofumi explicitly uses his knowledge of his homeworld to create these, by first copying Captain America's shield (and giving Sam a good scare while doing so), and then gaining Raphtalia a sword with the same powers as Mjolnir!
- In Spite of a Nail:
- It's been confirmed that Sword Art Online exists in both the MCU and Ren's home universe, despite the wildly different histories and timelines. People in both worlds also find it to be less than stellar in quality.
- While Motoyasu became convinced that Naofumi was a rapist and a scoundrel from Myne's False Rape Accusation, here Motoyasu still doesn't trust him and even tries to recruit Raphtalia into his party despite having no actual reason for it. Then again, Motoyasu is an idiot.
- Irony: Canon had the heroes assume that Naofumi would be reborn if they killed him. Here, Chapter 6 reveals that Naofumi was a victim of the Decimiation, meaning he did actually come Back from the Dead.
- Like a Duck Takes to Water: It doesn't take long for Petra and Raphtalia to adapt to the more advanced technological of Naofumi's world. By the time the first wave hits, Raphtalia has basically become a Phoneaholic Teenager with literal godlike power.Motoyasu: You two! Please listen, I can help you. You don't have to stay with him! Join my party, and I'll make sure you're taken care of.
Raphtalia: [Beat] Do you have wifi?
Motoyasu: Um...no.
Raphtalia: Goodbye then. - New Life in Another World Bonus: While Naofumi himself doesn't realize it, the sorcery he has been trained in not only gives him an advantage over the other heroes in terms of combat, but it essentially makes him an indomitable wild card when it comes to the internal politics of their world. Ren even compares his ability to generate dimension-spanning portals to a player who "started a new game with his old stats".
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Naofumi finds out what is causing the Waves in the form of a "magical super computer" equivalent and hacking into this system by inputting a shut down command on any of the Waves before they release any monsters. However, Naofumi's actions attracted the attention of a very angry Medea for "ruining [her] game."
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Naofumi is indicated to be an average sorcerer in the MCU, but this still puts him above all the other heroes by a lot, due to all the weird things that happen in the MCU.
- Not a Game: Ren and Itsuki fully realized the situation they are in is not a game after Naofumi shown them the truth.
- Not So Above It All: Once Naofumi gets the hang of his shield's weapon copying function, what is one of the shields he chooses to copy? Captain America's! And then he makes a sword version of Mjolnir!
- Outside-Context Problem: Naofumi is this to the Three Heroes Church, Aultcray, and Malty, as their plan to frame him didn't account for the possibility that he came from a world where catastrophes like the Waves happen pretty much at the drop of a hat.
- Popcultural Osmosis Failure: Naturally, the references Naofumi make tend to fly over the heads of those from the other world. The only person to get the references at first (Petra and Raphtalia learn of franchises that exist in Naofumi's world later) is Ren, who seemingly feels inner pain at being called Kirito.
- Refuge in Audacity: Not only does Naofumi use a portal to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here on Fitoria, he steals some of her feathers while doing so!
- Science Hero: Naofumi ends up being this - his focus isn't on just repelling the waves, but studying them so that he can find a permanent end to them. This is especially ironic considering in the MCU he would fall under the Token Wizard category like the rest of Kamar Taj.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the King explains the basic gist of the situation — that the Four Heroes were summoned to their world to save it from the Waves of Catastrophe — Naofumi immediately opens a portal with his sling-ring and goes back to Kamar-Taj to regroup with Wong. While he promised to return the next day, the idea of a Hero freely moving between their world and his own is so unprecedented that it whips the castle into a panic.
- Shout-Out: During Raphtalia's raid on Idol's mansion, the narration at one point quotes "Spinning, that was a good trick."
- Spider People: Petra is a spider-based demi-human.
- Take a Third Option: With his unique perspective on cosmic energies and dismissal of following the "rules" that the Cardinal Heroes are supposed to follow, Naofumi vows to find the source of the Waves and end it for good rather than simply follow its cyclical nature.
- Take That!: Chapter 6 has Naofumi explicitly call Sword Art Online trash after seeing that Raphtalia was watching it, before going off on a list of better anime to watch. Ren's reaction to being called Kirito indicates that SAO is considered terrible across universes.
- Token Wizard: While all four heroes qualify as Magic Knights, Naofumi by virtue of being a sorcerer's apprentice is this to them.
- Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: Stephen more-or-less explains to Naofumi that this is his problem; Naofumi is adept at the "theory" side of sorcery, but not in the execution.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: Being familiar with magic from an Urban Fantasy setting (within an overall Science Fiction superhero setting), Naofumi isn't impressed by Melromarc's video game mechanics....Status, like a game? Ren pointed it out in a rather condescending way to them. A small dot in their vision. Focusing on it brought up some kind of display, just like a video game.
What kind of bullshit magic worked like video game rules? - The World as Myth: When Naofumi reveals that he is apprenticed under Doctor Strange, the Itsuki and Motoyasu don't believe him because Doctor Strange is, in their worlds, a fictional character.
- Wrong Context Magic: Just as Naofumi, Wong and Stephen note, the kind of magic that they run under and the magic in Melromarc are so distinctly different from one another that this trope runs both ways. In Melromarc, Sorcery allows Naofumi a variety of abilities unfamiliar to them, with the other Three Heroes comparing it to a gamer with admin privileges that lets them cheat with impudiny. On the Masters of the Mystic Art's side, they develop a scientific fascination with the Cardinal Shield's mystic properties and the magic system from the world that it came from that Stephen tasks Naofumi with cataloguing everything he can find about the place.
- Younger Than They Look: It's implied that Naofumi giving Raphtalia a sword forged from the remains of Mjolnir moved her outside the leveling system, which means she is now stuck as a child (possibly forever). Keep in mind that this was already in effect due to the need for demihumans to level up to age properly.
