[Nanya01]

That was... Interesting, Kaijo.

I admit, I was expecting Fate to get her rear end whipped good too.

Anyway...

StrikerS 1-50

StrikerS 51

StrikerS 52

Spoiler for Blood That Flows - StrikerS 53:

"Yagami..." Zest looked at the screen, seeing Hayate looking at him, worry in her eyes. "We have Zafira, even with Zelgadis's healing, he's in bad shape. We'll be doing an emergency transfer in, have an emergency team on standby."

Hayate nodded and made a mental call to several of the doctors. "Go on, I'll make sure that there's no problems with you transferring."

Zest nodded as the screen turned off and Hayate fought the urge to shudder as she got behind her desk and started typing in data into her computer.

"Hayate..."

Hayate stopped, her pupils shrinking as a cold feeling came over her. "...What's going on? Reinforce? Reinforce, can you hear me?"

Her only answer was an echo of pain, excitement and a sensation of loss. "What's going on?!" Hayate slammed her hands on her desk, anger and frustration building up in her.

(---)

"You should be in bed, Ginga," the long-haired girl looked up to see her mother with a cup of hot liquid, likely coffee, in her hands walk up to her. "Then again, I probably should be as well." Sitting down at the table, Quint looked at Ginga. "Well? After what happened yesterday, only you and Caro are in any real shape to do any training today."

"I'm worried about Subaru, mom," Ginga looked at her, worry written on her face. "What am I supposed to do? If I had been there..."

"Then I might have lost all three of my daughters." Quint spoke up, stopping her rant. "That girl, Nove... She is your sister." Ginga's stunned look told her a lot at that moment. "We'll get Subaru back," Quint smiled lightly, "my daughters, all of them, aren't so weak that any of them would be taken out so easily." Quint winked at Ginga, "besides, I think this might be good for her."

"But, what if Jail does something to her?" Ginga slammed her hands on the table, causing it to groan, "what's to stop him from turning her into a weapon?!"

"I admit, that possibility crossed my mind several times." Quint sighed softly and looked at her coffee, "and it worries me, because if anyone knows how Combat Cyborgs work, it's Jail. Yeah, your sister could be working for him, dead, or in pieces while conscious and..." Quint took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "I don't want to think about it, and neither should you. For now, let's just focus on what we can do."

"Which is..?" Ginga blinked as Quint grinned at her. "Mom?"

"We're going to come up with some plans and moves to deal with Jail's cyborgs. Your old woman still has a few moves I haven't taught you yet."

Ginga gulped at the look in Quint's eyes. Part of her wondered just how messed up the training was going to be. "Like what?"

"You and Subaru focus on your hands too much, I think I should teach you some of the leg-work." Granted, Quint thought that Nove would benefit more from this than Ginga or Subaru ever would. "I think I can get Nanoha to let me work with you more directly for a while."

Ginga paled at her mother's grin. Sure, her mother was awesome, nice and wonderful...

But she took her Strike and Shooting Arts seriously. The last time she asked for personal training for special techniques from Quint, Ginga had been knocked out cold and required three days of recovery time before she even tried to learn those moves again.

Of course, that had been without the benefit of specialized healing magic. She doubted that she was going to get the same time to relax this time around.

(---)

Cracking an eye open as her alarm went off, Nanoha reached over and hit the button to turn it off. Sitting up and stretching her arms above her head to get any stiffness out of her back, she blinked as she felt a body touching her. She looked at the other occupant in her bed and blinked, if Fate wasn't curled up against her, who was?

Peeling the blanket back, her eyes softened as she saw Vivio hugging and cuddling against her. Gently peeling the girl off of her, she picked Vivio up and put her next to Fate, smiling brightly as Vivio turned over and hugged Fate, who rolled slightly in her sleep and hugged Vivio back. 'Cute.' She thought to herself as she went to get dressed.

As Nanoha changed her clothes and got ready for the day, she looked at a small box on her dresser top. Her eyes narrowed as she thought about the contents within. "Mom, what would you do, right now?" She asked herself as she put her hair into its side ponytail. "I need your help, mom. Everything's falling apart around me, and I don't think more power can..." She stopped and looked at the box again. "...More power for me won't work," a grin came to her face as she grabbed the box, "but there is someone who'll make more use of this than I can."

As Nanoha walked out of her room, part of her wondered if this was the right thing to do. These items had been in her family for nearly three decades by now.

(---)

Shari looked at the remains of Laevantein and grimaced. Even if they put it back together, at least half of the blade and some of the hilt had been completely destroyed from that explosion. She looked at one of the few pieces that had survived mostly intact, though, it was melted down something fierce. "Well, it's not too hard to fix a cartridge chamber." She muttered and turned to look at the few pieces that were floating in a stasis field. "Damn, I'm surprised you managed to survive, Laevantein." Sure, the body was destroyed, but the core A.I. was mostly intact from what she could see.

Mostly, because other than that last fight, most of what it had in its data banks for the past year was gone. "Good thing we have back-ups." Shari shook her head and blinked as a message appeared on screen. "What the..?" Her eyes widened as she realized what the message was saying. "Are you sure?! I mean, I'm no weapon smith, but that might take awhile to do for us, even if Mary and her crack-pot crew was here with the best Device Meisters on Cranagan."

"Ja."

Shari smiled at the device. "You care for Signum that much, huh?" When the device confirmed what she suspected, Shari found herself nodding and making several calls at once. "You do realize that what you're asking me to do is borderline illegal, right?" Shari snorted at that. "You don't care, and, really, I hope it works."

After all, if it did, it would help Signum more than ever.

If Laevantein could smile, it would. After all, it wouldn't let Signum down, even if it meant that it had to break a few laws in the process.

(---)

As she stood outside of the operating area, Hayate could only stare in helplessness as she saw Zafira on that table, fighting for his life while several medics worked on healing him. "You couldn't get him in sooner?" She asked Zelgadis softly as they watched Shamal, her hair was white, not from magic drain, but from unisoning with Rein Zwei.

"Trust me, I didn't dare move him until just now. I don't know much about anatomy, but I'm pretty sure that the fact that his body was smoking slightly was a bad thing." Zelgadis looked at Hayate as she squeezed her hands into fists. "Now what? I don't know if he'll survive."

When Hayate glared at him, Zelgadis found himself taking a step back. The young woman wasn't the most intimidating person he had ever met, hell, her glare actually made her look somewhat cute, but then again, he knew that she had magic at least on par with Lina's and making someone who had access to lots of different pain-inducing spells and pissing off someone who could flatten cities with ease was not really conductive to living a long and healthy life. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude about it."

"...I know someone who can look into his mind." Hayate turned away and walked out of the room, her eyes felt hot, burning and the sheer anger and frustration on her face kept anyone, even Vita, from speaking to her as she made her way to her office and locked the doors. Taking a deep breath, she called up a view screen and put it on audio-only. "Verossa, this is Hayate, I need you to come down here."

"What's wrong?"

"It's Zafira... He's been badly hurt," what she was going to say next nearly made her cry, "and I don't know if he'll survive much longer."

"I'll be down in three minutes." The communication ended there and Hayate sat down in her chair and spun it so that she wouldn't have to look at the door.

She wouldn't cry, not yet. She would refuse to cry. "Zafira, when I find out who hurt you like that, I'll introduce them to such pain that they'll wish they were never born. And if they hurt Reinforce at all..." She trailed off, squeezing the arms of her chair tightly as a magical aura slowly flickered into life around her. "I swear it."