[Kyral]

Don't worry I haven't forgotten Nanoha!
But I have some kind of writer's block atm, so I decided to break the chapter I'm working on into smaller parts.

Liingo checked my grammar again.

Memories of Blood and Sorrow
Part 7: Mantis Stalker I

Spoiler:

[Vedir, southern continent] [August, MC 076]

As his gaze wandered about the cleft landscape, he couldn’t help but to feel that this world was broken.
Like millions of cracks that covered the planet’s surface, dividing everything into plateau and canyon.

That was it. Up or Down, Top or Bottom. Nothing in between.

"Boring…" he turned to the young woman that stood a few steps away from him. He couldn’t see her face as she had turned her back to him, so he just watched her for a while.

Standing in the middle of a purple colored Mid-type Magic Circle, she held her Staff Device in her stretched arms, the tip pointing precisely towards the vast sky above her.
Her skintight, mostly gray bodysuit hid nothing of her trim figure and her long dark gray hair fluttered in the wind.

He spat into a nearby chasm. "Oi! You’re finished, are you?"

"All set!" She lowered her Device and the Circle vanished. Light purple eyes looked in his. Then she closed them and her shoulders sank a bit. "Really, why are you always so impatient, Nii-san."

He let out a sigh and scratched his head. "Don’t know… Maybe I was born that way."

She chuckled as she sealed her Device and approached him with playful steps. "Well, then it can’t be helped right?"

"Right." He lowered his body a little and gave her a short kiss on the lips.

She looked displeased as his face distanced from hers. "Baka. That was all?"

He rolled his eyes. "We can continue later. Are you sure this spell will work?"

She gave him a dark look. "Nii-san, who do you think you are talking to?"

"I take the question back."

She frowned a little but decided not to pursue the matter any longer. "Are you sure they will show up?" she asked instead.

"Yeah, pretty sure. From what I heard he is a main part of the team that takes care of our little matter."

She looked to the side. "I still don’t know what father would say, if he knew what we are doing."

"I don’t think he would say anything. We do what he told us, we deploy the second breed for field testing. We just have to tell him that the implant malfunctioned; stuff like this can happen, right?"

"I still don’t know…"

"He, you don’t trust me?"

She looked up to him, panicking a little. "What? Of course I do, Nii-san!"

He padded her head and moved to the big creature that accompanied them. It had folded its six limbs and sat motionless on the ground, but even sitting it was still bigger than him. Its armored skin and insect like shell had taken the color of the dry grass that grew everywhere on this plateau. The black eyes watched him without interest, only the short tentacles above its mouth where twitching a little.

He smiled at the creature. "Well, time to see what you’re made of, big fella."