[Astral Corruption]

Originally Posted by Old_Iron

Befriending the Nazgul would be amusing. But, would Nanoha be Sauron or Frodo?

And now chapter 1 of 'Leave of Absence', which went in a massively different direction than I'd planned.

Here is the link to the Prologue if anyone needs it:
http://forums.animesuki.com/showthre...33#post3746933

Not sure if I ended the chapter well or not though.

Spoiler for Leave of Absence: Chapter 1:

It was a rarity for Yuuno to sleep in, the man preferring to be up early so that he could get a head start on the tasks of the day. The first day of his month long hiatus from work was no different. Rising a few minutes before his alarm clock went off, he sat there in a daze. His sleep addled mind was trying to process what exactly to do with the day and having very little success.

Maybe he should get out of bed first. Yes, that seemed like a good course of action.

One nice hot shower and a decent breakfast later, Yuuno was feeling much more awake. Recalling the ad from last night, he made his way over to the computer occupying one corner of his flat. "Signum did suggest I try out a hobby. I'll take a look at that website. But first..."

Once the machine had booted up, the blonde was greeted with a message telling him that he had unread mail. It should be noted that Yuuno has two mail addresses. One for work and the other for his personal, day-to-day activities. Since he uses his work mail so much more often, everyone simply started using that address as his primary form of contact. Needless to say, his personal mail had gotten neglected and filters gone outdated.

"You have 65,536 unread messages, Mr. Scrya." Intoned a feminine voice.

Yuuno's response was to stare at the screen for a moment, one eye twitching. "I know it's been a while, but that's ridiculous." Stretching his arms, he set to cleaning out the Inbox from Hell. Most were easily disposed of. Others decided to go out of their way to avoid detection from the freshly upgraded spam filter.

"No. No. No. Definitely not. Don't know any princes from Nigeria." He mused to himself whilst going about his task. "Natural male enhancement, no thank you. Hot ferret singles in your area, into the trash you go." Yuuno was beginning to think that he should just delete the account at the rate he was going and the ineffectiveness of modern spam filters. "Hmm? Chrono sent this one a few days ago."

Clicking on the message from his friend, he noted that it had a video attached to it. Though the message, 'I found this by accident and I refuse to suffer alone.' did not raise Yuuno's spirits any. Clicking on the video, he braced himself. Everything seemed fine at first. What appeared on screen would take copious amounts of brain bleach to remove from the man's mind. Numbly closing the video, Yuuno went back to his original task with the movements of a poorly oiled automaton.

"I am going to kill him. Slowly and painfully." It was not long after that Yuuno's mind cleared enough to finish off his task and finally get around to what he'd initially set out to do on the web. Pulling up the hobby shop's homepage, he was quite surprised at the number of options available to him. One thing did stand out though: model kits. "That could be interesting... May as well give it a shot?"

It didn't take long for the librarian to set up an account and purchase a few of the models. They were of varying grades and he decided to start small. Plus, if it turned out to not be his thing then he could return the unopened kits. While checking the shipping information in his mail, a new message appeared in his Inbox.

It was marked as 'Sender: Unknown' with the subject line being empty. Writing it off as either spam or a potential virus, Yuuno proceeded to delete the message. Only to find out that he couldn't. Whenever he attempted to, a message would appear and deny him access or simply remove the delete function. "Great. First day of vacation and my computer gets a virus." As if those were some kind of magic word, the message opened itself and Yuuno found himself gawking at his computer display in shock.

"It has... been a while, Mr. Scrya." The voice was slightly hesitant, but otherwise exactly as Yuuno remembered it: soft, while calculating and filled with power.

"You, but how?" Yuuno did not think it was possible, but there she was: sitting straight backed on some manner of invisible chair was Reinforce. "We sealed you away with the protection program. You died." It had been a very emotional end to what was known as the Book of Darkness Incident. With no other recourse to prevent the return of the seemingly immortal and corrupt defense program, they'd had to seal away Reinforce permanently. It hadn't mattered how many other options they'd attempted and simulated. It always came back to requiring the death of the silver haired woman.

Looking slightly embarrassed, Reinforce answered the librarian's question, "...The procedure did not work properly."

"We ran through every possible alternative and nothing worked." Yuuno replied, raising an eyebrow at the enigmatic response and trying to convince himself that this was not a hallucination.

"Please remember that you were all still rather young at the time and the techniques and technology at your disposal were not so advanced as those that created me." She began explaining, "I had thought your decision was the correct one and would work at the time. But something went wrong or part of the equation was incorrect. I survived, as did the corruption, albeit both of us in a severely weakened state. As you might expect, the corruption tried to regain its power."

Yuuno's eyes narrowed, realizing more and more that this was really happening. "Something stopped it, it take it?"

Reinforce nodded, "The regeneration code had been completely destroyed in the sealing, so it was unable to repair the damage it took. It attempted to invade sources of data to try and rebuild its code, but eventually something called a 'Creeper' overwhelmed and destroyed it for good." She paused for a moment and then headed off what would likely be the next question asked of her, "I was separated from the corrupted defense program and attempted to put and end to it myself, but was ultimately forced to stay back or be devoured... Which would possibly have led to the whole thing starting over again."

"Well, that explains pretty much everything except for why you didn't show up until now. Have you been dealing with the program all this time, or...?" He trailed off, prompting Reinforce to answer.

"It did not take too long for the program to be eliminated in its weakened state. Since then I have been recovering and searching for a way to find and contact anyone. You were the first one I have had success with." It was an honest explanation, one that Yuuno took at face value.

Shaking his head. "Well this wasn't how I expected the first day of my vacation to turn out. Would you like me to get ahold of Hayate, I'm certain she'd love to see you again. Her and everyone else." All things considered, Yuuno was fairly certain that he was dealing with this absurdly unexpected situation rather well. Or he'd lost his marbles.

"Would you please hold on that? I.. I would like to prepare myself. I had honestly not expected to be met with as much success as I have. In addition to the fact that I currently lack a physical body..." Reinforce seemed a little hesitant in her reply from within the computer display.

"Understandable. Though I'm still a little shocked about this whole thing." A sudden thought came to Yuuno. "Wait. Did you happen to run through the TSAB systems the other day?"

"Yes." Blinking in confusion, the device nodded. "Did something happen?"

"You could say that. Likely thanks to you, I got placed on a month long paid vacation. Somehow allowing us to meet like this." He stated with an amused grin.

"That sounds absurdly convenient and rather improbable, Mr. Scrya." Her gaze was flat but her voice belied some amusement at the notion.

"No kidding. But please call me Yuuno. Mr. Scrya is too formal." He adjusted his seat to get a bit more comfortable, "As for getting you out of there... I may be able to set something up. It'll take some research, but I'm not going to leave you stuck in there."

Her smile was beautiful. "Thank you Yuuno, I am in your debt. May I ask how you've been these past years?"

The midmorning artificial sun in the TSAB HQ slowly arced over the skyline as the two talked late into the day.

Originally Posted by blitz1/2

Well if the program hasn't been fixed, would that mean that the Materials will make an appearance, or will it differ from the A's game?

Originally Posted by Yasanagi

Oh, damn... why didn't I think of that?

Now I'm even more interested in that story of yours, Iron. Please write more!

This seems like it would be one hell of a reunion and if the Materials would appear, would they be the same age as the Battle of Aces game or the current age and appearance as the cast now?