Arisa Bannings was not normally a morning person. Given the choice between sleeping in for an extra hour and leaping out of bed as soon as consciousness reclaimed her, she was much happier taking option 'A', and rolling over and going back to sleep. That wasn't to say that she couldn't get up or that she'd be dead on her feet for several hours upon doing so; she simply took great pleasure in that wonderful little space between wakefulness and slumber, where the covers were tucked around her and the bed was deliciously warm and cozy and the mind was not active enough to worry about anything except getting a few more hours of beauty sleep.
Today, however, seemed to be an exception to the rule, for as soon as consciousness reclaimed Arisa she knew instinctively that something was very very wrong, something that demanded her immediate attention.
Eyes still encrusted with that awful goop she always had to wipe out of her eyes after a full nights' sleep, Arisa rolled over in bed and let her eyes crack open enough to get a blurry look at the ceiling.... which, she noticed with a start, was entirely unfamiliar to her. Common sense demanded that waking up in a bed meant waking up in a bedroom, but the violet floral pattern spread across the ceiling like a wallpaper wasn't like the ceiling of any room she could ever remember waking up to. It certainly wasn't the ceiling of her room, which was decorated by a similar wallpaper-like pattern of dogs of various breeds, nor was it Suzuka's, which (as she knew from experience after numerous sleepovers in said room) was colored a pale shade of robin's egg blue. It wasn't the ceiling of Nanoha's room either, which was a pale pinkish red like most of the rest of her room.
Therefore, unfamiliar ceiling = bed in unfamiliar place = Arisa in unfamiliar place = Bannings survival instincts going to DEFCON 4.
Now fully awake, Arisa hauled herself out of the covers, only to fail miserably at this task as she belatedly realized she'd been sleeping on top of the covers, and for that matter apparently hadn't changed out of her school uniform before hitting the hay the previous evening. Setting that abnormality aside for the moment, Arisa put first priority in identifying her location and performed a quick visual sweep of the room, only to be dismayed as the additional information proved as unhelpful in that regard as the flowers on the ceiling.
Arisa had never had cause to stay in a hotel before, as her parents never took her on business trips with them, but she supposed that the small room around her must belong to something like a hotel; such a small dwelling could never house anyone permanently or they'd quickly go stir crazy in such small quarters. The room was decorated in western style, with two twin beds separated by a nightstand upon which rested an alarm clock (digital, currently indicating the time as being 7:06 AM) and a rather expensive-looking lamp. The bed opposite her was occupied by the only familiar-looking thing in the room, that thing being Tsukimura Suzuka, who was still very soundly asleep and was also dressed in her school uniform.
The two beds were essentially the only large objects in the room apart from a large but not entirely comfortable-looking easy chair, a small desk and office chair combo in the corner of the room, and a table gracing the wall opposite the two beds on which rested a mid-sized television. Past the beds on Arisa’s right side In the far corner of the room next to the bathroom door was what appeared to be a backpack of some sort, and it appeared to be loaded to the bursting point with… well, whatever was inside it. The only thing immediately to her left was a sliding glass door leading out onto a balcony, beyond which she could see the southern end of Tokyo Bay. If she squinted she could probably make out some of the taller buildings in Yokohama on the far side of the bay, but at the moment Yokohama wasn’t placing anywhere on her list of concerns.
Now significantly more worried by her circumstances (and the Bannings survival instincts moving to DEFCON 3), Arisa’s thought processes moved from identifying her surroundings to identifying her situation, beginning with retracing her steps from the previous afternoon.
Yesterday had been the last day of school before summer break began for the students of Uminari City, and she and Suzuka had celebrated the good weather by skipping the bus and walking home together. Ordinarily Nanoha would have joined them but her family had made plans for her and her siblings to visit an aunt of theirs who lived in Hong Kong and she’d had to leave school a few minutes early in order to catch the plane, leaving Arisa and Suzuka to walk home by themselves.
At this point, Arisa’s heart began to beat a bit faster as she recalled the sensation of being watched. Approximately six blocks south of school the girls had passed into Uminari’s commercial district and slowed their pace to do a bit of window shopping. She had been watching a commercial for a new anime series—something about dolls and roses if she recalled correctly—in the window of a Mitsukoshi department store when the reflection of a man dressed in black had suddenly appeared directly behind her. Startled, she’d turned to face him… there’d been a sharp pain on the left side of her head… and then…
…and then she’d woken up here. Which brought her back to her original question, where was here? And why was she here, and why was Suzuka here with her and why couldn’t she remember what happened and what was the source of the horrible feeling of wrongness that was starting to make her heart beat like a snare drum and…!
Deep breath. In… and out. “Cool it, Bannings. At least figure out where you are first, then panic.” She whispered to herself, slipping off the bed and taking a few steps over to the glass door, then sliding it open and stepping outside. As she’d expected, the hotel they were in was a high-rise affair, and looking around at the buildings below her, Arisa could make out several buildings she recognized as landmarks in Uminari’s commercial district. Now she was getting somewhere… bingo! That was the train station across the street from Midoriya! She was only a stone’s throw away from home!
Arisa stepped back inside, not bothering to shut the door behind her, and moved towards the second bed where Suzuka was still sleeping quite soundly. Not in the mood to do the job gently, Arisa grabbed Suzuka by the shoulder and shook her rather roughly, impatient and eager to be gone from these strange circumstances.
“Suzuka-chan… come on, wake up!”
“Mmm….”
Now Suzuka, it could safely be said, was very much a morning person, always quick to awaken and eager to start the day. Arisa had sworn on the mornings following several sleepovers in the past that Suzuka must already be drinking coffee to be so chipper in the mornings, but in truth that was simply the way she was. So when she was roused by Arisa’s attention, she rolled over and sat up in bed almost immediately, blinking the sleep out of her eyes and staring at her friend for a moment before gasping aloud.
“Arisa-chan! You’re alright! You are alright aren’t you? How does your head feel?”
“Wha… my head? Nothing’s wrong with… ow!” As she spoke, Arisa had been putting a hand to the side of her head to feel for anything out of the ordinary and had quickly found a sore spot roughly where she’d recalled the sensation of pain coming from several minutes before, and quickly withdrew her hand.
Arisa was a bright girl, and it didn’t take long at all for her to put two and two together. “Suzuka, how much of yesterday do you remember?”
“Um… the last thing I can recall is going out window shopping. You were watching that commercial for Rozen Maiden at Mitsukoshi when a man in black appeared behind us and hit you in the side of the head. I… I was about to scream for help, but… I guess he hit me too.”
As she spoke, Suzuka tentatively reached up and brushed a hand against her left temple before quickly withdrawing it, obviously having stumbled on a welt or a bruise like Arisa had. Arisa nodded at Suzuka’s words, now more worried than ever but at least a little less confused. If she’d been struck on the head then she would have been knocked unconscious. That would explain why she didn’t remember going to sleep, at the very least, but it also meant they were very likely in an extremely dangerous situation.
Arisa was not pleased to say that she had experience with kidnappers. Less than a year after she had met Nanoha, her parents had made enemies with someone with underworld connections after some sort of business deal had gone south. Arisa still wasn’t clear on all the details, but she’d been targeted, abducted, and held for ransom by a gang of Yakuza, and might not have come out of the ordeal with all her parts intact had it not been for the timely intervention of Takamachi Shiro, hired by the Bannings family to rescue Arisa at any cost.
Now it appeared to be happening again, this time with poor Suzuka being dragged along for the ride. While it wasn’t a certain thing yet, Arisa could think of few other explanations for their current situation.
Although… looking over at the door next to the bathroom, Arisa couldn’t help but wonder. A hotel was an awfully strange and public place for a kidnapper to hide out with his targets instead of, say, a dilapidated warehouse on the edge of town like her previous abductors had used. And for that matter, if the man in black was a kidnapper, how in the world had he attacked and then abducted two girls in the middle of a busy shopping district, and in broad daylight for that matter, without anyone taking notice and raising a scene? There were still too many unanswered questions for her to jump to a hasty conclusion like this. Still, they were questions she didn’t necessarily need answers to right now. Suzuka was awake, she knew where they were, and now they could make like trees and motor on home, where their parents almost certainly give them an epic chewing out for being out all night…
“Worry about injuries later, Suzuka-chan. Right now we need to get home. We’ve been gone almost a whole day, your parents must be worried sick.”
“My parents? What about yours?”
“They’re out of town on a business trip; they shouldn’t be home until later this week.”
So saying, Arisa gave the room one more inspection as Suzuka got up and brushed her uniform off.
“…Figures whoever brought us here didn’t grab our bookbags too.” Arisa snarled. She wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of replacing her bookbag and its’ contents—that would be coming out of her allowance, in all likelihood—but that was a concern for another time as she started for the door, Suzuka following right behind her.
But they’d only made it as far as the front door when a quiet clicking noise sounded from the other side. Almost instinctively, Arisa ducked into the dark bathroom right next to the door, pulling Suzuka along behind her as the two ducked into the shadows of the bath/shower combo and out of sight of the main door, just as the door opened and someone stepped into the room. Arisa’s breath caught in her throat as she caught a flash of black cloth moving past the open bathroom door.
For one long deadly moment, Arisa considered her options. The person to whom the room belonged had about two seconds before they came into sight of the rest of the room and saw they weren’t there. If the person had good intentions, then that was alright, they could slip out the door before it closed behind him and never see him again. If not, he’d start searching for them immediately and would likely chase them down in the hallway as they tried to leave. Escape could end in one of two ways.
…but if she took the initiative….
On the bathroom counter across from her was a hair drier, apparently left behind by the room’s last occupant or perhaps the property of this one; Arisa didn’t know and she didn’t care, all she knew was that that hair drier was the most suitable weapon in this room and she had less than two seconds to make use of it. So thinking, Arisa snagged the drier off the counter and leapt back out into the hallway, immediately lunging at the back of the room’s third occupant, swinging the drier over her head like a mace, ready to bring it down on the head of the unsuspecting… girl?
It took Arisa all of an instant to realize her target wasn’t the man in black, but a young girl—not too much older than her, by her estimations—with silver hair in a very long braid dressed in a simple black dress. It was an instant too late; her swing was already in motion, coming down right on—
And then suddenly she was on the floor with the all the air leaving her lungs without her permission. Later she would look back at the incident and realize that the girl had caught her swing by the wrist with a cross-hand block over the head, then grabbed said wrist, kneeled, and launched her over her left shoulder in a textbook perfect jujutsu throw, but for the time being she was more concerned about getting her wind back, a feat made much more difficult as the girl in red placed a foot on her chest and…
…wait a second, back up and take a second look at this.
She was flat on her back in the middle of the room, the girl in black standing over her with a foot on her chest. She was wearing plain black boots and thigh high stockings of an identical shade. Her skirt was long like a cloak in the back, stretching down almost to her ankles, but the front was almost as short as a miniskirt and from her current vantage point Arisa could almost see the girl’s undergarments. Her dress was simple, black and sleeveless with a cross-shaped cutout where her breasts would be in a few years time. Her arms were covered from the elbows down by a pair of detached sleeves (also black), and her hands were partially covered by a set of fingerless (and black) gloves. Back in the corner, Suzuka had come charging out of the bathroom after her, but now stood back by the door, apparently not sure what to make of the spectacle before her.
Arisa couldn’t really blame her. While she could deal with the idea of a strange girl standing on her after chucking her across the room, having said girl’s braid pressed up against her throat like a fifth limb with a spear tip on the end wasn’t something she was prepared to deal with.
Thankfully the girl in question only looked mildly annoyed at having been attacked and didn’t seem likely to follow through on her counterattack. Instead, she withdrew the braid from Arisa’s throat after a moment, sighed, and relaxed slightly.
“Just a friendly word of advice, kid… don’t do that again. Next time I might do more than toss you around a little.”
In spite of herself, Arisa found herself getting angry. She’d been told numerous times that she was very mature for her age, if not entirely level-headed. She’d never been treated like a child before, least of all by a child her own age!
“And who are you calling a kid!? You don’t look much older than me shorty—at this the other girl’s eyebrow twitched slightly—so where do you get off thinking you can talk to me like that?!”
“The fact that I can toss you around the room like a rubber ball, just for starters. And speaking of which, do you generally make a habit of insulting and attacking people who save your life? ‘Cause I gotta say, at the rate you’re going I might decide to just not bother next time.”
Arisa was on the verge of tossing out a venomous retort when the girl’s words pierced the veil of anger around her mind. It was Suzuka who voiced her next question.
“Um… excuse me, but what exactly did you save us from, miss…?”
The girl turned ‘round to face Suzuka, slight confusion in her expression before she sighed and began speaking to herself.
“Figures. Of course there’d be complications with the procedure, it wouldn’t be outlawed if it wasn’t dangerous.”
Now it was Suzuka who was confused, and Arisa wasn’t much better off. The girl sighed again, then turned and walked past Arisa into the room, gesturing for the girls to take a seat.
“Alright, quick question before we begin; do either of you two remember anything from the past twelve hours?”
Arisa looked over at Suzuka as she followed the girl back into the main section of the hotel room. When Suzuka shook her head, she replied, “The last thing I remember is being attacked by a man in a big black coat after school. Now what’s this about saving our lives? What the heck happened and why can’t I remember it?!”
“Calm down kid—“
“Don’t call me kid! My name is Arisa Bannings!”
“Fine Arisa, now just—“
“And I never gave you permission to drop the suffix! What are you, a gaijin?!”
“Arrrrrrgh! Will you sit down and be quiet for a minute?! I’m trying to be helpful here and you’re giving me grief for it!” The girl shouted, her fragile temper snapping in the face of Arisa’s bullheadedness. Suzuka merely watched the confrontation in dismay; if this had been an anime, this would be the part where these two would start shooting lightning bolts out of their eyes at each other. Thankfully, Arisa backed down before the two came to blows, and the silver-haired girl settled into the easy chair at the far end of the room, sitting lengthwise across the seat and the two arms.
“Alright. Since you two don’t have any reason to believe what I’m about to say, a demonstration is in order before you accuse me of making up wild stories.”
The girl glanced at the television, which promptly rose into the air by itself and stayed there for a few moments.
Arisa, for her part, was only mildly dumbfounded for a moment. She’d seen this girl turn her hair into a spear-like weapon only a moment before, so this didn’t seem all that much more unusual to her. Suzuka was likewise somewhat nonplussed but not as shellshocked as most people would be. The silver-haired girl raised an eyebrow at the girls’ lack of shocked reactions.
“Levitation. One of the many tools at the hands of a skilled magic-user. You two don’t seem too surprised by this power. Do you two have some previous experience with magic?”
Suzuka shook her head. “Not directly, but a few months ago a giant tree grew up in the center of the shopping district then vanished without a trace less than an hour later. The whole town was talking about it for several weeks, but I think we’re the only ones who seriously thought it couldn’t be anything other than magic. This just confirms that theory.”
The girl seemed to think on this for a moment. “That doesn’t sound like any kind of magic I’ve ever heard of… but then again there’s probably a lot of magic out there I’ve never heard of.” She shrugged. “It’s a big multiverse; you can’t learn everything in it in one lifetime.”
Arisa was about to ask what exactly she meant by that when the girl’s demeanor turned serious again.
“Right. So you know about magic and you know I’m a mage. Now I have to ask you two to take everything I say as truth, no matter how unbelievable it may sound.”
The girls looked at each other for a moment, then nodded hesitantly. The silver-haired girl took that as her cue to continue.
“Right. So first of all, there’s an organ in the human body that some people are born with called a linker core. This organ exists as part of a person’s spirit and bridges the gap between the physical body and the astral body. It’s this organ which allows people to use magic; if you don’t have a linker core you can’t perform most types of magic, though there’s a few systems of magic that don’t rely on the core to do spellcasting.
There’s no telling who a core can manifest in or what exactly causes the core to manifest in some people but not others, but many mages have spent their entire lifetimes studying the linker core and trying to decipher its’ secrets. Some of these people go a step further and try to create artificial linker cores. This practice is banned by the TSAB and getting caught making artificial linker cores can get you sent to prison for the rest of your life, but some people do it anyways.”
Arisa’s head was already swimming with questions and she only understood about two of every three words the girl was saying, but she held her tongue, waiting for the girl to finish. Somehow she knew she wasn’t going to like where this was leading, but morbid curiosity convinced her to stay silent for now.
“The problem with the practice that got it outlawed is that at the current level of techno-magical development, only about one in every three hundred people survives the process of having an artificial linker core implanted in their bodies. To have even a few successes you have to have a huge body count to go with it, and most people won’t risk their lives even to gain magical powers.”
The girl opened her eyes and stared straight at Arisa with a calculating gaze. Arisa found herself fidgeting under the girl’s stare, but before she could complain the girl continued speaking.
“So in order to advance the science of artificial core creation, people need to be acquired for experimentation against their will. Last night you two ran afoul of one of the familiars of Dr. Raz Zandil and were abducted for that purpose. I’ve been chasing Zandil for personal reasons for some time now, and by chance I happened to find his lab on the south side of town around midnight last night. I broke you two out of your holding cells and brought you back here rather than settle my business with Zandil. Hope you’re happy about that.”
Arisa swallowed nervously. “So… you saved us from having these core things put in us?”
“No. When I arrived Zandil had already finished his experiments. You two are among the lucky few to survive the procedure.”
At this, the girl smiled broadly.
“You’re now the proud owners of a pair of fully functioning artificial linker cores. Congratulations, ladies. You’re mages now.”
2009-01-07, 18:33
Author
I like seeing some Zafira jealously (which doesn't happen that often). Though seriously, Zafira should go out more in his human form. As a side note: I think everyone thinks Shamal is completely strange. 
