Nanoha FanFiction Discussion

[Nanya01]

Here's part 3.

Season 1

A's

Jump Part 1

Jump Part 2

Spoiler for Blood That Flows - Jump Part 3:

Chrono nodded as he turned off the mission logs. "I thought so... If that's the case, and what she said before..." His mind was working overtime as plans formed in his head. "Amy!"

She blinked and turned to him. "Chrono?"

"Can you get through to Mid-Childa?"

"Not yet." She shook her head. "Something... Or more likely, someone, is blocking any communications to Mid-Childa."

Chrono growled. "Damn." He turned around and walked out. "Still, I need to talk to a few people over this." Honestly, what he had planned was crazy, stupid and just plain nuts.

It was probably the best bet they had at that moment.

(---)

Give in...

Nanoha screamed, energy flowing through her body as she stared ahead blankly, her mouth open wide as her body jerked and thrashed from the pain. The white of her eyes were slowly outlined by black as her pink magic circle started to fade to gold.

Just give in... The pillar... Use your power, destroy the pillar.

Nanoha jerkily moved her head and caught sight of a large blue crystal pillar out of the corner of her eye.

When nothing happened for a few moments, she started screaming again as fresh pain and anguish rushed through her body.

(---)

"Pathetic." Death Bringer sighed as he caused his spell to continue to torture Nanoha. "I wonder... What will happen?"

Oh well, whatever happened would be amusing, at least.

(---)

"Nakajima." Zest nodded as he saw her touch down near him.

Quint barely acknowldeged Zest as she saw what happened to the HQ building. The elegant building had turned into a gigantic crystal tower with sharp spines all around the base and jagged edges along the main tower. "Looks like a giant flower opening up."

Zest nodded. "None of the ground forces nor the navy forces can break through the barrier that surrounds it."

Quint grimaced, wondering what was going on. "What are our commands?"

"Keep trying to break through the barrier and find out who or what is responsible."

Quint nodded, sighing as she crossed her arms under her breasts. "This sucks."

(---)

Lindy looked at the broken remnants of Raising Heart and looked at Mary. "Are you sure that it can be repaired?"

Mary nodded. "Yes. The body was a mess, but the core AI was thankfully spared."

"That's good." Lindy nodded at the Engineer. "Keep up the good work."

"Thanks. To be honest, if Raising Heart was left laying around for any real length of time, it couldn't be saved." Mary shook her head as she looked at it. "Even though I can replace it, it'll... I'd like to say that it'll be almost a half a year before it can be completely fixed."

"How come you said "soon enough" before then?"

Mary blushed softly. "Well, I said that when I wasn't even half way done with a project that took me over a year to finish before."

Lindy sighed, she honestly didn't understand engineers at all.

[Moczo]

Originally Posted by Nanya01

Here's part 3.

Season 1

A's

Jump Part 1

Jump Part 2

Spoiler for Blood That Flows - Jump Part 3:

Chrono nodded as he turned off the mission logs. "I thought so... If that's the case, and what she said before..." His mind was working overtime as plans formed in his head. "Amy!"

She blinked and turned to him. "Chrono?"

"Can you get through to Mid-Childa?"

"Not yet." She shook her head. "Something... Or more likely, someone, is blocking any communications to Mid-Childa."

Chrono growled. "Damn." He turned around and walked out. "Still, I need to talk to a few people over this." Honestly, what he had planned was crazy, stupid and just plain nuts.

It was probably the best bet they had at that moment.

(---)

Give in...

Nanoha screamed, energy flowing through her body as she stared ahead blankly, her mouth open wide as her body jerked and thrashed from the pain. The white of her eyes were slowly outlined by black as her pink magic circle started to fade to gold.

Just give in... The pillar... Use your power, destroy the pillar.

Nanoha jerkily moved her head and caught sight of a large blue crystal pillar out of the corner of her eye.

When nothing happened for a few moments, she started screaming again as fresh pain and anguish rushed through her body.

(---)

"Pathetic." Death Bringer sighed as he caused his spell to continue to torture Nanoha. "I wonder... What will happen?"

Oh well, whatever happened would be amusing, at least.

(---)

"Nakajima." Zest nodded as he saw her touch down near him.

Quint barely acknowldeged Zest as she saw what happened to the HQ building. The elegant building had turned into a gigantic crystal tower with sharp spines all around the base and jagged edges along the main tower. "Looks like a giant flower opening up."

Zest nodded. "None of the ground forces nor the navy forces can break through the barrier that surrounds it."

Quint grimaced, wondering what was going on. "What are our commands?"

"Keep trying to break through the barrier and find out who or what is responsible."

Quint nodded, sighing as she crossed her arms under her breasts. "This sucks."

(---)

Lindy looked at the broken remnants of Raising Heart and looked at Mary. "Are you sure that it can be repaired?"

Mary nodded. "Yes. The body was a mess, but the core AI was thankfully spared."

"That's good." Lindy nodded at the Engineer. "Keep up the good work."

"Thanks. To be honest, if Raising Heart was left laying around for any real length of time, it couldn't be saved." Mary shook her head as she looked at it. "Even though I can replace it, it'll... I'd like to say that it'll be almost a half a year before it can be completely fixed."

"How come you said "soon enough" before then?"

Mary blushed softly. "Well, I said that when I wasn't even half way done with a project that took me over a year to finish before."

Lindy sighed, she honestly didn't understand engineers at all.

Spoiler for Because apparently we're supposed to put reviews for this story in spoilers now?:

I know I told you this before over AIM, but it bears repeating in a more public location.

Death Bringer. Buddy. Torturing a girl who has a fragment of the Lord of Nightmares's world-unmaking Chaos magic quite literally bred into her? It really, really just cannot end well. At all.

[Rising Dragon]

My statement wasn't that you should put your responses in spoilers, guys, it just means I can't really come here until I catch up. Really, I have no one but myself to blame for that.

And Nanya for posting so fast, but I digress.

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by Nany01

"Can you get through to Mid-Childa?"

"Not yet." She shook her head. "Something... Or more likely, someone, is blocking any communications to Mid-Childa."

Chrono growled. "Damn." He turned around and walked out. "Still, I need to talk to a few people over this."

You know, I would think that the Athra would be charging ahead to Mid-Childa by now. So this is only a delay.

[DezoPenguin]

For both of you (Hah! I kid; I can count four! ) waiting for the second half of the Shadowverse two-shot...here it is!

Spoiler for Running Through Shadows--Chapter 2:

Durward Brantley V gripped Lutecia's hand with surprising strength. Though his features were easily recognizable from the case file despite the three-year age gap, the change was immense. There were no signs of the pampered, cosseted darling of wealth and privilege who had been raken from the Olympic. This child was thin, wiry, hard; he'd been toughened by privation and by the trials he'd undergone.

He reminded Lutecia of herself when she'd been a couple of years younger than he was, except that where she'd buried her emotions beneath an unnaturally dissonant calm, he wore his on his face, a desperation that was nearly feral.


She pulled, and he half-fell, half-sprang out of the car towards her. Garyuu had sent the Night Breaker reaching for the boy sprawling. The man didn't get up; without a Barrier Jacket to protect him from the insect knight's blades one blow had been more than sufficient. One man fired at him, while another, huge, rushed in close, some sort of magical blast gauntlet on his fist glowing with an armed charge. Lutecia recognized the weapon type; it allowed Belkan-type magically-enhanced physical strikes so long as its ammunition held out.


Lutecia couldn't sit and watch her summon's fight, though, because she had her own problems. The other two gang members, the woman and the tattooed bald man, came at her on the side away from Garyuu. They leveled their mass drivers and she swung Ward behind her. The impulse to protect him bodily cost her; she didn't get a shield spell up until the first shot hit her in the abdomen. She winced in pain, but luckily the weapon wasn't a military-grade linear rifle that could penetrate a low-end Barrier Jacket; she'd get a bruise out of it but no worse. Three further shots were stopped by her Panzerschild.


"Schattenstechen," her Boost Device, Asclepius, said his jewels flashing. Three missiles like elongated diamonds streaked from her palm and homed in on the two Night Breakers, cutting them down. She whipped back around, but Garyuu's armored shell and fighting skills had been more than enough to leave his two opponents sprawled in the dust. He tipped his head to one side, multiple rows of eyes gazing at her in an almost chiding fashion, as if her were saying, "And you doubted me?"


"All right, then. Let's get going. We need to move fast."


"Why?" the boy asked. "If you're with the Bureau, then aren't I safe now?" He glanced around. "You took care of those guys."


There was an almost plaintive note in his voice, which Lutecia understood at once. After all his experiences, his time in Conall's custody as well as his flight through the streets, he wanted more than anything to be told that it was over, that it was safe.


She wanted to give him that reassurance. Wanted to but couldn't.


"Those Night Breakers were just street-level punks. You're attracting attention from people bigger than that. Your family's company is pan-dimensional, dealing with multiple Administered Worlds, which makes you big business to them until you're safely at home. The TSAB isn't the only party that's after you."


He gulped and nodded.


"Like Angharad," he said. "They'll be hunting me to get me back." His eyes widened and he added, "I...I could be a witness against them! They have to find me!"


Lutecia didn't answer him at once. How could she respond when a child looked at her and announced that he'd realized he was under a death sentence?


She then shook her head. It was time for action, not sentiment.


"Don't worry. I won't let them get to you. But for now we need to get out of the city." She started looking over the parked cars, seeking one that would suit her needs.


"Why?"


"I'm a long-range teleporter, so I can take you directly where we need to go, but the background 'noise' created by all the magical technology in the city, from communications to magical barriers, makes teleportation magic difficult and unreliable," she explained.


Ah, that one will do, she thought, spotting a car that suited her.


She dismissed Garyuu, then opened a summoning gate and called upon a half-dozen of her wasp-like Insect summons. She aimed them at the car she'd picked and watched as they dashed in, merging with its computer systems and taking them over. Most of the cars in the lot were junkers or just old, with mechanical systems her summons couldn't possess, but this one was new enough for her to take over utterly, ignoring things like theft-control systems, locked doors, the need for an ignition code, and other pesky impediments to grand theft auto. The front doors of the sand-hued sedan popped open.


"That's our ride; let's go."


She flicked a magical shot towards the gate to blast off the chain, since she had neither the time nor the inclination to hunt through the dead guard's pockets for the padlock key. Lutecia and Ward got into the car, she had her summons start it, and they moved smoothly out into the street.


"Ms. Alphine?" Ward asked while she used the car's new system to combine with Asclepius's map of the mana-field patterns in Kyas to plot the quickest route for an exit strategy. "How did you find me?"


"We know that Conall had custody of you, so we traced the activity of his operators. He's a pretty well-known name here on Lucence, but his business is based on high mobility with a small work force so we didn't have to worry about global operations with multiple facilities. We tracked his people from there." She flicked a glance at the boy, then smiled at them. "Now honestly, did you follow any of that?"


"A little..."


"If we'd been a little faster, it'd have been me coming through the flophouse room door instead of those Night Breakers. I'm sorry."


"Why? You saved me from them."


"You shouldn't have had to see the guard killed, or had to get away from those thugs in the first place." She shook her head. "It's not fair that you had to go through all of that."


He stared at her as if he didn't quite know what to say. That was fair enough. She couldn't say that she really knew, either. Concepts like "fair" didn't seem to apply to a child who was victimized by criminals, anyway. Talk wouldn't change that.


She was expecting something to go wrong all the way through the city, but it didn't. No cars full of armed criminals, no hostile mages descending from the skies. She pulled to a stop, leaving the car in a parking slot and not bothering to find the meter. After all, if the police towed it, they'd at least be able to get it back to its owner.


"Almost there. It's just this way."


She led Ward to a staircase in the sidewalk about two blocks away from where she'd parked, surrounded by a wrought-iron frame and blocked off by a chain and a sign reading, "Danger." They didn't even bother removing the chain, but just ducked under it, leaving tracks in the dust.


"What is this place?" Ward asked.


"It's an abandoned metro-rail station," Lutecia explained. "This area of the city must once have been mixed in type, but now residential and commercial buildings have been torn down and there's just industrial parks."


"And you can teleport from here?"


"Uh-huh. It'll take time for me to set it up instead of working right away, but less time than it would take to drive anywhere where it would be easier."


They descended the stairs and entered the dim cavern of tile and concrete, illuminated only by a minor light spell Lutecia conjured. The summoner would have expected to see signs of human habitation, where the homeless might have taken advantage of the shelter, but there were none. Maybe Lucence, or just the city of Kyas, took their charitable obligations more seriously than most worlds.


Lutecia raised her hands and the pale violet rune of Belkan magic swelled into being beneath her, not the four-pointed version of her summoning but the more usual Belkan triangle associated with her other magic. She hadn't been exaggerating; she had to concentrate hard to make the teleportation spell begin to form. It took nearly ten minutes for the link to be made and she'd burned as much mana as if she'd been in a reasonably strenuous mock battle. It was almost with a sigh of relief that she dropped her hand to Ward's shoulder.


"Finally! Next step, our ship."


"It's really happening, isn't it? I'm finally going home."


Lutecia nodded.


"Yeah. You're going...to what you were born for."


She pressed the tips of her index and middle fingers to the back of his neck.


"Schattenstechen."


The sudden jerk his body gave was no more than a reflex of electrical impulses and muscle failures. Ward could have had no idea what had happened; the spell had snuffed out his brain functions before he was even aware it had been cast, which was the advantage of a contact shot.


His body was already starting to glow as it toppled forward, a dead weight crumpling.


The violet light of the teleport spell surged up, and a moment later Lutecia was alone in the stillness and silence of the abandoned terminal.


~X X X~


Eight hundred miles away from Kyas, has a lizard or small mammal chosen to lift its head towards the sky over the Kaku Desert, it would have seen the blast sphere of golden light, a raging storm of magical power a hundred yards across, so that its lower edge just brushed the ground and cut a perfectly-shaped curve of the sand and rock.


Then it was gone, and the day continued much as before.


~X X X~


Lutecia leaned back against the bulkhead, watching through the port as Lucence receded beneath them. Soon, the cargo hauler would make the shift from physical to dimensional space.


"Would it be too much to ask for the powers that be to get us a nice comfy ride on a TSAB vessel instead of shipping on one of these rustbuckets?" Victor Stormhawk asked.


"It'd have raised too many questions," Lutecia told her fellow Naval Special Intelligence Service agent. "The Enforcers are only a day behind us, and when they find Conall and his outfit dead and the boy missing, they might start asking questions."


"I suppose," Victor agreed with a shrug. "Still, operational security won't stop me from a little recreational complaining. Plus, my shoulder's going to hurt for a week; Conall's bodyguard tagged me a good one. Ah, well, Celica likes my scars. Says they make me look manly."


He waited a beat.


"Come on, Alphine, this is the part where you say 'well, something has to,' and I wince like my ego notices such things. It's all scripted out."


Lutecia just sighed, and the smile vanished from the face of her fellow Shadow.


"Is this because you had to kill those gang members? I know you hate having to eliminate anyone besides the target, but you know as well as I do that the Enforcers will be all over this, and that they'll probably trace Conall's goon to the slums like we did. If they found and questioned those Night Breakers...well, there aren't as many hot purple-haired female mages with giant bug friends as you'd expect. And let's be honest, those guys were dirt. They were fresh off a murder—two, with that parking-lot guy—and in the middle of a kidnapping when you caught them. They're not worth losing sleep over."


"That's part of it, but...honestly, not that big a part."


Victor looked measuringly at her.


"Alphine, you aren't talking about the target, are you?"


A little smile, one which had nothing to do with humor or happiness, played around her lips.


"The 'target.' Operational jargon certainly makes it easy to talk about murdering a twelve-year-old boy."


Victor slammed his palm against the bulkhead. "Dammit, Alphine, you did not murder a twelve-year-old boy. You disposed of a three-month-old tasked biological killing machine."


"He didn't know that. He thought he'd been held captive for years and had managed to finally get home to his family. He didn't know that he was a clone of a boy who'd died three years ago, subliminally programmed to be a suicide bomber. I wonder, was the target his father, or one of the dignitaries that he'd naturally encounter in his family's social circle?"


Victor glared at her.


"They aren't his family. They're Durward Brantley the Fifth's family."


"He didn't know that!" Lutecia shot back. "He didn't know what he was programmed to do. How does that deserve death as a punishment? We could have taken him into custody, kept him isolated from the target, maybe even found a way to remove the conditioning."


"I'm sure we could," Victor agreed. "And then what?"


Lutecia blinked.


"And then he could live a normal life!"


"By giving his parents an exact copy of their son and passing him off?"


"How about by telling him the truth and letting him live his own life, like my friend Erio?"


"So he lives a nice, peaceful life, with proper counseling to help him cope with the fact that most of his memories are somebody else's. And then he gets hit by a car. Or knifed in a street crime. Or gets sick. Or lives to eighty-four and dies of old age. And takes how many innocent people with him? The 'suicide' part was just how the bomb was to be triggered: a corrupted Linker Core that, upon death, would link and discharge its maximum possible mana load all at once. You know, the whole reason you had to be the one to dispose of the target so that you could teleport the body somewhere where the explosion wouldn't kill anyone?"


"But—"


Victor sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder.


"No, Alphine. It was ugly, but we did the only thing that could be done. They're the ones who are the monsters, making a weapon that could think and feel, but in the end that's what they made: a weapon, created by magical science gone mad for the purposes of destruction and given a personality because having one made it more likely to accomplish its maker's goals."


Lutecia brushed away his hand.


"That sounds like you're describing my girlfriend," she snapped fiercely, then spun on her heel and stalked away from him.


Victor shook his head sadly.


"It's not the same thing at all."


He wondered how long it would take before she could admit it.


~X X X~


TSAB Bureau HQ, One Week Later


"I just...I feel so helpless, Val."


Admiral Chrono Harlaown paused in his march down the corridor. It was the sound of his sister Fate's voice, and from years of experience he was aware that the ace Enforcer was seriously upset.


"I know the feeling," Valentine Yaris answered the other woman. "I read your field report, of course, and I can understand why you'd feel that way."


The two women were sitting in a little atrium at the bend in the hall up ahead, a small, circular area with couches, potted plants, and a nice view of the ships coming and going outside the massive colony. Chrono paused, waiting quietly instead of marching forward and announcing himself.


After all, as the director of the NSIS, he was the Bureau's chief spy. Eavesdropping was almost an obligation.


Fate let out a heavy sigh.


"It's just...we went into the mission, my team and I, with a primary goal of protecting the boy. If that meant launching a rescue, we were ready for that. If it meant sitting back and letting the deal go down between the family and Conall Viper, then we were prepared for that as well. We knew—I knew—that we might have to make some hard choices and let criminals get away for the child's sake. I'd accepted that."


Chrono couldn't see Yaris's face at the angle he was at, but saw the head of gray-streaked blue hair bob up and down slowly.


"But you didn't even get the chance to make those choices," the Enforcer Captain said carefully.


"Before we even reached the site, we found that Conall's operation had been torn apart. He and his men were dead, and his data files had all been purged by programs created by a very skilled hacker. Our computer specialists gave it up as a lost cause after three days. We found traces of a boy accompanied by one of Conall's men in the slum district of Kyas, but the man was apparently caught up in gang violence and killed, and the boy vanished without a trace." Fate sighed, her shoulders sagging. "Val..."


"I know. Heaven knows that even after all my time in the service, this is a lesson I've had trouble learning, but sometimes there's nothing that we can do. It hurts, I know, to realize that there are some situations we're utterly powerless to affect."


"It just seems that there should be something. If we'd arrived at Lucence even one day sooner, we might have done something to save the boy."


"Fate, I know that there's nothing worse than this kind of situation. It's even worse in some ways than trying and failing, because at least if there was the chance to succeed then there was hope, and hopelessness is worse than regrets. But you have to learn to accept it, that some things just aren't in our power to change. Now, I know you'll never accept that going into a case—even if you are nearly thirty, you're still that kid I remember from way back—but after it's done, you should be able to tell the difference. Regretting your failures is one thing, but guilt over what you never had the power to control will kill you."


Fate smiled wanly at the older woman.


"I guess..."


"Tell you what; I know you're not supposed to go off HQ shift for two more days, but I'll pull some strings. Go home and see that wife and daughter of yours. Being with family's the best way to clear your head I know of."


"Thanks, Val."


"No problem. Us moms have to stick together."


The women stood, shared a quick hug, and Yaris walked off, thankfully away from Chrono instead of towards him. The admiral hesitated, but then kept on going forward.


Fate was his sister, after all.


"She's right, you know," he said, entering the atrium.


"Oh! Niisan...you heard?"


"Yeah." Chrono nodded. "There was really nothing you could have done."


"I know," Fate said softly. "I know. It just takes a while to get my heart to accept it."


"If it helps, you weren't a day late. It was three years."


"What?" Her burgundy-red eyes went wide.


Chrono nodded.


"Durward Brantley V really did die when the kidnappers' shuttle crashed three years ago. I know the family still holds out hope and conspiracy theorists really love this case, but...honestly, that's all there is to it."


"Then what was going on on Lucence?" Fate asked sharply.


"Someone was running a game. Like I said, the Brantleys want to believe. It makes them vulnerable."


Fate didn't ask how the NSIS was involved in the business or on what side. She knew Chrono wouldn't tell her; he was breaking enough rules just by saying what he had. And truthfully, she probably didn't want to know the full details.


So she asked only the one question that most concerned her, personally.


"What about the boy?"


Chrono met her searching gaze directly and told her something that, although certainly deceptive in its was, was also at the heart of it, the truth.


"There was no boy."

Spoiler for Author's Notes:

Credit for the linear rifle type of small arms that the Night Breakers aren't using, much to Lutecia's happiness, goes to synaesthetic (aka cori.writes.stuff) from her Shadowverse story, False Light. General credit for inspiring me to write the story, though, goes to Fuyu no Sora, for an ongoing discussion on the morality of the NSIS's existence and operations. Fun stuff, these gray areas.

One of the nice things about writing Nanoha fanfiction is that when using child characters, I can err on the side of understanding and maturity, since they all tend to be wise beyond their years. Ward in this story tends to be a bit quick on the uptake for twelve, but given the setting (and other obvious factors) I'm hoping that it didn't jar.


The reason why Lutecia can't teleport away directly is totally fanon; mostly it's an internal justification for me why RF6 doesn't go teleporting people into battle in StrikerS, but instead deploys by helicopter and personal flight (and even Lulu doesn't teleport directly away after the first RF6/Numbers engagement, but has to make her escape later, after the battle).


The Night Breakers are named after motorcycle models, Conall Viper after the Dodge Viper, and Durward Brantley the Fifth after the Aston Martin DBV. Bonus points if you can identify the source of the place names!

Spoiler for Auctorial ramblings:

I considered adding a subsequent fight scene where Lutecia has to protect Ward against a more adequate enemy (something along the level of the guys from "Within Our Own Shadow"), both to show the contrast between her fighting to protect him and the finale and to add to the action, but ultimately decided not to. On the one hand, this story isn't supposed to be about zaptacular action scenes, and on the other, I figure that if enough pyrotechnics start getting flung around, it won't be believable that the Shadows could hide the traces of their presence from Fate's Enforcer team.

For those who missed it, here's Chapter 1.

[RadiantBeam]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

For both of you (Hah! I kid; I can count four! ) waiting for the second half of the Shadowverse two-shot...here it is!

Spoiler for Running Through Shadows--Chapter 2:

Durward Brantley V gripped Lutecia's hand with surprising strength. Though his features were easily recognizable from the case file despite the three-year age gap, the change was immense. There were no signs of the pampered, cosseted darling of wealth and privilege who had been raken from the Olympic. This child was thin, wiry, hard; he'd been toughened by privation and by the trials he'd undergone.

He reminded Lutecia of herself when she'd been a couple of years younger than he was, except that where she'd buried her emotions beneath an unnaturally dissonant calm, he wore his on his face, a desperation that was nearly feral.


She pulled, and he half-fell, half-sprang out of the car towards her. Garyuu had sent the Night Breaker reaching for the boy sprawling. The man didn't get up; without a Barrier Jacket to protect him from the insect knight's blades one blow had been more than sufficient. One man fired at him, while another, huge, rushed in close, some sort of magical blast gauntlet on his fist glowing with an armed charge. Lutecia recognized the weapon type; it allowed Belkan-type magically-enhanced physical strikes so long as its ammunition held out.


Lutecia couldn't sit and watch her summon's fight, though, because she had her own problems. The other two gang members, the woman and the tattooed bald man, came at her on the side away from Garyuu. They leveled their mass drivers and she swung Ward behind her. The impulse to protect him bodily cost her; she didn't get a shield spell up until the first shot hit her in the abdomen. She winced in pain, but luckily the weapon wasn't a military-grade linear rifle that could penetrate a low-end Barrier Jacket; she'd get a bruise out of it but no worse. Three further shots were stopped by her Panzerschild.


"Schattenstechen," her Boost Device, Asclepius, said his jewels flashing. Three missiles like elongated diamonds streaked from her palm and homed in on the two Night Breakers, cutting them down. She whipped back around, but Garyuu's armored shell and fighting skills had been more than enough to leave his two opponents sprawled in the dust. He tipped his head to one side, multiple rows of eyes gazing at her in an almost chiding fashion, as if her were saying, "And you doubted me?"


"All right, then. Let's get going. We need to move fast."


"Why?" the boy asked. "If you're with the Bureau, then aren't I safe now?" He glanced around. "You took care of those guys."


There was an almost plaintive note in his voice, which Lutecia understood at once. After all his experiences, his time in Conall's custody as well as his flight through the streets, he wanted more than anything to be told that it was over, that it was safe.


She wanted to give him that reassurance. Wanted to but couldn't.


"Those Night Breakers were just street-level punks. You're attracting attention from people bigger than that. Your family's company is pan-dimensional, dealing with multiple Administered Worlds, which makes you big business to them until you're safely at home. The TSAB isn't the only party that's after you."


He gulped and nodded.


"Like Angharad," he said. "They'll be hunting me to get me back." His eyes widened and he added, "I...I could be a witness against them! They have to find me!"


Lutecia didn't answer him at once. How could she respond when a child looked at her and announced that he'd realized he was under a death sentence?


She then shook her head. It was time for action, not sentiment.


"Don't worry. I won't let them get to you. But for now we need to get out of the city." She started looking over the parked cars, seeking one that would suit her needs.


"Why?"


"I'm a long-range teleporter, so I can take you directly where we need to go, but the background 'noise' created by all the magical technology in the city, from communications to magical barriers, makes teleportation magic difficult and unreliable," she explained.


Ah, that one will do, she thought, spotting a car that suited her.


She dismissed Garyuu, then opened a summoning gate and called upon a half-dozen of her wasp-like Insect summons. She aimed them at the car she'd picked and watched as they dashed in, merging with its computer systems and taking them over. Most of the cars in the lot were junkers or just old, with mechanical systems her summons couldn't possess, but this one was new enough for her to take over utterly, ignoring things like theft-control systems, locked doors, the need for an ignition code, and other pesky impediments to grand theft auto. The front doors of the sand-hued sedan popped open.


"That's our ride; let's go."


She flicked a magical shot towards the gate to blast off the chain, since she had neither the time nor the inclination to hunt through the dead guard's pockets for the padlock key. Lutecia and Ward got into the car, she had her summons start it, and they moved smoothly out into the street.


"Ms. Alphine?" Ward asked while she used the car's new system to combine with Asclepius's map of the mana-field patterns in Kyas to plot the quickest route for an exit strategy. "How did you find me?"


"We know that Conall had custody of you, so we traced the activity of his operators. He's a pretty well-known name here on Lucence, but his business is based on high mobility with a small work force so we didn't have to worry about global operations with multiple facilities. We tracked his people from there." She flicked a glance at the boy, then smiled at them. "Now honestly, did you follow any of that?"


"A little..."


"If we'd been a little faster, it'd have been me coming through the flophouse room door instead of those Night Breakers. I'm sorry."


"Why? You saved me from them."


"You shouldn't have had to see the guard killed, or had to get away from those thugs in the first place." She shook her head. "It's not fair that you had to go through all of that."


He stared at her as if he didn't quite know what to say. That was fair enough. She couldn't say that she really knew, either. Concepts like "fair" didn't seem to apply to a child who was victimized by criminals, anyway. Talk wouldn't change that.


She was expecting something to go wrong all the way through the city, but it didn't. No cars full of armed criminals, no hostile mages descending from the skies. She pulled to a stop, leaving the car in a parking slot and not bothering to find the meter. After all, if the police towed it, they'd at least be able to get it back to its owner.


"Almost there. It's just this way."


She led Ward to a staircase in the sidewalk about two blocks away from where she'd parked, surrounded by a wrought-iron frame and blocked off by a chain and a sign reading, "Danger." They didn't even bother removing the chain, but just ducked under it, leaving tracks in the dust.


"What is this place?" Ward asked.


"It's an abandoned metro-rail station," Lutecia explained. "This area of the city must once have been mixed in type, but now residential and commercial buildings have been torn down and there's just industrial parks."


"And you can teleport from here?"


"Uh-huh. It'll take time for me to set it up instead of working right away, but less time than it would take to drive anywhere where it would be easier."


They descended the stairs and entered the dim cavern of tile and concrete, illuminated only by a minor light spell Lutecia conjured. The summoner would have expected to see signs of human habitation, where the homeless might have taken advantage of the shelter, but there were none. Maybe Lucence, or just the city of Kyas, took their charitable obligations more seriously than most worlds.


Lutecia raised her hands and the pale violet rune of Belkan magic swelled into being beneath her, not the four-pointed version of her summoning but the more usual Belkan triangle associated with her other magic. She hadn't been exaggerating; she had to concentrate hard to make the teleportation spell begin to form. It took nearly ten minutes for the link to be made and she'd burned as much mana as if she'd been in a reasonably strenuous mock battle. It was almost with a sigh of relief that she dropped her hand to Ward's shoulder.


"Finally! Next step, our ship."


"It's really happening, isn't it? I'm finally going home."


Lutecia nodded.


"Yeah. You're going...to what you were born for."


She pressed the tips of her index and middle fingers to the back of his neck.


"Schattenstechen."


The sudden jerk his body gave was no more than a reflex of electrical impulses and muscle failures. Ward could have had no idea what had happened; the spell had snuffed out his brain functions before he was even aware it had been cast, which was the advantage of a contact shot.


His body was already starting to glow as it toppled forward, a dead weight crumpling.


The violet light of the teleport spell surged up, and a moment later Lutecia was alone in the stillness and silence of the abandoned terminal.


~X X X~


Eight hundred miles away from Kyas, has a lizard or small mammal chosen to lift its head towards the sky over the Kaku Desert, it would have seen the blast sphere of golden light, a raging storm of magical power a hundred yards across, so that its lower edge just brushed the ground and cut a perfectly-shaped curve of the sand and rock.


Then it was gone, and the day continued much as before.


~X X X~


Lutecia leaned back against the bulkhead, watching through the port as Lucence receded beneath them. Soon, the cargo hauler would make the shift from physical to dimensional space.


"Would it be too much to ask for the powers that be to get us a nice comfy ride on a TSAB vessel instead of shipping on one of these rustbuckets?" Victor Stormhawk asked.


"It'd have raised too many questions," Lutecia told her fellow Naval Special Intelligence Service agent. "The Enforcers are only a day behind us, and when they find Conall and his outfit dead and the boy missing, they might start asking questions."


"I suppose," Victor agreed with a shrug. "Still, operational security won't stop me from a little recreational complaining. Plus, my shoulder's going to hurt for a week; Conall's bodyguard tagged me a good one. Ah, well, Celica likes my scars. Says they make me look manly."


He waited a beat.


"Come on, Alphine, this is the part where you say 'well, something has to,' and I wince like my ego notices such things. It's all scripted out."


Lutecia just sighed, and the smile vanished from the face of her fellow Shadow.


"Is this because you had to kill those gang members? I know you hate having to eliminate anyone besides the target, but you know as well as I do that the Enforcers will be all over this, and that they'll probably trace Conall's goon to the slums like we did. If they found and questioned those Night Breakers...well, there aren't as many hot purple-haired female mages with giant bug friends as you'd expect. And let's be honest, those guys were dirt. They were fresh off a murder—two, with that parking-lot guy—and in the middle of a kidnapping when you caught them. They're not worth losing sleep over."


"That's part of it, but...honestly, not that big a part."


Victor looked measuringly at her.


"Alphine, you aren't talking about the target, are you?"


A little smile, one which had nothing to do with humor or happiness, played around her lips.


"The 'target.' Operational jargon certainly makes it easy to talk about murdering a twelve-year-old boy."


Victor slammed his palm against the bulkhead. "Dammit, Alphine, you did not murder a twelve-year-old boy. You disposed of a three-month-old tasked biological killing machine."


"He didn't know that. He thought he'd been held captive for years and had managed to finally get home to his family. He didn't know that he was a clone of a boy who'd died three years ago, subliminally programmed to be a suicide bomber. I wonder, was the target his father, or one of the dignitaries that he'd naturally encounter in his family's social circle?"


Victor glared at her.


"They aren't his family. They're Durward Brantley the Fifth's family."


"He didn't know that!" Lutecia shot back. "He didn't know what he was programmed to do. How does that deserve death as a punishment? We could have taken him into custody, kept him isolated from the target, maybe even found a way to remove the conditioning."


"I'm sure we could," Victor agreed. "And then what?"


Lutecia blinked.


"And then he could live a normal life!"


"By giving his parents an exact copy of their son and passing him off?"


"How about by telling him the truth and letting him live his own life, like my friend Erio?"


"So he lives a nice, peaceful life, with proper counseling to help him cope with the fact that most of his memories are somebody else's. And then he gets hit by a car. Or knifed in a street crime. Or gets sick. Or lives to eighty-four and dies of old age. And takes how many innocent people with him? The 'suicide' part was just how the bomb was to be triggered: a corrupted Linker Core that, upon death, would link and discharge its maximum possible mana load all at once. You know, the whole reason you had to be the one to dispose of the target so that you could teleport the body somewhere where the explosion wouldn't kill anyone?"


"But—"


Victor sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder.


"No, Alphine. It was ugly, but we did the only thing that could be done. They're the ones who are the monsters, making a weapon that could think and feel, but in the end that's what they made: a weapon, created by magical science gone mad for the purposes of destruction and given a personality because having one made it more likely to accomplish its maker's goals."


Lutecia brushed away his hand.


"That sounds like you're describing my girlfriend," she snapped fiercely, then spun on her heel and stalked away from him.


Victor shook his head sadly.


"It's not the same thing at all."


He wondered how long it would take before she could admit it.


~X X X~


TSAB Bureau HQ, One Week Later


"I just...I feel so helpless, Val."


Admiral Chrono Harlaown paused in his march down the corridor. It was the sound of his sister Fate's voice, and from years of experience he was aware that the ace Enforcer was seriously upset.


"I know the feeling," Valentine Yaris answered the other woman. "I read your field report, of course, and I can understand why you'd feel that way."


The two women were sitting in a little atrium at the bend in the hall up ahead, a small, circular area with couches, potted plants, and a nice view of the ships coming and going outside the massive colony. Chrono paused, waiting quietly instead of marching forward and announcing himself.


After all, as the director of the NSIS, he was the Bureau's chief spy. Eavesdropping was almost an obligation.


Fate let out a heavy sigh.


"It's just...we went into the mission, my team and I, with a primary goal of protecting the boy. If that meant launching a rescue, we were ready for that. If it meant sitting back and letting the deal go down between the family and Conall Viper, then we were prepared for that as well. We knew—I knew—that we might have to make some hard choices and let criminals get away for the child's sake. I'd accepted that."


Chrono couldn't see Yaris's face at the angle he was at, but saw the head of gray-streaked blue hair bob up and down slowly.


"But you didn't even get the chance to make those choices," the Enforcer Captain said carefully.


"Before we even reached the site, we found that Conall's operation had been torn apart. He and his men were dead, and his data files had all been purged by programs created by a very skilled hacker. Our computer specialists gave it up as a lost cause after three days. We found traces of a boy accompanied by one of Conall's men in the slum district of Kyas, but the man was apparently caught up in gang violence and killed, and the boy vanished without a trace." Fate sighed, her shoulders sagging. "Val..."


"I know. Heaven knows that even after all my time in the service, this is a lesson I've had trouble learning, but sometimes there's nothing that we can do. It hurts, I know, to realize that there are some situations we're utterly powerless to affect."


"It just seems that there should be something. If we'd arrived at Lucence even one day sooner, we might have done something to save the boy."


"Fate, I know that there's nothing worse than this kind of situation. It's even worse in some ways than trying and failing, because at least if there was the chance to succeed then there was hope, and hopelessness is worse than regrets. But you have to learn to accept it, that some things just aren't in our power to change. Now, I know you'll never accept that going into a case—even if you are nearly thirty, you're still that kid I remember from way back—but after it's done, you should be able to tell the difference. Regretting your failures is one thing, but guilt over what you never had the power to control will kill you."


Fate smiled wanly at the older woman.


"I guess..."


"Tell you what; I know you're not supposed to go off HQ shift for two more days, but I'll pull some strings. Go home and see that wife and daughter of yours. Being with family's the best way to clear your head I know of."


"Thanks, Val."


"No problem. Us moms have to stick together."


The women stood, shared a quick hug, and Yaris walked off, thankfully away from Chrono instead of towards him. The admiral hesitated, but then kept on going forward.


Fate was his sister, after all.


"She's right, you know," he said, entering the atrium.


"Oh! Niisan...you heard?"


"Yeah." Chrono nodded. "There was really nothing you could have done."


"I know," Fate said softly. "I know. It just takes a while to get my heart to accept it."


"If it helps, you weren't a day late. It was three years."


"What?" Her burgundy-red eyes went wide.


Chrono nodded.


"Durward Brantley V really did die when the kidnappers' shuttle crashed three years ago. I know the family still holds out hope and conspiracy theorists really love this case, but...honestly, that's all there is to it."


"Then what was going on on Lucence?" Fate asked sharply.


"Someone was running a game. Like I said, the Brantleys want to believe. It makes them vulnerable."


Fate didn't ask how the NSIS was involved in the business or on what side. She knew Chrono wouldn't tell her; he was breaking enough rules just by saying what he had. And truthfully, she probably didn't want to know the full details.


So she asked only the one question that most concerned her, personally.


"What about the boy?"


Chrono met her searching gaze directly and told her something that, although certainly deceptive in its was, was also at the heart of it, the truth.


"There was no boy."

Spoiler for Author's Notes:

Credit for the linear rifle type of small arms that the Night Breakers aren't using, much to Lutecia's happiness, goes to synaesthetic (aka cori.writes.stuff) from her Shadowverse story, False Light. General credit for inspiring me to write the story, though, goes to Fuyu no Sora, for an ongoing discussion on the morality of the NSIS's existence and operations. Fun stuff, these gray areas.

One of the nice things about writing Nanoha fanfiction is that when using child characters, I can err on the side of understanding and maturity, since they all tend to be wise beyond their years. Ward in this story tends to be a bit quick on the uptake for twelve, but given the setting (and other obvious factors) I'm hoping that it didn't jar.


The reason why Lutecia can't teleport away directly is totally fanon; mostly it's an internal justification for me why RF6 doesn't go teleporting people into battle in StrikerS, but instead deploys by helicopter and personal flight (and even Lulu doesn't teleport directly away after the first RF6/Numbers engagement, but has to make her escape later, after the battle).


The Night Breakers are named after motorcycle models, Conall Viper after the Dodge Viper, and Durward Brantley the Fifth after the Aston Martin DBV. Bonus points if you can identify the source of the place names!

Spoiler for Auctorial ramblings:

I considered adding a subsequent fight scene where Lutecia has to protect Ward against a more adequate enemy (something along the level of the guys from "Within Our Own Shadow"), both to show the contrast between her fighting to protect him and the finale and to add to the action, but ultimately decided not to. On the one hand, this story isn't supposed to be about zaptacular action scenes, and on the other, I figure that if enough pyrotechnics start getting flung around, it won't be believable that the Shadows could hide the traces of their presence from Fate's Enforcer team.

For those who missed it, here's Chapter 1.

Ouch. Cruel twist, that. Honestly, my stomach dropped right at the instant Lutecia uttered "What you were born for" because I knew it wasn't going to end well...

I also grasp your decision to mark Lutecia at nineteen-twenty in this short, instead of at a younger or older age, much better now after reading this. You're catching her right at the real moment where she was starting to show some cracks, starting to feel the real strain of it. Her last exchange with Victor both shows this and how stubbornly she clings to her ideals; one has to wonder how much of Vivio and how much of herself she saw in the boy. She's not yet at the breaking point, but she's approaching it fast.

And in the end, Chrono is still a brother. I can say his comfort to Fate wasn't really "comfort", per say, but the fact that he still stepped out and said something to her about it speaks volumes about his character.

I do wonder how Nanoha would view Lutecia if she'd somehow seen that conversation between her and Victor...

[deathcurse]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

For both of you (Hah! I kid; I can count four! ) waiting for the second half of the Shadowverse two-shot...here it is!

Spoiler for Running Through Shadows--Chapter 2:

Durward Brantley V gripped Lutecia's hand with surprising strength. Though his features were easily recognizable from the case file despite the three-year age gap, the change was immense. There were no signs of the pampered, cosseted darling of wealth and privilege who had been raken from the Olympic. This child was thin, wiry, hard; he'd been toughened by privation and by the trials he'd undergone.

He reminded Lutecia of herself when she'd been a couple of years younger than he was, except that where she'd buried her emotions beneath an unnaturally dissonant calm, he wore his on his face, a desperation that was nearly feral.


She pulled, and he half-fell, half-sprang out of the car towards her. Garyuu had sent the Night Breaker reaching for the boy sprawling. The man didn't get up; without a Barrier Jacket to protect him from the insect knight's blades one blow had been more than sufficient. One man fired at him, while another, huge, rushed in close, some sort of magical blast gauntlet on his fist glowing with an armed charge. Lutecia recognized the weapon type; it allowed Belkan-type magically-enhanced physical strikes so long as its ammunition held out.


Lutecia couldn't sit and watch her summon's fight, though, because she had her own problems. The other two gang members, the woman and the tattooed bald man, came at her on the side away from Garyuu. They leveled their mass drivers and she swung Ward behind her. The impulse to protect him bodily cost her; she didn't get a shield spell up until the first shot hit her in the abdomen. She winced in pain, but luckily the weapon wasn't a military-grade linear rifle that could penetrate a low-end Barrier Jacket; she'd get a bruise out of it but no worse. Three further shots were stopped by her Panzerschild.


"Schattenstechen," her Boost Device, Asclepius, said his jewels flashing. Three missiles like elongated diamonds streaked from her palm and homed in on the two Night Breakers, cutting them down. She whipped back around, but Garyuu's armored shell and fighting skills had been more than enough to leave his two opponents sprawled in the dust. He tipped his head to one side, multiple rows of eyes gazing at her in an almost chiding fashion, as if her were saying, "And you doubted me?"


"All right, then. Let's get going. We need to move fast."


"Why?" the boy asked. "If you're with the Bureau, then aren't I safe now?" He glanced around. "You took care of those guys."


There was an almost plaintive note in his voice, which Lutecia understood at once. After all his experiences, his time in Conall's custody as well as his flight through the streets, he wanted more than anything to be told that it was over, that it was safe.


She wanted to give him that reassurance. Wanted to but couldn't.


"Those Night Breakers were just street-level punks. You're attracting attention from people bigger than that. Your family's company is pan-dimensional, dealing with multiple Administered Worlds, which makes you big business to them until you're safely at home. The TSAB isn't the only party that's after you."


He gulped and nodded.


"Like Angharad," he said. "They'll be hunting me to get me back." His eyes widened and he added, "I...I could be a witness against them! They have to find me!"


Lutecia didn't answer him at once. How could she respond when a child looked at her and announced that he'd realized he was under a death sentence?


She then shook her head. It was time for action, not sentiment.


"Don't worry. I won't let them get to you. But for now we need to get out of the city." She started looking over the parked cars, seeking one that would suit her needs.


"Why?"


"I'm a long-range teleporter, so I can take you directly where we need to go, but the background 'noise' created by all the magical technology in the city, from communications to magical barriers, makes teleportation magic difficult and unreliable," she explained.


Ah, that one will do, she thought, spotting a car that suited her.


She dismissed Garyuu, then opened a summoning gate and called upon a half-dozen of her wasp-like Insect summons. She aimed them at the car she'd picked and watched as they dashed in, merging with its computer systems and taking them over. Most of the cars in the lot were junkers or just old, with mechanical systems her summons couldn't possess, but this one was new enough for her to take over utterly, ignoring things like theft-control systems, locked doors, the need for an ignition code, and other pesky impediments to grand theft auto. The front doors of the sand-hued sedan popped open.


"That's our ride; let's go."


She flicked a magical shot towards the gate to blast off the chain, since she had neither the time nor the inclination to hunt through the dead guard's pockets for the padlock key. Lutecia and Ward got into the car, she had her summons start it, and they moved smoothly out into the street.


"Ms. Alphine?" Ward asked while she used the car's new system to combine with Asclepius's map of the mana-field patterns in Kyas to plot the quickest route for an exit strategy. "How did you find me?"


"We know that Conall had custody of you, so we traced the activity of his operators. He's a pretty well-known name here on Lucence, but his business is based on high mobility with a small work force so we didn't have to worry about global operations with multiple facilities. We tracked his people from there." She flicked a glance at the boy, then smiled at them. "Now honestly, did you follow any of that?"


"A little..."


"If we'd been a little faster, it'd have been me coming through the flophouse room door instead of those Night Breakers. I'm sorry."


"Why? You saved me from them."


"You shouldn't have had to see the guard killed, or had to get away from those thugs in the first place." She shook her head. "It's not fair that you had to go through all of that."


He stared at her as if he didn't quite know what to say. That was fair enough. She couldn't say that she really knew, either. Concepts like "fair" didn't seem to apply to a child who was victimized by criminals, anyway. Talk wouldn't change that.


She was expecting something to go wrong all the way through the city, but it didn't. No cars full of armed criminals, no hostile mages descending from the skies. She pulled to a stop, leaving the car in a parking slot and not bothering to find the meter. After all, if the police towed it, they'd at least be able to get it back to its owner.


"Almost there. It's just this way."


She led Ward to a staircase in the sidewalk about two blocks away from where she'd parked, surrounded by a wrought-iron frame and blocked off by a chain and a sign reading, "Danger." They didn't even bother removing the chain, but just ducked under it, leaving tracks in the dust.


"What is this place?" Ward asked.


"It's an abandoned metro-rail station," Lutecia explained. "This area of the city must once have been mixed in type, but now residential and commercial buildings have been torn down and there's just industrial parks."


"And you can teleport from here?"


"Uh-huh. It'll take time for me to set it up instead of working right away, but less time than it would take to drive anywhere where it would be easier."


They descended the stairs and entered the dim cavern of tile and concrete, illuminated only by a minor light spell Lutecia conjured. The summoner would have expected to see signs of human habitation, where the homeless might have taken advantage of the shelter, but there were none. Maybe Lucence, or just the city of Kyas, took their charitable obligations more seriously than most worlds.


Lutecia raised her hands and the pale violet rune of Belkan magic swelled into being beneath her, not the four-pointed version of her summoning but the more usual Belkan triangle associated with her other magic. She hadn't been exaggerating; she had to concentrate hard to make the teleportation spell begin to form. It took nearly ten minutes for the link to be made and she'd burned as much mana as if she'd been in a reasonably strenuous mock battle. It was almost with a sigh of relief that she dropped her hand to Ward's shoulder.


"Finally! Next step, our ship."


"It's really happening, isn't it? I'm finally going home."


Lutecia nodded.


"Yeah. You're going...to what you were born for."


She pressed the tips of her index and middle fingers to the back of his neck.


"Schattenstechen."


The sudden jerk his body gave was no more than a reflex of electrical impulses and muscle failures. Ward could have had no idea what had happened; the spell had snuffed out his brain functions before he was even aware it had been cast, which was the advantage of a contact shot.


His body was already starting to glow as it toppled forward, a dead weight crumpling.


The violet light of the teleport spell surged up, and a moment later Lutecia was alone in the stillness and silence of the abandoned terminal.


~X X X~


Eight hundred miles away from Kyas, has a lizard or small mammal chosen to lift its head towards the sky over the Kaku Desert, it would have seen the blast sphere of golden light, a raging storm of magical power a hundred yards across, so that its lower edge just brushed the ground and cut a perfectly-shaped curve of the sand and rock.


Then it was gone, and the day continued much as before.


~X X X~


Lutecia leaned back against the bulkhead, watching through the port as Lucence receded beneath them. Soon, the cargo hauler would make the shift from physical to dimensional space.


"Would it be too much to ask for the powers that be to get us a nice comfy ride on a TSAB vessel instead of shipping on one of these rustbuckets?" Victor Stormhawk asked.


"It'd have raised too many questions," Lutecia told her fellow Naval Special Intelligence Service agent. "The Enforcers are only a day behind us, and when they find Conall and his outfit dead and the boy missing, they might start asking questions."


"I suppose," Victor agreed with a shrug. "Still, operational security won't stop me from a little recreational complaining. Plus, my shoulder's going to hurt for a week; Conall's bodyguard tagged me a good one. Ah, well, Celica likes my scars. Says they make me look manly."


He waited a beat.


"Come on, Alphine, this is the part where you say 'well, something has to,' and I wince like my ego notices such things. It's all scripted out."


Lutecia just sighed, and the smile vanished from the face of her fellow Shadow.


"Is this because you had to kill those gang members? I know you hate having to eliminate anyone besides the target, but you know as well as I do that the Enforcers will be all over this, and that they'll probably trace Conall's goon to the slums like we did. If they found and questioned those Night Breakers...well, there aren't as many hot purple-haired female mages with giant bug friends as you'd expect. And let's be honest, those guys were dirt. They were fresh off a murder—two, with that parking-lot guy—and in the middle of a kidnapping when you caught them. They're not worth losing sleep over."


"That's part of it, but...honestly, not that big a part."


Victor looked measuringly at her.


"Alphine, you aren't talking about the target, are you?"


A little smile, one which had nothing to do with humor or happiness, played around her lips.


"The 'target.' Operational jargon certainly makes it easy to talk about murdering a twelve-year-old boy."


Victor slammed his palm against the bulkhead. "Dammit, Alphine, you did not murder a twelve-year-old boy. You disposed of a three-month-old tasked biological killing machine."


"He didn't know that. He thought he'd been held captive for years and had managed to finally get home to his family. He didn't know that he was a clone of a boy who'd died three years ago, subliminally programmed to be a suicide bomber. I wonder, was the target his father, or one of the dignitaries that he'd naturally encounter in his family's social circle?"


Victor glared at her.


"They aren't his family. They're Durward Brantley the Fifth's family."


"He didn't know that!" Lutecia shot back. "He didn't know what he was programmed to do. How does that deserve death as a punishment? We could have taken him into custody, kept him isolated from the target, maybe even found a way to remove the conditioning."


"I'm sure we could," Victor agreed. "And then what?"


Lutecia blinked.


"And then he could live a normal life!"


"By giving his parents an exact copy of their son and passing him off?"


"How about by telling him the truth and letting him live his own life, like my friend Erio?"


"So he lives a nice, peaceful life, with proper counseling to help him cope with the fact that most of his memories are somebody else's. And then he gets hit by a car. Or knifed in a street crime. Or gets sick. Or lives to eighty-four and dies of old age. And takes how many innocent people with him? The 'suicide' part was just how the bomb was to be triggered: a corrupted Linker Core that, upon death, would link and discharge its maximum possible mana load all at once. You know, the whole reason you had to be the one to dispose of the target so that you could teleport the body somewhere where the explosion wouldn't kill anyone?"


"But—"


Victor sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder.


"No, Alphine. It was ugly, but we did the only thing that could be done. They're the ones who are the monsters, making a weapon that could think and feel, but in the end that's what they made: a weapon, created by magical science gone mad for the purposes of destruction and given a personality because having one made it more likely to accomplish its maker's goals."


Lutecia brushed away his hand.


"That sounds like you're describing my girlfriend," she snapped fiercely, then spun on her heel and stalked away from him.


Victor shook his head sadly.


"It's not the same thing at all."


He wondered how long it would take before she could admit it.


~X X X~


TSAB Bureau HQ, One Week Later


"I just...I feel so helpless, Val."


Admiral Chrono Harlaown paused in his march down the corridor. It was the sound of his sister Fate's voice, and from years of experience he was aware that the ace Enforcer was seriously upset.


"I know the feeling," Valentine Yaris answered the other woman. "I read your field report, of course, and I can understand why you'd feel that way."


The two women were sitting in a little atrium at the bend in the hall up ahead, a small, circular area with couches, potted plants, and a nice view of the ships coming and going outside the massive colony. Chrono paused, waiting quietly instead of marching forward and announcing himself.


After all, as the director of the NSIS, he was the Bureau's chief spy. Eavesdropping was almost an obligation.


Fate let out a heavy sigh.


"It's just...we went into the mission, my team and I, with a primary goal of protecting the boy. If that meant launching a rescue, we were ready for that. If it meant sitting back and letting the deal go down between the family and Conall Viper, then we were prepared for that as well. We knew—I knew—that we might have to make some hard choices and let criminals get away for the child's sake. I'd accepted that."


Chrono couldn't see Yaris's face at the angle he was at, but saw the head of gray-streaked blue hair bob up and down slowly.


"But you didn't even get the chance to make those choices," the Enforcer Captain said carefully.


"Before we even reached the site, we found that Conall's operation had been torn apart. He and his men were dead, and his data files had all been purged by programs created by a very skilled hacker. Our computer specialists gave it up as a lost cause after three days. We found traces of a boy accompanied by one of Conall's men in the slum district of Kyas, but the man was apparently caught up in gang violence and killed, and the boy vanished without a trace." Fate sighed, her shoulders sagging. "Val..."


"I know. Heaven knows that even after all my time in the service, this is a lesson I've had trouble learning, but sometimes there's nothing that we can do. It hurts, I know, to realize that there are some situations we're utterly powerless to affect."


"It just seems that there should be something. If we'd arrived at Lucence even one day sooner, we might have done something to save the boy."


"Fate, I know that there's nothing worse than this kind of situation. It's even worse in some ways than trying and failing, because at least if there was the chance to succeed then there was hope, and hopelessness is worse than regrets. But you have to learn to accept it, that some things just aren't in our power to change. Now, I know you'll never accept that going into a case—even if you are nearly thirty, you're still that kid I remember from way back—but after it's done, you should be able to tell the difference. Regretting your failures is one thing, but guilt over what you never had the power to control will kill you."


Fate smiled wanly at the older woman.


"I guess..."


"Tell you what; I know you're not supposed to go off HQ shift for two more days, but I'll pull some strings. Go home and see that wife and daughter of yours. Being with family's the best way to clear your head I know of."


"Thanks, Val."


"No problem. Us moms have to stick together."


The women stood, shared a quick hug, and Yaris walked off, thankfully away from Chrono instead of towards him. The admiral hesitated, but then kept on going forward.


Fate was his sister, after all.


"She's right, you know," he said, entering the atrium.


"Oh! Niisan...you heard?"


"Yeah." Chrono nodded. "There was really nothing you could have done."


"I know," Fate said softly. "I know. It just takes a while to get my heart to accept it."


"If it helps, you weren't a day late. It was three years."


"What?" Her burgundy-red eyes went wide.


Chrono nodded.


"Durward Brantley V really did die when the kidnappers' shuttle crashed three years ago. I know the family still holds out hope and conspiracy theorists really love this case, but...honestly, that's all there is to it."


"Then what was going on on Lucence?" Fate asked sharply.


"Someone was running a game. Like I said, the Brantleys want to believe. It makes them vulnerable."


Fate didn't ask how the NSIS was involved in the business or on what side. She knew Chrono wouldn't tell her; he was breaking enough rules just by saying what he had. And truthfully, she probably didn't want to know the full details.


So she asked only the one question that most concerned her, personally.


"What about the boy?"


Chrono met her searching gaze directly and told her something that, although certainly deceptive in its was, was also at the heart of it, the truth.


"There was no boy."

Spoiler for Author's Notes:

Credit for the linear rifle type of small arms that the Night Breakers aren't using, much to Lutecia's happiness, goes to synaesthetic (aka cori.writes.stuff) from her Shadowverse story, False Light. General credit for inspiring me to write the story, though, goes to Fuyu no Sora, for an ongoing discussion on the morality of the NSIS's existence and operations. Fun stuff, these gray areas.

One of the nice things about writing Nanoha fanfiction is that when using child characters, I can err on the side of understanding and maturity, since they all tend to be wise beyond their years. Ward in this story tends to be a bit quick on the uptake for twelve, but given the setting (and other obvious factors) I'm hoping that it didn't jar.


The reason why Lutecia can't teleport away directly is totally fanon; mostly it's an internal justification for me why RF6 doesn't go teleporting people into battle in StrikerS, but instead deploys by helicopter and personal flight (and even Lulu doesn't teleport directly away after the first RF6/Numbers engagement, but has to make her escape later, after the battle).


The Night Breakers are named after motorcycle models, Conall Viper after the Dodge Viper, and Durward Brantley the Fifth after the Aston Martin DBV. Bonus points if you can identify the source of the place names!

Spoiler for Auctorial ramblings:

I considered adding a subsequent fight scene where Lutecia has to protect Ward against a more adequate enemy (something along the level of the guys from "Within Our Own Shadow"), both to show the contrast between her fighting to protect him and the finale and to add to the action, but ultimately decided not to. On the one hand, this story isn't supposed to be about zaptacular action scenes, and on the other, I figure that if enough pyrotechnics start getting flung around, it won't be believable that the Shadows could hide the traces of their presence from Fate's Enforcer team.

For those who missed it, here's Chapter 1.

Ouch. Just...ouch.

Nice twist, it's

Spoiler for some spoilers:

tough to see Lutecia, who we view as "The Cavalry! Coming to the rescue!" actually be the assassin sent to kill a boy . I had wondered if this would be a fic where we see Lutecia do something other than kill--and you had deceived me into thinking that way in Chapter 1, so the startling turn of this ending really smacked hard.

Lutecia's conversation with Victor was nice, lots of emotion in that scene, especially when Vivio's name came up.

And Chrono's last bit is a powerful way to end the story, but it also feels a bit harsh coming from him: considering how many people in his family are similar to Durward (Fate, Erio, Vivio), for him to call Durward not a boy is pretty rough.

Great fic once again from you, Dezo.

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by RadiantBeam

Ouch. Cruel twist, that.

Originally Posted by deathcurse

Ouch. Just...ouch.

My work here is done.

Lutecia's conversation with Victor was nice, lots of emotion in that scene, especially when Vivio's name came up.

Spoiler for spoilery comment:

Yeah, I knew that that comparison was pretty inevitable given Vivio's origin and how it's similar. Fortunately Vivio doesn't have Automatically-Triggered Doomsday Powers once she was removed from the Magical Mind Control. But I knew Lutecia had to make that connection sooner or later, so I had Victor feed her the cue.

And Chrono's last bit is a powerful way to end the story, but it also feels a bit harsh coming from him: considering how many people in his family are similar to Durward (Fate, Erio, Vivio), for him to call Durward not a boy is pretty rough.

Oooh, you got the irony of him saying that to Fate's face, then.

[deathcurse]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

My work here is done.

Can I have the ruined bits of my heart back now?

Spoiler for spoilery comment:

Yeah, I knew that that comparison was pretty inevitable given Vivio's origin and how it's similar. Fortunately Vivio doesn't have Automatically-Triggered Doomsday Powers once she was removed from the Magical Mind Control. But I knew Lutecia had to make that connection sooner or later, so I had Victor feed her the cue.

Spoiler for reply:

It's a great moment, it really shows how Lutecia is very aware of the hypocrisy in her own life, and of how she tries so hard to adhere to her own morals and yet life keeps forcing her to break them. It would lead quite nicely into RB's "Shadow".

Oooh, you got the irony of him saying that to Fate's face, then.

Ah, it works nicely as irony . With that angle in mind, I can enjoy it well, and not give Chrono dark looks for insensitivity .

[RadiantBeam]

Originally Posted by deathcurse

Can I have the ruined bits of my heart back now?

You sure you want them back so soon? I'll be snatching them back eventually when I start updating Shadowverse again....

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by RadiantBeam

You sure you want them back so soon? I'll be snatching them back eventually when I start updating Shadowverse again....

But we have to give them back, or you'll have nothing to snatch!

[deathcurse]

Originally Posted by RadiantBeam

You sure you want them back so soon? I'll be snatching them back eventually when I start updating Shadowverse again....

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

But we have to give them back, or you'll have nothing to snatch!

Yeah, I need some time to Scotch Tape it all back together before the second round of Break the Cutie happens with the Shadowverse .

[Jimmy C]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

Running Through Shadows--Chapter 2

While this was well written, I can't shake the feeling that events were contrieved to deliver the intended result. Consider:

1. Child of wealthy family is kidnapped from liner.
2. Child and his kidnappers die when the shuttle they're on crashes.
3. Three years later, someone gets the idea of using a copy of the dead kid as a weapon of mass destruction.
4. The plan is to let the parents know that they have the kid, he gets back to them. Sometime after that, the kid goes BOOM.

So far so good. But the first question is why did NSIS get involved? Sure, it the kid of a wealthy family, but what about the case merited NSIS's attention above and beyond the Enforcers?
Second, NSIS not only investigates the case before the Enforcers can arrive, they find out the kid's not only a fake, but rigged to explode. Then, they have sufficent time deploy Lutecia to find, kill and dispose of him, just barely ahead of the Enforcers arriving on planet to rescue him.
One way out would be that NSIS was already investigating whoever cloned the kid in the first place. But that still looks like the kind of ilegal activity that they'd leave to the Enforcers to deal with. NSIS is supposed to deal with threats that no one else should ever know about, right? This doesn't seem to be major enough.
Second, is the timing. I can't help but feel, if they had been investigating the cloning since before the Enforcers got wind of the kid, they should have been able to use Lutecia to eliminate him much earlier than this.

Spoiler for I do have one idea:

NSIS finds out someone is cloning long dead kidnap victim. Why, they don't know. But their agents confirm the existence of the clone. After investigating for a while, they feel it's best to pass along the information to the Enforcers to mount a rescue. After that, the NSIS agents continue to monitor the operation, to keep an eye out for developments that the Enforcers might need to know. Then, just a day before the Enforcers are to arrive, the NSIS agents uncover the real reason for cloning the kid. Uh oh, now they need to race Lutecia to the scene to eliminate the kid before the Enforcers arrive.
First problem with this is, there doesn't seem to be any reason why the Enforcers shouldn't be told about the bomb.
Second problem is, even if Lutecia eliminates the target without a hitch. The Enforcers will be suspicious of how conviniently timed the incident was, and they'll have only a short list of suspects who could have done it in time.

Slight bumps on the road. But I think you can deal with them if you want to use the idea.

[RadiantBeam]

Originally Posted by DezoPenguin

But we have to give them back, or you'll have nothing to snatch!

Originally Posted by deathcurse

Yeah, I need some time to Scotch Tape it all back together before the second round of Break the Cutie happens with the Shadowverse .

But I want to see how much I can shatter pieces of a heart that's already been shattered once before! It's my own personal experiment!

[Moczo]

Originally Posted by deathcurse

Since RB's Shadowverse seems to be back lately, I thought I'd drop out of my NaNoWriMo haze to offer an update ^^.

Back to the Shadows! Auris starts to put some pieces of the mystery together...but who's tricking who?

Crime Never Sleeps
Part 12

“The worst things we do are always by our own choice.”

Spoiler for Crime Never Sleeps, part 12:

“I encountered something interesting when I was digging around about the mayor,” Jian reported, sitting in front of Auris’ desk and flipping through an open folder laid out between them. It was technically never “after hours” in the NSIS branch, but convention dictated a stand-down on protocol after normal office hours. So Auris slid a cup of coffee over to Jian before sipping at her own mug, nodding for her agent to continue her report. Jian left her coffee untouched and said, “It seems like someone else had gotten there first.”

That surprised Auris. “Who?”

“I couldn’t find anything about the other intruder…that kind of subtlety isn’t common, so I’m guessing that it was one of us.”

“A Shadow?”

“I think it’s Alphine.” Jian told her flatly. “Yagami must have some Shadows loyal to her—all the overseers do.” Auris was well aware of that fact—the ones that did it for under-the-table money weren’t a concern, but the ones who worked out of personal loyalty were. Those people Auris watched very carefully. Emotions were more unpredictable than money, after all. “Alphine’s the obvious choice. She’s the girlfriend of Yagami’s niece, the Sankt Kaiser, after all.” Jian smirked. “Probably more than friends, if the gossip is right.”

“So Hayate’s already looking into the mayor herself,” Auris mused, letting this new bit of information turn in her mind, shifting her many plans and potential ideas around the additional facts. “Which records have been looked into?”

“Mostly financial ones…his campaign accounts, as well as some smaller money in-flows that aren’t accounted for elsewhere.” Jian flicked her hair back then passed a sheet of accounts to Auris. “Probably a classic attempt to cover up anonymous sponsor sources, but possibly something else.”

“Can you find out who they are?”

“It’s beyond my skills,” Jian apologized. “I can speculate, from the information that I gathered so far on the two overseers, that the money comes from them, but I have no proof. You’ll need a computer specialist.”

Auris looked at the account sheets thoughtfully. Maybe it was time for her to test out Alvar Lonsdale’s loyalties, and see if he would be interested in joining in with his boss… “Leave that for now. What else?”

“The mayor appears to spend a lot of time visiting the Cranagan Corrections Program centre, even though his official standing as sponsor doesn’t warrant for that many visits.” Jian shuffled through the papers again and pulled out a stack of pictures and personal files. “Cross-referencing with the visitor’s log, I’ve pulled a list of the inmates he visits most often. Some of them will be familiar to you.”

Auris flipped rapidly through the pictures, her eyes widening as she went. “Many of these kids are Shadows-in-training at the moment!”

“Far too many for coincidence,” Jian nodded, pleased with herself.

Auris drummed the tabletop with one hand, staring at the photos and thinking hard. “If Alphine was in those files, she’s probably handed this information to Hayate as well. What’s her game, I wonder…Hayate can’t use this information as proof herself, it’s outside of her authority to have these files…”

Jian asked curiously, “Maybe Yagami is lying to you about her current relationship with the mayor? Perhaps they have a mutual agreement about this—Yagami has a lot of potential clout over the mayor’s reputation, with her influence on the Gallant Case.”

“Of course she’s lying to me,” Auris grunted, pondering that theory. “Neither of us expects the other to reveal their full hand…the trick is giving each other enough to reach our shared objective while concealing enough to keep the upper hand on each other.” She gave that tip freely, since if things went well Jian Valiant may soon become one of Auris’ closer allies. It never hurt to have a second to watch her flanks when Auris had her attention on other domains.

If Hayate really was plotting behind her back, then Auris might have to act pre-emptively on these issues.

“Good work, Jian. Go home and get some sleep.”

“Thank you.”

She should be getting home herself, Auris noted, but her mind was racing too fast for rest. Walking over to her office whiteboard, she started scribbling over the surface in big black letters.

Raven Gallant.

Mayor Magnus.

Corrections programs.

NSIS Overseers.

Bribes.

Shadows.

There was a theory in there somewhere. There had to be, if Hayate was so interested in it. Did Hayate even know what tied it all together, or was she investigating the mayor for some other reason? That could very well be true…But something told Auris that there was a connection in all this somewhere.

Now all Auris had to do was figure it out first, and distract Hayate long enough for Auris to decide the first move.

First though, she needed more information, and a means to feed Hayate enough half-true and misleading information to keep her off-balance long enough for Auris to work out what to do.

And Auris knew just who she could use for that.

**O**

“Half-day medical leave?” Auris chuckled to herself as she checked her messages. It was ridiculous, how only five hours had passed since she had last checked her inbox, and she had fourteen unread messages already. “Signed by Shamal Yagami—My, Hayate, if you can’t keep up with the pressure, things are going to start slipping by you…” A beep on another monitor distracted her. She had set a flag on Alphine’s sign-in, and immediately Auris proceeded to send out a pre-set message on another terminal before typing to Alphine through the Shadows’ secure network,

Gaiz: Alphine, report to my office.

Alphine: Yes ma’am.

Nearly immediately, there was a knock on Auris’ door. “Director?”

“Come in, Alphine.” Auris indicated, and Lutecia marched in and stopped in front of her desk, standing at ease but in an attentive stance. She started with the inane pleasantries that supposedly made people view you more sympathetically. “How are you this morning?”

“Fine, ma’am,” was the mild reply. “And yourself?”

Oh, Lutecia was good at this game. She was one of the best Shadows here, after all. Auris smiled and answered, “Alright, though the Gallant Case has been tiring on both me and my partner. Although I seem to be better off than Hayate, overall.”

Lutecia’s red eyes flickered in the low light for a moment. “Better off, ma’am?”

“Hayate has been getting most of the political pressure,” Auris commented idly. “It’s clearly become a problem—she’s on medical leave today.”

“I’ll send my sympathies to the Lieutenant-general,” Lutecia said, polite concern in her voice. “Would it be troubling for you, to work on the case alone today? Should I reschedule some of my cases and assist?”

“Oh no, it’s not that bad,” Auris said, waving off the offer. “Keep your schedule, I simply wanted to talk for a few minutes.”

“About what, ma’am?”

“You’re friends with Hayate’s niece, aren’t you? And Hayate herself as well, I presume?”

Lutecia was too canny an agent to show any kind of suspicion or concern on her face, but Auris did manage to detect an edge in her mellow reply. “Yes, we’re friends.” More than that, Auris thought in amusement. If Lutecia was avoiding saying that she and Vivio Takamachi were girlfriends (even if it really was common knowledge), then she must be really wary of what Auris might do with the confirmation. Although she was twenty-five, there was still something of a little girl in Lutecia when it came to fear. Still, Auris wouldn’t underestimate her—not the Shadow’s best assassin.

“Look…I’m not pretending to be Yagami’s friend—but I need to know what kind of pressure she’s under, or else I can’t help her during these trials.” Auris kept her tone theatrically defensive enough to appear as if she was simply embarrassed to be caught caring for someone everyone knew she claimed to dislike. “She’s been skipping her meals again, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. If I can do something to direct some of the fire from her to me, it’ll be good for us in the long run.”

A minute pause later, Lutecia said, “Hayate-san appears to be handling the stress well, ma’am.”

“Of course,” Auris answered, nodding firmly. “But I suspect it’s wearing on her…” She took a guess. “…especially since her family and closest friends aren’t entirely supportive of her actions lately.” Raising her hands helplessly, Auris said, “I can always tell right after one of those confrontations…Hayate ends up working twice as hard all day as if to try and forget the incident.”

Lutecia hesitated for another moment, her red eyes pensive, before she said slowly, “Most of them don’t agree with your stance on the case, but they’re mostly keeping silent about it. Nanoha-san is the most vocal about it, and Fate-san usually has to play mediator between them. But Hayate-san is handling it, ma’am, you don’t need to worry about her.”

Her face completely controlled and neutral, Auris cheered inside her head. Success. “I see…Yagami mentioned Admiral Chrono once in passing, and she looked distressed when she did—is he putting pressure on her too?”

Flinching slightly, Lutecia admitted, “Just a little. He mostly tries to convince her that she should follow what she believes to be right instead of what other people believe.” She shrugged, and Auris wasn’t quite sure if Lutecia was dismissing the moral dilemma as unimportant or if she disagreed with the Admiral’s way of thinking.

Auris wanted to chuckle, but she stilled the impulse. Sifting through Lutecia’s diplomatic speech was easy. Clearly, Harlaown thought that Auris was influencing Hayate with her opinions. It would be easy to plant a seed of suspicion in his mind by having him “find out” that the whole plan was Hayate’s to begin with…it would give Auris a hidden weapon for later use. She kept that in mind.

“Alphine, I know that you know Takamachi and Testa—sorry, I meant Harlaown. Could you maybe try and get them to convince Yagami to rest a little more?” Auris sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “The Lieutenant-general is always first in and last out of the office, while also keeping on top of her own regular duties…she’s going to make herself sick at this rate. If you can have them let slip that I’ll pull a few extra over-times to make up for her to get a good night’s sleep...so that Hayate won’t think that I’m interfering.”

Lutecia nodded. “I will.”

“Thank you.” Auris nodded then waved a hand. “Dismissed.”

Lutecia inclined her head in a polite salute before leaving, letting Auris’ door slide shut behind her.

One of the excellent advantages of being the Shadows Director was premium access to the Bureau’s best gadgets and toys. Auris turned off her scrambler device—no current bug-detecting spells have been able to crack its shielding yet, although like everything else it’ll probably become obsolete in a few years. But by then, someone would have created a new device to serve its purpose as a counter-spy gadget.

Auris opened a video screen to the live audio feed she had been transmitting under the scrambler’s shielding. “Lonsdale, send that recording to me and erase any other traces of it.”

“Done, and shazam!” Alvar finished typing and winked at her. “It never existed. Gave me a chance to try out this new software-deleting program I wrote recently, what a great trial run—eluding the NSIS’s own computer-trail hunters.” He paused. “Hm, I’m one of those computer-trail hunters…”

“So you’ll know what to expect from other people trying to hide their tracks,” Auris said wryly. She normally used these customary semi-illegal requests to tie the loyalty of her new allies to her through the shared guilt of committing a mild crime, but Alvar seemed to enjoy the challenge of covertly assisting her as a reward in and of itself. “Lonsdale, see if you can get a Shadow to drop some lines to Admiral Harlaown—the younger one—about Hayate’s initial files on Gallant. I just sent them to you. Not too obviously, but enough to have him turn his eye on her, understand?”

“Can do,” Alvar replied, but he hesitated, pulling out a deck of cards. Auris eyed him curiously. Finally, after shuffling a few times, the man blurted out, “I think you’re underestimating her, ma’am. She knew something was up—half of her responses were lies.”

“Alphine?”

“Yes! Did you think that she would really believe that you cared personally about Yagami when you ordered her into your office as her superior?”

“Damn,” Auris scowled, belatedly realizing why the whole interrogation had seemed too simple. “I forgot. I have to suppose then that Alphine had noticed that I’ve been feeding her information to pass on to Hayate lately…” She sometimes told the Shadows different things than what she reported to Hayate, just to see if she could catch Hayate in the act of having spies herself. Alphine had been an obvious suspect, but now Auris wasn’t quite so sure…it was far too obvious, and Auris was starting to realize that Hayate wasn’t quite so transparent as she appeared to be at first glance. But then why was Hayate so unsubtly using Alphine to run her errands?

“Maybe, but it’s hard to tell.” Alvar performed a series of triple-cuts in his hands, his fingers flicking the cards around quickly. “She’s clever enough to catch that, but she might not have a chance to figure out if it’s truth or half-lies. You could still run circles around Yagami through using her as Yagami’s informant.”

“At the same time, Hayate may be using her to give me false information,” Auris pointed out, considering Lutecia in a more cautious format now. “Or Alphine herself may use us both to her advantage.”

“She’s not the type,” Alvar dismissed that, but his doubt showed on his face.

“Tagus can keep an eye on Alphine for me,” Auris decided, tightening her tie. “She’s a bit sloppy, but she should be able to do the job after she’s finished with her current mission.” Smirking, Auris added, “And while she’s at it, maybe she could learn how to be more subtle from Alphine.”

“Ah, do you want them on a mission together?” Tapping at his keyboard, Alvar glanced at something off-screen. “There are two unclaimed cases they could legitimately collaborate on together…”

“No, that would be too obvious,” Auris cut in. “I’ll just get her to shadow Alphine for a while, to confirm what she’s up to.” She doubted that Tagus would actually succeed, since Lutecia was far too sharp not to notice that she was being watched. But who knows, she might get lucky. It also gave her an excuse to see if Clara Tagus would be an asset or a hindrance down the road… “Besides, I want Alphine free to complete whatever tasks she’s doing for Hayate.” And afterwards, she can decide whether or not Lutecia was even worth the risk of using as a go-between with Hayate.

“Give the Lieutenant-General enough rope to hang herself with?” Alvar deduced, grinning.

“She’s too clever to hang herself,” Auris answered, smiling coldly. “But I may want to use that rope one day.”

Spoiler for Author's Note:

Alright, this part isn't edited to the point that I'm pleased with, but I can't think of what else to do with it , so here it is! I had difficulty with Auris' lines, they seemed a mite cheesy--but that may be in character, since she finds it awkward to appear caring!

This is the last bit that may have contained parts that appeared before, from here on out it's 100% new material!

New Part 1-4A
New Part 4B
New Part 5: Trial Day 1A
New Part 5: Trial Day 1B
New Part 5: Trial Day 1C and New Part 6
New Part 7
Part 8 and Part 9: Trial Day 2
Part 10: Trial Day 2
Part 11

Finally caught up!

All I have to say in general is... wow. Plans within plans within plans, huh? You've worked out quite the intricate web. And you've got a talent for these morally ambiguous works, I see; I have so much tendency to paint obvious villains that it's rather impressive to me how well you can have me hating Auris one moment and sympathizing with her the next. The same goes for... most of the characters, in fact. Even lil' Raven, who I went in assuming I would find unshakeably sympathetic, but instead I occasionally... wonder.

Very much looking forward to the next part now that I can just follow along normally!

[DezoPenguin]

Originally Posted by Jimmy C

While this was well written, I can't shake the feeling that events were contrieved to deliver the intended result. Consider:

1. Child of wealthy family is kidnapped from liner.
2. Child and his kidnappers die when the shuttle they're on crashes.
3. Three years later, someone gets the idea of using a copy of the dead kid as a weapon of mass destruction.
4. The plan is to let the parents know that they have the kid, he gets back to them. Sometime after that, the kid goes BOOM.

So far so good. But the first question is why did NSIS get involved? Sure, it the kid of a wealthy family, but what about the case merited NSIS's attention above and beyond the Enforcers?
Second, NSIS not only investigates the case before the Enforcers can arrive, they find out the kid's not only a fake, but rigged to explode. Then, they have sufficent time deploy Lutecia to find, kill and dispose of him, just barely ahead of the Enforcers arriving on planet to rescue him.
One way out would be that NSIS was already investigating whoever cloned the kid in the first place. But that still looks like the kind of ilegal activity that they'd leave to the Enforcers to deal with. NSIS is supposed to deal with threats that no one else should ever know about, right? This doesn't seem to be major enough.
Second, is the timing. I can't help but feel, if they had been investigating the cloning since before the Enforcers got wind of the kid, they should have been able to use Lutecia to eliminate him much earlier than this.

Spoiler for I do have one idea:

NSIS finds out someone is cloning long dead kidnap victim. Why, they don't know. But their agents confirm the existence of the clone. After investigating for a while, they feel it's best to pass along the information to the Enforcers to mount a rescue. After that, the NSIS agents continue to monitor the operation, to keep an eye out for developments that the Enforcers might need to know. Then, just a day before the Enforcers are to arrive, the NSIS agents uncover the real reason for cloning the kid. Uh oh, now they need to race Lutecia to the scene to eliminate the kid before the Enforcers arrive.
First problem with this is, there doesn't seem to be any reason why the Enforcers shouldn't be told about the bomb.
Second problem is, even if Lutecia eliminates the target without a hitch. The Enforcers will be suspicious of how conviniently timed the incident was, and they'll have only a short list of suspects who could have done it in time.

Slight bumps on the road. But I think you can deal with them if you want to use the idea.

I think part of the problem you're having is, I deliberately skipped the backstory infodump because this was a two-part story and I didn't feel like I had enough story to balance out the scene, plus the fact that it would screw with the emotional impact of the final scenes.

Spoiler for spoilery:

...and the fact that too much of the information is tied in with the "twist" moment, so I couldn't provide it in advance of that.

To address your most basic question: The NSIS is involved because there's a terroristic plot centering around a major corporate entity (and/or its various political concerns). To elaborate:

Spoiler for Very spoilery:

You're actually right as to the NSIS having been involved in investigating the plot in advance, in a "gathering information" stage; they had not taken action because they were trying to gather details on precisely who was involved (not unlike how Jail used third parties to create the Vivio clone for him) and what the target was before they stepped in. The "bad guys" then decided to make their move, using Conall's group as their "front men" to operate in usual criminal channels. Aware that the negotiations would take time, they continued to monitor the situation. However, as happens, details leak--Crawler was exactly what he appeared to be, a legitimate informant passing on big news to his law enforcement contact. The Enforcers mobilized at once, due to the importance of the parties involved. The NSIS, believing they had no other choice if they wanted to keep a lid on it, sent in their operatives to derail the plot. This cost them a chance to gain more information, but it also kept the details of that investigation under cover so that they would be able to continue without the big public furball that would result if the Enforcers got involved (regardless of what happened to the boy himself).

[Nanya01]

Here's Jump part 4

Season 1

A's

Jump Part 1

Jump Part 2

Jump Part 3

Spoiler for Blood That Flows - Jump Part 4:

Regius glared at the barrier, hoping he could will it to dust. "What the heck is this thing?!"

"Yelling isn't making it any better, boss." Quint shook her head. Not that she didn't disagree with the thought. It had been hours and no apparent progress had been made.

Well, no, a few people had gotten the idea to touch the thing and ended up losing an arm out of it, which was why she hadn't tried to do much herself.

The only solace Regius had was that even the Navy had no luck against this barrier, though he wasn't sure why they were even bothering, they never had before.

(---)

"She's here." Death Bringer whispered to himself and opened up all lines of communication, his face being shown on all televisions and communication arrays all over the city. "Citizens of Mid-Childa, no, there is nothing wrong with your television sets, I've just commandeered all broadcasts." He chuckled and smirked at them. "You people, who have lived here for years in relative peace..."

(---)

Megane looked at the screen as the man continued to speak. "...know nothing of the terrors as society falls, crumbling away to dust. You think that your precious Bureau can protect you..."

(---)

Zest narrowed his eyes at that, it was like the man was insulting him directly.

"And yet, your precious Bureau is completely helpless against me."

(---)

"What is he doing?" Lindy asked as the Arthra got close enough to Cranagan to warp Chrono, Lina, Fate, Yuuno and the Wolkenritter to the surface.

"Setting something up, most likely." Lina didn't like this, not one bit.

(---)

"So, just sit back, relax and enjoy your last few moments before I destroy your entire world. Oh, I know you don't believe me, so, how about a small sample?"

(---)

Zest's eyes widened as he saw the man start to glow as he snapped his fingers. "Nnnaaahh..." He fell to his knees, his head felt like it was being torn apart from the inside. Not that anyone else could do anything more, since they were all on the ground, screaming in pain.

After a few agonizing moments, the pain stopped and Zest looked up, panting at the smirking man.

"You don't need to thank me for your suffering. You can thank this woman for it!" A picture of a redheaded woman with one red eye and one golden eye appeared on the screen. "If not for her, I would not have the key I need to do what I'm going to do to you. Like what I did to Al Hazard, and the Saint Kaiser, I shall do to all of you as well." He laughed as the screen turned off.

(---)

"That little..." Lina growled as she looked at the screen. "Gah! I haven't had this bad of a rep since I was a teenager!"

"Calm down." Chrono shook his head. "Amy, can you get me a line to Admiral Leon Phils once we touch down?"

"Um, yeah, shouldn't be a problem, Chrono. Why?" She blinked as he smiled at her lightly.

"I'm going to need his help."

(---)

"This is taking too long!" Regius grumbled, he was half tempted to ask the Navy to fire the bloody Arc En Ciel into the city just to stop this guy.

The problem with that was, there was no way to get everyone in the city out before it would be destroyed.

"Colonel." He blinked as he saw a screen with a green haired woman looking at him seriously. "This is Admiral Lindy Harlaown. I'm sending in a strike force that can deal with the current situation."

"You know what's going on?!"

Lindy nodded at him. "Yes. Events on Non-Administrated Planet 97 led to the current crisis. Unfortunately, there was a communications block, or I would have been able to contact you sooner."

"So, where are they?" Regius grumbled at her, if someone could get through the barrier, why hadn't they come yet?

"The help is a bit unusual, Colonel, but none of them are your enemies."

Regius blinked, wondering what she meant by that.

It dawned on him a moment later as a group of people appeared in front of him. "Y...Y...Y..."

"Enforcer Chrono Harlaown, these people with me are on our side." Chrono stepped up and looked at the Colonel, before looking at Zest, who was tense, on guard, but seemingly in more control of himself. "What we're dealing with is something that none of us can deal with alone, these people are here to help."

Lina grumbled as several people started to question Chrono's statement. "Man, this was easier when I was a kid, I could just blow something up to get them to listen." At least none of them tried attacking yet.

Chrono felt like banging his head against S2U, he should have known this was a bad idea.

"Can we trust them?"

Chrono blinked and looked Zest, who was looking at the Wolkenritter. "Yes. What's going on inside is a combination of factors, but if it is not dealt with, the entire Bureau and every world we look over would be destroyed."

Zest nodded at him. "Very well then kid. What do you need?"

"Two hours." Chrono nodded as Amy told him she had a line ready to go. "In two hours, the advance force will move inside to deal with the beings causing this problem."

"What are we dealing with?" Quint asked as she looked at the Belkan Knights slightly nervously. Oh, Belkan Knights on a whole didn't bother her, it was the fact that these four Belkan Knights were known enemies of the Bureau that bothered her.

"Creatures that you can't even hurt." Lina spoke up, getting everyone's attention. More than one person looked at her with resentment and anger, but she didn't care. "Your spells and abilities mean nothing to them, they wouldn't even need to block any of your attacks to stop you."

"You lie!" Someone in the crowd yelled and Lina felt like finding him and introducing her foot to his ass.

"Can any of you break through that barrier?" She pointed at the blue field around the building. "Can you?" She nodded as the grumbling stopped. "This is just a small amount of what that guy can do! If you can't break his barriers, then you can't beat him!"

Chrono nodded and turned to Zest. "Just trust me, they're on our side."

Zest looked at the group, before nodding. "Very well, kid. What do you want us to do?"

"For now, try to keep any civilians from going crazy, I need to make some preparations." Chrono turned and took off. "Give me two hours!"

"Two hours, huh?" Zest looked at him leave before turning to the rest of the Bureau's forces. "You heard him! Fan out and and reassure the civilians that we're doing all we can to protect them." The groups nodded and dispersed, though not before some of them had to question him on why he was giving the orders. "None of us are able to do anything and it's more important to keep civilians safe right now."

"Good speech." Lina spoke to him after the others left, the only ones left were Regius, who was glaring at her and the Wolkenritter, which she ignored, Zest and Quint.

Zest nodded at her. "You can get through this?"

Lina chuckled. "This is the easy part. The hard part is that bastard that stole my daughter from me."

Zest nodded, he didn't have any kids, or at least he didn't think he had any kids, but considering that both Megane and Quint had children of their own, he knew one thing.

If either of them had lost their children to some madman, all he would do was make sure that they came out of the ordeal alive.

(---)

"Enforcer Harloawn?" The blond elderly man blinked at the young boy who was talking to him through his communication array. "What can I do for you?"

"I need you to do a major favor for me, Admiral."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "Why me?"

"You're the Admiral that overlooks the Judicial branch. I need your connections."

"I need an explanation before I call up any friends to do anything." As Chrono explained what he needed, his eyes widened. "That's crazy!"

"I know it is. I'm willing to take full responsibility if something goes wrong. But right now, that's a far safer bet than asking that woman to kill this creature alone."

"There's no other recourse?"

Chrono shook his head as he flew through the air. "None. I've seen things on Earth that are quite terrifying. I've not seen that thing fight, but from what I've seen, no one in the Bureau has any chance of beating it right now. I have a plan, but I need help for it to work."

The aging Admiral sighed and nodded. "Very well, Enforcer. I'll get you what you need. Are you certain though?"

Chrono nodded once more as he finally touched down somewhere. "Yes. I've come to the realization that everything that's happened in the last year was likely a set-up by that thing."

"Alright, I'll get you the Pardon and limiter removal for her. But it only works if she's willing to help you."

"Of course." Chrono nodded as the screen turned off.

Admiral Leon Phils sighed and started making calls. If everything worked out properly... Well, he didn't want to think what would happen if it didn't work out properly.

(---)

"So, the great Enforcer comes to see me now, huh?" She snorted at him. "What do you want?"

"Your help." He held up an object that had her eyes widening in shock. "I need you to teach me to do to this what you did back then."

"You really think I'll help you?"

He sighed and pulled out a small device, which revealed a screen. "We're facing down the end of the world, and these two are responsible. You might be interested."

"Interested in wha...t?" She trailed off, her eyes wide as she saw the image of the blond woman. "You... That's a lie! Alicia's dead!"

"I know." Chrono nodded to her. "The body in the jar is hers. We confirmed that. But apparently she couldn't be brought back to life, because her soul was elsewhere..." He sighed heavily. "Precia Testarossa, if you're willing to help me save the world, you'll have a full pardon, complete with the limiter that's on you removed."

Precia blinked at that, staring dumbly. "What?"

"We need to stop what's happening. I don't know what you did exactly, but I need to know."

She turned away from him. "..."

"Precia Testarossa!" Chrono yelled at her. "This is your ONE chance to set everything right. Don't blow it because you're upset at yourself. Your daughter is going to destroy the very world you grew up on, is that something you want?!"

"...I need time to think."

"One hour, you have one hour, Precia." Chrono turned and left the older woman in her cell.

[vic-vic]

Originally Posted by Nanya01

Here's Jump part 4

Season 1

A's

Jump Part 1

Jump Part 2

Jump Part 3

Spoiler for Blood That Flows - Jump Part 4:

Regius glared at the barrier, hoping he could will it to dust. "What the heck is this thing?!"

"Yelling isn't making it any better, boss." Quint shook her head. Not that she didn't disagree with the thought. It had been hours and no apparent progress had been made.

Well, no, a few people had gotten the idea to touch the thing and ended up losing an arm out of it, which was why she hadn't tried to do much herself.

The only solace Regius had was that even the Navy had no luck against this barrier, though he wasn't sure why they were even bothering, they never had before.

(---)

"She's here." Death Bringer whispered to himself and opened up all lines of communication, his face being shown on all televisions and communication arrays all over the city. "Citizens of Mid-Childa, no, there is nothing wrong with your television sets, I've just commandeered all broadcasts." He chuckled and smirked at them. "You people, who have lived here for years in relative peace..."

(---)

Megane looked at the screen as the man continued to speak. "...know nothing of the terrors as society falls, crumbling away to dust. You think that your precious Bureau can protect you..."

(---)

Zest narrowed his eyes at that, it was like the man was insulting him directly.

"And yet, your precious Bureau is completely helpless against me."

(---)

"What is he doing?" Lindy asked as the Arthra got close enough to Cranagan to warp Chrono, Lina, Fate, Yuuno and the Wolkenritter to the surface.

"Setting something up, most likely." Lina didn't like this, not one bit.

(---)

"So, just sit back, relax and enjoy your last few moments before I destroy your entire world. Oh, I know you don't believe me, so, how about a small sample?"

(---)

Zest's eyes widened as he saw the man start to glow as he snapped his fingers. "Nnnaaahh..." He fell to his knees, his head felt like it was being torn apart from the inside. Not that anyone else could do anything more, since they were all on the ground, screaming in pain.

After a few agonizing moments, the pain stopped and Zest looked up, panting at the smirking man.

"You don't need to thank me for your suffering. You can thank this woman for it!" A picture of a redheaded woman with one red eye and one golden eye appeared on the screen. "If not for her, I would not have the key I need to do what I'm going to do to you. Like what I did to Al Hazard, and the Saint Kaiser, I shall do to all of you as well." He laughed as the screen turned off.

(---)

"That little..." Lina growled as she looked at the screen. "Gah! I haven't had this bad of a rep since I was a teenager!"

"Calm down." Chrono shook his head. "Amy, can you get me a line to Admiral Leon Phils once we touch down?"

"Um, yeah, shouldn't be a problem, Chrono. Why?" She blinked as he smiled at her lightly.

"I'm going to need his help."

(---)

"This is taking too long!" Regius grumbled, he was half tempted to ask the Navy to fire the bloody Arc En Ciel into the city just to stop this guy.

The problem with that was, there was no way to get everyone in the city out before it would be destroyed.

"Colonel." He blinked as he saw a screen with a green haired woman looking at him seriously. "This is Admiral Lindy Harlaown. I'm sending in a strike force that can deal with the current situation."

"You know what's going on?!"

Lindy nodded at him. "Yes. Events on Non-Administrated Planet 97 led to the current crisis. Unfortunately, there was a communications block, or I would have been able to contact you sooner."

"So, where are they?" Regius grumbled at her, if someone could get through the barrier, why hadn't they come yet?

"The help is a bit unusual, Colonel, but none of them are your enemies."

Regius blinked, wondering what she meant by that.

It dawned on him a moment later as a group of people appeared in front of him. "Y...Y...Y..."

"Enforcer Chrono Harlaown, these people with me are on our side." Chrono stepped up and looked at the Colonel, before looking at Zest, who was tense, on guard, but seemingly in more control of himself. "What we're dealing with is something that none of us can deal with alone, these people are here to help."

Lina grumbled as several people started to question Chrono's statement. "Man, this was easier when I was a kid, I could just blow something up to get them to listen." At least none of them tried attacking yet.

Chrono felt like banging his head against S2U, he should have known this was a bad idea.

"Can we trust them?"

Chrono blinked and looked Zest, who was looking at the Wolkenritter. "Yes. What's going on inside is a combination of factors, but if it is not dealt with, the entire Bureau and every world we look over would be destroyed."

Zest nodded at him. "Very well then kid. What do you need?"

"Two hours." Chrono nodded as Amy told him she had a line ready to go. "In two hours, the advance force will move inside to deal with the beings causing this problem."

"What are we dealing with?" Quint asked as she looked at the Belkan Knights slightly nervously. Oh, Belkan Knights on a whole didn't bother her, it was the fact that these four Belkan Knights were known enemies of the Bureau that bothered her.

"Creatures that you can't even hurt." Lina spoke up, getting everyone's attention. More than one person looked at her with resentment and anger, but she didn't care. "Your spells and abilities mean nothing to them, they wouldn't even need to block any of your attacks to stop you."

"You lie!" Someone in the crowd yelled and Lina felt like finding him and introducing her foot to his ass.

"Can any of you break through that barrier?" She pointed at the blue field around the building. "Can you?" She nodded as the grumbling stopped. "This is just a small amount of what that guy can do! If you can't break his barriers, then you can't beat him!"

Chrono nodded and turned to Zest. "Just trust me, they're on our side."

Zest looked at the group, before nodding. "Very well, kid. What do you want us to do?"

"For now, try to keep any civilians from going crazy, I need to make some preparations." Chrono turned and took off. "Give me two hours!"

"Two hours, huh?" Zest looked at him leave before turning to the rest of the Bureau's forces. "You heard him! Fan out and and reassure the civilians that we're doing all we can to protect them." The groups nodded and dispersed, though not before some of them had to question him on why he was giving the orders. "None of us are able to do anything and it's more important to keep civilians safe right now."

"Good speech." Lina spoke to him after the others left, the only ones left were Regius, who was glaring at her and the Wolkenritter, which she ignored, Zest and Quint.

Zest nodded at her. "You can get through this?"

Lina chuckled. "This is the easy part. The hard part is that bastard that stole my daughter from me."

Zest nodded, he didn't have any kids, or at least he didn't think he had any kids, but considering that both Megane and Quint had children of their own, he knew one thing.

If either of them had lost their children to some madman, all he would do was make sure that they came out of the ordeal alive.

(---)

"Enforcer Harloawn?" The blond elderly man blinked at the young boy who was talking to him through his communication array. "What can I do for you?"

"I need you to do a major favor for me, Admiral."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "Why me?"

"You're the Admiral that overlooks the Judicial branch. I need your connections."

"I need an explanation before I call up any friends to do anything." As Chrono explained what he needed, his eyes widened. "That's crazy!"

"I know it is. I'm willing to take full responsibility if something goes wrong. But right now, that's a far safer bet than asking that woman to kill this creature alone."

"There's no other recourse?"

Chrono shook his head as he flew through the air. "None. I've seen things on Earth that are quite terrifying. I've not seen that thing fight, but from what I've seen, no one in the Bureau has any chance of beating it right now. I have a plan, but I need help for it to work."

The aging Admiral sighed and nodded. "Very well, Enforcer. I'll get you what you need. Are you certain though?"

Chrono nodded once more as he finally touched down somewhere. "Yes. I've come to the realization that everything that's happened in the last year was likely a set-up by that thing."

"Alright, I'll get you the Pardon and limiter removal for her. But it only works if she's willing to help you."

"Of course." Chrono nodded as the screen turned off.

Admiral Leon Phils sighed and started making calls. If everything worked out properly... Well, he didn't want to think what would happen if it didn't work out properly.

(---)

"So, the great Enforcer comes to see me now, huh?" She snorted at him. "What do you want?"

"Your help." He held up an object that had her eyes widening in shock. "I need you to teach me to do to this what you did back then."

"You really think I'll help you?"

He sighed and pulled out a small device, which revealed a screen. "We're facing down the end of the world, and these two are responsible. You might be interested."

"Interested in wha...t?" She trailed off, her eyes wide as she saw the image of the blond woman. "You... That's a lie! Alicia's dead!"

"I know." Chrono nodded to her. "The body in the jar is hers. We confirmed that. But apparently she couldn't be brought back to life, because her soul was elsewhere..." He sighed heavily. "Precia Testarossa, if you're willing to help me save the world, you'll have a full pardon, complete with the limiter that's on you removed."

Precia blinked at that, staring dumbly. "What?"

"We need to stop what's happening. I don't know what you did exactly, but I need to know."

She turned away from him. "..."

"Precia Testarossa!" Chrono yelled at her. "This is your ONE chance to set everything right. Don't blow it because you're upset at yourself. Your daughter is going to destroy the very world you grew up on, is that something you want?!"

"...I need time to think."

"One hour, you have one hour, Precia." Chrono turned and left the older woman in her cell.

Woo-hoo, alied forces start to gathering. Go, team...erm, Strikers, yeah!!

[shiroi mahotsukai]

Originally Posted by Nanya01

Here's Jump part 4

Season 1

A's

Jump Part 1

Jump Part 2

Jump Part 3

Spoiler for Blood That Flows - Jump Part 4:

Regius glared at the barrier, hoping he could will it to dust. "What the heck is this thing?!"

"Yelling isn't making it any better, boss." Quint shook her head. Not that she didn't disagree with the thought. It had been hours and no apparent progress had been made.

Well, no, a few people had gotten the idea to touch the thing and ended up losing an arm out of it, which was why she hadn't tried to do much herself.

The only solace Regius had was that even the Navy had no luck against this barrier, though he wasn't sure why they were even bothering, they never had before.

(---)

"She's here." Death Bringer whispered to himself and opened up all lines of communication, his face being shown on all televisions and communication arrays all over the city. "Citizens of Mid-Childa, no, there is nothing wrong with your television sets, I've just commandeered all broadcasts." He chuckled and smirked at them. "You people, who have lived here for years in relative peace..."

(---)

Megane looked at the screen as the man continued to speak. "...know nothing of the terrors as society falls, crumbling away to dust. You think that your precious Bureau can protect you..."

(---)

Zest narrowed his eyes at that, it was like the man was insulting him directly.

"And yet, your precious Bureau is completely helpless against me."

(---)

"What is he doing?" Lindy asked as the Arthra got close enough to Cranagan to warp Chrono, Lina, Fate, Yuuno and the Wolkenritter to the surface.

"Setting something up, most likely." Lina didn't like this, not one bit.

(---)

"So, just sit back, relax and enjoy your last few moments before I destroy your entire world. Oh, I know you don't believe me, so, how about a small sample?"

(---)

Zest's eyes widened as he saw the man start to glow as he snapped his fingers. "Nnnaaahh..." He fell to his knees, his head felt like it was being torn apart from the inside. Not that anyone else could do anything more, since they were all on the ground, screaming in pain.

After a few agonizing moments, the pain stopped and Zest looked up, panting at the smirking man.

"You don't need to thank me for your suffering. You can thank this woman for it!" A picture of a redheaded woman with one red eye and one golden eye appeared on the screen. "If not for her, I would not have the key I need to do what I'm going to do to you. Like what I did to Al Hazard, and the Saint Kaiser, I shall do to all of you as well." He laughed as the screen turned off.

(---)

"That little..." Lina growled as she looked at the screen. "Gah! I haven't had this bad of a rep since I was a teenager!"

"Calm down." Chrono shook his head. "Amy, can you get me a line to Admiral Leon Phils once we touch down?"

"Um, yeah, shouldn't be a problem, Chrono. Why?" She blinked as he smiled at her lightly.

"I'm going to need his help."

(---)

"This is taking too long!" Regius grumbled, he was half tempted to ask the Navy to fire the bloody Arc En Ciel into the city just to stop this guy.

The problem with that was, there was no way to get everyone in the city out before it would be destroyed.

"Colonel." He blinked as he saw a screen with a green haired woman looking at him seriously. "This is Admiral Lindy Harlaown. I'm sending in a strike force that can deal with the current situation."

"You know what's going on?!"

Lindy nodded at him. "Yes. Events on Non-Administrated Planet 97 led to the current crisis. Unfortunately, there was a communications block, or I would have been able to contact you sooner."

"So, where are they?" Regius grumbled at her, if someone could get through the barrier, why hadn't they come yet?

"The help is a bit unusual, Colonel, but none of them are your enemies."

Regius blinked, wondering what she meant by that.

It dawned on him a moment later as a group of people appeared in front of him. "Y...Y...Y..."

"Enforcer Chrono Harlaown, these people with me are on our side." Chrono stepped up and looked at the Colonel, before looking at Zest, who was tense, on guard, but seemingly in more control of himself. "What we're dealing with is something that none of us can deal with alone, these people are here to help."

Lina grumbled as several people started to question Chrono's statement. "Man, this was easier when I was a kid, I could just blow something up to get them to listen." At least none of them tried attacking yet.

Chrono felt like banging his head against S2U, he should have known this was a bad idea.

"Can we trust them?"

Chrono blinked and looked Zest, who was looking at the Wolkenritter. "Yes. What's going on inside is a combination of factors, but if it is not dealt with, the entire Bureau and every world we look over would be destroyed."

Zest nodded at him. "Very well then kid. What do you need?"

"Two hours." Chrono nodded as Amy told him she had a line ready to go. "In two hours, the advance force will move inside to deal with the beings causing this problem."

"What are we dealing with?" Quint asked as she looked at the Belkan Knights slightly nervously. Oh, Belkan Knights on a whole didn't bother her, it was the fact that these four Belkan Knights were known enemies of the Bureau that bothered her.

"Creatures that you can't even hurt." Lina spoke up, getting everyone's attention. More than one person looked at her with resentment and anger, but she didn't care. "Your spells and abilities mean nothing to them, they wouldn't even need to block any of your attacks to stop you."

"You lie!" Someone in the crowd yelled and Lina felt like finding him and introducing her foot to his ass.

"Can any of you break through that barrier?" She pointed at the blue field around the building. "Can you?" She nodded as the grumbling stopped. "This is just a small amount of what that guy can do! If you can't break his barriers, then you can't beat him!"

Chrono nodded and turned to Zest. "Just trust me, they're on our side."

Zest looked at the group, before nodding. "Very well, kid. What do you want us to do?"

"For now, try to keep any civilians from going crazy, I need to make some preparations." Chrono turned and took off. "Give me two hours!"

"Two hours, huh?" Zest looked at him leave before turning to the rest of the Bureau's forces. "You heard him! Fan out and and reassure the civilians that we're doing all we can to protect them." The groups nodded and dispersed, though not before some of them had to question him on why he was giving the orders. "None of us are able to do anything and it's more important to keep civilians safe right now."

"Good speech." Lina spoke to him after the others left, the only ones left were Regius, who was glaring at her and the Wolkenritter, which she ignored, Zest and Quint.

Zest nodded at her. "You can get through this?"

Lina chuckled. "This is the easy part. The hard part is that bastard that stole my daughter from me."

Zest nodded, he didn't have any kids, or at least he didn't think he had any kids, but considering that both Megane and Quint had children of their own, he knew one thing.

If either of them had lost their children to some madman, all he would do was make sure that they came out of the ordeal alive.

(---)

"Enforcer Harloawn?" The blond elderly man blinked at the young boy who was talking to him through his communication array. "What can I do for you?"

"I need you to do a major favor for me, Admiral."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "Why me?"

"You're the Admiral that overlooks the Judicial branch. I need your connections."

"I need an explanation before I call up any friends to do anything." As Chrono explained what he needed, his eyes widened. "That's crazy!"

"I know it is. I'm willing to take full responsibility if something goes wrong. But right now, that's a far safer bet than asking that woman to kill this creature alone."

"There's no other recourse?"

Chrono shook his head as he flew through the air. "None. I've seen things on Earth that are quite terrifying. I've not seen that thing fight, but from what I've seen, no one in the Bureau has any chance of beating it right now. I have a plan, but I need help for it to work."

The aging Admiral sighed and nodded. "Very well, Enforcer. I'll get you what you need. Are you certain though?"

Chrono nodded once more as he finally touched down somewhere. "Yes. I've come to the realization that everything that's happened in the last year was likely a set-up by that thing."

"Alright, I'll get you the Pardon and limiter removal for her. But it only works if she's willing to help you."

"Of course." Chrono nodded as the screen turned off.

Admiral Leon Phils sighed and started making calls. If everything worked out properly... Well, he didn't want to think what would happen if it didn't work out properly.

(---)

"So, the great Enforcer comes to see me now, huh?" She snorted at him. "What do you want?"

"Your help." He held up an object that had her eyes widening in shock. "I need you to teach me to do to this what you did back then."

"You really think I'll help you?"

He sighed and pulled out a small device, which revealed a screen. "We're facing down the end of the world, and these two are responsible. You might be interested."

"Interested in wha...t?" She trailed off, her eyes wide as she saw the image of the blond woman. "You... That's a lie! Alicia's dead!"

"I know." Chrono nodded to her. "The body in the jar is hers. We confirmed that. But apparently she couldn't be brought back to life, because her soul was elsewhere..." He sighed heavily. "Precia Testarossa, if you're willing to help me save the world, you'll have a full pardon, complete with the limiter that's on you removed."

Precia blinked at that, staring dumbly. "What?"

"We need to stop what's happening. I don't know what you did exactly, but I need to know."

She turned away from him. "..."

"Precia Testarossa!" Chrono yelled at her. "This is your ONE chance to set everything right. Don't blow it because you're upset at yourself. Your daughter is going to destroy the very world you grew up on, is that something you want?!"

"...I need time to think."

"One hour, you have one hour, Precia." Chrono turned and left the older woman in her cell.

I just have this huge image of a massive showdown in my head now, complete with a soundtrack.

[Nanya01]

Here's Jump Part 5.

Season 1

A's

Jump Part 1

Jump Part 2

Jump Part 3

Jump Part 4

Spoiler for Blood That Flows - Jump Part 5:

Sighing as he looked at the barrier, Yuuno felt rather useless for what was to come. All the skills that he had learned, he just didn't know if any of them would be useful. He was startled as a hand touched his shoulder, turning, he saw Quint smiling at him. "Um..."

"Quint Nakajima." She smiled at him and sat next to him. "You know, you're rather brave." When he blinked in incomprehention, she smirked at him. "You're not part of the Bureau, yet you're on this attack force?" She chuckled softly. "I have a couple of girls younger than you. I just can't see Subaru doing anything like this."

"Subaru?" He blinked as she smiled at him.

"My youngest daughter. She's a bit of a crybaby at times, but she means well."

"Oh." Yuuno nodded at her. "Sorry, it's just that a friend of mine is in there."

"It's okay." Quint smiled at him and ruffled his hair. "I was just trying to get you to relax."

Yuuno was about to say something when a screen showing Chrono appeared in front of them. "I'm on my way back, ETA 12 minutes."

Lina nodded as she heard that. "We'll be moving in then."

"Fine. But be careful."

"I know." Lina whispered as she walked towards the barrier. She looked at Zest, who nodded at her.

"Good luck." Quint smiled as the group got behind Lina.

"Lord of Darkness of the Four Worlds.
Grant me all the power you possess."

Quint and Zest were surprised as the four talismens that Lina was wearing started to glow with power. What they could feel was rather impressive.

"O fragment of the Lord of Nightmares.
Free yourself from Heaven's bonds."

A black energy started to form in front of Lina as she cupped her hands near it.

"Become one with my body, one with my power.
And let us walk the path of destruction together!"

By now, everyone who was looking at Lina was getting nervous as a black magic rune appeared under her feet.

"Power that can smash even the souls of the gods!"

The black energy took shape into a large broad sword as Lina gripped what could be considered the handle.

"RAGNA BLADE!" Lina let out a scream as she slashed forward, effortlessly cutting through the barrier, shattering it into nothingness.

Zest, Quint and Regius all stared in shock at the woman, who smirked at them as she and the others went inside.

"Good luck." Zest whispered and looked at Quint and Regius. The looks on their faces told him everything he needed to know.

The three of them were going to stick around and see what was going to happen.

(---)

As they entered the building, Lina sighed softly. "Rather cliche, huh?" She called out to no one in particular. The main room was just a large room with a door on the floor that was surrounded by stairs on either side that went up to a door above it.

"Welcome." Lina looked up and saw Death Bringer smirking at her. "To hell."

"Heard it before, been in the Palace of Hell, killed the keeper, you, you're nothing to me."

He chuckled at her bravado. "We shall see." He frowned as a fireball connected with his face. Looking at the blond boy, he snorted. "You know that won't work on me, boy." He waved at the group dismissively. "You're welcome to try and find my servant, myself or those two brats. Either way, it doesn't matter, none of you are leaving here alive." He laughed as his body disappeared.

"Why didn't you..." Yuuno looked at Lina, who shook her head.

"It wouldn't matter, I doubt his body was really here anyway." She cleared her throat and looked at the two doors. "Man, if he's like Rezo, I'm going to shove the Ragna Blade so far up his rear end that he'll be able to eat out of each end!"

Ignoring them, Reinforce walked forward before kicking the bottom door down. "Signum, Vita and myself will head this way. Master Hayate is this way."

"Then the way that the rest of us are going, is up." Lina smirked and looked at the others. "Are you sure about this?"

Yuuno, Shamal and Zafira nodded at her. They knew what their places in all of this was.

"Alright then. Come on, Fate." The two flew up to the door before blowing it in and taking off up the stairs.

Yuuno, Zafira and Shamal all looked at each other and nodded before running up the stairs after them.

Their role was far different in this matter.

(---)

"Hey, Reinforce..." Vita spoke up as the trio flew down the hallway. "How come you know where Hayate is?"

"I can feel her." Reinforce closed her eyes as she spoke. "Since the bond I share with you Knights was shattered when you turned human, the bond I have with her is incredibly strong, so I can feel her location."

"You said that you could no longer unison with us." Signum spoke up, stopping as some dog-like beasts appeared in their way. "Why is that?" Thankfully, they weren't too strong and it was pretty easy for the three of them to take out the blood-thirsty creatures.

"I could, but considering the power that flows in me now, I do not wish to risk your life or sanity. Master Hayate was there with me, she was touched by it as well."

Vita grimaced at that, but nodded. "Alright."

As they flew through the corridors, dealing with whatever creatures or animated corpses popped up, Reinforce looked at the Knights and mentally sighed, wishing that there was some way she could help them more than what she was doing.

But that was neither here nor now. "Hold on. Diem wind!" She held her hands forward and created a mini-cyclone, pushing the bags of bones away from them and crashing them into the walls, destroying them.

But the most important thing at the moment was finding Hayate, then Nanoha, then finding some way to deal with this Mazoku lord.

(---)

"They're coming, master." Alicia chuckled as he nodded.

"Of course..." He smirked at her. "Go and... Say hello to your sister."

Alicia chuckled as she disappeared.

"Is there nothing but stairs?!" Lina yelled as she stopped on the way up, taking a moment to stop and look up, grimacing. "Okay, this guy is like Rezo, I'm going to demand that villains join a union so that they can avoid cliches so often. Or at least not use so many damned stairs!"

Taking a deep breath, Lina continued to fly up the stairs along with Fate, before the spiraling stairs finally stopped in front of a large door. "...For some reason, this feels too easy."

Fate didn't say anything as the doors opened up, revealing a rather sparse room. The two walked into the room and Fate yelped as the doors closed on their own accord.

"Hahahahahahaha! That look of stupid fear suits you... Little sister." Alicia snapped into appearance in the room, smirking at the two of them. "If you want my master..." She jerked a thumb behind her. "He's just down the hall."

Lina narrowed her eyes at Alicia. "Fate, are you sure?"

"Yes." Fate nodded at her. "Bardiche, Zambar Form."

"Yes sir. Zambar Form, Drive Ignition."

Alicia chuckled as she saw her sister ready to fight. "Little sister... LIttle sister..." She waggled a finger at Fate. "It doesn't matter, you won't win." She then looked at Lina, before moving away from the door and leaning against the far wall. "I'm only interested in my sister, not you. But, if you don't hurry, your precious little girl will snap and destroy everything."

Lina growled at her. "Fate..."

"Go!" Fate yelled at her and gripped Bardiche tightly. "I'll be okay." She frowned at Alicia. "I'll finish this up and join you later."

Lina looked at her and nodded before running through the door.

After Lina left, Alicia chuckled softly. "Well, little sister... I guess I can make this... More fair..." Her outfit of a Bureau member changed into the outfit that she wore the first time that they had met. "So, I'm not going to hide on the Astral plane, nor will I attack from there." The grin that ended up on her face had Fate gulping slightly. "Otherwise, how can I make sure that you endure maximum pain?!" She roared as she rushed forward.

(---)

Lina panted as she blew the doors in front of her open.

In the middle of an empty room, sans a giant crystal in the middle, was Death Bringer Garoth, frowning at her. "You do know that the door would have opened automatically, right?" He deadpanned at her before chuckling as she glared at him.

"Where... Is... My... Daughter?!"

He pointed down and Lina gasped as she saw her daughter and Hayate on a lower floor. Hayate was on the ground, apparently trying to call Nanoha, who was in a ball of black energy. "What..?"

"A little creation of my own design." He chuckled at her. "Oh, don't worry, it's not going to kill her... I'm just causing her physical and mental pain until she snaps." He chuckled and stretched. "You can just sit back, relax and watch as she goes crazy." He laughed at the glare she gave him, even as the Demon's Blood Talismans started to light up. "Or you can use your strongest Chaos spell... And destroy the crystal pillar that's behind me."

"Or you can go to hell." Lina muttered to him.

"Heh, well... If you think you can win..." His aura picked up as he grinned at her. "Go ahead and TRY!"

"Oh, I will!" Lina yelled back as she jumped away from a black tornado that he created.