MGLN: Future Tense
Chapter 35: History Fulfilled
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The room was silent following Precia's pronouncement; no one not named Precia Testarossa had any idea of how to respond, or whether she was even telling the truth. Well, all except one.
Quattro's laughter sounded from near one corner of the room, then she winced, letting everyone else know what kind of pain that simple action had induced. "So this is how things played out, Due? You knowingly betrayed Jail and his dream?"
Her cyborg mentor shrugged. "Jail miscalculated back then; Zest's strike was fatal. If it wasn't for Precia, I would have died. You disappoint me, my protege. I had expected you, of all people, to figure all this out long ago. You should have seen the signs."
"You were behind everything!?" Nanoha questioned in disbelief, staring.
Instead of answering, Precia merely smiled mysteriously, as more laughter echoed throughout the room, causing all eyes to return to Quattro; a standing Quattro, looking suddenly whole and uninjured. "Oh, I think it is you who disappointed me, teacher."
Before anyone could question that, Quattro faded from view, and in the next moment, Precia turned and stabbed Due with a short sword tthat had suddenly appeared in her hand. "You aren't the only one who can play the deceiver's game."
Blood trailed from Due's mouth as she bent over the weapon. "It was you... all along..."
Nanoha could barely follow what was going on anymore, as Precia changed into Quattro and pulled the bloody blade from her cyborg sister and kicked the body away. "You taught me too well, sister. It was actually I who went back in time, and pretended to be Precia in the guise of Marial."
"Quattro," Fate growled, gripping her weapon tighter. "I should have known. You won't get away with this."
"Oh, my dear Fate; you don't want to kill your own mother, do you?" Quattro told her mockingly, wearing Precia's face again. "Not when we can be a family again?"
"You're not my mother!" Fate nearly screamed.
Quattro's eager grin stretched across her face. "Oh, but I am, in a matter of speaking. Falling into that dimensional void at the Garden of Time sent me across time and space, where I took the place of the real #4 cyborg the moment she was born. The illusionary powers I gained with my IS gave me the perfect cover; neither Jail nor Due, nor anyone else, ever suspected a thing. And now I will go back in time and tell myself exactly what to do: create you, a tool, that I can manipulate and play with once more."
Fate-chan..." Nanoha whispered, growing disturbed at how Fate's head was hung low, her eyes hidden by her bangs.
In the next moment, Fate's surged forward in a flash of golden light, her device weapon shifting into Zanber form while it came down in an attempt to cleave Precia/Quattro's body in two. But the weapon fizzled before it made contact, the golden blade disappearing.
"Apparently you forgot that I made Vulnificus," Precia/Quattro tsk'ed. "Too bad for you." Without even a gesture, Fate's body was encompassed by lightning binds. "I'm very sorry you don't believe so, but what is done is done."You can't change history, only fulfill it. Though I don't blame you; when I discovered my own role in history, I didn't quite believe it at first, either. We are all pawns to destiny."
"Why?" Fate uttered at last, a million feelings and emotions surging through her mind. "What do you plan to do when you go back in time? What history are you fulfilling?"
Precia grinned. "Don't ask me a question you already know the answer to. What is the only reason for me to go back in time?"
Fate stared. "You can't... you wouldn't..."
"I'd love to explain, however..." Precia started to say, then turned to glance at Carim's linker core which had expanded to several meters in diameter. "As you can see, it's almost time for me to go. But first...""
She turned and released a blast of magical energy from her hand, meeting Nanoha's Divine Buster with one of equal strength. The edges of her lips turned upwards and she increased the flow of magic, overpowering Nanoha's spell and knocking the brown-haired woman into a wall.
"And now that's taken care of, it's time for me to go," Precia/Quattro stated, and then sent one last look at Fate. "See you again!"
"NO!" Fate cried as Precia/Quattro jumped into the enlarged linker core and disappeared.
Nanoha pulled herself from her indentation in the wall, noting in despair that the linker core portal was rapidly shrinking again; in moments, it was gone. "Fate, what was she talking about? Where is she going?"
She was struck by the haunted look in Fate's eyes. "Somewhere you can't possibly imagine...."
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"I can tell you put a lot of effort into this," she told the person before her, who had been nervously waiting for the verdict.
The artist beamed with pride, but also nervousness, hopes rising.
Precia/Quattro put the painted picture down on her desk and sighed. "Unfortunately, I'm afraid it's not quite what we're looking for here, at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. The style is decent, but it an amatuerish beginner way. I'm afraid you are just not fit to be an artist. I commend you for trying, but I would highly suggest you look to apply your abilities in another field."
"But..." the young man nearly whined, looking desperate. "I love painting! What else am I supposed to do?"
Precia/Quattro folded her hands in front of her face to hide her grin, having waited an eternity for this very moment. "Oh, I'm sure you'll find something, Mr. Hitler."
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Author's notes:
And this is when you realize what day it is.^^ (check the calender if you are unsure :P )
For those who don't know, Hitler was an aspiring artist, twice rejected from the Academy of of Fine Arts Vienna. Perhaps if he had been accepted... but maybe someone deliberately rejected him... someone twisted enough. ;p
The real chapter 35 is almost done, and will be coming along soon.. hopefully. But now, to further poke some fun at myself:
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Alternate Ending:
Due coughed up blood as she stared at Precia, who had just revealed herself as Quattro, her expression a mixture of surprise and horror
Then she laughed.
Quattro raised an eyebrow. "I'm glad that you find this amusing."
"You forgot my very first lesson: always have another plan," Due reminded her.
Quattro's eyes narrowed. "What could you possibly-"
"QUATTRO!" came the scream, accompanied by several shots.
The #4 cyborg turned just in time to be peppered by several orange bolts that made Swiss cheese out of her body, while Due hit the ground. She stared as Teana walked into the room, guns raised, continuing to calmly fire. When she was done, Precia/Quattro's body fell over and hit the ground with a thud.
"How could you possibly..." Quattro started to say.
Due grinned evilly, then coughed up more blood. "I may not win... but neither will you!"
"Neither one of you will win!" Hayate stated, drawing everyone's eyes over to the corner as she calmly stood up. "Because it was I who went back in time! I set all this up, so I could go back in time and stop Nanoha from dying! The Bureau would never have agreed to time travel research, so my only option was to take it over and rule with authoritarian government!"
"Hayate!?" Nanoha questioned in surprise. "You? How? Why? Did you create me, too?"
"I needed a clone of you to occupy their attention, someone who could take action while I merely played the part they designed for me, so as to not arouse suspicion of my true goals," Hayate explained.
Nanoha couldn't believe what she was hearing. "But everyone who died, or suffered... you did all of that?"
Hayate strode over to the portal. "It had to be done. Sacrifices had to be made. And now, I'll go back in time-"
"No, you won't, because I will!" came a new voice from someone who shot rapidly past Teana to enter the room.
The gunmage did a double take. "Subaru!? You're alive!"
"And I set all this up, because I was the one who went back in time!" Subaru declared, skating on her road and heading directly for the portal. "Pretending to be dead all this time was the perfect cover."
Nanoha rubbed her temples. "None of this makes any sense."
"No!" Hayate shouted, firing a spell. "Excalibur!"
"And now she's dead again," Nanoha noted, becoming increasingly disconnected from events.
"SUBARU!" Teana cried as her cyborg lover was obliterated, then turned her guns on her new target. "HAYATE!"
The Supreme Commander easily shielded against the gun mage's shots, then fired back, a humongous beam that enveloped Teana's body, dissolving it under massive pressure alone. "Now there's no one left who can-"
Six gun shots rang out in rapid succession and Hayate's body hit the floor, six holes in the back of her head.
Jail slowly rose to his feet, smoke trailing from the barrel of the Silver Dagger gun in his hand. "I knew she was planning to do that, because I-"
"-went back in time, we know," Nanoha finished for him, then sighed. "So you were behind all this after all?"
"Yes, I-ack!" Jail started to say, then frantically clawed at the emerald green bubble that had closed over his head, panicking as he tried to draw breath.
"No, it was me all along," Yuuno said, rising from the ground as Jail suffocated and expired. "I-"
One of the beam supports that was holding the magnifying glass up finally dislodged due to damage from stray shots, and landed on him, crushing him under it's weight.
In the silence that followed, Nanoha kept waiting for someone else to show up or take credit, then she glanced at the only other living occupant remaining. "So... was it you, Fate-chan?"
The blue-haired girl shook her head. "I thought it was you!"
"But you might not be Fate," Nanoha stated, suddenly wary. "You could be Due or Quattro..."
"And you could be my mother!" Fate countered, raising her weapon warily.
There was an awkward pause, as both glanced at the glowing portal, still floating there, unused, almost insulted that no one had gone through.
"Well, this is rather... unsettling," Nanoha noted aloud.
Fate nodded sympathetically. "Indeed. After having come this far, the readers will want a satisfying ending, and the author doesn't seem to know what to do."
Nanoha shrugged. "So... hot lesbian sex?"
Fate considered that, then deactivated her weapon and nodded. "Okay."