My story, Section Thirteen, takes place a couple years after StrikerS.
Here's a link to it, since you'll never be able to find it otherwise. I'm basically the anti-Nanya when it comes to updating.
We're all anti-Nanyas compared to Nanya's updating.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadiantBeam
Still alive and kicking, and with plans for updating Shadowverse sometime soon. Sad to say this place has lost a lot of appeal for me recently, but I'll still come on to update stuff.
RB? Updating? *shock*
:k I kid. I hope you'll stick around to still read MercenarieS, at least, The Collared's third chapter will be done soon.
Which forge would that be? Because there are a few that you *could* mean...
Nanya sets a bar that few can match. I mean, just the very premise of BTF is tough to match.
It the same one that I pull stories out of. You might have seen the building next door. It's really hard to miss. Tall, black, spiky, has a giant eye of fire on the top?
Rent is a little expensive, but it covers garbage pickup and utilities. The landlord even lets me keep a cat.
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The Art of Shipping is as profound as it is dangerous; not for the faint of heart nor the weak of will, it makes gods and devils out of us all.
It the same one that I pull stories out of. You might have seen the building next door. It's really hard to miss. Tall, black, spiky, has a giant eye of fire on the top?
Rent is a little expensive, but it covers garbage pickup and utilities. The landlord even lets me keep a cat.
Must be pretty tough living in a volcanic region, with all the fumes and stuff...glad to know you get to keep a pet, and a cat at that.
Then again, I'm cozy in my castle-tower with my horde of books and blankets and pillows...
In other news, I might have stumbled upon a crossover that could work out well for Yuuno. Or could give him nightmares that scar his very soul...heh. XD
Of course, I guess Riksfalto covers the idea anyway...oh well. XP
Spoiler for Blood That Flows - Peek Finale - Coda End:
Later...
"Mama!" Quint smiled as she heard her youngest child come running at her with arms wide open.
"Aston." Picking her son up, she smiled at him as the wind caused his short, dark hair to get all messed up. "Were you a good boy today?"
"NNNGH!" He nodded, grinning and kicking his legs back and forth. His eyes were bright green and they shimmered in happiness at seeing his mother again.
"Where is..." Quint trailed off as another young child, this one with purple hair and lighter green eyes. "Ceilia."
"Mama!" Her daughter's eyes lit up and she ran towards the older woman, who knelt down and picked the two of them up, smiling happily as they hugged her. "Missed you!"
"Missed you two too." She kissed them both on their cheeks. "You been good for daddy?" They both nodded, getting a smile from her. "Good. Your big sister Subaru and Ginga should get next weekend off, so we'll all go spend the day at the park, okay?"
"Yay!" The two yelled happily, the thought of seeing their big sisters making them extremely giddy and bubbly.
Quint smiled and put the two of them down. "Why don't you run off and play, I need to talk to your father." They nodded and ran off, causing Quint to smile softly as she watched them run off. It was still so new to her, having children that she actually gave birth to, rather than adopting. "Genya?"
"Yeah?" She found him at the kitchen table, putting some plates down. "You're back early."
Quint smiled before walking up and giving him a kiss on the cheek. "You're a sweet-heart for doing the cooking tonight."
He grinned at her. "Well... I would like to say that it was just for the joy of seeing my wife's face light up, but I think that you know that I have another thought in mind."
Quint blushed at that, but grinned right back at him. "Oh, sure, just because I'm hot and sexy, you feel the need to ravish me every night."
Genya moved towards Quint and in one motion, grabbed her lower back and pulled her against his body as he leaned forward. "Do you blame me?"
Quint smiled and kissed him on the lips. "Not at all." She whispered to him. "But it'll have to wait until the twins are asleep."
"Of course." He said, kissing her on the jaw as his hand rolled down to her rear and squeezed, causing his wife to groan in delight. "Doesn't mean I can't get you worked up ahead of time."
Quint closed her eyes and groaned at the attention her husband was giving her. As nice as it was... "Genya, I need to tell you something." She mentally pouted as he stopped groping her butt. "I'm going to be transferred over to the new Riot Force division, the one that Regius is helping to start up."
Genya blinked at that. That was news to him. "Any reason why?"
"Mostly to give the younger kids some guidance and have someone on hand who can navigate the more complex political situations." Quint shrugged and Genya nodded. "Now then..." She grinned at him and pushed him against the table. "You better not disappoint me after getting me worked up, husband... I may have to... Get creative then."
Genya nodded at her. "Not a problem." At least Quint didn't take after that pen pal that she had a few years ago. His back still ached from hearing about how Quint's pen pal suplexed her husband onto the bed during the honeymoon.
"Good." Quint grinned as she leaned down and kissed him while pressing her body against his. Part of her realized that if she kept this up they wouldn't make it to the bedroom and that their twins were still awake somewhere.
While she didn't care about making it to the bedroom, the twins were a different matter all together. "...We should make sure that Aston and Ceilia are in bed first." She nodded at the look he gave her. "Trust me, I don't like it either, but it's either that... Or they get to watch us."
Genya sweat-dropped. "I don't think we need to traumatize them this early." Quint nodded and got off of him, before jumping as he stood up and slapped her butt. "Let's try not to take too long, hmm?"
Quint was blushing, but nodded as she ran off to take care of the twins.
After all, she wasn't going to let an opportunity for a wild night slip away on her.
(---)
Days later...
Uno grinned nastily as she finally broke through whatever it was that was used on this data strip. "Try and keep me from finding out your secrets, huh? Well, you've just lost to Supreme Hacker, Uno! Ohohohohoho!" She put the back of her hand over her chin as she laughed.
Blinking, Sette tilted her head while she petted Mr. Snuggles, who was purring and nuzzling her chest. "What is so funny, Uno?"
"Some hacker tried to keep me from figuring out what was on this data strip. As if someone can stop me from finding out the truth of the matter." She looked at the cat. "...So, what did the doctor say about that cat?"
"The doctor is unsure about this cat, but..." Sette pulled Mr. Snuggles away from her body and looked at the cat more closely.
"Meow."
"...He said that he's got something unusual in store for it."
"Meow?"
Sette blinked and shook her head. "No, I do not think that it would harm you. If anything, it may help you avoid being blown up by giant balls of magic."
"Meow!"
Sette nodded at him. "I do think that the doctor would want you to help if possible, I will make sure to tell him that you wish to be helpful."
Uno stared at Sette. "...You can understand that thing?"
Sette looked at Uno and blinked several times. "It is not hard to understand Mr. Snuggles. Do you not understand him?"
Uno slowly shook her head. "Sette, dear, I think we may need to get your hearing checked."
"I can hear just fine, but thank you for your concern, Un-nee."
"Meow." Mr. Snuggles tilted his head and Sette nodded at the cat, before pulling him against her breasts, causing the cat to purr again.
"Yes, I doubt that she would appreciate it if you made her underwear disappear on her."
Uno rolled her eyes. "If my underwear suddenly goes missing, I'm pretty sure that Dieci could use some target practice in her cow field, Mr. Snuggles."
"MEOW!"
Uno turned and had a small smile grace her face. 'That will teach you to try and steal my underwear.' "Anyway..." Uno's grin slowly disappeared as the data she was viewing changed. "...He did kill himself." Uno shook her head and narrowed her eyes. "But..." She turned up the volume and a frown came to her features.
"Really... Trying to take me on? Just because I killed him?" A female voice was heard on the screen.
Behind Uno, Sette and Mr. Snuggles both looked at the screen and watched the events play out. A woman appeared on screen, but for some reason, a clear view of her face was impossible to get, even with Uno's continued work in trying to clear the picture up.
One thing that Sette found interesting was that even though the woman was in a skin-tight black suit, there was a red mark on her chest, right between her breasts and down to her stomach. Well, that and how her light blue hair turned dark at the tips.
"Who... Who are..?"
"Stupid humans." The woman snorted and pointed her finger at him. "You think I care about what you think?"
The man made a garbled noise as he pulled his gun up to his head and pulled the trigger, causing him to fall to the floor, dead a moment later.
"Heh... Maybe I shouldn't have super-charged that magic so much." The woman chuckled and turned to walk away. She took three steps before turning around and grabbing the device. "Hmm, maybe I should... Make sure that no one finds out it's me." She held her hand up and a nearly invisible keyboard appeared in front of it. "I know that. Don't worry, I just need to erase the data and over-write it. No one will know." The woman sighed and shook her head. "Of course there's a chance that it could go wrong, I don't know how these things work completely. I never learned that when I was still human and my master didn't have any use for them, except how to find the ancient ones and break them." Several moments later, the woman set the device back down on the ground and nodded. "Good, that should do it. Yeah, I know, I know, gotta hurry up or my cover will be blown, sheesh!"
"...The doctor was right." Uno said softly as the video went completely out at that moment. "...There are Mazoku still out there."
Sette blinked as she thought back some time ago. '...That mark... Is Quattro...' She shook her head. Even if Quattro was an annoyance, she shouldn't think that Quattro was a Mazoku. After all, if she wasn't, then Sette would feel horrible about casting suspicion on her sister.
...Even if she didn't like the cyborg personally.
(---)
Meanwhile, at a secret location, a meeting of great importance was taking place...
Three individuals stood in silence, yet, despite that silence, they were still able to communicate with each other.
Even though they were nothing more than giant brains in even larger jars.
"We've let Jail have too much freedom."
"What do you suggest? He's cut his freedom from us. I knew that we should have put chemical controls in his brain."
"That would have gotten too expensive too quickly. The cost of cloning him alone..."
"What do you suggest then?"
"Well..."
"You three..." A female voice spoke up a blue-haired woman walked in front of the three brains. Grinning, she smirked at them. "Don't bother calling security, I killed them all."
"Who are you?" The first voice was wary, but interested.
"Let's just say that you want Jail under control and I want him out of my hair." She grinned at them.
"What do you want?"
"Heh..." She smirked at them. "Using Jail himself will amount nothing... But use those precious cyborgs of his... You can control him through them."
"...We're listening."
"Trust me, just give me something that can put a small little..." The woman grinned at the brains. "Something that will make about... Half of the 'numbers' listen to you, no matter what." She tapped her chin and shook her head. "Actually, no, even I can't do that, not right now, but, if you get me the materials..." The blue-haired woman grinned at them. "I can make it so that those 'numbers' won't be an issue, in fact, they'll be quite... Helpful to all of us." Her purple-red eyes flashed as she grinned. "What do you say?"
"Very well, we'll leave the details to you."
Levi just grinned as she told them the materials she would need.
'The future is looking good.' She thought to herself.
Me: Looks like Sette got the trail but still not willing to pursue it yet.
Odin: They're gonna report it first to the good o'le doctor before the kid get the report.
Amy: Being a young gun and a insecure, Teana might rush to her death if she ever find out about the Mazoku.
Me: Well, the cool down of the "White Nightmare" will be sufficient enough to kept her from her early grave when it happens.
Sarah: And looks like the corruption is just spreading fast, now with a Mazoku in the mix.
Val: Great! More problems to solve... Do anyone wish a Chaos enpowered Divine Buster in Blaster 3 to smite Quattro/Levi, please say Aye.
Everyone, including some of the people in RL: AYE!
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Darwin's nominee are best for laughs.
MGLN "Befriending" shows love thru superior firepower (Zenryokou Zenkai!)
Gundams are your worst nightmare in the battlefield.
SRW beats all foes.
JAM Project pwns all!!!
And I can't still make fanfic without restarting from the start when new ideas comes in...
Yup, but more specifically, the Hayate x Vivio Files take place after the Force time-frame, but so far I'm writing it without Force in continuity. Hayate's rank and position doesn't match up with what she had in Force, and since I haven't read all of Force I didn't want to get details wrong by including it.
You might also want to mention that the other half of the HxV Files main duo have neither read Force nor Vivid. She has, in fact, not even seen the first season of the anime but only the movie.
The half who's name starts with a S and ends with a -higan.
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Never stop being a kid. Never stop feeling and seeing and being excited with great things like air and engines and sounds of sunlight within you. Wear your little mask if you must to protect you from the world but if you let that kid disappear you are grown up and you are dead.
— Richard Bach
Location: Place of rocks and trees, and trees and rocks...and water.
Age: 33
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadiantBeam
D'aaaw, Hayate. A little slow on the uptake there, but sweet all the same, and it's nice to see her finally admit it to herself.
(Yes, I am way slow. Shut up.)
RB!!!!!!!! *glomps* Nice to see you're alive, or at least alive until the end of finals? (*sobs in corner in dread of finals....*)
Heh, poor Hayate is coming to realize that she loves Vivio not just in the "warm fuzzies and butterflies in stomach" kind of way, but in the "I'll bring you soup when you're sick, play hooky from work, and race across aeroports just to give you a goodbye hug when I'm supposed to be on lunch break" kind of way .
(Better late than never? *innocent look*)
Quote:
Originally Posted by RadiantBeam
Still alive and kicking, and with plans for updating Shadowverse sometime soon. Sad to say this place has lost a lot of appeal for me recently, but I'll still come on to update stuff.
Nice to hear that Shadowverse will be updated soon .
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shigan
You might also want to mention that the other half of the HxV Files main duo have neither read Force nor Vivid. She has, in fact, not even seen the first season of the anime but only the movie.
The half who's name starts with a S and ends with a -higan.
LOL, wonder who that is supposed to be???
I haven't finished reading all of ViVid myself either, so yeah, the last two works are probably only going to be minimally alluded to, if at all. I'm pretty sure that we destroyed canon continuity with our stories already .
Ah... It's good to be young again, and updating fast. But alas, time waited for no man.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lycodrake
Sounds interesting, though I'm wondering what you mean by "Jodinmir", where such a story would go, and how this connects to the usual Nanoha-verse...
I hate you Marvel for polluting my research! The planet is called Niflheimr and according to TSAB records that dimension doesn't exist ever since it was destroyed during the Second Founding (Olivier Segebrecht era) by planetary exterminates.
The heavy Asgardian themes draws from Hayate's Norse spells which I took to imply that somewhere back in the day, Yggdrasil and the Nine Realms existed. So I picked one of the worlds, and subverted it.
Even before its "destruction", Nilfheimr was already a dead world. With no orbiting sun, life on the planet was either dead, or transformed. The people on Nilfheimr followed their Saint King and turned their bodies from flesh and blood to adaptive magisteel, becoming what would be called the Frost Giants on a world of ice, steel and death. So did their enemies from the Dark Heresy, and for three hundred years they fought an endless war. Olivier's intervention only placed that war on hold...
Fast forward to present day Midchilda. A young mage raiding his home's shack for trinkets to build his first device finds a simple cross. He inadvertably activates it, and discovers that it was a machine frame device! He rushes to school to show off...
...but doesn't know that he has alerted the Frost Giants.
And some are hiding in plain sight.
So! There you have it. Mecha and a shonen fic masquerading as a magical girl fanfic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Akiyoshi
I guess you won't include Thor or Loki into the mix, because those two are too insanely broken to be in a story with Nanoha characters. Unless they end up fighting each other at the climax with the Nanoha characters taking care of the Mini-boss squad and the mooks xD
I'd be including Loki as [Evil Genius] and leader of the other guys, just not like the MARVEL incarnation. Haven't decided who's leader of the nicer guys, though Shah ______ is on my list due to Alhazredian origins.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lycodrake
Actually, Thor isn't nearly as broken as some people think, or at how he is in the original myths. But I know what you mean, considering Marvel and other portrayals of him.
Loki...well, if you have lead or iron weapons, he's a lot easier an opponent than you'd think...
I'm just saying these things from what I know about Norse mythology (mythology being one of my favorite subjects *ever*)...
Thor: Pika...chuuuuuu!!
*runs*
Quote:
Originally Posted by Akiyoshi
You're right, it's easy to assume he's insanely powerfull, by Marvel standards, Thor will be able to rip Deville of Huckebein apart with his bare fists if he fights at full strenght. And Mjolnir make's Graf Eisen to look like a squeaky toy hammer and the War Hammer to look like a toothpick ...a used toothpick.
This could be funny if the "Iron" in Vita's "Knight of the IRON Hammer" title turns out to be literal xD!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lycodrake
Well, even with that major weakness of his, Loki still has shapeshifting and destructive magic on his side. But I know what you mean. Vita defeating Loki sounds hilarious but good to me. XD
And in this world, Loki the Trickster, Lesser of the Old Gods, has given his giants the same gift, allowing them to walk amongst us, hiding in plain sight.
The crossover thread inspired me to tried a once buried idea, a crossover between MSLN and Command & Conquer. I manage to work up a prologue, but I'm still not sure about it and there are some points I'm considering to rewrite. Oh well, let's give it a try anyway.
Spoiler for Prologue:
Non-Administrated World #97. Usually the only kind of Bureau personnel that would take interest in that kind of world were their librarians, and that’s more because they’re thirsty for all kind of trivia. Members of the always busy Enforcer Corps rarely ever bothered to pay attention to NAW’s, even the ones inside their patrol area, since the Prime Directives disallowed interference to any civilizations yet to develop interdimensional travel unless lost-logias or dimensional cataclysms were involved.
So the fact that operative Chrono Harlouwn was currently digesting every piece of information he could get regarding the planet said something about his latest assignment.
Fifty-five MC. A strange material dubbed tiberium by the locals, its origins unknown but suspected as extraterrestrial, was discovered at a patch of land near the Tiber river, leeching metals and other heavy minerals out of the soil and concentrating them in crystal form. Able to spread to almost any kind of environment and capable of transforming the local ecosystem to its alien nature, tiberium quickly spread across the globe and started to terraform it, threatening every carbon-based life form there.
Tiberium. Chrono grimly noted that despite all the knowledge stored in the Infinity Library, there was little to no other record of any similar substance in known space. That it was slowly turning the planet into a death world did not help matters.
Forty-nine MC. Using their then state-of-the art technology to harvest the valuable resources from tiberium crystals, an international entity known as the Brotherhood of Nod became an economic superpower and used their newfound advantage to secretly amass a huge army while expanding their political lobbying as well as control of the media. Their confidence growing, the Brotherhood then began agitating their rival the United Nations, first with terror bombings, but later with large-scale military operations, and the UN responded by giving its previously classified military arm, the Global Defense Initiative, permission to retaliate. What followed was a bloody three years of open conflict between Nod and GDI, ending only after the latter fired an orbital strike which killed the Brotherhood’s chief figure Kane.
Several paragraphs passed, his eyes finally stopping at certain topic. It was something he was personally familiar with, and revisiting the event caused Chrono to clench his fist.
Sixty-five MC. Rogue Midchildan mage Precia Testarossa was found not only conducting illegal cloning experiments but also collecting incredibly dangerous lost-logias known as Jewel Seeds. A Bureau task force was send to capture her, but when her plans started to collapse the mad woman, seething with rage and spite, steered her besieged secret base the Garden of Time into the nearby NWA #97. Using the task force’s brief moment of indecisiveness on deciding what to do with the falling stronghold, Precia then threw all nine Seeds in her possession into the Garden’s core reactor, hoping to open a path to the mythical Alhazard. Instead, the unpredictable logias exploded, and while the blast was non-lethal the coverage was global. The dormant linker-cores of the human inhabitants reacted to the blast, and their sleeping magical potential suddenly became active. Bewildered and with yet another sudden change to their lives, the barely recovering planet was plunged into numerous regional conflicts which were collectively called the Awakening Crisis, one that took years before GDI and Nod managed to bring order to their respective territories; the witch-hunts only started to slowly subdue after the realization that instead of magic being exclusive to a selection of people everybody could actually harness it, albeit at varying degree, but even then magic-related clash still brew now and then, the words “unfair” and “destined” and “blasphemous” and “superior” and the likes being thrown back and forth.
Precia Testarossa. At the name, the scar on his neck suddenly ached again. Damn that woman!
Chrono knew exactly how disastrous the Jewel Seed Incident had been, for he had been part of the task force sent to handle the situation. Two ships, the Yazata and Ashura, the latter where he had been stationed at, had been assigned for it, a larger force than normal due to the volatile geopolitical situation of the planet. He remembered just how byzantine the whole ordeal had been: the Alicia Testarossa clone competing with the task force to reclaim the Jewel Seeds; GDI and Nod forces mistaking his unit for each other and thus opened fire; the massacre of the entire marines attached to Yazata during the siege of the Garden of Time; the sudden revelation of magic to an entire planet’s populace…the only small salve to the gaping wound had been the few Jewel Seeds they had managed to secure. Admiral Stannard, who had been in charge of the task force, had resigned because of it, partly because the Navy had needed someone to take the fall and partly because the person herself had been traumatized by the outcome, considering it as her greatest failure; rumor has it she had been caught several times trying to commit suicide, and was now under constant supervision and counseling. Precia Testarossa was never found, though Chrono liked to think that she had painfully burned to death when the Garden entered the atmosphere. As much as he wanted to find her alive so he could blast her head off – the stoic man very rarely ever wanted to do such a thing, but what the madwoman had caused was beyond forgiveness so much that the Bureau even sentenced her to death in absentia, just in case she was still alive; note that the last death sentence in Midchilda was a century ago – the prospect of Precia Testarossa causing even more damage to the barely intact world shuddered him.
There was a knock at the door. Before he could answer, it slid open and two figures entered the observatory deck: Senior Librarian Yuuno Scrya and Major Tiida Lanster. “Sir,” the latter saluted. ”Admiral Lindy told us that you’re here.”
“At ease. And drop the salutes for the duration of this mission; I don’t want you making me sniper target. Is Knight-Lieutenant Nouera not with you?“
“She is leading a battle prayer with her knights. Some of our men are also participating.“
“We will be reaching Earth in six hours.” Yuuno said. “You might want to get some rest. Enjoy sleeping while you can; it will soon be a luxury.”
Chrono waved his hand. “Yeah, I know. The Book of Darkness will require our full attention.” He rotated his chair, his audience now in his full view. “Lanster, how is the Raiders?”
The Raiders, more formally known as the Joint Special Warfare Group, was a mage commando unit created following the Jewel Seed Incident. Old-school critics had initially blamed the failure to the allocation of L-Class exploratory ships, pointing out that the cruisers only had point-defense systems and the strategic weapon Arc-en-Ciel, with no precision tactical weapons such as the Augustus cannons to be used for fire support, but Chrono found the analysis erroneous; any orbital bombardment would have alerted the locals who will believed that they were being invaded and returned fire with Ion Cannons and nuclear barrages, and though the ships could survive and retreat from the retaliation the mission still would have been a total failure. In his opinion, a compliment of dedicated field mages with training and experience in special operations would have been more useful than the cannons, as well as less likely to provoke nuclear retaliations. With great effort he’d then successfully convinced the Bureau to create such a unit, with operators all flight-capable and with Strikers qualification, hand-picked from multiple arms, and they had achieved notable successes in Midchilda and overseas. But recovering the Book of Darkness would be their first mission of such scale and importance.
“The ones who had never been to Earth are a bit nervous, but the ones who had are calm. Disturbingly calm, but calm.” It was not surprising. NWA #97 was dubbed “the Second Orussia” by the media for a reason – not only had it been the second world where a Bureau task force had been forced to pull back empty-handed in the decade, it was also a world with a staggeringly high number of violence and conflict involving mass-weaponries now outlawed by the Bureau, just like Orussia. “Don’t worry sir, if checked with the doctor and she said it’s just a minor pre-deployment nervousness. Overall morale is still as high as before.”
“Let’s hope it’s still high once they reach planetside. What about their equipments and supplies?”
“Everything is ready: 8mm mana-containment cartridges for the armed-devices, auxiliary-control type intelligent-devices as number-crunchers for the teleportation specialists, translation software with updated earth languages, emergency rations for one week for each operator, air-filtering apparatus to protect the lungs from tiberium-contaminated air in case of severe barrier failure and full-body barrier-jackets to cover the rest of the body….” His voice trailed off for a moment; he knew what horror happened when tiberium came into contact with the skin – he’d seen it. Regaining his composure, Tiida materialized a holo-screen displaying a file. “The details are all here, sir.”
“Good.” Chrono glanced at the data. “…Yuuno, still no news from Graham?”
“No.” The librarian answered. “Yesterday’s message, the one with the estimated coordinates of the Book, was the last.”
“I see.” Chrono answered, his ice-cold face hiding the storm in his mind. Gil Graham was a family friend and he and his familiars had mentored the young man. Should anything happen to him…
“Don’t worry sir; I think he’s still alive.” Tiida assured, and Chrono wondered if he had betrayed his emotions. That was bad since he slipped up back then; officers must never take it personal – it clouded judgment and affected critical decision-making. He must learn to steel himself harder. “When the old man refused to come with us and evacuate from Earth I think he’s crazy,” the major referenced to the covert evacuation effort conducted by the Raiders following the Awakening Crisis, “but to think he risked staying here looking for the Book based on data which our intelligence had dismissed as inconclusive and unreliable…and succeeded…” The major was clearly impressed. “Well, he’s resourceful enough to do those while surviving the planet’s turbulent years, so I doubt he’s down yet. Maybe he’s just maintaining communication silence, sending messages only when there are important updates.”
“Perhaps. But we must also consider the Book’s guardians. What if he got too close, and…”
“Chrono,” Yuuno interjected. “You’re thinking too much. He’s not alone, his familiars are with him. And he of all people would know better than to recklessly close in; he’s the one in charge during the previous incident, right?”
“I guess.” Chrono relented, admitting that it would do him no good to brood on the subject. “Still, this means we might not be able to rely on him for intel. If we still can’t contact him when we reach the planet, we’ll have to recon on our own. Use the first day to scry the region, observe every military presence be they GDI or Nod, look for any hints of the Book like abnormally large mana concentrations, and then start sending the teams on small numbers from the next day and onwards. Or would one day be too long?”
“No sir. Too soon, and we might as well charge blind.”
“Yuuno?”
“If the scans fail to show any mana build-up, then chances are the Book won’t be fully powered soon. There is however the possibility of the Book being hidden deep underground where our sensors can’t reach. Since we lack accurate intel one day is acceptable, be we’re gonna have to get the teams on stand-by and risk jumping at the slightest of hints. Worst case scenario is that the Book is almost ready and hidden from our scrying efforts so we might have little chance in containing the situation. Capturing its guardians while they’re lurking the region for linker-cores to drain might be our best bet.”
Tiida smirked. “Hoo, I didn’t expect such a risky proposal from a librarian.”
“The librarians you’ve met have probably never been involved with ancient artifacts of mass-destruction before.”
“True. Let’s just hope the old combat footages and records of their fighting style we’ve gathered has given a good estimation on their martial prowess.” Chrono grimly concluded. He didn’t like risking his troops without solid intel, but they might be running out of time. He could only hope that the scans would show something so they wouldn’t have to manually look at every nook and cranny. “We also have the locals to worry about. We should see if we could tap into their communications so that we can keep track of their movement. And there’s also the chance that they know something valuable…”
“Speaking of which…” Yuuno blurted. “Have you read the report regarding their current technology?”
“I’ve skimmed from start to finish, but I haven’t committed to the fine details yet. Why?”
“After the…Incident…they suddenly started to utilize magic-based technology.” He chocked at the last part, a pang of guilt resurfacing. “All infantry uses barrier-jackets now, their mages uses equipments suspiciously similar to mage-devices, their power packs stores mana instead of chemical energy as was the case of pre-magic civilizations, and…”
By now, Chrono seemed to understand where this conversation was heading and cut the list. “Yes, we’ve expected this. The Garden of Time was not vaporized, merely broken; the explosion split the land mass and its buildings into several huge chunks but about half of the structures survived the fall, if barely, since the Garden’s gravity manipulators had back-up generators and didn’t instantly go offline, allowing emergency protocols to soften the crash. There’s enough machinery, devices, spell books and whatnots that were collected by the locals to be studied and reverse-engineer.” Seeing that Yuuno was not convinced, he added emphasis on the next part. “You losing an intelligent-device did as much change as one droplet amidst a rainstorm.”
“You can’t be sure!”
A long uncomfortable silence followed the outburst, only broken by Major Lanster’s fake cough. “Is there something I should know?” He asked.
“Due to the confusion during the siege, our librarian here lost his mage-device, Rising Head or something.”
“It’s Raging Heart.”
“Ah.” Tiida nodded. “Was it a family heirloom?”
“What?” The librarian chuckled. “No, nothing sentimental like that. I merely stumbled upon it when analyzing a small dig site. It’s not a mighty Old Belkan artifact or anything –it was Midchildan design, that’s for sure- or else it would have been secured in a museum, and to be honest I don’t know how it ended up there; there was no data on its previous user at all. Maybe some rowdy tomb raiders had entered the catacombs before, but I have no idea why he or she left the mage-device there.” He stopped, noticing that he’s going off-track. “That’s not the point. As an intelligent-device, not only is Raging Heart equipped with a virtual training simulator that allows its user to learn every basic spell ranging from binds to barriers to body reinforcement to shooting, it can also evaluate the magical aptitude of its user and recommend the best skill development path!”
“A feature, which I must remind you, exists in other intelligent-devices as well.” Chrono coolly interjected. “More than half of our assault team perished during the Jewel Seed Incident, several of them carrying similar devices as well, and we never got the chance to retrieve them either. Not to mention that Precia Testarossa had an entire armory filled with custom-made mage-devices as well as the workshop and materiel to build more – aside from speculations that she was running some experimentation on device-crafting I don’t know why she needed so many, but fact is they were there.”
“Look, even if someone managed to get their hands on that mage-device, the fault lies more on manufacturers and regulation makers. It was the classic problem of balancing between security and accessibility; allowing everybody to use a mage-device means that there’s a risk of it being used by and unwanted person but locking it to one person’s exclusive use make things difficult someone else needs to use it, like say, when you are wounded and your partner lost their weapon.” Chrono paused, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It was an oversight – our predecessors should have thought about it, but they didn’t because it had never caused a major issue before and they had more pressing matters to attend to; may I remind you that we are still a relatively young governmental entity. It wasn’t until after the Jewel Seed Incident that the new rule takes place and every team operating on Non-Administrated Worlds is required to lock their mage-devices to them and all members of their task force only. It is not your fault. Now can you please calm down?”
“I…” The librarian finally relented. “Fine.” Chrono decided to let him collect himself for a moment and gestured Tiida to come closer so they can discuss the reports.
“But still,” he added. “Do you ever wonder what kind of person might have found it?”
“…I honestly have no idea. Go get some shut eyes, Yuuno.”
Uh, I could never imagine CnC together with Nanoha no matter what. Nanoha is already pretty idealistic in its own way, but CnC is just off the scales; no matter how military it tries to be I can never get serious with the game...
Uh, I could never imagine CnC together with Nanoha no matter what. Nanoha is already pretty idealistic in its own way, but CnC is just off the scales; no matter how military it tries to be I can never get serious with the game...
Yeah, same here. CnC is one of the tactical games I grew up playing, but despite attempts to stay serious, I could never end up doing it...
Also, if we go by CnC mechanics or rules, Hayate and Nanoha would pretty much be OP, Hayate because of her AoE attacks, and Nanoha because of Starlight Breaker.
And this idea probably would fit better under the crossover thread anyway, unless it would just be Nanoha-verse characters...don't know for sure, though.