Chrono realized that leaving Fate to get yelled at was, perhaps, not entirely loyal.
Then again, interfering in one of 'Admiral Mom's dressing downs was not on his list of things to do.
Ever.
Listening now...
It might have been fun if it were Nanoha. Nanoha would get indignant. Listening to Fate try to puzzle out the earnest listing of the reasons why what she did was strictly against regulations and wrong, but also something Lindy was very proud of her for and having her be further embarrassed by knowing you were watching was just a little too much like kicking a kitten.
Even if his new 'little sister' did have a slight penchant for treating regulations as something closer to suggestions than rules.
Sisterly abandonment to the side, he'd left rather than face round three of Fate vs. the law in order to find someone else embroiled in highly technical struggle.
He found her right where he expected her to be, too: hunched forward in her chair in front of the data screens that networked all of the TSAB's sensor systems currently on planet into her control and scowling.
Amy didn't so much as twitch as he put a hand on the back of her chair, shuffling through scanning maps and scrolling sensor readings almost on autopilot.
"Find anything?" He asked innocently and got a subvocallized growl in reply.
"No. Dammit. It. Is. So. Annoying." Amy snarled and then pounded one hand on the desk hard. "I know finding mages who don't want to be found is hard. When we were looking for the Knights, unless they were set up, and even half the time when they were, even though I knew what to look for, I didn't find anything. Even though they don't even live very far from here. I know, the book was a lost logia - but it hasn't gotten a lot better either."
Amy heaved in a deep breath and then let it out again slowly. "It still pisses me off - even though I have the address, I still can't detect this 'Nightmare factory' at all."
Chrono blinked then turned slowly to look at her. "Nothing?"
"Nothing. If we didn't have Akiko-chan's directions and GPS I probably couldn't even find the place." Amy sighed. "I know this planet isn't well scanned. The Bureau's been here a handful of times - heck, the Jewel Seeds incident gave us better scans of this world than we've ever had and made us estimate it's magical population up an order of magnitude at least - but even then we never got anything solid. Except jewel seeds and Fate."
"That girl was fighting a war under my nose as early as last week and I didn't know - it's enough to give me nightmares, factory not necessary." Amy concluded.
"Nothing solid. What about what isn't solid?" Chrono asked musingly.
Amy shrugged and hit a few keys bringing up a map absolutely covered with splotches of color.
"Stuff I can't confirm? Our sensors and interpretation software are so good in some ways, it's a disadvantage. I can probably pull a ghostly magical girl out of a bowl of Jello if I want to." Amy grumbled. "If I go by this map, earth has a bigger mage population than Midchida. But if I go by that Midchida has more mages on it than people. Most worlds wind up looking like that if you turn the interpretation software up high."
"And the sensors don't get solid readings because...?"
"We both know making sure readings aren’t solid is unfortunately one of the easiest things to do with concealment magic." Amy sighed. "And if 'keep your magic under cover' makes it into the local social background noise thoroughly enough that even the bad guys pick up on it -"
"Then some of the people could almost hold a pitched battle and we wouldn't know."
Amy nodded glumly. "Add the mess the girls and the Arc-En-Ciel made of local dimensional space recently - a lot of them could. Don't throw around more power than, say, A-rank spells for more than a few seconds at a time and a good enough disguise magic would have me chasing phantom signals for weeks. And all of this assumes we know what we're looking for. And we don't."
"What?" Chrono asked startled, and Amy gave him a serious look.
"Akiko's magic style is not in the TSAB database. At all. The things she was fighting aren't either - and they don't use the same structure she does." She said firmly. "I could watch for them with all eyes for a week and if she hadn't shown me what she looks like by being in my elegant analysts hands - I'd never find them if they didn't out and out advertise. The best I can say is that there are more mages hiding on earth - there have been enough ghost impressions that some of them have to be real. Which ones, where they actually are rather than where I detected them.."
"...you don't know."
"I'm actually more likely to get it wrong than right with most of these readings." Amy sighed - then made a soft sounds as Chrono reached across her chair and started massaging her back.
"Thanks." She sighed. "I've been at it all day, but unless I have a breakthrough.."
"We do the best we can." Chrono told her calmly. "It's all we can do."
BATTLE FANTASIA
Graf Eisen swung in a lazy arc as it crashed through a bunch of the little black and red critters that infested the Nightmare Factory. Vita didn't really know what the things were and frankly she didn't care as none of them really put up a fight of any kind, instead they simply exploded into clouds of black smoke when hit hard enough. Maybe if they were fighting someone weaker than her then they'd be a challenge but for the most part it seemed like even a one-hundred per-cent normal human could have ripped their way through a crowd of the things.
How boring.
She had expected a fight worth crowing about! A toe-to-toe brawl with monsters beyond imagining against which she could go all out against! Not a horde of worthless nothings!
She frowned. Had Signum been this way? After she had split from the other two she had sort of lost track of where things were - she was beginning to suspect the factory was actively changing it's layout to distract her. Maybe the reason she was batting away underlings was because their bosses had already been defeated or were busy fighting one of the others? That sounded an awful lot like she was being treated as if she wasn't a threat - and that pissed her off! Spotting a nearly door the red-clad knight didn't even think twice about kicking the thing down and rushing in with Graf Ei...sen...
Vita paused.
First she looked back over her shoulder.
Then she once again took in the sight around her.
The reason for her sudden wariness was that she had just walked into what she clearly recognized as Hayate's room. The broken door behind her opened out onto what the rest of the factory had looked like - sickly green walls covered in dripping pipes and rusty grilles - but the room she was in now looked exactly as if it were Hayate's room back home.
“heLLo vITa.”
The knight shuddered at the high-pitched voice. She knew that voice, it was a voice that she had spent weeks trying to forget after the first time she had heard it. A squeaky, burbling voice that someone, somewhere had mistakenly thought was the ideal thing to comfort children with... It was the voice of 'Speak Easy Deadbunny' - a speaking version of her favorite plush toy. Apparently thanks to a manufacturing error almost all the first batch of the things had spoken with horrific voices which had terrified thousands of young deadbunny fans across the country - her included. That voice had haunted her nightmares for weeks.
Her pulse rising rapidly, Vita scanned the room for the source of the voice. On the dresser? The windowsill? Maybe hidden in the wardrobe? Reflexively she glanced towards the door for an escape route... only to see nothing but a blank wall where there had once been a door.
“vITa, vITa, vITa, wHEre ARe yOU loOKinG?” The red-haired girl let out a slight whimper as she turned around to face Hayate's bed and the large lump under the covers that hadn't been there the first time she had looked. She knew what was happening - this whole setup was following a reoccurring nightmare she had experienced for a long while a month or two after she had first met Hayate.
Dimly she realized why this place was called the Nightmare Factory.
Shaking her head Vita gripped Graf Eisen harder, hard enough that her hands hurt. She knew this was a nightmare... but in her nightmares she had never been armed. A nasty grin spread across her face as the idea of beautiful, beautiful revenge crossed her mind. “Eisen!” she hissed, pulling the iron count back for a full overhead swing and leaping forward.
The head of the mallet smashed into Hayate's bed... and the scream that came from what was under the covers was most definitely not the high pitched one Vita had expected. In fact it had sounded horrifyingly like... like...
“Hayate!” the red-haired girl screamed, almost dropping Graf Eisen in shock as a large part of her brain kicked in with the seemingly absolute certainty that she had just killed her own mistress, best friend and family member. That wasn't true! It couldn't be true! Hayate was safe at home where she and the other knights had left her!
But as the bed covers started to stain themselves red around the point of impact Vita found that her rational thought was pushed to one side as she dived at the bed and scrabbled wildly at the material. Eventually her fingers gained purchase on the cloth and she ripped it away -
“Boo.”
- only to reveal the large off-white head of deadbunny, it's red eyes looking right at her and it's stitched mouth curled up in a nasty smirk.
“eXPecTIng SOmeONe eLSe... vITa?”
The knight screamed and jumped away as the large version of her favorite plush toy sat up in the bed and twisted it's head to look at her. Then it seemed to twitch and look down at the hole in it's chest, damage from when Graf Eisen had smashed into it on the bed.
“yOU hiT HarD.”
The plush rabbit sagged forward, then moved to push itself off of the bed.
“Did YOu tHInk I Was SOmeONe sPEciAL?”
Vita backed away, her head shaking from side to side in denial. She was stronger than this! She should have been able to just smash her way through this thing but... but it was hard to make her body do what she wanted it to do. Her legs felt so weak and her arms were shaking almost so much that it was hard to keep hold of her weapon properly. Her breathing was shallow and her heart rate had rocketed - her body was reacting in fear whether she wanted it to or not.
“I WonDEr iF I caN See IF thEY scREam AS weLL as YOu dO?”
The wolkenritter froze.
“What... did you say?” She ground out between clenched teeth, her trembling seeming to slow and one hand reaching down to a pouch at her waist.
“HayATe iS It? tHE naME reSOunDS in YOur NighTMarES.”
The iron knight's shaking stopped dead.
“yoUR imAGinATioN Of hER scREam SOunDEd sO VerY TasTY.”
“You...” she hissed as she extracted a trio of iron balls from the pouch at her waist “...Stay the hell...” In one movement she threw the balls into the air and swung her mallet around in a great arc. “...Away from Hayate!”
“Schwalbe Fliegen!” The hammer smashed into the balls and launched them like a trio of angry hornets at the giant plush toy where they crashed into it - doubling the monster over with the impact even as they blew their way out through it's back.
“Now,” Vita whispered as she approached the collapsed plush toy, Graf Eisen transforming into it's rocket form as she did so. “I don't think you scare me anymore.” She grinned nastily as her device loaded not one but two cartridges in a row. It's head glowing with the massively dense magical energies the iron count was drawn back by it's owner.
When it came to threats against their master's life little emotions like 'fear' were rendered meaningless to one of the Wolkenritter.
To one of their enemies, now cowering upon the ground, 'fear' was a very, very real thing.
BATTLE FANTASIA
Moving as quietly as she could through the hallways of the factory, Signum was straining her senses as best she could to pick out any sign which might hint that she was heading towards something important. Not for the first time she cursed her lack of basic search spells, since she generally left that sort of thing up to Shamal and Zafira she had never sought to learn any of her own and right now she could have really used one. Worse it seemed as though telepathy was blocked - or at least heavily distorted - by the strange variable space the factory seemed to be occupying so she couldn't even ask Shamal to search for her. What little communication she had tried all ended up garbled or indistinct and she had already kicked herself hard over getting too caught up in Vita and Nanoha's enthusiasm to actually check it worked before they got in too deep.
Her ears twitched at the faint sound of screaming. Closing her eyes she waited for a moment for a second scream and when it came she was able to pinpoint it as being somewhere off to her left. Heading in the direction of the screaming, with all the maze-like passages, was difficult and she was forced repeatedly to stop and wait for a new scream in order to orient herself... and each time she did that she worried a little more that the next scream she heard might have been the last.
Worse than that was the ever growing feeling that she knew that scream. Despite herself the knight sped up and soon was taking the corridors at a run - she would have flown but the enclosed quarters and various pipes sticking out of the walls here made high-speed flight difficult at best. Someone with better skill at aerial maneuverability, such as Nanoha or Zafira, probably wouldn't have considered this a problem but Signum wasn't quite as at home in the air as those two were so she was left with simply running as fast as she could. Even then she occasionally clipped a bit of pipe as she ducked and weaved her way through what seemed like an ever-increasingly obstructed set of passageways.
Finally, as the screaming seemed to reach a climax, the passageway opened out and Signum caught sight of the source of all the screams.
It was Hayate.
The brown-haired girl was tied to a post in the center of the room around which a variety of smallish humanoid creatures were dancing. Every so often one of the creatures would closely approach the bound girl and prompt another scream.
For a moment the knight's mind blanked out entirely as she tried to understand just how and why Hayate was even here. She was sure, absolutely sure, that her master had remained at home... and yet the girl was right in front of her.
Was it a trick?
There was a part of her that said it was, but there was a much larger part of her which simply couldn't risk the possibility that it wasn't. They had, after all, left Hayate at home on her own - it was entirely possible that she could have been kidnapped... And if so it would be all her fault! As the wolkenritter's leader she should have insisted that one of the other knights remain behind to guard their master! How could she have made such a colossal failure in judgment when she knew that there were so many forces out there, now more than she had believed before, who would just love to get their hands on Hayate and the artifacts she owned?
A new scream snapped her out of those guilty thoughts and pushed her back into the immediate situation - Hayate was in need of rescue.
Signum darted forward, Leavatein already drawn, and crashed into the pack of monsters like an angry bull. She was vaguely aware that Hayate was yelling something but she ignored it in favor of making sure she wasn't impaled by one monster's scorpion-like tail. From there she ducked low under the horns of another monster while she lashed out with her device and gutted the scorpion-tailed monster with one blow.
The first indication Signum had that something was terribly wrong was when she felt it's blood splash against her face.
Unfortunately she didn't have time to consider the ramifications of this information as she was immediately forced to roll aside in order to avoid a hammer blow from a muscular third monster. From there on the fight was short and bloody, the monsters didn't really have any sort of teamwork going so half the time their attempts to kill Signum simply ended up getting in each other's way. This was a fact the knight took shameless advantage of as she quickly littered the ground around where Hayate was restrained with their corpses. She was an experienced warrior with years of experience at fighting with her few losses having occurred during times where she wasn't striking to kill as she was now. By the end of it all she was panting hard and quite literally dripping with blood and more than a little gore... which worried her for a reason she couldn't understand at the moment, what with her heart pumping and her body flooded with adrenalin as it was now.
All she could focus on right now was the fact that Hayate was safe and that everything threatening her was dead. Turning to the bound girl the knight smiled. “You're safe now,” she murmured as she cut her master's bindings and let the girl down onto the ground where she immediately fell to her knees. Knowing that her master wouldn't be able to walk away from here the knight bend down to pick the girl up.
And then Hayate slapped her.
“You...” began the girl, “You monster” she hissed as Signum shot upright in reaction and reached up to touch her reddening cheek in shock. “They were just children! Children turned into monsters! Children like me!”
The knight stared at her master for a moment in confusion before almost mechanically turning her head to survey the site of the battle. Immediately she felt as if her world had just flipped upside-down as where there had been a host of vicious monster bodies the ground was now covered in the corpses and severed parts of what did indeed look like children.
“I told you!” Hayate continued, her voice shrill with anger, “I told you not to hurt them but you didn't listen! You ignored me! Just like before!”
“Before?” Signum asked numbly, her mind currently grinding to a slow halt as the situation seemed to spiral away from her understanding.
“When I told you not to try filling the book!” her master yelled, “You didn't listen then and went around attacking everyone and you didn't listen now and slaughtered these children!”
“I...” The knight began, her mouth opening and closing several times as she tried to think of something to say in her defense. “Th-they weren't...”
“Go away!” The girl screamed, “I don't need a monster that won't listen to orders like you!”
“Ha-Hayate...” Signum's world seemed to be shattering around her at a speed she simply couldn't keep up with, especially not in the post-fight haze she had been in. She reached out only to have her hand slapped away by the smaller girl, who let loose with a single statement that finished breaking the knight's world.
“I never want to see you again!”
BATTLE FANTASIA
Nanoha slowed her flight before coming to a halt as she once again tried to get her bearings. She'd been keeping a mental map of her explorations and it was beginning to dawn on her that the effort she'd spent doing so had been a complete waste. The halls and rooms of the factory seemed to be constantly changing position in what was likely a passive defense against intruders.
Coming to a halt in one smaller room, little more than a terminal for several passages to meet, Nanoha considered her options. Just flying around had been rather unproductive and the longer she remained lost the more she worried that whatever they were after was going to get away. Sure Shamal and Zafira were outside waiting but even she had to admit that the two of them couldn't cover every escape route on their own.
“Maybe I should just blow a hole in the wall?” She murmured, part to herself and part to her device. “I think this way is towards the middle of the factory...” The girl paused, then turned to her right, “or is it this way?”
“Does it really matter?” A voice spoke out from behind her. “Wouldn't it be simpler to just level everything? A starlight breaker would do it nicely wouldn't you say?” There was a short laugh, “Nyahaha, of course you would - I should know right?”
Nanoha spun to face the speaker, swinging Raising Heart down into her classic shooting position as she did so... only for her to almost drop the device as her hands went momentarily numb, along with the rest of her, in shock at who the speaker was.
“Ooh,” whistled the speaker - an almost identical copy of the young ace. “You should be more careful with that.” This new Nanoha, as far as the original could see, was about as perfect a copy as anyone could have hoped to produce. Everything from the hairstyle to the face to the outfit was exactly what the the first Nanoha saw whenever she looked in a mirror. She even held her own copy of Raising Heart, though unlike the original she was twirling the staff idly in one hand as if she were bored.
“Y-You-!” Nanoha stammered, clutching her device in one hand and pointing wildly with the other. “Who are you!?”
“Isn't it obvious who I am? I'm you!” The other replied before grinning and grabbing her device in both hands. “Now back to my suggestion of you just leveling everything...”
“You can't do that!” The first yelled, then frowned, “I mean, I can't do that! Vita and Signum are still here! And who do you think you are, claiming to be me?”
The duplicate cocked her head to one side, an expression of confusion flashing across her face. “Why not?” She asked, “We've blown them up before.” Then she frowned slightly, “and it's not like they don't deserve it. They've been downright
unfriendly lately.”
“Wh- How could you say that!” Though Nanoha was horrified by her duplicate's statement she was even more horrified to find that there was a part of her agreeing that yes, the Wolkenritter
had been less friendly than usual recently.
“You mean how could
we say that. I'm you in every way after all - a direct reflection of everything you are...” The doppelganger replied before shrugging, “Which is why you really should already know how I could suggest it. After all the only difference between us is that I won't deny things like that the way you do.”
The original of the two girls frowned. “I don't shoot my friends.” she stated after a few moments.
There was a moment of silence before the copy doubled over in laughter, an act which looked particularly odd given that she was doing so in mid-air. “Oh wow!” she exclaimed in between laughs, “I can't believe you actually believe that!” Soon the laughter died down and the girl was left wiping her eyes free of laughter induced tears. “We're so heavily in denial aren't we?” She asked, then nodded to her opposite, “well you are at least.”
“Wh-what! I am not!” Nanoha yelled back, rather put off by the other girl's overblown reaction to her earlier statement. “Why would I ever want to shoot them?”
The other Nanoha fell silent and looked at the first curiously, as if she didn't believe that she had just been asked such a question. “You'll even deny that?” She murmured, “You're worse off than I thought you were. Do you even deny knowing what a friend is?”
The first girl frowned slightly, “A friend?” she asked, “A friend is someone who can understand you.”
“Someone who can understand your pain.” The double whispered, “Someone who won't leave you, won't abandon you and won't make you feel as if the world wouldn't mind if you didn't exist.” The false Nanoha floated around the real one, throwing in an artistic twirl now and then as she did so.
“Poor us,” she all but sang, “Left all alone by our family, back when we first realized we weren't important to them at all. Imagine leaving a child as young as us alone like that - we always did wonder what they were thinking then.”
“They had good reasons!” Nanoha yelled, twisting in the air to track the other girl. “Papa was sick and the bakery needed all the help it could get!”
“So what!?” The double exclaimed, stopping and then leaning forwards until her face was inches from the other Nanoha's. “They could have taken us with them to the bakery! They could have asked a friend to look after us! They could have done a hundred things but they didn't! They didn't
care enough to do anything more than just leave us behind all day!”
“That's...” The original trailed off, unable to admit the other girl was right but finding it hard to claim she was wrong either. She remembered those days, not perfectly, but she remembered the sensation of being all alone in their home, of being a small child who couldn't understand why her mommy was never around like everyone else's were. She remembered the meals which were rushed and sparse... and she remembered the mommy who always promised to tuck her in at night but always forgot because she was too exhausted to remember.
But mostly she remembered the little girl she had been, the little girl who didn't understand the reasons why mommy was always too busy and daddy was always asleep at the white building, why big brother was never around and why big sister never had time for her...
“And that was when we decided we needed friends.” her copy hissed, “Friends who wouldn't leave us, friends who wouldn't abandon us.” She grinned, “Friends like Arisa and Suzuka! When we first saw them at school, always together, never apart... what did we think?”
“I want that.” Came the soft, almost silent, reply from the real Nanoha.
Her doppelganger nodded knowingly. “That's right. The little baker's daughter, wanting to be friends with the millionaire children... but they would never be friends with us normally would they?” The duplicate swung around behind Nanoha, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and leaning close to whisper in her ear. “So we fixed that, we beat Arisa until she belonged to us and we made sure Suzuka was afraid we'd do the same to her if she wasn't our friend.”
“Th-that's not...” Nanoha protested, though her tone was both weak and hesitant.
“Not what happened?” The double asked, “After a little denial, a little editing of events? Of course it wouldn't be - we always claimed to be saving Suzuka from a bully, right?” She grinned nastily and released Nanoha in order to spin around to be in front of the girl. “But I don't deny things, I know who was the real bully there and I know that we liked it that way. We liked having power, we liked seeing Arisa flinch every time she believed we thought she was acting unfriendly, it meant she was too afraid to abandon us... Though she soon grew out of that - I wonder if it was because she honestly started thinking of herself as our friend?”
The false Nanoha frowned as a thought occurred to her. “Or maybe she realized how little power we actually had over her? She was rich after all - she could have easily stopped us if she wanted. It couldn't have been hard to get us thrown out of school with the kind of resources her family could throw around.” She scowled for a moment longer before relaxing and giving an indifferent shrug, “Well no matter, she can have all the resources she wants - we have magic now!” From there the girl twirled once and spread her arms wide, her face covered with a bright grin that bordered on the sadistic. “With magic we can get all sorts of new friends and make sure the ones we have have no chance to abandon us!”
“No!” The real Nanoha yelled out, causing the fake to flinch back in surprise. “My magic isn't for that! My magic is... it's for...” She trailed off, unsure of herself. “It's...”
“You can't even come up with a good reason for it, can you?” The double leaned forwards, one hand on her hip and the other stretching out to waggle a finger in Nanoha's face. “We use our magic just like we used our fists, as a means to take advantage of everyone around us.” She laughed lightly, “Our magic was just a gift! The greatest gift anyone, anyone, had ever given us!”
“Yuuno gave it to us.” Nanoha murmured, frowning slightly as a thought came to mind. “We...” she shook her head to clear it before continuing. “I never needed to hurt him!” Her voice rose to a yell as she latched onto an argument that countered the fake's claims about her friendships. “Yuuno is my friend - and I didn't hurt him at all!”
The other Nanoha stared at the original for a few long seconds. “And
where is he now?” She asked, her voice whisper quiet. “Well?”
“He...” The ace backed away from her copy as she realized exactly where she was going with her question. “He's... he's just busy!” she called out, though it sounded like she was speaking more to herself than to her double. “He's got an... an important... He has a job and... and...”
“The same excuses our family used!” The double roared, “They're busy! They're sick! They're tired! They'll come back to you later! Excuses, excuses,
excuses!” She darted forwards, surprising Nanoha when she grabbed the ace's collar and roughly pulled her close. “He's
abandoning us!” she hissed, right in the girl's face. “He doesn't even try to call us! It's barely been three months and already he's abandoning us!”
For a moment the two stayed there - then the false Nanoha threw the real one away from her in disgust. “And you deny it, make yourself blind to it when you know we could put an end to his running away from us for good.” She watched as the original came to a halt through the simple act of bouncing, lightly, off of the wall she had thrown her at. “Pathetic.” She murmured, “and to think that you were the person who made such a masterpiece out of Fate.”
The real Nanoha reacted to the name, her head snapping up in order to shoot the double a horrified look. “Wha... what about F-Fate?” she whispered, “I... We... I saved her!”
“We
broke her!” The other Nanoha countered. “We took from her everything she had! We broke her so completely and then built her back up as our little friend! Totally devoted and utterly dependent on us! Even her mother wasn't able to manage that!”
“How does it feel, me!?” The double screamed, a hideously joyous look plastered across her face. “Realizing that I, you, we are a bigger
monster than
Fate's own mother!?” Nanoha merely whispered something in response, causing the clone to lean forward curiously. “What?”
“Y... you...” stammered the ace. “You're... You're lying! You're not me!” she wailed at last, for the first time seeming to be little more than the young girl she really was underneath all her skill and power, “You can't be me so... so stop it! Just stop!”
“I can't!” The clone yelled back, “You can no more stop me than you can stop yourself! I am you! Even if I'm gone I'll still be there inside you! Every doubt! Every fear! No matter how much you deny and justify - I will always be there!”
“Stop it!” Nanoha wailed again, falling to the floor as she all but folded in on herself. “Just stop! I - I don't want to hear anymore!”
“Then,” murmured the duplicate in a tone that was clearly full of dark amusement. “I will just have to use my devilish tools to make you listen.”
BATTLE FANTASIA
They'd been studying in Rei's room again - a tradition that hadn't died just because everyone was in college these days - when the story hit the airwaves, and so missed the initial "breaking news bulletin." This was probably just as well, since there wouldn't have been a thing any of them could have done to stop what happened - at best, Usagi could have tried to work damage control and bring the poor girl back after... well, after.
Haruka called them over the communicators a few minutes later, informing the Inner Senshi of what was showing up on every news channel in country, one of the international networks, Youtube, Nico Nico, and every Japanese chat room and bulletin board in existence. Michiru's mirror and Setsuna's orb hadn't so much as hinted at it, though the latter apparently started going crazy as soon as the story hit the airwaves, prompting Setsuna to phase out to the Space-Time Gate with a hasty, "Excuse me sorry dimensional disturbance imminent paradox gotta go lock the Gate before it crashes and kills us all love you bye!" that would have been funny as hell if it occurred under any other circumstance.
Hearing the news, the Inner Senshi scrambled for the nearest TV, whipping out their respective PDAs - and the Mercury Computer - as they went, searching for the newsfeeds.
After about ten minutes of watching half a dozen angles and takes on the story, Minako turned to Ami with a deadly serious look in her eye that said the happy-go-lucky blonde wasn't home right now, and Sailor Venus was the one in charge.
"Find them, Mercury. Find them
right now."
2011-12-17, 21:01
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