A Christmas Catastrophe

[Aleph]

Beyond the world - beyond all possible worlds - there is a bar. There's no use trying to describe what it looks like from the outside, because the concept doesn't make sense. Time only flows in it irregularly, and it's more than a little subjective. People who visit it find that it's rarely the same size. It might spend one night as a cozy little bar with dark wooden counters and the next as a cyberpunk nightclub - and the day between them as a wholesome family restaurant. It changes to fit the needs and moods of its visitors. The reclusive owners stay behind mirrored glass in a private room that overlooks the premises, never seen and rarely disturbed. The barman is always the same, with dark eyes and dark skin and a certain pharaonic cast to his features. He's always listening and always smiling.

He likes the tales he hears from his guests. It keeps life interesting. He can't stand being bored. It's why he runs the place. It goes by many names. The one that it wears at heart, however, is:

The Aleph-EarthScorpion Fanfiction Bar​

Patrons of this place-beyond-places might listen to the thunder of tsunderes sitting over milkshakes and complaining about their honestly-not-their-boyfriends, give a wide berth to cabals of manipulative scientists exchanging ideas and flirting, or even buy an ice cream for wide-eyed innocent blood-drinking superhumans playing in the ballpit. Friendships are made and broken, plans are made and refined, prodigious amounts of alcohol are consumed, and even the occasional wacky adventure happens in the temporal tavern that touches a myriad of multiverses.

And when the barman calls time, the patrons find that their tabs add up to the memories of their time there…

___​

​

Contents
Dramatis Personae
The Narrator - ⓿: An Unexpected Arrival
Donald Sykes - Update ❶: Christmas Cheer
Ms As'koni - Chapter ❷
Mamoru Chiba - Chapter ❸: Onwards and... Under? Descent Into the Geofront!
Shinji Ikari - Chapter ❹: The Red Devil Arrives / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
Nanoha Takamachi - Chapter ❺
Taylor Hebert - Chapter ❻.0❶
Marisalon - Special Bonus Scene ❼: Marisanta and her Helpful Elves Minions
Dramatis Personae 1.1
Henrietta Mari Langley - Update ❽: She Can (Not) Lose
Chrono Harlaown - Chapter ❾
Belle (and also Izzy) - ❿.
Usagi Tsukino - Chapter ⓫: Snow, Swords and Sorcery! Who Came Up With the Naughty List, Anyway?
Louise de la Valliere - War on Christmas-⓬
Donald's Christmas Message
Epilogue: Santa's Last Secret

 

[Aleph]

Dramatis Personae

A Green Sun Illuminates the Void/Overlady/The Fearful Void
Louise de la Valliere - A petite, pretty young woman from a country which bears a suspicious resemblance to what you'd get if you threw Early Modern France and the Low Countries in a blender and then added magic. Louise has an unfortunate condition; she is the fusion of three very similar women from very similar worlds. As a result, not only is her personality the synthesis of all three, but her body and magic randomly flickers between them. This can be somewhat awkward in social gatherings.
Likes: Proper behaviour, proper conduct, punishing all traitors with overwhelming force, soft cheese
Dislikes: Lewdness, blasphemy, being called Evil just because her magic sometimes might draw on demon lords or flesh-melting psychic powers or occasionally the raw essence of Evil itself

Marisalon - An exceptionally ambitious example of the neomah demon breed, Marisalon built a trading empire in the Demon City before she drew the attention of the Yozis and promptly had a reprogrammed superweapon jammed into her. She wound up delivering it to Louise de la Valliere and became a voice in her head advising her. She mourns the loss of her decadence budget, which was very large indeed.
Likes: Lewdness, extravagance, having power over others, teasing Louise, grapes.
Dislikes: Unnecessary danger, Louise's prudishness, poverty, not having a body.

Gnarl - Adviser to Evil Overlords and Evil Overladies, Gnarl is a survivor who never seems to be present when Heroes kick down the door and stab his current master to death. Instead, he tends to show up a few decades later advising the next Champion of Evil Who Will Cast The Lands Into Darkness. He lives to further the cause of Evil - and the proper kind of Evil, with towering architecture, sinister magic, and armour with spikes on.
Likes: Evil, bureaucracy (but we repeat ourselves), the Minion race.
Dislikes: Good, especially fluffy bunnies. Also, lower-class vampires.

Maggat Thwacker - A brown minion. Big (for a minion), tough (by anyone's standards) and very dangerous (likewise). Is also a super-genius by minion standards, capable of understanding the spirit of Louise's orders, using words of more than three syllables, basic arithmetic, and even some light multiplication if given some severed hands to help him count on their fingers.
Likes: Looting, killing, keeping order in the ranks
Dislikes: Poetry, in-sub-ord-in-a-shun

Maxy - A brown minion. Somehow appears to be the repository for his race's collective appreciation of poetry. Is often maimed by other minions for indulging in it. Is also apparently a famed paramour, although that's probably a lie. We hope.
Likes: Looting, killing, long words, poetry, dramatic irony
Dislikes: Poetry which ignores the proper forms of rhyme and meter

Fettid - A green minion. Very fond of knives. Is apparently female because she looted a dress. Yes, that's how minion gender works. Or at least that's how they think it works, and no one wants to look under the loincloth to check.
Likes: Looting, killing, knives, stabbing, dresses, stabbing, sneaking, stabbing and stabbing
Dislikes: Long words, poetry, cleanliness

Igni - A red minion. Practices alchemy. Some have said that he's not really practicing because the explosions which happen are deliberate. Frequently has to be resurrected by blue minions when things go wrong.
Likes: Looting, killing, burning things, alchemy which explodes
Dislikes: Long words, poetry, alchemy which doesn't explode or at least burn

Scyl - A blue minion. Not all there in the head. However, useful for bringing other minions back from the dead, which is how they maintain their casual approach to things like maiming and being cut clean in twain.
Likes: Looting, killing, making non-sequitur comments
Dislikes: Long words, poetry

Aeon Entelechy Evangelion
Shinji Ikari - A brave and heroic mecha pilot, Shinji believes in himself and… oh, sorry, wrong script. Arguably very brave and heroic (in that many people would argue otherwise), Shinji does not believe in himself, and he doesn't so much 'pilot' as 'commune with a horrific cyborg slave god machine which happens to be pretending to be a giant robot'. On the other hand, he's very good at fatalistically accepting situations, convinced he can't change them (he usually can't). Also, beware of when he snaps. You wouldn't like him when he's angry.
Likes: Calm, peace and quiet, his father's approval, playing the cello, tsunderes (when dere).
Dislikes: Being put in danger, inhaling LCL, his father, tsunderes (when tsun).

An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Taylor Hebert - A depressed misanthrope teenage girl with the power to see into a decaying hell dimension and make creepy monsters from her inner demons. Of which she has a vast number. Despite all this, she tries to be a superhero in a corrupt low-tech cyberpunk world. Has managed to avoid the breakdown in personal reality which afflicts Louise de la Valliere. Somehow. Probably because her alternate selves didn't want to be friends with her.
Likes: Stephen King novels, 'accidentally' creeping people out, being a hero, blaming other people for self-inflicted woes.
Dislikes: Look, this is a short entry. We'd be here all day if we went into detail.

Blue Social
Ms As'koni - The asari species are famed for their cooperative and comprising approach to diplomacy. And then there's Ms As'koni, who's a bitterly cynical chain-smoking PI noted for her racism against anyone which isn't an asari, her contempt for pretty much everyone who is, and her respect for humans. Nah, just kidding; she views humans as a bunch of jumped up self-entitled idiots and hates people who treat them as pinkish-brown-skinned asari just because they look similar.
Likes: Money, her pets, close relatives who aren't her grandmother, not telling people her personal name
Dislikes: Everything and everyone else. Especially you. Yes, you.

Caught Up and Let Go
Belle - Big Sisters are nigh-unstoppable biologically engineered killing machines whose rages send entire mobs running in terror. They're not usually meant to be moeblobs, but Belle is the exception that proves the rule. Her unusually relaxed temperament may be down to her ice powers keeping her chill. Or it may be down to the fact that she doesn't remember anything before waking up in a cell and breaking out of Family Territory. It probably isn't down to the way her reflection talks to her from behind the mirror, because she usually advocates stabbing things.
Likes: ADAM, food, shiny things, ice, awful puns, people who are nice to her.
Dislikes: Being hungry, rival Big Sisters, people who aren't nice to her, sea mines.

Lucy - A pitiful, half-feral little girl bioengineered into an ADAM factory, Lucy would probably bite anyone who described her as "pitiful" within her hearing. A shining example of the capitalist spirit on which Rapture was founded, she relentlessly hustles everyone she meets, and may be the one who's stealing all of Belle's missing aggression. Belle saved her from having her stomach torn open and her vital organs pulled out, and she's repaying her Big Sister by making sure she does things properly. By doing what she says.
Likes: ADAM, being in charge, Miss B (begrudgingly), shiny things, getting her way.
Dislikes: Being ignored, being patronised, Bad People, Little Brothers, not getting her way.

Gamesverse
Nanoha Takamachi - A freakishly talented young mage from Earth who got mixed up in a small incident that escalated until she found herself a dimensional criminal. Whoops. Still, she's sure everything will work out for the best if she makes up for the mistakes she made and then explains things. Possibly with the aid of bombardment spells if people don't want to listen.
Likes: Learning magic, inventing new spells, flying, doing the right thing, making friends.
Dislikes: Rampant Lost Logia, Vesta leaving dead things on the carpet, people shooting her with her own attacks, people who won't listen.

Vesta - A feline goddess, greater and more glorious even than is normal for cats (who are just naturally better than everything else anyway). Vesta benevolently descended to Earth and chose the greatest and most worthy human there to grant her aid and friendship to. Truly, she is a shining example of altruism and heroism that we should all aspire to emulate.
Likes: Inflating her own ego, food, godlike power (opposable thumbs, the ability to open tins with laser claws), mistress (Nanoha), napping.
Dislikes: Rival cats, invisible walls, wet paint, food she can't catch, water, snow, doing work.

Chrono Harlaown - A young, by-the-book military brat and magical prodigy, Chrono works for the TSAB; an interdimensional organisation dedicated to keeping the peace, tackling wide-scale problems and cleaning up weapons of mass destruction, of which there are far too many lying around for anyone's liking. Oh, and he'd quite like to arrest Nanoha, too.
Likes: Regulations, being proven right, thrashing people at board games, snarking.
Dislikes: Insubordination, dimensional criminals, Lost Logia, people saying he's too young to be a policeman.

Of the Stars
Usagi Tsukino - A perfectly normal, if somewhat ditzy and excitable, schoolgirl and part-time shrine maiden. Not the brightest in her class... or the most athletic (except when running to avoid being late), or the most creative, or the most disciplined. But she has a heart big enough for the whole world, and she never gives up on her friends.
Likes: Ice-cream, cute guys, cute girls, her friends, video games, Sailor V.
Dislikes: That College Jerk, slavedriver Rei-senpai, school homework, maths, being grounded.

Mamoru Chiba - A college student who is Usagi's eternal nemesis, Mamoru is tall, dark, handsome and tsundere. His encounters with her are fiery contests of snark and insult, which would be much easier for her to stay mad about if he weren't so damn hot. Occasionally has mysterious blackouts, though his doctors can't find anything physically wrong with him.
Likes: Formal wear, flowers, teasing meatball-head, having insult wars, snarking.
Dislikes: Blacking out for hours at a time, clingy exes, college courseloads, his parents are deeeeaaaad, not being rich enough to be Batman.

Sailor Moon - A sailor-suited heroine of Love, Justice and the occasional high-speed tactical retreat. She fights against the evil energy-draining youma with her wits, her death frisbee tiara and her white magic. And her fellow Senshi, of course. She appears to have hidden depths. She'll need them. Any resemblance to perfectly ordinary schoolgirls named Usagi is pure coincidence.
Likes: Ice-cream, Tuxedo Heartthrob, the Senshi, dramatic entrances, helping people.
Dislikes: Youma, slavedriver Luna, magic homework, evil plots, being grounded.

Tuxedo Mask - A mysterious and handsome (and don't forget dashing) hero often found posing dramatically on rooftops or lampposts. Has a full brace of heat-seeking +3 throwing roses, and has mastered Buddhism. Uses both to great effect in fighting the forces of darkness before vanishing (dramatically) into the night. Clearly has nothing to do with Mamoru Chiba.
Likes: Rooftops, weaponised horticulture, dramatic entrances, dramatic exits.
Dislikes: Youma, people stealing his spotlight, clingy exes, dry-cleaning bills.

Luna - The poor belaboured cat who has the misfortune to be responsible for Sailor Moon. When not attempting to advise her charge or cram some knowledge into her head, Luna works very hard on mysterious cat business, which often results in her arriving back home late at night and decidedly cranky. If there are rare occasions when she smells faintly of alcohol as well, good taste and a healthy fear of her claws prevents us from mentioning it.
Likes: Putting the fear of Cat into people, being stroked properly, finishing her paperwork.
Dislikes: Being stroked badly, having to teach Sailor Moon magic, doing her paperwork, corrupt subordinates, annoying colleagues (who may or may not be white cats with British accents).

Panopticon Quest
Donald Sykes - Businessman, hedonist and member of secret conspiracy to control the nature of reality from behind the scenes of the modern world, Donald Sykes is a dangerous corporate raider whose extensive fortune funds many dubiously legal and outright illegal activities. Also a lot of charitable giving and expensive parties. He's complicated like that.
Likes: Sex, drugs and rock and roll, teasing his workaholic boss.
Dislikes: Working more than three hours a day, evil dark reflections of his own organisation's sins trying to conquer reality (enough that he'll work overtime to stop it).

 

[Aleph]

THE NARRATOR
___​

⓿: An Unexpected Arrival

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the pub
The whole place was heaving, with no space at all.

"I is pretty sure that 'pub' not rhyme with 'all'," Maxy said. The brown-skinned minion looked like a psychotic goblin with a fetish for wearing random things he had looted. This was because this was exactly what he was. However, he had also acquired - probably by looting - a certain level of skill with poetry, and improper meters tended to prompt violence from him.

Louise de la Valliere (alternately overlady of vile darkness, princess of the green sun of the hellish realm of Malfeas, and vaguely sinister psychic chick extraordinaire) groaned. "No murdering the narrator," she instructed her minion. She had a headache, and nursed her wine. She didn't like the heretical religious festival of 'Christmas' at all, although as long as she pretended that the pines they had inside were the sacred oak of the Silver Pentecost, things were tolerable.

Less tolerable was the presence of Gnarl, her chief Minion and villainous advisor, who was crunching a small bag of black somethings that he'd gotten from the barman in the seat across from her. Louise was doing her best to ignore the fact that the somethings seemed to be wriggling. The fact that her head-familiar Marisalon was sitting next to him and drinking an overly large bright pink cocktail with three kinds of sliced fruit, an umbrella in it and a name which was almost certainly some kind of sexual innuendo was also not helping matters. Although at least Marisalon was out of her head and Alma wasn't here to learn bad habits from the other two.

Over in the ball pit, three girls who very much did enjoy Christmas were causing a certain amount of commotion. Belle and Lucy; two Sisters from the underwater city of Rapture, had been roped into a game of Barrierball by Nanoha Takamachi. They were let down slightly in this respect by not having the magical abilities of the young mage, but so far speed, strength, judicious use of teleportation plasmids and shouting seemed to be sufficient for them to hold their own. They had also resulted in seven balls being broken by Belle hitting them too hard and four drinks being spilled by bad aim, but all three girls were having far too much fun to care about such minor details.

At the bar, Donald Sykes was taking some time off from being a heartless capitalist and oppressor of human creativity (and also henchman to a murderous superspy) to get drunk, consume drugs, and flirt with everything attractive in sight. Or, as it was otherwise known, it was business as usual for him.

The fact that his current target was a blue-skinned alien private investigator who combined bitter cynicism, smoking like a chimney, and virulent racism against anything not of her species was what he liked to call 'a challenge'.

"So… Ms As'koni… I'm sorry, this is dreadfully inconvenient. What do your friends call you?"

"Friends?"

"I'll tell you about friends," complained the blonde girl on the next table over. She was slurring slightly, and swaying in her seat in a way that Donald would have called "drunken" if not for the fact that the drink she was cradling was a vanilla milkshake. "Friends're nice to you. Give you days off. Don't... don't send you to sweep hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds..." She paused and blinked. "Uh. What was I saying?"

"Sending you to sweep hundreds of something," Donald reminded her helpfully, eyeing her drink. He was fairly sure there was nothing in it besides milkshake. She'd had a rum-and-raisin flavour one earlier, but even that hadn't had any actual rum in it.

Then again, Usagi Tsukino was fairly susceptible to the placebo effect where ice cream was involved.

"Oh yeah! Hundreds of steps! Hundreds! After scrubbing down the whole hall! So evil." She pointed at something visible only to her that was about a foot to the left of his head. "Listen to me! If a really pretty girl in a miko outfit ever offers you a job! Don't accept! She's a slavedriver!"

Donald sighed happily as he thought of a certain young woman in a miko outfit he'd known - in the Shinto sense - back in the old days. And if 'in the Shinto' sense wasn't a thing, it had certainly been in the biblical sense. She hadn't been a shrine maiden - he could say that much. "I will keep that in mind," he said.

Nestled in a corner booth - and coincidentally in line with Usagi's wobbling finger - another girl rolled her eyes and continued to studiously ignore her. Taylor Hebert had already been subjected to Usagi's attention twice over the course of the evening. The first time had been after admitting that she hadn't tasted every single flavour of ice-cream on the menu, which the blonde apparently thought was some sort of crime against nature. The second time had been when she'd tried to drag her into the ball pit for god-only-knew-what.

It was much safer in the corner booth, all things considered. Even if she had been shanghaied by two cats; one jet black and the other grey-and-black-striped, for stroking. As if alerted by the mere thought of her, Vesta nipped at her fingers and mewled cutely for more attention. Taylor pretended not to notice, and scanned across the room for anyone she could shunt them off onto, or at least another booth she could escape to.

The barman grinned and winked at her, spreading his arms with a shrug.

Taylor shivered. She really didn't like the barman. He looked exactly the same in the Other Place as he did in reality - if this place was reality at all. And he sometimes reacted to her constructs.

But the strange geometries of the place foiled her. The only other booth she could see - despite the fact that there were always enough to seat whoever was in the bar at any given time - was occupied by two boys, bickering over a board game of some sort. One of them was, from the sound of it, losing fairly badly.

"You what?"

Chrono Harloawan; young mage and Enforcer of the Time-Space Administration Bureau, gestured to the board. "I have a ten-point linker pattern. See? Here and here. That lets me take your pieces between them."

Shinji Ikari sputtered in protest. "You can't just... I didn't know you could do that! Who invented this game, anyway?"

His complaints fell on deaf ears, and Chrono shrugged. "Hey, it's not my fault if you don't read the rulebook all the way through." He nodded at the slim pamphlet on the table beside the board. "It's not a complicated game once you get the hang of it. And you knew about trapping between single-point patterns; you took down my wall with them."

"You only gave me five minutes to look through the thing before we..."

Further debate was forestalled somewhat by a loud series of thuds and curse words, steadily rising in volume and profanity, which ended in the entrance of a large, red-suited, soot-coated man who came tumbling headfirst out of the fireplace. From the sound of it, he had hit every wall, brick and obstacle on the way down.

"Ow," he groaned weakly, and went limp.

"Big Sister! Look!" came an excited cry from the ballpit. Lucy clambered out, almost tripping over herself in her haste to grab her arm-length needle. "It's an angel! Quick, Big Sister, we have to Gather roses from the pretty angel! Because Good Girls Gather!"

Belle nodded. "Good Girls do Gather," she agreed, the extending meter-long needle - or possibly harpoon - strapped to a vambrace on one of her arms. Nanoha turned pale at that, although not as pale as them.

Taylor frowned. "... wait a minute," she realised. "This place didn't even have a fireplace twenty minutes ago. Argh! I hate it when it shifts around on you while you're here!" She shot a vicious glare at the barman, who chuckled without looking up from the glass he was cleaning.

Ms As'koni frowned too. "Even ignoring the layout of the room; I was under the impression that this place didn't have an outside for a chimney to connect to," she pointed out. "How did he get up there in the first place?"

The man groaned, and shifted.

"Oh," the asari noted in a tone somewhere between disinterest and disappointment. "He's not dead. Well, that's all the fun gone." She raised her glass. "Same again, barman."

"Awww," pouted Lucy.

"You two!" Usagi scolded, putting her milkshake-induced drunkenness aside in favour of charity. She rushed over to the prone figure to help him up. "Don't be mean! The poor man just fell down a chimney! He could be hurt, or confused, or- YOU!"

She reared back, making warding signs with both hands as her expression of sympathetic concern underwent a 180° flip into uttermost loathing.

The soot-stained fake beard fell off as the man looked up, revealing fairly handsome features creased in irritation and mild concussion. "Oh, great," muttered Mamoru Chiba. "You."

Usagi leapt to her feet, pointing dramatically at him and attracting the attention of everyone in the bar that hadn't been alerted by her yell. "You! Why are you dressed as Santa? What were you doing up that chimney? Are you trying to corrupt the spirit of Christmas with your jerkiness and meanness?"

Mamoru rolled his eyes at her. "Look, meatball-head, some of us have part time jobs. Really low-paying ones."

This did not win him any sympathy. If anything, the blonde's ire only increased. "I know! You made fun of me for being a shrine maiden! And now you're doing this! Out with it! What are you up to?"

Mamoru sighed. "Fine, if it'll get you off my back. I don't know the details, but... me and a bunch of other new hires are filling in for Santa Claus this year. Apparently... he's missing."

 

[EarthScorpion]

DONALD SYKES
___​

Update ❶: Christmas Cheer

The Bar Outside The Universe
Date Uncertain (Also Possibly Meaningless)

A chorus of gasps go up from around the bar, or at least from around the younger members of it. Donald raises an eyebrow. Santa Claus missing, eh? Interesting.

The blonde girl apparently thinks otherwise, because she stumbles backwards with a horrified expression, her hands flying to her mouth. "Missing?" she repeats. "Oh no! But... that means Christmas will be cancelled! It'll be ruined forever if it's left up to mean jerks like you!" She frets for a moment, then her expression firms. "There's only one choice!" she declares. "We'll have to save Christmas!"

There is a prolonged silence, broken by a voice from one of the corner booths. 'Who's "we"?' asks... a cat? Donald blinks. Yup, definitely a talking cat. He surreptitiously checks his wine - he's pretty sure he hasn't taken any hallucinogenics tonight. Yet. So this is probably just the normal weirdness of the bar's patrons.

A slow, stealthy movement in the corner of Donald's eye catches his attention. Unnoticed by most of the room - who are watching the bickering with varying levels of entertainment or boredom - the Big Sister is creeping closer to their fake Santa. Suddenly, quick as a striking snake, she lunges forward and...

"Hey!" Mamoru protests as she scuttles away, clutching her prize to her chest. Belle hisses at him in response, jams the hat on and pulls it down past her ears protectively. She is almost immediately distracted as the white bobble on the end falls down in front of her eyes and she starts batting at it like a cat with a piece of string.

Shaking his head, Donald goes to check his phone and then remembers that the signal here is unreliable at best, and often actively malevolent. At the moment, it seems to be in the malevolent mode, because he can't connect to Union central servers and check with his boss and see what the Union's official policy is on the disappearance of Santa Claus.

On the plus side, that means he's out of contact. Which means it's up to him to act as he sees fit to further the interests of the Technocratic Union in general and the Syndicate in particular. And Christmas is a very important holiday, full of consumer spending. Plus, anyone who wanted to destroy Christmas was probably a total killjoy, and Donald Sykes is very much in favour of joy, kisses under the mistletoe, and prodigious consumption of mulled wine.

He catches the eye of the barman. "Do you have a meeting room at the moment?" he asks.

The barman smiles faintly. "Yes, we do."

"Excellent," Donald says, before raising his voice.. "Everyone! Everyone, please, be quiet! We're going to do something, I promise you. But first we need to work out what the problem is how we can solve it!" He reaches into a pocket, and produces some forms from a concealed compartment. "I'm putting out some sheets of paper, so people can put down what their personal skills are. Now, I'm going to take some people aside for planning, so I want you and you and you and you…"

**********************************************************************************************************************

The high-backed black leather chairs in this spacious boardroom are incredibly comfortable. Donald makes a mental note to get some like this for his amalgam's Construct. There's nothing quite like chairs in this style to make you feel like the world-controlling conspiracy you work for appreciates your efforts. And they even have little red buttons cunningly hidden in the arms! Such luxury!

And with that out of the way, he takes in the members of the group he will mentally refer to henceforth as the 'cabal'. Donald Sykes would like to say that this is the first planning session he's had with a talking cat, a fifteen-year old magical prodigy and a lilac-skinned succubus, but he'd be lying. He hasn't done it since he joined the Union, but he has experience with this sort of meeting. Although… he squints at the final member of the planning cabal. "What are you, exactly?" he asks.

"I'm a minion," the gnarled old creature called Gnarl said, chewing on a cockroach from the bowl in front of him.

"Ah," Donald says. He likes to describe his job title as 'henchman', but that's just a job, not a species. Oh, well. He's off duty at the moment, so who is he to judge?

"Now," Gnarl continues, "as a proper act of Evil, we need to begin with the minutes. Properly documenting your gatherings is a vital part of the Blackest Art of Bureaucracy. So let us begin with a list of the attendees. Chairing the meeting is..." he looks expectantly at Donald.

"Donald Sykes, from the Financier Methodology of the Syndicate Convention of the Technocratic Union," he says.

"Ah, yes, fine Evil names there," Gnarl says approvingly. "Sounds like a proper Evil conspiracy to control the fate of the world. Excellent. Next."

Donald wants to protest that the Union isn't evil, but that would take too much time.

"Enforcer Chrono Harlaown, Time-Space Administration Bureau," says the fifteen-year old in the black uniform with the spikes on the shoulders.

"Likewise a proper Evil organisation," Gnarl says, nodding.

Donald had to admit that 'Enforcer' was a respectable job title. After all, it was a sibling Methodology of the Financiers. The boy did look like he was about to protest that he wasn't evil, though.

"Play along and we won't have to do the minutes ourselves," Donald mutters.

The cat clears her throat, and glares at the others in a way that only a cat can glare. "Luna of Terra, Right Hand of the Silver Throne, First Minister of the Celestial Bureaucracy," she says elegantly.

"Luna of Terror," Gnarl says, nodding. "And cats are of course a very Evil species."

The lilac-skinned demon stretched seductively. "Marisalon of the Neomah, flesh-spawn of Berengiere, the Weaver of Voices, shimei sa Ligier, the Green Sun, shin giri Malfeas, the Demon City. I am by my own hand a citizen of Malfeas, the Oligarch of the Thrice-Shriven Brass Lion incorporation, the Tyrant of Va Malivi, a servant of…"

Gnarl clears his throat. "I'll just put 'et cetera, et cetera'," he states. "You are presumably a demon queen?"

"Demon merchant-princess, but yes."

"And of course, the minutes are done by Gnarl the Gnarled, Chief Advisor to Overlords and Overladies. Now, Mr Sykes. What Evil plan do you have to take full advantage of this current situation?"

Donald leans forwards, hands on the table. He's aware that he's in a touchy place right now, and that he needs to make sure that the others see him as their leader. There's a lot of potential egos packed into this small place.

Aww, responsibility. He hates it, but it is necessary.

"I've already begun preliminary research into methods by which we can track down Santa Claus," he says, thankful of his ability to cram lots of data quickly. The drugs in his system help, of course. "Before we can do anything else, we need to ascertain his location. Now, as we all know…"

"I don't know," Chrono points out. "I don't follow your local religions." Similar statements come from several others at the table. In fact, Luna is the only one who seems to know this sort of thing. Donald smiles to himself. He couldn't ask for better. It puts him in a position of informational supremacy.

"I will be brief, then," he says. "Santa Claus, aka Father Christmas, aka Saint Nic - he goes by many names, but he has but one nature - is meant to visit every child in one night. While there, he brings presents if they are good, or lumps of coal if they are bad. He knows this via a constantly updated list maintained throughout the year. Obviously, the surveillance systems to do such a thing are a known property, as is tracking his flights. If anyone knows about his flightpath, it'll be my people." He lets out a breath. "This is where the problem arises. Normally I'd check our databases, but the barman is jamming my access to them whenever I try to look it up."

"Why would he do something like that?" Chrono asks, frowning.

"Because he's an asshole," Donald says with heartfelt sentiment.

"Oh, yes, very much so," Luna says, nodding. "I've known him for more than ten thousand years. He is utterly dreadful. And that smirk! It's very annoying!"

"So what will you do instead?" Marisalon asks, lounging in her seat.

Donald grins, and presses a button on the console before him. It's red and has a little label. The barman might be an asshole, but he has excellent taste in neo-Sixties Conspiracy Lairs. Donald loves that in an ironic way which is sometimes unironic when he forgets himself. A floating holographic globe appears before him, the locations of major cities marked in red light. "Moscow," he says. "2015. There's a Technocratic archive hidden under the Kremlin which will have that data."

Gnarl nods. "So you'll send someone to collect it, your lucreness?" he asks.

The man shakes his head. "Not quite. I might not have the clearance for it. But Moscow was just attacked by giant death robots from outer space. Well, a few months ago, but this bar sort of exists outside of time so we can probably go back to then. So I'm thinking we put together a team of misfits and send them to raid the archives when they're totally wrecked from the fact that ten giant robots had a fight in Red Square, which'll have wrecked almost all the security."

Chrono purses his lips. "I see," he says. "So you'll need… hmm, someone with infosec skills, as well as several people who can deal with the defences. I can load up my Device with intrusion programmes, but I'll need backup."

Luna licks her paw, and brushes back one ear. "There is another possible lead," she says warily. "Around… oh, it would have been three thousand years ago, I met someone else at this bar. She also had links to the moon, and hadn't always lived on Earth. She made… how shall I put it?" The cat's eyes dart from face to face, staring through the holographic globe. "References which now that I look back it at, imply she knew of something which seemed remarkably similar to Santa."

Donald's eyes widen. "The concept of Father Christmas isn't that old," he protests.

"Time is fluid here. You said that yourself," Luna says smugly - and yes, cattishly. "I know it's a long shot, but it might be worth trying. She left me her address and," the cat pointed at the holodisplay with a paw, flicking through world maps, "it's there," she said, adding a silver marker to the globe.

Donald leans forwards. "On the northern shore of Lake Ashinoko in Japan," he says. "Well, that doesn't look like a very built-up area. The nearest city - well, it isn't much of a city. And it isn't very imaginatively named. Tokyo-3? Really? It should be fairly simple to check it out… unless anyone else has any better plans?"

Marisalon smiles widely, flashing brass teeth. "Not for the leads, no," she says, perfectly enunciating each syllable. "But the thought occurs to me that these actions - and the no-doubt more extreme violence to come - will require provisioning." She flashes a smile at Gnarl. "And I will require some muscle to aid me in obtaining the provisioning. My lady Louise thinks quite highly, albeit with much weariness, about the proclivities of minionkind for improvised provisioning."

Gnarl chuckles. "Might you be referring to looting, by any chance?" he asks, a malevolent twinkle in his eyes.

"I may indeed," Marisalon says. "Though I prefer terms like 'improvised provisioning' and of course 'right of salvage'. It's such an excellent right, that one," she says, her dark eyes gleeful.

Chrono sits back in his chair, arms crossed. Donald can see he clearly doesn't look too happy with this prospect, and swiftly acts to intervene. "I will take that into consideration," he says. "However, that's less important." Making sure Chrono can't see, he winks at Marisalon.

"Ah. I was merely and most elegantly trying to help," the demon said, shaking her head sadly. "Why do people always misunderstand my purely generous motives?"

Luna glares at her. "Because you're a corrupt spirit?" she snarls, back arched.

"I am not!" Marisalon protests. "I'm always very certain to abide by the laws of the Endless Desert, as far as I am able. And to allege that I have not paid the lords of the domain I operate in their due is a dreadful aspersion on my professional conduct!"

Donald's phone buzzed, and he checked the message. "The smartforms are saying they've all been filled out," he said, pressing a button on the arm of his chair. "Now, we have the profiles of our volunteers here. Let's see who'd be better for which team…"

**********************************************************************************************************************

The door opens back into the currently-wood-paneled bar (although it appears to have shifted from oak to mahogany while he was out of the room), and Donald is almost immediately overwhelmed by questions.

"Quieten down, quieten down," he calls out, pitching his voice so his wealth and authority is evident. It allows him to take advantage of certain instincts in the human brain. He takes the chance to look over the volunteers, matching faces to names. "We've managed to find two possible leads. So we're preparing two teams to go follow them, so we can find out what's happened to Santa and save Christmas."

"Yay!" Usagi Tsukino says happily. "We can't leave it in the hands of people like… like him!" she adds, glaring at Mamoru.

It is a sorry state of affairs, he's forced to accept. Director Belltower's amalgam - of which he is a proud-ish member - is bordering on the infamous for the misfits which make up its senior command staff, but he's wishing he had people that reliable for these missions.

There's a crippling lack of adults among his volunteers. He even has prepubescent children volunteering - and the worst thing is he can't turn them down. Partly because he's so short on people, and mostly because at least one of the small children is in fact a flying artillery piece capable of dimensional transport and comes with an intelligent magically-capable catgirl familiar which puts most Progenitor constructs to shame.

Well, he's done what he can assigning people in a way that'll let him live with himself. The Tokyo-3 mission should be the safer one, from his projections and the data he has available - if it's worth anything in this place - so he's made sure that the ordinary humans are there. Usagi and Mamoru read as utterly powerless with not a drop of primal energy in them, and they're Japanese too, so they'll be fine there. And since it's an easy one, the young man is one of the few adults he has who can lead it.

Likewise, he's secretly very glad that Chrono refused to have Nanoha Takamachi on the Moscow team - apparently she was some kind of cross-dimensional criminal as well as a nine-year old girl - because that means he didn't have the choice of deciding whether they needed the extra firepower she'd bring. Belle and Lucy round out Team Tokyo, because he can't separate them and in case of trouble, it'd probably be useful to have someone who resembles a prototype for some of the technologies which went into Rose. And has a very similar personality. He'd heard the rumours of an undersea Syndicate-Progenitor jointly run facility which had been lost back in the sixties or seventies which sounded like where they were from.

This does, unfortunately, mean that the Moscow team is rather less… uh, well-balanced. Chrono is the only teenager he's entirely fine with being there. Taylor Herbert is a depressive bag of nerves, but it wasn't like he hasn't met Traditionalists like her before. The kind who don't know how to have fun. Judging from the description of how she did her RDism by making psychic constructs from her mind, she was probably an Orphan or - worse! - a Hollow One.

He has no idea what's going on with Louise de la Valliere and her powers and how she seems to be a composite of three people with the same name, but both Gnarl and Marisalon recommended her highly. It is… somewhat concerning that a self-described 'Evil vizier' and a grasping arch-capitalist demon who reminds him of his rivals in the Syndicate think so highly of her, but he doesn't have much flexibility here. He feels dreadful about assigning Shinji to Moscow with those misfits, but it was out of his hands. Someone had pulled in a favour to make sure he wound up there.

Leaving the best until last, though, there is the incredibly hot Ms As'koni, who is a competent professional PI from an alien cyberpunk dystopia and thus could be described as a mercenary on top of that. He hasn't been able to ease her first name out of her, but he doesn't even mind. She might be a blue-skinned space babe, but damn. And she wasn't an EDE - he'd surreptitiously checked - so that opened up certain… possibilities. There was a disgraceful lack of actual adults in this bar, in his quite certain opinion. Especially sexy ladies, Or sexy gentlemen. She might smoke like a chimney and dress like a sci-fi PI, but that wasn't a downside. Far from it. Clearly it was his duty to open up diplomatic relationships with her species.

Sexy diplomatic relationships. Relationships of the third kind. Or possibly third base.

The only problem was that on her form she'd put in the 'Additional Conditions' box that she didn't work without recompense.

"And why, precisely should I do this?" Ms As'koni asks him coldly.

Donald clears his throat. This will take finesse. This will take tact. This will take social prowess and the uttermost application of his skills as a Financier of the Syndicate. "Because I'll pay you a million US dollars to do it," he says.

The blue-skinned alien does something with the glowing orange thing on her arm. "One… million… dollars… in… credits…" she tilts her head, reading off the conversion. "Hmm. Okay," she says, in exactly the same tone of voice. "I'll do it."

"Wait, why does she get a million dollars?" Taylor demands, her voice rising.

Ms As'koni shoots a glance at her. "Because you're a volunteer, while I work for pay. I don't care about your human holidays," she informs the girl. She turns back to Donald. "I'll send you my standard contract. Ammunition and materiel expenses are extra."

"We'll discuss that in private," he tells her. "Perhaps over drinks?"

She glares at him. "No."

Shame. Oh well. It had been worth a try. One last thing. "Excuse me, sorry, I just have some paperwork for you to sign," he says, handing out some more forms. "Take one from each pile and pass them around."

Louise looks down at the forms he has handed her. "Please fill out the nature of your powers and whether you are a Reality Deviant," she read out loud. "If yes… blah blah… you swear that you are not a force of Neffandery and that you are taking no actions against the Technocratic Union. If you are lying on this form, it is not the fault of Donald Sykes…" She narrows her eyes. "What is this?" she asks accusingly, jabbing a finger at him.

Donald coughs. "Essentially, they're waiver forms to indemnify me from any… ah, problems from our association."

"Is it because of me?" she demands.

"No," he lies.

**********************************************************************************************************************

Be Donald:

How will you focus on aiding the away teams?

[ ] Avoiding nasty surprises (Time)
[ ] Countering hostile Reality Deviant influence (Primal Utility)
[ ] Doing things you're not really meant to do (Spirit)
[ ] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)​

 

[RubberBandMan]

Update ❶: Christmas Cheer

Be Donald:

How will you focus on aiding the away teams?

[X] Avoiding nasty surprises (Time)​

Click to shrink...

Really? No one so far? Guess I'll join my first quest.

(Flirting can come later, make sure you're in a good position to have fun without worry.)

 

[Aleph]

Really? No one so far? Guess I'll join my first quest.

(Flirting can come later, make sure you're in a good position to have fun without worry.)

Click to shrink...

Ah, I should point out that this as a whole isn't a Quest. But some of the characters in it are from Quests, and so their chapters are in Quest update format, complete with a vote at the end.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

What have you two done?

This is the best worst Christmas present or the worst best Christmas present. I don't even know.

Also the correct answer for Donald is always "drugs and flirting" except for the times where it isn't.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Ah, I should point out that this as a whole isn't a Quest. But some of the characters in it are from Quests, and so their chapters are in Quest update format, complete with a vote at the end.

Click to shrink...

The hypothetical CUaLG-styled chapter is going to be fucking amazing. Second person narratives!

 

[Drakeneisen]

[x] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)

Its not every day that Donald Sykes gets to sleep with a blue skinned space babe and not get audited.

 

[TheLastOne]

Come on!
[X] Doing things you're not really meant to do (Spirit)

Because this whole thing is something he's not supposed to be doing. On multiple levels, including meta-levels!

 

[universalperson]

You've talked about it for a long time, and now we finally see it - the fanfiction bar!

 

[Havocfett]

[X] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)

Look, Ravana isn't here so someone has to take the role.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

[X] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)

Look, Ravana isn't here so someone has to take the role.

Click to shrink...

Given the internal logic of A Christmas Catastrophe ("ACC") means that characters in places with significant @EarthScorpion or @Aleph influence are fair game even if they're not the only writers, I suspect he might not be here yet. Or maybe he's not here because he hit on Rose and now he has the worst kind of genital cancer.

 

[Quantumboost]

Or maybe he's not here because he hit on Rose and now he has the worst kind of genital cancer.

Click to shrink...

...Wait, Rose got him pregnant?

[X] Doing things you're not really meant to do (Spirit)

Highly inadvisable things are best things.

 

[PhoenixFTW]

[x] Countering hostile Reality Deviant influence (Primal Utility)

Come on Donald, be useful! No, drugs aren't useful, now matter how much you protest.

 

[Insufficient Dakka]

[X] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)

 

[sebsmith]

[x] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)

How could he not? Also, it's better to keep the potential vulgar magic in reserve.

EDIT: Also, if he's to useful people will start to expect it of him.

 

[ckk185]

[X] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)

You know, I was expecting someone like Kessler or even Jameila in this.

 

[Aleph]

Given the internal logic of A Christmas Catastrophe ("ACC") means that characters in places with significant @EarthScorpion or @Aleph influence are fair game even if they're not the only writers, I suspect he might not be here yet. Or maybe he's not here because he hit on Rose and now he has the worst kind of genital cancer.

Click to shrink...

Actually, his absence is more due to his decision to use the mulled wine and "special" eggnog to challenge Keris to a drinking contest in the spirit of Christmas earlier in the day. They left the bar (in a line that averaged out to being straight only if you took the beginning and end points and ignored everything in between) some time after the fifteenth bottle. It's probably best not to ask where they went, or why.

 

[Scia]

I assume Henrietta isn't around because old Gnarly, the Egyptian one not the minion one, was sorting out a Trademark claim in regards to her and we will meet her and her clan in Muscov?

[X] Raising morale and inspiring the troops (Providing Drugs and Flirting)

 

[EarthScorpion]

MS AS'KONI
___​

Chapter ❷

Almost immediately, I regretted taking this mission to help save a human religious/commercial festival.

I was stuck with four juvenile humans when we tried to break into a data facility and steal flight path records. If the humans didn't start mating uncontrollably - which was a clear and present risk with humans of this age - I possibly might be able to get through this without wanting to kill any of them.

"I have a headache," moaned the pink-haired one.

"Why am I even here?"

"Can't believe she's getting a million dollars."

Oh. Too late. I wanted them all dead. But then I wouldn't get paid. I just gritted my teeth and had to bear it. Two of them were their slightly-more-asari-like females, while the other two were males. Well, theoretically. Honestly, I was having problems telling their sexes apart. The males didn't have facial keratin, while the females were clearly both early in their puberty from their lack of bust. And to make matters worse, the two males both had black head-keratin. Have you ever noticed that human features all are incredibly similar?

At least the length of their head-keratin would help my translation software to get their pronouns correct. They'd probably whine if it made any mistakes.

And on top of that, Mr Sykes had informed me that there were properties about his homeworld which be unfriendly to the element-zero in my biotic nodules and my weapons. Apparently it was only stable in space, and spontaneously decayed outside of sterile lab conditions. That was complete bullshit. Physics doesn't work that way. I had no clue what the fuck was up with that place if that was the case. However, I decided to accept that as a risk, and so I'd brought some backup weapons which didn't rely on e-zero to operate.

Okay, they were high explosives. What? High explosives are useful. They make friends. Well, they kill enemies, and that's basically the same thing.

I finished putting on my light armour, and flicked through the colours until I found Urban Camo - Night. I also checked that my helmet seal was working. Yes, I know a lot of stupid young Maidens think that they shouldn't wear helmets, but I like my brain and think it's better off without any punctures. Plus, on a human world, I'd draw less attention if they thought I was one of them.

And having done that, I went out to examine my 'team'. I wasn't impressed.

Some context would be useful, I think. Let me reiterate what was going to happen. We were headed to a ruined city called Moscow which had recently been attacked so we could look for information on the flight paths of this 'Santa Claus' in the archives of a building called the 'Kremlin'. There were possibly hostiles present. Mr Sykes had been very vague on that, like a lot of my employers tended to be, so I was assuming that there were enemies.

And what did the pubescent humans choose to wear? Taylor was wearing dark clothing and a gas mask, with no armour. Shinji was wearing a winter coat over some kind of skintight blue and white costume. And Louise was wearing plate armour with a spiky helmet and a red tabard, apparently having forgotten that steel plate does very little against firearms.

No real armour. No guns. The sole weapon between them was the staff Louise was carrying. Apparently I was being paid to assist in three suicides. And yet had to keep them alive. I turned and noticed Chrono behind me, looking similarly unimpressed. He was also carrying a staff as a weapon, but at least it looked like might have been some kind of energy weapon - albeit a horribly unergonomic one. Why had I taken this contract, exactly?

Mr Sykes apparently could read my body language well enough to realise that I wasn't happy with this stupid state of affairs. "The plate armour is demonic steel," he said hastily. "She says it can stop gunfire."

Under my helmet, I pursed my lips. "Why don't I have any competent professionals accompanying me?" I asked, hardly acidly at all. "Why do I need to have a collection of pubescent humans following me around? I can work alone."

"I am a professional," Chrono said. "Although I share your concerns with the others."

"I would be completely fine with not going to Moscow," Shinji said hastily, showing uncommon good sense for a human.

Mr Sykes looked decidedly awkward. "Your father insisted you be sent," he mumbled.

"Why are you doing what he says?" Shinji said. I agreed with him there.

"Uh… because I lost a game of poker to him and he's calling in a favour."

I winced. I understood his position a little better. I, too, had made the mistake of gambling with Gendo Ikari. The man's poker face was very annoying, and those glasses made it nearly impossible to read his eyes. And house rules at this bar meant you really, really didn't want to back out on your gambling debts. Otherwise the barman might get involved.

Shinji glowered. "Of course."

"Gambling like that is stupid," Chrono said smugly, leaning against the wall.

"So why the other two?" I asked. "Don't tell me you lost at gambling against their parents too?"

"No, no," Mr Sykes said confidently. "I'm well ahead against Karina. She's easy to read, and you just have to remember she doesn't know when to fold.. No, Louise is some of your heavy firepower. Theoretically."

"I'm psychic at the moment," the girl said. Her ridiculous armour clanked as she shook her head. "But when I'm channeling Malfean power or… um, raw Evil, I'm much better at controlling it. And get far fewer debilitating migraines."

I was reassured by that. No, wait, I wasn't.

"Don't worry," Mr Sykes said. "She signed a form saying that her Malfeas, a hell of green fire and chained evil world-creating beings, is not at all related to the Malfeas I'm familiar with which is a completely different hell of a trapped evil world-creating being which burns with green fire. And also that Evil magic is not necessarily evil. So I'm legally covered there."

I didn't care. "And her?" I asked.

"I'm your transport," Taylor said glumly. "Which is a good way of making someone feel valued. 'You're only useful because you can move the actually useful people around'. Just wonderful. I volunteer to help save Christmas and not only are some people getting paid for it when I'm not, but I'm apparently most useful as transport."

Good. I saw she understood her function in life and wasn't about to get ideas above her station.

Chrono cleared his throat. "I can do my own dimensional translations," he said firmly, brushing unseen lint off his sleeves. "I'll head out alone to scout the location. It would exhaust me to carry all of you, though."

I agreed with that idea. I hate doing things without intel, and for all that he seemed short and young, at least he wasn't a rank incompetent like the other three. "Good idea," I said. "Report back if you discover anything I'll need to know." I paused. "Given all of that, why can't just he and I go?" I asked. "Why do I need her to actually come along," I said, nodding at Taylor, "rather than just providing transport?"

"She's an Orphan mage," Mr Sykes said, taking a seat and swirling a drink in its glass. "Her paradigm might not be the most… uh, useful, but she'll have have some useful tricks which shouldn't depend on equipment."

"Paradigm?" Taylor said, frowning. "What's that? And I'm not a mage. Or an orphan. My Dad's still alive."

"Orphan with a capital 'O'. And sure, you aren't a mage," Donald told her kindly. "And you're not a Reality Deviant despite the fact that you spawn physics-breaking demons from your mind and use them for RD-equivalents of hyperpsych and hyperspatial theory. I believe you."

"No, I'm really not a mage! Why do people keep insisting I am?" she protested. "That's a perfectly explainable and scientific parahuman power! Magic is… like, stuff in fantasy novels. Not something real."

Donald crossed his arms. "Only reality deviants make spirits with their mind," he said, and coughed and then said something which sounded a lot like "And noo-woo psychics."

"I find it stupid to say that magic isn't entirely explicable," Chrono said, glaring. "It's just applied mathematics."

"Yes, but you're a techno-Hermetic," Donald said. "You have the right methodology even if I might not agree with your axioms. She just makes mind-demons."

"Sounds dangerous," Chrono said disapprovingly. "Unlicensed production of constructs is illegal. And if she's from a summoner lineage, I bet she hasn't even been properly tested for her capabilities. I'll have to tell her how to get in contact with the Bureau and properly be tested and registered. Last thing we need is another Nanoha Takamachi from your really annoying backwater."

I sighed. Humans. Why were they so stupid? "Are you quite done?" I asked, my patience getting quite thin. "Can we get going?"

"Well, do you have a photo of that place?" Taylor demanded. "I need a photo before I can find it with Watcher Doll and then open a rift with a barbed-wire angel. I don't know what to look for if I don't know what it looks like." She glanced back at us. "It takes me time to find a place when I've never been there before," she whined. "It's not my fault if you need to wait."

So we had to wait while she did… whatever she was doing, which seemed to largely involve muttering to herself and drawing things in a tattered notebook while staring at a picture. It took a long time, and it took longer because Mr Sykes insisted on flirting with me while we waited. Fortunately for him, I can tolerate this level of unwelcome attention as long as I'm being paid very well by the client. It really wasn't very fair at all. The other team had much faster ways of getting where they needed to go.

Finally, Taylor sighed, and an oval rip in the world appeared. It was dark on the other side, and a stark contrast to the well-lit bar.

Then it closed nearly immediately.

"... useful," I drawled.

"I can open it again much more easily," she protested.

Shinji coughed. "Um. Well done," he said. "Uh… should we go?"

Mr Sykes grinned at us all. Or possibly he was baring his teeth. "Good luck, everyone," he said.

"For Thessia," I said sarcastically, in a perfectly suited stroke of ironic comedy genius which none of the humans around me got because none of them had even heard of the planet.

"Who's Thessia?" Shinji asked, proving my point.

Once the portal was opened again, I ordered the humans through - so they'd take any ambush waiting for us - and then followed the, aiming my rifle.

The human city was a hellscape. It was night-time, but there was an orange glow illuminating the skies from below. We'd arrived in the middle of an open square and the buildings all around the edge were ruins. There were puddles of solidified glass on the floor, and I could feel the heat radiating off them even through my armour. Other bits of the ground were stained with bright blue acid which had eaten away at the paving, leaving chasms which were tens of metres across.

And then there were the thing which lay sunk into the deepest chasm, in the ruins of some large structure. Acid-stained white armour covered a humanoid form built to an incredible scale - taller than the buildings. I zoomed in on the severed arm which flopped out of the pit, and I could see machinery protruding from clearly-engineered flesh.

I was momentarily lost for words. I'd never seen something like that. What the fuck had happened here?

"Oh, Evas," Shinji said, looking at the destroyed combat units. "So they have them here, too. Or at least something similar. I don't recognise the model. I wonder what they were fighting." He looked nervously up at the sky. "Let's get this done before whatever it was comes back."

That seemed like quite a sensible idea, so we followed the markers on my HUD to the ruins of the Kremlin. The building had been slagged by some kind of starship-grade weapon and there was something which looked - amazingly - like a giant sword protruding from the ruins. It was probably just something normal like part of a starship, though.

"I wonder whose sword that was?" Shinji muttered.

I opened comms to the channel Chrono had told me to use when he left. "Come in," I ordered.

"Reading you," Chrono said. "My Device is getting a good signal from your comms relay. Transmitting the route I've found. Watch out - I've flagged some active hostiles on the map. I evaded them, but they're patrolling the upper levels. I've highlighted their common patrol routes."

"Understood. Have you found a safe rally point to meet up at?"

"Yes. Marked on the location as Rally Point A."

My goodness. A human who actually knew what they were doing. The shock was almost enough to make me faint. I supposed that given I had to handle three incompetents, I deserved someone who knew their cloaca from their mouth. Or whatever humans use for waste disposal.

"You three," I ordered them, "do exactly as I say. Keep quiet, keep low, and no whining. Or we might all get shot. I'm not a fan of that. Don't give yourself away."

"Okay," Taylor said from behind her gas mask, and she vanished from sight. No, she didn't do exactly that, but it's hard to describe what she did. She just… wasn't registering, and even though my HUD was highlighting her, it was really hard to remember what that blue marker was.

There were dead humans in the building, lying in the dusty rubble. I knelt by one. He'd been stabbed by some kind of heated blade. Maybe an omnitool? I wasn't sure if they had them here, but the burn marks were very similar.

I raised my hand. There was a noise at the edge of hearing. A heavy set of footsteps. It sounded like a biped from the way it stepped. Well, of that was what had killed these humans, I wanted to keep well clear of it.

Of course it was directly in the way of the path I had on my map. Of course. Because nothing is ever easy. Just marvellous.

I paused where I was, pressed up against the wall. "We have a hostile up ahead," I told my disordered 'squad'.

"There are two… things down there," Taylor whispered, reappearing.

"Things?" I asked. God, I hate working with amateurs. It's worse than working with the turian mob, because at least turians have been through military service and understand little things like 'actually providing useful fucking information about hostiles'.

"I don't know, okay?" she retorted. "Their minds are weird and slippery and weird, but…" she trailed off, breathing heavily. "They look like people," she said. "But their minds don't feel like people." She huffed. "Um, they're sort of down a level," she said. "Like, the thing up ahead comes out overlooking where they are. On a balcony or something."

"I can't sense anything," Louise said, before frowning. "But I can hear it. Or them."

Shinji said nothing, and thus managed to not irritate me further. I approved of that behaviour.

Keeping low, I crept forward with my weapon at the ready. Inching up to the structural pillar, I poked a cable out to look down below.

The two figures down below looked human to a first glance. I wasn't fooled. My combat VI software was getting pings off them that they were far denser than a human. Plus, the fact that half the skin on the head of the nearest one was missing to reveal a glowing red optical sensor and a metallic skull was also a clue.

Combat robots. Great.

Then they saw me through the full cover, which was complete varren-shit. They must have had some kind of built-in scanner, like geth units are meant to have. And multi-barrelled full-automatic weapons unfolded from their arms and then started shooting at me.

Even more great.

There are a lot of arrogant young Maidens who are too wowed by their capacity to do biotic microjumps and project a barrier that they forget that throwing yourself on your face when someone is shooting at you is a pretty good idea. I'm not one of them.

My back firmly against the nice solid cover, I checked my omnitool. I had a solid lock on that hostile. Whatever they were made of, it didn't stop thermal from acquiring them - even if their heat signature wasn't at all human. The noise was deafening as they opened up on my cover with those strange minigun things. They seemed to be viewing me as the main threat. Which was true, but not helpful.

"Help me!" I ordered my useless hangers-on. At the very least they might be able to draw some fire.

"K-keep back!" Louise stammered.

I wasn't quite sure exactly what happened, but a red glow illuminated the ceiling. Static washed over my HUD and there was a sinister crackling in my communications. It sounded like someone was trying to contact me, but it merely said;
UNKNOWN SOURCE
when I tried to ID it.

"Ow," Louise groaned. She was glowing like a biotic, except the light around her was red - the colour of human blood. She was on all fours, blood dripping from her nose onto the polished floor. "Hurts." She slumped back, leaning against the wall. "Something… something in that… it… it fights my magic. Managed something. Not sure what."

I risked a glance over the parapet. One of the machines had just… melted. Its flesh layer was spread all over the area, and the metal had melted and run. It was still trying to move, but it was a wreck. I lobbed several grenades down, and heard some very, very satisfying explosions.

Unfortunately, that only took the already-damaged one out. "Reality Deviance detected. Eliminate. Eliminate. Eliminate," the remaining machine stated in a monotone.

I heard a heavy clunk as something metallic bounced off the wall. My stomach turned circles and my eyes darkened as I saw the grenade fall in slow motion. The bastard apparently thought like me. My biotics were warming up but I wasn't going to be fast enough

The grenade vanished with a faint pop. An explosion shook the room, but it came from down there. Pulling myself up, I saw the metal figure reeling and opened up on it in full auto. The roar of my rifle made the dust dance. Sparks flew from its armour and it sagged down onto one knee.

And then my targeting reticle crashed and my rifle stopped firing. Red lights started flashing up on my HUD, warning of overheat and failure of cooling elements. I didn't need that to see it, because its heating elements were glowing red. Fuck. I dropped it and went for my shotgun.

The combat synth was faster. In an impossible leap it sprung up, smashing through the concrete barricade. I could see its gleaming red eyes, staring out from under its tattered layer of flesh and hear the whirr of its joints. It had red-hot metal claws protruding from the back of its hands, and they'd do all kinds of horrible things to my insides. I was about to die.

Yeah, fuck that.

I threw myself at the synth, triggering my biotics. I slammed into it in a flare of blue light, and it staggered backwards. That was enough for me to swing low and direct a fluctuating gravitational field into its legs with a sweeping kick, sending it to the ground. I didn't let up, slamming it again with a shredding field, before drawing my shotgun and pumping AP slugs into its head.

After four rounds, it stopped moving. I let my shotgun cool down, and then pulverised its limbs for good measure. That was it taken out. Good. Good.

Then I doubled over and threw up, barely managing to unseal my helmet before I did. I could taste blood in my mouth, and when I spat my spit was was blue.

Ow. Ow. Ow. What the fuck. I reluctantly conceded that Mr Sykes had known what he was talking about when he said there were funny things going on here. Okay, maybe sometimes rifles fail. That's just a thing that happens, even if I'd checked it before taking it here. But my medical VI was churning back reports, and apparently a pretty normal use of biotics had fucked me up. I had internal bleeding around all my e-zero nodules, and my bones were aching.

At least the cool, relaxing feeling of medigel was starting to seep through my body from the autoinjectors. That was something, at least. I managed to straighten up on my second try, and started picking through the bodies for a replacement weapon. If there was a risk of my shotgun failing too, I'd want to keep that for emergencies. I found a local rifle and took a few practice shots with it. Much worse than mine, but it'd have to do.

"Chrono," I opened up on comms. My voice was a croak. "I hit heavy resistance. The combat synths they're using are incredibly tough."

"I'm on my way," he said.

 

[Aleph]

MAMORU CHIBA
___
​

Chapter ❸: Onwards and... Under? Descent Into the Geofront!

It was an early December evening, overcast and cloudy, and there was a brisk chill to the air in the bustling city. The passersby were focused on shopping for the upcoming holiday, and didn't notice as motes of pink light winked into existence one by one in an alley. Slowly, they gathered together into a ball; the light growing brighter and larger as it expanded from the size of a golf ball to the size of a football to the size of a small car.

And then it burst with a soundless pop, showering sparkling pink points of light all around the small group of people that now stood where it had been. Two of whom immediately started squealing gleefully and grabbing at them.

Mamoru Chiba sighed. "You know, I really wonder how much help those two are supposed to be," he bemoaned to the world at large, before turning with slight awkwardness to the nine-year old that had brought them here. "Miss Takamachi? Are we in the right place?"

"Raising Heart?" she asked the high-tech staff she held. It chimed twice, which apparently meant something to her, because she nodded firmly. "This definitely matches to the dimensional coordinates that Donald-san gave me," she confirmed. "Which I wasn't sure about, because they don't look at all like normal D-space coordinates, but..." she shrugged. "Here we are. Tokyo-3."

"Wait," Usagi broke in. "Hang on. Tokyo-3? What happened to Tokyo-2?" She paused. "Actually, never mind that, what happened to Tokyo?"

'Maybe they upgraded!' suggested Vesta. The grey-and-black striped kitten had emerged from the hoodie that her mistress wore, and was perched with remarkable grace on Nanoha's shoulder, looking around and sniffing with interest. Her contribution came as the last of the pink motes faded, and Belle and Lucy looked up with faint disappointment from their attempts to gather them.

"What's a 'Tokyo'?" asked Lucy, frowning as her glowing green eyes turned turquoise.

Mamoru sighed again. This was his team. Meatball-head, a kid with a telepathic pet kitten, an unnaturally tall, grey-skinned girl with glowing eyes who wasn't all there in the head and her similarly-creepy younger sister; herself almost as tall as Usagi was. And he was supposed to be talking to what Donald had vaguely hinted was a god. Or an angel, or an "Incarna-level EDE" or something. The man had been rather unclear about that.

Honestly, the pay for this job was nowhere near enough for what he was doing for it. And Belle still hadn't given back his hat.

"Okay," he barked to get their attention. "According to Donald, we're looking for the entrance to a 'Geofront' below the surface. Takamachi, can you teleport us down there?"

Nanoha looked dubious. "Uh... without knowing how far down it is? That's a bad, bad idea," she said. "I mean, if I go too far or not far enough, we might try to come out underground, and..."

Mamoru quickly cut her off with a raised hand. "Yeah, I get the picture, no need for more detail," he said. "Okay then, in that case we fan out and look for entrances. If you find one - you've all got the earpieces that Donald gave us? Call in everyone else if you do. We should- yes, uh, Belle?"

"Mr Radio wants to say something," the tall girl said, holding out a cobbled-together contraption that looked like it had been made out of parts scavenged from a dumpster. Mamoru gave her a dubious look.

"Uh..."

Usagi interrupted before he could dismiss the offer. "Is he your friend? That's nice! What does he want to say?" she asked brightly, with every indication of genuine interest.

Belle pressed a button... and then looked confused, tried another button, shook the thing, and sternly whispered something to it. Mamoru was beginning to roll his eyes, but the third button seemed to work, and the radio crackled to life.

"... minor Pattern Blue detected in the downtown area of the city," someone was saying. A woman, by the sound of it. "It could be nothing, but I'm sending in Section 2 to investigate. Prep the Evangelions just in case. It's probably not an Angel, but it could be another breed descended from them, or a precursor to an attack."

"Damn," Mamoru hissed. "Okay, so they knew we're here. They must have picked up on that teleport. Fine; same plan, but don't use your magic, and get some distance from here first. We don't want to be around when whoever they've sent comes looking for trouble. Meatball-head," Usagi glared at him, which he ignored, "you go with Takamachi. I'll accompany Belle and Lucy. Head towards the city centre; there's bound to be some way in from there."

"Don't worry," Nanoha reassured Usagi as they started away from the alley; sticking in one group for the moment. "I'll protect you if we do run into anything. I'm a magical girl. And Vesta here is my transforming magical girl cat familiar."

Usagi blinked at her. "Hey!" she blurted. "You... you can't just admit that you're a magical girl!"

The younger girl looked confused. "Why not?"

"What about your secret identity?"

Nanoha shrugged. "Um... well, you'd realise as soon as I transformed, so there's not really any point. But don't worry! I might be young, but I'm really good! Precia says I'm a prodigy at the maths needed for combat magic!"

This drew a look of mild horror. "Your magic needs maths?" Usagi breathed in fright. "Are you sure you're not an evil sorceress?"

'Hey! No talking about mistress like that!' snapped the kitten on Nanoha's shoulder. Usagi yelped.

"Ah! More evil psychic magic cats!"

Mamoru left them to it, peeling away as they started to approach more populated areas. Usagi and Nanoha could pass for normal, but Belle and Lucy pretty clearly weren't. The younger Sister had climbed onto the older one's back for ease of transport, he noticed.

"It'll probably be better if you don't get seen by people," he pointed out, and Belle nodded seriously.

It was uncanny how she could melt away into the shadows, Mamoru thought uneasily. You'd think a grey-skinned two metre tall woman with glowing eyes would be easier to track. But no, she just slipped out of the light, into the shadows of the looming buildings, and... wasn't there anymore. And she could climb sheer vertical walls and teleport. She might not have been all there in the head, but the bits which were there seemed to be half excitable little girl, half murderous assassin.

But he could worry about that later. For now, they had a Geofront entrance to find, and not a huge amount of time to find it in if security was moving in on them.

Embarrassingly, he'd barely made a start before his earpiece chirped. He blinked. No way had Meatball-head succeeded that quickly. She could barely run in a straight line without tripping over herself!

He should know. She'd crashed into him on the street twice back at home, and had at least three more near misses. His face settling into a sceptical frown, he tapped the earpiece.

"Chiba here."

"Um, Mr Chiba?" It was Nanoha. "Usagi and I have found some girls who know someone who works in the Geofront. Usagi is... talking to them."

Mamoru winced. Okay, admittedly, running into complete strangers and making friends with them was something Usagi could do. Though with her personality, she might well scare them off if left alone with them for too long. "Okay, where are you?," he asked. "Wait, no, never mind. I can follow your signal. Do they seem suspicious of you?" He paused, remembering how Usagi tended to meet new people. "Or concussed?"

"... uh. Two of them aren't," Nanoha answered nervously. "The third one... well, you'd probably better come and see for yourself."

It only took a few minutes to get there; with Belle slinking along in the shadows in that incredibly creepy way of hers. She'd taken to the rooftops halfway there to avoid the gathering people, though he could still faintly make out a pair of glowing yellow eyes against the evening sky if he looked for them.

He heard what Nanoha had meant before he saw either of them, and groaned.

"So..." a girl was saying in a sarcastic, precisely enunciated voice, "where exactly in the flooded and irradiated ruins of Tokyo do you live, exactly?"

"S-Sasoriko, I don't..." someone else tried to say, but Miss Snappish cut them off.

"And by all means, regale us with how exactly you get snow there, even with the climate being altered since Second Impact. I'm sure we'd all love to hear!"

"Sasoriko..." the stuttering voice said again, sounding very much like she did not want to hear, and also like she would actually rather sink into a hole in the ground than keep listening to the conversation for another minute.

Given the way it was going, Mamoru could sympathise. He rounded the corner and saw them - Miss Snappish was a short girl about Usagi's age with black hair down to her waist and a ferocious scowl. She had two friends with her, a slightly chubby mousey-haired girl who seemed to be trying to disappear through sheer willpower and a short-haired tomboy who was doing a very poor job of hiding hysterical laughter. Nanoha was standing off to the side, her head in her hands.

Part of that was probably due to the mildly terrified look on Usagi's face. The shorter girl had her cornered against a shop window, and wasn't giving her any space to actually answer her questions in the relentless interrogation. It must have been going on for a while, because Usagi actually looked grateful to see him.

"Ah! Mamoru!" she cried as soon as he came into sight. "Sorry miss my friend is here I have to go byebye!" Ducking under an arm as Miss Snappish - Sasoriko - turned to look at him, she scurried over and hid behind him in terror.

"She's like Rei!" she whispered urgently. "But tiny. But just as mean! Honestly, it's so unfair. No matter where I go, I can't escape Rei! Even in other universes!"

The tomboy spluttered. "Oh man," she said, "trust me. Saso-chan is nothing like Rei."

"I told you not to call me that!"

"Um..." the mousey girl said, poking her fingers together nervously and blushing. "Sorry for my friends, they can b-be a bit much sometimes. I'm Kirima Harasami, and these are Sasoriko Yochi a-and Emi Ahako." She gestured to Miss Snappish and the tomboy, who was over her laughing fit, though giggles were still escaping here and there. "Your, um, friend w-was saying some r-rather odd things, though. Is everything... okay with her?"

"Hey!" Usagi protested, emerging from behind Mamoru indignantly. "I am not friends with that mean rude jerkface, you hear me?"

"Ahah!" Sasoriko declared loudly. "Inconsistencies in your story! Is he your friend, or is he not your friend? Make up your mind!" She leaned forwards, refusing to let her prey escape.

"Uh, don't mind her!" Nanoha interrupted, rushing forward. "Usagi's just like that, she's my... uh, cousin, we're tourists! Her family... was from Tokyo, before it got destroyed, and she's, um, really proud of that, which is why she brings it up so much." She paused. "And we're tourists, so we're not really familiar with Tokyo-3!" she added, in case that hadn't sunk in the first time around.

Sasoriko just looked at her in pure, disdainful disbelief for a moment. And then, ever-so-slowly, light dawned in her eyes.

Kirima began to look very, very worried.

"Oh," said the short, pale girl. "Ohhhh. Oh, I see. Of course."

"Aww crap," muttered Emi, "here we go again." She looked at Sasoriko with the wariness of someone standing next to an unexploded bomb, and glanced over at Kirima.

Who was actively backing away, apparently reflexively, though she held a hand out to her friend in some vain attempt at stopping whatever manic train of thought had taken hold of her. "Sasoriko," she pleaded, "p-please, I'm s-sure they're just..."

"No, no. I know what's going on here," Sasoriko spoke over her, sounding very smug. "I know exactly what's going on. I bet you three want to get into one of the shelters, don't you? Did you come here for information?"

"Hey, how'd you know?" said Usagi. All heads turned to her, not least Mamoru's in sheer disbelief. To the girl's credit, she seemed to have realised what a monumental mistake that had been as soon as the words had left her mouth.

"Ah ha!" Sasoriko cried victoriously. She started on something else, but Mamoru didn't hear it. Someone was whispering to him through his earpiece. Belle.

"There are people coming," she whispered. "Scary ghosts in black suits with mirrors for eyes."

It took him a second or so to mentally translate that from crazy-girl-ese. Crap. Security. He backed away from the developing argument - the local girls were occupied with interrogating Usagi, and Nanoha was trying to defend her - and tapped his earpiece to reply. "Knock them out," he whispered urgently. "Delay them as long as possible, we need to get out of this and find a way..."

He looked up just as the clouds above him parted to reveal the evening sky. A beam of moonlight washed over him.

And Mamoru Chiba remembered who he was.

He stood for a moment, blinking, as the knowledge settled. Then, crouching to touch the ground, he pulled gently. And the Earth responded. It wasn't quite the same as usual - there was a feeling of distance, as though the ground beneath his feet wasn't used to him; didn't recognise him as a familiar figure. But nonetheless; it responded.

Power coiled up around him, clothing him in the surety of stone, the implacability of a mountain, the grounded solidity of a continent. He closed his eyes and enjoyed it, feeling the half-mask settle onto his face and the tuxedo take form around him. There was something to be said for looking good. And damn, did he make this look good.

Then, with a single leap, Tuxedo Mask - once known as Endymion, Prince of Earth - leapt to the top of the three-storey building, balancing effortlessly on the thin ridge at the roof's edge and looking down at his companions. He blended perfectly into the night like this; unseen until he chose to show himself, and it would be relatively easy now to...

An alarm split the air, loud enough to all but knock him off his perch. Then another. And another. He heard a gasp from below - the Harasami girl.

"Th-that's the evacuation alarms! Quickly, we need to get to a shelter!" She grabbed Usagi and Nanoha by the hands and tugged them with surprising strength into a run. Tuxedo Mask frowned. An evacuation? But why would they be...

... oh.

Oh, no way. That was just unfair. His magic was meant to be subtle! He shouldn't even be distinguishable from the magic of the earth itself, let alone register to technology!

The unfairness of it was not, however, enough to stop the street swiftly emptying of people. He made an effort to follow Usagi and Nanoha, but they were gone before he could trace them; blending into the crowd. The evacuation drills here must have been incredibly good, because the streets were empty in minutes.

Well, that was... annoying. But the shelters were probably connected to the Geofront, so this had at least given them an easy way in. Now all he had to do was stay out of sight of whatever defences were sent out and find a way in himself.

He'd just about managed to convince himself that it wouldn't be too difficult when, with a rumbling groan, most of the nearby buildings retracted into the ground as though they were dropping through the floor. It was quick enough and unexpected enough that he actually missed a jump, and had to hastily extend his cane to vault the sudden absence of a building where he'd been aiming and land awkwardly just beyond it.

And then the street in front of him opened up, and a crimson giant holding a nightmarishly oversized naginata rose up... and up... and up...

"Yeah," groaned Tuxedo Mask as four glowing green eyes swung down to focus on him, "I am definitely not being paid enough for this..."

 

[Shanejayell]

I am confused, but intrigued.

 

[Guessmyname]

...Oh god. I'm scared already.

And also laughing. I am laughing a whole lot. But also scared.

Are we going to see BTFWK's obsidian protag dragon at some point? Because I'd love to see Louise's reaction to that.

 

[Khepri]

Well, hello Asuka.