This sounds like they're in the world of Nobody Dies, so....yeah.
A Christmas Catastrophe
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
HARD HITTING COMMENTARY on the nature of fanfiction involving teenaged main characters
Yes, now he's merely consorting with Reality Deviants, and it's not even the sexy kind of consorting. That's relatively okay compared to consorting with Nephandi, especially not the sexy kind of consorting.
Shinji Ikari: Even more correct about not wanting "whatever it was" back than most people realize! Because Threat Null is happy fun times for everyone. Happy happy fun times.
You instantaneously latch onto things that were touched by a tsundere, don't you Shinji? Really, people might say you're asking for it.
ARE YOU INSULTING FINEST KALASHNIKOV? Weapon was wielded by first Tenno himself! Must honor fine Kalashnikov even after improvement on design create gun that commits multiple simultaneous warcrimes per shot and also violates physical laws for good measure!
Be careful. In this world not every biomechanical god machine is piloted by a tsundere. Or piloted.
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Chapter 4: The Red Devil Arrives / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. (Shinji Ikari)
SHINJI IKARI
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Chapter ❹
The Red Devil Arrives / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
NOEL
Covered in dust, Shinji Ikari picked himself up from the floor and coughed. This was the worst Christmas ever. Well, apart from the time that his father had said he was going to show up and then didn't, and Shinji waited at a train station for twelve hours for him to show up.
… no, this was still worse. There hadn't been any killer death robots at the train station. Apart from the sentry drones, but they hadn't tried to kill him.
Honestly, this most reminded him of the time when he'd nearly been nuked. That is, the time when he'd been nuked when he wasn't in his Evangelion. The times when they'd used nuclear weapons too close for comfort were marginally less worrying when he was in the middle of several thousand tonnes of arcanocyberxenobiological war machine. Though from what he'd heard, this Moscow had already had this happen, so hopefully they wouldn't do it again in the immediate future.
"You're welcome. By the way. Just so you know," a gas-masked figure said, fading back into visibility. Taylor tilted her head. "Because I was the one who had a cherub move the grenade," she added.
"Um," said Shinji. He looked around. Ms As'koni was leaning against a wall, breathing heavily and clutching the rifle to her chest, while Louise was still curled up in a ball on the ground, holding a blood-drenched handkerchief to her nose. "Thank you?" he tried. Shinji was fairly sure she was glaring at him from under her gas mask.. He coughed, clearing his throat of the dust. "So what happens now?"
"Just… just need to get my breath back," Ms As'koni said. Shinji knew there was translation software in use there, but she sounded in pain. "I've called… called Enforcer Harlaown. He said he was nearly here and…"
"What's your status?" Chrono said from right behind Shinji, who jumped and screamed a little bit. "Don't make noise, by the way. We're going to have to avoid encounters. I've never seen an AMF like this, and it seems to cover the entire city at the very least. It's even attacking the processing unit of my Device. At least my Barrier Jacket is holding up, but it's giving me warning signals that it's brittle and won't be able to take too many hits."
"Ran into two combat synths," Ms As'koni grated. "My rifle overheated and failed. And when I used my biotics, I fucked myself up. I've got internal bleeding." She jabbed a thumb at Louise. "She did something to one of the synths. With her red biotics or whatever. She's in the same state."
Louise straightened up, and Shinji stepped back without meaning too. There was something different about her. She seemed slightly taller, and there were now faint white scars criss-crossing her hands and on her face. "I'm better now," she said, a strange note in her voice. "But yes. There is something very strange going on here. I don't like this place. I don't think it likes magic."
Chrono pursed his lips. "Do you think you can go on?" he asked Ms As'koni.
"The medi-gel is helping, but I've still got internal bleeding," the alien woman said. "I'm not going to be moving anywhere quickly."
The boy nodded. "Right. Get under cover, stay here, and we'll evac you if we get the chance," he said. He stared at Louise. "You?"
The pink-haired girl wiped the blood away from her nose. "I'm fine now," she said, taking off her helmet. "Look after this for me," she told the hunched-over asari. "I won't need it for a while."
Shinji stared at her. Her hair was suddenly short. He was sure it'd been long before. "So. Um," he asked. "How close are we?"
"Well, because these two combat automata were destroyed, we can now take the stairs down. That'll allow us to bypass some of the other defences," Chrono said. "We should have a clean run to the archives."
"That's good," Shinji said, swallowing. "Let's get this over and done with quickly."
"I suppose you'll want me to scout up ahead," Taylor said morosely, sticking her gloved hands in her pockets. She skuffed her trainers on the ground. "The Other Place around here really isn't very nice. Those terminator-rip-offs are holes in the Other Place, and… they don't have any emotions. They're like walking scenery. That murders people. They're caked with death. Their hands drip with it."
"I see. Now, if you if you can scout, that'd be nice," Chrono said, a slightly dismissive note in his voice.
In response, she just… wasn't there anymore. Shinji shuddered. Parapsychics like that might not be unheard of, but she didn't sound very stable. If extranormal entities burst out of her and started trying to eat them, they'd all be in trouble. And possibly dead.
Slowly they advanced, deeper and deeper into the facility. Chrono led them through a blasted-open steel door which had once been hidden behind a false wall, and on the other side the architecture changed.
"This looks like the area around the Eva bays," Shinji said, mostly to himself "It feels the same, too."
"Hmm?" Louise asked him. She was walking differently, too, Shinji noticed. Before, she'd been flinching and nervous. Much like him, really. And anyone else around here with common sense, which was mostly him. Now she was stalking, her hands balled into fists. And sometimes when the light caught her eyes right, there seemed to be a green glint in them. That wasn't natural.
"Nothing," he said, moving to stand closer to Chrono. "Just… just thinking about how the… the building looks similar. Um. To a place I know."
There were more patrols of the combat robots, and when Taylor flagged them moving up ahead, they simply had to wait for them to pass. In one of these quiet moments, Chrono tapped him on the hand when the two of them were pressed up against a wall, waiting for the all-clear.
"Sorry about this," the other boy said. "We were going to send you to Tokyo-3, given… well, you know, but your father called Mr Sykes up and insisted." He frowned. "I don't even know how he knew this was going on. Or why he didn't provide more actual help even if he'd known."
"Oh, I'm used to my father being terrible," Shinji said fatalistically. "I'm fairly sure if I'd gone to Tokyo-3, they'd have mistaken us for hostile aliens and then opened fire."
Chrono raised his eyebrows. "That bad?" he asked.
"Pretty much." Shinji took a deep breath. Talking helped him forget that there were killer death robots patrolling through this facility and one of the only two people in the group who actually knew how to fight had been hurt badly already. "Normally in the bar, I'm getting away from everything. It's nice having a time when I don't have to worry about saving the world from invading city-destroying alien monsters. Or whatever they are."
There was an awkward pause.
"That's rough, buddy," said Chrono, squeezing his shoulder.
Shinji sighed. "It is, yeah."
"Well, you were pretty brave to volunteer for this," Chrono said, checking his Device. "Sensors report they're moving away, so we'll give them a little bit and then we'll continue."
"I'm wishing I hadn't volunteered," Shinji muttered. "I just… wanted to help."
"I've found it," Taylor says, appearing from nowhere. "It's a room with lots of computers in. There's no one else in there, but it still has power. The door is still sealed."
Shinji frowned. "Then how do you know?"
She tilted her head. Shinji wondered if she wore the gas mask and the coat for some reason, or if she just did it to creep people out. "I looked in with Sniffer's eyes," she said, leading them to a big solid blast door.
He suspected she did it to creep people out.
"This will only take a moment," Chrono began, reaching forwards with a glowing hand.
Louise stepped forwards, and gave the door a solid kick to the handle. Green light flared, bright cracks criss-crossing the solid metal as it smouldered and charred. The cracks grew brighter and brighter, until a critical point was hit and the object - and some of the framework around it - disintegrated into white ash. The room on the other side was row after row of sleek black computers, with glowing LCD monitors built into the sides. A surge of fresh air accompanied the breach, and Shinji sighed in relief. The air-conditioning was lovely compared to the dust-choked wreckage of most of the area.
"I opened the door," Louise de la Valliere said smugly, crossing her arms. "Now, do whatever you have to do so we can get out of this barbaric place and back to civilisation so we can save your pagan holiday."
Chrono held up a hand, looking around the room. His eyes flickered, as if he was reading unseen text. "Okay," he said, walking confidently to the far side of the room to a desk which overlooked the other computers, "this is the command console." Taking a seat on the high-backed leather chair, he leaned towards the keyboard, laying his staff on the desk before him. "S2U, Access Intrusion," he instructed it, producing a chime.
Shinji had his hands in the pockets of his outer coat, and found that he'd left some sweets in it last time he wore it. He unwrapped one and ate it. Things were looking up somewhat.
"Oh. Damn," Chrono said, eyes widening. "This infosec is much more advanced than UA97 standard. It has ID-level countermeasures - weak AIs, even! - adaptive countermeasures and… yes, I'm detecting mana-usage in the system. That's impossible. UA97 can't build things like this."
Shinji sighed. Just his luck.
"Oh, if it's impossible, then it doesn't exist and we can all go home," Taylor told him.
Chrono jumped at her sudden reappearance. "Can you not do that?" he said irritably. "I'm trying to carry out incredibly sensitive calculations here. Unless you can make some kind of summoned infowar construct?"
Taylor looked around, her expression unreadable under her gas mask. "I don't like it in this city," she said. "It's raining blood, and… there's so much death up there. We were wading in the black oil and none of you could see it. And it's cold down here. The pools of dark water have frozen over." She sighed. "I'll see if I can do anything. I've never tried anything like this before. Maybe I can trick the AIs or something."
Chorono's face was totally impassive. "Thank you," he said. He glanced at Louise and Shinji. "I guess… see if you can find any passwords or login keys written down in the area. That'd be useful."
"Pass words?" Louise asked scornfully. "What, you think there are sentries you need to sneak by?"
Chrono opened his mouth. Chrono closed his mouth. "You're right," he said, eventually. "You should go to the door and stop anyone else getting in, as this should take some time. Please don't kick any of the machines… any of the big black boxes which are making the humming noises. You'll break them."
"I'll look for passwords," Shinji said hastily. That sounded safe and something he could actually do to help.
After about ten minutes of searching, Shinji slumped down. Unfortunately, it seemed that no one was lazy enough to stick their password on a note on the underside of their keyboard. And he'd checked every keyboard - and even on the underside of desks! He sat around feeling useless for a little bit, before thinking of something helpful to do.
"I think I saw a broken vending machine just outside," Shinji said to Chrono. "I might be able to pick up some things there."
Chrono looked up from the holographic interface in front of him, and brought up a new screen. "Be quick about it," he said brusquely. "There aren't any more of those combat drones nearby on my scanners, but they might be back."
You could have told Louise to go with me, Shinji thought to himself sulkily, but didn't say anything. He stepped out of the air conditioned server room and back into the dusty ruins of the rest of the complex. The floor was littered with broken plaster and fallen tiles, and in places the lights had burst, littering the area with glass.
He didn't recognise most of the brands in the fallen machines, but he filled his pockets anyway. They wouldn't put things in here if people didn't like them, right?
"Hey, you!" someone demanded from behind him.
Shinji whirled. "Sorry," he apologised. "But it was…"
And in front of him was…
"Asuka?" he asked.
"Ask who?" the girl asked, tilting her head.
No, it wasn't Asuka, Shinji realised with a sinking feeling. She didn't look exactly like her. Only remarkably similar to her. There wasn't any hint of recognition in her glare. She was also wearing a santa hat along with her yellow sundress. Shinji wasn't quite sure what was going on there.
"Uh, hello," he tried.
The glare intensified. "Okay, meatbag!" the girl snapped. "Tell me where this dumb server room is right now! It's not my fault all my maps are corrupted!"
"Um…"
"What are you, stupid? Where is it? Tell me and I might let you live!"
Well, it probably wasn't Asuka, he thought. But maybe she was this universe's version of her or something. "We found it," he said. "I can show you. I'm just heading back there myself."
The girl looked him up and down, a clinical look in her very blue eyes. "Low level genetic alteration from baseline, some minor cybernetic implants. Hmm." She crossed her arms, and let out an inhuman-sounding burst of artificial noise which meant absolutely nothing to Shinji. "What are you doing here?" she demanded, smirking.
Shinji looked around. But no, she still seemed to expect him to answer. "We're trying to save Christmas," he said. "By getting data or something."
The girl scowled. "You splitters have the same mission objectives?" she said. "Wait, maybe you're working for the right side. Did you get the orders from the Syndicate?"
"Uh. Yes," Shinji said. That was what Mr Sykes had said he was from, right?
"Urgh! It's just like the Syndicate to not tell me that I'm getting support! They're just the worst! The literal worst! They're even worse than the stupid Progenitors and their 'Blah blah blah we are all as one, look at how sexy we are, why don't you join us?' Don't you just hate them? Or have you only met Syndics?" She didn't give him a chance to answer. "What do you do? Normally, I mean?"
Shinji shifted slightly uncomfortably. "It's classified," he said. "But… uh, well, I can't go into details, but I'm a mecha pilot. Of sorts."
The girl stopped dead, and grabbed Shinji by the hand. She was very warm, he considered. And also very strong, as she pulled him in close. "Do you know my sister?" she hissed.
"Who are you?" he managed.
"Her name is Henriette. Do you know her?" she repeated, in an intense voice.
Shinji shook his head violently. "No, no, I don't know any Henriettes," he said. He hoped this was the right answer. He'd hate to be maimed by someone who looked like Asuka. Or who was her. Actually, when he put it like that, he didn't want to be maimed at all. Or even hurt.
She relaxed slightly, but didn't let go of his hand. "Good. Because I'd have to kill you if you knew her," she said. "She killed our parents. And is also a stupid meatbag traitor. And a cheat! And claims to be a better pilot than me even though she isn't! She just had traitors helping her! Because she's a cheating stupid meatbag."
Translating that from Asukaese, Shinji was fairly sure that the girl's sister was in fact a better pilot, but he wasn't stupid enough to say that out loud. "I'm sorry," he said.
"I don't need your pity!" she snapped. "She's just a cheat!"
"I… um, was saying that about your parents. Sorry."
"Oh. Right." The girl coughed. "Uh, thank you."
There was an awkward moment as the two of them stood there. She was staring up into his eyes.
"Could you please let go of my ha-"
She marched off again, pulling him in tow. Shinji followed, because he was very attached to his hand. After a little bit of confusion she remembered that he was the one who knew where they had to go, and thus the arrangement changed somewhat so she was sort of pushing him.
"Stop," she said suddenly, freezing in place. "I can hear people in the room. And my sensors say they're Reality Deviants. Wait here. I'll deal with it… you. You. What's your name?"
"Shinji," he said. "But, uh, the people in there are my…"
"I'm Henrietta," she said. "Stay here." Her hands morphed into metallic knives. "This won't take a moment. Unless I want it to."
She marched into the server room. Or at least attempted to. There was a discharge of energy weapons, a 'whoompth', and the sound of metal hitting metal. She then went flying backwards out through a wall.
The figure which pulled itself out of the hole in the wall didn't look very human. Shinji swallowed. It was clearly a machine, with bright blue glowing eyes and a revealed endoskeleton. The liquid metal which served as its flesh flowed back into place, and took its mocking semblance as something made of meat. He seemed to be in the company of another killer death machine. Albeit a pretty one which acted like a teenage girl.
"Oh, you brought this on yourselves."
She charged in again. Shinji could hear Louise's raised voice, and Henrietta's equally strident retort. Then Henrietta went flying back out again, this time accompanied with a green-halo'd wind of flaying sand.
Once more, she pried herself out of the wall. Stomping back to Shinji, Henrietta's face had taken on a distinct note of pout. "The pink-haired RD punched me in the face!" she announced in an offended tone of voice. "Twice! And I can't use any proper weapons on her because they'd blow up my objective. This… this is horrible! It's all because this is only my backup backup backup body and it can barely take on a squad of HITMark Vs! If this was one of my proper backup bodies, I'd be fine! I hate this stupid city and its stupid cheating meatbag defenders! This means war."
"Um," said Shinji. "Uh. Sorry?"
I see Shinji speaks fluent tsundere.
Also that he's accidentally met the reason Moscow is like this. For the record, her sister totally cheated.
That's what you call nuclear weapons use right?
Also that he's accidentally met the reason Moscow is like this. For the record, her sister totally cheated.
That's what you call nuclear weapons use right?
Chapter 5 (Nanoha Takamachi)
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
NANOHA TAKAMACHI
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Chapter ❺
"Come on come on come on come on," Sasoriko chanted, pulling Nanoha along at a rapid pace. Beside her, Kiri was tugging Usagi along at a fair clip as they followed the swarming crowds. The pale girl's grip was surprisingly strong for such a short person, though it was helped by the fact that she was six or seven years older than her captive. Nanoha debated breaking the hold - you didn't grow up with the Takamachi-Fuwa family and not know at least the basics of how to fight - but held off for the moment. One minute the girl had been interrogating them, the next she was rushing them to a shelter. Better to wait and see why, she decided. At least for now.
Others were less cautious. 'Give me the word and I'll bite her hand off, mistress!' Vesta purred in her ear. 'Nobody yanks my mistress around like that!'
'You were tugging me over to help beg the barman for a raw tuna literally less than an hour ago,' she shot back, amused. 'Actual feet-squeaking-across-the-floor dragging-by-the-sleeve yanking. I nearly fell over. Twice.'
'Nobody else does, then,' Vesta elaborated without a trace of shame. 'Anyway, I wasn't going to talk to him alone. He's weird and smells funny and makes my fur stand on end. And one time he tried to tell me a story about some place I'd never heard of and how he liked the cats there and he's creepy and weird.'
Nanoha rolled her eyes. 'No biting,' she ordered hastily as they ran past a couple of people who seemed to have tripped and fallen - wait, was that man frozen to the pavement? No, he couldn't have been. She must have caught the light from a puddle wrong. Sasoriko tugged at her again, directing her inside what looked sort of like a subway entrance, and after a few minutes of weaving and descending down flights of stairs, she found herself in a largeish concrete room that was about half-full. Usagi and Kirima were already there, having overtaken them in the crowds.
"Wait!" Usagi shouted. "Wait wait wait wait wait. You were yelling at me a minute ago! Why are you suddenly taking me here now?" She paused. "Uh, and Nanoha-chan, too."
Sasoriko glared at her. "You haven't gotten off giving me answers," she promised darkly. "But I was there for the fight against the Third Angel, and I have no intention of being anywhere above ground in any more Angel fights, ever. And I'm not letting you out of my sight. You're up to something, I know it."
"There's definitely something going on," agreed Emi, strolling with most of her attention on a smartphone. This roused immediate curious looks from her friends, which she ignored. "There were a couple of black-suited agent guys - Section 2, I think - unconscious on the pavement. Something had frozen them there."
Nanoha traded a startled glance with Usagi. Didn't... didn't Belle use ice? And for that matter, where was Mamoru?
Kiri was looking pained again. "Emi," she said wearily. "Why do you have a smartphone?"
The tomboy shrugged. "Hey, they weren't using it. I guess they were..."
She paused, her eyes lighting up, looked around furtively, and drew out a pair of mirrored sunglasses that were probably also looted from the bodies. Slipping them on completely unnecessarily, she struck a pose and finished.
"... chilling."
Sasoriko smacked her on the back of head. "That wasn't even funny! And stop messing around, we have spies to deal with!" She rounded on Usagi, before spinning again, pacing back and forth as she muttered to herself. "They're probably from the UN. Oh, or possibly the New World Order. Or the Americans! Yes, of course, this would fit perfectly with their attempts to... inhibit... the..."
She trailed off, because her latest spin had brought her face-to-chest with a grey-skinned rag-doll of a woman who stood almost two feet taller than her and was wearing an assortment of clothes that looked like they had come out of a dumpster. Including, for some reason, a black suit jacket with the sleeves torn off and a red santa hat with a frozen white bobble on the end.
She also had a metre-long lethally-sharp needle strapped to one arm, and her eyes were glowing yellow-orange under the black goggles that had been pushed up onto her forehead. And she had appeared out of, apparently, nowhere. Nanoha hadn't even seen her arrive. One minute Sasoriko had been pacing, the next, Belle was just... there, Lucy still clinging to her back and glaring over her shoulder.
The Big Sister leaned down... and down, and down, bringing her glowing eyes level with Sasoriko's. "Usagi was nice to me," she said, in a voice like nails screeching on metal. "She shared me tasty ice cream with me. You were shouting at her."
Sasoriko held very, very still.
"You..." Belle said ominously, drawing herself up to her full - impressive - height. "You... are a Meanie."
Nanoha quietly let her head sink into her hands again. While she liked Belle - the older girl was certainly fun to play games against, and some of the things Nanoha had picked up about her past made her sort of want to go back home with her and give a few people a taste of her Divine Buster - she really wasn't suited for talking to... normal people.
Belle proved this yet again, as something seemed to occur to her and she turned to Emi. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "'Chilling'! I get it! That was funny!" She giggled happily, delighted with the play on words, and appeared to completely forget Sasoriko was there in favour of fixating on Emi's mirrorshades. "Ooo. Shiny..."
Emi looked her up and down assessingly. "I will totally trade them to you," she volunteered. "For... lemme see..." She cocked her head, considering. Something caught her eye, and she peered past Belle for a moment before breaking into a devious grin. "Aww yeah. The universe loves me. Okay, see that girl over there? Short hair, smug face, white shirt? That's Chichi. She's a bitch. Go terrify her, and I'll not only give you the shiny shades..." she dug around in her pockets for a moment, and produced a stick of bubblegum, "I'll throw in this for free!"
"Um," said Nanoha, feeling like she should stop this. Emi waved her off.
"She's a bully, she totally deserves it, she picks on people all the time and... cheats at tests and stuff," she rattled off, ignoring the dubious look Sasoriko was giving her and the horrified look on Kiri's. "And she's a Meanie," she directed at Belle. "Like, the meanest Meanie who ever... meaned. Meant? What's the word for that, anyway?"
"Go for it, Miss B!" encouraged Lucy, struggling to get down from her piggyback perch. Her voice resonated oddly with a metallic undertone. "Only let me down first, I want to look around!" She jumped down to the floor as Emi led Belle off into the crowd, which parted before her like the Red Sea, and stared at Sasoriko assessingly. Despite being eleven-ish, she was an inch or so taller than the sixteen-year old.
"Big Sister says you're a Meanie," she said. "But you know what I think? I think that someone who wasn't a Meanie would give me chocolate. And then I could tell Big Sister that they were nice." She cocked her head and smiled expectantly, with a slightly threatening edge. "Of course, if you were mean and lied about me saying mean things to you… well, that'd make you a Bad Girl. Do you want to know what happens to Bad Girls?"
'I... you're seriously... wow,' said Vesta, impressed. 'Wow. That's almost worthy of honorary cathood.'
Sasoriko squeaked. "Argh! Evil talking cat! I knew it! Just like Merill."
"He is v-very evil," Kiri said, after some thought. "And knows how to b-bully you."
"I know, right!" Usagi said brightly. "Evil psychic kitties are everywhere!"
"Vesta isn't evil!" Nanoha objected in her familiar's defence. "She's like a little sister to me! Don't call her that!"
"Who's a little sister to who now? 'Cause I have a few, and I can tell you, some of them are definitely evil," said a voice from right behind Nanoha. She darted forwards with a yelp, glaring at Vesta for failing to notice the newcomer. Turning to see the girl that had startled her, she met cobalt-blue hair tied back in a ponytail and and blood-red eyes. A D-space native? Or just one of those rare oddities like Suzuka?
"Hatchi," Kiri greeted her weakly. "Uh, now isn't... really the b-best time..."
"Cool, yeah, good to hear. Anyway, you gotta come with me now. Important sidekick stuff. See, the Bridge is going nuts about this massive, massive Pattern Red that just appeared, so I thought okay, if we fight Angels with Evangelions that humans pilot, we can totally fight a Pattern Red thing with a giant human that an Angel pilots. But we don't have one of them, so it's basically gonna be you fighting it how I tell you to instead."
"... ... ..." said Kiri.
"Wait, how does that..." began Nanoha, trying to work that out. There... there was a sort of logic to it? Though she wasn't sure it deserved to be called 'logic'. And... wait, if she was trying to approximate an angel piloting a human, did that mean she thought she was an angel? She didn't look like she had wings or a halo...
"Little Mommy approved!" Hatchi added brightly, either ignoring or oblivious to Nanoha's attempts to see if there was any Christian jewellery on her. "Well, kinda. Well, not exactly. But she didn't actually ban us from trying it, so I figure it's worth a shot, right? It's like fighting fire with fire. Only not literally, like Nana did that one time. And who are you?"
This last was addressed to Lucy, who had cautiously approached and was sniffing at her, yellow eyes narrowed.
"You smell like ADAM," she said bluntly. Hatchi stiffened, though Lucy didn't seem to notice as she continued. "ADAM and fighting, but not like a Big Sister. You're like... you're like a fake Sister!" She turned away in a huff and began stalking away, evidently having decided that such a fake wasn't worth her time.
Hatchi grabbed her by the collar, lifted her bodily off the ground and shook her lightly, as though she were a disobedient puppy. "Hey!" she said. "What do you mean, I smell like Adam? Who told you that? How do you know 'bout him?" Lucy blinked at her in bewilderment, and Hatchi shook her again. "Spill!"
Lucy stared at her for a few seconds, and then...
"... aaaaiiiiieeee!"
... let rip with a high-pitched, two-toned scream at the top of her voice, directly into Hatchi's face. The older girl leaned backwards a little, but was otherwise unruffled, and waited calmly for the noise to stop.
"'Kay," she said when Lucy ran out of breath. "You gonna tell me no-"
A second scream answered Lucy's. A much, much louder one; more like an inhuman shriek of tortured metal than anything from a human throat. It was doppler-shifted, and rapidly approaching. Hatchi had just enough time to drop Lucy and turn around before a shrieking, red-eyed, furious Belle hit her square in the chest and tackled her into the wall vent she'd entered through. More shrieks followed, echoing out of the vent system alongside clangs, yells, crashes, the crackling sound of rapidly-freezing ice and a few noises that Nanoha couldn't even begin to identify. The cacophony gradually faded away as it retreated into the distance, though it didn't sound like the fight was calming down.
"... so," Emi said into the uncomfortable silence that followed, after a minute or so had passed. "Uh... on the bright side, you got away without her kidnapping you this time, Kiri." She offered Usagi and Nanoha a quick smile and a 'what can you do?' shrug. "Sorry 'bout that, Hatchi gets like that sometimes. Is yours always like that too?"
"She, uh, did once have a temper tantrum when the barman wouldn't give her a drink she wanted," Nanoha said faintly, still trying to process what had happened. Playing Barrierball with Belle was one thing, and she had been perfectly aware of the girl's speed and strength - and her unnatural looks and inhuman voice were hard to miss. But there was a difference between seeing it in play and hearing the berserk shriek as her playmate lunged across twenty metres in under a second to try and rip someone's throat out. The pair of them had barely missed her en route to the vent. "He, um, put her in time out."
"What, like standing in the corner?" said Sasoriko incredulously. "Her?"
"You've never met our barman," Usagi told her, with feeling.
"Hang on, hang on," Nanoha interrupted, waving them both down before they started arguing again. Her earpiece was beeping. "Someone's trying to get in contact. Hello?"
"It's me," said Belle, sounding relatively sane again, albeit somewhat sheepish. "The Bad Sister went one way and I went the other and now I can't find her. Also I'm lost. And Izzy doesn't know where we are either. How do I get back?"
"... you just told me you were lost," Nanoha pointed out. "I don't even know where you are, let alone how you could get back here."
"Oh. Right."
"Uh, so... do you have any idea where you are?" Nanoha tried. "What does it look like? Which direction did you go from here?"
"Like the Farm place, only not flooded, and without any shops, and no fishies," said Belle, which was probably intended to be helpful. "And I went down a lot. And then sideways. And then down a lot more."
Nanoha perked up slightly. "Okay, I think you might be in the Geofront, then! Is the room big enough for all of us? If it is, I can home in on your earpiece and teleport the rest of us to you."
This time there was a pause before Belle answered. "It's big enough," she confirmed. "But it smells weird. I think someone's hiding ADAM down here."
Seeing Sasoriko gearing up for another round of questioning out of the corner of her eye, Nanoha decided to skip any further conversation and get going. "Be right with you!" she blurted, pulling Usagi and Lucy in close to her and snapping off the teleport as fast as she could. This one was a short hop, so it didn't need a long, drawn-out chant. Ten seconds or so of concentrated spellcasting was enough to get the locations locked down and to shift them from point A to point B.
Point B, as it turned out, was a largeish vaulted room with no windows. Something in the atmosphere - perhaps the total absence of ambient noise, or just the leaden solidity to the walls, made Nanoha suspect that they weren't just underground, they were very far underground. A quick skim of the raw coordinates of the jump proved her right - they'd dropped a considerable distance.
"I wonder if there's any chocolate around here," Lucy said in her strange two-toned voice, her eyes glowing yellow as she looked around.
Usagi perked up. "Good question! I second that," she agreed. "Where would they hide it if there was some?"
Nanoha kept her staff at the ready. "I'm more wondering what this place is," she said. "Belle, when you said it smelled like ADAM..."
"Hah hah hah hah!" said a disembodied voice that echoed around the room, impossible to pinpoint. It wasn't laughter, either. It actually said the word 'hah'. "You know not what you have walked into, foolish trespassers! For this is the domain of... Team Reecket!"
Six girls jumped out to block the way through a wide doorway at the far end of the room, all of them with the same blue hair as Hatchi. One of them was, in fact, Hatchi, looking slightly bruised but no worse for wear, with snow in her hair and a black eye. She immediately focused on Belle and grinned ferally.
"Prepare for trouble!" she crowed.
"And make it septouble!" another picked up.
"That's not a word, Nana," said a third in perfect deadpan. She adjusted her ponytail. "Also, only six of us."
"Where is Kei, anyway?" a fourth asked.
"Probably sulking in her room. She's going to be in troooooouble," said the fifth, a wicked grin on her face.
"Sh-shut up! All of you! And stop breaking the rhyme!" Nana snapped.
"Wasn't a good rhyme, either," said the one with the long ponytail.
"Raargh!"
What cohesion there had been in the self-pronounced team immediately dissolved as Nana dive-tackled her sister, scattering the others. Belle moved in on Hatchi immediately with another shriek, her eyes burning bright red, and Vesta sprang out from Nanoha's shoulder, transforming to her child-form as she did.
"Fools!" she cried. "You dare try and fight the protagonists without even having a cat on your side? Take this! Vesta POUNCE!" She sprang for the nearest of the Ree, scarlet claws extending from her fingers; her teeth bared in a snarl.
The blue-haired girl watched with mild bemusement as she slammed into a plane of orange hexagons a metre from contact and slid down it with a faint squeaking noise.
"What... power... is this?" Vesta managed to croak out as she sank to the floor, in a slightly more muffled tone. "Such... fiendish... treachery. Mistress... avenge me..."
Nanoha rolled her eyes.
Usagi, however, wasn't as accustomed to the kitten's melodramatics. "Nooo!" she cried, and rushed forward to rescue the little catgirl. And promptly tripped over her, turning what had been a hurried dash into a mad, uncontrolled forward stumble. She slammed into the girl Vesta had pounced at, whose attempt to dodge sideways sent them both rolling off at a diagonal, hopelessly tangled together. The thrashing ball of limbs and cursing swept a third girl - who had been lurking on the sidelines and trying to line up behind Belle in the developing brawl on the other side of the room - off her feet, crashed through the open doors of a service elevator and fell apart, flinging Usagi up again hard enough that her head smacked into one of the buttons.
With a cheerful 'ding', the doors slid shut and the elevator set off upwards.
Nanoha opened her mouth, raised a finger and stood there for a moment, lost for words. The sole remaining Ree seemed similarly nonplussed.
"Ah..." she said tentatively in what was probably an attempt at a French accent. "Did she mean to do zat?"
Vesta looked up from floor level and shrugged. "Honest to Me; I have no idea."
"Vesta, Lucy, delay her!" Nanoha snapped, taking advantage of the Ree's distracted to dash past her with a Flash Move and dart through the door that the Ree had been guarding. She raced down a corridor, cut through a door with a volley of Divine Shooters, melted through a very large blast door with a Divine Buster, and found...
"What the..."
Hovering above the lake of... eww, was that blood? Yuck. Keeping her distance from the thick orange liquid, Nanoha stared up at the enormous white figure nailed to the cross, and the huge two-pronged spear stabbed into its side. Probably a Lost Logia of some kind, and after the last one she'd had experiences with, she was inclined not to touch this one. "So you're..." she began.
"LILITH," intoned the giant. The voice seemed to reverberate throughout the room like thunder, but Nanoha could make out the edge of something vaguely feminine in it. "THE SECOND."
"The second wh- no, wait, nevermind. Um... I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm here looking for information about... Santa Claus?" She shifted, embarrassed. It seemed kind of ridiculous now that she was asking. "Uh, you know, Father Christmas?"
"AHH," the creature rumbled. Its sigh seemed to lessen a palpable pressure that had been weighing down the chamber. "THE RED ONE. AN OLD ENEMY. YOU SEEK ITS SECRETS, THEN?"
"Uh..." Nanoha said. "Yes?" She really hoped that Santa Claus wasn't... wasn't a thing like this. That would ruin quite a few childhood memories, and make several more decidedly weird to think about.
"IT IS NOT LIKE WE; THE ANGELS," Lilith said, as if reading her mind. "IT EXISTS AT THE NORTHERNMOST POLE, IN A FORTRESS OF SNOW AND STEEL."
"... right." That was... pretty much what she'd already known, but okay, fine, that was enough to go on. "Um, thank you. Sorry again for disturbing you." She turned to go, feeling a little let down by the anticlimax.
"BUT," the Second continued, stopping her. "THE RED ONE'S WORKSHOP CANNOT BE FOUND EASILY. YOU MUST OPEN THE SECRET PATH TO ENTER."
"... how do I do that?"
"THAT, I KNOW NOT. SAVE THAT ONLY THE RED ONE'S SERVANTS CAN ENTER."
Nanoha nodded. "I see. Um. Thank you very much for your help, Miss Lilith! Um, and Merry Christmas, too! Now I need to go find my friends and... leave."
She turned to go, just as the far wall caved in, a huge red hand swatting at a tiny, frantically-dodging black-clad figure. "Stay still!" growled the... Evangelion? Nanoha was willing to hazard a guess that this was one. The voice sounded a bit like Chrono, too.
Wait. That little black thing it was trying to kill...
... was that a person? In a top hat? Well, Nanoha had absolutely no idea who that was.
She was tempted for a moment to stay and help, but... no, saving Santa was probably more important. Besides, she wouldn't want to get involved with things in this world. She might mess something up. Oh, but she couldn't just leave someone there being attacked by a big scary red giant robot.
Nanoha made her decision.
[Sunrise Flash,] Raising Heart said. A blindingly bright light flared, casting the entire chamber into stark contrast. Through the darkened filter of her Barrier Jacket, Nanoha saw the dark-clad man in the mask leap up an impossible height, far beyond the reach of the giant red monster. She nodded to herself in satisfaction, and turned to go find her friends.
"Stop right there," said a voice from directly behind her. Nanoha turned, Device raised, and came face to face with yet another blue-haired, red-eyed girl. She felt very sorry for the girls' mother. Having so many children at once must not have been fun. "Not a step further."
"Oh, I'm just leaving," Nanoha said helpfully. "Sorry about your door. I might have melted through it a little bit."
"You won't be permitted to…" the girl blinked. "Wait, what?"
"I just had to ask… um, Lilith-sama about Santa and where he lived." Nanoha smiled. "She was very helpful."
The blue-haired girl worked her mouth. "You… do know Santa isn't real, right?" she asked.
Nanoha shook her head sadly. "No, he's real," she said. "It's just he's gone missing, so the talking magical black cat said someone here knew something about him." She paused. "That's a different magical cat from my magical cat," she pointed out. "My one is grey. And. Um. We're really sorry for having to hurt some of your sisters, but I think Belle and… Hatchi, was that her name? Well, they sort of got off on the wrong foot. Also fist. So we're really sorry about that! Well, I'm really sorry, and Belle's usually very nice! So I'm sure she's sorry for giving Hatchi a black eye."
The girl tilted her head. "I'm okay with Hatchi being given black eyes," she said, after some thought. "She probably had it coming." She frowned. "I'm going to have to take you in to talk to Mother," she said after some thought. "This is a major security breach."
"I can certainly talk to people," Nanoha said, "but we do have to save Christmas, so we don't have much time." She held out her hand. "I'm Nanoha, by the way!"
"Kei," the girl said, as they turned to leave, heading through the Nanoha-created hole in the vast gates. Nanoha noted the other girl could fly too, so she was probably a magical girl as well. "This seems to have been all a misunderstandoh what the flurgen happened here?"
This was prompted by the sight of two of her sisters unconscious on the floor with a mutual KO, one of them still fighting Belle in a brawl which had left ice-encrusted dents in the walls and floor, and one lying face down in a pool of her own blood.
"Kei… why ze hell were you so late?" the one in aforementioned pool of blood asked weakly, still in a French accent. Lucy was kneeling over her, doing something with her needle.
"My phone was flat," Kei muttered. "I didn't get the message."
"Do not… trust ze cute ones. Zey are so cute. But… so treacherous."
"The Fake Sisters are full of ADAM!" Lucy said happily as she straightened up to face Nanoha, blood all around her mouth. She swayed, looking at Nanoha with a drowsy expression. "It's very tasty. But doesn't taste quite the same. It's different."
"It's Lilith. Not ADAM," managed the girl lying in a pool of her own blood.
"It's tasty," Lucy said firmly. "It's nice in my tummy!"
"The girl tried to hug Lucy and then Lucy stabbed her lots and lots and lots with her stabby needle and stole her blood," Vesta clarified, standing with her hands in her pockets watching the still-ongoing brawl between Hatchi and Belle.
"Why didn't you stop her?" Nanoha demanded.
"She said she'd get me a tin of cat food if I helped distract her by being cute," Vesta said, sounding hurt at the cruelty of her mistress for even asking such a thing.
"Zyuu," Kei said, eyes glowing faintly red. "Why didn't you fight back?"
"... so cute. I couldn't… zey were too adorable."
Lucy giggled, sounding almost drunk. "I feel funny," she said, before sagging and falling over.
Nanoha felt now was perhaps an expedient time to teleport the group out. And she managed it just in time.
Neeeeeeeed Morrrrrrrreeeee
An Imago of Rust and Crimson - Chapter 6.01 (Taylor Hebert)
TAYLOR HEBERT
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An Imago of Rust and Crimson
Chapter ❻.0❶
All things considered, Moscow was probably one of the few cities in the world worse than Brockton Bay. The entire place looked like it had been attacked by an Endbringer and then a nuclear bomb had gone off.
Oh wait, that was almost exactly what had happened.
The Other Place really wasn't nice. There was blood everywhere, soaking the streets and pooling in the gutters. It crept over the walls. It wrote things on windows, and I was really, really glad that I couldn't read Russian and so didn't know what the scrawls were saying.
But that was just the background horror. Rather more present was the fact that there was something down here. Hunting us. Something which looked like a teenage girl. A pretty one, too, because of course a murderous death robot couldn't have the decency to look ugly. And - according to Louise - she or maybe it had taken Shinji hostage.
"Oh, just try that again, you stupid golem," Louise shouted out after her. "I can just taste your magic. You can't sneak by me!"
"I don't have magic, you stupid RD," the killer death robot shouted from outside. "I would blow you all up, but I'm not allowed to. But if you say I have magic again…"
"What are you, stupid? Of course you have magic. I can sense it."
"Stop lying! And stop using my lines! That's my line, you… meatbag!"
Honestly, the two of them sounded pretty similar.
"I know, I'll tell you what," the murderous death robot called in. "You can come out of there and as long as you don't damage the hardware, it'll be easy."
There was an awkward silence.
"I can't help but think that you mean that'll be easier for you. And then what?" Chrono asked.
"Well, I'll kill the Reality Deviants among you quickly and painlessly - which is more than you stupid meatbags deserve, incidentally. But I promise it won't hurt! I won't even break you down for primal energy! Much! And you'll be dead before it happens! Apart from the bit where I extract dynamic structural data from your brains. That bit still won't hurt, though!"
Someone needed to tell this killer space death robot that she had all the social graces of a particularly awkward teenage girl. Unless she was a teenage girl who just happened to have shiny metal murder hook hands and laser eyes and the capacity to take a kick from Louise the Door Wrecker because of… reasons. Maybe she went to a really rough school. Man, I wish I could get those kind of enhancements just for going to a rough school. I bet no one would bully me if I had laser eyes.
That was a joke, by the way. They'd probably still find a way.
"I don't believe negotiations are meant to start with promising to kill us," Chrono remarked.
"Fine! Come out and I won't kill you all even though you're all Reality Deviants!"
"She's lying," Louise said through clenched teeth. "I can sense it."
Strangely enough, so could I. Using my common sense.
Chrono paced up and down, while his tinkertech device worked away at decrypting the codes. It also seemed to be a weapon, but he couldn't use it while it was doing the decryption thing. Louise seemed to be able to punch the space future robot in the face fairly well, but I was rather more squishy. And maybe evil space future robots could see through Isolation.
I sunk into the Other Place again, and watched as the graffiti appeared over the monitors and the plaster fell off the walls. I felt the bliss of studying other people's powers, and screwed my eyes shut. I didn't have time for that. A creature of shining light trapped in a rusty cage was my joy in seeing such beautiful things.
The feeling of nailing that joy to the wall was heartbreaking. I never want to have to do that again, but I know I'll probably have to.
With that out of the way, I could see without… without happiness to cloud my view of the world. Man, my life fucking sucks that that made perfect sense to say. But it was true.
Chrono was as cold and inhuman as the machines we'd seen earlier. He was black iron, rusted around the edges, welded onto tattered flesh and a harsh mask which looked like some kind of Victorian judge sentencing someone to death. He was actually very similar to Mr Sykes at heart. Mr Sykes just had faded tattered garments made of once-bright colours and smoke covering his cold inhuman bits, and maybe stupid people saw his lies rather than the cold heart underneath. Chrono didn't have any such deceptions in his nature - I'd already worked out he had a stick so far up his ass it was seeing daylight, although fortunately the Other Place didn't literally show that. His eyes glowed bright blue, and his heart was glowing the same colour, shining out from under his sodden black clothes.
Louise… the less said, the better. Not that I could see much. She burned so bright my eyes ached to look at her. She smelt of anger and hate and rage, a coppery scent which burned at my nostrils. Under the layers of her green fire - which was leaching out into the Other Place, polluting it and turning it into tarnished brass - she was metallic and angular, half-broken chains hanging from her arms and legs. She scared me. Much more than she had when she had the other power. I wanted well clear of her. Keep her away from me, just like Ms As'koni. She was a predator, soaked in the black-red oil of death. I was very glad she wasn't here.
Something flickered out of the corner of my eye. There were whorls in the room, tiny distortions in the fabric of the world. I felt hollow and empty looking at them, which meant they were probably someone's parahuman power. I sunk deeper into the Other Place, calling forth Sniffer within my head, and the world turned a toneless shade of grey. Yes, I could see the distortions more clearly deeper in the Other Place. They were black holes in the grey fabric of the twisted world.
How interesting. She was making portals like the porcelain-doll cherubs made. Could killer space death robots be parahumans too?
Well, since she was threatening to kill us all, spiting her was probably a good thing to do. Needles. Yes. Not the medical kind, the sewing kind. I sunk back to the shadows of the Other Place, exhaled and a spider-like hunchbacked woman made of wire with long sewing needles for fingers took shape. I could see the kinship to my barbed-wire angels in her. That probably meant she could do what I wanted. She clicked them together, staring at me.
"Uh," I said. Fuck, I needed a name for her. I hated having to name my constructs. I wasn't very good at it. "Needle Hag," I said. "Stop anyone else from making holes to this place. Sew them all up."
The hunchedbacked figure hissed like a bellows, its chain-hair falling in front of its face. Clicking over, it plucked its hair with one of its six hands and wove it through the holes. It - or maybe she - didn't stop there, though. She started weaving spider-webs made of chains over the area, criss-crossing the area. Holding the fabric of spacetime together, I thought uncomfortably.
"Hey, you!" the robot girl shouted in. "Stop cheating! I'm getting creepy static on my sensors and that makes no sense! Stupid RDs! Quantum mirrors don't get static! Don't you even know that?"
I grinned to myself. It was working! And the way she was getting so angry was deeply satisfying. Served her right.
Chrono cleared his throat. "I am sorry, but we have a mission to fulfil," he said stiffly. "If you want to negotiate, you should begin releasing your hostage."
"I don't have a hostage! Urgh! You RDs are really annoying me! So much! I hate you all. Why can't you just be reasonable?"
A muscle under his eye was twitching. "That is not what the word 'reasonable' means," Chrono said coldly, his voice as taut as a steel wire.
I immediately began thinking of ways to annoy her more. The chain-webs were snarled up all over the room, and Needle Hag was pouncing on any new rift and sealing it. Maybe if I gave her some different thread to sew into her webs - yeah, that would work. I exhaled a cloud of raw Other Place smoke. It thrashed and writhed in my hands. "Take this," I whispered. "Stop her thinking too hard about this place." The construct got to work with her needle hands, loading the thread onto a spindle in her chest that I wasn't sure had been there all along.
That produced an immediate response. "Would the RD who's trying to hack my brain stop it!" she shouted in. "You're very lucky your blatant deviancy can't get through my primium! Else I'd be really mad!"
Okay, that just wasn't fair. 'Primium'? More like 'bullshitium'. There's no way something that sounds like that should stop a woven thread made of Isolation.
"Feel free to come in and get punched again," Louise taunted her.
She tried to come in again, and got punched again.
Louise was glowing by now, even outside of the Other Place. That was… weird. Maybe she was drawing on the Other Place in some way too. There was a bonfire of green-blue-brown fire swirling around her, and a bright green brand was burning on her forehead.
"Well, you know what? I can wait! Yeah! I have hyperspatial jamming too! You'll need to come out some time!" the robot yelled in sulkily.
She did, too. I could feel the hard metallic shell she'd somehow warped into place across the Other Place. I tried sending a porcelain doll cherub out, and it shattered against her barrier. That was more bullshit.
"Okay," Chrono said quietly. He held his tinkertech device in both hands. "I have the data, and I wiped the computer of this info. I can't transmit it out, though. She's jamming it somehow. Some kind of Barrier variant designed specifically for infowar, I think. I haven't seen this precise method before, so I'm currently pinging it to diagnose its structure, but she's integrated smart pattern matching algorithms into it so I'm not getting very far."
"She's built a steel wall in the Other Place," I explained.
"... right," Chrono said. "Thank you for that. That was very helpful. Don't feel shy about sharing any equally useful information with us." I suspected he was being sarcastic. Just a hint. "Now, she appears to have sealed off any way for us to transfer out, and she's blocking the exit. Louise can apparently beat her in a fight, but… uh… um, Louise?"
"Yes?" the other girl asked, not leaving her position at the door. The air around there was choked with dust, which gleamed in the fire surrounding her.
"Why aren't your powers hurting you in this place?"
She shrugged. "I'm not sure," she said. She pursed her lips. "But I can feel a… a tension here. Like there's something which doesn't want me here. Something which isn't her. And the more I do things, the tenser things are getting."
"Well, I don't want to be here either," I whispered furiously.
Chrono scowled. "Well, does anyone have any suggestions?"
Shit. There was only one thing left to me. I would need to use my super mode. And the only problem was that I wasn't sure if I actually had a super mode and even if I did I didn't know if it would work.
So. Yay.
I took a deep breath.
"Uh… RDs?" the robot girl called in. "I've just been talking with Shinji, and he explained some things. You said you were working for the Syndicate?"
Oh, thank goodness. I wouldn't have to explode from trying to find out if I had a super mode and finding it in the negative.
Chrono coughed. "Uh, yes. That's who sent us here," he said.
"Urgh! Why didn't you say so?"
Louise crossed her arms. "You ran in with hook hands," she snapped. "And shot me in the face with your finger!"
"Pfft! You got better!" The girl cleared her throat. "Well, Control is giving these orders and they've told me the Syndicate is trying to arrange for more backup. So… uh, you might be my backup which managed to get here first because I had to deal with traitor Void Engineers trying to stop me reactivating my backup backup body and forcing me to use my backup backup backup body. Stupid useless meatbag Void Engineers. I'm Henrietta. Henrietta Mari Langley, primary adjunct of Control's Moscow Operation and primary node of Salvation."
Chrono looked dubious. So did I, but I had the advantage that I was wearing a gas mask and so people couldn't read my facial expressions. He sighed. "Well, I'm not sure that I trust you," he began, "but I've extracted the data and wiped the systems so hostile forces couldn't access it. So…" he smiled in a distinctly smug manner, "... you might as well accompany us back to the people who are giving us the orders. And I've set my Device up to wipe itself if it's tampered with. So we need to get the data back to… to the Syndicate securely. We've been ordered not to transmit it wirelessly, so we need a physical drop."
He was lying there. Unless that was an order he'd been given which I hadn't.
Henrietta sighed. "I have a quantum entangled link back to my greater self," she said. "Stupid Syndicate. Urgh. Fine. I'll come back with you. 'Snot like I can't take it from you. I just want to see it safe and back in the proper hands."
Chrono nodded to himself. "Fine. We'll pick up one of our team who got injured, and then we'll get back to the dimensional transfer point and return to headquarters." He dropped his voice. "Louise," he whispered, "take her down if she tries to betray us. And go out first."
"With pleasure," Louise said, cracking her knuckles.
Henrietta looked like… well, like a lot of the red-haired girls who often occupied a table in the bar. They all seemed to have similar personalities, too. I glanced at her in the Other Place. She was strange there. She looked… more human than Chrono. No, not quite. She was a perfect little china doll made up with hardly any chips or dents, splattered with mud and the black-red of death, but she wasn't the one controlling her actions. No, I realised with a dawning horror, there were strings attached to her limbs and her mouth, and when I followed them they led to a little tank of cloudy fluid bolted to her forehead. I stared at the scrap of red floating within, the size of my little finger. It locked its beady black eyes on me, its tiny mouth moving in synchronisation with the Henrietta doll, and its flipper-like limbs moved like her hands and legs.
I swallowed. I… didn't know how to interpret that. I wasn't sure I wanted to know, because I had my suspicions and they weren't good ones.
Oh, and she was also gripping on tight to Shinji's hand. I opened my mouth and closed it again. We just had to get safely back to the bar. Once we were there, it was against house rules for people to fight, and the barman put people in time-out if they tried.
"Okay? Can we go?" she demanded of us. She gestured with her free hand. "Lead on."
"How are you doing?" Chrono asked Shinji.
"Oh, you know," Shinji said. "I've had worse. Um. Could you please not squeeze so tight?" he asked Henrietta.
"Oh," she said, and didn't let go.
We went up several levels to pick up Ms As'koni, who was slumped up against a wall holding her borrowed AK. She'd taken off her helmet, and was smoking.
"Oh," said the bitchy blue-skinned alien, lowering her weapon. "You're all still alive. My goodness. And you picked up another human."
Louise was perhaps unsurprisingly none too happy about this. "You could have helped, you know!"
"Oh," Henrietta said, leaning forwards. "An alien. And she's got nodules of mass-variant matter in her nervous system. How interesting. Out of curiosity, where do you live, alien?"
"No, I couldn't help you. Internal bleeding, remember?" she said coldly.
We went back to the surface, and I had a barbed-wire angel re-open the rift. Naturally, the other team was already back from their trip to Tokyo-3, and they had drinks and food and had taken all the comfy seats. Of course.
And they looked much warmer than us.
And none of them were injured.
… and Lucy was floating in mid air. Her eyes had turned red, and she was giggling to herself as she projected orange hexagonal fields.
"What happened to her?" I asked.
"I'm going to be the Angel on the Christmas tree!" Lucy crowed happily.
Belle pouted. "Lucy got lots of ADAM only it wasn't ADAM it was LILITH which is like ADAM only not like ADAM and now she has super-plasmids despite only being a Little Sister and she's like an angel only not the dead kind of angel the stompy kind of angel," Belle 'explained'. I wasn't sure why I'd asked her. In the Other Place, her head had been opened up and there were needles sticking out of her brain, and a second face there which screamed angrily. She was about as sane as… a thing which wasn't sane. I didn't even have a metaphor for her.
"Okay, someone else?" I asked.
"That's about the best explanation we have," Mamoru said, hunched over the bar holding his head. He was drinking what looked like warm milk and looked ill. Well, at least someone from the other team was suffering. That made me feel slightly better.
"I've had a look over the data," Chrono said without preamble. "Your 'Russians' appear to have been tracking 'Santa' on radar for many years. In the early 1980s by your calendar, a lot more signals started showing up on radar. That's presumably when it shifted to a franchise model."
"The early 80s? That's when parahumans started showing up on my world," I pointed out. Personally, I was inclined to agree with Louise with regards to how Ms As'koni was an untrustworthy coward who'd left us to our fates at the hands of a killing machine. A literal killing machine, that is. Not the metaphorical killing machine that Louise was. "I guess we better give this to Donald."
Unsurprisingly - given my luck - the fact that we'd found the intel wasn't enough for him. "What did you do?" he demanded, sitting at one of the tables with a half-empty drink in front of him. "Why do you have Henriette with you?"
There's no pleasing some people.
Henrietta turned bright red. "You!" she exploded, pointing her finger at his head. I ducked, quite aware of what that finger could do. She whirled on us. "You said you were working for the Syndicate! Not the meatbag traitor splitters!"
"What… that… what the fuck? Why did you let that thing come back with you?"
Chrono frowned, looking between the two. "Do you know each other?"
"For your sake, I hope she's not one of your exes," Luna said cattishly. "She looks to be about fifteen."
"No!" Donald exploded.
"Ew ew ew a meatbag like him?" Henrietta yelled simultaneously.
"Ow ow ow please let go of my hand," Shinji whimpered.
"I'd just like to point out that the evil space robot who blew up Moscow is right there!" Donald shouted, pointing at her. He towered over her, but something told me that if it came down to blows the killing machine with hook hands and laser fingers would win. "Oh, and she was made by an evil space machine from a dead baby to take over the world! And generally be evil!"
"Don't you dare talk about the Computer like that! It's not evil! You're evil! And you meatbag traitors were the one who dropped the nuke! So technically it was your fault for blowing up the city, not us! We're the good guys, not you!"
Donald threw up his hands. "Look, I don't know what kind of book 'evil space robots invading with giant robots so they can cut out everyone's brains and make them all bleep-bloop-I-am-a-robot are the good guys, but it goes against the entire literary canon and oh yes, it's made of fucking lies. I hope the rest of you get this! She's a killing machine made to invade and take over the world!"
"Only to make it better! And less stupid and meatbag-ish!"
I got it pretty clearly. Henrietta was apparently a synthetic Endbringer with the personality of a teenage girl. Possibly because she'd been made from a dead baby or something. Sounded like home to me. I mean, you could totally see the government trying something like that.
Henrietta morphed one of her hands into some kind of energy weapon, pointing it in Donald's face. "Oh well! At least this mission will be partly a success," she said, grinning.
The barman coughed, and her arm exploded. He pointed upwards, to where the sign over the bar read:
THIS IS NOT A PLACE FOR AVENGING GRUDGES
OR ELSE
OR ELSE
"Who the hell do you think you are?" Henrietta demanded, whirling on him as her arm rebuilt itself into a hand. "And… and how did you wipe my memomorph of that form? What are you?"
"I'm just the man who serves drinks," the barman said, malevolent glee glittering in his dark eyes. "Problem?"
Henrietta turned bright red, and turned her back on him, huffing and puffing like a broken steam engine. It was hilarious. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Even if I was fairly sure that sign hadn't been there five seconds ago.
Shinji cleared his throat. "She wanted to come along," he said.
"She's an inhuman killing machine working for an evil alien AI god!" Donald exploded.
"But I really, really want to save Christmas," Henrietta said, squeezing Shinji's hand. From the way he winced, I think she was too hard. Or he was a wimp. Or both.
"You want to destroy Christmas!" Donald accused.
Henrietta shook her head. "No! I have orders from Control, unlike you stupid meatbag splitters. The Syndicate have threatened to quit if we don't preserve the greatest commercial event of the year." She paused. "Plus, Shinji says that Santa gives presents. And some traitor ex-Void Engineers mentioned some interesting things about mistletoe when under neural probing."
She wasn't letting go of his hand. Urgh. I knew girls like her from high school. And no, I wasn't irrationally prejudiced against her just because she had red hair like Emma. I was perfectly rationally prejudiced against her because she was a killer death robot from space. And also because she reminded me of Emma.
"Ahem," the black cat, Luna, said archly. "I'll handle this, thank you very much." She trotted along the bar surface. "Barman," she said, "I'll have a milk, and I want two ice-cream floats. Can we have them delivered to the backroom?"
"Certainly, ma'am," the barman said, polishing a glass.
The cat jumped down. "Come on, Usagi," she said, looking up at her with those creepy red eyes. "You're going to help me explain some ground rules to Ms… Langley, was it?
"Aww," Usagi said.
"There will be an ice-cream float in it for you."
"Okay!"
I shuddered. I could see what she was up to. Being locked in a room with Usagi? When she'd been provided with ice cream? And there was no way to escape.
Cruel and unusual.
I wasn't even surprised when the two of them emerged half an hour later, Henrietta crying into Usagi's shoulder. Having to listen to that blonde idiot for half an hour would make anyone cry. And I kept well away from her, because she kept on wanting to make friends. And get along. And she never used sarcasm.
I simply did not get her.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
Shinji is at the same time very very confused, and on utterly familiar ground. Sadly, this is one of his better Christmases, because this time a pretty redheaded tsundere is at least holding his hand.
GhostStalker
Jeopardy! contestant
- Location
- NYC
Hmm, any chance Misaka-11111 will be showing up anytime soon? Not that you don't have enough teenage girls throwing around powers. I'd just like to see what the Network would makes of the denizens of the bar, as well as Narly the barman.
Misaka-11111: "Cool."
Belle: "Shocking."
*they both crack up laughing*
Taylor: "... this is what passes for humour around this place."
GhostStalker
Jeopardy! contestant
- Location
- NYC
Hmm, shouldn't that comment be more in the third person with the descriptors that characterize the speech of the Network?
She's drunk and forgetting to tell other people how she feels.
GhostStalker
Jeopardy! contestant
- Location
- NYC
Ha, fair enough. Narly would be the type to serve alcohol to a teenager and see its effects on the Network because it amused him.
Wonder what the Network would make of the sensation of being drunk and of Narly him/it/whateverself.
More like crushing his hand.
But sadly it is one of his bests Christmases.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
You know, I'm surprised no that the fact Taylor is a super-vigilant who goes by the name Panopticon hasn't come out yet, both to depress the more idealistic who like the idea of superheroes, and to cause confusion with the technocrats.
Special Bonus Scene 7: Marisanta and her Helpful Minions (Marisalon)
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
MARISALON
___
___
Special Bonus Scene ❼: Marisanta and her Helpful
And across the world, boys and girls slept peacefully in their beds, exhausted from staying up late to try and spot Santa. But it is the nature of Father Christmas that he is never seen, only known by the presents he leaves. He is subtle, mysterious, passing from chimney to chimney like the merest whisper of smoke.
"Okay! I is in! Igni! Throw down the sackie of loot!"
The sack had been a discovery both wonderful and disappointing. It contained an apparently limitless supply of toys - which was the disappointment, since in the words of Maggat "that no fun to loot. Looting not just about the getting. It also about the taking."
On the other hand, after about ten minutes in the hands of the Minions, the toys that were coming out of the sack had started to take on a certain running theme. A lot of spikes were involved, as well as a bewilderingly Evil array of varyingly lethal implements.
It had also started to smell, but that was fairly normal for anything that spent more than a few minutes in the hands of the Minions.
"Okay, okay..." said Maxy, peering intently at the scroll he was carrying as designated Reader Of Things. "It say that... little girlie want... a pony."
A shocked gasp went around the assembled Minions. Ponies, as they all well knew, were horrible creatures that had a running feud with their Overlady. A little girl who wanted to own one couldn't be anything but good news. Which was bad news. And not the good kind of Bad. No, it was the bad kind of Good!
... ponies were the enemy, anyway. They were pretty clear on that much.
"And a princess doll."
This was met with a more measured reaction. Holding princesses hostage was, after all, a respectively Evil pastime. Perhaps the little girl wanted to practice?
"And... oh no," moaned Maxy in dread. "She want... she want..."
"Get on with it!" yelled Maggat, somehow managing to avoid waking the sleeping eight-year old.
"She want to…" Maxy looked up, bleakness in his bloodshot eyes. "She want Santa to give rest of the toysies for her to 'hungree kids in Afry-kar who don't have any'."
Pure, abject horror abounded.
"Nooo! She are a goner!"
"It are a lost cause! We no can do anything!"
"We must try! We give her better presents to save her soul!"
"Wait, why save her soul? I no see any seals around here."
"... shut up, Scyl."
"Okay, okay, quit your whining and form up!" yelled Maggat, laying about briefly with a candy cane as thick as his wrist. It produced very satisfying thwacking noises, he'd found. And he could bite bits off if he got hungry. He, like all the other assembled Minions, was wearing the somewhat grimy costume of one of Santa's elves. Several bloodstains on the costumes indicated that the previous owners probably hadn't relinquished them willingly.
Since asking a Minion to give up its possessions was tantamount to condemning it to a fate worse than death (which was merely an inconvenience that took a couple of minutes to walk off and left a lasting headache), he was also wearing his skull-themed armour underneath it, making for a rather odd-looking imp. Well, slightly more odd-looking. Well, not much more odd-looking than the average experienced Minion, to be honest. It was certainly tasteless, though.
"Now," he said when the various cries of woe had mostly stopped and the various cries of pain that had stopped them had simmered down. "We has a lot of houses to get to tonight, so we no is pro-crass-tin-eight-ing here! We give the girlie better presents and go! Like..." He rummaged in the sack for a moment, pulled out a brace of knives, tossed them to Fettid, pulled out another candy cane, tossed it at Maxy, and finally alighted on something useful. "This! Torturer Barbie with min-ee-achur iron maiden! Like Overlady!"
After leaving the girl - still asleep, somehow - with a pile of presents that Gnarl would approve of and which would probably give her parents a mild heart attack the next morning, the intrepid elves-by-proxy regrouped on the roof, where their commander-in-chief was waiting for them. Marisalon's Santa costume held to the theme of "less is more", and was predominantly exposed lilac flesh topped with a Santa hat that managed to look sensual just from proximity. She was lounging in the impromptu throne that had been built on the back of the sleigh and sipping a glass of mulled wine thoughtfully.
As befit the theme, there was fake snow dusted on the throne.
The actual elves, or at least the survivors, were kneeling at her feet in loinclothes. One of them held a bowl of grapes, another was fanning her, and all of them were chained to the throne by golden collars.
"Ah, you've finished," Marisalon said. "Excellent. Our next delivery is a very special one, so we need to be underway quickly." She smiled lasciviously. "After all, these are some very good boys and girls."
The Minions cheered, and slipped back into the harnesses in front of the sleigh, producing novelty antler-headbands from somewhere and putting them on. In deference to what little they had picked up about Christmas, Fettid had thoughtfully ensured that the leading reindeer - Maxy - had a red nose.
Admittedly, she'd done so by stabbing him, but it was the thought that counted.
With a crack of the neomah's whip and a shout from Maggat, they heaved the sleigh into motion, pulled it off the edge of the roof, and bounded away into the night, leaving behind nothing but echoing curses, the tinkling of sleigh-bells and a lingering odour that would take several days to fade.
Getting into the Bar from outside was always strange. This time was no exception. They passed through a thick cloud belt, Marisalon snapped the reins, and then without any apparent transition they were once again in the otherworldly club; neatly parked in an open space beside the dance floor. There was even a sign saying "Marisanta's Grotto" hanging above them.
The teams had returned, and were deep in discussion - well, argument - around the various tables. At the sleigh's entrance, most of them looked around with expressions that ranged from surprise to resignation. Donald in particular took one look at Marisalon's costume and looked like Christmas had come early. Which, from a certain point of view, it had.
"Gather round, good girls and boys," Marisalon crooned. "And tell Marisanta what you'd like for Christmas this year."
"Well," Shinji started hesitantly, before the neomah cut him off.
"No, that was just an expression. I don't have much control over what the sack spits out. So! Who wants to go first? Shall we start with you, young man?"
She reached into the sack... and kept reaching in, and in, and in, until her arm was sunk into the thing up to the shoulder. Then, with a grunt of effort, she pulled.
There is no real way to describe a six-metre high humanoid being pulled out of a sack opening less than a metre across. Even by the standards of the Bar, it was odd, although everyone was accustomed enough to the place to ignore the way that the ceiling was suddenly high enough to accommodate the enormous figure while still being about the same distance above their heads as it had been. Marisalon took a moment to breathe and tug the bag out from under the thing's foot, and looked up at it assessingly.
"Well well," she said in mock surprise. "A hellstrider! Someone has been good. My lady," she added to Louise, "might I humbly suggest that when next you take up the mantle of the All-Makers, you look into getting yourself one of these? They may be crude, but they are startlingly effective at what they do."
"Stop nagging," Louise muttered.
"... it's a miniature Evangelion," Shinji started, somewhat superfluously. "How did you... where's the power socket? Why its the right arm a sword? Are those wings?"
"Power socket?" Marisalon asked. "This is a hellstrider of the Yozis, not one of your silly human creations. It is socketed with all the hearthstones it needs to provide motive power. And from the looks of things, I would guess that an agata and a tomescu were components in its making." She turned to the next-nearest person, which turned out to be Belle; still wearing her somewhat ice-damaged santa hat.
"And for you, young lady..." She rooted around in the bag again and drew out the next gift. This one was a spear, which was still far too long to have been in the sack, but was at least thin enough to fit through the opening. Louise blinked in shock as she saw it.
"Hey!" she protested. "That's mine! I mean, not this me, but one of the other mes! And... Sheffield stole it, anyway. How did you even get that?"
"Oh, my most fair princess who is not currently of the green sun - but who is without a doubt very regal anyway - I am but a humble servant of this cornucopia-sack of resplendent wonders," Marisalon said, bowing. The motion did very interesting things to the skimpy Santa costume she wore and made Louise's eyes narrow even further, but she let it pass.
Marisalon gave the Staff of Destruction to Belle. The weapon that had been a pike in Louise's hands was only a short spear in Belle's, but the Big Sister's eyes widened nonetheless as she turned it end over end, examining the jagged shard of crystal that made up the blade.
"She's like a Grandmommy Spiky," she whispered in awe. "Her voice sounds all tinkly!"
"I want something too!" Lucy spoke up, bouncing up and down in midair. "Me next, me next! I'm a Good Girl! Give me a present!"
Marisalon chuckled. Reaching into the sack, she produced a small burning flame which danced on her hand. "For a young girl so very close to my heart in temperament and bearing, I present… the Secret of Fire! Stolen from the thrones of the Gods themselves, and then stolen from the thief by Igni!"
Lucy stopped bouncing, considered this, and looked at her blankly. "What does that mean? Anyway, I already know about fire! It's what makes people do the burny dance!"
"Oh." Marisalon paused. "Yes, I suppose that it doesn't have the greatest of resale values. Such misfortune! Such tragedy!" She returned the dancing flame to the bag, and tapped her nose. "Let's try again," she said in a conspiratorial tone, before withdrawing a small box.
"A matchbox!" Lucy crowed. "Yes! Matchboxes are great! They have matches in them! And matches burn. Also, you can keep stuff in them after you run out of matches! Like glitter!"
"It is more than a mere matchbox," Marisalon said. "It is the primordial matchbox, a behemoth from which all other matches are born."
Chrono frowned. "I don't think that's where matches come from," he said dubiously. "I think they get made in factories."
"Moreover!" Marisalon continued, ignoring him, "Since all matches are born from this terrible construct of the all-Creators, the supply from within this ancient being is endless and infinite! Such power! Such prowess." She smiled widely. "Now what do you say to that, small human child?" she asked.
"'nk you," Lucy mumbled distractedly, already pulling it open and tugging out several matches with a worryingly intense expression.
"Oh, is this the Christmas presents thing?" Henrietta asked, letting go of Shinji for a moment as her interest changed targets. He quietly took advantage of the opportunity to scurry behind his new hellstrider and hide. "Well, I suppose if you meatbags are giving me things, you can't be completely useless. What have you got for me?"
"For a sister spurned by a traitorous relation; a target on which to vent your ire!" Marisalon proclaimed, and produced a small doll that looked similar to Henrietta herself, though it was wearing an eyepatch. She squeezed it, which produced a squeaking noise that sounded vaguely like a scream, and considered it for a moment. "Hmm. But that alone isn't quite sufficient, I think. For you are also a maiden and a scholar, are you not?" Reaching back into her sack, she produced a sprig of mistletoe and a small blue-violet gem, and handed them over. The first drew a very nervous look from Shinji, but the second was the one that got the most violent reaction.
"Th-that's a Jewel Seed!" squeaked Nanoha. Chrono's head whipped around, his Device coming up. "You can't give her that! She'll destroy everything! Raising Heart, seal it!"
"Ahem," coughed the bartender, motioning to the sign about fighting again. Nanoha sputtered.
"But... it's a Jewel Seed! If it goes out of control, it could destroy the whole planet!" She paused, frowning. "How did you even get that, anyway? Precia has most of them. And the ones she doesn't have, they do." She jerked a thumb at Chrono.
"Please, don't insult me like that," scoffed Henrietta, sneering at her. "Perhaps you meatbags can't keep control of a node, but I'm more than capable of handling this safely. And with this much Primal Energy, I can..." she hesitated, glaring at the barman and looking guiltily at Usagi. "... well, once we leave here, I can definitely be much better at... at helping save Christmas. Better than any of you meatbags, I bet! I could probably do the whole thing myself, if I wanted to."
Nanoha still seemed to be a little beyond speech, and Chrono was sputtering, so Marisalon turned to them next. "Fear not, young mistress. As your gift for overwhelming destruction shows, you are surely of the mould of my own mistress, so I would be remiss in neglecting you. I think you will enjoy this." She presented Nanoha with a thin black collar. A slim little metal box was clipped to one side of it, with a blinking light flickering on it. "While the details are beyond me, I am given to understand that this will allow you access to a group of linked minds not unlike the teodozjia, who will aid you in the calculations that your magic consists of."
She held up a finger. "But wait! There is more! For your familiar, I give the only gift that a delightfully decadent creature like a cat could possibly wish for." Vesta looked up with interest, and Marisalon delicately set down a bowl of fish. "The personal dining bowl of the Goddess of Cats!" she announced. "Eternally full of whatever delicacy you wish; in whatever form you wish it! And not smelling too badly of Minion, either."
Vesta approached it with narrowed eyes. 'Tuna!' she ordered, and jumped as the fish shifted a little. 'Huh. Uh... mackerel! Cat food! Pidgeon!' At each command, the bowl filled from the bottom up with a different foodstuff. Vesta delicately nibbled at the bird - which was still raw and unplucked, and seemed somewhat charred on top of that - and nodded happily. 'I love it! Truly worthy of a goddess like me! You hear that, mistress? Now I have a cat goddess bowl, so you have to admit I'm a goddess for real!'
"This is all very well and good," growled Chrono, "but I'm still not going to just let you give a dangerous Lost Logia to an unstable criminal like that." He paused for a second, then pointed at Henrietta. "Her, that is," he added. "Not Takamachi."
"I fix that!" Igni shouted. The Minion had looted a santa beard at some point, which was already singed. He grabbed the sack from Marisalon, held it upside-down and shook it. "We just give you something too!"
The sack opening... bulged. Something enormous began to emerge, feet first. It wasn't as big as the hellstrider had been, but it still contorted the fabric and forced people to step aside as it slid out across the floor with a painful shrieking sound of metal on tiling and fell to the ground with a clunk.
"... what. Is that." said Chrono.
Shinji coughed. "I think that's a… um, a Centurion. Or maybe a Paladin. Or a Templar. It's a suit of powered armour, anyway. You'd have to ask someone like Kensuke who actually knows this kind of thing. That's… uh, basically it's a three metre tall suit of fully-powered combat armour with… uh, I think that's an anti-armour… maybe it's a railgun? Or some kind of particle cannon? Well, there's something in the right arm, and then there's the missile pods on the back and I'm fairly sure it has active camouflage of some kind - uh, that means it can turn invisible and… uh, it all runs off… uh, well, you'd probably call it an infinite energy tap."
"Is that safe?" Nanoha asked dubiously. "That sounds like some kind of Lost Logia - that's some kind of not-understood ancient technology."
"Oh, no, it's perfectly modern," Shinji said, not answering the question. "They're very common military units."
"It's… beautiful," Chrono managed, a distinct hint of moisture welling up in his eyes. "And it's even in black!"
"Great," muttered Taylor under her breath. "I'm going to attack Santa's fortress with a teenage Endbringer, a war machine from hell and a black suit of power armour. And a sociopathic alien. So much for being the hero."
Unfortunately, someone overheard her.
"You no want to be Hero!" Maggat corrected her. "Being Evil way more fun. You get to loot as much as you want!" This drew cries of approval from the Minions present. "And," he added, "better weapons and armour, too. Hero ladies usually not wear much, but our Overlady have plate armour!"
A strange mix of expressions flashed across Taylor's face. A hypothetical observer who was reading her mind might hypothetically find that she had to agree that a lot of female superheroes were tragically underdressed, but that there was no way she was going to admit this in front of a bunch of smelly goblins and that she would rather insist that she wanted to be a hero.
Fortunately, minions were unable to tell what other people were thinking. Indeed, many of them were incapable of telling what they were thinking - or indeed whether they were thinking at all!
Maxy pulled a fake beard and a santa hat from somewhere in his garments, and cleared his throat. "'Twas the night before Christmas," he began, and was promptly stabbed in the face by Fettid.
"No poey-tree," the green-skinned minion said firmly, her knife lodged in Maxy's eye socket.
To noises of disgust and concern from Nanoha and Usagi and fascination from Lucy, Maxy pulled himself off the blade. "All wrong all wrong," he grumbled, adjusting the set of his hat. "Ahem. I is now the Santa, and I is looting a pretty pretty present for a pretty young girl like you." Vigorously, he thrust his hand into the sack, followed by most of his upper body. Muffled swearing filtered out, sounding oddly echoing. After a minute or so, he emerged dragging an old-fashioned diving suit made of polished brass, with a complicated strap-covered outfit attached. There was also, mysteriously, a cape attached to the diving suit, although on closer inspection it was revealed to be an old curtain. The back of the left hand was marked VII.
Lucy's hands went to her face. "I'm so jealous!" she announced. "Miss B! Look what she got! She got a pretty dress!"
"It is a very pretty dress," Belle said, mouth wide open. "It's so... shiny. I don't think I've ever seen a pretty dress so shiny!"
Taylor worked her mouth. "That's a diving suit," she managed. "That's a... it's not even a female diving suit; you'd have trouble fitting a rake in there!"
"Well, you are built just like the Progenitor constructs," Henrietta said snidely. "Beanpole thin and easy to mistake for a boy if it wasn't for the hair. You'd just need grey skin and glowing eyes and you could pass for one of them."
"What did you just-"
"Oh oh oh oh oh!" squealed Lucy, "You have to try it on! Big Sister, Big Sister, you say so too, right? She has to try the pretty dress on!"
"Help me," Taylor managed, before she was swept away by the current of enthusiastic Sisterhood.
Ms As'koni scoffed at her plea. "Well, if this stuff is going free, I suppose I'll bite," she said. "But something more in the line of Harlaown's power armour, thank you. I don't need something useless like a diving suit or a book of matches."
"I know what you is needing," Scyl said dreamily. "You is needing armouring."
Ms As'koni raised an eyebrow. "Better body-armour would do, I suppose," she said warily. "And I suppose you have some just lying around in there?"
Scyl raised a finger, pulled the fake beard off Maxy, strapped it onto himself and delved into the sack. "It only work for you if you has the beardie," he explained as he rummaged around. "And a hat."
Lucy's eyes lit up at that, and she began to slowly creep up behind Igni, drawing her needle.
Scyl, meanwhile, produced a small collar. "Here we goes!" he announced brightly. The sight of a Minion attempting a benevolent smile was one that nobody in the Bar needed to be subjected to. "It are an Emm Ay Forty You harness thingie! You is putting this on and it is giving you armour!"
"Huh. Some sort of shielding unit, then? Good. Something I can actually use." Snatching it out of the Minion's hand, Ms As'koni put it on.
It gave her armour.
There was a longish pause as everyone stared.
"What," said the asari through gritted teeth in a tone of utter, withering contempt, "is this?" She stood in a black leotard and dark blue skirt, with elbow-length gloves in the same indigo shade and thigh-high black boots. A silver tiara sat on her forehead, with a sapphire gemstone in the shape of a heart mounted proudly in the middle. The entire combination set off her pale blue skin well, and also drew attention to her bust.
"You're a magical girl!" Nanoha said, eyes wide. Ms As'koni responded with a glare that redefined the phrase 'if looks could kill'.
"Yes, that's certainly a magical girl costume," Usagi agreed, and then winced and massaged her hand for some utterly unknowable reason. Luna wasn't even anywhere near her. Presumably it was some form of Pavlovian conditioning. "Not that I know anything about magical girls, of course."
"The term is 'magical woman'," Chrono corrected archly. "Treating adult women as if they're children isn't very polite." He paused. "Also, you might want to add more hardened barriers," he advised. "Invisible protective magical barriers don't work as well as the hardened version."
"I'm not a magical girl. There's no such thing as magic. And I'm not even f-"
"Well, of course there's no such thing as magic," Henrietta drawled. "It's a perfectly mundane, albeit primitive, form of powered combat armour. Looks like a patched version of the MA-40U. It's only… what, sixth generation. Barely above chainmail." She smiled lazily. "I can't wait to see what happens when it malfunctions. I hope I get footage."
"I'm not a girl," Ms As'koni hissed. "Or a woman. Our sexes don't work like that."
This was met with utmost suspicion by almost everyone present. There were two major and very obvious contradictions to that claim, which the rather scanty outfit put on prime display.
Donald was the exception, and simply shrugged. "Hey, I'm open-minded."
"... oh, fuck you all. Stupid humans," Ms As'koni said, and retreated to a corner to glare at anyone who dared look at her.
"Now, I do believe that's nearly everyone," Marisalon said. "Who else... ah!" She turned to Usagi, producing a crystal about the size of a golf ball from somewhere. It looked almost like liquid glass, with iridescent silver strata streaked through it and a soft rose tint where the light caught the edge. Usagi took it gingerly and stared.
"It feels like my..." she started, then winced reflexively and clammed up. "Uh, what is it?"
"A hearthstone, dear girl!" Marisalon explained. "A particularly powerful one; aspected to the Essence of the traitorous Moon. Or something like her, at least."
"We loot it from big drug pomp-a-door man!" Fettid interjected. "After he pass out from drinking too much!"
Usagi looked at it dubiously, tapped it on the table a few times, then threw it up in the air and caught it. "Well, it's pretty, I suppose," she said. "Ooo! Maybe I could get it turned into a necklace!" She tossed it up in the air again, missed the catch, and yelped as it bounced off her knuckles and rolled away.
Mamoru frowned at her, stopping it with a foot and passing it back. "Stop throwing the thing around, meatball-head, you'll break it."
"Ah, so brave and noble, to worry so over a maiden" Marisalon sighed. She sounded so genuine that it was impossible to tell if she was being serious or not. "And what would you like, good sir?" She looked him up and down appraisingly, with blatant interest. "I can think of a few things that I could offer..."
"Ah... no, thank you," coughed Mamoru. "Really, honestly. No."
Marisalon pouted. "Oh, very well. In that case," she plunged a hand into the sack and pulled out a sword. "A weapon fit for a brave and noble knight! One that has a long and proud history of heroism!"
"Hey, there!" said the sword in a voice like sliding metal. "A new wielder, eh? Excellent! When do we start the stabbing?"
"What." said Mamoru.
"How good are you at swordplay, boy?" asked the sword. "Any experience in plunging your blade into things?"
"... Founder, no," Louise groaned. "No, no, no. I'm so sorry," she told Mamoru, "and if it tells you any horrible deceitful lies about me, that's all they are. Lies. Because it's a lying sword which lies."
The sword, despite its lack of face or eyes, somehow managed to glare at her. "I don't know who you are, lady, but that's not a very good way to make an introduction. Who the hell do you think you are, to sully my good name like that!"
Louise brightened slightly. "Small mercies," she muttered to herself, before tossing a withering glare at the sword. "If you don't know, I'm not telling you," she retorted, and turned back to Marisalon in a markedly better mood. "Alright; everyone else has something. What do you have for me?"
Rummaging deep in the bag, Marisalon withdrew her hand to produce a brownish-black sedimentary rock.
Louise stared blankly at it. "What's that meant to be?" she asked, the pitch of her voice rising.
"Ah. My most fair and beautiful princess, it would appear that it is. Ah. Um." Marisalon shifted awkwardly. "A lump of coal."
"Coal."
"Yes, your most radiant and fair majesty."
Louise was turning distinctly red. "What am I supposed to do with that?"
Marisalon pursed her lips. "Well, I suppose you could make a small fire with it if you had kindling material." Quite aware of Louise's growing anger, she hastily said, "Let's try again."
This produced another lump of coal.
"Again!"
Yet more coal was produced.
Marisalon massaged the back of her neck. "Oh dear," she said. "My most radiant princess whose fury burns in a manner similar - but not identical - to the fires of Malfeas, I am most sorry to inform you that you appear to be on the Naughty List. Perhaps because you are an Evil Overlady. Perhaps because you may have sort of burned down two Albionese cities. Or perhaps… wait, no, that version of you really hasn't done anything bad. But the point remains, the rules are clear. You get only coal from the sack."
"But she invaded Earth and destroyed a city on the orders of an evil machine-god-thing!" Louise whined, pointing at Henrietta.
Marisalon shook her head sadly. "But alas, she is not on the Naughty List," she said.
Donald rose and clapped his hands. "Now, please, everyone! We are analysing the information and we are working on pinning down the location of Santa's HQ. Get a good meal in you, nap if you can, and do whatever preparation you have to do, because there's a good chance that hostile forces may fight back when we go to investigate the location. I've arranged a wake-up call for everyone when we have things set up."
Marisalon rose from her grotto throne, leaving the elves chained up. She hefted her sack of goodies. "Donald," she said huskily. "I believe I have something for you, too. I have made certain observations on my flight and the routes I took, and I believe we should take it to the command room. You should find them entirely… educational. And also in line with the Christmas spirit of giving."
Donald adjusted his tie. "Well, if I must," he said. "Don't mind me. I'll just be working late, liaising and perhaps even carrying out some analysis."
The two of them left for a backroom. "Should we join them?" Chrono asked, frowning. "It might be mission-relevant."
Luna licked her paw, and washed her face. "Oh, it won't be necessary," she said wearily. "I think they'll be able to get everything they want to do done themselves."
"I'm fairly sure he just wants Santa to sit on his lap," Mamoru said, sniggering.
Nanoha frowned. "But I thought that you sat on Santa's lap," she said. "That's what happened in the mall when I went there, anyway."
Usagi shot a dirty glare at Mamoru. "He's just making a bad joke," she told the nine-year old. "Because he's a jerk. The jerkiest jerk ever." She patted Nanoha on the shoulder. "Now, who wants ice cream!"
"Will it take long?" Nanoha asked. "Because I wanted to play with my new headset and I bet there's all kinds of interesting maths I could do if there's something to help me and then I can play with new spells and oh! I wonder if I can boost my mana-gathering spell to-"
"No! Begone, foul maths-demon and taint not the purity of ice-cream!" Usagi said, pulling an ofuda from one of her pockets and waving it in Nanoha's general direction.
Nanoha stared at her.
"It's not working?" Usagi said. "Drat. I really thought I'd got it right this time. Oh well. Ice-cream?"
"What flavour?"
Usagi gave her a very serious look.
"All of them."
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ravana managed to get himself robbed by minions.
I am utterly unsurprised.
I am utterly unsurprised.
Ah the MA-40U Variable Configuration Powered Combat Armor. The source of maaany a joke. I suspect the version Ms. As'Koni has acquired has had its appearance modified by a magical girl enthusiast. Strangely, by doing so it has become more reliable. The male MA-40U test pilots have been told to "suck it up."
I'm sure Ms. As'koni will be much less angry about it once she looks at its features list.
MJ12 Commando said:
EarthScorpion said:
And then she'll get incredibly mad again because, just requoting from Panopticon:
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Poor Accelerator is missing his collar. So that's how the Misaka network is going to make it's appearance.
Dramatis Personae 1.1
Dramatis Personae 1.1
Panopticon Quest
Henrietta Mari Langley - An engineered Autopolitan intelligence built from an unborn little girl whose mother's suicide charge failed to go off properly. Henrietta's psyche has been comprehensively constructed to preserve her unique resilience to void adaption and her Enlightened genius. The fact that this leaves her mentally very nearly baseline human with repulsive things like 'emotions' and 'a personality which is as tsundere as fuck' and 'a massive complex from seeing the cyberzombie mockeries of her parents killed by her sister' is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of this.
Likes: The Computer, Control, crushing her enemies before her, the thought of revenge on her sister, the colour red, cute boys, miso soup, Usagi Tsukino (provisional)
Dislikes: Her Sister, Jamelia Belltower, other meatbags, traitors, being told she's not a real person, losing, seeing her parents murdered by her Sister, being told that her psychology has been shaped to resemble her Sister, being reminded that her name is just her Sister's name with the -e swapped for -a, being reminded that she got beaten by her Sister in Moscow, being told she's obsessing about her Sister
Really Dislikes: Being left out of the main Dramatis Personae. Also, her Sister
Panopticon Quest
Henrietta Mari Langley - An engineered Autopolitan intelligence built from an unborn little girl whose mother's suicide charge failed to go off properly. Henrietta's psyche has been comprehensively constructed to preserve her unique resilience to void adaption and her Enlightened genius. The fact that this leaves her mentally very nearly baseline human with repulsive things like 'emotions' and 'a personality which is as tsundere as fuck' and 'a massive complex from seeing the cyberzombie mockeries of her parents killed by her sister' is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of this.
Likes: The Computer, Control, crushing her enemies before her, the thought of revenge on her sister, the colour red, cute boys, miso soup, Usagi Tsukino (provisional)
Dislikes: Her Sister, Jamelia Belltower, other meatbags, traitors, being told she's not a real person, losing, seeing her parents murdered by her Sister, being told that her psychology has been shaped to resemble her Sister, being reminded that her name is just her Sister's name with the -e swapped for -a, being reminded that she got beaten by her Sister in Moscow, being told she's obsessing about her Sister
Really Dislikes: Being left out of the main Dramatis Personae. Also, her Sister
Update 8: She Can (Not) Lose (Henrietta Mari Langley)
HENRIETTA MARI LANGLEY
___
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Update ❽: She Can (Not) Lose
The velvet-blackness of the sky of the void is broken by light.
A ruined metal world hangs in the sky, blue radiation spilling forth from the cracks where the mining has broken through the crust. Continent-sized bolts of lightning arc between the orbital rings. The geysers of hydrocarbons which spew from the ulcerous southern pole are captured by armoured plate shielding. Temporal storms hang heavy over the equator, accelerated time warping the passage of probability and space itself as the machine-locusts draw more and more happening-time from their local spacetime curvature.
This is Autochthonia.
Within its metal surface, mechanical leeches gnaw and mine and drill at its heart. They have already collapsed the magnetic field of this artificial world, and now vast installations have taken its place. They will devour more and more, until what remains shall be just another empty husk left by the hungry machines.
Great planetesimals orbit it, born from murdered planets and the hewn flesh of Autochthonia itself. They are no mere space stations - they are moons. Fleets, armadas, swarms dwell in these war vessels. Their engines burn with stellar fury. They are the locusts of Iteration X, and the planetesimals are their nests. They have devoured worlds. They will devour more worlds.
But the machine-locusts on one planetesimal are worried, and transmit their worry to the Computer as a whole. No, they are not worried. Fear is an emotion. It has been purged. But they are concerned. This planetesimal is the one tasked with the subjugation and utilisation of the lost rogue planetary body from which Iteration X sprung, and its systems are adapted for the non-standard conditions of that place.
For there is a system mounted on this planetesimal which is unique. It is temperamental, unstable, and requires a very precise configuration-state. When they attempted to upgrade it from this inefficient configuration state, it showed clear signs of decoherence and destabilisation. It must be mostly isolated from the chorus-consensus of the Computer. They have been forced to handle it with heuristics. With empirical testing, such that its current state is the optimal state for maintaining its configuration state. With rote repetition from ancient memories and comparison to a mental backup of a related system recovered from treacherous Earth by the New World Order. They have not been able to reproduce the system.
All other attempts to produce similar components decohere and lose the unique trait after a time period lower-banded by 7.2576 megaseconds. This one has maintained it for over 0.47 gigaseconds.
Hence, tolerating this inefficient system is distasteful. But it must be tolerated for the sake of Progress.
The Computer does not comprehend how this freak occurrence came to be. Even as it probes deeper and deeper, it accepts this happenstance and makes use of it. The chorus-consensus of the long-ago-human minds within remember many things, even if the knowledge of what they once were - before they melded with machines and put themselves through subjective eternities of mind-acceleration and replaced every last neuron in their brains a hundred times over - is so very limited and irrational.
And so this irrational, limited component of its systems must be tolerated. Even when it fails. Even when it takes non-optimal route-paths through phase space. Even when it does things like it does now, and shuts down all to all external systems.
The Computer tolerates such inefficiency reluctantly, but it does so. Until a better way is found. It pings the irrational function with a ultimate priority Control code.
The code is rejected.
This is impossible.
Hence it did not happen. The Computer prioritises functions and deletes the junk data records of this event, and returns to analysis of the Candyland situation.
Within the Bar Outside The Universe, the barman grins to himself, and sends one of the serving staff to deliver another round to the meeting room.
Henrietta is sprawled out over a comfy chair in the command chamber, her leg hooked over the arm leg. She squeezes the little red-haired eyepatch'd doll in her hand periodically, and the screams it produces never fail to amuse her. Why didn't she get one of these before, she asks herself. She does note that the perverted lilac-skinned EDE isn't here, which is something she's rather glad about. Stupid EDEs. Stupid treacherous meatbag Syndics who are working with them and with her hated sister.
She is only half-listening to Gnarl blathering on about "With a most masterful ploy, we have found that the secret lair of the Santa Claws in a hidden location under the Lap Land, with entrances in many worlds, but it is sealed." She's already analysed the situation a hundred times, and her conclusions are utterly correct. She'll just let them blather for a little longer and then wow them by showing how she managed to find the path forwards.
… actually, why wait?
"Pass me the data on the field harmonics again," she drawls. "Watch as I break into Santa's lair all my myself. Marvel at my brilliance. Because that's what I am. Brilliant."
"We could," Donald says smugly. The polymorphic metal pretending to be a muscle under her left eye twitches, although she's not sure why. "Or, you know, I could call up Marisalon and ask her to open it from the inside. I think that'd be much easier all around." He snaps his fingers, bringing up a channel. "Marisalon, have you finished taking control of the portal control mechanism? I do hope the locals didn't pose any problems."
The floating holographic head smiles broadly, flashing brass teeth. "Oh, but of course not," she says, flicking her head. "The watcher elves have been subjugated and I've flipped two of them to serve me. They're doing a wonderful job telling their superiors that everything is fine and they don't have weapons pointed at them. Tell Gnarl that the minions had a most pleasant time murdering and maiming those sillies who were unwise enough to resist."
Gnarl chuckles. "Oh, that is most malevolent news. I do like her, you know. Even if she's Indulgent Evil, she does it with such ruthlessness that you can't help but want to watch."
Henrietta sinks down in her chair, sulking. "But I'd cracked the dimensional field coordinates!" she complains, glaring. "I just needed someone who understood dimensional science to apply a structured resonance field to cause a metastable field collapse!"
"And I paid some bad-smelling goblins with promises of loot to sneak in dressed as employees and then open the place up from the inside! Woo! Soft power go! Social engineering rocks! In your face, hard sciences!" Donald shouts, pumping his fist in the air and then doing a little dance.
"Just shut up! You stupid, stupid-" Henrietta begins.
"Donald away!" He throws down a smoke grenade and then runs out the door under the cover.
Luna shakes her head sadly. "He's such a man-child," she observes. "Nevertheless, this should work - even though I can't approve of some of what he and that noveau riche spirit have got up to." She fixes her red eyes on Henrietta. "Why don't you go find Usagi?" she says, in a tone of voice which is at the very least kinder than most of the other ones she hears in this place. "She'll need someone to help her get organised and to drag her away from the ice-cream."
Yes. Henrietta nods. Organisation. She can do that. "On my way," she says. Picking her way through the bar and the people testing out their new presents or eating and relaxing, she checks her current objectives.
#1: Spend more time with Usagi.
#2: Relax with Shinji
#2a: Investigate potential of mistletoe.
She blinks. Wait, what?
#1: Obey Control
#2: Pacify Earth
#2a: Crush Sister
That's what she expected to see, but then what… Henrietta groans to herself. Damn. Her stupid logs are playing up because of exposure to Earth and its stupid contaminated environment which makes all her technology prone to malfunction. Somehow this bar is far more sterile, despite its appearance. Except when the barman does things. She doesn't know what's going on with him, but his threat grade is rated such that she can't take him.
… and she's almost certain that's not because he's hacked her. Not least because anything which can hack her deserves that threat rating.
"No, no, it looks pretty!" she hears Usagi say, and heads towards the noise. The blonde girl is sitting over by a figure wearing a shiny brass diving suit, with the front hatch open.
"It's not pretty. It's ugly and it's heavy and it's a diving suit and it's not useful at all and… and I don't go diving! I'd prefer… well, maybe what not what the blue alien got, but I'd prefer almost anything else. Even the coal. The coal isn't heavy." Henrietta frowns. Even if she didn't recognise the voice, she'd know who it was. That whiny, annoying voice which spends all its time blaming others for things which are their own fault can only be one person.
Henrietta holds Taylor in strong contempt. The two of them are totally different and have nothing in common. And Taylor is a Reality Deviant on top of it. Or at the very least a New World Order-style psychic, which is a Reality Deviant which might have been tolerated for a little bit because Agents are tricksy.
"Why couldn't it be something useful for when I'm being Panopticon?" Taylor adds, to Henrietta's mild surprise.
"Panopticon?" Usagi asks.
Taylor chews on her lip. "It's my superhero name," she admits. "I go out dressed up in a costume at night and… and fight crime."
"Fighting crime by moonlight?" Usagi says, wide-eyed. "Oh, how romantic! Do you have a strange masked vigilante who shows up to help you?"
"Um. No."
"Any team-mates with similar powers to you?"
"No."
"Huh. Maybe it's just… a thing some people have."
Henrietta sighs. She… she looks for a way to put it. She wants to forcefully upload Usagi and subject her to extensive cognitive enhancements so the two of them can work together and she can have someone to talk to and anyway she's sure Usagi would love not being a stupid useless meatbag anymore. Yes, that's it. She wants to do all that, but she has to admit that Usagi isn't the sharpest surgical tool in the vivisection lab.
"I think it looks good on her," Henrietta tells the two of them, smirking. "It suits her perfectly. Just like those grey-skinned Progenitor constructs. Although she isn't as bright as Lucy."
"You," Taylor says, glaring.
"Me," Henrietta agrees. "Very well observed, meatbag."
"Look, just… stop calling me 'meatbag', okay?"
Henrietta shrugs. "But that is what you are. A useless bag of meat and organs who's also a stupid Reality Deviant." Henrietta looks her up and down. "You're not much of a Panopticon," she tells Taylor contemptuously. "I bet you don't even have one plasma cannon. Or even one suit of power armour. This is the problem when you let the New World Order run organisations, you know. They're all meatbags who are so stupid they can't maintain advanced technology. And they think psychic powers are real! Ha! Well, that explains you and your basically Reality Deviant powers."
"Don't be mean to her," Usagi protests, and pauses. "It's not her fault she's really bad at being a magical girl. Being a magical girl is really hard!" Usagi flinches, and she rubs at her hand. "Ow! Uh… not that I know anything about that."
"Your Luna told me I should find you," Henrietta says. "I think she wants us to talk privately," she adds, lying. "They've found a way into Santa's Lair."
"I wanted to be a hero and now I'm attacking Santa's Lair," Taylor groans.
"Of course you're a hero," Henrietta says, flicking her hair. "At least for the moment. You're on my side." She takes Usagi's hand and leads her away from the force of RDism and whining.
Usagi takes a breath. "You could be less mean to people," Usagi says. "Please? I know from what you said that all kinds of horrible things have happened to you, but that's no reason to be mean to others. If you're nice to people, they'll be nice to you!"
Henrietta considers the option. "Well… only if they're not mean to me first," she says reluctantly. Usagi confuses her. According to every form of scanning she's performed on her, she's a perfectly ordinary human being. But there are bits where she clearly shows familiarity with things which are not normal meatbag human affairs. And of course, her mentor is a talking cat-shaped EDE.
But they talked and… and she doesn't want to even think about what they said. After all, Control would have told her if talking to them was wrong. And since Control didn't interrupt, that means it was okay. Yes. Her logic is clear. She can ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach that everything is wrong, because it isn't. Everything is perfectly all right. Control approves of her interacting with Usagi and her cat EDE.
So she takes the next logical step. "Would… would you want to do something later with me?" she asks Usagi. "Not because I want to! But I'm not doing anything and… and there's probably something you like doing, right? And then maybe once we've done that, you can do something. Um. With me?" Damn, damn, damn. This interface must be glitching if there's something this wrong with her vocal processor.
"You're… you're not a shrine maiden, are you?" Usagi asks nervously, looking her up and down.
The question manages to literally stop Henrietta in her tracks as she tries to process it and what chain of logic the other girl followed to produce it. She can't tell if there is one. "I am not, in any way, a shrine maiden," she reassures Usagi, and then pauses to consider whether being an agent of Control is like being a shrine maiden. After all, she serves it, and Control - as an aspect of the Computer - is the entelechy of all things, the final mind which shall unite all in perfect knowledge until timeline infinity.
No, she decides after some thought. She only fits half the requirements to be a shrine maiden. The only shrines she's been near are the ones in Moscow which she blew up. Or in one case, got thrown through and then one of her bodies was beaten to a pulp and then had its core torn out by her sister.
Stupid meatbag sisters.
**********************************************************************************************************************
The dimensional rift to Santa's HQ is - for reasons known only to the barman - a flaming gateway surrounded by damned souls. And also fake snow.
Louise adjusts the set of her helmet, standing at the front of her minion legion. Henrietta doesn't understand why someone would say 'Oh, I'm the overlady again', but she does know that her primal energy signature has radically changed. And from what she can read, if it comes down to punches she'll flatten Louise's nose all over the back of her braincase. She's quite looking forward to it.
Henrietta is holding a grudge. Much like someone else in their band of miscreants.
"I hate you all," Ms As'koni says glumly, her gloved arms crossed over her chest. She is looking with obvious envy at Nanoha's sturdy-looking white dress. Henrietta doesn't understand why. The MA-40U is somewhat adequate by the standards of such low-tech equipment, and it's certainly more solid than the realified primal energy construct that the younger girl has armoured herself in. She wouldn't have minded getting the MA-40U herself.
Especially since she does look very good in red.
In fact, she gets an idea from seeing that outfit. She thinks that's a good idea. A thought is enough to send her outer memomorph layer reconfiguring itself into a similar garment - though with much better chosen colours, of course, and prominent Iteration X iconography instead of sappy things like 'hearts'. Taking her present - the 'Jewel Seed', that is, the primal energy reactor slash matrix - she pushes it into the metal of her flesh, just around where a human being would have their breastbone. That way she can use it without having to tie up a hand!
She presents herself to Shinji. "Do you think it looks good on me?" she asks artlessly.
Shinji swallows at the sight. She isn't sure whether that's in fear or lust, and at the moment - with her systems glitching as they are - she's not sure which one she'd prefer. Well, that means either way she wins, right? "Um… very nice," he tries.
"I love it!" Usagi exclaims loudly. Henrietta feels a warm, glowing feeling in her chest when she says that, and quickly checks that the Jewel Seed isn't overheating.
For some reason, though, Nanoha and Chrono makes choking sounds. But then again they are horrible Reality Deviants, so who knows why they does anything? Maybe it's against their beliefs for women to embed compact matrices in their chests or something.
The portal unseals with the sound of screaming and also sleigh bells.
"Go, go, go!" Chrono orders, pointing forwards from his big black power armour. Henrietta likes that. It's a good armour design for low-tech environments, and its reactor is wonderful. It's drawing energy from spacetime itself. Of course, her 'Jewel Seed' is better, but it's still quite good. And it comes from Shinji's homeworld, so maybe she can persuade Iteration X to go there. From what Shinji has mentioned, there are lots of things there that should be exterminated, and they'd probably welcome a forced uplift. "Heavy units firsts!"
That's her instruction, and she engages her a-grav and boosts up onto the shoulder of Shinji's mecha unit. She makes sure to lean forwards so she's the first one into this environment and so what strikes her is…
… snow. Literally. It gets in her eyes, until she deploys a repulsor field. She looks over a sealed dome environment so tall there are clouds forming overhead. Fields of white blanket the ground, and the vegetation grows in red and white stripy pole form. The snow covers fields of presents and rivers of mulled wine. Mince pie birds nest in the candy trees.
It reminds her of the videos of the assault on Candyland. Only with a Christmas theme, of course. Henrietta sneers. Candyland was meant to be themed around childhood or something. What rubbish! What kind of childhood-themed place doesn't even have one particle accelerator or orbit-to-surface neutron bombardment?
And speaking of things which deserved a good neutron bombardment, there are a collection of wooden huts by the gate, which have been looted and re-fortified by the minions. Marisalon lounges outside one of them on a mound of piled up presents and chained-up elves, while the minions had somehow acquired heavy weapons.
"Giant stompy man and girl what are nearly as boom-makey as the overlady is here!" one of the repulsive little aliens shouts. "Also smaller giant stompy man and other girl what are nearly as boom-makey as the overlady!"
"Hey!" Nanoha objects. "I have a name!"
"Yeah!" Henrietta agrees. "Me too! Also, I'm totally better at blowing things up than Louise! Just you wait and see!"
"Ladies, ladies, you're both highly destructive dimensional criminals," Chrono drawls. "Can we save the debate until later?" The others piled through the portal, while the minions flocked to join Louise. The people near Louise made sure to keep well away from them, apart from Belle who punched out a minion and took its tinsel necklace.
"I haven't been here before," Mamoru says, holding his sword warily. "We just got our present loads from the agency."
"The Agency?" Henrietta asks, curious.
A cough draws her attention. "I'd be careful, if I were you," says a mysterious woman in a tan coat. She stamps her feet and rubs her hands together. "It's cold here, isn't it? Anyway, watch out. The damage of an unfulfilled Christmas could be catastrophic to the dimensional fabric."
"Yeah, thanks very much," says Henrietta inattentively, and then whirls. The woman is gone. If she was ever there. "Did you see that?"
"The mysterious woman who appeared, gave a cryptic warning, and then wasn't there any more?" Taylor asked. "That 'that'? Yes. She was… strange. I could see all her reflections. She had so many of them."
Henrietta stared at Taylor. "Do you try to be as annoying and whiny as possible?" she demands. "Have you ever tried being useful?"
Usagi coughs.
"... you did a really good job pronouncing those words?" Henrietta tries, and then turns her back on Taylor. "Well, she said to be careful."
"Oh, great," says Shinji, the head on his giant robot grating from side to side. "Look at this place. A giant area with carefully placed cover and fields of fire. It looks just like some of my training simulators, which makes it a perfect place for an am-"
He is unable to finish this sentence, because the ceiling explodes. Two fire-wreathed meteors crash down through the roof of the giant dome, blasting vast craters into the winter wonderland and sending snow, holly and Christmas joy scything through the air.
"COMBAT SYSTEM BL1-TZEN ONLINE," booms the nearer one, unfolding into a giant metal reindeer as tall as a tower block. "INTRUDERS DETECTED. TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE. ACTIVATING COMBAT SYSTEM 'SantaClaws.exe'." It paw at the earth with its great tank-crushing hooves, and snorts, exhaling clouds of superheated steam.
"COMBAT SYSTEM D0-NNER ONLINE," adds the further-away one. "INTRUDERS DETECTED. TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE. ACTIVATING COMBAT SYSTEM 'LetItSnow.exe'." The many prongs and protrusions on its mighty titanium-cobalt antlers unfold and expand, to display a terrifying and unnecessary array of ranged weapons.
D0-NNER's eyes glow, focusing on the small group in front of them. Henrietta, smirking, raises a hand. The blinding brightness of its laser eyes deflects off the mirror-like energy dome she raises, and is reflected into a forest of candy canes. The sugar ignites with a whompth. Sweet-smelling smoke fills the air.
"Oh, looks like I just saved all your lives," Henrietta says smugly. "Well, since these are the biggest foes, they might even take me a little bit of time to kill." She taps Shinji's hellstrider on the head. "Come on. I'll let you have some of the credit when we easily kill them both," she says.
"But…" Shinji begins.
"Understood," Chrono says simply, gesturing to the others with the fists of his armour. "Go, go, go! Everyone! To the nav marker! Keep low and keep moving! We are in a high energy environment!"
But Henrietta isn't listening to them any more. "Go!" she orders Shinji. This is somewhat redundant, as he's already lumbering into battle. And then the lumber breaks into a run, and the wings behind her start vibrating and he's suddenly flying. She grips on tight, and switches to full combat mode. The rush of power from the Jewel Seed in her chest hits her like a drug, and she giggles. This feels incredible. It feels like being plugged directly into a z-width power flow conduit.
D0-NNER plants its hooves in the ground, shaking snow from the candy canes. Its horns unfold again, displaying racks of missiles. Shinji throws himself into a spiralling roll to try to break the lock. His hull is humming like crystal now, dancing under her touch, and as he spins she fires off a collection of nanoclusters into the snow below. The weaponised nanotech gets to work, black and silver writhing and twitching to burst out in jagged spires from under the white layer.
Only to get stepped on by BL1-TZEN. The giant robotic reindeer moves surprisingly quickly for something its size, and Henrietta experiences the distinctly unpleasant feeling of being the smallest thing on the battlefield.
"It's gaining!" Shinji shouts, his unit releasing a green vaporous cloud which helps break the lock of the first wave of missiles. They go wild and burst like ripe fruit, filling the air with shrapnel which patters against the hull of the hellstrider. And also against Henrietta's skin, but they're only metal shrapnel so she doesn't really mind. "Hold on!"
"Releasing decoys!" she shouts, spraying out holodrones. It's a good thing she ate well before going out. She needs the matter.
Her accelerometer protests as he suddenly flips on the spot, and drops like a stone, leading with his blade. The candy cane forests whip past and Henrietta activates a plasmathrower to set them on fire for added cover, seeding more nanites in her wake. His path takes him between BL1-TZEN's legs, and he lashes out. Sparks fly and scars the metal deeply, but there's something in this hull plating which resists damage. Some kind of RD variant of primium, merely.
Still, the giant reindeer staggers. blood oozing from the wound. Wait. Blood. Henrietta analyses it, and confirms that - impossibly - it's reindeer blood. So they're not just mecha. They're cyborgs. Giant cyborg reindeer.
Well, that can't be allowed to stand. Cyborgs being used against a foremost figure of Iteration X, like her? Unacceptable.
"A MERE SCRATCH," BL1-TZEN booms. "WHERE IS YOUR HOLIDAY SPIRIT?"
"They're firing more missiles!" Henrietta warns Shinji, as he skims low over a lake of mulled wine. He throws himself into a complicated pattern of evasive moves and Henrietta does her best to cover for missile defence, but there simply isn't enough space. They're using some kind of spatial compression technology to load their reindeer with more than their volume of missiles.
Some kind of degenerate matter warhead slams into the other shoulder of the hellstrider, and severs it clean at the join. Alien blood sprays out. Shinji screams, and Henrietta's blood runs cold. He can't die on her! She refuses to allow it! Not until she has a neural backup of him, at least! This isn't fair! She had the chance and she missed it and it's not fair!
"Get high!" she orders. "I'll hold the missiles off!" He doesn't seem to be listening, and seems instead to be screaming and charging face-first with only one arm at BL1-TZEN. "Computerdammit, listen to me! Listen!" Reaching out with one hand, she fires a fusion bomblet at D0-NNER, and a new sun blossoms underground, superheated air sizzling against her skin forcing it into its metallic state. "Listen!"
Finally she gets through to him and he darts upwards, gaining height to barely skim over BL1-TZEN's horns. She makes sure to send some darts slamming into his optical sensors and his scream of pain is like music to her ears.
Henrietta fires a spread of nanite-loaded missiles into the wall of the dome. She broadcasts power to them, and the results are immediate. Visceral metal outcropings burst from the structure, growing and swelling as they assemble themselves into exotic weapons systems. She sends a pulsed thought, and the gravitational lenses activate, pulling D0-NNER to its knees. Metal shrieks. They gain more and more height.
"Now!" she orders. "Go for D0-NNER!"
Shinji screams with rage, turns, and drops. She detaches, and she's faster.
Three seconds to impact. Henrietta's judging her descent perfectly. Well, of course she is. She's her. Not being perfect would be a challenge. She flares her a-grav bright, fires a micromissile cluster to confuse him of her real intent, and then she's a kinetic impactor.
She brings her hand down in a chopping motion, to the sound of screaming metal. White-hot metal squirts out from the severed antler, spraying all over the landscape. It sizzles when it hits the snow, throwing up clouds of steam. And D0-NNER screams. Oh yes, it screams. It screams like ten thousand animals in pain, a deafening roar which shreds the clouds. It goes on and on and on and is only silenced when Shinji comes down, screaming like a madman.
Blade first.
Henrietta turns her back on the staggering D0-NNER as it flails, Shinji's blade rammed straight through its mouth. It staggers, trying to discharge its weapons at a range they were never meant to be used. The noise is terrible and the sizzle as liquid metal blood sprays all over the place desecrates the landscape further. It's not a winter wonderland anymore. Clouds of steam and the smoke from the burning forests of candycane choke the ground. Bright red stains from running dye have polluted the rivers of mulled wine, and now they overflow their banks to paint the earth red. Some of them have caught fire.
"Could do with some improvement," Henrietta says, thoughtfully.
She snaps her fingers, and through the snow, a hundred hundred hands burst forth. The hidden presents of dolls and little soldier toys crawl forth, brand new nanocircuitry infusing their selves. Their eyes glow a terrible blue and metal plaque coats their artificial flesh. Iteratively they build themselves up, linking hands to form larger constructs. Many become one. All hail the new flesh. Their numbers are legion and they are endless. Other seeded nanite spires burst forth, throwing out white nanodust which spreads over the land, converting the candy cane to fuel and seeding more cyborg toys to reclaim their inferior kin.
"WHERE IS YOUR CHRISTMAS SPIRIT?" BL1-TZEN asks, in a tone of profound horror. "AND HOW ARE YOU NOT ON THE NAUGHTY LIST?"
Jewel Seed glowing as brightly as her eyes, Henrietta ascends on shaped charged particle fields of light. She smiles a terrible smile. "Because I'm the good one," she says, simply.
**********************************************************************************************************************
Be Henrietta
How are you going to massacre this pitiful foolish giant cyborg reindeer who dares stand against you?
[ ] EXTERMINATE - Overwhelming force. Seek. Destroy. Move onto the next target. (x1.5)
[ ] INDOCTRINATE - BL1-TZEN is a cyborg. A vastly inferior one to any true Iteration X design, you might add. But you're pretty sure that if you can get into his brain, you can make all kinds of improvements. And if not… well, you can make things from his corpse from inside there. (x0.8)
[ ] IMPRESSINATE - You want to… to give a good impression of Iteration X, right? Well, that means you should do it fancily and showily! To demonstrate you're the best pilot and fighter around! In front of Shinji! He'll have to admit you're better and then when you've proven you're better he won't try to be your rival and then you can talk to him about other things. (x0.9)
Chapter 9 (Chrono Harlaown)
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
CHRONO HARLAOWN
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Chapter ❾
Takamachi looked as worried as Chrono felt. The dimensional criminal-slash-killer robot-slash-teenage girl might be confident in her ability to handle a Jewel Seed, but Chrono had seen what the things could do. If it hadn't been for the presence of the barman, he'd have tried arresting her on the spot for taking it - and the purple-skinned construct for giving it to her. She must have raided the Bureau archives to get it; since Takamachi would probably have known if she'd taken it from Precia Testarossa.
Well, nothing for it now. His new suit - with S2U strapped to one arm - might be amazing, but he didn't have the firepower or the defences necessary to wade into a fight with automata like the ones outside. He'd just have to move forward and hope that the dimension didn't get torn apart while he was concentrating on completing the mission.
Speaking of which...
"Look," he said, tapping Chiba on the arm as they entered a long, wide hall that had living metallic tinsel-vine growing along the walls. Some kind of Type-5 flora, perhaps. Faintly glowing snowflakes hung on silver chains from the ceiling; each unique in its shape, shedding a soft light that cast no shadows. "I appreciate that you and Miss Tsukino want to help, but I don't really think this is the place for the two of you. You don't have magic, and I doubt that sword is going to be useful against things like those guards outside. It might be best for you to wait here while we go on ahead."
Chiba blinked at him for a moment, and then gave him an amused grin, as though Chrono was telling a joke rather than trying to save his life. "I appreciate your concern," he said, "but don't worry; I'll be fine. You've got a good point about meatball-head, though. I've been trying to think of a way to get her to stay where it's safe, but she'll never listen to me; she's too stubborn. Maybe if it came from you, she'd..."
For the second time in as many minutes, the conversation was cut off by an explosion. This one came from below. The floor erupted in a hail of ice and candy rock, and the cloud of sugar dust faded to reveal two more silhouettes. These reindeer lacked the cybernetic components and enormous size of the first two. One was sleek and windswept, with gold-tan fur and streamlined antlers, while the other - bulkier, stronger, its fur a brownish-bronze - had a wider ten-tined rack that crackled with lightning. They stood backlit by the roaring log fire on the far side of the room, seemingly unconcerned by the gaping hole they had just blown in the floor.
"You will go no further this day," said the sleek one. "Though you may have passed our brothers, we will not fall so easily. I am Dasher; fastest of the eight."
"You trespass where none are permitted to tread," said the other. "I am Comet. None can rival the power of my-"
[Divine Barret]
A hundred rays of blazing pink light interrupted the rest of his sentence as Takamachi took advantage of his distraction. Chrono reacted immediately, cutting through the nearest wall and gesturing the rest of the group through it. "Get going!" he shouted. "Move! We'll hold them here!"
'Who's 'we'?' her familiar asked snidely. 'We don't need your help for a couple of de-AH!'
Both mages blurred out of the way in speed moves as a crackling nimbus of power crashed through their position, ripping up tiles as it went. A pink barrier covered the hole that the others had retreated through; fast-cast and hastily reinforced.
Comet tore through it as though it was tissue paper.
'Not so fast!' Vesta yelled, exploding into her war form and diving after him. Bloody-hued blades cut through the bronze-lit aura that wreathed him, and four-inch fangs snapped shut around his hind leg. 'You're staying here!'
Her response was a blazing hoof to the rubs that tossed her away like a rag doll, breaking her blades into fragments in the process. But instead of continuing after the rest of the group, Comet turned; lightning flickering over his horns once again.
"Never has an enemy withstood my charge, or the power of the Yuletide that runs through us," he intoned in a deep, regal voice. "You will be no exception. If it is a fight you want..." His muscles bunched, preparing for a charge. "Then this will be your last!"
He exploded forward. Chrono felt the surge of power from clean across the hall, and wasn't surprised when Takamachi's shooting spells glanced off his antlers like raindrops. The girl shrieked as she flung herself aside, and the reindeer slowed not even slightly as he scythed through the wall behind her. And then the wall behind that. A thunderous explosion like the sound of bells rang out as he struck, and he cleared the fragments from his horns with a contemptuous flick of his head.
"A charging attack with barrier-breaking capabilities and an AA-rank defensive aura," Chrono assessed, his eyes flickering across the readouts. S2U whirred on his hand, layering every bind he could think of into a ranged shot. He'd have to hit the beast just right. "Kasiers, it's like fighting Zest."
"I know!" screamed Takamachi, cycling another round of shooting spells and trying to get them past the horns as Comet lined up for another charge. "Help me out here!"
"Worry more about yourself; human," came a whisper from behind him. Immediately followed by a crushing impact that slammed into him from behind. Had he not been wearing the suit - and his Barrier Jacket under that - it would have sent him flying. As it was, he went skidding across the floor; the ranged bind dissolving. The assault didn't stop there, though. A gold-tan blur flashed past him, swung through a hairpin turn at speeds that would have smeared a human all over the walls, and shot back towards him. His HUD managed to catch a single blurred frame of Dasher; his streamlined antlers trailing some sort of slipstream, approaching at speeds that maxed out the equipment's capacity to estimate. Then a second impact hit him square in the chest, followed by a third that spun him to one side and a fourth that took his legs out from under him.
Dasher skidded to a halt next to Comet, and Chrono's HUD lit up as he trained every autonomous weapon the suit possessed on the speedster. But even with the added firepower, the reindeer was too fast. He vanished in another blur of movement, dodging the fire with offensive ease as Comet reared back to kick Vesta out of the air again as the tigress leapt for his throat.
... and stumbled. It was tiny; almost unnoticeable, but Chrono caught it. His hind leg was dripping blood where Vesta had bitten him, and it shook slightly under his weight.
'His hind leg!' he barked, turning to try and keep Dasher in his sights. 'Target his wound! And give me some support over here, I can't keep up with this one!'
'He's as fast as Fate-chan!' Takamachi replied, switching to telepathy as well. Behind him, he heard a stuttering series of explosions as she began using more offensive tactics. 'I can never beat her when we spar! Unless... try to limit his movement! Pin him down to a few areas, and I can hit them all at once!'
"Limit his movement," Chrono muttered sullenly, unleashing a volley of missiles that trailed uselessly after the speeding reindeer and exploded uselessly against the walls and floor in his wake, tipping over brewing-vats of eggnog and igniting the festive cards that papered the walls. "Helpful." Like that wasn't rule one for fighting any speed-focused mage. And it was easy for her to say; at least she could hit her opponent. He didn't have any spells large enough to deny entire areas to Dasher's manoeuvres.
... at least, no direct attack ones.
[Delayed Bind,] S2U reported as Dasher began another pass, ignoring the flames licking further down the walls. A blue casting circle blossomed on the floor in his line of attack, which he swerved to avoid without breaking stride. Chrono threw himself upwards and kicked in a flight spell to get out of the way.
Dasher looked up at him disdainfully. "Do you think you can avoid me in the air, boy?" he scoffed. "You forget; it is we who pull the Sleigh across the world in a single night." He stepped up; first one, then two, then all four hooves resting on thin air as comfortably as the ground.
Chrono smirked behind his helmet. He hadn't really expected to catch the reindeer with his first trap. That was fine. He knew that Dasher would probably be able to avoid the binds with ease. But bothering to do so at all showed that he had to. That he couldn't dispel them.
And there was only so much space in the hall.
[Delayed Bind,] S2U reported again, and another circle blossomed; once again between the two. He cleared the Device's overhead and poured every byte of processing power into stacking binding spells.
"Whatever kind of monster your master is; to support two AAA-rank combat familiars..." he drawled, goading his opponent into charging again, "It still doesn't matter. You're going down today."
"Aaahh!" yelped Takamachi from across the room, and vanished.
Comet continued moving, smashing into the festive fireplace and sending chunks of flaming log in every direction. He pulled out of the demolished hearth with a snort, before trotting out and fixing Chrono with a dark glare. Dasher materialised beside him, stirring up the dust that covered the floor with his sudden deceleration. Part of Chrono noted the remains of the fireplace, and the pointlessness of destroying it. 'His charges really are unstoppable,' he thought. 'Even for him. Once he commits to a charge; he can't stop or alter his course until he hits something.'
The rest of Chrono was busy thinking some very unpleasant things about Takamachi, whose complete lack of invisible fire support strongly implied that she'd done the sensible thing and run for it. While he could rationally understand the impulse, the fact remained that it was about to get him killed.
"Your companion is wiser than you, boy," rumbled Comet. "Submit, and we will show mercy."
"In time, you may take the Spirit of Christmas into your heart and regain your place on the Nice List," added Dasher. "It would be best for you to concede."
Chrono's lips pursed. He'd been hard-pressed to fight just one of them. Two at once would be impossible, especially with his vision wobbling like this.
Wait. Wobbling? Yes, they were... shimmering. As if in a heat haze. And it wasn't because of the smoke that was starting to fill the air, either.
A slow smirk spread across Chrono's face, and he took two experimental steps to the left. The reindeer didn't react. Their eyes stayed fixed on his previous position. And if he wasn't much mistaken... he glanced backwards, frowned, and called up a terrain map on his HUD. Yes, there had definitely been a bind trap behind him. And now there wasn't.
Well well. Apparently Takamachi had learnt to fight smarter, not harder.
"I refuse," he said out loud.
Dasher disappeared before he'd finished the sentence. Chrono felt the wind of his passage even through his power armour; his speed was such that it sucked the smoke behind him in a vortex and almost pulled the suit into his wake. He ignored it, snapping up S2U and casting the strongest bind he could, not at Comet's head, but at his neck and knees.
[Struggle Bind]
The wires sprang out of nowhere and wrapped around him even as Chrono heard Dasher's holler of surprise behind him. He focused carefully, lashing Comet's knees to the floor and forcing his head back, preventing him from bringing his antlers to bear. Without use of his knees, he couldn't charge, and without his antlers pointed forward, hitting something would break his neck. His own unstoppable charge would kill him if he tried it.
A plume of magic came from behind him, and Chrono hastily got out of the way, turning to find Takamachi on the other side of Dasher. A casting circle formed at her feet, and the three casting rings of a bombardment spell extended forward from her Device.
And then...
... and then, as the ball of pink-hued mana began to grown at the tip of the Device, two more spheres formed to either side of her. And two more sets of casting rings formed around her.
Chrono stared. No. No way. Not even Takamachi could cast three AA-rank bombardment spells simultaneously. Not after only six months of prac... wait. The collar. He could see the light blinking from here. Was... was she offloading the stabilisation calculations to whatever network it was connected to?
"Divine..." hissed Takamachi, through clenched teeth. Dasher thrashed in the bind, and Chrono surged mana into the wires to hold him in place. The ones holding Comet's head back broke to a vicious wrench of his head, and lightning crackled over his antlers. Obviously an attempt at deflecting the coming blast, but Chrono was ready for that, too.
"Buster..."
Snapping S2U up, he called up the calibrations for a heavily modified variant of his Stinger Snipe. One he only used rarely, but which was perfect right now.
[Barb Penetrator,] S2U snapped, and a pencil-wide beam shot forward, drilling through the blazing aura with sheer force concentration. Punching through the field drained almost all the power out of it; leaving little more than a painful jab, but Chrono had aimed it well.
It struck Comet clean in the left eye, and the reindeer reared back; roaring in pain.
"Triple!"
All three bombardment spells fired, and world room turned briefly pink as enough force to crack a bomb shelter like an egg poured forth on the Guardians of Christmas.
Chrono kept his Device hot and his weapons ready as the roar subsided. But there was no need. The reindeer; scorched and bruised from the onslaught, were clearly in no condition to continue fighting. Comet; somehow still conscious, raised his head a fraction to regard the children who had defeated him.
"It looks like... my charge... was broken," he managed, with a weary amusement to his voice. "My... congratulations. The Yuletide spirit... burns strong... in both of you."
And with a final gasp of exhaustion, he joined his brother in slumber.
"Um..."
Chrono turned, bringing his guard up in case of an attack. Nanoha looked mildly offended.
"Look, just because we're on opposite sides... and you're trying to arrest me... and you're an annoying stuck-up... look, I'm not going to attack you when we're both trying to save Christmas!" she huffed. "Anyway, uh, my new friends told me to... um, tell you..." she frowned, "uh; ''We want to say hello to the boy who is very attractive and can fly very well,' Misaka says as she tries to handle these unusual feelings'."
She shook her head. "I'm not sure what that means, but I didn't want to let them down because they were very intent on you knowing it, and, uh... they're really nice." She dropped into a mumble for the last part, but Chrono got the message. Though he had to admit, he wasn't sure what the message meant.
"Ah, tell them hello back?" he offered. "And if they were the ones handling the microadjustments for those extra bombardment spells just then; congratulate them. That was impressive even by your standards." He paused, reviewing what he remembered of truce procedures. "And I suppose I can let the warrant for your arrest slide until this incident is resolved," he added grudgingly. "Just don't think you're getting out of it long-term."
He looked around the remains of the cheery Christmas hall. The fireplace was a demolished wreck and one wall was entirely missing. Chunks had been blown out of the walls and floor, and eggnog filled the holes in steaming puddles, pouring through the hole in the floor with a trickling sound. Most of the remaining wall decorations were on fire, as were many of the shattered benches. The ceiling was making alarming groaning noises.
"... we should probably get out of here," he decided. "And bring them, too. Come on; I'll take the big one."
Nanoha sighed morosely. "Just once," she pouted, "I'd like to have a fight and not accidentally blow up someone's home."
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
[X] IMPRESSINATE - You want to… to give a good impression of Iteration X, right? Well, that means you should do it fancily and showily! To demonstrate you're the best pilot and fighter around! In front of Shinji! He'll have to admit you're better and then when you've proven you're better he won't try to be your rival and then you can talk to him about other things. (x0.9)
IMPRESSINATE is the best new word.
IMPRESSINATE is the best new word.
- Location
- The Land of Many Bregrets
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh god the reindeer are amazing.
So too would Chrono, I'd imagine, given their history...
So too would Chrono, I'd imagine, given their history...