Power Games (Nanoha fanfic)

[Aleph]

A little late, because this ended up less of an "Epilogue" and more of a "full chapter". To which my only response is "whoops".

Power Games
True Epilogue​

1 day after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

"… fine." Testarossa's expression clearly stated it wasn't, but she didn't push it any further. "But we need to go. Before more of the TSAB show up."

"Yeah," Nanoha sighed. "Okay. Let's just say goodbye to my family and be off."

"We need to go now-" Testarossa started, but Chrono stopped her from going any further.

"Oh," he said smugly, wearing a smile that edged into nastiness. "I don't think you'll be going anywhere, actually."

Nanoha stared at him, a faint trace of alarm starting to form. Beside her, her familiar let out a low growl and reverted to her kitten form; sliding into her hood. "What do you mea-"

"Pause."

The recording froze on her expression, her exotic UA-97er features creased in the first faint strains of worry. Yuuno gave them a glum look, then glanced away, running his hands through his shaggy blond hair. His assigned room on the Asura was small and poky, and he was pretty sure that in all the panic of the last few days, the cleaning rota wasn't happening properly. His bedsheet was certainly a lot more rumpled and creased than it had been for most of his stay here.

There wasn't much to hold his interest in his quarters. A few Ninety-Sevener trinkets he'd picked up as presents for his family, a half-eaten meal congealing on its plate and a pair of pink hair ribbons. His gaze caught on the last for a moment before sliding back to Nanoha's image like a magnet pointing north.

He sighed, and swiped back to the third marker on the display.

The holographic image blurred for a moment, then resolved into a swirl of violent colours…

"Ow."

Yuuno levered himself off the ground. "Ow," he said again, more to fill the echoing silence than as a genuine expression of pain.

Which wasn't to say that he didn't hurt. Because he did. Everywhere.

"Ow. Ow. Ow."

Yuuno winced in remembrance as he watched. At the time, he hadn't had a clue what had dropped him out of the sky like that, though he'd been told at his initial debriefing it had probably been an AMF pulse as the breach collapsed and the barrier had destabilised. The viewpoint on screen was dizzily swaying as its owner stumbled through the cloud of dust that had been thrown up by the last few impacts, and small wonder.

Since he was expecting it, Yuuno caught the flash of white amidst the rubble slightly before his past self, and bit his lip as the screen jolted and shuddered over to it. He leaned in unconsciously as the viewpoint knelt down towards a prone Nanoha, who groaned and rolled out from the shelter of a concrete pillar. It was tilted at a steep angle, and had a body-shaped splintered dent halfway up. Yuuno was honestly a little surprised, even now, that it had survived the impact. He bit his lip at the state of Nanoha's onscreen Barrier Jacket; torn, charred and covered in dirt and grime.

"Nanoha?" his onscreen counterpart said. "Nanoha! Are you okay?"

"… uuugh," she mumbled, "Wha' hit me?"

"Something broke all our flight spells," Yuuno told her. "You were even higher than I was! How do you feel? Can you stand?"

"Mm hmm." She used him as a handle to pull herself upright, wincing as she levered herself up using her staff. She leaned heavily on him as the ground trembled again. "Are you okay? What's happening?"

"I'm fine," he said, nodding. "I think we won. The Book's Archives are gone, and the Defence creature ran out of magic and stopped working." He smiled faintly. "I guess Miss Yagami had the right idea, getting it out of the Book. It couldn't survive out here, in the end. But the barrier's had it. It's beginning to collapse." He pointed upwards, where the purple sky was becoming brighter and brighter; rips and rents spreading across it. "We have… I dunno. Maybe ten minutes. The TSAB should get us out before that."

Nanoha mirrored his smile. "I'm glad," she said softly. Then she hissed in pain.

"What's wrong?" Yuuno asked, a spike of worry straightening his spine as he helped her into a mostly clear space.

"My hands… it's okay, it's not too bad." She grinned bravely and a little sheepishly. "I guess I just went a little bit over the top with using so much mana there, heh. Oh! Raising Heart, are you okay?"

[Severe damage, my master. Emergency Mode 3: Really Serious Emergency Needs Fixing. Please, I advise against further use.]

"Okay," Nanoha told her Device, collapsing it down to a ruby pendant as Yuuno gave it a worried look. "We won, anyway, so no more fighting needed."

"Let me see those hands," he said, and she dismissed her scorched gloves. Yuuno gasped. Her hands were reddened and blistering, already swelling up. He quickly cast a Physical Heal spell over them; numbing the pain and gently cooling the burns. He was rewarded as she relaxed; a lot of the pain and tension in her face fading away.

"Thank you," she said in relief.

"Pause," Yuuno said, and zoomed the screen in on her hands. With more time to look he was pretty sure they were mostly first degree burns, but there were nastier patches here and there which would need proper treatment if she wanted to keep full use of her hands.

"Be okay, Nanoha," he murmured. "Whatever else you are; be okay."

He took a deep breath. This would be the hard part. He scooted back on his bunk, steeling himself.

"Play."

"Nanoha…" Yuuno started tentatively, and picked up certainty as he went on. "Nanoha, you need to give yourself up."

She blinked at him. Her pupils were a little too small and he could tell she was in pain and trying to hide it. "What?"

"To the TSAB. Look, you're right, you used too much mana in that fight. Way too much! You need a doctor! And… and your family is safe, and you just helped seal the Book of Darkness, so you're sure to get off really lightly, and you can see your family again all the time and… and it's been six months, Nanoha! I've missed you! Come back. Come home."

Nanoha looked at him solemnly. "Yuuno," she whispered. After a moment she looked down, and Yuuno's spirits plummeted.

"I want to," she admitted in a small voice. "I really want to, Yuuno. I… I want to hug mama again for weeks and weeks, and go out shopping with you, and see Alicia and Suzuka again and tell them all about what I've been doing. I want to sleep in my own bed again and eat proper cakes again and I really really want to talk to papa about… some things I realised."

"But you won't," he said heavily.

"But I can't. Yuuno, the TSAB knew. Six months ago they put magic sensors all over the city; ones the Wolkenritter wouldn't have known about! They had to have known! But they didn't do anything!"

"One admiral-"

"Is bad, Yuuno! I believe you when you say the TSAB is mostly good, but there are people in it who do horrible things! High-up, important people! Who… who let the Book run rampant as part of some big plan, or look at an accident and try to get a weapon out of it! Or make little children fight things just to make money off them! I can't be part of that. I don't trust them."

She reached out to take his hand before wincing and thinking better of it. "I don't trust them. But I do trust you. I know you can make things better. Just like… just like I know I can make things better by staying with Fate and Alicia. I want to do what you do, but I just can't. And… and I'm worried about them."

She must have seen something in his expression, because she bit her lip and grimaced. "Not… not just like that, Yuuno. I mean I'm worried about them. Fate… she's been getting better at school, but she still doesn't act or think like Suzuka or Arisa or anyone else! And Alicia… is Alicia. I think they need someone be the normal one around them. You know, like the reasonable one."

"Pause."

Yuuno shut his eyes, and kept them shut for quite some time.

The voice of reason. Worried about them. Because Precia Testarossa was dying, if not already dead, and the clone of her daughter was unstable. That's what the psychological profile the Bureau had built about her had said. He'd seen it; in fact, he'd helped the Bureau analysts build it. Without her mother, she'd be on the verge of a breakdown. And then she'd default to her sister, who was…

… well, Yuuno still remembered what the little girl had looked like next to the huge, warped monster that had been spun from the power of a Jewel Seed.

"Play," he said hoarsely.

"I don't think you do reasonable. You're the most stubborn, unreasonable girl I've ever known." In contrast to the real Yuuno, the voice from the screen had a note of subdued humour to it. Nanoha mock-glared in response, and Yuuno almost choked on bittersweet affection.

"You know what I mean," she said. Leaning forward, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, lingering there for a moment and filling his senses with the smell of sweat and ozone and strawberry shampoo. "I do trust you," she repeated softly. "To help the Bureau from the inside, and to look out for my family if I can't. Keep in touch, okay? I know a bunch of encryption maths now. We won't get caught."

Yuuno hugged her. "I will. I'm… I don't want you to go. I don't want you to leave me behind again." He held up a hand as she started to protest. "But I guess I understand about not trusting the Bureau, even if I think you're wrong. If you ever decide to come in, you know I'll help, right?"

"I know." With two quick gestures, she pulled the pink ribbons from her hair, grimacing as her fingers protested even through the numbing spell. "Here. Keep these." She grinned, obviously on the edge of tears. "I think they'd look great on you!"

He chuckled weakly.

"Yuuno-kun! You're meant to give me your ribbons in return!" She sniffed, wiping her nose on her burnt and tattered sleeve. "Now my hair is going to get in my face!"

"I'll bring you some next time we meet," he said, his own eyes getting watery.

Winding one of the ribbons around his fingers fondly, Yuuno sat back and watched as the onscreen pair were interrupted – first by Nanoha's frantic familiar, then by Testarossa and hers. He had thought Testarossa was going to shoot him until Nanoha had come to his defence.

"Move, Nanoha," she growled onscreen; Device pointed at him. He winced. If that wasn't hatred in her eyes, it was a close runner-up. Testarossa had not forgiven him for sealing her sister, apparently.

"Fate!" Nanoha stared up imploringly, spreading her hands and carefully keeping him behind her. "Yuuno is my friend! He helped us!"

"He shot Alicia!" Testarossa floated gently to the ground and strode forward, though Yuuno could see she was limping.

"You shot me!"

Testarossa blanched and stopped dead in her tracks. Nanoha wasted no time in driving the point home.

"When we first met, you put me in hospital! And I forgave you, remember? Because you thought you were doing the right thing. Well, so did Yuuno. And he's helped us since. So no fighting him. Even if you don't like him, he's a good person and my friend."

"… fine." Testarossa's expression clearly stated it wasn't, but she didn't push it any further. "But we need to go. Before more of the TSAB show up."

"Yeah," Nanoha sighed. "Okay. Let's just say goodbye to my family and be off."

"We need to go now-" Testarossa started, but Chrono stopped her from going any further.

"Oh," he said smugly, wearing a smile that edged into nastiness. "I don't think you'll be going anywhere, actually."

Nanoha stared at him, a faint trace of alarm starting to form. Beside her, her familiar let out a low growl and reverted to her kitten form; sliding into her hood. "What do you mean?"

"Pause."

Yuuno stared once more at the worried look on Nanoha's face. If only that had been it. He could deal with her being upset with him if she hadn't... if she was...

He sighed.

"Play."

"I mean you're not going anywhere," said Chrono. "That wrench as the rift sealed shut finished what you started. The barrier disconnected. We're floating in the Dimensional Sea now."

He lowered Durandal to point at her. "You don't have the coordinates or time to teleport away and the Asura is right outside. They should lock onto us any minute through the turbulence. It's over, Takamachi." His nasty smile faded into a more sincere expression. "Come in. You did well here. The Bureau will treat you fairly." He glanced at Testarossa. "You and your friends," he added.

Nanoha stared at him. She followed his gaze to Testarossa whose eyes were flat and dead, then looked directly at Yuuno. Her hand rose halfway to Raising Heart, then faltered.

"I..." she began, and Yuuno's heart leapt.

Yuuno leaned forward, focusing intently.

And then someone appeared between the two girls. There was no teleport beacon, no warning. Just the sudden presence of a short figure in an anonymised barrier jacket. They were tiny, whoever they were – shorter even than Nanoha or Testarossa's sister. Nanoha's head snapped around to the new figure, and from the look on her face whatever telepathy she heard had stunned her.

"Cryo Bi-" Chrono snapped, but it was too late.

The figure grabbed Nanoha by one sleeve and Testarossa by the other.

And then they were gone.

Drumming his fingers on his knee, Yuuno pulled up another window. It contained a single message; short and to the point. The location of a heavily encrypted dead-drop folder on an out-of-the-way server. Thus far, there were no messages on it. He stared at the blank readout again, willing it to sound a new message alert.

Or... he could always...

... no. No, Nanoha had left. Left with promises to keep in touch this time, yes, but she'd still left again. It was up to her to make the first move.

He swiped back to the third marker with a sigh, giving the empty folder one last longing look.

"Play."

...​

The hospital lights hummed softly overhead.

"'Dear Yuuno'," Nanoha muttered, then frowned. "Urgh, no. Undo typing. Hmm. 'Yuuno,'… no, too stiff. Undo. Um… 'Yuuno-kun, thank you for everything' – ah! No! That sounds like a goodbye! Undo, undo!"

She blew out an irritated sigh and shuffled further up on the pillows. She was, once again, confined to Jail's hospital wing. And her hands were soaking in a weird funky-smelling liquid that Uno had told her was to treat mana burns, where she could flex them but nothing else. As a result, she was having to make do with a voice to text program and telepathic commands to the recorder.

Her hands were prickling again. Nanoha gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it. She was, she decided, thoroughly sick of having her hands paralysed. And Linith apparently had enough ways to do it that she couldn't just-

Linith. The bolt of grief took the wind out of her as she remembered. Again. It kept happening. When her papa had been sick, it had hung over everything she did like a constant fog of worry, but this was worse. She seemed to alternate between being quietly miserable, being caught up in other things and forgetting for a while, remembering and feeling the blow all over again, and then feeling horribly guilty for having forgotten.

"'I miss you,'" she whispered. "'Already. I really miss you, Yuuno. Precia and Linith are... are gone. I… I didn't even get to say goodbye. O-or thank them for… for everything.'" She sniffed. "'W-we're okay, we have a place to stay – I can't tell you where,'" she added. "'But… it hurts so much.'"

"Now then, dear!" Nanoha flinched and looked up, hurriedly minimising the screen with a thought. It was Jail, looking slightly sympathetic but mostly a bit manic. "You're looking upset," he went on. "Don't be too sad, now. You won a great victory today, and life goes on. A great victory, yes." His paternal smile unfolded into an overjoyed grin. "Oh, the data on this Device. These observations! These readings!"

"Mmm," Nanoha said softly, rather lost by his glee.

His strange yellow eyes almost seemed to glow with joy. "It's not just 'Mmm'. Aren't you interested? Why, I should say no better opportunity to study the Book of Darkness has been had in all its years! Live footage of its fully activated state! Recordings from within its code-structure! Marvellous! Oh, and to think of the things that Uno will be able to recover from the TSAB's investigations – but they won't have this, aha! Come on now, give me a smile!"

Nanoha managed to muster a faint twitch of her lips for him. He gave her a shrewd look, but let it pass; either aware that her grief would take time to come to terms with or just too excited about the data he'd got from Raising Heart.

"That's it," he praised, a little more quietly. "And don't worry, your Device will recover." Nanoha's eyes strayed to Raising Heart; the ruby gem cracked and discoloured, with patches of dark, dull red marring her bright glow. "As soon as I've finished processing this data and reading through Uno's analysis, I'll take it into the repair shop and," he chuckled, "fix up the damage from its exertions. Though the damage you did yourself will take longer to heal."

"Noooo! Wait wait wait!"

Both Nanoha and Jail looked up as Sein tumbled through the ceiling and dropped to the floor. In fact, Nanoha noticed, she actually dropped through the floor, then bobbed back up to a normal level.

Her eyes narrowed. How much time, she wondered, did Sein spend phased out like that? Or perhaps the better question was; how much time did she spend solid? And how did it work? The little girl could phase through walls, ceilings… and apparently even sealed dimensional barriers. The turbulence that had kept the TSAB out for several minutes even after the barrier tore loose hadn't even slowed her down. She'd plucked Nanoha, Fate and their familiars out and put them back on Earth as easily as Nanoha forming a training shot. And then Uno and Tre had been there with a small teleporter-equipped vessel to snatch them away.

It had seemed practiced.

She was also talking. Nanoha shook herself back to the present.

"You can't fix Raisin' Heart, Doctor!" Sein scolded. "She's a super-special Device and you're not…" she hesitated briefly, "… 'tek-o-log-ick' friends wi' her like 'Licia is! She said so! So she's gotta do it!"

Jail's eyebrows shot up. So did Nanoha's. "Raising Heart?" she asked tentatively.

The little gem warbled a slightly off-key chime. [I would prefer to be repaired by Miss Alicia, my master,] she chimed. [She has precedent.]

Jail looked startled and slightly put out for a moment, but recovered gracefully with a laugh. "Well, the little madam certainly has the skill for it," he conceded. "Very well! I look forward to seeing her work! Now, Miss Takamachi, I have a few questions for you about the…"

He was prevented from asking them by a sudden hammering on the door. "Heeeey!" came a yowl from outside. "Heeeeeey! Can I come in and see mistress yet? You've been in there aaaaaages!"

Try as she might, Nanoha couldn't quite stifle a giggle. Jail sighed.

"Yes, very well, come in," he said, and the door burst open to admit a worried Vesta.

"Mistress!" she shouted at an entirely unnecessary volume, and dived across the room to latch onto Nanoha's arm. Or tried, anyway. Jail's hand twitched, and Vesta ran into a fence of red wires. She bounced off and landed heavily on her bottom.

"But," Jail went on as if nothing had happened, "I will have to ask you not to disturb her hands. That burn treatment needs time to work, and any bumps or jostling will reduce its effectiveness. And we don't want your mistress to have scarred or stiff fingers, do we?"

Vesta's scowl diminished. Slightly. "No," she muttered, and reverted to her kitten form to climb up onto Nanoha's shoulder.

'Oh, oh!' she said, batting a paw at the still-minimised screen. 'Are we writing something? What are we writing?'

'A letter to Yuuno,' Nanoha confided. 'A secret one. And then after that, a letter to mama and my family and friends and everyone else who was there. I hope they're all safe, but I should tell them I am as well.' Her eyes went faraway for a moment as Jail asked his first question; something about how it had felt inside the Book's superstructure.

'I wonder what they're doing now?'

…​

2 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

"… and Admiral Gallardo is being moved from CoreCom to assume Admiral Graham's duties in full, including the mission to hunt down and eliminate all remaining Mariage units," Admiral Harlaown dictated. The glow of too many screens and windows around her left her face pale and wan. "I realise this will be a difficult time for everyone. I would also like to remind everyone that all our records and communications will need to be submitted as evidence for the investigation, and any unauthorised deletion may result in court martial. No one is exempt from this, not even – especially not – me, so I expect proper compliance."

She pinched her brow, her green hair falling in front of her eyes. Damn Gil. Damn him! His betrayal bit hard. He had been her mentor and then her friend, and she'd trusted his familiars to train her son. He had been like a father to Chrono after Clyde had died.

Reaching out, she tapped the stop icon on the projection and sat back pensively to. An old framed picture on her desk caught her attention, and she leaned over to pick it up. Lindy stared at her younger self, holding a young Chrono. Her husband stood beside her, arm around her shoulders.

"What would you say, Clyde?" she whispered to him. "We stopped it, finally. No one else will die like you did. But Gil was willing to sacrifice his homeworld to stop it. He fed people to the Book… people who trusted him. He was going to imprison a young girl forever, for the crime of having it latch onto her. If he'd… if he'd tried to bring me into his plans, would I have been strong enough to say 'no'? Or would I have gone along for revenge? I… I miss you."

She brushed the picture. "You'd be proud of Chrono," she said, voice husky. "He said 'no'. He took Gil down. All by the rules. Well, mostly. He arrested him, at least. And didn't punch him in the face at all. I probably would have."

There was a knock at her door. "What is it, lieutenant?" she asked the man poking his head in.

"She's being difficult," the young man said apologetically. "Very difficult. She's refusing to talk to anyone but you."

Lindy sighed. Yes. Fine. Just another headache.

"I'll be over in five minutes," she said. "Give me a moment to get presentable."

After taking a chance to freshen up and neaten her uniform, Lindy entered the interrogation room, and was immediately the target of a glare not dissimilar to a Starlight Breaker in intensity.

"We must stop meeting like this, Mrs Takamachi," she said, settling herself down. "Have you calmed down yet?"

"Can you take these handcuffs off me?" Momoko grated out, holding up the glowing blue bands around her wrists.

"As long as you promise me you're going to be better behaved."

Momoko gritted her teeth together. "I am sorry for shooting that man," she said. "But in my defence, he had a spear and he rushed towards me shouting something."

"He was a combat medic, and he was shouting 'Medic! Don't shoot!'," Lindy said wearily.

"I didn't know that! My Device wasn't translating things! It's probably broken!"

"Yes, it is broken." Lindy brought up a screen. "It is quite thoroughly broken. For one of the Asura's surplus Devices, it's been through a lot. Four combats with the Wolkenritter, a life-and-death fight with the Mariage, and a dimensional dislocation. With no maintenance. For six months. I'm surprised it didn't fail on you earlier." She deactivated the cuffs, but left the bands on. "I will reactivate them if you get threatening," she warned.

"It was a misunderstanding," Momoko said sulkily. "Everything was very tense!"

"Tense. Yes, that's one way of describing things," Lindy said diplomatically. "Now…"

"How's Kyouya?" Momoko demanded, hands held carefully still on the table.

"That's what I was about to say. Your son is getting the medical treatment he needs, and your daughter and husband are with him. Because they didn't attack any of my people. Yes, I realise you know it was an accident," Lindy said, raising a hand to forestall any outburst, "but that's the only reason you're not there with them. If you hadn't done that, we wouldn't have teleported you up into isolation." She took a breath. "And I'm here in person. Now, can we talk?"

"Fine," Momoko replied, as if it was a great concession. "But I'm not turning on my daughter. You can't use me against her. Nanoha has been trying to help people. She has been helping people. I don't believe she's done anything wrong, and I'm proud of her and her actions."

Lindy felt a headache coming on as she stared at the woman. "Mrs Takamachi, your daughter is using a Class 1 Lost Logia in her Device. An unstable, highly destructive artefact that neither she nor we fully understand, which you'll recall was the cause of quite a hassle six months ago. And she's using it as a power source, and..." she closed her eyes in pain, "hitting people with it."

"Well," Momoko said in an almost aggressively reasonable tone, "Alicia seemed like a bright young girl when I met her. Perhaps she worked out how to use them safely."

"A six year old?"

"Her mother may also have helped," Momoko amended.

Lindy gritted her teeth and clenched a fist under the desk. "The Bureau..." she started, and cut off. Getting into an argument about whether the Jewel Seeds were safe would get them nowhere, and she knew Momoko was baiting her. "... has asked Nanoha multiple times to cooperate with us, and yet she has a nasty habit of fighting us instead. You can see how this looks bad, given her association with a dimensional criminal."

"As far as I saw, Nanoha is quite happy to cooperate with you. She was working with that nice Yuuno boy without any trouble," Momoko shot back blithely. Lindy quietly suppressed the urge to strangle her, and forced a smile.

"If that were the case, I'm sure she wouldn't have any issues staying around afterwards, now would she?" she said with false cheer. "But instead, she keeps disappearing – along with people who, I'm afraid to say, match the methods and signature of several recent kidnappings." She leaned forward, dropping the smile. "Mrs Takamachi, we mean no harm to your daughter, but she is in over her head and I'm worried that she's being badly influenced."

Momoko pursed her lips, her own friendliness disappearing. "I trust my daughter, Admiral Harlaown," she said flatly. "Your assessments of situations involving her haven't always been perfect." She crossed her arms. "I think you're willing to say anything because you're worried about the magical thing she has."

"... so that's it, then," Lindy said. She looked the native woman up and down. Determination was in every line of her body – determination not to apologise, or capitulate, or cooperate against her daughter. "You're going to throw all your trust behind your daughter's judgement, and hope for the best."

"If I need to. I wish she was back home. Of course I do! She's nine! The only thing worse than having to pretend to people that she's missing and we're desperately looking for her is when she's actually in danger and I can't do a thing to help!" The cracks in Momoko's façade were more than enough to show just how much the woman was running on anger, using it to suppress her fears. "But I don't see any reason to help your space government! Every time you've shown up, you've hurt people I care about!" She glowered. "And I've spent days in this cell!" she added.

Lindy exhaled, and rubbed her brow tattoo. "I do understand you're scared and angry," she said, trying to remain calm. She had to be the bigger woman, which meant not pointing out that Momoko had been the one refusing to talk to anyone and yelling at her crew. Even if she really wanted to. "But please, I don't like this any more than you do. Precia Testarossa is a dangerous criminal, and the fact that your daughter is involved with her is a tragedy. Yes, I believe Nanoha means the best, but as you said, she's nine. But I'm not going to persuade you here.

"So instead I'll tell you what we're going to do now. I'm going to release you from here as long as you promise to be on your best behaviour. Then you're going to the medbay for precautionary treatment." Momoko winced at that. "Yes, I see you remember how nasty the drugs taste," Lindy said, with genuine sympathy. "And you can see your son first while they work their way through your system. After that and once you're feeling better – and maybe once we've both had some sleep – we can try talking again."

Momoko sighed, running her hands through her brown hair. The bags under her eyes showed how tired she was. "Fine," she agreed. Her eyes gleamed. "I don't suppose you'd care to give me a new Device? Just to avoid any translation issues?"

"I think that may have to wait," Lindy said tactfully. "For the sake of the doctors, if no one else."

Having sent the troublesome Mrs Takamachi on her way under armed guard, Lindy returned to her office and reheated her cold tea. Frowning up, she retrieved the recording from the unfortunate medic who had the misfortune of encountering an angry Momoko. Something still wasn't holding together. She vaguely recalled reading that the woman's Device was entirely non-functional when it was recovered – but then how had she taken down a Jacketed soldier, even one who hadn't been expecting it?

It was probably best that she didn't have a mouthful of tea when she found the incident in question. Everyone was on edge and looking for Mariage, so perhaps it was only natural that the medic had his standard Belkan-style spear extended and ready. She watched as the unfortunate medic turned a corner, only to run into a crude crimson Mid-style casting circle.

"Friendly! Don't shoot! We're on your si—" began the man.

"Sunlight Shooter!"

And then something that was either a poorly contained bombardment spell or an overscaled shooting spell slammed into the medic and detonated.

Lindy paused the recording, feeling numb. Yes, the man hadn't protected himself properly and yes, that wasn't a particularly well-cast spell. But it had been cast without a Device. Rewinding, she examined the casting-circle again. Momoko seemed to be using some kind of condensation spell to maintain a prepared effect, fuelling its natural loss with ambient mana. That certainly wasn't standard practice. No wonder it had been poorly contained and unstable – the woman had been casting without assistance.

That she was doing it with only six months informal self-taught training...

... except no, it wasn't even that. Mind racing, Lindy took a long sip of tea. Momoko Takamachi, from the reports her ground troops had given her, had not been able to do that a few weeks ago. This change was recent, and reminded her of the explosive growth that Yuuno Scrya had spoken of about the woman's daughter. An uncanny knack for mimicking spells she'd seen used, he'd said. And a stubborn disregard for the accepted rules of magical theory that led to her forcing clumsy, inelegant and often dangerous solutions to work on pure power and little else.

She groaned. Momoko Takamachi was clearly going to practice magic with or without a Device, so they basically had to give her one for safety's sake so she didn't kill herself. And maybe ones for the girls who were part of her little cabal too.

And yes, perhaps they'd put a few tracker programs on them, too, she added privately. A range of them at different levels of obviousness, just in case the native mages were clever enough to expect such a thing and go looking. After two incidents on this planet in half a year, it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on what the local mages were doing.

...​

6 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

"Knock knock."

Reclining on a comfortable seat in the medical wing lounge, Zest grunted with ill humour and cracked an eye open. His mood shifted as he saw who it was.

"Megane," he rumbled. "Good to see you."

"I wish I could say the same, Zest, I really do." Megane swept in her full Barrier Jacket, purple hair pinned up into a bun. She gently set down the carry-cot she carried without waking the thankfully-sleeping baby it held. Little Lutecia was wrapped around her slightly battered puppy-kitten toy, nuzzling into its neck and murmuring softly.

"You look awful," she added meaningfully, with a nod at his chest. He grunted again, keeping his voice as soft as possible to avoid stressing his healing ribcage. "And Quint is hardly any better. Honestly, I leave the team for six months and you both put yourself in hospital."

He risked stretching a hand out to lay it on top of hers. The snide comments revealed how worried she was. Megane was rarely unkind to people she actually liked. "I'm glad to see you missed us," he said.

"Yes. Unfortunately, your respective assailants did not miss you," she said acidly.

"Megane," he said again. "I'm going to be fine. You've already talked to the doctors, you know that. And it was worth it to put the Book down for good."

"Hm." It was a short, sceptical sound. "I'll believe that when I see it. The master might want us to think everything's under control, but I don't trust that thing."

He waved her scepticism off. "It's down for now, at least. While the Mariage are active, they're the bigger threat."

That earned him a glare. "Yes. That's the only reason I've been dragged off maternity leave. And if it wasn't Mariage I wouldn't be here and would be home with my daughter and…" she sighed. "I'm sorry," she apologised. "I'm not happy about this. I know I'm one of the few people who can extract data from their cores, and I shouldn't be taking it out on you."

"No, that's fair," he said. "I was angry when I got called up when my second was born." Looking around again – and finding nobody nearby – Zest lowered his voice anyway. "And did you manage to get those checks done?" he asked, propping himself further upright on his elbows.

Megane gently pushed him back down with a finger before pulling out a disposable data-device. "Here," she said. "I pulled some favours for this to get it done off the books, so take care with it. Full analysis and the data is on there, but in summary – you were right. That was a good hunch. The mitochondrial DNA is nearly identical. Nanoha Takamachi, Momoko Takamachi and Hayate Yagami are from the same matriline. And from the lack of mutations, the link is relatively recent - only a few generations back. If they inherited family names properly on UA97, this would have been obvious from the beginning."

"Mmm." Zest smiled, not entirely pleasantly. "I thought it had to be something like this. Three women, from a limited geographic region of an uncontacted isolated world? All with freakishly strong linker cores? It didn't seem like a coincidence to me." He shook his head. "I've never seen anyone pick up magic as quickly as Nanoha Takamachi. She reverse-engineers and compiles spells in combat time. Her mother seems to have some of the same talent, given she's entirely self-taught. And Hayate Yagami performed on-the-fly modifications to the Book of Darkness minutes after gaining full administrative control." He shook his head. "So, where's their root? I suppose we're in the right region of space for someone with Hegemony genes, like... what'shername, from that support squad?"

Megane spread her hands. "They're ancestral human," she said.

"What."

"I know, I know, it sounds stupid. But my contact knew straight off they were from an isolate population. I didn't even tell them. Trace degraded Alhazredian genemarkers, nothing Belkan, nothing Galean, nothing Ossirian... nothing at all. It's possible there's some modifications that aren't in the standard libraries that the tests didn't notice, but genetically? They're nearly the sort of thing you might find in fossils on Type-1A worlds."

"But... that doesn't make any sense," Zest said, frowning. "I was so sure that..."

"It was a nice idea, boss," Megane drawled, "but had the critical flaw that it wasn't true. Just like I was so sure that Takamachi had to be part of a berserker line - and the fact that her self-taught, half-trained mother tried to fight the Wolkenritter three times seemed to support it. But no, apparently ancestral humans just had low survival instincts."

"There has to be something going on," the man growled. "Baseline humans can't decompile mana condensation spells on the fly and then attach them into their spells! Not even if they have an Eidolon-class Device! I can't do it, and Nanoha Takamachi is nine years old."

"Jealousy ill-suits you," Megane said unhelpfully. Despite her flippancy, though, her brow was furrowed.

"I wonder what we'd get if we looked at Admiral Graham's genetics," Zest tried. "He's also from here. And he's unusually strong, and he was enough of a madman to hack and manipulate the Familiar Spell. Maybe there's some greater..."

"You're reaching," Megane said sharply. A hiccup from the cot froze them both for a moment as they waited to see if they'd woken the baby, but apart from turning over she stayed peaceful. Megane sighed in relief and continued in softer tones. "Yes, there's something strange going on with the Takamachis and Hayate Yagami, but we know they're close maternal relatives. We're probably dealing with an unusual mutation in an isolated population that crops up once and passes down the female line. Dragging Admiral Graham into things just ruins your hypothesis. Isn't he from the other side of the planet? Isn't it more likely that he's a driven, fanatical man who needed loyal servants and had been studying the Familiar spell for decades to manage to manipulate it in small ways?"

Zest sighed. "I suppose you're right," he said reluctantly.

"Not everything is a conspiracy. Not everything is connected." Megane smiled wryly. "Although you know what I'm glad of? Nanoha and Momoko Takamachi were also valid hosts for the Book of Darkness. It must have at least considered them. The best thing it did was pick Miss Yagami instead."

Slumping down, Zest raised a hand halfway to his face before wincing and lowering it again. "Yes," he agreed. "I've been thinking what would have happened if we'd run across Nanoha Takamachi with the Book of Darkness during the Jewel Seed incident. That would have been bad. Even more than a big strong man like me could have handled."

Megane chuckled, and checked her Device. "I need to report for check-in for my ride in ten minutes. Just remember, I've written down everything that you need to know and-"

"I'll be fine, Meg. I know how to handle babies. My ex would at least give me that much." He looked down at the sleeping Lutecia, who was chewing on the ear of the red-eyed white toy tucked into her carry cot. "She's safe with Uncle Zest."

"Just remember, I will maim you if she gets hurt."

"You're supposed to smile when telling a joke."

"I wasn't joking."

...​

7 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

Signum's fingers twitched. She stared across the arena of conflict, her gaze meeting the single red eye of her opponent. The Master Program of the Book of Darkness stared back, neither empathy nor sympathy in her dead stare. The light overhead was stark white, and cast no shadows. She knew the onlookers were watching for any sign of weakness or lack of resolve.

And there! A weakness! Like a snake, the Blade of the Book of Darkness struck!

With a click, she placed her red tile on the board.

Three of the five players had already been eliminated. Vita had been the first to go. She never had a chance, starting between Shamal and Zafira. But Shamal had been over-ambitious with her tile placement, and that had left a vulnerability that Signum had mercilessly exploited - and when the Healer had turned her attention to the Blade, Reinforce had fallen on her weakened flank and captured most of her territory. Zafira had fallen behind after the early game despite a powerful early position after an impromptu alliance between Signum and Reinforce had barely checked him, and now he was out.

And so any hint of alliance between the two women was dead.

There could only be one victor in this game of Kampfhunde!

"Your move," she told Reinforce.

The other woman shifted. She still seemed uncomfortable with the permanent damage she had suffered in the fight. A white bandage covered her empty left socket, and the empty left arm of her simple white dress was discretely pinned back. The damage to the Book - not to mention the determination of the Cloud Knights themselves to demonstrate they were no longer a threat - meant that they had not tried to regenerate the damage she had suffered. Reinforce herself had expressed fear that any regrowth might go wrong. The idea that she might be corrupted afresh caused her visible pain.

Of course, none of them were too comfortable in their presence circumstances. The Wolkenritter - and even they were not sure if Reinforce should now be counted as one of them - had been confined to a specialist containment cell that had been transferred onboard. The AMF that saturated the entire space was a constant weight. None of them had their Device, and that made the knights antsy.

"Bored. Bored bored bored," moaned Vita, lying on her back as she tossed a rubber ball at the wall repeatedly. "Urgh! You know what's really annoying me?"

No one said anything.

"I said, you know what's really annoying me?" Vita repeated more loudly.

"What is annoying you?" Shamal asked serenely. Eyes closed, she was kneeling in meditation.

"I didn't even get that rematch with Tacha… Takimark… that brat who broke my jaw!"

"Wasn't it that trapped tree that broke your jaw?" Zafira drawled from where he was sprawled out over one of the chairs.

That got him a dirty look. "No," Vita grumped. "She punched me."

"Oh yes. So she did. And she was a shooting mage. How sloppy of you." He caught the ball when Vita hurled it at his head. "I thought you'd have had more of a grudge against whoever threw the tree."

"She broke my jaw! And I didn't get to fight her again!" Vita sat up, lips in a pout. "Give me back my ball!"

"No." Zafira tossed it up and caught it. "Though that does remind me. Shamal, didn't you say you'd detected the tree thrower during the fight over that strange little girl with the Jewel Seed in her?"

Shamal nodded, eyes still closed. "I didn't get proper contact," she said, "but I felt their presence. There was no sign of them later, though."

Zafira grinned in a way which could only be described as wolfish. "See, Vita," he said. "You might still get a chance against them."

"Good! I owe them for nearly breaking my neck!" She huffed, tossing her pigtails back. "It's not fair! Signum got a great fight with Taka-thingie's blonde friend! What did I get?"

"What'shername on the rollerskates?"

"Pah! Hardly a match for how things were in the old days! I remember proper war-skaters, not policewomen pretending to be knights."

"I was nearly torn apart by Mariage," Signum called out, eyes narrowed. "That took any enjoyment out of it for me."

"But before that?"

Signum smiled quietly. "Yes. It was a good fight." She toyed with one of the pieces. "I would like to fight her again when she is fully grown. Children rely too much on magically compensating for their inferior strength and reach to achieve perfect bladework."

"It's so unfair!"

Reinforce frowned. "I enjoyed neither the fight with the artificial mage nor the assault of the Mariage," she said softly. "The fragment of my consciousness within the extension of the Book was greatly concerned." She sighed. "And I felt guilt for how your ignorance forced you to go against your oaths in the futile hope that your actions would save our master."

An awkward silence fell on the room.

"We go to face judgement, for our broken oaths and for our misguided deeds," Shamal said, her face as still as a mountain pool. "I will accept it. I could not save her despite all my healing magics and all my knowledge. She saved us. If the Bureau wishes to execute us for our many, many crimes then we shall at least die with honour and keep her safe by doing so. Our crimes should not weigh her down."

Zafira smiled grimly. "If it helps," he said, voice dry, "I think the Bureau's laws on prescription mean they cannot bring charges for most of the incidents we were involved in. For one, they occurred before the TSAB was founded."

"You're being more useless than usual," Vita said tartly, glaring at him. "They're hardly going to go after Signum for killing a Sankt Kaiser… like, two hundred years ago."

"The Saint-Church might have tried. They're officially the successor-state, and so they-"

"Stop showing off," Vita ordered, hands on her hips. "No one is impressed."

"Whatever our fate, we await it with calm resolve," Signum said. "We failed our master, and disobeyed her too. We will not bring further shame on her, nor will we cast aside our honour. If the TSAB decides we must be destroyed for fear that we may still be corrupted by the Defence Program, then our deaths may save her." She returned her gaze to Reinforce. "And you?" she asked softly. "You who understood the corruption of the Book when we did not?"

Reinforce's eyes widened fractionally. "Why would you doubt me?" she asked softly. "I am a knight of the Book, just as you are. My shame is greater than yours. Death may be too kind, though I would hate to make our lady upset. But I will keep her safe, even from myself." Her lips curled up in a fractional smile, "Even if I am now not as well-armed as you are."

Signum nodded. Vita just groaned. "That was terrible," she said accusingly.

"I quite liked it," Zafira observed.

"You would," she grumbled. Jabbing a finger at Reinforce, she squared her shoulders. "You! You are forbidden from being another Zafira, do you hear me? I've had it up to here with his teasing and his stupid jokes and I don't need to get any more of it."

"And when she's had it up to here, that's at least up to waist height for the rest of us," Zafira said in a stage-whisper.

"Are you just getting revenge for the last time you were a tiny little wolf-girl?" Vita asked, pouting.

Zafira considered the question. "Yes," he said firmly. "Yes, I am. I'd like everyone to note how I haven't once picked her up by her ankles, like she used to do to me."

"... yes you did! Last month you did exactly that to make Hayate laugh!"

"He was only entertaining our lady," Shamal said, eyes still closed.

"And now you're on his side!"

"I'm on the side of whoever ends this silly argument," Shamal said firmly. "We may be heading to our deaths. We throw ourselves on the mercy of men who call us monsters - and may be right to do so. Calm dignity befits us, for it is all we have left."

Zafira sighed. "I can't face Shamal when she's being depressing like that," he observed. "Where's the kettle? I'm going to make some tea. I suppose everyone will want it the same way they always do…" he paused, and looked at Reinforce. "What do you want?"

Reinforce tilted her head, white hair falling in front of her eye. She huffed it out the way. "I will have it as I had it when the captain interrogated me," she said seriously. "With milk and six spoons of sugar."

...​

12 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

Deep within the angular structure of a Bureau orbital station, tension hung heavy in the air.

"So?" Hayate asked hopefully. "What do you think?"

"Mmf!" Quint Nakajima replied, which wasn't really that useful as criticism. "S'good! Any more?"

The small shared kitchen was slightly grimy and the drying rack was covered in mugs. The coffee machine had an 'Out of Operation' label on it. Still, Hayate had managed to make things work, even though moving her wheelchair around the space hadn't been the easiest. She was a bit jealous that Quint could just hover rather than have to use crutches while her legs healed. She offered the woman the rest of the tray of pastries, and watched with mild surprise as she devoured them. All of them. Even one-armed, the tray was clear in less time than it usually took her four Knights to finish theirs.

… though, Hayate admitted in the privacy of her own head, that might also be because Quint wasn't wasting time trying to steal her neighbour's food, or defending her food against someone else trying to filch a mouthful here or there. She'd offered to make more the first few times, but had eventually come to realise that they just liked the challenge of competing.

Honestly. Belkans.

"Really though," Quint went on between mouthfuls of the last muffin, "these are really good. You're a fantastic cook, Hayate. I'm not surprised you won them over with food like this."

Hayate giggled. "Thank you. So what are we doing today?" She scrunched her nose up and poked at her legs. "More physio?" It had been amazing getting to walk and move around again when Unisoned with Reinforce, but she wasn't sure it was worth the evil torture that was physical therapy to relearn how to stand on her own again. Maybe she could just stay Unisoned with Reinforce all day instead?

Quint made a face. "In the afternoon, yeah. Sorry. At least you can suffer alongside me though, eh? Imagine how it would be on your… uh, anyway, that leads into something I've been meaning to ask you." She looked, Hayate thought, uncharacteristically nervous for the nice, funny lady she'd turned out to be over the two weeks she'd spent in various TSAB medical wings. Hayate had made Vita say sorry, but she still felt bad about how much her knight had hurt the woman.

"… go ahead," she said warily.

Quint was silent for a moment; her eyes straying and the fingers of her good hand tapping restlessly against her knee. "I want you to understand; you don't have to answer now. Or at all, if you feel awkward about it. In fact, I'd like you not to answer right now; this is something you should think hard about before making a decision."

Well that sounded ominous.

Clearing her throat, Quint got to the point. "It's just… it's looking like the aftereffects of that fight and the strain of that first Unison are going to have you needing medical oversight for a while," she explained. "And there's only so long we can make excuses for you on Earth, and having a TSAB medic visit you for checkups after you get better would either mean a long trip for them, or someone permanently stationed there, or a local doctor – and all of them mean you wouldn't be getting the absolute best quality care that you could find here in the Core worlds. And you're a sweet kid, and I've gotten to really like you in the time we've spent together…"

Or maybe she was just going around the point in circles. Hayate cocked her head and gave Quint a quizzical and slightly worried frown.

"… and if you wanted, you could come and live with me," Quint finished in a rush. "With… me and my husband, I mean. We could adopt you. You said you don't really have any family on Unad… on Earth, and you need someone to take care of you, and we seem to get along well…" She paused for breath. "Think about it," she repeated. "I'm not looking for an answer now, and I don't want to… to pressure you to say yes, or give you the wrong idea about why I'm asking. I really do think you're a great kid, and I'd love to give you a home. I've asked my husband, Genya, and he's all for it. So… yeah. Keep that in mind."

Hayate blinked a few times. Then a few times more. She felt confused, and a little bit stunned. Like there were clouds in her head, fogging everything up.

"… my Knights…" she started hesitantly. "If… if they need somewhere to live too…"

"Genya was a bit worried about that," Quint nodded, looking calm and nervous and strangely vulnerable for someone who'd gone toe-to-toe with an angry Vita and managed a draw. "But I've talked to them, and he's willing to trust my judgement. They could come too."

Hayate wasn't sure what to think for a moment. She couldn't put a name to the warm glowing feeling growing in her chest. But it was growing. Fast.

"… I don't think I need to think about it," she said slowly. "My answer probably isn't going to change."

Quint looked a little crestfallen, but nodded. "Well… wait a day or so anyway," she said. "And if you don't bring it up again, that's fine."

Hayate bit her lip. She should probably think about it some more. And talk to her Knights, just to make sure. And work out how to keep in touch with Chikaze if she went to live in space. Wow, living in space. It sounded so cool when she put it like that. But she really, really wanted to yell 'yes, of course I want to live with you!' as loud as she could. Especially since it looked like Quint was being silly and thinking Hayate was going to say 'no'.

With an effort of will, she restrained herself to a nod instead. "I'll definitely give you an answer tomorrow, then," she said firmly, sizing Quint up with new eyes. "And more baking. You need to eat more if you're going to get your arm and knees all better."

Quint smiled a little. "I'll look forward to that, then," she said. "But for now, there's someone else who wanted to talk to you. And this is another thing where you don't have to if you don't want to; there's no pressure at all here to go along and speak to him."

Hayate tilted her head. If this was a surprise like the last one, there was no way she wasn't going! "Who is it?"

Quint took a deep breath. "Gil Graham. The man… the admiral who was trying to seal the Book away."

Oh.

Hayate thought for a minute. And then another minute. And then several minutes more. She'd been told the basics of his plan when she was debriefed. How he'd kept the TSAB from finding out that her Knights had awoken. Had sent his familiars to quietly help them fill the Book. Had planned to freeze her when it activated, and lock her away in some super-secret heavily-guarded Bureau prison. Frozen and hidden away forever.

She shivered. But her chin rose stubbornly.

"I'll talk to him," she said.

...​

Gil Graham was in a prison cell. In deference to the fact that he'd surrendered mostly of his own accord and was providing the investigators with evidence they'd have spent months or years tracking down otherwise, it was a nice prison cell. It reminded Hayate of a smallish hotel room, actually; decorated in plain creams and browns and with plain but functional furniture, including a cat bed that his familiars were curled together on top of.

The only un-hotel-like parts were the pale blue forcefields over the heavy door and at several intervals down the corridor outside it that stopped him from leaving. Hayate had to stop and wait for a minute after each one before the next would open – a security measure, Quint said, which could only be overridden in emergencies.

He stood up from the little desk as she wheeled herself in, bore Quint's menacing stare with impressive composure, and sat down again once Quint stepped out. Hayate shifted so she could still see the woman's reassuring presence just outside the door in the corner of her eye, and studied him carefully.

… he didn't really look like an evil mastermind, she was forced to admit. He was a westerner, also from Earth, and he looked a bit like an actor or maybe a politician. Though maybe that was partly the old man clothes he had his Jacket set to. If he was wearing… like, a cape or something, and holding one of those thin whippy swords that Signum said were for duelling, he'd probably look lots more sinister. And then he'd say something like…

"Good morning, Miss Yagami. Hayate? However you would like to be addressed. I'm very glad you decided to come, and I hope you'll let me apologise for my actions."

… no, not like that at all.

She blinked at him owlishly as he bowed his head. "In trying to rid the world of a monster, I was going to sacrifice – to murder – an innocent. That I grieved the necessity did not stop me believing it right, in my arrogance. And when my scheme failed, it was you and those like you who managed to do what I could not, and redeem the Book of Darkness without further loss of life."

He looked up and met her eye. "What I did was wrong, and I will not make excuses or justifications to defend it. I am, truly, sorry. And I am more glad than I can say that you are alive, and on the way to health and happiness."

Hayate considered this carefully.

"Would you do it again?" she asked. "If you could. If you were back in the same position, and not in jail."

This seemed to throw Graham a little. He started to say something, stopped, frowned and fell silent. Hayate mentally chalked him up a point as he thought hard for a moment. He was taking her seriously.

"… if I found myself back at the time when Clyde sent me the coordinates the Book was searching for a new master…" he said slowly, "then knowing what I know now… hmm." He looked down. "The Mariage… I did not see coming. I think nobody could have predicted them – and though the Book no doubt slaughtered most of them, it will be years before we can say with any certainty that they are no longer present in this sector. The drain of the Book would still, in its damaged state… it would still be affecting your health. And so I would still see it as a unique opportunity to end the threat of the Book forever, and I remain doubtful that the Bureau would go along with such a plan."

He sighed.

"I cannot say I wouldn't be tempted," he admitted, and Hayate shrank back into her wheelchair. "But I think – I hope – that I would come clean to you. As soon as I found you. Before the Book activated, before the Knights initialised. And give you a choice."

Hayate looked at him for what felt like a long time, sorting through how she felt about that. Eventually, she gave a cheerful shrug.

"Okay then," she said lightly.

The look on his face was funny enough that she almost giggled. "I… beg your pardon?" he stammered, thrown for a moment. Hayate nodded firmly.

"And I give you it. You're pardoned. It's okay. Oh, and you can call me Hayate."

Graham seemed unsure of how to take that, and even glanced uncertainly at the door. Hayate sighed.

"Look. You were trying to do the right thing. You just did it really badly and in a dumb way. Like my Knights were, trying to fill the Book without me knowing." She paused. "Or trying to take all the blame for doing it and go to jail for ages and ages so that I don't get punished. Which they think I don't know about."

Sadly, this didn't get another funny reaction out of him. Graham seemed to have got his expression under control again, and just gave her a long, evaluating look. "If they think you don't know that, how did you find out?" he asked. "Did someone on the case tell you?"

"No," Hayate said blithely. "They're just really predictable about protecting me and being all honourable and… Belkan. It's a bit silly, and this time I'm not letting them get away with it. I'm the master of the Tome, so I'm the one who's meant to protect them. So that's what I'm going to do." She frowned as a thought struck her. "Oh. I should tell Miss Quint that, in case she… mm."

Graham studied her for a little longer. There was something lurking in his expression; something sharp and sad and tinged with respect. "You're sure about this?" he asked. "It will mean the punishment will fall on you, if you do this."

Hayate gave a single, sharp nod. "I'm sure. The Tome is mine. I claimed it, so it's my responsibility. And they were technically following my orders when they went out to attack people." Admittedly, the orders in question had been 'I don't want you to kill anyone or conquer anywhere', but they'd still been following them.

The look that earned her said in very big letters that he knew she was bending the truth. But he nodded, and even chuckled softly. "Well, in that case," he said more warmly. "What are your plans regarding the damage to the Book?"

Hayate scowled. "The Tome," she insisted. "It's not the Book of Darkness anymore."

"Mmm. I was afraid of that." Graham lost his smile and leaned forward; his mood turning serious. "What do you know about the inner structure of the Book, Miss... Hayate?" He held up a hand quickly. "The Book as it was before that last fight, not the Tome as it is now."

Hayate settled down a little and thought about it. "Um… quite a lot?" she said. "But it's all sort of… jumbled. I'm not sure there was enough space in my head for everything that it put in. I know there were seven different big sections in it. The Core, where I was. Defence and Archival, which were all corrupted and evil. Analytical, the watchy-thinky bit. Absorption, the bit that got Nanoha. My Knights, obviously. And Restoral, which I used to fix them."

Graham nodded. "That last one is what I'm worried about. The Book has shown itself able to repair damage in the past. In the event of severe damage sustained on one of its rampages that's limited – I doubt the Absorption structure Miss Takamachi destroyed will be coming back. But Restoral may well try to repair the corrupted sections. And while the backups would have been in Archival, which was lost, I'm concerned that any secondary backups might have been made…"

"After the damage that made it go evil," Hayate whispered, paling. Graham nodded sadly.

"Exactly." He sighed. "It is a pity that Archival was lost. If we had that; if we could pick through it slowly and safely, we might be able to find the original settings of the Tome from before its corruption buried in its memories. As it is… I'm afraid that the corrupted segments may, in time, regenerate and start the cycle over again."

Hayate felt her head shaking numbly. "No," she said. "No, that can't… we can't let that happen. How do we stop it?"

Graham pursed his lips and leaned back, accepting one of the cat-familiars as she leaped onto his lap. Hayate felt a dull pressure kneading her thighs – it was still strange to feel things below her waist – and looked down to find the other one looking up at her.

"I've mentioned this fear to Bureau staff," Graham said quietly. "Their most reliable suggestion was a complete formatting of the Tome. Wipe every sector down to the bare bones. Your Knights would be fine as long as they weren't absorbed into the Tome at the time, though it would wipe their backed-up memories clean. No more incarnations – the next master's Knights would be brand new people. And I suspect the master program would be lost."

Hayate bit her lip nervously, but the cat on her lap butted against her hand as she shrank in on herself. 'Don't worry,' she said, in English-accented Japanese. 'Gil came up with another way!'

She looked up hopefully, and Graham smiled. "I did spend almost a decade scanning the Book," he said. "And you have complete access at the highest levels. I think – I can't promise anything, but I think – that if we work together, we might be able to cauterise the missing sections. We can't rebuild them the way they were without the archives… but we may be able to cordon them off and prevent Restoral from trying to rebuild them at all. Archival will be the difficult one – the Tome needs that. But that should also be the easiest to rebuild manually, without resorting to corrupted secondary backups. And if we then seal Defence and Absorption away, it will be safe. Crippled, but safe."

Shakily, Hayate took what felt like the first breath since he'd mentioned the problem. She didn't bother trying to choose between the two. One option was acceptable and the other wasn't; it was as simple as that. "And…" she said, "I guess... the TSAB would be less... scared of the Tome. If it were missing two bits like that. Right?"

He nodded, and didn't hide the look of pride.

"And you promise you'll help?"

Graham – or maybe Gil, she decided. Gil looked at her for a moment longer, absently petting the purring cat in his lap.

"Hayate," he said eventually. "Looking at you, and your plans, and the person you'll one day become... even if I didn't owe you a debt, helping you is the very least I could do. And if you're determined to go forward with this plan for the hearing..." He mulled it over, and shrugged in an echo of her own gesture.

"Well, I suppose I'll have to help with that as well."

...​

14 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

Under the bridge, the river roamed and rushed down its carefully cut channel. Two of the moons of Mid hung in the summer sky overhead. With a sigh, Mei tossed a pebble down and watched the splash.

Chrono coughed.

"What?"

He pointed at the 'Do Not Throw Objects In The River' sign that she was leaning on.

"Oh, come on. That's total rubbish. Rivers are made for throwing stuff in." She twisted. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

Chrono leant on the bridge, brows furrowed. He was wearing full Enforcer dress uniform, and for once wasn't in his field Barrier Jacket. "The hearing's out for lunch. I get an hour of daylight, and then it's going to be back inside being asked very pointed questions by people who don't want to believe that an admiral went rogue."

"Ouch."

"That's one way of saying it." Chrono looked up at the circling toothed-birds. "What about you?"

Mei grinned. "Don't make it too obvious and don't look like you're staring," she said softly, "but if you look down there, over by those trees?"

"Your sister and... Lanster?"

"Yep," Mei said, smirk widening. "They're just having a little picnic. She finally got her act together and asked him out, since she's headed back to med school once these hearings are over. I'm here to protect her virtue. Or, you know, make jokes if she decides to deactivate her barrier jacket and show off the nice undies I got her for her last birthday. Her choice, really."

Chrono directed a flat stare at her.

She nudged him in the ribs. "Kaice, lighten up, would you. I guess the stick is all the way back up your butt."

"It's part of the formal dress uniform," Chrono said with an utterly straight face. "I'd be reprimanded if it wasn't properly in place."

Mei promptly doubled over laughing. "Don't do that," she eventually managed, once she had a little of her breath back. "It's unfair for you to make jokes like that looking all serious."

"Jokes?"

That produced another outburst and almost tipped her into the river. "Okay, okay, fair enough. I can't win," Mei wheezed. She glanced down at her sister and Tiida. "Crap, it looks like they're looking at us. Come on, let's go get something to eat. She can protect her own virtue if she feels like it."

They found a stall selling wraps, and wound up on a bench, looking down at the silvery expanse of the city below.

"It's so good to have proper food again," Mei said through a full mouth. "I was having to eat 97er food all through that mission. There was just way too much bland rice and noodles. I liked the seafood, though."

Chrono, for his part, had picked something which hadn't been marked with five heat icons and so refrained from commenting. "When do you ship out?" he asked, making conversation.

"Dunno. Still waiting on orders. I hope I didn't count as dropping out of the training. It'd be a pain in the butt to start all over again." Mei gestured with her food. "And you probably got years of tribunals and stuff ahead of you?"

"You're trying to be funny, but it's not too far off," Chrono said grimly. He sighed. "I think this probably locks me out of a command path," he admitted. "People're going to remember this. I got a bunch of congratulations from Senior Enforcers, but I embarrassed the higher ups. And broke the rules. And didn't report things properly. And assaulted a superior officer and his familiars and also a few people who tried to stop me. On top of the... uh, mess with Takamachi and the fact that she got away again, uh... well, if I ever got a ship of my own, it'd probably be a cargo ship."

"My disciplinary record is nearly clean, and I just got another bunch of commendations," Mei gloated. "Maybe you could ask for a perfect recruit like me to vouch for you."

"Life isn't fair," Chrono said sadly.

She punched him in the arm. "Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, for one, princess," he retorted, "things aren't fair that someone as perfect as you isn't stuck in the same hearings that I am."

Mei beamed. "Yes! Someone who calls me princess!"

"I was being sarcastic!"

"Don't care! I'll take what I can get!" She shrugged. "Don't envy you all those briefings. I got mine out of the way already. Not much to say, really. 'Got my face kicked in by the Healer, got my core drained, it really hurt'. You were totes busier than me." She sighed. "I don't trust me," she said in a little voice. "Not really. They're still the Cloud Knights. Still the killing machines of the Book of Darkness. I bet they don't even remember."

"Remember?"

"Killing my dad," Mei said. "I was kind of hoping that... I dunno. That they'd all shut down or something. It just feels wrong that they're getting to run around just because they didn't kill anyone this time. I mean, yeah, they're only running around in an exercise hall 'cause they're locked up, but I'd rather just have them tossed into Imaginary Space like the other bits of the Book."

"Yes. I know how you feel," Chrono said honestly. "I don't like it. But I don't think that matters."

"What?"

"I mean, I don't think it matters that I don't like it. The Book of Darkness won't be rampaging any more. I dropped its corrupted archival system into Imaginary Space myself. It doesn't have an archival system, it doesn't have a defence system, and Takamachi blew up the bit it used to absorb knowledge when it tried to absorb her. There is something very wrong with that girl."

"Something very awesome, you mean," Mei corrected him.

"No, I don't. I was far too close to the spell she used to do it," he said with a shudder. "But the Book is neutered. So I can grit my teeth and let the Cloud Knights have a chance to be the people their master says they are. If they really were just being controlled by the corruption, it wasn't their fault. And if that's just a lie - well, they've been beaten before. They're not invincible." Chrono leaned back, spreading his arms out on the bench. "So I think that went pretty well," he said to the sky. "Not perfectly, of course. I could have taken Takamachi if she hadn't cheated and run away. But pretty w... oof." He turned to glare at Mei. "What was that for?"

"You, sir, are a lump," Mei observed.

"Stop prodding me in the ribs!"

"Stop being a lump."

"Do it again and I'll lump you!"

"I don't know what you mean by that, sir, but I doubt you should address a princess like that. It is most uncivil behaviour and... ow! Enforcer brutality!"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You poked me in the back with some invisible spell!"

"Just your guilty conscience."

"I'll guilty your conscience!"

"What does that even mean?"

"It means this! Hi-yaah!"

"Stop creasing my uniform! I've got hours more of boring tribunal today!"

...​

"... was that just your sister?" Tiida asked, frowning.

"Um. Probably. Her laugh is... it's distinctive," Rizu admitted. "And wasn't that Harlaown?"

"I think it was," he said, running his fingers through the grass. "Do you think there's something going on with them?"

Rizu thought about it. "Um. Well, you know the idea that good g-girls like bad boys, right?"

"Yes?"

"He's sort of the opposite of that, even if he dresses all in black and has spikes on his shoulders. And I don't know why she'd be laughing at him. He's serious all the time."

Tiida grinned. "Yeah. He is that. So maybe good boys like bad girls."

Rizu slapped his fingers. "Bad," she told him. "She's not a bad girl! She just... she just... we don't even know there's anything there," she concluded weakly.

"Well, maybe there isn't. But it's still worth implying it to see if he blushes," Tiida said wickedly.

Rizu giggled. "Oh, you're terrible," she said. "But... she's not watching anymore." She leaned in to peck him on the lips.

"You know, I thought the very same thing," he said, returning the favour.

...​

14 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

The hall had once been a maintenance silo for fighter craft for a long forgotten empire. There were still a few of the skeletal structures of their long-forgotten war machines, though Jail had thoroughly pillaged them for any usable parts left behind. Now only a few of the machine bays were occupied, with brand new white machinery and computer bays. In one of them, a little girl standing on a box leaned over a cracked and blackened red orb, peering at it through a magnifying field.

"I don't know, Dollie," Alicia mused. "She still looks pretty beat up to me. Raising Heart, how's your self-repair doing?

[I can perform no more repairs without assistance, ma'am. I have completed all repairs my internal protocols can handle without specialist attention.]

"Mmff," sniffed Alicia, stroking her entirely imaginary beard thoughtfully. "And you've had ages to get started. Dollie, what do you think?"

The doll hung in the air; its head slightly tilted to one side, and said nothing. Alicia huffed.

"Fine, fine, we'll try it your way," she said. "But I'm warning you, if you're wrong..."

With a click, she twisted Raising Heart's gem form and unfolded the phase-shifted lattice of components. Almost immediately afterwards, she had to drop it and jump back, squeaking. The Device fell onto one of the many workbenches in the airy T-shaped room that Alicia had commandeered. Bits of it were glowing alarmingly bright red in her IR overlay.

"Ahh! It's even worse than I thought!" Alicia gasped in horror. "Dollie! You foolish fool! You've doomed us all! Unless..."

She darted in, passing Baton over the glowing bits and casting a cooling spell. "Baton! Connect to Raising Heart's coolant reservoir and top it all the way up!" she commanded. "Quickly, quickly, before it's too late!"

A rather anticlimactic moment passed.

[Transfer complete,] reported Baton.

[Coolant reservoirs at maximum. Routing to damaged regions. Thank you, ma'am,] Raising Heart chimed in slightly off-key tones, the Jewel Seed in its cradle pulsing slightly with every word. [I would advise that the highest priority of repair is-]

"Didn't I just save you from exploding?" Alicia said meaningfully.

Raising Heart paused. [Running self-analysis. Risk of explosion is minimal. Previous risk of explosion was mi-]

Alicia spun around and thrust her arms up victoriously, tilting her head back and basking in imagined applause. "And 'Licia Testarossa saves the day again!" she cheered. "From the terrible nasty stuff that would've happened if she wasn't so clever! Yaaaaay!"

She cracked an eye open and narrowed it meaningfully. "Dieci," she prompted. "I just saved us from a giant 'splosion. You're meant to be cheering."

"Yay," said Dieci flatly, not moving from her seat on one of the nearby benches. Her thumbs kept moving across the small handheld screen in her lap as she spoke, staring across at the opposite wall. "Thank you. Maybe keep working now."

"Fine, fine," Alicia pouted, turning back to the lattice and studying it carefully. "Argh, Nanoha really messed you up, Raising Heart! Maybe I shouldn't have done Bardiche first... oh well. Which Emergency Mode did you go to?"

[Emergency Mode 3, ma'am. "Really Serious Emergency Needs Fixing".]

"Nanoha!" Alicia's voice broke two octaves in outrage, and she cast a quick protection spell over her hands and thumped the bench before reaching into the lattice and gingerly unfolding it further. "Show me a map of what's still broken and what you fixed!" She studied the pink display that popped up and hissed in frustration. "Argh argh argh, I don't even understand half this stuff yet! I'm gonna have to read loads more to fix you up properly! And the books are all stupid and take too long to say things and I have to work out what they mean!"

[My apologies, ma'am.]

Alicia sighed, the high-pitched energy receding. "Nah. S'not your fault. An' it looks like you fixed about half of it by yourself, so well done on that. The rest is just gonna take a while, kay?"

[Yes ma'am.]

Dieci didn't actually move her head, but her attention seemed to refocus slightly and she tapped her handheld game twice to pause it. "I'll look through the books to find things," she offered. "If you tell me what to find. But I have a mission tomorrow. So I can't help then."

"Mmm hmm," Alicia nodded vaguely, squinting into Raising Heart's innards. "Uh. Start on the... mm. You see this six-legged beetle thing?"

"Crystal core."

"Beetle thing."

Dieci sighed. "Yes."

"And these wires coming out of it into the grey chocolate bar thing? The chocolate bar thing next to the glowy whirly bit?"

"... yes," repeated Dieci in a pained tone.

"Yeah, start by looking for whatever they are, 'cause I dunno what they do, but they're broken."

Dieci sat still for a moment, a tiny crease marring her forehead. "If you don't know what they are," she started, "how do you know they're-"

"Alicia?" Fate poked her head through the door. "I came to ask if you'd..." She trailed off. "Eaten," she finished half-heartedly, staring at the chaos covering the workbenches. "Uh. What... is that Bardiche?" She rushed over to her Device, which had been unfolded to expose the glowing cradle that held the Jewel Seed. Unlike Raising Heart's, this one was closed and surrounded by shaped crystal lenses and thick, heavily-insulated cables. Alicia intercepted her in a near-tackle and smacked her hands away.

"Don't touch don't touch don't touch!" she scolded. "He's fine, I finished him yesterday, I'm just leaving him stretched out for a few hours to let the machines get a better look inside him an' make sure everything's okay. You took care of him in the big fight. Unlike some people." She cast a malevolent glare back at Raising Heart.

But Fate missed her implication, because she was already looking at the third occupied bench, her eyes wide. "Alicia," she whispered. "That's..."

Alicia's expression faltered, and she moved over to the bench. Even by the chaos of her other projects, it was obvious that this Device was a mess; mostly disassembled and in a state of total disarray. Some attempts to restore new order to the thoroughly dismantled lattice, but they were clumsy and ran counter to what remaining pattern there was left over from its original state.

Lost amid the chaos, a pair of long, coiled whips could just about be seen.

"It..." Alicia said haltingly. "I... I thought... mama... mama won't be using it anymore. Will she?" She blinked rapidly. "A-and... that's not its fault, and it w-would be mean to just... leave it or throw it away. S-so I've been rebuilding it. Because I couldn't... I didn't want to... I was just going to use it, but then I saw it and remembered how mama always used to have it wh-when I was playing and I couldn't..."

Fate hugged her. Alicia hugged back, sniffling. "And... and she'd be mad but also prob'ly proud of how clever I am," she said into Fate's shoulder. "And..."

She paused, and her breath hitched several times in the circle of Fate's arms.

"... and I'm calling it 'Precious Memory'," she finished, eventually. "Because... it sounds like..."

"I know," Fate whispered, hugging tighter. "It's a good name. She'd like it a lot. So... so would Linith."

Alicia whimpered as though she'd been struck, and Fate bit down on her lip hard.

"If you need any help..." she offered.

"I'm helping her," Dieci put in quietly. She paused for a moment, thinking. "She just saved us all from an explosion?" she added, though it sounded more like a question than a statement. It did the job, though. Sniffing and wiping her eyes on a sleeve, Alicia pulled back.

"Yeah," she agreed bravely. "So... so I should get back to work. On Raising H-heart. Because she's worse than I thought 'cause of how Nanoha fights, and I'll go back to Precious Memory... later."

Fate nodded. "I'll come back in an hour or so, then," she said. "With food."

...​

17 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

"... gotta be some ramen left in here, c'mon... argh."

Arf sat back and blew her hair out of her eyes with a huff. Despite her best efforts and three rounds of searching, the bags they'd haphazardly brought with them from Earth refused to yield any delicious noodley goodness.

Chewing her lip and scowling at the unfairness, she looked up and regarded the kitchen with wary uncertainty. It looked different to the kitchens from the Garden of Time, Earth or Schzenais, which were unfortunately the sum of her experience with kitchens. And Linith had done most of the food preparation in the first and last cases, while her time on Earth had mostly been limited to what foods could be microwaved in five minutes or less.

However, she had the basics down. There was the heating-food-up-thing. The keeping-food-cold-thing. The cutting-food-up-place. The...

Arf peered at a squat, roundish machine and the arcane metal protrusions that jutted down into a little hollow in the middle. There was a distinct lack of helpful explanatory labels.

... well, all she really needed was the first three, and she could work out how to make them do what she wanted by trial and error. Probably. Well enough to keep Fate and the others fed, at least. She wasn't going to trust anyone else here to do so; not after Linith's warnings.

She could start with soup. That sounded easy enough. And she could probably… probably open a link to Nanoha and ask for advice if she got really, really stuck and…

"Vesta!" she barked reflexively, catching a grey-black blur out of the corner of her eye. "Stop right there!"

The blur skidded to a halt and resolved into a kitten carrying something flat and electronic in her mouth. Arf gratefully abandoned the kitchen to get a closer look, and growled.

"Vesta," she groaned, extracting it from the kitten's jaws with no small difficulty. "She's not gonna get better if she spends all her time awake and playing games. She needs to sleep. And keep her hands in the goop so they can finish healing. Quit taking her things like this."

'She's bored, though!' Vesta complained. Arf rolled her eyes.

"Good. Tell her to channel her boredness into getting better faster. And... urgh, I'll help you try to find something she can do that won't need her hands. Once I've done some food. Okay?"

Vesta's tail lashed unhappily, but her mistress's best interests won out over her orders. 'Fine,' she grumbled. 'Oh, and the Doctor's been wanting to poke around in, um... in Precia's things. Again. So we should probably go through them first, but...'

Arf winced. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Can you distract Fate while I take first run at that? I don't wanna make her do it."

The sight of a kitten attempting to pull off a salute was an odd one, but Vesta made it work. 'Aye aye, senpai!' she said, her tail standing at attention. 'You can do the boring bit and I'll... ah! I can get Fate to entertain mistress for a while! Two birds with one laser beam!'

Arf snorted, but let her scamper off. She turned and surveyed the kitchen again, biting her lip.

... food could wait for now. They weren't too hungry yet, and as long as they kept running tox scans of their meals it was probably safe to eat what the Doctor provided. And this was a more pressing priority anyway.

The meagre collection of bags they'd managed to bring was... well, it was meagre. The few she'd carted into the kitchen were a bust; there was nothing important in them, including ramen. That left the ones still stored in the medical ward. Arf shrunk down to puppy-form and snuck in quietly, looking in on Nanoha's room as she passed and making for...

... the other one. Just disturbing the clinical silence of the bare room felt wrong, somehow. Like she was violating something sacred. The bed that Precia had lain on was empty now, but her presence still somehow lingered. It made Arf's fur prickle, and she made for the bags with gritted teeth.

Rooting through them felt even more disrespectful than just being here. But she forced herself through it, sorting things one by one into three piles; safe, strange and secret. The second one was... annoyingly large, honestly. She didn't understand most of the things Precia had seen fit to bring with them. But if Jail kept pushing, they could occupy him with the safe stuff long enough for the others to see what they could identify.

She'd made her way through two and a half bags before she found the flat tablet device. At first glance it looked no different to several others that had been buried in the same bag, but this one turned on as she pulled it out. Arf yelped, glancing back at the curtain-shrouded bed as she scrambled to turn it off, but froze as the tablet spoke.

"Hello Arf," it said in Linith's voice.

Arf almost dropped it. Sheet white, she turned it in nerveless fingers to see the sandy-haired woman onscreen, smiling up at her from the past. A quiet sob forced its way out.

"Linith?" she whispered.

"Dear heart," Linith said sadly. "If you're listening to this... well, the worst has probably happened. At the very least, I'm gone. And I'm sorry – so very sorry – that you probably didn't get to say your goodbyes."

Arf choked on another sob, the image blurring as tears flooded her eyes.

"There is so much I want to say to you, but I haven't the time to say all of it," Linith went on. "I'm growing weaker, and so I must be brief. Arf. The others have their own messages, but this one is for you. Since the day Fate found you in the forest, you've done your best to look after her, as she looked after you. You cared for her during her training, you were there for her as she searched for the Jewel Seeds, and you've protected her in battle more times than I can count. I'm prouder than I can say to have known you, and I can't imagine a better familiar for our little girl.

"But now I'm going to ask you to do something more. Fate and Alicia will be heartbroken, and while Vesta blunts the edge of Nanoha's... quirks, they're both still of a kind. Those four don't really know when to stop, and they'll drive themselves too hard once Precia and I are gone. I need you to look after them, Arf. To care for them all like you've cared so well for Fate."

Breathing hitching, Arf reached out to trace the edge of Linith's face. The older woman's eyes were getting a little watery, but she was smiling through the tears.

"It has been my privilege and my honour to care for you," she said. "I love you all so, so much, and every day I spent with you was happy. And I know, in my heart, that I can trust you to carry on that love, and that care, and that happiness. A family needs a centre, Arf. Be that for them. You can do it. I know you can."

"I am," Arf whispered. "I will."

Linith's smile turned blinding, as if in response to her promise. "Good girl," she said softly. "And goodbye, my little one."

The screen winked off, fading to black, and Arf stayed cuddled around it for a few minutes of shaky breathing. The other tablets no doubt had similar messages on them; waiting to be touch-triggered by the other four. She should finish sorting through the bags... sort out the tablets, hand them out.

... but not right now, she decided.

Time to tackle that soup and get her family fed.

...​

20 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

And then it was later.

Snow fell lightly on the wilting winter flowers of a wide meadow. A stream wound through it lazily; ice crusting the edges of the water, and pine forests stretched up the slopes of a small mountain beyond the far treeline.

Five figures gathered around a freshly dug grave. It wasn't hidden. There was no need. They'd found this place by jumping randomly; an unpopulated world with nothing to draw attention to it. Precia Testarossa would rest here in secret. Her last refuge would be known only to the five of them.

Slowly, with tears streaming down her cheeks, Alicia knelt down and placed a circlet of flowers on the freshly turned earth. Fate moved up behind her as she stood again, folding her little sister into her arms. The two of them were dressed in deep mourning crimson, which made them look even more alike than usual. Nanoha watched with aching eyes, a painful lump in her throat.

She'd hoped. She'd really, really hoped. Precia had seemed so well on Schzenais, so happy...

... well.

At least her last few days had been happy. She reached out quietly and took Vesta's hand, then groped around with the other to find Arf's. She got two reassuring squeezes in response.

"Precia Testarossa was a great mage, a great master and a great mother," Fate said softly. The snow flurried around her face and flakes of it caught in her unbound hair. "She brought her daughter back when nobody else could, and gave her a sister – and a family – to look after her. She was brilliant, beautiful, and loving." Her voice choked up a little as she drew Bardiche and held him up over the grave in a salute. Opposite her, Nanoha drew Raising Heart and mirrored Fate's stance; the two Devices crossing in an arch of honour. Shakily, Alicia held a gloved hand out beneath them; fingers outstretched.

"L-Linith was warm, kind, and devoted to her children," Nanoha said, taking over the eulogy. "She accepted strangers into her family and made them feel welcome, and she never let her charges feel sad – not even for a minute. She looked after Precia and she looked after us."

Alicia half-turned, just enough to bury her head in Fate's side.

"They will be missed," Fate managed, "more than we can say. And we will never forget them."

"Never," Nanoha agreed, and heard the familiars and Alicia echo her.

It felt final. It felt fearful. Precia and Linith were gone.

They were alone.

...​

32 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

But of course, life went on. And part of life going on was dealing with the aftermath of life not going on for some people.

"... and so your mother set up a trust as part of the arrangements for her demise," the lawyer said. She was an elderly lady dressed in stern black with snow white hair and pale eyes, but seemed to be trying to make an effort to seem gentler to the young girls. The office was soft and warm, and outside snow flurried down from the reddened sky. "That is, she made sure that there are people who will handle things like looking after you and the like. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Fate said. She looked even smaller than usual, still dressed in her deep red mourning clothes. Alicia sat on her lap, being cuddled close. "She explained some of these things b-before... before the end. Um, basically, we're going to stay at school as boarding students. And when I graduate I become Lezi and Ami's guardian and look after them until they graduate. Same for Nene and Vittoria."

"Mmm," Nanoha said. "I understand." She had the easier task here, by a long way. Vesta was just her familiar. Alicia was Fate's little sister who had just lost her mother.

"That's good," the lawyer said. "Now, until you two graduate, a representative of the trust will serve as your legal guardian. That means that - well, for example, when you need permission from a parent to go on a school trip, it'll be their job to give that permission. They'll also be there for you if... well, you know, if you want anyone to talk to or anything like that. If you have a problem, you should go to them and they'll either be able to help you or know someone who can help you."

"Yes," said Fate.

"Now, from day to day, you'll be living at school. I've been in touch with them and they already have arrangements set up for students who are orphans. This does mean you'll be at school during the holidays too, which I realise will be a change."

Nanoha raised her hand slightly. "What if we want to travel or go on holiday somewhere?" she asked. She looked out the window. "I miss proper sunlight already."

"That will need to be discussed at the time. You need an exit visa to leave Schzenais, and that requires the government to give you permission. Normally that's not a big deal, but the arrangement with your mother does mean that as guests and non-citizens, your travel options are limited until all of you have reached the age of majority." The old lady crossed her hands on her lap. "However, there are still some things that can be done. You're right - for people who aren't born here, it's often good to take short holidays away. Some people just can't handle our sun or the way the day-night cycle is different for too long."

"Okay," Nanoha said quietly. She didn't like the sound of that. Having spent time on Earth recently, the homesickness was back - and the idea of not being able to leave here until she was old didn't sound very inviting. Her heart twinged as she thought about the perfect dream world the Book had offered her. Why couldn't that have been real? Why couldn't she have lived with her parents? Fate and Alicia could probably have lived with them too, even if Precia was dead in the real world. Why couldn't everyone have just been friends? Why couldn't she have lived on a real proper planet where it didn't always snow and where it wasn't cold and the sky was the proper colour and the sun wasn't a cool red disc and... why?

Raising Heart chimed quietly, and Nanoha checked her as Fate asked about something to do with their syllabus and extra classes. There was a letter in the dead drop she'd shared with Yuuno. A reply to the one she'd sent him.

She looked up carefully, dismissing the notification. She could tell him where they were... or maybe let Fate know about the dead drop? If they were careful, they could try to talk the TSAB into trusting that Alicia was safe, and then they could get pardoned and not have to live here and they could all... her friends could all be...

"Nanoha?" Fate was looking at her. "What is it?"

Nanoha met her gaze, and felt the smooth, hard surface of Raising Heart between her fingers. She closed her eyes.

"It's nothing, Farina," she said quietly. "Just an update. What were you saying about extra magic classes?"

This wasn't that perfect dream world, after all.

She'd just have to make the most of it.

...​

 

[Aleph]

Power Games
Final Words​

35 days after the defeat of the Book of Darkness

A silver-grey destroyer dropped into the thin atmosphere of a red planet. The Ys was small and out of date; one of many that had been pressed into service scouring the sector for remnants of the Mariage. The TSAB's manpower was stretched short out here at the very edge of their reach. This ship carried only four squads of six marines – under half its nominal compliment of sixty.

"Lieutenant, deploy and investigate the anomalous signal," ordered Commander Birturbo. Tall, thin, and pale faced, the commander had been tense and nervous throughout the entire mission. "It could be nothing, but I don't want any needless losses."

"Sir!" Lieutenant Dara snapped off a textbook salute, and looked around the cramped teleporter bay in the belly of the ship, meeting the faces of her understrength platoon.

She waited for her superior to duck back out of the room before scowling. Short brown hair framed a tired face, and her expression was snappish and irritable after days of searching. "All right! You should all know the drill by now, but apparently boredom is making you slack off. That last deployment was a mess! So to reiterate; any and all suspicious signals are to be treated as if they could be a Mariage hotspot. That means spells primed, corners covered, body cams on and don't let your guard down. I spot anyone chatting or watching a feed, I will bust them down so far that they never see daylight again. Clear?"

"Dara," Estelle groaned from the back of the small huddle. "This is the fifth dead-end today, you can't pretend you're not just as bored as us."

Dara gave him a killing glare. "We treat this seriously," she repeated, low and dangerous. "Teleport on my mark. I'll be heading down with Section C, since they're down one man. Section A, off you go!"

Six flashes of light marked their departure from the ship, and the signals came back reporting a clean deployment. Section B deployed, and then C. They materialised on the Martian surface in full Barrier Jackets, immediately sinking a few centimetres into the rusted sand. A dust storm was sweeping through the region, rendering the horizon invisible behind a reddish haze and obscuring much of the sun and starlight. In a testament to their professionalism – or possibly their desire not to be harangued anymore by their lieutenant – the squad fell into immediate formation; adjusting their colours to blend into the surroundings and crouching low to survey the area.

"Ys, this is Dara," she transmitted back up to the ship. "Platoon is on the ground. Any change in the anomaly?"

"No change," Commander Birturbo replied. "The dense terrain and the dust storm are interfering with scanners, though."

"Understood." Dara gave her orders, and the other sections began to advance, deploying their search spells and sweeping the rocky terrain.

One of Section C came scuttling low through the storm. "El-tee," Aleko whispered. "I've got something on Area Scan. Something humanoid – not just the wind."

The little group clustered closer together and peered through the gloom towards the cliffs a few hundred metres away. Dara's eyes narrowed as she picked out what Aleko had noticed; the slightest suggestion of a humanoid figure moving coming out of the shadow of a cave.

"Down, down!" she hissed, grabbing the two marines next to her and yanking them down. The rest of them hit the ground a second later, burrowing down into the sand to avoid notice.

The figure stood unnaturally still, searching the landscape with slow sweeps of its head. Dara swore quietly.

"They must have caught the teleport beacon. They know we're here, they just don't know where," she hissed. Opening a secure link to the Ys, she called it in.

"That's a Mariage," the commander said intensely. "It's exposed itself for our scanners. Lieutenant, standing orders are to search and destroy."

Lieutenant Dara gritted her teeth. "Sir, we don't know how many there are."

"We're prepared for close air support if the estimates on their remaining numbers are incorrect," the man said. "But we need to confirm if this is their nest, or just a scouting mission. We can't risk them getting awa—" His image broke up and scattered.

"Aleko?" Dara snapped.

"I'm trying," he muttered back urgently. "We're being jammed. I can't try to punch through it, not without alerting everything within a hundred kilometres."

"So we retreat?" asked Riva. Dara shook her head, hissing in frustration.

"The Ys will be trying to get through. If we run now, they'll vanish and we'll have to hunt them down all over again. But if they're out here and only sent one unit out, I'm betting they're low on numbers." She checked her links, made sure that she had contact with the other sections and moved A and B into position.

"We'll take point. Remember, they'll all be linked – as soon as one goes down, the rest will know, and start getting ready for us. Or escaping. We go in quickly, we cover all the angles, we lead with a scry-spell and we take them apart by the numbers. Estelle and Tatra lead – Estelle, shoot anything that moves, Tatra, you're on defence." The Mid- and Belkan-users nodded, and Dara continued. "Riva and Trabant next. Riva, you provide support if anything gets too close, Trabant is on forward watch." Riva hummed in acknowledgement, shifting her spear into a crossguard mode.

Dara took a deep breath. "Aleko and I will bring up the rear. Anything seems out of place, at any time, you yell it out for the squad. Got it?"

There was a low chorus of acknowledgement. The groaning or boredom from before was gone; replaced by a rush of adrenaline. Dara nodded.

"Trabant, can you dispatch it from here?"

The large man was already sighting down his Device. "Just a moment…" he murmured, shifting position. "Everyone get ready to go… and… firing."

[Whisper Cannon]

A washed-out blue so pale it was barely visible lanced from his staff and hit the figure in the neck before it could react. The body spun once; head half gone, and burst into liquid flame as it fell.

"Go go go!"

The squad ran for the cave entrance, the other squads moving in behind them. Another figure loomed up as they poured in, but its grey shooting spell glanced off Tatra's shield and a stutter of fire from three different Devices dispatched it. Trabant launched a line-of-sight scrying spell ahead of them and they sped on through the cave; a window hovering alongside to show them the view around the next corner.

That was the only reason they survived the next two Mariage, which didn't bother with a shootout. The dark figures were a blur on the advance screen, and only Estelle's reaction time saved them. A green pulse of force expanded into a web that filled the tunnel, which both creatures slammed into and detonated; spraying acrid chemical goop across the cave walls.

The squad skidded to a halt as the spatter roared into flame, illuminating the gloomy cavern with an eye-hurting orange-white light and sparking flinches where droplets hit their barrier jackets.

"Don't stop, don't stop!" shouted Dara. "If we lose momentum they'll have time for more traps; suicide bombs mean they're desperate! Move, damn you!"

But the last three Mariage they found weren't setting traps. Nor were they preparing to fight. Moving more haltingly than their initial charge, unnerved by the near miss, the squad turned into a large cave and found the looming bulk of a supply ship; old and battered.

And taking off.

The marines threw themselves out of the way of the battered ship as it launched, uselessly peppering it with shots.

"Stop it!" Dara broadcast on all channels, sprinting after it.

But there was nothing that ground troops could do. The Ravi emerged from the cave, smashing aside rock in its flight, and…

Bright light lanced down from overhead, punching through the flank of the escaping ship and sending it crashing down into the mountainside. The Ys could be seen overhead, its prow glowing from the discharge of its primary weapon.

"Yes!" shouted Tatra. "The commander came through!"

"Move in!" ordered Dara. "Secure the vessel! Don't let them get it in the air again!"

A flying leap by Riva got her spear through a bulkhead door as it closed to seal off the ruptured section, and she levered it open with a yell as alarms began blaring. The ship was small – only three internal compartments – and they found the Mariage on the bulkhead's other side, clustered around an ancient black throne that faced away from the door.

Six spells fired. Two struck and shattered Tatra's shield. One hit Estelle, who dropped with a yell of pain.

Two Mariage dropped with her, and Riva's spear pinned the last one to the wall through its chest.

Panting and swearing, Dara limped forward as the others congregated around their downed man. Wincing and raising a hand to shield herself against the burning goop that now filled the entire left half of the room, she grabbed the limp form on the high throne and yanked it into her arms before backing away as far as she could.

"Hey!" she yelled, catching the attention of the section. "We have a man down and a hostage, and that might not have been all of them! Secure the rest of the systems!"

Elbowing the door to the cockpit open, Dara settled the little girl the Mariage had been clustered around in copilot's seat, pulled Estelle's body in after her and – with some relief –turned off the alarms. Kneeling to check him over, she sucked air past her teeth. The spell had hit him on the temple; a lethally concentrated bolt of force that had punched through his barrier jacket and knocked him senseless. His breathing was shallow, but regular.

"Lucky," she told him, straightening. "Very lucky. A little more force and that would have shattered your skull."

She rose and made her way through to the ruptured compartment they'd come in through, edging carefully around the fire. Aleko was crouching over his Device readout and frowning. "Dara…" he said slowly as she came in, "something weird is going on here. The jamming isn't coming from the ship – it's not even coming from the cave complex. Why would they stick it outside somewhere?"

"Are you sure? Check again," she ordered.

"Lieutenant!" Commander Birturbo's image was unmoving, but this close he could punch through the jamming to get a voice link. "Do you have the wreckage secured?"

"In progress, sir!" She glanced back at the girl. "We've got a hostage – a child."

"Mark her and we'll teleport her out," the man said.

Edging past the burning goop for a third time, she dug a beacon out of her pocket and placed it on the girl. "Ready when you are, sir," she said. She paused. Wait, with the jamming so thick, maybe it would be safer to…

The little girl vanished in light. "Transfer successful," Commander Birturbo said. "We'll take good care of her. Keep on with what you're doing, lieutenant."

The man cut the link. Sitting back in his chair, he looked over his silent bridge.

The bodies of his crew lay at their desks. Blood pooled on the floor, well-lit under the bright lights of the ship. They hadn't suspected anything. Flexing the clawed glove on his hand, the man put his feet up on his command console, and tapped a few buttons on his Device.

"Wait, what's that?" he said, his voice perfectly mimicking Lieutenant Dara. "There's more! Kaice! Dammit it, Tatra, take them down! Section A, come in! Come in! They're all down! How many of those monsters are there? Commander! I need danger close fire support! There were more and they're all activating!" He wasn't just mimicking her. He was also mimicking the noises of magic in the background.

"Are you—" he began in the commander's voice.

"Do it!" he screamed in Lieutenant Dara's voice.

"Fire support authorised," he said, in the commander's voice. He waved his clawed glove idly, and the systems were overridden. "Danger close. Sky Lance."

Bright light formed between the vessel's prow, before a ship-grade bombardment spell fell upon the wreckage of the Ravi. The Ys burned the vessel and its own marines from the face of the dusty red planet.

"Commander!" he shouted in the voice of one of the dead crew. "Teleport flicker! They're through our shields!"

He swore in the commander's voice. "All hands! Prepare for boarding act—" And then he screamed exactly the scream a man might scream if he was stabbed from behind without expecting it. It was not the first such scream the bridge had heard.

Sitting back in the commander's seat with a sigh, Due let herself relax, properly, for the first time in days. Her skin squirmed and shifted as flesh and musculature swapped out with other grafts, and she shivered happily as her face returned to her favourite form. A pretty young woman with dirty-blonde hair who looked to be around fifteen sat sprawled out in the chair, a few flecks of blood still on her face. She gave herself a winning smile and a wink in the reflective surface of the screen, and fired one more shot down into the glowing crater to take care of the remainder of Sections A and B. Then, with a languorous stretch, she pulled up a window and made sure that the girl those idiots had found for her was safely secured.

"Well then," she said, half to herself and half to her comatose passenger. "Time to leave. Can't keep the Doctor waiting."

...​

Three hours later, a small group entered the UA-27 base of operations, unwounded but with shoulders sagging from tiredness. The tallest carried a tiny form in her arms; and she was flanked by three girls of varying sizes.

A man was waiting for them at the inner entrance, along with a young woman. The eldest of the new arrivals ducked her head prettily as they approached.

"Girls!" Jail greeted the Numbers. "It went well, then?"

Due nodded. "Your intelligence allowed me to pin down the world and lead my proxies there," she said, her manner as casual as if she was discussing the weather. "I maintained my impersonation of the commander I replaced easily, and eliminated all possible witnesses after my 'dear men' secured the Mariage Queen."

"And the vessel?" Uno asked primly.

Due smiled. "I disposed of the corpses, scrubbed it with Mariage-characteristic Galean cleansing spells, and then vented it. They'll find the ghost ship in orbit when they follow its emergency broadcast. If your injection code does its job, the TSAB will be chasing Mariage ghosts for decades. My younger sisters' presence on site close to the target location was useful, but not strictly necessary. If they had not arrived, things would likely have gone exactly as I planned."

"I helped, I helped!" Quattro added eagerly. "I put up a field to stop them talking! Due said I did well, didn't you, didn't you!"

Due shifted the tiny form in her arms to ruffle her sister's hair fondly. "Quattro was a great help," she agreed. "You were the most useful one."

Quattro beamed.

Tre, on the other hand, scowled. "I'm glad you had fun," she muttered sullenly. "I didn't get to do anything. Might as well not even have been there, right 'ci?"

Dieci; the last member of the little group, shrugged laconically. "I didn't mind," she said softly. "Went as planned. That's good."

Tre huffed in annoyance and stomped off. Uno sighed, and trailed after her.

"Hurt feelings?" Jail mused, watching her go. "Hmm. Well, I'm sure she'll get over it. And an excellent job, well done." He rubbed his hands together, smiling proudly. "I had complete faith in you, of course, but I'm glad to hear you weren't injured. And your objective?"

Due hefted the petite figure she carried. A long braid of red hair trailed down from to brush her knees. "Unharmed and asleep," she said. "She stirred a little when I first picked her up, but nothing since."

"Ah, poor dear." Jail nodded sympathetically. "Deprived of an energy source, she can do nothing but sleep, it seems. Well, we'll see if we can't sort that out." He smiled again, the mad gleam in his eyes twinkling at the thought of the new puzzle resting peacefully in front of him.

A small hand tugged at his lab coat and he looked down. Dieci, after a momentary pause, remembered to look up.

"Are we going to have a new sister?" she asked quietly. She had been a lot less lively since the Testarossas had left, Jail noted. Likely missing her friend.

He ruffled her hair paternally. "Perhaps, Dieci," he agreed. "A new sister, if she proves… amenable to being your friend. And perhaps much more." Despite himself, a chuckle escaped him as he gently lifted the young Queen of Galea from Tre's arms, and turned to take her back into the base. "As soon as we can wake her up, I'm sure she'll be a great help to us."

"That's good." Seeming happier than she had since Alicia had left for parts unknown, Dieci smiled. "I'm glad we rescued her from the TSAB, then." Behind Dieci, Due grinned. "And it's good that those servant-things of hers won't be around anymore."

Jail couldn't help it. He shifted Ixpellia in his arms to pat Dieci on the head, and laughed delightedly.

"No, indeed, Dieci," he managed, as he wiped tears of mirth away from his eyes. She was giggling too, drawn along by his amusement despite not really understanding the joke. "No, they most definitely will not."

He grinned.

"But I think she'll be a great help to us anyway."

…


Author's Note: Wow.

Let me repeat myself. Power Games is over. Wow. This story took far, far longer than I planned or expected – hiatuses caused by the demands of university threw off my writing schedule to a much greater degree than Game Theory did, which coupled with the long-chapter format made for ridiculously long dead periods. I'm not at all happy about that, and henceforth the Gamesverse will be shifting to a shorter chapter length that will hopefully prevent it from happening again.

But it's finished now, and it was a pretty wild ride. Thanks, as always, go to EarthScorpion; my cowriter and editor. As with Game Theory, I learned a lot from writing this story – and I was able to use and refine some of the lessons I learnt from Game Theory in the process. There are still flaws in the narrative, just as there were with its prequel, but all in all I'm pretty proud of what I've done here.

Next up in the Gamesverse will be a side story written by EarthScorpion, called Hide and Seek Games. Look out for it on his page! And until then, goodbye and thank you for reading!


…


END​

 

[EarthScorpion]

And so now Power Games is done for reals. No more fake-outs. It's actually done.

 

[Aleph]

If you have trouble believing it after so long, don't worry. So do I.

 

[jwolfe_beta]

Congrats the both of you, it's been a fun freaking ride.

Nanoha, Fate and Alicia will be slowly adjusting to their loss. Lindy's likely glad that she's managed to deposit the 97ers back on their planet (and away from the sane people) while Zest is finding out that the that Nanoha's family aren't berserkers, just Takamachis.* And the mistress of the Tome will now be called Hayate Nakajima (it just doesn't roll of the tongue the same way).

And finally Jail is performing crazy Mad Science! that no sane man would contemplate (wonder if the TSAB secret council added some 97er genetics when making their mad scientist?) But then he always is working on said Mad Science! so that's not really anything new.

*Though if you asked Chrono, he'd probably prefer a team of berserkers.

 

[Eidorian999]

Jail. Has. Ixpellia.

I see no way that this can possibly go badly! /sarcasm

 

[pheonix89]

That was beautiful.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Yeesh.

Well, that was quite a ride.

A shout out.

"But in my defence, he had a spear and he rushed towards me shouting something."

"He was a combat medic, and he was shouting 'Medic! Don't shoot!'," Lindy said wearily.

Click to shrink...

Life's little ironies. This bit was hilarious.

... The grave scene was... solemn as it should be; I'm curious what the other messages were, but I imagine we'll find out in time. It's good to see that they are, in fact, away from Jail, who as we've been reminded is less than moral (and why is it that so many living weapons take the form of small children anyway? Though I suppose Ixpellia is more "a girl who happens to be ridiculously broken" than the "manifested weapon" the Tome is...

A little surprised they'd let Graham near the Tome, but then again I shouldn't be; his problem was being too zealous about sealing it, after all.

... Looking forward to the rest. Good luck to Nanoha, in forging that world of hers.

 

[BF110C4]

Alicia is the kind of mad scientist I would get to create WMD's and to save the day at the last second with crazy scientific stuff, but she is not my first, or third (or 193°) choice for regular maintenance and repairs of delicate precision instruments. Something about her technical lingo does not inspire confidence...

 

[Jonen C]

Reinforce tilted her head, white hair falling in front of her eye. She huffed it out the way. "I will have it as I had it when the captain interrogated me," she said seriously. "With milk and six spoons of sugar."

Click to shrink...

... Hayate! The Admiral has corrupted Reinforce!

--

Nakajima Hayate. Huh. That'll be interesting.

He pointed at the 'Do Not Throw Objects In The River' sign that she was leaning on.

Click to shrink...

Chrono's such a square.
ChroMei?

... And oh god oh god, we're all gonna die.

 

[OmegaCloud]

This entire thing was just beautiful .

 

[EarthScorpion]

Chrono's such a square.
ChroMei?

Click to shrink...

SHINY AND CHROMEI

SHIPPING IN VALHALLA

 

[Bki]

The ending was quite nice. There wasn't really any big twist*, but it's kind of nice to have a relatively straightforward conclusion, after all the excitement that happened before.

*Jail doing something sinister to benefit was a given after all. Though I didn't quite expect kidnapping Ixpellia, and regardless of that, it's a nice sequel hook.

 

[Vyslanté]

I'm bad at constructively commenting.

So, I'll just say that, just like the previous chapters, I hugely enjoy reading you !

 

[Lexica]

Raising Heart chimed quietly, and Nanoha checked her as Fate asked about something to do with their syllabus and extra classes. There was a letter in the dead drop she'd shared with Yuuno. A reply to the one she'd sent him.

She looked up carefully, dismissing the notification. She could tell him where they were... or maybe let Fate know about the dead drop? If they were careful, they could try to talk the TSAB into trusting that Alicia was safe, and then they could get pardoned and not have to live here and they could all... her friends could all be...

"Nanoha?" Fate was looking at her. "What is it?"

Nanoha met her gaze, and felt the smooth, hard surface of Raising Heart between her fingers. She closed her eyes.

"It's nothing, Farina," she said quietly. "Just an update. What were you saying about extra magic classes?"

This wasn't that perfect dream world, after all.

She'd just have to make the most of it.

...​

Click to shrink...

It's interesting, because looking at this I really can't help but think that Nanoha learned almost the right lesson from her time absorbed in the book. Sure, she's realized that things magically turning out perfectly and everyone just forgiving each other immediately is impossible, but I think she's taken that idea too far. She's seen Precia and Linith die, she's feeling their loss keenly, and she's thinking that maybe the world isn't a terribly kind and forgiving place after all. So in this state, she's given up on the idea that things could be worked out with the TSAB, even though they very probably could be to one extent or another. This I think is emblematic of Nanoha's childishness in another sense- before it was the idea that everyone could just get along that was the big thing, but now I think it's this feeling that things can only really change in big climatic moments where everything is on the line, and then after that you're stuck with what you've got. She's not considering the idea that you can just talk to people calmly and try to slowly work towards something better, rather than forcing an immediate resolution.

My previous post which I deleted so I wouldn't be double posting: I'm sure you want some substantive criticism and analysis, but with so much to go over, that's a little tough to do immediately. I will say however that Linith's recording for Arf and the funeral for Precia actually made me cry a little, so great job on that. On the whole, you've done an amazing job writing Power Games, and I'm almost desperate for more. Thank you for sharing your writing with us.

 

[Dreitus]

SHINY AND CHROMEI

SHIPPING IN VALHALLA

Click to shrink...

Reflecting all the colors of the rainbow.

 

[Mega1987]

you just made me hooked for another sequel...

I'll be patiently waiting for your version of StrikerS.

but i gonna wonder if Due's still going to be like her canon self, same with Quattro?

or the presence of nanoha and co. managed to influence them a bit?

all i know that Dieci is got a decent chance of being a researcher if not the engineer of the team, especially if she's continued to be paired up with Alicia while the said girl do her works.

 

[zernach]

I'll leave the literary analysis to more competent people than myself and instead thank you both for taking the time to write this. So much care and thought put into this it makes me feel slightly bad that I can't offer more insightful feedback other than this:

"Zog me. It's bootiful." Kommanda Uzgob, Deff Skwadron

 

[pheonix89]

It's interesting, because looking at this I really can't help but think that Nanoha learned almost the right lesson from her time absorbed in the book. Sure, she's realized that things magically turning out perfectly and everyone just forgiving each other immediately is impossible, but I think she's taken that idea too far. She's seen Precia and Linith die, she's feeling their loss keenly, and she's thinking that maybe the world isn't a terribly kind and forgiving place after all. So in this state, she's given up on the idea that things could be worked out with the TSAB, even though they very probably could be to one extent or another. This I think is emblematic of Nanoha's childishness in another sense- before it was the idea that everyone could just get along that was the big thing, but now I think it's this feeling that things can only really change in big climatic moments where everything is on the line, and then after that you're stuck with what you've got. She's not considering the idea that you can just talk to people calmly and try to slowly work towards something better, rather than forcing an immediate resolution.

My previous post which I deleted so I wouldn't be double posting: I'm sure you want some substantive criticism and analysis, but with so much to go over, that's a little tough to do immediately. I will say however that Linith's recording for Arf and the funeral for Precia actually made me cry a little, so great job on that. On the whole, you've done an amazing job writing Power Games, and I'm almost desperate for more. Thank you for sharing your writing with us.

Click to shrink...

I disagree with your reading. She actually asked Yuuno to do just that: try and slowly work towards something better. She just wrote off the idea that they could resolve the whole Alicia mess as being unrealistically pie in the sky because Alicia does have a freaking Jewel Seed built into her.

 

[universalperson]

A little late, because this ended up less of an "Epilogue" and more of a "full chapter". To which my only response is "whoops".

Click to shrink...

I picked a bad time to have a headache.

Spoiler: Irrelevant things cut

[Severe damage, my master. Emergency Mode 3: Really Serious Emergency Needs Fixing. Please, I advise against further use.]

Click to shrink...

Ahhhhhhhh....

"But I can't. Yuuno, the TSAB knew. Six months ago they put magic sensors all over the city; ones the Wolkenritter wouldn't have known about! They had to have known! But they didn't do anything!"

Click to shrink...

Damn it...Jail? Was it Jail who told her this?

"One admiral-"

"Is bad, Yuuno! I believe you when you say the TSAB is mostly good, but there are people in it who do horrible things! High-up, important people! Who… who let the Book run rampant as part of some big plan, or look at an accident and try to get a weapon out of it! Or make little children fight things just to make money off them! I can't be part of that. I don't trust them."

Click to shrink...

I predicted Nanoha would do this. But then Nanoha is being a wee bit hypocrticial here, as she has been working with people who make little children fight things.

Spoiler

"Not… not just like that, Yuuno. I mean I'm worried about them. Fate… she's been getting better at school, but she still doesn't act or think like Suzuka or Arisa or anyone else! And Alicia… is Alicia. I think they need someone be the normal one around them. You know, like the reasonable one."

Click to shrink...

Ahahahahahahahaha, NO.

"I don't think you do reasonable. You're the most stubborn, unreasonable girl I've ever known."

Click to shrink...

Only sane man! Only sane man! Thank you Yuuno!

"I know." With two quick gestures, she pulled the pink ribbons from her hair, grimacing as her fingers protested even through the numbing spell. "Here. Keep these." She grinned, obviously on the edge of tears. "I think they'd look great on you!"

Click to shrink...

...another canon inversion.

"He shot Alicia!" Testarossa floated gently to the ground and strode forward, though Yuuno could see she was limping.

"You shot me!"

Testarossa blanched and stopped dead in her tracks. Nanoha wasted no time in driving the point home.

Click to shrink...

...Nanoha, don't push on Fate's buttons like that.

And then someone appeared between the two girls. There was no teleport beacon, no warning. Just the sudden presence of a short figure in an anonymised barrier jacket. They were tiny, whoever they were – shorter even than Nanoha or Testarossa's sister. Nanoha's head snapped around to the new figure, and from the look on her face whatever telepathy she heard had stunned her.

Click to shrink...

Saved by the Numbers.

"'I miss you,'" she whispered. "'Already. I really miss you, Yuuno. Precia and Linith are... are gone. I… I didn't even get to say goodbye. O-or thank them for… for everything.'"

Click to shrink...

Fare thee well, Precia, you died as you lived. Ambiguously.

"Now then, dear!" Nanoha flinched and looked up, hurriedly minimising the screen with a thought. It was Jail, looking slightly sympathetic but mostly a bit manic. "You're looking upset," he went on. "Don't be too sad, now. You won a great victory today, and life goes on. A great victory, yes." His paternal smile unfolded into an overjoyed grin. "Oh, the data on this Device. These observations! These readings!"

Click to shrink...

Damnit, Jail.

"As soon as I've finished processing this data and reading through Uno's analysis, I'll take it into the repair shop and," he chuckled, "fix up the damage from its exertions. Though the damage you did yourself will take longer to heal."

Click to shrink...

Damnit, Ja-

The little girl could phase through walls, ceilings… and apparently even sealed dimensional barriers. The turbulence that had kept the TSAB out for several minutes even after the barrier tore loose hadn't even slowed her down. She'd plucked Nanoha, Fate and their familiars out and put them back on Earth as easily as Nanoha forming a training shot. And then Uno and Tre had been there with a small teleporter-equipped vessel to snatch them away.

Click to shrink...

...Go Sein!

"You can't fix Raisin' Heart, Doctor!" Sein scolded. "She's a super-special Device and you're not…" she hesitated briefly, "… 'tek-o-log-ick' friends wi' her like 'Licia is! She said so! So she's gotta do it!"

Click to shrink...

Go Sein!

"… and Admiral Gallardo is being moved from CoreCom to assume Admiral Graham's duties in full, including the mission to hunt down and eliminate all remaining Mariage units,"

Click to shrink...

Kinda disappointed Ixpellia wasn't all that relevant to the plot.

Spoiler

After taking a chance to freshen up and neaten her uniform, Lindy entered the interrogation room, and was immediately the target of a glare not dissimilar to a Starlight Breaker in intensity.

"We must stop meeting like this, Mrs Takamachi," she said, settling herself down. "Have you calmed down yet?"

Click to shrink...

Pfft!

"Well," Momoko said in an almost aggressively reasonable tone, "Alicia seemed like a bright young girl when I met her. Perhaps she worked out how to use them safely."

"A six year old?"

"Her mother may also have helped," Momoko amended.

Click to shrink...

"As far as I saw, Nanoha is quite happy to cooperate with you. She was working with that nice Yuuno boy without any trouble," Momoko shot back blithely. Lindy quietly suppressed the urge to strangle her, and forced a smile.

Click to shrink...

...Momoko goes for the jugular, it seems.

She groaned. Momoko Takamachi was clearly going to practice magic with or without a Device, so they basically had to give her one for safety's sake so she didn't kill herself. And maybe ones for the girls who were part of her little cabal too.

And yes, perhaps they'd put a few tracker programs on them, too, she added privately. A range of them at different levels of obviousness, just in case the native mages were clever enough to expect such a thing and go looking. After two incidents on this planet in half a year, it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on what the local mages were doing.

Click to shrink...

Heh.

Still no answers as to why Nanoha and Momoko are such bullshit.

"Megane," he rumbled. "Good to see you."

Click to shrink...

Here's someone we haven't seen in awhile.

"No, that's fair," he said. "I was angry when I got called up when my second was born."

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Zest has kids?

Megane gently pushed him back down with a finger before pulling out a disposable data-device. "Here," she said. "I pulled some favours for this to get it done off the books, so take care with it. Full analysis and the data is on there, but in summary – you were right. That was a good hunch. The mitochondrial DNA is nearly identical. Nanoha Takamachi, Momoko Takamachi and Hayate Yagami are from the same matriline. And from the lack of mutations, the link is relatively recent - only a few generations back. If they inherited family names properly on UA97, this would have been obvious from the beginning."

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AHAHAHAHAHAHAH! FREAKIN' CALLED IT!

"Mmm." Zest smiled, not entirely pleasantly. "I thought it had to be something like this. Three women, from a limited geographic region of an uncontacted isolated world? All with freakishly strong linker cores? It didn't seem like a coincidence to me."

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Ahahahahaha! I feel so vindicated.

Megane spread her hands. "They're ancestral human," she said.

"What."

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...What?

"I know, I know, it sounds stupid. But my contact knew straight off they were from an isolate population. I didn't even tell them. Trace degraded Alhazredian genemarkers,

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...that sounds like it might be a bigger deal than the character's are making it.

"Not everything is a conspiracy. Not everything is connected." Megane smiled wryly. "Although you know what I'm glad of? Nanoha and Momoko Takamachi were also valid hosts for the Book of Darkness. It must have at least considered them. The best thing it did was pick Miss Yagami instead."

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Pfft.

Slumping down, Zest raised a hand halfway to his face before wincing and lowering it again. "Yes," he agreed. "I've been thinking what would have happened if we'd run across Nanoha Takamachi with the Book of Darkness during the Jewel Seed incident. That would have been bad. Even more than a big strong man like me could have handled."

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There would have been even chances of Hayate being the one to find Raising Heart.

"I'll be fine, Meg. I know how to handle babies. My ex would at least give me that much."

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That answers that.

Spoiler

With a click, she placed her red tile on the board.

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Oh look, it's Nanoha Innocent.

The other woman shifted. She still seemed uncomfortable with the permanent damage she had suffered in the fight. A white bandage covered her empty left socket, and the empty left arm of her simple white dress was discretely pinned back. The damage to the Book - not to mention the determination of the Cloud Knights themselves to demonstrate they were no longer a threat - meant that they had not tried to regenerate the damage she had suffered. Reinforce herself had expressed fear that any regrowth might go wrong. The idea that she might be corrupted afresh caused her visible pain.

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This looks like a job for Alicia! Which won't be happening.

Of course, none of them were too comfortable in their presence circumstances. The Wolkenritter - and even they were not sure if Reinforce should now be counted as one of them - had been confined to a specialist containment cell that had been transferred onboard. The AMF that saturated the entire space was a constant weight. None of them had their Device, and that made the knights antsy.

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That's good? Maybe?

Reinforce's eyes widened fractionally. "Why would you doubt me?" she asked softly. "I am a knight of the Book, just as you are. My shame is greater than yours. Death may be too kind, though I would hate to make our lady upset. But I will keep her safe, even from myself." Her lips curled up in a fractional smile, "Even if I am now not as well-armed as you are."

Signum nodded. Vita just groaned. "That was terrible," she said accusingly.

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I agree Vita.

"I quite liked it," Zafira observed.

"You would," she grumbled. Jabbing a finger at Reinforce, she squared her shoulders. "You! You are forbidden from being another Zafira, do you hear me? I've had it up to here with his teasing and his stupid jokes and I don't need to get any more of it."

"And when she's had it up to here, that's at least up to waist height for the rest of us," Zafira said in a stage-whisper.

"Are you just getting revenge for the last time you were a tiny little wolf-girl?" Vita asked, pouting.

Zafira considered the question. "Yes," he said firmly. "Yes, I am. I'd like everyone to note how I haven't once picked her up by her ankles, like she used to do to me."

"... yes you did! Last month you did exactly that to make Hayate laugh!"

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Oh god....

Reinforce tilted her head, white hair falling in front of her eye. She huffed it out the way. "I will have it as I had it when the captain interrogated me," she said seriously. "With milk and six spoons of sugar."

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To be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Is there any significance to Reinforce's tea preference?

Deep within the angular structure of a Bureau orbital station, tension hung heavy in the air.

"So?" Hayate asked hopefully. "What do you think?"

"Mmf!" Quint Nakajima replied, which wasn't really that useful as criticism. "S'good! Any more?"

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OH GOD HAYATE IS BUILDING HER ARMY!

"… and if you wanted, you could come and live with me," Quint finished in a rush. "With… me and my husband, I mean. We could adopt you. You said you don't really have any family on Unad… on Earth, and you need someone to take care of you, and we seem to get along well…" She paused for breath. "Think about it," she repeated. "I'm not looking for an answer now, and I don't want to… to pressure you to say yes, or give you the wrong idea about why I'm asking. I really do think you're a great kid, and I'd love to give you a home. I've asked my husband, Genya, and he's all for it. So… yeah. Keep that in mind."

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....

...oh.

Spoiler

Quint took a deep breath. "Gil Graham. The man… the admiral who was trying to seal the Book away."

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Something we didn't get in canon, finally!

"Okay then," she said lightly.

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...well, there you go.

"Exactly." He sighed. "It is a pity that Archival was lost. If we had that; if we could pick through it slowly and safely, we might be able to find the original settings of the Tome from before its corruption buried in its memories. As it is… I'm afraid that the corrupted segments may, in time, regenerate and start the cycle over again."

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This looks like a job for Alicia!
Which won't be happening.

Graham pursed his lips and leaned back, accepting one of the cat-familiars as she leaped onto his lap. Hayate felt a dull pressure kneading her thighs – it was still strange to feel things below her waist – and looked down to find the other one looking up at her.

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Uhhhhh...

She looked up hopefully, and Graham smiled. "I did spend almost a decade scanning the Book," he said. "And you have complete access at the highest levels. I think – I can't promise anything, but I think – that if we work together, we might be able to cauterise the missing sections. We can't rebuild them the way they were without the archives… but we may be able to cordon them off and prevent Restoral from trying to rebuild them at all. Archival will be the difficult one – the Tome needs that. But that should also be the easiest to rebuild manually, without resorting to corrupted secondary backups. And if we then seal Defence and Absorption away, it will be safe. Crippled, but safe."

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...hooray, I guess.

"Your sister and... Lanster?"

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Hooray! He lives and the girl gets him!

"You're trying to be funny, but it's not too far off," Chrono said grimly. He sighed. "I think this probably locks me out of a command path," he admitted. "People're going to remember this. I got a bunch of congratulations from Senior Enforcers, but I embarrassed the higher ups. And broke the rules. And didn't report things properly. And assaulted a superior officer and his familiars and also a few people who tried to stop me. On top of the... uh, mess with Takamachi and the fact that she got away again, uh... well, if I ever got a ship of my own, it'd probably be a cargo ship."

"My disciplinary record is nearly clean, and I just got another bunch of commendations," Mei gloated. "Maybe you could ask for a perfect recruit like me to vouch for you."

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Irony. Sheer utter irony.

*Mei and Chrono shipping*

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Ohhhhhh booooooy.

"Ahh! It's even worse than I thought!" Alicia gasped in horror. "Dollie! You foolish fool! You've doomed us all! Unless..."

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God damnit, Dollie!

Alicia spun around and thrust her arms up victoriously, tilting her head back and basking in imagined applause. "And 'Licia Testarossa saves the day again!" she cheered. "From the terrible nasty stuff that would've happened if she wasn't so clever! Yaaaaay!"

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*quietly* Yay.

She cracked an eye open and narrowed it meaningfully. "Dieci," she prompted. "I just saved us from a giant 'splosion. You're meant to be cheering."

"Yay," said Dieci flatly, not moving from her seat on one of the nearby benches.

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Oh, you got that reference already.

Also, CYBORG ARMY CYBORG ARMY.

"It..." Alicia said haltingly. "I... I thought... mama... mama won't be using it anymore. Will she?" She blinked rapidly. "A-and... that's not its fault, and it w-would be mean to just... leave it or throw it away. S-so I've been rebuilding it. Because I couldn't... I didn't want to... I was just going to use it, but then I saw it and remembered how mama always used to have it wh-when I was playing and I couldn't..."

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Ah, Alicia takes up her mother's...whips. Yes.

"... and I'm calling it 'Precious Memory'," she finished, eventually. "Because... it sounds like..."

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...I think this just broke the Testarossa bad naming curse.

"... gotta be some ramen left in here, c'mon... argh."

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NO RAMEN FOR YOU!

"But now I'm going to ask you to do something more. Fate and Alicia will be heartbroken, and while Vesta blunts the edge of Nanoha's... quirks, they're both still of a kind. Those four don't really know when to stop, and they'll drive themselves too hard once Precia and I are gone. I need you to look after them, Arf. To care for them all like you've cared so well for Fate."

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...Arf is the reasonable one here!

Five figures gathered around a freshly dug grave. It wasn't hidden. There was no need. They'd found this place by jumping randomly; an unpopulated world with nothing to draw attention to it. Precia Testarossa would rest here in secret. Her last refuge would be known only to the five of them.

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...a reversal of Game Theory's epilogue.

This wasn't that perfect dream world, after all.

She'd just have to make the most of it.

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...that was a sad ending.

Power Games
Final Words​

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Oh goody more stuff!

Spoiler

Six flashes of light marked their departure from the ship, and the signals came back reporting a clean deployment. Section B deployed, and then C. They materialised on the Martian surface in full Barrier Jackets, immediately sinking a few centimetres into the rusted sand.

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They're on Mars?

But there was nothing that ground troops could do. The Ravi emerged from the cave, smashing aside rock in its flight, and…

Bright light lanced down from overhead, punching through the flank of the escaping ship and sending it crashing down into the mountainside. The Ys could be seen overhead, its prow glowing from the discharge of its primary weapon.

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Well, that's one issue dealt with.

"Hey!" she yelled, catching the attention of the section. "We have a man down and a hostage, and that might not have been all of them! Secure the rest of the systems!"

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That is Dark Ruler of Galaea to you!

She rose and made her way through to the ruptured compartment they'd come in through, edging carefully around the fire. Aleko was crouching over his Device readout and frowning. "Dara…" he said slowly as she came in, "something weird is going on here. The jamming isn't coming from the ship – it's not even coming from the cave complex. Why would they stick it outside somewhere?"

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...Numbers?

The man cut the link. Sitting back in his chair, he looked over his silent bridge.

The bodies of his crew lay at their desks. Blood pooled on the floor, well-lit under the bright lights of the ship. They hadn't suspected anything. Flexing the clawed glove on his hand, the man put his feet up on his command console, and tapped a few buttons on his Device.

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Oh. Hi Due.

Bright light formed between the vessel's prow, before a ship-grade bombardment spell fell upon the wreckage of the Ravi. The Ys burned the vessel and its own marines from the face of the dusty red planet.

"Commander!" he shouted in the voice of one of the dead crew. "Teleport flicker! They're through our shields!"

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That is fiendishly clever.

Due hefted the petite figure she carried. A long braid of red hair trailed down from to brush her knees. "Unharmed and asleep," she said. "She stirred a little when I first picked her up, but nothing since."

"Ah, poor dear." Jail nodded sympathetically. "Deprived of an energy source, she can do nothing but sleep, it seems. Well, we'll see if we can't sort that out." He smiled again, the mad gleam in his eyes twinkling at the thought of the new puzzle resting peacefully in front of him.

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Hooray, another person to add to Alicia's army!

A small hand tugged at his lab coat and he looked down. Dieci, after a momentary pause, remembered to look up.

"Are we going to have a new sister?" she asked quietly. She had been a lot less lively since the Testarossas had left, Jail noted. Likely missing her friend.

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Or not.

Bah, she'll have them all wrapped around her finger in no time.

Jail couldn't help it. He shifted Ixpellia in his arms to pat Dieci on the head, and laughed delightedly.

"No, indeed, Dieci," he managed, as he wiped tears of mirth away from his eyes. She was giggling too, drawn along by his amusement despite not really understanding the joke. "No, they most definitely will not."

He grinned.

"But I think she'll be a great help to us anyway."

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Why have Mariage when you can make super-Mariage?

So I guess epilogue is a tie in to the prologue. That's a good way to wrap it up.

Later I'll have a post giving my thoughts.

 

[TheEyes]

all i know that Dieci is got a decent chance of being a researcher if not the engineer of the team, especially if she's continued to be paired up with Alicia while the said girl do her works.

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I'm pretty sure that Team NanoFate is not going to willingly go anywhere near Jail; they've already been warned away from doing exactly that by Linith, and Precia already has a support structure set aside for them. I do think that either Alicia or Nanoha may have set up encrypted dead-drops between themselves and some of the Numbers, which might influence them to be slightly less creepy weirdos by the time they've had a chance to grow up.

I disagree with your reading. She actually asked Yuuno to do just that: try and slowly work towards something better. She just wrote off the idea that they could resolve the whole Alicia mess as being unrealistically pie in the sky because Alicia does have a freaking Jewel Seed built into her.

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Exactly; the TSAB would never allow Alicia to walk around un-incarcerated, and then Fate would object strenuously, and Nahoha would back her, and more things would explode everywhere.

 

[Lexica]

I disagree with your reading. She actually asked Yuuno to do just that: try and slowly work towards something better. She just wrote off the idea that they could resolve the whole Alicia mess as being unrealistically pie in the sky because Alicia does have a freaking Jewel Seed built into her.

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Exactly; the TSAB would never allow Alicia to walk around un-incarcerated, and then Fate would object strenuously, and Nahoha would back her, and more things would explode everywhere.

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But the idea that Alicia is too big a pill for the TSAB to swallow falls flat on its face when Hayate and the Knights are looking to end up approximately where they ended up in canon.

The problem is that Nanoha's lost her faith to a degree. She doesn't believe that things will work out, and now she's unwilling to try. She's lost innocence and naivete in Power Games, but I think the point here is that that isn't an absolute good, and I imagine her unwillingness to try and bring up the possibility of coming in to Fate now is going to cause a lot of problems later when they inevitably clash with the TSAB once more.

 

[Jonen C]

Also, having read it, a line I mostly missed during the first readthrough:

"Pah! Hardly a match for how things were in the old days! I remember proper war-skaters, not policewomen pretending to be knights."

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Heh...

Heheh...

...

So odds Quint and Vita take to land hockey, or something like that?

EDIT: Hell, Nakajima family Land Hockey team, terror of the regional league.

 

[TheLastOne]

Reinforce tilted her head, white hair falling in front of her eye. She huffed it out the way. "I will have it as I had it when the captain interrogated me," she said seriously. "With milk and six spoons of sugar."

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Finally someone who drinks DECENT tea, as the Saint-Kaiser intended.

 

[Iron Roby]

So we are up to what? Four epilogues by now?

She sighed. "I don't trust me," she said in a little voice. "Not really. They're still the Cloud Knights.

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I don't trust them maybe? Unless there's something Mei would like to share with us here.

Finally someone who drinks DECENT tea, as the Saint-Kaiser intended.

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Coincidentally, teeth endurance was among the first things that was enhanced in their geneline.