The White Devil of the Moon Chapter 13

bissek

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Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon or MGLN.

The White Devil of the Moon
By bissek
Chapter 13
A Very Busy Day

The Senshi had a long standing policy where if any of their number sounded an alarm, the others would drop whatever they were doing as fast as they plausibly could so that they could help. While this had occasionally resulted in some of them running halfway across the ward only to find the fight was over by the time they got there, none of them begrudged the lost time. After all, there had been times when the extra help was needed, and the next time around it could be the person whose time was wasted who needed help in a fight.

The only thing that the Senshi's alliance with the TSAB had changed to that policy was to increase the number of people who could potentially send or receive the alarm. Which was why Sailor Mars was trying to make her way to Mugen Gakuen in response to an alert that Doctor Precia Testarossa was there.

Mars was actually looking forward to this fight. Precia had dropped a wall on top of her when they had last met, and Mars was looking forward to getting some payback. She suspected that given what the woman had done the last time she had been sighted, Mercury was even more eager for a shot at her. And in all honesty, Mars couldn't blame her for that.

She was still en route to the battlefield when she felt the wave of power. It was sudden. It was immense. And perhaps more disturbingly, it was familiar.

Seven years before, when she was just starting to learn how to be a miko from her grandfather, she had felt waves of power like this. They had occurred irregularly for about a month, culminating in one that happened at the exact moment an enormous storm broke out over the ocean with no warning. That one had been so massive that her awakening spiritual senses couldn't handle it, and she had passed out. She didn't wake up until a few days later, by which time they had stopped just as suddenly as they had started. She never had figured out what had caused them. Apart from a brief period shortly after Venus successfully contacted the princess when she thought she might have felt a wave of power like that again, she hadn't experienced anything like that in the years since. And now they had returned. And this one was actually stronger than the one that had knocked her out all those years before.

And then, just as suddenly, the wave stopped. Moments later, she received an all-clear message.

What had happened? Was the wave connected with Precia somehow? She would have to report this the next time she met with the others. Hopefully somebody would have a notion as to what was going on.

In the meantime, it looked like there wasn't any need for the Sailor Senshi to fight today. Sailor Mars turned away from her original course and started looking for a place to detransform in private.

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Mistress 9 had found her host's conversation with the woman named Shamal to be both interesting and worrying. Knowing the reason why her host's body was slowly failing was quite useful, especially as it came with the implication that once she had grown strong enough to destroy her host's personality and claim the body entirely for herself, it would recover. But she didn't like the thought that this doctor apparently had investigated a method of severing the link between her and the host body, and wanted to try it out.

Mistress 9 was a long way away from her full strength. She wouldn't be able to survive without a host body, and could only take control of the body for short periods of time. The thought that she might get blown up after being removed from her source of power only made the doctor more of a threat. She had to find a way to get rid of her.

She had been unable to speak with Germatoid. He had been busy with his work creating the constructs they had dubbed the Witches 5. Once they were completed, the Death Busters could begin their campaign of gathering Heart Crystals so that they could summon Pharaoh 90 to this world.

Still, the possibility that her host would stop wasting their body's strength on healing spells was helpful. The girl's body wasn't big enough for both of them, and every spell she cast was reducing the available real estate. The last thing she wanted was to inherit a crippled body, even temporarily. The extent to which the girl had already paralyzed herself was bad enough.

Mistress 9 watched the battle between her host's friend's mother and sister with dispassion. She didn't really care about either of the combatants either way. Her host might have some personal stake in who won, but it didn't really impact her at all. So she wasn't paying all that much attention when her host decided to go for a walk shortly after the surviving participants in the battle were carted off in an ambulance. She didn't realize what was going on until it became very clear that the girl was going somewhere specific, and it wasn't the hospital or her home.

Mistress 9 could only take control of her host's body when her host was distracted. At the moment, the girl was wholly focused on her goal, and the daimon was unable to divert her course, which was becoming clearer with every step. Mistress 9's was returning to the domain of the doctor who wished her destruction.

Mistress 9 screamed with rage as her host approached the young woman who suffered from injuries that only her host could heal. But nobody could hear her. Within a matter of minutes, her host had gone from having difficulty walking to being unable to stand.

She had to get in contact with Germatoid. That girl had to be controlled before her compulsive habit of healing people got herself - and more importantly, Mistress 9 - killed.

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Yuuno had been the only one to make it to Mugen Gakuen before the battle had ended. The local authorities had already arrived in force, and were taking charge of the scene. Walking away from the crowds, he contacted Hayate.

"Hayate, it's me. Precia is dead - Fate killed her. Fate and Alicia were both injured in the fight and are being taken to Juuban General Hospital. You might want to have Shamal take charge of them there." He reported.

"Okay, she's on her way. Is there anything else I should know at the moment?" Hayate responded.

"Yes, and it's a potentially serious problem. The last time I saw Precia, she had nine Jewel Seeds. She only had eight of them with her when she died. I have no idea where the ninth is, and even one of them can cause a lot of damage if activated.

"To make things worse, the local police have taken custody of Precia's body and all her effects, including the Jewel Seeds. While I'm sure we can get most of that released to Fate or Alicia as next of kin, that will take time, and given that Precia nearly activated the Jewel Seeds before Fate took her down, they could get triggered just by careless handling. I tried to explain exactly how dangerous they are, but the police refused to accept that they do not have the means to safely store a Lost Logia. I think I'm going to need help to get them properly contained."

"Terrific. I'm heading to the local police station with the rest of the Wolkenritter. We'll try to come with a way to convince the authorities that they are out of their depth on our way. Once we secure the bulk of the Jewel Seeds, we can start looking for the missing one."

Listening to Hayate's instructions, Yuuno left the area. They had to get the Jewel Seeds before someone did something foolish and wrecked the city. Tokyo had enough problems at the moment without any more turning up.

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An ambulance left the grounds of Mugen Gakuen, heading for Juuban General Hospital. Inside were two sisters who had been injured in the final rampage of their insane mother. While the people in the ambulance didn't have the means to properly diagnose and treat the wounds they received from the energy blast that Precia had struck both of them with until they reached the hospital, they were able to clean and bandage the numerous lash marks on the elder of the two girls.

And to their horror, there were quite a lot of lash marks. In addition to the recent injuries, the girl's back was covered in scars that were obviously from previous lashings. The scars were starting to fade, but were still quite visible. They had almost certainly resulted from injuries received years before. The paramedics had heard that Precia was a child abuser along with her other crimes (Most notably the killing spree in their hospital), but they hadn't expected to see physical proof of it, especially such extensive evidence permanently engraved on the skin of her own child.

"Fate?" the younger girl asked. "Who was Linith?"

The older girl sighed. "Linith was my first magic tutor. Precia created her to teach me so that she wouldn't have to interact with me herself. She practically raised me for two years."

"What happened to her?"

"Familiars are created for a purpose. Once that purpose is complete, they die unless their creator takes steps to ensure that this doesn't happen. Precia was going to take those steps, but Linith said she'd be willing to forgo that and accept death if Precia would spend one evening with me as a family.

"Precia never kept her half of the deal. Linith faded away, sentenced to a slow death in exchange for a promise that Precia refused to honor. The last thing she told me before she died was that she wished that I had been her daughter, rather than Precia's."

While Alicia gasped at the further revelation of how far her mother had fallen in the years she had been comatose. While they didn't understand the bit about familiars, they had just heard the story of a woman who had condemned her child's primary caretaker to a lingering death for daring to suggest that the parent make a token effort to involve herself in her child's life. One thing was certain: It was a good thing that woman was already dead.

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From a purely physical perspective, Nanoha felt better than she had in months. But the cost of her sudden good health kept her from enjoying that. Hotaru, the young girl with an unprecedented talent for healing spells who she had only just met, was lying unconscious on the floor. And from what the girl has said before passing out, she had sacrificed her ability to walk in order to heal Nanoha's back and magic.

Even if she hadn't been forbidden from using magic, Nanoha's knowledge of medical spells was virtually nonexistent. She didn't have the slightest idea of how to treat Hotaru's self-inflicted condition. This was something that would require an expert.

Unfortunately, Shamal wasn't around. She had left the base after the report the Precia had resurfaced had come in. Hayate and the rest of the Wolkenritter had left at around the same time. And since Nanoha wasn't allowed to use magic, she couldn't contact her telepathically.

After checking that the unconscious girl wasn't in a position that would hurt her if left in it for a while, Nanoha left to find a mechanical method to contact the TSAB's local medical specialist.

"What is it, Nanoha?" Shamal asked when Nanoha managed to contact her.

"It's Hotaru. She showed up and used that healing spell on my back again. You were right about the risks if she kept using that spell. She's unconscious on the floor and from what she said before passing out, I don't think she can walk anymore. What do I do?" Nanoha gasped out.

Shamal cursed under her breath. "We warned her what could happen if she continued using magic before the cause of her nerve paralysis was dealt with. Why didn't she listen?

"Alright. Call an ambulance for her. See if you can get her taken to Juuban General. I'm heading there to take care of Fate and Alicia anyway, so it will be faster if she also goes there. Once there, I'll try to speak with her family and get permission to heal her."

"Wh-What's wrong with Fate and Alicia?!" Nanoha demanded.

"They were both wounded in the fight against Precia. I think I should be able to treat them fairly easily, but that will have to wait until the local doctors stop looking over them."

"And what about Precia?" If that woman had escaped after hurting Fate yet again, then Nanoha was going to make her regret it. Especially since she had now expanded her abuse to Fate's sister.

"She's dead. She won't be hurting anyone else ever again." With that, Shamal closed the connection.

Nanoha immediately started looking up the phone number of the hospital in question. A young girl needed medical attention, and if what Shamal had said about the recent battle was true, then Fate would need someone to be with her as well.

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One inherent difficulty with dealing with officials on Non-Administered worlds was the fact that since they were Non-Administered planets, government credentials issued by an Administered world had no authority with them. In many cases the locals had never even heard of the TSAB, much less recognized its authority.

Since she had been born on Earth, Hayate was one of the few people in the TSAB who actually existed in its records. Unfortunately, those records weren't about Major Hayate Yagami, SS-class mage and up-and-coming officer. They were about Hayate Yagami, orphan and recovered paraplegic who hadn't been seen or been heard from by anyone since graduating from junior high and leaving Japan to 'study abroad'. This was making the discussion with the local police force about the Jewel Seeds rather difficult.

The man that she, Yuuno, Signum, Zafira and Vita were talking to didn't want to accept that they knew a lot more about Lost Logia than he did. Or that they were dangerous. Or that the local government did not possess the means to safely contain or destroy them. They couldn't even get the man to understand that storing them all in the same evidence bag was a very bad idea.

"I've had enough of this!" The officer ranted. "I've been in the force longer than you've been alive, little girl, and I don't need some kid telling me the proper way to store evidence!"

The man slammed his hand down onto his desk, where it landed on the plastic bag holding the Jewel Seeds. The impact ripped the bag, bringing his skin into contact with the Lost Logia. The crystals started to glow as the angry man inadvertently activated them.

"Yuuno! Get a barrier up, now!" Hayate ordered.

The air rippled as Yuuno set up the barrier needed to separate the people in the office from the rest of the precinct.

"What's happening?" The officer blurted out.

"You just accidentally caused the very problems we were trying to warn you about. I suggest you get back and let us handle this. Signum, Vita, Zafira, get ready."

The three Wolkenritter activated their Devices and prepared to contain the Lost Logia.

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Ami sat by her mother's bedside, holding her hand.

"It's over, Mother." She said. "The person who did this to you is dead."

Her mother didn't react to the news. But then, she hadn't reacted to anything since she had been put in that bed.

Nothing available to Japanese medicine had been able to wake her mother up. So far all efforts to find a magical solution had yet to find anything promising enough to even warrant trying it to see if it made a difference. Ami supposed that with Precia gone, there might be something in her belongings that might explain the workings of the energy drain spell enough to find a counterspell. Even if there wasn't a counterspell, if the spell could be reproduced, it might be possible to use it to provide her mother with enough energy to revive her. Ami was perfectly willing to volunteer as a donor if that option became viable.

Ami sat there, watching her mother's still form as the time passed. Eventually a nurse came into the room.

"Excuse me," The nurse said, "But it's time to give the patient her medication."

That was odd. Normally, the doctors tried to not interrupt visiting hours as a courtesy to the visitors if possible. Since her mother's vitals hadn't changed at all since she had been hospitalized, there certainly wasn't any pressing need to alter that practice. Also, given that her mother was unconscious and had been for days, any medication would be administered intravenously, and the nurse didn't appear to have brought a syringe to inject whatever medicine she had into the IV bag. And finally...

"You're not the duty nurse for this ward." Ami said suspiciously. She had spoken with the nurse when she had first gotten to the hospital.

"I just got on shift." The nurse replied.

That might have fooled most people, but Ami's mother had been working at this hospital for Ami's entire life. She knew what the work schedule was. "Shift change isn't for another hour and a half." She commented, pointing at the wall clock. "It's obvious you don't really work here. Who are you?"

The nurse - if she really was a nurse - froze as she was caught out. Then she started to smile evilly.

"Well then, I guess I'm going to have to take two instead of one today."

The nurse's form started to warp. A mass of tentacles that had been an arm moments before smashed into Ami and pinned her against the wall.

The nurse was a youma, come to drain the patients of the hospital in a plot similar to what Precia had done earlier. And at the moment Ami had no way of calling for help, and no time for help to arrive if she did. She was on her own.

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The man who was known to the public as Professor Souichi Tomoe but thought of himself as Germatoid had had a very busy afternoon. First there had been a battle between a magical girl and her apparently insane mother on the grounds of his school. That had brought in the police. Fortunately, since the fight hadn't happened in the school proper, they hadn't had any reason to search the facilities and possibly run into the hidden laboratories in which he was preparing the Death Busters for their impending campaign to gather the Heart Crystals needed to bring Pharaoh 90 to devour this world. It still was a major inconvenience that brought far more attention to his school than he wanted.

And now he was told that his daughter was in the hospital with a potentially crippling condition. Anything that happened to her also happened to Mistress 9, the Daimon he had implanted in her the day of the lab accident that nearly killed her and first put him in contact with Pharaoh 90. She was irreplaceable.

It had taken some effort, but he was eventually able to get away from the officers taking statements at the school and make it to Juuban General. Fortunately, the concern he had for the Daimon implanted in his daughter's body sounded similar enough to concern for his daughter to anyone listening.

"W-What's wrong with Hotaru?" He gasped out to the doctor as he entered the room where Hotaru was seated in a wheelchair.

The doctor looked at his clipboard, flipped through a few pages, and then addressed him. "I'm afraid we don't know, sir. From what we can tell, a significant portion of her nervous system has simply shut down. At present, we don't haven't been able to discern why. Hopefully, we should be able to learn more once we have the opportunity to run some tests."

A second doctor walked towards them. "I believe I can shed some light on this case, gentlemen." She said.

"And who would you be?" The first doctor asked.

"I'm Doctor Shamal Yagami. Hotaru's case is very similar to a case that afflicted a relative of mine seven years ago. The doctor of record on that case was Doctor Sachie Ishida, in Unimari. I did some examinations of my own, and discovered some things that didn't make it onto the official record."

"What discoveries? And what makes you so certain that Tomoe-san's case is similar to this earlier one?"

"I first met the girl earlier this week, and I was able to recognize the start of the nerve paralysis then. Judging by the fact that it spread from merely affecting her feet to covering her legs in that short time, it's clear that she disregarded my advice on how to slow the progression of her condition." Hotaru looked away guiltily at that comment.

"If I'm right, Hotaru is afflicted by a kind of rare and pernicious parasite." Doctor Yagami continued. "Her body is slowly shutting down due to the strain of trying to support itself and the parasite. So far, the effects have yet to impair her in any way other than in reduced mobility, but sooner or later they will spread to impact one or more vital organs. At that point, her life will be in danger.

"I believe that I may be able to remove the parasite, but given the patient's age, she isn't capable of giving consent for the procedure herself. I asked her to inform her family of her condition and the possibility of a treatment when we last met."

"Hmm. I'll have to contact this Dr Ishida. In any case, your theory suggests a possible method of investigation. If the tests I'm thinking of pan out, I'll want to talk with you about your proposed removal procedure." The first doctor mused.

Germatoid froze. He knew very well that there was a parasitic lifeform in his daughter's body. The parasite's name was Mistress 9. And the last thing he wanted was for it to be removed. If Mistress 9 died, his plans would be ruined. He wasn't sure how Hotaru had met this Doctor Yagami, but it was clear that she knew far too much. And once her theories were officially noted in Hotaru's medical records, any physician who took over her case would know about them and try to remove the parasite. Both doctors had to be eliminated before their knowledge of Mistress 9 could be recorded.

"No." He snarled.

"Excuse me?" The doctor asked.

"I am not going to allow you to remove the daimon that I planted in that child. Too many of my plans depend on it. And if you try to stop me, I'll just have to get rid of you!"

He lunged at the doctors, but was suddenly stopped short by chains that appeared out of nowhere. Looking at Doctor Yagami, who had somehow changed outfits in the blink of an eye and was holding a strange apparatus of rings and chains, he knew that she was responsible.

"I was only going to attempt the procedure with the consent of her family, but since it seems that you are responsible for your child's condition, I believe we can forgo that." She said coldly.

"You think these chains can stop me? Fool! You face the supreme being, the ultimate fusion of human and daimon, Germatoid!" Shifting into his daimon form, Germatoid was able to break free of the chains easily. But before he could kill the doctors, the air rippled, and one doctor vanished. Resolving to track down and eliminate her later, Germatoid focused his attention on the still visible Doctor Yagami.

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Ami was pinned against the wall, unable to reach her henshin pen as she struggled for air. While Sailor Mercury could have dispatched the youma fairly easily, Ami Mizuno didn't have the means to do so without transforming.

At least, she hadn't up until recently. Turning her thoughts to the one Mid-Childan spell she had learned, she formed an icicle in her hand. Stabbing the icicle into the youma's tentacle, she was rewarded with a shriek of pain. The tentacles recoiled, dropping her to the floor. Before the creature could recover, she cast the spell again, this time closing her hand on the forming ice, breaking it into small shards. Then she threw the handful of ice crystals into the youma's face. The distraction caused by the youma needing to clear its eyes gave Ami the time she needed to reach her henshin pen and transform.

Sailor Mercury glared at the monster that had tried to kill her mother and raised her hands to cast a spell.

The youma had only expected to be facing an annoyingly observant teenager. Now it was facing an angry Senshi. Realizing the danger it was now in, it bolted just before the spell was cast.

"Get back here, you monster!" Mercury yelled as she chased after it, not caring that she crashed into the frozen doorframe on her way out of the room and that it shattered from the impact.

With all the people walking the corridors of the hospital, Mercury couldn't risk casting a spell at the youma. She was forced to run after it, hoping to corner it someplace where there wouldn't be a risk of hitting a civilian.

Turning a corner, Mercury saw that the youma had vanished. An open door halfway down the hall showed her where it had gone. Running to the room, she found it draining energy from a small form resting in a bed. Clenching her teeth in rage, Sailor Mercury launched a freezing spell at the youma.

The youma broke off the energy drain and dodged the attack. Then it launched an attack of its own. Mercury threw herself to the ground, the tentacles passing above her and smashing into the wall above her. By the time she rolled to her feet, the youma had leapt out the window and fled.

If the youma was capable of returning to the Dark Kingdom on its own, it would have done so. Instead, Mercury could see it fleeing down the street through the ruined window. It had to be fleeing to someone or something that could return it to its base.

Mercury tried to calm herself. The youma wasn't solely responsible for trying to kill her mother. It had acted under orders. If she could track it to its point of origin, she could not only destroy the youma, but also the ones who sent it. If she was lucky, she might even find something that would allow her to strike against the Dark Kingdom as a whole rather than just taking out another energy draining operation. She just had to let it live... for now.

Mercury leapt out the window in pursuit of the youma that had tried to kill her mother.

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Once Nanoha had safely seen Hotaru into the care of the doctors, she hurried to find Fate's room. She had never seen what Precia had done to her daughter up close. Fate had always been reticent about allowing others to see the scars those incidents had left behind. But from what little Aruf had told her, it wasn't likely to be pretty.

While Nanoha couldn't see Fate's injuries themselves, what she couldn't see wasn't reassuring. Fate's torso was covered in bandages, many of which were stained with her blood. Noticing her friend's arrival, Fate weakly turned her head to look at her.

"Nanoha..?" Fate mumbled groggily.

"Fate! Are you alright?" Nanoha gasped out.

"I'll.. be okay. Precia's done worse than this to me before."

Nanoha wasn't sure what was more disturbing: the possibility that Fate was seriously hurt and was lying to keep her from worrying, or the possibility that she was actually telling the truth. Whichever it was, it was clear that Fate was under a lot of painkillers at the moment.

Nanoha sat in the room with her friend, talking about the events of earlier that day. Precia Testarossa might have been a monster, but she had still been Fate's mother, and being forced to accept how far she had fallen from the caring person she had been before losing her first child to a preventable industrial accident had hurt Fate deeply. Nanoha lost track of time as she comforted her friend.

Suddenly, something smashed through one of the walls. Nanoha tackled Fate, knocking them both away from the flying debris. Getting off the floor, Nanoha could now see an enormous hole in the wall to the adjacent room, though whatever had caused it was now gone.

The noise caused by a hole getting knocked in the wall had drawn the attention of people outside the room. A man poked his head into the room and asked if they were alright. But before Nanoha or Fate could answer, a disturbing cracking sound started.

The wall between the two rooms had been a load-bearing wall, and the hole was located in a spot that had once contained a support beam. Now the hospital was adjusting to the fact that there was a missing support, and with several floors above the one that they were in, that could potentially mean the ceiling caving in on them, killing them, anyone in the room directly above them, and quite likely many others in this part of the building.

Nanoha knew that she wasn't supposed to be using her magic, but Fate wasn't in any condition to act, and nobody else was available. She just had to hope that Hotaru had healed her linker core enough to allow her to do this without permanently harming her magic. Casting a Protection spell, she positioned it below the broken support beam, having the shield take the weight that the support should have been taking.

"Get everyone out of this part of the hospital, now!" She ordered. "And find someone who can shore up this wall. I don't know how long I can hold this up, or how much of the building will fall apart if the ceiling caves in."

"Nanoha, you can't...!" Fate protested, fumbling for Bardiche, which was lying on the bedside table in its inactive form.

"I'm the only one who can, Fate. You're hurt, and I doubt you can focus on a shielding spell strong enough to do any good with all those painkillers in your system. Just go! I'll follow as soon everyone's clear."

Gulping, the man helped Fate out of the room, leaving Nanoha locked in a battle with gravity and inertia.

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It was the second time that day that the Senshi had received an alert. It had been a long time since the last time they had needed to fight multiple battles on the same day. One recurring nightmare the Senshi had was Beryl realizing that she had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of minions and just sending them in wave after wave until the Senshi were too worn down to continue fighting. Fortunately, that scenario had never arisen.

"What's the situation?" Venus asked.

"We have three problems at the moment. First, someone activated all of Precia's Jewel Seeds at a local police precinct. Second, a monster is attacking Shamal at Juuban General. Finally, Sailor Mercury reports that she is in pursuit of a youma that was attempting to drain the patients of the same hospital of their life energy." Rein's voice reported through the communicator.

Venus winced. Three battles to fight simultaneously. "How bad is each problem?"

"Signum, Zafira and Vita are with Hayate at the police precinct. They think they have that situation under control. Mercury says that her main concern is tracking the youma to its base of operations, not open combat. It's Shamal I'm worried about. She's a support mage, not a front-line fighter."

Venus thought about what she had learned. If the people dealing with the first problem thought they had things under control, it was probably best to take them at their word. That left two other situations. If Mercury was really just trying to find a Dark Kingdom base, then she might not even need to fight until at least one of the other battles was over and reinforcements were freed up. On the other hand, she was also the weakest of the Senshi, and could potentially get in trouble if anything went wrong and she didn't have backup.

"Kamen, join up with Mercury." She ordered. "Try to avoid combat until it's possible for someone to send help if you can. Mars, Jupiter, with me. We're heading to the hospital."

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Hotaru couldn't believe what she had just heard. Her father knew about the source of her health problem. No, it was worse than that. He was responsible for her current health problem. He was deliberately trying to turn her into some kind of monster, and had nearly killed her in the process. He had already done the same things to himself, to the point where he could turn into a monster. It seemed that she and Alicia had another thing in common, though having evil relatives wasn't something either were likely to be proud of.

Now she was watching the thing her father had become trying to kill the doctor who had discovered the source of her paralysis. And it was clear that Shamal was overmatched. She wasn't even trying to attack the creature that called itself Germatoid. She had her hands full just keeping out of its reach.

Suddenly, Hotaru found her body moving of its own volition. Her arms started pushing the wheels of her wheelchair, taking her towards the fight. Then something black streaked past her and attacked Shamal. Hotaru realized that it was her own hair, which somehow had gotten considerably longer than it had been moments before. What was happening? And how?

Because I can't allow that woman to live, little girl.

Who had said that?

I did. I suppose I should thank you for finding someone who could figure out what was wrong with this body. Now I know that once I get rid of you, it should recover. And then Germatoid and I can bring our master to this world. But first, we need to eliminate this troublesome doctor. I can't allow her to let anyone else know about me and how I might be killed.

Hotaru tried to struggle, but her body refused to move the way she wanted it to. She was a prisoner in her own body, and her only hope of freedom was now in danger from the thing that had imprisoned her.

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Sailor Mars had had a very hectic afternoon. This was the second alert she'd had today. It was also the second time that she had sensed the return of that strange wave of power she had sensed all those years before. She was willing to wager that this wasn't a coincidence.

Whether or not it was, the energy she sensed was in a the general direction of a problem that she had been told was currently under control. She was heading to a different battlefield. Youma attacking people in a hospital. If she was to make a list of places where a fight could easily get ugly, that would be near the top.

Fortunately, there was already a barrier in place over the hospital by the time she arrived, so there wouldn't be civilians getting caught in the crossfire. One of the early lessons the TSAB had insisted on giving the Senshi was how to enter a barrier meant purely to keep people in specifically for situations like this. As she entered, Mars idly wondered what any observer would think of seeing her seemingly vanish into thin air.

The battle was already well underway. Most of the TSAB foot soldiers were already out of action, leaving the battle in the hands of Shamal and Sailors Venus and Jupiter. The Senshi were facing down several large Cyclopes while Shamal was trying to keep out of the reach of a girl in a wheelchair with very long and unusually animate hair. Looking at the girl, Mars muttered a curse under her breath.

The Cyclopes were monsters, plain and simple. They might have superficially resembled a human being, but as a trained spiritualist Sailor Mars could tell it was anything but, although for some reason she could only sense one monster when she could see several. But the girl was technically human, being controlled by something.

The Senshi hated dealing with possessed opponents. All of their spells were centered around the idea of killing their opponents, which they had to avoid if possible when the youma was possessing an innocent person. It would be a great deal easier if one of them knew a simple spell to expel a possessing entity or just kill it without harming the host, but they didn't have anything like that. All they had was Sailor Mars, part-time miko. And since the traditional Shinto exorcism ritual wasn't particularly quick or meant to be used on moving targets, that meant they had to find some way to immobilize their opponent long enough for Mars to perform the ritual without harming it, something that was often far harder than it sounded. Fortunately, they didn't turn up all that often.

It seemed that Mars was the only one capable of fighting the possessed girl. Venus and Jupiter would have to deal with the Cyclopes on their own. Well, there was one thing she could do for them before she focused her attention on the exorcism.

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Sailor Mercury ran after the youma, fighting back the urge to freeze the thing solid and smash it to pieces. Defeating it now wouldn't accomplish anything. But maybe if she could track it to its base of operations first, the TSAB might have some way of getting intelligence from the base. Forensic investigation and intelligence analysis were two skills the Senshi had never had available to them before. Now that they had allies with some degree of skill in those, maybe they could find a way to actually take the offensive for once.

She could tell that the youma was now running towards something just as much as it was running from her. It was getting close to its base. Good. Then she saw that the youma wasn't running to somewhere, it was running to someone. To be more specific, it was running to Zoicite. And with most of her colleagues busy with fights elsewhere, he had her outgunned. And he had seen her.

"You fool!" He snarled, smashing the youma aside and seizing the stolen life energy from its dying form, "You lead the Senshi right to me!" Turning his attention to Sailor Mercury, he hissed, "You shouldn't have come alone, little Senshi."

Privately, Mercury agreed with him. Unfortunately, there wasn't anyone available to provide backup at the moment. Tuxedo Kamen was on his way, but nobody else would be able to show up in time, and until he arrived, she was on her own. And she was the weakest of the Senshi. None of her spells could take out a Dark General.

But she was still going to try. That man had just tried to kill her mother, and had quite possibly other people using the same tactic. Even if she couldn't kill him, she was going to do everything in her power to hurt him. She would see him reduced to a corpse or a bloody wreck if it was the last thing she did.

Wait. There was something she had just learned about Senshi magic that might enable her to win. Unfortunately, it required time. Time, and a relatively stationary target, neither of which she had at the moment. She tried attacking low. Maybe if she could freeze his feet to the pavement, it would hold him still long enough for her to use a more effective holding spell she'd come up with from her studies in Mid-Childan magic. Then she could take him down.

Zoicite danced out of the way of her attack and countered with his own. Bystanders screamed and fled as the two traded spells back and forth, ripping up the street in the process. Thanks to the brutal but carefully planned out training regimen that she had been subjected to, Mercury was able to avoid getting hurt, but that simply turned the fight into a destructive stalemate. If only she could somehow slow him down...

Noticing the nature of the damage her spells were inflicting on the street, she changed tactics. Where before she was trying to land an exact strike, now she made her spells more diffuse. She still missed, but the misses were creating large patches of ice where they struck. Soon, there weren't many places on Zoicite's side of the street where a man could step without stepping on the ice.

Zoicite hadn't noticed that Mercury had been deliberately altering the terrain he was fighting on. At least not until an attempt to avoid one of her attacks resulted in him slipping. Taking advantage of his momentary immobility, Mercury froze his legs to the pavement. Then she activated her computer and started up a Mid-Childan spell she had come up with.

Start with the basic freezing spell. Modify it so that made the ice form in a specific shape. Add in the mathematical formulas for a three-dimensional strange attractor. Zoicite might be able to break his legs free fairly quickly, but he wouldn't be able to do so with this spell, or at least not fast enough. Assuming he could even try. If the spell worked the way she thought it would, it was going to be extremely painful, and she was perfectly fine with that.

The spell was ready. Mercury directed the spell towards the Dark General.

"Fractal Ice Prison!"

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Zoicite hadn't realized that Sailor Mercury had frozen half the street until he made the mistake of stepping on one of the numerous icy patches that she had created. The speed at which she followed up on that misstep showed that it had been a deliberate trap rather than a piece of good fortune. The Senshi were getting clever as they grew in experience, it seemed.

Fortunately, while the ice pinning him to the street held him immobile, it was far from enough to hurt him. He began breaking himself free when he noticed that there was more ice forming around him. Was she trying to encase him in ice?

A flash of light passed as Sailor Mercury cast her normal freezing spell at him. Strangely, it didn't strike him, but instead curved upwards and disappeared. He hadn't known that she could make a spell turn corners. What was she up to?

His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp line of pain. The structure of ice forming around him was rapidly growing upwards, outwards, and inwards. It wasn't a cell of ice she was creating, it was an abstract sculpture, with him trapped inside. And the edges that the ice was growing along were sharp enough to be used as scalpels. If he didn't break out know, the walls of his prison would slice him to ribbons, assuming one of the spiky bits didn't extend far enough to run him through first.

As he frantically smashed apart the ice, he saw that the ice was reforming at the broken points, slowing his efforts to escape. This couldn't be happening, he seethed as he fought through the pain of the ice slicing and stabbing into him as he tried to free himself. Mercury was the weakest of the Senshi. She couldn't possibly be beating him!

He was still breaking apart the ice when the final jaw of the trap sprung.

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The Senshi had been leery of experimenting with their magic much. For all they knew, trying to alter a spell could result in an explosion, turning themselves into something unpleasant, or do something else equally unexpected. Between the Moon Cats' memory loss and their background as politicians rather than thaumaturges, Luna and Artemis hadn't been any help in figuring out how to cast spells that the girls didn't remember from their past lives.

But among the many things found by Yuuno Scrya in the ruins of Serenity's palace were documents describing the nature of Senshi magic. And going through them, Ami had learned that it was far more flexible than they thought. Among the things she had learned was that just because the Senshi had always cast their spells directly at their enemies, that didn't mean that the spells had to travel in a straight line. She hadn't had much time to learn how to apply that knowledge yet - certainly not enough to try hitting a moving target, but what she had been aiming with her last spell was stationary. Or at least, not moving fast enough to matter.

The freezing spell soared upwards, into the clouds. As it impacted the enormous mass of water vapor, it began to freeze the moisture. Soon, all the power in the spell was gone, and in its place was an irregularly shaped block of ice. Then gravity asserted itself.

Ice wasn't a very visually impressive weapon. It didn't have the obviously destructive power of fire or lightning. But that didn't make it harmless. Regular patterns of freezing and thawing could eventually tear apart even the finest construction. A broken piece of ice could cut like any knife. And the destruction caused by a hailstorm could be just as devastating as a wildfire in its own way, damaging buildings and vehicles, ruining crops in some cases even knocking down trees. If the stones were large enough or coming down heavily enough, they could even kill.

The largest naturally formed hailstone in history was about the size of a volleyball. The one that Sailor Mercury had just created was the size of a small car. And it was poised directly above Zoicite, who was too busy trying to keep himself from being killed by the self-repairing ice prison to realize that the true purpose of that spell was to keep him standing in one place long enough for several tons of ice to land on him at terminal velocity.

Tuxedo Kamen arrived at the scene of the battle to see a massive frozen boulder crash into the man who had sent a youma after Mercury's critically ill mother, simultaneously crushing him and driving his body into the sharp, jagged edges of the broken ice sculpture that had been containing him.

"What was that?" He asked, looking at the red stain forming under the semi-transparent rubble in the newly formed crater.

"That was Zoicite. He's been dealt with. Come on. The others might need us." Mercury replied. Even if the other fight was over before they got there, she needed to return to the hospital anyway. Ami Mizuno had been seen and recognized entering the hospital. If she wasn't seen leaving it at some point, someone might realize that Sailor Mercury had left the hospital without being seen entering it, and draw unwanted conclusions.

Mercury turned away from the crater that held the remains of her mother's would-be killer. It was the first time she had ever killed a human being. She wondered if that would bother her later. At that moment, however, the thought of what he had tried to do was justification enough in her eyes.

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Sailor Jupiter was really starting to hate this fight. It seemed that every attack that she and Sailor Venus launched at the Cyclopes passed through them. But their attacks were painfully solid. Most of the people the TSAB had sent to the fight were already out of action. If they didn't find a way to hurt them soon, this wasn't going to end well.

Sailor Mars had arrived. Hopefully her aid could turn the tide. But instead of joining the fight against the Cyclopes, she sent after the girl on the wheelchair, pausing only to throw a fireball at the sprinklers. What was that all about?

Then, as the sprinkler started spraying the room with water, Jupiter saw it. The water was passing through most of the Cyclopes. There wasn't a group of them, there was only one. They had been attacking illusions. The one that was actually getting wet was their real opponent.

Venus leapt at the Cyclops, her sword flashing. The monster howled in pain as she sliced open one of its arms, but it was able to grab her by the hair and hurl her straight through a wall before she could dart back out of range. Then it turned its attention to Jupiter.

Jupiter countered its first attack by grabbing a shard of metal broken off one of the many pieces of furniture ruined by the fight and stabbing it into the open wound, followed by a high kick aimed at its eye. The creature recoiled from the attack, and Jupiter continued on the offensive. She had to keep it occupied until Venus could dig herself out of the rubble and rejoin the fight.

Then she made the mistake of stepping into a tangled power cord that had broken off of the appliance it had been attached to. The Cyclops took advantage of her momentary distraction to grab her by the throat and lift her from the floor. As she struggled for breath, she glimpsed the other end of the cord trailing in a puddle of water by the monster's feet and an idea came to her.

Instead of trying to pry the creature's hand from her throat, Jupiter reached out and grabbed the shard of metal stuck in its arm. Then she called forth her lightning. Electricity flowed through her, into the metal, through the monster, and back up the power cord and returning to her body. Jupiter was unaffected by the current created from her own magic. The monster wasn't. Power crackled through the crude circuit as enough energy to run the entire hospital for a week surged through the Cyclops' body, frying it from the inside out.

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Cornering the mage that wanted to destroy her had been far more difficult than it should have been, but given that her body was currently confined to a wheelchair, Mistress 9 conceded that it couldn't be helped. Soon her enemy would be dead, and Germatoid would finish off those that had come to aid her, and they could resume their plans to bring Pharoah 90 to this world unimpeded.

There was a flare of heat and the hair that Mistress 9 had launched at her enemy suddenly caught fire. Since the sprinklers were running, the fire sputtered out quickly, but it meant that she now had another opponent. Turning her head, she saw that a third Senshi had arrived, this one looking sort of like a miko wearing an extremely short skirt. This image was enhanced by her producing what appeared to be a set of Shinto wards from somewhere.

"Akuryo Taisan!" The Senshi shouted, throwing the wards at Mistress 9.

Pain. That was the only thing going through Mistress 9's mind as the wards struck. She desperately peeled them off before they could do any real damage to her. Unfortunately, one of them had attached to her leg. Since her host had managed to paralyze their body from the waist down with her selfless healing (Often of wounds that Mistress 9 had caused in the first place), bending over so she could reach it was a chore. And while she was doing so, the Senshi walked up and yanked the wheelchair out from under her, leaving Mistress 9 sprawled on the floor.

A new source of pain erupted from her back. As she tried to lift herself off the floor, Mistress 9 could see her original target reaching into a hole that had appeared in the air.

"Since you can't move anymore, little parasite, it's time I dealt with you.." The woman said coldly.

Mistress 9 could feel something inside her, slowly cutting into her. No, not into her, it was cutting her away from her host body. At the same time, a different voice started chanting. Mistress 9 didn't understand the words, but there was power in them, pressing down on her.

One attack was separating her from her host body, the only thing keeping her alive. The other was smothering her. Whenever Mistress 9 tried to resist one, the other would wound her. Unable to protect herself from the dual assault, she was soon destroyed, leaving only one mind in the body of Hotaru Tomoe.

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The police were puzzled. One moment five people were arguing with an officer over the proper method of securing specific pieces of evidence found on the person of the late Precia Testarossa. Then there was a flash of light and all six of them vanished, along with the evidence in question. Those who had witnessed the incident were still trying to figure out where they had all gone.

The air rippled, and all six of the missing people suddenly reappeared. Observers noted that the five civilians weren't wearing the same outfits they had been wearing when they came in. The jewels that had been the object of their discussion were now floating in the air. The officer was pale and shaking.

"Now do you understand how dangerous these things are?" The girl who appeared to be the leader of the group said. "You people don't have the ability to secure Lost Logia. I've been a mage since before I could walk. I know how to handle them safely until they can be transferred into a secure facility." With that, she raised her staff (Which she hadn't come in with), and the jewels somehow flew into it.

A young man with her picked up a small staff that was lying on the officer's desk. "We'd better take this as well. You don't have the equipment needed to examine this, or the background knowledge to know to what to look for."

The officer shakily nodded his acceptance. After the group had left, he was asked why he had let them do that, and he told his questioners that they really, really didn't want to know.

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The hospital was in a panic as people tried to figure out what was going on. A youma had apparently tried to attack one of the patients - one of their own staff, no less - before being chased away by one of the Sailor Senshi. The creature had managed to knock out a major structural support, which could have gotten dozens of people killed had one of the other magical girls that had been seen in the area not been present to hold the ceiling in place magically until a more mundane prop could be improvised.

And then there was the other incident. What had started as a routine discussion of a patient's condition had taken a turn for the unusual as the patient's father openly admitted to being the cause of the patient's condition and tried to kill everyone who knew the true nature of said health problem. The problem with explaining this to the police who were investigating both of the incidents was that both patient and father had vanished into thin air along with the doctor who had diagnosed the girl's condition (And who, upon later investigation, proved to not be a member of the staff of Juuban General).

"So you're saying that a schoolteacher turned into a Cyclops and tried to attack you when he suddenly disappeared?" The officer asked skeptically.

"I know it sounds crazy, but that's what happened." The doctor said.

Just then, the air rippled, and a large group of people appeared. The patient was one of them, looking at a deep-fried corpse with an expression of absolute horror. There were three Senshi. And then there was Doctor Yagami, who was doing... something to patch up a number of men she didn't recognize, some of whom had recovered enough to be mobile.

The officer stared at the group that had just appeared. "Where did you people come from?"

"When Professor Tomoe turned into that creature you see on the floor, I created a dimensional pocket where he could be dealt with without destroying the building or harming innocent bystanders. Then I called in reinforcements." She then pushed the wheelchair-bound girl over to her original physician. "The parasite responsible for her nerve paralysis has been destroyed. She should recover with time. Fortunately, she hadn't been suffering this problem long enough for muscle atrophy to have set in, so convalescence shouldn't take anywhere near as long as it did with the last person I knew to have gone through this. The physical convalescence, anyway."

That caveat was understandable. Hotaru's body might be able to rebound from what it went through fairly easily, but coming to terms with the fact that her father had put her through that deliberately would be far more difficult.

Examining the body, it soon became very clear that the doctor had been telling the truth about Professor Tomoe turning into a monster. Normal humans have two small eyes, not one large one taking up roughly a third of their face. The officer got out his radio and started to report in. By the time he looked back up, two of the Senshi and most of the walking wounded were gone.

"Where'd the others go?" He asked.

"I sent the others off to help repair the damage inflicted in some other incidents that have been happening today." Doctor Yagami said.

"Mars and Jupiter left to deal with a few loose ends. If you need to ask any questions about what happened, you can ask me. However, you should know that we didn't arrive until after the fight started, so we probably don't know much more than you about what started this."

The officer sighed as he opened his notebook. He supposed that it was nice that one of them had stayed behind to leave a statement. In the mangas superheroes never showed that kind of courtesy to the authorities.

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bissek

Well-Known Member
#2
Kaolinite was working in the Death Buster's hidden lab inside Mugen Gakuen. It would only be a few more weeks before the constructs that she and Germatoid had named the Witches Five were ready, and then their plans to offer this world to Pharoah 90 could begin in earnest.

A tone from the campus' security system alerted her to someone arriving. She looked up at the monitor to see if it was Germatoid returning from his errand at the hospital concerning Mistress 9's host. It wasn't. It was another police car. She had though that they had finished examining the scene where that serial killer had been taken out an hour before. Setting aside her current task, she headed out to meet the new arrivals. The last thing the Death Busters needed was someone stumbling on the hidden facilities they had placed around the school.

As she made it out of the building, she saw that the newly arrived officers weren't examining the crime scene. They were heading for the main building on campus.

"Good evening, officers." She greeted them. "I'm Kaoli Knight, Professor Tomoe's assistant. Can I help you?"

One of the two men held up a search warrant. "I'm afraid that Professor Tomoe was killed this afternoon while involved in some illegal activities, Knight-san. We're going to have to search his office."

Germatoid was dead? How was that possible? And what had he been doing when he was killed? This was bad. This was very bad. If the police knew he was involved in something illegal, then they were undoubtedly going to tear apart the school and his residence until they found something connected with his crimes. That meant there was a good chance that they would find the labs. That would bring the Death Busters to public attention, which they couldn't afford at the moment. They weren't yet ready to start operations, much less repel a serious assault from whoever or whatever killed Germatoid.

The policemen would have to go. Their deaths would be noticed fairly quickly, but it should buy her enough time to load up the more critical items from the lab and leave the area. She could build a new lab and restart her plans elsewhere. Of all the times this could have happened! They were so close to be ready to begin their real work!

Kaolinite shifted into her daimon form. Power hummed between her fingers as she gathered energy into her hands. She raised her hands towards the policemen, whose eyes widened with terror as she prepared to strike them down. Then her world vanished in a blinding flash of light.

The two policemen were knocked backwards as a bolt of lightning shot down from a mostly sunny sky, striking the woman turned monster. As they climbed to their feet, blinking away the flash blindness, they struggled to figure out what had just happened. Looking around, one of them found the answer, at least to where the lightning had come from.

Standing on a rooftop across the street from the Mugen Gakuen campus was a young girl dressed in white and green.

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After the excitement of the afternoon, things started to calm down in the evening. Shamal finished treating the wounded from the battle with Germatoid and went to tend to Fate. The TSAB repaired the most severe property damage inflicted by the various battles and then returned to base. The Senshi went back to their homes.

One of the repairs done to the hospital was to fix the broken support that Nanoha had been forced to act as a makeshift replacement for. This allowed her to leave Fate's former room and seek out where she had been moved to after a youma had knocked a hole in the wall. Shamal was there when she arrived. Unfortunately for Nanoha, the doctor knew the reason why Fate had been forced to change rooms.

"What were you thinking?!" Shamal demanded after she finished healing Fate. "I warned you that using magic could damage your Linker Core permanently and you go and use a shield spell to hold up a building?"

"I had no choice! If I hadn't done something, the ceiling could have collapsed. People could have gotten killed!" Nanoha protested.

"Be that as it may, I'm going to have to give you another checkup to make sure that you didn't injure yourself - again. Next time you go on a vacation, you're going to have to pick someplace quieter than Japan. Maybe you should visit Old Belka. Not much happens on that planet anymore. Probably because most of the landmasses have been glowing in the dark for the past century."

As Nanoha tried to decide whether or not Shamal was serious about suggesting a radioactive wasteland as a quiet vacation spot, a nurse came into the room.

"Excuse me, Harlaown-san?" The nurse said. "Something has gone wrong with the young girl you came in with. We're losing her. She's asked to speak with you."

Fate paled. "Alicia..." She leapt out of bed and followed the nurse to her sister's room, with Nanoha not far behind.

Alicia had been in the room on the other side of the wall that the youma had destroyed. It must have drained some of her life energy before it fled the building. And since Alicia's body was incapable of generating life energy on its own, that meant that some of the highly limited time that the girl had left to live had been taken from her. She was dying.

Alicia was lying on her bed, barely moving. If it wasn't for the rising and falling of the sheets, Fate wouldn't have been able to tell that she was still alive. She rushed to her sister's side and took her hand.

"Fate...?" Alicia said weakly.

"I'm here, aneue." Fate answered.

"I'm... glad... that I met you..."

"No! Stay with me, Alicia. Please!" There had to be something she could do. Yuuno had just recovered Precia's device. If he could extract the energy-draining spell from its records, perhaps she could donate some of her own life energy to sustain Alicia for a little longer. That would buy her the time she needed to find something, anything that could save her.

In that moment, Fate understood exactly how her biological mother felt in the moment that she started down the path to madness.

"I'm... sorry, imouto. I don't think I can. Good..." Alicia's eyes closed. Her breath slowed further, and her hand went limp. She no longer had the strength to remain conscious. Soon she would fade out entirely.

"Alicia!!!" Fate sobbed. Nanoha put a hand on her friend's shoulder, and Fate threw herself into her arms, weeping uncontrollably. As Nanoha held her grieving friend, she wept too. It just wasn't fair. After all of these years, Fate had finally found a member of her birth family that actually cared about her, only to lose her. Why did she have to suffer so?

As Nanoha mourned the loss of the final remnant of Fate's childhood dream of a happy family, a part of her mind thought of a foolish girl from a forgotten age who had similarly had all her dreams destroyed in a single day. Even though Nanoha could not understand or accept how Serenity had chosen to deal with her pain, she could understand what she had felt when Serenity realized that her life as she had known it had been irrevocably destroyed.

A tear fell from Nanoha's eye. As it fell, it started to glow from a strange inner light. Power pulsed through it as it dropped onto the bed, which magnified as it somehow solidified instead of being absorbed by the sheets. As it did so, strange and miraculous things happened throughout the hospital. Flowers that had been wilting suddenly revived. Over a dozen people with serious illnesses underwent massive spontaneous recoveries. Saeko Mizuno opened her eyes for the first time since her unfortunate encounter with Precia Testarossa. And Alicia's breathing grew stronger as she became truly alive for the first time in more than thirty years.

The sound of Alicia stirring snapped Fate out of her grief. She removed herself from Nanoha's arms and embraced her revived sister. As Nanoha smiled in relief at the girl's miraculous recovery, she saw an object roll off the bed. When she picked it up, she knew that she had never seen it before in her life, but still somehow recognized it.

It was a diamond, about the size of an apple, which had been carefully cut to resemble a blooming flower.

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Omake: Everyday uses for magic:

Ami poured herself a glass of lemonade and sat at the kitchen table. She had just figured out how to cast a basic ice spell using Mid-Childan magic. Now the only question was whether or not she could use that spell to do anything useful. In order use that spell, she would need a significant amount of either water or air moisture in order to have something to freeze. And unfortunately, she didn't know any spells to create large amounts of water on demand.

She knew that the spell she had cast was nothing more than just a proof of concept. But there still had to be something she could use it for other than making customized ice cubes. She sat at the table, thinking, wondering what she could do with a spell to freeze liquids into whatever shape she chose.

Minutes later, she took a sip of the lemonade and realized that it had gone tepid. It also needed sugar. Well, that was one thing that the spell could be used for, at least. While stirring in the sugar, she cast the freezing spell on the glass, cooling the liquid within.

The spell started to freeze the lemonade. But since she was stirring the liquid, the ice crystals immediately broke up, leaving small fragments of ice behind. Intrigued, she continued freezing and stirring until the entire glass was full of small ice crystals.

Perhaps she had been looking at the problem from the wrong direction. Maybe instead of thinking about creating large items of ice, she should have been considering what she could do with small items under the proper circumstances.

Removing the spoon from the glass, Ami decided that it could wait. It was time for a snack. She stopped thinking about magic and focused her attention on the home made lemon snow cone in front of her.

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Omake: Well, she had warned her... (Inspired by comments from SJC and nick012000)

Nanoha and Fate entered their room and got ready for bed. Nanoha had managed to get through her brief stint as a support beam without any further injury to herself, and Fate's injuries had all been healed after a short session with Shamal. Right now they just wanted to sleep after a long and trying day.

At least, that was Nanoha's intention. Fate appeared to be reaching into a bag that she had gotten at a store she insisted that they stop at on their way back to base. Nanoha's puzzlement increased when Fate pulled out a coil of rope.

"What's that for Fate?" Nanoha asked.

"You were told not to use your magic, Nanoha. You didn't listen. It seems that we're going to need to take more severe measures to ensure that you listen to your doctors." Fate answered as she advanced with the rope.

"I didn't have any choice, Fate! It was the only way to keep the building from collapsing - Fate! Stop!"

While Nanoha tried to defend her actions, Fate had taken her left wrist and tied it to the bedpost. She then took hold of Nanoha's right wrist.

"Fate! Stop this!" Nanoha cried out as she struggled.

The door opened.

"Fate? Nanoha? What's with all the racket?" Hayate asked. Then she got a good look at what was going on. She saw the state of dress the two girls were in, the position they were in, and the rope, and turned bright red.

"Umm... I think I'll let you two have a little privacy. Please set up a barrier to keep the noise from disturbing anyone else." With that, Hayate backed out of the room.

"Wait, Hayate! Help!" Nanoha cried out, but it was too late. Hayate had left, and Fate had taken Hayate's advice about the soundproofing barrier. It wasn't until the following morning that the others realized that Nanoha hadn't come down for breakfast and untied her.

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A/N: All Hail Zoicite! Sorry, couldn't resist.

Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that due to the Book of Darkness, Hayate technically didn't learn how to walk until she was 13.

Most public building in real life would not be in immediate danger of collapse if a single interior support failed (Though evacuating that part of the building would still be a good idea). Nanoha isn't a civil engineer and doesn't know this, though.
 

nick012000

Well-Known Member
#3
Whether taking out a single support for a building is catastrophic for a building depends on a wide variety of factors. The margin of safety the building is built with, how many supports their are, which support was taken out, the distance between the supports, the composition of the flooring, the number of floors in the building, et cetera. If you knock out one or two of the supports underneath a single-story Queenslander house, it'll be fine; at worst you'll just get the floor sagging a bit and the walls leaning a bit (I know this because this actually happened at the last house my family lived in). On the other hand, if you took out one of the corners of a skyscraper, you might wind up with the whole building leaning over, the opposite side fracturing, and the whole thing collapsing like a felled tree. In general, there's a margin of safety of about two times the expected load, so one floor collapsing onto the floor beneath it probably won't cause that floor to collapse in turn.

Also, why didn't Zoicite just teleport out of the ice that encased him, or burst out by creating a barrier around himself and expanding it from his skin?
 

MWkillkenny84

Well-Known Member
#4
Oohhh, new chapter...
BWAHHAHAHHAHAHHA!!!
Goodbye Death Busters, goodbye Mistress 9 and MP90th can start to search ANOTHER fool to tempt into creating the passageway for a populated planet.
And the Silver Deus Ex Machina has been unleashed, Alicia is saved and a good deal of problem resolved.
On Zoicite... the things are two: OR the Ice was so magically charged that the teleport was not an option (teleport + raw, unknow magic around you = BAD END), or the combo surprise + pain of the attack + S.MERCURY IS KILLING ME has making him 'forget' the teleport... right?
Vote: 10+++
 

ragnarok1337

Well-Known Member
#5
To all the naysayers out there: yes, the fic is riddled with plotholes. There are random idiot balls and incompetence balls being tossed around the Sailor Moon cast like hot potatoes.

That said, this is a guilty pleasure fic, and I look forward to the next chapter.

Edit: Although I'm pleased to see the Senshi are sucking much less than they first did. And while I knew that Nanoha's rezzing powers would save Alicia (I knew bissek wouldn't have the guts to kill her off), I never liked that plot device.
 

zeebee1

Well-Known Member
#6
Well, she had to get the crystal somehow. And while I'm pretty sure the crystal was in pieces, in the anime Sailor Moon forced the crystal to assemble anyways.
 

The Ero-Sennin

The Eyes of Heaven
Staff member
#7
ragnarok1337 said:
To all the naysayers out there: yes, the fic is riddled with plotholes. There are random idiot balls and incompetence balls being tossed around the Sailor Moon cast like hot potatoes.

That said, this is a guilty pleasure fic, and I look forward to the next chapter.

Edit: Although I'm pleased to see the Senshi are sucking much less than they first did. And while I knew that Nanoha's rezzing powers would save Alicia (I knew bissek wouldn't have the guts to kill her off), I never liked that plot device.
This is why bad fanfics happen.

"It's a guilty pleasure."

"I can overlook the glaring inconsistencies because I can't actually grasp the actual flaws with the story, and just want to sound better than those who hate it."

"Herpa Derpa."

Demand better quality, or just gargle the author's balls. Don't pay lip-service to the problems of the story and proceed to whitewash it with your own horrible taste. It doesn't make you look like you're offering critique, it makes you look like a tool.
 
D

Deleted member 5249

Guest
#8
The Ero-Sennin said:
This is why bad fanfics happen.

"It's a guilty pleasure."

"I can overlook the glaring inconsistencies because I can't actually grasp the actual flaws with the story, and just want to sound better than those who hate it."

"Herpa Derpa."

Demand better quality, or just gargle the author's balls. Don't pay lip-service to the problems of the story and proceed to whitewash it with your own horrible taste. It doesn't make you look like you're offering critique, it makes you look like a tool.
Glorious
 

Anonguy

Well-Known Member
#9
I dunno. A guilty pleasure is something that is bad and you know is bad, but you still enjoy it. If that's how you feel, good for you.

But............

I don't think that's how you feel at all, because you wouldn't need to start your post with the defensive sound, "To all the naysayers (read: "hater")". You'd shrug and not care and just give the feedback. You don't have to justify why you like it man, unless someone asks why.

If you find yourself needing to constantly defend yourself about it, maybe it's because you don't like it as much as you think? Dunno, don't really care.
 

Shiakou

Well-Known Member
#10
Anonguy said:
I dunno. A guilty pleasure is something that is bad and you know is bad, but you still enjoy it. If that's how you feel, good for you.

But............

I don't think that's how you feel at all, because you wouldn't need to start your post with the defensive sound, "To all the naysayers (read: "hater")". You'd shrug and not care and just give the feedback. You don't have to justify why you like it man, unless someone asks why.

If you find yourself needing to constantly defend yourself about it, maybe it's because you don't like it as much as you think? Dunno, don't really care.
Well he did put up a few critiques in the previous threads. I think he's just tired of the runaround nature of this story's arguments.

Summary: It sucks, but I'm putting up with it cause there isn't a better version.
 

ragnarok1337

Well-Known Member
#11
Shiakou said:
Well he did put up a few critiques in the previous threads. I think he's just tired of the runaround nature of this story's arguments.

Summary: It sucks, but I'm putting up with it cause there isn't a better version.
Got it in one. I don't want a retread of one or two guys ranting about how the whole story is bad, that bissek sucks to the nth degree, and various other rants. We had enough of that in the earlier threads.
 

Prince Charon

Well-Known Member
#12
This chapter isn't as bad as previous ones.
 
D

Deleted member 5249

Guest
#13
Prince Charon said:
This chapter isn't as bad as previous ones.
That is not high praise.
 

Tsukino_kage

Well-Known Member
#14
What I can't get over is how pointless Precia was to this story. There were other ways Alicia could have been brought in if you really wanted her, but having Precia there and then get killed off in just one confrontation is just pointless. Both Nanoha and Sailormoon are about redeeming bad guys, so long as there's any quality to them worth redeeming, and Precia sorta qualifies. That and how Tomoe Souichi just bit the dust. They really could have just exorcised him. Mercury is showing a mean streak though, which is nice.
 

Prince Charon

Well-Known Member
#15

MWkillkenny84

Well-Known Member
#17
Another thing: in the anime, I do not remember the Generals to have EVER been able to teleport themselves out of a spell's way... I remember the final fight of Kunzite, as exibit A.
 

Nanya

Well-Known Member
#18
MWkillkenny84 said:
Another thing: in the anime, I do not remember the Generals to have EVER been able to teleport themselves out of a spell's way... I remember the final fight of Kunzite, as exibit A.
As Sailor Moon Abridged put it...

"Oh no! The rats are eating me! Even though I have the ability to teleport!"
 
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