The White Devil of the Moon Chapter 15

bissek

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Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon or MGLN.

The White Devil of the Moon
By Bissek
Chapter 15
The Battle of Tokyo

Fate had sent a lot of video letters over the years. She had started shortly after being arrested for her role in Precia's attempt to use the Jewel Seeds to reach Al-Hazard as a way to keep in touch with Nanoha while on her way to court. After she had started working for the TSAB full time, she had gotten back into the habit when her work as an investigator kept her away from her family and friends for weeks or months at a time. Setting up the camera, she readied herself to record yet another one.

"Hello, mother." She said as she started the recording.

"I got the message you sent about the birth of the twins. I've gotten Amy and Chrono a present to congratulate them on the event. I'll be sending it to Mid-Childa with the courier that Hayate requested to transport some Lost Logia we collected during our current case.

"My relationship with Nanoha has changed somewhat since the last time I wrote you," Fate continued with a slight blush on her face. "While I'm sure that you don't to hear all the details about your daughter's love life, it's a good thing that I was able to find that enormous bed in the quartermaster's depot when I was furnishing my apartment." Her blush deepened, and Fate found herself realizing that she didn't want to discuss her love life in any further detail any more than she imagined her mother wanted to hear about it. She hastily changed the subject.

"I'm sure you've heard by now that Precia's resurfaced. I ended up running into her. It didn't turn out well." Fate sighed in regret. "She's dead. I killed her. I wish it hadn't been necessary, but I didn't have any choice. She was in the process of activating the Jewel Seeds she had gotten from me seven years ago. All of them at once, in the middle of a school. There was no telling what could have happened if I hadn't taken her down.

"But Precia's reappearance resulted in one thing I certainly didn't expect, which I doubt that you would have seen coming, either. There's someone I want you to meet." Pasuing the recording, Fate left the room, returning a minute later with a second person. Fate led her companion in front of the camera and started recording again.

Alicia looked nervously at the camera. What was she supposed to say to the woman who had taken her sister in after their mother had rejected her? "Uh, hi. I'm Alicia. My sister's told me a lot about you."

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Beryl was tired of waiting. Her early strategy of slowly gathering energy to revive Metallia had resulted in nothing more than month after month of frustration and negligible progress. She wanted to win a decisive victory for once, especially since Serenity and her allies had already killed two of her generals and subverted a third. She was reaching the end of her patience. When would Kunzite finish with the preparations for her master plan?

She was considering seeking her last surviving loyal general out to demand to know why the work was taking so long when the subject of her thoughts entered her throne room and knelt before her.

"My Queen, I am pleased to tell you that the construction of the combat drones is now complete. The army of the Dark Kingdom stands ready for your command." He announced.

Beryl smiled coldly.

"For too long we have been hiding in the shadows," She declared. "It is time that we stopped hiding from the people of Earth and showed them who their true masters are. No more shall we be sneaking about in the darkness, trying to steal energy from unsuspecting victims without been seen by the Senshi. From now on, we shall seize the power we seek openly!"

She rose from her throne, her arm reaching out to point towards the door. "Go forth, my General! Take all of the drones, and as many of the youma as you can transport! Attack the city the humans call Tokyo! Bring death and destruction wherever you go! When next I look upon that city, I want to see my forces rampaging through the streets, and my enemies scattered and unable to stem the tide that will drown them all!"

Kunzite rose to his feet. "As you command, my Queen." Bowing, he backed out of the throne room to carry our her commands. When the door closed, Beryl began to laugh, anticipating the victory that awaited her as she went to retrieve her crystal ball so that she could watch the upcoming slaughter.

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The attack was totally unexpected. One minute, the city was as peaceful as a city with more than ten million people living in it could get. The next, youma and drones were rampaging through the city in over a dozen places, bringing devastation wherever they went.

There was no subtlety to the attack. The Dark Kingdom agents simply attacked anyone that crossed their path and destroyed anything that got in their way. Half the time they didn't even bother to drain the life energy from their victims. The police were out in force trying to contain the chaos and get the people to safety. The JGSDF First Division was mobilized to repel the invaders. But between people panicking in the streets and the fact that they didn't have nearly enough helicopters to transport an entire division, it would take time for them to transport enough people to where they were needed to make a difference.

The TSAB was caught off guard just as much as everyone else was. But they had advantages that allowed them to move through the panicked streets much faster than the local authorities. The main ones being the existence of transportation spells and the fact that most of their top people could fly under their own power. Hayate ordered Shamal to start teleporting the ground troops to locations near known attack points. She then sent Nanoha, Fate and the rest of the Wolkenritter to fly the Senshi over the traffic to their own battlegrounds before seeking out places where they could help out.

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The Senshi had been fearing an all-out attack like this for a long time. While none of them had the slightest idea as to how large the army Beryl had at her command was, it was clear that she had far more manpower to call on than they did. Venus had killed more youma than there were Senshi long before any of the others had awakened, and it hadn't taken that much time for the others to duplicate the feat. The possibility that Beryl would decide that she had enough troops to crush the Senshi by sheer weight of numbers had been hanging over their heads from the moment they remembered enough of their previous lives to realize that they were fighting an actual war instead of just a series of monster attacks. It was a good thing that the idea of doing so hadn't occurred to Beryl until after the Senshi had been reinforced.

Mercury flew over the streets of Tokyo, carried by Vita. As Mercury looked down at the city, she wondered how the flight spell worked. She had to weigh close to half again as much as the girl carrying her, and yet Vita showed no sign of encumbrance. The magic she had seen in her time interacting with the TSAB was absolutely fascinating...

Mercury dragged herself away from that train of thought as she saw a group of youma and a combat drone in the street below her. Forming an icicle in her hand, she waited as Vita flew her closer. As they approached one member of the group who was separated from the others, Vita dropped her and flew off in search of her own targets to deal with.

Mercury landed on the youma, knocking it to the ground before it even knew it was under attack. Finishing it off with the icicle, she rose to check her surroundings. The nearest group of youma was far too busy menacing some civilians to notice that she had just taken one of them out. Good. That meant she could get it one more surprise attack.

The youma were too busy intimidating their victims to notice the Fractal Ice Prison forming beneath them until it was too late. As they struggled to free themselves from the razor-edged cage they were trapped in, the people they had been attacking took the opportunity to flee, barely taking a moment to shout a word of thanks to their rescuer before running away.

The screams of rage and pain from the dying youma alerted their companions to the presence of an enemy. They turned and saw one of their natural enemies waiting for them. Roaring defiance, they charged at their foe.

The two surviving youma were struck by a beam of pure cold and froze solid. They fell to the ground and shattered. That left the drone.

Mercury rolled to the side as the drone's sword swung through the place she had been standing. Firing a quick spell, she locked its joints in ice to buy her some time. Quickly looking around, she saw something that could give her an advantage.

Rushing over to the fire hydrant, she opened it up and plugged the hose connector with a ball of ice. Then she hurriedly fashioned a crude wrench of ice on top of the hydrant. As the drone freed its limb from the ice and came after her, Mercury waited until it was lined up properly, then pulled the wrench.

The ice wrench broke off in her hand. But it had served its purpose. Water pressure built up in the hydrant as it tried to empty its contents into the street but couldn't due to the plug of ice. The pressure increased until it finally forced the plug out of the hydrant, firing it at the drone like a crude cannonball.

The shot wasn't strong enough to break through the drone's armor. But it did have enough momentum to knock it over. Mercury took advantage of the opening to freeze the entire machine to the street. Knowing that it would break free in time, she dashed to her immobile enemy and started examining it carefully. Finding a seam in the armor on one of the joints, she put her hand on it and started casting. Ice crystals formed inside the drone, cutting wires, jamming mechanisms and breaking through circuits. Eventually the ice did enough damage to shut the machine down.

Mercury stood up and pulled out her communicator. This batch of enemies had been dealt with, but there were plenty more where they had come from. It was time to see where she was needed next.

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Jupiter was close enough to the nearest group of enemies that she didn't need to be airlifted there. Even with the streets crowded with panicked people, travelling the two blocks didn't take too much time (The fact that her magically enhanced muscles allowed her to hurdle cars helped).

Less than five minutes after transforming, Jupiter reached her target, a group of three drones and maybe two dozen youma. As the drones were closer, she focused her attention on them. She knew from her first fight with them that while their outer armor was immune to her electrical powers, a direct hit with a bolt of lightning would take them down if it hit an unarmored section. All she had to do was find a way to get past the armor. It was something she had spent some time thinking about since her last run-in with one of them.

Jupiter opened the fight with a high kick aimed at the shoulder joint of one of the drones. The heel of her boot penetrated the armor. The hole wasn't deep enough to do any actual damage, but that didn't matter. All she needed was a hole large enough to aim at. One quick spell later, a spark flew into the gap in the armor, burning out circuits and leaving the drone a useless hunk of metal.

The other two drones were alerted by the sound of their counterpart going down and turned to attack her. Jupiter stepped inside the attack of one of them, grabbing its arm and rotating, forcing it into the path of the other drone. After shooting electricity into the gash opened by its own ally, she focused her attention on the third one and knocked it into the wreckage of the first drone. It quickly rose off the ground, but the cracks in its armor were all Jupiter needed to finish it off.

But the time it had taken her to defeat the drones had allowed the youma to realize she was there and get ready to fight. As she finished off the last drone, she saw them spread around her in a half circle. She got off a spell that took out the ones directly in front of her, but by the time she did that, the ones that were flanking her were close enough to strike.

The lead youma leaped at her, latching onto her arms. Then the others closed in on her. With her arms immobilized, Jupiter could only fight back with her feet and her head, and that wasn't nearly enough to allow her to fight against so many foes, especially since she couldn't dodge or block any attacks. It wouldn't be long before the youma were able to swarm her under.

Jupiter gritted her teeth. She was not going to be mobbed and torn apart. Not again. Calling upon her magic, she electrified her entire body. The youma screamed in pain as they were cooked alive. Within seconds, Jupiter's captors were nothing but ash, and she was free.

The youma knew enough about basic tactics to come at her from all sides several at a time, but Jupiter had survived weeks of training on how to keep track of threats from multiple directions. Between trying to hit all those stupid rubber balls and having to avoid the penalties that her teachers had exacted whenever she or any of her colleagues made a mistake, she had gotten very good at it.

A youma sneaking up behind her was knocked back by an elbow strike as she kicked another one coming up on her right. While she punched a youma in front of her in the face, she backhanded one coming up on her left. Ducking under a blow from behind, she grabbed the attacking arm and threw her attacker into a group of youma coming at her, then smashed the entire group with an axe kick before they could rise. The moment her foot returned to the ground, she spun around, taking down another youma with a spinning roundhouse kick.

Again and again the youma threw themselves at their hated enemy, and again and again Jupiter beat them back. Finally the last youma dissolved into dust, and Sailor Jupiter stood alone on the field of battle. But Jupiter didn't have time to revel in her victory. There were a lot more enemies out there that needed to be dealt with.

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It was Saeko's first day back at work since being released from the hospital as a patient rather than an employee, and it was quite clear that she would not be getting home to her daughter at a reasonable hour, and neither would anyone else. Every hospital in Tokyo was swamped with the injured resulting from the attack, and more patients were still coming in.

Juuban General was full up. Every hospital in Minato was full up, with the hospitals in the other wards rapidly reaching that state as well. All treatments for the existing patients in the hospital was reduced to an absolute minimum as the staff tried to get the tide of new patients under control.

It wasn't pretty. They didn't have enough surgical teams to treat all of the critically injured, and didn't have enough operating theaters for them to work in even if they did. Because of this, the rest of the hospital staff was stuck performing the ugliest of all medical duties: triage. While nurses tried to just stitch up the lightly wounded so that they could be gotten out of the way as quickly as possible (Not that the treated patients had anywhere to go once they were no longer in need of medical attention, given the chaos outside), the doctors had the painful task of deciding which of the more seriously injured patients were likely to survive long enough for an operating room and surgical team to become available to try to save them and do what they could to keep their conditions from worsening. If someone wasn't judged to be likely to live that long (And with the ever-increasing number of people waiting for surgery, 'that long' was getting longer every minute), then all the doctors could afford to do was give them some painkillers so that they wouldn't suffer when they passed away. And given how many patients they had, the doctors were facing the possibility that they might have to suspend that slim mercy due to a lack of drugs. And even more people might end up on that list due to a lack of medicines and blood packs.

Saeko had it worse than the other doctors. They only had to worry because their loved ones might end up running into the monsters attacking Tokyo while they worked. Saeko knew that her daughter was running into them. She was seeking them out on purpose. Saeko had run into two patients who only managed to survive to reach the hospital because Sailor Mercury had saved them. If her daughter managed to make it back home in one piece tonight, Saeko wasn't sure if she should tell her how proud she was of what she'd done this day or demand she immediately give up her insanely dangerous hobby.

Looking down at the patient in front of her, Saeko sighed. This one wasn't going to make it. His injuries weren't all that complicated, but blood loss would finish him off long before any possible treatment could do any good, especially since the hospital's rapidly dwindling supply of blood bags was prioritized for patients with a higher chance of survival. Reaching into a pocket, she pulled out a syringe. As she fitted it with a clean needle so she could fill it with morphine, someone walked up behind her. Assuming it was another member of the hospital staff trying to triage everyone in the ward, Saeko paid the figure no mind until it walked by her to the patient and she saw that it was a little girl.

Since the girl wasn't visibly injured, she clearly wasn't one of the patients awaiting triage. She was probably one of the more normal patients who had left her room and gone for a walk. Given that the regular wards were stripped down to a skeleton crew and everyone in the triage wards was far too busy to take much note of a wandering child, it wasn't too surprising that she had managed to get to the triage ward without being stopped, but that didn't change the fact that she didn't belong there. Nobody on the staff had the time to keep track of a child who wasn't in immediate need of medical attention, and a room full of injured and dying people wasn't something that an impressionable young mind should be seeing. The poor girl would probably have nightmares for days over what she had already seen.

But before Saeko could inform the girl that the ward was not a place for children and tell her to return to her room, she had walked up to the wounded man and placed her hands above his injury. Saeko's eyes widened in shock as she saw the injury start rapidly healing. In a matter of a few minutes, a man who she had given up on as beyond help given the hospital's current resources was perfectly fine.

Saeko had been forced to acknowledge the existence of Magical Girls when a group of them ended up getting their picture on the front page of every paper in Japan. Then she discovered that her daughter was one. Now she was facing another one, one whose talents were more suited towards medicine than warfare.

She didn't bother asking how the girl had done it. From what her daughter had told her, there were literally hundreds of different schools of magic out there, many of which operated on totally different principles, some of which didn't even require a basic understanding of those principles before you could start using it. What ultimately mattered was that she potentially had a way to save many of the lives that she had been forced to write off. Even if the girl was only capable of healing relatively simple wounds (What could happen if she incorrectly reassembled someone's internal organs didn't bear thinking on), by doing so she could free up trained staff to work on the more difficult cases, and since her spell didn't appear to need drugs, sutures, or any other form of normal medical equipment, the people she freed up would be better equipped to save lives.

"What's your name?" She asked the girl.

"Hotaru. Hotaru Tomoe." The girl replied. The girl seemed nervous, almost as if she was expecting someone to be angry at her for what she'd just done.

"Do you think you can do that again?"

Hotaru nodded emphatically. The girl seemed delighted that her actions were met with approval. "I'll try to heal as many people as I can."

"Good." Saeko looked at the all the other patients in the room, and thought of the dozens of other casualties in the hospital. "We have a lot of work ahead of us, Hotaru. We'd better get to it."

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Sailor Mars dropped from the sky and rolled to her feet. As Zafira flew away to head to another trouble spot, she started running to her own area of responsibility. It took her less than a minute to reach her destination.

The youma had created a real mess. Not only had they attacked anyone they had run into on the street, they had also set an apartment building on fire and were attacking anyone trying to leave, along with the firemen trying to evacuate the building and put out the fire. The residents who hadn't been able to reach a fire escape in an alley or the back of the building were trapped in the lobby, stuck between the spreading flames and the rampaging monsters.

The youma, along with the drone accompanying them, had apparently figured out that the Senshi were being airdropped into battles. They had a lookout watching the skies as the others attacked the helpless civilians. It was a good thing that Mars had suspected that they might do that eventually and asked to be dropped off just outside the target area this time.

The youma's first warning that a Senshi had arrived was when their lookout burst into flames. Several more joined it before they could react. As the remaining youma turned their attention to their attacker, the trapped residents of the building took advantage of their tormentor's distraction to flee the building.

The remaining youma were easy to finish off. The drone was another matter. Mars knew that her fire was useless against its armor. At least, it was useless by itself. As she dodged its attacks, she called out to a group of firemen who had managed to attach a fire hose to a hydrant.

"Hose down the robot on my signal!" She ordered as she engulfed the machine in flames. The drone continued its advance, unable to feel pain and undamaged by the fire. But she knew that its armor was heating up, and that was all she needed.

"NOW!" She snapped as the air around the drone started to shimmer in the heat. A torrent of water crashed into it, cooling the super-hot metal. Unable to handle the rapid temperature change, the armor started to crack. Grabbing a fireman's axe from one of the fire engines, Mars hurled it at the damaged drone.

It was a lousy throw. Mars hadn't ever training with throwing weapons before, and the axe was meant for making holes in doors and walls so firefighters could reached people trapped by fires, not for use as a projectile. The axe hit obliquely on the edge of the damaged section of the armor and bounced off. But the hit had broken open a section of the armor, and that was all she needed. Mars cast another spell at the drone, firing into the gap in the armor to melt circuitry and wires.

As the robot crashed to the ground, Mars took in the scene. As she stared at the burning building, she went into a divinatory trance, trying to ascertain if there were any more youma in the immediate vicinity. She didn't find any, but she found something else that was more disturbing.

"There are still five people trapped in the building." She announced.

That drew the immediate attention of the firefighters, and a group of them were right behind her as she ran into the inferno. Darting into a stairwell, she charged up the stairs as quickly as she could, the firemen right on her heels. When she reached the fourth floor, she paused to let them catch up with her.

"Two people. Halfway down the hall, on the left." She explained hurriedly before resuming her climb. Most of the firemen followed her, with the remainder staying to rescue the people she had located on that floor. Twice more she paused in her climb to tell the firemen where to find the trapped residents before continuing her climb. On her last stop on the seventh floor, she left the last of them behind trying to clear a path through the wreckage between them and the person in danger, leaving her to go after the last person on the tenth floor alone.

Running through the flames as quickly as she could, Mars soon found herself outside the door where the last trapped resident was located. Kicking the door open, she hurried into the smoke-filled room. Using her divination skills to make up for the lack of visibility, it wasn't hard for her to find the child lying unconscious on the floor. But before she could make her way back out, part of the ceiling collapsed, blocking the doorway.

If the ceiling had caved in at one point, it could very well cave in again while she was trying to clear a path back to the stairwell. The boy she had found also looked to be in bad shape. If he had already passed out from smoke inhalation, then she couldn't afford to wait for the rescue workers to set up a ladder, assuming they had one that could reach the tenth floor on hand. There was only one way out - which would have been outright suicidal if she hadn't been a Senshi.

Taking the boy in her arms, she ran away from the blocked door and jumped out the window. As she dropped to the street below, she held the child close, taking the full brunt of the landing herself.

Had Sailor Mars been an ordinary human, the landing would have broken her legs, and quite possibly the rest of her as well. But her magically enhanced durability allowed her to land without injuring herself. Handing the child over to some rescue workers, Mars dusted herself off and took a few breaths of smoke-free air. Looking back to the building, she saw some of the firefighters that had followed her into the flames coming back out with more of the people who had been trapped there.

One more fight was over. But the battle was still raging elsewhere in the city. Sailor Mars stared at the fire long enough to learn where the nearest group of youma could be found and then headed out for her next engagement.

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Usagi Tsukino ran through the streets of Tokyo, occasionally looking behind her to see if the creatures chasing her were still after her.

All she had been planning to do that day was hang out with her friend Naru. Then a bunch of monsters smashed their way into the Crown Arcade. As they rampaged through the arcade and the adjacent ice cream parlor, it quickly became apparent that the Sailor Senshi weren't coming, or at least, they wouldn't be getting there quickly enough.

Usagi had cowered in a corner of the parlor, hoping that the creatures wouldn't notice her as they attacked anyone that ended up within arm's reach of them. Then one of them grabbed Naru. Seeing the look of terror in her best friend's face, Usagi knew that she couldn't just stand there and do nothing. Not if she wanted to be able to look at herself in the mirror ever again. She grabbed an ice cream dish from behind the counter and threw it at the monster, hoping to distract it long enough for Naru to get away.

The bowl failed to injure the monster. It didn't even make it flinch. But it did make the creature holding Naru to lose interest in her current victim and focus its attention on the person who had dared to attack it. So did all the other monsters.

Usagi only managed to avoid getting clawed open by the monster she had attacked because she stumbled over a chair while trying to get away, both falling down herself and knocking the chair into the path of her attacker. As she hastily climbed to her feet, she saw an open path to the exit and bolted with all the speed gained from years of hurrying to school in an effort to not be too late, with all of the monsters chasing after her as soon as they realized she was getting away.

The streets outside were full of panicking people. Fortunately for Usagi, once those people saw what was chasing her, they invariably decide to panic in a different direction, allowing her to flee without getting stuck in crowds. Running through the streets without any real destination in mind, only a need to get away from the monsters hunting her, she eventually ended up running into another group of monsters, this one accompanied by a pair of robots.

That explained why the Senshi hadn't shown up to save anyone at the arcade - they were probably busy saving other people from the monsters elsewhere. Not that knowing this was going to help her, as Usagi found herself trapped between two groups of monsters. This was it. She was going to die. As the monsters closed in on her, Usagi felt a twinge of regret that the last time she spoke with her father had been an argument about how badly she was doing in school...

Over a dozen pink lights flashed through the air, turning the monsters closest to Usagi into dust. Looking up, Usagi saw her rescuer. It wasn't one of the Senshi. It was one of the other magical girls that had ended up in the newspaper after that monster attack on the wedding all those weeks before. As Usagi looked on the figure in white and blue who stood in the air as if she was standing on solid ground, she thought that she had never seen anyone look so regal in her life.

The monsters turned their attention from the schoolgirl who had attacked one of them in desperation to the magical girl who was an actual threat. It didn't do them any good. The girl in white practically danced between their attacks, countering with balls of pink light that they weren't able to dodge nearly as well. A glow formed on the girl's staff, and a beam of light blasted through one of the robots, out the other side, and into the other. Soon there was only one monster left, who appeared to have more intelligence than the others. Rather than continuing with futile attacks on the magical girl, it grabbed Usagi by the throat.

"Come down, or the girl dies!" It demanded. The girl complied. "Put down your staff!" The staff dropped to the ground.

Usagi gulped in terror. Why was she listening to the monster? Usagi really doubted that it would let her go whether the other girl followed its instructions or not. Didn't she understand that she was dooming them both?

"Good," The monster continued, contempt dripping from its voice, "Now I want you to..." The monster never finished the sentence, as it abruptly dissolved into dust.

As Usagi rubbed her throat, she saw the other girl calmly retrieve her staff.

"How...?" Usagi wondered aloud.

"I had my shot loop around the building and take the youma from behind," The other girl explained, "I just needed to play for time until it finished circling." Then the girl looked at her curiously. "Why were they chasing you?"

"I - I hit one of them because it was threatening my friend, and then they all went after me instead. I tried to run away, but I just ended up running into more of them."

"I see. That was a very brave thing you did."

Brave? It hadn't seemed like that to Usagi. All she had done was one desperate act to try to help her friend, followed by several minutes of fleeing in terror. That didn't seem very heroic to her.

"How are you able to do all that?" Usagi asked.

"Training. Years of training and hard work. It may have been chance that first led to me learning magic, but I've gotten to where I am today by spending a lot of time over the past seven years mastering it.

"I'm not the chosen one of some prophecy or the heir of some legendary sorceress who could terrify dragons just by introducing herself. I'm just a girl who found her calling in life and has taken the effort to be as good at it as I possibly can." The girl paused, as if listening to something only she could hear. "I have to go. There's more youma out there that need to be dealt with."

A pair of pink wings appeared beneath the magical girl's feet as she floated off the ground and flew away. As she watched the other girl clear the rooftops, Usagi wondered if she could find a purpose in life that she could devote herself to like that.

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Signum flew over the skies of Tokyo, carrying Sailor Venus with her. A large number of drones were attacking the Imperial Palace, and they were the ones who had been detailed to deal with it. While the palace had the advantage of actually having security personnel present to try to stop the attackers, Signum doubted that the Imperial Guard had anything on hand suited for repelling homicidal robots. And without something that could do that, all they could do was buy time with their lives.

Signum's assessment turned out to be accurate. When they arrived, there were dead and wounded men scattered around the entrance that the drones had forced, having been cut down trying to protect the compound and those in it. The drones had split into two groups, one of which was heading into the main section, and the other to an island to the east of the main palace grounds. They had already separated too much to be all taken at once.

Coming to a quick decision, Signum dove to the ground and dropped off her passenger. "I'll take the group heading east! You go after the others!" She ordered before turning in pursuit of her designated targets. She would just have to trust her student to be able to handle the rest of them.

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Outside of Fukiage Garden, a detachment of the Imperial Guard tried in vain to hold back their attackers. They didn't know where the machines had come from, or who the man ordering them was, and they didn't care. All that mattered was that they had to keep them from reaching the Emperor.

Unfortunately, nothing they tried seemed to work. Bullets just bounced off the armor of the machines without doing any damage, and the man was equally capable of protecting himself against them. With luck, the JGSDF reinforcements they had called for and were being flown in by the first available helicopter would have something that could make a difference, but unless they showed up quickly, the machines would likely overrun the men trying to defend Fukiage Garden and the East Gardens and kill everyone there.

It might not even much longer. They were running out of ammunition, and even with their guns being almost totally useless against their opponents, they were the only weapons they had.

In the distance, a figure ran towards the battle. Nobody wasted any time wondering who it could be. If it was another enemy, then their situation wouldn't get any notably worse than it already was. If it was a civilian, then he or she was incredibly stupid and soon to be dead. If it was an ally, then he or she was incredibly brave and also soon to be dead. After all, they were barely able to slow the robots down, what could one person do to stop...

There was a teeth-aching tearing sound, and one of the machines fell to the ground, having been cut cleanly in two. As it dropped the Guardsmen saw what had done it. The robot had been diagonally sliced in half by a sword that appeared to be made out of some sort of crystal. Wielding that sword was a teenaged girl, who didn't look nearly strong enough to cut through a sizable amount of metal with one swing, no matter how sharp the sword was. A girl wearing a sailor fuku in white, blue and orange.

"Leave these things to me," Sailor Venus called out. "Bullets won't do any good against them."

Then their unexpected savior brought her sword back to a guard position and launched an attack at another one of the robots.

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Venus sidestepped an attack from a drone, then cut off its limb and followed through with a slash that put it out of commission. Knocking another drone backward by punching it with the hilt of her sword, she spun around to face the enemies that were closing in from behind.

Her entry into the battle had gotten the drones to focus on her as the most serious threat in the area. That had taken the pressure off the Guard, allowing them to get their wounded clear of the battlefield. And while it was good to know that they were no longer in danger, the fact that all of the enemies that would have been attacking them were now attacking her kept her from thinking on that too much.

An overhand swing cut deeply into one drone. Kicking it off her sword and into another two, she blocked an attack from the side and forced its weapon out of position, following it up with a thrust that went completely through it. She cut down three more drones when she heard a blow coming from behind her. Turning quickly, she brought her sword up to guard, only to find that her opponent wasn't another drone.

"This is sort of like the last time we crossed blades, isn't it, Sailor Venus" Kunzite taunted. "Let's see if you'll fail as badly as you did back then this time."

Venus didn't bother speaking a reply. She just struck, slicing a thin line in his left cheek before he could get out of the way. He thrust his blade at her chest, and she deflected it upwards before spinning to cut down a drone behind her and bringing her blade up to block Kunzite's next attack. Kunzite went straight from the block into a second strike, which nicked her leg before she could stop it.

Back and forth they fought across the grounds. Each managed to score a handful of minor cuts on the other, but nothing large or deep enough to hinder their ability to fight. Any advantage either gained over the other was lost before it could be taken full advantage of. Then her attempt to block a powerful strike resulted in their blades being locked together. Kunzite pressed against her, hoping to use his larger mass to force her sword out of position. Or was he?

Before she realized the trap, two of the surviving drones flanked her, leaving Venus boxed in. She couldn't move to the sides. If she disengaged to block an attack from either flank, Kunzite would cut her down. If she concentrated on Kunzite, the drones would get her.

"And so it ends, Sailor Venus. You die a failure twice over." Kunzite mocked.

Inwardly, Venus cringed. He was right. For the second time he had beaten her with the life of a monarch on the line. But before the final blow could land, there was a pair of explosions and the drones were blasted away. Not taking time to wonder about her good fortune, Venus pivoted on one foot, freeing herself from the blade lock and giving herself an opening to slash his left arm.

As Kunzite recovered from the blow, Venus caught sight of what had saved her. Apparently, the Imperial Guard had been reinforced by the JGSDF. And while bullet were useless against the drones, rocket propelled grenades worked quite well. With allies capable of dealing with the drones around her, Venus could safely focus on the Dark General. She resumed her attack.

The wound to Kunzite's arm weakened him, but the match was still too equal. He had fought with her before, and they both remembered how that fight went. He knew her style as well as she knew his, which meant they both had a good notion of what the other was going to do at any time, and ready a defense before the other could launch their attack. Kunzite's wound would make him weaken faster, but not quickly enough that he couldn't reverse the fight with a lucky strike of his own. And it was quite possible he could find a chance to do so, since he knew how she fought.

Venus smiled to herself. That knowledge was the reason he was about to lose.

A swing to the right side of Kunzite's head was quickly deflected. As the blow slid downwards, Venus jerked back at her opponent for a weak strike at her waist. It was also blocked, but she was expecting that. Spinning around, she used the momentum of her turn to launch a far stronger attack on Kunzite's other side. Kunzite deflected the blow upward, reflexively moving his sword to a high block position to stop the overhead chop he knew was coming next.

"Ha!" Kunzite snorted. "You think I..."

He never finished the sentence, because Venus stabbed him in the throat.

"I've learned a few new moves since we last fought." She said coldly.

Kunzite's sword dropped from his hand as the tip of the crystal blade emerged from the back of his neck. Venus snapped the blade to the side, half-severing his neck as it cuts its way free. The Dark General fell to the ground and bled out in seconds.

Venus turned to the Guardsmen and soldiers who had fought against the rampaging drones and brought her bloody sword up in a salute. Looking at the girl who had ensured that they had survived long enough to get an opportunity to fight back, they solemnly returned the salute.

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The battle raged throughout the day. Soldiers fought the drones with anti-tank weaponry while the Senshi and their TSAB allies battled both drones and youma with magic and magical weaponry. Slowly the number of attackers were whittled down and order was restored to large portions of the city.

And while the battle was fought, Beryl watched, waiting for the perfect time and place to strike. Her enemies were scattered across the city, being slowly worn down. All she needed to do was figure out which one was weakened enough to be struck down quickly before the others could come to her aid. Then she could retreat until the next one faltered, at which point she could launch another ambush.

She was losing many of her troops, including the last of her of her faithful generals, but if she could crush the Senshi before Serenity could figure out how to call on the power of the Ginzuisho, it would be worth it. Even if the Ginzuisho was lost, with the Senshi gone, she could gather all the life energy she wanted at her leisure.

As she surveyed the city, Beryl noticed one person with obviously magical abilities who wasn't visibly contributing to the battle. She was just floating above the city. What was she doing there? Then it occurred to her: this girl was coordinating the Senshi somehow. If Beryl took her out first, then the Senshi would be less able to deal with her servants. Having identified her first target, Beryl prepared to attack.

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Hayate hovered over Tokyo Tower, concentrating on the equations needed to create a cold, slow-moving, damp wind to help contain the fires burning throughout the city. She wished she could do something that would allow her to contribute more directly to the fight than spells of that nature and keeping track of what other areas needed assistance once someone finished with their current task, but her talents weren't really suited for urban warfare. If she started using combat spells, she'd probably level half the city, and they didn't have the ability to even try to evacuate the area before she started firing.

It was hard to just watch the battle without being able to participate in any manner other than support. There were dozens of buildings that were either on fire or damaged by fire (Once Hayate realized that Mars had gotten good enough with her fire divination to be able to locate anyone trapped inside a burning building at a glance, she'd made a point of sending her to every incursion point where fires were breaking out that she could). Many of the soldiers fighting in the streets had been killed or wounded because they didn't realize that bullets could only temporarily inconvenience the youma and tried to take them on before someone with the skills to handle them could arrive. She didn't even want to think about the civilian casualties. If each ambulance only carried one person on each trip, there were still far too many people getting hurt in this attack.

Her efforts to help stop one of the problems in the city came to abrupt halt when she suddenly found herself under attack. Trying to regain control of her flight as she tumbled from the sky, she caught sight of her attacker. It was a red-headed woman who matched the description she had been given of Beryl, ruler of the Dark Kingdom. It seemed that the Dark Kingdom really was going all out on this attack.

Hayate did her best against her opponent, but it really wasn't a contest. She might have been the most powerful mage in living memory (At least, before the discovery of Hotaru Tomoe), but she wasn't a very good fighter. She could raze the entire planet down to bedrock if she put her mind to it, but she didn't know any spells suited for attacking anything smaller than a city block. She also didn't have any combat skills that didn't involve a significant charging time, or the talent for running multiple complex calculations through her head simultaneously, though being in unison with Rein made that a lot easier.

As a weapon of war, Hayate's talents ranged from heavy artillery to weapon of mass destruction. And Hayate ended up being given a hard lesson in why you shouldn't bring a siege cannon to a knife fight. It was a good thing that she'd called for help the moment she realized she was under attack, at least that way there was a chance that someone would show up in time to make a difference.

Hayate's hopes for relief were in vain. It took less than a minute for Beryl to take her down. As she laid in the cracked pavement, feebly trying to reach her broken staff, she saw the Device eject the objects that had been sealed within in. She knew there was going to be more trouble when she saw a hand snatch the Jewels Seeds within moments.

"So that's what happened to Precia's crystals." Beryl gloated. "With these, I have all the energy I need to revive Metallia! Enjoy your final moments while they last, witch."

Beryl laughed as she disappeared.

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Shortly after Beryl vanished, all the flight-capable members of the TSAB arrived, carrying the Senshi in tow. Shamal immediately got to work healing her mistress.

"What happened?" Nanoha asked.

"It was Beryl. She ambushed me. She took the Jewel Seeds, said that they held enough power to revive Metallia." Hayate gasped.

Fate grimaced. "Well, that explains why she had one of her Generals hunting Precia. And what happened to the last Jewel Seed."

"That's not important!" Jupiter protested. "If we don't find a way to stop her, Beryl's going to wake Metallia up! Once that happens, she could kill everything on Earth!"

"But how are we supposed to find her?" Mercury wondered.

There was a pause as they considered how they were supposed to locate their enemy in time to make a difference. Then Fate had an idea.

"Mars, you said before that you were able to sense the Jewel Seeds back when Nanoha and I were fighting over them seven years ago, and were still able to sense them when Precia activated them earlier. Do you think you could divine their location?"

"I'll try." Mars created a ball of fire in her hand and stared into it. Sweat formed on her brow as she focused on the sensations she had felt every time the Jewel Seeds had been activated. An endless minute passed, and then she looked up. "I have them."

"Keep their location focused in your mind." Fate instructed, as she reached out to touch Mar's mind with her own. She didn't know how to read minds per se, but she was very familiar with mind to mind communication, and with that she should be able to read one focused thought from someone who wasn't trying to keep her out, even if the other person didn't know how to communicate telepathically. A moment later, she turned to the others. "I have the coordinates."

"Good," Hayate said. "Shamal, Yuuno, start healing everyone here. Fate, cast a repair spell on my staff. In ten minutes, we're going after Beryl. Shamal, you, Yuuno, Aruf and Kamen will be staying here to help deal with the remaining youma. Everyone else will be coming with me to stop Beryl and reclaim the Jewel Seeds.

Hayate looked around as she rose to her feet and saw the determined look on the people around her. "It's time we finished this."

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A/N: JGSDF: Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the land based units of the Japan Self Defense Force, essentially the Japanese Army. The 1st Division is attached to the Eastern Army, which is based in Nerima, Tokyo.

Fukiage Garden is the section of the Tokyo Imperial Palace set aside as the residence of the Imperial family. The East Gardens contain (among other things) the administrative offices of several parts of the Japanese government.

There is a Japanese Imperial Guard, which is responsible for the security of the Emperor, his family, and their various properties (Roughly equivalent to the security duties of the US Secret Service). It is organized as a police unit, not a military one.

One thing that is often mentioned about heroes in real life is that a lot of them don't think of what they had done as being particularly heroic. Usagi wasn't trying to use herself as a decoy to lure the youma away from everyone at the arcade, she just helped her friend because she couldn't bring herself to not do so.

I'm sure some of you noticed the shout out to the one MGLN crossover story that has more reviews than mine. Since Nanya has referenced this story in Blood That Flows at least twice, I figured I'd return the favor.

100K words and over 500 reviews! Thanks for everyone who's sent me their comments.
 

zeebee1

Well-Known Member
#2
You know, I was hoping for an anti-climatic finish. Why did they leave the dimension destroying batteries with the least effective mage anyways?
 

bissek

Well-Known Member
#3
Because they weren't expecting her to get into any fights at all, and expected that a courier would be showing up to take them away in the near future.

Edit: Posted revised chapter.
 

MWkillkenny84

Well-Known Member
#4
Ooooh, so now Beryl is alone, she has pissed off the TSAB... AGAIN, and the combined groups KNOW where she is.
Overkill anyone?
Excluding a revival of Metalllia, of course.
Vote: 10+++
 

ragnarok1337

Well-Known Member
#5
Where was Zwei? Her missing is jarring. Furthermore, even if Hayate DID have a reason to have the Jewel Seeds, why would her staff eject them? Precia had no idea that she had them. Bardiche only ejected the Jewel Seeds because that were the agreed upon terms for the fight between Nanoha and Fate.

The canon train is still chugging along the rails.
 
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