Disclaimer:

I own neither of the fictions present in this work of fiction.

Dresden Files is copyright Jim Butcher.

Someone else owns Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.

Timeline:

Post Small Favor for Dresden Files. A few years post Nanoha A's.

Chapter 1

It was about 8 p.m. when my phone rang. I picked it up and Mac's voice came from the other side "Someone's here to speak to you."

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Regular." The way it was spoken meant it wasn't anyone I knew. That was good. During the years I have made a lot of enemies, in and out of the supernatural community, and my friends usually come directly to me. Being a regular client of McAnally's meant either it was someone who belonged to Chicago's supernatural community, or someone who knew about it.

"Now?"

"Huh." I could almost see his shrug through the phone.

"Sure, give me half an hour."

I hang up and turned finding Mouse in front of me. One of my pets, Mouse was a Foo dog, a race of very big, very though magical dogs. Foo dogs also possess a very keen intellect and that, aside from Mouse's bear-like qualities made him a very dangerous grey-shaped pet.

"Come on boy," I said putting on my black leather duster. "We're off to see the bartender."

Forty minutes later we arrived at McAnally's, after spending half the time trying to find a parking space in Chicago, and entered. McAnally's was a tavern neatly tucked away at the end of an alley, beneath one tall building. It was an old place lit by candles and kerosene lamps, and it smelled of wood smoke and steaks. The tavern room is low-ceilinged with thirteen ceiling fans spinning lazily throughout the place. Thirteen hand-carved wooden pillars, each one describing a supernatural scene or creature, held up the low ceiling. There were also thirteen tables scattered about the room, and the bar had thirteen stools in it.

This layout was not made because of some thirteen fetish Mac might have had. It was meant to disperse dangerous or destructive energies that any potential client might have. It also had a calming effect in any practitioner that came inside, and it did a little warding against more dangerous magic. It wasn't this setup that made McAnally's a truly safe place for the members of the supernatural community however, it was the little sign on the wall just inside the door where you could read "ACCORDED NEUTRAL TERRITORY". That meant that the signatories of the Unseelie Accords had deemed this tavern as a safe-place, no one was supposed to start any kind of conflict inside this place and any who did might have to deal with the signatories of the Accords. Most of the really powerful magical beings on the planet were signed in the Accords, some in groups, others as individuals, and nobody wanted to piss them off. I am a member of one of the groups that signed the Accords, the White Council of wizards.

There were some clients spread around the tavern, not as much as there would be later in the night, but a good amount nonetheless. These were people that had a small magical talent and usually used McAnally's to either discuss the last rumors of the supernatural community or talk about the art without fear of being discovered by normal humans.

I approached Mac in the bar "Mac," I said.

"Harry." Then he nodded his head towards a table perhaps twenty feet away of where I was. Mac has a way with words, or rather a way of talking without them.

In the table a seemingly normal looking older gentleman sat, with pale skin and dark hair sporting a little gray. It was someone I already had seen on McAnally's more than once, usually in the presence of some other practitioners.

I started walking and sat at his table. He startled, but relaxed when he saw who I was. Mouse meanwhile reclined himself against my legs.

"Warden Dresden," He said, nodding his head a little.

The White Council is basically the government to which all humans practitioners of magic must respond to. Not all practitioners can enter the White Council, only a small percentage of them had the power and control to become members, and those that did became wizards. Despite this Council laws were to be followed by every human practitioner of magic.

There were only seven laws of magic, but the violation of these results in the capture and trial of the lawbreaker, and in the vast majority of cases the accused is found guilty and executed. Some exceptions do occur, like me. When I was younger I violated the first law of magic "Thou shalt not kill by use of magic". The only thing that saved my life was that I had used said magic in self-defense and that the person who would later become my mentor vouched for me, and agreed to take me in. If he hadn't, my head would have been cut-off by a very sharp sword. The White Council can be old school like that.

The Grey Wardens are both the police and the military of the White Council, the ones responsible for finding who breaks the laws of Magic and also responsible for fighting the Council wars. A few years ago in the last Wizard-Vampire war a lot of good wardens were killed and the Council was forced to recruit wizards wherever they could. Taking my luck into account it wasn't any surprise that I got conscripted.

"Mister …?" I asked.

"Mark Simmons, I apologize for making you come here, but" Here he made a gesture that was a mixture between a shrug and a twisting of shoulders. He looked about fifty, perhaps fifty-five years old, with some wrinkles starting to show on his pale face. His voice was steady and audible, but showed some uncertainty about something, not fear per se but perhaps some reluctance about whatever it was he was going to talk about.

"But…?" I pressed. He fidgeted for a few seconds before speaking.

"Yesterday, I was inspecting some warehouses, on the west side of the city, nothing serious but some of the inventory didn't stack up," It seemed that whatever reluctance Mister Simmons had had disappeared, his voice got firmer and he unconsciously righted his back. "It was when I started to leave, around midnight that something strange happened. I was entering my car when I heard someone talking a little further away from where I was standing; it isn't a rare occurrence to find people at those hours there, many of those warehouses sometimes work during the night, but for some reason I got curious and walked a few feet to where I could see them. They were strange." Here he stopped and drunk a sip from a bottle of Mac's dark.

"What did you find strange about them?" I asked.

"Their clothes and the language they spoke. Mister Dresden I consider myself an fairly educated man, I've spent a good amount of time traveling outside of the US, visiting different countries and I speak three different languages. The language those men were speaking was one I didn't recognize from anywhere I had been before, or even heard on television. Granted that doesn't mean anything, I am not a languages expert, but it wasn't just the way they spoke. They were dressed strangely, in some kind of armor or uniform, I couldn't tell very well."

"They could have been going to some party. Kids these days make the most strange of parties, and in even stranger places." Even as I said it I doubted it was something that simple, it was simply that kind of day.

"Maybe," He conceded with a small nod "But they were carrying something like staves and," Reluctance showed again on his voice. "I see myself as having very good instincts, Mister Dresden, and my instincts were saying those three men were dangerous and magical, so I left. Earlier today I asked Mac to contact you for me. I didn't want to make you lose time, but I thought it would be better to tell you about what I saw, even if it turns to be nothing in the end."

I looked Mark Simmons over and what I saw made me sigh mentally, he looked like a serious and responsible person that with some reluctance contacted the authorities to talk about something strange he saw. There was no way this was some kind of prank. Didn't mean it wasn't a trap though.

We talked a bit more; I asked a few more questions and a few minutes later Mister Simmons left.

I spent a few seconds looking at a scrap of paper with the directions of where Simmons had seen the mysterious three men and then looked at my dog.

"What do you think?"

Somehow Mouse, turning his head in just the right way, and managed to convene all the meaning a good shrug should have.

"Yeah, me too."

.

.

After a steak and a bottle of Mac's dark, we went on our way. The warehouse was on the other side of the town, and at that hour it would took us almost an hour to get there.

A few of the warehouses we passed were still functioning, despite the time. Big blocky things with barely any thought given for any aesthetical purposes. The warehouse Mister Simmons told me about was one such building, big, blocky and made of unpainted concrete.

Parking the Blue Beetle outside the warehouse I started walking in the direction the strange men were heard talking, my ears open and my magical senses ready to detect anything unusual. I had my staff on one hand, my blasting rod was on one of my duster's inner pockets and I also had brought my .44 with me. On my wrist was my ever trusting shield bracelet and in one of my hands I had my kinetic rings, I was ready to face whatever came ahead.

Half an hour later boredom had settled in. I walked around the nearby warehouses and hadn't found anything suspicious, neither magical nor mundane. There also wasn't anyone around that I could see. I spent a few more minutes walking around the place before I stopped close to one of the big warehouses around.

There wasn't anything suspicious that I could fund around, it was late at night and tomorrow early I had a lesson to give to my apprentice. Maybe I should come back during the day and ask some questions around; try to find out if someone saw something worth seeing. I started thinking I got lucky after all.

It was at that moment that the wall next to me exploded.

I got lucky then. The way the wall exploded made most of the debris crash a couple of feet in front of me. Problem was I am not that lucky, so some debris did came in my direction.

I have a magically-reinforced leather duster. I have a magically-reinforced black leather duster which, besides being awesome, it's practical and it saved my life more than a few times. The enchantments on it made it able to spread the kinetic energy of any impact the duster suffers. I had people shooting me with small hand-guns and barely felt it. Once I had a white-court vampire shooting me with an assault rifle and even though that hurt it didn't manage to penetrate my duster. Which was why when a soccer-ball sized of concrete crash into me it only felt like a professional football player was using me for tackle practice. It hurt like hell.

I lay dazed for a few seconds on the ground before I managed to climb back up to my feet. It was then that I realized my staff wasn't as lucky as I was.

"Hell's Bells." I cursed.

On the wall in front of me now existed a hole eight feet tall and around four feet wide. Inside colored flashes of light appeared every couple of seconds. I could feel the magic being flung inside, which either means there used to be some kind of ward in place that hid magic or they only starting using magic recently.

Like when someone decided to blow up the wall next to me.

Going forward with extra care I looked inside the warehouse. There I could see that what seemed a magic duel was taking place. That was if wizards had decided to grow wings and start flying magical duels. There were three different people fighting, but they were going around fast enough that I couldn't quite identify them. A bigger flash of pink light happened, a crash was heard and the combatants seemed to come to a standstill for a moment.

On one side there was some young woman dressed in what appeared to be a white and blue dress. Fighting her seemed to be two of the men Simmons told me about. One of them was in the air like the young woman on the other side, while the other one seemed to have crashed into the ground near his flying partner.

In an instant the fight resumed between the flying combatants.

I couldn't quite track them with my vision, they were moving extremely fast, leaving what seemed to be colored blurs behind them. For a second I thought this was what Wile E. Coyote must have felt trying to catch the Road Runner and I had to swallow in order to not release the nervous laugh that was bumbling in my throat.

It was then that a small light started to shine from where downed wizard was.

Some of my female friends sometimes say I am chauvinist pig, because I think men should do everything they can to make women's life easier. I can't help that, it was how I was raised and in certain occasions it almost got me in trouble, when some not so innocent women used that to their advantage.

I don't know if it was that trait of mine or maybe something about how unfair a two-on-one fight was, but I decided to interfere.

In one of my hands I use a series of silver rings, twelve in total, that store kinetic energy from any movement that hand makes. Each individual ring can pack quite a punch being able to flip a car when it's full. I reached with some of the energy stored in one of the rings and hit the wizard head on. I hit him harder than I wanted to.

He didn't know I was there and besides that he had being busy preparing some kind of spell. My attack threw him almost fifteen feet through the air and he only stopped there because he hit one of the pillars supporting the warehouse. I winced, that had been way too much energy and I could only hope he was still alive. Which was way it came as a great surprise when he simply shook his head as if dazed and turned to me.

Definitely not human then.

He snarled and thrust his staff forward. A greenish ball of magic came out of it and raced towards where I was. I raised my shield bracelet, focused my power and raised my shield. The ball of magic hit my shield like a Mack truck provoking an explosion of light, but my shield held.

He threw a second magic ball at me and I decided to be on the best side of caution and simply sidestep the attack. The greenish ball passed where I had been and continued onward. I started moving again simply to trip over the body of the unconscious person I hadn't seen before and crashed to the ground. Not exactly a good thing to do.

He paused for a second, perhaps thinking about his companion beneath me, but then simply decided to throw caution to the wind and sent one more attack at me. I was in the process of disentangling myself from his unconscious partner, thinking about how I could possibly stop his attack, when I inadvertently grabbed something metallic.

"Protection."

I felt my power spiraling from within me and with a greater focus and control that I had ever managed a spherical shield appeared around me. His attack crashed against the barrier and simply dissipated, not even ruffling the shield around me. What the hell?

I looked down at what I had in my hands. It was a staff, a metallic and sleek-looking one, with some odd shape at the end and a small pulsating white jewel incrusted within that shape. It was then that I realized that the genderless computerized voice had come from this staff. I don't quite know how I came to that conclusion, but when I did I knew it to be true.

I don't have time to think about this I thought to myself.

My adversary, seeing his attack had no effect started charging up some other spell to throw at me, so I did the only thing that made sense.

"Forzare!" I shouted and trusted the staff forwards. The same thing that had happened when the shield appeared happened now. My power appeared almost effortlessly, focused and controlled.

My kinetic blast caught him in the torso. This time he went through the supporting pillar. Only he didn't stop there, without even slowing down he went through another one and another one until he reached the wall on the other side of the warehouse. He went through that as well and didn't even slow down. I stayed there looking at what I done.

I had once sent a Loup Garou, basically a super-werewolf, through one wall of a building and another building in it's entirely. It wasn't easy it was something that took a lot of power, power fuelled by my emotions and in the end it left tired physically and mentally. Now I launched someone basically the same distance out of the battlefield and I wasn't even breathing hard. Star's and stones.

"Now we're talking." I said. This was simply too awesome.

I heard a shout to the side, and saw the other armored men looking into the hole to where I just sent his partner. It was a small distraction, but it was enough for the young woman to nail him with some pink blast. The man crashed to the ground, hard, and didn't even twitch.

The woman noticing this flew through the hole left by the man who had the stones to take a ride on Dresden aviations. A few seconds later she flew back in bringing the man in cords made of pink magical energy. Bounding the man she had knockout in the same manner the woman seemly nodded to herself.

With that she turned, with her staff raised high, and faced me.