Foreword: Eyyyy so I had this idea while working on one of my other stories. This is the companion story of sorts. It's post-A's but I basically threw the canon out the window with several things. In a nutshell, here's what I changed:

- Hayate goes to Midchilda immediately after A's instead of finishing high school.

- The characters are all 14, just to match up with my PMMM side of this story.

- I have no idea where Uminari is so I'm just going to make it a neighbouring city to Tokyo.

That's it (I hope). There's probably some that I missed off the top of my head though. I have yet to decide whether to include Hayate and the Wolkenritter into the story, but if I do, they still won't show up for a while. Enjoy! Oh, this will probably be darker than most of Lyrical Nanoha stories based on what I've seen so far, but I guess that's what happens with PMMM writers :D

Also I don't own any of the characters. Please don't sue me ._.

A heavy magical signature filled the air, dropping the temperature by several degrees. I had no time to even talk to Fate about what that meant when the entire room flipped upside down. Or maybe sideways. I don't know. Books, papers, pencils, and all sorts of other things flew around in the classroom, and I had a mild sense of vertigo as everyone in the room tumbled towards the wall. The windows shattered, creating a deadly rain of glass. Vaguely, I heard screaming but the magic in the air muffled it. A tap on my shoulder.

"Nanoha!" a voice yelled. I looked over and saw the burgundy eyes of my partner Fate. Her lips moved and I struggled to hear her words above the vicious gale.

"Look outside!" she yelled. I looked, and wish I hadn't.

Debris swirled in the air amidst storm clouds, and the classroom was in the air. Droplets of blood covered the room, blood belonging to those who had been hit with glass. I turn back to Fate, and we nodded. Glancing around quickly to make double check that everyone was unconscious, which they were at this point, we pulled out our Devices. Me, a red bead; Fate, a yellow triangular disk.

"Raising Heart, now would be a good time!" I scream, only slightly panicking. Slightly. The Device obliged me with a flash, conjuring my barrier jacket. Fate floated (flew?) over to me.

"We have to get everyone down on the ground! We're way high up right now! Bardiche, how many do we need to get?"

The yellow triangle on the back of her hand flashed, then said, "Twenty-eight, sir. Fourteen round trips between the two of you."

Arms wrapped around my neck and purple hair whipped into my face in the wind. It was Suzuka. I look over and find the dark blonde hair of Arisa tangling with Fate's lighter blonde as our two friends held onto us for dear life.

"Nanoha-chan! Why can't you be normalll?!" Suzuka screamed into my ear. I decided it wasn't a good time to grace that with an answer.

"Fate-chan, we can take two each this time and make thirteen round trips instead. Arisa-chan, Suzuka-chan, hold on tight!"

As one, Fate and I each grab a random body and fly out the window, casting a barrier in front to blast out the last of the glass, flying towards the ground. All the while, Arisa and Suzuka screamed at the top of their lungs non stop, until we touched the ground. They collapsed in a heap, and Arisa gave me a look.

"Nanoha, Fate," she said, as calmly as she could. "It's been five years, and I still can't get used to this kind of stuff. Five years. Five. Years."

She spoke of the Book of Darkness incident five years ago, when she and Suzuka had been caught in the crossfire.

"Not the time, Arisa!" Fate yelled, grabbing my shoulder and spinning me around to look where she had been looking. My jaw dropped.

In the sky were countless skyscrapers being thrown at various parts of the city. In the centre was a giant...something. It had gears spinning on the top of it and what looked like curtains surrounding it. Before I could get a better look, though, it vanished. A shockwave washed through the city from where it vanished, tearing up everything in its way. The floating buildings fell, smashing onto the ground; the school was one of them. Several explosions rocked the area, knocking the four of us to the ground.

The smoke cleared as we stood and stared out at the city. Fires engulfed large swathes of land, smoke and dust floated up in the air. Not a single undamaged building could be seen. The city was in ruins. Not even the Book of Darkness was this destructive. A ringing filled the area and we all looked around. Then, Suzuka gasped and took out her cell phone, flipping it open and answering.

"Mom?...uh huh? Is dad with you?...Yea, I'm okay but it looks ba-...hello?...mom?...mom!"

A loud crash could be heard through the cell phone, then Suzuka closed the phone, still as a statue.

"S-Suzuka-chan?"

She looks me in the eye, desperation showing.

"Nanoha-chan, can you take me to Tokyo? You can fly, right? And Tokyo's right next to Uminari. I think… I think what happened just now is happening there."

Tokyo was in ruins before we arrived, the giant lumbering beast in the air already gone. Suzuka guided us to her parents' company. It was completely collapsed, and despite searching for hours, we found no sign of her parents. She drops to her knees, and cries. Arisa attempts to comfort her, and I take Fate a few metres away.

"Fate-chan, can you try and get into contact with Lindy-san or Chrono-kun? Or someone? I think we may have found a Lost Logia"

She nods, walking off to send a message through Bardiche. I look back at Arisa and Suzuka, meeting the former's gaze. She shakes her head, then bends down and looks through the latter's phone, pressing some buttons. A ringing sounds quietly from beneath the rubble of the building. Suzuka only cries harder. Then, something clicks in my mind. I haven't checked on my family yet!

Fate-chan, sorry! I need to go, I say to her telepathically, breaking into a sprint before flying back towards Uminari.

Got it. I'll bring Arisa and Suzuka back when they're ready, came the reply.

By the time she finishes that sentence, I'm already a quarter of the way to Uminari. The sky was completely grey, and lightning crackled in the clouds above. I pushed more magic into my flying, edging out every bit of speed I could manage. Finally, I landed outside my house. Or rather, the pile of bricks that was left. I found no one, so I took off running towards the bakery, dispelling my barrier jacket as I did so.

A few blocks from where the bakery should be, a panel of wood with the words Midori-ya lay. I ran faster, struggling to catch my breath. When I arrived, I retched. The metallic smell of blood filled my nose. Somehow, the bakery didn't completely collapse, the rubble instead forming a small pyramid-shaped ruin. The front door was scrunched up, and I struggled to push the door aside, revealing what was left of the bakery. Bread was scattered all over the floor, but I ignored that. What caught my eye were the four bodies strewn inside, each in a pool of blood. My parents. My brother Kyōya. My sister Miyuki. All dead. The smell of blood repulsed me, but I stepped inside shakily, and stared. I don't know how long I stayed standing there in the doorway, but eventually, footsteps broke me out of my trance. I don't look. I don't need to.

"Nanoha… We should go… There's nothing you can do for them," Fate said. I wipe away tears that I hadn't noticed until she stepped in.

"Let me bury them."

I leave no room for argument. Arisa and Suzuka are outside, and they stare at me as I drag Kyōya out of the bakery, draping his arm over my shoulder and trudging down the road towards the garden of our house. No one says a word. I look back and to my surprise, Arisa, Suzuka, and Fate are each carrying a body. I hold back my tears and continue walking. Eventually, we reach the house. I prop Kyōya against the pile of rubble, then dig around the remains of the shed to pull out a shovel.

The digging takes all night, but I manage to bury all four. A hand placed itself on my shoulder, and the burgundy eyes of Fate met my own. I was not alone.

"Nanoha."

"Hmm?" I ask noncommittally.

"I can't get through to anyone. I think whatever that thing was has jammed any communication that our Devices can do. It doesn't help that the TSAB doesn't normally keep an eye on Earth."

"So we're on our own?"

"It seems that way."

We lapse into silence again. It's been three days since everything had happened. Suzuka wasn't handling the loss very well, and to be fair, neither was I. Arisa was less worried since her family was in Europe, but she was still worried. After all, there was no guarantee that that thing didn't lay waste elsewhere either. Several scans by Bardiche and Raising Heart revealed that Japan was almost completely destroyed. I shuddered. The Book of Darkness had been scary, but even that couldn't lay waste to an entire city as fast as what attacked us had, let alone a country.

"Having Hayate around would be nice. She always knows what to do. At least she's safe on Midchilda."

"Look on the bright side, Nanoha. She'll notice something's wrong when we don't send her a message after a while."

Fate wasn't wrong, but there was still the issue of whatever had attacked Uminari. It was gone, but who knew if it would come back? Could anyone even beat that thing? Currently, we were camped out inside what was left of Midori-ya. Luckily, the underground room where the oven was had survived unscathed, so we used that. Three days, and the only people we've seen have been stragglers. We didn't trust anyone outside of our group. People were bound to be hostile eventually, unless help showed up. A lot of time was spent sitting around, trying to tune into radio waves with our Devices and listening for news. All of it was talk about Japan's plight, and nothing about help being sent from other countries. We'd have to move soon. There wasn't that much food around, and it was a shame we couldn't just create food out of nothing with magic.

Then there was the matter of Arisa and Suzuka. Fate and I had never talked about it after the incident, but that time when Arisa and Suzuka had been caught inside the Book of Darkness barrier, it told both of us one thing: those two had Linker Cores. Decently powerful ones too, Fate had discovered when she had Bardiche scan them. Not quite as much as the two of us yet, but still above the average TSAB officer.

Laughter from across the room caught the attention of me and Fate. Arisa stared at us smugly while Suzuka was laughing for the first time since she found the fate of her parents. We walked over to them. I was about to ask Arisa what she had told Suzuka, but Fate spoke first.

"Arisa. Suzuka. We're going to have to move soon. Uminari isn't a big enough city that we can find enough food in for a long time. We might head closer to the coast," Fate told the two non-magical girls.

"We can't get into contact with anyone, so it might be a while before we get any help," I added, referring to the TSAB and any potential help they could've brought us.

Neither of them raised any objections. It was at this moment, staring at their expressions, that I realised they were scared. Fate and I could defend ourselves but the most fighting either of them has ever done was when Arisa had bullied Suzuka in elementary school. I smiled at them in what I hoped was a comforting expression. I was supposed to be the cheerful one in the group, after all.

"Don't worry. Everything will be fine!" I said optimistically. They didn't look convinced entirely, but they did seem to relax more than they have in the past few days. Everything would be fine, right…? I wasn't so sure.

The next morning, we left Uminari.

A/N:

Yea, so that happened. If you guys enjoyed it (or if you didn't), please let me know what you thought in the reviews. Thanks! :D