She awoke to the sound of something hitting the walls around her, tap-tap-tapping constantly. She was still groggy as she slowly pulled herself up from her cold bed and opened her eyes. She had taken to sleeping; there was nothing to do in this transparent box but sleep and think, so that was all that she did. Nothing but that, for months on end.
The first thing that came to her mind as she gathered her wits was wondering why the guards were standing outside her cell in the middle of the night. The second thing was why the door was ajar, and why there were two blasters pointed at her face.
The two men were dressed in the clothing of a typical security grunt, but the ones in her block weren't armed. She knew that well enough. This was the Time-Space Administration Bureau's deep-space prison, reserved for the worst. Maximum security. They didn't need to be armed, because there was no way to even escape your own cell.
In two years of being there, the door had not come open, not once.
She slowly began to process the situation she had in front of her; scenarios began to flash through her mind. Her life was at stake. She knew that much.
The guard in the front walked forward, a sneer on his face, and as he came into the light she could see his uniform was splattered with blood. Neither of them had any magical power, but the Bureau had locked her internal Device when she was sentenced here, and hers wasn't a combat type, either.
The blaster was now inches from her face. The guard had moved so close she could feel his hot breath pounding against her neck.
"What do you want?" she spoke, trying not to give away her fear. Her voice echoed throughout the hollow chamber.
"Don't mind us," the guard smirked. "Just taking out the trash."
So it was just as she thought.
"The ones next door weren't much trouble," he grinned. "So I hope you won't make this any. It'll be over quick."
Her mind had settled on something, one possible outcome. It was a tiny chance, but...it was her only way to survive, and she had nothing to lose by trying.
"You killed my sisters too?" she growled. It was a bluff. She couldn't care less about the others that had been imprisoned alongside her, but all it took was an expression of sincerity to get them to let their guard down.
"Sisters?" The guard snorted, then began to cackle. It was the most grating sound she'd heard in a while. "Trash like you think you have family? You're just a failed fucking experiment!"
"You killed them, didn't you? Dr. Scaglietti too?" She bit her lip, to appear if she was furious, but inside she felt only calmness. Was she supposed to be angry? These were, at least, the closest to what people called "family" she had, and people got angry if someone hurt their family. Or, they should. But did they really? Maybe they were just like her, and only pretended to rage, when secretly they didn't care. Or maybe they were happy someone finally got rid of their annoying siblings, or their nagging parents, or maybe their ungrateful children. At least, that's what she thought. She still, despite spending a lot of time learning about them in the past few years, didn't quite understand why humans acted the way they acted.
The barrel of the blaster was shoved up against her cheek, pressing into it. The guard was inches from her face. "No one cares that a terrorist just died. Because he got what he deserved." He smelled like a mixture of sweat and the Supools meat markets. "And so will you."
It was the opening that she needed desperately.
As his trigger finger twitched, she ducked under, ramming him in the stomach with her shoulder before slipping out. The other guard wasn't paying attention; he had relaxed, rightly assuming that his partner would finish her. That was his mistake.
Before he could react, she had flown into the back of his knees, dropping him to the ground. His blaster skidded along the metal grated floor, right into her hand. In one fluid motion, she drew it and fired at the other guard, still doubled over in the cell, gasping for air.
A beam of bright yellow-white light flew from the weapon in her hand and pierced him between the eyes. He fell to the side, and she could just make out the dark pool beginning to form beneath him.
A weight pressed against her leg, and her gaze wandered downward to the other guard, still not able to rise, weakly grabbing at her pants, a look of pure terror on his face.
She kicked his hands aside and shot him in the head.
Just because she had no magic didn't mean she was powerless. They should have known better, she thought. They should have known better than to underestimate a Combat Cyborg. Maybe if they had just done their job rather than stopping to gloat about it, they would be in her place instead.
Now was not the time to think about it, though. Now was the time to go. The silent alarm had probably already been tripped by her exiting the cell. The Enforcers, and the rest of the guards would probably be here soon.
This was her only chance for something she had been thinking about for months, as she lay in that cell. Her Device's offensive capabilities were locked, but not her network interface...apparently the net was a human right to the TSAB, and she was glad that it was, because she managed to find her way into a blueprint of the facility that some intern, probably, had left unencrypted. Maybe your normal prisoner wouldn't have found it, but for her it was remarkably simple.
As she sat inside her own prison, she planned her escape. Meticulously, nothing was left to chance. The only way out was the hangar, five blocks down. They would be filled with other prisoners and guards, but the air ducts ran between her block and the hangar, and would be free of any obstructions.
Her shoes clacked on the metal grating beneath her as she reached the entrance to the air vents. She pulled on it...nothing. It was welded shut. The only solution would be to use her blaster again. She wanted to avoid making so much noise, but...oh well. She had already failed at that. She aimed and pulled the trigger, and the gate punctured back into itself. In a single move, she flung herself down into the air duct.
It was big enough to stand, and as she ran down it, every single footstep echoing, she counted off the exits. One, two, three...nine, that wasn't it, ten, that wasn't either, eleven, close, twelve! She aimed and fired again, and flung herself out from her passage amidst the broken metal.
She had emerged into the hangar, between scores of small cruisers and single-person fighters docked on the black tarmac. The ceiling raised almost to the heavens, and the only thing separating the hangar from the cold void of space were the blast doors dead ahead. She had emerged in front of a group of technicians in their neon orange jumpsuits. Some had their helmets on, respirators hanging slack off to the side, and some did not; they stared at her with eyes wide in terror as she pointed the weapon at them. The cards they had apparently been playing were strewn around the ground along with drink cans and bits and pieces of the makeshift table they had made from spare parts.
They didn't even have time to move before she blasted their heads off their shoulders. As the bodies slumped in front of her, the scream of a klaxon began to sound. Now she had tripped the actual alarm. Well, it was to be expected, but it didn't matter. The pursuit division was caught off guard. They wouldn't be able to send any starships after her.
She scurried up the steps up the side of the fighter in front of her, and launched herself into the cockpit. As she touched the ignition screen, a transparent keyboard, maybe holographic, or maybe just made out of nothing, unfurled in front of her. It would only take a minute to hack the ship's onboard computer. Her fingers flew furiously across the keys, scrawls of code painting themselves onto the interface and then disappearing almost too fast for the human eye to catch.
...
Ranulf-class starfighter EE101A, starting up.
...
Performing user authentication.
...
TSAB user credentials recognized.
...
All systems normal. Mana flow stable. 25 seconds to engine ready.
...
Main navigation online.
...
Turrets online.
From her position in the cockpit, she could hear footsteps pounding on the floor beneath her.
I have to delay them.
She pressed a button on the console and drew back the joystick, and the two long cannons on the underside of the ship began to swivel.
As the first black-clad mage emerged from behind the rows of parked spacecraft, she fired a stream of powerful energy from the guns, white and brilliant. It threw the ships in the hangar to the side; as Enforcers poured in, she concentrated fire on the heavy cruiser parked alongside's midsection. It groaned, collapsed into itself, then exploded in a mighty magical pulse, throwing Enforcers to the left and right around it.
Engines online.
The turrets swiveled to the front, and she focused fire on the blast doors. An intense orange spot grew and grew upon it, larger, larger, then melting, then a hole began to open. Almost instantly, she felt the pull, as space began to suck the contents of the hangar out of it. Ships smashed against each other as they jostled for position towards the breach in the blast doors.
She pushed the throttle forward, and the small fighter took off, weaving its way around the debris being sucked out to the void alongside her. The space was small, but almost there...she could make it...
A large section of a cruiser suddenly flung itself in front of her, and she pulled down on the joystick, narrowly missing. As the fighter emerged into space, she could feel the debris scraping against the roof.
Heavy damage sustained to upper area. Shields 50%. Estimated amount of dimensional jumps remaining before automatic Device shutdown: 3.
The ship would have to devote its processing power and mana to fixing the damage. It could only go so far before it would have to stop and let the Device recalibrate.
She was free, but she couldn't go far. As she sped out, leaving the prison floating, suspended in the void between the pinholes of light, rotating like a Catherine wheel, its side pierced and its blood streaming from it, she began to think.
Only three jumps from here. The closest dimensional portal was five minutes' travel. Maybe there were planets on this plane that she could make it to without having to make a jump, but she instantly ruled it out. Those would be too obvious for the TSAB to search.
One or two jumps would be searched heavily as well. She pulled up the planetary map on the fighter's terminal; all four planets up to two planes either way from her current one had heavy TSAB presence. She couldn't ditch her fighter there. It had to be the full three jumps.
Three planes in the positive direction, there was nothing. Three planes in the negative...
Yne.
The only planet contained on the plane was Yne. She knew it instantly. It was completely built up, but the Great War had left most of the planet's skyscrapers abandoned; farthings upon farthings of cityscape stood ruined. There was plenty of land for her to come down in, and the people were notorious for hating Midchildans. They hated TSAB agents in general. Perhaps she would find someone sympathetic to her cause there.
Or maybe not, but she had no other choice.
She entered her destination on the console and sat back as the autopilot began its duty, beginning to drift back into the sleep that she had been jolted out of just earlier. It was fine to relax for a moment, she thought...there would only be more trouble ahead of her.
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
I know it's been a while since I've had time to write. It seems like forever to me too...I've started university since I last updated, and that's a whole lot of pressure. Pretty much the stress of school bleeds into my free time, and I get depressed and don't want to write. At times, it seems like a lot of work, and I don't get flashes of inspiration frequently, until I did for this story. It's a whole new idea, set after the canonical events of Strikers, when the actual canon material started to devolve into suckiness.
I have a particularly extensive headcanon of what Old Belka and the ancient times were actually like, and I want to get the chance to write it all down and share it with you, so I plan to incorporate a lot of it into this story. I think it's a cool idea to actually explore more of what an intergalactic confederation would actually be like. How do planets differ from each other? Are they actually all as idyllic as the series would make you believe, or is there more going on? The great wars that raged after Belka fell still affect my universe to the present day. It's not actually shown in canon, but I feel like large-scale warfare with magic would lead to a lot of deaths and destruction, and a lot of impact on the universe as a whole.
Our mystery prologue POV isn't going to be the main character, although she'll be a fairly important one. One issue I had with canon works is that despite being the main character, the story was often less about Nanoha and more about her rivals/subordinates/enemies/etc. Using that as inspiration, I decided that this work will focus on her first. Of course, there will be exploration of other characters, and even some of the past, but I wanted to put her and her development first and foremost.
Even though I said this the last time I disappeared for a year straight, I want to get back to writing. I hope to update when I can, and I hope you'll bear with me.
Until next time,
mrcmc888