Disclaimer: I do not own MGLN.


Adrift in Black

A MGLN story

By ReverseSide


Chapter II

At times Mrs. Takamachi becomes agitated. It's nothing I do (I simply sit there, letting her talk). It's her memories that affect her so. She clutches her throat briefly when recalling her escape. She tears up at other places in the story. Don't stop, I want to tell her, but that seems a cold thing to say.

But her tears dry and she keeps talking. This story is one that is yearning to be told, and it is clear in Mrs. Takamachi's eyes that she wants to tell it.

She cooks. She cooks very well. Every time I visit, she offers me a bounty – more than an elephant could eat. I don't know why I told her that I have a big appetite. It is a complete lie. It was stupid of me, but now I can't bear to see her disappointed eyes if I don't finish my meal. This is an enemy that cannot be defeated. I put whatever is on my plate into my mouth. It is delicious. And then she continues her story over the feast. I hasten to turn on my recorder.

I'm always stuffed full at her house, yet always hungry for more.


Before I boarded the ship, I had gone through a briefing. The trip was supposed to take sixty-one days. Thirty-two would be taken at constant acceleration, and the last twelve would be used for deceleration. We would achieve geosynchronous orbit around the planet Garun and be transported down for our exam. The Unto Dawn kept to this schedule. A steadily blinking orange triangle marked our position in real-time on a map in the dining room. For days the ship plodded along through the depths of space, confident of its ability to navigate the stars.

The Unto Dawn wasn't a military ship. That being said, the crew were very efficient in their work, always moving with a purpose. The ship engineers were constantly checking and rechecking the engines which tended to make loud rattling sounds at indeterminate intervals. Everything was kept running smoothly. This would have been good, had it not left Fate and me in a position of absolute boredom. There was nothing for us to do. We couldn't even practice our magecraft; the ship was unshielded against magical interference. For twenty-seven days we wandered the ship listlessly, aching for a proper assignment. On the twenty-seventh night, the ship was wrecked. I recall that I was fidgety that night, being full of unspent energy.

My restlessness saved my life.

It was about halfway through the night cycle on the Unto Dawn when I woke up. Normally I'm a sound sleeper and would have immediately tried to regain my slumber, but for some reason I climbed out of bed. Maybe it was because of a hollow feeling in my stomach, akin to a sort of falling sensation you get on a swing. It was a small thing so I passed it off as my nervousness about the examination. Thinking that it would be lonely to be awake by myself I shuffled over to Fate and shook her shoulder softly.

She looked at me sleepily. "What is it? What time is it?"

"It's night. But get up, okay? Let's go exploring."

If there is anything to be said for Fate, it is this: she may have been awakened in the middle of the dark to be demanded to go along on some ill-considered adventure, but she didn't get angry. Instead, she got up and nodded at me. Excited for the first time in weeks, I walked swiftly to the door before Fate interrupted me.

"Are you going to go out like that?" She asked me, with only the barest hint of amusement inflecting her tone.

I looked down and blushed. My sleepwear was definitely not appropriate for something like this. I located my barrier jacket, which I had thoughtfully spelled from Raging Heart before handing her over (I may not have had an intelligent device during the test, but I still wanted as much protection as possible). Pulling it over my head with a practiced motion, I changed into my battle uniform. Fate did the same, only she took a little longer; her attire was more complicated than mine. Unfortunately, our formal uniforms were in the wash at the time, which would end up being ghastly for Fate later on. But at the time we didn't know that, so I opened the door eagerly and stepped out, ready for an adventure.

Nights on the ship weren't much different than any other time. The lights were dimmed to simulate planet side conditions, but everything remained in the same place. But you could feel that it was night-time. There were fewer crew members around after dark, though, I remember thinking. Fate and I agreed to go to the observation deck where we could catch a glance of something interesting, if we were lucky. Taking our time, we were distracted on the way there and looked out at one of the small circular windows to admire the brightness of the stars. Nowhere but in space do can you find such a wonderful panorama of the universe. We stood there for a while before Fate nudged me. Reminded that I had wanted to go to the observation deck, which would offer a much better view, we continued on. We had almost made it there when the insistent sensation in my gut grew stronger.

"Fate… do you feel that?" What I said was vague, that was true, but Fate nonetheless discerned my intent.

She stopped walking and concentrated. Giving me a nod, she said softly, "Yes. It feels like the ship is decelerating."

I frowned. The acceleration dampeners (our source of artificial gravity as well) should have taken care of all sensation of movement. The Unto Dawn was no luxury liner, but even the most basic of space craft held some form of artificial acceleration. For us to feel anything meant that either the thing was broken, or that we were decelerating at an incredibly fast rate. Not knowing much about space travel, and not thinking about it much, I asked Fate which she thought it was.

"We're still standing on the ground. So we're probably just slowing down really quickly."

Maybe she would have said more, but she was stopped by what felt like an earthquake. The ship shook violently and I was thrown heavily into Fate. My elbow accidently jabbed her hard in the chest. With a grunt she fell into the wall with me sprawled on top of her.

"What's going on?" I asked her, unnerved.

"I don't know."

Frantic, I looked around for some kind of explanation. The lights were flickering wildly and red emergency bulbs were lit. And then I heard it, an irregular kind of hiss. It was a sound that can only be described as being inside of a canister of compressed air when something punctures it. Air whistled violently past me. Looking at Fate, I realized she had come to the same conclusion as me. Hull breach.

"Hurry, before the doors seal!"

Alarms belched loudly as we scrambled, frenziedly running for the airlock. If we could get to the other side before it closed – but it was futile. Heavy steel doors slid across the passageway, condemning us to a horrible death. I banged on the doors desperately, but they remained closed. I could feel the air being dragged out of the ship, slowly pulling me towards the rupture.

"Nanoha! Look!" Fate pointed behind me even as she grabbed my shirt and began dragging me roughly behind her. I looked over her shoulder and saw what she had also seen. Bold letters spelled out 'LIFEPOD' in glowing red font. The once-violent turbulence had now become a light breeze and I knew that in a few moments even those last scraps of air would be gone.

We stumbled towards it, oxygen starvation beginning to take its toll on us. Like two inebriates, we held each other up as we drunkenly made our way to the life pod. I tried to keep my thoughts clear, but I could barely remember that I had to keep my feet moving.

Choking is one of those sharp experiences that you can never get used to. In basic training they used to put us in a choke hold until we passed out. There's no ugly haze about your vision that creeps into your entire body. You start off by trying to ward it off, but it's no use. It's a horrible experience to be so wholly helpless. They told us it was so that we wouldn't panic if it ever happened to us in the field. It didn't help much. My mind was a haze of fright and confusion. I couldn't have told you why it was that I was staggering along, only that it seemed important somehow.

Abruptly I slammed into a wall and collapsed onto it. I looked up blearily and managed to conclude that we were right in front of the pod. A red lever poked out of the wall. Pull it my mind tried to say, but I was too exhausted. I did the best I could. Unfortunately, I was too tired and I could hardly grasp it in my hands. My fingers curled around it, and I willed it to move! I didn't have the strength. Then the last breath of air rushed out my lungs. Terrifyingly, I could feel its progress into my throat and out my mouth. I cried in frustration. So close!

Luckily, Fate saw what I was trying to do and so pressed her entire body weight against the lever, causing it to descend. The wall in front of me slid open, and Fate pushed me in before falling in after me. I was too weak to move, but Fate managed to palm the switch inside the pod that closed the door. Suddenly, my ravenous lungs managed to inhale, and I recognized that the life pod's air synthesizer had automatically activated. I laughed breathlessly with gaudy relief.

"We're alive!" I panted with wonder.

Fate gave me a weak smile, also trying to breathe in as much oxygen as she could. We had lived! All we had to do now was to wait for the repair crews to come through, fix the breach, and then we would be fine. I told her as much, and she nodded in agreement with me. But should we do in the meantime? A muffled pounding ended our deliberations. It was coming from the door.

"It's too early for a repair crew to come," Fate said uneasily. The alarms were still ringing in any case, though the blaring was quiet.

My eyes widened. "There's somebody else out there!"

Not needing to hear another word, Fate hit the switch once again, but nothing happened. As the thumping grew weaker, Fate became more distressed, and I along with her. We didn't know how to open it without using the button. We pressed the controls at random, hoping to get lucky and save the person outside. The panel unexpectedly glowed green, and I thought that we had done it.

Then a mechanical voice spoke up. "Launch sequence initiated. Launch in five seconds. Five. Four."

"What? No! Cancel that!" But the voice ignored Fate's pleas and finished the countdown.

"Two. One. Launching."

There was a brief moment of acceleration, the pod shook roughly, and then the sounds from the Unto Dawn faded into silence.


There was a flash of shock. My mind could hardly conceive it. Logic told me that the chances of the ship being struck were atomically small. It was unbelievable as the moon exploding spontaneously. I lay for what seemed like a week, looking up at the ceiling. I felt like a child who had just been orphaned, alone in the middle of nowhere.

But here is the crux of my military training: worry only about what you can affect. We could do nothing about the person we had just left behind, nor could we do anything about the Unto Dawn. There would be time to regret and grieve after we were through this ordeal.

It may seem like a cold way of thinking, but you must understand that we didn't know if the person was alive or dead. If the person had died, then the manner of death was convenient as well; we didn't see his or her face, and so it was like any other death in the universe: anonymous, faceless and common. So I put the person we had left behind out of my mind and took stock of the situation.

The first impression I got of the life pod was small. It was a cramped thing, cylindrical except for the floor, which was a level rectangle. There were four beds, though they were more like bunks. They were dull steel slabs with a thin comforter on top, plus a small pillow. There were no blankets. The length of the pod couldn't have been more than ten meters, if that. There was locker, labelled 'OPEN' in red.

I did not notice every detail immediately, you understand. They came to my attention over time, and when they were needed. When everything is falling apart around us, some small detail, some object would transform from a background actor to the lead star. It would become important, so important that it could be said that it was the most important thing in existence.

I gently pulled at Fate and gestured at the locker. We both walked over in single file, because there was no room to walk side by side. I unlatched the door and we opened it. Inside, there were only four things. A first aid kit, a notebook, a long, thin piece of graphite and a book entitled 'READ ME'. We read it together. I don't remember the exact words it used, but I do remember the gist of what it revealed.

Our saviour was an older model made by MagiCin, a fairly prominent construction company which often used in the making of magical devices. This was odd, since it cautioned us not to use any magic whatsoever while in the life pod. Presumably, this was because it would mess up some kind of system or another. We felt no great need to test the validity of this; for our entire voyage we never used a speck of magic.

The life pod itself was meant to hold eight people, with two sharing a bed. Since there were only two of us, we didn't have to share, yet the pod still was crowded. Light came from LED bulbs embedded in the ceiling. The manual instructed us that there was a pull-out toilet near one end of the pod – guaranteed to work even in null-gravity. Air was no problem; it assured us that the internal filters would take care of air quality. There was a matter synthesizer which created both water and food for us (included were eight plastic plates and four foam cups). All navigational systems were internalized to prevent tampering. In fact, the only thing we could change was the power distribution.

That was the first thing we looked at. It was accessed through a screen showing the current level of power to each system, and little black knobs underneath of it which allowed us to fiddle around with the allocation of energy. It read in glowing white letters:

SOLAR COLLECTORS - 100

NAVIGATION - 100

AIR FILTRATION - 100

SYNTHESIZER - 100

HEATING - 100

NONESSENTIAL - 100

There were only enough dials for the last five items. The first reading was apparently just a measure of how efficiently the solar panels were working. Since everything was working at one hundred percent, Fate and I relaxed as much as we could, and talked about our state of affairs.

"How long do you think it'll take before we reach Garun?" I asked Fate.

She thought about it. "Since there's no friction, we're travelling at the same speed that the ship was until we launched."

"So around thirty more days then?"

Fate hesitated. "No. We slowed down a lot, remember? And even if we didn't, we were still supposed to have five more days of thrust."

Obviously, this was bad news. There was worse still. I know that Fate came to the same conclusion as I did, but neither of us said it. We knew that we would need to be incredibly lucky in order to be caught in the orbit of Garun – the chance of which was infinitesimally small. Our course had been plotted precisely before; there had been no margin for error. Only once a Garun-year would the planet be where we needed it to be. If it wasn't there, then we would be doomed to drift through space until the pod degraded completely, and even then our corpses would float onwards forever. It was a frightening thought.

It's outlandish, but I truly believe that fear is the only true enemy of life. Not death. Death is life's lover, content to wait until life has run its course and is ready to come to bed. Not so with fear. It is treacherous and subtle. It creeps up on you and stabs you in your weakest spot. It begins in the deep recesses of you mind and crawls to the forefront of your thoughts. It disguises itself as doubt. It sneaks past your guard, asking questions like what if. You try to abolish it with reason. But when reason itself agrees with doubt, it pushes past your defences with ease. You become anxious, your will wavering. And then mind-crippling dread takes root.

Having defeated your mind, it attacks your body next. You find it hard to breath. Your ears can only hear the rushing of your blood. Your stomach clenches. Your heart tries to run away from your body with a quick thumpthumpthump. Your skin is clammy. Your eyes abandon you, looking wildly in every direction. And in horror, you realize that you have just defeated yourself.

It was Fate that calmed me down. Fear is infectious, but Fate was immune to it. And she gave me the cure to it as well. She was looking at me intently, I recall. Though I was still in the grip of terror, I recognized her gaze. It was the not-quite esteem of a person who trusted you so absolutely, held you in such high regard, that they could not possibly begin to contemplate the thought that you weren't one-hundred percent with them. It was trust; trust that you knew what you were doing, that you were calm and that you would get them through any kind of danger. If you have ever been on the end of such a look, you would know precisely what I mean.

Fear was vanquished, forcibly pushed back and pushed down. I gave Fate a smile and she returned it softly. This would characterize the rest of my journey. Because of Fate, I couldn't give up. To give up would be to abandon her, something that I vowed not to do in that moment. It was because I couldn't leave Fate alone to deal with this. Isn't that a trait of humanity? Alone, we may just keel over and die but together we argue, we fight, we love – we live. Thus inspired, I calmed. And with peace came a grumbling in my stomach.

"Nyahaha…" Embarrassed, I asked her: "Do you want anything to eat?"


The survival manual held a few tips about eating.

The food may be bland, but it contains enough sustenance to keep you healthy. Always eat until you are full! It also acts as a mouth cleanser!

For an adult, eat at least two cups a day. For a child, one and a half.

The food will spoil after five hours if not eaten.

Chew before you swallow!

There were also a few lines about what the food was made out of. Very dull stuff. I never paid much attention to it, having no allergies to speak of and, at that point, I didn't care what was in the food, as long as it was filling.


If you have ever eaten hospital food, I tell you now, that the 'food' that came out of the synthesizer was ten times worse. Pressing a button labelled FOOD would yield a gooey, dough-like pink goop that would drop on your plate sullenly with a meaty thwack. Attempting to sniff at it would yield no discernable smell. If you tried to move it around with a spoon, it would half fold on itself, before melding together in an indistinguishable glob. Trying to pick it up would do you no good – it would slide out of your hand instantly.

Eating it was just as bad. If you managed to keep it onto your spoon, then you would then have to move it to your mouth, a feat worthy of that ancient Greek hero, Heracles. And once there, you had to fight your tongue from rebelling like some medieval monarch throwing peasants back into the grime of their existence. And even as your taste buds recoil, you begin to chew. The meal would have no texture. You force yourself to keep going at it, a mindless tedium for your mouth. Finally, you give up and swallow the accursed thing.

Was it disgusting, you ask? Ha! It wasn't that it tasted bad. I could have lived with any kind of bad taste in my mouth. Don't people say that they become accustomed to such and such a taste? It is why people eat bitter things or drink tea. But this, this was tasteless, bland. You could compare it to a dry, yeastless bread that is four months stale and still this thing that pretended to be food would still come out with less taste than the bread.

It was this wasteland of insipid flatness that Fate and I ate, day after day. It wasn't so bad, I thought early on, sitting on one of the beds. The first mouthful went down fine. The second was the same. By the third, I was getting tired of chewing such nothingness. And halfway the meal, why, I could barely keep myself eating. I threw the rest down the toilet, brushing it off my plate with quick strokes. With a loud sucking noise, the toilet whisked the remains way into space. I did this for most of my early meals. This colossal waste would afterwards cause me become miserably self-loathing. I would later want to shake myself violently for performing such acts of vulgar stupidity.

Fate never minded the lack of taste. She ate it methodically, yet with a strange grace. Her spoon would dip down onto the plate and lift up without a moment lost. The gunk would stay on it perfectly – not a part fell out. The spoon would move quickly to her mouth where it would slow down, allowing her lips to close around the handle. The spoon would come out clean. Her chewing was slow, her jaws moving steadily. A little gulp, and then the process would repeat itself. It was almost hypnotic to watch. She finished the meal.

"How was it?" I asked her jokingly, impressed by her fortitude.

Fate, as was her habit, thought about it. "Bland." She told me, deathly serious.

She didn't understand why I began laughing, or why I wouldn't stop. In a manner that could be considered petulant for Fate, she stalked over to the water dispenser and poured herself a cup of water, ignoring me. The very sound of water splashing into the cup caused me to feel my own parched throat. I waited until she had sat back down.

"Faaaaate," I whined "Please get me a glass of water?"

Fate looked at me, frowning disapprovingly. It was obvious that I had waited simply to inconvenience her, and I don't think that she liked me teasing her at that particular moment. Fearlessly I looked right back at her. If she looked away first, I would win. You can also see this in the animal world. Wasn't there that story of a man who had stared down a bear and saved his own life? Here it was for a mere cup of water, but the principle was the same.

I forgot that Fate's willpower was much stronger than a bear's. After realizing that she wouldn't budge, I sent out my best weapon. I gave her my best doe-eyed look, lips pouting. Strong against direct confrontation she may have been, but my underhanded method hit her weak spot. With something that could have been called a sigh, she got up once again and brought me a cup of water. Victorious, I took a luxurious sip. The water was just a little cold and had a metallic tang to it. It was much better than the pink garbage.

My pulse raced. Face flushed, I looked over at the sleeping Fate. God, or whoever is up there, I asked, keep her sleeping. Aching expectation ran through me. I had to do it now or die. Action, woman. Get on it!

Let me ask you something. What is the first thing you do when you wake up? Yawn, maybe. You crawl out of bed slowly, dreading the cold air above your covers. You sit up and give yourself a few moments to become accustomed to the chill. Then you plod to the bathroom. You might brush your teeth first, carefully or carelessly. But then you feel it. The undeniable sensation of needing to address the balance of nature. You see, to wash away the not-flavour of yesterday's meal, I had drunk a lot of water. Now it was time to pay the price.

I shuffled over to the toilet and pulled it out of the wall before realizing there was no privacy to be had. I hadn't even thought about it until then. What a thing to have to suffer through! To not only be trapped on a cramped life pod but also to be brought low by embarrassment. It is a thing of the mind; to be preoccupied with the small stuff but ignore the threatening larger picture. At that moment, I could only presume that the engineers who built the pod entirely ignored the discomfort one might go through to use the toilet, and instead concentrated solely on preserving life.

To hell with life! I thought. Give me dignity! I was wearing my battle uniform, if you recall, but it could have easily been called a battle dress. Seeing no other choice, I sat down, held my dress as high as I could and urinated, hoping that I would be able to finish quickly. Alas, no deity heeded my plea. Fate woke up in the middle of my morning routine.

"Nanoha?" She asked drowsily, not looking in my direction. Good, I thought. She was laying on one of the beds on the opposite side of me, so if she turned to look at me…

"Ah! Fate!" I squeaked. "Good morning! How are you?"

I was trying to distract Fate from hearing anything untoward, but my panic only served to alarm her. "What's wrong?" She asked swinging her head around. She then saw me. And what I was doing. I gave an unintelligible shriek and in return she gave an "I'm sorry!" and turned away, reddened. I finished too late.

I will say no more about this, save that when it was Fate's turn on the toilet, I sat on the bed farthest from, resolutely keeping my gaze locked on the wall and humming loudly. We were too mortified to look at each other for hours.


You may think that we were surprisingly upbeat for people in our position. Not so, and I'll explain. The sheer hopelessness of our situation caused us to feel much better. It's very simple, you see, because when you realize that you really have nothing else you can do, you start do so much more. We see this all the time. When an infantry unit is trapped by enemies who won't allow them to surrender, what do they do? They become devils, and the enemy must work hard to defeat them. It was the same with us. Our lives were practically forfeit. So why not do what we could with them while we still had them?

The problem was that we had absolutely nothing to do. Our entire existence was kept alive by the lifeboat. But we were inventive. We tried to mould our food into strange shapes, and guessed at each other's artwork. An octopus? A bird? Bardiche? But there are only so many shapes one can make, and we quickly exhausted them. I unravelled a piece of thread from one of the comforters and taught Fate to play Cat's Cradle. She was fascinated by the game, but terribly bad at it. This was one of the recreational activities that we spent the most time doing, though Fate hardly became any better at it. The string would become badly tangled, and we spent hours working out the accidental knots. We crumpled up a piece of paper and competed against each other to see who could throw it with the most flair into an empty cup. In effect, what we were doing was trying to tire ourselves out.

We didn't want to think when it came time to sleep. We understood our circumstances, of course, but it did us no good to dwell on them. So as a preventative cure, we exhausted ourselves. It worked for the most part. But it is hard to sleep without a blanket. It doesn't feel safe. It doesn't make sense, but when have emotions ever made sense? The solution was simple. We simply stripped the two extra beds of their comforters and used those as blankets. It worked surprisingly well. A shiver went through my body as I settled in. The metal underneath my mattress was cold. I fell soundly asleep.

After a few days of living in cramped conditions I noticed something. There was a persistent niggling impression that tickled my nose. It was inescapable; when I moved, it moved with me. The truth was plain and simple. I stunk.

Washing was a strained affair. I tore up one of the pillows to make a wash cloth. I undressed letting my cloths fall haphazardly onto a bed. I wet the cloth. Using it, I ran it over my body, cleansing what I could. I used a blanket as a towel and dried myself off. Then I got dressed. Simple.

But then I thought about Fate, and how she would use the washcloth next. Mind frenzied, I attempted to scrub the cloth as thoroughly as possible. My fingers grew numb from the cold water, but I kept at it to the point where it would almost seem strange, then stopped. I casually passed the cloth to Fate, who took it easily.

Fate never cared or never noticed that we were doing could be indirectly rubbing ourselves on each other. She still insisted on me turning away when she bathed, but that was it. There was no intense running water when she was done, just a quick rinse. When it came back to me, I would wash the washcloth before washing myself. It was just too awkward otherwise. It doesn't make sense, I know. But logic didn't come in to it. It was instinct. Aren't we taught at birth to keep to ourselves? Intimacy is something that humanity never got around to understanding. I never had a problem with emotional sharing; it was the physical closeness that scared me. It was such a small matter to be concerned about. Privacy was something of a luxury that we suddenly had to do without. Why did we even care? In retrospect, it became the least of our worries.


You never appreciate what you have until you lose it. Isn't that what they say? It held true at that time as well. For days we had spent living like kings on that pod. Food was abundant, if tasteless. The air was warm, the lights were on. There was lots of water. I would wish later that I had taken the time to appreciate it, before everything started to go terribly wrong.

It started so simply. We woke up one day feeling not too ragged and strong. Remarkable really, I thought, considering the strain we were under. We did our morning business with something that could almost have been called indifference. And then we decided to eat (lunch or breakfast, I can't recall). Fate went to get us our food. The pink mess, as expected, dropped onto the plates with the usual wet sound.

I waited for her to come back, but when she didn't I called out to her. "Fate?"

"Nanoha…" her voice was quiet and troubled. I looked over at her. There was something wrong. I opened my mouth in apprehension but she spoke first. "There's… the water's not coming out."