On The Path of Vengeance
By Daishi Prime
Chapter One – Awakening
Two Weeks Earlier
Vita threw another of the thieves onto the heap, his unconscious form landing without awakening. "This is pathetic," Vita cried, "None of them were even a challenge!"
"Admiral Chrono did warn that these opponents were not up to our usual standards," Shamal said, simultaneously expanding her binding to include Vita's latest prisoner.
Hayate put her hand on Vita's shoulder, "You know why we got this mission, Vita. He wasn't trying to insult us, he wanted this over before it became a situation that required us."
"I know," Vita answered, crossing her arms and sulking, "But I haven't fought anything tough enough to take a beating in ages! When are we going back to Earth, so I can fight Nanoha again?"
"Vita," Hayate put a whole lecture into the Knight's name, then turned to Shamal. "Is that everyone?"
Shamal considered the pile of unconscious bodies before her, a double handful, all wrapped in the green magical chains of her bindings. She counted them carefully, frowning, then shook her head, "I do not believe so, Mistress. Chrono's reports indicated twenty-two members of this gang, and I have nineteen prisoners here." A moment later, her mental voice rang in their heads, Signum, how many do you have?
Three, came the immediate response. Two are disabled, however the third has some interesting protections against bindings. I am studying them in action before capturing her, but will not be long.
Thank you, Signum, Hayate said. "Vita, would be willing to you go collect her prisoners, please?"
Vita sighed theatrically, "Sure, sure." A moment later, she was flying out of the hanger, down the passageway Signum had followed when they first split up to search.
Hayate watched her go, then turned to Shamal. "I will go through the north wing and search for the Lost Logia they stole. Zafira, will you please take the south end?" The Shield Guardian nodded, turning to pad away on silent feet.
Shamal, having expanded her binding with ease, asked, "Are we taking it back to headquarters?"
Hayate shook her head, "No, I don't think so. Chrono said something about returning it, which makes sense. The world they stole it from has a large number of magic-users, and the Bureau wants to establish better relations, I think. There were already officers attempting to negotiate its sale when it was stolen, returning the Lost Logia and continuing those negotiations will establish good relations. It is inactive, as well, so it's probably not dangerous. I'll be back in a little bit." She turned and began walking down a different passage from that Vita took.
The facility was very large, but age had taken its toll. In decades past, it had been a Time-Space Administration Bureau research and monitoring facility, part of a network of such bases which allowed the Bureau to keep watch over the fabric of reality. While nothing approaching the size and complexity of Headquarters, this facility was still substantial, as big as any building Hayate could remember seeing in her home country, or even her home world. Tens of levels stretched out over an area the size of a baseball stadium, with one hangar large enough for Bureau warships, and several more, such as the one Shamal was using as a temporary prison, for smaller craft. Most of its space had been occupied by machinery, with a relatively small area given over to the crew who had monitored the surrounding space.
Now, however, the facility was mostly empty, filled with strange echoing spaces and collapsed sections. More than thirty years ago, the Bureau had moved out of the facility, when they shifted their organizational emphasis to more mobile ships, such as Chrono's Asura. Most of the equipment had been removed as well, too sensitive or useful to leave behind, but some items had simply been left in place. When they had converted it to their own ends, the small band of thieves Hayate and her Knights were here to capture had brought in their own power supply, but had not really changed much, simply moving into the abandoned crew spaces and ignoring the rest of the facility.
None of them had taken much time to look around, as of yet. They had barely been here twenty minutes, and most of that time had been spent localizing and securing the thieves. Honestly, Hayate thought to herself, Sending us after these people really was over-kill. One of us could have handled it, easily.
She had made that argument, in fact, while Chrono was briefing them. She had offered to do it herself, but her knights, and she smiled at the memory, had practically mutinied at the thought. Vita and Signum had offered, but Chrono had overruled them. He did not like sending out short teams, and had the dual excuses of a potentially powerful Lost Logia, and an unstable region of space with a track record of disappearances fit to make Earth's Bermuda Triangle look welcoming and safe. So the five of them had teleported from the Asura together.
She walked for a while, accepting Signum's report of completed captures absently as she checked room after room. Inactive Lost Logia could be damnably hard to track down, radiating little or no magical signal, so she had to carefully search each room. She had not expected it to be far from where the thieves had lived, but when she could find no trace nearby, she began searching deeper. She figured she was about halfway down through the facility when she felt the first trace of strange magic. It was a binding, a powerful one, but subtle and well camouflaged. Figuring that to be her target, remembering Signum's comment about her final suspect, Hayate began tracking it down.
She found it deep in the facility, approximately where Amy had said the power plant had once been located, a set of cavernous spaces filled with disconnected wires and junk. Even abandoned, the area remained heavily secured, not so much against intruders, as against the forces which had raged within, when the place had been operational. By the time she reached it, however, she knew it was not the Lost Logia she was searching for. She had to use Reinforce to slice through several meters worth of rubble in different places, strengthening others to be sure they would hold long enough for her return trip. This section of the base had obviously never been explored by the thieves living above.
At the very rear of the power plant, she found one more sealed door, and an exceedingly unpleasant surprise. Shamal, She sent, considering her find uncertainly, Someone died down here, a long time ago. It took her a bit to get over her own shock, and begin to catalogue what she was seeing, but eventually she managed to explain, It looks like he was an Bureau mage of some sort. His uniform is rather old, though, and I do not know most of these markings. I think he was an admiral, if the rank symbols haven't changed. It also appears he was trying to seal the door to the last chamber of the power section. I am going in to investigate.
Shamal was quite unhappy with that idea, Hayate-san, shouldn't you wait for Signum? She and Vita can be there in a few minutes.
I'll be fine, Shamal, Hayate was touched by Shamal's concern, but more than a little exasperated. She had demonstrated her own skill repeatedly, yet her Knights still tried to do anything more dangerous than the cooking themselves. Whatever happened here, it was a very long time ago. I'll just be a minute.
The door had apparently been sealed once, but it had not lasted long. The traces of magic on the door were faint and weak, but even so it was apparent to Hayate that they had failed due to time, and had not been broken. Similarly, the hinges and latch had rusted shut, however. "Reinforce," Hayate ordered, raising her staff between herself and the door, "Welding Arc."
The holographic miniature of Reinforces' original form appeared, smiling brightly at Hayate, "Yes, Mistress!" Before she had finished speaking, a brilliant light appeared at the tip of the staff, before leaping out to slice into the door frame. It was a short-range beam, something Hayate had created after Zafira was trapped beneath a heavy structural beam on a mission. None of the others had been available, and more powerful attacks would have injured her unconscious Knight, so she had created this on the spot, a short-range cutting beam of energy. It burned through the door in a minute, Reinforce's image bouncing with child-like glee and giggling as she directed the beam.
When the metal plate fell into the room beyond, Hayate gave the glowing edges a moment to cool, stretching Reinforce through to light the room better, as its own lighting was dim and fading. The first thing she found were three more Bureau mages, in similar uniforms and conditions to the one she had found in the hall. Resolutely ignoring them, Hayate stepped into the room herself, and found the source of the magical energies she had detected so far above.
Floating in the center of the chamber, not twenty feet from her, was an enormous emerald crystal. It was more than twice her height, randomly faceted as if fresh from the ground, yet glittering in Reinforce's light with polished perfection. Encased within the center of it, eyes closed, face relaxed in a neutral posture, was a young man, older than Hayate, but not by much. He was dark haired, with pale skin weathered by sun and battle, a light scar tracing down his jaw. Like the dead mages around her, he was wearing an Bureau Mage's uniform, but where theirs were blue, his was a pure blinding white, and bore no insignia, not even the Bureau's crest.
Of more concern, now that she was within a few feet of it, she could sense the incredible magical energy built up inside the crystal. She was surprised it was holding together under that sort of stress, and rather interested in how the man inside was generating that pressure from within what was obviously a stasis containment of some sort. Unable to restrain her curiosity, she stepped closer, inspecting the massive crystalline prison closely. So when she tripped on the debris-strewn floor, the closest thing for her to grab to regain her balance was the crystal itself. She grabbed a jagged ridge, Reinforce's armor protecting her from its knife-sharp edges, and managed, barely, not to slam into the crystal itself.
The crack under her hand was audible nonetheless. Fractures appeared in the crystal, spidering away from her grip, and she gasped in surprise. The energy she had sensed built up within the crystal suddenly had a weak point to exploit, an avenue out, and it attacked that weakness instantly. She had a moment to mentally shout, Signum! Run! Then, as the crystal exploded before her and dark power swept through her, she put everything she had into one last thought. Reinforce! Teleport us out!
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Signum was marching through the ruins herself at that time, following Hayate's path to where her Mistress was waiting. Signum was less than pleased that Hayate had gone off by herself, and intended to speak to the young woman rather firmly about it, but later. Right now, something was making her nervous, something was off about this base, and whatever her Mistress had found, Signum just knew it was dangerous. Zafira had found the Lost Logia, and even now Shamal was transferring it, and their prisoners, to the Asura's holding bay. Vita and Zafira, almost as unhappy with Hayate's solitary wandering as Signum, were following the Sword Knight.
Signum figured she was nearing the bottom, when she heard her Mistress' voice. Signum! The telepathic shout was filled with fear and surprise, and that was all she needed. Hayate? Mistress! Her response came fast, but remained unanswered. Her eyes grew wide, and she sucked in a breath in instant fear, then snapped "Levantine!" The sword in her right hand hummed, slamming back into her hand once as a cartridge discharged, and she swung it up to point before her, just to one side of a direct line to where she sensed her mistress. "Beam Cannon!" It was a borrowed attack, learned from Testarossa and more basic than Signum normally preferred, but she needed speed and raw strength right now, not finesse.
"Signum?" Vita's voice was surprised behind her, but not yet frightened.
Before she could say anything else, Signum finished her spell, and a ravening bolt of purple energy leapt from Levantine's tip, funneling wide into a blast of destruction that tore through the ruined base's structure. "Hayate's in trouble," Signum shouted, "keep this place from falling in on us while I open a passage to her!"
"Roger," Vita responded, but it was Zafira who's energies reinforced the structure around the tunnel Signum's attack was boring. "I've told Shamal, and Chrono. They're coming as well!"
A second later, Signum's beam cannon struck something else, a counter-veiling energy that blasted out in a wave. Her strike diverted the wave from herself and her companions, and the combined energies opened a passage she could use, so she leapt into the angled tunnel, heedless of the heat radiating off the slaged walls or the chilling cold of that new power. Vita and Zafira were right behind her, and she heard the distinctive clash as Vita's Graf Eisen loaded a cartridge of its own. Levantine triggered another cartridge before they were at the end of Signum's new tunnel.
The three of them broke free of the tunnel into what had been several ruined rooms, and was now a single open space of powdery rubble. Signum could still feel the energy which had countered her beam cannon radiating from the room, and knew instantly that the man standing in the center of the wreckage was its source. As the three of them spread out, flying overhead, he turned and looked at them. His pale face was set in a neutral mask, eyes shockingly green and clear even at this range, and at first, he barely seemed to acknowledge their presence.
"Where's Hayate!" Vita's demand drew his attention to her, "What did you do with our Mistress?"
His gaze did not change, and his voice was a flat monotone to match. "I know not of who you speak, child." He glanced at each of them again, shaking his head, "Aoi is still gone, none of you are the one I seek. Leave me."
Signum settled toward the ground. He was the source of whatever had happened to her Mistress, she knew it, could sense the power still radiating off him. She also knew Hayate was still alive, could feel her Mistress' energy, but not her location. Glaring at him, she demanded, "What did you do with Hayate?"
His gaze settled on her, and took a moment to inspect her. She did not care for that, but when his gaze settled on her waist, on the badge Chrono insisted they all wear, the first expression she had seen on him appeared. Hatred. "You work for the Bureau," he said slowly, a snarling quality creeping into his voice.
"Special Officers," Signum acknowledged, "And you know something of the..."
"I have something for you, then," he interrupted her, tone making his last two words an insult, "special officer." He extended his right arm, hand open, and when he spoke again, his voice was deeper, darker, and echoing with pain, "Darkness given form." Signum and Vita were moving before he finished the first sentence, both of them lunging forward from different directions. "Death given voice." Levantine and Graf Eisen were powerful in their own rights, even more so backed by the unreleased energies of the cartridges and the will of their users. "I call your presence to my hand," Signum fully expected their combined attack to destroy the still unidentified man before her, "your power to my service." The moment before impact, he finished his summoning, a single word rolling through her bones. "Hellblade."
The unmusical crash of metal on metal rang in Signum's ears, and her eyes widened in surprise. Levantine had stopped cold, the jarring crash transmitted through her hands and up her arms, the flash of neutralizing energies momentarily blinding her. The magically enhanced edge of her device had been met by the tip of another sword, blade colored by a shifting blackness that filled her with cold dread. Looking up the length of the sword, it was huge, a western-style blade, broad and double-edged, with an oddly fine bar guard, black from the tip holding Levantine, to the pommel blocking Graf Eisen. Only the grip was different, wrapped in blood red chord, two strands of which dangled off it as tassels.
He was holding his weapon in one hand, and when she found his face, was almost laughing at her. She knew she was letting too much show, giving away her shock, but she could not help it, and when he saw it, his smile grew wider. Then Zafira hit him from behind, a single punch slamming into his back, and his expression changed, slightly. He grunted in pain, catapulted from between Signum and Vita, anger returning full force.
The four of them spun around to face each other, Signum and Vita recovering stance and splitting up to cover against any move he made. The unknown man tumbled through the sandy remains of the power chambers, rolling to his feet in a crouch, still holding that massive blade in one hand. He snarled silently at them for a moment, then relaxed, rising to stand and giving them a superior smile. "I see someone's still teaching teamwork at the Bureau. That's good, that's very good. You kids might actually be able to challenge me, this time." He looked up, ignoring the tunnel and staring straight up through the rubble. "Tell your Bureau masters, puppets, that they're last group of slaves failed. Akira, the Breaker of Ships, the Great Traitor, is awake once more, ready to resume his march towards vengeance and death," He looked back down at them, "your deaths, in due course, special officers. But I do not have the time to deal with you today, you are too far from the top of your form to be worth my while."
He spun the blade upright before him, finally taking it in both hands. Signum tensed when the blade swung, then realized he wasn't attacking directly, but casting. "Levantine! Snake form!" She whipped the suddenly expanding blade at him, aiming to bind his device, but she was a fraction of a second too slow.
"Cacophony of Torment," his voice, as when he summoned his device, was deeper and more powerful than before, almost that of another person entirely. He rammed the sword straight down, into a black disc that opened beneath it, and runes instantly formed about him, circular patterns of magical sigils absorbing what little light remained in the chamber. Before Levantine could reach him, hundreds more black discs appeared around him, a spherical pattern that interfered with her view of her target. Levantine's tipped vanished into one a moment before the spell completed.
Sound issued forth from those black discs, terrible, agonizing sound. Conflicting screams and cries, the sounds of thousands of tormented souls, swept over her, resonating through her armor, her bones, her very being. She had a moment to watch the last third of Levantine crack and shatter, but she could not hear it over the agonizing noise. She could do nothing but crouch down, cover her ears, and desperately try to build a barrier of some sort against that awful sound, and the tumbling debris as the roof caved in on her.
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It was several hours before Asura's crew managed to dig their agents out of the wreckage, mostly due to the ship's own damages. While Amy had been unable to determine what, precisely, the mystery attacker had done to both bring the old facility down and escape its destruction himself, she had obtained very clear imagery of him. He appeared from a teleport beside the Asura, wrapped in a protective sphere of energy, launched a surprisingly precise attack on the ship's engines, and disappeared in another, longer-ranged teleport. Only Amy's fast reflexes and the Asura's automated damage-control systems prevented the engine from detonating, but the damage still left the ship on minimal emergency power for over two hours.
After an initial frantic reaction, however, Admiral Chrono managed to establish telepathic contact from beneath the rubble, calming nerves all around and bringing his crew back to order. He and Shamal were trapped together in a small pocket in the rubble. Most of his power was going into maintaining the pocket and keeping contact with Vita, Signum and Zafira, who he reported as alive but unresponsive. Shamal, to the crew's surprise, had apparently managed to track the attacker and was maintaining that contact for as long as she could.
Once the Asura's systems were repaired enough to power the teleporter, Amy sent as many members of the crew as she could spare to the surface to dig out their missing mages, coordinating both operations. Chrono and Shamal were simple enough to reach, a few meters beneath the surface. Shamal was difficult to move, so deep in her trance that she was completely unresponsive to the world around her. The rescue team had to be extremely careful moving her, lest they break her trance and loose the attacker. Once she was safely placed on stable ground, however, Chrono left one medic to keep an eye on her, and turned back to digging the rest of the way into the rubble.
Even with the Admiral and his Durandel, reaching the wrecked facility's power room was a nightmare. Towards the top, the damage had simply been from structural collapse – underlying structures providing support to the upper layers stopped supporting, and thus the upper layers collapsed. Further down, however, the damage changed from simple structural failure to direct destruction. The lower they managed to dig, the smaller and smaller the fragments became, from human-sized pieces of concrete and steel, to torso sized, to fist sized, until finally they were dealing with pebbles and dust.
Chrono, throughout, directed and supported. Using Durandel's designed affinity for ice, he initially created instant ice-buttresses to hold unstable sections. As the debris became smaller, he started freezing it into larger chunks to simplify their removal. All the while, he maintained three slender threads of contact, trying to guide the rescuers as close to the three trapped Velka Knights as possible. Finally, as the local sun was rising on their second day on this world, the shaft the rescuers had dug reached the level of the old power plant's floor, and from there they soon had side passages to each of the trapped knights.
Vita and Zafira were unconscious, protected from the rubble by static shields. Those shields had not sufficed, apparently, to protect them from whatever the unidentified attacker did. Both of them were taken out by medics as quickly as possible and, once clear of the interference generated by the residual energies of the base, binding, and attacker, teleported directly to the Asura's medical bay.
Chrono was unsurprised to find that, unlike the others, Signum was conscious. When they finally found the cavity she was in, she was curled up on the ground, Levantine's cracked and broken form still held defensively before her. The light from the rescuer's torches showed dried blood from her nose and ears, and staring wide eyes that glared at them through the shimmering silver barrier.
Stay there, Chrono ordered, when he got her attention, leave your barrier up until we can work ours in over it.
Understood, Signum replied. Vita, Zafira?
Chrono waited a second, before realizing she wasn't going to ask about Hayate, usually her first concern. Both unconscious, they've already been taken up to the Asura. Shamal's on the surface tracking whoever it was that did this. What's your condition?
Said his name is Akira, Signum replied, I'm not doing well. I can't hear, can't see anything but general shapes. Tried standing up, but can't balance. Levantine's damaged as well. She paused for a moment, then ordered, Get me out of here, I need to go after him.
Chrono shook his head, more in resignation than surprise, as he was well used to the Velka Knights by now. We're working on getting you out, Signum, he said, but pursuing this guy is going to be difficult to impossible. Asura is damaged, leaving us without a ship.
He doesn't have one either, was her immediate response.
So he can't get too far. Relax. We've almost got our barrier in place, after that you can drop yours and we'll get you up to the Asura, let the doctors have a look at you. Shamal is tracking him now, you'll need her information to find him again, so relax.
I'll relax when I have Hayate back.
Chrono shook his head again, breaking off the contact to concentrate on getting Signum free of the wreckage. A routine recovery mission gone sour, one of his best mages missing in action, said mage's personal strike team seriously injured, and his ship badly damaged. Who, or what, was that mage?
Happosai-sama: Thanks for reading, though the prologue was a bit short. Watched the end of "A's", and just pictured the scene that became the prologue. The rest of this is developing from there (how'd she get in that fight? Who is 'he'? and so on). I'm not certain I'll be able to stay true to the feel of the series, I'm too dark & violent in my own mind, I think, but it'll be a good experiment, and I can always up the rating. Akira isn't evil for no reason, though – he's got a good one, but I'm hoping to keep exactly what that reason is to myself for as long as possible. As for when it's set – at the end of the last episode of "A's", there's an epilogue that shows them 'six years later', and this is set a couple of months or so after that, though I'm not sure I'll ever set the exact gap in stone. So, if I'm understanding the age/grade ranges in Japan correctly, Nanoha & Co. should be 16 or 17? That's the age I'm working off, anyhow.
