Disclaimer: I don't own the worlds in this fic, or anything else portrayed. I did create the villains and story, though. They're not really worth taking, but if you do, just let me know if you would. Maho Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha and Maho Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha A's were produced by Ivory and Seven Arcs.

Chapter 3 - "Reinforce Zwei"

12.40, 11th June, Yagami residence, Uminari city

Reinforce was bored. She found that happening more and more recently as her artificial intelligence developed. Which might explain why, when left on her own to look after the house while the others searched the city ("Don't worry, I have Scwertkreuz and the Tome, I'll be fine!"), she was currently pirouetting around the ceiling singing nursery rhymes to herself.

Suddenly, she banged her head on something. It didn't hurt so much as make her feel stupid, especially when she realised that it was the Yaten no Shou. Still, she didn't like feeling stupid, so instead she just grabbed the little blue book in a crushing embrace.

"Oh! I know what I could do!" she chirped to herself, coming down to sit cross-legged a few feet above the table as the book opened itself in front of her.

"Book of Heaven, list known facts." She asked, and the tome's ages flipped until it showed the current information. "An unknown force has been removing peoples' linker cores and animating their corpses... but that shouldn't be possible. Even if you could make the body move, there's almost no chance that your personality would survive to direct it!" She paused as the page turned. It never struck her as odd that she went through her internal database in this way, and none of the others ever commented on it. Then again, most of them didn't take her seriously. It was hard to be taken seriously when you were not only an AI, but your normal form was less than twelve inches tall.

"Besides, there's so few things that can do that to a person... just me, a the Infinity Vortex the Asura was dealing with, the Tome of the Night Sky... no, wait, that's me!" she giggled to herself again. "the ancient Intelligent Device Crying Soul... but that's being looked after by its' owners on Betelgeuse... um... there was that other one... what was it called..? Felt like that.. and that..." She mused, as the book flipped pages to show the diagnostic of the artefact she half-recalled. "S... S... S something, anyway... Ein buried it somewhere, didn't she..? Disabled and buried it... where..?" The sense that something was horribly wrong broke through her musings, and the book snapped shut with a bang as she stood up and looked around.

"Who's there?" She yelled, angrily. Something wrong was in Mistress Hayate's house! She summoned her bureau uniform and put her hands on her hips, scanning the area for whatever it was. Something moved in the corner of her eye, but as she turned to look it disappeared. She had the fleeting impression of scales moving, span to look at it.

"Oh! That's what it was called! Ser..." Her high voice was cut off as the eater of cores closed its' mouth around her physical core.

This time, they all felt it. The gut-wrenching wrongness of the power as it gathered. Even though they were at the four cardinal points of the city, with Hayate at the centre, the Wolkenritter turned as one and sped inland to the house.

"Rein! Where are you?" Hayate cried as she fumbled with the front door lock. When she finally got it open, she looked around desperately, but there was no sign of either the amulet or the floating AI.

"I can't find her anywhere." Shamal frowned as she scryed. "And I can't get a lock on that energy, either! Blast it, why is it so hard?"

"She's not upstairs. I can't find any signs of forced entry." Signum told her as she came back down, sliding her hips around the old, disused chairlift.

"Not in the back either." Vita pouted. "It's not like her to just disappear."

"She must have been taken... what if whatever it was thought she was a person?" Hayate fretted, before bringing her wrist up to her mouth. Chewing on her clothes was a bad habit, but she couldn't hep it when she was this stressed.

"Mistress." Signum's voice as the sword knight forcibly took her wrist away from her teeth. "Calm down. She's a Device. Whatever it is that's doing it to those people can't destroy Rein in the same way. I'm sure she'll be fine."

09.30, 12th June, T/SAB Headquarters, Midchilda high orbit

"Admiral Halloun. I've got the reports from the Volkenritter on earth." The petty officer bowed as he entered Lindy's office and put the display crystal on her desk. "In summary, the number of attacks has risen dramatically over the last twelve hours. In addition, Strike Leader Yagami's device has disappeared, presumably in one of the attacks. The creatures they're referring to as Dempies have started appearing in public places as well."

"Blast. This is all we need..." Lindy swore, then swore again. The look on her adjutant's face was a picture. The Admiral never swore. "Between the damage to the base in the accident yesterday, Fate and Nanoha disappearing, and the repairs still needed on the Asura, we just can't catch a break." She paused, trying to calm down. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to shout at you, Ouran. Can you call Admiral Chrono and the Chief Librarian in, please? And get me a cup of tea?"

"Yes, ma'am." The officer saluted and went to fetch her what she needed.

When the two men stood before her, she took a moment to stir the three sugars into her green tea and take a sip before trusting herself to speak

"Chrono, Yuuno. I need you to read this, and tell me what you think." She gave them Hayate's report.

"Well..." Chrono said, eventually. "I know what it looks like, but I don't think it's possible..."

"Do you think we can convince the board of that? Yuuno, is it possible?"

"Mechanically, yes. But you'd need a psychometrist, and she doesn't have one." The librarian said, frowning. He didn't like where this was going.

"The odds are she could find one if she wanted to. It's the second most common psychic phenomena on earth. I don't want to believe it either, but..."

"There's always been the chance of this happening. That's why we agreed to let her join the Bureau. But to think that she'd do it now, of all times..."

"Just the fact that all three of us thought of it is enough to indicate that the board will assume the worst. Chrono, what can we do?"

"We'll have to put them into custody until we can prove she's innocent. But to try and resurrect the Book of Darkness..." The younger admiral trailed off, shaking his head. "After everything it did..."

"She cared about Reinforce Ein a lot, though. I don't think she believes it was possible for it to do everything it did as the Book of Darkness." Yuuno suggested. "I feel kind of bad saying it... but we do need to consider this seriously. I hope as much as either of you that its' not true, but..."

"We know. Chrono, can I leave this in your hands? I need to work out what I'm going to tell the money."

"Of course, mother." He stood and went to choose his teams.