Chapter 4: Truth
I was too late. By the time I had arrived where Nanoha and Fate had been fighting the Wolkenritter on the rooftops of Uminari City, the Wolkenritter had already been absorbed into the book, completing it and enabling it to possess Hayate's body.
The Lieze Twins, in their disguises, stood back, watching Nanoha and Fate fight the Book of Darkness-possessed Hayate, seeing their efforts as a means to buy time to enact their plan. The silver lining on this cloud was that this gave me an opportunity to take them by surprise, and I placed them in a magical bind that dispelled their transformations, and exposed their true identities.
No one was more surprised by this than they were; it was not a skill they had taught me, but one I had developed on my own, in order to capture a criminal who was able to assume the identities of others. But while I was past the point at which I could be surprised, my heart sank a little to discover that I had not prematurely or falsely arrived at the conclusion; that the Lieze Twins were involved in this illegal and morally dubious plan to contain the Book of Darkness. Worse, their involvement was the final confirmation of my theory that this was all part of Admiral Graham's plan.
But for my sake, for the sake of the investigation, and for the sake of finding out if there was a way to stop the Book of Darkness, I had to take them into custody. I needed to learn what Admiral Graham had planned, and whether he knew anything that could help me stop the Book of Darkness once and for all.
By the time I teleported back to headquarters, Admiral Graham was already confined to his office and under guard. The twins tried to claim that the plan was their idea alone, but Admiral Graham admitted everything, with a voice that neither indignantly defended his actions nor completely regretted them. He had reservations about what he had attempted to do, but believed it was necessary to avert a greater disaster.
The plan was, as I thought, to fill the Book of Darkness outside the Bureau's jurisdiction, and then seal it away with its master in a prison of ice, before leaving it in another dimension. There was a sort of harsh logic to choosing Hayate as a sacrifice. As an orphan who, until recently, had no friends, she would have few people to grieve for her, and if the plan succeeded, the sacrifice of one person would have saved countless more from future incarnations of the book. But she was also not a criminal, and while few people would mourn her, no one could say she had done anything to deserve this fate. Indeed, I thought of my father, and remembered that people who die often leave behind those who miss them. Hayate would leave behind the doctor who had cared for her for years, as well as the friends she had made in the past month. Was this fair to them?
There was also no guarantee of the plan succeeding, as I realized that magical effects could be undone, whether by deliberate action or time; magical fires could be extinguished, and magical ice could melt. It was thus possible for someone to one day reverse the seal on the book and gain access to its power. And if this plan failed, sacrificing Hayate would have been for nothing. My father may have failed to permanently destroy the Book of Darkness, but he died so that others might live. Furthermore, he had chosen to make this sacrifice on his own, without having been ordered to lay down his life or been cast aside.
Lotte made one last-ditch attempt to convince me, saying that the law was not worth following at the cost of the lives of people like my father, but Admiral Graham silenced her. My father's death and his belief that he was responsible may have driven Admiral Graham more than he wanted to admit, but he did not seem to care for using my father in an attempt to emotionally manipulate me into playing along with his plan. If nothing else, he realized that it would not work on someone who made every effort to leave his feelings out of his work.
As an Enforcer, as the son of one of the Book of Darkness' victims, and as myself, I could not accept this plan, and so I excused myself to go to assist Nanoha and Fate, who had since been joined by Arf and Yuuno in their fight against the Book of Darkness.
As I was leaving, Admiral Graham had Aria give me the Durandal, a powerful ice-type Device that was the keystone of his plan, saying it was useless to them now and it was up to me how I would use it. Perhaps he was admitting defeat. Perhaps he realized that his plan would not have worked; I had pointed out that it would be possible to retrieve the Book from where it was hidden. Or perhaps he simply trusted me, his student, to see this through to the end, regardless of whether I would try to go through with something like his plan, or try for a better solution.
And so, I set out to do what had never been done before, and succeed where so many Bureau mages and Belkan knights failed. Admiral Graham's teachings may have helped me up until this point, and even during the battle, but the solution to the problem of the Book of Darkness was one that my allies and I had to find on our own.
Author's Note
One strange part is why the Lieze Twins in their "Masked Man" form look somewhat like Admiral Clyde, although the resemblance doesn't seem to go beyond being a man with blue hair. It's possible that they were trying to make him hesitate (Lotte, in Episode 10, brings up Admiral Clyde's fate as a consequence of following the law), although the resemblance doesn't seem to register with Chrono.
It's indicated that Admiral Graham doesn't like his plan (he mentions that he's heartbroken over the prospect of having to freeze Hayate, and sympathizes with her for her parents' death), but doesn't see any other choice. There's also the possibility that Chrono did, in fact, convince him that he's wrong, since he doesn't put much effort into arguing with Chrono's points after Chrono says that Hayate doesn't deserve to be frozen. This, combined with the fact that this story is told from Chrono's perspective, is why I had his motives for handing Chrono the Durandal ambiguous. The next chapter will go into how he reacts when he sees that the heroes have found a way to permanently end the threat of the Book of Darkness with minimal sacrifice.
On a side note, in the dub, I've noticed Chrono doesn't call Graham "sir" at any point when he's confronting him in Episode 10, although he keeps referring to him as "Admiral".