A/N: Chapter 4: Discovery Arc End

"Where should we start?" Fate asked. "She could be anywhere. How long has she been missing?"

Hayate, Fate and Vivio were in Hayate's office coming up with a plan to find Nanoha. Signum and Zafira had gone to deal with another incident that was happening, involving a mysterious masked thief that used red lightning. "Nanoha-mama has been gone for a week," Vivio answered.

Before Hayate could speak the door was kicked down.

It was Shari, her eyes were unfocused. "I'm supposed to give you this," she said in a monotone as she thrusted her right arm forward, a folded piece of paper in her hands. Cautiously, Hayate took it.

"Dear Miss Yagami, I would like to inform you that I have in my possession, Miss Takamachi. If you wish to rescue her, she will be at her home. Be warned, I have collected many powers, any number of people with only one ability will be useless against me. Signed Traveler," Hayate read out loud. "Well, this is obviously a trap."

"The timing of everything is suspicious too," Fate noted. "They sent you the note after Vivio came here. Do you think he's trying to lure Vivio out there?"

"Hmm, I'm not completely sure how Traveler gets its powers but I think it might not be very appropriate to tell Vivio," Hayate said. "If Traveler was able to get to Vivio and take her power. It would be so much easier for it to get even more powers. It'd be killing two birds with one stone, getting a godlike power and taking out the only other person that could stop him."

Vivio thought about it for a moment. "So all I have to do is go home and beat this guy up?" she asked.

"Um... yes but-" Fate answered.

"Then I'm going to go beat him up and save Nanoha-mama," Vivio decided. "Simple as that."

"It's not as simple as that," Hayate replied. "You might be able to beat Traveler. At this point, we're not sure how many powers he has, and from what Signum told me when she fought with Traveler, it's very skilled with using its powers. Which is honestly, something you can't do."

"But in the letter it says people with only one ability will be useless!" Vivio argued. "I have more than one power! That means I can do this!"

Hayate facepalmed. "Sometimes I forget your still a little kid because you walk around looking like that. Fine, you can go ahead and fight Traveler but at least stock up on some powers. That'd probably give you enough of an advantage." She turned to Fate who was preoccupied with waving her hand in front of a spaced out Shari's face. "Are you done?"

Fate blushed. "Um...yes, let's go."

~...~

"Stop!" Signum shouted as she pulled out her sword. The masked red lightning thief cursed as she turned around to see Signum whose sword was pointed right at her. A clothing store was the last place she expected to be caught. "Put your hands up."

She slowly turned around and did what she was told. "Last time I checked cops don't carry around swords. Isn't that a little old fashioned?" she asked a smirk on her face.

"Just because it's old doesn't mean it's useless," Signum replied.

"Do you want to test that out?" her right hand glowed red as she fired an arc of red lightning at Signum who simply smirked and blocked it with her sword. "What? That's not a regular sword."

"I had this sword customized, with the upgrades on it, I have no problems going up against people like you," Signum explained. "Give up, you don't stand a chance."

"That's where your wrong," the masked red lightning thief said confidently. "People like you can't stop me, the only ones who stand a chance are, well, that Fate Testarossa-Harl something. Step aside, I have things to do."

"We'll see about that," Signum rushed forward and slashed at the thief who barely managed to avoid it. Signum continued with the assault and kept on attacking which made the thief keep moving backwards to avoid the attacks.

Frowning, the thief shot blasts of lightning out randomly hoping to just get Signum to stop.

It worked, mostly.

While she was shooting out lightning, Signum had managed to cut her. It wasn't too serious but the thief was impressed. For a fake, Signum was quite good.

The lightning hadn't managed to actually hit Signum but just the areas around her. The thief quickly ran behind one of the clothes racks. Signum raised her sword.

Smiling, the thief kicked the rack of clothes into Signum and made a run for it. She was almost at the door when another clothes rack slid past the door. Turning to the left, where the rack came from was Signum charging at her.

"Damn! Don't you give up?" the thief made a black charred line on the floor right in front of Signum, stopping her in tracks. She opened the door and was about to go through it if it wasn't for all the police cars outside waiting.

"I never come unprepared," Signum stated. "You never had a chance of escaping. Do you want to try and come peacefully this time?"

"Tricky," the thief complimented.

"My name is Signum, a member of the Company," she introduced. "And this," she lifted up her sword. "Is my blade Levantine. What's your name?"

"My name is..."

~...~

He paced back and forth across the room. "My, what have you been teaching her? She's late, when she gets here, you should teach her to come to her appointments on time."

"You never wrote a time she should be here on the note," Nanoha pointed out.

He stared at his tied up prisoner for a moment. "Oh, that's right, I didn't write a time. My mistake. But you'd think she'd be in a rush to save you, her precious mother."

"Right, because it's not painfully obvious it was a trap," Nanoha replied. "She is very smart for her age, you know. Hell, even a seven year old could figure out it was a trap."

~...~

"Explain to me again how it you could tell it was a trap?" Vivio asked innocently as Hayate drove the car to Nanoha's house. Fate sat up front beside Hayate, while Vivio sat in the back.

"Traveler wants to have as many powers as it can possibly get," Hayate said. "You have the power to copy any power around you, then he kidnaps your mom and says that only people with more than one power can defeat him. Do you get it now?"

"Oh, so Traveler wants to take my power. How does he take powers anyway?"

There was a pause.

"Um... ask your mom after we find her," Hayate replied. She passed her cell phone to Fate. "Call Signum and tell her to meet up with us at Nanoha's house. You remember how to use a cell phone right?"

~...~

"It's a very weird type of amnesia! No, I'm not making this up!" Fate Testarossa insisted. "Oh, wait, Signum picked up... um, hi. How's it going over there?"

"Good, I caught the thief," Signum answered. "What's the matter, Testarossa?"

"We found out where Nanoha is, Hayate wants you to meet us at Nanoha's house, as soon as possible," Fate replied.

"I see," Signum said. "I'll be there shortly after I drop off the prisoner. Goodbye." She hung up the phone and turned to the thief that sat beside her.

"So, that person you were just talking to was Fate Testarossa wasn't it?" the thief asked.

"Yes," she answered. "You're not going to cause any more trouble right?"

The thief thought it over. "Sorry Signum! I know this is completely unfair but I really need to go where Fate's going." The thief muttered something. "See ya." And like that, she vanished, leaving a surprised Signum starting at the space the thief was in a second ago.

~...~

"Let's crash the car into the house!" Hayate suggested crazily. "I've always wanted to crash the car into Nanoha's house."

Fate blinked. Hayate hadn't seem like the crazy type in this world. "Are you insane? That's a stupid idea! We could get seriously hurt or maybe accidently kill Nanoha or Traveler. And Nanoha would kill us if we destroyed her house."

"I wouldn't worry about the house being destroyed Fate, there's going to be a huge battle between two people with very destructive powers," Hayate said. "The house is going to be ruined either way. It'd be fun wouldn't it? Let's do it!"

"Mama always said that I should never let Aunt Hayate drive me anywhere," Vivio informed them. "Because Aunt Hayate always breaks something when she drives."

Fate blinked. "Vivio, that's the kind of thing you should say before we get into the car."

They weren't too far from Nanoha's house now. Hayate sped up the car and pressed a button on her cell phone and put it on speaker. "Hey, where exactly is Traveler in the house?" she asked.

"In the living room, near the couch, Nanoha is closer to the TV," answered a voice Fate swore was Teana. "I don't think you'll be able to get him without getting her. Honestly, this isn't a very good plan, maybe you should just t-"

"Thanks," Hayate hung up her phone, interrupting the speaker. The car's speed increased even more. "Buckle up guys, this is going to be on awesome crash."

Before Fate could protest, Hayate sped up the car some more and sharply turned into someone's front lawn and without even slowing down a little, crashed into the house without the hesitation any normal sane person would have.

Fate would have found it amusing how this world's Hayate's personality changed so drastically, would have if she wasn't just in a car crash. She unbuckled her seat belt and opened the door. She stumbled out of the car. The ground was covered in glass and bits of what used to be the wall. Surprisingly, she didn't feel any pain. She should have, since she wasn't in her barrier jacket and didn't have any magic at all.

"Well, this is surprising, I haven't seen you in awhile," an unfamiliar voice said. "How have you been?"

"Good," another voice answered. "I should have known that you would be interested in the new girl."

Fate couldn't help but stare at the two, one of them looked identical to Jail but didn't sound like him, while the other was wearing a mask that covered most of her face and wore all black. The one that looked like Jail was standing an inch from the front of the car. He chuckled. "That was unexpected, if I was a little slower I would have been hit," he said as he walked around the car to get closer to the masked woman standing not too far from Fate.

"What the hell is going on here?" Fate asked confused. Both of them were different than the illusions around her, she knew that for sure.

They both turned to her. "I should probably change back to my real form," suddenly the man changed, he no longer looked like Jail but a older brown haired man whose hair was starting to turn grey, there were a few wrinkles on his face and had brown eyes. "I'm not sure if you know this yet but we're not the same as the people here, we're real and they're fake."

"Yeah, I got that part," Fate said. "What I'm wondering is where are we? And what's making this place up."

"Inside a Lost Logia," the man answered. "Naturally the Lost Logia is creating this. Now since I've answered your question, you should answer one of mine. What's your name?"

"Fate Testarossa-Harlaown," she replied. "Now is there any way to get out of here?"

"If there were, we would have already left," the masked woman said. "Who are you?"

She blinked. "I'm an enforcer working for the TSAB-"

"No, not that. Who are you and why do you look like me?" in one swift motion she took off her mask, revealing an identical face with the same red eyes and blonde hair.

"How dramatic," the man commented. "I was hoping we wouldn't just surprise her and slowly extracted the information out of her before revealing your identity."

Her twin shrugged. "I think just taking off the mask is way more fun than doing it the slow way. So are you going to answer my question? Why do you look exactly like me and have, well, one of the same last name as me?"

"Same last name...?" Fate repeated. "Wait, are you...? This might be a long shot, but are you Alicia Testarossa?"

"Yes," her long not so dead after all sister replied. "Do you know me?"

The simple answer would have been just a yes. But Fate felt like a simple yes would do the real answer much justice. So she went and explained an edited version of the truth. Telling the both of them that she was a clone created by her mother, Precia, who was trying to revive Alicia who she thought was dead not stuck in a Lost Logia. Fate mentioned that Precia did a few illegal things to accomplish that but left out the whole abuse thing, since she remembered Precia was kind to Alicia and it would come out as quite a shock.

"It's been that many years already?" the man asked astonished. "I had always hoped that time in here was much faster than time out there. And if what you said was true and when we were sucked into this Lost Logia our bodies died then that means... we can't go back even if we found a way to leave."

It was only then that the realization hit Fate.

In the real world her body was dead, she was dead. Oh god, what if they already had a funeral for her?

Her head was full of what ifs. What if nobody out there knows she's still alive in here and just leaves her body to rot? What if she was stuck in this Lost Logia forever?

And most definitely the worst thought going through her head was, how was Nanoha, Vivio, and the others dealing with her 'death'.

"We're not going to find a way to leave because there isn't one," Alicia said. "If there was one, we would have found it years ago."

"Well, that may not be exactly true," the man replied. "Fate, you said you were an enforcer?"

"Um...yes," she answered, her mind still running through what might be happening outside.

"There might be a way to get us out of this," the man said. "A way we can't access since we're in the Lost Logia, but people outside it can."

A/N:

Yeah, I know, a bit of an abrupt end right there? I also know this chapter came out later than I hoped it would. So, sorry for that.

The next chapter is going to be different than all the other chapters so far, why? Because it's a-

surprise :P. Since Saturday is Christmas, there's going to be some fun stuff for you guys, ahem, what do TV shows have around Christmas?

Yeah, that's right I'm having one of those!

Happy Holidays!