Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor
(Worm/Nanoha)
by P.H. Wise

Interlude 1.X: Yuuno

Disclaimer: The following is a fanfic. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise is owned by various corporate entities. Please support the official release.


It began without warning; one moment, low Earth orbit was troubled only by satellites, debris, and the Simurgh; the next, there was an eruption of light full of impossible colors, a scintillating riot of yellowblue and redgreen and others more impossible and unrecognizable; for a hole had been bored through space and time to some cryptic well beyond our universe to reveal the undimensioned rainbow of unknown light that filled the Dimensional Sea. To call it a portal was a description of function, but fell desperately short of the form, yet a portal it was.

Something resembling a green solar flare in miniature shot out from the open gateway above Non-Administrated World #97, and then another, and another, and more still, until dozens of what looked like green fusion lashes reached from the portal, struggling to arrange themselves into some semblance of a Midchildan spell circle. There was a sense of growing strain, and then spell circle and lashes alike shattered like glass as a starship shot out of the portal. Or rather, as the two halves of a starship shot out of the portal, the violence of spell-collapse and uncontrolled exit ripping apart the portal even as the ship fell.

The rear section remained mostly intact and went far afield, coming down in the northern reaches of Canada. The forward section, shaped something like a tuning fork, had less mass, more empty space; it hit the atmosphere and broke apart into a thousand fiery fragments that mostly burned up as they fell towards the coast of Maine.

And amidst the burning, disintegrating wreckage, unnoticed and unmarked by any earthly eye, twenty-one small seed-shaped blue jewels rained down upon the northeastern United States.

Five landed in Brockton Bay, and all but one went unnoticed.

Many hours later, just after 2 in the morning, a boy appeared in a circle of green light at the Downtown coast just inside the South Brockton Marina. He was very young - maybe 10 at most - with green eyes and light brown hair that almost touched his shoulders. His clothes were better suited for a more temperate climate, but the cold didn't seem to bother him.

As the light of his spell circle went out, he took in his surroundings uneasily.

All was not well in the South Brockton Marina; a mist had gathered over it, hiding the piers and the lower halves of the boats docked there, and the only sound was settling of boat and wood and the movement of the water.

The boy's eyes flicked left and right, and then he whispered, "Area search."

A spell circle flashed beneath him, and a hundred green strands of energy spread from him to quickly encompass the entire marina.

His eyes widened as the sensor data filled his mind: movement and malice; an ethereal form with a glowing blue crystal heart shot towards him like a bullet. He whirled around just in time to put up a spiralling green defensive barrier.

Glowing red eyes formed within the amorphous monster's body, glaring balefully at the boy, and the shockwave of the thing's impact upon his barrier violently dispersed the mist, shattered every glass window on every boat in the marina and sent boats seesawing wildly back and forth in their moorings.

The sound of alarms began to blare.

The boy shoved the barrier forward against the Monster, and it used that barrier like a springboard to fling itself away from him, sending out a dozen lances of its own protoplasmic mass even as his barrier dropped. The boy scrambled out of the way of the salvo, which ripped through the pier around him and sent up a hail of splinters; he sent a single glowing green sphere back at the creature, which struck it at the same instant it sprouted a dozen legs and landed standing up sideways on the side of a yacht. He blew a hole in creature and yacht alike.

The creature's body began to repair itself, and it sprinted at the boy with inhuman speed, five more red eyes sprouting within its body as it ran.

One of the strands of energy left by his still active Area Search sang at him, and he fell flat on his back just in time to avoid having the part of the creature he had blasted out of it with his prior attack cut a hole through his chest on its way to rejoin the oncoming main mass. "Angled shield," he hissed, doing the necessary calculations on the fly without the aid of a Device; the barrier came up just in time to save his life. If the creature had struck his barrier full on, it probably would have broken it. It slid over the angled shield and landed in the water with a loud splash.

The boy knew the creature would not give up so easily; he rolled to his feet, feeling for its approach through his web of detection magic, and once again his preparation saved his life; he caught another dozen pseudopods on his shield even as the creature burst from the water once more. Maintaining his shield, he drew back his fist and shouted, "Jewel Seed... SEAL!" as he released the sealing magic into the creature's primary mass.

It wasn't enough, and the ensuing explosion cracked his barrier and sent him flying through a boat and into the rocks at the edge of the marina. He bounced off, and still had enough momentum to plow through the chain link fence that surrounded it.

The boy - Yuuno Scrya - couldn't even cry out in pain. The wind had left him, and the very act of breathing seemed to fill his body with liquid agony.

Was this the end? Was he going to die on this backwater planet? He couldn't sense the creature or the Jewel Seed it bore any longer, but that didn't mean it was gone. He tried to stand, but his agony redoubled, and it was all he could do in that moment to keep breathing.

Yuuno Scrya had failed. He had failed his clan, he had failed as an archeologist, and he was going to die, unremembered and alone, on this backwater world he'd never even heard of before today.

And so, in desperation, he called out into the darkness with his telepathic voice, broadcasting as loudly and as widely as he possibly could, [Someone... please hear my voice... lend me your strength...]

His only answer was the sound of the alarms his fight had triggered.

[Someone...] he called again, [Anyone... please help me...]

Silence. He felt very cold. Blood was pooling around him, and the world was growing hazy.

[...Can anyone hear me?]

[{CONFIRMATION}]