Part 10: Quack Fate

The doors swung open, slowly, excruciatingly, not because time slowed to a crawl when Fate was impatient, nor because Signum was any less excited to have another "practice spar" with her rival, but because… well… to be quite honest…

Demons are too friggin' lazy to keep their doors well-oiled. And it was rusty to boot.

Luckily, Signum was skilled enough in the art of ghost demon jitsu and teleported from one side of the door to the other, so she was unhampered from running straight for Fate, who was similarly running towards her.

They met in a clash of teeth and nails.

Nails, clawing at sides, soft when in control, hard when desperate, rough, unrehearsed sounds being ripped from each other's throats.

And all the lesser demons watched in horror, wondering and revering their future Devil Maiden for putting up with such torment- and in public no less.

Signum and Fate eventually fell against each other, the last tendrils of their laughter dying off as they called a truce on their tickle-fest.

Which gave Nanoha and Hayate plenty of time to stop their quick, rushed conversation to join them. Hayate grinned and said, "Let's go eat, hm? Then you two can go off and play some more."

At this, Fate held her breath to gather her wits about her, just long enough to frown while smiling. "Nano…Hayate will play too, right?"

"Mm… maybe a bit later, okay? Business first."

Signum looked between Nanoha and Hayate and saw the seriousness in their eyes, but knew that if she remarked on it, Fate would not appreciate their coming.

So she poked Fate and then ran off, shouting, "Tag, you're it!"

"Mou! That's so childish!" Fate puffed even as she got off the floor and chased Signum down the corridor to the dining hall. She could only assume Nanoha and Hayate were following at a leisurely paced.

Halfway through her sweet potatoes and bewitched eggs, Fate realized that Nanoha and Hayate still hadn't arrived. But then Signum flung some peas up her nose, starting a full-fledged food fight.

By the time Lilith had swept her and Signum up for a much needed bath, a couple of hours had passed before Fate had time to seek out the missing persons.

She checked in the North, West, South, and East corridors, with no luck. So she turned around and tried the NE, NW, SW, and SE hidden passages. Still nothing. Well, she did find an old potato, but she thought nothing of it.

At that point, she traded in her devil pride for necessity of the moment and started calling out their names. It wasn't like Nanoha or Hayate to not answer her.

If they were within range.

It occurred to Fate then that they might have flown the coop. They could do that, having flying magic and all. It was entirely possible.

"But she promised!" Fate puffed her cheeks out at no one in particular before hurrying off down a random corridor that would likely lead outdoors do the floating labyrinth maze of doom. "Nanoha-chan! Where are you?! Hayate!"

Finally, she stopped at the foot of the attic stairwell. Signum was already there, like a sentry. Arf was there too. That was when Fate knew this was the answer.

But she hated the attic. It was high up and really scary and there were ghosts and ghouls and other things worse than any Devil she had ever known.

It struck her then that Nanoha might need help. That she had been overwhelmed by the baddies and needed brave Fate to conquer them and beat them into submission with mind-rapping Barney reruns. She had to go.

… She ran to the bathroom, hopping from one foot to the other along the way.

After relieving herself, she came back, nice and content, with her game face on. Don't be mistaken, this is not the face that she used when playing poker (which was always some shade of red as it involved stripping and her always losing), nor was it the face she put on when hunting game (because those dagnab Monopoly pieces kept getting eaten or lost).

No, she had on the Face of Fate. Which would be pretty gosh darn scary if she weren't so darn cute.

Signum tried to stop her. "Fate. Don't go up there."

Fate went up anyway, leaving Signum to play Old Maid with Arf.

What she found was and was not what she expected to find. There was magic circles, and Nanoha was in one of them. Hayate was in another one, doing an incantation.

Fate raced forward when she realized that Nanoha was unconscious, but the presence of the other magical circle stopped her.

It was glowing.

It was yellow.

It was… Quack!

"Quack!"

Hayate opened her eyes and probably would have cursed if she wasn't in the middle of an incantation.

Fate crossed the room, tripped over some stray clump of air, got up, and ran again. She wrapped her arms over the now 7 foot tall duck and squeezed the living daylights out of him.

Fate started to feel strange.

"Quack?"

By all rights, Hayate should have stopped the incantation right there and then.

Fate fell into a dead faint as an eerie swoosh and whoosh consumed her.

When she came to, Nanoha's body was nowhere to be seen, and neither, for that matter, was Hayate.

But the duck. Her duck was still there.

And as Fate looked up into his- no, her shining blue eyes, she realized she had never been happier.

Fate hugged her and whispered, "Can I still call you 'Quack', Nanoha?"

The duck nipped at her hair but fondly nuzzled her hair with its cheek. "Quack."

Eventually, Fate and her duck made it down the narrow steps, to where only Arf was waiting for her.

Arf took one look at the duck and bowed in reverence.

"At ease." Fate smiled first at Arf and then up at Quack. "This is the beginning of a new era. There will be demons… and devils… but there will be respect and peace too."

And it was indeed a new era. No longer was it the era of the White Devil, but rather, after the rumors had spread that Fate had defeated Nanoha and taken her place as reigning Devil, it became a rather ironically named era.

The Era of Quack Fate, the Quack Devil that wasn't a quack at all- she was a legit Teletubbie lover with a oversized duck companion with a menacing glare.

But they expected no less of She who Beat the White Devil

~As things end, they should be as they began, an endless cycle, yet ever changing~

~Not TBC~

The End.

A/N: Alas, once again I realized/remembered epilogue epicness so... one teensy non-story chapter will be featured.

Preview: Vivio is born! (*giggles* I almost wrote pr0n)