Signum has expressed her opinion of her duplicate before. Let's get it all out in the open.
For the record, I tend to take a view that the Wolkenritter have been…well, monsters (yes I've already titled a story that) in the past, this is not intended to make them dark or tragic figures. Quite the opposite; redemption and triumph are far more powerful themes in my opinion.
Demons and Monsters
Scrambling out to meet another attack was going much better this time, partially because it hadn't caught anyone asleep this time. This was the fifth known attack, and the fourth they'd responded to now. It was getting almost depressingly routine. One every week, on a Thursday, at three in the afternoon Cranagan time.
Yuuno claimed you could set a watch by it. So Vita had gone out and gotten a watch, and set it by the attacks. It worked. Hayate and Nanoha both thought they could have done without knowing that.
Today, Adminstrated World #12, Fedikia. The capital building, in fact. And a lobby covered in gore and bodies.
"She is here." Signum almost growled it, and Fate wondered if she should be taking a step away from the knight for safety. The last few weeks, responding to what had been officially dubbed "Rogue Wolkenritter" attacks, had seen her grow distressingly familiar with blood and gore. Even so, this room was something that made her feel like she might throw up. It was to Fate's great credit that she cared, but empathy was a double-edged sword.
For Signum it was entirely different. She recognized this. She had done it once, serving a different and rather less stable mistress. This was a delibrate taunt, an attempt to prove the lack of difference between herself and her twin.
As such an attempt, it failed completely. The simple fact such a scene had been staged for Signum's benefit proved the point to her. This was an artifact from another lifetime, literally and metaphorically, a piece of a past she rejected. She was a Belkan Knight in deed as well as in name now, and this was against everything she believed in and now embodied. She was going to put an end to this.
Come on. Signum directed at Fate. This was meant to unsettle us. She is close by to see if it worked. The computer again, and the cold void that lurked beneath it. Signum might, perhaps, be a killing machine. Certainly she herself would own to that description at times like this. But unlike her doppelganger she was neither simple or undirected. Most importantly, both to her and others, she was not just a killing machine.
And if Signum were to want a spot to watch here, it would be… "Schlangeform!" Levatine snapped out and trimmed the nearby hedges a lot lower than any sane gardener would like.
Her twin was already in motion, launching straight up to avoid getting trimmed down along with the plants. The Snake Form was not something that could be blocked, it would merely bend around the blocking object to hit whatever was being protected assuming it did not cut through whatever was used to block it in the first place.
Testarossa. Give me some room for this at first. Signum sent.
All right. Fate sounded dubious.
"You like showing off." Signum said to her twin, with a hint of scorn; the distaste of a professional for an amateur.
"It was familiar, though?"
"A little. You staged it well but I suppose the proper clothing and hair colors was a bit much to ask." Signum gestured with the tip of her sword. "And I came out cleaner. Staging the cuts perfectly was too big a temptation for you, you had to get closer. Arterial spray." It was true. Her twin was practically bathing in red. Signum did not shy from getting a little blood on her, though her current job description never called for it. Rather, blood was a nuisance. It got on fingers, under feet, and in eyes, made grip and footing and vision less sure. Getting lots of blood on yourself was an unnecessary complication.
"But it was appreciated."
Signum raised an eyebrow, and casually blocked a slash at her head. "Why should it be?"
"A room, a crowd. Your fingers itch for your sword, because you know it would be so easy to kill them all, and you want to." A smile. "You know you feel it."
It was becoming rapidly clear to Signum that this wasn't a simple copy of her. That wasn't a thought she'd ever actually held, even in the service of the most depraved of masters and mistresses. She was incapable of this kind of sociopathic behavior, literally unable to go insane because that would have interfered with her ability to protect her master or mistress. If it was a copy, something had gone terribly wrong with it. "No. They do not."
But even if it was a damaged copy, it still knew her mannerisms. It still knew she was telling the truth. "You're…" Other-Signum extended an accusing finger. "You're one of them. The sheep. I don't believe this."
"The sheep," Signum said mildly, "often have horns." Fate appeared behind Other-Signum. Having learned that this group of Wolkenritter did not die permanently had opened up a lot of new options for Fate. All the pointless deaths ensured she took them. One such option happened to be going for nominally lethal Zamber attacks.
"Sheep?" Fate demanded, pulling Bardiche back.
"Generally viewed as cute, harmless, and fluffy. In fact they are stubborn and surprisingly violent animals." Signum offered the faintest of grins. "Describes you well, Testarossa." Fate was unsure if she should be offended, and if she should be offended, which part should offend her.
Signum, Nanoha needs help. Hayate.
Understood. She gestured for Fate to follow her and headed for Nanoha.
But by the time they got there, Nanoha had solved her own problem taking down a Shamal clone quickly and painlessly, unconcious and alive…only to see it evaporate into thin air two minutes later. And that was the last of this batch.
"Shedir has a second group on the edge of town." Hayate said.
"A second group?" Nanoha didn't immeditately grasp the implication.
"They're coming back here. That means their master is here, their Book is here. We can end this." Signum replied, ending with a fierce glee that had Fate edging away from her again.
It was a heady vision, but it died a quick death as Signum counted the enemies that rose to meet them. That death was not clean or painless however.
"Ten. Two groups of five." Caro said softly.
"I'm not seeing double here am I?" Yuuno said softly.
"Oh no." Fate whispered.
Signum gripped Levantine tighter. This was going to be a long day.
After all, she had to kill two of herself now.
Admiral Mizetto was not a woman given to profanity, but if there was a time to start it seemed like now. "Bring us down to engage," she told the captain of K-class battleship Adriane. Two Reinforces was enough that a starship could not simply sit and shrug it all off; they would have to take turns to let their wards re-radiate what they had absorbed.
"Signal to Headquarters. Situation critical."
"Ships dropping out of the Dimensional Sea!" Admiral Mizetto closed her eyes in response to the sensor officer's warning. Not again.
"Adriane, this is Uhlan. We have Alioth and Diphda with us. We picked up your signal and diverted. May we crash the party?" The Bureau had started sending out its patrols in groups after NAW #257.
Three cruisers with patrol loadouts. Thirty-six Navy combat mages each, over a hundred flight mages total. This problem might be manageable after all.
In the end, swarming wasn't totally necessary. The Bureau had long noted that the duplicate Wolkenritter were not as good as the real ones. Against most people, that didn't matter; against mages such as Nanoha and Fate, it did. Fate managed to take down a Signum copy entirely on her own, and Signum dealt with the other. Nanoha couldn't manage that sort of thing, primarily because paired off against two of them it didn't work well, but with Vita's help managed to deal with a Shamal while the Navy mobbed the both of the Vitas to death. Zafira took on and defeated both his counterparts, the second with some help from the Navy.
"This is out of hand." Nanoha said. "Two groups now? We have enough trouble with one." Things must be bad if she was talking to Admiral Mizetto again, Fate thought.
"I think we could have handled them." Hayate replied. "We almost did. It would have been slower, messier, but we could have done it."
"We do have new information. We know how they got there because they happened to teleport in directly underneath the Shedir." Admiral Mizetto sighed. "The teleport point is outside Bureau-surveyed space. It would take three months to reach it by starship. Given the schedule the attacks seem to run on, and their escalating strength, that's too long to pull you off the line. We could assemble all the Combat Cyborgs the Bureau has, throw them at the teleport site, and pray."
"Prayer is not a plan." Fate said. It was an amorphism from her mother, the woman that if pressed she would identify as her real mother, Lindy Harlaown.
Admiral Mizetto nodded. "Unfortunately true. Plans are being made, but at the moment there is nothing to be done."
Meanwhile, halfway across Headquarters, two others were having a very different conversation.
"She seems to like you Commander." Chrono said, amused.
"Sir, I feel like I'm being sexually harassed." Drei liked to spend her time tucked into Samuel's side as if she belonged there. From Samuel's expression it was obvious he had a strong difference of opinion on that. "Any chance this could go to someone else?"
Chrono's eyes sparkled with amusement. "You want off the station."
"I am a Mage Team leader, sir. We're strike troops. Protective detail is an Air Force mission, we're not trained for it…and it smells like garrison duty. You know how that goes down with strike people, sir." It was an old problem. Garrison duty is destructive to the morale and discipline of troops not trained for it or effectively isolated. In the old days, the very old days sometime before even the twilight of the Belkan Empire, only commanders had worried. But eventually the knowledge spread down through the ranks and now everyone worried, and that worry was more of a problem then the original issue.
"I do have a mission, Commander. But it involves working with some unusual people under some unusual circumstances." Chrono tapped some keys. "Did you know anyone who was personally involved in the JS Incident?"
"You know the answer to that sir." Samuel was born into the Fleet, both his parents Navy mages still on active duty, and his sister had graduated to join a Mage Team a couple of weeks before the Incident. "The Navy didn't play a part, except in the endgame."
"I know, Commander, but I'm required to ask. It seems Jail's last few Combat Cyborgs who remained unreconstructed want him thrown back in prison. Obviously we can't let them go about it unsupervised." Chrono tapped his desk. "Do you think your Team can work with them?"
Samuel considered a moment. "Probably, sir. I can control my people though. There's still if they can control themselves."