Nanoha clung to Vesta, almost riding her as they moved down the corridor past endless carvings and recessed alcoves. She didn't react to the explosions from below, or Vesta's attempts at cheerful, distracting chatter. She didn't cry, either. All her tears had dried. She just laid her cheek on the long, silky fur that stuck up slightly in a ruff around Vesta's neck.

'… and I was chasing it, but it kept going away from me, the tricksy little thing. So I tried changing direction, and that made me even more dizzy, and I bumped into one of the robots and since I was only kitten-sized it hurt…'

The prattling was comfortable background noise, a sound to reassure her that the world was still there as she thought. She could barely feel herself moving as Vesta carried her along. The sleek muscles along the tigress's back rippled as she paced along, a nine-year old girl draped over her back with a haunted expression of inner turmoil on her face.

She had hurt people. Well, technically the pseudo-summon had… but no, she had summoned it. Even if she hadn't really known what she was doing – especially that, in fact. If anything, the fact that she'd been messing with something she hadn't understood properly just made it worse. She should have made sure she knew what it did before altering things, instead of working out most of it and then hoping for the best.

Precia wouldn't have made a mistake like that. She knew about the Jewel Seeds, she had done tests and experiments and… and stuff like that. It was something she needed to emulate. Next time, Nanoha vowed, she would make sure she knew exactly what she was doing before she started messing with ancient technology or spells she didn't understand.

'… only you're all not-moving and lying-on-me and staring-at-stuff so maybe you're hurt? Lemme see… there were some tests that Arf-senpai ran me through to check I was made properly, so… um… hmm. Ah, yeah! Can you tell me how many fingers… wait, no. Um. How many ears do I have? No? Okay, can you see in colour? Do you remember how to speak? Come on mistress, talk to me! Okay… can you change shapes... well no, if you could, it'd be very scary… um… I don't remember the others very well… can you add three and twenty two? Or…'

But regardless of what she was going to do in the future, this time she had hurt people. That shot had ripped the side off the ship, and she had seen the people get pulled out by the decompression. Though… they had been teleported out, and they were at least still moving, so… maybe they were okay? Or at least not going to die. Barrier Jackets allowed you to survive in space, Nanoha knew – she had asked about it when she'd found out where the Garden was. And if she was attacking some place like this, she'd definitely make everyone wear Barrier Jackets. So… she probably hadn't actually killed anyone.

And she had shot the construct! That was something! It didn't outweigh that she'd activated it in the first place, but as soon as she'd realised what it was doing, she'd moved to stop it! And it was probably only because of her that it hadn't hit the ship dead-on and killed everybody. Saving people when you'd put them in danger in the first place probably didn't count as much, but it had to cancel out some of the blame, didn't it?

'… dunno whether you've noticed, but the explosions are really getting kind of loud, so if you wanted to wake up now it would be a really good time to do it, and then we could go and find Fate and Arf-senpai and go back to where Linith-oneesama is…'

So. She had messed up, that was certain. But probably not as badly as she'd thought. And while she still bore some of the blame, so did the TSAB – they were the ones who had come here to attack them, who had shot at the Garden and who wanted to kill Alicia!

So it was… both of their faults. Everyone's fault and nobody's fault. Which was hard to wrap her head around, that people could do bad things to each other without anyone being to blame. But life wasn't fair always – she'd known that since her father got hurt. You just had to put up with it, and try to make it better yourself however you could.

'… gotta say I'm really getting kinda sorta worried about you, cause you shot that thingy and now you're all lying there and maybe you sort of cooked your brains a bit when you shot it and if you did then please please please get better because even though I'll stay with you and look after you forever no matter what I'd really hate it if you were all comatose and… oh, but don't think you get rides like this all the time! This is a one-time only deal, okay? I love you and all, but letting you ride me places would be like work, and that's just eww…'

And that meant that she should be doing something to fix the situation, not lying here! She had messed up, so now she needed to make things right. And, she realised as she belatedly processed what Vesta was saying, she needed to reassure her familiar that she wasn't in a coma. Her arms were already draped around the tigress's neck, so she tightened them in a quick hug.

"Sorry Vesta," she whispered. "I'm okay, really. I just had to… think about things, before I could... um… do anything else. It was important."

Vesta huffed indignantly. 'Well it must have been a pretty hard thinky thing! I thought you were unconscious or something! For whole minutes! Next time you should tell me before you go into a thinky trance, so I can protect you better! I mean, what if…'

[Protection,]

'… eh?'

A pink dome surrounded them as Raising Heart's auto-defences engaged, tinting the corridor in rose light. A split-second later, a glowing sword-blade crashed into it point first, sending sparks flying in all directions as it skittered off the magical barrier.

'Ahhh! Stupid machine!' Vesta yelled, jumping away from the silent, intent figure that had attacked them. 'Aren't these things meant to be on our side? No fair! Switching sides and attacking people is cheating when you don't give a warning first!'

"No… Vesta, look!"

Nanoha pointed, and Vesta followed her gaze to the eye-slits of the mecha that were massing together in a group, swords drawn. They glowed a familar deep indigo-violet colour. The same unearthly radiance trickled through the black material of the automaton's under-layer, visible at its joints and where the brassy armour didn't cover. It lit symbols carved into the smooth material and pooled in similar glyphs that ran down the length of the sword it carried.

'… I'm fairly sure evil glowiness is bad, mistress..'

Vesta didn't waste any more time quipping, though. Feeling Nanoha shift to a get a more stable seat on her back, she sprung away as four of the machines darted forward again. Their stabbing blades barely nicked the edge of the barrier as it moved with them, and Vesta crouched slightly, baring her teeth at them as her tail lashed from side to side. A low, rumbling growl built in her throat as she eyed her opponents and took stock of the situation.

They were spreading out as much as they could in the narrow corridor, trying to flank her. On her back, Nanoha had pulled up her legs and buried her hands in the long fur of her ruff, riding her as if she were a very small horse.

The ten-centimetre claws and fangs seemed to be deterring the automata for the moment, but they were edging closer. The ones on the side of the corridor were moving a little faster than those in the middle, who were obviously trying to keep her attention. She could see what was going to happen. In a handful of seconds, the ones on the edges would rush past her and form up behind her, boxing her in. Nanoha was maintaining the barrier, but the subtle ebb and flow of magic clued Vesta in. She was picking her targets, preparing shooting spells. Probably planning to fire just as they charged. It would happen in only a second…

So Vesta acted sooner.

Slamming both front paws down on the ground hard, she opened her jaws wide and roared. The sound echoed startlingly well in the smooth stone-metal surfaces of the corridor, creating a cacophony of terrifying noise. She accompanied it with the brightest flash of light she could create, a blinding burst of red light aimed for their optical sensors.

The eyes of the automata were adjusted to see in the low-light conditions, and pick up on the faint sounds of movement in the maze of tunnels. Without the surge protectors that kept Nanoha's sight and hearing safe from the attack, and with their senses tuned for acute sensitivity, they were blinded and deafened by the thundering roar and the brilliant light that Vesta unleashed upon them.

The front row reacted instantly, spinning into a stabbing, swirling series of movements designed to keep away any attack that the girl and her familiar tried to launch while they were unable to see or hear. Glowing swordblades sliced through the air, hissing viciously.

And cut nothing.

'You're not part of our objective,' sang Vesta's telepathic voice from somewhere in the distance, 'so we don't have to stay and fight youuuuu!'

Unable to understand the taunt, the automata ceased their useless movements and waited for the last of the saturation to clear from their senses, before moving forward into pursuit.

Four tunnels away and still accelerating, Nanoha was once again pressed flat against Vesta's body, hugging her familiar as much as riding her. Now, though, it had nothing to do with preoccupation, and everything to do with speed . Vesta all but flew down the corridors, bounding in long, loping strides away from the combat drones.

'Mistress!' she complained in annoyed tones, just as Nanoha was about to scold her for throwing a taunt back at their mechanical adversaries. 'Why have all the robots gone evil and started trying to kill us? Did you cause that by setting the control chamber on fire?'

"What?" exclaimed Nanoha, "No! Um. Probably not, anyway. I mean… uh… I don't think so… anyway, they were glowing! Like, Jewel Seed glowing! I think one of the Seeds in the reactor must have activated!" She paused. "And that wasn't my fault either! Uh… I hope."

'…' Vesta seemed remarkably unconvinced by that, but managed a feline shrug as she skidded past left at a fork in the road and just about managed to avoid a sword-swipe from the automata that had been blocking the right-hand path. 'Fine. Still, we gotta not get caught by them. New mission: we need to get away from the evil crazy robot Jewel Seed monster-robots! Especially before they start doing something even weirder!'

"Okay." That was certainly a goal Nanoha could agree with. "Sounds good. But where do we go?"

Vesta hesitated, uncertain. But her question was answered by another source, cutting into their conversation telepathically with an edge of strained panic tinting the normally cheerful voice.

'Fate! Arf! Nanoha! Vesta! Make for the central chamber as fast as you can!' Linith urged them.

'Precia and I are under attack!'

…

Linith worked quickly and precisely, stepping over the shattered pieces of what had only moments ago been her automata guards. She was trying hard not to rush, or get sloppy in her haste. She could feel the ground shaking; hear the approaching explosions as the team of elite mages broke through floor after floor of the Garden far beneath her feet. She had thought her redirections had got them good and lost in the maze of underpassages, but it appeared they had found their way regardless, and now they were taking the direct route to her. Her… and her mistress.

The huge outpouring of magic from the chamber she was guarding probably didn't help. Even in the mana-saturated environment of the Garden, the sheer amount of power going into the culmination of Precia's ritual was as subtle as… well, as Nanoha, though Linith felt a little guilty about making that mental comparison.

Of course, the team smashing though the floors she'd spent some considerable time trying to make homey were far from quiet themselves. But while she had called Fate, Nanoha and their familiars back to help; it would be some time before they arrived. She would have to hold the team here for as long as she could.

She touched the wall, and another tan casting array blossomed on it, the squares within the Midchildan circle rotating for a second before stabilising. The walls were covered with them by now, ranging from the size of a spread hand to almost a metre across. She glanced around, choosing the next spot half at random and half to ensure proper coverage of the hallway. They were going in a straight line, so it wasn't exactly hard to tell where they were going to come through, but there was still a little uncertainty. And she did not want to waste this opportunity.

A crashing sound heralded their approach. They were close, now. Probably only a few floors away, and progressing in rapid bursts of speed that tore through multiple floors at a time. Reaching up, she made an educated guess as to where they would come through, and poured power into one last spell.

This circle was so wide as to brush the edges of the corridor. She held on just long enough to let it stabilise, and then leapt back. Far, far back. And waited, her face washed in the light of her magic.

She didn't have to wait long. An explosion thundered below her, and the floor – the only part of the corridor unmarked by sigils – exploded violently upwards. Chunks of rubble battered off the ceiling and Linith tensed, but they merely rained back down again and scattered off a navy blue barrier. She waited just long enough to confirm that all three figures she expected were inside the glowing bubble.

Her face utterly composed, Linith triggered the array.

And every spell in the corridor detonated at once.

Some people might have stopped there, as the dust of rubble and debris filled the air and swirled down towards them. But Linith knew what she faced. She moved her hands again, and the circle on the ceiling flared. The others had all been one-shot mines, but this one was more. Tan light crackled, and lightning poured down from above, filling the smoky air

Yes, her mistress had taught her well. Created her well.

And still Linith did not stop. She motioned, and a dozen circles spread out in front of her, pointing towards the billowing dust and smoke. A ripple passed through them, and they began to fire, pouring bolt after bolt of tan light into the smoke. She couldn't see her targets, but neither could they see her, and if they aimed for where the shots were coming from they would hit nothing. Shooting spell after shooting spell lanced into the dust as she moved on a circling path, never staying in one place long enough for them to retaliate or return fire.

Except… they weren't.

Not that this was a bad thing in principle. But Linith knew what she faced. She didn't believe for a second that the explosion had succeeded in putting them down, and if an S-rank opponent wasn't retaliating when under attack, if an S-rank opponent wasn't acting as expected…

… well, it probably wasn't the best idea to give them a chance to put their plan into effect.

'Photon Barret,' she mouthed unconsciously, and cast into the cloud. It started as a wave of tan light, but broke apart into motes even as it crashed forwards. Sweeping the lingering dust in the air aside, the avalanche of particles barrelled on until they struck something.

Something, in this case, was a shield. And the avalanche reacted, closing in around it like a fist. Each mote was tiny in and of itself, an impact that any shield spell could have shrugged off. But as each mote struck, it drew the rest in, pulling the entire construct in to concentrate its full force and fury on the protective dome. Tens of thousands of impacts hammering it proved too much for the navy blue shield, and it broke.

And from below it, in the gaping hole in the floor that they had come through, something blurred towards her.

Linith cursed even as she shifted into her war form. It had been a trick! They had dropped down with the explosion – perhaps they had never risen above the surface at all. She lunged at the blurred shape, but instead of retaliating, it jerked to the right, even as another flashed by on her left. That one she managed to land a blow on, whirling round and raking her claws down something hard and many-layered. But the blow didn't penetrate, and the mage kept going. Ignoring her. Heading for Precia.

Snarling, she bounded after it, preparing a bind that would slow the two fast-moving mages. And then dived to the side, even as something came down on where she had been a second ago, slamming two metre-long rods into the floor hard enough to splinter it. The lithe, agile shape resolved itself into a woman a little shorter than her, with grey hair and a black uniform. The cat ears and tail marked her as another familiar – a cat like Linith herself. She pushed off from where she had landed, flipping over in midair to land between Linith and her fast-receding companions.

"Hi," she grinned. "I'm Lotte. And sorry, but you're staying here."

A flick of her wrist, and the rods she held began to glow with a deep blue light. She twirled them once, and then settled into a relaxed stance, a faintly smug smile on her face.

In her War Form, Linith probably outmassed the girl by three or four times. And with her mistress in danger, she was not in the mood for games. She snarled, unsheathed her claws, and lunged.

And with her batons humming through the air and a wild grin on her face, Lotte leapt forward to meet her.

…

A barrage of red bullets and purple needles punched through brass armour, and the man-sized golem locked up, frozen in place. The four woefully underarmed and undertrained members of the back-up team crouched behind the green wall of magic Mei was maintaining with gritted teeth, Rizu clutching her hand. In her other hand her staff was adding a few shots to the dedicated shooting mages' fire. Blue-violet light radiated through the carvings in the walls, setting off mana exposure alarms in their Barrier Jackets.

"Just hold it for a few more..." Tiida grated, crouched behind the chest-high barrier as he focused the fire from his two pistols at the larger ape-like golem. Something detonated in one of its legs and it lurched; Heidi was more than willing to encourage this as a larger barb hit it in the weakened spot and sent it sprawling.

"My Device is running hot," she warned, as the nozzles by its staff-head vented gas. A tendril of magic in an ugly pink-blue flickered out and lashed against the impromptu barrier-wall. Mei winced at the force, her arm buckling as the extended mode of her Device took the blow, but she held it even as the tendril scraped and clawed at the smooth surface.

[Scatter Shot,] Rizu's device declared, and a cluster of small green-blue bullets hit the attacking appendage, severing it. Fire from the two shooting mages took the prone source of the tendril down, its explosion sending shrapnel scything out to bounce off walls, armour, jackets and barriers alike.

'Team Reserve Three!' a voice crackled over interference-heavy telepathy, 'If you can hear this, get moving! We have a secure teleport lock on a location near you, but it's unstable! If you miss this, you might have to try to get out of the Garden to get a lock – the entire place is breaking apart and some areas are falling into i-space!'

"Move!" Tiida ordered. "To the next fallback point! We're nearly there for pick-up!"

Rizu let go of her slightly frazzled-looking half-sister, and gripped her staff in both hands. The shield-wall folded back into Mei's shield, and she rose from her crouch in a practiced movement to slash her sword in a diagonal cut. A green line of force scythed out from her blade to cut one of the small unarmed drones in half, and the china-faced doll with Jewel Seed-coloured eyes fell and shattered. The team already suspected that those ones were not combat drones, but the... the whatever-was-happening – probably a Jewel Seed – didn't seem to care.

Mei led the way, her melee weapons at the ready, while the two staff-armed mages merely lowered their Devices and ran for it. Tiida flew slightly behind them, facing backwards and firing to cover their retreat. The four of them ran for their lives, following that desperate hope of the floating navigational icon.

And hence when the floor fell away and the ceiling followed it downwards, it came as an unwelcome surprise. Tossed around like ragdolls, even the flight-capable mage among them could do little more than hold onto a wall and try to match the movement.

'The corridor is moving!' Mei mentally broadcast, somewhat unnecessarily.

Heidi's yell of rage – or possibly pain – was inarticulate, yet neatly managed to summarise the team's consensus.

Eventually, movement stopped. The four of them were left sprawled over a vast mural which burned with cold blue-white manalight. The nature of the image was discovered by Heidi, who much to her displeasure had to pick herself up off a life-sized image of Nanoha Takamachi done in the Alhazredian style, which was radiating dangerous levels of mana.

"Injuries?" Rizu managed, scrambling away from the leaking systems. She massaged her right arm which had taken the brunt of her impacts, and shone a light over the corridor. Shadows danced over the walls, alcoves cast into darkness as her light skipped over them. "Ow. Ow. I'm... I'm just bruised. But you?"

Their red-haired lieutenant winced as he felt at his left eye. "I think I managed to hit myself in the face with my gun and then hit a wall," he said. "Or something. My face barriers didn't seem to hold up and... oww."

Heidi nodded. "You're going to have a royal black eye there tonight, sir, with luck. And I say 'with luck', because there's nothing on comms now – nothing from the ships. Kaisers only know what just happened there."

"I'll s-see to it," Rizu said, reaching out with a green-glowing hand. "You need b-both eyes working. And Mei seems to be fine," she added, because the green-silver haired girl was already on her feet, eyes and a single mana-scout scanning the area.

"Nothing to report," she said. "The golems in our section did even worse than us – lack of jackets, I think. And none of them were the big ape ones, or any of those even larger ones we just ran from. So... yeah. My scout's checked out the place that was meant to be the rally point – nothing there. Inertials are screwed, though, so I don't know where we are. Jacket went into survival mode."

"We'll just have to move, try to pick up a signal from... from any friendly at all," Tiida said, bringing out both weapons again. "Or... well, at the moment, I'd even welcome the 97er or even Testarossa. I don't think they meant for the golems to go like that – they were all non-lethal before. Also, their eyes weren't glowing like Jewel Seeds. And…"

He was interrupted by a series of ear-popping clunks and the noise of tearing metal. Then came a wave of uncomfortable pressure, and a chest-crushing tightness of breath. Eyes ached in their sockets and gasps of air – or something like it – were forced from protesting lungs.

[Adjusting for shift in atmospheric composition,] four Devices chorused in unison, and a barely-there corona of magic flared to life for a moment.

"Ah… fire suppression system, I think," Heidi coughed. Her voice was momentarily shifted deeper from the denser atmosphere, before the interface fields of her barrier jacket adjusted to compensate. "Yes," she added, an icon floating in front of her left eye. "It's a see-oh-two slash argon mix. Oh-two levels are down to eight per cent, and falling fast. Yes, it's almost certainly fire suppression, then. If this was some kind of defence system, they wouldn't be using those gasses. They'd be using something more lethal," she said darkly.

Tiida pursed his lips. "Keep away from any of those i-space rifts, whatever the cost," he ordered. "If something interferes with your jacket…"

"… w-we'd be unconscious in a few breaths," Rizu said weakly, face paling to the colour of milky coffee. "The oxygen'll be coming out of the blood be-because of the c-concentration gradient, and… and… and you'd just black out. It's only our air-recycling keeping us alive."

The lieutenant winced. "Okay, that's even worse than I thought," he admitted. "When we get out of this – and we are going to get out of this, all of us – I'll try to kick up a fuss about how we need better life support jackets even if we're not specialist space-ops." His eyes were serious as he added, "Everyone. Prep a filter-exchange spell on your Devices, and hit it if anyone loses their Jacket because of these things. We shouldn't lose anyone from a survivable blow just because of this air."

"That's not the only thing," Mei said, her eyes constantly flicking around. Unlike her teammates, she was not breathing hard, and there was no edge of panic in her demeanour. "If the fire suppression systems are on… does that mean there's a fire?"

"We'll have to risk it," Tiida decided, after a moment's thought. "We can't head back, and… Kaisers protect that the place is getting damaged enough that it can't reconfigure as much. Rizu, it's your turn to try a distress pulse."

"Still just noise and that damn incomprehensible chatter on all bands," Heidi reminded him, not turning to face him as she covered the corridor behind them. "It's more likely to just bring them down on us."

"I know!" the man snapped, glaring back at the taller woman. "I know," he repeated, more calmly, "but we need to try."

The four-note telepathic beacon echoed out. There was no pulse in return, not even the slightest shift in the alien babble which flooded the telepathic communications bands. So, ants in a crumbling house, the team continued their too-slow advance. Despite every nerve in their bodies telling them to run, Tiida insisted on them maintaining proper covered advances. All they had to do was get into space, and they could be picked up even if a teleport beacon couldn't cut through the noise. It would do them no good to run into a formation of those Jewel Seed-afflicted golems because they were too careless.

It was Rizu, walking forwards with her hands pressed together as she remotely controlled a scout spell, who called them to a stop. "There's something up ahead," she said. They were talking, simply because even the trickle of power needed for telepathy might be needed for something else. "A chamber, or something. Light from it… m-maybe fire, maybe red-orange magic glow. I can't see any fire."

Tiida screwed his eyes shut to think. "Inertials are still no good," he said, speaking more to himself than anyone else. "A chamber… it's large?" He nodded, a motion which turned into an uneasy lurch as gravity ceased to provide a steady pull. "Whoa!" He threw an arm out, catching Heidi's shoulder and pushing her gently into the wall, where she found a handhold. Grabbing one to stabilise himself, he checked around to make sure that the others had done likewise, and motioned to Rizu to continue.

"Uh… um… yes," Rizu confirmed, holding onto a door mantel with a white-knuckled grip. "A-at least fifty metres wide, and… and I think it's taller than it is wide. I c-can't see too much of it."

Tiida paused. He had three-dimensional combat training as a fully trained air mage, unlike his subordinates. "Lock onto this plane," he said, "because if gravity comes back, it'll probably be in the same orientation. We'll bound two-by-two forwards to that broken spar, and then Heidi and Rizu as Team Two will be on rearguard, while Mei… we'll see what's in the chamber."

…

The view from the end of the corridor was breathtaking in its own way. It opened out into a colossal cylinder, cabling and strange structures jutting out from the walls. In one direction, it was almost pitch black, lit only by blinding arcs of electricity and raw mana which forced their Barrier Jackets to darken to avoid burning out the retinas of their wearers. The other end still had red lights all along the heavily dented walls. And everywhere in the tube was free-floating debris, drifting the slow dance of orbital mechanics. Fluctuations of local gravity led to currents and shifts, to the extent that Tiida could have sworn that the place was underwater rather than in the depths of space.

Eyes wide, he watched as a delicately engraved filigree of silver drifted past, smeared in oils that had it gleaming iridescent in the light. He switched to thermal vision, and exhaled as he saw it was almost red-hot; that it was only the atmospheric replacement which was keeping it from igniting the cloud of oil droplets around it.

"This is no chamber," Mei breathed. "Ti… sir! This is either a hangar for entire vessels, or possibly the firing chamber of a planet-killing superweapon! Could be either given what this place is like!"

Lieutenant Lanster shot a dirty glare at his subordinate. She was technically correct there, but she didn't need to sound so enthusiastic as she bounded between walls, ceiling and floor – and did a remarkably good impersonation of a fully-trained ground-assault mage three ranks her superior. "Either way, it should lead to the outside," he said. "And since the weapons aren't firing any more…"

'Unless the way this place has been shifting sealed it off,' Heidi interjected acerbically, 'or possibly our side managed to fuse the end shut. Or we get mashed to a pulp by the debris. Or the red-hot oil I can see on Mei's link.'

"If we see a green glow, we should probably run," Mei said helpfully.

"We'll try it," Tiida ordered. "We're going to get out of this. All of us; I'm not going to have to explain to your parents that I let you get killed under my watch. Team Two, move up; then I'm going to try another pulse. We'll head away from the mana arcs; stick to the walls even if you can fly in zero-gee. Take it slow and steady at first, until we're used to it."

The responses from his team were more enthusiastic, more willing that he could ever have possibly hoped for. Kaisers, what a mess; that they'd got snarled up in this because of sheer chance. He was proud of them all, though. And this had to be the end of it; once they were back on the ships they would – all of them – be safe.

The red-haired man ran his fingers through his hair, feeling the plastic-like feel of the unseen barriers over it – the barriers which were the only thing keeping them alive. His left eye was aching despite the healing it had, but at least it was not swollen. "Well done," he said simply. "All three of you. You're... you're doing a wonderful job keeping it together. We shouldn't be here, and... and you saw how I tried to keep you off the mission but..."

"Yes, yes," Mei said flatly. "If you don't mind, sir, can we just move? And get out of here before this place explodes. Or maybe implodes. Something-plodes, at least."

Heidi seemed about to respond to that, but was interrupted by a groan from above them. One of the huge, hulking wrecks attached to the wall of the shaft had come loose from its moorings, and was drifting slowly out into the open. There was a huge gash down one side, with wires and pipes spilling out of it like strands of hair underwater.

"Sir…" cautioned Heidi, her train of thought snapped back onto their current situation. She was already consulting her AR display. "We can't stay here, not if the shaft is unstable. We need to move."

As if to put the lie to her words, a scream rang out from the broken wreck, high-pitched and terrified. Four pairs of eyes swung up towards it in alarm. "The hell?" demanded Mei. "There are people still here? Besides us, I mean."

"Apparently." Tiida was already reorienting his path towards the ship. "Come on, we…"

"Wait! Sir!" Heidi held up a hand, stalling him and speaking rapidly as she consulted the windows popping up in front of her eyes. "That scream wasn't human. There was way too much high-frequency noise in it, and it goes up in to the ultrasonic. Maybe it's a corrupt recording, maybe it's a machine, but… that's not a living human."

There was an uncomfortable silence for a second as they took this in. Then Tiida snapped back into action in alarm. "Fall back!" he ordered, in quiet but urgent tones. "As fast as possible. Mei, pair with Rizu, help her move. Heidi, with me." He grabbed the offered wrist, pulling her away from the ship even as Mei expertly pushed off towards her half-sister, guiding her quickly and quietly away from what was probably an ambush.

They barely got twenty metres before the ambusher realised its trap had failed. With a screeching roar, it tore its way out of the ship and kicked off in pursuit.

Rizu was the only one still looking back at the time, and so she was the first one to scream as she saw it. It was an appropriate reaction. The automaton was huge, one of the larger models they had fled from earlier. At least twice as tall as Heidi, it resembled a great ape more than a human, with arms thicker than Mei's torso and a torso that looked like it could double as a car bonnet. In one hand, it held a huge length of torn metal wrenched from the wreck, and it moved with frightening speed and agility as it angled towards drifting pieces of debris to kick off in its bid to catch up to them.

"Sir! It's gaining!" Heidi warned, rather more loudly than was strictly necessary. Tiida acted instantly, spinning them once to build momentum before letting go of her arm. They shot off in different directions, and he continued his turn until he was flying backwards. Drawing both pistols, he began firing as fast as he could, sending a stream of bullets in the head of the monstrous form in an attempt to slow it down and draw its attention.

It worked. With an angry screech that was modulated far too high for such a huge, hulking form, the ape-thing launched itself after him, the impromptu club raised to swat him out of the air. Heidi yelled, peppering its back with purple barbs, but to no avail. The jagged club swung…

… and was torn from its hand by a beam of pink light that sent it flying off to crash into the wall. Devoid of its weapon, the robot's swing sent it into an uncontrolled spin that left it easy prey for another beam, thicker and brighter, to smash into its chest-plate and hurl it back towards the ship.

Heart pounding from the near miss, Tiida turned to look at his timely saviour.

It was the 97er girl and her familiar. They looked like they had run into some trouble – there were scorch marks marring the white fabric of the girl's Barrier Jacket and the familiar had open claw marks all down one flank. But none of that mattered, because at that moment, an AA-rank mage was exactly what Tiida wanted to see, regardless of her allegiances.

"We heard screaming," she was saying to him, "are you- oh!" Recognition dawned as Tiida remembered her name – Takamachi, that was it. "It's you. Um." A brief look of uncertainty spread across her face. "Uh… hi?"

A furious screech rang out from the direction of the wrecked ship. Tiida glanced towards it and winced at the sight of the ape-construct ripping its way free from the tangle of metal it had been sent into. It looked, if anything, even more monstrous than it had when it was charging him. Jewel Seed light flared from its eyes, and its armour rippled and reconfigured as cannons the length of his forearm slid out from its shoulders.

Tiida turned to the young girl beside him, who was looking at the thing with an expression that mirrored his own feelings. "Please shoot it, not us?" he asked desperately.

Wide-eyed, Nanoha nodded. The ape-construct shrilled and charged, leaping onto the wall and galloping up it with startling speed, the massive arms swinging back and forth from handhold to handhold.

Then its shoulder cannons swivelled towards them, and began to chatter, sending the beleaguered mages scattering like startled birds.

…

Elsewhere in the Garden, another confrontation was taking place at a crossroads in the Garden's underbelly. Two dark-clad figures flitted between green and orange shields, firing at the stubby barrels on the walls and ceiling that spat hissing jets of mana at them. Blue blades raked one of the walls, while electric spheres fried the circuitry of those on the other.

The last offending component of the local defence system was broken off the ceiling by an orange ball that sent it clattering down the corridor, and the two groups reformed. Fate and Chrono watched one another warily, polearms ready to leap back into combat at a moment's notice. But in light of the circumstances, they were willing to talk. For now.

"Look," insisted Chrono heatedly, continuing a conversation that had been interrupted by the sentry guns sliding out of the walls without missing a beat, "we can't afford to keep fighting each other, not with… whatever is happening now. I think it's a Jewel Seed – the automata are warping, and don't try to pretend that you've still got any control over them. We need to work together, just until the current crisis is over. Like we did with the submarine."

Fate nodded slowly. "Until whatever's happening stops… yes. But no further. Once this stops, or we get to Mother…"

"Whoa, hold on, no," Chrono cut in. "Go towards Precia Testarossa? With the elite team en route to bring her in? Are you crazy? We should make for a rally point."

Fate and Arf exchanged glances. Then the wolf turned back to Chrono. 'Fine,' she shrugged. 'If you think there are any left in all of this,' she jerked her head in an encompassing gesture that took in the distant explosions, the by-now-omnipresent grinding caused by the Garden's internal structure shifting, changing and breaking down and the various threats and hazards roaming loose, 'then go off and try to find them on your own. But I'm going to save my mother.'

Chrono stared at her in frank disbelief for a second. His face twisted in annoyance as he tried to find a hole in her argument, and settled into a scowl as he found none. "Fine," he bit out. "Then I suppose this truce lasts until we get there, and no longer?"

"We won't attack first," offered Fate. "Not unless Mother is in danger. That's the best I can offer right now."

Chrono sighed. "It'll have to do. Though you really should make for a rally point and turn yourself in. Precia is manipulating you. We did the research; Precia's real daughter died, you must have been a cloning project or…"

He stopped there, as Fate lashed out in a slap. She caught herself before it connected, but only barely, and channelled the anger into a glare of such venom that Chrono actually took half a step back. "I know that," she bit out through tight lips, "and I've known for years, since she told me the truth. And how dare you say I'm not her real daughter? She's my mother, Alicia's my sister; just because she didn't give birth to me doesn't make things any different!"

'Fate!' Arf was snarling too, but she visibly reigned herself in. "Fate, he's still right about teaming up. You don't have to listen to him, just work with him to not get killed! We're safer together than alone!"

The words seemed to pull the blonde girl back down from her anger, and she shot Chrono another cold glare. Yuuno's polite cough defused the lingering tension further as he held up a hand to draw their attention.

"Ah… yes. If we are going to group together and move towards the core, I think we need to go… that way." He pointed down one of the tunnels, which looked more or less the same as any of the others. There was no flickering firelight, no lurking shapes or smoke. Somehow, though, the absence of any visual threat was just as intimidating as the real thing, as the distant sounds of thunder, clanging movement and the hiss and crackle of flames and arcing current drifted to them. There was no way to pinpoint the source of the sounds, the tunnels conducted sound like a giant echo chamber. They could be hundreds of metres away, or in the next tunnel over.

"Well," said Chrono, looking warily at Fate and Arf. He didn't trust them entirely, but in a situation like this he didn't have much of a choice. "Let's go, then."

…

Pink and red blended together in a hail so dense it was difficult to see through it, following the fast-moving form that leapt from handhold to handhold on the walls of the shaft. The ape-construct was far too agile, and even the homing shots were failing to land on it. It retaliated with violet-edged disks of mana that curved oddly as they swung towards Nanoha.

[Flash Move,]

A blurred motion took her to the other side of a slowly pinwheeling hunk of metal that looked like it had come off a ship's engine. She lurked behind it for a moment as the ape-drone swiped at Tiida, the shoulder cannons switching seamlessly to targeting him. It seemed to prefer attacking her – maybe because she was the smallest or maybe because it thought she was the biggest threat. Either way, she would need to go back into the fight soon.

Her visor's HUD bleeped at her insistently as it unsuccessfully fought to get a lock on the automaton's fleet movements. Nanoha's mind raced with it, searching for a tactic that would work. Trying to bind it hadn't done any good, and Vesta's war form wasn't fast enough to keep up with it. Her human form could, but that was too frail – even now, she was pursuing it with blood-red claws extended, fading into visibility occasionally as she diverted power from her illusion into steel-rending swipes at its flanks and midsection. Maybe if she layered a bind into a shooting spell?

It was too fast, that was the problem. The only one of them who was able to hit it with any sort of reliability was the very tall blonde girl with her sniping-tuned Device, but her shots were far too weak to do anything more than annoy it. Nanoha's eyes widened. Too weak on their own, maybe, but as long as she could hit it…

'Vesta! Break off and support… um… the blonde girl! Use a mana transfer spell, see if you can help her punch through that thing's armour!'

Vesta leapt away from a crushing fist that cratered the wall where it landed, and waved assent. Pushing off from where she had been dancing around the monster's wild swipes, she soared towards Heidi. Nanoha saw the Indian-looking girl move to boost her friend further, turquoise magic shimmering around her hands.

Nanoha nodded. Good. Now her job was to distract it until those shots could do some damage, and keep it from going after the newly-boosted sniper. She swerved out from behind her temporary cover, announcing her return with a cluster of tightly grouped shots aimed at the right-hand shoulder cannon. If she could get rid of those things, this would become much easier.

The combat drone was still far faster than something of its size should have been, and evaded her attack with uncanny grace. But with their sniper able to do some real damage to it, the fight began to turn in their favour. Nanoha ducked and swerved the suppressing fire and occasional swipes from those terrifying, oversized claws, keeping her distance and returning fire in kind as brightly-glowing purple barbs lanced in to punch holes in the brassy armour of the thing. She cheered as one of the shoulder cannons was snapped in half, and drew back a little, allowing the thing's attention to turn back to Tiida.

"Raising Heart?" she whispered, concentrating hard and pulling up power. If it wanted to try and dodge whatever she threw at it, that was perfectly fine by her. She knew the response to that. Floating quietly upwards and towards the wall, she manoeuvred until she was directly above the acrobatic form bounding from hunks of debris to the wall and back as it tried to rip the red-headed lieutenant apart.

'Back away!' Nanoha sent at him, readying her spell. He looked up and blanched, before pulling away as fast as his flight spell could take him. In all honesty, Nanoha couldn't really blame him. She smiled cheerfully as the ape-drone's head turned this way and that, before it looked up with an electronic trill.

"Hi!" she waved. "Come get me!"

It obliged, vaulting towards her with an eerie wail, violet disks smashing into her reflexively conjured shield like hammer-blows.

[Divine Barret,] spoke Raising Heart.

And Nanoha responded to its attack in kind.

Blazing pink rays shot out from Raising Heart's tip in a hundred zig-zagging lines, flashing through the air in an expanding cone before converging on the charging figure. It tried to throw itself out of the way, but the beams altered course in a swifter motion still, spreading out again to strike it. It was struck once, then twice, then thrice by the rays, brighter motes within them discharging punishing blasts of mana into its form.

Then the rest of the attack came around to hammer at it with brutal, unforgiving light. It was left spinning slowly, intact but damaged, with dents and scorch marks marring the once-pristine armour and shattered nubs where its shoulder cannons had been.

Another bright barb slammed into the inside of the ape's right elbow, the force of the shot spinning it through ninety degrees and snapping it out of its daze. With a loud 'pop', something gave in the joint, and the forearm twitched slightly as it tried to raise it. The squeal of grinding metal came before it got halfway, and the arm refused to rise above shoulder height. It landed against the wall and drove its left hand into the metal, lodging itself there as it surveyed its opponents.

"Hey big guy!" A spinning panel from the wall of the chamber itself caught the automaton in the side of the head with a clang. It turned, hissing, as Mei hurled another chunk of floating debris at it, spinning to gather momentum before releasing it. "Ha!"

This time, it reacted with uncanny speed. Letting go of the wall with its good arm, it caught the hefty metal block and whirled, launching it back at twice the speed it had caught it at. The momentum of the throw pushed the ape-droid itself back as well, at an unexpected angle. It bounced off the wall, skilfully landing feet first and launching itself again.

Taken by surprise, the mages tried to dodge. But too late, and far too slow. The enormous shape caught up to Tiida as he started to pull away, and brought its undamaged arm around in a vicious blow to his midsection. Like a red-headed ragdoll, he was sent tumbling through the empty space of the shaft, red droplets trailing behind him in the absence of gravity.

"Tiida!"

Nanoha wasn't sure who the cry came from. She saw turquoise light gathering around his prone form as his trajectory angled towards one of the tunnels leading off from the shaft, slowing his uncontrolled descent and softening the inevitable landing. Vesta and the girl she was helping were diving towards him too. She couldn't see whether they would get there in time, though, because she was abruptly forced to deal with a bigger problem. A diagonal dodge downwards, and a sweep of those massive arms missed her by so little distance that her hair was ruffled. It shrieked again, furiously trying to grab her comparatively tiny form in a bear hug as she ducked and flew for her life.

Even as she struggled to regain distance, though, it was pushing her back. Towards the tunnel! It was trying to go after the man it had injured! She could still save him! She had to! She started running through binds – at least that was one bonus of being so close. Her heart might leap into her throat with fear for every near miss, but it couldn't dodge her, either.

[Restrict Lock,] chimed Raising Heart, as wheels of light appeared around its wrists and ankles. The ones on its arms shattered almost immediately, though, torn apart by the sheer brute force behind the movements.

"Stop!" she yelled at it in frustration. "Just stop moving! Restrict Lock! Divine Shooter! Stop!"

The binds slowed it. The shooting spells sparked and dented its armour. But it didn't stop, and as the lethal claws came back around for another swing at her, she was forced to back away rapidly. She did not want to find out what a blow that could crater metal would do to her barriers, if she had to rely on them for defence.

The shaft shuddered slightly, and for a moment Nanoha felt something foreign tugging on her. She ignored it at first, as her opponent found another floating foothold and started to leap yet closer to the tunnel where the other mages were gathered around their lieutenant's unmoving form. Pink shots and purple knocked it back again, but even with the injured arm, it didn't seem too slowed. Another shudder started it drifting away again, though, much to its annoyance if the screech it let out was anything to judge by.

'Nanoha!' It was Vesta's voice. 'Keep it away from the tunnel! They said the gravity is coming back on! Be ready when it does!'

"Ha!" Green light pinwheeled by her as the sword-using girl leapt past, aiming straight for the automaton. "We'll do better than that! Come on, big guy, you and me are going for a ride!" She cast a barrier in front of her just as it struck at her, pushing off it to jump over a blow that would have ripped her in half and grabbing its shoulders as she passed overhead. With a grunt of effort, she brought herself squarely down to land on it, legs locked around the thick neck.

"Now let's see how well you like a bit of payback!" she yelled, and began to hammer at its face with her sword, laughing, sending flashes and sparks up from the repeated impacts. Though the droid thrashed and flailed, the injury to its right arm prevented it from raising it high enough to grab her. She shifted away from another blow and stabbed it in one of its optical sensors, extinguishing the Jewel Seed's light there.

'Mei! Get off there, it's dangerous!'

Regardless of her teammate's fears for her safety, she was having quite an effect on the ape-droid. Its mad thrashing as her sword struck its face-plate again and again was driving it back into the middle of the shaft, and it was almost blind from one side. Nanoha's carefully placed shots and the occasional barb of purple were directing it still further from the tunnel, towards a larger mass of floating debris that was festooned with pipes and conduits – and, Nanoha realised, generating quite a lot of sparks from the frayed electrical cables stemming from somewhere in its depths.

The green-haired girl was thrown clear with a horrible cracking sound as the pair slammed into the hulk, even as turquoise magic glimmered around it. Nanoha swooped down to catch her, pulling her away as it became tangled in the mess of wires and piping. The fine mist of oil around it suddenly caught light, burning fiercely and obscuring it from view as another lurch shook the shaft and the invisible hands of gravity tugged briefly on them once more.

The ape-thing screamed as it began to fall, clawing and ripping at the conduits and cables that entangled it. The violent frenzy wrenched several of the pipes from their moorings, a fine misty spray pumping out of the torn ducting.

And with a 'woomph' of force and blistering heat, the area around it went up in a fireball that engulfed the two girls pulling up and away and was felt even through their Barrier Jackets. Even as the indistinct form wreathed in flame screeched and hollered, the gravity came back on in full and the heavy engine pod dropped like a stone, bearing its screaming passenger down into the murky depths of the hangar bay. A crash and an explosion echoed faintly through the darkness as it smashed into other falling objects, fading away into the distance until nothing more could be heard.

…

Liquid metal bubbled out of shattered containers of adamant glass, pooling on the floor and floating through the air in globular bubbles. Great angular slabs of machinery screeched and piped and clanged behind the grinding, shifting walls that partitioned them. Mist and smoke flooded the corridors, filling some to the very ceiling and rendering visibility all but zero. The Garden had truly become a place of chaos and madness as ancient systems were reactivated by the surge of power from the Jewel Seeds at its heart.

It was strange, Yuuno thought in an abstract daze as he ran through the frenzied tunnels. Once all of this was over, he would be mourning the lost knowledge for months, maybe even years. But here in the moment, the destruction and mayhem had faded almost to a background detail. And that wasn't all that had been cast aside in the face of the clear and present threat.

He looked to his right, where the wolf he had so recently been fighting against loped beside him. Chrono and Fate were ahead of them, glowing silhouettes in the smoke under his Barrier Jacket's infrared filter, clearing the path with electric bullets and blue missiles that cut down or knocked aside anything that tried to impede them. Chrono had a scout spell running ahead of them, to give advance warning of anything too big to get past, but so far they had only been forced to change route twice, to avoid an inferno in the lower levels and something huge in a chamber where the lights had failed. Chrono hadn't been able to make out any details of the thing, but he had opted to avoid it anyway.

' Arf,' Yuuno started, and then paused, unsure of how to continue. Arf tilted her head, one dark blue eye glancing up to look at him, and he searched for a way to continue. After several seconds of thought brought nothing to mind, he gave up and made do with the first thing that came to mind.

'Is Nanoha-' He cut himself off. Happy? Safe? In this? After having to leave her family behind? 'Does she-' Another pause. Have regrets? Hold any grudges against him? He wasn't even sure he wanted to know the answer to the latter, and neither was what he really wanted to know. He struggled to find the words to put around his question.

'How can I help her?' he eventually asked, helplessly. To her credit, Arf didn't immediately give any of the obvious responses, understanding the context of what he was saying. She kept running at that easy lope, matching his pace effortlessly. He was still a little taken aback with how big she was, her head level with his chest even when he was a human. Everything was bigger when he was a ferret, it was only in his human form, so close to her, that he could appreciate the sheer, terrifying scale of a familiar's War Form.

After a few moments of thought, Arf seemed to come to some conclusion. 'She misses her family. More than she lets on, I think. If… if something happens, then if you could promise to go and tell them… tell them what actually happened, everything, so that they knew…'

'Of course.' Yuuno promised. 'Though I hope you don't mind if I hope she can be there explaining it with me.'

The corner of Arf's lip curled up in a wolfen smirk. 'Right now? I can agree with anything that involves us all getting out of this alive, ferret-boy.'

Any further conversation was rendered void, though, as they almost ran into Fate and Chrono from behind. The pair had stopped, and Chrono had his eyes shut and a furrowed brow.

"Is something wrong?" asked Yuuno. If they had to make another diversion…

"I'm not sure. We're about to hit a big chamber, but there's too much smoke in the air from the corridor, and I think something in the chamber is interfering with the scout. I don't think there's anything inside, but I'm not too happy about going in there without advance warning of what we'll find."

'Can we afford not to?' asked Arf. 'I mean, we need to get off this place soon, it's breaking apart.' As if to demonstrate her words, there was a violent lurch as the floor dropped away from them momentarily, before the gravity reasserted itself and they fell back to the ground.

"Urgh!" Chrono came down hard, but got a flight spell up fast enough to mitigate most of the impact. "Okay, okay, I see your point. If the gravity is starting to shut down, the station doesn't have long."

The corridor came to an end in a huge open space where the smoke thinned out a little, though not enough that it wasn't hard to see at ground level. The roof arched up and away in a huge dome that must have been at least a hundred metres across, speckled with points of light like stars in the night sky, which moved and swirled in patterns that occasionally converged to form glyphs before breaking apart again. And in the centre of the observatory, if that was what it was…

'Oh, hell,' Arf groaned. 'What in the name of the Galean kings is that?'

Yuuno had to agree with her sentiment as it rose up off the floor. What it had been before the Jewel Seed had warped it, he had no idea. Now, it resembled something between a snake and a scorpion's tail, a hooded mechanical stinger rising from a wide base in the centre of the room and forming an imposing, predatory silhouette against the smoke and fog. Even as they watched, though, it began to uncurl from its rest position. Lights blinked on along its length, and a row of panels opened near the end like the flared hood of a cobra.

"It must have been shut down – no heat signature," said Chrono quickly. "What kind of reach…" he cut himself off as the turret angled towards them. "Scatter!"

They scattered, just in time for a beam of light the width of Yuuno's fist to erupt from the tip of the jointed mechanical thing and pass through where they had been standing. The ground where it struck flared, and violet flames leapt up from the point of impact, blocking off the tunnel they had come through.

"Testarossa, distract it!" yelled Chrono, "I'll try to shoot it down! Scyra, Arf, try to bind it to…" He cut off again, dancing back from another shot that set a section of the wall alight and snapping out a trio of blades that cut into the joints and intersections of the thing. It had little to no effect on its movements, but it certainly caught its attention. Streak after streak of white-violet light lanced towards the young Enforcer, sparking vivid, unnatural fires where they struck that released clouds of thick, acrid smoke. He coughed, veering away from it as his Barrier Jacket rippled.

[Adjusting for atmospheric shift,] his Device chimed, and he hurled a warning at the others as he kept circling it. 'Stay clear of the smoke! I think it's toxic… whatever it is, it's not good!'

Fate took to the air in a blur of motion, hitting the cobra-thing just under the flared panels that formed its hood with a ring of metal on metal. The light building up on the surface of the hood stuttered and flared out in jets of concentrated mana that scorched the floor and set several parts of the turret itself on fire. It swung towards her and she darted away out of reach, even as more blue bolts rained down on it from Chrono's fast-moving form.

But Yuuno could already see that it was going to take too long. Far, far too long. Fate wasn't going to be able to distract the thing enough, and they didn't have enough time to take it apart the hard way. And as long as that gun was still working, they couldn't chance fleeing for one of the tunnels. There had to be a faster way…

A glimmer of an idea formed. 'Chrono!' he shouted. 'Can you just punch holes in the casing and get binds inside its armour? Anchor it to the ground with something that conducts!'

The other boy didn't respond, but he changed tactics, his shots becoming thinner and more concentrated. He didn't question the request either, trusting that Yuuno had a reason.

'Arf! Can you try to take out that beam cannon?' Yuuno called. He was already casting, equations flashing through his mind and his Device as a circle formed underneath him. Dimly, he noticed Arf bound forwards towards the turret. Slots opened down its back and bolts of violet light shot towards her. Perhaps it was a defence after all? She twisted around them gracefully, and then she leapt, far further than any natural animal could, high into the air.

Fate had seen it coming, and streaked round in a curving turn barely above the floor on the opposite side of the turret to Arf's approach. It followed her with a white beam that sliced through the floor cleanly and trailed white smoke behind it; never quite catching up to the black and gold form it was aiming at. It continued to track her even as she twisted upwards, uncurling to rise to its full height with the cannon on its tip pointed almost straight up after her.

Arf hit it from behind jaws-first, and sank her teeth a full centimetre into the metal with the force of her impact. Bracing her front paws on the metal panels of the hood, her neck muscles bulged as she twisted and wrenched…

The beam cannon, with two torn strips of the cobra-hood still attached to it, landed on the floor with a crash. The scorpion-tail turret reacted violently to the sudden loss, twisting and thrashing. Losing her grip on it, Arf was flung away from it, bouncing off the floor and skidding into a wall. She clawed her way back to her feet as Fate called out for her in shock.

'Arf!'

She arrowed towards her familiar, but was blocked by the thrashing turret and forced to the ground to avoid its wild swings. The panels that had opened to fire at Arf reoriented, and peppered her with lower-calibre fire. Fate swung Bardiche into position and threw up a shield to keep them off her, but the smoke began to build up, and her mono-directional shield did nothing to stop it curling towards her. Yuuno bit his lip. This close to finishing the spell, he couldn't interrupt his casting to go and help her, but with Arf on the other side of the chamber…

And then salvation came in the form of a dark-clad Enforcer. 'Scrya!' Chrono ordered, 'Whatever you're going to do, get ready to do it!'

Blue wires sprang out from him as he gave a shout of effort. They flashed out, intent and purposeful, aiming for the holes that his shots had punched in the turret, small enough that it had ignored them. They wound around the serpentine form, snared panels and threaded through the segmented sections. The thing's movements slowed dramatically as it thrashed and struggled to get loose, but it kept up the assault on Fate. There was a line of fire behind her, preventing her from retreating, and the smoke around her was getting thicker.

'Get clear!' Yuuno shouted. He took a deep breath, centred himself as best he could, and pushed the spell outwards. The turret, intent on freeing itself from the bindings and getting through the circle of blazing gold between it and its target, didn't appear to notice as green casting circles spread across both the floor beneath it and the ceiling above. Even if it had, it probably didn't have the intelligence or the autonomy to wonder what it was for, or why it wasn't centred on Yuuno.

Arf and Chrono, however, were very much aware of them, and backed away as they spread to cover almost the entire chamber. But Fate charged forwards again, taking advantage of its hampered movements to bring Bardiche up and around in a vertical slash that opened the thing's body almost from base to tip. Yuuno's eyes were closed, and his grip on his Device was white-knuckled, leaving him oblivious to her position. Arf mentally jolted against him, alerting him to it.

'Hey. What are you doing? Fate is still right there!'

"What?" His eyes opened, and widened as he saw Fate still well within the area of effect. Calling back as much power from the spell as he could, he gritted his teeth as the remainder, too far gone to suppress, broke loose from his control.

Green lighting exploded from the ground, crackling like a living thing as it lanced upwards. It skittered and arced over the brassy surfaces of the turret, leaving streaks of charred material in its wake and forming eerie coronas of viridian on the sharp points before continuing its journey upwards. That didn't stop it, though the hail of fire abruptly stopped, and several of the panels twitched open and shut in uncontrolled jerks, their shielding damaged by impact or attack.

But while the electricity that crawled over its armour didn't harm the turret, it wasn't meant to. Now the reason for Yuuno's request of Chrono was made clear, as the wires binding it to the ground carried the current from his spell back up into its internal systems. Sparks flew and emerald lightning seared the air as the massive construction spasmed and shook, fried from the inside by the cruel electric current. It jerked upwards, the current forcing it as straight as it could go, and one by one its segments shattered in explosions of metal and crystal shards. Fate was barely visible in the localised storm, suspended in midair with half a dozen bolts crawling over her skin on their way up to the ceiling. Yuuno shut it down as soon as he could, equalising the remaining charges before throwing up a barrier just in case.

He needn't have bothered. Like a felled tree, the machine dropped to the ground in a cacophony of crashing metal and dying circuitry. The acrid tang of overheated metal filled the air as more of the thick, choking white smoke began to wind out of several segments. Flames licked at others from within, from components that had caught fire from the electricity channelled through them. The floor and ceiling were charred black by the miniature thunderstorm, and several chunks of the latter fell, cracked or dislodged by the superheating that had come from repeated bolts of lightning.

The sole standing figure in the middle of the destruction touched down gently, lowered her scythe and turned to Yuuno with a strange expression. After a couple of seconds of silence, and with a slightly suspicious edge, she spoke.

"So," she asked, "just to be sure, you knew that wouldn't hurt me, right?"

A low growl from Arf added a graphical illustration of what would happen if the answer was 'no'.

"… yes," Yuuno said, after a brief pause. It was even true, mostly. He took in her dubious expression and scowled. "Stop looking at me like that! You weren't even meant to be inside its range! And of course I knew! You use electric effects in half of your attacks, and Kaisers know I spent long enough looking at the electrical burns on Nanoha's back from your favoured shooting spells! It wasn't exactly hard to work out that you have a lightning affinity!" And since he'd been right, there was no point in mentioning the very slight possibility that he might have been mistaken. "And your Intelligent Device has an autoguard function anyway, like Nanoha's. And," he added, "I did shunt as much as I could away from you. But I knew for a fact – because I am the expert here – that modern protective barriers are far better than these things could have had."

Fate considered this, and shrugged acquiescence. "Alright. Though… how did you even do that, anyway?"

"Oh, yes." Yuuno rolled his eyes. "Because clearly, no-one else can use electrical spells. Kaisers save us from people who think that just because you don't have an affinity, you can't do it at all."

They glared at each other for a moment. But before the aura of hostility could build up, their attention was violently distracted. An explosion from above them made the entire Garden shake, as if a ship's main gun had gone off inside the structure itself. Another followed it, and the roof of the corridor fractured as cracks spread through it. The quartet exchanged uneasy glances.

'We should get going again,' said Arf, breaking the short silence. 'This way.' She began to lead off, but then paused, her ears pricked and the fur along her back bristling.

Then she howled, leaping across the chamber to all but tackle Fate from the air. The speed of it surprised even the girl herself. An orange shield shimmered into being behind them, and Yuuno threw one up himself.

It was just in time. For a split-second, he was blinded by the light that exploded into existence at the centre of the room. Then his Barrier Jacket's safeguards kicked in properly, reducing the source to something he could see. It was a beam of light, a spell of some kind, finger-thin and yet bearing enough power to punch clean through the stone-metal substance of the Garden as if it were nothing. For a moment he wondered why Arf had tackled Fate out of the way – the beam had come through the roof at an angle, but not that close to where Fate had been.

Then he saw the fur on her back charring, and the wave of superheated air hit him. Even through a shield and his Barrier Jacket, he flinched. The beam itself must have been hot enough to vaporise lead. What in the world could produce an attack of so much concentrated power?

Oh. Of course. He answered his own question almost before he finished asking it, kicking himself for not realising sooner. Even with the anti-flash properties of his Barrier Jacket dimming it, the light was too bright to make out a colour, but he knew what it would be if he could see it.

The beam faded, and Chrono stepped out from behind the pillar he had dived behind. He was breathing hard, and when he spoke, it was in the flat, level tones of someone suppressing a panic attack. "What was that?"

"Mother." Fate's voice was just as devoid of emotion, but the shakiness to it and the tremble to her hands as she checked Arf's back gave her away. "Arf, you're hurt, you shouldn't have…"

'I heal faster than you do, and I'm tougher, too. And we need you more.' Arf cut her off. 'And you're right, that was Precia. We need to get up there, the sooner the better. You can worry about me later, it's just a surface burn.'

Fate nodded reluctantly. "If you're sure. And you're right, we do need to get to Mother." Her lips thinned again, and she glanced upwards. "I just hope she's okay when we get there."

…

Arms locked under the swordswoman's shoulders, Nanoha rose up and over to the tunnel where the rest of the team waited, and set her down gently on the ground.

"… who lit it on fire?" she asked curiously. "It went up like a firework, all at once."

"Uh, that was me." The dark-haired healer raised her hand shyly. "I was trying to distract it… there's still a bit of oxygen in the atmosphere, so I used a medical spell that concentrates it in an area. It's meant for when somebody is having trouble breathing, but I thought it would work to… um… give the oil something to burn with. I'm not sure why it went up in a fireball like that, though."

"It was tearing the piping around it," her green-haired comrade pointed out weakly. "And I think that chunk of metal it got tangled in was part of an engine pod. That stuff that sprayed out? Might have been an accelerant or something." She blinked, turning to Nanoha. "Oh yeah, um… thanks for the assist there. Catching me and all." She winced and gingerly touched her ribcage. "I… uh… think I broke something, though. Or somethings. Oh! Speaking of, is Tiida…"

"He's alive," Heidi reassured her. "Not in good condition, but that blow didn't kill him. He's unconscious, though. Rizu thinks he may be bleeding internally."

"Mei's ribs are badly bruised, too," added the healer, a glowing hand held over her sister's chest. There was no trace of her ordinary stutter. "We need to get out of here. Fast. If we can just get out into the open, the ships can pick us up."

'We passed a way out!' Vesta spoke up eagerly. 'Well, actually more like a weak point in the side of the Garden where your ships were shooting it, but you can get out that way if we open it up a bit. It's just up the shaft a bit, maybe a minute's flight away.'

Heidi raised an eyebrow. "In case you'd forgotten, we're not all A-rankers," she pointed out acerbically. "Some of us still can't fly."

Nanoha blinked. "… really?" she asked. "Huh. I guess you're right, yeah." She hadn't thought of that until now. Not being able to fly was terrible. "That's a shame. Flying is really fun. I hope you learn soon! And… um… until then…" she bit her lip. "I guess I'll carry you," she decided.

"…" said Heidi. "Uh, no offence, but how? You're the only one who can fly, the three of us are ground mages and Tiida's unconscious. And even if you could carry all of us– which I doubt – we couldn't all hold onto you if we tried."

"Oh, I didn't mean carry like that!" Nanoha shook her head. "We can… hmm. Raising Heart? I'll need your help with this, okay?"

[We can do it!] replied the modulated tones of her Device. The mages looked a little unnerved at that, she noticed. Yuuno had mentioned that Raising Heart was advanced, but she hadn't realised what that meant to… well, 'normal' mages.

She swung the staff round with the ease and familiarity of long use, and gestured at the empty space where the corridor ended. Pink light spun itself into a flat plane – a barrier, shimmering and solid. "Hop on!" she invited them cheerfully. Her Flier Fins activated, and she rose a little into the air herself.

The three ground-bound members of the backup team looked at the offered platform with no small amount of trepidation. Even Mei looked uncertain.

"Um," said Rizu. "I'm… not sure that's safe. Mei tried that a few weeks ago, and it didn't work then."

"Huh? No, no, it should hold you all," Nanoha reassured her. "I did all the maths right, and… well, maybe if you weigh a lot more than my guess, but I left a big margin of error in there to be safe." She looked up at Heidi. "You're really, really tall," she added. "Taller than a man, so I guessed and used my dad's weight and then added some more on."

"Okay, okay. How about you bring it over the floor, and we make sure you really can support them all before trying it?" offered Heidi. On the one hand, she was fairly sure that was overestimating herself. On the other hand, this was the nine-year old kid who had successfully escaped from the elite team. Twice. And... she wasn't quite sure how to feel about that comment about her weight, even if it was true.

The disk of pink light moved over into the tunnel, and Heidi stepped up onto it, carefully testing its ability to support her weight before letting her other foot leave the ground. It felt like stepping onto a slightly raised platform, as strong and solid as the floor. Rizu was next, lifting Tiida with her as gently as she could and resting him in the middle of the hovering platform. Mei sat down on the side without hesitation, her legs dangling over the edge.

The barrier-platform didn't so much as wobble. Nanoha smiled happily. "Okay then! I'll hover you up to the way out, and… hmm." She glanced at Tiida. "Maybe find one of those old ships that still has an air-pocket in it for you to go out in? It might be safer, and I can give you a push."

"Thank you for your help," Rizu said softly. "Will you come with us?"

"What? No, I can't!" Nanoha protested. "I'm sorry, but I need to go and help Precia-san. She's being attacked." The platform rose into the air and slid out into the empty space of the hangar, as steady as a rock. "I can only take you as far as the way out, then I have to go help her."

"I didn't mean for us, Takamachi-san," Rizu corrected her. "I meant for you. P-Precia is putting a great many people in d-danger, and you have not yet done anything t-too bad. When we say how you helped us, that should make things even b-better for you." Heidi seemed about to say something, but a subtle and vicious jab to the shin from Mei stopped her. The younger girl glared up at her and shook her head minutely.

'Let Rizu do her thing,' she whispered. 'If anyone can get through to the girl, she can.'

'Are you sure?'

Mei shot her an exasperated look. 'Heidi, she dealt with me. As a kid.'

'… point.'

Turning their attention back to the conversation being voiced, Nanoha was looking uncertain. "I know… I know it could hurt people, yes. That's… been shown to me." Something flickered in her eyes, something guilty and hurt and ashamed. Rizu held out a hand, and Nanoha drifted closer without thinking, allowing the older girl to softly squeeze her free hand.

"But!" Nanoha went on, recovering a little and smiling gratefully at Rizu for the comfort, "we're being really careful not to, and we're doing it for a good cause! And Precia-san can definitely control the Jewel Seeds, so it's for the best overall!"

"Even if it ends in people being killed?" Rizu's tone was sympathetic and her face was calm, but the question cut like a knife, and Nanoha flinched.

"No!" she objected in shock, "No, not at all! It's wrong for us to kill anyone with what we do! Even in self-defence! I mean, it's wrong anyway, but it's... like, double-wrong here! Because if we succeed without killing people, that means we've saved lives on the whole, because Alicia will be better! But even one death means that it's neutral, and then there's the way that that'll make their family unhappy and... and I know how terrible that is!"

Heidi stared at her. This AA-ranked mage who had thrown around her entire team in the past was using logic she would expect to hear from... well, from a child. But then, she was a child, wasn't she? It was disconcerting, to put it mildly. Part of Heidi wanted to grab the girl by the arms and shake some sense into her. But another part – the same part that stopped her from directing her caustic barbs at Rizu – saw the wounded look in the girl's eyes and suppressed the urge.

Whatever naïve innocence had sparked that attitude, it had already been broken. She knew – Heidi could see it – she knew that the world didn't always work like that, the kind of knowledge that came from personal experience. And yet she was trying anyway, determined to prevent a catastrophe by sheer willpower and effort. Heidi shivered. A look like that, the half-hidden hurt and guilt and age, did not belong in the eyes of a nine-year old. Freakish powers, unnatural strength, older than her years and yet still trying to be hopeful… who was this girl?

Her train of thought switched tracks with a nasty lurch as the barrier beneath her feet faltered for a second, becoming unsteady as if it had been replaced by sand or loose soil. She wobbled, grabbing Rizu for balance as it restabilised and glaring at Nanoha.

"Hey!" she snapped. "Watch it! Pay…"

But Nanoha wasn't paying attention to her. She was looking up, her face pale. "Vesta," she whispered in fearful tones. "That wasn't there when we came past, was it?"

Dread flooded through Heidi's veins like ice-water as she followed the younger girl's gaze upwards, to what had scared the little powerhouse so. She had a horrible feeling she already knew the answer, though.

She was right.

The shaft was breaking apart. Above them, stone slid over stone as a huge chunk of the Garden – Kaisers, it must have been at least half the size of one of the picket ships – broke off from the wall, knocked free by some titanic impact. Debris and rubble filled the air as the building-sized slab drifted loose, blocking the shaft off completely as it slammed into the opposite wall hard enough to crush its way into the rooms on the other side.

"No…" Heidi breathed. "Breaking loose… this large, inside the structure?" She closed her eyes in sorrow. "That's it, then. This place has had it. We need to double back to get out, going past that thing is suicide."

"Another way sounds good!" Mei agreed, her eyes wide and her grip tightening on her sword. But Nanoha shook her head.

"There's no time. Can't you feel the magic being thrown around down there?" She motioned downwards, towards the Garden's core. "Precia is in trouble, and I need to get back there as soon as possible. This is the fastest way. The point I was talking about is just under where it broke loose from." She looked at the slab nervously and her voice cracked a little. "A-and I… the rubble and stuff is mostly over o-on that side, right? S-so if we stay over here, we should be okay…"

"Are you crazy?" Heidi shrieked. "Some of those chunks are the size of cars! This place is falling apart, we need to find another way out!"

"It's because this place is falling apart that you need to take the fastest route out!" argued Nanoha. "And it'll be fine as long as we keep away from it. And anyway…"

"We need to go the fast way," said Rizu in a small voice. Heidi turned an incredulous stare on her, which she didn't appear to notice. Her hands were resting on Tiida's chest, glowing with turquoise light. Without looking up from her work, she explained herself. "I want to get Tiida to a medical bay as quickly as possible. He's still bleeding, and I don't know enough to stop it. He's bleeding badly, too. I'm doing what I can, but if we go back down and try to find our way out another way, we might get lost or attacked or…"

She trailed off, and silence fell over the small group. Slowly, hugging the wall as far from the rift as possible, the platform began to rise again. Nanoha hovered closer to it, her Device almost touching the pink plane, and sweat beaded on her brow at the strain of holding it. The distant sounds of thunder and explosions faded away behind the rumble of the slab digging still further into the opposite wall, as if it sucked all the sound in the world into itself and regurgitated them as the sounds of breaking stone and crushing jolts.

"We're nearly there," Nanoha whispered softly. She pointed at a patch of the wall they were drawing close to, barely twenty metres below the point where open shaft became slowly moving ceiling. It was almost devoid of panels, and the rooms beyond were in ruins, with shattered walls and caved-in roofs.

"It's not far to the outside from here, and the walls are already weak," Nanoha explained. "Um. Vesta? Could you want to try and find something they can go out in, and I'll get ready to cut a path for them?"

Shifting into her human form from where she had been curled in Nanoha's hood, the catgirl nodded wordlessly and flew away, arrowing across the wall in the direction of a cluster of lorry-sized shapes anchored to the wall. The torn and broken metal moorings elsewhere on the wall suggested that they were survivors of what had once been a much more substantial fleet. Whether they had been lost to time or to the hungry abyss across the hangar from them was a question nobody could answer.

"Okay," said Nanoha, trying to inject cheer into her voice. "This will be a bit trickier than normal because of… um, that." She nodded backwards, trying not to look at it. "But there's still a lot of ambient mana around because of the Jewel Seeds, and we don't want it at full power anyway. So that sort of works out! And since it's weaker, I can make it more focused!"

The words rang a warning bell in Heidi's mind, and she started to object. "Wait a minute, are you…"

Too late. A casting array of ridiculous size formed around the younger girl, and a barrel of firing rings extended out in front of her to a length that would have been more appropriate to an artillery piece or a ship-mounted cannon. Power gathered around her – first a little, then more and more, gathering in strength and intensity as a sphere of pink mana formed around her. After several seconds of growth, the ruby-red core of the Device flashed with pink script almost lost against the glow of the magical sphere.

[Starlight Buster,] it pealed.

And the sphere erupted.

When Heidi's vision and hearing came back online, the wall of the hangar was gone. The edges were still glowing white-hot and giving off little pinging noises as they cooled. A very roughly cylinder-shaped path had been seared out of the Garden to the open space outside, drifting rubble beyond the far edge bearing silent testament to the forces that had ripped them out of their places and thrown them out. Nanoha looked up nervously, but the blast seemed not to have affected the stability of the huge block above their heads.

'Mistress! I've found something!' Vesta called. 'No propulsion, and it's… uh… kinda got dead people and junk and stuff in it. But it's the only one with an intact seal. It should work as long as you give it a push.'

Nanoha exchanged awkward looks with the backup team. "I… guess this is it, then," she said, starting to move over to where Vesta was beckoning them. The craft she had found was about the size of a lorry, barely small enough to fit through the near end of the path that Nanoha had carved. A dainty thing of curves and coils and intricate carvings, Nanoha got the distinct impression that it hadn't really been meant for harsh conditions. But the door to the pilot section at the sealed well enough, and they moved the backup team in without much difficulty.

She shuddered at what they had to take out first. Parched and blackened with time, the grinning corpse of one of the original inhabitants of the station had still been sitting at the controls. There were more in the other sections, dried out and charred from heat, still wearing the ornate robes and jewellery they had decorated themselves with while still alive. But there was no time to deal with any of them. The front section sealed shut with a hiss, and Nanoha eyed the mooring that anchored it to the side.

"… Vesta?"

Bloody claws scythed through the chains, and the ship sagged momentarily. Then Nanoha caught it in pink wings, and it rose again, borne by an adapted version of her own Flier Fins. She groaned with the effort of lifting the heavy ship, still tired from the Starlight Buster she had carved its exit route with. But the gravity was low, and the ship was lighter than its appearance suggested. It took only a moment for her to lift it to the hole.

'Thank you, Takamachi-san,' said Rizu from within. 'You didn't have to help us, but you did it anyway. I'll make sure to tell them that, no matter what happens.'

The other two added their agreement, wordless pulses of gratitude tinged with worry. It was nice, Nanoha thought, to know that she had been right about the TSAB. They were good people, and she had even sort-of made friends with some of them. Maybe someday she would be able to be on friendly terms with them, once the current crisis had died down.

She paused for a moment at that last thought, watching them go with faraway eyes as Vesta nuzzled against her chin supportively. "I just hope Fate is okay too," she murmured softly, feeling a pang of worry for her blonde-haired friend.

Then she turned back down towards the core of the Garden, and shot towards the distant thunder like an arrow from a bow.

…

Zest hurtled through the air, skimming along the vaulted ceiling as tongues of amethyst flame followed in his wake. Cutting downwards to avoid the conflagration, he was confronted with a crackling bolt of lightning that filled the air with the taste of ozone and generated static along the entire length of his spear.

A burst of speed took him backwards at an angle as his opponent momentarily turned her attention to Quint, zigzagging across the ceiling in rapid arcs that changed direction unpredictably to avoid the shooting spells homing in on her. Her Barrier Jacket was in Full Armour mode, banded Laminar plates covering her whole body. An eyeless helmet covered her head, showing her surroundings on HUDs. Zest's own Jacket had manifested a solid visor – there was no point in having his eyes uncovered when it only forced the filters to engage constantly to stop him being blinded. It was fast becoming apparent that his assumption of taking down Precia quickly had been very, very far from the truth.

She stood at the centre of the wide chamber, her hair billowing in an unseen wind, ringed by Midchildan circles. She must have been using at least five that he could count, possibly more. Next to her lay the curled up form of a young girl, blonde-haired and waif-like. That in itself was another complication – not only was he having to hold back for fear of injuring the girl, but it looked like Precia had done something to the body of her daughter in the hopes of getting her back. And maybe succeeded.

Because while he hardly had the best point of view from which to judge, it looked an awful lot like the girl was breathing; the slow, shallow breaths of someone in a deep coma. More disturbing still was the violet light above her heart that slowly brightened and dimmed in time with the rise and fall of her chest.

What had Precia done to the girl? Could she possibly have…

He had to terminate that line of thought as the woman turned her attention back to him. The spell she fired at him was, probably, a variant on the basic shooting spell. It was a little difficult to tell, because it split into two almost as soon as it left her hand, and then became four, eight, sixteen…

The expanding cone of crackling electric spheres swerved to follow his first rapid escape, and a deafening series of explosions went off as those that couldn't turn fast enough struck the wall and detonated in flares of electric force. A plume of orange fire thinned them still further, but there were too many to hit all of them before they reached him. Corkscrewing towards a wall, Zest pulled up just before he hit it, flipping around to brace his legs against the burn-scarred surface. Looking back, he waited until the orbs had almost reached him before pushing off with a flash move.

The thunder above him as they struck the wall where he had been standing struck almost like a physical blow, painfully loud even through the muffling of his Barrier Jacket. He hit the ground and instantly launched himself into another flash move, vanishing in a blur barely a second before several tonnes of rubble blasted out of the wall crashed down where he had landed. He hurled a volley of orange javelins at Precia on the way up, and scowled as they were absorbed by a shield that sprang into being without her even turning to acknowledge the attack.

She had too much power; that was the problem. If it had just been her alone, he and Quint would have won this already. But drawing on the Jewel Seeds and riding the power surge they provided, the woman was a monster. She couldn't keep it up – she wasn't keeping it up, he could already see her starting to tire as the strain of magic use took its toll. But until she hit her body's limits, he couldn't see any way to win, and he was uncomfortably aware that if she landed a solid blow on either of him or Quint with this much power, it would be the end of it for them instead of her. It had come down to a test of endurance and skill. The first to slip would lose.

He climbed steeply, seeking the safety of altitude. The floor wasn't safe, and for more reasons than just Precia. Three i-space rifts broke the marbled surface, lurching iridescent tears to a realm from which there was no return. Close to the ground, their influence was enough to interfere with spells, even shut them down entirely. Including the flight spells that he and Quint were using. An ill-aimed dive to attack would kill them more assuredly than anything Precia could fire their way.

[Geschwungene Rakete,] his Device pulsed, and let fly a barrage of missiles that curved around in streaks of light to strike Precia from all directions. A shield blocked them even as she responded with a bolt of lightning, but Quint had already seized the opportunity, diving from the one side completely unprotected by an i-space rift. Silent and deadly, she shot down the blue path that rolled out ahead of her towards the still-visible shield… and then flickered and vanished even as the path continued on to strike the shield.

Zest grinned ferally. It only made sense that Precia's strongest shield would be reserved for the side on which she stood the greatest chance of attack. Blurred with speed, Quint reappeared on the opposite side, a dark silhouette with an arm drawn back in readiness. Precia's eyes widened in shock as she slammed a punch into the shield that shattered it in one blow.

But the force of the terrible blow had been bled out of it by the first shield. A second shield came into view as Quint hit it, layered beneath the first. It fractured, but even as it broke under the power of the punch that had struck it, it retaliated. A dozen lances of violet light grew from the planar surface and took Quint full in the chest, throwing her back like a rag-doll. A jolt of pure, icy fear gripped Zest's chest as she bounced over the i-space rift, but her momentum was sufficient to carry her over it, to come to a rest two or three bodylengths beyond it. Even Precia seemed startled by the near miss, lowering her hand from where it had been poised to counterattack.

Zest swooped down to his downed comrade, keeping a wary eye on Precia as he did so. Quint didn't seem too badly hurt – she was moving, at least. The Full Armour Barrier Jacket she wore had probably saved her life, absorbing the majority of the impact. It couldn't have been as powerful as the attacks that Precia was throwing around anyway; reactive shields could only store so much power to respond to a blow with. Even so, the banded plate armour was cracked and scorched, and he knew that at the very least, her entire side would be one livid bruise if they got out of this.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he looked up to the woman on the other side of the rift. She was leaning on her staff and breathing heavily, her skin pasty white. But she didn't look ready to fall yet. She waited, tense and alert but not overly aggressive, for him to make a move. Which was odd, he realised. She had most of what she wanted, why wasn't she trying to get away? Was she waiting for the girls that had been helping her? It fit with how she had been fighting – pushing him and Quint back, holding them at bay, keeping them on the defensive but not making any serious effort to escape.

But if that was what she was doing, he couldn't imagine that she would wait forever. There was a timer ticking down behind those eyes, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what would happen when it hit zero.

Whirling his spear as Quint dragged herself upright against the wall; Zest resumed the deadly game of attack and defence, determined to render the question moot.

…

Lotte licked bloodied lips, watching the imposing form across from her carefully. Several times already, the other familiar had tried to break off and go to her mistress's aid. It was getting gradually harder to stop her from doing so. Lotte held the upper hand in skill, but Linith's use of her War Form made up for a lot, and Lotte didn't want to use her own except as a last resort. She was pretty sure she was still winning, but it was a closer match than she would have liked.

Linith stalked left slowly, and Lotte moved to cut her off, gritting her teeth as another bombardment spell went off behind her. What was taking Zest and Quint so long? Testarossa wasn't supposed to have any specialisation in combat, it should have been simple to take her down, if not exactly easy. Instead, it sounded like they were waging a full-scale war in there! And she was uncomfortably aware that some of the spells being fired were cutting clean through the Garden's walls. If a misaimed one came this way… well, the woman probably wouldn't want to hit her own familiar. Hopefully.

It would still be nice if her temporary teammates hurried up, though.

Their fight had left the initial corridor some time ago, and was now in the remains of what had, moments before their arrival, probably been some sort of lab. It was in no state for research anymore, however. The walls were riddled with craters, and part of the ceiling near the far wall had collapsed. Two of the machines were broken shells still belching smoke, and there was a long scorched trail that crossed the floor and went halfway up the opposite wall before veering sharply to the right. Despite the destruction, neither combatant was ready to back down. They watched each other carefully, recovering from their latest exertion and waiting for the other to make a move.

It was Linith who broke the temporary standoff. A Midchildan circle appeared at her feet, and the scattered chunks of debris from both the lab equipment and the walls began to quiver. Lotte darted forward, intent on stopping whatever this latest trick was before it could be turned against her.

She was forced to backflip away again almost as soon as she started moving. Linith roared a challenge at her, and the debris and wreckage rose off the floor in a violent jerk. They flew from all over the room to surround her in a whirling, deadly orbit of jagged chunks of metal and masonry, some of them larger than Lotte's head. She couldn't quite see through the blizzard, but the snarl that followed sounded viciously amused.

"Aww, great," she muttered, and yelped as a fist-sized component that looked like the bastard offspring of a cogwheel and a throwing star whirred out of the rubble tornado towards her. She flipped to the side easily, only to find the entire thing bearing down on her as Linith charged at her.

"Gah!" She dived to one side and rolled as the rubble flew out from its circular orbit around the great cat and followed her, like a comet made up of a hundred fragments, a tail of smaller pieces following behind it. Chunks of wreckage battered the floor behind her as she shifted into cat form to present a smaller target and fled across the room. Robbed of their target, the impromptu projectiles quivered again for a moment, then shot back to resume their erratic orbit, surrounding the familiar directing them in a lethal shield of rubble.

Lotte shifted back to her human form and cast a mournful look at where her eskrima sticks had fallen. She was really beginning to regret causing so much damage to the surroundings. If she'd known that her opponent could animate things like this, she'd have been more careful.

Well, too late now. It looked like she was going to have to get serious to finish this, and maybe pull out a couple of things she'd rather have kept in reserve. She effortlessly slid out of the way of the projectiles Linith launched at her, ducking and twisting to avoid those that changed course in mid-flight. Even as she moved on instinct, her mind was a blur, putting together a rough plan of action. She would have to wait until Linith next charged at her…

The floor jolted, and a crack split the ceiling in half down the middle. Dust poured down from the fissure, forming a curtain between them, and Lotte exploited the opportunity for all it was worth.

"Sounds like your mistress isn't doing so well!" she shouted cheerfully. "Tell you what, you surrender here and I'll ask Zest not to hurt her too…"

As expected, the dust curtain exploded as the furious tigress charged at her, the whirlwind of debris revolving fast enough that it was almost a blur. Lotte snapped both hands up and cast, as strong as she could.

'Wheel Protection!'

The shield sprang out from her hands, a mana whirlpool blasting forwards to meet the tornado of rubble and wreckage. The improvised defence was ripped apart as the rapidly spinning mana caught each piece and flung them off to the sides, peppering the walls and ceiling with bullet-like chunks of broken metal and stone and opening up a gap in Linith's defences. Lotte took full advantage of it while it lasted, lashing a hand forwards and casting again. Even as she did, she noticed the involuntary flicker of Linith's eyes to the right and turned to see, bringing a hand up instinctively.

She caught a brief flicker of movement in the corner of her eye, and then something hit her arm hard enough to knock her clear across the room. Only her Barrier Jacket prevented the impact from ripping the limb off entirely, and she reverted to cat form on instinct, curling up around the aching phantom pain that persisted even after leaving the affected body. That was almost certainly a broken arm, she thought through a haze of pain. The other cat-woman must have sent one of the chunks orbiting her round on a curving path to hit her from the side as she charged. Sneaky, planning even through her fury.

But Lotte had won this round. She looked up in triumph as the remaining rubble dropped to the ground. Linith staggered and reverted to human form, clawing at her throat, but it was no good. The bind that Lotte had placed there only tightened further to make up the difference. Choking, struggling for every breath of air, Linith's fingers scrabbled at the ring of mana in a futile attempt at escape.

Shifting back to human form, wincing at the pain in her arm – yes, that was clearly broken – and cradling it gingerly, Lotte pushed herself to her feet with an effort and walked over to where her opponent was clawing at the ground. She'd be unconscious in a minute or so, and hopefully she'd shift back into her cat form when she passed out. Lotte didn't fancy carrying her like this.

"Good fight," she murmured. "Seriously. But not quite…"

'Get away from her! Raaaaargh!'

Lotte threw herself backwards yet again, bitterly reflecting that she'd been doing far too much of that recently, and wincing yet again at how the movement jarred her arm. The grey-and-black tigress, a smaller mirror of the one she'd just been fighting, landed where she'd been standing and left four parallel grooves in the floor. Blood-red light glittered around her paws and fangs, forming blades that looked uncomfortably sharp and powerful. Where the hell had she come from?

'You!' the newcomer roared, apparently almost beyond coherent speech in rage. A white-clad girl flew in from the direction she had come from… the hole in the ceiling, wonderful. And that was Takamachi, which meant that this must be her familiar. Lotte scowled as the girl made straight for Linith, and she felt her bind broken. She seriously doubted the older familiar was unconscious yet, and that meant this fight had just become a lot harder.

Vesta charged, roaring ferociously. But she wasn't as canny as Linith, and she didn't have a defence like the one her elder had been using. Lotte waited in an easy stance, and hopped backwards just before the young tigress got within range. As expected, she pounced.

Going airborne close to someone as good with binds and barriers as Lotte was all but asking for pain. In a blur of motion, Vesta was caught by a blue lasso that took her momentum and redirected it with vicious economy. The pounce that had started aimed at Lotte's throat became an uncontrolled flight at twice her original speed that slammed her back the way she had come into the unforgiving pile of rubble that had once been part of the ceiling.

"Vesta!" Nanoha had Linith's cat form gathered in her arms, and Lotte kicked herself for taking her eyes off the girl for even a second. It was too late, though. Vesta leapt towards her mistress, changing into her kitten form in midair and guiding her trajectory onto Nanoha's shoulder, and from there into her hood. A flicker of pink around the girl's ankles, and she vanished into a speed technique even as Lotte whipped a bind towards her. It caught nothing but air.

Muttering to herself, and feeling further from her normal perkiness than she had in a long, long time, Lotte cast a quick bind to secure her arm to her midsection – a clumsy hack, but the best she could do for now – and followed them.

…

Another tense standoff had developed.

Precia was tiring, that much was clear to all. She was still untouched, but her breathing was laboured, and a trickle of blood marred her ghost-pale chin. Nonetheless, the formidable web of magics around her was still holding, and she was not the only one running low on power. Quint took advantage of the momentary lull to cast a quick healing spell on her aching ribs. It was a quick and dirty patch job, but it would dull the pain and hopefully keep things from getting any worse.

The room had not fared so well as its inhabitants. The floor behind Precia was gone, collapsed into another i-space rift. The central island she stood on was connected to the rest of the room by three thick bridges of stone. Combined with the area directly above her, they were the only avenues along which they could attack her.

Even in her current state, doing so would be suicide. But if they held on a little longer, that would change. The hostile mage was weakening fast, and Quint could see Zest eying her barriers and shields. Soon enough, they would degrade to the point where the pair of them could break through.

A spark jumped between her gloves. She frowned. It was followed by another one, tiny arcs of static. She dropped into a ready combat stance instinctively, prepared for another lightning spell. But Precia didn't seem to be the source. Indeed, she wasn't doing anything at all, just watching them warily. And her eyes were flitting to the left…

The wall exploded, and a huge form tumbled out of the new hole and slammed down on the floor. It was half a combat drone – a huge one, that must have been at least twice her height when whole. It was missing its legs, and golden lightning crackled over a hole through its torso that she could fit her shoulders through if she cared to. It bounced once, twice, thrice across the floor before coming to a rest, and she looked up with a raised eyebrow. Two forms were framed in the hole it had made, both holding staffs. Harlaown and Scrya? Then where…

"Mother!"

Quint whipped around in disbelief. Sure enough, the Testarossa girl was standing next to her mother, hands already applying a healing spell to her chest. Her familiar prowled around them, adding her own orange barriers to the purple web. Quint let out a low whistle despite herself. She hadn't even seen the girl cross the distance. That kind of speed was incredible.

But then Precia straightened, a vitality restored that hadn't been there for several minutes, and her appreciation turned to ashes. She was leaning a little on her daughter, still far from what could be called healthy, but she was no longer on her last legs. The two boys weren't nearly enough to outweigh that advantage. The fight was lost, save for one option.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Zest slump slightly, even as he started readying a spell. She knew what he was going to do next. It was something she'd been hoping to avoid. Break the bridges holding up the island she was standing on. Doom her to fall into Imaginary Space, and her daughters with her. Regretting the necessity, she readied her own Revolver Knuckle. They would have to attack quickly, and in unison. As long as they could take out two of the supports, the last one should break on its own.

But before either of them could move to attack, the pink blur of a movement spell coalesced on the closest bridge. Nanoha stood facing them, a cat cradled in her arms, her familiar on her shoulder.

"Please," she said in an exhausted voice, "stop."

Her words did rather less to keep them from attacking than the line of attack spells that Precia readied behind her, but she didn't seem to notice. "No more fighting, please," she repeated, pleading. "There's been enough of that for today already. Too much." She set Linith down on the floor gently, and the sandy-furred cat brushed against her leg in thanks as she limped over to her mistress.

"Gonna have to do better than that, kid," Lotte said as she landed, adding another link to the half-circle of TSAB mages around the smaller group. "We can't just let you go through with this. Not with the risks that come with it."

"Nanoha-san," Precia said smoothly, ignoring her. "It is good to see you well. My preparations are finished." A circle grew around her, expanding to cover most of the island. Above her, fourteen Jewel Seeds spun in a glowing ring. "The Jewel Seed activating in the Garden's core is too far gone to suppress. Step back into the circle, and we will use its power to build the bridge to Alhazred, and Alicia's salvation." She threw a cool glance at the TSAB members. "Plunging it into Imaginary Space will direct the majority of its full activation down into the void. There will be tremors, but no cataclysm event. Step back, and we can leave at once."

"Nanoha, no!" Yuuno stepped forward, arm stretched out to the girl on the narrow stone bridge. A web of purple magic pulsed behind her, stalemating them from making the slightest movement, and the kaleidoscopic void of Imaginary Space cast rippling colours over the white of her Barrier Jacket. "Nanoha," he repeated, "don't go with her. You heard her, she's got everything she needs, you don't have to help her anymore. Come with us. You've not done anything too bad, you'll be let off lightly… please, Nanoha! If you go with her now, you won't be able to come back! You'll be committing yourself; you can't undo something like that!"

He searched her eyes, willing her to understand. "You wanted to help them save Alicia, and they can do that now. You've done enough, come back. See your family again. You've said it yourself, the TSAB are good people, join them if you want to help people more! Don't throw your life away like this!"

"Yuuno-kun…" Nanoha hesitated, caught between two choices, two directions. She could tell that this was a turning point in her life, that the course she chose here would affect the rest of her life. "I…" Her family flashed through her mind – mama and papa, Kyouya and Miyuki, Arisa and Suzuka. She missed them desperately, wanted to see them again so much that it was a physical ache. But Yuuno thought that going with Precia would put her in danger, and that meant that if she stayed behind, they would be in danger. And… and Precia was sick, dying. Who would look after Alicia when she was gone? "I don't…"

And Fate spoke.

"Nanoha…" she whispered, barely loud enough to hear. "Please." No more than that, no argument or rebuttal to Yuuno's pleas, no case of her own. But the depth of emotion in those two words seemed to go on forever, and Nanoha couldn't help but turn to look at her.

And for a timeless span of seconds, the world stopped turning.

…

"Please."

In that frozen moment, suspended between breaths, it was like seeing her for the first time, all over again. Her blonde hair was escaping the ponytails she kept it in, tangled and smoke-stained from fighting through the tunnels on her way here. She held Bardiche loosely, worn and chipped but still serving its mistress as loyally as it had in that first fight a month or more ago. Her black Barrier Jacket and cape were torn and dirty from far too many near misses, and Nanoha could see blood on her from a multitude of shallow scrapes and gashes. Familiarity warred with fascination in Nanoha's heart as she stood there, feeling as though she were transported back to the day they had met, when life was simple and before everything had got out of control.

Her gaze met Fate's eyes, and she sank into them. There was pleading there, and apology. Affection and camaraderie, hope and determination. But most of all, there was trust. Trust in Nanoha, trust in her heart, trust in her judgement, trust in her, as a person, to do what she thought was best. What seemed like hours of communication passed between them in an instant, and tears gathered in Nanoha's eyes at the choice she had to make. It wasn't fair that she had to make it like this, with no time to consider, while she was tired and hurting and so desperately sad.

But the world wasn't fair, and it wasn't a choice. Not really. Not if she wanted to go on being her. It was hard, but her life had seemed like one long string of hardships lately. And as she turned back to Yuuno, it felt like she could feel her path unrolling in front of her, beneath her feet. It would take her away from him, she knew, and she wept freely for the loss of her first friend in the magical world as she looked at him, his face full of concern and caring for her.

But Alicia still needed her. Precia still needed her.

Fate still needed her.

"Yuuno-kun," she whispered, and somehow her voice cut through the distant thunder of the Garden breaking up. "Yuuno-kun, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…" A quiet sob escaped her, but she refused to break his gaze. "I wish things could have been different. Maybe… maybe in another life… but I can't." She started to turn back to Fate, but Yuuno's voice halted her, urgent and frantic and desperate.

"Nanoha! If you go now… Nanoha, you might die!I don't want to lose you!"

"I know." Her voice was soft, and her bangs hung down over her face to shadow her eyes. "Could… could you tell my family that I'm sorry? And that I love them, and… I hope I'll see them again. And you too, Yuuno-kun. This isn't the end, I promise." She looked up at him, one last time, through tear-rimmed eyes. A tiny smile was on her face, a mix of bravery, apology and hope. "I'll see you again someday, and make things right. I promise."

And then she stepped backwards into the circle and took Fate's hand in hers. Her lips moved, but her words were snatched away as the tone of the Jewel Seeds grew until it shook the walls, like a cosmic finger on the wine-glass of the universe. Yuuno got one last glimpse at her, still looking straight at him with tears trickling down her cheeks and an expression of resolve on her face. The light around her built and built until it resembled a miniature sun of purple magic and the Jewel Seed's power.

"Evacuate!" yelled Quint. "Everyone out, move move move! Zest, cut us a path out of here, we need to go!"

Yuuno didn't react, still staring wide-eyed at the orb of power as it grew to blinding levels. He barely noticed as Chrono roughly grabbed his hand, dragging him along with the retreating figures around them. There was movement, flight through the tunnel being carved before their eyes by a blazing orange spear, but it seemed far-away and unreal, like it wasn't really happening. There was no memory, afterwards, of the crashing thunder as entire floors fell apart around them, as explosions lit the darkened scenes of chaos with painful hues, or of the wrenching jerk that plucked them from the outer borders of the Garden and deposited them on the bridge of the Asura. Only shock, grief, and a numb, hurt confusion that grew minute by minute into a tangled ache in his chest that eclipsed the gashes on his face and arms left by flying chips of rubble and steel.

Nanoha had chosen, and she hadn't chosen him.

She was gone.

…

Seen from the outside, the Garden was more a cloud of rubble than the single structure it had been mere hours before. Pieces the size of ships were breaking off even as they watched, drifting slowly away from each other as explosions from within tore it apart still further. Deep within the heart of the cluster, a gleaming core of purple was visible – the spell that Precia was casting, still growing in power.

But it was not to be.

It may have been some tiny error in the casting, a single digit misplaced that sent a surge of power awry that no human could hope to contain. It may have been that the strain of her illness finally caught up to her, and she was unable to complete the spell. It may even have simply been that they ran out of time. Yuuno didn't know, and couldn't say. He could only watch.

In a soundless flash of light and fury, the Garden detonated. The screens on the Asura briefly dimmed to near-black as the purple radiance flashed as bright as a star. When they returned to normal, it was to display the vast chunks of masonry flying away from a twisting, shimmering, iridescent void.

Yuuno had seen a void like that before. But where the tear into Imaginary Space at the apartment had been small, and easily sealed, this one was large enough to swallow a ship. And it was growing, the rent in space splitting further open as the merely-metastable fabric of the artificial spacetimebubble tore.

"Get clear!" Lindy ordered. Over the comms, the sound of the other ships' captains roaring similar orders were audible. "Retreat! Get us back into Dimensional Space! We need to get out of realspace!" She turned to the bridge officers. "Will it stop at the edge of the pocket?"

"It should!" came the reply. "The pressure of the Dimensional Sea should force it closed again once the pocket destabilises. But it's going to cause a quake, and… admiral, it's going to be big. Bigger than the one we got hit by last time!"

Lindy swore fluently. "We might just about be able to ride that out, but the smaller ships won't." She snatched up the intercom. "Pair up! We've got a quake coming, and we're at ground zero! Smaller ships, group in with the larger ones! Link your shields together and keep close! We'll have to rely on our shields to take the brunt of it!"

Bright light flared around the ships, forming sheltered areas of calm in the tempestuous froth that the Dimensional Sea was becoming. Trails of light and vortexes of spacetime whirled around the flaring shields as they strained under the forces battering them from all directions.

Behind them, as they fled, the coiling unlight of Imaginary Space spread from the explosion. Tendrils of it expanded out like tears from a punctured foil, growing and spreading out with terrible implacability. The wreckage of the Garden was drawn to the voids in space, sucked into the ever-hungry wounds and lost forever to their depths. With the loss of the ancient technology that maintained the sphere of realspace around the structure, the edges of the space began to fray and distort. And still the rents spread, budding and swelling until they had all but filled it.

And as the i-space rift consumed the last of the stable pocket of space, the boundaries collapsed entirely and the pocket imploded. The pressure of the Dimensional Sea pressed down on the open rift, forcing it closed and squashing it down into a singularity that lasted only a fraction of a second before closing entirely. For a brief, silent moment, all was calm.

Then the shockwave rippled out like a vast and unstoppable tsunami, sweeping aside anything in its path, and the floor dropped away as the Asura was engulfed in the storm.

…