Author's Note: This Prelude was written by my partner in crime, Golden Lark. All credit goes to him for it, he's working on HI a lot with me.
'Hazredous' Interruptions
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha / RWBY
Prelude I - Save Things Eternal
Damcina rolled over onto her back, soaking in every photon of sunlight while she waited. The ledge she was on didn't see too many passersby, so she was at low risk of damaging her dignity (and by extension, her Master's). Just as she made ready to flop over on her side for even coverage, her ears twitched visibly.
As the set of three officials passed by, they took no notice of the well-dressed cat-eared familiar sitting demurely on the ledge, tapping daintily at a small projected screen, showing naught but perfect poise. Once they were out of sight, she bonelessly flopped back down on her side, but only a few seconds passed before she sat back up in consternation, as the shadow of a floating tower covered her ledge quite completely. Sighing, she tried to sit still without kicking her legs or otherwise acting like a child, but her boredom was getting to her.
Normally, one would play a game on a hand screen to whittle away some idle time.
Normally, she'd be much too busy to ever waste time playing games. Hence, she had downloaded none onto her local PAN terminal.
Normally, the Network would be up, allowing her to download such games at the speed of thought, if she had reason to, such as waiting for her Master to exit this emergency meeting.
However, the Network was down, and because of that, she had plenty of free time, no games, and no way to get any games.
Oh, sure, there were plenty of devices linked to the planetary network that might be able to supply such things, but considering who she represented, there were certain channels she simply could not be caught turning to for the sake of paltry amusements. The interdimensional network, however, had plenty of ways to . . . mask one's standing.
If the damned thing was available.
Her Master had rambled on at length to various guests about the issue for three days, waving his hands and saying things about the alignment of the planets was causing a loss of signal to the greater Network. He made a very convincing case, and each of his guests in turn had left looking much less worried than they had been when they arrived, confident that the problem would solve itself after "just a little bit more inconvenience."
She herself might have been convinced had it not been her Master doing the talking, as she could read him like an open, dirty screenscroll. His heart rate, perspiration, breathing pattern, speech cadence, and most damningly, his slightly increased level of politeness all served to clearly signal her when he was talking out of his ass.
Whatever was blocking access to the network, she knew two things for certain: it had nothing to do with any planetary alignments, and it most assuredly wouldn't come back in a little bit. She had the distinct feeling that the rather angry group of men that had entered the meeting tower with her Master two hours ago were not being fed the false story.
Soon enough, said group of angry men filed out of the tower, her Master among them. One of them thumped him on the back a few times heartily, not noticing his grimace.
"Well, it won't be too much longer, Hea! You'll see. They'll have us back on the grid in no time. You won't miss your conference, and you'll get your grant, guaranteed!" Master Hea nodded in agreement and bowed as the older archmagus wandered off to the nearest source of liquor. Normally mind altering substances became less appropriate as one's social rank increased, but the last couple of days had been a series of 'exceptions stacking on exceptions,' as Master has been known to say.
Damcina silently fell into step beside him as he made his way to the platform which would teleport them home. She did not fail to notice the slight hesitation in his step before he passed over onto the platform. It was the very same hesitation most lower-caste children would make on their first visits to the upper tiers of any modern city: that small moment of doubt that the floating stone circle would hold your weight, before your common sense overrode your dirt-walker instincts and you hopped on anyways.
She did not fail to notice, and she did not fail to keep silent about it as the carvings lit up and they vanished.
Master Hea brusquely walked into their home, not even looking up from his handscreen as the doors dematerialized to allow them entrance. Damcina kept pace by him, silent as a cat and ever patient. He had taken dinner with the others at his meeting and would not need further food this night; she had caught up on organizing his mail during the first hour of waiting, and he had no further appointments this evening. As his normal channels with which to get work done were all but blocked, it was likely he would soon -
"Damcina. I am retiring for the evening."
"Yes, Master."
He entered his bedroom and the stone door phased back into place seamlessly. She bowed, despite him not being able to see it, and proceeded to make her final rounds for the night early. The washrooms were immaculate, the sitting room was in order, and the study - the study door was open. There was a single memory crystal lying in the frame, preventing the door from rematerializing. She stepped over, scooped up up, and made her way to her Master's desk - always a mess, but never disorganized. She scanned over the various racks of memory crystals, looking for the right place to set the errant one, but could make no sense of the chaos of her Master's mind as spread across an entire room. Sighing, she pulled up her handscreen and scanned the crystal to figure out which shelf it belonged on.
There was only one document on it. Opening it without hesitation, she scrolled through and noted that it seemed to be something of a comparison report. Planets across the Network, and the last known communiques from each - each clipped with news articles from the preceding month or so. Nothing new or interesting; barbarians from some of the less upraised societies harassing Hazredi interests, attacking otherwise helpless research worlds. For all that they could 'attack,' given that dimensional kill teams could reach any point in the continuum within seconds of a detected assault.
Still, only a fool would discount that the pattern of silent planets (and silent clusters, when a Network hub planet went down) didn't correlate to the reported sightings of terrorist agents rather well. Assuming their own nearest hub world's Network node was taken down, that could potentially account for the outage.
It would also incite global panic, and a rush on the teleportation matrix as Citizens attempted to abandon the world like rats from a sinking ship. After all, if the Network hub goes down, the teleport hubs are no less vulnerable. Only specially trained archmagi can independently teleport between worlds, and even then it's not good for the ambient dimensional framework as a whole if they would do so without the assistance and guidance of the hub relays.
Damcina yawned and did her final nightly checks of her master's projects. All of the subjects were stable, ambient mana levels were normal, and the projects showed no sign of entropic decay. One she was convinced that everything was ideal, she headed back to her own room. Taking a moment to revert to her completely natural form, she stretched and changed into her nightgown, then slipped into bed, quickly falling asleep.
The next morning, the first reports of the failures of mana matrices in the lower cities began to come in.
