Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor

(Worm/Nanoha)

by P.H. Wise

3.9 - Rivals

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

Thanks to Cailin for beta-ing!

Author's note: I ended up cutting this chapter in half. I realized as I was writing it that I needed to address the back half of the chapter in considerably more detail than I had been planning, so I expanded the front half a bit, and here it is on its own. Will be posting the back half as its own chapter as soon as it is finished.

There were a lot of things I never expected to do. Walking into one of Dragon's research facilities was definitely one of them. It was a concrete bunker built into the side of Brunswick Mountain about twenty kilometers north of Vancouver on the west coast of Canada. A service road went up to to its entrance, but it was mostly designed to be accessed by air. It was very cold, and the mountain was covered in snow as we appeared in the wake of Yuuno's teleportation field. The sky was grey, and snow was drifting gently through the air on a slight breeze, and I could see our breath as white clouds in the air that the wind carried away only reluctantly.

One of Dragon's armored suits was waiting for us. It was a mechanical gunmetal grey wingless dragon about the size of a horse with eyes that could rotate independently and a host of manipulator arms that came out of its mouth. "Yuuno, Starfall, welcome," Dragon said through her drone. "Thank you both for coming."

I smiled at the dragon-suit. "Thanks for inviting us," I said.

We talked as we went inside the bunker. It wasn't as cold inside as it was outside, but it was cold. It grew noticeably colder as we made our way down through a series of identical concrete corridors, the temperature steadily plummeting by degrees until I was sure that without my Barrier Jacket, I would be risking frostbite.

We walked on past multiple blast doors and scanners and through a handful of automated security checkpoints; at last we reached a room that looked like a combination of an engineering bay full of robotic arms and assembly tools and a laboratory. It was lit with sterile blue-white fluorescent light, and the hum of machinery never fully stopped.

The reason for our visit was in the center of the room: the stasis pod. Some sort of tinker-tech scanner was passing back and forth over it, and the results were being displayed on a holographic monitor screen a meter above the pod. It got colder as we drew nearer; I approached the pod, and soon I was close enough to see its occupant. He looked like he was in his early twenties; his hair was a super dark shade of blue that was almost black, and he wore a black and grey barrier jacket with steel gauntlets and spiked shoulders.

"I've met him before," Yuuno said from his position on my shoulder.

"You know him?" I asked.

"I don't remember his name, but I know I've met him," Yuuno said. "I think he's one of the..." He trailed off and sat up on his haunches and brought up a ferret-sized holographic window and began to scan through a series of images. After a few moments, the image of the young man in the pod appeared. "Found him," he said.

"What can you tell us?" Dragon asked.

Yuuno looked very serious. "His name is Chrono. Chrono Harlaown, son of the legendary Admiral Lindy Harlaown. He's one of the Enforcers that the Administration Bureau sent to help me transport the Jewel Seeds back to a secure facility where they could be studied without risk to anyone else. He's very, very good; if we can wake him up, it would be a big help."

"I've tried," Dragon said. "I think I understand the basics of the pod's operating system, but it keeps telling me there's a system fault whenever I try to start the revival cycle. I'm not familiar enough with the technology to trust myself to try to hunt down the problem and fix it without assistance. But you and Raising Heart are the experts. What do you suggest?"

"Raising Heart?" Yuuno asked.

"Scanning," Raising Heart said. "One moment." A shimmering beam of pink light passed over the pod, and Raising Heart made a noise like a digital chime. Then a holographic window appeared, showing a schematic of the pod with a part I didn't recognize highlighted.

Yuuno regarded the image. "Looks like the primary and both backup power regulators involved in the wake-up cycle are damaged, so it can't actually change modes to wake him up. Raising Heart, can you give Dragon the specs to make replacements?"

"Yes. It will be difficult to build with such limited technology," Raising Heart said, "but Dragon will solve it."

I studied the face of the man in the pod for a long moment. I wondered what his life was like. Did he have loved ones besides his mother? A wife or a husband? Was his mother looking for him? ... why was it so cold in here? "You wouldn't have called us all the way here just to do a diagnostic of this equipment," I said. "We could have done that remotely."

"I told you my Master would notice," Raising Heart said. "Dragon now owes me a shiny, unweathered American penny from 1956."

I raised an eyebrow. "You're betting pennies on whether or not I notice things?"

"There is something else, yes," Dragon said. "Over here." Her dragon suit gestured to a long metal container. It was roughly coffin shaped and maybe eight feet long in total.

As I drew near, the container split open with a faint hiss, the top folding away to reveal an interior that was covered in ice crystals; the room grew instantly colder, and a cold white mist flowed out of the box. Within lay a spear with an oversized blade. The butt of the spear was dark blue, both the shaft and blade were a pale blue that is almost white, and a dark blue gem was set at the base of the blade. Cold mist rolled off the spear in a continuous, billowing cloud, and I couldn't help but stare.

"We found it in the wreckage," Dragon said. "It was generating a cocoon of ice around the survival pod. It took the better part of a day to cut through it."

"Durandal," Yuuno whispered. "The Staff of Freeze."

"Is it famous?" I asked.

"It's one of the most powerful Storage Devices ever created," Yuuno said. "A masterwork. I didn't know the Harlaowns had it."

[Storage Device?] I asked Raising Heart telepathically.

[A Storage Device is a less advanced, more easily mass produced form of Device,] Raising Heart said. [Though it has a voice interface, it lacks intelligence. It doesn't support its Master the way I do; it can only do what it is told to do, and can only process spells that are programmed into it in advance.]

[Why do people use them?] I asked.

Raising Heart had a distinctly disparaging tone to her telepathic voice. [Besides cost concerns, it is widely believed that a Storage Device can process mana more quickly than an Intelligent Device.]

"Can you do something about this?" Dragon asked, indicating the spear with her suit's manipulator arms.

Yuuno nodded determinedly. He hopped off my shoulder and scampered forward, reverting to human form halfway to the frozen container. He traced a symbol in the air, and a green ripple rolled out from him, disrupting the waves of cold that were radiating out from Durandal; Yuuno stepped forward and brought up a holographic screen which displayed a schematic of the 'Staff of Freeze.' He entered a few commands, only for a red error message to pop up each time. He frowned, and then he tried another command. A moment later, the cold just… stopped. The spear contracted and folded away W-wards until all that was left was a white card about the size of a tarot card with a blue rhombic gem set into the center of it. He leaned down and scooped it up out of the box.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"I forced a reset," Yuuno replied. "It wouldn't normally work, but with the Device's master in the stasis pod, it queried the telepathic circuit and just got static."

I didn't really see why that would let him force a reset, but I nodded as if I did. "I see," I said.

"Do you mind if I study that Device for a while?" Dragon asked.

"I believe we may require it for now," Raising Heart said. "I can provide you with a full schematic, however, if my Master agrees."

I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't give the greatest Tinker in the world access to this technology. I nodded. "Go ahead," I said.

We had access to a second Device, Dragon would probably have the Survival Pod opened within a month and a half, Vicky was feeling better, and my increased training regimens were starting to pay dividends. Things were finally moving forward.

… to school. Things were moving forward to a long, slow, boring day at school. A long, slow, boring day that was part of an equally long, slow, and boring week where seconds felt like hours, minutes felt like days, and I was experiencing it five times at once. It looked like I'd finally found a downside to running multiple mental partitions.

Go me. Not even my four simultaneous Image Training partitions - I was running five partitions now - could sharpen the boredom into something less mind-numbing. Today, we were just starting on vectors. Why was I even in trigonometry again? My notebook - the one I never actually used for notes when I could just record everything that was said and, if I really wanted, have Raising Heart transcribe it all - was filling up with doodles and spell math.

"Taylor," Mrs. Rasmussen said. She was a short grey-haired woman whose hair style bore a striking resemblance to Shaggy's from Scooby Doo with an otherwise professional appearance, and I started at the sound of her voice.

"What?" I asked.

Giggles from the rest of the class. I blushed and glanced about. I was being stared at.

"Have you been paying attention?" Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

I nodded. "Of course," I lied.

Her forehead creased slightly and she smiled tersely from beneath her John Lennon glasses. "You're up," she said, gesturing to the board, where a vector was displayed on a simple graph on the whiteboard with a dozen more beside, above, and below it. Some of them had already been done. "Magnitude and direction," Mrs. Rasmussen said impatiently.

I stood up and walked to the front, feeling the eyes of the class on my back. I picked up the marker and wrote the magnitude and direction of the vector on the board without hesitation: 55 degrees North of East, 2.3.

Mrs. Rasmussen's smile vanished. "Would you mind doing the next one?" she asked.

I glanced at the next vector and wrote its magnitude and direction.

"And the next," Mrs. Rasmussen said.

I did the next.

"Why don't you finish what's on the board?"

I did. Why was everyone staring at me?

"... You can sit down, Ms. Hebert," Mrs. Rasmussen said in a subdued tone.

It was only when I returned to my seat that I realized that my protractor had been on my desk the entire time.

Shit.

After school, Vicky and Amy came over to work on their spell math with Raising Heart; Vicky was trying to perfect a basic attack spell, while Amy was going for a basic force field. Yuuno was in the living room with Durandal in card form, and he looked up as we walked in.

"No luck?" I asked.

He shook his head.

Vicky blinked. "Who's the kid" she asked.

Yuuno and I exchanged looks. "You've met Yuuno, haven't you?" I asked.

Vicky blinked. "The ferret?"

Yuuno looked embarrassed, and he rubbed at the back of his neck. "Oh. I guess I haven't shown you my normal form before," he said.

Oh. Amy hadn't actually met Yuuno. Right. "Amy, this is Yuuno," I said. "Yuuno, this is my friend Amy."

"Nice to meet you," Yuuno said, and bowed.

Amy hesitated a moment, and then bowed back.

After the introductions were done, Yuuno turned back to the Durandal card on the table.

[Seriously?] Vicky asked. [He's really the ferret?]

[Yes,] I replied, [He's really the ferret. No, it's not his parahuman power. I already asked.]

[... He's way cuter as a ferret,] Vicky said.

Amy rolled her eyes.

[What?] Vicky protested. [I'm just saying.]

"What are you working on, Yuuno?" Amy asked.

"I'm trying to crack the security for this Device." He made a frustrated noise. "No luck so far. Whoever programmed it did a very good job. I'm not sure I'll be able to gain access without the password, which could be anything."

"Have you tried guessing some of the more common passwords?" Vicky asked.

Yuuno nodded. "I have one more guess to try. Then I either have to get it right, or…" he trailed off. "Durandal, new user registration."

"Please state password," Durandal replied in an uninflected, mechanical sounding voice.

Yuuno quoted something in Midchildan that I didn't quite understand. The rhythm sounded like poetry, but the words were weird, and the suddenly changed accent made it indecipherable.

"Password incorrect," Durandal said. "Please state the correct password. This device will go into administrative lockdown if another erroneous password is given."

Yuuno sighed. "We can't actually use it if we don't have the password," he said.

"Damn," I muttered. "Maybe Dragon will be able to figure something out."

Vicky thought for a minute. "You have a picture of the guy this Device belongs to?" she asked.

I brought up a holo-screen with the image of Chrono in the survival pod, and Vicky studied the image. Presently, she pointed to Chrono's hand. "Is that a wedding ring?" she asked. "Do weirdly human aliens have wedding rings?"

Yuuno shrugged. "I guess?"

"You have some information on him, though, right? Bring it up. Let's see what we can find. A lot of times people use significant names for passwords, important dates, sometimes combinations of the two. What's his spouse's name?"

Yuuno opened a holographic window and brought up the profile he had on Chrono. He spent a few moments reading it over before he read aloud, "Takamachi Nanoha."

"Password accepted," Durandal said. "Access granted."

There was dead silence in the living room for a long moment.

"Vicky," I said, suddenly daring to breathe, "you're insanely lucky."

"Yup," she replied cheerfully.

"And a genius," I said.

"That, too," she agreed.

"And modest," Amy added.

"Always!" Vicky agreed again.

Somehow, I managed not to roll my eyes. "Takamachi Nanoha, huh? It sounds Japanese."

Yuuno nodded. "That's because it is. It says here she's from a city called Uminari, nationality is Japanese, and she's from…" he blinked. "Non-Administrated world #96."

I blinked. "Aren't we Non-Administrated World #97?" I asked.

"As far as I know," Yuuno said.

"Another version of Earth?" Amy asked.

"Maybe so," Yuuno replied.

After dinner, when Amy and Vicky had gone home for the evening and Yuuno had retired to the guest room for some reading, I finally asked Dad about Egalité. It didn't start out as a conversation about her; it had started with me talking to Dad about the battle with Fate and how badly I'd screwed everything up. He'd done the normal Dad thing and said he was proud of me and it wasn't my fault things had gone badly, and Raising Heart tried to make me feel better by saying she was super-proud of me and of how I did in the battle and thought I'd come a long way, but I knew how I'd done; I'd lost.

When I asked about Egalité, it was almost more because I wanted to change the subject and not have them tell me how proud they were of how bad I was at combat magic than because I wanted to ask about Egalité. … I mean, I did want to know, but I also couldn't bear to hear them try to cheer me up for even a second longer. "Dad," I asked, "Did you know a friend of Mom's with the cape name, Egalité?"

Dad thought about it. "What does she look like?" he asked.

I described Egalité as best I could. Tall, muscular, same colors as me on her costume: blue and white.

"Red hair and green eyes?" Dad asked.

I shook my head. "Her costume had a cowl that hid her hair. I think she had green eyes, though." I hoped she didn't have red hair.

Dad frowned. "Did she have Québécoise accent?"

"Québécoise?" I asked.

"French-Canadian," Dad amended.

I nodded. "She did," I confirmed.

"Well, I don't know any Egalité, but Nemesis and your mother worked for Lustrum together. They were close. Best friends, the way you and Emma..."

I flinched, and Dad stopped mid-sentence..

"Taylor," Dad began, "Did something happen between you and Emma?"

I didn't want to lie, but I REALLY didn't want to talk about Emma Barnes just now. "Can we talk about that later?" I asked.

Dad nodded reluctantly. "Okay," he said. "You know I'm here for you if you need me, right?"

I nodded. "I know." A beat passed. "It still seems weird to imagine Mom working for Lustrum," I said.

Dad looked a little uncomfortable, but it was hard to feel bad when he'd just turned the subject of the conversation to Emma not thirty seconds ago. "Things were different back then. Lustrum didn't start out the way she ended. It was more of a gradual thing. But I've seen it more times than I care to remember; hardly anyone turns evil all in one go. They do it one step at a time, and every step along the way doesn't feel like it's turning you into a monster. It always seems like you're just doing what you have to." He shook his head. "Even when she was first declared a villain by the PRT, things didn't get really bad until... well, it's a long story."

I wasn't sure what to think of that. I mean, I knew I could never go that route, but it seemed sad to imagine a good person doing the best they can, and every step leading them further and further into villainy. "Well," I said, "I've met Nemesis. She calls herself Egalité now, and she's working for the Protectorate. She's running the brute training program, and she's... really good at it."

Dad raised an eyebrow, and his expression was almost unreadable. "Huh," he said.

"Did she really meet me when I was a baby?"

Dad nodded. "She did. Babysat for you a couple of times, too. Nemesis stayed with Lustrum longer than your mom did. I don't know all the details, but Annette was really broken up when she finally had to cut ties."

I couldn't think of anything to say in response to that, so I said nothing, and the conversation ended in an awkward silence.