Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor
(Worm/Nanoha)
by P.H. Wise

Interlude 4.X: Rune

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!


It seemed like life was getting worse every day, and it wasn't like she couldn't see why. The Empire Eighty Eight was her life now. She went to the meetings, the rallies, she helped out with the community outreach. People called it a gang, but it wasn't exactly: It was a world. Her world. You lived your whole life through the group and for the group. It hadn't started that way, but it had been brought there by degrees. And as Rune looked into the bathroom mirror, she barely recognized the girl looking back at her.

She splashed water on her face. Maybe it was to try to wake herself up. Maybe it was just to try to make herself stop with the self-pity party. She didn't need anyone's pity: not even her own.

There was a knock at the door. "What is it?" she asked.

A man's voice replied, "Kaiser's ready for you."

Rune shivered. "... I'll be right out."

The man waiting for her outside the bathroom was well groomed. He didn't look like a gang member. He looked like a business man. Middle management, maybe, with soft eyes, a little pot-belly that his suit didn't quite conceal, glasses that gave him an intellectual air, a bald spot on the top of his head that made him look a little like a friar. His name was Henry Fischer, and he was on loan from Gesellschaft. He was unfailingly polite and pleasant, she had no idea if he was a parahuman or not, and he scared the shit out of her.

He led her down a richly carpeted hallway to where Kaiser was waiting in an elaborately decorated study. He was seated, reading a book, and he didn't stand when she came in. The contrast between his savage armor, his crown of blades, and his civilized surroundings - even the book in his hand, undisturbed and undamaged by his power - was striking.

Rune stood there before him for a full minute before he finally set the book down and looked up.

"Hello, Rune," he said.

She never knew how to behave around him. Was she supposed to bow? She wasn't the bowing type, but she'd do it if she had to. Fuck, she hated having to second guess herself like this. It wasn't like her. She didn't like the her that was constantly second-guessing, and it seemed like that was all she did these days. "Kaiser," she said.

"Tell me again about your encounter with Starfall and the Slasher Mist."

This again? She'd already related this story to him twice, but she wasn't about to tell him so, and it made her angry that she dared not tell him so. She went over the story again. "We'd heard there was a Jewel Seed at the marina. Victor was going, and Othala asked me to come..."

When she finished, he nodded. "And how quickly would you say Victor began to glow after he started using his power on Starfall?"

That was new. He hadn't asked that question before. Fuck. This was about Victor, wasn't it? He'd been missing for a few days now. Everyone was talking about how there was going to be an ABB attack, but nobody would tell her why. Pretty much the only other thing anyone was talking about was that thing with Starfall at the Bronx Arcology. Jewel Seeds and magic: a device that could give you a second trigger on command. And they'd had a chance to secure one right at the start, and they'd failed.

"I don't know," Rune said. "It depends when he started. Even if he started the second she caught him, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes."

"And in those few minutes, he was able to learn how to create a force field that kept him safe from what you called the..." he glanced at a piece of paper on the table before him. "'Fucking bees' attack?"

Rune nodded, her expression darkening at the memory. That Divine Stinger attack of Starfall's made it feel like every single inch of your body had been covered in bee stings. She wasn't fucking around, and Rune didn't intend to either, if they met again.

"Kaiser, did..." She forced down the wave of trepidation that she felt at speaking out of turn. You didn't speak out of turn to Kaiser; it wasn't done. And she wasn't, exactly. But he had asked her a question, and she wasn't answering it with her words. "Did Victor do something he shouldn't have?"

Kaiser's eyes flashed dangerously, and Rune forced herself not to take a step back, and the fact that she had to stop herself set off a new wave of self-recrimination. Since when was she the kind of person that stepped back? ... But this was Kaiser. Nobody fucked with Kaiser. It wasn't that she was scared of him, it was just... he had this way about him. He was in charge, and that was that. You did what he said. He was the only thing holding up White Culture in the city, for fuck's sake. Without him, the ABB, the crackheads, those fucking Puerto Rican gangs that were nibbling at the edges, they'd take over the whole damn town.

Her mouth kept running, almost without her realizing it. "Victor can't steal powers, right? Just skills. So if Starfall is really a mage like she claims, and magic is a skill, not a power... who did Victor go and drain?"

"That will be all, Rune," Kaiser said.

She shut her mouth. Nobody disobeyed Kaiser. Not even her.

Rune passed Othala in the hallway on the way out. There was a haunted look on the other cape's face, and Rune gulped, and then she was mad at herself for being so easily intimidated.

Was this really her? The only place she felt even a little bit like herself anymore was at school. She didn't have any friends there - she didn't really have friends outside the E88 at all - but she was herself. Hard core skater chick. Dyed her hair cobalt blue. Nobody fucked with her, and not because of the gang she was part of. When was the last time she's gone to the skate park? She couldn't remember, and that bothered her more than she would ever admit.

Brad was waiting for her when she came out of the building. He was okay for an adult. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," she answered. "The fuck did Victor do, Brad? Kaiser almost ripped me a new asshole in there."

Brad snorted. "Shat on Kaiser's corn flakes is what he did."

Rune blinked. "What?"

"He killed someone he shouldn't have," Brad said. "Some old Buddhist priest. Got all those yellow bastards up in arms, demanding justice." He shook his head. "It's why the police and the PRT have been sniffing around, and why the ABB has more new recruits than they've ever had."

Rune had no particular love for Asians, but killing a priest? "... Did he have a good reason?"

"Fuck if I know."

Brad's cell phone rang. He answered it. His eyes narrowed. "We're moving out, kid," he said.

"What's going on?" Rune asked.

"Some bomber cape just hit one of our businesses," Brad replied. "Oni Lee, probably."

"Shit."

They left, and what they found when they arrived at the bar that had been bombed was much, much worse than Oni Lee.