A Saga of Tanya the Evil/The Irregular at Magic High School crossover.

I do not in any way, shape, or form lay claim to either of these works.

This is just a work of admiration from one fan, to those others that share the same interest.

The only characters or places I lay claim to are those solely of my own creation

Chapter 41, Time flies: Assault and Battery

Tuesday, August 10th 2094. 2:00 AM

Point Two.

A slight ripple moved slowly and steadily across the backdrop of the wall that surrounded the compound. Under the cover of her optical illusion, the two most senior members of the 203rd Mage Battalion once again found themselves making their way into the heart of enemy territory with an assault on an entrenched, numerically superior force. In other words, a fairly normal Tuesday, at least back in the world that they had been cast adrift from.

The two operated in near total silence, years of close cooperation have made audio cues redundant. Each knows what the other intends in most situations, and quick hand motions convey the rest

As they moved, guards and cameras were identified and circumvented or removed if there were no other options. Most of them, Tanya handles on her own with a quick yank back with a hand over their mouths, and a knife in through the gap between the ribs or collarbone.

One guard had the misfortune of turning the corner at the exact wrong moment, and got to look into the intense eyes of Visha as she drove her always handy entrenching tool through his chest.

Tanya chose not to comment, she simply nodded as they each drug their respective victims out of sight and stashed them, as they moved out once again after they scanned them and uploaded the results to the encrypted network. Why, exactly, they had been informed to do this was a mystery to both of them. What was even stranger was how their tactical displays would update shortly after each time.

Tanya had to wonder about the timing, and what resources the good doctor might have in the shadows. A matter for another time. When they were not penetrating the heart of enemy territory.

Tanya exchanged a look with Visha as they came up on an intersection. Their displays showed a small group to the right, but nothing to the left.

With A quick exchange of gestures, the pair moved silently down the left passage. As they progressed down the passage, a group of four guards flanking an older gentleman with milky white eyes turned into the corridor before them. The pair exchanged a look and pressed against the wall to allow the group to pass.

The first pair of guards passed by the pair without incident, and the elderly gentleman stepped past Tanya without hesitation but as he started to move past Visha, he lashed out to the side and delivered a palm strike to her chest, right over where her heart was. As Visha slammed into the wall behind her, Tanya felt the surge of energy from a spell activation.

Tanya rolled deftly to the side as she avoided a strike aimed at her. She dropped the concealment spell as she glanced aside at the limp form of Visha as she lay crumpled at the base of the wall. She felt her blood run cold as the thought of Visha being hurt or dead settled into her chest like a cold, dead weight.

The guards attacked as soon as her cloaking spell dropped, and it quickly became clear that they had stepped into a trap. One that had injured Visha.

Unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. Without Visha, what purpose did living have? What good was fighting to survive? What did it matter what happened to this world?

A world without Visha no longer needed to exist.

The four guards had pressed Tanya back while the older gentleman stepped back to observe. Tanya wove her way between their attacks as she felt herself growing colder and more furious by the moment. She parted her lips as words began to spill forth.

"Oh Lord, I consign these now to your mercy and judgement. Lay low the mighty, the arrogant, and the unjust. Return them to dust.`` She said as she reached out and touched one of the four. His horrified scream was cut short as his body crumbled, consumed by time. Tanya looked up, and her golden eyes locked onto her next victim as she seemed to blur and vanish.

She appeared again before him as she gripped his head between her hands, and a moment later his headless corpse dropped to the ground. The other two guards attempted to fall back, but the Argent, the Devil of the Rhine would not spare them tonight.

In moments, Tanya had locked her golden gaze onto the older gentleman as the bloody and rotted remains of the four guards lay scattered on the floor. A quick motion, and an impenetrable sphere of all consuming blackness snapped into existence around them, the edges of it sinking into the walls and floor. As Tanya advanced on him, he took one, then two steps back until his back collided with the boundary of Tanya's field. He pressed against it for a moment, then steeled his resolve as he engaged her directly.

He moved with smooth, fluid grace. Each strike was precise, and Tanya could feel the tingle of magic in the air as he attacked her. More than likely, he was one of the ancient mages that she had heard about, practitioners that had been trained to use magical systems from before the codifying of modern magic.

As they separated again, he gave Tanya a grim look. "You do well to avoid my strikes, child. Otherwise, you will end up like your companion there. The Dim Mak kills with just a touch." He said as he moved back into his stance as Tanya went dead still.

"You killed her." Tanya said in a flat monotone voice. She looked up, and he flinched back at the pure, murderous intent that radiated from her like a cold torrent. He barely had time to block as she moved rapidly to engage him. She had changed her fighting style, and was no longer just simply dodging out of the way of his strikes. She had started to actively parry him and block his strikes with a magical shield that flashed in and out of existence at the last possible moment.

The only reason he knew where the barrier was that she had enacted was the fact that his senses just ended. No sense of a wall, or anything else. Just a sense of nothingness. Like knowing that the void of space was just on the other side of a thin bubble. He shivered as he parried another attack with absolutely no concern for her own safety behind it. She had become a cold, unfeeling berserker. What was the most disconcerting was the words that seemed to be spilling from her lips with no conscious thought, words of praise and devotion to God. Words that unsettled him, even if he could barely make them out.

He parried a particularly vicious attack, and a cold flame seemed to engulf his arm. He backed off and watched in a sort of horrified wonder as his arm seemed to just rot away. In moments, his right arm had been reduced to dust, and his lifeblood had started to pour out from the withered remnants of his shoulder.

He steadied himself as he decided that, no matter the cost, he had to destroy the monster that faced him now. It had become clear that he had obviously killed the wrong one with his surprise attack.

It was a mistake that he was determined to correct. And Zao Dao never failed his master's.

At that same time in the Projects FOB, a series of sensors and alarms begin to blare. The doctor's head snaps up from where she had been reading the latest report from ORACLE.

"Report!" She snapped out as she stood up.

"Ma'am! We are seeing a spike across all the bands. Tanya has created another entropic sphere. But ma'am… I've never seen readings like these…" The sensor technician spike nervously.

The doctor hurried over to examine the readings herself. She inhaled sharply as she saw the surge and spike in neutrinos and other exotic particles that were bleeding from the event horizon.

"Damn that Type 95… It doesn't have the limiters her combat CAD does. I don't know why, but Tanya's entropic acceleration inside the sphere is reaching dangerous levels. If this continues… we might see fission occur…" Doctor Schugel spoke as she examined the readings again. "We had best prepare for a blast wave… I don't know if we are far enough away…"

Doctor Schugel spoke softly to herself. "Degurecheff, what are you doing? Serebryakov is supposed to act as a check on her…" The doctor looked towards Point Two and hoped that the worst didn't happen.

Inside the sphere, Zao Dao tried to push himself away from the horrifying demon that stalked him. His legs were rotted ruins, and his sole remaining arm was in little better shape. He knew that his death stood before him, and that there was little he could do to stop it from happening. The raw power that poured out of the girl before him was terrifying, there was no way that there should be a mage of this caliber that was not on their lists, that they did not have a record of. In his senses, she stood like a swirling figure of light and darkness, like an angel of the end of days coming to deliver judgment on Mankind.

He supposed that he might not be that far off.

"You took her from me. You took the one thing I cared about in this world. You took the only reason I have to truly care about what happens to this world and the people in it away from me." Tanya said in a low, monotone voice as her golden eyes slowly started to fill with swirling red. "I will deliver justice. I will have vengeance. Oh Lord… Hear now my prayers as I condemn these souls to your fires. I offer them to lay at your feet as a sacrifice." Tanya said as she continued to stalk towards him, the very personification of Wrath incarnate.

She jerked to a halt as a pair of slim, strong arms wrapped around her from behind. Tanya barely stopped herself from reacting as a familiar floral scent washed over her, one that she had grown accustomed to in the time since they had each stopped pretending that they were sleeping next to each other every night. A scent that she would know anywhere, no matter what kind of state her mind was in.

"I'm here. I'm safe. Tanya… Please, come back to me. I'm here. I'm safe. Tanya, stop, please…." Visha said as she pulled the shorter girl back against her.

Tanya took a slow, deep breath as her opponent gaped at the sight before him. Tanya relaxed, as her eyes lost their reddish, golden glow and she seemed to shrink slightly, once more just a mere mortal, no longer a vessel of Divine wrath.

"How… How are you still alive!" Zao Dao asked as he pressed his back against the curved wall of the sphere. "That attack should have destroyed your heart! It should have caused the muscles to tear themselves to shreds!"

Visha glared over Tanya's shoulder at Zao Dao. "If you want to destroy my heart, you are too late. Someone beat you to it. And anyhow, it belongs to her now… No one else can have it." Visha said as she blushed a bit.

Tanya calmly reached down and pulled out her pistol as she took aim and put two rounds through his chest and one through his forehead. "And no one else ever will…." Tanya said before she took a breath and brought the raging sphere of entropic energy back into control again. She turned in Visha's arms and looked up at her slightly taller girlfriend. "You scared me, Visha…. I thought I had lost you again."

Visha smiled and shook her head as she winced a little. "I'm never leaving your side again, Tanya. I might just be a little sore for a few days, is all." Visha said as she smiled at Tanya, who just shook her head and looked down.

"I..I almost lost it…" Tanya said softly, then jerked a little as Visha lifted her chin.

"But you didn't. Now, let's finish what we came here for, okay?" Visha said as she gathered her gun and checked the round in the chamber.

Tanya nodded as she let the bubble collapse, and the pair moved out once Tanya had cloaked them once more. Time was no longer on their side, they could hear people coming, heading towards the sounds of gunfire and conflict that had echoed through the halls.

The race was on.

Elsewhere, the technician looked back at the Doctor. "It's... Gone, ma'am. It wasn't up for very long, and it seemed to stabilize just before it collapsed."

Doctor Schugel nodded as she looked at a screen that showed the telemetry from Visha's artificial heart. Hopefully they didn't have any other unpleasant little surprises. Visha's vitals had spiked and then dropped to a low level suddenly. They had to trigger the overrides built into her artificial heart to get her back up and into the fight. Luckily, they had sent the signal before Tanya had erected her entropic field.

They would keep a closer eye on the pair going forward.