Well everyone this is it:The final chapter in this long long journey! Now I do have some things I want to say but I will save it until the end of this chapter but to get the beginning stuff out of the way:Due to the pandemic, it got me pretty busy to the point of me not having the time to work on this chapter. Then more stuff just pilled on and now we are here. Hope you guys enjoy this chapter despite how long it took!

Same disclaimer as before

It has been five minutes since the recent battle between Ixia and the agents of the bureau. The current room was filled with a lot of destroyed rubble, scorched marks across the pillars and even where the throne was is nothing more then a shadow of its former self. With all of this in mind, the man in question Ixia was still in the same position as he was last time:lying on the ground and still was not moving. Nanoha, Hayate, Fate, Shiro and Hitoshi were all staring at the man,just waiting for a chance to counterattack if he moved again. Shiro was lightly panting after the fight and asked, "Is it over?"

He turns to Fate which after a few seconds, she responds with a thumbs up indicting that Ixia has been beaten for real this time. And with that amount of good news, the young sword mage dropped his sword and sat down on his back with a sigh of relief. Hitoshi grins at the state of his friend and yawned while lifting his arms, "Yeah Shiro has the right idea. Could use a little powwow." as even he fell on his back. The girls looked at the sight of the two men relaxing and giggled a bit with Rein splitting from Hayate.

The mistress also had a brief yawn and chimes in. "Maybe a short little rest will do us some good. Since Ixia is down for the count, may as well take this chance." Then she lied on the ground with Rein doing the same next to her. Fate decides to follow suit and took a sit as well with Nanoha, noticing that Ixia still has not yet moved, chose to sat down and enjoy the break. However, just as she was about to, a lingering thought entered in her mind.

'While we were fighting Ixia, I do wonder how Yuuno was doing against the drones outside. I know that he can handle himself very well but it has been a long time since he fought. He should be fine...I hope."

Then the white devil received her answer in the form of a familiar yell in the distance:

"HEY GUYS!"

This caused the others to stand up and witness the sight of Yuuno, Chrono and Zafira all running to the main room where the fight took place. Once they got there, Yuuno was about to ask about the fight and how did the others fare against Ixia, however he is stopped by the sight of a brunette woman running to him and hugging him. During the embrace, Nanoha spoke to the man, "I am very happy that you are ok Yuuno."

In response, said librarian blushed a tint of red and replied, " Nanoha I was going to be fine. I have fought before you know."

"Yes, but it has been a while since then and you mostly have your head in the books." agreed the white devil with a bright warm smile on her face. "So you can't get angry at me for being a bit worried."

Yuuno, still with the light blush, sided with the woman holding him, especially considering the massive time gap it was since he did fight. Though he can still hold his own if needed but the fact that Nanoha was still worried made him happy on the inside. Zafira and Chrono looked on along with Shiro, Hitoshi and Fate letting the two have their brief moment. Although Hayate lightly smirked and brought back the raccoon that she is.

"Ahh, could this be the spark of love blossoming guys?"

No one really replied since it was not super important at the moment, but Hitoshi grinned as well and threw his hat in the ring, "Oh yeah, definitely. You could see the fireworks from here."

"Mm hmm." said Rein who was now sitting on Hayate's shoulder, also enjoying the peace.

While that was going on, Zafira and Chrono were walking to the others, leading Chrono to fill in for the others on what happened. "As we were running here, we had noticed some bodies that were lying on the ground in some of the previous floors."

Shiro crossed his arms and asked just to be sure if it was them, "Those bodies must have been from Saika, Drav and Anna. Then that means you guys saw them?"

Zafira responded with a quick nod, stating that the bodies they had found were indeed from the three who were working with Ixia. Fate had decided to speak as well, bringing something up to the conversion, "If they were not moving by the time you guys came here, it must have a really long time since the individual fights we had with them reaching Ixia."

"We could tell after looking at their bodies." replied the young admiral with his arms crossed. "They must have indeed gave it their all in trying to stop you from reaching this point. But due to that, they are too tired and can't really fight back at the moment."

After the hug, Yuuno walked over to Ixia's unmoving body and made a green chain wrap around the torso. "With that in mind, the mission is now done. We should take the time to capture them before they may try and wake up again. Let's move."

With that, the gang walked out of the room as Ixia was still chained up, and was going to catch the other members now happy that the long struggle in capturing and stopping Ixia was a success.

Back on the Arthra, Nanoha, Fate, Hayate, Shiro and Hitoshi were all brought to Lindy's office on the ship. The woman in question has a bright smile on her beautiful face and she claps her hands together while still keeping that same smile.

"Congratulations to all of you on a job well done!"

Everyone is currently smiling at the recent news, with Shiro rubbing the back of the head and Hitoshi smirking. Nanoha, Fate, Hayate and Rein were also in the happy mood as well as Yuuno and while Zafira and Chrono were a good amount stoic, even they had a ghost of a smirk on their faces. The older Admiral then continued on with what she wanted to say.

"Now that the mission is over, we will be sending Ixia and his men to a prison planet for we can keep an eye on them as well as keep them locked up."

Lindy starts to push a button on her console and on the screen revealed a planet, only obviously a lot more different from Earth. The planet, in view was like a dark place where there were black spots that kind of looked like landmass and barely any sunlight was shown. Nanoha and the rest were used to the sight of a prison planet, given their jobs within the Bureau. But compared to them, Shiro just saw the darken planet with his mouth wide open, in complete shock. As for Hitoshi, he whistled while a brief mutter passed through his lips, indicating that even he felt that the planet was intimidating. Hayate smirked while looking at the side, leading to Nanoha and Fate to repeat the same way. It was almost like looking at how they were when they started, more so Nanoha and Hayate. After the huge shock, the lime haired woman decided to bring back the conversion.

"While they are being transferred there, all of their resources and data will be taken away, to make sure that this will never happen again. Hopefully, they won't have any plans of breaking out anytime soon."

Shiro sighed and replied, "Yeah, let's hope so." which allowed the others to agree, knowing full well that the mission was over and the job was done finally. However Shiro looked at Lindy and decided to bring something up.

"So now that the whole Ixia problem is over, I have a question. What happens now?"

From the way he asked the question, it felt as if it was a very serious one. The air felt a bit heavy as it lingered on the others, none more so then Lindy. So because of that, Lindy chose to take the question as seriously as possible and clapped her hands together with her eyes closed. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and responded to the young man, "That depends. What do you two want to do?" She also looks at Hitoshi and continued, "You both have your own path to take. It is only fair that you make that path your own."

Given this choice, it only took the sword mage 4 seconds to make his decision known. He stared back at the woman sitting on the chair still and spoke with conviction burning in his voice:

"I want to know if I could join the bureau."

Lindy then smiled at the question as Chrono just stared at the young man. He asked, "But why would you want to join? I would think that after this case, you would want to have nothing to do with this world anymore."

"Normally, if it was the old me then yes, I would want to go back to that life." He then turns to look at Nanoha, Fate, Hayate, Rein and even Hitoshi before continuing on with his words. "But training with Nanoha, getting to know all of you, learning magic and such, it got me out of my shell and I would like to think that I have gotten stronger as a result of doing this. I feel happy and proud, no longer that same puppy as Drav would call me. I really do enjoy being a mage."

From the small speech, all of the veterans each had a smile of sorts as they heard the conviction in his tone which lead to Nanoha, the person who trained him, to ask, "Now are you sure you want to join Shiro?"

The young man did have a small little thing nagging him at the back of the head, slowly but surely getting at him. However with a brief shake of the head, he redirected his focus back at Nanoha and told her while nodding and with a serious voice and harden onyx eyes:

"Yes Nanoha, I am sure."

Then in a surprising way, Hitoshi also said, "Lindy if Shiro is joining the bureau, then I am too!" This made everyone to stare at the fist user with an opened mouth leading to Shiro to question, "But wait Hitoshi, I don't think you should..."

"Nope, Shiro, I have made up my mind. I am joining you in this crazy ass world and you can't stop me." The red haired man then puts his left arm on Shiro's neck and grins in a joking manner, "Besides, someone has to watch out for you if you hurt yourself again."

The sword mage in question glared at his friend while replying, "Hey I don't get hurt too often Hitoshi!" as the girls all chimed in to say, "He does have a point."

The very act made Shiro blush a bit as the gang laughs while Zafira and Chrono watch on and Lindy giggles a bit. Once the heartwarming act was done, the lime haired woman looked at the two and gave her warm welcome with a smile. "All right then, Shiro Nagase and Hitoshi Ichimoto, I welcome you both into the Time Space Administration Bureau. Though honestly, I was hoping you two would join and say yes. You have potential and I can't wait to see how you will grow." The three women plus unison device all nodded, agreeing with the Admiral that the two will do good in the Bureau and Yuuno lightly smiles, glad to see that the two will enlist.

Chrono briefly stares at the two and spoke to them. "You two should be warned that the training to get in will be just as hard." which leads to Hitoshi grinning at the young Admiral and reply back with a snap of his fingers, "Chrono if I can handle old man's training regime and a bit of what I had learned now, then this training will be a piece of cake."

"I have to agree with Hitoshi on this one," Shiro spoke with a smile and responded back. "The fact that I am still standing here in spite of Nanoha's training, that means that I at least have a shot at surviving. You just watch."

"We will see." finished Chrono with his arms crossed and with that, the two men from Earth then went on to get enlisted into the TSAB.

It has been a couple of months since the Ixia case had finished and on a far away planet housed a building with a handful of areas around it. This building was one of the many training grounds in order to train, teach and educate future officers of the TSAB. Inside the main building is a set of dorm rooms, each assigned to a pair of trainees and in one such room housed one young man.

Shiro was stretching his arms and smiling at the screen. He was dressed in a white shirt along with some blue pants complete with brown shoes. Unfortunate for him after enlisting in training to became a Bureau mage, he had to give up Reginleif and was instead given a practice device instead. He looked at his wrist when his device would be and sighs knowing that without it, he felt naked. That aside, he was looking at the screen which was a letter he had wrote to Nanoha to basically give her an update on things with the training. As he pressed the button, he got up and spoke with a smile, "Done! Hope that letter finds it's way to Nanoha."

Just then the door opened and it was revealed to be Hitoshi, who was also wearing the same training garb as his friend. He saw the screen disappear and spoke to his buddy. "Hey Shiro, I was just about tell you that the next training session would start. Just about done with your letter again?"

"Yep, just got finished with it and she should be getting it soon." spoke Shiro as he walked to the door, ready to leave the room with Hitoshi. As the two stepped outside, Shiro looked up at the now alien sky he has been grown accustomed to within these past few months and smiles as he starts to run to the place where the training session was supposed to be held. With Hitoshi behind him and immediately catching up, the two went on their way, determined to pass the training and become mages.

Meanwhile on an extremely far out planet, a shadow is currently on a computer screen and is searching for something. Something that is very important to this individual and after a couple of seconds, he finds what he was looking for.

On the screen was a stone, and while to the untrained eye it may look like a normal stone, it is in fact a magical stone. The man then began to type the coordinates to find the stone and with the coordinates in hand, he smiles to himself as he walks to his ship. He spoke with the smile still on his face, "I finally found it! The El Pasado stone."

It is from there, he begins his plans to start up his personal operations.

Done and DONE! Finally the first story arc is officially over, the guys are going to join the Bureau while a new problem will give way for the next arc. So yes obviously due to this, that means there are some things that are briefly mentioned from this story but they will be mentioned and dealt with in the next story I will make. Again I do apologize for how long it took to write the Epilogue and I hope you all can understand the long wait. However now that we have reached the end of the Journey arc, I have some things I want to say:I would like to thank the people who reviewed this story and those who gave good insight on what to improve for the later chapters. Same goes for the people who followed this one and waited for the next chapter along with asking me some questions using DM. Also a shout out to AltheUnderboss for giving me the inspiration to write this out at all and finally a huge thank you to my unknown beta reader, Darkness Mage who took the time to let me know what needed looking into before releasing a chapter. Again thank you all so much and even if this story is done, I will still check and see if there are some issues. Feel free to let me know, you guys are awesome, stay healthy and safe and I hope to see you all again once I get to the next story arc so be on the lookout for it!