AN: In response to criticism that I've gone over several times since I received them, and only now feel up to talking about here, I'll be rewriting Conception I, II, II and IV to bring them in line with the other four chapters once I finish the arc.

With that said, there won't be too much changed aside from hopefully making it a better read, mostly by removing the 'wall of text' element that's found there and the 'telling not showing' I tend to find myself doing, and because of this, the rewrite shouldn't take that long. The only major things that should be happening is the 'telling not showing', which'll mean more scenes and conversations getting added, and Nanoha's beginning incantation being changed to something far more fitting than the other.

Hopefully this rewrite will only take at most a week or two, and I can move on.

Oh, I also won't put in translations for any other languages I use, at least for this first arc… though I'm liable to continue this throughout the fic. If you want translations, either ask me directly or translate yourself. For one, the translations would make the word count higher than what it should be, even if that's just a hundred or so words, and for two, it'd make the paragraphs even more 'wall of text' than I'm comfortable with.

And one last thing, a… 'secret' of sorts for those of you who have read everything else up to this point and don't re-read prior chapters, Conception V has an addition to it, just a few words but it changes things a lot.

Now then, enjoy, and apologizes on the rather large AN.

Amount of hugs needed: 5,896

Amount of hugs found: 2,314

Disclaimer: I do not own Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha nor any of the various seasons made after the original.

No time was wasted refuting those words, immediately starting when the Enforcer created a set of four blades above him and sent them at her, a spell she quickly dodged with a detonation upwards into another platform. Her body skidded against the sheet of mana before she sent herself flying at Fate, said girl having made the Enforcer briefly back off under a hail of bolts, before turning to meet her charge with a quick change of her device.

Sparks flew as both weapons bit into each other, serene smile opposing a stoic line before they both broke apart in the wake of a return volley from the boy, and then came the homing shots repeatedly chasing after them. An explosion sent her hurtling along the water away from the persistent bolts, the water parting slightly in her wake until a second platform changed her direction to send her behind a skyscraper. The bolts thankfully turned too sharply and plowed into the skyscraper rather than curve along the path she took, which left her alone for the mome-

Immediately she ducked and avoided the blade sent flying towards her courtesy of the Enforcer, followed by then detonating herself into the sky to avoid Fate's volley of bolts… She was in the middle of both of them… that needed to be fixed quickly. She let her body orient itself to be near horizontal, her feet brushing against condensed mana before it exploded her directly into the skyscraper, shattering glass and busting concrete as she slid inside.

They wouldn't follow her inside, doing so would put them in close-quarters with her and no room to maneuver, something they both were wary off given her 'prowess' in swordsmanship. This wasn't like any of the other battles before now, she didn't have a partner that would maneuver the opponent towards her, or at the least, pressure them enough that they were focused elsewhere than on her, nor was she against a single opponent where she could at least focus on a single target. No, this time she had to deal with two enemies, both of whom she couldn't catch without aid or trickery, and who would automatically try to flee from her if given the chance.

She heard explosions outside, steadily growing further from the building as time passed, so she quickly ran through the debris cast in her wake… was there really this many office buildings in this part of the city… and jumped back into the water-filled world outside. She made a platform directly below the opening and ran in the direction of the explosions, darting around three skyscrapers until she was almost at the sounds… and then ran directly into the Enforcer…

Not wasting the moment, she exploded the platform she'd be using and barreled into the boy, a barely heard gasp sounding out before she rammed the two of them into another skyscraper. Two seconds after they entered she threw the older boy into a wall, dazing him slightly before immediately sending a wave of mana at him. He hadn't gotten out of the daze by the time the spell hit, knocking him back into the wall moments before she rammed into him again, taking both through the wall and into second room.

This time she didn't throw him into the wall, choosing instead to deliver a knee to his gut before punching him into a table… this was strangely satisfying for some reason, a Monster beating up a 'Hero'. Her tiny thought cost her momentum, the Enforcer managing to finally recover and level his stave at her just as she charged again, a shield forming at the tip that she hit twice with her sword before the boy dodged out of the way, several blades hanging around him before they fired.

No room to dodge… just go through then. And so, she did, darting around the first and second blades before the third tore into her stomach, the fourth smashed away with her free hand while the fifth joined its 'brother' in her stomach. She ignored the rapidly dulling pain and kept going, noting the slight surprise that flickered across the boy's face before it was gone and their weapons clashed… he wasn't that good in comparison to Fate or her… Two strikes broke through his guard and sent his weapon careening away, though still clasped in his hand, the third drawing blood from his right shoulder, almost at his neck, the fourth and fifth carving into his chest, while the sixth screeched out against the returned stave. And then she kneed him the gut and sent him out of the room through another desk with a punch to the face.

Finally, she took notice of her injuries and did the responsible thing in this situation, she shattered the blades and tore the fading pieces out before walking after him. She heard glass shatter just as she left the room, immediately stopping her walk for several seconds before turning back the way she had come in. it'd be stupid to just go after the boy into the sky, especially from the exact same exit he'd made, he'd be waiting for her to appear and shoot her after the short beating she had subjected him to… unless Fate had been waiting for one of them to appe-

A thunderous explosion ripped apart her thoughts and sent debris flying in the room she was about to enter, though thankfully it did nothing but startle slightly and force some dust on her. Even still she immediately bolted through the wreckage made in the wake of whatever had made that explosion, jumping through the glass… directly into the Enforcer again… Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence…

The shattering of what little glass remained gave the boy enough time to get out of her way, though he wasn't prepared for her to send a wave at him, the spell slamming into him lightly and disrupting his flight… and then came a bombardment spell from Fate interrupting her. Barreling through the air with a numbness settling on her body in the wake of the spell was annoying, smashing into a building roughly a hundred meters away from the caster of said spell was far more annoying.

Prying herself from the wreckage caught in her wake, she walked back to the window and looked out into the distance towards her foes. Her idea had worked for a moment, it had only been beaten by circumstance, so she'd stick with it for now… though she either had to wait here for them to arrive for an ambush or charge out at them…

Decisions… decisions…

She watched and waited, finally deciding on her course and preparing herself… and then she saw a skyscraper disappear in a flash of yellow that continued until it speared the clouds… Fate had been holding back it seemed… far too kind or not wanting to kill. Whichever it was didn't matter, only that she was holding back did, still she leapt out of the building without giving much thought to that piece of information and ran back to the battle, waiting wouldn't have been productive and would have wasted time.

After a rough half-minute of running she reached the ruins from Fate's attack, immediately darting to her left when she heard the first explosion and continuing through the small gap between two skyscrapers. Halfway through she saw bolts of mana dart across the opening, both blue and yellow… she didn't think and just detonated the platform to send her directly into the hail of mana… directly in front of Fate. She didn't think again, and just let her body act on its own at this moment, which led to her leg catching the surprised girl a bit off-guard before Fate was sent into another skyscraper…

Why did they have so many skyscrapers here? This wasn't a major city like Tokyo, Osaka or Yokohama… well… she could ponder that later, when she wasn't the target of a rain of bolts that did nothing but make her body ache. Another platform caught her before she turned to face the Enforcer, the boy immediately moving out of the way while stopping the ineffective rain… that didn't get him out of her way quick enough.

A shield was made in response to her closing, she broke it as easily as all the rest that she'd broken, motes of pink lifting from her blade as her blade sung through the air and bit skin thrice. The Enforcer lashed out with his stave in response to the cuts on his leg and chest, the first one easily ducked under and repaid in kind with a light cut across his chest, the second one managed to daze her when it smashed into her head… She was sent reeling with a heavy headache that hit caused… and then her body locked up for some reason allowing the boy back off and send her into the ocean with a barrage of his homing shots.

Another platform greeted her at the water's surface, the headache receding with a shake of her head before she forced mana through her body, hollowing her bones in order to get out of the way of the rest of the swarm. She took a few hits before noticing that the motes she'd made weren't around the Enforcer anymore… and then Fate smashed through a window a bit higher than where she'd sent her… and then she started generating orbs of mana around her… that was a lot of bolts…

And then with a single muttered word, said so low she couldn't hear anything, everything was fired… and the sky became colored in sunlight. Immediately both her and the Enforcer tried to get out of the way… they didn't expect the sheer scale that spell was capable of… or was it spells?... no, not the time to wonder. Each of the bolts that hit made her body ache, more than the usual shooting spells shot at her anyway… and there were plenty that hit… Unlike the rest of the spells that had been fired so far, except for bombardment spells… but those were in a class of their own, the bolts tore through the buildings separating them and their targets… though whether that was them being more powerful or through sheer number she had no idea.

The storm, for calling it any less would be insulting the spell, lasted for a total of around a minute and a half… and in its wake, it left only falling buildings, churning water, and battered foes… those bolts hurt… Fate 'stood' watching over the devastation caused in her wake with a stoic face, she was justified that in this case… but still… Her katana clanged against the concrete she was under, scraping sparks along it as she calmly walked out from under skyscraper that had smashed into yet another skyscraper… she was somewhat grateful now for the sheer amount they had.

The Enforcer appeared shortly after Fate's attention was drawn to her, and in her lapse of attention to an opponent that by all rights, shouldn't have survived that amount of bombardment, the boy set her up to deliver a blow… something she hadn't expected to happen. Rings of blue bound Fate's wrists and ankles, and though they held for only a few seconds before they broke, that was all she needed.

A detonation brought her directly into Fate, the rings shattering a moment before she delivered a knee to Fate's stomach, a look of pain crossing the other girl's face before she sent her down towards the ocean with a single punch. Fate didn't enter the water, managing to stop herself before she would have hit the water, twisting back to look at her and then the Enforcer with a hint of pain peeking through her cold face.

She took a moment to look over the battlefield in the wake of everything happening in the short span of a few minutes… it looked like something you'd see from an apocalypse; every building was either broken or turned into rubble and swallowed by the ocean… or a mixture of the two… The only buildings standing 'pristine' were those outside of their immediate area, roughly back to where she'd been sent by Fate's bombardment spell… the water also appeared to be charged with electricity…

With how the field seemed to be completely changed to go against her prior idea… she was stuck fighting two ranged mages, in the middle of an ocean with next to no cover beyond two still standing skyscrapers and a mound of rubble breaking the ocean's surface … well this was going to be a terrible time… She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment before opening them again, a glance given to the Enforcer lightly breathing as he descended slightly to be just above her, before she glanced over to look in Fate's direction and watched as she rose quickly from the ocean.

All three stood… or floated in their case, in silence, Fate changing her Device to its scythe form while Chrono seemingly listened to someone… were devices also able to communicate with other devices? Well that was… interesting to know, but otherwise not really needed right now. Her own preparations in this moment of silence… she didn't have any, the only thing that could count was… 'something' bubbling up in her that made her giddy for some reason and kept trying to twist her smile into something more feral…

… She didn't understand why… sure she enjoyed fighting, losing herself in the dancing that erupted in the wake of a duel or the excitement that rose from fights like these… but aside from the last time, when she'd assumed she would die, a feral smile never showed itself… Was she instinctively seeking a death from a person her better? Hmm… that wouldn't do… not before she managed to finish this job at least… yet it still made her giddy… so she let that strange smile make itself on her face.

"… So… this is what it feels like… to meet a Hero…" She felt the need to giggle softly to herself… she didn't understand why… but that was fine, her blood was singing and it felt right, like this was the most natural thing in the world… except the giggling, that she forced down and refused to let out. "… A monster… a monster is destined to fight Hero…" Another set of giggling racked her, and both of her opponents were unsettled even more than before… they wouldn't ever understand… not when she didn't either… "… I wonder… are either of you my Hero?"

She didn't give them any time to comprehend whatever gibberish she felt the need to say, tilting the platform towards them before letting it send her flying, another greeting her just as the two registered and reacted to her movement. She hit the surface of mana with a jolt, this idea of hers was terrible… even compared to the rest, she just hoped whatever it was that made her plans work, helped her this one time above all else… She ignored the giddiness she felt with that thought… it would just get in the way.

Two hails of mana came for her, she deigned to avoid everything and send herself hurtling upwards up to the clouds just as she'd done by accident in her training… this was a stupid idea… She felt rain falling on her… the storm was crying for some reason, and then she saw a few bolts lance past her, and something hit her left leg… she barely felt anything… She passed into the clouds, and continued upwards… this would hurt, both herself and whoever she hit… if she did hit at all.

One last platform greeted her as she left the clouds and saw the sky and sun again… now or never then. With only a light flare of mana running through her body to reinforce it from what was undoubtedly going to hurt, she made the platform explode and send her downwards back to the earth below. Clouds passed by in her wake as she carved through them, an idle though passed through her head as she exited the near-black screen… did she leave a hole through the clouds in her wake?

… It certainly took a lot longer to rise than it did to fall… both her hands gripped her blade's hilt and held it back as she rapidly descended, both Fate and the Enforcer keep firing, though they both immediately tried to dodge out of the way once the realized her intention… they were too late. Gravity brought most of the momentum, and with it she shattered through the shield meant to hold her back and continued as if it wasn't even there… sparks flew as a stave was brought up, and both her and Fate hurtled down into the ocean.

They hit the surface with a crash and a plume of water, and both were in the ocean, thankfully with the electricity faded. Quickly they sank into the murky blue, bubbles of air drifting upwards in their wake before she separated them with a light push off Fate. … The water made it hard to move around… but she still did… decent given the circumstances, three light cuts across Fate's chest along with one nearly marring her face and a stab into her right leg. In return she was hit with a blow to the chest, something that nearly took her breath away, and one to her broken leg… why didn't it hurt anymore?

Both of them were forced upwards though when it became hard to breathe, even still she continued fighting, sending waves of mana at Fate, something readily blocked with a shield while Fate refused to return fire… was she afraid of being hurt by her own spells? She shook that question away a moment before she broke the surface, a platform appearing under her as she let out the last of her breath into the water, and with a single thought she was in the sky again… and immediately pelted with homing spell after homing spell courtesy of the Enforcer.

Fate broke the surface shortly after, taking a passing moment to regain her bearings as she herself went after the Enforcer through the hail of annoying bolts. The boy flew out of her reach twice before she reached him, body numb from the spells breaking against her, and she brought her annoyance to bear, sword slamming into his stave with high screech before she punched him in the chest. A knee hit his chest as well, a stab sank into his left forearm, his stave swung into her leg… she felt nothing, and continued with another punch to his chest that sent him away from her.

She didn't even get to turn around before she was hit by Fate in the back, pain blossoming across her back as whatever she did seared her flesh beneath her clothing… So, this was what it felt like to fight a losing battle, it felt amazing… her body was trying to giggle again, she forced it down again. … She was almost certain that both of her opponents, and anyone watching where completely and utterly unnerved, if not frightened of her… that didn't bother her… "Come on… I'm not dead yet…" Her voice was wrong, too much… 'something' mixed into it that shouldn't be there.

With a bit of effort, she managed to force the urge to giggle to subside… and even though her body ached she took a step towards the Enforcer, and immediately made the platform she stood on explode and send her flying backwards at Fate. … Her opponent expected that move, and a shield sprung up in her way… she did an unusual thing and went around it. A detonation to the side of the shield into another platform, that construct exploding to send her into a third platform behind Fate, and then a final explosion letting her to barrel into Fate, who'd been turning after the first one.

The shield shattered and then came a rain of droplets as the sky divulged its contents, followed by another rain of homing bolts a few scant moments later… the Enforcer loved to shoot those didn't he… She ignored the hail coming after them, it was nothing more than an annoyance really… nothing he threw at her hurt besides the mana swords… and he'd stopped using them after a while.

Her sword lashed out and elicited a tiny cut from Fate, a move that Fate rewarded her with a stab through her chest courtesy of her scythe… why didn't it hurt as much as before? Her body didn't pause with her thoughts, her 'good' leg kicking Fate in the side before she sent her downwards with another punch.

Then she turned back to Enforcer, flinching twice in response to two of the homing bolts slamming into her face before deciding to do a stupid thing and running through the rather small volley of spells… technically everything was small in comparison to whatever Fate had done a minute earlier. The moment she started running at him he changed from firing the homing shots... to firing the less effective regular spell… He didn't appear remotely concerned with her charge or the fact that she wasn't slowing down, calmly making a shield a few steps before she would reach him.

She crashed against his shield, shattering it with a single punch and swinging her blade down at him… only to stop in her tracks as something, likely those rings form earlier, locked her movements… and then a woman's voice came from the boy's stave, leveled directly at her just as she broke the first ring. "Safety restriction for Blaze Cannon disengaged Boss." … This was going to hurt wasn't it… and then with a sound akin to a roar, the bombardment spell was released and she was sent tumbling back through the air in pain.

Her vision swam in blue, body going numb yet again as mana passed over her and forced her back into something hard, and then pain exploded through her chest and her attention dropped as the light dispersed. She saw the Enforcer, his calm and cold face, morphing to have something like… 'horror' added to it, she shifted her gaze to Fate, and saw the same exact 'emotion' add itself to her… opponents were only supposed to feel horror when something showed up that was far beyond them. Then she looked down and finally noticed what was causing her intense pain… there was a rebar, slick with blood, impaled through her chest and reaching out for about twenty centimeters… that was a problem…

A cough full of blood racked her throat, while the same liquid slowly trickled from the grievous wound… immediately after it subsided she forced her body to work, her fist slamming into the metal and making it ring. Again, and again, and again she punched the metal, forcing mana into her limb to reinforce and strengthen it… she succeeded though her skin ruptured in response to so much mana forced into a single limb… it was worth it to be able to continue fighting.

The bar bent after six hits… with that result she forced more mana into the limb, and turned off her 'speed' augment, slamming her fist into the rebar again. It bent with the second hit, and the third, and each one after that until it snapped off on the fourteenth strike. Her arm and hand were a mangled ruin… blood leaked from the many rivulets formed from her mana ruptures, while the skin had broken in response to beating metal… she'd need to fix that another time…

Everything was becoming fuzzy… but she still saw that neither of her opponents had moved from their spots… she couldn't see their faces, but she'd imagine that their faces were the same… Why was it hard to move her body?

With slowly fading strength, she placed her blade into her mouth and gripped the rebar behind her with both hands… and pushed herself along the metal and felt pain freshly blossom from the wound until she slipped off it and back into the air. A platform was set to greet her fall… but it shattered the moment she touched it and failed to even slow her down… and there weren't any others coming to her aid… she couldn't feel her augments anymore…

With the last of her strength she brought her un-mangled arm up and took her sword back to its rightful place… Then her eyes closed and she fell into the water and sank, her wounds stung from the water brushing past them… and she felt water in her throat… Her eyes opened and everything was covered in slowly thinning fog… and beside her… was Okaa-sama… she felt the need to say something… and the first word came without any thought.

"Okaa-sama." She was walking with Okaa-sama along the streets… they got a few looks for their apparel, their kimono and yukatas rather than casual wear… but were otherwise unbothered. Okaa-sama looked down at her with her gentle smile… tilting her head to the side in question… "Can we go to the park for a while?" Okaa-sama's smile didn't dim as she thought about her answer… giving a light hum as she mulled it over before turning back and looking her in the eye.

"Why do you want to go there, my little monster?"

That was a simple thing to answer… "I want to play in the trees and pick some flowers for Onee-sama." … Okaa-sama's mouth twitched slightly in response to that… but she continued walking hand-in-hand with her, taking a turn that would lead them to their preferred park… a calm place full of flowers in spring with a sakura tree and some other kinds to play amidst…

"So long as you don't wander off again, we can spend an hour there. I'd rather not have to find you under a waterfall again." She gave a delighted nod of her head… though she didn't make a single noise in response… that'd have been a waste of breath. It only took them a few minutes in the memory to get there… but for some reason it seemed to 'shift' and have her and Okaa-sama just appear at the park… the shion, higanbana, haibīsukasu, and bara were in bloom.

Okaa-sama went off to the side and watched as she started to pick flowers for Onee-sama… Onee-sama liked the bara and haibīsukasu most, and she didn't like the higanbana at all… and shion was Onii-sama's favorite… she'd get Onii-sama something as well… Then the world shifted like fog again and she found herself settled against Okaa-sama with her picked flowers in hand… Okaa-sama was brushing her hair and saying something… she couldn't hear Okaa-sama anymore…

… Still she felt hands slip through the strands of her hair… flitting quietly to comb it softly… she could only see the sakura tree, flowers, grass and Okaa-sama's, somehow blurry body… Okaa-sama was humming a song, and it was overlaid with an echo of a voice similar to hers… she was tired. "Okaa-sama… I'm tired…" She heard something akin to a giggle and tinkling laugh mixed together and muffled, then something she couldn't hear… "Can I go to sleep… Okaa-sama?" … She received nothing in response…

…The world was layered with fog… drifting closer and closer towards her lying form… and Okaa-sama was gone, swallowed by the fog… everything was turning gradually darker and darker… so she tried to wake from memory… She failed to see anything but murky blue fading to black…

She heard something through the fading memory… or was it her imagination? Whatever it was… she heard a voice… it was gentle and sounded like Okaa-sama… the voice made her sleepy…

"Update komplett. Dauer sechs Wochen, zwei Tage, sieben Stunden. Benutzer tödlich verwundet, initiiert Protokoll sieben." [Update complete. Duration six weeks, two days, seven hours. User mortally wounded, initiating protocol seven.]

And with that her eyes closed… and she lost herself in soothing darkness.

Her eyes opened slowly and she saw… a void of black above, broken only by little red lines running through the sky in strange, intricate patterns… and then she was laid against something solid, yet was wet and wasn't drowning. She heard the voice again… Okaa-sama's voice, yet more… 'rough'… though still gentle and beautiful… "Bist du mein neuester Benutzer, junges Mädchen?" [Are you my newest user, young girl?] She didn't understand, but she heard it… and finally after several weeks of just whispering… she finally heard those words… and she lifted her head and looked in the voice's direction… and saw an equally beautiful woman…

Long hair grey as ash framed a pale face… she had the same dress as the girl in her dream… and there was the contraption on her left arm, it looked like a shield, but there was a handle at its point… why was everything so hard to focus on? "Språk, Belkansk, dialekt førtisyv" [Language, Belkan, dialect forty-seven.] … Still she couldn't understand the woman, though she finally could see her… and she saw the 'water' she was in… pink and clear… "Language, Mid-Childan, dialect 26." ... She understood her… finally…

"I hear you… and see you…" Her voice sounded wrong… too weak-sounding to be hers… even still the woman heard her, and looked down at her with a blank face… her eyes were unnatural and beautiful… and they conveyed nothing when they roamed over her…

"Forty-nine broken bones, seven bones shattered to dust, remaining two-hundred sixteen cracked and near breaking." … That felt right… why would she know that though… and where was here? "Major concussion, punctured lung, currently drowning. Prediction, five minutes to live, death by drowning." Oh… that's right she'd been fighting… the girl and boy… and then she'd been hit into the rebar… the woman kept talking… it was hard to listen… "Are you my newest wielder, young girl?"

"Razing Heart?"

The woman didn't react much to that name… only her mouth turning downwards showed that she even registered hearing her… "That is not my name young girl." Oh… that was disappointing… then what was her name? … And why was she here then? "It has been long since I was last woken. It is no surprise that the world has forgotten the Seraphs' Device of war." … What did that mean?

"I ask again, are you my newest wielder, young girl? Time is short for you, and your voice has woken me from my waiting for the Queen's line." She wielded Razing Heart and Okaa-sama's blade… the woman striding silently through the 'water' towards her… she'd said she wasn't named Razing Heart… she'd never said she wasn't the jewel she used… which meant she was 'Razing Heart'… She nodded her head as best as she could… and the frown that had marred the woman's face vanished as she knelt down in the 'water' beside her… ah… she was brushing her head like Okaa-sama did in the past… "I acknowledge you as my wielder… but you are not worthy to know my name yet."

That was fine… she didn't need her real name yet… that could wait… what she needed was to get better… and keep fighting until her last breath… "I need to… keep going…" A hand, soft and gentle passed along her face… and she felt the need to stop and listen… she was not wrong to…

"Man dies in the Seraph's wake. The Seraphs of past forsook their kind, and chose to fight until death claimed them. They were above Man, and Man strived to reach them. I was their weapon, and I am now yours." … A Seraph… a Seraph was an angel… she didn't understand the difference between them and other angels… but that didn't matter… "Are you willing to forsake your humanity, young girl, and become a Seraph to continue fighting and living?" That answer… was so very easy to say… but she settled with a simple nod.

She looked up into those orbs of pure black with a simple ring of red within it… and she saw a glint of satisfaction within it… she'd made her happy… that was a nice thought… And then the woman spoke once more, and firmly grasped her and lifted her to stand again, and everything was suddenly... right again. "Then let us fly, and leave naught but ash in our wake, my Seraph of Blades." She seemed to pause for a moment, and her mouth twisted from the smile back to a thin line, and then she heard the last line before she was underwater again, still she felt amusement run through her at it.

"You will learn the tongue of kings when this is over. I refuse to speak in this tongue for longer than necessary."

She felt strange… like her augments were changing her body instead of just enhancing her bones and muscles, while her mana felt different, mixing together with something else and changing her… She felt pain for a brief moment as her body was… 'unmade and remade', followed by feeling something manifest from her back… and she could feel it like any bit of her skin.

She felt wrong, yet right in the wake of whatever this was… and then she felt whatever was new on her body, and it moved to cover her… it was alright though nothing that held Okaa-sama's voice could be bad to her… Instead of the water she saw pink light, and with simple, careless thought she made a platform below her and let it send her to the surface, and listened as Okaa-sama's voice brushed against her thoughts.

"Auf den Flügel wachsen," [Rise on bladed wings,]
"Und lass sie singen," [And let them sing,]
"Lass das Schlachtfeld ungemacht werden," [Let the battlefield be unmade,]
"Das ist der Wille des Seraph der Klingen." [Such is the will of the Seraph of Blades.]

"Die Zahl ist auf siebenundsiebzig eingestellt. Man wird subtrahiert." [The number is set to seventy-seven. One is subtracted.]

She didn't know what those words meant, Razing Heart was likely speaking in Belkan after all, whatever language that was, there wasn't any need to know what it meant just yet. Still she rose and erupted into the sky amidst a great plume of water… at least it felt like she did

Neither of them had stopped and openly tried to aid Nanoha… even had both of them thought to do so and abided by a truce there was the matter of the girl herself… she was a near-rabid individual, and calling her a human would be far too generous after everything... she'd have attacked her 'savior' just because they were 'enemies'. Which left both of them continuing their aerial dogfight, tired and filled with a small amount of guilt that they were unable to help her for the four minutes and thirty-seven seconds since she fell… not until their current opponent was down could they try to.

Then without warning the ocean exploded with the force of a bombardment spell near them, and a flare of mana made their breath hitch in their throats and threaten to paralyze them. Both Chrono and Fate let their spells die, and in near tandem looked towards the fountain of water lightly sprinkling around them with 'rain', and then at the pink trail that streaked almost to the clouds, and that let what little guilt they held wash away with the water falling back to its home. Whatever had happened below the water… it'd made her able to fight again… and that was cause for both to be wary and apprehensive.

At the trail's end was a… 'object' of pink light, roughly the size that it would contain a child… and looked like it wasn't smooth in the slightest, as if everything making it up was overlapping. A moment passed by before motes began falling from it, drifting lightly towards the ocean below as the 'object' shifted and unfurled. A layer of pink lifted itself in a manner similar to a wing, followed by another as a human shape uncurled from the ball it was forced into… no she was forced into.

A young woman, no more than two decades old, with brown hair reaching her mid-back, blue-grey eyes and a serene smile met their gaze, dressed in a white kimono with two wings of pink light keeping her aloft and holding a katana in her left hand… Nanoha. If one had never seen her before or witnessed the actions she'd committed, one would think she was a picture of innocence, or at the very least a heavenly being meant to protect the weak.

Though with two simple thoughts the Seraph changed that.

'Nanoha is a nine-year-old human girl, I'm neither human nor nine anymore, so I'm not Nanoha anymore. Okaa-sama's promise was given only to Nanoha, therefore I don't have to smile anymore, right?'

'Nanoha is a Takamachi, a Monster born to a clan of Monsters, I'm no longer Nanoha, so I'm not a Takamachi, nor am I a Monster. What does that leave me as? … That leaves me as the Seraph.'

Once more without warning for them, the unsettling visage turned unnatural and terrifying.

The smile died into a thin line and with it died the fake light within those eyes, leaving behind a face as blank as a marionette's… It was wrong for anything to look that 'dead' to the world… and with that, she appeared still as a heavenly being, only instead of protecting, she looked ready to destroy everything in her path and dispense judgement.

After that brief moment as terror washed through them and was replaced with shaky resolve, they heard a woman's voice, mechanical and tinged with a hint of madness and… something else, speak in a language neither understood."Kalibrierungen ausführen. Auto-guard als ineffizient erachtet. Ersatzzauber gefunden ersetzt. Augment-Zauber gefunden. Regime Mana Ausgabe. Kalibrierungen eingestellt. Wiederherstellung gespeicherter Zaubersprüche, Senden von Zauberdaten an den Benutzer." [Running calibrations. Auto-guard deemed inefficient. Replacement spell found, replacing. Augment spells found. Regulating mana output. Calibrations set. Recovering stored spells, sending spell data to user.]

Resolve turned to confusion in the wake of that voice, before turning back into resolve as they prepared for the woman to fall upon them, though that resolve was nearly shattered completely by a single hollow statement from the Seraph that chilled their hearts back into numb terror.

"Razing Heart. Burn it all away."

AN: The Seraph wakes, and is no longer shackled by any rules Nanoha tied herself with, the end nears and ash falls from the Seraph's bladed wings.

The end of the conception of the Seraph draws close. Ascend into the sky on your wings of light, and may you find glory before the inevitable requiem.