In the darkness of her bedroom, Kuroi Mato lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling, her thoughts awhirl with emotions. To an outside observer she may have appeared to have fallen asleep with her eyes open were it not for the incessant opening and closing of the cellphone she held lightly in one hand.
After a time, that activity ceased and Mato spared a glance at the phone's screen. Thirty more minutes. She folded her arms over her chest and took a calming breath, trying to get her emotions under control. Something particularly difficult as she couldn't help thinking again of the pain in Akiko-chan's eyes, the tears, the desperate emotions as she cried out for anybody who would listen…
A blue light illuminated the dark room and she quickly covered her left eye, cursing softly at her loss of control. Not surprisingly, her Other wasn't exactly thrilled with what Akiko-chan had gone through either. Teaching the other girl's monsters why people were scared to death of the burning blue flame was a plan they both eagerly anticipated executing.
She looked towards her door with a raised eyebrow. "You can come in," she called out.
"Sis?" her door was pushed open and a young boy meekly looked in.
"What's wrong, Hiro?" Mato asked, sitting up. The younger boy moved to sit next to his sister and looked down at his hands. "You watched," came the not quite question. The blue eyed boy nodded and Mato smiled, pulling him into a tight hug. "Hey, don't worry, she's okay now."
Hiro nodded mutely, clinging to his sister for a moment before pulling back. A knowing grin was plastered on his face as he looked up. "Mato's lucky mom was looking at the television. You had your scary eyes on." Mato could only cringe, thanking her lucky star mom hadn't noticed anything. They were having way too many close calls as it was. "Will you help her too?" The question earned him a toothy grin.
"Yep, we're going to do everything we can."
The upper half of a girl with an eye-patch over her right eye suddenly appeared above them, hanging in mid air. Neither sibling noted the girl's intrusion with any more alarm than one might note the color of their own shirt. "First we need to figure out how we're gonna do that, though," the spectral girl said, tilting her head a little to the side.
"We will, we will," Mato said, waving a hand dismissively. "Any luck on the ID hunt?"
"Just on Akiko's case, and that's because she pretty much handed it to me on a silver platter," replied the other girl with a shrug. "Haven't found much on White-chan and Black-chan yet."
"Keep looking," Mato said and Hiro gasped.
"You're trying to find their secret identities? Naoko-chan, they're supposed to be on your side!"
"Boss's orders!" the half-girl chirped, shunting all the blame onto Mato.
Before the oldest girl could reply, Hiro frowned and looked at the other two girls with an unusual seriousness. "Are you going to tell mom about, you know?"
Mato and Naoko exchanged a look and mumbled something that could be a "Telling mom, sure," and a "Yeah, I'll tell Mama Kuroi later."
An awkward silence descended on the room.
"Well, I'm going to the hill," Mato said as she suddenly stood up.
"Isn't it a bit too early?"
"I just want a moment on my own to think," Mato replied with a shrug and her siblings nodded. "Coming?"
The eye-patched girl mock shivered. "Too chilly for me, Mato. Don't stay up too late, Hiro-kun!" Naoko chirped with a cheeky grin.
The boy pouted, glaring at Naoko. "You're just a few years older than I am."
"Still older!" she cackled, waving them goodbye as she pulled back as if ducking into a hole and disappeared into thin air.
"Sis?"
"Hm?" Mato looked up from putting on a black hoodie.
"Are Mato, Naoko, Yomi and everybody going to be okay?"
Mato simply gave him a boyish grin. "We always are, bro. Go get some sleep now, 'kay?"
She opened the window above her bed and climbed out. She hung from one hand on the ledge above the window, ready to close it behind her when Hiro hurried forward, trying to be as silent about it as possible.
"Sis!" he whispered.
Mato tilted her head a little to the side in question.
"Think... Do you think I can help this time?"
Mato couldn't help chuckling at the question, and in the back of her mind she could feel a touch of interest. "Keep your eyes open. If a magical girl happens to be in your school, tell her she isn't alone and can ask her senpai for help," she said, waving goodbye to Hiro, sliding the window closed and climbing the wall with an ease that couldn't be natural. She took a moment to check her surroundings and then hopped over the rooftops on the other side of the street, making her way towards a hill surrounded by a park of cherry trees.
"Nanoha! Signum!" Vita waved away the dust that filled the air as she clambered through the rubble left by Graf Eisen smashing through what she guessed was the seventh stone wall she'd wrecked today. After beating the monster bunny - a depressingly easy task given it had apparently been dead before she had blown it apart with her final attack - she had left the fake Hayate's room and gone searching for her companions. It hadn't taken long before she had given up wandering aimlessly and had gone right for option two - break stuff until she found something that looked important. "Where the hell are you two!"
It was only her deeply ingrained combat instincts that made her snap a shield in place as a sphere of pink light came bursting out of the dust in front of her and almost took her head off. Instead it exploded harmlessly a few inches from her face - as a bonus the exploding magic blew away a good amount of dust, allowing Vita a glimpse at whoever had shot her... though given the magic's color she had an idea in mind already.
"Nanoha!" She yelled, launching herself forward at the barely visible white blob she could see through the fading dust cloud. If Nanoha was shooting at her then either she didn't realize it was Vita she shot at, was under some kind of illusion making her think Vita was someone else, or was being actively controlled in some way. Neither of the last two options was something she expected as both required magical finesse on a level she'd never seen herself but given how easily the owners of this factory had reached into her own mind earlier she wasn't going to rule them out.
Naturally the white figure slid to one side as the knight came at her. Even without Graf Eisen leading the way Vita knew that Nanoha wasn't stupid enough to stay in her flight path. Knowing this the knight was already turning to face the white-clad girl before she had even come to a stop... though when she actually got a good look at Nanoha she almost didn't stop as for a moment simple surprise overrode her control.
What she had thought was her friend was... like her friend... and that was about the best way she could come up with to describe the... thingin front of her.
"You're... who the hell are you?" Vita hissed, pulling her weapon around into a ready position.
The white-clad figure laughed. "Isn't it obvious?" She asked, "I'm Nanoha!"
Vita could see that one could claim the figure to be Nanoha, but it was more like... like a caricature of Nanoha rather than the real thing. Certain parts were odd, distorted or exaggerated - as if whoever had created the girl had not been aiming to reproduce the things that Vita believed made Nanoha who she was. Perhaps another way of describing it would have been that this was a Nanoha from the wrong side of a fun-house mirror - she was slightly too tall, her eyes not quite level, her outfit more... girly... than the real Nanoha's was. Everything about her screamed 'Nanoha' and yet everything about her also screamed 'Not Nanoha'.
All in all it was pretty disturbing in ways Vita couldn't really put her finger on... But she could be sure of one thing at least. "Like hell you are." She hissed, "If you're the real Nanoha then I'm the Saint King!"
"You see what I mean, me?" The imitation asked as she looked down somewhere below Vita. "She's just downright unfriendly." The caricature shrugged and bought what Vita assumed was meant to be Raising Heart to bear on the knight. The device, like it's user, was just plain wrong - looking a lot less dangerous and a lot girlier than Vita remembered it being... though that didn't really change the fact that it was both in shooting mode and aimed at her.
Cutting her flight magic off cold the knight dropped like a rock as a wave of pink doom blasted the spot she had been in to vapor. As she fell she twisted in mid air and let loose with a brace of iron balls, accelerated to insane speeds by swinging her hammer into them with the kind of inhuman skill only a knight of her caliber could manage. Moments later she reactivated her flight magic and touched down on the ground safely before immediately throwing a quick shield up over her head. Above her the false Nanoha weaved around the shots and then darted away with a surprised squawk as the seemingly avoided shots instead hit the roof behind her and sent debris raining down from above.
Chunks of brick and shredded piping bounced harmlessly off of Vita's shield while she scanned the air for where the fake Nanoha had escaped to. Unfortunately along with the debris that had been part of her plan the destruction caused by her spell had caused yet another cloud of dust into which the fake had apparently retreated. Worse was that the same trick probably wouldn't work again unless the Nanoha copy was particularly stupid... and she suspected that was rather unlikely.
Backing up slowly, intending to find a wall to keep at her back, Vita continued to scan the area around her. She didn't think Nanoha would try a sneak attack - the girl was far too direct for something like that... but this fake wasn't really Nanoha and Vita was careful not to make assumptions on how she would act. As she backed away she moved her feet carefully, lifting one up and lightly checking behind her by feel before she put it down again - a method of stepping which ensured that she wouldn't slip or lose her footing as she moved.
Suddenly, and much to her surprise, one of her feet came into contact with neither thin air nor solid brick - instead she felt something that gave way with a whimper. Spinning around she swung her device... then stopped dead mid-swing when she realized who, exactly, she had bumped into.
It was hard, in many ways, to put into words the thoughts that passed through Vita's head while she stared horrified at the familiar girl in front of her... but in the end they summed themselves up in three little words.
'She's so tiny.'
It was an odd realization for the knight as she normally saw Nanoha as an equal in power, skill and stature to herself, an ancient Belkan knight with centuries upon centuries of training and experience behind her. For the first time she was struck by the simple fact that the combat mage she called both devil, rival and friend was... was just a little girl who up until a year ago hadn't even heard of magic much less magical combat. The brown-haired girl was curled up on the floor, her hands firmly pressed against her ears and her eyes screwed shut. Her barrier jacket had dissolved and left the young mage entirely unarmored in the light blouse and skirt she had apparently been wearing before she had come to see Hayate earlier.
A quick glance around revealed Raising Heart, in storage mode, resting nearby on the stone slab flooring where Nanoha had apparently dropped it. As Vita reached down to pick the jewel up she froze for a moment before suddenly hurling herself off to one side as a barrage of pink bullets blasted through the air above the downed Nanoha.
"Now now," the fake Nanoha called out from her firing position in the air some distance away. "The other me here is learning an important lesson, we really can't have you interrupting it."
Vita's eyes narrowed as she glared at the flying parody of the girl on the floor. "What the hellhave you done to her?" She hissed, clutching the haft of Graf Eisen so tightly that her knuckles turned white underneath her gloves.
The distorted Nanoha shrugged. "Told her the truth." she stated, "Stripped away all those pesky little lies she's told herself over the years." The girl frowned for a moment before smiling widely. "In fact, why don't we begin another lesson! Tell me Vita - what's it like being a slave?"
"The hell?" The knight frowned, caught off-guard by the question. That surprise quickly changed to anger however. "Who the hell are you to call me a slave! Hayate would never treat us li-" she cut off quickly as she was forced to whip up a quick shield thanks to the false Nanoha taking a shot at her face.
"Who said anything about being a slave of Hayate?" the fake asked while the smoke from the attack cleared. "She is, after all, as much of a slave as you - moreso in fact, as you at least haven't fallen entirely into our 'friendship' as she has." Vita couldn't help but notice how the real Nanoha reacted to the word 'friendship', seeming to clutch her ears tighter and shaking her head in denial. The false Nanoha simply laughed at the apparent distress of the real one. "She just bent over backwards when we asked for her help, didn't she? So happy to throw you against an unknown enemy simply because we asked! Isn't friendship wonderful?"
"Hayate didn't do it because Nanoha asked." The knight hissed back, "she sent us out because it was right."
The fake stared at the red-clad girl for a few long moments before she started snickering to herself. "We always thought you were the stupid one," she managed to get out after a while, "but we never thought you were this stupid! Our friendship with Hayate is based on the same things every other friendship of ours is! Fear and force!" Adopting a condescending look towards the young knight the false Nanoha explained, "Hayate we own through fear! She knows that if we were to go off and tell a few people about what really happened with the Book of Darkness then the Bureau will be forced to change their minds on how they dealt with you!"
Vita winced noticeably as she considered the truth of that statement. It was true that she and the other Wolkenritter were in a dubious position regarding their involvement during that incident. Officially they were following 'accidental' orders from Hayate regarding their collecting of linker cores... truthfully they had been acting entirely on their own initiative. Worse, they had actually gone against Hayate's instructions if one considered her desire that they not need to hurt people anymore as an implied order - and the Bureau likely would.
If they were proven to be capable of outright ignoring orders then almost all their legal defenses, mostly based on the fact that Hayate could control them, would fall apart.
At that point a Bureau sanctioned destruction order would be the best result they could hope for.
Such a thing would absolutely devastateHayate if it happened.
"You wouldn't!" The knight hissed, "Nanoha wouldn't!"
"Yes I would." At the sound of the voice, quiet as it was, Vita's eyes widened and she half twisted around to stare are where the real Nanoha had pulled herself upright and was now hugging her legs. "Because I'm... I'm a horrible person." she murmured, her words muffled by the way her head was pressed against her knees.
"But... you're Nanoha." It was not, really, the most intelligent thing the knight could have said - but right at that moment her mind was simply seizing up as it tried to mesh the idea of the girl in front of her with her definition of a horrible person. This was the girl who had spent every fight with the Wolkenritter trying to convince everyone to sit down and talk their problems over. The girl who seriously handicapped her combat ability simply because she didn't want to kill anyone. The girl who never held a grudge over anything, not even the time Shamal had literally ripped out her soul - and then went on to forgive them all for when they did the same to her best friend as well. And all that was just the start of the compassion she had showed for Vita, the other Wolkenritter and their master Hayate.
As a knight - no, as a person- she simply couldn't accept the idea that Nanoha was a horrible person... not even if Nanoha herself had claimed it to be so.
"A knight," she murmured, "Is supposed to hate the sin and not the sinner." The phrase was one of the few memories of her distant past that the childlike knight possessed. "I never understood what that was supposed to mean - until I met you." It had taken a long time before Vita had been able to understand that never, during everything that happened between them, had Nanoha ever actually hated any of the Wolkenritter. Instead she had merely hated the actions they had been forced to take and the methods they had chosen to use.
It had been a bitter pill for the knight to take because, in many ways, it meant admitting that Nanoha was a better knight than she was. The girl was loyal to a fault, protected the weak even to the point of handicapping her own magic in order to protect her enemies and she was definitely a more forgiving person than Vita could ever hope to be.
Now though... looking at the broken girl in front of her, Vita knew that Nanoha was no knight.
Admittedly she was both heavily armed and armored, and her skill was one that would likely secure her a place in history when she grew older... but deep inside her there simply wasn't the iron core of a knight. Rather there was the much more fragile core of a little girl who believed wholeheartedly in love and hope and simply couldn't conceive of a world in which those things didn't exist... Nanoha was a knight with the heart of a princess.
"It's a pity," Vita stated as she drew herself up to her full height and turned to face the fake Nanoha, the one responsible for her Nanoha's current state. "That I won't be able to follow your example."
There was a princess behind her, a little girl she had never imagined even existed before now. A Nanoha who had been shattered and had her broken self laid out for all to see. Looking at her hurt in a way Vita couldn't exactly describe, as never again would she be able to see Nanoha as the almost invincible opponent she had come to know. Where everyone else saw an ace of the skies, a genius combat mage or a true white devil... Vita knew that all she would ever be able to see from now on would be the fragile princess that hid behind all that strength, courage and skill.
"Because I'm not as kind as you are," the knight continued as she drew her device back with one hand and conjured a set of iron balls in the other. "Because I can't forgive people like you can." Before her was a monster. Behind her was a princess. For the first time since stepping into this god forsaken factory Vita knew exactly what she was doing. "Because unlike you I am a horrible person - I am going to destroy this bitch!" Graf Eisen swung around, whipping through the air as the iron knight threw the contents of her other hand into the air. A split second later the balls met the oncoming hammer's head with an almost deafening crash of metal on metal.
"Schwalbe Fliegen!"The Iron Count cried as it immediately performed the precise calculations needed to impart a set amount of magical energy into the balls, turning them from simple spheres of iron into deadly projectiles which curved mid-flight towards where the false Nanoha floated. Though it was a device, and one without any real intelligence at that, it was almost as if the count had picked up on Vita's resolve as the projectiles moved faster and with more conviction than Vita could ever remember them ever doing before.
The false Nanoha, who had apparently been about to rebuke Vita when the knight had let fly her attack, was forced to fling herself to one side. Even with this quick reaction she was still grazed by a few of the balls - the trailing edge of her barrier jacket ripped almost to shreds by the sheer force of the projectile's passing alone. She hissed nastily, as if the damage to her outfit was a physical pain to her, before swinging her version of Raising Heart to bear on the red-clad girl. As Vita shot forwards to put some distance between herself and Nanoha the fake let loose with a stream of pink bullets, most of which missed Vita while those which were on target ended up being swatted out of the air by quick swings of Graf Eisen.
In an almost immediate reaction the fake shot downwards as Vita changed direction towards her, going airborne and making a wide horizontal swing in an attempt to either cave in her chest or shatter an arm. The end result was that Vita overshot her target while the mockery just about slid through the air underneath her in the opposite direction. Once she had passed underneath the knight the fake kicked her legs up and stalled her forward momentum as best she could - causing her to pivot around her feet and hang, momentarily, upside-down and facing Vita's now exposed back.
Her copy of Raising Heart locked in on the knight.
"Divine-" Vita panicked when she head the fake Nanoha begin calling out her attack. If it was anything like the original's then she knew she was pretty slim on options to deal with it. Her shields would just crumble and any barrier she tried may as well have been made of tissue paper when pit against the raw power of that attack.
On the other hand, it wasn't a Starlight Breaker - which meant she at least had a chance of not being blasted into unconsciousness... Or ash, she wasn't sure if this false Nanoha held to the original's policy of not killing and frankly Vita had no intention of finding out. Naturally that meant trying not to get hit by this attempt to take her down... if blocking was out then evasion was her only option but at the speed she was going there was no way in hell she could pull off a sharp enough mid-air turn. And it needed to be sharp because anything less wouldn't get her out of the Divine Buster's radius fast enough. Fate could have done it without trouble, Signum too maybe, but they were both faster and more agile than Vita was by far - unless she got creative.
"- Buster!" The knight lifted her hammer up and dragged it lightly against the ceiling until it caught on an overhead pipe. That, combined with her forward momentum, turned her straight dash into a very sudden and very sharp turn straight upwards. Bracing herself against what was going to be a painful impact Vita simply slammed into the ceiling and hissed a few choice curses. From there she directed her flight magic into simply keeping herself pressed against the cold brick just as the air below her was forcefully replaced with a beam of pink death. The knight grimaced throughout the next few moments as she muttered a quick prayer on the subject of Nanoha not knowing how to re-aim her divine buster mid-fire.
Thankfully for her it seemed that Nanoha, or at least this copy of her, couldn't do so.
While hanging inches away from that much energy was nerve-wracking as all hell Vita remained where she was until the pink beam finally flickered out. Only then did she let loose the breath she had been holding, along with a muttered thanks to the Saint King for responding to her prayer and saving her armor-clad rear. That done she cut her flight magic back and dropped down while spinning to face the duplicate - at which point she gave a cocky little wave... before conjuring a whole barrage of iron balls to throw by hand at the girl.
Such a move was hardly effective as a real attack, not without the balls being charged and launched by Eisen, but they were enough to keep her opponent occupied and unable to shoot back. Keeping her opponent from shooting had, after all, just shot up high in Vita's list of priorities now that the fake Nanoha had just shown off one of the real Nanoha's bigger attacks. This was a fact that made the knight panic somewhat as it implied the duplicate possessed all of the real Nanoha's attacks. If this was true then she was almost certain that sooner or later the fake Nanoha would make use of a Starlight Breaker... and that was something Vita really didn't want to be facing in a room that was smaller than the expected blast radius of a small Starlight Breaker.
In order to prevent that happening the knight really only had two options - simply defeat the false Nanoha before she could use her top spell or keep her from using enough attacks big enough to provide the energy for its later use. Unfortunately the former option was rather shaky as a plan since Vita simply had no idea how much energy there was already in the air, which meant she had no idea how long it would be before the fake Nanoha could even use the attack.
Not for the first time did Vita make a mental note to learn how to detect ambient magical energy. Though she knew how useful the ability could be from facing Nanoha before she had never bothered to learn, thinking it best suited to support type mages like Shamal rather than a close combat type like herself. Right now, however, the ability to tell when the false Nanoha had enough power in the air to try a Starlight Breaker would have been really, reallynice.
This left Vita with the single option of keeping the fake Nanoha pinned down, which had it's own drawbacks as none of her attacks were really intended for that sort of use - they all prioritized breaking through heavy armor more than anything else. Currently her hand-thrown iron balls were doing the job but keeping up such a high rate of conjuration and throwing was rapidly draining the knight's magical stamina. Worse was the fact that the fake Nanoha wasn't even wasting her own stamina on barriers! She was dodging... everything... Vita... threw...
The knight's eyes widened as she finally grasped the one little detail that had been nagging at her from the back of her mind for a while now. This Nanoha had been dodging everything, even attacks which she should have easily been able to block. Not once had Vita seen her use a barrier or shield of any kind... which was unusual since if the fake was copying the real Nanoha's fighting style then she should have been using shields as if they were going out of fashion. Fate was the mage big on dodging, Nanoha had always been more about defending herself than evading attacks - so the fake's reliance on dodging seemed odd... Unless, for some reason, she couldn'tblock her attacks.
It was a good theory based on what she'd seen, but Vita was experienced enough to know that acting on an assumption usually ended badly - she would have to test the thought out first before trying to take advantage of it.
Throwing one last group of projectiles as a final distraction Vita launched herself forward and made an almost painfully lazy overarm swing at her opponent as she drew close. As she had expected the false Nanoha slid to one side to avoid the blow, which whipped down a few inches to her right. It was a blow which Vita knew the real Nanoha would have simply shielded herself against - though it was also an easy one to avoid, so she couldn't exactly consider it evidence for her theory yet. What it did do, however, was set her target up for a second strike which would prove or disprove her theory depending on how the fake Nanoha responded.
As her weapon came down past the level of her target's feet Vita leaned to one side and angled Graf Eisen so that she could use the weapon's momentum and redirect it all, spinning herself around and into a great horizontal smash. The trick wasn't hard exactly but the force of changing the weapon's direction at speed like that threatened to pull her arms from her sockets. More importantly it threatened to blow the false Nanoha's spine out through her stomach if she didn't use some kind of shield - the position she was in combined with the speed of the second attack made it almost impossible for her to simply duck away from.
Except she did.
Or rather she didn't, as instead of merely moving back and out of it's path the fake girl had thrown herself up and over the moving hammer as if she were a high jumper vaulting a bar. Of all the moves Vita had expected her to make that, most definitely, was not one of them. Which was why the iron knight was caught entirely flat-footed when the false Nanoha pointed one arm at her mid-vault, while Vita was off balance and entirely unable to dodge or counter, and simply shot her in the face.
Out of all the people present Vita was the one most surprised to find herself not dead. She knew how strong Nanoha was and she knew that a point blank shot like that from Nanoha should have ripped through her knight armor as if it was paper. While the real Nanoha would have held herself to stunning attacks she had expected the fake to be using lethal attacks... the fact that she wasn't dead meant that either the fake was also holding back or it was far weaker than the real Nanoha.
As before she was unwilling to make a guess either way but at least this time she had a clear course of action. All she had to do was not get hit again and then it really wouldn't matter what kind of attack power the false Nanoha possessed.
Quickly the knight pulled away from her opponent before she could take another close-range shot. If nothing else Vita had at least confirmed her idea that the fake apparently couldn't defend herself. There was after all no way anyone would have resorted to such an absurd evasion if they could have blocked that attack of hers. Hopefully this meant that all she needed to beat the fake would be to land just one good hit... a task made significantly more difficult by the fact that this Nanoha was almost as fast as Signum or Fate and seemingly much more acrobatic than either.
She was pretty sure she knew why too. Throughout and even before the fight she had been noticing various things about the duplicate which were only now starting to add up in her mind. The fact that this fake was more feminine than the real Nanoha, the way she fought, her speed and her agility... Vita was pretty sure that this fake wasn't a copy of Nanoha herself but a copy of what Nanoha thought she was.
All these factors which were exaggerated were those that the real girl must have believed to be her notable features. Of course the young girl thought she looked more 'girly' since even someone as modest as Nanoha had some vanity over her appearance. The combat style was likely what Nanoha thought hers was like too, as Vita doubted that the real Nanoha was experienced enough to really look at her style with a truly objective mindset yet. It also explained why Vita still had an intact head. If this clone was copying how Nanoha believed she fought then it seemed more than likely that it had unintentionally copied her constant holding back too.
So the false Nanoha was faster and more agile but seemed weaker and was potentially unable to take a direct hit.
She could work with that.
Taking a deep breath the red-clad girl calmed herself and surveyed the battlefield. Part of her watched the Nanoha in front while another, almost separate, part scanned for the real Nanoha. It was a trick most experienced warriors learned so as to focus on their enemy and their surroundings at the same time. Right now she was simply making sure the real Nanoha wouldn't be caught in what she was about to do as without her barrier jacket it could be injuring, if not lethal, were she to be hit by accident.
She was forced to dodge a few shots from her opponent as she continued to survey the area and moved around to a better location for her plan. Once she was satisfied that the real Nanoha was out of the way she shot down towards the ground. As she descended she let loose with a spread of iron balls in a circle around where she would land, all launched with the full power of normal-form Graf Eisen. She didn't want to blast clear through to the floors below, merely make as much mess and flying debris as she could.
The false Nanoha glanced around the room, her vision cut off by the clouds of dust Vita's move had kicked into the air. Suddenly her eyes locked onto a patch of the dust cloud and she flung herself to one side as Vita came shooting out of it. Had she remained where she was then Vita's device, hanging been swung overhand, would have crushed her skull like some over-ripe fruit. The fake attempted to throw a few shots at Vita's back but by the time she had turned to face her the knight was already safely hidden out of sight in the dust again.
A few moments later Vita shot out of the cloud once more, this time from a different direction, and again the fake Nanoha was simply able to slide to one side and avoid her strike. Again Vita simply vanished into the dust before she was able to shoot the knight in response... and once more the attack was repeated. This third time Nanoha began turning even she dodged. Thanks to that she was able to hit the girl, though her shots just splashed harmlessly against Vita's knight armor.
Growling to herself she spun slowly in place, her head whipping to and fro as she tried to predict where Vita would come at her from next.
Suddenly, reacting to a faint movement in the cloud, she threw herself to one side and spun to shoot Vita as she narrowly avoided Graf Eisen once more. Her hand whipped up and ... and...
Vita wasn't there.
All she could see was the knight's device, spinning through the air as it vanished into the cloud of dust. Eyes widening, she turned, much too slowly back towards the direction that the hammer had come from.
That was when the young knight smashed into her, fist first, in a manner not unlike an angry red comet.
The doppelganger reeled back from the blow, it's face distorted like soft clay around a vast and disturbing dent imprinted where Vita's fist had struck. "You!" It warbled, it's mouth and jaw not able to pronounce words properly thanks to the distortion. "You struck m-"
Whatever it was going to say was cut off as the iron knight punched it again, though with significantly less force and this time in the stomach. Unarmed combat wasn't something Vita was confident in but it had been impossible for her to have lived alongside Zafira without learning a few tricks to make use of. Which was why, as she retracted her fist her hand moved up to grab hold of the fake's barrier jacket.
"You call yourself Nanoha," the knight snarled as her other hand moved to join the first in holding onto the fake's clothes. "Don't make me laugh." She drew back her head. "Nanoha is a kind person! Don't you dare-" The knight's head whipped forward then, her forehead smashing into the fake's face. "- tell me any different!"
The fake staggered back in the air, blinded and disorientated by the injury, as Vita let go of her clothes for a moment.
"Racketenform"
Cursing the doppelganger swung to face the voice, knowing from Nanoha's memories that it was the voice of her opponent's device. Too late did she realize the trick as a pair of arms came from behind where they looped around her own and up to grasp each other just behind her neck.
She struggled to free herself as, from in front, she heard an approaching roar and saw a dull orange glow lighting up the dust cloud.
Moments later Graf Eisen burst out from the cloud alone and spinning end over end so fast that it's steel frame seemed to blur into what looked like a giant flying buzz saw. And thanks to Vita's restraining hold, the doppelganger had no chance to avoid it.
Not that she didn't try - she all but flung herself from one side to the other in an attempt to shake off the knight's hold but Vita held firm right up until the moment Eisen impacted. At that point she dropped her hold and her flight magic as even if Graf Eisen was her device she sure as hell wasn't going to stay in it's path when it was going at that speed.
It was a good thing too as the doppelganger was quite literally ripped in two by the spinning weapon. Had Eisen possessed an edge then the fake would have been bisected, but since it was a blunt weapon the result was significantly... messier. The mess didn't last long however as within moments the remains of Vita's opponent began to dissolve and evaporate into a rapidly dispersing cloud of black smoke.
After all that the act of retrieving her device and floating back down to the real Nanoha was almost anticlimactic.
"Nanoha..." the knight murmured when she found the brown-haired girl huddled in one corner of the room. Looking at her she knew that she couldn't make the girl carry on any further, not in that condition at least.
Sighing to herself she crouched down and slipped one arm under one of Nanoha's own in order to lift her into a standing position.
Destroying the factory and completing the quest Hayate had bestowed was important but if Vita was going to be absolutely honest with herself then Nanoha was even more important.
She smiled slightly. "Let's find Signum," she whispered, "and then get the hell out of here. We can just level the place from outside before we go."
Mato crouched atop of a building, stopping for a moment to make sure there was no prying eyes around. At that hour of the night she didn't have to put much effort to hide herself but it never hurt to make sure. By now, most people was already safely in their homes, away from the cold and dangers of the night, some sleeping already while others were probably talking about what they had seen in the news that night.
The tomboy closed her eyes, teeth grinding against each other.
'Calm down,' a voice whispered in the back of her mind and Mato snorted.
"I can't," she muttered darkly, "She's been alone for so long, fighting all by herself, and pretty much next door and I never realized anything was wrong!"
'None of them knew about us either,' the other replied calmly. 'They would have contacted us otherwise.'
Logically, she knew that was the case, but that didn't ease the weight in her chest.
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts before a smile grew on her face. She looked towards the top of the hill, at the lookout point surrounded by a park and she launched herself over the rooftops, speeding towards her destination. With a final push she soared above the park and looked down at the peak of her jump with a relieved smile. Four girls were already waiting at the top of the hill. She slowed her descent until she was floating a few steps in front of the quartet.
She touched ground and walked closer to the other four girls, their emotions easy to read even in the dark. Their eyes showed worry, eagerness and an unbreakable determination, and Mato felt her chest swelling with pride.
But underneath those emotions, beyond what normal human eyes could see, Mato saw darkness crawling over her friends, enveloping them like a second skin. Growing and twisting into monstrous forms, forming horns, tails and wings, bladed, armored and deadly limbs of black bone and steel. Waves of brutality, bloodlust and a barely contained excitement washed over her, and she felt a smirk pulling the corner of her lips.
A normal person wouldn't have noticed anything unusual about the group.
"You're early," she said with a gentle smirk.
Naoko suddenly appeared in mid air, landing gracefully on her feet. "I may have told 'em you wanted to be alone, Boss," the eye-patched girl said, tapping her black eye-patch once, causing a little purple light to glow on the edges of the black fabric. Once she said her piece, the little girl moved to sit down on the bench Junko and Yuu were sitting at. A black computer materialized on Naoko's outstretched hand and she started to type away, ignoring the rest of the world.
"Unruly, naughty delinquents," Yuu sniffed in disappointment with such a straight face Mato couldn't help chuckling. "You girls can't even think about poor Mato's feelings, can ya?"
"The things I have to deal with," Mato muttered, sharing a toothy grin with Yuu as Mayu and Yomi groaned in the background.
"Well, since the cavalry is here what are the ord-."
"Hold on a moment!" Mayu shouted, and despite not moving from her place, the tall girl's presence alone was enough to make it seem as if she were looming over the two shorter girls. "Let's get this out of the way. You're not going to take us on a wild chase around Tokyo looking for those girls, Mato!"
Yuu started to snicker and she extended an open hand; Naoko pouted in silence, handing her friend a few bills.
The blue eyed girl groaned tiredly, scratching the back of her head. "Really Mayu? You're not even going to let me say anything at all?" she fired back, and a twisted smile started to grow on her lips but she stopped it with a sigh.
Any other day she would have gladly get in an escalating glaring contest with Mayu -which would have probably ended up with both of them broken and bleeding all over the place-, but not at the moment.
"What's there to say?" Mato was pushed back when Mayu poked her in the chest with enough strength to punch holes through concrete, but the tomboy stubbornly stood her ground. "Let's go girls! Let's find Akiko-chan and save the day!" she said in a mockingly high and whiny voice.
Mato bypassed any kind of poke, instead punching Mayu square in the chest with a dull whumph, forcing Mayu a step back. In the background, Naoko passed another bill to a grinning Yuu.
"First of all, I don't sound like that," Mato growled through gritted teeth. "Second: Don't pretend you don't want to help, Mayu. I know you well enough. You want to help and crush whatever monsters drove that girl to the edge, no matter how grumpy you try to act, and... you know what's like to fight all on your own."
The tall girl looked away for a moment, running a hand through her hair before squaring her shoulders, glaring down at her friend. "How would you help Mato? We have no idea where they are at the moment! What happened to Akiko is bad, but she's already in good hands. She's not our responsibility! She's not your responsibility!" Mayu yelled and Mato could see the taller girl's eyes starting to glow.
"We can't just stand back and pretend nothing happened! We knew already there were other supernatural things out there, not only here in Japan but probably the rest of the world!" Mato shouted back and she could feel her own eyes changing. "Even if you won't help, that doesn't mean I won't help either!"
Mato's head snapped back when Mayu bashed their heads together with a deafening sound. Without missing a beat Mato returned the favor, both girls refusing to give any ground. "Don't you dare force our hand like that!" the red eyed girl hissed. "If you go, we will follow you, you know that! If you try to pull a stupid stunt like that I won't have any qualms making you stay here!"
The crimson glow in Mayu's eyes grew, and complex and glowing designs started to form in her eyes. Mato knew her own eyes had transformed were just like that.
She was about to reply when a raspy growl interrupted them.
"Annoying," both girls turned to look at Yuu who was looking at then in boredom with her own glowing, golden eyes. Junko was also looking at them, but her green eyes held an expression of worry behind her glasses. Even Naoko had taken her eyes away from her computer to stare at her diminutive friend across the bespectacled Junko. "Stop fighting... or I'll rip off your arms." The ashen haired girl blinked once and her eyes returned to their usual honey colored hue, and an impish grin grew immediately on her face. "Well, you heard the voice of reason!"
Yomi, who had been quiet until now broke into peals of giggles that she somehow managed to make sound sweet to Mato's ears. The change in the atmosphere was enough to snap the girls from their shouting match and they each took a step back.
"Well, miss Voice of Reason what do you propose then?" the elegant girl inquired, brushing a curly lock of hair away from her green eyes.
Yuu leaned lazily against Junko with a big grin. "Why, voting of course."
"That's actually sensible," Yomi said mirthfully with a hand against her cheek. "I'm shocked!"
"I know, sometimes I surprise myself. I vote we get involved yesterday, so that makes it two against one for staying, right Mayu-chan?"
The glare the tall girl gave Yuu had been enough to stop many monstrous and brutal creatures on their tracks in the past. Yuu simply gave her a cheeky grin.
"Actually," Mato glanced at her girlfriend as she raised her hand. Yomi gave her an apologetic smile and Mato sighed a little, giving her a comforting smile that made the green eyed girl's frown turn into a look of relief. "I agree with Mayu. We cannot just jump in the middle of this without any kind of plan or intel. We have no idea what Akiko-san has fought or if we can help fight them. Whatever her enemies are, they did such a good job on her that they didn't need to finish the job.
"I want to help too, but not unless we know more about what we are going to face. The idea of stepping in a conflict where we can have all the odds against us isn't all that comforting."
"So, we have a tie then," Mato said and looked at the trio of sitting girls.
"I forfeit my vote!" Naoko immediately shouted.
There was a moment of silence before Mato, Yuu and Yomi started chuckling. "Coward," instead of the gentle and comforting tone, Yomi's voice came out as a dark purr that sent a thrill of emotion to the back of Mato's mind.
"It's all about maths, you know?" Naoko replied with a careless shrug.
"Then..." Mayu muttered, looking at their bespectacled friend.
"That means..." Mato joined her.
"Oh dear," Yomi was the last one to join.
Junko stared back for all of three seconds and then Mato could easily see the train of thoughts going through her friend's mind. Confusion, realization and about-to-get-ran-over-by-a-truck shock.
"I can't decide for the entire team!" she said, managing to make herself look smaller despite sitting between two girls that made her look taller to begin with. "I-I give up my vote too!"
"Junko?" Mato approached the green haired girl, who was still shaking her head in negative. "I called you all here for a reason. Mayu was right, I can't force any of you to do something you don't want to," she told her gently, patting Junko gently on her head. "This is a decision I can't make on my own, I need you girls, you all are way smarter than I am," Mato ignored the sardonic snort coming from Mayu, instead glad that the peanut gallery managed to ease the tension from Junko's back.
"But Mato, you're the leader, you haven't led us stray so far. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you," Junko replied without hesitation. "If it were up to me..." she trailed off, looking away.
"That's because I trust your judgment, all of you," she said, looking at all her friends, "You guys make things easy, I know that you won't let me do something stupid," she said with a chuckle, earning a smile from the bespectacled girl.
"I... I don't even know if those two girls are actually helping Akiko-san or not," she whispered and Mato could only frown a little. She had thought the same, but she had told herself that Akiko-chan was in good hands or she would have gone crazy with worry. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the rest of her friends considering the option for the first time with different degrees of worry.
"But, what I know is that there are monsters out there that could try to attack our families. Monsters that need to be stopped," Junko's voice started to raise in volume and Mato felt a smirk tugging her lips at the sight of a green flame appearing in her friend's eyes. "I don't know if we can help Akiko-san, but I want to make sure our loved ones are safe as soon as possible!"
"Yay!" Yuu cheered and pulled Junko in a hug that lifted the taller girl off the ground.
"Down, Yuu, down," Mato chuckled, feeling the weight in her chest easing big time. The short girl obeyed, putting a relieved Junko back on the ground.
The blue eyed girl looked at Mayu and Yomi and cocked her head to the side. "Well, three to two."
"We can't go halfassed about this," Mayu immediately said.
"Of course not. That ain't our style after all," Mato said with a smirk that made Mayu and Yomi mutter about "their usual style."
"Then what's the plan, Fearsome leader?" Naoko asked with a grin, finally closing her laptop.
"I'll start scouting Tok- come on! I won't go looking for troubles!" Mato groaned, seeing the looks her friends were giving her. She wasn't that stupid. "I can cover more ground on my own, so I'll scout the place and see how Otherworld is holding up in the area. As soon as more people find out what happened, Tokyo's Otherworld will get chaotic. I'll make sure things don't get bad enough to cause an unscheduled breakdown. If I find any threat I'll come back and get you all. Good so far?"
Nobody wanted to knock her on the head so she took that as her cue.
"Naoko, I still want you to find anything you can about those other two girls, but I also want you to check on Akiko's life; Mayu and Junko, help her too, there must be clues about what Akiko has been fighting. Yomi, Yuu get your domains cleaned up in case we need to take normal people into Otherworld in an emergency and keep an eye open for anything on the news that can lead us to people who may need help. Sound good enough?"
"You have actually been thinking?" Mayu gasped in mock surprise, taking a step back. Mato gave her the finger for that.
"We can iron details later but sounds good enough," Yomi replied with a smile but her face then twisted into a displeased pout. "Aww, come on you two," the elegant girl sighed in a sultry tone, circling Mato's neck with her slender arms. The tomboy simply looked at her movement with a resigned smile. "Why must we walk on eggshells like this?" In a blink, her hand reached up and grabbed a fistful of Mato's hair. With a non too gentle pull, 'Yomi' made Mato look up at her suddenly glowing green eyes, and Mato couldn't help a hiss escaping her lips. "Rock, why don't you tell Mato that it would be so much more fun if we just track down Akiko-kun and let her tell us where we can start killing stuff?"
Mato smirked at 'Yomi' before her blue eyes started to glow and her face relaxed into a neutral, bored expression. "Dee." The single word came from Mato's mouth as little more than a whisper, but the message was clear. Black Rock Shooter's blue flame flickered out of Mato's left eye, a tongue of fire arching to lick 'Yomi's' arm like a gentle caress. "Later."
'Yomi' giggled, pulling back after trailing a finger over Mato's cheek. 'You two are no fun', Mato heard the thought coming from within Yomi and a beat later Yomi's eyes returned to normal and she ran a hand over her face, sighing in annoyance. "Not now Dee."
"Any more objections?" Mato asked. Nobody else had one, and Mato 'heard' other four replies in the back of her head. "Then tomorrow we go hunting."