3# - "The Town's in a Lot of Danger from Me?'

"o my god that was liek so cool, saod the woman who was dressed in white and it was soa wesome that she was saying nice things about subari becau8se she had liked her for like ages and so her respect was totally worthy it even though she didn't think anyone had ever been paying attention o her and it was so cool and everything because she was now all important but it was also really good how syhe didn't have muych of a personality because it made her an everywoman hero whyo people could idenityf with.

I know right" said the bluenette who was super cool and had all these real cool powers and stuff like that.

"No, really, it was really awesome," the man said. "you're like really cool and good at everything. And the way tghat that you're really important in the backstyoryt of some of the othyer characters means we all like you, because you're just that cool. In fact, the way that because you now have superoowers from the ancient technovirus in you means that you're the one who we should all be paying attention to and that you're fuighting the evil power inj youi and so we know you're on our side."

"Stop, stop," said Subaru, your all to kind.

"No one could be too kind about you because you're so cool and amazing and..."

Subaru Nakajima woke screaming. The way the narrative style had completely changed! All those typos! The lack of sentence structure, or indeed any narrative structure which one could care to mention! The contrived and poorly written plot!

What a horrifying nightmare!

"By all rights, you should be dead," a voice said, bringing her from her state of abject terror.

Subaru could vaguely sense that the world seemed somewhat fuzzier and harder to understand than it had been before, but she did not put it down to possible brain damage from her 'saviour' answering a phone call rather than saving her life. Possibly because of aforementioned brain damage.

"Chest... hurt?" she tried, before looking down. No, her chest appeared to be whole. And somewhat bigger. But no, it was missing the large hole it had used to have. Chests were not a place for holes. They were not a holy place.

"Maybe, maybe," the woman with brown hair sitting in the corner of the room said. "I am Sir Hayate Yagami. And yes, it's 'Sir'. And no, I'm not a boy. It's a long story. And complicated. Wretched useless trainee midwifes who didn't realise what the umbilical cord was."

That seemed hard to understand, so Subaru stopped thinking about it. Instead, she moved onto a much more interesting topic. "The girl?" Subaru asked. "So pretty. She saved my life."

"Nanoha?" Hayate asked, somewhat warily. "Well, yes, technically, she saved your life. After putting you in that state in the first place."

"She seemed so kind..." Subaru said. "I want to be just like her."

"Stockholm syndrome again?" Hayate said wearily, making a note. "And... well, yes, in a sense you have just got your wish."

"But my hair is still blue," Subaru said, stating the obvious. And indeed, it was very strange how she had blue hair in a universe where most people have hair colours which exist within the normal parameters of plausible hair colours. I mean, to have blue hair without dyeing it, you'd need to have a completely different pigment to the rest of humanity, who produce the entire hair colour spectrum from varying levels of pheomelanin and eumelanin. And I don't think we can even blame this on the Nazis, because they had a thing for blonde hair!

... unless they wanted their super-race to have hair and eyes which matched. And indeed, Subaru had blue eyes too. Hmm. That's very suspicious, because in normal H. sapiens the spectrum of eye colours is rather different from the hair spectrum.

Hayate, of course, saw nothing of this divergence into an examination of the principles of human colouration, and so instead said, "No, not your hair. To save your life, she turned you into a VAMPIRE."

"I'm... I'm a vampire?" gasped Subaru, starting at herself in a convenient handmirror. Her reflection appeared to be fully present, but that didn't tell you much about whether you were a vampire or not. Modern day vampires; so many of them have no respect for tradition and vainly like to show their faces everywhere they can.

Hayate looked momentarily uncomfortable. "Well... technically it's VAMPIRE... it's an acronym. Variant-A Magically Powered Intelligent..."

The blue-haired girl bit on her lip, noting that she didn't actually appear to have any fangs. "Um... what are the other two letters?" she asked, timidly. "You just stopped talking after a while."

"That's classified," Hayate replied, her voice cold. "But it's the result of a Belkan technomagical virus. Which has unpredictable results. In your case, it appears to have... well, cyberised you. That's never happened before, in any of our records. I wonder what Nanoha did that could have caused that?"

"Yes," Subaru said, her eyes darting from side to side. "Of course. A virus caused that." She paused. "Naughty virus."

"Yeah, that's the only explanation," Hayate said with a shrug. "I mean, cyborgs aren't, like, a thing modern Earth science can do. You'd need... like, some kind of super-advanced occult and scientific conspiracy run by the remnants of a defeated empire to do it. Like the Belkans."

"Or the Nazis," said Hayate's white-haired advisor, popping up behind her.

"Shut up, Rein. Go back to your desk."

"But those sorts of things aren't real, right?" Subaru said, sounding confused.

"Not any more, at least."

Subaru frowned. "What happened to them?" she asked timidly.

"Nanoha." Hayate sighed. "Oh dear. Now we've said her name three times in the conversation, it means she's..."

"Divine Buster!"

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The right-hand wall exploded in a mixture of pink light, explosions, and rubble. A cluster of brickwork the size of a man's head collided with Subaru's head and bounced off.

"Ow," said Subaru, after a few moment's thought.

"Nanoha," Hayate sighed, "could you please use the door in the future?"

"Yep," said the glowing-eyed shadow which stood in the dust-choked hole in the wall.

"... will you use the door in the future?"

"Nope!" Nanoha strode forwards and lifted Subaru's chin, to gaze into her eyes. "I'm sure you're going to try your very best and do what you feel is right," she said.

"Yes! Yes, of course!" the blue-haired girl with brick dust in her hair said.

"Good! Everyone should always do their best and that's all that matters. Or else I'll be upset with how you failed my training and you'll have to start again!"

Hayate coughed, a long and complicated noise which sounded remarkably like "When Nanoha says 'start again' she means 'reincarnation'." But that was probably just because the subtitling team had taken certain liberties with the script. And it was clearly a cough, because the next thing she said was "Awful lot of dust in here, isn't there?"

"There is, isn't there!" Nanoha said. "Why, I think your maids aren't doing their jobs properly! I'll have to have a little chat with them and persuade them to buck their game up!"

"Certainly not," Hayate said. "I prefer the cleaning staff alive and not terrified out of their wits, thank you very much. But Nanoha, I'm glad you're here."

"Oh, you're so kind, Hayate-chan! We're the very best of friends!"

"... yes. Because I have something I need you to do and I want you to take Subaru along with you. You made her, you'll have to train her."

"Do I have unlimited liability insurance?"

"No."

"Awww."

...

Once again, it was night. Sinister deeds were being committed. And also, in the case of the couple who were making out on top of a dead body, distasteful ones.

Fortunately, Nanoha Takamachi, the guardian of morality and all-round upstanding hero was here to censor such unrighteous behaviour. She started by blowing in the door.

"That's disgusting!" she called out, taking in the blood-splattered room, the bodies scattered over the place, and the couple. "You're been very bad!"

"'Ere, 'oo the 'ell are you!" shouted the man, who was apparently allergic to the letter 'h'.

"I'm Nanoha Takamachi, with the Organisation!"

"... what organisation is that?"

"I ask the questions here!"

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"Well, Raising Heart also asks the questions here. But no one understands her and they do silly things like falling over with their eyes bleeding, so I ask most of them! And what I'm asking you is this! You! A man and a woman? Together? How could you?"

The man went immediately for his gun while the woman, being perhaps possessed of more self-preservation, dived out the window. He worked the bolt on his machine pistol, levelling it at the white clad girl. "Count the bullets!" he yelled.

Man, it's amazing where all these petty criminals and obviously inept VAMPIREs are getting these automatic weapons from in the UK, isn't it?"

There was the repeated crack of ionised air and several messy organic sounds. And several exclamations from Raising Heart which cannot be rendered in text.

"... zero? Zero bullets? Is that right?" Nanoha asked the mutilated corpse. "I'm not sure, what was the point of this game again? I don't even see any bullets. Do you mean 'count the gun'? Because that's one. One gun." She paused. "Oh, wait!" she said, realisation dawning. She picked up the gun, shaking off the severed hand which still clung onto the weapon. "Did you mean me to take out the magazine and count how many bullets are in it?" she asked the split-open skull of her victim.

The dead man said nothing.

Nanoha's face fell. "Oh, drat," she said sadly. "I mucked up again and ruined the entire game." She perked up. "I wonder how Subaru's doing?" she said.

Subaru, for her part, was sitting on the roof in the new uniform the boss lady – Hayate, that had been her name! – had picked out for her. It was very nice. She liked the blue and black. She was less sure about why the shorts had to be so very short, and why her top could best be described as a glorified sports bra, but Hayate had said that it was vitally important that she not be weighed down by too much equipment and that she could move quickly.

And so Subaru trusted her.

Even if it was cold up on this roof. And she was carrying a magical staff which looked a bit like Nanoha's – which was really cool and all and so awesome and she could totally be like her one day but even more so – but it did somewhat cause issues with the fact that she had no idea how to use it and had in fact just been handed the magical staff and told she was on overwatch duty.

She wasn't even part of the special firearms unit, which one must be a part of to be an armed police office in the United Kingdom. That did make it a bit of a mystery why she had been carrying a gun when she had first met Nanoha, but that was in the hazy bit of her memory which didn't make much sense and which had ended in a great deal of pain. Which Nanoha had saved her from. And thus she was her saviour.

"Subaru," Nanoha said to her, over the super-cool mental link they now shared, "the female target is getting away. You're on overwatch."

The blue-haired girl nodded. "Uh huh! I'm certainly watching over her! She's running away right now."

There was a pause, as Nanoha drifted up to the roof, her mostly-white-apart-from-the-blood-splatters dress pale in the night.

The pause extended.

"... you don't know what overwatch is, do you?" Nanoha said eventually.

"Um."

"Go teach her not to be a bad person and stop her from hurting anyone else again! Okay! I believe in you! Just take your staff, and aim down at her. Focus for the centre of mass. And then..."

"Subtle Zero Fist!" yelled Subaru, at the top of her voice, as she leapt into the air trailing blue light. In a few heart-beats – well, in what would have been a few heart beats before she became a technomagical vampire cyborg, because in her present state a few heart-beats was an infinite amount of time – she was there.

The main thing that passed through the vampire's head, as she fled, was the back of her skull. But the thing immediately before that was complete and utter shock.

Her white-clad superior floated down in front of her, an expression of mild amusement on her face.

"Oh my," Nanoha said, after a moment's thought. "Well... you technically hit the target. And now she's not a threat anymore! Well done! You certainly did your best there!"

"It tastes like nails!" Subaru declared, after testing. "And coins!"

...