Noel felt the air around her getting a lot hotter and found herself struggling to breathe. Something bad had happened back inside the house. She hoped Mr. Black was alright, but she began to fear the worst. She had to get out of this crawlspace. Just keep going forward until she reached daylight, ignore the pounding in her chest, the fears swirling around in her head, and just get out.

Eventually, she wormed her way out of the crawlspace and on to what appeared to be a street. Apparently, it was now about nighttime, as the various lamps were now lit and several stands and shops had put up their electric signs advertising their wares. But the people seemed to be focusing on a set of TV screens showing a building bursting into flames, the very one she had just finished escaping. Before Noel had finished crawling out of the confined space, the smiling face of Hazama had just popped into view, as if he had somehow teleported onto the scene.

"Hazama!" Noel shouted, "W-w-what are you doing here?"

"You pushed the panic button I gave you, did you not, Lieutenant Vermillion?" Hazama helped pull Noel out of the crawlspace and into a standing position. "It's a terrible shame that you were interrupted, though. I would have liked to see what he discovered about Sector Seven."

"We have to go back, Hazama! Mr. Black might still be alive!"

"Oh don't worry your pretty little head about that, Noel. I've got some people working on that problem as well. For now, we should head back home and get you a shower, you probably need it after…"

"Captain Hazama! This is serious!" Noel became frustrated, "How can you be so calm and joke about this? Mr. Black was a teacher at the Academy, and he was attacked by the Red Devil of Sector Seven! You can't just leave him there!"

"Lieutenant," Hazama's tone sounded just as upbeat, but there was a slight undercurrent of impatience hidden in it, "I told you before that I have people taking care of Mr. Black. Your concerns lie elsewhere. For now, the Intelligence Division needs you to resume the task of locating Major Jin Kisaragi. I am offering you the chance to rest a bit before continuing on that mission."

"But I…"

"If you don't think you can handle the task that your superior has set before you, then let me know right now and I will find someone else who can."

Noel looked back at the burning building in the distance, and then returned her gaze to Hazama, and then to the TV screens showing a flaming Red Devil walking out of the wreckage while some assorted civilians muttered words of prayer.

"Ok, I understand."

Hazama stretched his arms out. "See? Was that so hard? Trust me, we'll give Mr. Black's attacker the attention he so deserves."

Alright, that's enough for now. Tager thought to himself, We can work out the mystery of that explosive later. For now, I suppose I should retreat...

His train of thought was interrupted as he felt a large object smack into his back and sent him stumbling. The object landed on the ground, and Tager turned around to see a large anchor.

Who? What? Where would one even find a large anchor like that?

A little girl screamed and ran full force into Tager, sending him stumbling again. Something was different though, this girl seemed incredibly strong for her small frame. How could she possibly have enough strength? Even if you compensated for momentum and adrenaline, it didn't make any sense!

"Who are you?" Tager growled, "Why are you attacking me?" Even as he spoke, he noticed a few NOL troops forming a perimeter around the area and pushing the civilians out of the way. Of course, now it made sense: draw out the Red Devil himself with a mission deep into enemy territory, probably leaked to Sector Seven as Mr. Black was an expendable asset. Then combine the incendiary explosive with forcing him to fight through NOL troops, eventually his system would automatically shut down in order to prevent overheating and melting the circuitry that kept his body functional.

But that still didn't explain this weird girl who had picked up the anchor and held it like a weapon. Seriously, what kind of person attacked with an anchor?

For all the things that bastard Hazama had done, at least he gave her a target to vent her frustrations. May didn't understand what this big red thing was, nor did she particularly care. All she cared about was getting Johnny back, and if this thing had to go down so she could get closer to him, then so be it.

May didn't know why the giant was trying to ask questions of her instead of hitting back, but she took advantage of it all the same, beating the giant in the chest with her anchor with as much strength as she could muster, equipped with an anchor she borrowed from a nearby seafood restaurant. She hoped they wouldn't mind.

After several strikes, she saw the monster finally drop to one knee and mutter something. She was too caught up in the action to see a glowing fist coming right at her face, smacking her and sending her flying into a nearby building. She actually flew so hard that there were cracks in the building, either that or some contractor had really skimped on the building materials. Either way, it freaked out the people in the building who thought they were relatively safe from the fight.

"Maybe you're another crude imitation of the anti-Sankishin unit." Tager stood back up, "Or perhaps you've become drunk on seithr and it's given you this power at the expense of your sanity. Whatever the excuse, I've got no more time to waste with you."

May stood back up as well, trying to shake off the dizziness she felt as she tried to think of how she could attack him next. However, Tager raised up a hand and made it glow again. The magnetic coil built into his arm started subtly dragging May back towards his hand, and May had trouble digging her shoes into the stony ground, finding herself getting pulled into Tager's arm. The metallic nanites Tager released with his last powered punch covered every inch of May, and they would not let go as the dragged her closer and closer.

"I'll make this quick." Tager finally grabbed May's small head in his large fist. He rotated his shoulders around twice, then tossed her up into the air and sent a message to his systems to activate a special maneuver, the Genesic Emerald Tager Buster. However, his attempt to follow the next step in the technique met with an error message: pulling off such a technique would cause his systems to overheat. The jump jets in his legs wouldn't fire. His large frame was planted on the ground.

As if his problems weren't bad enough, May had started falling back to the earth, the force of gravity only adding to the already considerable strength that she somehow possessed.

Tager knew he should move out of the way, but a part of him thought that the little girl falling down was going to be hurt if he didn't catch her. By the time he pushed that thought out of his head, Tager felt the full force of May's boot and gravity smacking into his face, sending him to the ground and knocking him out for a brief second. When he regained his bearings, he found that he couldn't move, but he was fully aware of everything happening around him. His system had probably shut down due to overheating. He just hoped Kokonoe had a way to get him out of this. He did not relish the thought of what the NOL would do if they tried to interrogate him.

Meanwhile, at Rachel's mansion, Sol was getting very impatient. "Geez, how big is this mansion?" Sol wondered aloud, "I feel like we've been walking forever."

"Cease your complaining, Sol," Rachel said without stopping to acknowledge him. "Time may flow a little differently in this particular realm, but that is no excuse for you to be whining."

"You said you had my sword. Where is it?"

"In this room." Rachel gestured to the single door in front of her as she stopped and turned around in one movement. "Just be warned, your blade may feel a bit…different."

"What do you mean, different?"

"Just look." Rachel opened the door and stepped inside. Sol followed behind her, and saw a pair of swords lying on top of a table. The sword looked a bit different from before: the blade was bigger, and took on more of a broadsword shape than the slightly smaller sword he remembered. Not that he couldn't handle it, but what unnerved him slightly was the fact that the sword seemed to be calling out to him, beckoning him to grasp its handle. Granted, he had felt a similar feeling before when he first grasped the Fuuenken sword all those years ago, but something was different this time.

"Hey, goth girl." Sol turned his attention to Rachel, "you do something to my sword when I wasn't looking?"

"Aside from carry it here and place it in this room? Very little."

"What do you mean, very little?"

"Well, I watched your sword change shape and evolve along with the other blade beside it as they came into contact with the seithr that permeated the atmosphere of this world. Though they started out as crude imitations of Nox Nyctores, by absorbing the seithr in the air around them they put themselves more in tune with the ebb and flow of magic in this world."

"And what about the second sword, is that for me too?"

"No it is not." Rachel dismissed him quickly. "I haven't decided what to do with it yet."

"Then give it to me, I'll take good care of it."

"You can barely handle one Nox Nyctores, even if you were at 100% strength. You won't be able to handle two."

"You seem pretty confident about that."

"I have my ways of knowing."

Sol's hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly. He wanted to grab both swords, cut that damned cat-face umbrella and just escape the mansion before the stuck-up goth girl knew what hit her.

"Guess what? I have mine too." He lunged for the first sword, the Fuuenken, and grasped the handle tightly. "So where's this confidence now, huh?" Sol reached with his free hand to grab the other sword, but found he suddenly had trouble moving as his head suddenly exploded with various emotions. He had trouble keeping track of them all, everything from sadness and anger to laughter and euphoria cycled through his brain.

"You idiot. You have no idea what goes into making a true Nox Nyctores, let alone the mixture of whatever crude version of magic came from your world." Rachel sounded rather bored by the whole spectacle, though a part of her was concerned by this turn of events. "I could swear I told you at some time that these particular items mix with your emotions. If you can't survive this, then what makes you think you can survive whatever enemies await you out there in the real world?"

Sol acknowledged what she was saying, but couldn't bring himself to respond much more than "What…did...you…"

"I suppose I overestimated your abilities after all. Begone from here, and I hope I won't have to see you again." Rachel opened up a rift to Kagutsuchi, and dropped Sol right through it along with the sword he held, leaving Rachel alone in the room with the evolved form of the Fuuraiken.

"Everything all right, mistress?" Nago asked Rachel while keeping his umbrella shape, "You feel tense. Did that man scare you?"

"Scare? Me?" Rachel scoffed, "Of course not, why would he?"

"You showed him, mistress!" Gii squeaked, flying just out of reach so Rachel couldn't slap him again, "Gave him a what for by dropping him out of the room! I bet you should have done it awhile ago, save the trouble of talking to him!"

Rachel shut out the words of her familiars as they lavished her with praise. It wasn't Sol himself that she was concerned with, it was the fact that he now struggled to control the power within his own sword. She hoped to use him as an ally against Terumi, but depending on Sol's next move he would either be a braindead vegetable at best or a wild-card at worst. And now he had the equivalent of a Nox Nyctores in his possession. Neither possibility seemed all that plausible to her.

She would have to choose her next ally a bit more carefully, or else the timeline would have to be reset again. Rachel didn't know if she could take another century of sitting back and manipulating the same events to reach her desired outcome, and on top of that these strange visitors that had popped up in and around Kagutsuchi made things even more complicated.

Rachel had to get out of this mansion. She had to go fight something, anything, to calm her nerves back down. Without another word, she opened a rift right next to herself, and stepped through it.

[A/N: For those who care, I'm having trouble figuring out how I should continue this story without drawing it out too long and getting sick of it. After some pondering, I decided to simply say that not all of the characters from the two games are going to be shown in this story, just the ones I can figure out a part for. Some more may pop up later, but not all of them will have prominent roles.

As always, comments and criticism can be pasted into the review section.]