Of Assassins, Samurai, and Magic

A/N: And the next chapter is up! I've tried to keep everyone as close as possible to their characters in the anime though I'm sure there will be a few OOC moments. Comments and reviews are much appreciated. Enjoy!

For those of you who have left unsigned reviews, see my replies below:

Love thus story - Thanks for the review. ^^ Good catch on that spelling error. You are correct, father in Japanese is spelt Otou-san. I'm not sure how I made that huge blunder, more than once might I add, considering I spelt it correctly in previous chapters. Lol. Oh well. XD Here's the next chapter! :)

Disclaimer: The characters and the worlds I write in do not belong to me. The stories that I write are intended for entertainment purposes. I do not make any money from them.

*** ~ Chapter 34: Tears of the Saint ~ ***

"Mama! Mama!"

Fate was floating. She was somewhere dark and silent, her body unmoving, nothing more than leaden weight. Yet, from somewhere within the depths of the void, something called out to her, screaming and yelling.

"Mama!"

That voice, pure innocence itself, continued to plead with Fate. To come back. To stop falling into the darkness. To wake up.

"Mama!"

Fate groaned softly, her eyes fluttering for a moment before they opened slowly. Her vision was blurred at first, the sounds of the battle surrounding her echoing in her ears like a ringing bell. A relieved gasp also sounded nearby, the unclear face of someone she knew, yet not, at the same time, came into view.

"Mama?"

"Who...?" Fate croaked, her throat dry. It took another few seconds before her vision cleared more, burgundy coloured eyes focusing on the face of a young child. A child with blonde hair and green and red eyes.

"Mama," the child said softly, clutching at her arm. "It's Vivio."

Fate blinked lethargically, for a moment considering never to open her eyes again when she closed them. But that thought was quickly squashed when Vivio's scared cries reached her ears again.

"Mama! Don't leave!"

Wine coloured eyes were forced open again, Fate catching sight of tears streaming down Vivio's face. The girl's grip on her arm squeezed tighter.

"Vi... vio..." Fate murmured weakly.

"Uhn," the girl responded, never letting go. "Vivio is here Mama."

"Vivio..." Fate closed her eyes again.

It was absolute chaos.

Shamal honestly didn't know what to expect when they first stormed the place. She only knew that it was going to be very bad. Having just come from healing a very battered Arf, they finally figured out what the demon fox had been deliriously mumbling about. Fate had gone to find the door to Al Hazard, and in the process, she had been attacked by the Numbers and Jail Scaglietti.

Shamal hated that man. She knew he was nothing but trouble the moment she saw that wicked, devious smile of his. The sneaky underhanded tactic his subordinate used in the battle versus Signum only added to her already growing suspicions of the man. And when Rein had finally been returned to them, albeit under mysterious circumstances, the little sprite recounted the bits and pieces of what she remembered during her imprisonment, all of it pointing at Jail. Shamal was ready to gut the man by the end of it. Strangling him with Klarer Wind's wires wouldn't do the atrocities he'd done justice.

"Mama! Mama!"

Shamal's head jerked up to the sounds of the screaming, her heart sinking quickly as she sought out the little one. While the Samurais kept the Numbers clan busy, the blue assassins apparently at Jail's beck and call, the City Guards freed the hostages and escorted them to a safer place. Shamal's apprentice healers ran from wounded to wounded, zipping in and out of the mini battles going on all over the place, attending too all they could get their hands on. They too would be retreating with the City Guards until the battle was over, something Signum had ordered them to do despite Shamal's protests.

"Mama! Don't leave!"

Shamal was starting to panic. All of the hostages had been evacuated at this point and the last of her apprentices had left the battlefield as well. A few of the City Guards remained, doing their best to support the Samurai as they battled on, but in all the madness, none of them had even noticed the little girl crying out. But Shamal had. And it was driving her crazy that she had yet to spot the child in all of this chaos.

A flash of gold.

There!

Violet coloured eyes locked onto the small form, closer to what she assumed to be the massive double doors leading to Al Hazard. Next to the child were two immobile forms, and Shamal couldn't but fear the worst, thinking it was the child's parents.

"Shamal-san! Look out!"

At Zafira's call, Shamal caught sight of a blur in her peripherals. Turning her head in that direction, she immediate found a Numbers assassin darting straight at her.

"Sturmwinde!"

An arc of fire cut between Shamal and the attacking blue assassin, forcing Due to make a quick retreat lest she be slashed in half and set on fire. Changing direction, the blue assassin darted off, away from the Empress' attendant, with an enraged Signum just steps behind her.

"Shamal-san," Zafira said, finally closing the distance between the two of them.

Shamal looked at the demon wolf, clutching her chest, breathing heavily and shaking. Had it not been for Signum's interception, who knows what state she would have been in right now. As skilled a wire user she was, she simply wasn't fast enough to keep up with the current battles going on right now.

"I'm alright," Shamal quickly said, noting the worried expression Zafira gave her.

"Mama!"

Shamal's gaze quickly returned to the crying child, Zafira also following her line of sight. The blue demon wolf growled.

"Hop on," Zafira barked. "I'll get you there."

"Hai!"

"Kami-sama..."

Shamal collapsed to her knees in shock, right next to Vivio. The girl gave a surprised squeak at that action, but did nothing more than stare at Shamal in surprise. Getting to the girl was no easy feat. Zafira took nearly ten minutes to get here despite the distance being quite short. Hastily, Shamal half jumped, half slipped off of the blue demon wolf's back the moment they were in the clear, the Empress' attendant scrambling over towards the small child and the girl's parents as fast as she could. The moment she came close enough to see the fallen forms, Shamal was ready to faint.

"F-F-Fate-san? N-Nanoha-san?"

Shamal's brain was clearly having a hard time processing what her eyes were obviously showing it. Here laid Fate and Nanoha, both girls badly injured and unconscious. While that in itself was not surprising, as they had rescued a lot of familiar faces from the Middle District in this place, the legendary weapons nearby along with the girls' clan insignia's certain threw the blonde attendant for a loop.

Both girls were on their stomachs, their clan insignias as clear as day on their backs. While she may not have seen them in person, Shamal recognized the bolt of lightning on Fate's back belonging to the Thunder Reaper, and the three stars on Nanoha's back as belonging to the White Devil. A cracked and nearly shattered Bardiche and Raging Heart nearby also confirmed the girls' alter egos. Nanoha and Fate were the White Devil and the Thunder Reaper.

"Mama! Wake up!"

Vivio's cries snapped Shamal out of her stupor, the healer immediately getting to work on examining her friends' injuries. Both girls were barely alive by the looks of things, Nanoha in much worse shape than Fate, judging by how pale the brunette was. That was probably due to the amount of blood she lost, most of it staining her white garb red with the excess pooling around her on the floor. Fate was also pretty banged up, shackled even, making Shamal feel sick to the stomach at the thought of how she ended up that way.

"Klarer Wind," Shamal whispered. "Please help me save them."

Klarer Wind chimed.

"Tranquil breeze, carry forth a blessing of healing!"

Zafira watched silently as green magic flowed from Shamal's fingertips and over Nanoha and Fate. Like Shamal, he too had been surprised to discover that both girls were the elusive assassins they had sought out for so long. At first, the demon wolf thought it was a fake, an illusion or some sort of deception. But the scent of blood never lied. These were indeed the bubbly brunette and quiet blonde they had all come to befriend over the years. To see them here, hanging onto life by a thread, Zafira wanted to murder Jail, painfully, and slowly.

"Get the key you fools!" Jail's voice boomed over all of the noise. "We cannot let it escape!"

Speak of the devil.

Vivio whimpered at Jail's command, her green and red eyes immediately looking around nervously. Zafira was the first one to catch sight of three Numbers assassins breaking away from their opponents, charging straight at the small blonde. The blue demon wolf roared, magical blades of white shooting up from the ground at the approaching assassins. All assassins dodged the attacks just in the nick of time, the attack itself only slowing them down a fraction.

"Ile..." Vivio said in horror, her eyes widening as the assassins narrowed in on her.

Shamal started to sweat, her gaze darting back and forth between the two she was healing, Vivio, Zafira and the darting Numbers assassins. She could not risk using her wire technique now. She was almost certain the moment she stopped her healing magics, she'd lose both Fate and Nanoha for good. Shamal wasn't about to let that happen.

"Ile..." Vivio repeated, utterly shaking now. Her small hands grabbed at the closest thing to her, that being both Fate and Nanoha's hands, the small blonde child clutching tightly at them as she shook.

"Mama..." Vivio said, tears streaming faster down her cheeks. The Numbers assassins still came at her, at them, in spite of Zafira rushing at them to intercept them.

"MAMA!"

Hundreds of magical orbs, both pink and yellow, materialized in the air around them. Shamal sat frozen in her spot, wide-eyed in shock, amazement and fear. A split second after they condensed, the magical orbs shot off faster than she could blink, each and every single one of them zipping off in different directions and trajectories. Everything within a one hundred meter radius from Vivio, that which threatened her, became a target.

Signum and Vita stared slack jawed and rooted in their stances as an unbelievable amount of magic whizzed by them both, homing in on the Numbers assassins like heat seeking missiles. Soon the entire chamber was filled with a cascade of explosions, Hayate's knights just barely having enough time to call up protection barriers against the fallout. When all the smoke and dust settled, they were left gawking at the amount of damage done. Neither the Numbers assassins nor Jail were within sight, all of them having made a hasty exit to avoid being killed in that bombardment.

Then all gazes turned back to the small, sobbing blonde child, Vivio begging Fate and Nanoha to open their eyes. Shamal had just barely managed to maintain her healing spell through all of that, despite the notable distraction just moments before.

"Signum!" the blonde attendant exclaimed, snapping the samurai out of her shock. The moment the pinkette saw Fate and Nanoha, her jaw dropped and she stood frozen, gawking.

"Call back my Deshi!" Shamal shouted at the captain. "I need them if we're going to save Nanoha and Fate!"

A/N: This is one of the shorter chapters for this piece, but don't worry. All the chapters here on out will be much longer. :3

For those of you wondering, Shamal's healing magic used in this chapter was her Calming Heal spell. Zafira's attack was Steel Yoke.

For those of you unfamiliar with the non-English words, I have translated them below.

Hai = Yes

Ile = No

Kami = God

Deshi = Apprentice/Pupil

Sturmwinde = Storm Winds (German)

For an explanation of Japanese honorifics (eg. [name]-sama), please check out: http:/en[dot]wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/Japanese_honorifics