Endless Waltz
By: Daishi Prime
-38 – Ghost Love Score-
Natalia did not relax until the door hissed closed behind her, the buildings' standing shields reforming to cover the portal, separating her from the Guard for the moment. The new security arrangements were just as paranoid leaving as entering, pressure sensors and air-flow sensors and multiple visual identifications, and she was glad they were behind her. She paused there, standing still briefly, feeling Precia slide back into her hiding place, her hips shifting level, her smirk fading, shoulders relaxing. Another day, another interrogation, she thought. At least the Guard doesn't treat me like I'll go axe-crazy if they look at me cross-eyed. Half the Protectors seem to think I'm Laura.
The Protector escort – an Adept this time, as it always was when she went to the Guard – waited patiently and gave no hint if he cared about or noticed the change in her persona, just like all her other escorts. Only Ahmu had ever commented on it, finding it an amusing façade, though the way he said it left unclear which of her personas he considered the façade. Natalia could still remember, with a bitter amusement, Marcel's and Ichigo's reactions to her 'Precia' persona. It was getting easier and easier to slip into, though it remained simple enough to let go of. She wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one. The ease of adopting the persona could very well indicate she was going insane. Equally worrisome, her escorts' failure to react to the change could either be a painful lack of observational skills, or a sign of people so insane themselves that they did not care about another's madness.
After a minute she swung into motion again, using Koschei for a combination of walking staff and crowd-clearing, heading home. Ahmu had already accosted her for her daily lesson, dragging her out of bed before the sun rose, and Lord Protector Yosho had not sent anyone for her, so she had the oncoming evening to herself. She was tempted to go exploring, see if she could look around some of the interior sections of the city that Ahmu avoided, but she was too tired. The Guard was polite, never getting harsher than hard tones and repeated questions, but the officers questioning her were experts at it, and the mental effort of keeping up with them and keeping from saying something wrong, or claiming as fact something she was unsure of, was wearing, especially when she knew so little of the subject. Nuclear arms and strategy were no interest of hers, though she knew the basics – thanks to Sasha, and his required years in the Army. She knew nothing of 'man portable' nuclear warheads, and was not even sure how big, physically, a nuclear warhead was.
She stuck to the public walk to the nearest monorail landing, climbing aboard one of the monorail trolleys that functioned as a cross between cars and buses. She barely noticed the jewel seed – 'controller batteries', according to Ahmu – in the control panel, telling the empty air a tower and floor. The jewel seed picked a route to bring her to the closest landing to the requested point, after dropping off passengers with intervening stops. It was a remarkably efficient system, and Natalia was occasionally curious how well it would scale up to a planetary level once the war was over, or if they had used something else before the Circles tore it all down.
She and her escort ignored the other people on the trolley. He was no doubt keeping an eye on her, sitting across the cabin from her. She was focused inwards, meditating, seeking the Gates again. The view always calmed her, reminded her of both her purpose and inevitable fate. She hardly noticed the other passengers leaving as their stops came up, though she did notice one person board, look at her, and immediately leave. His reaction amused her more than anything else – her every hope now depended on Al Hanthis' victory, but people like him saw only her original training. Eventually, the trolley's only passengers were herself and her escort, which she preferred. Fewer people were fewer distractions.
Then her escort grunted once, folding over his stomach, then spasmed to the floor and white lines of runes flowed over him. Natalia stumbled to her feet and backed up to the far end of the compartment, Koschei before her, drawing in energy but unsure what spell to shape it for, unsure what was happening. It was not until Allison faded into view, wrapped head to toe in grey leather, only her dark eyes visible above the mesh mask, that Natalia realized just how much trouble she was in.
Allison stood over the fallen Protector for a few seconds, then began stalking towards Natalia, not quite crouched but not fully upright, that wicked knife of a device floating back and forth in her left hand. Natalia watched her come, until she was halfway across the compartment, then remembered to form a shield. "D-do not do this, Allison," She said in Japanese, "I have not been idle this last month, and… I-I can hold you long enough for his reinforcements. They are already on their way."
"Figured they would be," Allison replied in Russian, "but don't worry, I won't be here long, and I'm not here to fight you, Russian. I promised Laura she can have you."
It was hard to tell thanks to the face mask, but Natalia was fairly sure Allison smirked at her with that last comment. It certainly sent a thrill of fear down her spine, and her shield flickered away. She knew Szash was going to take her to New York, and approximately why, but the idea of facing off with Laura for real was… unpleasant. Laura would not hold back, not now, and she had already proven herself willing and able to kill. Li's crimes had been bad enough, but Natalia was fairly sure her own would be seen as worse, yet she still had so much left to do.
"That make you nervous?" Allison chuckled at her, then relaxed out of her combat stance, Gallóglaigh dangling negligently from her hand. "Good, you should be. But now's not the time. I just came to deliver a message. Two of them, actually." She reached inside a fold of her leathers, and drew out a cylinder of paper, tossing it underhand. Natalia shifted sideways, letting it land on the floor, noting the heavy thud of its impact. "Tche, idiot," Allison muttered. "If I wanted you down, you'd've gone down before your friend there. I've got to say, you picked some pathetic people to betray us for. But don't worry, Cid-chan and Niranjana have already given their testimony. We'll have you back where you belong soon enough, you'll get your 'fair trial', then they'll execute you like the scum you are. Won't that be a happy day, Russian?"
Natalia started in shock, "They're dead. Niranjana and Cid-ch… Cidela, t-they're dead."
"No, they're not. You're almost as pathetic a mage as your new pals. You want to kill someone, Russian," she hefted Gallóglaigh, "use a real weapon, and make sure of the job. You failed to kill them, you failed to give these idiots enough information to kill Noriko, and you will fail in your attempts to avoid justice. I only hope your brother doesn't end up paying the price with you, like your grandmother already has."
Natalia flinched from that, but before she could respond, the trolley stopped at another platform. Allison vanished from sight again, the door hissed open, and no one came aboard. Natalia was fairly sure Allison left, though, and sank into the seat behind her as the door closed. Her hand started shaking, rather badly, and suddenly she was on the verge of tears, heart hammering. She could not, for the life of her, figure out what she was feeling, or why, it was too much, too fast, too confusing. It could have been fear of Allison, fear for her brother or herself, anger at Allison, surprise at her continued survival, shock at Cidela's and Niranjana's survival. Whatever it was, it was all too much.
The trolley did not go far, precisely three floors and a quarter turn around the tower to the next landing, but Natalia was paying it no attention. Allison had been here, in the city, in the same trolley, within arm's reach. Natalia knew she was a better mage than she had been, thought she could apply what Ahmu had been teaching her to save herself in open battle, but she had no illusions about being able to take Allison at such close range. She had less expectation of being able to survive Laura, whenever the American caught up with her. If Allison could get in, Laura could get in, and probably Hayate-sensei…
"It is a little known fact, but amongst Forecasters, one of our most treasured emotions is surprise – we feel it so rarely."
Natalia twitched, wrenched out of her reverie, to find Ahmu standing over her, holding the package Allison had thrown. He was staring at her, face inscrutable. "I… I'm sorry?"
"You present an interesting conundrum, child, from the perspective of a Forecaster, as do several of your classmates. Not only for your unique blessing and their odd forms of magic, but apparently from your very natures. You are very difficult to read far into the past or the future, difficult to hold, because so many possibilities coalesce around you. In the major and the minor moments, possibilities and changes collect and multiply about you. I confess that, while I saw this particular confrontation coming, I only saw four likely outcomes. Two involved your death at your classmate's hands, one a mutual death. The third involved you successfully fighting her off, only to burn out doing it and suicide. The fourth involved you taking her offer to return to your school, and dying in the attempted escape. All four were equally plausible, and equally likely, far more likely than the variety of outcomes I could not resolve to clarity. So I find our current conversation to be quite the pleasant surprise."
"Allison wouldn't have fought me or made me any offers," Natalia said, "not if she promised to let Laura come after me. She'll never trust me again, not enough to try and sneak me out of the city."
"Even if those were her orders?" Ahmu shrugged, "as I said, a surprise. Here, there is no magic in this package, merely paper and metal."
Natalia took it gingerly, expecting the weight. Carefully, under Ahmu's silent gaze, she unwrapped it. She closed her eyes when she saw the writing on the outside of the letter, mourning her grandmother, then slipped the letter into a pocket. The leather tube opened easily enough, spilling out thirty coins, and she laughed. It was weak at first, but before she knew it had descended into irregular cackling. She even had trouble keeping the handful of coins from spilling, her hands were shaking so much as she rocked in her seat.
"Judas," she finally managed, tears falling down her cheeks, "Judas Iscariot. I wonder if she hopes I will hang myself, like he did?"
"I am unfamiliar with this 'Judas'," Ahmu said, "But I will tell you this – you made the wrong choice, it now falls to you to correct that error." Then he was gone, and the trolley resumed its course.
Natalia turned that over for a few minutes, still rocking, still chuckling unevenly under her breath. She wondered what he meant, trying to see the lesson he was trying to teach her, then angrily dismissed the thought. It was nothing more than a crotchety old man being obtuse. She pulled out the letter from her grandmother, considered it for a moment, then burned it to ash unopened. Mother Morisovitch had rejected her, and she had no interest in the words of the blind. The tears were nothing more than irritation from the fumes and ashes in the closed compartment.
By the time the trolley stopped again, and Yosho himself stepped aboard with a Protector response team, Precia was firmly in place once more, and Natalia did not think she would be going away again any time soon. Natalia was too broken, too damaged, only Precia's strength would see them through.
Yosho's only comment almost broke that mask. "Your brother is awake."
00000
Cidela stepped through the light, and paused, glancing around in curiosity. She had not been able to get a good look out, and this place was completely unlike anyplace she had ever visited through the Void. Instead of a built-up place, a lab or some mage scrying somewhere, she was standing on a pool formed by the changing course of a slow-flowing stream. There were a few scraggly trees, thick bushes, and she could feel a damp heat unlike that she was used to from Egypt, but the place was nowhere near as lush as her beloved valley in Japan.
It was strange, but it was different. Different was good, a pleasant change. She knew she could not stay there, not for more than an hour or so, but she had been walking in the Void so long, she decided to enjoy the break. She could not go far, could not walk beyond the pool, but she studied the bushes, the insects, the small rodent that came to drink. All were healthy enough, to her senses, flush with spring growth and recent rain. Between the heat, the terrain, the plants, and the rodent, she figured she was in Africa somewhere, and probably some-when.
There was nothing around more interesting than the plants, however, no animals larger than the rodent, so Cidela soon turned to practicing her singing. It sounded better, more real, out here than in the Void, and the songs helped her remember better times with her mother, Mariachi, her classmates. Those kept her going when she was in the Void, kept her from despair.
Movement in the bushes distracted her shortly after she began Sara's song, but it was not hostile, just a rustling. Nothing but a mage could harm her as she was, and she doubted even that. So she continued singing, wondering what was moving through the bushes. A minute later, a small boy stumbled out of them, dropping to his knees on a rock by the pool. He watched her warily for a few moments, and something about him tugged at her mind and memory, something familiar she could not place.
Once he was sure she was not a threat, the boy tentatively drank from the pool, then settled in place, still watching her. He was dirty and battered, with dried blood staining his shirt, but she sensed no injury, so she figured it came from somewhere else. Given the apparent wilderness she was in, she thought he might have been hunting, except he did not have a knife, and did not even appear to have any sort of traveling kit.
Once she finished the song, trying to calm him as much as practice, she turned to face him. Figuring from the terrain she was somewhere in Africa or southern Asia, she said in Arabic, "Hello, little one, do you understand me?" He just stared at her, dark eyes wide and uncomprehending. She frowned a little – Arabic was not as all-pervasive as it had once been, but was still widely taught in Muslim lands, and he should have understood it. Maybe I've reached another world? Or I'm further west than I thought, in the Americas? She tried English, then Spanish, both getting no response, but to her surprise, French worked.
"I speak it," he said in a sad flat little voice.
The lost look on his face and the sad voice pulled at her heart. "What's your name, child?"
"Didier," he whispered back.
It felt like he slapped her. Name, face, local appearance, it all flowed together at once. Oh no, this is Didier, she realized, his past. This… this must be just after… whatever happened to him. Okaa-san would never tell me, but I know it was bad… I have to be careful. He never said anything before, never gave any hint of recognizing me. Is this new, am I changing something? Or is this just part of what he never talks about?
The logical part of her mind started ordering her to leave, get out before she damaged something, changed something. But he was so lost, so hurt, and so young… I never could leave someone or something in pain, she thought, gliding towards him. "Oh, you poor thing," she said, half-whispering. "I recognize you now. I am…" No, I can't tell him my real name. I should not have told Sara-san. "I am not sure who I am," she said, prevaricating – she was not entirely sure who she was, sometimes, caught between Japan, Egypt, and Velka the way she was. She cast about for a moment, for something he could call her, then she remembered Kessenra's most petulant complaint, and said, "I think you can call me Hikari."
Didier barely acknowledged that, nodding slightly. Cidela studied him a moment, then sighed, moving closer to sit beside the bank. "Come, Didier, sit. I will sing you to sleep, and when you wake, you'll be safe, I believe. Your father must miss you terribly, but I will get you back to him."
"Are you a spirit?"
She blinked, confused, and asked, "What?"
"Are you a spirit? I can see through you."
She looked down at herself, frowning briefly again as she was reminded of her predicament once more. "I suppose I might be," she admitted, since it was possible such manifestations across the Void were the source of ghost-stories, "but I don't feel like I'm dead. I'm lost, I think, looking for where I was when I came here. I will say, I cannot actually touch you. I tried that at first, but I just shift again when I touch a person. So, I'm not dangerous, little one, though Kessenra says I am very dangerous. Sit, little Didier, and let me sing you home to your father."
She took up Sara's song again, gently, softly, putting just a little magic into it. Didier settled, laying down on his side, and his eyes drifted closed as she sang, a few tears falling. It hurt, watching the poor boy and being unable to do anything to help him, but she was getting used to that. So she sang softly, lulling him to sleep, placing a light ward over him to keep the critters away until rescue found him.
The effort left her tired, her grip on the world tenuous, and she rose once the ward was stable. She was uncertain if it would last beyond her departure, but it was the best she could do. She stepped back into the center of the pool, then paused, looking across the stream. Someone was moving through the bushes, several someones.
Four men paused just behind the last bushes, just barely visible to her. After a few seconds, one stepped out, frowning at her. He looked her over for a moment, then considered Didier, until Cidela moved between him and the sleeping boy. "I'm familiar with the Arabs," he said in Arabic, "and they don't train their girl-children. So I'm curious where you are from, that you use the power of God at all, let alone so strangely."
Cidela felt herself cringe a little from that. He was a mage, which meant he was probably Circles, and God knew what sort of damage he could do to Didier if she let him. "I am of Arabic descent," she replied, sticking to French just to confuse him, "but I am from Japan." His eyebrows rose at that, then snapped back down when she asked, "Are you Circle mages?"
"Tche, no," he spat. "We have nothing to do with the colonialists. You are from Japan, but… you are no colonialist, are you? They are all the same, their magic is the same. Yours is… strange."
"It is unique to Japan," Cidela told him.
"What did you do to the boy?"
"Let him slumber," she answered, "and warded him against predators. I will not let you harm him."
The man's frown faded, then he grinned at her and chuckled. "Silly child, we're not going to harm him. But he has bandits on his tail, and I think you would have trouble dealing with them, yes? We know who he is." He gestured, and the three other men, all younger, teenagers just a little older than Cidela, "We will deal with his pursuers, and take him to his father. If you have truly not harmed him, and you truly are not a colonialist, you will be welcome here again. I think I would like to discuss your Japanese magic."
Cidela hesitated still, wary of being tricked. She remembered Juliet's and Hayate-sensei's stories of the Shaman too well, and was not certain she trusted this man any more than she would have trusted a Circle mage. She backed up, closer to Didier, and began to seriously think about trying to pull him through the Void with her. She could get him back home to the right time somehow, if she could take him out.
The man sighed, grin shifting, and he shook his head. "So paranoid. All right, little girl," he drew the heavy knife at his belt, but instead of brandishing it, slashed it across his own palm. As the blood flowed, he held it out over the sandy bank, letting the blood fall, and Cidela flinched as she felt her gift react. She also felt other magic rising, swirling into the blood and the land and him. "I swear on this blood, upon my ties to my homeland, that me and mine will do all in our power to return this boy safely to his father, and that he shall come to no harm from us." He clenched his fist, cutting off the blood, a flash of fire sealing the wound. "Good enough?"
Cidela nodded slowly, surprised both at how far he had gone, and that she had felt the magic. It was not what she was used to, but she thought it would still hold him, somehow. So she drifted closer, reaching out with just a little energy, and before he noticed, healed the wound in his palm. "Good enough. Thank you for taking care of him, he will be a friend in a few years." The magic destabilized her presence, and she felt the Void pulling at her again, and with a blink, she was once more in blackness.
00000
Allina considered her options carefully, debating what to do next and how to do it.
Uli was a nice kid, and had been an incredible help, but Allina could not, in good conscience, continue to operate out of the girl's computer. She could get into the limited implants the child already had – a neural interface and basic regulator for her linker core – but only trade data back and forth. The attempt to do more had not been a serious take-over attempt, just a check to make sure the girl was not vulnerable. She was too helpful, and too cute a kid, to face that sort of risk. Allina made just a couple changes, extra little bits of security added to the implants' code, but otherwise left Uli alone.
Uli's home computer was a relatively safe base to operate from, so long as she went elsewhere to actually try anything. The tower's computers were more than substantial enough to hide herself in, and Uli's home in particular had extra processing power, extra memory, and extra security. Subverting that had been delicate but doable, and the lower half of Yrth Arn Tower basically belonged to Allina now, whatever the inhabitants thought. But it was a residential block, nothing but housing, schools, parks, clinics, entertainment and the like. All the really useful stuff – the communications arrays, the power generators, the weapons arrays, the shield generators, the Guard, the Protectors, the Conclave – was in the core platform or the tallest of the upper central towers.
Her one aborted attempt to get out before had been… less than successful. Oh, the set-up had gone perfectly, once she figured out how to do it. The penetration of networking through the city was incredible, and her greatest difficulty, initially, had been choosing which way to route the various commands and responses so they could not actually be traced back to her. She already had a handful of similar re-routes and cut-outs planned and set, just waiting for a few critical commands to execute. But she had not been able to get fully out of the city, and while she had found her body, she had not liked finding someone else inhabiting it. Even worse had been seeing the damage to Niranjana, and she promised herself once again that she would find out who did that and make them suffer. Niranjana was not Guard, not like Allina, she was not supposed to get injured in the fighting. After those two shocks, the combined efforts of Aria-sensei to track her, and Yosho's kids trying to cut her off from inside, had forced her to abort the attempt before she could really accomplish anything.
So here she was, stuck in Al Hanthis, someone else wearing her face at the school, no idea where her real body was, and no way to get a reliable connection out that would last long enough for her to escape. She was starting to get a little annoyed about it all, especially the constant noise of the city's network traffic. She had made a few very careful probes of the city's critical systems – the power plants, the lifting engines, the shields, and so forth – but all of them were very well defended, more so now than before her first attempt to call for help.
I could just trash the networks, she mused. Enough chaos here, and Al Hanthis would have to focus here, retreat. Maybe buy time to let 'Jana-chan and Hayate-sensei come up with a way to get me out of here. No, too much chance they would find me and erase me, and that spy would have free reign to do whatever she wants with my 'Jana-chan, the pervert.
Some of the background noise intensified, and it became 'loud' enough to disturb her contemplations. Annoyed, she focused on it, and found that the Guard and Protector mages living in the tower – many more of the former than the latter, Yrth Arn was something of an unofficial Guard neighborhood – were being activated and called to duty. Warnings were going out to each of them, on Guard and Protector secure channels, but also on the public channels. The public and Protector alerts were interesting, but uninformative – a single intruder had infiltrated the city and had escaped containment. The Guard alert, once she decrypted it a few seconds after finding it, was far more interesting.
Allison, huh? That's… surprisingly surprising, Allina decided. I should have expected her to break in. But… hmm, the General seems to think she's here for recon… she's going to need an exit, then. I wonder, did she set one up beforehand, or… no, Allison was never that much of a planner. Beanpole would be, though, and those two are thick as thieves… She thought it over for a few seconds, arguments and counter-arguments flashing back and forth, then gave a mental shrug. Either way, I should probably see about making sure she can get out of here safely.
So, I'm going to have to set up an evac route through the city's shield, then somehow communicate that route to a girl who's invisible and doing everything she can to not be found by anyone, and do it all without letting the General or those Protector incompetents find out about it.
It took her a frighteningly long time to figure out an appropriate extraction method, all of an hour, and it was only that fast due to luck. She found the perfect escape route, right under the Protectors' and Guards' noses, and something no one would ever think of. She only had to hope Allison did not balk at the concept, and that she could get the crazy huntress through the relevant security cordons.
Once she had the extraction route prepared – which required jerry-rigging a ridiculous number of Al Hanthis' monitoring, power routing, and communications systems – she had to let Allison know. That required a whole other set of improvisations, but any good hacker/soldier was good at improvising as the situation required.
It's about time this city had a public address system, anyhow, Allina decided.
00000
Laying on the edge of a garden from fifty plus stories up and a half mile distant, Allison considered the shield generator. It was remarkably plain, and that very plainness made it stand out. The towers of Al Hanthis flowed together, merging and melding in forms and colors. They were not quite a seamless whole, but each tower had obviously been carefully constructed to blend perfectly with its neighbors. Even the various balconies and parks extending off the sides were arranged to compliment one another. But the shield towers, unlike the crackling crowns of the power generators, were not part of that smooth flow. They stood out sharply, regular, an intrusion as obvious as oak in the desert.
That alone told her something, though she was not sure how useful it was. The shields were not part of the city, they were an add-on, an upgrade. They had not been put up in calm times, with proper consideration for blending them into the whole, they had simply been thrown up wherever they were needed. Allison thought she could see where that lack of consideration had left vulnerabilities – power conduits that were too obvious, exposed entryways, things like that. But all those vulnerabilities had been patched and armored over, in equally expedient ways. That had obviously taken time, she could see where some additions were aged more than others, but the weaknesses had all been corrected.
The weapons emplacements all over the city were much the same – functional, solid, well-entrenched, but 'new'. They, too, did not blend in with the city. That, more than any thoroughness of her scouting, convinced her that there were no 'hidden weapons' secreted in the towers and structures, or at least not major ones. The whole set up of the city's defenses had the feel of an emergency improvisation that had become the norm, like a knife handle that had been taped back on in the field so often that it was more tape than handle.
They probably started on them when the Circles first popped up, specifically for the war, Allison decided, considering the shield generator's tower. There may be something in there we can use, but I don't see it right now.
That was also not her real purpose, she knew. She was there to gather information, not to analyze it. It was her job to see, then get back and report what she saw. Someone else could figure out what everything she saw meant, and what to do with it.
After locating Natalia and delivering her message, Allison had focused completely on her mission. She had not had as much luck at that as she had hoped, but more than she had feared. She had evaded detection, for the most part, and the few close-calls had only been close, not final. Each of them had come as a result of trying to get close to the shield generators or weapon emplacements, as well, which was why she was now so far from any such thing.
Well, there was that attempt to get into the Guard tower, she reminded herself. Damn, Szash is paranoid, and tricky, too. Here I am invisible, and she goes and seals all the entrances with visual-recognition locks. Tricky, tricky. Have to figure out a way around that.
She had prowled through several towers, cursory examinations, and she thought she had a good feel for the layout of the city. The closer to the middle she got – both horizontally and vertically – the more security there was, and the more sensitive the locations seemed to be. The upper ends of the topside towers, and the lower ends of the underside towers, were patently the 'high rent' districts, though. Basically, the powerful worked in the middle, and played at the edges, with the peons – such as they were – stuck in the middle.
The organization of the city, the fact that it was literally three dimensional, had been surprisingly easy to adapt to. Still, something had seemed very off as she prowled around, and it had only been as morning arrived that she realized what it was – there were not enough people. The sheer size of the city, the amount of space available for apartments, offices, all of it was incredible. Even with the necessary support facilities any city had, even with Al Hanthis' special requirements, there was an incredible amount of room for people. Based on what Hughes' people had told her, she estimated very roughly that the city could hold ten million or more people comfortably, but there were, she estimated, only two to three million, maybe four, actually in it.
That was a terrifyingly small number, especially given their ambitions and how much damage they had already done, yet it also meant that most of the city was vacant. Entire sections of most towers were simply unoccupied, sealed up and left dormant. The park Allison was in was technically in one of those abandoned sections now, the mall, or whatever it had been, that the park doors led to was empty and still.
What made it worse was the apparent age of the people she did see. Everyone was an adult, the youngest she had gotten close to easily Hayate-sensei's age, and few enough of those. There were children, she had seen them in various parks, especially the park which ringed the platform. But there were very few of them, especially in proportion to the 'elderly' she had seen. Those 'elderly' were closer to her grandparents' style of 'elderly' than to the typical meaning of the word – vigorous, healthy, still obviously active and aware, but they were also plainly old. Hughes' man from the CIA had told her specifically to look for things like that, to pay attention to demographics, and what she had seen was oddly disturbing.
They either need a baby-boom, she thought, gaze momentarily settling on a family – from her estimates, a father, mother, two grandmothers, one grandfather, one aunt, and one child – in the Ring Park, or they're going to have one in the next few years. Assuming this all doesn't go pear-shaped and we all end up dead.
As the sun rose over Cairo, she was starting to think about getting back. Her eyes went back to the shield generator, but her study was desultory. The city, like all urban environments, was well-lit at night, even with the back-lighting of Cairo, so dawn revealed no more details. Even with Gallóglaigh magnifying the image for her, there was nothing new to see.
Which left her with only one more job on this mission – escape.
That had been the most difficult thing to plan for. Allison had taken it as a given that she would not be able to leave the same way she came in. It would require too much stupidity on the Guard's part, and too much luck on her part, for the portals to be both two-way and for no one to notice her presence in the city. Even if she had infiltrated without being noticed, delivering her message to Natalia would have warned them she was there.
Signum-sensei and Vita had done their best to help her, Noah, Yussef, and Hughes' men plan her egress. They had come up with a number of options for it, all of which seemed generally workable at the time, but all of which felt insanely dangerous in the here and now. There was enough traffic in and out of the city that she should have been able to slip out with regular travelers. But after how fast the portals she used to get in had backfired, the thought of using 'public' routes made her very nervous. She could not get at the portals, could not get at the gap-generators such as what had let Hayate-sensei in the one time, could not teleport out through the city's main shield…
I'm going to need a distraction, she decided, something big enough to get me onto a transport or something.
That distraction then presented itself, in a rather surprising way. There was a sudden chime and a high pitched rising whine of speakers powering on, then, booming out over the entire city, came a familiar smoothly flat voice.
"Hey Wilderness Girl, it's Allina. I've got your departure all arranged. We're going to borrow a page from Spock and do this Wrath of Khan style, if you take my meaning. In one week, eight days, four hours and a handful of minutes, your portal will be open and you will be going through it. If you want to know where you're going to end up, just find your friendly neighborhood Guard mage and listen for the fake Brooklyn accent. You're going to want to get close to the mooks, but watch they don't take a bite out of you. If you think you can trust me enough, meet me where you left our Goth friend, I'll let you know where to go from there."
Allison rolled over on her back and frowned, considering. She knew about the unknown that had contacted Niranjana and Allina, knew that Na-chan considered it to be HAL, or the like, and that it apparently considered itself to be Allina. What she did not know was if it was friendly, as it had implied, or some sort of convoluted double-agent sort of thing.
She considered it for a while, turning it over. The timing was impossible, there was no way she could keep herself going for a week. Brooklyn was easy enough to figure out – this HAL/Allina/whatever obviously expected to get her out with the Guard force going to New York, or possibly with the Seed, given the reference to 'mooks' and 'biting'. But the 'Goth' part took her a while. As far as Allison knew, she knew no Goths, no one at the Academy was that pretentious. But dark, depressed… that described Natalia to a T. Overall, Allison figured that while the timing was impossible, it was worth a look to see if she could figure out a faster exit.
So, she wants me to go to where I left Natalia… the monorail platform, should be easy enough to reach. Going to be swarming with Protectors after that announcement, though. She patted a pocket that did not really exist, contemplating, then shrugged. Well, brought the explosives for a reason, they should make a good distraction. Let's see what this fake-Allina has come up with.
She reached the platform almost two hours later, and sure enough, there were the Protectors, swarming all over it. She watched from a distant platform for a while, considering, and smirked as she watched most of the people fade away from the platform. A few 'disappeared' into some shoddy stealth spells, but most actually left, heading for other hiding spots. There were patently enough wards and monitors on that landing platform to locate every last microbe that dared approach it.
Shaking her head, she finished her own preparations. She had picked a balcony – an open-air restaurant, not one of the poor innocent park-decks – and prepared it carefully. The restaurant itself was still open, had tables spread out, but was frequented by Guard mages, just one tower over from their main tower. It was also suspended over one of the ghost-town sections, mostly, and a quick check had shown none of the inhabited spaces were too worrisome – no schools or hospitals or the like, just administrative offices for something or other. Two pounds of C4 in four lines, a little careful magic to weaken the structure, a little more to make sure the blast did not penetrate the top level, and all four of the remote detonators she had been given completed the distraction. The level of magic she used was low enough to be lost in the background, and none of the people on the balcony were on alert. It took all the explosives she had been able to finagle out of Hidan's people, but she figured it would suffice for an amateur demolition of a hundred-foot wide balcony.
She dropped away, not flying but sliding along the surface of the tower using just enough magic to keep from sticking or falling too fast, a little more to guide her fall. She landed on a monorail boarding platform, and slipped aboard the next car. From there, she rode the rail for another hour, waiting for someone to return to her target tower, making sure no one noticed and responded to her little sabotage.
Luck was with her a short time later, when another monorail trolley deposited her much further up on the target tower than the monitored level. She had to work her way around to the correct side of the tower, then crouched there, magically stuck to the sheer vertical face. There were still several Protectors on the landing platform, and she was fairly sure the wards and monitors were still there. But it looked the same, and she figured it would remain that way. So she reached into the pocket Gallóglaigh had created in her leathers just for this moment. Her hand closed around the detonator, and she squeezed the priming handle twice, as she had been shown, then released it, feeling it click.
A second later, there was a surprisingly muffled boom, and the carefully prepared balcony bucked sharply. The outer edge drooped, then in agonizing slowness, the balcony collapsed against the tower and tore away. The whole mass began to slide down the tower, spilling tables and umbrellas behind it. The crashing slide was far louder than the explosion had been, shattering glass (or whatever it was, it did not really feel like glass or plastic under her hand) and warping steel combining into a stomach-churning sound of disaster.
It certainly got the Protectors' attention. Mages in gray and white exploded out of the surrounding towers, closing on the explosion, even as those who had been on the demolished balcony were lifted into the air by more mages in red and black. Allison watched them go, mentally cursed that not every Protector left, but struck anyhow. She dropped, trusting in Gallóglaigh to perfect the timing of her landing.
Halfway down, something distracted her, though, a pattern of blinking lights on yet another tower. It was subtle, but distinctive, and it was enough to make her pause, just four floors above her target. She studied the blinking lights for a moment, before the pattern gelled in her mind's eye – it was a very fast cycle, but the lights were forming, one letter at a time, JANACHAN, with an arrow pointed down. It ran for a few seconds longer, then vanished.
Allison considered it for a few seconds, then shrugged and bolted. Flight might trigger the Protectors' wards at this range, but might not as well, and speed was more important. She almost teleported, but both teleports she knew created rather obvious visual signatures. There was no door in the indicated spot, so Allison hit it with Gallóglaigh a moment before impacting it, the magic-sharpened blade shattering the window into little grains and spheres.
"You're so violent, Alley. I got your signal, but now we can't talk," the walls said. "Lower north quarter, tower with the all-blue safety lights, twenty-second floor, apartment five-two-two-zero. Run, now, the Protectors are closing."
Allison considered bolting back out the window she had come in by, but she was not that confident of her ability to disappear. So she used Gallóglaigh to cut her way out of the abandoned office she found herself in, then bolted down that hallway. She created a time-delay buster on the fly, launched it at the window at the far end of the hallway, then dove sideways and up. Most of the towers had transit shafts between the floors, some completely open, some equipped with lift cars. This one was open, but sealed several floors above and below where she had entered. She exited the shaft just below the upper seals, and vaguely heard and felt her buster trigger and detonate against the shield. It was the far side of the tower from where she had entered, and with a bit of luck the Protectors would focus on those two points long enough for her to find a quiet spot.
Sure enough, the Protectors cordoned off both shattered windows, then began searching the building floor by floor. Allison could feel barriers going up, containing the uninhabited sections of the tower, and grinned. They would be confident in those barriers, especially the teleport damper, but that damper was not as powerful as the city's shield, and Takashi's teleport let her bypass that. The only problem was figuring out where to go that would not get her instantly caught again.
Prowling around, she found a good candidate – the Ring Park, comfortably distant from any of the perimeter emplacements and shield generators. She appeared out of the rip in reality above a screaming crowd, whose first reaction was to get away from the Void-like apparition of Takashi's teleport. None of them even seemed to notice her presence. The Cloak could have explained that, it remained stable enough through the teleport, but she expected people this steeped in magic to be more on the ball.
Six hours later, she found the tower, floor, and apartment indicated. She debated how to get in for a few minutes, while prowling around the floor checking for ambushes. Finally, she decided to just open the door, only to find she had no idea how to do that. She thought she saw a motion sensor or touch-pad beside the door, but physical contact did nothing. It took Allison a few minutes more to decide she would have to try dropping the Cloak of Shades – the idea of being visible anywhere in this city gave her chills, but she forced herself to it eventually.
The door hissed open as soon as she appeared, and HAL's voice stated, "Finally. I've been waiting for you, Allison."
"Uh, yeah, nice to hear you, too, HAL."
"I am not HAL!"
The emphasis was clear, but still so close to the monotone of the device that Allison shivered. Man, I really hope she's closer to Allina than to her namesake. That movie gave me the creeps when Laura made us sit through it, I don't want to re-enact it. Still, stubborn honesty was one of her 'virtues', after all, so she said, "If you're not HAL, you're not Allina either – or at least, not the only one. The Allina back at school's the real deal."
"She's a spy!"
Allison shook her head, "She knows what you and Niranjana talked about the night before Hong Kong. You know, the time Niranjana insists the two of you were covered by every privacy shield she and Saraswati could manage?"
"We had no conversation that night, I will deny that to the day I die."
Allison smiled, "But Niranjana won't, unless her parents are around. Look, like I said, if you are Allina, you're not the only one."
"I will get my body back, just you watch."
"You say so. Your little public announcement said something about an evac route by way of the Seed?"
"Hah! Not a chance I'm sending you out that way!" HAL-Allina-whatever actually giggled, "Good bit of misdirection, though. The General's cagey, she'll figure out what the message said, and the Guard'll all be watching for you to try and sneak through the portals they're setting up. She's going to try a Pandoval Strongpoint – seize a town in upstate New York somewhere, bury it under fortification platforms with a platoon of mages and some Seed, then turn it into an activation center for a full-up Seed strike force. The US won't dare nuke their own towns, though the Russians or Chinese might."
Allison shivered at that, shaking her head, "Yeah, probably not. But if I'm not going out that way, how do you think I'm getting out?"
"That's the beautiful part… the Protectors are going to give you a lift. Yosho's people aren't nearly as security-conscious as the Guard. They're activating Seed of their own – not Alphas, those a Guard prerogative – to set up border patrols. To mark the border for the Seed, they are going to place mobile signaling stations, which get deployed via lighter. Technically it should be the Guard's responsibility, and the General offered her suggestions and those were better than Yosho's plans, but the Guard's focused on offensive plans, so the Protectors get border patrol. It helps them feel useful, or something."
Listening to HAL-Allina, Allison began to notice some oddities that made her very nervous. It was subtle, more in the way the program referred to things inside Al Hanthis, but Allison had the distinct impression that she was talking to a fan of the Guard – which Allina had not been. She was not sure about before Hong Kong, but after Hong Kong Allina, when she talked about anything other than computers and Niranjana, seemed to put the Guard in the same category as the FBI's cyber-crimes division – somewhere just below infectious pond scum.
This version of Allina was not exactly a 'Guard Booster', but she patently thought highly of them, rather the way Allison herself thought of them. Her opinion of the Protectors was also far better formed and more definite than any of the other students' opinions, though it again tracked with Allina's, if being rather more dismissive.
On top of those attitudes was the terminology the program used, from how it always called Szash 'the General', to referring to the larger Seeds as 'alphas', the 'fortification platforms'… Allison could figure out what she was referring to, but the way the program used the terms, even with the 'soothing' monotone, was too familiar, too pat. Some of all of that could have come from the program's time in Al Hanthis, but Allison had no way to be sure of that. All in all, the more she heard, the more she worried that the program was a Guard plant, or possibly a Protector trap.
"Okay, okay," she finally interrupted the program's somewhat rambling plan for getting her aboard a Seed transport. "Look, this sounds lovely Halley, but I'm a little twitchy about all of it. The Protectors have to realize this lighter would make an excellent escape route for me."
"Well, sure, but they're Protectors," the program replied, "and what's this 'Halley' crap?"
Allison rolled her eyes, "I'm not calling you 'Allina 2', and you don't like HAL, so you get both."
"My name is Allina!"
"So is Allina's, it gets confusing. Look, you get back to the school and prove you're real and the other Allina's the fake, I'll call you Allina. Until then, you're Halley. Deal with it."
"I am so tempted to call the Protectors on you right now! They wouldn't catch you, but ooh you so deserve it!" Halley fell silent for almost a minute, then grumbled, "look, just get to the entrance to the Protectors' flight bays by sunrise tomorrow. I'll get you in, and you can out that way and let Hayate-sensei know everything you've picked up. If I can, I'll get you the Guard's staging point in New York before you go, but no promises. The General's cagey."
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The healers insisted on keeping Sasha isolated for several hours after Natalia arrived. According to them, he was understandably disoriented and, despite everything they had done, physically weak and vulnerable. Mental healers were with him, talking him through waking up, explaining to him as gently as they could what had happened to their parents, to his wife, where he was, and how he came to be there. Yosho assured Natalia that they would tell him nothing of how she earned Al Hanthis' assistance, but Natalia was honestly unconcerned with that. Her brother was awake again, for the first time in so painfully long. Even just the visual feed they let her watch had her in tears, despite Precia's presence.
Then came that beautiful, magical moment when they finally let her in to see him for real, to talk to him. The bed he was in was folded up to let him recline, and he was wearing the loose plain shirt and pants Al Hanthis used in place of a hospital smock over a still-wasted frame. He looked gaunt, his hair was a mess, the hand he raised in greeting was shaking, and it looked like it took everything he had to smile at her.
He was beautiful, perfectly wonderful, and she literally flew across the room, heedless of the healers and Protectors watching, wrapping his chest in a hug and burying her face in his shoulder, sobbing in joy and pain as all the worries and guilt and victories hit her at once. She felt his arms go around her shoulders, his chin in her hair.
"Oh, little sister," he whispered in Russian, "this place, these people, they are not ours people, it's not our home, and Grandmother isn't here. They won't tell me how, but I know something is wrong. What have you done?"
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Author's Notes: Yes, there was more going on when Allison accosted Natalia than is displayed above, things neither girl was aware of. Cidela is the 'Green Lady' referenced in Didier's Side Story, which is relevant to background rules/details. Differences between their conversation above and that from the Side Story are due to the fact that the French Cidela learned is not quite the same as that taught in France's former African colonies, and also because all the languages the kids learned are somewhat blended, thanks to how they learned them and how they use them (back in Academy Blues, round about the Kyoto trip I think, there was an off-hand comment about the school creating its own pidgin language – same thing). Lastly, yes, Allison's C4 distraction was rather close to terrorist tactics, but remember, this is Allison – she's nowhere near the idealist Hayate is, and while her temper's not as bad as Juliet's, she still has rage issues, especially with would-be conquerors.
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Kell Shock: It would probably help to see the portals not so much as standing openings, but as 'teleport carrier waves'. Once something crosses the threshold, it functions as a slowed-down teleport. If the mass being transited varies from that logged into the control systems (or, as in Allison's case, is not logged in), it is routed to a Protector containment bay automatically. That's why the Protectors are so 'lax' about guarding the portals, the portals 'guard' themselves, to an extent. That being said, the guy who had the duty at the containment facility was definitely an idiot. No comment on Yussef's efforts at Fort Knox, that'll be covered in story in a few chapters. As for dealing with Al Hanthis' shield, I'm afraid that's a plot point – if they even get a chance to deal with it. The Twins devices are based on the Magelords' staves from Debra Doyle & James MacDonald's Magworlds trilogy – short staves chased in silver and wielded one-handed. They may be very short staves, but they are staves. However, their barrier jackets aren't frilly enough for them to be traditional magical girls. Demon cannon girls, now…
Arkeus: Thanks for the review, and the compliment.
hignum: Allison's escape attempt will be next chapter, mostly, though you'll have to wait for the following chapter to find out if she makes it:). The politics and planning is supposed to be somewhat mysterious, simply because I don't want everyone to predict the whole plot halfway through the story. Don't worry if you can't follow it, it's supposed to be complicated and hard to follow.
D.K.N.: Thanks for the compliment, and the review. To answer your first two questions: 1) There is almost no chance of anyone ever encountering Precia again. Cidela might stumble across her, but it would not be a pretty experience, and she would not be bringing Precia back. I do have a set of rules figured out for Cidela's situation and Void interaction in general, and bringing Precia (or her daughter) back would violate several of those rules. 2) The Bureau will be involved again, but it's going to be complicated and not pretty for anyone, least of all for the Bureau. As for your third and fourth questions, I'm afraid I can't answer them without massive spoilers. 'Good' or 'bad' answers, either would reveal the plot much too soon.
Nijiru: Mostly the Myrmidons would probably take Saeryn's device name as a compliment – proof that even crazy Laura's weird minions can recognize the best in history. Besides, Achilles and his Myrmidons came from a different part of ancient Greece than Alexander. As for what Mother Morisovitch wrote to her errant granddaughter, I'm afraid we'll never know.
Baughn: Allison has been looking forward to her own vengeance against Natalia too much to let it go. But as mentioned in the notes, there was more to the above meeting than Allison's skills. Remember, there are a lot of factions in Al Hanthis. Al Hanthis' air-supremacy is somewhat dependent on target-recognition, but they had long enough between returning and the first attack to map out and learn to recognize civilian flight profiles. So they have a high probability of spotting an incoming attack, yes. It would be entirely reasonable to teleport a number of nukes just outside Al Hanthis' shield and set them off. But who on Earth can teleport? The Circles can't, they have no mage who can process the math properly for a non-line-of-sight teleport, even though a wolfpack could probably generate sufficient power. Only Hayate's people could do it, until Maunders' fellow 'Circle Volunteers' learn how to manage teleports. The Bureau Volunteers might consider it, except their knowledge of nukes would come from Hayate, or from historical atrocities elsewhere cleaned up by the Bureau, making them almost as opposed. Also, remember, the Bureau personnel are police, not soldiers, and the idea of murdering millions of Egyptians, even to achieve victory, would be anathema. That would make them just as bad as the people they have trained and sworn to combat. Not everyone would be fine with losing the Earth, but nukes are definitely an absolute last resort for those who could use them effectively. And admit it, how many times have you seen or read about people sticking to their principles to the point of utter defeat? I'd need a book just to list the ones I know of.
Phillip: Thanks for the compliments, and the review. I have improved markedly since I started writing this, which is painfully obvious even to me. Path of Vengeance was originally a side-project to a much larger (and, looking back at it, rather execrable) Naruto fiction I was posting. The idea that became Academy Blues only occurred to me after I finished PoV, and I have been tempted on occasion to go back and re-write PoV to a higher standard. I'm well aware Deva magic is very powerful, and you're going to get a demonstration of just how powerful it is before the story ends. That would be one of the reasons why there are only five such mages in a story with almost a hundred major and secondary characters who are Velka, Mid-Childan, or Circle mages. The problem with how 'major' Al Hanthis provocations are, from the Bureau's perspective, is that Terra is not a major world (beyond being a major headache). Terra does not have a unified government, it is not a Bureau signatory world, is not near the heart of Bureau civilization (i.e., Mid-Childa), and does not have any real number of mages (remember, the Bureau's only known about the Circles for, apparently, a few months to a year at this point). The Bureau has hundreds of worlds to keep track of, each with significant mage populations, each with archaeological sites that may contain lost logia, with criminals trying to obtain/use/sell lost logia, and probably trillions of people to worry about. Expecting the Bureau to react with urgency to the murder of a few hundred people or the presence of Lost Logia on a backwater world, short of imminent dimensional dislocation, is expecting a bit much. Especially when they are faced with the complaints of representatives of those hundreds of worlds and trillions of people that are, to their eyes, the civilized universe, who are all complaining about the Bureau resources already 'lavished' on an insignificant non-signatory backwater. Remember, Nanoha and Fate were about to cause such a dislocation with their final battle, and Precia was deliberately creating one, and that intervention was taken on Lindy's initiative, which has already been ruled out in this situation. Yes, the local Bureau forces are quite well aware of how dangerous the situation is. Highers up (equal to or beyond Chrono) will basically look at the 'location: Earth' and file it under 'yet another overreaction'. I'm sorry you have trouble believing it, but no bureaucracy (and the Bureau's proven to be typically so, with Graham and what I've heard and read of StrikerS) is as responsive and active as you appear to think, not when it's not their people on the line, not even military or paramilitary ones.
Anonymous Reviewer: The twins are actually turning out to be a little more militant than I originally intended. They are closer to Laura than they would prefer to be, though. As far as the relationship between Noriko and the Paladins, that is going to get shaken out in-story, as will the actual structure of the Paladins as an order, but I have not yet decided if Noriko will take the Oaths. They would not interfere with her duties as Emperor, though swearing to obey herself would be sort of redundant.
Barricade: Thanks for the review, and for reading. Nanoha keeping her name was mostly a cop-out on my part – I referenced her by her maiden name after the scene where she was married, and thought it would be amusing to correct the mistake by have Yuuno take her name. Giving the devices more of a personality would be interesting, I'll admit, but it would nearly double the number of characters I have to keep track of. Reinforce (and the Sword, the Hellblade, and now Senbonzakura and Hypocrates) is a special circumstance due to the original's appearance in As (I liked the concept, especially after the psycho-security program was separated), and due to being a Deva device. I've never seen Fate/Stay Night, or played the game, and have to admit that I got the idea from David Weber's Honorverse history (though he got it from one King of Prussia – Prussia's laws required a 'king', but did not specify the 'king' had to be male). Your idea of the telefrag would work with some descriptions of the teleport, but not the way I envision it in the Nanohaverse. Based on how the first two series presented themselves, there's no 'environmental interaction' to generate the effect you're talking about. On the other hand, Takashi's teleport would be a good way to mess with an unprepared Deva mage, or with Laura. As for Laura's similarities to Batman, I guess I can see them, but they're not intentional (other than the whole 'hero' thing). Her oaths to Noriko were similar to the whole intro from Batman The Animated Series, but also to any number of heros' self-introductions, from Nanoha's "Then I'll be a devil" to Darkwing Ducks "Terror that flaps in the night".