Deva 04: Endless Waltz

by Daishi Prime

Deva Series 04. Sequel to Academy Blues. Hayate, her family, and their students face new tests, new challenges, and a deadly civil war. AU.

44. 43 Hail, Morrigan

Endless Waltz

By: Daishi Prime

-43 – Hail, Morrigan-

Corporal Paul McTavish had accounted himself well-prepared for the battle. He had fought in Iraq and in Afghanistan, one tour each, and however calm things were supposed to be in both theaters these days, there was no such thing as 'peaceful' in those regions. He had seen, in his opinion, the worst war could throw at a man, and acquitted himself well enough to be assigned to the Royal Guard, standing about London in his pretty red uniform keeping an eye on the tourists. He had heard the stories, listened to the briefings, seen the videos of Seed from Hong Kong. He knew what to expect.

Even better, his assigned post holding the mouth of the Blackwall Tunnel – in the event the Army was forced to fall back all the way to the north bank – meant that by the time he faced Seed, the creatures would be thinned out and worn down. He was rear-guard, just supposed to hold steady and provide some covering fire. It was one of the simplest jobs available, and one with the clearest honor – he was one of the guys who would make sure the rest of the Army got to live, if things went in the toilet. It also got him out of the nasty business of street-to-street combat under hostile artillery. Even the steady drumbeat of rain on his helmet did not particularly bother him – it was at least cool.

Then, almost an hour after the start of the battle, the Seed came boiling up out of the Thames, and his job suddenly became much harder. When the creatures 'went to ground' the day before, some had apparently worked their way to the river east and west of the city, or evaded the Royal Navy to swim up the river from the sea, to hit the Army in the rear. Horror stories aside, though, the Seed proved to be more killable than he expected, especially with the killing-zone of cleared construction yards between the tunnel entrances and river banks. The creatures blended with the rain and the dark fairly well, but Lieutenant White managed a lucky hit with their one Javelin on the second Seed, taking it out in a single hit. That left two more hitting their position from the west, three more hitting the other squad at the eastern entrance. The three old Browning Fifties someone had dug up proved to be worth their reputation, hammering the Seed back through sheer impact, and keeping them off-balance while the rest of the squad fired disposable LASMs, and McTavish smirked as the last fled back into the river.

McTavish was just relaxing from that assault, sharing a grin with his buddy Finn at their success, when a scream behind him made him twist around, fumbling for the third LASM strapped to his web harness. Behind him, already tearing the Lieutenant and Private Casey apart at the third line of sandbags, were three more Seed. Even as he got the disposable missile around, he realized what had happened – the creatures had breached the tunnels beneath the river, and hit the Lieutenant where he had dug in at the tunnel-mouth.

McTavish fired his missile without really aiming, just getting it pointed in the right general direction. Such had proven as effective as aiming before, and the missile almost hit, but the Seed that had just killed the Lieutenant dodged McTavish's and Finn's missiles in the same motion, then lunged at them, while its partners split left and right. One staggered abruptly as it sprouted ten or twelve steel spines, but it was not the one coming at McTavish so he ignored that in favor of lunging for the crate of missiles at his feet. He and Finn crashed into one another aiming for the same target, then Finn got the first missile out.

McTavish felt something massive hit the ground right next to him, and hit the deck completely, rolling to his left away from Finn and the missiles, fresh round clutched in a death-grip, and heard Finn shriek in agony just before a missile lit off and exploded simultaneously. He got over on his back, looking up at a Seed standing by his head, its far arm a mangled mess, and his hands brought up the missile by instinct…

Only to pause as a black-and-red shape blurred into the Seed, crashing into it with sufficient force to send the creature tumbling onto its back, halfway back to the second line of sandbags. The flight time gave McTavish a chance to collect his wits again, and the blurred shape resolved into a man in an Atlantis Guard uniform. He was flailing, firing off some sort of blue energy bolts towards his feet, but not hitting anything other than ground and sky. Then he whirled about by one ankle, spinning across the battle-line, and crashed into the other still-moving Seed, knocking it to the ground. As the Seed tumbled, just vaguely, McTavish could make out another form by the man's feet, a vague suggestion of shades of grey in a roughly human outline.

As whoever it was used the Guard mage as an improvised club on the far Seed, McTavish could only watch in shocked awe. Whoever it was they were slinging around an adult man like a football flag, and driving the Seed back from the mundane soldiers it had been going after. The first Seed, the one that had come after McTavish recovered and lunged at the hazy figure, but the figure twisted around, interposing the Guard mage, and to McTavish's surprise, the Seed checked its lunge.

The hazy figure become clearer as it – she – lunged at the standing Seed, once again swinging the Guard mage about. The Guard managed to shake her grip, but wound up thrown into the Seed for it. Then the woman was on him, lightning fast punches hammering both mage and Seed, and she became more clearly visible as she attacked, resolving into a grey-leather clad figure that reminded McTavish of a cross between bad American Westerns and Japanese ninja movies.

An LASM shrieking in from somewhere past the fight into the second Seed shook McTavish out of his shock, and he rolled up to his knees, shouldering his own missile. He took the time to aim, waiting until the second Seed lunged at the unknown's back, and let fly. The unknown was paying more attention than McTavish thought, though, and rocketed upwards just as the Seed lunged. McTavish's missile detonated against the Seed's side as it crashed into the Guard mage still pinned against the first Seed. Four more missiles shrieked in on its heels, then the unknown lunged back into the mass, yanking the Guard mage out. Bands of white spread from her hand, wrapping around the figure, and a second later she let go and he vanished as another trio of missiles hit the stumbling Seed. Both Seed collapsed, and while they continued to move weakly, neither rose again.

The unknown took a second to look around, and McTavish got a look at her eyes, dark and fierce between cloth face mask and lowered hood. Then she wavered and vanished, disappearing without even a whisper.

A hand landing on his leg made him jump, and he grunted in surprise at the sight of Finn, bleeding from hideous gashes across his chest, right arm and shoulder scorched and burned. "Jesus, Finn…"

"Medic's busy," Finn rasped, reaching up with his good arm to hand McTavish a missile. "More comin', gotta be. You shoot, I'll keep you loaded."

McTavish considered his buddy's injuries for a second, and shook his head, "Not a chance, man." He looked around, found the medic back over by the Lieutenant, and raised a hand to signal him over, only for that hand to be clasped by no one.

Then the unknown mage faded into view. "He's busy," she said, "I'll take him. You have work to finish, ashigaru." She crouched and ran a hand over the case of LASMs, making it glow briefly, then traced a white line to McTavish's temple. "Whenever you need a new one, just focus on it, you'll be armed a moment later. Refill the crate if you run out."

Then she lifted Finn with a gesture, and the world tore asunder behind her. She lifted Finn with a wave of her hand, despite Finn's attempts to struggle. McTavish saw her turn towards the terrible rent in reality, and McTavish lunged after her, shouting, "Finn! Jesus, don't you touch him, you…!"

The mage caught McTavish's collar and twisted, slamming him into the ground while his knife, which he did not remember drawing, slid off her leather jacket like it was steel. She dumped McTavish before he even impacted and stepped into the rent. 'Steady there, soldier,' he heard her in his head, 'Your friend's in the best of hands, and you still have Seed to kill.'

00000

"Would someone mind explaining to me how a people this primitive manage to field mages of this caliber?" Eri grumbled, watching as three mages and a familiar – or roughly half of the upper layer defenders over London – danced around an equal number of Guard triads. "They're making us look like idiot Protectors!"

"Anyone's bound to get lucky sometimes," Captain Trei said with a shrug, reaching out to teleport a Lieutenant clear of the lightning-mage just ahead of a vicious slice of her polearm.

"Sometime, sure, but ten, fifteen times?" Captain Hale was facing the other direction, not actively engaged, but watching for an opening in the array of shields around the other pair. "These four are bad enough, but there are three more just like them in New York, there's Yagami herself, and some of those child-soldiers are frighteningly reckless."

Eri huffed at that, not quite laughing, "You don't know the half of it. Sims should have blown herself up last year. But that's not really the point. Hale, warn Illy she and Dari will have to handle Testarossa on their own for a bit. We're moving against the Takamachis. Between her spells and his shields and bindings, they're more dangerous."

"Going to be tricky," Trei commented. "Those two are slick as it is, and he hasn't pulled out a mage-engine yet."

"He probably doesn't use one," Eri said, then grimaced, gesturing at the quartet of green-wrapped Guard floating behind him like a child's balloons. "It's not like he needs one, either. Let's go, down low and we'll strike from underneath."

00000

For all his years as the Bureau's Head Librarian, Yuuno Takamachi was no stranger to battle. Archaeology on non-administered worlds had never been safe, especially not with Lost Logia thrown in on top of possible pirates and other criminals, hostile locals, hostile environments, and the occasional hungry predator or plant. Occasionally helping Nanoha train to counter techniques and styles most Enforcers did not use had also helped hone his instincts. He was nowhere near Nanoha's or Fate's level, not a dedicated warrior, but he had experience and instincts that belied his official qualifications.

So he realized almost the moment Eri's triad moved that he was their target and so did Nanoha. 'Yuuno, these two are going take me a bit to wrap up, especially if you're going to be busy with those three.'

'I know,' Yuuno replied, already shifting his current batch of prisoners. Switching mental frequencies, he said, 'Megan, I need you to come up here for a minute.' They were over her quadrant of London, and no Circle mage would be able to take over the bindings for him. He was fairly confident Megan could, while he held the Guard off her.

'You're doing all right now,' Nanoha said, 'but for a real fight…'

When she trailed off, he asked, 'Yes?'

'Please remember, you promised me,' Nanoha asked.

Yuuno blinked, then slumped slightly. 'All right, all right.' Fishing in a pocket, he pulled out the flat card shape of a device, and state, "Geez, I'm a librarian, I don't need one of these things, but… Desu, set up. Vis Unita Fortior."

The rush of energy was a surprise, and he almost bobbled controlling its flow. Normally that would have been just embarrassing, but some of the overflow tried to bleed into the bindings, and given how well the Guard mages were fighting those bindings, Yuuno did not want to destabilize them unpredictably.

'Thank you, Yuuno,' Nanoha told him, before turning her attention back to her own fight.

The Guard arrived before Megan did, and Yuuno deliberately took the first strike to a fast shield, instead of dodging. The rather more powerful busters that passed forward of and behind him made him smile. The Guard really believes in bracketing their targets don't they? And their team-tactics, I'll have to remember to write them up for Yussef to study. He shifted after the strike, interposing the prisoners both to make the Guard hesitate and to offer bait for a trap he was thinking up on the spot.

They tried to split around the prisoners, and the woman leading them launched a barrage of some sort that arced in to attack him from multiple directions. Yuuno studied the arcs for a moment, just long enough to determine that she did not have Nanoha's level of control, and lunged to his left. "Raijin's Chain," he ordered, and a moment later a lash of green runes wrapped in crackling energy leaped from his hand. The Guard mage who had been moving between Yuuno and Nanoha checked and dodged clear, allowing Yuuno past him to remain between the triad and Nanoha.

"I'm sorry," he told them, "but I'm afraid I can't let you separate my wife and I."

A ring of glowing blue runes appeared next to him, then twinned and separated to reveal Megan, Longinus wrapped around her waist. "Sorry I took so long, Yuuno-sensei. Need me to help with these three?"

"No," Yuuno shook his head, watching the Guard trio spread out above and below him, "I can handle them."

His explanation was cut off by a shriek, followed a moment later by Nanoha dropping downnext to him, one hand glowing pink. "Here you go, Yuuno, another for your collection. Just give me a second and I'll have the last of this triad, and we can entertain your new friends."

The woman across from them coughed at that, the half-formed spell in her hand destabilizing slightly. "New friends? What is wrong with you two, this is a battle not an outing!"

Nanoha frowned at her in apparent confusion while handing off her prisoner to Yuuno, "What's the difference? If you aren't enjoying yourself, you aren't giving it your all. If you get distracted by all the negative thoughts and energies, you lose focus and can't give it your best. Ah, look, my opponent's joined up with yours, Yuuno. Do you mind if I cut in?"

Yuuno smiled slightly and nodded, "Go ahead, Nanoha-chan. Just let me hand off the prisoners to Megan, I'll back you up shortly."

"You have to be joking," the woman insisted, "no soldier…"

"Ah, point," Yuuno said, raising a finger to interrupt her, "I'm a librarian and a teacher, not a soldier."

"Enforcer, what you would call a Protector," Nanoha added, raising her hand.

"Yeah, ummm," Megan raised her hand more tentatively, "student? I think I still qualify, at least?"

The woman looked like she was going to have an aneurysm right then and there, but Nanoha's Divine Buster snapped her out of it and she rolled clear, still holding her incomplete spell. The other four Guard mages moved to cover her, launching a barrage of busters. Yuuno surrounded himself and Megan with one shield, covering Nanoha's back with a second, while her own almost negligent Round Shield blocked the barrage from her front.

"Megan," Yuuno said, taking the five bindings he was maintaining and merging them to a single point-source. It took a lot more power than the separate bindings had, but Megan would have an easier time maintaining it. After a moment, he prodded her shoulder, "Megan!"

She blinked and turned to look at him, then back at Nanoha. "Umm…"

Yuuno chuckled, "Yeah, she's impressive, but we have work to do. Here, take the bindings from me. All you have to do is hold them."

"O-Okay," Megan agreed, shaking herself and reaching out with her hands. They began to glow softly blue, Longinus' gem at her left hip glowing brighter. As Yuuno passed the binding to her, the blue glow flowed down the bindings, replacing the calmer green of Yuuno's power.

"Pitiless Severance!"

The Guard woman's shout surprised Yuuno, it was a lot closer than he would have expected. He recognized the ripple of energy as it burst away from her hands in all directions, and for a moment could only wonder, Did she recreate Hughes' spell from Hong Kong, or did he recreate hers? Then the destabilization effect struck, and he grimaced as nausea and collapsing magic washed over him. His shields barely noticed, and neither Nanoha's nor Megan's barrier jackets did more than flicker. But the bindings, the delicate structure of power designed to suppress and contain a living mage, collapsed completely. Yuuno had to catch Megan as she staggered in the air, holding her up for a second.

By the time Megan recovered herself, the five former captives had spread out, and the three of them were fully surrounded. Nanoha was above him, facing the woman leading the Guard. Yuuno considered the situation for a moment, took in the look on Nanoha's face, and sighed, asking, "Do you folks have a connection to the local mail systems yet? And what's your name, please, I'll need it for the invitation."

The woman blinked, triumph fading into confusion again, and asked, "What?"

Yuuno gestured to Nanoha, "Her birthday's coming up soon, I'll need to send you an invitation after this."

"Birthday?"

"Yuuno! She's the enemy right now! Ask her that later!"

The woman glanced back and forth between them, seriously confused, then swore harshly in Al Hanthis, "You people are truly insane!"

Yuuno shrugged, "You wouldn't say that if you knew her track record, miss. Arissa, Fate, Hayate, Vita... the list goes on. You've guaranteed yourself a spot in our circle of friends with that little stunt, why do you think she's smiling at you? But… Nanoha's right, that probably is for later."

"Still," Nanoha said, "I would like to know your name."

After a moment, the woman shook her head, then drew herself up. "I am Eri Makrone, Colonel of the City Guard of Al Hanthis, Adept mage. I'd offer you a chance to surrender, but I don't think you will."

Nanoha smiled at that and shook her head, "I'm sorry, but we can't. Raging Heart, set up Excellion."

00000

Laura snarled in frustration as Natalia once again shifted just clear of Hicho, a twisting dodge that was just enough to put her between – instead of in front of – the two Zippers Laura launched under cover of Hicho's strike. Two minutes now, and Laura was already pushing herself as fast as she thought she could go, as fast as she had ever gone against Sensei, and it was not enough. Bombardments with her Bolt drones were marginally more effective, forcing Natalia to shield as well as dodge, but those shields were worrisome in themselves, far too precise for Natalia's skill and experience.

The entire fight so far had been like that, Natalia barely dodging one attack, but doing it in such a way as to precisely avoid Laura's follow-ups. Natalia had done nothing offensive, and she was obviously trying to get away from Laura, and Laura was pushing herself as fast as she could, in terms of physical speed and her spells, to keep the traitor from getting away. Frustration did not begin to cover it.

Several Guard mages had tried to intervene in their battle, but however skilled they were, they lacked Natalia's preternatural evasion abilities, and they had to worry about the Wolkenritter and the Volunteers. Laura and Natalia had only each other to worry about, though Laura was starting to think she was going to have to abandon the fight to get down into the city.

It was watching one of those Guard mages break off that clued Laura in to what was going on. She had focused on him for a moment, a Positron Buster backed up by four Zippers to bracket him, using a quartet of Bolt drones to keep Natalia honest. The two had been close enough that Laura could watch both at once, and the contrast had been striking. The Guard mage – a Journeyman, Laura guessed – had dodged the Positron Buster and shielded against its blast effect, then taken two Zippers to his last-ditch shields. His dodge had been smooth enough, but had put him almost exactly where Laura had predicted. Natalia, in contrast, had arched her back in a loop around one Bolt From the Blue, and passed just beneath a second before dropping like a rock for thirty feet or so to clear the third and fourth. The fourth Bolt had just kissed her barrier jacket, enough to wreathe her in a white corona for a moment.

It was Natalia's motion that caught Laura's attention. The Guard mage dodged – he saw the first shot coming and missed the follow-ups. Natalia simply moved, just as the drones fired. Laura decided to test it, letting Natalia get enough of a lead for a Wormhole to drop Laura right on top of her as a quartet of bolt-drones hemmed her in.

It worked, after a fashion. Natalia was already sliding sideways when Laura appeared ahead of her, but she was not out of reach. Once in close, Laura just… disengaged her mind from the fight, letting her reflexes take care of her hand-to-hand, while her mind studied Natalia's responses. For someone never trained in martial arts, Natalia's blocks and dodges were precise, nearly perfect, and once again she was managing to block or negate several strikes with just a few moves of her own.

At that point, Laura managed to surprise Natalia, by stopping cold. Natalia floated through another block, then opened her eyes and blinked, drifting back slightly. Laura gave her a lopsided grin, "You're predicting me, aren't you? That eye of yours finally good enough to see something other than death?"

"Our eye is tied to the full expression of life," Natalia replied evenly, "and while we can see your end in twenty years' time, and the three lives that will grow from you, we have yet to use that information in battle."

Laura was oddly more disturbed by the thought of how many children she would have than the prediction of a short life. She shrugged it off, though, "So I'm dead by thirty-five, just means I have to live well while I can, right? Live fast, die young, leave a lot of awe-struck worshippers behind, right? So, you're learning other precog stuff, huh? Let me guess, you're looking through the null-space, right?" Natalia jerked and Laura chuckled, "Yeah, see, those things mess me up something fierce, so I paid attention whenever Hayate-sensei brought them up, and did some digging on my own. That place is outside reality, outside of time, so it figures."

"We do, in fact, see through the Void to view the pasts and futures. Reducing the immediate futures into a more amenable present is one of the more basic skills, one we have pursued assiduously since Allison's… visit. You should not have allowed her to warn us, we would have been less prepared for you."

Laura shrugged, "You're a wimp and a coward. I wanted to see what you would do when pushed, so I don't mind her letting you know. Wasn't my idea, though. Never warn the victim before the prank happens, unless the warning is the prank. Still," she dropped into stance again, left arm and leg leading, Hicho stretched out almost straight behind her in her right hand, "I don't have all night for this, and I think I can outpace your predictions, now that I've figured out how you're doing it."

Natalia shook her head, "You have taken too long as it is, child, and this discussion gave us the last few moments we needed. The locus points have stabilized, and we no longer need indulge your violent thrill-seeking." She held Koschei forth between them, and stretched her left arm out to the side, palm facing away from her. Both her palm and Koschei's gem began to glow as she said, "Danse Macabre."

Laura dropped towards Natalia and below to avoid the pulse of power that washed laterally from Koschei, but Natalia was already moving again, going up and over, using Koschei to deflect Hicho. Natalia lunged away, and before Laura could follow, the magic gathering at four points coalesced. The locations were clear enough, places where Laura had thought she almost caught Natalia, where the Russian's flight had paused and turned into complicated patterns of dodges, blocks… and not a single spell I ever noticed, Laura realized. Damn, she's getting subtle about things. That's bad. That's very bad.

Laura fell back, not so much retreating as giving herself room to avoid whatever Natalia had set up, along with the witch herself. The four spheres of energy split abruptly into four, and Natalia just floated into the midst of them, smirking back at Laura. "You can no longer reach us, Laura Sims, for we are Legion, and we do not care to be reached." The sixteen spheres shifted again, not splitting but stretching, morphing, then the light shattered, revealing sixteen mages, male and female, various ages and sizes, each with a smaller version of Koschei as a device.

Laura almost cut and ran. She knew her limits by now, and facing seventeen mages at once was a bit much. But even as they moved to surround her, she remembered 'Sasha', and realized what Natalia had done, what she was relying on. "Damn, girl, I guess you really have improved. Sasha used to be just a vague presence, but now you can bring up reinforcements that easily… pretty good, pretty good." She started shaking her head slowly, "but so very Russian of you, all that 'quantity over quality' thing." Laura paused, frowning, then wagged a chiding finger at Natalia, "You're problem is, you don't watch enough bad eighties sci-fi."

"Your problem is your overconfidence," Natalia replied. "You are so certain of your supremacy that you never understand that there is always a way to defeat you."

Laura chuckled, shaking her head again. "Smile for the birdy, Natalia." She dismissed Hicho with a thought, thrusting her arms out sideways, hands spread, feeling Paradox drawing the targeting information from her mind and feeding it to the drones. She only had a few left, and with a thought keyed all twenty-two at once. "Paradox, Death Blossom!"

00000

Precia was honestly surprised they were still free, that they had lasted long enough for the Danse Macabre. As their soldiers formed around them, and Laura finally gave them a moment to breathe, they sent a brief prayer of thanks to whatever deity watched over Natalia. Evading Laura had taken almost everything they had, and setting up the Danse Macabre on top of that had pushed them right to the limit of their skill, control, and strength, even with Koschei's support coming willingly for a change.

Their eyes were burning cold, like someone poured liquid nitrogen into them, and they could only vaguely see out of their left eye, which was making them nauseous. As Ahmu had warned Natalia, glancing across the Void so frequently in so short a span of time, however simple a technique, had a price. Further afield, Their back hurt abominably, as did their knees, hips, and elbows, a combination that had Precia fairly sure poor Natalia would need the healers' attention immediately after the battle. Not that the stubborn girl would go, that would not happen until Sasha demanded it.

But now, with their soldiers around them, Precia had thought they could relax a little, had even considered bringing Natalia back into control. The girl could not be coddled forever, after all, and the situation should have been safe enough.

Then Laura looked at their army and… laughed. Shrugged it off and dismissed it as irrelevant. There was every chance the crazy paladin had cooked up something new, but their soldiers were, while they lasted, equivalent to an Adept in their own right. They had spent the last weeks deliberately upgrading the constructs' design specifically to fight Laura, and Laura had to know that.

For a moment, as Laura initiated her spell, Precia thought they had overestimated the girl, given her too much credit. The spell certainly sounded fatal enough, and even if it was arguable if Laura's oath covered temporary constructs, Precia and Natalia were still in range for whatever she unleashed to deal with the Danse Macabre's soldiers. With some desperation, therefor, they reached across the Void once more, straining their eyes and feeling the runes beneath their left eye burn colder, and just as the first drone fired, at point-blank range from between Laura and the soldiers, they Saw the future.

White.

Nothing but white, whenever they looked. Natalia stirred, despite the situation, both of them frantically stretching further and further aside, trying to find some way through the next few seconds that did not involve… whatever was gathering in front of Laura as she slowly brought her spread hands together before her chest.

But nothing presented itself, even as their soldiers opened fire, raining buster spells and lashing out with draining bindings. There was nothing in their immediate futures but white and pain. Laura did not even attempt to dodge the counter-attacks, simply weathered the storm beneath Paradox's automatic defenses, patently focused on whatever she was doing. The look of glee on her face sped their search, and they reached further and further afield, to possibilities so remote they could not be expressed rationally…

Laura's shout cut them off, "Detonation!"

The world went white.

00000

Laura's breath was coming in gasps as she tried, desperately, to hold the spell together. She had pulled it off with up to seven bolt-drones in practice… once. Immediately after that success, Hayate-sensei's ban on her working with Nanoha-sensei occurred, and after that Sensei would not let her use more than a couple at a time, to get the mechanics of it down.

The attacks from Natalia's constructs were nothing beside trying to control that chaotic flow of power. Gaussian Field deflected most of the attacks, and the unstable bundle of semi-conflicting energies Laura was gathering destabilized the binding attempts. An experienced mage could have determined what was happening and compensated fairly easily, but Natalia's constructs were not that creative, apparently. Only two got through the field to strike her directly, and while those hurt, Laura ignored them in the face of the far more dangerous spell in front of her.

Twenty-two bolt drones put out a lot more loose energy than seven, though, and the last few were utterly useless, in their primary purpose. The wasted energy from their predecessors and the bleed from Laura's attempt to corral that energy, destabilized the drone's limited processors and control. But they added to the aggregate, and long before Laura's palms met in the midst of a massive sphere of light, her control over that sphere started faltering.

The last two drones were still in the process of firing their cartridges when she felt the pause in her struggle for control of her spell, the little hesitation that just preceded total loss of all control, and she triggered the effect that had so surprised Nanoha, "Detonation!"

On the downside, unlike with Hicho's or Gaussian Field's self-destruct blasts, Death Blossom's final stage was neither predictable enough nor small enough for Gaussian Field to really deflect it. Laura's armor, reinforced by some of the gathered energies, blunted the blast, especially with her better ability to predict the blast than whoever else was caught in the radius. But it still ripped her armor away and pummeled her like a whole squad of boxers with a mad on.

On the upside, the detonation's radius and power were proportional to the number of drones Laura fired. It was not a linear growth, the increases in both tapered off as more drones were fired and the total area involved became greater. But with twenty-two drones, or thereabouts, Death Blossom's radius over New York was a quarter mile, and it scattered Natalia's constructs before it like leaves on the wind.

Natalia herself was launched almost directly away from Laura, but it was obvious to Laura that she was disoriented at least, and possibly unconscious. She was falling too slowly to be out completely, but Koschei's automatics might see to that, depending on how Natalia had them programmed. Laura preferred fewer safeties herself, but Natalia was not a warrior, so Laura figured Koschei's automatics were probably a lot more conservative.

Regardless of whether she was out or just stunned, she was falling free, and Laura smirked in triumph as she launched in pursuit. A Wormhole would have been faster, but Laura could feel the instability lingering in the area, could perceive the weird colors and smells that were part of a dimensional instability. Death Blossom limited the destabilization caused by undirected magical energy left over by the Bolt Drones, but it was still a massive energy release itself. So Laura went direct, accelerating to her best straight-line speed, somewhere in neighborhood of hundreds of miles per hour.

She was stretching out her hand, Heisenberg's Rule ready to twist Natalia up in knots, when an unknown fist crashed into the side of her face.

Laura rolled away from that, Hicho materializing in her hand even as she stood on nothing to spin into a kick against her attacker. She caught nothing but air with the kick, the follow-up with Hicho, or the paired Zippers that followed that. The man was not even there, just gone each time, then he was over by Natalia, cradling her with one arm. He was an older man, not in Guard or Protector uniform, white hair floating loose around his face, aiming a confident smirk in her direction.

"My apologies, Paladin," he said in passable Japanese, "but I am afraid I still have some need of my apprentice here. You can have her when I'm done," his smirk shifted, and he shrugged, "by which point she will most likely run to you with open arms. For now, however… well fought, and best of luck. You might want to look to your minions, though, they've bitten off more than they can chew." Then he and Natalia vanished in a flash of reddish purple light.

00000

Allison only needed a few seconds to re-orient after dropping off the Private at Portland Hospital, in London's northern reaches. The hospital was not particularly close to the battle, so for the moment it was mostly treating those civilians that did not quite get out in time, and a few minor injuries to troops from the artillery forces.

Things looked to be going well, or at least roughly according to plan. The southern-most forces were now falling back into the northern forces, some crossing the river but most occupying positions amongst the Irish and Coldstream Guards. For some reason the forces headed across the river seemed to be avoiding the tunnels under the Thames, in favor of the more vulnerable bridges over the river.

Al Hanthis' Guard was still mostly concentrated south of the city, and most of them had dropped low to directly support the Seed. Considering that, and how London was spread out rather than up, Allison decided she was just as glad she was not in New York, rain or not. The idea of fighting both Seed and Guard mages in close quarters like amongst New York's skyscrapers was not pleasant.

Looking up, Allison almost decided to go lend the Takamachis a hand, but Megan was up there already, and as she hesitated, something titanic detonated up there, a vaguely familiar pink blast that reminded Allison badly of Laura cutting loose. So she turned her attention back to her own responsibilities, and scanned over the Coldstream and Irish Guard positions. The Circle wolfpacks were doing their usual semi-pathetic job, though whoever was in charge of them here had been smart enough to borrow the idea of the Guards' triads, three wolfpack mages operating in support of one another, instead of each haring off on their own.

The Circle mages with devices were another matter. They were still sub-par, by Allison's standards, but she was beginning to see what Tai-yu-sensei had been saying about the Circle mages' skills. They were very deliberate in their actions, either attacking or defending, never both, and they were very mechanical, fighting by rote as much as anything. But they were fast, unleashing their mid-strength buster spells – either of a pair called Fire Hammer and Lightning Scythe – almost as fast as Laura could unload a pair of her light Zippers. She was not sure how effective Maunders' Dogs were being, but as far as she could tell they were all still in the air, so they were doing better than the wolfpacks had ever managed.

Taking in the various positions, Allison grinned slightly to find the greatest concentration of Circle mages off over the Coldstream Guard. That meant she could join Juliet over the Irish Guard and keep an eye on her boys. Both British Army units had demonstrated remarkable tenacity and fortitude, in her eyes, and had stayed steady despite the nature of their foes. For troops that could not hurt a Guard Mage and were faced with foes they could only barely harm, they were proving remarkably stubborn.

So she dropped low over the Thames and headed south, looking for any sign of a Guard mage getting away from the Circles, or of a unit that needed cover from a Seed. She was really hoping for a combination of both. The fight over the tunnel mouth had been a surprise to her, almost as much as to the poor bastard she had snuck up on. She had just grabbed the Guard mage's ankle when she spotted the flight of missiles all aimed into a secure position. Spotting the Seed, she had gone with the first weapons to hand, and one of those had happened to be the Guard mage. At most, she had expected the Seed's magic nullification to mess up his shields and make him easier to bind and teleport to the Circle's secure cells.

The way the second Seed had checked at the last moment had been surprising, and then inspiring. The thing had plainly recognized the Guard mage and acted to avoid harming him, so there was patently some sort of friendly-recognition programming in there somewhere, something that would get the Seed to hesitate and back off, something she could exploit.

Now she found her first target easily enough. A Guard triad was pushing up to Tower Bridge, and the Circle forces there were nothing but wolfpacks. A device mage was just what they needed to even the odds, and Allison grinned behind her veil as she wrapped herself once more in the Cloak of Shades.

Stalking a target through the open air was a rather weird experience, for her. She was used to cover and terrain, watching her step and checking wind and line of sight. Up in the open air, though, there was no cover, as such. The closest she could come to that were the shrieks and roars of missiles from below, and the Circle mages' spells from above. Despite the lack of cover, with her Cloak of Shades and the battle raging, Allison was utterly invisible, passing unnoticed, but it still unnerved her immensely.

Before she could reach her target, however, something else caught her attention – motion, rapid motion, in the street she was passing over, accompanied by shrieks that were entirely natural in origin. A glance down showed her soldiers pinned by a trio of Seed, two normal ones moving north, and one of the big ones, the 'Alphas' Halley had called them, that had somehow gotten behind the soldiers.

Mentally she hesitated, debating. A Guard mage would make an excellent defense against one of those big boys, but she probably did not have time to surprise said Guard mage, get hold of her, and bring her to the fight.

Physically, even before she made the decision, she dropped out of the sky like a vengeful ghost. The Alpha was the immediate problem, it was too big and tough for the soldiers to handle, and between them and their escape route. Allison had not had time to pick up another supply of rebar after the battle at the tunnel, so she opted for the next best thing – the same telekinetic spells that manipulated the rebar ripped an old-fashioned streetlight out of the ground and slammed it into the Alpha's gut, even as she nailed the creature in the head with a modified axe-kick. The kick snapped the creature's head down, making it stumble as it tried to recover from the light-pole that interrupted its attack on a man with a missile-launcher. The impact also jarred Allison's heel and leg, and the collapse of the telekinetic spell and her Cloak of Shades sent a painful tingle up her leg as the energies backlashed through her. Neither alone was enough to do more than annoy her, and even combined it only stiffened her leg for a few seconds, but it still hurt and the Alpha was already recovering.

"Juliet, you better have been right," Allison muttered, focusing power through Gallóglaigh and into her limbs and eyes, "Vivace."

Juliet's spell took hold, and the world around Allison distorted oddly. What light there was faded, even the flashes and strobes of busters and explosions becoming muted, and colors shifted towards slightly, taking on a bluer shade. The soldiers slowed drastically, their every motion becoming so painfully slow, but the three Seed were still moving fast, almost as fast as Allison herself.

The speed difference, the fact that she was moving as fast as the Seed now, let Allison dodge back from the Alpha's first counter-attack, a double-clawed swipe trying to catch and pin her. It even allowed her to pummel the Alpha's face with four good hits… that it did not seem to notice, even as Allison's hands set to throbbing.

Right, Allison reminded herself as she fled upwards for a moment, Vivace's just speed. Need something else to hit hard, but Triphammer's basically a buster, Seed won't notice.

She almost decided to use Gallóglaigh. Even if the magical effects which normally provided the blade's edge would not affect the Seed, the device was still a solid weapon. But they had no idea how a Seed's nullification would affect a device, and the last thing she wanted was to lose her device suddenly while surrounded by mage-killing constructs.

Then her gaze lighted on a long tube lying half in an apartment building, and she blinked, a grin spreading over her face. "A bit big, but kind of appropriate, I guess," she muttered, and shot past the nearest Seed as fast as Gallóglaigh's flight spell could push her. She twisted around its attempt to strike her in passing, and then her left hand contacted the tube, magic adhered it to her palm, and she arced upward, whirling the heavy length of metal about in a blurring arc as fast as Vivace would let her. The tube stopped abruptly, kinking ever so slightly, as it connected with the nearest Seed and catapulted it across the street and through a brick wall.

That gave her a bit of time to study her new weapon, and she blinked in awe – it appeared to be the man cannon from the destroyed Challenger tank sitting up the street a short distance. The firing chamber that should have been at one end was missing, and that end was a blasted shattered wreck, but the mounting equipment was still partially present, scorched and sheered. "A tank cannon," she muttered, then nodded sharply, "I can work with this."

She set the cannon near her shoulder, then sank Gallóglaigh into the metal to act as a grip about a third of the way from the business end of the cannon. The two Seed still in sight were closing on her, still moving at human speeds, and Allison met them with a charge, intending to slip aside and nail the normal Seed.

The Alpha proved canny, though, and as she jinked left to go for the weaker Seed just ahead of it, the blasted thing changed direction like a deer and lunged to intercept her charge as she passed the normal Seed. She aborted at the last second, arcing up and converting her lateral swing into an up-and-over flourish, and managed to tag the Alpha on the back of the head, hard enough to send it tumbling this time just as one of the soldiers' missiles fired.

The proximity to the Seed was wearing on Vivace's delicate structure, though, and Allison shot upwards to renew it before it failed, only to jerk sideways with a shriek as three claws ripped straight through her barrier jacket and sank into the back of her left leg. The combination of Seed contact, pain, and panic stripped her of Vivace's speed and her flight spells, and she went tumbling into the sandbag wall the soldiers had been trying to retreat from. The cannon, falling out of her grip without her magic to hold it, took most of the impact, but caught her in the gut and knocked her breath out.

Between the impact and the roar of battle suddenly resuming – men shouting all around her, missiles flying, guns thundering, she had not noticed the absence of sound in Vivace until the spell failed – for a couple seconds it was all Allison could do not to black out. As she recovered from that, though, and saw the soldiers she had tried to save now covering her, shock faded beneath embarrassment and rage. She was one of Hayate's students, one of Laura's fellow warriors. She was supposed to be untouchable, unstoppable, by anything less than Szash herself.

Letting loose a banshee howl of rage and pain, Allison shoved herself upright, launching some of the sandbags she had landed in at the Seed with a vaguely controlled wave of magic. The same wave of magic returned the cannon barrel to her hand briefly, before she threw it like a spear, accelerating it as hard as she could with another shout. The normal Seed saw it coming, and almost managed to dodge, but the cannon was still accelerating when it hit the creature in the side, tearing out a piece of its hip.

Allison stood there a second, every eye in the vicinity on her, and then gestured once, reclaiming her weapon, Gallóglaigh still embedded in its side. She watched the Alpha as it crouched in the street watching her, and calmly pulled Gallóglaigh free of the cannon. Then she leaned her head to the side and growled, "On your feet, ashigaru. You've got killing to do. Get to the other barricade and get the guns up."

Leaving the shocked man to recover himself, she turned fully back to the Alpha and snarled, hefting her cannon barrel. "Come on, you over-grown lizard. Let's see how good you are all by your lonesome. Vivace."

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Author's Notes: Um, yup, the fic and I are both still alive. I don't have a Side-Story to accompany this chapter, and had to deny myself any other writing for the last couple weeks to get this one done in time to post at the one year mark, but after a couple days it started to flow again, in fits and starts. Rough year, though less 'oh the horror' than 'what a roller-coaster', lots of ups and downs and disruptions to my personal schedule. Also, after Bad Moon Rising, I had some trouble picturing how this chapter would work, especially a fight scene involving Nanoha. I'm finding that, awesome as I know it would be, I just can't get it to work. So this chapter turned into a study in Allison's contributions to London's defense. I don't know when the next chapter will be done, but I'm going to try and keep it from being too long. I'm in the middle of another job hunt, though (job number four in a year, woo!), so… yeah. If it helps, I still haven't finished the book I started for NaNoWriMo 2010, either.

LASM – the current British version of the old LAWS (Light Anti-tank Weapon System), this is a one-shot disposable missile launcher, firing a small unguided rocket. It's in the same class and scale as the venerable RPG.

'The Fifty' – In US Military parlance, an M-2, a Browning .50 caliber machine-gun. Since it was introduced it has picked up other names such as 'Ma Deuce', 'Browning Fifty', or just 'the Fifty'. Originally produced in the 1930s, it is still in service (and, I believe, still in production) today, as no one has yet produced a machine-gun that hits as hard and as reliably. I forget what role it was originally produced for, but by the time the US entered WWII, it was a mounted in tanks, on jeeps & trucks, on tri-pods, on ships, in aircraft (both the famed P-51 Mustang and the B-17 were armed with Ma Deuce), and anywhere else someone figured could handle the weight and recoil. As a comment on the insanity and ingenuity of soldiers everywhere, some have even been fitted with scopes and used as sniper rifles.

Ashigaru – Japanese infantry soldiers of the samurai era. Allison's use is not entirely accurate.

Vis Unita Fortior – United Power Is Stronger, the motto of Carrier Air Wing 15, USN. It seemed appropriate for Yuuno, given that he has always been stronger when fighting with/protecting Nanoha. And yes, Yuuno and Nanoha were playing merry hob with the Guard without fighting at their best.

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Spells

Pitiless Severance – This is a spell designed to disrupt delicate magical effects in a specific area. It is similar to Hughes' EMP spell, but more restrained. Despite Yuuno's wondering, this spell is neither a re-creation nor source for Hughes' EMP spell. They both rely upon the same principles, but rely on a slightly different approach. Hughes had very little in the way of magical infrastructure to worry about when crafting his EMP spell, while Al Hanthis is entirely built upon magic, so Pitiless Severance is deliberately not as all-encompassing as EMP.

Danse Macabre – This spell takes some time and preparation to set up. The mage in question sets up locus points in multiples of four, and once all are prepared and the key spell triggered, those locus points resolve into constructs. Similar to Natalia's Zacha construct, in that they have functional linker cores but are time-limited. The constructs created from this spell are also less intelligent and not self-aware. The name comes from a common medieval allegory on the universality and inescapability of death. As I originally learned it, it was a visual representation of four skeletal figures dancing together – a peasant, a soldier, a priest, and a noble.

Death Blossom – Laura's answer to Signum's continued insistence that she does not have an 'area attack' spell, and what she was working on with Nanoha that got the both of them banned from Hayate's workrooms. It is simple enough in execution – she fires however many bolt drones in rapid succession, while using the gathering-effect from Starlight Breaker to draw in as much of the drones' wasted energy as she can. Laura is not good enough to fuse such disparate energies into a coherent buster like Starlight Breaker, but she can make anything explode, which is all she needs the gathered energy to do. It is based on the Death Blossom system from the movie The Last Starfighter, which I highly recommend as one of the more ambitious pre-1990s CGI movies.

Vivace – Allison and Juliet have been trading spell notes and spells, though neither is as good with the other's spells. Vivace is one of Juilet's, providing acceleration of the mage's speed and maneuverability. Allison's version of Vivace does not properly interface with her senses, thus resulting in the distortions she experienced compared with Juliet's.

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Review Replies

General Reply: Since it came up in many of the reviews, here's an explanation of The Creepy Twin. Rhys is the Creepy Twin. Saeryn is the Creepy Twin. Saeryn and Rhys together are the Creepy Twin. Individually and together, they are referred to as The Creepy Twin, no 's'. It started as a little jab at how the twins try to play up that trope to keep people at a distance. Over time it has become for me (and becomes in story) a back-handed compliment at how well they work together and the fact that you only ever see both of them. So yes, The Creepy Twin is a deliberately confusing nickname, applying to either girl individually or both at once.

Jack Inqu: Allina's plan with Hong Kong will play out next chapter, probably. Yussef and Laura have both learned a lot, and Yussef especially understands putting aside petty differences in the face of greater threats. Natalia, in preparing for Laura, played to her strengths and what is, admittedly, one hell of a trump card – she can read the futures, to an extent. Even with that, though, no, she was not quite capable of defeating Laura – but Ahmu is a different sort of opponent. As for the scenes with the mundane soldiers, I am finding more and more that I can see the 'awesome' side of the magic more by writing those scenes. For the kids, it's all a matter of learning and practice, while for the troopers it's magic.

pfeil: Had time to re-read it all yet?;) Monikers and the piling on thereof, such as Natalia becoming 'the Russian' to Hayate's kids and the way everyone is picking up 'callsigns', are something that I've always been fascinated by. It does get confusing, though, especially since I make a point of not having everyone use all those names (you'll never see Maunders refer to herself as 'Mad Maudlin', for instance).

hignum: Natalia lost, yes, but Ahmu still has a use for her, so… not yet. Cidela will return, the only questions are when and how. She does have her part to play, though it will be a couple more chapters before I get back to her.

Arkeus: Your welcome for the previous update, and my apologies for the long delay on this one.

MaZe-Pallas: Again, apologies for the long delay. Regarding the 'error' in Juliet's quote – she regards 'Ready to go' and 'Ready to go and then some' as being the same saying. I did write it rather confusingly, though, so I've gone back and corrected it to be clearer what phrase she's talking about when.

Kell Shock: Corrected the us/use error, thanks! As for the possessive-s, it isn't written after a word that ends in an 's' sound, so "the Goddess' awakening" is the proper form, while for a male deity it would be "the God's awakening". Allina is making a second attempt, and with more backup, but the Guard has had time to study what she did last time, too, so they'll have advantages as well. It'll be interesting. On an individual combat level, Laura surpassed Yussef before the story even began. Remember, Laura's a warrior, an excellent individual combatant, while Yussef is a soldier and leader of soldiers. You are precisely right that they are on different tracks. That doesn't mean they won't get into arguments and cross swords once in a while, but they have two distinctly different approaches to almost all situations. How was the scene from Natalia/Precia's perspective above? Crazy enough for you? And she didn't so much escape as get rescued. Updated the chapter title, I hadn't realized I duplicated. Sorry about that!

Templar Prime: I've only recently discovered Butcher's work, and I can't decide if I like it or not – first person view point tends to rub me the wrong way. As I told Kell Shock, my apologies for duplicating the chapter title, that's been fixed. I'm going to have to start reviewing the list of chapters every time I start a new one now. I don't know how much crew space a Lancer has, to be honest, but I do know that a lot of bombers are designed with multiple crews in mind for long-endurance missions, especially those designed after the advent of in-flight refueling. It made sense to me, especially as the Lancers were kept on station for a long while before Al Hanthis showed up. Yes, Laura nicknamed Nanoha 'Gun-Bunny-Sensei', and with good reason, though I don't yet know if Nanoha knows that – remember, Laura does have some restraint in the nature of self-preservation. Thank you for the compliment on Juliet's fight, I've always seen her as somewhere between Laura and Vita – fast and crazy, with more than a little rage fueling the mix. You were correct that the 'biological weapon' line should have been 'use of', that's fixed, too. As for the nine Twilight Paladins, there's some debate in my mind as to who they are, mostly if/how many of the kids will die before the date of Juliet's quote (which is from somewhere around twenty-five to thirty years after the current time in-story).

Anonymous Reviewer: Laura's penchant for nicknaming people is a lot of fun, though I have not figured out her nicknames for everyone. It is fair to say, though, that if you find a character's nickname that isn't 'Red Baron' style, it's probably Laura's. Each of the future quotes has some hint of the future (though I do need to figure out one for the Myrmidons, the Paladins are getting too much attention), but the hints are mostly about the shape of things to come rather than the outcome of the story itself. I tend not to do introspection before combat because I'm more action oriented myself – I like to see things happening and see characters interacting, not just someone sitting around contemplating their navel. Never cared for philosophy courses, for instance. Regarding the Side Story, I'm still not sure how Megan's family will react to her decision. Yes, it could be 'upholding the family honor' like her uncle Thomas, but they could equally take it as a willful child abandoning the family to pursue strangeness.

Maimakterion: Okay, in order by review posting… "The power to destroy a thing is to control that thing" – the quote is from Dune, the first book – Paul Atreides says it to the Padishaw Emperor towards the end, when he offers to destroy the Spice and thus destroy the Empire. It's an all-around useful quote, and on re-reading Chapte 19, it does rather fit the tone. I haven't described most of the kids' devices' sealed forms, but I can think of two off the top of my head, other than the original three. Allison's device doesn't have a sealed form – active or not, it's a bowie knife. The other is Megan's, which gets complicated – Loginus, being just as morphic as its master, doesn't have 'a' sealed form, and if you pay attention, you'll see that almost every time I describe it (stored or active), it's different. Only the twin-tined spear form is regularly used. Laura and Allison won't be assaulting Mars in Endless Waltz. I may do a Side Story eventually on that mission, as I've got some ideas for scenes, but not until after Endless Waltz is concluded (so yes, Willan will survive this story). Regarding the new organizations, I do have defined roles in mind for each of them in the Terran Empire (which reminds me of 40K, yes, but also of Star Trek's Mirror Universe, for some reason). Most of their roles will be revealed in various future-quotes, though much later on I may do a Side Story similar to the one on the Seed of Leviathan, organizing and posting my notes on how the Empire is put together and run (trust me, the Empire's a huge complicated mess, due to all the factions and forces involved). I already have a couple such quotes planned out for the Black Dogs (which is the most confusing of the units), the Myrmidons, the Paladins, and Harlaoun's Knights. All I'll say about the last group at present is that they're Chrono's and they're a direct result of the Bureau's actions in this story.

Sereg5: Thank you for the compliment, that means a lot to me. I know I don't know enough about a lot of the countries/peoples I write about, so I try to be cautious and do some research before getting too specific. If you spot any such mistakes in Juliet's scenes (or anywhere, really) please feel free to let me know, and I'll try to fix them.

MissGardenia: Thank you for the compliment, though I don't think Laura's fight above quite lived up to the future compliment. I had that one written shortly after I started this story, though originally it was Chrono saying it with a slightly different tone.

PokemonJoe1: Thank you for the compliments.

Mikas131: Still alive, just having a lot of trouble writing. Too much else going on, I'm afraid. Thank you very much for the compliments regarding the characters and the story. I'm afraid I do tend to refer to non-focus character's magic in the simplest possible terms, mostly because if they aren't the focus, I'm not putting much energy into them. Most of that energy is being spent on keeping them consistent with themselves, their place in the story, and their current knowledge (you would not believe how long I spent, for this chapter, trying to figure out if Allison would know that the larger Seed are called 'Alphas', for instance). To be entirely honest, I haven't really come up with much in the way of specific spells for Al Hanthis, either, largely because magic is so integral to their way of life that it would be akin to you or I naming the method by which we dial our phone, as distinct from how someone else dials their phone.

DaManRando: Thanks for the compliment, always glad to hear I can remotely deprive others of sleep, as I have been deprived in the past. My apologies for the delay and cliffhanger, but it's been an interesting year. I'm finding I have a great deal of trouble writing Nanoha in combat – she's too good for me to do her justice with what I've tried so far, resulting in scenes like the above where her skill and power are referenced (she gave the Guard fits, demonstrated enough power Eri didn't want to face her directly with a full triad at her back, and then activated Excelion mode…). Regarding the scene-separators, about halfway through writing/posting Academy Blues FFN suddenly changed how their editor handled separator marks. The original collection of dashes I used was simply removed. I should go back and re-upload all those chapters, but I'm lazy and that's a lot of chapters. You are right that the devices are weapons, though given the level of independence and intelligence they all display in the series, the Circles have some reason to be concerned. But remember where the devices and the Circles come from: cultures that remember how the Lords of Light/Masters of Vision integrated magi-tech and advanced it to incredible limits, and then almost destroyed the entire universe. In Bureau space, that resulted in a separation between the mage and the technology (devices are external to the mage, however closely bound, while Al Hanthis' mages all rely on cybernetics, for example). Among the Circles, where the fall of the Lords/Masters lasted longer and involved a much more personal civil war, it resulted in an utter rejection of magi-tech. If you want an example, look at the modern environmentalist movement – anything modern is heresy and evil and must be destroyed, even if it would accomplish the environmentalists' supposed goals. The Circles are the same way, but with actual historical and physical evidence to back them up. The Circles don't see devices, or any of the other associated magi-tech, as 'weapons' or 'technology' but as corruption and the path to the destruction of everything.

Madly Meta: Thank you for the compliment. I haven't stopped writing, I just lost a lot of steam this year.

kilopi505: Thank you for the compliment. I've read a couple Ozzallos stories (following Hell is a Martial Artist at the moment) and I'm about halfway through Nobody Dies right now, though I keep having to put take a break from it. Here's another update, and my apologies for taking so long.

horngeek: Thank you for the compliment, and here's the next chapter.

Jammin-2099: I'm glad you're enjoying the series, hope you're still reading. Laura's battle with Li was one of my favorites, and I spent a lot of time on it. I would like to see it animated, but at the same time I'd be afraid of seeing it, if it would actually live up to the scene in my head. I'm working on Nanoha's last name, on remembering it right, but I make no promises. Nanoha starting the battle in China with Starlight Breaker makes sense if you consider how it works and where she was (though admittedly, at the time I wrote the scene, I had missed the energy-collection aspect of it). A major Circle facility, a regional headquarters. Lots of mages studying, training, researching. Lots of active magic, all of it wrapped under concealment and misdirection structures sufficient to make the place utterly invisible to the Bureau. Laura could have dropped into that base and set off a Death Blossom without using a drone, and still gotten a larger detonation than she got over New York. Since her job over China was to distract and demoralize, the biggest most powerful spell she had made a good start, and the ambient energies were more than sufficient for her to use Starlight Breaker. As for the title Endless Waltz, it did come from Gundam Wing, but that was not my original intention – I thought I had read the phrase in some of my history textbooks, thought it was part of a quote from someone in the 1800s, but all I can find are references along the lines of war being a dance humans are always dancing.

AceStarleaf: hope you're still reading. I'm sorry for the delay, but as I mentioned, this year wasn't much fun. I'll try to have the next chapter up in a couple weeks, like my old pattern, but I'm afraid it'll depend on how the job-hunt goes.