Jagged walls of glowing crystal swept past in a rush as Vita was carried away at a hard steady pace by the suffering reptile beneath her. She touched the inner rim of the ice crystal keeping her prisoner and found it to be tough and unyielding, in direct contrast to its appearance. The cage shook as Srethis shifted from side to side, its breathing raspy and broken as it struggled to keep going, and Vita was buffeted to and fro once again.

She disregarded how Srethis seemed to think she had contracted some kind of fatal disease. Vita had felt no ill-effects had all ever since she had woken up. In fact, she felt a lot better than that week in the hospital. There could be a link between that and her current predicament, in view of how she suddenly seemed to be back to normal, but...it could just be coincidence.

And this crystal looks like a tough nut to crack. I'm going to need Graf Eisen if I'm going to break through it...but I still can't transform. But I can't transform...until I get out of the crystal.

"Stop it," she said, unable to bear it any longer. "Srethis, stop it!"

The lizard paid her no heed. "Srethis must follow the instructions of - "

"Fine, follow your instructions all you like, but there's no need to kill yourself doing it! If you keep going at this pace then you're not even going to make it to the end of the corridor!" She could almost feel the creature's body breaking down, bleeding out of several wounds as it struggled to maintain its high speed, and a wave of pity overcame her. "Just walk instead, all right?"

Srethis came to a halting stop, almost throwing Vita off its back completely. She winced in pain as she was rammed into the side of the cage for about the sixth time already.

"All right, Vita-chan," the lizard panted, its body heaving as it went down to one knee momentarily. Despite its great restorative abilities, Srethis was still obviously in great discomfort from the effects of the earlier attack. "Srethis will listen to you. We will walk."

Vita felt herself lowered closer towards the ground as her escort removed her from its back, instead stretching up to carry her within its scaly hands. She was small enough, after all, and Srethis was probably worn out from carrying her such a long distance already. As the lizard's pace slowed to a more reasonable one, she felt Srethis' body relax considerably; its breathing became less restricted and the many wounds upon the creature began to close, so that they were given a chance to heal whilst the two of them travelled onward.

She didn't speak for a while, knowing that trying to persuade Srethis to go back would be treading on a very fine line. Before Ungore had turned, she had a very real chance. Srethis was acting against its own will in taking her with the rest of Red Scorpion, but its need for survival and fear of the consequences was a strong opposing factor. Strong enough to keep the shapeshifter going through blood, sweat and tears.

"Do you know where you're taking me?" Vita asked, trying to steer away from the topic of escape, at least for the moment.

"To the portal," Srethis replied numbly, focusing on putting one webbed foot in front of the other. "To the Metaworld Sector, where nobody will find us."

Vita raised an eyebrow at that. "And what is this "Metaworld Sector"?"

She received no answer, just the pat-pat of green flesh against dead rock as Srethis continued moving forward, clasping the ice crystal tightly. Perhaps the lizard didn't care to answer her, or didn't fully understand the concept itself. In any case, Vita had a feeling that if she did pass through this special portal...Nanoha and the others would find it very difficult to come after her.

Signum's back there fighting Ungore. I just need to stall for long enough or at least change Srethis' mind. Just for five minutes, before I'm sent through another portal. Who knows if I'll ever get home to see Hayate again at this rate?

It wasn't just escape she was thinking of. Srethis was clearly suffering as long as it stayed with Red Scorpion. The creature was ill, both physically and mentally, and although their first confrontation with the Bureau had been one of aggression, Srethis was not a professional fighter or assassin like some of the enemies that the TSAB were up against. If Nanoha was here, Vita felt sure that we feel in a similar fashion about this.

"I'm going to say this one more time," she said, preparing herself for disappointment. She had come so close, and it would only take one more push. "You've still got a chance, Srethis. Don't listen to Red Scorpion anymore – not Ungore, not the Legion, not anyone. Come back with us and I'll vouch for you when Nanoha arrives. You have to turn back now, whilst you still can."

Srethis' muscles tensed up and its pace quickened. Not a good sign.

"Srethis cannot," the lizard hissed in a broken voice. "Ungore is fighting for Srethis now, so that you can be brought through the portal, Vita-chan. Srethis will not let this sacrifice be in vain."

"Sacrifice? They're not sacrificing anything for you! They're literally sending you to your death!"

"That may be," Srethis croaked, "but you do not understand, Vita-chan. Srethis is the last of its kind. No other remains, and our species cannot reproduce asexually...thus our race has no hope of salvation. And so Srethis must live, Vita-chan. Live for their entire race, and continue to live as long as possible, no matter how high the cost." Its eyes narrowed. "Ungore supplies Srethis with its medicine, a means to continue living. So Srethis must continue following Ungore. You, Vita-chan...you propose a plan that Srethis likes, a plan with less pain, but..." The lizard sighed deeply, bowing its head so that its chin tapped lightly against the top of the ice crystal. "There is a chance that your Bureau will not be able to replicate our medicine, Vita-chan. And so is there a chance that if Srethis goes back with you, then Srethis will only perish."

Vita pounded her fist against the wall of the cage in anger. The sight of hopelessness in someone didn't only hurt her inside, especially when their predicament could be turned around by one simple act of defiance, but it filled her with frustration as well. "You want to have a better chance at survival? Then leave me here. Soon enough, Signum will beat Ungore and come after you – if you leave me behind then she won't follow immediately. That'll give you enough time to get to the portal by yourself, since you're so desperate to go back to the people who have hurt you so much."

"Vita-chan, Srethis cannot leave you to - "

"Really? And what're they going to do if you do go through the portal without me?" Vita felt herself getting hot-headed and out of hand, but she didn't want to let this pass. "They'll just send someone back to get me back. Or they won't care. Just tell them that Nanoha or one of the others hurt you badly and you couldn't get me back." She forced a note of easiness into her tone, trying to calm down. "Won't that make it a lot easier on you?"

The lizard shook slightly, digging its feet harder into the ground. "Vita-chan," it growled, "you have a serious illness. If Srethis leaves you, you will simply die by yourself!"

"I don't have any illness!" the Guardian Knight snapped back. She was getting a bit tired of hearing this. "Have I even sneezed once whilst you were carrying me? I'm fine!"

Srethis sniffed suspiciously at the ice crystal, its reptilian features melding into a frown. It lifted her up cautiously, turning around to inspect her body, turning its head sideways at various angles.

"You seem healthier than normal, Vita-chan," it said eventually, looking a little baffled. "But then again, the Legion did give you your medicine not too long ago - "

Vita found herself growing increasingly sceptical about this "medicine" that Srethis kept going on about. Why was Ungore the only one able to supply it? By the sounds of it, Srethis had been living on the medicine for quite a long time, so Ungore would had to have acquired a near-infinite supply. And gradual memory loss as a side-effect? How was this safe at all?

"Can I have a look at some of this medicine of yours?" she asked. "Do you have any on you?"

It took the space of a few seconds for the lizard to produce a small silver syringe, in which rested a minuscule amount of pale cloudy liquid. Vita stared at the strange concoction, wondering just what was in it. Did Srethis really inject itself with this stuff every day, just to stay alive a little longer?

And then something else occurred to her, something wild and completely out of the box that she could barely believe she was considering it. Whatever this medicine was, it removed the ill-effects of the disease that Srethis was suffering from and helped the creature to recover, if only for a temporary amount of time. That meant that it had restorative powers of some kind, and if it could combat Srethis' illness...

...then it was possible that the medicine was imbued with some kind of magic energy. Magic not too similar to what Vita had witnessed Shamal use before in the past with her own healing powers. It could just be a drug, of course, but the fact that Ungore had easy access to it...Ungore was not the kind of lifeform proficient in pharmaceuticals. It was an alien with a wide range of magical skills.

If the medicine was magic-based, then Shamal should be able to replicate it. If Vita could just persuade Srethis to go back with them, there could be hope yet. But she had tried everything, and the lizard was too far gone to listen to her anymore. If she were to help Srethis, then she might need a different plan completely.

But, more importantly – if her hunch was right, and the medicine really was created magically – then ingesting it would increase the magical energies of its user.

In her current predicament, she needed as much power as she could get. Srethis was too frightened to help her escape or do anything other than continue marching blindly ahead. And there was no sign of Signum catching up so far, which meant that Ungore was giving her a pretty hard time. There might not be time to wait for further help. If she wanted to get out of this prison of hers once and for all, she might have to take matters into her own hands. But to use such extreme measures...

I can't believe I'm actually considering this. The liquid in that syringe can't possibly be safe to ingest. And what if I'm wrong and it doesn't have much of an effect on me? Or worse, what if it has a detrimental effect instead and something really does go wrong?

Yet, in such a small quantity of liquid...if she had to be honest with herself, Vita didn't see how the medicine would have any effect on her. And hadn't she already been administered some of the medicine whilst she was unconscious? It hadn't killed her then, had it?

All I know is this: I was violently ill in hospital for over a week, and then I went through the portal. When I woke up, this medicine had been fed into me...and I found that I didn't feel sick anymore. No. That can't be right at all.

Her sixth sense was telling her that the life-threatening illness that Red Scorpion thought she had...was the same illness that she had suffered from back in the hospital ward. Before Red Scorpion even attacked. It didn't make sense at all, unless...unless that was the real start of everything...

No, she didn't know that. Vita shook her head quickly, inwardly disturbed by these thoughts. She was just making assumptions and jumping to conclusions. She was a living program. She shouldn't be able to get ill at all, and she definitely didn't feel ill right now. But one thing was important – she needed to free herself. She'd tried her best to persuade Srethis, but the lizard just wasn't budging, even though she had managed to get her point across.

She wasn't going to get out of here without help. Her friends might not arrive in time before Srethis took her through the portal, and then it might be a long time before she got out of there. Vita didn't doubt that she wouldn't escape – it was just a matter of time. Time, she mused thoughtfully. We always need more time.

"Srethis," Vita said determinedly, pressing forward quickly before she changed her mind and realised how stupid a plan this was. "Can you inject that medicine into me?"

The lizard looked at her in surprise. "Why would you want Srethis to do that?"

"Maybe to prevent me from dying of this unknown disease that I'm supposed to have." She debated for a moment about whether to tell Srethis the real reason or not, and then decided she might as well. If Red Scorpion really wanted to keep her alive, they could not deny her the medicine. "And because I'll have a better chance of breaking out of this cage."

With a heavy sigh, her reptilian escort drew out the syringe and laid its tip bare against the ice crystal. "Very well. You do have the disease too, Vita-chan. If you ask for the medicine, Srethis must comply."

The needle slid down into solid ice, releasing its contents into the walls of Vita's prison. The Guardian Knight watched in amazement: surely no liquid could do that. She couldn't even make a dent on the ice itself, and yet the needle slid into it so easily? It must be assisted by magic, she thought. And in the next few moments, Vita realised her assumption had been correct – she could feel a dim magical field surround her now as the medicine flowed into her in a different form entirely. Her body was absorbing it, but not as a liquid.

She waited several seconds longer, half-expecting a rush of power to flow through her veins, along with the ability to transform once again. On the other hand, she was also wondering if she was about to start vomiting from blood and forgetting how the hell she got here if the side-effects started hitting her.

Instead, Srethis quietly picked her up again and continued walking as if nothing had happened. Vita pressed her hand against one side of the ice wall, her plight no better than before.

"I don't feel anything!" she yelled. "Isn't something supposed to happen?"

The lizard paid little attention to her as it continued onward in a very definite fashion. "If you are wanting to be healed, Vita-chan - "

"Forget about being healed! There's nothing wrong with me. What about the magical energy inside the medicine? Why don't I feel any of that?"

"You absorbed a very small amount of the medicine, Vita-chan," Srethis said, speaking as if from faraway. "Any magical energy that came with it will also be very small, if it is there at all...and it will take time to accumulate. It will not be of much use to you, Vita-chan. You have to want to break through the ice. Srethis is sorry, but escape is not a viable option for you."

"Want to escape?" Vita almost exploded. "Of course I want to escape! At what point did I start thinking I might want to sleep in an ice cube for the rest of my life? Srethis, are you listening to me?"

She suddenly felt herself being raised up high as the lizard placed her upon its back, rearing up. With a thump in her heart, she realised that Srethis' pace was quickening to a run. Her escort wasn't walking at a slow pace anymore – the creature was going to take her at full speed to their destination.

"We have wasted a lot of time here, Vita-chan," the lizard rasped, shooting forward into a sprint as the walls of the corridor whizzed past her. "And Srethis does not like to keep others waiting. Srethis thinks...that it would like to start running now. We will arrive at the portal in less than a minute."

From all around her, twenty of the killer droids began to close in to attack. Each of them was armed to the teeth, wielding a variety of plasma-based weaponry and laser rifles. At the Superuser's command, they began to pick up speed, twin red lights brightening within their robotic eye circuits in acknowledgement as they sighted their target. The safety locks on their guns were released and the droids swung their weapons round, ready to fire.

"Sonic Move," Fate said, and simply disappeared from view completely.

The droids were old and suffering badly from many years of disuse. Their motor functions were slow to react, and a few of them fired blindly at the floor where Fate had stood just a moment ago, nearly hitting each other before they began to turn around here and there, searching for her with creaky and unpredictable motions.

Fate reached out from behind the first droid and snapped its neck cleanly at the head of its spine, standing back a little as sparks flew and ignited a minor fire. The headless body walked around of its own accord for about two seconds before communication from its positronic brain was exhausted and it plunged to the ground, easily deactivated.

Before the other droids could sense her position, Fate grabbed the rifle from the body of the enemy she had just defeated, and opened fire on all of them at once. Quick-fire laser bursts screamed from the muzzle of the gun in an unending roar, many of the shots puncturing through multiple enemies at once as she easily ripped holes in her opponents' breastplates and sent them into a chaotic breakdown. She took down about seven more of them before the numbers rose back against her, and she was forced to use one of the other droids' bodies as a shield.

It wasn't a very good shield, considering that her adversaries had particularly weak body armour for the situation, and Fate cursed as a burst of plasma virtually incinerated the clunky shield she was using. If not for her Barrier Jacket, she could have been seriously hurt.

I was going to save my magic and do this later, but it looks like there's too many of them. Time to hit back properly. Maybe she could do this with just basic spells anyway.

"Defenser Plus," she commanded, and a protective shield spread out around her in a large radius to deflect the burst of laser fire. It wasn't going to last for very long under such an onslaught, but Fate didn't expect it to. It was just to give her a breathing space, to wait for the right timing.

The superior program, the Superuser, was yelling orders at the droids as they milled uselessly around and tried to get around her from the rear. It wasn't going to work, Fate knew. If this was all that Red Scorpion had to throw at her, then this was hardly worth her time.

"Haken Form." Bardiche extended into a spear-like shape as three smaller fins of shimmering energy spreads out at its tip in preparation. It's been a while since I used this, Fate thought. "Haken Saber!"

She hurled the spell forward in a wide circle as Bardiche's compressed mana blade released itself from its main frame and spun around at the remainder of the droids in a shallow arc, cleaving through them and splitting their bodies in half as they tried to continue firing against her shield. Fate prepared for her follow-up spell in case that didn't finish them.

"Saber Blast!"

The energy blade exploded as it smashed into each droid, one by one, crippling each of her opponents as smoke poured from their bodies. Several of them exploded as well in turn, toppling over on the floor, ceasing fire as their guns dropped from their hands. Fate raised Bardiche high as the blade returned to her device, drawing it back to her weapon with the backflow of mana left in its wake.

Calmly, she walked through the rising smoke towards the Superuser's monitor, pausing briefly to kick aside the remains of one of the broken mechanoids. Should she destroy the screen? Would it help to do any more damage?

After a moment of deliberation, she lowered Bardiche to the floor again. The monitor was just for viewing. The voice had been all around her, coming from everywhere – she had to look for that. But how? The tower was absolutely huge, reaching up high into the sky.

"Fate Testarossa!"

The voice boomed out of the monitor in front of her this time, and she reacted on her gut instinct this time, sweeping Bardiche across the side of the screen so that it cracked apart and crashed to the floor. There seemed to be no other real change, but it must have been hooked up to something. The real problem was finding out what that something was.

"If those robots were your best shot at me," Fate said with genuine sympathy, "then I'm going to have a lot of trouble taking you seriously."

"You cannot defeat me, Fate Testarossa," the Superuser said icily, its voice blaring now from far above her. "What you see before you is merely a backup program, constructed to serve as a copy of my own functions and abilities. My real self is currently in another dimension, separate from yours completely."

Fate put her hand to her head in exasperation. "First you send Nanoha upstairs, throw some pitiful robots at me, and now you say you're not even here? Could you please give me something better to work with here?"

The Superuser paid her no heed. "Do you really intend to fight off every wave of attackers I send towards you? Sooner or later, you will fall. My backup program is rooted within this tower itself, and cannot be destroyed! Fate Testarossa, from the moment you set foot in here, your fate was sealed!"

"Is that a pun?"

A tremendous explosion rocked the entire floor and Fate had to quickly put up a magical barrier to prevent herself from being caught up within it. An object had hit the ground nearby with such force that it had gone partway through the ground as well as fractured parts of the building on the way.

With a cold stab in her heart, Fate realised that the source of the explosion was the elevator that Nanoha had entered into to ascend to the higher levels. It was the elevator which had fallen all the way down and been smashed to pieces.

Was Nanoha in there?!

"What did you do to Nanoha?" she yelled, passion and fury rising harshly within her. "What did you do?"

The wall exploded behind her and Fate re-casted Sonic Move to twist free from the flying debris. As she turned wildly to see what had caused it, the opposing wall was blown to pieces a second later, followed by the one next to it too, as if some invisible force was tearing them apart. Fate put up Defenser Plus once more, running forward as more explosions followed her like mortars on a battlefield.

Yes, it was like being fired at. Fate ducked for cover behind one of the bulky control panels and caught a glimpse of a projectile being fired out of one of the openings from a higher level. As it steered towards the ground it exploded in all directions, tearing across the remaining smaller monitors and gouging out more of the surrounding walls. A rocket? A grenade launcher? Whatever it was, it was going to cause her trouble.

Fate lifted Bardiche in her hand, and took careful aim. "Plasma Lan- "

Another projectile hit the ground at her feet, and the Enforcer was blown away to collide headlong with the stair railing. The shock sent her reeling, and she saw stars for an instant as she swayed on her feet, her brain rattled. The blast had thrown her into the railing so hard that the metal supports had been dented in three places.

She felt her sense of balance coming back just as the next projectile flew over her head. Sparks and boulders fell like rain and Fate quickly cast Defenser Plus again before she sustained another blow. If she ended up getting concussion from this kind of fight, she was not going to be very pleased about it.

Quickly, she sought refuge behind the damaged railing and aimed Bardiche again towards the shooter above her.

"Plasma Lanc- "

This time the projectile came directly towards her face. Distracted and too focused on getting her attack in, Fate just barely managed to get the shield up in time. The spell faltered in mid-air and she felt a searing pain in her shoulder from the resulting explosion. If she fouled up again, she might not be so lucky.

All right, that does it. No time for easy spells anymore. This is beginning to hurt.

Fate raised her right hand, palm facing outwards as two circles of magic appeared in the air before her to target her enemy.

"Plasma Smasher!"

The energy blast that was expelled from her hand shot upwards in a blaze of fury, decimating the projectile already sailing towards her on the way. It connected squarely with the shooter up on the balcony and annihilated them in a rush of golden energy, wiping out everything in its vicinity so that all that was left was a round hole of about three metres in every direction.

Fate lowered her hand and rubbed her shoulder painfully. That should take care of that.

"You see?" The Super user said triumphantly. "Already you begin to fall. You cannot win."

"I only pained my shoulder."

"I have much more than where that came from. Nanoha and Oguba are not here to save you, Fate Testarossa. And you will be finished here and now. Our data of your activities over the year is quite extensive, Fate Testarossa. We are aware of a key weakness of yours, one which you will not be able to stand against!"

"Weakness? I don't have any weaknesses," Fate said dismissively, though she was still clutching at her shoulder painfully. Some of the metal must have gotten under her skin, keeping the wound from healing properly... "Bring it on."

The clash of metal upon metal sounded above her. A mechanical clicking as joints were fixed into place and moved slowly down the rusted staircase above her. Fate glanced up with mild interest, wondering what new adversary the Superuser had decided to throw at her this time. Whatever it was, she could easily defeat them and find another way to defeat the Superuser. Maybe she had to bring down the tower completely?

In any case, if the real superior program wasn't even here on this world, but was hiding somewhere else, wouldn't it be better for her to work on getting out of here and searching for whoever was really behind all this...but no. Not when Nanoha was up there. Fate knew that now. The elevator had been destroyed, but she could tell by Nanoha's magical field that the Ace of Aces had not been in the elevator when it fell. That was one relief, at least.

The metal clanging grew louder, and a tall human-shaped figure stepped off the staircase to beckon towards her.

Oh, it's just another droid, Fate thought. Easy to dispatch.

She turned towards her opponent and her mind turned inwards upon itself in utmost shock and horror.

A woman stood before her. A beautiful face of passionate eyes not too different from her own, yet lacking the gentleness carved within her. Dark hair fell across her shoulders in an elegant stream, and black and purple clothes fell across the length of her body as she stared at Fate. Her cold unsmiling eyes burned into Fate's without recognition.

Mother?!

No. It couldn't be. Precia was dead, lost forever to her in the days of her childhood when she first met Nanoha and the TSAB. No, the mechanical clicking as the woman before her moved her joints, the blank expression on her face which was devoid of humanity...it wasn't her.

No, it's just another droid like all the others! But she's wearing Mother's face as a mask to try to get to me! She's not my mother!

"Fate," Precia said softly.

She couldn't move, frozen to the spot. The sound of her mother's voice seemed so realistic, so true. Her body wasn't listening to her anymore. The memories went far too deep and now they were controlling her from the inside.

Bardiche slipped from Fate's nerveless fingers and clattered as it hit the ground.

"Kill her, Program Precia," the Superuser commanded.

The creature carrying her mother's face began to advance on her as Fate stood rooted to the spot, unable to even think at all.

The metal stairs felt bulky and unyielding beneath her, each flight just another hurdle in her path to her goal. As Nanoha climbed higher and higher through the winding tower, she had to shield her face with Raging Heart as electric sparks flew at her from pieces of broken terminals and hardware, all literally falling apart as she struggled to make it to the top.

She didn't know whether she was running more to make it to the summit, or to get away from the blue mist which was continuing to pour out of Raging Heart in a constant flood of energy. At first it seemed to drift away from her as she put more distance between herself and the essence that was Oguba, but then it slowly began to curl towards her, climbing towards her body. And with every second, its size and bulk increased, flowing out of her only weapon against her will and becoming vast and powerful.

A sudden explosion rocked the entire tower, and Nanoha was nearly thrown off the staircase completely, her heart in her mouth. Desperately she clung to the fragile railing, hundreds of metres up above a ground that she could no longer see, feeling the rolling tremors echo across the entire complex. Raging Heart slipped from her grasp for a second, and with a cry Nanoha grabbed hold of the device once more, even as Oguba's light continued to slip through her fingers.

It felt strange to be so high up and to fear death for that reason. Ever since Nanoha had become a mage, she had been able to master the art of flight on her own. The fact that many other senior mages of the TSAB had to train for many years before they were even able to lift themselves off the ground was a testament to her own skill. And yet, now…

I can't see the outside world from here, not yet, but I've walked long enough to know that I'm higher up than anywhere else upon this land. If this was Mid-childa, I would be up in the clouds by now. And the magic of this place is preventing me from even flying at all.

Nanoha didn't think she had ever been afraid of falling to her death before. Becoming a mage in the first had made that kind of thing impossible. Yet now, there was a real chance that it could become reality if she did run out of options.

She was betting everything on whoever was waiting at the top of the tower. Even before she had started climbing up, Nanoha had felt the wave of an incredibly powerful magical field resonating from them. It felt very familiar…and that was what worried her almost as much as anything else going on right now.

As the tremors finally began to die away, Nanoha gritted her teeth and pulled herself up to the next flight of stairs. She had to keep going.

I know what that explosion was. That was the elevator plunging down through hundreds of floors and smashing to pieces at the bottom. Somebody doesn't want me to go back down that way.

Or was it Fate? Thinking of her just drove Nanoha to double her efforts as she rounded the next bend in the staircase. She hoped Fate was all right with whoever she was fighting. Then again, at least the Enforcer was on the ground.

As she rested for a moment to catch her breath, leaning on Raging Heart whilst blue mist stormed around her in a sinister fashion, Nanoha felt cold air brush against her cheek. Fresh icy wind which made her teeth chatter and caused her to tighten her Barrier Jacket about her for comfort.

Open air.

Furiously, Nanoha stumbled upwards again, feeling the steps turning icy and slippery under her feet. She refused to let herself have a very nasty fall from this high up, not when she'd come so far already. Not whilst Fate was fighting for her. Not whilst she was the only one who had any kind of control on Oguba, or at least that's what she hoped was the case.

Open air. Hard to breathe. High altitude.

It was like forcing her way through a storm. The wind seemed intent on pushing her back, slashing at her with a typhoon of icy gales as she gripped onto the crumbling railing, hanging for dear life, and defiantly finding the way forward. A single step back now would be the death of her.

Open air.

Nanoha set her foot upon the last step of the tower and pulled herself up. She was at the end of her journey. Standing here, she didn't feel cold anymore. There was only elation at coming through the struggle, even if she didn't quite know what was waiting for her.

I'm here. I did it. I reached the top.

She was standing inside a small circular room, a platform of tough gauze through which she could see the monster of a staircase she had climbed. The powerful gales obscured parts of her vision as she looked downwards, and Nanoha knew that she was not going to risk going down that way. Harsh ice crystals were forming on the tip of every step – just losing concentration for a moment would send you down several flights of stairs with a broken neck.

Nanoha didn't want to think about the journey down again. She had reached the top. Now what?

There was a small, hemispherical opening in the room she was in, through which the storm was gathering. It was through that opening that she could see the brilliant shining light. The light which she had seen from the bottom of the tower, attracting her towards it as she marched as if on death row.

Power emanated from it in an uncontrollable ring of magical energy, streaking down to the ground hundreds of metres below, lighting up the tower. With a jolt, Nanoha realised that the light in front of her was the storm. A conflict of magic, constantly at war from one another, tearing down through the tower. An unnatural storm, born simply of magic.

Is this the source of the power surge I detected? Is this what I came for?

If she could somehow deactivate it – Nanoha didn't know if that was even possible at this stage – then would she shut down Red Scorpion's main power? Was that it? It was going to be dangerous, of course, when the amount of energy built up here was so ridiculously huge –

And then Nanoha realised…that there was a person at the centre of the storm. A living human being at the core of the massive output of energy, soaking up all of this magic and grounding it into the tower, converting it, feeding on it, leaking it out in such incredible doses…

"Who are you?" she shouted above the roar of the storm, taking a step closer to the maelstrom before her, as far as she dared. She could barely stand at all before such force. It was all she could do to keep herself from being blown through the opening and smashed into the power field to disintegrate.

And as she approached the unknown source of the light and the storm, Oguba went berserk.

The blue light flooded out of Raging Heart like never before, shooting forward in a grotesque bubble as it coalesced with the rest of the mist. It poured forward through the storm as if it wasn't even there, and clashed off the walls and ceiling of the room as Nanoha covered her head fearfully, crouching within the shelter of an alcove as Oguba's light gouged out parts of the wall with each contact, shattering metal as it curved around. The staircase below was crippled as the supports broke, destroying any possible passage downwards.

And then the blue mist formed into one solid spike and plunged forward towards the mystery person at the centre of the storm, as if to pierce them whole.

Nanoha clamped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes, not daring to know what was coming. She braced herself for some titanic explosion, or for the tower to suddenly crumble. Was this Oguba's plan all along? So that she could take him here to destroy the power source? She'd spent enough time at Yuuno's academic seminars to know that all this power had to go somewhere, and if you disturbed the balance –

It was gone.

Slowly, not quite believing it herself, Nanoha began to rise to her feet. The gauze beneath her quivered slightly, but no more than that. The air was cold, but the whirl of inhospitable winds –

The storm had stopped, disappeared, ceased to be. The world was still once more at the top of the tower. Nothing moved, nothing changed. All seemed to be as if in stasis.

Nanoha blinked and tried to find some kind of explanation. Had Oguba just…destroyed the storm completely? Maybe they had transferred it into another dimension? Was there anything powering the tower at all now? The light was gone, too…

"Raging Heart?" she whispered.

"Yes, my master," came the response.

Nanoha didn't think those three words could have made her more relieved at that moment. Raging Heart. Her Raging Heart was back. Not controlled by Oguba, not twisted into a device solely for time travel, but…She felt a grin spread out across her face. Finally, she felt like things were coming back to normal.

"It's good to be back, Raging Heart," she said. "I missed you."

Even so, she still didn't know what happened. Where had Oguba gone? Where did the storm really go, and was it even supposed to be? Who was the person at the centre of the –

Nanoha turned towards the opening in the room where the light had once blazed so intensely. The light had disappeared along with all the other chaos, but…somebody else had been left behind…

A little girl in her early teens stood there on the platform, a friendly smile on her face. She turned her head slightly to look at Nanoha and blinked a few times, then gave her a little wave.

She looked very familiar. From the style of her brown-orange hair, to her knowing blue eyes, to the nostalgic school uniform she was dressed in as if she had just come straight out of class. A red jewel-like orb rested on a pendant around her neck, and Nanoha didn't need to think twice to know what that was.

Her eyes were simple empty sockets when she first looked at Nanoha, but the blue light of Oguba blazed across her knuckles as if it were second nature to her, and her pupils returned in a split second.

Oguba didn't destroy the storm, Nanoha thought. She…this girl…she absorbed Oguba into her own body.

The girl in front of her was her. A Nanoha from ten years ago. She was looking at her past, the same school uniform, the same carefree and innocent expression…

Except that this girl is a past Nanoha with empty eye sockets and with Oguba inside of her body. What's going on here?!

"I was just supposed to be an ordinary third grader," the dead-eyed schoolgirl in front of her said in a sing-song voice, "but a sudden situation changed everything…"

"Who are you?" Nanoha demanded, backing away slightly and unnerved. "You're Oguba, aren't you? You're just taking on the form of my past. Isn't that right? Who are you?"

The girl in front of her smiled again, in exactly the same way that a Nanoha from ten years ago would smile at school, or at her parents, or at Arisa and Suzuka or any of her friends…

"I've been waiting quite a long time for you!" she said sweetly. "But I have a few names. I'm the client of Red Scorpion, and the eternal power of Oguba has now returned to me in full, just as arranged. But importantly…Hi! My name's Takamachi Nanoha, and I'm going to save the universe. You'll help me, won't you? Won't you?"