A/N: This chapter should reduce a bit of confusion and explain some things. I still think people are going to be confused though.
Blood dripped off Fate's face and arms where she'd been slashed and shot in multiple places. Her Barrier Jacket was barely holding up, and her body ached to keep up with the attack. As she weaved and dodged between broken machinery and crushed terminals, the voice of her mother taunted her constantly, driving daggers into her heart. She thought she was strong enough for this. She thought time had healed her, time and Nanoha's efforts and her adoption into Lindy Harloun's family...but...
"You always were a disappointment to me, Fate!" Precia shouted out at her, raking the entire room with photon beams which riddled deep burning holes on every unprotected surface. "I tried to change you, but you were never going to be like Alicia!"
The hateful words burned into Fate, and she lost her concentration for a moment as the next barrel of shots seared her cloak and tore down one of her arms. She cried out in agony, more from the inside than from physical pain, and ducked back behind the cover of a bashed-in supercomputer. Bardiche was buried somewhere in the wreckage back there, but she couldn't fight back even if she tried. Fate found herself unable to fight back against her mother. Her mind knew it was just another more powerful droid, but her body wasn't listening. Trauma was steeped far too deeply into her past, and her hands shook just trying to attack.
I know she's not really my mother! She's just a mindless pawn that the Superuser is sending against me. Then why can't I even bring myself to fight her? Why?!
But she knew why. The happy memories she'd had of Precia were all fake. The last real memory she had of her mother was seeing her plunge to her death, looking up at her without a trace of love or affection. When something like that was ripped from your world, especially to a fragile nine-year old girl, it had a catastrophic impact on your life.
It didn't matter that Precia had hurt her so much, had wrecked her happy memories, had cast her away so that if not for Nanoha, Fate may have given up altogether. Precia was still her mother. It didn't change the fact that Fate had desperately wanted to see her again. It wouldn't have been a happy family reunion, but to a girl looking up to the only mother she'd ever had, that wasn't what mattered.
She was still shaking as another destructive beam flung shrapnel towards her face and cut into her cheek, increasing the flow of blood. Protect herself. That was all her body seemed to be responding to. Even when Fate tried to set herself to get Bardiche back, she felt her muscles tighten and lock up in opposition. Bardiche was her closest friend alongside Arf ever since she had entered this world, but it was also a weapon. A weapon that could be used to inflict pain on Precia, and fate found her body rigidly preventing her from doing so.
Why? Just because the droid is wearing my mother's face like a second skin? Is her face ingrained so deeply in my childhood that as soon as I see her, my body locks down? Did the Superuser know this would happen?
No. There had to be a way round this. If it was the sight of Precia which was causing such inaction in her, then she would just close her eyes.
Trembling, Fate shut her eyes tightly.
Her mother's image blazed through them, defined sharply in her mind as if she had filled her eyes with light. Frantically, Fate tried to dispel the image, shaking her head to throw it away. Forget her. Forget her. Forget her! She disowned you!
"You remember me, Fate, don't you?" her mother's voice called out to her coldly, shooting another volley of lethal bolts above Fate's head as metal and plaster rained down on her head. "Do you remember how much I hated you?"
No. I can't shut her out. It's not working. I can't do this!
She knew that she was more than a match for her enemy. Fate's arsenal of spells and combat techniques was more than enough to take on five of the same droids at once. But now she felt powerless to do anything except just defend herself, stalling for time until she could think of a way to stop all of this. There had to be a way to shut down the power somehow, didn't there? But if the droid was operating independently, that might not work. What was she supposed to do?
Fate thanked her stars that she was still in Impulse Form. It was the best defence against most of the shots coming her way; with any different Barrier Jacket she would have sustained much greater damage.
Think! Can I use reason to make my body realise that this isn't my mother? Mother was a gifted mage of her time. She was proficient in many different spells of all shapes and forms, and her device took the form of a whip. Fate shuddered at the memory. She did not want to remember that. And the person who's fighting me now is firing guns at me. Wake up! She's not your mother! MOVE!
For a second, she felt something in her body give way. The thorn in her heart eased. But if her opponent started taunting her again, in Precia's voice, then Fate knew that she would fall to pieces all over again. The sound of her mother's voice would be too much.
Quickly, she took advantage of the minor hesitation in her body to spring towards the left side of the room, scrambling around in the rocks to search for Bardiche. Within seconds, her steps were becoming slower and more reluctant as her muscles began to seize up. Only her sheer determination kept her going.
Nanoha, I'm sorry. I thought I was to be the one to protect you. Except...it seems I'm the one who needs you down here now. You would know what to do, wouldn't you? My Nanoha. If I hadn't come here...
Her right hand closed around the long metal rod of a device, shifting beneath the fallen rocks to expose an axe-like formation around the end. Bardiche! She'd found it -
Then she felt the cold metal barrel of a futuristic weapon make contact against her skull, and Fate turned to find herself staring into the hardened violet eyes of her mother. She could see Precia's lips move, but didn't hear any of the words through the roar in her mind. Her will and spirit began to seep away like a flood of water down the drain. She was gone.
Nanoha. Help me. Help me!
A soft wind blew across the orange-brown hair of the Ace of Aces, calm and subdued in contrast to the raging storm from before. It carried a scent with it, a bittersweet odour that you could taste in your mouth as it permeated your senses. The strike of her own magic, reacting against her own from ten years ago. It felt sweet and nostalgic to her, but it also felt out of place, much like the little schoolgirl standing in front of her with that familiar smile.
"Save the universe?" Nanoha echoed the client's words. It wasn't quite what she'd been expecting after that arduous trek up the tower.
"Yes," said her younger self in front of her pleasantly. "It is my mission as Oguba's host body. Of course, it hasn't always been easy. I was worried at first that Red Scorpion wouldn't listen to me, or wouldn't comply with my requests. The attacks on the Bureau, your necessary death, the extraction of Scaglietti's brain…" She scratched her head, looking puzzled for a moment. "But I'm not sure if you'd know about that, Nanoha. Would you?"
"Okay, hold on a second," Nanoha interrupted before the girl in front of her made the situation any more confusing. She was already having a hard enough time trying to puzzle everything out without it getting worse. Oguba's host body? Hadn't Oguba's power been given to her instead? Or had that been yet another lie told to her? "Tell me again: who are you?"
The client's smile broadened as her eyes shone blue, and strange symbols danced on her cheeks for a second. "I'm you, Nanoha. Or at least, your body – your past body. And at the same time, I'm Oguba. I'm the Nanoha who should be living, fulfilling Oguba's purpose. But you, Nanoha – you're a paradox. You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be part of history."
"What do you – "
"Let's start from the beginning, Nanoha," the nine-year old girl in front of her said, her eyes glancing upwards for a moment towards the skyline before settling down again. Her fingertips pulsed with blue energy for a moment before fading away again. It was like there was a storm controlled inside her. "The very beginning. It's quite a story. The story of your life, or at least the life you should have had. Of course," she added, "the fact that you're here talking to me wasn't something Oguba could control. Perhaps even unavoidable. After all, it's happened twice before in the multiverse…but let me explain that later. In the end, you're still going to disappear." She flashed her another smile and laughed lightly.
Nanoha sighed, not understanding most of what the client was saying. Oguba's power had left her and gone into this past version of her, and Raging Heart had been released back into her hands. That much she had witnessed already, but she needed her questions answered. She was hundreds of feet up with no way to get down, and she really wanted it to be worth something. Besides, the client in front of her didn't look like she was going to attack her any moment; she seemed genuinely happy to see Nanoha.
"All right," she said finally. "I'll listen to your story…Oguba, if that's what you are."
"What I am is determined by the flow of time inside me and my own sense of self," the client said. "But for the time being, perhaps you should call me Takamachi. It is a name we share, after all. You can continue being Nanoha if you want."
Takamachi. It felt strange calling the young girl by that name, giving her the impression that she was speaking to her other half. And yet…the girl in front of her kept acting as if Nanoha wasn't real, as if she were a fake or a clone…no, she didn't want to understand that part. First things first: she had to find out exactly who this client of Red Scorpion was.
"So let's begin," Takamachi said, gazing up towards her steadily. "Let's start…well, how about when you're about to die? I know how it felt. One minute you're flying up hundreds of feet above the ground, at the height of your career in the TSAB…and the next moment, you're gone. The accident, Nanoha. Ten years ago. You were taken to the hospital ward for high-intensity care. Soon it would be hoped that you would recover and go back to being one of the greatest mages the world had ever seen.
"And this, Nanoha, is where our paths differ. You survived – I didn't. Red Scorpion were given orders to execute you in the past. You know that, because you felt yourself die when the Legion unplugged you from the life support machine, didn't you? You felt it years and years ahead in the future. Your entire life history, changed with one simple tug. You're probably wondering why Red Scorpion wanted you dead, but I'll go into that a bit later, after I'm summarised the events here.
"Now let me tell you what I experienced," Takamachi continued, stroking at one of her pigtails fondly. "I died. I began to fall away, even inside my coma…and then Oguba appeared. He made a contract with me, saved my life, and I gained the power of time-travel. You asked who I was, Nanoha. You probably know by now that Oguba has sometimes been able to influence you, possess you…It's not his fault. It's just how he functions as a Lost Logia, and he doesn't know about things like individuality or sense of self or the soul…he is just here to fulfil his own purpose.
"Which is how I answer your question, Nanoha." Takamachi reached up to cup one palm against Nanoha's cheek. The Ace of Aces stiffened at the touch, feeling a faint tingling rush across her skin, but nothing more. "I'm you, of course, but I am also Oguba. And he isn't a person or an animal or anything with human characteristics. He isn't something you can kill. He's a force of nature, Nanoha, and I was his first contractor…" The blue light in Takamachi's eyes was intense now as she began to talk in a more excited manner. "I made the first contract with Oguba. He needed a host body to speak with, to control, and to send out more contracts to willing recipients. I was indebted to him for saving my life and giving me such power that I could scarcely dream of. And so it was my body that he resided in – or should I say yours, Nanoha…for generations. In time he gave over to me all the power that he had, so that there is very little of me now that isn't part of him."
Takamachi's grin was eager and fierce, almost dangerously so. "You see? I didn't grow up, Nanoha, I didn't grow up to become like you, a mage of limited capacity whose few merits were silly things like gaining the hope and admiration of your friends and family, or beating Scaglietti and the Numbers. I became Oguba. I became the force of a Lost Logia itself. I'm still you, of course – I never stopped being the Nanoha I started out as – but I don't feel much of that anymore. The Lost Logia's essence has merged with mine, and that is who I am."
Nanoha stared at the schoolgirl chattering away happily in front of her with a mixture of disgust and horror. She had been wrong. The girl in front of her was not her – she wasn't even close. Takamachi had been corrupted by the power of a Lost Logia. A past version of herself…which had taken a different path in life, a path leading only to the dismantlement of everything that had ever made her human. It explained why Takamachi hadn't aged at all, and why Oguba's power had been leaking when Nanoha had started climbing the tower. Oguba was drawn to Takamachi like a magnet, and the two fit together like a perfect jigsaw. A perfect, twisted jigsaw which had gone so horribly wrong…
So when Red Scorpion had me killed in the past…Takamachi was created. Or rather, she was given life from my past body. Like two petals falling from a flower, where one petal was carried away on the wind and the other was discarded into the mud. She was made from this. From this subversion of magic, from the caging of the power of a Lost Logia inside a human body – which should never be even thought about – another me which was taken over by Oguba. A willing participant. And worse, someone who was aware of the entire exchange going on inside their body and was eagerly consenting to it because they were so far gone that they wanted this to happen.
"Why?" Nanoha whispered to the girl in front of her. "Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you want to? Didn't you have friends, the same ones I did? What about Fate, Arisa, Suzuka…what about family? You threw all that away."
The client blinked, looking bewildered. "Oguba exists inside me," she said simply. "I can go back in time to see my loved ones any time I want to. What's the problem?"
"And have you?"
"Of course not," Takamachi said without hesitation. "Generations of time have passed for me and Oguba. People will be left behind. What should I want with people? I remember your thoughts and values, Nanoha…when I was you. I remember friendship and love, and it was beautiful. But it's hardly anything to bother with now, is it? With the passing of time, beauty is shattered. Now…I have yet to finish my story, so sit back and listen a little longer."
The client had been talking without a trace of concern. They weren't hiding anything, they weren't deliberately trying to appear emotionless or hard; they genuinely did not care for it. I would never have been like this, Nanoha thought as she watched her past self closely. I have always loved my family, and I still do even now. I cherish everyone I make connections with. Did sharing Oguba in the same body really do this to her? Were all her human emotions wiped out after being like this for such a long time?
Takamachi had continued talking as if nothing had happened, skimming over the alarmed expression on Nanoha's face. She was too caught up in her own dialogue to pay attention to anything else. "Soon after establishing my new partnership with Oguba," she said, "it became clear that I would need to form contracts with other people too. Many of them were not of this world or even this universe. I didn't mind. I had all the time in the world, after all." Takamachi laughed again, then accidentally bit into her lip, wincing. "Ouch. So, yes. I had to find the right kind of people, of course. After hearing what Oguba had to say to me, I knew there were things I had to do in the universe."
"What things?" Nanoha said in disbelief, still upset at how she had seen Takamachi behave so far. It was more about the fact that here was a girl who used to be her and had now turned into something unrecognisable which truly distressed her. "You already gave Oguba the use of your body. You didn't have to give him anything else."
"Oh, but you didn't hear me, Nanoha – I am Oguba now. His ambitions and mine are one and the same." Takamachi licked her lips, tossing her hair back as she traced another set of blue markings across her neck. She frowned as she rubbed against of the symbols, then seemed to disregard it. "So as you know, I made contracts with people who…desired his abilities. People who desired them so fiercely that they would kill for them."
Nanoha felt she could see where this was going now. "Red Scorpion."
"That's right!" the young girl exclaimed, lighting up at her answer. "Oh, they were in need of my powers – that is, to say, Oguba's powers. Their leader, Yagami, had departed from them a few years back and so they were without purpose or direction. But I gave them purpose, Nanoha." Takamachi turned to look at her fiercely, with a determination that Nanoha recognised only too well. She had seen it herself, after all, in the mirror. "I gave them a reason to keep their tiny little group from disbanding altogether. Isn't that a wonderful thing, helping to give people hope when they're just about to give up?"
"It is," the Ace of Aces said grimly, "when you're not giving them "hope" to go around spreading chaos and continue killing people."
Takamachi appeared to ignore her. "There were only three left in Red Scorpion when I came across them. Two of them were machines who had no knowledge of the merits of time-travel. The third, however…with her, I had a chance. That was Exoria." The client's closed her eyes fondly, a dream expression falling upon her face as she clasped her hands against her cheeks. "I met with her, and saw how desperate she was to please her former mistress. She was in love, too, which is never a good thing, not when it exposes your weaknesses so easily. I reasoned with her, telling her that her beloved Yagami would acknowledge her if perhaps she was able to travel in time. To do something that even her mistress could not do." The young girl sighed, folding one hand against a crease in her skirt. "Oh, to see the eagerness in her face, it really was infectious! She could not sign up fast enough.
"Now, of course I couldn't do it with just Exoria," Takamachi continued excitedly, looking back towards Nanoha to capture her attention in full. The glow of Oguba against her fist had begun to throb with a greater tempo. "So I journeyed to other universes, through time and space, for Oguba had spoken to me of his disapproval for humans' limits in combat and resources. I thought about how Oguba and I had first met, and realised that it would be easy enough to extend the same courtesy to my other contractors…"
Her words brought a chill to Nanoha's heart, and she felt her throat tighten. What kind of nonsense was this? A contract which offered to save your life just as you were about to die wasn't consensual. It was manipulation. The more she listened, the more she became convinced that Oguba was not a natural Lost Logia like all the others. It made Nanoha anxious about how such a force had come to exist in the first place.
Takamachi continued her story, barely pausing for breath. "And so it is that I had Oguba rescue Srethis and Ungore, both non-human beings with superior abilities to humans. Their races had both been tragically wiped out by a dimensional distortion, and so they would be indebted to me for saving them from the same fate. Why shouldn't they want a contract with Oguba? Why shouldn't they want the power of time travel? Unfortunately, the creature Srethis seemed distrustful of my motives, and made excuses about how it wasn't born to fight or to kill." Takamachi shook her head, her expression one of comical distaste. "But still, they were both useful to me to some extent, and Ungore showed some skill in Time Magic. Along with Grylmark, I initiated them all into Red Scorpion. The superior program of the organisation – the new leader ever since Yagami left – she had no choice but to accept these new members into Red Scorpion. She could not afford to turn such fighters away, not whilst their numbers were so low." The client began to play with her pigtails once more. "I was fortunate that they were led by mere machines. Machines can be persuaded very easily, since they listen only to logic."
"So," Nanoha said in a quiet voice as she took all this in, "so that's how you became the client of Red Scorpion. By manipulating them all to your will." She couldn't quite hide her disgust, let alone the fact that the person in front of her was in her past body. Something, however, was missing…Takamachi hadn't mentioned much about Grylmark at all except very briefly. Could something be wrong there? Maybe they had just glossed over it by accident.
"Well, you know the rest, Nanoha," the client in front of her said with a sly smile. "Red Scorpion killed you in the past because I told them to. You can see why – if you didn't die in the past, Oguba wouldn't come to make a contract with me back then, and I wouldn't have become their client. It's an unbroken circle of time. Oguba brought you back to life for the same reasons as me…but you woke up besides your Vivio and kept on living, didn't you?"
"You call this living?" Nanoha cried, throwing her hands up angrily. "Being unable to know when Oguba's possessing me half the time? And you haven't told me everything, Oguba." She refused to call her Takamachi. The schoolgirl before her was no longer someone you could call Nanoha. "What about the attacks on the Bureau – what was the point of all that? How did I receive Oguba just by dreaming about him and waking up?! "
Takamachi shrugged. "We are connected by time, Nanoha. Of course Oguba would be present with you in some shape or form. The possession, too, is simply natural. Oguba is inside me now – you will not be possessed by him ever again. As for the attacks…Red Scorpion did so on my request. I'm sure you remember finding out that one of the Lost Logia there was stolen after the first attack?"
"And you're telling me that was Oguba?" the Ace of Aces said in disbelief. "How does that even start to make sense? Why would the Bureau have Oguba in the first place?"
"No. You had Oguba, Nanoha – although, only in its physical form, which now longer exists, not after it was implemented into Raging Heart." Takamachi laughed again, a wild smile playing across her lips, enjoying Nanoha's confusion. "Don't you understand? Oguba is shared between you and me, Nanoha – past and present. I had the bulk of its essence contained inside me, but I couldn't have all of it…not until you brought it to me. The purpose of the attack on the Bureau was to ensure that you acquired Oguba and brought it with you…brought it all the way here…and brought it to me. My completion is close at hand." A small giggle escaped her mouth. "You have my gratitude for this, Nanoha, oh, you have my eternal gratitude, and I do not use that word without sincerity. I have waited a very long time to have the rest of Oguba's powers returned to me…"
Power. Was this what everything was about? Just so this shadow of her past gone wrong could become stronger and stronger with the power of a corrupted Lost Logia inside her? Was this why she had left Vivio behind with everyone else? And besides…if Takamachi was still able to travel in time, there was no reason why she had to wait for Nanoha on top of a colossal tower on a dead planet. She could have just waited at the portal and taken it there. Why here? Why…
I can see where this is going. Oguba drew me here because of the link to Takamachi. He used Vita's kidnapping as an excuse for me to go through this portal, just so he could be reunited with the client. Was Vita part of Takamachi's plan, too?...No, I don't think so. Vita really did enter the portal by mistake, but…it sounds a little too convenient.
She still didn't have all the answers she needed, but Nanoha doubted she was going to get anything better right now. Somehow, it felt like it wasn't all to do with Takamachi. There was something else going on at the same time, just within the loop, and it involved Grylmark. Nevertheless, Oguba and Takamachi were definitely her main concern right now. Everything else could wait until afterwards. With no way to use Oguba's powers anymore, Nanoha couldn't even communicate all this information to everyone else. The client must be have been very confident that she would not be able to do so.
"What will you do now?" Nanoha asked, putting her thoughts into words. "You've lured me here and taken all of Oguba's powers away from me. I can't create time portals anymore, so my friends and I are all stuck here. What are you going to do now that you've got Oguba back?" She left the question hanging in the air for a few seconds, then pressed her point forward. "Are you just going to use it for destruction? That's what usually happens with that kind of power."
"Destruction?" the client repeated blankly. "Oh, no, Nanoha, you've got completely the wrong idea! I told you already: I'm going to save the universe. I just needed all of Oguba's powers back to do it properly! You'll need to help me, of course. You don't really have much choice."
"We'll see about that." Nanoha resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at all of this. Save the universe? When the only threat that had appeared was the one right in front of her? Maybe she would have been impressed by such words ten years ago, when a talking ferret popped into her life and turned her into a magical girl, but not now. She wanted to know what this was all about. "What's wrong with the universe, since you think it needs saving?"
Takamachi raised her head to look her in the eye seriously, and Oguba's glow faded from her cheeks. "There are holes in the space-time continuum, Nanoha. Time isn't being conserved as it should be! That is Oguba's duty – to fix the gaps in time where anomalies are leaking out. Anomalies such as yourself." The young girl pointed a finger sternly at Nanoha's forehead. "You're in the present, and I'm from the past. We simply can't exist in the same universe together. The only reason why we can even talk to each other now without going mad is because we are in the land between all portals. A plane of lost time, if you like.
"And so believe me when I say it is not destruction, Nanoha, but salvation." Takamachi's voice began to accumulate volume, her eyes staring so hard at the mage that Nanoha found herself unable to look away. "With my combined power, I will put the universe back straight. And you – there is no need to worry. After all this is done, there will be no need for time travel anymore. I can already assure you that Red Scorpion will not bother you anymore. If you like, I can arrange for them to be transported back to your world, and put under arrest in the proper fashion."
Nanoha didn't understand. Takamachi seemed to have more than enough power to accomplish all of this by herself. "Then what do you want with me?" she demanded. "You've taken away what little of Oguba's power I had already. I can't travel through time or create portals anymore. You've lived my past – you know that if I knew people's lives were in danger, I would help them. If the universe was in danger, I would do my part."
The client nodded knowingly. "That's right, Nanoha. But this isn't why you're going to help. It's because there isn't any other way back for you, not any more." She stepped up to her, close enough to feel her skin against her own, though the little girl still only reached up to her waist. "Nanoha, I only require one service of you. One small gesture of goodwill, and you need never see me again."
Nanoha felt a chill of anticipation, but quickly suppressed it. The client seemed surprisingly earnest, but they also looked like they knew exactly what the outcome was going to be. Nevertheless, she still had to know. "What is it?" she asked.
The smile on the little girl's face was no longer warm, and when she spoke it almost seemed to the Ace of Aces as if she had expected this, as if the whole conversation had been leading up to this from the beginning.
"You're an unwanted anomaly of time in the universe, Nanoha," the face of her past self said softly. "I need you to be erased from history completely. I'm sorry, but it's the only way."
Ungore changed form as it sped through the last leg of the cave passageway. The black helm encasing its skull melted away into the air, the silver lining of elemental armour shimmered and dissolved back into the usual multicoloured robes, and the double-pronged spear held in the alien's grasp reverted back to a thick unsightly staff of dead flesh. Under cover of the smoke and the explosions further back, there was no possibility of anyone catching up now.
Running whilst transformed with Vasturien was not practical to Ungore. The armour weighed the creature down and was generally unneeded outside of battle. But now that the pink-haired Guardian Knight had been left behind in the dust, Ungore didn't have to worry about anything anymore. All it had to do was catch up to Srethis. The lizard and the prisoner were probably through the portal now.
Ungore smiled, seeing that the corridor was about to reach its end. Things had been a bit of a hassle, but now the portal was waiting literally round the corner. The Bureau would no longer be able to pursue Red Scorpion, no matter how much they tried. The Metaworld Sector was not somewhere that just anyone could walk into.
"Say goodbye, my friends," the alien sang, beginning to re-connect its dead arm back to its shoulder and return the state of its own little world back to normal, "say goodbye to the millennium of - "
The ceiling rose towards Ungore's face and struck it once, twice, bashing the creature's head to the side so that it couldn't react, disorientating it as everything spun, confused as to why it was seeing in double vision. Then the unknown force bit into Ungore's shoulder, and the alien howled in sudden recognition. The dead arm was torn away from its grasp, then whipped around in mid-air and swung swiftly to connect with the base of Ungore's neck. The creature hit the ground, not understanding why its body was no longer responding to it. Its remaining arm started clutching around blindly for a weapon.
Silently, Grylmark stepped out from the shadows, twirling the alien's only weapon in his hand with his eyes fixed on the creature, watching it crawl across the ground. There was no smile or sign of superiority in his face like usual, only the drive of single-minded purpose. The summoner tapped the dead arm against the ground as if it were nothing but decoration.
"Grylmark...no..." Ungore gasped, constantly reaching for the arm that wasn't there. It struggled to pull itself up with the arm that remained, but its vision was blurry and the pain at the back of the alien's skull increased everytime it tried to move too quickly. "Give back..." the creature whispered, gesturing with one finger at what Grylmark was holding. "I must reach the...portal...so close..."
The old man watched without sympathy, looking down at Ungore as he continued to tap the dead arm against the ground.
"Do you want this back?" he asked. "I feel sorry for you, Ungore. You just seem so weak without it."
Ungore managed an agonised nod. "Heal...need to heal...I cannot...I must..."
The summoner continued to watch the alien writhe in pain. The injuries from the past fights with the Bureau were evidently catching up to it, and Ungore's body could not endure such damage without magical assistance. Before, the mana stored in its arm had been released into its body at frequent intervals in the form of restorative energy, numbing the pain and repairing broken bones, thus enabling the creature to recover quickly and continue fighting. Now, with the arm taken away, Ungore was quickly feeling the effects of being without magic.
"You shouldn't complain, Ungore," Grylmark said with hard eyes. "After all, what you feel now...is how it must feel like to be human."
"I hate...I hate humans..." The alien was choking as it tried to speak, spitting out blood from its lungs. "Give back!" it cried again in a desperate plea, waving its clawed arm out in a wide circle. "It hurts!"
Grylmark sighed. "Very well," he said. "I suppose I should give you this back." His eyes glittered as he strode over to Ungore's twitching body. "But it only seems fair that you should receive it in full."
The dead arm rammed downwards and penetrated through Ungore's unprotected stomach and out the other side, driving into the ground so that the creature was impaled on its own weapon. Ungore's body jerked as it screamed, blood gushing from the base of the wound. At the same time, the alien's body began to heal and regenerate, now that the tankful of mana in the arm was once again making contact with its own body. Pale light flowed from the device and began its work on Ungore's torn muscles and shattered bones.
With cold eyes lacking in mercy, Grylmark touched the top of the dead arm lightly, his own hand bathed in a dark light. "Forced Device Transformation: Hunzichille Runesword."
The solid arm impaling Ungore began to writhe and transform, driving another shockwave of agony through the creature as the bone of the arm sharpened into black steel, cutting through the alien's bones as it twisted into an elegant sword enveloped in a black mist. The wound re-opened and spurted out fresh gouts of blood at the edges of the sword as the alien cried out, even as the same deadly weapon began to heal its broken body.
Barely able to speak, Ungore struggled to reach towards the sword in a useless gesture as the pain began to disappear. The weapon had been rammed down through into the ground solidly; even another seasoned fighter would have trouble getting it out with both hands. The alien's wounds were closing before its eyes, but not around the area of its stomach where the pain continued to spread. Ungore screamed again, this time more in frustration than anything else. Its body was healing, but not in the way it wanted.
"Why?" the alien cried, swallowing hard as its lungs began to work properly again, only to feel a ripple of pain slash at it from underneath as its body shifted around the sword. "If you wanted to kill me, then - "
"I don't have to kill you," Grylmark replied. He was already walking away from the crippled creature and back out of sight, already dismissing the entire scene. "But it's quite important for me that you do not go through the portal, and that you stay right here." He permitted himself a faint smile as he disappeared from the alien's sight. "Besides, you don't want to go through the portal any more. Red Scorpion is already dead."
"What are you talking about?" Ungore howled, before its voice died into a strangled cry as the sword bit into its body a bit harder. The alien fell back, cursing, left at the mercy of nature and any more of the Bureau who might arrive. Grylmark didn't want it to go through the portal? What was he playing at?
Plagued by continuous bouts of pain with every passing minute, Ungore forced itself back down again, trying to relax what remained of the muscles in its stomach. If Grylmark wanted it dead, he didn't have to give the arm back at all. He could have just watched Ungore die very easily from a distance. But I'm alive, the alien thought, fierce hope ignited by its anger. I'm surviving. That's what I'm going to keep on doing.
Gradually, Ungore summoned mana back into its free hand at a painfully slow pace, and began to formulate a plan of escape.