A Saga of Tanya the Evil/The Irregular at Magic High School crossover.
I do not in any way, shape, or form lay claim to either of these works.
This is just a work of admiration from one fan, to those others that share the same interest.
The only characters or places I lay claim to are those solely of my own creation
Time and Time Again Chapter 48, Time flies: Whispers of Tomorrow
Monday, August 30th 2094. 5:30 PM. Facility One.
Visha gasped as the staff scrambled to find an answer as worry swept over her. She opened her mouth to ask what had happened as a burning, cold pain ripped through her chest and dropped her to her knees. It felt like her chest was being torn open again, as ice cold sparks of pain stabbed into her. She looked up at Dr. Schugel as her hand grasped for something to latch onto.
Dr. Schugel took Visha's hand and winced at the crushing grip. "Call the medics!" She shouted at the staff, then looked down at Visha as she attempted to help anyway she could. Her attention is pulled from the shaking girl by a report from her staff.
"Ma'am! There are resonant echoes from the field! One is coming from your office… The other is here!" One technician called out before Greene called out his own findings.
"Confirmed! And the resonance here… The point of origin… confirmed, it's coming from Serebryakov!" Greene reported.
Dr. Schugel looked down at the pale girl that clung to her with a deathgrip, one hand on her chest as the medics rushed to her. Once they had the girl taken care of and a mild sedative administered, Dr. Schugel started to bark out orders. "Send the override signal! Yes, I know it won't penetrate the field anytime soon, but start it!" She turned to look at the sensor technician and spat out another order. "I need a status on containment unit 001S immediately!"
The staff moved to comply with the orders, the communications and system monitoring check signaled that the override sequence had been activated while the sensor technician looked over the readout from the containment unit. He turned to the doctor to report.
"Ma'am! I'm reading some very strange energy signatures coming from the unit. Some sort of repeating bioelectric signal, and a fluctuating entropic wave form." The technician responded even as he sent the data feed to the doctors console.
Dr. Schugel nodded as she saw a chance to test a hypothesis of hers. She looked to one of the staff members that were still manning their console and barked out an order. "You! Fields! Go retrieve the containment canister on my desk. You will know what one I mean. Now, go!" She didn't look to see if they went, and instead turned her attention to the medics. "Can you keep her conscious if you give her a shot of adrenaline to allow her to overcome the shock? I don't care what you have to do, I need her to be functional. She might be the only chance we have to recover Degurecheff."
The medics moved to carry out their orders even as the staffer came running back into the room and handed the containment unit to the doctor. Dr. Schugle looked at the object contained within and checked the readouts to confirm what she had suspected. She nodded as she placed it gently on the desk, as the ruptured and fragmented heart pulsed faintly.
Fields wiped her glasses nervously as she looked at the organ. "Doctor? How… Exactly… is that possible?"
Dr. Schugel nodded as she checked the readouts once again. "When Degurecheff encased the remnants of Serebryakov's heart in an entropic field, the pieces became quantumly entangled. As far as what remains of her heart is concerned, it's as whole as it can be. That includes the fragments that are still lodged in her chest. They are reacting to the field, just as I theorized they might."
"Why… Haven't we seen this happen before?" Greene asked as he checked over the readouts again.
"Because this time it's strong enough to resonate with the fields that linger in the tissues of this young woman. It's truly fascinating." Dr. Schugel said as she examined the heart in the glass container.
"Okay… But how does that help in us getting Degerucheff back?" Greene asked as he turned from his console.
"Do I really need to explain everything to you?" Dr. Schugel said, then sighed as she walked over and looked at his console. "Normally, when you are dealing with waveform physics, to negate one wave, you need a wave of equal but opposite frequency and oscillation. Now, with the fact that the generation of the field is literally somewhere we can't go or interact with we can't really counter the wave. What we can do, though, is introduce a sympathetic waveform, and it should be able to pass through the boundary layer. Either that, or tear the subject apart on a quantum level."
Greene paled and looked at where Visah had sat back up, with a bit clearer look in her eyes. "You can't mean…. No, doctor, it's too risky. Can't we just use the heart to penetrate the field?"
"To what end? Her whole body has traces of the energy, and the resonance that the fragments give off give her the best chance. It's quite likely if you tried to use the heart, it is the only thing that would make it into the sphere intact. No, she is the best chance we have of retrieving our wayward test subject this time." Dr. Schugel said even as she walked over to have the chief medic update her on Visha's condition.
Greene and Fields exchanged looks then looked where the doctor had pulled the chief medic aside. "Are you okay with this, Fields?" Greene asked the female researcher.
"Of course I'm not, I'm not insane like Schugel is. That said, what other choice do we have if there is no sign of the field weakening?" Fields said as she watched the numbers continue to increase. "I just wish we knew what had happened in there."
Greene nodded as he turned back to his console. "So do I. The only one likely to find out before the field collapses is Visha, though. If Schugel is correct, that is "
Fields nodded grimly before she moved back to her console. "I hope she is, for both of their sakes."
Visha looked around with a confused look on her face. The pain was still there, but it felt distant somehow. She could hear the medical staff talking to her, but she felt like something was missing. Something important to her. She pushed away the medical staff and looked around before her eyes fixed on the sphere of blackness that felt wrong somehow. As she took one, then another slow step towards it, she felt a slim but surprisingly strong hand grab hers.
Visha looked from the hand up to the calm face of Dr. Schugel and stopped the movement of her other hand. The hand that had instinctively drawn the combat knife at her side.
Dr. Schugel gave Visha a smile with a pale and drawn face. "You won't need that, Visha. Put it away, and we will explain what is going on."
Visha looked down at the knife again, then slipped it back into its sheath in a quick, fluid motion pretty much devoid of conscious thought.
Dr. Schugel smiled and relaxed as she let go of Visha's hand and led her towards one of the ready rooms. After Visha had settled restlessly into a chair, Dr. Schugel sat on the edge of the desk and took a breath before she started to talk.
"As you have probably already surmised, something has gone wrong in the latest series of tests. For reasons we do not know, the entropic field that Degr… That Tanya has created has started to increase exponentially." Dr. Schugel said as calmly as she could.
"How? How… Did this happen? You can stop it, right? That's why you have that override, isn't it?" Visha said as she gripped the arms of the chair tightly.
"It is, but at the rate of field growth, we have no idea if the signal can breach the field, or how long it will take." Dr. Schugel said.
"Then what do we do?" Visha said as she looked up with tears streaming down her face.
"There is a possibility, but it's risky. There is no guarantee it will work. And even if it does work, it's possible you won't survive it." Dr. Schugel said frankly.
"What do you need me to do?" Visha said without hesitation.
Dr. Schugel nodded and pulled out her handheld console. "I'd explain the technical aspects, but it's not necessary right now. In wave form physics, two waves that are opposite to each other cancel the other out. Now, ideally that is how we would handle this, but there are a number of problems with that idea. For one, the only one that currently can use that form of magic is Tanya. The other issue is that we don't know what would happen to anything inside the field when it broke down. Now, when you have two waves of identical form and frequency they merge."
"And… How does that help?" Visha said in an unsure voice as the support staff brought in Visha's gear.
"The tissue fragments that remain in your body that we couldn't extract are still imbued with the spell that Tanya cast to try to save your life. Because of that, your body is emitting a sympathetic wave that matches the field that Tanya created." Dr. Schugel explained as they started to help Visha into her gear
Visha helped them as she prepared herself. "Why my combat kit?" She asked as she settled the last of her gear into place.
"We have no idea when it will be when you exit the field. There is also the chance that Tanya might rip a hole in space-time again." Dr. Schugel said as they checked over the interface for Visha's implanted CAD.
"What do I do when I make it inside?" Visha asked as she stretched and pulled her hair out from under her coat.
Dr. Schugel handed Visha a small box. "This is the override. Once you reach Tanya, assess the situation and then use the override if needed to extract her.
Visha nodded as she placed the control box into one of the pouches. Visha looked at Dr. Schugel before she walked out towards the entropic sphere. When she arrived, she hesitated and looked Dr. Schugel.
Dr. Schugel nodded once as the staff bent over their consoles to watch the readouts as carefully as possible while Visha took a breath and walked forward to put her hand on the sphere. People had made contact with Tanya's entropic shells before, with nothing more than a strange tingling to the solidness of the sphere. It was where the field faded out, so the air was less solid, and the field flickered minutely. Not harmful, just a bit strange.
Visha, though, would be the first person to penetrate one of Tanya's entropic shells. That was, if the doctor's theory was correct. If not, she would either encounter the solid sphere that others had, or she might be torn apart as she passed through it.
It wasn't like she had ever let a bit of danger keep her from Tanya's side before, and she would certainly not let it now. Her resolve set, she squared her shoulders and pushed against the sphere with one hand. The sensors flared as her hand started to slowly sink through the event horizon of the field. Visha stopped and looked over at Dr. Schugel before she took another step and continued to push into the field.
It felt like walking through thick snow, or wading through molasses. They had been worried that she might not be able to see while within the boundary, but she found herself surrounded by light. Just like looking at the sphere from inside. It was an interesting experience, but she grit her teeth and continued to push forward. It was hard to believe that the shell itself, the boundary layer that she was moving though, was only an inch thick, at most. But the density of the field was many orders of magnitude higher in the boundary than it was even inside of the sphere.
Just one of the many ways that what Tanya did bent the conventional laws of reality into new and interesting shapes.
Still she wouldn't have her girlfriend any other way.
Tanya exchanged looks with Being X as she grit her teeth. "You had best let me return to Visha." She said in a voice as cold and hard as a cold-forged blade.
"If you welcome me into your heart, then I will consider it. I am a generous and compassionate god, after all. Just look at how I have blessed you, my wayward little lamb." Being X said with an unnatural smile splitting Greene's face and turning it into something horrible.
"Let me go, or I will find a way to destroy you. You are no compassionate being." Tanya said as she clenched her hands.
"Oh? Do you not find me generous, my lost lamb? Have I not blessed you with not just one chance, but two? Perhaps it is this form, maybe I should show you one that is more fitting, then." Being X said.
"Don't you dare try and take on Visha's form…" Tanya growled out.
Being X stepped forward, and his form rippled and flickered like someone had changed a channel on a television. What faced her now with a familiar grin was… Herself. But the self that others saw. A smartly dressed military mage, but her hands were stained red. Each of the medals pinned to her chest seemed to bear the faces of those that she had lost over the years. The pure malice that radiated from the being in front of her made Tanya start to take a step back as the version of her smiled a death's head grin.
"Who is the monster here, truly? Who is it that has sinned, that's hands are stained red with the blood of countless people? Who cost the lives of so many of her own men? And who was responsible, ultimately, for your… Visha… Being put in harm's way?" The mirror Tanya said in her own voice, but colder and more menacing than usual. The mirror reached out with her blood stained hands for the face of the original one with a look on her face that could only be described as hungry. "Give yourself to me, my little lost lamb. Let me show you my infinite mercy and compassion. I will wash away your sins, your doubts, and the guilt that you hide inside. All you have to do is stop fighting and let me in…" Being X said softly, enticingly.
Tanya felt her resolve waver, the bastion of disbelief and stubborn, relentless resolve cracked a bit as the smile on Being X's face grew ever more hungry. Tanya felt like she teetered on a precipice, a vast void that felt oddly welcoming arrayed before her. The abyss beckoned her, and she started to take a step forward.
Then the image before her shattered for just a moment, and gave Tanya a glimpse of… Something… as a very familiar shovel slammed into Tanya's duplicates face.
"Leave her alone!" Visha shouted as she stepped between Tanya and Being X, the last of the time and frost falling from her as she glared at the thing that had threatened her girlfriend.
Tanya shook her head as she stepped up beside Visha as her pistol raised smoothly before she emptied the clip into the twisted image before her.
The image stumbled back before it cast a hate filled glare at Visha. "I will take her from you!" Being X screamed before it was silenced by Tanya as she emptied the magazine of her submachine gun into it. Tanya cast a wary look around them as Being X fled back to wherever it hid when it was not confronting the defiant reincarnated salaryman.
Visha looked around as she clutched her faithful entrenching tool tightly. "Is..it gone? What WAS that thing?" Visha asked, then shook her head as she reached for the override control. "That can wait for later, we need to get out of here before we end up years later!"
Tanya stopped her hand as she wrestled control of the hijacked spell back, and reversed the flow of it. They had time now, as the outside world slowed to a crawl compared to them. As she looked over Visha, she made a fateful decision and took a deep breath as she steeled her nerve to make a move that would probably change everything.
But she had to do it, for Visha's sake since Being X had now included her in it's little plot.
"Visha… That was an entity that I call Being X. A self-proclaimed Creator. A being that claims to be God.". She hesitated for a moment, then nodded to herself. Visha deserved to know.
"There… Are a number of things I need to tell you… I just hope you will believe me, and… Still want to walk besides me afterwards." Tanya said hesitantly.
Visha looked over her girlfriend and longtime companion before she put the override away and took Tanya's hand in hers. "You can tell me anything, Tanya. Always."
"It's a bit of a long story…" Tanya hedged.
"That's fine. We have all the time we need, right?" Visha said with a smile as she pulled Tanya into her warm embrace.
Tanya nodded, and took a breath before she began.