Nanoha ain't mine, but I can dream....
The situation was somewhat less ideal on the battlefield which had once been the main parking lot of Riot Force Six central command. The lot was dotted with craters, places where stray or deflected attacks had left their mark on the landscape. Had one been able to glance back in time, one would have been impressed to see that most of those craters had been created by Shamal of all people; those attacks which her shields could not repel entirely had been curved back at their sources by creative usage of ricochet and well-placed shield arrays. The building itself was awash in flames, a victim of innumerable lascannon blasts and aerial bombardment from the Type-II drones which even now continued to circle the wreckage like starved wolves, almost eagerly awaiting the command to move in for the killing blow.
Within the wreck that was headquarters, the sounds of battle had all but ceased with the fall of Vice Granscenic, the last active and combat-ready member of Riot Force Six not occupied with the continuing battle for TSA Central Command.
Abruptly, the raging flames suddenly ebbed around one of the back entrances to headquarters, one only a few hallways away from the building’s living quarters, and from the flames emerged a trio of figures followed closely by a small group dressed in uniform battle outfits, one of whom simply melted out of the wall rather than use the door like a normal person. Then again, Sein and her sisters could hardly be called normal by any sense of the word.
Hovering in the air over the parking lot, Quattro sighed to herself as she continued relaying information to the drones still orbiting the wrecked command center. Zest, Agito, and Lutecia had been the ones to claim the Doctor’s ultimate prizes, something that irked her to no end; would that she had been able to acquire the Relic and the infant child without their assistance, perhaps Jail would have favored her with more of his attentions in reward. But alas, the resistance the few remaining members of Long Arch had mounted against hers, Otto’s, and Deed’s combined attack had stalled them long enough for the brat and her companions to show up and steal her thunder.
Descending to meet her “comrades”, Quattro carefully reassumed the mask of the michevious trickster she held up for her sisters to see; it wouldn’t do to reveal her true character and possibly provides hints towards her true feelings to the later generation runts, never mind Lutecia and her disgusting little pets.
“Nice work everybody!” She crooned as she landed on the pavement, still idly tapping away at the keys of a few M2D keyboards and keeping half her attention on the monitors displaying readouts and status reports from Gadget forces reporting in from the HQ battle. Their rapidly dwindling numbers had worried her slightly at first, but with the primary objectives achieved and the targets secured, there was little to worry about. All that was left was the extraction and the return to base, and her sensors indicated a complete lack possible enemy activity in the ruins of headquarters, as they had for the past five minutes. “But don’t get lazy just yet, we still have some clean-up to do.”
Deed merely nodded at this and shifted her grip on her twin blades, and Sein opened her mouth to say something when she was abruptly cut off.
“Do as you wish, but we’re going back to the lab,” Zest rumbled. Lutecia shook her head slightly.
“We should stay and help,” she said in her usual not-much-more-than-a-whisper tone. “Garyuu and I can still fight some more. If your injuries are too much trouble, though…”
Zest bowed his head slightly. His participation in the battle for HQ had taken a turn for the catastrophic when Hayate Yagami had taken to the battlefield, replacing the young knight he’d been dueling with before her. The young girl had fought ferociously in spite of her age but he’d almost had her on the ropes when the Yagami girl had joined the battle and entered a perfect unison with that other unison device the little knight had been partnered with.
Things had gone downhill very rapidly after that, as he and Agito were assaulted seemingly from all directions by barrage after barrage of shooting spells., curses, binding spells, and a grab bag of spells he couldn’t even begin to identify; they certainly hadn’t been Mid or Belka techniques, in any case. It was only due to a timely distraction from the return of Sette and Tre to the battlefield that had prevented him from being overwhelmed and allowed him to disengage and rejoin Lutecia. Much as it irked him to turn tail and run from an enemy, the child still needed him. So long as she was working for that insane scientist, she needed someone to watch out for her, and Agito, he feared, was too hot-headed to be an effective guardian, no matter how well she meant.
Quattro frowned at Zest’s rebuttal, then merely shrugged it off. “We lost contact with Cinque a few minutes ago and we need to send someone to back her up and possibly deal with that Type-Zero she was fighting with. Sein, are you feeling up to a rescue mission?”
Sein grinned and snapped a parody of a military salute. “I’ll be in and out before that zero even knows whats going on!”
“I’d expect no less from you,” Quattro replied coolly. “Well old man, if you’re heading back to base so soon, then you can take our little souveniers with you,” she nodded at the unconscious Vivio carefully clutched in Zest’s arms, as well as the relic case Lutecia held close to her body. At this, Zest merely nodded. “The rest of you, we’re heading over to HQ to reinforce the others. We have reports of unexpected reinforcements streaming into the battlefield. Shouldn’t be too much for the drones to handle, but those pesky girls are giving Dieci and the rest a hard time.”
As she spoke, Quattro turned away from her sisters and temporarily closed all the windows she’d opened in preparation for the flight to HQ. But as the others also prepared to depart, Deed’s sensors suddenly picked up on a soft sound that seemed to echo somehow against the crackling of the flaming buiding behind them and the roar of the drones circling overhead.
Footsteps. And getting closer, too.
“Company,” she called to the others, who immediately assumed defensive stances, save for Quattro, who merely hovered slightly higher to get a look at what had caused the noise.
She wasn’t sure what exactly she was expecting, but a civilian in a green blazer and long pants somehow hadn’t been on Quattro’s list. Emerging from behind the wreck of a ruined Type-III a young man with light brown hair and green eyes slowly stepped into view. His eyes were not on the cyborgs, but on the inferno blazing behind them.
And as those eyes turned on Quattro and her sisters, despite the heat of the blaze, the ambient temperature suddenly seemed to drop 20 units, and again when those eyes drifted over to Zest and his precious cargo.
“So that’s what he was after,” the stranger muttered under his breath, seemingly confiming something with himself as Quattro tried to place his face. Abruptly a name leapt into her mind, no doubt forwarded to her through Uno’s information retrieval and distribution systems.
With a cruel smirk, Quattro started in on the out-of-place civilian. “Aren’t you a little far from your library, Mr. Scrya? Perhaps you should go back to your books before you get hurt… it’s a very dangerous world out here, you know.”
Yuuno Scrya slowly turned his eyes back on Quattro. For a moment he was silent. Then he spoke.
“Tempest Blockade.”
Quattro had never been caught in a barrier before, and being a non-magical entity she’d thought for certain that she never would be. So she was completely unprepared for a sudden jarring sensation as she, her sisters, Zest, Agito, Lutecia, and Vivio were abruptly yanked out of local time-space and shunted into a pocket universe, an image of the surrounding landscape frozen in time by the sudden application of a barrier to everything within a mile of the caster, namely the apparently-brainless civilian standing before her.
Quattro gaped for a moment at the change in her surroundings before quickly regaining her composure. “Come now, little ferret. What exactly do you think this is going to accomplish, hmm? You mean to challenge a troupe of cyborgs when your little girlfriend hasn’t been able to stop even one of us?”
At the word ‘girlfriend’ Yuuno twitched slightly, but showed no other reaction for a moment. Then he spoke with the air of a defeated man.
“First of all, she’s not my girlfriend. Would that she would ever look at me as more than a friend, or an old comrade to share stories with, but she’s never felt that way for anyone besides Fate, and I sincerely doubt she ever will.”
Then, abruptly, his eyes hardened and his voice gained strength. “But as for what do I intend to accomplish? I intend to do what I do best! I’m going to protect Nanoha and everything she holds dear! And that includes the friends you’ve already harmed and the child you’re kidnapping for the Saint only knows what reasons!”
As Quattro began to sputter somewhat indignantly—this kid honestly thougtht he could pose a threat to a single cyborg, much less a group of them?!—Yuuno raised a hand, revealing to the casual onlooker a gorgeous diamond ring which hung from a small chain bracelet around his wrist. It was not for the cyborgs to know that said ring was a symbol of Yuuno’s feelings for Nanoha, of love gone unnoticed and unfulfilled. All that they would know was its’ roll in the fall of their master as Yuuno spoke once again.
“Farseer! Set-up!”
.
