"Magnus. Visitor."
The prisoner heard the announcement and the door open ahead of her but she didn't bother looking through her transparent cell. After all, there was only one person who would actually visit her in this cell. She turned the next page in her book while she greeted the visitor. "Hello, Enforcer Lanster."
"Hello, Runessa. How are you doing?" asked the orange haired young woman from the other side.
"I'm well. I appreciate that you were able to get me some reading material to keep my mind from wandering about too much. Even if it's ridiculous gibberish about the Sankt Kaiser," replied Runessa in a calm tone.
"Sister Carim would be disappointed to hear you say that."
She placed the book down for a minute and turned towards Teana, her red eyes fuelled with mixed emotions. "What makes you think I would care about that? Or that I would actually take these 'teachings' to heart? Are you expecting me to claim that I have seen the light and ask for sanctuary in the Saint Church?"
"Not at all-" The mage was cut off when her former partner got up from her spot and went right to the edge of the glass wall so that both women were eye to eye with one another.
"Then what?! What drives you to keep coming here and offer me these... hope spots?!"
There was a pause for a moment until Teana spoke. "Remember what you told me way back then? Just shortly after you came here?"
Runessa's anger seemed to dim for a bit. "That you should kill me if you want to protect that dream peace world of yours. Otherwise, I'll just find a way to start everything all over again."
"No, you won't. Somewhere deep inside, I believe that there's a good person buried underneath layers of trauma from the war in Orussia. I saw a glimpse of it when we talked after the Mariage incident several times. And I know that I'll reach her one day."
This earned an amused snort from the prisoner. "Are you for real?"
"Does it look like I'm joking?" replied Teana calmly.
After another long pause, Runessa let her anger fade with her eyes now taking on a tired look. "You're wasting your time with this."
"Perhaps... but I just don't like the thought of giving up on someone when I know I can still save them." The Enforcer then heard a beeping noise and noted the display on her personal digital assistant. "I have to cut this short. Gotta run to a briefing with Major Nakajima."
"...... give my regards to the Major," said Magnus as she returned to her bed and picked up the book again to resume where she left off.
Chrono took a moment to focus himself while keeping in mind that this conversation was seriously getting him nowhere. These women were obviously not really helping in the way they kept insisting they were the good guys when it was obvious that it was the other way around. Seriously, who's gonna believe that someone with the title of 'The Lord of Darkness' will turn out to be a good girl?
Not him for sure. He wouldn't admit it but Material-D was the one who unsettled him the most, even more so than his sister's duplicate. If her magical power's were anything like Hayate's, then that means he would need to prepare a better defense to deal with bombardment magic from a mage with extremely high magical power output. And that meant lots and lots of calculations to put up the strongest barriers. Calculations that someone like Yuuno Scrya, one of the best mages when it came to defense, could do fairly easily...
Oh, wait... he's in the clutches of the enemy. Chrono wanted to curse himself for not taking better precautions all because he wanted to keep this operation a secret. He should have went the full distance and gotten a decent sized security escort for the Librarian. Yes, it would have drawn some attention but at least this way, his safety would have been more or less guaranteed. No, because of his negligence, one of his old friends was in trouble.
And speaking of negligence, what was that saying again? You don't appreciate something until it's gone? It seems like everyone had taken Yuuno's support for granted for the past several years. Once they retrieved him from the clutches of his kidnappers, he would have to take some time to make sure that Yuuno's recovery goes well. Maybe take the guy out for drinks or organize a large reunion party so that he can catch up with some of the other important people in his life, particularly Nanoha, for old time's sake. They haven't been able to sit down and have a long friendly chat in quite a while.
That will have to wait. He needed to know where exactly that ship went. The patrol vessels in the area where the site had been found were currently recovering all the bodies of the secret security detail that had been there and Yuuno's own ship was nowhere to be found. While Chrono has a connection now, he can attempt to trace the call and compute the ship's position although this will compromise the current privacy features. After some consideration, he decided to take that risk and silently resequenced the connection properties to begin tracing.
Now the next thing to do is to stall like hell until he got something concrete. "Look, 'Your Majesty'... I have full access to Yuuno's employment records which proves that he chose to work for the TSAB and am more than happy to send them over to your end."
"How can we tell that those documents aren't forged?" asked Material-D coldly.
"There's an official seal stamped on-"
He didn't get much further than that when Material-L barged in again. "You kill baby seals and stamp them to your papers! More proof that you're such an evil monster!! I bet-"
On the bridge of the Claudia, things were busy as usual with everyone going about their regular routines. As per standard military protocol, one person was holding the bridge until Admiral Harlaown returned from his business. Right now, said person was receiving a report from one of the staff members of the engineering department. "Angie's gonna need an hour to properly repair the dimensional communication transfer relay. We're still investigating how it got damaged in the first place."
"So what does that mean in general?"
"Call transfers may be a bit buggy. For example, a private call to the Admiral could end up getting transferred to the bridge. Worst case scenario, some media station on Mid-Childa or a public domain television like in a mall," said the female engineer in a straight tone.
The dark haired young man, who currently sat in the Admiral's command chair, nodded and briefly pushed up his glasses. "You've already informed Admiral Harlaown?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Keep us posted then." The two officers exchanged salutes before the female communications officer sitting just ahead turned around with a mischievous little smile on her face.
"You're really getting good at command, Yaz-kun."
He gave a small snort. "Stay focused on your job, Shi Nye." Their conversation was then interrupted by a small beeping on Shi's console and she quickly turned back to check on it. "What was that?"
"How interesting. There's a call connection from the Admiral's personal quarters to... the Berlakian Universal Shuttle."
Yaz frowned for a moment. "Isn't that the personal vessel of that Librarian guy?" For some reason, he really couldn't remember his name often even though he knew that the Librarian travelled around a lot and made many appearances in academic and historic circles.
"Yeah. Why would the Admiral make a call to the BUS?" A pause and then a giggle from Shi. "Maybe he's engaged in a steamy conversation with his hidden gay lover! Hmmm... Yuunoro has a certain nice ring to it!"
"The Admiral's married... with children." He would never understand this whole fascination that the common population had with famous people and their relationships. Honestly, the whole idea was annoying to him. If he got any more spam messages from the Legion of NanoFate, he was probably going to...
"Let's eavesdrop on the conversation! A little piggyback carrier to create an additional visual feedback and..."
Shi's rapid typing snapped Yaz out of his thoughts. "That's not professional! If you don't stop that now-"
"Initializing!" sang Shi as she finished the final sequence and put up the image on the main screen. But rather than seeing the sight of the Chief Librarian, everyone was treated to sights of weird doppelgangers of two of the TSAB's most prominent figures.
"- that you get some turn on torturing animals like that, Evil Kyon!!"
The whole bridge went into a dead silence upon hearing that.
See other episodes by Yasanagi
(Posted Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:49)
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