“Why did you call all of us here, Mariel?” Hayate asked, though when she saw Rein, who was looking both scared and worried, she stopped wondering about that, opened her arms up and smiled as Rein flew to her, hugging her body tightly. “Shhh… Rein, it’s okay…” She rubbed the little device’s back, wondering what happened to make the Unison Device so upset.
Looking at the three aces, Mariel sighed, she had known them since they were little girls and just starting out, she had been there when they needed their devices tuned up, when they needed the cartridge systems put into place, when their frames needed to be enhanced. “It took me the last couple of days, I had to call Shari in, and we still almost missed what I found out.”
“Mariel, calm down, you’re not making sense.” Fate tried to calm the green-haired woman, who just sighed and shook her head.
“It’s not that, Fate. If Shari hadn’t suggested we compare Rein’s previous scans to the current one, I would have never found out what we were looking for.” The changes in Rein were so subtle that even knowing what to look for made it hard to find. “Still, I think I might have found out something about these… “Materials”.”
That got their full attention, though Hayate was still rubbing a sobbing Rein on her back. “What is it?” Nanoha asked.
“Do you three remember when you fought against the corrupted protection program of the original Reinforce?” When the three nodded, Mariel sighed softly, this was the hardest part, she wasn’t sure, but if what she saw was right and since the information did stack up… “Do you remember what happened to the remains of the protection program that were in the ocean?”
“I remember that Nii-san was going to send in a clean-up crew, but the body disappeared before they could get there.” Fate had a thoughtful look on her face as she tried to remember everything. “I think… It disappeared when we sealed Reinforce up at that time.”
“Not quite.” Mariel shook her head. “The body disappeared on the same day, true, but it was gone hours before Reinforce asked you to seal her away.”
“So…” Hayate trailed off, getting a bad feeling. “What does that mean?”
“I can’t say for certain, and I know that it’s a bit premature, but from digging around in Rein these last couple of days, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“What are you saying?” Nanoha was getting scared now as Mariel shook her head. “Tell us, please!”
Taking a deep breath, Mariel closed her eyes for a brief moment, before opening them and looking at the Aces seriously. “The protection program would do anything to survive, anything. From the information I gathered… It’s likely that the protection program decided, after Reinforce decided to seal herself away, to jump back to the remains of itself, reformed them into the Materials that we see, just to survive.”
“But…” Fate couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “That means…”
“Reinforce sacrificed herself for nothing…” Hayate trailed off, tears welling up in her eyes, before she looked down and saw Reinforce Zwei hugging her harder, crying even more. “Shh… It’s not your fault, Rein, you didn’t know.” It hurt Hayate to know that the original Reinforce had been sealed away for no reason, but it hurt more to see the sorrowful look on Rein’s face as she cried. “Shhh… Shhh… It’s okay, Rein, it’s okay.”
“Thanks for the ride, Yuuno.” Isis smiled as she got the last of her stuff off of the ship. She then smirked at Seikou, who was behind Yuuno. “Now, remember what I told you, if you want something like that, you need to take it.”
Seikou nodded as Yuuno shook his head. “Isis, thanks for not being upset with me.”
She shrugged at that. “Stuff happens, oh, by the way…” She chuckled softly. “Don‘t go and let your girlfriends ruin those clothes, especially if they get a bit rough with you.”
Ignoring the girlfriends quip, Yuuno rolled his eyes at her, “Sure.” Still, even with the way she was, she wasn’t a bad sort at least, and the past couple of days were pretty nice, all told. “Well, good luck getting good customers.”
Isis giggled and she nodded at him. “Well, as long as I don’t have more people show up with weirdo girlfriends and people chasing after them…” She doubted it would happen. After all, what were the odds someone would find some sort of weird girlfriend?
Touma sneezed and cursed slightly as he rolled out of the way from an overhead strike from Nove. “Ack!”
“What’s wrong, Touma?” Nove tilted her head and waited for him to get back into stance. “You asked me to help you train.” Actually, it was more like Einhart dragged him with her so that he would have something to do, since traveling abroad right now was too dangerous, and she decided to “help” him with his combat training.
The fact that Nove would get to feel up Touma’s body whenever she made contact with him was just a nice bonus.
It wasn’t like she took over training from Einhart so that her daughter/younger sister would stop feeling up Touma, nope, she just wanted to make sure that he was trained properly.
As for Touma? Well, he tended to blush a lot after training with Nove and Einhart for some reason, not that he’d tell them what was wrong with him.
“Nothing, really, I just thought something weird and ironic was going to happen to me.”
Nove sweat-dropped before shaking her head. “Look, Touma…”
“Huh?” He blinked as the short redhead sighed softly. “What?”
“You’re going to leave soon, huh?” When he blinked, she smiled at him softly, walked up to him and hugged him, pushing his face against her chest, since he was sitting on the ground. “Look, if you do leave, at least leave a note.”
“But…” He mumbled and got quiet as Nove just held him. “Nove..? He asked, looking up at her as she looked at him, slightly sad.
“I know you’re going to leave us. You didn’t want us and dad to worry about you, but could you wait at least another week?” When he nodded, she smiled and knelt down, kissing him on the cheek. “Thanks.”
Touma’s face was red, but he smiled at Nove. “Will you tell them?”
Nove shook her head. “No. I care for you too, Touma, so, just be careful, otherwise Subaru will have a breakdown on us.” When he winced, she nodded.
They both knew that Subaru was suffering from some sort of mental problems lately. They both just hoped it was pressure from the job and all she needed was some time off, a lot of time off, maybe a year or more.
“I’ll be careful.”
“Good.” Nove smiled and let him go. “Come on, you can do better than that.” She helped him up, before slapping his butt.
“HEY!” He jumped, his face red.
“You’re leaving your backside exposed.” Nove laughed at him teasingly.
See other episodes by Philip Weigel
(Posted Sun, 01 Aug 2010 02:30)
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