Fate Testarossa buried her face in her arms and resisted the urge to whimper. Between more serious injuries and the need to keep a reserve of power in case of a second attack, the bruises she'd picked up in that fight in... was it Abudaa Bee? Something like that... hadn't been treated. Needless to say, spending hours on end in the same hard, awkward seat pretending to listen to a series of droning lessons with nothing to do with anything important wasn't terribly high on her list of priorities.
But no, with Zafira and Nanoha resting up for the last shift before the Asura arrived late in the evening and Arf and Shamal to make sure Signum didn't do something to make her wounds even worse, she - and Hayate, to be fair - was stuck rotting in this idiot school.
A voice interrupted her thoughts. "Hey, wait, isn't that Fate-chan's mom?"
For all its academic excellence, the middle school the group Alyssa had wryly dubbed 'The Mage Gang' attended had rather old fashioned facilities - most infamously, from the students' viewpoint, its classrooms had a single ceiling-mounted projector screen to display visual media, rather than the networked notebook computers that some schools were beginning to use. Tama-sensei, their homeroom teacher, had left the classroom's example up and running, with the system sound turned all the way down, so that her students would be able to keep tabs on what might very well be the first truly important event of their lifetime, and when Fate raised her head to check, sure enough, there was Lindy Halloran, in her full Bureau dress uniform, no less, delivering her beaming 'professional' smile from above a banner reading 'CABLE NEWS NETWORK JAPAN - LIVE - 19:21:03 UTC 5/17/2012'.
Satou Jiro had been carefully ignoring the fact that most of his students were paying far more attention to the news' subtitles than they ever had to one of his algebra lessons, but once he had been alerted to the sudden fame of a person whom he had always regarded as being, at worst, a bit odd, he gestured the whispering crowd to silence and turned up the volume just in time to catch the latter part of one reporter's question. "-uture role in Earth's politics?"
"The treaties governing the Bureau's foundation specifically exclude it from taking part in any conflict that does not involve more than one world. The precedents have established that those limits do not extend to barring Bureau personnel from self-defense, or the organization as a whole from acting as an impartial judge or inspector, but both of the latter roles are only permitted at the explicit request of all concerned parties. Yes - with the brown scarf?"
"Junko Davis, MSNBC. Admiral Halloran, can you comment on the possibility of transfers of off-world technical and scientific information to Earth?"
"The Bureau takes no position regarding any natively-produced item or technology that a given world may or may not choose to trade. Our mandate is that those trades go forward unmolested, and that the worlds making them be secure from external threat. And... In the white suit?"
"Tanaka Kentaro, TV-Nihon. Admiral, could you be more specific about the recent... problems, and your Bureau's response to them?"
"Certainly. The attackers arrived directly at their targets using a short-ranged dislocation matrix, what might be called a teleportation spell, and began their operations by attempting to cause as many casualties as possible. The nature of their means of transportation suggests the presence of a forward base with a base-planar distance of no more than three parsecs from here, but they had taken considerable steps to counter our outpost's efforts to track their travel - steps which seem to have been specifically aimed at and only at the methods most commonly used by the Bureau.
"For logistical reasons, the databases of sector headquarters are limited to that sector and those immediately adjacent, and the invaders' language, uniforms, and matrix patterns - their chosen 'programming language', if you will - are unfortunately not included in those available here. The gathered data has been forwarded to Main Headquarters, to be compared with the archives there, but it will likely be several days before a match can be identified.
"In the meantime, three of the four Bureau patrol vessels assigned to this sector have been rerouted to Earth, and should begin arriving early this afternoon. Standard policy in a case of this severity will also see a full response squadron dispatched from Headquarters, and would have an additional fifteen ships in place by the end of next week. For the next few hours, however, security will be in the hands of local military forces and the sector' inspection team, as it was last night."
"Shinguuji Ichiro, Japan Times. This team would, presumably, include the teenaged girl from last night? Miss... Takamachi, I believe it was?"
"...It does, yes." Her voice became noticably chill, in place of its former careful neutrality. "How did you get that name?"
Shinguuji was outside the camera's field of view, but his voice, at least, was defensive. "She and my editor's daughter share a mutual accquaintance - enough for them to have been introduced. Which is entirely aside from the matter of your compelling a child into such a dangerous situation as last night."
Fate felt her jaw drop at the idea, and on the screen, her mother looked nearly as shocked for a moment - until her professional dignity shattered as she burst into giggles. "Compel?! Nanoha?!"
Note to self: check Chrono's job title. Also don't forget the Fate-angst.
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
But no, with Zafira and Nanoha resting up for the last shift before the Asura arrived late in the evening and Arf and Shamal to make sure Signum didn't do something to make her wounds even worse, she - and Hayate, to be fair - was stuck rotting in this idiot school.
A voice interrupted her thoughts. "Hey, wait, isn't that Fate-chan's mom?"
For all its academic excellence, the middle school the group Alyssa had wryly dubbed 'The Mage Gang' attended had rather old fashioned facilities - most infamously, from the students' viewpoint, its classrooms had a single ceiling-mounted projector screen to display visual media, rather than the networked notebook computers that some schools were beginning to use. Tama-sensei, their homeroom teacher, had left the classroom's example up and running, with the system sound turned all the way down, so that her students would be able to keep tabs on what might very well be the first truly important event of their lifetime, and when Fate raised her head to check, sure enough, there was Lindy Halloran, in her full Bureau dress uniform, no less, delivering her beaming 'professional' smile from above a banner reading 'CABLE NEWS NETWORK JAPAN - LIVE - 19:21:03 UTC 5/17/2012'.
Satou Jiro had been carefully ignoring the fact that most of his students were paying far more attention to the news' subtitles than they ever had to one of his algebra lessons, but once he had been alerted to the sudden fame of a person whom he had always regarded as being, at worst, a bit odd, he gestured the whispering crowd to silence and turned up the volume just in time to catch the latter part of one reporter's question. "-uture role in Earth's politics?"
"The treaties governing the Bureau's foundation specifically exclude it from taking part in any conflict that does not involve more than one world. The precedents have established that those limits do not extend to barring Bureau personnel from self-defense, or the organization as a whole from acting as an impartial judge or inspector, but both of the latter roles are only permitted at the explicit request of all concerned parties. Yes - with the brown scarf?"
"Junko Davis, MSNBC. Admiral Halloran, can you comment on the possibility of transfers of off-world technical and scientific information to Earth?"
"The Bureau takes no position regarding any natively-produced item or technology that a given world may or may not choose to trade. Our mandate is that those trades go forward unmolested, and that the worlds making them be secure from external threat. And... In the white suit?"
"Tanaka Kentaro, TV-Nihon. Admiral, could you be more specific about the recent... problems, and your Bureau's response to them?"
"Certainly. The attackers arrived directly at their targets using a short-ranged dislocation matrix, what might be called a teleportation spell, and began their operations by attempting to cause as many casualties as possible. The nature of their means of transportation suggests the presence of a forward base with a base-planar distance of no more than three parsecs from here, but they had taken considerable steps to counter our outpost's efforts to track their travel - steps which seem to have been specifically aimed at and only at the methods most commonly used by the Bureau.
"For logistical reasons, the databases of sector headquarters are limited to that sector and those immediately adjacent, and the invaders' language, uniforms, and matrix patterns - their chosen 'programming language', if you will - are unfortunately not included in those available here. The gathered data has been forwarded to Main Headquarters, to be compared with the archives there, but it will likely be several days before a match can be identified.
"In the meantime, three of the four Bureau patrol vessels assigned to this sector have been rerouted to Earth, and should begin arriving early this afternoon. Standard policy in a case of this severity will also see a full response squadron dispatched from Headquarters, and would have an additional fifteen ships in place by the end of next week. For the next few hours, however, security will be in the hands of local military forces and the sector' inspection team, as it was last night."
"Shinguuji Ichiro, Japan Times. This team would, presumably, include the teenaged girl from last night? Miss... Takamachi, I believe it was?"
"...It does, yes." Her voice became noticably chill, in place of its former careful neutrality. "How did you get that name?"
Shinguuji was outside the camera's field of view, but his voice, at least, was defensive. "She and my editor's daughter share a mutual accquaintance - enough for them to have been introduced. Which is entirely aside from the matter of your compelling a child into such a dangerous situation as last night."
Fate felt her jaw drop at the idea, and on the screen, her mother looked nearly as shocked for a moment - until her professional dignity shattered as she burst into giggles. "Compel?! Nanoha?!"
Note to self: check Chrono's job title. Also don't forget the Fate-angst.
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."