So, I've been reading an awful lot of Worm 'fics lately. And one of the scenarios that so rarely seems to get any interest is the post-canon situation. Sure, there's Copacetic and one of the Exalted crossovers (both of which are Awesome, by the way).
A few of you may have seen bits of this, and I'll be posting soon over on Spacebattles and SufficientVelocity, but, well, I trust folks here to give constructive criticism a bit more than I do those lunatics.
So! Episode Zero, Super Dimension Magical Girl Lyrical Skitter, hajimarimasu!
--- * --- 0 --- * --- 0 --- * ---
The laboratory facility was brightly lit, and the walls painted a gleaming white, the better for any speck of contamination or distortion to show itself instantly. When you were working with the dimensional boundaries, instantly spotting any breach was of the utmost necessity. Especially with this particular boundary.
The Baerzen wall had sprung into being some thirty years previously, sealing off a massive swath of dimensional space. It was named after the only explorer to have returned from beyond it, who had warned his comrades of immense monsters, madness, and danger to the entire multiverse, before expiring. The facility was officially the Baerzen Memorial Dimensional Transit Research Institute, but the scientists, mages, and soldiers who worked there just called it The Hole.
Major Tiida Lanster, chief of security for the Hole, set aside his coffee mug to look over the new transfer seated across the desk from him. She was young, clearly a recent Academy graduate, with long auburn hair and wide blue eyes. Freshly polished Second-Lieutenant's tabs gleamed on the collar of her uniform. He paused a moment to look down at her file.
"So, Lieutenant... Takamachi. Let me be the first to welcome you to the Baerzen Facility security team. Given your previous experience, I suppose you were expecting something a little more exciting for your first official assignment with the Bureau?"
The girl blushed. And actually giggled. She stifled it as soon as she realized what she was doing, but still, she giggled. Charmingly young. "Ano, er, well," she said, "The Jewel Seed incident could've been pretty messy, but it ended well, didn't it? And the Book of Darkness, well, I'm really hoping nobody has to deal with anything that, er, exciting, ever again."
"... We'll see, Lieutenant, and I think we're all hoping the same. But that's why we have security at facilities like these, to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen again. As much as we're able, that is." Tiida took another sip of coffee and watched the girl for another long moment. "Your assignment here does not mean," he finally added, "that command expects something to happen. Given the kind of research being done here, however, the possibility is all too real. That's not why you're here, though, Lieutenant Takamachi."
She nodded, sitting straighter. "Yes, Major. Colonel Grangeitz told me when he gave me the assignment that he just wanted me to learn to work with a team."
Good, she was paying attention. That was what might keep her alive long enough to realize the potential described in the reports Tiida had read. He let his eyes drift to the photograph on the corner of his desk, then forced his attention back to the Lieutenant. "More than that, you need to learn to work with a commanding officer that isn't a close personal friend. Which I'm not. And the actual director of the facility... well, her you do know. I do hope your past won't be a factor in your ability to work with Doctor Testarossa?"
Whatever answer she might have been about to give was erased by the blare of sirens and the urgent calls for security to the main research lab.
- 0 --- * --- 0 -
Ten minutes ago
The main research lab was active today. Consoles displayed graphs and plots of nearby dimensional space, control indicators blinked on and off, and there was a comforting soft hum of magitronics. (Mostly generated by the various machines' cooling units, really, but it was genuinely comforting. Many people found actual silence disturbing.)
At the center of the lab, several large objects that - to the untrained eye - looked vaguely like massive energy cannons of some sort surrounded a slightly-raised dais some three meters across. Each of the probes pulsed in a slightly different rhythm, lights trailing down their length to illustrate the dimensional energy they were pouring into the space tau-adjacent to the lab (which is to say, identically located in three-dimensional space, but slightly displaced along an orthogonal dimensional axis).
"Dimensional probe experiment number six four alpha three seven, cycle six, supervising: Doctor Presea Testarossa, Doctor Lawrence Fleinhardt, Doctor Peter Bishop, security adjunct Sergeant Raymond Marlowe." The computer voice listed a variety of testing parameters, echoing the commands the scientists had previously input. "Ready to commence at your command, Doctor Testarossa."
The lead scientist on the project was tall and brown-haired, with only faint wrinkling around her eyes to show her age. "If security concurs?" she asked, turning briefly in the direction of the black-uniformed watchdog.
"No issues here, Doctor," replied Marlowe. "Please carry on."
"Very well. Begin trial six four alpha three seven, cycle six," Presea instructed the computer.
The power began to rise in the dimensional probes, the lights growing stronger and brighter. In some the pulses quickened, in others they slowed, as the machines began to force a specifically-designed resonance onto the dimensional boundaries surrounding the dais.
The next minute or two passed as so many had before, in the hundreds of trials the research team had run, trying to find ways to peer beyond the Wall. Colors shimmered and twisted as the fabric of space-time itself was subjected to stresses and forces beyond the imagination of those who had first seen the Wall rise. Watching a series of readouts, the three scientists adjusted their equipment carefully, guiding the immense energies that stretched and twisted at the part of space-time that the Wall occupied. With a very little luck, they hoped to open a tiny breach in that wall, a way to push through a probe to examine what lay beyond.
Minutes into their experiment, something else pressed against the Wall. Something from the other side.
"We're getting flaring in the Gimel ranges," Doctor Fleinhardt said, noticing the first signs of it. "Something's pushing back against the probe."
"It's never done that before," remarked Bishop. "Whoa, that's interesting. I'm getting something in the Yod range, too. Increasing power to compensate."
Presea nodded and adjusted controls of her own. "I'm adjusting the gamma frequencies as well. This is very promising." Her pursed lips did not display pleasure, however. It reminded her too well, also, of the tragic day her first career had ended.
The experiment continued for some minutes more, the twisting, shifting colors occupying the space above the dais growing in intensity and complexity as the energy patterns built. The trio moved quickly to adapt their probes to each new variation in the resonance that built in the Wall.
And then it all came to a sudden, juddering halt. Electricity arced around the probes as energy fed back into them from the Wall, the colors started to solidify into a gleaming fractal pattern, and the room filled with the groaning hum of overstressed magitronics.
With a crash, several of the probes went dark, smoke billowing from them as their delicate circuitry overloaded and shorted out. The twisting, shifting color-space above the dais froze, glowed brighter, and then fell apart in a shower of sparks, leaving a single solid form slumped on the gleaming white surface. A closer look proved the form to be human, scarred, bleeding, and incomplete, the right arm terminating in a cauterized stump just below the elbow.
"Congratulations, Doc, it's a girl," quipped Bishop.
Sirens howled through the facility as Sergeant Marlowe pressed his panic button, and then the lights went out.
- 0 --- * --- 0 -
"… in short," Presea concluded, "We were able to open a small dimensional distortion, but before we could insert a probe, we apparently intersected another distortion coming from the far side. The result propelled our, ah, guest, through the breach thus created, and the resonance of that passage appears to have closed the breach. We're still measuring the effects on the Wall, but it looks like it may actually have been locally reinforced by this."
Nanoha sat at the back of the room, one of several minor officers invited to the briefing. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat; despite her assurances to Major Lanster, she was still wary of Presea. Their first meeting had gone so very poorly, after all, even if everything had worked out in the end.
"Speaking of our guest," the director added, "What can you tell us about her, Doctor Yamada?"
"Of course, Madam Director." He gestured, his Device projecting a holographic image over the table. It showed the girl who had appeared in the laboratory, now cleaned and dressed in a hospital gown, resting on a standard diagnostic bed. "The subject is, so far as we can tell, mostly human, with only the most minimal of augmentations. Female, obviously enough, and I'd put her age between sixteen and twenty-two standard years. She has several fairly significant scars, the most obvious being the severed arm, which appears to have been cauterized rather crudely by whatever event caused it. Poor girl's been through the wars," he commented.
The image zoomed in on her head, overlaying a transparent layer of internal detail, rotating to focus on the brain. "The augmentation I mentioned consists of one, possibly two, small sub-nodes added to the brain. Possibly some sort of processing support, or the like; it appears to have been directly connected to her Linker Core. I can't get much detail on the augment itself because it was mostly destroyed just before whatever event brought her here."
"This would be the injury that left her bleeding from multiple head wounds in the middle of my laboratory, Doctor Yamada?"
"Precisely, madam Director. It's…" He trailed off for a moment, reaching up to run one hand over his slicked-back black hair. "It's at once one of the most barbaric, yet surgically precise, that I've ever seen."
Nanoha frowned. That didn't sound good. It looked like Presea agreed, too.
"Explain, please, Doctor Yamada."
The medical specialist rotated the projection yet again, this time adding highlights to display the wound traces he described. "The subject was shot, twice, with a mass weapon, some sort of slugthrower. Targeted very precisely so as to do the maximum damage to the augmentation with minimal effect on the rest of the brain. Whoever did this was either incredibly lucky, or knew exactly what they were doing. Given the probabilities of such a thing happening by chance, I lean towards the latter option, no matter how incredible it seems. Someone deliberately destroyed her augmentation while taking incredible effort to do so without injuring her further… and did so using the crudest tools imaginable. I could do better with, with stone knives and bearskins."
-- tsuzuku
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
A few of you may have seen bits of this, and I'll be posting soon over on Spacebattles and SufficientVelocity, but, well, I trust folks here to give constructive criticism a bit more than I do those lunatics.
So! Episode Zero, Super Dimension Magical Girl Lyrical Skitter, hajimarimasu!
--- * --- 0 --- * --- 0 --- * ---
The laboratory facility was brightly lit, and the walls painted a gleaming white, the better for any speck of contamination or distortion to show itself instantly. When you were working with the dimensional boundaries, instantly spotting any breach was of the utmost necessity. Especially with this particular boundary.
The Baerzen wall had sprung into being some thirty years previously, sealing off a massive swath of dimensional space. It was named after the only explorer to have returned from beyond it, who had warned his comrades of immense monsters, madness, and danger to the entire multiverse, before expiring. The facility was officially the Baerzen Memorial Dimensional Transit Research Institute, but the scientists, mages, and soldiers who worked there just called it The Hole.
Major Tiida Lanster, chief of security for the Hole, set aside his coffee mug to look over the new transfer seated across the desk from him. She was young, clearly a recent Academy graduate, with long auburn hair and wide blue eyes. Freshly polished Second-Lieutenant's tabs gleamed on the collar of her uniform. He paused a moment to look down at her file.
"So, Lieutenant... Takamachi. Let me be the first to welcome you to the Baerzen Facility security team. Given your previous experience, I suppose you were expecting something a little more exciting for your first official assignment with the Bureau?"
The girl blushed. And actually giggled. She stifled it as soon as she realized what she was doing, but still, she giggled. Charmingly young. "Ano, er, well," she said, "The Jewel Seed incident could've been pretty messy, but it ended well, didn't it? And the Book of Darkness, well, I'm really hoping nobody has to deal with anything that, er, exciting, ever again."
"... We'll see, Lieutenant, and I think we're all hoping the same. But that's why we have security at facilities like these, to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen again. As much as we're able, that is." Tiida took another sip of coffee and watched the girl for another long moment. "Your assignment here does not mean," he finally added, "that command expects something to happen. Given the kind of research being done here, however, the possibility is all too real. That's not why you're here, though, Lieutenant Takamachi."
She nodded, sitting straighter. "Yes, Major. Colonel Grangeitz told me when he gave me the assignment that he just wanted me to learn to work with a team."
Good, she was paying attention. That was what might keep her alive long enough to realize the potential described in the reports Tiida had read. He let his eyes drift to the photograph on the corner of his desk, then forced his attention back to the Lieutenant. "More than that, you need to learn to work with a commanding officer that isn't a close personal friend. Which I'm not. And the actual director of the facility... well, her you do know. I do hope your past won't be a factor in your ability to work with Doctor Testarossa?"
Whatever answer she might have been about to give was erased by the blare of sirens and the urgent calls for security to the main research lab.
- 0 --- * --- 0 -
Ten minutes ago
The main research lab was active today. Consoles displayed graphs and plots of nearby dimensional space, control indicators blinked on and off, and there was a comforting soft hum of magitronics. (Mostly generated by the various machines' cooling units, really, but it was genuinely comforting. Many people found actual silence disturbing.)
At the center of the lab, several large objects that - to the untrained eye - looked vaguely like massive energy cannons of some sort surrounded a slightly-raised dais some three meters across. Each of the probes pulsed in a slightly different rhythm, lights trailing down their length to illustrate the dimensional energy they were pouring into the space tau-adjacent to the lab (which is to say, identically located in three-dimensional space, but slightly displaced along an orthogonal dimensional axis).
"Dimensional probe experiment number six four alpha three seven, cycle six, supervising: Doctor Presea Testarossa, Doctor Lawrence Fleinhardt, Doctor Peter Bishop, security adjunct Sergeant Raymond Marlowe." The computer voice listed a variety of testing parameters, echoing the commands the scientists had previously input. "Ready to commence at your command, Doctor Testarossa."
The lead scientist on the project was tall and brown-haired, with only faint wrinkling around her eyes to show her age. "If security concurs?" she asked, turning briefly in the direction of the black-uniformed watchdog.
"No issues here, Doctor," replied Marlowe. "Please carry on."
"Very well. Begin trial six four alpha three seven, cycle six," Presea instructed the computer.
The power began to rise in the dimensional probes, the lights growing stronger and brighter. In some the pulses quickened, in others they slowed, as the machines began to force a specifically-designed resonance onto the dimensional boundaries surrounding the dais.
The next minute or two passed as so many had before, in the hundreds of trials the research team had run, trying to find ways to peer beyond the Wall. Colors shimmered and twisted as the fabric of space-time itself was subjected to stresses and forces beyond the imagination of those who had first seen the Wall rise. Watching a series of readouts, the three scientists adjusted their equipment carefully, guiding the immense energies that stretched and twisted at the part of space-time that the Wall occupied. With a very little luck, they hoped to open a tiny breach in that wall, a way to push through a probe to examine what lay beyond.
Minutes into their experiment, something else pressed against the Wall. Something from the other side.
"We're getting flaring in the Gimel ranges," Doctor Fleinhardt said, noticing the first signs of it. "Something's pushing back against the probe."
"It's never done that before," remarked Bishop. "Whoa, that's interesting. I'm getting something in the Yod range, too. Increasing power to compensate."
Presea nodded and adjusted controls of her own. "I'm adjusting the gamma frequencies as well. This is very promising." Her pursed lips did not display pleasure, however. It reminded her too well, also, of the tragic day her first career had ended.
The experiment continued for some minutes more, the twisting, shifting colors occupying the space above the dais growing in intensity and complexity as the energy patterns built. The trio moved quickly to adapt their probes to each new variation in the resonance that built in the Wall.
And then it all came to a sudden, juddering halt. Electricity arced around the probes as energy fed back into them from the Wall, the colors started to solidify into a gleaming fractal pattern, and the room filled with the groaning hum of overstressed magitronics.
With a crash, several of the probes went dark, smoke billowing from them as their delicate circuitry overloaded and shorted out. The twisting, shifting color-space above the dais froze, glowed brighter, and then fell apart in a shower of sparks, leaving a single solid form slumped on the gleaming white surface. A closer look proved the form to be human, scarred, bleeding, and incomplete, the right arm terminating in a cauterized stump just below the elbow.
"Congratulations, Doc, it's a girl," quipped Bishop.
Sirens howled through the facility as Sergeant Marlowe pressed his panic button, and then the lights went out.
- 0 --- * --- 0 -
"… in short," Presea concluded, "We were able to open a small dimensional distortion, but before we could insert a probe, we apparently intersected another distortion coming from the far side. The result propelled our, ah, guest, through the breach thus created, and the resonance of that passage appears to have closed the breach. We're still measuring the effects on the Wall, but it looks like it may actually have been locally reinforced by this."
Nanoha sat at the back of the room, one of several minor officers invited to the briefing. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat; despite her assurances to Major Lanster, she was still wary of Presea. Their first meeting had gone so very poorly, after all, even if everything had worked out in the end.
"Speaking of our guest," the director added, "What can you tell us about her, Doctor Yamada?"
"Of course, Madam Director." He gestured, his Device projecting a holographic image over the table. It showed the girl who had appeared in the laboratory, now cleaned and dressed in a hospital gown, resting on a standard diagnostic bed. "The subject is, so far as we can tell, mostly human, with only the most minimal of augmentations. Female, obviously enough, and I'd put her age between sixteen and twenty-two standard years. She has several fairly significant scars, the most obvious being the severed arm, which appears to have been cauterized rather crudely by whatever event caused it. Poor girl's been through the wars," he commented.
The image zoomed in on her head, overlaying a transparent layer of internal detail, rotating to focus on the brain. "The augmentation I mentioned consists of one, possibly two, small sub-nodes added to the brain. Possibly some sort of processing support, or the like; it appears to have been directly connected to her Linker Core. I can't get much detail on the augment itself because it was mostly destroyed just before whatever event brought her here."
"This would be the injury that left her bleeding from multiple head wounds in the middle of my laboratory, Doctor Yamada?"
"Precisely, madam Director. It's…" He trailed off for a moment, reaching up to run one hand over his slicked-back black hair. "It's at once one of the most barbaric, yet surgically precise, that I've ever seen."
Nanoha frowned. That didn't sound good. It looked like Presea agreed, too.
"Explain, please, Doctor Yamada."
The medical specialist rotated the projection yet again, this time adding highlights to display the wound traces he described. "The subject was shot, twice, with a mass weapon, some sort of slugthrower. Targeted very precisely so as to do the maximum damage to the augmentation with minimal effect on the rest of the brain. Whoever did this was either incredibly lucky, or knew exactly what they were doing. Given the probabilities of such a thing happening by chance, I lean towards the latter option, no matter how incredible it seems. Someone deliberately destroyed her augmentation while taking incredible effort to do so without injuring her further… and did so using the crudest tools imaginable. I could do better with, with stone knives and bearskins."
-- tsuzuku
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.