trans_9 | A girl who can fly should never fall on her sword [Closed]

"Forgetting it does matter," Aibghalien said. "You can't learn without memory. There's no magic way to 'just know better' if what you've learned has been stripped away."

He drummed his fingers together for a moment, trying to think of how best to put this.

"Signum, for my part, I forgive you. You ought to know that, but I'm saying it explicitly just so you can't possibly claim, even just to yourself, that I don't."

"I appreciate that," Signum says, meaning it despite her curtness. "But I'm not looking for forgiveness from others."

She rests her head on her hand, as long as she's sitting down. Now that she thinks about it, she's very tired after hoboing it up and constantly fighting for however long she was out of touch with the present. Taking a full-force punch from Vivio without any magical protection was also pretty harsh. That girl was scarily strong.

"I suppose I'll get over it and continue living eventually. I've existed for millennia by now, so something like this isn't going to stop me. I want to make sure this can't possibly happen again, though. No one should have to bear the pain of my mistakes, let alone involuntarily."

She gestures to the magical tome she brought in, lying motionless but, in her eyes, malevolently near her. "And that needs to either be destroyed, or somehow repaired and re-merged with the honest Reinforce we know. It shouldn't exist in this world, and has no right to. I don't even know how Stacy got a hold of it. Nanoha knows how to destroy it, and Reinforce should know if it can be fixed or not. It might belong to her version of reality, actually..."

"I know you're not." Though he's glad she recognizes the fact as well. "Still, easier to forgive yourself if those you feel you've wronged forgive you in their turn. Offering yourself up for indiscriminate retaliation or honorable suicide is not going to solve anything but hurt the people he care about you," he added more sternly, as he crossed his arms, "and you know that."

He glanced down at the tome, then nodded. That was honestly the least of his concerns at the moment, though of course he'd keep it safe if she so desired.

Signum leans back and lets out another, deeper sigh. "I suppose that may have been a little immature, or possibly old-fashioned. There's no way Hayate would let me, regardless. I think I've heard enough remonstrations about that from my...victims...to be sure it won't be necessary anyway."

She lets out a bit of a humorless laugh. "Even Ms. Kaname's friend was insistent I should stay alive and aware to make up for it, and she's still in the medbay. The difference between older cultures and newer ones, I guess."

"You're suffering enough, anyway," he murmured, unfolding his arms to look at her over his clasped hands again. "Have you... heard any news, since then? I assume you've been in hiding and out of touch..."

"Other than Nanoha's guess that Hayate was re-podded, not really. I've gathered also that a lot more people were affected by the Clock," she says.

"Actually, I haven't even checked the inbox on my Omnicomm..."

"That was what I was wondering if you'd heard, yes," he said, quietly. "I don't think there's any 'guessing' involved there.

"Well, that's another reason for me to stay awake, I guess. I think only one or both of the Reins and myself are active right now, out of the family..." she says, pondering. "As much as I trust our friends, I had better help defend the ship while they're asleep."

She stops and thinks. "And find someone who can cook for the Reins, unless they've learned how recently."

He couldn't help but chuckle. Despite his suspicions that she wasn't quite as unaffected as she let on, he had to admire the way she addressed it all so matter-of-factly.

"If you're worried about something like this happening again...?" She'd said as much, but she seemed to have worked through the worst of her guilt at least for the moment.

Signum sighs. "That's my main concern, and the actual main reason I offered to re-pod myself. I refuse to risk going out of control again, for any reason, and unfortunately I seem to have the capability to subvert the security measures on this ship with my Barriers. I was hoping the Magic Department would be able to create some kind of failsafe, if you all don't think I should just turn in my Device and be done with it."

The pendant on her neck gives a ping of protest. "You lived in the Armory before, Laevatein," she replies wearily, "You can handle it again."

"If we spent all our time worrying that dark moments from our past would overtake us again, we'd all be too crippled and paranoid to function," he said. Not entirely to her. He frowned, pushed his own thoughts aside, and continued as he looked back up to her.

"You're not without ethics, kindness, or rationality even at your worst, that much is clear."

"You haven't seen me at my worst, Aibghalien," Signum says, darkly, remembering what little she could of her lives before Hayate. "Not even remotely."

"And I don't expect to," he said, evenly. "Signum, you'll probably just glare at me, but I honestly feel a little responsible for what happened just for lacking of making one thing clear."

He put his hands on the arms of his chair, leaning forward. "You remembered me last time, so next time, if you remember me, remember this: If you have a problem, come to me. Whatever it is. I will find a way to help you.

"All right?"

Signum looks off to the side, once again confused as all else by peoples' insistence on making friends with dangerous enemies who had, very recently, harmed them. She'd never gotten it when Nanoha and Testarossa had done it, and it made even less sense for Aibghalien to do so. On the other hand, counterintuitiveness aside, it did seem to be effective...

"Tch. If I can, I will," she eventually gets out through the flurry of emotions going on behind her continued stoicism. "Assuming I can remember."

She was looking at it entirely wrong. Signum was, and had been, a friend first, and when she had been in a bad place, she hadn't thought she could turn to him. It wasn't making a friend out of an enemy; it was reminding a friend that even in the worst of times, she was not alone.

"As for your Barriers... Could you put one up here and now? Before you worry too much about needing some counteracting agent I'd like to try something."

Did it always come back to experiments for him?

Well, she hadn't really expected friendship to continue through almost killing him either, hence the discontinuity of her perception.

"Only for a few seconds. Mages from my world can sense these things, and if I were them, I'd assume this to mean I was in here trying to attack you again," Signum says, then closes her eyes to concentrate, holding Laevatein in a clenched right hand.

Immediately, the color of the room changes and a feeling of stillness and arcane dimensional shifting occurs as the room is turned into a very small Barrier, out of phase with reality.

Aibghalien.... had good reason to forgive someone turning on their comrades due to outside causes.

"...after what I've done in here..." He shook his head, glanced to the far end of the room (which, fortunately was far enough away to put both Signum and his collection of magical items well out of range of even a 40' radius burst) and spoke one single word in the language of magic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesDisjunction.htm).

Signum blinks as the Barrier is instantly broken, normal reality shattering back into place. She's used to seeing such fields overwhelmed by force, or collapse due to interference from Anti-Magic Fields (there is a reason those are only used by people who want collateral damage), but the feeling of that spell from Aibghalien was akin to having built a 6000 square foot, two-story greenhouse, and watching it shatter and collapse from one precisely-placed hit from a regular hand hammer.

"...whatever that spell was, it's impressive," Signum says, again impressed by the breadth of Aibghalien's magical style compared to her own simple combat spells.

"It's one of the most powerful spells in magic," Aibghalien said. "And I always keep it memorized at least once, just in case."

He grinned at her, then sobered. "I was, I think justifiably, afraid of what it might do to you were you caught in its radius. But from an external vantage point it would be easy enough to target without endangering anyone or anything inside."

"A trump card against anything magical," Signum falls back into her habit of summarizing Aibghalien's point, "including general field effects. It could certainly prevent me from doing anything too insane."

"If it makes you feel better, by the way, I don't think I'd disappear if such an effect hit me. I was merely a construct, or manifestation of an artifact once, but my existence is independent of it now, and I'm more or less a living creature. You could permanently damage Laevatein, though, and I'd ask that you be careful of that."

"I'd still rather not risk it, both for your own sake, Laevatein's, and the fact that if in the course of a conflict with you, I suppressed your ability to fly... it would probably not be pleasant."

He put that image out of his mind. "In any case, I think the many virtues of having you out and fully-functional far outweigh the very slim chance of potential risks recurring. My official position as a Magic Department representative, if you will." He grinned.

"Don't forget that if you dispel my Armor without actually reversing the effect properly, I might end up naked," Signum supplies helpfully, mostly just to see Aibghalien's reaction. "That kind of spell actually does replace our clothes, not just cover them."

Unable to fault his logic, and feeling all the better for being surrounded by masochistically supportive people, Signum relents her bad mood somewhat. "As a warrior, and your junior in the Department, I can't argue with that," she replies. "When the TSAB caught us the first time, they just pressed us into their service and were done with it. Nanoha will almost assuredly decide the same thing for me this time, if no one else is angry enough to demand something harsher."

She sighs, slight smile fading back to her normal neutral expression. "I just want to do more to apologize to the victims, really."

Signum teasing him is so far from his image of her that he doesn't recognize it as such, but it earns a bemused grin all the same. "Well, I won't hesitate to toss a dispel magic or two next time. No permanent damage possible to Laevatein possible, and Celena isn't the jealous sort..."

Good. For all that she had any number of people she knew from her own world around here, Signum had always seemed a little lonely, just from the way held herself a little aloof and played the 'calm warrior woman' role to the hilt. "I'm sure we can find a way to put you to use," he said. "Some project to improve life on the ship."

Congratulations on being the fifth or sixth person she's ever even considered joking around with, Aibghalien. Erio may have beaten you, but she has an image to maintain in front of the kids.

"I won't hesitate to do anything you feel would help," Signum says, "Except subject my armor to that spell you just mentioned. And for the sake of my sanity please don't tell Hayate or Zwei about that."

"Well, I've been working on my own project to enhance your Devices in my spare time, since your sort of mages seem to possess more raw magical strength than I can imagine," he said. "But that's really my own project, as beneficial as it would be if you all could cleave through the Ohm like so much pudding. But I will certainly keep an eye out for possibilities...

"Though mind you," he said, looking up at her, "I don't actually know the full range of your abilities."

A girl who can fly should never fall on her sword [Closed]

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