Foreword:
In the past week or so, I've been having a bit of writer's block concerning my main Nanoha story, so I decided to try my hand at writing something else. This is an idea that's been floating around my head for a while, so I thought why not? It's not my main project, so updates will be slower than the Belka Trilogy, but I hope to write for this one every now and then.
Now, anyone who has checked out my MAL or Twitter would easily find out that Love Live is one of my favorite franchises ever. One night, I got to thinking, wouldn't it be cool if they were magical girls? The powers came first, the decision to cross them over with Nanoha came later. As I love the two series (because I am a major Yuri fan), I thought it would be awesome if they could be together in a fic.
Just like the Belka Trilogy, I plan for this to be reasonably long. If you prefer shorter fics, then that's okay. I understand that everyone has personal preferences, and it's not going to hurt my feelings one bit if you drop this story. It's also not going to hurt my feelings if you give me constructive criticism in the comments...in fact, I would prefer you do that. If I don't know how to improve, I can't grow.
That's enough about that. Enjoy the story.
-mrcmc888
They say that on the day the Saint was born, nine stars fell from heaven to prostrate themselves at her feet, and, finding themselves unable to return from whence they came, pledged to take up arms to protect her the rest of her life.
The truth about the Star Knights of the Shutran Guard is most certainly more mundane than that. However, nothing changes the fact that they were one of the most feared fighting forces of the late Belkan Unification Wars, and that they could singlehandedly turn battles in the favor of the Clanagan-Shutra alliance that ultimately ended more than a thousand years of universe-spanning conflict.
The red-and-black armored Shutran Guard was the elite personal fighting force of Klaus IV, Hegemon of Shutra, and in the early stages of the war performed quite admirably against the Sieglinde and Rehner forces. The Guard members were all female, trained from adolescence in the magical combat style of ancient Belka, and were the most powerful soldiers that the Hegemony could draw from the fifteen systems that were its constituents. However, It was not until the Hegemony entered into an alliance with the Kingdom of Clanagan, located in a backwater system known as Midchilda, and the Guard became the protectors of Queen Olivie of the Saegebrecht dynasty, that nine members would make their stunning magical power known to the former Belkan Empire, and to history itself.
As Shutran Guard members cast their real names off when they were knighted, the birth names of those who would come to be called the Star Knights had been lost to the ages, but the monikers the nine came to bear would be repeated around the dimensions for years to come.
They were the Shadow, who moved so quickly that it was impossible for opponents to even touch her, and could infiltrate an enemy camp and kill in the time it took to blink.
The Aegis, who could protect thousands with her shields and barriers, never faltering no matter how powerful the attacks loosed at her were.
The Lance, who with her spear could skewer hundreds upon hundreds of enemies, and who served as the chief strategist of the group.
The Healer, who was a gentle soul that, it was said, could return the dead to their bodies.
The Arm, who fought the death-machines of the Sankt Kaiser with nothing but her own hands and won.
The Flame, who burned with the intensity of a sun and could scorch the face of worlds until nothing remained.
The Soul, who, it was said, could speak to the plants and the animals, and who, it was said, could summon nature to do her bidding.
The Archer, who with her bow shot straight and true, and who could kill a man from the opposite side of the world.
And lastly, the knight who led the group, who was said to shine with the brilliance of a thousand sunrises and some days, to be as radiant as the Saint herself. Even though it was said she hailed from a noble family of the Saint's homeworld, there was not a man that she found suitable to wed, for she loved the thrill of battle far too much.
However, at times it would seem as if she was consumed by a certain disease, and her friendly demeanor would change to vengeful, and she would slaughter whole armies alone. Thus, she was called the Berserker Knight.
The effect the Star Knights had on the enemies of the Saint was undeniable. One of them would lead to an opposing army not pushing its attack. Two of them would lead to a sure white flag. Three of them would lead to entire armies routing just from the sight. Nine of them would make sure the opponents did not even have the time to give up.
It came near the end of the Unification Wars that the Star Knights faced their final battle. At the time, the Midchildan forces bore down on the kingdom of Yne, whose ruling Crozelig dynasty knew that defeat was imminent. However, they possessed a trump card of their own: the Gods' Eye, a moon-sized weapon said to date from the mythical civilization of Alhazard, which would implode the universe on itself, destroying it. The pride of the Crozelig was such that they would rather exterminate all life than allow themselves to lose.
No one knows how they did it, but the Saint and the Shutran Guard managed to invade the Gods' Eye without allowing it to be activated. However, it was not until she slew the Crozelig monarch that Olivie found out the truth about the key to the Gods' Eye: it was not an object. It bound itself to a human being, and when it was removed from its master, it began to cause dimensional alterations in the space.
Before the machine could go out of control and fulfill its horrible mission, however, the Saint fractured the ethereal key into nine pieces, and the nine who volunteered to sacrifice their lives in order to seal it away were the Star Knights.
Each bonded with a piece of the key, and the Saint sealed them away in a pocket dimension, in order to keep the Gods' Eye from ever being activated again.
Two weeks later, Olivie Saegebrecht would be dealt her fatal wound at Verbus, and the age of Ancient Belka came to an end. And in that pocket dimension, time refused to flow, and the knights simply ceased to be anything more than souls in an abstract reality.
When the Time-Space Administration Bureau grew to control the multiverse, the knights slept.
When a girl who would later change the fate of time was born, the knights slept.
When a book of untold power escaped the grasp of the TSAB for an unknown planet, the knights slept.
And when a woman, in her despair, attempted to reach Alhazard to return her long-dead daughter to her, the knights slept.
They would not sleep for much longer.
One year prior to the Jewel Seed incident
The moon of Yne lay silent.
In the distance, a barren, craggy, gray landscape stretched to the horizon, and an inky blackness filled the space beyond. In the sky were hundreds of thousands of stars and clouds, nebulae, galaxies, and planets, filling the view with their colorful symphony.
On the ground, the only thing apart from the seemingly endless expanse of dust and craters was a large, smooth circular mound, seemingly out-of-place amidst the emptiness. The tip pulsed with a strange green light, as if it was a signal to stay away.
From the east, two objects appeared in the air, moving at a high rate of speed. As they dropped closer to the surface, the figures of two people in flight, one larger and one smaller, could be made out. They were clothed all in black; they almost seemed to melt away into the night. The only color on their bodies were the blood-red masks that covered their faces. The two passed over the hill and immediately slowed, becoming upright, then dropped near the oscillating light without making a sound.
The larger figure looked around. Now that he was closer, he could tell that what he thought to be a beacon from the air was a large circular seal, inscribed with runes around the perimeter and glowing from the energy contained within. Every so often, it appeared that the power became too much for the runic circle, which would send a brilliant green laser into the sky. So this was what the Gods' Eye was like.
The rod the smaller person carried in her hand lit a teal color, then buzzed. "That was the others," the voice of a mature woman announced, breaking the silence. "They'll be here within fifteen minutes. It's almost time."
The man's voice sounded higher and younger than his stature would suggest. "Are you sure they won't call our bluff? The TSAB, that is. What if they figure out we wouldn't be that stupid to carry out the plan?"
The woman laughed. "You give them far too much credit, Ullr. I have no doubt those idiots in charge of the Bureau have forgotten their history lessons. If we tell them we have a weapon that could wipe them out, they'll believe it. They'll turn the corrupt officials over to us like we want."
"What about these...what did you call them, Hretha, Star Knights?" The young man's tone was concerned. "Are you really sure they'll follow us?"
"Of course. We have the Saint with us, after all."
"The what?"
"You'll see in due time."
Almost as soon as Hretha said that, a set of feet touched the ground behind Ullr, then another, and another, and another. Within the minute, there were twelve people of various shapes and sizes surrounding the two, their magical Devices drawn, all dressed in the same black clothes and red masks. The young man was unable to see the face of his older partner. In his entire time as a part of the group that surrounded him now, he had never glimpsed the face of anyone else. Nonetheless, he was sure she was smiling under that blank red visage.
Hretha's voice broke the silence. "How did it go?"
A stocky man stepped forward. "We incapacitated the TSAB garrison before they had time to send for help. I was surprised there was such a small number guarding a site with such high importance as this."
The older woman began to pace around the circle, naming off the masked figures one by one. "Hoenir...Vidarr...Eir...Altur...Mani...Njordr...Saga...Ran...Hodr...Njorun...Freyja...Baldur..."
She had come to stand in front of her younger partner. "...Ullr..."
"...And I, Hretha."
"We begin," she announced, taking a position next to the glowing seal. "Tyr awaits in the inner sanctum. Come." She beckoned with her finger.
The first of the masked individuals stepped onto the seal and disappeared. One by one, they followed, until only the young man and his senior were left. Taking a deep breath, he strode onto the magic circle.
At once, a strange buzzing sensation filled his body, and he found himself in a circular, cavernous room, filled with a strange light. The walls of the cavern seemed to be every color at once and yet none at all, and shifted as he looked at them into shapes that he was sure weren't physically possible. It was starting to make him sick. He turned his gaze to the floor, making sure not to look at the walls again if he could help it.
From the others surrounding him, he heard a whisper say, "So this is what the inside of a planet looks like." He had no idea what they were talking about. There was no way this could be the core.
The floor of the cavern was gray stone, with several concentric circles carved every half- or quarter- meter, and several smaller circles overlaid over the larger ones. In each, a progressively more complicated incantation spread itself out in the runes, and the tongue, of Old Belka. At the center of the circles, a simple, small obelisk rose from the floor, and next to it stood a masked man, whose dark hair was long enough that it flowed out from behind his mask. He held the limp form of a small, blonde girl by the wrist; she didn't look to be much older than six.
Hretha strode toward him. "Is that the Saint you speak of, Tyr? Impressive."
The man answered, deep and smooth. "She is an unfinished prototype...I have yet to perfect the art of cloning. These eyes will never open. This mouth will never speak. But for this purpose, she is perfect."
"I'll leave it to you, then."
"I assure you, it will not fail."
Backing away, Hretha signaled the masked people to spread out. All of them complied, their Devices at the ready. Half of Ullr felt like running in terror, and the other half was excited beyond belief.
It was time for the ceremony to begin.
The masked man who had been called Tyr placed the hand of the girl over the stone obelisk in the center of the room. Slowly, he produced a long, sharp knife.
"Rise, knights of Shutra," he intoned. "Your master beckons."
In a single deft stroke, he sliced the arm of the child, and red blood dripped onto the stone of the obelisk. Almost immediately, it began to shine with a powerful light, spreading out, filling all the channels of the carvings on the floor. In front of the young man, runic inscriptions glowed.
The light grew so intense that he felt compelled to shield his eyes. He didn't know how many minutes it was, maybe two, maybe three, before it died down.
When he opened them again, he saw nine armored female figures, shimmering ethereally, in the space between Tyr, the immobile girl, and the rest of the masked group. They all appeared to be almost like glass; they were able to be seen through, but there was no doubt that they were there.
They had done it.
All around him, Ullr could hear the voices of his compatriots, whispering.
"That's them. It's the Star Knights."
"The Gods' Eye is ours."
"Saint be praised, I can finally find the TSAB official who sent my husband to his death. It is truly a miracle."
Slowly, hesitantly, Ullr saw Hretha step forward, as if to initiate contact with the forms.
As soon as she did, the shape of a dark-haired girl, the smallest of the knights, glowed violently and disappeared.
The voices of the masked group turned from happiness to surprise in barely an instant.
One by one, the Star Knights of Shutra were disappearing.
There was only one left, a tall, red-haired knight, who was looking straight at Ullr with mournful violet eyes.
Then she too vanished.
All around her, the masked group was frozen. Then Hretha spoke. "After them!" she screamed, and thirteen men and women in blood-red masks rushed toward the center of the cavern.
The sensation overcame him again, and Ullr found himself standing back on the surface of the moon of Yne with his compatriots.
The knights were nowhere to be found. Beside him, his senior was pacing, muttering. "I don't understand...we had this planned...how could it fail? Why would they reject us?"
Suddenly, one of the masks, a smaller figure, pointed to the sky and exclaimed, "What's that?!"
When Ullr followed his comrade's finger, what he saw stunned him.
Nine orbs of different colors in a perfect wedge formation were streaking across the night sky, just like the old myths said.
At that moment, he knew they were without a doubt the Saint's sworn guardians of old.
Then the nine lights shot upward, and were lost among the stars.
North of Lake Towada, Aomori Prefecture, Japan, Earth
The lone lights on the Tohoku country road were the small blue sedan's headlights. A light rain drummed itself against the windshield, and the wipers beat it back.
Not much traffic came this way during the day. As late as it was, the woman's car was the only one on the road. Not that she minded; she had grown up in this area. She knew all the shortcuts from years of driving the family dairy farm's delivery truck. And it gave her much more time to think.
Earlier in the day, she had spoken at a teachers' conference in Aomori. When she got the invitation, she had been shocked that she would be regarded so highly; the woman had only become the principal of the Akita high school where she worked only two years ago, and she doubted she had the amount of experience to speak on the subject. Nonetheless, she had been invited, and had dutifully gone. It wasn't the best oration she had ever spoken, but it was serviceable. However, thanks to a deliberation over the zoning of the Aomori school districts, which didn't concern her but would be rude to leave in the midst of nonetheless, she was a good five hours later than she thought she would be. Even though the woman had taken the shortcut, she wouldn't arrive home until after midnight at the earliest. It was a good thing tomorrow was a Saturday.
As she rounded a curve smoothly, something flashed in the corner of her eye. She searched the sky, and out of her right window, saw a blinking white light skimming the trees of the countryside. She chuckled a bit to herself. It was just an airplane, but she liked watching them nonetheless.
A minute passed, then another. She continued to drive, but something was beginning to feel strange. The light was still right alongside, and it seemed like it had grown brighter.
Is it following me?
After another minute, she looked only to find that the light seemed to be closer than ever. It was almost like someone was shining a flashlight through the window.
At that moment, she heard a strange, high-pitched noise, almost like a shrill chirp, then another, then another.
That was enough to force herself to pull over. She had no idea what was going on.
When she stepped out of the car, the woman knew something strange was going on. The voices of what seemed like a thousand birds: swallow, finch, thrush, warbler, heron, and more, were raised in unison, in the dead of night. There was no sun, yet they sang as if it was midday. Her heart was pounding so hard, the woman thought it might burst any second.
As the woman stood, rooted to her spot in awe, the light passed overhead, and she could see that it was not one, but four orbs, orange and green and lime and purple, all dancing in a circle, flitting about like fairies.
The wreath of lights was hovering directly above her, and their movements were hypnotic. She was terrified. She didn't know what she was seeing, but still the woman couldn't look away.
As she stood transfixed, the green light broke from the group and began to spiral downwards.
With a start, the woman realized that it was headed toward her.
Suddenly, everything became bathed in emerald light, and the cacophony stopped entirely. The only sound she could hear was her heartbeat pounding out a cut-time rhythm.
As she tried to process what was going on in her confusion and fear, the woman saw something that she would remember for the rest of her life.
Directly in front of her was the figure of a sleeping girl, arched backwards in midair, radiating what looked like a halo around her. Her ash-blonde hair fell down her back and wreathed her naked body. To the woman, she looked like an angel. She almost looked too familiar. It was unnerving.
As she stood, transfixed, the strange girl slowly turned upright and opened her eyes, and as soon as she did, all the color in the woman's face drained.
She knew what that sense of deja vu was now. Those delicate features, those two amber pools...
The woman was staring into the face of what could have been herself, ten or fifteen years ago.
Almost instantly, everything disappeared. The strange girl, the lights, the birds...it was if they had never been there in the first place.
Slowly, the woman heard the sounds of the Tohoku night coming back one by one, the babble of a stream, the cry of a cicada, the croak of a frog.
She sat on the ground beside her car, her mind blanking. She didn't know what to think. What had she seen? What were those lights? Who was that girl? Why her?
Slowly, the woman pushed herself to her feet. It was less than a meter to the seat of her car, but her body trembled more than it had ever done in her entire life.
Was I dreaming?
She turned the ignition and pressed the pedal as hard as she could, hoping, praying, to leave that memory behind her, scrapped on the side of the road.
It wasn't until a month later, however, that the truly strange things began to happen. The woman woke up on a seemingly normal day, and fifteen minutes later found herself vomiting into the toilet. She called in sick that day, but by the afternoon she was fine.
It happened again the next day, and again, and again, and again, so she finally decided to go see the doctor.
In the past month, she was still thinking about the strange lights she saw often. She resolved to do research about it, and what she found shocked her.
The previous year, there had been five sightings of unexplained multicolored lights just like the ones she witnessed, four of them over Japan.
The first was a video on the internet where a man on the outskirts of Tokyo swore he had seen a UFO crash. On the news clip where he was interviewed, he was ranting hysterically, but he claimed to have witnessed nine orbs in a V-formation, and a pink light on the outside edge suddenly plunge into the treeline. When he went to investigate, there was nothing there.
There was a shaky picture of a dark purple light, so faint it could hardly be seen, falling out of a formation over Kagoshima, but in this case the woman could only make out eight lights. There was no pink orb with the formation.
Over Volgograd, Russia, a teal light had been observed circling the city before disappearing. It was the clearest of the sightings, but the other lights weren't present.
A blue light had left a formation of six and had dropped into the ocean just outside Chiba, but it did not disturb the water at all.
And lastly, barely a month before her experience, a brilliant red orb had been captured by cameras streaking over Chiyoda, passing the Imperial Palace.
As the woman sat in the cool doctor's office, she still knew about as little as she had when she had seen the flying object, and the strange girl, for the first time. All of those sightings seemed too much like what she had seen; the group of orbs, the one breaking formation...every part of that had happened to her.
The door to the examination room opened, and she went in. At least this would put all her doubts to rest; the doctor would tell her that nothing was wrong with her. She could put her harrowing experience behind her for good.
The tests went as routinely as possible, but near the end, the doctor pricked her finger. The woman wasn't completely certain, but she was pretty sure today wasn't the time when her annual blood-drawing was scheduled.
The doctor left the examination room. He was taking longer than he usually did.
Finally the door opened, and the old man in the white coat entered again, holding a clipboard. "Ma'am," he announced, "congratulations."
Congratulations?
"What do you mean?" the woman replied.
"You should know," he replied. "You're pregnant."
The woman's mind immediately blanked. That had to be a mistake. It couldn't be true.
"That's...not possible," she replied shakily.
"How so?" the doctor asked.
"My husband's been dead for three years."
Four years later
The woman stood outside the school that she would be working at, starting today, and thought back.
The teachers in her school at Akita were in an uproar when she had announced that she was going to have a child. It was somewhat of a scandal, a widow being pregnant by someone she didn't even know. But the other teachers didn't want to fire her; they all agreed that she was one of the best principals they'd ever had. They tried to get her to stay. They offered maternity leave, a pay raise, everything they could do. But she chose to resign. She had brought so much shame upon herself, it was the only honorable thing to do.
She had given birth to a healthy girl, who grew fast. The woman never wanted to go to work again, but her husband's life insurance, and the maternity leave the school provided, didn't last forever. So when one of her former coworkers in Akita told her about an open job at a school in central Tokyo, she reluctantly accepted it.
She didn't want to leave her daughter alone for such a long time. She was already a distant enough mother at it was when she was around the child every second of the day, but she had no choice. At least in a faraway place like Tokyo, no one would question the fact that she was a single parent.
That was how she ended up in front of the school in Chiyoda.
The surroundings were very beautiful, she had to admit. The amount of greenery surrounding the school almost made her forget she was in the center of one of the largest cities in the world, and less than a half hour from the electronic paradise of Akihabara, and the seediness of Ikebukuro. She had been told the school had been built by the British in 1921. It certainly looked that way.
She strode up the long sidewalk heading to the front door, with the cherry trees on either side occasionally dropping their creamy pink blossoms.
It was time to start her new life.
A short, balding man greeted her as she opened the front door. The hallways of the school were remarkably clean, she noted.
"Ah, you must be the new headmaster!" he exclaimed in the shaky voice of the elderly. "We're very happy to have you here."
They even called her headmaster instead of principal. It really did feel like stepped into fifty years ago.
"My name is Tomita. I'm the chair of the science department here. The other teachers are in the staff room, waiting on you," the older man said as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
"Is the alumni association representative here today?" she asked the older man. "I talked to her about conducting a tour last week."
"No, Mrs. Kosaka has something to attend to. I wish she would tell us sooner...she's so spur-of-the-moment. My old bones can hardly keep up with her. By the way," he continued, "I heard you were very notable in Akita."
Her blood grew cold. If news of the scandal had reached all the way here...
"I don't know if I could say so. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, don't be modest," Tomita chuckled. "Your friend from your old school put in a good word for you."
The woman breathed a sigh of relief. It didn't look like her past would follow her all the way here.
"You have a daughter, don't you?" the old man asked.
"How did you know?"
"I happened to see you in the grocery store yesterday, with an adorable little girl. She looked just like you, so that's what I assumed," he answered. "I hope your move didn't affect her too much. It's hard for children that age to travel that far."
"No, she's adjusting fine," the woman replied. "She's just so shy...she didn't really have that many girls her age nearby that she could play with when we lived in Akita, and I was so busy with other things that she couldn't make friends. Whenever I took her out back home, she always clung to me. I hope that changes here."
"Well, you know," Tomita said, "I have a niece about your daughter's age. Maybe they could get along."
"Oh, really? What's she like?" the woman asked, as they came to the top of the stairs and continued down a long hallway lined with classrooms.
"Her name is Umi, like the sea, but I think what's funny is she hates water. She won't go swimming, and if she accidentally steps in a puddle she'll cry. She cries over everything. My sister's husband is the very traditional sort, and he's already trying to teach her to be a proper lady." Tomita chuckled. "It's not working."
"She sounds like my daughter would like her."
"I'll bring her by sometime. I take care of her when my sister and her husband are busy. He's a sixth-dan kendoka, and a pretty good archery teacher as well, and she's a Mai dancer, after all...they don't have a lot of free time, what with running dojos and all."
"Are they teaching her?"
"She's the only child, so she's the heir to both. She'll learn soon enough. I nearly burst out laughing every time I try to imagine her trying to swing a sword, or draw a bow, or do kabuki. She'll just keep tripping over her own feet."
The woman laughed politely. At least her daughter wouldn't be lonely here. She hoped.
Presently, the two had reached the door labeled "Staff Room." Tomita opened the door.
Collecting her breath, the woman strode into the room authoritatively. The eyes of every person in the room were on her. She had to make her first impression count. She took a second, then opened her mouth.
"My name is Mikoto Minami. I'll be taking over as the new headmaster from today. It's a pleasure to meet all of you."
AUTHOR'S NOTES
This is a prologue, just wanting to make that clear. The next chapters will have canon characters. I promise. I'm just using this to set up the main story, explain why the hell the TSAB would have anything to do with high school girls in Tokyo, etc.
So I plan to make some references to this fic in my Belka trilogy. For example, there the Star Knights still exist, but they're still sealed away.
Again, just a disclaimer, fic updates may be very slow. I hope you guys don't mind.
NicoMaki is my OTP, and Nico is best girl. 3
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