At the end of the second set of Nanoha episodes ("A's"), Nanoha and Fate are pictured as young teen-agers. Ii is stated that at that time they are "Special Investigators" of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. This story is set at that time in their lives, so Nanoha is about 14 years old at the time of this story, and Fate has the same level of maturity, although as a magical construct she has not lived as many years.
As far as Tokyo Mew Mew is concerned, this story is set the year after the fall of Deep Blue. That would make Ichigo, Mint, and Lettuce about 14 years old also. Zakuro is about 5 years older than Ichigo, Pudding about 5 years younger. Berry is a year younger than Ichigo. Ringo is supposed to be about the same age as Pudding, but is somewhat more mature in her appearance.
I will confess that I found the Nanoha anime creepy in several ways. I found all the "loli" stuff to be thoroughly creepy, and much of the fan-service very overdone. I found the Time-Space Administration Bureau to be creepy, too. On the other hand, I liked some of the animation very much, and I liked certain parts of the plot-line, especially in the first year. So I watched it to the end, in spite of the parts I really disliked.
And it happened that the creepy Time-Space Administration Bureau decided that all rogue use of magic must be suppressed. And thus the story begins…
The Cat That Walked by Herself
by tgwWhale
Chapter 1: Cat-Girls Never Submit
"'I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me." (Rudyard Kipling)
Nanoha and Fate swept over the great city that stretched from the mountain foothills to the west to the sparkling ocean to the east. Tokyo was indeed a huge city, and even at flying speed, it took the girls a long time to cross it. Yet they slowly drew closer to their goal, and they began to descend.
"Good to be home again?" Fate said, smiling at her companion.
Nanoha turned to the blonde, and she smiled as well. "Sure," she replied. "Let's get this job done quickly, so I can drop in on the family."
"How long has it been since you saw them?" Fate asked.
"More than six months," Nanoha responded.
"You've grown so much they'll hardly know you," Fate came back. "Filled out so much, too!" She smiled broadly now.
Nanoha smiled back. She indeed looked so much more mature than she had just a few months before, though she still wore her same outfit – a flowing, below-the-knees white dress – when she transformed. She glanced at herself, and smiled once more time, this time to herself: for she clearly filled out her white outfit better than Fate filled out her black pseudo-dominatrix outfit. "Then we'd better get this over with," she said, looking up again.
She looked down at the weapon she carried. "Raising Heart!" she said.
"Yes!" the weapon replied.
"Search mode!" Nanoha commanded. "Detect magical energy, any form."
Indeed, the magical talisman-weapon had many abilities, and searching for magical energy was one of them. And it was less than a minute before Raising Heart responded, "Magical energy detected, form unregistered. In the wooded area ahead." Ahead of the two descending girls was a splotch of greenery that obviously was a park. It stood out clearly amid the built-up concrete expanse of Tokyo and its suburbs.
"Raising Heart!" Nanoha called again. "Detect number of magical sources."
"One magical source remains," the weapon responded immediately. "There were two – one has been destroyed."
"Just one," Fate muttered to her companion. "Shouldn't be hard."
"Yeah, quick and easy," Nanoha came back. "Get it done, get it over, get on out."
Nanoha and Fate, though in appearance only young teen-aged girls, were in fact Special Investigators for the Time-Space Administration Bureau. And the primary mission the Bureau had currently given them was the suppression of rogue magic use. After the horrible results of the rebellion of Precia Testarossa, that most rogue of all magic-users, when the fabric of space-time had so nearly been permanently damaged, it had been decided that all use of magic must be tightly controlled by the Bureau. And so for the last year the Special Investigators had been combing one planet after another, suppressing any rogue use of magic, bringing all magic use under the control of the Bureau – one way or the other.
The two girls were getting lower now, and individual trees and even shrubs were visible to the girls. They slowed, their eyes searching the ground below. "Maybe they'll submit to the Bureau," Fate said. "But on your planet, you never know."
"That's true," Nanoha answered. "But we have to give them a chance."
"Of course," Fate said. "But whether they see reason or not, it's my turn this time."
Nanoha smiled as she chided her companion. "You sure you can handle it?"
"Hey, last time it was your turn," Fate came back, smiling also. "It's my turn to have the fun."
"I'll back you up, just in case," Nanoha said.
Fate nodded. Her beloved Nanoha always backed her up. They always had each other's backs, were always there for each other, now. They were inseparable; so much so that they now slept in the same bed. As she thought of that, Fate wondered if Nanoha's parents would approve, if they stopped for the night…
"There!" Nanoha's voice barked. Fate looked down to where her companion pointed with her weapon. There was a single character, all in pink, with pink hair, standing alone beside a bench in the park.
Fate hated pink, but the pink was not the reason Fate made an ugly face. "Damn!" she muttered. "Cat-girl!" Fate had picked up some bad habits from her original so-called mother, Precia Testarossa, and occasionally displayed something of a potty mouth. Nanoha never indulged in such language herself, but she, too, scowled. For as the two dropped lower, they could clearly see that the creature was indeed a girl, and that she had the black ears and tail of a cat.
Nanoha shrugged. "We've handled cat-girls before, even Alia and Lotte. If we could handle those two, it shouldn't be hard to get this one."
Fate made a face. "But cat-girls never submit. Scrya says that maybe it's the cat in them, I don't know. Alia and Lotte were Graham's familiars, but they didn't submit, even when Graham did. They pretended to, for a while, but then they rebelled." Fate closed her eyes, and hard memories crossed her mind. "We had to destroy them. And Graham was dead, too, before it was over. That was one of our hardest battles, the hardest since the Book of Darkness fights."
"But we won," Nanoha said decisively. "We destroyed them." She looked at her companion closely, and went on: "Hey, if you're not sure you can handle this, I'll take her on."
Something flashed in the blonde's red eyes, something Nanoha was not used to seeing there. "I'm no coward," Fate barked, her jaw set hard. "I'll take this one. It's my turn. You keep high cover up here." For the standard tactic of the two Special Investigators was to have one of them go down to confront their target, while the other stayed high. It was a highly effective tactic, as most magic-users could not fly, nor did their magics have the range to match that of the girls' weapons. Nanoha could stay high, out of range of retaliation, and suppress any attempts at ambush as Fate confronted their target.
"OK," Nanoha responded, a bit uneasily. "I'll stay here, you go down." So she pulled up and hovered there, a couple of hundred meters in the air, while her blonde friend descended toward the cat-girl in pink.
Fate slowed her flight as she eased in behind the cat-girl. The girl was alert, searching for something. She had recently discharged some form of offensive magic, and so had been detected by Nanoha's weapon. But now she was quiet, her eyes searching into the bushes ahead of her. She was in the open, standing on a path with a grassy lawn surrounding her. But a copse of trees and bushes stood just in front of her, and Fate hoped no others of her kind hid in there and had somehow escaped Nanoha's search.
Fate drew nearer to the earth, halting her descent only a meter or so above the ground, and slowed her approach even more. Her target was less than a hundred meters away, now, and still oblivious to her presence. She was well within range; a single shot from the magical weapon in Fate's hands would certainly destroy the cat-girl. But the standing Rules of Engagement of the Time-Space Administration Bureau required that Fate first confront her and give her the chance to submit. And Fate herself did not like the thought of shooting enemies in the back; that was too much like murder. She preferred a fair, open fight. That was one more way that she was like her beloved Nanoha. They had fought each other more than once, back in the day, when they were young. And they had always fought with honor, openly. And so it would be this time; but Fate's hatred of cat-girls made suppressing the thought of a quick shot in the back a bit harder than usual. Cat-girls were a very common form of magical girl, and they never submitted, ever. Fate had hated them ever since she and Nanoha had fought those terrible battles with Alia and Lotte, and now she hated them more than ever. Her hands gripped her weapon more and more tightly as she approached: seventy meters, fifty…
Suddenly something pink sprang up from the cat-girl and blossomed in the air above her. "Ichigo! Ichigo! Alien! Alien!"
"What? Alien?" the cat-girl screamed, turning about. Her dark eyes, large to begin with, grew huge, and her mouth dropped open as she spied Fate approaching. For a split second those huge eyes darted right and left; searching for other opponents. But seeing none, they settled on Fate.
Then Fate reached her adversary, and settled to the ground. And as she did so, she sized up her opponent. The creature was a young girl, no older than Fate herself. And she was quite pretty; but Fate did not care. Instead, she felt revulsion rise up inside of her. She hated cat-girls and she hated pink. Her own outfit was black: strong, dominating. The cat-girl's strapless mini-dress was pink and ridiculously frilly and effeminate; her hair and even her eyes were pink as well. Fate also noticed that the creature's body filled out that ugly pink outfit better than her own body filled out her black leather top, and she hated that, also.
She set her feet and leveled her weapon at the cat-girl, whose eyes grew even larger as she did so. Then Fate spoke, her voice hard and precise: "Cat-girl! You are under arrest for use of destructive magic contrary to the law!"
The cat-girl's mouth fell open even farther, and her eyes revealed that she was not only frightened, but mystified. "What?" she half-screamed. "Who the hell are you?"
"I will ask the questions!" Fate replied, her voice still level but still hard. "Give your name – who you are – now!"
Once again the cat-girl's eyes glanced around. They did not detect Nanoha, high in the air above them, and they saw no others but Fate. So once again they focused; and now the surprise left them, and they became hard. "I asked first! Who the hell are you? Why are you after me?"
Fate suppressed the angry desire in her heart to answer with a fatal blast from her weapon, Bardiche. She struggled to keep her voice level, and spoke again. "You don't need to know that. But I am Harlaown Fate-o, Special Investigator of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. Now: who are you?"
The cat-girl, apparently an abysmally ignorant character, was becoming even more flustered. "The time… uh … space… uh…" She paused for a second. "What in the hell is that?"
Fate, finding herself clearly in charge of the situation, managed to keep her voice level. "You didn't answer my question: Who are you?"
"I… I… am Mew Ichigo," the cat-girl said, stumbling on her words. "And I've never heard of your stupid Bureau, and I have every right to use my magic!"
"Ignorance is no excuse," she said. "The Time-Space Administration Bureau wields power over all use of magic, particularly destructive magic, in order to protect the fabric of space-time…"
"What?" the cat-girl half-shouted, showing anger now. "I don't know what you're talking about! I've done nothing wrong, and I've only used magic to save the freaking world! And I don't know who that Time-Space Whatchamacallit Bureau is, and anyway, they don't run things here, and like I said, I've done nothing wrong, and just let me alone!"
A tiny sigh escaped Fate's lips. Cat-girls never changed, they never submitted. Her voice grew dark. "All magic comes under the authority of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. Now submit to that authority, or be destroyed." She thrust her weapon slightly toward the cat-girl to emphasize her point.
"Be… destroyed? For doing nothing wrong? You're crazy!" the girl in pink came back, fully shouting now.
Fate still kept her voice level. "You discharged destructive magic within the last fifteen minutes. That's how we detected you. I assume you claim that you were 'saving the world' in these last 15 minutes?"
"I… I destroyed a leftover Chimera Anima. That's all!" the cat-girl responded.
"I don't know what that is, but I am sure you have no right to destroy it," Fate came back. "You are not allowed to use destructive magic without the permission of the Time-Space…"
"You're damned right I do!" the cat-girl said quite angrily, showing her teeth. She was silent for a second, and then shouted, "Strawberry Bell!" And some strange, heart-shaped thing – strawberry red, rather than pink – appeared in her right hand.
Fate sighed openly now. She had been sure it would come to this: the proud cat-girl would not submit, but would fight – that weird thing in her hand was surely a weapon of sorts. Fate decided to finish it quickly. "Bardiche!" she said.
"Yes, Master," the weapon replied in a foreign language and a foreign-accented voice.
"Shooting mode!" Fate said. And a glowing rune-circle began turning about her feet, while a smaller one began turning around her weapon.
The cat-girl raised her heart-shaped weapon up before her and began dodging to Fate's right as Fate gave the final command: "Shoot!"
A gleaming yellow ray sprang forth from Bardiche and crashed into some kind of defensive barrier generated by the heart-shaped thing, and exploded. The explosion, so close to Fate's eyes, blinded her momentarily; and when she could see again, she saw that the cat-girl was not destroyed yet, but was running, or, rather, limping, fleeing toward the woods. "Bardiche… shoot!" Fate commanded again, but the accursed creature was quick, and dived into the bushes, rolling as she did so, and the explosion burst behind her. Fate ran up, but she could find no body where she had fired. The cat-girl must have fled into the woods; but she would not escape. Fate could fly, and no matter how quickly the creature could run, Fate would be much faster. She leaped up and flew into the copse of trees.
It was quite open in there; most of the bushes were only along the edge of the trees, where they could get some light. Under the tree-canopy the bushes were few and scattered. Fate slowed, then stopped, hovering a few feet above the ground while her eyes searched the area. She could see no enemy. Could the creature have invisibility powers? Fate was sure no cat-girl ever known had such powers. She looked to the right, to the left…
A little scrape above caught her ear, and she began turning to her right and looking up, and began to chant, "Bardi…"
It was too late. Her pink-clad enemy had leaped from a tree above her and crashed fully into her, dragging her to the ground, where Fate hit, hard, with the cat-girl on top. The hateful creature grappled with Fate, and that was not good: Bardiche was an excellent long-range weapon but was far too long to be of value in its current form during a hand-to-hand fight. Fate was well-trained in melee fighting, but the cat-girl was quick and unnaturally strong – it was part of the cat thing, Fate knew. The girl kept hitting, clawing, even biting Fate; and those little cat-fangs drew blood from Fate's arm. Fate was losing the fight and desperation took hold of her. A savage punch struck Fate on the side of her head, stunning her momentarily, and she struggled to hold on to her opponent as they rolled on the ground.
Then the cat-girl began to chant: "Ribbon… Strawberry…"
It made no sense to Fate, but the cat-girl's voice gave her an idea, and she began her command: Bardiche… Dagger mo…"
But she did not finish the last word before the cat-girl finished her chant: "Surprise!" And from the heart-shaped thing that the cat-girl held against her back there streamed awful power that ripped through Fate's body with flaming destruction. The screaming pain was far worse than anything Fate had ever felt, even under Precia's worst tortures. Fate withered under the blast and the exploding pain. And then, mercifully, the darkness took her.
Author's note: All of the characters named exist in the original Nanoha or Mew Mew animes, mangas. or video games. When I write fanfiction, I assume that the reader is familiar with the original stories and I do not have to introduce the characters. If this has confused any readers, I apologize.