Chapter 1
"Geez Nanoha! Can't you go easy on them for once! And what did I tell you about pushing yourself too hard!" exclaimed Shamal, watching the mages limp their way into her care.
Nanoha laughed at this and cheekily grinned, "But your job would be so boring without me, Shamal. Besides, I wasn't too rough on them."
As she said this, she patted one of her students on the back, causing him cringed and groan in pain. Shamal gave her a look.
"Sorry Leon," Nanoha muttered.
"S'alright, Commander," he said, all the while grimacing when Nanoha wiped the blood on her hand off with a towel.
Shamal opened her mouth to continue her scolding when a five year old ran past her and into her mother's arms.
"Mama!" Vivio yelled as Nanoha picked her up and twirled her around, causing Vivio to giggle.
"How's my girl doing?" Nanoha said, giving Vivio a kiss on the cheek.
As the little Takamachi rambled on about her day at school, Shamal began to clean a wound on Leon's arm.
"How is it possible that one minute she's deadly and the next she's motherly?" Leon wondered out loud.
"The Devil has many sides to her," whispered the girl beside him, making Shamal chuckled.
"Fate-mama is coming home today, right Mama?" asked Vivio when she and Nanoha walked into their home. Before she could notice Nanoha's sad expression, a voice came from the living room.
"I should hope so. She did promise after all."
"Fate-mama!" screamed Vivio as she ran to her other mother. Once Fate set Vivio down, she walked to the shocked Takamachi that was still standing in the doorway.
"I'm home," said Fate as she caressed Nanoha's cheek and gave her a soft, yet short, kiss.
"You said you weren't coming for another week," said Nanoha disbelievingly, grabbing the hand that was still on her cheek. Fate smirked,
"I lied."
Vivio stared up at her mothers and couldn't help but feel happy. Nothing could ruin this moment.
A couple hours later, Fate was finishing up her written report when she felt hands start to massage her neck and shoulders.
"You never take a break do you?" whispered her lover, causing her to shiver.
"God, I missed this," she groaned when Nanoha kneaded her way through the hard knots in the overused muscle.
"Vivio's asleep," Nanoha had moved Fate's long blonde hair to the side and stared pressing light kisses on her neck. She smiled when she heard Fate moan. "If we're really quiet, we could-"
She let out a gasp, an eerie feeling washed over her, as if an enormous amount of power had broken through the atmosphere. Her body and mind were in a daze that didn't release its hold on her until the feeling went away. Sweat had broken out all over her body, and she panted as if she had just run for hours. She noticed then that her knees had given away and all her weight was on her lover who was too, gasping for air.
"What-" Fate's disbelief was interrupted by their daughter, slightly opening the door, tears welling in her mismatched eyes.
"Nanoha-mama? Fate-mama? I feel funny."
Fate stood and went to her, and picked her up in her arms, still trying to solve what had just occurred.
"Receiving an urgent call, my master," said Nanoha's intelligent device, Raising Heart, causing Nanoha to straighten up to her full height and go into commander mode.
"Accept call."
The three soon stared at their old and currently pale friend, Hayate Yagami, her kind blue eyes unusually grave.
"You felt that too." It wasn't a question.
"What was it?" asked Fate, but Hayate shook her head.
"Meet me at the Saint Church, everyone's on their way," and with that, the screen disappeared. Fate and Nanoha looked at one another and nodded, both heading to Fate's car, taking a shaken and confused Vivio with them.
"Sorry we're late, Vivio had a hard time being left with Admiral Lindy and Arf," said Nanoha as she and Fate walked into Carim's office. The couple was surprised at the amount of people.
"Took you long enough," said Vita, who was nudge by Signum. Shamal was on her left, kneeling over Carim who was lying on a couch. Before Fate could ask, Carim quickly replied, "I just felt a little woozy during the episode. I'm fine now." Her last remark aimed at Shamal.
"The reason I called you all here, was because of this."
She held up blank sheet of paper, "I was in the process of seeing my annual prophecy, and everything was going on as normal. But in middle of foreseeing… everything went black… as if all I saw had disappeared"
"You're sure you didn't just faint?" asked Vita.
"That's the strange part. Sometimes I would black out, as if I were in a trance, but when I would snap out of it, the poem would already be written. As you can see, the paper's blank. Even when I couldn't control my power, I always wrote something, even if it didn't make sense." Nanoha had never seen Carim look insecure about her power before.
"Maybe the future changed. Isn't it always in motion?" asked Chrono.
"It doesn't change that fast," admitted Carim.
A pregnant silence took hold of the room, while everyone gathered their thoughts. But before any could voice them, Hayate got a call from Yuuno.
"What we felt was a surge of magical energy," he explained, "When a being, or any substance really, contains an immense amount of magic, mages within their range can sense them."
"Then why hasn't any sensed it?" "How can we track it?" "What exactly is it?" Many asked at once.
Yuuno held up his hand to silence them.
"That's what bothers me. The size of their range depends on how powerful they are. They could be 5 miles away, or 5 billion miles away and we wouldn't know. It could be anything, from what I've read. Supposedly, you can only sense it when you enter its range. We won't sense it if we leave the range or are still in it. Because only a few have been recorded, there isn't much on them, and the only records that discuss them are vague."
"What can we do?" asked Signum.
"Nothing," stated Hayate.
"But what if someone gets a hold of it?" asked Fate, "What if that person isn't necessarily good?"
"Those sources of power have never once been found," reassured Yuuno, "They usually disappear as fast as they came."
"Then how come it happened right after my prophecy was erased?" asked Carim.
"Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe you didn't realize that the surge was what you saw," Yuuno replied. Carim still looked unconvinced, but stayed silent.
"Okay then," said Chrono, "There clearly is nothing that we can do except wait and hope for the best. Yuuno, keep looking for more information, I'll even send people to help research if you need it." Yuuno nodded.
When everyone left, Carim took the blank sheet of paper once again.
This doesn't make sense… yet why do I feel a little relieved, as if I didn't like the prophecy I was about to make?
Thousands or miles away, on the non-administered world #97, in Uminari City, Japan, a hospital had just admitted a young brunette, found near a small café called Midori-ya.