AN: I've always wanted to answer reader reviews in my ANs. Time to start, I think!
iZuikaku: Sorry, but you're going to be disappointed for a while. Fate will appear, but not for a very long time.
Tabasc0: Thanks! That was one of my concerns going into this. I'm glad to see I'm hitting the characterization right!
Engineered Muse: Read and find out!
Christopher Yagami: A lot of the problems you critique will, I hope, be limited to the opening chapter. Rest assured, following chapters will at the very least have more doing rather than just talking, and I will be trying to take more time with worldbuilding and stuff. And while I appreciate the offer, I already have someone to act as my beta. The first chapter stays as is, though. I don't like revising chapters after I publish them.
Dasu-kun: Thanks! I hope to finish this, too. Not got the best track record on that...
~o~
It was a beautiful spring day as Nanoha Takamachi, age nine, walked home from school with her best friends Arisa Bannings and Suzuka Tsukimura. Their route took them through one of Uminari City's many lush parks, this one a small patch of forest that covered the ground in a shady canopy. It made for a pleasant break from the sun with the seasons turning from spring to summer.
Nanoha, talking and giggling with her friends, her brown hair done up in two short pigtails and wearing her white school uniform, was the very picture of an ordinary girl. She was great in math class, but every child has that one subject they're really good at. She lived with her mother and father and older brother and sister; for a living, the family ran a fairly popular bakery. This in stark contrast to her two friends. Arisa, for all that she was culturally as Japanese as they came, had been born in America to a rich family, and Suzuka's family was just as wealthy. Quite un-ordinary. None of them cared, of course. To the trio, visiting Midori-ya was just as fun as going to the massive mansions and petting the dogs and cats, respectively.
As the three girls approached the exit from the park, the conversation turned towards the recent career day – and from happy chattering to one of Arisa's usual lectures.
"Seriously, Nanoha, quit moping over that career sheet. So you don't know what you want to do when you grow up. Who cares! Just you wait, half the kids in our class are going to change their minds in a week."
"You and Suzuka know what you want to do," Nanoha weakly pointed out.
"That's 'cause we have rich parents who sat us down and walked us through it when we were five," Arisa retorted.
"Four," Suzuka chimed in. "There was a flowchart."
Arisa shuddered. "Your mom scares me sometimes, Suzuka. But anyway!" She turned back to Nanoha, face drawn in an adorable scowl. "Just put something generic like police officer or something, turn it in, and quit angsting about it!"
"Mou, okay, okay, Arisa!" Nanoha protested. She desperately cast about for a change of subject, and her eyes fell on a red glint coming from the bushes lining the trail. Curious, she jogged over to the bush and picked up the source: a simple rope necklace with a gorgeous red gem, perfectly round, as its centerpiece.
"Wow, that's pretty!" Suzuka gasped from over Nanoha's shoulder.
Nanoha's sense of responsibility, strengthened mightily by the lengthy hospital stay her father had undergone even earlier in her life, kicked in at that. "We need to find a police station, turn it in," she declared as she stood up. "This belongs to somebody, and they might come looking for it."
"Ah, so responsible," Arisa sighed fondly. "Oh well. I think there's a police station a couple blocks from the park…"
As the girls walked away to find the station, none of them noticed a fuzzy black blob behind the bushes, watching them leave with gleaming red eyes. Once they were out of sight, it slinked away. Not now.
~o~
The nice policeman behind the desk hummed thoughtfully as he examined the gem, before putting it down. "Honestly, I think you could probably just take this home with you and nobody will mind.
Nanoha blinked, surprised. So did her friends. "But isn't it… valuable?" Suzuka asked.
"Not really. I did a stint as a diamond salesman in the academy, this is probably artificial sapphire," the officer said, giving it a tap with his nail. "It's worth, oh, 5000 yen or so. We'll hold it for twenty-four hours in case it has sentimental value for someone, but I think it's going to be yours, young lady."
Nanoha beamed. "Thank you!"
Responsible or not, Nanoha was still nine years old. The thought of getting such a pretty necklace as a reward for being responsible left her on cloud nine for the rest of the day and in a bright mood the next. That her family applauded her decision and expressed eagerness to see the necklace over dinner only added to her buoyant mood.
After school she picked up the necklace – the officer had been right about nobody claiming it – and wore it home with a spring in her step. Her family appreciatively oohed and aahed at it when she got home. Life was good. Even having to do homework in her room did little to dampen her mood.
The sky was just getting dark when Nanoha put down her math textbook, having finished not only the assigned problems, but also next chapter. She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head – and then, with an almighty crash and the sound of splintering wood the whole house rocked to its foundations. Nanoha was pitched to the floor, and spent a few dazed seconds gaping in shock before she darted under her desk. No more shocks came, though. Instead, Nanoha faintly heard shouts downstairs, and… growls?
Satisfied that whatever just happened it wasn't an earthquake, Nanoha crawled out from under her desk and headed down the stairs. Three steps above the bottom, she finally got a look at the dining room, and she froze.
Squatting on the remains of the family's dinner table was a horse-sized ball of black. Fuzzing at the edges indicated that the black might be fur, but it look nothing like any animal Nanoha had ever heard of. The only features the thing had were two red, vaguely feline eyes. The rest was just roiling black.
It also had several thin segmented tentacles out and about, and Nanoha followed them to a sight that made her heart jump into her throat: her brother Kyouya and sister Miyuki, both wielding swords and fending off the tentacles. To her relief, neither appeared to be injured, but they also weren't making any headway against the monster.
At that moment, Nanoha's father Shiro burst into the fight with a sword of his own. Vaulting over the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen, he lunged at the monster swordpoint first, clearly intent on skewering it and ending the fight there. The monster, though, was too fast; it withdrew a few tentacles from swatting at Kyouya and Miyuki and brought them out to bat Shiro's sword aside. Well, all but one. That one darted after the wielder himself. Once again, Nanoha's heart leapt into her throat, but Shiro hopped back, buying enough distance to bring his sword back up to deflect the tentacle.
None of this diminished the fear Nanoha felt. Now her family was on the defensive again, and somehow she could see that compared to her siblings Shiro was… stiff, was the best way to put it. Memories flashed through her mind of long evenings in the house, alone, her family desperately trying to keep the household afloat with Shiro in the hospital. Memories of seeing her father, wrapped in bandages, hooked up to and surrounded by machines, deathly still.
"Nanoha, over here!"
Flinching, Nanoha glanced back over to the counter, where she could see her mother Momoko poking her head around and indicating that she should join her. Carefully, Nanoha crept over, noting the house phone in her mother's hand.
"I've called the police," Momoko said, her normally warm eyes shining with fear. "Just… stay here with me where it's safe, okay?"
She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. That was a monster right out of a bad dream out there, and Nanoha was nine with no cool sword-fighting skills. What could she do? And yet… what the monster could do to her wasn't what scared her – even if the counter seemed awfully flimsy against something that could bust through walls.
"B-But what about Papa?" she blurted out. "I know h-he got h-hurt, that's w-why he was in the hospital s-so long…" Momoko visibly winced, and Nanoha pressed her advantage. "I saw him when attacked that monster, he's not moving right! He could- he could…"
"I know…" Momoko whispered, almost too softly for her daughter to hear over the din of the fight. "I know, Nanoha. But what can we do?"
The pain in her mother's voice was palpable, and it was old. Nanoha knew it was old because it was the same pain she had felt all those years ago. And it was that sudden sense of empathy that brought her to her senses. She could do nothing. Nothing but stay quiet and out of the way. Again. It rankled. It made her want to yell, and scream. And yet the logic was unassailable.
Then she heard a cry of pain, and cold rationality flew right out the window. Damn not being able to do anything! Nanoha stood, to jump into the fray and do something-
"I am here, my Master."
The mechanical yet feminine voice out of nowhere brought her up short. "Who's there?" she demanded, head on a swivel trying to find the source.
"Nanoha, what-"
"Down here, my Master."
Almost reverently, Nanoha grasped the necklace she'd only just gotten, pulling it up to eye level. "Was that you?" she breathed.
"Yes. I am Raising Heart, Intelligent Sealing Device."
A pause. Nanoha tilted her head in confusion. "Um…"
"I can also be shot."
Nanoha felt the counter bump up against her. The situation was becoming more surreal by the second. There was a shadow monster in her living room, her siblings and father knew how to use the swords displayed prominently in the dojo-
Curious, Nanoha peeked over the counter just in time to see Miyuki catch one of the tentacles on the edge of her blade and, with the subtlest of movements moved it out of the way. And then she let her momentum carry her so that she ducked under another tentacle. Okay, so they didn't just know how to use the swords, they were really good at it.
Anyway, her new necklace she'd found on the ground could talk. And shoot, apparently. Somehow.
At this point, Nanoha had met and exceeded her weirdness quota for the day. So she simply accepted that the gem was talking, it was apparently offering her power, and if she wanted to fight she needed power. So she simply asked, "What do I need to do?"
The reply she received was not in words. Not words that could be heard with ears, at least. And despite the length, Nanoha knew she could recite it. Knew it down to her soul.
"I am the one who gives you this charge: release your power to your contracted master. As the winds fill the sky, and the stars fill the heavens, so shall my heart fill with courage, and my hands with magic! Raising Heart, set up!"
Light flashed over Nanoha, and power flowed through her as if it had always been there. She watched, fascinated, as a fancy white and blue dress, bearing a strong resemblance to her school uniform, wrapped around her, and the gem in her left hand expanded into a golden staff, a ring three-quarters encircling the same red gem grown to the size of her hand. The transformation finished, and her feet touched the ground. Apparently she'd been floating?
"Augh!"
Miyuki's pained cry tore Nanoha out of her transformation, and back to the fight in the living room. Miyuki lay in a crumpled heap, clutching her right ankle, and Kyouya was right in the middle of being thrown into a wall. With two assailants out of the way, the monster wrapped its tentacles in one twisted mass, plainly a second away from smashing it down on Shiro.
"No!" Nanoha shouted, aiming her staff at her father and willing him to be safe.
"Protection," Raising Heart intoned, and a pink wall of energy imposed itself between Shiro and the monster. The tentacles struck – and bounced clean off before dissolving. The monster reared back, screeching.
Nanoha blinked and glanced at her hand. "Eh? I did that?"
"You did, my master."
The monster's roaring, seemingly closer, drew Nanoha's attention again, just in time for her to dive out of the way of it. The beast crashed clean through the low counter and into the rear wall, demolishing half the kitchen and drawing a cry of terror from Momoko. That chased away the confusion and fear. Now, the young mage wanted nothing more than to destroy this monster. That meant an offensive spell. Normally, she would've been ecstatic to learn a new spell, to untangle its intricacies, but for now she just relied on Raising Heart to do the heavy lifting and provided the mana and willpower.
"Sealing Mode."
Raising Heart sprouted two wings of light just below the head. Nanoha aimed the staff at the monster, still trying to extricate itself from the wall, and ribbons of pink light snapped out and wrapped around the creature, digging into its "flesh". The monster shrieked, and thrashed, but it could not break free.
Giving her staff a twirl, Nanoha ended the flourish by pointing it at the monster and declaring "Jewel Seed XXI! Seal!"
The ribbons dug deeper, deforming the darkness like a tube of toothpaste, and then mummified the creature entirely and squeezed. The ribbons wrapped up in a tight ball before dissipating. All that was left was a strange, bluish-purple, four-sided gem that clattered to the floor.
For a long moment, Nanoha and Shiro, the latter still holding his sword in a guard stance, warily eyed the gem as it rose up, and then floated up to Raising Heart. Whatever they were expecting, it was not for it to sink into the jeweled head.
"Jewel Seed XXI sealed," the device proclaimed.
Finally, everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Then Nanoha ran up to Shiro, coming to a halt just short of him and eyeing him up and down. "Um… Papa, are you okay?"
Shiro followed her eyes where he'd unconsciously pressed his hand against his side. He gave her a reassuring smile and reach down to rub her hair. "Yeah, I'm just bruised. I'll be sore for a few says but I'm alright."
"Oi, don't we get any concern?" Miyuki deadpanned from where Kyouya was helping her off the floor.
Nanoha adopted a stricken expression, which prompted Miyuki to hastily try and wave her off.
"I'm joking, okay? I-"
"Are you alright?!" Nanoha wailed, rushing over to check on her siblings with tears streaming from her eyes. With a sigh from Miyuki and a warm smile from Kyouya, they let her fuss over them. Thankfully, bruises, scrapes, and a few thin cuts seemed to be the worst of it aside from Miyuki's right ankle. It was already a livid purple, and she very pointedly was not putting any weight on it.
"I'm pretty sure it's just a sprain," Miyuki explained to placate Nanoha's distressed expression.
"Um…"
"That means that with time, immobilization, and regular icing her ankle will heal fine," Kyouya assured her.
Sirens wailed outside the home, and Nanoha, realizing she was still wearing her magical dress, hastily dismissed it right before a police officer poked his head in.
"What the hell happened here?" he muttered, before calling out, "Anyone need help in here?"
"Me," Shiro said, stepping out into the debris left around the hole. "Took a hit to the ribs. I'm pretty sure they're just bruised but best to be sure. My older daughter has an ankle injury. And my son-"
"I think I'll be fine with just the first-aid kit, Dad," Kyouya said as he helped Miyuki over to the hole.
"Nanoha, why don't you help me make some tea? I think we all need it after what just happened."
Jolted out of her anxious watching, Nanoha thought it over. Tea did sound nice. Soothing. And Raising Heart had more magic to show her. Some sort of handcuff spell she could teach via simulation. With a mental agreement, the young mage jumped right into the simulation while simultaneously turning for what was left of the kitchen.
And promptly stubbed her toe on the stump of the counter. Okay, maybe save the multitasking until she could practice it more.
~o~
While Nanoha and Momoko brewed up a pot of tea, Shiro spun a story about a crashed truck that had left in a hurry. A story that prompted skepticism until another car pulled up and a more senior officer had a quick chat with Shiro. An ambulance arrived not long after, Nanoha bustling out to deliver tea and the first-aid kit to Kyouya. Thankfully, everyone's instincts were correct. After wrapping Shiro's ribs and Miyuki's ankle, the paramedics decided that a hospital stay was not necessary and let them go.
Despite the late hour once all the first responders finally left, the family still made the time to sit down and figure out what the fuck had just happened.
After an awkward moment, Shiro opened, "Nanoha, do you have any idea what… that was?"
Nanoha closed her eyes, her mouth moving in silent conversation. After a moment, "Raising Heart says that, um, it was probably a rat? Or some other small animal that found a-" She frowned. "Um, Jewel Seed? Hang on, I'm asking her what a Jewel Seed is."
The Takamachi family remained silent as Nanoha went through a whole silent conversation. Her expression morphed from confusion to curiosity to confusion again and then to some sort of understanding.
"They're… basically wish-granting magical batteries?" Nanoha answered. "But kind of dumb so they latch onto the first desire they run into and fulfill them in a stupid and destructive way." A cute frown passed over her face. "That's really oversimplified, there were a lot of big words I don't understand. Raising Heart kind of lost me when she started talking about dimensions and energy potentials. Whatever an energy potential is. Anyway, I think that's a decent summary."
That Takamachis all shared a glance, a glance that said one thing: "I know what each word means but together they make no sense." Suddenly, Kyouya jerked in realization.
"Um, if they're batteries, how much energy are they holding?" he worriedly wondered.
A moment passed while Nanoha conferred with Raising Heart. "Raising Heart, I have no idea what an erg is, can you please give me an example?" Abruptly, she blanched. "Uh… when you say 'All of Honshu'…" Somehow, she grew even whiter. "That's the best case?!"
Momoko gasped, covering her mouth. Kyouya and Shiro both sucked in a breath through her teeth. And Miyuki thunked her head on the table, groaning, "And there are at least twenty more of those things out who knows where…"
Somber silence fell as everyone pondered the consequences of more of these things activating in populated areas. It made for grim imagining.
"Dad, do you think any of your old friends might be able to seal and fight these Jewel Seeds?" Kyouya asked.
Shiro shook his head. "This is beyond anyone just good with a sword. The Kazanaris, maybe, but-" Something ugly flashed over his face. "No, best not to bring this to their attention."
Silence, once again. And then…
"I'll do it. I'll seal them all!" Nanoha declared.
"Nanoha…" Momoko tried.
"Mama, I'm the only one who can do it. Uh, that we know of, but how would we even find someone else who knows magic? And Raising Heart is bonded to me and we don't know if the Jewel Seeds can even be sealed without her. It has to be me."
Shiro turned a stern, impassive look on Nanoha, who flinched and kept going.
"A-And I can learn more magic! Raising Heart knows all kinds of cool spells, and they're all controlled by math, and I'm really good at math! So I'll get stronger, and safer, and-!"
"If you're going to do this," Shiro cut in, still stern. "Then you're going to learn how to fight as well as use magic. Two weekdays in the dojo, plus both days on weekends." He stroked his chin. "Obviously, you should learn how to use a staff, but live sparring would be best to build up experience…"
"Isn't that dangerous?" Miyuki pointed out.
"I can set my magic to stun, it's fine," Nanoha offered. She blinked as both her siblings gave her pitying looks. "What?"
Abruptly, Nanoha found herself swept into a hug by her mother, Momoko burying her face in her shoulder.
"Stay safe. Please," she whispered.
"I promise, Mama."
The two broke apart – and Nanoha let loose a jaw-cracking yawn.
"I think it's time we all got to bed," Shiro chuckled, standing. "We'll talk more tomorrow. Do you want me to tuck you in tonight, Nanoha?"
Nanoha wanted to protest that she was way too big to be tucked in at night, but after everything that had happened, she needed the comfort. So she nodded, and let her father lead her to bed.
That night, her dreams were filled with flying.