AN: Aww, I didn't get any reviews. Oh well. Anyway, we're hitting the fast-forward button for essentially the rest of season 1. Let's be real, without Fate to try and take her head off there really isn't any reason to go into every Jewel Seed battle. We'll just be hitting the highlights here.
The next several weeks were the busiest of Nanoha's short life so far. She and her parents had worked out a short list of excuses to use if she ever needed to duck out of class to seal a Jewel Seed – none of which she'd had to use, thankfully – but she still had to go to class and do the homework. That had been nonnegotiable. Added on top of this was the combat training with Shiro, searching for and then sealing the Jewel Seeds, and her own individual magic practice. The result was that she had practically no free time.
She straight-up didn't have any free time for about the first week, and when she was persuaded to take a break it resulted in a Jewel Seed activating in the middle of downtown Uminari. Thankfully, the tree that sprouted as a result mostly just damaged pavement and her new bombardment spe- er, long-range sealing spell, worked beautifully, subduing the Seed in one shot. Regardless, feeling guilty, Nanoha had vowed to not take another break until all the Jewel Seeds were sealed.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on the point of view, Nanoha also shared that vow at the dinner table that night after she finished telling her family of the sealing.
~o~
"Nanoha-" Kyouya started, Momoko and Miyuki also looking worried, but at Shiro's hand on his forearm he went quiet. Her father turned to her, and the young girl instinctively sat up to listen a little better.
"Nanoha, take it from someone who's trained in martial arts most of his life and used those skills on the job," he said. "You need to rest your mind and your body, or you're going to damage something. It can be your motivation – we call that burnout – or it can be your body. I understand feeling like you're not doing enough, but if you push yourself too hard you won't be able to do anything."
"But Papa," Nanoha protested. "I don't use my body to fight. Or, well, not very much. My magic-"
Shiro held up a hand, and she went silent. "And can your magic be overstressed, too?"
Nanoha raised a finger and opened her mouth – and then closed it and let the finger droop. She wanted to say, to scream that it couldn't. But she didn't know, did she? Shiro, taking in her expression, nodded.
"I think we need to treat your magic as if it can be overstressed," he declared. "There's still so much we don't know about it, best to play it safe. That means fewer of those combat simulations you think I don't know you're doing. One scenario per day, that's it."
"Ehhhh?" Nanoha exclaimed, though whether it was at the restriction or being caught out wasn't clear.
"And we should sit down soon and work out at least a rough idea of how your magic works, physiologically."
Downcast, Nanoha nodded.
The awkward silence that ensued lasted for only a few seconds before Miyuki clapped her hands and declared, "Okay, enough of the serious stuff! You guys gotta hear what Saori over in Class B did over the weekend, it's a hoot!"
~o~
As promised, Nanoha had cut down the simulations to one a day. A couple hours of meditation, experimentation, scanning, and conversation with Raising Heart revealed that yes, magical ability had a physical source. Probably. Without deep medical scans Raising Heart couldn't do, the information they had was limited. Regardless, it meant that the young mage was quite motivated to not overstress her magic and potentially lose it, as Shiro had emphasized could happen with stress injuries.
After all, magic was awesome! Raising Heart was teaching her all sorts of cool spells on top of sealing and barriers! Magical handcuffs! Giant pink laser beams! She could fly! Flying was, frankly, her new favorite pastime, and often her breaks just saw her go out flying around. No, she did not want to lose that ability.
Sadly, more normal breaks often ended up with Nanoha running into a Jewel Seed anyway. Like the one she'd had to seal during their hot springs trip in the middle of the night, or the one that one of Suzuka's cats had gotten a hold of during a visit to her house.
~o~
Nanoha slowly floated down through the trees surrounding Suzuka's mansion home, the little grey kitten that had been the size of a truck mere seconds before now nestled happily in her arms. Below, Suzuka and Arisa, drawn by the flashes of pink light, watched her descent with open mouths. Internally, Nanoha winced. She'd meant to tell her friends about this whole magic business and her search for the Jewel Seeds the day after the first battle, but she'd been so busy, and there never seemed to be a good moment to share until now, and then the Jewel Seed had activated before she could bring it up…
Well, they knew now. And hopefully Arisa would be too awed to question the timing.
"That… was… so cool!" Arisa gushed, eyes shining, as Nanoha touched down. "You were out there, and you were flying, and then you wrapped the kitten up in those pink ribbons and it shrank and-!"
"Breathe, Arisa," Nanoha interrupted, before handing off the kitten in her arms to Suzuka. Arisa took deep gulping breaths while their purple-haired friend examined the feline.
"She's okay," Suzuka reported shortly.
"Great, then we can go back to gushing about Nanoha is a real-life magical girl!" Arisa interjected, grabbing Nanoha by the arm. "C'mon, let's get inside and you can tell us all about it! Do you have a cute mascot? Who are the bad guys?"
"Nyahahahaha…" Nanoha chuckled nervously as she allowed herself to be pulled along. "Well, there are these things called Jewel Seeds…"
~o~
In the end, Arisa didn't think to question the timing. Not during the playdate, and not afterward even when her fangirling cooled. Suzuka did – but also accepted her explanation of being busy. With that, Nanoha could confide in everything to her friends, friends who also took immediate ownership in helping Nanoha relax sometime.
So overall, despite how busy she was, life was pretty good. Of her new routine, she only disliked one part of it, and that was the live sparring with her father. Not learning how to use a staff, that was fun. But the sparring always, always ended with her eating a bonk to her forehead from Shiro's shinai. By about three weeks in, she was getting frustrated at her own apparent lack of progress.
Let it never be said that Nanoha Takamachi wasn't her own worst critic.
~o~
Bonk!
"Hau!"
Nanoha, floating in mid-air, reached up to rub at her forehead where Shiro's shinai had hit. She despondently floated down to the floor and dismissed Raising Heart from her active mode. While she didn't have specific times to compare, the young mage knew she'd done worse that day than the previous session. And it was all on her.
"Nanoha?" Shiro prompted as he finished putting his shinai back on the wall. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"You were tagged sooner than you were in our last session," Shiro pointed out. "And now you're sulking."
"I am not!" Nanoha protested.
The knowing smile her father gave her said he wasn't fooled. "As your father and as your instructor, that tells me something's wrong. So…"
Frustration bubbled up in her, and the words spilled out. "Because it's unfair! The dojo's too small for me to fly properly, I can't use Divine Buster without putting a hole in the wall, and I have to be super extra careful with Divine Shooter, and-and-and it's not fair that it's one hit and it's over because I can take these hits and-" Panting, Nanoha slumped into a kneeling position. "And I can't beat you."
Sighing through his nose, Shiro sat down in front of her. "You're right, it's not fair," he said, getting a look of surprise from his daughter. "That's the point. I have no doubt in an actual fight, you could fly rings around me and blast me into submission. But I also have no doubt that you and Raising Heart can get better at that on your own. We're sparring so you develop skills for when that skill set doesn't work. So you know how to trap and lead an opponent, and pin them in place."
He smiled. "And you are getting better, Nanoha, even if it doesn't seem like it sometimes. I'm sure you'll leave me in the dust soon. Now, I'm assuming because you were frustrated, you tried to force things?" A nod. "As you've noticed, that doesn't work. Take it patiently, and it'll come."
Nanoha nodded, calmer.
"Now," Shiro said, dusting his pants off. "As a reward for sitting and listening to me lecture, why don't we go and see if we can convince your mother to part with some fresh pastries?"
"Pastries!" Nanoha cried happily, running into the house. Chuckling, Shiro followed her at a more sedate pace.
~o~
Now, fifteen Seeds into the search, Nanoha was at least able to get the occasional win in. And she and Raising Heart were working on a new spell that should help tilt things more in her favor.
Unfortunately, she'd also run into a brick wall trying to find the remaining six Jewel Seeds. For all the power they held, when deactivated they were mostly just pretty magical rocks, and so almost invisible to passive sensor spells. Most of the Seeds Nanoha had found, she'd found while they were activated and very visible indeed. Thank goodness for phase barriers shunting herself and the Seed monsters out of step with the rest of reality. Some of those fights had gotten hairy and would've resulted in considerable collateral damage otherwise.
Anyway, the remaining six hadn't activated, so Nanoha had started systematically combing the Uminari region by air with her Area Search spell. Even with Shiro writing up a search pattern for her to follow, it was slow, tedious work, and produced absolutely no results. That left only two possibilities.
"Well, they're either out in the ocean or on land outside of Uminari somewhere," Miyuki decided the day Nanoha finished mapping the whole area. She tapped a map of every Jewel Seed location the family had put up on the wall, each sealing marked with a pin. "And the only Seed that's come down outside the city limits is the one at the hot springs. Which makes the ocean the more likely option, and the one that's easier to search because you can safely prod them."
"Right," Nanoha nodded. "Then I'll give it a try tomorrow! Hopefully I'll find them and have this all wrapped up by dinner."
Miyuki nodded in return, before a thoughtful look crossed her face. "Hey, Nanoha, what are we going to do with the Seeds when you've sealed them all?"
A shrug. "Raising Heart's been able to keep them quiet so far. We'll just have to keep them where they are."
"Comforting…" Miyuki muttered.
"Nanoha, Miyuki, dinner's ready!" came Momoko's voice from the recently-repaired kitchen.
"Yay!" Nanoha cheered, running out of the room. Miyuki followed, shaking her head at how adorable her sister was and how that contrasted with the amount of firepower she could carry around.
~o~
The next day, after school ended, Nanoha bade goodbye to Arisa and Suzuka and took to the air, flying out over the sea bordering Uminari. A gray blanket hung low over the city, but Nanoha's mood wasn't dampened. Cloudy or sunny, flying was just too much fun for her to care about the weather.
About a mile offshore, Nanoha came to a halt a hundred feet over the water and cast Area Search, the pink spheres the spell produced diving into the water and spreading out. As the spell was automated, Nanoha took off at maximum acceleration, skimming the wavetops. The flight very quickly became a test of how quick she could bank and turn – which was very quick indeed – and how low she could fly. Despite the spray in her face from the waves Nanoha laughed in delight the whole time.
Alas, all too soon Raising Heart interrupted with news. "Wide Area Search complete. Marking locations."
Sighing a little in disappointment, Nanoha pulled up to properly check the locations, given by her own connection to the spheres of Area Search. The results were… not great.
"They're all in one spot?!" she yelped. "Nn… at least they're all inert."
But not likely to stay that way for long if she just carelessly attempted to seal one (sealing all six at once was right out). Much experience sealing the Seeds had taught her that they reacted to both intent and lots of magic – and the spillover from a sealing spell qualified for both.
Nanoha flew over the spot on the water where the Jewel Seeds were, and took a deep breath. She let it out, and aimed her device as she switched to her winged Sealing Mode. "Alright, Raising Heart, let's seal them!"
"Yes, Master."
The pink ribbons of the sealing spell slithered out of Raising Heart and into the water. Down, down they went, until they reached the bottom and could very carefully wrap around a single Seed on the outskirts of the small cluster. Slowly, her face a rictus of concentration, Nanoha carefully began to pull the Seed back. It took all of her concentration to minimize mana leak and thus any chances of a chain activation.
It thus took a few minutes to pull the Seed all the way up, and the second it breached the surface she hastily pulled it into Raising Heart's storage.
"Jewel Seed V sealed."
Breathing a sigh of relief, Nanoha slumped over in mid-air, panting. She reached up to wipe sweat from her brow, a product of the intense concentration that the sealing had required. It took her a few more minutes of rest to muster up the mental energy to try for another sealing.
That second sealing was conducted without incident. Another break, a third seed, and things finally went wrong: for a bare instant, Nanoha's concentration slipped and some of the energy of the spell leaked out. This energy touched on a neighboring Jewel Seed, and it immediately activated. Throwing caution to the wind, the young mage hastily sealed that third Seed as the energy from the activated one triggered the other two.
While three activated Seeds at once was a great deal more manageable than six, it still wasn't an easy job. This was very quickly proved when Nanoha had to hastily backpedal from a spread of waterspouts kicked up by the Jewel Seeds.
"Yeep! Raising Heart, Restrict Lock!"
"Yes, Master."
Drawing magic from her core, Nanoha mentally designated the area of the waterspouts. After a moment to calculate their erratic movements, she pulled the mental trigger.
Rings of pink light sprang shut around each waterspout, locking them in place despite extensive thrashing. That was about the worst thing they could have done; Restrict Lock maintained itself from mana in the environment, so every bit of struggle just strengthened the bonds. And it was watching that process that gave Nanoha an idea of how to finish this fight.
"Raising Heart! Let's try our new spell!" she declared.
"Let's do it!" the Device eagerly agreed, shifting its head into the two golden prongs of Shooting Mode. A pink circle sprung up under Nanoha's feet, and then another, larger one in front, behind which motes of pink light gathered into a steadily growing ball. Much like Restrict Lock, the new spell drew its power from ambient magic in the environment, and worked best after a long battle.
Three rampaging Jewel Seeds also did the trick.
"Starlight! Breaker!" Nanoha declared.
The ball condensed, and then fired in a ravening beam the size of a tree trunk. The water offered no resistance, and the beam slammed through and annihilated the section of seawater the Jewel Seeds were controlling. It continued on and slammed into the seabed where the Jewel Seeds lay as well, blossoming into a pink explosion that threw up a small mushroom cloud of water. While the cloud came down, Nanoha warily watched for any sign of activity. Once she was sure that there wouldn't be any more activity she sealed the Jewel Seeds with no further fuss.
"That's all twenty-one," Nanoha said happily. "Let's go home, Raising Heart. I can't wait to see what Mama cooked tonight!"
~o~
As Nanoha flew home, she was blissfully unaware of one particular unforeseen consequence. That night, the energy funneled into the sky by the waterspouts merged with the typhoon remnant that had caused the overcast day to form a nasty, wind-heavy thunderstorm. Uminari woke the next morning to several downed trees and powerlines, and scattered lightning damage. Minor for a city in a country regularly battered by typhoons.
One specific house had seen a tree fall into it, smashing apart several rooms, including the lone inhabitant's bedroom. Well, what had been the lone inhabitant. The fire crew that stopped by to assess things didn't comment on the four oddly-dressed foreigners that accompanied her to the curb. The resident said they were relatives visiting from overseas and the crew simply assumed the clothes were sleepwear of some kind. That was that, as far as they were concerned.
"That's your room there, miss?" the chief said, whistling as he eyed the massive limb smashed into the room in question. "You're darn lucky you weren't hurt, then."
"Y-Yes, lucky…" Hayate Yagami chuckled nervously.
"Anyway, I need to go supervise while they cut up that tree. Take care of yourself, okay, miss?"
"I will!"
As the crew went to work cutting up the tree, Hayate wheeled herself back into her house, her new guests trailing behind like bodyguards. As she crossed the threshold, a book bound in dark leather with a pointed golden cross on the cover floated up to her. She grasped it and looked it over, pondering the mystery of why it was, well, floating. How it had put up an energy barrier to save her from the limb that crashed into her room. What it had to do with her four new houseguests.
But all that was secondary to a far more important concern. "So, who wants breakfast?" she cheerily asked.