SonicANIME2010 here, bringing in another chapter to Lyrical Familiar; I will have another chapter after this, then a bit of a hiatus to focus on my other two stories. I apologize for the long delay; I've been swarmed up by school work and heck this chapter is much shorter than I wanted it to be.

[Earth: Japan]
[Uminari City, Residential District]
[Takamachi Residence]
[Local Time: 0715 hours]
[BGM: "Welcome to our Town" Final Fantasy IV OST]

"Ittekimasu" Nanoha cheerfully said to her family and recent houseguests as she exited the front door to head for school.

"Itterasshai" Her family, including Sonic and the recent houseguests Fate, Alicia and Arf, said to the 9 year old as they watched her depart.

Even with the Admiral's departure less than an hour prior, it still didn't change the fact that Nanoha was still an elementary school student, and as the semester was still in session, she still had to attend school. There was little doubt that Fate and Alicia would have to join her at some point if their stay on Earth was to be of any lengthy of duration; but until they were sure. Nanoha's family wasn't about to chance that until they knew for sure.

As soon as Nanoha had left, Kyouya, Shiro and Momoko took their leave to start work at the café, leaving Miyuki to discuss things with Sonic and the others from Mid-Childa. The notable absence was of the Tutorial Ferret, as he had to accompany Lindy to Mid-Childa; the Jewel Seeds were his responsibility and he had to see to it that they were documented and safely stored.

"Alright, everyone" Miyuki said to Sonic, Arf, Alicia and Fate, who had just finished their breakfast, "With Nanoha-chan at school and everyone else at work, we are off to the dojo."

"Eh?" Fate was slightly confused; understandable as she had little idea what went on in the daily life of her new friend, "Why?"

"Training" the brunette answered easily and swiftly, "Go grab some gym clothes; the dojo's out back."

Arf and Alicia were equally confused but when they saw Sonic vacate his spot from the table, all 3 took the hint to follow suit. With little delay they met up with the hedgehog and made for the dojo in the back of the house.

[OP: "Innocent Starter" Mizuki Nana]

Sonic the Hedgehog: Lyrical Familiar
Chapter 23
Complexities and Uncertainties

[Takamachi Residence: Dojo]
[Local Time: 0721 hours]
[No BGM]

The trio from Mid-Childa met up with Sonic and Miyuki outside the dojo. All of them, aside from Sonic, who had opted to simply wear his gloves and shoes, had all worn some form of track or gym clothes. Fate and Arf both had light track suits on while Alicia had to wear an older pair of Nanoha's gym clothes as she didn't have any herself. That was a small issue that probably would be easily resolved with a shopping trip, something that Sonic would dread no doubt in the near future.

"Sonic's the one getting most of the training. We're teaching him our style to make him a solid close combat guardian for Nanoha-chan" Miyuki explained briefly as she led the others inside and quickly grabbed pairs of twin training blades for herself and Sonic, "Yuuno-kun was doing all of his training from the magical side, but since he's not here…."

"Someone will need to step in" Fate finished the trailed-off statement made by the eldest daughter of the Takamachi family. In truth, she wouldn't mind the idea of assisting as it would help her own training and get a chance for her to know her new friend's familiar and family, which would help her in getting to know Nanoha as a friend.

"Well, our last session, Tutorial Ferret pretty much stated that he didn't have much left to teach me in the way of spells" Sonic shrugged, "So it's just a matter of practicing them. But we rarely train magically here. Nanoha's family won't like if the dojo gets blasted up."

"However, we can work on close combat" Miyuki pointed out the object of training in the dojo as she set down her training blades and went to the wall to fetch some more for the Testarossa siblings, "Alright, what do you two wield for your magic device things?"

"Bardiche is a poleax" Fate answered almost instantly, prepared or not, she understood the training environment the dojo made.

"I don't use weapons" Arf admitted, "My fists and claws do my fighting for me."

"Lucky Star has 2 modes. Twin pistols for shooting and a paper fan for melee." Alicia answered just as truthfully, though quickly put a pouting look on her face when Miyuki gave her a deadpan look, "Don't look at me like that! I'm a mage, I can make it work."

"Okay… well since we don't have a shooting range, you'll just have to settle with practicing melee." Miyuki said rather neutrally, schooling her expression of exasperation from hearing that a powerful mage would use a paper fan for close range. She tossed the Testarossa siblings wooden practice blades, the longer one going to Fate to simulate using Bardiche while Alicia got the shorter for the paper fan.

"Alright" Miyuki said as she readied herself and gestured for Sonic to do the same, "Sonic-kun and I will have a practice spar to show what we're doing, then for the rest of the time we'll have 1-on-1 sparring while trading off partners."

The girls plus wolf from Mid-Childa all nodded their heads to confirm their agreement to the elder Takamachi sister's planning. They both watched as Sonic and Miyuki took battle stances at opposite ends of one another with their wooden blades readied to strike. As was the case before, Sonic had his blades held like he held the kodachi in his barrier jacket, his main hand held in a normal grip while the offhand held in a reverse grip. Miyuki had adopted a similar format only her offhanded grip was a normal one. While the differences in stances were notable, the effects they would've made didn't seem to be that important until they came to blows.

[Sonic vs Miyuki]
[BGM: "Normal Battle" Final Fantasy IV (arrangement)]

Using his speed, Sonic was the first to make a move with a solid paced rush with both blades held at his side to build momentum in his stride. He was aiming to make an upward slicing attack to make up for the significant size disadvantage he had with his mentor and trainer. He had managed to close the distance into a sizable melee range before his mentor made her move.

Miyuki, to the noticeable surprise from the 3 onlookers, kept a calm composure and only made a subtle shift in her stance to a defensive minded one. Her off-hand held wooden blade easily intercepted both of the blue hedgehog's as they were going upward. Her block had not only broken up her pupil's attack, but also allowed her to make a spin in the same direction she had subtly shifted in before defending. To no surprise as she moved notably slow, Sonic was able to dodge backward with an agile flip.

The older teen moved in to make her move with a downward strike with her right hand blade. She had opted for such a strike not just to reach her significantly shorter pupil, but also to give her momentum to work with and keep her aggressive stride going. She was not surprised when her student dodged and moved to counter; rather she seemed to be expecting a movement of such as she was able to deflect the off-handed blade counter with her main hand blade. For the next few seconds to almost a half a minute, the hedgehog and human traded wooden blows and blocks with such blows.

The fact that Miyuki was not only able to keep up with the blue hedgehog's speed and also answer for his attacks had a significant reaction from Fate and Arf in particular. As they had spent a majority of their time on Earth hunting Jewel Seeds and acting as a de factor "rival" for Nanoha and her familiar, they entertained some thoughts of going after their rival to claim the Jewel Seeds. They had shot down such thoughts on several bases such as the fact that they had no idea where the two had lived and had no idea what their family was capable of.

As was most of the times when hindsight can prove to be 20-20, this was especially true as they were thankful that they shot down the possible strategy. Sure their magic might've helped them, but as Miyuki has shown so far in her spar with the hedgehog, she was formidable of a foe in close quarters combat and even with magic to help Fate and Arf; they would've been likely outclassed and put in their place quite swiftly enough.

"Amazing..." was Fate's only word to open a mindspeak conversation with her familiar. "Arf, are you watching this?"

"Yeah" The wolf girl answered, her jaw nearly slack in shock, "If this is what just what one of the girl's family was capable of…"

"Fate? Arf?" Alicia's voice cut in to reveal that she had been listening in, and was slightly confused by the musing of her younger, even if cloned, sister and her familiar in the mental conversation, "What do you mean?"

"You remember when we told you about the Jewel Seeds?" Arf asked the shorter blonde.

"Yeah, you said that the incident had you and Nanoha-san as rivals in capturing them" Alicia visibly nodded to confirm her agreement and memory.

"Well while were hunting for the seeds, the fact that our rivals had Jewels of her own had not escaped our notice and we could've gone after our rivals for the seeds they had ourselves" Fate explained, her tone did not hide the shame she felt in entertaining such mean and dishonorable thoughts, not to mention her regret, "We quickly shot it down though because we not only had no knowledge of where our rivals lived, but even if we did, we had no knowledge of the support they had outside of their civilian friends."

"And you're glad you didn't move forward with it?" Alicia finished off the train of thought with a knowledgeable conclusion. Nodding herself when she saw the latter two nod their head to confirm, "Consider this too, she's still holding back..."

"Earth to the Testarossa girlies" Sonic cut into the drawn out conversation. While he most likely was not listening in, it didn't take a genius to figure out that the girls were analyzing his instructor, "We're finished"

"Eh?!" The trio blinked and focused their attention on the duo that had recently sparred. They saw the amusement that was shared between the hedgehog and teen and realized that they had spent a longer time in their chat than they had thought and it might've made them look a "little" silly.

Sonic and Miyuki both enjoyed the humorous display of the trio of two girls plus wolf familiar adopt similar expressions of embarrassment and cute pink blushes to match. The display was about equal parts adorable and funny, but while Sonic would've liked his amusement to continue, he and Miyuki both quickly agreed that it would be best to save them from further embarrassment.

"Alright, let's get on to the 1-on-1 spars." Miyuki declared, "I'll take Fate-chan first, Sonic-kun will partner up with Alicia-chan."

"Hai" The aforementioned three nodded in agreement.

"Arf-san, would you mind watching more?" the girl asked the wolf familiar, "I'd like to keep this session to be weapon-based for now, later on we can likely focus on hand-to-hand combat."

"Sure thing" the wolf-girl shrugged. Sure, she was hopeful for a chance to spar with her opposite number in the familiar context and settle a thing or two with the friendly rival; she still felt that she should honor the request of the instructor.

[Public Seishou Auxiliary Elementary School]
[Grade, Class 1]
[Local time: 1200 hours]
[No BGM]

Meanwhile, it was business as usual for Nanoha, Arisa and Suzuka at the elementary school. Nanoha's biggest challenge since returning from the Arthra and aiding in the Jewel Seed incident was catching up on the work that she had missed. Not that she had no confidence in her friends' ability to take notes on what she had missed and do so effectively, but she had usually gotten better grades than Arisa and Suzuka for a reason. Not to take anything away from the two as they were exceptionally hardworking kids in balancing elementary school with cram and their music lessons, but the curriculum could be very challenging if they weren't paying as much attention to it. Luckily, Nanoha was able to return and catch up quite quickly even if it came at the cost of a few grade points.

"We don't have music or cram lessons today" Suzuka noted to Arisa and Nanoha during their break between classes set for the students to enjoy lunch, whether brought from the cafeteria or home, "Why don't we go somewhere to study and play?"

"I like that idea" Nanoha answered with a smile, "But whose house?"

"I vote for Nanoha's" Arisa's response was rapid, but didn't surprise Suzuka in the least.

"You really want to spend time with Fate-san and Arf-san," the purple-head said with little surprise in her voice, "Don't you?"

"Maybe…" the dirty blonde girl did not decline the statement, noteworthy enough, "I just wanna make sure they pass my inspection"

"And the new girl we saw earlier?" Suzuka didn't need her friend's reaction to tell that she was right. Suzuka herself was quite curious about Alicia and glanced at Nanoha with such an expression, "Alicia-san, right? What was her story?"

"Well... she's related to Fate-chan." Nanoha was able to say that much but couldn't find any other words for the rest so she opted for an attempted out, "But it's kinda complicated"

"Complicated, huh…." The girl said in a cryptic and, quite honest for Nanoha and Suzuka, frightening manner as heaven only knew where Arisa's usual paths of thought led her and sure enough, she asked from out of proverbial left field, "Wait, we're allowed to hear this right? We're not going to be ambushed or something by weird guys in tuxedos and sunglasses with some weird pen devices that wipe memories or something, right?"

"Ah… ah..." Nanoha tried, keyword "tried" to maintain a straight face in reaction to that question, but she was still taken by surprise by the sheer ridiculousness of the question. She tried to level a deadpan or flat look at her dirty blonde friend but ended up looking more cute than annoyed, much to the amusement of Suzuka.

"I think we're in the wrong country for that to be possible" the purple-head saved Nanoha of something awkward with her counter. She was quite amused, nonetheless, of the reaction Nanoha had to the question.

"Mou…" like the tsunderes are capable of, Arisa pulled off a cute, but meaningful pout, "Ruin my fun."

The rest of the school day went off with little issue or any dramatic hilarity of note happening, the drama was likely to be saved for when the trio returned to the café and meet up with Alicia, Fate and Arf.

[Takamachi Residence]
[Local time: 1825 hours (appx 6:25 pm)]
[BGM: "Welcome to our Town" Final Fantasy IV (arrangement)]

Farin and Noel, the maids from Suzuka's family, had taken the liberty to transport the trio of schoolgirls from Seishou to the Midori-ya. While Nanoha was humble enough to make her best resistance from being treated so importantly over her friends, she bowed at the insistence from the younger maid, Farin. In addition, she had taken the opportunity in the drive home to phone the Harlaown residence to get Chrono and Amy over to, A: make sure that her friends and family were allowed to hear about the specifics from the most recent case from Little Planet and B: disclose such specifics.

It took a little debate between the resident enforcer and information specialist. Chrono had argued that the case was, first and foremost, and wasn't even officially documented to the Bureau yet and should be kept from the civilians and Amy (Limietta) argued that Nanoha's friends and family already knew so much about their magic and knee deep in the first case, plus they had every right to know if the aforementioned Alicia, Arf and Fate were likely staying on Earth for the long term through the legal proceedings involving Precia, which was likely due to the lack of any next of kin. The last note was also the clincher for the brunette as she had argued for sympathy considering Fate and Alicia especially would need a presence of family to comfort them to help through any troubles they'd likely have in the long run, which had Chrono relenting in record time.

The trio from school had arrived at the café shortly prior to Amy and Chrono's arrival at around 1600 hours. The disclosure of vital information had to wait until closing time at the café to avoid any more civilians from accidentally overhearing anything they might not understand. To compensate Amy and Chrono for the trouble, Momoko had fixed up dinner for everyone, which would ease any dramatic tension generated from the sensitive information being disclosed.

The disclosure wasn't even a full one though at that, as Chrono had to avoid drawing any absolutes and that Precia wasn't tried just yet, nor did he disclose the fact that Fate was Alicia's "clone", which would've drawn a fair amount of questions that neither he nor Amy could answer. He was, however, able to clear up the conclusion of Alicia's identity. He had identified her as the older sibling to Fate, which, while odd for an older sister to appear younger than the latter, it wasn't unheard of. Amy also noted the conjecture of late bloomers to make it more believable.

Amy and Chrono had agreed to request that Nanoha's family aid in taking care of the Testarossa siblings, stating that their mother was in a bit of complex legal trouble and as there were no next of kin recorded to be available, it was either that or foster care or child services, which would add a lot of unnecessary complexities.

Nanoha's family had agreed quickly enough and offered to sponsor the girls enrolling in Seishou, the school their youngest daughter attended with her friends. They'd take care of any expenses as well in the meantime, which Chrono had promised to reimburse them for such. The Bureau would've likely had to anyway, considering the family situation involving the Testarossa family and the fact that Alicia and Fate were still technically minors.

With all said and done, Chrono and Amy had left the residence with full stomachs and calmed spirits. The complicated disclosure had gone better than they had anticipated, helped by the fact that any complex topics were avoided. They were still hopeful that Lindy didn't have to take too long on Mid-Childa.

[Dimensional Space]
[Time: 2225 Zulu]
[No BGM]

Lindy reclined back in her comfortable chair in her spacey office on board the Arthra. She had spent a majority of the inflight time in boredom, but she was able to entertain herself and the young archeologist Yuuno with a few card and board games that led to one-sided results. The admiral had beaten out the archeologist boy in poker easy enough with the expert of poker faces; had beaten in him in chess, though that one was an interesting duel of minds regardless and could've gone either way.

"Nervous?" Lindy asked the boy

"A little" the sandy haired boy admitted, "I don't know how my reports on the Jewel Seed incident will be taken. It was mostly my fault for losing the Seeds and they led to almost dangerous results."

"Accidents happen" the admiral said quite quickly in retort, "I wouldn't worry too much. You had no way of knowing that your ship carrying the Seeds would've had an accident like it did. You knew the Jewel Seeds could potentially be dangerous and beyond your own power to keep in check so you enlisted the aid of someone you could trust. Keep in mind that pretty much anyone who you're reporting to likely have been in your shoes before. You made instinct-based decisions that ultimately led to the resolving of a dangerous incident before it got worse."

"What about you?" Yuuno asked, "I mean, with the liberties you took to make sure that Fate, Arf and Alicia aren't on Mid-Childa, you played the higher ups in a way"

"I'm not worried, this isn't the first time I've done things like that" The admiral calmly stated as she sipped from a mug of tea, which had her missing Amy's brews already, "The higher ups know as much, and they know that they were no better in some of the liberties they've taken. Like I also said, my decisions were instinct-based, there was no way I was going to let Fate, Alicia and Arf be caught up in the complex systems the Bureau has for minors at risk of being orphaned. I trust Nanoha-san's family more than the system.

"The higher ups know how complicated it can be though" Lindy noted, "And if Nanoha-san's family can prove that they can support them, it should be enough. And if not, I'll step in and adopt the children myself if I have to. There will be more pressure on the Bureau to ensure that the girls get what they need while their mother's facing trial."

"Speaking of…" the boy said on that note, "Have you thought about… um… you know"

"How I'm going to basically drop a volatile bombshell on an emotionally compromised woman?" Lindy finished rather bluntly with her expression matching. She softened up though with a defeated sigh upon seeing the boy nod with some recoil, "I honestly don't know yet… I can't come in too hard or blunt or Precia might break. I also can't be too soft as Precia might think I'm avoiding the issue."

"I wish I can help you there..." the boy noted with some regret.

"Don't worry" the woman assured him, "This is my battle to combat. You just have to worry about making your report and case regarding the Jewel Seed incident."

"Yes, ma'am" The boy stood up and saluted her.

"Don't "ma'am" me" Lindy chided playfully with an amused giggle, "I work for a living"

"Uh..." Yuuno felt rather stumped.

"I'm kidding" The woman waved dismissively, "You may rest for the evening if you wish; we'll likely hit Mid-Childa by mid-morning at the earliest."

"Thank you" The boy saluted once more before taking his leave.

'Regardless of my fun and humor, there's still the manner of dealing with Precia...' Lindy thought to herself, 'How am I going to break the news to her?'

[To be continued]

[Ending: "Little Wish ~Lyrical Step" Yukari Tamura]

[End of Chapter 23]

Author's notes: Finally... a completion again... short or not, I needed this to get my momentum in the story again. Read, review, comment, etc, I'd like some opinions and feedback. Until then, later. Btw, before anyone asks, Zulu time is basically a "shared" time zone for the military, I opted for it regarding scenes with the Bureau to establish a difference between times in say Japan and Mid-Childa. Oh, a little reference to a movie or two here, pay attention, or you might miss them.