Mahou Kunoichi Lyrical Nanoha

[Valles]

There was a woman - a woman's body - lying in the middle of the street with one arm stretched out and the other lying along the side of her body, as though she had fallen asleep in the middle of trying to claw her way out from under the massive block of fallen structural concrete that had crushed her entire lower body.
She had been anything but alone.
"Raging Heart," said Takamachi Nanoha. She looked across what should have been a busy street, and resisted the urge to grind her teeth.
The spherical crimson gem at the head of the slender white metal staff in her hands flashed once. "Yes, my Master?"
"Barrier," she ordered, and could barely even recognize her own voice.
"Cannot establish," was the answer, and while someone who didn't know either of them wouldn't have recognized it, there was a distinct undercurrent of apology beneath the normally dispassionate voice. "External disruption prevents stablization of pha-Protection!"
Years of experience at guaging the amount of drain Raging Heart placed on her own reserves of power told Nanoha that the levinbolt splashing off of her shield didn't have nearly enough power to be a threat, and it was her father's advice that made her turn to face the attacker with a graceful twist of her head that tossed her single asymmetric ponytail back over her shoulder - a showy display of assurance (not to say arrogance) that would provoke her attacker to either dismiss her as overconfident, and hence vulnerable, or make them wonder if the opinion it showed might be justified...
There were several of them, and through the corner of her eye she saw more filtering out of shadowed alleys and ominously dark storefronts. Their clothing - battle armor - was as uniform as the Time and Space Administration Bureau line personel she often worked with, but very differently styled - armored high-topped boots and elbow-length gloves and an armored breastplate over an almost knee-length tunic of interlocking metal rings and a short cape that came forward over their shoulders and fell a few inches short of their waists, and all of it battleship gray with slashes of vivid red trim. Their faces were hidden by their helmets, which were single units that covered the entire head save for a narrow T-shaped slit over the eyes and down the center of the lower face.
They moved like she had been told trained soldiers would - like her father still did, even years after his injuries had ended his career - and carried Expert Devices built to a pattern her memory immediately dubbed a nagamaki, a longsword's blade and guard fitted onto a short pole of about the same length. The crystal-clear lenses just beneath their guards wouldn't be full Connection Cores, but rather of the simpler, mass-produced Amplification type, but in these kinds of numbers, with her alone and more than a dozen of them surrounding her, she was probably in more trouble than she had been since that first battle with Vita.
"You did this," she said, very softly.
The one she was looking at flinched, slightly, then shook himself and brought his Device up to bear on her. So did all of his cohorts.
"I don't care why."
Intelligent Devices were alive, were people in their own right, and chose their own masters. Their function made it essential that they interact, connect with their users in far more ways than just the obvious, and, having been designed to do so, were driven to it at a level with much in common with a human's biological needs. Nanoha had once asked Raging Heart if that was why she had refused to go back to Yuuno after Precia Testarossa's death, but it had taken years to understand why even asking the question was an example of the real reason.
To Yuuno, then, as to almost all individuals priviledged to be granted the chance to direct such a powerful artifact, Raging Heart had been - not a tool, that was unfair to him, but a co-worker - deserving of respect, certainly, but subject to no real attachment. And both of them had been satisfied with that... until an all-too-innocent Terran schoolgirl had begun treating the Device like a makeshift member of her own family.
Raging Heart had been forged by the Scrya clan nearly a thousand years ago, but in all that time no one had known the person behind the featureless core and monotone voice as well as Nanoha had come to know her most constant companion.
The reverse, of course, was also true, and so it had been a long time since either of them had needed to bother exchanging advice or commands in battle. "Starlight Wave."
An expanding dome of light swallowed almost the entire width of the street, and the shockwave it threw off knocked the armored soldiers flying in disarray.

---

I had actually planned to go a bit farther into this scene and cover most of the fight and the introduction of the figure who, if my muse stays latched on to this, would be the plotline's Dragon, but frankly, I'm a bit fried right now, so this is all there is at the moment.
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[ECSNorway]

Dude.
MORE. Please. This rocks.
--
"Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of General Zod has been approved."
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Rieverre]

*sighs* Because we didn't have enough plotbunnies running around before.
Aw, hell, what am I saying?
Sir! May I have another, sir?
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[katreus]

Fantastic. I'm looking forward to what you do with this. It does make me wonder what sorta connection these Devices have with the soldiers (or maybe it's like Yuuno's relationship with Raging Heart?).

[Valles]

---

Fantastic. I'm looking forward to what you do with this. It does make me wonder what sorta connection these Devices have with the soldiers (or maybe it's like Yuuno's relationship with Raging Heart?).

---

That's the intention. More, Expert Devices really are tools in a way that RH and the others we've met aren't - they're explicitly non-sapient. They have no initiative, no real reasoning capacity - their user-interface and other programming are no more than we could design in the real world at this very moment. (well, except for the quality of the voice-activation features)
Frustratingly, the deeper I get into the fight scene, the more it looks like a bad idea, dramatically speaking, to use the image/concept that provoked me into starting this in the first place. Anyway, the soldier-guys are sort of an idea on how to deal with the problem of level creep - it's not that they're powerful or badass or anything, because one-on-one they wouldn't even be a match for a TSAB redshirt, let alone Nanoha herself. They're dangerous because, one, there's a lot of them, and two, they work together very well. They support each other, they time their attacks in sequence to keep the pressure on... in short, they're a different sort of threat than Nanoha and even the TSAB as a whole are set up and trained to fight.
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[katreus]

So the whole warrior v. soldier concept (like what David Weber set up in the March to the Stars trilogy)?
Interesting. Although at the end of s2, it looked like Nanoha and Co. were starting to head in that direction -- if not faceless soldiers but more like the Teams set up in Naruto (esp. with that last ending scene of the three powering up).

[CattyNebulart]

I'll add my voice to the ones asking for more.
There are lots of things I'm wondering abot though, for one this is clearly set after the series and Nanoha became a combat instructor in Canon, so how did she wind up on the front lines? Or didn't she become a drill sergant in this timeline? (Drill Sargent Nanoha. I'm not sure if I'm shivering in fear or suppressed laughter)
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Valles]

Re: tjalorak

---

So the whole warrior v. soldier concept (like what David Weber set up in the March to the Stars trilogy)?

---

Not really. 'Time and Space Administration Bureau' sounds like the name of a police organization to me, and their behavior seems to bear that out (although the nature of their work produces a lot of similarities to the world's various Coast Guards). They'll have given Fate and Hayate a considerable amount of training and evaluation before turning them loose as full field agents, and given how closely she's connected to them - and given her personality and views in general - I'd be shocked if Nanoha hadn't gone through the same course.
It's possible that her family would have had more influence over her development than that did, but, before any other skills she'd have picked up from them, they'd have trained her to think like a spy - shinobi, remember, not samurai.
As for the TSAB in general, well, they've got better equipment than the gray men, but don't work on a large scale very often and usually deal with situations where it's smarter to talk first.

Re: CattyN

---

There are lots of things I'm wondering abot though, for one this is clearly set after the series and Nanoha became a combat instructor in Canon, so how did she wind up on the front lines? Or didn't she become a drill sergant in this timeline? (Drill Sargent Nanoha. I'm not sure if I'm shivering in fear or suppressed laughter)

---

Fear, if I were you. Triangle Hearts may be AU from this, but it still suggests that she can be surprisingly scary when she wants to.
As to what she's doing there... The flash-forward also showed that she's been spending at least enough time on Earth to hold down a respectable academic career, as well as saying that she sometimes did field work as an investigator. I suspect that either A, the TSAB has a low enough turnover rate that they don't need to do the class every year, or B, Nanoha's too influenced by her personal experience, and her lessons aren't really practical for, oh, about the lower seventy-five percent of the power range, which'd have about the same effect - either way, she doesn't need to teach it until there are enough applicants built up to make a full course worth doing.
The real reason, though, is that this whole fight scene is happening on Earth - essentially, she's point woman on this because she was already on scene when it started.
Speaking of which, I'd like to float a theory - from the way Lindy and the others reacted to them, Lost Logia are not all that common - but there were still two, apparently unconnected incidents on Earth within a year of each other. Likewise, it seems like magically-based technology is more common in the greater universe than the purely physical type that developed on Earth.
So, what I think is happening is that Earth was the nearest world to the destroyed dimension that the Lost Logia originally came from, and that much of its, er, magisphere, was basically burned away by the backlash. Being closest, it'd also be in for the greatest frequency of artifacts, whether ones that survived the cataclysm or self-directing ones trying to find their way to a home that doesn't exist any more.
Ja, -n
(ETA: The gray men are carrying weapons based off of nagamaki.)
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[katreus]

Oh *very* nice.
And that'd explain why the few mages pop up are ridiculous in power... (see Hayate and Nanoha and even the Admiral)
As for the TSAB, I get what you're saying -- on the other hand, Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate -- all of them are basically walking armies in one. From the flash forward, I get the impression that they still work mainly in small groups or by themselves as trouble shooters; although they may coordinate with TSAB units, by the time they're called in, there's no need to deal with individual TSAB squads because their power level is too low. (This doesn't quite make sense with what Lindy ordered regarding the capture of Precia Testarossa -- but then again, it was shown quite clearly that the Enforcers couldn't deal with it)
As for shinobi, well, Naruto type shinobi aren't necessarily spies (they just blow lots of stuff up). Those scars on her dad don't just come from spying -- I'd say her family also deals in assassinations...

[Valles]

---

As for the TSAB, I get what you're saying -- on the other hand, Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate -- all of them are basically walking armies in one. From the flash forward, I get the impression that they still work mainly in small groups or by themselves as trouble shooters; although they may coordinate with TSAB units, by the time they're called in, there's no need to deal with individual TSAB squads because their power level is too low. (This doesn't quite make sense with what Lindy ordered regarding the capture of Precia Testarossa -- but then again, it was shown quite clearly that the Enforcers couldn't deal with it)

---

It might very well be one of the incidents responsible for adopting the 'single heavy unit' approach you're describing - also, saying that the Enforcers aren't as good at teamwork as the gray men is not the same as saying that they aren't good enough to make it work.
Besides, Precia was a hell of a threat - more than Nanoha, in her own way, and certainly more than the TSAB usually has to plan for. She might not have had quite the same amount of brute power, but, other than the Al Hazred transport sequence, the few times we saw her actually use magic, she just... tossed it out with a wave of her hand. Effortless, like, where Fate and Nanoha had to actively work to use their heavy artillery.
Anyway, I actually think you're right about the role they've been using Fate and Hayate in, and that it's a well-established one - that'd be why Chrono was assigned to the Asura in the first place.
Now I just need to rewatch and figure out what rules he was running under and I'll be set...

---

As for shinobi, well, Naruto type shinobi aren't necessarily spies (they just blow lots of stuff up). Those scars on her dad don't just come from spying -- I'd say her family also deals in assassinations...

---

Mm. Triangle Hearts again (it's fairly mediocre in its own right, but provides lots of interesting detail on Nanoha's family) - the two roles we see them in there are acting as an OpFor for a SWAT team's training and working as bodyguards... both roles entirely too legitimate to justify with a background like that. I suspect that the scars are from the incident that killed him in that timeline - we don't get much detail on it, but the person responsible was later shown using 'mad bomber' tactics as a distraction to let him get in close and do the real work, so I figure he basically dived into a major fight right after getting blown up.
So, yeah, historical ninja were assassins, too, but I don't think that the Takamachi are in that business any more.
I am planning on having her school's drama club stage a kabuki play, though, which should be good for a laugh.
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[CattyNebulart]

---

Anyway, I actually think you're right about the role they've been using Fate and Hayate in, and that it's a well-established one - that'd be why Chrono was assigned to the Asura in the first place.
Now I just need to rewatch and figure out what rules he was running under and I'll be set...

---

Hmm, my sugestion would be something alog the lines of Section 328, paraarph 7 of The Book; All ships of destroyer class or larger that operate or plan to operate more than 5 hours away from HQ shall carry at least on Midchilda type mage.
What the Ashura runs into is definitly uncommon, but I think one such incident every few decades would justify this kind of rule. Of course they still wouldn't be able to handle such things as the book of darkness. OTOH the redshirts must be pretty decent because Rita and wolf-boy where back to back watching them rather than dispatching them when they where surounded by a dozen or so of them. They can't be too good however because they retreated when the heavy hitters showed up.
I'd rate a heavy hitter like Nanoha or fate to be equivalent (for this purpose equivalent means 50/50 shot at winning) to about one and a half Wolken Ritter by series end, and equivalent to about a dozen higher-end Redshirts.
Does that seem correct?
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Valles]

The protective abilities of magical armor were almost completely disconnected from its appearance, but the fact that her enemies' equipment was even so thorough as to provide a strictly physical layer of protection underneath the magical ones made Nanoha fairly certain that an attack as diffuse as the Wave wouldn't be able to seriously harm them. Fortunately, she hadn't intended it to - all she had wanted was to distract them and force a measure of seperation that she could use to...
"Divine Shooter."
The soldiers yelped and dived out of the way of the homing spheres, then one of them, with red on his helmet as well as his arms and legs, shouted something in a language she didn't recognize. There were thousands of languages in use across the dimensions, of course, but only a couple of hundred belonged to people with the ability to travel away from their own. Raging Heart's ability to store data was great enough that she could 'speak' almost all of them, and the nearly subconcious nature of linguistic fluency let her share that ability with her master. This was only the second time she hadn't felt the psychosomatic 'tickle' of that new knowledge entering her mind on hearing a traveller speak for the first time, and she made a mental note to show a recording of it to Amy-san's new data intern - or victim, to give the position its more deserved name.
With so many spheres in the air, she couldn't spare the concentration to be very accurate, but one caught a man just above the knee - which broke with a very disturbing crunching noise - and another skimmed past its real target to catch the soldier behind him across the temple. His helmet saved his life, but he still tumbled to the ground with an utter limpness that announced that conciousness was most definately absent.
The leader shouted again, and the one who had had the narrow escape grabbed up his fallen companion's weapon into the same hand as his own and hurridly hoisted the rag-doll form up over his shoulder with the other before joining the rest of his comrades in converging on the man with the broken leg.
Three of them stopped a little short and spun to face her, raising their weapons with an unitelligable order. The response, though, was clear enough: "Triple Guarda!"
She didn't recognize the style of the shield that command produced, but a couple of attempts made it clear that breaking through it would require a bit more effort than her usual staple.
Fair enough. She could do that.
"Flash Move," Raging Heart said, and once she had reoriented herself, Nanoha realized that the spell had been triggered to pull her out of the way of a volley of fire from the pair of soldiers in the back, and that the last four were in different stages of preparing their own.
Two down, three occupied on their shield, and the commander busy doing... what looked like a dimensional transport spell. Six left to take down, if she wanted to apprehend them rather than hoping that Amy could trace them back to their origin.
Expert Devices needed verbal or somatic cues to begin their strikes, and, having seen the blades begin to swing down and throw off crackling arcs of white light, were relatively easy to avoid or bat aside. Defending wasn't going to win this battle, though, and any attack heavy enough to break their shield would require that she pause for a moment or two to focus it... a period of vulnerability that they'd be quite capable of taking advantage of.
On the other hand, with them on the ground like that... "Flash Move," to find cover as another white arc slashed through her former position, then "Divine Shooter," to keep them busy and let her weave and build then wrap up and set aside before "Flash Move," snapping into place directly above their heads and throwing herself up and forward so that she was facing the ground and had Raging Heart leveled straight down. "Divine Buster."
The reason she had attacked from above was that, with no disassociative Barrier in place around the battle scene, all of the collateral damage their fight did to the surrounding environment would have to be paid for and repaired the normal way, and would further have a chance of going wild and injuring some innocent bystander, which wouldn't do at all. Fortunately, the angle from which the shield was hit made no difference in the ultimate effect her attack had on it - a judgement borne out by the way the shield collapsed, and two of the men maintaining it flinched back with cries of pain as their Devices exploded in their hands.
The remaining shield-man was leaning on his weapon and shaking his head, as though disoriented, but the six who had been shooting at her seemed to trade a glance, then lunged into the air after her.
"Melee Mode," Raging Heart announced, and deployed a pair of wickedly sharp blades to form an 'A' around her Connection Core, and then the soldiers were on them. Nanoha twisted around the first one's lunge and speared the device's butt down to cave in his helmet's nose guard, but was barely able to block the next two's strikes while he reeled away with a strangled cry and the fourth twisted around his companions to deliver a kick that knocked her tumbling.
The last two were waiting for her, and he threw his weapon up between both hands to block her strike at the same moment that she tried to twist and lean out of the way of his partner's.
Both of them failed.

---

I'm about to pass out where I sit, so here's something to last y'all.
ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[ECSNorway]

Looking pretty damn good so far.
I see you're using some variant of the phase-dislocation theory on the Barrier shield, too. Cool.--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[CattyNebulart]

how is a clifhanger supossed to tie us over?
I second the very good. If only writing that well didn't take so much effort and practice :/ (well then I'd have my 500+k Nanoha story done.)
*Holds out ramen bowl* More please. ^_^
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[katreus]

Hah.
Combination of brains, beauty, power, and even niceness. (Tactics God Nanoha!) Why aren't more people falling over their feet to get to know her? =P

[Valles]

The nagamaki's blade probably wasn't really that sharp, but the actinic tracery of white fire along its edge apparently added a tremendous amount of cutting power. Nanoha had been diligent about practicing her evasions, and one of the characteristics that had made her family successful as shinobi had been their excellent reflexes, so she almost managed to avoid it.
That meant that, rather than cleaving her head in half, the very tip of the blade slashed across her right cheek, parting skin and muscle alike but missing her nose and remaining just barely too shallow to nick her jawbone.
It hurt.
She was very lucky, but the man she had struck was rather less so. There was a bright flash of pink light against white before Raging Heart cleaved cleanly through the Expert Device's resistance a moment before doing the same to its physical structure. And its wielder.
There was no time to think about the fact that she had just killed the man - his companions were playing by the same rules she was, rules they had set with the civilian bodies scattered across half the shopping district, and the one who had cut her was coming out of his follow through and into recovery.
He had been open, but she was a split second too slow pulling free and he slapped her lunge aside with a hand-over-hand twist of his weapon that left him in a position to turn the motion into an attack of his own. The counter was just as easy, though, and Raging Heart traded ends in her hands and rotated up to lock against the nagamaki's guard for a moment before she changed her leverage and forced it free of his hands and falling freely to earth.
She would have taken advantage of that weakness, as mercy was a luxury that would have gotten her killed at these odds, but the four she'd clashed with only a few seconds ago caught up and drove into melee.
One bypassed her and slid in front of his disarmed comrade, but the next slashed in from his left as she turned to face him. She dropped Raging Heart to that side a blocked it solidly, then shoved him away and spun the Device up and around to slap the third soldier's lunge down into thin air. The last was right behind him, coming down, weapon first, in a motion that put all his weight behind the strike. He was too close for her to come back on guard in time, so she let go with her higher hand - the right - and threw it out, palm first. "Protective Force."
The disc-shaped shield absorbed the impact and the magic backing it, then flashed and gave them back redoubled a split second later, blowing him clean through the facade of the building across the street.
A voice shouted something in that language of theirs - a command, by the tone - and it wasn't the one belonging to the man who had been giving the orders until now. The men she had been fighting scattered away from her, and she had only a moment to throw up a shield before she found out why.
"Estrella Fuego!"
Then there was nothing in the world but flame. If she hadn't already been sweating - from exertion, and from the pain of the wound pouring blood all across her front - then the heat would have made her start, and the way the attack tore at her defenses was no worse than Hayate sometimes managed on her off days.
When her vision cleared, she could see the soldiers hustling through what looked like a long-range portal, and, standing between her and them, a man wearing much the same style of armor, but with a more open helmet and a red-hemmed full cape rather than the half-length ones she'd already seen. The Intelligent Device he held was a full-length staff, and held its Connection Core in place with six angular flanges at one end, much like a medieval European mace.
He met her eyes, and she could see enough of his face to know that his mouth was set in a straight, grim line. "Escua," he said.
"Si, mi Amo! Quemar Hormigueo!"
The casting matrix beneath his feet was the same sixty-degree angled fractal pattern as the others had used, like a cross between a circuit diagram and a snowflake, and lasted only a second before shattering and flowing out to form nearly a dozen shining octohedral frameworks hovering in the air around him. At the center of each was a blinding, brilliant point of light which, at a gestured command from the mage, they commenced to flinging from their interiors against her shields. No sooner had one attacked than a new light was growing at its heart, and between all of them there wasn't the slightest break that would let her lower her defenses and attack.
On the other hand, there was hardly any chance that those seperated daemons could hold enough power to outlast her, and scarely more that their creator could use the distraction to come up with something capable of breaking through her shield, and, from the ironic bow he gave in answer to her glare as the last of his... subordinates? ...vanished, he was well aware of both facts.
The fact that he followed up on this by turning and departing himself only made her frustration all the worse as the portal winked out of existence.
"Schwalbe Flieger!"
One pass, then another took care of the distractions that had held her in place, and she let the shield drop as her rescuer approached.
"Nanoha! Are you all right? We couldn't contact you - there was some sort of jamming, and..." Vita stopped cold and went very pale as she took in the look in the elder girl's eyes and the blood soaking her clothes, and she stopped and began to reverse direction almost immediately. "A-andI'llgogetShamalsoshecantakecareofthatforyouokaybye!"
*eyecatch one: MAHOU KUNOICHI LYRICAL NANOHA*

---

Are y'all curious yet?
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Rieverre]

---

"Nanoha! Are you all right? We couldn't contact you - there was some sort of jamming, and..." Vita stopped cold and went very pale as she took in the look in the elder girl's eyes and the blood soaking her clothes, and she stopped and began to reverse direction almost immediately. "A-andI'llgogetShamalsoshecantakecareofthatforyouokaybye!"

---

And here comes the cavalry ... late as usual.
Poor Vita. Grim!Nanoha is apparently f*cking scary.
Seriously cool snippet, Nate.
Random thought of the day: the Intelligent Devices we've seen so far have all been Melee weapons/staves/rings, or at least that was their initial form. I'm looking forward to seeing the first gun or bow based Intelligent Device.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[ECSNorway]

---

Random thought of the day: the Intelligent Devices we've seen so far have all been Melee weapons/staves/rings, or at least that was their initial form. I'm looking forward to seeing the first gun or bow based Intelligent Device.

---

Actually, we have, sort of. Signum's blade was capable of transforming into a bow, yes?
Not quite what you were asking for, but still.
I think this Nanoha is going to be very, very, interesting.
(And has Vita grown up any, by this point, or is she still doing the loligoth thing?)--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

---

(And has Vita grown up any, by this point, or is she still doing the loligoth thing?)

---

This is set about three months after the flash-forward, which, from the cherry blossoms and the way the girls didn't seem to've seen each other for a while, I'm guessing was set some time in April.
So, since we saw her in that, and she hadn't changed at all, no, she hasn't matured any. Besides, Vita just isn't Vita if she's not short and sulky.
Oh, and, here's a plot hook for you to turn over in your heads until I can write it: that entire fight scene was being broadcast live onto (inter)national television.
Ja, -n
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Foxboy]

Hmm.
Just a thought from one of the IB (innocent bystander) casualties' relatives who recognize the language.
Me llamo es Inigo Montoya. Tu mi padre asesino. Preprese para morir.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Rieverre]

---

Oh, and, here's a plot hook for you to turn over in your heads until I can write it: that entire fight scene was being broadcast live onto (inter)national television.

---

...
...
oh ... frag ...
Yes, this will make things quite convulted, I'd wager, since their particular form of armor doesn't come with glamour included.
Wonder how the first meeting of a TSAB representative with the local politicos will go.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm

[katreus]

---

Oh, and, here's a plot hook for you to turn over in your heads until I can write it: that entire fight scene was being broadcast live onto (inter)national television.

---

Heh.
Hehehehe. The *entire* fight? As in the beginning discussion on whose fault the dead civilians were?
Mwahaha. I wonder what the Japanese and the American government will make of this. A japanese girl with an American accent weapon.
(And people *will* be falling over their feet to get to know her now :S)
Edit: The end scene -- hilarious. *G*
Edit2: I want to see Fate's reaction. Not to mention Nanoha's family's (to her condition and the international broadcasting ^^).
Edit3: Spanish government response also has me wondering. =P

[katreus]

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Random thought of the day: the Intelligent Devices we've seen so far have all been Melee weapons/staves/rings, or at least that was their initial form. I'm looking forward to seeing the first gun or bow based Intelligent Device.

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Most (i.e. all apparently) of the Intelligent Device have a long-range/middle-range component. It might be nice to have something like a gunsaber where you can easily shoot out balls of magic (sub-automatic guns!), but the ID should be fairly robust -- because some people are just too fast and they'll get too close and once you're holed up behind your shield, they won't let you open the range to your comfort zone. So I suppose all ID would have something to allow them to fight short-range.

[ECSNorway]

Jack O'Neill still has to figure somewhere into it, just so we can have him go "WHAT???". (Besides, Japan -is- part of the Stargate Program now, and Jack's CO of Homeworld Security, so if this -were- to be a crossover, the TSAB would be, as far as Earth was concerned, under his jurisdiction...)--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Valles]

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Hehehehe. The *entire* fight? As in the beginning discussion on whose fault the dead civilians were?

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Well, the broadcast was coming from a news chopper, actually, but it showed up even before she did - actually during the killing spree.

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Wonder how the first meeting of a TSAB representative with the local politicos will go.

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It's fairly likely that they're already known to and cooperating with each other, actually - leaving aside Fate's transfer to Nanoha's school, one does not throw around the kind of resources needed to get ahold of an apartment the size of Lindy's in urban Japan without attracting government attention.
The press conference is gonna be fun, though. ^_^

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Mwahaha. I wonder what the Japanese and the American government will make of this. A japanese girl with an American accent weapon.

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The Americans are probably just going to be concerned with supporting their allies. The Australians, OTOH, may well plotz.
Ms. Burke was born in Perth, you see. ^_^

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I want to see Fate's reaction. Not to mention Nanoha's family's (to her condition and the international broadcasting ^^).

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Nanoha's not as badly off as the bleeding might make you think - facial wounds are like that, I understand, but she was never in danger of bleeding out. I still haven't decided whether or not it'll scar...
Fate is, by the power of authorial fiat, out on a case way off in the back end of beyond - which gives me more time to think of that question's real answer, and sets up a deus ex machina if I find myself in need of one. Go, me.
I figure that the parents will be just one step short of totally blase about the whole thing, and the sibs are going to try and put her into boot camp to get ready for the next time something like this happens.
Suzuka is going to be hiding from the reporters, Alyssa will solicit her parents for reccomendations on lawyers and/or PR people to help handle the whole thing, and Hayate will be too busy saving the paparazzi from the Wolkenritter to comment much.

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Most (i.e. all apparently) of the Intelligent Device have a long-range/middle-range component. It might be nice to have something like a gunsaber where you can easily shoot out balls of magic (sub-automatic guns!), but the ID should be fairly robust -- because some people are just too fast and they'll get too close and once you're holed up behind your shield, they won't let you open the range to your comfort zone. So I suppose all ID would have something to allow them to fight short-range.

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If nothing else, a staff makes a surprisingly effective weapon. And there's something just immensely amusing about the idea of someone like Shamal diving into a fight wearing brass knuckles.
Anyway, that ties in to the whole Midchildian(sp?) vs. Velkan question - Velka-type Devices are optimized for combat. They're weapon-like in their design, they have that nifty cartridge-amplification function, and most of all, their internal systems are protected against shocks and surges like you get in any fight.
Mildchildian ones have a lower maximum amplitude, but can manipulate power more subtly and generate more sophisticated effects, along with being a great deal more efficient.
Basically, in a fight, a Velka-user can almost always overpower a Mildchild-type mage fairly quickly - but if they don't, they'll run out of steam a lot faster. For anything other than asskicking, it's Midchild all the way.
Ja, -n
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"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."