They really are. The only weakness they have really is that they have to ration out what percentage of the Barrier(s) used to make them are targeting. Like atmospheric pressure, mana damage, kinetic damage, and such.
Pathfinding for Beginners (Pathfinder/Nanoha)
- Thread starter Mizu
- Start date
Librarian
SAN Loss Isn't Fun Anymore...
Depending on whether Pathfinder's spell system works by forcing genuine environmental effects (fire: unfueled combustion, ice: temperature anomaly) or mana-based approximations of the same, classic spellcasting can be absolutely deadly to Barrier Jackets due to the sheer range of effects different spells can exert.
Adaptive as Barrier Jackets may be, no mage'll be able to counter five different attack "vectors" at once. Doubly so for regular "dumb" Devices.
InfiniteDaze
Too lazy to leave the house
- Location
- I wish I could stay
You saw the future in the form of an anime series spanning three (now four- five?) seasons and one manga that eventually got axed?
Man what happens to the old days when you just got psychic visions?
Actually, to the best of my knowledge, a properly formed Barrier Jacket defends all its applied vectors at once. It's not a single defensive spell that quickly swaps damage types to protect from, it's compressed layers upon layers upon layers of shields and barriers and protection spells. So it protects from all damage types it can defend from equally well, simultaneously.
The biggest problem Barrier Jackets have is actually magical barrier piercing. So, it proves once again something fantasy connoisseurs have known forever: you need magic or anti-magic to efficiently counter magic. That's probably why the Jackets are so powerful, actually; someone adds barrier piercing to their spells, so someone else beefs up their Jacket to compensate, so better piercing was added...
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Kind of. That's what I meant really, you have all those layers, but you can only have so many. Usually scaling with how good you are, but there is a cap, so you need to decide and assign how many barriers for each you want.
I'm not sure there is a cap as such really... rather then say that how more layers you have how more magic you tie up. And of course how more bulky your uniform becomes. Something that can be a drawback all in its own.
So it could be more like in real life, just adding on more armor to a tank doesn't necessarily always make it better.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
I'd need to check the spell list for Wizards before, being unfamiliar with D&D as I am, but gut instinct says no. Overall, Mizuki's kinda inferior to Nanoha mages on most fronts, barring a few exceptions, and those either need outright divine intervention to pull off (eg; Cleric's True Resurrection) or tend to be very high on the Wizard power pole (Tier seven spells and above).
And processing power. They are spells, which means they take up run-time either in your Device or your brain. Maybe not much, but its there, and its taking away processing power from other spells.
Fair enough, yeah.
That depends on how 3.5 Spell Compendium translates into Pathfinder. If spells from it are available for MC in their unchanged form... well, Nanoha's most powerful attacks can be lol-noped with a level four spell. It only gets worse from there.
Is that via an exact words interpretation? Or some kind of barrier effect?
Nanoha's "most powerful" spell is kind of arbitrary isn't it? Her most powerful bombardment spell is not nessecarily her most powerful spell. Hell, we could even gauge this based on utility, in which case her biggest booms fall down to the bottom of the list, with only one use: cause big booms.
Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
- Location
- Where the Beef is
- Pronouns
- Any
MSLN magic in general is kind of low on subtle and utility effects, which are the bread and butter of D&D/PF arcane magic. Most of the things that show up on camera are considered Rare Skills, where Mizuki has a whole arsenal of them to pull out as needed. If not for being very explicitly INT based casters, I'd say they were more similar to Sorcerors, with a limited selection of things they can use more freely and a deeper well but little breadth and flexibility - if you can't shoot it, block it with a Barrier, tie it in a Bind, or fly over it, MSLN magic is going to have trouble at least in the short term.
Their entire tech base is magitech. They power entire cities with Mana Reactors. We don't see many subtle or mundane uses of magic, but if you can base an entire tech base off of it, those uses exist. This is particularly true here, since the entire series is very action oriented.
As for those less direct spells we DO see: Wide area search*1, flight, Teanna's illusions*2, Summoning*3, healing, probably a godsend in surgery though we never see that, dimensional displacement*4, interplanetary distance dimensional transfer, mental forking*5 , Yuuno's reading multiple books at once thing which probably has any number of other uses. Virtual Reality.
Probably dozens of others I just can't rmember off the top of my head.
And finally, keep in mind that MSLN DOES actually have esoteric magic systems as we saw with the Witch in Vivid, they're just rarely used. Mid-Childan and Neo-Belkan are the most popular around, but not the only ones in the series.
*1(and, by extension, any other remote viewing)
*2(not a Rare Skill, she's just good with them)
*3(technically a Rare Skill, but I'd bet anyone with the patience and dedication needed could learn it)
*4(Barriers)
*5(true multitasking is literally impossible for humans, so use magic to get it done)
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It should be noted that even the blunt attacks you see are more sophisticated then you might think. Things like barrier piercing abilities added to them is common enough, but other things often get added as well like homing, dimension breaking, physical and or magical damage, shock, heat, piercing, imbuing objects to carry damage, etc. Barriers and defences similarly have many different sub-effects which are at times mentioned in miscellaneous canon materials.
So as @Phant0m5 said, it's not that they don't exist, they just aren't discussed that much in the anime, because that's not what the story is about. In comparison D&D will upfront mention lots of the world building, so you can make your own story in it. But lack of mention of world building as such does not mean it doesn't exist.
Really when you get right down to it, it's actually a bit hard to find magic types that aren't used in MGLN. There are so very many of them in the end, just like what you'd perhaps expect from an advanced magi-tech civ.
So as @Phant0m5 said, it's not that they don't exist, they just aren't discussed that much in the anime, because that's not what the story is about. In comparison D&D will upfront mention lots of the world building, so you can make your own story in it. But lack of mention of world building as such does not mean it doesn't exist.
Really when you get right down to it, it's actually a bit hard to find magic types that aren't used in MGLN. There are so very many of them in the end, just like what you'd perhaps expect from an advanced magi-tech civ.
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Yeah, pretty much.
We're not going with rules-as-written, we're going with fluff-as-consistent. (And please excuse me saying "we"; I'm a beta-reader and sounding board, not Mizu's cowriter in this instance.) What this means is:
- The laws of physics are the same in all locations. Magic works; MGLN magic would work in Mizuki's home (presuming it exists); same goes for the reverse. Any magic that pull on entities other than the caster (mostly clerics, but a few arcane spells as well) may or may not, as those entities may or may not be there.
- Pathfinder worlds are, generally speaking, multiply post-apocalyptic. That has lots of consequences, and one of them is that they don't really understand their own technology. They can barely do magitech at all, and they certainly can't e.g. build a factory that mass-produces magic items with no human input, something which is very much within the realm of possibility.
- Dimensional Space is, of course, also post-apocalyptic. They're living in the dark ages, but it's getting better; they never fully fell. Things are much better now than they were a century ago, although their technology isn't as good as it was, say, when the Cradle and its sister ships were built.
In particular, people in Dimensional Space do understand their own technology, in 99% of cases. There are a few exceptions — lost logia, the familiar spells — but they're getting very close to cracking the latter, and every year some lost logia or other turns non-lost. The existence of the Infinite Library helps with this, as did devices like the Tome of the Night Sky, back before it was corrupted.
They try not to use anything they don't understand, and they certainly won't build on it, so their scientists spend time on the more productive job of pushing the boundaries of what they do understand. If a Pathfinder wizard were to do the same, then he'd never get beyond cantrips in his lifetime.
That being said? The rules are the same. Excepting the apparent nonexistence of gods, the mage-scientists in dimensional space have the exact same set of constraints as the Pathfinder-native ones, which means the same solutions work. That being the case, and their level of understanding being much better, for the most part MGLN magic just plain trumps Pathfinder magic. Whatever you think Mizuki might try, someone already did it centuries or millennia ago, and modern barrier jackets and auto-defences guard against it.
There is very little she could do that they don't have an answer for, somewhere. An intelligent device like Raising Heart is capable of casting half a dozen spells in the time Mizuki takes to finish a single one, which alone would be enough to crush her or counterspell almost anything; any spell which isn't instant-hit could be unravelled faster than Mizuki can cast it, if it doesn't have guards against that.
(Which it would, to some degree. Mizuki's school of spellclasting isn't new either.)
But as they say, it's the spells you don't know you should guard against which kill you, and Mizuki is a wandering collection of Rare Skills.
Now if only she was a little older than thirteen, and understood more of the spells in her spellbook...
Actually, if you somehow get disembowled without damaging any organs then you can live for quite a while like that. As long as your organs are clean, kept moist, and still connected to everything else the way they should be, they'll continue working just like normal, weather inside your body or out. Your biggest problems at that point are blood loss, infection, and certain lines getting pinched or damaged because they really should not be moving around like that.
People are not particularly durable, but they are surprisingly hard to kill.
Chapter 5
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
You'd expect, upon coming to the realization that you've swapped gender somehow, that this fact would disturb you in some manner. Things would be slightly off, whether that's the changes to your gait as you walk around the room, or the subtle alterations to your body shape from increased estrogen and other female biology bits. Couple it with losing a decade or so and things would get even funkier from the changes in height alone, not to mention the change in how people tend to treat you when you're a kid instead of an adult.
And yet, the only thing I'm feeling is a dull sense of shock.
Being a girl feels normal. Natural. I still feel like me, albeit a me who's sore and faintly hurting all over from numerous injuries, but there is no big sense of 'this is wrong' hitting me in the face with a two-by-four. Just a dull feeling of surprise coupled with vague apprehension of figuring out how the heck you go about wearing a bra. Luckily, I don't really need one. At all, and I feel vaguely annoyed about that.
So I decide to put it out of my mind, and at the same time I proceed to shrug on the clothes sitting on the table before me. Leaning against the bed, I'm pulling my socks up when there's a knock at the door, followed a few seconds later by a faint whoosh as it slides open to admit a figure carrying a tray; hunger makes itself known as the scent of porridge wafts past my nose.
"Ah, you're awake!" It's the woman from before, the one who rescued me from House, although now I'm not bleeding out and can properly examine her a better description would be 'teenager'. She's still got the baby fat of youth sticking to her face, her mouth is currently spread in a relieved smile towards me, and if I had to peg her I'd say...fifteen? Sixteen? Only a few years older than me. "Glad to see you're up, Mizuki, you've been sleeping for a while now. Feeling OK?"
"Uh–" My stomach answers for me with a rumble, and I flush. "Rather hungry?"
"Right, right, of course!" She passes me the tray, which I fumble for a moment, before plopping down on the bed nearby. There's a brief awkward moment where I'm looking at her in confusion, tray in hand as I stand next to the door, before getting the unspoken hint and sitting down next to her to feed the black hole of my stomach. I still don't know her name.
"So, uh–"
"Amy."
"Right, Amy." The sound of clinking cutlery fills the room for a few moments before I continue. "Where...am I, exactly? What happened after I fainted? Or, well, I think I fainted? Last I recall was chatting to Chrono and Captain Lindy…"
"You fainted." She confirms, cheerful tone drooping a bit at the admission. "Exhaustion from the operation, the doc said, so don't feel too bad about that. That's all our fault, for pushing you that soon. As to where you are, you're still on the Arthra, just in a room next to the medbay so we can get to you quick if something pops up; you're not really healed yet, as it were."
I sure don't feel hale and hearty, yeah.
"Captain Lindy sent a message off to Mid-Childa nine hours ago, letting them know about a possible location on the Book of Darkness as well as a request for reinforcements. Since then we've been checking in on you every two hours, making sure you're OK, while we continue on towards UA97."
UA97? What could that-Oh, Earth, right. The numbers name is gonna screw with me till I adjust, I just know it. "When do you expect a response? How about the reinforcements? I'd guess neither are going to be instantaneous if they're a long way away."
"Response?" Amy hmms, frowning a bit as she thinks. "Probably a week or so, at a guess, same with the reinforcements. It all depends on how turbulent the Dimensional Sea happens to be at the time, so you can't really have it happen immediately like across a single planet. We'll be arriving at UA97 later today, so we'll be on our own for a while."
Note to self, assume dimensional travel works like 18th century sea travel. It seems to map pretty well.
We both lapse into quiet as I finish consuming my meal, the room silent but for the clinking cutlery, and I turn to look at her once I'm done. "So, uh, not to sound ungrateful for you guys looking after and feeding me and all – as I am, really grateful – but...what am I meant to do while we travel to Ea-UA97?"
I mean, there's always studying magic from my books, but that seems kinda tricky to pull off without acceptable targets to blow up and/or damage in the area. Which are probably sparse to nonexistent on spaceships.
Amy blinks, forehead furrowing in a frown, before clearing into a smile. "Do you like books?"
When Amy suggested I spend my time devouring books in their ship library it seemed a wonderful idea; I love reading, they've got a shipboard library likely full of literally-alien entertainment for long voyages, and it's something calming and unlikely to physically stress me out as I heal up from my injuries.
Then we flipped open a book and I recalled their writing is gobbledygook to me.
"I...can't read this," I admit, holding the book loosely in one palm as I flip through pages with the other. The cover was clear enough, a staff-toting wizard casting a spell against a dragon, but the text inside just looks like chicken-scratch. "It's not in any language I know, which, you know, makes sense, so it seems this idea's run into a roadblock right out the gate."
"Ahaha, right." Amy rubs her head abashedly. "Uh, I could teach you? Look, this letter here's the sound 'A', this one's 'Le', this one's 'Re'–"
"Somehow I doubt I can learn an entire written language in an hour or two. Or even a week or two." Unless I'm a dragon, maybe. "You teaching me the Mid-childa alphabet, while a kind gesture, will both take time away from whatever your job is when you're not looking after me and run into numerous issues from our differing languages. Not to mention translation oddities my ring isn't converting into the closest substitute – there's no 'Re' or 'Le' in the languages I know, for example."
The book closes with a snap as I place it back on the shelf, and Amy droops. Just in case I'm proven wrong and I can read something, we try a few different books in numerous language they've got scattered about – turns out when you're a multi-planetary organization this means you need entertainment in multiple languages – but the result remains the same each time. Wriggly lines, strange boxy shapes and dots, a bunch of circles with waves around them, none give up their secrets to the ring about my finger.
We're passing a table where a few crewmembers are relaxing when I stop and stare, a bizarre sight catching my eye. A blonde-haired young man is leaning back in his seat, calmly watching a holographic screen projected a few meter in front of him, displaying a cartoon of some sort involving… sentai mages fighting a giant plant? What?
"What is it-Oh!" Amy spots it too, and suddenly swaps moods from depressed to excited at the same moment. "There's an idea, videos! You can watch videos, Mizuki, even if you can't read anything! It's spoken, so it should be fine, right?"
"...Um." The sentai wizards run about the screen in a panic, one of their members dangling in the air as the plant-monster squeezes its tentacles around them. "Uh–"
"Wait, I forgot, you're from a low-tech world. Right, uh, he's watching something we call 'television' on the screen there, although in this case it's a recording instead of being sent live across radio waves – Oh, those are invisible waves flying through the air, like light or sound except we can't detect them normally – and..."
The explanation of what TV, radio and video recording were was both vaguely informative and annoying in equal measure. Amy did her best to dumb it down for me, which I'm sure I'd be grateful for if I didn't already know what it all was and involved, but the end result was that I ended up trying out a video on her Device.
"Last time, on 'Dangerous Creatures across the Multiverse', we covered the fearsome Blubberworm!" A giant brown worm rears on the screen, roaring at the camera from its position overhead in some sort of sandy desert. "Famed for its fearsome magic resistance and humongous appetite, we're going up the food chain once more to the only thing this fearsome creature fears – the Drooping Eagle."
The screen flashes, a logo spiralling into view, before the worm and sands around it black out from shadow. There's a fierce cry, sharp furrows dug four feet deep into the dunes, and the blubberworm is gone without a trace.
This is… uh. This is new. I find myself captivated by the moving pictures.
"Well?" Amy looks at me, hope in her eyes, and pauses the video. "Does it work, Mizuki? Can you understand that? I've got lots more where it came from, a bunch of famous movies we can borrow, or cartoons like you saw Paul watching earlier. Or maybe some history documentary about Mid-childa? That sound interesting?"
"It works, yeah." Even though the ring only functions via telepathy. It shouldn't be able to pick up and translate spoken words otherwise! "That blubberworm thing looked pretty neat, as did the...cartoon? I think? I'll give whatever you recommend a shot."
Amy beams.
I tap my fingernails on the wall, looking uncertainly at the unrecognisable text on the sign mounted there. It looks just like the sign at the previous six-way intersection, which looked pretty much like the one before that, which is to say that it all looks like Djinnish to me.
I'd lowered my guard.
This—spaceship—looks technological. It mostly is technological, from the fluorescent lighting, to the screens, to the motors in the doors. I know there's magic behind the scenes, but I'd let myself rely on my common sense from Earth to get around. That was my first mistake.
"Um…" I cough. Shouting as loud as I can, which isn't very, has not been kind to my throat. "Anyone?"
No-one. My second mistake was in not asking for help while I could. I lean back against a wall, already out of breath just from walking a few hundred meters.
Okay… okay. No use in panicking, though what the heck, who ever heard of leaving a spaceship mostly deserted? Weren't they supposed to be crowded, with tight quarters and corridors that weren't mostly empty space? Were they supposed to be this big in the first place?
Recap time. Starting from the library I made my way straight back towards my room, aiming to cut across the path I originally took, and immediately got hopelessly lost. It had been a straight path. It should have been a straight path…
That was after taking a sort of scythe-like path from my room to the library this morning, going out, left, right, straight and then right again before turning left, which ought to have been just the same as going straight all along. The corridors are all pretty much the same length, and most of them lead to those same basic six-way intersections. There shouldn't be any room for mistakes. I shouldn't be lost, and I kind of aren't; it surprises even myself, but I can still remember my entire path. But then, I have a sneaking suspicion about where this story is heading.
There are legends like this. Students who walk into the depths of the Academy, and never make it back until… er… Academy? That isn't—
It hurts. It doesn't hurt. It feels like I've slammed my head into a whole pool full of cotton. I can't remember—I don't want to remember. This isn't my memory, it's—someone else's. The girl whose body I'm using? I half thought she's someone I've made up—though I shouldn't have that kind of power. It hurts. Mom, Dad—
A red-hot dagger pierces my side. I stagger, gasping at the sudden, physical pain, and open my eyes to find myself half-leaning, half-slipping down the side of the wall as I tear my way back to reality. My eyes quickly water. I blink, trying to stop the tears, and I'm only partially successful. I slide all the way down to the floor, too weak to push my way back to my feet, and let out a piteous moan as I do. I miss my family. I miss them horribly. I'll never seen them again, will I?
It takes me a little while to recapture my balance, both physically and emotionally. Once I do, I find the memories slipping through my fingers like a fading dream.
And… still lost. I sigh, and slowly climb to my feet, getting to work on fixing that.
'But— what was that anyway?'
Leaving a Dancing Lights as a marker at each intersection, I walk up one corridor, then left. Then I return, and when I get back to the first intersection I walk right—my previous left—then right again, which by all rules of logic ought to leave me at the last intersection I marked. There is an intersection, but there are no dancing lights here. What there is, is another entrance to the library.
"Really?" I whine, almost petulantly. My eye twitches.
For a moment I'm tempted to backtrack my entire path, the way I was planning. Then I think better of it. I'm horribly thirsty, and the library will have both a snack, and something to drink.
Despite being a military ship, the library onboard the Arthra wasn't utilitarian and dull in appearance. Rich, dark wooden shelves line the room in neat rows, stacked full of books in a number of different topics and genres, while a handful of people around beanbags or tables read books, watch videos on their Device or munch on snacks from the kitchenette in one corner.
The fellow from a few hours earlier, Paul, is hanging around the kitchenette as I approach and vaguely look for where the cups are kept, raising a hand in greeting as he slowly stirs a pan on the stovetop.
"Hey. Mizuki, right? Saw Amy giving you a tour earlier; finding the place to your liking?"
"Ups and downs." No, no cups here. Maybe in the drawer next to it? "The fact you've got a library on a military vessel is very impressive, I confess. Navigation leaves something to be desired, though."
"They're on your right." Paul waves at a cupboard far above my head, reaching beneath it to snag a bottle from a rack as he does; it drips yellow ooze into the pan, hissing softly against the hot oil. Then he blinks, and reaches up to get me a cup. It's frustrating, but I can't reach, and jumping would be painful; I guess the bandages tell him as much. "And yeah, I guess it would be a bit confusing if you aren't used to it. You're from a low-tech world, right? Used to 3D spaces and all, objects only as big on the inside as their outsides allow?"
"Wizards tend to make mansions for themselves in pocket dimensions if they're good enough, and there's artifacts which can hold several times more than they should, but otherwise that's right, yeah. What's that got to do with me getting lost?"
"The rooms in the ship are three-dimensional, the ship is not. They're folded into a four-dimensional space, though the ship's hull has five, and the shields cover all ten—" He chuckles at my expression, keeping one eye on me and one on his cooking. "And you didn't understand any of that, did you. Hey, Aerith! Mind explaining things to the newbie?"
I think I can feel a headache coming on. "It's not that I don't understand," I complain, as I'm efficiently bundled off to one of the sofa sections with my cup. "I just don't want to. You're telling me the entire ship is inside a pocket dimension? How is that safe?"
Mysterious otherworld knowledge or not, I know what happens when you put a Bag of Holding inside a Portable Hole. It isn't pretty.
Kaboom.
Aerith turns out to be a young brown-haired woman in engineer's overalls, with blue eyes, a kind smile, a shapely body and a staff-shaped Device nearly as tall as she is slung across her back. I feel a muddled sting of jealousy, presumably at the sheer level of comfort she's exuding. As kind as she might be, too, it doesn't stop her eyes from glittering at my obvious confusion.
"We meet again," she says, with a smile. "You look a lot better than you did on the operating table. I'm glad. Fast healer, I guess?"
Great. I blush and look down, for no good reason at all, except that this is someone who's seen me at my absolute worst.
Aerith hastens to add, "Ah, not that I mind! My own heritage is pretty odd as well, I'm just happy you're better already. Most people with that sort of injury would still be in bed."
Then she offers me a cookie.
I feel oddly sore, but the cookie is yummy.
A few minutes later, we've commiserated over getting lost on the ship—a common occurrence for trainees, apparently—and Aerith has cast a few diagnostic spells to reassure herself that I'm basically fine. She tsks at my right side, where I tore one of my stitches sliding down that wall, but claims I should be back to normal in as little as a month. Then we get back to the main order of business.
"This is basically pretty simple," she says, deftly folding a sheet of paper into smaller squares and stacking them on top of each other. They form a kind of fan, which she stretches upwards. "Imagine this is the ship. The bits of paper are the rooms you can see; this—" she points at a square close to the edge, "—is your room, and this one here in the middle is the bridge. They're pretty far from each other, see? But if I do this…"
She picks a bit of tape out of her pocket, then glues the "bridge" to the top of the paper fan. I pinch my nose. I'm not sure what she's trying to say, but this is such a vast oversimplification.
"Then you can take a shortcut, see? And so long as we keep the rooms simple and reasonably uniform, it's easy to join them up during construction, which is good, because a human exposed to dimensional space is… um… don't worry about it," she says, not reassuringly. I may have made a choked "Glurk" kind of noise. I stare at the construction in horror.
"—Mizuki? Are you all right?" She touches my arm, making me realise I'd stopped breathing. It's a fight to start back up, and a fight not to sit absolutely still. I carefully lean back, my eyes wide, and try not to let on too obviously that she might as well have told me I've been walking drunkenly through a pit full of live vipers.
"It's all perfectly safe," she says, giving me a sympathetic look. "I'm sure it sounds scary, but joining them up this way also keeps the ship stable. It's like cross-bracing, in a way; keeps destructive resonances from building up…" She sighs. "I had a roommate who could talk your head off about this for hours, but he left the service. He's with R&D today, working on the next generation of dimensional cruiser. He'd have had a better explanation. If you want, though, I can show you some of the stabilization systems?"
I consider her offer.
On the one hand, it does sound really interesting. On the other… I'm tired, I've had a lot of shocks already, and I really want nothing more than to slide down the couch and watch silly, childish-but-fun, alien cartoons for a while. Maybe I'll take a nap.
In the end I decide to take a rain-check. If I could have understood what I was seeing, then… maybe. But I'm sure I don't know any of the background here, after all.
Paper slides through my fingers as I turn the pages of my spellbook, looking for something which could work. Doll was a lucky win considering I defeated it with nothing but Sleep and Acid Splash, but the bird, dog and House don't hint at the best track record for combat. Raw damage output is something I'm going to be limited in for a good while, and is possibly too redundant to even bother with considering the TSAB mages, so something which distracts and captures foes seems like it'd be in my best interest to learn.
So I can run away, if nothing else.
Glitterdust looks good as a blinding option, golden sparkles to the eyes being rather irritating things and all, while Mudball and Colour Spray are alternate, less difficult versions to learn. Charm Person would be helpful for getting Fate, Precia and...basically anyone hostile to stop and listen to you for a bit (or just stop, period, if you wanted to capture them), if it works at all, while Admonishing Ray is the non-lethal takedown option if that happens to fall flat. Grease is great against anything on the ground, but seeing as all Nanoha mages I know of can fly it's kinda useless at the moment; Glue Seal falls in much the same category, except if I manage to hit the target when they're not floating it'll actually work.
Problem is, I can't really practice any of them without making a big mess, or having a human target in the case of Admonishing Ray and Charm Person, so while they're nifty they'll be put on the backburner for a later time when I'm not a guest on a TSAB spaceship. Hmm…
Maybe Shadow Trap? Shadow Anchor?
I flip to their page, looking over the instructions carefully for a few minutes, before glancing around for something I can test this out on. A nearby book bravely volunteers for the cause. Placing it in the middle of the desk, I clear everything else away, check the instructions once more, and cast.
"Shadow Anchor!"
Nothing… seems to happen.
"Shadow anchor?" My fingers tingle, the telltale feel of magic flowing through me, but the book remains unchanged. Maybe I should've tried this on a moving target. I nudge the offending paperweight, eyeing it suspiciously, before trying to lift it off the table; it resists, stuck like glue for a moment, then flies up into my face when I tug once more.
Ow.
"Mizuki?"
There's a knock on the door, moments before it slides open, and Amy sticks her head in to look at me. I look back, spellbook on my lap, and brush some glitter free of my face when everything remains gold-tinged.
"Uh–"
"Spell failure." I reply curtly, guessing what she was about to say. "Glitterdust tends to be rather explosive when you muck with it, but at least it's glitter and not, say, fire or lightning. Should vanish in a few minutes."
"...Right." Amy pauses, eyes tracing over the walls, ceiling and floor coated in sparkly gold, and visibly forces herself to ignore it. "Anyway, I came to collect you, Admiral Lindy's orders. We're approaching UA97 now, and she wants you on-deck when we drop out of the dimensional sea."
"Did she say why?" I stand up and brush myself off, glitter falling to the floor in piles from the motion. I'm still entirely too gold-tinged for my liking. "What's the plan for arrival, anyway?"
"Eh?"
Amy blinks, brow crinkling as she thinks, and we begin walking up the hallways towards the deck, gold sparkling behind me like a human slime-trail.
"Well, I think Chrono's giving a speech to the assault team, and–"
"Right then, listen up!"
Everyone jolts to attention when Chrono addresses them, standing ramrod-straight as their eyes remain firmly ahead, staring at the holographic screen projected on the wall of UA97 slowly growing bigger before us. In small Mid below the orb the local name, 'Earth', glitters softly, while next to it known information on the world's society, technology and customs scroll down the screen. Their sensor feeds make it immediately obvious that a lot of that information is woefully out of date.
"Readings from the sensor mage confirm an ongoing battle between powerful, high-class mage located on the map here." A dot lights up on the globe, zooming in to display a city of shining skyscrapers split in half by a river flowing through the middle. A building shudders, trembling, and a dust cloud billows into existence as they watch. "If Mizuki – our rescued seer-mage for those who haven't read the briefing yet – is correct, then at least one of them is the daughter of one Precia Testarossa, SS-Rank mage and wanted criminal for crimes of illegal cloning and tampering with S-class Lost Logia known as 'Jewel Seeds'."
The map changes, showing a blue gem sparkling in the sunlight, resting softly in the dust of a busy digsite.
"The vaunted 'Book of Darkness' is also believed to be on this planet, currently in the position of one Hayate Yagami, and as of this moment unawakened and thus not causing rampant destruction as a buildup to the destruction of the very planet itself. By no means will this remain the case."
Scenes of past encounters with the Book play out onscreen, starting at the most recent with the book extruding tendrils throughout a TSAB frigate, before it explodes in a flash of blinding white light.
"Our plan is twofold. Aerith, Paul and Zeke are assigned to Alpha Squad, and shall be teleporting into Uminari City to search for and confirm Hayate is both residing there and in possession of the book. Utmost caution shall be taken to ensure the book does not awaken at this time, as well as to conceal our presence on this world as per standard TSAB doctrine for Unadministrated Planets. Is this clear?"
"Sir yes sir!"
"Myself, Kirk and Jeanne shall be dropping into the brawl itself, forming Beta Squad, with the goal of restraining all combatants, relieving them of their Devices and retreating from the public eye as soon as possible. Jeanne, you're on healing. Kirk, offense. I shall be–"
Chrono pauses, frowning, and looks at Kirk. To be specific, the raised hand he'd thrust into the air as a sign he wanted to ask a question.
"What's your question, Kirk? We're on a time limit here, we can't afford to waste it with something mundane."
"Sir!" Kirk barks, arm thumping against his chest as his brown locks brush against his shoulders. "I was just wondering, Enforcer Chrono sir, why we were enforcing secrecy in this mission when the local mages have shown no sign of hiding their own existence with the use of a Wide-Area Shift spell."
"Because it's TSAB policy, Kirk." Chrono says as if he's stating the obvious. Objects drop due to gravity, the sky is blue, TSAB likes to keep magic secret on non-administrated worlds. "Regardless of how much or how little local mages are concealing magic, we shall be concealing our existence with the utmost secrecy and caution. A few spellcasters are an entirely different matter from an interplanetary government full of them, and we are in no way ready to accept UA97 into our numbers when we're still picking up the pieces from the Succession Wars. Or worse, go to war with them."
"Now, as I was saying, I shall be on overwatch. Our first target will be the dimensional criminal known as Fate Testarossa, but on the assumption that our information is correct, remember that she is much a victim as a criminal. After that—"
The bridge of the Arthra was a wide open space, ovular in shape, with chairs dotted around the edges for various technicians to control things and a raised segment for Lindy to preside over them all. Huge glass windows provided glimpses of the outside world in what screams to me as the most unsafe method of spaceship design possible – you don't build glass windows into your command center! – and there is a low murmuring buzz as people prepare for the operation before us.
Purple and blue dissolves into pure black in an instant, then we're suddenly orbiting a giant blue jewel, made famous in photographs ever since Man first set foot on the moon. Or took pictures from the ISS, to be more accurate regarding size.
"Got a lock on one of the Lost Logia, Captain Lindy!" One of the bridge bunnies cries as we step through the door, a screen flickering into existence on the giant windows in the same moment. "It's fueling a transformative effect on someone, and they seem highly aggressive!"
A crocodile-man roars on-screen, clambering free of the rubble of a wall it was knocked into, while people run screaming away from it. There's a purple blur, a surge of motion, and dust billows outwards to obscure our view as the monster is knocked backwards further into the building.
Two figures clash on a second monitor, white-and-blue locking staff with golden-yellow lightning scythe. Yellow breaks off, dashing backwards away from white, before trying to blitz her way around and under towards where the monster is crawling free once more; pink bindings lash into existence before she gets more than a foot away, her opponent pointing her staff at her determinedly as she strains against her bonds.
Wolf and ferret duke it out as a third screen flickers into being, binds and energy shots flying thick and fast through the air. The werewolf is visibly angry, her every attempt to shake the ferret being met with a block or attack, as she's prevented from going to her Master's aid.
The dust finally clears back on the first screen, revealing the two combatants clearly, and I gape in shock. A purple-haired young girl, clad in a white t-shirt and shorts, is locked hand-in-hand with the croc-monster as they wrestle and push against one another. With a grunted cry she judo-throws him over her back, sending him flying back out the building into a lightpost across the street, and punches off the ground after him hard enough to leave craters in her wake.
This… uh. This is new.
And yet, the only thing I'm feeling is a dull sense of shock.
Being a girl feels normal. Natural. I still feel like me, albeit a me who's sore and faintly hurting all over from numerous injuries, but there is no big sense of 'this is wrong' hitting me in the face with a two-by-four. Just a dull feeling of surprise coupled with vague apprehension of figuring out how the heck you go about wearing a bra. Luckily, I don't really need one. At all, and I feel vaguely annoyed about that.
So I decide to put it out of my mind, and at the same time I proceed to shrug on the clothes sitting on the table before me. Leaning against the bed, I'm pulling my socks up when there's a knock at the door, followed a few seconds later by a faint whoosh as it slides open to admit a figure carrying a tray; hunger makes itself known as the scent of porridge wafts past my nose.
"Ah, you're awake!" It's the woman from before, the one who rescued me from House, although now I'm not bleeding out and can properly examine her a better description would be 'teenager'. She's still got the baby fat of youth sticking to her face, her mouth is currently spread in a relieved smile towards me, and if I had to peg her I'd say...fifteen? Sixteen? Only a few years older than me. "Glad to see you're up, Mizuki, you've been sleeping for a while now. Feeling OK?"
"Uh–" My stomach answers for me with a rumble, and I flush. "Rather hungry?"
"Right, right, of course!" She passes me the tray, which I fumble for a moment, before plopping down on the bed nearby. There's a brief awkward moment where I'm looking at her in confusion, tray in hand as I stand next to the door, before getting the unspoken hint and sitting down next to her to feed the black hole of my stomach. I still don't know her name.
"So, uh–"
"Amy."
"Right, Amy." The sound of clinking cutlery fills the room for a few moments before I continue. "Where...am I, exactly? What happened after I fainted? Or, well, I think I fainted? Last I recall was chatting to Chrono and Captain Lindy…"
"You fainted." She confirms, cheerful tone drooping a bit at the admission. "Exhaustion from the operation, the doc said, so don't feel too bad about that. That's all our fault, for pushing you that soon. As to where you are, you're still on the Arthra, just in a room next to the medbay so we can get to you quick if something pops up; you're not really healed yet, as it were."
I sure don't feel hale and hearty, yeah.
"Captain Lindy sent a message off to Mid-Childa nine hours ago, letting them know about a possible location on the Book of Darkness as well as a request for reinforcements. Since then we've been checking in on you every two hours, making sure you're OK, while we continue on towards UA97."
UA97? What could that-Oh, Earth, right. The numbers name is gonna screw with me till I adjust, I just know it. "When do you expect a response? How about the reinforcements? I'd guess neither are going to be instantaneous if they're a long way away."
"Response?" Amy hmms, frowning a bit as she thinks. "Probably a week or so, at a guess, same with the reinforcements. It all depends on how turbulent the Dimensional Sea happens to be at the time, so you can't really have it happen immediately like across a single planet. We'll be arriving at UA97 later today, so we'll be on our own for a while."
Note to self, assume dimensional travel works like 18th century sea travel. It seems to map pretty well.
We both lapse into quiet as I finish consuming my meal, the room silent but for the clinking cutlery, and I turn to look at her once I'm done. "So, uh, not to sound ungrateful for you guys looking after and feeding me and all – as I am, really grateful – but...what am I meant to do while we travel to Ea-UA97?"
I mean, there's always studying magic from my books, but that seems kinda tricky to pull off without acceptable targets to blow up and/or damage in the area. Which are probably sparse to nonexistent on spaceships.
Amy blinks, forehead furrowing in a frown, before clearing into a smile. "Do you like books?"
0–––––––––––––––––––––0
When Amy suggested I spend my time devouring books in their ship library it seemed a wonderful idea; I love reading, they've got a shipboard library likely full of literally-alien entertainment for long voyages, and it's something calming and unlikely to physically stress me out as I heal up from my injuries.
Then we flipped open a book and I recalled their writing is gobbledygook to me.
"I...can't read this," I admit, holding the book loosely in one palm as I flip through pages with the other. The cover was clear enough, a staff-toting wizard casting a spell against a dragon, but the text inside just looks like chicken-scratch. "It's not in any language I know, which, you know, makes sense, so it seems this idea's run into a roadblock right out the gate."
"Ahaha, right." Amy rubs her head abashedly. "Uh, I could teach you? Look, this letter here's the sound 'A', this one's 'Le', this one's 'Re'–"
"Somehow I doubt I can learn an entire written language in an hour or two. Or even a week or two." Unless I'm a dragon, maybe. "You teaching me the Mid-childa alphabet, while a kind gesture, will both take time away from whatever your job is when you're not looking after me and run into numerous issues from our differing languages. Not to mention translation oddities my ring isn't converting into the closest substitute – there's no 'Re' or 'Le' in the languages I know, for example."
The book closes with a snap as I place it back on the shelf, and Amy droops. Just in case I'm proven wrong and I can read something, we try a few different books in numerous language they've got scattered about – turns out when you're a multi-planetary organization this means you need entertainment in multiple languages – but the result remains the same each time. Wriggly lines, strange boxy shapes and dots, a bunch of circles with waves around them, none give up their secrets to the ring about my finger.
We're passing a table where a few crewmembers are relaxing when I stop and stare, a bizarre sight catching my eye. A blonde-haired young man is leaning back in his seat, calmly watching a holographic screen projected a few meter in front of him, displaying a cartoon of some sort involving… sentai mages fighting a giant plant? What?
"What is it-Oh!" Amy spots it too, and suddenly swaps moods from depressed to excited at the same moment. "There's an idea, videos! You can watch videos, Mizuki, even if you can't read anything! It's spoken, so it should be fine, right?"
"...Um." The sentai wizards run about the screen in a panic, one of their members dangling in the air as the plant-monster squeezes its tentacles around them. "Uh–"
"Wait, I forgot, you're from a low-tech world. Right, uh, he's watching something we call 'television' on the screen there, although in this case it's a recording instead of being sent live across radio waves – Oh, those are invisible waves flying through the air, like light or sound except we can't detect them normally – and..."
The explanation of what TV, radio and video recording were was both vaguely informative and annoying in equal measure. Amy did her best to dumb it down for me, which I'm sure I'd be grateful for if I didn't already know what it all was and involved, but the end result was that I ended up trying out a video on her Device.
"Last time, on 'Dangerous Creatures across the Multiverse', we covered the fearsome Blubberworm!" A giant brown worm rears on the screen, roaring at the camera from its position overhead in some sort of sandy desert. "Famed for its fearsome magic resistance and humongous appetite, we're going up the food chain once more to the only thing this fearsome creature fears – the Drooping Eagle."
The screen flashes, a logo spiralling into view, before the worm and sands around it black out from shadow. There's a fierce cry, sharp furrows dug four feet deep into the dunes, and the blubberworm is gone without a trace.
This is… uh. This is new. I find myself captivated by the moving pictures.
"Well?" Amy looks at me, hope in her eyes, and pauses the video. "Does it work, Mizuki? Can you understand that? I've got lots more where it came from, a bunch of famous movies we can borrow, or cartoons like you saw Paul watching earlier. Or maybe some history documentary about Mid-childa? That sound interesting?"
"It works, yeah." Even though the ring only functions via telepathy. It shouldn't be able to pick up and translate spoken words otherwise! "That blubberworm thing looked pretty neat, as did the...cartoon? I think? I'll give whatever you recommend a shot."
Amy beams.
0–––––––––––––––––––––0
I tap my fingernails on the wall, looking uncertainly at the unrecognisable text on the sign mounted there. It looks just like the sign at the previous six-way intersection, which looked pretty much like the one before that, which is to say that it all looks like Djinnish to me.
I'd lowered my guard.
This—spaceship—looks technological. It mostly is technological, from the fluorescent lighting, to the screens, to the motors in the doors. I know there's magic behind the scenes, but I'd let myself rely on my common sense from Earth to get around. That was my first mistake.
"Um…" I cough. Shouting as loud as I can, which isn't very, has not been kind to my throat. "Anyone?"
No-one. My second mistake was in not asking for help while I could. I lean back against a wall, already out of breath just from walking a few hundred meters.
Okay… okay. No use in panicking, though what the heck, who ever heard of leaving a spaceship mostly deserted? Weren't they supposed to be crowded, with tight quarters and corridors that weren't mostly empty space? Were they supposed to be this big in the first place?
Recap time. Starting from the library I made my way straight back towards my room, aiming to cut across the path I originally took, and immediately got hopelessly lost. It had been a straight path. It should have been a straight path…
That was after taking a sort of scythe-like path from my room to the library this morning, going out, left, right, straight and then right again before turning left, which ought to have been just the same as going straight all along. The corridors are all pretty much the same length, and most of them lead to those same basic six-way intersections. There shouldn't be any room for mistakes. I shouldn't be lost, and I kind of aren't; it surprises even myself, but I can still remember my entire path. But then, I have a sneaking suspicion about where this story is heading.
There are legends like this. Students who walk into the depths of the Academy, and never make it back until… er… Academy? That isn't—
It hurts. It doesn't hurt. It feels like I've slammed my head into a whole pool full of cotton. I can't remember—I don't want to remember. This isn't my memory, it's—someone else's. The girl whose body I'm using? I half thought she's someone I've made up—though I shouldn't have that kind of power. It hurts. Mom, Dad—
A red-hot dagger pierces my side. I stagger, gasping at the sudden, physical pain, and open my eyes to find myself half-leaning, half-slipping down the side of the wall as I tear my way back to reality. My eyes quickly water. I blink, trying to stop the tears, and I'm only partially successful. I slide all the way down to the floor, too weak to push my way back to my feet, and let out a piteous moan as I do. I miss my family. I miss them horribly. I'll never seen them again, will I?
It takes me a little while to recapture my balance, both physically and emotionally. Once I do, I find the memories slipping through my fingers like a fading dream.
And… still lost. I sigh, and slowly climb to my feet, getting to work on fixing that.
'But— what was that anyway?'
— — —
Leaving a Dancing Lights as a marker at each intersection, I walk up one corridor, then left. Then I return, and when I get back to the first intersection I walk right—my previous left—then right again, which by all rules of logic ought to leave me at the last intersection I marked. There is an intersection, but there are no dancing lights here. What there is, is another entrance to the library.
"Really?" I whine, almost petulantly. My eye twitches.
For a moment I'm tempted to backtrack my entire path, the way I was planning. Then I think better of it. I'm horribly thirsty, and the library will have both a snack, and something to drink.
0–––––––––––––––––––––0
Despite being a military ship, the library onboard the Arthra wasn't utilitarian and dull in appearance. Rich, dark wooden shelves line the room in neat rows, stacked full of books in a number of different topics and genres, while a handful of people around beanbags or tables read books, watch videos on their Device or munch on snacks from the kitchenette in one corner.
The fellow from a few hours earlier, Paul, is hanging around the kitchenette as I approach and vaguely look for where the cups are kept, raising a hand in greeting as he slowly stirs a pan on the stovetop.
"Hey. Mizuki, right? Saw Amy giving you a tour earlier; finding the place to your liking?"
"Ups and downs." No, no cups here. Maybe in the drawer next to it? "The fact you've got a library on a military vessel is very impressive, I confess. Navigation leaves something to be desired, though."
"They're on your right." Paul waves at a cupboard far above my head, reaching beneath it to snag a bottle from a rack as he does; it drips yellow ooze into the pan, hissing softly against the hot oil. Then he blinks, and reaches up to get me a cup. It's frustrating, but I can't reach, and jumping would be painful; I guess the bandages tell him as much. "And yeah, I guess it would be a bit confusing if you aren't used to it. You're from a low-tech world, right? Used to 3D spaces and all, objects only as big on the inside as their outsides allow?"
"Wizards tend to make mansions for themselves in pocket dimensions if they're good enough, and there's artifacts which can hold several times more than they should, but otherwise that's right, yeah. What's that got to do with me getting lost?"
"The rooms in the ship are three-dimensional, the ship is not. They're folded into a four-dimensional space, though the ship's hull has five, and the shields cover all ten—" He chuckles at my expression, keeping one eye on me and one on his cooking. "And you didn't understand any of that, did you. Hey, Aerith! Mind explaining things to the newbie?"
I think I can feel a headache coming on. "It's not that I don't understand," I complain, as I'm efficiently bundled off to one of the sofa sections with my cup. "I just don't want to. You're telling me the entire ship is inside a pocket dimension? How is that safe?"
Mysterious otherworld knowledge or not, I know what happens when you put a Bag of Holding inside a Portable Hole. It isn't pretty.
Kaboom.
Aerith turns out to be a young brown-haired woman in engineer's overalls, with blue eyes, a kind smile, a shapely body and a staff-shaped Device nearly as tall as she is slung across her back. I feel a muddled sting of jealousy, presumably at the sheer level of comfort she's exuding. As kind as she might be, too, it doesn't stop her eyes from glittering at my obvious confusion.
"We meet again," she says, with a smile. "You look a lot better than you did on the operating table. I'm glad. Fast healer, I guess?"
Great. I blush and look down, for no good reason at all, except that this is someone who's seen me at my absolute worst.
Aerith hastens to add, "Ah, not that I mind! My own heritage is pretty odd as well, I'm just happy you're better already. Most people with that sort of injury would still be in bed."
Then she offers me a cookie.
I feel oddly sore, but the cookie is yummy.
— — —
A few minutes later, we've commiserated over getting lost on the ship—a common occurrence for trainees, apparently—and Aerith has cast a few diagnostic spells to reassure herself that I'm basically fine. She tsks at my right side, where I tore one of my stitches sliding down that wall, but claims I should be back to normal in as little as a month. Then we get back to the main order of business.
"This is basically pretty simple," she says, deftly folding a sheet of paper into smaller squares and stacking them on top of each other. They form a kind of fan, which she stretches upwards. "Imagine this is the ship. The bits of paper are the rooms you can see; this—" she points at a square close to the edge, "—is your room, and this one here in the middle is the bridge. They're pretty far from each other, see? But if I do this…"
She picks a bit of tape out of her pocket, then glues the "bridge" to the top of the paper fan. I pinch my nose. I'm not sure what she's trying to say, but this is such a vast oversimplification.
"Then you can take a shortcut, see? And so long as we keep the rooms simple and reasonably uniform, it's easy to join them up during construction, which is good, because a human exposed to dimensional space is… um… don't worry about it," she says, not reassuringly. I may have made a choked "Glurk" kind of noise. I stare at the construction in horror.
"—Mizuki? Are you all right?" She touches my arm, making me realise I'd stopped breathing. It's a fight to start back up, and a fight not to sit absolutely still. I carefully lean back, my eyes wide, and try not to let on too obviously that she might as well have told me I've been walking drunkenly through a pit full of live vipers.
"It's all perfectly safe," she says, giving me a sympathetic look. "I'm sure it sounds scary, but joining them up this way also keeps the ship stable. It's like cross-bracing, in a way; keeps destructive resonances from building up…" She sighs. "I had a roommate who could talk your head off about this for hours, but he left the service. He's with R&D today, working on the next generation of dimensional cruiser. He'd have had a better explanation. If you want, though, I can show you some of the stabilization systems?"
I consider her offer.
On the one hand, it does sound really interesting. On the other… I'm tired, I've had a lot of shocks already, and I really want nothing more than to slide down the couch and watch silly, childish-but-fun, alien cartoons for a while. Maybe I'll take a nap.
In the end I decide to take a rain-check. If I could have understood what I was seeing, then… maybe. But I'm sure I don't know any of the background here, after all.
0–––––––––––––––––––––0
Paper slides through my fingers as I turn the pages of my spellbook, looking for something which could work. Doll was a lucky win considering I defeated it with nothing but Sleep and Acid Splash, but the bird, dog and House don't hint at the best track record for combat. Raw damage output is something I'm going to be limited in for a good while, and is possibly too redundant to even bother with considering the TSAB mages, so something which distracts and captures foes seems like it'd be in my best interest to learn.
So I can run away, if nothing else.
Glitterdust looks good as a blinding option, golden sparkles to the eyes being rather irritating things and all, while Mudball and Colour Spray are alternate, less difficult versions to learn. Charm Person would be helpful for getting Fate, Precia and...basically anyone hostile to stop and listen to you for a bit (or just stop, period, if you wanted to capture them), if it works at all, while Admonishing Ray is the non-lethal takedown option if that happens to fall flat. Grease is great against anything on the ground, but seeing as all Nanoha mages I know of can fly it's kinda useless at the moment; Glue Seal falls in much the same category, except if I manage to hit the target when they're not floating it'll actually work.
Problem is, I can't really practice any of them without making a big mess, or having a human target in the case of Admonishing Ray and Charm Person, so while they're nifty they'll be put on the backburner for a later time when I'm not a guest on a TSAB spaceship. Hmm…
Maybe Shadow Trap? Shadow Anchor?
I flip to their page, looking over the instructions carefully for a few minutes, before glancing around for something I can test this out on. A nearby book bravely volunteers for the cause. Placing it in the middle of the desk, I clear everything else away, check the instructions once more, and cast.
"Shadow Anchor!"
Nothing… seems to happen.
"Shadow anchor?" My fingers tingle, the telltale feel of magic flowing through me, but the book remains unchanged. Maybe I should've tried this on a moving target. I nudge the offending paperweight, eyeing it suspiciously, before trying to lift it off the table; it resists, stuck like glue for a moment, then flies up into my face when I tug once more.
Ow.
0–––––––––––––––––––––0
"Mizuki?"
There's a knock on the door, moments before it slides open, and Amy sticks her head in to look at me. I look back, spellbook on my lap, and brush some glitter free of my face when everything remains gold-tinged.
"Uh–"
"Spell failure." I reply curtly, guessing what she was about to say. "Glitterdust tends to be rather explosive when you muck with it, but at least it's glitter and not, say, fire or lightning. Should vanish in a few minutes."
"...Right." Amy pauses, eyes tracing over the walls, ceiling and floor coated in sparkly gold, and visibly forces herself to ignore it. "Anyway, I came to collect you, Admiral Lindy's orders. We're approaching UA97 now, and she wants you on-deck when we drop out of the dimensional sea."
"Did she say why?" I stand up and brush myself off, glitter falling to the floor in piles from the motion. I'm still entirely too gold-tinged for my liking. "What's the plan for arrival, anyway?"
"Eh?"
Amy blinks, brow crinkling as she thinks, and we begin walking up the hallways towards the deck, gold sparkling behind me like a human slime-trail.
"Well, I think Chrono's giving a speech to the assault team, and–"
0–––––––––––––––––––––0
"Right then, listen up!"
Everyone jolts to attention when Chrono addresses them, standing ramrod-straight as their eyes remain firmly ahead, staring at the holographic screen projected on the wall of UA97 slowly growing bigger before us. In small Mid below the orb the local name, 'Earth', glitters softly, while next to it known information on the world's society, technology and customs scroll down the screen. Their sensor feeds make it immediately obvious that a lot of that information is woefully out of date.
"Readings from the sensor mage confirm an ongoing battle between powerful, high-class mage located on the map here." A dot lights up on the globe, zooming in to display a city of shining skyscrapers split in half by a river flowing through the middle. A building shudders, trembling, and a dust cloud billows into existence as they watch. "If Mizuki – our rescued seer-mage for those who haven't read the briefing yet – is correct, then at least one of them is the daughter of one Precia Testarossa, SS-Rank mage and wanted criminal for crimes of illegal cloning and tampering with S-class Lost Logia known as 'Jewel Seeds'."
The map changes, showing a blue gem sparkling in the sunlight, resting softly in the dust of a busy digsite.
"The vaunted 'Book of Darkness' is also believed to be on this planet, currently in the position of one Hayate Yagami, and as of this moment unawakened and thus not causing rampant destruction as a buildup to the destruction of the very planet itself. By no means will this remain the case."
Scenes of past encounters with the Book play out onscreen, starting at the most recent with the book extruding tendrils throughout a TSAB frigate, before it explodes in a flash of blinding white light.
"Our plan is twofold. Aerith, Paul and Zeke are assigned to Alpha Squad, and shall be teleporting into Uminari City to search for and confirm Hayate is both residing there and in possession of the book. Utmost caution shall be taken to ensure the book does not awaken at this time, as well as to conceal our presence on this world as per standard TSAB doctrine for Unadministrated Planets. Is this clear?"
"Sir yes sir!"
"Myself, Kirk and Jeanne shall be dropping into the brawl itself, forming Beta Squad, with the goal of restraining all combatants, relieving them of their Devices and retreating from the public eye as soon as possible. Jeanne, you're on healing. Kirk, offense. I shall be–"
Chrono pauses, frowning, and looks at Kirk. To be specific, the raised hand he'd thrust into the air as a sign he wanted to ask a question.
"What's your question, Kirk? We're on a time limit here, we can't afford to waste it with something mundane."
"Sir!" Kirk barks, arm thumping against his chest as his brown locks brush against his shoulders. "I was just wondering, Enforcer Chrono sir, why we were enforcing secrecy in this mission when the local mages have shown no sign of hiding their own existence with the use of a Wide-Area Shift spell."
"Because it's TSAB policy, Kirk." Chrono says as if he's stating the obvious. Objects drop due to gravity, the sky is blue, TSAB likes to keep magic secret on non-administrated worlds. "Regardless of how much or how little local mages are concealing magic, we shall be concealing our existence with the utmost secrecy and caution. A few spellcasters are an entirely different matter from an interplanetary government full of them, and we are in no way ready to accept UA97 into our numbers when we're still picking up the pieces from the Succession Wars. Or worse, go to war with them."
"Now, as I was saying, I shall be on overwatch. Our first target will be the dimensional criminal known as Fate Testarossa, but on the assumption that our information is correct, remember that she is much a victim as a criminal. After that—"
0–––––––––––––––––––––0
The bridge of the Arthra was a wide open space, ovular in shape, with chairs dotted around the edges for various technicians to control things and a raised segment for Lindy to preside over them all. Huge glass windows provided glimpses of the outside world in what screams to me as the most unsafe method of spaceship design possible – you don't build glass windows into your command center! – and there is a low murmuring buzz as people prepare for the operation before us.
Purple and blue dissolves into pure black in an instant, then we're suddenly orbiting a giant blue jewel, made famous in photographs ever since Man first set foot on the moon. Or took pictures from the ISS, to be more accurate regarding size.
"Got a lock on one of the Lost Logia, Captain Lindy!" One of the bridge bunnies cries as we step through the door, a screen flickering into existence on the giant windows in the same moment. "It's fueling a transformative effect on someone, and they seem highly aggressive!"
A crocodile-man roars on-screen, clambering free of the rubble of a wall it was knocked into, while people run screaming away from it. There's a purple blur, a surge of motion, and dust billows outwards to obscure our view as the monster is knocked backwards further into the building.
Two figures clash on a second monitor, white-and-blue locking staff with golden-yellow lightning scythe. Yellow breaks off, dashing backwards away from white, before trying to blitz her way around and under towards where the monster is crawling free once more; pink bindings lash into existence before she gets more than a foot away, her opponent pointing her staff at her determinedly as she strains against her bonds.
Wolf and ferret duke it out as a third screen flickers into being, binds and energy shots flying thick and fast through the air. The werewolf is visibly angry, her every attempt to shake the ferret being met with a block or attack, as she's prevented from going to her Master's aid.
The dust finally clears back on the first screen, revealing the two combatants clearly, and I gape in shock. A purple-haired young girl, clad in a white t-shirt and shorts, is locked hand-in-hand with the croc-monster as they wrestle and push against one another. With a grunted cry she judo-throws him over her back, sending him flying back out the building into a lightpost across the street, and punches off the ground after him hard enough to leave craters in her wake.
This… uh. This is new.
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Suzuka practised to much dodgeball, didn't she?
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Czlyydwr Llrngwl
"Sell ya a door Learn gull," Czly/Celly for short
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So Suzuka is a person of power in this AU? Keen. Isn't she half-vampire or something in the Triangle Hearts version?
So... Suzuka has her Triangle Hearts Three back story, with the vampire family? I think Arisa was also non-normal somehow, but I don't remember how having never played the game.
I can only assume Nanoha still got Raising Heart though, considering the pink magic. Magic colour is always based on the caster, never on the Device.
I can only assume Nanoha still got Raising Heart though, considering the pink magic. Magic colour is always based on the caster, never on the Device.
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I kind of noticed how no one was actually described apart from maybe-Suzuka.
Although their magic aura colors are the same, so I assume it's them.
Also, they weren't hiding magic, so it's a known quantity on Earth?
Although their magic aura colors are the same, so I assume it's them.
Also, they weren't hiding magic, so it's a known quantity on Earth?