Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: SeekerS
From high, high above, it's an ocean of lights. The sun rises, and it becomes an ocean of people instead.
Tokyo.
Almost forty million people. Every single one of them is an answer to a question someone else doesn't yet know to ask.
What am I missing?
Who do I love?
Why am I alone?
How do I decide what to believe?
Where is my home?
Forty million answers.
Sometimes you can't just wait for them.
Sometimes, answers must be sought.
After a long wait, the new season, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha SeekerS, begins!
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This page is an ongoing summary of BF's original season of Nanoha, SeekerS.
Contents
Three Dark Mirrors
Lera Camry, Endo Naoki, and Ren Aizawa have each been attacked by shadowy, cowled figures bearing their own Devices, nicknamed Dark Heraut, Shadow Stern, and Black Sky by our heroes (though they referred to themselves as Souverain Heraut, Fallen Stern, and Soaring Sky, and when asked who they were, continuously insisted 'I AM MYSELF'). The cowled figures never spoke; only the Devices did, and they did in a broken way, like voices from a staticy channel on an old television.
They had distinctive personalities. Dark Heraut was determined to 'destroy all Belkans'. Shadow Stern was terse and bickered with Dark Heraut constantly. Black Sky was swift and decisive.
In their very first encounter, Shadow Stern and Black Sky were able to immobilize their counterparts long enough to insert themselves directly into them, and -- download? copy? steal? -- something. After this, their voices resolved into full clarity, and they became even more dangerous and determined. Dark Heraut has yet to achieve the same union with Souverain Heraut, but there's little doubt, given the repeated attacks on Ren since then, that it's one of the Device's -- the organization's? -- highest priorities.
But it isn't their only priority.
The Golden Skein
Late one night, a being -- or maybe a remnant of a being, the faintest echo -- returned to Earth for the first time in years: the Maiden of Dreams, once reconstructed and freed by the magical girls very early in their careers. Her star fell once again over Tokyo, and unfurled into a girl with a message -- a dream, old and lost and deferred. The glowing figure of the girl was immediately dispersed by Black Sky, but the message remained, a tiny, glowing dot of golden light. There was a huge fight for its possession; the magical girls won, and with more time to examine it, realized that it was actually a tightly folded net. A web, really, a complex chart, something between constellation map and abstract art. It clearly held spaces for the resting forms of Soaring Sky, Fallen Stern, and Souverain Heraut.
Road Trip
It took a great deal of puzzling and research before the group was able to activate the skein. They believed it to be a dimensional transfer spell, and geared up for a long journey, but once it was activated -- by Soaring Sky and Fallen Stern alone, the first time, with strange words they don't seem to remember -- it was revealed to be far more than a simple transfer.
---
The group reawoke inside other bodies -- inside other LIVES, lives that they began to live seamlessly, as though they had always been a cadre of ancient Knights of Belka. Only Lera and Endo retained their Devices, becoming the Radiant Knight and Umbral Knight respectively; everyone else was wholly overwritten into another Knight's role in this history, complete with Device and powers. Alongside their Crown Princess, they fought a calamitous final battle to defend their world from a horrific supernatural invasion.
This battle was the last of a war; every Knight had lost something significant. People, places, sometimes very crucial things. The Radiant Knight's family had been slaughtered. The Argent Knight's home was in ruins. The Vermillion Knight lost both to the oncoming darkness. The Ebon Knight's big sister was slaughtered. The Ashen Knight never had a family to begin with as an orphan, but so many of her found family were killed in the war, her brothers and sisters in arms. The Palatinate Knight lost their mentor. The Azure Knight lost an entire border fort of comrades. The Auric Knight, a city. The Umbral Knight, an order of knightly brothers.
In the end they defeated this army of darkness, thanks in large part to their Crown Princess' realization that what seemed to be many monsters was really only one hive, a hive with a queen. With the help of her Knights she penetrated all the way through the river of cthonic horrors to destroy it, and in so doing, banish all of them. But she did not survive. Her dying words were thanks to her knights, and that "my only regret is that in saving our world from them... we have surely doomed another. I only wish we had the power to save..." 'them all.'
---
In an eyeblink, everyone awoke in the back yard where they'd activated the skein. It turns out they hadn't traveled physically at all; it was an entirely mental transfer, through the mechanism of dreams.
And upon their return, the holes in the pattern that had fit Soaring Sky and Fallen Stern had filled with one rune apiece, but also opened new empty spaces, new possibilities, and new journeys to take.
---
In their second journey, they reawakened as the Knights some years after the heroic but tragic resolution of the great war, gathered to present the results of grand quests to their Queen, the grieving mother of the Crown Princess. It unfolded that these mighty artifacts were in fact the hearts of other worlds. The full implications of taking a heart from its world were not made explicit but the apparent purpose was to strip their magic, gathering it into one place both to prevent these worlds from being targeted by the enemy that Belka had only barely driven off, and when the cache inevitably attracted that enemy once more, to use those combined plundered powers to defeat it forever. In other words, to make the Crown Princess' dying wish come true, in a matter of speaking. This was the will of the Queen.
The Auric and Palatinate Knights were late, and they presented last. The heart that they had brought was not an item, but a person: the Pillar of Cephiro, a Princess herself, a defiant maiden who accused the Belkans of tyranny and imperial design. The Queen tried to explain how desperate they were to prevent the apocalypse that had ravaged Belka -- that Belka had yet to heal from, and might never heal at all -- from destroying other worlds even less capable of defending themselves, but the Princess would have none of it. In the end, angry and frustrated, the Queen sought to seal Cephiro's Heart away with all the other items -- a matter of touching a magical ring to them, they had vanished in motes of light to some secret vault -- and that is when two of her Knights intervened.
The Ashen Knight attacked the Auric Knight from behind, trying to reach the Cephiran Princess, only to be foiled by the Argent Knight, who took the attack on herself instead; and the Vermillion Knight shielded Ashen, and tried to help the two of them escape. However, although the Azure Knight quailed, unsure of what to do, the Ebon and Umbral Knights acted decisively to contain the traitors, while the Auric and Palatinate Knights also stayed loyal to their oaths. The Queen offered her captured vassals a final chance to redeem themselves and prove their loyalty, by sending the Princess to the vault.
The Vermillion Knight pretended to go along with this plan, then, at the last minute, attacked the ring while it was still on the Queen's hand. She had sought to destroy it, but the Umbral Knight, her closest found family, knew her heart and executed her before she could succeed. However, the ring was damaged, and apparently that damage was of enormous significance to the Queen, who was forced to depart immediately in order to prevent their years' worth of gathered world-hearts from being immediately devoured by their enemy.
She told her Knights, who themselves did not know where this secret vault was, to seek her out by using the Pericosmic Array.
Then the dream ended, as the Auric Knight screamed and attacked -- the traitors? The Princess? Everyone else's fate is unknown.
---
Back in Tokyo, everyone discovered that two more unique arcane runes had been set in the dreamtime skein. That made a total of four:
Exactly enough for a coordinate in timespace.
Victory Luck Aizawa
Ren and Endo were about to graduate from high school... if they can pass their last round of finals. Ren hosted a study party which non-seniors attended as well, but her big brother joined it, trying to help but awkward and arrogant. Eventually he left the room, but around then, the three Dark Devices were detected on approach by Signum and Shamal, who intervened to buy the others some time.
Kyouka, currently lacking her Device Strike Wolf, was tapped by Shamal to do one of the only things a Device-less mage can do in a seriously powered situation: create and maintain a barrier, in order to preserve the safety of Ren's house (...and neighborhood, it /is/ Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha).
The battle, led by Dark Heraut, last of the Dark Devices to still not merge memories(?) with his counterpart, was brutal. Shadow Stern arrived to reinforce his erstwhile ally over protests by Dark Heraut that he did not want assistance. But everything was brought to an abrupt halt when Black Sky, actively possessed by Jail Scaglietti, appeared with Ren's brother as his hostage. Jail arranged this by impersonating Shamal with telepathy, and tricking Kyouka into momentarily dropping the barrier so that 'Shamal' could take it over.
Ren, prioritizing her brother's safety above everything, immediately submitted to Jail's demand that Dark Heraut be allowed to merge with Souverain Heraut, but unexpectedly, Dark Heraut refused. In the chaos created by that moment, Ren and her friends were able to rescue her brother; he and Ren shared a special moment in the skies of Tokyo, and it seems that his memories of magic, and his sister's double life, are going to last.
Jail, his objective thwarted, ordered the evacuation of the three Dark Devices. But this, too, was a confusing moment, and one with a significant secondary result:
One of the three device-wielders -- Dark Heraut's -- was left behind.
She was taken, unconscious, to the Harlaown Residence, both to be cared for, and if needed, restrained... but did not wake up from her coma.
Road Trip 3
Meanwhile, Fallen Stern announced a desire to go back to the dream skein. Endo, with Setsuna and Kyouka in tow, returned to historical Belka to find that the Ashen Knight had escaped the scene of her betrayal of the Queen, and that the Umbral and Argent Knights were pursuing her across time and space. The chase was long and arduous, spanning many worlds, and on those worlds the three of them learned many things: how, denied their Pillars, worlds were losing their magic and becoming colder, sadder realms; how Belka, once beloved by all other civilizations as a beacon of hope, is now feared; and without having ever personally experienced Outsiders as a threat, other worlds wonder if they ever even existed, or if Belka made them up to cover up atrocities committed on their own kind.
Eventually, Umbral and Argent cornered Ashen on the very threshold of the Pericosmic Array. There, Ashen gave one more appeal to Argent and Umbral, that they could find another way to protect all the worlds from Outsiders besides the Queen's method of taking Pillars by force and secluding them in the Royal Vault. And there, unexpectedly... Argent listened, and turned. The two on one battle against Ashen became one against Umbral instead. Incredibly, Umbral held his own against his two former knightsisters; he severed Argent's arm, taking her out of the fight, and then he and Ashen closed in a final strike that would have slain them both--
--if not for the sudden intervention of a new party.
The Princess of Cephiro, the Pillar that broke the Knighthood's resolve in the first place, appeared coming OUT of the Pericosmic Array. She, too, had escaped the site of the original betrayal, and evidently worked closely with Ashen and others to rally the remaining magical worlds against Belka's tyranny. Umbral and Argent had believed themselves to be fighting Ashen for the right to enter the Array, but in fact Ashen was buying time for her new, second Princess to...
...well, whatever else she was supposed to do in there, she emerged with a means to join the fight.
Wielding a gemstone-laden scepter called Souverain Heraut, the Princess stopped Umbral and Ashen from killing each other, cauterized Argent's arm, and demanded that they all come inside the Array to see what she had seen. "Not like this," she cried, when she first appeared, much as Dark Heraut, in the modern day, had refused Jail his victory.
---
As the three woke up in Tokyo, a fourth person woke up too. "Not like this," they cried.
And then Endo's phone rang.
Lindy was calling.
Other Targets
Besides continuing to seek out Ren Aizawa and Souverain Heraut, and wanting to recover the Golden Skein, the three Dark Devices have been deployed to achieve other objectives as well.
- They attacked Hayate Yagami, forcing her to transform for the first time since the Book of Darkness Incident and demonstrate massive mana-wielding capabilities. Jail seemed to believe her Storage Device, Schwertkruz, was actually the Tome of the Night Sky, and was furious when she destroyed it rather than let him take it.
- Shadow Stern seems to enjoy fighting for its own sake and, given the slightest permission from Jail, will push his wielder so far to achieve his goals that her Linker Core emerges from her chest and is drained directly, which can't be good for her.
- Dark Heraut tried to keep Shadow Stern from joining his fight against Souverain Heraut, and refused an order from Jail to merge with Souverain Heraut under the circumstances of a hostage crisis. What could be more important to him than becoming complete?
The Cowled Figures
Disturbingly, the cowled wielders -- carriers -- of Sky/Heraut/Stern, were revealed to be clones of Fate Testarossa -- older, taller, late-teen Fate, of an optimal age to be a soldier. However, they have shown little to no sign of awareness, or even consciousness; they are almost completely inert. There have been times, however, that their consciousness has been overwritten by someone else, seeing through their eyes and speaking through their mouths and gesturing with their arms: their 'creator.'
Time-Space Criminal Jail Scaglietti
A twisted Midchildan maester, genius and madman both, who claims to be the mastermind behind these horrifying events. In fact, on his first appearance, he claimed to be behind far more than just the appearance of the three matching Devices; but the one who reawakened Soaring Sky, Fallen Stern and Souverain Heraut by bringing them to Earth and finding them appropriate owners. The one who stole the Book of Darkness and put it in Hayate's path. The one who engineered Project F and the very existence of Fate Testarossa.
He explained that he did all of this as part of his study of artificial life; and that, in making Devices able to wield themselves, Devices who didn't need anyone but themselves, he had created a replacement for the human heart, which he considered the weak link in any Device-wielding system.
He spoke of other mysteries. He called Sky, Stern and Heraut "The Threefold Question" collectively. He announced that his goal was to find and recover the 'ultimate' memory, implying that this was connected to his recovering the memories of Sky and Stern within his copies -- very possibly more memories than the originals actually have access to, as much has been lost from their pasts all this time, though in the aftermath of this trauma, the originals' memories are beginning to stir, too. And he invited the group to try to beat him to the next stop on his journey: the long-lost Pericosmic Array. (No one has heard of it.)
Resonance Drive
In response to these calamitous encounters, the closest thing Earth has to a Device Maester in the post-TSAB age, Hayate Yagami, performed analysis. She believes that the dark Devices have been configured to maximize raw mana output in a way that is wholly indifferent to the survival of the 'wielder'. That, indeed, it invalidates the idea that the cowled figure is the wielder at all; they are very much like weapons wielding their humans, not the other way around. This tracks with the cowled figures' strange movements, which seemed puppetlike and awkward, dragging behind the sword and lance Devices they carried; indifferent to their own injury, prioritizing only the desires of the Device. And it aligns with Jail's explanation that he has created a system that does not require humanity to function.
And so, in a collaboration with Lera's maester mother, Hayate developed a technology they called Resonance Drive; essentially taking the same premise and turning it on its head. Instead of a Drive that gives all autonomy to the Device at the expense of their wielder, she posited that, if a similar drive was installed in Devices who cared for their wielders, tapping into that very bond would create even greater potential than just a calculation of raw, maximized mana throughput. Still, there was the high potential for a sharing of memories and other visions; it was not quite a true Unison (in the Belkan sense of the word), but certainly a great deal more than traditional Device-wielding. It could be incredibly dangerous.
All the Devices, and their wielders, chose to install it anyway, and since then they have fought on much more even ground with their assailants. However, even after activating Resonance Drives, they have also sometimes fallen to the might of their enemies; it seems the Dark Devices are still growing, too...
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