Gah. Another double post. Oh well, time for the resident n00b to make an announcement.
*ahem*
Several months ago, I joined Outer Cadia with one goal in mind, and that was to have a good time making characters and coming up with storylines with people who held the same interest in the greatest of all magical girl shows as I did. And after a rough start and a few mishaps with the locals, I finally got around to making a few characters, which were (I thought) balanced.
For the record, I’m still not sure what’s wrong with Zero.
But after a short while I noticed a disturbing tendency I had, and that was to skip around way too much, jumping from idea to idea and storyline to storyline with no certain focus. Just recently, I realized one of the big reasons for this.
I
hate the StrikerS layout. I would give anything to force 7Arcs to go back and make the girls stay out of the TSAB and do Season 3 differently, because the Ace’s association with the bureau limits their ability to be heroes; they have to follow the structure of the military, they have to wear those damnable limiters, and worst of all, they have to
follow orders. Ugh.
Worse by far, however, was the treatment Hayate got, being turned into a glass cannon and relegated to a leadership role when we all thought she was going to be just as active as Nanoha and Fate. You’ve heard this all before, you probably share my opinions, so I’ll cut the rant short and get to the point.
I’m changing this.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I hereby give you my plans for my own answer to Kerokanon and REBUILT of StrikerS. I’m going back to the beginning and I’m doing things
my way, putting the Magical Girl back into Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. This is not a passing thing that I’ll abandon within a week or two, this is the story I’ve wanted to do since the beginning, and I’ll be damned if I let this project die out on me.
In addition to a few OCs to join the crew (including a new Ace, my answer to Keroko), significant changes will be made to the storyline following the A’s epilogue owing to the fact that Hayate is not a glass cannon and is therefore able to conduct missions on her own or with small amounts of assistance. This simple fact, with the added influence of the previously-mentioned OC, sets off a chain of events which culminates in a narrow avoidance of the Nanoha Incident thanks to the presence of Hayate on the battlefield with Nanoha and Vita.
Following this incident, which ends with a badly-wounded Hayate, Nanoha expresses a desire to personally hunt down the person responsible for Hayate’s injury, and derails her plans to become a combat instructor, leading her to join Hayate as a Special Investigator. As investigators, Hayate and Nanoha have all the freedom of movement that Acous displayed during StrikerS, able to go anywhere and do virtually anything to solve their cases. They are, in essence, the magical girl versions of James Bond and his ilk. Expect Acous and the disappearance of Zest’s team to feature prominently in the storyline, and the battle with Jail will take on a completely different tone as the girls hound him and the Numbers at every turn
This is but a brief description of the plans I have in mind for Hayatecanon, centering on the OC I mentioned earlier, one Alexander Crestwood.
Spoiler for Basic Background and Changes to A's:
Alex is the long-delayed steel mage I’ve been keeping on the back burner for several weeks now, and I’ve finally figured out how to make the concept fit right in to Nanoha canon (he has a special talent for creating and manipulating pseudomatter, like Vita’s Schwabe Fligen, not for creating actual steel), so I’m sticking him in here to make things interesting.
Alex comes into the story after living for the first few years of his life on the streets. Having fallen in with Tokyo’s yakuza after his parents died, Alex (a Mid-Childan/human hybrid) moves with the organization into Uminari City right around the same time Nanoha and Fate are having their fun with the Jewel Seeds. Alex is a practicing mage who keeps his abilities to himself, but he’s self-taught and has neither a device nor any formal magical education. In comparison to Nanoha, he sucks… for now.
While the Yakuza are interested into expanding some of their operations into Uminari, they fail to realize the number one reason others haven’t tried to do the same; namely, the Takamachi parents. Shiro and Momoko are perfectly willing to come out of retirement every now and then to keep the streets safe for Nanoha and her friends, and the yakuza learn this the hard way not long after they set up shop. The gang splits, and Alex gets left behind in Uminari.
After wandering the streets trying to live as a pickpocket, Alex finally decides to try his hand at burglary, seeing no other option to keep from going hungry. The problem is that the house he targets, coincidentally, is none other than the Yagami household. And as he’s hopping the fence to get into the backyard during his attempt, he loses his footing and falls and cracks his head on the pavement. When he wakes up, Hayate is taking care of him, completely oblivious to his intentions.
Alex’s concussion forces him to stay put for a while, which he uses to get to know Hayate. After about a week of being in her presence, all desire to leave her, much less rob her, has left. The two become fast friends after their initial introduction, and Alex lets Hayate in on his secret (being a mage). This takes place approximately at the end of S1.
After living together for a while, summer rolls around and Hayate and Alex are joined by the Wolkenritter. Once the Wolks have settled in and gotten used to the idea of being a family instead of servants, Signum begins taking some time out of her day to educate Alex in the finer points of the Ancient Belka style, as well as professional swordplay, which Alex doubles up on by attending the classes Signum teaches at a local dojo.
When the BoD begins to increase its’ drain on Hayate’s core, Alex is largely unable to assist. Since he has no connection to the BoD, he can’t drain linker cores and he isn’t strong enough to be of much assistance to the Wolks. Nevertheless, he all but orders Signum to drain his core dry before they go searching for any others. They get about 26 pages out of Alex’s core (about the same as they got from Nanoha), but also render him bedridden for several weeks. They explain it to Hayate as a training accident.
Alex doesn’t completely recover until the events of episode 5, when he follows the Wolkenritter into battle, maintaining a safe distance and keeping an eye on Shamal, which pays off when Chrono makes his move. Instead of the Lieze twins showing up, Alex makes his move and attacks Chrono, giving Shamal the time she needs to break the barrier and let everyone escape. However in the process, Chrono all but hands Alex his ass on a platter, kicking off a grudge that will persist for the rest of the series.
Alex redoubles his training while the Wolks continue to fill the book with pages, keeping Hayate company while the others are out “doing their own things”.
Just prior to the final battle and the awakening of the BoD, Alex is spotted by Chrono while out in public, and the two engage in a running cat-and-mouse game through the city while under one of Chrono’s barriers. Finally, Alex breaks the barrier by beating Chrono to within an inch of his life. The barrier drops just in time for Alex and Chrono to get telepathic calls for help from their respective groups. They arrive at the hospital just in time to see Hayate activate the BoD.
While Chrono interrogates the Lieze twins, Alex joins Nanoha and Fate in assaulting the BoD, using every trick in his arsenal to little effect. Finally, Reinforce utters something along the lines of “she desires your presence”, and absorbs Alex into the BoD.
Through a sequence I’m still working out in my head, Hayate and Alex meet up in their shared dreamworld, as they both desire to live happily together with each other, their friends, and the Wolkenritter. Together, they break out of Reinforce’s dreamworld and Hayate reassumes control over the book. The final showdown goes just as it should, and Reinforce fades away. The only difference here is that Hayate’s vast amounts of power do not interfere with her ability to use that power, though she needs training to perfect her control over the spells she borrowed from everyone.
Thus ends A’s, and so begins the StrikerS manga… and the hard part of creating this wonderful little world of mine.