[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Hmm... Still insane eh?

Well, I'm rested, and I think I've compiled my idea (after a long IRC conversation with TK last night) for it.


This will not be an attempt to predict what the writers at 7arcs were thinking, but an attempt to take what they've put out, and encompass the inconsistencies in a system that accounts for exceptions.


Pt 1: Construction

A Barrier Jacket is magical clothing that guard and protects mages as a last line of defense. The jacket is formed VIA magical construction during the 'transformation' stage of Mage operation. Once formed, the Jacket becomes a seperate entity from the device that formed it.

The Jacket is composed of visually appealing clothing, defenive focused fields, and barriers.

The Clothing itself does not have any value in the actual defense of the mage. It acts merely as a dress uniform to ensure freedome of movement, identification, and as an indicator of physical damage sustained. It does however, act as an anchor point for the defensive fields and barriers. These physical clothes will stay in place until destroyed physically, or willed away by 'powering down', reguardless of the condition/status of the mage wearing them. Physical defense could be augmented by the placement of actual solid armor on the jacket material, but is not a requirement.

The field(s) of the mage serve as a local area defensive mechanism, working to the tastes of a particular mage as an augmentation. Fields general purposes serve as inertial distribution, filtering, and impact. They are anchored via the jacket clothing to the mage, and are powered directly by the mage.

The barrier provides direct defense against impact trauma. It is a force distributor.

Pt 2: Maganics (Magical Mechanics?)

The Jacket Clothing (Reffered to from here on out simply as The Jacket), is composed of magically formed material ressembling cloth. This material is all but normal, save for probably being made of a kevlar-like fiber, and having an anchoring embedded in it for the fields and barrier. Once formed, it operates independently of the device used to create it. In other words, the Jacket is REAL.

I back this with Subaru. Despite Mach Calibur being damage beyond functionality, her jacket remains, despite her trashed state.


For Fields, there are at least two discernable functions. One is as a filter for the atmosphere as seen in strikers, the other is as an inertial distribution mechanism. While the filter is obvious in function, the I.D. field may need explanation. But this is perfect for what fields are. Fields, by Nanohaverse definition, radiate from a source and fill volume.
By this function, a field is perfect for evenly distributing the effects of an inertia change, especially radical ones. What occures, is that upon a sudden change in direction and velocity (IOW: Sudden Accelleration), the field distributes the altered inertia evenly to all parts of a mage's body, without applying compromsing physical force to the outside, thus allowing the mage to achieve insane accllerations so long as this field is active. A minor problem is that fields gradually decrease in power the further from the source they get.
This WOULD be a problem with a Point Source. But since the field is anchored to the Jacket, the 'source' pretty much encompassas the mage, which means the field has maximum effect on the mage and immediate objects the mage may possess. The other note about fields, is that as a FIELD, you can place several of them in the same volume without problematic interactions, thus, a filter, and inertial dispersion simultaniously.


The barrier, while still simple, is probably the most complicated component.
As stated by discussion on barriers in general, the strength of a barrier is based, not on its power, but by its construction, or should we say, composition.
In this case, most barriers seem to be implied to be solid and inflexible. This would be a bad type of barrier to use in a Jacket. Such a barrier would prevent functional tactile use of the hands on objects outside the mage, or interaction with the environment, without having to be shut off and turned on constantly.

Instead, the Jacket's barrier may actually be constructed in an alternate way to other barriers. This barrier's construction, or what I call Composition, would be more fitting to be elastic in nature. The exact nature of magical energy is unknown, but one could say that barrier construction for jackets has long since become uniform in functionality based on requirement.
In this case, the barrier consists of a flexible magical 'mesh' (This is merely a visualisable term to an energy form, not litteral.) that is flexible, elastic, and compresses. This mesh was designed long ago to deal with the most common element a mage would deal with. Blunt Trauma. Since in general, blunt trauma would be more common than other effects caused by actual combat, even outside of combat, it's like the mage equal to having a hard-hat of sorts.

The elasticity and flexibility of the field gives the mage freedom of movement, and the ability to interact as if it wasn't there, allowing them to operate without the pesky, or even dangerous task of turning it on, and off, and on, and off... over and over during their actions.
However, when experiencing blunt trauma, AKA, impact, the barrier is compressed. The compression of the barrier increases its density, and causes it to distribute that force across its surface, away from the mage as much as possible. The inherent flexibility of the barrier still allows impact to bleed through, but not in the magnitude it was orginially intended.

The weakness comes in the form of non-blunt trauma. Due to the nature of the barrier's construction, it cannot guard so well against actions which slice (tearing force) or stab (Piercing force). These forces do not compress the barrier in the manner which allows it to become dense and distribute the force, and instead, punches through with minimal effort. This would fall into consistancy with the various laccerations, cuts, slices, and stabs mages recieve throughout their combat. These include Fate and Signum's fighting, Nanoha getting stabbed, Erio making it to Nanoha's jacket with Strada, Rein getting sliced by a bug, Erio getting sliced by Sei, Vita getting a Replay on herself of Nanoha getting 'shanked' and other 'lesser' injuries that involve one of the above mentioned forms of injury.


Pt 3: Catastrophic Incidents.

One of the biggest problems now of the Barrier Jacket, is its seemingly superhuman defense of a mage going through an event which quite frankly, should render them a bloody smear. The situation to note is Fate, not once, but TWICE, impacting Reinforced Concrete with the force of an artillery round. This can actually be accounted for as a composite of the propperties and sub-propperties of the Barrier Jacket working together as a whole defense system.

First, and foremost that comes to mind, is impact, into, and through six floors of a reinforced concrete structure. (A building.) If the Barrier on the jacket only compresses and distributes force, how did she withstand impact?
Easy. A backup propperty of the elastic barrier's compression. The Explosive Reaction Thresshold. (Fancy term, think no more of it.) Similar effect has been seen on active defenses, such as Jacket Purge and Barrier Burst... However this one is inherent to the composition (construction) of the barrier.
At a certain compression limit, it is obvious the barrier is not going to be able to distribute the force of the blow around the mage. While the barrier is not sentient, the people who came up with its design, were. It contains a built in limit in which the barrier will 'recoil' or 'snap back' or 'react'... throwing energy into the impact. The discharge, in effect, works in the same light as Explosive Reactive Armor on tanks. If the impact is coming from an object or attack, or otherwise, the effect is knocking that attack off course, slowing it down, and dispersing its energy. If that impact is the result of the ground, or in our case of management, six floors of concrete, the discharge PULVERIZES the impact area... In the case of the concrete, blowing a hole three times as wide as fate is tall in it (estimated), and kicking up a huge dust cloud. The fact that she blew through six floors shows just how much force she struck it with, and how much explosive reactive detonation her barrier dished out before she came to a stop.

The next problem, is accelleration. In the offending scene, face undergoes accelleration equal to being shot out of a canon, twice. First upon being struck by signum, and the second at impact. Surviving accelleration could be tied to her BJ's Inertial distribution field, allowing her to wistand higher accellerations than normal. On top of this, with Fate's specialty being in speed and mobility, she gets bonus points on this field to deal with her rather common high speed accllerations. If this same 'smash' were tried on say Nanoha, her lack of focus on speed enhancement may not have allowed her to withstand those two accellerations the same way Fate did. We cannot test this however. I would put it to say that Fate's Impacts with concrete would be the absolute upper end of the abilities of a jacket to safely protect the mage, and only because she was speciallized did she withstand insane accelleration. I wouldn't suggest trying it on anyone else. The margin for error and catastrophic defense failure is small and has a high price.


Pt 4: Contradictory issues.


Of issues that contradict with the protective ability of the Jackets for things like impacts and falls, there is the implicated issues of mages falling and coming to great harm.

1 - Yuuno saves Nanoha when Fate blindsides her with a photon lancer attack.
2 - Chrono catches himself before hitting the ground after getting a boot to the head by our disguised catgirls.
3 - Caro 'saves' Erio after being thrown off the train.


Of the three instances, one and three stand out the most. In these instances, both 'victims' getting saved were unconcious. It is plausable based on some (admittedly sketchy) reasoning that a mage must be concious to feed magical inergy to the Jacket's defenses (Barrier and Fields), or they simply fizzle out, or fade away, or die out, or whatever. They stop working. Thus, if a mage falls unconcious, they're open to physical attack as much as any mundane person.

The only case of unconcious defense that I can think of that would counter this one, would be Vivio's Saint Armor. However, that being a special genetic trait rather than a standard Barrier Jacket mechanism, can be dismissed as "Not even CLOSE to the same thing."