Cleaning out insistent bunnies

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Re: Cleaning out insistent bunnies

Unread postby Phht » May 14th, 2016, 1:13 am

So, realized that, despite plans to put this up... oh, TWO MONTHS AGO, I never did that.

Parts of this was from the original idea, copy/pasted in and altered to match the expanded plot line (hopefully I didn't missed any spots I needed to alter), and ends at roughly the same point (just after Nanoha comes out of coma). Not entirely satisfied with it, but eh.
Spoiler: show
Examining a downed drone and finding a relic, Nanoha is badly injured by a drone she didn't notice in her exhausted state, but the relic she found reacts and she crashes into Emerald Forest. She further drains herself trying to fight off Grimm without using lethal force and having no real effect. She shifts to shielding herself, hoping to buy time for help to arrive. And it does, but not the help she was expecting. Team STRQ (recently graduated) were deployed to find out what crashed into the forest, and find her. She passes out and wakes in Beacon's infirmary, where she meets Ozpin and has some discussion about her arrival, etc. Montage through her recovery period, with her taking time to learn from Ozpin/STRQ about the place she found herself. Once she's healed up and she feels her reserves are mostly full, she goes to leave (with Ozpin watching to see a bit of how it works).

An hour or two later, she gives up, having never gotten off Remnant as a result of failing to locate a world within range that counts to any degree as "safe." Given her reserves and the distances a mage can cross with that standard teleport spell, she realizes that she's stuck there until the TSAB hopefully locates her at some point in the future. Ozpin speaks with her about what she's going to do since she can't head home. One step she agrees to is to have him become her legal guardian, given that she's currently underage for the laws of Remnant. She does some testing regarding her abilities and how they interact with Grimm, how they relate to Aura, and other topics with Ozpin mentoring her. She eventually decides to become a Huntress and help fight the Grimm. This leads to a rather intense year to a year and a half of training under Ozpin's mentorship in melee skills, along with various other knowledge she would need and further exploration of mana and Aura. It works out and she makes it into Beacon on her own merits. Nanoha becomes a member of Team TANN, led by Roman Torchwick (Torchwick, Adel, Neo, Nanoha).

The combat instructor takes a disliking of her after her first bout – wherein she makes heavy use of her magic to take down her opponent – along with her “special treatment” due to Ozpin being her guardian, and he begins heavily restricting what she can use during matches. Given her relatively weak pure weapon skills, she rapidly drops to the bottom of the class though her grades manage to continue passing due to high marks from fighting Grimm and when other teachers are watching the class.

Despite the urging of her teammates and the growing discontent of other students at the situation they're put in, Nanoha refuses to go to Ozpin and complain. At the end of the year, the wide differences in grades and the variation in the combat class between teachers leaves Ozpin wondering, but with Nanoha choosing not to complain, he's only left with a feeling that something is likely wrong.

As a result, starting in Nanoha's second year, an associate professor (Glynda Goodwitch) appears that is bounced between various classes but primarily the Dust and Combat classes. Nanoha's combat class grades continue to be low, and Prof Goodwitch reports at the end of the year that Nanoha is restricted to melee only by the instructor while her opponents are in the upper part of the class and have significantly fewer restrictions. When she stood in for the instructor and had Nanoha face someone that wasn't in the top part of the class, she did much better even with the melee only restriction.

The high mark of her first year is the Vytal Festival at the end, taking place in Mistral. Team TANN dominates in the first round, with Adel and Nanoha trouncing the duos round, and Nanoha ends up winning the tournament overall. Mistal commentators refer to her as “The Endless Assault” due to her performance in the final match. Due to the results of Glynda's year-long investigation, combined with the questions and investigating caused by the Vytal Festival tournament results, the combat instructor is fired for “conduct unbecoming” of a teacher. Goodwitch is brought on as a full time instructor at that point, where she teaches the combat class and assists with the Dust classes.

When the Vytal Festival rolls around at the end of her fourth year, her team participates in it again. Their duos match is the fourth of the round and a random rule change is announced for the first time – Team TANN is restricted to weapons only for the round. Knowing that her former combat instructor was involved in the planning for the tournament and is one of the commentators, Nanoha forfeits the match and calls the “random” rule a continuation of the instructors two years of trying to prove she wasn't “special” because of who her guardian was. She goes on to state if it was truly meant to be fair to all participants, then both sides would be affected by the rule and every match of that round would have received rule changes rather than none for the first two. She teleports herself and her teammate away, and the rest of Team TANN drop out of the tournament before the team disappears for the rest of the tournament.

The team they were facing that round ends up winning the tournament, but when asked how they fill about their victory, the winner states that it felt hollow since the only reason they won was because their opponent forfeited over biased rules. The scandal that occurred costs the former combat instructor his place in Vytal Festival planning.

At some point during the year or two of missions, mention of Mountain Glenn retreating underground will be made. By the time that Nanoha's team is visiting the city, the citizens have settled in the underground city that had been built prior to the move above ground and to a degree carried on with life. This wouldn't be the first time the team has been to the city. A few times previously, the city has discovered a potential cavern near them, and a team or two of Huntsmen have passed through small breaches in order to explore the space. This has allowed the city to expand out underground, though a few spots had to be resealed behind a retreating Huntsman team due to Grimm.

This particular visit has Team TANN leading a pair of teams into a potentially large cavern that could really allow the city to expand. A third team waits nearby to serve as a blocking force should Grimm get past the exploring teams. When the breach is made, it's larger than it should be (either due to too much boom, or the wall in that area is weaker, or both), and a number of Grimm come pouring through. Nanoha's team takes the brunt of the invasion – Adel is killed in the fighting –, but Nanoha drops a Deathstalker barely small enough to partially fit the hole, and uses its bulk to clog things log enough to get a shield over the breach. She keeps it up while the other two teams finish off the Grimm on their side, and engineers and citizens help make a barricade that the reseal mixture is applied to, resealing the larger breach.

With four dead Huntsmen and the barricade not necessarily sound, evacuating the city becomes the best option. Except they can't, as they receive word from a pair of Huntsmen that came to their aid that the Vale council ordered the tunnels collapsed after getting initial word of the breach. Now over 6500 citizens and 10 Huntsmen are stranded underground.

Most of the story would focus on her time in Mountain Glenn after the tunnel was sealed. It would cover things like how they deal with morale/emotions given they're trapped, handling limited supplies, how murderers/rapist/profiteers are dealt with, etc. One team is sent to the surface to re-establish contact with Beacon. These communication runs eventually set up evacuation flights, where a team escorts a group of civilians to a clear area for evacuation by Bullhead. The council tries to stop it once they get word, but Ozpin ignores them. These flights manage to get out 200ish people, mainly children, before an evacuation group is ambushed and wiped out. None of the evacuated citizens are allowed into Vale by the Council.

With there now being only six Huntsmen in Mountain Glenn and supplies starting to run low, the flights are called off by them while a better plan is figured out. They'd like to have an evacuation path secured and just round the clock evacuate people, but the council blocks Ozpin from using anything larger than the Bullhead. He contacts the other kingdoms about the situation, and the head of Atlas Academy provides the aid of the Atlas military in the evacuation, led by Major Ironwood.

However, while the evacuation forces are en route, they receive word from the Council that the city was breached once more and fell to the Grimm, so with no contact from the city, the force turns around. A day or two later, the walls around the barricade do actually fail, as do the walls around other resealed breaches. With Grimm swarming in all over the city, the last six Huntsmen try to evacuate citizens to a defend-able position on the surface that they can be evacuated for. They try and fail to get in contact with Beacon, and after a few days they get to a high power transmitter and broadcast as loud a signal as they can. That gets through to Beacon and even to people in Vale. In the end, seven Huntsmen and maybe a dozen or two civilians hunker down on a roof for rescue while their supplies are gone. Grimm get around the blockage, but Nanoha uses a shield to block the roof access despite being nearly exhausted.

A giant Nevermore appears, and a flurry of feathers on the roof claims many of the surviving civilians. Nanoha's exhaustion causes the shield to fail as she tries to also engage the Nevermore. Two Huntsmen goes down as Beowolves push through the roof access, but a Bullhead drives off the Nevermore as a three-man team deploys to the roof, halting the Beowolf pack from wiping out the rest of the survivors. With the area temporarily secure, the Bullhead hovers to the roof's side, and the few survivors start getting moved over to it. The Nevermore returns and sends another flurry of feathers at the roof. A Huntress from the evac team sees a young girl out in the path of the feathers, and gets the girl out of the way. This leaves her with no time to dodge and is killed as Nanoha manages to get one shot off that knocks the Nevermore out of the sky. Nanoha then collapses unconscious.

The fallout in Vale from Mountain Glenn is incredible. The kingdom had a couple months to grieve the unfortunate loss of the city, only to have Beacon's headmaster come forth with scroll videos and survivors. The reveal that Vale's council wrote off thousands of lives on an initial report and then refused to provide any assistance in the "fool's errand" of evacuating them out a different way sparks a number of villages outside of Vale's walls to consider closing up and relocating back to Vale. The council's threat of military action to prevent such moves from entering the city then sparks unrest within the city itself. Further information coming to light about evacuated survivors not being allowed to leave Beacon for Vale, and the behind closed doors discussions regarding Mountain Glenn resulted in the entire Council being forced to resign under threat of revolution by the citizens.

Only seven people survive the final "breach" in Mountain Glenn. A Huntsman and one civilian die of medical complications from wounds within two months of the incident. Another civilian can't handle the loss and jumps off one of Beacon's airship landing pads. Nanoha herself is in a coma for four months. Her two surviving teammates resign and drop out of sight. The last survivor is a young girl with black hair that took up offers from the other kingdoms to make a fresh start elsewhere, like the other civilian survivors chose to do.

One thing that had been done was the recovery of weapons and scrolls from fallen Huntsmen, the scrolls because the Huntsmen had them recording while in the field at Mountain Glenn (thus footage of what actually happened in the city) and the weapons so others would at least have something they could use to mourn their loss since bodies wouldn't be recoverable. The weapons end up on a memorial wall remembering Mountain Glenn at Beacon – initially 11 slots filled and four empty – with one empty slot being filled soon after the memorial was built (Three initial teams – 12 people, 2 Huntsmen that showed up soon after, and Summer Rose).

When Nanoha wakes four months after Mountain Glenn, she wakes into a dimly lit room with not well defined borders, causing a panic attack as she thinks she's back in Mountain Glenn. She nearly managed to destroy the room she's in – rated to withstand a young Goliath – when someone realizes what's actually going on, getting the lights turned up and calming her down. Colonel Ironwood – promoted for his part in trying to evacuate Mountain Glenn, then helping transport the 200ish evacuated survivors to other kingdoms – meets with her to explain things. She's in a high security facility due to the injuries she sustained underground during the final breach. That's important, because while two of her fellow survivors were officially listed as dying from medical complications from injuries... the reality was more frightening.

The civilian did die of medical complications, but within hours of dying, the body began transforming into a live Grimm. Soon after, word was received that the Huntsman had gone berserk and seeming to show Grimm aspects, eventually having to be put down by the other Hunters on the team. The body was rushed back, and it too began transforming into a live Grimm after a few hours. Given that both had been injured underground and so had Nanoha, she was moved to a more secure location just in case. She didn't for four months while in the coma, but when she had her panic attack, she did seem to start transforming, though as she calmed down, the Grimm aspects faded away.
This Nanoha would be a much more active version than the loner, not getting involved in events version from the plot bunnies thread.
Spoiler: show
She's stayed in contact with Roman and Neo over the years, even after they went criminal. Even meets up with them from time to time to catch up and spar using their styles a bit. Spent a few years after she finished recovering from the coma just researching, planning, and picking up competency in numerous weapon styles (the last just to take up time and stay busy). Three-ish years after she recovers from the coma, she starts campaigning to put into effect what she calls Project Skyfall. Project Skyfall involves increasing the combat quality of huntsman training, an overall increase in Huntsman force levels globally, uniting the Huntsmen (finally) under a single international organization, and begin pushing Grimm back to create secure zones (the C&C fan in me wants to categorize Remnant into Blue, Yellow, and Red Zones...). With the lack of definite proof of a new type of Grimm that had been involved in the fall of Mountain Glenn, no kingdom really cared to support the project. She gave up after a few years, but paid visits to Huntsman academies in Atlas, Mistral, and Vacuo to work on at least improving the combat training of upcoming Huntsmen while she campaigned. It's shortly after this that she gets a call from now General Ironwood.

Apparently he didn't give up on getting evidence of a new, more dangerous Grimm type, and in the caverns under Mountain Glenn, his recon drones just managed to find proof of something worse (the Grimm spawning Dragon Grimm sleeping away). As a result, the Councils got together and started discussing options. One long time super-soldier plan - Project Lazarus - was discussed and shot down yet again, as no one wanted 10 super-soldiers at the cost of 90 above average Huntsmen due to the forecast mortality rate of the procedures involved. Another, Project Lambent, involved building a defend-able location in the wilderness that would attract Grimm regularly and have students and Huntsmen just kill tons of Grimm as much as possible to train them up. Finally, General Ironwood (listening in) points out to the Atlas Council a Project Skyfall. The down to Remnant plans that don't involve super-soldiers or throwing Huntsmen into a Grimm meat grinder -- plus intends from the start to constantly improve itself over time in order for a long term victory -- gets support from all four Councils. Ironwood suggests putting the author of the project in command, and with Nanoha's service record, she gets the approval of three Councils -- Vale's Council never really forgave her for her part in the post-Glenn upheavals, and one Councilman has a history of running afoul of her.

She spends the next four years and change getting parts of Project Skyfall going, and a year before series start, take up a job as combat instructor at Beacon since Skyfall reached a point where she couldn't really do anything for two years except hovering over people's shoulders and make them nervous. Now the fun part is that part of Project Skyfall envisions taking the fight to the Grimm, ranging out from the safety of the kingdoms and range of the communication systems. So a core part of the project is essentially a mobile fortress airship that serves as a staging area, command base, and mobile CCT tower. Think RWBY version of a Helicarrier carrying numerous air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons, a company or more of ground troops and their gear/transports, plus a fully operational CCT system also packed into it. They're called the Skyfall class. The training facility and shipyard is called The Farm.

Yes, I was listening to Skyfall's theme multiple times when I came up with the project and class name. Also, Project Lambent is a nod to the RWBY fic Auburn. And Lazarus is referring to super-soldier projects in general, like Marvel's various ones or WH40k's Space Marine creation process.
Second arc story-ish elements
Spoiler: show
Starts a week or so before her second year teaching at Beacon. I can't help but want to take the approach to Pyrrha's fourth Mistral Tournament win that the fic Technician did -- namely, that after the semi-finals match, her finals opponent forfeited, resulting in her winning the tournament by default -- but have Nanoha there watching, and talking the tournament organizers to have an untelevised/recorded exhibition match between her and Pyrrha in place of the cancelled finals match. Match starts slow, with Pyrrha setting the pace of the fight. Nanoha keeps pulling out various weapons, tossing the metal ones aside in the arena as they fail to get past Pyrrha's defense. Eventually, Pyrrha stops upping the pace and Nanoha gets annoyed. She tells Pyrrha to stop holding back, and when Pyrrha says she isn't, Nanoha powers through her defenses and launches Pyrrha across the arena and stopping just short of a ring out.

At this point, Nanoha points out that Pyrrha is holding back by focusing too much effort on avoiding letting a damaging blow land, and notes all the metal weapons laying around that Pyrrha isn't making use of with her semblance because she's only making use of it defensively. Nanoha concludes her mid-match scolding by telling Pyrrha that if she doesn't stop holding back, Nanoha will just put her into a wall and leave with a ring out win. Pyrrha never does land a damaging hit, but she did push further than she ever had before until the glancing blows and grazes added up too much aura damage.

Nanoha heads back to Vale to make sure everything's ready for the upcoming school year, and stops in at Junior's club to catch up with Roman (yes, Yellow trailer time). Sadly for Yang, she notices that Nanoha recognizes the person she's looking for, and eventually gets fed up with the person not facing her and refusing to give information. Yang grabs the person's shoulder, spins them around, and wakes up the next day looking up at the ceiling of her family's living room. Nanoha used her partially full mug of beer to knock Yang out in a single blow (unfortunately, the mug did not survive), then carted Yang back to Patch. Nanoha stays at Beacon the last few days leading up to the start of the year after that, and only becomes aware of Ruby attending Beacon, well, the day before Initiation.

Nanoha doesn't have many rules she 100% supports, but the age requirement of being 17 to attend a Huntsman Academy is one of them. On Remnant, 17 is the point where someone is considered an adult, and thus that person is choosing and consenting to undergo the potentially lethal training to become a Huntsman (as opposed to a minor, where they choose and parents consent). Ozpin's actions to legally allow Ruby to attend do not help the relationship between Nanoha and Ozpin that's been badly strained since she was recovering from her coma. The relationship was strained enough that Ozpin's never brought her in on the Maidens, and Nanoha never brought him in on Skyfall.

I'm somewhat iffy on how to go from here. I kinda half want to take more of a Professor Arc approach, where Nanoha was actually in Vacuo when that one school fell and was well aware that Jaune was lying about attending. Given that she stays in contact with Roman and Neo, she'd be useful for slipping Neo in and also getting Jaune trained up. Plus, her dead teammate being the uncle to Coco Adel would make an interesting discussion between RVNN, CFY, and her over Velvet once Nanoha gets fed up with how they're acting (I'm imagining forcing Coco to write condolence letters to Velvet's next of kin, and to the next of kin of her other two teammates, as well as plan how to break the news to the family members when she'd visit to deliver the news, all as practice for what will likely happen if Velvet is put back on their team. And then make Ren doing something similar for his team, given that he's team leader and he let the team fall completely apart like he has).

Regardless of how team stuff goes, there'd be the amusing fact that Roman, Neo, and Nanoha all recognize Cinder as their "mascot" from Mountain Glenn over a decade prior, and Cinder unaware they noticed and thus thinks she's getting one over on them. One of the things that would start popping up over the story line is that Nanoha has her own secret shadow conspiracy going, which means the game is not just between Ozpin and Cinder. Roman/Neo are actually working for Nanoha against Cinder, and Ironwood and Nanoha share similar enough views on many issues that he gets along better with her (and he's also read in on Skyfall) which means he's kinda her spy in Ozpin's camp. She has people keeping ears to the ground in each kigndom, not necessarily Huntsmen though. It's possible that Nanoha's connection with Skyfall gets revealed after the CCT break-in because Nanoha gets Council authorization to relocate the injured Maiden over Ozpin's protests from Beacon to The Farm in order to keep a potential lure to awaken the Dragon Grimm further away from the dragon. The actual relocation would probably occur while the students and staff are out doing missions (or containing the Breach). Nanoha would be aware of the Breach plan due to Neo, and had staged personnel so the recon team of students would locate the staging area and call in the reinforcement teams that would foil the Breach completely. And then RWBY accidentally spoiled the plan and kicked off he Breach days early instead.

If nothing else, the flow should lead to the focus being on fighting Grimm, not other people. Whenever I watch the first two volumes, I'm going "wait, they're supposed to fight Grimm, but the Grimm aren't really shown to be a danger despite what we're told..." and all the focus goes to Roman/White Fang/Cinder/etc and not so much Grimm being scary (I like One Good Turn Deserves Another for putting more emphasis on the real danger of Grimm). Also, I like how Squire introduces additional Grimm species (like the Arachne and its growth cycle...) So I'd probably end up with Skyfall showing up at the Battle of Beacon, Nanoha telling Roman to ignore Cinder's orders and get the Atlas air fleet over Vale to provide ground support, have the Vale CCT taken offline so Cinder can't flip the mechanized Atlas forces or can't keep them flipped (which would be an option with Skyfall online in the area with an uninfected "tower" to prevent the "loss" of a tower), and then Nanoha proceeds to pick a point on Beacon and cut loose with her powers for the first time since she got fully healed up (personally, I'm imagining Nanoha firing beams of energy through the Nevermore/Griffin swarms to the beat of Derezzed, and then soaking up all that mana to Starlight Breaker the Dragon before it can make it to Beacon).

With much of Cinder's plan to sow mistrust and fear through Remnant and potentially wipe out Vale wrecked and Cinder herself likely on the wrong end of Ruby's silver eyes, there's not much need to focus on people threats. And Nanoha's forces essentially doing a Big Damn Heroes moment during the battle means popular support is up, and Nanoha can really get going on making her dream of a Grimm free Remnant a reality. Somewhere in here is a vague thought that Emerald is actually one of her people keeping an ear out (getting pulled into Cinder's service wasn't actually planned in any way/shape/form), and at some point during the battle Nanoha tells "E" to try to save Pyrrha while faking her death, but to abort if doing so would reveal herself to Cinder. The actual fate of Pyrrha would be left ambiguous as to whether or not she survived, which would leave a possibility of a couple years down the road having Pyrrha reunited with the rest of her team (where she thought they were aware she was alive and undergoing hard training, and they thought she had died).
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Re: Cleaning out insistent bunnies

Unread postby jgkitarel » May 16th, 2016, 7:15 pm

Much better developed and more reflective of how Nanoha's presence would change things by derailing some aspects of the story, playing a few others differently, and going in a different direction elsewhere.
Also, I have to punch you, jgkitarel, because I spent a lot of time on the nanoha wiki trying to locate information on mages being trained due to being above a certain rank, only to remember and confirm that you were the one that came up with that. - Phht
Don't forget: Mass Effect is powered by magic space rocks. Evangelion is powered by Your Mom.
From his new fic Long Night of the Harvest

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