Shadow of the Keybearer: A Nanoha/Kingdom Hearts idea

[Comartemis]

Several dozen years ago, a Belkan general named Malcon Fiss returned from an extended campaign at the far edges of the multiverse to find that the empire he served was no more. Blaming the Saint King for his failure to protect his home, Fiss began a journey to resurrect his empire and the people he once served.

Fiss is a SSS-rank mage, and is so powerful that his spiritual energy has saturated his body and halted the deterioration of his cells, essentially rendering him immortal. As the years wear on and the TSAB comes into power, Fiss begins to lose sight of his purpose, eventually becoming a maniacal would-be dictator who seeks to bring the whole of the multiverse under his control through the power of Kingdom Hearts, or Alhazard as the legends have come to call it.

Having details of the old legends of Kingdom Hearts, Fiss recognizes that he requires the power of the Keyblade to access KH’s power, and seeks out a Lost Logia known as the Throne of Heroes, which has become the resting place of Sora’s heart, or linker core if you prefer the scientific name for it. He forcibly extracts Sora’s linker core from the ToH and attempts to turn it into a unison device for himself, but his experiment creates a flawed device that is incapable of engaging in a Unison with anyone. Disgusted, he hands his experiment off to an ally of his, Jail Scaglietti, in the hopes that Jail will be able to make something of his failure. Jail fails, and Fiss begins to search for other ways to access the Realm of Darkness, unaware that Precia Testarossa is on the verge of entering it herself.

Unbeknownst to either Fiss or Jail, Fiss’s tampering with Sora’s core has permanently altered Sora’s spiritual identity into another state; the Keybearer is no longer Sora, but Roxas, Sora’s Nobody.

***

Following the events of Nanoha Classic, Precia Testarossa becomes well-acquainted with the Realm of Darkness and its’ inhabitants, the Heartless, which have been absent from the Realm of Light ever since Sora used the power of Kingdom Hearts to seal all Heartless in the Realm of Darkness. Precia’s usage of the Jewel Seeds has torn open a gateway into the Realm of Light, but Precia is the first mortal the heartless have encountered in millennia with a heart as dark and twisted as Ansem’s, and her control over the unspeakably massive hoard is perfect. For now, the Heartless remain in the Realm of Darkness while Precia attempts to unlock the power of Kingdom Hearts so that she may resurrect Alicia.

To Precia’s dismay, however, the power of Kingdom Hearts is sealed by a barrier that is maintained by the existence of the Seven Princesses of Heart. With no other options, Precia returns to the Realm of Light to begin the arduous task of searching each and every universe for these Princesses.

By a very unfortunate twist of fate, however, Precia happens to meet up with Malcon Fiss early in her search. Having nearly identical goals, the two mages join forces just prior to the events of Nanoha StrikerS, and begin searching the multiverse for the Princesses, who Fiss describes as being users of something called Star Magic.

***

Our story begins several months after the conclusion of the JS Incident, when Division Six (Formerly Riot Force Six, which has not disbanded, thank you very much) is hunting down one of Jail’s Gadget manufacturing plants, following information taken from Agito and the reforming cyborgs. Deep within the heart of the compound, the group comes across a stasis tank containing an inactive unison device (Roxas, naturally). Thinking him to be another artificial mage, the group releases him from stasis, inadvertently triggering the compound’s inactive defense network. With the aid of a very confused Roxas, the group fights their way out of the compound, destroys the whole place, and returns home.

While the TSAB tries to decide whether or not Roxas qualifies as a Lost Logia or not, he becomes a ward of Division Six, training, working and making friends with most of the mages there. Roxas’ power level is approximately on par with Signum or Vita, with a nearly identical focus on melee supremacy over ranged attacks, though his focus is on speed and skill over raw power. Oblivion and Oathkeeper are no longer in Roxas’ possession; instead, his weapon is an artificial chainless keyblade Jail created as a side project, based on the Sleeping Lion keyblade and utilizing the Cartridge System to augment its’ power. Roxas will eventually recover his true keyblades right at the end of the story, but for the majority of the story he's using an armed device instead of the real deal.

Several months after Roxas’ rescue, Fiss’ fleet of Apocalypse-class dreadnaughts—identical to the Saint’s Cradle in most respects, but lacking the ability to draw on the power of Mid-Childa’s moons—appears in the skies over Mid-Childa. While the navy scrambles to intercept this threat, Precia appears planetside right outside Division Six’s headquarters, along with a hoard of Neo Shadows and Darksides, which proceed to occupy Roxas, the forwards, and the Wolkenritter while Precia battles Fate and Nanoha.

During Precia’s fight with Nanoha, Precia reveals that she intends to take Vivio to replace Fate as her right hand, and all but declares her intentions to treat Vivio as bad or worse than she treated Fate. She then proceeds to heavily imply that Fate was forced to endure sexual abuse during her time with Precia.

“I wonder… what does Vivio sound like when she screams in agony?”

Nanoha, predictably, goes absolutely ballistic, breaking out the Blaster System at full power and overriding the limiter in Raising Heart that prevents her attacks from doing lethal damage. For the first time in her existence, Nanoha knows what it feels like to hate someone, to want them dead and gone, and that is exactly what Precia wants.

By experiencing hatred and acting on it, Nanoha has ceased to be a Princess of Heart; her heart contains darkness, and the color of her attacks shifts from magenta to a dark red to reflect this. The barrier around Kingdom Hearts has weakened with the “death” of one of its’ power sources, and Precia departs, intending to hunt down and destroy or corrupt the remaining princesses.

Things only get worse in the aftermath; with the TSAB’s main fleet in ruins, the Bureau is caught completely off-guard when a clone of Jail Scaglietti stages a (pardon the pun) jailbreak, setting the original Jail, Quattro and the other unrepentant cyborgs loose. They immediately join up with Malcon Fiss and begin to harass the bureau all across dimension space. The TSAB’s possession of the technology behind the Arc-en-Ciel is countered by the Belkan navy’s superior subspace warships and starfighters, which the bureau has no real countermeasures for.

The only spot of light in this situation comes from Yuuno; the Infinity Library contains Jiminy Cricket’s journal, and the painstaking notes JC took during the years following the events of Kingdom Hearts II reveal several of the universes and the worlds within them that are most likely to contain the other Princesses of Heart. With the rest of the TSAB trying desperately to fend off the Belkan fleet, it falls to Division Six to locate and secure the Princesses of Heart before Precia can sink her claws into them.

But with several dozen worlds that could possibly contain a Princess, our heroines are going to have their work cut out for them. For one, Precia isn’t the only one out to corrupt the princesses; circumstances are working against our heroines as well…

…and Matou Sakura, Princess of Heart #2, has already begun to walk the path of Heaven’s Feel.

[Comartemis]

The story is intended to be split up into several arcs, one for each Princess of Heart. The first arc is the introduction, wherein Roxas is introduced to the TSAB and begins to adapt bits and pieces of the Mid-Childan magic system into his own fighting style, while also learning about the potency of the Belkan system in melee. Roxas quickly makes friends with the forwards and gains the respect of the captains and the Wolkenritter for his unique and powerful fighting style and light elemental spells (He and Fate can often be seen exchanging notes on battle tactics and spell templates in the cafeteria during meals). This arc ends with Precia's attack, Nanoha's corruption, and the unveiling of the enemy's plans.

Division Six splits into several groups to tackle multiple worlds at a time. The captains wind up chasing red herrings while Roxas and the forwards handle the first few worlds. The Wolkenritter join the action one at a time later on, until eventually the entire group save for the captains are fighting together against massive hoards of Heartless and Jail's Gadgets.

In the second arc, Roxas tackles the first world by himself while using limiters imposed on him by the TSAB's bureaucracy, arriving in Fuyuki City several days prior to the start of the Fifth Holy Grail War. Here he happens to encounter Matou Sakura by chance and befriends her. Sakura is in even worse condition than normal in this universe due to the absence of Shirou Emiya, who didn't survive the explosion at the end of the previous Grail War. Roxas' friendship provides a much-needed base for Sakura to stand on, and she begins to obsess slightly over him as she did with Shirou in the original timeline.

When the Servants begin to appear, Roxas becomes caught in the crossfire between Lancer and Archer, but escapes with Rin without being impaled on Gae Bolg. To fit in with the locals (and to work around the power restrictions of his limiters), Roxas opts to attempt to summon a Servant of his own. Using the blade that Kotomine gave to Rin as an experimental catalyst, Roxas summons the Saber-class servant Archerko, who stars in a doujinshi called "Sword Dancers" and seems to be a future version of Rin.

Despite assistance from AK and Rin, Roxas is unable to prevent the events of Heaven's Feel, and Sakura loses her status as a Princess of Heart when she becomes Dark Sakura. In the end, Sakura and Rin accompany Roxas off-world as he goes to join Shamal and Caro on the continent of Halkeginia, in a Zero no Tsukaima universe.

More details to come if this doesn't get the comments flowing.

[Muramasa]

This sounds very well thought out. Not much to say on the Nanoha aspect since I'm only vaguely familiar with it (only watched 3 episodes of StrikerS so far). I'm a bit more familiar with Kingdom Hearts and Fate/Stay Night though.

Biggest thing I see is weather or not Sakura is actually qualified to be a princess of heart with Zoken's worms corrupting her as it is. And without Shirou, you said she was in even worse shape then before. Then again, their aren't that many other possibilities who it could be I guess...

I'm a bit surprised with your choice of KH protagonist in Roxas, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Does this Roxas retain all his memories? or is that another aspect that could be looked into later on?

[Comartemis]

Biggest thing I see is weather or not Sakura is actually qualified to be a princess of heart with Zoken's worms corrupting her as it is.

I see Zoken's worms as being an infestation of the body, not of the spirit. It's not until Sakura actually lets that darkness into her heart and soul and becomes Dark Sakura that she becomes fully corrupted and loses her Princess status.

Roxas has all his memories prior to the end of Kingdom Hearts II, but beyond that everything is blank. It's possible that he'll experience flashes of Sora's memories as the story progresses, leaving Sora's ultimate fate a mystery until the back story is fully fleshed out later in the series.

After this the image I have for this fic begins to come apart a bit. I know for certain that I want Siesta to be the Princess of Heart for the Zero no Tsukaima arc, and Daidouji Tomoyo for an ensuing Cardcaptor Sakura arc.

In these respective arcs, the enemy will begin to play on the emotions of each princess as they did with Nanoha. In ZnT, the enemy actually targets Louise as the local Princess of Heart, due entirely to Louise's ability to use Void magic. Whichever enemy happens to show up in this arc (probably Quattro) will be playing on Louise's feelings of inferiority and her rampant Akane-esque jealousy towards any girl Saito pays the least bit of attention to.

The CCS arc will feature an as-yet-undecided enemy playing on Tomoyo's hopelessness regarding her love for Sakura and Sakura's affection for Syaoran.

[Muramasa]

Have you figured out all the worlds you want to visit yet?

[Comartemis]

Not yet. I think a visit to Twilight Town or The World That Never Was is in the works at some point, but beyond what I have already I'm drawing a blank. Since the events of KH II took place thousands of years before the rise of the Belkan Empire, we have the opportunity to visit some of the KH worlds in drastically different states than what we saw in the games.

Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion in ruins? Traverse Town overrun by Nobodies? The End of the World reformed somewhere along the way? And what about any leftover Organization-rank Nobodies? These are all things that could be taken into consideration when devising paths for the plot to take. Disney worlds are probably not going to show up, though.

[Sky]

I can't really comment on Kingdom Hearts, but...

While the navy scrambles to intercept this threat, Precia appears planetside right outside Division Six’s headquarters, along with a hoard of Neo Shadows and Darksides, which proceed to occupy Roxas, the forwards, and the Wolkenritter while Precia battles Fate and Nanoha.

During Precia’s fight with Nanoha, Precia reveals that she intends to take Vivio to replace Fate as her right hand, and all but declares her intentions to treat Vivio as bad or worse than she treated Fate. She then proceeds to heavily imply that Fate was forced to endure sexual abuse during her time with Precia.

You could (and probably should) spend some time on Fate before you reach this point. Fate's mind is going to explode with emotions if there's a hint that Precia is still alive, harboured old feelings or not. The problem is, it could end up somewhat anticlimactic if Nanoha takes out Precia.

If it's Fate on the other hand, you might be able to show the progression a lot better.

[Muramasa]

Resurrecting a dead idea, in the hopes that one day it's a not so dead idea.


Alright. I've finally caught up with my knowledge of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (Yes, I am now a fan ) and have brushed up on my Fate/Stay Night so hopefully I can be a bit more helpful now.

After reviewing your idea, I've hit upon a couple of points that may or may not be of interest to you. Take it for what it is. Suggestions.

One thing you may want to look into is developing some kind of back story as to how Malcon Fiss and Jail Scaglietti know each other. At the moment, your current plot summary doesn't cover this.

Secondly, I would drop the use of Limiters. The TSAB is going into war with a faction that has succeeded in decimating it's main fleet. They're going to want every able bodied person at Full Power and capable of using it without any hangups. No seriously. Things look really bad for them, even at the start.

When Roxas makes it to Fate/Stay Night verse, you may need to completely rework the approach here.


Problem point #1. It's unlikely that Roxas would be allowed to operate unsupervised at this point. He's still a rather large unknown to the TSAB even if he is in good graces with Division Six. At the very least I would have one of the Forwards keep an eye on him. Personally, I'd prefer Teana at this point for her long range support as backup to compliment Roxas skill at short range combat.

Problem Point #2. Why would Roxas participate in the Holy Grail War? His goal would only be to secure the Princess of Heart on that world.

Problem Point #3. Roxas needs a command seal before he can summon anything from the Throne of Heroes.

Problem Point #4. Roxas is basically a Heroic Spirit himself. If you take that and compare it to the case between Caster and Assassin, anything Roxas himself tries to summon would be fairly much useless. Something about the anchor to the world being frakked up... or whatever (Some times I really hate Type-Moon rules). Considering Medea's knowledge of magic would far exceed Roxas, the end result would be much worse.


I don't have have a complete solution but I do have some suggestions here. As I said, have Teana be partnered with Roxas and forget about the Limiter. If you want to have Lancer attack anyway, Roxas and Teana should be capable of holding him off until Rin gets there with Archer as back up. Lancer would have no choice but to retreat. After that, it's completely up to you but I would likely assume that you want Roxas to help Rin win the war. *Shrugs*

I wouldn't have Roxas as a master, but however with Rin witnessing both Roxas and Teana being capable of fighting other servants, she might want to use them (*cough* I mean enlist their help) for her own strategies.

I still barely have any knowledge of Card Captor Sakura, so whatever you have planned, I obviously have nothing to say here.

I do have some suggestions for some worlds you can explore.

One of them would be Mahou Sensei Negima (Princess of Heart could be almost anyone here). The other one that comes to mind is Evangelion with Rei being the choice for the princess.

Man... I had an urge to write a snippit for this... but it's your idea so there isn't much I can do.

I do have one more suggestion though. The name of Roxas's device (Pseudo Keyblade or whatever). For some odd reason, I like the name Hyperion. I was looking the name up on Wikipedia and I liked the references connected to it.

[ZeroForever]

even if it's not your idea that doesn't mean you can't go with your own variation if you have good concept, specially if it's been dead for a while.

It's a entertaining x-over idea the major issue is the power systems jumble that would occurs with large scale X-overs like this one and the fact there are uber god/dimension smiting characters (Zelretch, clow, etc) that would definitely get involved if things like this were happening in the area, though that could be used as part of the story as they have Xanatos gambit +100 skills.

either way additional anime universe's could be added pretty easily, the main requirement would be knowing enough about those additional series that it wouldn't seem out of place and having adjusting the power levels so it wouldn't seem to out of place.

modern/current series that could probably fit in well
to aru majutsu no index
shana
regios
Code Geass

older series
SM
Ranma
Trigun

[Knight of L-sama]

It's a entertaining x-over idea the major issue is the power systems jumble that would occurs with large scale X-overs like this one and the fact there are uber god/dimension smiting characters (Zelretch, clow, etc) that would definitely get involved if things like this were happening in the area, though that could be used as part of the story as they have Xanatos gambit +100 skills.

Don't forget Yuuko! And Mokona.

Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC do make any kind of cross over between CLAMP series and others fairly tricky since they tie everything into their own extended multiverse, not including all the series that take place in the one main universe (CLAMP Campus Detectives, 20 Faces, X/1999, CCS, xxxHOLiC, Lawful Drug at the very least).

[al103]

Tsubasa and xxxHOLiC do make any kind of cross over between CLAMP series and others fairly tricky since they tie everything into their own extended multiverse, not including all the series that take place in the one main universe (CLAMP Campus Detectives, 20 Faces, X/1999, CCS, xxxHOLiC, Lawful Drug at the very least).

Ehm... As i remember CLAMP Campus Detectives, Tokyo Babylon and X are one universe, CCS and Holic another, and Angelic Layer with Chobits a third one... and many other crossovers and dimensional doubles.

[Knight of L-sama]

Ehm... As i remember CLAMP Campus Detectives, Tokyo Babylon and X are one universe, CCS and Holic another, and Angelic Layer with Chobits a third one... and many other crossovers and dimensional doubles.

Yuuko knows Subaru from Tokyo Babylon and X/1999. And Watanuki makes a visit to the pharmacy that the main characters of Lawful Drug work for in one of the earlier chapters.

[al103]

Yuuko knows Subaru from Tokyo Babylon and X/1999.

Actually... Can be different Subaru... Or one in X different... CLAMPverse make my head hurt so much...

[Comartemis]

There's actually another issue that's come to my attention since I started hanging out on AnimeSuki, namely that Jail has no interest in any branch of science apart from his combat cyborg project and Project F. So of course, Jail having anything to do with Unison Device research -- or any kind of magical research, for that matter -- would be significantly out of character for him.

[Muramasa]

Well, you could have it so that when Fiss turns over Roxas's Linker Core, Jail is reluctant to do anything with it at first. He does so because it's Fiss and angering someone like that is not on his to do list. It could be when Jail is analyzing the Linker Core that he finds some aspect of it that does in fact catch his eye.

*Shrugs*