[FFML] Magical Girl Wars, chapter 1

[Andrew Dynon]

(Okay, this is my first fanfic in quite a while. My writing skills are 
probably quite rusty, so I'll apologise in advance.)

*****
“For a force that has always existed, it is strange that so little is 
actually understood of magic. It appears in legend on all worlds, even 
those where most of the population does not actually believe in it, 
regarding it as nothing more children’s stories. Even on those worlds 
where its use is commonplace, its precise origins and nature are a 
mystery, and every law seems to have exceptions, if one can only find 
and exploit them. This encourages those who seek ways to change the 
past, or bring back the dead – the conceit that, since there are 
exceptions to every law of magic, why should this be any different? 
Considering the ramifications, it is fortunate that such loopholes, if 
indeed they exist, have yet to be discovered.”
- Yuuno Scrya, Foreword to “Unified Fragments: Does Magic Truly Follow 
Laws?”, Midchilda Unified Calendar 0071


“So this is it? The world She told us about?”

“It looks so boring. Why did we have to come all the way here?”

“Were you even listening? There’s been a surge in that world’s ambient 
magic. In case you don’t understand what that means…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know… geez!”

“What does She say about arguing among yourselves? Let us go, in the 
name of our Goddess…”

* * * * *
MAGICAL GIRL WARS
A crossover fanfic
By Andrew Dynon

Inspired by the Super Robot Wars series

Chapter 1:
Shadows Fall, The Light Is Called
* * * * *

“Wow, it’s a BEAUTIFUL day!”

While Usagi Tsukino could quite accurately be characterized as 
“carefree”, today she felt especially happy – so much so that even the 
prospect of school couldn’t bring her down, at least until she was 
actually in the classroom, or the bell rang – whichever happened first. 
Beyond the usual sun shining, birds singing, et cetera, there had been 
no monster attacks or villains to fight since Galaxia had been dealt 
with, and…

“~ Date with Mamo-chan on Saturday… lalalalala ~”

“Usagi-chan, didn’t Mamoru-san say he was going to be helping tutor you 
then?”

“Ami-chan, a date is a date! I’m a dependable high-schooler now, so you 
don’t have to worry about my studies!”

“That makes your attitude MORE worrying.” Rei pointed out. “You’re going 
to have to grow up SOME time.”

“Rei-chan never appreciates the hard work I do.”

“When have YOU ever done hard work?”

CRASH!

Usagi’s friends had become accustomed to hearing such sounds. What was 
unusual was the fact that on this occasion her falling over was not her 
own fault. A blue-haired girl who looked to be about a year younger than 
Usagi had been running past, and bumped into her.

“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”

“Gomen nasai! Are you all right, sempai? If you scraped your knee or 
something, I can bandage it for you.”

The word “sempai” seemed to instantly jolt Usagi out of her annoyance, 
her tone of voice instantly switching to “big sister”. Not the type she 
used with Shingo, but a softer, more mature tone. In her opinion, at 
least. “It’s all right. Be more careful next time, okay, miss…”

“Kusuha. Mizuha Kusuha.” The girl didn’t know Usagi well enough to 
notice such a tone of voice was unusual. She picked herself up, and 
rushed off – and as soon as she did so, Usagi’s normal speech patterns 
resurfaced.

“Did you hear that? I’m a sempai now!”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll set a great example.”

“It’s good you’re around, Rei. Without you, Usagi’s ego might go out of 
control.”

“You’re one to talk about out of control egos, Minako.” Makoto replied.

“By the way, Ami-chan… didn’t that girl kind of look like you?”

“Well, sort of, I guess…”

* * * * *

“MEEEEENNNNN!!!!!”

The smaller combatant’s shinai crashed down upon the larger one’s helmet.

“Ippon! Winner, Hikaru!”

Hikaru Shidou removed her helmet, and bowed to her opponent. “Thank you 
for the match, Kakeru-niisama!”

“My pride as a man…” Kakeru fought back tears.

“Eh… gomen…”

“But if Hikaru hadn’t fought at her full strength, that would have been 
worse than the whomping she gave you, right?” Masaru pointed out. “Our 
little sister has grown incredibly strong.”

“That’s an understatement,” Satoru said. “It’s as if her abilities 
increased by several levels in a short amount of time.”

“What have you been doing, Hikaru? Did you find some legendary master in 
the mountains to study under?”

Satoru ignored Kakeru’s speculation. “In addition, Hikaru, you’ve 
obviously got your confidence back. In fact, mentally, I can tell you’re 
stronger than you’ve ever been before.”

“Thank you, Satoru-niisama.”

“Don’t mention it. I’m just curious how you managed to bounce back in 
such a short amount of time. Anyway, I’m sure your teammates at school 
will appreciate it. Speaking of which, it’s time you got going.”

“All right.” Hikaru headed off to change into her uniform. From the way 
things looked early on, her school’s kendo team had a lot of potential. 
With luck, Umi-chan and Fuu-chan might even be able to make it to watch 
the big tournaments. Naturallt, she’d be doing the same for them.

* * * * *

“Arienai! Do they HAVE to make the work this hard in high school?”

“Nagisa, like I keep saying, it’s a matter of applying yourself 
properly.” Honoka asked herself how many times she and Nagisa had gone 
through this.

“Hard is hard! If you like studying so much, why don’t you do mine for me?”

“That won’t do you any good. If you’re having trouble, I can help you, but…”

“Is something the matter?” The pair turned to see one of the second-year 
students standing behind them – their little debate had apparently 
caught her attention.

“You’re… Mizuno-san, aren’t you?” Honoka said.

“How do you know her name?” Nagisa asked her.

“The school listings for top of the class… didn’t you pay atten- oh, no, 
you wouldn’t have.”

Nagisa growled – Honoka seemed to be taking it on herself to pester her 
in the event that Mepple was unavailable to do so. Speaking of which, 
the little fuzzball was probably listening in on every word Honoka was 
saying in order to remind her later on.

Honoka turned back to Mizuno-sempai. “It’s no trouble, sempai. 
Nagisa-san just needs motivation.”

{Kind of like someone I know.} Ami thought. “Well, I’m not really that 
good at motivating people. But Nagisa-san, I’m willing to help you study 
if I have time.”

Among Ami’s group of friends, motivation was Rei’s department. Ami 
sometimes felt that it was entirely due to Rei that Usagi studied at 
all. Hopefully Honoka could motivate Nagisa better than she could Usagi. 
She didn’t know the pair that well, but had seen Honoka in the science 
club meetings. {Unusual for one of us nerds to have a jock for her best 
friend.} Ami mused. {Well, I guess Nagisa’s better off than the rest of 
them. Well, looks like lunch is almost over.}

* * * * *

“I thought we were going to go to where the magic was strongest, Abyssa! 
Why are we wasting our time here in the frigid middle-of-nowhere?” The 
golden-armored woman complained.

“Because here is the site of a battle where an ancient evil fell. One 
seemingly connected to the surge in the amount of magic on this planet 
in recent years.”

“So?”

“So… the being’s essence is here. We can make contact with her, and 
offer her our goddess’ power in exchange for her service.”

“Hmph. Just like you to rely on minions, Abyssa.”

“And all this deal-making’s so boring.” The final member of the trio, 
the one in silver armor, complained.

“Pyra, Glacia, if you two don’t like it, why are you sticking around? 
It’s not as if I actually need your help.”

“Good point. I’ll take care of things without you.” Pyra said, and 
departed in a streak of golden light.

“Pyra-nee, wait up!”

Well, Abyssa didn’t have to worry about THOSE annoyances any more. It 
was time for her to get to work.

* * * * *

“Lieutenant Takamachi Nanoha reporting, sir.” Nanoha saluted as she 
appeared on board the /Asura/, as did the girl accompanying her.

“At ease.” Chrono said. “I take it this is the trainee you mentioned?”

“Yes. This is Ensign Excellen Browning. She scored the top marks out of 
the cadets at the TSAB academy.”

“Hi-hi! Like Nanoha-san said, I’m Excellen, and this is my device, 
Weiss-chan. Say hello, Weiss-chan!”

<Ich bin Weissritter. Wie gehts?>

“Oh, and is it okay if I call you Chrosuke?”

{That nickname…} Chrono sweatdropped – he would need to have a word with 
Nanoha about letting the cadets know things like that. He’d known her 
long enough to trust her judgment of the new girl’s abilities. He just 
wished she’d also mentioned her personality. Amy, meanwhile, cast a 
warning glance over her shoulder at the Ensign, which Excellen either 
didn’t notice or ignored.

“So, how did you find teaching your first group of cadets?” Chrono asked 
Nanoha.

“It was great, I really enjoyed it. I’ll probably continue being an 
instructor for a while.” Despite that, Nanoha was looking forward to 
returning to Earth for a while, to see her family, and Hayate-tachi… 
and, of course, Fate-chan.

“They didn’t get out of hand, did they?”

“This is the White Devil you’re talking to.” Excellen said. “She kept us 
in line all right.” Now it was Nanoha’s turn to sweatdrop over an 
embarrassing nickname.

“Anyway, there was something I wanted to tell you about. Recently, one 
of our scout ships detected a group of beings with high magical readings 
approaching Earth. Now, the TSAB isn’t technically supposed to intervene 
on a non-administered world unless there’s clear and present danger of a 
dimensional disturbance.” He smiled. “Fortunately, though, we have a 
native of that world about to return anyway, as well as two more 
investigators who are currently resident there.”

“Understood. I’ll investigate the matter.”

“I’m leaving things in your hands, then.”

* * * * *

The TSAB had not been the only ones to detect the intruders on Earth. A 
pair of small creatures – spirits, actually – had sensed their arrival, 
and felt a deep sense of foreboding. One of the spirits appeared as a 
blue oriental dragon, about two feet in length. The other looked like a 
tiger, although only about the size of a housecat.

“KoRyuOh, this presence…” The dragon said.

“I know, RyuKoOh. We’re needed again.”

“I wish we were able to do something by ourselves, instead of relying on 
humans to channel our power.”

“Well, like it or not, this is the way it is. Be careful until you’ve 
made your Soul Bond.”

“You too, KoRyuOh.”

* * * * *

“All right, let’s get into it!”

Yep, this was definitely going to be a good year for kendo. The club at 
Hikaru’s school wasn’t big – it hadn’t been last year, either – but 
there was definitely an aura of enthusiasm and optimism. As the new 
captain, this was what she was trying to bring. The coach had picked her 
out, saying he thought she had “leadership qualities”. Of course, he had 
no way of knowing that she had enough willpower to be chosen as the 
Pillar of an entire world, but the confidence in herself she had gained 
in the course of that journey showed.

Still, that was another time, another place. Her purpose here and now 
was to try and help other people find that confidence in themselves…

…like the first-year girl over in the corner, trying to practice by 
herself. Her grip and stance were all wrong, and consequently nearly 
falling over herself every time she tried to swing the shinai.

{She’s completely hopeless.} came the shadowy voice in her mind.

{She’s just new to this. She can get better.} was her response. She 
accepted that Nova was a part of her, now… but a part which needed to be 
reminded just who was in control.

“You’re Yumeko-chan, right?” she asked as she headed over to the girl.

Yumeko nodded nervously. “Gomen nasai, sempai.”

“There’s nothing you need to say sorry for. Here, let me show you…” 
Hikaru adjusted Yumeko’s hands into the correct position, and then 
showed her how to place her feet. She let Yumeko take a few swings… and 
the first-year soon backslid into her old habits. By the sound of her 
breathing, she needed to work on her fitness as well.

Maybe this would take more time than Hikaru first thought.

* * * * *

“Here they are, here they are!” Pyra exclaimed.

“Wow! This city has so many strong magical auras! Ooohh… this one! This 
one’s mine!” Without waiting for Pyra, Glacia turned and flew off in the 
direction of the aura that interested her. As Glacia departed, Pyra 
looked around for a second, trying to pick out which aura she should go 
after… and sensed something on the edges of her perception.

Well, well. If it wasn’t one of the spirits she’d been told about. What 
a perfect opportunity to take care of it before it found someone to bond 
with. And there were more magical auras in the same direction, as well…

* * * * *

Usagi and her three friends (Rei would be joining them on the way home) 
chatted as they headed out the school gate – although many of the clubs 
were practicing on the sports fields or meeting in one room or another, 
none of their group had any activities this afternoon. So the four of 
them chatted about cute guys they’d seen and the latest pop idols as 
they began to make their way home, along with the crowds of other students…

…wait a minute. Shouldn’t there be a crowd of other students heading 
home after school? Where had everyone gone all of a sudden?

As soon as the group had made that realisation, a streak of blue light 
came rushing past them. All of them blinked as they caught a glimpse of 
the little lizard that was trailing the streak of light behind it… or 
was it a dragon?

As soon as the blue light had headed into the school grounds, a larger 
streak of light, golden in color, came into view. This one’s form was 
more easily visible – that of a golden-armored woman. The woman also 
flew past, ignoring them, and a bolt of sickly yellow flame shot from 
her hand towards the dragon. The little dragon let out a squeal of pain, 
and dropped to the ground.

This was obviously not on. Usagi couldn’t let people go around hurting 
helpless creatures, especially not on her school grounds.

“Everyone, transform!”

The transformation yells that ensued did succeed in distracting the 
woman’s attention from the dragon she was pursuing. She turned, 
interested to see who it was who could remain active inside her barrier.

“Hold it right there! For making our schoolmates disappear, barging into 
our school, and hurting helpless creatures, I won’t forgive you! For 
Love and Justice, the Sailor-suited Pretty Soldier, Sailor Moon! In the 
name of the Moon… I’ll punish you!”

Pyra grinned. This looked like fun.

* * * * *

Glacia didn’t see the need to set up a Barrier as she honed in on the 
aura she’d sensed. The silver-armored woman simply went straight in the 
direction, crashing through the wall that stood between her and her target.

Screams rang out as the wall of the dojo burst into splinters. Most of 
the people there were too shocked at the sight of the silver-armored 
being’s intrusion for panic to set in… at least for the first few seconds.

Glacia looked around the dojo. Although she could tell the power was 
coming from here, she wasn’t good at being able to tell which individual 
out of a group possessed it. Oh, well, maybe one of the humans knew. In 
one swift movement, she grabbed one of the smaller girls, lifted her up, 
and shoved her against the wall.

“The power I sense! Who wields it?” She demanded.

“Power? What power? Yumeko stammered – and saw, to her despair, that 
this seemed to make her assailant mad. She was completely, utterly 
helpless. As the woman raised her sword, she was unable to even scream. 
She simply sat, back against the wall, waiting for the inevitable.

-Crack-. Yumeko saw the armoured woman knocked back as a shinai hit her 
in the stomach. The girl raised her head to see her team captain was the 
one wielding the bamboo blade, firey rage in her eyes.

“Don’t. You. Dare. Don’t you dare threaten my teammates!”

Well, this was amusing, Glacia thought. Here she was, imbued with dark 
magics beyond this pathetic planet’s understanding, and this foolish 
little girl presumed to challenge her armed with only a shinai.

“Are you challenging me?” She asked mockingly. “Shouldn’t you let me 
know who you are before I kill you?” A gesture, and her weapon was 
engulfed in shadow. The room became chilly as the blade seemed to suck 
the heat from it.

And still the red-headed girl didn’t flinch. Instead, her eyes narrowed 
as she readied herself.

“My name is… Shidou Hikaru.”

END CHAPTER ONE

AUTHOR’S NOTES:
Wow. It’s been a long time since I’ve written fanfic, so I’m probably a 
bit rusty. It probably shows in my writing, so I'll apologise for that 
now. And naturally, my muse comes to me DEMANDING that I do this 
sprawling epic that I’ll now have to try and somehow get through. I very 
well realise that I’m probably biting off more than I can chew here, but 
I have to give it a go.

Sometimes I hate muses.

Anyway, of the series included so far:

Sailor Moon is, of course, THE iconic magical girl series, at least as 
far as the “magic warrior” variation goes, meaning she’s the equivalent 
of what Superman is to superheroes, or Mazinger Z to mecha. You really 
couldn’t do a magical girl crossover without including her. Of course, 
if you know your anime history, there were magical girl shows before 
Sailor Moon, but Sailor Moon was the first superhero-style magical girl, 
and shows like Mahoutsukai Sally wouldn’t really fit this kind of story 
well. I myself haven’t seen much of the earlier shows – a few episodes 
of the 80s Studio Pierrot shows and that’s it.

Magic Knight Rayearth – this is one of my favourite shows of all time, 
and Hikaru is one of my all-time favourite anime characters. Umi and 
Fuu, of course, are going to show up soon as well… perhaps some other 
Rayearth characters will also appear later on. Of course, some fans 
argue that Rayearth is technically shoujo fantasy, rather than a magical 
girl show, but hey, close enough. And I’ll be including at least one 
other series that it’s arguable isn’t technically a magical girl show 
either.

Pretty Cure – This is a more recent series that I found to be a lot of 
fun (hey, it’s not as if I’ll be including shows that I hated in this 
story). I’ll be just including the original series and Max Heart, not 
Splash Star or Yes! Pretty Cure 5, partly because I love Nagisa and 
Honoka, partly because I don’t want to put extra weight on my shoulders 
by including characters from the other series (I’ve got so many 
characters to write already!), and in large part because only about 20 
episodes each of the latter two series have been subbed.

Nanoha – This is another more recent show that I’ve become a huge fan 
of, not to mention that the Nanohaverse has a lot of story ideas that 
gave me inspiration for this. Nanoha timeline wise, this happens around 
the time of the A’s epilogue. I like the StrikerS cast, but setting it 
before StrikerS fitted better (and time travel isn’t possible in the 
Nanohaverse… although of course there’s a certain character from another 
series who can get around that…

Originals – Those of you who have played the Super Robot Wars games that 
inspired this story know that Banpresto include their own characters in 
said games, so I thought I’d do the same thing here. If you’ve played 
the games or seen the SRW anime, you probably recognise Kusuha and 
Excellen. Apart from the Banpresto characters, I’ll also be including 
some of my own characters in this story (as if there weren’t enough 
characters as is!) The focus will still be on actual anime characters, 
though.

And there are some other series that will show up in future chapters…

OMAKE!
IF MAGICAL GIRL WARS WAS AN ANIME

(Roll opening credits)

“Minna! Henshin yo!”

25 minutes’ worth of transformation sequences later…

(Roll closing credits)