Name: Berri
Contact Info: TaiyakinoNaku @ Plurk & AIM
Other Characters Played: Winry Rockbell, Satou Kuroneko, Alice, Homura Akemi
Preferred Apartment: She's going to try to move in with Fate right away, so maybe with Fate?

Character Name: Nanoha Takamachi
Canon: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
Canon Point: The ViVid manga (age: 23); I would like for her to retain her previous Haven memories
Background/History: Nanoha Wiki
Personality:

Nanoha is a unique animanga character in that her canon starts from the time she is nine years old and expands all of the way until she is 25. Using a combination of Anime, Manga, and Drama CD mediums, the Nanoha franchise has had a lot of time to develop Nanoha as a character, as to be expected. She has grown from a nine year old girl thrown into a world of magic to a young woman who turns magic into a carrier.

The starting point of Nanoha's personality is therefore her nine year old self. At the root of everything is the girl Nanoha once was: a cheerful and upbeat child who, while recognizing her life as happy and blessed, battled with the uncertainty of feeling like a "third wheel" and that she was not useful. In these times, Nanoha watched how her siblings, parents, and two best friends seemed to pair off and leave her as an accessory. She felt like she had no place in the world and would privately cry out her stresses, as she had no idea how else to soothe them.

That isn't to say her nine year old life set Nanoha on course for a depressing life. Quite the opposite, actually. Nanoha is still a happy girl who loves her family and friends. Her family, the Takamachi family, raised her into a strong and mature child for her age. The family has a dojo and her siblings and father are shown to practice their regularly. The discipline this brings to their family life rubs off on Nanoha, which is why she cries privately and is not often seen asking for help early in the series. She knows how to take care of herself and handle her life with more maturity than you'd expect from your average nine year old.

This all remains true for Nanoha as an adult. She is disciplined and knows from her family and new experiences that she cannot get more if she does not put forth effort. Even at age nine, Nanoha is shown waking up before the sun rises so she can practice magic before school. In the movie, Nanoha is doing mental magic exercises while taking notes at school, acing her school tests, learning to balance her social life, and then go out and catch jewel seeds. When she's an adult, Nanoha applies this to becoming a combat instructor. Her policy is that you must learn the fundamentals and should practice routines, so that when you need them in a fight you can act naturally. Her strong work ethic is seen all over the series, especially in the fact that Nanoha is called the "Ace of Aces". She climbed military ranks so quickly and at such a young age that she became a freakin celebrity. She even has a canon fangirl, who has magazine clippings of articles and photospreads dedicated to the Ace of Aces.

Nanoha also shows her roots in her own family. One of the early scenes in StrikerS shows how Nanoha does not spoil her daughter, as this was how she grew up. Vivio falls and lands on her face, but Nanoha does not rush in to help her up. She encourages Vivio to stand on her own, since she is not so severely injured that she cannot do so. This applies in other ways to Nanoha's life, creating a policy where she will not help people unless they absolutely need it. Not because she is cruel, but because she wants them to build their own strength and overcome problems on their own.
If they are truly in a pinch, however, Nanoha will act. This is way she throws herself into Fate's life in the original series and why she is so persistent with the Knights in A's. And why, at the end of StrikerS, Nanoha wants to rush to Vivio and help her up--- because she doesn't think Vivio can get up on her own.

At this canon point, Nanoha has also shown her capacity for learning from what some might consider "mistakes" that Takamachi family made. When Nanoha was nine, she went through a phase where her family was too busy to deal with her and began to feel very lonely. So when Nanoha sees that her job is going to keep her too busy to see Vivio grow up, she switches from intergalactic work to being a local civil servant solely to pay more attention to her growing daughter.

Aside from her upbringing, Nanoha has faced many other life challenges that strongly influence her character. The biggest one is probably the mere existence of magic. As mentioned, Nanoha felt powerless and purposeless as a child. Magic gave her the purpose she longed for. And she turned it into a frickin' career. Nanoha goes beyond the stereotypical magical girl. She embraces her new magical powers, practices them, experiments with them, refines them, and builds herself a new life out of them.
How much she has done with her magic shows just how dedicated Nanoha is to what she loves: being able to help people. Nanoha's desire to help those in need is reflected all over. The first season is about helping Fate, the second season is about helping Hayate, StrikerS is about helping Vivio, even Force is about helping people in a seemingly hopeless and gloomy situation. Nanoha has even joined a magical military called the TSAB and dedicates herself to helping new recruits make the most of their magic.

Nanoha has also hit a few bumps in the road and had to overcome them. Time and time again, Nanoha has wanted to help people who do not want her help. She has been in tough situations that she feels could be resolved by simply talking each other's problems over and creating a compromise. And she has had this peaceful offering rejected, time and time again. It has frustrated her and caused her to adopt her own philosophy for such situations: if you don't want to talk, Nanoha will beat you senseless so that you have no choice but to listen.

No, really.

She's called the White Devil in fandom. She chases Vita around and shoots at her while insisting that Vita "PLEASE TALK THIS OVER WITH ME!". Near the end of A's, there is a scene where Vita accuses Nanoha's methods of being demonic. In response, Nanoha replies that "it's okay if I'm a demon, as long as I can use my hellish tools to get you to lesson to me". She is a strong supporter of peaceful and talked out compromises, but that does not mean Nanoha will be pushed around either.

Nanoha has also had a chance to suffer from many of her personality flaws, which has helped her to overcome them. For example, she is shown to be a lot less tough on Vivio after a few years of being family (as opposed to 19 year old Nanoha letting Vivio take a nosedove). She may still be strict as a mama, but she isn't as cruel.
She has also had a chance to suffer from her strong work ethic. As a child, Nanoha pushed her limits constantly so that she could become stronger. And as a teen, Nanoha suffered for it. Her body finally caved when she asked too much of herself and she was severely injured. The injury was so bad that the doctors expected Nanoha to be crippled for the rest of her life. She managed to overcome it through years of physical therapy (StrikerS takes place around 4 years after, and Nanoha is still having to take it somewhat easy), but it made a strong impact on her.
Nanoha now understands that being reckless will come back to haunt you. It is this incident that makes her so serious about having her students train routines over and over and over until they can perform them perfectly and without straining themselves. It also makes her very cross and stern with people who make up new battle tactics on the fly and don't practice them first, which is kind of hypocritical since Nanoha claimed to come up with Starlight Breaker on the spot when she was nine.

The incident also taught Nanoha the value of being able to protect yourself. She does not believe you should think of protecting others unless you can protect yourself. She stresses this with Subaru and Teana especially. When she was injured while on that mission with Vita, she put Vita in a vulnerable position while being protected. With her students, Nanoha would scold anyone who rushed out to save the day while sacrificing themselves. She does not see this sort of reckless self-sacrifice as helping anyone, but as instead causing more trouble.

All of her nitty gritty belief systems aside, Nanoha is a friendly and upbeat person. Magic has given her confidence, as has growing older, so she is no longer a nine year old girl who cries when she is alone. Nanoha very rarely has reason to cry since her life is not at all suffering. She is financially stable because of her job, has the job of her dreams, has overcome a handicap, is kinda-sorta famous, has great friends, and now she has a daughter that she loves to bits and pieces. By no means is Nanoha an unhappy girl. If anything, she has all of the reason in the world to be incredibly optimistic and confident.

But Nanoha is also an adult who has grown up with a military background. Optimistic, yes. Stupid? No. Nanoha is trained to expect the worst on the battlefield and is trained to adapt. She becomes a much different woman when she is on the job. Nanoha is downright cruel in some regards, but only when she has to be. Her final attack in the StrikerS comic takes down a ton of walls and still hits a living target. That is a lot of firepower to fling at your enemies when they can still feel pain. But when she is fighting opponents who are not psycho crazies, Nanoha won't go full power.
She is also quite adaptable and quick on her feet in a fight, as shown with how she takes down anti-magic robots in the StrikerS anime and manga. She comes up with effective plans and uses them.

But while she has the capacity to be serious, Nanoha is still a happy person. She is friendly, caring, and now has a mother's tough to add to her social interactions. Nanoha has also been shown to be very playful and have a teasing streak to her (something Vivio picked up on). She even flirts and teases Fate, her best friend, in the ViVid manga. When meeting Einhard, Vivio scolds Nanoha for being "too loud of a person". She's quite easygoing, even with first impressions.
She can be strict and show tough love, but a setting like Haven will have Nanoha on her toes enough to be a tiny bit less strict with those she talks to. It's a stressful scenario and she'll be wanting to ease tension rather than create more of it. She is also likely to occasionally worry about her daughter, Vivio, who is 'waiting' for her back home. Nanoha is coming from a point where she dropped everything to take care of Vivio, so she will be quite Vivio-centric.

Abilities/Powers:

Nanoha's magic plays a huge role in her character. Her universe also has a very developed concept of magic to work with.
The first thing to note about Nanoha's magic is a special organ called a Linker Core. It is what produces her mana. Her magical device, Raising Heart, then turns that mana into spells.

Nanoha's spell list can be found over here. She uses a combination of beam spam and magic bullets that she can direct to her opponents. Nanoha is not as fast as some of her canonmates, but she has a lot of firepower and is still an opponent to be aware of. She can also perform some basic support and defensive magic and create a "barrier jacket" to protect herself.

All of this relies on Raising Heart, Nanoha's AI device. Raising Heart is a red amulet that can speak and make choices, but is usually loyal to her master. She will make choices to protect Nanoha if she must (she gives up Jewel Seeds so Nanoha's life will be spared, against Nanoha's will) and can alert Nanoha to incoming danger (Raising Heart notices Vita's surprise attack and reacts before Nanoha does). They are a team and have been together for over ten years now.

Raising Heart becomes Nanoha's staff for battle. She has multiple modes that help her use certain spell-types more effectively (shooting mode, for example). Normally, the name of a spell is written across the amulet. In Haven, this will disappear. She also can be broken by too much force or strain, but can also repair herself. It just takes a few days.

She also has two updated systems since her debut appearance. Raising Heart uses the cartridge system as of A's, which allows her to use powered up spells by inserting cartridges. These spells will be limited by how many cartridges Nanoha has in Haven. As of StrikerS, Raising Heart also uses the Blaster System, which boosts Nanoha's defense and attack at the cost of her health. There are 3 blaster modes and by the 3rd Raising Heart is beginning to crack and break. Nanoha won't spam this and will only use it in emergencies. They seem to be able to recover afterwards, but it will be physically draining at the time and leave Nanoha and Raising Heart unfit for battle for at least a few days.

Finally, Nanoha's magic is canonly limited with an output limiter. Her magic is reduced from S+ rank to AA rank at this point in time. The limiter cannot be removed except by TSAB admins, and since none of them are in Haven the limiter will stay in effect. This isn't a big deal. It's a good thing. Even with AA rank, Nanoha could potentially take on a Gundam. As a child, when her magic wasn't even that much, her beamspam could tear through multiple buildings. Playing her at S+ rank would just be silly.

Additionally, I would like it if she could return with her previous Haven memories. She took part in the computer-hauling raid, for example. However, if this is inconvenient then I understand!

Items/Weapons:

1) Raising Heart
2) A pair of casual clothing
3) Vivio's stuffed rabbit (not her AI device Cris)