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During the original series of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, on occasion when Presea Testarossa was alone she would cough up blood with more being coughed up as time went on apparently getting weaker as well. She also commented that she was running out of time to collect the Jewel Seeds to reach Al-Hazard leading her having to push forward with her plans before getting all the Jewel Seeds.

In the movies it's revealed that Alicia died from a prototype energy generator meltdown that Presea was developing so at first i thought that she was suffering from injuries from the accident she survived however the accident was in in 0039 and the Jewel Seed Incident was in 0065 so Presea had been alive for 26 years so she would have recovered by then.

So i am wondering, what was wrong with Presea? also when she said she was running out of time, was she referring to her own life running out or Alicia's preserved state?

Memor-X
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    This is part speculation from me but I always thought that the exposure to the generator meltdown gave her something like radiation sickness. So she had a disease that progressed making her sicker and sicker until 0065. – Q the Platypus Jun 10 '16 at 00:09

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Yes, whatever happened with the reactor probably caused it. I don't think radiation poisoning is the exact condition, if only because an advanced, experimental technomagical mana reactor shouldn't be using nuclear fission, but the symptoms and progression seem to match media portrayals of that — and of tuberculosis, more closely; the "beautiful pallor", the exhaustion, and coughing up blood were originally markers, in prose and poetry, then later in film, of what was generally referred to as "consumption". Tuberculosis is no longer a major killer in the developed world, but its symptoms remain in media as the go-to nonspecific slow, wasting death.

As for the time factor, I think her disease was the determiner there; Alicia wasn't going to get any more dead. Whatever the actual cause of her illness, I believe that it was exacerbated by her throwing herself into Project Fate; as you say, she spent 22 years on that before Fate herself was decanted, presumably working at all hours and neglecting her health; she probably knew she was dying slowly before she realized Fate wasn't Alicia and moved to her mad attempt to reach Al-Hazard. She gave Linith a hard (and near-impossible) deadline by which to build Bardiche and train Fate as a top-flight combat mage, so she certainly knew she had little time by then.

Taper Wickel
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