NorikoIt's the big day and everything is fucked. The bride can't enter the chapel without catching fire, the groom keeps triggering random encounters as he walks down the aisle, a shadowy cult has sprung up around the wedding cake, and the ring causes its wearer to hallucinate horrifying phantasms to tempt them with dark powers. The venue has been double-booked for a shoot-out, the priest has gone AWOL, and Lothgar the Undying has invaded the banquet and is now fighting a war on two fronts against the ravenous bouquet and a random flock of psygulls.
Someone needs to sort out this clusterfuck.And that someone was you. Was. It's sorted now.
You managed to track down the priest who was in the middle of a booty call he thought was a hostage negotiation. Learning that Ren is able to power up magic by draining the life of living beings (and having a few emotional landmines you deemed best left undisturbed) you sent her off to lifedrain the contents of the entire dungeon that turned out to be lurking beneath the chapel. Ring turned out to be beyond saving, turns out it wasn't some Lord of the Rings shit, it was some Kafka-meets-cyberpunk shit with a hallucination of the most generic corporate stock picture ever offering you immense power if you would just be as kind to answer their 1000 question survey in a process that apparently requires being transferred between five different departments and being put on hold for half an hour just to answer the first question. You noped right the fuck out and offered it to Lothgar if he'd so kindly fuck off. Apparently Lothgar is a lot more patient than you are. Bouquet, you're not entirely sure hat happened, it sort of just eloped with the cake, and the latter's cult followed them out.
With Ren returning from just eradicating an entire dungeon of all life and now having enough charge to stop the bride from catching fire for the entirety of the ceremony the pair of you
eventually manage to eject the telekinetic seagulls from the chapel. And this time
only Patricija lost her panties.
Last matter to attend to were the Triad-looking motherfuckers outside the chapel. You walked up to them, Vasavi Shakti'd a Narayanastra and informed them in no uncertain terms that if they were so eager to die you'd be happy to oblige them. You
might have still be a
tad pissed from trying to herd the fucking seagulls. The gangsters left in quite the hurry.
Well, if there's anything to say about this, it's whole experience, it's that you didn't crash into a sex shop, fight Hitler, or have to perform open heart surgery. Which might actually count as a win in your books at this point.
Oh also turns out your ass got cursed. Apparently that Black Beast you speared back in Kingshaven laid some kinda curse on you that forced you to remind everyone that you and Kouta are not blood-related at the worst possible times. God fucking damnit. Faith tore it out.
Minato, Shef, and YukiWhose numbers are in Noriko's phone? Why is Yuki a robot now? Y'all seek out answers to these questions.On the phone number front, turns out the Sendo numbers correspond to Sol and Luna, no idea which one's which though. Apparently Noriko got them last night when she got drunk and hit on the pair, asking if they came as a package deal. At least, that's what the twins say. It's hard to tell with them.
Of the local numbers, one of them turned out to belong to Fiona Ritter, someone Minato would recognize to be a Reincarnation of Sir Lancelot in addition to being a member of The Crown, effectively the personal retinue of Izanami Nakahara the
true Reigning Queen of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Realms (no, you have no idea why her name is japanese and apparently neither do her parents). It's only natural that Minato would have heard of her. And totally not because he's a fan of her doujinshi work. Nope! Definitely not!
Another turned out to be that of Princess Patricija Kovacs, of the Drakenvaldian royal family, who a drunken Noriko went on a date with much to the delight of the tabloids. Of the remaining two phone numbers, one turns out to belong to one Alberto Di Antonio the shopkeeper of a local magic store who apparently taught a very drunk Noriko a bit of metamagic, the other turns out to belong to Sanjin Vuković a doctor who helped Noriko perform some rather extreme open heart surgery.
As for Yuki, hoo boy.
So your investigation started with the Gaia Driver's diagnostic suite. Simple enough, run a preliminary analysis figure out where to go from there. Thing is, the results raised more questions than answers.
So firstly her ass was totally cursed. Well "cursed". Cursed for all intents and purposes but mechanism. Strictly speaking it was a complex persistent transmutation that would kick in periodically to simulate what's basically a compulsive effect. Yeah almost certainly the work of that Black Beast she fought. Fits with the timeline too.
Except, that didn't make any fucking sense. Yuki wasn't being compelled to do jackshit. She was turning into a robot not refusing to disclose her name or something. And yeah, turns out it's because the curse wasn't actually doing
anything. It was
supposed to do
something, but instead
something else repurposed it as a power supply to do all the weird robot-y stuff. Issue as it were, was that y'all couldn't see
what. Only thing the diagnostic suite picked up was the curse and her shielding. Which kinda implied it was some sort of internal process at play, but why the fuck would she have an internal process to turn her into a robot?
Minato uses True Regalia Replication to create a copy of Astolfo's spellbook and breaks Yuki's curse and robotic state by fucking yeeting it at her via Gandiva, something rendered way more awkward than it had to be when Gandiva's summoning also gave Minato one of those horrific ahegao compilation jackets with an inner lining that seemed to be woven together from panties.
While the curse and physical effects had been removed there was still the matter of whatever internal process was causing it, given that it was liable to start shit again given the chance if left untreated.
With that in mind and suspecting conceptual fuckery y'all headed back to Guantanamo Bay Resort to meet up with Ji-Hun Yi. Guy's parents are both researchers at Heaven's Gate, guy practically grew up there so Minato figured there was a chance he might know a thing or to. Well long story short, didn't. The girl with him did though. Name's Evangeline. Just Evangeline.
Turned out Minato did know her after all. Not by name, not face, but by subject number and designation. Subject 13. Genesis Antecedent. When scientists at Heaven's Gate realized they could create people out of the contents of Akasha, they almost immediately went all go big and go home and tried to pull "that which came before everything else". God, in other words. Well, no idea what the fuck Evangeline is. But she's certainly not God. Her data was quite useful for creating the Gaia Driver though and as it turns out, she's got a sort of instinctive sense for conceptual fuckery.
Good thing too because this one was fucking doozy.
Remember how Yuki's memories showed her stabbing her reflection? Turns out that, kinda sorta was her own existence.
She got drunk, tripped balls, and somehow (Shou's advice on how to run a con on reality probably played a part) managed to murder herself without actually dying. What this means is that right now Yuki isn't human. She isn't
anything. She's a void, a vacuum. And vacuums tend to get filled by whatever's available.
That's what happened with the robotic shit. The void within her saw a chance to solidify her existence with transmutation magic and took that chance. And right now, it's really going to just take whatever chances it can get. So for how to treat it, well, she could either try and fill the void with something she wants, become human again if she wants. Become some kinda goddess like she so often claims. Could even become an Aramitama she fills it the right way. Or, she could learn how to keep her herself empty, stay as "something that exists without an existence" and see if that doesn't help her con reality even harder for fun and profit.
FaithBattle rages through the frozen streets of Kingshaven. Entire city blocks have become consumed by ice, streets once packed with people now flooded by seas of liquid nitrogen. The culprit, General Frost of the League of Evil remains at large, lurking somewhere beneath the ice. A motley crew of adventurers, tourists, and students had launched a counter-offensive seeking to reclaim the contested area.
While initially met with some success, the counter-offensive was thrown into chaos by the entrance of the Magus Aerial Squadron. Taking advantage of the chaos to redesign and reshape his minions, Frost routed the allied forces using new "Sky Warden" constructs.
Now outnumbered and behind enemy lines, the former spearhead of the charge, Eagle Squadron (which honestly made up like 80% of the allied forces' total military power) engages Magus Squadron in vicious low altitude dogfights between the frozen edifices of once bustling buildings.With a flash of gold Faith accelerates into close range of Galavant, the magical girl/corporate mercenary steeling her nerves for a point blank Freedom Beam.
Rather than evading answers her head-on, spinning around to meet her. His shell seals its thruster ports and begins venting a cryonic energy, its sheer output no longer able to be contained within its own form as it enters Harbinger Mode. His cloak fans out as a set of makeshift airbrakes, the deceleration so violent they snap off, scattering in his wake. From Faith's perspective it's as if he suddenly rushed to meet her, shield and lance ceysrallizing in his hands.
The ambient temperature plummets as Faith's shield begins to
freeze, Galavant's overclocked EMS giving him enough control over the local energy to contend with Faith. He gets to work trying to freeze and crush her shield as he unleashes a salvo of eight missiles.
Shield compromised Faith cannibalizes her protection, redirecting its energy into her readied beam. Moments before impact a shot rings out.
Eagle 3 Legion <<Incoming!
>>It is Freon's final bid to save her comrade. A packet of cryonic energy wrapped in a cocoon of crystallized filament and fired at high velocity.
Under normal circumstances its payload would be liability, a dense bundle of magic that Faith could manipulate. Not especially well given its velocity, but enough to shift its course. Easily the difference between victory and defeat.
But these were not normal circumstances, Galavant's EMS was at play here and whatever she did, he could counteract. So instead, she dodges.
She breaks off from the charge, the bullet narrowly missing her as she sweeps a wide angle Freedom Beam across Galavant. The EMS holds, but only for a moment. The defense as futile as trying to stop a tsunami with an umbrella. Armor boils, motors detonate, ice becomes steam and machinery becomes wreckage as the shell and missiles are all but obliterated.
A phantasmal core ejects from the blast, unfolding to reveal the defeated pilot as he drifts down onto a nearby rooftop.
Faith had been quicker on the trigger than expected. But while Freon's bullet couldn't save Galavant, it could still doom his foe. The miss was expected.
Freon hadn't just lined her shot up against Faith, she had lined it up against the scattered fragments of Galavant's cloak, and now ricocheting between them the bullet rushes back from Faith's flank.
Its cocoon unravels and the energy within explodes forth, crystalizing into a shotgun blast of icey munitions.
Not time to dodge. No time to manipulate the blast. Faith finds herself in checkmate.
But watching on from her rear, Cynthia has an option still. A reckless dire option, but an option nonetheless. She weighs up the options in her head. Her vessel was expendable. Faith was not. She fires the missile.
Typically, magic-enhanced missiles use a combination of enhancement and reinforcement magic. Enhancement charges the detonation with spirit energy while reinforcement shapes the shrapnel and protects it from being destroyed by the enhanced blast. Spirit energy is then pumped into the shrapnel to up their lethality.
In this case however, with only herself and Faith in the blast radius Cynthia didn't want shrapnel. Instead the missile she fires only carries enhancement, enhancement to power up the blast and vaporize any would-be shrapnel.
Safety fuse disabled, the missile detonates almost as soon as it fires, the blast wave hurling Faith out of harm's way. Cynthia isn't so fortunate. The blast slams against her vessel leaving it scorched and fractured and sending it a plummet she rights by the barest of margins.
Not one to let the opportunity go to waste, Freon opens fire fire on the stricken drone, a deluge of frozen rounds quickly freezing half of the vseesel and leaving it dangerously tilted. Faith attempts to return fire but Freon proves to be too fast and too maneuverable, weaving through the magical girl's scaterred beams, whatever aim assist Faith's energy manipulation could afford counteracted by Freon's own EMS.
Neuromancer <<[Japanese] I see... so that's how it is...
>>Neuromancer <<[Japanese] Cut their tethers! Aim near the anchor points! They can't maneuver without them!
>>Heeding Enn's advice, Faith splits her next beam differently, aiming the majority of it for her anchor points with only a single beam aimed at the sniper herself. The beams scythe through the tethers sending the sniper into a spin. An easy target for the remainder of the beam.
The beam slams into Freon, filling the girl's world with a haze of warning messages. The pink beam that blasted off one of the shell's arms and vaporized a good chunk of its plating. She moves to control her spin, aiming tethers at a nearby building and thrusting away. Her opponent could not attack quickly. She has a chance to recover.
That chance does not come.
Faith's rate of fire may be lacking, but with her shell saturated with Doki Doki Energy, Freon was dead in the water. Sweeping her wand in a cutting motion, Faith focuses the energy on the tethers and a select few thruster units, severing them from the shell.
Now completely out of control Freon careens through the air, slamming into a building and is forced to eject.
Goose and Sheriff meanwhile close in on Immanuel and Distance, the former warded by her shell's Danger Prognosis, the latter by a vanguard of Sky Wardens.
Distance can't really determine what Goose's Danger Prognosis does, but she can sense it still and makes an the educated guess it would be less than cooperative toward her spatial manipulation shenanigans.
With that in mind she takes the safer option, directing Immanuel into a "tactical advance towards victory (and away from the enemy)", and as their pursuers close in she gestures at them casting Dark Matter. The space between the pair and their pursuers seems to explosively expand, the distance suddenly widening thwarting Magus Squadron's attempts to engage.
Sachen <<Ziel erfasst!
>>Adding insult to injury Immanuel fires one of the his railguns, the metal slug grazing Sheriff severing his shell's leg and shattering a Sky Warden behind him.
Having just dispatched Freon, Faith levels a second beam at Sheriff. Cynthia's second vessel severs the damaged shell's tethers as the beam crashes down on him.
But Sheriff is prepared. A conventional EMS might not be able to stop the beam, but the Sky Wardens do not have conventional EMS, rather they have a sacrificial EMS. Fortified with ritual magic they did not need to stop the beam. They just needed to choose what it damaged, and all their systems networked together, that was well within the their capabilities. The Freedom Beam arcs through the formation like lightning. Two Sky Wardens the one in the rear of the formation simply vanish, their entire physical existence vaporized in an instant. Sheriff remains unharmed. From the beam at least. Shell's still missing a leg from the railgun.
Before Eagle Squadron can capitalize on their momentum further the mist rolls in again, this time accompanied by the rest of the Sky Warden forces. The hastily named aaaaa links up with Faith and is promptly rechristened as Merlin after her old squadron in a bid to make her callsign actually pronouncible.
Faith attempts a wide area search using Cloud of Sunlight again, but this time her adversaries keep their distance, content with regrouping and licking their wounds rather than trying to push their wavering offensive. With visibility limited Eagle Squadron opts to do the same, de-icing Cynthia's vessel as they prep up fresh shields and railguns.
Between the howling winds and humming thrusters, it would be a mistake to say it is too quiet. But it certainly is too boring, and it really only is a matter of time now before the other shoe drops.
Movement.
Movement in Faith's clouds. Frost Eyes. Small simple constructs used as flying sensor arrays and scouting units. They're trying to narrow down her location. Immanuel's swords move to intercept, bewitched blades cleaving through the swarm.
More constructs follow. More Frost Eyes. Four squadrons of Sky Wardens. Stealth is impossible now. Eagle Squadron moves to engage.
And then, they hear it.
Broadcasted on the open channel, a loud and terrible cry.
Fox 4 Fox One <<OWO WHAT'S THIS?>>The mist clears and sky seems to split asunder as frozen bullets fill the air, scintillating contrails packed so densely the reflections are near blinding. An apocalyptic deluge of gunfire pouring out from what is best described a flying wall of muskets, deployed and coordinated by four new figures.
| | FOX | | League Air Force | | 4th Air Division 1st Air Force Unit | | Emblem: T-posing Falco |
|
Faced with a frankly absurd amount of gunfire heading her way Distance just decides "fuck it" and casts White Hole.
It starts as a single mote of light, a blinding pinprick in reality. Then a gunshot wound weeping the light of forgotten stars. A hole the size of a grapefruit. Then a beachball. Then Yuki's emotional baggage filling the world with roughly as much burning radiance as a seraphic stripclub. Bullets are forced to the side if not outright incinerated in its presence.
Naturally Immanuel sees this and thinks he can do better.
Sachen <<Überwältigen!
>>He gestures and the White Hole
shatters as if it were nothing but a reflection in a now-broken mirror. Yet the reflections shine still, each a fraction of the original, but together with a fury even greater. It's also completely unstable and as the reflections drift through their respective reflections they wind up discharging beams of deathly radiation in random directions along with the occasional errant shard of cosmic glass.
Eh, he'll chalk it down as a feature, keep the enemies on their toes. Especially now with the expanded White Hole having basically bisected the battlefield, with Eagle Squadron on one side with some soon-to-be-fucked Sky Wardens, and most of the League's forces on the other, consisting of the other half of the Sky Wardens, Fox Squadron, and Magus Squadron remnants. Wait, weren't there two Magus units left?
Magus 1 Goose <<*static*>>Thrusters flaring, Goose erupts out of a nearby building. Beams and machinegun fire rake across her armor but her shell has already engaged Harbinger Mode and a small detachment of nearby Sky Wardens sacrifice themselves to spare her from the brunt of the reaction fire. While the mode had disabled her shell's thrusters and tethers she had worked to counteract this accelerating through a fucking shopping center to pick up speed by exploding out of the wall like the fucking Kool-Aid man in Harbinger Mode. A spray of frozen fire intercepts Immanuel's attempts to dodge. The damage is quite limited in part because of the man's armor and in part because only a few shots landed, but was only the set up. The contrails pull taunt and yank him backwards slamming them into Goose's freezing grasp.
Ice pours over Immanuel's armor, flowing like a particularly angry fluid as it gathers on his cape and boots freezing them solid and disabling his ability to fly as she tears off one of his railguns and ejects most of her plating in a cloud of mist to cover her retreat. A retreat that begins with the recoil of the stolen railgun and a metal slug tearing through Cynthia's vessel.
The round rips through the fuselage splitting the drone in two as Goose rockets back from the recoil, she baits a Freedom Beam by deploying tethers only to flare up her unused thrusters, launching herself in the opposite direction. The beam grazes her, held at arm's length by her EMS as she proceeds to
jam her fucking arm into the beam sacrificing it to use the resultant explosion of steam to push that that final distance through a wall and into cover.
Merlin lassos Immanuel tethering him to the back of her invisible jet and sparing him the embrace of the nitrogen sea before Distance taps him temporarily disabling gravity's effect on the inventor as he begins chipping away at the ice with his blades.
The respite is short lived however as the unstable White Hole detonates, allowing the remainder of the League's aerial forces to fall upon them, any semblance of formation on either side quickly falling apart as the combatants engage in a series of vicious dogfights. Faith lets loose another scattered Freedom Beam, severing Sheriff's tethers as he tries to dodge. The main beam fails to connect, again shunted off into a few sacrificial pawns. Unfortunately for him, before he can even counterattack with his lasso he finds himself getting lasso'd to a building by Merlin and promptly 9/11'd by her seemingly inexhaustible supply of invisible jet planes.
Fox Squadron proves to be a wilier foe. Realizing what Faith's doing they adjust their tactics, throttling down their thrusters and keeping up their musket deluges. Not going full throttle costs them speed but in exchange opens the possibility of evading through sudden acceleration. Not the best odds when fighting against Faith who's seen a little too much high speed linear dash bullshit, but this works well in tandem with their sustained, almost token gunfire - the contrails act as backup tethers, and let them cover each other's backs with suppressive fire should they find themselves cut.
Of course for all their skill, Fox, or rather Joker Squadron as called by their AWACS has their own share of problems. Even if their foes didn't know it.
AWACS ReaperEye <<Fox 2!
>>Fox 1 Fox Two <<Yeah brah?
>>Fox 2 Fox Three <<Waddup?
>>AWACS ReaperEye <<Goddamn it did you link your comms again?
>>Fox 3 Fox Four <<Would you believe us if we said we didn't?
>>AWACS ReaperEye <<. . .
>>Fox 1 Fox Two <<Y'know as the great philosopher Zeno said, it's not about what the world throws at you, it's about how you take it
>>Fox 1 Fox Two <<So really it's your fault for caring!
>>AWACS ReaperEye <<. . .
>>Fox 4 Fox One <<Oh shit! Missile!
>>BOOMFox One would go on to survive that hit. ReaperEye wasn't sure whether to feel happy about that fact.
General Frost <<Guess if you want something right, you must do it yourself.
>>He rises from the nitrogen sea, a hulking suit of armor clad in a thick fur coat. His voice the howl of winter. His gaze enough to freeze. Across his chest is a deep scar sealed by frozen rivets, a wound that has yet to heal.
General Frost <<I applaud your tenacity. But I'm afraid this is the end of the-AAARGAGHRVBJNDKGTHJYEFSWADRTYJ!
>>Eagle 5 Merlin <<That didn't work?
>>Eagle 3 Legion <<It looked like it worked, he went "AAAARGH!" and everything
>>Wintermute <<It worked. He diverted the damage to his Sanctuary, keep hitting him and he will fall
>>General Frost <<Huff... Huff... as I was saying-
>>Sachen <<Ziel erfasst!
>>BANGGeneral Frost <<ARRGH! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
>>General Frost <<Ahem! As I was-
>>Fox 2 Fox Three <<Target locked
>>BOOMGeneral Frost <<YOU TOO?!
>>Fox 2 Fox Three <<I thought it'd be funny
>>Fox 3 Fox Four <<That was pretty funny
>>Deciding that monologuing was off the table and that it's time to get serious unless we wants to continue getting bullied General Frost commences his offensive by calling down another barrage of Icey BMs. It soon becomes apparent that with no need to maintain concealment, his rate of fire a
tad bit faster than expected. In that the barrage doesn't actually seem to end, massive icey explosions becoming as if a meteorological phenomena no different to wind or rain.
Faith moves to engage General Frost, finding him to be a much more agreeable (read as: less annoying mobile) target even with his limited teleportation capabilities. Merlin (real name still unknown) breaks off with her using her invisible plane as a makeshift shield to protect her from incoming fire and Fox Squadron's assault. The exchange, while seemingly in Faith's favor is far from one-sided. Faith might be landing all of the shots but by some bizarre twist of fate she finds herself needing to land
several while her opponent by all appearances needs to land only one, a fact he seems to know all too well given his aggressive teleportation attacks, taking full doses of Freedom Beams and Doki Doki Energy seemingly without slowing down at all.
It's here that Faith decides to shift tactics. She had the luxury of radiation poisoning now, so there was no need to go for the raw damage. No need so long as she could disable enough of Frost's kit. And she certainly could.
She focuses on the events at the Appleton Estate. The feeling of being caught at the center of what was basically a fuel-air bomb. And then seeing her classmate wounded and drugged running away from those Mononoke. The knowledge that those things lurked in the shadows. She makes a quick glance at Sol and Luna. Every little bit counts.
Purple energy flares around Faith as she catches General Frost with a pair of magical bolos. That's his teleportation gone. A cloud of purple fallout disables his targeting and doses him with that much more Doki Doki Energy. Guy was dead in the water, just needed a decisive hit, and Immanuel and Distance already had one in mind.
Sachen <<Opfer Spielen!
>>Immanuel releases the bomb, and then, he is elsewhere. He is where Frost was, positions swapped courtesy of distance. The bomb sparks, fizzles, and vanishes. There is no explosion. There will be no explosion. But Frost was marked now. He was at Ground Zero of the explosive. There is no escape now. For the spell to work, Immanuel needed two things - a delivery mechanism, and sacrifices. Distance had provided the delivery mechanism, and now, she was preparing the sacrifices.
She casts Wormhole of Champions connecting the battlefield to a makeshift camp downstream, where their fallen allies are washing up and getting defrosted. Their allies and the gear Immanuel modified for them. He'd be needing those back now. The energy of the enchantments. Every last drop.
It comes pouring in through the wormhole. Seconds later the "blast" is realized. It is as if the bomb had detonated but reality forgot to render it, forgot to register its effects, and now, only now took the time to make them manifest. Everything around the bomb when it fizzled. Whether it remained there, whether it moved. They are all struck by some tremendous unseen force. Walls shatter, Sky Wardens vanish. The ice covering entire city blocks shatters in a single instant and the nitrogen sea evaporates. Frost's frozen domain, once covering entire city blocks could scarcely cover the current combat area now, eroded by Sunbeams, explosions, and Doki Doki Poisoning.
Distance proceeds to drop a blackhole right on his lap, and really at this point he's not in a position to do much. General Frost and his two squadrons are immediately arrested, the only real surprise being when it turns out that Goose is literally just a goose.
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Topic: Tengoku no Owari SI IC: Yuki Is (Not) Fine (Read 211008 times)