Welcome back to Remnant of Cursed Paradise! I know that there are reviews abound about the last chapter, but because of prior obligations, I'm putting this chapter out around 11:55 at night. Since I promised to get it to you guys on Saturdays, I'm just going to forsake review responses this chapter. They'll be back next time. I hope you enjoy this latest chapter, so without further ado, let's get reading!
EDIT: 5/24/15 Fixed some grammatical issues, as well as an instance where Yang calls Shirou by his name instead of Jaune.
Chapter 9: Archaic Weaponry
A torrent of cool wind, smelling faintly of a fresh spring breeze, rocketed me forward. I shot ahead of the other students and began my descent only a few seconds after the apex of my climb. I charged another Prana Burst into Invisible Air and fired downwards. The recoil nearly tore my arm off, but it slowed my descent considerably and threw me into the treeline with much less force than I had anticipated.
Normally, Invisible Air was a high-powered wind Magecraft made to conceal Saber's Excalibur, made of a condensed tornado spinning so quickly that it grabbed photons and twisted them to disperse any sign of Excalibur's existence. I'd seen Saber move across city blocks in a split second with that power, and the force it added to each blow scared me.
I bounced, trying as best I could to regain some semblance of control of my fall. I managed to land on my feet, but there were still more than a half dozen cuts and scrapes on my arms and face from dropping headfirst into three fir trees. A gust of wind signaled the unveiling of Invisible Air as it and Durandal unraveled into threads of bright prana.
I heard a crash in the trees above me, and it took just a second of my time to pull out Kanshou and Bakuya to defend. A body, not just a fist, crashed into my shield of crossed swords. I pushed whoever it was off with a grunt and some Reinforcement, and they went tumbling into the undergrowth. There was an unfurled golden gauntlet on the figure's wrist.
I dodged to the right when Yang came barrelling after me again, her fist extended in a crushing punch. Kanshou batted the jab to the side, while Bakuya got inside her guard and met her stomach with its hilt. I danced away when she threw yet another punch at me, this one twice as strong as the first two.
I got into the signature position of my style, with a gaping hole around the ribs on my left side. Yang must have thought she'd won already, because her mouth split into a fearsome smile. "Sorry, Jaune," she said brightly as her fist traveled towards my solar plexus. "Looks like you're gonna fail this test!"
I effortlessly batted the incoming punch to the side. I would have been lying if I said I didn't enjoy the look of complete shock on her face. The shotgun blast that followed her trailed hook detonated against a nearby tree, nearly splitting it in two. If these people didn't have Aura, they'd all be dead!
"Don't talk during a fight," I told her seriously, just before whipping her across the face with the flat of Kanshou's blade. I followed up with a smack to the temple, just to be safe. She crumpled like a rock falling to earth. "It's unbecoming and distracting."
I stepped away and watched her motionless form for a moment. She wasn't moving, a fairly good sign for me. As I observed her, a shimmering green barrier pulsed to life around her form, looking suspiciously like an Aura. As if to confirm my thoughts, Ozpin dropped down from the canopy just a moment later. He landed with nary a sound, nodded to me, picked up Yang by the back and knees, and jumped away again.
I watched the two fade into the distance, then an idea struck me. I started climbing one of the trees, balancing precariously on Kanshou and Bakuya as they carved gouges for me to climb with. I managed to perch myself on the tip of the tree, its boughs bending dangerously beneath me. Finding a higher vantage point was a must in any form of combat, whether long range or short. I pulled EMIYA's bow from my back and fitted it with an arrow. My eyesight sharpened threefold when I directed the flow of prana to my eyes. There were two figures in the corner of my vision, one black and one silver. Blake was fighting some giant kid with a buzzcut and a mace. I breathed deeply, visualizing the target...
...and took the shot.
The arrow soared true, traveling for nearly a half mile with perfect accuracy. It struck the man on the arm, directing his attack away from Blake and allowing her to land a devastating series of slashes on his armor. The steel curled and furrowed like paper, rending away from the Variant Ballistic Chain Scythe known as Gambol Shroud. He was out in an instant, blood seeping from the wound on his chest. Moments later, the green Aura began to envelop him too, and Ozpin once again dropped to the ground before sailing back up to the cliff tops. Blake looked around, trying to find the source of the arrow that had given her an opening. She must have been able to see my general figure, because she squinted up at my form. I raise a hand in greeting, a gesture that she tentatively repeated.
Blake seemed to be the best chance I had of getting out of this thing on top. Besides, a little teamwork went a long way. Thanks to teaming up with Rin and Archer, I'd been able to activate powers that not even I could have dreamed about, as well as take out a number of Servants.
I dropped back to the ground, activating another volley of Invisible Air to slow my descent. Once I hit the ground, I took off in a burst of speed, accentuated by Reinforcement. Of the seventy two first-year students, two of them were already down that I knew of, and probably four or five more were going to go down in the five minutes it would take me to reach her.
As expected, it took five minutes exactly to reach Blake. She was heading towards me also, and tensed when I approached. I held out a hand a stopped. "No need," I said shortly. "Working together doubles our chances of winning."
She mulled over the question for a moment, and as she did so, I assessed our location. The growth was thick, but not overly so, and the sun hung in the sky like a gigantic lamp. I couldn't hear anything other than the sounds of the forest for at least a half-mile around, so we were in the clear for the moment.
"Alright, let's get going," Blake murmured. I nodded, and together the two of us set off in search of more combatants.
It didn't take long for us to find them. The first one was a girl with some of the brightest hair I'd ever seen, even more orange than my own. She was walking next to a boy with black hair and carried a massive warhammer with her, lifting it easily as if it didn't weigh the two hundred pounds my Structural Analysis told me it was. Upon our arrival, the green-clothed, black-haired boy twisted and threw a lightning-fast punch at my head. I bent backwards, allowing my torso's momentum to pull my legs up and knock the boy's arms away. I finished the flip and darted forward the moment my toes touched the ground. Beside me, Blake took the girl down with a single move. It seemed like she wasn't as prepared as I thought she would have. A person needed to have some serious reflexes when holding a weapon that huge, because if they didn't, there wasn't a chance in hell they could dodge or block a move from a faster weapon.
The boy jabbed at me, not bothering to reveal his weapon, but I just pulled out Bakuya and knocked it aside again. He used my deflection against me, turning the momentum I'd created into a spinning kick that caught me on the cheek. I spat out a bit of blood and jammed the hilt of Bakuya into his open palm.
He gargled out a rasp of pain, and Bakuya promptly exploded. A pink wave of Aura spread out from its hilt to the tip of the blade, dissolving it as it went. I pulled out Kanshou and beat him over the head with the flat of the blade. He still didn't go down, and in the end we were tied in a deadlock, beating each other to pieces with fists, knees and elbows as we wrestled on the ground. From the few glimpses I'd caught of Blake, she simply sat back and guarded the perimeter.
Five minutes and several severe bruises later, the boy was unconscious, courtesy of a stray fist to the temple. I stood and spat out more blood next to his prone form. I wasn't much of a fist fighter, but that felt... oddly satisfying. Blake pulled me up when my leg began to give way and I stumbled. For the few minutes she helped carry my weight, I focused on overcharging Avalon with prana, and soon my bruises and cracked bones were nothing more than a faded, hazy memory.
In the course of the next two hours, Blake and I met more than a half dozen more students, each of them posing no real threat. To be honest, the black-haired boy with the pink eyes and the ponytail was the biggest problem I'd had so far, and that was kind of pathetic. If these people couldn't even stand up to me when my Curse was still in effect, then how easy would it be for me to defeat them with my full power?
I pulled out Gae Bolg. Behind us, the bushes began to shake ominously. Blake stopped immediately, her eyes trained on the hidden creatures in the bush. Just as one of their number leaped- I vaguely recognized the black hide as that of a Beowolf- I jabbed forward with the Spear of Impaling Barbed Death. The spear, true to its legend, gravitated towards the beast's heart. With a wet, slimy squelch, the Beowolf fell limply onto the crimson shaft of Cu 's famed lance. I tossed the body away, its half-canine, half-human limbs already trailing black smoke. Blake was facing off against another two, and six more were advancing from behind her. I grinned.
I tossed Gae Bolg in the air and flicked Kanshou and Bakuya at my enemies. They instantly decapitated two before coming together to bisect a third. EMIYA's bow launched two arrows, each one striking a Beowolf between the eyes, and Gae Bolg came hurtling down on the sixth one, nailing it from mouth to groin to the ground. Each one let out a simultaneous shriek in the throes of death. Blake's Gambol Shroud detached, the original blade coming away to reveal another, thinner length of steel. Each one carved a pattern of pain into her opponents' bodies before quite literally disarming them.
More growling came from the bushes, and a Beowolf several times bigger than the small fry we'd been fending off rose from the shadows cast by the trees. It stood at an impressive fifteen feet, and more than half of its body was coated in a Grimm's signature bony plates. Its mask was carved with several slashes and scars, marring the intricate red patterns that naturally decorated it. Clearly, this thing was a Big Boss.
I found myself smirking just a little bit. Rin must have been rubbing off on me.
Kanshou and Bakuya returned to my hands, each one vibrating with energy before being tossed at its face. I pulled Gae Bolg out of the ground and leveled it against the Beowolf, shifting my stance to the one that I remembered Lancer pulling before striking Saber with his "unblockable" attack. Blake stood back. She must have seen me take that specific stance and waited to see what I would do.
"Gae..." I began the incantation. Gae Bolg's spearhead lit up in a fountain of yellow and crimson prana sparks. The light created streaks in the air as my body, pushed to the absolute limit by Reinforcement, shivered. The Beowolf recognized a chance to attack and charged forward. At the last second I thrust the spearhead down, my prana finishing the Single Action causality reversal before my words could. The Beowolf seemed to realize something was wrong, because it twisted to the side and landed a good dozen feet away from where I was originally aiming.
It didn't matter.
"Bolg!" The spear rushed forward, becoming a shaft of light in my hands as it elongated and flew towards its target. I couldn't have seen it, but I knew the effects of Gae Bolg well enough. What seemed to be the light-spear turning 90-degree angles to reach the Beowolf was actually the spear impacting the point where I was aiming, realizing it had not struck the heart, rewriting the laws of the universe, and lodging itself into the Beowolf's left side. That was the ability of Gae Bolg: to create a phenomenon where instead of "the spear has struck, so the heart is pierced", causality became "the heart has been pierced, so the spear must have struck".
Blake watched over the whole battle impassively, only a raised eyebrow signifying her surprise. Gae Bolg rematerialized in my hand, becoming a six-foot spear once more. I replaced it on my back and gestured for Blake to move on.
"We're talking about this later," she said simply. I nodded.
Really, I had a gift for causing problems. Just my E ranked Luck.
By the time Blake and I made a camp, it was nearly sundown. The quiet forest grew in volume, teeming with the lives of thousands upon thousands of insects, small mammals, and most profoundly Grimm. Our camp was simple, consisting only of two tents Blake and I had dredged up and a fire pit. I turned the squirrels spitted on a stick, enjoying the smell of slowly roasting meat. A pile of various fruits lay next to the fire, courtesy of Blake. The girl herself was reclining her head against a tree trunk, gazing blankly at the reddening sky. Her golden eyes would occasionally flick to me, as if she was expecting me to pull another trick like Gae Bolg out of my ass.
That would be a waste of prana, and besides, most of those special abilities were designed to main, if not kill. No, it would be best for me to leave the rest of my Noble Phantasms unknown at the moment.
"So, what was that spear thing?" Blake asked from her position on the ground. I stopped turning the squirrels for a second, then sighed and started speaking.
"I was hoping not to ever have to use that ability while I was here, you know," I began. It's too dangerous for me to throw it around, and the cost of charging it completely is ridiculous." I pulled Gae Bolg from its place next to my tent, where it was holding up the rain cover. Not the most extravagant use of a nine hundred year old famous lance that could kill pretty much anything, but spears were versatile, and I saw no need to reveal my Tracing just yet. "Its name is Gae Bolg, or if you want to be technical, Gae Bolg: The Spear Of Impaling Barbed Death. Its regular abilities just function as a spear, but when charged, it can be used to accomplish one of two effects: to either pierce the opponent's heart with unerring accuracy or to multiply mid-throw and become a storm of lances. To be honest, I've never used the second form, because I just haven't found the need to just yet, but Gae Bolg's reversal of causality works wonders with single Grimm."
"Reversal of causality?" Blake looked intrigued by the idea, and I explained the concept to her. Afterwards, she sat up and took a contemplative stance. "So... Your Aura is used to charge the effect of the spear, but your Aura is completely independent from the effects itself? It's the spear causing the reversal, not your Aura?"
"That's right," I affirmed. The squirrels smelled about done, so I stripped them off the stick and took to carving them up with Bakuya.
"But then, why doesn't your Aura interfere with its effects?" she asked. "The elemental affiliations in Aura should throw that effect off balance and cause it to self-destruct if it charges up."
"I just have an unaffiliated Aura," I mumbled. It was partially true, because I couldn't use any of the five basic elements for Magi, not the European nor the Japanese versions. It was one of the reasons I had been branded as a failure of a Magus by Rin and Ilya, and they were both Average Ones, those few Magi that could use all five elements with equal strength.
"Impossible," Black deadpanned. "Everybody's got some sort of elemental affiliation with their Aura, even if it's just extremely obscure. Mine, for example. My Aura has a strong affinity with the shadows, which allows me to transfer between them without being seen or heard. In addition, it allows me to create semi-corporeal clones of myself that I can use to take attacks for me."
I nodded idly, while mulling the information over in my head. There was some serious power in that ability, and if used right it could decide the fate of several battles. That still didn't answer her question, though. "I don't know what else to tell you, other than that I have no affiliation whatsoever. I've been able to use Gae Bolg as long as I've had it. Really, the only restriction on my use of it is the power it uses, and I've both built up my reserves and learned how to refine my pr- Aura to condense its power with as little use as possible." In the beginning, I would only have been able to use Gae Bolg fthree times after Tracing it, and I'd be decomposing. That number had increased to four after the Grail War, and after transplanting into Jaune's body it had increased into maybe sixteen. Lancer could use it with far more effect and probably many more times than I could, but it was a start.
Blake grumbled at me, like she still didn't believe me. Man, nobody believed me when I revealed my abilities. It was kind of disheartening, to be honest.
I bit into the squirrel closest to me. It was a bit well-done, and there wasn't any seasoning aside from some ripped-up lemongrass I'd managed to find sprouting underneath the shade of a tree, but it was still pretty good. Across from me, Blake gave me another glare even as she bit into hers. Her glower slowly trailed off into a blank look as she chewed, and I knew that my skills as a decent cook had diffused the tension between us.
"Where'd you learn to cook?" she asked curiously. A sparkle in her eyes was the only sign that she'd enjoyed it, even though she started tearing into a second the moment she finished the first. I grabbed a small apple and bit into it, the sweet juice hitting my tongue like a wave and washing away the pleasant umami taste of the squirrel.
"I was orphaned when I was ten," I told her, "and my adoptive father couldn't cook at all. I decided to take up the burden for the both of our sakes, and it turned out that I was a decent cook."
"Decent?" She didn't even appear fazed by the orphan part. Most people usually were. "This is incredible. I doubt that there are many five-star chefs who could make something as simple and stringy as squirrel taste so good with only a few sparse ingredients and a campfire!"
I smiled as she tore a chunk of meat from the squirrel in her hands and placed it into her mouth, in order to more carefully savor the taste. This was ending up a lot more like the standard Emiya household dinner after all.
Blake and I finished dinner with a satisfying lump of chocolate I'd smuggled in along with my camping supplies. To be honest, I'd forgotten it was there, having absentmindedly placed one in each of my bags to distract a nonexistent Rin should she become a problem. The two of us watched the hungry shadows after that. Blake seemed unnecessarily focused on staying up to keep the both of us safe. I tamped her down, telling her that I'd take the first watch. She opened her mouth, looking like she wanted to protest, but sat back down after a while with an oddly guilty look on her face. She somehow managed to convince me that splitting the night watch was best for the both of us, and before she could argue I promptly took the first four hours and coaxed her to sleep with another small apple.
Two hours into my night vigil, there was a shake in the trees. Blake twitched in her sleep, but didn't wake. The shaking in the branches grew louder. I pulled EMIYA's bow from my back. I was just above six feet tall in Jaune's body, imposing for my age, but even I was dwarfed by the gigantic bow in my hands. It stood just under seven feet tall, with a bowstring that only a Heroic Spirit or someone similar could draw. My D rank Strength fell just shy of doing so, but Reinforcing my arm allowed me to draw the bowstring back almost all the way. Archer's Reinforced Strength had been B rank, after all. I fit one of the bow's normal arrows, four and a half feet tall and twice as thick as a regular arrow, to the string and waited.
A figure stumbled into view, barely visible even with my Reinforced eyes. "Keep your hands in the air and step into the light of the fire!" I snapped. My fingers itched to relax and release the bolt towards my victim, but I held fast.
It was a good thing I did, too. With a nervous squeak, Ruby Rose stepped out into the light of the fire, her hands in the air and her knees shaking. I relaxed the bowstring, but only slightly. "How do I know you're not some species of Grimm that can change form?" I asked it. "Tell me something only Ruby would know about me." Chances were that this was Ruby Rose, but I wasn't going to give any ground while someone lay vulnerable behind me. If I lowered my guard for even a moment, that thing that may or may not have been Ruby Rose could bolt past me and attack Blake.
"Umm..." Ruby pulled one of her hands out of the air to grip her chin, and if it were any other situation I'd halt my threat immediately and set down my bow. Even after knowing Ruby for only two days, that was very Ruby-like behavior. "Ah, I've got it!" she exclaimed, slamming her fist into her open palm. "You get really airsick! You looked like you were going to hurl when you got off the airship yesterday!"
I released the breath I'd been holding and set my bow down, replacing the arrow within its quiver. "Alright, so it is you," I breathed, then gave her an apologetic glance. "Sorry about that, but you can never be too sure with Grimm. Sit down and make yourself comfortable. We're going to be here for the entire night, it seems."
Ruby nodded and sat down by the fire, quickly unloading a sleeping bag and blanket. Her stomach growled loudly, and she looked longingly at the three remaining squirrels. I couldn't help but laugh. "Go ahead, have them. They're not doing anything there other than cooling down anyway."
"Thank you!" she quipped. As I resumed my watch of the woods beyond us, I heard the distinct tears and crunches of Ruby digging into to the leftovers of our meal. It was quickly silenced, and not ten minutes later it was replaced with a tiny snore. I pulled my arrow back to the bowstring, took a deep breath, and released.
The Beowolf that thought it was being clever dropped to the ground, my arrow splitting its head. It had been following Ruby for the past few hours, by the looks of it, and if she hadn't stumbled across us I doubt she would have been alive the next morning to tell the tale. A Beowolf loner wasn't particularly common, but it had happened from time to time. My only hope was that there weren't more of them behind her.
Morning came quickly for all three of us. Despite Blake's insistence that I need to sleep, I'd climbed into bed with anything but on my mind. I managed a few restless hours that refilled my prana reserves once more. Ruby tagged along behind us, even after we broke camp. It seemed like she'd been trying to keep her promise of finding Blake and me. The three of us stuck together, dealing a massive blow to the other students, who for the most part had decided to go solo.
The only other person of merit we'd found was a girl by the name of Pyrrha. She'd fought evenly with Blake, something that only I could do so far, until Ruby and I had decided to get involved. After a few minutes of withstanding our combined beatings, she relented and surrendered.
A cannon fired in the distance, and we looked up from our tonkatsu lunch to see a violet orb, gleaming with dozens of glowing silver inscriptions, descending to our eye level. "Attention students," it murmured. "Please gather in the ruins located near the Cliffs for the final part of your test. Only eleven combatants remain."
With that, the orb shattered, its cracked pieces littering the floor and our lunches. I pushed the last piece of pork to my mouth and stood, the girls following suit quickly after. I could see the Cliffs in the distance, their rocky crags jutting out into the air. Overhead, a few stray Nevermore glided along the jet streams, darting in and out of sight of the glade. Blake was the one who led the trek back to the Cliffs.
She was on edge about something, and I couldn't blame her. I had the strangest feeling that Ozpin was up to something, and I didn't like it. I sniffed, allowing the scents of the forest to permeate my thoughts. Most Magi had a way of detecting prana signatures, whether it be through sight, hearing or other senses. I'd gotten stuck with scent, and while the smell of energy wasn't nearly as common on Remnant than on Earth, my detection ability must have extended to Aura, because I could smell that too. Ruby smelled like her namesake, the faint smell of freshly watered roses hitting my nostrils when I turns in her direction. Blake, on the other hand, was layered with a myriad of different scents. Honey, pepper and moonstone wafted into my nose, mixing into a strangely pleasant feeling of invigoration. She would fidget every now and then, like she was expecting an attack.
She must have been sorely disappointed when the only things that came keeping out at us were the occasional Beowolf. The journey back to the Cliffs was made somewhat easier by a faint trail of footsteps heading in the direction we were.
The ruins came into sight within a half-hour of the discovery of those footprints. They were crumbling apart, but still looked like they could hold several of the giant Grimm I'd seen in the forest at the Arc household. Each stone pillar was engraved with thousands of tiny markings, each one unfamiliar. I could see an occasional Norse rune here and there, but with the multitude of other symbols it wasn't surprising that there would be a similarity or two in our languages. The center platform was circling, and consisted of concentric rings inscribed with the same enigmatic language as the pillars. It appeared to be a worn version of a Coliseum, some kind of arena. I could even see the faint impressions of seats ringing the circle in the center. Ozpin and Glynda, along with three other students that I didn't recognize, were standing in the middle.
I raised a lazy hand in greeting, one that the students returned. As Blake and Ruby stood next to the others, I began to Analyze the structure of the ruins. They were still sound, and probably would be for another three or four hundred years before needing refurbishing. The most interesting part, however, was the fact that we were on the top floor of what appeared to be a several-hundred foot tall tower. The other floors had been worn away by age, leaving only the structural support pillars behind. I glanced over the edge. The pillars extends deep into the fog below, so far that I couldn't see the bottom even with my eyes Reinforced.
This was a building built quickly and as strongly as possible. The people here were most likely facing the immense number of Grimm that inhabited the forest, and thus built upwards. Even without Structural Analysis, I could tell you that this was built thousands of years ago, when humanity was still prey to the Grimm. This was a sign of the defenders, not the conquerors.
I didn't like it. This place, while stable, stank of fear long gone. It was in the air around me, permeating every fiber of my nose and lungs. It made me wary, tense, and somehow I knew that the others were feeling the same.
As I waited and tried to calm myself down, the other students arrived one by one. A few I recognized, most I didn't. In total, it was me, Blake, Ruby, five strangers, a kid with a light green mohawk that I'd bumped into in the morning, the Schnee girl, and a girl with red-brown hair that almost matched mine. Myrtenaster's yearning presence, now so familiar I could feel it even outside of just Analyzing it, wasn't as painful as it was before initiation. Somehow, my presence was causing the damage on its sentience to lessen, but how? Was it Avalon that was healing the blade? A few seconds passed, each of us looking at the others in silence. Ozpin tapped his cane against the ground.
We weren't making all that much noise anyway, but suddenly everything fell deathly silent. The birds stopped screeching, the limbs of the trees stopped creaking and twitching in a soft, lilting wind. It was as if everything had gone silent. I smelled Aura, or some kind of intensely concentrated prana, bubbling away under my feet, providing the circle with a silencing spell. Ozpin cleared his throat. Interestingly enough, he could make noise, but we couldn't.
"There is a silencer on this circle, as I'm sure you've noticed," he began. "Your task is to fight for first place. All eleven of you will be attacking each other, with no restraint. Fight to immobilize, not kill. That is all."
Ozin slowly, deliberately stepped out of the arena. Nobody moved for a moment, then I stepped forward. Before anyone could get into the heat of battle, Gae Bolg was already knocking somebody's body to the side, sending them precariously close to the edge of the arena. I turned, ready to block the strike I knew was coming. The kid with the mohawk thrust a bladed gun at me, his arms flailing wildly as he beat on Gae Bolg's shaft. The intricately carved vines didn't so much as scuff when they met the high-quality steel. I batted one of his weapons away, then pulled Kanshou and stabbed him in the side. The point of the Yang sword only dug a few centimeters deep, but it was enough to put him off balance and disrupt the focus he needed to control his Aura. I pushed him down and slammed his head against the ground, not hard enough to break anything but definitely enough to give him a nasty concussion. When I looked back up, the battle had started.
Since one of the contestants was already down, it was easy for me to notice Blake and Ruby. The pair weren't going for each other, which was good enough, but neither were they teaming up to deal with their enemies. One of the strangers pulled a massive broadsword from his back and swung it at blinding speeds at Ruby. She blocked, but the sheer strength behind the attack sent her skidding back several feet, and she had to dig the tip of Crescent Rose into the stone below to keep herself from falling off. A blast of heat erupted from the blade of the sword. Ruby fired a single bullet that caught him in the chest. At first I thought she'd punctured straight through his body, but then I realized that his Aura, now significantly weaker than before, had caught it. Ruby moved in with incredible speed, hacking and slashing. For such an unwieldy weapon, her scythe did its job well; everything it touched, aside from the stranger's blade, was rent to ribbons.
I ducked out of the way of another shot, this one from the auburn girl I'd noticed earlier. She was taking aim with a rifle. I jumped forward in an attempt to intercept the weapon. She pulled the trigger.
The bullet was slow enough to be visible to my Reinforced senses and reflexes, but it still clipped my shoulder. Without Aura, there was nothing to protect my body but the black armor I'd Traced from Archer. Avalon set to work on the hole piercing straight through my shoulder blade, already finding little bits and pieces of flesh to sew back together. the girl looked horrified that she'd actually shot another person. Her arms shook, her knees trembled, and with a clattering of steel against stone, her gun dropped. I stepped forward and smacked her in the jaw with Bakuya, and she crumpled.
With one of my arms useless I had to take the time to replace Gae Bolg in its holster, which cost me about a half-dozen precious seconds. In that time, Blake had dispatched two of her opponents and Ruby had finished her first. I spun as Blake approached, and we instinctively went back to back as the last two men surrounded us. They also figured that working together was the best way to do things. I nodded at the larger one. "I'll take him, you and Ruby get the other guy."
Blake nodded without a sound, opting to redraw the hidden blade in Gambol Shroud and watch her opponent carefully. Ruby, on the other hand, charged straight in. Weiss was still sitting back and watching us. Whenever she glanced over my form her expression grew tight, and Myrtenaster's pain increased a little bit. I pushed the pressure to the back of my head and focused on the person in front of me. He was already on me, slamming down on me with two massive fists. I caught his hands with my good one and shrugged him off. Even if he was massive and extremely muscled, I still had E-rank Strength right then. This guy was E- at best. I spun around and kicked him in the chest, sending him flying into a tree.
At that point, Weiss stood, her eyes blazing with angry blue light. She gripped Myrtenaster. It cried out again, but didn't scream, and after the first yell of pain quietened down. I could still feel its anger and agony stewing inside of it, though.
Weiss darted forward, faster than even Ruby could. She struck first at my left, then my right. I deflected each one with Kanshou, tossing it and Bakuya in the air to try and wield them both at the same time. Avalon was healing me as fast as it could, but it would still be another few minutes until I could use my other hand. I shrugged off EMIYA's bow and threw it to the side; it was cumbersome and useless in that situation.
As if angry with my choice to abandon my long-range weapon, Weiss stabbed again at me, this time aiming for my throat. I bent backwards, and in much the same way as I'd done with the boy with pink eyes, I allowed my torso to carry my momentum and sent my feet into Weiss' chest. She gasped with pain. I refrained from slamming Kanshou against Myrtenaster, waiting until I absolutely had to attack to strike against the blade.
The Schnee got up shakily, her breaths short and a small red-purple patch blossoming above the line of her dress. She charged again. I noted her movements. She was flashy and graceful, but there was so much wasted movement in her steps that it was almost abhorrent. One of the first things Saber had beaten into me was footwork and movement, and while I already knew not to waste movement from my few sessions against Taiga in kendo and my kyuudou training, Saber had recognized a lot of unnecessary body movement in my form. This girl used it liberally, literally spinning to the side or bouncing around when she didn't really need to. It made her a bit more unpredictable, but she still telegraphed all of her strikes through the bunching of her shoulders in a lunge. She slashed, too, a terribly ineffective move for a rapier-wielder. Only the point could tear and slash, and although she was precise in her movements, it didn't convey nearly enough damage in her attack.
Where did she learn to fight with such a wasteful manner? It was almost pathetic, how easily it could be exploited.
I could see the advantages, but she wasn't nearly ready enough to be a showy fighter. I only just considered people like Rin enough to be showy fighters, and that was because she could get away with it and still crush most of her opponents. The Servants were in that classification as well, but they never once wasted a chance to attack, or took an unneeded step. They had learned multiple times the consequences of being flashy. It made you a bigger target in a war, and unless you had the skills to back up your claims, you didn't want to be a big target in a war.
The Schnee girl stumbled on her heels when she darted forward again. I took advantage of the opportunity and blocked Myrtenaster by swatting her arm out of the way, then buried a fist in her gut. She trembled, but stayed focused and conscious. Myrtenaster fell from her limping grip. Abruptly, the pain I'd felt from the sword ceased. I kneed her in the side, just for good measure, and left her there to sink into unconsciousness. Kanshou fell to the ground next to Bakuya, and I picked up Myrtenaster.
The sword positively hummed.
Myrtenaster erupted with life the moment Shirou picked her up. The warmth emanating from his grip threatened to overwhelm her entirely. The fluctuation from extremes, pain to relief, was intense enough to release a flash of energy independent from the Dust that was chambered inside her barrels. Her blade lit up with shifting white inscriptions, and she channeled the power as best as she could to her wielder's arms.
It was unnecessary, she knew, but the energy still merged with his own power. It wasn't Aura, not even close, but it still flowed and gleamed like it, and the energy accepted and assimilated her power boost.
The pain was gone, however briefly, and she felt the strange, probing glow (Structural Analysis was the word that echoed within her being) invade her blade and barrel once more. It sifted gently through her memories, taking care not to damage anything, then latched onto a few, copied them, and pulled them away. She vaguely recognized the man in the memory as one of her older wielders from three hundred years or so ago. He was always gentle with her, unlike the current Schnee heiress.
Then, to her utter amazement, Shirou adopted the exact posture that the man from three hundred years ago did. His arm was held out and away from him, bent ever so slightly inwards. His feet moved swiftly, right foot front and left foot back. His trailing arm tucked itself away and laid upon the red line of infernal flames on his back. She assumed it was a weapon, but without eyes there wasn't any way to tell for sure.
Shirou dashed forward and released another burst of his unfamiliar energy into her blade. The white inscriptions reformed, increasing his speed, strength and endurance by a noticeable amount. She flew forward, intent on stabbing the ground. That was exactly what she did, and the light ejected from her point and blasted across the ground in a wave of pure destruction. The stone began crumbling, and it was only then that Shirou let up on the onslaught.
If Myrtenaster could breathe, she would have let out a sigh of almost disappointment when he gently laid her on the ground and moved towards the two targets he'd disarmed and disabled with their attack. It was good to be used correctly for once. Weiss Schnee hurt her, but she had some semblance of how to use a rapier. Shirou, on the other hand, read her like a master and fought just as one would.
She withdrew, waiting for the pain to come back and basking in what was left of Shirou's warm light.
