Quick Note: I added text Ch. 10 the day after I released it so it flows better and isn't as... needlessly hyperactive. If you just read Ch. 10 the day it was released, I'd advise you to reread it again to catch all the little details I added.
Also, whoo, another double-chappy update. I'm starting to wonder if it's starting to become a bad habit of mine. Or a good habit, I don't know.
Oh yeah, after this storyline I'll do another planned arc (focusing on Index and another Toaru character (hint: it's not a main character).), and then I'll be running a poll on what crazy storylines you dear readers want to see next. Hope you'll look forward to it!
Awesome backround fight musics!(Youtube): (watch?v=6I1cYJZRy3E, watch?v=wj75z_qD1T4)
"Hey, Sayaka-sempai, I made those eyepieces you asked for..." Charlotte said, handing Sayaka what appeared to be a bunch of tinted contact lenses, with strange symbols etched right onto them.
"Ah, thank you, Charlotte-chan..." the blunette said, accepting the lenses.
"Umm, Sayaka-san, what are those?" Tsukasa asked, eyeing them closely.
Kyoko grabbed one of the lenses. "These are contact lenses, and... wait a minute, these are made of hard candy, aren't they?" she asked, holding it up against the setting sun.
"Yup!" said Charlotte. "Enchanted hard candy! Athena-san did all the heavy-duty calculating, Kirsten did all the cutting and carving, and I provided the materials." she said proudly.
"Here, you use it like this..." Sayaka said, holding one of the lenses and putting it on Rio's iris.
"Wah, it's so cool..." she said in awe.
"You can zoom your eyesight in-and-out by willing it too. It won't take very long to master." she said, as the dark purple-haired loli fiddled endlessly with her lens.
"Sayaka-sempai, I can see asteroids from here!"
"But, Sayaka-san, what in the world would we need these things for?" Corona asked.
"Well, t's best to be prepared, right? Besides..." the blunette leaned in close to the silvette. "I have the weirdest feeling that these things'll come in handy someday..." she leaned back. "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Now then, I'll be going now..."
"So you won't be watching us live, Sayaka-san?" Tsukasa asked, seemingly disappointed.
"No, sorry. Have some things to do. Not that you participating isn't serious, though. It is. I'll watch it-"
*GRAAAAH!*
"-laterHuh!" Sayaka whirled around.
"Hehehe, umm, sorry blueberry head, but I didn't know these lenses would make good throwing weapons!" Kyoko said.
Rapidly approaching the group was a mob of dirty hobos, with the lead hobo having an enchanted contact lens embedded in his forehead.
He pointed at them.
"GEDDIM!"
"Run!"
Gah, it was dark.
Not just dark, it was dark.
It was darkdark.
Darkdark.
Heh.
...
You know, she should really be spending time trying to get herself out of this burlap bag those bastards stuffed her in, but she honestly couldn't bring herself to do it, especially in a burlap bag this comfy!
...
But she should do it for Lord Homuhumu...
...
Nah. The power of the comfy burlap sac is clearly far superior.
Buuurrrlaaappp...
"Whoah, Kyoko-san, this deep fried and candy-coated giant ants on a stick is awesome. Hey, Kirsty! Why don't you take a bite!" Charlotte said, waving the strange shish kebab in front of Kirsten's face.
"Charlotte-chan, if you shove that disgusting delicacy in front of my face one more time, I will release naked photos of you on the internet..." she quietly threatened.
The pinkette just kept on grinning.
"...fingering yourself."
Charlotte quietly went back to eating.
*thump*, *thump*
A sudden rumbling shook the group out of their reverie, as a huge, muscular young man the size of two and a half men standing shoulder-to-shoulder came thumping over to them, followed by a giggling pack of giggling fangirls.
"I'll buy you a manshake, Hale!" one fangirl said.
"I'll massage your warm, muscled, manly back for you, Maxton!" another fangirl offered.
He stopped in front of Kyoko.
"Hey, applehead, you look like some hot stuff. I've seen your little stunt back there, crashing a train through the stadium walls and all that, and I've got to ask you... what the hell are you doing with these shrimpy losers? They look like they're seriously cramping your style, lady..." he said, surveying her companions.
She snorted. "You wouldn't know style if it gained psychic powers and punched you in the face seventy-million times a second, blockhead." she said, looking up at his topless, "I can't believe he's not Conan with shorts" getup.
He grinned. "Yeah, maybe I'm a blockhead, but look at some of the wimps you have with you now..." he looked over at Charlotte. "a skinny little kid wearing rags..."
"Hey! Rags are cool!" Charlotte retorted.
"A pasty white babe who probably rubs off to pics of little girls and comps, and has probably never went out in the sun before in her pitiful life..."
"Oi! That's a low blow, isn't it?" Kirsten said, hugging her own boobs.
"And..." he looked over at Vivio, Rio, Corona and Miura. "Four kids and their little toys..."
"Hey! Kris isn't a toy. Our devices are proof of our mage training and talent, and we can also *blablabla*..."
"Yeah yeah, whatever, blondie..." he said, waving off her rant.
"Alright, that's enough of you effing around with my crew's feelings. That or maybe I show you what an expert can do..." she growled.
"Ooh, Maxton, looks like she'll go full retard on you..." one of his ladies said in his ear.
"You're sure you wanna go with these chickens, when all they do is b*tch and moan when they get teased? What about you join my crew, eh? You'll be the personal companion of me, Maxton Hale! Heir to the million-and-counting Hale family fortune, and future CEO of the richest goddamn weapons manufacturer within a trillion miles of the dimensional sea, and the manliest man you will ever meet!" he boasted.
"Your crew? Oh, you mean your harem army? Hmm... thanks, but no thanks. I'm already taken..." she cooly replied. "By a nice, sensitive girl that's considerate with people and acts for humanitarian purposes, but can be really badass when badasses are needed..." she crossed her arms indignantly. "Besides, why would I even be another one of your girltoys, anyway? You look like some weakling who injected himself with steroids because of low self-esteem, and only convinces girls to follow you on the weight of your money and patheticness!" she mocked.
The hulking man gritted his truly barbaric set of teeth. "What. The. Hell. Did. You. Say?" he gritted out.
"I said that you look like an overcompensating sissy boy with an ego bigger than your brain! What, are you deaf or something? Wanna die?" she said, mockingly.
"Why I... YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S GONNA DIE, B*TCH!" he screamed, rushing forward and grabbing her by the collar.
"Oh, now someone's got a temper... It makes you wonder why you're dad still keeps you around, eh? I know hehas a very low tolerance for stupidity. I read the magazine!" Kyoko said, smirking.
"HRRRRGGGGHH..."
All nearby guard patrols and sentries pointed their guns towards him.
"Hey, cool down, Hale. No fighting out of offical matches, those are the rules, ya got that! If you won't, then maybe our bullets will." the chief guard shouted out.
"Hmph" Maxton snorted, dropping the redhead to the floor. "It's unlikely you'll ever scratch me with your puny toys anyway, but whatever, I'll play along. It'll be more fun for me to beat you down when everyone's watching, after all..." He leaned down to Kyoko's level.
He pointed at her.
He pointed at himself.
He made a gesture whose meaning can only be interpreted as "I will cut off your head, then use it for dodgeball. Then, I'll also flay your skin off and use it as underwear! I'll use your intestines to string tennis rackets with, to use your femur bone for golf and your eyeballs to play catch with. And, anytime I'm feeling lonely, I can use your severed head, with your eyes still attached to it, and use it as a f**************toy."
He was very specific on those gestures.
He stood up and stomped away, his gaggle of fangirls following close behind.
"Geez, what a killjoy..." the redhead said, standing up and dusting off her shirt/blouse.
"A-Are you okay, Kyoko-sensei?" Tsukasa asked, rushing over to her.
"Nah, it's fine." she smirked. "In fact, I think I had quite a bit of fun, pissing off overinflated egomaniacs like him..." She looked at seemingly random bench. "Okay, Tsukasa, you can uncloak yourself now..."
The purplette did. "Gah, I hope I don't meet that scary man again...*shiver*"
Upon entering the strange bar, the blonde fully expected to smell the typical scent of bars like these. Alcohol, cigarette smoke, stale air, etc.
Well, it didn't, surprisingly enough. It was rather airy, and there was a strangely sweet scent in the air… fresh mint?
She sat down.
Pulling down the hood she had on even more, she silently looked around and scanned the place carefully. Basically a more sedate version of the streets outside. There was still noise, per se, but Fate imagined that if you scream out loud about the wonders of ethnic clensing in here, many more people would mob you and rob your corpse in less time than in the streets.
Her eye just happened to fall upon a group of boys sitting around a nearby table.
They were playing cards. Except... they were playing cards with pictures of her and her friends printed on them. Huh? Were the legendary Aces and their friends being franchised now?
Suddenly, it seemed like they felt that they were being observed. One of the boys looked up from his hand of cards and looked to her left, looked to her right, and then she silently whispered to his buddies.
They all disappeared in an instant, leaving several overturned chairs in their wake.
"You know, if you're gonna do nothing but scare our customers away while you're waiting, miss, I think we may have some problems..." a pretty female voice suddenly asked from right beside her.
Fate briefly jumped. 'When did she...'
"I'm sorry, I didn't know they'd react that way..." she defended herself.
"*sigh*, the's what they all say... So, anything you'd like to order here, Ma'am?" the waitress asked
The blonde looked up at her.
"Umm, no thanks, I'm... waiting for someone..."
The waitress examined her face closely.
"Suuure you are." she said, nodding her head slowly. Fate was gripping something in the inside of her coat when the other lady finally pulled back.
"Well, you can always order at the counter. Water's free, by the way." she said, being there one moment, then gone the next.
The blonde jumped. Again.
'What in the world! Does everyone and their grandmother have super-speed here?'
Well, it's not like it would get any more weirder than this, right?
Right?
*rumble* *rumble*
Suddenly, something which can only be described by a giant, scrap metal chariot came crashing through the bar window, pulled by what can only be described as a large, burly, flying mass of human male wearing pink bunny ears and a shirt depicting two naked men in very... questionable positions. Nobody flinched, or even seemed to notice them and their vehicle. The flying man came barreling out of the contraption and started bounding towards Fate-chan's table.
Obviously, she thought too soon.
"Wow, she is real! The lady with the oppressive white coat, the deadly bionic red eyes, and hair so blonde you'd think they murdered a squirrel for it! You're gonna call the Inquisition on us heretics, aren't you? he asked enthusiatically, jumping up and down.
"Oy, buddy, stop bein' such a sour fool, yer in front of a lady!" another rider chastised, except this time, it was a little girl, with a lit ciggarette in her mouth and wearing a wifebeater stained with what appeared to be dried blood and oil. And chocolate.
"Oh, but this isn't just any lady, Walch-chan, this lady is clearly a herald. A herald of DOOOM from the Golden Throne!" he shouted in earnest, punping his arms.
"Bud, for that, I am burning all your space marine novels..."
"NOOOOOOOOO! Don't do THAT!" he screamed in terror, throwing himself at the little girl's feet
"Oh, grow up, you big baby..." the little girl said, walking up and kicking him in-between the thighs.
Hard enough to send a large, gory chunk of his crotch to go flying off, in fact.
"AAAAAAAAAARRRGGHHH! WHY YOU DO THAT!"
The large man screamed, then fell into a fetal position in pain.
The large, bloody chunk of flesh that flew right off of him slammed against the leg of a wooden chair, causing the flesh to transform into plant matter and causing an overgrowth of vines and flowers in the wooden leg.
Yet again, nobody seemed to care. Or even notice.
"Umm... Are you alright?" she asked.
The strange man-child stood up quickly and took a deep bow. "Buddy is quite alright, wise golden-haired lady. Buddy simply had a flesh wound."
He then walked over to the contraption they flew in on and cried himself to sleep inside it.
. . .
"Umm..."
"Ah, sorry for that, miss. That little blob over there just saw you and your little orange-haired friend come in mysteriously through the big city portal nearby. He tends to jump to conclusions sometimes..." she said, as she took a seat next to her.
"Hey waiter! Gimme a beer!" the little girl shouted.
"Okey-dokey!" a voice shouted.
As Enforcer Fate sat there, she wondered in silence at what the hell had she had just gotten herself into...
All while the sound of a dishwasher droned on.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer shouted. "With our exciting first act long over, we will now proceed too the next stage!"
The announcer enthusiastically pulled down a lever.
*KRIIIK...*
*KRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKK...*
The ground shook, and it overturned, revealing large and grandiose bronze contraptions. Giant metal arms, holding up giant metal rings, rose out from the beneath the Earth into the sky. It bathed the ground with think shadows everywhere.
With the flip of a switch, each metal ring sparked, and warped. They folded reality upon themselves, creating doorways to other realms.
"Now, some of you may be wondering: What the hell is going on her! Well, we say: It's the power of modern interdimensional travel technology, people! With the latest technology, provided by McFly Manufacturing Incorporated(TM), we are able to make and send people over to entirely new arenas on different planes of existence, where they can be able to fight, uninterrupted at all times! And this is what the next stage is, ladies and gentlemen..."
Almost on cue, paper slips were instantly teleported into the participant's hands.
"Okay, now if the contestants could follow the directions given on your slip of paper, we could get this party started!"
Charlotte looked at her hands. "Umm, Kyoko-san? I think they forgot to give us..."
"Aaand, as for Team Magic Titan League, they'll be going up, inside this very arena, against the reigning champions for the last five years/tourneys: Team Maximum Elite Source!
The stands burst into screams and cheers.
"The reigning champions... we'll all get turned into mush..." the purplette moaned.
"Oh, don't be such a pissant..." Kyoko said, slapping her on the back. "You obviously don't watch too many sports movies, since if you did, I'll bet you'll remember the cardinal rule of all competition..."
The purplette looked up at her, wide-eyed.
"Underdogs always win!" she smiled winningly, holding up a winning thumb.
"Why do I feel like we want to punch you in the face right now..." Rio deadpanned.
"Heheheheheheh, how lucky! We'll won't be just slaughtering some reckless punks, we'll also be butchering some calc b****** too!" the only female member of the opposite team exclaimed, looking at the girls with disturbing relish.
An incredibly, fabulously dressed madman looked at his fellow teammate, wide-eyed with wonder.
"How did you know they had one of the shiny ones onboard, bloody?" he asked.
"I can smell them, smell them like newborn babies..., the smell of sweet, sweet innocence that only makes me want to taint them even more..."
She looked across the arena to Kyoko's team.
"Though, come to think of it, those other girls aren't half bad, too..." she purred, cutting one of her fingers open and licking the blood off of it.
Most of the girls in the group felt a massive chill crawl up their collective asses...
They were inside the amphitheatre.
"Alright, people! This match(and technically all the others, but they're not important) is bought to you by 1337 radio station! Get even, or get pwned! Now back to you, Bob."
"Ah, yes. We have a very promising lineup today, with the famous "Punk Killers" on one side as the defenders, and a another group on the other side as the newcomer in this tournament series, but has made some very impressive performances over the last few hours, especially Ms. Sakura..." Bob said, his voice playing over clips of Kyoko and friends beating people up.
"Yup. She looks like she kicks takes no sh*t from nobody. I'd like to know her phone number..." the other commentor said lecherously.
"We also have our referee on the scene, the long-suffering Alex Rodriguez, head referee since the reign of Queen Victoria! How are things going on your end, Rod?"
"Just fine, really." a transmitted voice said. "Nobody's trying to kill me right now, so that's a step up from last year. Time knows if my luck will hold into the actual match itself..." he muttered.
"Well, okay, that's enough faffin' about, let's introduce the stars of our show here, ladies and gentlemen!" he shouted.
The crowd went wilder than an overnight speed-addled rave party in Las Vegas.
"Right here in this corner, we have team Maximum Elite Source, coming from the city-state of Valves and Steam, in the planet of Shooteria."
"Yeah, I remember them. If I remember correctly, last year they beat up that infamous Kaizo Hell team using an unholy combination of a fully-stocked battle Zeppelin, a time machine, a time-displaced Michael Jackson, lots of rum and thousands of poor, desperate, Eastern European immigrants..." Fuun said, sighing. "Ah, good times, gooood times..."
"From left to right, we have Maxton Hale, experienced practitioner of the All-American Pure Manliness Style, as well as heir to the Mann Co. Weapons Manufacturer..."
"Bask in my pure manliness, b*tches!" he boasted. His fangirls went wild from the stands.
"Narcissa Bloodwen, a battle-hardened former street gang member, who learnt supernatural kung-fu while imprisoned in the bowels of Alcatraz, and inducted herself into the team by blowing up their headquarters in one blow!"
"Rumours say that she killed a thousand annoying punks, exactly a thousand, and arranged their bloody corpses into a football-field wide drawing for fun."
The woman simply licked her lips with abandon.
"Dr. Joseph Morry, former professor of the University of Righteous Indignation and Book Bleaching, who quit his teaching job to further his research beyond the "stifling ethical limitations" of staying there. His likes include experimenting on people, cute girls, and torturing them both immediately afterwards. He dislikes normal people and priests."
He simply grinned madly.
"Right beside him is Redshirt Ricky..."
"I'm so unimportant I don't even have a cool title or wacky caption to go with me... Not even italics... Well, at least I get to fin-"
"Next is the Maniacally Mad Maestro, Mad Teller of Misfortune and "Metafictional Extraordinaire", whatever that means..."
"None of this is really happening. There is a dude. With a computer. This is all part of his crazy imagination..." says the man, wearing a glittery cape, a red-and-white party hat, and a pimp bowtie.
He paused.
He pulled out a deck of cards. He drew a card.
"Hmmm, prediction today is a jumbo-sized space rock, served pipin' hot, with a nice side of chillin' explosions. Best served warm." he mumbled to himself.
"And finally, their team leader: Ultt!m te133tk!LLarQu4d4, which, if you don't speak Leetalise, translates to "Ultimate Elite Killer Quad 4", or just "Quad" to his teammates. It's said that he comes from a mystic clan from gunslingers that chooses the name of their offspring in a brutal coming-of-age ritual that involves mass duels to the death with guns, knives and deadly nerf guns in specially-designed arena maps. He claims that in order to join his team, you'd hav'tha pass this ritual with flying colours. We're here, live on field with the man himself. Would you kindly tell us a bit about yourself?" the colour commenter questioned him, over a flying drone with a microphone attached to it's head.
"ya first off you get dropped off on an island crocodiles, lava and sh*t. If you gone get eaten or burned to death, then TOUGH LUCK MAN, it means you just ain't MAN enough. Then ya get randomly given a weapon, from a machine gun to cleavas to termite-mound-on-a-stick, becuz f*ck game balance! f*ck it in the nads. TRUE MEN fight with scraps of wood and shank it in tha back of a p*ssy sniper fragots. But if you gots a gun than it's OKAY too, cuz that means you got the MOJO POWER on ya side, man, you got the MOXIE with the GAME GODS. Anyhow, you gotta kill one another with whatever u got and rack up enuff SWEET KILLS. Otha tribes get all wussy and added respawn points. My tribe? F*ck that, we don't need no respawn points. When ya die, ya die, and it's up to tha great big fat dokta pepper sippin' nerd ya go! Cuz it's a test designed for REAL MEN. In fact, it's SO MANLY, that its a 'quirement for theym my team to PASS IT WITH SKY HIGH ORBITIN' COLOUS! If they don't they're notquilified to join cuz they're NOOBS who can't MAN UP and sht." the leader broadcasted to any nearby ears (and microphones).
"So, basically, you're saying that all of your team managed to acheive these feats?"
"Hell yeah." Quad proudly said.
"Actually..." Redshirt Ricky started. "I was the only one to pass that test, the rest just got in by either bribes or who-*BOOM*"
The team leader interrupted his teammate's speech by killing him with his assault rifle. "Shh! They weren't supposed to know that, you bloody moron!" he said to the bloody corpse.
Vivio's eyebrow twitched hard. "Bu-bu-bubu-But wasn't he your friend!" the blonde shouted.
"friend?" the enemy team leader verbalised. "he was just sum goddamn noob retard who couldn't tell a quickscope from a strafe jump. he was just dead weight, b*tch!" he snarled.
Vivio balled her hands into fists.
"Wait a second, Bob! If Redshirt is dead, then how the hell are the teams gonna get balanced this match!"
"You call six versus eight balanced?" the other announcer asked.
"Hmm... you do have a point..."
Quad the squad leader laughed it off. "It doesn't matter anyway! I can beat 'em all BY MYSELF if I felt like it. lukily for you poor girls, the only reason i use a team is because I don't want you to get too hurt, so i let my less brutal teammates handle you. SO BE GODDAMN GRATEFULL!" he boasted out loud. "So the death of 1 doesn't matter. JUST BRING IT, POLESUCKERSSS!"
Both announcers looked at one another.
"Uh, OK! Now that's settled, we can move on to the next team! On this corner..."
*swing*
Someone stepped in.
The new arrival was a tall, stout, hulking green man... thing, who looked to be in his twenties or thirties, if you can even judge whatever his age is by human ageing standards, accompanied by a troop of of smaller, if otherwise identical, green men. They all wore what appeared to be metal plate armour cobbled together from the junkyard and a nearby kitchenware shop, as well as enough black leather to make full-grown biker men weep. Couple that with ladles strapped to their side like deadly weapons of war, and large metal strainers for helmets, and this scrap-heap armour is complete. Normally, she would call this getup "incredibly weird", but from what she'd seen so far? This might as well be formal-wear for these people.
"Hey humie, yer in my seat..." the biggest green man growled, grabbing a man drunk and sitting in the bar, and casually tossed him down the stairs.
The barwoman rolled her eyes. "Bar-Basher, how many times did we go over this? Extreme violence against defenceless people is against the rules. One more time and I might need to call the bouncers on you."
One of the smaller green men jumped unto the counter. "Hey! Boss didn't ask no opinion from some dumb no-name humie like you!" he shouted.
Looking back, he suddenly took notice of Fate and her white overcoat.
The green man's eyebrows quirked.
"Hey, who the hell invited the damn pussy-perium and their puny inquishitors over here!" he shouted, standing up and walking towards her.
The barwoman frowned. "Basher, I'm warning you right now..."
"What do you want?" Fate asked, looking up from her table.
"Wat do I want? Wat do I want!" the hulking man exclaimed, reaching out to strangle her.
"Wat I want, is to squish the motherfrackin-*graaak!*"
His arm went from "reasonably positioned" to "being twisted like a goddamn pretzel". The blonde also went from on the other side of the table to right beside him in the blink of an eye. Somehow.
"Like I said, what do you want? And trying to strangle me won't be very conductive." she said, holding one arm locked.
Basher closed his other hand in his fist, but realised he had a better plan.
"Boyz, type to show them the hot vests!" he shouted.
The "Boyz" opened up their armour and leather jacket to reveal, strapped underneath them...
'A pack of TSAB-issue MRIs... Painted red...' Fate deadpanned in her head.
"Hyahaha, so whassit' gonna be, it's either we get to beat the sh*t outta ya and launch ya into deep space, or..." he gestured all around him. "Everything here goes KABOOM!"
"You're threatening me with packs of military-"
"It was me."
"Huh?"
Crusher's gaze moved towards the little girl sitting beside Fate, the little girl with attitude, a stained wifebeater shirt, and clearance to drink beer, somehow.
"I... invited her here, you big lug." she said. Lies.
"Feh," said he. "Must feel good to break your own rules, eh, little girl?" he snorted.
"Uh-huh." she said. She turned to Fate-chan.
"Ma'am, I think we need to talk outside, if you will, and you..."
She turned towards the green men.
"This is the last time you three will be drinking here. Get out and screw yourselves."
"On this corner..." the announcer booms. "Is team Magic Titan League, a newcomer to the scene, though not exactly unimpressive either." he said, with footage of footage of the stolen repulsor craft entering warp-speed, the dragon dogfight, and the flying train crashing into the building being shown onscreen.
"That there is one righteous team name Bob, and that whole thing with the train was just frickin' awesome." Fuun commented.
"It sure is. From left to right, we have... Charlotte Candy, the Dessert Witch..."
"Hiya all!" she waved.
"Kirsten Kracker, the Witch of Boxes and Tech, who claims that she can hack into your computer webcam and watch you jerk off in your parent's basement, apparently."
"Whoo! I'll let her see my weiner anytime!" Fuun said, eyeing the navy-haired girl intently.
Kirsten spoke. "Look briefly into your laptops and cellphones. Now look at me. Now look back your gadgets. You may find a magic program that allows match spectating from every angle possible, even from the eyes of the participants themselves..."
Everyone took out their cellphones/laptops/whatever techy device they used and gasped.
"It was already installed by me while you all weren't looking, by the way. You're welcome!"
"Holy sh*t!" Fuun exclaims, staring at his cellphone. "I can look under her skirt with this app..."
"Aaand now you don't get to use it anymore!" she said, immediately deleting every copy of her software remotely.
The audience groaned.
"Umm, moving on, we have the psychic girl Tsukasa Hiiragi..."
She shrank under the gaze of so many spectators.
"Dual-element wielder Rio Wesley..."
"Hell yeah! I am fire, the lightning transformed, or was it the other way around?" she wondered.
"Corona Timil, master of golems..."
"All your geology are belong to meee..."
"Vivio Takamachi, the little blonde wonder..."
"Umm... hi?" the blonde said awkwardly.
"Finally, in the far right, we have their team coach, the gorgeous redhead Kyoko Sakura!"
"Holy sh*t, is she the one who made a giant train crash into tournament headquarters!" said Fuun.
"Sure looks like it." Bob said, showing onscreen security footage of a giant steel train crashing in from the skylight, with a familiar redhead riding on the top of the head carriage and screaming incoherent battle cries.
Meamwhile, somewhere on the back row, Sayaka was contemplating hurling herself off the nearest cliff at high speed.
"Wow, holy motherf*cking shit. That train looked like it was destined to go a million feet under, but at the last minute... something made it jump, motherfrickin' jump like a large metal kangaroo-snake hybrid right over it, and made it fly the rest of the way like it was the f*cking Time Train with motherf*cking Parkinsons Disease..." Fuun said, wildly computer scribbling over slow-mo footage of the insane feat.
"Yes, absolutely incredible. Now, a word from our lady of the hour: Who are you? What do you do?, and most importantly of all..."
"What the hell were you on back there, miss!" the more colourful announcer yelled.
"Ah, yes, that feat. My thought processes were rather simple back then. Carefully timed and powerful enough explosions can make you jump very high; Big bombs make big explosions Aaand Big jumps can cover gigantic gaps. Really, It was all perfectly common sense to bind those three together. My brilliant scheme didn't have anything to do with mind-altering substances except the adrenaline in my skull. Now then, any more questions?" Kyoko boasted with an unusually refined demeanor.
"Umm, rocket jump?"
"Well, it was more like a nuke jump, actually..."
"Using the force of a nuke to make a train fly... Man, I wonder how you'll top that..." Kagami muttered, looking through binoculars
"Yeah, well, if that's the only trick in her hand, I doubt she'll last long in the next segment..." a girl sitting right next to them commented.
"Oh, trust me, that back there was just one trick. She's got way more crazy in her arsenal..." the purplette said. "Besides, they look like overacheiving douches, especially their boss. What makes you so confident that they'll totally have them beat?" she asked.
"Well, you can't argue with the results! They were grand champions for the last five years! They're nearly unstoppable! I should know, I was there. They were one of the countless no-name teams of the '12, the type that were mostly ignored and forgotten, but they really got the attention when they strapped the former Grand Champions unto a rocket and blasted them to god-knows-where in a crazy scheme that looked like it came from the mind of someone who catches roadrunners! I mean, I don't know about you guys, or those other guys, or the fact that they added some no-name as a replacement, but if the newcomers don't get lucky soon, that they'll be flattened into the very soil itself." the girl next to them concluded.
"Wow, you're quite the tourney nerd, aren't you?" the purplette deadpanned.
"And what's wrong with bein' nerdy about something?" she asked, hands on hips.
"I can think of a few things...by the way, is there a betting station around here?" the purplette asked.
After fiddling around with the controls for a bit, the operators made the previously flat rooftop of the arena morph. It changed, as if secretly moulded by many invisible hands, into a mass of buildings, some short, some tall, with every architectural feature known to mankind and some unknown. To the enemy's side, there were rows of houses, all alike, like an archetypical suburb, while it was more cluttered and urban on our heroines' side. It was all buildings, as far as the eye can see, with the sole exception of one side, which looked like an artificial resort, wih an artificial beach. The referee was perched on the tallest, being twice as high as anything else there. All in all, it looked like a mocking 1:1 scale model of urban development.
The referee moved over to a microphone that wasn't there before, and tested it a few times before speaking.
"Alright, you know the ground rules..." the referee said, standing on the tip of a tall mosque, overlooking the map. "And there's only one. No outside help, got it?"
He clapped. "Now then, if you're all quite ready..."
They all nodded or grunted in response. They were all ready.
He dramatically puts his hands together in an "X" shape.
"GO!"
A large bell from nowhere rings, and the battle starts.
Vivio ran forward, transformed and jumped right into the leader's face.
"The f*ck! Vivio!" Kyoko shouted, running after her.
Grinning, the enemy leader snapped his fingers, and suddenly, from a certain radius around him, a sandstorm came out of nowhere. Thousands of gallons of sand and dust, whisting around in an intense wind, all of it conjured out of what was then clean, unsullied and unburdened air.
"Ah, Kyoko-sempai!" Tsukasa shouted.
The rest of the girls tried to run after them, but they blocked by a building collapsing in front of them.
"Haha!" the Mad Maestro laughed as he jumped in the middle of their group.
"Let's see... leader already has the blonde loli, sooo..."
He dodged one attack and blocked another one without missing a beat.
"Lessee... the mage-lolis for he crazy chick..."
He turned around and punted Miura through a nearby building, before doing the same to Rio and Corona.
"Ah! Little girls!" Kirsten exclaimed.
"Oh, and herr doktor would surely appreciate witches to get a hold of, the ones he captures by himself tends to die for some reason..."
He punched Kirsten through the wall over in a completely different direction.
He deflected a hard candy projectile with a playing card.
"Wait! Aren't you a witch that makes desserts! I love desserts!" he squealed. "If it would result in infinite pies for me, I should give you to Dr. Morry for further research!" he screamed, pulling up Charlotte by her collar and throwing her over to Kirsten's direction.
"Ah! Oh no, Charlotte!" Tsukasa said.
The Madman slowly turned and looked at her...
The purplette's sweat rate increased.
Looking up, Quad saw a little blonde girl, unfazed by the sandstorm around her, flying towards him in blind rage.
"Graaaaaaaaahh! You're going down!" she screamed.
"try me" he said, as the blonde's righteous fist meets his outstretched palm, and a large dust explosion happened.
"Ah!" the blonde grunted, as she was sent flying into the window of a building. Just before they broke eye contact, the blonde could him pull out a gun, which transformed into a huge, man-sized rifle.
"stupid noob, do u even know who youre getting into a fight with? And in a sandstorm, noless. i'm the great ultimate leet killa q 4, and you? yor a SHRIMP!" he shouted.
'Okay, so jumping full-power into the enemy leader wasn't very smart(Damn my Takamachi heritage!), but as long as I'm in this building, away from the sandstorm, I should be fine...'
All of a sudden, the winds grew strong enough to lift the entire building she was in. The building tilted, leaving her tumbling out of a window.
"Gah!"
The moment she hit the ground, she gets fired upon on all sides by gunfire!
'SOMEONE HELP MEEE!'
*THUMP*
"Ah!"
*thump**thump* *thump*
"Ow..."
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh!"
*THUMP*
"Owwww, my head..." Charlotte moaned in pain.
Kirsten quickly stood up and looked around. They were obviously not outdoors anymore.
She spotted an office chair behind a very classy office table.
It swiveled around.
"Welcome, little girls. Welcome to your do-..."
Kirsten blinked.
The man in the white coat froze mid-speech.
"...-om..."
The doctor pulled his glasses down and looked at the navy blue-haired girl.
"Amazing... Magnificent..." he said, as he leered at Kirsten a little too closely. "I know I've seen you on the screen before, but seeing you up close is something elsSSE!"
Kirsten kicked him the crotch.
Hard.
"Owowowowowwowow, now that was totally uncalled for!" he said, grabbing his crotch in agony.
"That's what you get by touching me, you freak!" she answered, folding her arms.
She then noticed something on her right leg...
She looked down to see, and to her horror, she found that her right leg, the same leg she used to kick him in the nads with, was totally covered in big, red ants.
"!"
*GACK!*
"Kir-chan!" Charlotte ran over to her friend and tried to assess what was up with her, as she was coughing up blood.
"Kirsten? Kirsten! What's wrong!" she worriedly asked. Then she spotted the ants covering half of her right leg.
It was ghastly. Blood-red ants were crawling up-and-down the girl's leg, pulling small chunks of flesh out of her skin and causing streaks of blood to cover her lower leg.
"You fell for my trap, you fools!" he said, holding up an arm. "I have a trained colony of size-shifting ants that reside in my body and hide under my pores and the seams of my clothing, trained to eat up anyone that's more delicious than me on contact! In a minute, they will devour your little friend there completely, from the inside-out! Look at you, you look pathetic right now!" he giggled madly.
"Ch-Charlotte-chan... it... hurts..." Kirsten said, falling over.
She looked up and stared at him.
He laughed like there was nothing coming to him.
Charlotte's face hardened.
"Hahahahahahahaha-Ompf!"
The doctor got a faceful of cake for his laughter.
He wiped the cake and frosting off his face. "Why you... HEY! Get back to feeding!" he shouted.
Charlotte looked down slightly, and there she saw, at the foot of her enemy, were the same deadly ants crawling off of Kirsten's arm and feeding on the fallen cake and frosting. That gave Charlotte an idea.
Summoning up her greatest magic reserves, she launched the sweetest of caramel and cake frosting at her opponent. Not just sweet, though. Super-sweet! HYPER-sweet! So sweet, it'll make the enamel of even the most die-hard sweet tooth turn into gooey sludge. It's so sweet the stench of it fills the air. The air that gives the feeling of sugar, sugar everywhere!
"!"
And the doctor was covered head-to-toe with it.
Labouring, she willed the sweet stuff to go under his skin, to infect his bloodstream, to fuse with his muscular tissue, making him half-man and half-dessert.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!"
Heaving, Charlotte collapsed.
Sensing a gigantic treat more delicious(and sweet) than the leg they're chewing on now, they left Kirsten's leg and marched over to the pitiful Dr Morry. The ants living inside him also happened to notice that their owner seems a lot more sweeter now.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"
The doctor screamed in agony as his own flesh-eating ants ate him alive from the inside-out. As she nursed her injured right arm, Kirsten winced, but ignored him. He was trying to do the same to her, after all. She turned and quickly looked at Charlotte. She looked horrible. She was so thin, you could see the bones. Her skin was an unhealthy shade of sickly white, and she looked like she would've been eaten alive by vultures if left in the desert too long.
"Charlotte? Charlotte!" Kirsten yelled, shaking her pink-haired friend back-and-forth.
This was bad. This was very, very, very bad.
Kirsten tried to go through every medical file in her magical hard drive, and did a brief medical scan of her body via an app she made "just in case"...
It was a classic case of magical overexertion. An overuse of one's own mana system, leading the body to cannibalise itself in it's quest to stabalise itself. It's one of the lead causes of magic-user death that doesn't involve explosions. Or impalement. The only way to save an overexerted magic-user is to cut out the main magic-using organ. In this case, it's her soul, her swirling spring of passion and emotion. Being Puella Magi, this was the how their magic worked, by pure human willpower and emotion, which carried on even into the next world...
She gritted her teeth.
F*ck this...
F*ck this...
She wasn't a doctor, but she did consider herself a very precise person, and damn it if she wasn't going to save her little pink bundle of joy!
She put on her magic lenses, did some calculations in her head and quickly focused mana into her hand.
She straddled her emaciated body and put a firm hand to her neck.
"Charlotte... I'm so sorry about this..."
She plunged a hand inside.
*thump*
The cashier at the betting counter looked up to see quite a large bag of money being dumped in front of her.
"What will you be betting on, Ma'am?" she asked boredly, spotting the tiny, teenaged figure behind the huge pile of moolah.
"I'll bet..." Kagami started. "...that Kyoko will end this team match with the most excessively destructive maneuver of the match... and that she'll gloat extraneously about it right after." the purplette said, not missing a beat.
"Oh? You seem confident in your predictions..." the cashier said, looking up from her magazine.
"Probably because they weren't predictions..." the purplette looked the cashier straight in the eye. "They're facts, true and blue, miss."
"Now then, now that we're alone..." the weirdly-dressed man cackled evilly.
"U-Um..." Tsukasa shook.
She took a deep breath.'Calm down, girl. You're not going to do anything while your panicking' she said to herself.
Putting down her foot, Tsukasa draws in a deep breath, and prepares too...
Talk.
"Maestro-san, I know there's nothing you look forward to more than having the fight of your life, but I feel I have a very good reason for you to let us win, and I can prove it to you!" she said, with as much mustered-up confidence as she can.
The Mad Maestro looked intruiged, almost aroused, at this turn of events. "Ohoho, what do we have here? A young lady, willing to use diplomacy, how delightful! I've never used diplomacy myself, so I'm oh so curious at what being talked to death feels like..." he hisssed.
Tsukasa shook. She breathed in slowly and calmed her nerves. "Umm..." she started.
"The... The reason we joined this competition is for neither fame nor fortune..."
"Oh, really, now! C'mon, tell me what your almighty reason is! Pretty please?" he said, jumping up and down like a hyperactive monkey on steroids.
Upon hearing this, the purplette somehow found the resolve(and the right words) to keep on going.
"We are looking for the last few of the legendary Soul Cards, artefacts that can summon a being of unimaginable power, and can be used to rend the fabric of time, space and reality asunder..." she said.
She froze. She wasn't normally this well spoken! Especially in English, which she only had the most basic luck in anyway. Yet, she was compelled somehow...
"Our enemy has plans to use these cards for herself, a Multi-Dimensional Conqueror from outside this multiverse entirely, and from that, we can safely assume that she has nothing but ill intentions in obtaining artefacts this powerful..." she continued.
He tilted her head.
"Boo-riingg..." he said.
"Huh?"
"You didn't really give me a good enough sales pitch. In fact, it's horrible. It's weak, stilted, lacks compassion and you're trying to convince me with a talking point that I don't give two sh*ts about! I might as well drink coffee laced with cheese powder. So no, no thanks. I don't really see why someone being a vandalising ass is reason enough to stop, so Let's hurry up and get on with throwing each other around like good fighters should!" he said, assuming a fierce fighting stance.
The purplette froze.
"What? Why?" she asked.
"Well, if whoever your talking about actually screws the fabric of time and space a new one, I could always go somewhere else, I mean, it's not like the multiverse doesn't have a lot of space, after all..."
She gulped. "But if we fail, millions might die. Die!" she emphasised, waving her noodly arms around.
"Hah, like I said, why in all of the seven layers of hell should I care? I only live for the strong ones, the ones that can move mountains and split rivers! The ones that I can fight with and then party till the end of time itself! All of those fans, those spectators, those cameramen, announcers, cannon fodders, little kits, circus freaks, single moms, new-age retro hippies, I don't give a flying fish about any of them. To me, they might as well be nobody, because they aren't even the tiniest bit strong, and therefore, not fun to play with..."
She gritted her teeth. "But what about you? Aren't you worried about yourself?" she asked.
"Like I said, little girl, there nothing stopping me from doing the chicken dance the moment reality gets kicked in the balls. After all, all the powerful men and women of battle I know don't live near here. They say it's filled with the stench of weaklings. And you know what? Screw your compassion, I only joined because I like to crush the egos of overconfident insects, and watch their expressions of despait and humiliation, but you don't mourn when your toys get broken, do you? No, you get a new one! And the multiverse has no shortage of cannon fodder for me to torture..." he grinned sadistically.
"Wait, K-Kyoko-san's really strong! I know, I've seen her myself. *shiver* But also, you never might know. Me, my friends, all the people you dismiss as "weaklings" might not be later on. I mean, great warriors start somewhere, right? Even the most elite of the elite didn't start at level 9000, you know? Everyone had to start someplace. So, I ask of you, if you could aid us, or at the very least, ignore us, then do it not for us, but for them..."
Silence.
' that he BOUGHT that...' she hoped.
"Hmmm..." the strangely-dressed man mused, before jumping up to his feet in triumph. That really could work! I just never realised it because all I get fed are punkish dumbasses that couldn't even last six minutes in a boxing match with a goddamn pony. Finally, a revelation!. You are truly a godess among mortals, miss... miss?"
"Hiiragi..."
"Ah, yes! Ms. He-Man-Ragi! How positively daft of me, it was mentioned in the opening intrductions! Nice to have met you, missus..." he said, grabbing her hand and shaking it vigorously. "... and now I'll bee sodding off, adieu!"
And with that, he then proceded to ran to the edge of a giant, nearby window and do a flying jump right out of it.
"Whoah there! Is this scene really what I'm seeing? Did the Mad Maestro just jump off the edge to his possible doom! Has he finally flipped out? Did he realise his life of fighting and training weren't worth it anymore!" the colour commentor exclaimed like crazy.
All of a sudden, Maestro popped out of a nearby cupboard. "By the way, your stand power is so cool. I like, met 'em and got an autograph from him and everything. Squeal to him for me! And cheerio!" he said.
"Huh? Wait! What do you..."
He disappears.
"...mean."
Sometimes, I wonder why I even bother to do something like this, then I remember that there are stupider fanfics out there, so I should just shut up and write my own goddamn fanfic.
Man, inner me is cool.