Disclaimer: I don't own Bravely Default, all rights to the owners.
I don't usually take requests anymore (barring The Robin Variable, of course, but that's a special case), but this was a fun idea. So thank you for the idea, Soul.
Tiz hadn't given much thought to the hourglass in his backpack ever since the mysterious figure in green handed it to him. Quite frankly, he had more important things to think about rather than a fancy hourglass with inscribed words he can't even read, like the fact that he was now helping a wanted fugitive flee from an entire country out to get her and awakening magical crystals with the ability to shape the world.
A little bit more important than a strange hourglass. That said, the hourglass also turned out to be much more useful than he could possibly have imagined.
It was an accident, as you might expect.
Heinkel was much more of a problem than they could ever have expected. Their new, rag-tag group of a fugitive, a traitor, an amnesiac, and a shepherd, was woefully unprepared to deal with a fully trained knight, much less one with the power of an asterisk.
Luck had felled Holly and Barras, healing, a numbers advantage, Agnès' natural resistance to magic, and Edea's quick bladework had done-in Ominas, but Heinkel was different. Heinkel had armor, and didn't care about a katana. Heinkel had a large sword, and none of them were particularly well-armored. Heinkel was fighting them in an airship, where there was no space for fancy footwork and no way to avoid that large blade of his.
Edea had scoffed when Heinkel had called luring them here a trap, but it was obvious at that moment that he wasn't lying. The forced close-quarters combat of the airship was perfect for him.
Agnès and Ringabel didn't have the space to cast their magic without interruption, but they were the group's only hope. Edea's blade wasn't scratching Heinkel, and Tiz's fists (empowered by the Monk asterisk) weren't doing much better.
"What did you expect to accomplish, chasing me?" Heinkel asked as his boot met Edea's chest, and launched her into Ringabel (and therefore both of them into a reinforced glass window). "Did you think I'm as incompetant as Ominas? As unfocused as Barras? As petty as Holly? Edea… you all of all people should have known better. Turning traitor has dulled your wits."
Tiz lurched into a haymaker at the knight's back in a desperate attempt to keep Heinkel's blade from coming down on Edea, and he succeeded, but only at the expense of getting pommel-struck in the forehead as Heinkel half-turned and dropping like a stone.
He didn't think about the cracking noise his head made when it met the metal of the knight's sword hilt. In fact, he didn't think about much of anything because he was decidedly unconscious and dying from internal bleeding until Agnès' raise spell shot life back into him.
"Look at you all." Heinkel scoffed. He didn't even bother striking at Tiz as the boy rolled away and shakily rose again. "A worthless dandy, a gullible traitor, and a harbinger of doom and her stupid shepherd boy. You thought you could fight a knight? You thought you could fight Eternia?"
"Says the k-kidnapper." Edea coughed. She grabbed one of the airship's consoles and pulled herself back to her feet. Despite her weak state, she still managed a burning glare. "A coward who would threaten a completely innocent city of people rather than just finding the vestal himself. A field mouse is more knightly than you, Heinkel."
"And what would a traitor know of knighthood?" The man scoffed. "Clearly you missed the urgency and importance of our mission, Edea. You should know why I had to resort to such measures."
"It's only 'resorting' when you actually try something else first." Edea shot back, helping Ringabel to his feet. "You went straight to the cannons and gave Ominas the go-ahead to commit arson without a second thought. You're black as tar, Heinkel."
"Speak all you want now." Heinkel said, once again raising his sword. "Because dead girls are thankfully much quieter."
Edea brought her own blade up in front of her for some sort of defence, and Ringabel tried to fumble out the beginnings of a fire spell, but no one was under any illusions that Heinkel's next strike would be a fatal one. Agnès was in the middle of a healing spell that wouldn't finish in time, and Tiz was several steps away from the action.
They needed a miracle. In that moment, watching Heinkel raise his sword, and fearing he would lose two more people when he'd already lost so much already, Tiz reached for something, anything he could do. He didn't know magic, but he couldn't get across the room in time so in that moment he tried, reaching into himself and into the world for the barest whisper of power to give himself another miracle.
And, a miracle did indeed happen. Tiz's desperate reaching found something, a small well of power located surprisingly close by, and he pulled with all his mental might.
Three things happened at once.
An intense feeling of vertigo shot through Tiz's stomach.
His limbs tingled with foreign energy.
And the world slowed to a crawl.
Heinkel's deadly swing, just beginning, continued at the pace of a lazy afternoon. The blade inched forward over the course of a second, hardly moving. Off to the side, Tiz could see Agnès' mouth slowly opening into a yell that sounded unusually deep and distorted in his ears. Behind Heinkel, Edea stood still as a statue with her katana out in front of her while Ringabel's hand grabbed her shoulder and his leg pushed off the wall behind him, trying to pull her back while launching himself in front of Heinkel's attack.
The buzz in his limbs was rapidly fading. Tiz didn't waste another second of his miracle. He rushed across the room, aimed for the side of Heinkel's waist where there was overlapping plates, and unleashed three consecutive windup punches in the same spot. He could see the metal buckle under his concentrated assault, and the bent plate was driven into Heinkel's side, underneath the plate above it.
The blood splatter was enough to tell Tiz that the plate pierced skin; and when time resumed its normal course the abrupt roar of pain and Heinkel falling to the ground told him the plate had hit something important.
"T-Tiz?" Agnès said from behind him, and it vaguely occured to Tiz that he must have moved at a truly absurd speed in her eyes.
But that was a matter for another time. Heinkel, while grievously injured, was not dead and showed no intent to stop until he was. He yanked the damaged plate out of his side and hefted his sword again with an animalistic snarl.
However, Ringabel hadn't been idle in the precious seconds Heinkel had been down. A fireball met his snarling face, and another after that, and to finish it all off Edea shot forward and thrust her sword up through the hole the missing plate left in his armor, driving her katana up through his side and into his stomach and chest.
Heinkel blinked slowly, his stern eyes fixed on Edea's as his sword slipped from his grasp and his legs gave out, until those stern grey eyes of his couldn't remain stern anymore and glazed over as the rest of him toppled lifelessly to the ground.
They'd needed a miracle to beat Heinkel, and a miracle they got in the form of a gift with powers far beyond what any of them could have dreamed of.
Heavy combat focus here. Not my usual fare because I'm rather poor at pacing them, but it's somewhat mandatory when the subject of the chapter is the Bravely Second mechanic.