The Risks of Being a Spectator
Sherra leaped away from the area of the charge, irritably aware that she really couldn't do anything to help. Considering her most recent change in species, and she idly began to wonder just how many she would undergo before she died, it would have been better if they had waited for nightfall. At any rate, Sherra watched the fledgling mazoku and remembered the last time they had crossed swords.
"What an idiot," she muttered as she sat down to watch the battle. He might have been able to take them on one at a time, but all together. "Idiot." Amethyst paused in joining the battle to turn towards Sherra for a moment.
"Sherra-san, are you going to help?" The chimera asked for a moment.
"How? I can't change on purpose you know, what do I do, hope for an eclipse?" Sherra paused a moment and then formed a megaphone from her hands. "Umm...DUOFOLGER sic him!!"
"I plan too," Duofolger said in his normal long-suffering tone. Sherra wondered why the sword, err ex-sword, was still treating her like "an eternal teenager that he was saddled with until the end of time" to quote an early comment from him.
"How's that?" the former mazoku asked the chimera princess, ignoring the question of why Duofolger hadn't attacked her yet.
"Thank you, I think..." Amethyst turned and launched an array of flare arrows at the mazoku swordsman. Sherra watched as the mazoku's imitation Ragna blade slashed out and connected with one of Xina's force shields. The former bounty hunter ducked low and let the flare arrows pass over him into Xina's shield.
"If that was Inverse's Ragna Blade the brat would be dead now," Sherra yawned.
Zangulus had to dodge as Jolrael and Xalan came in wielding their weapons. The mazoku reacted and tried to slash through Xalan. Sherra almost called out and then blinked as the kage-kitsune pulled one of his sisters tricks, falling back into a created shadow and slipping to a new place.
"When did he start doing that?" Sherra scratched her head in confusion as the fight continued. "You know he wasn't this strong last time, dangerous yeah, but I would have thought this would be over by now. Oh, that's right, he was still human last time I saw him." Sherra stopped and considered this. "Uh...oh..."
Zangulus frowned as Xalan came in low with his claws, and Jolrael slashed high with his sword. The hunter blinked out as he teleported a few feet past his attacker's range. He appeared right into a blast of dragon breath as Val found a clear shot.
The dragon looked mostly human, though black wings had ripped out of his back. He felt tempted to take full dragon form, but then he couldn't fight effectively with everybody else in his way.
Zangulus flew backward, black mazoku-essence leaking out of his form for a brief moment before he healed. The mercenary was recovering his feet when the ground exploded underneath him along with Amethyst's cry of "DUG HAUT!" One of the spikes tore into the mazoku, lifting him away from the ground.
Zangulus gritted his teeth in pain as he pulled himself off the earth spike and the cut healed itself.
"That spell's not enough to do more than give me p..." Zangulus cut his brag short as the other mazoku on the field slammed into him. The former human teleported out before the unnatural chill radiating from Duofolger could do him any real harm.
Zangulus was trying to catch his breath as a virtual volley of mystical attacks launched towards him from six directions. Spikes of moonlight, telekinetic punches, balls of flame, the essence of a demon winter, and a beam of pure spiritual energy cascaded towards his direction.
"He HAS been watching his sister," Sherra whistled as the mazoku "eeped" and teleported away from his former location. Sherra smirked. "The idiot can't win if he can't get a shot off. Imagine a mazoku saying 'eep'." Sherra felt duly insulted.
Zangulus appeared again and swung his blade of darkness. A wave of black energy rippled its way towards six warriors. Jol levitated above the attack, while Xalan tackled Amethyst and took her into a shadow pocket. Duofolger vanished, as any intelligent mazoku would. Xina, meanwhile leaned forward and formed a wall of light the wave of energy collided with and washed over.
"NICE TRY!!" Xina shouted, just before the cracks started appearing in her wall. "Awww....he's STILL beating me!!" Xina squinted as her force wall caved in and then there was this odd sensation of being in two places at once.
"Next time run....please," Val pleaded as he set her down. Xina looked to where the dragon had teleported her away from "I don't want your brother and mother to kill me." Xina blinked for a moment and then glomped Val.
"VAL-KUN!!! You saved me!!"
"Urk."
"Get back in the fight!" Jol shouted as his levitation became something more like flight. The youngswordsman landed in front of the mazoku and he started attacking.
Zangulus smirked as he started in to fight the boy. That didn't last long. Zangulus knew the secret of Xalan's phenomenal fighting skill, and could easily throw the kage-kitsune off his top performance. Jolrael had trully learned his skill though, and tended to add in a few surprises that kept the mazoku watching with his higher senses as well as the normal five.
When Xalan joined the fight, the trading of blows became mostly Zangulus blocking. Everybody else grumbled as they waited for a clear shot at the mazoku or some other chance to help without hindering. Then Zangulus vanished and didn't reappear.
Sherra snapped to her feet, there were no enemies for him to fight on the astral. That meant...
"Where'd he go?" Xina asked confused, not noticing Sherra charging at her.
"Tinu and Kyrie!!" Jol gasped, and suddenly most of them turned to head out over the lake, following Jol.
~LOOK OUT!!~ Xina paused and looked at the staff, before glancing around. Something small slammed her aside as the air rippled and a mazoku attacked out of the astral plane. Xina landed hard on the ground, the breath knocked out of her and the staff skittering out of her grasp. Behind the Metallium, Sherra felt the blade of darkness pass through her, chilling her whole being. The were-fox looked down in shock as her lower body seperated from her torso and she crumpled to the ground. She remained control of her motions long enough to flip her face upwards before her body shut down and she could only watch. She would have given a sigh of relief as she felt a healing coma slip over her, but, she couldn't.
Zangulus frowned as he discovered that he had hit the wrong target, he was moving to correct his mistake when he saw the discarded staff.
"SHERRA!!"
"XINA!!"
Zangulus looked up in time to see three of his attackers vanish from sight, and wave of concealing dark moved for him, obviously carrying the girl's brother with it. He lunged for the staff and leaped back as Xalan leapt out of the shadow and Val and Duofolger popped into place. Zangulus growled as light and magic ripped into his form.
"I got what I came for!" Zangulus proclaimed painfully as he vanished from sight again. Teleporting in an escape.
"GET BACK HERE!!" Duofolger shouted. He turned angrily to what looked to be Sherra's corpse. He teleported to her side as Xina was being helped up by Val, who was getting a glare from her brother.
"He got the staff," Xina said glumly. "But I know where he's going." She'd seen it often enough in her dreams, and her father had told her what it was.
"Then you can tell us and we'll..." Xalan stopped as Xina turned a look on him. He swallowed until she smiled suddenly.
"I'm the only one who can take us there," Xina said in a sing songy manner. Then she looked towards the mazoku. Jol had paused for a moment, before Amethyst had waved him to go ahead to rescue his sister and Tinuviel.
"I've totally failed..." the mazoku said quietly. The male mazoku's long, midnight blue pony tail hung loosely behind his back as he knelt down beside her.
"Um...Mr. sword," Xina started.
"She's dead," he pulled at the white collar of his ice-blue shirt and sighed.
~What's he going on about?~ the girl was thinking as she tried to flick her eyes towards her long-time partner/weapon. ~His mission ended when I stopped being at ALL mazoku.~
"Duo..." Xina started before being interrupted again. The mazoku cradled Sherra's torso and started to actually cry, to the amazement of the onlookers.
"And I never got to tell her how much I loved for her..." the mazoku stopped as he felt a sudden upswing of shock coming from the "corpse" he was cradling. "Uh..she's alive?"
~WHAT DID HE SAY!?!!?!~
"That's what I was TRYING to tell you," Xina sighed. Then she elbowed Val, and whispered. "You'd better be taking notes." Val blushed and rolled his eyes heavenward.
"Were's don't die unless you behead them, burn them or use silver," Xalan explained, trying to ignore his sister flirting with the dragon. He wasn't succeeding.
"Oh, that was so sweet!" Amethyst clapped and fluttered her eyelashes. Then she shot Xalan a saccharine glance. The kage-kitsune did his best to ignore that as well. He didn't come near as close to succeeding in that as he was with Val and Xina flirtting.
Duofolger looked around and then down at Sherra, from whom he was feeling a rather confusing mix of emotions. Rage, embarrasment, disbelief, rage, fear, curiousity, oh, and rage. He idly wondered why he hadn't noticed that before, and wondered if he would survive after she healed up.
"Hello Jol-niisan," Kyrie waved as Jol entered the ruined building. Jolrael halted and stared at an amazing scene.
"Jol-san!!" Tinu sniffed. "You have to save me from this monster!!" It took the swordsman a while to recover from the idea of Tinuviel being phased by anything.
"Kyrie got bored, didn't she," Jol asked, as he looked at Tinu's....well he supposed you could call it a hair style. It looked more like one of Tinuviel's experiments had backfired, only they had never backfired on her before. The elf nodded furiously while crying, while Kyrie gave her brother a broad grin.
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