Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Chapter 38: Battle In The Sky! Shades of Green Wind Have Flair, & Shades of Pink Psychic Power Flare Up With Levitation In The Air!
After getting on to the Sky Garden Cloud with the Sabertooth mages, Haruna remained quiet while looking anxious about what would happen in the next few minutes. She got to see the Sky Garden Cloud nearly move in various directions because of the winds that were created naturally or by other mages who were in Ryokufū Town, and it only remained on its path to the research lab from how Haruna fired spells of Wind Magic from her hands to make the cloud move in proper directions. That also applied to the act of increasing its speed, which was crucial.
She looked straight ahead to notice that the three remaining researchers were on a faraway cloud, detecting a potent amount of Wind Magic to come from one direction in the skies, and those wizards had probably used strong spells to make themselves have a vast amount of distance from the people who were pursuing them. Haruna groaned in frustration at how she couldn't see very far ahead to get a chance at precisely aiming a spell towards their Sky Garden Cloud, but that wasn't the only thing that made her feel like her current group of wizards was disadvantaged.
Sting had been suffering from motion sickness while he laid on the cloud, his head being on Lucy's lap while she was sitting down to keep them both from falling off, and the only other person standing on the Sky Garden Cloud was Risa. She spent the past few minutes smiling down at people and waving like a delighted person, acting like she was a royal princess in front of Haruna, and Risa's gasps of excitement from seeing certain buildings or houses be quite small when viewed from an immensely high height only made Haruna wonder why more people didn't ride Sky Garden Clouds or other types of clouds to get themselves accustomed to the concept of being on clouds.
The unfortunate answer for her curiosity soon appeared in the form of a forest green vortex that was suddenly headed towards the group, and the vortex was composed of high winds while Haruna could see large feathers flying out of the spell. Haruna recognized that spell as Kaze's Aerial Twister, and she wasted no time with firing a gust of wind from her hand to make the cloud sharply swerve to the left at high speeds. Evading that beam only made Haruna not fully focus on that spell being used for a second time, and it curved in midair to head straight for the mages. Haruna screamed with worry from seeing the attack, as she felt the first attack explode in midair to push the team closer to the second beam, and Haruna closed her eyes out of pure fear. However, her hastiness with closing her eyes kept her from seeing someone else be just as hasty.
"Psychic Magenta Cosmic Shields!" Risa loudly stated with a fierce look on her face while a magenta aura quickly surrounded her hands, before two large heart-shaped shields appeared in front of the group.
Haruna asked aloud in a stunned manner, as she opened her eyes to see the vortex slamming into the shield that Risa controlled with her left hand, "What?!"
Lucy stated to Haruna with a nice smile on her face, delight in her eyes while thinking about the situation, "Even if those guys are firing at us in the air, they're no match for the powers of a psychic mage who can levitate or create awesome shields!"
"Yeah, I'm glad to be creating shields and protecting people instead of letting those explosive winds hurt people!" Risa replied to Lucy with a proud smile on her face, as her response also contained a snarky remark that was rightfully directed at Haruna.
Haruna was about to question Risa on her choice of protecting other people from getting hit by the enemy's attacks, but she soon saw the pink-haired girl move her hands in a psychic manner to make her left hand's shield intercept another vortex while her right hand's shield went downward to block a matcha green sphere that had five rings of forest green leaves around it. Risa watched the shields endure the blasts that occurred, even though she could feel the impact of the blasts on her hands, and the strong shields made Risa smile with confidence.
She looked straight ahead with a proud smile continuing to be on her face, before she looked very fierce about handling all of the attacks that would come towards the group. Risa ended up blocking a gleaming beam that was in the color of matcha green, taking notice of the vibrant shades of green that were being displayed in her enemy's attacks, and blocking that attack with her left hand's shield made a matcha green burst of light occur. That made Risa nearly become blinded by the light to not see a forest green tornado head straight towards the group while the air surrounding it formed crescent-shaped blades that fused themselves into the tornado, and the attack grew much stronger.
The powerful attack spun at rapid speeds while its size was quite large, but Risa wasted no time with doing her best to block the attack with her right hand's shield. She winced in pain from feeling the tornado heavily push against her shield, but she soon looked a bit startled from hearing the shield start to crack multiple times. That only prompted Risa to build up enough magical power, and she created the Cosmic Cerise Psi spell in her right hand. The spell made a sphere appear in her right hand while the attack had two layers, and Risa purposely put her hands next to each other. She propelled the attack off of her right hand for it to hit the respective shield, before a portion of the spell hit her left hand's shield for both shields to be engulfed in a cerise pink aura, and the shields fully healed themselves. In addition to repairing themselves, the shields soon had magenta blades on them while they were in front of the fuchsia hearts. The blades sent a magenta aura into Risa's hands, effectively healing them to where they never seemed injured, and Risa watched her right hand's shield now be durable enough to withstand the tornado that had been weakening. As the tornado created an average-sized explosion in a forest green color, Haruna's eyes showed the feeling of being impressed at what Risa just did.
"Wow, so she's not just a snarky wizard. Risa was defending the team, but she also waited for the perfect moment to put herself in the position of healing herself while strengthening her defenses." Haruna thought to herself with amazement in her eyes, as she had never even thought of that as a leader's necessary tactic.
Lucy asked Risa with a curious facial expression, as she felt like it would be good to help her, "Maybe you should let me unleash a few powerful attacks while you maintain those defensive shields."
"That's not a good suggestion right now, since any collisions of attacks could create blasts where the winds or psychic energy fall to the ground and explode in Ryokufū Town. The townspeople can't get hurt, or we'd be mages who can't protect people. You also mustn't get hurt while protecting Haruna, either. I also don't want you to expend any magical power here, especially since you and Master have to be at your best to fight the two remaining researchers." Risa explained to Lucy with a protective and soft smile on her face, not wanting her friend to do anything reckless.
Upon hearing Risa's response and seeing her turn around with eyes that were magenta instead of cherry red, Lucy smiled in an admiring manner at how her friend's words were definitely filled with wisdom. Risa's psychic abilities were helping her make very wise decisions, instead of just letting her be emotional to only care about protecting her friends, and the fact that Psychic Magic could help Risa come up with strategies during battles made Lucy see that her friend was definitely becoming as smart or even smarter than her mentor in protective ways.
Risa was definitely being a skilled mage of Sabertooth in this situation, and Lucy felt like her friend could absolutely be a wonderful leader of Parmanie Town later on. She was demonstrating her leadership skills, as well as a strong desire to make sure that no innocent people were killed off like sacrifices, and Lucy fully understood while Risa clashed so much with Haruna when it came to their different beliefs. One person cared about protecting innocent people, and the other person only cared about protecting themselves. Haruna started to look slightly ashamed of her selfish behavior, but the sound of no more attacks being fired caused her to look quite curious.
She wondered why the enemy stopped attacking, only to hear the sudden sound of a large gust of wind roaring towards them, and Haruna did her best to stay on the moving cloud. Another Sky Garden Cloud was moving, but the cloud came towards the group while it rode the winds to float through the air without any problems. The commander of that cloud was Yaeko, who fired that strong gust of wind from the palm of her left hand, and she surprised the Sabertooth mages by smirking rudely about the distance between their clouds. She proceeded to apply Wind Magic to her feet, before shockingly jumping off the Sky Garden Cloud, and Yaeko kicked the air multiple times to jump off of it. Her feet felt large bursts of air underneath them, allowing her to jump and move around in midair. Haruna gasped in a shocked and terrified manner from recognizing that particular technique of Wind Magic, and she watched Yaeko bounce around the group's Sky Garden Cloud to see exactly who was putting a halt to her strong attacks.
After letting her eyes do a swift analysis of the situation, Yaeko smirked deviously while kicking the air to be above Risa's shields. The pink-haired girl watched Yaeko inhale a high amount of air like she was readying an attack at close-range, but Yaeko chose to use the Kaze's Aerial Twister spell while aiming for Haruna at the very last second. She fired the forest green vortex from her left hand, only to see Haruna attempt to block it with a dark green sphere that she created in her left hand, and the resulting forest green blast came from how Yaeko's attack overpowered Haruna's spell.
Haruna wasn't just hurt by the attack tearing through her spell to strike her body, but the powerful blast created winds that knocked her off of the Sky Garden Cloud! Haruna ended up falling down to the ground, but Risa quickly dispelled one of her shields to aim the Stellar Psi spell at Haruna. The perfume shop owner was soon surrounded a light pink aura, and Risa used her Psychic Magic to bring her back up to the cloud. She was interrupted by the sight of Yaeko jumping on the air to quickly get in front of her, before using a spell called Matcha Forest Flair, and Yaeko fired the sphere from earlier. It came from her mouth at high speeds to strike Risa at point-blank range, and shooting out the attack with an enhanced amount of Wind Magic in her mouth caused Yaeko's spell to create a massive blast that was in a matcha green color!
The power of the explosive blast made Risa and Lucy scream in excruciating pain while Sting also felt a high amount of pain from the attack, but explosive attacks weren't the only troublesome thing for the team to worry about. Yaeko took the legendary green ring off of her right hand's ring finger for the purpose of tossing the ring to Ayane, who caught it, and Lucy was able to faintly notice that through the explosion. She picked up Sting to carry him on her shoulders while applying Psychic Magic to her feet, and Lucy attempted to run past Yaeko for the purpose of jumping on to a nearby Sky Garden Cloud.
Trying to bypass the antagonist only made Lucy get harshly punched in the face by Yaeko, who made a forest green aura engulf her left fist, and Lucy was sent rolling backwards with Sting. Lucy ended up hanging on to the edge of the Sky Garden Cloud with one hand while her other hand was wrapped around Sting's waist, and the sight of her friend getting hurt enough to be in that position caused Risa to look quite concerned. She used Stellar Psi to levitate Lucy and Sting back on to the cloud, before angrily glaring at Yaeko for her cruel actions. Yaeko only looked quite amused by Risa's glare, not viewing her to be very serious if she was willing to ignore her enemy in the middle of a fight, and hearing Yaeko rudely laugh like Risa was a fool made the fashionable wizard feel like she needed to calm herself down. She exhaled a soft breath, before realizing that there was a clever way to help her friends get to the two remaining researchers.
"You know, we've totally got teamwork on our side. In fact, it's not like one of us can't fight this woman here while the others attack from other Sky Garden Clouds!" Risa stated aloud to everyone with a happy smile on her face, before turning around to wink at Lucy with her left eye.
Lucy replied while smiling confidently at Risa, before seeing her friend fire a thin pink beam from her mouth at Sting to heal him, "You're absolutely right, Risa! In fact, all this wind thankfully moved some of those clouds around for them to be floating nearby!"
"Let's take this woman down right now!" Risa exclaimed with a fierce facial expression, as a magenta pink aura surrounded her body to help her move at faster speeds.
Yaeko rudely responded to the girls with the smile on her face becoming a very amused smirk, "If you think that you can beat the power and flair of my spells, then let's just see what you pieces of garbage can do!"
That prompted Risa to run straight towards Yaeko, who attempted to casually jump high into the air, but Risa grabbed her foe's right leg with a strong amount of force to restrain her. Yaeko couldn't jump anymore, leaving her vulnerable to close-range spells in these precious seconds, and she saw Lucy jump high into the air. The green-haired girl came down towards Yaeko to presumably strike her with a harsh punch, and Yaeko sent magic into both of her hands for this situation of close combat. Her strategy was wasted, however, and that was because of the fact that Lucy went past her to land on a Sky Garden Cloud.
Lucy sent the Psychic Magic from her feet down into the cloud, making it turn light pink, and Lucy sent Psychic Magic into her hands. She placed them both at the back of the cloud to make her magic push the cloud in the opposite direction, making it go forward at high speeds, and Lucy departed from the battle with Sting to catch up with the other researchers who specialized in using wind or plants. The thought of those evil mages made Lucy alarmingly turn her head around for a moment to see that Haruna was still on her lower cloud, not even moving, and Haruna seemed like she was still recovering from the shock of almost falling out of the sky to nearly have the fate of harshly crashing down into the town.
That only made Lucy sigh in a frustrated manner, as protecting the client was now a task that was in the hands of a mage who would have to spend time fighting Yaeko, but taking time to go back for Haruna would likely put Lucy at risk for losing the green ring. The researchers who had it could easily use the winds to make themselves go to a different town, and that would probably make the ring permanently be out of Lucy's hands. Still, Risa volunteered to fight against Yaeko and she'd probably do her best to not let Haruna gat physically harmed. That wouldn't prevent her from being verbally harmed, however.
"First, you defend that disgusting little girl with dark green hair for wanting her ring back. You're now defending a person with dark green hair who ran away from the town like a coward to only save herself, and she just couldn't handle how our perfume put her out of business. If you're trying to stand up for what's right, at least help an inheritor whose father didn't let the townspeople feel free enough to have different views based on different shades of green hair." Yaeko explained to Risa with a disapproving frown on her face, as she got her leg free from Risa's grip and moved to soon stand a few feet away from her opponent.
Risa asked aloud with a shocked look on her face, realizing an implication of Haruna's position, "Haruna's going to be the inheritor of the town? Wouldn't that make her be the leader to where she'd just replace her father?"
"My father's surprising death from five months ago surprised me to where the inheritance wasn't the biggest issue on my mind, but what could you possibly know about him other than how he strove for peace in this town?! Did you know that he seemed sickly and poisoned on his deathbed?!" Haruna loudly asked Yaeko with the feeling of anger in her voice while being stunned to hear about someone having an issue with her father, prompting her to make the Sky Garden Cloud somewhat ascend higher to be near
Yaeko told Haruna while looking quite calm, not feeling ashamed to admit a certain fact when her attention shifted back to Risa, "Well, us members of The Green Meadow's Five Groves killed him with our perfume. Although, I'm glad we didn't go through with the weak option of spraying it in his face for us to deal with possible news reports of a leader being sickly. Instead, we made him drink it straight from the bottle while he was wounded by us. After all, making one idiotic person with dark green hair suffer is the best way to make them all be oppressed by the rules of smarter people who look much better. We keep things fair for us, so your pink-haired friend is making a mess of things by defending you diseased-looking people."
"There's nothing wrong with protecting people who did nothing wrong, you jerk! They didn't ask to have their natural hair in that color, and no one in your town asked to be discriminated against! That includes the discrimination based on you people not keeping that perfume's horrible scent to yourselves, and it disgusts me that you'd sacrifice your own townspeople just to make yourselves thrive! As the princess of Parmanie Town and as a mage of Sabertooth, I'll show you how a real leader has strength when they want to protect other people!" Risa replied to Yaeko in a refuting manner, looking absolutely enraged by her cruel behavior.
Risa decided to create an Esper Ball in her left hand while creating the Psychotic Slicer spell in her other hand, and slamming her hands together caused the Esper Ball to grow larger with crescent-shaped beams swirling all around it at high speeds. The spell glowed in a plain pink color, and it was known as Esper Psycho Slashing Spear. Risa threw the attack towards Yaeko, who quickly countered it by using the Kaze's Aerial Twister attack again, but the sight her enemy's vortex made Risa quickly curve her fusion spell around Yaeko's spell by using Stellar Psi from her right hand.
The attack gained more power from being levitated in midair with more psychic energy being around it in the form of growing pink aura, and Risa made it quickly strike Yaeko for a pink blast to occur in midair! Yaeko screamed in pain from being caught in the blast while she became immobilized, but she screamed in more pain from feeling heavy slashes strike her body from different directions at a fast pace. The sight of Yaeko taking damage made Risa smile, and she confidently dodged the forest green vortex to see it burst into a blast that became glittery.
Risa started to see what her opponent meant by having flair to her spells, but someone who only used one attack at a time without any fusions wasn't going to win against a strong mage such as Risa. However, Yaeko jumped out of the explosion while her bruises meant nothing. In fact, she smirked evilly from how Risa seemed to be showing off her own level of flair for her psychic spells. That only prompted Yaeko to create a matcha green sphere in her left hand, before making the air heavily blow around her in a circle to send high amounts of wind into her attack, and the final ingredient of some moss green leaves coming up from the large trees in town to gently land on the spell allowed her to create an upgraded version of the Matcha Forest Flair spell. The attack was called Matcha Moss Green Garden's Wind, and Risa seemed startled at the sight of the enlarged orb changing into one slightly smaller orb with rings of leaves surrounding it while the five miniature orbs around it were circling the main orb in a clockwise direction. The attack seemed powerful, but Yaeko seemed like she'd give it more power by picking up a leaf that she'd blow against her mouth like a leaf flute.
Yaeko blew some soft notes on the leaf flute, causing the five miniature matcha green spheres to spread outward at a slow speed, and playing one high-pitched note made the small orbs head straight towards Risa with a sudden gust of wind propelling them in her direction! That made her swerve to the right while using Stellar Psi on herself for her to float in midair, and Risa thought that Yaeko's attack would be easy to dodge. The orbs came back while Yaeko played a discordant array of high notes on the leaves, causing them to be affected by different paths of wind blowing around them to give them more power, and Risa would have to predict their various movements with her psychic abilities.
She managed to dodge the first two orbs, only to be struck in the back by the third orb, and Risa screamed in pain while being caught in a matcha green explosion! She was soon engulfed in two more explosions, as the last two orbs hit her with her when her guard was down, and even falling off the cloud didn't keep Risa from being struck by the remaining orbs! They both exploded around her, before the matcha green glitter ended up shimmering with Wind Magic all around it to create a harmless forest green tornado of winds that brought her back up towards Yaeko. Yaeko grabbed the final orb to slam it against Risa's chest, smiling viciously from hearing her let out another scream of pain while a matcha green blast occurred right before it became moss green.
That other color represented the spell's boost in power, and Yaeko didn't mind that the blast's power destroyed her leaf flute. She only saw it as a sacrificial tool, and Yaeko felt like she needed to activate her next fusion spell. She fired the Kaze's Aerial Twister Spell from her left hand while creating a spell known as Windy Excalibur in her right hand, and the spell from her right hand appeared to be two floating mint green rings that intertwined. She threw them at the vortex for it to start alternating between the colors of forest green and mint green, before the rings within the vortex ended up bursting to create a double helix of mint green winds that grew larger inside of the vortex. This fusion spell was simply called Kaze's Tornado of Excalibur, and Yaeko aimed it straight at the blast occurring in midair!
The attack gained more power from the winds, but it only came very close to grazing Risa while she descended from the sky. She landed on a Sky Garden Cloud while wincing in pain, before seeing Yaeko's spell obliterate a nearby Sky Garden Cloud after trapping it in a large explosion that was forest green right before its color became mint green. As the spell ended up leaving behind a spinning ring of glitter, Risa sensed the immense amount of magical power coming from that attack. Windy Excalibur may have been Yaeko's third spell, but it gained a frightening amount of power when it got fused with another spell of Wind Magic or became exposed to several air currents. Both of those conditions severely powered it up, and feeling a mere fraction of the fusion spell's air pressure come down on her made Risa feel lucky that she wasn't directly hit by the attack.
"Even though that blast canceled out my Stellar Psi spell, I'm alive. Still, that doesn't mean anything if I can't hit this woman with fusion spells that are more powerful than hers." Risa thought to herself with a frustrated facial expression, as she groaned in a pained manner from feeling how the strong amount of air pressure hurt her body.
Yaeko asked aloud while looking sadistic, grinning at the sight of Risa starting to stand up, "Do you want me to try hitting you with that fusion spell again, since it'll hopefully result in your death?"
"She could probably hit me in this situation where I'm unsure on how to fully steer this Sky Garden Cloud, and I'd have to be quite powerful with Psychic Magic for me to also jump on the air. Wait, that gives me an idea!" Risa thought to herself with a disgruntled look in her eyes while her face showed dissatisfaction, before her eyes widened from remembering something.
Risa wasted no time with creating the Esper Ball spell in her right hand, before jumping up to aim it down on the Sky Garden Cloud, and Risa watched her attack create a large pink blast that also made its winds blow her upward. Risa was soon above the Sky Garden Cloud that Yaeko was on, and she fired the Psychic Cerise Confusion spell from her left hand. She shot out a zigzagging vortex of cerise pink Psychic Magic from that hand, and Risa fired a hot pink beam from her right hand. That beam pertained to the spell called Psychic Flair Boost, and Risa aimed the spell at her vortex. Even though that attack zigzagged, the second spell moving in a straight line ended up making contact with it for the hot pink beam to have a second hot pink beam beginning to spiral around it like an enhancement in power. The strength of the cerise-colored vortex also increased to where it doubled in size, and this fusion spell known as Psychic Pink Glamorous Blitz alternated between being cerise pink or hot pink. The pink spell began to absorb psychic energy in the area, such as the lingering energy from Risa's recently-fired Esper Ball, and the fusion spell grew to have two pink beams spinning around it to be coating it.
The enhancement of coating occurred right before Risa made a magenta pink aura engulf her hands, and she soon engulfed herself in the magenta aura. The aura was as bright as the impact of her fusion spell slamming against Yaeko, since the fusion spell created a large cerise pink blast that was followed by a large blast in the color of hot pink, and the two blasts released a high amount of Psychic Magic that made the aura around Risa become multiple shades of pink for a few moments. That prompted her to use Stellar Psi on herself again, and Risa felt herself levitate quite high in the air.
She got to see the pink clouds of smoke around Yaeko fade away to reveal that the antagonist had charred skin from that attack while her forest green lab coat had some bruises on it, and only her smallest wounds were bleeding. Yaeko seemed to be a durable wizard, which made Risa wonder about how much more power she'd need for the rest of her attacks to severely damage her opponent's body. She couldn't think about that for a long amount of time, since Yaeko made a forest green aura engulf her body while she aimed her hands in opposite directions while she appeared to be crouching.
"Upon being hit by two of those psychic mage's fusion spells, I now recall all of the necessary information from the research reports. You're quite an interesting research specimen, Risa Ryusei. Those clones made it quite difficult for me to have a perfect analysis of your list of fusion spells, due to all the shades of pink making you unpredictable, but I think that this combo of spells works best against you when you're in midair." Yaeko thought to herself with a confident facial expression, as she remembered most of the data that was gathered on Risa.
"Aero Giga Hurricane, combine with Forest's Tower of Gardenia! Become the spell known as Gardenia Tower of the Aero Zephyros Hurricane! This combination of spells is one of my all-time favorites, so enjoy seeing it in these last seconds of your life!" Yaeko shouted up at Risa with overconfidence in her eyes, as seven large projectiles of forest green wind bursts appeared near her left hand during the same moment where a matcha green ring of wind energy appeared to be close to her right hand.
Risa responded to her in a snarky manner, sounding sarcastic while smiling at how she could propel herself in certain directions by jumping on the air, "Yeah, I'm totally going to be worried about that!"
Risa's snarky response made Yaeko stick her arm through the center of the matcha green ring while her left hand rose upward to make the forest green bursts of wind ascend in that same direction, and they began to go around in a counterclockwise circle. That formation was followed by the ring on her arm rapidly spinning in the same direction, before it propelled itself high into the sky to ascend like it would be at the pinnacle of a tower, and the ring soon detonated to create a high amount of thin beams in a matcha green color! Several of those beams struck the forest green projectiles, causing them to ascend higher and gain more power to where they briefly became matcha green before they all swerved downward to converge on Risa.
They were attempting to strike her, only to be evaded when Risa repeatedly kicked the air to jump off of it in her quick attempts to avoid the matcha green beams that had been coming down from the higher parts of the sky. Risa had to make herself hop on the air in various directions at a rapid pace while also dealing with matcha green blasts occurring in midair to make her be blown in different directions by the air currents that she also needed to bounce off of, and the power of those thin beams was quite dangerous. Risa screamed in pain from how some of them exploded around her, as her constant movements in the air made them several air currents push against them, and she soon felt more pain from the seven projectiles of strengthened Wind Magic striking her a few seconds later! Risa let out a scream of excruciating pain from feeling herself be caught in forest green blasts that quickly became matcha green, but even the slight sight of seeing herself cough up blood wouldn't stop Risa from feeling determined to win.
She tried to jump out of the blasts, kicking the air to propel herself out of the bright explosions. The nearly-blinding amount of light from the blasts gave Risa the idea to create a spell called Shimmering Magenta Luxe, and she shot out a magenta sphere that had a cerise pink sphere in its center while both spheres shimmered with beams of light emanating from them in their respective shades of pink. Risa combined that advanced spell of Psychic Magic with another powerful spell of her magenta-colored magic, which was called Psychic Magenta's Hexing Flames, and she put her hands to shoot out a beam! The spiraling beam was alternating between a plain shade of pink and magenta pink, but it soon made contact with the advanced spell for them to form the fusion spell known as Magenta's Lustrous Gleaming Cerise Flames.
"What in the world is this spell going to do?!" Yaeko asked aloud with a shocked facial expression, as her eyes became blinded by pink shades of light that were very bright.
Haruna thought to herself with a smile of respect slowly appearing on her face, as she steered her Sky Garden Cloud several feet away to see projectiles in the bursting light, "Blinding your opponent to disorient them as part of a powerful attack, even in the middle of their fusion spell. Not a bad move, Risa."
Risa said aloud to herself while smiling with joy at her attack, "The light will give my enemy quite a shiny surprise. In fact, she's not a very bright researcher to just think that the light does nothing else."
Yaeko ended up dealing with several magenta pink beams and cerise pink beams that rapidly spun down to strike her and the Sky Garden Cloud, creating large blasts in their respective colors while their high amounts of light were quite blinding, and Yaeko couldn't see any of the magenta pink flames that hastily descended from the sky to hit her. They were mixed in with flames in the plain shade of pink while all of the fire exploded around her, and Risa used her psychic abilities to move any remaining flames on to unoccupied Sky Garden Clouds. The clouds were moving from the intense heat waves of the explosions, the heat making Risa's flames grow, and keeping the flames above the town kept any innocent people from getting hurt by them.
Yaeko wasn't innocent, however, and she was heavily bruised from that explosive barrage of blasts while the explosions left painful burns on her body. She felt like Risa had struck her with a large amount of heat, and focusing on being burned made Yaeko almost forget to jump on the air for her to at least be on another Sky Garden Cloud. She looked down at the soft cloud that shined in the sunlight, but the light reflected off of the cloud to show Yaeko that the flair in her spells couldn't protect her beauty forever. Upon seeing a burning wound be on her face while it started to bleed, Yaeko screamed in agony at how her beautiful face had been damaged. She looked horrified by this, prompting her to cancel out the spell that had made its remaining beams detonate in midair to create more strong winds, and feeling some wind currents merge together to create stronger gusts of air made Yaeko feel like she definitely needed to display the intense spell of a boosted spell pertaining to Wind Magic.
Yaeko fired the Harpy's Whirlwind Fang spell from her mouth, only to compress that spiky forest green vortex by putting her hands together to make air currents push against the spell from the left and right sides. The air currents quickly sent their winds into the spell, before Yaeko used the Harpy's Whirlwind Fang spell two more times to make two more forest green vortexes with rotating spikes of Wind Magic poking out of their lower halves. The three vortexes were thrusted upward by Yaeko exhaling a large gust of air to blow them towards Risa while Yaeko controlled her Wind Magic with her hands to create a circular air current that made the tornadoes appropriately move around in a circle.
Since Yaeko found herself frowning at how she had to fight so hard against a psychic wizard, she deliberately thought about making her tornadoes converge on striking Risa simultaneously in a basic attack while making a forest green aura engulf her hands to send out large gusts of wind that boosted the power of the tornadoes. They moved around at high speeds while forming a triangle, but the feeling of heavy winds around her body only made Risa aggressively kick down against the air with her feet to propel herself upward before the tornadoes could presumably smash into her. However, foreseeing Yaeko's thoughts about that only proved to be disinformation for Risa. She was taken by surprise from seeing the the three tornadoes combine to form a very tall tower of winds that had the winds at the top being shaped to form feathery wings with tall spikes protruding upward, and trying to kick the air for her to jump away from the attack was futile against the extremely strong winds.
"Harpy's Winged Winds of Fanged Turbulence!" Yaeko exclaimed with a fierce facial expression, as she made her hands form the shape of a sphere.
Risa shouted with a worried look on her face, as she got pulled into the attack, "This spell's winds are far too strong!"
Haruna yelled with an anxious look on her face, sensing Yaeko's spell to be just as strong as her other ones, "Risa, don't let those winds tear you apart!"
Haruna's words were spoken too late, however. Risa ended up being caught in the tall tornado that spun in the clockwise direction with its winds being quite severe, and she couldn't stop herself from being spun around in midair with an intense amount of force. As she was trapped in the vortex, Risa briefly saw some of the winds forming a circle of spiky wing-shaped winds around the tornado's edges. The wing-shaped winds soon detonated one by one, their blasts harming Risa with their high amount of power, and they ended up making her be thrusted into different blasts! No matter which way Risa was moving, she would be caught in an intense blast of Wind Magic. That also applied to the tall tower of winds, which detonated in a forest green blast that had an immense amount of brightness in that shade of green for almost all of the town's citizens to see it while Risa let out another scream of excruciating pain.
Risa soon felt more pain from how the spell's aftereffect involved its gusts of Wind Magic becoming spikes that slammed themselves against Risa. The air pressure crunched down on her body before exploding, almost like fangs or talons were roughly harming her body, and that only made Risa scream in more pain while she was heavily bruised. Several of those bruises were bleeding, really making Risa seem like she was torn apart by Yaeko's spell, and the psychic mage was badly wounded to where she couldn't even propel herself in a different direction with even the weakest kick. Her feet were just as shaky as the rest of her body, which no longer had the enhanced Stellar Psi spell surrounding it, and not being able to stay air caused Risa to be at the mercy of the winds that came from the explosions.
The powerful winds sent her falling down to the cloud where Yaeko was located, only to feel Yaeko harshly raise her left fist to aggressively punch Risa in her stomach, and Risa could faintly see the forest green aura surrounding her strong fist. Yaeko's fist soon had blood from Risa's mouth drip on to it, causing her to look disgusted, and Yaeko soon grabbed Risa by the front of her fuchsia pink belt to throw her off of the cloud like she was trash that belonged on the ground beneath her. Yaeko mistimed the proper moment for throwing Risa, though, and she groaned in a displeased manner from seeing her land on a somewhat lower cloud that had pink flames. She watched Risa weakly crawl towards some magenta pink flames while her eyes tried to maintain consciousness, and the sight of her opponent now struggling made Yaeko feel like her next fusion spell could be Kaze's Tornado of Exclaibur to make this battle reach its end. However, Yaeko decided to give her heavily-wounded opponent a small bit of information before her upcoming death.
"Risa Ryusei of Parmanie Town, at least you can rest assured that you won't be the first psychic wizard who will be buried in our town for trying to interfere with our perfume. In fact, a man with Psychic Magic had been sent by the Magic Council to investigate Ryokufū Town's outbreak of our sweet perfume's aroma right after Haruna and her employees left. Of course, them running away and him arriving in Ryokufū Town meant that we were satisfied with killing someone who looked just as hideous as a person with dark green hair." Yaeko explained with an amused look on her face, before lightly pushing up her glasses with her left hand's middle finger while looking at Risa.
Risa weakly asked her while trying to stand up, looking quite exhausted, "You... killed one of my town's mages, even... after I briefly became Parmanie Town's princess? His hair color... wasn't even the one you... despised the most, but you guys were... that vicious to commit a hate-filled crime for the fun of it?"
"That's exactly right, Risa Ryusei! For a fashion-loving girl, you're actually not as dumb as your fashion choices make you seem to be! Maybe you probably heard of Koji Hogosuru, a man who stole a badge to investigate the research facility, but he got killed for figuring out our perfume's formula and possible ways to make his own perfumes for counteracting it. Of course, his chances of experimenting were gone after we experimented fusion spells on someone who tried to claim that we were wrong to conduct unethical experiments." Yaeko shouted down to her with an impressed look on her eyes, the feeling of sadistic amusement in her eyes from remembering Koji's screams.
Risa sternly asked her while managing to put her hands into the magenta flames, absorbing their power with her hair starting to cover her eyes, "You had the nerve to treat one of my town's wizards like a test subject? Even though I dislike Koji for what he and others under Kyoko put me through, do you really think I'll let you off so easily for doing something like that? Isn't that just as evil as how you people wanted to kill Haruna when she had been framed, and didn't you want to even kill a little girl like Kusabue?"
Thinking about how these researchers harmed several people as part of their research only made Risa absorb more magenta flames while she let the magenta aura surround her body, and she activated the spell called Psychic Cosmic Rings. She made her right hand quickly be behind her left hand while two magenta pink orbs were created in her hands, but the one in her left hand absorbed the one in her right hand. The sphere that remained ended up having three magenta rings appear around it in a triangle, but Risa immediately grabbed some flames that were in a cerise shade of pink and plain shade of pink for them all to end up touching the sphere. When that happened, four plain pink flames largely shot up from Risa's hand while three cerise pink rings appeared to form an upside-down triangle that was currently alongside the triangle that was right-side up. The heat from this upgraded spell and fusion spell made Risa feel warmer, and its energy began to heal her wounds. She was able to stand up again without any problems, and Risa threw the fusion spell upward while foreseeing its effect.
"Cerise Psychic Cosmic Rings of Magenta's Psi Trio!" Risa exclaimed with a fierce look in her eyes, before using Stellar Psi again to accelerate her spell's ascent up towards the cloud.
Yaeko asked aloud with a shocked facial expression, seeing the flames start to curve up towards the bottom of the cloud, "She's still able to fight me?! How come this spell didn't come up in my research?!"
"You can gladly view your notes as facts on my spells, but being emotional can gladly help me improvise!" Risa stated with a stern facial expression, as she applied Psychic Magic to her feet for her to jump into the air.
Risa's improvisation definitely helped her catch Yaeko off guard, and she watched her spell create six consecutive blasts that were spherical while they were quite large. The first aftereffect of the magenta-colored and cerise-colored blasts were that they made Risa be pulled up towards them at high speeds, but the second aftereffect made Yaeko be forced down on to the cloud while the waves of Psychic Magic were crushing her body. That wasn't as bad as the third effect, which made the four flames curve upward at rapid speeds to all strike Yaeko at the exact same time, and she let out screams of tremendous pain from feeling the flames create several fiery explosions around her. They had been just as painful as the blasts, which were still engulfing her to where she was becoming severely bruised, and Yaeko couldn't even put enough magic into the Sky Garden Cloud for it to have a sufficient amount of durability. It soon ended up bursting, prompting Yaeko to push herself towards quickly jumping on to a Sky Garden Cloud that was far away, and seeing Risa smile like she'd easily win only made Yaeko scowl in anger. She made the matcha green and moss green shades of magic engulf her body, before adding the forest green aura, and Yaeko narrowed her eyes at how she wouldn't let a tactical princess beat a strategic researcher.
As Haruna took notice of Yaeko powering herself up again for more of her strong attacks to be unleashed, she looked over at Risa to see her looking quite fierce. Risa wasn't even scared to take on Yaeko, regardless of what level her fusion spells were at, and Risa began to grin confidently. That grin of confidence made Haruna just sit down on her Sky Garden Cloud, amazed that a princess of Parmanie Town had such a brave and strong mentality while she seemed to have found her strength from caring for others. That seemed to be fueling Risa's motivating to not lose, and even getting badly harmed wouldn't make her think about running away.
Haruna recalled how she had ran away from Ryokufū Town for months, only caring about herself while wanting to use mages as tools to solve her problems without really doing much on her own, and realizing that Risa contrasted her views with the added determination of great leader made Haruna widen her eyes with realization. Surviving to be the inheritor of Ryokufū Town required more than just wanting to help the town thrive without making any noticeable efforts, and relying on other researchers or doctors to create a cure had been something that made Haruna look ashamed. She wondered if the mages who she viewed as sacrifices to get into the sky would've wanted her to be a leader who didn't even argue after getting her research rejected, and Haruna had a shameful look in her eyes from wondering if her selfishness put people like Rogue in situations where promises of catching up with the group couldn't be kept.
Meanwhile, in the research lab...
Rogue entered the entrance of Ryokufū Town's lab that had been sealed, and he used his nose to specifically look for Yukino's scent. She and those younger mages hadn't been in the forest, making Rogue think that they went in here, and he wasted no time with going on the same path as their scents. Rogue quickly reached the area for botanical research, seeing plants and flowers organized in various fields while certain signs pertained to certain plants, but there were some plants that couldn't even be sniffed directly or have their aromas blowing in the wind.
That explained why some male and female researchers with green hair wore face masks, and Rogue held his breath while running down the same path where Yukino's scent had been lingering. The smell of Yukino stopped at a door that seemed like it had recently been closed, but the smell of Kusabue and her strange breath were prominent to detect because of how Rogue focused his enhanced hearing to single out that sound-creating mage. He instantly ran up the stairs at high speeds, his presence only being sensed faintly by mages who doubled as researchers, and Rogue felt glad to not be caught by any employees while they would probably just assume that someone made a breeze blow through the botanical gardens.
Rogue soon felt a breeze of air at the top of the neon green stairs, as the door to one lab was slightly open, and Rogue opened the door to see beakers of neon green powder with green leaves stuffed into them. The beakers were on a circular black conveyor belt that constantly rotated to dispense leaves into the beakers, and the powder was coming from the circular bowl-like top of the dark green machine that had remaining neon green liquid sinking down into its hole for that Plant Magic to become neon green leaves that would turn into powder. Those leaves were different than the ones in other shades of green, since Rogue detected that they were infused with Sosai's magic. The leaves that weren't containing Sosai's magic were fusing with the powder, before dissolving to make a neon green aura and forest green aura quickly come up from the beakers in the form of a green aroma that Rogue could visibly see, and the air gave off the same bitter smell as Sosai's powder. The antagonist's notes were still with Rogue, who proceeded to look at them, and one paper informed him of how the pills could expand the range of the bitter herbal solution if they were mixed in with any of the sweetest-smelling leaves.
As Rogue put the bottle of bitter powder pills on the neon green rectangular table that was closest to the hexagonal-shaped machine, his red eyes noticed how there were other duplicates of this operational machine in the room. The other five machines all had their conveyor belts spinning in a clockwise manner while they even had automatic green buttons turned on for firmly twisting green bottle caps on to the beakers of powder, and the machines contained different green leaves that pertained to different plants. They were all being mixed in with the same powder from Sosai's Plant-Make Magic, but seeing the neon green pills be dispensed into beakers to increase the amount of powder in them made Rogue wonder if the first machine was the prototype that got copied. After all, it didn't have the upgraded functions of the machines that were created by the technical experts in the research lab. As Rogue got up to approach a dark green desk at the back at the room with a portrait of Sosai above it to signify that this was the room for a Head Herbalist, he detected the familiar scents who came into the room.
"Rogue-sama, you're okay! It's nice that you showed up, but I hope that everyone else is okay." Yukino happily stated to Rogue with a very happy smile on her face, before calmly talking to him.
The shadow dragon slayer turned around to respond with a nice smile on his face, before frowning at Yukino's bruised body, "Yukino, I'm glad that you're okay and it seems like we both won our fights. Although, you didn't have a healer. It's too bad that Risa's probably quite far away, but I can still sense her magic right now."
"If she's fighting Sosai or Yaeko of the Green Meadow's Five Groves, then your friend would definitely hate them for seeing this floor's research by itself. We're not at Yaeko's sector yet, but..." Kūkiatsu told the Sabertooth mages with a look of unease on his face while his eyes truly showed discomfort.
Kusabue added while looking at Rogue with a dazed look on her face, still under the effects of the leaves that she ate, "My big brother didn't like the research... Powder sprayed into faces... Everything is spinning, and the herbs smell horribly bitter."
Upon hearing what Kūkiatsu and Kusabue told him, Rogue hurriedly grabbed the papers. He took them out of the room while Kusabue grabbed the bottle of pills, and everyone quickly followed him down the hallway that had neon green square tiles matching the plain green doors. The doors went well with the olive green walls, which were the color of walls for every room on this floor. Rogue peeked into one room to see some researchers holding clipboards while they were teaching citizens how to create piles of the neon green powder for them to supposedly mix with their Plant Magic for them to become stronger, but he soon noticed how those people became sick from inhaling the Plant-Make Magic's powder. One woman even started having sickly coughs, but that only made one researcher blow more powder into her face like a test subject that needed more exposure to a deadly virus.
That woman and the other test subjects were soon exposed to neon green explosions that were in a small size, but the pain of their weak magic only added to how the bitter powder was making those people be quite sick. Rogue and the other protagonists heard coughs coming from another room, which featured a female researcher making kids consume leaves with the powder heavily covering them, and even the teenagers choked on sweet leaves that soon tasted very bitter. One young girl who loudly spat out the bitter leaves ended up dealing with the researcher approaching her to chew up some dark green leaves that were on her plate, before spitting them out on the girl's skin to make the neon green corrosive liquid burn her skin. The girl with light green hair screamed in pain from the burning sensation, before the ingested powder made her sneeze while feeling extremely feverish. However, that wasn't the only type of horrible experimentation where people unfortunately felt heat.
There was an adjacent room where people were being struck with neon green spells of Plant Magic and Plant-Make Magic while the powder on the forest green grass exploded to burn their feet, but those people screaming in pain wasn't the just the worst aspect of that experiment. The test subjects who had dark green hair were hit with higher quantities of spells that created the explosive powder, as well as being struck with spells that were viewed to be powerful, and people who had their hair in lighter shades of green were hit with a lower number of spells that weren't as dangerous. Despite that fact, all of the test subjects looked heavily bruised and bloodied while the researcher with olive green hair merely wrote about his findings on the clipboard. He had been writing while some people who saw Rogue tried to run straight towards the door, but the researcher took out a beaker of powder from his lab coat with melted leaves providing the slight amount of liquid in the solution. He purposely splashed the contents of the beaker on to the test subjects, making them scream in more pain before they felt extremely sick to the point of falling over in tremendous pain from the sickly mixture. Upon seeing the researcher slowly turn around, Rogue and his friends ran to the end of the hallway while Rogue seemed to be the most horrified.
"These types of experiments are so cruel, and they have to be stopped! If the mayor's not sensible or in charge, then who exactly is allowing all of this to happen?!" Rogue told Kūkiatsu in a soft whisper while feeling disgusted, before sternly asking him how the town could let the improper research escalate to this level.
Kūkiatsu explained to him while still looking scared and upset about the situation, "Those researchers who we encountered in the forest are mainly responsible for our town's problems, since they most likely killed our previous leader and judge people based on how the leader before him ran the town like a discriminatory tyrant. Those researchers follow his views, and they call themselves the Green Meadow's Five Groves. Yaeko is said to be much stronger than Harui. and she might beat-"
"Don't be stupid enough to have doubts, you dummy! Kūkiatsu, you wanted to defeat two of them because of how they caused us trouble! We haven't been training for months to let them fatally harm our family again, or fatally harm our new friends! You may want us to be safe, Kūkiatsu, but you know that the right choice is to fight as hard as we can to get rid of wizards who harm innocent people!" Kusabue explained to Kūkiatsu with a stern look on her face, as she was now feeling quite angry from eating those leaves.
The thought of fighting against Yaeko made Kūkiatsu feel quite fearful, as he didn't want to die or see Kusabue get badly hurt again. He felt like they would only be putting themselves at risk by challenging the stronger researcher to a fight, but he soon remembered how his mother had wanted him to inform a guild of what had been happening. He chose to not do that, since Yaeko seemed like a strong mage who could've probably defeated people from any of the nearby legal guilds such as Lamia Scale, and not doing anything when the problem first arose made Kūkiatsu have an ashamed look in his eyes. He felt like the mages from Sabertooth wouldn't have been fighting so hard if he had been much stronger, and passing up the opportunity to fight a wind-wielding mage like Yaeko was like throwing away any chance for the sickly perfume to be stopped. Even if the perfume's other creators were gone, Yaeko could still manufacture it and keep Ryokufū Town filled with citizens getting sick.
Kūkiatsu didn't want more people to die, and he didn't want to be in a town where Yaeko or her superiors could recruit more discriminatory researchers to aid them in making sickly perfumes in other scents. As Kūkiatsu wondered if this lab was making other deadly aromas of perfume, his eyes widened with a bit of realization from thinking about how finding Yaeko and Risa didn't just involve sensing magic. He noticed that the group was right in front of the surveillance room pertaining to this floor, and Kūkiatsu slid the Master Key into the door's slot. The dark green button on the door soon shined in a light green color, allowing the group to enter, and barging into the room only made Kūkiatsu see that a single juniper green Surveillance Lacrima Crystal was on the olive green desk in this room while the orb had a juniper green aura flowing outward towards the walls to reach the smaller Surveillance Lacrima Crystal orbs that were cleverly hidden in the outside walls of the green building.
Since the person with magic in the shade of juniper green didn't seem to be managing the research cameras or be on their official break to order to someone else to manage them, Kūkiatsu tapped the orb to turn it on. After juniper green beams of light emanated from it, Kūkiatsu rubbed his hands downward on the orb to simply reach the option for watching the Sky Garden Clouds. Kūkiatsu wondered if he could find Yaeko or Risa from the footage of a camera that was inside of a very high cloud, and he pressed an option for recorded footage to see that Risa had been jumping on the air like a user of Wind Magic while Yaeko was making her dodge beams from a fusion spell.
"Your friend Risa is in the sky with Yaeko right now, so all of those winds would help me have my Wind Magic at an enhanced level for anything that may happen. Kusabue will join me, since we're a team. I hope that leaving you two here is the most logical choice, but just know that you can get off this floor by taking the nearest staircase upwards." Kūkiatsu explained to Rogue and Yukino with a stern look on his face, before stepping aside to let them see the recorded footage.
Rogue told Kūkiatsu in an emotionless tone while turning around to frown at him, "Risa can handle herself against that mage, so don't intervene. Just stay out of range until you feel like there's a chance for you to fight without getting harmed too badly."
"Speaking of not getting harmed, Rogue-sama, we should probably turn of this camera. That will greatly help us with not getting caught by other cameras on this floor." Yukino told her friend with a nice smile on her face, as Kūkiatsu put the Master Key in her left hand for Yukino to have it.
Yukino put her hands on the orb, before rubbing downward to simply reach the option for shutting off the camera, and Yukino gently pressed that option with her left hand to turn off the Surveillance Lacrima Crystal. She and her friends heard it quietly be turned off, before the juniper green light faded from it entirely. The absence of that light also made the aura fade away, causing the cameras in the lab's walls to shut off. With those cameras now off, no one on video could be seen recently entering the research lab from its sealed entrance. Kūkiatsu chose to not go back there with Kusabue, however, and he went up the neon green stairs that soon became forest green to signify that he'd be going up to the third floor with Kusabue.
She quickly followed him while feeling her body still be wobbly from eating the leaves, and Kūkiatsu helped her climb up the staircase for them to reach the third important sector of the research lab. Kūkiatsu was quick to take his sister down a very long hallway in that sector, however, and he wasn't going to explore Yaeko's sector. Instead, he would try to reach Yaeko and Risa by getting on a Sky Garden Cloud that he personally preferred over the others. He didn't prefer that particular Sky Garden Cloud for speed, but he liked where it was located.
The location of that Sky Garden Cloud was actually near an important place where Kūkiatsu liked to observe the most beautiful flowers, along with some trees, and Kūkiatsu hoped that none of the battles would involve that particular place getting harmed. The route to reaching that place would also involve taking a Sky Garden Cloud to get there, since the researchers never made an actual straight route to that location, but being on a Sky Garden Cloud would benefit Kūkiatsu from how he could also have a way to help his friends get past another obstacle that would probably be near the research lab's entrance on the west side of the town where he was exiting the lab with Kusabue for their next methodical idea to begin.
How was Chapter 38? Feel free to tell me your thoughts on it. Lucy and Sting are now on their way towards catching up with Ayane and Fūsoku for the opportunity to get the fifth legendary ring, but Risa is fighting hard against Yaeko! It's quite interesting for someone who's fashionable with clothing to go up against someone who only wants their spells to have beauty. Risa shall definitely try to win that battle, and she's even convincing Haruna to not lead Ryokufū Town with the attitude of caring only for herself. Also, Rogue's battle in the previous chapter only lasted for that sole chapter because of how he'll have much more to do in a future fight later on in the story. Thinking ahead is important, just as how the researchers have been trying to do. By the way, the matcha green shade pertaining to some of Yaeko's spells is green like high-quality matcha green powder for delicious matcha green tea. Just to let you know. Anyway, this is the fifth part of the Emerald Wind Arc! I'll update soon. :)
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