Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Taylor

"I'm ready when you are, Princess."

With Opal's declaration, I took a deep breath and went over the explanation for how this was supposed to work in my head. Magic was surprisingly complicated, as it turns out. I held out Opal and gently placed the Archer card on her head. "Class Card: Archer," I said in a calm monotone, "Include."

Opal and the card both glowed white and she changed shape in my hand. After a moment, I was holding Billy the Kid's ivory handled revolver. It was odd. I'd expected the gun to feel heavy in my hand, but it didn't. The Thunderer felt oddly familiar, as though I'd been using it my entire life.

I turned the gun over in my hands to examine it, but when I started to look inside the barrel the revolver suddenly shouted, "Do not point a gun at your face!" I dropped the gun and stumbled, falling to the basement floor and landing on my ass.

I heard a commotion from upstairs and after a moment Dad scrambled down the stairs. "Is everything alright?" he asked. "I heard shouting and… Taylor," Dad asked, "where did that gun come from?" He pointed to the revolver on the floor.

The revolver in question glowed and then turned back into Opal, the Archer card emerging from her with a comical pop and fluttering slowly to the ground. Opal flew up and bent sheepishly when she faced Dad. "I'm sorry we disturbed you, Mister Hebert," Opal began, "I was just teaching Taylor how to use the class cards, and-"

"And this involves turning into a gun?" Dad sounded incredulous.

"Yes, well..." Opal began weakly. I didn't let her finish.

"The cards have the power of a Heroic Spirit," I began. "I beat the hero a get the card, I can use their powers." I pushed myself up off of the floor. "Opal was teaching me how to use the Class Card to turn her into a hero's weapon and then she startled me."

"Okay," Dad said, "so, you've fought someone with a gun?" Oh crap. "Taylor," Dad asked in a serious 'Dad' tone, "did you get shot?"

I looked to Opal, who looked at me. Then I turned back to Dad. "Does it count if it was just a grazing hit that healed in half a minute?"

Dad stared at me for a moment, and then let out an exasperated sigh. "Okay Taylor," he said, "I've got two things to say. One, from now on, I want you to fill me in on everything you do during these card hunts."

"Okay Dad, that's fair."

"And two," Dad continued, "if you're going to be using a gun, I want you to take a gun safety class."

I blinked and looked to Opal. "That might be a bit… I mean, I only have the gun when Opal is…" I trailed off.

"On the one hand," Opal said with her handle bent to the right, "even base including should grant a small portion of Archer's firearm proficiency. On the other," Opal bent to the left, "you did just point a loaded revolver at your own face. A course on basic firearms safety wouldn't be inappropriate."

I glared at Opal, the traitor. "Okay, fine, I'll take a gun safety class… after I look up the relevant gun laws."

"I can help with that," Dad said with a smile, "but first, tell me about how these card hunts are going so far."

"Oh, well we found Archer in the parking lot at Winslow..."'

*F/KLPT*

Gun laws and regulations are weird, and I was kind of frightened by the implications of some of them. But, at least I was able to get into the safety class and do what needed to be done.

It turns out that Miss Militia did an incredibly amusing gun safety PSA involving a Muppet reject full of ketchup and an obviously fake shooting range. The acting was terrible and I could tell by her eyes that Miss Militia clearly wanted to "accidentally" shoot the writer of the script and not the dummy representing her friend from the shooting range. I choked on my drink laughing at it, it was so cheesy.

And that brings me to now. I raised Opal, in the form of Billy the Kid's Thunderer, and gently squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times, four, five, and once more. The ear muffs I was wearing dulled the shots to six low pops, and a moment after the last shot was fired I hit the switch to bring my paper target back over to me.

The gun safety class I'd taken had been taught at a shooting range that was not that far from Winslow. It felt appropriate in my mind that a place where thugs came to shoot things was so close to the school that all of the gangs recruit from. Even after the class had ended I'd made it a habit of coming to the range every so often. Firing a few rounds into a silhouette on a piece of paper was oddly relaxing. Not quite as much as flying was, but still. Besides, as the six holes in Mr. Target's sternum demonstrated, I was a pretty good shot. I don't know how much of that's me and how much of that is skill inherited from The Kid, and I don't know if I could pull the trigger against a real person, but still.

As I holstered Opal and folded up my target to leave, I noticed a bit of movement behind me and saw a blonde girl with a freckled face and green eyes about my age standing behind me when I turned to see what it was.

She gestured to her own ear muffs with a smile and then towards the room between the entrance and the range proper, where it was quieter. I followed the girl to the other room, somewhat hesitantly, and hung my borrowed set of earmuffs up on the hooked wall from whence it came.

"So," I asked the blonde, "what is it that you want?"

"Nothing bad," the girl said reassuringly, "you just stand out a bit around here." That was fair. The blonde was the only other teenage girl who I'd seen since I'd started coming here, too. Most of the people who come here were thugs. I swear, the other day I saw a member of Empire Eighty-Eight, the local neo-nazi gang, one of Skidmark's drug peddling Merchants, and a Bad Boy here at the same time just ignoring each other. I guess they have a truce or something.

'So, yeah," I answered, "I guess I do stand out a bit. So what brings a girl like you to the firing range?"

"Same reason I suspect you're here," she said with a smile, "a young girl like us in a town like this needs a piece if she's gonna be safe."

"Yeah, that's right," I lied. Going with her story was easier than coming up with something else.

"That and it's a good way to blow off steam," she said, still smiling, as she extended a hand to shake. "My name's Lisa, what's yours?"

"Taylor," I said as I took her hand. "Nice to meet you."

"The feeling is mutual," Lisa replied. I'd noticed that she smiled a lot.

I got a better look at her and noticed that while she was dressed down, it was in much nicer clothing that what I wore. "I've never seen you before. I take it you don't go to Winslow?"

"No, I've got my G.E.D." the girl replied.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I applied and tested for it after my parents died," Lisa replied in a manner so matter of fact that I stumbled without walking. "Yeah, sorry," she said, "I guess that's a bit too candid for a first meeting."

"Yeah, it was." I looked down. "You just seem so..." I trailed off.

"A bit upbeat to be talking about my parent's death?" Lisa finished for me. "I guess, but it was a while ago. Mom and Dad loved me and made sure I'd be taken care of in the event of their premature passing. It hurts, but they wouldn't have wanted me to be sad, so…" she finished with a shrug. I nodded in understanding, and she concluded, "Well, it was nice meeting you, I'll let you get going now."

I left the shooting range and my departure was initially uneventful, other than a vaguely familiar boy staring at me for a moment as I walked out the door. After a few moments, though, I heard a feminine laugh from behind me.

"If I'd known we were heading the same way I'd have walked with you," came Lisa's voice.

"It's funny how things like that happen," I said in reply.

"So," the blonde said, "I noticed that you use a revolver."

"Yeah. A Colt M1877 double action," I answered, "just like Billy the Kid used."

"That's interesting," Lisa said. "Are you a history buff?"

I thought about it for a minute. "I guess? My mom was a college professor."

"History?"

"No, English."

"Ahh," Lisa began in understanding. "You grew up in a house full of books, learned to read maybe a little early and have been in the habit ever since, and since you read a lot you pick up a lot of interesting facts."

"Exactly!" I laughed. "You know Lisa, you're pretty good at figuring things out."

The blonde was beside me now, and I got the impression that she was giving a wide smile. "It's a gift. What have you been reading recently."

"I'm kind of between books right now," I answered honestly. Thinking of the research I'd been doing and my work with Opal, I continued, "I'm thinking about looking for stories about great figures from history or mythology at the moment."

Lisa hummed. "I can't say I'm much of a reader, though I do enjoy a good Sherlock Holmes story every now and then."

"Doyle's mysteries are some of the best," I commented. "What's your favorite?"

Lisa gave a low noncommittal grunt. "I don't think I have one I'd call my favorite per se, though I do have a friend who insists that The Hound of Baskervilles is the best. Honestly," Lisa continued, "I don't think she's even read it, but she's a huge dog person and it has hound in the title." I laughed at what I assumed to be a joke. "Speaking of my friends, I have to meet up with them soon so I think this is where we part ways." We'd stopped at the edge of a street and I'd already gravitated towards the crosswalk while she was prepared to turn. "But I did enjoy talking with you and would like to do it again." Lisa reached into her purse and took out a pen and notepad. She scribbled out a quick note and handed it to me. "And this should be how you can contact me, please keep in touch," she said with a smile and went on her way.

I looked at the note, with a phone number, an email address, and a PHO handle written in a neat and tidy script. Did I just make a new friend?

*F/KLPT*

I touched down in a large vacant lot that I'd passed while walking with Lisa today. Opal had just happened to notice that a mirror world was present as we went passed and informed me as soon as I got home.

"Center of the lot?" I asked my magic wand.

"Exactly," Opal said in an upbeat yet elegant chirp, "you're really getting the hang of this."

"Thank you," I said before walking over and holding Opal out so that she could do her thing.

The first thing I'd noticed when the shift was done was that there was ice and snow everywhere, covering the ground and encrusting the buildings around the lot. I could feel high winds blowing around me, but oddly enough I didn't feel cold. Either my Princess of the Hooker People of the North outfit was better insulated than it looked or there were some perks to being a magical girl that Opal hadn't told me about yet.

"Ugghh," came a low moan from behind me. Great, this is the second time that a hero has taken me by surprise. I slowly turned around in the hope of being able to get a good look at the spirit before it attacked and gasped at what I saw.

Standing in the street, next to the frozen mirror of an abandoned car, was a woman, one who'd clearly been beautiful once, dressed in a tattered gray dress. She stood on her toes, though the heels of her tattered shoes had broken away long ago. Her graying red hair was a matted and unkempt mess exposing only a single yellow eye, like Rider's, though that was partially obscured by a torn bridal veil. There were these gold or brass… things, each easily the size of an exceptionally large man's fist, where her ears should have been, a huge spike, similar in color, coming from her forehead, and a ball made of the same metal at her hip. All of the metal garments were degraded and discolored. The woman was too thin, emaciated even. And her hands, visible through shredded gloves, were black from wrist to fingertip from frostbite, as were large stretches of the rest of her exposed skin. She was holding a staff or mace of some kind, a steel pole pitted with rust and white with frost with a massive sphere frozen solid and half buried in the snowbank next to it. "Uuggh!" she moaned again, and this time I could hear the pain and anguish in her voice.

"Opal," I said to my wand, "this doesn't feel right."

"Why not?"

"Opal, she's hurt."

"Princess," Opal began, " 'She' isn't a person. She's a mindless, corrupted, and evil copy of someone who already died a long time ago. 'She' is running on pure instincts at best. Besides, we do need that card."

"But-"

"Princess," Opal interrupted, "if helps your conscience, think of it like crushing a bug. Or perhaps like putting down an old and terminally rabid dog. Or cutting your wedding ring out of the turtle that ate it." That last one was a bit… Opal hummed as she thought, while the spirit moaned again. "Oh, or exorcising a restless spirit. Honestly, Princess, they're all applicable metaphors for this situation."

I still didn't like this. The spirit was just standing there, looking at me and occasionally moaning. I took a deep breath to steel my nerves and leveled Opal at her chest. I fired a large but otherwise basic prana canon at the woman in the tattered dress. She didn't move until near the last moment when she raised her hand with surprising agility and caught the canon blast bare handed. The ball of mana that resulted from the catch rapidly shrank until it vanished within her frostbitten palm.

Then she looked right at me, opened her mouth, and screamed. An inhumanly loud wail like anything I'd imagine a ghost or banshee emitting but a thousand times worse. The shout chilled me to the bones in a way that the ice and snow around me could not and then all sense was lost.

The next thing I knew, I was laying at the far end of the vacant lot, a sharp pain in my back from where I'd hit the building at the end, my front feeling as though I'd just been hit by a truck, and the rest of me feeling as though I'd been hit by a live wire.

"Opal," I said, "what the hell just happened?"

"I don't know," Opal said with a mild panic in her voice, "my senses were disrupted when the spirit screamed." I pulled myself up as I began to feel Opal healing my injuries but snapped to full awareness as I noticed the spirit charging at me, it's weapon held high above its head and crackling with lightning. It was all I could do to bring Opal up and invoke "Physical Protection!" before the electrified super-mace would crush or electrocute me.

And then the barrier of magical energy Opal and I created quite literally melted before my eyes and was sucked into the mace. So, I flew straight up at near top speed, and then to the far side of the street bordering the lot. I'd have gone further, but the strange frozen mirror world didn't go that far.

"Okay Opal, just to recap:" I inhaled. "It's deceptively pathetic looking, it hits like a truck, it has lightning powers, and it fucking eats magic!" I exhaled. "How do we beat it?"

"Language Princess," Opal chastised. "Now what happened to it not feeling right to fight the spirit."

"Well, apparently I'm less sympathetic to something when it's kicking my ass!"

"Calm down Princess," Opal said, "and let's try and thick through this. Our basic prana based attacks are ineffective, so try a physical attack."

Okay, that's good advice. I reached for my card holster, planning to shoot the damn thing, but I pulled the Rider card instead of Archer. I was about to put it back and grab the other one when the spirit I was fighting jumped up at me and began swinging it's electrified mace down towards me.

Thinking quickly, I slapped Rider's card onto Opal and with a shout of "Class Card Rider Include!" Opal became the weird shield-surfboard Prydwen. I held the shield up between me and the spirit just in time to block the strike.

"Bll-lass-ted!" Apparently, the spirit could talk after all. The mace, which I could now clearly see was made up of segments, opened up just a bit and the crackling of the electricity reached even greater peaks. It was then that I noticed that I was being pushed down at rapid speeds. "Trr-reee!"

I hit the ground at speed and force great enough to crack the sidewalk and an explosion of lightning hurled me back across the street and into the middle of the vacant lot.

"Princess," Opal began as she shifted back to her true form, the rider card floating from her and landing on my chest. "I would politely request that you not use me as a shield again unless the circumstances are dire." Opal made a sound, not unlike a wince. "It is undignified, and it is painful. Ouch."

I pushed myself out of the snow, again, and saw that the spirit was hunched over, in clear pain, and breathing heavily. I wasn't going to fall for that a second time.

"Okay, physical attack..." I exhaled, I was breathing heavily too. "Shoot it with Archer's gun?"

"Maybe." I didn't like the sound of that.

"What do you mean maybe?"

"What I mean," Opal began, "is that Archer's gun by itself is not a Noble Phantasm, a conceptual weapon, or Mystic Code such as myself."

"And?"

"Well, that means that it's an utterly mundane revolver-any mysteries it may have been used for are entirely from the skill of Billy the Kid." Opal hesitated for a moment before she continued. "And heroic spirits are usually categorically immune to any attack that is not conceptual, supernatural, or preternatural."

I blinked. "So what you're telling me is that I don't have anything that can hurt her?"

"Well, there's a chance that since I'm a mystic code, and one made from True Magic at that," some small part of my brain noted that I could practically hear the capital letters in 'True Magic,' "that the firearm would retain some aspect of my nature as a mystery and harm the spirit-" Who I noted was getting back up- "But I'm not sure."

"So," I said as I picked up Rider's card, slipped it into my card holster, and I prepared to make a run for it, "plan B?"

"I would have preferred to save this lesson for more controlled circumstances," Opal began, "but there is another level to using the class cards. Place Archer's card on the ground and then either step on it, hold it down, or touch my base to it."

I grabbed the western outlaw's card and pressed it to the ground. "Now what?!" The woman in the tattered dress was staring at us with intent in its visible eye.

"Picture yourself being temporarily overwritten by the conceptual nature and legend of Billy the Kid, then say "Class Card Archer Install: Phantasm Summon.' '"

I did what she said as best I could and shouted: "Class Card Archer Install: Phantasm Summon!"

The spirit screamed again, but the sound was cut off as a circle of mana with strange writing and symbols within formed under me and melted the ice and snow around me. Bursts of blue mana erupted from the ground around the circle, and an opaque aura of white and prismatic mana formed around me. I couldn't see what was happening but I felt my outfit changing and knowledge and skill flowing into my brain.

The light show cleared and I found the spirit charging at me and screaming, but I felt oddly calm-in mere moments I'd picked out six weak points on her her body and shot them all.

The spirit collapsed as she found a bullet in each ankle and each knee. She dropped her weapon as her shoulder and elbow were destroyed by two more bullets. She released a primal sounding roar of pain as she tried to push herself up on ruined limbs, while I reloaded and took aim at her chest.

I could feel Archer's skill and power coursing through my body and knew, almost by instinct, how to access the pinnacle of the outlaw's skill at marksmanship and-there! The spirit had managed to push herself up, and I'd noticed that she had some kind of regeneration judging from the condition of her limbs, but now I had a clear shot at her chest and with a cry of "Thunderer!" three gaping chest wounds exploded into existence on her body. The woman let out a last pained scream and faded from existence, leaving only a card behind.

I held the Thunderer to my face and blew the smoke from the barrel, before twirling and holstering the revolver like a character I'd seen in a movie.

"Damn that felt good," I said to no one in particular as I stepped forward to pick up my third card.

"Language, Princess" came Opal's voice from somewhere.

As I walked to the card I took note of how I was dressed. A long-sleeved beige dress shirt, gloves and tight pants of black leather, a black tie, a brown vest with swirling patterns, and wide, folded top cowboy boots adorned my body while the twin tails of a red scarf trailed behind me. A thick white belt and a similar strap on my thigh held my holstered revolver in place at my hip, and I was wearing some kind of hat-a quick examination revealed it to be a black Stetson. I was going to have to show Dad this "install" thing, and maybe take a look at myself in the mirror when I got home.

I plucked the card from the snow. Depicted on the card was a werewolf holding a giant cleaver, with the caption saying "Berserker."

"Three down," I said, "and if you're right Opal then there's four to go."