Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Taylor

I knew that there would be trouble today when I walked into World Issues to find that my desk had had what looked and smelled like orange soda poured all over it. I sighed and reached into my bag. Madison Clements, the 'cute' manipulative bitch friend of Emma and Sophia, was in this class with me and had a habit of pouring crap on my desk, my possessions, and me. As I was sick of this, I started packing a towel, which I retrieved and used to clean my desk. I wish I'd had a camera, the look on Madison's face was priceless.

Honestly, there were a lot of simple solutions to some of the more irritating problems that I'd had to deal with on a day to day basis for the last year and a half that I'd just never thought of until I'd talked with Opal about my problems. For example, staying after class and lying to the teacher, claiming to have a dentist appointment the day an assignment that one has worked hard on was due and asking, pretty please, if one could email a digital copy to the teacher in order to prevent said assignment from being stolen or destroyed by one of three assholes. Then I just show up to class with a claim that my dentist had to reschedule the appointment and I'm gold-'Mr. G,' the wannabe 'Cool Teacher' who taught world issues had eaten it up, and my paper on Muramasa was safe. It'd probably only work once or twice, Gladly wasn't that stupid, but I'd figure something else out in time for the next assignment.

Speak of the Devil, there was the man now. Mr. Gladly was a short, youthful-looking man, probably not that much older than we were, who could easily pass for a student if he wanted to. He was the kind of teacher who cared more about being liked than about teaching, and I hated him. He tended to give lots of group work, which was rough on students with no friends in a class full of bullies, and mostly just let the class do what they wanted… Which wouldn't be so bad if he didn't also cater to the popular kids, who were in my experience the most likely to be complete and utter jackasses to other students. Thus, I had to put up with a lot of shit in this class.

"Hello class," the man said with an obnoxious smile. "I'm so sorry that it took so long, but I've finally got your essays on your chosen foreign heroes graded. My bad, I had some business that ate up a bunch of time." I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "But first, I believe a promised a reward to the writer of the best paper," he said, pulling a candy bar from his own bag. This was one of his gimmicks, offering treats or prizes to whichever person or group did the best on whatever his idea of a fun assignment was this week. I was preparing to just sit quietly when there was suddenly a bar of chocolate flying at my head, which I barely managed to catch.

"Congratulations, Taylor," Gladly said either oblivious to or ignoring my fumble. "Not only was your paper one of the best researched and best written, but I'd never even heard of Muramasa until I read your paper."

"Then how do you know that Taylor didn't make them up?" Asked one of Madison's lackies, some girl named Julia.

"Because Google exists," Gladly replied, "but good on you for being skeptical." ...He was honestly trying to please everyone, wasn't he?

He handed back the papers-I noted my 100-and class progressed as normal. Well, mostly normal. I'd been made the center of attention for a moment, and throughout the class, I could feel the stares-some disdainful, some curious, boring into me. A lot at first, but always a little throughout the entire class.

It was all I could do to keep my composure as I quickly left the class at the end of the period, my nerves were so shot. I didn't normally patrol on school nights, but I'd need to burn off some steam tonight.

F/KLPT

Brockton Bay at night was peaceful up until it wasn't. Flying above the city, it looked beautiful even though it was a festering shithole at ground level. It was a paradox I'd noted several times while training, patrolling, or just taking a relaxing flight, but even that contrast was beautiful in its own way.

And there was the interruption to the peace. A loud and shrill alarm coming from a brick storefront in one of the middling neighborhoods of the city. Before the building were three large, vaguely canine monsters with ugly spikes of protruding bone and exposed muscles. They were terrifying, but I didn't let it show as I landed in front the shop, a jewelry store judging from the sign.

As I landed, four people-three of them about my age-emerged from the store in a hurry. A tall, muscular man in bike leathers and a helmet with a skull in the front, a girl with loose blonde hair and a domino mask dressed in skintight purple with a bag on her back, a thin boy dressed in effeminate, foppish attire, dark curly hair, and a face hidden by a Venetian mask and silver coronet. He carried a scepter. The final member was a girl with a brutish figure, dressed in street clothes other than the fur trimmed collar and the cheap plastic rottweiler mask. The man in the leathers cursed when he saw me.

I swung Opal and pointed her towards them. "Return the jewels to their rightful place and surrender," I said in my best heroic voice, "or else."

"Look," said the boy in the Renaissance-style costume, "we've already got an effeminate guy with dark curly hair who uses a scepter with a royalty theme in this city, and I was here first. You need to… Wait, you're a chick! Sorry, forget I said anything." I resisted the urge to blast him in the crotch. That wouldn't be very heroic of me.

"Not the time for jokes, Regent!" chastised the blonde in a voice much deeper than I would have expected looking at her.

"Brutus," came the voice of Dog-Girl, "hur-"

"No," Skull-Mask interrupted with a raise of his hand. Smoke blacker than the darkest of nights was flowing out of him, obscuring parts of his body and creating the image of a floating skull in darkness. Then he ran towards me. I changed my stance, preparing for one on one combat before the darkness surged out of him and everything was blacker than pitch.

I couldn't see, I couldn't hear. I was almost afraid to breathe. Something struck my legs and knocked me off balance. I felt a shove on my chest and fell on my ass. I tried to push myself up but couldn't find the ground. Next, I felt a tug and Opal was torn from my hand. Not knowing what else to do, I started flailing around hoping to strike the bastard at least once but my fists met nothing.

Eventually, I managed to get my balance and stand to my feet, but it was still dark. I twisted around, looking for light, but all I managed to do was destroy what little sense of direction I had right now. I didn't know how long I stood there, lost in the darkness until I started feeling a strong breeze from behind me. Soon after, the darkness began to disperse. I turned just in time to see Armsmaster standing beside his motorcycle, some kind of fan at the end of a staff pointed right at the heart of the darkness.

"Princess!?" I heard Opal calling out as she flew around. "Princess, where are you!?"

"Over here!" I called to her.

She flew to me and I grasped her handle gently. "Are you alright? Did that brute hurt you?"

"I'm fine," I answered. "He knocked me down but I'm not hurt." Well, my pride was. Not even Rune had gotten away that easily.

Armsmaster approached me. "I take it that your encounter with the Undersiders didn't go as well as you'd have hoped?"

"Is that who those were?"

"If not," the armored hero began, "then one of the tinkers in this city has found a way to replicate their leader's powers."

"The guy in the skull-mask?"

"Grue. Moderately skilled physical combatant," Armsmaster explained, "Shaker/Stranger power of darkness generation. Believed to be an aficionado of classic computer games." The fan stopped and it folded into the ax head of his famous halberd. "The others are Regent, a Master who can make people trip and spasm, Tattletale, a girl who claims to be telepathic, though as of now we suspect some sort of precognition or clairvoyance, and Hellhound, a Master who can transform the dogs under her control into biological tanks."

"She doesn't control them," I corrected.

"What?"

"If she's the one I think she was," I explained, "then she was about to order one called Brutus to do something before this Grue did his thing with the darkness."

"That… Is valuable information." The more experienced hero said. That made me feel a little better.

"Do you need me for anything, or..."

"I can report this in myself," the Hero declared. I turned to leave but just before I took off he called out to me. "Princess," he said, "the Undersiders are punks and cowards who'd prefer to outwit their enemies, but usually run away from anyone they consider a genuine threat. We know that they've outwitted Lung at least once, but they chose to run from you. In your shoes, I'd take it as a compliment."

He said nothing else and I didn't respond, but I did smile a little bit as I flew away.

F/KLPT

"So, that was certainly a something," Brian said as we walked out of the theater. We'd managed to get together and catch the movie he'd had to cancel on last weekend.

"That it was," I answered half-heartedly, "a lot of swear words in that one."

"And a lot of sex jokes that weren't hinted at in the trailer," Brian added.

"And that 'joke' conflating all Siberian people to The Siberian?" I questioned.

"Terrible taste."

Then we both started laughing. "Do you think," I asked between huffs, "do you think they made it that bad on purpose?"

"I don't think you can do that on purpose," Brian answered.

I nodded and we began walking, heading towards the bus station. A few moments later, as we passed an alley, I heard a somewhat familiar voice say "You!"

I turned and saw a blonde girl of around my age, one who was a little bit familiar. "Excuse me?"

"Hebe," she said, "race traitor. Close enough." She said. "I knew you looked familiar."

Brian turned to face her too. He cracked his knuckles and took a combat stance. "I think you should leave."

It clicked for me, who this was, just as she reached into her pocket and pulled out some gravel. "Brian, get back. She's a cape." The gravel in Rune's hands began to levitate and twist around itself. I did a quick look around to see if anyone else was nearby or else could see me, in case I needed to trance, and reached for my own pocket.

"Oh, this is adorable," Rune said with an ironic smile. "I take it that your boy doesn't know, Princess?" Brian's eye twitched.

"Brian," I said, "down the alley. And stand back."

"What?"

"Now!" I jumped and ran to the chainlink fence halfway down the long alleyway and turned in time to see that Brian had joined me. "And now we're cornered, now what?"

Rune stepped into the opening of the alleyway just in time for me to draw a card and beckon Opal to come out of hiding. "Stand back." I slapped the card onto Opal and shouted: "Include: Lancer!"

The sudden appearance of a massive red spear made Brian step back just enough that I could spin Gae Bolg Alternative and twirl it around to point at Rune. "Back off," I said with all the command I could muster, "I won't make the same mistake twice." I left her to guess at what the mistake was, the last time we fought.

She smiled again, then laughed, "keep an eye on him. I doubt all the Celtic magic in the world can keep him safe if you're not there."

And then she pocketed her gravel and walked away. Brian and I were both silent for a moment, then he ran to the mouth of the alleyway and checked the direction she'd gone.

"She's gone," he said. Another pause. "Well, that happened."

"Yeah." I ejected the card from Opal and let her fly free. "I guess I've got some explaining to do?"

"I already knew that you were a cape," Brian said. "My sister has no poker face," he explained, "and if you weren't it would be a major coincidence that she got found by a hero not long after I told you she was missing." It was then that I decided that I really needed to work on my subtlety.

"Oh… Uh, there's some stuff I can do," I began, "that can make a dwelling safer. Harder to find if you mean harm, harder to get into uninvited. I've already done it to my house and Lisa's apartment, so if you'd like…?"

"I'm not worried about her," he said reassuringly, "but if it's got you that worried then I don't see the harm. Just give me a few days to clean up first." I think he was trying to make a single guy apartment joke, but that stereotype didn't really fit with what I know of him.

I was about to answer him when Opal suddenly flew up to him. "Greetings, Brian. I am Magical Opal, and it's so nice to properly meet you."

"Likewise," Brian answered in a tone that told me that he had no idea how to respond and was just trying to be polite.

Opal hummed. "You will behave in a gentlemanly manner and take proper care of my Princess or there will be a reckoning so severe that-"

"Opal!" I shouted. "Hair. Now."

Opal stopped in her tracks, the flew back and hid in my hair without another word.

"I'm sorry about her," I explained, "she doesn't always get proper behavior." I heard her mumble about true properness.

"It's okay," he said, "believe it or not it's not the strangest or most severe threat I've ever gotten. We have to hurry," he said changing subjects, "or you're going to miss your bus."

As we started again towards the bus stop, he turned to me and asked: "So, Princess, huh?"

I felt the heat rising in my face as I mumbled, "it's a long story."

F/KLPT

I was in the middle of a routine patrol. There was a fire in the distance, deep in the Docks, but I'd seen a fire engine and PRT vans heading that way and I wasn't sure that anything I could do would help so I instead went towards a more middling region of town. That's when I saw them.

The Undersiders were tearing off into the night on the backs of Hellhounds monsters. Once more, Tattletale was carrying something but from this high up I couldn't see what, and they were heading back towards the docks. None of them were looking up. It took me only a moment to decide to follow them, get them when their guard was down, then take them out and bring them in.

Ten minutes later, just as I was about to make my move, I noticed a flash of metallic scales down an alleyway in the middle of the docks, with red-and-green-clad figures following it. A moment later, Lung burst through a pile of garbage that had been blocking off the alley just as the Undersiders passed it. The dragon-like man took one look at the teenage villains and shoved one of the monster-dogs, knocking all three and the four riders to the ground.

This was bad. The Undersiders were crooks, but they were still just kids. Lung was a killer and a sex-slaver. If they couldn't get away from this… I leveled Opal towards Lung, planning to blast him just hard enough to draw his attention and give the Undersiders a chance to escape when Lung suddenly twisted around.

I heard it a moment after he did, the engine of a motorcycle. I looked to where Lung was looking just in time to see a shimmer and for Armsmaster to near literally appear out of nowhere. He did something with his wrists on the handles, and twin gouts of fire erupted from the back, causing the armored hero and his metal steed to at least double in speed. He suddenly pulled up causing the front and then the rear wheel to lift off from the ground, allowing Armsmaster to slam the front wheel into Lung and send the man flying a good ten feet through the air. Lung landed in a heap, and Armsmaster landed safely, turned around on a dime, and drove back to the Undersiders, who were climbing back up. He said something that I didn't catch, Tattletale nodded, and they all climbed back on their dogs and got the hell out of Dodge. Armsmaster then turned back to face Lung, paying no mind to the five armed Bad Boyz who'd watched the whole thing like deer caught in headlights.

"Opal," I asked, "did you see that?"

"I did indeed."

"That was the coolest thing I've ever seen."

Opal grumbled.

Lung pushed himself back up and roared. Armsmaster drew his halberd and revved his engine, and then the most famous hero and most infamous villain of Brockton Bay charged each other. The hero and villain engaged back and forth, Lung with his strength and might and Armsmaster with his cunning and gadgets. I was totally engaged in the fight below me and I knew that I'd never forget it as Lung and Armsmaster traded blows. For now, they seemed evenly matched-The hero would produce a taser but Lung's scales would thicken to protect him from the shock. Lung would burst into flames but Armsmaster would produce con-foam or some kind of flame retardant to extinguish the flames and slow Lung down, only for the dragon to escape confinement with a feat of strength.

Finally, Armsmaster managed to strike a decisive blow, cleaving through Lung's scales and producing what, from my vantage, looked to be a syringe from inside his Halberd. He made to jab it into Lung, but suddenly the leader of the Bad Boyz smacked the weapon away with enough force to throw it from Armsmaster's hands. The hero was clearly taken aback by this turn of events, which gave Lung enough time to send him flying with a fiery uppercut.

Lung seemed to shrink somewhat, and he began to laugh, a deep rumbling laugh that I could hear even from my vantage point. He began to slowly walk toward the downed hero. I was flying towards them before I'd even thought about it.

I grasped Opal with both hands and swung her, sending a crescent of mana to strike Lung's back.

"Ooh da fuh-uck dawes!?" He roared, his words apparently distorted by his transformation.

"Up here!" I called out, trying to draw his attention from Armsmaster long enough for the elder hero to get back up.

Lung turned to face me, his face scaled and almost catlike. Then he shrank, becoming noticeably more humanoid. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. "Why," he asked in a confused monotone, "am I being attacked by a high-class whore?" Opal grumbled.

Armsmaster was still down, I had to keep Lung's attention. He wasn't fighting yet, which was good, but… I steeled my nerves. The only thing I could think of was something that Opal had been pressuring me to do but that I'd refused until now.

"I'm no prostitute!" I shouted in my best approximation of a confident noblewoman's tones. "I, am a Hero of Justice! A cute wielder of the Second Sorcery, empowered by the Kaleidoscope to defeat villains likes you!" I took a combative pose, Opal pointed square at Lung's chest, and tried to ignore the dirty feeling crawling down my spine and keep the blood from rushing from my face. "Magical Girl Kaleid Liner Prisma-"

"Oh God, not this shit!" Lung interrupted. "You!" he said, gesturing to the five armed men and snapping them from the shock they'd been in. "Whichever one of you kills Sally the Witch here gets their pick of the new whores." The Bad Boyz looked at me. A flash of recognition crossed one of their faces and he dropped his weapon, a double-barreled shotgun, screamed, and ran off. "As does whoever tracks down and kills that coward when we're done here," Lung finished in a deadpan. I noted that the wounds from his fight with Armsmaster had already healed.

The four remaining gangsters aimed their weapons at me just in time to take a mana ball each to the gut. Each of them fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of them, and dropped their own weapons. Lung took a second look at me as I landed.

"It's gonna take more than your bargain barrel recruits to stop me, Lung," I said with my voice filled with confidence that I didn't have. To be honest, I was terrified at the prospect of fighting Lung.

Armsmaster had managed to push himself up. "Princess," he called out to me, "get out of here. Lung's too much for you to handle."

Lung responded by twisting around and launching a blast of fire at Armsmaster. I raised Opal and with a thought, a star-shaped barrier of my Mana appeared before the armored man to intercept the attack.

I reached for my card holster. "I'm sorry Armsmaster, but I can't just leave a fellow hero to die." I withdrew a card and held it out. "Class Card Saber Install: Phantasm Summon!"

I could have changed faster, but the full display with the magic circles and the eruptions of blue mana drew a hell of a lot of attention and would keep Lung's eyes on me, not Armsmaster. The mana cleared and I stood there in a clean, shining and shimmering silver-white version of the banded armor that the manifested Saber wore, with only the cloth under armor still black, and with gold knee pads and accents. Well, it wasn't quite the same. Saber had a helmet, while my head was adorned with a simple silver circlet. He also didn't have an exposed midriff, or a billowing blue and gold-trim cape coming out from his pauldrons. I tightly gripped the blue hilt of my sword. Where Saber's version had been a solid black, mine was gold and silver-white with designs in blue. I held the blade up in the proper two-handed stance of a greatsword wielder and glared at the dragon-like man before me, as though telling him to bring it even if I wished he wouldn't.

"Install?" He questioned. "I'm sorry, but I think you mean 'Honey Flash.' " Lung laughed again. "But if you're so eager to die here, little girl, I'll just have to oblige you." Lung charged at me, and I acted on instinct.

The next I knew, our positions had been reversed. He was where I'd been standing, I was in front of Armsmaster, and we'd each turned to face each other. Or rather, I faced Lung. The leader of the Azn Bad Boyz was too busy studying the bleeding slash I'd effortlessly carved into his armored chest.

"How?" he questioned after a moment, confusion and anger evidence in his voice. Clearly, he wasn't happy about the damage I'd inflicted.

"You can't sense it?" I asked, for once tonight feeling the confidence with which I spoke. "This weapon is Arondight, the blade of Sir Lancelot du Lac." I smiled. "One of the most powerful Holy Swords in existence surpassed only by King Arthur's own Excalibur. The Greatest and Most Noble of the Knights of the Round Table wielded this weapon on many adventures, but one legend, in particular, is important here. To answer your question," I said as I swung the sword and pointed the sharp tip directly at Lung's heart, "this is the sword of a Dragon Slayer!"