Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Taylor
Mister Saito jumped from the roof and landed on his feet in front of Lung and slashed at the larger man's chest. Lung leaned back to avoid the slash but I wasn't able to make out what happened next as I myself jumped down to join the fight. Lung's minions swarmed over to me, a dozen or so men who'd expended their gun's munitions on a failed execution.
Each of them had a knife, however, which they pulled. Caster wasn't meant for hand to hand combat, but I was still okay at it with her card installed. I was easily able to lean back and avoid the initial slashes, parry another by meeting his forearm with mine, and a well-placed sandal to the crotch drove back another and bought me some space.
I took a second to judge the scenario. The thugs who weren't cupping themselves were trying to stare me down, apparently judging best how to approach me as I judged them.
Further up the street, Lung was covered in metallic scales… I was impressed that Mister Saito had actually managed to drive Lung so far back in so short a time. Lung shot at swordsman with a blast of flame, but Mister Saito swung at the flame with his sword and the fire went out. It was almost like the sword ate the fire.
The tip of his blade scratched the pavement as he pulled back and frost started forming where it made contact. I think he'd be okay, at least for now, and-
My train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a flying mirror bashing someone in the head.
"Princess," Opal in the form of Tamamo's mirror said as my attention was drawn back to her and the thug she'd just bopped over the head. "Eat the eye candy later, we have work to do."
"I wasn't-"
I didn't get to finish my thought because the guy that Opal smacked wasn't the only one who'd worked up some nerve. They were all rushing me again and I didn't have much room to back up with Saito's shop and the civilians hiding inside behind me. I was decent enough at fighting, but Caster thrived at witchcraft and I needed room for that…
Caster was a shapeshifter. I could tell that she never used it based on the way her powers felt, but the power was still there…
I shoved one of the men back and then focused. In an instant, I was smaller. A fox on all fours darting between the legs of one of Lung's executioners. A few bounds later and I'd put enough distance to return to my human form and turn back to face them, drawing one of Caster's paper talismans.
"Guys?" one of the Bad Boyz started. "This is starting to look a lot like a story my grandma used to tell me."
"It can't be," another said. "Kitsune are supposed to turn into hot women, not pasty-skinned mops."
"Kitsune?" the first said again. "No, no. Kumiho. Malevolent fox spirits. Shapeshifting, magic powers. They stalk cemeteries and like to seduce boys and young men to eat their hearts and livers."
"She could be a huli jing?" A third young man said.
"She not a fox spirit!" Lung shouted from behind me. "She's a little bitch appropriating our iconography when she plays dress up with her tinker-tech!" And then there was the sound of a blade slicing flesh and I assumed that Mister Saito had it handled.
A man, not one of the ones who'd spoken, ran at me with his knife.
So I tossed my paper talisman at him and he fell to the ground as all of his strength was drained away.
"No, fuck this. I'm not messing with magic," the first man to speak up said. And then he took off running down a side alley. The man who'd called me too ugly to be a kitsune looked left and right and then followed.
I summed six paper talismans to each hand and held them up. "Look, I'm still kind of pissed about you all shooting my friend, but I'm more concerned about the lizard back there. If any of you are suddenly feeling superstitious like your friends..."
And most of them ran off. One stayed behind long enough to grab the guy I'd paralyzed by the legs and drag him off.
Opal rejoined me and I turned to face Lung.
Mister Saito was good at fighting capes.
In the time since Lung had spoken, he'd progressed to the point where he was a steel-scaled giant.
Trapped in a cage made of giant cruciform swords.
Mister Saito was about twenty or so feet away with his bow out. He held his motorized ice katana in one hand and it shifted. First, the blade straightened and shortened, then the handle extended out so that it resembled a spear before it shrank down to something that could be accurately called an arrow, which he knocked to his bow and fired.
The arrow sank into Lung's belly and ice formed around it. Lung roared and pulled the arrow from the wound, but caged in as he was that was all he could do.
Mister Saito created another sword and turned it into another arrow, and I figured that for the time being he had it handled.
But Lung escalated, growing stronger the more he was hurt and the longer a fight dragged out-he'd gained an inch in the time I'd been watching.
So, while Mister Saito peppered the dragon with ice-cold arrows, I focused on a branch of caster's magic that I hadn't dabbled much in.
Caster had mantras meant to bolster the power of her spells, and I started chanting one called Merciful sky.
Lung snarled. He shoved against the blades keeping him caged in and shattered them all.
He then leaped over Mister Saito and landed right in front of me. He struck me square in the belly with his closed fist.
Time slowed. I could feel muscles tear, organs rupture, and my spine shatter.
It hurt more than anything I could begin to describe.
Time sped up again. I hit the ground, and I couldn't feel anything from the waist down.
"Ooo… Little… Bit-Ch," Lung said, his mouth too distorted for proper words at this point. "Prey preten. Ooo thin-kch that ooh can weah ears an tail, speak our lan-goo-age in fake spells, be ayshun?" He completely ignored Mister Saito jumping on his back and burying a sword in it. "It dough-ehnt werk liek that. Ooo er nothing! Jus little Bit-Ch! Wit-ought 'dragon-slaying sword,' ooo cannot win. I.. Am a… Dragon. Ooo… Are… Nothing!"
The whole time he was basically ignoring that Mister Saito was stabbing him in the back.
He reached behind himself, grabbed mister Saito in one of his giant hands, and threw him. Mister Saito would be okay. He'd shrugged off worse just a few minutes ago. I didn't have to worry…
Immediately after throwing Mister Saito, Mirror-Opal bashed Lung in the face. It was less effective against a giant dragon man than against a normal human.
It did, however, buy me time to slowly wave my hands around and bring them together while saying something in Japanese.
This got Lung's attention. But also Opal's, and she caught on to what it meant and came down to meet my hands just in time to blast Lung with a ball of white light, enhanced by my mantra.
Lung flinched, taking a step back.
And shrunk an inch.
"What did you do?" He could talk normally again.
"It's called… Distant Land..." I had to pause, as I was breathing quite heavily, "of the Torn Blossom. It's a… retributive curse. If I'm hurt bad... you get infected with… magic poison. Gonna be a… Nasty one after that Mantra… Too."
"I'm going to break every bone in your body," Lung said, his voice dripping with subtle rage. "And all of your little toys. I'll make you watch while I kill the son of Muramasa… And then I'll take you into my home. Shelter you while your body mends, and as soon as you recover, I'll send you to my farm where you'll be broken down into a simple plaything." He laughed. "Someone out there will pay top dollar to have a former heroine as their pet. Even one as plain and ugly as you."
There were then six swords embedded in Lung's back.
"I won't let you hurt her," I could hear Mister Saito state as a matter of fact. "Not any more than you already have."
"I suppose that it's all the same to me if you want to die first!" Lung shouted, and then he turned around and headed for Mister Saito, throwing a fireball at him.
It was then that the pain started catching up with me and my vision went blurry.
"Princess," Opal began. She was still in my hands. "You have severe internal injuries. You need to revert the installation so I can heal you."
I shook my head. It took me a second to answer her though. "No… Help me up."
"Princess I must-"
"Help… Me... Up."
Reluctantly, Opal started levitating. Still, in my grip, I was able to sit up and raise her over my head. After a moment I was levitating what I think was a few feet over the street.
"You're… Wrong… Lung!" I shouted. "I'm… Not… Nothing. You might… be a dragon… But… right now... I… am… a… Goddess!"
And then I started chanting while caster's paper talismans were summoned and set to their work. "Gods in Izumo, this is the sign of freedom and purification."
"You dare!" I heard Lung shout.
"The sacred treasure, the Mirror of Uka," I continued to intone with no heed to the dragon even as I heard his rushed footsteps coming my way.
"Eightfold Blessings of Amaterasu on the Weight Stone under the Sunlit Watery Heaven!"
As I invoked the eightfold blessings, several things happened.
First, taking in the godly amounts of mana and life energy that Caster's Noble Phantasm brought in immediately healed my severe internal injuries. All the pain was gone and I could once more feel my legs. My vision also cleared back up, allowing me to see the look on Lung's face change from fury to confusion to terror as the sky darkened and the streets and buildings melted away to be replaced by a dark field filled with dozens of blue shrine gates.
"Oh..." He said. "Oh shit."
"Let's get something straight, Lung. I'm not a Parahuman," I explained. "I'm not a tinker. I'm not a little girl playing pretend. I'm a real Magical Girl. With real Magic, drawn from the Gods and Heroes of Old. I don't need Arondite to beat you," I finished, "you're the one who never stood a chance."
"...The Old Gods are real… You've stolen the power of the Old Gods… You bitch."
Well, I mean I had technically killed a manifestation of an avatar of Amaterasu to gain my Caster Card, so technically…
While Lung was still momentarily stunned by the realization that gods and magic are real, I quickly rushed past him to Mister Saito.
Mister Saito himself was breathing heavily. He had a nasty bit of cooked flesh on his chest, around a gash that seemed to be having trouble healing, and he was sweating profusely. His hair had grown a couple of inches.
"Are you okay?" I asked even though I could clearly see that he wasn't.
"I'm fine…" he said. "Just a little tired."
Without a word, I touched his shoulder and channeled a good chunk of the mana and vital energy that I'd gathered with eightfold blessings. His burn and slash wound healed right up and he quickly recovered his Stamina.
I summoned six paper talismans.
"Lung's having an existential crisis right now," I explained, "but he's not shrinking so this is still a fight." If anything, he'd grown slightly. "I figure if we both hit him with the biggest thing we've got at the same time, we be able to do more damage than he can heal and force him out of the fight."
Mister Saito nodded and held out his hand. He slowly formed a court sword that immediately ignited in blue at the edges as it finished manifesting. "This was something my father was working on before he died. The blade is made of an ultra-dense synthetic tinker material that's been honed and sharpened to the point that it passively slices the molecules in the air around it as they brush against the edge of the blade. He'd intended to create a version so sharp that the cutting edge extended beyond the visible part of the blade, as a weapon that might slay the Endbringers, but..."
That… That reminded me of a book I'd read once, actually.
Mister Saito grabbed the hilt of the sword and transformed it into a glowing blue arrow which he knocked to his bow.
As he drew it back and prepared to fire, I sent my paper talismans to encircle Lung. I'd tried this spell against Lancer, but it'd failed because she was too agile. A dazed Lung, however, was encased in an explosion of ice.
Which Mister Saito's arrow cut straight through.
And then exploded in a burst of blue fire.
A badly singed but clearly still breathing Lung hit the ground just in time for the field of shrine gates to fade back into 'the border of the Brockton Bay docks district.
At the edge of where my Noble Phantasm's effect ended was the rest of my group-Glory Girl and Aegis.
And also a separate group, consisting of Armsmaster, Triumph, and Vista.
"What the hell was that?" The youngest Ward said while miming the existence of a dome with her hands.
"Literal god-tier magic," I answered casually.
"Okay then," Vista replied.
Armsmaster approached the downed Lung and checked his vitals. Apparently satisfied by what he found, he produced a large syringe from the halberd and-
"Wait!" I shouted. "I poisoned him a little bit ago," I explained. "I don't think it'll have run it's course yet. It shouldn't kill him because of his healing factor, but I don't know how it'll react to your tranqs." If it'd react. A moment after I finished explaining I remembered the poison was the result of a curse and might not work like regular poison. Oh well, better safe than sorry.
Armsmaster fiddled with the Halberd. "I'll hit him with a half dose, better safe than sorry."
"Okay then," I said, "now Mister-Yip!"
I turned around and glared. Vista had gotten behind me somehow-damned spacewarpers-and yanked on my tail. "Hey, it's real."
"God damn it, why does everyone want to grab my tail!?"
"Because it's fluffy," Glory Girl said as she flew up beside me. "Just let her have this. Little V was breaking Bakuda's legs with a tire iron when Armsmaster's group got your beacon."
"Really now?" I said while taking a closer look at the young blonde.
"Yeah," Vista said with a smile. "Between that and what you did to Lung," Lung was now being locked up in a PRT prisoner transport van, "this is basically over. Oni Lee's still at large but I've seen his file: He's basically a robot. Without someone to point him at a goal, he's almost harmless. So, who's Mister Abs?"
"He uh… He's Mister Saito. He runs the repair shop," I gestured to Saito Repairs, "he's a family friend that I need to have a long talk with."
"The Protectorate are probably going to have questions for the both of us," Mister Saito said. "And if the danger has passed, I have some neighbors who'll need help moving back into their homes and/or repairing things damaged in raids. If you're insistent on a long talk, it might be best to do it in a few days, once we're both recuperated from the events of this afternoon."
Yeah. You know what. That made sense. "Okay."
About an hour later Mister Saito and I had both given our story about how the encounter with Lung had gone and, once dismissed, I flew home and took a nap.
When I woke up, Opal complained that I'd drooled on her again.
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Topic: A New Thread
In: Boards ► ► Boards ► Places ► America ►Brockton Bay
Princess(Original Poster) (Verified Cape)
Posted On May 6th 2011:
So, a little bit ago a friend and I were fighting Lung and some of his goons. I was using my caster card(the foxy one with the blue robes) and one of them started thinking I might be a Kumiho and ran off once I started really using my magic.
The next morning I got up to go jogging and found candles and a bunch of Korean food on my porch with a note that was half apology and half begging me not to eat the anonymous gift-giver's heart and/or liver.
I'm not a Kumiho. I'm not gonna eat anyone. Still kinda pissed off about shooting my friend, but he's not pressing charges if the city doesn't so... I'm not saying you're forgiven, if you're reading this, but I'd really like the recipe for that beef dish.