Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Taylor

The first thing I noticed as the wave washed over me was that the wave stopped when it washed over me.

The water rolling out from the beach dragged me out into the bay, but I was quickly able to get my bearings and make my way to the surface.

I found it surprisingly easy to orient myself atop Rider's surfboard and turn back to face the shore.

Leviathan wasn't moving. Even as blaster shots impacted his back all he did was stare out at the beach.

Out at me.

I felt the water rise up under me as Leviathan continued to stare at me, his glowing eyes focused on me like a laser. He was trying to make another wave, with me on it, but knowledge of how Rider's power worked was quickly filling into my head and I was able to push the wave back down with an effort of will and a channel of mana into my board.

In hindsight, I was glad that I'd only ever fought a mindless, degraded copy of Rider. Prydwen, in addition to being a ship and shield, granted the ability to conjure and control water. Even create massives waves.

As long as I had Mana to spend, I had Macro-Hydrokenisis. Just like Leviathan, and it seemed, with some mental effort, that mine was stronger than his. At least when it came to controlling the waves and tides.

Seeing that I'd canceled his wave, Leviathan started walking toward me in an uncharacteristically slow lumber.

After about five steps, however, he bolted and made his way to me at top speed, trampling what few trees, poles, and cars were still on the streets after his earlier waves.

I laid face down on my board and used my arms to turn it around before paddling further out to sea. I was surprised just how fast I was able to move in the water thanks to Rider's power—I'd managed to clear the bay and make it to the ocean proper by the time I heard the crashing splash of him diving into the water.

I had a plan. But I only had one chance to pull it off. Leviathan had already sustained significant damage. If I could get in one more good hit, then hopefully...

I turned back around in time to see a half-submerged Leviathan surging toward me like a missile. I stood up on the board and willed a wave to carry me forward, toward Leviathan as fast as I could as the adrenaline started building up in me again.

It's weird what comes to mind at times like this. As I allowed Rider's skills to guide me into the appropriate foot placement and stance, that surfing was probably something I should try at some point.

As Leviathan and I came closer and closer together, murderous intent clearly visible in the beast's body language, and the pounding of my heart the only thing I could hear, I channeled as much mana as I could into the board beneath my feet and exploded forward at an even greater speed—fast enough to even begin to lift from that water just slightly—even as I felt my body begin to burn from the strain.

"Prydwen..." I said as the wave began to curl around me. "Tube Riding!"

I took leave of my senses at that point. When I became aware again, I was in the air. High in the air.

I'd gotten turned around at some point, and could see that I was behind Leviathan. He had a huge gash right at the bottom of where his ribs would be, deep enough that I could see clear through to the other side, on my left-hand side. It formed an off-center cross with the marks from when I'd impaled him not too long ago.

And then I realized that the only thing I could hear was a faint ringing in my ears.

The Rider card was ejected from my body, and since I wasn't holding the board that meant I wasn't holding Opal. I fell away from where she was floating and fell out of my Trance.

The water below me was getting closer and closer, but I couldn't bring myself to react. My eyes felt heavy and an ache was beginning to form in every fiber of my being.

Something dark-colored whooshed and I found myself in a princess carry in Alexandria's strong arms.

"Did… Did we get 'em?" I babbled without meaning to say anything.

"Leviathan's leaving," the strongest heroine in the world said. "You did good. Let's get you to the hospital, you look like Hell."

"YOU'RE RIGHT SHE DOES!" Opal shouted as she came up next to us in compact form, my lost card held in one of her wings. "Princess, do you have any idea how reckless that last stunt was? Not only did you expend far more mana than Rider's Noble Phantasm required, but I can also tell from here that you overstrained your circuits again! If you keep doing that then eventually you'll cause permanent damage and..."

I didn't want to tune Opal out, but I was sore and tired and she started sounding like the teacher in the old Peanuts tv specials so I kind of had to.

I think I spaced out for a bit. The next thing I knew I was sitting in a chair in one of the waiting rooms in the hospital. No sign of Alexandria anywhere, so…

"Where?"

"The person running intake decided that exhaustion and soreness wasn't a pressing concern," Opal said bitterly as she floated into my eyeshot. "Apparently, due to concerns about secret identities and such, instead of using the emergency rooms anyone who isn't at urgent risk gets dropped either here or another room on a different floor depending on their relationship with the law."

So wait, did Alexandria carry me all the way here or did she drop me off and then… Fuck, I was too tired for this.

"You shouldn't have to wait for very long," a man's voice said. I turned my head to see a couple of people on the far side of the room and a man wearing most of a suit of armor quite a bit closer to me. Chevalier. "It's been less than an hour, a major record for fending off an Endbringer, which I think we have you to thank for." I nodded. "So, there's not that many injured, comparatively. Most people here are just waiting to see if their friends are going to make it."

"'Kay..."

"Though I do have a question for you," the armored hero said as he took a seat across from me. "You're not a parahuman, are you?"

"What?"

Chevalier looked to the others in the room and leaned forward. "This is classified information and I'm showing you quite a bit of faith telling you this: I can sense the powers of Parahumans. I can tell how much raw power a parahuman has, and I can even pick out the details of their trigger events. And I can tell that you, by all means, shouldn't have any powers, and your equipment is too advanced to be Tinker-Tech, anything that powerful can usually only be used by the Tinker who made it. So what are you?"

"I do magic," I managed to say.

"Of course you do," Chevalier said with a sigh. Then he mumbled something about Myrddin.

"I have a few questions of my own," Opal began while drifting a bit closer to the knight. "About that Myrrdin fellow… How does he do what he does?"

"Portals and pocket dimensions mostly," Chevalier replied.

"Yes, and I'm asking how he does it."

"It's his power," Chevalier replied casually. "We don't really know how powers work, though he'd tell you that it might as well be magic."

This caused Opal to grumble.

"You seem oddly invested in this," Chevalier noted.

"Sir," she began, "there is only one magic that can manipulate dimensional barriers. The Second of the True Magics, the power of Kaleidoscope. And there is only one being who can cast the Second Sorcery—"

"You're making a scene, Opal," I said lamely. Idly, I wondered if anyone else had heard the capital letters in her sentence.

"The only being who can cast the Second Sorcery is my creator, the Wizard-Marshal Lord Zeltretch and if—"

"Ahh, there's a name I haven't heard in a while," another man said. Speak of the devil, there was Myrddin now. There was a bit of a hobble in his step, but that didn't stop him from making his way over to us and sitting down next to Chevalier.

"You, you've… Met Lord Zeltretch?" Opal seemed confused.

"Oh yes," the wizard said. "Years ago. Met him in a tea shop. Odd fellow, but we ended up having an hours-long but very pleasant discussion about faith, the nature of reality, and what 'identity' would mean if there were an infinite multiverse and thus, an infinite number of people with just as much claim to being you as you yourself do." I could tell that Myrddin was smiling. "Never saw him again, but I don't think I'll ever forget it."

Opal kind of cocked to the side as Chevalier spoke up, "you never told me about that."

"It was years ago," the wizard said. "Years before I met you. Years before I even had powers." He paused for a minute. "I think it was back when I was trying to run my own business, actually."

"You never told me about that either."

"I had to give it up," Myrddin explained. "I kept getting prank calls meant for the private investigator renting the office next door. He was an eccentric man." He continued. "Never made eye contact with anyone, spoke softly. Sort of moved about like he thought he was too big and was afraid of breaking something. Carried a hand-crafted walking stick everywhere and seemed irrationally attached to outdated technology."

"You need to write a book sometime," was Chevalier's only response.

"That all raises more questions than it answers," was Opal's.

The conversation came to a lull after that. I think I nodded off at some point because the next thing I knew my eyes were closed and I was being poked in the cheek.

"Miss Dallon," I could hear Opal say. "I know that this is a delicate time for you and that you are under strict orders, but I don't think that is an appropriate bedside manner."

I blinked my eyes open. "Wha's going on?"

"I was instructed to get you on your feet as soon as the critical cases were all taken care of," Panacea said. Her voice was purely professional and I couldn't make out her face… Honestly, this was a little awkward. This was the first time I'd seen her face to face since I found out she was the one writing the Cape-fics about Vicky and I.

And then I remembered that her mom was one of the first to die tonight.

"Are you o—?"

"I don't have time to talk, gotta fix you then get back to people who need me," she interrupted. "Legend wants to talk with you asap, so… For liability's sake, I have to ask you if I have permission to use my powers on you?"

"Why does Legend want to see me?"

Panacea looked at me like I was stupid. "You almost cut an Endbringer the fuck in half. You did more damage to Leviathan in one night by yourself than everyone else has in fifteen years. Why do you think he wants to see you? Now do I have permission to heal you?"

"I guess." Panacea touched her fingers to my cheek and paused for a moment.

"Well, that's new."

Well, wasn't that last thing you wanted to hear your doctor say? "What's wrong?"

"You have a lot of extra nerves," Panacea said. "Enough for an entire tertiary nervous system, except they don't seem to do anything and they're arranged like computer circuits for some reason." She hummed. "They're all inflamed pretty badly, but the weirdest thing is that… You know what the Manton Limit is, right?"

I nodded, that sounded familiar. Something about how powers usually either worked on your or everything else and usually either worked on living things or nonliving things. "So, my power only works on things that are clinically alive and aren't me. Your extra nerves don't register as dead. They don't read like a piece of brain. They're something my power should work on, but it doesn't." she went silent for a second. "Also, you're not a Parahuman. You've got the potential to be one, but it hasn't been triggered yet. I have no idea what's up with you, but you might be some kind of freak or mutant.."

"Well, the extra nerves are probably my magic circuits," I said. "They're how I do magic."

"And if I had to hazard a guess," Opal added, "magic circuits are as much an extension of a mage's soul as they are a part of their physical bodies. If not significantly more so. I doubt that whatever 'parahuman' abilities run on is comparable to the kinds of sorcery needed to touch upon souls."

"...Magic is real," Panacea said as if she thought I was crazy. I could hear Chevalier's say 'God damn it' and Myrddin chuckle so while they weren't sitting across from me anymore, they were still in the room. "Oh, okay… Well, they say you're tired and sore… I can't do much for the soreness since that's probably from the inflamed nerves, but I can eliminate the stress toxins building up in your muscles and convert some of your body's stored sugars directly into metabolic energy help you wake up some." She paused. "If I do that, you'll crash pretty bad later tonight and when you wake up you'll be starving."

"That's fine."

"Okay, that'll take me a minute… I can also try and trigger some of your body's natural painkillers, but I can't do much more than take the edge off for a little bit without compromising your judgment and I don't know how much you're going to need that."

"Just do what you can." honestly, I wasn't sure how much she could help now that I thought about it. I was tired because I burned through all my mana. I don't think she can fix that.

However, despite my doubts, over the next few minutes, I started to feel more awake and alert. The ache in my muscles even subsided just a little bit.

"Thank you," I said, and stood up. "Uh, do I need to go to Legend or is he coming here?"

"Leave the waiting room, go down the hall till you get to the stairs, go up a floor and go right. He's in the office, room 405."

I nodded, thanked Panacea again, and marched off, Opal floating behind me, stopping only to turn, nod, and then march off again, a little confused when Myrddin called out to me "Miss Hebert, give my regards to the Blacksmith's heir."

It took a few minutes to make it to the office in question. I knocked and was told to come in, and found Legend standing in the middle of the room.

Up this close, without Frankenstein's mad enhancement and the rush of the fight to distract me, the man was an awe-inspiring figure and I wasn't sure if I would be able to speak to him.

He sat down behind the commandeered desk and beckoned me to sit across from him, which I did.

"Now, normally I'd start by offering you a place in the Wards," he said, "or, considering what you've accomplished, an offer to look for loopholes to let you come straight to the Protectorate, but Armsmaster tells me that you very strongly value your independence?"

"That's right sir," I said. Even if the offer, or, the idea of the offer had been very, very flattering…

"However," he said, "to be direct: People are going to find out about this. There were security cameras and the usual foolhards out in the thick of things trying to get cellphone footage. There's no covering up what you did tonight, and honestly, I don't think it should be covered up."

And it was at this point that I realized that it was highly likely that I'd be harassed by the media to get the story of the girl that almost killed Leviathan.

"I see you're getting it," he said. Probably reading my expression. "People are going to be talking about the girl who sent Leviathan running with a hole clean through his chest. Who outraced him in his own domain with a surfboard and then turned around and stabbed him with it. Children are going to want Princess action figures. In short," he finished, "you've just put yourself up there with Alexandria, Eidolon, and I and I want to use that."

"Use it how?" Opal asked before I could.

Legend looked to her. "There are two major problems I think that I can use your Princess to address. The first is the desperate need for hope in the face of the Endbringers, which I'm certain that you can understand that publicizing just how badly she hurt Leviathan would give hope that they can be beaten."

"And the other?"

"I'll admit that this one is a bit more selfish: There's never enough money to go around when dealing with government bureaucracy. Salaries and Tinker Budgets aren't cheap, and the Government is rather stingy. The PRT and Protectorate are occasionally dependant upon merchandise sales and donations to stay in the black. I'm not an economist, but I know that there's going to be a huge demand for Princess merchandise in the months to come."

"And you want to exploit my Master to make a profit?"

"No," Legend said, "now, it isn't entirely my call, I need to discuss it with Chief Director Costa-Brown, but what I want is to help your master work her way through copyright and trademark law to ensure that people have to pay her to use her image and offer her access to our resources in managing that image in exchange for an exclusive license and for Princess to appear with the Triumvirate and other prominent Protectorate and Wards members in some Public Relations events." He held his hands up. "She's going to be famous, maybe even world-famous, when the news of what happened tonight gets out. I'm proposing a way that lets the Protectorate spin it to restore people's lost faith and make sure she gets her fair share of the money that's inevitably going to be made on her image after tonight without her having to give up the freedom that she so values."

Sounded like a decent enough deal, but… "Is there a way to earmark the PRT's cut of the profits? You know, make sure the money you make off of selling Princess merch goes where it can do the most good?" Like making sure departments in troubled areas had up to date equipment.

"That would have to be discussed with the heads of Image, Marketing, and Accounting," Legend admitted. "Though, for what it's worth, it sounds reasonable enough to me."

I remembered that Caster had spells that were meant to help amass a fortune or attract someone who already had. A little tweaking… "I have to think about it, and talk it over with my Dad..." If he made it through the night, "but it's a very tempting offer."

"I wasn't expecting an answer tonight," Legend said with a smile. "I'll be heading back to New York in a few hours and none of this can happen if I don't clear it with director Costa-Brown first. Take a few days to think it over, then call up your Local PRT or Protectorate, have them call me and we'll set up a proper meeting."

"Okay."

There was a brief exchange of pleasantries before I was excused.

A few minutes later, Tattletale ambushed me by the stairs.

Her left foot was wrapped and she'd replaced her domino mask with a cheaper one. The black makeup she'd had around her eyes had run off in the seawater, giving her cheeks a grey stained look I hadn't noticed when I'd seen her face earlier.

"Hey," she said awkwardly. "Uh, we need to talk."

And it all came to me at once. The anger, the sadness, the feelings of betrayal that I'd shoved aside in the middle of the battle all came rushing back. And then another horrible thought came to me: She's the one who introduced me to Brian. She never told me how she met him, and he was pretty vague about what it was exactly that he did.

"If you're worried about me going after you at home or something," I said, too angry to yell, "don't be. You're not worth it."

I made my way past her, paying her no mind as I did so, went and down the stairs to the first floor and from there out of the hospital. I needed to make sure my house was still there before I had that crash that Panacea warned me about