AN: Still trying to finish up this story arc so I can I can turn my full attention to Archetypal. So if anyone happens to be reading this story while waiting for chapters of that story, that's the reason why. Sorry, but I'm not the type of person who can split my attention on two different projects like that. Fortunately, I don't see this going on for more than another chapter, two max, so please be patient.
dogbertcarroll: Luna's fury is perfectly justified. Loud women run hot as it is, being willing to kill one another over something as simple as getting the best seat in the family van. But on top of that, Sam's trying to deny her access both to her boyfriend and her brother. Her fury is both that of an angry sister and an angry girlfriend, the most terrifying of all combinations. Really, Sam brought it upon herself :)
Ronnie Anne Santiago, currently in her guise as Shimmer Sparkle Rainbow Princess, Magical Ron-Ron glared fearlessly at the pair of identical, buxom, yellow clad women who were standing across the remains of the rooftop from her. Outwardly, at least, internally she was desperately trying to fight off the urge to freak out in a very visible, and spectacular manner. The situation had already been bad when she'd been facing a single one of these things, and now her odds had gotten twice as bad.
"So, Lame—er, Lincoln." She tried to say as nonchalantly as possible, hoping the snow-topped boy wouldn't notice her slip up. "Any more bright ideas?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Lincoln glance around, as if hoping another friendly giantess would stroll by to lend them a hand.
"Nope." He said at last, shrugging helplessly. Ronnie couldn't help but feel at least a little disappointed by that, it seemed like even The Man With The Plan had his limits. "You gonna try that—" He pantomimed swinging a baseball bat "—'hitting them', thing?"
"Something like that." She muttered. Ronnie took her Ribbon Rod in one hand and gave it a little flourish. At her unspoken mental command, the rod extended considerably, quickly expanding from its original length to one more befitting a quarterstaff.
"Wow! Cool!" Ronnie took great pains to refrain from outwardly acknowledging the boy's praise, but she nevertheless stood a little straighter after that.
With a flick of her wrist she sent the staff twirling end over end, maneuvering it in such a way to allow it to spin seamlessly around her body. Finally, she allowed the weapon to come to a stop, and laid it to rest on her shoulder.
"Bring it!" She shouted, gesturing threateningly with her free hand.
"Hit her! No, no, dodge the—NO! Hit her!"
Fiona facepalmed, groaning softly as she watched the strangely dressed girl lay into the QTs with a fury that was unfitting of her girly appearance. It was undeniably impressive, watching her fight, the staff in her hands would blur, and moments later QTs would be sent flying with a viciousness that belied the simplicity of the weapon, the girl often capitalizing on their helplessness, chasing after them with inhuman speed and buffeting them with a flurry of followup attacks. Had she not been facing multiple opponents, and thus forced to expend twice as much energy to maintain her offensive, it was entirely possible that the fight might have ended in her favor by this point. The QTs were pretty competent fighters in their own right, being far stronger and more durable than humans were, even without the advantage of darkseeds, but...
"No!" Maggie howled, slapping the side of the machine in frustration. "Your other left!"
...fighting a battle yourself was one thing. Vicariously fighting a battle by yelling commands at another person, it turned out was much more difficult.
"Use both hands! No, your other hands!" Especially when you were as antisocial as Maggie. The girl was terrible at communicating in normal social situations. Watching her scream unintelligible commands at their minions was painful, and watching her communication skills degrade further as she grew increasingly frustrated, locked in a strange sort of perpetual failure loop, even more so.
"Maggie." She said at last, patting the younger girl on the shoulder in an attempt to get her attention. "Maybe you should let me take over."
"I can do it!" The pale girl snarled. On screen, the girl in the frilly dress swung her staff in a wide arc, knocking both QTs up into the air. She then used her staff to pole vault up after them, and slammed them back into the ground with a might roar.
"I can see that." Fiona remarked sardonically.
"I can!" Maggie insisted. "It's just stupid and hard to do this with voice commands. If I could just take manual control—"
"Manual controls engaged." Spake a tinny voice from the control console. Strange, Fiona hadn't been aware that the machine could talk. She was about to say as much, when to her surprise, the front of the console jutted out and unfolded, revealing two joysticks, each accompanied by six brightly colored buttons, lined up in two neat rows of three. The pair stood there in silence, watching the transformation take place. Then...
"I call player one!" Maggie said hurriedly, reaching for the joystick.
Fiona slapped her hand away. "Fat chance. Gotta maintain the chain of command."
"Aw"
Ronnie Anne Santiago was feeling pretty confident. Despite being outnumbered, and seriously out muscled, so far she'd managed to hold her own against the maybe robots and/or aliens (she really needed to have a talk with Lincoln about what he'd been up to that would make either possibility viable). By taking advantage of the superior reach afforded by her weapon, and the superior agility afforded by having a body that wasn't straight out of a teenager's wet dream, it had been surprisingly easy to keep her slower and uncoordinated opponents on the defensive. By her estimation it wouldn't be much longer before she could wrap this up, and then she and Lincoln could have a nice, long—
Ronnie's train of thought was abruptly interrupted as one of the QTs suddenly leapt to her feet and lashed out at her with a blindingly fast roundhouse kick. Ronnie wasn't even aware the attack had taken place until she was in the process of hopping clear of it, saved only by her deeply ingrained reflexes. Apparently all that time she'd spent dodging abuela's chanclas had paid off.
That was...unexpected, apparently these ladies still had some fight left in them. But it was fine, all she'd have to do was keep her cool, and—
"Ron-Ron look out!"
Sensing movement, Ronnie whirled around and spun her staff defensively—
CLANG
Just in time to catch the other QT's fist on it. Ronnie's arms trembled from the force of the impact, barely able to maintain her grip on her weapon, but the other girl didn't look at all bothered by the fact that she'd slammed her bare fist into a solid chunk of magically enhanced metal. That was...unsettling. Almost as unsettling as the fact that dealing with this attack had forced her to take her attention off the other QT...
A gust of wind was the only indication Ronnie received as to her impending danger. With a burst of exertion she pushed back the girl currently occupying her vision and leapt, magically enhanced leg muscles easily propelling her into the air, whereupon she transitioned into a forward somersault. The movement allowed her to catch as glimpse of the ground below her. Just as she'd suspected, the space she'd been occupying only moments earlier was now occupied by the large, meaty fist of the other QT. She landed with a growl of frustration, and immediately spun around to face her suddenly much more competent opponents, taking care to place her body between the QTs and her all too frail companion.
"You okay, Lincoln?" Ronnie called out, trying to spare a glance backwards without losing sight of her enemies. The boy was standing ramrod straight, his eyes wide open, beads of sweat rolling down his face.
"S-short...skirt." He murmured. "So short..."
"What was that?"
"I'm fine!" He called back, seemingly snapping out of the trance he was in. "You...uh, you still got this, Ron-Ron?"
"Piece of cake." Ronnie replied, turning her full attention back to the approaching QTs, hoping she sounded more confident than she felt.
It occurred to Ronnie that now that she was on the defensive and warding off attacks from multiple fronts, it might be prudent to change up her tactics. She grabbed her staff by the midsection with both hands and pulled in opposite direction, separating the staff into two segments. Those segments began to loosen, and in a matter of moment she found herself holding a pair of nunchaku. Ronnie spared the pale haired boy one last annoyed glance, remembering vividly that it was his fault she instinctively referred to the weapons by their "proper" names, before fullly turning her attention to the QT's once more.
"Come and get it!" She called out, giving her nunchaku a demonstrative twirl as she settled prepared to combat once more.
"I'm kinda confused by the theming here." Maggie complained as she and Fiona hammered away at their respective sets of controls.
Fiona winced as the girl on screen, now dual wielding a new set of weapons, beat back her QT's strikes before stepping within the QT's guard and elbowing her hard in the solar plexus. The surprised expression on her minion's face induced a mild degree of sympathy pain in Fiona herself, and it was likely that would have been the end of things had Maggie's QT not stepped in, forcing the girl to retreat instead of capitalizing on her attack.
"Say that again." She growled at her co-worker. "But less nerdly."
"She's got that frilly, princess thing going on." Maggie continued, ignoring the barely veiled insult. "But she's fighting us with ninja weapons."
"Nunchucks." Fiona muttered, half-remembering a very boring date with an ex who loved those stupid kung-fu movies.
"Nunchaku." Maggie corrected her.
"Whatever." Fiona rolled her eyes. "So what's the problem?"
"It doesn't fit her theme. She should be fighting with something more, princessy.
"Like her divine right to rule?" Fiona snarked, slapping her controls with all the grace of an angry walrus.
"Like a sword, or a scepter or something." Maggie let out a little sigh of her own. "And can you please stop button mashing?"
"You play your way, I'll play my way."
Ronnie landed lightly on her feet, wincing in pain. One of the QT's was attacking haphazardly, which had proven fairly easy to dodge around, but the other was fighting with considerably more finesse, and had managed to tag her, albeit just barely. Even so, it hurt like hell. Taking a hit like that head on was tantamount to suicide. Clearly she needed to try keeping her distance, zoning the pair with her superior range, and then, when she could find an opening, she could...
Ronnie's train of thought drifting off as she spied the QT who had managed to strike her get into a strange stance, knees slightly bent and hands cupped at her side. Much to her surprise, a sphere of crackling, obsidian energy formed in the joined palms of the woman's hand, and rapidly began to expand. Within moments, the to the size of a kickball, and with a wordless roar the woman swung her hands forward, launching the orb in Ronnie's direction.
"Oh crap!" She called out, desperately leaping to avoid the blast.
"How the hell did you do that?" Fiona demanded, marveling as the frilly dressed girl tried to leap clear of the projectile fired by Maggie's QT, but couldn't quite manage it in time, catching the blast in her torso. Upon impact, the orb exploded, sending the girl flying. The fact that she wasn't knocked off the rooftop entirely was pure serendipity, her flight path being interrupted by one of the few bits of wall that was left standing after all the abuse the building had suffered that night. However, the expression on the girl's face gave no illusions as to the fact that she was very clearly in a great deal of pain from the experience. As if to add further insult to injury, the impact she suffered from crashing into the wall caused that stupid tiara she wore to pop clear off her head, landing on a floor a short distance away from her and rolling a ways further, as if daring her to chase after it. It was...strangely cathartic, to see someone else getting the kind of beating that was usually reserved for her.
"Quarter-circle forward and punch."
Fiona blinked as the utterance pulled her from her musings. "What?"
"Quarter-circle forward, and punch." Maggie repeated, somewhat more slowly. "You move your joystick a quarter of a circle towards your opponent, and hit the punch button. It's a pretty standard command."
"Again, less nerdly!" Fiona retorted. She then looked down at her controls, and began to try and emulate the motion.
Ronnie Anne Santiago's world was currently comprised mostly of pain. There was a bit of embarrassment in there too, an amount entirely separate from the passive degree of embarrassment she normally felt when she wore this outfit, but pain seemed to be the prevailing theme of the story that was currently her life. She attempted to sit up, and immediately regretted it, biting down hard to keep herself from screaming at the flashed of agony that rippled through her body when she attempted the motion. Yeah, that clearly wasn't happening right now.
"Ron Ron!"
A familiar voice cut through the fog of pain and delirium, and Ronnie momentarily found herself panicking. Partly because she couldn't bare the thought of Lincolns seeing her in such a state. She used to bully the kid for crying out loud! Him getting to see her in a crumpled heap like this felt too much like karmic payback. But also because from the sound of his voice, Lincoln would have been very close to her, and the fact that she couldn't see the kid who regularly dressed like a traffic cone suggested that, in addition to the indignity of her situation, she also might have been blinded!
Thankfully, this fear was short lived. Lincoln knelt down beside her, inadvertently jostling her prone form, and the movement caused a tiny pinprick of starry starry night to peek through the blackness. It would seem that she'd landed in such a way that left her long, raven hair covering her face. Indignities compounding indignities...
"I'm alive." She wheezed, wincing at the sound of her own voice, she certainly didn't sound alive. "Get away you dope, fight's not over yet!"
"I think we've got a minute." Lincoln murmured, trying to keep his voice low. "One of them is just jumping up and down and punching the air. Might be something wrong with her."
Ronnie had another angry retort prepared, but before she could use it, she felt Lincoln's hand cup her face, and the anger she was feeling suddenly dissipated. She was loathed to admit it, but she thrilled at the feeling of his fingers upon her skin, and unbidden, she turned into his hand, seeking deeper contact.
"S-sorry." He stuttered. "Just let me...there you go." The darkness parted as Lincoln gently brushed the hair out of her face, and Ronnie now found herself staring directly into the eyes of the boy she was so...very...fond...of. The part of her that was still thinking logically panicked at his sudden closeness, reminding her that she had a secret identity to protect! Responsibilities to preserve! And, most importantly of all, a very distinct tough-girl image to protect!
...but a more pervasive part of her brain assured her it was okay. Lincoln didn't know who she was, couldn't know who she was, if what abuela told her was true. Her tiara was enchanted with a glamour that would prevent anyone from casually recognizing her, so as long as she still had that, she could allow herself this one moment of weakness. A rare moment of closeness with the sole male Loud. Gazing upon his stupid freckles. Those dumb, bucked teeth of his. His thin, sensual lips, parted in a really cute expression of surprise and disbelief—
"R-Ronnie Anne?!"
Ronnie Anne Santiago froze, stiff as a board. She waited a few moments, hoping Lincoln's expression would change, that there was some further utterance that would re contextualize his outcry in a way that didn't result in him having learned her secret identity. When that moment failed to come, she reached up with one trembling hand, and gingerly felt around her forehead. The tiara was gone.
"Dangit." She grumbled, desperately wishing that Sid's giant fist would crash down from the heavens once more and put her out of her misery.