Hero of the Fist (Battle)

(Bazette)

Truth be told, being caught by two Servants was already a bad situation, but the second being Berserker was even worse. She had initially planned to draw a Master ideally Kotomine into the rune-enforced duel, but all that went out the window.

Cu Chulainn's slight turning into a punch gave away his left hook, which ran into her right "hand" like it was a wall. His brief look of surprise was cut off when her own attack from the left glanced off his face.

"This isn't two fists to one," she commented by way of distraction while recovering backwards. Not used to being left-handed. Her right arm whipped out, knocking aside a quick jab.

Perhaps I should stick to my usual style, Bazette thought. Yes, she lacked roughly a fist's worth of range, but the jury-rigged metal "replacement" on her wrist was much more durable than her remaining hand. And while Cu Chulainn had an impressive physique, ramming a rune-reinforced and rune-empowered bit of metal into that was likely to leave some impression on it.

"Hmph." Lancer closed again with a direct haymaker from his right, but she sidestepped and deflected rather than take it head on. Seems he thinks alike.

Another person might have congratulated herself on being one of few humans who could stand up to a Servant, but Bazette knew it was likely that once he had fully gotten into the right mindset the fight was only likely to become harder.

Damn, but he is fast. Lancer put his high Agility to immediate use, darting ahead to one side, then the next. Clearly trying to get on her side where he would only face one arm at a time. However, by quickly moving in the opposite direction, Bazette made it so that he had to fight his own acceleration each time to change direction. It was, however, a high-speed game as any contact would take place at an even higher relative speed.

Still, not only did she have to turn in a smaller circle than Cu Chulainn, but each time he overshot it wasted a little more of his energy. There were two options, either try to drag things out on the defensive, risking the possibility of her opponent fully engaging into the fight, or try to deal some damage to him, keeping him from attaining that balance.

I don't have many good defensive tricks, but I do have some offensive ones. And my runes are weakening as the fight continues. Thankfully sight enhancement wasn't immediately necessary to keep up with Lancer, but there!

Rather than step back from a particularly wide swing, Bazette instead stepped in, curving her good arm around and turning while crouching to maintain stability. Cu Chulainn's momentum flung him around like in a dance, except that at the end of it he slammed into the ground. She immediately considered stomping on him, but he instinctively allowed himself to roll away from her in time, sweeping his legs low across the ground to keep her away before backflipping himself off the ground back onto his feet.

Regardless of the precaution, having to move both up and backwards slowed him down enough that Bazette was able to charge him, turning while doing so in order to ram her left shoulder into his chest right before he was able to defend himself, causing Lancer to continue his flip, into the ground.

Aiming for center mass to avoid missing due to the change in her balance, Bazette brought her right arm down, ready to activate the Eihwaz rune on the metal end to...

Cu Chulainn grabbed her elbow, and her attack stopped short due to simple lack of range. Damnit. Her rolling with the attack caused her to slide off him and some ways along the ground, preventing any further attack or counter-attack for the moment. Both sides quickly got to their feet and prepared to re-engage.

Bazette quickly stepped into the attack, but her opponent was not flat-footed this time and quickly fended off a blazing triple attack. On the last one, he caught hold of the sleeve of her suit and attempted to throw her. As her feet were leaving the ground, Bazette grabbed at one of his armored shoulders, dragging him along for the ride.

(Cu Chulainn)

The suit tore and while Cu Chulainn stumbled a few steps, his manouver worked. However, he was not able to capitalize on it while recovering.

She's definitely picked up a lot from our earlier sparring. As he looked over her defensive form, he noticed something about the long tear down her left arm. It revealed some sort of white inner lining that had curiously enough not been damaged. But that means it is sturdier than the rune-reinforced cloth above it?

Bazette seemed unfazed as she moved forward on the attack again. I'll switch to throws. Even if it had strength equivalent to armor, armor couldn't protect the internal organs from trauma.

The two's attacks collided. Bazette seemed to be betting that her metal prosthetic could defeat his fist, but in the next tempo he made an attempt directly on her arm. Cu Chulainn lowered his stance before moving forward to attack. She tried to dance around him but he tripped her instead.

As she was about to go flying, he grabbed her foot and swung, sending her an impressive distance upward and away before landing with both a crunch and a ripping sound. But she just got up again?

Bazette caught him looking questioningly at the white liner of her suit that was revealed when the previously-torn left arm had come off upon hitting the ground at speed. Almost copying him, she tried attacking from a low position but he practically jumped over her.

What he saw from the damaged back of her suit gave him a critical clue. A rather large rectangular piece of cloth was draped over her back and shoulders and went around to cover her whole chest area. It's Jeanne's banner.

The upper part of her arms were protected by the borrowed Noble Phantasm but not the lower portions. Or the legs. Or head.

Cu Chulainn cracked his knuckles. She had clearly prepared extensively, and while it was not really a great victory for a Servant to defeat a human, it had been a satisfying fight. But now it's ov- He heard the sound of something, a banner flapping in the wind to the side. "What?"

He turned to see Assassin holding aloft a second banner, in black and white. Lancer blinked, watching her shout something in slow motion, as unpleasant memories of nearly being impaled in their previous fight came back all of a sudden.

(Bazette)

As she rammed into a stunned Cu Chulainn, the world exploded. He went flying towards a swiftly expanding sphere of destruction.

"You win!" she shouted after him, hoping that ending the duel in some way would allow him to be harmed by it. Honestly speaking, the non-interference effect wouldn't have held against something like that anyway. It was really only a question of if he could survive or not, since she clearly couldn'-

Wait.

Quickly curling up, she tried to stretch get the banner out to face the approaching flames, having enough presence of mind to hold it so her fingers wouldn't be extending outside of its potential defense. With only one hand though, perfect coverage was not likely, especially given that the flames would go around anyway.

There's no way Jeanne can survive being in the middle of that, though. The most she could hope for was that Lancer, Berserker, and their Masters would also perish. Though that first had ((Battle Continuation)).

(Cu Chulainn)

His spear flashed into his hand like instinct. One throw.

Within the hazy inferno rapidly closing in on him, or him on it, he could see two vague blobs. Most likely Assassin and Berserker. While he couldn't tell who was which, at least there was no worry about missing whoever he did target.

His spear's potential victims wavered, dancing around one another, the images practically merging together. The crazy mana density here must be screwing with me. Without worrying about it, he flipped a coin, as it were, and let fly.

((Gae Bolg))!

A mere moment after the resulting red streak dove into the flames, he ended up in them as well.

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Notes:
Kirei probably didn't want to attack Jeanne because being closer to Lu Bu than absolutely necessary seems like a bad idea.