(A "peaceful" shore)
A critical mission, you say... Sétanta grumbled to himself (mentally) as far to his right Medb's ships started spraying bits of their wooden construction into the waters as they were hit. Himself being in the water meant that he couldn't be shot at as directly, though this would provide no help on the final sprint to his target.
I didn't train under Scáthach for nothing, even if it's literally other versions of me taking me lightly. At least the Caster understood that a lot could be done with a staff. Popping up onto sandy land, the Saber brought up his study defense as as he was promptly assaulted by several spears in a tight group.
With this angle, they were definitely targeting me and not Medb's ships on the horizon, he thought. It might have actually saved the latter some pain had he simply run straight to his target.
A number of the black spears were effortlessly struck out of the air, taking dives into the sand before disappearing. Using his whirling staff like a shield Sétanta made directly for the enemy that he could see a ways off, definitely by now taking note of him.
(Sasaku)
"Ah of course, as a Cú-type, he has something analogous to (Protection from Arrows)," Sasaku commented to Ruby who was watching the approaching enemy wade though her spears, hardly slowed by the missile attack.
"This is bad. Cute Gil-kun will be upset if you get your heart stolen by another boy," the wand replied snarkily, referring to of course the famous heart-piercing (Gáe Bolg).
"No, I don't think he has that, but still I wouldn't wager on myself taking him on in a straight fight," its contractor shrugged. "Ok, let's transform and head back to the group."
(Sétanta)
Now that he was closer, the warrior boy could tell that of the two, Caster was definitely wrong as his opponent was not wearing anything resembling a green dress. Perhaps Bazette was right, though to be honest the Grail had not informed him what exactly a "modern school uniform" actually looked like since it was irrelevant to the current era, so maybe she was wrong too.
However, as he sized up the opposition, she seemed to be gesturing toward him, but paused her attack. How odd, no wait this might be part of preparing a special technique. Nevertheless, keeping his guard up, the Saber began his charge into melee.
...
At first, when she started shimmering and then abruptly changed forms into some other outlandish clothing and took out a large brilliantly glowing sword he thought for sure their battle it was about to start.
But it was not to be as, after waving happily to him, the Chaldean immediately took off flying back in the direction of the main Chaldean force, leaving him behind.
"Damn it, those Chaldeans played us like a damn ... something, whatever - I gotta catch up to her !"
l
(Main battle)
"That's not good," Cú muttered to himself while parrying a series of tightly controlled slashes by Artoria as the Princess Knight tried to close in past his spearpoint. Something was brightly flying over towards them, and he knew that Sétanta didn't fly. And he's definitely not a magical girl.
A short distance away, Fergus' opportunity to press the attack never materialized as Jeanne and Marie kept him busy enough protecting himself. It was clear now to the Celt behind the drill sword that even if it had a banner attached to it, he was definitely facing a spear honed by Scáthach. And Marie's attacks doubtless carried some sort of Charm effect, going by the way she seemed to be targeting his head specifically. After all it wasn't as though she had some conceptual advantage to decapitating others.
At that moment, flying over the battlefield, Sasaku sprayed the Celts with a shower of sparkling magical energy attacks from Ruby that didn't do much but abruptly interrupted the tempo of battle as they had to deal with the impromptu strafing run.
Spotting an opportunity, d'Eon took the moment abruptly given to him to wave the Ruler over. Since she had been flying from south to north, his fight was the closest to her as she circled around in the air and quickly made ground directly behind the Saber's opponent - brandishing Ruby like a mace.
"Oh crap." Caught off-guard by this sudden new threat, Cú Chulainn instinctively tried to step sideways towards the Cú Alter who was focused on attempting to shred Elizabeth and didn't even take notice of the sudden developments once the aerial barrage and his instinctive defense response ended.
"I've got you now ! (Fleur de Lys)"
Rather than try to chase, the Saber decided on a a more indirect method of attack, instead using his sword dance technique to assault the Lancer facing him.
"You bloody French," Cú growled, barely avoiding the humiliating fate of being Charmed and then skewered by d'Eon's saber. Though with great mental effort, he was able to parry the incoming thrust and was just about to riposte, though far too slowly to avoid the Saber's immediate switch to a back-edge cut. Well, his armor could probably take that one -
The Lancer's weapon dropped to the ground as he was run through from behind by a burning blade of magical energy that, had he been less affected by d'Eon, he might have been warned about from the way the lighting abruptly charged when Sasaku activated that particular function of Ruby's. Of course, since she did this while flying just moments before impact, it would have been hard to fully evade.
Suddenly noticing what was taking place to his right, Cú Alter made a backhand swing with his right claw, barely missing his comrade but forcing the backstabber to hurriedly disengage. However, d'Eon moved to keep the wounded Cú between him and the giant Berserker while precisely reaching out and finishing his fight with a cut to the neck.
"Hey, you can't just leave," Elizabeth reacted immediately to Cú Alter's change in focus by swinging at him. However, her Eighteen made for slow attacks and the Celt was able to bring his left claw into the line of her reactive strike and block it.
Something was going on at the far side of the Chaldean formation, and though Artoria couldn't see what, since it was clearly their magical girl who had just joined the battle there, the likeihood was it was good.
But it wasn't long until she spotted someone running towards her who had probably only been seconds behind Sasaku, which wasn't a great portent since they could easily swing out and get at the Masters in the rear of the Chaldean group.
A little behind her it was clear that while their teamwork was keeping Fergus at bay, neither Jeanne nor Marie could intercept this new threat without leading their partner at a severe disadvantage.
I just need to block their most direct path and buy time, the others can catch up once they've rolled up the other flank.
Artoria smoothly disengaged backwards, turning to keep both her current opponent and the approaching enemy in sight.
Then- huh?
As if responding to something else, Cú Chulainn pulled away in turn... even though if Artoria was out of his range, clearly he would be out of hers too oh no.
"Ah," he grinned as though catching sight of her internal realization. "Your heart is mine ! (Gáe Bolg)"
The blood-red spear leapt out of its Lancer's hands with its own, heart-seeking life, darting towards the target Saber. Even though she knew what would happen, Artoria still moved to parry instinctively, only to see the weapon adjust its course mid-flight with an agility that any guided missile would envy.
She shifted her defense while hurriedly backing away, but it wasn't physically possible to get out of range in time before it would hit. This time the spear simply instantaneously changed its momentum as if giving up on the illusion of following the norms of physics in its quest to strike home.
At the last moment, as the point was passing her Caliburn, Artoria tried to catch or knock it off course with the sword's cross-guard, but though the spear was abruptly forced from horizontal flight to being nearly vertical, it simply came to a dead stop and then stabbed down.
While the Saber's armor was able to prevent some level of grazing hit, before (Gáe Bolg)'s unleashed throw, it presented hardly any resistance at all as the sure-kill weapon pierced its way through.
Gudao abruptly felt the surge of magical energy and, looking around where the fight against Fergus continued unabated, he was able to catch sight of Cú Chulainn's spear leaving its owner's hand. The homuculus immediately realized what was about to happen in the fraction of a heartbeat as Artoria was being impaled.
"Here !"
The Command Spell took effect right at the Saber was being run through by the lance handed down by Scáthach.
Despite her injury and confusion, nevertheless Artoria's first action on abruptly materializing next to Jeanne was to strike at Fergus, her high attack taking the Celt by surprise coming from that angle and catching him in the face.
"Eh?" Immediately following up with speed born of practice, Jeanne quickly tried to thrust at Fergus' leg, but the Celt quickly backed away from the trio of Servants as Cú Chulainn and then Sétanta closed the gap, coming to his aid.
"Take the one with the Holy Sword," the Lancer said to his younger self, who simply shrugged and whipped out his own blade.
"(Cruaidín Sétanta)"
"I don't think so," Jeanne immediately stepped up to cover her ally, using her banner to block the Celt's thrown staff. But this was only an opener as Sétanta, undeterred, charged his sword with magical energy and charged.
Some distance away, Elizabeth saw what was about to happen in the time that Cú Alter was attempting to deal with d'Eon and Sasaku and responded in kind. "Laa~~"
A torrent of draconic magical energy charged into the narrowing gap between the three Chaldeans and three Celtic Servants, forcing Sétanta to switch onto the defensive, expending his energy in surviving being caught by the attack, while a little further away Cú Chulainn and Fergus quickly retreated unharmed.
"Get ! (Báthory Brave-"
"Just die." Cú Alter of course had his attention drawn back to his original opponent as her magical energy welled up. Spotting Elizabeth turning off to her right, the Berserker rapidly brought up his right claw and took a swipe at her left side.
*Dunn~ ping*
Right as the bone claw was about to make contact, Elizabeth brought up her shield and, with something that outwardly resembled a simple flick of the arm, parried the Berserker straight right in his moment of triumph.
"What." The giant could hardly understand how he had been so casually stopped dead.
"Ah." Turning around, Elizabeth rapidly drove her sword into Cú Alter's chest. The heavy weapon cut or smashed though many layers of bone-growth armoring and rent his flesh. So much so that when she saw his counterblow coming in from the right and tried to extract Eighteen, it was stuck.
Thinking quickly, the Saber switched from arm to leg power, performing something like a flying dropkick into a springboard, ramming her feet into the broken armor and then jumping off horizontally while sending Cú Alter staggering backwards, swiping at the air as Elizabeth went flying off out of his range.
"What move was that?" d'Eon asked no one in particular as he boldly closed ground on the ailing Berserker and tried to thrust at his arm. Coming up behind her friendly Saber and then moving out to the side, Sasaku tried to get at Cú Alter's back but the Celt started swinging about with abandon forcing the two Servants to hurriedly back out of the deadly whirlwind.
Both sides quickly regrouped in the brief pause in battle that followed, eying one another.
"Watch out !" Gudako warned her Servants, pointing out something coming in rapidly from the sea. "That Noble Phantasm is definitely Medb's -"
"(Chariot My Love) !"
Notes:
Yeah, d'Eon has a single-target version of his Noble Phantasm that can charm plus do damage, as well as his multi-target no damage one.
Cú could probably have survived being run through by Ruby - (Battle Continuation), but after being wounded like that he wouldn't be able to fight (even) Sasaku one-on-one. However, if d'Eon had not used his (Fleur de Lys) to reduce Cú's ability to respond, even with the two of them working together Cú would not have been caught off guard enough.
It's hard to say if Sasaku and d'Eon could actually have gotten around Cú Alter, since he could have kept swinging all around and held off them and Elizabeth at once. Definitely a natural for taking up the center of the battle line.
The sound made when Elizabeth parried Alter's attack can be any Demon's Souls etc parry sound effect that comes most easily to your mind.
