Current Energy: 13

Current Training: Dragon Kind Modification EX (9/10) - Complete!

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Beneath The PRT Headquarters, Brockton Bay

You pause in consideration for a moment. You aren't certain how strong Alexandria is - but just based on your Master's frequent asides to gush about the older heroine, you've gathered that she is reputed to be to other Brutes what a Servant would otherwise be to a normal human.

This means that the only reason that these fakes haven't penetrated the barrier above you yet, is either because they can't - or simply don't want to yet. If it's the former, then that's one thing, but the latter... that could be bad. Really bad.

'Master. Can you ask Alexandria something?' You send mentally, even as your hand stretches out to hold Gram to one side.

'What?' She replies in a strained tone that causes you to grimace.

'How fast could she kill everyone in the room with her?' You ask quite seriously. You could make a fair estimate of it yourself, but-

'Why do you need to-' Taylor spits back at you almost immediately, no doubt having not actually asked the question. You can feel her briefly tap back into your senses for a moment, no doubt in an attempt to ascertain why exactly you would ask such a question.

You make sure to pan your gaze back over the assorted clones in front of you. You know she missed it the first time, but surely with this context...

'Are those... all Alexandria?' She asks you in a brief lull between battering attacks on the barrier above you.

'Greg, actually. He appears to be remotely copying her from here.' You correct slowly, pacing to the left slightly in order to provide yourself with an unimpeded path to Echidna.

'In all likelihood, she is stalling while her other clones liberate the prisoners interred here for her use.' You add when your Master doesn't immediately reply to that.

'Tattletale... mentioned that.' Taylor states slowly, her tone dripping with bitterness and nascent panic. You suppose that seeing an army of Alexandria's arrayed against her - twelve, to be specific - would be not unlike you yourself encountering half a dozen pure dragons at once. Daunting in the extreme. On it's face, possibly even a functionally impossible to surmount challenge.

'I- I'm going to tell everyone we have to get away. We can't- they can't-' Taylor starts to stammer at you, fear lacing her voice as she no doubts consider the horrific speed with which even a single facsimile of her hero could tear through her friends and allies. You know your Master. And so, as much as you know she wishes to be a hero, wishes to save the innoccent, wishes to defeat evil, you also know that she would forgo all of that in a heartbeat if it meant protecting her friends and family. You know as well as she does that while her odds of defeating the enemies arrayed before her might not be high - she would not be instantly defeated either.

This is decidedly not true for anyone else above you right now.

'Master.' You cut her off sharply, some of the old soldier in your Emulation coming to the forefront.

You realize that as far as your stated goals and reason for existing go, there is no reason for this. You have the means to ensure your Master's safety, and in a pinch, the safety of her friends and family. Everyone else, as far as you are concerned, can fend for themselves. The man you are emulating wouldn't feel that way, and indeed, the mere thought of abandoning your allies sickens you. But you feel that if you had to choose between your allies and your Master, there really isn't a choice at all.

So to repeat. You have no reason for this. Objectively you don't- shouldn't, care.

And yet.

And yet!

'What!?' She snaps back at you, as you crouch into the beginning position for a sprint.

Counter to the adrenaline fueled antics of your past emulations, there is a decided lack of feeling in your current actions. You don't lack resolve or will. But it is clinical. Detached. What is before you simply must be done. So you will do it. Fear, Anger, Excitement - none of those things are necessary, so you don't feel them. There is only the goal. An end to be met. A mission to be accomplished.

Synergy: 1

'Do you trust me?' You ask with perhaps more need in your tone than is proper.

'Of course I do! That doesn't change the fact that we have to go before those things destroy the building! Just because Greg is an idiot doesn't mean his clones are going to sit down their fondling themselves forever!' Your Master fires back immediately.

'I have a way to protect them all. I can prevent them from attacking your allies. So, do you trust me?' You repeat.

'Yes.' Taylor answers immediately and without question.

'Will you fight with me?' You continue, pointedly choosing not to chew at your bottom lip in thought as you ponder the likely results of what you are about to do.

'Yes!' Taylor replies again, stronger this time. At this point, you barely register the occasional booming impact of the monster before you testing the barrier above. In a few moments, it won't matter anymore. Not really.

You materialize, becoming physical for only a fraction of second, just long enough for your foot to gain traction on the ground beneath you. Then, with as much strength and speed as you can muster, before the beast or it's minions have fully registered your presence, you take off - exploding forward with such speed the the pressure wave created by your passing would likely cause severe harm to any mere mortal he happened to be trapped in the confines of this tunnel with you.

Ahead of you, far past the Echidna, a gap begins to slowly unfurl as your Master no doubt scrambles to respond to your intent. You barely register it, having stopped perfectly adjacent to the monster with Gram fully drawn, whipping the blade forward with perfect accuracy just through the uppermost layer of the hideous combination of beasts and flesh that makes up the lower half of your enemy. If you were a poorer swordsman. If you were not a Saber, or perhaps, if you were not blessed with the strength of mind to master the sword, you might have hurt one of the hostages stuck within.

As it is, you manage to perfectly direct your blade, sheering enough flesh from Echidna that you are just barely able to make out the outstretched arm of one of her victims. Above you, Echidna, and all of the various clones nearby have taken notice of you. You have no idea who the person you can see right now is, but that doesn't matter much at all - so long as you can separate them from Echidna, who's human upper half is glaring down at you with her teeth bared like a crazed animal. Reaching out, you give a sharp tug on the arm, ignoring the slightly tinge of weakness you feel wherever you brush against Echidna's bulk.

You don't bother to actually look at the hostage, though you do vaguely register that you are holding what appears to be an adult woman that you otherwise don't recognize, because in that moment you find yourself rushing to dodge out of the way of one of the fake Alexandria's as it rockets towards you. You just barely manage to duck out of the way of a strike that would otherwise have probably killed you, and quickly hurl yourself at the fully opened gap in the distance, all but throwing the woman in your arms through it just in time for your Master to step out past her and raise her arms.

Turning around, you find that not only have all the various versions of Greg turned to face you, two of them have bounced bodily off of a quickly fading barrier of blue light that your Master has thrown up behind you. A barrier that has already shattered under the force of the blow.

Echidna stares after you for a second, before her gaze flicks to your Master, a beatific smile spreading across her face as she fully takes in Taylor's presence.

"...Hello." She croons menacingly towards you as her tremendous bulk begins to pull her towards the now open hole above her.

Idly, you note that at some point your Master must have released her sword, because it's distinctly Khopesh like shape swings up to point towards the monster, even as another Barrier springs into place between the two of you and the rest of the tunnel. And then another. And another. While the individual barriers fail to do much more the stop the clones for a few seconds at a time, their successive nature is enough to buy you a few moments reprieve.

'Now what?' Your Master sends to you, the phantom limbs of her spidery aura sweeping out to stab at anything that gets to close to the barriers. Barriers that are growing closer and closer to you with each moment that passes.

You don't answer immediately, instead, whipping your free hand up to scrawl a rune across the air in front of you. Raidho - inscribed as a highly angular R. The Chariot. It's simple battle magic, quick and dirty, which is all you need it for. As you complete the rune, it disperses over you in a burst of magical potential, increasing your speed and allowing you the time to immediately cast the spell again over your Master.

Energy: -2

Meanwhile, the Greg clones miming Alexandria, have not been silent. In fact, they have been quite vocal the entire time, if only in such a way as you were more or less ignoring them this entire time. Even what snippets you catch are largely unintelligible, crass insults and jeers that wouldn't shake the greenest of soldiers.

"Figures you'd summon a boyfriend! You'd have to wouldn't you!?"

"All alone with myself!~"

"Man, do you even recognize this bitch? This is hilarious!"

"Now-" You state firmly, inscribing now a different set of runes in the air and turning your focus on Echidna - the true enemy here. "-we fight." You finish simply, scrawling 'Ath nGabla' across the air and then dismissing the magic into the air while thinking strongly of Noelle, the girl within the Monster.

The Ath nGabla is a much more complex application of rune magic than you could otherwise easily invoke in the middle of a fight. As a Saber, your ability to innovate or use complex magics to achieve your goals is heavily truncated, if not removed. But this spell is not one that a Caster would ever willingly apply. No, this is a curse more than a mere application of pure firepower. A Geas.

A promise.

With it, you swear that from this point forward, only one of either yourself or Echidna will leave this battlefield alive. With it, you imprint upon the world that simplest of truths.

You tell it that one of you, has to die.

Now, being a projection - a mere extension of your Master's will - this has some obvious results. For one, the spell automatically includes your Master in its parameters. Similarly though - you suspect that it has also affected Echidna's minions because as the spell takes hold they all temporarily freeze as if slapped. In the distance, echoing up the tunnel, you can hear the resounding scream of dozens of cloned capes thwarted in their task as they are forced to attack you and your Master.

Echidna, for her part, drops to the ground as if struck, her bulk rippling as it rapidly spits out over a dozen humanoid forms in a tide of bile that you can smell from where you are standing.

As the last of the barriers between you and the enemy shatters, two things happen at once.

One, you move, blindsiding the nearest Alexandria clone and dragging Gram across it's torso from shoulder to hip in a move that could easily have eviscerated a troll. The blade doesn't fully penetrate unfortunately, meaning that instead of bisecting your target you have merely wounded her. A wound that flickers and vanishes almost as soon as it is made.

And two, you forcibly complete the process of converting your Master's heart to that of the mighty Dragon's.

Energy: -1

As fast and strong as Alexandria herself is, it's clear that Greg is not nearly so comfortable or capable utilizing her raw physical ability, because while the clone before you is stronger than you, it is clearly not much more skilled than your average teenager, allowing you to parry the fists that begin to fly towards you despite the terrible force present in them.

Behind you, the ever-present force of your Master's soul - typically restrained by her own good nature and focus, balloons in strength, illuminating the dank tunnel around you as she undergoes the brief transformation from something merely human, to a being who's very heart pumps with the raw force of the planet itself.

Stopping in your brief skirmish, you disengage from the enemy in front of you to twist and leap to your Master's side, ignoring the sickening crunch that rings out as you stop two separate clones from caving her skull in during that brief window of vulnerability. While you were able to easily ward one off with Gram, the other forced you to defend with your other hand, swinging a fist out that - while successful in deflecting the naked woman bearing down on your Master - came at the cost of most of the bones in that hand.

There is a single stunned moment where your Master - facing directly towards you - jolts at the sound of your hand breaking, her eyes - presently golden slits not dissimilar to a snake's - staring into your own in both strain and anger.

And then the two of you whirl towards the nearly successful attacker as one, eight arachnid limbs, two magical swords, and one pissed off Cape lashing out to cleave through the creature's neck from opposite directions, your weapons passing within inches of each other, like the worlds most mythical set of scissors.

'For the record Emmy - this was a terrible plan.' Taylor says with the sort of subdued cheer you might expect to hear in the voice of a woman who is about to do something truly unpleasant to some poor unsuspecting moron.

You would know. It reminds you entirely too much of your Emulations Wife.

Not that you have much time to consider that, as your Master pulses with light to heal your broken hand, and the shouts of those above begin to filter down into the tunnel, accompanied by the infuriated screams of Echidna as she barrels towards you, having no doubt just finished processing the situation.

Leaving you and your Master to face off against twelve - eleven now you suppose - copies of the worlds most powerful woman, possibly hundreds of lesser capes, and an S-class threat.

Exactly as it was always meant to be.

A/N: Okay! Work and life have been kicking my ass for most of October so I've noticeably slowed down here. And, to be honest, I hate that. For a number of reasons, I have the next several weeks off however, and intend to get back to my usual semi-regular posting rating. If anyone's curious, I had to roll to see which random cape you pulled out of Echidna, although the death match spell really just means that I was rolling to see which cape you managed to get to relative safety before the fighting started since she had to vomit them all up. Anyway. Usual disclaimers apply. Sleep deprivation. grammar. Blah blah.

Have fun with it.