A Saga of Tanya the Evil/The Irregular at Magic High School crossover.
I do not in any way, shape, or form lay claim to either of these works.
This is just a work of admiration from one fan, to those others that share the same interest.
The only characters or places I lay claim to are those solely of my own creation
Chapter 44, Time flies: Time moves onward, always onward.
Tuesday, August 10th 2094. 2:03 AM
Point Two.
Visha tried to tune out the high-speed battle that was happening all around her as she focused her attention on her opponent. He moved slowly, but she had become certain that it was more a matter of being methodical than slow. It could very well even have something to do with the magic he had employed, or it might be a bluff to put his opponents off guard. Two opponents that were resistant or immune to ranged combat, but handled it in completely different ways. An interesting way of dealing with the modern battlefield. How effective their tactics were against magic would be tested in this engagement, of that Visha was sure.
From her time on the front, Visha knew how deceptive the slow, lumbering movements of tanks could be. They could cover a surprising amount of ground in a rush, all while turning aside any attack that wasn't designed to defeat their armor. She had quickly realized she needed to treat her opponent like a tank, and that also meant looking out for whatever ranged options he was sure to employ.
Shan narrowed his eyes behind the bulletproof visor of his helmet as he watched his opponent. She moved well, and had remained calm. She had even almost managed to penetrate his armor at one of the joints, the few places he could not completely fortify. Still, as long as he remained aware of her movements and where she had aimed, he was confident he could handle her. It should not be long before Xian Lao had taken care of the mage that had confronted her, and then they would crush this other one between the hammer and anvil.
He spared a glance at where his partner was engaged with the other mage, and paused for a moment. He had trouble following either of them, and that was not a good sign. Xian Lao had been forced to push herself faster than normal, and somehow the mage she was engaged with had kept pace with her. It should not be possible, but it made him even more cautious of the mage he had engaged with. They were clearly no ordinary mages, and he had to take that into consideration.
He issued a new command, and went on the offensive. He had to take out this interloper he faced so that he could try to help Xian Lao. It was what they had always done since they had truly started to train under the Master. They each had a wildly different outlook and fighting style, but that had allowed them to cover for the other, to only make them stronger as a team.
Visha barely had time to dodge out of the way as the ground underneath her erupted into spikes of stone. She started to keap backwards, but some voice in the back of her head drove her to dive to the side and roll clear before she came back to one knee and had already started to aim down the sights of her rifle. She was shaken out of her focus when the wall behind her previous position exploded into shrapnel.
If she had followed her first reaction, she would have been skewered by the fragments of concrete that had shotgunned out.
Visha steeled her resolve and resisted the urge to glance in that direction. It wouldn't help her, especially against an opponent that seemed to be able to turn the walls and floors against her. She fired off one of the precious rounds from the special magazine, and watched to see how his armor handled the entropically hardened round.
Shan had hoped that the compound attack would have done the job. He had been prepared for most possibilities when he launched the attack. The initial attack moved like a wave along the ground, a short ripple of stone spikes to drive his target backwards towards the real attack. The fact that she dove clear to the side, and risked being caught by the stone spikes on the floor spoke either of finely trained instincts, or an almost preternatural level of awareness.
Either that or an almost psychotic level of training.
He figured it must be one of the former, and not the latter. Western societies tended to be more humane in how they treated their mages. Softer. Weaker. It had been what they had been taught.
And it didn't pay to doubt the lessons they had been taught.
Shan braced himself as the western mage prepared to fire. It had been odd to realize that they were mages, yet they had cast no offensive spells so far. So far, all the combat from the intruders had been conventional arms, yet he had a feeling that there was something going on. A feeling that proved all too true as the round penetrated partially through his armor. And this time, it had not been a joint. It had been one of the primary plates on his upper leg.
The fight had just gotten a bit too interesting.
Visha nodded to herself as she chambered another round and surveilled the damage. She could see a little bit of blood seeping out of the spot that the round had struck. It hadn't been a solid hit, the round had not landed as true as she would have liked. Still, the effectiveness of the penetrator rounds that her girlfriend had given her was undeniable. Once again, Visha proved to herself and the world at large just how thoughtful her significant other really was. A moment later, she was pulled out of her thoughts as the slowly moving mountain rushed at her like a landslide.
It seemed her earlier judgement had been proven all too true.
The mismatched opponents found themselves engaged in heated close combat as Shan rushed to engage his opponent, since he had decided that someone as skilled at ranged warfare and equipped with a weapon that could penetrate his protective magics was not likely to be as skilled or dangerous in close combat.
Needless to say, he found himself more than a little perplexed when the smaller woman pulled out an entrenching tool, of all things. And proceeded to block his attacks with it in a way that suggested more than a passing familiarity with the odd weapon.
Visha had reached for her trusty shovel as soon as she saw Shan begin his headlong rush towards her. She cleared it and snapped it open just in time to block the first heavy palm strike that had been launched at her. The strike seemed very familiar in how it had been delivered. It reminded her of the old man who had almost killed her. Her eyes narrowed as his follow up strike set up an attack on her rifle, that she just barely managed to avoid landing.
It was obvious that he thought it must be some property of the rifle itself, most likely a CAD device, that enabled it to penetrate his enhanced armor. While it was true that the rounds were special, otherwise the rifle was exactly like what it looked like.
Now, her actual CAD was hardly anything that would be recognized for a mage device, by the very nature of what it was. Sadly, she had never really mastered the art of truly magical combat, that not being an area that the combat mages of her old world really focused on, as long as you excluded the likes of the Devil of the Rhine, or those lunatics that had tried to hunt down Tanya.
But for now, she had to focus on the capable opponent that she faced. She was uncertain if her trusty entrenching tool could defeat his armor, but she was more than willing to put it to the test, if it came to that. He had obviously figured that since she was adept at ranged combat, that she would be inept or at least lacking in close quarters engagements. That might have been true at one time, but one did not earn the nickname the Devil's Handmaid without being able to function where her beloved former commander had spent most of the war, in the midst of the enemy where her formidable close quarters talents could turn the tide in an engagement.
VIsha decided to take a risk to get a better assessment of her opponent. She feinted swinging her rifle up, and when he moved to block the rifle being raised, she stepped in and short-hafted her entrenching tool as she stabbed, then stepped back and to the side as she let her grip slide towards the end and delivered a heavy turning slash. She was not surprised when the blade was deflected, and her shell was forced to absorb his heavy counterstrike.
As the two separated again, they locked gazes as they circled each other once again. Visha's only real chance against him was the special rounds in her rifle, while he assumed it had been the gun, or a spell she herself had cast through it, that allowed it to surpass his armor.
Everytime she let her hand dip towards the rifle, she saw him tense and prepared to close the distance. She had to find some way to distract him or make sure that he could not close the distance before she could aim and fire off a round at something that would actually slow or stop the juggernaut that she faced. As much as she would have liked to just shoot him in the head and be down with it, the chances of landing the shot as things stood was not good enough to make it a good strategy.
She spared a glance to where the other two fighters were buzzing about each other, and she could tell that the pace of the conflict had picked up. She knew how long Tanya could maintain a truly enhanced speed like what she had shown here, and that timer had to be rapidly ticking down to zero. She had to do something soon to break this stalemate so that she could be of some use to Tanya before she had to cross that threshold. The fact that this Chinese operative had been able to push Tanya this far for this long spoke volumes about the pair they had encountered. And Visha, having fought alongside the Rusted Silver, the Bloody Devil of the Rhine for as long as she had, knew for a fact that part of the reason that Tanya had to push herself this far was her own presence. That and the necessity to leave the facilities and the surrounding buildings in something resembling an intact shape.
Whatever plan she might have settled on quickly became moot as there was the high pitched sound of Tanya snapping off a burst at almost point blank range, then a moment later it seemed like a bomb went off. Visha didn't let herself dwell on the small shape that went flying through the air, instead she let herself be pushed back by the blast wave as Shan did the opposite, and braced himself.
As the ground and Visha neared each other, she sighted her rifle and fired three shots in rapid succession, one just before she landed on her shoulder, and the other two as she rolled to a kneeling position. The first round hit Shan in the lower leg, just above the swell of armor that protected his ankle. The other ones hit the outside of his left leg, just below the heavy armor that covered his hip joint, and then one into his left shoulder as he rotated and fell.
Visha spared him a glance as she hurried over to check on her stunned partner. When she looked back, Shan had ended up near where his partner lay. He slammed his hand into the ground, and a wall of concrete and stone shot up to shield them. A moment later, the floor shook and rolled for a moment as the sound of rumbles and cracks reverberated behind the sudden barrier. When it ended, Visha could see the partially filled depression where the two Chinese operatives had been moments before.
Visha sighed and looked down at the groggy form of Tanya as she lay against the wall. The two shared a look before Tanya sighed. "You didn't finish him off, did you?" Tanya asked.
Visha shared a long, aggravated look with her girlfriend that pulled a sigh and a faint smile from the former Devil of the Rhine.
"Thank you for making sure I wasn't broken or anything. I appreciate the thought." Tanya said, then winced as Visha helped her back up. "We should finish up here. I have the distinct feeling we will probably see those two again. Call it a hunch, from dealing with too many competent enemies that just never could figure out when to call it a day."
Visha smiled and nodded as she walked alongside Tanya until she had once more regained her balance on her own.