So, this wasn't meant to be posted for another few days, review period and all, but my Grandfather passed away today and I ended up just deciding to throw up my hands and stop doubting myself this time as a way of venting.
As promised, here's the next of the Distraction team stories. Because of the Frankenstein-esque world-building I've been doing, combined with RWBY's complete lack of actual information about the pre-Remnant world, I've had some interesting experiences translating the background we have from the Wizard of Oz and RWBY Ozma into something that fits.
Add in ZUN's own ambiguity regarding Aya's backstory and hints of importance (why did you have to specify she was holding back against Reimu and Marisa, ZUN?) and this felt like putting together a puzzle with only a quarter of the pieces.
Let me know what you all think about the result. Balancing the original fairy tales and Touhou lore with Rooster Teeth's worldbuilding is half the fun of writing this. Even if it drives me to madness some days.
Once upon a time, the Emerald City had been a place of wonder and innovation. Where the best and brightest would gather from across the world to further their craft under the guidance of legends.
From architects to spellcasters, every calling had a place there. Each working in concert, for one of the founding principles of the city was that no discipline could reach its full potential without cooperation.
Nowhere was this more apparent than with the city itself. Every building, from the most extravagant palace to the humblest shack, was constructed out of brilliant crystal. A unique material that was more durable than anything not god-forged and capable of being shaped like clay by those with the necessary skill and authority.
On top of that, the substance was an extremely effective base for enchantments, allowing for virtually any function to be added within hours or even minutes. From necessities such as food and water to amenities like on-demand lighting, even top-tier workshops for virtually any discipline could be provided so long as there was sufficient room.
While all of these things were subject to limitations, such as food materials needing to come from a prepared supply or continued energy flow being required to maintain the additions' active states, the city could reasonably be called a paradise. Somewhere where the residents could truly live without fear of falling victim to the many dangers the rest of the world faced.
Of course, such a place was not perfect; there was a sense of elitism and separation among many of the residents. Only the best were to be allowed entry, so did it not follow that those who dwelt within the city were not different from those outside it?
And so, rather than illuminate humanity with their achievements, the residents of the city were content to remain as a distant goal. One that offhandedly gave out bits and pieces of the wonders they achieved, taunting those looking upon it to become worthy to enter if they wished to grasp the true extent of the city's brilliance.
Those bold enough to try and pillage the contents of this place would be met with not only a legion of golems but a small army of hostile mages and warriors. Every last resident was trained in magic, with many taking advantage of the available resources to learn some form of combat art, all of whom were backed by the city's defensive enchantments.
A daunting task to be sure.
But, like any place of great renown, it had those who dedicated their lives to subjugating it under their heel. Petty warlords who sought plunder, hostile gods and youkai, and the occasional experiment gone horribly wrong, or right depending on who you asked.
But one individual had earned infamy beyond any other threat to the Emerald City: Elphaba, also known as the Wicked Witch of the West.
A former resident of the city, she had been born with a unique deformity that left her with green skin, a body that melted when wet, and an affinity for magic that bordered on the absurd. No one was quite sure how this happened, some blaming curses, others claiming she was a Youkai, and yet more citing mutation.
Regardless, the result was the same. A talented and powerful young girl growing up in one of the largest repositories of knowledge on the planet spent her entire life alienated from the rest of humanity. People are rarely kind to those different than themselves, even more so when the differences are so obvious and exploitable.
And so, Elphaba eventually turned against the city and its inhabitants, seeking to avenge her years of persecution. However, despite her best efforts, her plan to seize control of the city's defenses was thwarted by her longtime friend Ozma.
Fleeing the city in despair and failure, she went into hiding in the mountains and began building up her supplies and forces for a new attempt. Acquiring an artifact that allowed her to summon an army of monkey youkai and honing her skills in preparation for the day when she could take revenge on the city and the wizard who betrayed her.
Yet, when the time came for her plan to be put into action, the prodigal son she had longed so dearly to face once more had already passed away.
Perhaps if Ozma had lived, if he had been there to confront the woman he had protected from bullies in their youth, things might have taken a different turn. She could have fixated on him, weakening her overall strategy, and maybe even be talked out of her self-destructive rampage before it went too far.
But there was no hero, no spanner in the works to derail her war. Driven even further into madness by this cruel twist, this lack of confrontation with the one she sought to prove wrong above all else, her forces descended upon the Emerald City like the wrath of one of the more temperamental gods.
Decades of unbroken security and superiority had left the people of the city complacent, most only theoretically prepared to defend themselves and their homes. Against someone who had grown up within the city, who had devoutly studied every piece of information about the defenses that she could get her hands on, that failing became their downfall.
The indomitable Emerald City, a shining symbol of progress and success, fell within days. The residents were forced to labor day and night to support their new ruler's whims and were put to work strengthening her army and crafting items of use. Those who resisted were swiftly rounded up and dragged away into the dungeons, from which no one had emerged since the takeover.
And now, the city was once again under attack by those who sought to lay its masters low and pillage the contents within. Not that the residents were aware of this fact yet.
For Aya and her Tengu horde had studied their target and knew that a direct assault would likely end in them being bogged down by the various defenses, and so, had opted for a stealthier approach…
"Does the air feel off to you today?" a patrolwoman asked her partner as they moved through the empty streets of the Emerald City and past another deserted alleyway. "Like something's different?"
"Gee Jam, I don't know?" She replied caustically, throwing her arms up into the air. "Maybe it's the flying monkeys that keep passing overhead, or the enchantments our fair lady keeps adding to the city's matrix. Or even the teensy little detail that our new ruler is a tyrannical despot who's probably watching our every move?"
"Alright, alright, I get it. I'm sorry Jin. Just felt like maybe something was happening, no need to bite my head off," she muttered as the two continued down their assigned route and around a corner. Their voices faded into the distance.
A handful of moments passed before a winged figure emerged from behind a stairway.
"So undisciplined. Though I suppose you can't expect much from a bunch of conscripts," she mused absentmindedly. The bulk of her attention focused on the stream of whispers and sounds carried to her by the wind.
Getting into the city might not have been much of an issue between her speed and Yagokoro's cloaking device shielding her from magical detection, especially with most of the defenses still damaged or disabled from Elphaba's conquest, but Aya knew better than to get complacent here.
Checking the map she'd been provided, the Tengu confirmed that there were only another fifteen blocks between her and the central control tower. Once she got inside and took the city's defenses down, the rest of her forces could swoop in and clean house.
Sadly, flight wasn't an option if she wanted to avoid notice, so she would have to stay close to the ground for the rest of the trip.
"Right, so that's a group there, another patrol over in that part, some monkeys flying over there, and a sentry house there…" she muttered to herself, using the information conveyed by the wind to plan out her route.
Once her course was set, she took off and vanished further into the city in a blur of movement. Were it not for her actively muffling her movements with magic, every guard within three blocks of her location would have been drawn to the boom left behind by the displaced air.
Four blocks this way, take a left here, into the alleyway to dodge that oncoming patrol, around the back before they noticed her passing behind them, a right turn here, and another seven blocks straight ahead. Nearing a sentry tower, Aya took a moment to pause beneath the shadow of an awning, relying once more on her command over the air to determine what the sentries were up to.
While her sensory abilities weren't advanced enough to form an actual image of people, she could, with a great deal of concentration, track their exhalations to determine which way the sentries were facing.
At the moment, only one guard was looking at the area she needed to pass through, though the Tengu knew that that could easily change.
When almost a minute passed without the watcher turning away, Aya began to wonder if she would need to somehow distract them if she wanted to pass unnoticed. Fortunately, they chose that moment to glance off to the side.
The opening was all the time she needed to launch herself across the exposed road and continue towards her destination. By the time the guard's eyes had returned to the path they were meant to guard, the Tengu was already well past the checkpoint and speeding towards her destination.
To Aya's pleasant surprise, she didn't encounter any more guard towers along her route to the defense center. From what gossip she could gather from the winds, it seemed like Elphaba simply didn't consider them necessary or practical when she commanded such a large number of aerial forces.
If so, the witch was clearly even less stable than the Tengu had imagined. Which was both reassuring and deeply concerning for her plans here.
Elphaba had very definitely sabotaged her own defenses, the infiltration wouldn't have gone so smoothly otherwise, but that sort of behavior pointed towards her being too paranoid not to have added some unexpected additions to the important things just in case anyone got any funny ideas.
It wouldn't have to be anything capable of bringing her down, Aya held no illusions about her chances if she got pinned down and everything she knew about the Emerald City's defense systems gave her the impression that they were designed to do exactly that. All the witch would need to do is prepare something good enough to force her into the other defenses and that would be all she wrote.
Still, there was nothing Aya could do about the possibility of unexpected complications right now. She'd just have to keep her ears open and close attention to the whispers on the wind. Hopefully, they would tell her something.
Aya had always hated not knowing things. When she was growing up, she'd always hear the Tengu warriors bickering about what the most important thing they could have was. Some said it was strength, some said cunning, and a few wiser ones said determination. Personally, she'd always considered information the most important thing.
If you knew effective training methods then you could get stronger even faster, if you had knowledge of your enemy it would be even easier to plan around or even manipulate them, and if you understand what you're facing there's no reason to fear. That was the conclusion that Aya Shameimaru had come to.
It was that belief that carried her to her present standing. Long hours spent spying on every warrior she could find to learn the best ways to get stronger, learning what worked and what didn't until she could put together something better. Using those little scraps of info she'd gathered up to convince people that she deserved a shot, that she was good enough to know their secrets.
Elphaba probably knew that once, she couldn't have pulled off her coup without truly absurd amounts of research and/or luck, and it's entirely possible that scraps of that understanding might still be floating around in her twisted little head.
Aya resolved to keep a very close eye on her surroundings from here on out. Yagokoro's cloaking device might shield her from detection spells or the like, but it wouldn't save her if some guard got lucky or there was a more mundane trigger. She'd certainly screwed over enough mages that way.
Pushing those thoughts to the back of her head for now, Aya came to a halt in the shadow of one of the various waste disposal bins scattered throughout the city. Only a few dozen feet away stood the Emerald City Defense Center: a massive tower of crystal stretching miles into the sky and situated at the heart of the city.
All she had to do was get inside and use the identifier medallion the crafters had whipped up to fool the system into thinking she was in charge. Without their defenses, the remaining forces of the Emerald City wouldn't stand a chance against her troops. Maybe she could even turn some of the countermeasures against Elphaba for extra irony.
Still, Aya wasn't home free yet. She took a peek around the corner of her hiding place and confirmed what the wind had been telling her: that there were a half-dozen guards positioned around the exit. Each one was bored but still alert.
What's worse, each of them was located so that two other guards could see them at all times. Meaning that if she couldn't just pick off the outsiders one by one, not if she wanted to get inside without bringing the witch's army down on her head before she was ready. Especially not if the tower could still seal itself like she'd overheard some of the soldiers saying.
Using the wind to create another distraction was an option, but there wasn't enough cover for her to blitz them and disappear while they're still off-balance. At most, she could kill four before someone realizes they need to activate the defenses and she gets locked out of her objective.
"Tch,'" the young Tengu clicked her tongue. "There has to be something I can do…" she growled under her breath. Her mind raced through possible solutions to this dilemma as she absentmindedly chewed her lip.
The simplest option would be to bypass the guards and head straight into the tower. If she moved at full speed there was no way that those guards would be able to even recognize she existed until she had already made it inside. The issue with that was that she didn't have the slightest clue how to shut them out of the tower, meaning she would be alerting enemy forces to her existence in exchange for switching an unfavorable battleground to an unknown one.
The second option would be to try and cut down their numbers before engaging in open combat with the remaining forces. The fight would be weighted more in her favor than the previous method but she would be putting a lot in the hands of her luck. At any time, a guard could look over and notice her handiwork. Forcing her to go with whatever she's accomplished at that point.
The third option would be to try and take down all of them at once. Aya knew she could push air to and from locations, allowing her to crush things, cut them, or create vacuums, all of which could be scaled up to eliminate entire groups. However, her abilities worked best in relatively close proximity to her. Creating a half-dozen localized areas of effect, or one very large one, would drain most of her energy even if it worked. Leaving her significantly more vulnerable than the Tengu would prefer to risk even if she could theoretically perform such a feat.
No, it would take a more creative approach to achieve her goals. Fortunately for Aya, creativity was something she had in spades.
Looking back over the guards, she recognized one of them, the one stationed by the right-hand corner of the building, from the Tengus' investigations over the past two weeks.
Her mouth split into a devilish grin. She had her way in.
Omby Amby, once again stationed outside the entrance to the central defense tower, wondered where everything had gone so wrong.
He'd never been the best soldier, always terrified of hurting someone even if he might need to. Whatever spark of bravery people liked to wax lyrical about had simply failed to light itself within him, leaving only a coward who relied on bluster and trickery to keep the peace.
When the Wicked Witch's army had torn through the Emerald City, he'd failed to even incapacitate a single enemy, having focused solely on helping the civilians caught up in the madness. His biggest contribution to the battle had probably been the ten seconds that it had taken that one monkey to tie him up.
With that sort of track record, he supposed it wasn't a surprise that the witch hadn't seen him as enough of a threat to deal with and just put him back to work. Doing the same job, just under her orders rather than the councils'.
Every now and again, he thought about rising up against the tyrannical madwoman and fighting back. Of protecting the helpless civilians who were so often subjected to her insane whims. But his nerve would always give out and he'd simply comfort himself that he could accomplish more from within the system than he would dying against it.
The assurances rang hollow, even within his mind, but they were all he had left to cling to in these dark times. He wasn't a legendary mage like the deceased Ozpin, a hero like the fallen Green Knight, or even a competent strategist.
He was just another coward among many.
Omby shook his head to clear the depressing thoughts from his mind. He knew that nothing good waited down that train of thought, or perhaps he simply couldn't bear to face the reality of his situation.
Regardless of the reason, he turned his attention outward. His gaze swept the plaza for any sign of something with which to distract himself from his own situation. Yet nothing out of the ordinary appeared.
Just as he was about to give up and resign himself to seven more hours of stewing in his own self-loathing, he heard the sound of something crashing into the ground just around the corner.
His legs shook at the thought of confronting the cause of the din but, unfortunately for him, the choice was about to be taken out of his hands.
"Hey, coward!" the head guard's voice called out from his place by the front door. "Go see what that was!"
And so, he reluctantly set out to investigate the source of the suspicious noise. Though not without glancing back at his commanding officer as if he might change his mind at any moment.
When no such orders came, he slowly continued onward, looking back at his destination just in time to miss the argument that had broken out between several of the guards.
Omby approached the entrance to the street, his knees trembling like leaves in the wind and his gun clenched tightly in his hands. He turned the corner, raising his rifle in preparation to take aim at whatever might be lurking nearby.
However, given how badly his hands were shaking, it was unlikely that he would be able to hit anything even if he tried.
Mustering his courage, he rounded the corner and braced himself for the worst. But his efforts were in vain, the sight before him leaving him gawking and bewildered.
The street was completely empty. With not a single trace of the cause of that noise, or anything else, to be found.
He stalked forward, eyes darting across the area in an attempt to make sense of the situation. Yet nothing appeared.
Confused, Omby turned back around to report the situation, only for a fist to smash into his face and send him sprawling to the ground.
"Thought you could just run off, did you you damn waste of skin?!" Omby gazed up at the blurry figure glaring down at him. His shaken mind trying to identify who had just decked him and why.
"On your feet traitor!" The figure grabbed Omby by the collar of his uniform with both hands and lifted him into the air. As he hung a foot above the ground, his vision finally cleared up enough for the terrified guard to recognize his attacker.
It was the captain himself. Looking ready to tear out Omby's organs and feed them to him.
"Why…? Omby croaked out. "You told me too…"
Before he could finish his sentence, he was slammed back down into the ground by the enraged guardsman.
"I gave no such order, you craven fool!" The captain screamed in his face. "Whatever excuses you're trying to give are irrelevant. The moment the other troopers spotted you sneaking off over here, I knew you'd finally decided to try and run off!"
"I…I…" Omby tried to defend himself, to explain, but his throat clogged up and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the words out.
"You know what? Screw wasting everyone's time dragging you to trial." The captain drew his rifle from his hip and took aim between Omby's eyes. "I'm going to do what the queen should have done a long time ago."
"Please!" Omby begged, tears pouring down his cheeks. "I didn't…"
But before he could finish his last desperate plea, he heard an ear-splitting bang and felt his head jerk backward before everything went black.
"Good riddance…" the captain muttered as he returned his rifle to his side. Completely unaware of the green and black blur passing behind him and into the defense tower. The other guards, having studiously averted their eyes from the execution, likewise failed to take note of the intruder sneaking by
Aya was rather happy with herself. She'd infiltrated the objective with no one the wiser and sowed conflict among the enemy forces, even eliminating one of them. Even if he was, by all accounts, completely useless.
Still, she'd killed two foes with one arrow. Enough to leave her in a good mood as she snuck through the tower, concealing herself from sight in the shadows of the towering arcane devices. With the damage done by Elphaba's invasion still recent, the defense tower was undermanned enough that Aya wouldn't have to worry about coming across anyone outside of the work areas.
"Now, if I was a central control unit, where would I be…" Aya muttered to herself as she idly scanned her surroundings for clues.
"Surveillance room, restroom, oh, an armory. Need to keep that in mind." While her mental map of the structure grew ever more detailed, Aya's wandering had yet to uncover the clues that she sought.
And so, she decided to gamble that whatever sensors littered the structure wouldn't be able to pick up her preferred method of information gathering.
After finding a nice out-of-the-way hiding spot, she closed her eyes and cast out her awareness. Letting her power carry conversations from across the nearby floors straight into her ears.
"...have to work overtime again? Where's that focusing crystal? So, she wants to meet up next Monday… Who left monkey crap in my chair?! Just tell them to fix their own damn doors! We're not a repair shop for crying out loud!"
Aya frowned. It was decent gossip and prime evidence that, no matter where you worked, magic attracted madness, but she needed something a little more relevant to her mission right now. With a bit of focus, she tried to narrow the whispers down to anything involving the layout or central chamber.
"...went nuts, Usami and Hearn got eaten by the rift along with the rest of the room. No clue where I am! Assigned to sector S. Bathroom is across the hall. How big is this place? Just heading down to give today's status report to central. Drop those crystals and we're monkey food!"
Finally picking up a clue, Aya focused her attention on the second-to-last voice that she had heard.
Each airflow had a unique signature, the countless factors making up the windy equivalent of a fingerprint. The breeze that had carried the information she had sought to her was tinged with a hint of ozone, an underlying sense of energy that had been caught up in the wind's wake.
Aya traced the path of that feeling, letting her esoteric senses paint an image of the area in her mind's eye.
The breeze had traveled in from above, exiting the stairwell in the next room over after a winding descent of four stories. Before that, it had traveled across the hallway for what felt like eight feet before entering the stairwell.
Unfortunately, that was the extent of the information that Aya could glean from her ability. Between the various closed doors and the disturbances caused by other movements muddling the picture, she would need to get closer in order to better locate her target.
With a final glance at her surroundings just in case someone had somehow managed to evade her ability, she set off towards the stairwell. While Yagokoro's camouflage and Aya's own skills left her the closest any living being could likely get to being a ghost, there was no sense in taking chances this close to the objective.
She slowly and carefully made her way towards the stairs, never once lingering outside of cover any longer than was necessary to proceed.
Aya cautiously opened the entryway and proceeded up the stairway, beginning her ascent upwards. Her pace was swift, but there was a sense of tension pervading her movements. Her form was ready to spring into hiding at the slightest sign of company.
Despite this, her preparations were ultimately unneeded. Though she could make out the sound of shoes smacking against the crystalline floor, the person responsible for the noises had exited the stairwell before they approached Aya's current level.
Reasoning that the individual who had just left was the one she meant to follow due to the timing of their presence and the matching tinge of ozone in the air around them, the young tengu moved to follow them and quickly traversed the intervening levels.
Once she reached the floor that they had exited on, Aya sidled up next to the door and cracked it open by a centimeter. Without the airflow being blocked by the door, it was child's play to extend her control over the air through the newly-opened passage and into the corridor.
The area on the other side was definitely more populated than the sections she had passed through, the telltale sensations of air being inhaled and exhaled emitting from almost a dozen points.
Turning her attention back towards the whispers on the wind, Aya searched once more for that familiar voice.
"...ward actually tried to sneak off while no one was looking… sensors are holding steady, no sign of trouble… operating at seventy-percent capacity, internal sensors need another two weeks to repair."
Having identified her target as the last voice, she determined that he was in the fourth room on the left, along with three other individuals who were gathered within a circular structure of some sort. The hum of ambient mana suffusing the nearby air indicated that it was the control center she'd been looking for.
The fact that they outright referred to the room as the 'control room' was enough to confirm those suspicions in record time.
With the objective marked, Aya began redirecting her focus toward planning out her route. While she could make use of her speed to blitz them and slaughter the lot of them, such a tactic ran the risk of making her a target for any remaining defenses.
No, she could tear through these people like a vengeful god once their protections were no longer an issue. She'd snuck this far, another few minutes wouldn't kill her.
Aside from the four in the control room, there was one person in the first door on each side, two in the second door on the right, two more in the room across from the control center, and three people in the last room on the left.
Aware that someone could enter the stairwell at any moment, Aya quickly ran through the best ways to ensure that no one got in her way.
After a minute of thought, she came to her conclusion.
She reached out to the air around her, once again forming an aura of silence, and darted out of the stairwell and into the door on the left.
The worker inside, bent over a table and fiddling with a magic circle, never saw her coming, Before he even realized anything was out of the ordinary, she tore the air away from his head and followed up with a swift decapitation while he silently flailed.
With that potential complication removed, Aya pulsed the hallway with her wind sense to confirm no surprises would be lying in wait.
Once she'd confirmed that the hallway remained clear, the tengu shot across to the opposite room like a bullet. With not a single noise betraying her movements, she repeated the process.
And so she went, moving from room to room, slaughtering anyone in them before they could even begin to react.
Enter, suffocate, kill. Repeat as needed. Quick, clean, and simple. Unless they were one of the really scary ones, most mages lacked the ability to channel mana while choking on vacuum. It had a way of disrupting one's focus.
No magic, no enchanted artifacts, and what seemed like no actual combat experience. The workers never stood a chance.
Within a matter of seconds, Aya had whittled down the floor's residents to the groups in the control center, the room opposite it, and the ones further down the hall.
Ready to get this assignment over with, she moved towards the room across from her target. Eliminating those within would remove the last group who could place themselves directly in the path of her exfiltration and clear the way for the next step.
However, as with almost any plan, it was inevitable that something would eventually go wrong. In this case, it took the form of a technician who happened to be staring at the doorway right as Aya entered.
While Aya's powers ensured that no hint of her presence could reach the ears of those around her, they did little to shield her from the gazes of others. And though her cloaking device offered some protection in that regard, it was only enough to make Aya harder to identify, not invisible.
In the brief instant of recognition, two very different emotions flickered across the human and tengu's faces as they locked eyes.
The technician's expression contorted in confusion, realization, and finally, terror as her mind processed the sight of a youkai in the tower. One who wasn't a member of the groups serving the Wicked Witch at that.
In contrast, Aya simply stared back with thinly veiled annoyance. As if she was looking at a cockroach that had just crawled out from under a rock.
With a speed borne from mind-numbing terror, the technician turned to warn her companion, to raise the alarm, to fight back. Anything that might save her.
Unfortunately for her, Aya was simply that much faster.
Her desperate cry was strangled in the crib as her words slammed into the empty void. Before she could even turn halfway to the other mage, her head fell from her shoulders.
The miniature vacuum she'd created where the woman's head used to be collapsed on itself with a light 'pop.' The noise, and the sound of her head hitting the floor, drew the attention of the other worker.
"Hey Marcy, did you knock something ov…" He began to tease, only for his words to trail off into nothing as he gazed at the remains of his colleague. Before his mind could finish comprehending the situation, Aya was upon him and the room fell silent once more.
"What a mess," Aya sighed as she slumped down. "That's going to come out of my grade, I just know it."
With the room cleared and her route prepared, the tengu was ready to finally complete her main objective.
With a flick of her wings and a brief flex of her ability, Aya shot through the doors like a bullet.
Within moments, she'd reached the interior of the control center. The man who she assumed was the one she'd followed here was standing the closest, facing the three in the center of the control circle and reading off his report.
The trio who appeared to be running the defense system were garbed in the flowing black hooded robes common to magicians who had yet to grow out of the stereotypes. Each stood before a floating screen made out of light displaying arcane symbols and images from throughout the city.
Aya passed right by the first man, her blade tracing a silver line through the air and him before she skidded to a stop next to the center of the circle. For a second, everyone held their breath at the sight, unsure how to react to this sudden appearance. Then, the worker's body fell to the ground in two separate pieces and the screaming started.
"Oh gods, someone he…!" The panicked cry was cut short as a wave of air pressure slammed into them from behind. The impact launched them right onto Aya's outstretched sword, leaving them impaled through the heart and suspended in midair as their words devolved into pained gurgles.
Aya yanked her weapon back out, letting the soon-to-be corpse fall to the ground, and turned to face the remaining two mages. Her legs tensed and ready to spring forward at a moment's notice.
The mages each had a very different reaction to the sight. The one closer to the door turned and made for the exit while the one further inward conjured a barrier in front of them.
Aya rolled her eyes and withdrew a throwing knife from where it was sewn into the side of her skirt, burying it deep into the back of the fleeing mage's skull with a flick of her wrist and a burst of air pressure.
"So, care to try your luck?" she asked the sole survivor, a bright smile on her face. "Or would you rather just drop that shield now and get it over with? I promise you won't feel a thing."
"You… why…?!" The worker stammered, his thoughts racing and colliding at the absurd situation they'd found themselves in. "What are you even doing here?!" He finally cried out, desperately strengthening his protection.
"Oh, just shopping around," Aya nonchalantly waved her hand. "I heard so many things about the Emerald City and its treasures and just had to see for myself. With all the damage your new queen's done, it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up."
The sheer absurdity of that statement left the mage gawking at the tengu in utter shock. So occupied were his thoughts that he missed the sight of a button from his deceased coworker's cloak being torn from the fabric and into the palm of Aya's hand by an unseen force.
"You..!" It didn't take long for his confusion to be replaced by burning rage, his world consumed by the all-encompassing desire to see the creature before him wiped from existence.
The mage's hands erupted in a storm of lightning while his face twisted into an expression of pure contempt. "You!" He repeated. His barrier flickered momentarily.
"Yes, me," Aya deadpanned. "What about me? Are you by chance referring to my bewitching looks, winning personality, or incredible skills? There are just so many great things about me, I can understand that you might get lost in them. You certainly didn't have this kind of quality here from what I've seen."
By this point what could be seen of his face was completely red and the man was standing at the heart of what was rapidly becoming a pillar of solid electricity. Little tongues flickered through the air around him, some coming dangerously close to the terminal.
His barrier was fading in and out of existence, the concentration and power he'd originally invested in it having been devoted to blasting the target of his wrath with everything he had.
"Oh, by the way, just a bit of advice for you. Since you so clearly need it." Aya smirked malevolently as she flicked her thumb and launched the button at the mage. Before he could realize what happened, the projectile had passed right through the unstable shield spell and pierced clean through his frontal lobe.
"Always keep your head in the game if you don't want to lose it."
He stood still for a moment, the aura of lightning fading away to nothing before his body went limp and toppled forward to the ground.
With everyone else in the room dead, Aya was free to stride over to the main terminal and do what she came here for. She reached into another concealed section of her dress, one that she had badgered Yagokoro into upgrading with a pocket dimension storage, and retrieved a silver crystal with runic engravings covering every surface.
"Let's see… Yagokoro said there would be a port to insert it into. Something about how the magicians who made these liked to store information on crystals and upload it so they didn't have to write everything out," she muttered to herself as she looked for anything fitting that description.
After a cursory examination of the machine, she found what she was looking for. There, on the right-hand edge of the console, was a small circular indentation the size of her hand.
Aya quickly placed the crystal inside and stepped back to watch Lunarian craftsmanship at work. It wasn't like it was a common sight even after the lunatics had to run to earth with their tails between their legs and she was eager to see how it worked.
A magic circle engraved around the port lit up and a dome of light formed over the crystal. Moments later, glowing lines ran over its surface as a green bar appeared on the monitor and slowly began to fill.
After a minute, the process was complete. Information boxes began to open one after another in such numbers that, within seconds, several of them had been covered entirely by new ones.
With Aya's keen eyes, she was able to follow the flood of information. Apparently, scanning the crystal had removed every friendly-fire protocol from the defense network as well as triggered something called the scorched earth protocols.
As if on cue, the sounds of explosions and terrified screaming could be heard from outside.
"Well, that's my work done. Time to be on my way," Aya noted as she removed the crystal and stored it away again. No sense in leaving evidence lying around after all.
She flared her wings, drawing in the magic and focus needed for what came next.
The world fell away. All that mattered was her and the path that she must travel.
Aya closed her eyes and took a deep breath and held it for a handful of seconds before slowly exhaling. Letting her sense of self synchronize with the air and the magic flowing beneath her skin.
"Alright," she opened her eyes once more, crimson orbs burning with resolve. "Let's do this."
With a flap of her wings and the resulting shockwave, Aya shot out the door and down the hallway. Leaving the confused and terrified survivors to stare as a black blur burst out of the control room and into the stairwell at the other end of the hallway.
From there, it was the work of seconds to reach the bottom floor. And then, the front door.
The sheer speed of her exit from the building tore the replacement doors from their hinges, leaving them to fall to the ground behind her as she made her escape.
Of course, there were plenty of complications.
Sprawling walls of fire had sprung up throughout the city, crystalline structures had grown out of surfaces seemingly at random, with those unlucky enough to be caught in the area of effect swiftly crushed if they were lucky, charred monkeys rained down as anti-air lightning spells fried them en masse, and so much more.
While the really nasty defenses were still out of order after Elphaba's take-over, most of the Emerald City's more skilled residents were either dead or imprisoned. Leaving mostly the average and below to contend with a situation wildly outside their experience.
Even Aya had a close shave or two as she raced through the streets. A wall of razor-sharp string nearly took her head off, she'd cracked a rib after getting disoriented from a mind scrambler and bouncing off a wall, and the giant tornado of fire where a guard tower used to be had singed more than a few feathers. To say nothing of all the flying rubble.
"Ah!" Aya screeched as she frantically weaved through a storm of shattered crystal. Each one was either large enough to shatter her bones into a dozen pieces should she collide with them at this speed or small enough to shoot right through her.
It was a desperate dance, where a single mistake meant death or worse. The air itself was burning, smoke beginning to coat the skies as the surrounding buildings shattered and crumbled into yet more dangers. A man-made hell if there ever was one.
And yet, Aya had never felt more alive.
Her blood boiled, her eyes strained to track every last piece of debris in her vicinity, she could feel herself burning brighter by the moment. Her magic flowed out of every fiber of her being, a storm unleashed at last.
With a defiant cry, she channeled that feeling into the world around her. Blowing the nearby flames and debris away with a miniature tempest and clearing the path forward.
It seemed like it would be relatively smooth sailing after that, with Aya already two-thirds of the way out of the city and past the most trapped parts of the city. All she had to do was keep an eye out for any surprises and fly over the wall of fire that the city wall had become and she would be home free.
Of course, things could hardly be that easy. Crippled shell of its former self or not, the Emerald City wasn't completely filled with the inexperienced and incompetent.
A shockwave suddenly appeared in front of Aya with a thunderous boom. With too much momentum built up for her to stop in time, she instead redirected as much of it as possible into throwing herself upward.
While the blast still slammed into her like a runaway cart, Aya's last-second repositioning ensured that she was only launched spinning through the air rather than pancaked between two devastating forces.
Her head ringing from the impact, she was unable to halt her descent and crashed into a nearby rooftop with enough force to crack the material.
"Ugghh…" Aya groaned as she pulled herself to her feet, the world spinning and her legs unsteady. "Where did that come from?"
"Over here you oversized crow!" A harsh voice called out from a nearby building.
Aya looked over at the source of the voice, grimacing slightly as the world spun for a moment, and took in the sight before her.
There, surrounded by the smoking rubble that had once been neighboring structures, stood a young man clad in a brown vest beneath an emerald-green cloak, A pointy hat covered in stitches and runes seated atop his head. In his right hand, he held a staff as long as he was tall, the uppermost section shaped like a z within a circle.
"We've lost enough already. You don't get to take what we have left and just run away from the consequences." He declared, his staff glowing with a light green. The tip pointed dramatically at her.
"Is that so?" The corner of Aya's mouth turned upwards into a truly smug smirk as she drew her blade. "Well, I've already taken care of what I needed to do, so I suppose I've got a little time to play with you."
She suddenly vanished in a burst of wind, only to reappear behind the man. "Try not to disappoint me, random mage boy."
With that, Aya went on the attack. For her opening move, she opted to send a sweeping horizontal slash towards her opponent's torso. One powerful enough to spread his innards across the roof if it connected.
Before the strike could meet flesh, it slammed into a semi-circular wall of transparent emerald squares that had appeared out of thin air. The blade was stopped dead in its tracks, and Aya found herself momentarily frozen in place.
"Oh, don't worry. I'll be sure to give you everything you've got coming," As he turned around, the barrier suddenly expanded and shoved Aya backward. "And my name is Woot, guardian of the Emerald City!"
Woot swung his staff, unleashing a wave of burning light across the roof. Before it could strike her, Aya threw herself backward off of the roof and into the air. However, the wave continued onward and soon covered the space where she had retreated.
Suddenly, Woot threw his free hand out to the side and launched a burst of lightning from it. A choice that would prove to be the correct one a moment later, when Aya, having evaded the blast by a hair and circled around, was forced to break off her attempted sneak attack in favor of evading the bolts.
"Sharp one, aren't you," Aya noted with a chuckle as she threw a chunk of crystal the size of her head at Woot. Who simply deflected the projectile with another barrier.
"I've had plenty of practice with tricks," Woot retorted. A half-dozen chains of green light formed around him and began to chase after the tengu.
"Clearly not enough or you wouldn't be working for the Witch." The chains' speed doubled. "Touchy subject?"
Aya shattered one chain with a swing of her blade before breaking another with a compressed burst of air.
This still left four chains closing in on her. The steady assault forced her to keep them at bay with careful evasion and well-timed walls of wind as she continued to try and maneuver herself into a position to strike back and break more of the constructs.
Naturally, Woot was not standing idly by and watching the whole affair. He'd pointed his staff at the tengu, magical energy gathering around the head as he took aim at his target.
As Aya dodged yet another attempt by the chains to ensnare her, she noticed an orb of mana had formed and began to compact shortly ahead of her. Rather than slow down, she increased her speed and charged forward. The chains close behind.
With her sudden acceleration, she passed by the orb just before the mana reached critical mass and it detonated in an explosion of heat and force. The mana chains, unable to match Aya's acceleration, were caught in the blast and destroyed.
"Brothers damn it, I thought that had her," Woot snarled as he shielded his eyes from the bright light. His gaze darted around frantically as the young mage tried to pin down his enemy's location.
"You consider something that basic enough to take me down? Wow, you really don't have much experience fighting tengu, do you?" Aya's mocking tone rang out behind him, prompting Woot to about-face and hurl a storm of razor-sharp disc constructs in its direction.
Only for the attack to pass through empty air.
Woot had just enough time to take in the scene, his eyes widening as he realized what just happened, and forced himself back the other way before he felt a sharp pain on his right forearm. A moment later, he heard a wood clattering on the ground.
When Woot looked down at the limb, he was met with nothing more than a bloody stump from the elbow down. The rest of his arm lying in a steadily growing pool of blood on the rooftop below, his staff still clutched in a rictus grip.
"Huh, thought that that would be your torso," Aya idly noted as she flicked blood off of her sword. "Not good enough to take me on, but maybe you're not a total failure like everyone else I've run into today."
Woot stared back, too shocked to respond, before his face twisted in rage and mana began to gather in his remaining hand while an inhuman growl emanated from his throat.
Before he could follow through on his plan, Aya raised her palm and sent him flying off into the distance with a burst of wind. The force of the blast carried him through the air for what felt like minutes before he smashed through the wall of one of the many burning buildings in the area.
The impact was enough to bring down the already damaged structure, dumping several tons of flaming rubble onto Woot.
"And… bullseye," Aya smirked as she watched the collapse from above a neighboring building that was less on fire than the rest. "Now then, is he going to be a fighter or a quitter…?"
The remains of the building suddenly exploded, showering the nearby area with falling crystals and, judging from the agonized cries, leaving more than a few bystanders with yet another set of problems.
"Fighter it is," Aya chuckled.
Saying that Woot was angry was like saying that the sun was hot. Technically accurate, but a vast underestimation.
His friend and idol had died off in a distant land, his home had been invaded and occupied while he was unable to do anything but stand by helplessly, and now this crow had plunged the city back into hell and even had the gall to mock him when he tried to bring her to justice.
In that moment, his world faded into a startling clarity as his thoughts fell away. The state of the Emerald City didn't matter, his failures didn't matter. Here and now, the only thing that he could think of was making the monster pay.
He lowered his upraised arm, trace amounts of mana still wafting from the limb, and pulled himself to his feet. His breathing was heavy and ragged, his body burning from the exertion of channeling so much raw mana at once, Yet he forced himself to look up and meet the tengu's eyes.
There was no shock or rage at his survival within those orbs, merely a cold satisfaction. As if he was a toy she could keep playing with.
With an enraged scream, he cast out his will and took hold of the countless pieces of what was once someone's home. And, thrusting his arm forward, hurled them at his enemy in an avalanche of crystal.
Despite this, the winged demon lazily evaded each and every projectile. Ducking and weaving through holes in the onslaught Woot hadn't even known existed before she descended to the roof below.
"Losing your touch? I was expecting more after your display earlier," she taunted from her perch, grinning smugly down at him.
"Then try this on for size!" Woot retorted heatedly, his open palm raised skyward as energy gathered above her into an erratically shifting orb covered in crackling arcs of power.
Aya simply raised an eyebrow at him and remained where she was.
With a downward slash of Woot's arm, the orb exploded into a pillar of lightning. Within the blink of an eye, the spell had smashed into the roof where she had stood and punched all the way down to ground level.
The young mage struggled to catch his breath, having drawn upon more energy than he intended in his fury, the strain leaving his body cold and weak. The heat from the growing blaze surrounding him further sapped his strength, leaving him torn between the two extremes and fighting to remain steady.
"You know, that might have done some serious damage if you could actually hit me," Aya commented as she lounged atop a nearby pile of rubble.
Another influx of pure rage slammed into Woot's veins and cleared away the weakness he'd felt. The sense of cold permeating his being remained, but it felt distant. Like he was watching his body move from the outside.
"Grrrgghh…" He growled back, too deep in rage and pain to form proper words.
He instead drew back his hand and began to charge another attack, the power flickering erratically in the palm of his hand.
'Really? Do you think that'll work any better than the last few you tried?"
Woot ignored her and focused solely on his spell. With a cry of defiance, he gathered his magic into a sphere larger than he was and hurled it toward her with all his might.
Aya idly sidestepped the attack in a blur of motion, the blast missing her by a good five feet as it passed by.
Woot snapped his hand shut.
Suddenly, the spell exploded, dozens of smaller versions of itself scattering in all directions and detonating on impact.
Aya threw herself away from the explosion a moment before one of the orbs smashed into where she had just been standing, destroying everything within three feet in the process.
For the first time since she launched Woot over to this building, Aya was forced to make full use of her mobility. She alternated between the air and the ground, ducking, dodging, and flipping through the barrage as she put more and more distance between her and the storm of bullets.
Just as it seemed that she had made it through unscathed, two of the orbs collided and exploded. The blast disrupted the pattern that Aya had been exploiting and knocked the remaining attacks around. An act that happened to leave her penned in with a magical cannonball headed straight toward her.
Thinking fast, Aya used her control over the air to grab one of the larger pieces of debris below her and hurled it towards the oncoming attack. It slammed into the orb with enough force to trigger an early explosion, clearing a safe zone for her as the remaining blasts rained down on the rest of the area.
Woot watched all of this with a sense of horrified resignation as he stumbled and fell to the ground, his legs having given out.
"No…" He whispered softly as he watched as Aya pulled herself to her feet and dusted herself off. His desperate plan had failed.
"Credit where credit's due, even if that was just a stroke of dumb luck you got closer to taking me out than most hunters would," Aya stated.
"Would that make you feel any better in my situation?" he spat back as he forced himself to try and rise back up.
"Heh. Definitely not," Aya laughed, a faint smile on her face as she approached Woot, only to stop six feet away from him. "I'd just be angrier at being treated like a joke. Though I would probably do a better job of hiding it."
"Is this all just a game to you?!" Woot demanded angrily.
"No, I'm just mixing work with pleasure. Besides, it isn't like you're a threat to me at this point." Aya's matter-of-fact delivery and nonchalant shrug were probably the most insulting parts of that statement. She truly believed that he wouldn't be able to do anything to her.
Some color returned to Woot's face upon hearing that, his shame and rage at being treated as inconsequential giving him the strength to force himself back to his feet.
"You've got a lot of magical power, but you can't shape it into anything precise on your own. That's why you needed the staff for that barrier or those chains earlier, it shored up that weakness," Aya elaborated. "Without it, you can't quite stabilize any of the more complicated matrices and have to try your luck with overcharged versions of the simpler stuff."
"On top of that, every spell you've cast throughout this fight was a variation on the same theme: you make a shell, fill it with whatever type of energy you feel you need, and then release it in whichever way suits your goals at the time."
Woot stared back, mouth agape as she casually dissected his casting style and abilities.
"The only exception was that trick you used to catch my first attempt to catch you by surprise, and even that was basically just a cloud of mana with enough form for you to tell when some other magic is in it."
"So, what I'm trying to say is that you've burnt out most of your reserves, you can't do anything but throw around overcharged spells that I could dodge in my sleep, and you've been losing blood from that stump for the last few minutes, so I don't imagine you have much left in you," Aya listed off, raising a finger with each point made.
Indeed, the young mage's skin was unhealthily pale, his muscles weak and shaking. Woot's rage had numbed the pain and let him fight on, but it had also blinded him to the damage his injuries had done. Enough that he had neglected to staunch the bleeding stump and now stood in a puddle of his own blood.
Woot listened to the youkai's words and found them hard to deny. He could barely stand, let alone fight. His mana reserves had been worn down to almost nothing, and for what? To try and kill someone who was already leaving?
He'd sworn to do everything he could to protect the Emerald City and those in it when Ozma first left, and again when word arrived that his friend would never return. Could he really justify continuing this fight as keeping that promise?
The damage to the city was done and he had failed to prevent or avenge it. But perhaps he could still be there to heal it…
Woot's body sagged momentarily as the comforting embrace of adrenaline ceased propping him up. When he thought about it like that, there really was only one option.
"You're right," he admitted. His head hung low by the admission. "I can't win. Not here, not now."
"So what are you going to do about it?" Aya asked, eyebrow raised.
"I'm going to focus on where I can make a difference," Woot stated as he looked out at the chaos still running rampant throughout the city. "One day, you'll pay for this, I promise. But right now, my life can still be of use to the ci..ty…" he trailed off. His eyes took in the sight of winged figures swarming the rest of the city, looting wherever they went and cutting down anyone in their way.
For a moment, they both fell silent. The only sounds were those of the growing fires around them, crumbling crystals, and the distant cries of the city's residents.
"Yeah, I'm not really sure why you would think that I came here alone," Aya clicked her tongue. "Even if I was one of those rogue tengu who broke off to do their own thing, this city is too much of a goldmine not to get all you can out of it."
She stared back at him, her expression vaguely apologetic. "Normally, I'd be fine leaving you be. You're the sort of person who would go on to some grand quest to seek revenge, encountering countless obstacles along the way, and under most circumstances, I'd enjoy that story."
"But I'm sorry to say that's just not in the cards anymore," Aya signed melancholily. "The millennia-old dance of youkai and hunters is coming to an end and I really can't afford to cause myself any problems I don't have to."
"Oh, I'd say you've already made a very big one," Woto snarled. His rage rekindled ten-fold by the sight of the invaders' pillaging.
"And what are you going to do about it?" Aya prodded, her arms crossed over her chest and a wicked smirk on her face. "We've already been over this. You. Can't. Hit Me."
"Maybe you're fast enough to dodge any attack I can throw at you," Woot admitted. "But there's one option you've overlooked." He extended his hand out in front of him, palm upraised and glowing faintly with whatever mana he could dredge up, and the fires surrounding the two flickered momentarily.
Woot stared Aya dead in the eyes, his gaze resolute. "I can drag you down with me."
He clenched his hand tightly enough to draw blood and, as if tied to his fingers by invisible strings, a tsunami of flame descended upon the pair from all directions. Encasing them in a rapidly shrinking cage hot enough to reduce flesh to ash in seconds.
With all the escape routes sealed, and the last of his energy spent, Woot collapsed to his knees and shut his eyes in preparation for his impending death. Only for the burning agony he expected to never come, replaced by a sudden chill and shortness of breath.
When he opened his eyes to see what was going on, the flames he has so desperately called were nowhere to be found. Though his eyes were blurry from both strain and tears, he could tell that the nearby rubble that had been burning so brightly only a moment ago was now as cold as ice.
Woot tried to take a breath and refocus himself, only to spasm as he choked on vacuum.
Desperate, he tried to fill his burning lungs with vital air and clutched his throat in agony as nothing came.
Woot looked up through teary eyes and saw Aya standing in front of him, unbothered by his last resort.
He could see her lips moving, but couldn't hear a single word. In fact, he couldn't hear anything. The collapsing buildings, the screaming populace, the crackling fires, the myriad of magical defenses, or even his own choking gasps.
The Tengu raised her sword.
Woot desperately tried to draw on whatever reserves of strength his battered and drained body could offer but only managed to flop around like a dying fish.
He barely made out his opponent saying something before the sword came down and everything went black.
"That's that I suppose," Aya idly cleaned and sheathed her sword before turning away from the decapitated corpse. "It's a pity, I feel like he actually had a decent story behind him too."
That was the biggest waste of Salem's tantrum: so many interesting stories cut down before they had the chance to truly shine. Even if the world survived their folly, it would objectively be lesser for it.
Aya sighed, leaning back and taking in the death and destruction around her once more before turning her attention to more important matters.
"Well, better get back and give my report. If I take too long, someone else might snag the juicy stuff before I can grab it."
She idly reached out with her free hand and let the wind pull the fallen mage's staff into her grasp, including the severed arm clenched tight around the shaft.
"No, I don't think anyone would want to buy this off me and I sure don't need it for anything," Aya mused. "Still, not letting go of your weapon even after the end… not bad kid," she nodded in approval.
Aya pried the fingers off the staff with practiced ease, making sure to double check that there weren't any damages before slipping the weapon into her pocket.
With that done, she took a final look around the area before shooting off toward the edge of the city where the rest of the raid leaders were waiting. Leaving behind the ruined homes and the remains of Emerald City's last true guardian without a second thought.
And with that, we're almost done with this set of side stories. Next and last is Yuugi Hoshiguma leading her gang against the relentless hordes of the Beast King. I'm actually a little curious if anyone is going to figure out their real identity before the chapter drops. As a hint, he originates from a Baltic tale.
As always, your thoughts on the story, characters, world, etc are appreciated. I know there's a lot I'm trying to fill in so feedback is particularly helpful for my efforts in making the Old World an actual setting before we transition to Remnant. My hope is that by the time we get there, I'll actually have established the setting as a world with characters who have their own hopes and dreams, and whose deaths at the hands of the Brothers are a bit more impactful than 20 seconds of random stereotypes standing around not saying a world before they get Snapped. Looking at you RoosterTeeth.