Gomiko hoped Harald would be able to hold the hallway for a while, heroically cutting down one hero after another. But the first ability to come through the door, Leenhardt’s Rock Missile, killed him in one shot. Gomiko hadn’t even turned the first corner.
Once she had, she ran. Classrooms flew by along with the nameplates of the slumbering faculty members, some still alive, most now dead. She didn’t look back. Her ears and nose told her exactly when the invading Heroes began their pursuit, their boots and heels squeaking and clicking down the tile hallway, her own ragged breath providing the background noise. They were coming for her. That was what she wanted. But it was terrifying.
“Down there!” a voice screamed.
‘There’ meant where she was, where she would be, where she was headed. No path led to safety now. Not along the axis of space, not along the axis of time. She felt her palms and the soles of her feet grow clammy with sweat.
“Please, please…” she whispered as she ran, not knowing who she was asking for help.
The first ability thrown at her was a CC ability—a sparkling ember grenade filling the hallway with concussive waves of flame, licking her face and fur. As the fire scorched her she threw her potion bottles. The first potion doused the fire as she ran through it. The second she threw behind her to slow her pursuers provided they hit. The important thing was to get to her third and fourth potions, which would trip, blind, and stun them. These were the ones she needed to land.
When she reached the end of the hallway, Gomiko pivoted and cocked back to throw the next potion. Before she released it, however, her instincts took over and she popped into the form of a raccoon doll right as an arrow shot through and shattered the bottle still hanging in mid-air. In the brief interval before she returned to her regular form, she got a longer look at the Heroes chasing her. To her dismay, she recognized some.
The four in front were members of Team Tsubaki—Tara, Camomile, Qilan, and Tsubaki—and it had been Tsubaki herself who shot the potion out of Gomiko’s hand. Years ago, the all-girl team had been a friendly rival to Team Harald, usually hovering near them in the Use-Rankings. To see them now, and particularly Tsubaki, the cool and tall Water Elemental and her role model for the first two years of her existence, Gomiko’s heart ached. It made her hate the Yishang all the more for tricking the other Heroes into doing their bidding until the very end.
The timer on turning off Bake-Danuki came up and Gomiko turned back to normal in a puff of silver smoke. Resisting the urge to throw the blinding and stunning potion directly at her pursuers, she instead threw it to the left, creating a flow of wind in that direction and bolted in the opposite direction as spells, abilities, and projectiles rained down on the dummy bottle. At the same time she pulled back a sling loaded with a rock with FDJ markings on it and whipped it down the hall with a loud crack. Sounds of fear and confusion told her she landed a hit.
“Split up and corner her!”
Booking it down the hall, an explosion deeper in the building launched Gomiko off her feet for a split second. Fortunately, it hadn’t come from the direction of the laboratory and Shuixing. Unfortunately, it came from where Margaret had run to. Without checking the Use-Rankings, she was certain Margaret was dead. Distracting the other Heroes was a long-shot from the get-go, let alone with Margaret’s lack of evasive abilities. In all likelihood, Gomiko was all that was left of the original Team Harald.
“I’ll see you all there,” Gomiko whispered as she ran.
Up ahead was another junction of hallway connecting back to the one she had come from. Footsteps echoed down it. At the last second she elected to whip one of her last three FDJ stones at a nearby window. Rather than dimension-jumping the window out of its frame as she expected, the stone turned out to be an improperly-manufactured dud, leaving nothing but a small hole. Gomiko had no choice but to throw herself through it.
It dealt no HP damage, but shattering a window with her body and then tumbling onto broken glass was not pleasant. Blood trickled down her arms and legs, turning the tufts of fur around her hands and feet sticky and matted. What pain she felt disappeared upon hearing someone shout she had jumped into the courtyard. Her injured body pushed her to her feet as her Desperation Art unlocked. Fighting the urge to run, she waited for the first Heroes to reach the broken window before throwing all her potions at once in a blinding, technicolor rainbow that she hoped and prayed would buy her as much time as she wasted setting it up.
This hope was dashed as a bullet shot past her and dimension-jumped a rose bush. Gomiko’s tail frizzed up. Taking as quick a sniff as she dared, she smelled fewer Heroes in the direction of the dormitory and sprinted towards it, tossing potions as she went to make sure she didn’t entirely lose her pursuers. Her sense of self-preservation screamed at her to run and hide, but that wasn’t her mission. That wasn’t what she promised Harald and Margaret she would do. What she promised was to keep the Heroes occupied and away from Shuixing.
“Come get me, ya bastards! I’m gonna burn the whole world to the ground if you don’t stop me!” Gomiko yelled.
Her Bake-Danuki ability helped her dodge the volley that followed her provocation as the courtyard exploded with every element existing on Po-Lin. Tucking her tail between her legs, she ran for the residence hall.
By miracle, luck, and enough skill at cycling her evasion abilities to give herself a shot, Gomiko made it to the residence hall, threw the double doors open, and sprinted up the stairs to the second story to hide. From her nose, she could tell there was one other person in the building, and she prayed she wasn’t about to lead her pursuers to an ally. Unfortunately, she sensed whoever it was moving in her direction.
As Gomiko neared the top of the stairs she caught a flash of black in her peripheral vision as whoever it was moved to meet her. At first she thought it was Pechorin, but her brain caught the scent of something amiss and she pressed herself against the wall as a rod swung out of the black cloak awaiting her at the top of the stairs. Her heart pounded and her skin pricked with cold sweat as a pair of fox ears emerged from the hood of the cloak. Daji’s fanged mouth grinned back at her.
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“Hello, my little trash panda. Thank you for cooperating and coming right to me.”
Gomiko’s eyes flicked to the FDJ rod which she could now see was not, in fact, an FDJ rod, but a metal pipe with flecks of blood decorating it from someone else’s circulatory system. Daji’s sapphire claws curled around the pipe and her vicious grin grew as she watched the look of recognition spread across her quarry’s eyes.
“Come on, why don’t you run? You could always turn around and try your luck outside?” Daji said.
That was exactly what Gomiko wanted to do. One quick fireball or shot from an FDJ gun would be far quicker and less painful than whatever Daji’s horrible mind had cooked up for her, but quicker was not her goal. Harald’s words had been, ‘Do whatever you can to waste time,’ and if she could do that by getting through Daji, she would stay and fight.
Gomiko whipped the sling out of her pocket and shot a stone at Daji. It cracked against her and, to Gomiko’s immediate horror, it was another dud. Before her opponent could react, Gomiko dashed up the remaining stairs and down a hallway of dorm rooms. She didn’t make it far before pain erupted out of the blue as Daji’s rod cracked against her back. Air fled Gomiko’s lungs and she staggered forward, keeping herself upright by falling into and clutching a door frame.
“Drat, I wanted to paralyze you on the first hit,” Daji said. “Not that I mind a longer chase.”
Gomiko only had a couple potions left. She threw one at Daji, but her attacker shattered it in mid-air with a swing of her rod. Gomiko’s second and final potion followed it up, splashing and slowing Daji to around the same speed as Gomiko could hobble in pain down the hallway. Her mind clutched for any idea, any plan, any possible course of action that might save her or, at an absolute minimum, buy more time. Her abilities were all on cooldown, she only had one, possibly defective FDJ rocks left, and Daji had a generation’s worth of stats over her. Gomiko wasn’t going to win one-on-one.
“I wish you were here, Sofa,” she whimpered.
As she stumbled down the dormitory corridor, she noticed another smell in the building. Another Hero. More likely than not they were a foe, but compared to facing Daji alone, another enemy Hero might have been a blessing. Gripping the wall for stability, Gomiko turned toward Daji. As she predicted, the moment she stopped running, Daji slowed to a walk in order to savor cornering her prey.
“Oh no, dear, don’t give up! You know what’s going to happen to you if I catch you. Why not keep running?” Daji said, licking blood off her clawed fingers, her fox ears twitching. “Or maybe you actually want it? You naughty girl!”
Gomiko swallowed hard and stepped backwards, hands probing for a doorknob. There was nothing else in her nose now but the acrid stench of blood. Her heartbeat pulsed with each throb of her injured back. She found the doorknob and turned and stumbled backward into a small, windowless dorm room. She backed herself up as far as she could and fished with trembling hands for the last rock for her sling. This one needed to work. This one had to work. It couldn’t fail.
At the same leisurely pace, Daji nudged the door open. “Is my little trash panda ready for her punishment?”
The look of sadistic pleasure on Daji’s face was replaced with shock as a stone whipped towards her. The rod in her hands went up to defend her and the rock cracked against it, causing it to fall from Daji’s hands, connecting with her feet, and then sliding through the floor, clanging somewhere on the first floor of the building. With dread, Gomiko realized she would have had a better chance of escaping by using the stone on herself. In her fear, she had completely forgotten how dimension-jumping worked.
“Oh no, no, no. That’s too naughty! I think you’ve earned yourself some extra punishment,” Daji said, only a few steps from her. “If you’re lucky, I might let you die before the end of the special event. But only if you beg sweetly for me.”
Behind Daji, Gomiko watched smoke flood the corridor and her ears picked up the sound of crackling fire. Her tormentor was a half second too late in noticing, turning around as Margaret rounded the corner with an FDJ rod in hand and slammed it into Daji, sending her to the first floor of the building.
“Margaret… h-how!?”
Margaret responded with a pained laugh. “I don’t think we’ve got the time for the full recap.”
Blood trickled down her teammate’s temples. Elsewhere, her dress had been sliced and torn and her upper arm was pinkened with burn marks.
“W-What do we do now?” Gomiko said.
“We trap as many of them in here as we can… and then we hope the fire takes them with us,” Margaret said.
No longer staring down imminent death, Gomiko could hear footsteps pounding through the building along with distant, muted shouting. Her nose told her a dozen or more Heroes had run into the building after them. She realized Margaret’s plan was a last ditch effort, the best thing her teammate could come up with while being chased by stronger opponents. But it was something.
“Is there any chance we can escape too?” Gomiko asked.
Margaret laughed bitterly. “I don’t think so. I was trying to go in a separate direction, but I guess we accidentally led our adoring fans to the same spot. They’ve probably got the building surrounded by now, hoping we’ll jump out before it burns.”
“So we…”
Margaret grimaced. “I think this is our final stand. We’ve got one rod between us, so I say we head back to the first floor and try to nick as many as we can. When they get me, you pick up the rod and keep swinging, sound good, babe?”
Gomiko blinked back tears and hugged Margaret. That was enough of an agreement for both of them. Exiting the dorm room, they rushed for the stairs and the spreading fire on the first floor. Before they reached the ground, however, Gomiko’s nose twitched.
“Oh no…” she said.
Margaret ground to a halt. “What?”
“It smells like… like how Hemiola did… like a—”
“A Xian…” Margaret said.
A male voice with a Cascadian tribal accent boomed outside, loud enough to be heard from inside.
“Out of my way! Waiting for those idiots to scramble out is just going to waste more of our time!”
Gomiko reached for Margaret’s hand and squeezed. She wasn’t aware of her last moment on Po-Lin, but she made sure to think of Sofiane and her friends until the very last moment to make sure they were on her mind as she went. A moment after her final thought, the dormitory of the Vermögenburgh Mage’s College was obliterated by a single blast of wind from Windwalker.