“We’re going to need to start with diplomacy, before violence despite that being a tactically terrible decision” I explained.
“What!? Why!?”
We were currently somewhere in the middle of the Sabretooth Mountains, trying to track down Jiemma and Minerva. Well, I say ‘we’, but really, it was Cana doing all of the work. I knew fuck all about tracking anything, what’s the difference between a twig broken by a crag frog and one broken by a man? Something apparently, judging from Cana’s frustration with my inability to tell the difference. Hell, I even say we’re somewhere in the Sabretooth Mountains because I was good and lost – without Cana I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to Crocus at all.
“Because our primary goal here is to rescue Minerva, not beat up Jiemma.”
Cana looked up from her foraging, “What’s the difference?”
“The difference,” I explained, glad to be doing something other than just standing around, “Is that we want to prove to Minerva that there are other ways of doing thing than punching everything in your way. If we go in punching, we just show that we’re exactly like her father, and therapy-ing her into a normal member of society becomes almost impossible.”
Cana seemed doubtful. “Are you sure? From what the High Captain told us, Jiemma is going to be hard enough to take on even from ambush.”
Why does she have to call me out like that, I’m trying to appear confident, “No I’m not sure! I’m just making my best guess off what I remember of psychology and common sense! But I think no one would be well disposed towards people that come out of nowhere and start beating up their father.”
The gray mountains stretched up around us, currently sheltering us from the whipping winds usually present at this height. I listened to their distant howl as I buried my frustration again. My first mission should have me worrying only about keeping myself alive, not the delicate psychological state of an abused child.
‘Suck it up, buttercup’ I thought to myself. ‘This is a small price to pay for fancy magical powers.’ And it was, but I have never had so much responsibility when I barely knew what I was doing. Hell, I never had so much responsibility period.
I shook my head, ‘too much time doing nothing’. I tried to distract myself with figuring out how Cana was tracking Jiemma and Minerva with little but bare rock to look at.
‘Could she be tracking by smell? No, she doesn’t have Enhancement Magic. Maybe…’
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Cana and I spent days following a similar pattern, tracking and angsting/planning respectively. The scenery changed little despite our travels. High stone walls and narrow passes surrounded us, and when they did not, howling winds tried to throw us off the cliffs or freeze us. Unsuccessfully of course, but it was still unpleasant.
Even wildlife was scarce. Crag frogs didn’t move unless disturbed and Animice – ice golems essentially – didn’t move unless something tried to melt or shatter them. I’d even climbed over one without knowing until Cana had pointed it out. There were more dangerous things in the mountains, but they were few and marked their territories.
The territory markings of these more dangerous monsters were what eventually led us to Jiemma. Claw marks and the acrid stench of piss marked a monster’s territory, maybe the remnants of one of their meals. Monsters didn’t mark their hunting grounds with rows of skulls stuck on stakes.
Cana and I gave each other sardonic looks. “Think he’s here?”
“Most definitely.”
‘Here’ was a pass too thin to let the large boulder over top of it to fall. The only reason I didn’t believe it to be a cave was the sunlight streaming through the other side. That, and the skull topped stakes on either side of it. Only necromancers (not Necromancers, there was a whole bunch of magics that fell under the umbrella of necromancy) took corpses into enclosed spaces like that, and as far as Arcadios knew, Jiemma was no necromancer.
We walked into the pass.
----------------------------------------
The plan – such as it was – called for us to make no special effort to conceal ourselves as we approached. The appearance of civility and general friendliness would hopefully get Minerva considering our points before the inevitable violence.
“Hey there!” Cana shouted brightly.
The pass had led us out into an elliptical valley. It was surprisingly verdant, with thick grass covering the valley floor and various trees growing thicker towards the end of the valley, around a lake that shimmered in the light of the setting sun.
We were walking down towards something like an advanced campsite that sat on the border between the plain and the forest. I’m sure there was some official name for it, but that’s what the couple tent-cabin things surrounding a bonfire looked like to me.
The two Cana was hailing were facing each other in a ring of flattened ground – a sparring ring unless I missed my guess – though they looked up at Cana’s call.
It was here that I started struggling with the plan. Not morally, but practically.
Jiemma was a follower of Wolfheim, which meant a lot of things, but most relevant here were his law of the jungle philosophies. If he got even a hint of fear from us, we’d lose all of his respect and he might attack out of principle, before we’d gotten a chance to talk.
Therefore, we had to show no fear. Complete confidence was the name of the game. Cana was doing an excellent job, smile on her face, the relaxed and smooth stride of an expert combatant (or so she said). Apparently when facing monsters who can smell fear, you learn to fake its absence quite well.
I, on the other hand, was cheating. I had zero experience with faking an absence of fear (faking an absence of stage fright is quite different from faking an absence of mortal fright), so I instead turned my insides to water. Water doesn’t twitch or produce fear smells, which Jiemma could detect.
The thought that I was currently a macabre water balloon also helped take my mind off the fear.
The pair turned towards us but didn’t say anything.
Minerva was black haired and black eyed with a statuesque build and wearing a blue qipao. The way she rushed a disdainful expression on to her face gave me hope though – she wasn’t quite the lifestyle dominatrix yet.
Jiemma was the bigger concern though. Tanned, at least eight feet tall, shirtless, and absolutely shredded, he was scowling at us. The fact that his nose was at least half a foot long somehow didn’t detract from his intimidation factor.
“I think you’re the ones we’ve been looking for!” Cana said cheerily.
Minerva fought to keep the curiosity from showing. Jiemma scowled even harder. Neither said anything.
“D’you wanna talk over dinner?” Cana continued. “We’ve brought our own supplies.”
Minerva was barely even trying to keep up her veneer of haughty dismissal in favor of curiosity. Jiemma considered us, though the scowl stayed. I tried making eye contact, but found, to my surprise, that he wasn’t looking at my eyes.
Maybe it was the fact that I was a guy a couple months ago, maybe it was that prior to reincarnating I was a seven on a good day. Whatever the case, I was glad that by the time I figured out where the convicted rapist was looking, I had time to suppress any instinctive sign of revulsion.
“Come” Jiemma rumbled, nodding over to the bonfire.
We followed and sat in silence as we prepared out respective meals. I tried to keep myself from feeling that it was an awkward silence but having Jiemma scowl at mine and Cana’s boobs while Minerva did her best to both ignore and disdain us simultaneously made keeping the awkwardness away rather difficult. We managed though.
Eventually, the dinners were made, and we got to talking. Mostly of Jiemma’s achievements against the various Incursions Wolfheim sends Fiore’s way whenever The Wild Lands get overpopulated. The achievements were actually pretty impressive – as expected of a mage of his caliber – but more importantly gave Cana and I time to accomplish a few of our pre-battle preparations.
Firstly, I got a bit of a read on his character. Gruff as he first appeared, he was quite vain and willing to espouse his own philosophies to those he considered equals. His utter confidence and certainty as he spoke on killing the disabled in the cradle and sending children out into the wilds to weed out the weak was very disturbing to listen to.
The talk also gave Cana time to assess his strength, something Jiemma had likely done the moment he saw us. Getting a feel for another’s magical power was an imprecise and difficult art, having about as much to do with performing magic as smelling does with playing piano, but most mages got decent at it as they grew older. Jiemma was very old and probably assessed us instantly, hence our relatively warm reception. I had been at magic for a couple months and didn’t even know what to look for. Cana was talented and so managed to get a read on Jiemma while we talked.
She flashed me a thumbs down and I suppressed a grimace. Jiemma was distinctly more powerful than either of us. I thanked my ability to turn to water for keeping my heart from racing; this meant it was my job to hold Jiemma off while Cana performed talk no jutsu on Minerva.
I glanced at Minerva briefly and let myself feel a little hope. Things probably were as bad for her as I thought they were judging from the open wonder on her face as she watched us talk.
I took a deep breath to center myself in a small break in the conversation, before launching into the topic that would likely end in violence.
“How is it raising you daughter in the wilderness?” I asked.
“These mountains are soft” Jiemma replied, disdain evident.
Time to start poking the pressure points. “But don’t you think it could be harmful to her that she hasn’t gotten a chance to actually talk with other people and make friends?”
Father and daughter both laser focused on me, if for very different reasons. Minerva looked as if I’d said the sky was yellow. Jiemma now looked well and proper pissed off – this was the first time he’d been challenged on anything the whole time we’d been talking.
There was only one way a man like Jiemma could respond to being challenged, but I kept poking because that’s exactly what I was aiming for.
“I mean, defending yourself is great and all, but being able to interact with others is also imp – “
I barely registered a pressure on my face before my world went black and I could feel myself flying through the air. I dissolved just in time for my mass to split in two against a tree.
The fight had begun, and I was blind. I needed to find Jiemma, to keep him away from Cana and give her the time to bring Minerva over to our side.
I reformed my eyes. My world went white with pain. I had no mouth or lungs, yet I had to scream.
I lost control of my magic and lost even the ability to move.
‘Focus!’ the thought was distant amidst the rising tides of panic. ‘Focus!’
No limbs to thrash, no mouth to scream, I was stuck inside my own mind with only pain for company.
‘Focus! Cana is going to die.’
The thought gained me enough control to turn my eyes back to water once more.
Instantly, the pain fled. I floated in peaceful darkness, aware only of the water that was me.
In that state, it didn’t take me long to figure out what had happened.
‘The fucker destroyed my eyes!’
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From the moment Cana finished her assessment of Jiemma’s strength, she knew that this fight was going to be terrible. His magical capacity was almost on par with hers, and both his Enhancement and Blast magics were far more suited towards combat than her own Card Magic.
She flashed Juvia the thumbs down. Her face tightened in that way it did when she was trying not to show emotion. Cana could relate.
Looking back to Minerva, Cana confirmed to herself that the plan was still doable. Minerva looked like Lucy when Natsu first brought her to Fairy Tail. It was heartbreaking to see a normal conversation eliciting that kind of reaction.
‘But that’s what we’re here to fix’ Cana thought resolutely.
Jiemma was fast. Faster than Juvia could see but not much faster than Cana, not when she was prepared. An instant after Jiemma started moving Cana leaped across the fire and tackled Minerva into the forest.
“We’re not here to hurt you” Cana said, trying to affect calm. Minerva got over her shock quickly, but they had lost sight of the campsite by then.
Minerva didn’t respond, but a blue-green light surrounded her briefly before she disappeared from Cana’s arms.
The same blue-green light appearing at the corner of her vision let her find Minerva easily – a teleportation magic of some sort obviously. She had little time to consider that though, as the sound of shattering trees heralded a wave of concussive force that had her rolling backwards to avoid it.
She had no time to recover though, as a punch from Jiemma cracked the ground she had only just jumped away from and a sickle shaped wave of Minerva’s magic had her jumping away again. She took her time in the air to launch a flame card, the explosion giving her a moment of respite.
‘Where’s Juvia!?’ she thought frantically ‘That punch couldn’t have hurt her that much! And I can’t face both of them at once!’
Another wave of concussive force signaled the renewed assault. A flurry of fists, explosions, and debris surrounded in blue green light had Cana scrambling. She dodged what she could, threw cards to intercept what she couldn’t, but she was still only just staying ahead.
‘I can’t talk to anyone through this! Come on Juvia, please be alive.’
As if in answer to her prayers, a fog cloud rose over the valley.
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‘Fuck.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.’
Can’t see means can’t target means can’t fight means Cana dies.
No. Wait. I have something for this.
I seized control over my magic again and conjured as much water as I could at once. Then I separated all that water into individual droplets, as small as I could get them.
‘And now…’
I wasn’t the best I could be yet, but I had been practicing this trick.
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‘Just see where the water isn’t …’
It was almost like trying to find something by touch in a pitch black and unfamiliar room, except I could feel the whole ‘room’ at once and the sense wasn’t quite as familiar as touch.
Initially, all I could make out were vague mushroom shapes and cylinders – trees and fallen trees, I think. Soon enough though, I could make out Cana, Jiemma, and Minerva through the tunnels in my perception they left behind as they moved through the fog.
Differentiating was the work of another moment. The large tunnels were being left by Jiemma, the waves of something (magic probably, but assuming can be dangerous) were probably coming from Minerva, and that left the erratic path to Cana.
I condensed a part of the fog into a solid mass of shredding currents and punched it into Jiemma, sending him rocketing out of the fog cloud.
‘And hopefully that flayed the fucker too’ I thought with a grim sort of glee.
Dispersing my own mass into the conjured fog, I pursued.
----------------------------------------
When the fog rose, Cana began to relax.
When the assault against her continued unabated, her panic began to return.
When the tidal wave swept Jiemma away from her, she finally let herself relax. She took a moment to center herself, only slightly ruined by having to dodge a stone hurled at her by Minerva.
‘Telekinesis and Teleportation, huh?’ she frowned and prepared herself for a psychic attack. ‘It’s not likely, but Jiemma does seem arrogant enough to try and train a Psion.’
Cana shook her head; Minerva’s magical abilities weren’t the important thing right now. She got enough of a read on them when she was being tag teamed – if any of Minerva’s abilities could really threaten her, she’d already be dead.
‘She’s pretty good though. Maybe even better than I was at her age’ Cana thought as she jumped out of the way of another volley of debris, then had to rapidly twist away from a kick as Minerva suddenly teleported closer.
Cana’s part of the plan, such as it was, was to apply ‘concussive therapy’ to Minerva. She had questioned Juvia extensively on it, and from her ramblings on ‘talk no jutsu’, ‘the power of friendship’, and ‘kill them with kindness’ she figured that Juvia’s plan was for Cana to quickly convince Minerva that her father was abusive and that there was a better life for her.
For all that that was true – Cana felt a pang of sympathy as she watched Minerva grow more and more panicked as her attacks failed to land – that didn’t tell her much about how to actually get Minerva on their side.
Then again, Juvia did mention that Erza succeeded on doing the same by defeating her while screaming about fighting for her friends – something Cana couldn’t quite imagine Erza doing, she was definitely earnest and naïve enough for the friendship part, but she didn’t scream unless Mira was involved.
‘Maybe – ‘duck away from a rock ‘– if I just – ‘dodge a kick ‘– talk to her – ‘let the psychic assault wash over her ‘she’s actually trying to be Psion!’ deflect a punch ‘and try to convince her – ‘jump away and hide to get some time ‘– of my points, I’ll actually get her on our side without having to beat a terrified girl.’
And Minerva was terrified. Her attacks had been getting more and more out of control as Cana kept dodging, and now that she had hidden Cana could see Minerva whipping her head around, eyes trying to pop out of her skull. She looked like an animal after days of being chased, exhausted, frantic, and kind of pathetic.
‘Thunderclap’ Cana whispered as she threw a lightning card and a force card at Minerva. The two cards left blue and yellow streaks behind them as they flew, alerting Minerva to the attack, but not in time to move away.
The cards merged and detonated next to her ear, stunning her and letting Cana run up and tackle her into a hug.
“We’re here to help you! Calm down!”
Minerva struggled and thrashed like a wild cat and Cana had to repeatedly fend off multiple attempts to teleport or throw her away.
A seeming eternity of struggle later and Minerva still wasn’t slowing down or calming down, no matter how Cana tried to calm her. She tried letting Minerva go, which only resulted in her resuming her wild attacks. She tried capturing and recapturing her in the hopes of showing her the futility of her struggle. Cana was capable of keeping up with her just relying on her body, and that would last long past when Minerva’s magic ran out.
But Minerva just wouldn’t stop.
“Why won’t you give up!?” Only the battle was keeping her from pulling her hair in frustration. “I’m not here to hurt you! I don’t want to hurt you! I want to bring you somewhere better! Somewhere you don’t have to be afraid!”
“Because he’ll kill me!” Minerva collapsed and hugged her knees. “He’ll kill your friend, then you, then me because I’m weak! The weak die, so I have to be strong!”
The area around them was quiet now except for Minerva’s sobs and the distant sounds of thunder over an angry sea – Juvia’s and Jiemma’s battle.
“You know it doesn’t have to be like that, right?” Cana said softly. “There’s more to the world than just killing those weaker than you.”
Minerva made a strangled sort of noise, “He kills everyone who says that. To ‘show you the lies of the weak’.”
“But that’s wrong! I can see you don’t believe that.” Cana said emphatically. “Juvia and I are strong, but we’re still friends with people weaker than us, we don’t need to show them we’re stronger all the time! I’m stronger than you, but I want to help you!”
Minerva didn’t respond, but her sobs grew quieter.
“You have a chance. Listen, you can still hear Juvia fighting. Your dad hasn’t killed her or gotten away from her, do you think he can stop all three of us?”
Cana walked over to Minerva – slowly and tentatively, watching for any signs of attack. But when she finally came to Minerva and put a supportive hand on her shoulder, the girl tensed, but she didn’t move away.
Cana smiled, maybe there was something to Juvia’s ‘concussive therapy’.
----------------------------------------
Jiemma frowned as he felt the mass of water crash into him and knock the breath out of him. His flight only gave him time to analyze the strength of the blow and the power behind the griding force he felt for the brief moment he was in contact with the water.
He snorted. To give him time to think was the sign of an amateur. The size of the mass of water that hit him was wasteful. The girl was powerful to be sure, but not as powerful as him, and definitely inexperienced.
He’d killed plenty like her before, academics who thought all it took was power and knowledge to win a fight, disregarding instinct and experience. The battles were usually unimpressive, but at least he could take joy in showing them their weakness.
The flight eventually carried him over the lake at the end of the valley. He let out a thunderous Blast to halt his momentum and let himself fall towards the lake. He sent out his Enhancement magic once he hit the surface, hardening it, and letting him walk across it as if it were solid ground.
Disadvantageous as the battle ground may be for him, it would encourage the Water mage to expend their reserves faster by taking control of the lake water in a misguided attempt at attaining some sort of advantage – Jiemma knew that the Water mage couldn’t hurt him with any attack he saw coming, and no amount of water was going to stand up to his Blast Magic.
The roiling fog finally appeared out of the forest and began to move over the lake.
Another waste.
He Enhanced his eyes, ears, and nose to search out the mage through her cover. The normally impenetrable fog became no more obstructive than a patchy mist, faint rainbows moving through it as the water droplets split the light. The sounds of the forest came into sharp focus, from the rustle of leaves of every tree across the valley to the sounds of his daughter fighting and her racing heart under that. He could smell every tree and every rodent sheltering in them.
And yet, there was no sign of the mage.
Jiemma frowned, then Enhanced his legs and his sense of touch and stomped on the ground. The resulting vibration, carried through the hardened water and into the ground, revealed that the mage wasn’t hiding underground either.
The fog, meanwhile, hadn’t stopped moving, and the moment it touched him, the battle begun.
The water surged, tendrils reaching out to grasp and grapple him. He let them, Enhancing himself against the pull. The strange grating would leave his skin raw, but that was irrelevant in the face of finding the mage.
A few of the tendrils went for his eyes, nostrils, ears, and other holes. Those he Blasted away. He could Enhance himself enough to ignore attacks there too but Enhancing the soft spots that much was far more wasteful than dispersing the attacks.
Seeing that her attempts to grapple and cut him were failing, the mage switched tactics. The water around Jiemma dropped away – the mage wresting control of it away from Jiemma’s Enhancement magic – and the rising up in attempt to drown him at the bottom of the lake.
Before the water could close over him, Jiemma sent out an omnidirectional Blast, throwing the water away and clearing the air of fog. Jiemma Blasted himself down to the lake bottom before the water could rush back in and then jumped out onto the shore.
The fog rushed back in first and confirmed Jiemma’s suspicions. None but a Thrice Bonded mage would be able to take wrest control of something infused with his magic with such ease.
Which meant…Jiemma focused on his magical senses. The fog was mostly a mass of pure Water magic, but here and there – now that he was looking for them – were bits of fog and water that had a little more…personality to them.
The mage’s attacks resumed, but Jiemma Enhanced himself and ignored them as he did before. The ability to turn to water was quite impressive, and even explained the mage’s confidence in pitting herself against him, but she would learn fear. She would learn her weakness. He would teach her.
Enhancing himself to the degree that the mage’s attacks didn’t distract him was wasteful, but necessary. He needed absolute focus.
He stretched out his hands in front of him and splayed his fingers. Then he directed his Blast magic to emanate from each of his fingers and palms in waves and in ever increasing intensity until…
Jiemma’s hands started glowing, not with the purple of wasted magic, but with the white light of heat.
Faster than any but a Saint could follow, Jiemma lunged for one of the patches of fog containing a piece of the mage. He left behind a hissing trail as the heat turned the fog into proper steam.
The reaction was almost instant, though slow enough to betray her lack of experience. The fog recoiled away from him and Jiemma could see it roiling at the edges of the space that had opened around him.
The mage would be cautious now, aware of the danger. But that didn’t matter; she had neither the speed nor the stamina to get away from him.
Jiemma jumped for another piece of the mage.
It was only a matter of time.
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This fight was not going well.
From the loss of my eyes to my ineffective attacks to Jiemma figuring out a way to hurt me despite him supposedly not having any methods to do so. To top it all off, overuse of my fog sensory trick was giving me a headache regardless of not currently having a head that could ache.
I halfheartedly crushed a stone and pulled the shards into another mass of water in hope that the extra solidity would manage to get past Jiemma’s seemingly impenetrable skin.
That, surprisingly, sort of worked. I could feel something extra being added to the water as it touched Jiemma, in the brief moment before it was boiled away. I tried again, this time cooling the water to just above freezing. The water lasted longer this time, but not long enough for me to get a proper read on what exactly I was managing to accomplish.
It would be a lot easier to check on how I was actually doing if I could actually see –
I cut that train of thought off as soon as I recognized it. Calm. Calm. Had to stay calm. And not think about how the motherfucker had pulped my –
I refocused on the fight just in time to note that another bit of ‘me’ water was entering Jiemma’s range and move it away just as he jumped for it. I’d lost enough of myself determining that range to let myself lose more to inattention. Calm was important.
Better than calm would be a moment to think and figure out a strategy. As it was, I was barely able to string together two thoughts without interruption between keeping ‘me’ water out of Jiemma’s range and conjuring or controlling the fog to cover the area after Jiemma Blasted it away. Bastard had figured out that I was using it to ‘see’.
I hadn’t had a moment to think since I knocked Jiemma…away from Cana.
I’m an idiot.
I flooded the area around Jiemma, bringing in water from the lake and conjuring the rest, and forced some of the water underground. He Blasted most of it away and jumped for another bit of me for good measure, but I expected it.
I kept at it – even letting him boil away another bit of me – until he could hardly take a step without touching water. Even then I waited and did my best to pretend all that I was using the puddles for was an addition to my sensory technique.
Whether due to dismissal of my skills or lack of experience with fighting living water, Jiemma eventually began ignoring the puddles, and when he stopped on one, I acted.
Pressurized water surged up under him, sending the maniac flying into the air. Quickly, hopefully before he could react, I sent a volley of prepared stones into the air after him in my best impression of the Gates of Babylon. They probably wouldn’t hurt him, but they were only meant to delay him anyway.
I spread the fog low over the ground and as far as it could stretch, trying to locate Cana and Minerva and see where Jiemma would land. I would’ve made more fog, but my reserves were strained enough already.
I found Cana at the same time Jiemma landed, and luckily, they were far from each other. Jiemma had landed a fair bit away from where I launched him, the stones probably knocked him around or he had to maneuver around them.
Cana, meanwhile, was running towards where I launched Jiemma from. Minerva was running near her, and considering they were both in range of each other’s magics and not attacking each other, Cana was successful in getting her on our side.
Now that Cana was near, I took a risk and reformed my ears and enough of my head and torso to talk.
“Did it work?” I asked
“Yeah” Cana said. Both she and Minerva were looking away from me. “How’s it going here?”
“Terribly.” I replied honestly. “He’s ridiculously strong, he figured out a way to heat his attacks so he can actually hurt me even in water form – he’s already boiled away…too much of me – while I’ve barely scratched him.”
“His hair is missing, and his arm is a bloody mess,” Cana sounded confused. “I’d say you did a bit more than scratch him.”
“Really? I couldn’t tell.” I said evasively, and Cana clearly picked up on that.
“Juvia…”
“Well, you see, it’s not out of the question that I may or may not have a very minor case of having my eyes punched out.”
“YOU WHA – “
“You actually hurt him,” Minerva breathed. She clearly hadn’t been paying attention to Cana and I, and I was thankful for that. I needed time to process the loss before helping Cana through her own guilt.
“Apparently, I did, yeah. We’re going to have to hurt him a whole lot more though.” I shot a rock at him which was promptly Blasted to dust.
“I taught you better than this, girl” Jiemma’s growl carried over the distance between us. “There are no second chances.”
Minerva took a deep breath.
I tensed. We were absolutely fucked if Minerva broke here.
“YOU KILLED FINGERS!”
A massive wave of something split my fog, heading from Minerva towards Jiemma.
Well…that certainly tells us where she stands.
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Cana started planning as soon as she started running towards Juvia, and when she saw her girlfriend reforming, she was ready to finish planning.
That endeavor was made very difficult when Juvia chose to reform without the top half of her head, giving Cana an excellent cross section of her brain. She even had a good reason – one that had Cana ready to both hit and hug her.
She got to do neither though, as a Minerva hurled all of the wood, dirt, stone, and even air she could get her magic to hold and hurled it all at her father.
There was a moment of shock as her mind switched from worrying about Juvia to processing Minerva’s attack to running for Jiemma to keep him off of the other two girls – she was the only one of the three who could take a hit and Juvia needed to stay corporeal to communicate.
A force card exploded against the man, slowing him down enough that Cana’s own tackle brought him to a complete halt. Her shoulder went numb from the impact, but Juvia’s own barrage stones and water slowed Jiemma down enough that Cana managed to dodge his retaliatory strike.
She couldn’t dodge the Blast Jiemma sent at her, knocking her breath out and sending her crashing into a tree.
Cana leveraged herself up and through tear blurred vision, threw a flame card at Jiemma.
“Juvia! Keep him away, we have to plan something!” Cana shouted. She really hoped Juvia heard her, because as it was, she could barely see or hear anything.
Water spray filled the air, the fog blotted out the fading light of the sun, and waves of Minerva’s and Jiemma’s magics occasionally lit up the fog in ghostly blue-green and purple light. Thunder filled the air along with the sound of waves crashing against stone.
Cana squinted to get a better view of the fight and she could just make out the blur that was Jiemma speeding through the fog.
“Juvia!?”
“Yeah, I got you, I got you.” Juvia reformed beside her. “How though?”
They both dove to the sides to avoid Jiemma, Juvia once more dissolving. Cana followed with a force card to his injured arm in the brief moment he was deciding which one to chase.
It hit and created a shower of blood, though the arm didn’t move much. Cana wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw Jiemma wince.
“The arm! Go for the arm!” she shouted.
Jiemma’s normal scowl deepened into something inhuman.
He Blasted Cana, sending her flying out of the fog and into one of the few parts of the forest that remained undamaged. He caught up to her, before she even managed to catch her breath.
‘I’m going to die’ she didn’t even have time to panic. One moment he was standing above her and the next…
His fist was frozen in front of her face.
A retaliatory force card sent Jiemma flying away and gave Cana time to stand up.
“I’m not sure I can do that again!” Cana jumped as Minerva hissed next to her. “I’m bad at Telepathy.”
“You’re going to have to do it again” Juvia reformed next to them a moment before her fog came back. “I’ve got a plan, but he needs to freeze up like that again for it to work.”
All three unleashed their respective magics at Jiemma as soon as they caught sight of him again.
“So – “Cana was interrupted by a Blast cone that had all three scattering. “– do you have any idea how to tell us the plan!?”
Juvia didn’t answer and the battle dissolved into a sort of frantic stalemate. Jiemma ran, jumped, and Blasted his away around the battlefield, simply bulldozing his way past their attacks. Cana kept up with him, keeping him from attacking Juvia and Minerva while they, in turn, kept the worst of Jiemma’s attacks from reaching her.
The stalemate continued and Cana was beginning to think that the battle would be decided by who would run out of magic first. Not as situation she wanted to be in considering Jiemma’s reserves and how much magic Juvia and Minerva had to use to deflect his Blasts.
She was just about to attempt to disengage when she felt a small buzz at the edges of her consciousness.
‘H-hello? Is the link working? Can you hear me?’
Only long experience kept Cana fighting smoothly – anything less would’ve been certain death.
‘Minerva?’
‘Great!’ she sounded a bit manic. ‘Juvia told me the plan; here it is.’
It was difficult to listen and fight, but Juvia increased the intensity of her own attacks to give Cana some breathing room.
----------------------------------------
I waited nervously for Minerva to finish telling Cana the plan. It was our one shot at eking out a proper victory instead of a battle of attrition that we’d likely lose.
I gave Minerva a second to establish a Telepathic link with Cana before throwing almost the entirety of my remaining reserves at Jiemma. Shredding streams, crushed stone, icy walls, any and every trick I could think of to keep him occupied.
A few moments later I felt my mists around Cana get annihilated by a mixture heat, force, lightning – Cana had begun her own assault.
A small object, small enough that I would’ve missed had I not been looking for it flew back from Cana, and I caught it in a conjured bubble, letting it release its contents inside. Hopefully Jiemma hadn’t noticed it.
A moment later, Cana’s assault stopped, letting me flood the area in mist again.
Jiemma was still in place. Good, that means in just a second…
He froze.
I shot the bubble containing the full contents of Cana’s sleeping gas card at him. Splitting it into a parts and sending each down a different orifice. I banished the water as soon as I got the bubbles inside.
Jiemma unfroze and there was a moment of fear as he unleashed a massive omnidirectional; Blast, but it swiftly passed. Skilled and powerful as he maybe, none of his magics removed the need to breathe, and even if they had, I’d sent the gas into more than just his lungs.
Jiemma collapsed. I waited for a second before cautiously reforming my head.
“Did we win?”
“Yeah” Cana said.
“Holy shit”
“Yeah” she sounded exhausted.
I reformed myself, without my eyes as Jiemma had boiled away enough of me that I didn’t have the mass for it. Exhaustion flooded in, and a moment of anxiety as I felt how low my reserves were – any less and I may not have been able to reform. But with those came a feeling of victory. We’d thrown everything we had at Jiemma and we came out on top.
“He…He actually lost” Minerva fell to her knees. I couldn’t see her face, but I could imagine the shock.
“Yeah” I said. “He couldn’t stand against us together”.