Risky though it was, everyone agreed with the plan. After all, we had little choice.
Unlike the Director, the beast in front of us seemed to have an effectively unlimited supply of magic power, so the pressure he exuded upon us continued without a moment’s reprieve. Attack after attack, he didn’t give us time to breathe, so we would be forced to execute here and now if we wanted to stand a chance.
“「Burning Spirit!」”
“「Cool Spirit!」”
Balls of ice and flame were launched at the demon before us, though he effortlessly blocked them with his hand as if they were no more than toys thrown by a child. The plan required that Descartes’ attention be drawn away from those of us taking part, so the Twins had volunteered themselves to draw his fire while we set up.
“Already resorting to desperate attacks? You all disappoint me. You cannot be the heroic nuisances that caused that bumbling fool of a human-convert so much trouble.”
Descartes’ condescending attitude told me that he likely assumed he had us beat from the beginning. With luck, that cockiness would be his undoing.
A dozen metres above his head was two magical girls who had shed their earthly restraints. One who had mastered the forces that governed flight, and another who was untethered by them entirely. Those two would be the crux of the plan.
“I tire of this. I thank you for providing me a modicum of entertainment, short lived though it may have been. I bid you farewell.”
Descartes surrounded himself with more and more of his magical spears, circling his body as he prepared to fire them in succession. Even with Hikari’s speed and Suzume’s intelligence, there would be little they could do to dodge so many at once. In other words, he had been holding back this entire time.
Fortunately, he was never able to deliver that attack.
“How?! By what trickery?!” Descartes called out in anger as he was forced to block at the last possible moment. The 「Untethered」Kyouma, greatsword in hand, had fallen from a great height directly down towards the troublesome demon. She brought her sword down with immense force, the contact between the blade and the metal glove it had been blocked by sending a shockwave into the surroundings.
Under normal circumstances, Descartes would simply have shot her out of the sky. That is, if he had been able to perceive her. I had hung back from the fight and focused every ounce of my mind on concealing her magic signature, allowing her to quite literally get the drop on her foe.
Well, her and one other.
As Kyouma quickly zipped off to one side, freely drifting through space as if weightless, her aerial comrade swooped in at immense speed and aimed a punch at his head as she passed by. He dodged at the last moment, but the momentum with which Nao’s body passed by him caused Descartes to stumble backwards.
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Kyouma took the opportunity presented to launch her second attack, this time swinging her sword horizontally as she approached at h almost the same speed as Nao. Descartes once again dodged at the last moment. This time he also attempted a counter attack, predicting Kyouma’s flight path and firing a spear towards it at immense speed. Kyouma simply rolled her body away and let the spear sail past her, her movement looking almost effortless.
While Descartes was focusing on Kyouma, Nao had used her extreme speed to rapidly regain height, drawing her bow and raining a short but fast hail of arrows down upon him. He was able to frantically dodge most of them, but accidentally put himself in the position to be struck through the face by that last one. Unable to dodge, he moved his arm in front of his eyes to block. It was a clumsy block, and the arrow pierced through his right wrist, stopping just shy of his eye.
"Argh! Vermin!"
Now enraged, Descartes’ attacks become even more aggressive, now exclusively aimed at the flying foes attacking him. He could detect them only by sound, but that was enough for him to accurately predict their paths through the air, resulting in a number of scary near misses.
But misses they were, as both Nao and Kyouma continued to dodge each and every spear, no matter how fast nor how accurate. This was down to the excellent tens synergy of Mai and Saki, who utilised their unique abilities to predict his attacks and feed that information to their allies wordlessly.
It was a strategy that used our strengths and abilities perfectly. The offensive capabilities of the twins, the support capabilities of myself and Mai, the leadership of Saki, and the aerial prowess of our two birds in the sky. All on full display to take down this otherwise insurmountable enemy.
“Do you flying rats have any idea just how annoying you are?”
Descartes, who had begun the fight calmly and with utmost confidence, was now angered and acting desperate. Every pass Nao and Kyouma made brought him closer and closer to fatally dropping his guard. Every fireball or ice crystal launched by the twins divided his attention a little more. He was slowly but surely getting overwhelmed.
“We have the advantage, we can’t waste this opportunity. We’re moving to the final stage of the plan.”
“You’re sure, Saki? It's risky.”
“We don’t know if we’ll get another shot. It’s now or never.”
“…understood. Let’s end this.”
As Nao passed by with yet another strike, Kyouma rose directly above Descartes’ head once again. Only this time, she didn’t immediately attack again. She waited, and the signal she was waiting for came shortly afterwards.
“Hussars! Now!”
The staggered demon was now the target of a seven-pronged attack. Mai, Saki and I all threw our weapons with as much force as we could muster. The twins launched a continuous stream of magic attacks. Nao fired every arrow remaining in her quiver. And for the finishing blow, Kyouma descended from the heavens to slam Descartes down with the heavy greatsword she had already harassed him with so many times.
It would be too many attacks to deal with at the best of times, but for the confused and disoriented Descartes, it was a death sentence. There was no possible defence.
“You brats… I’ll wipe you all out!”
Mai tackled me to the ground so fast that I barely registered the next fraction of a second. The arrows found their mark, and Kyouma’s attack was enough to dismember Descarte’s right arm completely, but in the same instant he had unleashed one final brutal attack. A series of spears, faster than any others launched prior, shot from his body in every direction around him.
Mai had tackled me to the floor, saving both our lives within a tenth of a second of death. Hikari and Suzume’s own magic was enough to neutralise the spears aimed at them. Nao and Kyouma were still far enough off the ground to be unthreatened by the attack.
That left a single person to receive a fatal blow.
“SAKI!”
Nao’s scream was blood curdling, as she watched her girlfriend’s body sail through the air, followed by a trail of her own blood.