The sky above Lullaby was as clear as Maze had ever seen it, merely cloudy with irregular showers. For once she could sniff the fresh smell of summer without the petrichor overtaking it.
Another scent approached, two in fact. Mazeline’s ears shot up and her tail started to wag, it seemed like her two new acquaintances were already approaching. Alana and Qullqi, good girls, but also extremely clueless.
The setting of the upcoming spar would be a large open field, seemed like it was a football field in drier times but now it was just a muddy stretch. Maze herself sat at a tree stump, adjusting her pose and her messy hair, making sure she would give a good impression once the duo broke past the forest, into the clearing.
“Yooo girls~” Maze waved as soon as she saw the dogs. “Hope you trained lots.”
“We did! A bit!” Alana answered with a giggle, rushing ahead. She had dark circles under her eyes, and Maze felt a bit guilty if that was because of her training too much for this spar.
Qull’s pace was slower, she merely nodded to acknowledge Maze’s comment, observing her surroundings and probably still working on strategies.
“We also went to the mall, to a bunch of lame magical stores and I almost got in a fight with an evil cashier. We also met a strange lady who used to be a magical girl and she gave me a bunch advice and she said Qull could be a magical girl if she wanted.”
“Sounds like quite the adventure.” Maze smirked. “I will stay alert for when Qull shows up in a frilly dress, declaring that the power of love shall conquer all.”
The mercenary just sighed, and it was so frustrating, Maze was expecting a blush or a bark. She was just so focused on the upcoming battle; it was absurd that she thought she had a shot.
Hopefully such misconceptions would die today.
“Alright!” Mazeline lazily stretched then took a more energetic stance “I see no reason to delay it. It will be a simple spar. Two against one, a fighter is eliminated when they surrender or are crashed out by the Protocol. Field of battle is a circle around the stump.”
As the words were spoken, the whole trio would feel their defence wards acting up, registering it. Maze and Alana would see a small thread of magic forming around the area, while Qull had to take out her flip phone to see it through the lenses.
Then the battle was on. Maze was feeling kind enough to give the girls some time to reposition, in a melee range it would not even be fun to fight them. Once all was set, she took one last deep and relaxed breath, then opened her eyes wide and began to sprint.
Alana was the obvious first target, and everyone knew this. Qull had already placed herself in the battle and barely bothered taking a defensive stance, merely staying out of reach. She had a pistol in hand and was already firing.
The protocol would immediately crash someone out of battle if it defended a lethal amount of damage, a bullet to the head could do that. That said, Qull was not there yet, her pattern was predictable, her fingers hesitated, and she was playing too safe, aiming for the torso or legs.
Only one bullet damaged Maze, passing through her leg, the rest bounced off like rubber shots and did not cause enough pain for Maze to even wince. Considering Qull had sold most of her guns, the use of such third-rate talisman round was just too strange, it had to be a trap.
Come to think, they probably would try to do the exact same thing they did on the warehouse raid, but this time with intent. With some focus the werewolf saw the glint of red ahead, while she was still distracted overthinking Qullqi’s pitiful barrage of bullets. Alana on the back was focusing with a large wooden staff, striking it on the ground... a few times.
To her side, Qullqi had stopped the gun and prepare bolas, a type of weapon formed by weights bound on an interconnected rope, good to wrap around the legs. It hit wide, and with the small fire trap ahead, it almost felt like she was being coerced to jump up.
Maze would not, she braved forward and stepped right into the spell, flames burst beneath her which was bad, but she could feel the densest bits of magic were not on that circle she was seeing, but on smaller circles to the side, which burst up in pillars of flame. However, since her stomp had broken the spell, they quickly fell to the side and dissipated. Had she jumped, they would have converged on her and done some real damage.
Her sprint did not stop, she still had to dodge Qullqi’s throw weapon but now Alana was well in sight. One advantage she had was that her feet did not sink in the mud at all, a simple enchantment called light step. Maze had never taken martial arts seriously but had picked up some wind and earth techniques.
The advantage she had in mobility was simply absurd, but that was only expected. She had never said this would be a fair fight, on the contrary, the more unfair, the clearer the lesson would be. Her nails gained a metallic shine, Alana winced at the murderous intent of her supposed comrade and...
Ice spikes.
While pretending to be scared, Alana had prepared a small spell that she launched as knives of ice. That was new, an actual modern spell in fact, the type you could buy in a store. Maze was so sure Alana would have stuck to her old spells and overuse the fire spell. She was proud of Alana for having left her comfort zone.
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It almost made her feel bad when she carelessly dodged not only the spikes, but the cheeky fire traps the witch had prepared in front of herself. She did so by copying Rumi and doing a powered somersault right above the way slower magician. Alana’s horrified expression as she met Maze face to face, with the werewolf upside down, was way too adorable.
Landing right behind the witch, Maze did not waste a single second and sunk her claws on Alana’s back, there was a splash of a myriad of colours and then the sound of glass breaking. The witch’s body and dress gained an ethereal aspect, glowing and half transparent, while all the colours of her visage became a muted greyscale.
Alana had been broken out of the battle by the Protocol. Maze able to walk through her as she fell to the ground since she was now fully intangible.
Meeting Qull’s eyes was exciting, there was now a lot of determination in them, but also some sense of rage, some emotion for once. The chimera now had a small rifle in hand, and she was loading a heavy looking bullet on it, fully etched with three lines of symbols. That would hurt. Good. This meant the girl now knew to take this seriously. Absolutely destroying Alana had been the right decision.
Maze pounced and the bullet was fired. The werewolf thought she had dodged, but Qull was learning fast, and had managed to correct at the last moment and hit Maze right in the knee. A glass cracking sound being heard, not enough to kick her out of battle but that had hurt, a lot. And there was magical suppression in that etched bullet, it had severed the links in her frame to her legs which was how she could keep the mud walking ability.
Damn, that was good shot come to think of it. But a way too late, not enough to wipe off Mazeline’s fanged smirk.
While Qull rushed to load another shot, stepping backwards. Maze sank her claws to the ground and in a rush of adrenaline started a mad dash towards her enemy.
A howl echoed over the battlefield as the werewolf did not hold back on any of her skills. Qull winced as she heard it, and her steps became confused and ultimately, she stumbled, falling on her butt and losing her concentration. Among other perks, Maze’s inherited ability was one that could force upon listeners an effect similar to labyrinthitis.
Gritting her teeth, the merc, despite the sensory mess she was trapped into, managed to load that second bullet. Even on the ground she still took aim, after all, one good shot was what she needed to take down Maze and with the werewolf closer and closer, it was now or never.
Mazeline pounced, one claw aiming for the neck, the other to slap off the barrel of the gun and avoid any chance of it hitting her at the last minute. Qull doubled down on her bet, recognizing it as her last chance, she started to retract her right hand and the rifle away from Maze even as that meant bending to the side and leaving her defences fully exposed. Maze paid in kind, going all in, losing contact with the ground as she successfully reached for the rifle by overextending her arm.
But by then she had noticed something, there was no way Qull could have fired that gun considering how awkward her position had become, the thing was almost touching her shoulder.
The other hand, where was it? The left hand. When speaking with Qull about her plan to use swords and guns in a quick swap fashion, Maze had suspected the girl was ambidextrous ever since she said she could handle a sword and a pistol at the same time, so where was it? She couldn’t see, the damned ‘poncho raincoat’ thing she wore was fully hiding it...
A movement, and Qull’s left hand emergent from the cloth, wielding a silver talisman blade. It was a fast swing, and Maze had no limbs left to deal with it, one claw was too far ahead, the other was behind still gaining speed in an arc movement to crush her enemy, the legs were off the ground and entirely bound by the momentum. There was no response as the blade cut in an upward swing, until it was almost against Mazeline’s neck.
Clank. The blade was stopped by something sharper and stronger.
Qullqi watched in awe as she saw Maze swing her head forward, against the blade, and bite at the sword. Her fangs with the same metallic gleam of her nails.
The Vespertine noble then was free to finish the Runan mercenary off, her hand crashing against Qullqi’s face and the sound of exploding glass being heard as the magenta and blue of the Protocol splashed and dissipated around them.
Maze had such momentum she had to roll on the mud before stopping, while Qullqi was left on the ground, defeated and clad in a ghostly monochrome, holding at her face as it surely had hurt quite a bit.
Standing up and stretching, she smirked and wagged her tail, this had been a fun battle. But a good battle? No. These girls had a lot of issues they needed to work on, even if they were a bit above what Maze expected, especially Alana. For one, Qullqi was addicted to traps, to the point she would give up on honest shots to try some sort of trick, for example, at that last moment of their battle, sticking to her guns and aiming for a shot through the heart would have had a higher chance of working than the little blade trick.
But such criticisms would come later, for now, she would prepare some snacks and a resting area, getting broken out of the Protocol was never fun and they needed the time to recover.
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A variety of snacks now rested on the tree stump, a bottle of cola too, with three rocks surrounding it as makeshift seats, Alana had showed another spell she had learned from grandma and formed a ward over them to keep the rain away.
The mood wasn’t the best, despite Maze trying to avoid talking about the battle, the two dogs were brooding a lot, and only Alana was pretending to be cheerful, Qull was sipping at her cola and frowning like a petulant child.
“Anyway.” The noble girl started. “I finished the paperwork with our sponsors, we should go to the city and get properly registered soon enough.”
Alana nodded at Maze. “Yay, Cerberus is getting off the papers, I think this will be fun. Oh, could we make a blog for our group.”
The werewolf shook her head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, not before we finish the smuggling stuff. Otherwise, we become too easy to track.”
As if by universal irony, not soon after Maze had talked about her wish to keep a low profile because of her fear of the corporation she had slighted, she noticed new presences walking into the forest, aiming straight for the clearing they were at.
She was shocked, she had stayed low and made sure she wasn’t followed. Who could these people be? Tengu agents? Wait. She turned to Qullqi. Who was already fidgeting with her phone.
“Qullqi, dear heart. What is the brand of your phone?”
The merc tilted her head. “Hmm? It’s a Tengu, why?”
Maze facepalmed, hard, thinking 'and this girl was supposed to be the smart one in the group'.
They were doomed, weren't they?