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“Sailor Mercury?” Jumpstart repeated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Isn’t that the one who defeated Zarg and Alexandri?” Maladoll questioned.
“I doubt it,” Jumpstart answered, giving Mercury the once over. “She doesn’t look all that tough to me.”
“Oh, I’m not much of a fighter,” Mercury volunteered airily. “In fact, your electrical abilities are a particularly bad match-up for my powers. Even so, I’ve already accounted for that weakness in my plan to defeat you.”
“‘Already accounted for?’ ‘Plan to defeat you?’” Jumpstart repeated, followed by a shriek of laughter. “I’ll show you who will be defeated!” She raised her wire-coated arms, and her metal appendages opened, releasing two bolts of electricity.
Ready for the attack, Mercury dived and rolled to avoid it. “That was far too easy,” she said with a sigh, then crossed her arms. An orb of blue energy appeared in each of her hands. She waved them around and then thrust her arms outward in the direction of the two Youma, uttering, “Freezing Mist!”
“Mist again?” Jumpstart mocked as their side of the park was swamped with the dense, white haze. “Is that all you can do?”
“I wonder…” Mercury responded enigmatically from somewhere on the other side of the fog.
“Jumpstart!” cried Maladoll, somewhere to the Youma’s right. “Something’s wrong!”
The female monster had already noticed that the mist was far colder than before, but the car battery from which she had been created circulated enough warmth throughout her body to resist the cold. In addition, she kept herself moving on the spot as the frost formed across her skin, threatening to cover her in a layer of ice. “Shake it off, Maladoll!” she advised.
“Th-that all you got?” Jumpstart challenged with a shiver, spotting Mercury’s figure as the veil of mist lifted. However, her smug expression changed when her eyes settled on what Mercury was holding in her hands. It was the jumble of doll parts that comprised her ally’s head. She looked to her right and spotted the rest of Maladoll’s body frozen in place, ice filling the gaps between all its separate pieces.
Without warning, Sailor Mercury tossed the frost-covered head into the air like a beach ball and let it fall to the floor on one side of the park. Its frost-covered pieces scattered with a crash.
“To answer your earlier question; no, mist isn’t the only thing I can create. However, the mist I do use comes in two varieties. The first is used primarily to obscure vision. My Freezing Mist, however, also exposes those inside it to sub-zero temperatures. I’m susceptible to the latter too, of course, but my visor allows me to see through it,” Mercury explained coolly. “Once I saw that enough ice had formed on your friend’s plastic pieces, I rushed in and took its head before the cold could affect me.”
“Very educational, Jumpstart remarked,” biting her bottom lip in frustration. “But so much for your plan, you’ve already made a big mistake! Maladoll can reform!”
“Yes, I heard about that ability and included it in my calculations,” Mercury responded as the plastic doll arms, legs, mouths and eyes began to levitate. Then, after forming a dense sphere of blue energy between her palms, she commanded, “Bubble Spray!”
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A stream of bubbles was blasted toward the floating remnants of Maladoll’s head. The mass of bubbles absorbed and contained the separate parts, preventing them from uniting. They could be seen moving within, but the bubbles weren’t bursting.
“You think that will last forever?” Jumpstart yelled. “Maladoll will reform eventually. In the meantime, you’ve got me to deal with!”
“You? Oh dear, it seems you haven’t realized. I’m afraid your fate has already been sealed,” the soldier said in a grave tone, raising a hand to her right ear and removing her computer’s display visor with a touch of her earring.
Jumpstart let out her wildest cackle yet. “Enough of your talk!” she exclaimed, raising her pincers to deliver her shocking blasts.
Mercury didn’t even flinch. She didn’t have to. No electricity was released. “As I said earlier, I’ve already accounted for your powers,” she said.
“H-how? What have you done?” the Youma demanded, flailing her arms around wildly, trying to get them to work.
“It was simple really,” Ami told her as she continued to wave her alligator clip hands to no avail. “When I observed you attacking that young woman, I captured data on your electrical attack using my computer. It’s a powerful but simple technique. I was able to determine its weakness immediately.”
“Weakness?” Jumpstart spat, the fear in her voice rising.
“Oh, yes,” Ami continued. “You see, after you fire your blasts, your hands—for lack of a better word—give off smoke. This is due to the extreme temperature generated from conducting a high amount of electricity, so much so that it momentarily weakens their molecular structure.”
“Just tell me what you did to my hands!”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Ami asked innocently. “I confirmed with my earlier provocation, that your attacks require your hands to open, but after firing your blasts, thereby heating them, they were exposed to my Freezing Mist—”
“What are you saying?” the monster interrupted with a whimper.
“When hot metal is rapidly cooled, it hardens… I’m saying that your hands were effectively fused shut, leaving you powerless—and vulnerable,” Ami concluded, then held out her right arm. “Mercury!”
“You planned that far ahead?” the dejected Youma mumbled as it watched a lyre comprised of blue energy form in her opponent’s hand. With every musical pluck of its strings, water molecules were gathered from the air at high speed.
“Aqua Rhapsody!”
The collected, spiraling mass of pressurized water was then launched at Jumpstart. She was blasted across the park and into its jungle gym with such force, it crumpled around her.
Sailor Mercury approached the climbing frame cautiously to see if her attack had put an end to her opponent. She surmised that Jumpstart may have survived the impact had it not been for the rupture of her battery-like torso, which sparked and electrified her now-soaking body. The limbs that were able to move under the bent, metal bars convulsed until Jumpstart’s body disappeared into black vapor, leaving behind a smaller version of the car battery from which she must have been created.
Ami considered for a few moments whether the monster’s passing evoked any emotion for her, or indeed whether it should. It didn’t. Unfortunately, her brief period of reflection proved costly. Upon turning her attention to Maladoll, she saw the last of its rapidly spinning head pieces popping their bubble prison and reuniting. She had miscalculated.
Before she could prevent it, the head flew at its statue-like torso. The impact smashed many of the icy joints that prevented its other pieces from moving. With enough of them now free, the head whipped them into a localized tornado of plastic, which collided with the remaining frozen parts. In a matter of seconds, the main body reformed and Maladoll’s head returned to its shoulders.
“Prepare yourself, human!” the abomination warned.
Mercury had to act. “Bubble Spr—” she started, forming the energy required to release another cocoon of bubbles and buy her some time.
However, the Youma threw two punches at her—quite literally. Its arms separated from its shoulders and soared across the park. The first landed under her chin like an uppercut, lifting her off the floor and interrupting her attack. The second plowed into her stomach and propelled her backward, slamming her into the park’s house-shaped climbing apparatus.
Mercury almost blacked out then and there, her eyes bulging, and spittle escaping her gaping mouth as the wind was knocked out of her. Falling to the tarmac as the flying arms returned to their master, she was unable to focus on anything beyond her dry heaving.
“This is for Jumpstart,” the Youma spoke as it approached the incapacitated guardian. As it walked, it combined the pieces from its left arm with those of its right, creating an odd, conical shape.
From across the park, barely managing to hoist her injured body up off the bench, Makoto watched in horror through the transparent barrier of bubbles, as the monster’s enlarged arm began to rotate with the speed and likeness of a drill.