The protective abilities of magical armor were almost completely disconnected from its appearance, but the fact that her enemies' equipment was even so thorough as to provide a strictly physical layer of protection underneath the magical ones made Nanoha fairly certain that an attack as diffuse as the Wave wouldn't be able to seriously harm them. Fortunately, she hadn't intended it to - all she had wanted was to distract them and force a measure of seperation that she could use to...
"Divine Shooter."
The soldiers yelped and dived out of the way of the homing spheres, then one of them, with red on his helmet as well as his arms and legs, shouted something in a language she didn't recognize. There were thousands of languages in use across the dimensions, of course, but only a couple of hundred belonged to people with the ability to travel away from their own. Raging Heart's ability to store data was great enough that she could 'speak' almost all of them, and the nearly subconcious nature of linguistic fluency let her share that ability with her master. This was only the second time she hadn't felt the psychosomatic 'tickle' of that new knowledge entering her mind on hearing a traveller speak for the first time, and she made a mental note to show a recording of it to Amy-san's new data intern - or victim, to give the position its more deserved name.
With so many spheres in the air, she couldn't spare the concentration to be very accurate, but one caught a man just above the knee - which broke with a very disturbing crunching noise - and another skimmed past its real target to catch the soldier behind him across the temple. His helmet saved his life, but he still tumbled to the ground with an utter limpness that announced that conciousness was most definately absent.
The leader shouted again, and the one who had had the narrow escape grabbed up his fallen companion's weapon into the same hand as his own and hurridly hoisted the rag-doll form up over his shoulder with the other before joining the rest of his comrades in converging on the man with the broken leg.
Three of them stopped a little short and spun to face her, raising their weapons with an unitelligable order. The response, though, was clear enough: "Triple Guarda!"
She didn't recognize the style of the shield that command produced, but a couple of attempts made it clear that breaking through it would require a bit more effort than her usual staple.
Fair enough. She could do that.
"Flash Move," Raging Heart said, and once she had reoriented herself, Nanoha realized that the spell had been triggered to pull her out of the way of a volley of fire from the pair of soldiers in the back, and that the last four were in different stages of preparing their own.
Two down, three occupied on their shield, and the commander busy doing... what looked like a dimensional transport spell. Six left to take down, if she wanted to apprehend them rather than hoping that Amy could trace them back to their origin.
Expert Devices needed verbal or somatic cues to begin their strikes, and, having seen the blades begin to swing down and throw off crackling arcs of white light, were relatively easy to avoid or bat aside. Defending wasn't going to win this battle, though, and any attack heavy enough to break their shield would require that she pause for a moment or two to focus it... a period of vulnerability that they'd be quite capable of taking advantage of.
On the other hand, with them on the ground like that... "Flash Move," to find cover as another white arc slashed through her former position, then "Divine Shooter," to keep them busy and let her weave and build then wrap up and set aside before "Flash Move," snapping into place directly above their heads and throwing herself up and forward so that she was facing the ground and had Raging Heart leveled straight down. "Divine Buster."
The reason she had attacked from above was that, with no disassociative Barrier in place around the battle scene, all of the collateral damage their fight did to the surrounding environment would have to be paid for and repaired the normal way, and would further have a chance of going wild and injuring some innocent bystander, which wouldn't do at all. Fortunately, the angle from which the shield was hit made no difference in the ultimate effect her attack had on it - a judgement borne out by the way the shield collapsed, and two of the men maintaining it flinched back with cries of pain as their Devices exploded in their hands.
The remaining shield-man was leaning on his weapon and shaking his head, as though disoriented, but the six who had been shooting at her seemed to trade a glance, then lunged into the air after her.
"Melee Mode," Raging Heart announced, and deployed a pair of wickedly sharp blades to form an 'A' around her Connection Core, and then the soldiers were on them. Nanoha twisted around the first one's lunge and speared the device's butt down to cave in his helmet's nose guard, but was barely able to block the next two's strikes while he reeled away with a strangled cry and the fourth twisted around his companions to deliver a kick that knocked her tumbling.
The last two were waiting for her, and he threw his weapon up between both hands to block her strike at the same moment that she tried to twist and lean out of the way of his partner's.
Both of them failed.
I'm about to pass out where I sit, so here's something to last y'all.
ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
"Divine Shooter."
The soldiers yelped and dived out of the way of the homing spheres, then one of them, with red on his helmet as well as his arms and legs, shouted something in a language she didn't recognize. There were thousands of languages in use across the dimensions, of course, but only a couple of hundred belonged to people with the ability to travel away from their own. Raging Heart's ability to store data was great enough that she could 'speak' almost all of them, and the nearly subconcious nature of linguistic fluency let her share that ability with her master. This was only the second time she hadn't felt the psychosomatic 'tickle' of that new knowledge entering her mind on hearing a traveller speak for the first time, and she made a mental note to show a recording of it to Amy-san's new data intern - or victim, to give the position its more deserved name.
With so many spheres in the air, she couldn't spare the concentration to be very accurate, but one caught a man just above the knee - which broke with a very disturbing crunching noise - and another skimmed past its real target to catch the soldier behind him across the temple. His helmet saved his life, but he still tumbled to the ground with an utter limpness that announced that conciousness was most definately absent.
The leader shouted again, and the one who had had the narrow escape grabbed up his fallen companion's weapon into the same hand as his own and hurridly hoisted the rag-doll form up over his shoulder with the other before joining the rest of his comrades in converging on the man with the broken leg.
Three of them stopped a little short and spun to face her, raising their weapons with an unitelligable order. The response, though, was clear enough: "Triple Guarda!"
She didn't recognize the style of the shield that command produced, but a couple of attempts made it clear that breaking through it would require a bit more effort than her usual staple.
Fair enough. She could do that.
"Flash Move," Raging Heart said, and once she had reoriented herself, Nanoha realized that the spell had been triggered to pull her out of the way of a volley of fire from the pair of soldiers in the back, and that the last four were in different stages of preparing their own.
Two down, three occupied on their shield, and the commander busy doing... what looked like a dimensional transport spell. Six left to take down, if she wanted to apprehend them rather than hoping that Amy could trace them back to their origin.
Expert Devices needed verbal or somatic cues to begin their strikes, and, having seen the blades begin to swing down and throw off crackling arcs of white light, were relatively easy to avoid or bat aside. Defending wasn't going to win this battle, though, and any attack heavy enough to break their shield would require that she pause for a moment or two to focus it... a period of vulnerability that they'd be quite capable of taking advantage of.
On the other hand, with them on the ground like that... "Flash Move," to find cover as another white arc slashed through her former position, then "Divine Shooter," to keep them busy and let her weave and build then wrap up and set aside before "Flash Move," snapping into place directly above their heads and throwing herself up and forward so that she was facing the ground and had Raging Heart leveled straight down. "Divine Buster."
The reason she had attacked from above was that, with no disassociative Barrier in place around the battle scene, all of the collateral damage their fight did to the surrounding environment would have to be paid for and repaired the normal way, and would further have a chance of going wild and injuring some innocent bystander, which wouldn't do at all. Fortunately, the angle from which the shield was hit made no difference in the ultimate effect her attack had on it - a judgement borne out by the way the shield collapsed, and two of the men maintaining it flinched back with cries of pain as their Devices exploded in their hands.
The remaining shield-man was leaning on his weapon and shaking his head, as though disoriented, but the six who had been shooting at her seemed to trade a glance, then lunged into the air after her.
"Melee Mode," Raging Heart announced, and deployed a pair of wickedly sharp blades to form an 'A' around her Connection Core, and then the soldiers were on them. Nanoha twisted around the first one's lunge and speared the device's butt down to cave in his helmet's nose guard, but was barely able to block the next two's strikes while he reeled away with a strangled cry and the fourth twisted around his companions to deliver a kick that knocked her tumbling.
The last two were waiting for her, and he threw his weapon up between both hands to block her strike at the same moment that she tried to twist and lean out of the way of his partner's.
Both of them failed.
I'm about to pass out where I sit, so here's something to last y'all.
ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."