The nagamaki's blade probably wasn't really that sharp, but the actinic tracery of white fire along its edge apparently added a tremendous amount of cutting power. Nanoha had been diligent about practicing her evasions, and one of the characteristics that had made her family successful as shinobi had been their excellent reflexes, so she almost managed to avoid it.
That meant that, rather than cleaving her head in half, the very tip of the blade slashed across her right cheek, parting skin and muscle alike but missing her nose and remaining just barely too shallow to nick her jawbone.
It hurt.
She was very lucky, but the man she had struck was rather less so. There was a bright flash of pink light against white before Raging Heart cleaved cleanly through the Expert Device's resistance a moment before doing the same to its physical structure. And its wielder.
There was no time to think about the fact that she had just killed the man - his companions were playing by the same rules she was, rules they had set with the civilian bodies scattered across half the shopping district, and the one who had cut her was coming out of his follow through and into recovery.
He had been open, but she was a split second too slow pulling free and he slapped her lunge aside with a hand-over-hand twist of his weapon that left him in a position to turn the motion into an attack of his own. The counter was just as easy, though, and Raging Heart traded ends in her hands and rotated up to lock against the nagamaki's guard for a moment before she changed her leverage and forced it free of his hands and falling freely to earth.
She would have taken advantage of that weakness, as mercy was a luxury that would have gotten her killed at these odds, but the four she'd clashed with only a few seconds ago caught up and drove into melee.
One bypassed her and slid in front of his disarmed comrade, but the next slashed in from his left as she turned to face him. She dropped Raging Heart to that side a blocked it solidly, then shoved him away and spun the Device up and around to slap the third soldier's lunge down into thin air. The last was right behind him, coming down, weapon first, in a motion that put all his weight behind the strike. He was too close for her to come back on guard in time, so she let go with her higher hand - the right - and threw it out, palm first. "Protective Force."
The disc-shaped shield absorbed the impact and the magic backing it, then flashed and gave them back redoubled a split second later, blowing him clean through the facade of the building across the street.
A voice shouted something in that language of theirs - a command, by the tone - and it wasn't the one belonging to the man who had been giving the orders until now. The men she had been fighting scattered away from her, and she had only a moment to throw up a shield before she found out why.
"Estrella Fuego!"
Then there was nothing in the world but flame. If she hadn't already been sweating - from exertion, and from the pain of the wound pouring blood all across her front - then the heat would have made her start, and the way the attack tore at her defenses was no worse than Hayate sometimes managed on her off days.
When her vision cleared, she could see the soldiers hustling through what looked like a long-range portal, and, standing between her and them, a man wearing much the same style of armor, but with a more open helmet and a red-hemmed full cape rather than the half-length ones she'd already seen. The Intelligent Device he held was a full-length staff, and held its Connection Core in place with six angular flanges at one end, much like a medieval European mace.
He met her eyes, and she could see enough of his face to know that his mouth was set in a straight, grim line. "Escua," he said.
"Si, mi Amo! Quemar Hormigueo!"
The casting matrix beneath his feet was the same sixty-degree angled fractal pattern as the others had used, like a cross between a circuit diagram and a snowflake, and lasted only a second before shattering and flowing out to form nearly a dozen shining octohedral frameworks hovering in the air around him. At the center of each was a blinding, brilliant point of light which, at a gestured command from the mage, they commenced to flinging from their interiors against her shields. No sooner had one attacked than a new light was growing at its heart, and between all of them there wasn't the slightest break that would let her lower her defenses and attack.
On the other hand, there was hardly any chance that those seperated daemons could hold enough power to outlast her, and scarely more that their creator could use the distraction to come up with something capable of breaking through her shield, and, from the ironic bow he gave in answer to her glare as the last of his... subordinates? ...vanished, he was well aware of both facts.
The fact that he followed up on this by turning and departing himself only made her frustration all the worse as the portal winked out of existence.
"Schwalbe Flieger!"
One pass, then another took care of the distractions that had held her in place, and she let the shield drop as her rescuer approached.
"Nanoha! Are you all right? We couldn't contact you - there was some sort of jamming, and..." Vita stopped cold and went very pale as she took in the look in the elder girl's eyes and the blood soaking her clothes, and she stopped and began to reverse direction almost immediately. "A-andI'llgogetShamalsoshecantakecareofthatforyouokaybye!"
*eyecatch one: MAHOU KUNOICHI LYRICAL NANOHA*
Are y'all curious yet?
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
That meant that, rather than cleaving her head in half, the very tip of the blade slashed across her right cheek, parting skin and muscle alike but missing her nose and remaining just barely too shallow to nick her jawbone.
It hurt.
She was very lucky, but the man she had struck was rather less so. There was a bright flash of pink light against white before Raging Heart cleaved cleanly through the Expert Device's resistance a moment before doing the same to its physical structure. And its wielder.
There was no time to think about the fact that she had just killed the man - his companions were playing by the same rules she was, rules they had set with the civilian bodies scattered across half the shopping district, and the one who had cut her was coming out of his follow through and into recovery.
He had been open, but she was a split second too slow pulling free and he slapped her lunge aside with a hand-over-hand twist of his weapon that left him in a position to turn the motion into an attack of his own. The counter was just as easy, though, and Raging Heart traded ends in her hands and rotated up to lock against the nagamaki's guard for a moment before she changed her leverage and forced it free of his hands and falling freely to earth.
She would have taken advantage of that weakness, as mercy was a luxury that would have gotten her killed at these odds, but the four she'd clashed with only a few seconds ago caught up and drove into melee.
One bypassed her and slid in front of his disarmed comrade, but the next slashed in from his left as she turned to face him. She dropped Raging Heart to that side a blocked it solidly, then shoved him away and spun the Device up and around to slap the third soldier's lunge down into thin air. The last was right behind him, coming down, weapon first, in a motion that put all his weight behind the strike. He was too close for her to come back on guard in time, so she let go with her higher hand - the right - and threw it out, palm first. "Protective Force."
The disc-shaped shield absorbed the impact and the magic backing it, then flashed and gave them back redoubled a split second later, blowing him clean through the facade of the building across the street.
A voice shouted something in that language of theirs - a command, by the tone - and it wasn't the one belonging to the man who had been giving the orders until now. The men she had been fighting scattered away from her, and she had only a moment to throw up a shield before she found out why.
"Estrella Fuego!"
Then there was nothing in the world but flame. If she hadn't already been sweating - from exertion, and from the pain of the wound pouring blood all across her front - then the heat would have made her start, and the way the attack tore at her defenses was no worse than Hayate sometimes managed on her off days.
When her vision cleared, she could see the soldiers hustling through what looked like a long-range portal, and, standing between her and them, a man wearing much the same style of armor, but with a more open helmet and a red-hemmed full cape rather than the half-length ones she'd already seen. The Intelligent Device he held was a full-length staff, and held its Connection Core in place with six angular flanges at one end, much like a medieval European mace.
He met her eyes, and she could see enough of his face to know that his mouth was set in a straight, grim line. "Escua," he said.
"Si, mi Amo! Quemar Hormigueo!"
The casting matrix beneath his feet was the same sixty-degree angled fractal pattern as the others had used, like a cross between a circuit diagram and a snowflake, and lasted only a second before shattering and flowing out to form nearly a dozen shining octohedral frameworks hovering in the air around him. At the center of each was a blinding, brilliant point of light which, at a gestured command from the mage, they commenced to flinging from their interiors against her shields. No sooner had one attacked than a new light was growing at its heart, and between all of them there wasn't the slightest break that would let her lower her defenses and attack.
On the other hand, there was hardly any chance that those seperated daemons could hold enough power to outlast her, and scarely more that their creator could use the distraction to come up with something capable of breaking through her shield, and, from the ironic bow he gave in answer to her glare as the last of his... subordinates? ...vanished, he was well aware of both facts.
The fact that he followed up on this by turning and departing himself only made her frustration all the worse as the portal winked out of existence.
"Schwalbe Flieger!"
One pass, then another took care of the distractions that had held her in place, and she let the shield drop as her rescuer approached.
"Nanoha! Are you all right? We couldn't contact you - there was some sort of jamming, and..." Vita stopped cold and went very pale as she took in the look in the elder girl's eyes and the blood soaking her clothes, and she stopped and began to reverse direction almost immediately. "A-andI'llgogetShamalsoshecantakecareofthatforyouokaybye!"
*eyecatch one: MAHOU KUNOICHI LYRICAL NANOHA*
Are y'all curious yet?
Ja, -n
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."