Nexus Campus Town

[YOLF]

Headmaster

This close, the folds of the black cloak fluttered before the cascade of impacts like snakes caught by a hurricane, but the woman that wore it did not sway as if affected. Her form was outmatched against these forces, but her mind refused to allow even a blink to pass through and give away a weakness. Flung familiars tumbled past her, and without a sweat or missing a beat the Headmaster threw her palms forward. The street beneath all of them rolled like a wave, stone and cement bursting like crests of seafoam into the melee, separating the squirrelgirl from the barrage of the assistant professor and attempting to bury the bloodsucker.

As winds of combat blew a gap in the smoke, the headmaster could see the vampire clearly, and he would have been able to see her lips utter something without sound. A split second was all he got, as her soldiers reared up once more to resume their purpose. Your proof?

[Panda]

Nanako

There was an unfamiliar rush as her kick hammered Costin down into the dirt, then a far more familiar one as he dislocated his own arm to grab her leg and slam her down next to him. The fight was starting to remind her of her battle with Orcus, except this time there was no assurance of healers, no rules against killing your opponent. Here, he'd be entirely at her mercy if she bested him, and she at his if he did.

"You know, normally I like being on the receiving end of this," Nanako chuckled, "But for you, I can make a-" was all she got out before explosions cut her off, the squirrel girl bringing her arms up on reflex. The fires, however, cracked apart with lines of nothing as they touched her, tiny squirrels of abyssal nothing emerging and chewing through the flames. Annoyed, she kipped up to her feet in one smooth motion, then zipped through the flames as the headmaster's stony tidal wave crashed down behind her. In one swift motion, she grabbed the resplendent blackfire bird by its throat, her skin cracking like the fires it had spewed and her eyes shaded over like viewports into an endless night for a brief moment before they returned to their usual hazel.

"Hey shitbird, watch it with flambe, I'm not your next meal," Nanako barked at the oversized roast chicken, holding back a wince as a sudden sharp pain crawled down her back, distinct from all the other lingering aches from her destructive battle with Costin. This was less impact, and more...like something that had been stuck in her, sliding in deeper. Shards pushing into her back even though she didn't feel the warmth or wetness of blood.

[Kotomine_Rin]

Costin

"-!"

The flames poured down like comets, delivering heat and ash while eating the very life around them. Suddenly, the vampire's massive frame was swallowed whole by the black pyre,  as if he was being eaten by it too. There was nothing to see there, naught but fire and death.

Suddenly, a crimson boot walked out the flames, gargantuan and metallic in hue. Thick, jagged crystals mixed and coalesced into a broken, halfway-formed bloody layer, like a plain crystal shell around some of his body parts.

Nonchalantly, the man took the first step, and walked. Calmly. Burnt. And perhaps, in a small way... hurt.

"Not bad."

The apostle coughed blood. In its hand, he clasped his headphones tightly, coated in his own essence. The moment they went back on, they fused with his own makeshift helmet's blood with the frames, encasing them in the protective layer that soon formed the shape of a hat. Meanwhile, the blood on his flesh and the crystal melted, spread out, and formed hundreds of needle-wide threads around his body, until it was no longer something as brute as crystal or as mundane as mere blood- but a coat, cloak and all. That of a hunter.



He looked at the headmistress curiously. For a moment, he stared and waited. Then, he vanished.

The murderous intent closed the gap, right behind the Headmaster.

[Kotomine_Rin]

Lawrence

"K-KHAAHHH! YOU BITC-KHHH! L-LET GO!" The blackbird roared in indignation, flaring furiously with each futile flap of its wings. But if that nightmare showed all of that burning emotion, the man next to it had a pallid, hollow face. Nay, it turned to the squirrel girl, and for a moment, their eyes met.

She had seen those eyes before.

The man who fought her in the dojo then. Their tint had that similar lifelessness.

The rebel who fought alongside her against the seraph. While that man had the most life and freedom in it than all the others, both carried the same conviction.

But compared to these imitations, there was one thing that felt truly, genuinely crushing. It was the ravenous, hungry emptiness. A hollow lack of anything other than what it had not, drawing everything closer to its ego. Like a black star, colliding and devouring until it met its own demise. The eldritch truth that dictates all life to crave, a blackened craving.

The black star-mud of draconic greed.

"How fascinating... Poor thing."

And that thing acknowledged the own girl's void. And it was terrifying. The seraphic thing inside her felt a horrifying fear that very moment.

His shadow created a chair for him to sit on. Its as if her power did not threaten or intimidate him at all.

"Since you've been so rude as to trash this place about, allow me to ask you a question. What led you here?"

[YOLF]

Headmaster

Ah, so everything until now had been playing. The rumbling of her soldiers seemed small and distant as the vampire's figure grew taut with bloodthirst. While it wove itself in a figure of predatory chivalry, her human heart thumped once in its chest like it meant to escape. Every mortal fiber in her being ought to be warning her to not look away if she wanted to live, in disregard of the deeper ego that assured her invincibility.

Still, the corners of her eyes wrinkled at Lawrence's manners, away from this. What... was he doing?

And in that instant, the vampire slipped her senses completely. She slammed her foot down, and spears of steel rushed forth from the ground in a piercing net, but she was already open. This attack, she could not avoid. Was this his answer to her demand?

[Panda]

Nanako

Nanako froze when the man's eyes met hers, the squawking flame chicken forgotten for the moment. Those eyes, that look, she'd seen it many times before.

"Zeke?" came the words, even if she didn't believe them herself, "How are you...what?"

Her throat felt try as she felt like she was falling into herself, that same feeling when she'd first met the man, the endless void yawning wide before her as if to swallow her whole. The Grace reacted as well, burrowing deeper, the pain of a dozen cold knives sliding into her back that much faster. It almost felt like the chilling shards were converging, ever so slowly as they crawled deeper into her.

"It was...a guided tour," she said, tossing the bird aside dismissively the battle raging behind her forgotten for this brief moment.

[Kotomine_Rin]

Lawrence

"S-SWKWAAAAHH!!"

"Is that so..." Lawrence's eyes narrowed icily. A snap of his fingers, and a spark lit up between the two for an instant. Using that thing inside her to communicate was child's play, information transfer was what he designed them for in the first place. It took no time to convey his feelings to her.

No matter.

Like a scalpel burrowing in your brain.

You are no fool.

You knew what wild abandon meant here before you struck.

Was it carelessness...or something else drawing you here?

It matters not. However...

If you are to disturb this land further, I will be its sentinel... and I shall reap you.

Make your choice.

And in an instant, he was gone.


Costin

"..."

The mage was adequate, but not even worth picking his teeth with her bones. That attack was too telegraphed, too deliberate. She was distracted in her purpose, and that wouldn't do. The slightest tremors in the ground triggered his reaction before the spikes emerged to skewer him. He was simply a step ahead of her.

His curse swelled and burst. It was a heartbeat.

Instantly, numerous weapons tore out from his body, bloody and blackened. A sword that belonged to a stranger. A limb that belonged to a nemesis. A dagger that belonged to a colleague. A spear that belonged to a friend. The countless instruments of harm were a karma he bore and released, and for each steel lance, a bloody weapon shot out  to intercept it.

But not the headmaster. For her, a weapon wouldn't do. His clawed paw swung down like a hammer to grab her face, but -

CRRRRRRACKKKKKK!

The next thing the headmaster saw wasn't the chunks of her body being flung about, nor the color of her innards. Lawrence teleported right in the way of the attack, covered by the blackened grail king. Even that protection cracked and screamed from the impact, but the grail king grew and grew, resisting with everything it had. Providing a shield and a spear with Lawrence's own life as fuel.


Lawrence

"This place is not yours to ravage." Black mud poured out of his chest, where the claws almost reached him. Lawrence's glare was unlike anything before. Even if the defense quickly cracked and gave way to his exposed body, he grit his teeth and truly resolved himself to defend the headmaster.


Costin

His look was of utter disinterest, and even disgust. Well, its not like he was seriously trying to kill that robed wench, so even a swing like that was soft enough to be held off for a bit. "Slow down there bud. I might just kill you for real."

A flash of crimson was the only warning they'd have of the kick launching their way. It threatened to decapitate the meddling mage here and there and crush the woman in one fell swoop.

[YOLF]

Headmaster

And then, first in this exchange, her expression slipped into clear scorn, and a snarl tumbled from between her gritted teeth. If his ear was sharp enough, perhaps he could tell. The Headmaster had no intention, none whatsoever, of humoring him in the way he desired. This was no place for the mania of a fool who delighted in stoking the flames of death.

And so, with a minute flick of her wrist hidden behind Lawrence's body, in the instant the vampire swung his leg, the bars and meshes of iron he had so easily discarded split in the air, and double their number threw themselves in impaling arcs from his flanks, so quick the air was rent in their wake, and dozens of sharp pellets torn loose from the buildings and road too let loose sonic screams in hurling themselves at the hunter.

[Panda]

Nanako

Nanako felt that spark run down her spine like a jolt, lighting along the shards like a live current. Time seemed to grind to a halt as he spoke through them, just as Zeke had. What he said cut deep, words sinking into her head like knives as he got right down to the core of the matter. The shards sliding into her back started vibrating, whether with anticipation or fear she didn't know. The feeling of fiery heat piercing her back spread, as if it were following her veins and nerves to spread throughout her body. However, in the same stroke, he'd exposed himself just as much, opened himself to the same line he'd used to speak to her.

You have his eyes.

And nothing else.

There wasn't time to think, when Lawrence vanished. Fortunately, Nanako didn't need to, as the roar of battle came rushing back to her. She saw Cossie descending upon the headmaster, felt that growing need to hear his body give out again boiling in her blood, saw Lawrence interpose himself between them, saw the headmaster try to riddle him with steely flechettes.

The squirrel girl moved to leap back into the fray and suddenly the piercing molten heat turned ice-cold. Nanako was moving before she could process the sudden temperature shift, and the ground exploded under her feet, the sheer shockwave of her step carving a trench into the ground behind her, obscuring the building behind her in its dust cloud as the sheer force of her step cracked  stone, rattled steel, and shattered glass even from this distance.

Nanako moved with more force than she ever had before, the sound in her wake more like an artillery report than the usual gunshot cracks. The screaming storm of shards was drowned out in that moment, and now Nanako stood where Lawrence had before, shining feathers tracing lines along her limbs, armoring her boots, covering her hands with clawed gauntlets, flowing around her tail like a wispy trail of steam. She'd caught his crimson scythe in her hand, the follow-up kick stopped cold with her tight grip on his shin. She tightened her grip and felt the bone begin to crack and splinter.

"Getting distracted in your old age, gramps?" Nanako growled, a hungry smirk showing pearly-whites, "You're fighting with me, she can wait her turn."

[Kotomine_Rin]

Costin

As his kick approached, his circuits flared with a vermillion hue, crawling on his limbs like tattoos brimming with magic. It was a quick, almost undetectable thing - the fact the hunter's expression changed. Even with this speed, even at the point air itself ceased to be a conductor, his senses were sharpened to the point he could perceive it. The stakes, the hurling debris... everything.

No.

Even they almost seemed to stop before the comet that crashed down. The explosion of force from all four of them colliding, their wills... for a second, even the future wavered before this clash, giving way to new uncertain possibilities, masked by an explosion of dust.


Lawrence

"Argh-!" The sorcerer let out a pain cry as the comet hit critical impact, the force so massive, it uprooted the grail king and launched them all backwards with the resounding explosion. The reverberation crushed his eardrums, and the shockwave was enough to crack his shell visibly as the grail king flung back - losing its shape in the process.

How... inelegant...kh..

Thrown back, he landed against a wall and broke his arm with a visceral snap, vomiting a spew of mud from the pain. If he wasn't pulped on the spot, it was only thanks to his shadow armament's defenses, allowing him little reprieve as he clawed on the floor in pain.

His eyes looked back at the Headmaster, his familiar covering her body in favor of his to cushion her own impact, to focus on defending her. The moment the master found her safe landing, the grail king spoke. "Are you alright milady?"

Meanwhile, his eyes darted around quickly, observing his surroundings. Observing the letters carved around them. Narrowing as he understood their intent. Immediately, Lawrence wiped the mud off his cracked jaw. "Please, don't exert yourself. The entire perimeter will soon be fully evacuated. I have a plan to take down this beast, but I need you to trust me."

Lawrence flicked his wrist once. Phenex cried out a hellish scream, and a pillar of flame came crashing down on the two like a wave. He looked like he was in agony right now, but he did everything in his power to buy his lord time and protect her.



Costin

The iron stakes and weaponized rubble yet to be knocked away sank into the apostle's flesh, the rest flung away by the booming impact. And yet, it was utterly absurd, for he somehow moved his body at the last second to avoid the shards breaking any vital limbs, making even this seemingly severe damage a cosmetic hindrance at best.

But it did hinder him. The fact was, the two women were good enough to warrant using this much power to begin with.

The hand crushed his foot, the grip was hardened. But his reaction wasn't delayed in the slightest. At once, his foot pulled out with a horrifying sound, utterly degloving the caught limb from its hide to break free. Blood, meat and raw bone exposed didn't matter at all, her pearly white smile met his own silent grin.

A red light flashed like a blade, finally revealing a true exchange.

The serpentine flurry of kicks came down like rain, his foot now a sword-like blade aiming for her vitals expertly while his long limbs  swooped down like waves - hurling a terrifying combo. Each blow had an utter lack of wasted movements, and had the precise aim to either bait or hit the beastgirl where her body would break the easiest. Her liver, her gut, her nerves, her blood vessels. He spared none of them in his intent.

And then came a sea of flames, washing over them both.

[YOLF]

Headmaster

If she ought to have been grateful, what instead the assistant professor found on her face was an uneasy scowl with no joy for his actions.

"I would have been fine," she said. "Take better care of yourself."

Lawrence soon found himself pulled up in defiance of his body's fragility, and his crippled arm hoisted around the Headmaster's shoulder, the better to support him to his feet.

Turning her face from the plea to play into his plan, the Headmaster only followed the chaotic confluence between the vampire and the re-emerged, transformed squirrelgirl, and at once she stomped her foot.

A telepathic warning sounded in Nanako's head for only the briefest interlude - 'If you don't want to be caught, quit this clash now.'

Every stone under the entire street reverbated once again, as did her remaining warriors of stone, and in an instant an avalanche of rubble, steel, cement, glass and rock thundered free into the sky. The numerous debris swirled around the flames led by the floating familiars and hurled themselves in a crushing rain to surround it like a dome, piece after piece streaming in to form walls on every side.

[Panda]

Nanako

The sound of Costin's leg degloving was a new one, another shiver up her spine, the same way the feeling of his bones breaking felt. That Costin now resembled a pincushion more than a man mattered little to her. That the headmaster was warning her to back off or she'd be caught mattered even less. The sea of flames washed around her like rain off her back, abyssal nothing swallowing whatever would have touched her, a singular oasis amidst the inferno, and it was already occupied. Her foe was before her, still moving, still fighting. He was more skilled by far, but she was faster. He'd stopped talking, but that was fine. Nanako had better things to do with her mouth right now anyway.

Hazel eyes tracked the sword-like limb with single-minded focus, the flurry of blows melting away before her eyes even as pain exploded across her body like firecrackers, fists and feet battering away at her with agonizing precision. She weathered the hits with that same smile, until the hardened leg finally descended. With a movement that was more beast-like than human, she caught the bloody blade between her teeth, still grinning all the while. Pain that would have crippled another woman drove her to greater heights, and in the same moment that she caught his leg, she brought an open hand around and simply shoved Costin away with a sound like a cannon shot, yanking back on his leg as she did.

As the Headmaster had warned, debris rained down around them, making a dome of stone and steel and their creator's will. At this point, it didn't matter to Nanako. If anything, the narrower arena only made their fight a more intimate affair.

[Kotomine_Rin]

Lawrence

The grail king stared, the shadowy mouth agape. "... that works too milady."

But Lawrence didn't share that sentiment, directly anyway. Hanging off his lord's shoulder painfully, he still focused his sorceries to the best of his abilities. He couldn't put his safety above that woman, she was too important.

He spoke.

"There's an old legend in my world of origin. Its founder... the Heaven Hunting Vanguard was famed for not creating any kin of his own. In exchange, if he happened to find someone of his liking, he gracefully taught them his martial arts, with utter disregard as to whether they were kinsmen, beast, or members of another origin. And once his pupils reached a satisfactory level of skill, he rewarded them with a Godkilling blade of his own, forged from his own blood, to further rule their own circles."

As he said that, his fingers trailed arrays of old magics. Weakened things that stood the test of time, calling forth the nightmare of the old fae queen. The once cute snake was now a massive serpent drawn from the earth, letting out a shrill cry full of poison, to draw the call of nature. Meanwhile, Phenex's wings fluttered, drawing more hellish incantations so the flames inside the dome may not die.

"The twin fangs and seven claws of the Qliporth. They were the floor administrators that ruled over my homeland's floors. I... knew them well. They were a rigid brotherhood tied not only by blood - but by arts and blade."

Cracks began to show on his face. As he spoke this tale, he showed visible disgust... and sorrow.

"But eventually, one of those kinsmen...had died."

And the cry of Lawrence's nightmares reached their apex. A wave of overpowering nature and greenery smoldered the earth, crawling towards the dome with alarming speed. Sinking its poison inside, and spreading vines and roots deep in that shell to fan the hellfire swirling. It would soon turn into an inescapable oven.

"Blade and seat were stolen by an aberration, a vampire who clawed from the bottom rungs of the tower. But that tyrant should've died long ago, it's something that won't stop until it reaches a heaven built atop its corpses. That calamity... was none other than..."

[Kotomine_Rin]

Costin Andrei

The flames didn't just burn, they ate away at the life in him. Despite that, his shit eating grin didn't fade.

The beastgirl's body showed no signs of breaking.  Despite that, his shit eating grin didn't fade.

And so the storm of strikes showered the dome's interior. Burning flesh crashed against unyielding flesh, and the apostle's blood swung freely like a weapon. He noticed it all: the way her warm body resisted his strikes, the way his blade failed to sink into her - as if something dulled the mass of bloodied curses. Was it endurance or something else? When his axe-kick to her face was stopped by her savage bite, he already realized it.

Despite that, he kept smiling.

BOOOOOM!!

The follow-up was so fast it could hardly be observed. She struck his chest with explosive power and pulled to tear his leg, but he reacted in the nick of time and detonated the edge of his bladed limb. With a gruesome blast of curses, his leg was set free and his body shot back like a rocket, slamming hard into the debris to the point it visibly cracked. Enough to let him land on his hands and feet. The fact he avoided losing a limb was impressive enough, but there was something more to that. Even behind his sunglasses, his expression was still awake. That instant, the immediate spot he touched grew dozens upon dozens of bloody spears, sprouting up the sky like a murderous tree - reaching for Nanako there and then.

"Heh... la naiba." He coughed a spew of blood, a neat hole now cracked into his chest like a second mouth. And as if perfectly awaiting that impact, the flames that were bouncing around the dome's interior came swirling back, slamming against Costin's hunter attire once more. His bloody clothes bulged and shifted into something else. Something thicker and layered, holding vacuums between the blood fabrics to shield him from the flames.

The curses and weaved spells forming his bloody attire pulsed with hunger, his defensive circuits quickly filled to the brim. All it'd take was a moment, an instant, for the tides to crash once more.

I see... you want to die and be released from your suffering? Damn shame...

Despite all this, his shit eating grin didn't fade.

"Self taught, and not half bad..."

[YOLF]

Headmaster

As she listened to the tale, the Headmaster's hold on the professor's body stilled, and then reasserted itself. She focused on the devastation still singing before them, but some tension bled from her grip as she made sense of something.

"Fascinating story, but have you considered he is an alternate self from the man you allude to?" She asked. "Such things are not unprecedented here."

The battle waged, and before the situation could change again, a final boom hammered the dome sealed. But the rain didn't cease. The Headmaster brought her foot down, and the strengthened debris continued to fall like a precipitation of nails, making the walls thicker and thicker.