[color=fff79a][i]Surprise. Shock. Righteous anger. I absolutely can't believe it. Ohhh nooooo.[/i][/color]

It probably couldn't have happened any other way. Morimoto had apparently had some fire to him, once; even in the brief amount of time since the school had come under siege from the nightmarish terracotta sentinels, he'd found enough of a spine to worry about the safety of his students. I could see him from under the window, encased in stone, all traces of the nebbish he had been erased by the magecraft tied to that arrow. 

It [i]probably[/i] couldn't have happened any other way, but it was too bad it did. I watched Morimoto land, brandishing his new stone weapon for a second as he advanced on the two kids. Ryou was probably about to kill the poor son of a bitch. As much as you could kill stone, anyway. Was it a weird form of armor that had swallowed him, consumed his soul, driven him against his charges? Or his flesh?

I let out a slow exhale and took a second swig from the bottle. Drinking in my own little fiefdom of a classroom hadn't quite been in the plans for the day, but that was par for the course in this life. The world sucked. Wear a fucking cup if you're scared of it. It was a lesson Morimoto had just learned painfully. 

[color=fff79a][i]Per cent'anni, Doc.[/i][/color]

[i]So.[/i] The time for decisions had come. The window was [i]the[/i] way out of this room. There was no second option; the door to the classroom was pointless while so many terracotta warriors roamed the halls. No matter what I was capable of, it wouldn't matter against so many. I'm no action hero, I'm just a weird son of a bitch with some tricks up his sleeve. And I can talk to people. Those two things can get you far as a magus, but sometimes you needed to put your od where your mouth was.

So: the window. Jumping was the only way; climbing would have taken too long even without the damage Morimoto had done to the windowsill. Jumping also left me a prime target for the next one of those arrows. But...

[color=0072bc][i]Ansuz. Kenaz. Ehwaz. Perthro.[/i][/color]

What?

[color=fff79a][i]Perthro?[/i][/color]

I turned to look at the bottle of Irish whiskey that Morimoto and I had been drinking from for luck and courage, respectively.

Luck and courage.

Holy fuck. It had clicked. 

[color=0072bc][i]You're welcome, you damned devil.[/i][/color]

From my messenger back I withdrew my Mystic Code - a plain one, about as common among magus circles as a smartphone case would be in a group of students. But a dearth of rarity usually meant that an item didn't lack for use. The Azoth Blade had gotten me out of a few hairy situations before - both business and personal. I really should give it a name sometime. It needed something to make it feel more unique. Az-nable Blade. Something custom.

I splashed a few drops of the alcohol onto the flat end of the blade and started drawing runes three times faster than the average Mystic Code user. 

[hider=Here goes nothing.][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/8tRxPCB.png[/img][/center]
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/mcf2cf2.png[/img][/center]
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/uTapJQv.png[/img][/center]
[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/RyTnWh3.png[/img][/center][/hider]

When I had drawn the last rune, I flicked my wrist upwards, like I was about to toss the blade underhand into the forest below. The channeling had worked; from the end of the Mystic Code, a dense fog colored the dark teak of the alcohol in the bottle swallowed up the window, obscuring the window and its immediate contents from view below. It was only an average Bounded Field, the best I could conjure immediately with the resources I had, but it would work as long as I needed it to. 

The average human being would jump as soon as they were covered. That was what any foe would expect. So the smart thing to do was wait a few crucial seconds, long enough for an arrow to be notched and aimed at someone who had immediately clambered up on the window--

I ducked to the right of the exit, watching as the heavy stone arrow cut through the fog and buried itself in the classroom ceiling. That was when I jumped. 

The rest of the runes I'd used were meant for quickness, merely getting me the hell out of the room and onto a level playing field with the kids. Ryou would kill Morimoto if she had to. I had seen enough Hong Kong cinema to know [i]that[/i] wasn't the route. What I [i]could[/i] do was keep either girl from taking an arrow in the back and creating enemies in our midst. Another, stronger Bounded Field would be good for those purposes...but it would also create a temporary island, and if the soldiers had any sort of hivemind - which, odds were pretty good - they would know exactly where to converge on.

Covering the rear was the best option. It was Lia's blind spot.

[color=fff79a][i]You're up next.[/i][/color]

[color=0072bc][i]Yes. That was a damned good idea with the Runes. Quick and dirty.[/i][/color]

[color=fff79a][i]I'm not super patient.[/i][/color]

[color=0072bc][i]Me neither.[/i][/color]