[h3][color=#9dc5e9]Ikeda Setsuna[/color][/h3]
[@ERode]

Night was falling fast. The dim light of the defeated sun bled through the horizon, radiance gobbled up by the overcast sky and the long, dark shadows of the city. The changing of realms. In many traditions twilight was a moment of weakness between the waking world and the next. Mankind feared the coming dark. Uncertainty hid creatures of the imagination, the demons of the past, the bogeymen that preyed on fear. They were wrong to be afraid. The monsters of their own design cared little for the real world, the Vices that plagued their souls clung to them no matter where they passed. 

Not so for the true children of twilight, the stalwart defenders of that fragile innocence like herself. The day belonged to the enemy, when she had to attend to her real life and maintain the illusion of normality. The night was theirs, their hunting time. The sun fell, the people closed their eyes, and their resolute guardians emerged to protect the dream of their sheltered world. Night was the time to realize the false life that had come to define her. Ikeda Setsuna was a creature that exterminated Vices. Real lives were lost on her success and failure. She had soared to the heights of victory, and witnessed the carnage, the human cost of defeat. Not like a real warrior; her case would not be resolved or redeemed by her death. Others paid for her shortcomings, and for that reason, it was upon her soul to do her duty and do it well.

Black loafers clacked along the rusted steel, her breathing ragged. She flung her arms before her, set into a dead sprint. A maintenance access, a scaffold for a decommissioning that had never quite gone through. Plywood and sheet metal echoed underfoot, the dull beat of her advance radiating from the makeshift tunnel's mouth as Setsuna ran uphill. A cab for the Ferris wheel sat, haloed in sodium lights, ahead of her.

[color=#daeeff]"Bulwark, engaging!"[/color]

Her hand rose to her ear, snatching the speck of diamond hanging there and throwing it ahead of her. A burst of blue light spilled from the end of the tunnel, etching bizarre underlit shadows across the Ferris wheel's face. She strode through hovering sigils before her, glyphs of arcane light holdings her limbs back while a new reality stretched across her slender frame. A black jacket pillowed behind her, her blazer tightened down to a harnessed dress of gallant blue. Her fist reached for the horizon, towards the hovering glint of her diamond. Icey light expanded under her fingertips, her scabbard growing from a ripple on its surface. Her fist clenched around the sheathed blade, mana crystal dangling from it after she clipped to her hip. 

The magical girl blew free of the tunnel, speed redoubling as her transformed body adjusted to its enhanced performance. She was running late. In the distance the maid was marching confidently up the long-dried waterslide, right up to the foul creature they had stalked to this forgotten place. It awakened, swelling grotesquely, lashing out with its ivory fangs. Setsuna leapt into the latticework of steel above her, boots kicking freely from one beam to the next. The central hinges of the dilapidated amusement creaked as she streaked from the bottom to the top.

Her ascent matched the Vice's meteoric rise towards the firmament, its own trail of rocket motor exhaust culminating in the deafening bang of the weapon's detonation. Pieces of rocket casing scattered by the charge sailed overhead as Setsuna's boots landed on the roof of one of the topmost cars on the monster's side. The suspension shuddered ominously, the wheel almost budging against its safeties as she came down. Dust showered the ground below as she took a single stride forward and launched herself with all of her strength into the void.

Heeding the Maid's request, Setsuna would answer the call. Her sleek body of black and blue flew at the Vice. Long spires of white shot from its body, staining themselves red as they lashed out at any approaching movement. Spines raked across her limbs, grazing her flesh. It wasn't enough to stop her. Setsuna's hand fell to her waist, knuckles clenched white and hidden behind black gloves as her fingers wrapped her sword's hilt. Blood trickled into her grip, only to be cast away. The magical girl's body contorted, muscles flexing and sudden motion shedding away the bloodstains. Her arm threw forward, steel withdrawn from shadow. The sword's edge blurred into a jagged crescent, the impression of shape blurred away by practiced speed. With a vicious, heavy swipe, she drove into the Vice. Magicked metal bit in, crackling against its strange physiology as the honed edge sought to shear it in two. The surrounding air hissed with the passage of a sharpened front, and after a fleeting moment of closeness she passed the Vice by. 

Her momentum carried her into a spin, thin trails of blood splattering the pavement crimson below her as she landed soundly on the concrete. Residue from the creature's viscous body sizzled threateningly on her blade. With a cock of her arm she sloughed it off onto a nearby wall to steam and sizzle. Striking a stony face the magical swordsman rounded, facing what became of the Vice to witness their handiwork and to find the composed silhouette of the other hunter.