Fighting a crab that's stuck inside an almost indestructible box is pretty easy, actually. It can't really fight back without getting in its own way, see. A claw that big would be plenty on its own, even blind, to stop an ordinary sillyhead and turn her into a certified damsel in distress. But a dual-wielding Fluffybiscuits filled with the battle prowess of the ancient world? Not a chance. 

She can dodge like water. She can strike like water, too. She can deflect and flip and twirl and slash away until chunks of hard carapace (I think? maybe it's ablative), but it doesn't amount to more than a stalemate. See if we were going to rate Kat's own stats against this big awful monster's, she'd have the edge in speed and wisdom no question at all. 

But like she is, she can't win. A+ Defense is just A+ Defense, y'know? There's no way for even an A-rank Attack stat to break through. Mind you, all of that is silly game stuff, it doesn't really filter down into the mind of our protagonist. It's just that she's plain not strong enough, or else she realizes she can't find its weak point and that she is in fact smashing her swords into one of the most well armored pieces of the whole darn thing even accounting for the vault itself. This could go on forever.

But that's the thing. This [i]could[/i] go on forever. And actually, it can't. The longer it does the more dangerous it gets. You think an opponent like that can't learn? And even if it couldn't, Saber can't hold on forever. Promises or no promises, all that power has a time limit and it has to evaporate eventually. And the sad thing is, for everything she tried to do for Kat, a lot of Saber's power comes a "being stabbed is the same thing as blocking" mentality and all of her grudge magic only amounts to anything if Kat is actually being hit. Which right now, no dice. So it's really more like Attack B or even C+ against that big scary Defense number, and... yeah.

Like I told you, fighting it is easy. But beating it feels impossible. It's like climbing an endless staircase, the sense of progress that never leads anywhere, the musical loop that tricks your brain into thinking it's always rising, but actually... it...

Wait. A staircase? That's it!

So swing this back around, right? There's offense and defense, and that's usually a lot of what fighting's all about. But there's speed too, and even more importantly than that? Range! Kat's got basically everywhere she can see as her arena, while the crabi... the crabital, the, the... NO! I'm not saying it. I'm not saying it! You can't make me! It's a silly word, it sounds bad comin' off of my tongue! It's a... no! Never never never never! It's a crab monster and that's final.

But Kat's eyes have already turned away from her opponent. She's looking down towards the earth, and what she's found is a long and winding road made of partially destroyed attack drones. Every one of them just filled with highly explosive munitions that they hadn't fired off because it would have been "property damage". Well that sounds just about perfect, doesn't it? 

She ducks under a blind claw swipe, easy as you please, and just like that she's off like a bolt of fluffy lightning. She is sword dancing; thrusting to create momentum and then literally riding that the way that Princess Chen would, using the lack of gravity to her absolute advantage and turning on a pin. The trains of her dress flow behind her like the memory of her motion, a river of perfect beauty and intent. 

But everyone with any sense knows that rivers are dangerous. Katherine passes by and where the fabrics kiss those death machines they also pull them along in her wake. She ducks down, lifts straight upwards and then dives again, corkscrews through a large cluster of the machines, and all the while her eyes burn like the sun. She knows what she's chasing. She knows what this means. She may be running on borrowed power, borrowed technique, but even so. If she pulls this off, she's going to surpass me. Because she'll have something I've never quite managed to figure out even yet.

This is not a Secret Sword. Nor is it a Noble Phantasm. What this brave foxgirl has flowing behind her in an increasingly unwieldy and dangerous stream of comet dust is a bonafide Finisher. 

Does she have enough to do the job? She doesn't know. She can't count that high, and she couldn't do the math on the damage even if she could. But she's certain that she's up against the limits of her control, so it doesn't matter anyway. It's time to go. She spins through the trace bits of air and hurtles herself at the vault again. She sees the claw protrude again to grab her, but this time instead of meeting it or slipping just outside of its grip she simply... slows down, instead.

This is the desperately tricky bit. She has to trick it. She has to confuse it. She needs that crack as open as she can get it, and she can only thread this needle in the space between the claw retreating and the eyestalk protruding to try and figure out why it isn't richer already. Because if it sees this coming, it'll simply block. And that would be a disaster. So she brakes, plays against her enemy's calculations and confuses it as best she can. 

A couple of drones slip free of her grip. They collide with the vault door and explode, bright and hot but silent in the lack of atmosphere after all the air inside of them is consumed. And she winces. Is that a failure? But no! The claw slips inside. The crab monster (ha!) has to know what the heck that vibration was just now. So Kat grits her teeth and pulls her tails against her body and skids to a halt with nothing but sheer force of will. Her dress whips out from behind her to in front, just the prettiest siege engine of all time. And a stream of drones that once had no higher ambition than to aid the very thing they're flying at are suddenly a weapon that might destroy it.

It's not a very accurate way of attacking, unfortunately. About as many clang off the outside or blow up right as Kat is getting in close as make it inside. It's so risky to have tried this. It's so brave of her to follow up on it anyway. She lifts her purified sword to cover her face and thrusts with all her foxy might with the grudge blade. Deep into the hole, as deep as she can force it. The sword burns with hate, with frustration, with the need to be avenged. And inside the vault, drones overheat. Missile payloads detonate. The chain of explosions is so strong the escaping shockwaves alone are enough to blast her backwards into the wall of Berserker's Castle Elevator.

She gasps and falls forward, and she floats without control. But she holds onto her swords, and she watches while little drips of blood float like bubbles up from her lip, which she cut on something while she was bouncing.

This is the Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits School of Borrowed Swordsmanship. The First Finishing Blade: The Dead Fox Bounce.

It's a lot. And for what she has to fight, it's all she's got. But is it enough?