Two figures walked along the desolated and abandoned landscape of the training grounds where the girls' usual exercises took place. The sight of the broken, worn-out buildings felt as gloomy as ever to Chie. She didn't have much she could do other than look about the environment while she tailed behind her instructor:
A tall, pink-haired Ars Magi with a placid expression on her face. She hadn't said much for the entire journey; in fact, Chie only knew her name was Lies because she'd been told beforehand.
"Out here's far enough," the older woman finally spoke up, a slight accent to her speech. It was somewhat similar to Selma's, so she must have been from Hasta. The senior Ars Magi hadn't bothered to look back at her examinee, instead fixing her gaze skyward.
Chie had already been transformed for a while now, waiting on her exercise to start. She timidly asked: "Uhm... miss Lies, what's going to be my test?"
And, as soon as Chie asked, Lies turned on her heel and drew her Gladius; a small handgun. She fired a shot from it without warning, point-blank at Chie who didn't have any time to react. She tried to dodge, too late, as the beam of energy that had come from it hit the girl square in her forehead. Strangely, it hadn't actually hurt her, or made any kind of impact at all. Then, when Chie blinked, Lies had vanished without a trace.
"Consider that your only hint," the instructor's voice resounded from no clear direction.
"If you land a scratch on me, you pass."It didn't take long for Chie to catch on to what that meant, quickly dodging to her side. Her movements were followed by several of those same shots from earlier, each now punching a very real hole in the ground where Chie had stood just moments prior.
"Good, you think quickly," her instructor's voice echoed again. The first thing Chie needed to do was pin-point Lies' location, a feat made slightly harder by the fact that those first few shots were clearly just the warm-up. Chie had to rely on some kind of miraculous 6th sense because, as far as she could tell, the next ten, even twenty shots all came from different directions. The girl dodged to the side, ducked, jumped and did all kinds of maneuvers to dodge the veritable bullet hell.
"What are you doing?" her senior's disappointed voice resounded. The onslaught of attacks briefly paused.
"Did they teach you to run instead of fight?"Chie didn't have much time to ponder the question, for more shots were fired in her direction. This time, though, she couldn't dodge quite as easily; one shot had been a feint at her feet, meant to make Chie freak out and cause her to dodge backwards. All it ended up accomplishing was make her dodge straight into the actual attack meant to hit her. Chie would've gotten hit, if not for the fact she got lucky- her arms swung just right to end up deflecting the shot with one of her chakrams. And, in doing so, Chie realized what her senior was trying to do. The next barrage of bullets had Chie remaining rooted in place, parrying them with her gladius. From this, she learned a couple of things:
1. Not every bullet was real. Some vanished mid-air without a trace and she felt like she was slicing through thin air on others.
2: Even though she couldn't see Lies, sometimes a flash of her appeared in the reflection of Chie's chakrams.
Armed with this knowledge, Chie took a gamble. She broke straight through one of the attacks, not even bothering to cut the shot in half. Like predicted, it harmlessly phased right through the girl. Chie readied her chakrams to toss them, but instead of straight ahead, spun around to throw one to her diagonal in the back. The spot Chie threw it in looked empty, but from behind thin air, Lies suddenly emerged. She'd jumped to the side to avoid Chie's much-too-slow attack, but at least it served to flush the senior Ars Magi out of hiding. For Lies' sake, she merely pulled down her hat with one hand while casually unloading more rounds Chie's way. They weren't hard to dodge, though. For some reason, Lies just remained rooted to the ground and followed Chie's movements with her handgun, lazily shooting blank after blank. It gave the Calcarian girl the perfect chance to counterattack.
Taking stock of the area, Chie found Lies to be standing underneath a shaky lighting pole. All Chie had to do was increase the gravity, which would both root the instructor to the spot and cause the object to fall on top of them. Chie focused her magic on the spot she saw with her eyes. Clutching her hand, she created a gravity well to root whoever was standing there to the spot- and immediately as she did so, noticed what had gone wrong. The gravity beneath Chie's feet suddenly intensified, pulling her down on her knees as she heard the creaking above her. A shadow formed underneath where Chie was standing and, looking up, she could clearly make out the same lighting pole coming crashing down on her. The girl had no time to get out of the way, the only thing she could and did do was hurriedly reverse her magic. The increased gravity turned to zero gravity, just barely managing to stop the hunk of metal from crushing her.
"Your movements are predictable!" Lies chastised her again, this time landing a clean hit on Chie's side. She let out a yelp in pain.
"Is that all those powers of yours can do?" the instructor continued to berate her. Chie panted and grit her teeth, getting back on her feet. She looked around to try and flush out her target again.
"If you lack ambition, then get out!"The sound of snapping fingers signaled a disorienting experience for Chie- in the quite literal blink of an eye, her world had turned sideways. The buildings were all stretching out horizontally across her field of vision, rather than reaching out to the sky. No- even the sky itself was to Chie's side. She moved her body, but it felt like it was going in a completely different direction to what she actually saw happening before her. With the sound of more gunfire ringing out, Chie knew she had to do something fast. She looked to her new 'down,' finding a building 'below' her. Taking an all-or-nothing gamble, Chie quickly anchored a gravity well to that building, sending her hurling straight to it. It allowed Chie to dodge the next few shots, sure, but at the price of her slamming straight into a brick wall.
"You're slow!" Lies continued to taunt. Chie barely had any time to scramble to her feet, managing to just barely jump backwards from another bullet that scraped her by. But there was one trick Chie now had available to her; even though her world had briefly turned sideways, her newfound location made it stand up straight again. Though in reality the girl was probably standing horizontally against the wall of a building, the fact she could anchor herself that way made her visual feed match up to what her body actually felt. Adjusting her field of gravity as she danced across the building's side, even jumping over the broken windows, Chie managed to easily dance around every shot fired back at her.
It finally dawned on Chie what kind of power Lies had been using up to now, but she didn't yet have a way to counter it. She knew she couldn't rely on her eyes; after all, that's exactly what her instructor had been misdirecting her with the entire time. Chie took a deep breath and shut them tightly, making her world go black. At the same time, Chie released the grip her gravity had on her. The area around her had returned to normal and the girl fell to the very real, actual pavement she'd decoupled herself from earlier. Chie wasn't used to fighting blind, so she ended up getting clipped by quite a few of Lies' shots while readjusting. Chie took a calm breath, assessed her situation and let the Nox flow through her.
"I figured out your trick," Chie said to buy herself some time. As she'd hoped, her instructor took the bait and briefly halted her assault.
"Tell me, then.""It's... the light. You're refracting light!"
If Lies had been altering the direction of the ambient light surrounding Chie, then she could make Chie see anything she wanted. The bullets were never disappearing, they were mirrored images. Lies didn't jump out of thin air, she was jumping from behind a fake projection. Chie's world hadn't gone sideways, the light had hit her eyes from another direction. If Lies had really wanted to, she could have taken away Chie's ability to see anything at all. And if Chie couldn't rely on her senses... she'd need to rely on her magic.
Instead of altering the gravity around herself, Chie reversed her magic. It was something she hadn't tried before; rather than changing the gravity around her, she'd
feel the changes in gravity. Every object, no matter how small, had its own center of gravity, its own pull. So, if Lies shot a bullet, Chie could feel the ripple. She could feel the new force of gravity, hurtling through the air- and sliced clean through it. Not just the bullets, even, as Lies herself was also a center of gravity. She was running around, shifting the net of gravity around herself. Obviously, she was running about to hit a rooted Chie from different angles. With her newfound trick, however, the girl had an easy enough time turning to parry each and every single shot. There was just one problem with this approach- it was
とても difficult to maintain such a completely alien trick. She wasn't used to the technique, having only come up with it on the spot and it made it incredibly inefficient from a Nox-expending standpoint. Additionally, the concentration required of Chie made it all but impossible to create new gravity wells to root Lies in place with.
So, only one option remained open to the girl. Taking careful note of her instructor's position, Chie bet the farm on an all-or-nothing attack. She dashed forward, straight at Lies, cutting through any and all bullets in her path with one chakram. The other, Chie tossed straight ahead. At the last possible second, Chie's concentration broke. She felt her grip on the gravity net slip, suddenly losing all sensation. Mere moments after that a cold, metallic object was pressing into her chin- alongside an arm having firmly wrapped itself around her waist.
"Your test is over, kleine meid."Chie opened her eyes, finding Lies to have shoved the gun right into her face. To make matters worse, the senior had Chie in a firm grip. If that trigger was pulled, Chie was dead- a clear sign she'd lost the duel. Lies released the girl from the lock, causing the young thing to drop to her knees. Chie scraped her fingers across the pavement, balling her hands into fists and biting her lower lip in frustration. "I... failed, didn't I?"
"Stop feeling sorry for yourself and look at me."The instructor's harsh, aggressive words made Chie jump a little. She looked up, as instructed. Lies was clutching her side, the hand doing so being covered in blood.
"Your last attack hit me.""Then...?"
"I said if you could land a scratch, you'd pass. Now get up," she commanded, desummoning her gladius so her now-free hand could somewhat forcefully help Chie to her feet. Lies' expression was foul like usual, meaning a lecture for Chie was coming up.
"Stop relying on the same few tricks. You'll fight all kinds of enemies out there. Both our elementium- my Light and your Gravity- can't attack any of them directly. Your Gladius isn't there for show; crushing your enemies with magic may have worked for you to now, but for me, my only way of fighting has always been my handgun. I was forced to learn how to use my weapon for its own merit- now you should figure out yours."Chie cast her gaze downwards. "I see... I'd never-"
"And further," Lies cut off the girl before she could continue.
"Stop doubting yourself. You're smart, I've never seen anyone figure it out as fast as you have. I kept changing my tricks to confuse you, but you also kept quick on your feet and always found some way to fight back. You need that kind of snap judgment- if you let self-doubt cloud your mind, you'll end up dead. Or, worse..." the senior Ars Magi berated Chie, with a brief pause at the end as she looked up to the sky.
"...your negligence causes one of your friends to die."The last bit had a hint of melancholy to it. Chie couldn't bear the thought. "No... I won't- I'm not going to let that happen, miss Lies."
Her expression passive, still, Lies lowered her head to meet Chie's gaze again.
"Is that so? Then we're going to practice those new tricks of yours some more.""Huh? But, your wound-" Chie tried to show concern, but Lies' Gladius had already been drawn. Unlike before, Chie managed to dodge backwards and parry the warning shot- very much a real one, this time.
"Zwijg, and focus.""...Right!"
Chie may have passed the initial test, but her evaluation was far from over.
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