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NalloreMilla hummed thoughtfully. Out of every enemy entrapped by her Quicksand Conversion, only Roxas still remained within its reach. Not a great use of her talents. Of course, she didn’t plan to stay here; she was just wondering which direction to go. As much as she wanted to help Sasha, he probably didn’t need it, and that mechanical monstrosity looked pretty horrible. “I’ll lend you a hand, darling,” she announced to the Sectopod, and she was off. Rolling atop her hoverball, she sped up the street with incredible speed, her dark power pulsing around her until she got close enough to capture Midna’s bearmech in its area of effect. “Open season!” she sang back, mindful of her Originum Art’s remaining duration.
”...Firing main cannon.” With an ear-splitting VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM the Sectopod’s Wrath Cannon lit up the dark day, bathing all of Main Street in the radiance of a fifteen-foot-wide beam of unadulterated crimson power.
Everything had basically gone straight to hell right from the word go. After he was seemingly trapped in place by the Quicksand Conversion, Roxas immediately suffered a severe case of lasers-to-the-face which downed him pretty much immediately. He should probably have counted himself lucky that Milla didn’t decide to finish him off right then and there. And yet, the fact that she chose not to somehow felt like even more of an insult.
But after that catastrophically bad start, he finally managed to push himself back to his tired feet and patch himself up with a Curaga. Great, a grueling battle against absurdly powerful psychics and here he was stuck without any MP to work with. At that point he realized where Milla had gone off to. While he had no desire to deal with her Quicksand thing, maybe his speed wouldn’t matter if he was attacking from behind? And that’s when he had an idea.
The Nobody began to run in Milla’s direction. But before he could get slowed down by getting too close, he summoned his striker, attempting to have it appear as close to within striking range as possible. But even as Burn Rooster attempted a heavily slowed down fire breath attack, the kid who summoned him was already going for a surprise attack at Milla’s back. Yes, both he and the Striker spirit would be slowed down by the Quicksand Conversion, but Roxas was counting on his attack being enough of a surprise to get through in spite of the slow effect.
Midna, meanwhile discovered her mech was capable of evasive maneuvers just too late to actually avoid the incoming blast, as her frantic wrestling with the controls upon being slowed down resulted in a hop and a sideways dash that did absolutely nothing to avoid the giant beam of death that blazed over everything it its path. Warning lights and claxon blazed and blared inside the machine trying to tell her about the front of it had been wrecked. Unfortunately for it, and her, being blasted by a weapon with the luminosity of the midday sun had done quite the number on the princess’s eyes, and she was seeing none of it.
The bear engaged in a full, and blind, retreat while the princess threw every minion she had at the issue to try and buy her time, risk of feedback be damned. 7 spear wielders of ice and psychic energy appeared across the back of the bear, all of them grabbing hold of exposed fur to avoid falling off, before lobbing their respective javelins at the nearby hoverball rider. Skywave was also summoned, the exosuit firing a gravity cluster to try and pin down the flier, while roadblock taunted and shielded to draw fire away from the other strikers.
Portals also opened, launching Midna’s wolfos and flygon into the fray, both of which rather got in the way of the ranged strikers when they tried to melee attack Milla. The flygon naturally attempted this via swooping towards her, claws bared, while the best the wolfos could manage was a single leap up into the air to try and snap her between its jaws.
In the aftermath of the Wrath Cannon, Milla couldn’t help but be impressed. How could that tawdry-looking bearmech possibly withstand that immense laser? Well, it had sustained suitably immense and probably irreparable damage at least, but it hadn’t been destroyed. And the occupant (or occupants) hadn’t been either, judging by the varied creatures pouring from the charred hulk’s body. Milla chanced a look over her shoulder back toward Sasha to see how he was getting on, and instead found Roxas back on his feet and charging toward her with no sign of the injuries inflicted by the Sectopod’s blaster. Some sort of powerful healing, no doubt. And to think she’d thought him soundly defeated. Now she was being attacked on all sides, her enemies spurred on by the dispersal of her Quicksand Conversion. It had been over twenty-five seconds, after all.
“Dear oh dear,” she pouted. “You naughty children are eating through my SP like candy.” With her off hand she slid the gilded black dagger from her belt. Then she reactivated Quicksand Conversion. Fast as her attackers were, nobody could mount an effective close quarters assault when slowed by 80% just under 60% of the time. Roxas, Burn Rooster, and Midna’s melee minions all slowed to a crawl, their brief bursts of movement unable to keep up with Milla as she rolled around on her hoverball. In that kind of situation, evading Burn Roosters flamethrower was child’s play. That heavy robot was annoying, but did it really think she was going to prioritize it just because it was noisy? “Quite slow,” she taunted the others. “You should-” Then Skywave’s gravity cluster touched down next to her, yanking Milla off her hoverball. A deluge of projectiles landed on her, drawing blood in several places. Projectiles seemed to be exempt from Quicksand Conversion’s effect.
When the gravity well ended, Milla lay on her side, propped up on her arms. Her head was hanging, but a slight dark mist seemed to be rising from her body, and when she raised her head she looked disappointed. “Tsk-tsk-tsk,” she clicked her tongue. “Harder. You’ll have to hit me harder than that. Much harder.” Her shadow goat rose up from the ground behind her and gave a horrific shriek as she activated ATK Up β, boosting her basic attack by 80%. Then the ghoulish beast raised its claws. “Like this!”
It jammed its claws into her back, sinking them in deep to activate Renegade Gambit. Milla groaned in intense pain, her HP dropped from about 90% to 30% in an instant. In exchange, her attack went up a further 20%, her attack speed went up 10%, and her Dragondrive Gauge went up by over half. Dark power, pitch black and blood red, welled up around her as she floated back to her feet. With her dagger in one hand and her inverted staff held like a sword in the other, she smiled through the pain. “Give me your best shot!”
As soon as he was able to move, Roxas let out a groan of frustration. This whole Quicksand Conversion thing just didn’t seem fair at all. He knew what he needed right now, but unfortunately he still lacked any MP to make that happen. So for now he was stuck continuing to rely purely on his Keyblades. But at the very least he finally realized that projectiles went right through Milla’s Quicksand power. But here again, Roxas lacked any MP to actually capitalize on that.
It didn’t look like Midna’s mech was going to be in any state to do this, as it slumped to the ground. Yet a moment later the giant cannon on the back of the crippled mech, now low enough to the ground to shoot at it, turned towards the self wounding woman, as a mostly recovered Minda found that control. Then, with a flick of a button the cannon roared, and fired out of itself a not inconsiderable amount of sand she’d portaled into it in a shotgun like blast.
That was a pretty good shot. Only the mechanical groaning of the bearmech as it reoriented its cannon clued Milla in to what was about to happen, and even that gave her barely any notice at all. The realization might have frozen a lesser soldier in her place, paralyzed by fear, but Milla was a seasoned veteran. Even before joining Psych-OSF, and gaining powers that strengthened her the closer to defeat she got, she’d stared death in the face many a time. She had no means to block or withstand this, and no time for second guesses. As the bearmech’s cannon fired, she leaped into the air, her dress streaming behind her. The conical sand blast caught her, but it didn’t cut her short. She burst from it a split second later, her upward momentum boosted by her signature Levitation. Her flips came to a stop as she reached the apex of her jump, dark power welling around her.
“...Shadowfall!”
She cannoned downward, creating a dark shockwave in the air. Her Renegade Descent hit the ground with a tremendous geyser of purple-wreathed black energy, dealing 1260% of her attack in an area only a bit smaller than the range of her Quicksand Conversion. It might not be boosted by ATK Up β, which only applied to her normal attacks, but that staggering multiplier plus the bonuses from Renegade Gambit meant just one thing for everyone caught in its radius: annihilation.
Roxas could easily tell what was coming when Milla just jumped up into the sky. Things like that had a habit of being followed up by big stomping attacks. And so the Keybearer made sure he backed off for several paces, trying to make sure he wasn’t caught up in the incoming drop attack. He let out a sigh of relief when he managed to avoid harm. This was getting hairy, and his MP still wasn’t recharged just yet.
It was a good thing, then, that Midna had taken one look at that charging of power and proceeded to smack every untouched button with all four hands till she found the ejection button. She was launched up into the air, while below her the bear mech was unceremoniously dumped into a portal. It was very fortunate that it had been crouching down before being dropped, because it meant only the cannon got blown to smithereens rather than its skull.
As the dark eruption subsided, Milla huffed at the disappearing bearmech, tracing Midna’s upward path with her gaze. All that expenditure, and not even an elimination to show for it. This four-armed trickster’s ability to manifest and unmanifest both herself and her allies at will was one hell of an ability. By taking to the sky, however, Midna had consigned herself to the sparse afternoon daylight that filtered through the angry clouds. No escaping now, Milla reasoned. Time for some target practice. Through the SAS she activated Sasha’s Marksmanship, and pink psychic lasers began to hurtle upward, rapid-fire.
The princess’s response was to expend the rest of her cargo crate collection, portals opening up and dumping the boxes in the way of the shots, but that ablative armor collection was only going to last so long.
Roxas could see what Milla was trying, but he was too far away to try and intercept the shots. And so he had to settle for the next best thing. Continuing to keep his distance, he winded up his arms and hurled both his Keyblades in opposite arcing paths that took them right toward where Milla was. He couldn’t stop the initial shots but he could at least try to draw her attention away from Midna.
”Hey! Forgetting something?” It really was irksome to be consistently ignored like this. But on the bright side it at least gave him ample opportunity to try and take the Psychonaut by surprise.
The element of surprise did not necessarily mesh with a yell for attention, but nevertheless Roxas succeeded in taking Milla’s focus off Midna. When she turned her foe’s way and saw his double keyblade throw, the Septentrion pursed her lips, thinking. Contrary to what the boy might believe, she hadn’t been ignoring him. No fighter worth his or her salt, no matter how confident, should ever just ignore an opponent. She knew, though, that her Quicksand Conversion was keeping him out. So far, he’d given her the impression that he couldn’t attack from range and wasn’t a good enough swordsman to fight her toe-to-toe without his mobility. She could hardly blame him, but that meant Roxas was her secondary priority. Until now.
Rather than sit still and get sandwiched, the dashed toward the keyblade on her right and sent it flying with a heavy stroke. Then she pivoted and parried the other as it hit her, carrying her momentum forward into a revolving knife strike to the keyblade’s guard that sent it skittering along the ground. Then Milla activated her Levitation and surged straight toward Roxas, bringing her Quicksand Conversion to him. “Careful what you wish for…” The tip of her cane extended like a rapier, she thrust it toward his chest. “Darling!”
Like Milla, Roxas wasn’t just going to stand there. He recalled his Keyblades back to his hands from the moment she batted them away. And then when she lunged, he moved to parry the thrust of her cane with his Keyblades. He was a little surprised to find that these movements were apparently unaffected by her quicksand. So it basically only affected his ability to run and jump?
Suddenly this seemingly unfair advantage of hers looked a little less unfair now. And it seemed Roxas’ luck finally turned because now his MP was back. And this allowed him to instantly offer a reprisal to her attack in the form of a Dual Counter. Sure, he wasn’t moving forward much at all but the actual circular slash itself still went as normal.
With a lot of momentum behind it and its power boosted by 100%, the end of Milla’s staff struck the boy’s guard with a whole lot of force. No amount of jarred nerves or strained muscles would stop his counterattack, though. He swung around in a circle, his keyblades carving radiant streaks of light through the air, but he wasn’t the only fast one. What Milla lacked in strength (without all her buffs from Earthspirit and Bellina, at least) she made up for in speed, and her trademark Levitation brought the contrast with Roxas into sharp relief. She dodged backward from his counter slash, hobbled as it was by Quicksand Conversion, and turned a certain hit into a glancing blow. Undeterred, she threw herself forward, vaulting up and over to try and bonk her opponent’s noggin as she passed overhead before landing behind him.
She wasn’t the only one who arrived behind him however, as Midna emerged from Roxas’ shadow at almost the same moment, having surrounded herself in an enshadowing sandstorm while he took their foes attention.
”Payback time!” the splinter peppered princess declared, a cry meant for both friend and foe as she came to pay them back for the aid and the harm respectively. Then she crescent-moon slashed her tree spear into existence to ward the speedster away from performing a backstab on Roxas, before launching her Boltok Pistol out of a portal and into a freehand and then using it to take potshots at Milla, again more to keep her away from her head ally than to do direct damage.
Upon hearing the yell, Milla transitioned smoothly from her wind-up into a guard. Polearms built like the Treespear were made for thrusting, not slashing, and its weight made her attack even more awkward, but the clumsy strike also kept her in blockstun longer than a clean hit. Milla used her Levitation to let the hit move her rather than crush her guard, but at this range it didn’t make much of a difference against the princess’s pistol. The shots she took prompted a sharp intake of breath, and Milla began to pick up speed. Now both her foes were stuck in Quicksand Conversion, and before its second usage timed out, the Septentrion planned to use it. Rolling atop a new hoverball, Milla sped around her opponents in a full circle, trying to outpace their attacks and cause one to bodyblock the other. There was just one question on her mind: how could she defeat an opponent who could just choose to not be attackable? She needed to figure out that disappearing act. Still, she couldn’t waste this chance while both were right here. Once more Milla hurled herself into the air, then rocketed downward in a desolate dive to try and wipe the Seekers out with Renegade Descent.
And it was at that moment that it became Roxas’ turn to pull a vanishing act. Well, not quite a “vanish” so much as his body turning into a streak of light that arced and zagged upward at the descending Milla. Miraculously this streaking light seemed to bypass the Quicksand Conversion, either due to the sheer speed of light or the light itself counting as a projectile. But either way Roxas was able to put himself in a position to try and intercept her descent with a powerful Cross Slash.
”Not so fast!” was the first thing Roxas shouted at her the moment he emerged from the streak of light to unleash his attack. Even if he couldn’t interrupt her attack entirely he was confident he could at least slow it down or blunt it somehow.
Midna could only hope that he gave her enough time to pull another disappearing act, the princess tossing her spear into the air and then using its shadow to hop away, unfortunately having to abandon the armament in the process.
She was right to get out of the way. Roxas burst upward, a ray of light against the crushing tide of darkness, pitting his keyblades against the dagger that was the driving edge of Milla’s withering Renegade Descent. Even with her damage buffs amping it up, her technique was telegraphed enough to be dodgeable, but -as demonstrated earlier against the bearmech’s sand blast- too armored to be stoppable. Though the Cross Slash cut into her already-low health, Milla won out, her meteoric shadowfall devouring Roxas’ light. Together the two careened into the ground and Roxas disappeared into the darkness, dealt a whopping 1260% of the Septentrion’s attack damage.
In spite of the pain, and in spite of all the damage, Roxas’ light refused to be snuffed out. In fact if anything, it was starting to burn brighter. His blades became encased in searing light even as he was pinned into the ground by the Renegade Descent, ”Not yet!” he screamed out with sheer determination and began to hack and slash his light-encased blades at Milla with wild speed and strength.
Milla’s brows went up, surprised that Roxas was still breathing, let alone fighting. As the ripples of molten shadow around the two began to subside, she backed off to avoid his keyblades, allowing Roxas to regain his feet.
He spent all remaining MP to exert as much strength and power as he possibly could into this rush of attacks, ”You’re finished!” And at the end of it he brought both blades crashing downward and unleashing a quartet of light pillars that raced across the ground in four opposite directions from him, which would deal heavy light damage to any enemy they collided with along the way.
What a bad time for Quicksand Conversion to run out; Milla was forced to deal with the Limit Break for real. The area became a furious dance of light and dark as Roxas attacked with unrelenting ferocity, his airtime as floaty as his target’s. At first Milla held her own, dodging in unpredictable directions and blocking with both her staff and her knife, which she held like a parrying dagger. But Roxas was putting everything he had into this, and on defense the Septentrion was no star player. She got clipped, then a second later struck twice, then soon after caught with a blow to the head that scrambled any chance of holding on any longer. The last part of Event Horizon chewed her up and then spat her out. Though she resisted light damage, that punishment on top of her already-low health left her on the ground, her hat torn off and her silvery hair splayed out in every direction. A long wound covered her left cheek from chin to ear, half bruise and half gash.
The next moment Roxas sank to the ground too, the last of his energy exhausted along with his magic.
Midna, having stayed clear of the blistering battle, stepped back in at this point, flicking a pack of orange gel and a granola bar at Roxas with one hand, while her other ones held a charged up Prometheus Torch.
”I liked that spear” she informed the other wounded woman calmly as she close in, before lunging forwards and attempting to drive the lightning-infused bo staff into her chest
Her dash stopped short, slowed by eighty percent.
Milla let out a deep breath, hovering off the ground. One hand went instinctively to the wound on her cheek, prompting a pained wince. When she turned to look at Midna, her shadow goat manifested around her, its stygian skull overlaid across her face like a mask and her eye blazing in its empty socket. Immediately a flurry of psi-blasts borrowed from Sasha’s Marksmanship shot at Midna to keep her from closing the distance, and as the barrage ended Milla tugged the cord in her collar. Because of her horns, a hat appeared instead of a hood, a dark synthetic veil hanging in front of her face with a pattern that resembled a single left eye, glowing orange. Brain Drive was engaged, giving Milla the legs to stand on that she needed to face the Twilight Princess.
”This again? You all really need to find a new trick” Midna declared confidently despite the pain of the psiblast inflicted wounds, and even she was stuck actually having to face the Brain Drive to protect the injured Roxas
Roxas slowly reached for the items that Midna threw his way. He ate them both and thankfully his injuries and damage was mitigated a bit. But he lacked the energy to actually get back on his feet. He could push himself to a kneeling position but that was it. With a trembling hand he summoned Oblivion, then shifted it into a backhanded grip. He used the last of his stamina to throw himself forward and to try and throw the Keyblade itself in Milla’s direction. But that was all he could muster. Even the act of throwing the weapon put him off of his kneeling position and back to laying on the ground.
Unfortunately it was up to Midna to find a way to finish this fight.
The princess meanwhile raised up her hand, curling the fingers and started to spread out her own field, one that washed over both her and Roxas harmlessly as it cloaked an area within an orange ring of power with supernatural darkness.
”Come on then, try me” she dared, as two portals opened up, one summoning her flygon, which began blasting Milla with dragon breath, and the other tossing up the princess’ Charr Pirate Musket into her free hands, which she promptly fired at Milla as well.
After dashing back from the dark field, Milla took a deep breath. Anger, indignation, and so forth might be warranted, but instead she focused. Enhanced by Brain Drive, her battle sense and her dexterity were finely tuned. Despite knowing that she now faced her foe at peak performance, Midna hadn’t fled from Milla’s Quicksand Conversion. Instead she extended a smaller field that overlapped with Milla’s own, but didn’t quite reach her. The Septentrion stood her ground, almost effortlessly blocking the thrown keyblade from Roxas, as the flygon appeared and Midna started shooting. Well, that creature would never get close enough to bathe her in those nasty blue flames. Levitating atop a new hoverball, Milla circled around her opponent, staying out of the dark zone while keeping her foes within her own pulse. Midna was a bad shot, and her weapon looked like an antique. Paired with her taunt, this seemed like bait. Neither terribly hurried nor anxious despite Brain Drive’s limited duration, Milla accessed PSI from Lucas through SAS, and an image of that nervous, pitiable boy flashed through her mind. His vulnerability made him her favorite, almost like her very own child throughout his training, and their bond was strong. “PK Thunder.” An electric orb flew in to hunt Midna down. “PK Freeze.” A self-generating snowflake arced through the air, growing larger as it went.
In response Midna dug back into her bag of strikers and started throwing them out there again. Roadblock to shield them from the ice, icy and psychic spear throwers trickled in one by one to toss their javelins, and finally Skywave to shoot its healing projectiles at both her and Roxas.
As for the electric orb, well, her flygon, aware of how much said style of power unnerved its trainer, and also seeing how it could not hit the out of range opponents, instead (slowly) turned and wrapped its wings around Midna, preparing to simply take the attack that would do the ground type pokemon no harm.
Those phantoms again. Milla kept moving too as Midna used her summons to counter both her projectiles, and Roadblock shuffled around to try and keep its shield between her and its master. PSI casts and javelins flew back and forth, but neither amounted to much. Milla took another deep breath. Last time she used Renegade Descent, she didn’t have any Dragondrive stocked up from Renegade Gambit that could be spent to ready the skill again, so she couldn’t just crash down on these happy campers like she did before. Dragondrive was the answer, though. Her last hope, once Brain Drive drained away. Calling upon her shadow goat, Milla used Renegade Gambit again. She didn’t have any extra health to sacrifice, but it still boosted her gauge up to 60%. Just one more time, she thought. Problem was, she’d need to attack to use that skill again, too. It all came down to that dark field; with Brain Drive and Quicksand Conversion still on her side, she’d need to risk it if she wanted to keep moving forward. When Roadblock finally timed out, she had less than ten seconds left on both her abilities. It was now or never.
“HYA!” Milla boosted forward with Levitation, charging with her staff gripped in both hands for as many mighty strikes as it would take.
”Gottcha” the princess declared, as she snapped her shadow hand’s fingers, causing power to pulse through the field once, causing orange electricity to lash out, briefly encasing Milla in a stunning web. It also marked her for a swift strike from her Flygon, who lunged forward to try and deliver what would have been a devastating finishing blow, had the slow field not dragged it to a crawl.
What was not slowed was the lighting the princess blasted fourth from her bo staff, a continuous beam of it blazing forwards at the restricted target till the weapon ran dry of charge.
No way–crowd control!? Milla gritted her teeth, her assault stopped in its tracks. The flygon might be slowed on the whole, but it would burst her way at full speed .6 seconds at a time. Until then, she suffered Midna’s electrocution. “Gaaaah…aaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!” Milla cried, unable to fight back. Her only blessing was that lightning fell under ‘light’ in Bellina’s world, making it disadvantaged to and resisted by her own inherent ‘dark’, but she really didn’t have enough health to make that fact matter. The Septentrion withstood it only long enough for the Flygon to finish her off.
Its deathblow snapped her staff in two and knocked her down hard, her dagger sliding along the pavement. This time, Milla didn’t rise. No Brain Drive. No dragondrive. No life. It took everything she had to crack open one eye and stare up the street, her vision weakening. “...Sasha…”
