Bite down, he says. Bite down, bite down, bite down. Bite down to keep what you have. Bite down to get more. Bite down because it's never, ever enough. Bite down to prove how smart I am. Bite down, bite down!
For a fleeting moment, it does not occur to Kat to be terrified. It doesn't occur to her to be intimidated or even awed. It's the funny thing about the end of a journey: after such a winding and difficult path it is easy to mistake the last step for another step. So there's no thought inside her head at all except for two words echoing around inside her cutie skull:
"Bite this!"
And the next thing anybody knows? Her delicate hands are wrapped around that bird. She squeezes it tight as her leg winds back. Release! Swing! Kick! She watches with satisfaction as the mechanical creature operating as Adam's current terminal bounces off of the far wall hard enough to start skipping along the floor into the darkness of parts unknown. Wherever he winds up it's not her business. 'Cause it's not here!
"This is exactly what I was talking about! 'Preparing arguments' my left tail! Preparin' them for what???! If I'd sat down and talked it out you'da already destroyed the world behind my back! A real villain woulda at least had the decency to go 'Nyo ho ho you foolish fox, I already pressed the button ten minutes ago <3' or whatever. But you're like, tryina convince me you're right while you're doin' the mean sneak stuff. Honestly, learn some... uh... some... ah. Strawberry pop rocks."
Sometimes, you miss the final step because you just have too much momentum built up to stop. Sometimes, it misses you instead. Because it was never the final step in your journey, just the last one you were meant for. Kat reaches for her piece of rebar and stumbles as the sudden adamant bulk of a growing dragon takes up the space she'd been using for standing and shouting and bowls her over onto the ground. Her version of a forward roll turns out to be an undignified flop and flail completely unsuited to a hero or other kind of savior of the world.
She looks up and sees shadow. She looks up and sees light. She looks up and sees moss and flowers and all manner of things that grow and which are alive, and for once they bring no comfort even in a place as unwholesomely overbuilt as this. Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits beholds Oroboros; the End and the Beginning, and the Beginning of the End.
"I... oh goshies, bubblegum. H-hey? I, I kn-know that jerk was telling you to bite down, but if you could please just--"
Bite down? Bite down. Oroboros' jaw clenches harder around her tail. And once more her size begins to swell. Kat scrambles for something to do, anything at all, because the alternative is- well no, she's screaming anyway, but the alternative also involves crying and if she'd stayed where she was then whatever that pink glittering laser actually is it would've turned her to dust on the spot. Possibly by accident? Probably by accident. Either way she moved, so she gets to keep screaming. Her hero's resolve tightens in the face of absolute disaster. This is where she proves she's got what it takes to save the world. All she has to do is fight it.
She plants her feet. How hard could this be, compared to catching a cat? She pivots on her front foot and swings with all her might, so heavy she can feel the impact rattling her bones all the way up into her shoulders. It feels almost like she's going to crack. Her weapon shatters in her place, leaving her with nothing but fistfuls of... ivy? She gasps and tries to tug away, but what's one forest fox against the whole stinking forest?
"Berserker!" she shrieks, but twisting branches filled with thorns wrap around her throat and cut her voice off.
Katherine is lifted up, and up, and up. From within the scales of the World Dragon she sees the green glow that means an energy burst is about to blow her to pieces. Sweat beads on her forehead as tears well in her eyes. Is this... really how it ends? Was she that bad of a girl? All she'd wanted was! The only thing she wished for was!
She only! She only wanted!
...At least it doesn't feel so bad anymore. She can't feel the thorns biting into her now, and her body is relaxing before she dies. It doesn't even feel like she's being dangled anymore, which is nice. If anything, it feels like her feet are planted on nice, cool, familiar... stone?
"Berserker!" she cries again, but this time with full throated joy. "Berserker!!"
She's alive! She's standing in a castle tower! Her knight came to her rescue and she... oh crackers, she's gotta go! With a yelp that sounds just a little bitty bit more confident, Kat goes scrambling, twisting, leaping out of the newly formed window not even a whisker's width away from lasery green death as it vaporizes the stone behind her. But she's not even singed. She's free falling into the waiting arms of her favorite knight.
Though, really? Surviving the first attack is only one piece of a battle like this. A very small one, at that. Kinda doesn't seem fair, does it? When both of them, modern foxgirl and ancient king alike, are looking up and up (and up) at Oroboros in her seemingly infinite bulk and seeing nothing but an opponent so beyond them that she shouldn't even be able to fit in the same space as them anymore. But here they are. So close and yet so far.
The attacks crash down on them in waves. The dragon does not move, except to bite down harder, to consume and to grow in the same motion. But missiles of horn and bone fire off like the cross of a missile boat and an extremely angry porcupine, though from the way the ones that miss bury themselves multiple meters into the walls and the floor, anything a viewer might find comical about that comparison dies about as fast as they would if they were even a little closer. Berserker pulls her sword and crushes through the first batch but the second follows so closely after that the only way she can protect Kat is to raise a battlement in such haste that she can't make it uniformly thick. Several barbs catch her on the leg and hip with enough force to tear through her armor. She bleeds, but her Master does not.
She snarls, and her tightly controlled platinum blond hair dances in the heat waves preceding a barrage of laser fire. Her leap is barely in time to avoid death, and there's nowhere safe to land that isn't on the dragon herself. Her blade slams full force into Oroboros' hide and to her own surprise it bites through the scales almost down to the hilt. She slashes through the flesh and wrenches it free in a torrent of blood that turns into a swarm of furious pecking birds of paradise she is obliged to crush with her fist. She takes a wound above her eye in the process, and when she finally pulls free of the swarm there's no visible damage to her opponent anywhere that she can see. It was too superficial, too easily healed for a creature this size and with this much toxic magical power coursing through it.
Ridiculous. Ridiculous! She howls her fury, for the moment not even caring whether or not it scares her Master. Not even noticing that Katherine is screaming her encouragement right alongside her. What makes her so inferior? Be she King or Tyrant Oppressor she is a dragon too! Strip her of her holy sword and all her heroism, trap her in a cage shaped into armor, scream and howl into her head until she can barely hold herself together outside of the light provided by a slender foxgirl's loving smile, no cries of brutality or insistence that she call herself a monster can take away what she is. The Dragon is the Land! More so! Even more so than this, this!
It simply isn't fair. All of her power is compressed into the form of one very short woman, and she has a tall, awkward, and unarmed Master to consider as well. Her swordsmanship is peerless for all that it is wild and brutal, but when spines and fins and branches all grow out of the ground around her it's all that she can do to give as good as she gets. Her deepest, cruelest strikes are scratches compared to the battering she gets in turn. She can't even keep the pride of keeping Kat perfectly safe, as the fox is forced to hop down onto her own feet to keep her head and is promptly knocked into a terrifyingly giant venus fly trap that Berserker is only barely able to rip open with her fists before the acids inside it finish dissolving all of Kat's nice clothes and start burning her pretty skin beneath them.
Spines and lasers shoot into the sky, curving slowly above the pair of them as they prepare to rain down like destruction from heaven itself. Berserker pulls Kat close to protect her. Kat wraps her own arms around Berserker's neck in response.
"...Back." she murmurs, voice shaking with exhaustion.
Berserker growls in question, head tilted toward her Master.
"I said quit holding back! Are you the King of England or not?! If you are, then use me! I'm sorry I blew all of our Command Seals on such silly things, I'm sorry, ok? But I'm still here! I can't do anything on my own, Berserker, so use me! Take everything you need! Just! Beat! Her! I, I, I, I don't! I DON'T WANT TO LOSE LIKE THIS! Not to him! Not to this! So take it already! Take my mana and conquer this stupid land already!"
Ever since she'd pulled her helmet off for love, Berserker had refrained from building proper castles. Small things, or partial things, in this much she couldn't really help herself, but choosing to be someone's knight meant that on her honor she couldn't be a conqueror. And only honor could hold back the storm of voices threatening to claim her. But the wish of a princess is a powerful thing indeed. Even this deep underground, when Berserker's eyes turn upward, what she sees is not the ceiling of a grand and horrible tunnel. She doesn't see the glitter of certain death streaking down on top of her.
She beholds the sky. And high above, shining just for her, is a single star. A small thing. A pointless thing. A kindly thing, with perfect timing. The most beautiful thing in the world. And isn't it true? Isn't it always the case that the fate of the world hinges on tiny, lovely things like a little mote of light in someone's heart, or the love of a fox too trusting for her own good?
Even now, Berserker's castle is not a glittering palace of ivory towers and white marble. It is a squat and brutal thing for gathering armies and siege engines instead of heroes. An impenetrable bubble of solid stone that exists to claim the land. To claim all of its bounties forever and for always. Flowers are crushed under the spreading stone. Vines wither, and the green along Oroboros fades to gray. Nature in all its deadly shapes rains down upon her palace, and while walls and ramparts and battlements crumble under the weight of the assault, the castle stands firm.
Long live the King.
It is an ugly battle. It is a war of attrition and the long winter. Berserker's soldiers work, if not tirelessly, than with more fear than fatigue as they gather grains and the bounties of the forest in the form of taxes. Rippling scales crash and crush into the main walls, and torrents of arrows and hot oils pour from slits in response. Burning, rampaging, scouring, crumbling, devouring, enduring. And growing. Ever growing. Berserker's is a legacy that once lead to the conquest of the known world. The terror of it is known to all land that claims this world as its home. The settlement grows. New castles spring up by her will and her power along Oroboros' length. Where they rise, the dragon seems to wilt. Green becomes tired grey. Impossible might becomes trembling effort. What gets torn down is rebuilt.
She is provided with a horse. Lifting Kat into her lap she takes the saddle for herself and sallies forth, sword brandished high to strike terror into the barbarians that would dare to challenge her.
"Go, go, go!" screams Kat, holding her hand over nose to cover how badly it's begun to bleed. Her eyes are shining under the dark circles that are forming there. But she doesn't shut off her connection to her Servant. If she can't be the hero holding the sword, she'll be the core of this great engine. Whatever saves the world, y'know? It's all her fault, so whatever it costs to put it back right is just... fair, isn't it? Not what she deserves, but it's what's asked of her. Nobody gets to call her a bad girl ever again. Not her, and not her Berserker either. She holds the flag high and shouts her foxy war cry for the world to hear.
But even through all of this, Oroboros' assault continues unabated. There is always more of her to conquer, more of her to fend off, and more of her all the time, because nothing has managed to get her to stop biting down. That pink light, whatever or whoever it is, strikes for the heart of the beast on repeat, but even it can't force the nature of the dragon to alter itself. What even could? A foxgirl takes what's Next. It's not in their nature to grab everything at once, even if everything would eventually be Next. Their silly heads and fluffy tails are just too easily convinced to settle for the pile in front of them, and then the one next to that, and...
"Hooollldd!" cries Berserker, and there are no more words in her than that. Nor does she need them.
A wave of spines crashes down around them as they ride. One takes Berserker in the shoulder and knocks her from her horse, so she rips it free and throws it like a missile so that she can ride it instead.
"FLLLLYYYYY!" she roars, and hurls her sword to Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits.
There are only moments to spare before the pair of them are crushed into pulp, and the pulp blasted into dust, and the dust crushed into nothing, to be scattered through space or burned up in whatever cruel alien god the Harvest Star must secretly represent. But tired as she is, Kat has a guiding light and a word to follow. She scrambles onto the horses neck as best she can, takes her aim, and leaps with all the power left in her slender, exhausted legs.
The sword is heavy in her hands. That's a good thing, though. It means she can let the weight of it do all the work. All she's got to do is point it in the right direction. All she's got to do is not miss a giant dragon's mouth. She's too tired to even scream about how scary all of this is, or to waste energy on something as ridiculous as shaking like a leaf. It's hard enough holding this giant blade steady. How the hay does Yue manage with hers? Who even knows? That's just one more reason to make it past this moment: to ask her. And to whine about how much easier her best friend's first adventure was than this.
She doesn't cut deep. She doesn't strike especially hard. Just enough to catch a tooth and bounce right off. She tumbles out of the air, cut up and dripping blood and sweat and maybe something grosser that she'd rather not really think about, if that's ok with everyone. She hears the hiss of pain, and lets her eyes close.
So she misses Berserker's great charge. She misses the gauntleted fist smashing through that same tooth, though she hears the terrible howl of her knight as she reaches into the maw of a dragon and stomps a foot into those fangs to buy herself purchase. She hears instead of sees the cracking of Berserker's armored dress, and the final rending of the metal as it snaps and shears and falls away. She listens, and she shudders at the sound of muscles giving out under the strain of trying to do the impossible, trying to force open the mouth that only exists to swallow that tail, and anything else it sees.
She doesn't know what she hits, if it's not the ground. But it's softer than she expects. That's enough to force her eyes open. So she sees it when Berserker summons one more tower. And this one is a glittering monument to hope. It just also happens to be the most horrible thing she's ever seen. Because it's growing out of Oroboros' mouth itself. The unyielding stone of an impenetrable fortress presses into that jaw until it cannot help but wrench open. Even it begins to crack under the strain of the dragon's desire to bite down, but it is enough.
Oroboros gags. She coughs and writhes, and something falls free from her throat. The tower splinters into rubble and Berserker falls with it, but this is it. They've won. All she has to do is...
Well that's funny. She can't feel her legs. That's gonna make standing up a lot harder. Katherine reaches for the indistinct glowing shape on the floor in front of her, instead. She tries to find a grip on her Servant's sword, tries to summon any kind of strength to swing. It can't take much, can it? She just needs that one more push! She rest after, gosh darn it.
A burst of pink like a supernova explodes overtop of her. Elizabeth Bathory twists her spear-slash-microphone stand into whatever horrible thing was causing all of this. She tosses her adorably pink hair over her adorable shoulder, and smirks (adorably) at the ruined foxgirl beneath her.
"Tch. Well, it just got way too pathetic watching you fail like that. Don't go forgetting who the real hero was, pipsqueak."
"Oh. Uh. Th-th-thank... thank? You? Um? Miss?"
She feels those pinker than pink claws caress her chin. It's embarrassing how much it makes her tails flutter, even as tired as she is.
"Elly, little fox. At least to my fans. Which includes you, doesn't it~?"
Oh. Um. Well. Goshies. What's a fox to say?
For a fleeting moment, it does not occur to Kat to be terrified. It doesn't occur to her to be intimidated or even awed. It's the funny thing about the end of a journey: after such a winding and difficult path it is easy to mistake the last step for another step. So there's no thought inside her head at all except for two words echoing around inside her cutie skull:
"Bite this!"
And the next thing anybody knows? Her delicate hands are wrapped around that bird. She squeezes it tight as her leg winds back. Release! Swing! Kick! She watches with satisfaction as the mechanical creature operating as Adam's current terminal bounces off of the far wall hard enough to start skipping along the floor into the darkness of parts unknown. Wherever he winds up it's not her business. 'Cause it's not here!
"This is exactly what I was talking about! 'Preparing arguments' my left tail! Preparin' them for what???! If I'd sat down and talked it out you'da already destroyed the world behind my back! A real villain woulda at least had the decency to go 'Nyo ho ho you foolish fox, I already pressed the button ten minutes ago <3' or whatever. But you're like, tryina convince me you're right while you're doin' the mean sneak stuff. Honestly, learn some... uh... some... ah. Strawberry pop rocks."
Sometimes, you miss the final step because you just have too much momentum built up to stop. Sometimes, it misses you instead. Because it was never the final step in your journey, just the last one you were meant for. Kat reaches for her piece of rebar and stumbles as the sudden adamant bulk of a growing dragon takes up the space she'd been using for standing and shouting and bowls her over onto the ground. Her version of a forward roll turns out to be an undignified flop and flail completely unsuited to a hero or other kind of savior of the world.
She looks up and sees shadow. She looks up and sees light. She looks up and sees moss and flowers and all manner of things that grow and which are alive, and for once they bring no comfort even in a place as unwholesomely overbuilt as this. Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits beholds Oroboros; the End and the Beginning, and the Beginning of the End.
"I... oh goshies, bubblegum. H-hey? I, I kn-know that jerk was telling you to bite down, but if you could please just--"
Bite down? Bite down. Oroboros' jaw clenches harder around her tail. And once more her size begins to swell. Kat scrambles for something to do, anything at all, because the alternative is- well no, she's screaming anyway, but the alternative also involves crying and if she'd stayed where she was then whatever that pink glittering laser actually is it would've turned her to dust on the spot. Possibly by accident? Probably by accident. Either way she moved, so she gets to keep screaming. Her hero's resolve tightens in the face of absolute disaster. This is where she proves she's got what it takes to save the world. All she has to do is fight it.
She plants her feet. How hard could this be, compared to catching a cat? She pivots on her front foot and swings with all her might, so heavy she can feel the impact rattling her bones all the way up into her shoulders. It feels almost like she's going to crack. Her weapon shatters in her place, leaving her with nothing but fistfuls of... ivy? She gasps and tries to tug away, but what's one forest fox against the whole stinking forest?
"Berserker!" she shrieks, but twisting branches filled with thorns wrap around her throat and cut her voice off.
Katherine is lifted up, and up, and up. From within the scales of the World Dragon she sees the green glow that means an energy burst is about to blow her to pieces. Sweat beads on her forehead as tears well in her eyes. Is this... really how it ends? Was she that bad of a girl? All she'd wanted was! The only thing she wished for was!
She only! She only wanted!
...At least it doesn't feel so bad anymore. She can't feel the thorns biting into her now, and her body is relaxing before she dies. It doesn't even feel like she's being dangled anymore, which is nice. If anything, it feels like her feet are planted on nice, cool, familiar... stone?
"Berserker!" she cries again, but this time with full throated joy. "Berserker!!"
She's alive! She's standing in a castle tower! Her knight came to her rescue and she... oh crackers, she's gotta go! With a yelp that sounds just a little bitty bit more confident, Kat goes scrambling, twisting, leaping out of the newly formed window not even a whisker's width away from lasery green death as it vaporizes the stone behind her. But she's not even singed. She's free falling into the waiting arms of her favorite knight.
Though, really? Surviving the first attack is only one piece of a battle like this. A very small one, at that. Kinda doesn't seem fair, does it? When both of them, modern foxgirl and ancient king alike, are looking up and up (and up) at Oroboros in her seemingly infinite bulk and seeing nothing but an opponent so beyond them that she shouldn't even be able to fit in the same space as them anymore. But here they are. So close and yet so far.
The attacks crash down on them in waves. The dragon does not move, except to bite down harder, to consume and to grow in the same motion. But missiles of horn and bone fire off like the cross of a missile boat and an extremely angry porcupine, though from the way the ones that miss bury themselves multiple meters into the walls and the floor, anything a viewer might find comical about that comparison dies about as fast as they would if they were even a little closer. Berserker pulls her sword and crushes through the first batch but the second follows so closely after that the only way she can protect Kat is to raise a battlement in such haste that she can't make it uniformly thick. Several barbs catch her on the leg and hip with enough force to tear through her armor. She bleeds, but her Master does not.
She snarls, and her tightly controlled platinum blond hair dances in the heat waves preceding a barrage of laser fire. Her leap is barely in time to avoid death, and there's nowhere safe to land that isn't on the dragon herself. Her blade slams full force into Oroboros' hide and to her own surprise it bites through the scales almost down to the hilt. She slashes through the flesh and wrenches it free in a torrent of blood that turns into a swarm of furious pecking birds of paradise she is obliged to crush with her fist. She takes a wound above her eye in the process, and when she finally pulls free of the swarm there's no visible damage to her opponent anywhere that she can see. It was too superficial, too easily healed for a creature this size and with this much toxic magical power coursing through it.
Ridiculous. Ridiculous! She howls her fury, for the moment not even caring whether or not it scares her Master. Not even noticing that Katherine is screaming her encouragement right alongside her. What makes her so inferior? Be she King or Tyrant Oppressor she is a dragon too! Strip her of her holy sword and all her heroism, trap her in a cage shaped into armor, scream and howl into her head until she can barely hold herself together outside of the light provided by a slender foxgirl's loving smile, no cries of brutality or insistence that she call herself a monster can take away what she is. The Dragon is the Land! More so! Even more so than this, this!
It simply isn't fair. All of her power is compressed into the form of one very short woman, and she has a tall, awkward, and unarmed Master to consider as well. Her swordsmanship is peerless for all that it is wild and brutal, but when spines and fins and branches all grow out of the ground around her it's all that she can do to give as good as she gets. Her deepest, cruelest strikes are scratches compared to the battering she gets in turn. She can't even keep the pride of keeping Kat perfectly safe, as the fox is forced to hop down onto her own feet to keep her head and is promptly knocked into a terrifyingly giant venus fly trap that Berserker is only barely able to rip open with her fists before the acids inside it finish dissolving all of Kat's nice clothes and start burning her pretty skin beneath them.
Spines and lasers shoot into the sky, curving slowly above the pair of them as they prepare to rain down like destruction from heaven itself. Berserker pulls Kat close to protect her. Kat wraps her own arms around Berserker's neck in response.
"...Back." she murmurs, voice shaking with exhaustion.
Berserker growls in question, head tilted toward her Master.
"I said quit holding back! Are you the King of England or not?! If you are, then use me! I'm sorry I blew all of our Command Seals on such silly things, I'm sorry, ok? But I'm still here! I can't do anything on my own, Berserker, so use me! Take everything you need! Just! Beat! Her! I, I, I, I don't! I DON'T WANT TO LOSE LIKE THIS! Not to him! Not to this! So take it already! Take my mana and conquer this stupid land already!"
Ever since she'd pulled her helmet off for love, Berserker had refrained from building proper castles. Small things, or partial things, in this much she couldn't really help herself, but choosing to be someone's knight meant that on her honor she couldn't be a conqueror. And only honor could hold back the storm of voices threatening to claim her. But the wish of a princess is a powerful thing indeed. Even this deep underground, when Berserker's eyes turn upward, what she sees is not the ceiling of a grand and horrible tunnel. She doesn't see the glitter of certain death streaking down on top of her.
She beholds the sky. And high above, shining just for her, is a single star. A small thing. A pointless thing. A kindly thing, with perfect timing. The most beautiful thing in the world. And isn't it true? Isn't it always the case that the fate of the world hinges on tiny, lovely things like a little mote of light in someone's heart, or the love of a fox too trusting for her own good?
Even now, Berserker's castle is not a glittering palace of ivory towers and white marble. It is a squat and brutal thing for gathering armies and siege engines instead of heroes. An impenetrable bubble of solid stone that exists to claim the land. To claim all of its bounties forever and for always. Flowers are crushed under the spreading stone. Vines wither, and the green along Oroboros fades to gray. Nature in all its deadly shapes rains down upon her palace, and while walls and ramparts and battlements crumble under the weight of the assault, the castle stands firm.
Long live the King.
It is an ugly battle. It is a war of attrition and the long winter. Berserker's soldiers work, if not tirelessly, than with more fear than fatigue as they gather grains and the bounties of the forest in the form of taxes. Rippling scales crash and crush into the main walls, and torrents of arrows and hot oils pour from slits in response. Burning, rampaging, scouring, crumbling, devouring, enduring. And growing. Ever growing. Berserker's is a legacy that once lead to the conquest of the known world. The terror of it is known to all land that claims this world as its home. The settlement grows. New castles spring up by her will and her power along Oroboros' length. Where they rise, the dragon seems to wilt. Green becomes tired grey. Impossible might becomes trembling effort. What gets torn down is rebuilt.
She is provided with a horse. Lifting Kat into her lap she takes the saddle for herself and sallies forth, sword brandished high to strike terror into the barbarians that would dare to challenge her.
"Go, go, go!" screams Kat, holding her hand over nose to cover how badly it's begun to bleed. Her eyes are shining under the dark circles that are forming there. But she doesn't shut off her connection to her Servant. If she can't be the hero holding the sword, she'll be the core of this great engine. Whatever saves the world, y'know? It's all her fault, so whatever it costs to put it back right is just... fair, isn't it? Not what she deserves, but it's what's asked of her. Nobody gets to call her a bad girl ever again. Not her, and not her Berserker either. She holds the flag high and shouts her foxy war cry for the world to hear.
But even through all of this, Oroboros' assault continues unabated. There is always more of her to conquer, more of her to fend off, and more of her all the time, because nothing has managed to get her to stop biting down. That pink light, whatever or whoever it is, strikes for the heart of the beast on repeat, but even it can't force the nature of the dragon to alter itself. What even could? A foxgirl takes what's Next. It's not in their nature to grab everything at once, even if everything would eventually be Next. Their silly heads and fluffy tails are just too easily convinced to settle for the pile in front of them, and then the one next to that, and...
"Hooollldd!" cries Berserker, and there are no more words in her than that. Nor does she need them.
A wave of spines crashes down around them as they ride. One takes Berserker in the shoulder and knocks her from her horse, so she rips it free and throws it like a missile so that she can ride it instead.
"FLLLLYYYYY!" she roars, and hurls her sword to Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits.
There are only moments to spare before the pair of them are crushed into pulp, and the pulp blasted into dust, and the dust crushed into nothing, to be scattered through space or burned up in whatever cruel alien god the Harvest Star must secretly represent. But tired as she is, Kat has a guiding light and a word to follow. She scrambles onto the horses neck as best she can, takes her aim, and leaps with all the power left in her slender, exhausted legs.
The sword is heavy in her hands. That's a good thing, though. It means she can let the weight of it do all the work. All she's got to do is point it in the right direction. All she's got to do is not miss a giant dragon's mouth. She's too tired to even scream about how scary all of this is, or to waste energy on something as ridiculous as shaking like a leaf. It's hard enough holding this giant blade steady. How the hay does Yue manage with hers? Who even knows? That's just one more reason to make it past this moment: to ask her. And to whine about how much easier her best friend's first adventure was than this.
She doesn't cut deep. She doesn't strike especially hard. Just enough to catch a tooth and bounce right off. She tumbles out of the air, cut up and dripping blood and sweat and maybe something grosser that she'd rather not really think about, if that's ok with everyone. She hears the hiss of pain, and lets her eyes close.
So she misses Berserker's great charge. She misses the gauntleted fist smashing through that same tooth, though she hears the terrible howl of her knight as she reaches into the maw of a dragon and stomps a foot into those fangs to buy herself purchase. She hears instead of sees the cracking of Berserker's armored dress, and the final rending of the metal as it snaps and shears and falls away. She listens, and she shudders at the sound of muscles giving out under the strain of trying to do the impossible, trying to force open the mouth that only exists to swallow that tail, and anything else it sees.
She doesn't know what she hits, if it's not the ground. But it's softer than she expects. That's enough to force her eyes open. So she sees it when Berserker summons one more tower. And this one is a glittering monument to hope. It just also happens to be the most horrible thing she's ever seen. Because it's growing out of Oroboros' mouth itself. The unyielding stone of an impenetrable fortress presses into that jaw until it cannot help but wrench open. Even it begins to crack under the strain of the dragon's desire to bite down, but it is enough.
Oroboros gags. She coughs and writhes, and something falls free from her throat. The tower splinters into rubble and Berserker falls with it, but this is it. They've won. All she has to do is...
Well that's funny. She can't feel her legs. That's gonna make standing up a lot harder. Katherine reaches for the indistinct glowing shape on the floor in front of her, instead. She tries to find a grip on her Servant's sword, tries to summon any kind of strength to swing. It can't take much, can it? She just needs that one more push! She rest after, gosh darn it.
A burst of pink like a supernova explodes overtop of her. Elizabeth Bathory twists her spear-slash-microphone stand into whatever horrible thing was causing all of this. She tosses her adorably pink hair over her adorable shoulder, and smirks (adorably) at the ruined foxgirl beneath her.
"Tch. Well, it just got way too pathetic watching you fail like that. Don't go forgetting who the real hero was, pipsqueak."
"Oh. Uh. Th-th-thank... thank? You? Um? Miss?"
She feels those pinker than pink claws caress her chin. It's embarrassing how much it makes her tails flutter, even as tired as she is.
"Elly, little fox. At least to my fans. Which includes you, doesn't it~?"
Oh. Um. Well. Goshies. What's a fox to say?