Time flew at Nova Lux for the young Siscian, spent through training, classes, and time with her teammates/friends, even a couple of times club-hopping with Nichole (the red-haired beauty somehow knew where to find all the best rock clubs). Penny had always wanted to go clubbing, but back home, between school, work, homework, and a busy home life, she never had the time. It’s as fun as she imagined it to be, but maybe that’s just being with her friends. It also made her feel guilty thinking about her home life, and wonders how they’re doing these days. One recent letter made her worry about Vanessa; the poor girl never was in the best of health, now she had a bad coughing fit again.
However, all she could do here was try her best and pass her exams. And Penny aims to do just that, and prove she fully deserves to be here, and that her potential isn’t wasted.
Of course, given her own incredibly studious nature and almost single-minded focus, she notices that Dana needs help with some of her own work. The latter wasn’t negligent or lazy, she just lacks Penny’s almost one-track mind regarding schoolwork, and it irked Penny’s almost disciplinarian nature, especially when Dana would try to take a break or go do something else. Pop quizzes, ambush study sessions, and having a pint-sized tyrant breathing down her neck became the new and unpleasant norm for Dana. The pop quizzes were the worst; any time Penny even felt that Dana was slacking in something, or needed to refresh her knowledge, she’d (metaphorically) hit the poor girl with a pop quiz. One time, Dana stumbled to her bed after a long and exhausting day, turned off the lights and went to sleep - only for Penny to turn the lights back on, several books under one arm, and the dreaded words on her lips:
“Pop. Quiz.”The resulting despairing wail brought the other students banging on their door in protest, saying angrily they were trying to sleep, but Penny yelled back at them through the door.
“Oh knock it off! It’s a matter of passing or death!”Then the written exams finally arrived. For her part, Penny felt like she did her best, and was pretty confident about her results. The answers basically seemed to flow from her hand, writing sentences, filling the blanks, and writing essays with almost manic energy. Dana seemed… less enthusiastic, but then again, so were 90% of the other students.
Still, It’s safe to say that the results were worth it, though Penny had to admit, given the bags under Dana’s eyes and the lack of her usual cheerful demeanor that she might have taken things too far. Even Penny herself felt a little tired from all the late night study sessions, even though she consumed enough coffee to supply a company for a week. Still, the most tedious parts of the test were over, and she was sure Dana would be looking forward to something simple and fun. Penny guiltily wonders if Dana would request all the targets have Penny’s face on them.
After a good night’s sleep and a chance to recover from the exhaustion of the study sessions and the tedium of the writing part, the first set of physical exams began. This, Penny knew, was the easy part; the first set of physical tests were always geared to testing what an Ars Magi was good at. And for Penny, as an Assault-class Ars Magi, was really good at mixing it up close and personal, as several unfortunate combat drones found out the hard way.
A gauntlet of drones, both light and heavy combat units, were arrayed against the Ars Magi, all trying to use a combination of tactics and firepower to take down the young girl. Penny, however, was prepared. Using a combination of her literal lightning speed, Lightning Elementum strikes, and even a newly mastered combination of swift combo attacks and her new Pulse ability, she basically dances between her opponents, a swift, adrenaline-fueled frenzy as she switches from dodging, attacking, blasting and skating in a a manic trance. She even manages to tie in a couple of mixed martial arts into her combat, jumping into the air, grabbing one dron between her thighs, kicking it at another, then smashing them both with a single hammer blow. She manages to evade close calls, near misses, and even manages to turn potentially dangerous strikes into glancing blows, in one case grabbing a robot’s attack arm after it smacked her in the chest, and promptly using the robot’s momentum to sweep it off its feet, then suplex it into the pavement so hard she shatters the circuitry inside.
Her ranged attacks are still weaker than Dana’s, but then again Penny’s a tank, not artillery, and Dana’s ranged abilities were, quite frankly, phenomenal. Still, Penny likes to think she got better at her ranged lightning attacks; more focused, more accurate, and even a bit more range than before, allowing her to take the battlefield by literal storm.
With a mighty swing, she smashes in the head of the last robot, compacting it into half its height, and watches with satisfaction as it falls backwards, smoking.
“Whew,” she grunts in relief as she stretches her arms.
“That was quite the workout.”She’s interrupted by the sound of clapping hands behind her. Turning to see who it was, she sees her instructor for the test,
Serene Crimson Garnet, AKA Yagami Tsukino, a former student turned Wing of Justice with a distinguished service record. While her achievements weren’t as lauded as others, that was because she generally operated as part of the more secretive Shadow Ops sections of the Wings of Justice, meaning you only found out about them if someone screwed up. Her serene appearance and calm smile was friendly, but given the reputation she’s heard about Yagami and the Shadow Ops, that calm expression rubbed her the wrong way somehow.
“Well done, Miss Grenoble,” she says.
“A bit of a close call here and there, but overall an energetic performance as always.”“Well, I’m a close quarters kind of gal,” Penny replies, hefting
GroB Eisen onto her shoulders one-handed.
“Gotta expect a few knocks here and there.”“Indeed,” Yagami replies with a soft smile.
“For the next part of the test, though, it’s less a fight and more… hide and seek. You have one hour to find me.”Penny looks around, confused.
“I’m… guessing there’s more to this than one would think?” she asks, uncertain. To her surprise, Yagami starts dissolving into cherry blossom petals right before her eyes, all with that same mysterious smile on her face.
“You guess correctly,” Yagami replies casually, as though disappearing into petals was an ordinary thing for her. She leaves Penny looking around in bewilderment.
“I’ll be in Test Site 37C,” came the disembodied voice of the senior Ars Magi.
“You have one hour to find me - starting… now.”With that, she was gone, leaving Penny cursing under her breath as she fired up her rocket hammer and blazes off to her next test.
“Well, that’s one way to make an impression, I guess,” she mutters under her breath, skating as fast as she can.
Getting to the designated zone takes little time, though the size of the test site is a bit daunting. Penny knows she has to find Yagami in an hour, but she isn’t sure what to expect. The experienced Ars Magi could be hiding anywhere…
As Penny looks around, skating slowly to gain her bearings, she hears something rustle in an alleyway. She looks at the alleyway, hammer in hand, ready to fight back, when she suddenly sees something to her right!
Out of a nearby window,
a ghoulish-looking woman sprung out, giggling eerily as she slashes with her claws. Penny’s reaction was to slam her hammer into the woman’s face, causing her to collapse on the floor. Initially, Penny is horrified to see herself having hit or even killed a civilian trying to do a Halloween impression, but then she sees the creature’s long, snakelike torso even as it’s disintegrating in death.
“Wait, a projection?” Penny muses.
“No, it felt real enough when I hit it. Must be something like a pawn or a summon…”She didn’t have time to ponder this any longer, as more things started popping out everywhere; from the windows, the alleyways, and even the trash cans! Some were like the one that just attacked her, others were snakes with the heads of women, and one attacking her with a long pair of rusty scissors looked like a normal woman in a trenchcoat
had it not been for the horrifying Glasgow grin across her face. Penny counters with her hammer’s long shaft, spins it around to throw the carved-face woman’s strike off, then smacks her into a nearby wall with a counterattack. But even as she starts beating down her adversaries, she notices that even more of them pop out; gremlin-like things with long claws, small deformed human-like things with only one large eye and no nose on their faces.
“Christ, how many of you bastards are there?!” Penny shouts in frustration. She realizes that if she tries to continue fighting here, she’d either be overwhelmed or run out of time.
“FUCK!” she cries out, and then, as much as it irks her, she runs off in another direction, firing her rocket hammer to move on quickly.
Just as she thought she lost them, she barely dodges a spear aimed at her head, and turns to see a trio of
large bipedal frogs with spears, rainbow mists coming out of their mouths with every breath. One of them launched its tongue at her, barely missing her, only for the other to grab Penny with its tongue, spin her around and then slam her into a wall with considerable force. Growling with anger, Penny, not wanting to wait for the thing to toss her around, grabs the thing’s slimy tongue, and launches herself at the giant toad, caving its head in and forcing it to disintegrate into nothing. The other two, trying to take her down quickly, launch their tongues in unison at Penny. Acrobatically dodging both, she grabs one tongue and attaches it to the other, causing both giant toads to struggle as they try to disentangle their tongues. Penny, seeing the opportunity, grabs the stuck tongues, give a loud war cry, and then spins the toads around by their tongues like a giant pair of bolas, before slamming them into a wall on top of each other, then killing both at once with one powerful blow of GroB Eisen. Breathing hard, she notices a trio of what looks like Japanese prayer strips, which soon burn up into dust before her.
Skating away, she tries to find a way to a different block, but comes across a dead end. Looking around, Penny is surprised by several prayer strips falling to the ground, but is strangely relieved when they ‘pop’ to reveal
several small and spherical little mice, allowing looking up at her, noses twitching.
“Hey, you guys are kinda cute,” she begins, but then realizes that they’re quickly swelling like balloons, cute faces becoming grotesque, and small bodies stretching horribly. She even sees a couple of them begin to glow ominously.
“OH YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!!” she cries out, before a combined large explosion rocks the street, leveling a couple of buildings.
Penny, fortunately, manages to dodge out of the blast at the last second, causing her to be launched into a pile of rubble. Getting up and dusting herself, Penny grumbles under her breath. This is getting her nowhere fast, and she needs to hurry. And yet no sooner does she get going when she suddenly has to dodge several gouts of fire from a nearby alleyway. She sees
several paper lanterns with faces spitting fireballs at her, while what looked like
umbrellas with one leg hop quickly towards her, then opened up, using their shapes as obstacles and weapons, trying to slash her with their edges or smack her with their bodies.
As she manages to dodge and weave between the attacks, she notices several more flying creatures, looking like flying eels with bug legs, and braces for more. However, she realizes.the things aren’t attacking, they’re just… there. Watching.
She gets a reminder of her current predicament when one umbrella-monster opens up in her face, smacking her into a wall. Recovering quickly, Penny lands on her feet then charges her opponents. For all their cunning and skill, these particular ones seem weak, easily falling to strong sweeps or electric shocks. Once done with those, she turns up to look at the flying things, only to notice most of them are gone, with only a couple remaining to keep an eye on her.
She then realizes what the whole test is.
“Oh fucking hell,” she groans.
“Shit. This whole place is a goddamn maze. Booby traps everywhere. And I’m here trying to find a fucking needle in a haystack.”Penny once more resumes her search, but this time her search is more cautious and paranoid. She constantly looks over her shoulder and peeks into alleyways to discern if something is chasing her. Most importantly, she keeps looking for more of those flying eels, figuring out that they’re basically messengers or control extension agents, there to transmit Yagami’s will to her puppets over a large distance, and quite possibly to keep an eye out for Penny herself. In fact, any time she was spotted by one of them, ambushes and attacks were sure to follow.
Carefully tracing the movements of the flying eels, she manages to track them to a nearby apartment building, long since abandoned. She takes a deep breath, but before she could take a step forwards she hears something to her right and reflexively jump back. This allows her to avoid the jabbing bone-arm of
a giant, ugly ogre. It shambles towards her, licking its chops with its long tongue.
“Yoooouuuu loook taaasteeeee….” it slobbers, before raising its arm to slash her.
Penny dodges the strike, spins around her opponent’s bulk, before smashing it in the other arm it was using to prop itself up, causing it to buckle. She then crushes the knee with another blow, forcing the creature down on the ground with a surprised yelp, causing the earth to shudder under its massive bulk. She then finishes it off by crushing its skull with an electrified power strike.
“Tsch, I’ve wasted enough time as it were,” Penny grunts, noting she’s spent more than twenty minutes just on this wild chase.
“Let’s wrap this up…”Powering up her rocket, she smashes through the front door, dodging several skinny ghouls wielding clubs, before using the guardrails as a skating rail as she quickly shoots up the stairs, jumping over gaps and avoiding any traps or obstacles Yagami left behind. She quickly finds herself in front of the top floor apartment. Taking a deep breath, she opens the door, and finds Yagami in the center of the room, seated in deep meditation. Penny approaches hesitantly, unsure of what other traps to expect. It seems a little underhanded to sneak up on the instructor like this, but she’s also unsure if announcing her presence is a wise idea. She’s gotten rather paranoid from the traps all around the place.
“Oh no need to sneak around like a thief in the night, Penelope,” Yagami teases.
“Why don’t you come closer?”Penny hesitates, takes a few steps, then stops again, this time a strong sense of discomfort telling her something was off about the whole thing. Before she could react, the door slams shut behind her, and her attempt to smash it open stopped as a magic circle seems to trap her in. She turns to face Yagami, who stirs unnaturally.
“Oh why the mistrust?” says ‘Yagami’, her voice having an unnatural echo.
“You found me, you won!”‘Yagami’ started growing unnaturally pale, her clothes becoming ratty and torn, as the raven-haired girl’s appearance turned from a cool ivory skintone to a ghastly grey as she faced Penny. Her delicate, manicured hands became long and gnarled, the fingernails turning into monstrous talons to shred apart living flesh.
“TIME FOR YOUR REWARD!”
the ghostly being shrieks, lunging at Penny.
The Siscian girl barely dodges out of the way, and tries landing a blow, only for the strike to pass through the incorporeal fiend, allowing the ghost to slash back, causing a cut in Penny’s side. Penny, grunting in pain and frustration, waits until the thing comes back for another go.
”EINSCHLAGEN!” Penny cries out, slamming
GroB Eisen into the ground and sending a powerful electrical shockwave around her that stuns the
yuurei long enough that Penny Slams it with another electrified hammer blow, smashing its head open. Yet despite the grotesque display of ghostly brains on display, the ghost just grins ghoulishly as she melts into a black smoky mist that envelops Penny.
“Hey, what the hell is this?!” Penny says as she tries to shake off the smoky mass. It doesn’t dissipate no matter how hard she tries, and gathers around her ankles and
GroB Eisen’s head. Any attempt to dispel the mist with her Elementum only makes it grow faster Then suddenly, a loud rumbling occurs behind the bewildered Ars Magi, and a giant red
oni smashes through the wall behind her, giving a loud roar in challenge. Penny reacts immediately, turning on the rocket thruster on
GroB Eisen, only to discover that it sputters and struggles to get a good thrust going.
”What the hell is it now?!” Penny groans, being jerked around by the stop-start action of the seemingly failing rockets. Then she realizes that whatever the ghost ‘Yagami’ had inflicted her with was interfering with her Gladius’ powers and her own.
The
oni, taking advantage of the Siscian’s surprise, slams his giant club right into his much smaller opponent, slamming her into a wall. Penny initially falls to her knees after the blow, but catches herself, and gets up again, a look of burning determination in her eyes. She charges the
oni, this time sticking to her own skating abilities and agility to avoid the blows. While she still isn’t as fast without the rocket thrust, her own augmented abilities and agility allow her to avoid the beast’s blows, though she still gets peppered with the shrapnel. Then, as the
oni slams his club into the ground, just missing Penny again, she sees her chance, and jumps onto the club before the thing can react. Skating up its arm quickly, she dodges a couple of swipes by the
oni before getting on its back, right between the shoulderblades.
”Alright, ya big fucker, ya like smashing stuff?!” Penny growls menacingly, winding up for a blow.
”HERE, HAVE SOME BACK!”Penny’s blow strikes the back of the
oni’s with brutal force, stunning the giant. But she doesn’t relent. She keeps swinging and swinging, slamming brutal blow after brutal blow to the back of the thing’s head. Soon, it’s spitting up ichor, stumbling as it’s dazed and weak. Trying to stop the attacks, it slams its back into the nearby walls, catching the scrappy little bruiser in between. Penny grunts as she weathers the attacks, and responds by hammering the back of the
oni’s skull even harder, even as she’s being slammed repeatedly herself. Soon, the
oni’s struggles become sluggish and slow, and Penny jumps off its back and gives a loud cry as she delivers one final blow to the monster’s head, knocking it off its shoulders and causing the decapitated colossus to collapse to the ground before it starts dissipating into mist.
Penny lands on her feet, bruised all over and breathing hard. She notices that the black smoky bands on her ankles and gladius were still there.
”Shit, here I thought this was a temporary thing,” she groans.
”I swear, if I have to deal with any more bullshit…”She’s suddenly startled as prayer strips fall from the ceiling, all popping into more
kodama nezumi. True to form, they all started to swell and glow ominously.
”Oh you MOTHERFU-!!” Penny cries out, before they all explode. The resulting blast takes out the top three floors.
Elsewhere, the real Yagami Tsukino watches the explosion through a mirror, surrounded by floating
shinidamachu, her usual mysterious smile on her face.
“Perhaps I might have taken that a bit too far,” she muses.
“Still, if one’s to achieve their full potential, they need to be properly challenged. Besides, this is a test, not a birthday party.”She looks at her watch. A bit over twenty minutes left. She better hurry up if she wants to pass the test.
Penny finds herself skating the streets quickly, trying to dodge the fireballs of
fire-breathing lanterns and swooping tengu with spears. She growls as she parries a spear thrust with her hammer’s handle, then counters by spinning the hammer’s shaft to throw her opponent off balance, and then brings around her hammer in a strong sweeping blow before they can react.
“FUCK! OFF!” she shouts, smashing the tengu into the pavement, the summoned creature poofing into vapor.
“I’VE WASTED ENOUGH FUCKING TIME WITH YOU THINGS!!”She dodges another fireball, and then skates her way between several attackers, using a couple of strategic powerslides to get under a bunch of
chouchin obake and up against a wall. The
yokai were surprised by the move, and before they could react, she takes her hammer and swings it against a nearby wall.
“KAISERSCHLAGEN!” she roars, smashing the load-bearing wall and bringing the building on top of her enemies and raising a massive plume of dust. Before the shinidamachu could see through the dust, she opens a nearby manhole cover and dives right in, being sure to close it behind her before she’s spotted.
There, in the old abandoned sewers, she pauses to take a breath. She’s bruised, battered, and annoyed as hell. She’s been on a wild goose chase, and still has to finish this exam to pass.
I’ll give Yagami this; she certainly knows how to push a person to their limits, she thinks, looking at the smoky black curse bands fade away.
She also knows how to piss people off. I really got to hurry up and finish this damn thing; I can’t face Dana and the others if I mess up here.
At least I can feel the curse go away; it was annoying as hell to try to power through when it feels like someone’s pressing the brakes on my powers.She looks up at the roof of the sewer.
At least those things can’t see or sense me through this. Should buy me some time to lose them.She skates away, trying not to breathe in the musty, foul smell of the sewers.
Elsewhere, Yagami switches between several vistas on her seeing-eye orb, but Penny isn’t showing up anywhere.
“Seems like she’s managed to give me the slip,” Yagami sighs before looking at her watch Just about 20 minutes remaining.
“Not bad. Still, there’s not much time left; let’s see if she can still make it in time.
“In the meantime, I think I should pull out the red carpet for her. Prepare for the big finale; assuming she still has her determination to win.”She gets up, stretches, and dismisses her seeing eye orb, before walking out into the open, followed by floating
shinidamachu.
Penny tosses the manhole aside as she emerges from the sewers again, gagging.
“Next time, I’m bringing a mask,” she grumbles. She then sniffs herself and makes another face.
“And taking a shower afterwards.”Taking cover behind a wall, she notices something; the
shinidamachu seem to have changed their flight patterns and movement; no longer were they patrolling the skies in search of her, instead, they seem to be more limited in the directions of their moment. They seem to be keeping in a general pattern between seven tall buildings, all roughly equidistant from a stadium in the center. The circle, she realizes with a start, would be completed by an eighth building; the one she had just fought the fake Yagami in.
Well, fuck me,, Penny thinks.
The whole thing’s been a setup. Eight fake targets set up all around town, just to confuse the hell out of me. And in the center…Looking at the stadium did not set her mind at ease; There was a growing cacophony of laughter and giggling, presumably from the hordes of yokai Yagami was holding back. If she’s at the stadium, it’s going to be one hell of a fight trying to reach her, especially as the yokai will be heavily clumped together the closer she gets to her goal.
She leans against the wall and sighs, looking upwards.
“Just great,” she mutters,
“How am I supposed to solve this? Which one’s the real one? This is so-”Something catches her eye, and she looks up at the sky. There were several more shinidamachu… but they were in the wrong direction from the stadium. Also, unlike the others, they didn’t seem to be patrolling, but moving randomly - or so it seemed. She follows their movement with their eyes, and sees them moving between one of the buildings in the circle, and a smaller building just a bit further, well out of the circle and away from the stadium.
“Wait, why would they travel to a random building-”Then it hits her. The whole thing was a shell game. Eight fakes, and even the stadium is an obvious trap. While it was blatantly unfair for a test to just set up traps everywhere with no real solution, it makes sense; in a shell game, the shell is never in any of the cups after the dealer shows it off. They always palm the shell before or during the final shuffle. So the real Yagami was never in any of the buildings, or even in the stadium. And if she spreads her minions so far and wide, she needs a system of control to keep them handled. While the range these things can keep active in is impressive, there still has to be some way to keep them organized. Every time she was ambushed, there were
shinidamachu nearby, either to guide them, or to extend control. And if she can control her puppets through
shinidamachu, she might be able to extend her control through puppets of puppets.
The whole thing’s like a network; each part can transport information to any other part, and there’s a central server handling the whole thing, Penny thinks.
It was just a question of where the real server was being kept.
Of course, it can’t be that easy, can it? she muses bitterly, already spotting quite a few yokai patrolling the route to the real Yagami’s hiding spot. Probably an ace in the hole should anyone figure out her little ploy.
So how do I get to her in time…?She looks around, trying to find another route to the building when she spots a couple of stores nearby. One of them was a hardware and electronics store, long since abandoned, but it causes something to click in her mind. She rushes inside, and looks around. A lot of forgotten, abandoned electrical equipment, possibly unsafe to use, but hopefully they’ll last long enough for the plan to work. Electronics, cables, even a car battery or two.
”Yeah, I think this might work,” Penny says confidently. She looks over at the other store, where several mannequins covered in old, moldy clothes were still posing in the window.
Yagami was getting a little impatient by now. She looks at her watch - eight minutes left. Did Penny get lost somewhere, or did she give up? Either way, it seems like such a disappointment for the test to end this way.
Suddenly, she sees a burst of lightning erupt in the distance. She summons her seeing orb by sacrificing a prayer strip, but by the time she gets a visual, Penny is obviously long gone, leaving a large smoking crater and a few scattered yokai parts that soon dissipate into nothing. What had happened here?!
Before she has time to think it through, she’s interrupted by a sudden plume of lightning and fire erupting even closer and charging on her position.
“So you’ve finally decided to show up, Penny?” Tsukino says with a smile.
“Good, I was thinking you might have given up on- eh…?!”Her smile faded into an expression of confusion as
several streaks of lightning and fire promptly appeared and made mad dashes on her position, all outside the circle she set up. She switches her viewing orb to see who it was, and each mystery attacker was a short brown-haired girl wearing a visor, hunched over as they rode the power of a rocket hammer while skating forwards at full thrust. They were going too fast for her to get a good look at them, but it seems like there were five Penny’s racing towards her.
This doesn’t make any sense! she thinks. Penny doesn’t have illusion powers, nor is she capable of creating dopplegangers! How is she doing this?!
She commands her yokai to stop the attackers. Internally, she’s amused to see Penny having seen through her trick with the fakes, but she’s still a mite sore about being outsmarted, and either way she isn’t going to make it easy for Penny. Besides, the rookie’s shown resilience and stubbornness, and she’s curious to see what Penny has up her sleeves.
To her surprise, once the yokai catch up to the targets, the ‘Pennys’ seem utterly reckless, charging forwards regardless of dangers or attacking enemies. One runs into a bunch of
gaki, one of which lashes out with its long arms, and hits her legs, causing her to tumble. With her speed, she hits the ground rather hard, and starts rolling in a quite frankly hazardous manner. To Tsukino’s shock, ‘Penny’ actually breaks apart, limbs flying off, one still attached to the hammer, and the head rolls to a
yurei’s feet. The ghost yokai picks up the head, and looking through her familiar’s eyes, Tsukino realizes the head is that of a mannequin, with a silly face crudely drawn on it and a rotting wig attached by old glue. The hammer, arm still attached, hits a wall, has a visible electric short-circuit, then bursts into flame.
||Music: Music Stops||
Rapidly switching between different targets, Yagami finds the same thing happening with the other ‘Pennys’. One trips on a rock, causing her hammer to drag her along, causing her lower torso to break off before the power runs out, catching fire and lighting the unfortunate mannequin as well. Another runs into a wall, scattering mannequin pieces all over the place while the hammer shorts out and catches fire. Yet another suddenly has the hammer malfunction, taking out the mannequin (and quite a few yokai who were trying to intercept it), leaving a lower torso and legs squeaking by on half-melted skates. The last one crawls to a halt as the rocket sputters, before coming to a halt. Then it abruptlycaught fire.
“Where is she?” Yagami wonders.
“I’ll give her credit for turning my own tricks against me, but right now I need to find out where she’s gone.”She commands her familiars to search the area, high and low, but then discovers one of her minions is missing, a
shibugarasu. What had happened?
Five minutes earlier, the three-eyed crow was flying high above the ruins, trying to see what had happened when that first bolt of lightning struck. As it scanned the area, suddenly it caught sight of not one but five consecutive bursts of lightning as the fake mannequins started their suicide runs. It turned to take a closer look, but before it could get closer, it noticed something in the corner of its eyes. It turned around to look, only to receive a deadly hammer blow that rattled it, leaving it dazed and floundering, about to fall. Then a pair of powerful legs wrapped around its neck, and before it could realize what was happening, there was a sickening crunch as Ars Magi Bright Emerald Spark broke its neck with a mighty twist, before grabbing a wing, hopping onto the dying thing’s back, and then jumping off with a mighty kick as the thing disintegrated below her.
I got lucky there, no lie, Penny thinks.
The spare parts, the dummies, and now the distractions needed to keep Yagami off my tail. If I time this just right…With that, she uses momentary bursts from
GroB Eisen to manage multiple high double-jumps, rising higher and higher into the air with each one until she hides in the dark clouds above. There, she stops using her power, and just lets the momentum take her until she’s almost above Yagami’s hideout. With a bit of squinting, she can see the senior Ars Magi there, commanding her familiars, unaware of her true location as she hunted down disposable copies.
I’ve wasted enough time; let’s finish this, she thinks. Then, as she prepares to bring this chase to an end, a thought comes to her mind. A battlecry. A catchphrase.
“Time to call down the thunder… heh, so that’s how Nichole felt when she came up with her catchphrase…”Below, Yagami was still trying to make sense of this when she gets a call from HQ.
“Yagami, what’s going on?” came the tinny voice over radio. “Where’d Grenoble go?”
“It seems she’s taken a page from my own book and used dopplegangers to throw me off her track. I’m sure she’s making her move, and I’ll find her soon. She’s almost out of time now; just a few minutes left. It’ll be over soon either way.”“It better. This test is excessive, if you ask me, and you already took a fair bit of resources.”
“A good test is one that pushes the candidate to their limits,” Tsukino replied dryly. “You called me in to test her, I will not apologize for my methods. I’m actually pulling my punches here and not actively trying to maim her.”“Could hav.. ooled… report… nse…”
“I’m sorry, HQ, you seem to be breaking up. Could you repeat that.”“...not cl… answ-... static on your…”
Yagami removes the earpiece in annoyance and studies it. Must be electrical interference, she thinks. Then her eyes widen in shock
Electrical interference-!!She looks skywards, and sure enough, the dark clouds seem to be extry stormy all of a sudden, with lightning flashing in the sky with increasing intensity. The power focused on one spot, before the clouds parted, and reveal Penny, wreathed in lightning, coming down on her position like a meteor. If she could see Penny’s face, she’d see a manic grin frozen on the smaller girl as she brought down her hammer full-blast, ready to smash with maximum force.
Without a moment to lose, Yagami immediately commands all her minions either to her or straight at Penny, trying to buy time to create a tough enough barrier to withstand the force of the incoming blow. Flying monsters head straight for Penny, trying to form a cushion to either blunt the blow or block it entirely, while the ground-bound ones form a protective dome around Yagami, even as the Shadow Ops Ars Magi is raising a shield as quickly as she can to protect herself from the incoming strike.
Penny sees the black mass of flying creepy-crawlies rushing at her, trying to stop her wild downwards charge. Instead of pausing, or maybe try to avoid the wave and dodge the attack, she instead goes full-bore, supercharging
GroB Eisen as she gives a loud roar.
With the pure power of her Elementum, Penny smashes through the forming first barrier, and continues to hurtle downwards full-tilt towards Yagami’s glowing shield, supported by numerous yokai and beasts. Lightning and Spiritual Elementum hit each other, immovable object and unstoppable force clashing once again. The sheer force of the impact causes a massive explosion of energy, one that levels the building itself and even knocking over nearby debris.
As the smoke clears, there’s nothing left but a giant crater and a considerable pile of rubble, several figures standing in it in defiance of the sheer destructive force unleashed. Penny stood, battered and bruised but unbowed, breathing hard but with her hammer in hands, and ready to throw down if need be. Opposite her, Yagami was also battered and dusty, shaken by the strike but not defeated yet. In her hands she holds prayer strips, and she is flanked by several large yokai, all of which had been mauled by the strike but still ready to throw themselves at Penny to protect their mistress. The two Ars Magi stared each other down for a bit before Yagami composed herself.
“You know, some would take that last attack as a sign that you’re quite mental,” she says in a disapproving tone.
“Yeah, well, sue me; I got a little cranky the second time you blew me up with those mice,” Penny snaps back.
“Fair enough, I suppose I did go a bit too far there,” Yagami concedes with a sigh.
“So, I gather we’re done here?”“Unless you got any more tricks up your sleeves,” Penny retorts, but she lowers her hammer.
“Well, not for the sake of this exam,” Yagami replies, straightening herself and dismissing her remaining familiars.
“Congratulations on succeeding, Ms. Grenoble. That was quite the show there, start to finish. I admit I may have gone a little overboard, but you must understand that as an Ars Magi, the enemy will not fight in a way that best suits your fighting style.
“You show unusual strength, speed, and toughness, and yes, I am aware of your moniker as ‘Panzer’ Grenoble. However, not all the foes you will face will be straightforward to fight; many will use tricks, misdirection, and yes, even curses and dark abilities to weaken you. Above strength and speed, Ars Magi’s most important weapon is situational awareness; the ability to spot enemy attacks before they happen, or to find a way out should they be caught in an ambush anyways. Barging in blindly helps no one. Improvisation is also important; one must adapt to the enemy’s plans to survive before they can figure out a way to regain initiative. And as they say, ‘discretion is the better part of valor’; one must pick their fights carefully. You will not always have the luxury of just bringing down a power attack full-force on an enemy’s head; sometimes they will be stronger, so you must seek their weak points, and sometimes they will be too numerous to take down quickly and thus must be avoided as you complete your intended objective.
“Overall, I’ll say you’ve handled yourself very well there. Outnumbered, surrounded, and harassed from almost all sides, you’ve found a way to overcome and reach your target, even if you cut it a little close.
“I will say this, however. Be careful in future; this isn’t one of your little shows you like so much. Altea, wasn’t it?”“I’m aware,” Penny replies brusquely. Yagami chuckles.
“Well, I suppose it can feel like Altea at times. Sort of like episode 15, played on an infinite loop. Have you seen that one?” There’s a hint of teasing in Yagami’s voice.
“Once or twice,” Penny admits, a little more sharply than she likes.
“And yet, you’ve seen the rest of the show several times over, at least. That’s rather telling, isn’t it?” Yagami chuckles again.
“Anyways, Penny, dismissed. Once again, congratulations on passing, even if it was a little more rough than would be advised.
“Also? Get a shower,” Yagami concludes with a wrinkled face.
“You smell like shit.”
After a long, hot shower, Penny was only too glad the whole thing was done. While the exam was a little over an hour, it felt like weeks to her, and she wanted a long break from it. She’s too tired and bruised to even do her usual ‘get free drinks from the vending machine trick’, her arm too exhausted to pull off the combination of finesse and strength to pull it off.
She notices Nichole also oddly grumpy, or at least quiet and brooding, so very unlike her. What exactly happened with the usually vibing Hastan to make her so tense? Then again, if it was anything like Penny’s test, she can sympathize. Penny herself was more annoyed than anything afterwards, and for a while afterwards she was oddly tense and hostile to small rodents, something Dana would discover when she had to save a fellow student’s hamster from getting yeeted across campus by a suddenly agitated Penny.
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