... I tried, didn't I? I wanted to help people.. I wanted to help save lives. I wanted to be a good person, like my father.
But.. I can't do it. I worked for it. I'm not strong enough, fast enough, good enough.. I failed. I made some mistakes too.
.. Why should I live? Nobody likes me. My friends just put up with me. The other girls.. they won't help me, they fight me at every turn. Because I'm a bad person.
Why bother with it? Why bother with them. I should just give up.. I fought so hard and got so little.
But I won't go witch. I'll just go away.
Hold on for now.
Asha let out a sigh of relief. She couldn't believe it worked, magical powers didn't stop impressing her everyday. "Mina! Oh thank god it worked... How are you feeling?" There was no immediate answer, and Asha quickly understood why upon looking at her surroundings. Even in that state, she was fighting.
Then before she knew it, an explosion struck the top of the icehill. And- "Alida!"
Asha messily started running toward the direction she thought Alida fell, trying to sense her presence. Then she noticed Aleksandra's abnormal state. She hesitated, pausing a second. <Aleksandra?>
Alida. I must hurry. I can talk to Aleksandra while I look for Alida. Asha resumed her search for Alida's body, simultaneously trying to get an answer from Aleksandra via telepathy. Their link was likely clear thanks to the Memento, and maybe she could use that link to help Aleksandra in some way. <Aleksandra snap out of it! I- I know you are scared, no, terrified, but you are not alone! Listen to my voice, I know you can do it. What happened was an accident! There is something only you can do! Aim true, and shoot that witch!>
Asha said to the other girls via telepathy:
<I asked Aleksandra to provide support fire, I'm now on my way to help Alida! Mina, Tooru, be careful!>
Send encouragements/orders to Aleksandra: use your gun to shoot at the Witch!
Search for Alida, and hopefully get there in time. Use Soothe if I can reach her body...
Where? Where?... Alida, where are you?...
Asha shouts for Aleksandra to use her gun to shoot at the witch, then rushes off around the corner without watching what the Russian girl does. She stops for a moment, looking around the ash plains for Alida's location, and is confused for a moment when she spots the girl, entirely whole, jumping and waving her hands in the air while floating about two feet above the ground. Then she spots Alida's
real body, laying in a small crater filled with bones, a fair distance away from the illusory Alida. Asha sprints to her wounded friend, sliding to a stop and dropping to her knees when she reaches the girl, grimacing when she sees the horrible state Alida's body is in. She squeezes her eyes shut, doing her best to not pay the girl's injuries any mind, and drapes herself protectively over Alida while she uses her magic.
The state of Alida's soul isn't encouraging; while it still possesses much of the intricate beauty that all the magical girls' souls possess, it's faded and rotten, degraded and dying. It's difficult for Asha to search through it and locate
which broken strands of Alida's soul represent her horrible injuries, and once found, she's sad to realize how minor they are. She's used her powers enough to realize how limited they are in repairing the
true damage her friends are suffering,
and as she lets her magic flow into the wounded girl, patching the small flaws that she can, she feels a little sick, seeing how little she's doing to help. And then she opens her eyes, Alida turning to look up at her, and sees the girl fully healed, no trace of the blood or burns left. Asha smiles a little at that, trying not to think of what she was seeing moments ago.
A pair of loud gunshots come off from behind Asha, and she turns as Alida sits up to look at them. Aleksandra is about halfway between the two of them and the mansion wall, aiming her rifle clumsily at the distant witch, which is evidently very large. She's still distant, too distant to make out any details beyond her harsh brightness, but she's already proportionately taller than any of the surrounding walls((Projection is a primary... and also getting pretty expensive, worth noting. It's a good thing Mina's been keeping pretty light on soul use up until now... I hope this one gives a multi-use seed or something, we're all gonna be pretty low. If you have alternate suggestions or ways to make this better I am open to suggestion.))
<Don't give up! We can do this!> Mina shouted over the telepathic link, but besides that kept her focus after trying to get to cover.
Alright, first up, get on the move and find some cover to make it harder to be found. Second up - continue to maintain illusions to distract, confuse, and divert fire. That should be easier with sight, now. As suggested, they'll drop once hit and revealed as illusions to save on power. If Alida is in sensory range, make sure to tell Asha a safe-ish route to her. If it's possible to do that too, try and find a safer way to reach the witch - once she goes down, everything else does.
((Mina's sixth sense has about a ten foot radius around her soul gem. The exact amount varies a little in-universe depending on her concentration, and a lot narratively depending on narrative needs, but it's never going to show her anything that's significantly out of melee range.))You get up slowly, feeling awkward in your own body, which moments ago was outright
dead. Asha shouts at Aleksandra to shoot, and then rushes off, the girl running off after her at a
much slower pace. You watch her go for a couple seconds, before she disappears around the corner of the mansion. You hope Asha can protect her.
Looking around, you're not sure about what place to take cover. You're sort-of already in cover, the ice hill created by Tooru's song is tall enough that you can't see the witch directly, only the light that's brightening up everything
aside from the mansion, but you don't think that will last. Asha, Aleksandra, and Alida are to your right, so you don't want to go over there--lest all four of you get hit at once--and looking up, there's a
ton of the flying skeletons circling overhead, so you're don't feel safe hiding among the mansion's ruins. That leaves the building far to your left, which requires you to sprint across open ground first. You take a deep breath, get down into a sprinter's position, and then
launch yourself forward.
[Joy]
You pass into the light moments later, but don't turn to look at the witch, focusing on moving as fast as possible, staying hard to hit. Halfway there, you
feel more than hear the explosion as one of your illusionary copies of Tooru, not far ahead of you, gets hit with one of the witch's explosive bolts. You cover your eyes and change course to sprint through the lingering ash cloud, letting the illusion dissipate as you do. You come out of the ash seconds later, uncovering your eyes to correct your course. Seconds later, you slide to a stop behind the wall, staying low and scrambling over to the other side in case the witch throws a bolt at your cover. After a few harrowing seconds spent cowering and waiting for an explosion, you decide to risk peeking out from behind cover.
The witch is
much closer now, and clearly massive. You have to squint to keep from hurting your eyes, and you can only barely make out her outline--a jagged, alien, angel. She's all hard angles, sharp edges and corners, without any depth or variation. She looks more like someone
cut a hole in the sky than an actual animate monster. She looks
wrong, entirely out of place.
Tooru stops singing, then waits on the bridge long enough for the first attack to be launched. Dodge using mobility, and continue to move defensively until I think I have a sure shot with the strongest mana bolt barrage I can get for Cheap using talismans.
You stop your song, and slide partway down the icehill toward the frozen pier, trying to get the bulk of the ice hill between you and the witch. As the ice stops expanding, suddenly becoming much more slippery and harder to navigate, it occurs to you that you've steadily been rising higher, and are worryingly high already. The skeletal familiars are circling about two stories above the ground, twice as high as any of the walls, and you're a fair bit above
them. You struggle for a moment to halt your slide, not wanting to get too close to the height of the familiars, and then just wait and listen for the sound of the witch's attack.
You don't have to wait long; there's a loud explosion off to your right, and when you look over, you see a Mina--you're not sure if it's she's
real, there's a couple other illusory Minas running around--rush into the ash cloud thrown up by the explosion. You hope nobody actually got hurt by that attack.
You don't hesitate long after the attack, quickly scrambling back to your feet and rushing up the side of the hill as fast as you can. You quickly get high enough to see the witch, and are immediately stunned by how much closer she is--she's
enormous for one, easily larger than any of the ruined buildings surrounding you, and you're not even sure if she's over the flowers, or within the circle of bare ash and ruined buildings yet. You can't se any
depth to her body, it's just a giant, sharply defined angelic shape, all angular edges and hard corners. Her wings are hard lines following a basic curve on top, with sharp, dagger-like 'feather' shapes below, her hands and feet terminate in long jagged sword shapes, fingers and pointed toes, and her head is an indistinct elongated pentagon.
You grip two talismans in your right hand, desperately trying to figure out how far away she is, so you can aim properly, and then you finally start to make out some texture. There's a thin barely-visible patchwork of lines over her entire body, like a wireframe held in front of a painfully bright light, and then you start to make out color between the lines, and it hits you: she's a stained glass window, floating in midair, her entire body a shifting framework of lightly-colored glass plates, constantly shifting, changing shapes, and rearranging. You couldn't see any depth before because she
has no depth! She's certainly coming closer, the glass sections becoming larger and easier to make out, but her individual body parts only change in shape, not distance. Her wings are flapping up and down, her height raising and lowering as if she really were flying with them, but when they're low enough to meet her arms, they meld with them as if she were just a silhouette, glass exchanging between her wings and arms before they separate. She draws her right arm back, and it seems to shrink slightly, glass sections flowing into the rest of her body, and suddenly you realize she's about to throw another attack!
[Joy]
You launch the two talismans in your hand immediately, throwing them towards her head, still unsure how far away the witch is. Then you duck and dodge backwards, hiding behind the bulk of the ice hill. You cover your head and hope her attack wasn't directed towards you. You hear her scream, the sound nearly indistinguishable from the last scream, aside from the volume, but don't hear any explosions, from your attacks or from hers. You don't peek back up quite yet, though.
((Next update on the 31st. My sleep schedule is out of whack, so the update schedule / writing quality will likely suffer as well.))
Soul Gem: Glowing with a fading light.
Form and location: Medallion, pinned to her left breast.
Age: 14
Hair Color: Salt-stained blonde.
Health: Fine!
Inventory: A magically-lengthened club, tied to her arm with one of Asha's ribbons.
Totem: A fishing club.
Stats:
Bravery: Talented~
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Amateur...
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Skilled!
Creativity: Cursed ;-;
Love: Cursed ;-;
Abilities:
Mobility Lvl2
Close Combat Lvl3+1
Totem Manipulation Lvl2
Berzerker Lvl3 Active; Crippled! (Cheap discount to power use)
Painless Lvl2 Active; Cheap cost per turn!
Effigy Lvl1
Soul Gem: Glowing with a warm light.
Form and location: Ring, worn on her left ring finger.
Age: 13
Hair color: Ashen
Health: Wet, ashy, and with a bunch of glass and gashes in her right hand. Has a fair bit of living clay on her, mostly her clothes and right arm.
Inventory: A short rusty metal shiv, broken off from a longer piece.
Totem: A Ribbon. The one her late sister wore.
Stats:
Bravery: Skilled!
Joy: Cursed ;-;
Innocence: Cursed ;-;
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Talented~
Creativity: Amateur...
Love: Skilled!
Abilities:
Mobility: Level 3
Close Combat: Level 2
Totem Manipulation: Level 1 (+1)
Heal and Steel: Level 2 (Active; Next attack rolls on Mercy)
Soothe: Level 3
Flagellation: Level 3
Memento: Level 1 (Given to Aleksandra)
Soul Gem: Glowing with a dull light.
Form and location: Ring, worn on her right index finger.
Age: 14.
Hair Color: Bright green.
Health: Fine!
Inventory: A halberd, which is not really long enough to be helpful here.
Totem: A halberd.
Stats:
Bravery: Amateur...
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Amateur...
Purity: Skilled!
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Talented~
Love: Cursed ;-;
Abilities:
Mobility: Level 2
Close-Combat: Level 2 (+1)
Regeneration: Level 2
Sixth Sense: Level 3
Semblance: Level 2
Projection: Level 2 (Active; maintaining a bunch of Alida and Tooru illusions; maintenance cost 1/6th Major)
Soul Gem: Glowing with a shadowed light.
Form and location: Necklace, worn around her... neck...
Age: 13
Hair Color: Bright scarlet.
Health: Has a bunch of shallow cuts across her back, and she's a little cold, to boot!
Inventory: Two paper talismans, ready for throwing.
Totem: Ofuda talismans, primarily thrown as manabolts.
Stats:
Bravery: Cursed ;-;
Joy: Talented~
Innocence: Skilled!
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Amateur...
Love: Skilled!
Abilities:
Mobility II
Mana Bolt III (+I)
Regeneration I
Totem Manipulation II
Invigorating Passion I
Outburst II
Duet with Reality II (Active; Cheap maintenance.)
Ward: Glowing with a foolish light!
Age: 12
Hair Color: Black.
Health: Awake, but very cold and wet, and probably a little traumatized.
Inventory: A cute blue ribbon tied into her hair. She's wearing Alida's coat, now soaked with water, and wielding her grandfather's AK-47.
Stats:
Bravery: Skilled!
Joy: Skilled!
Innocence: Talented~
Purity: Amateur...
Mercy: Cursed ;-;
Creativity: Cursed ;-;
Love: Amateur...